#Saint Peters Emergency Room

[shadowqueenrules-blog]

PLEASE READ!

Trigger warning: gaslighting, bad experience at ER, neurological issues, lots of swearing

Okay I’m gonna tell you all the story that I’ve been dealing with for the past two months and how I’ve been majorly gaslighted. I want this to reach a ton of people so we can get the word out.

On August 15th of this year I started developing stroke like symptoms. I’m talking stuttering, slurring, forcing out words, fingers not doing what I want them to do, headaches, ext. so I go to Urgent Care where I had an CTscan and blood tests which thankfully came back negative. They told me if it got any worse to go to the ER. My work is really cool and kept me on clerical items since I couldn’t be on the phones.

On August 18th of this year I realize that I’ve been forgetting A LOT. And I’m telling you that I forgot things for minutes at a time where I thought I’d done something but I didn’t do a single thing. My original symptoms werent getting better and I got sick that day. So I call the nurses line and they told me that I either needed to call 911 or have someone drive me to St Pete’s in Olympia, Washington. Now I don’t like posting about where I live cause I’m a nervous Nancy, but I want all of you to know what the name of this place is so I hope to GOD you never go there.

My mom, being the saint that she is, drove me to the emergency room where we waited in the waiting room for a total of 5 hours, which I didn’t mind cause I knew that there were more important cases to focus on than me.

Finally we get a room. Now….I don’t know much about HIPPA, but I’m in like a room that can fit a bed and two chairs and it’s a tight squeeze. The bed has another patient in it and the curtain is drawn. But I knew she was listening to every word I said cause she got real quiet when the doctor came in to talk to me

The doctor comes in and I start telling him everything from how it started to how it’s progressing. How I don’t even know how or why it started only that I couldn’t speak that way I that I usually do and the symptoms are getting worse.

This doctor, fucking quack that he is, says that he’s talked to neurologists about similar cases and they’d probably say it’s not a neurological issue.

Fucking what?????

Then he goes on that anxiety can manifest in different ways. BTW HE DIDNT ASK ME ABOUT MY ANXIETY LEVELS WHICH HAVE BEEN THE LOWEST ITS BEEN IN YEARS!!!!!

My mom brings up a scientific article about someone who had similar symptoms about two months after having Covid. We thought maybe this was it because I had covid back in June.

Didn’t even look at it.

Instead he said it’s probably anxiety and told me he wasn’t going to do any tests besides the hand grabbing and reading his badge.

Cause, ya know, that solves EVERYTHING!

So we spend another 20 minutes waiting for my discharge paperwork that says the reason I came in was HEADACHES! They could’ve chosen anything else I was dealing with but they chose HEADACHES!

Needless to say I immediately filed a formal grievance against the doctor.

Now, two months later, I’m able to talk mostly the way that I’m used to with only a few slips ups here and there. Honestly it’s been a rollercoaster with my symptoms so I’m hoping it doesn’t come back.

Last week I get a bill for this ER visit, which I told them that I wasn’t going to pay for cause fuck that. And the total without insurance, for the 10 mins I saw a doctor, was over $400. With insurance was almost $300. But when I called the billing department to ask wtf this was, she said “well, even though you weren’t satisfied, we still provided you a service.” EXCUSE ME MA’AM BUT YALL DIDNT DO SHIT! So I sent another email to the complaints department demanding an explanation.

And today, I got the call. This woman was finding every excuse in the god damn book. And I’m getting so emotional during this call that I have to stop myself from breaking down and crying because I was being even more traumatized.

For instance here’s a bit of our conversation.

Me: you guys literally didn’t do any testing on me.

Her: well if it’s not a life threatening issue then we’ve just been sending people on their way.

Me: but how can you know if it was a life threatening issue? I could’ve possibly had like an aneurysm that could’ve been prevented if you guys did any tests. I was clearly having a issue and I was told by the nurses line to go to this hospital.

Her: but you see they don’t actually see you so they don’t have an accurate way of telling it’s an emergency issue.

Me: you do realize I have doctors who are mad for me because of how I was treated in your ER, right? Family members that are worried. Work had to accommodate me for a month. I have an appointment with an ENT this month! I have videos of what I sounded like. Countless people are saying that it’s an emergency issue.

Her: but it wasn’t life threatening.

Me: BUT WE DIDNT KNOW THAT AT THE TIME!

This conversation went on for 20 mins.

I cannot tell you how much this experience has traumatized me. I’m almost crying at the moment cause I’m still so emotional and it’s been hours since that phone call.

I can’t tell you how angry I am right now. But if I can help at least one person with my story then I want this out there.

If you value your mental and physical health please, DO NOT GO TO ST PETERS EMERGENCY ROOM IN OLYMPIA WASHINGTON!

THEY DONT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOU UNLESS YOU ARE BLEEDING OUT IN FRONT OF THEM!

[mirrored-movements]

There's a Problem

(Miguel O'hara x reader)

Synopsis: Miguel is turned into a cat by a villain, Peter and Jess need someone to watch him until they find out how to fix it- this is where you come in, however, they neglect to mention that Miguel is the cat you're now tasked with looking over.

Warnings: None, lack of romance tbh but still kinda cute

“What’s the problem? Where’s the emergency?” Arriving at HQ out of breath and half put together you leaned against the doorway to the meeting room, mask to your costume in hand as you felt there wasn’t enough time to put it on.

“(Y/N)! Thank god you’re here.” Peter’s robe-clad form right away came over to greet you, the man's arm moving behind your shoulder to bring you farther into the room. “We had er- a little problem.”

Raising a brow you side-eyed him, gaze briefly spotting Jess also occupying the room, the woman's arms folded as her head shook from side to side in some sort of impatiens.

“Problem? What do you mean by problem? I thought there was an emergency.”

“Well I mean it’s kind of an-” “We need you to look after something for a bit,” Cutting the man off Jess spoke, the woman's loud voice quickly cutting through the air as she’d rounded a table. “Think of it like a mission.”

“Alright,” Somewhat following along you watched the woman with a skeptical stare. “What do you need me to do?”

She seemed the finally pause, her form kneeling a bit in order to pull something out from underneath the table. “We need you to watch him for a bit.” Rising back up she seemed to hold out a cat?

The fluffy brown feline seemed more than displeased with being held, it’s equally as fluffy tail swishing back and forth angrily.

“A cat? You need me to watch a cat?” Knitting your brows together you watched the two respond with a nod, the animal being placed back onto the floor where it begrudgingly trotted over occupying the empty space in front of you.

“Yes well,” Peter paused upon feeling the intense stare Jess had given him, the man releasing a laugh. “Yeah, we need you to watch him, very important and whatnot.”

Blinking while trying to process what was being said you sucked in a breath letting out a sigh; kneeling down you held out a hand towards the cat trying to beckon it over. “Does it have a name?”

“Mig-” “His names Mog.” Cutting Peter off Jess nodded her head. “We’ll pick him up later, but until then we just need someone we trust to look after him.”

You thought it was strange how they both spoke about the feline and how they chose you out of everyone to watch said feline, seemed a bit fishy. “Couldn’t you have gotten one of the others to watch him?”

Peter’s hand came quickly to rest on your shoulder. “Miguel trusts you and therefore thats why we figured you’d be the best choice.” Turning his head a bit he added on quietly so that only you could hear. “And we all know how you li-”

“Ok ok, I’ll take care of the cat.” Shoving the brunette away you let out a huff. “Jeez can’t tell you people anything.” 

“You’re a saint.”

Rolling your eyes you moved to pick up the cat, your hands coming to wrap around it despite how reluctant it seemed. “Yeah yeah whatever.” Shaking your head once more you turned to head out of the office, cat in hand as you muttered to yourself. “Basically blackmail.”

“They so owe me.”

Taking a moment to see that the cat had a mere daypass wrapped around it’s neck like a collar you made the decision to just bring it back to your apartment. The animal seeming less tense once you’d made it out of HQ however it still refused to leave the spot on your couch that you’d sat him on.

You’ve had cats a few times growing up, however, this one just felt different from any cat you’d met.

“You are- certainly something Mog.” Finding yourself kneeling before him to stare into his little face your eyes took in the strange colour of his eyes, the brown colour was mainly present however near the center it seemed to become a ruby hue.

Pointing a finger towards the cat you held it up to him, trying to see if he’d rub into it like any other cat- however, he just raised a paw to push your hand away, tail flicking back and forth.

After a few more failed attempts to coax the cat into doing cat like things, you’d inevitably given up. Hand raising to rub the bridge of your nose as you’d mindlessly flicked on the TV to some random channel.

It was beyond your comprehension as to why Jess and Peter had a cat in HQ appart from spider-cat, and to ask you to watch it nonetheless?

Wild.

Figuring you’d leave the cat to do his own thing you trailed into your room, falling face first onto the bed intent on the possability of taking a nap.

Remaining on the couch for a few minutes the felines gaze trailed around the room, little knick knacks and picture frames littered the small space, as did a random assortment of blankets. There was the smell of vanilla in the air, presumably from a wax warmer however he’d also noted how you carried that scent as well.

Hopping off the couch he crept towards the rest of the room, eyes taking in the rest of the apartment as well as the little things that seemed to make it unique. Stupid little stickers were stuck in random places and he could tell some of the posted noted stuck to the fridge were from the youth of the spider society.

You did like to take care of everyone.

Taking a moment to stare at each note he eventually trotted towards where he assumed your room was, the curtains had been closed leaving only a sliver of sunlight to shine in.

Finding that the room was just as decorated as the rest of the apartment he moved towards the desk, the newfound cat agility making it easier to hop onto the surface. Gaze right away moving towards a turned off laptop.

He shouldn’t.

But, he’s good at keeping secrets so…

With the tap of a paw on the trackpad the device lit up, no password seemed to inhibit anyone from accessing the device which was both a good thing and bad thing. Good in that he didn’t need a password but bad because anyone could access it and see the photos you’d used as your wallpaper- each having a different member of the spider society.

Somehow navigating the mouse he tapped a few things opening up one of the photos, the title of it being ‘the loml’.

What did loml mean?

Sitting there for a good few minutes he gave up, attention moving to some more photos you’d taken, each having similar labels.

A disgruntled growl left the feline, his paws nearing the edge of the desk where he’d leaped from landing on the bed with a silent thump. Each paw moved with careful precision as he neared where your face was, a series of meows with the intent to wake you up leaving him.

Cracking your eyes open at the sound you let out a low groan, “Didn’t like what was on TV?” sarcastically asking that Mog merely meowed once more, his little snout jutting afterwards towards where your computer was.

Squinting a little bit to note what he was trying to get at you glanced towards the cat once more- there was something certainly strange about this particular brown cat. Your spider senses have been off the hook since leaving HQ however you just figured this is why a normal person couldn’t just take him in.

Sitting up you rose up from the bed, hands pulling out the chair tucked beneath your desk all the while Mog trailed over as well, the feline popping up onto your thigh quickly to peer over the surface.

“Did you open some stuff?” Tiling your head down while asking that you shook the thought away, reminding yourself that a cat couldn’t talk. 

Brown and red hues stared up at you almost innocently, a sort of expectation followed after as though he were asking you what was going on on the screen.

Shifting to sit more comfortably you raised a hand pointing towards the screen, “This one’s me,” You pointed towards the left side, “And this one is Miguel.” Your hand trailed to the right towards where the less than enthusiastic man stood. “He looks really crabby but he can be nice when he wants to.”

Glancing down you took note of how the cat’s whiskers twitched at your answer, dual-toned gaze returning towards the desk where he then hopped onto, head rubbing the corner of the screen where the title of the document rested.

“Sometimes I think he carries too much.” Mindlessly musing that out you let out an airy laugh, the cat's attention seemingly solely focused on you now, as if trying to get you to continue with that train of thought.

Which you did.

“I know he’s  got it rough, but I mean- I just don’t think anyone should deal with that alone- right?” You stared at the brown animal almost expectantly, hand coming to brush through your hair quickly. “I guess they say animals are the best listeners.”

Taking in your words he let out a trilling noise, stepping towards the edge of the desk where he seemingly nodded his head up and down.

Reaching out a part of you felt happy when Mog had let you gently pet his head, fingers scratching the side of his face softly.

“You’re so cute.” Cooing softly you continued to pet the cat only pausing once you felt that it was enough, you couldn’t afford to get attached to the animal knowing that Jess or Peter would be dropping by later in the evening to pick him back up.

Perking up a little Mog turned his head towards something shiny off to the side, his tail swishing back and forth as he tried to figure out what exactly was wrapped around one of the many water bottles scattered around your room.

Noting where he was looking you let out a soft laugh, body rising from the chair in order to bring the bottle over taking off the item of interest.

It was a bracelet.

“Made this for someone but I don’t think he’d want it,” Taking the bracelet off the bottle you held it in your hand to show Mog, “He’d not really the accessory type.”

There was a sort of bitterness to your words; there were many occasions that you’d tried to get in the good graces of the leader of the Spider-society, and despite the insistence from Peter that you were liked- it didn’t quite feel that way.

“Whatever though, here let's hide that day pass for now.” Making sure that the bracelet wasn’t too small or too big you slid it over Mogs face happy that he seemed to let you, the item now sitting neatly around his neck. “So handsome.” Cooing once again a smile gradually broke out among your face.

Taking in your expression Mog let out a churr, the noise causing your smile to widen.

---

“-and then Hobi and I got stuck on the train, honestly have no clue what happened after that but the mission ended pretty quick. He’s not great with damage control though so we got an earful back at HQ.” Finishing your story absentmindedly you continued moving throughout the kitchen.

Yourself and Mog having migrated there after lingering in your room a while longer.

“Oh my god and Miguel- so we were both like absolutely coated in mud and whatnot and didn’t think about the mess it'd track in- so he absolutely reamed us out.” You laughed briefly at the memory lips curling up into a smile. “Although I do think Hobi got the brunt of the scolding.”

Taking a moment you thought back to that day, recalling how you’d been able to avoid most of the yelling and instead were told to just go and clean up.

Maybe Peter was right to some extent.

With a sigh you paused whatever you were doing, arms folding over one another as you leaned onto the counter that Mog sat on.

“You’re a good listener.” Turning your head to the feline you extended a hand finding that he allowed you to pet the back of his head once again.

Taking a moment you turned, both hands coming to squish Mogs little face pressing a quick peck to the top of his head. “If Jess and Peter weren’t coming to get you I’d a hundred percent just take you in.”

At the mention of leaving Mog let out a huff, his tail swishing back and forth as though he himself didn’t want to leave.

It was homey here, you were homey.

Deciding that you weren’t hungry anymore, you’d moved to scoop the cat off the counter, holding him within your arms much like how one would hold a baby.

“Let’s go watch some Netflix or something- they updated black mirror.”

—-

The quiet atmosphere of your apartment was interrupted briefly as an orange glowing portal illuminated the room, Peter’s form stepping out.

“(Y/N)? I’m here to pick up the cat.” Calling out into the apartment the man let out a sigh upon hearing no response, slipper-clad feet scuffling across the floor towards the open doorway at the end of the hall. “(Y/N)?”

Hesitantly peeking into the room the man let out a soft laugh, his eyes took in the way you and the cat sat.

Your laptop had been sat on the covers in front of you, all the while you laid on your side, one hand resting over the brown feline as he himself curled up comfortably.

“Knew it.” Holding himself back from fist pumping the air he trailed towards the two, hand reaching over you in order to poke the sleeping feline.

A low Murr left him before he rose his small head, eyes landing on Peter.

“Come on, we gotta go.”

Almost reluctantly slipping out from beneath your hand the cat gave a short stretch inevitably leaving with Peter.

It was a few hours later that you’d begun to stir, the feeling of something heavy sitting along the edge of the bed barely registering in your mind.

Rubbing your eyes with a yawn you’d sat up, joints cracking in response.

“Sleep well?”

Jumping at the voice your head snapped around, eyes landing on the corner of your bed where the form of Miguel surprisingly leaned on.

The head of his suit was deactivated leaving his face readable.

“Yeah yeah, it was good- er what are you doing here?” Having stood up from the bed trying to make yourself a little more presentable a sheepish smile crept across your face. Your eyes briefly flickered around the room in search of a certain feline.

“Just wanted to give my thanks.”

Blinking in response to what he was saying you opened your mouth to question the statement, pausing once he’d raised a hand to display his wrist.

A bracelet was wrapped around the blue and red suit, the bracelet you’d put on Mog.

Wait.

“Hold on- you,” Pointing a finger at the man you pieced your thoughts together; Jess and Peter keeping this hush-hush, you being tasked with pet sitting, the cat having the same striking pair of eyes that Miguel did- 

You were so dumb.

“Let’s just keep that between the four of us,” Noting how you’d pieced things together he let out a hum, head shaking from side to side a little in a sort of amusement.

Running the palms of your hands down your face the tips of your ears burned, your form face plant back into the bed with a muffled groan.

Head popping up briefly to speak, “Can we also forget the last few hours? For humility’s sake?”

At the mention of that, the edges of his lips quirked up head tilting back to regard you with a teasing smile. “Why? Am I not handsome anymore?” He couldn’t help himself in commenting that, the man chuckling softly as more groans arose from you.

Deciding to continue on he leaned over a bit hovering above where your head was, “Not cute? No more praise for being a good listener?” At the sound of you muttering something incoherent he couldn’t help but grin, eyes taking in the way you hid yourself.

Moving so that he could kneel on the floor at the foot of your bed his hands reached out to press against the sides of your face pulling it out from within the covers, an obvious embarrassed look covered your face.

“Really though, you could say this was…eye opening.” Resting his chin onto the covers he stared into your eyes, a genuine look of gratitude crossing his features followed by a hum. “However I do disagree with being crabby- I like to think I'm more work-oriented,” Taking a moment to think he added on, thumbs both coming to brush against your cheeks. “But, maybe I do have too much on my plate.”

Giving your face a gentle squeeze he pulled back, hands moving to rest against his hips as a new question dawned on him.

“Now answer me this, what does loml mean and why did you label all our photos with that?”

-------

<Unedited>

Anyways this idea was from one of my Instagram mutuals so if it's ass- blame them

[tytarax]

Dance of the Damned

Shit…

It was the first thing that _____ thought. She was so blinded by the hatred she had for Adam that she forgot one of the most important rules that limited her.

Don't kill souls

And now she was in trouble with one of the most important beings in heaven, Michael.

(A/N: The angel Michael in this fanfic is inspired by the same angel Miguel from sandranetta_13, you can find her on IG, here is a reference image)

Charlie: Uh… _____ are you okay?

_____: What? Ah…yeah…just…I have to go now. Bye!

Noticing the tone of concern in _____'s voice, they tried to call her, but she ignored it, picked up Ghostie, opened a portal to her house, left Ghostie there, changed her clothes putting on her black suit, and proceeded to go to heaven.

Arriving there, Saint Peter received her again, asking her the reason for her unexpected visit.

_____: I have an emergency meeting

Peter let her pass, _____ flew through the city to reach the most exclusive place faster, a place unattainable by any other mortal soul, the 7th heaven, where the greatest of the great were found.

Finally arriving at a golden palace, with gigantic doors, _____ was about to knock on the door and...

“You can come in, my daughter.”

The Almighty already knew that she was there, he knew everything.

____ went to the room, where she found God himself, on his right side was Jesus Christ with his always humble and loving face, and on the opposite side was the archangel Michael, with his serious and perhaps a little angry face.

_____ made a slight bow and sat in her respective chair, prepared for what was to come.

Michael: Well, do you have any explanation?

____: I…-

Michael: I remind you that you and I have a deal, you can handle the souls in purgatory as you wish as long as you don't touch the souls that are in heaven or hell. We know of your obvious hatred towards Adam, the first man, but can't you have a little respect for our Lord?

Jesus: Michael, let her speak.

_____: I have an explanation, but at the same time a question. It is assumed that, with all due respect, the Almighty is the one who gives me the authority to take lives, and only he can give them. I don't know if it is a different rule for souls, but Adam has been going to hell every year with an army of exorcist angels to murder sinners... And if he had had permission, you had informed me and-

Michael: What- what was that last thing? Adam and an army of exterminating angels?

_____: Yes… didn't you know?

Michael gave a confused look at his Lord, who was silent, but still with his smile.

_____: My Lord… you knew that, right?

“That's right, you know I see everything.”

_____: And why did you allow it? That is not fair

“You know perfectly well that I allow things for a reason. You're right, Adam and Sera had no right to carry out those exterminations, but if I allowed it, it's for a reason."

_____: Which reason?

“You will soon discover it, for now, you can withdraw. Michael, you two talk and resolve your conflict.”

Miguel: Yes, my Lord. Would you also allow me to talk to Sera?

"Yes"

_____: It has been a pleasure to see you again, I will be going now. – She said giving a bow.

---

Michael and ____ left the palace and prepared to go where the seraphim were, along the way, they started to chat a bit.

Michael: I found out that you have been in hell for a while...

_____: Yes… I know I shouldn't, since some might think I have a preference, but I was… doing some favors…

Michael: And how is it… you know who…

_____: You mean Lu-

Michael: Don't say it.

_____: Michael... I know it still hurts you, but you can't let the past make the present bitter... he is your brother... and not just any brother, he is your twin... even though you have taken the height of both of you.

Michael: It's not that easy, you should understand it

_____: I should but I don't, I don't have a blood family Michael. I literally existed out of nowhere, and if there is something I have learned from millennia and millennia of humans, it is that no matter how far away they are, brothers always will be brothers...

Michael: He betrayed us

By that time, they had already arrived at the city where Sera was along with her younger sister Emily.

_____: If he had not done it, humanity would not have known the greatest example of love... think about that...

Michael remained silent, he opened the door for _____ to enter, and she froze as soon as she entered.

...

_____: Pentious!?

Sir Pentious was... in heaven, but with a different appearance... pure white with golden details, he still had his red pupils and fangs, but he looked... redeemed.

Sir Pentious: Um... hello.

_____: I can't believe it, it works!

Emily was very happy, jumping all over the place, while Sera had a “Shit, it works” face.

_____: I have to go, Charlie has to know this

Before _____ left, she felt a grab on her wrist, she turned around and it was Michael.

Michael: Wait a moment – he said as something appeared in his hand – here.

Michael extended his hand towards her and handed her a small golden box.

_____: What… what is this? – She said while she opened the box and from it, she took out a beautiful necklace with a luminous pendant.

Michael: You don't think I forgot your “birthday”

_____: I almost forgot about it myself!... but what is it?

Michael: A fragment of the Christmas star…

_____: Wow Michael, thank you!

Emily: It's your birthday, ____!? Let me... - Emily concentrated on her hands, while they began to shine and out of nowhere a flower never before seen by human eyes appeared - ready! I'm learning to create flowers! Happy Birthday!

_____: Wow, thanks Emily! It's beautiful!

After saying goodbye to her, she opened a portal straight to hell, passed through it, and as she approached the now-improved hotel, she put the necklace around her neck and the flower behind her ear.

She knocked on the hotel door and was greeted by an Alastor in very good condition, except for his shirt which was torn from the attack he had received from Adam.

Alastor: It's good to see you, dearest! Everyone had been wondering where you were.

_____: I had to settle some issues, but everything is fine now. Oh, allow me - she said as she snapped her fingers repairing Alastor's shirt.

Alastor: Why thank you, darling! Although you didn't have to.

_____: It's not a problem, now... where is Charlie, I have to tell her something.

Alastor: Come in dear. Charlie is in the living.

_____ ran into the room, drawing the attention of those present.

Lucifer: _____, where were you!?

_____: That doesn't matter, what's really important is that...

Your project works, Charlie!

@lofasofabread

@randomgurl2326

@22carolina08

@luleck

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[evita-shelby]

Devilry dancing in her blood

Or Evas adventures in the Eva-verse

For @raincoffeeandfandoms blog birthday OC celebration 🎂

Enjoy!!!!!

It is strange how she got here.

To this place she knew was her destiny and she pretended she could avoid it.

Eva was born to rule high society, marry a great rich man and ensure they could rise as high as far as Saint Peter’s Gates in her generation or the next.

She drinks the tequila quickly before she lost her nerve.

The witch still gets nervous before these events, you know.

When she was fifteen her mother introduced her to the secret passed down to them from Lydia Chapul de Aramburu who took a shot of tequila before receiving her lover at the home she rebuilt from scratch.

Eva takes one last look at the mirror and sees the nervous fifteen year old girl so hopeful in a pink ball gown that once belonged to her grandmother.

To think all the hell that broke loose when she became a woman in the eyes of society.

To think how she came to discover who she was and what she would never be during those dark years between her fifteenth birthday and her twenty-first.

That she would leave and start over in a strange country that hated her for being different and yet rise just as she her great-great-grandmother did when she chose to change her last name from Aramburu to Arambula after sending Emperor Agustín to his death.

“They are ready for you, Mrs. Shelby.” Tommy says from outside the dressing room door.

There was probably something bad about drinking so early in the morning, but she needs it.

Besides it just one measly shot.

Just to settle her nerves and keep her from being nauseous or worse throwing up on Tommy during her vows .

Could you imagine if it went viral?

Mexican heiress vomits on English groom.

No, señor, she is not letting that happen.

There can’t be anything going wrong today.

It can go to shit tomorrow, today is her fucking wedding day.

After one last look in the mirror, Eva reaches for the door.

She keeps a bottle of tequila for emergencies such as these.

The first true meeting between Wakanda and Talokan to cement their alliance.

Maybe if K’uk’ulkan had not killed Ramonda thinking they had killed her or not have Wakanda declare war in revenge, this wouldn’t be making her so nervous.

She is dressed in Talokanil regalia, the only difference is that her headdress is a replica of Montezuma’s and black as squid ink with pearls and silver white vibranium holding it together.

She wears the pearls Ch’ah Toh Almehen , or as his enemies know him, Namor, gave her that magical night they met and te pearl bracelet woven for his mother with the fibers of the plant that save him and his people.

She has been the Witch Queen of Talokan since 1920 and yet this meeting has her biting her nails from the anxiety.

When she opens the curtain door she will be where she needs to be, she tells herself after fixing the endless ropes of the most perfect pearls the God King of Talokan could find.

It is over.

The last of the Shelbys are dead or hiding and now begins their reign.

The rubies are as red as the blood on her hands and the dress as black as her soul.

The Empress has completed her transformation and tonight she comes to stand by her Emperor as they celebrate their victory.

The black velvet is fine and warm, but the chill in her bones creeps in still.

The tequila does enough to quell it, but it’s there.

Something is going to happen the moment she opens that door.

But she must open it and see what’s behind it.

“You said you only needed a minute, maga, it’s been ten.” Her husband said impatiently.

“You can’t hurry perfection, Luca.” The witch laughed despite the pit in her stomach and opened the door.

She shouldn’t have been drinking.

She is pregnant with their first and second.

Twin boys.

Perfect little boys with their father’s looks and her desire to fight for what is right.

Eva can’t wait to tell Jack.

He has been great, sure there were some close calls and she’s had to threaten his secretary, but he wouldn’t stray.

Eva won’t let him.

But he could, her magic has been acting strange since she conceived.

And some men don’t like fucking their pregnant wives and after because the body changes for the occasion.

Will he still find her desirable?

Will he stop being her devoted husband who can’t go a day without her?

There is only one way to find out.

“Next time you want to fuck with magic, Evie, count me out.” Tommy said and she laughed at his words.

Fuck?

Fuckity fuck fuck.

Fuck!

Not again.

Eva Shelby, formerly Eva Smallwood opens the door of her dressing room to step into her old house in Veracruz and sees five other Evas walk into the courtyard as confused as her.

“Did we play with magic again?” an older Eva asks her, and it takes her a moment to realize that this was the Eva she switched places with.

“Why are you old, we are the same age?” she asks herself and her lookalike scoffs.

“Forty isn’t old, Smallwood.” Eva Shelby answered.

“Neither is 129, Lady Smallwood.” The fae looking queen who isn’t a day over twenty-five says with a glare.

“What is going on?” an Eva ,with a more pronounced American accent says wearing a baby blue day dress and having the aura of twin baby boys, asks the one question she might be able to answer.

But the sixth Eva beats her to the punch.

Somehow there is a darker, bloodier aura to her. The cold of death sticking to her like perfume.

“The Multiverse has been broken."

[apieters]

Buried Treasure

K-POOM!

The shot from the flintlock pistol rang out in the darkness and echoed across the beach that marked the Western coast of the Magic Kingdom. Chris looked around, holding his breath, but he couldn’t see anything, blinded by the light of the torch he held in his right hand. The tyrannosaur listened for the sound of anyone stirring, but no one shouted or stirred, no lights came on in the few houses just off the beach.

He couldn’t be too careful. Lieutenant Rennes’ “visit” to Pride Rock could only mean that Frollo was looking for the papers, and he wouldn’t be surprised if he returned to find Jeronimo’s with a busted door and ransacked rooms too. Chris could only thank the saints that he’d been there himself to fight off Rennes until Mufasa could rally the lionesses.

When the mainsail’s set and the anchor’s weighed, Chris sang in his head, There’s no turning back from any course that’s made. There was no room for mistakes, and they only had one shot to pull this off. The Festival of Fools was tomorrow. He had to be back in the French district by daybreak—it was the only window of time to save André. Frollo would be out of the Palace of Justice, his guards would be out guarding the square, and the great bleak castle would be left with only a skeleton crew. Still, it was the Palace of Justice, and they were going toe-to-toe with Frollo himself, and escaping the walls of the prison was arguably more perilous than getting in. These papers would be his and André’s only hope of survival if he pulled off this stunt.

Chris patted his coat, checking to make sure nothing was lost. 1, 2, 3…8 packets of papers. All there. Good. If the secrets buried in these papers ever got out, Frollo would be torn to pieces in hours. Tonight, Chris’s mission was to make sure that those papers could get out, if the worst should happen tomorrow. Chris checked the lock on the gate that barred the entrance to what the locals had started calling Tristan’s Cove. The pistol shot had worked—the padlock hung loose, with a gaping hole where the cogs and machinery had been. He pushed open the gate and thrust his torch inside. There was a long, dark tunnel in the seaside rock that he knew lead to a small, isolated cove, protected from the eyes and ears of overly-curious pedestrians by sharp, jagged bluffs and the loud roar of the surf, with hollows carved by the crashing waves at high tide. Chris checked behind him one last time, hoping that no one was spying on him in the dark, then headed into the tunnel.

When he finally emerged, he found himself on the cove, a moderately-sized little beach exposed by the low tide, covered with great strands of washed-up kelp and surrounded by cliffs. He held the torch up, looking around, and saw what he was looking for—a small sailing canoe, with two shadowy figures inside, with what appeared to be only a small candle for illumination.

The figures stood up and Chris pulled out his reloaded pistol.

“Finger on your pistols?” Chris whispered hoarsely.

“Not a finger,” the voice said. “Just a hook.”

“It wouldn’t be good form,” the other said.

The only other sound was like the tinkling of silver bells, almost drowned out by the surf.

Chris put his pistol away, having received the agreed-upon answers.

“Captain Hook,” he said to his old friend. “Peter Pan.” The small light tinkled loudly.

“No, I didn’t forget you, Tinker Bell,” Chris said to the little pixie.

“Captain Carnovo,” the old pirate and the Lost Boy said, and the friends embraced. Chris and André had gotten their start in film and theatre as fight choreographers for Peter Pan, and Chris considered James Hook to be one of his best students and a close friend—close enough to be entrusted with secrets worth more than a thousand chests of Spanish gold.

“Still doesn’t feel right without André,” Peter said. André had been his personal fencing master, and of the two fencing masters Peter had been closest to André before the Reign of Terror.

“Well, if we all do our parts, we’ll be back together soon enough,” Chris said grimly. “Did you bring what I asked for?”

“It’s in the stern,” Hook said. Chris checked the back of the boat, and sure enough, there was a small treasure-chest.

“Is it waterproof?” Chris asked

“Sealed with tar.”

The tyrannosaur reached into his coat and put his hand into a tear in the lining, and began pulling out the precious packets of papers, wrapped in oilcloth. He stacked them neatly into the chest until it was full, and thankfully there was enough room. Then he pulled a padlock out of his coat pocket and locked the chest.

When he was finished, he climbed into the boat and and fished out two more small oilcloth sacks.

“This map tells you which of the islands in the Pirate Bank Archipelago the treasure will be found,” Chris said, handing one bag to Hook. “The other side tells you where on the island to find the chest,” he said, handing the second bag to Peter. “You must swear never to tell a soul that you have these maps. Now listen carefully,” the tyrannosaur leaned in close, so that everyone’s head was touching. “In the event that I, Mufasa, the Archdeacon, Cinderella, or André should die, no matter what the circumstances, I need you to dig up this treasure chest and give it to Mickey Mouse himself.”

“What exactly is in the chest?” Hook asked.

“Frollo’s death warrant,” Chris said. “Every letter sent between him and Tristan. Every command, every order, will be exposed and the Magic Kingdom will know that Frollo was not some helpless old man at the mercy of a rogue Captain of the Royal Guards.”

“We should be doing more to help you,” Peter Pan said.

“By accepting this and staying out of danger yourselves,” Chris said, pressing Peter’s hands around his map, “you are doing far more for André than I ever will.”

He pushed off from shore, and Tinker Bell flew to the top of the small mast as Chris raised the sail. Peter Pan grabbed Captain Hook, and the boy carried the pirate as he took off flying into the dark, cloudy night, and soon they had parted, heading back to Neverland.

Chris was left alone with Tinker Bell. “Set a course for Rumrunner’s Island,” he said. Tinker Bell flew ahead, and Chris took the rudder and jig and followed her into the night.

“Shiver my Timbers, Shiver my sails,” Chris sang softly to himself. “Dead men will tell tales.”

[perthtradedirectt]

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the assuaging of the waters

Summary: After emerging from the Atlantic, Will and Hannibal retreat to an entirely different kind of cliff house— an isolated mountainside home in the remote Canadian Rockies— where their intimacy deepens as Will learns to see Hannibal again.

“And the waters were assuaged and the wells of the sea were closed, and the windows of heavens were closed, and the rains of the heavens were ceased.”

(or: the obligatory post-fall working things out/falling-in-love-again fic)

11.3k, 1 chapter, complete. On ao3.

It is a gray, drizzly morning when Will realizes he’s happy. He’s on one of his long, rambling walks through the wooded mountainside behind their house, still not well enough to run. As much as he’s tempted to push himself— for the exhilaration of relishing in his body’s strength, for the satisfaction of brushing around the edges of his limits— he knows Hannibal would be displeased with him. And even though Will’s beginning to suspect that nothing more would come of Hannibal’s displeasure than a weary sideways glance or possibly a solemn lecture on the importance of rest and recuperation, Will finds himself bizarrely disinclined to rankle Hannibal lately, not in any way more serious than the irritations and needlings that mask concern and affection alike. So, instead of running, Will walks. He can do that just fine, now that the bruising from their crash into the Atlantic has faded from a sallow yellow into the milky paleness of bedridden skin. It’s not like his cheek— stubbornly still tender, even as his shoulder has healed admirably under Hannibal’s ministrations— has anything to do with his gait so even Hannibal can’t object.

It’s become a routine, these walks. He walks and he walks, among the gnarled roots of the conifers, each morning carving out a different path through the seas of fog. He walks along the stream, watching from a distance the squirrels and birds and the occasional fox who all remind him that maybe it isn’t so bad to spend time with creatures who’ve never seen anyone like him before, an idea that had long been tainted by his time with humans who thought the same. He walks until he’s overcome with how much he misses Hannibal, how much he misses his nearness, as smooth and warm as the handle of a well-loved knife, and turns to walk home again.

*****

Among his newfound knowledge of his own happiness, there are many things that Will has learned since he’d dragged Hannibal and himself ashore sick with pain, but mostly sick with the realization that he’d been wrong, so terribly wrong. The first of these discoveries was that Hannibal’s teeth chatter.

(read the whole fic, "the assuaging of the waters" on ao3 or under the cut)

Will wasn’t sure why this surprised him so much— his own body was shivering after their nighttime plunge into the Atlantic— until he realized that he’d never really considered Hannibal fully human until then. He’d always seen him as something more until Hannibal had looked up at him from that rocky shore, lips blue and trembling, like Will was Saint Peter and had just granted him entry to heaven. Will had thought about kissing him then, kissing him until his lips were flush and pink again, but shook off the thought as a delirious adrenaline-induced fantasy.

At first, Will kept a mental catalog of every new revelation about Hannibal. Not intentionally, but especially in those early days, hunkered down in a motel room for fear of capture, there was little else besides muted daytime television to occupy his mind; it was hard to stop himself from turning each new piece of knowledge in his hands like rosary beads, worrying down the edges of his wonder the way water smooths out sea glass.

Hannibal prefers saltines to Ritz crackers.

Hannibal refuses to sleep with socks on, even when the flukey motel air conditioner chills his toes.

Hannibal is terrible at Wheel of Fortune because he overthinks all the puzzles, even while he insists it’s the painkillers dulling his faculties; it’s the first time Will has seen Hannibal unable to perfect a skill on the first try.

Will finds himself holding the odd, inexplicable, desire to accommodate the quirks of a man who has tried to ruin his life over and over (out of love, a not-insignificant part of his mind reminds him, even as Will bats the thought away like a pesky sprite) and has now, finally, succeeded. And yet— foolishly or foolhardily, only time will tell which— he pays extra attention to the crackers he grabs at the gas station; he tucks the blankets back around Hannibal’s feet when he kicks them off in the feverish, drug-haze of his nightmares; he doesn’t ruin the game show by spoiling the answers even as Hannibal expounds on the origins of a phrase and the possible etymology of the answers. Will had known he was a vulnerability of Hannibal’s, but he’d never considered that Hannibal would be vulnerable to all the things normal people are too— lack of sleep, high doses of opiates that leave him swimming in and out of lucidity, air conditioning units that turn themselves on as if by magic— until he’d dug his fingers into Hannibal’s bullet wound to check for organ damage.

Eventually, he loses count of all these little revelations— quirks that make him realize the amount of time they’ve spent together isn’t actually all that great. How many times had they ever even slept in the same building— a handful, maybe— let alone in the same bed? Let alone with their faces so close that Will can feel Hannibal’s breathing against his cheek, a reminder that neither of them is dead? And even that was years ago. Prison changes people; marriage changes people.

They are long past those early days now, though, and through the months they’ve been tucked away in the house nestled deep in the mountains it’s become clear that some things never change.

“Perfect timing,” Hannibal greets Will when he returns from his morning walk today. “The omelets are nearly ready.”

Will as he shakes the mist off his rain jacket and hangs it by the kitchen door before turning to look at Hannibal. His face is soft with pleased contentment— another thing Will has learned: it pleases Hannibal to please him. Another thing Will is still suspicious of: it pleases Hannibal to please him.

But despite himself, Will smiles at Hannibal as he finishes untying his boots.

“Smells great. I’m starving,” he says, putting his boots on the rack. Then, adds, “the creek is going to overflow if we keep getting rain like this”

“Some banks are meant to be overrun,” Hannibal replies, “some barriers meant to be broken. It’s the natural order of things here, after all.”

Hannibal has already laid out the newspaper— where he keeps procuring them, Will doesn’t ask— and the dark green coffee mug Will favors, steaming from a little white saucer in anticipation of Will’s return. And that is yet another thing he’s learned: Hannibal trusts he will return. Taking a seat at the table Hannibal has already set for him, Will is beginning to trust it himself. He unfolds the paper and waits to be served.

*****

Will has found that the two of them move in each other’s orbit even as they both go about their days separately. The house affords them more than enough space to sequester themselves but he’s learning that neither of them wants to. It’s massive, at least by Will’s standards. There are three bedrooms accompanied by an ensuite bathroom (though they’ve only ever used the one), two rooms that are outfitted as studies (one of them decorated much like Hannibal’s office in Baltimore but the other— outfitted in more natural tones with conspicuously few bold patterns— makes him wonder how long this was Hannibal’s endgame), a sitting room on both floors, a palatial kitchen with a separate dining room attached, and a living room with floor to ceiling bookshelves on one side and floor to ceiling windows on the other.

This room— the living room— is Will’s favorite in the house. He likes the windows that look down the mountainside they’re perched on; when the fog gathers below them and swallows the trees, it looks like he and Hannibal are suspended at the edge of the world. It’s a pleasant thrill of vertigo to see the vast expanse of clouds undulating like a bed sheet laid out across the treetops and he feels that their house, a little glass box hovering in the sky, is the only thing separating him from falling into an abyss, even while he rationally knows that the tops of the trees are only a few feet below the windows. On clear mornings, he will sink into the loveseat, a plush thing that doesn’t match any of the other furniture in the room, and read as the tops of the trees sway in the periphery of his vision. The windows were what immediately drew him to the space— and Will can’t help but wonder if that was part of why Hannibal chose this house for them out of all the ones he must own— but here is what he’s learned about the room since: through the wide, airy hallway that runs like an artery through the center of the house, he can see most of the kitchen from the loveseat.

It gives Will ample opportunities to watch Hannibal from a distance— to learn the customs in this world of dusted chrome and gleaming knives like an anthropologist, to observe the grace of movements the way a naturalist observes a tiger in its natural habitat— free of the sensation that he’s being watched back. As soon as Hannibal could stand for any length of time, he was back in the kitchen, and Will watched from the living room as Hannibal marinated meats, kneaded doughs, and caramelized onions for the meals he would serve Will. It frustrates Hannibal, though— his new lack of stamina— and Will can tell it does even if he tries to hide it, even if he adamantly denies that he’s disgruntled whenever Will suggests.

“It’s the mark of any talented chef to be able to adapt to the circumstances at hand,” he’d told Will many times since. Adapting, apparently, looks like prepping vegetables while sitting on the barstool Will conveniently “forgets” to put back at the kitchen island. Adapting also means, much to Will’s pleasure, Hannibal barely puts up a fight whenever Will suggests he take a break and join him on the loveseat. Often, now, he drifts over to Will’s spot by the living room windows and rests with him on the loveseat.

That is how they are this afternoon, Will satisfied that he’s washed the lunch dishes to Hannibal’s standards and Hannibal satisfied to keep Will company until he must tend to the soup simmering on the stove. The soft cushions of the loveseat sink either their weight until they’re sliding into each other, coming to rest shoulders touching. It’s nearly dark outside despite the hour, the cloud cover smothering out the last remains of sunlight. But it’s also unseasonably warm, and together they watch the grey jays, almost the same shade of graphite-stained white as the fog, fluttering in and out of sight as they hop between the branches.

“You carried me,” Hannibal says out of the blue, breaking the lazy mid-afternoon lull. It startles Will and he blinks hard, pulling himself back from the haze he’d slipped into, swept away by the birdsong and the warm press of Hannibal’s body and the trails of rain cutting paths down the windows.

“You carried me,” Hannibal repeats, eyes focused on where the treetops sway below them, barely poking out of the fog. “Up the cliffside.”

Will considers saying: ‘dragged you up the cliffside’ would be more accurate and I barely even managed that but yeah, sure, Hannibal.

He considers saying: you were so out of it I didn’t think you’d remember.

The whole house smells of bay leaves and chilies, the rich scents of the pork Menudo Hannibal is simmering for them to share at dinner tonight, just as they have shared dinner every night since they’ve been together, even when all they could stomach was crackers and ginger ale.

He considers saying: I can’t bear to be separated from you again, Hannibal. I can’t bear to see you hurt by any force but my own. Blood loss, hypothermia, drowning— they can’t have you because you’re mine. You’re mine.

He considers saying: You’ve ruined me.

He considers saying: Of course, I carried you, Hannibal. Of course.

“Yes,” he finally says instead. “I did.”

Hannibal inclines his head in a slow nod but doesn’t say anything else. Will looks at him, at those deceptively blank eyes, and thinks I would do anything for you. The thought should be horrifying because Will knows better than anyone what anything could include but instead, he holds it with quiet exhilaration, a warmth that springs from a deep, previously undiscovered well inside him and seeps out through his limbs until he is suffused in its surety. He wants to spread this realization out like a picnic blanket and settle them both onto it because it’s big enough to hold them both. It’s a knowledge that rests on the base of something else he’s learned recently: Hannibal will never make Will do anything he doesn’t want to, not ever again.

When the little egg-shaped timer in Hannibal’s pocket starts ringing, Hannibal finally looks at Will. He stands, the timer jingling away in one hand, and searches Will’s face— for what, Will doesn’t know. Will reaches up and rests a hand on Hannibal’s shoulder; he feels Hannibal’s whole body relax with a deep sigh, eyes closing. Hannibal brings his free hand to cover Will’s own and squeezes.

The timer rings and rings until Hannibal finally says, “thank you, Will,” solemnly, fervently.

Before Will can respond, he’s turned on his heel and is padding in socked feet back to the kitchen, twisting the timer to quiet it.

*****

“You used to play music when you would cook, when you served dinner,” Will observes on an uncharacteristically bright afternoon. Spring has snuck up on him, the smallest hints of it peaking around the curtains from the wings of their lives. If this house the mountain’s edge was the set, the play unfolding on it would be a rather gentle one, filled with scenes like this:

Leaning against the counter, Will murmurs a soft thank you as he accepts the miniature tart that Hannibal plucks from a cooling rack and offers to him. Will bites into it, the sweet fruity filling warm and surprisingly floral as it oozes onto his tongue.

“I did,” Hannibal agrees. Then, gestures to the cooling rack as Will takes another, “Fig and almond tarts made with lavender honey and topped with crème chantilly.”

“Mm,” Will hums around a bite. He’d relaxed his table manners around Hannibal towards the beginning of their stay here, reasoning that it didn’t really matter if he ate with his elbows on the table when they could both barely eat at all. The formality of Hannibal’s dinners in Baltimore never came back even as the other trappings did— the meticulous platings coordinated across several courses, handmade centerpieces to compliment it all— especially not when he realized Hannibal looked at him with something alarmingly close to endearment, like he is now, when Will cups a hand in front of his chest to catch the crumbs. “It’s sumptuous. Did you use almond flour?”

“I did. Although I would consider using a higher ratio of pastry flour and adding almond extract instead if I were to make these again. The dough is a bit more crumbly than I expected.”

“Baking at elevation is unpredictable,” Will responds. “It took me a while to figure out how to account for altitude. These are good, though, I like them.” he adds, plucking another tart from the cooling rack.

Hannibal watches with a look Will has come to recognize, with a mix of barely contained curiosity and awe, like he’s brushed away the dust on a box at a junkstore to find out it’s a intriguing heirloom.

“What is it?” Will asks him, covering his mouth as he talks around the half of a tart he’s still chewing.

“I wasn’t aware you’d ever lived in the mountains before, or that you were interested in baking.”

Will shrugs and looks to the rack of tarts, feeling a bit helpless under the intensity of Hannibal’s interest in him. “My dad took a job near a river in Arizona once. Just some project work, an adventure tour company needed their boats tuned up in the off-season. I still have no idea how he heard about it, it was the furthest west I’d ever been. And we needed to eat so…” he trails off, shrugs again.

Hannibal waits until Will looks up again and then smiles. The cat that caught the canary, Will thinks, although he isn’t sure who’s the cat and who’s the canary between the two of them. Hannibal is awfully pleased to be in Will’s clutches these days.

“Please,” Hannibal encourages. “I’ve never been to the American southwest. Tell me, Will, how does the culture differ from the eastern seaboard? The perspective of someone as observant as yourself— and an outsider, no less— is certainly intriguing.”

Will, despite the blush heating his cheeks, tells Hannibal a story and then another and another, until he’s bubbling over with people and places, with the small slights and small joys that pierced through the blanket of his isolation in those days, memories he hasn’t thought of in years, memories he’d always thought were tucked inside him alone. Life, he thinks then as he’s thought many times before, is an inherently lonely affair, the only other people who carry the same remembrances lost from him for decades now.

But as he spills over the edges of himself, Hannibal, deep as a well, catches him, the only place that’s ever been big enough to carry all of him without resistance.

*****

Although they never discuss the topic of Hannibal playing music out loud after the first time Will mentions it, Hannibal takes Will’s comment as the permission that it is. There have been bluetooth speakers installed in the kitchen and living room walls this whole time, Will discovers when he comes back from one of his morning walks to find the kitchen filled with music as lush and as rich as the heady scents of pastries that hangs in the air.

“Will,” Hannibal says, looking up from the scone he is plating, “good morning. You’re just in time. The first movement started only a few minutes ago; the best is yet to come.”

He looks rhapsodic this morning and is all the more lovely for it. It feels surreal— not thinking that Hannibal is lovely, as much as Will once would have balked at the idea, but the whole scene of it, everything warmed by the oven and by the sunlight pouring in through the vast kitchen windows, the soaring voices that wrap themselves around Will and Hannibal, and the mournful orchestra contrasting how bright Will feels at the sight of Hannibal so plainly chuffed.

“Please, come,” Hannibal offers, while Will drifts into the kitchen, face still flushed from the early morning chill. Hannibal pulls out the chair for him at Will’s usual spot and Will sits, bemused.

“Plying me with scones won’t work, Hannibal,” Will says, only half teasing. “Just tell me what you want.”

“I want for nothing,” Hannibal replies as he pushes Will’s chair in and takes a seat next to him. He unfolds his napkin on his lap with a flourish. “I’m simply eager to share this new scone recipe. I’ve made some adjustments I think you’ll enjoy.”

Will raises his eyebrows in suspicion but then Hannibal smiles at him, gestures again at the little pastry— sitting so harmlessly on its small blue plate— and Will’s resistance is wiped from him. He takes a bite. His eyes close of their own volition, closing out everything else in the world except the tang of the cranberries, the popping choral voices rising up and over each other like the foam on cresting waves, the layers of mourning folded in, and the smooth, drawn-out base notes of dark chocolate and melancholy strings.

“Wow,” he murmurs. When he opens his eyes, Hannibal is smiling wide enough to show his teeth, practically ecstatic by Hannibal’s standards.

“Bach’s St. Matthew Passion,” Hannibal says, “I thought it was a nice pairing.”

Another discovery, yet one that doesn’t come as a surprise given everything else Will knows about him: Hannibal considers how well the music and the food will compliment each other.

“A bit late for Easter,” Will observes.

“Not at all. It’s today, in fact.” Hannibal replies. “In the Eastern tradition, that is.”

“Oh.” Will hadn’t even realized it was Sunday. It’s not something he’s bothered to keep much track of here. “What did you give up for Lent?”

Hannibal tilts his head back a smidge, watches Will with thoughtfulness for a moment, and then looks back to the table. (Another tally to add to Will’s list of newfound information: Hannibal is capable of running out of words, so long as Will is the one that exhausts them). He turns his cup in it’s saucer until the handle is perfectly parallel to the table’s edge then meets Will’s eyes and says:

“The sacrifices of Lent pale in comparison to the beauty of God’s grace. It’s the ultimate display of devotion, but such a small penance to pay for the joyous celebration of Jesus’s return. There is nothing I wouldn’t give to be closer to such divine mercy and all-consuming love. ”

Has anyone been ever loved as deeply, as fiercely, to such disastrous, ecstatic ends? The saints, perhaps, as their martyrdom came to an end, but even that seems doubtful. To Will, such intense love feels like akin to a violence, something new they’ve invented together, and looking at Hannibal now, Will thinks there is nothing more divine than the act of creation.

Will watches as Hannibal sweeps the scone crumbs off the table and into the palm of his hand, dusting them onto his empty plate. His hands are steady and sure as he plucks at the few remaining crumbs, even as Will’s breath shudders on the exhale.

“Please,” Hannibal says, gesturing at the pastry half-forgetten on Will’s plate. “Your food will get cold,” Hannibal says.

Will, overwhelmed and unable to think of an adequate way to reply yes, yes, yes to Hannibal’s confession, picks up his scone and takes another bite.

*****

“What’s this one called?” Will asks Hannibal one afternoon. They are in the kitchen again, as they so often are.

Hannibal never seems to bore of cooking and tidying, tending to the abundantly stocked pantry the way some people tend to houseplants or children— with fastidious attentiveness underpinned by genuine affection. This is another thing Will has noticed now that they live together, how Hannibal ensures the kitchen is always teeming with more food than the two of them could eat. The shelves of the pantry are always stocked with at least one backup of each dry good and a new package— of rice or flour or whichever non-perishable is running low— always appear when the first one is barely halfway used. Will had never seen the pantry at Hannibal’s Baltimore home, but he imagines it was much the same. It’s an adjustment— Will, being so used to taking only what he needs and no extra— but Hannibal wants to provide for him, for them both, and Will finds himself unable to deny him that.

“It’s a Schubert piano sonata,” Hannibal replies. “Number 21 in B-Flat Major, This is the second movement, Andante Sostenuto, the name for a slow tempo smoothed over by drawn-out notes.”

His shirtsleeves are rolled up to the elbows and Will finds himself tracing the flexing of the tendons as he rolls out strips of pasta into round noodles that he said, earlier this afternoon, will be served with a ragu sauce made from wild boar. Genuine wild boar, Will knows, and not a euphemism for a particularly brutish man; the two of them have only talked about their dietary preferences once— a hushed bedtime conversation under the cover of night— and only long enough for Hannibal to apologize that it would be imprudent to cook properly for Will until they are well enough to plan a trip further afield to gather ingredients, so as to not attract suspicion. Since then, Will has surprised himself with how secure he feels in the fact that the real conversation will emerge naturally once it’s time.

“Do you like it?” Hannibal asks him.

Will hesitates for a moment and then nods. “It’s nice,” he adds, suddenly not sure what else to say to describe the way the music rolls over them.

“What do you think of it?” Hannibal asks. He is looking at Will with that same warm curiosity that he’s worn to approach nearly everything concerning Will since they’ve been here.

“I think it sounds the way swimming feels when you’re all alone out in deep water, the clouds moving across the sun.”

“Beautifully said.” Hannibal’s eyes crinkle with the hint of a smile. “I think so too. The common rhythms and conventional harmonies allow for the pianist’s interpretation to truly shine through. This one is perhaps my favorite performance of this movement; it invokes the sensation of watching the sea shimmer on the distance horizon even as the fog roils around you on the shore, much how I imagine Schubert himself must have felt when he wrote this in the final days of his short life. ”

The conversation turns, then, to phrasing and interpretation in classical music, then the interpretation of literature and the follies of literary analysis, to the concept of authorship, to ownership, and then Will realizes it’s dark out, and Hannibal is clearing away the dinner dishes, and Will never opened the book he’d originally sat down at the kitchen island to read hours ago, and he realizes that they’ve shared yet another delectable, gratifying meal together and not only passed the day together without incident but passed it with genuine pleasure in the other’s company, with genuine contentment.

The next morning he runs for the first time, shoulder healed well enough that even Hannibal can’t refuse him anymore, taking the mountainside paths at a jog. There’s something invigorating about carrying himself along, but by the time he reaches the stream he misses the slowness of his usual mornings, how it lets him open himself wide enough that the feral peace of the wilderness can sink into him. He walks the rest of the way home.

Hannibal, as Will has learned in the past few months, is fastidious about having a shower every morning. Will suspects it's a concession to his routine that Hannibal even waits until after breakfast; by the time he gets home from his walks Hannibal is already dressed in slacks and a button-down but he always changes into an entirely new set of clothes after he’s showered. Today, though, he tells Will that he’ll do the dishes and allows him to go upstairs to the master bathroom and shower off the sweat from his pseudo-run. It’s from the steam of the glass-enclosed shower that he hears the piano played in the living room. Estonian-made, Hannibal had told him a couple of months ago, when his side finally healed enough for him to sit on the piano bench without great discomfort. It felt shockingly intimate the first time he’d heard Hannibal practice, almost like intruding to hear Hannibal repeat a section over and over until he didn’t stumble over the final notes.

Today Will drifts back downstairs, towel around his shoulders, to find Hannibal there, tablet propped up against the piano’s music stand.

It’s the song from yesterday, he recognizes, the one he’d ask the title of. He hesitates in the doorway, listening. He thinks, Hannibal is learning it for you, while he watches Hannibal read the music and bring the swelling, roiling water into their home, rays of serenity slipping through the fog and deep into Will’s body. No one has ever done something like this for Will before. He has been close to death more times than is his due but the only time it felt this hopeful was when he was poised on the edge of the abyss in Hannibal’s arms; if this is what Schubert had felt as he succumbed to death’s trembling waters, the sun peeking over the horizon, Will figures it couldn’t have been all that bad.

It’s for you, Will thinks again, and he goes to Hannibal.

Hannibal pauses, scooching over and gesturing to the spot next to him on the piano bench. “Please,” he offers.

They share a long look, one so replete that Will can barely even begin to decipher the meaning, before he nods and sits next to him. There is barely enough room for the both of them and he knows the damp towel around his shoulders is certainly wetting Hannibal’s shirt, but he doesn’t move. He closes his eyes, feels the weight and presence of Hannibal pressed against him and listens to Hannibal play him a song.

*****

Spring in northern Canada hasn’t lent itself to sunshiny days. This is not news to Will; although the climate where he spent his last three years in Maine isn’t quite as harsh, it was similar enough to extrapolate how much harsher the mountainous hinterlands would be. What is news to him, is that he’s naturally much paler than Hannibal. This had never been the case in Baltimore when Will had spent nearly all his free time outdoors with his pack or on the water, while Hannibal’s proclivities mostly involved fellow socialites wining and dining (sometimes on other socialites) or skulking through the night. But now they both spend most of their time inside— Hannibal gets chilled quickly, still recovering from blood loss, and Will finds himself peculiarly unwilling to be far from him for any great length of time— and while Hannibal has maintained the same faint tan he had in the hospital, Will’s skin has slid down the scale into the tone of unused printer paper. The first morning he decides to try and trim his beard around the newly formed scar in his cheek, he sees himself in the mirror and realizes he can’t recall a time he’s ever seen himself look so… translucent, practically. The pallor makes him look sickly, even though he’s probably the least sick he’s been in nearly five years now.

“I practically glow in the dark,” Will jokes to Hannibal one night as they lie side by side in bed, both unable to sleep. He has his hand outstretched in front of him, curling and relaxing his fingers, curious about the new ways the moonlight pouring in from the window plays off the grooves and wrinkles of his knuckles, off the silvery circular scars in the center of his palm from the time he had to untangle Muffintop— one of his and Molly’s dogs— from some barbed wire she’d gotten herself trapped in. It’s still bright in the bedroom despite the late hour, the moon swollen to fullness. They’ve gotten in the habit of leaving the curtains open here; Will is trying to not let it represent anything more than that. But it's hard not to read more into it— into all of this— when the moonlight leaves him feeling… not exposed, but seen. There’s nowhere else to go, not with the scant few inches separating them.

Will has often obsessed over the odd comfort of sharing a bed with Hannibal these past couple of months, ever since there was no longer the excuse of injury and illness to hide behind. But despite that he doesn’t leave; Hannibal doesn’t ask him to, and Will’s not sure he wants to remember what it’s like to wake without the sight of Hannibal’s lips parted in sleep, or to the sight of Hannibal lying on his side watching him sleep, both of their bedhead spread across the pillows.

(A discovery: Hannibal gets the most ridiculous bedhead, hair sticking up in every direction— inexplicably, because he doesn’t toss and turn like Will does and is, in fact, eerily still in sleep.)

(Another discovery: the hair product Hannibal uses is stupidly expensive and wildly unnecessary— it’s not like there’s anyone around to impress except Will and what an unappreciative audience Hannibal must think him.)

(And yet another: Hannibal’s hair smells so wonderful that Will wants to rest his cheek on the top of Hannibal’s head and never move again, wants to press his nose into that mix of fancy shampoos and gels and that scent that can only be described as Hannibal, and breath it until his last breath.)

The sheets rustle, and Will looks over to find Hannibal on his side now, one arm tucked under his pillow, the other resting in the several inches of demilitarized zone demarcating the space between their bodies, and his whole attention turned on him. Will stills, hand raised above them with fingers splayed. There is time to stop this, Will thinks as he watches Hannibal’s hand move towards him, so slow and telegraphed that there is plenty of time for Will to pull away if he wants to. And yet he doesn’t want to. He lets Hannibal slot his fingers between Will and fold their hands into each other.

Will closes his eyes; something about the way his breath is just barely stirring Hannibal’s hair makes this moment feel too fragile. Or maybe that’s just Hannibal’s perception of him bleeding into his own because right now Will himself feels very, very fragile. Hannibal guides their hands towards him and kisses Will on the inside of his wrist, right at the point where his pulse crashes through him.

“You’re radiant,” Hannibal whispers against the delicate skin there. “Resplendent.”

“I’m reflective,” he retorts. “Isn’t that what you like about me? That I’m a mirror you can hold to yourself?”

There is a long silence while Hannibal considers, both of them watching each other for so long that Will feels his eyes start to droop despite himself, and, listening to the even sounds of Hannibal’s breathing, he begins to think Hannibal has also fallen asleep. This, too, is part of why Will cannot imagine sleeping without Hannibal by his side anymore: their quiet, musing growing fainter, their responses drifting further apart, as they bob against the current of sleep, the conversation sliding away the same way the seashore slopes away to the depths of the ocean floor.

“Isn’t that what all love is? Discovering yourself alongside another?”

But before he can respond, he is dragged under by sleep. He does not know this now, as his last conscious thoughts collapse underneath him, but tonight he will wake suspended in nightmares as if in agar. The sensation of forcing air into his lungs is nothing new,and neither are the subconscious images of Hannibal being killed, but now they instill in him a new type of panic that can only be soothed by the sound of Hannibal’s voice. He will be lulled by the feeling of Hannibal rubbing his thumb across the back of his hand where they’re still clasped in between their bodies and by the weight of Hannibal’s hand on the side of his head where he rests it after brushing Will’s sweat-soaked hair from his eyes. He will feel a deep, gnawing shame. But in the morning, Will’s memory of this will be faint, just as it is most nights, Hannibal ushering him back into sleep so quickly that the line between dream and reality is blurred far enough to encompass these late-night episodes as well. These nights will get less and less frequent the longer they stay here— the nights where he comes back to himself standing at the dresser frantically filling a duffel bag, panicked that someone is after them until Hannibal takes the bag away and guides him back to bed— and then even less frequent beyond that as well, even once they’ve built a new home elsewhere with a different bed they share.

But these are not things that either Will or Hannibal know yet. What they do know is that they are together, their soft breaths mingling and curling up between them like a third creature of its own. And, wrapped like a set of parentheses around this third creature they have made together, they sleep, as they do most nights, hand in hand.

*****

It seems that the kitchen is where they hold most of their serious conversations, the room in the house where Hannibal is the most relaxed, the most himself. Often over the weeks that they have been here now, Will has looked up from his book— A Sand County Almanac now, something Hannibal brought home to him earlier in the week saying “the bookseller assured me it was something you might like,” and this, itself, was a discovery: Hannibal talks about him when Will isn’t there— to see Hannibal watching him from the kitchen. But as much as Hannibal has watched him, Will has watched back, marveling at his ease.

Lately, though, Will finds himself less and less inclined to watch from a distance. It has always been impossible to resist seeking him out— like a compulsion, like love— and Hannibal is almost certainly taking advantage of that. He tempts Will by leaving plates of finger foods and snacks on the counter while he prepares meals, keeps the door open when he’s in a room where Will is not, like he’s sitting back to give a feral animal the opportunity to come to him.

“I know what you’re doing,” he told Hannibal from the doorway of his study one morning, Hannibal having retired there after breakfast while Will showered.

Hannibal had clicked off the screen of his tablet, looking up at Will over his reading glasses. Will has always wanted to resent how naturally Hannibal has taken to wearing the wearing glasses that have recently appeared in the house (it’s always felt awkward on Will’s face), how handsome they look on him, but the perching his new glasses on the edge of his nose evokes something entirely different than resentment.

“I’m aware,” Hannibal replied.

“You’re not subtle. You know that, right?”

“I’m often not when it comes to you,” he’d replied, amusement gathering at the corner of his lips.

“I’m not a stray dog,” Will had insisted, determined to get his point across. “You can’t win my trust like one.”

“Of course not,” Hannibal had agreed. “A stray dog couldn't undo me so easily.”

Will had frowned, the slightest pucker between his eyebrows, and left.

He was back a few moments later, a towel wrapped around his shoulders to catch the stray drips of his now shaggy hair, and settled into the chair behind Hannibal’s desk.

This afternoon, probably just over a week since Will had broached the subject, Hannibal has plied him yet again with small cuts of fruits carefully arranged on a platter for an afternoon snack. He has learned that Hannibal is alarmingly good at divining which foods are Will’s favorites and that he will make them as often as Will wants, procuring ingredients that certainly cannot be abundant so far north this time of year, as if by magic. As he pops a handful of blueberries into his mouth— the burst of the ripe juices tasting like southern summers, rustling in the berry bushes dotted along the creek near the trailer— Will thinks that if he wanted mac ‘n’ cheese for every meal for the rest of his life, Hannibal would probably buy a dairy farm.

“Are you happy?” Will asks him.

Hannibal swallows the apple slice he’s been chewing on and smiles at him. “Exquisitely so. Are you happy, Will?”

There is some part of Will that thinks he should be worried about this newfound peace, that he should be worried about what carnage might happen if their happiness runs out, that he should be worried about what the could inflict upon each other, what they could inflict upon the world. But he’s not. He looks at the monster leaning on his elbows, across from Will at the kitchen island, twisting an apple slice in his hand to catch the string of caramel dripping back into the bowl— and here marks another thing he’s learned, that Hannibal has a sweet tooth. He feels a streak of possessiveness so fierce he wants to tear Hannibal limb from limb just to preclude the possibility that anyone else would ever do it; he wants to bundle Hannibal in his arms and seclude him from the world in their safe haven, to protect him for all who would see him harmed. Hannibal would let him do either, do both. Will is finding himself newly inclined to do only the latter these days, since their sojourn together here.

Will opens his mouth and leans over the island towards Hannibal, who only looks puzzled for a flash of a moment before he gets the idea. Hannibal leans forward too, placing the caramel-covered slice of apple on his tongue like a communion wafer. The sugar melts on his tongue and Will bites down, the crisp apple giving under his teeth with a soft crunch. Rapturous, Hannibal watches him swallow and then takes the piece of apple Will left in his fingers and eats it himself, Will’s eyes tracing the bob of his Adam’s apple through its whole path.

They’ve already done the worst to each other, so what else is left now besides this? He is Hannibal’s monster, just as Hannibal is his.

“Yes, Hannibal. Exquisitely so,” he echoes.

*****

By now, Will’s walks have long since become routine, one that Hannibal hasn’t even attempted to encroach on. That alone makes Will suspicious.

Earlier on, soon after Will was well enough to begin these long walks, he would wake just before dawn and slip out without waking Hannibal. In hindsight, he suspects that Hannibal was probably pretending to be asleep because he’s since learned that Hannibal is an even lighter sleeper than he’d always imagined. But at the time, it felt like a necessary precaution to prevent Hannibal from inviting himself along. Now they both sleep in more often than not, nothing urging them to leave the cocoon of their blankets. It’s a kind of luxuriating that Will has never experienced before, not for any extended amount of time, and the restlessness that builds in him from the relaxation is what usually propels him from bed.

“Are you off?” Hannibal asks him this morning as Will sits on the edge of the bed. This, too, has now become part of the routine, even this short parting feeling too significant to endure without a goodbye.

“In a minute,” Will replies. He fiddles with the hem of the pullover fleece in his lap and Hannibal sits up in bed next to him, stilling Will’s hand by covering it with his own.

“Then maybe you would like to lie back down in that minute between now and then,” Hannibal says and leans forward until his head is resting on Will’s shoulder. He’s shirtless and the feeling of his sleep-mussed warmth makes something quiver then crumble inside Will.

“Maybe you’d like to come with me instead.”

Hannibal, already slouched against Will in repose, grows even more still, preternaturally so in his attentiveness. “Are you extending an invitation?”

“Not indefinitely,” he clarifies. “Just this morning. Call it a trial run.”

In an almost uncharacteristic display of excitement, Hannibal rushes through dressing while Will watches from the bed, bemused and almost guilty, having not realized that Hannibal cared about coming along with Will on these walks. While Will leads them down his favorite route to the stream, Hannibal is remarkably unobtrusive— no extended expounding on the differences between Classical and Romantic understandings of nature, no questions about where they’re going or suggestions on how to get there, nothing that would intrude on the peace and solitude Will takes these walks to seek out. There is something comforting about being alone together but, Will figures, that’s often how they’ve been.

He is learning too, Will thinks, hearing Hannibal’s footsteps come to a stop beside him when Will himself stops so as to not disturb the small family of skunks toddling by further up the path. He wants to be good to you, he just doesn’t always know how to.

The path to the stream is steep and rocky. Will doesn’t realize that he’d been expecting some kind of complaints from Hannibal— who he’s always viewed as urbane through and through— until there are none by the time they arrive. Hannibal pulls a glass container and two water bottles from the small pack he insisted on bringing and they settle on a boulder outcropping over a cascade in the stream. Will takes a handful of granola when Hannibal holds out the container to him and together they munch on the toasted oats and berries while the stream rushes by.

“Did you just have this on hand in anticipation of this exact moment,” Will teases, gesturing to the bowl of granola perched on Hannibal’s thigh where their legs are pressed together, “or did you somehow magically whip this up in the three minutes you disappeared into the kitchen?”

Hannibal’s eyes shine with amusement, and with something Will is wary to call bliss. “As implausible as it may sound, I purchased this at the market in town last week. But yes, I might have hoped that I’d find myself in a situation like this one.”

“You're glad to be here,” Will observes.

“I’m always glad to be wherever you are.”

Will exhales slowly until he’s confident his voice won’t shake.

“I trust you, Hannibal,” he begins haltingly. “But I don’t know if I should.”

“You make it sound like trusting another is something we have any say in. But trust is rarely preceded by a conscious decision. It’s rather like love in that regard.”

Will can’t help but shake his head, though he’s not sure at what part of Hannibal’s response. “I feel like this is a conversation we've had a hundred times before even if we've never spoken these words aloud.”

“Tragedy is by its very nature repetitive. That's what makes it a tragedy— by precluding all other paths out.”

“Is that what we are?” Will asks. “A tragedy?”

Beneath them, the stream murmurs its response; Will only wishes he could make out what it meant, what it all meant— the peace they’ve found here in their home suspended on the mountainside, the almost fairytale beauty of the forest surrounding them, the intimacy that took root between them long ago now reaching new heights, the new snippets of Hannibal he’s been hoarding like magpie decorating itsnest, each new quirk as shiny as a gem fallen loose from a ring and loved all the more for the very fact that no one else will love them.

“What would you like us to be, Will?”

He wishes he had an answer to that.

“You and I are more akin to the aftermath of trauma, to the mind’s desperate bids to resolve the past by repeating the same situations over and over in the hopes that this time things will work out.”

“And will it? Work out this time, that is,” Hannibal replies.

Something inside Will yanks him to reply no. No, things can never work out between us, that old instinct to hurt gives him the words like a branch on fire, like something Will has to force on Hannibal just so it’ll stop burning Will’s hands. But the look on Hannibal’s face— so openly, painfully hopeful— stops him.

“I want it to,” Will replies, and the sudden truthfulness of it strikes him so heavily that he can barely force the words up his throat.

Hannibal reaches for his hand, where Will is plucking at a loose thread on the hem of his sleeve and takes it in his. Will squeezes back.

They listen to the stream crash down the rocks for a while longer before they rise and walk towards home again.

*****

The newest on the list of things Will has learned since he was reborn from the waters of the Atlantic: Hannibal will often hum to himself when he thinks he’s alone, or sway his head in the time with music, as a snake would follow the tune of a charmer. Will finds it endearing— not a word he’d ever thought he’d associate with the notorious Hannibal Lecter (killer of men, devotee of indulgence), but nonetheless, it’s what he thinks when he rises from a nap to find Hannibal reclined on the couch, reading glasses poised on his nose, tracing his head through the air in tight arcs along the curves and dips of the concerto playing on the speakers— played softly, so softly as to not wake Will. That is itself something else that Will is finding himself less and less suspicious of with time, the feeling of Hannibal’s keen power to notice Will being used to consider his comfort instead of inflict pain.

Hannibal does this, too, when he’s cooking. That is how Will finds him this evening, whipping cream for dessert as, under his breath, he breathes the words of the opera he’s playing over the speakers. It’s not one Will recognizes, which is an odd thing to even think; he’s never been the kind of person to recognize operas at all, and now, after spending so much time listening with Hannibal, he has favorites.

“Hannibal?” Will asks.

His head snaps up, but then his eyes find Will and his face softens into that hint of a smile that Will knows means he’s glad that Will is joining him— he’s always glad when Will joins him, Will has realized.

“Eugene Onegin, the final scene,” Hannibal replies in lieu of a greeting. “Our young protagonist has realized he can never be with the lovely Tatyana and yet he still begs her to leave her life for him when he hasn’t earned that devotion. He’s drained his life of all meaning and betrayed his only friend in the pursuit of passing pleasures and his imagined version of her. All because he was too selfish to let himself see her from the start.”

Will tries to ignore the parallels there. “And so he laments,” he says.

Hannibal nods, securing the top on his mixing bowl while the duet reaches its peak. “With all other avenues closed off to him, there is nothing left to do but turn his woe into something beautiful. Pushkin warns us against the dangers of Romanticization and yet Tchaikovsky makes Onegin’s suffering so beautifully.”

He tucks the bowl of whipped cream into the fridge as something on the stove begins to bubble, and turns his back to Will so he can tend to the burbling sauce.

“Dinner will be ready momentarily,” Hannibal says over his shoulder, “Could you please set the table, dear?”

Will stops himself from freezing entirely but only barely. It still catches him off guard sometimes, this new thing he’s learned: Hannibal is very partial to pet names. This isn’t particularly surprising to Will— he can see the appeal for Hannibal in the theatrics of it, in the possessiveness, in the open and frequent declarations of devotion— but what he is taken aback by is how much he likes it. It’s only happened a handful of times: dear heart, Hannibal calls him when Will brings him a cup of tea to his study where Hannibal is sketching before curling up in the nearby armchair with a book. My remarkable boy, Hannibal hums, circling appreciatively around the dark, glimmering wooden chest Will had built for the foot of the bed when Hannibal commented on the lack of blanket storage nearby and, when he stops next to Will— who feels so full he fears his seams might split— he leans into the embrace once Will slowly, tentatively, puts an arm around his shoulder. Each time the words come to Hannibal so smoothly, so easily, it seems nearly unconscious. My dearest, he calls Will the most often but it’s less of a pet name and more of an adjective. I am dear to him, Will thinks every time and then, in quick succession, thinks how obvious it’s been.

Once they're both sitting in the dining room, Hannibal says: “Nearly all my schooling was in Russian until my uncle took me in as his ward.”

The centerpiece— though Hannibal had denied that he’d set the table this elaborately when he was dining alone in Baltimore, Will can barely believe that all this show is just for him— is piled high with flowers and oranges that Hannibal gets from God knows where.

“Our parents hired tutors for Mischa and me to teach us English and French. We were little terrors,” he continues with an affectionate smile, voice underpinned by the distant thrum of laughter buried within time. “We both picked it up quickly— Mischa especially— and we used our new vocabulary to torment our teachers.”

“Am I supposed to be surprised by that?” Will teases, amused himself and basking in the warmth of Hannibal’s fond recollections. The music has ended now, Onegin’s final lamentations faded into nothing, but the swelling sounds of the spring night outside— the whispering of the wind, the chittering of birds settling in for the evening— and the sounds of cutlery on china has filled its place. “Words have always been your best weapon.”

“For certain opponents, yes,” Hannibal teases in return and Will, inexplicably, feels himself blush. “Eugene Onegin always puts me in a nostalgic mood, more so now than before.”

Before what? Will wonders. Before Abigail gave him a reprise of something he’d thought lost to him forever? Before Will had made him understand the pain of Tatyana’s rejection? He thinks he should be upset, bitter, but instead, he is too warm— from the fireplace Hannibal tends to diligently, from the all-encompassing affection— and too well-fed to feel anything except contentment. He knows so little of Hannibal’s life before he had crafted himself into the man Will met in Baltimore.

“The opera reminds me of all the times I was made to read the novel in grade school, more times than I can count, enough to make any boy resent the story and the language used to force it upon him.” He pauses, turns his fork over in his hand once, twice, then speaks again as he sets about meticulously arranging the perfectly constructed bite on the tines. “To this day I can’t read Lithuanian very fluently; I haven’t spoken it in decades now, either, so I can’t imagine my vocabulary is any better than that of a very precocious twelve year old.”

Hannibal doesn’t speak of it like a loss, but rather as a curiosity. Will finds himself turning his own fork over and over in his hand, surprised by something that Will never would have predicted about Hannibal. Resentment of his first language, rejection of it? Sure, that always seemed likely to Will, a reasonable leap of logic from the orphaned young boy to the Hannibal he’d always known to embody the mantle of Western European refinement. But an inability? There is so little of a filter between his mindset and Hannibal’s anymore, the fluidity of the two simmering inside him. Hannibal is not incapable— he could certainly gain fluency if he wanted to— but this, Will can see, is his rejection in his refusal to pick up the heritage that had been assigned to him, rather than the narrative of himself that he’d so diligently crafted.

“Maybe you could help me brush up on my French,” Will replies.

The conversation veers, then, to the bits of Creole Will had picked up among the dock workers of his youth, to language education in the United States, to the pedagogy of French education, to the possibility of relocating to Morocco if they ever decide to leave their hideaway in the Rockies. Hannibal serves them dessert with his usual elan— the whipped cream making a reappearance, now dolloped on top of a handmade gelato with fresh strawberries and a brown sugar balsamic caramel— and Will realizes that there was a test and that he, unknowingly, passed it tonight.

“I was never convinced this was how it could be,” he muses later that night, after dessert.

They have curled up on the loveseat again, Hannibal is reclining against the arm with his knees bent; Will is sprawled out next to him with his legs outstretched, rubbing the balls of his feet on the plush rug that surrounds them, their couch like a boat in the center of a small maroon sea. Hannibal is wearing a dark purple sweater and sweatpants— or at least his approximation of sweatpants, the soft, charcoal gray joggers with elastic cuffs that Will also has in forest green— as he often does at night, changing into more comfortable clothes for the evening, something he never did when they would share a drink by the fire after dinner in Baltimore. Will had tucked a blanket around Hannibal before settling down next to him, the red one that’s made of flannel and fleece, while Hannibal looked up at him with so much awe that Will had to duck his head to avoid it. Next to each other, they look like they’re dressed for two entirely different climates— Hannibal swaddled in layers up to his chin and Will is in his regular tee shirt and jeans, the back of his neck flushing where he’s warmed by the fireplace behind them. He’s never understood Hannibal’s intense aversion to the cold, but the realization that he might someday learn why laps against the edges of his mind, like sinking into a hot bath.

“How so?” Hannibal asks.

“I never thought we could expose our soft underbellies to each other without sinking teeth into the vulnerable flesh.”

There is a pause; Hannibal runs his fingers up and down the stem of the wine glass in his hand, the deep red of it shimmering in the firelight. “Is that what you want?” he asks, finally looking up at Will.

Will frowns. “Does it matter? What I want?”

“Yes,” Hannibal says and Will is surprised by the intensity, the certainty of his statement. “What you want matters to me very much.”

“It didn’t always.”

“No,” Hannibal concedes. “Not always.”

Another long moment of consideration. “What changed?” Will asks.

Hannibal shifts under his blanket, his cold toes brushing the side of Will’s thigh. Without thinking, Will lifts his leg and rests it gently on top of Hannibal’s foot, warming the toes underneath it.

“If you want to feel teeth rending your flesh,” Hannibal says eventually, “I would gladly take a bite from you. If you want to feel the give of soft flesh splitting in your mouth, then I would find no greater joy than offering you my neck in supplication.”

Will licks his bottom lip, considering. “Why?” he finally settles on asking. There are so many many things he wants to know, but none of his questions feel good enough.

“Would you believe me if I said it's because you deserve to be cherished?” Hannibal says, and Will can’t bear to look at him for fear he might find sincerity there.

“Why?” Will presses, trying to keep his voice hard with insistence but he hears his question voiced with strain, so quiet he’s not sure Hannibal can hear him but he must because Hannibal shakes his head.

“Certainly you already know,” Hannibal says, voice low. It’s dark outside now, no moon tonight, and their fire behind them illuminates the windows into a mirror, their reflected faces looming over them.

“I need to hear you say it. Please.”

“The reasons why I cherish you are too rich, too plenty to express with words.”

“Try,” Will insists.

And so, because Will asked him to, Hannibal does.

*****

Spring gives way to summer and the two of them flourish as the forests do. Will starts a garden in the backyard, a small spit of land that quickly gives way to the slope of the mountainside again. He’s surprised by how quickly his plants yield oblong, oddly shaped cucumbers and small, plump tomatoes— bright red and glistening shiny when he brings them inside to Hannibal.

Hannibal doesn’t look up when the kitchen door closes, nor when Will settles onto the creaky bench by the door to untie his shoes. Will goes to him and sets the tomatoes on the counter next to Hannibal

“Here,” Will says. “For you.”

Hannibal blinks at him once, twice, and then his face softens with the barest hint of a smile.

Will doesn’t know if Hannibal has always spent this much time in his mind and Will was simply never there to see it, or if this is a new habit since the hospital when he had nowhere else to go but inside himself. Will is only just learning to consider the possibility that it could be something more nefarious, something insidious— something like being comfortable around Will, something like trusting him. But cataloging each new entry in his encyclopedic knowledge has begun to seem much less important lately, when observing Hannibal, learning him, has become so second nature. Every day brings a new realization about him, about how they are together; every day brings new joys he’d never let himself imagine before.

“Will,” he says in greeting and picks up one of the tomatoes tenderly, cradling it in the palm of his hand. “They’re lovely.”

And then there are the things that have long been obvious, but that Will is only now just learning anyway: that Hannibal looks at Will like he is a holy revelation. That says Will’s name like it’s a prayer. That he is beautiful, so beautiful in his entirety that Will feels caught by the enormity of his feelings for Hannibal yet again.

They’ve both been in high spirits these past few weeks and the music Hannibal plays has been changing too, brighter sonatas and lighter concertos that match the sunshine that pours in through the kitchen windows and the heat of their skin where the places they touch burst into blossoming radiance. Right now he’s playing a piano piece, something light and warm that Will doesn’t recognize. There isn’t anything out of place on the counters and Will realizes that Hannibal hasn’t been cooking, but had been leaning against the kitchen island because it faces the windows above the sink, the best view in the whole house for the garden where Will had been working all afternoon. Just as Hannibal had been watching him then, he is watching Will again now with a mirth that threatens to bubble over and scald them both with its foaming happiness. Hannibal sets the tomatoes down on the island behind him.

“May I have this dance?” he asks, offering a hand to Will.

Will feels himself almost take a step back on instinct, and barely reels in that gut reaction before he does, tensing instead.

“You’re not supposed to exert yourself,” he replies.

“I’d hardly call slowly dancing to a three minute piece an ‘exertion’,” Hannibal says, voice warm with amusement.

Will’s eyes narrow. The request is shocking, really, more than anything else. Hannibal asking Will to indulge him isn’t the suspicious part, nor is Will afraid of all the things Hannibal could do to him if Will took his hand; Will knows all the things he could do to Hannibal just as easily but he knows that’s not what either of them wants from the other anymore. But the uncomplicated frivolity of it, the spontaneous playfulness of dancing together on a warm summer afternoon— that’s not something they’ve ever had.

“What’s your game here?” he asks.

Hannibal hesitates a moment, head just barely tilting to the side before he drops his hand, bringing it back to rest against the side of his thigh

“Have you considered that perhaps I just want to dance with you?” he asks.

“Nothing is ever that simple with you, Hannibal,” Will says, shaking his head.

“Couldn’t it be, though?” Hannibal asks.

And at something in the way Hannibal says it, in its open hopefulness, that finally cracks open Will’s pride and lets his own hopefulness spill out of him. As long as they’ve been tucked away in the folds of this mountainside, Will has never had any doubts that he wanted this, this life they’ve been building together. What he had doubted was that he could have it. Hope has never gotten him very far before, a fickle friend who left Will to do the hardest work of life. But maybe he and Hannibal can have this, here, together. Maybe they can. And so he takes Hannibal’s hand.

“What are we doing?” Will asks. Hannibal situates his free hand on Will’s shoulder and Will, on instinct, tucks his free hand into the small of Hannibal’s back.

“You’re leading,” Hannibal replies but Will shakes his head.

“I don’t know if I’m the most qualified for that job,” Will half-jokes. He can’t even find the beat of the piano piece playing over the speakers to count it out but Hannibal seems intent on Will guiding them and so they stand, holding each other, until Will takes a shuffling step to the left. Hannibal follows. Then a step backward and Hannibal steps forward to fill the space he’d occupied. The music sounds like Chopin if Will had to wager a guess, and he doesn’t think it’s not the kind of thing meant to be danced to, but Hannibal’s graceful confidence in following each of Will’s unsure steps makes it easier for Will to trust himself until, in the space between the kitchen island and the counter, they’re doing a simple box step — maybe a bit out of time to the music, but so easily in tune with each other, until Hannibal’s arm is slung around Will’s neck and Will is pulling them close with the hand on the small of Hannibal’s back, pressed chest to chest, so close that all they can do is take small shuffling steps and then, eventually, a slow sway.

Hannibal nuzzles his cheek into Will’s hair; Will tucks his head into the crook of Hannibal’s neck.

“I want to kiss you,” Will whispers, lips moving against the pulse point of Hannibal’s throat.

“I know,” Hannibal whispers back.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you since that night— afterward, when we were on the beach,” he says, knowing that Hannibal knows what he’s talking about. “Probably even longer, I just didn’t know it yet.”

“I know,” Hannibal repeats.

“Do you know why I haven’t yet?”

Hannibal’s fingers tighten where they’re curled into Will’s shirt. “Because you need to understand me before you can see me again.”

Will exhales, breath shuddering.

“And do I see you, Hannibal?” he asks and, pressed so tightly together, feels Hannibal’s chest expand with a deep inhale. Will would crawl inside Hannibal’s chest if he could, sustain himself on Hannibal’s breath alone.

“Yes, Will. You do. I would strip myself bare for you if you only asked.”

Will clutches Hannibal even more tightly. The thing is, Will won’t ask. He doesn’t need to. Hannibal has already revealed all of himself; there is only one last thing Will needs to know.

“Is it true,” Will begins, willing himself to not trip over his words, “that you want to kiss me too?”

“Yes. Yes.” Hannibal ducks his head to meet Will’s eyes even as his fingers dig tightly into the space between Will’s shoulder blades, into the soft gaps between his ribs, like he can’t bare to pull away even enough to look at Will’s face unless he has a strong enough grip that he’s sure there’s nowhere else Will could go. There isn’t— anywhere else Will could go, that is. If Will turned away now, it would be the end of them both. He won’t; he can’t. But most importantly, he doesn’t want to anymore. To know something so deeply is to love it, and there is no one he knows as completely as Hannibal.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Will says.

And then he does.

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

Expectations vs. Reality: Video games

Kingdom Hearts

Expectations: Disney-Final Fantasy fanfiction!

Reality: ...so it turns out, your best friend is actually an empty puppet created by the memories of the person that your main protagonist was based on. Also, your character is the soulless husk of the main protagonist that gained sentience.

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

Resident Evil

Expectations: Zombie apocalypse!

Reality: You drop a zombie but immediately after, the plant monster that shoots poison at you emerges from the hallway. You escape it, only to encounter the giant gray man in a trench-coat.

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

Ace Attorney

Expectations: Lawyer simulator!

Reality: An honorable attorney living in some dystopian world where the court system is designed to work against the people. Rule of law is dead and people attend trials just for fun.

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

Danganronpa

Expectations: Ace Attorney but Battle Royale!

Reality: So then you're promised nude artwork of the hot detective waifu, which fills you with HOPE. But then it turns out, the artwork is censored, which fills you with DESPAIR. You were given HOPE just to increase the intensity of the DESPAIR. The best DESPAIR comes from a place of HOPE. Also, you're filled with more DESPAIR when you realize that you were given HOPE just for the purpose of getting HOPE so you could feel DESPAIR.

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

Silent Hill

Expectations: J-horror but a video game

Reality: Well...you technically got what you were expecting. But in addition, everything is your fault and you're the asshole that's responsible for everything.

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

Devil May Cry

Expectations: Demon slayer, basically

Reality: ...so after your main protagonist slides into the room in ice skates, he proceeds to destroy the demons with his Angel Saxophone, which is a saxophone that's been blessed by Saint Peter. The main protagonist does a little dance while his hot girlfriend watches him while eating pizza.

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

Mass Effect

Expectations: Space opera

Reality: Space opera but your biggest concern is deciding which of your crewmates you're gonna romance. Also, whether or not you're being too good of a person or too much of an asshole.

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

Red Dead Redemption

Expectations: YEE-HAW simulator

Reality: Dark cowboy drama that grapples with themes of morality, redemption, and the anti-western genre. Basically...Blood Meridian.

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

Assassin's Creed

Expectations: Badass ancient warrior simulator

Reality: *smokes blunt* Bro, the government is hiding shit from us. I'm telling you, Adam and Eve were actually slaves working for alien overlords. Also, the Illuminati! New World Order! Open your eyes, bro! *smokes blunt again*

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

The Last of Us

Expectations: The Walking Dead

Reality: Logan (2017) but with zombies

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Uncharted

Expectations: Indiana Jones

Reality: Modern AU Pirates of the Caribbean

[tothemaxxx]

My Favorite Films and Performances of 2020

“I wish I could’ve seen it on the big screen.”

It was a strange year, and even stranger year of movie watching. In 2020 I saw only one of my top films in a theater, which is crazy (like much else over these past months). But the experience of keeping up with the movies this year was a reminder that great filmmaking can transcend the specifics of the viewing experience. In your living room, in bed, projected onto the side of a garage, streaming on Twitch, broken up into multiple sittings, maybe even on your phone (desperate times)… if doesn’t matter as long as it connects with you. A great film has the power to soothe and transport, to alter your perspective, to re-wire your brain. So while I didn’t get on a single airplane last year, I definitely went places. And I’m grateful for these changes of scenery. For the time-travel as well; last year in my house, we found great comfort in revisiting a bunch of old favorites. It was also an opportunity to finally watch a number of those older films that had someone evaded us… a year of catching up, now or never. We were members of a weekly movie club for some months — that was cool. Another pleasant silver lining was the emergence of virtual film festivals, which have been a fantastic opportunity. I hope that they can continue in some form when this pandemic is in the rearview. Because, you know, getting to Park City is a real schlep. All this to say: like you, I’ll always remember 2020. In this truly crummy year, the movies really helped.

I’m including some of the film festival stuff that’s coming out a little later, because the boundaries between 2020 films and 2021 films feels blurry to me without proper theatrical releases.

TOP 5, loosely ranked. I love these deeply.

1. LOVERS ROCK, Steve McQueen

2. NOMADLAND, Chloe Zhao

3. ANOTHER ROUND, Thomas Vinterberg

4. TIME, Garrett Bradley

5. MARTIN EDEN, Pietro Marcello

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

The rest of the Top 25, in alphabetical order. I loved these.

À L’ABORDAGE, Guillaume Brac

BACURAU, Kleber Mendonça Filho

COLOR OUT OF SPACE, Richard Stanley

THE FATHER, Florian Zeller

FIRST COW, Kelly Reichardt

I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS, Charlie Kaufman

JASPER MALL, Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb

LUXOR, Zeina Durra

ALEX WHEATLE / EDUCATION / MANGROVE / RED, WHITE AND BLUE, Steve McQueen

THE NEST, Sean Durkin

NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS, Eliza Hittman

NEW ORDER, Michel Franco

THE PAINTER & THE THIEF, Benjamin Ree

THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD, Armando Iannucci

POSSESSOR, Brandon Cronenberg

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN, Emerald Fennell

RELIC, Natalie Erika James

SAINT FRANCES, Alex Thompson

SOUND OF METAL, Darius Marder

THE TRUTH, Hirokazu Koreeda

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

I also enjoyed (some more than others):

Apples, The Assistant, Babyteeth, Bad Education, Black Bear, Blow the Man Down, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Butt Boy, The Climb, Da 5 Bloods, Deerskin, Emma, The Father (Bulgaria), Greed, His House, The Hunt, I Used to Go Here, I'm No Longer Here, Impetigore, The Intruder, The Invisible Man, Kajillionaire, La Llorona, Let Them All Talk, Lost Girls, The Man Who Sold His Skin, Mank, Never Gonna Snow Again, News of the World, One Night in Miami, Palm Springs, Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, Rebecca, She Dies Tomorrow, Shirley, Slow Machine, Sorry We Missed You, Soul, Spree, Straight Up, A Sun, Swallow, Tenet, Tesla, Tommaso, The Traitor, The Trip to Greece, True History of the Kelly Gang, Uncle Frank, Under the Open Sky, The Vast of Night, Vitalina Varela, Wendy, The Whistlers, Wildland, Young Ahmed

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

And these documentaries!

American Murder: The Family Next Door, The American Sector, Assassins, Beastie Boys Story, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, Bloody Nose Empty Pockets, Boys State, Brainiac: Transmissions After Zero, Circus of Books, Class Action Park, Collective, Crip Camp, David Byrne's American Utopia, Dick Johnson is Dead, Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds, The Go-Go's, Gunda, Miss Americana, MLK/FBI, The Mole Agent, Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado, My Psychedelic Love Story, Mystify: Michael Hutchence, Narrowsburg, On the Record, Other Music, Sisters with Transistors, Spaceship Earth, The Way I See It, Whirlybird

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

And these shorts:

Bye Bye Body (which I edited), Fit Model, Friday Night Pizza for Daddy, Hard Cracked the Wind, The Human Voice, John Was Trying to Contact Aliens, Michael's Preference West, What Did Jack Do?, World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime

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

My favorite performance of the year:

Frances McDormand as Fern in Nomadland

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Favorite ensembles:

À l’abordage, Another Round, Bad Education, Babyteeth, Bloody Nose Empty Pockets, Blow the Man Down, Emma, First Cow, Kajillionaire, Let Them All Talk, Lovers Rock, Mangrove, Mank, One Night in Miami, The Personal History of David Copperfield, Promising Young Woman, True History of the Kelly Gang

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

More memorable (and in some cases under-discussed) performances:

Christopher Abbott as Colin Tate in Possessor and as Gabe in Black Bear

Idir Ben Addi as Ahmed in Young Ahmed

Riz Ahmed as Ruben Stone in Sound of Metal

Daniel Algrant as Kelvin Kranz in Let Them All Talk

Maria Bakalova as Tutar Sagdiyev in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

Haley Bennett as Hunter Conrad in Swallow

John Boyega as Leroy Logan in Red, White and Blue

Rob Brydon as Rob Brydon in The Trip to Greece

Jessie Buckley as Young Woman in I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Nicolas Cage as Nathan Gardner in Color Out of Space

Salif Cissé as Chérif in À L’abordage

Sheyi Cole as Alex Wheatle in Alex Wheatle

Cleopatra Coleman as Trina in The Argument

Carrie Coon as Allison O’Hara in The Nest

Michael Angelo Covino as Mike in The Climb

Willem Dafoe as Tommaso in Tommaso

Charles Dance as William Randolph Hearst in Mank

Catherine Deneuve as Fabienne Dangeville in The Truth

Katie Findlay as Rory in Straight Up

Sidney Flanigan as Autumn in Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Johnny Flynn as George Knightley in Emma

Julia Garner as Jane in The Assistant

Robbie Gee as Simeon in Alex Wheatle

Chris Giarmo as himself in David Byrne’s American Utopia

Betty Gilpin as Crystal Creasey in The Hunt

Ethan Hawke as Hank in The Truth

Kris Hitchen as Ricky Turner in Sorry We Missed You

Anthony Hopkins as Anthony in The Father

Jonathan Jules as Dennis Isaacs in Alex Wheatle

Sandra Guldberg Kampp as Ida in Wildland

Joe Keery as Kurt Knuckle in Spree

Udo Kier as Michael in Bacurau

Orion Lee as King Lu in First Cow

Delroy Lindo as Paul in Da 5 Bloods

Peter Macdissi as Walid "Wally" Nadeem in Uncle Frank

Matthew Macfadyen as Wilcock in The Assistant

George MacKay as Ned Kelly in True History of the Kelly Gang

Yahya Mahayni as Sam Ali in The Man Who Sold His Skin

Luca Marinelli as Martin Eden in Martin Eden

Tuppence Middleton as Sara Mankiewicz in Mank

Mads Mikkelsen as Martin in Another Round

Wunmi Mosaku as Rial in His House

Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia Kass in The Invisible Man

Kelly O'Sullivan as Bridget in Saint Frances

Shaun Parkes as Frank Crichlow in Mangrove

Robert Pattinson as Neil in Tenet

Paul Raci as Joe in Sound of Metal

Kadeem Ramsay as Samson in Lovers Rock

Gayle Rankin as Marissa in The Climb

Tanya Reynolds as Mrs Augusta Elton in Emma

Tyler Rice as Detective Russell Fox in Butt Boy

Andrea Riseborough as Hana in Luxor

Cecilia Roth as Marta in The Intruder

William Sadler as the Grim Reaper in Bill & Ted Face the Music

Kenyah Sandy as Kingsley Smith in Education

Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn as Martha Trenton in Lovers Rock

David Strathairn as David in Nomadland

Michael Stuhlbarg as Stanley Edgar Hyman in Shirley

Swankie as Swankie in Nomadland

Tilda Swinton as Woman in The Human Voice

Kristin Scott Thomas as Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca

Steve Toussaint as Ken Logan in Red, White and Blue

Alec Utgoff as Zhenia in Never Gonna Snow Again

Jairaj Varsani as young David Copperfield in The Personal History of David Copperfield

Ben Whishaw as Uriah Heep in The Personal History of David Copperfield

Sharlene Whyte as Agnes Smith in Education

Letitia Wright as Altheia Jones-LeCointe in Mangrove

Ramona Edith Williams as Frances in Saint Frances

Kôji Yakusho as Masao Mikami in Under the Open Sky

Youn Yuh-jung as Soon-ja in Minari

Helena Zengel as Johanna Leonberger in News of the World

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

Favorite pre-2020 films I saw for the first time in 2020:

Blood on the Moon, But I’m A Cheerleader, Crooklyn, Cure, Daughters of the Dust, The Death of Dick Long, Deep Cover, The Draughtsman's Contract, Eyes of Laura Mars, Give Me Liberty, Greener Grass, Hardcore, High Hopes, The Last Party, Long Day's Journey into Night, Maiden, One Day Pina Asked, Persona, Right Now Wrong Then, Right On!, The Seventh Victim, Slightly French, Synonyms, Tammy and the T-Rex, Variety, The Watermelon Woman... and a tip of the hat to Coppola's new The Godfather Part III recut, The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone

[artist-raphael]

Upraised Right Hand, with Palm Facing Outward: Study for Saint Peter, Raphael, 1518, Art Institute of Chicago: Prints and Drawings

The traditional attribution for Raphael of this long overlooked and hitherto unpublished drawing was recently upheld by Konrad Oberhuber, Paul Joannides, and Nicholas Turner (in conversation, 1995/96) all of whom agreed that it should be dated 1518/20, towards the very end of Raphael’s career. In the image represented, as well as its medium, technique and style, the drawing relates to Raphael’s most important commissions from this period; the Transfiguration altarpiece, now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana (Dussler 1971, pp. 52-55, pl. 111), which he completed shortly before his death on April 6, 1520; and the decoration of the walls of the Sala di Costantino, the largest of the papal suite of rooms in the Vatican (Dussler, pp. 86-88, pls. 143-44; Quednau 1979). With the possible exception of two allegorical figures in oil, this project, which was underway by late 1519, was largely executed by Raphael’s assistants under the direction of Giulio Romano, and completed in 1524. Although the Sala’s general decorative scheme was devised by Raphel, there are still questions concerning the extent of his responsibility for the design of individual components (Oberhuber/Fischel 1972, pp. 184-204). The gesture itself, of the upraised right arm and hand with palm facing outward, is reminiscent of that of Christ in the Transfiguration, as conveyed in two modelli, possibly by Giovanni Francesco Penni, in the Louvre (3954; Cordellier/Py 1992, pp. 533-34, no. 905, repr.) and the Albertina (193; Birke/Kertész 1992-, vol. 1, pp. 110-11, repr.), which preserve two abandoned designs for the Transfiguration. In both modelli, Christ's arm is dramatically bent and thereby foreshortened as in the Chicago drawing, whereas in the actual painting, the same arm is more fully extended within the picture plane. Although it is conceivable that Raphael would have executed a detail study for this important gesture even in the early planning stages, it is unlikely that the Chicago drawing represents this study. Despite morphological similarities between the classically proportioned fingers and thumb, and those of the hands of the two apostles in an auxiliary black chalk cartoon for the Transfiguration in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (P II 568; Joannides 1983, no. 437, pl. 38), the hard consistency of the black chalk in the Chicago drawing and the overall polished surface conflict stylistically with the softer chalk employed in the Ashmolean cartoon, and the resulting atmospheric, painterly effect produced by the merging of contours and smudged parallel hatching in that sheet. Moreover, the outlines of what appear to be a cowl or cope in the upper arm are not consonant with the unspecified, toga-like drapery arrangement given to Christ in both the modelli and the final painting. Although the Chicago drawing may have derived from an abandoned idea Raphael had for Christ’s right arm in the Transfiguration, it bears a much more precise relationship with the upraised right arm and hand of Saint Peter in the Sala di Costantino (Fig. 36; Quednau, pp. 181-204, pl. 33). Attended by the personifications of Ecclesia and Eternity, Saint Peter is one of eight early popes enthroned in niches, and flanking four narrative scenes from the history of Constantine, represented as feigned tapestries on each of the four walls. Peter is immediately identifiable by the pair of large keys he grasps in the his left hand, symbolizing Christ’s charge to him in Matthew 16:18-19. His right hand, with palm facing outward, is raised in a ceremonial gesture that at the time could have been interpreted as blessing or commanding (Quednau, pp. 182, 654-55 n. 615), but in either case would have reinforced the message of papal supremacy proclaimed throughout the room. In this particular case, the Biblical legitimacy of the pope’s role as successor to Peter, Christ’s vicar (then being undermined by Martin Luther), was underscored by the flanking figures of Ecclesia, who holds up a model of the church that Peter was to establish on earth, and Eternity, who symbolized the heavenly kingdom. Several key elements are held in common by the Chicago drawing and the relevant portion of the fresco of Saint Peter, which suggests that it served as a preparatory study for this detail. Beyond the similar gesture of the hand, and foreshortened arm, there is a clear connection between the cope worn by Peter, and the corresponding outline in the drawing, while the crumpled cuff in both fresco and drawing is virtually identical. In addition, the light in the drawing falls from the left, as it does in the fresco, which was located at the northern end of the east wall, receiving direct light from the nearest of the two windows on the north wall facing the courtyard of the Belvedere (for relevant photograph, see Oberhuber/Fischel 1972, fig. 203). While the general patterns of light and shadow created by Raphael in the drawing are maintained in the fresco, there are noteworthy differences in the specific treatment of the hand as painted by Giulio Romano. The fingers are more curved and have acquired a gnarled and swollen quality, but, more strikingly, the palm has been stretched disproportionately wide, and the fingers elongated, in keeping with Giulio’s exaggerated treatment of such morphological details in drawings for his earliest independent works, such as a black chalk study at Windsor Castle (0339) for a nude figure in the Martyrdom of Saint Stephen, of 1521/23 (New York 1987, no. 62 repr.). Here, the man’s upraised right hand, albeit not treated in as much detail, provides an instructive comparison, not only in the floppy, elongated fingers themselves, but in the relief-like treatment of the entire figure, and the lack of any underlying anatomical structure. Although there are no other detailed hand studies associated with the Sala di Costantino, the Chicago drawing compares well in its technique and style to two of the small group of figure studies accepted as being by Raphel: A study in the Uffizi (542 E.) for an advancing soldier in the Adlocutio of Constantine, the narrative scene to the right of Saint Peter (Oberhuber/Fischel 1972, p. 201. no. 484, pl. 84; Joannides 1983, p. 244, no. 444r, repr.), and a study in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (P II 569), for two soldiers struggling in the water in the right foreground of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, on the south wall of the Sala di Costantino (Oberhuber/Fischel, p. 204, no. 487, pl. 86; Joannides, pp. 120-21, pl 44; New York 1987, no. 40 repr.). Like the Chicago drawing, these are executed with swift strokes of black chalk and patches of white heightening over a fine network of stylus lines, creating in each case an expressive form whose surface texture is modeled by the particular pattern of light and shadow dictated by its placement in the complex illusionistic scheme conceived by Raphael. As Paul Joannides has observed, the bodies of the submerged soldiers are intentionally rendered as smoother and more generalized than that of the advancing soldier, in part because “their slickness of surface emphasizes their wetness,” but also because the advancing soldier required more detail, given his placement on the east wall, which received brighter, less diffused light. Although the Chicago drawing shares this more detailed treatment of surface with the Uffizi soldier, its style is perceptibly harder, particularly in the areas of the lower palm and the wrist, where the short, black chalk strokes are not blurred and softened with stumping or white heightening, but seem to stitch a taut impenetrable fabric, which coolly reflects the passage of light and shadow. Such detailing of the surface of Peter’s hand, as specified in the preparatory study, would have been necessitated by the figure’s proximity to the raking light coming from the north window. Without diminishing the inherent organic vitality of the hand emerging from the sleeve, Raphael intentionally endowed both with a marble-like sheen in order to establish clearly for the executant the illusionistic role played by the sculptural form of the enthroned Peter. — Entry, Italian drawings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago, 1997, p.205. The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection Size: 286 x 197 mm Medium: Black chalk, heightened with white chalk and lead white, partially oxidized, over stylus underdrawing, on cream laid paper

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/114932/

[orthodoxydaily]

Saints&Reading: Sat,  May, 8, 2021

April 25/Sat 8

The Holy Disciple and Evangelist Mark (63)

     The Holy Disciple and Evangelist Mark, named also John-Mark (Acts 12: 12), was a Disciple from among the Seventy, and was also a nephew of the Disciple Barnabas (Comm. 11 June). He was born at Jerusalem. The house of his mother Mary adjoined the Garden of Gethsemane. As Church Tradition relates, on the night of the Sufferings of Christ on the Cross he followed after Him, wrapped in a linen winding-cloth, and he fled from the soldiers catching hold of him (Mk. 14: 51-52). After the Ascension of the Lord, the house of his mother Saint Mary became a place of prayerful gatherings of Christians and a lodging for certain of the Apostles (Acts 12: 12).      Saint Mark was a very close companion of the Apostles Peter and Paul (Comm. 29 June) and of the Disciple Barnabas. Saint Mark was at Seleucia together with Paul and Barnabas, and from there he set off to the island of Cyprus, and he crossed over the whole of it from East to West. In the city of Paphos Saint Mark was an eye-witness, of how the Apostle Paul had struck blind the sorcerer Elymas (Acts 13: 6-12).

     After working with the Apostle Paul, Saint Mark returned to Jerusalem, and then with the Apostle Peter he arrived in Rome, from whence at the latter's bidding he set out for Egypt, where he became founder of the Church.      During the time of the second evangelic journey of the Apostle Paul, Saint Mark met up with him at Antioch. From there he set out preaching with the Disciple Barnabas to Cyprus, and then he went off again to Egypt, where together with the Apostle Peter he founded many churches, and then also at Babylon. From this city the Apostle Peter directed an Epistle to the Christians of Asia Minor, in which he points to Saint Mark as his spiritual son (1 Pet. 5: 13).      When the Apostle Paul came in chains to Rome, the Disciple Mark was at Ephesus, where the cathedra-seat was occupied by Saint Timothy (Comm. 4 January). The Disciple Mark arrived together with him in Rome. There also he wrote his holy Gospel (c. 62-63).      From Rome Saint Mark again set off to Egypt. At Alexandria he made the beginnings of a Christian school, from which later on emerged such famous fathers and teachers of the Church, as Clement of Alexandria, Sainted Dionysios (5 October), Sainted Gregory Thaumatourgos ("Wonderworker", Comm. 5 November), and others. Zealous with the arranging of Church Divine-services, the holy Disciple Mark compiled the order of Liturgy for the Alexandrian Christians.      Later on in preaching the Gospel, Saint Mark also visited the inner regions of Africa, and he was in Libya at Nektopolis.      During the time of these journeys, Saint Mark received inspiration of the Holy Spirit to go again to Alexandria and confront the pagans. There he visited at the home of the dignitary Ananias, for whom he healed a crippled hand. The dignitary happily took him in, hearkened with faith to his narratives, and received Baptism. And following the example of Ananias, many of the inhabitants of that part of the city where he lived were baptised after him. This roused the enmity of the pagans, and they gathered to kill Saint Mark. Having learned of this, the holy Disciple Mark made Ananias bishop, and the three Christians: Malchos, Sabinos and Kerdinos – presbyters.      The pagans pounced upon Saint Mark when he was making Divine-services. They beat him, dragged him through the streets and threw him in prison. There Saint Mark was granted a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ, Who strengthened him before his sufferings. On the following day the angry crowd again dragged the holy disciple through the streets towards the court-room, but along the way Saint Mark died with the words: "Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit".      The pagans wanted to burn the body of the holy disciple. But when they lit up the bon-fire, everything grew dim, thunder crashed and an earthquake occurred. The pagans fled in terror, and Christians took up the body of the holy disciple and buried it in a stone crypt. This was on 4 April in the year 63. The Church celebrates his memory on 25 April.      In the year 310, a church was built over the relics of the holy Disciple Mark. In the year 820, when the Mahometan Arabs had established their rule in Egypt and those of this different faith oppressed the Christian Church, the relics of Saint Mark were transferred to Venice and placed in the church of his name.      In the ancient iconographic tradition, which adopted symbols for the holy Evangelists borrowed from the vision of Saint John the Theologian (Rev. 4: 7), the holy Evangelist Mark is depicted by a lion – symbolising the might and royal dignity of Christ (Rev. 5: 5). Saint Mark wrote his Gospel for Christians from among the gentile-pagans, since he emphasises predominantly the words and deeds of the Saviour, in which particularly is manifest His Divine Almightiness. The many particularities of his account can be explained by his proximity to the holy Apostle Peter. All the ancient writers testify, that the Gospel of Mark represents a concise writing-down of the preaching and narratives of the first-ranked Apostle Peter. One of the central theological themes in the Gospel of Saint Mark is the theme of the power of God, doing the humanly impossible, wherein the Lord makes possible that which of man is impossible. By the efficacy of Christ (Mk. 16: 20) and the Holy Spirit (Mk. 13: 11), His disciples are to go forth into the world and preach the Gospel to all creatures (Mk. 13: 10, 16: 15).

The Monk Sylvester (Syl'vestr) of Obnorsk (1379)

     The Monk Sylvester (Syl'vestr) of Obnorsk was a disciple and novice under the Monk Sergei of Radonezh (+ 1392, Comm. 25 September and 5 July). After completing obedience at the Trinity monastery, the Monk Sylvester received blessing for wilderness-dwelling.      In the deep forest at the River Obnora, flowing into the River Kostroma, he set up at his chosen spot a cross and began to asceticise. For a long time no one knew about the holy hermit. His cell was by chance discovered by a peasant who had lost his way. He told the distraught hermit, how he had come to this place, over which earlier he had seen luminous rays, and then pillars of cloud. The monk shed tears of sorrow, that the place of his solitude had been found out. The pilgrim besought the saint to tell about himself.

     The Monk Sylvester said, that he was already living here no short while, and that he ate tree bark and roots. At first he became weak without bread and fell on the ground from his weakness. But then an Angel appeared to him in the guise of a wondrous man and touched his hand. From that moment the Monk Sylvester did not experience any distress. And then the peasant another time, this time deliberately, came back to the monk and brought him bread and flour for reserve supply.      This one meeting was sufficient for the exploits of the hermit to become known to many. Soon peasants began to come to him from the surrounding though not close settlements. The Monk Sylvester did not refuse them to build cells alongside him.      When the brethren had gathered, the monk himself set off to Moscow and petitioned of Sainted Alexei (1354-1378, Comm. 12 February) blessing for the construction of a temple in honour of the Resurrection (Voskresenie) of Christ. The sainted-hierarch entrusted to him an antimins ["antimension" or 'corporal" for the altar‑table, needful for celebrating of Divine Liturgy], and made him hegumen of the monastery. With the construction of the church the number of brethren quickly grew, and the monk frequently withdrew for prayer into the dense forest. This spot received the name "Commanded-Grove", since the Monk Sylvester commanded that no trees should be cut there. In the thick of this grove the monk himself dug out three wells, and a fourth – on the side of an hill at the River Obnora. When the monk returned from his solitude, there usually awaited him around the monastery a number of people, and each wanted to receive his blessing and hear his advice.      When the saint fell into a fatal illness, the brethren, who were distressed about his going off into solitude, were even more distressed about the impending end of the saint. "Grieve not over this, my beloved brethren, – the monk said to them in solace, – for in everything is the will of God. Keep the commandments of the Lord and fear not in this life to suffer misfortune, so as to receive reward in Heaven. If indeed I have boldness before the Lord and my deed be pleasing to Him, then this holy place will not diminish with my departure. But pray the Lord God and His All-Pure Mother, that ye be delivered from temptation of evil". The monk died on 25 April 1479 and was buried towards the right side of the wooden Resurrection church.      There has been preserved from the year 1645 a record of miracles of the monk, in which 23 miracles are described. In quite a number the monk healed from demonic‑possession (12 cases) and delirium, and from eye-afflictions (6 cases). A lesson‑teaching miracle occurred in 1645. The priestmonk Job of the monastery directed peasants to cut down the interdicted forest-grove for firewood, and for this he was struck blind. After four weeks he acknowledged his sin, repented and gave a vow not to act on his own will, but to do everything on the advice of the brethren. The priestmonk finished out the molieben in church, after which he was brought up to the reliquary of the Monk Sylvester, and there he regained his sight.

All texts© 1996-2001 by translator Fr. S. Janos.

Mark 6:7-13 (St. Mark)

7 And He called the twelve to Himself, and began to send them out two by two, and gave them power over unclean spirits. 8 He commanded them to take nothing for the journey except a staff-no bag, no bread, no copper in their money belts- 9 but to wear sandals, and not to put on two tunics. 10 Also He said to them, "In whatever place you enter a house, stay there till you depart from that place. 11 And whoever will not receive you nor hear you, when you depart from there, shake off the dust under your feet as a testimony against them. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city. 12 So they went out and preached that people should repent. 13 And they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick, and healed them.

Luke 10:1-15

1 After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place where He Himself was about to go. 2 Then He said to them, "The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. 3 Go your way; behold, I send you out as lambs among wolves. 4 Carry neither money bag, knapsack, nor sandals; and greet no one along the road. 5 But whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace to this house.'6 And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest on it; if not, it will return to you.7 And remain in the same house, eating and drinking such things as they give, for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house.8Whatever city you enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you. 9 And heal the sick there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.'10 But whatever city you enter, and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, 11 'The very dust of your city which clings to us we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near you.' 12But I say to you that it will be more tolerable in that Day for Sodom than for that city.13 Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. 15 And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades.

[sadmmann]

Life lost in the club Pulse

Today and every day we remember 49 innocent victims lost 3 years ago in Orlando, June 12, 2016. part 1

Edward Sotomayor Jr, 34

Edward was a caring, energetic man known for wearing a silly top hat on cruises, Edward worked for a company that held gay cruises and often travelled to promote the company’s events.

Stanley Almodovar III, 23

Stanley worked as a technician in a pharmacy, he was described as “good, but impudent” and a person who is not indifferent to his own sexual identity. "He was so proud of who he was."

Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20

Luis described himself as a dancer on his Facebook account. Following the terrorist attack at the Bataclan theatre in Paris last year, he showed solidarity with the victims by adding a tricolour filter to his profile photo. A former teacher described him as a ‘ray of sunshine’. 

Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22

Guerrero worked as a telemarketer, and was in school at the University of Central Florida. He was attending Pulse with his boyfriend, Christopher Andrew “Drew” Leinonen, who also died in the attack. “Juan and Drew were soul mates, and they were great together,”

Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36

After moving to Florida from Puerto Rico for the chance of a better life, Eric , a merchandise manager, was said to have ‘sacrificed himself a lot for his family’, the Orlando Sentinel reported. ‘Eric was always willing to help everybody. He loved his brother, and he was always being generous.’

Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22

Peter worked for logistics company UPS in Orlando after graduating from Colonia High School. Originally from South Africa.

Luis S. Vielma, 22 

Luis worked on the Harry Potter ride at Universal Studios, according to author JK Rowling, who said she could not ‘stop crying’ after hearing the news. Friends told the Orlando Sentinel that Mr Vielma was a ‘true friend’, and he had hoped to become an emergency medical technician. One, Olga Glomba, described him as ‘a funny, sweet, nerdy guy without a mean side. He just wanted to make people smile.’

Kimberly Morris, 37

Morris, a bouncer at the nightclub, was a former basketball player at Post University in Connecticut. “She was tough and played hard on the basketball court but off the court she was all smiles.” “She always had a smile on her face,”

Franky Velazquez, 50

DeJesus was a professional dancer who had danced in Puerto Rico and had traveled the world. “Jimmy was lovable, outgoing,” his sister, Sarah Lopez, tells. “He was one of those guys that you wanted to be friends with, you know? One of those people who brightened a room when he walked in.

Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35

Rosado was the father of a 5-year-old child and also a professional dancer, specializing in salsa. Close friend tells that he used to dance for Disney and Universal Studios. “He was a great, great father,” she says. “He was just the most fun, happiest guy you could ever know.”

Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40

Jorge-Reyes had a passion for life, according to friend. Ortiz met Jorge-Reyes, who was originally from Puerto Rico, through her practice, and says, “He was so funny and so alive and savvy.” “He had an extreme talent for the arts and was very creative with makeup,” she shares.

Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33

Tomlinson was a lead singer in Frequency Band, a local cover band that performed top 40 songs, according to longtime friend Jai Saint. “He has a great voice, he is so popular around here. Honestly it’s hard not to enjoy his voice,” Saint tells of his best friend of 10 years. “He’s extremely positive, he’s all about life and living it to the fullest. He had amazing energy, which is hard to come by these days.” Tomlinson graduated from East Carolina University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Communication with a minor in Business Administration.

Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30

Justice worked as an accountant and lived in downtown Orlando. He loved accessorizing with flashy jewelry and loved making others laugh. Justice’s mother Mina received texts from her son throughout the shooting as he hid in the bathroom. At one point he wrote, “He’s coming. I’m gonna die.”

Darryl Roman Burt II, 29

Burt was a member of the Jacksonville Jaycees, a young professional’s group in Florida. “He was personable, social and easy going,”. “Both socially and professionally he was always interested in making positive impact on people’s lives and in the community.” A hard worker, Burt had recently been recommended for a position on the Jaycee’s Board of Directors.

Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32

Drayton, had been through rough times, a friend tells, but was pulling herself together and was happy living in Orlando.

Anthony Luis Laureano Disla, 25

Disla was a talented dancer, who excelled in a variety of styles including salsa, mambo, tango or ballroom was in Orlando to pursue a career as both a dancer and choreographer. His mother, Olga M. Disla, tells: “He was lovely, kind and respectful of others all the time. He liked to help anyone who needed help.”

Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35

Perez, born in Puerto Rico, was obsessed with fitness and loved testing out new fragrances, Agudelo said. He met his longtime partner Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon at the store. Wilson-Leon was also a victim of the shooting. Friend Marisa tells, “Nicest guy you’d ever meet. Both of them, actually. They were magnetic. They’d walk into the room and everyone would turn to look, because they were just so handsome.”

Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37

Wilson-Leon was the manager of a shoe store and longtime love of fellow victim Perez. “They faced the odds, Luis came from Puerto Rico and being gay isn’t totally accepted, obviously here, but it’s not totally accepted there as well,” his cousin Luis Wilson tells. “He is an inspiration. He grew up conflicted but found peace with himself and those around him and he finally had found acceptance and love. Finally found it. And now look.”

Amanda Alvear, 25

Alvear was attending school to be a nurse, and has recently been promoted to the lead pharmacy technician at the pharmacy where she worked, Shannon Marie Baxley, her sister-in-law, tells. “She loved the gay community, the LGBT community. She was straight herself but those were her people, those were her family. She was a magnetic person,” Baxley shares. “She was the loveliest girl, just the sweetest girl.”

Martin Benitez Torres, 33

Longtime friend of Torres, tells that he just had moved to Florida at the end of the last year to continue working for Hertz. He was also studying marketing at Sistema Universitario Ana G Mndez. “He was one of a kind,” she shares. “He was always a person that you could talk to. He was our confidant. He was always surrounded by all of us. We were all women where we used to work, so we used to laugh with him, we used to cry with him. He was a good friend.”

Jerald Arthur Wright, 31

Wright worked in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. Another person who worked with him added that he was “hard-working” and “loved his job.” “He was one of the first to say hi and make us smile and laugh,”

Cory James Connell, 21

Connell enjoyed playing football and basketball and had dreams of becoming a firefighter. While still in pursuit of that dream, Connell studied at Valencia Community College in Orlando and worked stocking shelves at the Publix in Orlando’s Edgewater neighborhood.

Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49

McCool, was battling leukemia when her life was cut short, her niece, Neila Rodriguez, tells. At Pulse with her son Isaiah, McCool was shot in the back and told him to “just run, go.” “She was a cool mom. She was really down-to-earth and open-minded.”

[trinitea-fics]

Too Many Thoughts about Bare: a Pop Opera

So I saw Bare last night (last week actually, it’s taking me a while to write this. @bluejaye91 I’m sorry it’s taken so long) and I’m expectantly emotionally distraught. Anyways, I really love when people share their experiences seeing Bare, ‘cause every production is so different, I thought I’d share some things this production did. 

During the last chorus of You and I Peter and Jason were waltzing together and it was adorable

THEY ADDED A LINE “PETER SIMMONDS, MERCUTIO” WHEN SISTER CHANTELLE ANNOUNCED THE CAST LIST!!! GOD BLESS

I really thought that the McConnell sibling relationship was really sweet, they hugged at the end of Plain Jane Fat Ass

Wonderland was the most CRACKHEAD ENERGY thing I’ve ever seen. They really embarrassed how absurd the ‘White Boy Drug Rap’ is. Lucas was giving it 110%, running around, rapping in everyone’s faces and he LEAP onto the table like a madman. The rest of the Wonderland Crew had this mixed look of embarrassment and amusement. 

The audience went BANANAS afterwards. The Drug Rap literally got one of the biggest applause in the show that they cast missed their cue for the proceeding dialogue.

Jason had a tshirt that said “Saint Cecilia’s Crew 2020″ and I WANT IT

Nadia and Ivy have a unicorn poster in their room omg

During A Quiet Night at Home Nadia was holding a chocolate bar, was staring down it, play around with it in her hands and ended tossing it aside.

BUT THERE WAS NO CELLO IN THIS PRODUCTION AND I’M MAD

I could sing my praises about the actress who play Nadia forever, she was perfect.

During the rave Peter wore a white t shirt with a BLACK VEST ON TOP LIKE THE DWEEB HE IS

OKAY, POSSIBLY ONE OF MY FAVOURITE MOMENT(S) At the end of Rolling Peter and Jason were making out, but then Peter turned away, clearly upset. Then there was this split second where Jason reached his hand out for Peter, who stared at a second before taking it. Only then did Best Kept Secret start. THEN LATER Jason held his hand out like that for Ivy in Promise to during “Maybe I can/Learn to love me”, but then realizes what he’s doing and pulls his hand away. We love a motif!

At the beginning of Birthday, Bitch! Matt was setting up dinner-for-two for him and Ivy and was all sweet and dorky about it before the rest of the gang showed up

In Are You There? the “Who usually leads?” line was directly proceeded by Peter whispering in Matt’s ear about him and Jason. Which I see as Peter expressing his frustration at Jason “leading” and discouraging Peter from coming out. I never really thought about that line that way before.

911 Emergency! “WHAT👏HAS👏HE👏DONE👏FOR👏ME👏LATELY👏”

During the “No such thing as heroes who are queer” line in Ever After Peter and Jason were standing really close together, just staring at each other during that pause, until Jason broke away, looking absolutely heartbroken

You could hear their laboured breaths and it made me #SAD

There was a pride flag in Wedding Bells 🏳️‍🌈 

While the chorus was singing, Peter and Jason were dancing together. Like those cute choreography wedding dances, spinning and dipping each other. Peter ran and jumped into Jason’s arms and Jason picked him up and spun him around full-on ice dance stationary lift style.

They were exchanging rings during the vows, but when Claire came in, Jason dropped the one that he was supposed to give to Peter.

During Touch my Soul when Ivy asks Jason if he’s ever “felt this way before”, Jason was leaning against Peter’s locker, he glanced at it before replying “Yeah, once”

Warning was one of the highlights of the show, by far (which I was utterly surprised by.

Claire was a vocal powerhouse. Like, wow, lady had pipes. I had an out of body experience listening to her sing

When the song finished the audience was silent for a moment, just stunned at what we just experienced. Then one guy said “WOW” really loud, then the audience went NUTS

Peter and Jason almost kissed at the end of Pilgrim's Hands before Jason spotted Ivy

“Loud, proud, and clear.” Sister Chantelle looked out into the audience The Office style.

During God Don’t Make No Trash, Sister Chantelle pointed out to the audience during the line “Every gay man” (A call out!)

Ivy went off to riff-town during the “How can I--” at the end of All Grown Up and it was magnificent

Nadia comforted Ivy at the end of the song and it was so tender

Jason and Nadia hugged at the end of Promise and it made me #SAD

The make it appear like Jason was standing in the light of the cross that was a fixed part of the set while he sang Once Upon a Time

The confessional booth was set on an angle, with Jason closer to the audience. So it felt like Father Flynn was disconnected from the audience/Jason

(I still miss the cello)

As Jason fell, Peter was just able to catch him. Peter was kneeling on the ground with Jason’s head resting on in his lap. Peter closed Jason’s eyes

A Glooming Peace was preformed with the ensemble standing in a semi-circle around Peter kneeling on the ground with Jason in his arms

The “And I forgive you, Father” in Absolution was said much slower than it is on the cast album, with Peter articulating every word. Which made me #SAD 

Moral of the story? Bare made me really sad, but I had so much fun and I wish I could go and see it again. And damn I really want to direct this show now!

Also their social media for this production has been SLAYING. They made an Instagram post with a picture the guy playing the Father Flynn reading “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” with the caption “Our resident priest is hard at work studying how to handle the raucous graduating class of St. Cecilia’s ✌” which askdjhfaksjd. Damn.

And I left a comment on their IG post about how Bare is my favourite show and how I’m grateful I am that they are producing the show and how excited I am to be emotionally devastated by it and replied with “we are so ready to emotionally devastate our sweetest audience member” which made me so soft wtf

[itsanerdlife]

Cruel Boy 27/33

Pairing: Howie Stark x Reader

Warning: Lies. Betrayal. Just a lot of violence. Mentions of Domestic abuse. Parental abuse. Murder Suicide. Death. Guilt. Hate. Deception. Lots and lots of anger.

A/N: This is a bit darker theme, but Howie isn’t dark. Anger problems and bad choices but he’s not a bad person.

Playlist!!

First love. First heart break. Life time of hate. When the silver spoon feeding you love is taken away, you learn to lick it off the knives. Howie Stark broke you. Him and his brother ruined your life. Destroyed your dreams and crushed your soul. Your best friend is dead and your life is a mess. When you take a bartending job, it just happens to be owned by the Bastard Son’s MC. Just your fucking luck. Jokes, you haven’t had luck since Gwen died and Howie ripped out your barely beating heart. There is no way in hell you’re giving him a second chance. Hell will freeze over before you let him touch you again. Not a chance are you ever letting the Stark’s near you again. Hell might have just frozen over.

Tag List Open

“Anything?” Frank, Clint, Bucky, Sam and Steve jog into the waiting room.

“Waiting on a nurse.” Howie swallows.

“Shit.” Frank struggles, dropping into a seat.

“Do we think, Rhodey?” Buck looks between them.

“Right now we’re just trying to focus on the damage done to our girl. We will deal with everything else after that.” His dad silences everyone.

“Y/N Stark? Stark Family?” A nurse steps into the waiting room. Every one of them jumps up. He holds Morgan tightly, standing up.

“That’s us.” His mom nods. Gripping tightly to his dad.

“She took most of the impact from the crash. She’s getting a full set of scans now. She has two broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder. As well as scraps and cuts, a few need stitches.” She explains. “She’s very lucky to be alive. She has a severe concussion; we will be keeping her for a few days.” She looks between them.

“Can we see her?”

“Is she awake?”

“She’s alive?”

The nurse gives them a small smile.

“She is alive. She’s going to be a walking bruise for the next few weeks, but she’s alive. She’s in an out, when she’s back from her scans, I’ll bring you too her. Just immediate family though.” She nods, leaving them.

“Holy fuck she’s alive.” Peter scraps his hand down his face.

“I feel sick.” Howie admits. Morgan slips her hands around his neck, hugging him. “Thanks babe.” He hugs her back.

“How?” She pulls back looking at him.

“Yeah?”

“Y/N okay?” She asks in a small voice.

“She’s,” he can’t figure out how to put it into words.

“Yeah, Y/N’s okay peanut. She’s just banged up right now. So, we’re going to have to take care of her.” Peter steps in. Howie meets his eye, thanking him.

“She can have my room.” She nods softly. It makes him smile, such a sweet girl.

“You’re the best sister ever. I hope you know that.” Howie brushes his nose against hers.

“Y/N is too.” She returns to curling up against him.

“Yeah, she is.” Peter smiles softly at her.

The nurse is approaching them again, this time with a clipboard.

“What is it?” He swallows.

“Her scans show some internal bleeding from her broken ribs. Doctors want to go in and stop it, now.” She looks at the board in her hands. “We need a family member to sign off on the emergency surgery.” Howie can’t move. He’s sucked down the well of bad flashbacks.

“I’ll sign.” His mom stands, taking the board. She quickly signs several pages. “What is this?” She looks at the last page.

“A DNR.” The nurse explains. “Not to resuscitate if she flat lines.” She swallows.

“Fuck that.” His mom rips the paper off, balling it up in her hand. “Save my daughter at all costs.” She thrusts the board back at the nurse. Peter and Howie exchange the same look.

“Of course.” She takes the board hurrying away.

“I got to, um. I need a smoke. Or a drink. Maybe punch something.” Peter’s got his hands in his hair. He jumps up, he’s twitchy and jumpy. Like his body can’t contain itself.

“Pete.” He tries.

“I just need. Something.” Peter mutters, stalking away. His hands scrapping down his face.

“What’s that about?” Bucky looks over.

“Saint Mary’s is where Gwen died.” His mom explains.

“No, she died on this floor. Almost six years ago. After club shit fall on her and Y/N.” Howie bites out. He hands his sister over to his father getting up. He stalks after his brother.

“Peter.” He jogs to catch up to his brother. Peter’s movements are jerky, as if he’s trying to control himself. He turns, slamming his fist into the stair exit door.

“Here again How!” He growls. “Once again, that poor girl is in the fucking hospital because of our shit!” 

“Why do you think I ended it with her the first time.” He stares at his brother.

“What?” Peter spins, glaring at him.

“We lost Gwen. Because of us. I wasn’t going to have that happen to Y/N. Guess I fucked up again. This is on me.” He nods, tucking his hands into his pockets. 

“Fuck.” Peter’s body sags. The fight in his gone, replaced with shock. “What, I know that look.” Peter watches him.

“She’s right. She said it when she came back. I’m fucking cruel. I knew it was a bad idea pulling her back in and I did it anyways. I’m fucking cruel, I ruin everything I touch.” He shrugs, eyes locked on the hospital floor. Peter’s hands grab the front of his sweatshirt, his back slams into the wall.

“You bail in the middle of the night, and leave that fucking girl lying on an operating table right now. I’ll find you Howard Anthony Stark and I’ll break your fucking jaw.” Peter growls. “I know you. I know what you’re thinking. Don’t even fucking think about it.”

“Pete.” He swallows, the soul crushing weight on his chest called guilt.

“She’s my sister, she’s Morgan’s sister. She’s fucking family, dick bag. We don’t walk out on family.” His brother’s voice thunders. “I don’t know what you did or why you did it before, but not again. We’re family, she makes this bullshit whole. Work out your guilt, but don’t walk the fuck away.”

“Okay.” He nods, chewing the side of his cheek. 

----------- 

Almost three hours later, the nurse steps into the waiting room again.

“She’s in her room. If you’d like to sit with her, you can.” She nods.

“Peanut, think you can give your uncle Frank some good hugs?” Howie stands up, walking over to Frank.

“Yeah.” She nods, going to Frank.

“We’re going to check on your sister, we’ll be back.” His mom presses a kiss to her forehead.

“You look like you give good hugs.” Frank adjusts her, so she’s resting against his chest.

“You know who give good hugs?” Morgan asks.

“Who?”

“My seester.” She mutters into his shoulder.

“I want to be offended she didn’t pick one of us.” Peter looks at him as they follow the nurse down the hall.

“But she’s not wrong.”

“Here you go. A nurse will come and check on her every hour, but if you need anything or anything changes, hit the blue button the bed.” The nurse stops in front of an open door.

“Thank you.” Howie manages to get out.

Peter grips his hand as they step into the room. The monitor beeps with her heart rate. Her arm is tucked into a sling, resting against her middle. Hospital gown, bed, and blankets. Purple hair bright against the striking white pillowcase.

Her forehead is stitched up. Mild cuts and scraps across her cheek. Bruise building on her cheek, angry red split in her lip. Her good arm lies on top of the blankets colored with, cuts and bruises. 

“God damn.” Peter swallows moving to one side of the bed. Howie moves to the other side.

“Fuck, Baby Girl.” He swallows, scrapping his hand over his mouth.

“Boys stay with her. Tony, start looking into who ever the fuck hit our girl.” His mother orders.

“Rally the boys, Pepp. I need to make a call.” His dad nods.

“Who are you calling?” Peter looks confused when their mother leaves the room.

“No offense, but I’m not leave you two here distracted without protection just in case.” Their dad looks up from his phone.

“Just keep us in the loop. Whatever you find.” Howie asks, leaning forward in his seat. His hand grasps Y/N’s good one.

“Same for you boys. Whatever the doctors say, let me know.” He nods and leaves the room.

“So we just wait.” Peter nods slowly.

“For her to come back to us, again.” He nods.

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