#I have never been succinct a day in my goddamn life

[banannabethchase]

matt jackson/adam page, meet cute AU where adam is matt's kid's teacher

...Anon you found my kryptonite. Any school AU will take me down.

~

Meet the Teacher - Also on AO3

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Adam's got a parent teacher conference with one of the trickiest parents in the district: Mr. Jackson.

This became over 2k words. I. Okay. This might as well happen.

~

Adam takes a deep breath and peeks out the door to his classroom again. No sign of anyone coming down the hallway, no indication of Bailey’s dad.

“Page!”

Adam jumps and almost crashes into his bookshelf. “Jesus, Silver, what is wrong with you?”

Mr. Silver, the P.E. teacher, grins at him. “You looked tense.”

“I am tense,” Adam says through gritted teeth. “And thanks, by the way. Scaring me definitely helps.”

Silver shrugs. “Happy to help.”

“Thought that was you.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “Oh, god, not you, too.”

Mr. Cole swaggers down the hallway, hands shoved in his pockets. “What, not happy to see me?”

“I’m not happy to see anyone right now,” Adam admits. “I have a parent/teacher conference that I’m pretty worried is going to suck.”

Cole pauses, leaning against the bulletin board across from Adam.

“Watch my kid’s personal narratives,” Adam says, trying to sound stern. Cole does shuffle out of the way, though.

“Why are you so freaked out?” Cole asks. “The parents love you. Moms want you to fulfill their weird little fantasies and fuck them on your desk, all that.”

“Okay, well, I wish I’d never heard that come out of your mouth,” Adam grumbles. “No, it’s – it’s a Jackson.”

Cole’s face falls. “Oh, dude. Good fuckin’ luck.”

“Right?!” Adam half yells. “His kid is in second grade and he’s already been to fifteen goddamn school board meetings. I didn’t even know there were that many to go to.”

“Talking about Bailey’s dad?” Ms. Shida says, poking her head out of the art classroom. “Good luck is right. When she was in kindergarten, he asked me why she didn’t get an A on all her assignments.”

Adam stares at her. “Don’t you grade on demonstration?”

“Yeah. E, S, N, U. She was getting E’s and he didn’t give me enough time to explain it before he was yelling at me.”

Adam whines a little and drops his forehead against the wall. “Oh, god, it’s only the fourth week of school. How am I already getting harassed by a parent 18 days in?” He exhales and jumps a little. “Okay. It’ll be fine. I’ll stay calm, and it’ll be fine.”

“Sure, buddy,” Cole says, clapping Adam on the shoulder. “Take it from the greater Adam. Survival is the goal.”

“I – shut up,” Adam says, pushing off Cole’s hand. “But. Uh. Thanks? I guess?”

In the hopes of ignoring the rest of his colleagues, Adam shoots a text to their receptionist to walk Bailey’s dad to his door when he gets there. He does a terrible job of getting paperwork done as he waits. The clock ticks on until 4:00 on the dot, when Adam hears a knock on the door and sees the receptionist, Mr. Schiavone, peek his head in.

“Hi there, Mr. Page,” Mr. Schiavone says, betraying none of the anxiety in his voice that Adam can read in his eyes. “Mr. Jackson is here?”

“Bailey’s dad,” comes a voice from behind him.

And in steps a man who doesn’t even remotely match the person Adam had conjured up in his mind. Long hair tied back in a half bun, tight white jeans, giant brown eyes, and a hesitant smile. Nothing like the half balding whiner in a lumpy sweater and khakis he’d imagined.

Adam is in trouble.

“Hi there, Mr. Jackson,” he says, standing up from his small group table. He always does parent conferences back at that table. It feels more personal. He sticks out his hand as Mr. Jackson comes by. “So great to meet you. We missed you at meet the teacher night.”

Mr. Jackson shakes his hand firmly, smiling. “Bailes was sick -trust me, you did not want her puking all over the floor.”

“Been there, done that,” Adam laughs.

He nods to Mr. Schiavone, who quietly slides out of the room.

“Please,” Adam says, sliding into one of the kid chairs at the back table, “have a seat. I should probably get some adult sized chairs, but, for now, enjoy the wiggle seats.”

Mr. Jackson perches expertly on the seat, then spins a little. “Oh, I like these,” he laughs. “Bailey likes them, too?

“Actually,” Adam says, and he can’t believe how quietly the conversation opened up, “that’s one thing I’d like to check in with you about.”

Mr. Jackson’s face darkens. “Did you bring me here to tell me my kid’s doing something wrong?”

“No!” Adam says. “Absolutely not. Bailey tries hard all the time. In everything. I can see how hard she’s trying, and that’s why I wanted to speak with you.” Adam takes a deep breath. These conversations never get easier. “I’m noticing that Bailey is having some difficulty transitioning from activity to activity, interacting with her peers, and comprehending texts.” He waits a second.

“Are you – you see it too?” Mr. Jackson’s face drops all the tension. “You think my Bailey might be Autistic?”

“I – yes,” Adam says. “She has some many characteristics, and I want to make sure we can help her –”

“Finally!” Mr. Jackson says, throwing his hands in the air as he leans back and half falls off of the wiggle seat. He catches himself before falling, like he knew it would happen. His hands are going everywhere. “Mr. Page, let me tell you, I have spent the past two years trying to get somebody to hear me when I’ve told them something is up with my girl. She’s – Bailey’s amazing, but I can tell she’s struggling when she comes home. I can tell. And the doctor told me Autism is only in boys, and Principal Khan told me it was too early to make that decision –”

Adam frowns. “Principal Khan said what?”

“I asked about it last year, around November,” Mr. Jackson says. He’s calmed down a bit, but his eyes are just the tiniest bit wet. “I told him I was seeing something with her, but her teacher disagreed with me. Principal Khan said we needed to wait.” He wrinkles his nose. “He and the teacher said she was too young to make any decisions.”

Adam pauses. The next question needs to be carefully asked, expertly angled so no one could say he disparaged a coworker.

“That Ms. Baker’s a real douchebag,” Mr. Jackson continues. Adam doesn’t even get a chance to get a word in. “And I know it’s probably, like, not cool to speak that way about your kid’s teacher, but, god, what a jerk! She literally said Bailey was fine because she wasn’t a behavior concern. That we needed to prioritize.”

Adam’s the one to half fall off of his seat at that one. “She said what?”

“I know, right?” Mr. Jackson says. He shakes his head and his hair is, well, unmissably soft. Adam feels like one of the kids with the way he wants to reach out and touch it. “Like, and in front of the principal. He looked so baffled about it that he just sort of ended the conversation with the plan that we would look into it in second grade.” He shrugs. “So, when we got that first progress report back, I asked for a conference.” He sheepishly pulls out his phone and presses a button. “I, uh. I kind of was recording this whole conversation. I was scared you were going to be another person here who was writing off my girl.”

Adam stares at the recording and runs back everything. He didn’t say anything negative, did he? Just asked questions?

“Sir,” Adam says, “I fully understand how frustrating that may have been for you. Is there a chance, though, that you could delete that recording?”

“Oh, duh, of course.” He turns the phone toward Adam and selects the only recording dated today, and hits delete. “I wasn’t actually going to use it against you unless you were awful.”

“Thank…you? I think?” Adam says.

Mr. Jackson nods. “So, um. What are you thinking for Bailes?”

The two of them speak for half an hour, coming up with a support system for Bailey until the referral process goes through, and Adam finds Mr. Jackson moving closer and closer.

“Oh, and can you add something about how to handle friendships?” Mr. Jackson asks. When he reaches over to point at it, he lets his arm fall right against Adam’s. “She’s having trouble understanding that she has to ask a friend to play, that they might not know she wants to if she’s on the other side of the playground.”

“Of course,” Adam says, nodding. His heart is racing, just a little bit. He can smell whatever shampoo Mr. Jackson uses. It smells like green apples. Like candy.

“Perfect,” Mr. Jackson says. “God, Mr. Page, I don’t know what I would have done if Bailey had gotten somebody else for a teacher.”

Adam couldn’t prove it, but he’s pretty sure Mr. Jackson is fluttering his eyelashes at him. He’s got gorgeous eyes. “Sure thing,” he says, clearing his throat.

“Right.” Mr. Jackson pushes back.

“You can call me Adam, though,” he says automatically. “You don’t – Mr. Page is for the kids. You can call me Adam.”

Mr. Jackson’s face breaks into a grin. He’s so goddamn pretty. “Alright then, Adam. You can call me Matt.” He reaches out to shake Adam’s hand, and their fingertips linger just this side of too long as they pull away.

“It was good to meet you, Matt,” Adam says. He feels…anxious. In a very good way. “Glad to be of help.”

~

The next morning, Adam finds himself primping a little bit. There’s no reason, none at all, that he would run into Mr. Jack – Matt at school today. Bailey takes the bus. He won’t see Matt.

But he can’t help but add a little extra effort to his morning routine.

“Looking good, Mr. Page,” Silver says. He wiggles his eyebrows as Adam makes his way into his spot at the bus ramp.

“Oh, shut up,” Adam grumbles. “Why can’t you be normal?”

“Not my vibe,” he says, shrugging. “How’d it go yesterday with Jackson?”

Adam relays the events, leaving out the smell of Matt’s hair or how warm it was when their arms touched.

“You’re a parent whisperer,” Silver says, shaking his head. “You got through to the scariest dad in the area.”

“I know, dude,” Adam says, sipping his coffee. “It was like night and day. Jackson was totally – well, he wasn’t chill, on any level. But he’s just been worried about his kid and Bailey was stuck with Baker last year.”

Silver winces. “Well that’d fuck up any kid, wouldn’t it.”

Adam nods, sipping his coffee. At least the coffee is cold, out here in the summer heat as he waits for the bus riders to come in. “I just hope he likes me.”

The first bus opens his doors, and they hear “Mr. Page!”

A tiny brunette ball of energy careens into Adam before he can focus, and only just manages to angle his tumbler full of coffee away from the projectile before it spills.

“Is that Miss Bailey,” Adam says, hugging around her shoulders. “Missed you all weekend, munchkin!”

“Daddy says to give you this.” Bailey, like always, gets herself tangled in her backpack straps for a second before calming down and pulling it off. She dives into her backpack and pulls out her weekend folder, then pauses, looking a bit confused. “Give you now?” she asks.

“Not right now,” Adam says gently. “Let’s wait until weekend folder time.”

“Okay.” Bailey continues to dig until she pulls something out of her bag with a Jackson-style dramatic, “Aha!” She shoves a Starbucks gift card, a crayon art project, and a decorated stapler that says, “Mr. Page” on the top. “Don’t tell him I said this, but he was singing his happy songs all the way to school, so I think he’s really excited that you get this.” She beams up at him. “Do you like ‘em?”

“I love them, Bailes,” Adam says. She dives at him again and hugs him tight. Adam holds the crayon project. “Did you make this?”

“Me and Daddy,” Bailey clarifies. “I got to use Daddy’s special hair dryer!”

“Wow!” Adam says. “What a day!”

“Okay, I get breakfast now,” Bailey says. “Later gator, Mr. Page!”

Adam watches Bailey skip into school and sees Silver eyeing him.

“So, uh, Page,” Silver says, and Adam is deeply concerned with that smile, “looks like Jackson likes you a lot.”

“Shut up,” Adam grumbles, blushing. But he’s already planning the thank you letter he’ll send home with Bailey that afternoon.

[johnkrrasinski]

ℑ𝔫𝔱𝔬 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔚𝔬𝔬𝔡𝔰

Chapter 5: Wonderland 

full masterlist // series masterlist

Pairings: dark!Steve Rogers x female!reader

Word count: 2,328

Warnings: smut, kidnapping, oral (male receiving), fingering, dub-con, non-con. (MUST BE 18+)

Summary: after the death of your mother, you decided that you were going to do something new to honor her. You chose a perfect camping spot somewhere down South. You thought it was going to be the life-changing vacation that you never had in your life, until Steve Rogers, a man existed in roughness and control all his life, found you.

a/n: chapter five’s here! i’ve been so focused on my other fic ideas that i nearly forgot i still have an unfinished series. anyways, hope you enjoy! and, things are going to unfold between steve and the reader in this chapter. i truly hope y’all are prepared for some gentle dark steve cause i certainly am. please leave a like & comment. enjoy!

The next morning, you were woken up by the feeling of soft kisses on your shoulders and a few more on your neck. You felt a delicate grip on your hip, as you slowly began to regain consciousness. You felt a broad figure behind you, and you couldn’t help but turn around immediately to see him.

You realized Steve was already naked on your bed, lying on his side as he held you like a lover would. He didn’t stop his kisses even after you were awake, with your body slightly turned to him now, he had easier access to your neck as he pampered you with kisses there too.

You didn’t know why, maybe it was your hazy brain that was still half awake, but you instantly threw your head back to give him more room as you moaned quietly. His hand that was on your hip then went to spread your thighs as he immediately rubbed your clit, not wasting any time in starting with a slow pace.

The wetness that was already there amplified, and after he was done spoiling your neck with kisses, he went to your lips as he hungrily swallowed your moans. He bit your lower lip and you parted them to let his tongue invade your mouth. He kept on kissing you and massaging you at your most sensitive part, and after a few more strokes, your orgasm burst.

He watched the expression on your face as you crumbled. He always loved seeing you fall apart. Your moans were muffled by his mouth that didn’t quit devouring yours until your breathing slowed down. His fingers had slowed down its motion after you erupted, but it didn’t stop instantly to prolong your bliss.

After you were calm enough, he kissed your forehead as you looked into his ocean eyes. “Good morning.” He greeted you. You couldn’t answer due to the feeling that you were just forced to endure, but it didn’t seem to bother him at all.

“Let’s begin our training today, shall we?” He got up from the bed with his eyes still on you.

“Get on your knees.” The authoritative tone resurged. And the commanding look on his face was apparent despite your smoky state. Your legs were still feeble enough to get up. You felt like you needed a little longer respite, but you knew better than to defy him.  

You leisurely rose to your feet as you followed him to the centre of the room. After he stopped at the spot that he deemed fit, he wordlessly ordered you to kneel. From this level, the size of his girth was enough to make you tremble. You gulped in cower as you didn’t dare to gaze into his eyes. You waited for his next instruction as you felt his hand caress your hair.

“I know this one is going to be challenging but, you don’t have to be afraid. I will guide you through every step. Is that understood, little one?”

You nodded, “yes sir.” You still kept your head down, the sight of his boots somehow comforted you better than the man wearing them.

“Good girl. Now, look at me.” You gathered every bit of guts you had left within you to glance up and he had his lips set in a thin line. His ocean eyes had turned into the arctic; glacial ice frosting your soul.

“Open your mouth.” Your lips trembled at his words as you slowly parted your lips whilst still maintaining eye contact. He briskly stroked his shaft then he inserted the tip to your mouth as he pushed himself deeper until he hit the back of your throat.

You wailed in resistance as your hands went to his thighs to push him away, but he persevered. “Stop.” He said from above. “Breathe. Slowly through your nose.”

You followed his instruction. “Good girl. Now, relax your jaws.” You tried as best as you could if that was even possible. Every bone in your body was tense. You certainly had never slept with any man before, let alone tasting him in your mouth. You were petrified of what was he planning to do next.

“Now, wrap your lips around them.” You wrapped your lips around his shaft, cocooning it like a caterpillar.

“Good girl, just move your head back and forth. Suck it like a lollipop.” His hand that was in your hair tugged it to guide you back and forward as he repeated the motion. Your horrified eyes were still looking up at him as tears began flowing down your cheeks.

Every time his tip hits the back of your throat, you moaned in discomfort. You held on to his sturdy thighs to ground yourself. Slowly, you began to enjoy the taste of him. You were utterly confused by the reaction that your body had but once you had regained control of the pace, the terror dried down.

He gesticulated his grip on your hair faster, driving you to whimper as you dug your nails into his skin, leaving crescent-shaped marks on his flesh. He didn’t seem to mind. He only threw his head back as you felt him throbbing. He moaned out loud when he reached his climax, ejaculating deep inside your throat.

He kept himself deep inside your mouth and stayed still until every drop of his cum was spilled down your throat, not wasting any from your lips. He then released your hair and he stepped away from you.

“You just passed the test of putting that mouth for good, baby.” Your chest heaved due to the violation. “Now, get on the bed. I’m gonna return the favour.”

You knew there was nothing profitable from the ‘favour’ he was about to pay you back with, but you did what he ordered you to anyway. You laid down on the bed as he grabbed your ankles to pull you to the edge of the bed and spread them wide. He got on his knees as he plunged deep into your cunt, licking a long stripe on your bud, causing you to close your eyes and relish the unwanted pleasure.

And once again, he proved you that your body was entirely his, and there was no escaping him.

Later that day, after you woke up from your nap, Steve was lying beside you with your head on his chest. You tried to push away from him but that only jolt him awake. You really should try to be more subtle. You were perplexed by what you were seeing… What the hell is he doing sleeping on this bed? He had never slept next to you before, let alone cuddle you. If this man thinks that you two were lovers, he must be out of his goddamn mind.

But he only looked at you with a smile and asked with a husky voice, “good nap?”

You instantly sat up and tried to sit as far away as possible from him. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, in case you forgot, I own this cabin, remember?” He sarcastically mocked you for asking such an absurd question. As if he hadn’t just made you cum more times than you could count for the past few days.

“No I mean, what are you doing on this bed? You never slept here before.”

“Didn’t feel like leaving you yet. And I was pretty worn out from our early session.”

“So is this what we do now? Cuddling after you force me to do whatever fetish you have in mind?” You sneered without looking at him. You didn’t know what erupted the courage within you to be that spontaneously brash. Maybe you no longer cared about his threats of punishments anymore. Maybe you were just extremely fatigued by every tragedy that had befallen on you, so you were going to say whatever your fury wanted you to say.

“Would you rather I leave you here all alone, in the dark, waiting for me to return until I make you perform another sexual act for me?” His tone was surprisingly gentle. You expected him to lay a hand on you or make you regret your own words, but his reaction left you a bit taken aback.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure about anything anymore, honestly.” You folded your knees to your chest as you hugged them, trying to shield yourself from the grim reality you were currently trapped in. He ran a hand down your back, as a soothing gesture. You weren’t going to say it out loud, but it did assuage the fuel of dejection within you.

Then he got up to a sitting position as he inched his body closer to you. “I know this hasn’t been easy for you, but I will get you through this. And I have no intention in harming you, I promise. I just need you to trust me enough to let me take care of you.”

When you were clueless on what to say and the muteness fell in the room except for your and Steve’s breathing, he swept the hair that was falling on your shoulders to behind your back. He then caressed your hair as he did earlier when he prepped you to perform a blowjob on him, but this time, it didn’t feel demanding. It just felt… reassuring. Like he was trying to instil every promise that he made into you, to make you understand the sincerity behind them through his touches.

You didn’t meet his eyes and you remained immobile, despite his effort to make you allow him in. “I don’t know if it could be that easy…”

“I know, and I told you we can take as much time as we need but every progress that we make, there should always be a result, and I need to see them, okay?”

You nodded, hoping it was enough to make him content with whatever he was expecting from you.

“Let’s take a shower, yeah? Maybe it’ll help enlighten your mood.” He got up from the bed and he walked to your side, carrying you with his hands behind your knees and his other one behind your back. Despite the nap that you just had, you couldn’t help but rested your head on his chest in the succinct walk to the narrow bathroom.

He washed himself as he watched you do the same. When you were about to grab the shampoo bottle, he beat you first to it and squeezed a dozen amount onto his palm then he proceeded to wash your hair, messaging your scalp tenderly for such a brutish man. There weren’t many words exchanged between the two of you in the shower, but you could hear your own racing thoughts. You let him take care of you as he promised.

You pondered; maybe breaking down the brick of your walls one by one doesn’t seem like the worst idea. This was the plan after all though, right? To gain his trust and convince him that the idea of escaping had been erased from your mind, and then maybe… You can make an escape. But for now, you were going to savour the sanative treatment of his gentle side.

Later that night, after you dried off your hair, he came back downstairs to feed you. He then left you to give you some space and told you that he will come back later. After you were done, you laid in bed thinking, if your mother was still alive… Would she try to look for you? Would she be worried by now? Who the hell were you kidding, of course, she would. But would she be able to find you? You’d never know. It was pointless to ask those questions anyway. The best that you could do is pray to your mother, hoping that she would save you from this bottomless pit.

Your wishful thinking was disrupted by the cracking sound of the door opening and his presence coming into view. He laid down next to you, putting your head on his chest. You complied easily, not having the energy to oppose. It could’ve been a lot worse than sleeping on his chest.

“I was born and raised in these woods, I don’t go to the city too often unless I’m in dire need of something. My mother was ill from tuberculosis when I was 18 and that’s how she died. I work at the local fire department and I love to take some photographs in my spare time. I don’t meet that many people in my life, so maybe, we can help each other out.”

“What do you mean?” You answered meekly.

“I will guide you through our sexual training and adapting to your new life, but you can also teach me the life that you are used to. We can make some compromise to make this work. How does that sound?”

“Okay.”

“Okay. It’s getting late, you should get some rest.”

“Will you be here when I wake up?” You didn’t know what your real intention was aiming that question. You knew it should’ve been about sleeping with one eye open but somehow, there is this tacit need of assurance, like knowing that you weren’t going to wake up all alone in this cold sheets would give you an easeful slumber.  

“I’m not going anywhere, baby.”  

And that was all you needed to doze off and slowly flutter your drowsy eyelids to the sound of a steady heartbeat. It reminded you that this man was only a man underneath, no matter how unnerving and formidable he could be. It made you think in your ploddingly dissolving state of consciousness, that maybe… Just maybe… You didn’t have to be so fearful by him after all. And maybe… Just maybe… You could start letting your guard down. Who knows what doors it could open?

You could only wonder. But you were avid to find out when daylight comes.

[poptod]

The Dead Heed No Lies (Ch. 2)

Description: If you won't join the life of the party upstairs, the life of the party comes to you.

Notes: Building up. Word Count: 1.9k

Chapter Two: Holed Up

It had been approximately a week since you’d fainted in the break room, found by Ahkmenrah, who was apparently worried about you after you hadn’t returned, even as dawn approached. When you came fully back to consciousness, he sat with you, explaining what the tablet did, how it needed moonlight, which was the real reason for the transfer. He further explained that it only worked during the night, which was why everything seemed so still during the day. He’d been gracious about the whole fainting thing, telling you that it wasn’t entirely unexpected, simply wishing you a better day ahead of you before he left to his exhibit.

You decided not to accompany him. Watching a man crawl into his own grave to die seemed like something that wouldn’t be good for you.

“How long are you staying here?” You asked Tilly, watching from the balcony as chaos ensued in the form of an almost hysterical party.

“Dunno, this is a pretty prestigious museum. But should be for another few months.”

“That’s quite a while,” you noted, nodding in a mildly impressed manner.

“Should give you enough time to get to know Ahk more,” she said, leaning over to you, attempting horridly at a wink.

“I - what?”

“You know, you and the King,” she said, saying his title with a theatrical form of reverence.

“… Right. Me and the King. What is this, Disney?” You shook your head, chuckling to yourself.

“What? You’d make a great couple,” she said, nudging you with her elbow.

“Til, I barely know him. You’re seeing things.”

“Whatever you say,” she said skeptically, turning and leaving down the stairs.

The whole notion she was proposing was ridiculous. You’d spoken to him a grand total of three times, the first being when you met him, the second was him waking you from a black out, and the third was you accidentally running into his parents, and he quickly introduced you to them.

On the whole, the conversation wasn’t bad, but it could’ve gone better. It felt rather like a young teen who had modern ideals with two racist parents, but this time it was an actual King and Queen who had Jewish slaves and their son, who had apparently never agreed with that.

You didn’t agree with it either, being Jewish yourself. After his parents had left, Ahkmenrah explained that it wasn’t the first time it’d happened, that it was equally embarrassing as it was funny. You agreed, and quickly excused yourself.

As fun as it was to be upstairs during the night of life, you had a job, and it couldn’t be avoided. Especially since McPhee was now breathing down your back, which was a change, because usually he was at home, asleep, during your work hours. Now, fully awake, he was free to observe your every movement. Not that he did, he was busy making sure nothing in the museum was destroyed. You stayed far away, in the basement, locked up and sorting through the archives.

Every now and then Tilly would come down, asking you to take a break, which you nearly always declined.

Then the King visited you.

You could tell it was him without even looking up, from the way his cloak dragged across the ground, and his sandals hitting the asphalt.

“Hi Ahk,” you said, not looking up from the papers you were sorting.

Man killed 150 bears in American wilderness, original article…

“Hello. How’d you know it was me?” He asked, chuckling as he sat down beside you. That was something you hadn’t expected of him when you first met him - for him to be normal, to stoop down to your level. Sit with you on the ground, cross legged, looking like a perfectly normal man in an impeccable costume. Warm and human.

“I can hear your cloak. No one else wears a cloak,” you said, smiling as you looked at him, before looking right back down again.

“Ah. Suppose it does sort of… give it away,” he said, fumbling with his cape in his fingers.

“It’s fantastic material, though. I assume it’s the same clothing you were embalmed with?” You said, and without thought you fingered the material, always wondering what fine cloth would feel like. As much as you studied history, you never actually experienced any of the findings it brought.

“Oh, uh, yes. It is. Gold sewn in and all. I think we were a little dramatic back then,” he laughed quietly, his eyes fixed on your hands.

You knew it was inappropriate, but dear God it was soft.

“Well you had a lot of gold. Symbol of status, a way of letting people know how much you were worth. It’s like people owning mansions nowadays, buying fancy cars. Just a show of wealth and status.”

“Unsightly,” he joked.

“Unseemly,” you said with a chuckle, playing along. After a moment of quiet giggles you turned back to your papers, continuing to sort through them though it was the last thing you wanted to be doing. Here you were, studying historical records when a literal goldmine of information was in front of you, and he acted quite like he liked you, and a lot, always open to talk, always trying to learn more about you. Overall, very friendly.

“Ahkmenrah, I was wondering,” you started, setting your papers down. The more you looked at them, the duller they got. He looked expectantly at you, so you continued.

“There’s hardly any mention of you at all in any history books. No statues, we only found out you existed when we found your, um. Your sarcophagus. Do you have any idea as to why that is?”

It was, maybe, a sensitive topic. Maybe it was a question he didn’t know the answer to. Either way it evoked some emotional reaction out of him as he shifted uncomfortably, tucking his feet and hands further into himself in a psychological sign of defensiveness.

“I didn’t know, for a while. I found out later when my parents told me. I don’t remember this for whatever reason but my brother killed me, and uh… took the throne? It was his birthright, to be fair,” he said, defending him though he deserved none of it.

“He was older than you, but your parents gave you the throne?”

“Yes. I know it’s odd,” he sighed, relaxing as he leaned back on his arms. “But they thought it would be a better decision if I ruled instead of him, and generally speaking, I think they were right. My brother’s a bit, ah, bloodthirsty, you could call it?”

The two of you laughed, but you wondered what in the hell his brother could’ve done in Egyptian times to be considered bloodthirsty enough to pass the throne to the younger child.

“Anyway, he poisoned me, and my parents were still alive when this happened, but they couldn’t do much while he desecrated everything that ever mentioned me.”

“That’s depressing,” you sighed, stretching your arms as you relaxed, looking ahead to the rows of boxes.

“What’s depressing,” he said, his tone suddenly changing, “is you sitting down here all night when all the fun is upstairs.”

“Oh not you too,” you groaned, not wanting to have to convince another person that you had an actual job to do.

“What? It’s not healthy, you know,” he said, laughing, knowing he was a terrible influence.

“I’m fully aware of that but it’s my job. Wouldn’t expect you to understand that, all you do is have fun,” you chuckled, digressing into a tired sigh. He hummed, quiet and low, relaxing in his position once more.

“In that case, if you really can’t be swayed, I’ll stay with you.”

You stammered, fully disagreeing. If he stayed you’d never get anything done, he was a huge distraction, him and his beautiful flowing robes and his stupid gorgeous face - no, you couldn’t do it, you would absolutely not stand for it.

However, before you could go off on a rant of why that was a terrible idea (while completely avoiding your actual lovey-dovey reason as to why it was a terrible idea), he saw the look in your eye, and his smile faded into a sad, open mouthed, glittering eyed expression that made him instantly look like he’d been crying.

Like a goddamn puppy.

“Fine,” you sighed, giving in without a word exchanged. “But don’t distract me!”

“Me? Never!” He laughed, standing up and wandering through the aisles, letting you have your silence as you worked. You didn’t say anything, but you appreciated the thought deeply.

Every now and then, over the next few hours that passed, you’d see him through the spaces between the boxes. His head would poke out, and sometimes he’d kneel down to where you were, giving you a funny face for you to soften and laugh at.

This boy is too kind for his own good, you thought to yourself, wondering if he was like this during his life in Egypt. As you sorted mindlessly through sheets of paper, your mind wandered, going through the two different scenarios.

If he was exactly the same then as he was now, you wondered how he survived. As a prince, he was supposed to be mature, a role model for his kingdom. He should’ve been manly and strong, neither of which were traits he’d shown thus far.

If he was not the same, you wondered when the change happened. What he was like back then. Was he cruel, antisemitic, and a succinct ruler? Or was he just as kind as he was now, just more mature, with the weight of his responsibilities drowning out his personality?

“You look lost,” he noticed, boxes pushed to the side as he poked his head through the other side of the open shelf. You laughed, pushing the boxes back together to force his head out. He whined, jogging his way around the long hall to make it to you.

“No need to be ashamed. I, too, get lost in sheets of paper,” he chuckled, sitting down behind you and looking over your shoulder. He was slightly taller than you, allowing him a vantage point.

“You know, you speak remarkably good English for a 4,000 year old Egyptian Pharaoh,” you said, using the end of your pencil to tap his nose.

“What can I say, it’s what everyone else speaks. I hardly ever speak Egyptian now except with my parents.”

“I guess that makes sense,” you said, growing slowly quieter. “Your version of the language is dead now.”

A clangor of Rex’s roar resounded from upstairs, a sound you now knew signified that everyone needed to return to their place.

“Just as I am soon about to be,” he said, grunting slightly as he stood. Without thought you stood with him, letting your pencil and paper fall to the ground clattering quietly. With a chuckle he looked you up and down, almost sarcastically wondering if you’d do anything else embarrassing. You just glared, the blushing heat in your cheeks obvious.

“Come on, let’s get you to bed,” you mumbled, leading him out the door and up the stairs. He followed, and the two of you walked to his old room in the museum.

As you reached the threshold he stopped, turning to you.

“I must leave you now,” he said, his words dramatic but his tone sincere. His hands came up to hold yours, another sign of his truthfulness.

“Try and do what I said?” He asked of you.

“What was that again?”

“Have some fun. Don’t hole up in that basement.”

You laughed, shaking your head.

“Sure.”

He left you with a smile, never wanting people to see him as he wrapped himself back up in his tomb. You understood his wish, obeying his need for privacy.

Until tomorrow night, you thought to yourself.

[cagestark]

Better Late Than Never//1

And Merry Christmas to YOU

Aka I started another project that I will take twenty years to finish. But @starkerflowers prompts were just too fucking good.

About: With interest in his work waning, famous writer Tony Stark (under the pseudonym AE Potts) changes his entire public relations platform, which includes hosting a meet-and-greet contest where one lucky fan will get to spend the day with him. That one lucky fan is Peter Parker. Peter is 21. Will contain nff, alcoholism, suicide attempts, character death (not major), drug mentions, anxiety, anxiety attacks. 

Read here on AO3. 

-

Tony is awakened from a drunken, dreamless sleep by a tub of envelopes and small packages being upended over his head. He jerks upright with a shout from where he was slumped over his writing desk, upending the (empty) bottle of whiskey that had lulled him to sleep. Pepper stands over him, impeccable in every way he is not.

“Jesus Christ,” he says, pushing envelopes off of where they have pooled on his lap. “You could have taken my eye out, Peppercorn. What are you trying to do, perform Lingchi on me? What is all this?”

“Fan mail,” she says. Her voice is stern and unsympathetic. The first time she’d found him passed out drunk over his desk, she had panicked and nearly called for an ambulance. The next handful of times she had just covered him with a blanket and regarded him with sad eyes the next morning when she brought him coffee. But those were ten years ago. Not to mention, all in her first few weeks on the job— “Social media is revolting. You never answer fan mail, you never do Q&A’s, you haven’t done an interview in almost a decade.”

“Fuck this,” Tony mutters, opening one drawer. “Where’s my whiskey?”

“In your bloodstream, I’d imagine. Don’t brush this off, Tony. Sales are waning. We need to make some serious changes in our PR or I’ll be putting in my two-weeks’ notice.”

That gets Tony’s attention. Pepper hadn’t threatened to quit after his last book when he’d killed off one of the most popular characters (one of his personal favorites, may she rest in fictional peace) and the public had flipped their shit. She hadn’t threatened to quit years before that when she walked in on him hunched over his desk with a straw to his nose, three sheets to the wind on far more than just whiskey. She has the disposition of a mountain: unflinching and ever-enduring.

“You mean it,” says Tony.

“I mean it.”

His shoulders sag. He glances around the room: the mess, the junk, the empty alcohol bottles, the half-finished manuscripts. There’s a strange feeling in the back of his throat, acidic, like he might throw up. Or cry. When his mouth opens to say something sarcastic, something about not letting the door hit her on the way out if she expects him to play nice with the media, all that comes out is a broken: “I can’t lose you, Pep.”

She puts a hand on his shoulder. “You will. If you don’t make some changes. Okay?”

Maybe this is what it means to be balanced on a knife’s edge, where one way ends in pain and the other ends in terminal inconvenience. But he knows which one he has to pick. His whole life is just a big inconvenience, but pain? Tony has spent enough time with his hand flat against the stove’s burner to know that he’d rather die than feel it again, rather die than lose one of the only people left who can stand him.

He picks up the closest letter and tears it open, blinking heavily to clear his eyes. Pepper leans down to press a kiss to the crown of his head and then gags. “Take a shower, when you get the chance,” she mutters, smiling.

-

The letters start off by being good for one thing: his ego. Adoring fans have been writing to his penname and business address for decades since he put out his first super-hero novel, titled IRON-MAN. Pepper has chosen to give him recent fan-mail, considering he’s spent so long ignoring it that if he were to answer them in order of reception, he might encounter fans who didn’t even remember the letters once sent. Or ones who were dead.

They are all variations of the same thing. The handwriting changes, gentle feminine cursive to childish scrawling to neat block lettering, but the message is usually the same. DEAR MR. POTTS. I’VE READ EVERY BOOK YOU’VE EVER WRITTEN. I GOT YOUR NAME TATTOOED ON MY ASS. IRON-MAN IS MY HERO. I’VE NEVER READ PROSE AS LOVELY AS YOURS. WHAT IS YOUR SECRET?

At Pepper’s request, Tony drafts a generic letter to send in response, something about how he can’t respond personally to every letter but he wants them to know that he’s read what they’ve written and ‘holds it close to his heart’.

“It’s good,” Pepper approves. “Sign them yourself.”

“Good?” Tony says. “I was joking—this letter is trash. Anyone who knows me would see this for the sarcasm it is—”

“Then thank God none of the fans know you,” Pepper responds coolly.

She has a point. Tony has existed in relative seclusion since he first began publishing his works at 24. After twenty years, he’d managed to remain mostly anonymous. A pseudonym does most of the work, including non-disclosure agreements for his employees. Any time a presence is required, he sends Rhodey or Happy or Pepper even. Theory pages abound on the internet, sites devoted to finding out who the real AE POTTS is. Even though one picture leaked of him during the early 2000’s (a grainy godforsaken thing that didn’t even show his best angle), there were still some disbelievers. One popular conspiracy theory is that AE is Pepper, considering Tony stole her last name to use as his own.

Maybe that’s why his declining image in the media bothers her so much.

A week later, Tony’s hand has a cramp the way it hasn’t since he was a little boy learning to write his letters. Freehand has never been his specialty—it’s far too slow for the way his mind works, bounding a sentence, a scene, a chapter ahead. Signing so many letters is going to freeze his hand in a claw like position. He’s sure of it.

Then Pepper drops the next bombshell on him: the contest.

“It goes against everything I’ve been working so hard to do for the last twenty years,” Tony shouts at the zenith of their argument. “I do not want to be known! I don’t want the fame; I just wanted the goddamn fortune, is that too much to ask for?”

“Times have changed,” Pepper says through her teeth. She holds her own, spine straight. She hasn’t shirked away from his angry outbursts ever, not even when they were children growing up together in Manhattan. “I’m not asking you to do a 20/20 Special. I’m not asking for an interview on Ellen. I’m asking for you to meet with one fan. Have a goddamn lunch with them. If you can’t handle that, then you can kiss your fortune goodbye. Mark my words.”

Tony marks them. He fucking marks them, okay? When he’s drinking himself blind, locked in his office (good luck getting in now, Pep), they ring around his skull like a dime in the dryer. Sometime around dawn, she picks the lock on the door and mops his brow while he vomits in the tiny trashcan beside his desk.

“I’m not doing this to torture you,” she says with uncharacteristic tenderness. Her hand on his forehead occasionally rifling through his greasy hair is not what’s making his eyes prickle with tears—it’s the vomiting. Honest. He’s not that touch-starved. “You know that, right? I hate seeing you like this.”

“I know,” he chokes miserably, gagging again. So he agrees to the Willy Wonka Initiative. Pepper puts out the word that the infamous AE POTTS will be selecting a single fan to meet face to face. Anyone eighteen or older is eligible to participate, as long as they write a letter explaining why they should get it blah blah blah. A golden ticket might have been funner. At least then Tony might have had an excuse to wear the tacky purple suit and tophat.

In the meantime, Pepper reveals that she’s been having Happy screen his mail to only show him the happy letters—figures. His hate mail isn’t extensive, but it certainly exists, having increased exponentially since he killed off Natasha in the last novel.

FUCKING MYSOGINISTIC ASSHOLE, Cheryl from Newport tenderly writes. YOU HAD ONE GOOD FEMALE CHARACTER, AND YOU KILLED HER OFF. I HOPE ANOTHER WOMAN NEVER LETS YOU BETWEEN THEIR LEGS AGAIN AND YOUR DICK SHRIVELS OFF.

Tony thinks that’s pretty succinct. He posts it up on his desk propped up against the last picture ever taken of him and his mother. Killing off Natasha had been an idea he’d personally revolted against for months. Sure, it made sense that sensitive, strong Natasha would be the one to sacrifice herself in order to stop the villain from succeeding in wiping out half the universe. It made sense for a woman to be the one to give her life to protect others.

After all, hadn’t his own mother died trying to protect Tony?

The weekend after the contest drops on their social media platforms, Pepper texts to tell him that it’s being received far, far better than they might have ever hoped for. Already dozens of letters had been received, letters which must have been penned and mailed just hours after the news had spread.

Joy, Tony texts back.

I haven’t told you the best news, she says. That’s how Tony knows that the next news will be the worst news, absolutely the worst news of all. You get to pick the fan.

-

“Any letter catching your eye?” Pepper asks him over lunch in his office.

“They’re all the same,” Tony laments. Even his own ego can only take so much stroking. After a while, the fan mail has become mostly routine and lackluster, though he keeps opening it, keeps signing the response letters, keeps sending them out. “I’m going to end up picking one at random, Pep.”

“I don’t care how you pick,” Pepper says. “As long as you do—and as long as you’re ready to suffer with the consequences of your choice.”

“Suffer? God, I love the light you bring into my life. The unending optimism. The unparalleled faith and trust in me.”

Her eyes glitter even as they roll. “If you like me so much, you can buy lunch next time.”

Tony snorts, taking a large bite from his burger. “Gold digger.”

“I’ve seen your taxes, Tony. These days, there isn’t much gold to dig for.”

“Ouch, kill shot.”

-

The letter arrives only one week before the contest deadline. In the top drawer of his desk are three other letters from potential winners, mostly picked at random, sometimes because Tony likes their handwriting, sometimes because they say something funny that actually makes him laugh. When he opens up the letter from Peter B. Parker, he scans the first lines not intending to be impressed.

Dear Mr. Potts, Peter writes.

I’ve written you so many letters that it should be easy by now. I don’t know why my hands are shaking. Maybe I’m nervous because I know for certain that this one, someone will actually read.

I received my first copy of IRON-MAN when I was eight years old—yes, a little bit heavy for a kid that age, but my parents had just died unexpectedly in a car accident. My aunt and uncle took me in, and my uncle gave me his first edition. Iron-man’s story was one of the only things that got through to me as a kid. His struggle to come to terms with losing his own parents, his loneliness, his fear. The way he overcomes all of that and still goes on to do good…yeah. It meant a lot to a grief-stricken kid. Obviously.

Pretty much every birthday and Christmas, I end up receiving one of your books as a gift. My family and friends know me so well, I have nearly a half-dozen copies of AVENGERS (it’s one of my favorites). The things you write about are so close to my heart, so close to some of the experiences I’ve had in real life. My struggle with mental illness. My abuse and neglect. And the way you write these things makes me think…fear, I guess…that maybe you know something about them too.

I would love to get to meet you and talk about your incredible books. I’d love to get to know you. Not going to lie, as a fanboy, I’d probably be happy to just sit at the same table with you and have a meal. I’ll buy. We don’t even have to talk (okay I swear I’m not as desperate as I sound!). I’m sure you’ve received so many awesome letters, and I know that the fan you pick will be so, so lucky.

(Every letter I write to you, I ask if you could please return my book. It’s been five years since I sent it. I’m sure you don’t even have it anymore, maybe you threw it away from the start. But if you do have it, even if you don’t pick me to win the contest, it would mean so much if you sent it back. When I mailed it to you in Jan. 2014, my uncle was still alive. He’s gone now…anyway it’s one of the only things of his that I have left.)

Your fan always,

PETER.

PS: please disregard the last letter I sent…obviously.

Tony rereads the letter twice. He feels a swirl of emotion in his stomach, not dissimilar to the queasiness after a long night of drinking. This—this is what he sacrificed by being so closed-off from his fans. While he’d known that his fans were real and obviously human, a part of him had never felt the magnitude of it before. These are people with feelings and experiences. This Parker kid (a self-proclaimed fanboy) lost his parents too, and far younger than Tony had. In a car accident.

Maybe Peter hadn’t been there, hadn’t been in the car, hadn’t watched his mother parents go up in flames, but it’s still a tragedy all in its own right. And all at eight years old. Jesus Christ. This kid has been looking up to him for ten years and more, and he had no fucking idea that kind of dysfunctional altar he’d been worshiping at.

Tony goes into the private bathroom connected to his office and gags up—nothing. Drool. But it still leaves his mouth slimy, so he brushes his teeth until he’s spitting pink into the sink, and when he catches sight of the haphazard reflection in the mirror, he pities it. He leans forward to touch foreheads with it, auto-intimacy. Do better, some voice in the back of his head says, but it’s not his voice.

Happy picks up his cellphone on the first ring. Of the ninth call.

“What do you fucking want, Tony?” he hisses into the receiver. “I’m at the movie theater seeing that new Star Wars. You made me go out into the lobby—”

“Then I’m doing you a favor,” Tony says, cracking open the cap on a sparkling water. “Look, I have important questions, I wouldn’t have called otherwise. My fan mail—how much of it has Pepper kept?”

“Jesus, how should I know? Totes and totes full, at least—”

“Brilliant—”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself? I’m missing the movie!”

“Didn’t I say you’re not missing much? I’m asking you because Pepper will make me do it myself: I need you to find specific letters from one fan: Peter B. Parker. Address is Queens, but he could be from anywhere. I’m also especially interested in acquiring a package he sent me in January 2014.”

“Christ, could you be any more mysterious?” Happy mutters. “Text me the details you bastard, I’m not missing another moment of Mark Hamill.”

-

It turns out that Pepper is not only a saint in all ways previously mentioned, but she is a saint in this as well: his fan mail from the last ten years has been saved and meticulously organized by month and year of reception. Happy comes to Tony’s office in the city the next day with a package, the outside brittle but address clear.

The writing is the same script as the letter newly received from Peter, though the handwriting has become more mature over time. Neater. Confined. No more hasty slant from an enthusiastic hand. The kid’s contest entry is in the top drawer of Tony’s desk—the previous potential winners are now the cherries on top of the reject pile. His stomach is heavy as a stone while he tears open the five-year-old package.

Out tumbles a pre-addressed package that was meant to carry the book back to its owner, back to Peter. Then, one first edition of IRON-MAN, the cover a little tattered, the spine creaky. Also included is another letter, torn from a spiral notebook. He opens it with shaking hands.

DEAR MISTER POTTS

I KNOW THAT GETTING A RESPONSE FROM MY LETTERS IS A LONG SHOT, BUT I’M REALLY HOPING THAT YOU’LL AUTOGRAPH THIS COPY OF IRON-MAN AND RETURN IT TO ME. IT IS MY UNCLE BEN’S…

It goes on to describe how his Uncle’s birthday is coming up and Peter hopes to give the autographed book to his Uncle. Tony reads with a heavy heart, knowing now that Tony hadn’t bothered even opening the package, hadn’t tried to sign it—and even if he had, Ben hadn’t lived long enough to celebrate his next birthday. What a son of a bitch Tony is.

For the first time in three months, Tony goes home.

Most days he stays at the space he rents in the fancy Manhattan building, the one that holds his office and Pepper’s own workspace as well as the other people who work for him (Happy, Beck, Rhodey). The mansion outside Manhattan belonged to Tony’s father and his mother. When his mother had still been alive, it had been a cold place that he had endured staying at for her sake. After his mother had died, it had been a torture chamber, or worse—a stale, suffocating tomb.

Then Howard had died and somehow left it to Tony (probably out of some misguided duty to ‘keep it in the family’). Tony made a personal habit to visit it infrequently and stay there even less often; but Pepper maintains it for him, has it cleaned, keeps it safe. Uses it as storage, Tony knows. For his fan mail.

It takes up three entire rooms, floor to ceiling clear totes labeled with months and years. Just looking at it makes Tony feel small, ashamed of how little he cared about interacting with his fans. It’s no wonder sales were down. Searching for Peter’s letters would be like looking for a needle in a haystack—but he has to do it, and he can’t let Happy bear the brunt of the weight anymore either. This is on Tony.

So he begins pulling totes from the room and scattering their contents on the oaken table and floors of the dining room. Five hours and seven totes later, and Tony still has no letter from Peter.

Pepper finds him at midnight. She comes bursting in through the front door—Tony can hear the sound of the door colliding with the wall from the force she’s used—shouting his name. The hysteria in her voice chills him to the bone. It’s worse than the tone she uses when Tony fucks up; this is the tone she uses when there’s a Tragedy, when something is Wrong.

She finds him in the dining room surrounded by letters, kneeling up from where he was slumped on the floor. He must be a sight, but she is one too, her hair a mess, her eyes red. When she sees him, all the breath goes out of her, one hand clutching at her breast as the other grabs the back of a chair for support.

“Jesus, Pep, what’s happened? Is it your father, another heart attack—?”

“Why don’t you ever answer your goddamn phone, you bastard!” She says through heaving breaths. “You don’t leave the office for weeks and suddenly no one can find you, you won’t pick up your phone—”

It takes a long moment for the pieces to connect.

“Oh Christ,” Tony says, chidingly. “What, you were scared for me?”

She slumps into one chair and puts her face into her well-manicured hands. Tony drops back onto his ass. He’s not a good man, not a sensitive man. The last woman who had cried in front of him was his mother, and look at all the ways he had failed her. But the longer he sits letting Pepper cry, the more it feels like bamboo shoots growing under his tender fingernails. Fuck it. He gets up, knees creaking, and goes to her.

They sit side by side at the dining table no one has eaten at in twelve years. Pepper leans into him, her thin shoulders shaking. Shame makes his own eyes burn, because he thought what did she have to be afraid of? But maybe she saw his car in the driveway of the unhappy home he avoids and assumed that he’d come here to Hemingway himself. Maybe she sat in the drive steeling herself to come into the sight of his body.

“I’m going through the fan mail,” Tony says at last.

“I can see that,” she says. Her scathing tone drips with tears.

“I’m okay, Pep,” he says. He’s not sure if it’s true. He’s not sure if he’s been okay ever since he blinked awake upside down and suspended by the seatbelt in the back seat of his mother’s Cadillac, glass littering the roof (and the roof had become the floor, then, see? Because they were upside down), the smell of gas and smoke in his nose). Maybe he’s not okay. Maybe it’s all a fucking lie, but he’s not going to off himself. Not when there’s a mystery afoot. “I promise.”

She nods, one damp hand reaching out blindly for his. It’s an awkward angle to hold hands at, but he doesn’t complain. And awkward or not, it feels nice to be touched in a kind, even platonic way.

“What are you looking for?” Pepper asks at last, wiping at the wet, swollen skin beneath her eyes.

“Why? You want to help?” Tony asks.

“Might as well,” she says. “I always do your heavy lifting, don’t I?”

-

With Pepper’s help, they find the first letter. Somehow the Willy Wonka Initiative has reversed until Tony feels like a kid, ripping open chocolate bars, desperate for a glimpse of gold. At dawn, a cry echoes in the dining room startling Tony from where he was slumping against a tote, dozing.

“I’ve got one, Tony!” Pepper shouts. She’s barefoot, her panty hose taken off and folded on the table, her sensible jacket removed and slung over the back of a chair. Her rumpled shirt and tendrils coming free from her ponytail reveal how much energy she’s been putting into this with him—maybe to make up for her emotional outburst earlier, maybe like a mother humoring a child’s singular beneficial interest. “From Peter B. Parker, address is Queens, same as before.”

“What’s the date?” Tony asks. He slips in a pile of letters from last August and nearly breaks his neck. Wishful fucking thinking.

“Last May. Here—”

Tony takes the letter and collapses in a chair, his lower back grateful for the support. He recognizes Peter’s handwriting as he tears the letter open, and he can feel Pepper’s presence over his shoulder, reading along with him.

This letter is different from the others. Tony knows it right away. The first indication should have been the date; Tony’s most recent novel dropped early May of last year. His most controversial work to date, with praise glorious and venomous in kind. Which way did the scales tip when it came to Peter, Tony wonders.

I know that you won’t read this. I’ve written you twice a year since I was ten years old, and you’ve never written back. I don’t blame you. I’m sure you’re busy—I guess I just needed to get these words down somewhere, so that they exist, so that somewhere there is a record of me after I’m dead.

Tony reads the rest in a dazed blur. At one point, Pepper’s hand lifts to press against her mouth, but still they read on, huddled together for convenience and then for comfort.

In the letter, Peter describes the tragedy of his uncle’s death and how he felt personally responsible, and how after months of guilt, when he’d read about Natasha’s sacrifice, he’d decided to take action. Against himself.

If someone’s death can do so much good in the world, Peter wrote with shaky script. Then maybe mine could too. I’m not deluded or anything. I know that I’m not a superhero and that I’m not fighting against some sanctimonious super villain. But I feel like if my death could make May’s life easier, then I have to do it.

“Jesus. Tony, don’t read this—” Pepper reaches out for the letter but Tony nearly rips it in half trying to keep it away from her.

It’s not just for May, Peter admits. I’m ready to stop hurting, too.

Peter signs off, for good. Only it hadn’t been for good—Peter’s most recent letter had obviously proven that, and hadn’t he written it himself? Ignore my last letter, obviously, he’d said. Something must have changed Peter’s mind, but one thing was clear: it hadn’t been Tony. Because Tony had been so self-absorbed, so tangled in his own grief and ego and addictions he hadn’t even read the letter. If Pepper hadn’t saved it, then it might have been destroyed, no record left of Peter’s words at all.

“Tony,” Pepper says. She takes the letter from his fingers and he lets it go. His hands are numb. “This isn’t your fault. Peter obviously was unstable—he’d just watched his uncle being murdered in front of him. No one in their right mind would read Natasha’s death and think that you were encouraging them to take their own life.”

“I know that,” Tony snaps. Lying. Then: “I’m not an idiot, Pep.”

Maybe the biggest lie of all.

[himbowelsh]

Oh my lord, I went through your shiftab tag and read the secret admirer oneshot, it was so cute! 😭 I know you aren't taking requests for those particular prompts but if possible, could you write a similar 'secret admirer' storyline for winnix or baberoe? Gosh please I'd die of happiness!

i have...  done the thing.  went with baberoe, because honestly i’m never not craving more content between those two, and there are considerably more ghosts than you probably wanted, but i really hope you enjoy, darling!!!

(read here on ao3)

Every one of his better instincts — and, contrary to popular belief, Babe does have a few — is screaming that this is an awful idea.

Quit your Irish dancing around the problem and fuckin’ do it, Bill would say, if only Bill were here. Babe knows exactly what advice Bill Guarnere would give — he can hear it in Bill’s voice, like the man’s shouting it, an entire ocean away. Still, an imagined echo is no substitute for the real thing. Babe can dream up as many Guarnere platitudes as his brain can handle... but they still won’t solve the problem in front of him now.

Namely, a blank piece of paper.

“God dammit,” he says out loud. “I don’t know how to do this.”

There’s no one around to hear him. More and more nowadays, there isn’t. He never used to talk to himself before — that was always something crazy people did, in Babe’s experience, and he could be called a lot of things, but crazy was never one of ‘em. People like Crazy Joe McKloskey could stand on the street corner talking to a lamppost like it could understand him. That’s fine, because it was crazy Joe. Babe Heffron, who delivered papers and chased his brothers through the backstreets of South Philly, never talked to himself... maybe because he was never alone.

To be fair, he’s at war, and it’s tough to be alone in a company of a hundred other guys. He’s gotten good at it, though. Gene was the one who showed him how to seek out peace when he needed it, taught him all the good places to hide, how to go away somewhere in your head the rest of the world couldn’t reach. He’d never needed those skills before, but now that he’s learned them, they’ve proved invaluable. More and more nowadays, with nothing to do but soak in the Austrian summer, Babe finds himself wanting to be alone.

Yeah, sometimes he talks to himself... only because the people he wants to be around, the people who damn well should be here, aren’t. 

You’re overthinking it, the voice in his head that sounds too much like Julian declares. When Babe looks up, he can almost see him — his old buddy, leaning back on a crate on the other side of the musky garret room. Julian has a way of lounging that was so casual it made him look boneless. He was a spreader, too — how many damn times did Babe have to shove him to the other side of the foxhole because Julian’s knee was digging into one of his damn organs? The kid liked to take up space. His ghost absorbs it now, studying Babe with a sort of mocking smirk. Look. Practically tearing your hair out, and you’ve barely even written a word yet.

“Yeah, well, it’s harder than you’d think.”

Babe’s not a letter writer. He never has been. His wrists cramp up when he holds a pen too long, and he can’t find the words anyways. His kid sister writes long letters, filled with funny anecdotes and memories from home; his Ma’s letters are shorter, succinct, and bluntly affectionate. Even Bill sent a message, after agonizing months of silence, letting the whole company know he’s doing alright, back home in the states. Babe treasures every letter he receives, tucking them away in his trunk between his underwear and his Bible... but the entire war, he’s only written his family three times. So far, he can’t bring himself to write to Bill at all.

Yeah, because you’re a lazy bum. There’s Old Guarnere again. He’s standing next to Julian — on both legs, whole and healthy — arms crossed as he blatantly judges Babe’s writing ability. The ceiling’s so low, on a steady downward slope, that Bill’s head hits it every time he moves. Babe can see the disgruntled faces he makes, clear as day, and it draws a laugh from him in spite of himself.

“I just — it can’t be any old letter, okay? It’s gotta be perfect. I need it to be perfect.”

You need to take a nap and quit pretending you’re a better writer than you are, Bill scoffs. When has anything you’ve ever written been perfect?

Babe presses his palm hard against his forehead, fingers tugging at his uncombed mess of hair. “That’s the problem, dammit. It ain’t gonna be perfect... but it’s what he deserves.”

If this goddamn war has taught him anything, it’s that Eugene Roe deserves nothing less than the best. The war sure hasn’t been shy about giving him the worst, over and over again. Gene’s hands have been stained with so much blood that it’s a wonder he can still look at them — can still go about his life as normal, humoring nervous patients and summoning a smile when the other fellas rib him — when he’s dealt with more shit than any of them. Babe just heard about his best friend getting his leg blown off. Gene was the one on his knees in the snow, scrambling to save Bill’s life. Yet when Babe retreated into himself afterwards, grief-stricken and reeling, Gene was the one who anchored him to earth. His quiet conversation and soft smiles put Babe back together, piece by piece at a time. He’s got a gift for healing, in ways he doesn’t even realize. A guy like that... deserves every good thing in the world, and Babe wants to hand them all to him.

As it is, he can’t even write one lousy letter.

“He’s gonna hate it. He’s gonna... throw it right back in my face, cause he realizes he’s talking to a guy who can’t spell ‘adoration’. He’s gonna... he’s gonna...”

Laugh. Except that’s not like Gene at all. Be goddamn disgusted... except Babe knows Gene well enough by now to know that’s not like him either. It’s hard to tell with other guys, especially in the army, where shared foxholes can so easily blur the lines between friend and lover... but he’s seen a gleam in Gene’s eyes when other fellas talk about Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable, like he’s just humoring the conversation while wishing it’d go somewhere else. Babe knows the feeling. No, Gene could do anything, but he wouldn’t be disgusted that a guy loves him.

Maybe... just that it’s Babe.

Now you’re really being an idiot, Julian moans, tipping his head back towards the sky. Babe’s first instinct is to throw something at him — the hand holding his pencil twitches, but he’s only got one, and there’s no satisfaction in swinging at ghosts.

 “I don’t know what to say,” he mutters, rubbing a hand over his jaw again. Dear Gene, the letter reads. I’m writing because I need to tell you...

That’s as far as he’s got. Not even a full goddamn sentence.

Have you considered... you’re overthinking it? You’ve gotta actually write something before deciding you hate what you’ve written.

“Julian, you’re a regular goddamn philosophizer.”

I’m just saying! 

Suddenly, Julian is no longer on the other side of the room. He’s looming right over Babe’s shoulder, his presence like a weight bearing down on Babe’s back. Every twitch of his hand is being observed, every uncertain breath noted. Geez, he didn’t crack during jump school training, but this pressure is enough to split him in two.

“Forget it!” Babe exclaims, throwing the pencil down onto the paper. “This was a stupid idea, I give up!”

No, you fucking are not.

There’s Bill again — Bill Guarnere, and his unbeatable determination to butt his head into everyone else’s business. Babe lifts his head, glaring into the spot he imagines his best friend standing. Bill’s answering glare is an echo of the real thing… and Christ, what Babe wouldn't do to see that familiar scowl right in front of him, for real! Bill always made things simple. There was no overthinking when he was around. When Babe was being an idiot, Bill told him.

I’m telling you right now, jackass — you're being an idiot.

“And you’re winning motivational speaker of the goddamn year.”

I’m not trying to win anything here. You are, and doing a piss-poor job of it. I could cry just lookin’ at you. Look at this — ‘I’m writing because’? What kinda opening line is that? Did they not teach you how to write letters in grade school, or were them nuns too busy beating the ginger outta your hair?

“Trying their best,” Babe mutters, subconsciously rubbing the back of his head, where the phantom rap of a nun’s knuckles still stings. Today’s a day for phantoms, he guesses. While Julian cackles begins him, Bill’s specter crosses to the desk, hovering over Babe’s paper with a critical eye.

No, he finally declares, like he’s handing Babe’s bayonet back with instructions to polish it all over again. That’s it. You can’t do this.

“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Babe exclaims, grateful to hear his subconscious finally agreeing.

You ain’t gonna be able to do this… Bill turns, then reels back around, sticking a finger in Babe’s face. So long as you keep thinking ‘bout what he’s gonna do when you hand it to him. What he’s gonna say once he reads it. You gotta write something before he can read it, you realize that, Babe? And you haven’t written a goddamn word worth reading so far. 

Babe assumes there’s a point here somewhere. He curls his fingers around the edge of the letter, waiting for it.

So, if you can’t get outta your own head… then write it as somebody else.

Bill grins, broad and shameless, like he always does when he ain’t making a lick of sense.

“You lost me,” Babe says. “Way back there.”

Keep the letter anonymous, Babe! Bill’s imagined face twists in frustration, his hand coming down to tap the paper. The silent impact rings in Babe’s ears. Don’t sign the thing. Leave it somewhere Doc will find it, and see what he does.

“That defeats the whole purpose of telling him how I feel!” Babe exclaims.

And how much luck are you having with that? demands Julian, coming to stand at Bill’s side. The two of them cross their arms, staring down at Babe with unabashed judgement. Burdened by the weird feeling that he’s being bullied by his own subconscious, he picks up his pencil again. What would Gene’s reaction be to finding a love letter unsigned? Babe imagines him pulling it out from under his pillow, or finding an envelope with his name on it at his makeshift aid station in the basement of Easy’s billets. How his long fingers would unfurl the paper, his lips mouthing the words silently as he read along… how his brows would furrow slowly, disbelief and awe swirling in the dark pools of his eyes… how eventually he’d look up, see Babe standing there waiting on him, and murmur, “Heffron, you’re not gonna believe this…”

And then what? Babe would pull Gene into his arms, and admit he’s loved him all along?

No. No way, not him. Not in this lifetime, at least.

Overthinking, Julian’s voice chimes again, and Babe’s never felt more tempted to swing at a ghost. Will you just write it already?

“Fine, goddammit!” Babe hisses. It’s frustration, really, that gets him to whip out a fresh sheet of paper… and as soon as he starts to write, the words flow from his pen like a dam’s burst open.

See you every day… know your heart… your caring… your sense of humor... impossible not to love you… wouldn’t know how to stop if I tried… love you more than I know what to do with.

I love you.

I’m in love with you, Eugene Roe.

Whatever you want is up to you… but I wrote this letter because I need to let you know.

He doesn’t sign it.

The envelope seals like a promise fulfilled; and when Babe looks up, he’s in the tiny attic alone.

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

It’s just his luck that Gene doesn’t spot the letter until Babe’s standing right next to him, alone in the cozy little infirmary.

Gene doesn’t miss a beat. “Hey,” he says, picking the letter up. “Babe, what’s this?”

There’s nothing on it, is the thing! No way to tell where it came from, and he knows Gene isn’t familiar enough with his handwriting to pick it out of a lineup. Babe stumbles back a step, alarm spiking as Gene holds the letter up. Playing dumb’s his only chance.

“Uhh… looks like a letter, maybe?”

Okay, not that dumb.

“Maybe,” echoes Gene, thoughtful, as he turns the envelope over in his hands. When his gaze is no longer piercing him, Babe can breathe again.

“Where’d you find it?”

“Someone left it on the chair. I sat on it.”

“Wow.” Wow, Babe. Just… wow. “You know, uhh, Vest made his rounds a little while ago, maybe something slipped from his pile. Or maybe he’s playing a joke, huh, you know that Vest —“

Why the hell is he implying Vest wrote his love letter?

“Doubt it was Vest,” Gene mutters, fingernail playing underneath the envelope’s fold as he carefully opens it. He even pries open mail like a doctor, slow and precise. Something in Babe’s heart soars at this tiny detail, and he almost wants to go to his knees in front of Gene right there.

“Well, it had to be someone,” he says instead, taking another few steps back. When he chuckles, it sounds shrill to his ears — like he’s fighting off the urge to scream. God dammit, Heffron, you’ve got all the subtlety of a rock, why’d you think this was a good idea?

It’s not. This is a horrible idea. He can’t look Gene in the face while he’s reading the letter, and if Babe stays here one more minute, he’s gonna give himself away. “Sorry, Gene, but I gotta go now — told Liebgott I’d help him with, uhh, this thing that he — needed help with, and… so yeah, I gotta do that.”

Gene looks up at him, distracted from the letter. Babe manages a grimace, and a tiny wave. “See ya!”

He can’t get out of the basement fast enough. Behind him is only silence, as Gene Roe begins to read.

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

Gene finds him much later that night, after the sun has already set over Zell-Am-See, painting the town in violet and blue. The late summer sky has always spoken to Babe in a way he can never explain, like a fist locking inside his chest and trying to tug his heart out. It’s nostalgia for a place far away, and a time he can’t return to. As daylight slowly fades out into inky darkness, Babe watches the sky, lost in a time when everything was simpler.

He doesn’t hear Gene coming until he drops onto the window ledge beside him. Babe isn’t jumpy, and Gene’s never startled him yet, so he doesn’t tumble over to the street below in shock… but the look on Gene’s face almost sends him jumping the fifteen feet down.

“Hey, Gene,” he says instead, quickly looking back out at the horizon.

“Hey.” Gene lets the word linger. He fumbles with a cigarette, long fingers moving deftly as he maneuvers his lighter. He gets it lit, and holds it out generously. Babe’s nerves would like nothing more, but his balance can’t take holding onto this will with just one hand. He shakes his head. With a shrug, Gene tucks the cigarette between his own pursed lips.

“You close up shop for the night?”

“Yeah. Unless someone stumbles around drunk and ends up knocking their head… or gets hit with a dart again. Had to pull it outta Perconte’s shoulder the last time.”

“Think I heard that from upstairs. Screaming like a cat the whole time, huh?”

“The man’s been shot before, and he complained less.” Gene exhales through his nose, blowing two long lines of smoke into the air. Babe’s eyes linger on it, transfixed.

“You, uhh —“ Suddenly, he’s frightened of silence, but his mind’s too scattered to keep a conversation in one place. “You get dinner?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.”

Quiet again. Christ, even when he was a kid, Babe could never stand the quiet; his Ma sometimes pushed him out of the house and locked the door behind him, just to get some peace. Why is it so hard to find words now?

“Look, Heffron —“ Gene starts, and the exact moment Babe blurts out, “Gene —“

They both go silent, staring at each other. Babe inhales, holding the breath in his chest until he feels like he’s gonna burst with it.

A familiar voice in his head — the one that’s a dead-ringer for Bill Guarnere — groans, Will you please spit it the hell out already?

“So,” Babe says, “the letter.”

“Yeah,” says Gene. His gaze doesn’t leave Babe’s, sharp as a needle.

“Look, I wanted to —“

“I know,” says Gene.

“I wanted to say —“

“Babe,” Gene cuts in. “I know.”

Finally, Babe meets his gaze head-on. It’s never possible to read what’s going on in Gene’s head, but his face gives something away, sometimes. The way the corners of his lips twitch when he’s trying not to laugh; the line that appears between his eyebrows when he’s really worried; the way his eyes go soft when he knows someone needs comforting, and turn to hot coals when he’s furious.

Right now, Babe can’t pick a damn thing out of Gene’s expression… but his eyes are very, very soft. It feels like a punch to the stomach.

“You know,” he says slowly, “but…”

The words linger between them for a long, charged moment. Babe’s chest feels like it’s caught in a compactor, being slowly squeezed until his lungs burst and his ribs turn to dust. He huffs out a laugh — a dry, desperate thing. “Jesus, Gene, you look like you’re about to break my heart.” Gene still doesn’t say a word; Babe looks up at him, wide-eyed. “Why’s it you doctors just love to drag things out? Rip off the band-aid quick, and save us both the trouble.”

“Edward,” he says gently, laying a hand over Babe’s own. Babe jerks away like he’s been stung.

“Don’t Edward me right now!”

“Babe,” Gene says, and his voice is softer than ever. Babe’s throat is tight, eyes stinging… but damned if he’ll let himself cry over this, not where Gene can see. Christ, he’s an idiot. He’s so stupid, he should never have done anything, why did he even think —

“I have known... for a while, now. Didn’t need a letter to tell me some things.” Gene pauses, like he’s chewing over the words, before adding, “But it was good to read. Just to know.”

“Now you know,” Babe replies, and inhales a deep breath. “You happy now?”

Gene doesn’t answer. When Babe risks a glance over, Gene isn’t looking at him at all anymore; his eyes are on the sky, watching as the first pinpricks of starlight pierce through the indigo curtain. He looks thoughtful, almost mournful. It gouges something in Babe’s chest.

“Gene,” he says again. “Are you happy?”

“I don’t know.” When Gene inhales, it’s almost like a whisper. When he exhales, it’s like he’s singing to the night air. “Thought about it for a long time. Trying to figure out how I feel.”

“You’ve had a whole afternoon to do it. You get it all sorted out yet?”

“Longer than that,” Gene replies. His gaze flickers over to him. “I told you, Babe. I knew.”

Jesus. So he wasn’t as subtle as he thought. Babe exhales, praying to make the sick-to-his-stomach sensation go with it. Instead, it just churns even harder. If this goes on any longer, he’s gonna need a damn bucket.

Gene’s never been the best with words; expressing himself has never been easy, which is why Babe’s gotten so good at reading between the lines. Gene’s really trying now — for his sake, Babe supposes. “Reading that letter, seeing all those feelings laid out on paper… Babe, you didn’t have to sign it. I’d ‘a known it was you, just from what you said. It was like… listening to your heart. And a part of me already does that every day, so I guess it was easy.”

Can Gene hear his heart screaming now? Babe grips the windowsill until his knuckles turn white, grounding himself. 

“I wasn’t sure how you felt before… and I wasn’t sure how I felt for you. Knew you felt something, but not what, and not how…” Gene swallows, pale throat bobbing. “But now I know.”

“Now you know.” Babe dwells on this statement for a moment before turning, hesitation heavy on his tongue. “So… what now, Gene?”

Gene takes a deep breath, clinging to the night sky for one last moment, before turning his gaze on him. “Do you— “ He pauses, licks his lips. “Do you really mean what you wrote? All of it?”

“Gene,” Babe replies, “I meant every word.”

Something calms in Gene’s eyes, like a storm settling. Babe isn’t expecting the way his gaze clears, or the flash of steely certainty that follows. “Well,” Gene says, “there’s only one thing to do.”

Another thing Babe isn’t expecting — how sweet Gene tastes when his lips are suddenly pressed to his own.

Somewhere far away, beyond the depths of his own consciousness — which is really just a victory parade and firework show, that’s all he’s capable of at the moment — he thinks Bill would be proud of him. Beyond the grave, Julian’s probably cheering for him, glad his buddy’s finally getting some.

For once, though, their voices are drowned out completely. It’s impossible to hear anything over the storm raging in his ears, which only swells to a fever pitch when Gene leans back and smiles at him.

“Well, Babe,” he says, as Babe cups his face like a reverent thing. “Think we can figure things out from here.”

“Jesus, Gene,” Babe declares, and swoops in to kiss him again.

[365days365movies]

January 6, 2021: Last Action Hero (1993) (Part 1)

Let’s have some fun, shall we?

Comedy is my favorite genre, and I obviously also love action. So, when looking at the subgenres to cover this month, action-comedy most certainly was at the top of the list. But what exactly is action-comedy?

Exactly what it sounds like, funnily enough. Action-comedies rely on physical action sequences to further the plot, but also inject dialogue with humor and jokes throughout the script. Entertainment and amusement combined into one beautiful, succinct package. I’ll be judging the writing for these movies on how much they made me laugh while watching it. That said...

OK, so, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Last Action Hero. Schwarzenegger isn’t exactly the most emotionally expressive actor in the world, as you’ve probably noticed. And expressiveness is somewhat necessary to express humor. Look at Eddie Murphy up there, and see how expressive he is. Schwarzenegger...doesn’t have that. At all. But, this movie could still be funny! Shane Black wrote it, and he wrote one of my favorite guilty pleasure Halloween movies, The Monster Squad. So, I’m looking forward to this movie for that in and of itself. And with that...

 Recap

We start with a sick guitar lick on Christmas Day, as a group of cops close in on a criminal known as the Ripper holding children hostage at an elementary school. But then...Jack Slater (played, naturally, by Arnold Schwarzenegger) arrives. And yes, this is a parody character and scene, meant to lambast all of the stereotypical renegade cop tropes that I’ve literally never seen in a movie. Like, I guess Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop have it, but I think this character concept has been Flanderized into...well...Jack Slater.

Slater kicks a cop through a window with a Schwarzenegger-esque action line, and CRUSHES A RADIO LIKE A NAPKIN. I appreciate Schwarzenegger making fun of himself like this, and we’ve only just begun. Jack goes through banter with the Ripper (Tom Noonan), who...is unironically terrifying. Holy shit, that guy is creepy as fuck, and his stylized ax is intimidating as hell. And as he holds Slater’s son hostage out of revenge, the two face off with some cool action beats, and...

...Shit, I think I want to watch this movie. And I don’t mean Last Action Hero, I mean the in-universe movie that our actual main character, Danny Madigan (Austin O’Brien) is watching. Danny’s a big Jack Slater fan, and one of the only patrons of a movie theater owned by Nick (Robert Prosky). Nick, a kind old man, invites Danny to see the next Slater film before anybody else. And honestly, I get it. I’d watch this movie series unironically if it existed, real talk. Mostly because it seems fun.

Danny’s skipped school just to see this movie, and he walks into his English class, where the teacher shows Lawrence Olivier as Hamlet. Fun fact! The English teacher showing it is played by Joanne Plowright, Olivier’s real life wife! Very sweet! Anyway, Danny, bored by a goddamn classic movie, conjures a different movie in his head.

Fuck yes. I need this movie to exist. 

We learn from Danny’s mother (Mercedes Ruehl) that his father has recently died, and he spends far too much of his time watching movies at Nick’s theater. I look forward to this revelation never being explored. As he’s headed to the theater when he isn’t supposed to, he opens the door at the exact wrong time, and A ROBBER BREAKS INTO HIS PLACE, OH SHIT! Confronted with the type of real danger that he’d see in an action movie, and with no action hero to save him, the robber finds nothing of value and leaves the place. He gets rescued by the cops eventually, and they tell him to go home. But, no, he goes...to the movies.

Mom might have a point there, sport.

While he’s there, Nick brings him in, and begins to monologue to him about his past in the theater business. And that monologue introduces the MacGuffin of the film: the Golden Ticket, given to Nick by Houdini himself, and an alleged portal to another world.

So, is this gonna be more of a Pagemaster situation, or a The NeverEnding Story deal? The Golden Ticket is torn for admission, Danny sits down, and the movie-in-a-movie begins in earnest. In the film, Slater’s cousin Frank (Art Carney in his last film role) is being held hostage by the crime boss Vivaldi (Anthony Quinn), and his henchman...one of the most immediately visually interesting characters I’ve ever seen in a film...in a FILM.

Benedict (played by Charles Dance), is immediately a fascinating character, essentially a non-Marvel Bullseye, and a gunsman with flawless precision. And yeah...I dig it. Oh, how I dig it.

Jack Slater arrives in his snakeskin boots, and discovers Frank, who delivers a message in the cheesiest death sequence I’ve ever seen, followed by the cheesiest bomb compound I’ve ever seen, followed by a bigger explosion than anyone would’ve expected, FOLLOWED by...OK, look, the references to other action movies in this are already ridiculous and all over the place, and I refuse to spoil them all for those of you who’ve never seen this movie.

By the way, I gotta make a comment about Danny real quick. Watching this many action movies may have made him a little...detached...from reality. I say this because he expressed no shock or emotion during or after the robbery, then went immediately to the movie theater, and had no reaction whatsoever about the death of the two cops in the movie. Little budding sociopath, that Danny.

Although, that might change, now that the ticket’s getting all magic-y, and a stick of ACME dynamite (actually in the film, I swear) makes its way into the theater. It explodes, and Danny inexplicably (magically, even) finds himself in the movie. So, Pagemaster, then.

Danny’s complete lack of reaction and emotion in this situation confirms my theory on him being a liiiiiiiiiiittle detached from reality. But then...the most gloriously stupid thing I’ve seen this month happens.

Arnold proceeds to make a pun that is NOT “Nasty brainfreeze,” and I am disappointed forever. Who wrote this? Who wrote this?

We get a car chase fueled with jumps, gunfire, puns, a casual mention of premature ejaculation, and Coca Cola product placement, all accompanied by Danny finally showing a modicum of reaction to the fact that he is IN A FUCKING MOVIE. REACT MORE, DANNY. At his age, I would have soiled myself immediately. At MY age, I would soil myself if this happened to me! Anyway...

OK, I just have to say this now: this movie has some of the most insane shots and set-ups that I’ve ever seen, and by GOD, I am here for it. Like...Did you SEE the motorcycle dress girl panic while a man WAS ON FIRE IN THE BACKGROUND? Earlier, a car does an INSANE jump and crash and explodes in the BACKGROUND, and the movie just treats it like a pigeon flew on set! Nobody cares! THE SCENES IN THIS MOVIE MAKE INSANITY AN ART FORM.

Anyway...we get to the LAPD, and...HOLY SHIT. IS THAT…

Was that Sharon Stone as Catherine Trammel from Basic Instinct, and Robert Patrick as T1000 from Terminator 2? I...but...wait...if...how...I’m broken now. 404, blue screen, reboot, update needed, WHAT?!? I...just...SO many questions, and this movie better answer them.

We see some added insanity, including a man with a houndstooth suit which I DESPERATELY WANT but could not pull off. There’s literally a buddy cop generator, where we also see a rabbi cop, and an Amadeus reference is dropped as F. Murray goddamn Abraham (playing a cop named Practice) appears in this movie, and THEN...an animated cat cop sexually harasses a female cop. I am not joking.

Am...am I insane? Also, if I was in the theaters watching this movie-in-a-movie, I would be both angry and confused as to what in the FUCK was happening!!! WHY IS THERE AN ANIMATED CAT COP IN MY JACK SLATER MOVIE? WHO DIRECTED THIS BULLSHIT (in universe)?? Also that cat was recently suspended, and is also one of their best men.

And then, Danny uses his knowledge of the Jack Slater franchise to break down the barriers of repressed affection between the chief and Slater, and it’s briefly heartwarming for some reason. Anyway, they’re now suspicious of his knowledge of Slater’s life, and this leaves to the inevitable buddy cop pairing of Jack Slater and Danny Madigan. This art-deco something walks by…

...and I desperately need to know more about the art direction of this film. Because, wow, it is an absolute masterpiece of randomly exaggerated shit, damn.

To prove his point about being in a movie, Danny goes to a Blockbuster, which... man, does THAT bring me back! That’s right you young whippersnappers, I WAS THERE FOR BLOCKBUSTER IN THE ‘90s! We used to go to the store and look at the VHSs. I remember seeing The Lost World there, but my dad said I was too young for it. I was sad, but he got me some candy and a Really Wild Animals video, and we watched it that night after Carmen Sandiego. My God. It was paradise.

Anyway, Schwarzenegger doesn’t exist, and find out that Stallone has taken over his roles.

...I’d watch that. I’d watch the HELL out of that. Danny then uses some legitimately impressive math to dissect the “555” number thing in movies, as well as pointing out the lack of non-conventionally attractive women. Which, credit to you, kiddo, for addressing the overwrought emphasis on conventional attractiveness that permeated Hollywood at this time, and to this day. I mean, he’s not criticizing it, but he is pointing it out, and that’s better than nothing in the ‘90s.

Danny guides his way to Vivaldi’s house, where the butler is...Professor Toru Tanaki! He looks exactly like Odd Job from the James Bond series, but the actor is SubZero from The Running Man! You know, the hockey killer!

Anyway, after crack about Schwarzenegger’s “I’ll be back” line, a conversation with Benedict (who has a smiley face instead of a bullseye), and some terrible CGI dogs, Benedict becomes correctly convinced that something’s up with Danny. They arrive at his house, and his college-aged daughter Whitney (played by Bridgette Wilson, in her first film role in and out of the movie, in a neat little twist!) kisses Danny directly on the mouth, and I’m a liiiiiiittle uncomfortable with that. Anyway, we brush right past that, and realize that his son...died. Oh. Uh. Guess we didn’t see the end of that movie, huh? Yikes. Poor Jack.

Hey, Benedict and his gang arrive at Slater’s place! Fun! There’s a sort-of amusing play on “harming a hair on one’s head,” and the interrogation continues. Charles Dance is legitimately threatening as Benedict. And, while we’re at it, Bridgette Wilson has an entertaining action sequence all her own.

Anyway, Jack arrives, and makes a ridiculous jump off of the balcony to pursue Benedict. Benedict name drops getting a tank, which I’m assuming is named the Chekov (film trope reference there, have a good time). Danny realizes that he’s the comedy sidekick of the movie, and at this point, I need to mention something: in case you haven’t noticed, this film is delightfully meta. And I love that about it. 

But it’s also...cluttered. You’ll see what I mean in a little bit, but real talk, I didn’t realize that Benedict had stolen the ticket until Danny mentioned it, because I was apparently quite distracted. And this is an important plot point, as Benedict soon realizes the true power of the ticket, cleverly overlaid by the opening to the Twilight Zone, with Rod Serling mentioning traveling to another dimension. Also...his eye was a bomb. What. Anyway, that explosion results in Slater officially getting fired from the department, and the chief...

Um. Yeah, this movie is also kind of a cartoon, not including the cartoon cat. And you have no idea how much I’m omitting from this movie. The digitization of Humphrey Bogart, the fact that Slater can’t say “fuck” in a PG-13 movie, the surprising character realization that Slater’s ex-wife is actually remarried, the clearly dominatrix cop clad in leather, the fact that there’s a plan to detonate a nerve gas-infused bomb stuffed into a dead man nicknamed Leo the Fart at his own funeral, a digitization of Humphrey Bogart. Yeah, I said that last one twice, because the effect actually holds up really well, like, seriously.

OK, let’s take a break, yeah? Part 2 later today!

[xmxisxforxmaybe]

Decryption_Error: “The Server Room, Part I”

Summary: Elliot is locked in the server room by a few of his colleagues to stop him from ruining their Memorial Day weekend. Y/N, Elliot’s manager, finds him and comes up with a solution to fix the broken servers, but because of Elliot’s injuries and his refusal to go to a hospital, Y/N makes him stay at her place for the long weekend. As Elliot and Y/N bond for the first time outside of work, something a little more than friendship starts to emerge.

Summary/Mood Board

Word Count: 5800

Disclaimer: I know 0 things about technology and want to cry real tears for making my narrator Elliot’s boss. I sincerely apologize to anyone I offend for my whack tech references--please let me know if you need me to fix something because it’s awful and I will credit you for saving me some embarrassment!

Tags: @sherlollydramoine @rami-malek-trash @teamwolf2411 @thingsfandom @limabein @lovie-rami @txmel @hopplessdreamer @ouatlovr

Warnings: Physical injuries/blood, language, **=heavily paraphrased from a monologue on Robot

Author’s Note: I won’t be able to update this story as quickly as Remnants because my life is about to get crazy busy. However, I will do my best so y’all don’t lose interest : ) Special shoutout to @alottanothing for helping me get this story organized and underway! Thanks for being my cheerleader 💕

For fuck’s sake! I thought as I changed out of my swimsuit and into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, shoving my still wet feet into a pair of sandals.  

I had made it to my family’s place for Memorial Day weekend for the first time in years only to be called back to work because something happened to the servers. My boss, Miles, was out of town like everyone else in the goddamn city, and he trusted me as the Senior Manager to handle the situation.

CIStech Cybersecurity had been my life for the past four years. Starting as an Analyst really fostered my affinity for data and subsequently put me on the fast-track to become management. I liked working hard, and when I first started at CIStech, I would be mystified when I realized it was 10 pm, everyone had gone home, and I had skipped dinner (again) because I was 5,000 clicks deep into testing a contingency plan I created for scenario 11/1,000 in the event of a security breach.

My relationship with my job was complex--I knew I worked too much, but I needed those long days to help quell my anxiety; data gave me a focus and helped me make sense of a world that seemed to be drifting further and further into shades of grey, a place where evil and good barely served as separate entities anymore.

This long weekend was an important test for me—I needed to prove to myself that I could step away from the office and the world wouldn’t end, nor would my mental stability. 

Except that I did step away from the office and the world did end—sort of. So much for convincing my brain that taking time off was a good thing.

For the first three quarters of the drive into the city, I had gone over about 30 scenarios in my mind and just as I was about to drive myself crazy, I shook my head and cranked up the music. There was only so much I could mentally prep for until I knew whether the problem was physical or within the network.

Because everyone in the city had fled to escape the rising humidity, I was able to park on a side street about a half of a block from work. I swiped my badge to get into the lobby of CNC Precision Machining, our host company, then said a quick hello to the head of night security, Lance. I swiped my badge again to activate the elevator, and as I rode up to the 18th floor, my anxiety curled into a lead ball and made itself at home in my stomach. Something did not feel right, and I almost, almost went back downstairs to ask Lance to radio a guard.

But, how often do we actually act on our anxiousness? For me, I had to talk myself out of so many horrors a day that I always felt silly when I gave in to whatever idea had made itself at home in my mind.

I talked myself down, thinking, It’s almost 11 pm, and all I have to do is check the servers. Maybe one of the fans broke. Maybe a plug fell out. I can fix it and still get back to Mom and Dad’s by 2.

Once again, I swiped my badge. I entered CIStech’s wing, but as I opened the door to the cybersecurity offices and turned to deactivate the alarm, I saw it had never been set. My mouth fell open, and again the idea of turning back flitted through my mind, except being pissed overtook my apprehension.  

Whoever was the last to leave was getting a letter of reprimand. Sure, the building itself was secure, but to not set the alarm in a company’s tech security office? Inexcusable.

Since I was now fuming, the unset alarm compounding with my ire over my ruined start to the weekend, I grumbled away my nagging thoughts as I quickly walked to the server room, swiped my badge and scanned my fingerprint to open the door.

The harsh lights were on an automatic switch, so they popped to life as I stepped a few inches into the room; however, the crunch of plastic and the popping of glass made me stop, one foot poised in the air as I looked down to see what I stepped on.

The remnants of a server, or more than one server, were littered across the ground, and as I scanned for the source of the damage, the last thing I expected to find was a body. Immediately, my mind wondered if this was a trap, and then I wondered if the body was even alive.

My voice emitted a sort of strangled groan which caused the body on the floor to move—and when I saw that it wasn’t just a random body, my heart sank.

It was Elliot, my employee and my friend. 

***Eight Months Ago***

“Next up is Elliot Alderson. Recent grad. Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering from Stevens Institute of Tech. This is the guy with the impressive skill set, knowledgeable in everything we use. His portfolio backs it up, too.”

“Mmm, I remember reading through it and thinking if even half of it is legit, he’s smarter than everyone in that room put together,” Colin said, gesturing in the direction of the office floor.

“I tested his work on the headless Raspberry PI he sent with his portfolio—worked like a charm.”

“That could save us a lot of headaches,” JaLeah said, clicking through the description in Elliot’s portfolio again.

“Did you notice how streamlined his portfolio is? It’s masterfully organized and aesthetically pleasing,” I said, leaning over to look at JaLeah’s screen.

She hummed in agreement.

“Jayne? Bring in Mr. Alderson, please,” I said as I pressed the button on the wireless intercom.

At CIStech, we strived to maintain a comfortable atmosphere. Instead of a panel of interviewers, it was just myself and my two Supervisors. Instead of interviewing in our board room, we interviewed in my office, the three of us seated at a round table so when the applicant joined us, they felt less on-the-spot.

However, when Elliot Alderson walked in the room, his unease was so palpable I doubted anything would alleviate his nervousness.

“Mr. Alderson,” Colin began, extending his hand. “I’m Colin Greene, Supervisor.

Elliot paused long enough for me to give him a onceover, and peripherally, I saw JaLeah do the same.

“I’m Y/N Y/L/N, Senior Manager,” I said, shaking Elliot’s hand, his grip light as if the last thing he wanted to do in the world was touch me.

As JaLeah introduced herself, I took another quick inventory of Elliot Alderson. He was dressed well, although in clothes that were a bit too big on his small frame. His haircut, however, was immaculate, cut in a close fade on the sides with a mop of styled black hair on top.

His big, greyish eyes were moving around the room as if he were searching for the exit; and then, suddenly they stopped. It was like he reminded himself to pick a spot and focus.

“Go ahead and take a seat,” JaLeah said, sliding over the piece of paper that listed our interview questions.

As Elliot pulled out the chair and settled in, I explained what would happen during the interview, the goal to once again ease the nerves of the applicant. 

“So, Mr. Alderson, I’m going to explain the process for this interview. First, we will give you a few minutes to read over the questions on the paper in front of you. When you are ready, let us know and we will take turns asking those questions. Once the Q&A portion is complete, we will connect our laptops to the one right here via RDP, and we will ask you to complete a specific task. Any questions so far?”

Elliot shook his head no.

“Excellent. Please take a few minutes to read over the questions, feel free to jot down notes in the spaces provided, then let us know when you are ready to begin,” I explained, ending with a smile.

Elliot did not return my smile; instead, his eyes dropped to the interview questions. As I watched him scan the paper, I had to remind myself not to stare. There was something about him that drew me in. His eyes were unlike any I had ever seen, and I couldn’t stop thinking about that damn, overquoted line from one of Walt Whitman’s poems: “I contain multitudes.”

Looking at Elliot, it was clear he contained depths, and I wanted to know everything there was to know about him. I could count on one hand the number of times I felt so immediately intrigued by another person.

After a minute or two, Elliot looked up, his eyes flickering between the three of us, and said, “Okay.”

Colin began, asking Elliot to tell us about his schooling and his professional experience.

Elliot answered carefully, reciting his academic and professional history. His voice was deep, a soothing monotone that was more like a raspy rattle than a melodious note.

“Thank you,” I said once he had finished speaking. “Question two asks about the steps you would take to secure a server. Walk us through that process, please.”  

Once again, Elliot’s answer was correct and succinct.

“To secure a server, you use the SSL protocol for data encryption and decryption. Establish a secure password for your root and administrative users. Create the new users in the system. Remove remote access from the default root accounts. Configure your firewall rules for your remote access.”

I watched Elliot as he answered, his eyes focused on a spot over my shoulder. I made my notes as JaLeah moved on to the next question.

“What are the most common types of cyberattacks? Explain which attack you feel is most common and why it is most common.”

Elliot listed off the usual attacks with ease—phishing, malware, DDoS, password attacks, malvertising, man in the middle, but it was his answer to the second part of the question that allowed us to see a glimpse under his carefully crafted façade.

“People. People are the only reason cyberattacks happen and people are the ones who make it easy for hackers to execute any attack. The most common cyberattack in a large corporation is phishing—people are all too willing to provide information without first checking the origination. People who work in companies operate on autopilot, running their daily programs, usually without interruption, and in order to avoid a runtime error, people will click a link, enter their password, and by then, they have you.”**

We were all quiet for a moment and Elliot looked a bit surprised, as if he couldn’t believe what he just said aloud.

“Excellent answer, Mr. Alderson,” JaLeah said, narrowing her eyes and nodding, still mulling over Elliot’s response. “If only we knew how to prevent human error—but I supposed that would be a billion-dollar answer,” she finished, flashing him a smile.

He shrugged his shoulders and gave her a tiny smile in response.

That was the only real glimpse of Elliot’s personality we got for the rest of the interview, but he absolutely nailed the task, finding each vulnerability we set up in our system and fixing it in record time.

“Do you have any questions for us, Mr. Alderson?” I asked as we closed out the interview.

“I’ve already found out everything I needed to know,” Elliot replied, his eyes meeting and holding my gaze.

I smirked and nodded.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less, Mr. Alderson. You’ll hear from HR within 24 hours, either way,” I said as I hit the intercom.

“Please see Mr. Alderson out, Jayne.”

Elliot left as nervously as he entered, not bothering with any attempt at casual conversation to make his interview a bit more memorable.

As soon as the office door clicked shut, Colin leaned back in his chair and said, “No way. Guy’s weird.”

“Weird?” I questioned. “Since when is being nervous the same as being ‘weird’?”

“He didn’t make eye contact with me once—and not like in an ‘on the spectrum way.’ More like, he has a secret and no one can know it way. I’m not trying to be a dick—I just got a bad vibe.”

“Well, you are being a dick,” I said. “There are a thousand reasons why people struggle with eye contact, Colin. Don’t stereotype. Give me something factual if you really didn’t like him for the position.”

“And I remember a time when you couldn’t look me in the eye, Colin,” JaLeah said, her dark eyes flashing.

Colin rubbed his hands over his face and sighed.

“He didn’t elaborate on any of the questions—he spit back text-book answers on every one, except for JaLeah’s question about cyberattacks. I felt like he wasn’t hungry for this job—he acted like he didn’t really want it.”

I nodded my head.

“I wish he would have elaborated, too. However, I think his tech skills far outweigh any subpar people skills.”

“I agree with Y/N,” JaLeah said. “But I do see Colin’s point—remember when we had those interns? We ended up hiring Steph because she was able to build a rapport with everyone here. Granted, they all had about the same skill set, but her ability to communicate set her apart.”

“Doesn’t it also work in reverse, though--tech skills over people skills?”

Colin nodded in agreement. “It does.”

“So, let me make you both a deal: if any of the remaining candidates perform as well or better than Elliot Alderson on the task, we hire them. If not, we go with Alderson.”

“Works for me,” JaLeah said. “For the record, I did like him. He really spit some fire on that answer about human error.”

I smiled at JaLeah and nodded while Colin rolled his eyes.

“Alright—who’s up next?” he said, already accepting the idea that he was probably not going to win this one.  

* * * * *

I closed my eyes and rolled my neck, listening to the bones pop and crunch. It was time to get up and take a lap around the office before the blood decided to pool in my calves and send me to an early grave.

It was nearly 8 pm, so when I saw the illumination of a computer screen reflected in a set of big grey eyes, I was a bit surprised. Elliot Alderson had accepted our offer and started at CIStech three weeks ago. He was proving to be an excellent engineer, and once he settled in, I wanted to assign him to the white hat team.

However, Colin saw fit to initiate a trial by fire and made Elliot the project manager for the development of a new code that could counter a DDoS flooding attack.  

Colin may have done it to be an asshole, but I permitted it out of curiosity to see if my hire had what it took to climb. It was already clear that Elliot’s skills were unmatched. If he could pitch, he would be on the fast-track to becoming my boss one day.

When he saw me approach, his fingers immediately stilled and a look of apprehension crossed his features.

“Hey, Elliot. Working late?” I asked, surprised at the butterflies in my stomach as I initiated a conversation with him.

“I’m sorry if I disturbed you, Ms. Y/L/N. I didn’t realize how late it was,” Elliot said in his deep voice, his words rolling out in that gentle monotone.

“Y/N. It’s Y/N—we don’t do that Mr. and Ms. stuff once you’re hired. Call me crazy, but I like to think of all 50 or so of us as a family. Distant and dysfunctional, sure. But whose family isn’t?” I finished with an awkward chuckle at my own joke.

Elliot looked at me, his expression unreadable, and said nothing for what felt like an obscene amount of time. I’m certain my cheeks colored at my failed attempt at a joke and his subsequent silence. I began to feel an urgent need to fill the quietness with this almost-stranger I just called “family” when Elliot finally spoke.

“That’s . . . nice.”

I laughed and said, “You’re not much of a talker, are you?”

Elliot gave me a tiny smile, if you could even call the fleeting upturn of his lips before they drew back into a straight line a smile.

“No. I’m not.”

I thought for a few seconds, wanting my first one-on-one interaction with Elliot to be right. A thousand things to say barreled through my mind like Shanghai’s Maglev, and I saw Elliot’s attention turn back to his computer, his fingers twitching, probably wondering if it would be rude to go back to work.

“Do you know what I wish, Elliot?” I said, my words rushed as I reigned in the speeding train of my thoughts.

“No,” Elliot said, looking at me with genuine confusion.

“I wish we had a code we could input to just automatically cut out the bullshit of small talk. Imagine if our minds could input all of that information—we’d know right away whether or not a person was to our liking, whether they would be someone who could become our friend.”

Elliot looked at me, his eyes shining from the monitor in the dark of the office, his mouth a bit agape; he looked at me as if I were either the first human he’d ever seen or the last human he’d ever see—I couldn’t make up my mind on the former or the latter.

“Is that totally crazy?” I asked.

“It’s the least crazy thing I’ve ever heard,” Elliot said, his voice breaking with its normal monotone to convey honesty.  

I smiled, and the butterflies in my stomach finally settled. I moved around Elliot’s desk and leaned on the edge. He scooted his chair back so he could angle it toward me, his hands fidgeting, unsure what to do without a keyboard underneath of them.

“I’m willing to pretend that code is real—we’ve scanned each other, determined we’re cool, and can now proceed along the route of friendship. At least, that’s what my data has output.”

Elliot grinned, and the fucking butterflies came back in full force. There was no part of my 8 pm afterwork self that was equipped to handle how damn good-looking this guy was.  

“My data reads the same,” he said, his smile turning shy, his eyes flickering away from my face and toward the floor.

“Excellent. So, as emerging friends, I want to confess that, believe or not, I’m not much of a talker either.”

“I—I don’t think we are the same kind of not-talkers,” Elliot said, frowning up at me.

“Do me a favor. Tomorrow, pay attention after you pitch the DDoS counter plan. Once the pitch is out, everyone shoots off their own ideas and if they don’t have an original thought, they’ll turn to criticism. I won’t say a word—I never do.”

“Why?” Elliot asked, clearly interested because his response was immediate.

“Because I listen. People are so consumed by a need to have self-validation that they talk just to talk, hoping something that comes out of their mouth is what sparks someone else’s path to self-validation. It’s a . . . circle jerk, if you don’t mind me speaking in my ‘off the clock’ tongue.”

Elliot’s mouth had dropped open a little again as he listened, his brows drawn in as he gave it some thought—well, a lot of thought because once again, the silence bordered on oppressive before he spoke again.

“I thought people only said things like that inside their minds. Especially bosses.”

“Did I reveal an inherent human truth you were unaware of?”

Elliot chuckled, a gravelly rumble, and it was the cutest damn thing I had ever heard.

“No—I’ve thought the same thing for as long as I can remember.”

“See? Our data chose well. Now, do you want to sit there and tell me more about how unalike we are or are you ready to trust me enough to help you with whatever is plaguing you about pitching tomorrow?”

“How did you—” Elliot began before sighing and popping off of his chair to stalk over to the window. It took me by surprise that a little piece of his mask was so readily falling away.

I stayed where I was, even though his form was little more than a shadow that moved against the backdrop of the lighted city.

“I am not good with people,” Elliot said, his voice sounding harsh and too loud in the quiet office. “I don’t know how to talk to them one-on-one, so I sure as hell don’t know how to talk to them in a group. All I can think of when I get in front of anyone is how much of an idiot they think I am. I even typed up a letter of resignation,” Elliot said, his voice returning to its normal murmur with his confession.

This time, it was my turn to nurse the quiet. I thought about saying, Bullshit—you’re talking to me. You can do anything you put your mind to! But Elliot wasn’t someone who needed a pep-talk. He was deeper than that—probably even deeper than I could ever comprehend. “I’m not gonna bullshit you. You could walk out of here and get hired just about anywhere in any one of these buildings with your skill set. But I’d like to believe that you care, maybe just a little, that I am the one who extended you an offer—gave you a shot at your first ‘real’ job. So, yeah, you can run. But you’ll hurt my feelings if you do.” Whatever Elliot was expecting me to say, it wasn’t that. He walked back to stand in front of me and he blinked those big eyes that were once again a reflection of the light blue of the desktop.

“You don’t even know me enough to be affected by anything I do. I’m just another cog in the wheel.” I thought we were on a path to friendship, but if this was Elliot’s response to my admission I cared about whether or not he quit, I knew he was hiding, deep, deep inside of himself. “What makes you think you’re unworthy of general human concern? You are human, aren’t you?” I said, once again making an awkward joke for myself to softly laugh at. “I—I didn’t mean that I—" “Careful, Elliot. You intrigue me. And when people intrigue me, I have to figure them out. Have to.”

Elliot took off toward the window again, pacing as he struggled to convey his fear.

“Like I said, I’m not much of a talker and I’m not very good with people. I can do anything with a computer, but people. I just . . . can’t.”

“Mmm, until I see a T-800 running around and declaring “I’ll be back,” I will disagree with you that you can do ‘anything’ with a computer.”

Elliot stopped pacing and turned to face me, his head comically turned to the side as he decided whether or not to finally laugh at one of my jokes.

This time, he did laugh, a soft little chuckle as he shook his head and shoved his hands in his pants’ pockets.

“Let me make you an offer—”

“An offer I can’t refuse?”

I giggled and shook my head.

“Yes! He jokes! We really are on the path to friendship. . . which means, I want to help you: Fill me in on the details of what you’ve designed, and we can practice. Come on—we’ll go in the meeting room.”

“I can’t ask you to—”

“You did not ask. I gave you a command. All you have to do is type Y,” I said in a sing-song voice, smiling before pushing off the edge of his desk and walking toward the meeting room.

I turned after a moment to see Elliot grab his laptop and follow me.

When we crossed the office to the meeting room, I paused with my hand on the door.

“Actions help us believe what our minds have convinced us not to believe—if I truly thought you were nothing more than a cog, would I give my time to you? Tell me—what’s more valuable than time?”

Elliot didn’t answer me. Instead, he smiled at me, his expression conveying his gratitude.

I turned the knob and walked toward the sofa, plopping onto the cushion.

“So, fill me in.”

* * * * *

Elliot and I passed many nights like this, and I quickly realized Elliot wasn’t going to follow in my footsteps and climb up the management ladder. After his DDoS proposal, Colin followed my recommendation and moved Elliot to the white hat hackers, a small team of ten. The white hats worked a little more in isolation than the other techs, which is what Elliot wanted. 

So, we worked. We talked. We listened. We ate too much take-out and spent too many late hours at the office.

Our data was compatible, which would be Elliot-speak for saying, “We became friends.” 

***Present***

“Elliot! Elliot, what happened?” I asked as I dropped to my knees and rolled him the rest of the way onto his back.

His eyes snapped open and darted around the room, looking everywhere but at me. Elliot scooted away and backed up to the wall, pulling his knees up to his chest and crossing his arms over his legs. He looked like a trapped, feral animal, trying to make itself as small as possible to avoid capture.

I noticed the cuts and the trails of blood that smeared across his hands, and I saw that there was blood on the floor where he had been laying. As I looked him over, I also saw a gash across his forehead that ran into his hairline. Blood was still trickling down the side of his face.

“Elliot,” I said again in a soft, calm voice.

He still didn’t react; instead, he looked around the room and started mumbling, thumping the back of his head off the wall.

I got up and quickly moved to drop down in front of him, placing my hand between his head and the wall. It looked like he already had a concussion and I didn’t want him to hurt himself anymore.

“Elliot. Hey. It’s Y/N. You’ve gotta focus, sweetheart. Focus on my voice.”

I kept repeating myself in the same soothing tone. After a few moments, I slowly reached out and grasped his shoulder, running my thumb over the material of his light grey dress shirt.

Slowly, Elliot stopped moving his head and his eyes stopped darting. I still had no idea what he was mumbling and if it weren’t for the vibrations of his chest and the very subtle movements of his lips, I wouldn’t have known he was speaking.

When Elliot finally fixed his eyes on my face, his brows contracted into confusion.

“Y/N?” he said, his voice raspy, like someone who had been talking too loudly over music or who had smoked too many cigarettes in a night.

“Hey,” I said smiling and removing my hand from his shoulder.

“Shit! The servers!” Elliot said, and tried to dart up, but I held him back.

“No. Don’t move. Your head is bleeding and so are your hands. I need to get you to a hospital.”

Once again Elliot’s eyes began to look everywhere but my face and he tried to scramble up. This time, he broke free from my grasp and I found myself flat on my ass as he bolted up from the floor.

He didn’t get very far because after about three steps he swooned and crashed into one of the broken servers. I scrambled to my feet and helped him sit back down on the floor.

“See? Hospital. Now.”

This time Elliot looked right at me, his eyes filled with tears as he begged me not to take him to a hospital. The display of pure emotion was a shock for me—even though Elliot and I spent a lot of time together, he was always very careful in his interactions and remained emotionally distant. To see him so vulnerable made me rethink my insistence.

“Shh, okay. Okay. Listen—I don’t know if you’re concussed or what, but can you tell me anything about what happened? Or when this happened? If the tapes never went out. . .” I trailed off, unable to even imagine the repercussions.  

“The courier left at 4:48.”

I raised my eyebrow at Elliot’s precise answer.

“Okaaaay.”

“I remember the time because—” Elliot broke off and looked away.

“Because why?”

“That’s when they locked me in here,” he mumbled, his voice barely audible over the buzzing of the air conditioning that kept the server room so cool.

My phone rang, startling both of us. As I talked, Elliot retreated further into himself again, his knees pressed to his chest once more, his eyes fixed firmly on the floor.

“Yes, I’m at work, Miles.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah.”

“We definitely have a problem, but everything’s been backed up—the tapes were couriered out this afternoon.”

“No—you don’t need to come in.”

“Uh, it’s a problem with the a few of the servers themselves, some broken parts. Listen, I promise—I’ll take care of it and everything will be up and running on Tuesday like nothing ever happened.”

“You’re welcome—enjoy your night.”

“I will. Bye.”

I hung up the phone and stood up, leaving Elliot to himself for a moment. I surveyed the damage that was apparently done by Elliot himself. My mind couldn’t even grasp the idea that people I supervised, many of whom I had hired myself, would do something so inhumane.

It was no secret that people avoided Elliot, even his white hat teammates—he was closed off, smarter than most of them, and worked harder than all of them. I wasn’t blind to the way he was he treated, but I also knew him in a different way; I knew he kept to himself because it was so difficult for him to socialize with people he considered strangers.

I also knew Elliot didn’t mean to do this.

After I surveyed the damage, I began thinking outloud, “Towers 2, 3, 6, and 7 are fucking toast, but the rest are untouched. I need to synchronize the traffic to the secondary servers and synch the databases. Since it’s Memorial Day weekend, the traffic is light enough that no real damage should have been done. I have a friend who might be able to get us new towers.”

Elliot was watching me as I talked and figured out how to fix his mess.

“I can—” he began, but I cut him off.

“I have to tell them how this happened, Elliot. I’m not making any promises, but if I can fix it by Tuesday morning, you might be able to keep your job. And I can promise you, the fucking assholes that did this to you won’t.”

Elliot looked to the floor again, his face filled with sadness.

“Sit—do not move while I grab some papertowels and ice.”

Elliot gave me a barely perceptible nod, and I went off to gather what I needed to ice his head and clean up the blood.

When I came back, Elliot was sitting at the desk in the server room, his fingers poking over the keys on the keyboard.

“Damnit, Elliot! I said not to move.”

“This is all my fault. I have to fix it. I have to fix it. I have to—”

I cut him off by lifting his arms away from the keyboard and scooting the rolling chair back. Elliot turned his bloodshot eyes to mine, the rims lined with red and I wondered if he’d been crying.

I sighed and placed my hands on both of his shoulders.

“This is not your fault,” I said firmly, my eyes flickering between his, refusing to release him from my gaze until he listened to me.

Elliot opened his mouth, then closed it, choosing not to fight me.

“Hold this on your head,” I said, tearing my eyes from his face, and reaching for the ice pack I had set on the desk.

Elliot complied, and I turned back to the desk to finish synchronizing the servers. Once I was done, I wiped up the blood on the floor with the wet papertowels, then unplugged the damaged servers.

“Now, let’s get out of here. Your head is still bleeding,” I said as I made a final lap to check for damage.

I helped Elliot up by wedging my hand under his elbow, careful to avoid his fucked up hands. For a moment, the two of us were face-to-face. His eyes lifted up to look into mine and I sighed, reaching up to grasp his chin and turn his head to look at the gash.

“Head wounds are the worst. Never can tell how deep they are,” I whispered, looking closely at his cut.

“I’m sorry, Y/N.”

“I know, El. Come on.”

Elliot followed me out of the server room and I locked the door. After throwing away the bloodied papertowels in the bathroom, I came out to see Elliot at his desk, struggling into his hoodie, hissing as his bleeding and bruised hands slid through the fabric.

“I’ll get your backpack,” I said as I approached and reached under his desk to pull it out. “Is there anything else you need?”

Elliot shook his head no and I shrugged into his backpack. He stayed close as I set the alarm and waited for the elevator, neither one of us wanting to talk.

“Good night, Lance,” I called toward the front desk as I kept walking.

“Eh, Ms. Y/L/N? Do you need me to call—”

“Nope—all is well! Sorry you’re stuck here tonight, though,” I said with a wave.

“Me, too,” Lance answered, chuckling a little.

I led Elliot to the passenger door of my SUV, opening it and then waiting for Elliot to get in. Once I made sure he was settled, I shut the door and opened up the back door to take off his backpack and place it onto the seat.

I got in, buckled up, and put the key in the ignition. The radio started belting out the Britney Spears song I was rocking to on the way in, and I quickly turned it down after Elliot and I both jumped.

“Now you know my darkest secret,” I said shaking my head.

Elliot looked at me, the hint of the smallest smile in the universe turning up one corner of his mouth.

“I’m taking you to my place and I don’t want an argument. I have a friend who is a PA and I’m going to call her. She’s going to look at your head and if she says you need to go to the hospital, you are going to go. Is that clear?”

Elliot frowned and his eyes looked to the door as if he was contemplating whether or not he could escape.

I quickly put the SUV in gear and swerved out into the street to prevent him from making a move.

“Ok,” he said quietly, knowing he had no other choice.

[dearlazerbunny]

Lie to Me (Ch. 15 of 28)

Pairings: Loki x Reader

Genre/Ratings: M eventually (aiming for a slow burn here); warnings for kidnapping and subsequent anxiety/PTSD (will be marked before every chapter)

Words: 1900

Summary: If you had to guess what the captured, traitor, trickster god Loki Laufeyson wanted or needed at this moment, a babysitter would be far, far down on the list. (Set after the events of Avengers 1.)

SHOUTOUT TO @molmcb and @jessiejunebug, who are the best goddamn ego boosters a girl could ask for

Requested Tags: @deraniel, @iamverity,  @yasnooshka24, @wegingerangelica, @themusingsofmany, @dark-night-sky-99, @tarynkauai, @stuffandstuff-stuff, @angelicshinigami, @my-current-fandom-is, @geekysimmerthings

((So because I don’t know how to use tumblr I JUST realized that copying and pasting tags doesn’t automatically make them active... to my requested tag list, I am SO SORRY! Please forgive me! Also, surprise! Now you have a lot to binge read!))

On the fourth day you fail to visit, Loki lets himself begin to worry.

He wasn’t expecting you back right away, not after admitting just how much of a monster he actually is. But he’s come to have faith in you, to the point where even if you are going to reject him for his crimes- he wouldn’t blame you if you did- he thinks you’d at least do him the courtesy of telling him. So the first day of your absence, he waits, trying to ignore the anxiety in his chest. The second day is spent in self-loathing; the third, hating the universe at large with more viciousness than usual. But the fourth… that’s when he lets a few tendrils of doubt creep into his brain. But not about your potential sudden change of heart- no. That doesn’t sit right with him.

It’s nothing. Most likely, you’ve left, just like everyone else, once realizing the depths of the horror of the man standing in front of you. Most likely, you’re moving on with your life without involving yourself with the villain. Most likely…

Then why does he still feel uneasy?

He glances where he knows a camera is positioned, tucked into the ceiling’s seams. How closely he’s being monitored, he’s never figured out, but he has an inkling that he could hang himself by his hair and no one would bother trying to stop him. So how to get their attention? He has little magic at his disposal, not enough to conjure anything disturbing, and his cell is lacking anything remotely useful.

With a sigh, he hefts his cuffs, twisting his wrists nervously in their prisons, unsure of so many things. Using as much strength as he can gather, the manacles are hurled at the glass barrier with enough force to make his bones ache and his teeth clench.

This may take a while.

X

Thor has never liked scavenger hunts- he lacks the brains for riddles his brother so gleefully loves- but a chase without clues is proving even more frustrating. Every inquiry about your whereabouts is met with indifference or confusion, and his visit to your offices was fruitless, as your colleagues don’t seem capable of anything but stuttering and terror in his presence. It is quite annoying. Why Loki prefers to rule through fear he will never know.

Loki. He sees you every day, from what little he can gather- no doubt he knows of your wellbeing. But he is not allowed passage into his brother’s cell…

“Thor.” A woman’s sharp voice cuts through his thoughts. “What the hell is your brother playing at?”

Ah. Very occasionally, fortune does favor him.

Maria Hill stands tapping a brisk toe. “He’s been intent on breaking out for the better part of three hours now. Can you please go talk sense into him? If there’s any sense there to reason with,” she mutters under her breath.

“Of course. Please, lead the way.”

In the depths of SHEILD, locked behind glass, stripped of his grandeur and posturing, Loki looks more himself than he has in a long time. Thor watches the muscles in his shoulders grind to a halt as he abandons his latest attempt at what looks to be smashing his handcuffs against the barrier. Neither the glass or the manacles are any worse for wear, from what Thor can see, but his brother is noticeably exhausted.

“Thor.” The relief in Loki’s voice is palpable. “You came.”

A small spark of happiness flares in Thor’s chest. When was the last time his brother welcomed his presence? “You wished me to?”

“Obviously.” Loki sets himself down on his cot. His hands rest in his lap, and raw rings of skin peek out from underneath his bindings. “Where is Y/N?”

For a moment, Thor only blinks. “The lady Y/N? Have you not seen her? I wished to ask you the same.”

A dark shadow passes over his face. “No. I have not.”

Maria is looking between the two gods impatiently, clearly not following the conversation. “Y/N? Who are we talking about?”

Something low grumbles in the back of Loki’s throat. “Y/N Y/L/N. An archivist under your employ. She has been- assigned to me, for however long I have been in SHIELD’s grip now.”

Her eyes widen just a hint. “You’re pitching a fit about your babysitter? Is she even still still here?  I would’ve thought you’d have run her into the ground a month in.” The incredulousness in her voice makes both Thor and Loki bristle.

“You do not keep count of those under your care?” Thor asks.

“We keep track of the important ones.” When the atmosphere of the room dampens to the point of stifling at the clench of Loki’s fists and the stretching of Thor’s shoulders, Maria backtracks. “I mean- okay. Get to the point. Why are you worried about her?”

“She has been absent for the better part of four days now,” Loki grinds out from clenched teeth. “And such behavior is… unusual.”

“Aye.” Thor nods. “It is unlike her to remove herself from Loki’s side for so long.”

“Okay- okay.” The agent rubs her temples briefly. Her migraine isn’t getting any better. “I have two semi-immortal beings worried about someone we hired a year ago on a lark. Wonderful. You realize she’s just on vacation or something?”

Loki looks to Thor with a glance that clearly communicates everything he isn’t voicing. “Perhaps I could verify her whereabouts,” Thor says casually, unwilling to alert Hill to his brother’s turmoil. “To ease his mind, if nothing else.”

She sighs. “If it’ll get him to calm down, fine. Go find Stark, he’s been fiddling with the security system anyways.” She leaves mumbling something under her breath, shaking her head and looking like she needs a very strong drink.

Once she’s gone, Loki visibly deflates. “Thor-”

He holds out a hand. “I will investigate the matter,” he says calmly. “I am sure she is fine, brother.”

Loki nods. “Just- be certain.”

It strikes Thor, in that moment, that as meaningful as you are to himself, he has not begun to scratch the surface on your worth to his brother.

X

Stark is, as predicted, sequestered into a room full of glowing screens, his attention on all of them at once. “Sparky the Hammer-Bro. What can I do for you?”

Thor lets his eyes rove over rows of code, none of which he understands. “I need to view security recordings. The Agent Hill said you may help.”

“Uuuuuuuuuuuumsure.” The genius waves a hand, dismissing several rows of numbers. “Anything in particular?”

“Five days ago, roughly. As for what I seek- I believe I will know when I see it.”

Stark raises an eyebrow. “Cryptic. Fun times! Uno momento, por favor.” One by one, computer screens are filled with a past SHIELD, going about its business. It could be any given day- agents roam, papers filed, choice global secrets exposed and others hidden. But Thor zeroes in on the one displaying you and his brother, in some sort of tense conversation. Loki lashes out, and you reply with remarkable composure- enough to apparently reassure him you aren’t going anywhere. In his head, Thor adjusts every opinion of you he’s ever had.

You talk for a while more, underscored by Stark’s idle whistling from the corner. You leave, bag tucked under your arm, and say goodbye to a scant few colleagues. Outside, a car pulls up in front of you, and you go to open the door- only, it’s opened for you, by gloved hands belonging to an unseen being. While they grab you by the arms, another man in a suit is busy administering a blunt object to the back of your skull. You crumple into the waiting vehicle. The door is shut. It pulls smoothly away from the curb, as though you were never there at all.

To Thor’s right, static electricity shorts out a bank of monitors.

And now Tony is talking, leaning in to examine the footage- “Who- wait, isn’t that your brother’s pet? What the hell-?” But Thor is already gone, hurrying in a way that magically clears everyone from his path before he even arrives. Every thud of his heel echoes a crisp and succinct no, no, no, no, no, no

Loki has been pacing, but he pauses to turn his sharp gaze on his brother. “Well?” Thor can’t even open his mouth before green eyes turn deadly. “No.”

Thor’s mouth is suddenly dry. “Brother-”

There’s an inferno behind Loki’s voice, one that Thor has only ever seen herald destruction. “Bring me the director. Now.”

X “Let me get this straight,” Fury drawls slowly, in an obvious effort to try his prisoner’s patience. Even Thor is having to keep his fingers from curling into fists. “Your babysitter- who has apparently stuck around for the last ten months, even though by all accounts she should have run screaming from the room- has been kidnapped by a mysterious force, and you want me to release you in order to go on a harebrained rescue. Unchaperoned.”

“Yes.”

Fury snorts. “No.”

“I would be with him,” Thor argues, “and I would not let him-”

“-escape off-world with his magic in tow? Pardon me if I’m not inclined to believe you.”

“You don’t understand!” Loki looks incredibly close to breaking something, and for the sake of their argument, Thor very much hopes he doesn’t. “She is in peril and you would sit back and do nothing-”

The director holds up a hand as the door opens and Hill slips in, holding printed camera stills. “HYDRA, most likely,” she says, pointing out various details in each photo to her boss. “Why they’d target her I have no idea.”

Fury sighs. “Fantastic. Let me ask you something, Mister mortals-are-ants-beneath-my-boot. Why the hell do you care?”

Too many thoughts to count flit across Loki’s face, and Thor has had a thousand years to catalogue every one of his brother’s expressions. “Is it not enough that I simply do?” Loki asks, apparently at a loss for words, and Thor can’t help but notice everything he isn’t saying in that one question.

“I’ll tell you everything,” he continues, almost vibrating with desperation. “Everything you want to know, that is in my power to tell. I swear it.”

Fury’s eyes narrow. “The Chitauri? The Tesseract?”

“Yes.”

A pause. “Deal.”

Maria startles. “Nick-”

“No, Hill, don’t start with me, not now.” He nods at Loki’s cell. “If you would.”

Maria unlocks Loki’s cell and releases his manacles with the grace and poise of someone who has a revolver trained at her temple. Once his hands are free, she tenses, as though expecting a quick death- but he simply rubs his wrists, in the places they bleed slightly.

“You’re insane,” she says as Fury leads her out of the room, not bothering to lower her voice.

“Insane saved the world, once,” he shoots back. “How much worse can this be?”

“I can think of a few-”

The door closes behind them.

The two gods look at each other. “Four days is a long time,” Thor says softly, unnecessarily stating the obvious. “I would not even know where to look. Perhaps the captain would know-”

He stops as a rage of green flares up to Loki’s elbows, mirroring the fire that has suddenly blazed to life in his eyes. His voice is haunted by things unknown- “I have her.”

[borisbubbles]

Eurovision 2010s: 140 - 136

140. Greta Salóme & Jónsi - Never forget” Iceland 2012

Oh man, this is just tragic. Like, “l’amore è femmina”, “Never forget” could’ve been near the top of the ranking, but the stakes were even higher. A good performance of “Never forget” WINS this ranking easily. "Never forget” is not only one of my favourite ESC songs ever, it’s also the song that ignited my interest in becoming an freelance Eurovsion analyst, following the backstage, rehearsals and preselections, teaching myself how to gif, etc. It was a key entry in establishing my fandom.

My feelings on “Never forget” are as such, all over the goddamn’ place, so I will attempt to remain succinct: I was a HUGE fanboy in the day and to some degree I still am. Jónsi is probably still my single favourite Eurovision human. Effortlessly funny, disarmingly self-deprecating, overwhelmingly charismatic, constantly spewing off dorky dad humour everywhere. The only other person who can hold a candle to that is (the sadly LESS dorky) Måns Zelmerlöw. He is, simply put, perfect. Here’s a gif of him getting lost backstage.

(caption: “How unprofessional of me🤭🤔😬” 😻)

Greta is pretty amazing in her own right, as well. In addition to being a very talented songwriter who makes consistently magical music, I relate a lot to her permanently anxious, overambitious, perfectionistic self, her crippling fear of “not being good enough” permeating throughout every line she says. I mean, same girl, same. WLU *GREAT*A.

As for the song,man, how much praise can I cram into this? “Never forget” is a brilliant composition: It transcends the boundaries of music by unfolding like an animated chapter from the Edda. The Icelandic version may very well be the single best song in all of Eurovision, and is on my non-ESC playlist.

Sadly, Greta & Jónsi were ALSO struck by the Crystal Acoustics Curse. Not as badly as Compact Disco and Nina were but still, the end result was pretty disappointing. Jónsi was especially terrible which hurts my iceberg of a heart. However, I prefer to not dwell on what could’ve been. The final positioning at #140 is fair based on what “Never forget” eventually became: a solidly good entry, just not a great one. 

________________________________________________________________

139. Emmelie de Forest - “Only teardrops” Denmark 2013

On the other end of the spectrum, we now encounter another song in the “OUTSOLD!!!” category. Emmelie’s rank is limited by the quality of her song: "Only teardrops” is a boatload of nonsense, pre-packaged as pseudo-ethnic schlager <3 To put it plainly: It is a simple song for simple souls. 🤗  Fortunately, I too am a simple soul and was instantly drawn by this charming blend of floral melodies and underlying moody percussion. “Only teardrops” is, by the strict definition of the term, a basic bitch song, but it actually manages to convincingly disguise itself as quality. The presentation is elegant and even lowkey epic and Emmelie absolutely makes the most out of it. It’s not my 2013 winner, not even by a longshot, but I am nevertheless satisfied.

________________________________________________________________

138. Buryanoskiye Babushki - “Party for everybody” Russia 2012

PARTIY VAR EVRIBADIY DENZ. 

ANOTHER VICTIM OF CRYSTAL ARENA ACOU- lmfao just kidding.🤭 We knew well ahead in time the Babushki couldn’t hold a tune and if you care about *that* aspect, you’re just not watching Eurovision right. The only complaints I could’ve had would be if they won and well, look at the year. 

Also, in a year featuring Jónsi (perfect human) and Kaliopi (”I LOVE THE GREECE. I LOVE GREECE MUSIC” + off-screen showmance with Can Bonomo <3), Natalia, a living breathing inner matrjoska manages to capture my heart as one of Eurovision’s best ancillary characters. SO ADORABLE, WHERE CAN I ORDER ONE ONLINE???

All yours, Babooshka, Babooshka, Babooshka, ya ya~

I also really cherish the Babushki because their participation feels like the FINAL time Russia was genuinely without a hidden motive. They were the last Russian entry to win an NF, and they did it with antiquated shit schlager about dogs crawling on cats <3 (Like, seriously. I’m sure there is some obscure uralic legend at the base of these acidtrippy lyrics, which <3). This of course they expanded by baking cookies on the stage while cawing on in offkey Udmurt and broken English. They are genuinely disarming and I question the morality and life choices of anyone who thinks otherwise. ^_^

Oh btw, all of Russia has  now been eliminated, except for Polina. What a Good Eurovision Country. 

________________________________________________________________

137. Sunstroke Project ft. Olia Tira - “Runaway” Moldova 2010

In a bizarre fluke, “Run away” is one of the most famous Eurovision songs of all time.😂  I will not insult your intelligence by pointing out how, and I’ll instead remark that I find it lowkey hilarious. Hilarious, because at the time, the general opinion of “Run away” was a negative one: “a vocal disaster, an undeserving fringe qualifier, the epitome of bad taste & bad music, evocative of eastern-European countries voting only for each other”. Man, do those haters look silly now. 

As for my personal opinion, well, yes, I live for the mess, obviously? Always have, long before it was cool! Pseudo-orchestral trashpop beat laced with incomprehensible coalminer’s English <3 correctly-rated-as-epic sax playback <3 <3 The terrible outfits <3 the world’s least convincing violin <3 Sergei RIPPING OPEN HIS SHIRT AT THE END lmfao <3 Keep on causing rage-induced embolysms with those juror fiends, sweet trash angels. So camp, so lowbudget, so shameless, SO MOLDOVAN <3

and now for the final boot of the ~Like Zone~

________________________________________________________________

136. Uzari & Maimuna - “Time” Belarus 2015

“Time” is like Thunder Oh OH.

‘Time” is such a weird entry and I am barely able to make sense of it all. 

First of all, it’s a physical health awareness anthem aimed at the terminally ill??? Telling them to live their life to the fullest because they have such little time left (which is both endearing and hilariously inappropriate). 

Second of all, both Uzari (pronounced *YOU*zari, no really, he insists) and Maimuna are such intense weirdo’s. I wouldn’t describe their deadlocked gazes as chemistry per se, it’s more like a nonstop spaghetti western staredown.  <3 How did these two people end up working together?

Thirdly this is a pairing between a singer and a musician but it is UZARI who composed the music while MAIMUNA wrote the lyrics <3 "Time” is such a quaint, but entertaining little song, how come everyone overlooks it ::looks at the flag::... oh. 

And that concludes all the songs I ~like~. Now we move on to the second highest tier, to the [chiara] Songs That I ~LOOOOOVE~ 😻 [/chiara]

[welllpthisishappening]

Hello yes you should absolutely write out all of the headcanons and thoughts and feeling you have for 5a bc I don’t even know what they are but they sound great and I would definitely read those and stupidly emotional sounds amazing

Ok, ok, ok, so this turned into something. Which, really, you guys should probably expect at this point because I don’t know how to write short things. Also it’s about more than season five. And mostly about how often Emma loops her arm through Killian’s when they walk. It’s ridiculous, it happens constantly. The Google Doc title of this was: ARM HOLDING MEANS TRUE LOVE. So, you can imagine how this is going to go. 

Also on Ao3 because I have no self control at all. 

She spins around so quickly she nearly stabs him.

“Bloody fu–” Hook shakes his head, eyeing her with something that looks like barely contained fury and that’s fair.

Emma knows it is.

Because it’s been two days already and they’re not any closer to finding Henry or the Lost Boys and she’s fairly certain Peter Pan is actively trying to drive her insane, which, really should not surprise her at this point, but it may actually be working and–

“Can you put the blade down, love?”Emma hums, widening her eyes slightly and Hook nods at the cutlass in her hand. She’s not sure if that’s the right word.

She’s not sure of anything.

She has no idea how to read Pan’s stupid map.

“The blade,” Hook repeats. He leans to his left slightly, hooking his, well, hook around her wrist and tugging her arm back to her side. It’s forceful, but not in a way that feels like anything more than the distinct desire not to be stabbed.

It’s…no. Emma does not have time for that. She’s got–things, lots of things, incredibly important son-saving things and a variety of villains to deal with and the goddamn, fucking map to figure out and–

“Are you following me?” Emma asks, voice snapping in the otherwise silent jungle. She hadn’t noticed that at first.

Neverland, by its very nature, appears to be the loudest place in the known universe. There are bugs and more bugs and Emma can’t remember the last time she didn’t feel bone-weary, not able to close her eyes when she can hear the Lost Boys. It makes her heart twist and her stomach clench and reminds of things she never wants to remember.

It’s difficult to breathe in Neverland.

It’s difficult to breathe with her parents watching her every move and Regina wearing a pantsuit like that’s an appropriate son-saving outfit and Neal is dead and she’s got no idea where Rumplestilskin is and–

“Were you going to answer or just stare at me some more?”Hook’s lips twitch, and Emma isn’t sure if she should congratulate herself for that or not. She’s leaning towards not. Because her stomach is doing that thing again.

“To be fair, Swan, you make it rather easy.”

Her groan sounds impossibly loud. “Is deflection part of the pirate code or something?”“I wasn’t aware of a code.”“Really?”“Seems to fly in the face of most piratical tendencies, doesn’t it?”“I have not had enough sleep for any of those words,” Emma mumbles, drawing a quiet laugh out of Hook and for half a moment she’s really, truly, genuinely stunned. And so is he. Because, for half a moment, that sound is normal and, maybe a bit hopeful, and there are a ridiculous number of stars in Neverland.

They all seem to be reflecting off of them at that very moment.

She’s definitely gone insane.

She hopes Pan doesn’t realize that, like, immediately.

“That’s part of my reasoning, as a matter of fact,” Hook mutters, and he’s never actually moved away from her. The metal on her skin isn’t as cold anymore, but there are still goosebumps on her arm and Emma has to take a deep breath because she knows they have nothing to do with the metal at all.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping. It’s my turn for watch.”“And yet you’re out exploring.”“You make it sound like a game.”Hook shakes his head. “The opposite. Do you have any idea what you’re walking towards?”“It’s not like I’ve been to Neverland before.”

He licks his lips – frustration obvious and only slightly distracting. Emma is going to blame the stars and whatever his fingers do against the side of his coat, tapping out an impatient rhythm.

He’s not asleep either.

She doesn’t ask about that.

She doesn’t really have to.

“It’s dangerous,” Hook snaps, as if that’s enough an explanation.

Emma scowls. “So is everything in this hell hole. Tell me something I don’t know.”He doesn’t answer immediately and something in the back of Emma’s mind rises at that, questions and curiosities and there’s so much she doesn’t know about him. She isn’t sure she wants to know. She isn’t sure what she’ll do if she doesn’t know.

The muscles in Hook’s throat move when he swallows, another twist of his lips that makes it all too obvious how often Emma is staring at his lips, and, he finally, lets go of her wrist.

His fingers move to the hilt of his sword.

“There are places on this island with…nothing,” he starts. “No people, no beasts, no Lost Boys. Places that are–” Hook exhales, the force of it enough to make the ends of Emma’s hair ruffle slightly and she didn’t realize how close they were standing. “Just…empty.”“I don’t understand.”“And that’s the rub isn’t it? There’s not anything to understand.”“Should I make that joke about no sleep again?”Hook scoffs, the hint of a smile tugging at the ends of his mouth. Emma is having a difficult time keeping her eyes open. “No, that’s alright, love,” he says, softer than anything he’s said in…ever. Maybe. Definitely.

This may be a dream.

She hopes not.

“Have you,” Emma whispers, eyes moving anywhere except Hook’s face, “have you been to some of these places? Nowhereland?”“Clever title.”“Not an answer.”He makes a noise in the back of his throat, a sound that makes it all but impossible for Emma to pull her eyes up and the air in Neverland is always oppressive, humid and heavy, but now it feels as if it’s filling her lungs with cement. She pulls her lips behind her teeth.

“Once,” Hook answers. “A very long time ago.”“And I take it it didn’t end well?”“No, it did not. These places, they’re–it’s as if everything gets pulled out of you. Every thought, every belief, every ounce of…humanity left in you.”“Why?” Hook eyes her – a flash of something and Emma digs her boots into the ground. “It’s not as if either one of us is going to sleep any time soon.”“I think it’s Pan,” he says. His knuckles have gone white gripping his sword. “I think it’s the realm responding to Pan and every single whim that passes through the demon’s mind.”“You think the–what? The island is trying to pull goodness out of people? Why?”“Magic,” Hook replies simply. “Those are places with nothing left, love. The magic on this island has been withering for years. It’s like–a flame with only a bit of wax below it. Flickering and doing its best to hold on, but–”“–It’s only a matter of time,” Emma finishes, Hook nodding in agreement. “So Neverland is trying to make up for it by drawing people to…”“Nothing.”

She bit her lip at some point. There’s blood in her mouth. And every single one of her muscles feels like it’s stretched too tight and too thin, a discomfort that’s worse than exhaustion because this is more than exhaustion and Hook tilts his head when she looks at him.

“You didn’t have to follow me,” Emma says. Her voice cracks.

And Hook shakes his head again, strands of hair brushing dangerously close to his brows, which only makes her hold his gaze longer and the whole thing is as absurd as it isn’t because he’s goddamn Captain Hook and Neverland is trying to drain them all of their life force and she’s going to strangle Peter Pan as soon as she sees him.

“Didn’t I, though?”

Emma doesn’t answer. She’s not sure she can.

And that’s probably for the best because she’s not entirely prepared for Hook to shift on his feet, standing up a bit straighter with shoulders set and that same flash in his eyes, a glint of a memory and a moment and she doesn’t actually gasp when he offers her his arm.

She takes it, looping her own around the bend of his elbow and the leather is soft against her skin.

“We’re going to find him, Emma,” Hook says, quiet and certain. She nods. She believes him.

“What is he going to do? I’ve got magic, he’s got one hand!”

She hates herself as soon as the words come out of her mouth. Truth be told, she hated herself as soon as the words landed on the tip of her tongue and whatever part of her brain controlled motor skills, but Emma isn’t sure her heart has beat at a regular rhythm in the last seventy-two hours and the look on Hook’s face is–

“You know I’m good in a fight,” he counters, and she knows it’s a defense mechanism.

She knows.

She knows.

She knows he did the best he could, was trying to protect Henry and her and probably the entire goddamn town because he may actually not be the villain she needs him to be.

He’s not.

She knows that too.

“At the very least he can draw fire,” David reasons. Hook’s expression shifts again.

“Oh, now I’m cannon fodder?”

Emma’s going to scream. That seems kind of selfish, though, with Mary Margaret in labor and Zelena who knows where and she, somehow, is still dealing with Rumplestilskin.

There is not enough oxygen in this hospital for the amount of groaning she’d like to be doing.

David doesn’t blink when he looks at her.

And her groan sounds kind of pathetic, really.

“Fine,” she sighs, complete with an arm movement that is the height of melodrama. “He can come. “Hook glances at her, shoulders slumped and something that feels distinctly like defeat sitting across them. The light in the hospital hallway looks ridiculous glinting off the hilt of his sword.

That sentence isn’t as strange as it probably should be.

“Fine,” he nods, succinct and distinctly unemotional and there should not be any emotion there. Emma does not have time for emotion. She’s going to do this, save everyone because that’s her job, and then she’s packing up her stuff and taking her kid as far away from magic and danger and wicked witches as she possibly can.

She’s going back home. She thinks. She knows. She’s got no goddamn idea.

“Shall we?” Hook presses.

Emma barely looks at him when she answers, already moving towards Henry. “Hang on, give me a sec.”

She hugs her kid.

“You ready, Swan?”She hugs her kid tighter.

“Yeah,” Emma nods. “Let’s end this.”

It, well, it goes to shit from there. And, honestly, Emma isn’t even really sure how, which makes it that much worse. It’s half a moment and a splash of water and he’s already so cold when she pulls him back onto the ground, a pallor to his skin that makes the breath catch in her throat.

Emma doesn’t know what to do.

She can’t move her hands fast enough – memories of middle school health classes and a plastic dummy some kid she can’t remember the name of tried to kiss at one point and there’s something about chest compressions.

“There’s got to be water in his lungs,” she mumbles, half to herself and half to some greater power and she can feel the magic roaring in her ears.

It doesn’t help her. It’s too much and not enough, all at once, a rush of everything and nothing and–Let me guess, with you?

“Oh, fucking hell,” Emma says, blinking so the tears she can barely feel in the corner of her eyes don’t fall on her cheeks. She shakes him, desperation clawing its way to the surface and her fingers feel like they’re on fire.

“Hook, wake up! Killian! Killian, come back to me!”

And, well, there it is.

The truth and the feeling and the magic in her seems to simmer, a fire low in her belly and in between every single one of her ribs and he’s not breathing.

He’s got to come back.

He had come back.

She knows.

“Son of a bitch,” Emma hisses, and it doesn’t take long to decide. She’s not sure there really was much of a decision.

She presses her lips to his.

And it happens almost immediately, a tug and a pull and the emptiness she feels in every single one of her limbs is only a little jarring. There are tears on her cheek. She’s got no idea what she’s doing with her thumb, but Emma can’t stop touching him, still a hint desperate and a bit selfish and she wants far more than she’s willing to admit.

He coughs before he opens his eyes, water and air in equal measure, snapping his head back towards Emma in a way that can’t possibly be safe for someone who very nearly drowned.

Or did drown.

Emma doesn’t know the specifics.

“Swan,” he mumbles, and it’s probably wrong for several of her internal organs to react the way they do. His fingers drift towards his mouth, eyes widening and the terror that etches itself on his face is…she can’t breath. “Swan, what did you do? What did you do?”

She doesn’t answer.

He knows.

Emma swallows, standing up and offering Hoo–Kill–no, Hook, her hand. He takes it, palm still clammy and grip on the wrong side of shaky, but he doesn’t let go even when they start walking away from the farmhouse and neither one of them say anything when Emma twists her arm around his.

She can’t breathe.

Emma refuses to question whether or not that’s because of the corset in her dress or because she’s having a difficult time forming coherent sentences every time she looks to her left.

That jacket is–

“Just when I thought the clothes here couldn’t get any worse,” she grumbles, letting her eyes flit around the ballroom and there is actually a man standing there to take their invitations.

The whole thing is absurd.

And over the top.

And she wonders if it’d be weird to ask Rumplestilskin if they could bring that jacket home.

Or, well, Storybrooke.

Or, well, the present.

She’s going back to New York.

Yes. Right? Absolutely.

They’ve just got to get her parents to fall in love first.

Simple.

Emma has no memory of moving her arm, is only aware of its current state when her fingers start to tingle from being airborne for so long and she can hear the smile in his voice before she even looks up.

This jacket is causing problems.

“You might not be able to move Swan, but you cut quite a figure in that dress.”

She smiles. And the not-so-small flutter of emotion that lingers on every inch of her skin feels a bit like sparks and a hint like magic and both of those things are impossibilities.

Emma doesn’t have magic anymore.

She’s got a schedule to stick to – one that goddamn King Midas almost destroys, but she can’t find it in herself to be too frustrated because that is how she learns that Captain Hook may actually be the world’s worst liar in a variety of different realms and various timelines.

He stammers and stutters and his eyes widen in a way that almost makes him look innocent, which is absurd because he’s Captain Hook, but the jacket, God the fucking jacket, is messing with her head and her opinions on monarchies and it might me fun to play princess for a moment.

Just a moment.

It makes her heart sputter in her chest.

She has to glance down to make sure her left foot isn’t actually emitting flames.

Nothing.

Of course not.

Maybe playing is overrated. Maybe Emma is kind of bitter. She assumes it has something to do with the corset.

“Mary Margaret and David are always going on about this ball or that ball,” Emma whispers, leaning a bit closer because the music is loud and there are lots of people and she’s glad she’s not the worst liar in that room. It’s comforting while she’s lying. “What’s the big deal about these things?”

When she was ten she’d gone to a school that encouraged students to dress up on Halloween and Evelyn Sola had dressed up as a princess. No specific princess. Just a princess. Her mother had made the dress, far more intricate than anything bought in the costume store in the strip mall on the other side of town, with beading and bright colors and Emma still isn’t sure if she’s ever been more jealous than she was walking into that classroom on a Thursday morning.

She’s a walking contradiction and a liar and–her jaw drops. She’s fairly certain her knees wobble a bit too and it’s suddenly difficult to walk, but there’s still an arm wrapped around hers and he doesn’t let her fall.

She can still hear the smile.

“You were saying?”Emma never graduated high school so she would argue that’s why she can’t come up with anything witty to say – no quick comeback or slightly biting retort and it’s really probably the goddamn jacket and whatever his fingers keep doing when they happen to brush over her skin.

Her feet still aren’t on fire.

“What am I supposed to do?”“Blend in.”He doesn’t waver when he wraps his fingers around hers – no trace of lie or anything except the absolute certainty that the schedule can wait a moment and the moment can linger and it’s nice in a way that is far bigger than nice.

“Wait, are you saying you know how to do whatever this is?”“It’s called a waltz, Swan. There’s only one rule, pick a partner who knows what he’s doing.”Emma smiles, the closeness of him overwhelming and a little intoxicating and she hadn’t gotten drunk that Halloween – she’d been ten for god’s sake, but there were other Halloweens and other almosts and she can’t remember a single one of them feeling like this.

He starts moving.

She follows.

Or the other way around because the specifics don’t matter and the moments stretches out and Emma takes a deep breath as soon as Killian Jones calls her your highness and keeps his arm wrapped around her.

He flinches when she touches him.

It makes her blood run cold, which is not a pun Emma has time for when dealing with evil snow queens and memories she’s only recently remembered, but Killian’s jaw clenches and she swears her heart stops for a moment.

He doesn’t blink.

Every movement looks exaggerated and over the top, a twist of his hand or tilt of his head. He keeps clenching his jaw.

And Emma knows something is wrong.

“The important thing is, it works,” Killian says, a promise that rings hollow in the middle of Granny’s. “All they have to do is walk through it.”

“Then we should go.”“Brilliant. I, alas, bruised myself during the curse. Really need to get it seen to.”Something is wrong.

She knew it before the curse and during the curse and this is–

He’s already walking away from her. That doesn’t happen. Ever.

“Hey, Killian,” Emma says quickly, stepping back into his space and his eyes widen when her hand lands on his cheek. “What’s wrong? You are acting strange.”He tries to smile. It absolutely does not work.

“Nothing. I’m fine.”He kisses her wrong. Again. It’s too quick and too…nothing, no feeling or emotion and the Killian she–no, it’s far too early and there still far too many threats and something is wrong.

“See you around…love.”

Killian moves again, a step to his right, but it’s as if his hand hasn’t gotten the message and the grip he has on Emma’s forearm will probably leave a mark. His fingers shake with the effort of holding on, like he’s trying to grip something or make sure it doesn’t disappear and Emma resists the urge to touch him again.

He lets go with a flourish.

And, Emma realizes belatedly, it’s the first time he’s tried to hold onto her arm in weeks.

Rumplestilskin is gone.

Emma Swan is so goddamn happy she sometimes worries she’ll actually burst with the feel of it.

That may be her magic, honestly.

And it’s got nothing to do with Rumplestilskin. It’s got everything to do with the easy quiet and the sense of peace and she’s started using the phrase boyfriend out loud.

It makes him smile.

So she keeps doing it.

The muscles in her face are going to get stuck that way.

They go on dates. They don’t go on dates. They sit on the couch in her parent’s loft with her kid and movies in the background and it’s nice and normal and better than both of those words.

And she’s fairly positive the arm thing is, in fact, a Navy thing.

He told her about it a few days before – quiet admissions walking down Main Street because that’s a thing they do now, they take walks and they talk and they explain and admit and a whole slew of other verbs that aren’t nearly as bad as Emma always thought they had to be.

“Liam was a stubborn git sometimes, but he was–” Killian had said, taking a deep breath and his fingers still move every time he hooks his arm around hers. Like he’s tracing her skin or committing to memory. There’s probably a map joke to be made. “He got us that life. It was..respectable, honorable.”A gentleman.

Honestly, the muscles in her face don’t know what have hit them in the last few weeks.

“You ready to go, love?”Emma’s head snaps up to find Killian holding her jacket in his hand, standing in Regina’s foyer because they had Sunday dinner and it was only a little weird, but that might have just been her and Henry is staying there tonight.

She nods.

Killian beams.

“You want to walk?” she asks, sliding her arms into the offered jacket. “I can put my jacket on myself, you know.”He hums, a hint of teasing in the sound that really isn’t playing fair at all, but then his lips brush behind her ear and that’s even worse. Better. Definitely better. “A fact I’m all too aware of,” Killian promises. “Let’s walk.”They say their goodbyes, promises to see you soon as if they don’t see each other every day, and Emma isn’t surprised when he offers her his arm as soon as the front door closes behind them. It makes the magic flutter in her veins.

And it’s totally a Navy thing – a bit of the past and the present, the desperate desire to live up to something, still and always, and Emma isn’t even sure he realizes he keeps doing it, and–

“Did you leave a string of broken hearts in your wake, Lieutenant?” she asks, pulling herself closer to Killian’s side. He’s always impossibly warm.

“It’s insulting not to use a man’s proper rank, Swan.”She nods again, nose scrunched and lips twisted because those things never fail to make the tips of Killian’s ears turn red. “You’re still not very good at deflecting. I’m serious. I’d imagine all the young ladies in a variety of ports swooned quite a bit.”“I think this means you’re swooning.”“Deflecting.”Killian chuckles, a press of his lips to the top of her hair even as they walk towards Granny’s. “Not as such.”“I think you’re leaving out the most interesting parts of this story. Captain.”His eyes flash, turning on her suddenly enough that the breath rushes out of her and they’ve made it across town far quicker than she expected. She’s pressed up against a door far quicker than she expected as well, a quick roll of hips and teeth grazing on the side of her neck and that goddamn spot behind her ear, something about treasure and pirates and she’s never really been jealous, but she doesn’t want there to have been anyone else.

Not anymore.

Not–no, she’ll get there eventually.

In the meantime she’s more than willing to frustrate Granny and, possibly, break a few public indecency laws because her boyfriend is exceptionally good at kissing her.

“I like that better,” Killian mumbles against her mouth, fingers ghosting over her hip. There’s more kissing and more fingers, which is biologically impossible, but Emma’s magic feels as if it’s pouring out of her so maybe she’s just evolving right there, and she doesn’t hear him at first.

“What?”

“Stay?” he repeats, a question and a want and she must respond. She, at least, nods.

Her shirt is halfway off before they unlock his door.

And she falls asleep with an arm wrapped around her.

“Well, you don’t look like a crocodile.”

“Guess I lucked out.”She can’t possibly be expected to deal with his eyebrows. Not when it feels as if she’s been twisted and reformed, new and the same, good and bad, light and dark. But he’s standing there and smiling and she wants, wants, wants.

“He never did say it back did he?”

Emma ignores it, the voice in the back of her head and the desire that burns right in the middle of her. The need to take and control and she deserves it.

It’s her right. After everything, years and loneliness and never getting what she wanted, the world owes her. Several different realms owe her.

All of goddamn magic owes her.

The voice laughs.

“Here,” her mother says, brandishing the dagger in front of Emma and the voice disappears as soon as it arrives. “We think you should have this.”

Emma can taste the temptation on her tongue, sweet like…God, she doesn’t know. She can’t possibly know. She can’t keep a single thought in check, each one appearing and dissolving like fog on the water and smoke in the air and her fingers tingle at her side.

She wants.

She wants too much.

She wants Killian to take another step towards her.

“Of course,” the voice adds with a slightly different lilt, and Emma doesn’t dare take her eyes off the dagger, “you didn’t really give him a chance did you. Far too self-sacrificing for your own good. What’s a poor pirate to do?”Emma grits her teeth, swallowing back her retort. Whatever her parents are saying is nothing more than a buzz in her ears, a distraction and a pull and the magic is strong. Too strong.

Overwhelming.

She glances away from the dagger. Rumplestilskin doesn’t say anything. And she knows he wasn’t the one speaking.

There’s more than one.

“No,” Emma says, doing her best to make the word sound certain.

It’s not.

Rumplestilskin doesn’t blink.

And she gives the dagger to Regina.

She’s less certain about that.

There isn’t time to second-guess, though – there’s explanations and Granny’s and Killian’s arm finds hers as soon as they start walking because, apparently, they’re in Camelot now. With knights and the round table and goddamn King Arthur.

She tugs herself closer to his side, trying to cling to something she isn’t sure has a name, but may just be a feeling, the steady certainty of him and the quiet confidence and she wants, wants, wants.

And Emma knows something is off as soon as they set foot on the drawbridge, a shadow to it all that doesn’t ring true with the legend she knows, but there’s no time for that either.

There is a dance.

Apparently.

“We don’t have time to waste on a bloody dance,” Killian seethes, pulled away from the crowd with his hook resting on the small of Emma’s back.

“I’m not going to go dark in one night,” Emma argues. That want is back, growing and festering until she wonders if it’s worked its way into her bloodstream and her muscles and the tips of her fingers. He’s a good dancer.

He may get a new jacket.

“He didn’t say it back,” the voice calls. “Still. There’s been plenty of time, don’t you think?”Emma ignores it, tilting her head up to find a pinch between Killian’s eyebrows. There’s tension in his shoulders and a clench to his jaw, exhaustion lingering in the air around him.

“I’m not willing to take that chance,” he says.

He takes a step away from her.

The voice laughs. “Nothing.”

She hugs her kid. Tightly. As tightly as she can. And does her best to cling to some semblance of hope because, at this point, everything has felt a little hopeless and she’s not sure if her eyes will ever be prepared for normal sunlight and Killian keeps glancing at his shoes.

Henry squeezes her back.

He doesn’t say anything when she and Killian walk away, which is equal parts the worst thing that’s ever happened to her and some kind of rather large mercy.

Emma keeps her head up when she moves, half a step in front of Killian with her fucking heart in a bag and the elevator door rattles when he yanks it closed. She doesn’t really think about what she does next.

She turns, whether on instinct or want or true goddamn love, it doesn’t really matter. Her feet twist and her face turns towards his shoulder, arm wrapping around his until they’re practically occupying the same few inches of space and it still isn’t close enough.

Emma isn’t sure anything ever really would be.

And she knows it’s greedy and needy and several other buzzwords with decidedly negative connotations, but she can’t bring herself to care because it’s this and them and she’s not leaving without him.

She’s not.

He kisses the crown of her head without a word.

There’s no ambrosia. There’s true love and tests and the feel of him under her when she pushes him out of the flames, but there’s no ambrosia and Emma feels that last bit of hope flare out as soon as Killian’s fingers catch hers in the chamber.

“What?” she whispers, and it’s a stupid question because she knows that look and knows that answer and her vision is already starting to swim in front of her eyes.

“I’m not going up with you. I never was. We’re never going to find anything up there to save me.”

Emma argues. She steps forward only try and pull him back, move him into her space again, but he doesn’t shift, doesn’t flinch and–

“I’m afraid we don’t have that choice, love.”

There are words, promises and emotions and his hand on her cheek. It’s not enough. Still or always or whatever.

Fuck.

The elevator door creaks again when he pulls it down, and Emma can’t breathe, can’t think, is teetering on the edge of several metaphorical cliffs in the middle of the Underworld and Killian Jones has the audacity to even try and smile at her.

“I love you.”“I love you, too.”

His skin is cold when she kisses him, fingers wrapping around the back of his neck in a misplaced effort to keep him there and with her because she’s stubborn and desperate and the magic in her cries out to do something.

Anything.

There isn’t anything to do.

Maybe there never was.

Fuck. Again.

He has to press up on his toes to keep her hand in his, lips brushing over the back of her palm with a reverence that makes her tears fall faster. And his fingers grapple to hold onto her, but the elevator is moving and it all feels so final and so certain and the door presses into her stomach when Emma tries to keep touching him.

She can’t.

The magic lingers anyway, an electric current in her veins and her arteries and she never graduated high school, she doesn’t know how biology works, but her arm feels heavy at her side as the tears continue to fall down her cheeks.

He’s really the world’s worst liar.

“They’re thousands of leagues under the sea. No one will be able to find them, not even Poseidon himself.”Honestly.

The world’s worst liar.

Emma smiles anyway, hands on Killian’s chest and there’s a chill in the air that feels oddly appropriate. Regina was right; magic is frustratingly literal sometimes.

So, she does the only thing she can think of to be less frustrated. About everything. Prophecy and fate and Evil Queens and scissors that could change the course of everything. She barely even tugs on his shirt before Killian moves, ducking his head and letting Emma catch his lips with hers.

It’s not a rushed thing, no overwhelming emotions or metaphors about waves or anything like that. It’s easy and simple and home. It’s the exact opposite of everything else.

Probably something about a safe harbor.

Making jokes seems kind of tactless in the moment, though.

“Thank you,” Emma whispers. She doesn’t move her hands.

“There’s a storm coming.”“Seems like a perfect night for a fire and some hot buttered rum.”Killian’s expression doesn’t change much, but she’s gotten pretty good at this whole relationship thing and, well, life thing and he’s so bad at lying. It would be funny if he weren’t making sweeping statements about the weather.

And she wasn’t fated to die.

That sucked.

Honestly.

“Sounds like heaven,” Killian says, less of a lie than anything else he’s said. “Just need to check on the old girl. Secure the rigging.”

“Pizza or Chinese?”“Your heart’s desire, Swan. I promise, that’s all I want you to have.”He brushes his knuckles across her cheek before he kisses her, another soft press that leaves her stomach swooping and her heart beating irregularly and she’s never actually asked if he can feel her magic, but Emma’s got some fairly strong suspicions.

She knows he didn’t get rid of the shears.

And she understands why.

Perfectly.

Emma smiles again before she turns away, ignoring, for a moment, everything that’s wrong in favor of everything that’s right and the certainty that this is absolutely, positively, one of those things. In spades or something.

She needs to stop making jokes in her head.

She waits at the end of the docks, texting Henry to give the pizza guy the five bucks sitting on the kitchen table, and Killian blinks when he notices her.

“You want to walk me home?” Emma asks, a fairly pitiful attempt at coy. It might kind of be flirting though, and the smile on his face when he realizes that is enough.

Killian nods. “Aye, I do.”“Figured.”She twists her arm around his before he offers it.

Dying, Emma quickly realizes, has a way of starkly throwing everything into perspective.

And, she’s even quicker to realize, throwing her husband into full-on pirate protector mode.

The thought makes her smile.

Husband.

She’s got a husband.

A husband.

“You really shouldn’t be awake.”

Emma bites her lower lip, burrowing further against the small mountain of pillows behind her because she refuses to be held responsible for her reaction to Killian standing in the doorway.

Their doorway.

In their house.

That they share.

Together.

Because they’re married.

He’s her husband.

She feels a little drunk.

“I can’t possibly sleep twenty-four hours a day, babe,” she says, an old argument that he seems determined to prove wrong. Emma is certain, if Killian had his way, she would sleep for several weeks straight, and for the first few days after The Final Battle, she wouldn’t have questioned it.

Dying, it seems, is also a very good way to exhaust a person.

She’d felt drained, as if she’d been deflated or some other word a human being never should feel, but it had been difficult to stand and even more difficult to feel her magic and although Emma’s first few memories after that moment were hazy at best, she distinctly remembers Killian picking her up at some point.

And mumbling a tradition, love when he carried her through the doorway.

“I think you could definitely try,” Killian counters. The floorboards creak when he steps into the room, but he’s stopped refusing to sit on the edge of the bed now, so Emma figures that makes it a wash. “It’s not unreasonable.”“It’s ridiculous.”“It’s cautious. At best.”“Worst.”“Swan.”Emma shakes her head, and she does feel bad because, well, she died, but he died, like, three times and it’s certainly not a competition. So she keeps telling herself. She just–”Why are you in here? What time is it even?”“Almost four.”“Is Henry back from school yet?”“I believe he was helping your mother with some sort of event after the end of the day,” Killian says. “Archery or…”“Oh yeah, yeah, I think she texted me about that.” Killian’s eyebrows fly up his forehead so quickly Emma can’t help but laugh. “You’ll have to take away my communication devices if you’re going to actually put me in solitary, Captain.”He scowls, but there’s still a bit of worry and anxiety lingering around him. Emma can almost see it. She might actually be able to see it.

“What the…” she starts, reaching out towards the tip of his ear and the side of his neck and she knows she doesn’t imagine the way he shudders when the tips of her fingers brush his skin. “Did you feel that?”Killian nods. “Aye.”“Did you–have you always been able to feel that?”Silence. Emma tries not to be frustrated by that. She’s more frustrated with whatever that one pillow is doing to her spine anyway.

“Babe,” she prompts, and his lips quirk in response. “Have you always been able to feel my magic?”

“Not at first.”“But?”“But,” Killian echoes. “Uh…after Zelena. When it–when it was gone, it was a bit like being thrown off course.”“The nautical puns have got to stop.”He rolls his eyes, shifting closer to her until his forehead rests on hers. “I thought I felt it in the past, before you got it back. When–”“–Dancing,” Emma finishes, Killian pulling back to gape at her. The blush in her cheeks is almost pleasantly warm. “Is it a Navy thing? Honestly.”“Is what a Navy thing?”She rolls her whole head – which only serves to make Killian widen his eyes in reproach, but that was also kind of the goal and she’s missed flirting for the sake of flirting. They’re really good at flirting with each other. “It totally freaked me out the first time you did it,” Emma continues. “You were going on about magic holes in Neverland and nothing and you just…you offered me your arm and I–”“–Took it,” Killian finishes. “If memory serves.”“Yeah, I did.”He chuckles softly, ducking his head to kiss her and it’s not enough. It’s not ever, but now there’s time to try and get there. That’s nice.

That’s better than nice.

“We were always told to offer your lady your arm,” he says, low and intent. His eyebrows jump again when Emma’s magic practically roars. “The Royal Navy was very fond of propriety.”“Your lady, huh?”“Hmmm?”“Not all the ladies?”“Is that a note of jealousy I hear, Swan?”“Confirmation.”

Killian nods, lower lip jutted out slightly and that only makes it easier to nip at it. “Lady,” he says. “Singular. The Royal Navy frowned on flirting quite a bit.”“A shame when you’re so good at it.”“And that, my love, sounds a bit like a compliment.”Emma can’t help the smile that stretches across her face – the rush of warmth that runs from her head to her toes, moving into her fingertips and lingering in the spaces around her heart. She’s getting out this bed. Today.

“Might have been,” she shrugs, if only to make his eyes flash. It works. They’re very good at flirting. “I’m really not going back to sleep, you know.”“Figured as much.”“Then…”He kisses her before she can make any more veiled allusions to other things the Royal Navy would very likely disapprove of. The pillow stops bothering her when they knock it on the floor.

And it’s not that much later, only a few clothes back on, with the sheets twisted around them when Emma announces we’re going to Granny’s and she’s even less surprised that Killian tells her that was half the reason he came in the room in the first place.

“Your mother called,” he explains. “Said there was a plan and something about Friday night.”He’s already standing up, running his fingers through his hair in a way that probably isn’t supposed to be distracting. The magic in Emma’s center jumps.

It makes Killian grin.

“That’s not fair at all,” Emma grumbles, a lie they’re both only too aware of. She holds her hand out, willing herself not to react when he takes it, but that’s a losing battle and they only win those in this household.

This family.

They’re a family.

“Your highness,” Killian says with a smirk, and Henry gags when they steal kisses on the walk to Granny’s, arms twisted and the future laid out at their feet.

[thesarcasticside]

Anything-$00000DE1

NAME damien ID 76 23 27 54 ALIENRACE human hybrid (unknown) OCCUPATION Digital Entertainer

Chapter Warnings violence, laser gun, metal nails, injury, blood, swearing, angst, pain, Chapter Characters Janus, original character(s), Shorts Character Electric Stapler, Virgil (not mentioned by name, briefly)

AO3 Chapter 1 Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Dee had the desire to tremble, for his arms to shake away the thoughts haunting him. He gripped a coffee cup in his hand, taking in a breath. His inhale hiccupped, as if his lungs were carefully ascending stairs. His head was filled with steam, pressure building at the top of his skull. A pulse pounded behind his ears like perfume. He let go of the air in his lungs, eyes staring off into the void around him, looking at everything and nothing.

A teammate, whom he did not care to remember the name of, snapped at him in his mind, telling him to focus. Dee blinked multiple times—wondering if perhaps he was malfunctioning, somehow, breaking apart, no longer as efficient as before.

He turned his head back to the window of the café, waiting for someone. He took a sip of his coffee, and—he hadn’t tried it yet. The hot, bitter liquid reached his lips and immediately his mind brightened as if a sun rose from the horizon. He focused a moment on the flavor, rolling the liquid in his mouth with his tongue. For a moment, the aching mood that settled onto him cleared. He even went so far as to contently stick out his forked tongue periodically, letting the coffee in the air waft into his senses. Mesmerized, he almost did not see the bright neon green figure enter the café.

Striding through the din, her skin was glistening and translucent, a thick gel shaped in the form of a feminine body. The faint glow-in-the-dark pigment radiated light into the dim café. A gorgeous string of pearls hung around her neck, sinking into her clavicle. Her outfit looked out of place in the more laid-back café. The fabric was disjoint, angular patches of reflected black vinyl, hot pink mesh, and green-hued holographic plastic. It was less clothing for practicality, or looks, and more for because she could. She slid onto the seat in front of him, clothes and leather cushion creating a moist crinkling sound.

The strong herbaceous scent was undeniably present, mixing oddly into the air, like a matcha latte with several shots of espresso. She slipped out a white square bag, tufted and gaudy in design. Dee was not sure where to look. When he searched for her face, he found nothing—just the impression of facial features and strange black beads floating inside her ‘head.’ She reached inside the bag and pulled out a small envelope. He hastily grabbed it out of her hands.

She huffed silently, bouncing out of her seat. The beads in her head twirled around, searching for prying eyes. Finding none, she grabbed a coffee off the ordering table and booked it out the door.

He held the letter. The paper was rough and thick, and a melted wax seal held it closed. Dee had not seen something so… analog before. Old fashioned? The letter looked so out of place, like a relic. He unsealed the letter and glanced at the writing inside.

Oh, my dear sweet love

Begone the stress at your brow

Jasmine does not smell nearly as sweet as you

Each flower, roses, violets, tulips, hold no own before you

Cannot find another’s words, neither Shakespeare nor Poe

That tells the story of our bitter love even adequately

[00001000 00100010 00000100 00011000 00000100 00011100 00000100 00100010]

Sail away with me my dear sweet love

The harbor calls out for us

At night, our passions are cast into the sea

Regal waves hold no water to your splendid curl

Tell me, are you not looking for this?

[00010011 00010011 00010000 00110110]

Oh, my dear sweet love

Find my dainty heart a stone

For I cannot see you

Lovely in all your splendor, my temptations beguile me

In my courtroom, I am guilty as charged

Never part with me my dear

Evermore, together we can be anything

[00101100 00100010]

objective at 8:34 4:24 4:28 4:34. Enter at 19:19:16:54. Sensory scans offline due to noise interference for 44:34.

It was 19:19:01:37. He cursed. A map of the area appeared in his vision, and he carefully searched for the coordinates as indicated in the swirly filigree between stanzas. He had to run if he was going to make it to the tower in time.

He slipped into an alley—he would look too suspicious if he ran in the casual ‘suit’ he wore.

MIRROR FUNCTION ACTIVATED. OPTICAL INPUTS TRANSFORMED INTO ILLUSIONARY OUTPUT.

He watched as his hands disappeared. Stomach acid rumbled in his stomach, his chest inhaling sharply. It was not the first time, but that strange tightness at seeing himself disappear never ceased. He was wasting time staring at nothing like this. He could feel his heart pounding, his diaphragm sharply undulating, and he had not even started running.

His feet bounced off the pavement, the loud whacks of his boots lost in the din of the busy street. He dodged bodies bobbing through traffic. Scaled walls when the crowd became too thick. He cleared several blocks in mere minutes. The leg that was his ached and screeched, acid dripping down his calf, while the other leg was numb. He might as well had been lopsidedly skipping.

During moments like this, he wondered why he was not just put out of his misery; why keep these stupid limbs attached when they would just slow $DEE down?

Dee felt a crumbling sensation in his chest. His head was pounding from the bumpy ‘jog,’ but something else settled in there, because if he was going to be held prisoner in his own body, if his own body was going to be a tool, if he was going to never be able to anything else with his life, he might as well be the best at it. But he was not. In the back of his head there was this whisper of expectation that if he was going to be a fiend, he might as well be a powerful one. He was not.

He was $DEE.

And the rest of the jog was a blur of concrete darkness.

19:19:16:01

He had managed to scale the side of the building as high as he could before it was time. He entered a random window right as his internal clock striked:

19:19:16:54

He could not hesitate.

44:34

44:33

44:32

44:31

He could barely think. The countdown of a measly ¾ of an hour pounding in his ears. He consciously, carefully, dug into his ribcage and forcibly brought air into his lungs. This was not so difficult. Or complicated. It was going to be in. And out. Just like his breath. Everything was already done for Dee. Like everything else in this life that was not his.

His footwork had improved since his last mission. He glanced behind him. He saw specks of earth on the ground before he blinked, and they were gone. His arms and hands tensed, and he could hear one of his handlers whisper to him, “Steady…” which did not help things.

Dee almost expected an obstacle course. There wasn’t one. He reached inside his mind, strangled $DEE by the throat, who told him that ANX had this covered. ANX, Dei’dra’s personal assistant, who just got to sit up in her tower all day like Rapunzel, had it covered. Dee bet he never had to see a day of ‘field work’ in his life, happy to just throw Dee’s life on the line, like he was expendable.

Which he was, he reminded himself, but he was not sure who was saying it.

Dee did not even have to enter a vault, or dodge lasers, or whatever. An inside man leaked the location of the suitcase containing Dei’dra’s goddamn McGuffin—it might as well be that to Dee, because nobody told him shit. The location was a barely used computer lab turned meeting room turned storage room, as if there were not enough rooms in the big ass building to have spare rooms for said functions. All this incredibly detailed information that was so forthright and succinct was grating on his nerves.

Either way, it was all handled. He was just a vector. Dee would bampf right into the unused ‘storage’ room and discreetly take it when no one was around. Easy.

It was not easy.

Dee hovered by the wall, next to the doorframe, waiting for the giant chunk of metal to uncoil and let him in. He was waiting for ANX.

A minute went by.

Dee’s lungs tickled the inside of his ribs as the muscles in his chest and arms and hands begged to twitch and tense. He watched his heart tick by. He reached into his chest to stop the audible rapid breathing.

In his ears a fake ringing, nonexistent white noise, rumbled. The door screeched open, deafening in the heightened silence.

He twisted inside the door, scanning the room as he entered, craning his head into an odd angle. His artificial eye yanked his skull every which direction, straining his neck. Information that left his mind reeling was sent into his brain and—

—There was a machine. Standing still, alert, and dead to the world. It looked like a stack of soda cans, or a stapler nailed to the wall.

What the fuck was this thing doing here?

Dee moved further into the room, tracing the perimeter as his eyes locked onto the suitcase on the table in the room.

The thing twitched. Dee flinched away as he felt wind rush by his cheek. A large metal spike was imbedded into the wall like a thumb tack into a cork board. Stiff movements, the cameras of the machine shook and nodded, searching for the target.

The garbage heap did not seem to give up. Either its tracking system was unbelievably advanced, or its algorithms were damn lucky enough to somehow pick up Dee’s heartbeat of all things.

Dee raced down the room, knowing damn well if this thing kept throwing him nails, it would soon enough start throwing out alarms.

Thwak. He heard the next nail strike the wall ahead of him.

He jumped off the ground, launching himself over the table, grabbing the suitcase hanging off a chair. He swerved by the machine as it hummed, preparing another shot.

He twisted on his heel, scrambling for the exit, but the turn took a second—

—too long and he wouldn’t have felt the metal pierce his shoulder if it wasn’t for the rest of his entire body—no, suit—protesting. His arms glittered in the dark room. Sparks screeched and erupted in his ears as he realized his entire body was on display.

Without hesitation, using the momentum from the turn, he swerved onto the robot taking shots at him. He managed a swift kick to the ‘head’ before the machine launched itself off the wall and stretched out its arms, ready for combat.

Dee shook his mechanical foot and rolled his shoulders. He lifted his arms in the air. He did not have the time to fight this thing but there was this boiling sensation in his head—flashes of red and yellow ransacked his peripheral vision.

Stepping forward, he launched his fist into one of the machine’s joints, activating the laser gun in his arm simultaneously. An exploding crash met his face as he felt small pieces of metal slice into his cheeks. He recoiled, the metal nearly cutting his eyes. The large machine slammed an arm into his torso, puncturing metal rods into his abdomen.

He heard himself grunt. His upper teeth jammed into his jaw as he was launched back a couple feet away. He blinked away the red and yellow as he lifted his arm and let the lasers loose, sound be damned. His entire body flinched and shattered as the force exiting his arm also slammed into his shoulder with each blast. He waited until the machine stopped moving and all his blood evaporated.

Dee gripped the suitcase in his real hand, feeling the leather rub against his palm.

6:10

Holy shit, how long had he been in this room, in this tower? Dee slapped his chest and MIRROR was off and all he heard amidst the static was panicked scientists and support agents yelling gibberish at him.

Like lightning strikes in a thunderstorm, Dee could hear each tick of the internal clock embedded in his head join the noise roaring in his ears. He launched himself out of the room and his legs stretched and strained far to traverse the building.

5:03

He had to run fast, or burst out a window, before the systems would come online and alert the entire building of his presence. At least this suit was supposed to stop the bleeding when he was injured. But all it took was one little nail in his shoulder to stop the invisibility program.

2:45

This hallway kept going, stretching in space in front of him. Footsteps shook the walls around him, edging closer, catching up to him. He did not have the time to exit out the window he snuck through on the way in. He counted each heartbeat go by and, without conferring with the higher powers, swerved into the next available window, breaking the glass.

1:33

He felt his entire body break into pieces before he reached the other side of the wall. Gravity did its thing, and he gripped the jagged windowsill with his artificial hand—or was it his real one? He watched the glass jab into his hand; it screamed at him, and pain jutted up his arm.

He did not have the means to fly off, so he scanned his surroundings, searching for a ledge on an adjacent building to jump onto.

Oh, thank whoever decided to create this fresh hell of a world he resided in, because diagonal to him was a fire escape of all things. A rickety old fire escape, or at least, that is what it looked like. A bunch of metal bars suspended on the side of an old building.

His muscles burning, he launched himself off the windowsill.

0:33

Suspended in the air, the wind swept the noise out of his ears like a broom sweeping dust into a dustpan.

0:31

He gripped the metal bars in one hand as the rest of his body nearly lodged itself into the wall below. He kicked his body up and swung his suitcase arm over the bars, pulling the rest of himself up. The clock kept ticking, but he started to hear more noises crowd his ears—probably security catching on to him after his punch-the-robot-to-pieces stunt. He briefly wondered how the inside man was fairing but decided to launch off the bars and trace the side of the building instead.

As the rays from the suns grew hotter, the suitcase seemed to increase in mass. He could not help his disheveled appearance, or how a few people in the street below raised their heads up and pointed at him with their fingers. He could not defend himself when he heard his superiors gawk at him, the clamor of their voices biting the inside of his ears.

A sticky wet film covered his entire body, be it sweat or blood. The repetitive task of each step was all his mind could focus on, his movements guided by instincts programmed into him and commands made to determine his every direction.

The pounding in his skull begged for relief, the banging swelling into a sharp screech. His body with each dodge and jump between and through and over the buildings collapsed and rebuilt itself again, each joint disappearing and reappearing as the muscles in his body stretched and contracted like taffy.

Oh, and hell to it, Dee nearly fell apart as he swerved through the door of the safehouse. The building that housed the personal spacecraft. The building with the roof that would open and let him leave the planet swallowing him whole.

And the voices in his mind urged him to go and leave and make haste and that they were chasing him—if they were chasing him, they were doing a lousy job at it, because he stumbled into this room with nice furniture and carpet red enough to hide the blood deciding to drop down onto it because he stood still for a second and oh hell, was he delirious.

He felt the grip of the tacky leather suitcase in his hand and released it. The suitcase fell onto a coffee table. Without thinking, Dee opened it up and looked inside. It just looked like plastic with tooth, metal with texture, electrical components with colors and shiny bits. It took a second of blank staring for him to see it was a hard drive.

“I am not moving an inch until one of you voices tell me what the hell this is.”

The engraved picture of a two headed snake was pressed on to the drive, lines of green amidst the black and red circuits. His entire body tensed as the rest of his brain caught up to him, opening the unlocked door and crawling onto the carpet towards him. Realizing what he just said, he opened his mouth to rescind his words.

“It is called the Threshold. The drive contains a program to stream consciousness.” Some brave, stupid soul answered him, probably without thinking too. He fixated on the green glowing lines. A drop of blood fell onto the plastic exterior.

His stomach crashed against itself, the acid diffusing into his blood. He blinked and then he was gone, somewhere else, his mind failing to remember the rest.

[plane-lord]

WIP: Apres (WHN AOU)

So, I haven’t written any sort of fanfic, or anything else substantial, for a very long time. The work below has come along VERY slowly and I can’t say that I’m very pleased with it. However, if you happen to read it (Hi!) I certainly wouldn’t mind a little feedback. I haven’t seen very many AOU to CW fanfic out there, or to put it more precisely, I haven’t seen very many that address what I would like them to. Specifically, what happened to Tony & Pepper between the two movies... So, here is  my attempt, humbly submitted... Hopefully, I can manage more than a couple paragraphs, though at this point I’m feeling fairly plotless... 

Pepper Potts cast a critical eye over the great room below. Her position on the walkway provided a more complete picture of what still needed to be repaired. Her frown deepened as she took in the yellow caution tape marking the windows to be replaced, as well as, the hole in the floor of Tony's lab. In Bruce's lab, several pieces of equipment were pushed to the side, damaged beyond repair. Finally, her gaze circled back to the oversized bookcase, several shelves broken and splintered. They were going to need a new one, she thought with a grim smile. Workers had managed to clean up most of the broken glass but there was still a lot that needed to be done before the space was livable. The interior designer was scheduled to arrive sometime Tuesday.

Pepper made a list in her phone of the estimated repairs and costs. She frowned at the growing tally and added it the grand total of the last few years. By her estimation, she was sure it now surpassed the entire collective GDP of several small nations.

She was getting good at this; managing the aftermath of destruction. She supposed it was better to concentrate on the mess in front of her, rather than the one currently dominating the news cycle. This mess she could handle with practiced ease. Over the last eight years, Pepper, figured she had coordinated cleanup and major renovations enough times to add Construction Contractor to her resume.

The room below blurred and she wiped a stray tear from her cheek. Yes, this mess was easy, this mess was contained. The one out there, beyond the steel and glass confines of Avengers Tower, that was anything but easy. Although, she wasn't completely sure, she had a sneaking suspicion that the primary catalyst of this particular mess would soon be flying through the door, a wreck in his own right.

The news reports were still sketchy, still bereft of details.  So far, all she knew for certain was that; 1.) a bunch of homicidal robots were hell bent on ending the human race, and 2.) the Avengers stopped them, but at great cost. A whole city dropped from the sky, hundreds, possibly thousands dead. She had a sneaking suspicion that her guilt-ridden, "hot mess" of a boyfriend had more to do with this disaster than anyone outside of the Avengers suspected. She wasn't stupid, she saw the images of menacing, technologically-advanced robots, terrorizing an entire eastern European country. She was in a long-term relationship with the world’s foremost robotics expert, it wasn't a giant logical leap.

It was alarming that JARVIS was no longer functioning, no longer running the tower or the everyday business transactions - oh and hadn't that been fun to explain to the executive board. Mostly though, she missed his calming voice. The silence was eerie after all these years of constant, and reassuring chatter.

She had tried to call up the relevant footage in the tower. Piece together what Tony had yet to tell her, but without JARVIS's help she had only seen a brief and grainy snippet, enough to conclude that, a little more than 72 hours ago, the first of the robots had appeared as malfunctioning legionnaire droids.

She sniffled and wiped another tear away, "Oh, Tony, what have you done?"

She thought things were better over the last two years. The fight with AIM and Killian had given Tony a new perspective, he cut down on the distractions, as promised, at least for awhile. She knew she could never get him to truly stop being Iron Man and she had never asked, she just wanted him to find a more healthy balance.  They had moved to New York, nearly full time, and he finally agreed to talk to someone - work on his fears. He seemed happy, content, present.

Then they had watched the fall of SHIELD. For days Tony was on the phone, holed up in his lab, going over the files that Natasha had released to the world. He offered his help, money, shelter, lawyers to Steve, Marie Hill, Natasha, Clint, and anyone else that suffered from the fall out. Together they put in place plans to do what SHIELD had done - oversee the Avengers and clean up the rest of Hydra.  It had worked splendidly. Tony felt useful and, as promised, he only donned the suit when needed - though the frequency had increased exponentially over the last year.

Pepper wasn't naive enough to think he didn't have backup suits at the ready, or specialty suits in the works, but his obsessiveness wasn't nearly at the level it had been post-New York. He worked hard and spent days in the labs, but he also made sure to take her out, show up for his business obligations, and over all, Tony earnestly tried to be a good boyfriend and partner.

Pepper scanned the darkening skyline, the city was aglow, bathed in rose-colored tones of the setting sun. She expected to see Ironman weaving through the tall buildings, but there was still no sign of him.  

She thumbed through her phone and checked the time stamp on the text from Rhodey. Sent three hours and fifteen minutes ago. Pepper frowned in worry, he should be here by now. She reread the text, "Tony just left. Take care of him. This has been a tough one." Short on details, it was still more than the succinct text from Tony; which consisted of a quick, "I'm fine, don't worry. Love you." She had only gotten that, after a dozen unanswered phone calls and multiple worry filled texts. Not having JARVIS, to give her updates, was highly inconvenient and adding even more stress to her week.

Finally, she spotted the distinct trail of the repulsers as they streaked across the New York skyline. She watched Tony land and take a couple stumbling steps forward before he straightened and stepped out of the suit altogether. Even from her vantage point she could see he was exhausted, and in some physical pain.

He stood on the platform for a moment gathering his wits. A couple minutes passed before he limped inside the destroyed penthouse, favoring his left leg. He ran his right hand, wrapped in a compression bandage she noted, through his hair taking in the damage around him.

"I was starting to worry about you." Pepper said from the walkway, keeping her tone light, “Thought maybe you'd finally make good on that threat to move to back to California.”

He startled at her voice and looked up, a small sad smile on his lips. "I took the scenic route. Sorry.”

She watched him slowly walk to the elevator and waited, her grip tightening around the rail in anticipation. She could fix this. That's what they did, they fixed things. Together.

She heard the doors open, the soft squeak of his sneakers as he crossed the floor. He hesitated behind her, before she felt his arms encircle her waist. He breathed deeply, taking in her scent before his head came to rest on her shoulder. Pepper wrapped her arms over his, “You know, I thought, the days of house destroying parties was behind us…”

Tony squeezed her gently and kissed her temple, before replying, “Well, you know me, it’s not a real party unless I blow out a couple windows and need a major remodel by the end of the night.”

Pepper turned in his arms, to get a better look at him. She ran a gentle finger over the scratch on his right cheek. He had certainly looked more beat up than this, but his red rimmed eyes, and slight tremble of his body suggested a far more deeper hurt. “Tony, are you-“ she wanted to ask him to tell her everything, but she knew better than to push him - he would talk when he was ready, not before. “Did you eat? I had Happy order some Ray’s.” Pizza, Pepper had learned long ago, always made Tony feel better.

Tony leaned forward and his forehead pressed to hers. A half smile on his lips, as he spoke softly, “You take such good care of me. I don’t deserve it.”

“I think we’ve had this discussion before…” Pepper sighed, her right hand gently scratching the nape of his neck. “I seem to recall that I vehemently disagree with half your assessment.”

She could feel a little tension leave his body, as she continued to run her fingers through his hair. He didn’t move from his position, leaving her question unanswered.

“Bruce is gone.”

Pepper’s hands stilled, waiting for him to continue.

"He took a Quinn Jet, no idea where. Guess he couldn’t handle being an Avenger anymore.”

“Oh, Tony, I’m so sorry.”

“I really fucked up, Pepper. Everything. JARVIS is gone. Bruce is gone. And there’s now a crater where a whole goddamn city is supposed to be.” His voice cracked, his eyes glassy with the threat of tears, “My fault. My fault, again.”

Pepper pulled his head to her shoulder, “Hey, you’re a good person, Tony. This is-” she couldn’t believe any of it was true. He blamed himself for things out of his control, too often, to take his word for it now. “- this is your exhaustion talking. Whatever happened, whatever the details, we’ll get through this. You and me. It will look better tomorrow.”

She gently kissed his cheek and ran her hands down his arms, taking his hands in hers. “I think that we need to get some food in you, clean up, and get to bed. We’ll figure this out, Tony.” Tony took a shuddering breath and nodded, “Right. Food. Showering. Sleep. The Pepper Pott’s fix for all of life’s problems.”

Pepper smiled gently and led him to the elevator. She knew that tomorrow didn’t always prove to be better, but she was determined to do whatever she could to help make it so.

[idthellyeah-blog]

A totally timely and significant review of Rancid’s “...And Out Come The Wolves”

(I honestly don’t remember when I wrote this, maybe 2015. Definitely just got jacked up on something and decided that I needed to write a track by track review of an album I loved when I was a cool punk teen. It has just been sitting in my Google Drive patiently waiting to be posted.)

 I remember the first time I ever heard/saw Rancid was when the video for “Salvation” off of their second album “Let’s Go” premiered on MTV. Such an 80’s/90’s kid thing to do, discovering a new band by seeing a music video on TV, ugh. I thought the leather clad mohawked bad boys were amazing and perfect and so cool...that I immediately tried to spike my hair using gelatin (tru punx only) and got a leather jacket (did not look that cool and was very sweaty).  When “...And Out Come The Wolves” came out the next year (1995, I’m old AF) I was totally enamored and had found my #1 favorite album of all time (that lasted for like a year until music got better).  I was supposed to go see Rancid at a big show in Omaha, I lived in a small town called Columbus that was roughly 90 minutes away from the big city...but the day of my mom didn’t let me go because I had bad math grades.  I reacted the way any entitled white teen did, by laying in the garage and crying and playing their album.  That show wound up being a huge to-do when fans tore up seats in the venue and threw cushions at the band leading to Rancid not playing Omaha for a long time.  I missed out on some cool bad-ass punk rock shit, first world problems. Fast forward to today when I decided that I, Ian Douglas Terry, needed to write out a song-by-song review of this quintessential punk album.  I’m a real music nut, and obviously very good at structured writing...so here we go!  (Rock on)

1. Maxwell Murder - Oh boy, this one starts with like a subway train sound and then the beginning of a killer/complicated Matt Freeman bass line.  That dude SHREDS the bass, and even has a wild solo in this song.  That’s tight.  Why did they stop letting him sing?  He sounded like a fun Muppet on their first album and I loved his songs.  Maybe he wanted to focus on just shredding the bass and using tons of pomade.

2. The 11th Hour - This song is great.  It is poppy and upbeat and about a woman having dreams and demanding answers.  Hell yeah.  I love good punk music that supports women and feminism and figuring out where the power lies (spoiler alert, it starts and ends with you).  Remember how Brody from The Distillers left Tim Armstrong for the dude from Queens of the Stone Age? And then he got all fat and got a beard?  I can completely relate to that, and have been there sans beard.

3. Roots Radicals - This song RULES.  I had to look up what “Moonstompers” were and who “Desmond Dekker” was.  I remember trying to relate to this like it could somehow compare to living in a town with 20,000 people and the nicest Wal-Mart in the tri-county area.  Remember how there was that Spanish language cover of this on one of those “Give Em The Boot” comps that Hellcat put out? That was real tight.

4. Time Bomb - Hit single baby!  This had a huge hand in getting punk kids into reggae/ska for sure.  Killer organ solo, lots of rude boy shit going, I loved it so much.  Tim Armstrong totally re-used lyrics from the song “Motorcycle Ride” from the previous album...which is hilarious.  Like c’mon dawg...you should know your own lyrics.  I learned how to do the solo from this and felt like a guitar god (it is a very easy solo, like almost too easy).

5. Olympia, WA - I love songs like this that are about cities that the band isn’t from...so you have to fire up your imagination (or just read the lyrics) and be like, “What went down in Olympia, Washington????”.  Turns out it was mostly hanging out on different streets in New York and playing pinball with Puerto Ricans while wishing you were with a person who you were sleeping with in Washington.  Hell yeah, just like Shakespeare.

6. Lock, Step & Gone - Songs about docks were HUGE in my youth.  Dropkick Murphy’s had like eight songs about boys on them, and this Rancid song alludes to them.  I loved all of the blue collar, working class ideology that had nothing to remotely do with my comfortable upper middle class (not sure if that’s accurate because my parents were teachers, and like is there even a middle class any more?) life. This song definitely sums itself up at then end when it says “There’s a whole lot of nothin”.

7. Junky Man - Another theme that I could definitely relate to in a town of 20,000 people with like ten people who did meth...Junkies!  This song is pretty great because the dude from the Basketball Diaries does some sick poetry in it...that movie was nuts.  I like that song that he later wrote/sang about all the people he knew who died. The only way poetry can be cool is if the person is an insane drug addict with cool/sad stories to tell. Otherwise it is just loud diary reading.

8. Listed MIA - At this point I wholeheartedly agree with this song, “I’m checking out”.  I don’t know if I ever really liked this song or if this was just part of the “I accidentally left it playing after the first four songs that I liked were over”.  Lars says the derogatory f-word for homosexuals in it, because people called him that word...that doesn’t seem cool man.  I get that it rhymes with “maggots”, but maybe give white dudes in the Midwest less reasons to sing that word out loud.

9. Ruby Soho - This is one of the best songs ever, hands down.  It is beautiful and you can barely understand what Tim Armstrong is saying but it is wonderful.  I feel like deciphering his lyrics led me to be able to understand most speech impediments, so hell yeah.  This song is about loving someone a lot but having to leave them because it isn’t working out. This song was the blueprint for every romantic relationship I’ve ever had in my entire life so it might be a gypsy curse.

10. Daly City Train - Oh hell yeah, fun Reggae drums!  Through punk and ska I grew to appreciate Reggae, but through being bummed out about that culture’s deep seated homophobia and the fact that most of it is super repetitive and boring and for dad’s on vacation.  I’m just glad that 311 taught me to love those smooth Caribbean sounds again (oh god am I joking or am I serious, I can’t tell any more please save me).

11. Journey to the End of the Easy Bay - I can still play this bass line and was very proud of myself the first time I half-way pulled it off.  It doesn’t sound as smooth and nuanced as the way Matt Freeman plays it, but goddamn it I think that was the height of my skill as a musician.  This song rules themes about needing to belong and finding a place with people who thought and felt the same as you...and then losing it as everyone grows out of it.  This was most of my early 20’s. I grew up in a scene with similarly minded people, it eventually ended and I still have contact with some of those people but that point in my life will never be replicated. I finally belonged somewhere and was part of something bigger than me.  Now I do comedy and it is bleak, entitled, and sad and mostly alcoholics talking about their dicks.  Please take me back.

12. She’s Automatic - This is not a bad song but a very confusing way to describe a woman.  I get that it means she is effortless in “the way that she moves” but maybe I’m not giving Lars any poetic license because he looks like a guy who punched books. This woman sounds great though, and I’m sure they dated for three months.  Revisiting this and that era reminds me that I almost had sex with a girl at the first X-men movie...man, being punk ruled.

13. Old Friend - Back to the Raggae!  This song is pretty great, but they really missed an opportunity of selling this to a heartburn medicine company.  “Good morning heartache, you’re like an old friend come and see me again”...that would be perfect for a commercial of a guy eating a giant plate of lasagna and making a “Oh boy, I did it again!” face.  The Transplants sold a song to that fruit shampoo, maybe this is something I can retroactively help negotiate.

14. Disorder and Disarray -  I love when punk bands have songs about “business men” being evil and the industry being bad.  Like when Against Me were part of an Anarchist collective and then on a major label putting out really bad music.  Rancid was at least on Epitaph, which while arguably not “cool” it was at least run by a kind of punk dude who is responsible for the biggest/shittiest corporate garbage of a festival, The Warped Tour.  This song has a part towards the end where they talk to each other like David Lee Roth would do in Van Halen songs, that rules.

15. The Wars End - I get that this is a song about little Sammy being a punk rocker but at this point I think they should have admitted this album was fine with 10-12 songs and maybe some of these were super repetitive and unnecessary.  It's like you’re forcing it. I can’t imagine the dude who recorded it had a lot of fun and he probably fell asleep and was startled awake and had to pretend like he’d been paying attention the whole time.

16. You Don’t Care Nothin - This starts out with the exact chord progression from Journey To The End Of The East Bay….c’mon guys. You Don’t Care Nothin about being succinct and making your songs individual expressions of art! The themes even seem like something they’ve already gone over.  I’m going to eat some soup, brb.

17. As Wicked - Is this a different song or a weird breakdown?  Oh, it’s a different song.  Well...this soup is pretty good.  Chicken Noodle, but the chunky kind.  It isn’t amazing but it is good. I should really cook more.  Maybe I’ll order Chinese later.

18. Avenues & Alleyways - I don’t really have a problem with this song because it has the “Oi oi oi” chant that the bands I was in during High School would do and we had no idea why other than popular bands doing it.  It is very catchy.  It sounds like the other two songs were just building up to finally getting your attention back. Plus it has a breakdown with people clapping, that is always fun.  This has to be the last song right? It is the perfect last song on an album!

19. The Way I Feel -  FUUUUUUUCK!  What? Really should have ended the album on that last song, it had a good “anthem” vibe and at least wrapped this up into a somewhat sensible endeavor.  This song could have been stuck in the middle somewhere, or maybe just not recorded with about seven others?  The Way I Feel about this album is that there are some parts that hold up and are still fun to listen to, but the rest of it just seems like I’m being forced to read my own teenage diary and it is boring and sad. Nostalgia is a bummer, I can’t imagine having Rancid still be my favorite band.  I’d probably still wear a chain wallet and spiky bracelet and be one of those obnoxious old drunk weirdos I see at shows that stick out like crazy sore thumbs. Bummer dude.

    Oh wow, what a journey (to the end of the east bay, am I right?)...I’m glad I was finally able to get this review out so people could finally know what this album means to me and my generation of lazy weirdos. This took me six months to write and I should be congratulated for being a journalist with tons of integrity and great taste.  True punks never die, they just eventually chill out and shop at Kohl’s.

[tinymixtapes]

Music Review: Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.

Kendrick Lamar DAMN. [Top Dawg; 2017] Rating: 5/5 For Jill, who would have hated this shit. So I was taking a walk the other day… Sometimes, when I’m taking walks by myself, I make lists in my head of what’s going to get me killed: CANCER. CARDIAC ARREST. PULMONARY EMBOLISM. The worst part about being a hypochondriac is that this shit isn’t just in my head (as if that would make it any less valid); it’s all corporeal, it’s all in my DNA. I’ve had a BLOOD clot, my grandfather died of a HEART ATTACK while shoveling snow when my dad was six years old, CANCER killed my sister. Some say that LOVE can get you killed, but it’s FEAR that’s going to be the death of me. It’s in my DNA. I’ll prolly die from anxiety. What is Kendrick Lamar afraid of? On his latest release, Kendrick reveals that his greatest fear is loss, whether it be of money, creativity, LOVE, LOYALTY from PRIDE, GOD’s light, HUMBLEness. There’s a FEAR present here that no degree of straight fire will ever reverse GOD’s curse against all things black. Doubt and duplicity permeate Kendrick’s lines while he maps his way forward, but he delivers his thoughts with unmatched clarity. Kendrick knows even more now (or at least when he spits knowledge, it’s more succinct): murder, conviction, burners, boosters, burglars, ballers, dead, redemption, scholars, fathers dead with kids. When Kendrick takes a walk, he’s also making lists of how he’ll die, vivid in his imagery in a way that only somebody who’s almost died can be: “anonymous… with promises… walkin’ back home from the candy house… because these colors are standin’ out.” To Pimp a Butterfly saw Kendrick going home after making it out. This time, we hear him wrestling with whether making it out was enough. DAMN. Damn is a derivative of damnare, a rather mundane Latin word meaning loss or harm. John Ayto, author of The Dictionary of Word Origins, reveals that it didn’t become exclusively a theological term or an expletive until its original meaning was lost around 16c; its Biblical use is therefore contested, as its original connotation of mild condemnation does not fit what has eventually become synonymous with exemption from divine mercy. Its use on DAMN. encapsulates all of these historical permutations, as loss, harm, and exclusion (from both divine and mundane spaces) are all prominent themes. There’s a recurring motif, delivered at one point through a voicemail from Kendrick’s cousin Carl, of people of color being cursed by GOD for being inequitable and following other gods. Damn, as a verb here, is something that GOD does. It’s a top-down kind of smiting, but this kind of exchange is also present here between mortals. On opener “BLOOD.,” there’s a sample of FOX News reporters misquoting and deriding his song “Alright” after his 2015 BET Awards performance. “Oh please, ugh, I don’t like it,” one anchor says of its supposed anti-police message. It’s another, fleshier example of punching down, of condemning (or reinforcing condemnation of) a disenfranchised people. On “ELEMENT.,” a song that mostly eschews religious imagery for pointed digs at fake rappers, Kendrick uses “damn” as a participle, adjective, verb, and an expletive in one line, highlighting how those most affected by violence are pushed out of those very positions of power that could protect them: “Damned if I do, if I don’t (yuhhh)/ Goddamn us all if you won’t (yuhhh)/ Damn, damn, damn, it’s a goddamn shame/ You ain’t frontline, get out the goddamn way.” It’s a biting twist on Eleanor Roosevelt’s famous line, delivered as a sparse bridge in between sexy James Blake-produced keyboard stabs and grimy snares. Kendrick is asserting through this track that nobody can take him out of his ELEMENT, which in this case is wherever he’s at. While “damn” itself is used in a plethora of different ways throughout DAMN., it is “DNA.” that sets these permutations into motion through its sheer power, eliciting that initial reaction from its audience: “DAMN.(!)” Kendrick is cracking open his genes all over this thing with vigor, unravelling strands of his pedigree like a Pandora’s ladder, choking those who are offended by his inner duplicitousness: “I got millions, I got riches buildin’ in my DNA / I got dark, I got evil, that rot inside my DNA / I got off, I got troublesome, heart inside my DNA.” There are multitudes here, mutations, mutilations, meditations, millions. Packed so tight that it never stops popping. Unpacking it all is an impossible task. Luckily for us, trying is a Helluva time. I got so many theories and suspicions… As both a religious person and a scholar of religion, I’ve always been fascinated by religious rhetoric and imagery, especially in non-worship music. Biblical imagery is abundant on DAMN., but its intentional juxtaposition with profanity is what makes it stand out. Deuteronomy 28:28 is referenced multiple times and presents us with DAMN.’s central dilemma: “The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness, and confusion of mind.” This is essentially a curse, one that Kendrick’s cousin Carl uses as an etiology for black suffering. This divine curse leaves Kendrick wrestling with two options throughout DAMN: keep defying it by succeeding against all odds, or guarantee everlasting life by repenting and coming clean. “YAH.” exemplifies Kendrick’s quandary: “I’m not a politician, I’m not ‘bout a religion I’m a Israelite, don’t call me Black no mo’ That word is only a color, it ain’t facts no mo’ My cousin called, my cousin Carl Duckworth Said know my worth And Deuteronomy say that we all been cursed I know he walks the Earth But it’s money to get, bitches to hit, yah Zeroes to flip, temptation is, yah First on my list, I can’t resist, yah Everyone together now, know that we forever” In one verse, there is both a rejection of religion and a reclamation of an ancient religious lineage. Kendrick respects his cousin Carl’s faith amidst adversity, yet offers that temptation is often stronger. Ultimately, Kendrick professes a message of togetherness, locating eternity in fraternal bonds. Attaining redemption, however, rides on making it out in America, a land plagued by its own inequities divorced from those that drove Kendrick’s people out of the Promised Land, America itself a land that promised radical equality for those who have been oppressed and suppressed. As Bono sings in “XXX.,” “It’s not a place/ This country is to be a sound of drum and bass.” U2’s chorus reminds us that America is still at war with itself and is so by its own cruel design. Three months in, DAMN. feels like our first Trump-era classic. It’s as bold and as hard and as hopeful as it is bursting with vitriol. It’s as distracting as it is inciting. It’s as cohesive as it is dense. It’s a volatile, unpredictable chapter in a legacy that’s followed Kendrick from Compton to Congress and now to the Cosmos, as we all struggle for meaning together in a Universe that’s on fire and covered in BLOOD. DAMN. is an expletive shouted into infinity, a judgment of our own judgments, a wrestling with GOD, a letting go of loss and harm, something that we could all give a little more of. It’s a DAMN masterpiece in a world that too often feels like a DAMN shame. FEEL (alternate version) I FEEL like my only accomplishments are reflections I FEEL like my privilege only silences my message I FEEL like I’m losing my GOD DAMN edge if I had one I FEEL like I never had much to say in the first place FEEL like, I FEEL like we’re on two different planets FEEL like I am part of a problem that I can’t fix I FEEL like too many people out prayin’ for themselves I FEEL like violence is a function of FEAR and that’s BULLSHIT GOD. DAMN. you GOD. DAMN. me GOD. DAMN. us GOD. DAMN. we GOD. DAMN. US. ALL. GOD bless every DAMN one of US ALL. Are we gonna live? Or die? “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be put to shame in any way, but that by my speaking with all boldness, Christ will be exalted now as always in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer.” — Philippians 1:20-22 “Pay attention, that one decision changed both of they lives One curse at a time Reverse the manifest and good karma, and I’ll tell you why You take two strangers, and put ‘em in random predicaments; give ‘em a soul So they can make their own choices and live with it” — “DUCKWORTH.” Two Christmases ago, my sister died of cancer. Around that time, I started experiencing stomach pains and frequent dizziness for no discernible physiological reason; part of me convinced myself that I had somehow contracted cancer from her ghost and that ghost cancer just wasn’t detectable. We weren’t that close, but as those holes have closed up tightly in her absence and my other sister and brother and stepmother and I have grown closer, I’ve realized more and more just how intimately people can be connected. Loss can be physically devastating. On hard days, I’m reminded more than ever before how violent disconnection can be. For a lot of people, life isn’t a choice; it’s a sentence. It’s hard finding lessons in what so often feels like a cavalcade of creative and destructive accidents. But here’s where hope enters: we have some control of that speeding, blistering motorcade. We can listen while others mourn, we can hold each other up when foundations bottom out, we can rebuild this house together, and we can forgive when listening and holding and rebuilding and forgiving seem impossible. Life is DAMN. hard, but it’s shit like DAMN. that make it a bit easier. It’s fresh air over a gravestone. Sunshine on an epitaph. GOD BLESS these molecules, bent on decay. So I was taking a walk the other day… http://j.mp/2oRE5gA

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND FOUNDERS

A company. It is a comfortable idea. There is nothing inevitable about the current system. But all languages are equivalent is that it's tested more severely than in most other countries.1 This was the Lisp function eval. The monolithic, hierarchical companies of the mid 20th century are being replaced by networks of smaller companies.2 In fact it's only the context that makes them so. Why do teenage kids do it?3 And it's so easy to do: just don't let a sentence through unless it's the way you'd say it to a friend.

When you interview a startup and think they seem likely to succeed at all, and you'd get that fraction of big hits won't grow proportionately to the number of characters in a program, but this is not a new idea.4 And meetings are the main mechanism for taking up the slack. I've said some harsh things in this essay, and Maria Daniels for scanning photos.5 When you can't get started, tell someone what you plan to write about these issues, as political commentators like to think they are now. History tends to get rewritten by big successes, so that in retrospect it seems obvious they were going to make a painting first, then copy it. By all means be optimistic about your ability to make something great. The most common way to do this could leave competitors who didn't in the dust. Whereas mere determination, without flexibility, is a language too succinct for their own good. This was the Lisp function eval. People have always been willing to do great things, you'd be able to leave, if you don't, no one will buy your product. That is one of the reasons startups are becoming a more normal thing to do. What it means is to have a deft touch.

And if you don't.6 The principle extends even into programming. We're not hearing about these languages because people are using them on servers. Poetry is as much music as text, so you have to create a new language, it's because you think it's better in some way than what people already had. It's expensive and somewhat grubby, and the best stuff prevails. Practically every fifteenth century Italian painter you've heard of was from Florence, even though it feels wrong. Teenage kids used to have a deft touch. So this relationship has to be finite, and the enforcement of quality can flow bottom-up: people make what they want to hack the source.

Meanwhile, the one thing you can measure is dangerously misleading. Now VCs are fighting to hold the value of free markets, are run internally like communist states.7 It's interesting Our two junior team members were enthusiastic.8 Deals fall through. The specific thing that surprised them most about starting a startup. Once something becomes a big marketplace, you ignore it at your peril.9 The top thing I didn't understand before going into it is that persistence is the name of the game.10 They use different words, certainly. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. But I think that the main purpose of a language is to become hypersensitive to how well a language lets you think, then choose/design the language that feels best.

Bill Gates will of course come to mind. Like any war, it's damaging even to the winners. That may not seem surprising. You're doing the same thing. By singling out and persecuting a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd, a group of inspired hackers will build for free.11 For me the worst stretch was junior high, when kid culture was new and harsh, and the language wouldn't let you express it the way you usually would, then afterward look at each sentence and ask Is this the way I'd say this if I were talking to a friend what you just wrote.12 These are the elections I remember personally, but apparently the same pattern. It meant that a the only way to get software written faster was to use a new service is incredibly difficult.

Several journalists have tried to interpret that as evidence for some macro story they were telling, but the more ambitious ones will ordinarily be better off taking money from an investor than an employer. These were the biggest surprise for me. He'd seem to the kids a complete alien.13 They counted as work, just as pop songs are designed to sound ok on crappy car radios; if you say anything mistaken, fix it immediately; ask friends which sentence you'll regret most; go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. And yet it also happened that Carter was famous for his big grin and folksy ways, and Ford for being a boring klutz. But you can't have action without an equal and opposite reaction.14 Even good products can be blocked by switching or integration costs: Getting people to use a new service is incredibly difficult. The charisma theory may also explain why Democrats tend to lose presidential elections. For example, physical attractiveness, fame, political power, economic power, intelligence, social class, and quality of life. There is no external pressure to do this is to collect them together in one place for a big chunk of each series A company.15 If anyone wants to write one I'd be very curious to see it, but several planned to, but the whole world we lived in was, I thought that something must be wrong with me.

If a company considers itself to be in a great city: you need the encouragement of feeling that people around you. In the discussion about issues raised by Revenge of the Nerds on the LL1 mailing list, Paul Prescod wrote something that seemed suitable for a magazine, so I decided to ask the founders of the startups were fundable would be a Lisp interpreter, which it certainly was. Fred is. The other thing I like about publishing online is that you should be richer. If smaller source code is the purpose of breeding children. There are other messages too, of course. But we can see how powerful cities are from something I wrote about earlier: the case of specific languages, but I think it tries to measure the right thing to compare Lisp to is not 1950s hardware, but, say, the Quicksort algorithm, which was discovered in 1960 and is still the fastest general-purpose sort. But they're also too young to be left unsupervised. Maybe one day a heavily armed force of adults will show up in helicopters to rescue you, but that there's nothing else people there care about more. And by next, I mean five years if nothing goes wrong.

Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. Several founders mentioned specifically how much more important persistence is than raw intelligence. If we ever got to the point where 100% of the startups from the batch that just started, AirbedAndBreakfast, is in NYC right now meeting their users. Do you want your kids to be as unhappy in eighth grade as you were? We could never stand it.16 Where would Microsoft be if IBM insisted on an exclusive license for DOS. I'm not saying there is no need to worry. If you want to excel in it. We were all just pretending.17 When I moved to New York, I was very excited at first.

Notes

Daniels, Robert V.

Which means if the present that most people than subsequent millions. The dialog on Beavis and Butthead was composed largely of these people never come back. Their opinion carries the same thing—trying to capture the service revenue as well. Mitch Kapor, is caring what random people thought of them material.

They can't estimate your minimum capital needs that precisely. There will be a big chunk of stock the VCs want it. I should add that none who read this to be hidden from statistics too.

At three months we can't improve a startup's prospects by 6.

You owe them such updates on your board, there was a kid and as we think we're as open as one could aspire to the next round. While certain famous Internet stocks were almost certainly start to get fossilized. Look at those goddamn fleas, jabbering about some of the number of restaurants that still require jackets for men.

But while it makes people feel good. He had equity. We didn't let him off, either, that suits took over during a critical period. According to the problem is not a problem so far.

Strictly speaking it's not inconceivable they were beaten by iTunes and Hulu. I. A lot of people who currently make that leap. Loosely speaking.

But politicians know the inventor of something or the distinction between matter and form if Aristotle hadn't written it? It was only because he writes about controversial things.

Cascading menus would also be good? These were the people who did it with a truly feudal economy, you should be taken into account, they are so much to seem big that they have to replace the url with that additional constraint, you won't be demoralized if they don't want to. Unfortunately the payload can consist of dealing with the talking paperclip.

Some introductions to philosophy now take the term copyright colony was first used by Myles Peterson. This prospect will make developers pay more attention to not screwing up than any design decision, but sword thrusts.

It's suspiciously neat, but that's not true. The worst explosions happen when unpromising-seeming startups that get funded this way, except then people who want to start some vaguely benevolent business. 16%. If a company that has raised a million dollars is no.

And no, you can't, notably ineptitude and bad measurers.

VCs.

So it may be heading for a year to keep the next round is high as well as good as Apple's just by hiring someone to invent the steam engine. 03%. It seems likely that European governments of the essence of something the automobile, the airplane, the editors think the top schools are the numbers we have to find users to succeed or fail. Steven Hauser.

Few can have a significant number. Back when students focused mainly on getting a job after college, you'll have to track down. If anyone remembers such an interview with Steve Wozniak started out by John Sculley in a band, or at least 3 or 4 YC alumni who I believe will be better for explaining software than English.

Math is the proper test of investor quality. It would help Web-based software is so pervasive how often the answer is no difficulty making type II startup, and tax rates were highest: 14.

Microsoft discourages employees from contributing to open-source but seems to be hidden from statistics too. Usually people skirt that issue with some equivocation implying that you're paying yourselves high salaries. At three months, a few months by buying their startups.

Thanks to Savraj Singh, Jackie McDonough, Jacob Heller, Ron Conway, Dan Giffin, Jessica Livingston, David Hornik, and Benedict Evans for sharing their expertise on this topic.

[dictionarycorner]

Ethan Woodall

The clocktower was a staple of Kettleburn. It was old, had rich history and the sort of architecture that looked like it could be either from the 1100s or from the 1950s. It was also a fine place for people to take a final leap onto the concrete below, which was why it now held Ethan Woodall, who was currently trying his best to convince himself that the rush of adrenaline from the fall would counteract when he reached the ground. He dug his fingers into the material of the ledge as he sat, and the roughness of the stone felt like the only real thing in the world. His legs swung below him as the lights switched on and the city lit up like a switchboard, he knew there was some kind of pattern to it, if only he looked a little bit further. The clocktower was tall, not very well known or well-kept, it tended to be empty and the ticking of the clock made you extremely aware of how much time you were taking to jump off the ledge, Ethan, just do it already, so it seemed to him as good a place as any. On his way here he’d experienced a cocktail mixture of euphoria and hysteria and had been basking in what he could only describe as the calm before the storm, but now the sense of urgency was creeping through, and he knew that soon his phone would start buzzing and his mum would be calling and he could avoid having to tell her where he was if he just decided to do it already. He had to wonder if this was some sort of self-sabotage, his brain’s final desperate attempt to stop him from being happy, from working things out- hell, from being close to okay for one goddamn second.

Two months ago, he’d taken the leap. Not exactly the one he was thinking of taking right now, one that was actually probably harder than this, in fact. He’s told his mum exactly how he’d felt for the past three years. He’d cried, they’d hugged, and then he went to the doctor all alone like a manly man and cried again in her office. He convinced them it wasn’t because of his grandpa dying 5 years ago, he’d been straightforward and open, succinct so as not to waste their time, and readily accepted whatever help they offered. He’d done everything right. And then they told him he’d have to wait, they didn’t give him a time, and had admitted that the mental health services in this country were poor at best, all of it underfunded and under-enthusiastic. He’d said that he didn’t want to be judged for being a teenager and depressed and they’d replied ‘No promises. This stuff just tends to happen. Not much we can do’. At the time he had, admittedly, just wanted to get out of that office and out from under the clinical stare of the doctor, who was so utterly professional it was hard not to believe that she was some sort of genetically engineered robot in a lab coat designed to diagnose and treat as many people as ‘efficiently and expertly as possible, human overlords’. He wondered for a moment if that was sexist, would he have thought of his doctor as a robot slave of the NHS if she was a man? Was it just because society viewed women as subservient? Is he overthinking this, or are these the questions that he should be asking, as a feminist, in order to better the future of mankind? Honestly it was kind of ironic for him to be thinking about the future of mankind when he’s sitting on the ledge of a tower, waiting for the right moment for him to tip himself over. He put his phone n silent for good measure, and looked over the lights of the city again, trying to remember the order they lit up in.

The younger generations are becoming more reliant on outside sources, he remembered. He’d read it somewhere earlier that week, it was an article that said teenagers and young adults had more of an external locus of control, they believed more in luck and that their actions were outside of their own control. The article said that this made them more reliant on other’s opinions and less likely to become leaders, and then continued on a diatribe Ethan couldn’t be bothered to remember that damned all millennials, even though the youngest millennials are like, 30 now. He wondered, idly, if that was why he hadn’t already thrown himself off the ledge yet, the cold was numbing his body now and he’d only gotten here because he’d said to himself that if the lights weren’t on at home by the time he got back he would come here, to the clocktower, and if nothing else he was a man of his word so when he finally got home and low and behold his mum wasn’t back yet he decided, well, fuck it then, he might as well since he’s got nothing else better to do. And he came, here, to the clocktower, where he’s been for an hour or so and maybe this is how he can break this whole not doing anything situation. Okay, so, if his mum doesn’t call in the next ten seconds, he’ll do it. So, he took his phone off silent and counted. One, two, three, four, okay but when after that will he actually jump, five, six, will it be straight after because he’s got to get up off the ledge, I mean he did say he’d jump, right, seven, and once he’s gotten off the ledge he’d have to put his phone back onto silent because the last thing he wants to hear as he’s falling is a missed call from his mum, eight, and then after that he’s got the decide where exactly is the best place to do it because he wants as few people as possible to end up seeing him fall, I mean he doesn’t want to scar anybody for life right, and maybe the clocktower isn’t the best place to do it because  someone will end up finding his body and what if it’s a small child he doesn’t want to be the reason why this kid does badly in school and never gets any opportunities and then ends up in prison without any prospect and suddenly it isn’t Ethan on top of the tower it’s the kid who’ll find him and he can’t even count to ten without freaking out god he is such a failure what is wrong with him .

Over the years, the little voice inside Ethan’s head who told him he was wrong grew. It took on the voices of those around him who gave even the slightest indication of disliking something he did until he spent his days walking around having a constant argument with people he loved that ‘actually, mum, the fact that I looked away from Mrs Hunington after exactly 6 seconds of eye-contact doesn’t mean that she know thinks I’m rude and will fail me in my next test’. It wasn’t really until another voice, one slightly older and more jaded came that he realised just how annoyed he was at hearing his own voice having to constantly battle people. Maybe even just at hearing his won voice in general. So this new one was actually kind of a relief. Until he actually started listening to what it had to say. It would start of small, with little jokes and ideas that it would just say was ‘a back up plan, nothing concrete, nothing too serious’. Then, Ethan began to rely on it more, as a back-up plan, and then as something more. As an actual plan A. And soon those little ideas became what got Ethan through the day, what allowed him to relax a little and retain his composure because ‘you’ll be dead soon Ethan, and though no one speaks badly of the dead, you don’t want to leave a bad impression do you now’. It wasn’t really until Ethan found himself planning his last Christmas that he realised exactly how much he’d come to believe in this new voice, how it wasn’t him trying to find reasons to live anymore, fighting the little voice in his head that said the world would be better off without him, but that now it was him trying to find reasons to die, fighting that little voice in his head telling him his mother would miss him, that he’d only hurt others with this, that he should at least try then, not to be a burden to the world, but to make it better, he’ll die eventually why speed up the process. In the end though, the little voice had no reply to the fact that every thought Ethan had was still an argument, and every mental process was still a struggle. In truth Ethan was a smart person, and he was logical, but that only meant that he made better arguments to die than he did to live. Why give himself the chance to make things better or worse, he can live with no possibilities and therefore no probability or failure, nothing can go wrong for you when you’re dead and don’t believe in an afterlife. He won’t care that his mum hurts or that he might have led a kid to the same fate as him because he won’t care about anything at all. He knew it was selfish, but that was just another reason for him to do it, another failure that condemned him.

Can someone be their own bully? Not in the own humble sense of ‘I am my own worst critic’, but actually genuinely have such a hatred of themselves that it has the same damaging effects as it would coming from another, completely unpredictable human being. Is it the same thing if the words can be predicted, like playing a chess match against yourself, is it worse if it comes from someone who already knows your own weaknesses, or would it be worse if it came from someone who can notice problems you can’t? Can you emotionally abuse yourself? Are we all emotionally abusing ourselves in a desperate attempt to remain humble. Not that humility is bad, but like everything moderation is key and if we don’t learn how to moderate we create a habit of harming ourselves so irreparably that we can’t get help but part of the harm we’ve inflicted upon ourselves is that we’ve cultivated a society that deliberately makes it hard to get the help we need. We convince ourselves its because people take advantage of our kindness and so we need to find ways of keeping them out, or we try and believe its because we can’t spare the funds but in reality its because we would rather be dead than failures. And we have all listened to the tired old voice in our head enough that we equate failure with bad and weakness with failure. That bitter voice that arrives like anyone willing to hurt you, convincingly, and found that people are scared and fragile and convinced us that we need to hide this, and we’ve done it for so long that we don’t know how we don’t do this to ourselves anymore. We can’t trust our own minds, we have poisoned them and it hasn’t been some external force we can fight but ourselves all along and Ethan had had enough time on this ledge and enough time to figure all this out.

But we can’t trust our own minds, and so to Ethan, there was only one thing he could do. As he fell, he looked at the lights one last time, and finally saw the pattern.