#actually no that is not all that entire interaction has been rotating in my brain nonstop

[southern--downpour]

pros of new hyperfixation: dopamine :) 

cons of new hyperfixation: i cannot focus on school work all i want to do is read trigun nothing else is interesting rn

[bakedbakermom]

Nugget, the Shifting Cast of Extras, and the Unreliable Narrator

One of the biggest twists of season 2 that I completely did not see coming, is that Nugget was dead all along (a rare miss for me, as I'm usually a great plot guesser). All of the scenes with Nugget were seen through Akliah's eyes; we saw only what she saw/believed, and that was a whole, living mousey friend. The minute Taissa, an outside perspective, came to notice Nugget, we all saw the truth: that he was dead, and had always been dead, and his life with Akliah was nothing but a coping mechanism, a dream that allowed her to keep sane as death slowly closed its claws around all of them.

Akilah was not a reliable narrator of her own story. None of them are.

In this context, the constantly rotating, growing, and shrinking cast of extra JV Jackets makes much more sense. Much of the teen storyline is told through the perspectives and memories of the adult survivors, and through the journals that Shauna kept in the wilderness (more reliable having been written in the moment, but still shaped by her limited perspective as well as trauma and hunger).

It makes sense that their memories focus only on those who are important to what is happening at the time, and the others fade into the background or disappear entirely as their relevance diminishes.

They remember what one background extra wore to the Doomcoming, but forget where she was during the Jackie Snackie. They remember who stood at the gravesite by the plane, but not who drew cards during the first hunt.

Gen and Melissa only got screen time this season because one of the survivors remembers their conversations and interactions. Crystal shows up because of her friendship with Misty. Akilah has a bigger part in s2 due to the Nugget plot and her role in Shauna's labor. Mari has a bigger presence in s2 because she's increasingly annoying and antagonistic to the other survivors, as well as chief acolyte of the Cult of Lottie.

Memory is a tricky thing, and memories made during trauma and starvation are trickier still. They simply don't have the brain power right now to accurately encode memories (adult Lottie mentions this, though she neglects to say that a brain that normally consumes A THIRD of the calories you take in understandably doesn't work very well under starvation conditions).

My prediction is that background YJs will come and go based on their relevance to the events happening on screen. It's not a mistake by the show runners or poor planning or an accident; it's all by design.

Not only does this work in-universe as an explanation for backgrounders coming and going, it gives the writers flexibility to bring in edible characters without having to explain why we haven't seen them before; they've always been there, they just didn't matter until now.

(It also serves to explain why, despite being on the brink of death from starvation, the girls still look pretty normal weight. The out-of-universe explanation is that it's morally reprehensible to ask the young cast to drop to a starvation weight and maintain it for the entire run of the show [or yoyo between seasons, which is even more dangerous]. The in-universe explanation is they remember themselves looking normal, so that's what we see. Just like we saw a healthy, living Nugget. Until we didn't. I wonder if we're going to see a "true" view of them through the eyes of the rescue crew that eventually saves them. Much easier to present one good vfx shot of them looking as haggard as they would actually be rather than multiple seasons.)

[little-mouse-adventures]

I haven’t been able to make much project in my reread courtesy of coursework, but your tags about your own reread and thoughts was really cool so… how has your reread been, which has been your favorite to reread so far, and what are some of your thoughts? I always enjoy seeing them!

😈okay so i have about a million thoughts, all the time, about the Artemis Fowl series.

but this reread - which has been going great, thanks for asking!! - has really reminded me how much of a comedy the whole series is. Not just the deliberate snappy one-liners, but the whole premise of a lot of the books is inherently funny. Like...I'm just over halfway through TAC right now, so most of what's in my head is from the latter half of the series, but the entirety of TTP with Little Artemis being the worlds most irritating ten-year-old and Older Artemis recognizing that, and then doing the bare minimum to change the way he interacts with people is hysterical. (The reason the St. Bart's authorities wouldn't let Butler on the grounds is because they are hoping that if someone tosses Artemis into a trash can for being a smarmy little monster, he might learn something, but no one will be brave enough to do so with Butler hanging around.)

Also, No1. He's probably my favourite character to read about this go, he's just so sweet and lovely, but I noticed this time around that he's apparently around 14. The same age as Artemis. And despite TLC introducing us to Minerva in an attempt to show 'look how far Artemis has come from being nothing but a young genius interested in his own gains!' (which she does, don't get me wrong), the book also shows that a literal demon warlock from another dimension is still so much more of Just Some Guy than Artemis is. Fourteen-year-old Artemis is wondering how he's going to get away with lying to his parents about his various criminal enterprises, and No1 is just thinking "I don't like school, and I wish I had more friends :("

In terms of straight up style of the books, I do find the shift at about TLC from a mostly action-focused series to a more introspective POV fascinating. The first four books are very much written in a sense of "Here is the narrator, telling you that Action A happened, and then Action B. Character A thought X about Action C while it happened." whereas the latter books are lot more stream-of-conciousness of the characters through third-person limited POV, rotating between the main cast. For example, in TAC, when Butler is off in Mexico to rescue Juliet, the entire section about him finding and entering the wrestling ring is written as though we are riding around in his head:

Around the back, he decided. The story of my life....How old do I have to be? he wondered. Come to think of it, with all the time travel and fairy healings, I'm not even sure how old I actually am anymore.

Compare that to AF, when Butler is getting Juliet out of Holly's holding cell and winds up trapped in the foyer of the Manor:

And on any other day, Butler would have moved. He would've been halfway up the stairway before his brain had time for second thoughts. But today he had his baby sister over his shoulder spouting gibberish, and the last thing he wanted to do was expose her to murderous assault fire.

While both are past-tense, and both give us insight into Butler's thought process and desires, the change in perspective from essentially looking in on Butler's thoughts in AF as opposed to the more personal and direct communication of those thoughts in TAC is wild. We really get a lot more sense of the characters as individuals, and I applaud Colfer for handling such a broad cast with different personalities so well in the latter style! It's hard to get different character voices, and when you are trying to really get inside their head, as opposed to just note down what they say, it's a huge accomplishment to do so well.

[otaku-tactician]

Im a bit late but for the ship ask earlier, yariyumi or lancer/archer?

Thank you!!! That's ok, I don't mind. I am glad you asked. also epic Sakura pfp btw!

Yariyumi/ Lancer x Archer (rotating them in my brain like a microwave fr!)

What made you ship it?

This is a good question. To be honest, from the very first fight they had I thought they were really cool; but didn't quite understand the parallels between them or the nuances to their rivalry (I even initially came into Fate by mistaking Cu and Archer for Tohsaka Rin's parallel boyfriends...yes I used to think Cu and Archer were 2 versions of the same guy from different timelines). But one thing that struck me was the symbolism of Cu's spear that pierced the heart, and Rin's Pendant, that brought Emiya back to life...and somehow gave the two guys a rematch as servants within the same timeline that he dies as a teenage guy... (I am confused now XD)

To understand the rivalry between them a little better, I read many posts online and I just love how they interact! The way how they clash over ideals concerning heroism, how Archer goes full sass mode (and stops holding back) whenever he hangs out with Cu; and overall...it is always a joy to watch these two interact. (And being obsessed with both of them helps!)

2. What are your favourite things about the ship?

EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!! Actually, I am not sure. Maybe their battles and banter. I love how Archer goes out of his way to compliment Cu during the heat of battle, and how he gets under his skin; I greatly enjoy watching the sparks fly between them. In other words, it's all about the inherent eroticism of battle for me. Also the whole red/blue, fated rivals, bi4bi etc etc stuff surrounding them...even their outfits look a bit similar. And there is something EPIC AF about how if one of them is in a holy grail war, the other will be bound to follow soon (most of the time).

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

There are probably many, yes... But there have been things I've misunderstood about Yariyumi as well. I do think the biggest unpopular opinion would just be me believing that actually, these two guys do not hate one another in canon, and get along incredibly well (this can sometimes be a hotly debated facet of the Archer/Lancer debacle). The other things that come to mind was ancient tumblr discourse on who would top and bottom, I personally think I don't mind either way.

Also this may be a super unpopular opinion, but sometimes I wonder if Archer purposely seeks Lancer's attention at times (like when in HA he goes out of his way to acquire a higher quality fishing rod than Lancer, and gloat about his superiority the entire time; even challenging him to a fishing match). I dunno, it just feels to me like Archer has a strong admiration for this guy- probably a mutual one as well, with how Lancer gets frustrated that a bowman as skilled as Archer is completely lacking in a sense of pride.

[anotherduckinthedepths]

Breif little ramble about a more dsmp-centered, Superhero AU esque idea my brain has been rotating every now and then

Dont fully have everything planned, originally it was just a few stray thoughts caused by me listening to the Opening OSTs of both I Expect You to Die games that has started to spiral out of control from there (honestly I wouldn't be surprised if there's also some inspiration from Grimmijagger's Cursed Town AU due to some spoopy themes) General sorta modern world setting where some people have superpowers, most of the world looks to a group of powered humans known as Pantheon to guide them and protect them, having somehow been granted two powers. Pantheon has been around for generations, with members coming and going through the years. ...Well I say somehow, the actual reason just tends to be hidden to almost all but Pantheon In the setting, there are sinister, sorta eldritch sorts of entities that for the most part, lurk just beyond the boundaries of the material plane, most desiring to shape, control, and generally invade the world... but they can't sustain a physical form in the material plane on their own, so they are for the most part, stuck in areas for dreams and general unconsciousness and dimensions tied to specific aspects of the world such as time or death. They can mess around with dreams ...That is unless they make a pact with a creature that originates from the material world, creating a sort of link between the two and even allowing the vessel to harness a fragment of their power The members of Pantheon fit into this category, humans who one way or another ended up making a pact with one of these entities (there can be several vessels connected to the same entities), their second power being that fragment they received in return, (currently vessels connected to the same entity will have the same secondary power). The sinister nature of the pact becomes apparent overtime, as a vessel will slowly have their every thought given access to, loose any form of autonomy over their body and have more and more of the entity they're bonded to control them, until the pour soul is practically a puppet for their entity to use to interact with their world and carry out their will, whilst the person themselves becomes trapped within their own body, in this state, they are functionally lost. ___ Outside of the the most I have for the first main plot focuses on Kristin (Or Lady Death), a member of Pantheon who made a pact with the entity that lurked within the realms of the dead, now capable of seeing spirits and conversing with them.

She's been a member of Pantheon for a while, not as long as Jubilant (name may change) , who's sort of taken up the role of leader amongst them, but long enough to become aware of the position she's in (for the most part, she isn't full aware of just how much control of her own body will eventually be taken), she's stuck in this life now, she is the vessel of the entity of Death who she's aware doesn't have noble goals but has fallen into the idea that there's nothing she can do, she made the pact, so she must play the part of Lady Death, she who brings to those who she hunts at best into the steely hands of her fellow commanders and at worse, the cold reaching grasp of the beyond. She who is inevitable. She who no one can outrun. But there's something that shakes that beleif... Whilst hunting for those the Pantheon deemed criminals (often being those who didn't fall in line and/or knew too much)... one gets away entirely. Sisyphus, a name for the criminal given by the public and quickly adopted by the Pantheon, the one who escaped death herself. The Pantheon treated him as a stain on their perfect streaks, someone who made the public think they had flaws, Kristin follows this mindset, the entity insistent that he may have gotten away but no one could outrun death forever, Lady Death and Sisyphus develop a sort of rivalry... but with each escape, each time the idea that the fate of those Death hunted were doomed wavers, something in her worldview changes bit by bit. If this man who to some degree may as well have been any old resident could escape his fate, well maybe she could to... and that's the most I've got for now outside of plans for Kristin to eventually break away from Pantheon and for the two of them to work together to avoid the rest of Pantheon and find a way to make it impossible for the fate of the vessels to ever befall her. ___ So yea those are some of my silly ramblings, hope at least some of you enjoy them, incoherent as they may be Might doodle for this AU of sorts sometimes, brains got some spooky visuals especially for Jubilant

[whoiskt]

Here are my Severance theories: (not very well thought out yet: still stewing things around)

1. The Severance Floor is nothing more than a testing facility for the capabilities/limits of the chips.

Helly's employment as a severed employee is entirely a PR move by her outie to give good press to the severence procedure.

I have no idea what's going on with the goats but they do come off as test-subjects.

O&D seems to do nothing more than move paintings and office supplies around, and these commands come from higher up. If it really was a 2-person department I could maybe see this being a real need for the company but the department comes off as an excuse for more severed employees as opposed to real work. Rotating paintings just isn't such classified work that it should require being severed. Also, Burt can wander around and goof off with Irving all he likes, it's only a problem when Irving wanders and goofs off with him because MDR has an actual purpose which takes me to my next one...

2. Macro-Data Refinement is refining their own memories/memories of severed employees.

No one knows what they're doing/the data they're refining, but they know how to do it. Their is no in-depth training it is only described as you'll know it when you see it. "The scary numbers" are an innate thing, implying it has to be something subconcious-- a product of the chip in their brains.

This theory needs more work but I seriously wonder what would happen if they started binning numbers at random?

3. Gemma/Ms. Casey was secretly previously severed.

She did get in a car crash which resulted in brain death and/or comatose but due to the fact that she had already had the procedure the part of her brain where her innie lives "survived" and is now the only place she can be conscious.

Why/How she was severed without Mark knowing, I'm not sure yet. Mark mentioned they had fertility issues and she didn't seem to deal with it very well. It could be that she secretly took a part-time severed job to cope, not unlike her husband would after she "died".

My main point of this theory is I don't think Lumon is holding her outie against her will or hiding her away or something.

4. Mrs. Cobel is personally invested in the severence chips capabilities.

She has taken special interest in Mark specifically, living and closely interacting beside his outie in a way that the board doesn't even approve of, and observing his innie very carefully while at work. Specifically she took great interest in his wellness sessions with Ms. Casey. Milchick had to tell her "it is a good thing they don't remember each other, it means the chips are working," because she seemed to be upset by their interactions.

Thus I think Mrs. Cobel wants Mark and Gemma to remember each other because she has hopes it can reunite her with a loved one, too.

When outie Mark expresses a desire to quit she is happy and exclaims he needs to get away from those people.

She leaves Eleanor in front of the family photos where Mark discovers that Ms. Casey is his wife, alive.

While she can easily come off as facetious, I think she does legitimately care for Mark and it is perhaps because she sees herself in him

She is also, of course, deeply indoctrinated to the Kier cult, but I think she's more into the ideals of the cult, and is disillusioned by the people running Lumon currently. However, she will do whatever it takes to get the severence chips out and into every person, even after getting fired.

Still a lot unknown.

5. Sleep is the key to smuggling messages between innies and outies.

Irving's outie obsessively paints the corridor and elevator that resembles the testing floor. The Testing Floor being an ominous place where Ms. Casey is taken after being let go. We don't know much about what goes on there, but Irving has been there in order to paint it. Needless to say, this place is hiding some secrets.

Outie Irving, perhaps, has discovered a way to bridge memories across the severed mind. He stays up late, purposely depriving himself of sleep painting this image over and over again, concentrating in it deeply in his mind. Innie Irving then falls asleep at work and dreams of the black paint oozing everywhere.

Perhaps outie Irving and Burt have/had some sort of relationship, which leads to their innies having the immediate connection and passion they have for each other. But it's not love that transcends the severence chip, as we see with Mark and Ms. Casey, it is sleep.

Sleeping at work is a faux pas anywhere so reprimanding an employee for sleeping is not even suspicious.

[phoenixtakaramono]

Does Bing gē Have Descendants in ‘The Untold Tale?’

This topic has come up a few times since The Untold Tale takes place in the PIDW universe (post-Bingge vs Bingmei extra), I figured I might as well compile and archive my official answer here for me to refer my AO3 readers to in the future for convenience’s sake. I hope everyone doesn’t mind. :) I’m always happy to answer questions!

TL;DR

Q: Will we see Bing gē having fathered children with his harem of 600 or so wives in TUT?

A: For TUT, the answer is a definite “no.” There were a lot of factors which’d contributed to my decision. I’ll try to explain my reasoning down below.

Context

In PIDW, it is canon that Luo Binghe has a bountiful number of descendants with his harem of 600-or-so wives. It is a detail that has been mentioned even in ch1 of SVSSS and in ep1 of the donghua.

(SVSSS Excerpt - ch1)

(SVSSS donghua - ep1)

I like to plan things ahead of time. So from very early on, I knew this would be something I would have to decide on whether or not to address when I’d finally decided to expand TUT from just a prologue into a full-blown story. And after contemplating it, I decided against adding children into the story. It is because 1) it would make the situation more complicated, and 2) it would take TUT in a different direction that wouldn’t be fun for me to write.

I’m a very decisive writer, meaning when I make my mind up about something, chances are I won’t change my mind. This is because I would have already planned it into my plot outline, which means changing a decision would require me to change other details in the other chapters I have planned for that story. (I’m typically not a spontaneous writer; I try not to write spontaneously because when you’re a writer who rotates through multiple WIPs with different characters across different genres or writing styles, you inevitably have writer’s block because you probably won’t remember all the ideas or the direction you had whenever you return back to a different WIP. To reduce this shortcoming, it helps me personally to have a plot outline. This way I can return to any WIP, read my notes and then transcribe them into legible paragraphs, find a way to transition between the story beats I have to hit for that chapter, and then eventually post the final draft to AO3 when I feel it’s ready.)

Having made a decision, I knew I had to set it up in TUT and give a “reasonable explanation in-story.” Hence, in ch2, we see:

(Excerpt I - ch2)

Basically the set-up is TUT takes place post-Bingge vs Bingmei, but between “the third or fourth book” of the hypothetical PIDW webnovel series aka before Airplane wrote the fanservicey chapters where the luckier of LBH’s wives give birth to children during the harem drama plots and the children are probably rarely, if ever, mentioned again in the story as a lot of stallion novels tend to do.

(Excerpt II - ch2)

(Excerpt III - ch2)

Contrarian Tendencies

You know the saying: Monkey see, monkey do? In my case, it’s monkey see, monkey do not do.

A little fun fact about me as a writer: if I have already seen a fanfic where someone has already written a concept or idea into their story, chances are I will just avoid it entirely in my own stories. I don’t know why this aversion exists, but I’m assuming it’s because of my counterculture hipster inclinations and an intrinsic fear of plagiarism which has been beaten into all of our skulls since adolescence. There’s nothing wrong with being inspired by other people’s works. Technically everything’s been done before in writing so, as a writer, a good rule of thumb is to always try to give it your own unique spin on things. So for me, my brain somehow interpreted this a step further. This is a reason why I try to avoid reading stories from whichever fandom my WIP is from during the writing process of updating a fic, because this is how I get influenced. Once I see an idea or interpretation from another fanfiction, it influences me to not want to write it into my own. This is a very strong unconscious impulse for me. I guess this is just the neurons in my brain’s thinking that this way, it won’t be something my readers will have read before and the story idea will come across as different or fresh, and mine. In a way this is also how I show respect for fanfiction writers in the same fandom—by being inspired to not be inspired, ha. I like to think every story in the world serves a niche audience, so seeing a diverse range of originality and interpretations in a fandom is a good thing. This is also how I feel when I am able to identify certain popular tropes or depictions or patterns in a fandom; 99% of the time, it makes me feel a compulsion to “go against the grain” or write the opposite. For example, you have no idea how long it took me to come around the idea of incorporating the fanon “A-Yuan” into TUT. However cute it is, the moment it dominated the fandom (well, “dominated” is an exaggeration; it’s more like I’ve seen enough, especially in the Original LBH/ SY | SQQ tag), my gut reaction was to nope out of using it. But after seeing a lot of comments in my inbox with readers affectionately calling SY “A-Yuan,” I’d contemplated it for a long time and it wasn’t until ch4 that I decisively decided that yes, I can have Bing gē calling SY “A-Yuan” in TUT—but it has to be at the right moment for maximum dramatic and emotional impact. (See this thread that started it all. And this is the small sneak peek I wrote where LBH will call SY that for the first time.) <- This is the rare 1% where I actually conformed to what’s popular.

In this case, when I finally decided to expand the prologue into a full-blown story, coincidentally I had just recently read a good Binggeyuan (Bingyuan) fanfic which featured a kidnapped Shen Yuan interacting with Bing gē’s harem and LBH’s children/descendants. I’d liked their portrayal and even thought the children were cute. <- However, with me having reading this, the problem came up: I felt the familiar stubbornness in me rearing its head. So knowing myself, if I had included children, it is very likely the direction that I would have gone down for TUT would have been the opposite. To further complicate matters, you have to keep in mind the kind of writer I am. I tend to like grounding stories with a semblance of realism, no matter if the genre is pseudohistorical fantasy, romance, sci-fi, etc. And this writer has seen and read quite a few harem and palace intrigue Chinese dramas/ premises.

For further context, in those types of “historical” C-dramas^, in that sort of environment which fosters scheming, competition, jealousy, etc, it is almost expected to see heirs aka children aka descendants harmed along with the women. Innocent parties are often victims in these sorts of cutthroat premises, to underscore the underlying message the show or novel wishes to present. (See Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace. See Yanxi Palace. See The Legend of Haolan. See Nirvana in Fire. See The Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage. Etc.) And me being me, this would be the direction I would take. Remember, while TUT is meant to emulate a legitimate danmei C-novel reading experience in a fantasy world, I do drop pseudohistorical and cultural Easter eggs into the story. So trust me when I say you would not like the direction TUT would have gone down in, had I made LBH have children with his harem. I mean, theoretically yes, we could’ve seen endearing children characters from me, but you would have also seen me addressing a lot of the baggage that comes with (see Comment III Excerpt down below).

The situation with dissolving Bing gē’s harem is already complicated enough. As his romance with Shen Yuan develops, I didn’t want to have an additional headache thinking about how to address the issue of LBH having children already. Divorces in a pseudohistorical context is already a heavy topic—even more so when it’s divorces with children in the mix. Naturally I will still have SY and LBH eventually discuss the matter of legitimate heirs since LBH will essentially become the Sacred Ruler of all Three Realms and it’s a traditional precedent for an emperor to bed his empress, noble consort, and imperial concubines until he has his heirs (plural, because the rate of mortality was high in ancient China). In TUT’s case, at that point in the story SY will remind LBH that he’s essentially an immortal sovereign so there isn’t any need for an heir unless he wishes to retire. Furthermore, he will inform LBH that he could set a new precedent since he’s already different from the other emperors from history (with him being of half-Heavenly Demon and half-human cultivator lineage); as long as LBH is fully aware of all perspectives of the situation, he doesn’t necessarily need to conform to all traditions if this is something he really feels strongly about. But this future conversation(s) is likely the extent of it.

But wait, you say, what about a certain someone who’s going to be transmigrated as an imperial crown prince? Isn’t he going to be in that sort of vicious upbringing? <- Yes. But that’s an entirely seperate matter. In a way, since I’ve decided Bing gē will not have had any children or descendants in TUT, with Airplane, this now presents an opportunity for me to show the consequences of being one of the many children of an emperor with a harem of women vying for one man’s attention—and the power struggle that’d ensue in this kind of environment. It’s an interesting What-If parallel, if you think about it.

AO3 Comments

Although these are just small excerpts from replies I’ve written before, it’s nice and orderly to just compile them here for everyone since these will be buried underneath all the comments as TUT updates:

(Comment I- ch3)

(Comment II- ch4)

(Comment III- ch4)

Because of seeing comments that have asked me for my thoughts on whether or not I will include LBH’s children, I’ve had so much fun seeing theories thrown around: from LBH’s blood parasites being able to control conception, to someone’s headcanon about LBH being a hybrid and all that entails scientifically (think: mules). I will say in TUT, it’s more the former since in PIDW he’s supposed to have descendants; we’re pretending Bing gē doesn’t have any yet (and now definitely won’t, especially after having heard SY’s “prophecy”) because he subconsciously does not want children due to certain fears, trauma, etc. And his Heavenly Demon’s “blood parasites” (blood manipulation) is a convenient story device to explain why no wife has gotten pregnant yet.

I hope this explanation makes sense! Mainly I just wanted to have this archived on tumblr so that I have this post to refer to moving forward.

On a side note: especially since ch4 had been posted, quite a few people have actually mentioned they’ve read my replies to other comments and/or I have seen different people having hopped onto other readers’ comment threads (for example, imagine my pleasant surprise when I saw a reader you lovely person, you helpfully jumping in to respond to another reader’s questions about TUT, and their answers were actually aligned with what I would’ve answered!), so it’s always such a thrill whenever I see this level of engagement happening. I can’t explain why, but seeing this happening is just so cute to me. It really makes this writer feel so warm and fuzzy inside!

[charincharge]

Cruel Summer, Part 20

cruel summer masterlist

AN: This was supposed to be ready hours ago. SORRY. Only five chapters to go. Have I mentioned how much I appreciate all of you who read, reblog and review this? It has seriously brightened up a shitty time in my life.

Rowan feels like he’s barely slept when Aelin’s alarm goes off. He grumbles and pulls her closer, so he can bury his face into her shoulder, away from the thick rays of sunshine pouring through her window. “No…” he groans.

“Yes,” Aelin laughs as she turns over to face him. Her finger traces over his lips, and he kisses it softly. Her eyes lock with his, and he can’t help the warmth that blooms in his chest at her staring.

“What?” he asks, kissing her finger again. Her eyes flit across his face, observing him closely.

“You’re pretty in the morning,” she says, and Rowan narrows his eyes at her.

“Pretty?” he asks, incredulous. She nods and giggles quietly as Rowan climbs on top of her, pinning her hands beside her head on the mattress. “I’ll show you pretty…” he growls. His lips dive onto her neck, and he can feel her laughter against his chest.

They both hear her door open and slam at the same time. They freeze, their heads turning in the direction of the noise, praying against all odds that it isn’t one of Aelin’s parents.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake…”

Dorian stands with his back pressed against Aelin’s door, his hand covering his face again. Rowan sighs a breath of relief and rolls off the bed. He can’t believe how close that came to being a nightmare. They really need to be more careful. He grabs his work uniform, which is crumpled on the floor and pulls his pants on quickly.

“Dor?” Aelin asks from under her covers. “Why are you in my room?”

“I volunteered to wake you up,” he says, eyes still closed. “I had a feeling. Your entire family is downstairs. It’s Saturday, remember?”

“Shit,” Aelin mumbles as she rushes to her closet and throws on shorts and a tank top.

Rowan looks at the clock. Thirty minutes until works starts. And he has no idea how he’s going to escape this house with Aelin’s entire family downstairs. It’s not like he can climb out her window – he’d be spotted in a second.

Dorian finally cracks his eyes open and sees that everyone is fully dressed and relaxes slightly. He nods to Rowan, who nods back uncomfortably.

As they exchange hellos, Aelin heads straight into her bathroom and plugs in her curling iron. Rowan stands in the middle of the room, unsure of what to do. He shoves his hands into his pockets and watches as Aelin starts wrapping her hair around the hot metal rod. She examines her bruise in the mirror and dabs some makeup over it with her free hand.

“Dor?” Aelin calls from the bathroom. “Can you tell my family that I am curling my hair, but I will meet them at the park shortly?” She pokes her head out of the bathroom. “Just, get them out of the house quickly. Please,” she implores him with wide eyes, and Dorian salutes her and takes off.

By the time Aelin’s hair is curled, and her family has officially left the premises, Rowan has about five minutes to make it to work. He kisses Aelin and makes a mad dash for the park.

“See you there,” Aelin calls out after him as he takes off into a quick sprint. His cross-country skills are put to the test as his feet sink through the sand with every step. By the time he reaches the park entrance, he’s only one minute late. He’s impressed with himself.

Breathing hard, he slows to a brisk walk, making his way through the throngs of crowds lined up to get in.

Rowan pauses, his brain finally catching up to him, and looks around. The park is packed. Shockingly crowded.

The line of cars to enter the park is so long, it extends past the parking lot and onto the street, and at the front gate, a hefty crowd is gathered, waiting to get in.

“What the fuck?” Rowan mumbles to himself.

Inside the park, a very stressed out Lorcan mans the admissions booth with Fenrys. “Rowan!” he calls out. “You’re here! Come help us.”

Rowan apologizes for being late, but Lorcan just attributes it to the long line of cars and waves Rowan off. He’s just grateful for the help.

As Rowan starts handing out tickets and wristbands, he finally asks Lorcan what the hell is going on. Apparently, the park was featured on some big reality show called Hometown Hotspots earlier in the week, and the park is seeing the after effects. Lorcan has never been more stressed. He’s not exactly a people person, and these people are impatient, entitled, and anxious to get into the park. Rowan feels for him.

The overflow of people is never ending, and Rowan ends up staying at admissions until well into the afternoon. He barely has time to even think about missing Aelin, being kept so busy. Until, finally, he checks his phone during his lunch break and sees he has a slew of texts from her.

WHOA, what’s up with these crowds???

You were so busy this morning, you didn’t even see me come in! Luckily, Fenrys was far more cordial ;)

Rowan glares at Fenrys, who eats his lunch across the table from him. He can’t believe he didn’t’ even see Aelin enter the park.

Lys wants me to tell you that she knows this is not a curler burn. *facepalm*

Gavin heard your name and got excited, and now my family is insisting you join us for dinner.

You’re going to go down in history as being Gavin’s favorite person ever, just for buying him cotton candy that ONE TIME.

Rowan can’t help but smile at this phone screen, despite how tired he already is. He texts back quickly.

I’ll be there.

At the last second, he adds a red heart emoji and sends it. He’s never been an emoji person before, mostly using texting for utilitarian purposes only. But with Aelin, he can’t help himself. It’s silly, he knows. But the red heart sitting in his texts is his silent way of opening up more. Of silently insinuating the three words he’s tried to push to the back of his head and not let overtake his thoughts. He smiles when Aelin immediately returns his text with three kissing face emojis.

He must be smiling like a mad man, because Lorcan chuckles loudly as he takes a seat next to Rowan and asks, “How’s your girlfriend?”

Rowan’s smile disappears as Fenrys perks up from across the table. “You have a girlfriend?”

“Uhh… no… not really…” Rowan fumbles his words.

Lorcan senses his mistake and flashes Rowan and apologetic glance.

But Fenrys is undeterred. “I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me, Rowan,” Fenrys pouts, sounding all of his young age. “So… who is she? Townie? Someone who works here? Rich summer home crowd?”

“Someone way out of your league, kiddo,” Lorcan says, slapping his large hand onto Fenrys’s shoulder. His voice is gruff, but Rowan sees the hears the affection in his tone. He weirdly feels like he’s turned a corner with Lorcan. Maybe they could even be friends.

“It’s nothing,” Rowan assures Fenrys, who still looks on with hopeful eyes, begging for scraps of information. “It’s super low key, so we haven’t gone public, or whatever.”

“Then how come Lorcan knew?” His whining would be almost comical if Rowan didn’t want to exit the conversation so badly.

Luckily, Lorcan saves him. “Caught them in the break room the other night.” He pauses. “Which, no one should be doing, by the way.”

“What should we not be doing?” Elide asks, entering with a giant funnel cake in her hands. She’s followed by Connall and Vaughan and Gavriel, which means that Rowan’s lunch break is up. He groans. He’s not ready to deal with those crowds again. And if the group’s faces are any indication, nothing has slowed in the minutes he took off to eat. Elide looks exhausted.

“Making out in the break room,” Rowan laughs.

“Oh please,” Elide scoffs. “What do you think Lorcan and I do every night when you guys leave?” Elide wiggles her eyebrows at Lorcan, who turns bright red. His hands tug at his long hair, unsure what to do with himself. Rowan can tell he wants to be mad at Elide, but he thinks Lorcan is physically incapable of actually getting angry with her.

“Ellie,” he whines, but she just giggles as she stuffs a piece of funnel cake into her mouth. Her lips become coated in powdered sugar, and she purses her lips and motions to Lorcan.

“Come get some sugar.” She winks, and Lorcan looks conflicted as he looks at her lips and everyone else in the room. Ultimately, Elide’s lips win, and Lorcan leans down and gives her a quick kiss as everyone else in the room whoops. His entire body is flushed as he narrows his eyes at the bystanders.

“Not a word,” he warns.

Fenrys sighs loudly. “Man, did everyone get a girlfriend this summer but me?” he asks. Connall and Vaughan sit down next to him, and as the conversation turns to summer gossip, Rowan extracts himself and heads to the kiddie section of the park, where he’ll be on rotation all afternoon.

The rest of the day is even more miserable than the first half. Children are crying, upset with waiting for hours and missing their nap times; Rowan sympathizes – he’d love a nap, too. The crowds become angrier the longer they have to wait, and Rowan realizes the park is not equipped for this many people. They have no idea how to manage the crowds. And he almost witnesses a full on riot when one of the food stands runs out of ice cream bars. It’s a mess.

Somehow, he manages to keep his cool with the angry patrons, and he practically runs back to the Ashryvers’ as soon as the day is finished.

The entire family, plus Dorian, sits outside on their back patio as Emrys brings out platters of food, which smell absolutely delicious. Fleetfoot waits happily under the table, tail wagging, ready for scraps to fall. Rowan’s stomach rumbles as he approaches, seeing the spread of salads, biscuits and corn on the cobb.

“Wine?” Aelin offers him a large glass, and Rowan accepts it happily.

Gavin runs straight for his legs and wraps his tiny arms around them. He pats the top of the small boy’s head, unable to interact much more than that in his current state of exhaustion.

“Oh, sweetie, I can get you a beer, if you prefer,” Evalin says, but Rowan shakes his head and takes a large sip of the cold wine. “You look utterly exhausted.” She holds out a chair, and Rowan slinks into it without a second thought.

“The park was…” Rowan begins, but he stops himself short, not wanting to insult his bosses. Aelin sees it in his face.

“A nightmare?” Rhoe laughs. “We know.” He fills his own glass again. “We left early in the afternoon. We were not ready for those crowds.”

Evalin sighs. “The board is meeting about it tomorrow. We need to come up with some kind of solution other than hiring people to help with the parking lot. Luckily, this summer is almost over. But if this is how it is next summer… We need to get organized.”

Rowan thought the same thing throughout the day, but he’s unsure if he should bring up his suggestion. He knows his opinion likely holds no weight with this family, despite how outwardly friendly they are to him.

“Have you ever been to Disneyland?” Rowan asks, deciding to speak up after all.

“The competition?” Evalin raises an eyebrow, and Rowan becomes slightly self-conscious. He takes another sip of his wine. But Evalin cracks a smile, clearly teasing him, and Rowan relaxes. “I’m kidding. Yes, we’ve been there. But not since Aelin was nearly a baby.” Evalin smiles wider, staring at her daughter. “All Aelin wanted to do was to meet Mickey. It’s all she talked about the entire trip. We waited for over two hours to meet him, and when we got to the front, she screamed bloody murder. Just cried and cried…”

Aedion laughs loudly. “Oh my god, I remember that. She was terrified of him.”

Aelin frowns. “Okay, when you’re a toddler and you love Mickey, you expect him to be the size of a mouse, not a GIANT.” She shudders. “I still don’t like the characters.”

Rowan laughs and rubs her arm reflexively. He only realizes what he’s done when Dorian catches his eye. He pulls his hand away quickly, and prays no one noticed. Aelin seems unfazed as she sips more of her wine.

“A-anyway,” Rowan continues, “I know Disney is very different from Playland, but… the one thing they’re great at is crowd control.”

Rhoe and Evalin nod in agreement, so Rowan continues.

“Besides hiring people to direct car traffic and foot traffic, which, is definitely an important part of it – I think they really got a handle on things when they created their app,” he explains. “It’s an interactive map of the park where you can check ride wait times, see the daily schedule, preorder food, make reservations…” Rowan looks around the table and notices all eyes are on him, listening with rapt attention. “Playland isn’t big enough to need all of that, but it couldn’t hurt to have some of it. Everyone loves an app.”

“That’s not a terrible idea.” Evalin looks to Rhoe.

Lysandra turns toward Rowan and narrows her eyes. “Rowan, weren’t you telling us you used to work as a programmer for a start up?” she asks, and Rowan nods uncomfortably. He doesn’t like this many eyes on him. Especially when he’s talking about himself.

“You did?” Rhoe asks.

“Yeah. Not for very long,” Rowan admits. “The start up went under pretty quickly. Bad investors.” He pauses, then continues. “But I did computer engineering for the Army before then. I could make you a mock up, if you wanted?”

“That is very sweet to offer,” Evalin says, her voice sounding too saccharine to Rowan’s ears. “But I don’t think we’re anywhere near that step yet.”

Rowan smiles, but he can’t help but feel like he’s been blown off. He should have known they only see him as park staff. He does appreciate Lysandra taking him seriously, though.

The conversation dies down as Emrys brings out a large plate of brightly colored lobsters. Rowan can count the amount of times he’s had lobster on one hand. It’s a delicious luxury, one that Rowan absolutely loves, but is completely inexperienced with. He watches Aelin pull the claws with a slight twist away from the body and crack the shell, pulling the meat out. He mimics her actions, but somehow ends up crushing the shell into multiple pieces with his clumsy fingers.

As Aelin dips her piece into butter and drops it into her mouth, she sees Rowan’s struggle and leans over to help.

“Here,” she whispers as she takes her knife and cracks open the knuckles for him. He feels like a child. In fact, he notices Lysandra doing the same thing for Gavin and Evie.

“I can do it,” he protests, but Aelin has already finished cracking it for him. He sighs as she moves to twist off the tail, hoping his cheeks aren’t red with the embarrassment he feels.

His embarrassment fades quickly, though, when he sees Evalin reaching over to do the same thing to Rhoe’s lobster. Rowan looks at Aelin, who doesn’t seem to realize she’s completely mirroring her parents’ behavior and smiles behind the rim of his wine glass, which has been magically refilled.

Dinner is just as delicious as Rowan hoped it’d be, and by the end of the night he’s feeling sated and sleepy and buzzed on wine. Evalin tells him he should spend the night, since he’s not safe to drive yet, but Rowan can’t actually justify wearing his gross uniform again tomorrow. And as loathe as he is to spend a night away from Aelin, he knows he needs to go home.

“I can stay for another hour or so and sober up and then head home,” Rowan says, but his large yawn gives away his current state of fatigue.

“We can give you a ride if you want?” Lysandra offers, and Aedion readily agrees, but Rowan isn’t sure how he’d get to work the next morning without his truck.

“Fireheart, are you sober?” Rhoe asks, and Aelin nods. Rowan did notice she stopped drinking after her first glass of wine. He should have, too, but she just kept refilling it. It barely takes Rowan a second to realize that Aelin was trying to get him drunk, trying to get him to stay over. He shakes his head, sorry for her failed efforts.

“Why don’t you drive Rowan home, and then you can take an Uber back home?”

Aelin agrees, and says she’ll be quiet coming back in, in case her parents are asleep. After a round of goodbyes, Aelin and Rowan walk back to his truck where it’s still in the far corner of the Playland parking lot.

He tosses her the keys and watches as she moves her hand over the gears. As they drive, Rowan realizes he’s never seen Aelin behind the wheel before, and there’s something incredibly sexy about watching her maneuver his giant truck. By the time they reach Rowan’s street, Rowan can’t wait any longer. As soon as Aelin parks, he pulls her over to his lap and kisses her.

She squeals as he plants sloppy kisses on her face. Their kisses become more heated as it continues, so much that the windows start to steam up. His hands roam across her back and slide up her tank top, relishing in her bare skin. He just wants her all the time. Always.

Aelin pulls away and smiles. “I thought you were tired.”

“I am,” Rowan admits through another yawn. “That’s why if you come up, you’re going to have to do all the work.”

Aelin snorts, making Rowan laugh. It’s the cutest thing in the world. When she snorts. No other girl could make snorting cute, but Aelin somehow manages to.

“This is what you get for getting me drunk,” he says, letting her know he was well aware of her plan.

Aelin snickers as she opens the door and slides off his lap. She pulls on his arms, and Rowan stumbles out of the cab. And when they get upstairs, Aelin shows Rowan she’s more than happy to do all the work, and then some.

Rowan’s drunk heart feels like it’s going to explode as she moves on top of him, and he has to physically stop himself from saying the three words he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about all day. I love you, he thinks to himself. I never want you to leave. I want to be with you forever.

His resistance snaps. He’s too tired, too ready to put his entire heart into this thing. The lid he’s tried so carefully to keep on his feelings, explodes. The dam bursts, crumbling and cracking under the weight of his emotions, and he lets them tumble out, spilling everywhere, coating his skin where she touches him. He is lost to her, and he’s ready to burn.

~*~*~*~*~

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Happy Little Stars

Hello Lovelies! I’m back with more of the Alien au! If you missed the previous parts you can find them [Here] on Ao3!

Previous: [Stars Die (But We Don’t)]

Start: [The Space Between Us]

Summary: Virgil is Happy. Logan helps him realize how much. (ft: Anxceit, gays in space, and good feelings)

Words: 6885

Quick Taglist:@alias290 @chelsvans @coyboi300 @dante-reblogs @dwbh888 @glitchybina @faithfulcat111 @felicianoromano @harrypotternerdprincess @holliberries @jemthebookworm @killerfangirl3 @mrbubbajones  @musical-nerd18 @nonasficcollection @stricken-with-clairvoyancy @the-sunshine-dims @themagicheartmailman @themultishipperchild @thenaiads @treasureofpriam @vianadraws @welovelogansanders  

Read on Ao3 || General Writing Masterlist

Virgil stretched out his shoulders as he walked into the kitchen area. It was somewhere between too-late and why-the-fuck-was-he-awake-this-early o’clock and his body was bemoaning it. But Space revolutions and rotations had long since thrown off his circadian rhythm. He wasn’t sure how much he was sleeping compared to how much he’d been sleeping on Earth: he hadn’t exactly been abducted with a watch and different planets regulated time by different intervals. 

Logically Virgil knew that one rotation of a planet was one day, and one revolution was a year, but aliens used the word “Qisannu” to describe minutes, but their minutes were something like 84 seconds and their hours (“Phisannu”) were about 42 quisannu each and Virgil had decided that he was perfectly happy not knowing what time it was, ever. Logan had been very interested in how humans told time but had gotten distracted by the finger multiplication Virgil had been doing while trying to explain it all and they had never gotten back on track.

The point was that Virgil had slept and that even in the expanse of Space, the Final Frontier(™) he was still not a morning person. Janus and Logan were already up though: the former sipping tea from Patton’s secret stash and the latter reading off one of the Interspace Nook-like devices that usually brought news of the important type to them while sitting at the table quietly.

Virgil gave a blurry, still sleepy nod in the direction of the living beings and shuffled over to the cabinet where food was stored. He poked around for a moment before picking out some weird substance that Roman had specifically told him not to eat. It had reminded him of Jello, but the flavor was more towards cough syrups than fruit. They had picked it up off a distant planet and Roman had nearly paid thrice the amount of griot for it. Virgil didn't see what the hype was, but it was substance and he was hungry and really Roman had practically invited him to take it when he said don’t even look at it, you Deathworlder!

“I was thinking,” Janus started. “Rozario.”

“Rozario?” Virgil echoed.

“Spanish origins to remind us of Spanish class where you repeated embarrassed yourself every single day--”

“Seriously,” Virgil said, “Can’t you wait until I wake up to insult me?”

“--And it's elegant. Listen to it: Virgil Rozario, Janus Rozario.” He paused for emphasis as Virgil blinked at him slowly, “Really it's my favorite so far--”

"FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS SCIENCE!" Logan yelled, "I CONCEDE! I GIVE UP!"

At any other moment this would be a momentous occasion. Logan, the smartest of the Tenekarie, the most feared alien on this side of the cosmos, the relentless scientist, finally admitting defeat. Virgil hadn’t thought that Logan even knew the Common words for "give up" much less how to use them in a sentence. He was passionate and determined and once he set his mind to something there was a better chance of stopping a black hole’s gravitational pull than getting him to back down.

And yet, at stupid-early o'clock on their mostly silent spaceship in the middle of completely silent Space, hearing Logan scream at the top of his lungs was not what Virgil was expecting nor was he prepared for.

"What the fuck!" The human growled from on the floor surrounded by the remains of his breakfast, whatever alien food it was. “Actual fucking Hell! Logan!”

Janus looked down at him from his delicate perch on the table, humming into his cup of tea like he hadn't also startled at the sound of Logan's exclamation and poured half his drink on the ground. "Oh dear," he said innocently, intentionally, asshole-ishly. "That's quite a mess there, Virgil. You should really be more careful."

Virgil flipped him the bird, which of course only made him laugh. He ignored it in favor of turning back toward Logan. The alien was dancing with lights all singing so brightly it was near hard to look at and with so many colors Virgil's empty stomach attempted to rebel.

"What the Hell, man?” Virgil squinted and raised a hand to blot out the sight, while his heart was fluttering like a butterfly over a fucking venus fly trap. “What's wrong?"

Logan's lights briefly concluded, shutting off like he was taking a deep breath and then flickering back on at a less intense, less violent pace. His lower arms crossed themselves while his upper arms kneaded the table. 

"You!" Logan snarled, "You two are my problem!"

Virgil's shoulders tensed and his back straightened and every single thought of his when careening out the goddamn airlock in the void. Because, yeah, this was it! This was the start to every single nightmare Virgil had ever had since joining the crew: Logan the only one who had wanted him around, the one who brought him here and gave him a place to stay, the one was now fed up with him for something he didn't realize he was doing wrong and now going to kick him off into space or sell him back to the Welsors or something equally terrible that Virgil can't even imagine because he's not entirely space savvy yet. And the worst part would be that Virgil didn't even know what he was doing wrong! And he dragged Janus into it by default which meant Janus was getting the same punishment and then Janus would hate him for getting them into the same mess all over again and Virgil can withstand a lot but the mere idea of Janus sneering at him and pushing him away had hislungs shrinking right there in his chest, shriveling up as a way to make it easy for him to just die--

Janus slipped off the table in a fluid motion and landed softly next to Virgil. He placed a hand on Virgil's shoulder blade but used the other to help clean up some of his dropped breakfast and the slipped tea with a towel he materialized out of who knows where. "Breathe," Janus's words ghosted into Virgil's brain without him actually having to say them. "Breathe and relax."

Logan let out a frustrated screech again, "I do not understand! You both are confusing me!" His lights flicked again harshly around his neck notches, "Please just tell me: what is the human greeting custom?"

"The what now?" Virgil asked all eloquently out of breath and strained and near dying. His heartbeat was thumping in his throat, like a frog and no amount of breathing could get the foggy panic to subside.

Logan, though, appeared to be oblivious to his plight. He pulled out a pocket notebook, and flipped through it angrily. "Roman reported that when you two saw each other you had- and I quote-- "open mouth kissed in the grossest display of love I have ever seen, you should have been there Lo it was terrifying seeing Virgil looking so emotional" end quote. However!! I have been documenting your interactions on the ship and out of seventeen times that you two have greeted each other, only six times have those been with kissing and only twice has it been with tongue--"

"OKAY!" Virgil screeched, cutting him off. “That’s enough Science for today and probably tomorrow, too!” 

Logan plowed on like he hadn’t even spoken, “--On the days that you two do not greet each other with a kiss, your interactions range from a nod, to actually speaking words, to brushing a hand over one or the other or to becoming hostile-- although Patton has informed me that those last interactions may be considered as “play fighting” or “flirting”. As you can see there is a large amount of inconsistency--”

“Oh my god, Logan,” Virgil begged, “How long have you been watching us?”

“Eighteen days, six phisannu, and eleven qisannu.” Logan recited.

“Jesus…” Virgil dug his chin into his chest and forced himself to exhale long and slow. Eighteen days? That was just about when Janus and Remus had first come aboard. Now that he was thinking about it….yeah Logan had been watching them closer than normal. Virgil had been so distracted by Janus being alive and breathing and not dead, that he had written off most everything else. 

Speaking of, he peaked up at Janus, at Janus’s stupid smirk and his shaking shoulders and realized, the jerk was laughing. 

“You knew about this?” Virgil accused, launching a hand in the distressed Logan’s direction.

Janus held up a jiggly cube of alien food and ever so sweetly winked at him. “I had my suspicions. He is hardly subtle when it comes to taking notes.”

“And you let him?!”

“Who am I to get in the middle of a scientist’s project?”

Logan gave another frustrated screech and tossed his upper arms into the air. “So you’ve been intentionally messing with my observations instead? You have been manipulating my data! No wonder I cannot get a significant answer!”

“You could have just asked us,” Virgil groaned. He grabbed another Jello-like cube and put it in his empty bowl. His stomach growled faintly at the smell of them, because while they tasted like cough syrup they gave off the aroma of fresh strawberries. Was it wrong to want to eat them off the floor? Surely Patton had just cleaned the kitchen and really Virgil had eaten worse back on Earth and hadn’t died. Could he die of alien germs?

Janus plucked the next Jello cube from his hand and put it in the bowl as if he knew exactly what Virgil was thinking and taking action against it like the killjoy he was.

It was hard to make out Logan’s exact expression because of the thick light blocking glasses he was wearing, but Virgil thought he could guess. Tenekarie expressions were similar enough to humans that he could see the “I’m regretting everything” look from galaxies away.

“Roman told me that it was rude to ask a human about their customs,” Logan said.

“And you listened to him?” Janus asked, not at all delicately. Logan made a series of noises in the back of his throat that sounded suspiciously like an engine dropping out of warp drive.

“Roman literally calls us Deathworlders,” Virgil pointed out.

“Roman is also more experienced in the customs of other species than I am,” Logan said, stubbornly. “I am perhaps one of the only ones of my kind to venture off world. Social niceties of other species do not make sense to me.”

“Logan, you literally taught me how to speak,” Virgil said. “All you had to do was ask. I would tell you anything.” And it wasn’t even a lie. If Logan asked him to explain the governing system from back on Earth, Virgil would begrudgingly rack his brain for all he knew about the Electoral College from eighth grade Government class.

“But you greatly dislike talking about humans!” Logan snapped his pocket notebook closed, his upper hands twisted in the air like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with them. “I do not know much of anything about human expressions and culture, but your mood greatly decreases when Earth is mentioned and you are caused great distress when any one of us attempt to uncover knowledge of your childhood.”

Virgil was well aware of the eyes on him: both Logan’s hidden light sensitive ones and Janus’s curious heterochromic ones. He plopped another cube in the bowl and stood up, measuring out his breaths as evenly as he could.

“I mean, I guess--” Virgil tried to play it off like his mind wasn’t furiously fighting off unwelcome memories, like he was perfectly fine and there was nothing wrong with where this conversation was going at all, period. “You could have still asked.”

Logan’s face pinched. “What sort of friend would I be if I caused you intentional distress?”

Janus didn’t say anything, just sat back on his hunches and watched Virgil with that critical gaze of his. Virgil could barely even remember the last time Janus had to analyse him for information. Was it before the Robotics Show from Hell or later when they were lying on the floor of Janus’s room for the first time so sleep deprived that they were enjoying each other's company? It was the look he used when he was picking apart words and tone and emphasis and intention, the look he used when he was weedling his way into someone’s mind and figuring out how they thought, the look he used when he was filling in gaps of information without needing to ask.

Virgil didn’t necessarily hate when Janus did it to him, but it made his body go rigid and his eyes stiffly avoid contact and connection and all the things that amateur profilists used to determine when one was lying and telling the truth.

Virgil sighed out another breath, “Alright, alright.” He left the bowl on the counter and sat down in one of the chairs at the table, opening his palms to Logan. “Ask your questions.”

Logan’s lights slowed, flooding purple and green with dashes of red in between, Northern Lights style. He tapped two of his four fingers on the table across from Virgil as if he wasn’t satisfied with Virgil suddenly opening up. 

“I do not want to bring harm to your emotional status,” the alien said.

“Whatever he doesn’t want to answer, I will,” Janus offered, pulling himself up off the ground and brushing imaginary space dirt off his pants (which were actually Virgil’s, because they still hadn’t stopped somewhere to pick up supplies. Not that Virgil was complaining. Janus calves really stood out in the slim fit). Janus smiled without teeth and Virgil saw Logan doing an extensive overthinking process before finally nodding.

“Okay,” Logan said. “What is the normal way for humans to greet each other?”

“Depends,” Virgil said. 

There was a beat of silence, before Janus huffed and sat himself on Virgil’s lap. “What he means, Logan, is that humans have a lot of ways to greet each other based on their relationship to one another. The closer the relationship the more personal the greetings tend to be. I might greet a new acquaintance with a handshake, but hug a close friend or ruffle the hair of a younger cousin.”

Logan scribbled something in his notebook, which Virgil knew from experience was in ancient Tenekarie language as well as in a code that only Logan knew the key of. Supposedly it helped keep all his information organized and prevented theft but they had yet to encounter someone willing to fight Logan for his information.

“These things change between humans,” Virgil added, “In some families it might be normal to kiss a relative on the cheek, and in others that can be weird or uncomfortable. Between cultures too.”

“Cultures?” Logan repeated, “How many cultures are on your planet?”

“Please don’t make me count them,” Virgil said. 

Janus shuffled so he was better seated in between Virgil’s thighs. “Perhaps it's easier to explain like this: if there is something for humans to disagree over, there is a different culture for it.”

Logan stopped writing to look up at them. When neither of them corrected each other he hummed. “That sounds truly chaotic and ill designed.”

Virgil shrugged, “Its not all that bad.” He carefully carted his fingers through Janus’s hair. It was soft, a little greasy because it had been a day and a half since he showered and he smelled like the healing aloe even though the scars on his face were as healed as they were getting. Still he was warm to the touch and Virgil felt himself practically melting into him.

“Sometimes it's really cool,” Virgil said. “You meet people from an entirely different way of life and if everyone doesn’t suck, you get to learn something new.”

“Suck?” Logan echoed confusedly, but Janus warded it off with a wave of his hand and a sip of his tea.

“Many cultures,” Janus summarized, “Many ways to greet each other. Next question.”

Logan accepted the answer with all the grace of the Tenekarie. “From my observations, kissing is a very personal act. This means that you two have a very personal relationship, correct?”

“Yes,” They answered together.

Logan nodded. “So what is your relationship?”

Virgil’s fingers froze midway through their path in Janus’s hair. “Uhhh…”

Janus frowned, and looked back at Virgil. Even now their faces were less than a couple inches apart and his breath smelled pretty awful, but Virgil didn’t think he could push him away even if all life in the cosmos depended on it. It was something about his eyes-- always about his eyes. Virgil had probably made a million metaphors and similes about his eyes before and he could probably make a million more and still not manage to capture his quintessential essence of him.

It was nearly embarrassing as all hell. Middle School Virgil who righteously suffered through all English classes would be completely mortified to know that he had turned into a poetic sap who liked to make love songs out of the way that Janus’s lips taste and the rhythm of his heartbeat. All those times he had ripped up his own emo writing and now he was trying to figure out if “vivacious” rhymed with “Janus” because there was no other way to describe how his heart was acting any time the other boy fluttered his eyelashes.

Maybe words weren’t enough, maybe they would never be enough. Janus would probably know better anyway, because he knew so many different words in different languages, but Virgil would rather eject himself into space than admit all those very real, very mushy, very gushy emotions in his head. 

Maybe that was the reason why Virgil was breathlessly staring into Janus’s eyes scrambling for an answer he wasn’t sure even existed.

Poor little Virgil, who never got a chance to tell Janus how he felt three years ago and now chased him down in Space and still couldn’t get the words “I’m super fucking gay for you” out unironically. It wasn’t like Janus didn’t know. Virgil knew he knew already. The words weren’t necessary between them, when they could look at each other and recognize that they’d do anything for each other.

How can he put a name to that? Virgil didn’t think there was a name. 

The emotion in his chest, the burning desire in his heart, the hum in his soul that finally settled when Janus was next to him-- those weren’t things that Virgil thought had a name. It wasn’t simple to explain, not like sadness, or anger, or fear.

It was dangerous, Virgil knew. Because it was the emotion, the feeling, the urge that made him want to bend over backwards for Janus’s smile, that made him bullheaded enough to sneak over the mansion walls into the Ekans Estate and climb the trellis to the Janus’s bedroom window, that made him want to pick out Prom Tuxes and dream of a perfect world where Janus’s parents didn’t hate the mere idea of Virgil. Virgil had done stupid things for the sake of Janus’s real smile already; what was stopping him from doing more? What was stopping him from doing stupider things? Virgil would fight the whole world, dozens of worlds, thousands for the sake of Janus.

And Logan wants him to define a dedication like that in a simple relationship status?

“Oh my god,” Janus said, staring at Virgil, “You are way over thinking this.”

He rotated on Virgil’s lap and faced Logan with a look of determination that Virgil was honestly a little terrified of. “Our relationship is Fuckbuddies, okay? Fuckbuddies with emotions.”

“EXCUSE ME,” Virgil yelped, “What?!” 

“Fuck.” Janus said, “Buddies.” Deliberately. Slowly. Cheekily. “Am I wrong, Virgil?”

And oh. 

Virgil was right there, right next to Janus’s lips, right next to his wide eyes and soft, very kissable lips, right next to--

And then suddenly he was closer.

Kissing Janus was like setting himself on fire, but in a good way or whatever. Virgil didn’t know. In a single breath Janus managed to make him stupid, caused him lose focus of everything around him, drew him in and held him tight in his clutches until Virgil honestly forgot what his own name was. All that matter was Janus, Janus’s hands cupping Virgil's face, and Janus’s sneaky clever little tongue was darting between Virgil’s lips, searching for a gap between his teeth--

“Pardon my interruption,” Logan said. Like a beacon of light in the middle of a rainstorm, like the fire alarm in the middle of the night, like Janus’s mother knocking on the door to ask why he’s still awake when Virgil is not welcomed in her home and he’s currently lounging on the bed next to Janus. 

Virgil yanked back on instinct and Janus gave him a toothy, smug grin in return. The boy in his lap patted Virgil’s cheeks, and licked his lips again because he was an asshole and Virgil was very much blushing across his entire face. 

“But what exactly is a-- What did you say?” Logan tapped his pen, “A Fuckboodie?”

“A fuckbuddy,” Janus repeated the English word which he did not bother to try and convert to any sort of alien language. 

“Yes,” Logan said. “That. What is that?”

Virgil was so lost in the sensation of Janus running his thumb over Virgil’s lips, of the sight of Janus looking all coy on Virgil’s lap, twisting just ever so much….he totally completely missed what Janus said next.

The next thing he knew Janus was plucking himself out of Virgil’s lap drawing his fingers across the underside of Virgil’s chin and walking away with a sway in his hips that definitely wasn’t there before and definitely impossible to look away from. He was hypnotizing all the way out the door and out of sight.

“--Virgil?” Logan said.

Virgil blinked twice. “What the fuck just happened?”

Logan adjusted his glasses, “Janus said that you would be better suited for answering what a fuckboodie was… are you okay?”

Virgil couldn’t help but laugh, “Asshole.” He shook his head slightly, but he couldn’t keep that stupid smile off his face. Absently he wondered if his cheeks should be hurting this much from smiling. When was the last time he smiled this much? Had he ever?

“Virgil, I will admit, you are starting to scare me,” Logan said. “It is very unlike you to act so…aloof and whimsical. Ever since I have known you, you have been very direct and, well, possibly paranoid. Is there perhaps a pheromone that Janus is giving off that is making you like this?”

“Pheromone?” Virgil repeated to make sure he heard that right, “Pheromone? Humans don’t give off like pheromones-- at least I don’t think they do? At least not pheromones that other humans can really pick up on. I think I read a Wikipedia article about some basic stuff that suggested early humans did but Janus can’t and doesn’t-- I’m not acting weird.”

Logan didn’t say anything and Virgil felt the weight of his own words come careening back down on him. Like a guillotine. 

“Okay, maybe I’m acting a little weird,” Virgil allowed, with a sigh. He gently touched the underside of his chin where Janus had drawn his fingers. The ghost imprint of his fingertips made him shiver and maybe hold that stupid fond smile longer than he meant to. 

Logan wrote something in his notebook with the fluidity that made Virgil certain he was writing down possible pheromones types. 

“Janus and I are not fuckbuddies,” Virgil blurted out, if only to distract him. “We’re uh...what’s the word…” Boyfriends. Lovers. Stupid Idiots. Best Friends. Don’t they all mean the same thing between the two of them, anyway? “Partners.”

“Romantic partners?”

“Yes.” Virgil said. He picked up Janus’s abandoned tea and twisted the tea bag around his finger. “Yeah.”

Logan tracked the motion, as shown by the tilt of his head and the press of his lips together. The lights racing through his body slowed further into a contemplative tempo, something that someone could slow dance too, not that Virgil was thinking of slow dancing or anything. He was a scorned poetic, not a masochist.

The tea tasted like Jasmine although Virgil doubted any planets this far from Earth produced the plant they were used to. 

“You are happy,” Logan stated. Which very much sounded like an unchangeable fact than a guess or an observation. 

Virgil blinked at the sudden change of tone, but he nodded carefully. “Yeah?” 

“Janus makes you happy.” Logan stated again.

“Yeah,” Virgil answered again. He couldn’t help but feel like he was taking a test suddenly, like Logan was his Spanish Teacher and he was being graded on his pronunciation in front of the entire class, like there was a lot riding on his every answer but he couldn’t figure out the trick that was going on.

Logan tapped his writing pen on his notebook, and drummed two fingers from another hand on the edge of the table, much like Virgil’s actual Spanish Teacher when she was about to fail him. 

“I am causing you distress,” Logan said leaning back, “I apologize. My line of thinking was not intended to make you uncomfortable. Through my observations and with the help of your answers I am formulating conclusions--”

“That is way too much thinking for this early in the morning, Logan.” Virgil told him, shifting slightly. “Really too much--

“Were you unhappy?”

Virgil froze. 

He felt his blood run cold and turn to ice crystals in his veins, cutting off all feeling to his extremities. He felt the warmth disappear from his cheeks, felt the air in his lungs come to an absolute stop and the vacuum of space suck away every moderately decent feeling he was having. Virgil had never been tossed out into space but he figured that this feeling was pretty close to how his carbon based body would react to Absolute Zero.

“We have known you for two years,” Logan continued, talking much like he was the dam and the words were the water breaking through his barriers and drowning them both. “Ever since we picked you up from TS-1219, you have portrayed a certain personality: you don’t smile, despite having told us that humans smile to show happiness, you’ve always held yourself at a distance and been closed off about your past. You have always been a difficult person to get to know, although Roman, Patton, and I have put forth a valiant effort to befriend you, Virgil. However in just the short time Janus and Remus have been on our ship, you have-- you have--”

His upper arms writhed in the air with hopelessness bordering on frustration that was covering some other emotion Virgil couldn’t quite pick out and was afraid to pick out. This was Logan, and he didn’t do “hopeless”. He had a plan for everything. He was the anchor in the storm, the calm in the chaos, the reassurance in the panic. When Virgil had lost everything and everyone, Logan had shown up and pulled him out of that dark place.

“Were you unhappy?” Logan asked quietly with all his lights going dark, “Did we make you unhappy?”

Virgil's mouth moved, but the lack of oxygen in his lungs twisted his insides into a mess, wriggling like a knot of snakes that were devouring each other. Before he even knew what he was doing he sprung across the table, catching Logan in the Cosmos’s Most Awkward Hug ever. Janus’s stupid tea spilled again but Virgil couldn’t have cared less about getting hot leaf juice on himself when Logan was sitting across from him wondering if he was the reason that Virgil had hated living for so long.

Logan was larger than him, but Virgil fit his arms between Logan’s upper and lower ones and held him as tight as he could, tighter than he could, tightly enough to convey all the words he couldn’t articulate. He buried his face into Logan’s crystal collarbone just as Logan’s probably completely confused, maybe a little terrified arms circle back around to tentatively hold him back.

“Vir...gil…” He whispered. “What…?”

“No, no, nonono,” Virgil said, “No, Logan. I wasn’t-- I’m not-- I swear--”

There was something warm trailing down his cheeks, and it took him a half a quisannu to realize, oh, those were tears. His tears. 

He was crying. 

Logan floundered his upper arms. “Virgil you-- your eyes--!”

“I’m sorry,” Virgil said.

Logan made a hysterical noise in the back of his throat, running lines of agitated lights up and down his arms. Virgil could feel the warmth of them as he pressed his face into Logan’s chest, like holding his palm to a birthday candle. The alien smelled like dish soap-- the fancy stuff that the Ekans kept in their kitchen that made the best bubbles at two in the morning when they were trying to clean up any signs that they had been making cookies.

“I do not understand why you are apologizing,” Logan said desperately, “Please do not apologize! I was the one who asked--”

“I’m sorry,” Virgil said again, “That I made you… fuck, Lo...Did I really…?” He sucked in a dangerous breath, an urgent, determined, dire breath and forced it back out. 

“You guys made me so happy, Lo,” Virgil told him. “You don’t… you really don’t know how happy you guys made me.” 

Because they did make him happy. They made him so stupid happy. Virgil’s favorite memories were the ones where Patton was hopping around the kitchen, experimenting with new foods and sweeping everyone else in to dances, the ones where Roman was polishing his sword collection and telling the corresponding tales for each weapon, the ones where Logan read off science tidbits to the room and got excited for new experiments in testing, the ones where the others let him play around with their broken electronics and he created something ultimately useless but that the others were so amazed over. They were the memories that bandaged up the gaping wound in his heart and finally allowed it to heal over, the ones that reminded him he could smile, that there were still things to smile about. 

They pulled him out of the black hole of despair he’d fallen into, they brushed the Welsor fighting ring’s dirt off of him, and they accepted him-- even when Patton had started out so terrified of him and Roman was so distrustful and Logan was struggling to climb that language barrier between them. 

When Janus had disappeared from Earth, Virgil had been left empty. The three of them had filled him up again.

And they hadn’t asked for anything in return for it.

Virgil wasn’t sure how to tell Logan that in definite words, in concrete breaths, in a way that didn’t dredge up the memories of who he was before Logan, Patton, and Roman. Because he was sorry he ever made them doubt how happy Virgil had been with them, that he made Logan so scared he had to ask the question out loud, that he hadn’t realized his actions could have been perceived that way at all.

Sometimes Virgil forgot as alien as they were to him, he was just as much as an unknown to them.

There were a billion, million, trillion stars in all the galaxies and Virgil would give them all up for the sake of the people he called family. Screw Earth and the Human Race; Virgil had already decided he didn’t want to save his own last name. He didn’t want the people that he had grown up with. 

He wanted the three aliens and Janus and hell maybe even Remus too, when the guy stopped trying to sell them to the Space Pirates of the Caribbean. He wanted to travel and see nebulas, watch the death of a star and the formation of a sun and all that stupid stuff he never thought he was ever gonna see. 

He wanted to be able to turn around and grasp at the nearest person and ask “Are you seeing this?! Isn’t it so fucking cool?!” Because that was his deepest desire, what he saw in the Mirror of Erised, what he would be happy doing for the rest of his tiny, insignificant life. 

There was a thin line between being content and being happy and Virgil had walked on the far side of it for most of his life. Before Janus, he had clawed his way through his parent’s disappointed gazes and he had resigned himself to being content on the days where they’d rather ignore him than ask him if he had gotten any better at kissing his teachers shoes. Before Janus’s death, he had been content with those stolen late nights with Janus and happy with the cherished few hours he could get away with. 

Before, before, before. Virgil had been content with what he had. He wrapped himself around those things that brought him warmth and he held onto those memories even when they burned him-- even when Janus’s ghost had been laughing in his ears and he had torn himself apart missing it, he clung to the concept of it. He had been content once upon a time, and he was content knowing that even if he had never reached that state again.

But now?

Now, he was more than content.

He was happy. 

Because Janus wasn’t dead and he had Logan, Patton, and Roman who wanted him around. Because he was in space and learning new things. Because it was everything he had never dared dreamed of and more. 

“Oh Great Disney,” A voice behind them said, “What did you do to him, Pocket Calculator?”

Logan shifted slightly, but he did not go as far as to try to remove Virgil from clutching him. Even from behind closed eyes, Virgil could tell he was giving off purple flashes in regular slow inverals, the type that usually calmed Virgil down when he was waking up from a nightmare and couldn’t get imaginary alien blood out from under his nails.

“I ah… I’m afraid I’m not entirely certain,” Logan admitted. “He mentioned that perhaps I was doing too much thinking this early in the rotation.”

Roman-- Virgil couldn’t think of another person who’s footsteps could sound so dramatic other than Janus, but Janus didn’t have a tail-- let out a huff, “Yeah well! I would also burst into tears if you started talking about warp cores and all that junk before I got my Shishdouble.”

“Is that what this is?” Logan asked tiredly. “Crying?”

There were some sounds of things being pushed around, cabinets being opened and closed; Roman must have been looking for food. A specific type of food. The food that Virgil had already poured all over the floor and then cleaned up hurriedly and placed back on the counter.

“Uh yeah,” Roman said, “Seriously, what did you say to him? Virge, whatever it was, I’m sure he didn’t mean--where is my Shishdouble?”

Virgil gave Logan another, last tight squeeze and untangled himself from the rocky alien. He was a little wobbly standing back up, but he managed and he even got to rub away the slight tear tracks on his cheeks.

“Sorry, Lo,” He rasped out. 

Logan was peering at him curiously and Roman, too, now. The latter had a spoon in his mouth and was watching from next to the counter, his bone plates clacking together in what Virgil thought might have been surprise.

It took Virgil a moment to figure out why. He was sure he looked great: his bed head was probably still in effect and he was wearing a sleep shirt with too many holes in it, not to mention the way his face grew blotchy when he cried and the red rim to his eyes. 

But even through all that, he was smiling. Teeth and all. Oh God, when was the last time he smiled like this? Had he ever?

“You broke him!” Roman hissed.

“I didn’t--!!” Logan snapped back.

And Virgil laughed. It felt a bit like he was letting go of a weight he didn’t know he was holding, like an invisible straight jacket being cut off him, like he had been drowning his entire life and just now came up for air for the first time. 

“S-sorry,” He laughed between gasps for breath, “I-- oh fuck, god, sh-shit! I’m sorry!”

“Don’t let Pat hear you say that,” Roman said, “You’ll make both his hearts give out with such strong language.”

“I have already said this, but it bears repeating,” Logan said, “You do not need to apologize, Virgil. I appeared to have overstepped your boundaries with my personal questions and that is my fault. I should be apologizing to you.”

“Disney, guys,” Roman moaned. His tail knocked against the counter, “Just how deep did the two of you get this morning? Its only the seventh Phisannu.”

Virgil laughed again, shorter, lighter. 

Because he was happy.

Not just content with things, but happy. 

Happier than he thought he had ever been.

“To answer…” Virgil said, looking at Logan, “to answer your question, Lo, I am the happiest fucking man in the galaxy. I am living my best life. If I die right now I will have, like, no regrets at all.”

Logan and Roman shared a look. Roman sucked on his spoon for a second before popping it back out and using it to point at him. 

“So this whole…. “Pleasant personality” gimmick is sticking around?” The Erefren asked, sounding damn near disappointed. “You’re much less entertaining to make fun of when you’re upbeat.”

“You like kicking men when they’re down, Princey?”

“Only when they attempt to steal the 350 griot Shishdouble that I bought for myself and specifically told them not to even think about taking.” Roman pointed to Virgil’s abandoned bowl of jello like cubes. They jiggled in accordance with the barely recognizable power of the distant engines.

“Who says I wasn’t getting it for you?” Virgil asked sweetly. “Maybe I was being a decent person!”

Roman blinked several times, twisting between Virgil and the bowl. Virgil could see the moment his suspicions melted away: Roman’s telltale tail started wriggling in the air behind him dangerously close to lodging into the cupboards (Which, unfortunately would not have been a new occurrence, but Virgil doubted that Patton and Logan’s combined budget plan included funds for new cabinet doors. Again.) His face flushed purple in a way that suggested he was letting himself be flattered and he picked up the bowl delicately.

“Oh, well,” He said, “That was really nice of you, Vee. This “kind actions” routine is different but I think we could all certainly get used to it! Needless to say no small actions will go unappreciated under my watch from here on out!”

“You trust me way too much,” Virgil told him as he took an exaggerated bite of his stupid cough syrup tasting Jello.

“Wait what--”

Logan winced from his spot at the table, “He poured that all over the floor.”

“Unapologetically,” Virgil added, because being nice was overrated and watching Roman get an impressive distance with his spit take was his new favorite breakfast event. 

The Erefren pawed at his purple tongue and spit the rest of the half eaten Jello on the floor. He cursed in his native language, growled something in Common, and threw the bowl back on the counter. 

“You heathen!” He cried. “You don’t mess with a man’s food! Don’t you know how much that cost me?”

“Is now a bad time to tell you I used the last of your shampoo last night?”

Roman’s bone plates clicked and then fanned out, oozing the red toxin that his race was known wildly for. He growled, baring his teeth and took a threatening step towards Virgil. 

“I’ll take that as a “no”,” Virgil said, and offered a quick double thumbs up to Logan, “Like I said, no regrets!” Then he sprinted towards the door back to the inner bowels of the ship. 

Roman let out an Erefren warcry and charged after him.

Erefrens were fast, but Virgil was faster. By just a little bit. It also helped that Virgil was able to dodge the sleepy Patton coming around the corner when Roman tripped right over him-- if the series of thuds and slew of curses were anything to go by. Virgil thought about turning to check but then a bone lodged into the wall mere inches from his face and the flight instincts kicked in again.

“Hey Pat! Bye Pat!” Virgil yelled.

“Careful!” Patton’s voice called after him. “No Running in the halls--”

“I’m gonna eject you into Space, you Deathworlder!” Roman bellowed drowning out the rest of Patton’s helpful advice. “My Shishdouble! Virgil! Have you no honor?!”

And yeah, Virgil thought that if every morning started like this for the rest of his life….he wouldn’t mind it. At all.

Out here in Space? He was happier than he thought he could ever be.

[meloncubedradpops]

Repo! The Corona Opera

For every rotation that Earth has completed around the sun since the dawn of humanity, humans have created art to cope with the realities surrounding our everyday life. We weave stories in songs, movies, plays, books, paintings, and so forth, that help digest the world around us and provide an entertaining escape from the cruelties we endure. Some stories take place in abstract universes or in the future, and we rely on what we know in our present reality to build upon these fantasy societies. My favorite movie, Repo! the Genetic Opera, certainly makes this list. We are currently experiencing perhaps the most surreal year of our collective lives, and with each passing day I argue that we find ourselves closer to the world crafted in Repo. I have seen this movie, at least 20 times. If you haven't watched Repo! the Genetic Opera or you haven't seen it in a while, I recommend giving it a view. The movie is unique in that it falls under three distinct genres: musical, horror, and sci-fi. And while the jury is out on whether our future society is going to go full on gothic aesthetic, I can say that the Repo! movie experience offers a glimpse into a dystopian fascist post-plague world wrapped in unapologetically hilarity with a heaping side of camp. It doesn't offer any spiritual cleansing that our souls collectively need, but it does show us what a new normal could look like if we really go off the rails.

As things stand, right now, so much of our daily lives and culture are impacted by the coronavirus. All of our institutions have been impacted, from school, to work, to family, to the way we interact with strangers, and especially our economy. We have all felt the effects in one way or another, and honestly? Most the impacts are of our own undoing, for better or for worse. I am going to write three pieces analyzing Repo! the Genetic Opera. First I will create the foundations that bridge our contemporary life and the world of Repo! Second I will explain how the Repo! universe operates under the definitions of fascism. And third I will weave together parts one and two into our contemporary world (particularly in the context of the United States) to highlight the dark path we heading towards. My viewpoints are of mine, and my own alone. Let's dive into part one.

Part I Repo! the Genetic Opera takes place in the year 2056. Humanity was on the brink of collapse as a result of a medical crisis that caused massive organ failure.

I never gave the premise much thought, at least not until recently. We aren't given much detail beyond the fact that entrepreneur Rottissimo "Rotti" Largo solved this crisis through his company GeneCo. GeneCo provides organ transplants that can be repaid through a payment plan. Witnessing the coronavirus unfold in real time and seeing its wrath, particularly on severe cases, honestly makes me wonder if the writers had some sort of "super plague" in mind when creating this universe. For the purpose of this analysis, I will assume that humanity suffered at least one infectious disease crisis. And just to reiterate covid-19 particularly, we really *don't* know what it's going to do to us long-term. Let the parallels begin. 

The world in Repo! the Genetic Opera, operates as normally as the citizens possibly can, which appears to be quite limited. I have noted how dated some the technologies look.

For a world 30 years in the future, it lacks cell phones and easy access to internet. When we enter Shilo's world (aka her bedroom!) she watched Blind Mag sing on a busted up tiny ass TV and the program itself looks like an ad on Home Shopping Network.

The Graverobber is shown reading headlines on a newspaper. The news reporters shown in the ribbon cutting ceremony during the 1st Italian Post-Plague Renaissance have old school cameras with flashbulbs.

The most contemporary technology appears to be a Wish.com version of an Apple watch, and even that looks like a leftover prop from Spy Kids.

Obviously the people who made this movie intentionally inserted these anachronisms, but why? This is a science fiction movie after all. I speculate that they reverted back because the impact from humanity's crisis resulted in an overall professional "brain drain" from the sheer volume of professionals that dropped dead. In fact every scene depicting medical procedures looks dimly lit and lacking in sanitation. We will see this as we struggle to contain the coronavirus, at least in America. Healthcare workers have already died from this thing, and I am sure many prospective college students will have second thoughts about a career in healthcare. I mean hell, look at no other than GeneCo itself. That company employs workers called "Genterns" who are most definitely not in full PPE. I don't doubt their medical expertise, but they appear to be disposable (please see: that time Luigi killed one for NO REASON in "Mark it Up").

On that note, it really was quite incredible how China built the pop-up hospital in Wuhan in under 4 days, but it was also not the most safe or structurally sound building by far (it collapsed, people were hurt!). Maybe at this point, the people in Repo! don't have much of a choice. I am sure there were likely legit hospitals, but the fact that the Renaissance had gross surgery tents is a bit unsettling.

This is a world that is completely built upon the social more of valuing your health above all else. There had to be a turning point in the GeneCo business model where they really played on up-selling organs for the benefit of "genetic perfection". "I needed a kidney transplant desperately. GeneCo showed this single mom sympathy. This makeover came for a small added fee. Now I look smashing on live TV!" Imagine signing the documents for your power of attorney while actively going into renal failure, when your doctor chimes in with an up-sell for breast implants. When all is said an done, your body is now not only functioning again, but you're hot! Even in a post-plague dystopia we are still holding value to having a nice rack. What's not to love about GeneCo? Obviously we know right away that GeneCo has a dirty side. Rotti Largo personally lobbied to make organ repossessions legal, and he does not hesitate to recollect his property. The concept itself is, of course, wild. In America, our healthcare system is incredibly broken and expensive.  You would wonder how it could get worse without us backpedaling many steps on the industrialization timeline. And in a lot of ways, I could see a company like GeneCo thrive here. We already hate the poor, and we have political think tanks that salivate over the idea of cutting social programs that keep people alive. Our president has wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act while many people are unemployed during a pandemic. In Repo! we hear about those who don't pay, but obviously there are plenty of people who do. Those who can will happily pay, either for vanity reasons or to stay alive.

And while society cites Rotti as being a "hero" for humanity, we see more and more evidence that the crisis is both not under control and life is cheap.

His son murders multiple people, in front of others, with seemingly no repercussions. In the scene where Shilo meets the Graverobber for the first time, adjacent to the graveyard and tombs owned by wealthy families who could afford grave markers, lies a poorly constructed wall hiding thousands of corpses piled on top of one another. We even get a glimpse of a truckload pouring more onto the pile. I would not be surprised if there is a disinformation campaign there keeping the public in the dark (although you'd think the smell would be unbearable at this point).

There are multiple indications that propaganda works in society (still), and no one is getting the full picture of how much of a raw deal the people in Repo! have. We see poster after poster about GeneCo, in the literal absence of other corporations. 

And a lot of them bear resemblance to 20th century Russian propaganda. It would be a real shame if the goals outlined The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia were actually realized. Imagine going to visit your mother's grave and hearing commercials for hardcore analgesics play through the cemetery. Also, there's a police presence too. Apparently the police are called Genecops and have authority to execute any assumed graverobbers on site.

Imagine the hellscape it would be to live in a world where your loved ones may have died from a terrible pandemic, and you face a non-zero chance of an over zealous cop murdering you thereafter, and because their qualified immunity bypasses the judicial system entirely...oh wait. Anyways let's circle back to the Graverobber character.

Graverobber's role in Repo! appears to be minor on the surface. Rotti's daughter, Amber Sweet, appears to almost despise her relationship with him. And that relationship involves him supplying Amber with what he describes as the "21st Century cure". This cure you ask? A super effective painkiller with the clinical use to accompany GeneCo surgeries. This drug is called Zydrate, and it has a street version that he acquires and sells, with clients including Amber Sweet.

Graverobber makes his living sucking the glowy blue brain corpse goo and injecting them into people on the streets. Yum!

Not everyone who needs an organ transplant can pay for it all upfront. Luckily for them, GeneCo provides payment plan options! The caveat to this is if you fail to make those payments, legally GeneCo can come and repossess your newly acquired organs. If you find yourself past due, you will soon see the last face before your doom, the Repo Man. He will harvest GeneCo's property, and it won't matter where you are or what you are doing. There is no anesthetic, and you will likely die! This was all made legal through Rotti's lobbying efforts.

Society, as it's set up today, allows for property repossessions. This can be as straightforward as a repossession of your vehicle to as heartbreaking as a foreclosure on your home. At the end of the day, the impacts of that are difficult and life changing. Currently millions of people in America are out of work, and the threat of losing everything is at stake for many. We could lose our homes, our vehicles, and our sense of purpose. And while many government bodies have created temporary moratoriums, they have not provided any substantial financial relief to keep the proverbial repo man at bay. What went wrong in this dystopia to normalize the concept of death due to nonpayment? Fascism! Ah yes, the dreaded f-word. In my next essay, I will outline the 14 characteristics of fascism and how it relates to the universe in Repo! After I will relate that to our modern world so that we can try and stop this from becoming our reality.

[razorblade180]

So I finished Age of Calamity

[spoilers]

Thanks to the beauty of holiday time off I have logged in 40 plus hours into this game and just beaten it, so naturally I’m gonna talk about it a bit. I’ll save the spoiler stuff for a little later though.

The game

This game might be my favorite game of 2020, or at least top three. Not just because of the world, but because everything is over the top! So far I’ve done 131 missions and 90% has the consistent energy of “we are fucking under attack” and it’s almost overwhelming in the best way possible. It really felt like you were on a battlefield field. Your map is just a sea of red and it’s your job to clean it up. What kept me engaged in the fights was all of the character’s different uses runes. I found myself constantly ordering my teammates to face certain enemy types that match best with how they fight.

Originally, I really wanted to be fair and rotate between characters. That didn’t last long. Mipha and Link in my opinion don’t have a single bad move. The bias only got worse whenever the master sword is obtained. Before that, my Link had a spear most of the time but that sword is just handy. Especially with item drop rate and attack range on it. In the end, my strongest characters were Link 74, Mipha 70, Impa 60, and Zelda 60. It’s been awhile since I played the first hyrule warriors so I can’t remember if they had the level up system were you can pay for experience but or definitely came in handy. Combine that with how many guardians were in this game and I quickly found out I needed Link with a shield on a regular bases. I also learned I didn’t forget how to time a vase amount of blocks and dodges.

The amount of characters you get to play quickly became too massive for me to juggle, but they all had their own merits for the most part, though I did find a few of the gimmick characters a bit of a hassle. My opinion on who was viable was constantly changing as I unlocked more combos. Originally, wasn’t the biggest fan of Urbosa. That second and fifth combo modifier changed everything.

The real portion of the game that really kept me wanting to play more was not only the ability to order other people, but seeing them fight along side you. I’m a softie for things like this, but genuinely felt relieved or hyped whenever I was fighting something crazy and I can see Impa rushing over towards me while text from soldiers scream “Just keep pushing!!!!” The AI wasn’t dumb either! There’s plenty of moments that controllable and NPC characters will just go where they’re supposed to, or kill targeted enemies. I remember not wanting to switch over to Link because he had low health, so as I’m running over to him as Mipha to heal him, the madman kills the Lynel. Ran all the way over there to watch him flex. That combined with elemental reactions you can cause in a fight, and the entire spectacle just felt elevated. The feeling of fighting three Lynel’s at once becomes a little less scary when you have a lightning rod and puddles everywhere.

The only negative I found in a gameplay perspective is some of the resource gathering. Gaining the trophy notes for killing a type of enemy isn’t too much of a hassle, but I found getting the materials they drop to be a bit harder, even with increased drop rate statuses. Most of this I find irritating for two reasons. One, specialized enemies show up in relatively small groups in a majority of missions, so getting things from them could be a flop altogether. Number two, a fair amount of these missions take a decent chunk of time if you’re being thorough and killing as much as possible. So grinding is a pain. Fortunately most missions a majority of what you need . If the game wanted chu chu jelly, I knew one of the missions coming up had chu chu as an enemy. You could also keep track of what you needed with material sensor that told you when you had enough.

The story

I’ll be honest, I was upset with this game for a hot second. It was advertised as a prequel to BoTW and while sad, I was truly invested to playing the events that lead to the fall of the champions. What this game didn’t tell you is it’s like most LoZ games, on its own separate part of the timeline. This isn’t the story of they lost. It’s the story of how they win, thanks to the little adorable robot mascot that has the ability to not only show the future, but bring people from the future; the champion’s descendants. At first I was upset with this. Mainly because I’m a little tired of time travel plots and it felt really out of place here. However, time travel gave way more to this game than what I expected this game to have in the first place. It allowed at least six more playable characters that wouldn’t have been possible in the other timeline, and a wellspring of interactions through missions. Every time Mipha was with Sidon, I smiled. Having Urbosa being this super encouraging role model to Riju was so nice since BoTW had expressed just how much those two admired and missed those people. Revali was nice to Teba! They were vibing. Even the soldier commentary on the new champions were a treat. So I got over the time travel issue pretty quick. It made things sad as well when the new generation leaves because they’re going back to a time where they lost it all. There was no great union that took place across hyrule to fight Ganon and their beloved champions failed. I do appreciate that the diverge in the timeline really takes place on the day they’re supposed to die, moments before the final blow. It still lets the player see the definitive moment where good was supposed to lose.

The “new” villain is meh. I wouldn’t really say he stands out. His entire thing is thinking he’s gonna win because he doesn’t realize that he isn’t seeing hyrule’s future. He’s seeing another hyrule’s future. What comes out of his character is cool though because it gives a different, yet same finale boss. I wasn’t expecting to basically fight a giant Ganondorf. Honestly, you can kinda say you fought Demise. At least aesthetically speaking. Or Yuga. This game has also made me care about robot. Something I haven’t done in awhile. A few scenes near the end felt hammy, but also amazingly realistic to how a lot of people would feel when someone breaks your favorite thing. The war was already personal, but now it’s really personal. Quests open up after the game that plays on those emotions too. It’s very clever.

Overall, Age of Calamities story felt like a love letter to everyone who loves this rendition of hyrule and the characters in it. They even another one named Sooga, who just might be my favorite. That man has no choice but to be the brain and muscle of the Yiga. It kinda makes me sad he’s introduced here because you can assume he didn’t make it in the other timeline, so he has no descendents. The amount of serotonin I felt just seeing all of these characters fighting together as the absolutely conquer the battlefield was more than satisfying. Definitely worth the money. I don’t know if they can, but Nintendo might wanna consider some sort of audio patch. The mixing is bad in certain parts. Voice lines get really quiet. Other than that, this game is real solid. I’d give it an 8.5/10

Side note

The music is really good. Especially the Zoe’s demain track. Also, I never noticed frame rate dropping or lag, except on two occasions. Both of these happened to be me pushing the game to its limits. The first is being surrounded by enemies in a small space as Mipha. Creating the water vortex and raining down bombs makes the game wanna cry a little. The second one is a similar case. Sidon’s fifth or sixth combo made the made the game drop frames because it’s incredibly fast, involves timing, makes a vortex, and i was in a small space with tons of enemies. Other than that, not even Urbosa’s or Riju’s lightning made the game freak out from what I noticed. That may have something to do with me never using them in a place where there’s constant rain. That might actually be the cause of the drop in combination of everything else.

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 89

Wee-oo-oooooooooooo!

I thought long and hard about this chapter before writing it, and it just felt like it fit more into the narrative. Will it raise questions later? Probably.  Am I prepared to answer those questions?  I’m pretty sure.

Thank you, @satan-parisienne for being such a lovely person to bounce ideas off of, and for being an amazing sister (real and fictional).

The following week was a fog of exhaustion and mind-numbing soreness.  Tyche insisted on sparring each night, either with fencing or some other form of combat, while adamantly refusing to speak other than instructions and taunts regarding my form.  Any stretching to relieve my over-worked body had to be done in the gym, at home, or in my office, as those were the only three places I was allowed for the time being.  I didn’t even have the relief of walking to stretch my legs, since any time I spent in transit was seated on a transport with two escorts, one on either side.

Conor and Maverick were as patient with me as could be expected, but I could readily admit that I was in a sullen mood and would have done anything for some privacy.  Eventually, they both told Tyche to come keep an eye on me herself, they both needed some space.  Since she had been working me to the bone, not to mention was responsible for my ongoing rotation of guards, she was honestly the last person I wanted to see at the moment.  The second she walked in the door, the feeling was clearly mutual - she wouldn’t even look at me, just stood staring at one of my plants, arms crossed.

“You couldn’t even bring Mac with you?” I glared.

“I haven’t seen him in two weeks,” she snarled back. “Pretty sure you scared him off with your crappy attitude.”

“Maybe it’s because I haven’t had five minutes to myself in the past fucking week,” I muttered, turning away from her. Stomping into the kitchen, I got two cups of coffee, set one on the end of the table closest to her with a thunk - being angry didn’t mean I was going to be rude - before flopping down in her favorite armchair.

The next hour was the most tense round of sipping my walls had ever seen. She surrendered first, standing to pace. “Where the hell are they? They didn’t say how long they would be gone.”

Before I could respond, a chirp came from the ceiling. “Human Conor and Human Maverick are at the Undine, playing a Terran game with needles and a target.  They advised me when they left that they would return when both of you have categorized your defecation, although I am not entirely sure what that means.”

Against my will, a snort of laughter almost sprayed my coffee onto the deck. Tyche’s eyes tracked as she parsed what was just said, and I recognized her scowl as the one she used to keep from laughing. “I know for a fact that you have a better grasp of human euphemisms than that. You knew what they meant.”

“Simon has informed me that it is a standard Terran practice to diffuse tense situations with humor. Did I do it wrong?”

“We aren’t tense,” she argued.

“Tyche. There is currently less strain detected in the hull plating than there is in that room. Please re-evaluate your statement.”

She gaped like a fish at the remark, while I dissolved into breathless laughter. “Oh my gods, who taught you to say things like that?”

“Several humans on the Ark display a propensity for conversational rejoinders using wit. I find it very unique and pleasing.”

“I don’t care how witty you think you’re being, we don’t need to sort our shit out,” Tyche asserted airily.

It was my turn to gape. “You have me under house arrest! Don’t you think that needs to be addressed!?”

I was less than intimidated by the finger she pointed at me with, despite her gesturing like it was loaded. “First of all, it’s a protective detail, not house arrest. You’re free to go wherever you want, in a transport, with escorts.”

“How is that any - “

“Second of all,” she raised her voice to interrupt me. “Do you really think I have the authority to make that decision?  Yeah, you’re my sister, and I love you, but you are also my boss, dork. Not the other way around.”

Every processor that I joked existed in my head stopped with a grinding screech. How fucking stupid am I? “You mean to tell me I could have just walked off at any point?”

“Pfffft. No.” Annnnnnd now she was looking at me like I was an idiot.  “I mean, you can try. But the door won’t open.”

If I wasn’t already sitting down, I’d have fallen on my ass. It hurt itself in its confusion! Something supplied from the back of my head.  “So. I’m not on house arrest, but I also can’t walk out that door by myself. You don’t have the authority to assign a protective detail to me, but you did assign a rotation of escorts… Ohhhhhhh.”  Apparently ‘turning it off and back on again’ worked for mental processors, too.  “I am under house arrest, or protective custody, or whatever, but it wasn’t your call.”

“Finally!” she threw her hands in the air and flopped elegantly across my couch.

“Which means it was someone on the Council. So Xiomara did this.”

An exhausted thumbs-up popped comically from the pile of scarves and sweaters formerly known as my sister.

“Why didn’t you just tell me that?” I demanded angrily, chucking a pillow where I thought her head was.

A muffled voice came from under the pillow. “I did manage to make sure you actually like and trust your escorts.”

“What do you mean my escorts? Who else’s… The entire Council?”

The thumb popped back up.

“And you couldn’t tell me.”

Second thumb.

“Why not?”

One hand dropped and the other flashed me a middle finger.

“Okay, can’t answer that either.” I thought for a minute. “Can’t as in, not supposed to, or can’t, as in you don’t know?”

Index finger. First one.

“Is there a penalty if you do tell me?”

Thumbs down.

“So, really, there’s not anything stopping you from telling me except you keeping your word,” I pointed out.

Thumbs down.

Wait, what?

“There is something other than your word keeping you from telling me, but it’s not a penalty.”

Thumbs up.

“You literally can’t tell me, can you?”

Thumb still up. That explained the twenty-questions game, and her terseness lately.

“Are you physically incapable of making the words go, or is something preventing the words from getting there once they go?”

Two fingers. Second option.

“What is Xiomara thinking!?” I blurted angrily.  “This is over the line. She may have the authority to put the Council under watch for our safety, since Safety is her jurisdiction, but dinking around in your head!?  She can’t do that!”

I glanced back at Tyche, her hand in a thumbs down. “Something I said was wrong.” Thumb up. “She doesn’t have the authority to go poking around in your head.”

Thumb stayed up.

“Who does?”

She flapped her hand. Apparently can’t tell me that either.

“Did they have your permission to do this?”

Tyche made a ‘sort of’ waver with her hand before giving a thumbs-up.  At this point I wanted to scream in frustration. 

Keeping my eyes on her hand, I started talking, playing a sort of hot and cold. “The only person who has the authority to poke around in your head is you…” Thumb up. “Unless you’re unconscious.” Thumb down. “So you were awake and aware, and gave permission…..” Sort of, yeah, again. “But someone suggested it…” Thumb up. “Was it Xiomara?” Thumb down. “Antoine?” Thumb down. “Was anyone else in the room?” Thumb down, to my relief.

Wait. Thumb down?

“This was your idea!?” I shrieked, resisting the urge to tackle her when she gave a thumbs up.  “And you thought I was being an idiot!? Tyche, how could you do that!?”

She sat up, gasping for air. “I knew I would tell you at some point.  I let it slip a dozen times, and you were so distracted you didn’t notice. So, since Antoine and Derek were clever enough to set up the proximity alerts for those of us who are triggered by random strangers touching us, I asked if whop could set it up so you couldn’t hear me, even if I did slip.”

Hang on. “Say that last part again, slower.”

 “I asked if wherb could set it up so you couldn’t hear me, even if I did slip.”

“Oh my gods,” I whispered. “That’s why you haven’t been talking.  It’s garbled when you say something I shouldn’t hear, isn’t it?”

She nodded and started talking. It sounded like someone speaking backwards, through a voice distorter, while underwater. “Tyche, it sounds like I’m having another stroke.”

She nodded, and made a ‘keep going’ gesture. 

“It’s supposed to, isn’t it? Because even though the brain damage was fixed and I can hear fine now, I had hearing issues for so long that you knew I would brush it off and not think anything of it.”

She nodded again, lips pressed in a firm line. “Because I would notice not hearing you at all, or any noise replacing it, or anything like that. But I literally never noticed that my hearing was garbled again until I was looking for it. Which I wouldn’t, because I should be able to hear fine.”

“Yep,” she confirmed with a firm, final nod.

“Sneaky bitch,” I muttered.  It was clever, I had to give her that.  I thought back over the past week and all our interactions, trying to determine if any specific topics triggered the parts I couldn’t understand. I started at the day she punched me, and something stood out in screaming neon with alarm bells attached.  “We.  When you were chewing me out in the gym that day, you kept saying ‘we’. We were counting on Bjornson thinking I’m helpless. We thought we had the advantage.” I paused as one sentence stood out, even clearer and louder than the rest. “This time, he’s got more people than Arantxa did, but we thought we had the advantage…. Because we knew who they were, we knew what they thought…”  I focused on her, and felt nothing but fear and confusion as I whispered. “Tyche, how do you know who they are and what they think? How deep into this did Xio drag you?”

 She stared at me, wide-eyed and helpless as garbled words fell from her lips.

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[ohwereusingourmadeupnames]

Let’s Talk About Your Hair

Pairing: Peter Parker/Tony Stark Rating: Mature (M) Warnings: AU, Peter does a little hop, skip, and jump that’s sudden. There’s some smut and a little bit of angst. That’s about it, though!  Notes: I found @whenstarkerwillbecanon‘s post about May being Peter’s cousin & had to go with it. I loved the prompt, so thank you for that. I tweaked it to fit my writing style, but I hope it’s kind of what you had in mind!  Word Count: ~13.5k Summary: 

A snazzy little AU where Peter and May are cousins. Peter has been in Minnesota for school over the past 6 years and returns to New York to take a job. Going back home means hanging out with his favorite cousin, and when she introduces him to her new boyfriend - he's surprised to see Tony Stark - his ex and long time love - sitting there next to her. Goodness ensues.

Read on AO3 here

6 years ago… 

Peter was 21 and desperately in love. 

Or - the one where Peter gets the shock of a lifetime and yearns away a little bit at a time.Peter was 21 and desperately in love.

Despite the fact that the end of college was quickly approaching and so many decisions needed to be made, Peter felt okay. The pre-med track he took through NYU connected him to his true passion, physical therapy and if all went well, he’d be attending PT school in the fall. His clinical rotations were a lot of fun and he enjoyed working with the patients – especially the younger ones, the dreamy eyes on those kids were a big motivation to chase all  of the things he wanted. Things like his education and the beautiful Tony Stark.

He met Tony in Microbiology lab his sophomore year and they immediately clicked. Tony’s brain was fascinating and the vivid way he lived his life drew Peter in like a moth to a flame. Aside from acing their lab final and coming out of what was rumored to be one of the harder classes in his degree, Peter found himself with a Tony Stark attached to his hip, too. It felt good, being close to someone the way he could be with Tony – the lack of expectation and abundance of goodness made their time together priceless.

For two and a half glorious years, Peter and Tony learned the necessary things to graduate college and mapped out places in each other’s lives. With Howard still running the company, Tony was free to do whatever he wanted, and thankfully – what he wanted included Peter. The prospect of attaining his dreams and keeping the man he loved the most couldn’t be beat. It didn’t matter that there were better PT schools to go to, or that New York was starting to feel a little suffocating – he liked the flow of his life and didn’t want to change it.

Then – Howard Stark died. The entire thing was stupidly sudden, not a single person was prepared for it. Not the board of Stark Industries, and sure as hell not Tony Stark himself. Throughout their time together, Peter met Tony’s dad a handful of times. Each one of the witnessed father-son interactions was forced, boarding on the edge of hostile. There was no love lost between the two of them – Tony’s grief seemed to be based around the loss of his freedom, not the death of his father.

Like every powerful family, Tony walked into a legacy that took things from him in all directions. Between board meetings, R&D presentations, and the terrible Obadiah Stane’s never ceasing presence, it got a little harder to picture that happy ending they’d been planning for. No matter how well he knew the situation, Peter couldn’t shake the feeling that things were different. Or, maybe he was just different – he couldn’t really pinpoint the dark bit of energy that sat in the center of his chest and started to collect.

By the end of the semester, Peter was barely getting to see Tony. With  his rotations and the hectic schedule of a young business owner, there wasn’t a lot of time to kick back and relax – to fuck all over the apartment and waste the rest of the day recovering just to go again. In fact, Peter couldn’t remember the last time they even got to fuck. It was petty – deep down, he knew that. Holding anything over Tony’s head when the man was trying to juggle running a business and struggling not to mourn someone he couldn’t help but miss.

Peter didn’t often find himself in a place of selfishness – where he wanted what he wanted, and nothing was going to change that. Yet, he got there, anyway. Applying to Mayo Clinic School of Medical Sciences in Minnesota felt like a little act of rebellion.

He loved Tony too much to ever hurt him in a physical sense, Peter didn’t have any interest in cheating, or anything like that. The card he held removed his presence all together and the closer he got to the point where decisions needed to be made, the more uncertain he felt himself becoming.

About a week before graduation, Peter got his acceptance letter in the mail – the school he actually wanted to attend wanted him back. How interesting a concept that was – he could almost remember when he felt that with Tony. He was lost and that wasn’t anybody’s fault but his own.

The door to their shared apartment opened a couple of minutes later, Tony peaking his head in hours earlier than usual, a smile on his face.

The annual Stark Gala was later that evening and as promised, he’d taken the afternoon off to spend with Peter – their time later that evening would more than likely be very limited. Leaving the letter on the table, Peter got up off the couch and wrapped Tony in a hug. For some reason, tonight felt like the turning point. His heart was already beating out of his chest, Tony’s hands doing things to him without a second thought. Peter wanted to stay – he just wanted to be whole enough to want everything that came with staying more.

The delicate caress of Tony’s hands became distracting no less than a few minutes later – his fingertips digging into Peter’s ass cheeks through his jeans. It’d been a while, so Peter went with it, his arms wrapping around Tony’s neck tightly. Their kisses were hot, like each man could feel the bit of separation between them – Tony clung to him a little tighter and for the first time in a while, Peter felt good. He felt Tony making him feel good.

When he came a little later on with Tony’s name on his lips, Peter relaxed into the bed, a light smile on his lips. They stayed snuggled up together until a knock on the door was sounding and any other thoughts of intimacy were out the window. There wouldn’t be a single moment of peace for the rest of the evening. With one last kiss, Peter got up and out of bed, the haze of happiness rolling off of him.

Later, when he put a bag together and left without saying a word – Peter didn’t realize how blind he’d been. Without him knowing, Tony saw the letter and planned to surprise him with champagne later that evening. He didn’t get to see the other man sitting on the arm of the couch, fisting the bottle – wondering what in the actual fuck happened.

Instead, he got a bus ticket and made his way to Minnesota, his acceptance email to the Mayo Clinic PT school fresh in the sent folder.

For days to come, he would look back and wonder what the hell compelled him to just up and scram – to leave everything behind other than the basic necessities and his favorite picture of him and Tony. Even presently, Peter can’t come up with the greatest reason. He acted on instinct and fled. For whatever reason, he lacked the feeling of completion and needed the space to find out what that meant – and how he could change it..

Present Day

In the six years that he’d been there, Minnesota sort of grew on him. The cold sucked – that’s the first thing he realized when he got there. What he’d been wearing in New York, even in late May, was not appropriate for the small town he walked into after getting off the bus. He did a quick perusal of town and figured it would be as good of a place to start over as any other. Rochester, Minnesota – he remembered he picked the Mayo Clinic PT school there just because it reminded him of New York – he thought it was ironic.

Now, it’d been home away from home for a few years. After getting a pretty decent one-bedroom apartment and a job at the PT clinic within the actual medical school – Peter set up camp pretty quickly. He dropped his New York number and started completely fresh. It tore at his heart, turning off the last line of communication he had with Tony – he’d been ignoring all of his calls and texts, the desperate emails – but he made his decision.

Why not get all the breaking done at once?

He figured the longer he was gone, the easier the heartache would get. It felt deserved, for being callous in the way he just up and left – dropped off the map. The longer it lasted, though, the more Peter started to doubt his decision. School was going great and he loved getting to receive the education he actually wanted – but was it worth the cost?

To try and take his mind off of it, Peter tried to date – as miraculous as that sounded with the busy schedule he kept. A part of him could honestly say he knew going into each date that they were already doomed. He tried – at least, he wanted to say that he did. The new guys were always held up against the highest pedestal, no matter how hard he tried – Peter couldn’t stop seeing Tony, couldn’t keep Tony off his mind. Tony, Tony, Tony.

In the collective whirlwind of time, Peter finished PT school and immediately stepped into a job as a traveling physical therapist. He worked with a couple of the local sports teams in the area and covered their games when in his little jurisdiction. It was satisfying – he got to do a bit of wandering around the state, watch sports in leu of doing an actual job, and it paid well. Yet, the longer he stayed in it, he felt himself getting further from that genuine feeling of happiness.

When it became more effort to get his ass to work and do his job, he figured it was time for a change of scenery.

May’s call came at just the right time, too – Peter dealt with a particularly difficult man-child of a soccer player that morning, his patience frayed and wearing down thinner than he ever thought they could. The buzz in his pocket drew him away from the notes he’d been trying to put together on the athlete, his eyes lighting up when he saw her name.

“May, my favorite cousin! How are you?” Peter said in a way of greeting, his tone warm, voice inviting. Of all the family Peter had left, May was possibly the only person he cared to keep in touch with. Her parents were great for taking him in his last couple of years of high school, but they weren’t his – not like they were May’s.

He heard a chuckle on the other side of the line, her voice never stopping him from smiling, no matter what. “I’m your only cousin, Pete,” she started, the thick sarcasm wrapping the words up, delivering them beautifully. “I’m on to you. I’m good, though – very good. I am also calling with a purpose.” She cleared her throat, the sign that she was serious.

Leaning back in his chair, Peter felt interest flare up within him – May’s suggestions and adventures usually ended up horribly, but they were fun, and they didn’t usually steer him wrong. He rubbed at the scar from their tubing adventure his senior year fondly, the memory one of his favorites to think about. “With a purpose. I’m sure this’ll be good,” Peter remarked, a chuckle leaving his lips, the laugh soothing the sting of truth in his words.

May rolled with it, the eye roll obvious in her next words. “Shut up – you know my ideas are the best. It’s not coming from me this time, though. I got a tip from one of my coworkers that the Nets are looking for a staff PT – thought you might be good for the job.” He felt his breath hitch – he’d been trying to get on with a singular pro team for a while now.

She must have caught the change – her voice excitedly talking again, “Oh, I knew you’d be interested, Petey! I’ll send you the information.” He could practically hear the claps coming down the line, her perpetual ability to be happy both delightful and irritating all at once. Shrugging, Peter didn’t deny that the job looked promising when he clicked on the link to look at the details. Within the hour, he clicked the submit button and sent the damn thing off.

The itch to go to New York was there – now he just needed to scratch it.

Luckily, his resume reigned supreme. During his time in school, Peter did a bunch of outreach with youth sports programs and adult recreation leagues. He took a big internship with Rochester and Oakland University his last two semesters in PT school – if anyone was qualified, it was Peter Parker. And the hiring bodies seemed to agree, after a lengthy Skype interview, Peter was flying out for a quick 24-hour turnaround trip. One in which he came back to Minnesota with a brand-new job and the chance to finally go home.

The move was pretty easy – much like his first trip, he didn’t bring much with him. The team put him up in one of the nicer apartment complexes in Brooklyn, a place that came fully furnished and with a delightful view of the back porches of the 3B patrons. When May came to help him, he could see the grin on her face – the idea of getting done sooner rather than later obvious. They took a look around the box riddled place when they were finished and decided that dinner out was the best way to finish off the night.

There were many things in the city that he missed, but good Thai food ranked pretty high on that list (that and Tony – but he wasn’t about to go and tell anyone that.) Settling into the low-lit booth of the place they found right down the street from Peter’s apartment, he let out a long sigh. “It feels good to finally not be moving. I feel like I haven’t stopped since I got here yesterday,” Peter fiddled with the silverware in front of him, a smile on his lips.

“I’m just glad you didn’t have more stuff to move around. The ER was hopping last night, so I’ve been feeling more tired than usual today,” she placed a hand over his, her touch stopping the restless fretting. “I’m really glad you’re here, Pete. It’s been weird in the city without you.” Her red lips pulled into a grin, eyes twinkling.

Peter dropped the utensils and turned his hands, surrounding May’s with his own. “I’m glad to be here, too. Disappearing like I did was stupid – “ he stopped, breath catching a little. So stupid, he thought to himself. May was in college when he left, her own experience just starting to get off the ground. She didn’t even know anything about him during that time – no matter how ‘close’ they were. “I’m happy to be back. And in Brooklyn – who would have thought?”

They chatted until the food came – the world narrowing down to noodles, deliciousness, and not much else for Peter. She might have been talking at him, but he wasn’t listening. For the first time in years, it felt like being at home. This wasn’t Pho’s from down the street in Queens, it wasn’t the best he’d ever eaten, either – but it felt familiar. He’d been missing familiarity for a while now, that realization hitting him harder than he figured.

Self-induced isolation could do that to a person.

As he finished up, Peter clued back into the conversation, his eyes watching May gesture through the rest of her story before he met her glance. “I didn’t hear a word of what you said. Sorry,” he admitted, his mind split in a million different directions. New York brought back so many things – memories and wants. Trying to pay attention to May was proving difficult.

“I said you have to meet the guy I’ve been seeing. It’s pretty new, but I like him. He’s unique and smart and sort of weird – but who isn’t these days?” May repeated, her cheeks flushed. “We’re going to meet at Sully’s in Manhattan. You know the old place.” She waved at him nonchalantly – like they’d spent so much time there over the years. He remembered taking her with him during her first winter break and hadn’t been back since.

Chomping down on those words, Peter shot her a sheepish grin – “I’m not going to be a third wheel, am I?” Peter questioned, his tone light, but the question serious. He hadn’t been successful in his own dating life in a while – the last thing he wanted to do was watch May get her flirt on for too long.

She shook her head, eyes bright – the pure shininess of her personality a little overwhelming, especially right that moment. He dropped a hand beneath the table and clenched it into a fist – the countdown backwards from ten starting (ten-nine-eight…) in his head. The tightness left quickly, but he felt a little rattled – his patience still on the wrong side of thin. “I promise that you won’t be.”

He took her at that and reluctantly agreed, his inability to say no to her something he needed to work on now that they were back in the same place again. Peter Parker grew into a respectable adult – he could put his foot down when necessary. Maybe. He hoped.

The next afternoon, Peter left his brand-new office and grabbed a cab – the process still as exhilarating as ever. At least he’d grown in his absence and the vehicles actually saw him when he waved from the curbside. Minnesota didn’t have the same hustle and bustle – so the luxury and relative newness kept him staring out the window the entire drive. The upscale buildings made his heart race a little – the reaction another clue telling him he was home.

The little café looked exactly the same as it did in his memory – upscale with a side of hipster. They tried to make the record player in the corner look vintage, but the current technology couldn’t be disguised. The Upper East Side had standards after all. He took a second to catch his bearings before approaching May and the dark-haired man sitting next to her. The particular color struck him as familiar – but then again, who the fuck was he?

Like she knew he was there, May turned to look over his shoulder and caught his eyes, her token smile pulling today’s pink coated lips up, causing a swift crease by both of her eyes. “There he is,” he made out, a hand coming up in a slight wave.

And then – he stopped in his tracks.

The man who turned to look in the same direction as May wasn’t just any man – no – his beautiful cousin was dating the one person Peter could honestly say he missed more than ever. His Tony – well, not really his anymore. Obviously. His heart wanted to jump out of his chest and run over there, every part of him paralyzed except for that particular muscle.

His mouth watered and for a second, he thought about turning right around and getting the hell out of dodge before something went wrong – before he lost control and got down on his knees to beg the man for forgiveness. The thought was so fucking enticing, especially when his eyes finally caught gorgeous amber honey eyes, the look there a mixture of surprise, excitement, and hurt. Gulping in a big breath of air, Peter forced himself to keep walking.

He could do this.

Rounding in on the table, Peter stayed on his feet next to the other open chair at the table – the idea of running still sitting in the forefront of his mind. May reached a hand over and patted his, the touch he figured was supposed to be comforting – instead, it made his skin itch. How dare she – ! And then it hit him that he didn’t have a singular right to feel that way. Guiltily, he flipped his hand over and gripped hers, the skin soft under his own calloused palm calming.

“I’m glad you made it,” she said genuinely. “Babe, this is – “ May started to say, her hand drawing back from Peter to pat against her boyfriend’s arm, his gaze fixing on Peter’s once again.

“I’m Peter, May’s cousin,” Peter blurted out, his hand shooting into the space between them. He felt like an idiot, a total loser still standing with his hand out and the single most confused look on his face. He didn’t need to see his own expression to know how freaked he look – he could feel the way his stomach was trying to drop out of his asshole.

A warm hand gripped his own a couple seconds later, the hold firm, the touch familiar. The natural chemistry between them swallowed Peter whole – his hand on fire and the arm attach to it numb and the chest attached to it trying it’s best to collapse in. The audacity of his body to be so mutinous – fuck the littlest bit of joy that settled over him. But god, he’d missed this man.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Tony, the boyfriend.” Tony shot him the still recognizable shit eating grin – his hand keeping Peter’s in the tight hold for another couple of heartbeats, each one dragging him down further and further. What were the odds? How could this possibly be happening? Chuckling, Peter covered up his freak out by dropping Tony’s hand and finally taking the seat he’d been standing by.

For a second, it seemed like May could read the tension suddenly infiltrating the room. Her eyes roamed between the two of them, eyelids narrowed. Then, she tilted her head and smiled sheepishly – “Great, now that’s over with – I’m going to grab some coffee. You two get to know each other.”

Peter shot her a look, the silent plea in his eyes obviously not recognizable – she merely nodded her head towards Tony and turned around, the conversation obviously over.

That same hand from before touching his made Peter glance up quickly, his eyes wide. Now that he wasn’t being watched directly, Peter took a second to really look at the man across from him. There didn’t seem to be any signs of aging, Tony’s face was smooth, aside from the goatee he’d only been nursing when Peter was around. His eyes were still that deep brown, the heavy wave of their darkness never failing to pull him in. His hair was a little longer – like he’d purposely been trying to grow it out.

Time was very kind to Tony Stark – so kind, in fact, that Peter could easily admit he was even more handsome than 6 years ago, a feat that didn’t seem fair. The hand didn’t move during his perusal, though the fingers attached to it did start to roam over the skin of his palm. The mechanism Tony used all those years ago to bring Peter back to the present. Blinking away the thoughts, Peter forced himself to teether to the spot, this next interaction one he probably didn’t want to miss.

“My May, Tony?” Peter ended up saying after a few more heartbeats of Tony tracing the lines of his palm, the familiar touch so goddamn soothing. There wasn’t much else to say – not when there were so many things unsaid, so many things that Peter wanted to explain, and by the looks of it – Tony felt the same way. Glancing over, Peter sighed with a sort of relief when he noticed May completely engrossed in the drink board, her fingers playing with her lip.

The deep vibrato of Tony’s laugh shot a tingle down the middle of his spine – his body not taking long to once again tune itself to the delicacies that were Tony Stark. He balled his right hand into a fist, a blinding hope that out of all the times he’d done it, this would be the time it actually allowed him to relax. No dice, though – Peter almost melted into a puddle when Tony started to speak.

“I didn’t even know you had a May, Pete. I was supposed to meet your family when they came in for graduation – but you know how well that went,” Tony pointed out, his hand drawing back now, the man knowing he had Peter’s full attention. “I’m just as surprised about this as you are.”

Peter could tell, too. There was a sort of vulnerability in Tony’s eyes that even in all their time together, Peter didn’t get to see often. For a second, he wondered if May knew that look – if she understood the gift she was being given. It took him way too long to realize Tony was a man of simplicity who gave affection the only way he could – with subtlety and in the littlest of ways. Oh, how he’d taken those little things for granted.

“I can’t believe it’s you that I’m sitting here with right now. Of all the people in New York,” Peter muttered, his hands spinning the pile of coasters sitting on the table. He couldn’t, either – it felt like the universe’s way of slapping him in the face. The karmic retribution for being a total fucking asshole to someone who in the end, didn’t deserve it – not a single bit.

Tony laughed then, his upper body adjusting against the back of the chair, his arm slinging over the back of the chair, resting there like this was some casual meeting, like just looking at him in such an open position wasn’t killing Peter from the inside out. Or maybe Tony knew exactly what he was doing to him, each move calculated to get the biggest bang for his buck – to pull the reactions from Peter and watch him squirm.

Either way – Peter couldn’t tear his eyes away. The thought of running coursed through his head again, this time to save himself the humiliation of this – this situation that could not go anywhere but further and further into the garbage. May didn’t know anything about their shared past, though – she wouldn’t understand the immediate need to get the hell out of dodge and avoid her for the next however long. Preferably long enough for her to no longer be dating Tony, but he didn’t get to decide that little detail.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Tony finally uttered, a smirk on his lips – he was trying for snark, for aloof and uninterested. Peter could see the way he glanced at him, though – his rebuttal the guiding hand for their interactions from here on out.

Peter took the bait, the part of him that still belonged to Tony speaking before his brain could get in on the action. “I’m not disappointed. It’s so good to see you. You look amazing,” Peter prattled off, his restless hands spinning one of the coasters from the pile between his fingers. “I’m far from disappointed, Tony.”

He didn’t know how true that was, either, not until he heard the words for himself. Despite May being the person Tony sat next to, it immediately felt good to be in his presence. Like simply being in his orbit set things right, the magnetic field surrounding him finally put back into the correct position. The brunette across from him should have a piece in his life – the fact that he accidently walked into it a second time sign enough.

They didn’t get to talk for any longer after that, May brought over three coffees and sat down, the woman immediately starting in on her babbling – he forgot how much she could talk and how passionate she could be when she did. Peter didn’t stay much longer, the thought of sticking around to witness anything coupley between them making his stomach turn.

After making his escape, Peter walked for a while, the haze of Tony Stark and all he’d been to him bringing him under. When he eventually caught a cab home, it was well into the evening – he passed the whole day away thinking about a man from his past, someone who he felt like he had unfinished business with.

----

In an attempt to forget that entire meeting existed, Peter went out of his way to avoid May – with his job starting up and the season just coming to an end, it was easier than he figured it was going to be. There weren’t a lot of things for him to do, yet – but he enjoyed getting to know some of the athletes and familiarizing himself with the facilities equipment. It far surpassed the places he’d been conducting his rehabs in before.

There was no forgetting Tony Stark, he understood that after years of trying to clear his brain of the man – but maybe he could avoid dealing with him and the unsettling and unmoving feelings that were settling in again, taking root. He loved May and he knew enough about family code to keep his distance and remove himself from a situation that could get very bad, very quick.

It sort of worked, too – sooner than expected, Peter finished his first month in the city. Most of his apartment was put together and he finally felt settled in at his job. They team was on a little break, which meant he also got to take some time for himself – a thing he thought he might actually enjoy. There hadn’t been time for vacations over the past couple of years, surviving came first.

About to settle in for a nap, Peter sat straight up when his phone vibrated, the notification that “Maybe: Tony Stark” was texting him stealing all the air from his lungs. Throwing the phone down like it burnt him, Peter forced himself into a comfortable position and drew in long breathes, his chest so goddamn tight, it felt like he couldn’t breathe. Finally able to use his brain to think and not just perform simple bodily functions (like breathing,) Peter picked up the phone again, his hands trembling.

Maybe: Tony Stark [2:26PM]: PICTURE MESSAGE Maybe: Tony Stark [2:27PM]: Do you remember Dum-E? He got an upgrade.

Peter lost his shit when he saw the picture, Tony’s prized robot was flipping him the finger, his traditional DUNCE cap sitting proudly on the top of its head. He pressed on the image to zoom in, the articulation of the joint almost spot on. Saving Tony’s contact, he moved to reply. It was against his better judgement – he shouldn’t even be thinking about it. But – he was weak. Peter didn’t have any trouble admitting that.

Peter Parker [2:31PM]: Tony Stark – did you teach your robot how to throw the bird just for me? Peter Parker [2:33PM]: Glad to see you’re still as elegant as ever.

He put his phone face down on the couch and forced himself up – his stomach growling all of the sudden. In times of desperation and nervousness, Peter didn’t get sick to his stomach. No, he felt the need to eat everything in sight, instead. The crumbled carcasses of 4 Doritos bags were already sitting on his counter, the evidence of his emotion fueled binges staring him straight in the face. Deciding on something healthier, Peter brought a bowl of cereal back to the couch with him. Finally letting himself look at the phone again, Peter got lost in the back and forth for a while.

Tony Stark [2:39PM]: Anything for you, Petey. Tony Stark [2:41PM]: I was just telling him about our little reunion, he wanted to show you how much he missed you. Tony Stark [2:42PM]: Still can’t believe that’s how you walked back into my life.

Peter Parker [2:45PM]: You two are such gems. Peter Parker [2:46PM]: That makes two of us. Peter Parker [2:47PM]: I am the king of great timing.

Tony Stark [2:50PM]: I am a delicate ruby, you’re absolutely correct. Tony Stark [2:51PM]: I literally just laughed out loud. It’s a good thing my private lab is y’know – private. Tony Stark [2:53PM]: You’re actually a huge dick with the worst timing.

Peter Parker [3:00PM]: You’d be a delicate opal, don’t lie. Peter Parker [3:01PM]: Are we talking about my dick now? Peter Parker [3:03PM]: In all seriousness, I know. I am. I’ll admit it. It probably doesn’t mean much, but I am sorry. Peter Parker [3:05PM]: Very.

Tony Stark [3:15PM]: I’ll take that as a compliment, Peter. Opals are multi-faceted. Tony Stark [3:17PM]: You started it. Tony Stark [3:18PM]: It doesn’t – mean much. I do accept it, though. Your apology. Tony Stark [3:20PM]: I knew where you went the second I saw the Mayo Clinic letter still sitting there. I wish you just told me, instead.

That last text message made Peter pause, his hand coming up to press against his mouth – the gesture a dashed attempt at keeping the gasp from falling from his lips. He never considered that, the fact that Tony would have simply gave him a hug and congratulated him. Peter took the strain and stress of Tony figuring out how to step into big shoes as something completely different, a lot bleaker. Maybe, at the time, he let it be an excuse, too.

There was a desperate sort of hatred for himself whenever he thought about what he did. On the other hand, Peter knew the only way he was going to grow was to get out and do it. There were obviously better ways to go about it – but he couldn’t change that now. The fact that May was dating the man he loved so much and treated so dirty – it all kind of made a twisted sort of sense.

Peter Parker [3:35PM]: It was a compliment. Peter Parker [3:36PM]: I did – it’s nice, I have to be proud when I can. Peter Parker [3:38PM]: Thank you – that’s all that I can ask for. Peter Parker [3:41PM]: I don’t have a good excuse as to why I didn’t. You were doing your thing, I didn’t think – I just went and did the same. Peter Parker [3:45PM]: I needed to figured things out – and I did exactly that. Just – a little too late.

When he didn’t get a response after that, Peter wasn’t all that surprised. Typing the words out felt lame and he knew there’d been no justice or retribution. At this point in either of their lives, it didn’t seem prudent for there to be – Tony had May, even if it still weirded him out a little bit to think about it. Peter made his decision six years ago, choosing himself over everything else. The least he could do was stand by that.

Making up excuses that would never explain the density of his want to figure himself out before he gave himself completely to another. And, wow did he want to give himself completely to Tony. Of course, there were better ways to go about it – there were much better ways. Stepping away from the situation, he formulated twenty, thirty – tons. Yet, Peter wasn’t sure he would have been able to pull off any of them without chickening out.

So – he dealt with the consequence. Hurting the person he loved the most, watching him with his cousin, feeling just the slightest bit incomplete – that was his penance. At least he knew he did the right thing for him. When the right person came around, no matter how much he wanted it to be Tony, he could genuinely and honestly be in it – giving himself would be so very easy. That thought made him just a bit more content – even if it didn’t keep him warm at night, it kept him sane.

The next couple of weeks went by quickly – he spent the days he didn’t go into the office wandering around the city, his heart truly full now that he was back. There truly was no place like home. When Ned and MJ found out he was back, they got together a couple times a week just to hangout and catch up. Ned worked for a computer engineering company and got to enjoy the spoils of his youth behind the keys. MJ taught at Midtown and came packed with the best gossip.

One night in the middle of June, the three of them were gathered around Peter’s coffee table, the remains of Chinese food scattered around. Peter had been in the city for four months now – each one better than the next. It felt good to be able to do what he wanted – to be able to afford copious amounts of food and stupid movies on DirectTV. They were watching the newest Men in Black when Peter’s phone vibrated. A soft smile slipped across his face when he noticed it was Tony.

For the first couple of days, it felt weird to be texting Tony so much. Tony sent him another message out of the blue the very next day that broke the weird spell of the past they decided to dredge up – and they’d been texting ever since. It remained casual – despite the vibe that Tony wouldn’t mind if it did. Peter wouldn’t, either – if he were being completely honest. But, May deserved more than that.

Glancing down at his phone, Peter felt his smile grow – Tony’s initial jump into conversation was always off the wall, always completely random.

Tony Stark [8:01PM]: Did you know that the state sport in Maryland is jousting? Tony Stark [8:03PM]: Like, legit medieval era shit.

Peter couldn’t hold back the laugh, despite not wanting to give himself away. He wasn’t ready to talk about any of it with anyone – but he’d already been caught out, MJ was too smart for her own good. “What, or I guess who, has got you smiling like that?” she quirked a brow at him, the lady like a bloodhound sniffing out a scent.

Biting into his bottom lip, Peter didn’t answer for a few seconds – his fingers too busy sending off a reply.

Peter Parker [8:07PM]: I did not know that. I’ve been to a Renaissance festival, so I’ve seen it – I couldn’t imagine that being a very practical sport, however. Peter Parker [8:08PM]: Did you find that on the back of a Laffy Taffy wrapper?

A warm feeling settled within him, the ease in which he could talk to Tony hadn’t gone anywhere – even with 6 years and a ton of baggage between them. Finally glancing up at MJ, he took a deep breath, the news he was about to give something that would probably confuse the fuck out of her. She was the only one he told about leaving for Minnesota, she knew how big of a deal it was to disappear like he did.

“It’s Tony,” Peter mumbled, his face heating, though his eyes never wavered.

In true Ned style, he jumped into the conversation randomly, his voice echoing around the room. “You mean like – Tony Stark? The Tony?” he asked, his entire body shifting, his attention now on Peter and MJ completely.

Blushing further, Peter nodded – his fingers brushing through his hair as he did. “The one and only. It’s weird – he’s dating May and I know that. And things are strictly friendly between us – but it could easily be something else.”

MJ moved a little closer, a hand pressing into his thigh. “I always thought it was a little weird that you were dating the golden boy. And when you left – I thought maybe that was the end. I don’t know, Peter – I hope you’re thinking about what you’re doing,” her voice sounded concerned, his heart warming a little at the sentiment.

“I am – I’m thinking about it, pretty frequently, actually. The last time I saw May, she didn’t talk about him much or bring him up at all, really. I can’t tell – but nothing is going to happen while he’s with May. Maybe he’ll stay with her, who knows,” Peter started to ramble, so he shut his mouth, his thoughts so scattered on the matter. Things were so natural, so easy – it made the whole situation a whole lot more confusing.

MJ brushed her long hair out of her face, an indifferent look in her eyes. From the get-go with Tony, MJ took that approach. She kept herself in it just enough to be a shoulder that Peter could lean against. “You’ll never convince me that he’s the great guy you say he is, but whatever you decide – I support you. Just don’t fuck up your relationship with May, we all know how important that is to you.” MJ stated, her eyes doing the smiling for her. She turned back to the TV and said nothing more.

As always, Ned followed suit. Shaking his head at the group antics, Peter shifted his focus back to his phone, his conversation with Tony completely absorbing him for the rest of the movie. He’d seen the movie before, anyway – the end was the only part that was really worth watching.

A couple hours later, MJ and Ned filed out of his apartment – Ned lightly punching his arm and MJ pulling him into a hug. She kept him in her arms for an extra second, her grip tight. “Be careful, okay? Can’t have you running away again.” Her words were whispered and driven home by the softest press of a kiss to his cheek.

He closed the door and leaned against it, the flurry of emotions from the evening hitting him – making everything he’d been thinking about magnifying tenfold. Nights with his friends were always fun, but stupidly exhausting – especially when MJ got into detective mode. In any other case, the details would have gladly come out of his mouth – it was nice to have friends he that he knew kept secrets like the pros that they were.

The collective thought of Tony still made him feel a bit raw. Like the wound could heal – he just didn’t know what the remedy was. A part of him knew he was dancing with the line, keeping his conversations with Tony going. Another part figured that they were both adults and could make sound decisions. Tony understood what he was doing just as well as Peter.

Which is why he was surprised to hear a knock on his door about ten minutes later. Checking his phone, he didn’t see a text from either Ned or MJ – though, it wouldn’t shock him if they just came stomping back in. At least they decided to knock instead of using his not so well-hidden spare key.

Pulling open the door, he started to speak, his mouth moving before his eyes bothered to take in what was in front of them. “What’d you guys forget – “ Peter picked up his head while he spoke, a soft smile on his face. Realizing who actually stood there, Peter straightened up, brown eyes wide. “Tony?”

Taken aback, Peter wondered for a second how the hell the man even found him. Though, he quickly realized he was dealing with a technology genius. He could also recall a conversation about an AI that dealt with most of Tony’s affairs. Licking his lips, Peter desperately tried to cure his dry mouth – just the sight of the other man enough to sweep his feet out from under him. He ran a hand through his hair, the strands still sticking up from earlier.

“Hey, Pete,” Tony started, one of his hands pressing into the doorframe, his body only a foot or so away from Peter’s. The tightness in his chest made him want to buckle in on himself – the feeling way too fucking much. He watched Tony draw in a deep breath, his eyes murky with a gale of emotions. “Jarvis told me where you lived. I hope it’s okay.”

And just like that, Peter was stepping back from the door, the both of them hovering in the hallway, the space between them narrowed down even more now. “It’s okay – it wouldn’t be you if you weren’t doing crazy shit like that.” He let a light laugh leave his lips, the exhalation of breath doing nothing to ease the tension inside of him. “Why are you – why are you here?”

Tony straightened his posture at the question, the softness in his eyes hardening a little. So – they were going to have a serious talk, then. Crossing his arms, Peter steeled himself for whatever Tony had to say. In all of the time they’d been reconnecting – this conversation never made its way back to the surface, at least, not until this very moment.

He watched color spread over the top of Tony’s cheeks, eyes dropping to look at their feet. “I always wondered when you stopped loving me. I told myself that’s what happened – because it made it easier to accept that you left. You didn’t though, did you? Stop. You’re just a selfish prick,” Tony got out, his words harsh, despite the soft tone they were delivered in. “I thought – maybe we could be friends. There’s been enough time for the hurts in my heart to be patched. I got over it a long time ago. I did not take into account, however – how I didn’t get over you.”

The words felt like a punch to the gut – not because he didn’t want to hear them. Oh, no – he’d been longing to hear those words for years now. Digging himself into a hole didn’t have to mean certain death – he thought maybe he could find his way back to Tony someday. The damage came from the fact that, despite the immensity of want coursing through him, Peter couldn’t act – wouldn’t.

“You haven’t said a singular false statement, Tony. I never stopped loving you. I took the only out I could find – you finding yourself and giving more and more of your time to it – and decided I needed to do the same. Once I mustered the courage, I knew it would be the only time, so I left. I wouldn’t have left otherwise. You, me – we deserve this Peter, the one who knows what he wants and can make it happen. I’m just – the king of bad timing,” Peter whispered the last few words, the reality of them feeling like the final smackdown.

A silence settled between them then, the tension in the room coming to a head. Thinking about it later, he couldn’t decide who made the move first – all of the sudden, Peter was wrapped up in Tony’s arms and they were kissing – kissing like their fucking lives depended on it. He felt long fingers slid into his hair and tug, the warm press of Tony’s torso against his own absolutely divine. His own arms wrapped around Tony’s middle, his body on fire from that simple little touch.

The inability to think kept him under the haze of their joined passion, his lips moving without thought or hesitancy. Tony’s tongue plunged into his mouth and Peter hung on for dear life, his own head tilting to deepen the kiss even further. His chest burnt from the lack of oxygen, but he couldn’t pull away – the second the high of his skin against Tony’s left, Peter’s conscience would reign supreme again.

Tony’s chocked off moan snapped the delicate spell controlling them, Peter’s body on fire, his mind all over the place. “Fuck. Stop – Tony. We have to stop,” Peter mumbled, his hands moving from the solid flanks of Tony’s sides to the bulk of his shirt, fingers digging in. “We can’t do this.” Even as the words were coming out of his mouth, he felt himself leaning in, his nose dragging over Tony’s. “This isn’t rejection – I just can’t. Not when you’re with May. I refuse to hurt her like that,” he pressed a final kiss to Tony’s lips and forced himself away – chest still heaving.

Both of Tony’s hands came up in surrender, the look in his eye resolute. “You’re right. You’re right. I’m sorry, Pete – I shouldn’t have come here like this.” He kept his glance tied to Peter’s, the other man still so easy to read – his hurt and confusion written plain as day.

“It’s okay, Tony. It’s okay.” Peter didn’t know what he was saying was okay, or even if it was – but the need to soothe took over. He reached forward and palmed Tony’s cheek, his thumb brushing over the arch there.

For a second, Tony leaned into the touch, the bourbon color of his eyes buried under closed eyelids. Peter trailed his finger back and forth, the digit moving until he felt a breath of air against his forearm and Tony was pulling away. He didn’t say anything, he simply opened the door and walked through it. His eyes trailed after the other man until he was down the hallway and out of sight.

This time, he shut the door and slid down it – his head falling into his hands.

----

Never prescribing to the age old ‘when it rains, it pours’ thing, Peter wasn’t expecting the knock on his door early the next morning. After Tony left, Peter barely made it to the couch before passing out into a fitful sleep. Between tossing, turning, and a mind that didn’t want to slow down and stop – Peter could count on two fingers how many hours of complete sleep he got. Sitting up, Peter looked groggily around the room, the disturbance in his sleep something he thought he might have dreamed up until another knock sounded.

“Peter, I know you’re home! I can see your open porch door from the street.” May’s voice was the last thing he figured he’d be hearing. The taste of Tony still lingered on his lips – Tony’s stubble making the skin above them a little raw, too. How in the world could he face May right now – when he hadn’t even had time to process what happened, or how he reacted, or even how Tony reacted.

Grumbling, Peter got up off the couch, his feet heavy in their steps towards the door. It felt like he spent the night before getting completely wasted, yet he didn’t have a singular sip. A couple of quick runs of his fingers through his hair and Peter finally felt ready to pull open the door and face whatever might come his way. Even if it was terrible.

Peter took a couple of deep breaths, his hand not wanting to move to actually get the damn door open. He braced himself, the idea that he might take a hand to the face or harsh words thrown his way that would eclipse him. There was nothing, though. May simply looked at him, two to-go coffee cups in her hands. “Are you going to let me in?” she asked, her voice neutral, the look in her eye hard to read.

He took a step back quickly, his arm sweeping wide. “Hi May, yes – please come in. I just got up, so my brain still isn’t working all that well.” It would have sounded like an excuse if he weren’t still shirtless with marks from the couch all over his right side. He stepped back further, the space now more of an open invitation that May took gracefully.

If this were a social call, they would have wandered to his makeshift bed of a couch and sat down – his cousin’s hands already moving to take the remote and put on whatever show she was currently addicted to. She would have jammed the coffee she was holding into the thickness of his chest, the joke of almost scolding him something they’d been doing since Peter came to stay with May and her family. The atmosphere would have been a little bit more accepting.

Yet, none of those things happened. May put his coffee cup on the middle of his kitchen table and sat down in one of the chairs. Knowing how different things would have been, Peter didn’t hesitate to take the seat opposite her, his hands wrapping around the warm to-go cup on instinct. He didn’t even take a second to put a shirt on – he simply sat down and waited, each second that past like a sweet torture.

Eventually, she pulled her phone out and started to flip through it, a concentrated look on her face. Finding what she needed, May pushed the phone over towards him. He took it a little hesitantly, his mind wandering around all of the possible things that could be on that phone. There wasn’t anyone else around when Tony came here last night – so with that, at least, they were in the clear.

His breath caught, though – the photo on her screen one he knew with familiarity, one that he glanced at more times than he cared to remember. The memory of the day the picture was taken still sat fresh in his mind. They were at Tony’s place, probably about a year into their relationship. They were celebrating the end of the semester and people were everywhere – the streaks and blurs in the background their friends caught in a second of chaos. Peter and Tony were in the middle of a conversation when MJ called over – “Snuggle up, love birds – let me take a picture.”

Peter could still remember how quickly Tony stepped up behind him, arms embracing without hesitation. They both beamed at the camera, the smiles on their faces so genuine. What Peter liked the most about it, though, was the fact that MJ caught them a second before they looked back at each other.

Peter’s face was turned as if he were trying to look over his shoulder, his smile bright and big but eyes oriented in Tony’s direction. The hand on his chest was splayed open wide, Tony’s fingers one of the main focuses in it. The look on Tony’s face showed affection and happiness – but most importantly, love.

MJ gave it to them both in a frame a couple of days later, the gorgeousness of it something that even she couldn’t deny.

Eyes a little watery, Peter looked up from the phone and over at May, a questioning look in his eye. “Where did you even find this?” Peter knew for a fact that his copy was tucked into the box in his closet – one in which he only allowed himself to go through every now and again, one that he specifically brought in and put away himself.

“It’s in Tony’s lab. We were supposed to meet for lunch a few weeks ago, but he couldn’t leave, so I met him there. He left for a minute to get cleaned up, so I snooped – because why not, right? There are a couple of the two of you, but that one is right in the middle of his workspace. He told me a little bit about this epic love he still wasn’t really over, and it never once crossed my mind that it was with you.” May stopped then, her hands reached across the table for his. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

The soft touch of her hands felt like a drastic juxtaposition to the raging war of emotions keeping him right on the edge of panic. As a distraction, he watched her thumbs brush against his hands, the movement hypnotic, easy to get lost in. The lull seemed to help calm him a little – Peter glanced back up at her, apprehension still so very visible.

“I didn’t treat him well at the end. For a while, it was nice to have this thing that was all my own. And when it got serious, I freaked a little. I ran away because I felt too much. It was easier not to acknowledge it out loud – because telling you about him made the selfish thing I did a lot more real. It took a while to find me and then a while after that to cope with how big of a dick I am.” He paused then, taking a long breath.

“I never thought I’d see him again – never. Then, he’s sitting next to you and everything I have neglected for six years suddenly hit me square in the face. May, you seemed happy – I’ve been selfish enough,” Peter knew he had to get all of that out, or he probably wouldn’t, the acknowledgement of so many things harder than he ever imagined possible.

He gripped her hands, pulling them towards him a little. “The last thing I want to do is hurt you.” And that was the truth. Regardless of how badly he handled other things, Peter couldn’t be careless with something like that – May and her feelings. Even if that came at the cost of his own.

At that, she chuckled, her lips quirking into the first real smile on her face all morning. “I saw the way you two were talking to each other the day I introduced you. It doesn’t take a genius to know chemistry when you see it. The picture just sort of – put all the pieces together. It’s okay, Pete. Really.”

Quirking a brow at her, he pulled his hands away and sat more fully in his chair. “There’s nothing going on, May. I – “ Peter stuttered out, but she held a hand up, a soft little smile on her face.

“There’s nothing going on between Tony and I anymore, either. He came over last night, started to talk a bunch of nonsense. It seemed like a good time to tell him I’d been seeing someone else, anyway. You remember Ben? Either way – he is single and not attached to me, so you no longer have to factor hurting or upsetting me into any of your life choices.”

She got up then and came around the table, her arms engulfing Peter into a tight hug. “This is a lesson on when to keep secrets from me. I hope you learned that never is probably the best course of action,” she mumbled against the side of his head, Peter’s chest shaking with laughter before she let him go. And just like they were kids again, she slapped the back of his head hard, a cackle slipping from her lips. “Stop ignoring me, okay? Let’s be friends again.”

It took a few more minutes of banter back and forth for Peter to totally comprehend all the things May told him – he couldn’t get past the green light of acceptance; despite all the other juicy things he’d just been told. His mind immediately went to Tony, the thought of pulling his phone out and texting him flashing across his mind. Then, he realized just how much he missed May and put it on the back burner. If he were reading the room right the night before, he didn’t think Tony would be going anywhere anytime soon.

“Yeah, alright.” Peter said after a second, their eyes meeting. He could see nothing but clarity in those hazel eyes, a look he knew to be acceptance and contentment. It felt good to be able to read her again, the crippling guilt no longer between them. “I’m not going to the office today. Want to binge something on Netflix?”

Her lips pulled into a smile, the look in her eye mischievous – “Actually, I think we should find you something to wear to this,” she murmured, hands rummaging in her bag until an envelope came into view. Peter didn’t need to see the Stark Industries logo in the corner to know what she was referring to. The Stark Gala – the height of events for the engineering and technology society. It seemed kind of fitting, a reunion at one of these events after the shitty end to the last one.

A soft blush set in his cheeks then, a silent sort of understanding happening between them. This wasn’t just acceptance from May, but a push in the right direction, too. He took the envelope from her, then pulled her smaller frame into his arms. “Thanks, May.”

When they parted for the afternoon, May pulled him into another hug and wished him luck. The suit they picked out was going to look pretty damn good on him – even if it wasn’t one of the fancy custom-made ones. The whole time, it felt like being with May when they were younger, when there wasn’t a care in the world. Maybe that was because the trauma between them was officially over, or maybe May felt like she knew Peter a bit better. Whatever it was, Peter enjoyed the time thoroughly.

It felt like the first time since getting here that he wasn’t stressed or watching over his shoulder. Even though he enjoyed every single second of being back in the place that felt like home, there were so many things still trying to press him down and keep him there. The weight of his chain felt a few links shorter now. In hindsight, the simple truth would have been much easier than all the angst – but hey, that’s how lessons are learned.

There was just enough time to sneak in a nap – Peter grateful for that fact. They decided early into their conversation that the surprise of his presence would make much more of an impact than a text, so Peter kept control of himself and didn’t say a word to the other man. He could already picture the look on Tony’s face. With the rest of the night on his mind, Peter slept pretty peacefully – his body finally content with where things were headed for him.

Actually feeling refreshed upon waking up, Peter took his time getting dressed. The blue suit and light grey shirt combo looked great in the mirror at the store, the jacket fit his shoulders nicely and the slacks hugged the curve of his ass just right. With the addition of some product in his hair and a small white-gold chain around his neck, Peter looked ever better. It’d been a long time since he dressed up like this – he appreciated the view and hoped Tony would, too.

Peter splurged on the relatively expensive Uber into Manhattan, his conversation with Paula the driver helping to ease any nervousness that wanted to bubble up inside him. Surprisingly, though, there wasn’t much other than excitement coursing through him. No matter what happened, Peter felt a sense of freedom he didn’t before. If Tony decided the craziness they were able to build was what he wanted, Peter couldn’t wait to give himself completely to it. Finally.

It was pretty easy to slip out of the Uber and into the party without dealing with any of the press. They weren’t interested in someone like him. He gave his name and flashed the invitation to the man he remembered as Happy at the door – the exchange easy and over before he knew it. There were lots of people scattered around the upper floor of Stark Industries, the age range wide and varied and the dress much the same. Peter fit right into the people flitting around and used that as an advantage to scope out Tony.

Looking around, he felt a little disappointed when he didn’t see the man right off the bat. He decided to put the search on hold and get a drink when he felt a hand on his arm. “Hope you’re not leaving already.”

He didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know who the hand belonged to – the ghost of Tony’s touch still haunted him on a pretty constant basis. A soft smile slipped across his lips, the other man’s presence did that to him – especially now that it didn’t come with the not so gentle pang of guilt. “No, not yet. I just now found what I was looking for.” Peter’s response was shift, said with confidence.

Tony tugged on his arm until they were facing each other, their chests almost pressing together. After so many years, it felt like the first time all over again – this dance they were doing. Their even height made it easy to catch amber colored eyes – the yellow tinted glasses Tony took to wearing enhanced the color of his eye, the depth of it so easy to get lost in.

“I’ve done my rounds for the night, come upstairs with me,” Tony mumbled, his voice just loud enough for Peter and Peter alone to hear. The warm caress of the liquid smokiness arousal always made Peter think of washed over him, his arms wrapping themselves around Tony’s neck. He pressed in for a kiss, the need unable to be denied. It stayed chaste for the sake of not being in public when things turned steamy.

“Lead the way, Tony,” Peter responded, his brain forcing his body to step away, to keep some space until he could have all of the other man. A work-roughened hand gripped his own, their fingers tangling – Tony led the way through the crowd seamlessly, his ability to fit in despite the sheer amount of attention he could attract was impressive. Probably learned from all the times he did his best to escape the charade over the years.

It was nice to see that some things never changed.

Once they were in the elevator, Tony didn’t hold back – this one led to his part of the penthouse, so they wouldn’t be disturbed. “I’m guessing May talked to you and this is your way of saying that it’s okay to do this,” Tony babbled before grabbing his cheeks and pressing their lips together, the kiss hot and on the right side of desperate. Peter figured he didn’t need to verbally answer, he gripped Tony’s hips instead and kissed back, his tongue pressing forward to join the warmth in the luscious caverns in Tony’s mouth.

Forgoing the tie ended up being a good idea, Tony’s hands were everywhere as they kissed, the tips moving from Peter’s cheeks, down his chin, neck, and under the slight gap of his button up shirt. Each place he touched felt like molten lava, the stroke of his fingers branding his skin – every inch becoming Tony’s once again. Finally, the elevator doors broke open, the dark comfort of Tony’s home just a couple steps forward.

Peter broke away then, his chest heavy from too much carbon dioxide, breaths coming in pants. “It’s okay. I want you, Tony. All of you. Because I finally know how to give all of me, too.” He used the lapels of Tony’s jacket to seal their lips back together, his feet working on their own accord, the path back to Tony’s room still etched into the forefront of his brain. Aside from bumping into the wall a couple of times, Peter and Tony were in the bedroom in no time.

Nimble fingers started to work on Peter’s shirt, Tony’s eye wide with eagerness and heat – the pupils blown open, taking over that precious brown warmth. His gaze made Peter feel a little on display, his skin on fire – the seconds passing making him feel like he needed to crawl out of it. A soft sigh of relief left his lips when the cool air hit his skin, the scalding deliciousness of Tony’s touch all of the sudden bearable again.

Quickly getting in on the action, Peter worked on Tony’s bow tie, the knot coming undone without much effort. Tony tried to press in for a kiss, but Peter kept some distance between them. “I’m going to cum in my pants if you keep doing that. It’s been a while – let me see you,” Peter stammered, his words lazy, the blood meant for his brain traveling lower, instead. He got all of the buttons open without fault, a look of triumph on his face. Greedy hands pushed the suit jacket and shirt off in one go, Tony finally shirtless – skin on display.

His fingers skimmed across tight pecs and prickled nipples, down across each of Tony’s ribs, and along the seam of his abdominals. The trail of hair Peter remembered so fondly seemed a little thicker, the change one of the only signs of aging he could really see. His dress pants sat on slim hips, a v on either side guiding his eyes to the real treasure. He could see the bulge there, Tony’s length long and eager, exactly the way he liked to remember it.

The rest of their clothes came off in a fumble to get onto the bed, Peter’s back hitting the mattress without any fight, a sigh of delight slipping from his lips when Tony settled over him. The weight felt divine, the tangibility of being pressed down amping up the slow spread of arousal tenfold. “Fuck, you feel good,” Peter gasped against Tony’s shoulder. The man was caressing his flanks, fingers moving reverently, like devotion and memorization were the only options.

The ticklish feeling kept him from getting too close to the edge too fast – Tony’s touches driving him crazy in so many ways. His hips rolled up every now and then, the semi-constant friction just enough to stave off the intense itch that needed to be scratched. Peter did his best to memorize the way Tony’s hips felt against his own, how the sweat on his brow rolled down so very slowly, how even after so much time – this felt so goddamn right.

Throwing his arms around Tony’s neck, Peter pulled him down for a fierce kiss, feelings overwhelming him, the earnestness of the interaction so much – everything he wanted. Their lips met for a sloppy kiss, tongues tangling between them, the taste of Tony in his mouth just as exciting as the slip slide of their bodies together. Peter’s fingers roamed through Tony’s hair, the softness of it a nice contrast to the heat overtaking them both.

The need to breath forced them apart, Tony’s forehead leaning down, resting against Peter’s. “I’ve missed you, Pete. So much,” the other whispered, the words kissing his cheeks in a tender brush. His eyes were closed, but Peter could tell he was trying to hold back tears or emotion – or maybe both.

With both hands, he cupped Tony’s cheeks, the other lifting his head enough for them to be looking into each other’s eyes. “I missed you. I’m here now, though – not going anywhere, either,” Peter said softly. He hoped to convey how genuine the words were – that despite how big of a shit he’d been, there still might be a future. He didn’t deserve it – but fuck did he hope for it.

“I won’t let you,” Tony replied, his cheeks lifting into a wide smile. “Jarvis can find you, so don’t even think about it.” He turned his head to press a kiss to Peter’s palm, his nose nuzzling into the same spot. “Can I fuck you?” Tony murmured into the skin there, his eyes hot and hopeful. Peter could feel Tony’s cock against his flat belly – the length throbbing at just the mention of pressing into him. Peter grinned and used his grip on Tony to slip their lips together once again.

“Fuck, yes – please, Tony. I want you.”

Tony didn’t need any more prodding after that, he moved until he was on the bed next to Peter. “Turn over onto your side,” he mumbled, his hands pushing and tugging at Peter’s hips until he turned over. “I’m going to make you feel good, Petey – promise.”

Peter elongated his neck and let Tony pepper kisses against the skin there, the man’s hands still working over lean sides. He threw a hand behind himself and grabbed Tony’s hair, his fingers gripping to keep him as close as possible, so that the other man couldn’t pull away, even if he wanted to. A gasp left his mouth when Tony’s wandering hands wrapped around the front of his body and started to teasingly stroke his cock.

The pulls started off slow, like he was trying to orient himself with Peter again. His fingers were rough, a little bit more scarred than the last time Peter felt his touch – and yet, still completely perfect. The tip of his cock was already leaking, so the glide of Tony’s hand was delicious, the friction faultless. With the slightest of thrusts, Peter could feel the other’s cock against his ass. “Mm, you’re so fucking hard,” Peter babbled, his hands tightening in Tony’s hair.

“Fuck me, please. I want to be yours again.” He thrust his hips back and ground into Tony, if the words weren’t enough, he hoped the move would be.

Tony pulled his lips away from Peter’s neck to pant against it, a soft groan leaving his lips. “God, Pete – I, you’re too much,” he murmured, his hips thrusting forward again, his fingers tightening around Peter’s length. “I can’t wait to feel you.” He squeezed Peter again, then the fingers were gone – Tony’s hand now slipping down to slip between pert ass cheeks.

There were a few soft teases to Peter’s hole before Tony was pulling back – the mattress dipping with his weight. Peter immediately felt the cold of the room clinging to his back, the sweat there staring to dry. Absentmindedly, he let his hand trail down his chest – his fingers ghosting straight down his abs, the tips teasing along the sensitive skin there. His nerves were on fire and he couldn’t let that tingly sensation die down for a single second.

The warmth was back within a couple of minutes, Tony’s hand trailing down his side, the other tucking under Peter’s neck to keep him close. “Tuck this leg up a little,” Tony whispered, lips brushing against Peter’s ear. Complying quickly, he bent his leg – a moan leaving his lips when Tony’s finger filled the newly made space. The barely there touch had him clenching his eyes, mouth open wide. “Fuck!”

The snick of a lube cap opening pulled another sound from his chest, anticipation settling low in his belly, the heat there compounding with it, his cock dribbling a bit of precum at the thought of what was to come next. The first touch of the lube was cool on his skin – and immediately forgotten, the first press of Tony’s finger into him after so much time exquisite, painful, and just right – just enough to distract him.

He couldn’t help the constant stream of ‘Tony’ leaving his lips, each thrust of one, two, and then three fingers shredding ever sense of self and control and conscious thought. It was only Peter and Tony and the aching touches that could tear him apart and then delicately piece him back together. “I’m ready, Tony – I’m ready.” His words were desperate, as was the hand that shot behind him to get a nice grip on Tony’s hair again. “Please – “

“I’ve got you, Pete,” Tony said, his fingers pulling out, only to be replaced with the warm head of the other’s cock. Tony pressed his hips against his loosened hole and thrust forward slightly, just the tip slipping inside. Peter let his jaw drop in a silent moan. He felt Tony’s grunt against his neck before hearing it, the gust of breath sending goosebumps cascading across his skin.

Inch by inch, Peter felt himself relax and accept more of Tony – the stretch turning from a sheer burning sensation to delectable with every passing second. Then, Tony hooked an arm under his already tucked leg, the move opening him up further.

The last couple of inches were easier now, Peter’s hole exquisitely stretched and full – the press of Tony’s hips against his own the best part of all. “Fuck, you’re so tight. You’re clenched around me like if I pull out, you’ll never be whole again,” he babbled, hips pulling back ever so slightly.

Just like Tony said, Peter clenched down a little tighter around him, his heart rate picking up with the sweet ache of his hole stretching further. “Maybe I won’t be,” Peter responded, his eyes closing, Tony’s cock slipping almost all the way out of him, the head resting just past the ring of muscles. He already felt empty, the rightness of being filled missed dearly.

The teasing roll of his hips didn’t last, though – Peter clenched each time he tried to pull out and before long, Tony was panting heavily against his neck, the snap of his hips long and hard. “Harder, Tony – more,” Peter ground out, his jaw clenching with ever thrust in, the tip of Tony’s cock hitting his prostate dead on.

Leaning into Peter more heavily, Tony pressed his leg down until he was almost up on his knees, the weight pressing him fully into the mattress. “I’m so close. Touch yourself – “ Peter barely heard, Tony’s words spliced with pants and groans. He could feel the pulse of Tony’s cock inside of him, the harder and faster he moved, the more it seemed to thrum in time with their joint heartbeat.

It took a second for Peter to register the plea – he was creeping closer and closer to the edge, it felt hard to focus on anything. He complied, though, his fingers gripping tightly and stroking at the same pace as Tony’s thrusts. There was no holding back after that, the boiling heat in his stomach finally bubbling over – each spasm of his body drawing shot after shot of cum from his body. “Ah, Tony!”

He barely felt the hard bite against his shoulder blade, the world tilted on a different axis at the moment. The warmth of Tony finishing inside him kept him grounded, though – his hole tightening to keep him there, deep and exactly where he should be. Tony mumbled Peter’s name over and over again, his forehead coming to rest against the back of his neck.

It was a few minutes before Peter felt with it enough to move or talk or even feel his limbs. He felt Tony slip out and the delicious feeling of cum dripping from his hole – then he sunk into the mattress further, everything about him boneless. Tony’s weight pressed against him a moment later.

The room was quiet when Peter came down enough to turn a little, his arm reaching back to pet at Tony’s bare skin. “Let’s go shower – I’m gross,” Peter said softly, a chuckle leaving his lips when arms wrapped around his waist, Tony sink down into him a little further.

“Do we have to?” Tony whined, his nose brushing Peter’s ear, every breath he took ruffling the hair there.

“I need to,” Peter retorted, the man using his arms to push up a little, his leverage dislodging Tony from his back. “The way you had me pinned down, I came all over myself – I’m already a little itchy.” He moved until he could sit up – the cooling cum on his chest making him pull a face. Tony’s arm reached out to attempt to pull him down once more, but Peter avoided it – a soft smile on his face when he looked over his shoulder. “Come join me if you want.”

Luckily, not a lot had changed about the bathroom, the shower was a little bigger – but Jarvis was easy enough to access, the water starting without much of a hassle. Peter stepped under and let out a relieved grunt – the nerve endings of his skin still sensitive, the hot water just enough to ease that feeling a little. He stood there letting the water sleuth over him – the peace of it nice after such an adrenaline-fueled event.

The shower door opening a few minutes later didn’t surprise him – he simply relaxed into the arms that wrapped around his waist. “Will you stay?” Peter heard, his head tilting to the side to accommodate Tony’s head resting on his shoulder. “I just got you back, I don’t know if I can let you leave now.”

Pressing his head against Tony’s, Peter let his hands grab onto the ones around his waist – the grip tight. “I’ll stay. For as long as you’ll have me.”

[ahyesthesufferingoftvteens]

Just the Way You Are

I decided to IDK...write a ReeKai fic...cause why not?

Letting y’all know I might regret writing this tomorrow and might delete it, IDK XD.

Rated T for some swearing.

So here, have this bullshit I wrote in three days:

“...Hey...Kai’s been acting weird lately, don’t you think?”

Adam’s question startled Reeve.

He was, once again, extremely close with his old friends Mira and Adam. The entire “second round” incident, as everyone liked to call it, changed his relationship with the two for the better, especially with Adam. The two fought way less than they did before he even eavesdropped on their conversation with Mira.

He was also fairly close with Vanessa as well. He looked passed her mistakes, and she’s been a pretty chill person to hang out with. All three of these people, he could say with confidence, he could read pretty well. He could usually tell how they felt with each moment.

...Him and Kai though...

He could tell that Kai was also pretty close with Mira and Adam, and they’ve developed a special sibling bond with Vanessa it seems. But despite the fact that both of them are very close with the same friends...they never really interacted with each other.

Sure, him and Kai would sometimes converse with each other, but it wasn’t often, and always with the others, where it was more a group chat than anything. Him and Kai were simply acquaintances. Acquaintances that got along pretty well, but it never became anything more than that. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in getting to know the red-head better...it just kind of...never happened. The two only ever saw each other when someone from the group was also around.

Adam’s question startled Reeve because, unlike the others, who probably instantly noticed these changes Adam was referring to, Reeve only realized the change in that exact moment. Because he wasn’t close to Kai, he didn’t pay attention to him much. It was only when he quickly looked back at his interactions with Kai this month that he realized that, yes, Kai was acting a bit strange.

The dork was the type to stick chopsticks up his mouth and make walrus noises as a joke. The type to develop gadgets that had a 50/50 chance of either working spectacularly or burn the house down. Luckily he had his fire controlling powers, which he gloated about every 10 minutes or so. Kai was a fucking nerd, but not in a bad way, at least to Reeve. Kai’s quirks were charming.

...Lately however, Kai had begun to quiet down. He spoke less often, and the topics he brought up were a lot more general. “Have you heard of the latest Movie Weirdie implemented! A cult classic! I’ve always wanted to watch it!” Was replaced with, “So how was your day?” He gloated less, he didn’t do the stupid chopstick thing anymore, and most importantly...he looked sad.

“...Now that I think about it...yeah...he kind of has...” Reeve responded, shifting his comfortable position on Adam’s couch, and pausing Fire emblem on his switch.

Adam had returned from his trip to the kitchen, placing the last bowl of popcorn onto the nearby coffee table. 5 in total, for five people. It was movie night, and the others haven’t arrived yet. “I want to talk with him later...ask him what’s going on. I’m worried, he isn’t himself.”

“So why haven’t you?” Reeve questioned his best friend, who sighed and shook his head, collapsing into the couch behind him, and pushing Reeve’s feet out of the way. “I’ve been trying to speak with him in private for a week now. He always has some sort of excuse. Heck, sometimes he even says he has to leave early! Remember a few days ago at the fair, when Kai announced his parents called and he needed to go home to deal with some issues? That was directly after I asked him if we could talk in private near the river.”

Reeve narrowed his eyes at this piece of information. It was definitely worrying. “...Suspicious.” Reeve commented. “...What do you think could be wrong though-”

“Sup guys!” Shouted a familiar, lilting voice, who barged through the door and appeared from the doorway to the living room. Vanessa was, as usual, stylishly dressed for the occasion. Mira, meanwhile, who followed shortly behind, was dressed for comfort first. “...You two look gloomy. Is something wrong?” Mira inquired.

The girls were quickly filled in by Adam, who both instantly agreed with his reasoning. “Yeah, Kai has been acting strange lately!” Vanessa sighed out, gently massaging her neck. “I’ve asked him time and time again if he was OK and every time I ask he looks more and more depressed!”

“...Yeah, something’s definitely off about Kai...especially since he texted me he’s not coming over a few minutes ago.”

Everyone gawked at Mira’s confession.

Kai never missed movie night. Everyone had opted out at least once, but not him. Kai was the one that started the entire thing in the first place! And he used to pick all the movies before they all established a rotation system recently.

This night would have been Kai’s turn to pick the movie, but he surprisingly declined. “I don’t have anything good I can think of right now. Sorry! Vanessa can go ahead and pick one.” Was what they remembered him saying. That alone was weird, but ditching movie night? Absolutely bizarre!

“...That’s it.” Adam grumbled, abruptly sitting up from his couch. “I’m driving to Kai’s house.”

“Adam you’re grounded right now, you can’t go anywhere outside of the house.” Mira reasoned as she crossed her arms. Adam wasn’t convinced. “My parents would understand!” He stated.

“One of your parents teaches math, which you are failing right now. It’s a miracle they even let you host movie night in the first place with how much they want you to study right now.” Vanessa’s comment silenced Adam, and after a moment, he flopped back down onto the couch, grumbling about how it wasn’t fair that he was grounded for the week just for getting a few Ds on his recent tests. Those were flukes!

“...I’ll go check on him?”

Mira, Vanessa, and Adam turned to Reeve, who had placed his switch on the coffee table. He looked perfectly calm on the outside, but on the inside, he was beginning to panic.

Why did he suggest that?! Mira’s much more suited to this kind of comfort stuff, not him! He’s not that close to Kai anyways! He simply wasn’t the right person for the job!

...But...this was an excuse to finally try and connect with Kai...Was that why?

“...You sure?” Mira questioned, confusion clear with her furrowed eyebrows. “Because...I can go instead, you don’t have to-”

“It’s fine.” Reeve reassured his other friend, sealing his fate and lifting himself off the oh so comfortable couch. “...Just...tell me where he lives...”

Huge.

Kai really was rich off his ass, as he had heard from the others. The mansion was huge, and the front yard was spectacularly decorated. For a moment he just sat there, admiring the scene before him.

But then he saw...was was it called, a gazebo? Close by the front of the house, and in it, he could see Kai’s body, lying lazily along the benches inside.

It was only when he sprinted closer, out of worry, that he realized Kai was actually awake. They stared blankly at nothing, their eyes dull. They looked almost as if their mind was in a completely different world.

Now that Reeve was directly standing in front of the entrance, He could now see Reeve. It only took his name being called for the red-head to snap out of his trance. He looked absolutely confused, his eyes bulging. He abruptly stood up from the bench and cleared his throat, trying to calm himself down. “...R-Reeve!” He laughed out awkwardly. “...Didn’t expect to see you here. Didn’t know you knew where I lived!”

“I...didn’t...Mira gave me your address a few minutes ago.” Reeve answered. Kai raised an eyebrow at this, but didn’t comment, simply muttering a small “oh” under his mouth.

Awkward silence hung between the two, slowly suffocating them until Kai formed another question in his brain. “...So uh...” He began, trailing his fingers along the gazebo fence. “...Why are you here? I mean...it’s movie night after all...don’t you want to hang out with the others?”

Reeve was quick to explain. “We were all worried when you said you weren’t coming, it’s not like you...so I came over to check on you.”

“...Oh! That’s...really nice of you!” Kai remarked, showcasing an overly cheerful smile. “But I’m fine really! I just have some stuff to do at home! Real busy you know! I have to help prepare the mansion for some guests that are coming over tomorrow! Wish I could come!”

An obvious lie. “...Oh, so you’re taking a break right now?”

Kai nearly choked at Reeve’s reasoning, but quickly regained composure and nodded vigorously. “Y-Yeah! I have around 10 to 20 more minutes before I have to get back to work!”

Awkward staring was met with awkward staring.

...

...

...

The tension is mind-crushing, holy shit.

Kai cleared his throat, avoiding Reeve’s gaze. “So, anyways, you should probably drive back to Adam’s place! I don’t want to interrupt your fun! Tell the others I’m fine-”

“I-It’s not just that!”

Kai’s smile faltered a bit. He seemed more than shocked. “...Oh...um...” He scratched his head, and let out a strained laugh. “...What’s up?”

“...I just...I want to say I’m sorry for being mean to you, back in the first round...and...I want to get to know you better.” He explained. Although that wasn’t the main reason he was here...he couldn’t say his excuse to stay was a lie either. “We don’t...we haven’t really hung out that much...y’know? Figured now would be a good time...to just...chat.” Don’t break your stone cold demeanor now Reeve. You have a reputation to uphold. “...So...Is it OK if I come inside? I won’t be a bother or anything. I told everyone they could start the movie without me...they picked a shitty one anyways.”

Fuck, he was so nervous. Why? This isn’t like him...maybe it’s a result of the awkwardness from before. It was screwing with him.

Kai stood stiff as a rock, his mouth slightly agape as he stared at Reeve intently.

It was only after a few moments of silence that Kai finally nodded a slow, small yes, fidgeting with his shirt sleeves.

“...O...k.”

Reeve wasn’t much of a tea person. Yet here he was, sipping some freshly prepared chamomile tea. It was weird, how it actually didn’t taste as bad as the batch his grandma made him try once.

He watched Kai almost gather all the ingredients for a chocolate shake, but then put them all back in their proper places and made some hibiscus tea instead. He didn’t seem to enjoy it that much, as he took a small sip and sat stiffly on an armchair.

They were in some sort of fancy, parlor room. Wide, spacious, and rather modern styled. Reeve himself was sitting in the armchair opposite to Kai, a coffee table separating the two.

For a good while they just asked random questions about each other. Reeve indulged, mostly so he could eventually transition to the main reason he was here. “What’s your favorite color?” Was the first question Kai asked, which showed just how tense they both were. He obviously responded with red, and Kai responded with blue.

“...Weird, considering your power, I figured you’d like a more warm color.” Reeve commented. Kai shrugged in response. “I don’t think about aesthetic choice when it comes to power choosing...it’s more what complements my team.”

“...Have you...ever had any pets?”

“...What is this some weird version of twenty questions?” Kai giggled out, rubbing his hand against his face. “...God we’re...so awkward...”

Reeve, for some reason, couldn’t help but chuckle a bit in response. “...I mean, we don’t know each other that well, so might as well get the basic facts down...” Reeve reasoned. Kai seemed to agree, with the small smile he gave. “I had a pet cockatoo named Chipper when I was...around 8? They...flew out of my window when I was 10...I never saw them again...you?”

“Pet-less all my life...I remember when I was like...a toddler, I constantly begged my parents to let me get a cat...but it never happened.”

Back and forth, back and forth. Question after question was answered. And slowly, Reeve noted just how different him and Kai were.

Kai wasn’t that close to his parents, and vice versa. Reeve’s parents were over-doting, constantly hovering over him like a helicopter. Kai was obviously extroverted despite his awkward tendencies, and Reeve was more introverted. He liked his alone time. Kai could explain any and every piece of tech, not only due to his powers, but because those were his interests. Reeve was more the artsy type. He didn’t know what to do with a gadget, but he liked to sketch in a notebook he has at home.

Kai and him were almost opposites, counterparts. The only things they had in common were their love for video games and comic books, and their similar friends. These differences intrigued Reeve a lot. He saw a side of the world that Kai had lived in his entire life.

“Oh come on, superman would totally win in a fight with batman! It would take me more than a minute to list all of his powers!”

“Superman is too good-natured to kill someone and Batman is not. It’s not about powers, it’s about will, and Batman has the will that Superman doesn’t.”

Kai let out an annoyed huff, and crossed his arms. “...I mean, I guess it depends, Some of the comics portray Superman as the winner while in others Batman wins. The comic writers can’t make up their minds either...My favorite showdown between them was probably in...Justice League Origi...”

The way Kai trailed off at the end concerned Reeve, greatly. He looked shameful, like He made a grave mistake. Fidgeting with his shirt sleeves. Kai attempted an awkward smile, although it didn’t reach his eyes. “...But I mean...you’re probably not interested in me ranting about that, sorry...”

Reeve remembers seeing Kai do this before.

He’d speak about a topic he was passionate about, pour his entire soul into it, and then just...shut down, discarding the topic like some embarrassing photo he didn’t want people to see.

“...Hey...” Reeve spoke up. It was now or never. “...Are you sure you’re ok?”

Kai jumped at the question, and attempted to wave Reeve’s concern away with a forced giggle. “Oh, I’m fine! I just don’t want to annoy you! Let’s change the subject-”

“Don’t lie to me Kai.” Reeve growled out, silencing Kai’s excuse. “You’ve been acting weird this entire month. You haven’t been yourself at all. Everyone is worried about you.”

What Reeve didn’t expect was for Kai’s expression to harden, and for him to glare daggers at his lap. “...So that’s why you’re here huh...” He accused lowly. “Tell our friends who sent you here that I’m fine. Ok? There’s nothing wrong.”

“...Kai.” Reeve began his explanation. He was confused that Kai would assume he was doing this because he had no choice. “I volunteered to come over. I’m not doing this against my will-”

“Bullshit!” Kai stood up from his armchair, tears threatening to escape his eyes as he breathed heavily. ““I want to get to know you better” My ass! Why would you...” Kai trailed off for a moment, the tears spilling down his cheeks. “...Why would you want to hang out with me? The worthless fifth wheel of this group...why would...you want to be friends with someone like me.”

Muffled sobs filled the room as Kai hid his face into his hands and attempted to control his crying. It took a while for Reeve to process everything Kai said, but before long he had stood up from his armchair and walked towards Kai,hesitantly gripping his arms. Kai flinched at first, but didn’t struggle.

“...I...” Kai sobbed out in his hands. “...I’ve been trying to be more likeable...be less annoying for you all-”

“Is that what this is all about?” Reeve questioned softly. Kai nodded hesitantly. “...Kai...We don’t think you’re annoying at all. Everything about you is distinctly you. We love those parts about you...” Reeve, after a moment of reluctance, cupped Kai’s cheeks, and slowly coerced Kai to removed their hands from their face. “I mean, even I think you’re great...You’re quirks are charming.”

“...I-I thought...I thought you of all people hated me...” Kai strained out, small hiccups erupting from his throat as his snot filled face was shown for Reeve to see. “I think you’re really cool, you know that? You’re calm, and collected, and you read the mood well. You never make a fool of yourself. I was...never a worthy replacement for you, and now that you’re back...” Kai jerked his head away, and hid it from Reeve’s view as it faced the ground. “Adam and Mira...don’t need me anymore...I mean...that’s why they picked me to be in their team. There was an opening, and I was available...”

Reeve's heart tightened at Kai’s comment, as they stared intently at the floor, avoiding his gaze. He was partially responsible for Kai’s current insecurities. He couldn’t help but wonder, if he had tried to get to know Kai better earlier on, would this situation have happened in the first place?

His stern expression faltered, and was replaced with a guilty frown. “...Kai...I....hey, look at me.” He once more had to lift their head up, which they resisted at first, but eventually complied, and stared directly at Reeve, threatening to crumble at the sincere gaze they were met with.

“Listen...whoever told you these things, you need to stop listening to them right now.” Reeve commanded, almost begged. “You are not just my replacement. You were never that. If Mira and Adam secretly think so, then fuck them. You are you, and you aren’t going to make yourself happy by changing your very core, the thing that makes you you, just to please others. That happiness is only going to come if you love yourself, good and bad.”

The advice just came flowing through him. To him it was simple logic, and it wasn’t sure if it would even help, but according to Kai’s absolutely shocked expression. He supposed he at the very least reached Kai’s heart with those words.

“...Love myself?” Kai nearly whispered. Reeve was quick to nod a yes.

“...How?”

It was a question that left Reeve stuck in place for a good minute, as he removed his hands from Kai’s body, and massaged his temples for inspiration, for an idea that would answer Kai’s question.

Eventually though, that idea came in a flash, and he snapped his fingers, gripping Kai’s hand, much to their surprise. “Not that I’m an expert on this stuff but, let’s try something real quick. I’ll drive you there.”

“...Reeve, I don’t know about this...” Kai muttered as he stood on the thick railing of a bridge, which created a path over a chest deep river.

Reeve sat close by, on the same railing, his phone in hand. “...Listen, just, you know those pep-talks people give themselves while staring at a mirror?” Kai was quick to nod a yes, and Reeve continued. “...I want to you shout about all your good qualities on this bridge.”

“W-what!?” Kai shrieked out, earning the attention of the few passersby on the bridge. “T-there are people here Reeve I-I can’t...o-oh god they’re staring-”

“Sometimes you have to push yourself to extremes. The point of this is to teach you how to not give a fuck about what other people think about you.”

“B-but what do I say? I...don’t have anything nice to say about myself.”

“...Hey...just look at me for a minute...” And Kai did so, finding himself somewhat relaxed by Reeve’s chill energy. “Just shout the first good thing that comes to mind. Don’t try to deconstruct, just say it first thing...you got this.”

Kai, which shaking legs, slowly nodded, slowly breathed in, and shut his eyes tight. “...I have pretty hair!”

The red-head felt a brief moment of relief, before he peaked an eye open, beholding the groups of eyes that stared intently at him, judging his overly loud self-compliment. Immediately he crouched down, hiding his face, but felt a warm, firm hand on his shoulder.

Turning his head to the side a bit, he saw Reeve, still in that same spot, his eyes non-judging. “...The world didn’t end, did it?”

Kai looked around the bridge once more, and everyone went on with their lives. He wasn’t torn apart for his supposed sin. The world didn’t explode. He was fine.

Most importantly, Reeve himself didn’t think of him any less. “You’re not wrong you know.” Reeve reassured, focusing his attention on his phone once more. “Auburn’s a pretty color.”

On Reeve’s phone, was a text he had recently sent to Mira, along with a few replies.

Reeve: Had a talk with Kai, but he aint goin to come, we talkin things out, he’ll be fine

Mira: I’m super glad he’s doing better, but PLEASE CONVINCE HIM TO COME AND PICK A MOVIE!?!

Mira: VANESSA PICKED SPICE WORLD JUST FOR THE KICKS!!! PLEASE HELP US!?!

“H-hey!” Kai gained Reeve’s attention from his phone, and he raised an eyebrow, ready to hear what Kai had to say.

“...You can help out you know!” They said with a bright blush, late evening sky glowing his face. “...C-could you...compliment me more? Please?”

Reeve in that moment was completely consumed in the moment, studying each feature of the boys face.

“...You’re pretty cute, you know that?”

His complement escaped his throat without a single breath, or thought. Kai’s eye’s widened and sparkled at the sentence he quickly regretted saying out loud.

...But then Kai smiled...like...truly smiled. Letting out the most charming laugh he had ever heard. When he saw how happy they were, he instantly ceased his regret.

“I-I can’t! Y-you can’t be serious!” Kai accused in near tears, wiping his eyes and tilting his head ever so slightly. “Y-you’re joking right? Me? Cute? No way-”

“Dude I know plenty of friends who would die for the opportunity to have a cup of coffee with you.” Reeve justified his statement, a wide smirk on his face as he elbowed Kai. “Remember what this is about man. You heard me say it! Now you go say it to the world. Stand up already!”

Kai nodded, and quickly stood straight up. “I’m absolutely adorable!” He said without hesitation. Slowly opening his eyes, they sparkled with excitement, and he let out a soft giggle.

Reeve’s phone dinged, signaling another text from Mira, but Reeve ignored it. He shoved the phone in his pocket as he admired the boy before him.

You really are...

You’re amazing just the way you are...

[theculturedmarxist]

Yves here. Reader IM Doc, an internal medicine practitioner of 30 years, trained and worked in one of the top teaching hospitals in the US for most of his career before moving to a rural hospital in an affluent pocket of Flyover. He has been giving commentary from the front lines of the pandemic. Along with current and former colleagues, he is troubled by the PR-flier-level information presented to the public about the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, at least prior to the release of an article in the New England Journal of Medicine on the Pfizer vaccine: Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine. However, he did not find the study to be reassuring. He has taken the trouble of writing up his reservations after discussing the article with his group of nine physicians that meets regularly to sanity check concerns and discuss the impact that articles will have on their practices.

By IM Doc, a internal medicine doctor working in a rural hospital in the heartlands

Right off the bat – I am as weary and concerned about this pandemic as anyone. What my little rural area has been through in the past three weeks or so has been nothing short of harrowing. This virus has the ability to render patients about as sick as I have ever seen in my life, while leaving more than half the population with minimal if any symptoms. The patients who are sick are often very sick. And instead of slow and steady improvement like we normally experience, most of these patients are assigned to a long and hard slog. Multiple complications arise. This leads to very diminished throughput in the hospital. The patients literally stack up and we have nowhere to put the new ones coming in who themselves will be there for days or weeks. On top of that are the constant donning and doffing of PPE and intense emotional experiences for the staff, who are themselves becoming patients or in this small town have grandma or Aunt Gertrude as a patient.

To put it bluntly, I want this pandemic over. And now. But I do not want an equal or even worse problem added onto the tragedy. And that is my greatest fear right now. And medical history has demonstrated conclusively over and over again: brash, poorly-thought-out, emotion-laden decisions regarding interventions in a time of crisis can exponentially increase the scale of pain and lead to even worse disasters.

I am not an anti-vaxxer. I have given tens of thousands of safe and tested vaccines over my lifetime. I am very familiar with side effects and safety problems associated with all of them. That is why I can administer them with confidence. I am also an optimist, so all of the cautions I discuss below are the result of experience and the information made public about the Pfizer vaccine, not a temperamental predisposition to see the glass as half empty.

I know this piece is long, but I wanted to completely dissect the landmark New England Journal of Medicine (from now on NEJM) publication of the first Pfizer vaccine paper. I am replicating the method of my mentor in Internal Medicine, a tall figure in 20th Century medicine. He was an internationally recognized authority and his name is on one of the foundational textbooks in his specialty. He was a master and he taught me very well, including the fundamentals of scientific inquiry and philosophy, telltale signs of sloppy or dishonest work, the order in which you should dissect someone’s work, and the statistics involved.

When I have a new medical student doing rotations with me, I give them a collection of reading. At the very top is Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption from the New York Review of Books in 2009 by Marcia Angell, MD. She was the editor-in-chief of the NEJM, the very journal that published this Pfizer vaccine paper.

Dr. Angell’s article is the Cliffs Notes version of much longer discussions she had about corruption, corporatism, managerialism, profiteering, greed, and deception in in the medical profession. Patient care and patient concerns and indeed patient lives in her mind have been absolutely overcome by all of these other things. It is a landmark paper, and should be read by anyone who is going to interact with the medical community, because alas, this is the way it is now. I view this paper the exact same way I view Eisenhower’s speech about the military industrial complex. What she said is exactly true, and has only become orders of magnitude worse since 2009.

And now the paper.

Unfortunately, this study from Pfizer in the latest NEJM, and indeed this whole vaccine rollout, are case studies in the pathology Agnell described. There are more red flags in this paper and related events than present on any May Day in downtown Beijing. Yet all anyone hears from our media, our medical elites, and our politicians are loud hosannas and complete unquestioning acceptance of this new technique. And lately, ridicule and spite for anyone who dares to raise questions.

I have learned over thirty years as a primary care provider that Big Pharma deserves nothing from me but complete and total skepticism and the assumption that anything they put forth is pure deception until proven otherwise. Why so harsh? Well, to put it bluntly, Big Pharma has covered my psyche with 30 years of scars:

• As a very young doctor, I treated an extraordinary middle-aged woman who had contracted polio as a toddler from a poorly tested polio vaccine rolled out in an “emergency.” Tens of thousands of American kids shared her fate1 • The eight patients I took care of until they died from congestive heart failure that had been induced by a diabetes drug called Actos. The drug company knew full well heart failure was a risk during their trials. When it became obvious after the rollout, they did everything they could to obfuscate. Actos now carries a black box warning about increased risk of heart failure • The three women who I took care of who had been made widows as their husbands died of completely unexpected heart attacks while on Vioxx. I have no proof the Vioxx did this. But when Vioxx was finally removed from the market, the mortality rate in the US fell that year by a measurable amount, inconsistent with recent trends and forecasts. Merck knew from their trials that Vioxx had a significant risk of cardiovascular events and stroke, and did absolutely nothing to relay that danger in any way. Worse, they did everything they could to muddle information and evade responsibility once the truth started to come out • The dozens upon dozens of twenty and thirty-something patients who have been rendered emotional and spiritual zombies by the SSRIs, antipsychotics and amphetamines they have been taking since childhood. Their brain never learned what emotions were, much less how to process them and we are left with empty husks where people never developed. The SSRIs and antipsychotics were NEVER approved for anyone under 18. EVER. While there are some validated uses for stimulants in children, they are obviously overprescribed, as confirmed by long-standing media reports of their routine use as a study/performance aid. It is all about the lucre. • The hundreds and hundreds of 40-60 year olds who have been hollowed out from the legal prescribing of opioids. All the while the docs were resisting this assault, the drug companies and the paid-off academics and medical elites were changing the rules to make physicians who did not treat any pain at all with opiates into evil Satan-worshippers. And they paid for media appearances to drive across the point: OPIATES ARE GOOD. WE HAVE MADE THEM SO YOU CANNOT GET ADDICTED. And here we are now with entire states taking more opioids than in the waning days of the Chinese Empire, and we all know how that story ended. All this misery so a family of billionaires can laugh its way to the bank.

I carry all these people and more with me daily. I would not be doing a service to their memory if I allowed myself to be duped into writing another blind prescription that was going to add yet another scar.

I will dissect the important parts of this paper exactly as my mentor described above taught me. He performed years of seminal research. He was a nationally-known expert in his field.

In medicine, especially in top-tier journals like NEJM, landmark papers are always accompanied by an editorial. These editorials are written by a national expert who almost always has “peer-reviewed” the source material as well. This is how the reader knows that an expert in the field has looked over the source material and that it supports the conclusions in the paper. My mentor did this all the time. The binders all over his office were the actual underlying data that he scrutinized to confirm the findings. There is no way on earth to print and publish the voluminous source material. Editorial review was one sure way all to assure that someone independent, with appropriate experience, confirmed the findings. This was onerous work, but he and thousands of others did it because this is the very essence of science. He was scrupulous in his editorials about findings, problems, and conclusions. It was after all his reputation as well.

My first lesson from him: READ THE EDITORIAL FIRST. It gets the problems in your head before you read the statistics and methods, etc. in the actual paper. It gives you the context of the study in history. It often includes a vigorous discussion of why the study is important.

Admittedly, over the past generation, as the corporatism and dollar-counting has taken over my profession and its ethics, this function of editorial authoring has become at times increasingly bizarre and too-obviously predisposed to conclude with glad tidings of joy, especially if pharmaceuticals are involved.

So I read the editorial first. You can find it on the NEJM webpage, in the top right corner.

And, amazingly, it is basically a recitation of the same whiz-bang Pfizer puffery that we have all been reading for the past few weeks. There really is not much new. Furthermore, it is filled with words like “triumph” and “dramatic success”. Those accolades have yet to be earned. This vaccine has not yet even been released. Surely, “triumph” is a bit premature. Those words would NEVER have been used by my mentor or similar researchers in his generation. They would have been focused on the good, the bad and the ugly. A generation ago, editorial reviewers saw their job as informing the reader and making certain the clinicians that were reading knew of any limitations or problems.

In quite frankly unprecedented fashion, two different events that were carefully reported occurred almost simultaneously with the release of both the paper and the editorial. Both of these events contradict and contravene data and conclusions reported in both the paper and the editorial and I believe they deserve immediate attention. They both belie the assertions of the editorial writers that [emphasis mine] “the (safety) pattern appears to be similar to that of other viral vaccines and does not arouse specific concern”.

First, a critical issue for any clinician is “exclusion criteria”. This refers in general to groups of subjects that were not allowed into the trial prima facie. Common examples would include over 70, patients on chemotherapy and other immunosuppressed patients, children, diabetics, etc.. This issue is important because I do not want to give my patient this vaccine (available apparently next week) to any patient that is in an excluded group. Those patients really ought to wait until more information is available – FOR THEIR OWN SAFETY. And not to mention, exclusion criteria exist because the subjects in them are usually considered more vulnerable to mayhem than average subjects. From my reading of this paper, and the accompanying editorial, one would assume there were no exclusion criteria. They certainly are never mentioned.

I reiterate, the paper is silent on this question of exclusion criteria, as is the editorial. Had my mentor seen something like “exclusion criteria” in the source material, and realized that it was not in the final paper, he would have absolutely included a notice in his editorial. This would have been after calling the principal investigator and directly questioning why there was no mention in the original paper. Patient safety should be foremost on everyone’s mind at all times in clinical research and its presentation to practitioners.

And now we know there were exclusion criteria, not because of anything Pfizer, the investigators, or the NEJM did but because of stunning news out of the UK. UPDATE: I will address this at greater length, but an alert reader did find the study protocol, which were not referenced in any way that any of the nine members in my review group could find, nor were they mentioned in the text of paper or editorial, as one would expect for a medication intended for the public at large. I apologize for the oversight, but this information was not easy to find from the article, not mentioned or linked to from the text of the article, the text of the editorial, in the “Figures/Media,” or in a supplemental document.

In the UK on day 1 of the rollout, two nurses with severe allergies experienced anaphylaxis, a life-threatening reaction to this vaccine. Only after world-wide coverage did Pfizer admit that there was an exclusion criterion for severe allergies in their study.

Ummm, Pfizer, since we are now getting ready to give this to possibly millions of people in the next few weeks – ARE THERE ANY OTHER EXCLUSION CRITERIA? Should I, as a physician, specifically not be giving this to patients with conditions that you have excluded?

Furthermore, NEJM, since you published this trial, have you bothered to at least put a correction on this trial on your website that it should NOT be given to people with severe allergies? I certainly see nothing like this.

Should someone from the NEJM or the FDA be all over Pfizer to ascertain the existence of other exclusion groups so we do not accidentally harm or kill someone over the next two weeks?

Unfortunately, Americans, you have your answer from the FDA about severe allergic reactions right from a press conference in which Dr. Peter Marks, the director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research is quoted as saying:

Even people who’ve had a severe allergic reaction to food or to something in the environment in the past should be OK to get the shot….1.6% of the population has had a severe allergic reaction to a food or something in the environment. We would really not like to have that many people not be able to receive the vaccine.

Are you serious? Dr. Marks, have you ever seen an anaphylactic reaction? I live in a very rural area. Many patients live 30 minutes or more from the hospital. What if one of them had an anaphylactic reaction to this vaccine hours after administration, had no epi-pen and had to travel a half hour to get to the nearest hospital? There is a very high likelihood that a good outcome would not occur. Sometimes, as a physician, I simply cannot believe what I am hearing out of the mouths of our so-called medical leaders.

To the writers of the editorial accompanying this research:

Did you actually look at the source material? The existence of at least one exclusion criterion for severe allergic reactions had to be in there somewhere. If you did look at the source material, are there others that the physicians of America need to know about? If they were not in the source material, after the events in the UK, has anyone bothered to follow up with Pfizer about this omission?

Does anyone at NEJM or Pfizer or FDA plan to fully inform the physicians of America? Does ANYONE at NEJM or Pfizer or FDA care about patient safety?

Now for the second story that got my attention this week, an article from JAMA Internal Medicine, a subsidiary of JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association.

JAMA, like NEJM, is one of America’s landmark medical journals. I will assure you that JAMA is not the National Enquirer. This piece was written by a nursing researcher. It is very likely she is well-versed in all aspects of American medical research.

In her story, she details her recruitment and her experience in the Pfizer COVID trial, the same one we are dissecting here. She describes in detail her experience with the vaccine and the fact that she is concerned that many patients are likely going to feel very sick after the injection. She wrote up her own reactions, and included a very troubling one. About 15 hours after her second injection, she developed a fever of 104.9. She explained that she called her reaction to the Research Nurse promptly the next morning. The recounted the response of the Research Nurse to her information as “A lot of people have reactions after the second injection. Keep monitoring your symptoms and call us if anything changes.”

Thankfully, it appears this nurse has completely recovered. From the best I can tell, this encounter occurred in late August and early September, putting it well within the trial’s recruitment of arms as detailed in the paper.

This JAMA article impinges directly on Figure 2 on page 7 of the paper, a graphic that that lays out all the major side effects during in the trial.

It is very important to note that based on the trial’s own data, conveniently laid out on the very top of the figure in green, blue, orange and red, a temperature of 104.9F or 40.5 C is described as a Grade 4 event. The definition of a Grade 4 event is anything that is life-threatening or disabling. A fever of 104.9 can have grave consequences for any adult and is absolutely a Grade 4 event.

By law, a grade 4 event must immediately be reported to the FDA, and to the Institutional Review Board (the entity charged with overseeing the safety of the subjects) and to the original investigators. THERE IS NO EXCEPTION. One would think that would also be reported in the research paper to at least alert clinicians to be on the lookout.

I could not find any mention of this event in the text of the paper. NOT ONE. Let’s take a closer look at Figure 2 on page 7 where adverse events are reported in a table form. Please note: this is a very busy image, and in the browser version, with very low resolution graphics that are profoundly difficult to read (they are a bit clearer if you download the PDF). This is a time-tested pharmaceutical company tactic to obscure findings that they do not want you to see. My mentor warned me about ruses like these years ago, and finding one raises the possibility that deception is in play.

The area for the reporting of this Grade 4 reaction would be on the 2nd row down at the left of the set called B, titled systemic events and use of medication. The area of concern would be where the graph is marked with the number 16. Do you see a red line there? It would be at the very top. I have blown this up 4 times on my computer and see no red there. I am left to assume that this Grade 4 “Life Threatening or Disabling” event that was clearly within the time parameters of this trial was not reported in this study.

To those who say that I am making way too much out of one patient with a severe fever, let’s do a little math. There are 37,706 participants in the “Main Safety Population” (from Table 1), of which 18.860 received the vaccine.2 Let us assume that this individual was the only one that had a GRADE 4 reaction. Let us also assume that the end goal is to vaccinate every American a total of 330,000,000 people. So if we extrapolate this 1 out of 18,860 into all 330,000,000 of us, it suggest that roughly 17,500 could have this kind of fever. Now assume a 70% vaccination rate, and you get that would be approximately 12,250. I hope you now understand that in clinical medicine related to trials like this – a whole lot of nothing can turn into a whole lot of something quickly when you extrapolate to the entire targeted group. Does anyone not think that the clinicians of America should be prepared for anything like this that may be coming?

A couple more questions for NEJM and the editorial writers:

Were you ever made aware that this Grade 4 reaction occurred? Now that we have a reliable report that it occurred, has there been any attempt to investigate?

Did the Research Nurse actually report this event? If not, was she just simply not trained or was there deliberate efforts to conceal such reactions? How many more reactions were reported anywhere this trial was conducted and that did not make it to the FDA, the IRB or possibly the investigators? Is that not a cause for concern?

As if this is not enough, there is so much more wrong with this editorial. Now we are going to talk about corruption.

I want to reiterate my concern that over the past generation, as my profession has lost its way, its medical journals have turned into cheering sections for Big Pharma rather than referees and safety monitors. We all should relish the great things medical science is doing, but we should be doing EVERYTHING we can to minimize injury and death. Too often our journals have become enablers of Big Pharma deceiving our physicians and the public. Unfortunately, this paper and its editorial look troublingly like a case study of this development.

To provide context, I looked over the last month of the NEJM, the issues from November 12, 19 and 26th and December 3rd. Based on having read the NEJM over the years, I believe these four weeks are representative.

During this period, there were 15 original articles published in the fields of Oncology, General Surgery, Infectious Disease, Endocrinology, Renal, Cardiology, Pulmonary and Ear Nose & Throat. Of these 15 articles, the editors thought that eight were important enough to have an editorial from an acknowledged expert. I have read every one of these studies and the editorials as I do every week. All eight in the past month were indeed by leading experts in the field of the underlying studies. They included a COVID vaccine overview reviewed by an leading figure in vaccinology, and two COVID papers about Plaquenil and other approaches discussed by top infectious disease experts.

It was unlikely that those papers were going to get national media attention. All medical stuff.

But here we have our Pfizer vaccine paper. We have 300,000 fatalities in the USA alone and millions of cases. We have whacked our economy, we are in the depths of a national emergency. And we have a paper, the first, that may offer a glimpse of hope. Certainly this would be a landmark paper, and certainly it was treated in that manner? Right?

One would think that the doctors of America would have this study explained to them by a world-known vaccinologist? NOPE…..Maybe a virologist? NOPE….. Maybe a leading government official? Dr. Fauci? Dr. Birx? Dr. Osterholm? NOPE…..Maybe an expert in coronaviruses? NOPE…

We get the Pfizer ad glossy editorial treatment from Eric Rubin MD, the editor-in-chief of the NEJM. And Dr, Longo, an associate editor. Dr. Longo is an oncologist. Dr. Rubin is at least a recognized infectious disease doctor, but his specialty based on my Google search is mycobacterium, not virology. Again, one would normally anticipate for a paper of this importance, the editorial would be from someone with directly on point expertise.

Why would this fact been important to my mentor? (and I had the privilege of hearing him trash a paper in an open forum about a very similar issue, a paper introducing a drug to the world that later was the disaster of the decade, Vioxx) Why is this important to me and all the other physicians in my review group here in flyover country yesterday?

Because the choice of authorship of the editorial leads you to one of only several conclusions:

• Pfizer would not release the source data because of proprietary corporate concerns and no self-respecting expert would review without it • Pfizer knew there are problems and did not want anyone with expertise to find out and publicize them • The editors could not find a real expert willing to put their name on a discussion • Drs. Rubin and Longo are on some kind of journey to Vanity Fair and wanted their names on an “article for the ages” • This is a rush job, and no one had time to do anything properly, and so we just threw it all together in a flash

Readers, pick your poison. If anyone can think of a sound reason, please let me know. I am all ears.

But let’s open up the can of worms a bit more. Pfizer supports NEJM. Just a brief swipe through of recent editions yielded several Pfizer ads. A Pfizer ad appeared on my NEJM website this AM. I do not know how much they pay in advertising but appears to be quite a bit.

Americans, have we devolved so far in our grift that it is now appropriate for the EDITOR-IN-CHIEF of our landmark medical journal to be personally authoring “rah rah” editorials about a product of a client that supports his journal with ad dollars? And he has the gall to not present this conflict on his disclosure form? Really? Am I the only one worried about this type of thing?

Now we travel from the can of worms to the sewer. And this impacts every single one of us. I want you to Google the names of the people on the FDA committee that voted 17-4-1 two days ago to proceed with the Emergency Use Declaration. Go ahead – Google it. On that list, you will find the name Eric Rubin, MD. Why yes indeed, that is the very same Eric Rubin MD who wrote this editorial. Who is the Editor-in-Chief of the NEJM. A publication that certainly takes ad dollars from Pfizer. And he was one of the 17 to vote for the Pfizer product to be immediately used in an emergency fashion. Oh yes, oh yes he was.

Am I the only one who can recognize that Pfizer and other pharma companies may have some influence on Dr. Rubin thanks continued support of his employer, the NEJM? Am I the only one concerned that Dr. Rubin’s “rah rah” editorial may have been influenced by Pfizer? Is anyone else troubled that the Editor-in-Chief of the NEJM, supported by Big Pharma advertising dollars, is sitting on an FDA board to decide the fate of any pharmaceutical product? Is this not the very definition of corruption? Or at least a severe conflict of interest? I strongly suspect that a thorough evaluation of members of that committee will reveal other problems. As my grandmother always used to say, “There is never just one roach under a refrigerator.”

I looked in vain all day today for media discussions of conflicts of interest with Dr. Rubin or anyone else in a position of authority. I found nothing.

What I did find was the Boston NPR affiliate WBUR discussing Dr. Rubin’s Yes vote. You can listen yourself:

This interview left me much more concerned about Dr. Rubin’s role and what exactly he read in the raw data from Pfizer. In this interview, he admits that he as an FDA advisory member has seen no data from the Moderna trial coming up for a vote this week:

These two vaccines are fairly similar to one another, so I am hoping the data will look good, but we haven’t seen the data yet, so I reserve judgement.

Excuse me, but should not the members already have the data and be mulling over it to ask intelligent questions?

These statements left me more worried about the issues I have already brought up with the Pfizer vaccine:

We don’t know if there are particular groups that should or should not get the vaccine…We do not know what will happen to safety over the longer term.

When finally asked specifically about the UK allergic reactions and if they came up in the FDA meeting (emphasis mine):

It did come up and this was a bit of a surprise because in the trial, that trial was limited to specific kinds of participants, there were apparently no incidents like that, nevertheless this suggests it is something we are going to have to look out for.

There is absolutely not a word in the published data to suggest there was a limit to SPECIFIC PARTICIPANTS – what on earth is he talking about? Are there limited specific kinds of patients that we as physicians should be looking to vaccinate?

In a fine finish, toward the end of the interview Dr. Rubin states he is a bit relieved that low risk patients will be getting the vaccine later after we know more about the side effects with the first patients. I am really not trying to be a jerk – but are you kidding me? I thought this vaccine was a triumph with minimal side effects.

Dr. Rubin, kind sir, I really feel that you owe a clarification about your statements in the WBUR interview to the patients and caregivers of America. We are the ones with lives on the line.

First, I have the privilege of sitting on an Institutional Review Board (an independent entity that protects patient safety) and I know something about Grade 4 side effects. Just for 1 Grade 4 side effect in one subject, the accompanying documentation would often be a half a ream of paper. Because I agreed to do that job, it was my obligation to look through that documentation. That half a ream was for one side effect in one trial. Yet, you state unequivocally in this interview, that you, as a sitting member of the FDA committee that oversees the safety of the nation in this affair, have not seen any of the Moderna documentation for that upcoming meeting this week.

For readers to fully understand what I am saying, this Moderna documentation is going to be reams and reams of documents that need to be evaluated carefully to ask the right questions. And you have not yet studied this? For a meeting in just a few days? I find this deeply troubling. Your statements create the appearance the committee you are sitting on is nothing more than a rubber stamp for a decision that has already been made. This would be an absolute tragedy.

Second, Dr. Rubin, you in your position as the Editor-in-Chief of the NEJM and the editorial writer for this research, may be one of the few people on earth that have seen the original Pfizer research. Despite calling this a triumph, you state in the interview that you are relieved that younger people less likely to get the vaccine early so you will have time to wait to see if complications develop in the first patients. You have stated, despite your assertion in the editorial that the side effects were consistent with other vaccines, that “we don’t know if there are particular groups that should or should not get the vaccine”. Have you seen something in that “triumph” research that is concerning enough to you to make such statements? As a physician, I would really like a clarification on this statement, given that the shots are already rolling out today.

Now that we are past the editorial, a few words about the nuts and bolts of the paper.

I look for very specific red flags – usually making the data difficult to interpret. This study did not disappoint.

On page 5, in Table 1, the Demographic Description of the participants, go down to the AGE GROUP area. Note it is divided into only two cohorts 16-55 and >55. This is a real problem. My mentor said an honest paper should never deploy such a tactic.

You see, more than half of my patients are over 70. Why is this kind of obfuscation a real problem for my ability to trust the vaccine? Well, the intro papers to many pharmaceuticals that have gone down the drain in recent years have used this very same device. It is their way of hiding the fact that they did not put many older patients in the trial, certainly not representative of the population, and certainly not representative of who is seemingly going to get this vaccine in the first round. Do I know that 90% of the >55 group is actually between 55-58? I don’t. How hard would it be for them to do a breakdown in decades? 16-25 26-35 36-45 46-55 56-65 66-75 76-85? We have lots of computers in this country and the population breakdown is done this way on studies I read all the time. Why not do provide this information on a study that is this critically important, particularly one where elderly patients will be near the head of the line?

What are they trying to do here? Unfortunately, too often drugmakers resort to this practice to hide their failure to test their drug on the elderly to an appropriate or safe degree, knowing there would likely be lots of problems. Because of their past behavior, I ALWAYS assume this is true until proven otherwise and act accordingly with my elderly patients.

That is the world these companies have made for themselves.

Now for the tables on pages 6 and 7 about immediate side effects.

Just a brief look shows that local soreness and tenderness is very common, up to 75% with this vaccine. That is a bit high, but not that far out of range from my experience with other vaccines.

The tables on page 7 are the whoppers.

Headaches, fatigue, chills, muscle pain and joint pain appear to be very common, way more common than other vaccines I am used to, as in an order of magnitude higher. It is very clear from this table that about half the patients, especially the younger ones, are going to feel bad after this vaccine. That is extraordinary.

We are told nothing about how long these symptoms last or the amount of time at work lost. The “minimal side effects comparable with other viral vaccines” in the editorial and press releases is just not consistent at all with my experience of 30 years as a primary care physician. There was universal agreement with this assessment among my MD colleagues. They had great concern about this as a matter of fact: great concern that it will cause bad publicity and decrease administration and great concern that given this already high side effect profile, it may be much worse when it gets out to the public.

Given the fact that this virus is largely asymptomatic in more than half the people infected, what exactly are we doing here?

Furthermore, unlike other pharmaceutical papers that try to explain variances in symptoms like this, there is not a word offered about possible underlying causes of these outcomes.

The numbers of COVID cases in the placebo group vs the vaccine group have been widely publicized, from 162 cases in the placebo group down to 8 in the vaccine group, giving a relative reduction of 95%. It seemed to all of us in our review group that we do not have nearly enough patients to really make assessments. That is not a criticism. The researchers have done admirably in my opinion to get this many patients this quickly. That is still the problem: they are going to be using the first million patients or so in the general public to get a real gauge on numbers and side effects.

Another issue of grave concern to us all on Friday was the asymptomatic cases. The only subjects counted in the 162 and the 8 numbers above were patients with symptoms. Who knows how many in each cohort were asymptomatic.

This to me leads to the most important question of all, and it was again completely untouched….. How many asymptomatic patients are there? And how many who were vaccinated are still able to spread the virus? Not even an attempt to answer that question. This is critical, and is one of the ways a vaccine can backfire. If a vaccine does not provide sterilizing immunity, ie stop transmission, it is of limited use for disease control. It is great for the individual, but if they can remain without symptoms and still spread it all around it does not help from a public health standpoint.

I have described my concerns and red flags about this study. I would like to add one more thing. Pharmaceuticals that go bad rarely do so in the first few weeks or months. Rather, the adverse effects take months or years. It is a known unknown of not just vaccines but any kind of drug. Our pharma companies have become notorious for having inklings or indeed full knowledge that there is a problem early on, and saying nothing until many are maimed or killed. I will assume that this is the case in this class of drugs until proven otherwise. They are such deceivers I have no choice.

Due to sense of urgency my colleagues and Ifeel about this vaccine rollout, we had an ad hoc meeting of our Journal Club to discuss the NEJM article. Of the nine physicians at the meeting, three have already had very mild cases of COVID. Of the nine, only one is enthusiastic about these vaccines. I have a wait and see stance. I will not be taking it myself. I have too many scars, too many staring at me from the grave to take any other approach.

My patients’ feeeback on the COVID vaccine has been very different than the polls finding that 60% are ready to take it. About half my patients are in the professional/managerial classes and feature a higher level of the 0.1% than the US overall. They tend to be more blue. Most prefer to wait and thankful that health care workers were getting it first. The other half who are working class, more red, and they feel the whole thing is a hoax. They will not be getting the vaccine – likely ever.

The only enthusiasts I would call elderly Rachel Maddow fans. That really makes no sense to me at all since Operation Warp Speed was a Trump project and even Kamala Harris said she would not take a vaccine that Trump recommended.

I would say AT BEST 25% of my patients will be getting this vaccine shortly after being available. There is widespread skepticism that is not being acknowledged by our media. The pharmaceutical industry has worked tirelessly to earn every bit of that disrespect.

Please look at Dr. Angell’s seminal article from 2009. She predicted in her works, all of this and more. My profession has been captured by a cabal of corporatist MBA clones, rapacious and unethical pharmaceutical entities, and an academic elite addicted to credentialism and cronyism. They have over the years bought off and infiltrated all of our government health care regulating agencies and our public health system. And they are completely incestuous. I believe where we are now to be worse than Dr. Angell could have ever dreamed. Even more depressing, I see no way out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1 As a special homage to the polio patient described above, a truly exceptional woman, let me underscore that the disastrous rollout of the this polio vaccine came at a time similar to ours. Panic and malaise were in the air. The children of America and the world were being stricken with polio at an alarming rate. Dr. Alton Ochsner, a leading figure in medicine of the day, vaccinated both of his grandchildren in public in an attempt to bolster confidence in the vaccines. Within 8 days his grandson was dead of bulbar polio. All the celebrities and politicians lining up to take this vaccine on national TV should remember this tragedy. “Stupid human tricks” like this have no place in this kind of situation, and can backfire in unexpected ways. Unlike that era’s polio vaccine, there is no way on earth this vaccine can transmit COVID. However, there are those of us in the medical profession who treat the plan to make population-wide use of messenger RNA, which before these trials had been repeatedly investigated but never reached the human trial stage save in a small scale Zika vaccine study. This is no time for machismo. This is also no time for anything less than complete transparency on the part of everyone involved in the quest for safe and effective vaccines. To behave in any other way is an affront to patients like mine who have suffered and died in the past.

2 If you read the paper, you might well have wondered about that 18,860 number and even checked Table 1 to make sure it’s accurate (it is), since the third paragraph of the Abstract, under the headline “Results,” has very different figures:

A total of 43,548 participants underwent randomization, of whom 43,448 received injections: 21,720 with BNT162b2 and 21,728 with placebo.

So how did the researchers get from 21,720 injected with the vaccine to the 18,860 in the “Main Safety Population”? This sort of thing confirms the impression that this is a very incomplete or sloppy study. It is really not clear where the difference between the 37,706 and the 43,548, or for that matter, the 36,520 total subjects in the Tables 2 and 3 (Efficacy) come from. I used the 37,706 and hence the 18,860 that went with it from Table because it gave slightly smaller numbers than using the Table 2 and 3 figures, but they would be close to each other.

My concern here is the 6000ish discrepancy between the figures in the main text compared to the tables. Were they excluded? If so, why? I could not make heads or tails out of this, and accordingly kept it out of the body of this post. This kind of inconsistency really needs to be hashed out with the actual source data in hand, and should have been explained in the article, even if just in footnotes.

[i-choose-the-danger]

A Sensitive Experiment

Author note: I know, it’s been quite some time since I’ve written anything. Life got in the way for a bit. I’m back with new writing. :) This isn’t Trek-related. This fic is BBC Sherlock-related. I love that series dearly and I’ve been missing it. Hopefully y’all like this fic. <3

Summary: Molly Hooper is staying a few days at Baker Street. Sherlock is going through withdrawal from cigs and cases. John won’t let him go back into his addictions, so the consulting detective finds other ways to keep his brain active. 

______________________________________________________________

It had been unusually quiet at 221B Baker Street, despite having a third person spending the past two nights at the flat. Molly Hooper had mentioned a few days prior that an entire stretch of piping under her home needed to be replaced and it could take a few days as her kitchen floor needed to be completely dismantled to reach it. John wouldn't hear of letting Molly stay in some cheap hotel room and he offered for her to stay at Baker Street with them until everything was finished. The temporary changes in routines and the current lack of interesting cases were beginning to aggravate the consulting detective.  

Today was proving to be more difficult than expected for Sherlock. He had no cases. He had no cigarettes. He had no nicotine patches. John wouldn't let him anywhere near any other drug. Sherlock sat straight up in his chair by the fireplace. He would normally be pacing around the flat in his pajamas as it was only noon, but felt somewhat uncomfortable doing so with Molly being in the flat and opted for his usual slacks and a dress shirt. Compromising with himself, he also threw on his silk blue dressing gown as an added comfort. Sherlock's legs bounced absent-mindedly as his fingers rapidly tapped against the arms of his chair.

"John..."

"No."

"But I-"

"No."

"I need-"

"NO."

"Bored!"

"No. You've been off cigs for nearly three weeks now and you're doing well. You turned down the last six cases I showed you. You won't let me go get you more patches. You can sit here having a right strop and continue to suffer or you can take one of those cases." John was used having this conversation with Sherlock, but looked apologetically at Molly from the couch over the newspaper he was trying to read. "Sorry about that, he's not usually this bad," he whispered to her.

"He's usually worse," she muttered back.

"You know, I can hear you both," Sherlock grumbled, continuing to fidget in his chair.

Molly had brought some files from work to the flat to keep herself busy and out of the way. She'd even offered Sherlock a look at them to get his mind off needing a new case, but he waved them off. She placed the small pile of folders on the coffee table and walked around it to sit on the couch.

John excused himself and nudged past Molly on his way to the kitchen after standing from the couch, brushing his hand against her side. Molly twitched.

Sherlock's brows knitted as he looked Molly over. "Are you hurt?"

"Beg pardon?" She tensed at his very audible sigh.

"Are. You. Hurt," was his flat reply.

"Not that I know of?" Molly lowered herself to the couch, eying Sherlock cautiously.

"You flinched just now when John put his hand on your side to pass by. And last night you winced when I pushed by you on the staircase in the hallway." His tone was more matter-of-fact than concerned.

Molly tried to sink herself deeper against the back of the couch as two pairs of eyes turned their attention to her. She tensed as John reentered the room.

"You sure? You know you can tell us if something's wrong. Want me to have a look?" John offered.

"Sherlock's just jumpy because you haven't had a new case in days. I'm fine." Molly noticed Sherlock's eyes narrow at her as he took an all-too-familiar thinking position in his chair. "Really," she added, "I promise."

"Even from here, I can see that your pupils have dilated and your breathing has become labored. But the question remains... Why?" Sherlock leaned slightly forward in his chair, resting his elbows against his lap and tenting his fingers against his lips. "Why..." he repeated to himself.

Sherlock's breathing slowed. His expression became blank. The room dissolved around him until he was alone with his thoughts in his mind palace. Different interactions with Molly played in quick rotation through his thoughts. There were different moments in hospital hallways, brief flashes of discussions in the morgue, the last Christmas party in the flat... Wait. A flash of movement caught his mind's eye. Sherlock concentrated harder and pushed his focus through to something in the background of the Christmas party. Mrs. Hudson was fawning over Molly's hair, which was done up quite differently from her normal pulled-back style. A stray tendril had fallen loose and Mrs. Hudson reached up to tuck it back behind Molly's ear. As she did so, Sherlock noticed Molly flinch and huff out a short breath. There was a twitch so slight in her lips that anyone else would have missed it. Sherlock misinterpreted her reaction to him on the stairs as a wince. It was a smile. She laughed. But why would she laugh when I...

"Oh!" Sherlock snapped his eyes open and looked straight forward. He leaned back in his chair, crossing his right leg pointedly over his left and relaxing his arms. "I see. You're right."

"I, I am? Hmmph, of course I am." Molly eyed him curiously for a moment, and then felt her stomach drop when she noticed the brightness in his eyes usually reserved for the first moment of a new case for the consulting detective.

"Yes. You're not hurt. You're ticklish. The question is no longer why. It's where. Or more precisely, where else." Sherlock narrowed his eyes and fixed his gaze on Molly, studying her reaction and body language. "You've not protested my conclusion, so your silence tells me that my deduction is valid. We've already established that this particular susceptibility can be attributed to your sides, possibly around your ribs. I know it includes your neck. Hmm, that must be quite a bad spot then," Sherlock stated, noting how tightly Molly's shoulders hunched at merely a mention of her neck.

"John, he's gone mad. Please do something," Molly pleaded.

"Best not," Sherlock interjected. "I doubt very much that Mrs. Hudson would be happy with you making me choose to remedy my boredom by further riddling her walls with bullet holes, John."

Watson stared for a moment, pursing his lips at the thought of being blamed. He shrugged at Molly from the kitchen doorway. "Sorry. Wouldn't dream of upsetting Mrs. H. It's also much safer than having this one open fire like a lunatic on the defenseless wall, again," he replied. That comment gained him a cold glare from his flatmate.

"Now then..." Sherlock turned his attention back to Molly and studied her. She was rubbing her palms against the tops of the knees of her pants and fidgeting with the material. "The more people try to hide, the more they actually give away." Her knees were definitely a spot. Molly's upper arms were pressed tightly at her sides, protecting her ribs still. He'd already realized that area was sensitive, but it must be much more so than he noticed if she was still trying to cover herself there.

"Why don't I go out and get you some patches? Or food. Or something. Anything." Molly tried to keep as still as possible so Sherlock would stop trying to make deductions. The way he stared at her made her feel as if she'd eaten a dozen butterflies and they were viciously fluttering in her stomach. This was mostly because she was ridiculously ticklish and the thought of someone taking advantage of that trait gave her chills. However, she'd be lying if she said that it wasn't also because Sherlock had never paid so much attention to her before. She liked that much more than she was willing to admit. Without thinking, she started scraping the soles of her tennis shoes against each other.

"Hmm, seems like you have the most common spots. There might be one or two that you're hiding. Let's see what I got right, shall we?" Sherlock pushed himself into a standing position and took a step towards the couch.

"Wait, what? What're you doing? Stay over there. I mean it." Molly stood slowly, trying not to make sudden movements as Sherlock took another step towards her. The butterflies in her stomach flapped their wings with the force of a hurricane.

"Surely someone of your intelligence understands how the scientific method works, Molly. My hypotheses are meaningless if I do not test them out." He spidered the fingers of both of his hands in the air at the word 'test', smirking when Molly reacted to the movement by nearly folding in on herself with a giggle. "Oh dear. Pavlovian conditioning. You must be more sensitive than I thought if you react before I'm even near you."

Molly tried to scramble to the front door, or the hallway, or the kitchen... she wasn't sure where, but Sherlock's long legs had him blocking her path to safety in three short strides. Molly backed up to go around the right side of the coffee table, Sherlock countered her and went around to his left. John leaned against his armchair with his arms folded across his chest, amused at the scene before him. He didn't know what had gotten into Sherlock, but he wasn't about to interrupt it either.

Molly and Sherlock continued their delicate dance around the coffee table for another moment or so. Then in one fluid motion, Sherlock stepped onto the table and over it, holding out an arm to take Molly backwards onto the couch as he turned himself to land beside her. Molly let out a quiet squeak as her back hit into Sherlock's shoulder. She immediately tried to run but the long arm that circled her waist and arms was quicker.  

"Now, how to proceed... What do you think would be the most efficient way of testing, John?" The detective looked to John with his brows raised.

"Oh no. I'll have no part of this. I'm just a bystander. This bit of nonsense is between the two of you." In truth, John was curious to watch the scene unfold before him. He also did not want to stray too far in case things got out of hand. It was fascinating to see Sherlock acting like a normal human being and showing the tiniest hint of intimacy towards someone, but John wouldn't dare vocalize that thought for fear of sending him right back behind his protective walls.

"Hmm, I suppose I can start... here." Sherlock took the index finger of his free hand and lightly traced the side of Molly's neck, the corner of his mouth curling upwards when he heard a small squeal and his finger became clamped between her ear and shoulder. He bent the tip of his finger back and forth as much as he could where it was trapped.

"No no noho noho no." Molly tried to squeeze the offending finger between her ear and shoulder enough to stop it from brushing her neck. She summoned every ounce of will power she had to silence her giggles. The last thing she wanted to do was give that smug bastard any sense of satisfaction as he continued his 'experiment'. Molly shut her eyes and tensed every muscle she could control to block out the ticklish shivers that were shooting down her spine.

"I wonder. We know you're susceptible to a brushing touch here, but does it wield the same results elsewhere?" Sherlock asked. He slid his fingers across her side gently, causing her to let out another squeak and struggle in his hold. "Or would a more pressured touch do?"

The next sounds echoing through the flat were Molly's shriek and high-pitched giggles as the fingers of Sherlock's hand around her repeatedly scrunched against her right ribs. Molly let go of his captive finger and tried to turn her face away from him so he wouldn't see her laughing while her arms tried to wriggle free.

"Interesting. A lighter touch against your neck causes more of a response, yet a firmer touch here causes an even stronger reaction. It also seems to correlate with the varying size of known nerve clusters throughout the human body." Sherlock paused for a moment to regain his grip on a very squirmy Molly who was trying to escape the fingers that were now skittering her side. "Now where else do those clusters tend to be? I think another usual one is around here somewhere." Sherlock wrapped the middle finger and thumb of his free hand right above the joint of Molly's knee and gave it a few light squeezes.

"EEEK! Sherlohohohock!" Molly crossed her other leg over to knock his hand out of the way and only succeeded in giving Sherlock another knee joint to test. She squealed as he quickly let go of one kneecap and attacked the other. "John, hehehehelp!"

"You know what? I think I need tea. Anyone want tea? Right. I'm gonna make tea." John straightened up from his chair, nervously clearing his throat, and promptly strode to the kitchen as he avoided Molly's eyes. He turned his head back towards the couch and looked at his flatmate for a moment. "Don't kill her, Sherlock. I'm in no mood to bury a body today, even for you." The doctor disappeared into the kitchen to focus on making tea. He probably should have stopped the 'experiment', but he was honestly more content with Sherlock keeping himself occupied instead of stomping around the flat or stabbing knives into the mantlepiece or tearing the rooms apart looking for the cigarettes John had hidden from him.

"Jehehesus, Sherlock, it tihihihickles! Oh my God!" At this point, Molly was sure that this would kill her. Her cheeks were hurting from laughing so much. She would never admit this to anyone, but she was loving such a close and carefree interaction with Sherlock despite the fact that the man was tickling her completely senseless.

"Does it? I couldn't tell through all of this giggling and squirming around that you insist upon doing." He paused his movements for a moment to allow Molly to catch her breath before posing one last question. "Your ribs seem to be most vulnerable. But what happens if both sides are tested at once?" He let go of Molly and immediately attached his hands to her sides. His skilled violinist fingers strummed against her ribs as if her laughter was the most beautiful melody he had ever played. After a few seconds of testing different methods and varying pressures, he settled on spreading his fingers across Molly's upper ribs and spidering them in different patterns.

"AAAH! You're the worhurhurhurhurst!" Molly immediately melted into a curled-up heap with her head now resting against Sherlock's leg. She weakly swatted at one of his hands, unable to speak a word through her continued laughter. Thankfully, he understood that she had reached her limit. Molly felt his hands stop and let her go, even though the ticklish feelings continued to linger all over her skin. "Absolute. Worst," she whispered between gasping breaths.

"I agree. I'm usually much more thorough in my experiments. Definitely not at my best this afternoon, I'm afraid." Sherlock made the mistake of looking out the window momentarily and underestimating Molly's resolve...

John was just about to grab the boiled water from the stove when his ears heard a most inhuman noise followed by what sounded to him like a low rumbling giggle. There was no way either of those sounds could have come from Molly. John opened his mouth to call out to the others when he heard it again, this time more stifled. Curiosity getting the better of him, John slowly crept to the doorway and glanced at the couch. His jaw hung in disbelief to what he was witnessing. Sherlock was on his side, facing the backside of the couch and burying his face deep into the cushions. Molly was leaning against him with her hands underneath his dressing gown while trying to avoid all of his flailing limbs. Sherlock kept letting out muffled sounds into the couch, refusing to speak.

"Well, what do we have going on here?" John mused. At first, it looked as if John had walked in on something that should definitely be a private moment... until he distinctly heard a strangled giggle-snort coming from the face that was buried in the couch cushion.

"I'm taking recompense for every single time he's been a complete arse!" Molly told him, never taking her concentrated stare off of Sherlock as her fingers continued their assault against his ribs.

"Oh. So you'll be a while then, I imagine. Yeah?" John couldn't help the smile that slowly crept across his features as Sherlock growled at his joke.

"John, this is no time f--MOLLY! Controhol yourself! Stop ihihi--" Sherlock slammed his lips together in desperation to prevent himself from laughing. He knew that John would never let him live it down if he'd let Molly completely break his concentration over something so childish.

"Oh my God..." John whispered with a chuckle. He was nearly beside himself with an almost embarrassing joy at Sherlock showing signs of anything that would expose him as a vulnerable human being and not the cold unfeeling sociopath Sherlock always claimed to be to him. Now that he thought of it, he couldn't remember ever hearing Sherlock really laugh... unless it was at John's expense.

John took note of Sherlock's waving hands and how he was trying to restrain himself from outright attacking Molly. His movements were just verging on frantic. John stepped closer to the couch and observed the scene. Molly seemed to hold her own, fully determined to break the man curled up on the corner of the couch beside her. She pinched, spidered, poked, and prodded her fingers anywhere she could reach across Sherlock's torso. She knew how he felt about physical contact, but after what she had just endured at his hands, there was no way she would be denied full reciprocation. Sherlock on the other hand was simultaneously swatting at Molly's hands, clamping his arms down at his sides, and keeping his face buried into the couch while only bringing his head up every so often to take a breath. John noticed the movements and wrestled for a moment with thoughts on involving himself in the scuffle. He stood well enough out of Sherlock's line of sight and waved his arms at Molly to gain her attention. Once her eyes met his, John clamped his own arms down and then pointed under them. The gleam he saw in Molly's eyes was almost evil.

"Why are you protecting under your arms, Sherlock? One might think you don't want me to get you there. Let's find out." Molly slid her hands into the hollows under his arms, and the result was even better than either she or John expected.

That was the moment that Sherlock's resolve had started to crumble. He would deny it until the day he died, but he outright shrieked into the couch before biting down on both of his lips in a last ditch effort to keep himself from laughing. He twisted his upper body desperately to counter the unbearably ticklish shocks that Molly's fingers were sending under his arms as he clung on to his last shred of dignity. His shoulders were shaking from the laughter he was holding back. Unable to concentrate, his arms became useless as protection because he could no longer control his movements. Short baritone huffs of laughter bubbled in his throat, fighting to break free. Sherlock shook his head and growled to cover the sound.

"You know you're only making this worse for yourself, being a stubborn little git," John told him. He knew that involving himself at this point would be asking for a whole new world of trouble from Sherlock, but figured that if he could survive actual war, then he could survive the wrath of his flatmate. "Just get it over with and let it out. You know you deserve it after wrecking poor Molly like that." John laughed as the near-exhausted man on the couch gathered enough strength to send him a death-glare with silvery eyes peering out from a now matted mess of curls.

"Piss off, John," were the only words Sherlock spat out quickly before clenching his jaw closed again. Sherlock slowly opened one tightly-shut eye when Molly's fingers suddenly stilled against his underarms. Both of his eyes then widened in panic as he felt another pair of hands wrap around his wrists and pull them above his head. Even though John's face was upside-down above him, he could make out what he took to be a menacing grin. He snapped his attention back in front of him as Molly repositioned herself to pin his lower body on the couch. "Alright, you've both had your laughs now. You can let go, and I'll forgive you and forget this ever happened." Sherlock tried to yank his arms back down and found that John's grip on them was far too tight to be a joke. He attempted to move his legs and realized he was firmly pinned down by the weight Molly was leaning against him. He had never begged for anything in his life, but Sherlock suddenly found himself contemplating such an action.

"Oh no, the problem is that you haven't had your laughs yet. I think we might be able to remedy that now," Molly told him. She hovered her hands above Sherlock's chest and flexed her fingers, grinning as she noticed Sherlock's mouth momentarily quiver into a panicked smile and hold back a laugh. "Look at that, a Pavlovian response... Now who's over-sensitive?"

The second Molly's fingers connected with his ribs, Sherlock lost all composure and laughed freely. The sounds ranged from baritone barks to squawks to giggles that traveled between three different octaves.

"Let gohohoho of meheeheehee! I ca-ha-ha-han't- MOLLY NO!" Sherlock's words were drowned out as his laughter turned delirious. With his wrists still held down, he tried to bury his face into one of his arms.

"Molly..." John looked from Sherlock's face down to Molly and saw that she had moved her hands to taser into the spaces between his hips and lower ribs. "You might want to ease up a bit. That seems to be his worst spot so far."

"You know your lunch had that funny taste to it yesterday because he put that open jar of decaying lung tissue next to it in the fridge, right?" Molly stated nonchalantly, never slowing in her torture of the detective's ribs.

"He what?! You absolute cock! That does it." John threw caution to the wind and pulled Sherlock's thin wrists into one hand. Despite his victim's distressed struggles, John started digging the fingers of his other hand into any ticklish spot he could reach. Realizing that Sherlock was now too weak to even fight back, John let go of his wrists completely and spidered his fingers into both sides of his upper ribs. Molly continued scratching above his hips. At this point, Sherlock felt more embarrassed at his lack of control and chose to focus on covering his face completely with his arms. "For someone as smart as you, that's not a smart way to protect yourself now, is it?" John took the opportunity and went back to concentrating under Sherlock's arms.

"AHAHAHAHA! Dahahahamn it, John!" Sherlock curled in on himself and tried to block the four hands that were coming at him from all angles. He continued to giggle, laugh, snort, and squeal. Molly drilled her thumbs right above his hip bones, causing him to buck and arch his back. The sound that came out of his mouth was a mix of a laugh, a scream, and a sound one might hear if they stepped on a cat's tail. "I can't! No mohohohore! Ahahahaha enough! Eheeheeheenough!"

Once Sherlock's laughter started to become silent, John backed off and motioned to Molly to do the same. They pulled their hands away and put enough distance between their bodies and his to allow him to calm down. Sherlock laid his head back over the armrest of the couch. One of his arms dropped behind his head and hung off the armrest as his other simultaneously slipped off of his face and slid down to brush across the floor. His hands were shaking as his nerves began to relax. His usually pale complexion was now dusted a dark rose and glistening with sweat, his eyes partially covered by the curly hair matted across his forehead. Sherlock tried to speak, but he was still giggling and heaving breaths as his lungs fought for much-needed oxygen. His white dress shirt was damp and wrinkled in places, his dressing gown half-twisted around his upper body.

"Aww, look at him. He's completely ruined, John. Do you think we were too rough on him?" Sherlock was staring at Molly through half-open eyes, silently pulling for sympathy.

"Don't let those fake puppy eyes fool you. He tickled you to absolute pieces. And I ate soup apparently flavored by bloody cadaver bits! I'd say he deserves another round or two." At that statement, the body sprawled on the couch twitched at the thought. John rolled his eyes and held his hands up in a surrendering pose. "Don't worry. Unlike you, neither of us are that cruel. Maybe if you stop acting like such an arse, we won't tell anyone what happened... except maybe Lestrade. I'm sure he'd get a kick out of the image," John joked.

"I loathe you both," Sherlock croaked out half-heartedly. His voice was hoarse. He slowly brought both arms to his chest and turned his body to face the back of the couch again, straightening out his dressing gown and pulling it around himself like a protective cocoon. "If word ever leaves this room, even Mycroft's best men will never find your bodies."

"Oh yes, I'm shaking in my trainers," John scoffed. He made his way to the kitchen to reheat the water he had abandoned on the stove.

Without thinking, Molly leaned towards Sherlock, and lightly brushed fingers across his forehead to sweep the dark fallen curls away from his eyes. Her hand lingered against his temple. She watched him slowly crack one eye open, its iris now a pale blueish-green in the light. Worried that she had invaded his personal space far too much in one day, Molly began to pull her hand back... until Sherlock leaned further against it and closed his eye. Very lightly, she brushed her thumb over his brow bone and slipped her fingers into his hair. She watched the rise and fall of his chest slow to a normal rhythm. Still worried that Sherlock would revert to his usual closed-off self, she took back her hand and straightened up against the other end of the couch. Looking down at her lap while rubbing the hem of her shirt between her fingers, she didn't notice Sherlock watching her. Confusion was a feeling that he hated to have, but it was different this time. He had never let someone get this close to him, physically, mentally, or emotionally. Not even 'the woman', Irene Adler, had such a privilege. Something was different with Molly and he didn't understand it. Sherlock would have to revisit these thoughts at a later time when he wasn't trying to recover from the torture Molly and John just put him through. Oh, revenge would be had. He understood why Molly had gone after him, but John should have known better than to start something Sherlock would ultimately finish.

"You know, Molly... isn't it usual practice to do systematic observation of at least three test subjects?" Sherlock asked, loudly enough to be sure his voice carried to the kitchen. He grinned at the sound of rattling teacups.

John Watson would take today as a lesson learned to never go against Sherlock Holmes.