#That's the rating system because that's how many I drank in 10 minutes.

[penofdamocles]

You'll all be pleased to know that the new Mountain Dew Purple Thunder flavor receives 12/12 empty cans from me, the ultimate authority on the color purple and uniquely flavored beverages. That said I'm making it into kickass ice cream floats who wants some.

[write-orflight]

Galileo: Chapter 5

**Gif Not Mine**

Prev -  Next

Pairings: SpencerXReader, enemies to friends to lovers trope

Rating: M

Words: 2.5K

Warnings: Light smut, 18+

Request: OPEN/CLOSED

Summary: Y/N is an astronomer with her head constantly in the stars. But when a serial killer is threatening NASA’s top scientists, she is left in the protective custody of a man who’s gravitational pull threatens to pull her back down to earth.

A.N Unedited because i’m sleepy. There’s a fic I read when I first joined the fandom that inspired some of this chapter. i can’t remember the name but if you do, please tell me so I can credit. Comment on this chapter only or message to be on taglist please.

                             Chapter 5: Saturn 

There was a rare occurrence that happens sometimes in Space where a Planet will tilt off its axis and disrupt the order of things in the galaxy forever. Even though it hasn’t happened yet, it doesn't make it not possible. You had always thought about that phenomenon and how you never quite understood how so many scientists just blindly believed in that possibility with no proof. It wasn’t until that dance with Spencer that you believed in it. If you were the galaxy, that dance was the tilt in your axis. 

Nothing could quite be the same again. 

It seemed that Spencer himself was the disruptor. 

Since that day, everything between the two of you was different. It was simpler. It was too easy to have conversations, to laugh at each other's jokes, to spit inane useless facts at each other. But it also became too easy to melt at Spencer’s bright smile, too easy to stare at his hands as he helped you with your math sometimes, too easy to flush whenever he paid you a compliment on your work. 

Too easy to fall in love with him. 

You didn’t want to think about that but you couldn’t help it. At first, you wanted to chalk it up to you not knowing how to differentiate your feelings. Maybe you just thought you were in love with him because he was the first guy to be nice to you since Jonathan but as the days went on you knew that to not be the case. None of this felt like how you were with Jonathan. With Spencer, it just felt easy. Just felt right. 

It was the weekend so you had off work. Before you would always end up going into work anyway and getting some extra logs in but now you liked staying in and hanging out with Spencer. Right now the two of you were walking in the plaza near your home, fresh cups of coffee in hand. Spencer, at first, did not want to be out but after some convincing (which was just you threatening to leave without him, which he did not like) he was all for joining you out. The two of you stopped in a bookstore and you made a beeline for the astrology section. You hear Spencer scoff when you pick up a book to look through it. You raise an eyebrow at him. 

“What?” You say. 

“Astrology, really? Aren’t you a scientist?” 

“Yea, an astronomer. I love Space, so while Astrology isn’t a proven science. It’s fun to think the stars have a say in what kinda person you are.” You shrug. “When’s your birthday?” 

“October 28th.” 

“Of course you’re a Scorpio.” 

“That doesn’t mean anything to me. Astrology isn’t real.” 

“You must be real fun at parties.” You roll your eyes. 

“Well, what’s your sign?” 

“I’m a Cancer. Did you know that water signs are the most compatible? Especially Scorpios and Cancers.” 

Spencer laughs out loud at that. You turn looking him in the eye. “What’s funny?” you say. 

“That itself doesn’t tell you that astrology is bullshit?” He laughs. You narrow your eyes at him. “I mean, us, compatible? It’s funny.” 

You try. You try so very hard not to look hurt by his words, you know Spencer’s a profiler and will see right through it. And he does by the sympathetic look he gives you. 

“You’re right, maybe it is bullshit.” You say, putting the book down instantly. “Let’s go home.” 

You and Spencer don’t talk the whole walk home, in fact you don’t talk when you get there. You’re about to just retreat to your room when you feel a hand circle your wrist. 

“I’m sorry.” He says. 

“You didn’t do anything.” 

“I hurt your feelings.” He says. 

“You didn’t hurt my feelings.” You lied. “I’m just with you all the time. Sometimes I just need a minute alone. Is that okay?” 

He lets go of your wrist. “Of course, I’m sorry.” 

You nod and retreat to your room, blowing a heavy breath as you fell into your bed. Might as well take a nap. You thought as you let sleep take you over. 

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

Long, slender fingers found their way into your hair and yanked roughly. You couldn’t help the soft whimper that came behind it. You felt the lips that were sucking hard bruising marks into your neck smirk slightly. His other hand trailed your body lightly until they met their final destination at your sex. You gasp loudly when the digit rubbed soft circles around your clit. 

“Are you going to be good for me?” He asked, you nodded dumbly before moaning out loud when the first digit found its way inside you. Spencer smirked at you. “Look at you. I’ve barely touched you and you’re this wet for me. You want me to fuck you, don’t you?” He asked, you nodded and gasped again as he found that spot inside you. “Hmm, I don’t think you want it enough baby.”   

You’re shaking your head immediately. “No. Ple-please fuck me.” You stutter. “I’ll be good, I swear.” 

The smirk he gives you is almost devilish. “Alright, baby. I’ll take care of you.” He says as you feel member pressing up against your sex--

You wake up to the smell of something burning and Spencer shouting expletives from what you assumed was the kitchen. You groaned, frustratedly. Since that day your mom came to visit, you dreamed of Spencer almost constantly. Today was no different. You couldn’t escape him in your waking hours and now it seemed you couldn’t even escape him sleeping. 

You hop out of bed and run to the kitchen. The sight before is Spencer frantically waving the billowing smoke that was coming from your oven. You run to open your window and turn the oven fan on. You both look at the pan that had something that couldn’t even be described as food anymore by the degree of which it was burned. Spencer looked at you guiltily. 

“You seemed upset so I thought I’d make you dinner but I was reading and I lost track of time. I’m sorry, Y/N.” 

You smile at him. “Thank you for thinking of me but I wanted chinese tonight anyway, sound good?”  You say, he nods gratefully. 

Later the two of you are sitting at your kitchen table, eating chinese out of the takeaway containers. You were talking about nothing and everything until the topic came to College. You talked about how freshman year you did the whole partying thing before quickly finding out it wasn’t your scene and keeping to yourself for the rest of your college career. Spencer told you he never went to any parties in college. 

“You never went to any parties?!” You asked, shocked.

“Well, I was 12. No one was really scrambling to invite me to frat parties.” 

“So you didn’t do any traditional college games? No beer pong? No ‘Never Have I Ever’?” You ask, Spencer shakes his head. That’s when you get a fantastic idea. You get up and look in the cabinet above your stove which is where you kept your liquor and pulled out a bottle of Jameson. Spencer sees this and immediately shakes his head. 

“No.” 

“Aww, come on. Let’s play Never Have I Ever.” You smile. “If you’ve done the thing you drink.” 

“I don’t want to play a remedial drinking game.” 

You think for a second. “How about this? You’re a profiler, right? And I like to think I’m a little observant so how about this. We’ll take turns making assumptions about the other if the person is right, the other drinks and if they’re wrong, you drink.” 

“I don’t know… it probably isn’t wise for me to be drinking. I’m supposed to be watching you.” 

“It’s not like we go anywhere that’s not here anyway.” You say. “Plus, if you're good at your job, you’ll hardly have to drink.” You throw a pouty face on for good measure. Spencer rolls his eyes. 

“Fine.” He says standing up and snatching the bottle from you, walking to the living room. You giggle at him before grabbing two glasses to follow him out. “Just so you know, it’s wrong to peer pressure people.” He says. 

“Well, what’s a college drinking game without peer pressure.” You laugh. 

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

“Who’s starting?” You say as you watch Spencer pour your glass. The two of you are settled on opposite ends of your small couch, facing each other, your knees just almost touching. 

“You can.” Spencer says. “I want to see if you're actually observant.” 

“Okay.” You say, sitting up slightly at the challenge. “You’re an only child.” You say. Spencer raises his eyebrows at you, shocked you actually got something right, but drinks anyway. 

Spencer looks at you for a second. “You have an older sibling you are not close to.” 

You drank. “Yea I’ve got an adoptive older brother. There’s nothing wrong, it’s just he was already much older when I was born and we have nothing in common, other than our parents.” You look at Spencer for a second. “I wanna say divorced parents, but only raised by one.” 

“You’re a lot more observant than I thought.” Spencer says as he drinks. “Dad left when I was 10.” He says offhandedly. 

The game goes like this for a while, both of you confirming your beliefs of each other. You find out about Spencer’s mother's illness, Spencer learning you smoke when you’re stressed. Spencer was winning though, not that you had a problem with that as you wanted to drink, hence why you suggested the game. You were giving him a little bit of a run for his money. It was now your turn and the alcohol in your system must’ve turned off your filter because you say. 

“You’re a virgin.” 

You pause for a second waiting for him to drink when you realize he’s waiting on you to. You widen your eyes in shock but take your drink anyway. “I thought Maeve died before you got to meet her fully.” 

Spencer nods. “She did.” He says, “The two don’t correlate.” He says, like it's obvious. 

You hadn’t been expecting that. “You just didn’t strike as the hit it and quit it type.” 

“And I’m not, but sometimes things are just temporary.” He says looking at you, deeply in your eyes. “You were upset today, in the shop because I said we weren’t compatible.”  

You solemnly take a drink. “Why?” He asks. 

“Hey, that’s not a part of the game.” You say. 

“Please?” He adds. 

You sigh. “I don’t know… I guess, it seemed like the idea of being with me repulsed you. And that was upsetting.” 

Spencer looks at you with the most intense look in his eye. You had never seen that look before and you were glad you hadn’t because it was so heated that it was melting you where you sat. “The idea of being with you…” He says, eyes flickering down to your lips and back to your eyes. “Doesn’t repulse me. Trust me.” 

You knew you weren’t the best at social cues sometimes but that seemed like a pretty big one. You move closer to him, so that your faces were close but someone would still have to make that final move. You realize it’s your turn, so you think, Fuck it...  

“You want to kiss me right now.” You say, looking Spencer in his eyes. He doesn’t say anything, just takes a slow swig from his glass, eyes never leaving yours. He sits his glass down on the table next to him before saying. 

“You want me to kiss you.” 

You sip your drink, looking him right back in the eyes. You sit your glass down next to his and Spencer's hand catches your wrist on its way back. Before you can even get a good look at him, his lips are crashing on to yours. You groan in surprise before melting into it, your hands immediately going for his hair. His massive hands almost engulf your face as he tries to pull you impossibly close to him. He groans as he licks into your mouth, both of you tasting like the Jameson you had just drunk but there was also something under it that was just pure Spencer. You push him back until you are fully seated in his lap. His hands go immediately to your waist. Feeling risky, you experimentally grind your hips, causing Spencer to groan and grip you tighter. His hands slide up your shirt slightly, you moan at that. 

“Fuck-” Spencer says as you suck bruises down his neck. “Fuck, w-we’ve gotta stop.” 

You pull back. “Why?” you ask. 

Spencer swallows, pushing you off his lap. “There’s this thing called transference. You only want me right now because I’m protecting you. You don’t like me.” He says. “We don’t like each other.” 

You realized what Spencer was trying to say. You were both drunk and there, he didn’t really want you. It was being stuck together for so long that was making him attracted to you. You were foolish to think a guy would actually want you. 

“You don’t like me.” You say. “And I read this situation wrong again. God, I’m an idiot!”  

“I didn’t say that, Y/N-” 

“No, you’re right. You only kissed me because I’m what you’ve been stuck with for weeks. You don’t like me. I can’t blame you no guy ever does.” 

“No, Y/N, I just didn’t want to take advan--” 

“I need to smoke. I’m going out.” You say, grabbing. “Alone.” 

“Y/N, that’s not safe and you know it. Let me go with you.” 

“I think we both need to be away from each other. I’ll only be out front. Please.” You plead to him. 

  Spencer doesn’t say anything so you take that as your cue to go. You pull your pack and lighter out the kitchen draw and stomp out the door. As soon as you get in front of the building, you light the first cigarette as stray tears fall down your face. You were such an idiot to think someone like Spencer would want you. Sure you were both smart but you were arrogant and spiteful. Spencer was the sweetest person ever when you got to know him. It was stupid to think there was a world the two of you would work. 

You frustratedly put your cigarette out and stand to head back inside to probably embarrass yourself some more when you feel it. 

The hard slam to the back of your head knocking you out cold. 

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

Taglist: @lokislilslut​ @spencerreidslove​ @evelyncade @ceeellewrites​ @diesinspanishbcimhispanic​ @eevee0722​ @fiftyshadesof-reid​ @cielo1984​ @differentkettleoffishalltogether​ @criminalmindzjunkie​ @bbygirlq2020​ @quillanpie​ @themanwiththreephds​ @itshatertatertotblog​ @bihoeofmanyfandoms​ @baby-i-am-fireproof​ @graciehams​ @no-honey-no​ @capricornmashmallow​ @itsarayofsunshine​ @big-galaxy-chaos​

[lovemesomesurveys]

5,000 questions survey series–part forty-two

These surveys always take me so long to get through, hence why I took such a long break from them. The questions are just too much at times and some are just plain annoying. But, I’ll try and finish it eventually. A couple of you have been taking it lately, so I figured I’d start up again.

4001. How would you rate your sex drive? It’s been non-existent the past few years, honestly.  4002. You are sitting alone with a stack of videos and a vcr. Of the following which are you most likely to puut on (1 is most, 10 is least) I’m just gonna bold which one I’d likely watch out of all of ‘em...

The good the bad and the ugly, dracula, slc punk, twin peaks fire walk with me, jerry springer too hot for tv, singing in the rain, flash gordon, the matrix, blade runner, the muppet movie 4003. Are you more likley to get or send random instant messages? I receive nice messages more often than I receive random ones. I got a rude one recently; however, about how I’m still a 31 year old virgin. Does it affect their life? No. So, don’t worry about it. *eye roll* I do get a lot of random comments on my surveys from su*ar da**ies, though... super annoying. 4004. If you were writing an ad telling people to come to your town what would you say about it? I wouldn’t write such an ad. My town sucks. 4005. What part of your body can you not stand to get an itch on? One that’s hard to reach.

4006. How many people do you suppose have stolen that System of a Down album called 'steal this album'? I haven’t heard anything about that, I’m not even familiar with that album of theirs. I’m there were people who tried/did.  4007. Name a band you like: Linkin Park. What are/were this band's roots and influences? Zeppelin, Run DMC, Public Enemy, Rage Against the Machine, Depeche Mode. 4008. would you rather have a poster of john lennon or a cute fuzzy black cat? Cute fuzzy black cat. 4009. make a public service announcement: Wear a mask! 4010. What makes you feel the need to escape? Just the need for a change of scenery and to help take my mind off things a bit for a little while. I’m sad I couldn’t go to the beach at all this summer because that’s my one place where I’m able to relax at all and just zone out. 4011. You and your signifigant other, crush, interest etc...who is the ernie and who is the bert? I don’t have any of those. 4012. When was the last time you did something and later asked yourself 'did I do the right thing?'? I hate when I forget if I took my medicine or not. I end up taking it, questioning and hoping that I didn’t already take it. I feel so robotic at times and like I’m just living life on autopilot, so things like that tend to happen. 4013. What do you find it hard to say goodbye to? I have a hard time getting rid of things because of my emotional attachment to them. 4014. What is your fantasy valentine's day like? I’ll admit it, it would be nice to experience a Valentine’s Day with someone and actually do something. It’s always been just another day for me. 4015. If you had to have a color for a name, what color would it be? Jade. 4016. Should preference be given to minority students during the college admission process? I think everyone should have the same opportunity.  4017. Sweet wine, fresh crisp appples, bagles with creme cheese and lox...what is the most incredibly luxurious food? I don’t know about those options, but if I were to think of luxurious foods I’d think of like expensive wine, cheeses, fresh fruits, and seafood like caviar and lobster and whatnot. I’m picky so I personally don’t care for fancy foods. 4018. Is there really anything to fear in communism? I don’t know enough about communism and socialism and all that to speak on it. 4019. Best sesame street character: Uhh, Big Bird. most annoying sesame street character: Elmo can be a little annoying sometimes. 4020. feast or famine? I don’t need to overindulge and have excess, I just would like to be able to have food.  4021. Write a poem right here in five minutes or less: Nah. 4022. Do you stay and help clean up after a party? I usually was one to leave early. 4023. Why was the teddy bear named after teddy roosevelt? His name was Theodore, Teddy for short, and apparently while out on a hunting trip he refused to kill a bear and someone dedicated a bear stuffed animal to him and called it Teddy’s Bear. Then it was just called a teddy bear and the rest was history. 4024. What are you the prince or princess of? Uhhh. 4025. Some people think that Christmas should be taken off of public school calanders because it is politically incorrect. What aould you say to this? I say no. It can still be winter break for those who don’t celebrate. 4026. Would you rather go to an excorcism or a step aerobics class? Uh, I think an aerobics class sounds a lot better than an exorcism. I wouldn’t be able to participate in a step aerobics class, though. I’d have to do something else. 4027. Do you believe in spells and curses? No. 4028. What tv show does your family watch together? There isn’t really one all 4 of us watch, but there’s several that 2 or 3 of us watch together. I guess Family Guy or American Dad could be one all 4 of us could watch, although I don’t really care for either one much. 4029. What's on your calander this year? Nothing. 4030. Is anything ruining your life? It has felt that way with my health issues. 4031. How was life meant to be lived? “We were meant to live for so much moreeee.” 🎶

4032. What is your usual breakfast? I rarely have breakfast, but I like breakfast foods like eggs and hash browns. And country gravy, yum. 4033. If you had kids, would you worry about what they did online? Of course.  4034. Will you be maxin and relaxin this weekend? Sure. If not, what are your weekened plans? 4035. Who has the most interesting story to tell: someone who used to fly to asia as a drug trader the ceo of Nike a nyc homeless person a preacher's wife

^^^They all would. 4036. What do you have a bad feeling about? The future regarding this virus. 4037. Do you have a lot to say? No. 4038. If a smallpox vaccine was offered to you, would you take it? Wasn’t that one of the ones given as a baby or child? I should mention I live in the US. 4039. Would you ever work at a kissing booth? No. how about a dunking booth? No. 4040. There is a woman who paints by stripping naked, rolling around in paint and then pressing her body against the canvas. What do you think of her art? I’ve never seen it, but hey do your thing. 4041. Have you ever bought something you saw on tv? Yeah, I mean that’s what commercials are intended to do. However, I’ve never called the number for a product advertisement to order something that way. Like those as seen on TV products. There have been some of those products sold in actual stores, though, that I’ve got like the Snuggie and that Finishing Touch Flawless Razor. 4042. Name a relative:  that relative dies unexpectedly. On the same day 9/11 happens. You can either bring back your relative or bring back 1/2 the people who dies on 9/11. What do you do? I don’t like these type of questions. 4043. Have you gone mental? I’ve definitely felt like that. 4044. What do you think of jews for jesus? You word this like it’s the name of a group or something. Okay, so I Googled it and see that it’s an organization.  4045. Has anyone ever tried to 'save' you? Yes. 4046. Quick! picture santa clause in your head... ...Okay. Was he black or white when you pictured him? White. That’s just how I’ve often seen him portrayed. 4047. Would you ever buy a black santa clause? Sure. Santa isn’t real, you can make him look any way you want. 4048. or take your kids to vist a black santa clause? Yeah? why or why not? Santa is Santa.  4049. What do you smell like? I just smell my clothes laundry detergent scent. 4050. What kind of soup do you eat? I’m a ramen girl all the way. 4051. What have you heard about the next Harry Potter book? Will you pre-order it? I know this is old, but I haven’t read any of the Harry Potter books. 4052. Would you rather go out or stay in? I’m a hermit crab.  4053. What's your favorite song to hear on halloween? I like the classics like Monster Mash. Oh, and the Halloween movie theme music for spooky vibes. 4054. What song makes you feel all tingly like you want to laugh and scream and cry? Uhh I don’t feel that way about any song. 4055. If you were starting a website that was not about you, what Would it be about? Nah. 4056. Do you ever take the long way just for fun? I don’t drive. 4057. '..and god said let there be ____and there I was.' Fill in the blank, as if if you were talking about yourself. ‘...and God said let there be Stephanie and there I was.’ 4058. What do you think of when you hear the word 'mill'? A million.  4059. What do you think of when you hear the name: weird al? Parodies. bob dylan? Music. michael jackson? Moon dance. henry rollins? billy idol? White wedding. gary numan? will smith? Fresh Prince of Bel Air. paul mcartney? Black Bird. alice cooper? Rock and roll. J Lo? Jenny from the Block. 4060. What is one social disater you have had? It was really embarrassing getting sick in front of everyone at my party 7 years ago aka the last time I drank alcohol. I just threw up on myself in front of everyone and sat there and my friend had to help clean me up. What really messes me up is that I don’t remember drinking that much, so I don’t know how I got so drunk. 4061. Can you moonwalk? No. 4062. If a presidential candidate went on late night tv, picked up a guitar and rocked out on it and could really play, would that influence you to like/respect them more? I’d probably be like wow that’s cool, but no I wouldn’t let that influence my vote. Them being able to play an instrument doesn’t say shit about their policies or whether they’d make a good fit for the job. 4064. If it was possible for people to instantly change from one sex to another, would everyone be straight in the end? Uhh just cause they could switch their gender it doesn’t change their brain/sexual preference.  Would you change your sex? No. 4065. Finish the sentance: nobody broke your heart, if you're alone... I don’t know. 4066. Would you rather have a best friend OR a boyfriend/girlfriend on a Friday night? I’d rather stay at home and do my own thing, ha. 4067. Would a woman rather be complimented about her intelligence OR her looks? Depends on the individual.  4068. Do you tend to think of the right thing to say after the moment is gone? Always. Super annoying. 4069. Would you rather a potential mate have nice hair OR nice legs? Nice hair out of the two. 4070. Okay,…. nice hair OR a nice rack/bulge? I don’t look for a “nice bulge” when I look at guys. 4071. What is one thing you thought you would enjoy, but actually didn’t? Hmm. I’m blanking at the moment. 4072. Be in the spotlight OR in the shadows? In the shadows. 4073. What is your favorite part of the newspaper? I haven’t read a newspaper in several years. When I was a kid I loved the comics, though. 4074. What in your life has been an “acquired taste” for you? Alcohol. I never really cared for it, honestly. I drank because my friends were and felt like that’s what people in their early 20s liked to do. And because it was fun sometimes, though I more often just felt like crap. It’s been 7 years since I last drank and I truly haven’t missed it. 4075. Do you find sunlight makes you happier? No. 4076. If you could conquer one fear, it would be...? I’d take care of some health related things. 4077. What's the dumbest thing you've ever seen someone do or heard anyone has done? There’s been a lot of things. 4078. How do you feel about the fact that J-Lo earns 37 million dollars a year? Is that actually true? This survey is also like a decade or so old. Do you buy anything that contributes to her salary? I haven’t bought any JLO related in several years. Is J Lo the ultimate ideal of what a woman should be? To some people. 4079. What is unforgettable beauty? I don’t know. 4080. Worst fashion mistake EVER: I don’t know or care. 4081. What is your advice to someone on their first date? Ha, I’m definitely not one to ask for dating advice. 4082. Is there a musical performer more ridiculous than Avril Lavigne (I don't think there is)? I didn’t think she was ridiculous.  4083. What is the best: daytime talk show? Dr. Phil. late night talk show? I don’t watch any anymore. 4084. Are you afraid of total freedom? What would that mean? 4085. Do you live in an invisible prison? I feel that way with my mind and health. 4086. Who do you feel distant from, that you used to be close to? I’m not close to anyone anymore outside of my immediate family.  4087. Rate the following song lyrics (1 = you like it the most, 9 = you like it the least). Nah, I really hate the rating questions. Maybe you shouldn't care/throw away those dreams/& dare Eden lets me in/I find the seeds of love/And climb upon the highwire/I kiss and tell all my fears I know the pressure is on/In a race for the life of endless love/If it seems to much/Remember/All these things are endless I see the wind, oh I see the trees/Everything is clear in my heart/I see the clouds, oh I see the sky/Everything is clear in our world Inflatable doll/Lover ungrateful/I blew up your body/But you blew my mind Well I jumped into the river/too many times to make it home/I'm out here on my own/drifting all alone/and if it doesn't show/ give it time/to read between the lines The very thought of you makes/My heart sing/Like an April breeze/On the wings of spring/And you appear in all your splendor/My one and only love now I've had lots of girls/most of them from other worlds/but lookin through the galaxey/the valley girls are the ones for me I'm the dandy highwayman so sick of easy fashion/the clumsy boots, peek-a-boo roots that people think so dashing/so what's the point of robbery when nothing is worth taking?/it's kind of tough to tell a scruff the big mistake he's making 4088. Can you name any of the nine bands/songs above? I didn’t even read any of the lyrics. 4089. What would your reaction be if a total stranger called to say s/he loved you and told you that you were to pass the message on to others in a telephone call you make yourself? Uh, I wouldn’t answer a call from a total stranger first of all and even if I actually did, I would be like wtf and hang up.  4090. Would you like to take a journey to jupiter? No. I have no desire to take any trip to outer space. 4091. Can you crack nuts in your bare hands? I’ve never tried, but I’m going to assume that I couldn’t.  4092. Do you take walks at night? No. Or ever. 4093. Beavis and Butthead or daria? Neither. 4094. Cow or chicken? Chicken. 4095. Do you think you will visit China in this life? I don’t see that happening, but who knows.  4096. Are you having a happy day? No. 4097. When was or will be your 'golden birthday' (when your age is the same as your birthdate, like turning 17 on the 17th)? My golden birthday was 3 years ago. 4098. Enlighten everyone with something profound: Nah. 4099. When has the third time been the charm for you? Hmm. 4100. What is kinda sick, but fun? Uhhh.

[morphituu]

Milagro

Chapter 4: “Manifest”

Ch: 1 - 2 - 3 

In uncertainty, he ran his tongue over his clipped tusks, reading each seed packet critically, but this had been the third time he’d done so and he still wasn’t any closer to deciding on one. It wasn’t that he worried about the possible challenges with growing watermelon, it was the damn brands; two of his favorites.

Nick chuffed, shuffling the packets with averted eyes a few times before dropping one into the cart filled with large potted plants Callie had chosen, and placing the other back on the shelf. He looked down- nope, that wouldn’t do. He switched his selection, fighting the impulse to shuffle all over again.

He looked up from his dilemma when Callie turned the corner, a hand on her ever growing stomach and less tension in her shoulders.

“Much better,” she sighed, reaching for the water in the cart.

“At that rate you’re gonna be back in 10 minutes,” he avoided eye contact when he said that, knowing she’d have a placid stare ready for him.

“Or cause your monster baby is sitting on my bladder,” she piped, fiddling with the long, spear like leaves of the plant she’d chosen and delicately tucking in the star like one of the other two she planned to hang from the ceiling beside the sliding glass door.

“Which is why we shouldn’t’ve bought those newborn onesies…” he trailed off, an irked groan coming from her.

“Oh my god here we go again,”

“She’s not gonna fit in them,” Nick argued, firm on this side of the debate they’d had countless times.

“We don’t know how big they will be, so shut it, chato,”

“Keep callin’ me that and I’m gonna stick somethin’ in your mouth.” he said against the shell of her ear, but a quick swipe of her hand pushed his face away before he curled a strong arm around her neck to pull her back in, half-hearted shoves against his chest doing nothing.

Callie only allowed them to complete their purchase until after an associate had guaranteed none of the plants they were buying were harmful to a dog that had an odd obsession with chewing on flowers or greens, even though Nick had assured multiple times he’d Googled it before they even made it to the store.

Walking became a little slower every week that passed, not only because of Callie’s sore back, but for the impressive size of her 17 week belly that had her officially waddling beside him through the parking lot. That also meant when she hoisted herself into the truck now, his hand stayed on her back, ready to catch her if she tumbled. Being so small never posed such a threat.

“To T-Mobile?” he asked as he turned the engine, grinning at her sheepish nod.

“Hopefully it’s just the screen,” she mumbled, looking at the poor state of her shattered phone. “Guess I should invest in one of those Lifeproof cases,”

“Callie proof,” he ribbed, but she couldn’t really disagree with that. Throwing her phone across the room in attempts to simply pull it from her back pocket was an everyday occurrence.

A clustered fluttering stirred in her stomach, and a stifled groan snagged Nick’s attention as she shifted in her seat. “I’m gassy.” she admitted shyly, so he rolled her window down.

↠

Nick eyeballed the shredded, frying tortillas she flipped and stirred, his mouth watering even with lime and tajin coated jicama between his jaws. Just the smell of the blended tomato, onion and garlic was enough to make him groan in anticipation, and he’d even laid the eggs out beside her when the time came to fry them for the chilaquiles.

He popped another piece of jicama in his mouth, wincing at the particularly sour piece.

“Can you start making this everyday?” he inquired over her shoulder, offering her a piece.

“I’m already getting too chubby,” she chewed, pouring the contents of the blender into the pan. Nick’s excitement was evident as he observed, nearly done with his bowl. “I thought my jeans didn’t fit because of my stomach, but I think it’s my ass,”

“I like your big ass,” he kissed her cheek, and she snorted.

“Pervert.”

↠

She could sit and watch this for hours.

Callie never grew tired of watching Nick work on his garden, especially under the sun, shirtless and wearing those old stained and faded jeans he’d had longer than she was around. They hugged those toned thighs deliciously and hung low on his hips, effectively dampening her panties everytime he wore them. Add in a little bit of sweat shining off those chiseled muscles across his back and arms he worked so diligently to build up the past few years, and she had her very own private show from the comfort of their backyard.

Nick liked lap dances, and she loved watching him garden.

She sipped her iced tea, finding herself unbearably thirsty when he stood and walked to the shade of the overhang she laid under, eyes roaming his brawny body up and down as he stuffed his gloves in the pocket of the jeans.

“Should have watermelon in a few months,” he informed, reaching for her cup before sitting by her legs.

“Just in time for summer,” she noted, sliding down her seat when more gas fluttered through her stomach. He hummed as he drank, rubbing her thigh when it stretched across his lap.

“Still feeling dizzy?”

“Only when I stand up too fast,” she soothed, her hand falling to his shoulder when he leaned in towards her stomach.

“Why you harassin’ mama? Huh?” he interrogated playfully, her stomach bumping his nose when she stretched to alleviate more gas that never seemed to actually pass. “I was ready to know what the sex was yesterday,”

“Getting impatient?”

Nick nodded, half a frown curling his mouth. “I wanna meet her already,” he mumbled a little sadly, his palm drawing wide circles over her distended stomach.

“I want her to cook as long as she needs to,” she played along.

Nick grinned. “I’m kind of excited you’ll pop earlier than expected,”

“That’s not a for sure thing,”

His brows perked up, his fingers drumming against her stomach when he said, “Tell that to the little thing 4 weeks ahead of schedule,”

The probe had made multiple passes over the same spot, effectively panicking Callie when the doctors eyes stared unblinking at the monitor, her expression a look into her thoughts she couldn’t decipher.

“Is it alive?” Callie blurted, and Nick grabbed her hand when she tried to sit up.

“Yes- oh goodness, I apologize. Yes it’s alive,” Dr. Sangui assured, pausing to rest a hand on Callie’s thigh. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,”

Callie’s head fell back, hands cupping her head. That engulfed her so rapidly it made her lightheaded. Nick also- his forehead dropped to her shoulder, squeezing her arm in comfort as that momentary torment drained from their system.

“After all the time it took to find you I thought we’d been too late,” Nick exhaled, holding his head in his hands, then holding Callie’s as she slipped her palm into his.

“Oh I understand, it’s hard to find high-risk OBGYN’s that specialize in halflings,” Dr. Sangui sympathized, taking a few shots of the ultrasound. “It’s been about 3 weeks since you’ve seen the doctor that referred you?” she asked, and they both nodded.

“Why the concern?” Callie asked, looking back to the doctor who was still circling in tight swipes over her stomach, her Doctors neat brows curling critically.

Dr. Sangui’s lips curled up in a tender grin. “Your little one looks to be about 4 weeks ahead of schedule,”

The couple studied her words a moment before Callie sat up on her elbows, head tilting before finally saying, “What?”

She turned the monitor, revealing an impressive full body side profile of their baby wiggling in her stomach, and Callie’s restive expression softened before the doctors long, thin finger started pointing to the fuzzy image.

“You can see here- see? Those little hands and fingers? That level of development is normally a milestone at 21 weeks, but the biggest indicator is it’s size. At 17 weeks we’d expect about 5 inches in length, but this little ones already at 9 and around 13 ounces,” she explained, dragging the probe to highlight the little hands they could see curling into fists.

“Does that explain why my back hurts so much?” Callie was distracted when she asked, admiring her lively baby.

“You’ve definitely got a big baby coming your way. At 21 weeks you’d see babies at around 10 ounces,” she reflected out loud, her other fingers tapping thoughtfully against the carob skin of her chin.

“But, it’s okay? Even though it’s growing fast?” Nick asked.

“So far so good. It’s growing closer to the rate of an Orc which is expected since the father is, but I don’t see anything out of the usual even for a halfling. I think an ultrasound next week will solidify my assumption that you’ll have a sooner due date than expected,” she elaborated, helping her sit up. “That being said, this adds a little more caution to be had since you’re already a high risk pregnancy,”

“How’s that?” Nick asked.

“Labor will be something up for discussion,”

“I wanted a natural birth,” Callie reminded.

“Which I’m not against at all, cause, goodness- more power to you, but with halflings, medical intervention may need to be taken. I’ve had many patients who’ve tried delivering vaginally and the baby’s become stuck in the pelvis because of their size. That being said, a woman's body is capable of amazing things, including natural births to large babies,”

Nick cringed a little; imagining a baby that big was… scary, honestly. “So this is… generally normal?” he asked, and she nodded encouragingly.

“Normal Orc gestation is only 7 months. It doesn’t surprise me that the baby is growing faster, I just didn’t expect to be doing a scan on such a developed one when the chart said 17 weeks,” she laughed, her voice harmonic. “But it's a common hiccup in changing doctors. 12 week scans don’t give all that much insight, especially under a nurses scrutiny,”

Callie back tracked, her hand raising. “You said growing closer to the rate of an Orc? I thought they aged slower,”

“Adults age slowly,” she rolled backwards to reach for a laminated chart from the counter, wheeling back before Callie and swiping her coily hair from her cheek before pointing to the illustrations that timelined an Orcs pregnancy. “Orc growth in the womb is rapid if you take into account the shorter pregnancy terms and size at which Orcs are born, but after birth they age relatively close to humans but reach sexual maturity much sooner than humans. 9 or 10 is the normal age for their first heat cycles to start, and the progression of their aging drops dramatically in their early 30’s,”

“You didn’t know that?” Callie poked Nick, but he shook his head.

“I knew pregnancies were quick but I didn’t think it’d equate to you,” he shrugged.

“What about halflings?” Callie turned back to Dr. Sangui.

“Genetic testing after birth can tell us at what percentage they inherited and in turn be able to give us more insight to how they’ll age,”

The couple nodded thoughtfully, taking in all the information they’d been withheld from in their search for a specialist. Neither knew there was such contrasting differences in a crossover pregnancy, but above all, it gave them peace of mind knowing what to expect.

“I always thought I was bigger than I was supposed to be,” Callie mumbled, Nick nodding in agreement. Both of them had noticed that but figured it was just because he’d make big babies. “But everything is okay? It’ll all be okay?” Nick squeezed her thigh reassuringly.

“From what I see, everything is moving beautifully, so I have no reason to be worried about your progression even if you’re ahead of schedule. If you don’t have any further symptoms out of the ordinary, I’d say your body is handling it very well,” her doctor held her hand, reassuring Callie with a gentle smile and honest words. “We’ll start ultrasounds for cervical length next week. We might as well keep them weekly- you know you’re high risk for gestational diabetes or preeclampsia, and we also don’t want the baby to have developed rapidly and your body overfiring and sending you into preterm labor or struggling to catch up if it reaches term sooner,”

“What would happen if any of that happened?”

Her doctor sighed, clasping her hands. “If you went into early labor, there’s medications that would hopefully halt it, but you’d likely be kept in hospital for observation,”

“What if I went into labor tomorrow- I’d have to stay till it’s fully grown?” Callie barked, but she raised her hands calmly.

“Like I said, it all depends on how the pregnancy progresses. Above all the baby decides when it’s done cooking and every halfling is different. So stay calm, drink lots of water and keep exercising. I have no reason thus far to think you wouldn’t go home with a healthy baby and a somewhat decent recovery at the end of a seemingly normal pregnancy,”

Callie’s brows rose unenthusiastically. “Somewhat decent?”

“First time recoveries are always tough. Add in a big baby, it gets tougher,” she explained, lips quirked to the side.

Nick ran his hand over his head, suddenly having multiple things to keep him paranoid at work instead of just one. “So we’re just playing the waiting game?”

“More or less, which in that sense isn’t any different from other pregnancies. You’re doing good, Callie. Everything is normal so far,” Dr. Sangui encouraged, handing off their fresh batch of ultrasound scans.

That eased some of the couples momentary concern, and then Nick’s head perked up. “Does that mean if we wanted we could know the sex?”

Callie’s doctor nodded, one eye closing as she pondered. “You technically could’ve known 3 weeks ago.”

Nick looked to Callie, but she shook her head, turning his hopeful smile into downcast brows and a deep frown.

“Still might decide to cook longer,” she reiterated, smoothing her hand over the back of his head while he placed long smooches against her stomach. Inwardly, she hoped for that. She didn’t know if she could stand seeing their baby in the NICU hooked up to endless wires if her body betrayed her again.

He shrugged. “Either way, as long as it’s healthy,” he turned his head to rest his cheek there, looking up at her. “She’s gonna be so pretty. Just like her mama,”

Callie blew a short raspberry, giggling when he leaned up to press his mouth softly to hers again and again. She held his face, thumbs tracing his handsome cheekbones as he caressed her lips delicately, moaning softly under her delicate touch.

“You tryin’ to be all sweet and stuff?” she whispered against his eager pecks, noticing the shift from tranquil to starved in his amber eyes, the soft scrape of sharp teeth across her lips when he opened his mouth wider to taste her tongue stirring a low moan. Splayed fingers traced to the back of his head, keeping him locked against her.

“Tryin’ to get in your pants is more like it.” he slurred, conjuring seductive giggles when his touch traced upwards along her inner thigh.

↠

“I did! I swear I did,” she laughed, pushing against his bare chest as he looked at her suspiciously.

“And you never said hi?” he teased, earning another attempt at a smack on his chest, but he caught the blow.

“Well you were working so excuse me for being polite, officer,”

“Mhm,” he exhaled, an arm draping under her bare breasts and half his face disappearing beside hers in the lush pillow. “What kinds of calls were these that you stalked me on?”

“Mm,” she pondered thoughtfully, the plump bottom lip she worried between her teeth making Nick lick his own. He wanted to nibble on that lip again. “The one I remember best was at Fifth and Westlake, and the dude had an entire intersection stopped because he was throwing a sword around,” she explained, fingertips tracing the muscle of his forearm. Nick’s interest pulled from her mouth to settle on her sleepy caramels, recalling the start of that strange day years ago.

“You were there for that?” he asked.

She nodded. “I was with my mom next door getting tortillas,”

He adjusted his head. “You saw me arrest him?”

“Mhm. And I remember thinking, damn that ass looks good,” She laughed when he pinched her naked hip, pulling her writhing body closer to his. “And I remember how out of place you looked,”

His brows wrinkled drowsily.

“Like, you wanted to fit in but couldn’t just walk up and join a conversation, not even with the other Orcs around,” she said plainly, turning and stuffing a pillow under her stomach so she could face him and draw the pad of her thumb back and forth across his chin.

Stirring those repressed emotions from lonely days made him shift uncomfortably.

“That was the only time you saw me?” he asked.

“A few other times here and there, the occasional YouTube video. Not constantly until you started coming into the store though. Otherwise you never would’ve noticed me,” she smiled.

“Oh I noticed you. If we would’ve bumped into each other during work I probably woulda been fired trying to track you down,” he chuckled.

“What if you would’ve been cuffing me when we met?”

“Woulda fucked you in the back seat,” he sneered, blocking her hands when she swatted at his face playfully. “Look at us now,” he added lovingly, tracing the curve of her side down to her hip, squeezing as her knee slid up his bare thigh.

“You fit in the world now,” she said softly. Her caresses had already been beckoning him towards her, electrifying his body that’d seemingly just been spent minutes before.

“Only cause I found you in it. I couldn’t have kept going without you,”

“No, you got up everyday and did it. You started it and you’re finishing- I’m just here to cheer you on,” she insisted, and he found himself drowning in the sincerity of her balmy caramel eyes as he kissed her, sitting up on an elbow to lean over her deliciously writhing body.

“Still,” he argued, dragging his fingertips from her knee down her inner thigh as they spread, smirking at the soft shake of her whimper. “Everything was because of you.”

↠

He stood after he finished pulling his Nikes on, returning to their room where she was still sprawled naked across the bed, pillows stuffed around her stomach and limbs with hair fanned around her head like wild vines.

He peppered kisses across her face until she stirred, her hands finding him.

“I’m leaving,” Nick finally placed a soft kiss on her lips.

“Be safe,” she mumbled sleepily, her cheek squished when he gave her another hard one. “I love you,”

“Love you.” He stood straight with a groan, leaving her to melt back into the blankets and pillows as he headed for the front door with his bag in hand. Pucca was given a few messy face rubs when she stretched upwards onto his stomach at the door, and sweetly instructed her to watch over mama while he was away.

At the precinct, he always parked farther from everyone else. A far corner where no one else preferred to leave their vehicles because of the distance to walk, but after years of people opening their car doors into his and riddling his truck with dents and scratches, he now carried the habit with him everywhere he went unless Callie was tagging along.

He made idle conversation with a few friendly officers at the front desk who asked how Callie was doing, one of the men who was an impressive father of 6 daughters offering that if he should have a girl, he could have the mountains of hand-me-downs he and his wife didn’t know what to do with. Nick considered it, and would most likely take him up on the offer. He couldn’t be convinced otherwise that they weren’t having a girl at that point.

Walking into the lockers, he found Sergey, already clad in uniform and tying his boots. His nose scrunched when Nick walked by.

“You did not shower afterwards?” the young Orc griped.

“Says the one who came in for a week smelling like a closed room after an orgy,” Nick retorted snootily, rousing a loud chuff from Sergey, but Nick threw one right back at him alongside a cocky grin.

“Could y’all stop flirting please.” A sour officer commented as he walked by them, smirking to himself.

But the Orcs had the last laugh when they both chuffed loudly in unison, startling the paler man who turned to glare at their toothy sneers.

↠

“No listen,” Nick interrupted, holding up his green tea smoothie. “People that go for Chivas are always fucking hot heads,”

“The hell you say!” Sergey defended heatedly.

“Case in point,” Nick noted, slurping the drink as he sat deeper in the seat, the two waiting for someone to whip around the corner of the street frequented by speeders.

“Oh shut the fuck up, how does Callie put up with your bullshit?” Sergey lamented, staring at Nick critically.

“Cause we like the same team,”

“Which is?”

An arrogant smirk was his answer, but it took Sergey a moment to decipher the expression, and it was a long eye roll when it finally clicked.

“You are not for América,”

“Got an official jersey at home,” Nick boasted, his smug smile from ear to ear. “My baby’s gonna have a little one just like her daddy,”

“You’re a fucking disgrace,” Sergey took a hearty bite of his chicken wrap. “It’s not too late to convert, you know,”

“Callie’s father would murder me if I came over wearing an opposing team's shirt.”

↠

Their nightshift consisted of a few speeding tickets and nothing more by the time their clock ran out, and they were sat back in the locker rooms, changing from their finely ironed attire. Nick always enjoyed taking the vest off; even upon requesting the next size up when more muscle bulked his form, his dimensions didn’t work well with the constricting material.

“Take it easy, old man.” Sergey patted his shoulder after he’d finished changing, but Nick only chuckled, finishing pulling off his boots.

Your mom wants us there by 11 on sunday, read the message from Callie, pinhead sized sprinkles falling onto the screen of his phone once outside. Nick dug in his bag for his beanie, slipping it over his head before replying.

Wear sweats so you can pig out then. my dad's gonna expect your salsas too

He shoved his hand into the pocket of his shorts, pressing the unlock button on his car keys, but his truck didn’t chirp when he did so.

Nick stopped once he looked up from his phone.

The drivers side door was thrown open, the hood popped, and anything inside had been thrown about. Papers, wires, anything that could fit into a compartment was tossed into seats or on the floor, and upon stepping closer, the car seat had also been knocked off its base and was on its side.

Nick spun, wide eyes glaring over the parking lot, anywhere a head could’ve been secretly watching him.

Cautiously he approached the truck, leaning to look in the just under the driver's seat. The aluminum bat was still there. Cold flashbacks of being attacked just outside his truck quickened his heart, his hands fisting and ready to swing this time around.

He leaned farther in- he stopped, stepping back.

His nostrils flared, second guessing his own ability to identify scents he’d picked up years ago. But this one… it was so distinct. It made his stomach roil uneasily like the first time when he inhaled it all those years ago when he’d draped a heavy blanket over her shoulders, trying to make sense of her jumbling words.

Hesitantly, he craned forward, taking deliberate breaths.

Sickly sweet that coated his tongue like syrup.

It was Tikka.

More spins, frantically looking, and waiting for her to pop out and stare at him with those lightning blue eyes, but all was quiet in the parking lot besides the thunder of his heart in his ears.

All the times he’d convinced himself she would never come back- the years and weeks proving that were thrown aside, and he was left standing there in orbiting disbelief, and panic slowly creeping its way into his chest.

His hands were unsteady when he texted Callie that someone had broken into the truck, but even in his distressed state, he absolutely dreaded making the phone call to Kandomere.

↠

Side to side he swayed, face hidden in his palms, it being the only thing that was harnessing his irritation. The varying size of the raindrops pelting against him was one thing, but this being the 3rd time he’d gone over every miniscule detail with Kandomere leading up to this incident was close to sending him over the edge, ready to say fuck it and take the truck before his team was done dusting for fingertips and observing for any small evidence.

“And you found it in disarray?” Kandomere asked again, flipping the small booklet he’d sketched Nick’s statement into.

“Yes, like the first 30 times I told you,” Nick grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“How’re you so sure it’s her?”

“If you’re going to grill me about the certainty of my sense of smell…” Nick started, but Kandomere’s raised hand stopped him.

“I’m not, but could you have mistaken it?”

“Not unless by some coincidence someone smells exactly like her, no,” he near hollered, uncaring of the other elves that looked on at Nick’s impatience with disgust. Nick only had loud growls for them, lips pulled back to bare his pointed teeth.

“Concentrate,” the blue haired elf snapped his fingers, barely fazing Nick. “What else could you have missed? Anything that could’ve been any kind of indication she was nearby?”

Nick’s eyes fluttered as he inhaled; he was seconds away from exploding. “Nothing,”

“Is that certain? Or were you too busy staring off into nothing to bother keeping an alert eye open?” Kandomere asked bitterly, equally annoyed.

“If I wasn’t working today I was balls deep in my girlfriend, and I definitely didn’t see any familiar faces in our bedroom,” Nick snapped back. That silenced the elf, but to what level of discomfort his words caused he couldn’t tell. Enough for him to close his notebook and stuff it into the inner pocket of his pinstripe suit, turning to watch the team continue their inspection.

Nick glanced at him, stood fixed like marble, and couldn’t help but feel a little pleased with himself. Were raunchy outbursts like that what got him to shut up?

It stirred curiosity; a few times Nick and Daryl had pondered over Kandomere’s personal life, but had ultimately agreed that there was no way anyone could put up with his cold exterior, just as they were certain no one could meet up to the high expectations they assumed he had. At the mention of Nick’s sex life, it seemed to make him further reserved.

“Shield of Light has gone dark,”

Nick’s head snapped in his direction. “Dark? Like-”

“They’ve disappeared. Headquarters, outposts, recruiters- they’ve all been wiped off the face of the Earth,” Kandomere explained, his sunken eyes tireder than most days. “We can’t find any trace they’ve even existed except for a few bodies that have been scattered across LA,���

That sent an alarming chill down the back of Nick’s neck and through his spine.

“She’s bringing something with her. I need your full cooperation,” Kandomere stated, but not harshly like he’d had the habit of doing before. There was an air of desperation in his voice, and it got Nick wondering. If they reported to him, who did Kandomere report to? What kind of repercussions did he face when results weren’t yielded?

“You act like we haven’t cooperated in the past,” Nick mumbled, still sour.

Kandomere nodded, more in the swaying motion of his shoulders before he started turning. “More or less.”

And he moved away, passing words between the head of the team that was finishing with his truck after a couple hours of intensive inspections.

They left it with all the doors open, and almost messier than when he’d found it. Scraps of red tape and sterile utensils were discarded inside the truck, fingerprint powder dusted all over the place. The car seat was completely flipped and covered in it.

Nick huffed, pulling it out and using the sleeve of his jacket to wipe it down.

He did so bitterly, but when adjusting the small straps, his fingers were gentle as he centered it, and placed it back in it’s base still buckled into the seat. Papers and cords were wound and stacked, placed back in their appropriate compartments, his battery hooked up once again, and thankfully his truck roared to life with only a few sputters. He didn’t want to be stuck here anymore.

↠

Pucca barked and jumped excitedly behind the door, knocking Nick loose of his immersive thoughts enough to notice the kitchen light was still on. Once in and pushed past his bulldozer of a pitbull jumping almost as high as him, he found Callie leaned against the counter, chewing a banana.

Immediately, his world stopped spinning as madly, and he could focus on the beauty before him, cloaked in one of his long sleeve thermals that wasn’t loose enough to conceal that impressive belly that held their baby.

Exhaustion flooded him, and he could let go of the breath he’d unknowingly been holding.

“You’re still up?” he asked, setting his belongings down.

“I was worried about you. And I got the munchies,” she said with a cheekful, kissing him after he dragged his feet to her and hung against her loosely. She encircled his broad shoulders when he hid his face against her neck, groaning loudly at the soothing sensation of her hand massaging away the last of his qualms.

“How’s the truck?” she asked, taking another bite behind his head.

“Nothing was taken,”

“Nothing to take,”

“Except that $400 car seat,” he mumbled.

“Must’ve been after electronics then,” she decided, placing her peel down to better hold her clearly agitated companion who was boneless against her, yet felt the slightest of tension in his frame, like he couldn’t fully relax. “Did you have a bad day?”

He nodded, lying. At what point he would tell Callie about what was happening he wasn’t sure, but that night didn’t seem like the right time when so much was still up in the air. If he fessed up, he’d have the same amount of answers for her that Kandomere had. A whole lot of nothing.

“I have something that’ll make you feel better,” she grinned, and reluctantly peeled himself from her when she pushed back on his shoulders.

Up came the shirt, stuffed under her bust, and a short pause before she grabbed his hand and rested his fingers flat on the left underside of her belly. He rocked onto one leg when another pause came, but then his eyes shot to hers, meeting her wide grin.

“Is that…?” he asked, his other hand joining.

“I thought I was feeling gas all day but they’re little kicks,” she smiled, pulling his hand beside her belly button to follow the soft tapping below his touch.

He watched, waiting to see if he could catch the visual of the little thumps he felt drumming under his contact, but after he followed the baby’s small steps a full orbit around her stomach, he figured it wasn’t yet big enough to make such an impact. Either way, it left him breathless, and in complete awe. It had always amazed him how far along Callie had come in her pregnancy, but feeling the tiny life prove its existence was overwhelming, and beautiful.

“What’s it feel like?” he asked, his earlier grievances lightyears away.

She thought about that for a moment; such a tricky thing to explain. “Sometimes like gas bubbles, but you know when you’re on a roller coaster and your stomach flips during a drop? That’s kind of what these ones feel like,” she explained as best she could.

“How’d you figure it out?” More kicks, and he could almost cry.

“Gas eventually comes out,” she chuckled, and he did in return. He took his wide hands to lay flat over her belly, admiring the swirls beneath his touch.

“Active little thing,”

“Tell me about it. Got a feeling I’m not gonna be getting too much sleep anymore,” she drawled, and he chuckled sympathetically, pulling her in for a warm hung, his face buried close to her neck.

“I guess I’m obligated to give you more back rubs then.” he admitted, and she agreed wholeheartedly, rubbing his back as he caressed her entirely, astounded by the miracle she was growing, and already loving so extraordinarily. It brought everything into a more manageable perspective, too, somehow. As he held her, he understood then that he’d deal with Kandomere, and any grueling process to make sure no harm would befall Callie or their baby. If he could keep this bottled, there’d be no overflow.

He stepped back to hold her belly again as their small miracle danced beneath his palms.

↠

The worn, battered laptop barely functioned enough to carry on the task of scrambling the lockscreens of the stolen phones, and it took some hard slaps against its surface to even get the program running as the fan spun loudly inside. Most of these phones had been put through the ringer already, many having cracked screens and slow startups, but he’d still carry out the task at hand until something decided to crap out on him.

He didn’t turn his impressive head of platinum curls when heels approached behind him, instead asking in his lurid voice, “How’d it go?”

A black heel stepped mercilessly on one of the phones, ending it’s ability to assist them any further.

His lips pulled into a straight line as he calmly detached it and tossed it into the pile of other broken, useless phones.

“Not good then?” he added, and Tikka opened her bag to drop another handful of phones and a laptop beside him with no regard to their well being.

“Waste of time,” she remarked vehemently, clopping to an adjacent wall to slide down, her fingers sliding into her long locks that were knotted and tousled around her shoulders. She couldn’t stand to look at the state of her dirty hands, or equally messy clothing, and instead closed her eyes to try and search for any moment of peace she could hold onto.

“I told you,” he intoned, and was met by lightning blue eyes glaring him down.

“I assumed they’d still be friends,” she argued, crossing her ankles. Everything on her felt heavy, and dirty. Like she’d become a giant scab.

“You can be friends and not keep extensive information about one another,”

“Fero,” she sighed his name, rubbing her palms over her eyes.

“I’m just saying-”

“You’ve said enough!” she snapped, dazzling fangs flashing. “I don’t want to involve Jakoby anymore than we have to,”

His already curved brow arched upwards. “Why the sudden change of heart?”

Her head hit the wall behind her, letting go of a long breath as she said, “He had a baby carrier in his car,”

Fero sucked in air between his equally sharp teeth, his luminescent eyes squinting. “Yikes. Doesn’t the Bright have a daughter?”

She nodded with her face in her hands. “He’s our only choice now. Without him, this whole journey is pointless,”

“If he doesn’t agree then this is all pointless, you mean,” he simpered, but she didn’t look up. Her head remained hung, picking grime from beneath her nails and the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Fero looked over her, sympathy stirring in his heart at the sight of his emotionally and mentally wounded lover. He left the laptop to finish its task, scooting before Tikka and drawing her hands into his to place sweet kisses across her knuckles. She watched him, unmoving, unable.

“Why don’t we go into hiding with them?” he asked, again, for the hundredth time. Her eyes rolled back with her head, groaning tiredly. “Why does it have to be us? You say you don’t blame the others for scattering so why don’t we, Tikka? Why should we have left our lives in Brazil for this blind mission?”

“Because I knew from the beginning there was darkness in Makhel’s heart and I remained silent. It’s my fault so many have died,” she spoke sadly, unable to meet his eyes.

“It’s not-”

“It is,” she looked up, bringing forth the slightest of her relentlessness. “I thought we would see miracles from this new worlds first Orc Bright but we’ve only seen genocide. I taught him everything he knows. I have to finish this,”

Fero only nodded slowly, dropping his head to her hands cupped in his. Her forehead dropped to his curly locks, the both of them tired, and hungry, and dirty, and scared. Again her eyes closed, searching for the smallest amount of rest she could wrap herself in, but his eyes were trained to the years old leather bag stuffed into the corner of the ratty motel they seeked shelter in, a low hum emitting from it.

“When we return home, I never want to see a wand again,” he mumbled, and she tittered.

“I never want to leave home again after this.”

Tikka didn’t know how well she masked her dread in that statement, but when he nodded in agreeance, she assumed he didn’t catch onto the impending doom she knew was lurking over them. After this- all the battles she’d waged and the ones coming for them in the night, she knew there’d be no returning home.

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

don't @ my Chivas 😎

OOOOOOOO trouble is stirring in LA again!! slice of life nick and callie are fun to conjure up and write. thanks for reading! i always appreciate feedback 🖤

[cksmart-world]

The completely unnecessary news analysis

by Christopher Smart

February 2, 2020

WHY REPUBLICANS NIXED WITNESSES

1 - He did it, but it's not an impeachable offense.

2 - He did it, but let the voters decide in November.

3 – This is a hoax lynching, so F-off.

4 - The House didn't have any first-hand witnesses, so it's Nancy Pelosi's fault.

5 - Jon Bolton is a disgruntled, rabid, angry man who had a bad childhood.

6 - We can't waste time on this, because if we do, we can't waste time on other stuff.

7 - The whistle blower is a subversive communist who must be unmasked and hanged, or at least given a pantsing by Rand Paul.

8 - He did it, but if I vote for witnesses, I'll be disinvited from CPAC and be reduced to drinking milkshakes with Mitt Romney in the cloakroom — I could even wind up with my head on a pike.

9 - He did it, but if we call witnesses, Americans will get an up-close account of how to run a criminal enterprise from the White House and that would hurt our democracy.

10 - He did it, but Congress has given up its constitutional mandate to check the power of the president. Long live Trump.

DUCK AND COVER, LEGISLATURE IN SESSION

The staff here at Smart Bomb has loaded up on emergency supplies: water, trail mix, flashlights and toilet paper — everything needed to survive a cataclysm. That's right, the Utah Legislature is in session. One of the slimiest and oft-used ploys on Capital Hill is something called a “boxcar.” That's when a legislator puts up a bill that is blank. Cagey lawmakers then wait until the last minute confusion of the session to sneak in language out of the Old Testament and have it voted through before anyone can say, lights out. But the staff here at Smart Bomb has cleverly embedded moles in the Republican caucus to get the skinny. One boxcar would amend Utah liquor law to mandate that fine wine be served in beer mugs. This would dissuade people from drinking wine. A companion boxcar would mandate that beer be served only in champaign flutes. Imagine that at the Twilight Lounge. Another boxcar would force pregnant women to watch a fetus grilled on the spit of a Weber Barbecue before seeking an abortion. This is when some new residents call back the Mayflower Movers. Our intel has it that another one would require everyone over 18 to carry a firearm. The legislation is labeled, “The Safe Utah Law.” Wilson and the band have loaded up on California bud and Pabst Blue Ribbon — it's going to be a long, strange haul to March 14.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN' IN FINALND

The American Dream is a lot easier to achieve in Finland. So says Sanna Marin, the Finnish prime minister. “We have a very good education system. We have a good health-care and social welfare system that allows anybody to become anything.” These are probably some of the reasons Finland gets ranked the happiest country in the world.” The United States is ranked 17th. Nordic countries are at the top of the World Economic Forum’s “Social Mobility Index,” that evaluates how citizens from all walks of life fare in health, educational achievement and income. The United States ranks No. 27. Don't tell that to Donald Trump (not that you could). But that's not all. In Finland health care is free — for everyone. The Finn's spend about $4,000 per person per year. The U.S. health-care system, by contrast, spends more than $10,000 per person per year. And no surprise, Finns are healthier. Finland also has one of the lowest poverty rates in the world — 6.3 percent compared to 11.8 percent in the U.S. All of that may be true, but the Finns don't have the Super Bowl and pelvis-grinding half-time shows. So put that in your kalakukko and smoke it.

SUPER SUNDAY IS AS AMERICAN AS GUACAMOLE

The nation's big celebration is in the books for another year and many people actually know who won the game. By Easter, few will remember the come-from-behind spectacle of Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. But, hey, the important thing is that Americans all got together in front of a TV and didn't talk politics. We were united by chicken wings and guacamole. Americans ate 1.38 Billion (with a 'B') chicken wings, according to Food & Drink magazine. (We did not make this up.) But that's not all. Americans devoured an estimated 153 Million pounds of avocados for guacamole on Super Sunday, along with 14,500 tons of chips. To wash it all down, we drank an estimated 162 million gallons of beer. On average, each American consumed 2,400 calories. Football, of course, is a dangerous sport — for spectators: Since 2013, avocado accidents  (removing the pit with a knife) have accounted for 27,059 trips to the emergency room — the majority of which occurred on Super Sunday. There is no reliable data on hangovers, but a potentially record number of people took Monday off. It's the god's honest truth.

Post Script — There it is, another historic week here at Smart Bomb. And when we say historic, we aren't just whistling “Dixie.” This will go down as the time when unabashed Republican senators tied themselves up in integrity pretzels that even they found embarrassing. Can't you just see Lindsey Graham years from now in his rocking chair gazing out at yesteryear: “The Devil made me do it.” Right. Closer to the present, Michael Bloomberg has drawn first blood in our never-ending presidential campaign: “Trump is a pathological liar who lies about everything: his fake hair, his obesity, and his spray-on tan.” Ouch. That hit the Insulter-In-Chief right where he lives.  And speaking of Trumpness, Brian Wilson has called for a boycott of The Beach Boys over their upcoming engagement at a trophy-hunting event featuring Donald Trump Jr. Mike Love is the only remaining member of the '60s California band, who sang about surfing, cars, girls and big-game safaris. WTF. The original quintet (The Wilson brothers, Brian Dennis and Carl and their cousin, Al Jardine) wouldn't  be caught dead posing with a leopard carcass. “Help me Rhonda, help me Rhonda now, shoot that big ol' rhinoceros...” Yecht. There ought to be a law. But what are you going to do?

OK, Wilson, wake up the band and take us out with a little feel-good for Punxsutawney Phil's early spring: Well, she got her daddy's car / And she cruised to the hamburger stand, now / Seems she forgot all about the library / Like she told her old man, now / And with the radio blasting / Goes cruising just as fast as she can now / And she'll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes the T-bird away...

[obiternihili]

Ngo writes for the National Review and Quillette. Spins stories such as a hit and run into a group of BLM protestors as antifa attacking an old man. ( https://katu.com/news/local/driver-plows-through-protesters-in-downtown-portland | https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-leftist-mob-polices-portland-1539298766 ) . In the aftermath of that, right wing groups started protesting around Portland which led to what should be understood in democratic countries as normal outcomes of protest; groups A and anti-A arguing in the streets, occasionally breaking out into brawls in the same way drunks do in bars or sports fans do in parking lots. https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/10/13/portland-streets-descend-into-bedlam-again-as-proud-boys-and-antifascists-maul-each-other/

And because apparently now “militant” means throwing a milkshake, despite the A groups being known for literally killing people, despite far-A groups being known for stockpiling weapons. An informal, completely unorganized aesthetic some informal counter-protestors with all the coordination of football brawlers get the militant label while the people they’re reacting to, people who nakedly want to overthrow democracy and commit human rights violations discriminating against and deporting a reasonable chunk of the country, despite being nakedly in bed with explicitly white nationalist groups and pushing their agenda, one gets the label militant and the other doesn’t. Gee, I wonder why?

At this point I’m largely going to plagiarize the article I’m using as a middle man. Sorry I just figure if I lead with the source instead of putting the text down as is you’d dismiss it instead of considering the fact that the article draws its information from such horrifically communist tabloids as “a local sinclair broadcaster” or “the wsj” “ It didn’t end there. The flash march created new viral moments. A video of a left-wing activist harassing a woman claiming to be a 9/11 widow was posted days later to The Daily Caller, which was cofounded by Tucker Carlson. (The woman appears to have lied about being a 9/11 widow.) Efforts to doxx the man hurling invective resulted in a professional skateboarder from Portland being falsely identified and inundated with death threats. Eventually the man in the video was identified, which started a new round of harassment. One source says the social service agency that fired him over the video “was flooded with hundreds of harassing calls and Facebook messages that were explicitly racist and threatening to harm and kill staff.”

Carlson credited Ngo with publicizing the videos. Ngo was a bit player, but the incident bolstered him. The incident was an example of a disturbing media model for the Trump era: opportunists using biased reporting, social media, and wild accusations inflame vigilante and digital mobs to target “enemies” such as the media, Democrats, and left-wing activists. Figures like Carlson and Ngo reap followers, prominence, and income from the outrage and threats of violence. But to keep the ratings and the money flowing, the outrage machine must be cranked ever louder, risking greater violence.

One political organizer in Portland who has received death threats stemming from Ngo’s work says, “It’s an arms race for money, and the narrative isn��t the point — the grift is. The larger, more offensive thing you can do, the system rewards it.”

This appears to be Ngo’s model. He uses social media to push biased opinions in conjunction with selectively edited videos that play to the bigotry of his audience. His followers get worked up, and this is often followed by a deluge of threats against his subject.

[source] has talked to six people in Portland, including journalists, political officials, and activists, who described harassing messages and threats of violence resulting from Ngo’s work or political involvement in Portland. Friends of two other activists claim they went into hiding after Ngo spread their names and they became targets of harassment. Some individuals who’ve tangled publicly with Ngo are reluctant to go on the record. They say they want to avoid the “trauma” of being subjected to a new round of death threats.

In fact, Ngo appears to rely on people not speaking up about his effect on them. He often writes of how activists won’t talk to him or they take down social media profiles after he focuses on them, seeming to imply they have something to hide. What he doesn’t mention is many say they are doing so to avoid harassment and threats of violence.

Madison, a Portland activist who tracks Ngo, says, “Ngo signals this is a person that should be targeted, should be harassed, and should be threatened. Andy puts a target on them and that results in the person being doxxed. Andy is giving people explicit permission to unleash hatred and violence on people. He absolutely knows what he is doing.” 

Ngo is so intertwined with the specter of violence [writer I’m plagiarizing] encountered it after just a Facebook post.  [writer I’m plagiarizing] wrote a post with the headline, “Andy Ngo is no journalist.” The post was shared by notorious right-wing figure, Carl Benjamin, aka, “Sargon of Akkad,” who has been featured on Ngo’s podcast and was banned from YouTube for repeatedly “joking” about raping a British Labour MP. In the comments on Benjamin’s post were calls for violence against [writer I’m plagiarizing], Antifa, and others. Within hours  [writer I’m plagiarizing] started receiving threats directly, such as “You’re a bunch of retards and it will be a glorious day when you all are dealt with,” and “You are a disgraceful liar. If you or anyone of your ilk throws even a fucking tissue at me or my family watch what the fuck happens to your family lol.”

Now this model threatens to turn deadly. On June 29, Andy Ngo was attacked in Portland while videoing a Patriot Prayer rally heavily outnumbered by Antifa. A video shows him being punched, kicked, and hit with coconut milkshakes and silly string by masked individuals. Within minutes, videos of the attack and of a beaten Ngo narrating the incident were picked up by right-wing media such as Breitbart that have a dodgy relationship to facts. Headlines screaming brutal assault, vicious assault, and vicious attack by Antifa on Ngo were pumped out.

The sensationalism breached the mainstream with CNN’s Jake Tapper sending out an ill-informed tweet above a video of Ngo being attacked, writing, “Antifa regularly attacks journalists; it’s reprehensible.”

In a bizarre twist, the Portland police threw fuel on the fire by tweeting that some milkshakes thrown on June 29 “contained quick-drying cement.” The police never provided evidence and observers, including journalists, noted that many counterprotesters drank the milkshakes, making it extremely unlikely anyone could have laced them with concrete. But amplified by conspiracy theorists like Jack Prosobiec, the tweet went viral, whereupon right-wing media turned the disinformation into fact and the mainstream press treated it as a credible assertion. The police tweet incited the Right further and the group that made the milkshakes was deluged with death threats. It culminated in the city being flooded with death threats. Days after Ngo was attacked, City Hall was evacuated after a bomb threat. One source inside City Hall says the mayor’s office received “insane vitriol” and every office was receiving threats, including almost 100 harassing calls that tied up emergency service dispatchers.

Far-right figures responded to the June 29 attack on Ngo with graphic threats, and plan to hold an “End Domestic Terrorism” and “End Antifa” rally in Portland on August 17. Such is the level of far-right anger that many in the city fear the rally could become another Charlottesville, or worse — given the anti-Latino murder spree in El Paso and other foiled white nationalist plots since then.”

Here’s a point where I mildly disagree with the writer I’m plagiarizing:

“ To be clear, the attack on Ngo should be condemned. It serves no political purpose, and the Left should not be attacking media makers, even if they use dicey methods.”

Ngo doxxes people and sicks his far right buddies on them, and it’s known he doesn’t do the due diligence to make sure the people he’s targeting are actually guilty. If you think it’s wrong when left-wing adjacent people on tungle or twitter do it, it’s still wrong when right wingers do it, holy shit. If you think it’s dangerous, the type of action that gets people lynched, you’re right! Fuckers like him and Milo need to be silenced. Yes, legally it’s unfeasible to do this without opening people up to loosing their freedom to publish or accuse; which is what movements like antifa serve to do - they do the dirty work the law cannot do so the law doesn’t have to break over every item-line exception to the necessarily clumsy, overgeneralized, poorly thought out “““principle”““ put into place. It’s the same sort of deal as wide-eyed idealistic and overly-narrowly focused deontic reasoning and utilitarian thinking, you know, the ethics that actually deal with consequences and reality.

Does it break the law? Yes. Does it violate principles? Yes. That’s the point - the principles underlying this shit aren’t fundamentally different mechanically speaking from the principles that lead to people’s hands being chopped off for stealing a snickers bar or because they didn’t want to live as a serf or why people are content with sending ethnic minorities to concentration camps because the Party said so. A principle that doesn’t have the nuance or flexibility to recognize when it needs to let other principles take the lead is a bad principle; you’ve fetishized it.

Of course there are other issues too. If you’re not comfortable letting Nazis throw milkshakes too you should be comfortable with people getting arrested for it. But of course fuck all because the cops take one side in all of this, lying about wet cement mix as seen above, so this principle needs to be nuanced for the fact that some people receive more violence from law enforcement than others.

It’s late, I’m tired, lazy, mad, and exhausted. At some point before the last paragraph I was going to ask for evidence of antifa kills comparable at all to the number of far-right kills in the last decade in America. Because it’s a valid question that’s rarely answered. Because again antifa have all the organizational structure and systematization of belief as drunks at a bar. But I can’t remember my rhetorical point.

Continuing.

“Some Antifa activists in Portland also admit the attack played into right-wing hands by elevating him.

That is exactly what’s happened. Trump has beatified Ngo as one of his sinless followers — “A single man standing there with a camera who never got hit and never hit back before in his life” — under assault from the “evil” Antifa full of “sick, bad people.”

But it would also be a mistake to see Ngo as an innocent or as a journalist, considering that whoever he turns his camera, social media, or pen on is at significant risk of being inundated with violent threats from the far right.

Shane Burley is author of Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It, and a Portland-based journalist who covered the June 29 rally. He says, “I would never condone what happened to Andy Ngo, but I think there is a reason why he got in a conflict with protesters and dozens of other reporters present seemed to be left alone.”

Burley says, “One way to think of Andy Ngo is he is part of a far-right mediasphere that creates victimization narratives of conservatism and profit from it. It’s all about the embattled American man who is under siege at every turn, whether its trans children, immigrant criminals, anchor babies, or dangerous college campuses. ‘They are all out to destroy us and our values.’ It’s an entire infrastructure that’s moved from commentary like National Review to populist media hucksters drumming up a controversy. Ngo doesn’t seem to have many real journalistic credentials, and any he does is from creating controversy. He gets in the Wall Street Journal and New York Post from being a conservative celebrity. His actual reporting is very infrequent and sparse.”

Ngo adds a new element in facilitating violence, intentionally or not. Burley says, “He appears to target ideological opponents, which can make them fair game for harassment and violent confrontation.” The scale of the threats keep escalating. Now Portland is bracing for the August 17 rally.

                         Killing in the Name of Free Speech?                                      

For the last few years, the far right has used fascistic language about “cleansing” Portland, while its brawlers wore T-shirts proclaiming themselves kindred to South American death squads that killed thousands of leftists in the 1970s. But in advance of August 17, the language and memes from the far right have become more extreme. They’ve posted dozens of threats on social media pledging to kill Antifa and naming left-wing activists in Portland who should be shot during the End Antifa rally.

Individuals affiliated with Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys talk of wanting to “slaughter” Antifa. Others have posted hair-raising images of a Portland activist and his partner with crosshairs over their faces and the words, “End Domestic Terrorist’s [sic].” Another image is of a knife cutting the throat of an antifascist with blood spraying out. This is especially ominous. In April 2017 white supremacist Jeremy Christian attended a Patriot Prayer in Portland and threw Nazi salutes while yelling “Die Muslims!” Weeks later Christian allegedly slashed the throats of three men, killing two, after they came to the defense of two black teenage girls, one wearing a hijab, whom Christian threatened by saying, “Go home. We need America here!”

One organizer of the End Antifa rally is Joe Biggs, a former staffer at Alex Jones’s Infowars website who has “encouraged date rape and punching transgender people.” He shared an illustration for the rally of a Proud Boy punching an antifascist, warning, “Free speech was fought for and paid for with blood. It will not be lost for anything less!” Biggs, whose Twitter account was suspended recently, used the platform to advise his followers to bring guns and declared “DEATH TO ANTIFA!!!!!!”

After the FBI visited him, Biggs now says “he wants a peaceful demonstration and has told his followers to keep their weapons at home.”

But that may be too little, too late as the far right is encouraging potential mass shooters to come to the rally. Recently, Haley Adams, a provocateur in Portland who told a reporter last year, “Damn straight I support white pride,” said on Facebook she “couldn’t wait” to meet Thomas Bartram on August 17. Bartram is an Infowars fan who showed up in El Paso days after the anti-Hispanic massacre and was briefly detained after allegedly brandishing a gun and trying to enter a migrant solidarity center. The center claimed police did not search Bartram’s truck that was decked out with violent pro-Trump images, saying “he has rights.” After being released, Bartram told media he was headed to the End Antifa rally.

What connects these dots is Andy Ngo. He even did his bit to stoke right-wing paranoia in El Paso. In a July 29 tweet Ngo included an image of a flyer about an immigrant rights “border resistance tour.” Ngo claimed stick figures on the flyer represent “border enforcement officers being killed & government property fired bombed” as part of a plot by Antifa to “converge on a 10-day siege in El Paso, TX.” It’s been retweeted more than 11,000 times and hundreds of comments endorse violence against Antifa. Four days later Patrick Crusius allegedly killed twenty-two people in an El Paso Walmart in “response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

                         Gateway Bigotry                                      

Ngo’s ascendancy began as an editor at the Portland State University newspaper, The Vanguard. At a university interfaith panel convened in April 2017, Ngo tweeted a brief video claiming, “the Muslim student speaker said that apostates will be killed or banished in an Islamic state.” The entire clip shows the student gave a long answer in response to a hypothetical question about Quranic law. The panelists stressed they weren’t experts, and the Muslim student later said “he may have misspoke.”

Ngo’s tweet was picked up by Breitbart. The Vanguard fired him days later for a “dangerous oversimplification that violated very clear ethics outlined by the Society of Professional Journalists.” The Vanguard said Ngo’s actions “placed a PSU student in significant danger.” Ngo twisted his termination into an article for The National Review, “Fired for Reporting the Truth,” which the student paper said was a “misrepresentation” that resulted in “unjust threats” against them.

Critics see this episode as establishing a pattern in Ngo’s work: using charged language and selective facts on social media that stoke bigotry, putting his subject at risk of harassment while boosting his own reach and status. It worked because in 2018 Ngo graduated to writing a “racist” and “massively Islamophobic” travelogue to two Islamic communities in England for the Wall Street Journal.

But it’s in the city of Portland and state of Oregon that Ngo calls home where the most damage has been wrought. Zakir Khan is board chair of the Oregon chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy and civil rights organization. Khan says of Ngo, “That guy is obsessed with us.”

Ngo has tweeted dozens of times about CAIR, saying it “has done PR for terrorists & their families.” He characterized CAIR’s representation of the surviving child of the Muslim couple who committed the 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino as advocating for “the terrorists’ orphaned baby.”

Recently, in a sprawling New York Post opinion Ngo claimed a “suspicious rise” in gay hate crimes in Portland fits a pattern of hoaxes. (Ngo found space in his 2,100-word article to quote a member of the Proud Boys, which experts call a “gang” notorious for violence, as “the most welcoming organization that I have ever been a part of.”)

Khan says, “We are seen as experts on hate crimes reform, so I questioned Ngo’s groundless claims of ‘hate-crime hoaxes.’ He is not an expert in the field.” Ngo responded by accusing CAIR of “terrorism” and “terror.”

After the exchange with Ngo, Khan says, “We received dozens of threatening and harassing messages. We weren’t able to log them all.” One post that tagged Ngo, as well as Michelle Malkin (who signal boosts Ngo and started a “Protect Andy Ngo” fundraiser after the June 29 attack that netted him nearly $200,000), read, “CAIR IS HAMAS! If you stand with your Muslem neighbors; prepare to die with your Muslem neighbors. We will take our country back![sic]” Ngo frequently claims that Hamas, the governing authority in Gaza, is connected to CAIR.

The irony of all this is that after CAIR challenges Ngo’s claim of hate crime hoaxes, he responds with what could be considered hate speech, accusing them of terrorism. This appears to have incited his followers to threaten and harass CAIR, actions which might qualify as hate crimes.

For his next act, Ngo joined Quillette where he is a “sub-editor.” Described as the voice of the intellectual dark web, Quillette published a report on May 29 claiming fifteen reporters who cover the far right were really “Antifa journalists.” According to the Columbia Journalism Review, the article by “estabished right-wing troll,” Eoin Lenihan, was picked up by the neo-Nazi Stormfront website within a day, and a day after that a video was uploaded to YouTube containing “imagery of mass shooters intercut with images of the [Antifa] reporters.” The names of the journalists were put on a list called “Sunset the Media,” while the video ends with a notorious neo-Nazi saying he won’t “disown” anyone who kills the reporters.

Two journalists, including Shane Burley, wrote of the unnerving effect of being put on a Neo-Nazi death list. Another targeted journalist wrote that Quillette had crossed the line from being merely reactionary to “reckless endangerment” and bluntly stated that its list “could’ve gotten me killed.”

The article was so shoddy, Lenihan was suspended from Twitter. But Ngo promoted the article and more significantly continues to promote it — just as eight months after the fact, Ngo continued to claim that striking the protester from the Patrick Kimmons march is really evidence of Antifa taking their anger out on an elderly man.

In at least one instance it appears Ngo has doxxed activists himself. During May Day 2019, Ngo published a YouTube video that included him talking to members of the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America who were tabling for “Hands Off Venezuela.” The entire time Ngo points his camera at a sign-in sheet, not the person he is interviewing. In the video the sheet is digitally blurred. However, Connor Smith, a Portland DSA member, provided a still from what he claims is an earlier version of the video. The still includes a watermark of Ngo’s twitter handle, “@MrAndyNgo,” exactly the same as in the YouTube video. Eleven names can be seen on the sign-in sheet, including Smith’s, all of which have visible email addresses and six of which include phone numbers. Smith says at least one person on the list received threatening messages such as “Die commie.”

Smith claims it is a common right-wing tactic to doxx people on social media like YouTube and Twitter and then delete the offending material before it is removed for violating the platform’s rules. He says this cat-and-mouse game achieves the results the far right is looking for. “I’m sure some fascist has put all our names and phone numbers in a list.”

Ngo is more of a symptom, however.

Ngo couldn’t exist without social media companies which turn a blind eye to right-wing violence because having to monitor their platforms for hate speech would cut into their profits. Ngo also needs Murdoch-owned media such as the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and Fox News that allow him to masquerade his bigotry as journalism. These outlets, in turn, are amplified by the larger landscape of mainstream media, which often fail to distinguish between fact-based journalism and pro-Trump, white nationalistic propaganda. Add in police who collaborate with the far right and weak political leaders, as in Portland, and you have all the conditions needed for opportunists like Andy Ngo to grab the spotlight.

Ngo is just the latest inflammatory right-wing agent in Portland who’s tried to vault to the big leagues. Before him was Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson, who has seen his ranks of violent white nationalists dwindle due to infighting and long-overdue arrests.

Way back in 2016, before Gibson, was another media provocateur, Michael Strickland. Strickland shot his YouTube career — which mainly featured him doxxing and harassing local activists — in the foot after he pulled a gun on a Black Lives Matter protest while being armed with enough ammunition for a massacre.

That’s not to say the Left should ignore the likes of Andy Ngo or even Tucker Carlson. They are both the cause and effect of white nationalism and the violence that comes with it. Their synergy is also a reflection of the complex digital landscape. Legacy media like the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and even Fox News need Andy Ngo just as much as he needs them. They gave him a platform not for his shoddy reporting and tired bigotry, but for the audience he’s amassed, even if it’s a digital lynch mob.”

[chungledown-bimothy]

Trust Me: Chapter 7

Hey look! A timely update! Consider it a preemptive apology to everyone who loves Logan. 

Chapter 1 Chapter 6 AO3 Chapter 8

Warnings: GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF TORTURE and JD is a high schooler. It’s relatively short, and marked by ******* before and after. But it’s for sure there. Oh, and some swearing.

Author’s Note: The German translates to “I speak German too, and I know you killed them.”

Word Count: 2190

Tag List: @ccecode​ @emo-sanders-sides-loving-unicorn​ @ren-allen​ @ilovemygaydad​ @bloodropsblog​ @funsizedgremlin​ @raygelkitty​ @roxiefox23​ @thomasthesandersengine​ @spookyingarbageisland​ @band-be-boss-blog​

15 minutes passed before Logan broke the silence. "I understand that two members of the football team committed suicide two weeks ago. I know that you are new to the school, but it must be difficult nonetheless."

"Not really. I bounce around so much, I don't bother learning names or faces, let alone care about anyone. Besides, I heard they did it because they were gay and too homophobic to deal with it. No major loss there, in my opinion."

"That is… an interesting perspective, JD. I am almost afraid to ask about your thoughts on Heather Chandler's death."

"Sometimes even the shiniest of ivory towers are prisons, I suppose. One has to wonder, though, how much the bullying rate has dropped since she kicked the bucket. I mean, sure, one of the other Heathers is trying to take her place, but even she knows that she'll never measure up." He looked out the window and then back to Logan. "Hang on, I never told you where I live."

"I know where I'm going. What do you know about how Heather, Kurt, and Ram died?"

"If you say so," JD began, hesitantly. "Only what everyone knows. Heather drank drain cleaner, and Kurt and Ram shot each other. I heard someone saying that they used some special kind of bullets called ich lüge."

"Ich spreche auch Deutsch und ich weiß dass Sie sie umgebracht haben."

"H- how could you possibly know that? No one knows that. I was careful. I was perfect."

"Obviously, you were not. If you were truly careful, you would not have said anything about the bullets. You wanted to applaud yourself for being so much smarter than everyone else. You also would not have chosen such an emotionally-driven accomplice. I understand the appeal. We have a lot in common, JD. We both understand that emotion and personal attachments are nothing more than hindrances. But there is that one person who changes all of that. Who makes you want to know how to feel things. But ultimately, they will always choose their emotions over us. I was not completely certain that you killed them until you bragged about the bullets. Killing people who had been cruel towards your person, Miss Sawyer, aroused my suspicions. Rule number one of getting away with murder: only kill people to whom you are not linked."

"It's you, isn't it? The killer everyone's talking about. The Park Puzzler."

"That is the first honest and correct thing you have said all evening." Logan paused, considering JD's words. "Is that really what they are calling us? Disappointing, but not surprising. The best and brightest certainly do not go into journalism."

"You aren't gonna kill me. You said yourself, the first rule of getting away with it is killing strangers." Logan was filled with a savage glee, seeing the terror in his student's eyes, his desperate attempt to save himself.

"In most circumstances, yes, killing you would be a mistake. However, your father is known for leaving town and taking you with him unexpectedly. You have attended 10 high schools, I believe, and it is your senior year? Everyone knows that the killer is punishing people for their unpunished crimes, and how would a simple teacher know what you did? Especially one who does not interact with other teachers, let alone students. No one was around when you got in my car. No one has ever seen us interact outside of the rare occasions you showed up to my class." He sighed when he saw JD reach for the door handle. "Don't be stupid- there is no point in trying to escape. I engaged the child-lock this morning. You cannot open the door from the inside, and breaking through the window is difficult with only a fist for exceptionally strong individuals. Looking at you, I estimate that you have slightly below average upper body strength for an 18-year-old male."

"Well that's awfully rude, teach. So, I'm gonna die. Why? Why not just turn me over to the cops?"

"You are a young, white man who, when you want to, can be quite charismatic. The American justice system is skewed to protect people like you. Even that is predicated on the assumption that a prosecutor would take the case, which is unlikely, given how well you were able to convince everyone that they were suicides. Your kills were cold-blooded with very little motive outside of bloodlust, and you left very little to no evidence. Truthfully, I am rather impressed."

"And we're back to my question. Why do I have to die for doing such good work? You're a killer too. Why should I die, when you're no better than I am? If the papers are accurate, killing me will even up our body counts, so you aren't even better than me on that front."

"The quality of your work was admirable, but it was still wrong. You took three innocent lives, simply because you wanted to. I only kill those whose crimes go unpunished by the corrupt justice system. We are both killers, but my crusade is a righteous one."

"I still don't buy it. I trade in half-truths, straight-up lies, and manipulation, teach, and there's more to it than you're saying. You're gonna kill me anyway, and clearly we aren't to wherever it is you're taking me to do the job. Why not pass the time with a good old-fashioned villain monologue?"

"All will be revealed in due time. I have been reliably informed that people tend to dislike 'spoilers'."

"You're absolutely nuts. You know that, right? You're even more delusional than I am. And that's my self-harm of choice is fucking Slurpees."

"I find it interesting that you truly believe that your obsession with what is colloquially known as 'brain freeze' is less sane than your manipulation of Veronica Sawyer and the cold-blooded murders of your peers."

"Peers? That's bullshit. They were, at best, vapid instruments of the system."

"And for that, they deserved death?"

JD shrugged. "I would do anything to protect Veronica from assholes like that."

"As I would do anything to protect my sibling from a world that turns a blind eye to the crimes of assholes like you. We are at an ideological impasse. That impasse, however, is rendered irrelevant by my superior intellect. Ah, here we are." Before JD could respond, Logan reached across the car and emptied a syringe into his arm.

-

The first thing JD noticed when he came to was the rope around his wrists tying him to a chair. Struggling revealed that his ankles were bound as well, and the chair was bolted to the ground. He was surprised to find that he wasn't gagged. Looking around, he reasoned he could only be in a warehouse, and it was empty except for him and a video camera. He continued to struggle against his restraints, barely noticing when the rope burn broke his skin. He was also hungry, and his mouth felt like sandpaper.

"How long was I out?" JD croaked, unsure if anyone was there.

"Approximately eighteen hours. It is 2pm on Saturday." JD jumped, not expecting Logan's voice to be so close behind him. "You are in luck. Normally, Patton would take a turn with you before I do anything, but they are… otherwise occupied. You should thank me- you will be useless to them once I have started with you, let alone finished. I am saving you potentially weeks of agony. The last one took a week and a half to learn his lesson. Only then could I begin my experiments."

"Experiments? What the fuck are you going to do to me?"

"As many things as you can endure."

"Why? Why not just kill me and get it over with? Satisfy your 'righteous crusade' without wasting time."

"And waste the opportunity to study how much the human body can endure? I think not. In all honesty, I care about the cause far less than Patton does. As I said, you will be spared their particular brand of torture, both physical and mental. I can only imagine what they'd do to you, given the fact that you murdered children, despite being a child yourself."

"We were all 18. Technically not children. Why, may I ask, won't I have the pleasure of making their acquaintance? They sound absolutely delightful."

"I am not surprised that your listening skills are subpar. They have other business to attend to."

"They're with someone, aren't they? That's why you've got such a big bug up your ass about emotional attachments and me and Veronica. It's rebellious child 101, teach. Lash out to get their attention. You aren't the center of their universe any more, and it's eating you alive." Logan flinched, and JD smirked; he'd hit his mark.

"Those who speak of what they know find too late that prudent silence is wise. This is doubly true for children who know nothing." He raised a hand, cutting JD off. "No more talking. Feel free to scream, however. Your responses will be recorded on that camera," he pointed, "and further analyzed later. I tend to get… distracted in the moment."

Logan briefly returned to the shadows of the warehouse before returning with a tank that seemed to be smoking. "This, JD, is liquid nitrogen. You mentioned your fondness for cold-induced pain. Let us see how you feel about it in the extreme. And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest."

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

He put on thick gloves and an apron before opening the lid and pulling out a ladle full of liquid nitrogen. Very carefully, he stepped forward and slowly emptied the ladle onto JD's arm.

The first drops hit JD's skin with a sizzle, causing JD to flinch. That flinch quickly turned into convulsions and a scream he didn't know he was capable of making when the stream grew thicker. It burned. Every second was more painful than the last. He was on the edge of unconsciousness when the agony stopped getting worse- Logan had stopped pouring. JD didn't know how long he sat there, face contorted with pain, before he was able to open his eyes and look at his arm. He immediately wished he hadn't. From wrist to elbow, his arm was mostly violently red and blistered. What truly horrified him, however, were the areas that weren't red at all, but were an unnatural grayish-yellow.

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

"That is third degree frostbite. Those uniquely discolored areas should turn black over the course of our time together." JD tried to scream, to swear, to cry, but he couldn't. He was hit with a wave of dizziness and nausea when he tried to open his mouth. "Ah yes, that would be the shock setting in. Breathe with me, JD. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight." Logan led him through the breathing exercise until he returned to a slightly more normal temperature. "Well done. Keep focusing on your breathing; I will be right back with some first aid."

"Wh- why bother?" JD asked when Logan returned without his gloves and apron, carrying a first aid kit. "Why not let me die from this?"

Logan gently began heating the frostbite with a warm, wet towel before responding. "There are more experiments to run. Even if this was the only one I had planned for you, seeing how it heals is a crucial part of the process. My goal isn't killing you. My goal is observing how the human body reacts to and recovers from various extreme stimuli. Letting you die would be extremely counterproductive. For now, at least." Logan began wrapping JD's arm with bandages. "There we go. That should be adequate to keep you alive and will hopefully prevent gangrene. The point is to study frostbite, not gangrene."

"Why thank you." JD smirked the best he could, but even he knew that it was, at best, a pitiful attempt.

"You certainly are strong, JD. Most people would not dare being sarcastic in the face of their torturer. Drink this." Logan demanded, holding a water bottle to his lips. "Good. I suggest you get comfortable. I will be back tomorrow to change your bandages and check on you. Can't have you dying before I allow it."

-

Sunday

"Oh Logan, he's absolutely wonderful. He's so smart, kind, and handsome. He didn't even blink when he learned my pronouns! And he said the most beautiful things about Monet and Impressionism. Aahh, I wish I could stay and tell you all about it and him, but I have to spend some time at the coffee shop- between our work and Virgil, I haven't spent nearly enough time there!" Patton got to the door before turning around. "Oh, and I'd love to know what you were up to yesterday- I called, but you didn't answer or call me back. That's why I had to come check on you before going to work. I'll be back around eight tonight, okay? See you then!" Patton was out the door before Logan could respond. Eleven hours. Plenty of time to tend to JD and come up with a convincing lie.

[shireness-says]

Playing the Part ch. 11: Why So Silent?

Summary:  As a stage manager who’s clawed her way up from the bottom, Emma Swan can handle just about anything thrown her way. But does that include handsome lead actor Killian Jones? A CS Broadway AU.  Rated T. Also on AO3.  Prologue  Ch. 1  Ch. 2  Ch. 3 Ch. 4  Ch. 5  Ch. 6  Ch. 7  Ch. 8  Ch. 9  Ch. 10

A/N: Here we are: the fallout from the holiday party. Sorry? 

Chapter title from “The Phantom of the Opera” and suggested by my fantastic beta, @snidgetsafan. Thanks for that, for your beta services, and for reassuring me about what I did this chapter.

I did a count this morning, and if all goes to plan - or to outline, rather - then this story will have 19 parts. That’s 6 more chapters and an epilogue, so you can all breathe a sigh of relief that we’re halfway through this nonsense. Thanks for sticking with me.

Tags: @kmomof4, @winterbaby89, @thejollyroger-writer, @mythologicalmango, @onceuponaprincessworld, @idristardis, @teamhook, @courtorderedcake, @aerica13, @revanmeetra87, @snowbellewells, @searchingwardrobes. If you want to be tagged going forward (or taken off this list - I won’t be insulted!), shoot me a message, and I’ll make it happen.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Emma wakes up in her bed the day after the holiday party with a headache, dry mouth, and regret. Plenty of regret.

At first, it’s just a vague regret, one she attributes to the knowledge she drank too much and an all-too-keen awareness of how her brain is pounding in her head, attempting to forcibly squeeze out through her ears. As she readjusts to the waking world, however, it all comes rushing back. The holiday party. Drinking on the balcony. Killian.

Fuck.

Images of the night before flash behind her eyelids and Emma groans, and not just from the physical pain. God, she was a mess. Mortification courses through her veins, leaving Emma tempted to just crawl underneath the covers again and never come back out. She just might have done it, too, if the bedroom door hadn’t squealed open at that exact moment. I really need to get some Pam on those hinges, Emma idly thinks as she flops her head over to face the door and is met by Mary Margaret’s head, cautiously peeking through the crack. That hesitance doesn’t last long, though, as once her friend ascertains that Emma is indeed awake, she fully walks through the door with a perky smile on her face and cups of what Emma can only hope is very strong coffee in her hands.

“I thought I heard you!” she chirps, pulling an apologetic face when Emma winces at the pitch. Honestly, fuck this hangover. “Sorry,” she says in a much mellower tone of voice. “Here, have some coffee.”

“Oh thank god,” Emma responds, hastily reaching for the offered cup. “You’re a living saint, Mary Margaret.”

“There’s bagels in the kitchen, too, if you feel up to getting out of bed. Oh! And,” she chirps, sending another stab of pain through Emma’s skull as she starts fishing through her pockets, finally coming up with a small plastic tube, “I found Advil. Just my little travel size, but it’ll work, right?”

Emma nods as best she can when attempting to inhale her coffee, motioning with her free hand to hand over one of the capsules. “Thanks,” she rasps when Mary Margaret hands the little salmon-colored tablets over to her. A thought strikes her suddenly, a drunken half-memory creeping through, and Emma groans again. “Don’t tell me you slept on the couch last night.”

“I didn’t sleep on the couch last night,” Mary Margaret reassures, before pausing. Somehow, there’s a sense of a ‘but’ coming, though there really shouldn’t be. Sure enough, though, Mary Margaret continues. “I slept in Henry’s room.”

“Oh, M’s…” Emma groans. “You didn’t have to do that!”

“Oh, I think I did,” she argues right back. “You were very insistent last night that you didn’t want to be left alone.”

“Of fucking course I was,” Emma mutters to herself.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Mary Margaret offers kindly, ever the mother.

Easy answer, that. “Nope,” Emma answers curtly. Fueled by embarrassment and a desire to get as far away as possible from this conversation, she manages to swing her legs out from under the covers and haul herself out of bed to make her way to the bathroom, though she regrets it all the while. Cold air and nausea-inducing movement are much less pleasant than the cozy warmth of the many layers of blankets on her bed.

Brushing her teeth and taking a moment to look marginally less gross helps, but Emma’s still not quite ready to dissect the whole thing with Mary Margaret. Unfortunately, her friend isn’t quite on the same page. Emma had anticipated as such, and is already braced and ready when she walks back in to find some clothes.

Sure enough, Mary Margaret tries to jump in as soon as she walks back into the room. “If you want to talk about last night, Emma — ”

“Don’t you have that appointment this morning?” Emma quickly interrupts, the words already waiting on her tongue. “Miss Blue really won’t be pleased if you’re late, and it’s already almost nine. You’ve got to get going if you want to stop at your place before the theater.” There may or may not have been an incident Tuesday evening where a seam in one of Mary Margaret’s gowns was ripped while she and David were playing tonsil hockey (or whatever the kids say these days). Ruby had quickly tacked it for Wednesday’s matinee, but the production’s petite yet intimidating costume designer had wanted to supervise the permanent repair, supposedly to ensure the fit was correct. Personally, Emma suspects that Mary Margaret is in for a talking-to. If her friend’s blanched face upon initially receiving word of her appointment was any indication, Mary Margaret thinks the same. It’s a low, dirty move of a distraction, but Emma knows M’s won’t risk being late to a professional obligation - both for her own sake and for Emma’s, knowing that these kind of snafus directly increase the amount of stress Emma has to deal with.

The look Mary Margaret gives her is unimpressed - the look of a woman who knows exactly what Emma’s attempting and is not fooled in the least. “Don’t think you’re getting out of this,” she warns. “I’m just about to leave because you just happen to be correct about the time, not because I’m letting you drop this subject. We will pick this up later, and you’ll feel better for it afterwards. Promise?”

Emma hums noncommittally. She’d much prefer to drop the whole thing and pretend it never happened until the end of time. That doesn’t fly with her friend however, as Mary Margaret’s unimpressed look only sharpens.

“I’m serious, Emma. Promise me we’ll talk about it later?”

“Yes, fine, Mom, I promise,” Emma sighs in exasperation, rolling her eyes. The latter was probably a bad idea; it doesn’t help the headache in the least. “Now for the love of God, get out of here before you’re late.”

“Alright,”  Mary Margaret agrees, somewhat hesitantly. “But call me if you need anything, ok? And make sure you eat that bagel, the bread and the protein in the cream cheese will do you good.”

“I will, ok?” Emma all but snaps. Subconsciously, she knows that she’s only reacting in this way due to embarrassment, but for the moment she just wants Mary Margaret out of her apartment, good intentions aside, so that she can wallow in her mortification in peace.

A flash of guilt streaks through Emma as her friend fixes her with a disapproving stare, but Mary Margaret still gathers her coat and heads for the door. “I’m just trying to help, Emma,” she says quietly, disappointment coloring her voice and turning the flash of guilt into a deeply stabbing knife.

Emma sighs, deflating. “I know. I’m sorry,” she says. “Blame it on the hangover. I’ll be better once I get some food into my system. I’ll see you tonight, alright?”

“Alright,” Mary Margaret agrees, before stepping forward to envelop Emma in a tight hug. “Feel better,” she whispers. With a last squeeze she departs, leaving Emma to the silence of her empty apartment.

(Somehow, even though it’s exactly what she wanted mere minutes ago, she hates every silent second of it.)

———

She’s an absolute child, is the thing, between the clinginess last night and her outburst this morning. Might as well go for the hat trick of immaturity and react to her embarrassment by avoiding all witnesses to the event that’s warranted it. Mary Margaret she’s avoiding for obvious reasons - Emma has no intention to discuss the matter, but knows her traitor mouth might betray her anyways when faced with her friend’s gentle insistence. Killian though… she knows he isn’t judging her for her behavior, can see it in the gentle smiles he offers her, and doubts he’d make her discuss the matter, but Emma avoids him all the same out of shame. Merely being in his presence makes her burn with embarrassment at the memory of that evening, and she seeks to evade any reminders of that whenever possible. He doesn’t deserve this treatment, which makes Emma feel slightly guilty - Killian’s a genuinely good guy, kind and charming and (dare she say it?) handsome, someone who she’d want to know more intimately under different circumstances - but she’s compelled to act on a self-preservational instinct.

New Year’s passes with Emma ducking around corners and passing secondhand messages. Henry eventually returns from his vacation with his dad, less enchanted with skiing than before he left - “It’s hard, Mom, and who wants to be out in the cold all day?” - Emma’s good mood returning with him, but another Wednesday comes and goes with her avoidance tactics still in full force. Seeing Emma cheery again, Mary Margaret seems inclined to let go of her determined attempts to dissect the incident now that a week has passed, and Emma can almost put the whole thing behind her. Still, though, the memory persists, and with it, Emma’s avoidance of Killian.

It won’t last forever - at least, she doesn’t think so - but for now, a mere week and some change later, the tactic is here to stay.

———

Emma is avoiding him. Again.

It feels a bit like two months ago again, except this time, Killian can’t figure out what he did wrong. All he knows is that Emma is avoiding him at all costs, ducking around corners when she sees him coming and relaying messages through intermediaries when necessary. And it hurts.

Thinking back, the closest he can figure is that all this started right after the Christmas party, when he watched over Emma in her intoxicated state. Though he meant well, he must have overstepped her boundaries that evening. With growing sadness, Killian realizes he likely blew any chance he might have had of even remaining friends with Emma with what must have been a blatant disregard of her understandable restrictions and concerns. Even if he just meant to make sure she was alright, he must have come off as a real arse. Eventually, he’ll be kicking himself over the whole thing, but for the moment he just feels sad.

He misses her, is the thing, even though he feels like he doesn’t deserve to, not since this is all his fault. He’d thought they were making such good progress too; a simple conversation with Emma can brighten his whole day, and without that to look forward to, everything seems dimmer. He misses her sarcasm, and her dry sense of humor, the way she doesn’t mince her words and snorts when she laughs, the way her smiles may not be easy to earn (except for where her boy is concerned), but so worth it when they make an appearance. He’s fully aware that he’s a pathetic bastard, but ultimately, he can’t help it.

Though Killian is sure everyone has noticed by now how desperate Emma is to avoid him, and how morose he is in turn, it’s Robin of all people who broaches the subject and stops tiptoeing around the matter.

“How are you doing, Killian?” he asks, voice filled with more concern that Killian really deserves. He’d come up to the booth for a meeting they should never have needed to have about finding his spot, Killian frustratingly distracted by his emotional turmoil and nearly missing his marks two days in a row. Ostensibly, they’d met to review where Killian needed to stand each time and whether Robin needed to adjust anything, but it seems more like an excuse for Robin to prod him about the source of the distraction rather than the side effects it creates.

Killian initially just shrugs, humming noncommittally at the other man’s inquiry. It feels a bit weird getting into this with Robin - though they get along well enough, he doesn’t actually know Robin that well, and the lighting designer is definitely more Emma’s friend than Killian’s. There’s a bad joke about losing friends in the platonic divorce bubbling at the back of his throat, but his persistent melancholy keeps it from finding a voice. Ironic, this - he and Emma have switched places emotionally from the circumstances that started all this.

“Really, now,” the other man persists, “I know something’s the matter. Emma’s been acting odd all week, and you’ve seemed down ever since. Now, I may not be some rocket scientist or statistics whiz,” he jokes, “but I’m sensing a correlation. So: how are you doing, Killian?”

Faced with that gentle opposition, Killian cracks. Perhaps it’s a sign that he’s wanted to talk about this all along with someone who knows all the players. “I don’t even know what’s the matter, not really,” he confides. “I just know that for some reason, Emma is avoiding me.” Privately, he suspects it’s a direct result of the events of the other night, but he doesn’t feel comfortable sharing the details without Emma’s knowledge or permission. It hurts, knowing that despite his best efforts to assist Emma as best he can while still respecting her boundaries - her reasonable boundaries, which he agrees with - she still feels avoidance to be necessary. “I think we all know how I feel about Emma,” he chuckles, the words eliciting a snort from Robin in return, “but I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should just… let it go. Find a way to move past my feelings. Not because I want to,” he hastens to add, “but because she seems to want me to. I’m willing to be persistent, but after a certain point… it all seems like a hint to go away. And maybe it’s about time I took that hint.”

Robin just stares back, more skeptical than Killian expected. Granted, he hadn’t expected skepticism at all, so any amount is rather unexpected. “Seriously?”

“... Yes?”

Robin lets out a snort. “Oh lord. Killian, my good man, let me tell you a secret.” He leans in conspiratorially, Killian meeting him halfway out of some bizarre sense of courtesy. Robin, the absolute bastard, lets the moment dramatically sit a moment longer before whispering melodramatically, “Emma’s got a thing for you too.”

Killian rears back, face suddenly twisting into an expression of annoyed disbelief as Robin raises his eyebrows knowingly. “Really?” he deadpans. “Now that’s just mean. Childish, even, taunting a man like that.”

“I’m serious!” Robin protests. “She absolutely, one-hundred-percent has a thing for you. If you want to get truly childish, really embrace this middle-school mentality you’re accusing me of,” he smirks, “then I’d say she likes you. Likes likes you. Please, trust the man shut into a woefully small space with her every day on this one.”

Still, Killian scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve seen absolutely no proof of that.”

“Yes, well, you’re not the one witnessing the banter and the little blushing smiles and the way she stares at your arse in that costume. Seriously, mate, it’s almost nauseating. Not quite as bad as Nolan and Blanchard, but…” he trails off, his point clear.

“She never said anything!” Killian weakly protests. Like that’s a thing people actually do - walk up and tell the object of their affections how they feel.

“Yes, well, that would require Emma actually being willing to admit to herself that she fancies you, and that’s proven to be a stretch too far,” Robin parries, voice dry but sage, before softening. “Look, if you want my advice, don’t give up on her yet. I know from experience - the best ones will lead you on a merry chase,” he tells Killian somewhat wistfully. Killian almost cracks a jab about the other man’s own enamorment of Regina Mills, but restrains himself upon seeing the melancholy-tinged reminiscence gracing Robin’s face, instead waiting for the man to reveal his train of thought in his own time.

Shortly, Robin seems to remember Killian’s presence, smiling sheepishly. “My wife - Marian, her name was - was an opera singer, part of the chorus at the Met, back when I was just some young upstart, full of confidence and no real chance to prove it yet. It was love at first sight on my part, as cliche as that sounds, and she had approximately no time or patience for me, some young puppy following at her heels,” he laughs, eyes crinkling in a way that Killian knows is caused by warm memories. “But whether out of hope or determination or pure obliviousness, I held out hope, and look what it got me. Five of the happiest years of my life and a wonderful son.” He smiles, face flooded with the look of a truly content man. “Look, you have to do whatever is best for you, I understand and support that one hundred percent. I just want to encourage you not to throw in the towel just yet - not while I still think there’s hope.”

The words are comforting, and even if Killian was feeling somewhat despondent just minutes before, he’s suddenly reinvigorated with a new sense of just what Robin urged him to have - hope. “Thank you,” he replies softly, a small smile starting to form on his face. “That’s, uh…” he pauses, not sure how to continue, how to express the bolstering impact Robin’s had with his words, and settles for simple gratitude instead. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Robin smiles back, offering a comforting and companionable pat on the shoulder before turning back to the task at hand. “Now, let me show you again exactly where the spot is gonna hit, even if you really ought to know this by now, and I’ll have you go mark it, okay?”

———

She should have known she wouldn’t be able to avoid all interactions forever, or at least not those with Mary Margaret. Emma could swear the petite brunette has magic, what with the way she always seems to appear just when Emma is hoping to avoid her. Who knows, maybe the name of that pixie cut denotes more than just a style, and is instead a hint that Mary Margaret is actually a devious fairy. Stranger things have happened, surely.

Regardless of whether or not Mary Margaret possesses magical teleportation powers, that doesn’t change the fact that she eventually catches up to Emma, her face displaying that awful combination of half hurt and half disappointment usually only displayed by parents (or so Emma’s heard).

“Are we ever going to talk about the Christmas party?” she asks in a tone that suggests she thinks it’s been more than long enough of a wait.

“Not if I can help it,” Emma mumbles back under her breath, but Mary Margaret’s keen ears catch the words all the same.

“Emma, you can’t run from this conversation forever,” she scolds. “I know you don’t want to rehash it, but I really think you’ll feel better once you do. It’ll let you stop lingering on it.”

“I’m not lingering on anything,” Emma argues. “Henry’s home again, so everything’s fine. And, not to gloat or anything, but he didn’t have nearly as much fun as he expected. I’m still my kid’s favorite, all’s right with the world, no need to talk through whatever last Wednesday was. I’m good, really.”

Mary Margaret stares back skeptically, that disapproving frown still dominating her face. “Really, you’re good?” she demands. “You sure you’re not lingering? Because avoiding — ” she interrupts herself to peer around, seemingly checking that no one is listening — “avoiding Killian doesn’t seem like something a person who’s completely past the matter would do.”

“I’m not avoiding Killian,” Emma insists stubbornly. “I can’t help if we haven’t run into each other this week. It happens.”

“Oh, please,” Mary Margaret shoots back. “I’m optimistic, not stupid. You’ve practically run in the other direction whenever you see him coming. It’s a damn good thing there haven’t been any major issues you were both involved in the past few days, or God only knows how that would have been resolved.”

Well, she’s got Emma there. “So what if I am? Seems like that’s my business. What does it matter to you?”

“I just want you to be happy, Emma,” Mary Margaret wheedles in that way of hers. The pure cloying sentiment of her words and intent nearly make Emma gag. “And this hasn’t been a happy week for you. I can only imagine this self-imposed separation from Killian - usually one of your greatest supporters - is part of that. What happened?” She gasps suddenly. “Oh god, he didn’t do anything before I picked you up, did he?”

“No, no, God no,” Emma rushes to reassure.

“What then? I can’t understand it.”

“Look, I’m embarrassed, ok?” Emma snaps. “I was not at my best that night, and I don’t really want to face what Jones - one of my coworkers - thinks of me after that display, pity or disgust or whatever else. I don’t want to deal with it, so I haven’t.”

There’s an unexpected snort from behind the women, and Emma whirls to see Regina, standing there looking deeply amused. “You’re aware that Jones thinks the sun shines out of your ass, right?”

Mary Margaret gasps next to Emma, though it’s more likely that she’s less shocked over Regina’s presence than about her use of language. Figures.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” Regina clarifies somewhat haughtily, “it’s just that neither of you are particularly good at watching your volume. But I say again: you do know that Jones thinks you personally are responsible for the sun coming up each morning? Thinks you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread? That you hung the stars? Etcetera, etcetera, must I continue?”

“She’s got a point, Emma,” Mary Margaret contributes, her tone vaguely apologetic.

Regina smiles smugly at that, before continuing. “Look, I’m just saying, I don’t think there’s much that would change his mind, and that probably includes whatever you did the other night that you’re so embarrassed about. Did you hit him?”

“No,” Emma replies, rolling her eyes.

“Insult his mother?”

“No.”

“Run down the street buck-ass naked declaring your allegiance to some space alien dictatorship?”

“Christ Almighty, no!” God, where did Regina even come up with that?

“Ok, then I’m sure he doesn’t blame you for anything. And anyone with two eyes can see that you don’t need or want pity, which is pretty effective at keeping it away. So what are you worrying about?” Her tone softens somewhat at the stubborn set of Emma’s jaw (a stubborn expression that hides her insecurity about the whole matter, but Regina doesn’t need to know that). “Look, you can do whatever you want, Miss Swan. Lord knows we certainly can’t stop you,” she declares with a knowing look to Mary Margaret, “but what I can tell you - and I’m sure Miss Blanchard can as well - Jones has seemed sad and confused and even hurt ever since you began your little avoidance game. The way I see it, you’re protecting yourself from something that isn’t going to happen anyways, and we’re all witnessing the fallout. If you don’t want anything to do with Jones, that’s fine, that’s your prerogative, but you can’t keep up this ridiculous ducking around corners and speaking through the ASMs. Let it go on long enough, and it’s going to undermine your power - which I’m sure is the last thing you want.”

Emma hadn’t thought of it like that, far too caught up in her immediate mortification to truly think through its consequences. Hell, the entire reason she gave for turning Killian down in the first place was fear of a relationship affecting things at work; according to Regina, Emma’s brought exactly what she feared to come to pass, without even the benefit of a relationship as an excuse. Fan-fucking-tastic. She groans in realization.

“Yes, I think that about sums it up,” Regina comments drily. Emma shoots her a glare in response - entirely warranted, in her opinion, especially since Regina’s opinion is so unasked for.

“We don’t want to guilt you, Emma,” Mary Margaret puts in more gently, shooting her own look in Regina’s direction as the latter sounds a dissenting hum. “Like I said: we just want you to be happy, and this? This isn’t making you - or Killian, for that matter - happy.”

(Emma think that statement is effectively the same thing as guilting her, but she doesn’t have the energy right now to argue that.)

“Look, I’ll think about everything you both said. Happy?” Even if Mary Margaret and Regina are correct, Emma’s not really in the mood to admit it right now.

Mary Margaret nods, though the movement seems reluctant. It’s the best she’s going to get right now, though, so she’ll have to be happy with it. “But about the thing with Neal and Henry - ”

“Honestly, I haven’t even thought about that since Henry returned. Funny how that solved the issue. Really, Mary Margaret, can we just drop it? I’ll admit to ‘lingering’ or whatever, but honestly, the Henry and Neal thing that started it all has been the furthest thing from my mind. Which means no need to to talk about it or… whatever.”

“If you’re sure…” Mary Margaret finally agrees hesitantly.

“God, yes, I’m sure. It’s my one real dream to drop this. Please. Immediately. Like, yesterday.” That, at least, draws a laugh out of even Regina, Mary Margaret shaking her head with affection. “Now, I think we all have things to do or places we’d rather be, so can we, you know, get to it instead of standing around doing whatever this is?”

By some miracle, both women comply, even if Mary Margaret is hesitant. Eventually, Emma will probably appreciate the conversation they’ve all just suffered through, but for now, she just wants to be alone.

After all, she’s got an awful lot to think about.

———

In the end, things go back to normal out of Emma’s own volition - no more pestering friends and, unlike last time, no need for Killian to come convince her. The insecure part of Emma whispers that the fact that he wasn’t fighting for her and their… whatever dynamic this time is a sign that his affections have changed, that he’s no longer interested in her in any way, romantic or otherwise, but his near-palpable relief when Emma breaks her silence to ask him if he’s seen Belle dispels that notion.

“Missed you, Swan!” he calls with a wink (well, his facsimile of a wink) as she wanders off in the indicated direction.

(And if she blushes at the return of his casual affection, well, that’s her business - as is the acknowledgement that she maybe missed him too.)

[trueloveseyeroll]

When The Tide Turns (14/16)

Summary:  The plan was to go to England, finish the case and head back home in a matter of days. Of course, nothing in Emma’s life ever goes according to plan. Not only does she end up travelling across Europe, looking for a Liam Jones in order to finish her case, she ends up travelling with Liam’s brother - an annoyingly handsome Killian Jones. And she doesn’t trust him one bit.

Rating: T, for language and some violence later on

Beta-reader: I can’t thank Aina enough for being so helpful and kind! Shout-out to @forget-me-not-s !!

Artists: these artists are seriously such talented and amazing people, and they deserve so much praise!!! @theblacksiren - check out her beautiful artwork for chapter 1 here, chapter 7 here and chapter 12 here! @optomisticgirl created the awesome banner - and soon you’ll get to see the amazing masterpiece created by @fairytalesandtimetravel

Word count: ~5098 (68k+ in total)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 |

AO3

Emma glared at the distant island. With her legs folded beneath each other, her right elbow resting on her knee so her hand could support her head, she almost felt like crying - almost. The bigger part of her wanted to yell across the water, frustrated with Neverland and everything about it.

It was just so infuriating; to be so close, but forced to stop right before the finish line. Emma hated giving up. Hated admitting defeat. This island, with its ridiculous magic and tropical-looking trees, it wasn’t going to get the best of her. Not without a fight.

“It’s trying to trick us,” she said. “You didn’t look through the spyglass, but you can still see it. Maybe you do need to look through the spyglass though, if you want to actually get there.”

The spyglass rested on Emma’s lap. She handed it to Killian, and he looked through it without any objections.

No sudden gust of wind appeared. The engine didn’t magically restart. Killian even stood up and tried bringing the engine back to life, but to no avail.

“Good idea-”

“Just didn’t work,” Emma finished for him.

When Killian rejoined her on the planks, he handed her a water bottle from their backpack. “Afraid it’s not the most enjoyable of drinks, but it’s worth staying hydrated in this heat.”

The sun had risen above the horizon, moving eerily quickly across the sky. Emma accepted the water bottle with a thanks, chugging down a few gulps. Killian was right; getting dehydrated wouldn’t help anything, and she could already feel her head thumping. Or maybe that was just the lack of sleep.

A little while later, her bottle almost empty and the sun high in the sky, Killian spoke again.

“I’ve always found it calming - the horizon. Soothed me better than any rum ever could, but regrettably, you can’t carry the sea in a bottle everywhere you go.”

Emma lifted the corner of her mouth in a slight smile. She remembered leaving a foster family in the middle of the night, jumping on a bus to go anywhere but there - and had ended up at the sea. It had just been her and the waves, starlight above, and sand between her toes as she sat on the beach. She’d been chilly, but she’d hardly noticed when everything felt so peaceful for once.

So Emma knew exactly what Killian meant, how the sea could soothe your worries, just for a minute at least. If only she weren’t stuck on it now, unable to reach that damned horizon.

“Guess that’s why you bought a ship, huh?”

Killian chuckled. “Aye - The Jolly’s been a better home than any house I could imagine.”

“The Jolly?” Emma repeated. “As in The Jolly Roger? Please don’t tell me you named your ship after Captain Hook’s.”

“Is there something so wrong in that?”

He sounded so defensive, Emma couldn’t help but smirk. “No, not at all. Hey, maybe that’s our problem - we should’ve taken your ship because Neverland can only be reached by a real pirate ship.”

“Bad form to tease a man about his ship, Swan.”

“Only teasing you about the name, Hook.”

“What, do you not have any childhood fairy tales that somehow stuck with you?”

Emma didn’t need to think long about that. The Princess Bride had always been her favourite film, but during her time at foster homes or group homes where films weren’t allowed, a certain series of books had always been her trusted companion.

“I guess I always liked Harry Potter,” Emma shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I’ve named my car after the golden snitch though.”

“But I imagine you’ve dreamt of going to Hogwarts from time to time.”

“Every kid does that.” Of course, he caught what she wasn’t saying. She’d been an orphan, stuck in lousy foster homes much like Harry. Dreaming of going to Hogwarts had been much more than a small wish.

She could have sworn the sun had only risen an hour ago, but already it began to sink towards the sea again. Emma didn’t feel that warm any more, but she drank the rest of her water, if only to have an excuse not to say anything.

“How old were you when you were adopted?”

It was a simple question, but Emma knew why he asked. He knew she hadn’t been adopted as a baby, or even as a toddler. It was a simple question, giving Emma a chance to answer and talk more about her childhood or just give him a number and leave it at that.

“Sixteen.”

Killian nodded curtly, asking no further questions. Perhaps that was the very reason Emma felt like telling him more.

“I was found on the side of the road in a baby blanket with my name on it - grew up in the foster system, back and forth through homes, never staying in one for more than a year.” She gave him the facts, straightforward. “So yeah, I’d dream about going to Hogwarts or finding out my life was some fairy tale. Discover my family had to leave me to save the world or something. But that never happened, did it? I’m just lucky Ingrid decided to keep me around. She’s all the family I’ll ever need in the end.”

She stopped there, not one to tell big tragic back-stories. Besides, Killian had already heard most of it by now. She didn’t need to say much more to know he understood.

Emma stared at the ripples in the sea, unaware of the way Killian looked at her. He wanted to say something, wanted to curl his arm around her and tuck her into his side. Not out of pity, on the contrary in fact - because he admired her so bloody much.

Instead, he turned to look at the ripples as well.

His eyes widened in realization.

“Bloody hell, Swan, that’s it!”

Emma looked at him, her face resembling a question mark. “What’s what?”

“Family!” he explained. “Emma, look - those ripples weren’t there before. There was no wind, no movement at all, but now the sea’s begun to stir.”

She seemed to understand a bit, but still looked rather questioning. “And what does family have to do with that?”

“In the tales, Neverland was always a place children forgot about their parents, their family, the life they’d left behind - at least for a little while. But they’ve got it all wrong; Neverland isn’t a place you go to forget your family, it’s a place you go to remember them.”

Killian stood to find his satchel, searching for Liam’s letters and opening one in particular.

“Look - amongst all the gibberish, Liam wrote the very last clue.” He crouched next to Emma, pointing at the two simple words Liam had used - amongst many others- to described Neverland: It’s family.

Emma looked from the letter to Killian. “So, what, you talk about your family and the sea starts moving?”

“Aye, thinking surely isn’t enough, for I’ve been thinking about Liam throughout every minute.”

“Uh, then let’s talk about family. I guess.”

Killian’s satchel caught her eye. Before he could respond with more than a scratch behind his ear, Emma had a better idea - even if it made her question her sanity. “The lullaby - you said it was one your mother used to sing to you, right?”

Killian nodded, already seeing where Emma was headed.

“Liam didn’t write that lullaby in one of those letters for nothing - he didn’t leave behind his music box for nothing. Killian...” she paused, looking as if she couldn’t believe what she was about to say, “Maybe you need to sing it to reach that island.”

“Does sound like something from a fairy tale,” Killian muttered. He straightened his legs again, standing up.

So... he really had to sing for them to get to Neverland? Well, awkward as it seemed with Emma sitting there, looking up at him, Killian could have thought of worse things to do.

He closed his eyes, letting the words of the lullaby find their way to his tongue. He knew it by heart, but hadn’t sung it in years. Standing there now, the sun setting on a silent sea, he was almost afraid to do so.

This had better work, he thought, licking his lips before opening his mouth.

In a sea of grey and blue, I’ll find my way to you, and I will make a bed of foam and sand. I’ll be there to hold your hand

Killian’s voice was soft, barely carrying through the air. With his eyes closed, he could see his mother before him, a faint ghost of a memory.

He opened his eyes when he felt the first gust of wind.

You’re a soul meant to be free, your home is with the sea, we’ll be safe there in the crashing storms, and I’ll hold you in my arms

He dared to glance at Emma, reflecting her smile as soon as he saw it. The wind picked up, taking hold of the sails.

Close your eyes and taste the salt, rest your head from thoughts of fault. Through the dreams of endless worlds to roam, together we’ll find home

Swiftly, through no other possible means than magic, the boat made its way through the water to the island. Killian felt as if he were soaring, the boat only gracing the surface of the sea. The three verses of the lullaby faded into a low hum, but the boat carried on through the water.

His smile broke into a laugh. It was insane - absolutely brilliant - but insane; he had sung his way to Neverland.

When Emma’s laughter joined his own, Killian could have sworn his heart started soaring as well. No sound could ever compete with that of her laughter. No moment in his life had ever felt this magical. Except, perhaps, when she’d kissed him the night before.

(He’d never tell her that though, knowing she’d call him a miserable sap.)

(The thought only made him smile more.)

Of all the things Emma had done, nothing would ever be as weird as sailing towards Neverland, the wind in their sails powered by song. And there was a sentence she never thought she’d say.

Within minutes, their boat reached the beach, gliding effortlessly through the sand until it came to a gentle stop. No sudden halt, no jerking movements.

Emma was either dreaming or dead. Nothing real could ever feel like that.

Too amazed by the magic of the island, neither she nor Killian noticed the small group of people gathered near the jungle at the edge of the beach; not until they stepped off the boat and looked to their right.

Emma’s first thought was that her dream had turned into a nightmare.

One man stepped forth, crossing the beach towards Emma and Killian. He wore different clothes than the rest of the people; a simple white dress shirt and dark pants. He had a somewhat stocky build, light skin and dark sandy hair, curled and tangled in the wind. Emma knew who he was from the moment she saw his eyes.

Liam.

“We saw your boat and thought we’d come and welcome you. I must say though, little brother, it took you quite a while to get here.”

Killian stared at him, eyes wide and jaw slack, as if he couldn’t really believe what he saw.

Emma couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t seen his brother for nine years - had almost thought him dead - and here he was, right in front of them. Looking healthy as ever. He spoke clearly, his accent resembling Killian’s. From what she’d heard of the supposed rambling crazy man, Liam wasn’t exactly what she had expected.

Killian quickly found his bearings again, clenching his jaw and narrowing his eyes at Liam.

“You mean younger brother. And bloody hell, who are you to talk about quite a while? I’m not the one who disappeared for nine years leaving nothing but idiotic clues. Not even an explanation.”

If Killian had only been angry, Emma would’ve been able to handle it. But the crack in his voice echoed a long-buried pain that made Emma turn her head away. She shouldn’t be there. She had no right to witness something like this. An intruder, that’s what she was.

“I’m sorry, Killian.” Liam’s words were genuine, but Emma understood why they weren’t quite enough for Killian.

“You’re sorry? Liam, you let me think you were dead. For years you didn’t bother to contact me, and when you did, it was only to write about Neverland - as if I care about this bloody island!”

“I wasn’t in my right mind, you know that, Killian -”

“But you were lucid enough to make a little life for yourself in Norway,” Killian cut off his brother.

“Yes, but only with Elsa’s help-”

“And you don’t think I could’ve helped?”

Liam paused before answering, staying calm throughout Killian’s anger.

“I didn’t want to burden you, brother - no, let me finish,” he held his hand up to stop Killian from cutting him off again. “When father died, you became my responsibility, Killian. Perhaps not in legal terms, but even before father’s death, your happiness and chance for a good life rested on me. I didn’t want you to ever think you weren’t good enough, Killian. I watched you grow and work hard at everything you did, and I couldn’t be more proud of you. But when I came back from my journey nine years ago, I couldn’t stand letting you see how broken I’d become; a shell of a man, just like father. I had strived to be your role model throughout all of your life; I couldn’t bear failing you like that.

“I see now, Killian, how wrong I was to leave without telling you everything, but I thought it was for the best. And the longer I stayed away, the less I thought you’d want to see me again. Elsa tried to get me to call you ever since she learned I had a brother, but you see; I couldn’t. I was scared, Killian. I was a coward, and I let you down, and for that I truly am sorry.”

Emma watched Killian’s jaw tick, tears brimming in his eyes. She almost felt like crying herself, thinking of those tv-shows Mary Margaret loved to watch, where people were reunited with their long-lost family. It seemed she’d caught the live version.

“You succeeded, you know,” Killian said, his voice small. “You were always my hero… and I’m beginning to accept that even heroes are allowed their flaws. Even cowardice.”

Emma saw the meaning of Killian’s words sink in as the tension from Liam’s shoulders lessened. A smile started to spread from the corner of his mouth, and before Emma could turn to gauge Killian’s thoughts, Killian surged forward to bring his arms around Liam in a tight hug. Liam returned it without hesitating, his grasp around Killian just as firm.

Emma wanted to look away, feeling awkward just standing there and looking at them, but for a moment she allowed herself to smile. When she couldn’t bear it anymore, her eyes flickered towards the waves now lapping at the shore. She wasn’t sure she’d be as quick as Killian to forgive her parents if she ever found them. Forgiveness in general had never been her strong suit. Then again, she’d forgiven Killian for all his lies, hadn’t she?

She glanced at the brothers again, Mary Margaret’s words coming to mind; forgiveness itself might be the hardest thing ever, but in the end, it will rarely make your life harder to live.

“You could have been less of a pain in the ass about leaving that trail though,” Killian said as they pulled away from each other.

Liam only laughed. “I had to make it hard, didn’t I? And if you managed to figure it out, it can’t have been too difficult anyways.”

“I doubt I’d have figured it all out without Swan here.”

Emma tensed as both brothers turned to look at her. She felt a blush creeping up, and hoped to god she didn’t look as red as she felt.

“Ah right, I think it’s about time you properly introduced me to the lovely lady, little brother” Liam smiled, holding his hand out for Emma’s.

“I’m Emma Swan,” she introduced herself as she took his hand.

“A pleasure to meet you, Emma,” Liam said, and gave her hand a small peck. She should have known he’d be a charmer just like his brother.

“Nice to finally meet you too.” Knowing that she’d been searching for this man for the past week because she wanted him to sign some documents was almost laughable. And it was impossible now, knowing that the documents were in her suitcase in Kristoff’s car, somewhere on the west-coast of Norway. And she really didn’t give a damn about them anymore anyway.

“Now what prompted you to help my brother find Neverland? Surely it couldn’t have been for my - or his - benefit.”

Emma wondered how to explain everything with a few words.

“Actually, it’s kind of a long story.”

“You’ll have to share it with me some time,” Liam smiled.

“Perhaps when there’s not a rather large group of strangers staring at us,” Killian cut in, bringing Emma’s attention back to the group of people that, indeed, were still standing on the beach, looking at them. She felt kind of relieved though - at least she hadn’t been the only one staring at a private moment between brothers unfold.

“Those would be the people of Neverland,” Liam explained.

One of the women stepped forth when she saw Emma, Killian and Liam had turned towards them. She crossed the sand, and Liam met her halfway, Emma and Killian just behind.

“Tiger Lily, this is my little brother Killian and Miss Emma Swan.”

The woman - Tiger Lily - nodded her greeting, keeping her arms folded a few inches in front of her. She reminded Emma of a Native American, as did the rest of the people staying near the shade of the trees. Weren’t the inhabitants of Neverland Indians too in the stories? And wasn’t there a Tiger Lily involved as well? Perhaps this Neverland wasn’t as different as the one she knew as a child.

Emma and Killian returned Tiger Lily’s nod, both unsure of how to proceed.

“Pleased to meet you, Killian - Liam has spoken of you several times. I’m not certain I’ve heard your name before, Emma, but be sure, you’re just as welcome to our island,” Tiger Lily smiled. “I believe you call it Neverland.”

“That we do,” Killian answered, finding his charming self and smiling back at Tiger Lily. Emma saw right through it though - whenever Killian wasn’t sure what to do or how to act, he’d try and flirt his way out of it.

“A strange name if you ask me.”

“What do you call it?” Emma asked.

Tiger Lily looked at her and smiled again, a fiery glint in her eye. “Home.”

Well, that was a practical name at least.

“Our ancestors discovered the island centuries ago, after sailing on open seas for months on end, unknowingly having entered a certain pocket of the world where realms meet once every few centuries,” Liam said. “They called the island Neverland, as they’d thought they’d never see land again.”

“Clever,” Killian said, dryly. “They were the ones who forged the objects, aye?”

“Yes - and founded The Brothers Jones which passed on through the family along with the stories of their adventures.”

“The objects you speak of were forged here actually,” Tiger Lily said. “A gift from my ancestors to yours, to help them find their way back home. It seems though, that they work both ways, and in the wrong hands, those objects pose quite the danger to the peace of our island.”

“Which is why our uncle and I decided it was best I hid them properly once we discovered the stories about them were true,” Liam elaborated.

“And I’m guessing once you’ve already been here, you don’t need them to come here again, or else you wouldn’t be here,” Emma said, looking at Liam.

“Precisely.”

“However you have the objects with you now, I trust,” Tiger Lily surmised.

“Aye, they’re in my satchel,” Killian nodded towards the boat.

“Perfect. Then we can finally get around to healing your brother properly.”

What?

Liam chuckled at Tiger Lily’s bluntness - or perhaps at Emma’s and Killian’s perplexed looks. Before either could ask, Liam answered their question.

“You’ve met Elsa, I presume, or talked to her at least.”

Both Emma and Killian nodded.

“I believe she told you the nature of my illness and this ring that kept me alive?”

They nodded again.

“Well, the ring was meant to keep the poison of the nightshade from reaching my heart, but it wasn’t as efficient as we could have hoped. I lost part of my sanity and with time, the magic of the ring wore off. As long as I’m here in Neverland, I’ll live. But if I want to leave this island alive, they need the magic in those objects to create the proper cure.”

“In the process, the objects and their purpose will be destroyed, meaning that no one - not even you - can return to Neverland,” Tiger Lily added.

“A small price to pay for my brother’s life.”

“It’s probably for the best actually,” Emma said, thinking of how Gold wouldn’t ever be able to fulfill his plans of turning Neverland into his own personal stock.

“Then let’s not waste more time,” Tiger Lily said.

Killian went to get his satchel from the boat. They left their coats behind - traversing Neverland in clothes meant for Norway did not sound ideal.

While the rest of the inhabitants of Neverland that had come to see Emma and Killian turned towards their village, Tiger Lily led them to a place she called Dark Hallow. A pretty ominous name, if you asked Emma.

Neverland was mostly one big jungle. Liam and Tiger Lily said there were open fields on the other side of the island, and cliffs with several hidden caves, both large and small.

Killian asked a lot of questions about the island. Emma preferred to stay silent, soaking everything in. She was still half-convinced she was dreaming. Something about the heat made her feel dizzy, and the further they ventured into the jungle, the more Emma’s head started to hurt.

“Everything alright, love?” Killian asked, sagging behind with Emma, just enough so that Liam and Tiger Lily wouldn’t listen in. Emma was surprised that Killian would even take the time to talk to her, what with finally having found his brother after nine years. You’d think he’d rather talk to Liam than her.

“I’m fine. It’s just all a bit much,” Emma added, knowing Killian wouldn’t be satisfied with a simple ‘I’m fine’.

He handed her a water bottle from his satchel. “Aye, it’s a lot to take in. At least they’re a peaceful folk.”

Emma drank several mouthfuls and handed the bottle back to Killian. He drank a few mouthfuls as well.

Killian was right - they were a peaceful folk. Emma didn’t make a habit of trusting people easily, especially not in situations like this, but well, she’d never actually been in a situation like this. And though she stayed wary, she didn’t really think there was a reason to worry. She just didn’t want to be caught with her guard down.

Ahead of them, Lily hacked her way through a couple of overgrown bushes. She was always sure to point out which plants to avoid touching, lest they ended up with another person to heal.

“How are you holding up?” Emma asked Killian in return.

“If I’m entirely honest, I could do with a glass of rum right about now.”

“I don’t blame you there.”

They continued to walk in a companionable silence, the path soon becoming too narrow for them to walk alongside each other. Killian let Emma pass first. She almost wished he hadn’t though; it irked her to have him walk behind her, him able to see her but not the other way around. Not that Killian made her uncomfortable, on the contrary actually. She had gotten too comfortable around him, and not having him in her line of sight only made her think about him more.

“I was meaning to ask actually,” Liam turned around, mainly addressing Killian, “how is our dear uncle? I hope he wasn’t so austere he denied helping you find the objects.”

Emma all but froze mid-step. She didn’t need to look at Killian to know he probably felt the same uncertainty about how to proceed.

In the end, Liam’s question led to Killian explaining how Barrie’s death meant Liam now owned the family business - and that’s where Emma entered the picture, explaining how she was actually the lawyer working on getting the business sold. Not that she intended to follow through on that any more though, she quickly added.

Liam clearly had more questions, but Tiger Lily interrupted before he could ask them.

They had reached Dark Hollow.

Emma understood the name now. The trees were so thick and all but knit together, letting no sun- or starlight pass through their leaves. The ground was a bumpy weave of roots and Emma had to take care not to stumble and fall.

Killian had his flashlight, and Tiger Lily had somehow procured a torch, lighting the way to a small clearing, that wasn’t really a clearing at all. Branches overhead still blocked the view to the sky. A few vines hung from the trees, and roots still covered the entire forest floor. It wasn’t as much a clearing as, well, a hollow.

“Why here?” Emma asked. “I mean, it looks more like a place you’d murder someone, not cure them.”

Tiger Lily chuckled. As if things weren’t creepy enough. Emma readied herself to make a run for it soon, if need be.

“We call it the darkest place on the island.” Yeah, you’re only proving my point by saying that, Emma thought. “And you’re right; it doesn’t seem the obvious place to heal someone. Usually, one would think of a field under the stars or a bed of flowers. But this place has its own charms, you’ll see.”

Tiger Lily turned to Killian, asking for the objects. He handed them over to her and she placed them on a tree stump in the middle of the hollow. At her request, Killian turned off his flashlight and the three of them stood around the stump, Liam placing his hand on the compass. Where Emma and Killian were rather suspicious and wary of the whole ordeal, Liam seemed perfectly calm. As if he knew what was about to happen.

“I can promise this will be quick, but I’m not sure it will be painless,” Tiger Lily said, and before Emma could say something or even think about getting the hell out of there, Tiger Lily thrust her torch towards the sky.

The leaves parted above them. Moonlight danced through, like tiny particles spinning down towards them, and for a second, Emma was spellbound. Her eyes met Killian’s, seeing the same daze that she felt.

And she saw his panic the moment she felt the pain sear through her own body. As if something was being ripped from her - or no, she was being ripped from something else. The ground shook beneath her and she struggled to breathe.

On instinct, she reached for Killian’s hand as he reached for hers.

Their fingers almost touching, Emma blinked.

And when she opened her eyes again, the light was gone. The trees had vanished and neither Killian nor Liam stood beside her anymore. The ground still rocked beneath her - except there was no ground. Only planks.

She was on the boat again.

Clouds covered the night sky, and a brisk wind hit her face. Only then did she notice that she was wearing her coat again, her beanie as well.

Emma had a strong feeling she wasn’t in Neverland anymore. But where were -

“Bloody hell.”

Emma whirled around to see Killian standing by the helm.

She’d never felt so relieved in her entire life.

Killian went from seeing a blinding white light to crisp white sails, to the dark sea around him.

And then there was Emma.

Swan whirled around, eyes wide. Bloody hell, she was a sight to behold. He couldn’t block out the image of her panicking when the pain that took hold of him must have taken hold of her too, but it washed away when he saw that she was alright. She was alright.

She was wearing her beanie again, he noticed. And her coat. And he was wearing his own, come to think of it.

Emma looked everything from confused to relieved and he felt much the same. But they were out of Neverland. They-

No.

“Where’s Liam?” The relief he felt faded into a new bout of panic.

Emma opened her mouth as a hand clasped his shoulder. “Worry not, little brother. I’m right here.”

Killian turned around to meet Liam’s grin. Once again, relief washed over him, accompanied by immense joy. Killian wrapped his brother in a hug, both of them laughing as they finally started to calm down.

Killian turned to Emma again, wanting nothing more than to wrap her in a hug as well and not let go for hours. She was pointing at the water though.

Or rather, the harbour.

“Looks like we’re back,” Emma said.

“Aye.”

Between the three of them, getting the boat docked - even in the dark of night - was no problem. Liam spotted the boat he’d sailed to Neverland with a month ago, and Killian felt relief on the behalf of Kristoff’s cousins.

Everything had turned out just the way it was meant to. Everything was going to be okay.

They weren’t sure where to go, but anywhere with food, some warmth, and a couple of beds sounded heavenly. Liam mentioned calling Elsa to tell her they were back, alive and well.

They never made it to the end of the pier though.

Blocking their way stood three people, one of which Killian had hoped never to see again.

Gold.

[mattpajak]

Nutrition: Exploring Food Sensitivity

Overview

I’ll just start by saying that I’m not a nutritionist, however, the experience that I will share will have takeaways that you can hopefully use to keep your body feeling good.

Back in May, I visited a doctor who ran a quick food sensitivity (food-allergy) check on me. A friend of mine had recently retooled his fridge by removing certain foods from his diet that he had sensitivities to, per the check, and noticed a drop in weight (as a result of reduced inflammation), stable digestion, and an increase in general well-being and energy. I didn’t seek this check, however, I was curious based on his feedback and was presented with the opportunity, so despite not having any glaring issues, I went down the rabbit hole.

Initial Evaluation

After about 5 minutes, the doctor had given me a laundry list of foods to avoid because I may have sensitivities. Now, again, my body didn’t present any glaring issues and at the time I subjectively reported feeling good. So, when the doctor told me that I should try and avoid dairy (which I had largely cut out anyway), chocolate, peanuts, cashews, seeds, gluten, chicken, oranges, corn, and eggs, I was heavily skeptical.

I had replaced dairy chocolate milk with chocolate-almond-cashew milk about two years ago and I drank that regularly. Both cashew and chocolate came up as potential sensitivities. Was it not enough to cut back on the dairy? I ate a lot of eggs and eggs are an ingredient in a lot of things I eat. So, no more eggs? Come on, chicken? I don’t eat it all the time, but I love fried chicken, and what about grilled chicken thighs? I’ve always been told chicken breast is one of the best lean proteins for you. Well, apparently not for me?

I made the decision that I would do my best to avoid the foods that came back with potential sensitivities for a 2-week period. I would say that I was at least 90% compliant and any of the 10% that wasn��t compliant was a result of a small-trace of a food item that was used as an ingredient in something I ate.

What did I eat for 2 weeks?

The first trip to the grocery store was a long and frustrating one. Finding an attractive gluten-free bread isn’t easy. Finding an attractive gluten-free bread that wasn’t made with egg is near-impossible. I arrived at a gluten-free cinnamon-raisin swirl bread (it actually wasn’t half bad). I also found that many of the foods I was targeting for healthy snacking were made with sunflower seed oil (seeds came up as a sensitivity).

Ultimately, your best bet for snacking with heavy-restrictions is food that doesn’t have a ton of ingredients. For me that was a homemade trail-mix with lightly-salted almonds, raw walnuts, dried cherries and honey-roasted pistachios. Lara bars were a necessary discovery (most are made with 4-7 ingredients only). Peaches and cherries are in season. Green pea snack crisps are inexpensive, made with only 6 ingredients (and you can pronounce them all), and the cracked and spicy black pepper ones play well with an almond butter, pecan, and honey sandwich on the aforementioned gluten-free cinnamon-raisin swirl bread.

A steak prepared with onions and cilantro, a side of tomatoes w/ balsamic vinegar, and a sweet potato w/ pecans and honey. 10 total ingredients on this plate.

When it came to meals, I could still work with steak, pork, fish, rice, sweet potatoes, and avocados. In tandem, there were plenty of onions and peppers chopped, tomato, brussels sprouts (I did not know there was a third ‘s’ in brussels before spellcheck), and of course, cauliflower.

Unfortunately, no non-dairy ice cream made the okay list, so I pivoted to frozen fruit bars (also very few ingredients) for dessert.

Results

The first result was weight-related and as it was explained to me, foods that you have sensitivities to create inflammation in your body (add weight). It shocked me none to see the volatility in both directions during and after the two-week period.

The green lines represent the start and finish of the 2 week ‘food evasion’ period.

After two weeks of the great food evasion of 2020, I was down 2.6 lbs. (without modifying my physical fitness or sleep patterns). Mind you, I had monitored my weight on daily basis for 2 months prior to this and had weighed in consistently between 188 and 192 for at least a month. I broke the two-week evasion with a pizza, because I love pizza, and weighed in 2 lbs. heavier the next day. Over the course of the next week, I became less rigid with what was going in the fridge and in my body and one week after breaking the two-week evasion, I was up 4 lbs. from the two-week low (also, without modifying my physical fitness or sleep patterns).

The second result was digestion-related and is what made me a believer. Regular digestion came within a few days and at no point over the two-week period was my stomach upset in any way. There’s a difference between the “my body is feeling good,” I subjectively expressed prior to avoiding the laundry list of foods and the “my body is actually feeling good,” that I can say with confidence was a result of avoiding the said foods.

Pulse Test

The doctor provided me with an at-home, easy to execute food sensitivity test (if you’re ever curious). 

The crux of it is that you take your resting pulse (how many beats in 1 minute) with nothing in your system (I opted to do all food sensitivity testing prior to my first meal of the day). Once you are confident in your resting pulse. Put the food item that you want to test in your mouth for 30 seconds and make sure it covers all tastes buds – do not swallow the food item – this is your body’s opportunity to gather all the information it needs on the food item (a significant increase in pulse is your body’s way of preparing to defend the fort). After 30 seconds, keep the food item in your mouth without swallowing and take your pulse for another minute – record your pulse now and note any difference. If you intend to test another food item, do not swallow the food item, if you do not intend to test another food item, it doesn’t matter. Per the above linked article, an increase of 3-4 bpm confirms a food sensitivity. The higher the increase, the more severe the sensitivity. Results from 7 food sensitivity pulse tests below:

Elimination and Moderation

Keep in mind that the following notes and explanations behind them are my own interpretations and not those of a licensed professional.

The combination of the Chocolate Almond-Cashew Milk test and the Milk Chocolate test results revealed to me that the cashew was likely the cause for the pulse spike. As such, I have decided to avoid cashews moving forward. Chocolate did not seem to have much of an effect at all on my pulse, so I will continue to enjoy in moderation.

Parmesan Cheese came back with a +4, so there was a sensitivity to dairy. I had largely removed dairy from my diet anyway, but because the sensitivity is on the milder side, I won’t feel bad about enjoying a pizza from time to time.

My primary bread of choice for quite some time has been sourdough, and that’s mostly because I enjoy the taste – also turns out, it is lower in gluten and easier to digest – who knew? I was pleased to find that my Sourdough Bread test came back with no change in pulse rate. Since that test, I have reintroduced sourdough bread into my weekly rotation.

The Blue Bell Cookie Cake Ice Cream test is the one that is most interesting and unfortunate. Looking at the ingredients list, it shocks me none that I saw a +8 spike in pulse after testing this food. This was one of my favorite ice creams, and after the two-week food evasion, I decided to follow the test with a full bowl. Keep in mind that this half-gallon was half-empty prior to the two-week period, so I had already consumed part of the container. After I ate the bowl, I experienced an upset stomach – a reaction that I had never had previously (both with this particular container and with multiple past half-gallons). After essentially cleansing my body for two weeks, I think that was its way of telling me that it would prefer if I didn’t go back to eating Blue Bell Cookie Cake Ice Cream. Dairy ice cream as a whole will be an infrequent treat for me moving forward, fortunately, there are plenty of non-dairy ice creams out there (that are starting to taste just as good).

Milk, cream, wheat flour, milkfat, butter, eggs, skim milk, high fructose corn syrup, and corn syrup were all identified food-sensitivities for me + the things I can’t pronounce can’t be good for me + what is a natural flavor anyway? Do those grow on trees somewhere?

The last two food tests that I recorded both involved peanut butter as the primary identified-food sensitivity. Both an almond milk-based, peanut butter-flavored Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and a Clif Chocolate Peanut Butter Builder Bar yielded a +4 jump in pulse. From this, I have decided to moderate any use of peanuts or peanut butter and substitute where possible (almond butter has become a new mainstay for me).

I haven’t tested corn, oranges, egg or chicken yet in isolation, though, it hasn’t been entirely difficult to avoid these foods. I do plan to test them, but I have already mentally decided to move forward in moderation with these food items.

It is worth noting that concentration of a food item likely impacts the effect it may have on your body. Eating an egg and eating something made with egg are likely two different things – I would guess that it’s akin to taking a straight shot of alcohol vs. having a mixed drink.

An Aside on Salt

I, like many of you (I’m guessing), have been under the belief that salt is no good for you. As an aside, a conversation I had with the doctor yielded a new lease on salt. It turns out that table salt is the salt that spikes sodium levels and has been attributed to heart-issues (think salt-shakers/salt-packets at restaurants and the stuff fast food restaurants use). My understanding now is that table salt is boiled at a high temperature and stripped of a TON of minerals that are good for you in the process. The good news is that the salt that isn’t bad for your heart and still has all of the minerals is available at your grocery store. Grey Celtic Sea Salt is my new salt of choice, but here is an article on other salts you should look into / use at-will and without fear.

Closing Thoughts

Fortunately, I’ve never needed or explored a popular diet – I know Paleo and Keto have emerged as popular diets in the past few years and obviously, vegetarians and vegans have been preaching largely plant-based diets for a long time. Those diets are one-size fits all, and that’s not how we’re wired – there’s no magic bullet for everyone. The human body is complex and individual to you and that is probably what the past month or so has opened my eyes to the most.

I must make clear that none of the identified food sensitivities were affecting my quality of life. With the knowledge gained, application and observation, I have decided to make some adjustments moving forward.

Objectively, I just want to feel good with regularity. If that means I have to stop eating certain foods and moderate other foods, I’m willing to do that. I would urge anyone at any age to explore what they are putting in their body and how it may be impacting their sleep, energy, and general well-being.

Food is joy and health is wealth – so find a way to enjoy food that keeps you healthy. Your health is your long-term freedom.

[killerspectrum]

NEVADA

After such dramatic claims of being a "deadly" state with a high rate of violent crimes, I assumed this was going to be a bloody post with some fascinating characters.

Nope.  Couple of mass murderers, sure, but I was hard pressed to find serial killers in this state.  In my desperate search for dirt on Nevada, I came across a hot lead on some 'serial killing'... and after 20 minutes of reading, I realize that someone's cattle is being picked off.  One by one.  Oh, fuck me.

Anyway.  There were only 33 victims attributed to serial killers during the 80's, which basically means they were unscathed by the SK epidemic rolling across the US at the time. 

Naturally, a transient state with mobsters and hit men, there's going to be plenty of dead bodies but hardly any confirmed cases of multiple homicide.  

Plenty of known serial killers have passed through Nevada (who hasn't) on their way to other murderous destinations, but the 7th largest state in the US has only one confirmed and convicted serial killer who sorta made Nevada their home turf.  

 Color me shocked.  You would think there would be a long history of serial killers given the opportune geographical perks of this mountainous state.

Maybe the 928 atomic bomb explosions in the area may have been a turn off. Or, maybe they all died of dehydration. 

SERIAL KILLER

CARROLL COLE

Las Vegas

Killed 14

1971-1980

Carroll Cole could’ve written a book about getting away with murder.

Prone to violence as a small child, Cole committed his first homicide at the tender age of 10 when he drowned his 7 year-old playmate in a pond for kicks. Declared an accident by local police, he had gotten away with his first murder before puberty.

As he grew older, he became a man of many nasty qualities.  Near genius-level intelligence, wicked alcoholic, necrophiliac, and murderer.   Real charmer.

Eventually, Cole moved to San Diego where he started killing again and continued to get away with it for nine years.

He preferred finding his victims walking in parking lots, where he would strangle them before bringing them home where he would act out necrophilia fantasies.   Mostly wasted during his crimes, he would capture what he would consider "loose" women to cope with his raging Mommy Issues. 

In addition to random strangers, Cole also killed his wife.  

Neighbors had heard some disturbing noises coming from the couple’s apartment, and when they didn’t see the wife for eight days afterwards, they called the police.   

Naturally, when investigators found Cole’s dead wife in a closet, rolled in a blanket, they decided she had drank herself to death and labeled it an ‘accidental death’.  Sounds legit, because most dead people I know, like to wrap themselves up in blankets before eventually found- a week later.

Cole was free to continue killing, and he did. 

Several in San Diego, several in Nevada before moving on to Texas, where he was finally apprehended. 

After being called to the scene of a disturbance, cops literally found Cole having a drink, relaxing next to a corpse.  Since there were no sigbs of violence, investigators in Texas declared another accidental death and he was free to go.

Before they could shut the door behind them, Cole stopped them.  He told them to have a seat and confessed to several murders across the country.  In addition to any corpses in his personal space.  

It’s unknown if he was just exhausted from all that activity or  just wanted to brag, as he went on to claim 35 victims.

Cole was taken back to Nevada where he was sentenced to death, as per his request.   He died in 1985 after waiving all appeals. 

UNSOLVED SERIAL KILLINGS:

LEMMON VALLEY

4 Killed

1971-1981

All four victims found in the dusty and rural community of Lemmon Valley had similar profiles:

Murdered by blunt force trauma to the back of the head.

All of them were in their Teens, with the exception of Julia Woodward, who looked young enough to be mistaken for a teen.

Hair styles and physical characteristics. 

Last seen hitchhiking, walking or otherwise on foot at the time of their disappearances.

Besides a couple ‘persons of interest’, a suspect has never been named or arrested.

THE SUSPECTED I-80 KILLER

In the Northern part of Nevada, runs the iconic I-80 freeway.  Spanning coast to coast, it has gotten investigators attention with a high number of unsolved disappearances and homicides over the last 20-30 years. 

Authorities have considered the chilling possibility that a serial killer (or a few) could be using their desolate stretch of highway for macabre purposes. 

While there are a lot of corpses sprinkled about the Nevada portion of I-80, in various stages of decay, however there are no connecting pieces, links or connections to tie them to any serial killers.  SMH Nevada.

Some victims were found inside their cars, others laying on the side of the road. A lot of times, only scattered bones remained.  

No suspect(s) has ever been identified as being the "I-80 Killer".   Sounds about right for this state!

MASS MURDERS:

EDUARDO SENCION

Carson City

Killed 4

September 6, 2011

At the peak breakfast hour of 9 AM, Eduardo Sencion walked into his local I-HOP pancake house with an AK-47.  He parked his bright blue mini van, complete with a yellow “Support Our Troops” magnet, and marched directly toward a table of uniformed National Guard members sitting down to eat.   Sencion killed all four sitting at the table together and wounded seven others in his line of sight.

Refusing to die among bacon grease and dirty napkins like his victims, the mentally disturbed man walked out to the parking lot and shot himself in the head.

It’s unclear why those specific troops were targeted, as he was never in the military before.  

PHILIP CLINE  

Las Vegas

Killed 8

February 10, 1981

One month into the job of ‘room service attendant’ at the Las Vegas Hilton, Philip Cline decided to smoke a PCP joint while on his break.  Inside an elevator. Around 8 o’clock that Saturday night, the 24 year-old model employee wanted off early for some reason, proceeded to light the curtains on fire in a drug fueled haze.  

Chaos ensued as the building went up in flames, with over a 1000 people trying to escape.  As helicopters were circling and people hanging off the side of the building with torn sheets, Cline was running through the hallways with a bucket of water trying to douse the flames, before escaping himself.

After a few suspicious interviews, Cline claimed it was an accident.  Although he couldn’t explain the four different points of origins, on four different floors of the hotel.  Total accident. 

The aftermath left 8 people dead and over 200 injured.  Luckily, most people were watching a show on the first floor and were able to easily escape.

Cline’s exact motive was never understood.  Some people think he was just high on PCP and thought it would be fun to burn a building down while he was inside. 

The hotel is known today as the Westgate Hotel. 

Click here for chaos

Cline is spending life in prison.

PRISCILLA FORD 

Reno

Killed 7

November 27, 1980

Frustrated at the court system for blocking her attempts to regain custody of her daughter, Priscilla Ford mentioned she was going to make Reno pay for all her troubles.

On a brisk Thanksgiving Day, Ford drove her Lincoln Continental up on the busy Casino Row sidewalk and plowed through 5 blocks of people, killing seven and injuring 23.

When she was pulled out of the car she asked how many people she killed- she was curious. After being told several people have died, she replied  “Good, the more the better. They are all pigs and wild animals.” 

Ford received a death sentence, but died in prison from health issues in 2005.

ZANE FLOYD  

Las Vegas

Killed 4

June 3, 1999

Early morning shoppers had the shock of their life at their local grocery store.

An ex-Marine spent 7 minutes slaughtering people at an Albertson’s grocery store.  Dressed in Camouflage, Floyd walked the isles calmly picking off shoppers with a shot gun.   As he fled the store, I doubt he was anticipating the quick response from the authorities.  The cops were already waiting for him in the parking lot, where he was arrested after a short stand off with police.

Floyd claimed to have visions and basically wanted to know what it was like to kill people.  

He was sentenced to death and currently on Death Row.

INFAMOUS CRIME:

TUPAC SHAKUR

The 1996 shocking murder of Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas reverberated around the world.  Shot four times at the intersection of E. Flamingo and Koval near the famous strip.  Plenty of speculations and conspiracies, but no arrests have ever been made.

Note:  Included are murderers with a minimum of three victims and that did the majority of their killing in the state of Nevada.

[balancedlifegoal]

Health Benefits of Green Tea

Green tea is made from the unfermented leaves of the Camellia sinensis tea plant. Because it is not fermented like black teas, it has a higher concentration of antioxidants (called polyphenols). Research suggests that these antioxidants can have a beneficial effect on the body by neutralizing free radicals and reducing inflammation.

The effects of green tea benefit the body in many ways. It contains catechins (most notably EGCG) that may help fight cancer, obesity, heart problems, diabetes, and more. It also has a modest amount of caffeine, about half as much as a cup of coffee, that can promote energy and wakefulness.

Theanine is also present in green tea, an amino acid that can lower blood pressure and promote optimal brain and nervous system function. Theanine on its own is often taken to promote a calm mind, and green tea can have this same effect.

Vitamin C is another nutrient found in green tea that is known for immune support and being a potent antioxidant. Together, these components give green tea its impressive health benefits.

(Learn more about the full benefits of green tea in this podcast, or read on!)

These are the most research-proven ways that green tea supports health and well-being:

Antioxidants

Green tea is an exceptional source of antioxidants. The rich antioxidant content makes this light tea beneficial to the brain, heart, and other organs. Research from the journal Nutrients in 2019 explains that antioxidants may be helpful in slowing the effects of aging. It also may help protect the body against diseases linked to free radical damage (cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and others).

Green tea gets these benefits from the catechins it contains, four in all:

Epicatechin

Epigallocatechin

Epicatechin-3-gallate

EGCG

EGCG is the most well-studied polyphenol component in green tea with the most active properties. They are not only rich in antioxidants but are antimicrobial, too. Green tea catechins are a general one-two punch for aging and disease—but you have to consume them regularly to get any type of benefit.

Cancer

Anything that can reduce the risk of or combat cancer is going to be interesting, and green tea actually has plenty of anti-cancer properties!

A 1998 study from the Japanese Journal of Cancer Research looked at 472 women with breast cancer. Those who consumed higher levels of tea both before and after the diagnosis had the lowest spread and growth of cancer in the body. They were also less likely to have a recurrence after treatment.

More recently, a review from 2018 summarizes some pretty mind-blowing benefits:

Delayed onset of any type of cancer over the course of 10 years

Prevention of colorectal cancer recurrence

EGCG generally works against cancer cells and their activity in the body

Regularly drinking green tea can also reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer in women by 32 percent, as compared to women who don’t regularly drink tea. In men, several studies have shown that regularly drinking green tea can lower the risk of prostate cancer by up to 70 percent. Green tea is so potently anti-cancer that it can even reduce the risk of lung cancer in people who smoke. (Imagine what it can do for people who don’t!)

Green tea has also been associated with reduced risk of esophageal cancer, liver cancer, and colon cancer. For colorectal cancer, consuming green tea just three times a week for at least six months may decrease the risk—and the more green tea you drink, the lower your risk goes.

A 2010 review in Chinese Medicine shows that green tea may also work to prevent or decrease the risk of cancer in the esophagus, mouth, stomach, small intestine, kidney, pancreas, and mammary glands.

Weight Loss and Obesity

Green tea is often touted as a weight loss aid, but how legitimate is that claim? Studies show mixed results. While it’s not a weight-loss miracle, meta-analysis of more than 44 different studies shows that green tea can lead to some weight loss. The most likely reason for the weight loss is due to the caffeine in green tea, so decaf green tea may not have the same effect.

Green tea may also lead to increased fat burning thanks to increased thermogenesis. Thermogenesis is a term meaning heat production, and the more heat production that happens in the body, the more fat is burned for energy.

Heart Health

Green tea also shines in the area of heart health thanks to the flavonoids it contains. Drinking tea leads to an increased activity of enzymes in the body that protect against reactive oxygen species. This lowers the level of nitric oxide in blood plasma. Green tea also helps to prevent plaque build-up in the arteries, which can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

For people who’ve had heart attacks, a study of 1,900 people found that the death rate was 44 percent less for people who drank at least 2 cups of green tea per day. Green tea helps to prevent the oxidation of LDL cholesterol, lowering the risk for potential cardiovascular problems. The more you drink, the better it works.

Reduced risk of heart disease isn’t the only cardiovascular benefit that comes from green tea. Animal research also shows that it lowers the absorption of triglycerides and cholesterol, increasing the way that the body burns fat.

Of course, the heart benefits from reduced body weight, and as we saw above, green tea can help to promote weight loss.

It’s also good for blood pressure, which is an important component of heart health. A meta-analysis of 13 randomized controlled trials found that green tea consumption leads to lower blood pressure. It is especially effective for people who are in stage 1 hypertension or prehypertension, suggesting that it’s better at preventing blood pressure problems over time than correcting more severe ones.

For people with high blood pressure, green tea might be good for supporting health. You should always talk to your doctor though, to see what’s right for you.

Cognitive Health and Anti-Aging

Thanks to a compound called epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG, green tea may also be good for the mind and for slowing aging. This compound not only protects against UV related damage but may also help halt skin aging caused by free radicals.

This same compound makes it protective of neurons and brain cells. Initial research suggests that regular green tea consumption can help protect the mind and delay deterioration from Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons.

Other compounds in green tea, like L-theanine and caffeine, can help support the brain and improve alertness and focus. L-theanine is especially good at improving alertness without adding jittery energy like caffeine can.

Blood Sugar and Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes is a metabolic disorder where your body doesn’t respond to the hormone insulin as it should. Insulin draws glucose (blood sugar) into your cells, so that your levels aren’t too high. There are lots of things that can reduce the risk of getting type 2 diabetes. Green tea happens to be one of them!

A 2009 meta-analysis of 7 studies found an 18 percent lower chance of type 2 diabetes. Another meta-analysis from 2019 found that green tea doesn’t lower diabetes risk for everyone, but works really well for lowering fasting blood sugar levels in people who are under age 55.

If you already have diabetes, green tea won’t magically make it go away. But if you don’t, green tea might help to prevent it or help to get your blood sugar levels better off so that you don’t develop it.

Types of Green Tea

There are several types of green tea. It can be loose leaf or in tea bags, but regardless of the type, unless it’s decaffeinated, the caffeine content is about the same. Most green tea has about half the caffeine of a cup of coffee per serving.

Matcha is another type of green tea that comes from the same plant. However, it is grown differently so that it has higher levels of chlorophyll, caffeine, and antioxidants. After the tea leaves are harvested, the stems and leaves are removed. It is then ground into a bright green powder.

Matcha has many of the same benefits of green tea, but due to its higher caffeine content, people tend to consume it in smaller amounts.

Both green tea and matcha can be used to make a smoothie, providing a boost of antioxidants with its light, mildly grassy flavor. I like the Pique Tea Matcha as it is quadruple toxin screened and their tea farm is located high in the mountains where cooler temperatures are a natural insect repellant.

Cautions, Side Effects, and Fluoride Content

Tea plants are known as fluorine accumulators, meaning that they can absorb and store fluoride. Those with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis or other thyroid conditions, as well as any other disorders, should ask a doctor and exercise caution with green tea consumption.

Research has found that higher quality green teas have less fluoride and lesser quality teas are more likely to contain high levels of fluoride. I buy bulk organic green tea from a trusted source and consume in moderation.

Green tea is not studied in children and not recommended during pregnancy. It can also block the absorption of folic acid, so it may not be best to consume if you’re trying to conceive. Due to its high antioxidant content, it can interact with some medications so check with your doctor before consuming green tea, especially in large amounts.

How to Make Green Tea

This tea is slightly more difficult to brew than other teas since it is more delicate and can easily become bitter. I follow these rules to ensure a non-bitter tea:

Start with a high quality organic green tea. I buy in bulk here and my favorite varieties are Dao Ren and Green Sencha.

Use hot water between 175-180°F.

Ideally, use a tea kettle and place the tea leaves in the kettle before adding the water. I use 2 teaspoons of tea per cup (8 ounces) of water.

Steep for only 1-2 minutes before pouring into a cup. Some tea kettles have a built in strainer, or else tea can be poured through a strainer.

To make iced tea, use the same amounts and pour over a cup of ice before consuming.

This article was medically reviewed by Dr. Lauren Jefferis, board-certified in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. As always, this is not personal medical advice and we recommend that you talk with your doctor or work with a doctor at SteadyMD.

[lalka-laski]

How many bank accounts do you have? I have a checking account & a savings account, but they’re kind of intertwined. So I guess 1-2? Have you ever been falsely accused of starting drama? Yeah, middle school were FUN times.... How old are you? 28 Do you attend church regularly? Nah. I don’t come from a church-going family.  Have you ever found a song that describes your whole life? I personalize *everything* so I could find a way to attach myself to any song lyrics if I tried hard enough

What time did you wake up this morning? Sadly it was 6:17. Obviously, that was not by choice!  What time do you plan on waking up tomorrow morning? Tomorrow’s Sunday so I get to sleep in! We leave for brunch at 11:15 which means I can sleep as last as like 10:45 if I wanted.  What kind of car do you drive? I don’t drive. What kind of car would you like to have? Have you ever been to Dairy Queen? Yeah, fairly recently I had a frosted animal cracker Blizzard. It’s what dreams are made of!!! If so, what’s your favorite thing to eat from there? When I get actual food (which is rare) I get cheese curds How old did you turn on your last birthday? 28 Ever felt like falling apart? On a daily basis Have you ever been in an ambulance? Mhm  Do you tend to worry a lot? Again, on a daily fucking basis. Actually, more like a minute-to-minute basis. How old were you when you lost your first tooth? I have no clue Do you remember your first time on the internet? My first time-ever, no.  Which website do you email from? Yahoo for personal, Outlook for work. Do you enjoy receiving souvenirs? Oh yes! I love kitschy stuff. I hope the people in my life never shy away from buying me something out of fear that I’ll think it’s ‘tacky” because that has never been the case.  Do you get angry with people easily? I get a lot more irritated with people than I let on.  Do a lot of people dislike you or is it the other way around? Neither? I don’t think I’m a dislikable person and there aren’t many people I actively dislike.  Have you ever had the flu? Knock on wood, I don’t think so. This year would be especially bad for me to get it because my immediate assumption would be “coronavirus!” and then I’d convince myself I was dying. What about strep throat? Many, many times. Sore throats are my most frequent ailment Have you ever been to a psychologist? Yeah, although it’s been years. I see a LCSW now (and she’s phenomenal).  What’s the worst part about school? The worst parts of school as a kid/teenager were some of the social aspects. I had friends and I wasn’t necessarily bullied, but I still struggled to fit in. Or at least it felt that way, I guess. I excelled in academics though, so that was never an issue for me. Do you normally have a lot of homework, if you’re still in school? When was your last vacation? New Orleans last December  Would you ever consider going on a cruise? ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT. You couldn’t even pay me.  What did you last buy from the store? A bottle of Sprite that I thought was a normal 20 oz but turned out to be a whole damn liter. The worst part though is that I still drank *all* of it over the course of my workday.  Would you say you enjoy being single or in a relationship more? I was always perfectly comfortable being single but now I could NEVER imagine my life without Glenn. 

Do you try to stay busy a lot? No, but I really should be for the sake of my anxiety. Something something about idle hands or whatever...  Do you lie a lot? Nah. My face is too readable and my conscience is too guilty. Do you still act childish most of the time? Not most of the time, but I certainly have my moments.  Did you ever enjoy gym class? Not ever  What is your biggest insecurity? Where do I begin?  Have you ever painted a room alone? I painted most of my bedroom myself as a teenager, but my Dad came in and did a lot of tweaking & final touches.  Speaking of which, when did you last paint your room? That was the last time I did so.... it’s been a while.  What’s for dinner tonight? It’s only 8 am so I have no clue. Probably something simple since it’s a Saturday night and Glenn & I both have plans. Do you ever drink alcohol? Maybe a little too much Have you ever had a terrible hangover? Oh God, I’m notorious for my wicked hangovers! I’m trying to be more conscious about the type of drinks I choose now though. Wine is BAD NEWS.  Do you ever get migraines? Thankfully, no. Although they run in my family so I feel like it’s only a matter of time before I start experiencing them  Do you know how to garden? Nope. I always think it’s something I’d be interested in until I consider all the manual labor it’d require and I’m like “nah” What was the last thing you plugged into an outlet? My phone charger Do people consider you to be a funny person? Yes, and it’s one of my favorite compliments. Although I don’t know if it’s that I’m a naturally funny person, or if funny things just *happen* to me and I’m good at relaying the stories.  Do you have any bad habits? Worrying, obsessing, over-thinking, over-drinking.... should I stop here or continue?  Do you like children? I love them & I really think I have a gift with kids. I can’t wait to have my own someday.  If not, why is this? What is your favorite snack? Chips & dip or cheese & crackers. Basically any cheap “party food” is up my alley. Do you own any gaming systems? Nope, but Glenn has a billion.  How old were your parents when they had you? Mid-late 20s?  Is there a big age difference between you and the person you like? He is 12 years older although it hardly feels that way. The only time our age gap becomes apparent is when one of us makes a pop culture reference that goes undetected. Like the time I said “No, this is Patrick” and he, in all seriousness, asked ‘Who’s Patrick?”  Do you trashtalk people a lot? I try not to but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t ever. Sometimes it’s just too easy.  What is the most amusing thing on the internet, in your opinion? Twitter is a goldmine, especially in the current political climate.  Does the future excite you or scare you? It used to scare me a whole lot more but now that I have Glenn, I’m less afraid and more excited Do you try to spend a lot of time with family? Yes, although I haven’t seen them too much recently. I’ve seen Glenn’s family more than my own How often do you shower? Every 1-2 days unless I’m in a depressive slump What would you say is your favorite genre of music? Typically alternative rock with soft rock/pop rock elements Do you need to clean your bedroom? Not really. I’m good about keeping it tidy. Although I do have a popcorn bowl and a water glass sitting on my bedside table right now that I’ll have to take care of when I get home What do you plan on doing with the rest of your life? Who the hell knows!! Do you enjoy Chinese food? In very small doses, yes. When I eat Chinese food, I’m set for several months. What is your favorite movie from the nineties? Clueless!  Which decade were you born in? The 90′s  Are you good at giving advice to people? I don’t think so. I don’t dish out advice as much as I just allow my friends to vent. I am a great listener though! How many huge secrets do you have? Hmm... I can’t say I have many at all anymore How many people know these secrets? How many times a day do you brush your teeth? At least once but usually twice Do you ever floss? LOL I couldn’t even tell you the last time I did... Have you ever been in a long-term relationship? I am currently Is there anyone out there who makes you feel completely useless? Thankfully, no. I have good people around me.  Do you like texting or calling people more? TEXTING. There are few instances where I’m ok with a phonecall. Otherwise, everything else can be done via text.  What’s your favorite band? The Killers Do you have a lot of friends? Yeah Have you ever painted something and been impressed by it? I guess. I’m not artistic but I’m kind of crafty, and I’ve painted a few cute trinkets before.  Would you rather go out to eat or stay in? Going out to eat is one of my favorite activities! And I’m so sad that Covid has (somewhat) robbed us of that little pleasure.  When did you last babysit, if ever? It’s been months :( Yet another pleasure stolen by Covid!  Do you have any younger siblings? A younger sister  Have you ever thought of someone as useless? I don’t think so Have you ever considered bleaching your hair? I dye it but I have no need to bleach it as it’s already very light Do you drink vitamin water? Oh man, I haven’t even seen it in years! It was super trendy when I was a young teen though. I remember putting Vitamin Water gif/sticker things in my Myspace bio.... THAT’S how old I am! Are there any old movies you absolutely love? Of course Have you ever had a Big Mac before? Nope Do you think you attract the opposite sex at a reasonable rate? What is defined as “reasonable?”  Where is your favorite place to travel? I could have fun almost anywhere. As long as there’s good food & drink!  What is your goal for the next few months? I’m really hoping to get on an antidepressant of some kind and then once my mental health’s a bit more in check, there are a few other goals on my mind.  Can you count to ten in another language other than your own? Polish & French  Do you own a lot of shoes? Nah, I’m not a shoe girl Have you ever played on a sports team before? Soccer as a kid. It didn’t go well If you have, what was that sport and when? ^^ Have you ever filed a lawsuit on someone? Nope Do you think you’re a good singer? I’m not bad but I’m not a “good singer” quote un-quote.  Would you rather wear jeans or sweatpants? Sweatpants are of course the comfier and therefore better option, but I never wear them in public.  Do you think you have a good sense of style? I have a good eye for style I just never have the energy (or confidence) to wear what I want. Oh, money is a major issue too. Ha!  Do you enjoy reading often? It’s my lifelong favorite hobby. Sadly I went through a mild depression during quarantine and didn’t pick up a book once. I’m making up for lost time now though. Have you ever had a deadly illness? No, thank God  Ever had food-poisoning before? Not that I’m aware of  Where did you last eat dinner at? Moe’s? Have you ever shot a gun before? Yep

[mysteriouslymysticalparadise]

Including results for cracking sound in joints

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The cracking sound appears to come from tendons or muscles moving over the joint or from the popping of nitrogen bubbles normally found in the joint space. ... Sometimes the noise is related to worn cartilage in the joints and bones rubbing together, which can cause pain.Jul 1, 2018

https://www.health.harvard.edu › ar...

Are cracking joints a sign of arthritis? - Harvard Health

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What does it mean when your joints crack all the time?

Research shows that the sound you hear when cracking a knuckle is caused by “popping” bubbles in the synovial fluid, the fluid that lubricates your joints. ... If a joint is making a 'crack' sound, the joint mechanics could be off.” Reavy also says that constant, continued cracking can mean an alignment issue.Nov 26, 2018

https://www.runnersworld.com › joi...

Why Do My Bones Crack? | Cracking Joints - Runner's World

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Are cracking joints a sign of arthritis?

Joint "cracking" can result from a negative pressure pulling nitrogen gas temporarily into the joint, such as when knuckles are "cracked." ... Some patients with arthritis (inflammation of joints, usually painful), bursitis, or tendinitis notice "cracking" sounds due to the snapping of irregular, swollen tissues.Jan 8, 2018

https://www.webmd.com › joint-cra...

Does Joint Cracking (Popping) Cause Arthritis? - WebMD

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What is the crunching sound in my shoulder?

Shoulder popping or crunching.

Feeling a crunching or hearing a popping sound when rotating the shoulder may be a sign that cartilage has worn away and is not protecting the bones from friction. The medical term for this symptom is “crepitus.”

https://www.arthritis-health.com › sh...

Shoulder Osteoarthritis Symptoms | Arthritis-Health

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What supplements should I take for cracking joints?

Some people use supplements to try to help manage joint pain from arthritis. Glucosamine, chondroitin, omega-3, and green tea are just a few of them. Glucosamine helps keep the cartilage in joints healthy and may have an anti-inflammatory effect. Natural glucosamine levels drop as people age.Jun 18, 2018

https://www.webmd.com › arthritis

Supplements for Arthritis and Joint Pain - WebMD

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How do you lubricate joints?

Get them from salmon, trout, olive oil, nuts, avocados and supplements high in the DHA form of omega-3s. Take these joint preservers. Supplements with a combo of glucosamine sulfate and chondroitin may help on two fronts: They increase lubrication and decrease inflammation (and thus pain).Jul 30, 2010

https://www.oregonlive.com › health

You Docs: How to keep your joints well lubricated - oregonlive.com

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What is the fastest way to lubricate stiff joints for pain?

Apply a cold compress or bag of ice to your stiff joint for 15 to 20 minutes several times a day. This can help reduce inflammation or swelling and ease the joint into movement. It can also dull pain receptors so you experience less pain. Heat is also therapeutic to joints and muscles.Mar 27, 2017

https://www.healthline.com › health

Stiff Joints: Why They Hurt and How to Treat Them - Healthline

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Does water lubricate joints?

Water does more than just quench your thirst and regulate your body's temperature; it also keeps the tissues in your body moist. ... In addition, water helps protect the spinal cord, and it acts as a lubricant and cushion for your joints.Feb 16, 2015

https://www.everydayhealth.com › ...

Functions of Water: Health Benefits | Everyday Health

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What foods help strengthen joints?

Foods high in antioxidants can help reduce the rate of cartilage breakdown.

Oily fish. Oily fish can reduce joint pain and morning stiffness, thanks to the anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids they contain. ...

Avocado. ...

Turmeric. ...

Extra virgin olive oil. ...

Onions and Garlic. ...

Grapefruit. ...

Green Tea. ...

Berries.

More items...•Jul 12, 2016

https://www.fishertitus.org › health

Improve Your Joint Health with These 12 Superfoods

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Can low vitamin D cause joint popping?

A vitamin D deficiency can affect both physical and mental health, but many people have low levels of vitamin D without realizing. The physical symptoms of a deficiency may include muscle pain in the joints, including rheumatoid arthritis (RA) pain, which often occurs in the knees, legs, and hips.May 24, 2018

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com › ...

Vitamin D and joint pain: What does the research say?

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What vitamin deficiency causes arthritis?

Another study found that vitamin D deficiency is common in people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and may be linked to musculoskeletal pain. Not having enough vitamin D can: affect your immune system. reduce calcium and phosphorus levels.

https://www.healthline.com › health

Here Comes the Sun: Vitamin D and Arthritis - Healthline

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What vitamin is good for cracking bones?

Summary: Researchers have shown that deficiencies in vitamin D -- the sunshine vitamin -- accelerates the aging of bone, reducing the quality and making it more susceptible to fracturing.Jul 10, 2013

https://www.sciencedaily.com › 201...

Vitamin D deficiency linked to accelerated aging of bones ...

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How do you fix crepitus?

The first line of treatment for this condition includes rest, ice, compression, and elevation, or "RICE." Anti-inflammatory medication and physical therapy exercises can also relieve it. If these do not help, splinting, surgery, or both may be necessary.Aug 30, 2018

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com › ...

Crepitus of the knee: Structure, causes, and protection

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Does glucosamine help crepitus?

It's what gives the 'crepitus' (cracking, creaking, clicking, grinding) noises you feel and hear,” she says. There are several things cyclists could do to help prevent the onset of gritty knees. ... In addition, natural supplements such as glucosamine and chondroitin will have long-term benefits for your knees.Jan 17, 2013

https://www.cyclingweekly.com › b...

Beat the grind with glucosamine - Cycling Weekly

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Can crepitus go away?

If you experience crepitus without other symptoms no treatment should be required, but if you have other symptoms you will want to coordinate treatment with your physician. The treatment depends on the diagnosis. ... While the many treatments may help to control pain and swelling remember that crepitus may not go away.Jul 28, 2016

https://www.ornish.com › zine › wh...

What To Do About Those Noisy Knees | Ornish Lifestyle Medicine

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What is the best vitamin for joints and bones?

These are five of the best vitamins to take regularly to promote good joint health.

Fish Oil. The omega-3 fatty acid contained in fish oil pills is often associated with a healthy heart and glowing skin. ...

Calcium. ...

Vitamin D. ...

Glucosamine. ...

Chondroitin.

https://www.jointflex.com › top-5-vi...

Top 5 Vitamin Supplements for Healthy Joints - JointFlex

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Does coffee cause joint pain?

Common symptoms include joint pain, stiffness and restricted movement. Studies have shown that sufferers should think twice about their morning cup of coffee, as caffeine can weaken bones and exacerbate the joint pain associated with arthritis.Apr 6, 2018

https://www.express.co.uk › health

Arthritis pain: Avoid this popular drink to protect your joints | ...

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Why do I stiffen up after sitting?

Muscle stiffness typically occurs after exercise, hard physical work, or lifting weights. You may also feel stiffness after periods of inactivity, like when you get out of bed in the morning or get out of a chair after sitting for a long time. Sprains and strains are the most common reasons for muscle stiffness.

https://www.healthline.com › health

Muscle Stiffness: Causes, Diagnosis, Treatment & More - Healthline

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Does exercise lubricate joints?

Exercise Lubricates and Nourishes the Joints

Joint pain is also reduced during and after exercise because physical activity boosts the circulation of synovial fluid, which is used to lubricate joints. Exercise also moves water molecules that put weight on the joints and cause pain.

https://www.jointflex.com › ways-ex...

5 Ways That Exercise Can Help Reduce Joint Pain - JointFlex

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Can dehydration cause stiff joints?

Lastly, when the weather gets warmer, you are more likely to become dehydrated. The joint cartilage in our bodies has a high water content so when your body loses fluid and is not replenished, dehydration can occur. Without that fluid in your joints, you are more susceptible to degeneration and damage of your joints.Aug 22, 2018

https://www.arthrosurface.com › 10-...

10 Unlikely Things That Cause Joint Pain - Arthrosurface

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Can dehydration cause achy joints?

Dehydration: The most easily corrected cause of hip pain, dehydration can be the root of stiffness and pain in joints. Caffeinated and alcoholic drinks are diuretics, causing drinkers to eliminate more fluids than typical, causing dehydration even in patients who drink adequate amounts of water.

https://frontrangeorthopedics.com › ...

Hip Pain - Top 5 Causes | Front Range Orthopedic & Spine Center

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What are the 5 worst foods for arthritis?

Inflammatory foods. “Arthritis” is a general term encompassing conditions that share joint pain and inflammation. ...

Fried and processed foods. ...

Lower your AGEs. ...

Sugars and refined carbs. ...

Dairy products. ...

Alcohol and tobacco. ...

Salt and preservatives. ...

Corn oil.

More items...

https://www.healthline.com › health

8 Foods to Avoid with Arthritis - Healthline

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Is coffee good for arthritis?

People who drank four or more cups of coffee daily were two times more likely to develop arthritis than those who drank less. However, coffee may not be bad for all types of arthritis. A 2005 study by the Mayo Clinic showed coffee was safe to drink for patients with psoriatic arthritis. ... Arthritis Foundation.Apr 5, 2019

https://www.emedicinehealth.com › ...

Is Coffee Bad for Arthritis? - eMedicineHealth

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What are the 5 worst foods to eat if you have arthritis?

In the Kitchen with Arthritis: Foods to Avoid

Processed foods. Avoid processed foods, such as baked goods and prepackaged meals and snacks. ...

Omega-6 fatty acids. ...

Sugar and certain sugar alternatives. ...

Red meat and fried foods. ...

Refined carbohydrates. ...

Mono-sodium glutamate (MSG) ...

Cheese and high-fat dairy. ...

Learn more:

May 9, 2019

https://www.arthritis-health.com › ki...

In the Kitchen with Arthritis: Foods to Avoid - Arthritis-health

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Is it bad when your bones crack?

"The noise of cracking or popping in our joints is actually nitrogen bubbles bursting in our synovial fluid," says Dr. Klapper. ... "Cracking your knuckles does no harm at all to our joints," says Dr. Klapper. "It does not lead to arthritis." 'Cracking your knuckles does no harm at all to our joints.Aug 13, 2018

https://www.cedars-sinai.org › blog

Ask a Doctor: Is Cracking Your Knuckles Bad? | Cedars-Sinai

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Is it bad that my knees crack when I squat?

In some cases, it may be nothing more than bubbles of gas popping in your joints. It can also result from the cartilage in your knees losing their smoothness, causing bones and tissue to rub together noisily when you bend your legs. “Crepitus is extremely common,” Dr. Stuart said. “Our joints make a lot of noise.”Dec 15, 2014

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com › ask...

Ask Well: Noisy Knees - The New York Times

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What is best for joint pain?

For moderate-to-severe joint pain with swelling, an over-the-counter or prescription nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) such as aspirin, ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin), or naproxen sodium (Aleve), can provide relief. ... If you have milder pain without any swelling, acetaminophen (Tylenol) can be effective.Jun 17, 2019

https://www.webmd.com › guide › j...

Why Do My Joints Hurt? Causes of Joint Pain & Pain Relief Options

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What are clicking joints a sign of?

The cracking sound appears to come from tendons or muscles moving over the joint or from the popping of nitrogen bubbles normally found in the joint space.Jul 1, 2018

https://www.health.harvard.edu › ar...

Are cracking joints a sign of arthritis? - Harvard Health

More results

What causes joints to click?

Your joints can make a variety of sounds: popping, cracking, grinding, and snapping. ... Escaping gases: Scientists explain that synovial fluid present in your joints acts as a lubricant. The fluid contains the gases oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. When you pop or crack a joint, you stretch the joint capsule.

https://www.loc.gov › scitech › joint

What causes the noise when you crack a joint? (Everyday Mysteries ...

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Why does my back crack all the time?

Most likely explanation for frequent back cracking

The cracking sound you hear is most likely due to tiny gas bubbles that form and pop in the fluid between your facet joints. Facet joints are where the back of your vertebrae connect with each other.Mar 25, 2019

https://www.spine-health.com › blog

Why Does My Back Crack So Much? - Spine-Health

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What does it mean when your bones crack all the time?

According to many studies, there is no clear answer for what causes joints to make a cracking sound. Research shows that the sound you hear when cracking a knuckle is caused by “popping” bubbles in the synovial fluid, the fluid that lubricates your joints.Nov 26, 2018

https://www.runnersworld.com › joi...

Should I Be Worried If My Joints Are Cracking? - Runner's World

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What's the symptoms of low vitamin D?

Here are 8 signs and symptoms of vitamin D deficiency.

Getting Sick or Infected Often. Share on Pinterest. ...

Fatigue and Tiredness. Feeling tired can have many causes, and vitamin D deficiency may be one of them. ...

Bone and Back Pain. ...

Depression. ...

Impaired Wound Healing. ...

Bone Loss. ...

Hair Loss. ...

Muscle Pain.

Jul 23, 2018

https://www.healthline.com › nutrition

8 Signs and Symptoms of Vitamin D Deficiency - Healthline

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What does it mean when my joints pop all the time?

Popping or cracking noises could just be gas bubbles bursting within the fluid surrounding the joint, or the sound of ligaments and tendons stretching and releasing. ... A soft snapping or clicking sound is also sometimes caused by a tight muscle or tendon moving over a bony structure.Jul 4, 2017

https://www.health.com › fitness › j...

Should You Be Worried If Your Joints Crack All the Time? - Health

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Is b12 good for arthritis?

Most experts recommend older adults get this vitamin from supplements or fortified foods. ... Research Note: Vitamin B12 reduces homocysteine, an amino acid found at high levels in people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Even moderately elevated homocysteine is associated with an increased risk of fractures in older adults.

https://www.arthritis.org › guide › v...

Vitamin B-12: Benefits, Dosages, Foods and More - Arthritis ...

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Does drinking more water help with joint pain?

If there's a magical elixir to drink, it's water. Hydration is vital for flushing toxins out of your body, which can help fight inflammation. Adequate water can help keep your joints well lubricated and can help prevent gout attacks. Drinking water before a meal can also help you eat less, promoting weight loss.

https://www.arthritis.org › best-beve...

Best Beverages for Arthritis | Arthritis Diet | Arthritis Foundation

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Can a calcium deficiency cause joint pain?

Dietary Calcium Deficiency

It depletes the storage of calcium in their bones which in turn weakens them and leads to osteoporosis or bone degeneration. This increases the risk of fractures and can also cause a “humped” back. The symptoms of this type of Calcium deficiency are: Bone pain or tenderness.Sep 28, 2016

www.anandlab.com › blog › how-c...

How Calcium Deficiency can be a Bane for your Bones- Symptoms ...

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What supplements should I take for cracking joints?

Some people use supplements to try to help manage joint pain from arthritis. Glucosamine, chondroitin, omega-3, and green tea are just a few of them. Glucosamine helps keep the cartilage in joints healthy and may have an anti-inflammatory effect. Natural glucosamine levels drop as people age.Jun 18, 2018

https://www.webmd.com › arthritis

Supplements for Arthritis and Joint Pain - WebMD

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Is crepitus a sign of arthritis?

When joints create a grinding or popping sound or sensation, this is known as crepitus. Occasional joint crepitus is considered normal and is no cause for alarm. However, a large new study suggests that frequent knee crepitus may be an early warning sign of knee osteoarthritis.Jul 5, 2017

https://www.arthritis-health.com › cr...

Crepitus May Be Early Warning Sign of Knee Arthritis - Arthritis-health

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What crepitus sounds like?

Crepitus is grating, crackling or popping sounds and sensations experienced under the skin and joints or a crackling sensation due to the presence of air in the subcutaneous tissue. Various types of crepitus that can be heard in joint pathologies are: ... Crepitus of tenosynovitis.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org › wiki

Crepitus - Wikipedia

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New Post has been published on http://cookingtipsandreviews.com/how-to-become-a-certified-cicerone/

How to Become a Certified Cicerone

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[Photograph: Dustin Hall]

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BEER!

We love it. And you’ve voted. See which is the best American beer city.

Not very long ago in America, beer was generally unexciting and bland. Beer was beer. Movies and TV programs would show someone walking into a bar, saying “Give me a beer,” and actually getting served. It’s not like people in the ‘70s and ‘80s were ordering “a wine” or “one liquor.” What Prohibition started—the decline of independent brewers—rapid post–World War II industrialization and consolidation nearly finished. By 1978, there were only 89 breweries in America. With a dwindling number of producers competing to make the most cost-effective light lager, the American brewing industry just wasn’t super interesting.

But these days, as you’ve surely noticed, the number of independent producers is booming, supermarket shelves boast a tremendous variety of styles, and beer is getting the respect it deserves. People are passionate about beer in a way Uncle Todd drinking Stroh’s in the backyard out of a koozie never was—many more beer drinkers nowadays study the styles and keep tasting notes, obsessively track new brewery openings, teach themselves to home-brew, and stand in massive lines for special releases. And with that surge in mainstream popularity have come ways for people both inside and outside the brewing industry to collect, expand, and prove their knowledge on beer. As an outgrowth of that, some companies have come along to offer certification and training to gauge whether someone knows what they’re talking about when they talk about what’s in your glass.

That certification works in favor of brewers and distributors—they can gauge a job candidate’s general level of knowledge without having to test them, train employees without having to write up or administer an in-house program, or use employee certification as an indicator of passion and knowledge. But are the concepts studied in these programs relevant to everyday drinkers, aside from conferring a greater chance of finding good beer at the bar? I decided to find out.

Going for Certification

[Photograph: Rich Orris]

My quest began where I assume most other people’s does—Monday-night curling on a lethally cold January evening in Chicago in 2017. I curl (it’s like bowling but more precise, or shuffleboard but slippery) in a league made up of teams sponsored by breweries, beer bars, and other beer-adjacent concerns; I hit the ice for Lo Rez Brewing, a newer South Side brewery owned by friends of mine. One of the other teams was made up of employees from the Cicerone Certification Program, which has certified beer-service knowledge at different levels since 2007.

At the time, I appreciated that mission, and drank my fair share of beer, but I also couldn’t have told you the difference between an IPA, an APA, and an amber ale. I knew I loved roasty, coffee-like stouts and strong, figgy Belgian abbey ales. But the nuances—why I liked the refreshing bitterness of the IPA from the brewery down the street, yet found the acclaimed barley wine from Colorado kinda caustic; the recipe differences between beer styles; most of the actual brewing process—totally escaped me.

I wasn’t looking forward to memorizing hundreds of data points about various beer styles, which I knew was part of getting certified. But the Cicerone employees were encouraging, and I accepted their invitation to the Road to Cicerone Bootcamp®—a weeklong course of hands-on instruction designed to give those serious about certification a big push toward passing the three-plus-hour test.* And, since I’d be spending a week of class time on the subject, it only made sense to think about taking the certification exam as well.

* Full disclosure: I got to attend for free—a big deal, as the regular price is $1,995—but explicitly with zero expectation of media coverage.

Cicerone Certification Levels

The Cicerone Certification Program offers four levels of certification:

Certified Beer Server: A 30-minute, 60-question online test. Many breweries and beer-focused bars encourage or require this level for employees. Currently there are more than 100,000 Certified Beer Servers worldwide.

Certified Cicerone®: A three-plus-hour exam, including essays and tasting, with a pass rate of around one-third. There are 3,331 Certified Cicerones worldwide at the moment.

Advanced Cicerone™: The newest certification level, which culminates in an expansive two-day written, oral, and tasting exam. There are currently 88 Advanced Cicerones.

Master Cicerone®: The highest level of beer-knowledge certification that Cicerone offers, requiring two days of oral, written, and tasting challenges with over a dozen experts from around the industry. Only 16 people have achieved the title, including BrewDog cofounder James Watt and Patrick Rue of The Bruery.

Cicerone isn’t the only certification game in town. The Brewers Association and Beer Judge Certification Program keep beer styles codified, and the latter certifies judges for brewing competitions. Canadians interested in brewing and service can take the Prud’homme Beer Certification course, provided they’re able to travel to whichever university is holding classes. And the Master Brewers Association of the Americas offers a range of Beer Steward certificates for service professionals.

But I don’t brew, Cicerone is local (like, walk-there-from-my-house local), and from my perspective—years working as a writer in the very beer-adjacent food and restaurant world—it seemed to loom largest over the service-side certification landscape.

The test has a reputation as a tough one. Cicerone doesn’t track or share exact pass/fail numbers, but the pass rate is about 40%, which, for context, is a good deal lower than most states’ bar exam pass rates.

Boot Camp, but for Drinking

[Photograph: Liz Clayman]

So it happened that for one week in February 2017, I abandoned most of my worldly responsibilities to learn to drink better. And I wasn’t alone—17 other people had come from around the world, including China, New Zealand, and Panama, to take the class. Before we even set foot in the classroom, the program emailed us a fairly comprehensive list of readings to brush up on in preparation for the first day. We spent the week hearing from Moody Tongue brewmaster (and black truffle pilsner creator) Jared Rouben, Tasting Beer author Randy Mosher, Cicerone founder Ray Daniels, and others. Classroom lectures ran from 10 a.m. to about 6 p.m. every day, and two nights featured beer-pairing dinners afterward. Lectures covered topics ranging from draft theory (gas pressure, troubleshooting, proper cleaning) to tasting technique to brewing history. Beer-style tastings and comparisons were woven through the lecture units, with consideration for the time of day—no tastings first thing in the morning, no imperial stouts before noon. One thing to note is that the certification exam is not offered especially soon after the week of the class, because a) there’s a whole lot more to study independently, and b) they don’t want to create a perception that you’re paying to pass the exam.

I didn’t have the built-in advantage of most candidates, who are employed in the industry and thus are around beer and pick up firsthand knowledge of it all day. So I needed to figure out when I’d be ready, and set the date myself.

Plenty of people have gone through this process already (Serious Eats contributor Lucy Burningham even wrote a very cool book about it), so I asked around for a realistic timeline. The general response I got from people in the know was one to two years, but I chose a date around 11 months out, in November. It seemed like just about enough time to become confident in knowing the material.

With the class complete and the test slated, it was time to study.

The Certified Cicerone exam is structured as a three-hour written test (short-answer and essay), an hour consisting of three separate tasting-exam units, and a brief taped demonstration. The syllabus breaks the entirety of what you need to know into five distinct units, which I tackled individually.

Pouring Beer, Professionally

[Photograph: Liz Clayman]

The first major section of the exam addresses beer service. Draft systems, kegs, bottles, glassware, line cleaning—everything relevant to the operation of a beer-focused bar that gets the beer to the drinker in the best possible condition. I hadn’t worked at a bar a day in my life. I knew that Guinness gets nitrogen for the fancy bubbles, and that was about it.

And I’m sure it wasn’t just me. A lot of your passionate craft-beer advocates—the ones who stand in line for hours to get this double IPA or that barrel-aged stout—don’t home-brew, bartend, or work in beer stores. I needed to figure out, roughly:

How and why you clean draft-beer lines

Cleaning and replacement schedules for the rest of the equipment

How to fix a tap that isn’t pouring correctly

How different draft systems (long-draw, kegerator, jockey boxes, et cetera) operate

How to apply the right amount of pressure to a keg to get a good pour from the tap

What kind of gases, and in what mix, to apply to kegs

How heat, oxygen, light, and time affect beer

Fortunately, the Brewers Association puts this kind of information out for free. You can go download everything I needed to know, if you’re curious. After that, it’s just a matter of studying, and maybe persuading a friendly bar or taproom owner to let you have a little practical experience. I found that after just a few study sessions (and some hands-on work with a borrowed draft faucet), every component fit together naturally, and the whole system made intuitive sense. Like a Lego set designed by Tom Waits.

Even for experienced brewers, it can be a lot to learn. Kevin Lilly, cofounder of Lo Rez Brewing (and co-captain of my aforementioned curling squad), began as a home brewer and found that figuring out the service-side details was a vital prerequisite before opening a commercial brewery and taproom. He ended up pursuing Cicerone certification to smooth his transition to full-time commercial brewer.

“Both my cofounder and I got a lot out of the draft-system knowledge—maintenance, troubleshooting for foamy beer, and fixing issues as they come up,” Lilly says. “We took it from there, and by digging deeper into the science, we were able to build our own draft system.”

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

The other half of service is customer-facing. What glassware matches up with certain beers (Belgian-style beers need more room for a tall head, while high-ABV beers should get smaller glasses); how to tell if a glass is clean enough for beer (basically, no bubbles clinging to the side); and how to manage inventory to ensure the beer in a customer’s glass is at its peak (serve it as fresh as possible, and rotate your stock frequently).

The kinda sad thing is that once you figure out how things work, you also start noticing when they’re off. The next thing you know, you’re realizing that the tap at your favorite bar, the one with worn-out chrome plating and exposed brass, is giving your beer a metallic aftertaste. You can’t un-learn things. But hey—that’s what cans and bottles are for.

I took a go at the first of several practice tests and failed. Not by a ton, but I was also self-grading pretty leniently.

In addition to storing away all this geeky beer knowledge, I learned something else around this time, with far greater personal consequences: My wife and I were expecting our second child in August. I remembered what having a newborn was like, so the idea of taking the test in November was out, as was September. So suddenly “I’ll have most of the year to prepare” turned into taking the test on July 12.

Let’s Learn 71 Different Kinds of Beer!

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

To call yourself a Cicerone, you need to be familiar with 71 unique styles of beer, and you have to learn the following for each one:

Color range, expressed in the Standard Reference Method, a color-associated number from 1 to 40 that measures how much light passes through the beer

Alcohol range, expressed in alcohol by volume (ABV)

The amount of dissolved isohumulone (an iso-alpha acid found in hops), expressed in International Bitterness Units (IBU)

The ratio of Original Gravity (which measures the amount of dissolved sugars in the wort prior to fermentation) to Final Gravity (the same measurement, afterward). This dictates much of the result, including alcohol content, mouthfeel, and how dry or sweet a beer tastes.

Flavor descriptors—does the beer have bready, nutty, or biscuit-y malt notes? Are the hops herbaceous, citrusy, or fruity? Is the beer effervescent and highly carbonated, or thick on the palate?

The styles aren’t set in stone, or even decided on by Cicerone. They use the BJCP style guidelines, which are updated every five years to reflect trends in brewing. So I used flash cards—lots and lots of flash cards. When I got sick of that, I used an app on my phone. It was a flash card app, but it seemed new and exciting at the time.

Looking at beer just by the numbers isn’t fun or productive, and as I progressed, I realized that you don’t have to murder yourself memorizing figures if you know how different styles relate to each other. Kolsch looks and tastes a lot like the traditional light German lagers but is made with an ale yeast; the hoppier character of American wheat beer is the result of American brewers trying to make Weissbier before recipes were widely available; and the English bitters are mostly distinguished from one another by their alcohol levels.

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

When you’re learning about the styles, you usually get a history lesson along with the numbers. You learn how the town of Plzen in the Czech Republic changed the entire concept of what people thought of as beer with the pilsner—setting the first example of the crisp, clear, and golden-colored brew that drinkers worldwide think of as the default form of beer. Or how London’s porters and stouts were the first mass-produced beers, and how their business practices paved the way for the beer world of today. Or, famously, how a few lines from a tax law in Germany in 1516 (the Reinheitsgebot), dictating that beer must be made with only water, barley, and hops, continue to loom large over how the world treats beer.

And, most importantly, you have to, you know, drink the stuff to really get an idea of what sets different varieties apart. Between January and July, I tried a staggering 219 beers, give or take a couple—everything from a plastic cup of Old Style at Wrigley Field (okay, maybe several) to a foraged-ingredient sahti at a tiny brewery in a town of 629 people. And I took a ton of notes along the way, adding as much evocative language as I could so I’d be able to call up the memory months after the fact. For instance:

“Scalded milk, Tootsie Roll” (milk stout)

“It’s like an old person made an Airhead from figs. A little cherry and currant, thin body.” (A Flanders red ale. Belgian beer is great for memorable flavors.)

“Dirt. Rotten mud. Old garbage. Dear god, what happened?” (Bière de garde. Turns out the yeast had autolyzed—become strained and basically eaten itself—which can create a lot of strong, unpleasant flavors.)

“Acrid. Maple syrup. Black pepper in old coffee. Smoke smoke smoke.” (This was for a rauchbier I actually quite liked.)

To pass the exam, you also need to be able to tell styles apart just by taste. They showed us a bit of this in the class, during which I failed to tell a German pilsner from a kolsch all three times it came up. So I bought a bunch of pils and a bunch of kolsch, and considered it all study material.

In late May, it was time for practice test number two. I either passed or failed by a couple points. (I got a few too many wrong on the short-answer portion, and it’s kind of hard to grade your own essays.) Also, I still couldn’t tell a pils from a kolsch.

Learning How to Make Beer by Making Beer

[Photograph: Liz Clayman]

While the BJCP exam maintains a far more in-depth and intense focus on the brewing process, the Cicerone exam also asks a fair bit of test takers about how to make beer. This is generally where the home brewers excel and the beer-distributor employees tend to fall short. Hands-on experience really makes the knowledge click.

Through some of that hands-on work, and lots of reading, I ran through the following:

Beer ingredients and how variations affect the beer

How yeast strains contribute to a beer’s character

Non-core stuff that gets added to beer (known as adjuncts, including oats, rye, and corn) and what they do

How different brewing processes dictate the result in your glass

The equipment that’s used in brewing and what each item does in sequence

Really, the way to drive everything home is to brew at least one batch. There are a couple different kits available online that let you produce a gallon of beer at a time for around 50 bucks. And, while your scale will be different from that of, say, Lagunitas, home brewing and commercial brewing are essentially the same process, according to Lilly.

“If you’re all-grain [using malt, rather than malt extract] home-brewing, I’d say you’re probably learning 95% of how the commercial brewing process works. The underpinnings are all there: the knowledge of why I’m doing what I’m doing, why I’m choosing a certain mash temp, what kind of hops are added and at what time,” he says. “The biggest difference between home brewing and commercial brewing is the scaling, and even pros moving to new systems have to deal with that issue.”

At yet another practice test, in June, I finally did well enough—91%, give or take—that I felt pretty sure I was making good progress. I’d started confidently pointing out kolsches and pilsners like a dramatic courtroom prosecutor. Sometimes, I was even right.

Learning to Taste

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Learning a higher level of beer tasting was both really cool and somewhat intimidating. I’m guilty as anyone of rolling my eyes at someone nose-deep in a glass of beer or wine, talking about “notes of chicory” and “a hint of citrus fruit.” It’s easy to scoff at—it sounds kind of pretentious or kind of impossible, depending on your attitude. But I needed to figure it out.

First lesson: There’s a reason no one feels super confident discerning individual flavors in food or drink at first—it’s a learned skill. I’m not a mouth scientist, but one thing I did learn is that human beings’ sense of taste operates on a Will Kill Me/Won’t Kill Me binary. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn’t concern themselves as much with hints of dark fruit and sherry.

So what you end up doing to learn to taste is building new memory associations and flavor descriptions. Taste, blurt something out, repeat. Literally, just blurting out whatever dumbass thing comes to your mind is the best way to start to create flavor associations, at least from what I remember from Randy Mosher’s classroom lecture. Eventually, you’ll get more confident, and it will come more naturally. I started finding new flavors in my morning coffee within a couple months, which is something I’d never cared to do.

The only wrong-wrong thing to do is get tentative about being wrong, and shut down. This is another place where a lot of people quit, because it can be hard to put yourself out there and think you might be wrong.

Writing this piece was a big help in mastering the off-flavors part—identifying the flavor characteristics of compounds like dimethyl sulfide, diacetyl, acetaldehyde, trans-2-nonenol, 3MBT, and acetic acid that indicate a problem with the beer. I also ended up taking a separate off-flavor class through Cicerone. Another option is off-flavor spikes for your beer, which you can find here and here, though, cost-wise, it’s a lot easier if you can split it with a few other people who are also trying to master the yuck. You’re paying to get the unfiltered versions of these flavors, but chances are you’ll encounter them in the wild eventually.

“The off flavors we test on are definitely the most common that you’ll run into at a bar,” Shana Solarte, who teaches Cicerone’s off-flavor-specific courses, says. “I hear all the time where someone runs into a stale, papery beer. It’s really important for us to use a set of flavors that are realistic. You’re learning to taste beer to assess whether it’s in good shape.”

Right before the exam, my wife helped me spike beers and blind-taste them. And she tried really hard not to laugh at my grave, “This is me swirling and noting the bouquet of some skunked Amstel Light” face. She also helped me in one final round of Pilsner or Kolsch: Seriously, Enough Already With This.

Food and Beer Pairing: Possibly Black Magic

[Photograph: Brendan Daly and Dayna Crozier]

Once you start to pull out individual flavors in beer, you need to turn your brain to pairing with food. While pairing is tricky, complex, and frustrating (many people’s opinions on the matter, both online and among friends and loud acquaintances, begin and end with yelling “BULLSH*T!” through cupped hands), the right pairing can really make both the food and the beer sing. Certain malting and mashing processes in beer production create reactions in the malt (including every Serious Eats reader’s favorite, the Maillard reaction) that mirror ones you find in food.

The easiest approach was to start small. Grilled sausage with a beer that features roasted malt. A light citrus-dressed salad with a fragrant, bitter IPA to balance the sweetness. A dark chocolate cake paired with a raspberry kriek reminds diners of classic desserts. Then, figure out a few things that don’t work—poached shrimp with an imperial stout washes out all the briny seafood flavor; spicy beef curry with a double IPA creates an irritating amplification of the heat on your scorched palate. Add to that my experience trying to pair a Scottish wee heavy with sautéed hen-of-the-woods mushrooms—two relatively earthy things that kind of tasted like mud when layered on top of each other.

What works for some people won’t work for others, but generally, there’s stuff that works well enough to be standard (brown ale and cheddar cheese), stuff that doesn’t work at all (mint and dark beer produces a certain toothpaste quality), and stuff in the middle, a space where you can refine pairings by degrees and find new and interesting combinations. It’s not the biggest focus of the exam, but it’s also important to view beer flavors and traits outside of a beer-only bubble. We’ve published a fair amount on beer pairing, because it’s one of those realms where you can always find new and surprising things to elevate the dining experience.

[Photograph: Mike Reis]

Time to Take a Big Dang Beer Test

Eventually, after a few months of flash cards on the train ride to work, beer books during lunch, and YouTube videos on draft systems at night, it was time to quit studying and take the test. I didn’t drink the night before—standard test prep, but a little funnier considering the subject matter.

To pass, and earn the title of Certified Cicerone, candidates need to score at least an 80% on the overall test, and at least a 70% on the tasting exam, no matter what the overall score is. Both written and tasting exams can be retaken separately.

Our phones were sealed in envelopes, our names replaced with numbers to ensure grading impartiality, and test packets were distributed.

There were dozens upon dozens of short-answer questions, covering everything from the areas I’d studied, sometimes in extreme detail. What kind of beer fits these descriptors? What color should this beer be? When should you add yeast to the fermenter during the brewing process, and why?

Then there were three essay questions—one covering a retail service setup, one covering the attributes and history of a specific beer style, and one on the flavor results of a certain element of the brewing process.

Once I’d answered everything and turned in my test, I went off for my short recorded demonstration. I was filmed from the neck down (about as anonymous as they can get), detailing the parts, function, and cleaning method of a specific piece of the draft system. Luckily, this was a piece I’d carried around in my bag since February, taking it apart and putting it back together, Full Metal Jacket–style, until I knew it inside and out.

If I’m being slightly vague about the exam where you’d want more detail, this is where I point out that exam takers sign a nondisclosure form that states they won’t reveal the test questions to others.

A lot of people used every second of the three hours. I finished the written exam around two hours in, and, since my phone was sealed in an envelope and my scratch paper was turned in with the test, the remainder of the time was a solid 70 minutes of staring at the wall and disassembling and reassembling my pen.

Eventually, time was called, and we got a short break before the tasting exam. One guy whispered something to the effect of “I can’t…” to the proctor and left, never to return. Either he’d already passed the tasting exam, or I was witness to a fairly calm and polite test freakout. I hoped it was the first one.

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

The tasting portion of the exam stands on its own—as I mentioned, you can retake the tasting alone, and a decent number of people end up having to. There are three distinct components:

Identifying off flavors in a low-key light beer

Style discrimination, in which you’re asked to identify which of two similar styles a given beer is (e.g., “Is this beer a milk stout or an Irish stout?”)

A service portion, which puts you in the scenario of a bar manager tasting beer a customer has sent back. Is it okay to serve, or has it gone off? And if it has, how?

While we waited, the staff poured sample after sample of beer for the tasting portion—12 per person, covering a large table in the front of the room. The anticipation was intense, with only these beers standing between us and the end of the test.

The off-flavor section went well—I’d practiced with spiked samples the night before, and managed to peg all of them pretty quickly. The next section in the exam was the style discrimination. It was time! Pilsner versus kolsch. Kolsch v. pils. KvP! I’d spent months preparing for this. I was going to completely knock it out of the…

…aaaand, it wasn’t on the exam. The guy next to me wondered why I was laughing. But if any of you ever have a bunch of unlabeled kolsch and pilsner that needs sorting, I’m your man—this is permanently burned into my brain.

Style discrimination is a great example of the necessity of trusting your first instinct when you’re tasting. You learn a lot about different beers while you’re studying, but if you spend too much time trying to call that information back and bring it to what’s in front of you, things go sideways. You can convince yourself that your initial decision was wrong, and your mind will walk you all the way back to the wrong decision. It happened to me when I decided that yes, I was totally getting notes of dark fruit and plum, along with a candi-sugar dryness, in the Belgian dubbel that was in front of me. Except it wasn’t a dubbel at all; it was the other option, which was what I’d thought in the first place, and my idiot brain cost me points. But you never forget hard-won wisdom like this: Don’t overthink a beer, and never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

The final tasting-exam section is easily the most nerve-wracking, because your list of possible responses encompasses basically everything you’ve studied. You’re given four beers, along with their names, styles, and how they were served (i.e., draft or bottle/can). If the beer is bad, you have to detail why, and how it likely happened.

I was fairly confident on my answers for three of the four in this section and encountered a bad beer in need of an explanation for the fourth. It was a darker, malt-focused British ale, which made it trickier to peg the issue, since I’d studied these off flavors in lighter beers, where flaws really jump out. I thought it had a little diacetyl, but it was actually lightstruck. Half credit, maybe?

While getting your overall results takes weeks, the tasting answers are all revealed right after the test when you discuss the beers. These beers are also blind-tasted by a staff member to ensure that everything tasted was as good or as bad as it should have been. It’s sort of a call-and-response discussion (“Okay, who answered double IPA on this?”), so tentative hands went up with every question. And, wouldn’t you know it, a surprising number of people talked themselves into tasting flaws in the un-spiked beers. Tasting is hard, and will wreck your brain given half a chance.

The Waiting Game

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

With all the beer-learning done (hopefully), I went for a beer after the exam. Luckily, there’s a brewery right across the railroad tracks. Someone else in the test session, a lab tech at the Goose Island brewery, had the same idea. She and I agreed that it was nice to taste a beer without thinking too hard about it after months of focusing on this one test.

From that moment until I got the email with my exam results, I managed to convince myself that I’d passed, that I’d failed, that I’d passed with flying colors, and that I’d failed spectacularly. It’s easy to talk yourself in and out, especially as a lot of industry pros with deep knowledge and experience have needed more than one try to pass.

“We’ve had professional brewers who know everything about brewing and off flavors take the exam and totally nail those sections, but fail overall because they don’t have adequate style knowledge and know very little about proper beer service,” Cicerone founder Ray Daniels says. “Likewise, an expert in draft systems and beer styles could totally kill those sections, but not pass due to lack of brewing knowledge and lack of tasting skills. These individuals might well know more, overall, about beer than someone who does pass the exam, but the scores won’t reflect that. So, we don’t put a lot of stock in ‘the highest score’ or in comparing scores too closely.”

After about five weeks and change, while holding my one-day-old kid in the hospital, I got my results. I passed! Here’s how things broke down for me:

Overall: 89%

Tasting: 86%

Keeping and Serving Beer: 94%

Beer Styles: 85%

Beer Flavor and Evaluation: 90%

Ingredients and Processes: 92%

Food and Beer Pairing: 84%

After all that, I was finally able to confirm that you can definitely go from “Yeah, beer’s good” to “It all started with Josef Groll in 1842…” in about six months. You might have to make it your hobby—I didn’t read a non-beer book from January until July last year—and, as with any test prep, you’re going to have to cram your brain with some stuff you find less than interesting. But eventually, it makes sense, you start to ask better questions, and you look at beer differently from how you did before. Most important, the process should make beer more fun for you.

[Photograph: Brendan Daly and Dayna Crozier]

The knock on certification programs in general (and Cicerone specifically, on some message boards) is that they reduce something that people feel organic love for to a set of right and wrong answers. But that’s like saying maps take the fun out of travel: Once you know what to look for, you see the little peaks and valleys and offshoots that build the rich landscape of beer. People who want to learn more about beer and test themselves don’t tend to end up liking beer less. Months later, I’m relieved to report that I still love a cold Guinness, even though I know that fairy dust and ancient brewer magic probably don’t make a pint served in Dublin any better. And, even better, I’m finding new things to enjoy in the beers I’d thought I already knew, and giving ones I’d thought I hated a second chance.

If you’re interested in learning more about beer, or even getting certified, my advice is to go for it if the time, money (the Certified Beer Server exam costs $69 to take, while the Certified Cicerone exam is $395), and work involved make sense for your own goals. You don’t have to take a fancy weeklong course like I did—most people who take the exams don’t—and you can find a syllabus for each level of certification on Cicerone’s website. If you prefer to do your cramming in the company of others, scout around online for an in-person study group in your area.

The eventual certificate (and yes, it is a handsome certificate) is about 1% as important as the things you learn and the people you meet in pursuit of it. Turns out that brewers, bottle-shop owners, and bartenders, at least the good ones, love to talk and share what they’re passionate about. So get out there and try something new. If I can do it, you definitely can.

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How to Become a Certified Cicerone

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BEER!

We love it. And you’ve voted. See which is the best American beer city.

Not very long ago in America, beer was generally unexciting and bland. Beer was beer. Movies and TV programs would show someone walking into a bar, saying “Give me a beer,” and actually getting served. It’s not like people in the ‘70s and ‘80s were ordering “a wine” or “one liquor.” What Prohibition started—the decline of independent brewers—rapid post–World War II industrialization and consolidation nearly finished. By 1978, there were only 89 breweries in America. With a dwindling number of producers competing to make the most cost-effective light lager, the American brewing industry just wasn’t super interesting.

But these days, as you’ve surely noticed, the number of independent producers is booming, supermarket shelves boast a tremendous variety of styles, and beer is getting the respect it deserves. People are passionate about beer in a way Uncle Todd drinking Stroh’s in the backyard out of a koozie never was—many more beer drinkers nowadays study the styles and keep tasting notes, obsessively track new brewery openings, teach themselves to home-brew, and stand in massive lines for special releases. And with that surge in mainstream popularity have come ways for people both inside and outside the brewing industry to collect, expand, and prove their knowledge on beer. As an outgrowth of that, some companies have come along to offer certification and training to gauge whether someone knows what they’re talking about when they talk about what’s in your glass.

That certification works in favor of brewers and distributors—they can gauge a job candidate’s general level of knowledge without having to test them, train employees without having to write up or administer an in-house program, or use employee certification as an indicator of passion and knowledge. But are the concepts studied in these programs relevant to everyday drinkers, aside from conferring a greater chance of finding good beer at the bar? I decided to find out.

Going for Certification

[Photograph: Rich Orris]

My quest began where I assume most other people’s does—Monday-night curling on a lethally cold January evening in Chicago in 2017. I curl (it’s like bowling but more precise, or shuffleboard but slippery) in a league made up of teams sponsored by breweries, beer bars, and other beer-adjacent concerns; I hit the ice for Lo Rez Brewing, a newer South Side brewery owned by friends of mine. One of the other teams was made up of employees from the Cicerone Certification Program, which has certified beer-service knowledge at different levels since 2007.

At the time, I appreciated that mission, and drank my fair share of beer, but I also couldn’t have told you the difference between an IPA, an APA, and an amber ale. I knew I loved roasty, coffee-like stouts and strong, figgy Belgian abbey ales. But the nuances—why I liked the refreshing bitterness of the IPA from the brewery down the street, yet found the acclaimed barley wine from Colorado kinda caustic; the recipe differences between beer styles; most of the actual brewing process—totally escaped me.

I wasn’t looking forward to memorizing hundreds of data points about various beer styles, which I knew was part of getting certified. But the Cicerone employees were encouraging, and I accepted their invitation to the Road to Cicerone Bootcamp®—a weeklong course of hands-on instruction designed to give those serious about certification a big push toward passing the three-plus-hour test.* And, since I’d be spending a week of class time on the subject, it only made sense to think about taking the certification exam as well.

* Full disclosure: I got to attend for free—a big deal, as the regular price is $1,995—but explicitly with zero expectation of media coverage.

Cicerone Certification Levels

The Cicerone Certification Program offers four levels of certification:

Certified Beer Server: A 30-minute, 60-question online test. Many breweries and beer-focused bars encourage or require this level for employees. Currently there are more than 100,000 Certified Beer Servers worldwide.

Certified Cicerone®: A three-plus-hour exam, including essays and tasting, with a pass rate of around one-third. There are 3,331 Certified Cicerones worldwide at the moment.

Advanced Cicerone™: The newest certification level, which culminates in an expansive two-day written, oral, and tasting exam. There are currently 88 Advanced Cicerones.

Master Cicerone®: The highest level of beer-knowledge certification that Cicerone offers, requiring two days of oral, written, and tasting challenges with over a dozen experts from around the industry. Only 16 people have achieved the title, including BrewDog cofounder James Watt and Patrick Rue of The Bruery.

Cicerone isn’t the only certification game in town. The Brewers Association and Beer Judge Certification Program keep beer styles codified, and the latter certifies judges for brewing competitions. Canadians interested in brewing and service can take the Prud’homme Beer Certification course, provided they’re able to travel to whichever university is holding classes. And the Master Brewers Association of the Americas offers a range of Beer Steward certificates for service professionals.

But I don’t brew, Cicerone is local (like, walk-there-from-my-house local), and from my perspective—years working as a writer in the very beer-adjacent food and restaurant world—it seemed to loom largest over the service-side certification landscape.

The test has a reputation as a tough one. Cicerone doesn’t track or share exact pass/fail numbers, but the pass rate is about 40%, which, for context, is a good deal lower than most states’ bar exam pass rates.

Boot Camp, but for Drinking

[Photograph: Liz Clayman]

So it happened that for one week in February 2017, I abandoned most of my worldly responsibilities to learn to drink better. And I wasn’t alone—17 other people had come from around the world, including China, New Zealand, and Panama, to take the class. Before we even set foot in the classroom, the program emailed us a fairly comprehensive list of readings to brush up on in preparation for the first day. We spent the week hearing from Moody Tongue brewmaster (and black truffle pilsner creator) Jared Rouben, Tasting Beer author Randy Mosher, Cicerone founder Ray Daniels, and others. Classroom lectures ran from 10 a.m. to about 6 p.m. every day, and two nights featured beer-pairing dinners afterward. Lectures covered topics ranging from draft theory (gas pressure, troubleshooting, proper cleaning) to tasting technique to brewing history. Beer-style tastings and comparisons were woven through the lecture units, with consideration for the time of day—no tastings first thing in the morning, no imperial stouts before noon. One thing to note is that the certification exam is not offered especially soon after the week of the class, because a) there’s a whole lot more to study independently, and b) they don’t want to create a perception that you’re paying to pass the exam.

I didn’t have the built-in advantage of most candidates, who are employed in the industry and thus are around beer and pick up firsthand knowledge of it all day. So I needed to figure out when I’d be ready, and set the date myself.

Plenty of people have gone through this process already (Serious Eats contributor Lucy Burningham even wrote a very cool book about it), so I asked around for a realistic timeline. The general response I got from people in the know was one to two years, but I chose a date around 11 months out, in November. It seemed like just about enough time to become confident in knowing the material.

With the class complete and the test slated, it was time to study.

The Certified Cicerone exam is structured as a three-hour written test (short-answer and essay), an hour consisting of three separate tasting-exam units, and a brief taped demonstration. The syllabus breaks the entirety of what you need to know into five distinct units, which I tackled individually.

Pouring Beer, Professionally

[Photograph: Liz Clayman]

The first major section of the exam addresses beer service. Draft systems, kegs, bottles, glassware, line cleaning—everything relevant to the operation of a beer-focused bar that gets the beer to the drinker in the best possible condition. I hadn’t worked at a bar a day in my life. I knew that Guinness gets nitrogen for the fancy bubbles, and that was about it.

And I’m sure it wasn’t just me. A lot of your passionate craft-beer advocates—the ones who stand in line for hours to get this double IPA or that barrel-aged stout—don’t home-brew, bartend, or work in beer stores. I needed to figure out, roughly:

How and why you clean draft-beer lines

Cleaning and replacement schedules for the rest of the equipment

How to fix a tap that isn’t pouring correctly

How different draft systems (long-draw, kegerator, jockey boxes, et cetera) operate

How to apply the right amount of pressure to a keg to get a good pour from the tap

What kind of gases, and in what mix, to apply to kegs

How heat, oxygen, light, and time affect beer

Fortunately, the Brewers Association puts this kind of information out for free. You can go download everything I needed to know, if you’re curious. After that, it’s just a matter of studying, and maybe persuading a friendly bar or taproom owner to let you have a little practical experience. I found that after just a few study sessions (and some hands-on work with a borrowed draft faucet), every component fit together naturally, and the whole system made intuitive sense. Like a Lego set designed by Tom Waits.

Even for experienced brewers, it can be a lot to learn. Kevin Lilly, cofounder of Lo Rez Brewing (and co-captain of my aforementioned curling squad), began as a home brewer and found that figuring out the service-side details was a vital prerequisite before opening a commercial brewery and taproom. He ended up pursuing Cicerone certification to smooth his transition to full-time commercial brewer.

“Both my cofounder and I got a lot out of the draft-system knowledge—maintenance, troubleshooting for foamy beer, and fixing issues as they come up,” Lilly says. “We took it from there, and by digging deeper into the science, we were able to build our own draft system.”

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

The other half of service is customer-facing. What glassware matches up with certain beers (Belgian-style beers need more room for a tall head, while high-ABV beers should get smaller glasses); how to tell if a glass is clean enough for beer (basically, no bubbles clinging to the side); and how to manage inventory to ensure the beer in a customer’s glass is at its peak (serve it as fresh as possible, and rotate your stock frequently).

The kinda sad thing is that once you figure out how things work, you also start noticing when they’re off. The next thing you know, you’re realizing that the tap at your favorite bar, the one with worn-out chrome plating and exposed brass, is giving your beer a metallic aftertaste. You can’t un-learn things. But hey—that’s what cans and bottles are for.

I took a go at the first of several practice tests and failed. Not by a ton, but I was also self-grading pretty leniently.

In addition to storing away all this geeky beer knowledge, I learned something else around this time, with far greater personal consequences: My wife and I were expecting our second child in August. I remembered what having a newborn was like, so the idea of taking the test in November was out, as was September. So suddenly “I’ll have most of the year to prepare” turned into taking the test on July 12.

Let’s Learn 71 Different Kinds of Beer!

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

To call yourself a Cicerone, you need to be familiar with 71 unique styles of beer, and you have to learn the following for each one:

Color range, expressed in the Standard Reference Method, a color-associated number from 1 to 40 that measures how much light passes through the beer

Alcohol range, expressed in alcohol by volume (ABV)

The amount of dissolved isohumulone (an iso-alpha acid found in hops), expressed in International Bitterness Units (IBU)

The ratio of Original Gravity (which measures the amount of dissolved sugars in the wort prior to fermentation) to Final Gravity (the same measurement, afterward). This dictates much of the result, including alcohol content, mouthfeel, and how dry or sweet a beer tastes.

Flavor descriptors—does the beer have bready, nutty, or biscuit-y malt notes? Are the hops herbaceous, citrusy, or fruity? Is the beer effervescent and highly carbonated, or thick on the palate?

The styles aren’t set in stone, or even decided on by Cicerone. They use the BJCP style guidelines, which are updated every five years to reflect trends in brewing. So I used flash cards—lots and lots of flash cards. When I got sick of that, I used an app on my phone. It was a flash card app, but it seemed new and exciting at the time.

Looking at beer just by the numbers isn’t fun or productive, and as I progressed, I realized that you don’t have to murder yourself memorizing figures if you know how different styles relate to each other. Kolsch looks and tastes a lot like the traditional light German lagers but is made with an ale yeast; the hoppier character of American wheat beer is the result of American brewers trying to make Weissbier before recipes were widely available; and the English bitters are mostly distinguished from one another by their alcohol levels.

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

When you’re learning about the styles, you usually get a history lesson along with the numbers. You learn how the town of Plzen in the Czech Republic changed the entire concept of what people thought of as beer with the pilsner—setting the first example of the crisp, clear, and golden-colored brew that drinkers worldwide think of as the default form of beer. Or how London’s porters and stouts were the first mass-produced beers, and how their business practices paved the way for the beer world of today. Or, famously, how a few lines from a tax law in Germany in 1516 (the Reinheitsgebot), dictating that beer must be made with only water, barley, and hops, continue to loom large over how the world treats beer.

And, most importantly, you have to, you know, drink the stuff to really get an idea of what sets different varieties apart. Between January and July, I tried a staggering 219 beers, give or take a couple—everything from a plastic cup of Old Style at Wrigley Field (okay, maybe several) to a foraged-ingredient sahti at a tiny brewery in a town of 629 people. And I took a ton of notes along the way, adding as much evocative language as I could so I’d be able to call up the memory months after the fact. For instance:

“Scalded milk, Tootsie Roll” (milk stout)

“It’s like an old person made an Airhead from figs. A little cherry and currant, thin body.” (A Flanders red ale. Belgian beer is great for memorable flavors.)

“Dirt. Rotten mud. Old garbage. Dear god, what happened?” (Bière de garde. Turns out the yeast had autolyzed—become strained and basically eaten itself—which can create a lot of strong, unpleasant flavors.)

“Acrid. Maple syrup. Black pepper in old coffee. Smoke smoke smoke.” (This was for a rauchbier I actually quite liked.)

To pass the exam, you also need to be able to tell styles apart just by taste. They showed us a bit of this in the class, during which I failed to tell a German pilsner from a kolsch all three times it came up. So I bought a bunch of pils and a bunch of kolsch, and considered it all study material.

In late May, it was time for practice test number two. I either passed or failed by a couple points. (I got a few too many wrong on the short-answer portion, and it’s kind of hard to grade your own essays.) Also, I still couldn’t tell a pils from a kolsch.

Learning How to Make Beer by Making Beer

[Photograph: Liz Clayman]

While the BJCP exam maintains a far more in-depth and intense focus on the brewing process, the Cicerone exam also asks a fair bit of test takers about how to make beer. This is generally where the home brewers excel and the beer-distributor employees tend to fall short. Hands-on experience really makes the knowledge click.

Through some of that hands-on work, and lots of reading, I ran through the following:

Beer ingredients and how variations affect the beer

How yeast strains contribute to a beer’s character

Non-core stuff that gets added to beer (known as adjuncts, including oats, rye, and corn) and what they do

How different brewing processes dictate the result in your glass

The equipment that’s used in brewing and what each item does in sequence

Really, the way to drive everything home is to brew at least one batch. There are a couple different kits available online that let you produce a gallon of beer at a time for around 50 bucks. And, while your scale will be different from that of, say, Lagunitas, home brewing and commercial brewing are essentially the same process, according to Lilly.

“If you’re all-grain [using malt, rather than malt extract] home-brewing, I’d say you’re probably learning 95% of how the commercial brewing process works. The underpinnings are all there: the knowledge of why I’m doing what I’m doing, why I’m choosing a certain mash temp, what kind of hops are added and at what time,” he says. “The biggest difference between home brewing and commercial brewing is the scaling, and even pros moving to new systems have to deal with that issue.”

At yet another practice test, in June, I finally did well enough—91%, give or take—that I felt pretty sure I was making good progress. I’d started confidently pointing out kolsches and pilsners like a dramatic courtroom prosecutor. Sometimes, I was even right.

Learning to Taste

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Learning a higher level of beer tasting was both really cool and somewhat intimidating. I’m guilty as anyone of rolling my eyes at someone nose-deep in a glass of beer or wine, talking about “notes of chicory” and “a hint of citrus fruit.” It’s easy to scoff at—it sounds kind of pretentious or kind of impossible, depending on your attitude. But I needed to figure it out.

First lesson: There’s a reason no one feels super confident discerning individual flavors in food or drink at first—it’s a learned skill. I’m not a mouth scientist, but one thing I did learn is that human beings’ sense of taste operates on a Will Kill Me/Won’t Kill Me binary. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn’t concern themselves as much with hints of dark fruit and sherry.

So what you end up doing to learn to taste is building new memory associations and flavor descriptions. Taste, blurt something out, repeat. Literally, just blurting out whatever dumbass thing comes to your mind is the best way to start to create flavor associations, at least from what I remember from Randy Mosher’s classroom lecture. Eventually, you’ll get more confident, and it will come more naturally. I started finding new flavors in my morning coffee within a couple months, which is something I’d never cared to do.

The only wrong-wrong thing to do is get tentative about being wrong, and shut down. This is another place where a lot of people quit, because it can be hard to put yourself out there and think you might be wrong.

Writing this piece was a big help in mastering the off-flavors part—identifying the flavor characteristics of compounds like dimethyl sulfide, diacetyl, acetaldehyde, trans-2-nonenol, 3MBT, and acetic acid that indicate a problem with the beer. I also ended up taking a separate off-flavor class through Cicerone. Another option is off-flavor spikes for your beer, which you can find here and here, though, cost-wise, it’s a lot easier if you can split it with a few other people who are also trying to master the yuck. You’re paying to get the unfiltered versions of these flavors, but chances are you’ll encounter them in the wild eventually.

“The off flavors we test on are definitely the most common that you’ll run into at a bar,” Shana Solarte, who teaches Cicerone’s off-flavor-specific courses, says. “I hear all the time where someone runs into a stale, papery beer. It’s really important for us to use a set of flavors that are realistic. You’re learning to taste beer to assess whether it’s in good shape.”

Right before the exam, my wife helped me spike beers and blind-taste them. And she tried really hard not to laugh at my grave, “This is me swirling and noting the bouquet of some skunked Amstel Light” face. She also helped me in one final round of Pilsner or Kolsch: Seriously, Enough Already With This.

Food and Beer Pairing: Possibly Black Magic

[Photograph: Brendan Daly and Dayna Crozier]

Once you start to pull out individual flavors in beer, you need to turn your brain to pairing with food. While pairing is tricky, complex, and frustrating (many people’s opinions on the matter, both online and among friends and loud acquaintances, begin and end with yelling “BULLSH*T!” through cupped hands), the right pairing can really make both the food and the beer sing. Certain malting and mashing processes in beer production create reactions in the malt (including every Serious Eats reader’s favorite, the Maillard reaction) that mirror ones you find in food.

The easiest approach was to start small. Grilled sausage with a beer that features roasted malt. A light citrus-dressed salad with a fragrant, bitter IPA to balance the sweetness. A dark chocolate cake paired with a raspberry kriek reminds diners of classic desserts. Then, figure out a few things that don’t work—poached shrimp with an imperial stout washes out all the briny seafood flavor; spicy beef curry with a double IPA creates an irritating amplification of the heat on your scorched palate. Add to that my experience trying to pair a Scottish wee heavy with sautéed hen-of-the-woods mushrooms—two relatively earthy things that kind of tasted like mud when layered on top of each other.

What works for some people won’t work for others, but generally, there’s stuff that works well enough to be standard (brown ale and cheddar cheese), stuff that doesn’t work at all (mint and dark beer produces a certain toothpaste quality), and stuff in the middle, a space where you can refine pairings by degrees and find new and interesting combinations. It’s not the biggest focus of the exam, but it’s also important to view beer flavors and traits outside of a beer-only bubble. We’ve published a fair amount on beer pairing, because it’s one of those realms where you can always find new and surprising things to elevate the dining experience.

[Photograph: Mike Reis]

Time to Take a Big Dang Beer Test

Eventually, after a few months of flash cards on the train ride to work, beer books during lunch, and YouTube videos on draft systems at night, it was time to quit studying and take the test. I didn’t drink the night before—standard test prep, but a little funnier considering the subject matter.

To pass, and earn the title of Certified Cicerone, candidates need to score at least an 80% on the overall test, and at least a 70% on the tasting exam, no matter what the overall score is. Both written and tasting exams can be retaken separately.

Our phones were sealed in envelopes, our names replaced with numbers to ensure grading impartiality, and test packets were distributed.

There were dozens upon dozens of short-answer questions, covering everything from the areas I’d studied, sometimes in extreme detail. What kind of beer fits these descriptors? What color should this beer be? When should you add yeast to the fermenter during the brewing process, and why?

Then there were three essay questions—one covering a retail service setup, one covering the attributes and history of a specific beer style, and one on the flavor results of a certain element of the brewing process.

Once I’d answered everything and turned in my test, I went off for my short recorded demonstration. I was filmed from the neck down (about as anonymous as they can get), detailing the parts, function, and cleaning method of a specific piece of the draft system. Luckily, this was a piece I’d carried around in my bag since February, taking it apart and putting it back together, Full Metal Jacket–style, until I knew it inside and out.

If I’m being slightly vague about the exam where you’d want more detail, this is where I point out that exam takers sign a nondisclosure form that states they won’t reveal the test questions to others.

A lot of people used every second of the three hours. I finished the written exam around two hours in, and, since my phone was sealed in an envelope and my scratch paper was turned in with the test, the remainder of the time was a solid 70 minutes of staring at the wall and disassembling and reassembling my pen.

Eventually, time was called, and we got a short break before the tasting exam. One guy whispered something to the effect of “I can’t…” to the proctor and left, never to return. Either he’d already passed the tasting exam, or I was witness to a fairly calm and polite test freakout. I hoped it was the first one.

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

The tasting portion of the exam stands on its own—as I mentioned, you can retake the tasting alone, and a decent number of people end up having to. There are three distinct components:

Identifying off flavors in a low-key light beer

Style discrimination, in which you’re asked to identify which of two similar styles a given beer is (e.g., “Is this beer a milk stout or an Irish stout?”)

A service portion, which puts you in the scenario of a bar manager tasting beer a customer has sent back. Is it okay to serve, or has it gone off? And if it has, how?

While we waited, the staff poured sample after sample of beer for the tasting portion—12 per person, covering a large table in the front of the room. The anticipation was intense, with only these beers standing between us and the end of the test.

The off-flavor section went well—I’d practiced with spiked samples the night before, and managed to peg all of them pretty quickly. The next section in the exam was the style discrimination. It was time! Pilsner versus kolsch. Kolsch v. pils. KvP! I’d spent months preparing for this. I was going to completely knock it out of the…

…aaaand, it wasn’t on the exam. The guy next to me wondered why I was laughing. But if any of you ever have a bunch of unlabeled kolsch and pilsner that needs sorting, I’m your man—this is permanently burned into my brain.

Style discrimination is a great example of the necessity of trusting your first instinct when you’re tasting. You learn a lot about different beers while you’re studying, but if you spend too much time trying to call that information back and bring it to what’s in front of you, things go sideways. You can convince yourself that your initial decision was wrong, and your mind will walk you all the way back to the wrong decision. It happened to me when I decided that yes, I was totally getting notes of dark fruit and plum, along with a candi-sugar dryness, in the Belgian dubbel that was in front of me. Except it wasn’t a dubbel at all; it was the other option, which was what I’d thought in the first place, and my idiot brain cost me points. But you never forget hard-won wisdom like this: Don’t overthink a beer, and never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

The final tasting-exam section is easily the most nerve-wracking, because your list of possible responses encompasses basically everything you’ve studied. You’re given four beers, along with their names, styles, and how they were served (i.e., draft or bottle/can). If the beer is bad, you have to detail why, and how it likely happened.

I was fairly confident on my answers for three of the four in this section and encountered a bad beer in need of an explanation for the fourth. It was a darker, malt-focused British ale, which made it trickier to peg the issue, since I’d studied these off flavors in lighter beers, where flaws really jump out. I thought it had a little diacetyl, but it was actually lightstruck. Half credit, maybe?

While getting your overall results takes weeks, the tasting answers are all revealed right after the test when you discuss the beers. These beers are also blind-tasted by a staff member to ensure that everything tasted was as good or as bad as it should have been. It’s sort of a call-and-response discussion (“Okay, who answered double IPA on this?”), so tentative hands went up with every question. And, wouldn’t you know it, a surprising number of people talked themselves into tasting flaws in the un-spiked beers. Tasting is hard, and will wreck your brain given half a chance.

The Waiting Game

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

With all the beer-learning done (hopefully), I went for a beer after the exam. Luckily, there’s a brewery right across the railroad tracks. Someone else in the test session, a lab tech at the Goose Island brewery, had the same idea. She and I agreed that it was nice to taste a beer without thinking too hard about it after months of focusing on this one test.

From that moment until I got the email with my exam results, I managed to convince myself that I’d passed, that I’d failed, that I’d passed with flying colors, and that I’d failed spectacularly. It’s easy to talk yourself in and out, especially as a lot of industry pros with deep knowledge and experience have needed more than one try to pass.

“We’ve had professional brewers who know everything about brewing and off flavors take the exam and totally nail those sections, but fail overall because they don’t have adequate style knowledge and know very little about proper beer service,” Cicerone founder Ray Daniels says. “Likewise, an expert in draft systems and beer styles could totally kill those sections, but not pass due to lack of brewing knowledge and lack of tasting skills. These individuals might well know more, overall, about beer than someone who does pass the exam, but the scores won’t reflect that. So, we don’t put a lot of stock in ‘the highest score’ or in comparing scores too closely.”

After about five weeks and change, while holding my one-day-old kid in the hospital, I got my results. I passed! Here’s how things broke down for me:

Overall: 89%

Tasting: 86%

Keeping and Serving Beer: 94%

Beer Styles: 85%

Beer Flavor and Evaluation: 90%

Ingredients and Processes: 92%

Food and Beer Pairing: 84%

After all that, I was finally able to confirm that you can definitely go from “Yeah, beer’s good” to “It all started with Josef Groll in 1842…” in about six months. You might have to make it your hobby—I didn’t read a non-beer book from January until July last year—and, as with any test prep, you’re going to have to cram your brain with some stuff you find less than interesting. But eventually, it makes sense, you start to ask better questions, and you look at beer differently from how you did before. Most important, the process should make beer more fun for you.

[Photograph: Brendan Daly and Dayna Crozier]

The knock on certification programs in general (and Cicerone specifically, on some message boards) is that they reduce something that people feel organic love for to a set of right and wrong answers. But that’s like saying maps take the fun out of travel: Once you know what to look for, you see the little peaks and valleys and offshoots that build the rich landscape of beer. People who want to learn more about beer and test themselves don’t tend to end up liking beer less. Months later, I’m relieved to report that I still love a cold Guinness, even though I know that fairy dust and ancient brewer magic probably don’t make a pint served in Dublin any better. And, even better, I’m finding new things to enjoy in the beers I’d thought I already knew, and giving ones I’d thought I hated a second chance.

If you’re interested in learning more about beer, or even getting certified, my advice is to go for it if the time, money (the Certified Beer Server exam costs $69 to take, while the Certified Cicerone exam is $395), and work involved make sense for your own goals. You don’t have to take a fancy weeklong course like I did—most people who take the exams don’t—and you can find a syllabus for each level of certification on Cicerone’s website. If you prefer to do your cramming in the company of others, scout around online for an in-person study group in your area.

The eventual certificate (and yes, it is a handsome certificate) is about 1% as important as the things you learn and the people you meet in pursuit of it. Turns out that brewers, bottle-shop owners, and bartenders, at least the good ones, love to talk and share what they’re passionate about. So get out there and try something new. If I can do it, you definitely can.

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