#aka trying to melt me through the floorboards

[bizarrelittlemew]

Rhys dancing (with tongue) (source, video)

[cno-inbminor]

a/n: drabble dump time aka random stuff i just felt like writing! ft. spy!au, iwaizumi x fem!reader. all characters are aged up. 

warnings: description of an explosion, presumed reader death, unedited. mainly angst

It’s not often that Iwaizumi wakes up like this, drenched in sweat, chest heaving, and lungs screaming desperately for oxygen. Anyone can agree that it’s never fun to wake up to a damp pillowcase and sheets that stick to skin, yet here he was, experiencing just that. What pisses him off more than anything is the fact that he knows the exact reason why he’s been acting this way. He knows the reason and yet, he’s unable to do anything about it.

When he shuts his eyes again, the vivid nightmare plays on his eyelids like the screen of a movie theatre. His vision fights to discern details through the smoke and dust, his ears are ringing from the blast, his feet stumble over broken concrete and cobblestone, his hands tremble in their hold on his spare pistol; he’s searching, pleading to an unknown force, that you’re around here somewhere.

He brings on hand up to use the collar of his shirt as a temporary dust filter. His choice of weaponry has never felt so heavy before, but he was trained to fight against the strain and the odds. You always stand back up. When you have no choice but to run, run. This was one of those moments where he’d be advised to run.

“Damn it, where the fuck are you?” Iwaizumi curses to himself, trudging through the half-collapsed building to find any sign of you. You had been too many meters away from him and out of his sight when the blast happened. There was no way for him to determine just exactly where it had come from, especially when the licks of flames behind were only growing higher and higher towards the skies. He was on a countdown to find you and get you safely to the rendezvous point, something he never thought he’d have to worry about.

He decides to take his chances and yells out your name, his voice cracking and breaking as the dust scratches at his throat like nails on a chalkboard. Gritting through the pain, he calls out again, looking in every possible direction. The earpiece in his right ear comes alive, static crackling before a familiar voice comes through.

“—jime, can you hear me? Hajime?”

“Fuck, yeah, I’m here, Kenma,” he bites, eyes still flitting everywhere.

“Are you okay? Where’s (y/n)?”

“Really fucking beat up, and trying to find her right now. I can’t see shit though.”

“Tooru’s coming around to the rendezvous point in three minutes and you need to be there. Local police and firemen are already on their way, we have to get you out.”

“Can you locate her?”

“Signal’s lost. She was last seen on the north side of the building.”

“Well fuck,” Iwaizumi groans as he recalls the layout of the building in his mind. “That side’s entirely in flames, do you think…”

“She wouldn’t go down that easy. Two and a half minutes.”

“She has to be here somewhere,” Iwaizumi argues, tone becoming frantic. There’s nothing he can do but turn back towards the fire, desperate for any sort of clue. “(Y/n)! Are you there?”

He stumbles on the path once traveled, scouring the floor and in the rubble. Then his eyes catch a flash of rose gold, buried underneath fragments of brick and stone. His fingers and knees protest when he kneels down to push all of it aside, reaching to pick up the dust-covered chain. His heart sinks past his feet and into the earth beneath him when he gets a good look at the design.

In his hands is the very necklace he had gifted you months ago, one that you never took off, one that he had eyed and seen in many nights of passion, one that he had personally clasped underneath your hair. A thin rose gold chain holding a circular pendant of the same material, no larger than the size of your fingernail, with a small diamond suspended in the middle.

It can’t be.

“Hajime, ninety seconds. You need to get out of there.”

“But—”

“We’ll find her. You have to go.”

Iwaizumi takes one more look at the fires just a foot in front of him before standing back up and heading for the nearest exit. When he stumbles out, a sleek black vehicle pulls up and he wrenches open the passenger door. Not a second longer after his bottom hits the seat, Oikawa steps on the gas, the force aiding Iwaizumi in shutting the door. With deft skills and hands, his longtime friend secures an inconspicuous escape, merging onto the highway in the direction of their headquarter facilities.

Both ignore the incessant beeping from the car, the vehicle protesting the fact that Iwaizumi isn’t wearing his seatbelt. Oikawa only needs to take one look at the chain hanging from Iwaizumi’s fist to understand the situation, quickly letting Kenma know that the retrieval was a success and they were on their way back. His eyes take a glance in the rearview mirror to ensure no one is following them before addressing the elephant in the room.

“She probably made it out and went into hiding,” Tooru hypothesizes. “Maybe she left the necklace as a sign.”

“She better fucking have or she’ll never hear the end of it from me.”

“Must you be so harsh on your girlfriend, Iwa-chan?” He attempts to tease, but it falls flat. Iwaizumi lets out a staggered sigh and leans back against the seat, staring out the tinted window. His heart beats heavily against his ribcage, hoping that in the next few hours, you’ll securely contact them and let them know you’re safe and sound.

But night comes around and there’s no word from you. Iwaizumi can’t sleep, not when the other side of his bed is empty and cold. The morning sun peeks above the horizon as Iwaizumi downs his second cup of coffee, his phone out on the dining table, sitting silent and motionless. Even when Sugawara hands him a bowl of rice, miso soup and natto on the side, Iwaizumi only eats a few grains at a time. He skips his workout routine for the day, instead taking a seat silently by Kenma and scourges through the footage of the previous day’s events.

The hours turn into days, and the days turn into weeks. The agency begins to lose hope and when the two-month mark hits, Iwaizumi watches in despair as your photo in the database gets slapped with an ‘M.I.A.” stamp on it. Oikawa tries to convey his comfort and own pain through the hand placed on his friend’s shoulder. For the rest of the day, everyone who passes by Iwaizumi gives him their best apologetic look. He can only nod and train his gaze to the floor to avoid the pity. Losing a partner is never easy, and even more so when you’re romantically attached to them.

Yet inside his gut, he doesn’t believe it. Kenma had shown him the crime scene report as well as the autopsy results – all bodies found were accounted for and none of the samples matched to any characteristics describing you. There were no Jane Does, nothing that indicated you were there besides the necklace. Whether you had hacked into the database yourself before Kenma got to it or you had just simply disappeared into the flames, you were simply…gone. It just didn’t make sense and Iwaizumi needed to get down to the bottom of all of this. You were alive – he could feel it.

The head of the agency gives him fewer missions and often pairs him with Oikawa, the best person to keep him on his toes. Iwaizumi shuts off his emotions during these times, completely zoned in on the objectives and goals, senses on high alert. He trains and trains until his abs hurt and his arms are jelly, causing Daichi to forcibly lock him out of the gym and demand that he takes a day off. This happens more times than Iwaizumi can count on his fingers and toes, so he spends his free time searching for clues. Sometimes, even Kiyoko and Yachi come by to help.

He’ll find you. He has to.

-

Four months after the incident, Iwaizumi takes a train into a small town in Germany. Thankfully, there are very few people in his cart, and he looks like the odd visiting businessman. He’s got a messenger bag leaning against his body with a worn journal in his lap, one that he had found under the floorboards of your apartment. This was the third place your journal had strung him along to, and he was really hoping you would be here.

“You have two months,” the head told him. “If you don’t find her…”

You’ll need to give up.

The unspoken words had left a bad taste in Iwaizumi’s mouth. He was a month in and beginning to lose his sanity. Reading your journal made him realize how there was so much he hadn’t learned about you, yet you knew so much about him. Had he given over his heart too easily? Were you toying with him? Did you even want to be found?

The train comes to a stop, ripping him away from his thoughts. He steps off and looks around before spotting the street he wanted. Down that road would lead him to the main plaza of the town, the one that had been vaguely mentioned in your writings. Iwaizumi begins setting himself up for disappointment so the pain would be more bearable if he doesn’t find you here in the next few days.

It’s about a 15 minute walk – cream-colored houses in an old European style tower over him as he ambles down the curvy street. He passes by bikers and crepe stands, sometimes the occasional antique store. The ambient noise of nature begins to melt into sounds of spoken word, Iwaizumi’s first sign that he’s nearing the plaza. Eventually, the street opens up into a large square. He’s greeted by restaurants and gelato shops, many people enjoying the fresh air in the outdoor seating. Children run around playing with balloons and each other, no care in the world except for their current enjoyment. Iwaizumi looks around and freezes.

There you are, sitting at a shaded table by a café, sipping on what he presumes to be a latte. A book is spread open on the metal surface and you haven’t noticed him yet. He drinks in all your features, noticing your hair color has changed and your face thinner than before. But despite these concerning changes, you still look as beautiful as ever to him.

He can’t believe it. He finally found you.

As though you felt his eyes, you look up from your book in his direction. They bore right into yours and you process all the emotions running through him. There’s confusion, pain, determination, exhaustion, but most of all, there’s love. Your heart aches at the sight of him – with no doubt in the world, there was nothing, no one you missed more than Iwaizumi Hajime, the love of your life. But it’s too early for him to find you. There was something that you needed to do, and you had to do it alone. For him.

Iwaizumi watches you warily stand from your chair. Your body is tense and ready to act, and he recognizes that stance all too well. No, don’t – !

You run.

But he’ll be damned if he doesn’t chase after you.

[amydancepants-peralta]

you’re the closest to heaven that I'll ever be

(aka, the epilogue I suddenly found myself writing) 🙈♥️🤷‍♀️

season eight: you’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be

On New Years Eve of 2020, the Santiago-Peralta household is strangely quiet.  

In the tastefully decorated living room a brightly coloured activity centre, complete with musical panels, sits neatly beside the beige sofa.  Three of the warmest blankets in Brooklyn share space with a knitted Ninja Turtle themed throw, and strapped to the door frame of the reading room Amy had once considered her favourite space is a purple and yellow Jolly Jumper,  a myriad of sensory developmental toys clipped along it’s edges.  

There are five different flavours of baby food on the kitchen counter waiting to be put away, and the bedazzled invitation to Gina Linetti’s 2021-a-thon lays forgotten to the side, mixed in with the letters and correspondences that neither Jake or Amy have done more than skim their eyes over.  Above the counter, below the precision-timed clock, hangs a framed photograph of the two of them on the night of their wedding, the happy glow of a freshly married couple still noticeable all these years later.  

Having just hung up from an unnecessarily long conversation with her mother, Amy leans against the kitchen counter, sighing at the familiarity of the curved granite meeting her lower back.  Mama Santiago means well; and as the mother of eight and abuela to five, has a lot of valuable tips and tricks up her sleeve.  But this is Amy’s first child, and as much as she wants to do everything exactly right, she also wants her and Jake to figure things out as they go.  A statement she’d had to repeat approximately eighty-nine times to Camila during that last phone call.  

Twisting the rings on her finger, Amy smiles at the thought of all that she and Jake had been through in the past year.  At eight months, their daughter Mia was tiny but fierce, and motherhood was both everything and absolutely nothing like she’d expected it to be.      

There had been offers to babysit from friends and family alike in the last few weeks, but all of them had been met with a polite shake of both her and Jake’s heads.  Sure, there were a lot of places that they could be tonight - and they’re probably missing out on an interesting experience at Gina’s - but truthfully, tonight there is nowhere they’d rather be than home.

(With any luck, they’d have their own wild night - and by wild, she means uninterrupted sleep for the next ten to twelve hours.  Baby Mia had only just begun to sleep through the night, and both Amy and Jake were approximately 4,167 hours behind on their own slumber.)

Shaking off the last remnants of the phone call from her body, Amy tucks her hair behind one ear and looks around the kitchen, noticing the bottle of champagne that her husband had pulled out of the chiller earlier was still sitting to the side, unattended next to a spare lid for their daughter’s favourite bottle.  Pouting her lips slightly, she glances at the clock, noting from it’s steady tick that it had been a good half hour since she’d heard from either Jake - and while silence in a house with a baby is usually a good thing, she’s also really curious what could be holding him up, and so Amy grabs the champagne with her left hand, shoving her phone into the pocket of her sweats with the other.  

The condensation from the neck of the bottle drips onto Amy’s fingers as she makes her way down the short hallway, her socked feet moving carefully across the floor lest a squeaky floorboard should wake their sleeping beauty.  Amy cranes her neck around the doorway once she’s reached her destination, and the sight inside simply makes her heart melt.

Jake sits inside their daughter’s room, on the oversized plush chair that a very pregnant Amy had insisted they buy, his eyes trained solely on their sleeping daughter.  The delicately embroidered pillow made by Camila, with Mia’s name sewn in shimmering thread, remained gripped in his hands, his body leaning forwards as though at any given second he was going to climb into the cot and join their daughter.  His eyes are soft when they flicker over to her, and he shrugs, giving Amy a sheepish look before turning back to Mia.  “I just can’t stop watching her sleep.  She’s so beautiful, Ames.”

Humming her agreement, Amy tiptoes into the room.  While a relatively tight budget had meant that the nursery had remained the same colour as the rest of their apartment, she and Jake had chosen softer toned items for all the trimmings, and the mixture of excerpts from some of her favourite children’s authors and photographs of family that lined the walls never failed to bring her a sense of calm.  Running her free hand along the edge of the dresser, she toys with the neatly folded onesie Jake had placed there earlier in the evening before resting the champagne bottle beside it, moving to stand beside her husband and run her hand through his hair.  He was absolutely besotted with their little girl, and it was her favourite thing in the world to see.

Jake starts at the moistness of her fingers, looking up at Amy before noticing the champagne and he rubs his face in exhaustion, wedding band glinting in the soft light from the lamp set up behind him.  “Oh right, I’d completely forgotten that I opened that before I put Mia to bed.”

Shrugging, Amy points her chin towards their daughter, moving both hands to Jake’s shoulders as she replies.  “It’s a good thing you did, really.  A popping champagne cork would definitely have meant saying good-bye to a sleeping Mia for the rest of the night.”

His laugh is soft as he nods, the memories of the first few nights with a screaming newborn still very fresh in both of their minds.  “It’s crazy, though … how much I miss her when she’s literally right there.”

Amy’s heart swells to twice it’s normal size, thrumming against her rib cage as it tries to compensate for the sudden and overpowering amount of love she feels for her husband.  She understands all the reasons why there was a part of Jake that was worried he would turn out to be a terrible father, but oh, how she wishes he could hear how sweetly he talks about their daughter.  Turning slightly, she grabs the bottle of champagne and nudges Jake over on the plush seat, rubbing her shoulder against his as she settles into place.  One of her favourite things about this chair - and the reason she’d been so insistent on buying it - was the fact that it was just big enough for two (if they snuggled); and in moments like this Amy would definitely consider it a worthy investment.  

Reaching for the bottle and taking a slow swig, Jake uses his free hand to rest against Amy’s thigh, fingers tracing gentle patterns that she knows are unconsciously done.  (They’d been together so long now that each of their bodies was an extension of the others, and she liked to think that the tiny swirls he made were representative to the myriad of coils in his mind, stretching and unfurling comfortably whenever she was around.)  In front of them, resting her tiny head in the cot that Jake had put together (and definitely hadn’t lost his cool whilst doing so), was their baby girl - and she was literally the most beautiful thing.

“I still can’t believe we made her.”

“I know.”

“And that it’s been eight months already.”

“I know.”

Jake smiles, nudging the frame of his glasses up with the edge of his finger (a Tired Jake at home has no time for contacts).  “She gave me the biggest smile tonight, when I lay her down and kissed her goodnight.  It was like she was saying ‘goodnight, daddy!’ … without being able to actually say it, ya know?”  His face scrunches.  “God, I sound really stupid right now.”

Amy shakes her head, unable to keep the blissful smile from stretching across her face.  “Not at all.  This morning, I swear she almost said ‘mama’, but then she just kinda spit up everywhere.”

His shoulders shaking as he chuckles, Jake turns his head slightly to leave a commiserative kiss on Amy’s temple.  “I’m sure she was trying to say it anyway, babe.”

Shrugging one shoulder, Amy looks up at her husband with a smile.  “Maybe, but I doubt it.   Her first word is definitely going to be Dada.”  At Jake’s incredulous shake of his head, Amy persists.  “She literally lights up when she sees you, babe.  It’s adorable.  You’re going to get first word, and I am totally okay with it.”

(Her first word, when she says it in a few weeks time, is in fact baba - aka, her bottle.  But, it’s totally a compromise between mama and dada, and the parents take it with glee.)

Picking up the blanket mysteriously knitted by Tia Rosa, Jake drapes the material over Amy’s legs before clearing his throat.  “So earlier this evening, I was scrolling through Facebook, and the sweetest photo came up on my timeline.”  He pauses, digging for his phone and unlocking the screen with the dexterity of a man who has definitely trained himself to text without looking down.  “See?” He continues, holding up the selfie he’d posted of the two of them last year, the festoon lights strung out on the fire escape casting their faces in a cool glow as they grinned up at the camera.  “Hard to believe this was only a year ago, right?  What a difference between then and now.”

“Oh god, that feels like forever ago,” Amy murmurs, her eyes running over the image as the memory of that night washes over her - right down to the feeling of their daughter still nestled in safely.  “You were right, though.  This year has been amazing. Even if we’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a quiet home for longer than five hours.”

“An amazing night is just another Peralta Guarantee, babe.”  Jake winks, grinning.  “And as crazy as it sounds, I’m all in for that screaming, Ames.  I mean ... I’d like it a lot more if it was two in the afternoon, and not morning, but I’m here for it all the same.”  He shakes his head at Amy’s offer of the champagne again, and she nods in agreement, setting it down on the floor.

Shuffling until her legs are draped over Jake’s lap, Amy reaches for her husband’s phone and types in her brother’s profile.  “Chris did the same thing earlier tonight - look, it’s the same photo I sent to you all those years ago.”  Jake smiles, eyes taking on a faraway look as Amy continues.  “Man, I was so stupid back then.  I was crushing so hard for you, and really thought that if I just put all my energy into my work, that it would just …. Go away, I guess.”

Jake nods, his arm wrapping further around Amy’s legs, rubbing the amazingly soft purls of wool between his fingers.  “If only we’d been able to talk to each other about it … I would’ve warned you it was fruitless.  I tried to forget how I felt about you for over a year.  Obviously, it did not go well.”

“Do you think if we had told the rookie detective versions of ourselves, sitting in that unmarked car down at the docks, that one day we’d spend our entire evening watching our daughter sleep, that we’d believe them?”

His chest constricting with a restrained snort, Amy feels Jake shake his head above her.  “There is no way I would have believed it for a second.  I would have hoped, but …”

Wrapping one arm tight around Jake’s midsection, Amy looks up at her husband, genuinely wishing that even the smallest part of the amount of love she has for him right now is detectable in her gaze.  “Lucky our heads caught up to our hearts, huh?”

Leaning in, Jake plants a gentle kiss against her lips.  “I’m thankful every day.”

A muffled snore comes from the direction of the cot, and Mia stretches out her fists as she slips further into whatever dream she’s having.  “Okay, seriously.  Our daughter is literally the cutest baby ever to be born.”

“She really is.”  And really, how else could they put it?  She was tiny and beautiful and adorable and all those other words that always seemed to fail to come to mind when someone asks them to describe their daughter, because how can you relegate something so life-changing to just a few words?  She laughs, a deep-from-the-belly kind of laugh, whenever Amy pretended to have a sneezing fit in front of her.  Smiles so brightly that even her godfather Ray finds himself smiling right back.  Grips her parent’s fingers with the strength of an army - and Jake swears that their daughter somehow took a seminar in utero, because she is her mother’s daughter - but Amy already knows that truly, both of them were 100% wrapped around their daughter’s little finger from the moment she was born.

Mia was a tiny tyrant, but their tiny tyrant; with deep brown eyes you could lose yourself in, messy curly hair, and a screaming voice louder than any infant had any right to have.   But it only took one look from her: one slow blink, or the resting of her head on your shoulder, and suddenly everything was okay again.  It took thirteen hours to birth her, and only one second to fall in completely in love, and Amy would do it all again in a heartbeat.  

As her eyelids begin to grow heavy, Amy rests her head against Jake’s shoulder, relaxing completely as the combined scent of his shower gel and their daughter’s baby powder fills her senses.  Before they close completely, her eyes shift towards the framed picture of her and Jake on their very first New Years Eve together as a couple.  Oh, how far they’d come.

*

It’s several hours before she opens her eyes again, ears picking up on an unfamiliar but persistent pop sound coming from the window in their daughter’s room, and as her still-snoozing mind begins to wake up, Amy realises that both she and Jake had managed to sleep through it all.  

Jake’s head is heavy on her shoulder, and as Amy cups his jawline in her hand and begins dotting kisses to his hairline, he mumbles himself awake, shrugging when Amy tells him that they’ve missed counting in the New Year completely.  

His hand grips Amy’s steadily as she leads him over to the crib, neither able to resist the chance to check that their daughter was still just as perfect as she had been several hours ago, and with a stretch of his limbs Jake allows himself to be pulled away from the nursery, grabbing the baby monitor from the change table as he goes.  

Both are asleep again before their heads even hit the pillows, completely unfazed at missing the countdown.  This house, after all, was going to be filled with celebrations for so many years to come - whether their family expands or they stay as a unit of three - that a new year simply meant a new beginning.  The future was ripe with possibilities, and they couldn’t wait to see what was in store.  

[primalrageanddumbassery]

And The Hounds of Heaven Rise

Summary:

Martin hears a sound in the cabin and with the kind of day he's having, whatever it is probably won't live to see tomorrow once he finds it. AKA Martin hears Jon singing for the first time and absolutely MELTS

CONTENT WARNINGS: Umbrella grabbed with the intent of using it as a weapon Death Mention Mention of being startled Mention of hounds (dogs)

Words: 658

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26423734

There was a sound somewhere in the cabin and Martin fully intended to figure out what it was (and possibly kill it because it was Just That Kind Of Day). It had started somewhere around 2 minutes ago, a soft sound that was just quiet enough that you couldn't really identify what it resembled, but loud enough that you could tell that there was noise. Finally, he snapped. He'd had a headache all morning and, quite frankly, trying to ignore it was annoying him more than the headache itself. Any fear he may have had of the unknown was so far outweighed by the sheer level of pissed off that he was.

Sighing, he put his poetry journal and pencil on the end table and pushed himself up from the couch. Without hesitation he grabbed an umbrella from it's spot by the door and held it up like a baseball bat. The sound was still steady and Martin could now tell that it was coming from a small office-like room down the hall right across from his and Jon's bedroom. "Alright," he growled under his breath. "I guess we're doing this." Umbrella at the ready, he slowly made his way to the hallway, careful to avoid floorboards he knew were creaky. He was almost there when he realized what the sound was. It was singing. Specifically, Jon singing. Martin breathed a sigh of relief, even chuckled a bit at his jumpiness, before putting the umbrella down on the floor and peeking around the corner. Jon was leaned back in the office chair, his back to Martin and the doorway. His feet were propped up on the mostly empty desk, something which endlessly amused Martin as it was a habit he had yelled at Tim for on multiple occasions back in the archives. On his lap sat a little journal. "And the hounds of heaven rise From their place by the fire They're chasing me down But it ain't my time They're chasing me down But it ain't my time." Martin let slip a sigh of pure admiration. Jon's voice was gorgeous. Martin had heard him sing once before while listening to the statement of Lawrence Mortimer, but that was nothing compared to when Jon actually put his heart into singing. He sounded like he'd been trained, taken lessons probably, but any professionalism gave way to what Martin could only describe as the sound of pure enjoyment. Martin leaned up against the door frame, then winced when it creaked. Jon stopped, mid verse, and whirled around with a wild look in his eyes, his feet flying off of the desk and almost hitting several things on their way to the ground. Martin put his hands up in surrender. "Just me, love," he said softly. Jon sighed, his shoulders relaxing. "Sorry, I was- that startled me." Martin smiled in an understanding way. "It's alright, Jon, I get it." Jon ran a hand through his hair, causing more stands of his already-loose ponytail to fall around his shoulders. "You sing beautifully," Martin offered. Jon's eyes widened, then closed with a chuckle. "Thank you, but I'm very out of practice." Martin shrugged. "I still think it's beautiful. Could you sing that song for me? The one you were just singing. I liked it." Jon thought about it. "I suppose I could," he said finally. "Although I'm not sure I know all the lyrics." "Well, I wouldn't know the difference; I've never heard it before now." Jon smiled. "Yes, I suppose that is true." Jon gestured to the other office chair they'd bought a few days ago and Martin took a seat. Jon cleared his throat and sat up at the edge of his seat. "Where do you go when the light is low When your ship is sinking When the storm explodes When your heart it lingers On one sad kiss When the sun is red Through the mist..."

Hi!!! Thank you for reading! I'm sorry this was so short. By the way, my end notes won't be near as 🤗 snazzy 🎇 as usual, I'm watching Owl House while i'm typing and I have THE SHORTEST attention span adshfksdkjfahskj First off, a couple things to clarify about the story. 1. When it mentions a journal on Jon's lap, it's a sketchbook! I like to headcanon Jon doodling and I may mention it in another fic later if I get the chance. 2. When Martin mentions Lawrence Mortimer's statement, he's talking about the statement of the older gentleman who went to Virginia to go hunting. If you don't remember, Jon did sing 'A-Hunting We Will Go' a little bit and that's really where this fic stemmed from- me absolutely LOVING the fact that Jon sang in that episode and toying with the idea until a story came to mind! Once again, I absolutely take requests for TMA if you have any ideas! I'm still trying to find my footing in writing them so any practice is welcome! HEY BY THE WAY- I love yooouuuuuu! Take care of yourself please please please! dead fucking serious, you matter so much and no matter what's going on, you will get through it. I believe in you you absolutely gorgeous human being! Drink some water! Get youself some lunch if you haven't eaten today, or even if you have. Take your meds if you need them, wear your mask, and stay safe! I adore you you funky lil person! AAAAANYWAAAAAAAAYS Thanks again for reading! ~Beck

[nonoahstop]

Ah, thanks for the new favorite song! This was very cute to imagine in my head… I did this as if it was first person mode from the LI, hope you enjoy! It helps if you have this playing in the background as you read. Also I ran out of lyrics from the song for everyone so I added in the opens from the lyrics on Google❤ The main 6 overhearing MC singing Baby Mine to their baby Asra: 
I woke to hear the sound of soft footsteps making the floorboards creak. I reach out across the bed to feel for my other half but it is empty. Slowly I push myself up to see. I find them holding our child close, head on their shoulder, rocking and swaying while looking out of the window. A soft smile crosses my face, just seeing them there as the moon glows on their face, that’s my love… So caring, so gorgeous, I love them. I hear a soft hum followed by a song as they stroke our child’s head, soft white hair. Their voice is so wonderful and calming. I let out a satisfied hum.
“Rest your head close to my heart” they turn to face me thoughtful eyes watching. “Never to part, baby of mine…” they lift a hand over our child’s back and I can feel my heart ake, their love radiating through yet another combination of our hearts together.
I slip out of bed and pad my way over wrapping my arms around their waist and kissing them lightly at the side of their temple. “Your voice is so soothing… Can you finish the song?” They comply with a smile and begin singing the song again. We both stand and sway watching the sun slowly rise over the city streets from the window, the occasional deep breath or wiggle of our baby interrupting me from dozing off. 
Nadia:
I saunter down the halls mind full of thoughts. I have not had a great amount of time to spend with my family recently with important meetings and trying to keep up my appearance. It has been a nightmare since the masquerade… I hear the crying of my child cut the cold tension in the halls and I speed up my pace. As I reach the door the crying fades away and is replaced with the humming and song from my dear spouse. I choose to stand by the door watching from a distance as they sing to them, tickling and swirling shapes on their exposed tummy, giving off sweet little giggles and gurgles. I do not hear them sing very often, most times it is when they are getting ready in the morning or taking a bath with me, but this is nice, watching the two loves of my life, in complete bliss. 
“Don’t you mind what they say, let those eyes sparkle and shine…” they boop their nose and they give out a smile, I see my love giving one in return. 
“Baby mine, baby mine…” As they finish the song I settle myself behind them and look over their shoulder at our now asleep and relaxed child, my hair sliding down my loves arm. 
“Your voice is amusing my dear… It is perfect and silky, you should sing more often.” they let out a small chuckle.
“You were listening? Hm, maybe I will…” They lean in and rest their head against my shoulder and smile looking up at me. 
Julian:
After a long day at the clinic, I can finally come home. The weather was awful today, raining as well as some thunder here and there, it made me think of them both the whole day. I know they’re just next door but I was quite booked and couldn’t visit, there has been a small bug going around the schools as of late and its been consuming my time. I open the door and chuck off my coat hanging it on my arm. I hear a soft inviting voice swaying its way down from upstairs and I follow it. I swing around the corner recognizing the song as one that my dear has sung for me many times before on a hard sleepless night. I join in as I walk over to them, swaying holding our child looking lovingly at them.
“From your head to your toes” I tap each place as I sing and they let out a happy gurgle. My heart swoons as my love begin to harmonize. 
“Baby mine…”
“You’re so sweet, goodness knows…”
“Baby mine…”
“You are so precious to me” I take their chin and tilt their face towards me.
“Sweet as can be, baby mine…”
“Baby mine, baby mine…” A smile curls on both our lips and I bump my forehead against theirs looking down at our peaceful child a cheeky smile accentuating their cute chubby cheeks.
“Oh wow… It’s been a while since I’ve heard that one- you should sing with me next time we go to the Raven your voice is stunning, I adore it!” They let out a laugh.
“The reason why I haven’t sung that in a while is because you are getting better at having a good nights rest. And if you want me to sing with you next time we go to Barths I suggest something that won’t knock them out?” I look down at our child and yawn…
“Heh… Yeah…”
Muriel:
I lie there looking at my newborn child, so precious and soft as they wriggle in place drowning in all the fluff that surrounds them. They’re too delicate for this world. I’m too scared to touch them sometimes… I feel something so small and adorable surely can’t look fitting with someone… *sigh* Like me… As I watch over them they begin to cry up a storm.
“Oh shhh, it’s okay! Uhh… T-the baby!” I look over to my spouse in worry as they make their way over from the small kitchenette.
“Muri, my love, you can’t hurt them… Everything is okay.” They pick up our child and cradle them carefully. “I know its all new and weird but we’ll get used to this…” They intertwine one of their hands with mine. “Hmm, you know I found out that they really enjoy listening to people sing, I was doing it yesterday and it put them straight to sleep, heh…” They get up and walk over to the fire, sitting down with the baby. “Come here watch this.”
“…Okay…” I blush and sit down next to them. They start up a melody and I feel a bit more relaxed than the beginning. I watch the song work wonders on comforting our child. 
“Baby mine, don’t you cry… Baby mine, dry your eyes…” they stroke their hair, rocking back and forth looking into their bright shining eyes. They are wonderful, so caring and patient…
Out of all the time I’ve known them, I never expected for them to have such a beautiful and melodic singing voice, I secretly wish they would do it more… I wrap my blanket around them both and watch as our child slowly falls asleep. My spouse hands me the child and brings a hand up to my cheek.
“Everything is fine…” they rest their head against my shoulder and begin to hum again before I know it my eyes are closing and I’m falling asleep.
Portia: 
I stop my gardening to look up at the sky and watch the sunset for a beat. It’s getting pretty late… I turn to see my love sitting on the bench playfully tickling our child and blowing raspberries onto their tummy. The echoing of their giggles and gibberish noises bringing a wide smile to my face. I make my way over.
“Hey, there hot stuff, how’s it going?”
“Haha, how old are we and you’re calling me that?” 
“Not old enough!” I wrap an arm around their shoulder trying to avoid getting mud on them. “Hows the little one?”
“Too rowdy” They sigh “I don’t know what to do” They give me a sheepish smile.
“Hm, you know what I loooove, it might help…” They raise their brow. “Your singing!”
A blush spreads across their face “Oh shush… Mmm, okay…” I sit back and wait for them to start.
I listen to their voice hit all the right notes, slowly melting in a pool of love, as they stroke our child’s eyebrows, holding their head up with one arm. Their eyes slowly slide shut and they wriggle to get comfy, an arm poking out and slumping on top of theirs. 
“If they knew all about you, they’d end up loving you, too.”
I watch the sunset hit of their face highlighting every point of beauty on them, (AKA every point!) and sink into the bench tuning in till the song ends. 
“Your voice one of your many wonders…”
“Mmm, thank you…” they give a peck to my cheek and sink back into the bench with me. We share a piece of silence, something we haven’t had for a few days.
Lucio:
I feel guilty about the argument we had today, I shouldn’t be so snappy on them especially with our new child… I should stop fussing over everything, I know they have things covered but I guess it’s hard, it’s not like I’d ever admit that though. I find myself making a sheepish look even though no one is around.
I push open the door to our bedroom and am shocked to not find them there.
“W-where are?…” I turn in my heels and make my way over to our child’s nursery. They have to be there it’s too late at night to be going out for a stroll. As I approach the door I hear soft singing coming from inside. I push it open gently and see my love standing on the balcony rocking our child giving them kisses between every verse. My heart softens at the view as I make my way over.
“My dove your voice is so smooth and soft…” I wrap an arm around their waist and they turn to face me.
“Thank you… They were a little grumpy so I thought a song would work.” They begin to hum again and I watch contently pulling them both in against my chest in a loose hug. I listen in as their voice perfectly reaches every note. I hear our child let out a soft sigh and a few mumbles here and there.
“All those same people who scold you, what they’d give just for the right to hold you.”
They hum until the song fades off.
“You should show off your talents! I would- not saying my singing voice is bad but… It’s just in the works.” I give them a wink and a small peck to the lips. “I can prove it!” 
I clear my throat and attempt to sing the same song again my voice not reaching the notes quite as well. I see our child wriggle and open their eyes looking up at me with a small pout. 
I hear a laugh from my love. “Woahohohou they did not like that!”
I look away blushing with a grumble. “Maybe not…”

[peccolias]

Carousel (aka Recipe for Disaster)

Naruto OC fic

M rating for coarse and crude language, substance abuse mentions

Humor

~2k words

Take one young and shameless flirt with a new lease on life and nothing to lose. Combine with every poor shmuck unfortunate enough to live in Konoha. She’ll spend the world right ‘round, and ‘round, and ‘round. OC Rebirth fic.

(WIP preview under the cut)

The girl was well-mannered.

Perhaps a little off-color at times, but charmingly so. Enough that people laughed at most of her jokes, anyway.

Not entirely memorable, but with the kind of face you could recognize in a crowd. A little plain, but her bright and colorful personality made up for it.

Her name was—

The scrawling pen stopped. Pushed a bit too hard on the paper—splattered shiny black ink across the page.

Tōmei cursed under her breath and tried to wipe the wet splotches of ink away with the side of her hand—panicked, and too late realized that only made the mess bigger. “Fuck! Shit! I just wrote that!” She picked up the entire notebook and held it aloft in both hands, flapping it around in the air, trying to get it to dry before ink dripped elsewhere.

Not such a great idea.

Her writing space wasn’t the cleanest area—just a cushion and a low table shoved up against a wall, really, with several books, opened and closed, strewn around the floorboards. One of those books had the gall, the sheer audacity, to grab her by the ankle and trip her up.

The notebook flailed in the air—arms pinwheeled as her body arced and she tried to correct her balance. “Wait! Wait wait—stop!”

No such luck.

She fell on her butt, hard, and hissed through her teeth before just dropping flat against the ground and releasing a whoosh of breath.

Another book dug into her back—she didn’t mind it, much. It pressed into the spot just on the side of her spine that twinged with a persistent pain leftover from a poor and unpracticed attempt of dealing out the smack down to a teammate with a German suplex.

The notebook had fallen, scattered, pages folded, wrinkled, against her arm.

Well, it was a shitty start to the story, anyway. And stories were kind of her thing—she had to raise the bar a little. Challenge herself. Break outta the comfort zone. Check in to Narnia.

She closed her eyes and ran her hand across her face, letting it and the long sleeves of her red sweatshirt rest across it heavily, fingers massaging her forehead. Hiding her bloodshot, sleep-deprive eyes visibly shadowed even through her olive-tan skin. Laying on the floor wasn’t that bad, really. Maybe she’d just stay there forever. Never get up. Never go outside. She’d spend the rest of her days as a shut-in. She’d lay there so long, in fact, that her body would grow into the dusty floorboards. Melt together as one.

Her nose wrinkled at the thought. “Sorry, I don’t ship that.”

No—she had to get up. Because a knock sounded outside the door.

She craned her head sideways against the floorboards to see a shadow swaying vaguely on the other side of the sliding door panel.

“Tōmei-chan!” the shadow called. “Are you home? I brought what you asked for.”

Ah, what a sweet voice. The voice of a friend. A savior in her time of crisis.

She tried to get up—moved too fast, felt a sharp jerk as her head spun like a wild Beyblade, wheezed, and collapsed again. Back onto the book that dug into her back, and this time not too kindly. A groan left her lips as she shimmied away from it until the floor was flat beneath her. As it should be.

“Yeah, uhhh, I’m gonna need you to let yourself in. Door’s unlocked.”

The latch released—the door slid in its tracks to reveal the upside-down face of her good ol’ reliable friend, Nohara Rin. Rocking those burgundy thigh-highs and a fashionable bob haircut, which hung around her face in a curtain as she stared down at the other girl in full dismay.

“Jeez, you’re like an old lady. How long have you been down there?”

“If I’m old, I sure as fuck have fantastic and supple skin for my age,” the girl shot back with a toothy grin—canines, a bit too sharp, incisors slightly crooked. Because, no matter how you looked at it, the two girls were no older than twelve. Not even teenagers yet—but in their terrible pre-teens. Right on the cusp of puberty and crushes and unrequited first loves and growth spurts and trips to the corner store to sneak peaks at the porno mags.

Although for Tōmei, it wouldn’t be her first rodeo.

As always, Rin’s thin, shaped brows furrowed together at the crass language—she was a proper lady, for the most part. Only cussed when she was good and pissed. Which…never happened. Not that Tōmei had ever seen—and she’d seen a lot of the girl. They attended the Academy together, some few years ago. Weren’t on the same genin team, or chūnin squad, but remained mutual friends through some weird twist of fate.

The purple marks on her cheeks creased slightly as she grimaced. Then allowed a tolerant smile as she held out a hand. Just one, because the other held a pouch filled to bursting with sweet, sweet meds.

Tōmei reached for it and grabbed on tight, bracing herself as the other girl hauled her into a sitting position. Almost got to her feet, until the stabbing pain returned. This time, through her skull. She let go immediately and fell back onto her ass, gripping her head in her hands. “Ow, ow ow… Think you could hand me one of those amazing painkillers you brought first? Pretty please?”

Rin’s patience knew no bounds. She pulled her hand back and opened up the bag—pink, like Tōmei requested even if it was off-hand—and retrieving a round ball that looked for all the world like a determined dung beetle’s pièce de résistance with the way it reflected the lighting, but in reality was a specialty health pill. A lesser version of the ones issued to shinobi in combat, because she was pretty sure those were laced with something not-so-legal, especially for kids. These were over-the-counter grade. Perfectly legal. Because abusing narcotics was bad and should never be done, ever. Ever.

Not that she’d complain if Rin had access to a surplus of soldier pills, but she had to take what she could get.

She tossed the pill her way, and Tōmei watched it trace a perfect arc through the air before landing in her mouth. She crunched it with the full force of her teeth, without mercy. Crushed it into powder to leech its power—those precious acetaminophen particles that would morph into tiny loyal knights and beat the pain beasts into submission. Her eyes shut as she released an elated sigh. “You’re such a doll, Rin. Thank you. Thank you. You’re a goddess.”

“Don’t thank me, just don’t forget the cake you promised in return,” Rin replied with a half-smile, tilting her head just slightly to the left as she observed her friend. “Do you want me to check you?”

“You can check me out any day.” Tōmei shrugged, massaging her temples as she waited with bated breath for the effects to kick in. She held out a hand, palm-up. “Gimme another. Just for precaution.”

Rin reeled back, clutching the medicine bag to her chest, a frown marring her face as she tightly buttoned the flap closed. “You know it’s one a day. You promised! Don’t make me drag you to the hospital. Although, Taji-sensei would love a new patient.” Seeing the easygoing grin that settled onto the other girl’s lips as she let her hand fall away from her face and rest against the floor eased her worry. “…Don’t joke like that, Tōmei-chan. You know I worry.”

“You don’t have to worry ‘bout me. Headaches kinda just happen. The back thing was an accident, though…”

Rin heaved a sigh—a bit dramatic. Maybe her presence was rubbing off on her. “Sometimes I think we’re only friends because I’m the medic.”

“No way! No way—c’mon, who else would I take early morning jogs with so we can ogle our shapely fellow athletes as they pass us by? Remember when—” she lowered her voice into a not-so-quiet stage whisper, cupping her hand to one side of her mouth. “Remember when we saw Minato-sensei with his shirt off?!”

Rin’s face tinged pink—only briefly, before she pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut. “Don’t say that out loud ever again. You might slip up and mention it around Kushina-san. That… I can’t imagine what would become of you.”

Tōmei shrugged, but her expression had glazed over. “He’s such a mild guy. I never knew he had a six pack. ‘Yellow Flash?’ More like Yellow flash me.”

“Puberty is going to be an awful time for you, Tōmei-chan.” All she could do was shake her head in pity.

“Mmm, probably.” A decidedly catlike grin overtook her face as she looked directly into her friend’s eyes. “Buuut you can’t tell me you don’t try to catch Kakashi’s shirt slip up a little when y’all’re training.” After dropping that bomb, she casually examined her uneven, bitten fingernails, eyebrows raised.

It didn’t faze her. “Oh, please. You’re the one constantly speculating on random women’s bust sizes. Shameless ogling is your area of expertise.” Her sweet smile remained. “A shame, really. If you applied that kind of passion to your studies, you could have passed at the top of our class, too.”

Tōmei flicked a booger in her general direction, earning a shriek.

Rin tossed the medicine pouch toward her and turned on her heel with a huff, feigning irritation. “Well, I have to get going. Medical lessons.” She stopped as she neared the door, throwing a concerned look over her shoulder as her friend remained on the floor. “Let me know if you have any more problems. And remember—one per day.”

“Doctor’s orders,” Tōmei saluted as she pushed herself to her knees and then rose to her feet, back ramrod straight, before half-jogging to the door to see Rin off. “And the cake you asked for should be ready tomorrow.”

Humid air blew in through the door as soon as she opened it—a bit chilly, but not chilly enough for the thick red sweatshirt zipped all the way up to the girl’s throat. The full-length, black leggings, much less. Her bare feet pattered along the flat expanse of dirt as she followed her to the road, waving her arm in a large arc as she waved her farewell. “Tell Obito I saw him in a dream last night, if you see him!”

Rin smiled—tensely—and shook her head as she returned the wave, though much less enthusiastic. By now, she’d grown accustomed to her friend’s wily, crude behavior—but it was still embarrassing when she spouted it in public.

Tōmei set her hands on her hips as she watched her friend depart, proud that they’d reached the point in their relationship where she could honestly shoot down her facetious request. Then, her attention promptly drifted to a passing civilian man wearing extremely tight pants, and in that moment all that existed in the world was that finely sculpted derriere—

A steady stream of icy water splattered against her face, hitting her right cheek and splashing across her nose, stray droplets sparkling in the morning sunlight as the rest soaked her from the shoulders up. Her mouth dropped open as she dragged her horrified gaze to the side to see a particularly exhausted individual eyeing her with tired disdain. He also held a water hose in his hand, which innocently hydrated a potted plant on the windowsill. Like it didn’t just drench her.

“I see you’ve upgraded from the spray bottle,” Tōmei observed with no hostility, hands still on her hips, though rigid. Clinging tightly to the fabric of her jacket’s waistband. “But I told you, I told you, Kakashi, I’d wear a white T-shirt if you didn’t cut that out!” She gripped the waistband and yanked it upward in one swift motion to reveal the hem of a white shirt, which crawled up along with the sweatshirt and revealed a good bit of her stomach as she pulled it up over her grinning face—her coup de grace. But backfired. The shirt fell down into place again, dry and covering what it was supposed to, but the sweatshirt—not so much. Not with a fully-zipped zipper, still bunching the neckline at her throat. It remained stuck at her chin no matter how hard she pulled, legs bowed and braced against the earth as if it would give her the strength she needed.

“You are so embarrassing.”  

She gave another tug at the sweatshirt before giving up and dropping it, letting gravity drag it back down her torso. Like her pride, her hair, a dark brown—almost black, especially when soaked—didn’t escape unscathed, either. Flyaway strands stuck out in every direction, especially from the braid pinned at the back of her head with a clip. Inversed, with the thin tail end sticking straight up from the back of her head like an antenna. Skewed, because of the struggle. Sticking to the right a little more than usual, wilted.

With as much composure as she could muster, she straightened the antenna and smoothed down her jacket, sticking her hands into the pockets on either side of the zipper. Looked away—down the road, watching a few neighbors mill about—before she snapped her head toward her immediate neighbor and feigned a gasp, hands splayed in front of her mouth, eyes wide.

“Oh! Morning, Kakashi. Didn’t even see you there!”

He sighed, audibly. The mask covering his face didn’t even muffle it.

She waited a moment, wondering if he would return the small talk, and shrugged when he didn’t. Not a talky one, that kid. “Anyway, those plants are growing great! Don’t you know the girls—and boys, too—love a guy who can raise a garden?”

The hose splashed her full in the face, this time.

“I—I didn’t even try to make that an innuendo! It was a genuine compliment!”

Such was life, being the unfortunate and long-time neighbor of Kamiyama Tōmei.

[morkhan]

Swan Song

Part 1 of a collection of alternate endings to Baby Driver:

He dies alone, on a dark grey morning, with music humming in his ears.

aka

Baby drives the final heist. It does not end well for him.

Darling hears it happen.

Baby is bobbing and weaving through the city like he could drive it with his eyes closed, darting and dodging, dancing around cops and cruisers like the fucking Fred Astaire of Fords. He’s doing good—he always does good—but something’s off. The kid is driving angry. He turns the wheel like he is trying to break it off, yanks the gear shaft like it insulted his mom, nostrils flaring, lips in a snarl, face so red she half-expects him to start breathing fire.

One time, after a job, Darling told Buddy that Baby was part-terminator; only a fucking robot could drive the way he did.

This Baby was no robot. This Baby was a demon.

Somehow, they wind up stopped in an alley. In front of them, a lone foot cop, gun drawn and aimed. On the other, practically every cop car in the ATL. Way out is pretty obvious, but Baby ain’t driving.

“Run his ass over!” says Bats.

Baby doesn’t move.

“Put your foot on the gas, you mute motherfucker!” Bats insists.

Buddy chimes in. “We gotta go, Baby!”

Darling joins with him. “They’re gonna fucking shoot us, kid! Get the lead out!”

Baby’s grip on the wheel tightens so much she can see every vein in his hands. What’s he thinking? What the fuck is he thinking?

Bats raises his shotgun towards the cop. “Fuck it! I’ll do it mys—”

And Baby floors it like he’s trying to stomp through the floorboards. Bats gets plastered against the back of his seat, the cop starts shooting and backing up but Baby’s barreling down on him and for a second, she thinks he might really do it. He might actually turn this pig into fender ketchup. Baby’s First Kill.

But he doesn’t. He turns so sharp and fast that heads hit window glass; swerves and curves around that fat blue-shirt fascist like only he could.

That’s when she hears it.

You’d think, over all the noise—tires squealing, glass shattering, gunshots cracking like thunder, cops shouting orders over louspeaker, crooks shouting “SHIIIIIIIT” into the wind—it’d be impossible to hear a sound so soft. But she hears it. It sticks out to her like a grenade going off at a funeral. Baby gasps, sudden, subtle, involuntary—a short suck of air, like somebody poked him where he was ticklish. She doesn’t know why it sticks out to her so much. Not at first.

They speed off into the city, the cops caught in the funnel. Baby veers onto the 85 and they all take a second to breathe

“Lot of bullets flying back there,” Buddy says. “Everybody okay?"

“I’m good,” Darling says.

“I’m a little pissed off, but ain’t no holes in me,” Bats says.

Baby keeps both hands on the wheel, eyes straight ahead. “I’m fine,” he says.

Darling squints. The sound plays again in her mind. “Bats, check him,” she orders.

Bats doesn’t have to look long. “Shit. Shit.”

Buddy leans forward, brow furrowed. “Baby’s hit?”

“I’m fine,” Baby says.

“Bullshit. Where’d they get him?” Darling asks.

“Chest,” Bats says.

“How bad?” Darling asks.

“We need to change cars,” Baby interrupts as they head into a tunnel. It takes him barely a second to guide another car off the road. The four of them hop out. Buddy and Bats go handle the carjacking. Darling goes to handle Baby.

She can already see the blood has seeped through his shirt and the hoodie. He’s walking funny, breathing funny, starting to sweat. “Baby, here, lean on me,” she says, trying to position herself under his arm.

He flinches away. “I’m fine.”

As she and Baby head for their new ride, Bats and Buddy usher its previous driver back to their old one, sitting him in the driver’s seat. “Drive straight, and don’t stop ‘til you run outta gas, you hear me?” Bats says.

“Y-yes sir,” the driver says.

“BYE!” Bats says, and the driver peels out, heading straight ahead. Bats puts a couple bullets in his rear fender for emphasis, and the driver speeds up. The chopper follows the decoy, leaving them an opening to escape.

Baby opens the door and starts to get in the driver’s seat, but Darling stops him. “Let Buddy drive.”

Baby shakes his head. “I’m the driver.”

Buddy rushes over. “Kid, you’ve been shot. Get in the back and let Darl—”

And then, something she never in a million years thought she’d see—Baby pulls his fucking gun on them. He holds it one-handed, aim unsteady, but it’s a statement.

“I’m the driver,” he says, teeth clenched.

For a second, they can only stand there and gape. What the fuck.

“Fuck it!” Bats says. “Boy wants to drive, let him drive, we got to go!”

It’s hard to argue with the sound of sirens getting closer every second. Buddy curses under his breath and gets in the back. Darling follows, and Bats has barely shut the door before Baby peels out and jumps the median, doing an about-face and taking the first off-ramp back into the city.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Baby!?” Darling shouts.

“We’re trying to help you, you little shit,” Buddy agrees.

“I’m fine,” Baby says, his voice weirdly thick. He coughs, and the car lurches just slightly, but he doesn’t lose control.

Bats puts a hand on his shoulder. “Keep it together, Baby. We gonna get through this. You take care of us, we take care of you.”

Baby squeals the car around a corner, but he takes it wide, scrapes the wall hard, shattering the driver’s side windows. He recovers quick, but Darling can already see the pedestrians pulling out their phones to call the cops about reckless driving. Shit.

“We’re almost there, Baby, just hold on,” Darling says, eyes glued to her driver. His face is pale, shining with sweat, slightly pinched; he’s hurting. The impact knocked his shades off and popped out one of his earbuds, but he’s making no attempt to put it back. Something about watching it dangle there forgotten makes her sick.

They drift into the parking garage where the switch cars are waiting, and Baby doesn’t so much ‘park’ as run one tire over the parking stop and then take his foot off the gas, sitting back in his seat. Three doors open: Buddy heads straight for Baby’s door. Darling heads straight for Buddy.

Bats heads straight for his switch car. “Come on!”

“What the fuck, Bats!?” Darling shouts.

“Help us with the kid!” Buddy says, flinging open Baby’s door and starting to pull the boy out. Baby doesn’t fight him or insist he’s fine—he actually reaches for Buddy, wraps his arms around his neck. She feels like she’s living in upside-down world.

“The kid is dead!” Bats says. “Ain’t nothing we can do for that boy. Leave him! He’ll tie up the cops!”

Right on cue, the distant echo of sirens seeps into the corridors of the garage, and she doesn’t have to listen long to know they’re getting closer. Baby’s leaning limply against Buddy’s shoulder, his shirt soaked through so bad that it’s starting to seep into his jeans. His breathing is ragged and raspy. There’s blood on his lips. His eyes are down, not looking at anything.

Buddy takes a long look at the kid, flicks his eyes towards the sound of sirens, and makes up his mind. “Sorry, kid,” he says, lowering him back into the car.

Baby’s head snaps up, eyes locked on Buddy, confused, afraid. “Wha… what?”

Darling runs forward. “What the fuck!? Jace, we can’t just leave him.”

“Mon, we can’t help him,” Buddy says, shaking his head and doing his best to put Baby down. Baby’s not making it easy—he’s started clutching at Buddy’s jacket, weak hands looking for something to hold onto.

“No… no…” he says weakly.

“I’m sorry, kid,” Buddy says, grabbing Baby by the shoulders. “It’s a tough business.”

With a final pat on Baby’s shoulder—like he’s giving him a fucking pep talk or something—Buddy abandons Baby in the driver’s seat and starts towards the other switch car. Bats has already peeled out of the parking lot. Darling can’t fucking believe what she’s seeing.

“Come on!” Buddy says. “We’ve gotta go!”

Baby looks at her with pleading eyes. “P-please…” he says.

The sirens get closer, and Darling grits her teeth. She’s not going down today, not for Baby or anybody else… but she can’t just leave him. “Get the fucking car and bring it here!” she shouts at Buddy.

Buddy dashes off, and Darling kneels beside the open driver’s side door. “Sorry, Baby,” she says, cupping his face in her hands. ���Looks like this is goodnight.”

Baby shakes his head, paws at his jacket with weak, shaking fingers. “Please…” he says again.

Suddenly, she gets it. “Music?” she asks, reaching into his pocket. “You wanna hear a song?”

Baby nods.

She pulls out his iPod and unlocks it. “What you wanna hear?” she asks. “Who’s gonna sing you to sleep, Baby boy?”

He leans forward and whispers something in her ear. It only takes her a few seconds to find the song and hit play. She locks the iPod and curls his limp hand around it, reaches around for that dangling earbud and puts it back where it belongs, and suddenly the pain just seems to melt off of him. He goes to another world just as Buddy pulls up in the car.

“Darling!” Buddy says.

The sirens are closer than ever. The cops can’t be more than a minute out, but Darling still finds time to lean in and press the gentlest kiss a killer can give to a dying boy’s forehead. “Sweet dreams, Baby.”

Baby locks grateful eyes with her for just a moment, and then he’s somewhere far, far away.

Darling jumps in the car and Buddy’s off, peeling out and leaving Baby in the dust. The last time she sees him, Baby is leaned back in the seat, eyes closed, head just barely bobbing to the beat, bloodstained lips mouthing the words.

They drive in silence for a while. Maybe out of respect. Maybe because it’s hard to talk around the fucked-up thing they just did. Hey, they never claimed to be good people.

“Doc’s gonna be pissed,” she says.

Buddy hmms in response. “Wouldn’t want to be the guy who has to tell him.”

The guy who has to tell him is Bats, which explains why Bats’s brains are all over the wall when Buddy and Darling step off the elevator.

“Told you,” Darling says, elbowing her beau in the ribs.

“I didn’t disagree with you, dear,” Buddy says through clenched teeth.

When they round the corner, Doc is seated at the table, a mess of toy cars and cassette tapes scattered in front of him, and a shotgun within arm’s reach. He doesn’t look up at them when they enter, but he knows they’re there, because he asks, “Where is he?” in a terrifyingly casual tone.

The lovers share a look, and Buddy takes the lead. “Doc, there was nothing we could do.”

“He was lungshot,” Darling says. “Fucking drowning and bleeding out at the same time. He needed surgery.”

“Yeah, and we don’t have a surgeon,” Buddy says.

Doc closes his eyes, massaging his forehead with one hand and letting the other creep dangerously close to that shotgun. “Where is he?” he asks a second time, in a tone that makes it very clear there won’t be a third.

“In the back of a coroner’s van, if I had to guess,” Buddy says.

Now, Doc’s eyes open, staring straight through the two of them. “You left him?”

“The cops were right there!” Buddy says. “What were we supposed to do, bring him here and throw him a funeral?”

Doc places both hands on the table, and slowly stands up. “Let me get this straight,” he says, eerily calm. “After the best fucking getaway driver in the history of cars does his job and gets you away from the cops, you decide to repay him by leaving his fucking corpse as a piece of meat to throw the fuzz off your scent. Is that what I’m hearing?”

“Hey, look, we tried, alright!?” Buddy says, suddenly defensive. “I told him not to drive, told him to get in the back so Darling could patch him up. And you know what he did? He fucking pulled on me! How’s that for gratitude?”

Doc’s shotgun hand twitches, and Darling jumps in

“I stayed with him as long as I could!” she says. “I even played him a song.”

It’s subtle, but a little tension seeps out of Doc’s shoulders at that. He is silent for a second, breathing in and out, and she can practically see the wheels turning in his mind. “This is over,” he says. “We need to get the money orders exchanged ASAP and then we all need to disappear.”

“Why?” Buddy asks.

“Because, Jason,” Doc says. “Bodies are evidence. Evidence is bad. A body leads to a face, a name, common whereabouts, known associates. It compromises us.”

“How?” Buddy asks. “Nobody’s seen us with the kid except his girlfriend, and she doesn’t know shit about us. Even if she did, I don’t think it’d be that hard to shut her up.”

“You will do no such thing,” Doc says evenly. “You will call your guy immediately and begin the process of spinning this straw into gold.”

Buddy raises his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. I’m calling…”

His phone is out and he’s walking off as Doc looks down at the cars and cassettes, eyes growing distant for a moment. Darling’s not sure what to do, so she waits for a few seconds, her eyes scanning the room until she spots the rest of Bats’s body. “Should we, uhh… clean him up?”

“Huh?” Doc says, shaking out of his reverie and following her eyes to the nearly-headless corpse. “Him? Sure, yeah, knock yourself out.”

She squints at him. “You don’t think we should clean up the dead body?”

“Yes, I do, which is why I told you to do it,” Doc says. “Go get some cleaning supplies.”

She starts to walk out, and pauses. “Where from?”

“I don’t care!” Doc’s hand slams onto the table. “Anywhere! Just go get them! Just… go! Leave! Get out.” Doc sinks back into his seat and stares at the cassettes.

Darling takes a deep breath, and leaves to go look for some bleach, walking around outside in the fading afternoon light, trying not to look as guilty as she feels, and avoiding every cop car she sees.

Joseph finds out from the police.

Late that afternoon, he manages to wake up, dial 911 and make enough noise to convince the dispatch to send somebody out. Naturally, it’s not somebody who understands sign language. His shaky arthritic hands aren’t much good for writing, so he gets the distinct pleasure of playing a losing game of charades with some fat white cop before they finally get their hands on an interpreter so he can tell them what’s going on.

Two men came in, roughed him up, trashed the place and took something out of his son’s room.

His son?

Yes, his foster son, Miles. Joseph thinks he might be in real danger.

Does he have a picture?

Of course, he does. He tells them there’s a yearbook somewhere in the trash heap they turned the boy’s room into, but that’s really old. Kid dropped out at 16. He has a more recent one. He rolls over to the shelf where he kept it. Miles never liked having his picture taken; would play cryptid and hide whenever a camera came out. He was a crafty little shit, but you don’t get to Joseph’s age without becoming a little crafty yourself; Joseph caught him cooking breakfast one day, smiling and singing in the middle of a pancake flip. The camera flash made him drop the pancake, and Joseph wound up laughing so hard that he slid out of his wheelchair. Miles was red with embarrassment while he was putting Joseph back in; it probably didn’t help that Joseph was still laughing at him. After that, Miles jokingly threatened to drop him every time he had to lift him out of his chair. But he never did. Miles never dropped him, not once.

They sift through the wreckage a little bit, find the photo, and…

Well.

Joseph may not be able to hear, but he can see. And to a degree, you can see silence. Mouths stop moving. Bodies stop gesturing. Speech is more than just noise; it’s motion. And that’s how he can tell the terrible silence that falls over the room the second those cops lay eyes on Miles’s face. They all gather around, huddle together, take turns looking. One of them snaps a picture and sends it off somewhere and then they wait. Silent, and still. Terribly, terribly still.

After a few moments, one of the cops looks down at his phone, says something to the interpreter, and they approach him together. The cop kneels in front of him and takes off his hat, looks him in the eye, and…

Miles never dropped him. Never let him down. Not once.

Not until today.

Today, Joseph learns just how low an old man’s heart can sink without falling right out of him.

Debora finds out from the Fox 5 News.

She’s just sat down at the end of a long and strenuous night of trying to think about anything but him. A night where she threw herself into work so hard that she polished every table to a shine you could check your makeup in, cleaned the bathroom to a sparkle you need sunglasses to look directly into.

Sunglasses. Damn it. There he is again.

She sits in a booth and leans her head back, closes her eyes and lets the sounds of the TV wash over her. It’s a special report on the robbery earlier that day, the one they can’t seem to shut up about.

“…and police have now released the identity of the deceased driver: 21-year-old Miles Fletcher, a Dekalb County native.”

She feels herself huff a slight laugh. So they finally got one of them? The cops have been chasing those robbers for months, but the robbers always ran circles around them. Guess somebody’s luck finally ran out.

“Fletcher was wounded while escaping police, and later found dead at the Five Points Parking Garage. Police have obtained information that suggests Fletcher was the driver for all of the recent hub heists, and that he may been involved in similar incidents going back nearly a decade.”

She feels her brow furrow. Nearly a decade? He was only 21; he would’ve been robbing banks since he was barely a teenager. Boy, they really do start them young these days…

“Police also believe that Fletcher may not have been an entirely willing participant in these heists—”

I have to drive again. It’s not what I want.

Her breath hitches. There he is again. She just can’t seem to get away from him tonight. She’s got so many questions, and he just isn’t around to answer any of them.

“…ster father claims that he was at the mercy of a local criminal organization, and that he was coerced and pressured into being their driver.”

I’m a driver. Oh, like a chauffeur?

She stops breathing for a second. Her eyes remain closed. She’s being silly. She’s being ridiculous. Her mind is playing tricks on her. It’s like when you see a face in the moon or something; your brain’s just trained to make you think everything’s about you. It can’t possibly… just because he looked about 20… there’s no way. There’s no way.

“...other suspects are still at large. Eyewitnesses describe them as a Caucasian male in his late-40s, a Hispanic female in her mid-20s, and an African American man in his late-40s, all heavily tattooed. If you have any information, please call CrimeStoppers, at…”

And suddenly she sees them. She sees him, sour-faced and closed-off as he walked in that night, accompanied by people who made her skin crawl. She sees their tattoos in vivid relief, hears the condescension in the black man’s voice as he speaks over everyone else, feels the waves of violence radiating off the white man, sees the hateful sneer of the Hispanic woman. She sees him, sitting rigid beside them, never looking more uncomfortable than at that moment, pretending he doesn’t know her and silently begging for her to do the same.

You drive around important people? Something like that. Anyone I’d know? I hope not.

And finally, she sees the last time she saw him, sorrow and something like shame in his eyes as he slid her the napkin note and walked out of her life, never to come back.

Road trip, 2AM. I want us to head west on 20, in a car we can’t afford, with a plan we don’t have. Keep driving and never stop.

She keeps her eyes closed. She won’t look. She can’t look.

The door to the backroom opens and she hears Jenny walk in. “Debbie? Debbie, what’s wrong?”

She’s already started crying. She didn’t even notice. Jenny tries to hug her, but she shakes her head and points at the TV.

“What? Are you sad about the All-Star Game? What’s wrong, sweetie?”

She opens her eyes. Of course, the news has already moved onto sports. Of course they aren’t going to wait for her to get her shit together and face the truth. Of course.

Her inability to look is suddenly replaced by a need to look. To see. To know for sure. She wipes her tears and pulls out her phone and pulls up the Fox 5 News site and

“Oh my God,” Jenny breathes.

There he is. The biggest picture on their home page, the biggest story. A little younger, a little skinnier. No buds, no shades. But oh, that grin, she’d know that grin anywhere. She could look at it forever. She’ll never see it again. And the flood of grief that threatens to drown her at his face is overcome only by the fiery wall of anger rising at the words underneath it:

Police: Bank robber killed during escape

He wasn’t a robber. She knows who the robbers were. And, she thinks as she looks up the number for CrimeStoppers, I’m damn sure gonna tell somebody about it.

Later that night, after walls have been scrubbed and bodies have been packed and sent to Sunset Drive, plans and contacts arranged and exchanged, Doc, Buddy, and Darling are in the elevator together for the final time, each holding their cut of the money orders. Buddy and Darling had the privilege of splitting Bats’ share, but Doc took Baby’s.

“I’m not keeping it for myself,” he had said pointedly as he packed away the last of the cars and tapes. They didn’t bring it up again.

As the elevator comes to a halt, Buddy starts to give the benediction. “Well, Doc, it’s been…” Doc is already out the doors before they finish opening, without a look or a word to either of them. “…a real kick in the teeth.”

Buddy stalks off, and she follows him. Doc has already split off to head for his own car, but just before he is out of sight, he stops. “What did you play?”

She blinks, confused for a second, figuring out what he means just as he clarifies it.

“The song, Monica,” Doc says, turning his head just slightly towards her. “What did you play for him?”

“Oh,” she says. “Uhh… Easy, I think was the name. By the… Commandoes?”

“The Commodores,” Doc corrects. He’s silent for a second. “Good. That’s… good. He always liked that one.”

Darling nods, not sure what to say. “He was a good kid.”

Doc stares straight ahead. “Yeah… he was.”

He walks off, and Darling catches up to Buddy. “I can’t wait to quit this fucking city and forget all of this shit.”

“What shit?” Buddy asks.

“This weird, guilty-feeling shit. This is what I signed onto this life to avoid,” Darling says.

Buddy puts an arm around her. “There, there, my dear. Soon, life will be nothing but candy-cane condoms and lollipop lingerie for the two of us once again,” he says with a grin. “Sugar, and sex, and lots and lots of coke.”

She kisses him, long and languid. He always did know how to chase the demons away. They hop in the car and start to pull out of the garage.

The last she sees of Doc, he’s sitting in his car, not moving. Just staring straight ahead in the driver’s seat.

It’s kind of fitting.

Baby knows. He knows the second he throws the car in reverse and leaves that poor screaming teller and that poor dead security guard behind. He knows.

Not what’s gonna happen, mind you. Nobody knows that. No, he knows what he deserves. Because he has never hated himself more than at that moment. He’s just shown that teller—and the whole world beside her—who and what he really is. He saw injustice, he saw evil, he saw the chance to remove it from the world and what did he do? He followed orders. He moved the fucking car, and he got them out of there. Like a coward. A quivering little lapdog who goes and does where and what he’s told. Oh, they trained him but good. Whipped him right into shape.

When he stops in that alley, and Darling says “they’re gonna fucking shoot us”—part of him hopes she’s right. Just shoot them. Shoot them all, bring them down in a hail of gunfire, end it. Every single one of them deserves to die, himself included. They’re all terrible people; he’s just the only one with enough of a conscience to still be bothered by it. Which is why he has to floor it when he realizes Bats is about to kill that cop.

The almost-funny thing is, Baby could’ve killed that cop. Should’ve killed him, from a survival standpoint. It’s the dodging, the curving around him that gives the cop enough of a bead on them to actually shoot the car. If Baby had just hit him, he never would’ve been hit. It’s almost funny. Almost.

He doesn’t feel it. Not really, not at first. He feels something, but it comes and goes so fast he can’t even think about it. He’s got a job to do. He’s come this far, he might as well finish. He doesn’t even realize he’s wounded until Bats tells him, and then, he just—he doesn’t care.

It’s probably pure adrenaline that pushes him through the rest of the chase. He’s pissed off and angry and fatally fucking wounded and he just wants it to be over with. It almost feels like he’s pushing towards his own personal finish line, so when Buddy tries to put him out of the driver’s seat, Baby’s not having that. That’s why he pulls on him—Baby’s the driver. He’s the fucking driver. He’s decided who he’s gonna be, he’s decided what kind of person he is, now let him fucking be it. Let him drive the fucking car. Let him get to the finish line—he’ll sure as hell get there faster than Buddy.

It’s just before they get to the parking garage, when the adrenaline is wearing off and the pain is setting in, when the oxygen count in Baby’s blood is starting to get low and his punctured lung is starting to collapse in earnest—that’s when the fear sets in. That’s when Baby’s brain suddenly realizes that he doesn’t want to die. Not here. Not now. Not like this, not with these people, not for these people. Not when there’s… there’s nobody to take care of Joseph. Nobody else, he doesn’t have anybody else, and somebody has to, somebody HAS to take care of him because he deserves it and, and, and Debora—oh god, Debora’s going to think. Shit. She’s gonna think he’s a bank robber. She’s gonna… well, he is a bank robber, but she’s gonna think that’s all he is and it’s not. It’s not. He’s more than that. Isn’t he? Is he? He loves her. He loves her, he never said that. He has to say it. She has to know it.

Buddy pulls him out of the car and Baby clings to him. He’s warm, and Baby is cold. Buddy will keep him warm. Buddy’ll take care of him. Buddy’s his buddy, they like… they like the same songs. Their killer tracks. Buddy won’t let him die.

Except Buddy is putting him down, Buddy’s putting him back in. The warmth is leaving him, and no. No. “No… no!” He tries to grab Buddy but Buddy’s too strong and he’s too weak. He can’t keep hold of him. Can’t talk. Buddy’s talking to him, but he can’t, can’t hear over… The ringing. God, the ringing. It’s worse than ever. It hurts. His chest, his ears, all of it. It hurts. He can’t think.

Darling is there. She’s talking to him. He can’t hear her. He asks… he can’t think of the words. So he motions for it. His music. Please stop the ringing.

She gets it. He reads her lips. Who’s gonna sing you to sleep, Baby boy?

His mom. He wants his mom. But she’s not here. The closest he can get is her song. He asks.

She plays it. Puts his other earbud in, kisses his forehead, and suddenly he’s back in bed, back at home when he was little and mom was laying him down to bed with his earbuds in. Even then, he liked to listen to music when he went to bed. Liked to listen and sing along under his breath. Why in the world would anybody put chains on me?

He blinks, and mom is gone and he’s alone. He tries to close his eyes, tries to get lost in the music, turns it up louder, but the ringing is winning out. The music is leaving him. Song’s over, Baby.

He’s… he’s…

He’s sorry. He’s sorry. He’s so fucking sorry.

He’s cold.

It hurts.

The ringing is too loud.

And…

The police find him minutes later, slumped over in his seat, iPod playing at max volume in ears that can no longer hear it. The coroner removes his earbuds and turns the music off, handing the iPod to the police for evidence. The report detailing his death is dry and clinical; were the police a little more poetic, it might read:

He died alone, on a dark grey morning, with music humming in his ears.

Baby’s—Miles’s funeral is sparsely attended. It’s just a few girls from the diner, Debora, and Joseph. Miles didn’t really have anybody else. Hell, even the girls from the diner are there more for Debbie than they are for him. They didn’t really know the kid that well. Apparently, nobody did.

Debbie glances at the coffin and tries not to shudder. She hates dead bodies, hates the weird, waxy way they look. He doesn’t look anything like he did when he was alive. He was beautiful when he was alive. She hates looking at him now—no, not him, at this thing that’s supposed to stand in for him. It’s not him. Not anymore.

So instead, she looks off to the side, and sees an elderly black man in a wheelchair. Somehow, she thinks she knows who he is. She walks up to him and waits until he is looking right at her, before saying slowly, “Hi, my name is Debora.”

The man smiles at her, and then looks off to the side and waves. A kindly looking black nurse comes over and smiles at her. She looks at Joseph, and Joseph signs. “Hello, Debora. My name is Joseph.”

She looks back and forth between the two of them just long enough to make Joseph laugh. He signs something else.

“And this is Cherita, my nurse and interpreter,” the lady says, smiling and saying on her own. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” she replies.

Joseph signs something, and she’s amazed at how expressive he is, even if she doesn’t quite understand what he’s saying.

“Miles told me about you,” Cherita translates.

“He told me about you, too,” Debora says, being sure to speak to Joseph. She read about that somewhere—always speak to the person, not the interpreter. “Not much, though. He… didn’t talk much.”

Joseph shakes his head with a grin. More signing.

“He wouldn’t shut up about you,” Cherita says.

Debora laughs, and finds herself blushing a little.

Joseph smiles, and his expression grows a little dourer. He gestures to the coffin, crosses his fists over his chest, and then gestures to Debora. She almost doesn’t need a translator.

“He loved you,” Cherita says.

She sighs. “He didn’t even tell me his real name.”

Joseph shakes his head. A few more signs.

“He walked lighter with you in his heart,” Cherita says. More signs. “Sometimes, I thought he would start flying.”

She smiles and lets herself take a tiny glance at the coffin. “He’s flying now.”

After the funeral, Debora starts to visit Joseph every Sunday. When he runs out of money to pay his nurse, she moves in with him. He needs somebody to take care of him, and if she’s honest, she needs somebody to take care of. She learns sign language surprisingly fast.

Despite Debbie’s best attempts to describe them in detail, none of the other robbers involved in the Post Office Heist are ever caught, nor is the mysterious man who masterminded it. As a result, Miles Fletcher accidentally becomes a bit of an outlaw legend due to being the only real person confirmed to have been involved in all the Atlanta Hub Heists. Popular opinion slowly turns him into some kind of romantic superthief who masterminded the whole thing. They start calling him ‘The Kid Who Robbed Atlanta.’

She hates it. She knows that’s the last way he would want to be remembered. Sadly, we don’t always get to choose our legacy.

Starting a few weeks after the funeral, Debbie gets a check for $1000 in the mail, made out to her with no return address. The following week, she gets another, and another. They’ve been coming every week for five years. When she moved in with Joseph, the checks moved with her. She burns every single one that comes. Somehow, she knows what they’re from, and she wants no part in it.

Other than that, life largely goes back to normal.

Nothing changes.

Ultimately, her Miles, her Baby, is just another soul chewed up and spat out by the city she calls home. He wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. And that might be the saddest part of all.

[coreglia]

Family update, not that you asked, but I’m just getting over my PTS from last week, and I could use a little support from things that don’t slither or build webs.

Even gratuitous interest is welcome.

Something I knew, but conveniently forgot, three-year-olds scream. A lot. It’s sort of an ear-piercing howl that lingers in the air as if a recently smoked cigar. You know what I mean? But so do their giggles and that’s the win.

I wake up to the echo of soft laughter coming from down the hall and can’t remember a time when this wasn’t so?

The odd thing is when it’s quiet you know there’s trouble brewing, that’s when you jump up and rush the tranquility.

Rounding the corner to the room in which the twins were last seen, I ask accusingly, “What are you two doing?”

“Nothing (in unison),” claims Cora and Sienna, looking up at me with the most cherubic faces you have ever seen.

“What’s in your hands?”

Four sets of little hands disappear, “nothing Grammie.”

“Are those Kiki’s earrings I see scattered all over the floor, dangling from your shirt, hiding in your hands?”

“We organizing Grammie.”

“Did Kiki ask you to organize her jewelry?”

“Yes, she did,” says Cora.

“Seems odd?”

“We helping,” says Sienna as she holds a crystal earring up to her ear.

“Let’s put them all back and then we can have an otter pop!”

By the way, otter pops solve everything.

Can we move on to the industriousness of our five-year-old roomie? When this child is in pursuit of an important task it is nearly impossible to dissuade her. Recently I found her creating a collage with my latest DIY magazine, later that day she was using my toothbrush as if her own, after relocating my lipsticks to an undisclosed location? Today she was lavishing my French perfume on the dog and my hair clip has mysteriously disappeared?

It’s quite possible Shaggy not only smells but looks better than the humans with whom he resides?

And by the way, adult children revert to their adolescent personas when in the company of their parents, only now they’re educated, self-funded, and not subject to parental restrictions or grounding.

It’s utter mayhem.

Even so, everyone is getting their needs met, albeit with a few peculiar compromises, and silent negotiations. We’re under construction, literally, and metaphorically. My daughter and son-in-law just took ownership of the house across the street. It needs some serious renovations, but that’s the beauty of a large family, many hands make light work as John Heywood notes.

Families have their own micro-culture, it’s as if a bustling harbor, a place to moor your person while you recover from the stress of the outside world. Shannon Alder says love doesn’t make the world go ’round, love is what makes the ride worthwhile, and family is your fast pass.

The best part of being in a large family is you don’t have to waste your time trying to prove yourself in order to be loved, we actually care about each other, and value one another even when we’re acting like total assholes. At least we take turns. Can I just add some of us have taken more turns than others? As Johathan Carroll reminds us, real love is always chaotic. You lose control; you lose perspective. You lose the ability to protect yourself. The greater the love, the greater the chaos. It’s a given and that’s the secret.

I have learned through long and lengthy discussions that disagreements don’t get resolved, they hibernate, until the issue emerges under some new circumstance, disguised as concern, judgment, or control. There are no winners in the ring of unresolved conflict, just knockouts, and bruised feelings. You can’t change people, it’s more about acceptance, and the resolve to agree to disagree. I have to learn to be okay with that and just move on. #LifeLessons

Here’s another hiccup when you live in crowded conditions with wannabe fairies, aka Cora, Sienna, and Audrey. Things get lost! Julie lost a wallet, Larry couldn’t find his keys or flipflops, and I believe there was a necklace that went missing for several days. I keep losing the book I’m currently reading, our shoes are never where we left them, and we are always in search of our iPhones. When one phone rings seven people go into a hard scramble and one of them doesn’t even have a phone?

One day I was using my Airpods and the next day they were gone! I accused everyone (including Shaggy) of borrowing them and then failing to return the merchandise. They all vehemently denied any knowledge of their whereabouts (keep in mind four of us have the exact same model).

A week later I found them precisely where I always store them and had searched this location no less than fifteen times! Fairies or adults? We’ll never know for sure.

The minute the kids got the keys to their new house, we migrated across the street as if a murder of crows, forming this makeshift crew of amateur artists as if attempting to paint a new portrait over a previously used canvas. The kids have submitted plans to the city for an extensive remodel, and while they await approval, there is a lot of prep work that needs to be done. The first order of operations was to pull up all the old carpet, clean out the garage for storage, remove the draperies and rods, along with some of the landscaping, and finally take down the dated wallpaper.

It’s interesting to me how our lives follow the same cycles, we experience periods of creation, followed by deconstruction, and then reconstruction, and it’s the same for houses, cultures, governments, movements, relationships, even our faith. Is this what you think about when you can’t sleep? I didn’t think so.

Too bad we’re deconstructing this beautiful house in the middle of July, it’s hot and humid, and I believe I have sweat out half my body weight pulling carpet staples out of the floorboards.

We were delighted to find hardwood under all the carpets, solid wood doors on all the rooms, and a wallpaper mural of Paris in the dining room! Everywhere I look I sense a surfeit of memories and traditions lodged in the walls of this charming house and smile warmly at the sweet memories domiciled in the future.

Our lives are continually under construction, just when things get comfortable, we find ourselves redesigning the idle spaces. “Every day we reconstruct ourselves out of the salvage of our yesterdays,” says James Sallis. I say family is but a glimpse of heaven simmering on the fires of hell, and like Olaf says, “some people are worth melting for.”

I’m Living in a crowded Gap, searching the net for diversions, catch me up on your life in the comments!

Anecdotes:

“The strewn and tangled wreckage that litters our lives is the precious raw material from which great beginnings are forged.” Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Writers will happen in the best of families.” Rita Mae Brown

“Before you were conceived, I wanted you. Before you were born, I loved you. Before you were an hour, I would die for you. This is the miracle of love.” Maureen Hawkins

  Not that you asked… Family update, not that you asked, but I'm just getting over my PTS from last week, and I could use a little support from things that don't slither or build webs.