#although i like air force one and lucid about the same amount

[lqloonatv]

Let’s get controversal: worst track on Version Up

[snowythebeast]

What Should Have Been

If he was being honest, Sir Nighteye’s opinion of Mirio had started off neutral. His grades were subpar, to say the least, and he had a very loose grasp on the true power of his quirk. Of course, the boy wasn’t completely hopeless, Sir was the one to seek him out in the first place after all. Mirio Togota had a fighting spirit. He had an unbridled determination and no matter how many times he failed he always came back with a smile even wider than before. In that particular sense, Mirio was the perfect person to inherit All Might’s quirk. Mirio seemed to be the only one worthy of obtaining All Might’s quirk and continuing the legacy of One For All. Sir repeatedly recommended the kid, but Toshinori hadn’t bothered setting a date to even meet the kid, which Sir deemed a shame.

Sir had trained Mirio near constantly, borderline working him to the bone. They trained after long school days, and sometimes even before. They went out patrolling more often than not. Mirio never shied away despite the overbearing tasks. He never even faltered. His academics skyrocketed, and soon he was one of the most revered students in the school. He was a fixer-upper, but Sir’s positive reinforcement went a long way it seemed. In addition to his grades, Mirio quickly gained quirk comprehension skills. It was quite the sight to behold. Sir watched as Mirio perfectly passed through wall after wall. He became a worthy opponent, even against a pro like himself. He was perfect, the perfect vessel for One For All. Unfortunately, Toshinori was incredibly stubborn. Sir’s pleas were left unheard and Toshinori was running out of time. Sir admired All Might, but wished that Toshinori wasn’t so easily blindsided by his one-track mind. A few years passed without so much as a conversation between the two. Sir wasn’t pleased, but he had other things to attend to. Mirio was going to be an astonishing hero regardless of if he was going to be All Might’s successor or not. Lemillion was going to be a fantastic hero whether he was riding All Might’s coattails or not He didn’t need One For All. They had so much work to do, Mirio was his obligation now.

Without consulting Sir Nighteye, or even sparing him a glance in acknowledgement, All Might made his choice. Sir was irate. He had already found the perfect specimen, a smart, kind-hearted, smiling, bouder of a boy. Toshinori chose to pick some kid up off of the street. Sir had tried to leave it be, genuinely he did, and for a while he was able to remain ignorant. That is, until the kid in question waltzed into his agency. Being the former sidekick of All Might, there was no chance that he could decline the future of One For All, but he was not happy about it. Sir absolutely couldn’t see the star quality that Toshinori had. He gave Izuku Midoriya a chance to prove himself, but he was met with grave disappointment because he was thinking about what it could have been if Toshinori had just listened for once. If Mirio had been put through the same trial, he still wouldn’t have been able to retrieve the seal, but the crucial difference would be both of their demeanors. Midoriya had looked like he was going to cry at the end, Mirio would have branded an award-winning smile and taken his failed attempts in stride. Mirio had it all. Midoriya was not worthy. Mirio was what should have been. Toshinori Yagi truy made the worst decisions.

On Sir’s last day on Earth he was still confident about who he should have picked to be his successor. But Sir wasn’t the one in that position. He wasn’t the one leaving a legacy. He was forced to place his pride elsewhere. Regardless, here he was, impaled and bleeding profusely while watching Mirio in one of the most valiant fights Sir had ever seen. It was comparable to one of All Might’s many victories. Sir wasn’t fully lucid at the moment, he was dipping into a wooziness as he was reaching a critical amount of blood loss. He was, for only a few minutes, still holding onto his consciousness. He had noticed his heart swell in seeing Lemillion’s arms outstretched to protect the child. A sublime selflessness like that was a rarity, especially in the go-go society that they were living in. It was somewhat grounding. Sir Nighteye was very compelled to continue watching, but he was lulled into a blurry, agonizing, semi-consciousness. He could see and hear, but it was muffled. His brain was foggy with the events of the night. He wasn’t able to absorb any information until several surgeries later. Despite the efforts of the hospital and the miracle of modern medicine, Sir’s prognosis was rather grim. He still had some unfinished business though.

His eyes fluttered open. The room felt bright, although the lights were fairly dim. There were a few of his colleagues around him already, he had no idea how long he had been there. They weren’t much for intriguing conversation, which left him wallowing in an intensely lonely atmosphere. At some point, Toshinori and Midoriya had come in. Their companionship wasn’t worthless, in fact, it was rather impactful in itself. Sir told both of them that he held no sort of resentment, and that Midoriya may have been the key to a brighter future. Just a few simple pleasantries. The conversation was somber so Sir Nighteye was focused on another being entirely. He wondered about Mirio, his Lemillion. His hero who smiled no matter how hopeless the situation, who worked ceaselessly no matter how exhausted. His pupil who had been shot with a quirk-erasing bullet. He didn’t have to think for long.

“Sir!” A tense voice resonated through the room. His heart thumped against the walls of his chest. The voice was instantly recognizable. His charge, Mirio, had never sounded so despondent. Mirio pushed himself off of the door frame he was leaning on and rushed closer on wobbly knees. He had a cast on one of his legs, but, as expected, he still limped to Sir’s bedside. Sir imagined it to be sore, but the boy’s features painted a different kind of pained expression. His voice echoed through the room, cracking loudly. “You can’t! Please, live!”

Sir Nighteye’s fate had been sealed the moment that his interns ran into Eri in the street that day. He couldn’t bring himself to speak on such a disheartening matter. Instead, Sir found himself lamenting for Mirio. Words spilled from his mouth. Not about One For All, or All Might. Not about heroes, or the work that they still had to do, but about Mirio.

“Mirio.” His voice was frail and raspy. Tears beaded in the corners of his intern’s eyes. Remorse tightened Sir’s chest. “You suffered so much because of me. If only I had been-” The student was too choked up to let Sir finish. “It was because you taught that I was able to become strong! It was because you taught me that I am living like this now!” Tears had begun rolling down Mirio’s cheeks, dripping down onto the tiled floor. A wet sob echoed in Sir’s ears. Guilt piled on top of him.

“Mirio, please forgive me.” He paused, carefully picking the next words to leave his mouth. “At first, I only lured you in as a vessel for One For All.” He didn’t know if Mirio was able to hear him beneath his own gut-wrenching wailing. Sir had never seen him cry, let alone break down completely. He brought his hand up, resting it gingerly against the boy’s cheek. “But you followed me and believed in me, and before I knew it, you became my pride.”

Sir Nighteye activated his quirk, a reel of the future playing in his mind. In his movie-esque sights, his blonde-haired charge was standing heroically. Lemillion flashed his trademark smile. Even after this horrid night in which he lost his quirk, he was still able to maintain his toothy smile. Mirio was always such a sight to behold, Sir knew that there was just something about him. He was worthy, more than so in actuality. It was a beautiful sight, but his vision soon blurred, a sign of his body losing functionality. A warm feeling incapacitated him, followed by a white throbbing pain shooting through his abdomen. His time was limited.

“You’ll be fine.” He breathed. “You’ll become a finer hero than anyone else.” Mirio’s tears streamed down the arm leaning against his face, Sir didn’t seem to mind. “This is the only future that shouldn’t be changed.” He let his hand slide back down to the bed, too exhausted to keep it in the air any longer. A tight-lipped smile now encompassed his lips. Mirio’s hurt seemed unrelenting. Every breath he took was shaky.

“So, smile.”

Despite the injured man’s calm demeanor, a taut whimper escaped Mirio’s throat. His eyes squinted shut, wishing away the future he knew was imminent. Sir’s eyes stayed locked on his mentee, but he could also see All Might and Midoriya’s disgruntled expressions behind him.

“Smile. A society without cheer and humor will not have a bright future.”

He could physically feel his biological clock ticking down, only seconds were between himself and the cold embrace of death. All of his strength had been diminished.

The last thing Sir Nighteye saw before his consciousness faded completely was the wide grin Mirio proudly displayed in due time.

[valkyrieofsmut]

Captive Love 8

UF!Sans x Reader (or Frisk if you wanna)

Summary: Today's the day! The day for going home! And Sweetheart is fed up with it being put off.

A/N: Well, um... now, we're getting into Sweetheart realizing that she's not quite as free to leave as she thought.

Masterlist      Series Masterlist

Story

Caught.

A sudden jerking of her body coupled with a noise behind her shoved (Y/n) into a confused state of waking. 

“H-uh?” She asked, sounding more like a gasp than a question. 

A whimper sounded behind her and she felt bony arms that were thicker than it seemed they should be tighten around her. 

(Y/n) looked behind her shoulder, trying to figure out what was happening while forcing her brain to lucidity. 

Sans’ arms tightened around her again as he shifted, another pained sounding groan leaving him. 

(Y/n) blinked to clear her eyes and reached behind her to pat his hip comfortingly. It sounded like he was having a nightmare. 

Sans woke up, and she felt his arms tighten around her, his breathing heavy. 

“didn’t mean ta wake ya up, doll…" He told her after catching his breath. "go back ta sleep, sweetheart,” her murmured against her neck. 

(Y/n) got comfortable to go back to sleep, but when she realized that it was almost morning, and that it was  the  day; the day she was going home, she was too excited to manage it. 

Sans tried to fall back asleep, but any time he managed to let the darkness of sleep take him, it was fitful and short lived. 

Finally, he gave up and climbed from the bed, going to the shower to clean the sweat from himself. 

When he got back to his room, pulling his shirt over his head, he walked in, seeing (Y/n) looking up at him from the bed, her lips parted and eyes focused on his chest. 

Red spread across his cheekbones and nose, and he quickly tugged his shirt down, feeling self conscious about all of the scars and cracks across his bones. 

"uh, s-so- i'm gonna h-head out ta work…" He stuttered, irritation at the stutter filling him. 

"S...ns, c...n … com… w...th you?" Her voice ended in a high pitched squeak, and Sans felt his cheekbones get warmer as he gritted his teeth. 

so… so fuckin' adorable!  

The amount of squeezing he wanted to do to her right then felt like it was abnormal… 

"sorry, sweetheart, goin' in the opposite direction. when i get back, though, a'right?" He told her, panic pinching at his soul again. 

shit… 's been that long a’ready?

She seemed a little let down, but nodded, giving him a smile and wave as he left the room. 

shit. shit shit shit… what’m i gonna do?  He asked himself as he went through a shortcut and arrived at his first job for the day.  i can't let 'er go- fuck… i can't let'er go, i'll never  see  'er 'gain…  

Pain seemed to fill his chest and press out on his ribs, making his soul hurt. 

He had until the end of the day to come up with something… he just had to think! 

 (Y/n) sighed as she heard the door downstairs close loudly. They were gone. 

She was a bit upset that she had to wait to go back home, but she knew it was horribly selfish of her to expect him to skip work to take her home, something dangerous that could get him seriously hurt, when he was already letting her stay as a guest. 

She sighed again. At least she only had to wait until later, when Sans got back. Then she could finally go home. 

Her lips twitched up in an embarrassed smile. 

She was going to have to give him her number so they could keep in touch- and it had  nothing to do with the look of his bare -ribs? chest? body?- self, she'd swear to it! 

Though… That look she'd gotten… 

His ribs had been the same shade of slightly yellowed, off white that his skull was, but with a sort of glow filling in the spaces between them; the same almost transparent red that his sweat was. 

She'd wondered what they felt like- were they the same weathered smoothness as the back of his hands? Or more like the callus like roughness of his palms? 

What did the red part feel like? 

Would it be like poking jello like she thought it might be? Or would it be like poking the normal connective muscle between bones, like on a human? 

Why did she want to know? 

She didn't! 

No no no! 

She really didn't! 

...except she kinda did… 

-not! She didn't- she didn't! 

Oh god… Something is really wrong with me…!  She pressed her hands over her face as she screwed her eyes tight.  There  m ust  be something wrong with me… How could I be thinking that a skeleton is… sexy…?!

. 

Sans opened the door, dragging his sneaker clad feet as he trudged into the house and up the stairs. 

He was so tired. Working a bunch of odd jobs did that to you, though. 

He opened the door to his room and saw (Y/n)'s head turn toward him. 

His tired face turned up in a happy grin. 

It was so amazing how quickly just seeing her lifted his mood. He never would have guessed that it would feel this good to have her waiting for him when he got home, but the feeling of joy that filled him only made him that much more determined to keep her there with him. 

“hey sweetheart,” he greeted. 

(Y/n)’s head tilted in concern.  Are you ok?  

Sans shot her a grin. “‘m fine, jus’ need a nap,” he told her, flopping onto the bed and wrapping his arms around her waist. “i know ya wanted me ta take ya home soon’s i got back, but i need some sleep first, or we’re not gonna have a great time.” 

Although it was irritating that she had to wait  longer  , (Y/n) would freely admit that whatever Sans had done that day had obviously taken it out of him; he looked like the star example of  bone  tired  -ooo, that one is terrible, I should use that one when he wakes up - if the bags under his eyes were anything to go by. 

She looked toward the window and saw that there was still a decent amount of light. 

She could wait, no problem.

.

(Y/n) sighed to herself as she stood next to the window looking out. 

The sun was starting to hang a bit lower in the sky, just to the edge of evening. 

She needed to go soon to have enough time to get home before dark, if it really was as dangerous as they said it was, and it probably was. 

She looked back to the bed where Sans was still passed out, snoring. 

Damn it… she needed to go soon! 

(Y/n) shook her head to herself and clenched her jaw as she looked out the window again. 

I should just go… 

She paused and pondered over the thought. 

Why not?

Sans had said that it would be fine, no one would even be looking for her in three days, it had been three days, today was the day to go… 

She started towards him, patting his pocket to find his phone and pulling it free of his coat. 

She contemplated his phone for a minute, trying to figure out how to unlock it before just hitting the emergency call and dialing her phone number and leaving herself a blank voicemail so that she’d have his phone number when she got her phone back. Wherever it was. 

After that, she stuck the phone back in his pocket and gathered herself, taking a breath before silently wishing Sans goodbye and turning to the door. 

Down to the main floor, and no sign of Papyrus’s intimidating presence, she opened the front door and stepped out. 

It was beautiful! 

Fields, almost a meadow, really, surrounded the house, tall grasses, colorful flowers, trees in the distance on one side… the works. 

Too bad monsters would kill me just for being around; this wouldn’t be a bad place to live…  She could definitely see why Sans and his brother had chosen this place as their home. 

(Y/n) walked around the house, trying to find recognizable landmarks for the city, finally seeing tall buildings in the distance, on the same side as Papyrus’ room, at the opposite side of the house from Sans’. That explained why she hadn’t been able to see anything through his window. 

She started forward, pushing the nearly waist deep grass to the side as she moved, trying not to pay attention to the scattered glimmers of what was most likely spiderwebs. It was nature. Spiders deserved houses, too. 

A bright light in the shade of a tree caught her attention, and she carefully made her way that direction, since it was generally the same way she had been going, anyway. 

As she got closer, she could tell that the bright light was actually a group of glowing flowers. 

She crouched down, pushing a curtain of tall grass out of the way, flailing one hand slightly and rubbing it against her pants when it came back sticky with spiderwebs. 

Each flower had six petals, and she could see that they were the same sickly translucent color of a blind cave dwelling animal she’d seen in some documentary she’d had to watch for school, but that the beautiful blue-ish glow was coming from inside them and lighting them up that color. 

Pushing the grass out of the way again, she reached out and touched one of the flowers, wondering what it felt like, and finding it quite rubbery. 

“i wish i could jus' stare at th' stars all night…”  

What the hell?  (Y/n) wondered.  Did that flower just talk?!

She touched the flower again, and it repeated,  “i wish i could jus' stare at th' stars all night…”   

She touched the one next to it and it spoke as well. 

"you're above ground. don't need ta worry 'bout resets." 

(Y/n)'s brows met in confusion.  Resets?  She wondered. 

She shook her head and tapped the next flower. 

"there's a new star…  sweetheart  …"  

"andromeda’s beautiful t'night."

Just as (Y/n) was about to tap the next flower, a voice behind her startled her, sending her hand into the flower and making them all collide into each other, spilling out their words at the same time on repeat as they bumped into each other and filling the surrounding air with a cacophony of confused noise. 

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT HERE?" 

(Y/n) turned and looked up at Papyrus' towering figure, feeling the blood drain from her face. She tried to open her mouth to answer. 

But nothing came out. 

His glare seemed to intensify as he demanded, "DOES SANS KNOW THAT YOU'RE OUT HERE?" 

(Y/n) again couldn't force any words out of her mouth. 

Papyrus let out a grumble before reaching down and grabbing her arm. "AS I SUSPECTED." 

He hoisted her up over his other arm, and settled her so that he was carrying her under his arm like a child having a tantrum as she fought to get away from him. 

"YOU SHOULDN'T BE OUT HERE ON YOUR OWN. IT'S DANGEROUS. I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT SANS IS BEING SO NEGLIGENT. HE NEEDS TO TAKE MORE RESPONSIBILITY AND BE PROACTIVE IN KEEPING YOU SAFE!" He yelled to her, overpowering all of her quieter attempts to explain this misunderstanding. 

With Papyrus’ long legs and wide steps, they made it to the house in what probably would have been record time for (Y/n). 

He didn’t put her down, even as they got into the house. Or when he took her up to the second floor landing. 

No. 

Instead, he held her against his side like she was a naughty child, his arm around her waist, her feet poking awkwardly behind him toward the ground. 

At least mine isn’t going to be the only hurt pride , she thought ruefully as he slammed the door to Sans’ room open and stormed in, startling the skeleton into a semi woken state. 

“-hkhgn- wu- wassup, paps?” He asked, blinking slowly, the bags under his eyes looking worse, somehow. 

“SANS, YOU NEED TO TAKE BETTER CARE OF YOUR HUMAN!!” Papyrus reprimanded. “SHE WAS OUTSIDE! ALONE!” 

Sans looked up at them, an easygoing grin stretching his jaw. “‘s fine, boss. ya got ‘er, she ain’t even hurt.” 

“THAT IS BESIDES THE POINT, SANS,” Papyrus huffed as he rolled his eye lights. 

He seemed to be really good at condescending huffs. (Y/n) wondered for a moment if he could have an entire conversation only using them and facial expressions…

“YOU NEED TO BE RESPONSIBLE!! TAKE BETTER CARE OF YOUR PET!!” 

Wait- what?  (Y/n)’s expression fell from mild amusement as she thought about huff conversations to shock and resistance as she registered all the implications of his words.  Pet?! 

Before she could properly get angry or attempt to say anything, Papyrus had tossed her onto the bed, landing her right in front of Sans. 

He wrapped his arms around her middle and pulled her closer as he told the taller skeleton, “'s fine, boss, i got it.”

Papyrus just glared at him, then gave a dramatic flip of his scarf as he turned and left. 

(Y/n) tried to turn to face Sans, about to demand what the hell his brother had meant, but froze when his face was so close behind her shoulder. 

“but seriously, sweetheart,” he started, nuzzling against her shoulder, “ya gotta be careful. there’re monsters out there that’d wanna tear yer flesh from yer bones fer a snack. literally eat ya alive." He chuckled. "y’re jus' lucky i only wanna eat that sweet lil thing ya got b’tween yer thighs,” he told her, his deep voice rumbling against her ear before he seemed to sink back toward sleep, his arms keeping her from getting away. 

(Y/n) laid there, eyes wide, frozen. 

A feeling filled her with hurt, rejection, anger, and despair, making her rethink everything that had happened so far. 

A sick, stomach twisting feeling, that made her feel nauseous and heartbroken. 

Betrayal. 

A/N: Ah, mentioning again that I have some drabbles; "what if reader has kinks?", barista drabble, if you want to see them. I’m always here if you have questions about the story, or maybe just want to say hi, or I don't know... maybe... have something like a fan project to share...? *more flustered noises* I can hope, dammit!

[chiimmchiimm]

❝𝖒𝖔𝖓𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗 !¡ 𝓉𝑒𝓃 ❞

CHAPTERS “  01 - 02 - 03 - 04 - 05 - 06 - 07 - 08 - 09 - 10 -  11  - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 “  

The northern jail was the most dangerous in the country, social scum, thousands of criminals were locked behind their bars. Who would tell poor Blair that he would end up there because of his father’s mistake. The problem was not the lack of hot water, but that inhuman obsession that many of the prisoners had for “new toys.” Rookies had two options; be submissive and abide by veterans’ orders or suffer the dangerous anger of those disturbed minds. It all started one night when Blair had the bad idea of ​​going to shower alone.

𝒫𝒶𝒾𝓇𝒾𝓃𝑔: Jungkookoffender au x (female: Blair).   𝒢𝑒𝓃𝓇𝑒:  smut.(later), offender au, fluff, angst. 𝒲𝑜𝓇𝒹𝓈: 4 k 𝑅𝒶𝓃𝓆𝓊𝒾𝓃𝑔:  +18   𝒲𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔:   dirty language, proposals, mood swings, spectacular bodies, muscles, biceps, problems, future friends ?, jealousy, confessions.

                                         Fear is an ephemeral feeling that can cause great consequences if we let it dominate us. I don't know if what I felt at that moment was fear or a simple tingling of what could happen, but I had already gotten into this and couldn't turn back. Halfway there, Lucy had harassed me with slightly irritating questions. When we crossed the patio door and saw where she was looking, her nerves betrayed her.

"What are you supposed to do? You promised me you wouldn't tell anyone." She begs, her cold, wet fingers brushing my wrist to stop me.

"Jimin won't find out about me, calm down. I know what I do."

Heading towards a stack of men stacked with Lucy behind me. Getting all kinds of reactions, some men frown their frown over my meddling in their affairs, others decided to be a bit more impolite and not cut a hair how much they needed female company. There I found him, sitting with his legs in the position of an Indian, playing what seemed to be a most innocent game of cards, although anyone who needs some intelligence could realize that it was not so much.

I couldn't even take the privilege of approaching him so that he could see me because a blue movie (the same one I saw in the cafeteria on the fateful day I met Hong Kong) had got in my way with too much determination. Although he was not as tall as Thirteen, I did have to stretch his neck up a little to give him an annoyed look. He had delicate features I agreed with his white skin, however, eyes injected with fury turned away any sweetness from him.

“Suga.” A slightly weak voice rang out behind me. The blue movie put all his attention on the way Lucy came out of hiding. The boy angry with the world seemed to soften his frown for a moment. "Please let her pass."

“Is she a friend of yours, Dallas?” Her question caused me some discomfort at the simple fact that it seemed that if I wasn't, my person was worthless. My friend nodded slowly before shrinking back behind my back. Suga snorted moving my hair causing it to form a face of torture, I did not like to get my breath in my face. All without getting out of front. Imitating a dramatic inhalation pass by him with the same annoyed air as him.

"I'm going with everything." He said, a man with an orange hairy beard. He bent his entire body to drag all the tiles onto the concrete. I looked immediately at his opponent too intrigued, Thirteen seemed too focused to worry about his surroundings, he did not notice my presence until he gave a smile full of pride to the redhead. As if my person will be a stimulant for him, he imitated the bearded man's gesture and slipped his own with too much confidence. Jimin, who was next to him, showed an expression of confusion mixed with a little more alarmed, it seemed as if the act of his friend had caught him by surprise. Thirteen brought a finger to his lower lip to touch him, he transmitted so much confidence that the redhead had no choice but to make his letters known. I opened my eyes surprised at how good his letters were, that redhead had a straight flush. Seeing himself as the great winner of the game, he leaned his body back with an air of pride. "Thirteen, it seems that I have ..."

The redhead closed his mouth impressed when the chestnut man revealed his hand. I throw the full as if he didn't care, then he got up and approached me.

"Graff, collect the money for me." His tone did not sound like an order, but rather, a proposal that the blond did not take long to accept. Deeply rolling his eyes in my surprised expression, he smiled under his breath as if that gesture was only for me. No need to open my mouth, as if reading my mind, he leaned toward my ear and whispered in a hot sigh. "Come with me, gongjunim."

Without unnecessary waiting, take a breath of air before following you to the other end of the large courtyard. He walked slowly with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders relaxed and the most serene look he had seen so far. He seemed quite happy despite not expressing it directly with a smile, well, actually, he was like that, he never showed emotions, only if it was necessary. Probably his good mood was due to the exorbitant amount of money he had just won, but the brightness that I perceived in his eyes when he turned and supported the fence, yelled at me that there was something else, that he was not only elated by the simple fact of having won a couple of dollars.

"You have accepted my proposal, I deduce. I must admit that I am surprised by how quickly you have decided, precious."

I frown intensely when I hear his compliment. Actually, he seemed in a very good mood, with a triumphant air that even the smallest insect could disturb. Arecosto the head while lowering a funny look towards me. His thick neck was in the front line, I had to take a lot of willpower to avoid being hypnotized by the movement of his Adam's nut. Coming out of my little temporary trance, I clench my lips and direct an overrated face towards his direction.

"Those are the bets?" Playing cards like little children? ”My scroll forms a sideways smile full of fun on his lips.“ I don't know who is most surprised. Thirteen, if you or me.

"There are many types of bets, gongjunim. That was just one of the many games my people are dedicated to. You know ..." He takes off the back of the gate to straighten and impose his height. He stretched his neck up to have more access to his facial reaction, which despite being almost neutral, I can perceive excitement from the discussion. As if it were his most banal custom, he leans his mouth over my ear to disturb her with hoarse whispers. "... keep up appearances."

“That is very good for you, isn't it?” I take the audacity to whisper directly on her cheek, to subtly paste the surface of my lips. My most lucid self is screaming at me internally how much I have spent making such a provocative gesture. However, when Thirteen tightens the jaw and separates with the darkened look, my imaginary self begins to dance in a triumphant dance. His proud smile had been overshadowed for a couple of seconds by a little confusion, frowning as he realized my ironic tone. The discussion I heard between Lucy and him has not yet left my mind, really, I never thought I saw him so broken. Taking advantage of their state of confusion, I opened my lips calling their attention to them, I remained silent for a couple of seconds, without reacting to their dark pupils, but sanity came to me like a tsunami. "I want forty percent of the profits to help you win. "

Her sharp laughter completely paralyzed my imaginary dancer, she looked at me with a big question in her head while my real self kept an eye on her peculiar laugh.

"You'll be twenty, that's what the rest of my people earn."

Expanding his eyes to his stingy attack. It is as much as he is that this percentage is too small. I urgently need the money to help Lucy and with that misery it would take weeks to cover what Shanghai is exaggeratedly asking.

"But I'm different." I mutter softly to sound much weaker. My sudden change in attitude seems to affect him, his shoulders stick to the ends of his neck with momentum, his gaze darkens more and he licks his lips. It forced me to continue this absurd game that I didn't even do where I am going, I am really desperate and if I have to use the tricks of a pampered girl to get what she wants, Eevee have mercy on my soul. "It was you who you asked me to help you. "

His wildly sensual smile almost destroyed the foundations of my security. My role as a weak girl was almost endangered when referring to her large body mass, she took a step towards my direction to almost completely hit our bodies.

"To increase that percentage you will have to earn it, a lot." Pronouncing that adverb too slowly, he kept his gaze fixed on mine waiting for it to be the first to yield. I did not do it. I don't calculate when time we were caught in each other's eyes, but enough for my sudden tremor to betray my urgency. I didn't know exactly what crossed his mind at the time, but when he looked away at the wall, I thanked him with a deaf gasp. "I'm going to give you thirty percent, if I see that you serve, I will give you forty for sure that you ask me."

I opened my mouth to close it instantly. Actually, it was more than I expected to get, really, I had said that percentage in a guiding way. Surprised at how well I had managed to cope with the situation, I turned around with a smile that was increasing as I moved away.

"That means that from now on I will become your personal trainer."

My smile disappears before I turn at him.

"I wasn't serious about being my coach." He tried to make sure that he was playing a joke. I looked for something in his expression that revealed his amusement, but he only looked at me with a serious look.

"It was a contract we stipulated in the gym when you tried to mistreat my bag."

"Yes, but ..."

"If I'm not your coach, you can't help me with the bets."

“But why? I already told you that I am a disaster, is that, really. I don't want you to owe me a favor, I don't care about those things ...

"Then there is no deal." His lips open and close too tightly. His brow frowns intensely before releasing a frustrated growl towards my direction. Then he turns and starts to get away from me. Flapping with exaggerated hands before running behind him. My fingers wrap his wrist in an attack of hysteria, he stops quite tense, as if the single act of my touch will cause him an accumulation of emotions that I would not know how to control. I notice the process of dilating his veins under my palm, I feel chills from the warmth of his skin. It is the first time I touch him, when I realize my actions, I withdraw the altered hand.

"Okay." I close my eyes when a little shriek escapes through my nerves. He says nothing, he simply advances as if he had said nothing. Leaving me practically at the mercy of all the curious looks that had been spectators of our scene. Suddenly looking down to the ground with my cheeks flushed with shame, not knowing if my modesty was due to my overexposure or the simple fact of having become manipulated.

A blow to the face is what I need to get back in me. With my head in the clouds while thinking about meaningless things with my eyes glued to the ground. Apart from the fact that Lucy had just hit me practically in the face with a rolled towel, I decide to let it be and concentrate on the task of collecting the empty bottles in a little pile.Another day that passed in this prison, I sighed reluctantly. It is true that Lucy's presence is pleasant to me (as long as it does not hit me with strange things), that the days make me more pleasant, but that does not take away the fact that I crave the freedom I know I deserve.

This morning, as I passed the calendar hanging on the wall of the cafeteria, I realized that today was the day I had been in this place for a month. As if being exact, there were three weeks left for my birthday, that little memory caused me to sigh again.

Glancing over the towel cart, I see Lucy wipe her forehead with her sleeve.

"You shouldn't work so hard, you're pregnant. The first weeks are the most important." I knew willingly that my scolding was not going to take it well for the simple reason that I was very stubborn. Confirm my suspicions when, in an act of total immaturity, he stuck my tongue out. I gave him a tired grimace before throwing the last batch of bottles in the trash. "It's a serious matter. My aunt almost lost my cousin ..."

"What luck." She whispers, under her breath and with her chin inward to avoid being heard, but my great auditory sense catches her immediately.

"What do you say?"

Throwing the towels badly, he gives me a foul look.

"What you hear. I didn't want it and if it dies then goodbye very good."

"You're talking about a life, Lucy." I reprimand, with accusation glistening by my tone of voice. "Your son." I whisper, this time ensuring that no one will listen to us. Looking at all the places where there could be people to verify that they were not following our conversation.

"I don't want it." He spat quickly before he rolled up a towel and threw it into the cart angrily. "It's my last word."

"But..."

"Hey, Blair! I thank you for helping me in the Shanghai affair but that doesn't give you the right to get into my life like that, except in such an intimate affair. You don't know ..." stop talking suddenly. His eyebrow frown almost instantly when he sees something behind me. Swallow sharply, your lower lip begins to shake leaving me stunned. When I decide to turn around, I meet Thirteen, he raises his eyebrow at Lucy, but she can't stand it and leaves the gym dragging the cart too quickly. He stays a couple of seconds analyzing in the direction that Lucy has left, frowns as I look at her profile. He seems worried but confusion also plays an important role in his gaze.

Then, lead your eyes to my direction.

“Come on?” “It's not a question, it's an order because it advances without waiting for an answer from me. I close my eyes and sigh overwhelmed. The gym exit was so tempting. I do a little breathing exercise to relax before turning and following. Actually, I can't understand the insistence he has to help me with my duck sporting ability. He stands in front of a punching bag and then bends down to deposit a bottle at the foot of the structure, his wonderful flexing muscles are visible. I silently follow his movements until he looks at me again, quickly looked away from his body completely ashamed. Traveling across the ground I look at him again to find him lost at the exit. You must still be thinking about Lucy. When he returns to his position he grabs the bag with both hands. "He has three attack zones, the blue one for the head, the red one for the body and the yellow one for the lower extremities. As you can deduce the other day you were trying to hit the area yellow."

"I already told you that I am a disaster, and I do not understand why you are still ..."

"Put your fists up." He growls, he's annoyed at my little collaboration, I can tell by the pressure of his jaw. I roll my eyes and abide by his order, I hold them in his direction but soon I was repressed. "Taller woman, you don't want to let them beat you."

Under the arms of blow.

"I have short arms, I don't give more of myself." I answer, wrinkling my nose as I move my arms dramatically in random directions. It is not my fault that I was born with so little spirit of sport. He suddenly stopped any action when I hear how a small laugh escapes his lips, one that immediately suppresses. Get serious again and pat the bag to divert my attention, but I can't help but see the way in which his lips have silenced that involuntary emotion. Actually, it seemed as if he didn't want me to know that my little self-criticism had seemed funny. I frown, it must be quite strenuous to keep your face so rigid all day.

"You have to shrink your body to reduce the exposed areas, in your case it will be easy you are a dwarf."

I let out an indignant scream.

"Excuse me, sir, I am taller than you." I am not short, my height falls within the middle. "I answer, pride transpires through all the pores of my skin.

"Yes, whatever you say. Now, give it." I feel a strange sense of comfort from the hint of fun in his voice, adding the fact that his words despite sounding uncompromising his expression said the opposite. I find myself imitating his act, clenching his lips to prevent the smile that threatened to leave, did. I hit the red zone to start at once with this impromptu training, suddenly I hear a pout of disapproval. "It doesn't happen that way."

"Then stop complaining and show me how it's done." I growl and, as I pat the sack through the cloud of anger that dominates all reason. Thirteen, raise an eyebrow surprised by my change in attitude. His pupils shine with something that is not described, it seems joyful but I am not sure. The next thing I do not see coming, it is placed behind me sticking his chest against my back, his hands move towards mine to lift them, I attend the first blow. It controls the movement of my body so naturally that I feel like a puppet. With each blow, a small push is accompanied, the redness of his legs brushes the back of my knees. I stop an involuntary gasp when his pelvis crashes into my butt in an abrupt motion. I feel my cheeks burn, my mouth is open as I remove myself to separate myself from it. To my surprise he releases me right away. I feel, as the heat of his body leaves mine when he stands next to me while he frowns confused. It is only after realizing my shameful little state when he realizes the reason why discomfort has been represented on my face so furiously.

His ladino smile doesn't help me at all.

"What happened, beautiful? Have you been excited?"

My cheeks burn under my palms when I cover my dead face with shame.

“Have you done it on purpose, right?” I growl, the words don't come out too clear from my coat of hands but I don't care. I know you heard me because a tongue click sounds.

“The what?” His little question, not at all innocent, causes me to run away from my shelter and uncover my face.

"That." I get the voice fast and stained with too much sharpness.

"And what is that?"

I open my mouth indignantly when I notice his intentions, he wants me to say it, he wants to see how I describe that so rough behavior. Thirteen, just resting an arm in the bag to get close to my face, he is mocking me, but unlike the other times he has had the audacity to mess with me, he had never done it that way, if he did not know his explosive character would even swear he's flirting with me. I discard that possibility with too much effusiveness, you are simply practicing your favorite activity, making fun of me. Nothing else.

"Always acting with such correction, gongjunim. Aren't you tired of always acting? I know you have loved what I have done to your little round butt. I bet you have loved the shape of my thrusts."

"Do not..."

"No, what." Take advantage of my evasion to bring his mouth to my ear.

"Don't do that." I whisper, fleeing from its heat moving to the other end of the bag. I put my back on the latex and crossed my arms. I am aware that I have betrayed myself with my cowardly behavior, but I have really been forced to act so impulsively because of the uncomfortable way in which my body began to succumb to its menthol breath. I do not know what happens to me when it is close but I begin to suffer ups and downs of chills that I fail to understand its purpose. I know you're behind me, I see your body reflected in the mirror in front. He rests his arm leaving his bulging bicep in sight, but he looked away almost out of necessity.

"Hello, Blair." A terribly familiar voice sneaks in between us. I look again at the mirror to find the image of Brain at the gym door. Moving away from that suffocating atmosphere, I walk slowly towards my friend knowing that I had a look nailed to my neck. I extend my arms and give him a friendly hug in the form of a greeting. As I separate, I see Brain's lovely smile. A blow to my back causes me to form a fist in Brain's jacket. I look sideways at the mirror beside me, Thirteen strikes the sack with such emphasis that the poor object swings enthusiastically. It's amazing how easy it is to hit, it seems as if he really knows what he is doing. Each blow is directed with such precision that if it is not because Brain was here, I would sit down and admire his skill. His voice brings me back. "Mrs. Smith has left the hospital, tomorrow you can return to your old task."

"Okay." I accept, I return her smile kindly. I close my eyes when another blow breaks into the room. Brain sweeps Thirteen's body with contempt for the scandal he was forming. His perfume interferes with my nostrils as a welcome intruder, a smell of lime rather than relaxing that leads me to approach him.

“Was I bothering you?” Brain's soft tone creeps into my heart like a pleasant storm. Another blow much more strenuous than the previous ones causes my shoulders to strike a start. The squeaky sound of the chain roars furiously with each punch, Brain narrows his eyes when in a quick warning, he can see how Thirteen does not take his eyes off his, indirectly provoking him with strong latex attacks.

"No." I am forced to intervene, I feel chills of regret all over my body, I wasn't sure if I told him about my small deal with Thirteen. "I'm fine, go to work."

"Safe?"

"Yes, go."

After a few long pleas for him to do his duty, the blows stop as if it were a miracle. Turning on my own heels, I find myself crossed my arms towards his person. Thirteen successfully ignores me with the cheap excuse of wiping the drops of sweat, which he had so arduously built along his brow for extreme exercise. Putting all my self-control into practice so as not to look at her skin, transparent through the fabric, I frown.

“What?” He growls, despite finding himself without an apex of breath he keeps his mouth shut.

"What was that?"

"It's called boxing, beautiful." Ironizes, through an unbearable tone.

I put my eye white.

"You're so bipolar ..." I sigh, tired of always having to carry the rational part in our pointless conversations. Thirteen is an effusive smile but so false that I drown in my own self-control. Glue a light (more than intentional) push to the bag, the latex hits my stomach causing me to bend at the sensation. I sigh, I jerk him away. "And now why do you behave like a little boy? Just ten minutes ago you were crazy about your sister's behavior ...”

Shit.

Oh holy shit.

“What the hell did you just say?” I had never seen him whisper so nervous, letting himself be carried away by a massive attack, hit the bag so hard it almost slipped off the roof. The chain squeaks elated by the attack, I can not help but shrink in my own fear, I deeply analyze his change in attitude because at one moment he stops breathing through his mouth and sinks his head into the sack, covering all possibility of seeing what it was Your expression now. I am pleasantly surprised when an affected whisper comes out through the tiny hollow of his arms. "Did he tell you, Lucy?"

"No, I heard it ..."

Take off the face of the sticky material, give me a confused look. From the pressure of his lips I can deduce that he is pressing his tongue against the palate, he was nervous, surprised and a little upset. I never thought that all those emotions could fit in one glance, every day I discovered a new facet of his personality.

"You can't tell anyone."

“Why?” I asked, lost in the depth of his confused eyes.

Resting his back in the sack as the only support, sliding a hand down his face to clean the frustration.

"Because it is better here not to have people you love, Blair."

NEXT

[ryewi]

Closed Distance - jjk

You appreciated him, so much, Jungkook was someone to rely on, trust, someone to love. If he got a dollar each time he heard you say “I love you”, Jungkook would’ve been a millionaire a long time ago. Yet, there always was that burden of physically not being next to each other. That feeling of loving but also not having their hand to hold, torso to hug or lips to kiss. Having, but also not having someone.

That was exactly why a white plane ticket rested between the grip of your fingers.  

Words: 1,6k

Genre: Long distance relationship!au, birthday scenario, F L U F F

Your eyes skimmed over the small colorful circular object above your TV. Two dark lines were positioned near each other as the third one, slightly thinner than others, ticked closer and closer towards its companions. Previously during the day, you made sure to check at least twelve times that the calculations you made were correct and ready. It took more time than you liked to admit to calculate the time difference and moment of calling you’ll be doing.

Currently, it was two minutes before midnight in a country that was a couple of hours ahead of you. Waiting patiently, with a phone in hand, you watched as that same thin line moved near the end of it’s journey, after which it’ll begin a new one. Seconds, minutes passed by like that and your mind was more than welcoming to home thoughts of your boyfriend inside.  

Jeon Jungkook, was a soon to be twenty-one-year-old boy that you met three years ago over an online game. Although you were only starting, Jungkook handled your inexperience well when the two of you were paired up as a team. He would explain things quick and well, occasionally sending healing packs when he noticed the hp of your character was low. Shortly after, with a lot of help from Jungkook, your now “battling buddy”, you were climbing up the charting board, joking how “you’re going to beat him if this continues”.

As time passed by, the two of you moved from gaming to social media and eventually, phone numbers. You’d face-time or send messages, trying hard to sneak pass the time difference and work/school hours. Whether it was an hour-long rant while you complained about people who made you feel uncomfortable, which he would gladly listen to, or a ten minute catch up, both of you enjoyed the calls. Jungkook was an extremely caring person, a friend which never missed sending a goodnight or good morning message, sometimes even delivering encouraging texts to boost your day.

Eventually, you started to date. Long-distance, as teenagers today would say. Something that should’ve made you feel special, when in reality, it was only a simple label on what the two of you already were.

You appreciated him, so much, Jungkook was someone to rely on, trust, someone to love. If he got a dollar each time he heard you say “I love you”, Jungkook would’ve been a millionaire a long time ago. Yet, there always was that burden of physically not being next to each other. That feeling of loving but also not having their hand to hold, torso to hug or lips to kiss. Having, but also not having someone.

That was exactly why a white plane ticket rested between the grip of your fingers.  

Your phone buzzed, reminding you that midnight has indeed struck in South Korea. Fingers moving in such rapid pace, they tenderly pressed on the call button, watching as the screen displayed a picture of a perfect human being.

“Hello? Y/N?” Jungkook replied, voice raspy and slow. He was most probably awoken from a deep sleep, considering that this week it was his turn to work the afternoon shift. The way your name left his lips in such tone, was tantalizing. You imagined his fluffy hair, closed eyes and puffy cheeks, body wrapped into a blanket, representing the whole sight as a human burrito.  

“Happy birthday, sleepyhead” You chimed in, speaking low and just as slow, fearing that if somehow changed, it would ruin the moment and scare him. Jungkook smiled and although you couldn’t see it, you could feel it through his next words.  

“Well thank you, what time is it?” Jungkook asked, more for himself. Before he could distance the small device from his ears, you already gave an answer. It was late, he probably arrived home two hours ago and although you wished to speak for another hour, you were ready hang up if he asked.

“Midnight for you” Jungkook sighed, shuffling on the bed while turning on his back. Checking the small analog clock on his brown bedside table and watching it pass from 00:01 to 00:02, he smiled. You really called at midnight. Noticing the silence that soon spread throughout the line, you asked if he was still awake to which your boyfriend only hummed along. It wouldn’t be humane to keep him awake for much longer.

“I have a gift for you” you began, listening to the calming breaths and what seemed the noise of heavy raindrops hitting a window. It was raining in Seoul, creating an amazing atmosphere for a nap or heavy sleep. Jungkook made a sound similar to a whine, probably curious but at the same time unsatisfied that you’d spend money on him. Looking at the paper in your hand and calculating the time of travelling to Jungkook’s doorstep, you continued, “It should arrive around 8am to your doorstep, sorry that it’s so early”. To your remark, he laughed, anticipation bubbling inside his chest.

“I’ll leave you to rest now, goodnight Jungoo”, “Goodnight, my love”.

»»————-　♡　————-««

Your flight went extremely well, considering this was the first time traveling alone, your experience was beyond great. No screaming kids, scary metalheads or boring elders who need a victim to choke with stories about their grandchildren. Well maybe you were slightly stereotyping.

As of right now, it was 7:27 and you patiently waited in a café across Jungkook’s apartment building, sipping on your favorite beverage. People have only now started to fill up the streets, entering random cafés, picking up coffee and a quick breakfast then leaving. Cars packed the streets, creating colorful lines, snakes that moved every now and then in a desired direction. You wondered, was Seoul always this packed?

7:50, you stood up, paying for the drink and getting ready for a surprise. Decorative metal cylinders began hitting against each other while the door ruined their perfect state of balance, creating an unexpected melody as you left.

7:56, there you were, on the 6th floor, trying not to let your lungs burst from the huge amounts of oxygen you gaped for. Apartment 602 under which laid a small plaque with cursive Jeon written on it.

You couldn’t believe it, after three years of friendship and a year of dating; after numerous I love you’s spoken in the air, imaginary hugs and hand holds. After all these tormenting emotions, you’ll finally be able to feel them. Feel his hands as they wrap around you, lips as they place on yours and warmth that’ll radiate between the two bodies.

8:00, you knocked. Hurried steps were heard somewhere on the other side, then a faint “fuck” followed by a thump. Trying to suppress the incoming laugh, you put a hand over your mouth. The anticipation of this moment finally happening was intriguing but also terrifying.

Once the door opened, it felt like time stopped. Not because you could move, it was obviously possible, but none of you did. Jungkook stood with an unreadable expression on his face, eyes slowly becoming glassy while his hand gripped the handle tighter. Knuckles on his right hand became white like paper, but your observations of it were swift, attention once again back on the beautiful face of your boyfriend.

With caution, his hand moved from the handle, only to be put on your shoulder. Both of you remained silent, staring into each other’s eyes, trying to make sure that the other person really was there. That this wasn’t one of the often-occurring lucid dreams.  

Then, with such force that would’ve hurt if you landed on any other surface, Jungkook pulled you towards him, hands wrapping around the soft being in a quick manner. Out of instinct, you did the same, drawing Jungkook in as tight as viable. Suddenly, the shoulder of your shirt began to damped and only then was it noticable that the tender boy, currently in your embrace, began tearing up. Pulling him in even closer you began to rock back and forth, creating a steady rhythm.

“Hey, cheer up, I’m here now?” You smiled, ending the sentence in a slightly higher tone, attempting to tease and cheer your bunny boy up. Jungkook let out of a puff of air but smiled, nodding into your shoulder and detaching himself from the hug for a quick moment.

“I know but you’re, you’re really here now and I can’t comprehend that, it’s unreal” he replied, eyes watery but still locked with yours. It was a sure fact that Jeon Jungkook, Y/N’s one and only, adored her eyes. Actually, everything about you but, the safety and happiness your eyes radiated, only for him, made Jungkook get addicted easily.  

“I’ll interpret that as you liking your gift” Smiling, you opened your arms once again, inviting the boy in once again. Walking into the cage with a wild heart, Jungkook cupped your face, gently rubbing his thumbs on the soft surface of smiley cheeks, before leaning in to kiss you. It was a slow, cute and full of emotions kiss. The first you two ever shared.

“I love the gift, I love you”, Jungkook said, leaning his forehead on yours, touching noses and just appreciating the beauty. He was so blessed to have someone like you, someone who made him feel loved, appreciated, happy. Who’d understand and offer reassurance in each and every moment. You too, could talk days on the topic of this man who owns your heart and not stop to take in a breath.

“And I my prince, love you too, more than I’ll ever be able to express”

AN: My heart is screaming because that last line is me @ Jungoo and I just love this baby boy so much it’s beyond the borders of description. Happy 21st (22nd) my dearest squishy, I appreciate you so much, for all the times you’ve made me happy and made my day better. For making me laugh and relaxing me with your voice whenever I was near a panic attack. Thank you. I wish you everything best, health, happiness, wealth, to always be satisfied with your work. I love you <3

masterlist

[mileenadelanoche]

Japanese Vending Machines are Amazing (Ch. 6 update)

     Read it on AO3     

        Like sweet angels’ wings, strong gusts of wind caressed Yuuri’s body as he was slowly pulled from his deep slumber. His frame shivered as he felt the warmth being stolen from him by the cool air. Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson smiled down from the heavens, happy to know that the Second Law of Thermodynamics still applies. Their life’s work having reached the hearts and texts of any respectable and stressed science major.

         As Yuuri’s eyes opened to half-moons, the first thing that he noticed was how beautiful Tokyo looked at night from a bird eye’s view. Monsters made of carefully laid steel and shining glass reflecting the weak rays of the gibbous moon, the flashing signs and rolling late-night cars, the dark sparkling waters of the Pacific, the gyre of marine debris and plastic that make up the Great Pacific Trash Vortex… ah the universal law of equivalent exchange floated into his subconscious: humankind cannot gain anything without somehow f*cking shit up in return.

         As the hideous result of the folly of humankind floated its way into Yuuri’s mind’s eye, he was startled awake and was so shaken by what he saw that his entire body froze. At least 10,000 feet, his mind supplied, he had to have been floating at least 10,000 feet in the air and it was only climbing—the city where he once was grounded rapidly becoming a spec as he was pulled up by what felt like the suction of a typhoon. His hair went wild with the force of the winds.

         The land and sea disappeared from his sight as he passed through a cloud, nothing but thick wispy water vapor. With eyes larger than a seal staring down the maw of a great white, Yuuri started yelling. Covering his eyes while balling himself up into the fetal position, he braced himself as he saw the nose of a Boeing 787 racing towards him.

He barreled through the cabin as he was swallowed by the murmur of hundreds of passengers. A customer on the JAL sanctioned flight asked for dinner set A but, there were none left—we are sorry to inform you. As the words whizzed by him, Yuuri was overtaken by a sudden calm as he was ejected out the butt of the plane. Somehow, that was all the confirmation that he needed. This was probably a lucid dream.

Floating to the outer reaches of the troposphere, the clouds became thinner and lighter until he broke through some invisible barrier. Eyes burning from the sudden light, he squinted to see that there was a glittery man dressed in red waiting for him at the pristine gates—the silver gates to what Yuuri assumed was supposed to be the afterlife or the planes of reincarnation.

It felt like his body had lost all its mass as he began to walk towards the man—probably the guard of the gates. The clouds felt like quality alpaca wool beneath his feet-squishing lovingly between his toes, leaping to lick at his toned calves. Although aware of his phantom heart hammering away in his chest at the awe-inspiring sight, Yuuri felt some sort of unsettling peace flow up from his legs.

That is, until he got close enough to the guard that he was noticed. The guard’s entire face dropped to the floor as he saw Yuuri before slowly morphing into one of euphoria, smile so wide that it could stretch from sea to shining sea. Something about that was extremely unsettling but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. The guard looked like he knew him. But, Yuuri didn’t think he’d ever encountered such a person in his life. He would have remembered such a flashy individual.

Yuuri froze like a pole once the guard began to squeal—jumping up and down in excitement before speeding towards him like a bullet. A bullet with a stylish bowl-cut for a head.

Ecstatic, the guard let out a happy shout before mowing down frozen Yuuri like a goat before a field of overgrown yet helpless grass. The air was forcefully removed from Yuuri’s lungs as he let out an ‘ack!’.They both bounced across the clouds before sliding to a stop. Yuuri hissed painfully as the air mercifully returned to his body. What was the point of dreaming if he still felt pain? Wasn’t that a part of the deal? In exchange for suffering through daily life you were supposed to be able to escape to a nice fantasy at night. What did he do so wrong for the world to break rules just so his suffering could be prolonged?

“YUURI!!!!” the guard on top blasted the stream of conscious right out of Yuuri’s head before having the conscious to pull away. Excited eyes looked down into bewildered eyes, Yuuri’s hair had spread around him like a faux crown from the force of the impact. “What are you doing here?! Last I checked you still had a good amount of time going for you, what happened? Wait, sorry I’ll get off you. Here, grab my hand.”

Yuuri still looked disoriented as he was pulled onto his feet and dragged back to the golden gates. His eyes were still rolling from the fall as they looked in opposite directions. Stumbling a little, he sat upright as he was unceremoniously dumped onto a raised cloud lump.

He felt a weight in his right hand and found that his blue-rimmed frames were being held there. Rubbing them a bit, he put them on wondering if they had always been there. The world regained its clarity. The guard who had been blurry before focused into a man with nice sun-tanned skin wearing a loose, over-the-shoulder red robe with gold accents. This close, Yuuri could see that his eyeliner was impeccable—gold swooping out to dark black wings. He was grinning widely so his pearly whites were shining. Even his eyes seemed to be smiling and he looked at Yuuri like a long-lost friend.

“Who are you?” he asked confused before slapping his hand over his mouth in shock. That’s not japanese! “What?!” He closed his mouth again as the beginnings of an identity crisis began to unfold. “What?!”

The guard just laughed his loud laugh as Yuuri became more and more troubled. “Yeah it always shocks people when they get up here but don’t worry about it!” He reached behind him to grab two long drink glasses and let them fill under the small ambrosial waterfall suddenly manifesting from out of the aether. He took a long sip from one and sighed in bliss. He handed one to Yuuri who looked like he wasn’t sure what to do with it as he held it nervously with both hands.

“I don’t get paid at all to translate so I just make everyone default to a universal language up here. This language—that just happens to read like English—was conveniently imparted to your soul, spirit—your whatevertheheck—when you died! Congratulations! You know what? We should toast.” The guard, still smiling like the sun, wiggled his fingers before ‘Presto!’ a piece of golden brown toast exploded into existence right in front of Yuuri’s eyes.

Yuuri went cross-eyed. His head was spinning. His dreams tended to be weird, but this was pushing it.

“Did you like that, Yuuri? Looked like I was a handsome magician for a second, right? I wish David Blaine could have died to see this, he would have lost his shit!” The guard cackled before sighing. “Aaahh, too bad magic’s not the same up here. Anyways, I’m getting off-topic.” He lifted his glass to Yuuri who still looked shell shocked. He didn’t look like he could process language in his bewildered state.

“You’re supposed to cut me off when that happens, Yuuri! Now toast! Don’t give me that look, I know that you, of all people, should know how to toast!” The guard’s smile faltered a bit. “Fine then, I’ll show you. All’s you gotta do is gravitate the glasses together-like magnets.” He leaned forward and moved his glass slowly as to not further alarm the frightened creature. As the lips of the glasses clinked together he finished his narration. “Yep, just like that. Softly, like when two sexually repressed college dudes make their dicks kiss on a double-dog dare.” The guard sighed as he pulled back, eyes far away and full of nostalgia. “Ahh, the infinite stupidity of youth.”

Yuuri looked more than mildly disturbed as he finally asked the question that had been bugging him for a while.

“I’m dead?” he asked; the face of skepticism. “Then, are you supposed to be some sort of St. Peter?”

The guard looked most offended at this remark. “Uuuhh, that’s Saint Phichit, to you. Do I even look like-“ the gatekeeper—Saint Phichit—looked like he was rearing to go into a rant about how no single man named Peter could pull off his look before he stopped himself. “-Actually, you know what? That’s fair. I’ll let you off the hook with that one. I’m more offended that you don’t remember me.” Phichit pouted as he sipped on his drink.

“Have me met before?” Yuuri asked, trying to look back into his memories to see if he could recall anything. He kicked at the clouds gathering around his feet. “I can’t remember meeting you before…”

Phichit just waved him off as if swatting away annoying flies. “It’s alright. Memories from past lives generally don’t carry over but, I know you are my Yuuri! I’m surprised you kept the same name—there must be some of you that’s left.” Phichit paused. “Ah, I wasn’t supposed to disclose any of that information. Forget I said anything.” He pointed at Yuuri’s untouched drink. “Take a sip of ambrosia, we have a lot to do!”

With so much metaphysical knowledge entering his head, Yuuri’s head began to ache. From everything that he’d unwittingly gathered, he’d been good friends with Saint Phichit in a past life. That means either he used to be an angel or something or Phichit was a human beforehand. But more than that, apparently some kind of reincarnation exists. Did destiny exist? Why was he taking this in like it’s real? Wasn’t this supposed to be some elaborate dream? With all these thoughts storming his brain, Phichit’s cool ambrosia seemed more and more appealing. He took a refreshing sip. Sweet, slightly bitter, caffeinated milky goodness exploded in his mouth.

“I think…” He took another sip. “Isn’t this just Thai coffee? I thought you said this was ambrosia.” He kept on sipping. It was helping his headache to recede after all.

Phichit tapped on his chin as he adopted a suave look. “A rose by any other name.” Yuuri felt a sudden weight on his head. It only elicited mild surprise when he felt the soft rose petals of his new flower crown.

“Ambrosia’s good right?” Wait. He knew that Yuuri was working as a coffee man before he died. Did he just induce a form of cannibalism by having Yuuri drink coffee? It sounded far-fetched but whatever the case he hoped he hadn’t. “Anyways!” He clapped his hands together, rubbing them before throwing them up into the air. “Let’s get to the bottom of this mystery! You weren’t supposed to be here for a while. Shall we playback the footage of your life?”

Yuuri nearly spit out his coffee as his recent night-time activities came to mind. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, coughing. “No, you don’t have to do that…”

But Yuuri would be far too late. Phichit had already produced a tablet from the fabric of reality. He blew off the leftover cloud from the surface and the disturbed mist made him look like a winter dragon. Seconds later, the screen came to life.

A fire had started in his eyes as he shoved his cloud tablet at Yuuri’s face. “Look at how fancy! This model isn’t even out on earth, yet.” Phichit gushed before tsking to himself as he pulled back to look for Yuuri’s archives. “Can you believe that—before I lost my shit and yelled at the higher ups—they used to use filing cabinets for this? You know, those old-ass alphabetical drawers with the file dividers from the last ice age? From when Homo fucking habilis was still trying to learn how to walk?” Phichit shook his head. “Unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable. I almost died my first week and I’m practically immortal.”

Phichit typed Yuuri’s name and date of birth into the search engine. “Aha, here you are. Man, look at your profile picture. Beautiful, I think I might have to cry.” Phichit wiped a few fake tears away as he showed Yuuri the same picture that he had on his driver’s license. Yuuri’s hair was in a clean job interview comb-over and he looked frozen in a state of shock like a cat being introduced to a stalk of catnip. The camera man must have not given him any warning.

         “Beautiful…?” Yuuri asked, with a look that questioned Phichit’s eyesight. ‘Where?’ he seemed to be asking with his eyes.

         Phichit made an unimpressed face. “Yuuri…I swear you’re always so hell-bent on making my job as a loving friend difficult in every. Single. Alternate. Universe. That exists! Just accept the truth, angsty pants. Gee whiz. You’re killing my vibes.” Phichit breathed out and his sunny demeanor returned.

“Now, let’s look at how you died, shall we?” said Phichit, in the most inhumanly refreshing way possible.

         Yuuri started shaking his head and hands in the most visceral movement of PLEASE DON’T in all of history. “No, no, no! Let’s not watch that.”

         Phichit nodded as if in understanding. “I got you, Yuuri. It must have been traumatic for you. Sorry, I’ve been insensitive.”

         Yuuri relaxed but, it was too soon as Phichit continued. “It’s okay, we don’t have to watch it if it makes you uncomfortable. That’s my job anyways! You just sit tight, okay Yuuri?”

Yuuri’s eyes nearly popped out of his head as Phichit pressed play. He could only sit tight and maybe ask for a miracle. Buddha, Amaterasu, god, whatever higher power… if you’re out there, please let me rest in peace.

In a rather anticlimactic way, the video began to load and Phichit made an annoyed noise grumbling about how they needed to get fiber optics. Internally, Yuuri was hoping that his small prayer had actually worked. Long story short, it did NOT as the video pulled up seconds later.

“It’s kind of a shame…” Phichit started as the thumbnail which showed Yuuri’s hotel room loaded. “I was gonna show you all the cool features like zoom and the tilt-controlled panoramic video feature, ah, on second-thought I see why you wouldn’t want to see your own death played out in high-def 360 degree video footage. Good call.”

Yuuri put his head in his hands as Phichit clicked the play button. Like a pig before slaughter, he waited for his impending death by embarrassment. In the farthest reaches of his soul, he still had a tiny glimmer of hope that what he thought was going to happen would not happen despite all signs pointing to yes this is happening. Some internet troll was probably typing out how he brought this on himself. Wait, why was nothing happening yet?

Peaking out from between his fingers, Yuuri saw that Phichit was fiddling with his tablet as he saw a familiar scene from when he and Viktor had first began to explore the love hotel room. If his memory serves, soon after they’d explore each other.

         “Aha!” Phichit shouted in triumph as he flicked on a switch on the side. Muffled sound began playing from the device. “People always put these things on mute, and I will never understand why. Hmmm…” He watched the footage for a few minutes. “Viktor, huh? You can never trust the handsome ones, I tell ya. Let’s just go to the scene right before the crime. Tablet, show me when the dying begins.”

         “Showing when the dying begins.” Echoed the robotic feminine voice of the tablet.

         Putting aside how nonchalant Phichit sounded which clashed with how disturbing the actual words coming out of his mouth were, Yuuri had never felt such an urge to knock himself unconscious in his entire life. As he was contemplating how to do that with nothing but soft cloud around him, they began. The sounds.

         They couldn’t have been much louder than the rest of the video, but they sounded like a sexual operatic concierto blaring into the sacred air of the heavens. Yuuri’s face grew hot with first-hand embarrassment.  

“Aaahhhh~ nnggghh~ *SLUUURRRP* ah, haaa… *slap* *slap* haaa…!” Yuuri wishes that he had four hands so he could cover his ears too but he just wasn’t lucky enough to be a mutant. The wet slapping sounds of rough lovemaking and the occasional snippets of unfortunate dirty talk flooded into Yuuri’s ears and disrupted all his thinking processes. Yuuri couldn’t see it, but he knew that if he peered over to look at Phichit he’d see the horror of finding what was essentially his friend’s sex tapes.

         “Oh wow, hello.” Phichit said in the most suppressed form of surprise Yuuri had ever heard. “Sorry about that, lemme just uhh turn down the volume.”

The sounds slowly faded away but the will to turn to dust that was in Yuuri did not.

         Out of morbid curiosity, and morbid curiosity alone, Phichit turned on the tilt controls. When Yuuri wasn’t looking, which was almost all the time, he angled the tablet down and… a little to the side now, ah, perfect. He really couldn’t help himself. After all, he had wanted to be a producer at one point and wow. These tilt controls were really something. This angle, that angle, pinch-in here and the video didn’t pixelate at all! The cinematography was just breathtaking; it could rival hit motion picture Inception directed by Christopher Nolan. Here, make no mistake, Yuuri was Leonardo Dicaprio.

Dang, didn’t Yuuri feel any lactic acid build-up at all? He was wolfing down that german sausage like Takeru Kobayashi who currently holds the world record for most bratwurst consumed in 10 minutes. We’re talking 58 bratwurst sausages here. That’s like six sausages in a minute. Could he submit this video to Guiness? More importantly, where was all of that going? It looked like it was disappearing like a good magician should. Elephant imagery stampeded into Phichit’s mind and he found that it was really fitting.

         Human bodies shouldn’t do that. OH MY, WORD. This violated everything that Phichit knew about the limits of the human body and basic arithmetic. You can’t just keep packing a car that’s full. You can’t fit two balls into a box that only allows one. Unless Yuuri was a black hole and he was bending the fabric of space and time which of course Yuuri would do that.  

Yeah! That’s just like his best friend: doing the impossible in every single aspect of life. Someone give him a medal. Someone give him two medals! Because he treasured all his relationships, he secretly readjusted his robes into a more strategic position. Just in case of course. Phichit was a good person and it didn’t hurt to be prepared. Or at least that’s what he kept telling himself as he listened to several variations of moaning over the course of a few minutes. He tried to skip around the repetitive parts to get to the erm, important points.

         The video was nearing its end and currently Yuuri was on the floor trying to smash himself into the clouds. In the video, Phichit saw Yuuri’s soul, battered and weary, escape from under the covers as naked Viktor crinkled his nose smelling something putrid and kept snoozing away. He fought the strange urge to clap as the screen faded to black and instead joined his horrified friend on the cloud floors.

         With as must gentleness as he could muster, he pulled Yuuri from out of his cramped tornado-drill position to sit up until they were shoulder to shoulder. Right now, Yuuri probably didn’t want to look him in the eyes so they both just stared out into the ocean of endless cloud cover. The light of death was blinding, but Phichit knew he would never be able to un-see that. Yuuri contemplated whether it was good or bad that you could not die of embarrassment as he squinted out at the golden whiteness of the bright clouds that continued into infinity in every direction.

It was silent for a while. Phichit never really had training to deal with these situations. He grabbed a handful of airy cloud and looked at it closely as it floated out from his hands. Maybe they would hold the answers to the world. Nothing was coming to mind, so Phichit did something he was good at: break the silence.

“Sooo…” he began whilst drawing out the ‘o’ sound, “funny thing, I kind of assumed that Viktor was your murderer but nothing could have quite prepared me for how you were murdered.”

Yuuri made a strange face and chose not to follow up on that. Phichit understood, after all most people don’t like to think on death. He let the silence hang for a while until he couldn’t take it. He had to say it. He was dying to say it.

“What a… interesting weapon, am I right?” Phichit bit his lip, trying not to grin. He looked over at Yuuri who looked like he was making a constipated expression. That was probably a sign to continue.

“You know.” Phichit fought down his giggles as he kept talking, “When he first pulled it out I was like, what? Is that a gun? That can’t be a gun.” Phichit’s lips were wobbling so hard, he couldn’t take it anymore he had to let loose. “But then, but then,” Phichit paused so he could turn to look Yuuri dead in the eye, “he fucking cocks it.” Phichit goes completely nuts. Yuuri has the most offended look on his face- mouth open in shock, eyebrows raised.

“HAHAHAHAHA!!! HE COCKS IT!! GET IT???? YUURI I’M DYING” Phichit’s bowled over, there are tears coming out of his eyes.

“Phichit!” Yuuri screams, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you!”

“Hey, hey, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said that.” Phichit recovers enough to rest a reassuring hand on his decimated friend’s shoulder. “But, you know what?”

“What?” Yuuri asks genuinely confused as to what could possibly be the silver lining here.

“Well,” Phichit starts, “at least you went out with a bang.”

Phichit laughs harder when he sees the way Yuuri’s looking at him. Yuuri’s got the deepest pouting frowny-face on; the one that’s wobbly at the edges because he’s trying so hard not to smile at terrible puns and Phichit knows he’s won him over.

Exasperated, Yuuri just sighs as he can’t help but smile at this stupid saint’s antics. “Alright, alright. Stop before I actually hit you.”

Phichit puts his hands up in surrender. “Ok, ok, I’m stopping so no hitting!”

“So now what happens? I’m dead so, do I get to go to the afterlife now or are you going to send me back as a flea?” Yuuri asks, half-joking.

Phichit adopts the thinkers pose as he thinks about how best to pass judgement. “Well, all things considered with your early demise, the way you died, and your fateful reunion with me I can only come to one conclusion.” Yuuri waits, a bit nervous. He really didn’t want to be reborn as a bug, if possible.

“And that conclusion is…” Phichit draws out the sentence like a game show host as Yuuri hopes with all his might. “You are far away from god.” Phichit says it while winking like it’s a good thing but Yuuri doesn’t look at all amused.

“Really, Phichit?”

“No, No! I know it sounds bad but just hear me out Yuuri, this is actually a very auspicious thing for you!”

Yuuri stares at him, searching his eyes before he relents. “Alright, you’ve got my attention.”

“So, if my theory is correct and your death was an unpredicted death, this means that you are off the grid right now. That means, none of the important people in administration have caught wind that you’re up here which means you might still have the power to go back.” There’s a light in Phichit’s eyes as he says it, his hands are clenched in excitement in front of his face as Yuuri lights up in return.

“Really!” Yuuri says, all excitement.

“Really, really.” Phichit says, 10,000 watt grin on his face. “All’s you have to do is find something that ties you strongly to the physical world. Can you think of anything? I’ll take care of all the rest.”

“Wait, won’t you get fired?” Yuuri asks a little worried for his new supernatural buddy.

“You want to go back, don’t you? Just be selfish for once in your life; I know you need to go back, c’mon Yuuri.” Phichit snorts as he gestures to his tablet. “Besides, it’s not like any of those old farts could afford to lose me over someone who’s not supposed to be dead anyways. I’m one of the only tech-savvy gatekeepers there are so don’t worry about it.” The clouds began to stir in front of him. “So, tell me who it is that you want to return to?” Phichit has a knowing glint in his eyes even as he inquires.

“You already know who it is, but, can I see Viktor again? I only knew him for a night but I feel like I’ve known him forever. I know it’s hard to believe, but I really have no one besides him. I was alone before him. Every day was monotonous as I did my job, spreading the love of canned coffee. Viktor’s the only one who’s ever loved me back…” Yuuri felt the beginnings of tears spring to his eyes. “I can’t die yet Phichit, I miss him so much and I don’t know why.”

Wrapping an arm around Yuuri, Phichit shushed him as the clouds in front of them slowly cleared. “Awww. Yuuri, don’t cry. If it makes you feel any better, I think he misses you just as much. Let’s see what he’s up to shall we?”

Once the clouds vanished leaving a reflective barrier, the busy city of Tokyo was projected on the faux screen before zooming in on a frazzled silver-headed man. Viktor could be seen gesturing to his phone and trying to communicate to the locals who shook their heads and walked away. This continued several times, Viktor seeming to sag more and more in dejection. Before long, he made it to a park and sat down on a bench before putting his head in his hands. It zoomed in on him, he was probably crying.

“Oh, that’s so sad.” Phichit commented. “He’s gotta be crying, oh no, he’s shaking. Look, even the ducks are starting to collect around him, they probably think he’s going to make a pond for them to play in.”

“Viktor!” Yuuri shouted as he tried to touch the man on the cloud screen. He felt helpless when he realized he couldn’t comfort him as his hands just stopped on the image like the glass of a television. He turned to look at his friend, both hands on Viktor’s projected face. “Phichit, look, he needs me! How do I go to him?!” he said, desperation in his voice.

Hypnotizing like a desert haze, Phichit’s image began to distort and bleed into the surroundings.

“Phichit! What’s happening?”

The clouds began to swirl in on each other and Yuuri was overcome with a  feeling of nausea. “Oh Yuuri,” Phichit said, voice sounding faint and distorted, “have you already forgotten what you are?”

Yuuri’s stomach dropped into his guts as he began sinking into what used to be firm cloud. His struggles to get out were in vain as he was pulled under like a horse stuck in quicksand.

“Phichit!” he screamed terrified, “Help me!”

Phichit’s distorted face just smiled at him as he sank lower and lower until the clouds began to obscure his vision. “Next time you come up here you better not forget me!”

[allyinthekeyofx]

Genesis - 15 & 16

Previous Chapters

1 & 2  //  3 & 4  //  5 & 6  //  7 & 8  //  9 & 10  //  11 & 12  //  13 & 14  

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Mulder was first aware that his throat hurt; a gritty discomfort that no amount of swallowing would ease. It almost felt like his throat was scratched or bruised in some way but he could think of no reason why this should be so.

He could hear sounds around him, an incessant bleeping which cut through his escalating headache like a scythe. He fought against the need to sink back down in to the sweet oblivion of sleep in order to block it out, answering instead to the small voice inside of him that demanded he wake up fully. He had been mindful of the voice for a considerable length of time, and he had struggled to obey its commands, willing his eyes to open and throw off the bounds that held them closed. Something inside of him told him over and over that he was needed - that to sink back in to the abyss would be somehow disastrous and it was this pressing thought that forced him finally to come back in to a state of full awareness.

Slowly, painfully, Fox Mulder opened his eyes.

He was more than a little surprised to find himself focusing on the stark brightness of a fluorescent light and for a few seconds he had absolutely no idea where he was.

As his mind cleared, however, he was able to identify the slightly antiseptic scents that had become all too familiar over the years.

He was in a hospital.

The how and why would follow shortly, and for the present time they didn't really concern him. Instead he focused on the light above him, willing and able to wait until he felt more together before asking himself questions he couldn't answer.

The sound of a door being opened somewhere to the left of him prompted him to attempt to lift up his head, but the slight movement caused a wave of dizziness to wash over him as his equilibrium struggled to cope with the sudden rush of blood. A hand on his chest ceased his efforts, and somewhere beyond the roaring sound that filled his head, a familiar voice reached him.

"Take it easy, Mulder."

The damage though had already been done, and Mulders last waking thought before lapsing back in to brief unconsciousness was surprisingly lucid. -- Why was Skinner in San Diego? -- and the answer came right alongside it, that whatever the reason was it was bad . . . very bad.

XXXX

"So how are you feeling now?"

The man had earlier identified himself as being called O'Brien, and from what Mulder could gather, he had been overseeing all of his treatments over the past twenty four hours, and was now continuing along that same vein.

Mulders earlier lapse in to unconsciousness had been brief and he had awakened once again to find Skinner gone and this man in his place.

He had allowed himself to be thoroughly checked over, and had attempted to furnish the doctor with some kind of explanation for his recent illness. He also knew by the man's guarded expression that he was still at a complete loss as to how to give any kind of definitive reason for Mulders previous condition.

Mulder too was unable to piece together anything that could be of much use. He remembered hazy details of his being in San Diego and the reasons for it, but beyond the vaguest of recollections, his mind was a complete blank. The headache was still there, pounding away in his skull and, despite the pain relief the medical staff had administered, it was not abating at all.

Mulder forced himself to rise above the pain in order to arrange his thoughts in to some kind of distinct pattern that would enable him to make sense of why exactly he was here, and more importantly why Skinner had chosen to fly half way across the country to be here too. His instincts told him it wasn't simply out of concern for his health.

He eyed O'Brien as the doctor jotted some more notes on to the chart that hung at the bottom of the bed and voiced the question which had been buzzing uncomfortably around his head since his awakening.

"Is my partner here?"

His tone was casual, but the words hung in the air as O'Brien busied himself with his writings. The seconds ticked by as Mulder waited patiently for a response, and when it became obvious that he was not going to answered he tried again.

"Agent Dana Scully. Is she here?"

O'Brien raised his head, and although he attempt to remain carefully neutral, something about the way he shifted his eyes away caused momentary panic to surge through Mulder.

"Dr. O'Brien?"

"Um . . . no. She's not here."

He replaced the chart in to its slot at the end of Mulders bed and turned away, abruptly ending a conversation he did not feel equipped to handle.

Mulders unease edged up another notch.

"I think Agent Mulder that you should talk to Mr. Skinner.

Mulder nodded numbly, not trusting himself to speak as the doctor raised his eyebrows in an unspoken query, wondering just exactly he was about to hear from his superior, but knowing that whatever it was it was unlikely to be good news.

O'Brien pivoted quickly and Mulder, from his prone position on the bed, heard rather than saw his exit from the room, just as he was aware of Skinner's sudden presence before he actually saw him appear above him, the concern on his face was unmistakable.

"How are you feeling, Agent Mulder?"

"Where's Scully? Why isn't she here?"

Skinner closed his eyes briefly, knowing that he could not escape answering, but at the same time knowing that Mulder was in no shape to confront the realities of his partner's situation until he was stronger. He briefly considered lying, but dismissed it when he realised that weakened or not, Mulder would no doubt see right through him. He finally decided that optimistic honesty would be his best course of action for the time being.

"Agent Scully is missing.....but we have every available resource....."

"What?"

Skinner winced as Mulder struggled to sit up.

“What do you mean she’s missing?”

“Mulder...take it easy...”

He placed a hand on Mulders shoulder in an attempt to calm him down. Mulder though, shrugged him off easily.

“Skinner?”

Skinner shook his head, the movement almost imperceptible.

"Agent Scully hasn't been seen or heard of since late last night. There was an incident at the motel you were staying at. A man was fatally wounded."

Mulder narrowed his eyes.

"And?" he prompted.

Skinner sighed as he realised that honest optimism had flown out the window. Only the truth remained, as elusive as ever.

"A witness has identified Scully as firing the shot, that it was an unprovoked attack. She hasn't been seen since driving from the motel."

"That’s impossible"

Mulders voice was heavy with cynicism, and Skinner eyed him levelly.

"I don’t think anything is impossible with the two of you Agent Mulder"

“What? You’re kidding me right? This is Scully we’re talking about.”

The barely suppressed fury on Mulders face made Skinner instantly wish the choice of words back in to his mouth, especially in light of his own deep misgivings regarding the case. But the words had been said. He couldn't take them back.

Skinner opened his mouth to speak, but Mulder threw him a look that was dripping with disgust.

“Save it. Sir”

Slowly and with obvious effort, Mulder pushed back the covers and manoeuvred himself in to a sitting position, bare legs dangling now over the edge of the bed.

"What the hell are you doing, Mulder?"

He watched as the younger agent struggled to his feet, only moving when it was obvious that Mulder was in no state to be standing up. He grabbed his arm and applied just enough pressure to let Mulder know that he wasn't kidding, and Mulder in turn allowed himself to be pushed back in to a seated position.

"I'm checking out. I need to find her."

Skinner laughed, the sound hollow and totally without mirth.

"And how exactly do you propose to do that? E.S.P? Don't be ridiculous."

He allowed his voice to soften slightly as he regarded the expression on the younger man's face, a face that appeared two shades greyer than it had five minutes ago.

"Take a look at yourself, Mulder. How long do you think you'd last before you wound up right back in here? You're in no shape to be going anywhere. You are sick. And running half-assed out of here isn’t going to help Agent Scully...”

He flinched slightly at Mulders next words.

“How are you helping her? You shouldn't be here, you should be out there finding her."

Mulder attempted again to get to his feet. Again Skinner pushed him back.

"Mulder, I have half the San Diego Bureau trying to find her and the other half figuring out ways to help find her. Believe me, I've got it covered, and what I don't need is another of my Agents going missing, especially one who has no business walking around. It won't help you, it won't help me and it won't help Scully."

He waited a few seconds for his words to register, and it was with a certain amount of relief that he watched Mulder relax slightly, knowing that for the time being at least he was having at least a measure of success.

“Well I need to do something. I can’t just sit here....”

Skinner swallowed.

"What I need from you, Agent Mulder, is a narrative. Everything and anything you can remember that might help. I don't care how trivial it might seem."

To his intense relief, Mulder nodded slightly.

"You're right. I'm sorry, I just . . . I don't know what to think any more. . ."

"It's Okay."

Mulder closed his eyes, the weariness showing all too clearly in his face.

"I’m so tired. But I need to know that she’s alright"

Skinner observed the unhealthy pallor of his Agent, and was reminded sharply of how ill Mulder had been. The last thing he needed right now was to be pushed too hard, especially in light of everything that had happened, and Skinner was smart enough to realise that a couple more hours would hardly make any difference either way. He made the decision to leave quickly.

"Get some rest. I'll come back later."

He waited a few minutes until Mulder was sleeping, and then quietly left the room, taking the opportunity to grab some much needed food and a change of clothes.

He returned to the hospital ninety minutes later and headed straight up to Mulders room. He was less than pleased, although not particularly surprised, to be confronted with the sight of the recently removed canular laying on the bed. The drops of Mulders blood a sharp contrast against the pristine white cotton. The window was still open, a breeze stirring the humid air within the room, rendering the air conditioning ineffective.

Open just enough that he could make his escape.

To find his partner.

Before it was too late.

XXXXXXX

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In her dream state, Scully was running. From whom or what she wasn't yet certain, but a strange sense of urgency forced her to carry on even as her throat began to burn from the effort of her exertion. She could hear the heavy tread of footsteps behind her but didn't dare turn around for fear of losing her balance and falling, knowing that to do so would surely mean the end for her.

In the distance she could hear a child crying, a pitiful keening sound that awakened a part of her that had only existed for such a short time, and she focused on the sound, allowing it to guide her during her headlong flight.

The crying grew in volume as she continued to run, and within a few seconds she had rounded a corner to find herself face to face with a small child. A blonde haired little girl with blue eyes – a tiny version of herself.

Emily stood, arms outstretched, the tears falling freely to leave streaks on her pretty face.

Mommyyyyyyyy please make it stop.....

Without hesitation, Scully scooped the child up in her arms and held her close, breathing in the scent of her child, rewarded as she felt Emily's grip tightening around her. The sweetness of the moment was short-lived though as she felt the child become rigid in her arms, eyes widening in terror.

No Mommy..........

The footsteps behind her had ceased.

He was here.

She spun around to confront him, still holding Emily tightly to her. And for a second she relaxed, a moment of absolute relief.

Mulder. Thank God.

Until she saw the gun his gun - pointing straight at her, at Emily.

"Give her to me Scully"

His voice was hard, uncompromising but Scully simply clutched Emily closer to her and took a stumbling step backwards even as Mulder advanced. Her eyes darted wildly around, seeking an escape route but finding none. Her only hope was to get past him, but he seemed to sense her strategy and easily out manoeuvred her, grasping her arm so tightly that she cried out.

"Mulder, what are you doing? Please. . ."

"I said give her to me, Scully. Or I will take her from you."

She struggled to make sense of his words, eyes widening as she realised he meant to kill her, regardless of whether she surrendered Emily to him or not.

But this was Mulder.

This was Mulder for God's sake.

This is not happening.

She gasped as the barrel of the gun dug in to the soft flesh beneath her ribs. The whispered words from a man she had trusted with her life. A man for whom she had willingly risked her own life to protect.

“Give her to me Scully. Or I will kill you both.”

Scully’s throat constricted painfully and she suddenly couldn’t seem to breathe. Her voice, when she finally managed to speak, sounded far away.

"Mulder please don’t do this. Why are you doing this........? "

She recoiled slightly as he brought his free hand up to lightly touch her face, brushing a strand of hair away from her cheek and tucking it behind her ear. And then he leaned in closer.

“Because it’s what you want Scully. It’s what you’ve always wanted.”

She shook her head, quite unable to prevent the tears escaping and sliding down her face, unable to comprehend the enormity of the betrayal.

No. This isn’t real. Not Mulder. It’s just a dream. A nightmare.

She squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to awaken until suddenly the world exploded in a barrage of sound and light. And along with it a terrible realisation. A realisation that nothing would ever be the same.

Oh God the pain....the terrible pain....

She felt her hold on Emily weaken, feeling the child slipping out of her arms.

Noooooo you bastard. Give her back to me.......

The word fading in to the distance as he stole her daughter away from her.

XXXX

Scully's eyes snapped open abruptly, and for a few seconds relief washed over her as she realised that it had been no more than a simple nightmare, no doubt brought on by the rigours of the case.

And then a question, chasing away the horror of the dream.

Where am I?

Something was very wrong. For one thing, the room she found herself in was way too bright, the bed beneath her hard and unyielding. And the pain.....

Why am I hurting?

The awful stabbing sensation in her left side that seemed to synchronise perfectly with every beat of her heart. She attempted to sit up and the stabbing became a chain saw cutting her in half. She was barely conscious that the high pitched yelp she heard had come from herself.

Until she felt a hand drop on her arm, stroking softly as the voice reassured her.

Mulder?

"Sshhhh. It's OK, Dana. You're safe here. Don't try to move...."

Not Mulders that voice.

Her vision was slightly blurred and she blinked a couple of times in an effort to clear it, focusing finally on the face that hovered above her, identifying it immediately as belonging to John Wickham.

The senior agents brow was creased with concern, and from the growth of stubble that adorned his cheeks, it was patently obvious that he had been there for some considerable length of time.

Scully ran her tongue over lips that felt dry as sandpaper, and then attempted to speak.

"Where am I?"

Her voice was little more than a strangled whisper, but Wickham could hear the raw fear behind her words. The fact that she was frightened was good. It would make his task all the easier.

"You're in the hospital, Dana."

He answered softly, aware that she would expect more than that, but the key to winning the game was to wait for her to ask rather than simply supplying the information to her unprompted.

"For what?"

Again the question was voiced in little more than a whisper, and for the merest instant Wickham had the crazy urge to pick her up from the bed and take her as far away as he could from the men who had put her here.

Instead he slammed the door on the thought and gently smoothed the hair back away from her brow.

"Don't you remember?" he asked softly

He watched as she frowned up at him, the confusion all too evident in her eyes, struggling to make sense of her circumstance.

"I . . . no, I don't remember . . ."

Her voice trailed off uncertainly.

"You were shot. The bullet perforated your left kidney – you started to bleed out and for a while it was touch and go. You've been unconscious for over a week. If we hadn’t found you when we did.......” 

He trailed off.

“We didn't think you were going to make it."

And then he smiled

"I guess you're a lot tougher than you look."

Scully shook her head from side to side, trying to deny his words even as she began to remember.

"It's OK, Dana. Take it easy."

Scully struggled to sit up as Wickham watched the blood literally drain from her face. From the forced memory or from the pain, he couldn’t be sure.

"Who shot me, John?" she whispered hoarsely, knowing that her time for denial was coming to an end.

Oh God Please no. Please don’t say it. Please?

But already a chill was working its way up her body. A hideous truth that was already buzzing around her confused mind. Refusing to be quietened.

"Oh, Jesus. You really don't remember, do you?"

She heard the strain in his voice as he prepared to be the one who would shatter her. And suddenly she wanted to pull the words back in. To sink back in to oblivion. To wake up in a world she could make sense of. Because none of this made any sense. She closed her eyes tightly. Reverting back to a childhood trick of counting to keep the bogeyman at bay.

One

"Dana?”

Two

“Oh God I'm so sorry.....”

Three. Stop now, please just stop.

“.....so sorry to be the one to tell you....I know what he means to you..”

Four....

“We have witnesses that put Agent Mulder at the scene.....”

Scully pressed her hands over her face. One hand atop the other.

Five. I got to five, you bastard........

Wickham delivered the kill shot.

“We aren’t seeking anyone else in connection with the shooting...”

He’s lying. He’s lying. He’s lying.....Oh God why is he saying this?

“WHERE’S MULDER?!”

Wickham recoiled at the level and ferocity of her words. He hadn’t expected this.

“WHERE IS HE YOU LYING SON OF A BITCH.....WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HIM?”

Wickham backed away from her. He had expected tears from her. He had expected confusion. Anger even.

But this level of denial wasn’t in the game plan. And suddenly he was struck with a realisation that they had grossly underestimated the allegiance Fox Mulder had garnered from this woman. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

Fuck.

He directed his stare squarely at the small mirror that hung on the opposite wall,

“Hey, I need some help in here...”

And then things happened quickly. The room suddenly became way too crowded as they began to work on Scully. Swiftly restraining her as they plunged the needle deep in to her upper arm while she writhed and twisted on the bed beneath them, fighting them with a ferocity that belied her current weakened condition.

Wickham turned away from the desperate scene before him. Shame washing over him as her screams reverberated around the tiny room. 

Calling for Mulder. 

Over and over she called for him.

Until finally, her screams became less. The sedatives working their insidious magic on her and rendering her incapable of emitting more than a series of hitching sobs.

The first segment of the plan had been executed, albeit not quite as smoothly as they expected. But he had done his job. He had not wavered. They would be pleased with him. He should have been happy – elated even – that he had played his part so well.

But as he stared down at the now sleeping form of Dana Scully he just felt numb.

Continued chapter seventeen

[paper-star]

lost and found

summary: adrien and marinette get drunk together, adrien spills his guts, and marinette quickly realizes that the partner she lost two years ago after the defeat of hawkmoth is right in front of her. oh, boy. aged up AU.

genre: romance, humor, angst, crying children 

cross-posted: ao3

---

preview:

“Do you remember Ladybug and Chat Noir?”

Marinette felt her brow furrow in a knee-jerk reaction. She almost wanted to laugh. Did she remember Ladybug and Chat Noir? She had lived and breathed Ladybug and Chat Noir. They formed a core part of her soul. But it had been a long, long time since Paris had needed its heroes.

After the defeat of Hawkmoth, Chat Noir had disappeared. And after a few weeks of showing up on rooftop after empty rooftop waiting fruitlessly for her partner to come out from the shadows, Marinette had forced herself to retire Ladybug as well. After a tearful goodbye with Tikki, she’d handed the earrings back to Master Fu and assured him that if evil ever returned to Paris, she'd take them back in a heartbeat.

The depression that had ensued had been unfathomable in its depth. The eighteenth year of Marinette’s life was a black hole that she hardly remembered.

Subconsciously, Marinette raised a hand to one unadorned earlobe. It was only when she saw Adrien look at her curiously, cautiously, that she realized she hadn't responded yet. “Uh—uh-huh,” she said, nodding.

“Well, what if…” Adrien’s eyes fell to his hands, which were folded in his lap, but he appeared to force himself to look back at her once more before continuing to speak. “Mari, what if I told you that I was Chat Noir?”

---

Marinette Dupain-Cheng watched with dissatisfaction as her best friend, Alya Cesaire, pulled on her bright orange, down-filled coat. Nino Lahiffe, another longtime friend and Alya’s boyfriend, was doing the same with his decidedly less fussy jacket.

“Do you really have to go?” Marinette whined.

Alya wrinkled her nose. “I know, Mari, I’m sorry! It’s just that I have to get back home to finish this video project. It’s due in three days and I’m so close to being done that I can taste it.”

Nino held a hand up apologetically. “And I have to be—”

“A supportive boyfriend, I know,” Marinette said, waving one hand toward them dismissively as she took a sip out of her drink with the other. She pursed her lips, but then gave them a goofy grin. “Get out of here already.”

“Is it really that bad to be stuck here with me?” came a sheepish voice from beside Marinette.

Nino laughed. “Where’d you pick up those guilt trip skills, Adrien? Your dad?”

Adrien Agreste, the fourth and final member of the inseparable quadrant of friends, sat in the seat beside Marinette’s with his hand in his chin, looking playfully morose.

Marinette turned beet-red. “Oh, Adrien, you know I didn’t mean it like that—I just haven’t seen Alya all week, and she already has to go—”

Adrien placed a reassuring hand on Marinette’s shoulder and threw her a bright smile. “It’s fine, Mari. I’m joking.”

Alya leaned in to give Marinette a hug and air kiss, and then Nino did the same. “I’ll see you in a few days! I’m camping out at Nino’s to finish this project, and then I promise I’m all yours for all of next week after this hell is over.”

“I’m holding you to your word!” Marinette said, before she waved them off.

As Nino and Alya exited the bar, Marinette turned back around and noticed that Adrien’s hand was still on her shoulder. He was absentmindedly chewing on the straw of his drink, apparently totally unaware of the continuing bodily contact.

Marinette marveled; just four years ago, she would have melted on the spot. Adrien Agreste, with his kind heart, brilliant green eyes, stylish mop of blond hair that always seemed to fall the perfect way over his forehead, tall, built body, and impossibly sweet smile, was touching her without a second thought. But now—

Marinette had long since gotten over her teenage crush on Adrien, which she occasionally remembered with embarrassment—not at the fact that she’d liked him, as she’d always found him quite likable, but at how she’d been rendered positively speechless whenever he was around for at least two years. Now that they were twenty and they’d known each other so well for what felt like forever, it seemed laughable that Adrien Agreste, dork and cat-lover extraordinaire, could ever have made her nervous, beautiful and sweet as he might be.

“You okay there?” Marinette said, waving one hand in front of Adrien’s glazed eyes.

Adrien startled, sitting up a little straighter and removing his hand from her shoulder. “Huh?”

“You seemed to zone out for a minute. You have been quiet today,” she added with a frown. “What’s been going on?”

Adrien shook his head quickly, and his lips curled up into a smile. “Nothing. It’s been a long exam period, that’s all.”

Marinette took a sip out of her own drink and grimaced at the amount of alcohol in it. She envisioned the liquid traveling down her throat and burning smoky holes in it along the way. “You sure? I know how you are about hiding things,” she chided.

Adrien, as Alya liked to say, had always had the poor-little-rich-boy thing down to an art form. As a professional model who had never let his popularity get to his head and remained perpetually sweet and hard-working, even as he climbed higher and higher peaks to success, Adrien was revered by all except the person who mattered most to him. Gabriel Agreste, much to Marinette’s confusion, never seemed satisfied with his son’s performance in anything. She wondered if Adrien had spoken with his father today.

“I’m fine,” Adrien reassured her, and he looked pointedly at her glass. “You, on the other hand, need to catch up.”

Marinette frowned down at her drink. “It’s too strong,” she complained. “I’ll be out like a light if I finish this.”

Adrien laughed, and without a word, he slid his glass across the table and took hers.

Marinette stuck her tongue out at him, but she picked up his glass and sipped. Something floral, with just a hint of sweetness, seemed to melt over her tongue. She pursed her lips. “Much better,” she admitted. “Thanks.”

Adrien clinked his newly-claimed drink against hers. “Bottoms up, Marinette. Let’s celebrate the end of a spectacularly terrible semester.”

---

Even while half-slumped over, disheveled, and reeking of alcohol, Adrien Agreste managed to look relatively glamorous. It made Marinette, who looked like a creature from the underworld when she was that drunk, sick to her stomach. Or maybe that was the liquor.

Exhausted, excited, and probably not full enough of carbohydrates, both of them had outdone themselves at the bar, although Marinette at least knew she’d make it to the next morning alive. She wasn’t so sure about Adrien, whose forehead was hot against her shoulder as he snoozed, snoring softly.

It was like stepping into the taxi had somehow hit Adrien’s “off” switch: one moment, he’d been talking and joking animatedly, convincingly, to Marinette, to the point where she’d wondered if the alcohol had even affected him at all, and the next, he’d been out.

The taxicab pulled up to Adrien’s townhouse, and Marinette turned to gently shake Adrien by the shoulder.

“Adrien.”

“Mmmph.”

“Adrien, come on. You can’t sleep here.”

Adrien lifted his head and looked at Marinette through one bleary eye. “Whudtimeizit?” He peered past her through the taxicab window. “I don’t wanna go in there.”

Marinette frowned. “What do you mean?”

Adrien shrugged, eyes half-lidded and glassy. Even in his intoxicated, barely-there state, his expression was like a parody of someone who was trying very hard to look casual. “I just don’t want to.”

“Adrien… Are you okay?”

Marinette caught the cab driver looking impatiently at them through the rearview mirror, and she bit her lip, thinking quickly. She knew it. He hadn’t been himself all night, but every time she’d tried to approach it, Adrien had masked whatever he was burying with another goofy smile and a stupid pun. But something was very clearly wrong, and she couldn’t just leave him alone in that big house, where she knew he lived all by himself.

Marinette nodded to herself. Right, then. She was going to take care of this.

She turned to the cab driver and gave him the address for her flat. Adrien could sober up there, tell her what was going on, and then spend the night and let her force-feed him a hangover-curing breakfast the next morning, even if it killed him.

---

“Here,” Marinette said, pushing a large glass of water into Adrien’s hands. “Drink all of it.”

Adrien stared at the water for a moment before downing it in four loud gulps. “Thank you.”

Marinette sat down beside him on her couch, observing him with a critical eye. He was still glassy-eyed and smelled as though he’d dragged half the bar into her apartment with him, but he was, at the very least, more lucid than he’d been in the cab.

“Adrien.”

Adrien raised his eyebrows and glanced at her sideways.

“What’s going on?” Marinette paused, and then added firmly, “And don’t try to tell me it’s nothing!”

Adrien pursed his lips, his gaze fixed on an indeterminate spot on the wall, before he turned his eyes to her. Marinette was momentarily stunned—she wondered how she managed to be surprised, time after time, at how very green they were.

“Marinette…” He swallowed. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

Marinette felt her heart sink into her stomach. Adrien looked as though he might cry and didn’t sound too far off from it, either. She thought about all the secrets she’d kept over the years from her closest friends, even Alya, and reminded herself that she’d want any one of them to react with acceptance and an open mind if she ever chose to reveal those secrets to them.

“Try me,” she said softly. “You’d be surprised.”

Adrien’s eyes remained trained on her own for five long seconds before he pressed his fist against his mouth. “Okay,” he mumbled. “Do you remember Ladybug and Chat Noir?”

Marinette felt her brow furrow in a knee-jerk reaction. She almost wanted to laugh. Did she remember Ladybug and Chat Noir? She had lived and breathed Ladybug and Chat Noir. They formed a core part of her soul. But it had been a long, long time since Paris had needed its heroes.

After the defeat of Hawkmoth, Chat Noir had disappeared. And after a few weeks of showing up on rooftop after empty rooftop waiting fruitlessly for her partner to come out from the shadows, Marinette had forced herself to retire Ladybug as well. After a tearful goodbye with Tikki, she’d handed the earrings back to Master Fu and assured him that if evil ever returned to Paris, she'd take them back in a heartbeat.

The depression that had ensued had been unfathomable in its depth. The eighteenth year of Marinette’s life was a black hole that she hardly remembered.

Subconsciously, Marinette raised a hand to one unadorned earlobe. It was only when she saw Adrien look at her curiously, cautiously, that she realized she hadn't responded yet. “Uh—uh-huh,” she said, nodding.

“Well, what if…” Adrien’s eyes fell to his hands, which were folded in his lap, but he appeared to force himself to look back at her once more before continuing to speak. “Mari, what if I told you that I was Chat Noir?”

There was only silence then, and Marinette could only begin to guess what her expression must have looked like in those few seconds following Adrien’s statement.

Truly, she hadn’t even realized it was possible to feel so much at one time. A string of jumbled words—Wait what did I hear that right he can’t be serious can he—buzzed through her brain as a dim roar, like water rushing to a shore, filled her ears. Simultaneously, a particularly prickly sensation crawled up her body in a wave, until it reached her heart.

“Wh-what?” she whispered.

Adrien let out a shaky, mirthless laugh. “I told you you’d think I was crazy.”

Much to Marinette’s surprise, Adrien didn’t look shocked or hurt at her apparent disbelief. This made the moment more painful, somehow. She scrambled to pull herself together. “No—no, Adrien, I'm just—”

“I know it's a lot to take in,” he interrupted, and he looked at her with such pleading in his eyes that she found herself unable to speak once more. “And I don't have my miraculous anymore, so I don't think I have any way of proving it to you. But...”

Out of the corner of her eye, Marinette saw him absentmindedly rubbing his thumb against his ring finger, and it was as if someone had splashed a bucket of cold water over her head. Blinking rapidly, she started to see him in a totally new light, dizzy with how quickly her brain was suddenly connecting the dots. The same bright green eyes, framed by the same long lashes. Of course.The same perfectly unruly sunkissed hair, just a little more windblown when he was flying from building to building and somersaulting in midair to avoid an akuma attack. All those nights where the mission had ended, and it had been time to detransform and go home, and her partner had been so reluctant to do so, because—

“I don’t wanna go in there.”

Because he’d either had to go home to an empty house, or to Gabriel Agreste, which was almost worse than nothing at all. And then there was the newly added dimension to the understanding that Gabriel was Hawkmoth, a revelation that had shaken Marinette to her core and sent Adrien into a tailspin for the better part of that year. But she could only imagine, knowing what she knew now, how he must have felt in the moment as Chat Noir: triumph, at first, in finally apprehending their years-long enemy, only to find out it was his own father. And then, to see him taken to jail and dragged through the mud, and to bear some of that burden as his son, as well, without being able to tell a soul that he'd been the one to capture him in the first place.

Marinette felt a fresh pang of hurt for him in her heart. Of course of course of course of course—

“Oh, Adrien,” Marinette breathed.

Adrien’s own expression transformed as he registered the sorrow in Marinette’s eyes, in the set of her mouth. His lips parted, and Marinette heard the softest intake of breath. “You believe me.”

Marinette nodded. “I do.”

She did. All this time. All this time, the partner she’d missed and mourned and cursed and cried over had been right here. Everything inside her was on fire.

“Thank you, Marinette,” Adrien said, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees and lowering his head. “You have no idea—”

And surely—surely, he didn’t have a clue that she was—

In the back of her mind, Marinette heard Adrien’s voice shaking, and she tuned back in, alarmed.

“—I thought it’d get easier, you know, with the passage of time—but it’s been two years, and…” Adrien ran his hands through his hair. “I still feel so empty, like I lost a part of my body, or worse—like—”

“Like you don’t have the same soul you did before,” Marinette finished.

Adrien looked up at her, and Marinette bit back a gasp. The glassiness in Adrien’s eyes was now distinctly amplified by unshed tears.

“Yes ,” he whispered. “And the worst part is… Marinette… I abandoned her. Ladybug. After it was all over. I saw…You know. That night, I saw my father, and—I just—I got scared, and I went to M—the person who’d given me the miraculous in the first place, and I gave him my ring and told him—I couldn’t do it anymore, I—” Adrien stopped, and one hand rose to shield his eyes as a stifled sob erupted from his chest. “Sh-she was my best friend. And I left her all alone, with no explanation, and now she’s gone. I miss her. And now I can’t even tell her… It’s all my fault.”

Marinette felt her own hand cover her mouth as she watched Adrien—sweet, joyful Adrien—begin to cry. Swallowing back tears of her own, Marinette scooted closer to him and put an arm around his back and leaned her chin on his shoulder, not knowing what she could possibly say. When—if ever—would be a good time to let him know that she was right here?

Adrien was wrought with sobs now, unable to speak. Marinette had never, in her many years of knowing him, seen him like this—but then again, she thought, it probably wasn't often that he let himself let go this way. She rubbed his back and tugged on his shoulder a bit, and eventually, he moved so that his head was tucked neatly between her chin and her shoulder. She could feel warm tears on her collarbone.

When Adrien had quieted, Marinette moved to sit up, as she’d slid against the back of the couch, but he was dead weight against her. She leaned down to see his face—his eyes were closed. Deep breaths told her that he was asleep.

She studied him. But for the wetness on his face, which Marinette wiped away carefully with the back of her index finger, it was impossible to tell he’d been so grief-stricken just moments before. Her heart was so full that she really thought for a moment that it might burst. Both sheer joy and potent, rending sadness competed to fill the empty space that had been left in Chat’s absence.

Adrien Agreste, Chat Noir—one and the same. Both totally heartbroken, just like her. She wondered how they’d managed to hide from each other so well for so long.

“Chaton,” she tried, softly. Her heart pounded like a bass drum in her ears.  

Adrien remained dead asleep. Marinette bit her lip and felt two hot tears slip out of her eyes, down her cheeks, onto her neck, where Adrien’s had been moments prior.

“I’m here,” she breathed. “I’m here.”

Minutes later, Marinette succumbed to her own inebriated exhaustion, and she fell asleep.

---

Marinette awoke when the ache in her neck grew to be too much to bear. She felt dizzy and a little ill, and the buzz in her head told her that she was still somewhat intoxicated. Adrien clung to her, his head on her chest, his own chest rising and falling with the rhythm of his sleep. She was parched.

As gently as she could, Marinette slipped out from underneath him and tiptoed through the dark to get to her kitchen, where she filled and downed two glasses of water. She filled one more and brought it back to the living room, where Adrien, hair mussed and eyes half-lidded with sleep, but awake, nonetheless, sat before her.

Marinette moved to hand him the glass, and then thought better of it. She reached out her free hand. “Come on.”

Adrien blinked at the outstretched hand for a moment, and Marinette, much to her surprise, felt four-year-old nerves revving back to life in the pit of her stomach. Thankfully, before she could stammer out a clumsy explanation, he took her hand, and Marinette led him to her small bedroom in the back of the apartment, turning out the lights as she went.

---

“Comfortable?” Marinette said quietly, making her way to the bed.

“Yes. Thank you.” Adrien’s silhouette was unfamiliar in the darkness, and again, Marinette’s stomach churned just a little bit.

“Of course,” she said, trying to sound as casual as possible, and suddenly, she was so nervous that she couldn’t even turn to him. She lay down, facing the ceiling. They were far enough apart that they didn’t touch, but still, Marinette was quite aware of the heat emanating from his body.

Tell him. Why won’t you tell him?

Marinette lay wide awake for who knew how long, pondering the question. It should have been such a simple thing. You know how you said you’re Chat Noir? Well, I’m Ladybug. Surprise!

But the terrifying part wasn’t really telling him, then, was it? It was what came after—the unknown. Would he be relieved and overjoyed and sad for the lost years, as she was? Or overwhelmed at the notion that she’d been there all along? Or—and this was the worst option, and the reaction she feared most—disappointed, perhaps, that it was just her? That would tarnish not just one, but two relationships she’d cherished since she’d been a young teenager. She didn’t know if she could take any more heartbreak.

But she knew she couldn’t keep it to herself. Now that she knew where her partner had been this whole time, he deserved to know the same. He deserved to know that she’d never really held it against him for disappearing, too.

“Adrien—”

“Are you awake?” Adrien whispered, at the same time Marinette had said his name. “Oh. I guess you are.”

He turned onto his side so he could face her. Marinette did the same. She could see the outline of his face—the dip between his brow and his cheekbone, the glint of his eyes—in the dim city light filtering in through the window.

“Wh-what’s up?” she said, and she was glad she had an excuse to whisper, or he’d have heard her voice trembling.

“I just wanted to say thank you,” he said softly. He sounded distinctly more sober now than he had before. “I’ve never told anyone what I told you tonight. It feels like a huge weight is off my chest. And maybe now… Even if I can’t go back and fix things, I can—”

“Adrien.” Marinette clutched at the sheets, the churning in her stomach intensifying.

“Hm?”

“I have something to tell you, too.”

“What is it?”

Marinette knew he could hear the trepidation in her voice from the concern in his.

She took her time, trying to choose her words carefully. “Um… You know… How you told me—that you felt like you’d lost a part of yourself… ever since you gave up being Chat Noir?”

Adrien nodded.

“W-well, me, too. I knew exactly how you felt, Adrien,” Marinette murmured, “because I’ve been living that for the last two years, too. Right there with you.”

There was a long pause. She couldn’t even hear him breathing anymore. In the darkness, Marinette couldn’t read Adrien’s eyes, but she wasn’t sure if she should be comforted or made more nervous by the fact that he didn’t take them off of hers.

“Mon minou,” she whispered, and she blinked away tears. “It’s me. I don’t have my miraculous, either, because I gave them back to Master Fu after… After I gave up on you coming back.”

She knew then that Adrien had to have been holding his breath for quite some time, because she finally heard him let out a shaky exhale. Instinctively, she pulled the covers up so close that they reached her nose.

And then, she felt his hand, skimming along the side of her face, tracing along her cheeks and lips.

“Buginette?” his voice was teetering somewhere between joy and disbelief, not a trace of disappointment to be found.

She let out something that was half a laugh and half a sob, and before she knew it, Adrien had closed the gap between them and thrown an arm around her so that his face was buried in her hair.

“My Lady,” he said, voice low. Marinette suspected he was trying to hold himself together. “Marinette. How? How did I not know?”

Marinette laughed thickly. “I guess we’re really good at hiding our identities, after all. I always thought I was pretty terrible at it.” She paused. “How were you so quick to believe me?”

Adrien pulled back, meeting her eyes. She saw a look of hesitation cross his face for the briefest moment—or maybe that was just the darkness—and then his hand slid down to hers under the covers, where he intertwined their fingers. Marinette felt something spark to life inside of her, deep and low.

“Well, you mentioned Master Fu. No one else could have possibly known about him. But even if you hadn’t, it’s like… You said it, and suddenly, I knew.”

Marinette smiled. “Me, too.”

Adrien smiled back, but then his face fell. “You—you said you gave your miraculous back to Master Fu after you gave up on me coming back. Does that mean you waited for me?”

Marinette bit her lip. She thought about lying. There was no point in him knowing, really, she thought; it’d only cause him fresh heartache that he didn’t need. But it seemed wrong to be dishonest in this particular hour, even if it were for his own good. “Yes.”

“How long?”

“Just a few weeks,” Marinette said, trying to make it sound as nonchalant as possible. But she was sure he could visualize it almost exactly as it had happened: Ladybug landing, night after night, on their usual rooftops, hopeful at first, then worried, spending the nights searching for him, and then beside herself, until she’d given up altogether out of pure exhaustion.

Adrien let out a soft “oh.”

“Please don’t be down on yourself about it,” she added hastily. “It’s not a big deal—and now we know—”

“So that’s why you were so—that whole year. After it was all over. For a really long time, Mari, because of me, you weren’t… You weren’t all there.”

Marinette squeezed his hand, which was still interlocked with hers. “Neither were you.”

And now she knew why. He had lost so much more than his father that year.

A long breath escaped Adrien. “I’m really sorry, Buginette. So sorry.”

“No, really,” Marinette insisted, panicking a little at the anguish in his voice. “Please don’t be sad. It’s okay now, see? We found each other in the end, right? And I was never angry to begin with. I just didn't understand. And now I do.”

Adrien was silent for what felt like an eternity. For some reason, Marinette worried for a moment that he might bolt—but finally, she saw the outline of his shoulders relaxing, and he moved himself closer to her, so that their foreheads touched. Marinette forgot how to breathe.

“I know I never lost you, after all,” he said. “But I’m really glad I found you again.”

Marinette couldn’t speak. She nodded, and Adrien let go of her hand to brush a tear away from her eye before it fell. His fingers remained on her face, his eyes fixed on hers, and she only had a second or two to ponder the expression on his face before he moved, ever so slightly, to press his lips against hers.

---

“You WHAT?” Alya groaned loudly into the phone, and Marinette carefully stepped out of bed, hoping she hadn’t woken Adrien. She wandered into the kitchen and began to gather pans and ingredients to make breakfast as Alya ranted about how she couldn’t believe this was happening in the middle of her finals.

“I swear, Marinette, once this is over, we need to go out and I want every. Juicy. Detail.”

Marinette laughed. “It’s not— okay, well— it’s kind of juicy.”

Alya let out something akin to a scream, and Marinette heard a faint, “Babe, what is it?” in the background.

“Go away! I can’t talk to you right now! I’m busy,” Alya hissed, presumably at Nino.

Marinette giggled as she imagined Nino slinking off sadly to another room. “You really should be nicer to him.”

“Don’t change the subject! What happened? I can’t wait! I’ve decided. I need to know now.”

“Well,” Marinette started, twirling a pan full of oil this way and that to coat it. She wondered where she could begin.

She and Adrien had discussed the night before the extent to which they should reveal their being together to their best friends, but they hadn’t come to a decision. On the one hand, there really wasn’t any need to explain their alter egos as part of the story, but on the other hand, it felt wrong to keep it from them any longer. She held her tongue. Maybe it would be better if they decided to tell Alya and Nino together, she thought. She cracked several eggs into the pan, and they hit the metal with a satisfying sizzle.

Just as Marinette had made the decision to give Alya the abridged version, she felt a pair of warm arms slide around her waist and a chin against her shoulder. Marinette turned around and tried to bite back a laugh as Adrien placed a soft kiss along her jawline.

“Would you look at that,” she said into the phone. “Bad timing. I’ve got to go, Alya.”

“What? You can’t just go now! I need to know!”

“I know, I know. Think you could afford to do dinner tonight? Maybe I can tell you then?”

Alya didn’t answer for several seconds, and then she sighed. “I’m going to work my ass off today, Marinette. Double speed. Because I know this story will be worth it. You’d better not let me down!”

Marinette caught Adrien’s eye. He looked at her quizzically, and she grinned. “I won’t. Promise. Bye!”

Adrien kissed her forehead. “Good morning.”

Marinette put her phone down, and she couldn’t help but beam at him. His hair was mussed in every which direction, eyes bright and wide and alert. He was chewing on his lower lip to bite back a smile. It was adorable.

“Good morning, Chaton.”

“Can I help at all?” he asked, watching her flip the eggs.

“Nope. How are you feeling?”

“Well, I feel like someone threw a boulder at my head last night,” he said, leaning against the counter beside her. “Also, there’s a chance that I’m going to be sick.”

Marinette winced.

“But I think I’m perfectly happy, regardless.” He smiled down at her.

Fireworks exploded in Marinette’s stomach. She had to remind herself to look back down at her pan so the eggs wouldn’t burn.

Adrien’s phone went off then, and he held the screen up to her to show that Nino was calling. Shooting her a grin, he answered and placed it on speakerphone.

“Hey, Nino.”

“Dude, did you make it home last night? I didn’t understand anything you were trying to say in your texts, and Marinette sent me like, four snapchats of you guys in that bar at three in the morning.”

Adrien laughed and rubbed the back of his head. “Not necessarily… But I’m fine.”

There was a pause. “Wait. How are you not super hungover? Why do you sound so happy? Does this have anything to do with why Alya is in her studio freaking out by herself?”

Adrien exchanged glances with Marinette and burst into laughter. “It’s a long story.”

---

notes: happy valentine’s day and thank you for reading! this fic came out of nowhere and then quickly snowballed into a monster i couldn't really control. LOTS of crying. much more than i expected, haha. i hope you enjoyed! (ps: do parisians eat eggs for breakfast? i'm not sure that they do. alas.)

[easterndaze]

Arszyn/Duda & Paper Cuts- There is No Conclusion (Review)

The mysterious, obtuse and bare-knuckle avant-garde There Is No Conclusion is a release from the collective improvisations of Krzysztof ‘Arszyn’ Topolski, Tomasz Duda and the duo formerly recognized as Paper Cuts (Wojtek Kurek and Lukasz Kacperczyk), released on Warsaw based label Pawlacz Perski. It’s three pieces of abstract sounds and free jazz orientated improv music; two of which ascend the ten minute mark, fighting structure and linear characteristics of ‘traditional music’. But unlike some lengthy improvisation releases, the group maintain an air of engagement throughout the entire odyssey; at the same time forcing the listener to question the formalities of truly experimental music, and offering a thought provoking statement about how the place and form of performance can impact and influence the music release.

For those of you who un-aware of label Pawlacz Perski, their rostering and release history reads like the far outskirts of what most would call ‘accessible’ music; covering diverse and experimental music beyond the threshold of definition. For example, a release by the label entitled Okoły gnębione wiatrem, by artist Bachorze, centres around several deep, drowning pieces of avant-jazz built around a screeching saxophone, backed by electronics that sound akin to a drill or jack hammer. Another, entitled Mneme, by artist Jacek Mazurkiewicz, is almost the complete opposite; sounding almost on the verge of meditative. Over two tracks, the listener is fed rattling gong brushes and reverb, accompanied by the occasional screech of electronic music, a lucid violin and lowercase tinkerings. Moral of the story; Pawlacz Perski release extensive and engaging music, highlighting the most interestingly quirky and unorthodox music in and around Eastern Europe. And while not all of their releases are the sort of stuff you would put on at a Tupperware party, they remain ridiculously intriguing and captivating as both music and as listening experiences.

There Is No Conclusion [ppt38] by ADPC (Arszyn / Duda & Paper Cuts)

It makes sense, then, for the label to release There Is No Conclusion, whose characteristics are every bit alluring, confusing and darkly winsome as the aforementioned releases. Recorded ‘live in concert’ at the acclaimed and equally as interesting Biuro Dźwięku Katowice in Southern Poland, the release begins with the lengthy, nineteen minute ’12 To 16’. This track is as close to what some would call ‘traditional free jazz’ as you get on the release, equipped with fantastic and progressive drumming skills by half of Paper Cuts that stay at a steady, swinging beat that holds the background of the musical chaos together somewhat. The first half of the song is where the realms of jazz are inspired thoroughly; featuring ear bending saxophone and heavy percussion. But as the song progresses, so does the experimentation which comes to include electronics, synthesizers, radios and other samples that turns the mood of the music schizophrenic in its diversity. And although its epic-ness and sheer weight makes it sound like pushing through metaphorical sludge, it is in fact an interesting full circle; beginning with elements that featured deep into the second half of the song.

The following song ‘Pan Radio’ opens with a lowercase radio frequency and centres around more experimental instruments and passages of music. Less jazz like, ‘Pan Radio’ contains the screech and fuzz of a radio that plays speeches and talking in a sample like manner. The percussion (for most of the song) remains much less intricate and free form than the opening track. The inclusion of saxophone adds another dense level to the avant-garde escapades the group of musicians thrash out. One should note the second half of the song, where heavy saxophone accompanies synthesizer to create a fantastic droning-jazz inspired piece of sonic electronica.

‘Bo Diddley’ sits at just over five minutes; making it a more condensed adventure than the other tracks on There Is No Conclusion, equipped with a different type of instrumentation and sound altogether. But the mood of the song is far from being unlike the other two on the EP; it’s claustrophobic, morph-like shape forms connect with ‘Pan Radio’ in a brilliantly transitional way. Unlike the other songs however, ‘Bo Diddley’ only contains the crunch and churn of synthesizers, samples and other various electronic sounds, which amount to what seems could be likened to a dense, improvised piece of soothing ambient music. Eventually, as the instruments and sounds amass, the song begins to feel like a clear extension of the rest of the music on the release.

Altogether There Is No Conclusion rewards its listeners by containing a few elements, one of which is the players that appear on the recording. Kacperczyks musical creations on a modular synthesizer prove to be an essential ingredient to the musical soundscapes of the EP. Accompany this with Arszyn’s use of a radio as an instrument to create an extra layer and sample like sounds and the two create a wild, textured sound that shines its brightest on the wavering ‘Bo Diddley’. One of the greatest elements of the entire project is the percussion section; holding the background of blast beats and cymbal runs in a free jazz context that sounds as brilliant as they do original. From a slow tap to a full kit, the beats and hits of the kit reinforces the music while still maintaining the all-important ‘feel’ of improvised music. To top all of this off, the screeching, fantastic blasts of Duda’s saxophone add a necessary tightness to the wild blasts of music; especially on the opening track.

I thought for a while, while listening to There Is No Conclusion, what makes interesting and thoughtful improvised music? Is it the quality of performance and performer? Is it the relationships, dynamics and connection between the players? Is it the dis-connection between the players? Is it in the performance itself? Is it how loose it is? I read a few bits and pieces and declared it was all the questions I had asked and more. Improvised music should speak for itself in its connection, it’s fluidity and it’s performative elements, to represent those involved in a way that transcends what linear, formatted music can do. I noticed eagerly after this statement was made that There Is No Conclusion had personified it; it all its glory and its noise.

By Cam Phillips

[lifeonashelf]

CKY

Do any of you remember a film from the ‘90s called Shazaam?

Allow me to refresh your memory: Shazaam was a vehicle for C-list comedian Sinbad, who is perhaps best known for starring in a 1994  sitcom that was creatively titled The Sinbad Show—which I never watched because the show starred Sinbad. The Sinbad Show didn’t even last a full season on the FOX network (probably because the show starred Sinbad), but sometime either shortly before or shortly after that program was cancelled, its namesake landed the lead role in a film entitled Shazaam, a part which allowed him to stretch his acting chops by playing a wisecracking genie who acted exactly like Sinbad.

I distinctly remember seeing the trailer for this cinematic tour de force. To the best of my recollection, the plot revolved around two precocious children—one girl and one boy, naturally, to ensure that twice as many kids would beg their parents to buy the tie-in merchandise that would inexorably be produced if the film was successful—who one way or another encounter a djinn named Shazaam. Though their initial meeting befalls as a startling surprise for all parties concerned, they quickly become the best of pals and Shazaam subsequently convoys his youthful comrades through a rote series of comical PG hijinks. The specific nature of their shenanigans has been lost to the haze of time, but those details don’t matter much; a mid-‘90s movie built upon that scenario and geared toward that audience sort of writes itself (I doubt there was a subplot about Hungarian sex traffickers, for instance). I’m sure Shazaam helps the moppets surmount some sort of reasonably benign conflict and everyone learns a lesson about the true meaning of family by the time the credits roll. I’m assuming a clever dog is also involved in some fashion, and I’m confident the film features at least one protracted flatulence gag. Mind you, this is all just speculation; I can’t verify any of it since I never actually watched Shazaam (I decided not to because the trailer revealed that the film starred Sinbad).

Perhaps you already know where I’m going with this, but in case you don’t: Shazaam likely qualifies as the least successful celluloid offering ever concocted, because it is a movie which literally nobody watched. Oddly, this dearth of viewership didn’t have anything to do with Sinbad starring in it; the main reason nobody watched the film Shazaam is because the film Shazaam doesn’t actually exist. And I have a real difficult time wrapping my head around this, because not only am I ABSOLUTELY FUCKING CERTAIN that I remember viewing the trailer I’ve described, I can also readily visualize the VHS case for this movie that was never really a movie on the shelves at Blockbuster Video (imagine my incredulity when I learned that Blockbuster Video never actually existed, either). And even stranger, there are evidently thousands upon thousands of people who recall the existence of this movie that does not exist as vividly as I do.

If you kept up with the brief internet furor about this topic which arose a couple years ago, you’re undoubtedly aware the Shazaam phenomenon has been explained away as some peculiar mass delusion known as the Mandela Effect—apparently, so many human brains muddled the title and star of the ill-advised Shaquille O’Neal genie flick Kazaam that our collective hive-minds fabricated an illusory film to match our erroneous memories. (Of course, this begs the question: do those of us who remember Shazaam subconsciously wish there was a film in which Sinbad plays a sassy, flatulent genie…?). This clarification makes a kind of sense, even though my vague recollections of the corporeal Kazaam and my lucid recollections of the false Shazaam differ substantially (in my brain, Sinbad never raps or does karate in his movie, yet both disciplines factor into major plot-points in Kazaam—and Shazaam doesn’t meander into a baffling second-act detour about Hungarian sex traffickers like Shaq’s film inexplicably does).

So here’s the reason I’m bringing this up here: when I sat down to write about the band CKY, the paramount thing I intended to delve into was how I was introduced to their music. Do me a favor and keep that in mind—this information will come in handy later.

 #

  When I was a twenty-something in the very late 1990’s-slash-very early 2000’s, I worked at Domino’s Pizza as a delivery driver, which was a really excellent gig at the time. I had almost no bills and gas was a buck a gallon, so I only needed to work about 20 hours a week to earn enough money to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle. And like most twenty-something males who make their living as pizza conveyance professionals, when I wasn’t on the road, my comfortable lifestyle mainly entailed spending inordinate amounts of my free time listening to a bunch of punk rock, smoking a bunch of pot, and playing a bunch of video games.

[To be clear, not all of my co-workers at Domino’s did even one of these things. There was Dennis, for instance, who to the best of my knowledge did not enjoy punk rock, marijuana, or video games. He did, however, regularly come into work with cartons of expired baked goods that he extracted from the dumpsters behind Vons, which he would then rinse in the sink to make them “fresh” again. The prevailing rumor about Dennis’s backstory was that he was a former surgeon who had a nervous breakdown after losing a child patient on the operating table. I’m not so sure that was true, although I am very sure that he once brought in a plastic grocery bag filled with vomit instead of pastries and attempted to rinse that in the sink, too—which is why I tend to lean more toward believing Dennis was probably just fundamentally insane. There was no preamble to his unambiguously unhinged act; the dude simply strolled into the prep area at the start of his shift and said “hey, Taylor” to me like it was any other day… except he was carrying a sack of upchuck with him, clutching it right below the straps, as if girding the parcel to ensure he wouldn’t spill any of his cargo. My manager sent him home when she saw what was in the bag, but Dennis came back to work the very next afternoon—sans puke satchel—and the incident was never spoken of again. To this day, I cannot fathom how Dennis accumulated all that vomit, why he was hauling it around in his car, or what he was hoping to accomplish by soaking it in the same basin where we washed our pizza pans. Anyway, what I was getting at is that he didn’t especially fit the stereotype I outlined. We got along okay, though; I always made it a point to be really nice to the guy—you know, considering his alarming derangement and all.]

One of the staples of my Playstation habits in those days was the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series. Despite having only spent a combined total of maybe zero-point-three hours on an actual skateboard in my entire life, my best friend Andy and I logged approximately 19,000 hours guiding the avatars in those seminal games through a multitude of gravity-and-logic-defying feats which no human being could ever possibly achieve with or without a skateboard. In the real world, I probably couldn’t even pull off an elementary trick like an ollie—but in the realm of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater I was a four-wheeled fucking god who could effortlessly grind up the side of a building, soar off the opposite edge, perform roughly nineteen twisting flips on my way back down, then execute a perfect landing on the downslope of an opportunely-placed ramp so I could launch off that and catch enough air to do nineteen more flips. Though I have never been an aficionado of that particular sporting pursuit, the Tony Hawk games were incredibly fun and offered endless replay potential due to the almost pornographic extremity of their facets. The conscientious city planners in THPS’s utopia were mindful to randomly insert dozens of half-pipes and empty swimming pools all over their towns, and none of their edifices featured a single surface that could not be utilized for some sort of astonishing aerodynamic exploit.

Instead of composing an original musical score for the series, the developers of the Pro Skater franchise rather ingeniously opted to license fifteen-or-so songs by relatively popular bands for each installment. These tunes supplied the background inspiration during gameplay, and were ostensibly chosen because they represented genres which the skater demographic enjoyed—unsurprisingly, the soundtracks predominantly relied on crowd-pleasing punk and hip-hop material (although one of the sequels featured a song by Powerman 5000, whose fanbase was roughly equivalent to the number of people who have watched Shazaam). However, a cycle of only fifteen tracks doesn’t go a very long way when it’s entirely feasible to play 100 rounds in one sitting—as Andy and I regularly did. So as you might suspect, we ended up hearing the same song-batch an incalculable number of times throughout the course of any given session, which inevitably burned every one of those tracks permanently into our brains. This is how I became intimately familiar with the band CKY, whose cut “Flesh Into Gear” appeared in one of the Tony Hawk releases and was consequently submitted for my listening pleasure hundreds upon hundreds of times.

Luckily, “Flesh Into Gear” is a really cool tune, a prime slice of appealing proto-metal with an insidiously catchy chorus and a snaking stoner-rock guitar riff that would undoubtedly inspire anyone in their right mind to rail-slide across a chain of forty conveniently-equidistant park benches. I could hardly believe a song this excellent and shrewdly-crafted was coined by an outfit like CKY, since the group’s foremost point of notoriety at the time was their drummer’s family ties to one of the cast members of Jackass—an obtuse reality television showcase for the misadventures of a squad of unabashed idiots whose misguided testosterone impelled them to launch bottle rockets out of their rectums, drink animal semen, and obsessively scour the ends of the earth searching for various objects to pummel each other’s testicles with.

My persistent exposure to “Flesh Into Gear” via Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater eventually motivated me to purchase CKY’s 2002 release Infiltrate-Destroy-Rebuild, the album the track was borrowed from. I have been spinning that disc repeatedly since I started writing this, and—while the rest of the band’s material is satisfactory but un-extraordinary—every single time “Flesh Into Gear” comes on, it instills me with a rush of delightful nostalgia. I cannot remember the last time I played any of the Pro Skater installments, but with “Flesh Into Gear” navigating my recollections just like it navigated my board-wielding avatar seventeen years ago, I can still clearly visualize the games’ indelible imagery and virtually weave my way through the vast intricacies of those levels I traversed countless times back then. And these evocations are accompanied by a flood of additional splendid reminiscences, snapshots from a far simpler and more idyllic time—perhaps my very favorite phase of my life—an era free of real jobs and real responsibilities, when on any given day my best friend and I could unreservedly spend endless hours engrossed in Playstation, and the most critical concerns in our purview were what combination of toppings we should order on our pizza and whether or not we would be able to track down an eighth so we could smoke a bowl before watching that evening’s new episode of South Park.  

This is the true and immeasurable splendor of music. Even this many years removed, I can still listen to “Flesh Into Gear” today and instantly be enveloped in those potent and wonderful memories, transported back to a comfortable living room in Lakewood, sitting in front of a big-screen television beside someone who is closer to me than a brother, our fingers frenetically tapping on the joysticks which control our destinies on the monitor, beautifully oblivious to the evaporating hours because we are twenty-one and our time seems infinite and our futures are wide open and we have a whole lifetime of escapades ahead of us. On these glorious occasions, Andy and I weren’t just mindlessly zoning out on some silly skateboarding game. We were ardently devoting ourselves to having fun, pure and unadulterated fun, the kind of serene merriment you only get to have for a woefully short yet richly blessed period of your existence, the kind of immaculate and untroubled amusement you don’t realize you won’t ever experience again until that phase of your life imperceptibly cedes to the next and the ravages of the real world begin to methodically devour your body and your soul. We were also laughing, a lot, often so vigorously and exuberantly that our giggle-fits overtook us in irrepressible paroxysms that brought tears of elation to our eyes. Simply by being in the same room with each other, we were celebrating just how special a friendship that spans literal decades truly is, and how singularly magnificent it feels to spend time with people whose mere presence has the ability to make you happy. So, it didn’t ultimately matter how many times we heard “Flesh Into Gear”. I never got sick of that song. Who could ever get sick of laughter and happiness?

The list of CKY’s quantifiable merits isn’t an especially long one. Nevertheless, they created something which conjures a surge of jubilant memories that I will never forget, and would never want to. Thus, they will always occupy a warm place in my heart, a place where they are inextricably tied to one of the most joyful epochs of my life: those euphoric and carefree days when my best friend and I had all the time in the world to listen to “Flesh Into Gear” over and over and over again while we were playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.

Okay, are you ready? Here comes the Sinbad part…

In the interest of accuracy, I went online to look up the Pro Skater series and clarify which installment this particular track was used in. As I said, each of the Tony Hawk releases featured a different assortment of songs, and since Andy and I enthusiastically immersed ourselves in all of them as they came out, we heard and re-heard the music on all of those playlists accordingly. I was fairly certain “Flesh Into Gear” was part of Pro Skater 3’s soundtrack, but I wanted to verify that it hadn’t instead appeared in one of the previous games before I started waxing nostalgic here.  

What I found out is this: CKY’s song “Flesh Into Gear” did not appear in any edition of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. The band did indeed supply a track to THPS3, but it was an entirely different cut called “96 Quite Bitter Beings”, which I do not have in my collection because it isn’t even on the same album as “Flesh Into Gear”. This means that for the last however-many years, I have been assigning a reverent sentimental significance to a song that, for all intents and purposes, has absolutely no relevance to the detailed web of memories I have snuggled around it. The crystal-clear recollections I have of guiding a pixilated daredevil through a labyrinth of nosegrind-ready obstacles while “Flesh Into Gear” churned in the background never happened.

Shazaam.

For the record, Andy is still my best friend, and has been for 33 years and counting. Our lives have changed significantly since our Pro Skater era, but our bond has not. Though we are only able to hang out every couple months or so at present, whenever we do, we still play video games. And we still watch South Park. And we still approach ordering pizza like the medley of toppings we select are variables in an intricate and vitally-imperative equation. And we still laugh a whole fucking lot.

Sure, I miss the old days—anyone who doesn’t miss the old days obviously wasn’t doing the old days right. Yet, despite only seeing Andy a handful of times a year and having to drive two hours to Oceanside to do so, I never get so wistful for the way things were that I neglect cherishing the way things are now. I love Andy’s wife, Neisa, and I love having a front-row seat to the incredible and inspiring marriage they have built together. I absolutely adore the two remarkable humans they created, Shae and Nixon, and I consider it the most profound honor of my life to be their Uncle Taylor. There are plenty of things I would change about my own contemporary reality, but there isn’t a single thing I would change about theirs.

Still, every now and then, I do find myself wishing I could revisit that living room in Lakewood, settle down in front of that big-screen TV with Andy, turn on the Playstation, and feel as infinite and invincible and utterly content as I did back when I was a twenty-one year-old pizza conveyance professional whose universe was far too harmonious and secure to generate even an inkling of anxiety about the present, let alone the future. If I did return to that time and place, it wouldn’t be so I could instigate any sweeping amendments or pass on some sage piece of cautionary wisdom to my younger self. No, I think I would let the pages of that chapter turn exactly the way they did. Because, all things considered, spending entire days on end doing something as enchantingly frivolous as playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater with your best friend in the world isn’t really all that irresponsible—it’s probably precisely what life is all about. And, you know what, it wouldn’t matter to me one bit which CKY song was on the soundtrack, just as long as Andy and I were having fun while we listened to it.  

I hope you enjoyed this piece. Even though it starred Sinbad. If you don’t mind, I’m going to go ahead and roll the credits here on that poignant note. I’ll save the story about my run-in with Hungarian sex traffickers for another time.

 July 21, 2018

[newidaho]

1.  Snow

Don’t have the time/patience/desire to read with your eyes? Don’t have eyes? Well, have your friend read you this:  You can check out the audiobook for free on Apple, Google, Stitcher, or Spotify.  Subscribe for new episodes every Wednesday!

20 December 2054   //   0700h.

Snow Caston sat on his balcony, eating his yogurt and absentmindedly tapping the side of his Lenses to turn the clouds below him from green, to blue, to yellow.  He settled for a moment on pinkish-orange before turning the effect off, returning the clouds to their natural whitish-grey.   With any luck, they would turn pink again on their own, when the sun rose.

Snow was blessed to live where he did.  Of course, he could complain if he wanted to.  Isolation, for instance, would be the first place his mind went.  Unlike in other parts of the state, where you could easily take a highway from one city to another, the city of New Idaho was nestled in a valley between a ring of mountains.  Within New Idaho’s 12-mile radius, the terrain was relatively flat.  Go past the outskirts, however, and you are looking nearly a mile down to the next valley—hence Snow’s ability to look down at the clouds from his balcony.

New Idaho was not only a geographical anomaly; it was also an experiment in a new form of locality.  The only way in (other than a long hike) was a bullet train, most accessible from Boise, that took you right up to the south side of town.  After that, you had to move by bike.  Solar-Powered Electric Bikes were popular for those with longer-than-usual commutes.  Cars, however, were totally obsolete in New Idaho.  It was no wonder New Idaho was consistently ranked as one of the healthiest cities in America.

Even living in such an isolated city, Snow could admit it was a lucky situation.  He had spent all seventeen years of his life in the elevated valley, and there was still a generous amount of the city he had yet to see.  He had learned that yesterday, if he had learned anything.

Snow’s house was on the eastern end of New Idaho, built into the eastern ‘wall’ of the valley.  His neighborhood’s road wound about 700 feet down the inner edge of the Ring into the mainland of town.  On his side of the valley, clouds were quite common, lending to the feeling of isolation.  It was as if the whole town was floating on an island in the middle of an ocean of clouds, and he lived on the coast.  Unfortunately, the only way he could go swimming off that coast-line was with a Virtual Program on his Lucid Mask.

Out of the corner of his eye, Snow saw a porcupine-like creature.  Startled, he took his glasses off.  The creature disappeared.  He thought he had turned off the AR Capabilities for his Pokemon game.  He wanted to spend this morning relatively unstimulated.  Not to mention, he had already caught all of the Pokemon that lived around his house, most of them six times over.

Most days, he wouldn’t desire this low level of stimulation.  Normally, his Lucid Lenses were on as soon as he took his morning shower.  The apps he took advantage of varied; sometimes he would have a brief interface with friends, sometimes he would go outside and play one of the AR games he had downloaded onto his Lenses, sometimes he would just read from the different authors he followed online.  

Snow felt an added anxiety to the discomfort he was already feeling that morning when he realized how rarely he woke up without wearing his Lenses at all.  He knew his generation had an unprecedented relationship with AR technology, but he had generally been able to justify his use through the knowledge that this was true for any new technology.  It was probably similar to how his parents had felt growing up with the "Smart Phone".  At the end of the day, Snow felt (and hoped) he benefited from the use of AR.  Not to mention, it was his parents’ close relationship with the AR industry that allowed them to have this house on the edge of town.

This house, however, was at the root of what was bothering Snow this morning.  He had always known his house was rather large, and he certainly appreciated his view down the mountain (a gratefulness that he knew wasn’t shared by some of the brattier kids in his neighborhood), but until yesterday, he had truly never stopped to think about the amount of money his parents really had.  Sure, he always had the latest AR technology, but that was probably true of anyone with relatives in the industry.  Hell, it was true for most kids in general these days.  

Yesterday afternoon, however, he was finally forced to admit it:  His situation was far more unique than his ignorance had allowed him to believe.  His parents were some of the most integrated members of the biggest industry in modern times—an industry that had made New Idaho possible in the first place.  And they had been there since 2030, the virtual beginning of any real residency in the city.  No wonder they had a house on the Perimeter.

Yesterday was the first time Snow had visited his friend Adam’s house.  He had hung out with Adam a few times before, but it was always either at the skate park right after school or at his house on the Ring.  Snow’s parents had always been generous about hosting his friends, another privilege Snow remained grateful for.  Yesterday, however, Adam had taken a leap and invited Snow over to his house for a change.

Adam lived just north of the center of town, about three blocks from the border of the Greta Barn Jungle, one of the strangest mysteries of the town, likely caused by the intersection between climate change and technology.  Having a Jungle in the city was great for water, however, and provided the perfect border for the  south side of New Idaho University.  Although he had lived in town since his birth, however, Snow had only been to the jungle once before, on a mini-vacation with his parents.  The jungle was about 30 square miles altogether, spread out about 17 miles east to west.  

More than anything, Snow remembered how dense the Jungle had been.  He had followed his father to the campsite, "helping" him cut through the growth with a machete.  By the time they headed back two days later, the path was already, once again, overgrown.  It had been a fun vacation, but Snow hadn't felt any strong urge to return since.  Now, just six days before Christmas, Snow had found himself back in the area, this time in the neighborhood bordering the Jungle's southern end.

Looking back, he shouldn’t have been so surprised at the size Adam’s house.  It was only three rooms—a combination living room/kitchen, a room for the parents, and a room for Adam and his brother.  It was common knowledge that the Jungle had both an intense mosquito population and a higher humidity than anywhere else in New Idaho.  This meant, of course, that housing was in less demand, and therefore the cheapest place for citizens to live.

The house was relatively well-kept, and perhaps as organized as it could be, but there were still more knick-knacks kept around than the house realistically had room for.  In the corner, for instance, were four large bins filled to the brim with branded frisbees, coozies, and childhood games the family had decided not to part with.  Additionally, each wall was "wallpapered", a term that Snow hadn’t even heard before he asked Adam about it.  Despite having never seen it, he somehow automatically found it tacky.

It hurt him to think that his friend’s house was tacky, especially when he compared it to the immaculate clean walls of his own home.  In fact, as soon as he stepped in, he felt a guilty pang as he immediately wished he could go back to his house in his mountainside neighborhood.  He then experienced the hard realization that Adam had to live here every day.  Here was his friend’s daily dwelling, and Snow was trying to leave as soon as he stepped into the door.  It was unfathomable to him that Adam could just be ‘used to it’.

Snow’s body language must have given him away.  Adam immediately asked what was wrong, though it sounded more like a statement than a question.

‘Nothing’s wrong.  I just haven’t been near the Greta Barn since I was very young.  And then only once.  It’s all very new to me.’

‘And this house I’m sure, is new to you.’

‘Well, of course.’

‘I mean, you realize that not everyone lives like you—not even everyone at Sky High.’  Adam was referring to the fact that they both attended the high school on the east side of town—generally considered the higher-end educational facility in the area.  Adam had been accepted to Sky High through open enrollment.  Most students from this neighborhood went to Jungle High.  ‘Every house in this neighborhood is probably a lot different than what you’re used to—no view, no picture window, half a room per person.’

‘That's true, but at the end of the day, it’s just a house.’

‘Is that really what you’re thinking?’

‘…’

‘Why don’t we go for a walk.’

The two boys set out into the neighborhood.  Each house had the same basic shape as Adam’s.  Most of the yards were overgrown, crawling with lush vegetation, fallout from the jungle.  This sort of growth was part of a buffer zone that extended about three miles in any direction from the denser heart of the jungle.  Beyond that, for whatever reason, the mountain air became notably dry and cool again.

The street itself was rather narrow, cracked and full of potholes.

‘I didn’t want to have this conversation with my brother in the other room,’ said Adam.  ‘It just seems kind of uncomfortable.  But I really am curious what it’s like for you.’

‘I mean, it’s nice.  To see where you live.  You know.’

Adam sighed.  ‘You know we’re friends, right?  I can tell you I find it strange to go over to your house and look over the side of a mountain.  Do you ever wonder if I’m jealous?  If I want that?’

‘…’

‘I'll take that as a yes.  To be totally honest, I've felt a little jealous before.  The first couple times I visited, it was kind of hard to stomach the differences between our lives.  That I could have been born on the Perimeter.  But now I don’t think about it much at all.  If I’m successful, maybe I’ll get to a point where I have a house like that.  But I’m used to the way things are around here.  It’s just the way life is.  You get what you get.’

‘You don’t hate living here?’

‘So now it comes out!  What you were really thinking.  I knew it.’  Adam smiled to show he wasn't bothered.

Snow nodded.  ‘We’re friends, right?  I’ll tell you how I really felt.  When I went into your house, I didn’t know how anyone could live like that.  I mean, that’s the first thing I thought.’

‘…’

‘That’s just me being honest!  Don’t worry, I feel really bad about it.  But that’s the truth.’

‘I don’t hate living here.  Not at all.  I have some great friends in the neighborhood.  My parents can’t afford to remodel the home, or move anywhere else, or buy me the newest Lucid Lenses, but we always have enough to eat.  I always get presents on Christmas.  Hell, I live in the City of the Century!  I don’t know, there’s really not much I want.  I have everything I need.  And it’s actually kind of fun to have the Jungle right there.  Nobody else in America really gets that.'

‘I guess it’s just a lot different than what I’m used to.’

‘I’m sure it is.’

‘Do you hate me for it?’

Adam laughed.  'Why the hell would I hate you?'

‘Because of where my house is.  What I have.’

‘I already told you, I’m not jealous.  Maybe at first, but I’m older now.  I’ve had some time to think it over.  At the end of the day, honestly, I'm happy for you.  You were just blessed.  I won't say I never feel jealous, but there's still a lot to love about where I live.  So it’s not that bad.’

‘Mm.’

They finished walking around the block, then ended up back in Adam’s house.  Part of Snow still felt like he wanted to go home (to an extent, the conversation had made it even worse), but he stayed, and ate dinner with Adam’s parents, and all was good.  Around 2000h, Snow hopped on his electric bike and rode it back home.

Back on the balcony, the clouds were starting to take on that natural pink hue after all.  Snow wondered whether he would be invited back to Adam’s house.  As soon as that thought entered his head, a guilty chain of excuses to dismiss the invitation trailed behind.  Then he thought back to the honesty of their conversation, and figured it would be better to just tell Adam he would rather hang out at his house on the Perimeter.

Snow’s knee-jerk resistance to the idea of returning to the Jungle bothered him.  If Adam could live the way he did, relatively happy, and Snow couldn’t even fathom living a life like that, with the humidity, the cramped quarters, the wallpaper—how would Snow handle what was to come in his life?  Would he just be forever pacified in an immaculate palace such as this?  Would he be able to afford that?  Or would he ultimately have to go through a rite of passage he was unprepared for, learning to truly appreciate what it took to achieve the life his parents had set out for him?

Should he just jump into the sea of clouds right now?

No, not now.  Not yet.  He put his lenses back on and absentmindedly flipped the clouds’ pink color from yellow, to green, to blue.  As the sun rose, he wondered what Adam would be getting for Christmas.  He knew his gifts would be much more exciting.  Embarrassed and a little guilty, Snow felt a rush of excitement at the thought of what might be under the tree come Christmas morning.

[bronzeflower]

Who The Fuck Writes A Ten-Page Rant?????

Chapter 20: Mango Sorbet

Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god.

You were currently in a very specific predicament.

You were in a bed. That, in of itself, was pretty normal. Nothing wrong with being in a nice, comfortable bed with a bunch of blankets on you and a bunch of pillows surrounding you. Exactly the way a bed should be. It’s comfortable and cozy and soft and nice and whatever other synonyms there are for the word comfortable. The point was, you were in a bed, and that particular part was not the problem you were having.

What the main issue was that it wasn’t your bed. It was someone else’s. Usually, you wouldn’t mind that a whole bunch. There have been more than a couple times where you went to someone’s house, and they offered their guest bedroom for you to use or something similar. So, no, that wasn’t the issue either.

The issue was whose bed it was. Because that made all the difference.

Here you were, in Karkat and Kanaya’s house after Kanaya’s birthday party in a bed. Specifically, you were in Karkat’s bed while he snuggled up against you like being an octopus was his goddamn job. You were almost surprised that he hadn’t died yet due to living outside the water because you were pretty fucking certain that Karkat was literally an octopus with how he was cuddling up against you.

The previous night, you and Karkat watched movies on Karkat’s laptop until you fell asleep. You were pretty sure that you were the first to fall asleep, otherwise, you would have figured out something to avoid sleeping in Karkat’s bed.

Not that there was anything wrong with that. There was a part of you that was absolutely ecstatic about sharing a bed with Karkat. That part of you was mostly your heart deciding to go absolutely wild once you realized what was happening.

However, you usually would have asked for a different solution out of politeness and common etiquette, like a blow-up mattress or sleeping on the couch or in the guest bedroom or something like that. You know. Just as a courtesy, and you certainly also don’t really want to make Karkat uncomfortable at all. Although, he seemed to be pretty comfortable right now doing his duty as a literal octopus.

Karkat squeezed tighter around you, clearly having absolutely no awareness of the situation at hand. Not that you could blame him at all really. That was a pretty tiring party, and the two of you did stay up fairly late.

But Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. What should you do? What should you be doing? What could you even do in this sort of situation? Was Karkat okay with this at all? If he went to sleep after you and had enough thought process to put his laptop away, he must be at least a little bit okay with this. Maybe. Hopefully.

Honestly, you didn’t know the protocol for this or anything. Your crush on Karkat just made this entire situation at least one hundred times worse. Or better-it was kind of difficult to know which.

Not to mention that being this close to Karkat kind of made your brain stop working. You were pretty sure if someone asked you what two plus two was, you would say twelve because you clearly are unable to do basic arithmetic. But you were also apparently lucid enough to think the word ‘arithmetic,’ so you suppose some part of your brain is still actually working. Supposedly.

You were actually extremely thankful that Karkat was asleep and therefore unable to see how much of a mess you were.

You then noticed that you didn’t have your sunglasses on. You looked over to the side and saw them sitting on the side desk thing of the bed. That must have meant that Karkat took off your sunglasses for you because you certainly don’t remember taking off your sunglasses yourself last night.

Thinking about it made you a little dizzy, so you stopped thinking about that and started to wonder how the hell you could possibly escape from Karkat’s clutches.

“Yo, Karkat. Hey, hey Karkat. Karkat. Karkat,” You repeated. Even with your vague attempt to wake Karkat up, you didn’t actually try to actually wiggle out of his grip.

Karkat barely moved a muscle, so you decided to try again.

“Karkat. Yo, Karkat. Hey. Karkat. I gotta piss. You gotta let me up, Karkat. Karkat, are you alive. I need to know if you’re alive. Am I going to have to bury you? I’m not really fond of the idea of putting you into the ground. Maybe a cremation? Actually, I don’t know what you want for your body when you die. Hey, hey, Karkat. Do you have a will? You should have a will. You never know when your gonna die, so you should always be prepared. I’d say that I learned that the hard way and be all dramatic and stuff, but that would imply that I died, wouldn’t it? God, dying is fucked up. Like, we have absolutely no idea what the fuck is going to happen after death, and we have no way of knowing without dying ourselves.”

Karkat responded to the amount of noise you were making by making a grunt sound and shoving one of his hands in your face in an attempt to shut you up. You responded like any sane person would-by licking Karkat’s hand.

That woke Karkat up real quick.

“Ew! Ugh! Gross! Why?” Karkat exclaimed and then proceeded to wipe your spit on your sleeve. “There. Take your goddamn spit back, you heathen.”

“Aw, no fun insults for me?”

“No. You don’t deserve them. I don’t have to spend time and energy figuring out insults to call you because that would be a waste of my talents.”

“Yeah, maybe instead you should become a food or movie critic and truly offer businesses only the most deserved pile of insults. The ones who are actually horrible for one reason or another will receive your most hurtful and festering insults, while the ones who are good will receive your infinite praise.”

“Don’t kid yourself-I’m practically a movie critic already. You’ve already received one of my best works, you ungrateful piece of shit.”

You gasped.

“I’m not ungrateful! I cherish that rant with every fiber of my being! I even had it printed out on fancy paper and framed each and every page of it.”

“Yeah, all ten pages of it. That’s excessive and wasteful. How expensive was it to frame each page?”

“I spared no expense!” You swiped your hand in the air in the same dramatic fashion that people in movies do when they’re excited about the possibilities they’ll find in a new town. “I used only the finest of gold frames, ones meant to truly highlight the beauty of your writings. Of course, I did only what your writings deserved, which included nothing but the best materials.”

Karkat laughed, and your heart soared.

“You’re a dumbass,” Karkat said, still smiling brightly.

It was then when he realized the position he was in, and he hurriedly detached himself from you.

“Shit! Sorry about that. I probably should have warned you that I tend to grab onto anything close to me when I’m sleeping.”

“Nah, man, it’s chill. If I cared, I would have told you.”

“Still. There are a bunch of folks who definitely do care about that sort of thing, and, trust me, I’ve been in loads of situations with people who got mad at me for that because their masculinity was more fragile than glass,” Karkat explained, and you frowned.

“...I was like that at one point, if you can believe it,” You responded.

“Mr. Pink-pants? Mr. Nail-Polish-And-Makeup-Video? Mr. I-Put-On-A-Skirt-Because-They-Shouldn’t-Be-Just-For-Girls-And-Also-They’re-Pretty? On level with the guys who couldn’t even wear a dog tag necklace without thinking it was gay? Really?”

“No! Really!” You insisted. “It… actually took a while to unlearn that kind of toxic masculinity, and I’m still struggling with it to this day. It’s not really something that goes away immediately, even if you’ve been out for a few years. And sometimes I feel like being trans kind of made it more difficult, you know? Especially with the idea that following this kind of toxic masculinity was the only way I could be considered a ‘real man.’”

Karkat said nothing for a while, letting the silent tension build and build until it was practically unbearable.

“I’m…” Karkat finally broke the silence. “I’m glad you’re working to unlearn that kind of thing.”

That told you everything you needed to know. You popped on your sunglasses and grinned.

“Alright! We should get started on that mango sorbet, shouldn’t we?” You got out of the bed probably more energetically than you had in a while.

“Hold up, we have to eat breakfast first, you dumbass!” Karkat interrupted, stopping you in your tracks to glory and ice cream.

With that, you were forced to do all the typical morning stuff, like using the bathroom and eating breakfast instead of eating mango sorbet, which was obviously the breakfast of champions. Now you were forced to eat the lunch of champions instead, which was a phrase that wasn’t nearly as fun to say as the breakfast of champions.

You also had to go back to your own house to get the mangos before bringing them back to Karkat and Kanaya’s house. Yeah, that was also a thing necessary to do in order to accomplish the goal of actually making the mango sorbet. After all, you can’t exactly make anything if you don’t have the ingredients to do so.

Well, you supposed that you could always use substitutes in recipes, but if you use too many, you’re basically creating a different thing, which was something that still required certain ingredients in order to reach the exact product. Not to mention that the point of making mango sorbet was to use the mangos that were going to go bad soon if you didn’t use them almost immediately.

Never mind all that though. It was time to get started on the mango sorbet.

“Wow, these mangos really are ripe,” Karkat commented. “Do you know how to cut a mango, Dave?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” You responded. “Honestly, when I tried one, I kind of just chopped it up in a way that would give me access to the meat part of the fruit.”

“Oh thank god you didn’t try to eat the skin,” Karkat held a hand over his heart. “I’m not sure if I could be friends with a dumbass like that.”

“I’m almost certain that you’re friends with a dumbass like that.”

“Yeah,” Karkat sighed. “I have multiple dumbass friends who did that, including Terezi.”

“Honestly though, I feel like she should get some sort of a pass on that. She tries to eat everything, even when it’s in no way edible. And also she’s blind. Who’s tried to eat the mango skin who isn’t Terezi?”

“Well, all the friends that I’ve seen try to eat a mango and try to eat the skin include Sollux, Terezi, Vriska, Eridan, and John.”

“Isn’t that, like, half your friend group?” You asked. Karkat responded with a facepalm.

“It’s a good bit of my friend group. Haven’t seen Vriska in literal years though. I think she’s in jail or something. But, nevermind all that. I’m gonna teach you how the hell to cut a mango because that’s an invaluable skill for every single person in this world to learn.”

“Alright, here’s how you go about it,” Karkat placed one of the mangos on a cutting board with the fruit being placed vertically in reference to Karkat. “You’ve kind of got to cut around the pit because that thing is extremely hard and basically impossible to cut through, so it’s honestly better to just avoid it completely. So you’ve got to cut to the side of the pit like this.”

Karkat made a clean cut on one side of the mango, chopping off about a third of the mango.

“Then you do the same to the other side,” Karkat turned the mango around and cut another third off the mango.” Next, you lay the mango on one of the sides you just cut and slice off the excess. You got that?”

Karkat glanced towards you, ultimately making the exact same face that every single hot character in an anime does multiple times towards their love interest, and it was a stupid fucking look, and yet it made practically all the blood run to your face and made you almost completely lose your ability to form complete sentences.

“Ye-yeah. Yeah, I got that.” Yes. You definitely knew how to make sentences. It was very simple. It was just a noun and a verb. That was all that was necessary to form a full sentence. Like, I run. He runs. She runs. You run. I ran. They ran. You ran away from this train of thought and went back to trying your best to focusing on whatever Karkat was actually saying.

“Next, since we’re going to be turning this into a puree, we’re going to cut up the mango into cubes. Just slice the flesh into squares while it’s in the skin and then you can kind of pull the skin off,” Karkat did so and put some of the cubes of mango into a blender. “Or you can squeeze them off if taking the skin off becomes too time-consuming.”

Karkat cut the rest of the mango into squares and put them into the blender.

“Do you want to try cutting one of the mangos?” Karkat asked, and you pretty much immediately agreed, even though that was probably an awful idea because you didn’t really know exactly what you were doing. Oh well. Practice makes perfect, right? Or something like that.

You placed one of the mangos vertically towards you and did your best to ignore Karkat looking over towards you to make sure you were doing everything correctly because Karkat was a very distracting person.

You looked at the mango and tried to guess where the pit was. You honestly couldn’t tell at all where it was, but you could certainly guess.

You started to cut through the soft flesh of the mango before you were stopped by something rock hard, and, no matter how hard you pressed, your knife refused to slice through that part of the mango.

“Hey, hey! You’re going to hurt yourself if you try to cut through the pit!”

As if on cue, you accidentally cut yourself. It wasn’t a large cut-you’ve certainly had much, much worse, but seeing the blood, regardless of how small of an amount it was, still made you feel kind of dizzy.

You barely noticed as Karkat guided you to the sink and turned on the facet to clean the wound. He got something out of one of the cabinets in the kitchen.

Karkat rummaged around in a box and pulled out some things.

“Dave,” Karkat’s voice was still loud, but it was soft and reassuring. “**** ** ***** ** hurt *** * ******. *** disinfectant. Is that okay?”

Karkat’s voice was a little fuzzy, but you nodded, and Karkat took a cotton swab and lightly swiped it over your finger. It stung, but no more than the initial slice did.

Karkat then put a bandaid on your finger and then kissed where your wound was.

That broke you out of our stupor. Your heart started racing at 100mph, and your mind filled up with…certain thoughts that were almost certainly not appropriate at all, and you could feel all the blood rushing towards your face as if your blood cells were race cars and the finishing line was your brain.

“Dave! Are you okay?” Karkat worried, putting a hand to your forehead. “Are you getting sick?”

“Ah, n-no,” You managed to stutter out. “I’m just a little bit, uh, you know…”

Karkat’s eyes widened as he seemed to realize what he had just done.

“Sorry, I kind of got carried away.” It was Karkat’s turn to blush. “Kanaya and I do that for each other sometimes, so I guess instinct kind of took over. Are… are you okay?”

“Yeah,” You choked out. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m cool as a cucumber, cold as ice. I am zero degrees Kelvin.”

“If you were zero degrees Kelvin, you would be dead.”

“I’d be more than dead. All the molecules in my body wouldn't even be moving. Actually, do you think that’s why they call it freezing time? Because all the molecules aren’t moving and are therefore frozen? How would it be for the person who freezes time? Is that why freezing time is considered impossible? Because reaching zero degrees Kelvin is impossible?”

“You could probably make the time go really, really slowly.”

“Just freeze everything to one degree Kelvin. People would probably die if you do it for too long though.”

“Ah, the dangers of time travel. You gotta be super careful with that kind of thing.”

“You’ve also got to be super careful with knives.”

You laughed.

“Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Gotta be hella careful.”

“You wanna try again with cutting the mango?” Karkat asked.

“You’re trusting me to try again? Not worried about me cutting myself again?”

“Everyone makes mistakes. It makes no sense to forbid you from cutting a mango simply because you fucked up the first time you did it. And I guess I am still kind of worried, but it’s not like you’re going to cut your hand off or anything.”

“Yeah, I’ll try again.” You went to stand in front of the cutting board and picked up the knife. “You might want to guide me though. You know, just as a precaution against an accident happening.”

You were honestly joking. You really had no expectations for Karkat to take you up on your request, but Karkat walked over and lightly placed one hand over yours and put his other hand on the mango. He placed his head on your shoulder in order to see the cutting board.

First a kiss and now this? You were going to die. You were in heaven, on cloud nine, and you were also so, so dead.

“So you need to cut around the pit,” Karkat said, his voice awkwardly close to your ear. Was it just how close he is, or does his voice sound deeper? Karkat guided your hand to finish cutting the initial slice you did off of the pit. He then turned the mango around and cut off the other side.

“Put it on its side…” Karkat muttered, clearly more talking to himself, but it still sent a shiver down your spine. Karkat laid the mango on its side and had you cut off the flesh on the top and bottom of the pit.

Karkat then realized exactly how close he was to you and quickly removed himself, leaving you feeling a little chilly without his body pressed against yours.

“S-sorry,” Karkat apologized, keeping a good distance away from you.

“It’s-It’s fine.” You placed down the knife. “How about you handle the mango cutting?”

“You can put the stuff in the blender,” Karkat suggested, likely as a way not to leave you out of the cooking process.

“Sounds good.”

You were both clearly very embarrassed if the awkward silence that followed was any indication.

Karkat cut up a mango and handed you the parts that you were supposed to take the skin off of, so you put the edible parts of the mango into the blender while Karkat continued to cut the other mangos.

It took about three mangos before the silence was completely unbearable.

“So what’s going in this other than mangos?” You asked because, obviously, you were going to ignore everything that made the situation awkward, no matter how much those situations made your heart flutter.

“The other ingredients are honey and lime juice,” Karkat responded. “Although adding a bit of salt might also be good.”

“Yeah, get that salty ice cream.”

“What do you think salted caramel ice cream is there for?”

“That's completely fair,” You said. “God, now I want caramel.”

“We have caramel, but I can’t guarantee that it would taste good on mango sorbet.”

“You never know if something is going to taste good unless you try it.”

Karkat stuck out his tongue in disgust.

“Feel free to do that to your taste buds, but I, for one, am not going to tarnish my delicate palette by doing that.”

“I’ll tarnish my palette for you,” You responded.

“That’s not necessary, thank you very much.”

“I’ll tarnish my palette for myself.”

“I have no qualms about allowing you to do that, but if you end up sick, it’s not my fault.”

“That’s completely fair. Now, how much honey and lime are we going to put in here?” You questioned.

“Hold up. We gotta finish cutting these mangos first so that we can see how much mango puree we have, and we can figure out how much stuff we’re going to add.”

“Alright. I’ll be patient. I’ll wait before adding a bunch of random stuff to our lovely sorbet that we’ve put so much blood, sweat, and tears into. It’s an old, secret recipe that we would die to protect because allowing it to fall into the wrong hands would be dangerous to the world.”

“I’m going to throw a mango at you if you keep being so goddamn dramatic.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” You challenged, honestly fully expecting Karkat to just straight up lob a mango at you.

“You’re right. I wouldn’t. That would be wasteful,” Karkat said.

“It wouldn’t be that wasteful,” You argued. “Afterall, the mango would still have the skin on it, and we could just wash it if it fell on the floor. We could definitely still use the mango.”

“Are you trying to get me to throw a mango at you?”

“I won’t stop you if you did throw a mango at me,” You really didn’t know why you said that. You don’t actually want Karkat to throw a mango at you, but also you kind of wanted Karkat to throw a mango at you.

“I’m not going to throw a fucking mango at you.” Karkat handed you a cut mango for you to throw in the blender. “I will only hand them to you gently and carefully like a newborn baby.”

“I’ve never been all that good with babies.” You put the flesh of the mango into the blender.

“I’ve never even touched a baby. I just know that they tend to be more fragile than troll grubs.”

“I don’t know enough about grubs to dispute that, and I’m also not sure if you’ve ever actually touched a troll grub anymore than you’ve touched a human baby.”

“That sounded weird,” Karkat mentioned. You shrugged. “Besides, I have actually worked with troll grubs before. Sometimes I help out Kanaya in her jadeblood duties.”

“I thought the system made it so that anyone who wanted to could work with the grubs and so jadebloods weren’t required to do grubsit anymore.”

“They did do that, but the name ‘jadeblood duties’ kind of stuck around because of how it was required in the past.”

“Huh.”

“Would you ever consider volunteering for something like that?” Karkat asked.

“Ah, no. No, not really,” You answered. “I don’t really trust myself around kids, you know?”

Too worried that you’d be a bad father. Too worried that you might fuck them up completely. Too worried that you’ll be apart of a circle of repeating events.

“I get that,” Karkat said, asking for no explanation whatsoever, and you felt a little more relaxed.

“Is that the last mango?” You asked as Karkat handed you yet another mango. “Are we ready to fire this blender up?”

“Go ahead.”

You pressed a button on the blender and realized it was unplugged. After plugging in the blender to the nearest outlet, you turned on the blender and watched it turn the mangoes into mush.

You varied up the speeds to make certain that the mango mush was perfectly smooth. Once you were absolutely sure that it was smooth, you poured the puree into a large measuring cup.

“Looks like we’ve got about threeish cups of this. How much other stuff should we add to it?” You asked.

“An amount.”

“That’s specific.”

“Yes.”

From there, Karkat took over all the measuring and putting stuff into a bowl.

“Grab the bowl thing from the freezer,” Karkat ordered.

You went to the freezer and found the bowl thing.

Karkat took it, put it on a platform thing that it is attached to and poured the contents of the mixing bowl into it.

Karkat put other attachments onto it and pushed a button. The bowl started spinning.

“Alright. Now we just wait for twenty minutes.”

“God, Karkat, I’m not sure if I can wait that long. I’ll die of starvation in that time period.”

“Well then, I guess you’re just going to have to die.”

You placed yourself on the floor and pretended to be dead.

“Come on. Get up,” Karkat lightly nudged your corpse with his foot. “We’ve got to pick our a movie or show to watch, and, if you don’t get up, I’m eating all the sorbet myself.”

“Well, would you look at that-I’m alive! It’s a miracle.” You stood up and wiped yourself off.

Karkat rolled his eyes, and the then the two of you decided to watch Queer Eye and then proceeded to eat way too much mango sorbet.

All you had to do was remind yourself that this wasn’t a date at all because, otherwise, you were pretty sure you would have died.