#a seal with a gps tag on its head was hanging out with it though

[forkandknife]

I think I saw a harbor seal play fighting with a northern fur seal today

[inawickedlittletown]

Walking The Wire (87/?)

Summary: Tony Stark always knew about Peter Parker. He didn’t know that Peter was going to get superpowers and become Spider-Man, but he always knew about Peter because Peter was his son.

This will span from pre-Iron Man up through the rest of the MCU (eventually including Infinity War) and will be for the most part canon compliant except where I’ve taken some liberties and interpreted canon a certain way.

Pairings: Pepper/Tony, Tony/Steve (endgame), Tony/Mary (past)

A/N: If you want me to tag you when I post new chapters let me know. This fic is also on AO3

I used Collider’s MCU timeline to stay canon and the title of this fic is an Imagine Dragons song that is just so fitting for Peter and Tony

Masterpost

Chapter Eighty Six - (Author’s note post-ch. 86)

He called him dad.

It was -- it was a minor detail to focus on in light of everything that was happening, but at the same time it was huge.

Peter changed into the suit and Tony gave him his privacy but even then, he couldn’t help but notice that Peter had a lot of bruising on him. That guy had made a building fall on Peter. On his son. He was going to pay for that. Tony had been so relieved to find Peter after Friday alerted him to the building collapse that his anger at knowing what had occurred had faded some, but it was fast returning.  

“Dad,” Peter said and the word was everything.

“Yeah?”

“He was my date’s father,” Peter said. “I don’t know if Ned told you. I wasn’t looking for trouble -- I was just going to the dance and he figured out I’m Spider-Man and--”

“And?” Tony asked.

Peter sort of shrugged his shoulders. “He threatened me -- told me to stay away. I couldn’t, though. I really couldn’t and you have to understand, I wasn’t--”

“I know, Pete,” Tony said, cutting him off.

It was a hard reality to face -- to realize that maybe he had been too hard on Peter. Too overbearing and too much of what could be considered overprotective. He’d watched enough footage of Peter’s time with the suit to know that Peter was good at what he did. That everything he’d done over the course of this whole thing with the weapon dealers had been with every good intention and then a whole bunch of bad luck.

“Thanks for coming for me. I was —”

“I know.”

Peter wiped at his eyes and face but there was still a lot of dust left behind. “I didn’t think Ned would get through to you.”

“Friday redirected him to Pepper. If that hadn’t happened I don’t think I would have known.”

“Oh,” Peter said and he looked down. “I stole a car.”

Tony couldn’t help but laugh and then he looked towards the car. “I can see that,” he said. “You weren’t kidding about not being able to drive. We might have to rectify that among other things.”

His kid was a precious amazing and wonderful mess and Tony couldn’t imagine ever loving anyone the way that he loved Peter.

“So, what are we--” Peter trailed off and sort of motioned is arms.

Tony had been thinking about that too. They had to find and capture this guy. It was high time this was dealt with.

“Friday?” Tony asked.

“Boss, there’s movement over by that empty billboard,” Friday said, from the suit and both he and Peter turned and sure enough the winged guy was up there and he didn’t seem to be moving. That was the man that had made a building fall on his kid and he wasn’t going to be getting away.

“The plane,” Peter said with a gasp. “He’s waiting for the plane to take off.”

Tony turned to look at Peter. “What?” he asked.

“Your plane,” Peter said. “He’s trying to steal the plane and everything on it.”

---

“Friday, where is the plane?” Tony asked.

Peter kept his eyes fixed on Toomes. He seemed to just be perched up there by the billboard. Peter could just swing up there. Toomes probably wouldn’t even expect it really. He glanced back at his dad and then he put the mask on.

“You are injured, Peter,” Karen said.

“Doesn’t matter right now. And hardly.”

“The plane took off two minutes ago,” Tony said and Peter heard the strain in his voice. They had wasted too much time after Peter had been rescued.

“Can it -- can it fly back to the tower?” Peter asked.

Tony shook his head. “No-- wait, he’s on the move.”

Peter turned fast and sure enough The Vulture was in the air. Peter didn’t think twice before he ran up Flash’s car and jumped into the air as he threw out a web. He swung up towards where The Vulture had been. He heard the Iron Man repulsors behind him and enjoyed the sound as he reached the billboard. The Vulture was too high up to reach, but Iron Man wasn’t as he flew past and Peter didn’t even give him warning before he attached a web to the armor.

“Where’s the plane?” Peter asked.

“Reflector panels,” Tony said and he sounded distracted.

Peter focused on how quickly they were moving. If they could get a little closer he might be able to grab onto The Vulture. Although maybe that might make him notice them. Peter shot another web at the armor to steady him and his dad glanced back and in that same moment a couple of things happened.

The Vulture turned. One of Peter’s webs broke off.

The next moment happened quickly. “I knew you’d be around here somewhere, Stark,” The Vulture said. “So I prepared for that. Just like I prepared for Peter. Shame it had to come to that. I kind of liked the kid.”

That was when Peter realized that Toomes hadn’t seen him. He was hanging off of the armor but just out of view and it was dark. The Vulture was also overconfident and so sure that he’d managed to keep Peter under the building.

“You’re going to pay for that,” Tony said and then Tony lifted his arm and Peter was trying to keep himself from moving too much due to the wind. He could tell that Tony wasn’t moving too much because of him -- because the high altitude was not something that Peter had accounted for while creating his webbing and the wind was pushing and pushing at it.

Toomes dodged the repulsor blast and Peter felt the web breaking. He shot out another but it didn’t land on the Iron Man armor. Instead, it was on The Vulture who didn’t even seem to notice. He was far more focused on his dad which was good except that Iron Man somehow didn’t see The Vulture throw something at him.

“Dad,” Peter gasped over comms, but it wasn’t enough warning.

“EMP,” Karen said to Peter just as The Vulture flew up and away from Iron Man and taking Peter with him.

“The suit can guard against that, though,” Peter said to Karen.

“Yes, but I don’t believe that was a regular EMP,” Karen said.

Peter turned even as he had to hold on as The Vulture speeded up and he caught the tail end of the blast and then Iron Man was falling.

“Dad?” Peter asked over comms. There was no response. “Karen, what do I do?”

“Iron Man suit will be up and running soon,” Karen said.

“Okay. Okay. So I have to stop The Vulture, then.” Peter took a deep breath. He had just been under a building that this man had brought down on him and every single time before this had ended horribly but --- but he could do this. He could do this.

“Are we getting close to the plane?” Peter asked.

“According to GPS we’re close,” Karen said.

They hadn’t even managed to delay The Vulture much. The wind was coming harder and harder as they came up faster and then they were at the plane and Peter had to brace himself as The Vulture landed and Peter just managed to hold on. He threw more web at it and at least some of it stuck but it kept being ripped off. So much for amazing tensile strength.

“Karen, how -- what do I do?” Peter asked.

“The plane does not have a pilot. Just a destination,” Karen said.

Peter nodded. Then, what did that mean? Was Toomes trying to just do as he always did and take some of the stuff on the plane or was he trying to somehow steal everything on it. The wings had attached to the plane and they weren’t moving. Peter had to think quickly.

“There are also security measures,” Karen went on to say.

Peter was barely holding on to the plane. He had to get inside but he was well aware that there was no way to do that. Except that Toomes had that handy thing that disintegrated matter. And he’d sealed up his hole with his wings!

“Peter?” Tony’s voice came in and Peter felt relief flood him.

“He’s in the plane,” Peter said. “I’m -- I’m kind of outside of the plane.”

“Shit,” his dad said. “I’m coming. Suit had to reboot.”

That’s when a drone came off of the plane.

“Karen, scan that thing -- what is it doing? What is Toomes doing inside?”

Peter moved closer to the wings. He tried to kick them even as the plane shifted its course and the wind came at Peter fast and hard.

“He’s taken control of the plane,” Karen said.

---

EMPs weren’t fun. For the most part his suits never had much problem with them anymore -- nothing like the early suits. Some of the EMPs actually gave the suit more energy than shut everything off -- but this had been alien tech or something constructed from alien tech and even his suit hadn’t been able to take it. But it was lucky that a quick reboot didn’t take longer than a couple of minutes. Long minutes during which he worried for Peter who had gone with the winged guy. He hadn’t even had Friday to keep him company as he fell and then systems had come back and he’d had Peter’s tracker to follow. As he got closer, he could see the plane reflecting Peter’s suit on it’s panels.

“Boss, it appears the plane’s security measures have been overridden. It is no longer headed for the Upstate New York facility.”

Peter had said that the guy had made it onto the plane. It was almost a little impressive that he’d managed it. He saw the drone fly away from the plane and shot it down with a small missile.

“Where is it going now?”

“I don’t know,” Friday said.

“Damn it,” Tony said. He was closer now and Peter spotted him. Peter who was trying to dislodge the wings. Tony flew towards him and he motioned for Peter to move back as he raised his hand and shot a repulsor blast at them, and whatever had been keeping them on the plane gave.

They seemed to come to life rather than fall off so Tony just shot at them again. In the meanwhile, Peter scurried into the plane which was good. He’d be safer in there probably. Tony dodged a wing that came close to hitting him. Something fell into the hole in the plane. Good -- it might stop enough of the depressurizing.

The wings came back at him and Tony was just on the side of almost impressed at how well they did with no pilot. He didn’t want them to hit the plane with Peter inside, but he kept them occupied and hoped that Peter could deal with Toomes on his own. No. He knew that Peter could. Because despite how much Tony wanted to hurt that man for what he had done to Peter, Peter could fight this fight too.

---

“So you made it out,” Toomes said and he looked angry and intense -- his eyes wild as he stared at Peter.

Peter didn’t respond. He knew his best bet was to tie him up. The hole on the plane was sucking things out -- not any of the cargo because that wasn’t directly where the hole was, but it could get to that point and either way a hole in a plane was just not a good idea.

“You just couldn’t let this be and you had to involve Iron Man too. Didn’t you, Pete?”

“I see nothing wrong with involving the person you’re trying to steal from,” Peter said and he shot a string of web at him which was when Toomes moved and lunged for Peter, his hands extended.

Peter was faster. He jumped back onto the wall and then it wasn’t far from getting to the ceiling and dropping down behind Toomes. The cockpit was right behind him with all the controls and while Peter may not know much about flying a plane -- maybe he should add that to skills he needed to learn next to driving a car -- he knew Karen could probably guide him on changing the destination coordinates. First, he kicked Toomes on the back. But there was also the hole to deal with and Peter knew enough about physics to know that any kind of horrible thing could happen next.

Toomes turned as he stumbled and Peter shot web at his arm attaching it to the side of the plane. He didn’t hesitate to shoot out more at his other hand.

“So you’re just going to take me from my daughter now, Peter? I kind of remember something Liz said...something about you not having any parents--”

He was good at talking -- good at trying to get Peter to lower his defences by angering him.

“Well, she’s wrong,” Peter said. “And Liz deserves so much more than you.” Then, Peter used his elbow to fix a blow on his head and he threw more web at him. Toomes’ head dropped down but he was still breathing.

“How’s it going in there, Peter?”

“Do you think I could learn to fly a plane?” Peter asked as he walked back to the cockpit. The plane seemed to be rocking a little and it was getting worse.  

Tony didn’t say anything for a moment. “Do you need to fly a plane right now?”

“No. I don’t think so. Just -- I have him webbed up but now --”

“Peter, the plane is losing altitude,” Karen announced. Tony must have gotten the same impression. “It’s losing pressure fast too.”

It was the hole - it was going to bring the plane down if it didn’t first cause some sort of explosion. Maybe if he could close it up--

Outside there was some sort of explosion and for a moment Peter thought that it was the plane -- that somehow a motor or turbine or something had just exploded. The plane rocked even more and Peter felt it shift downward. This wasn’t good.

“Dad, what -- what should I do? I think it’s going to crash.”

“I can see that. Can you get that hole taken care of?”

“Yes. On it,” Peter said and he’d already been headed there.

Peter tried to move towards the hole despite how much it was pulling. He knew he might be sucked out and as he drew nearer he felt the pull. It was only his strength and his powers that kept him from flying out and then Peter saw that one of the boxes had actually been pulled towards the hole. It was plugging some of it, but not all. It was a miracle it hadn’t fallen through entirely. It was probably the reason the plane was still in the air even if it was destabilizing and to add to that, Peter felt a bit woozy.

He filled in the holes he could with webbing, unsure that it would hold for long but hoping that it would do something while he found something else to cover the hole. At least the pull had lessened. Peter rushed towards the cargo and he ripped off the lid of one of the wooden crates. He webbed it into place just as the plane jolted again.

“I got the plane, Peter,” Tony said. Oh, that’s what that last jolt had been about. “How’s our friend?”

Toomes was still out cold. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t wake up soon, but Peter was prepared for that. He just would prefer if he didn’t and if he didn’t have to deal with this man ever again. But Peter did hate what it would do to Liz. Despite everything, she was back at the dance having fun with her friends. She wouldn’t have any idea what was coming and Peter hated it it a little bit and yet he couldn’t let him go even for Liz.

Karen gave him instructions on what to do at the controls to make it easier for Iron Man to just take the plane down. They somehow ended up at the beach in Coney Island, but it turned out to be the best place to land the plane safely. It was a bit of a rough landing, but it was a landing.

The door the plane was opened fast after that and Peter stumbled out into the armor. The helmet came off and his dad smiled at him.

“Proud of you kid. Couldn’t have done this without you. Now where is he? I’d like a few words with him before the authorities get here.”

There was anger in his father’s eyes. Anger in a way that Peter had never seen before -- it looked dangerous.

“I -- I webbed him up inside.”

Chapter Eighty Eight

[whosxafraid]

Married Life: Luka/Beth

Meme: Married Life Meme Status: OPEN

leaves their dirty clothes on the floor

He’ll pick them up in a minute, he tells himself. Says they’re better off where they are because the floor isn’t as hard to get mud off of as the furniture. Because if anyone (besides the man also stripped down to his skivvies, next to him) knows the size of the fuss she’ll make about dirt in the weaving—it’s him.

So he’ll pick them up in a minute. The only problem is a minute became two became ten became an hour, became two. One bag of ice for his jaw, another for the nether bits. Because the asshole next to him fights dirty, though Luka had left himself wide open. 

But that’s not the point. The point  is….

Keys turning in a lock and there’s a second where his mind punches him twice for not having picked up the dirty clothes yet. But it’s all too late now, isn’t it? And all he can do is manage to tilt his head. Look back, squinting one eye shut so there isn’t three of her warbling on the very awkward horizon afforded him given the angle.

          “He star’ed i’!”

A glare that Riley had, had the same idea. To blame him, verses taking it. The reality is it’s both their faults but damn him if he’s going to take that sitting down. Well he is but—that’s not the point.

          “Oi’ dinna ye sh–tool. Ye be d’one d’at be drawn bloo’ firs’!”

forgets to run the dish washer

They prepare you for war. They prepare you for chaos. They prepare you for a lot of things that would make the average man curl up and cry. But what they don’t prepare you for? What they don’t prepare you for is the surprise. What they don’t prepare you for are the tears and the hugs that could last a week if you let them.  What they don’t prepare you for is coming home.

Coming home to a cat that can’t ever decide if it hates you or loves you. Coming home to cinnamon and half a dozen other floral scents you’re too damn tired to name. Coming home to water running, that’s only drowned out by the crash of a plate in the sink and running feet. That’s forgotten in the wake of a hundred pounds wet vaulting at you without doubt you’ll catch her. Coming home to her because home isn’t home without her there.

And the first thing you fucking say isn’t I love you. Isn’t I missed you. It’s your brother’s on the next flight. Because relief is a hell of a gift, and for a woman that’s loaning out more than most to the United States Armed Forces–she deserves it. 

And maybe your arms tighten a little more around her in the silence. And maybe you bury your face in her hair that hangs over her shoulder like some silk scarf. And you could fall asleep on your feet right then and there. To the scent of coconuts and cinnamon and what’s so easy to trick your mind into thinking is rain pouring out on a tin roof.

pumps gas for the car

        “Praghsanna peitril. Chomh hard is atá sé fuar. Tá mé sa gh—-”

Thunk.

Snow. Wet freezing slush. Cutting down his back like so many tiny rivers, that have a thousand little needles in place of droplets. That makes his spine want to jump right out of him and go slithering into the gas tank because it’s warmer in there. But nothing of the sort happens does it? No he holds it all in. Shoves the shudder in his shoulders down into his feet. Continues watching the price tag of living rising higher and higher and higher until finally…

Thud.

The pump cuts off. The trigger released. A little shake to knock off the access, and don’t get him started on where that makes his brain go. How the differences between a gas pump and a dick weren’t all that many. And back on its perch it goes. Screwing in the gas seal, swinging the latch shut. Refusing the receipt because nine out of ten times they don’t print anyway and–he’s already stepping around the car. 

Already paced himself. Made it look like he hadn’t a care in the world. Even with the sunshine smile on his face. Because she thinks she’s crafty does she? Going to be a wee shite just because she can. Well she’s not getting away with it this time. Because she’s her and he’s him, and every now and then he needs a tick mark or two put on his side of the score board.

So it’s all fluid, she sees it coming, has too if she knows him at all. But stands there unmoving like a deer in the head lights. And up she goes. Plucked from the ground like a princess at the end of any proper fairy tale. Carried a handful of steps (for him anyway) away from car and…deposited into the small snow bank. And the laughter follows after her.

Because her face. The sheer playfulness of it all. The happier times it reminds him of. Reminds him he can still feel that. And that it feels even better because it’s her. And maybe he doubles over a little, feet not quite so sure of themselves, stumbling marginally. At least until he hits a patch of unseen ice, and as the saying goes the bigger they are the harder they fall. But he hardly feels it at all. Flat on his back in the gas station parking lot, laughing clouds of breath into the air.

drives when they’re going somewhere

He knows what it looks like. Knows what they’re all thinking. And if he were perhaps a better man he might just admonish the lot of them. But he’s not is he? So he plays along, plays it up. All the while, keeping the wee woman that’s become the pulsing super nova center of his universe, wrapped safe and tight in his arms. Never mind the weird gate it’s causing him to undertake. Never mind it’s just as awkward for her. Because let them think what they like, just as long as it’s got nothing to do with thinking they’ve got a chance of taking her away.

And there’s slips and slides and laughter that still hasn’t died. Red noses and tinged ears. Flushed cheeks and skin that’s complaining about the cold air finding a way to make contact due to dishevaled clothes. And by the time he’s gotten her back in the car. Run round the car and started it up. They’re both trying to sniffle away the aftermath. Both reaching for the heater at once to jack it up to ridiculous; as he pulls them back out onto the highway.

It isn’t very long though before they realize they forgot the coffee. And Beth’s already fighting with her phone’s gps to find the next closest coffee spot to get their fix. Three attempts and getting him to try it later, she’s simply typing it in. Because google wasn’t built to understand accents. At least not ones as thick as both of theirs. 

            Wha'ya say Creek’s wahine stay f’ hana?

      “Manager fer some richie’s horse ranch. Gives her run a d’place when he no be d’ere which is about forty ou’ o’d’fifty-ta weeks ye get in o’year.”

            Horse ranch?

       “Aye, love.  Ashy already be pickin’ ou’ d’bes’ trails ta take ye on.”

He doesn’t need to look away from the road to know she’s beaming brighter than the sun.

rearranges the furniture

He has no idea when it started, or even that it had until he’s half done, hauling the headboard up five flights of stairs because it wouldn’t fit in the fucking elevator. And by then as the saying goes don’t stop now. So he doesn’t. His pride and his face are at stake at this point. And he’ll be damned if he loses either to that hawked nosed little—

             Lulu, where stay box'a hooks f’ pot rack?

         “One o’d boxes lef’ o’d’stove, love.”

At least he thinks so. He’d packed all this away in storage two years ago, so to be honest as little of it as there was, he can’t be quoted on where anything really is. As far as what box was packed with what anyway. But that’s neither here nor there as he moves to once again head back down the steps. A phone call that sounds a lot like Banks’ Texas, booming out of the speaker of House’s tortured phone.

Another hour if not longer, and eventually—they meet in the middle. The last item sitting stoically in the back of the truck. And he can almost feel it glaring at him. Daring him to even so much as make her twitch in her sleep and–oh no wait that’s Batman glaring at him. A silent truce in minimal gestures and stances. They’ll carry it in together.

The only problem? They both go for the same end. And there’s fifteen minutes of arguing over the best way to carry it with her on it. How best to keep it level. And why it made much more mathematical and logistical sense for Riley to go in backwards. Because you always put the bigger dude at the bottom. In case the top one slips. So you’ve got some kind of chance at both of you and the couch not turning the stairs into a slip n’ slide.

And by the time common sense weighs out there’s a hiss spoken into the air as he leans down to pick up his designated end.

          “Ja’sus, how she be livin’ wi’d ye an’ no gone mad, be o’miracle.”

falls asleep with the TV on

Go big or go home. He likes to do both. Always tries to make it a little special. Flowers from the shop in the airport. Or a plush from a port he can’t ever tell her where was. Simply shows up on her door mat, when she thinks he’s still months out. Always puts her first before even his pillow. Why? Because she’s important. She’s beautiful. And he’s spent every second missing her since he left.

But it…..always goes exactly the same way. They don’t go out. They stay in. Order take out through Uber. And spend the entire night swimming through the best noodles and burgers NYC has to offer, while binge watching everything he missed. Though he never makes it too long after dinner does he? Never quite finishes that last season because a full stomach, six months of jet-lag, and that little piece of heaven snuggled up next to him is the perfect recipe. 

The perfect recipe for making eye lids droop and his head heavy. Until eventually he doesn’t wake up when his skull meets the back of the couch. Doesn’t snap back to awareness, trying to shake off the exhaustion for another few seconds. Eventually that arm around her slackens and doesn’t move again. Eventually the remote tilts of his hand, and that one foot relaxes near parallel agianst the coffee table.

Tomorrow he’ll wake up with half a dozen kinks in his neck but it’ll be worth it. Tomorrow he’ll make it up to her with a late breakfast, and dinner that isn’t soaked in grease. Tomorrow….tomorrow is a lot of things. One of which right now is far away. So for now he enjoys the little things that have become large ones.

Things like sleeping on his girlfriends couch.Things like having her tucked up against him.Things like being at home, where he can switch off and just be him.

gets to use the bathroom first

She thinks she’s quiet. Sneaky as a mouse. And maybe she is, but he’s just wired to wake up with even slight changes. Even if he’s drifting off and back again after she’s moved beyond his awareness.

He could get up. Help with the coffee. But he doesn’t. Could throw on clothes and go scrounge up breakfast so neither of them have to cook. But he doesn’t. Selfishly he rolls over. Shifts her pillow closer and plants his face in it. Pulls the covers up over his head, and breathes it all in. 

Thinks about taking finally taking her on a proper vacation. They both need it, and she deserves it. And that…that leads to other things. Things that are small and square and hidden for safe keeping in a loose slat he’d found in the flooring under the bed. Which makes the cogs start turning because it’s a big deal. And it’s got to be just right.

And somewhere beneath multi-colored cotton there’s a sleepy smile pressed into her pillow, before he’s gone again. Lost to the quiet blankness of non-existent dreams. And honestly? He doesn’t stir a muscle when she slips out of the bedroom and down the hall.

But it’s okay. Because later? The bathroom will still smell like her. At least until that bottle of man is cracked open.

decides the temperature for the ac/heater

Seventy-five. Loses her shoes.

Eighty. Gets him a sweater landing on his head.

Eighty-three. Socks get eaten by the couch.

Eighty-six. A shirt becomes a wadded up pillow.

Ninety. There goes the skirt in a puddle on the floor.

Ninety-five…that curved back end is getting followed to the bed room. Because leather sticks and cotton breathes.

sets up holiday decorations

Things you miss.

Fighting with fake cobwebs, to make them just right. Spending an egregious amount of green on candy that will mostly go uneaten by the tricksters and treaters that come to call.

Staring at the turkey in the oven. Still trying to work out why this is a Thanksgiving food and not a Christmas one. Because where you’re from Thanksgiving hadn’t been a thing. Appreciating the stuffing though because okay yes, they did manage to upgrade that.

Rockefeller center squeezed into one little loft apartment. He can almost feel the warmth of it all in the photo. Smell the Christmas biscuits, hear the records playing in the background. Taste the snow that still lingers on the edges of you for hours after coming inside.

The horrendously stereotypical scene makes him laugh. But there’s something not at all mocking about it. Because it’s his two favorite people in the world caught inside one small five by eleven. The radiance that Beth always is, and the little boy that really wasn’t so little anymore.

Each one is stuck to the underside of House’s bed. Each one cherished and looked after. And when it’s time to go home. Where the pictures become people, they’ll be tucked away in that box he keeps under his nightstand. Where every other moment he’s missed lies ready to remind him–why he does what he does. Why he leaves. Why he pays the price of not being in their lives more.

Because soldiers don’t fight because they hate what’s in front of them, they fight because they love what’s behind him. And all the missed moments too.

leaves the lights on

Night lights. They never were a thing in his house. Save the light over the sink that was always on. Because his mother had said the fair folk wouldn’t come. That if you left the lights on, they would think you awake. So the O’Rian children had grown up with no fear of the dark. No sense of it being evil. Because darkness meant the fair folk would come. And how could that be a bad thing?

But he’s too old to believe in that sort of thing anymore. Growing up, knowledge, being a SEAL; they’d all bled the fantastical out him. Or at least he’d thought so until he’d met her. When she’d either knowingly or unknowingly rekindled that little light in him. Reminding him the magic was still there, he’d just chose to stop seeing it.

So he goes to Home Depot. But they’re just not–so the bench outside the store it is. Asking the almighty google for help. And when that doesn’t work? He makes a long distance phone call. Even if it’s past reasonable calling hours there. Because the receiver isn’t going to care. And like clock work she picks up on the second and a half ring.

Twenty minutes later, he back inside the store. Buying battery powered light clusters, and spray adhesive. Then it’s off to the dollar store for jars and glitter and a can of spray paint. Back to his place. Digging up yesterdays newspaper and three hours later…

A jar of lit glitter is standing vigil in every room. And Luka? He’s still picking silver and gold out of his hair and beard and out from under his nails for weeks afterward.

uses the bathroom with the door open

Privacy. He’d never had it growing up, so there was little to no adjustment required when he hit basic. Let alone everything else that followed after it. So he really…the first time it’d happened, had been after. And she’d already seen it all anyway. No harm no foul. Especially considering her vocation. She knew how it all worked to begin with.

But there’s the little reasons too. The way she likes to pretend it’s not happening. The way the conversation between them doesn’t have to ebb or pause because body functions are a thing. And honestly it’s not like it takes ages to piss. Ten seconds give or take a little, shake, flush, wash, done. It’s just easier with not having to worry with the door.

           “Ye bro’der an’ ta wee lad, be comin’ fer dinner, aye? We just be bringin’ i’ up d’en. S’jus’ o’weeken’, love. D’ink he’ll live.”

fixes the plumbing (or calls the plumber)

It’s four am. He should have been asleep seven hours ago. First bells in an hour. But he’s gone longer without sleep. He’ll be fine. By four thirty he’s hung up with the plumber. They’ll be there in three hours. He sends her a text to let her know, before he shifts gears entirely. Puts the SEAL back on and cuts into his reserves.

But even the seven mile run down the beach doesn’t push the worry away.  Doesn’t stop the cogs from turning about what can be done to change things. To put her in a better position. A better place where things aren’t going to break down on her every third week of the month. And if something does break, all she has to do is make a phone call. They’ll fix it. No hassle. 

But it’s not as simple as moving a few bits of furniture. Trading one key for another one. No it’s way more complicated. Because she has a thinks himself a knight for a brother, and one of God Almighty’s literal mouth pieces for a best friend. So the simple question of asking your girlfriend to move in with you, becomes very much not simple. And round and round and round it goes in his head.

Until somewhere between mess and his head hitting the pillow a word of advice comes from the most—unexpected of places.

Jus’ ask ‘er ta marry ya already, dumbass. Peej’ll have a stroke sure but at least ya won’t have the lord’s m’shepard, up ya ass for ya livin’ together.

And maybe he lays there staring a bit dumbfounded at Creek for a long minute. Because it’s honestly the last piece of advice Luka would have ever thought Mister-I-Don’t-Believe-In-Marriage would suggest. Still it’s a thought. A real viable one. And that box under the floorboards beneath his bed back home, is getting pretty full. Maybe he’s got just enough to pull it off. Luck with him of course that she says yes.

[originaldetectivesheep]

The Thirty and One Nights' Momentary Diversion - In the Track of the Albatross, part III

Le'von, Lew, Hurley, and Allison return from "When John Frum Came Back to Peliwak" (collected in Monsters of the Week), with a new plane, a new employer, and a new wild-goose chase: a German sub missing for near on a hundred years.  And tonight, first contact -- and the exciting conclusion of this three-part tale.

Part I Part II

In the Track of the Albatross - continued

We found those non-nuclear coconuts – a whole beachfull of them, drying out in the sun, the stink of the rotting-out oil all over the place, coming up on Al's tests pretty much the same as they ought to – on one of the next islands; we found a Kaiserliche Marine belt buckle on the one after that.  We found a lot of islands with more human intervention than there ought to be – crappy docks built in at the side of deep-water lagoons, managed copra plantations – but we hadn't found any submarines, nor anybody driving them, not on the next island and not on the next three after that one.  It was like we were really chasing ghosts, really chasing a ghost sub that wasn't playing by the same rules as a normal ship, drifting in and out of the real world, its hull more ectoplasm than solid metal.  But the hell you could take a picture of a ghost from a satellite.  There was a for-real submarine out here, somewhere, somehow, and even though the Scooper CL215 is nobody's idea of a ASW patrol ship even when you've got sub-finding gear loaded up in it, we were going to find it if it took a week and the last of our fuel.

We had cleared all the islands that the USGIS or the Navy or the NSA had spotted as sub bases; that just left the water in between.  And so Hurley had us hunting in wide sweeps, zig-zagging cutoffs, with the radar in the nose manually turned over to look down at the waves.  I was the one who'd flipped the radar over, and with the lack of a return, I wasn't that sure that I'd put all the connections back together right – and even if it did, that the waves wouldn't just bounce off the water.  I was getting worried that we'd miss the sub, and it'd be my fault, when the interphone crackled up, ahead in the cabin.

"Major target, wave height, bearing 315 degrees.  Distance about 20 klicks." Allison's scope was more sensitive than the one built into the panel, so Lew didn't hesitate; the plane dropped into a diving bank, twisting left towards the target, before the dot even popped up on the pilots' scope.  The sub was down in the waves, and now so were we, headed straight forward towards it at full pelt.

Hurley had his headset on, scanning across the dials of the military bands. "Hello the target submarine, this is Northern Stores aircraft the Rachel, registration 4326NS, acknowledge, acknowledge." At least with only the one transmitter, he couldn't play around with call signs.  "Hallo hallo Uu hundert sechsig.  Sag mal zu." That had to be German, but it didn't sound like he knew what he was saying, or how to say it right.  It didn't matter.  Lew had his radio doubled out through the panel, and there was no reply.  Did they even have radios on subs a hundred years ago – or was the radio like made out of wax-sealed vacuum tubes and gutta-percha and rotted completely away by now?  Could you even talk to ghosts by radio?

Lew pointed ahead; he had them on visual now, a little blur of brown-black metal in the endless toss of the empty blue sea.  Hurley tapped him on the shoulder.  "Pull up – pylon turn around them.  They're not hailing back; we'll take as much footage as we can and tag it to the GPS."

"On it," I said, unbuckling and turning the GoPro on as I got up to the window in the door.  I checked the latch as the plane lifted under me, and, sure that I wasn't going to fall out, let gravity and the angles hug me into the glass.  Lew was about two hundred feet up, holding the turn in perfectly, and the submarine was rotating under me like a slow-turning turntable.  I let the camera drink it all in: the long, bulbous hull, the weird cage around what must be a deck gun – that sealed it that this was ancient, nobody put guns on submarines these days that you needed to be on the surface to fire – the soft haze of gray smoke from piling coconuts on the engine, bluejackets dashing here and there around the rails of the conning deck.  Those weren't ghosts down there; those were men, men panicking, diving in hatches, grabbing up shirts or stripping them off, men on the travels and controls of the – shit, the deck gun, traveling it back up at us.  They'd take some time to get it dialed in and match a plane that was making a hundred and fifty knots, but the Rachel was kind of a big target at this range, and we couldn't take even one hit from a ship-killing shell.  "Lew!" I yelled back.  "Watch it – break off!  They got a deck gun, and –" and something flashed, and I was glad that I'd turned away from the window.

The plane juddered in the air, and I grabbed for a strap as Lew slammed the wheel over the other way, a diving bank to break contact, then swept it over again, zigging and zagging through stomach turning Gs. Did we get hit?  I hadn't heard anything – what the hell was going on?

Hurley slammed the interphone on, clutching the edge of his seat with his free hand.  "Al – Al – Allison!  Are you all right?  Are you alive back there?"

"Yes. What."  The plane was screaming from every joint at Lew's mad slams and turns, the engines were hammering like they were about to blow up, and we'd just gotten shot with something, but Al was just as flat and neutral and even as ever.

"Get us full power on the radar – everything we've got.  It's not going to jam that directed-energy weapon, but if they've got any over-the-horizon spotting gear, it might give us half a chance to get away."  If I didn't need every muscle in my body to keep from flying free and pulping myself on the inside of the fuselage, my jaw would be hanging open.  The ghost sub had shot us with a laser gun?  What the hell was going on here?"

"Get away, hell," Lew said, jaw set.  "They've messed with us – they don't get to walk away from that.  Shoot me up, huh?  Me hanging up like a party balloon in the sky, and they can't more than burn the top hinge on the rudder.  Let's see how they like me coming in low and hard – let's see them drop that gun down into the spray and pick us up out of the surf."  He snapped the wheel around again, almost dragging the low-wing float in the water, and put the dot of the sub target straight ahead on the beam.

"What the – Lew, you're not going to ram them, are you?  Get a grip, man!"  I wasn't happy at getting shot at with a damn laser either, but he had to see we were up here naked – a M-16 even if we could aim it out a window wasn't going to scratch that boat.

"Ram'em, hell," Lew spat, hunched up over the controls.  "I'm gonna bomb 'em – ain't we got that avgas in them fire-bomber bays? A hundred and fifty knots to spill, and all it takes is a spark to get'em lit up."  The engines were redlined, and there was a blur on the horizon, a scar in the water that had to be the sub.

Hurley laid a hand on Lew's shoulder.  "It's a good idea – it's the only idea, if we're coming back like this.  But we've got to do it right.  Keep zagging – don't let them line you up down the throat. It'll let us close – it'll give Allison time to put up the jamming wall, and Le'von to open up a window for the  flare."  So it was going to be me throwing a flare out into our slipstream to set off Lew's fuel-air bomb – no surprise there.  But what the hell else was I going to do?

"Max output, aye.  Broadcasting random avionics resonance all bands, directed ahead." Al's flat voice cut out, and Hurley had to shut off the panel as the radio detonated into a storm of electronic squeaks and whines and gibbering; I made sure of my handholds and grabbed an over-water emergency kit, hauling myself back along the side of the plane to a window that would open.

We were way down in the wave tops, so close that I almost felt the hull had to be actually in the water, the floats had to be dragging as we jinked.  The air was howling outside, the vacuum pulling me out, but I kept myself pressed back, flare ready on the striker.  We only got one shot at this – we'd only get one pass without getting shot, and we only had the one set of tanks to burn them with anyway.  I tried to listen back, tried to hear Hurley counting down or whatever over the roaring wind, over what felt like Al's jamming rattling up through the goddamned hull.  "Steady – steady – target – now – and – !"  I moved like to hit the striker, not sure, and then the plane jumped up under me as a thousand pounds of gas fell out through the open bomb bay doors.  That was it – no mistake.  I pushed myself up to my knees, lit the flare, and tossed it out the window all in one motion.  If I was expecting anything to happen, a thunder crack like a live bomb, it wasn't coming.  Nothing.

Then it hit: a flash of light, and I was sure that we'd gotten pegged by the laser again – but the sound after it wasn't the crashing bang of an engine exploding, the groaning shriek of the plane ripping itself apart at the seams.  It was a WHUFF! like someone'd stomped on the world's largest blown-up paper bag, and as I pushed myself up to check the damage I saw it, the dirty, greasy black cloud hanging out over the sea.  The flare just took a while to hit the gas, but when it did, it went off.  If that was just the smoke, the fireball must've been something else – and it might even have gotten the sub off our backs.  "Striped 'em, yeah?" Lew was saying from ahead, turning the plane to get a better view of the carnage.  "Right dead straight across – wonder how they liked that carpet-burner, yeah?  I got half a mind to set down, pump full of water, and come back to drop it down their funnels if there's anything left'o them.  But –" and he cut out right at that, because the smoke was clearing, clearing off the sub down in the middle of it.

The sub was still there; there were little fires on her decks where some of the gas had caught, but fuel-air weapons didn't do a lot of break-em-up damage in the best case, and we had airbursted a small, improvised one over the head of a submarine – a purpose-built steel pressure cylinder.  The deck gun was still in one piece.  The conning tower was still in one piece.  The hull was still in one piece.  The sub was still there, and we hadn't done nothing to it but piss it off.  The sub was still there – and then, suddenly, it wasn't.

Hurley slammed on the interphone so hard that the button was like to break off.  "Al!  Al!  Target!  Target!"  There was a clicking, like Al was switching off the jam to scan again, and then Allison's same old flat even expressionless voice through the speakers.  

"No target.  Nothing.  It's gone."

"Scan it – all directions – where did it dive to?"

"Hurley, that's what I'm saying.  I'm scanning all directions.  It didn't dive – I'd have at least a partial return somewhere.  It's just gone – broken up."  Allison sounded world-weary through the crackle of the mic.

"And that's what we're saying – that sub did not break up.  I saw it with my own eyes in one piece, and then all of a sudden it's gone – no oil slick, no whirlpool, no nothing.  Just flipped off like a switch, like it never was."  Even if I wasn't in range of the mic, I was yelling loud enough that Al could probably hear me through the floor.

Hurley leaned back in his seat.  "Lew, put her down – down where the submarine was, as close to where the middle of the cloud was as you can come.  It's a risk, but maybe we'll find something, some clue – something that'll tell us what that sub was, and where it went."

Lew shook his head.  "Sir yes sir," he said, but settled us down on a glide path to the center of the burning sea.

It was me out the door; it was always me out the door, into an ocean with a few patches of burning gas still floating on the water, a few smears of soot that hadn't bulked up and gone down to the bottom. This was deep water here – if the sub had dove to get away, I wouldn't've thought anything of it.  Head up, camera on a headband, shark pouch on my left ankle, I breaststroked through the waves; there wasn't anything here, not any more than there'd been on those islands – nothing to say that we'd had a laser burn instead of a servo short or whatever up in the tail, nothing to say that there was a ghost submarine out here at all.

Then I saw it.  I didn't recognize it at first, but then I made the connection: deck guns, even laser deck guns, needed deck hands, and people, caught in a fuel-air blast, don't hold up as well as pressure-hulled ships.  It was soaked and it was sinking, and I had to sprint for it before it made the long trip down to the bottom, but I made it, and got it in my hand, the squishing, half-burned, dark-blue old-style sailor hat and its trailing ribbons.  I pulled up, treading water, and traced the name in the grimy band:  SM GERMANIA.  German.  It had to be.  No denying it now.  I shook my head, and swam back for the Rachel before the shark repellent ran out.

Hurley turned the cap over in his hands.  "It's not much, Le'von, but this may be all the proof we need.  The Germania – there were more than a few ships of that name, but the only one not accounted for is the U-160.  There were some other names that might have gone by, but a submarine, and we recover a cap from Seine Majestäts Germania, and it must be the U-160 itself.  It can't be anything else – the Germans stopped calling ships "His Majesty's" in 1919."

"It could be, you know, like a reprint," I said from the floor, where I was sitting eating a MRE energy bar to calm my nerves. "Anybody can get ribbons embroidered in Thailand or wherever, and then just pretend to be this time-lost U-boat crew when they roll up and shoot lasers at people."  I was aware of how dumb that sounded, but I couldn't just not push back on Hurley.

He leaned forward, the German cap hanging down between his knobbly knees.  "Do you really believe that, Le'von?  Really?  No, not for me: when we're engaged by a submarine of ancient construction that attacks with a directed energy weapon generations beyond anything available to modern navies, then disappears without any radar trace, leaving behind only scarred relics of sailors as it would have been served by in its own age, the simplest explanation is that everything is as it is: that the submarine really is the Germania, lost without a trace for a hundred years, and that until it is stopped and brought to bay, that it's still somewhere out there."

I thought for a moment, about that impossible laser cannon, about a hat a hundred years old that hadn't gone to pieces in a fuel-air blast, about coconut husks from twenty years in the future – about how the sub had just vanished, disappeared, as if it had never been, like a needle jumping tracks on an LP record.  "Yeah – somewhere, or maybe somewhen." Hurley looked at me, then down at the hat; he didn't have an answer for that one.  Lew picked up his takeoff checklist and started flipping switches; no sense in hanging around here for a sub that was maybe cutting the seas in another dimension, maybe  right back through here, right through this chunk of sea and air and 3-D space, a decade before any of us were even born.