#but that makes him skinny by default and i never even noticed it. fuck me one thousand times over i need to change that

[cherry-shipping]

i need to draw him Fatter

[woogurl]

i’ve been meaning to make this post a while ago, but i was uncertain if now was the right time to do it, it’s something that’s extremely controversial, but yes...

i decided to make a post regarding what i think woosan’s sexuality is, now i figured it was bad to just assume their sexuality but people assume all or at least most of the male/female kpop idols are straight anyway by default. which i don’t think is bad or illogical, seeing as most people are straight statistically. 

not gonna lie, ateez is one of those groups that give me mad gay vibes tho. however, i won’t be analyzing the others as i don’t really watch much of their individual behavior or content, i think you should only make these when you’ve watched enough of their behavior. 

as you know, i’m a woosan enthusiast, and a woo stan, but i’m not gonna just analyze their relationship, which i think is sufficient proof enough, but i’ve compiled everything that has led me to the conclusion that san is either bi(with male preference) or gay, and woo is bi.

lastly, i want to say just because someone is homophobic or really opposed to skinship with the same sex does not mean they’re automatically straight. sometimes it’s a coping mechanism, and just because they’re feminine, comfortable with their masculinity, support LGBT+, or okay with skinship with the same sex doesn’t mean their gay. 

sometimes there really are NO signs. 

just look at all of the idols people assumed were gay. momo/heechul, baekhyun/taeyeon, hani, kai(though mostly considered him to be bi). anyhow, my point is you just never know. lol 

now, i’ll stop my rambling and get started. first let’s start with 

S A N

now, i’ll be honest, i’ve always thought san was gay because how reserved he was and how shy and sweet he was around the members during their predebut days. i just felt like he was maybe shy because he hadn’t come to terms with he sexuality. i mean when i look at san during predebut, he literally was like a baby, and his mannerisms was so small and reserved. even his body was so tiny and fragile. however, this was because san was naturally skinny and it had always been a complex for him. in which he said he had a tough time gaining weight.

what we know about san’s former lifestyle is that he was a church boy, a farmer, a wannabe gamer and a freaking black belt in taekwondo and his dad was an owner of a taekwondo studio, he was one of the most popular kids, he had a pretty good relationship with his parents or at least now he does and his grandparents took good care of him when his parents didn’t. 

but san still had low self-esteem. why? i really don’t know, but i would hazard a guess that it was because of his sexuality(this is just an assumption guys, not a fact). now remember san was part of the church, and he joined because a friend asked him too. they probably asked him because they figured he liked to sing and dance. although i think san was shy and self-conscious, i don’t that he was self-conscious about his abilities as you could see he did go to the church to sing and dance in front of a bunch of people. i think he had low-self esteem because of who he may have realized that he was.

here are some examples of what i mean.

there’s something that san continuously repeats and that is to learn to love himself, know his worth, and just simply love who he is. and i think that’s one of the reasons that san didn’t like church is because it went against who he was and is. if you watch videos of him in the church he really looks like he doesn’t want to be there. he looks so uncomfortable. he doesn’t just look like “ah, this is boring there’s nothing to do” but he looks more like he’s displaced. like he’s NOT supposed to be there. we learn later that san isn’t religious instead.

don’t you find it interesting that he made a direct correlation to his belief in god to his belief in himself. it was like he was saying, even though i don’t believe in god i believe in who i am. like i trust that who i am is correct. 

another part of this video that i find interesting is the moment that they talk about how much they value each other(woo and san).

S: You’re cool and

S: I honestly

S: Now I can sincerely

S: To the people around me or my relatives

S: I can proudly say that my friend is Wooyoung!

S: You're that kind of friend

S: To that point where I'm not embarrassed

S: Or rather say you're my friend that's worth showing off!

S: I think this is more than enough!

a lot of people in the comments of this video said that they felt like this was a confession and i agree. i remember feeling odd at how san worded this, the first time his sexuality didn’t even cross my mind. i was just like oh, he’s probably embarrassed because woo’s so loud and shit. lol. but now it doesn’t make much since to me. the vibes here are very serious, and we all know that even though woo can be loud and noisy many atiny’s forget that he is also extremely mature. especially when he needs to be. not only that but san has said woo is very respecful to his elders, so i don’t think he would of been embarrassed by woo’s on camera behavior. i noticed before san said this he hesitated a bit, like should i say this or how should i word this. it was super sweet.

now, let’s talk about san describing his ideal type. in which he says the outside doesn’t matter and that he wants someone who is kind-hearted and warm. he wants someone who’s good to him.

there are a lot of moments translated where he used feminine pronouns, but others have clarified and said he did not mention any pronouns. 

let’s also talk about that conversation he had with wooyoung where they talked about what kind of guys they liked. where woo was like, “i like cool guys” and san was like, “i like both cool and sweet guys” then there’s silence because they probably realize that it’s considered “weird”. then san says, “i’ll be quiet”. i honestly felt bad like ;c. he probably felt the need to stop talking about it because he realized that people would prob think that it was gay.

he also sang troye sivan my youth, but i honestly don’t think that it’s too relevant seeing as many kpop idols appreciate troye sivan. but it’s worth noting i suppose.

lastly, body language there’s just a lot of moments that can’t be explained. now i completely understand that korea is tote fine with males being close with one another but there are just some moments, that i believe, i don’t care how comfy you are with the same sex is questionable. lmfao. 

mind you seconds before this san was just minding his own business but his expression completely changed when he saw woo seduc---i mean dancing in front of him. idc what anyone says, a straight man would never eye fuck another man like this. lmfao. there’s lust in those eyes and you can’t tell me there isn’t. san was literally checking him out.

san being completely comfortable with having his no-no on woo’s ass, these are both very intimate parts of the body. honestly, the simple fact that san likes spooning woo from behind all the time is suspect to me. lol. especially with the expressions he gives at times. 

san’s reaction when woo gets too close to his face, he doesn’t flinch. he’s also clearly looking at woo’s lips. there’s also another moment like this where san becomes so flustered that he has to look away for a second. lmfao.

when i think two of the other members(i don’t remember who) had to do a couple dance. what they did was completely tame, but woosan over here took it up several notches and started dancing like they were at a gay bar. no one told them to do it, they just did. 

next i want to point out how comfortable they are with the shipping. i already mentioned this in my woosan relationship post but they’re comfortable with the shipping, then i figured it was because they were comfortable with the relationship that they had. but now, i think they don’t mind it because they’re proud of who they are. it’s not just them being comfortable with woosan, but with their sexuality as well. so they’re like telling us we’re woosan but we’re also okay with our sexuality kind of thing. 

lastly, i want to point out body language again for san, and this is honestly the ONLY reason why i believe he is somewhat bi and not completely gay. the way he interacts with fans. i know you’re all gonna say well, that’s his job. but, he seems to want to impress his fans or look good for them. san’s confidence has changed quite a bit and as yeosang once said, san’s kind of like a tough guy now, as mingi said he’s changed the most since debut. i think the reason satan--i mean san has become so powerful, and a sexy demon on stage is because he’s confident in who he is now and it really shows. i think san wanted to break those stereotypes of who he was and show people that he wasn’t weak or shy, but manly and sexy and the best in bed. but on stage he loves showing off his muscles and how flexible his hips are and even on vlive. most of the fans are women and i think to myself why would he do this if he was completely gay? 

i just don’t think a completely gay man would not want to appeal to women all that much. then again it could possibly be because he enjoys getting those compliments and that’s what fuels his self esteem. it could be the compliments from the women and not the women themselves. i’m not completely sure, but the reason why he does this does matter. he likes receiving compliments not just from the fans but from anyone really. so i don’t know if the reason he shows off his manliness to fans is because he wants to appeal to women OR if he just wants to appeal to his self esteem. which is possible. you guys let me know what you think.

next

W O O Y O U N G

there really isn’t as much content for me to work with when it comes to woo because he refuses to post, but i’m so confident that this boy is bi that it’s not even funny. there’s not much predebut info, there’s not much info about his ideal type. 

sighs 

yo girl will work with what she’s got. now, woo has only playfully mentioned his ideal type. in which he usually automatically answers yunho. do i actually believe that? no. lmfao. i think woo was smart enough to have yunho as his default answer for this question really. instead of actually being attracted to yunho i think woo just admires yunho because he always answers yunho for a member he would switch bodies with as well. he always says yunho because he’s tall, fun, funny, handsome and has a nice figure. 

but as you’ve all probably noticed he doesn’t really seem physically attracted to yunho, but you know(HAHA) who he is definitely physically attracted to? 

seonghwa, without a doubt, i’m saying this with my whole fucking chest, okay? i have no doubt in my mind that woo is or at least was physically attracted to seonghwa. 

that full post i made with woo trying to kiss seonghwa for the 100th time is all the evidence you need, but i’ll keep y’all entertained. i want you all to understand that seonghwa has said that woo kisses him so much off camera that he’s used to it, the fact that the members gasped so hard that they almost caught flies was mehmehable. 

now you all will probably say that woo just loves kisses and that’s fine but he seems to want to kiss on the mouth too and that’s pretty gay. lol. 

he literally looked at seonghwa’s mouth before he dived in for a kiss. cheek kisses and mouth kisses are two whole different vibes. not to mention he tried to kiss him again during this vlive and san. woo has literally tried kissing all of the members okay? lmfao. he’s just way too comfortable with it in my opinion. 

woo has been hungry for seonghwa, and he knows it, we can also talk about how he has said twice that seonghwa has a pretty ass. which he isn’t wrong about. lmfao. we could also talk about that moment where woo literally looked down seonghwa’s shirt.

anyway, while i do think woo was physically attracted to him, i’m pretty sure he has some kind of intimate relationship with san now. i don’t wanna add those moments because it would just me repeated what i wrote for woosan relationship analyzes, woo has also shown a lot of interest in women during their america tour and he’s repeatedly gone to the same fancam of some women. it’s important to mention woo is naturally a flirt but he seems to flirt with the members as well, according to yeosang who said this during their christmas vlive. jongho has also said he wanted woo’s ability to flirt. so my best guess is that he probably flirted with the members in the past. 

there’s also the clip of him telling a fanboy to go after the guy that he likes, and he was also surprised to hear that he had fanboys, and he seemed interested to know this information other than that i don’t have much evidence, but i think woo’s body language off camera with the members is plenty evidence really. lol. there’s just not many straight men i know who would be inclined to cling to another male as much as woo does. 

anyway, i’m tired this was my woosan sexuality post. remember these aren’t facts just observations and opinions. ;)

[scarlct-vvitch]

Spideypool, the 50 from the angst and fluff promptlist: “Nothing is wrong with you.” I hope this is up your lane and ignites the writing spark again. :D

thank youuu

———–

Wade is halfway through getting dressed after his shower when he hears the unfamiliar sound of someone unlocking the door to his apartment. He pauses–sweat pants halfway onto one leg as he balances on one foot–and listens as someone unlocks his door, opens it, walks in, and slams it shut behind them.

He frowns as it slams and finishes putting the pants on. He hears the noises of someone dropping their coat and backpack, making their way down the hall past his bedroom and into the bathroom, and he doesn’t hear the bathroom door close.

He walks to his bedroom door and cracks it open, poking his head into the hallway. Sure enough, he can see the square of light from the bathroom illuminating the opposite wall of the hallway, and he can see a shadow moving around. After ducking back into his room to grab his wet towel off the floor, he heads down the hall to the bathroom.

Peter doesn’t even look at him when he comes into view. He’s standing in the middle of the bathroom, shirtless, and looking at himself in the mirror. His shirt sits in an abandoned crumbled heap on the floor.

It’d be really hot if it weren’t for the massive frown on his face.

Wade watches him for a few seconds before he says, “Hey.”

Peter visibly startles, which is a bit concerning, but he relaxes when he realizes it’s Wade. “Oh. Hi.”

Wade walks into the bathroom and heads for the towel rack. “Whatcha doin’?” he asks as he puts the towel in its place, because he does know how to keep things tidy, thank-you-very-much.

Peter hesitates, which makes Wade look back up at him. He’s staring at his reflection again. It takes him a few seconds before he says, “Nothing.”

Wade smells bullshit. And the leftover smell of soap from his shower. Very conflicting.

“Uh-huh.”

Peter looks at him, then noticeably glances down at Wade’s bare chest before he looks away from him entirely. 

“It’s nothing,” Peter says as he snatches his shirt from the floor.

Wade takes a step forward and leans his hip on the sink. “Seriously, what’s up, webhead?”

Peter looks like he’s going to say something, then he looks down at the shirt in his hands, and then he looks pretty much anywhere but at Wade. It’s–weird, to say the least.

“It’s–it’s stupid.”

Wade frowns. “If it’s bothering you, it’s not stupid.”

Peter looks down at the shirt, then at his reflection, then back to Wade. Wade kinda wishes he’d just pick a place to stare at and keep it.

“Promise you won’t laugh?” Peter asks.

Wade pauses for just a second, surprised that Peter would even ask, but he recovers quickly. “Promise.”

Peter takes a breath and doesn’t look at him when he asks, “Am I…like…scrawny?”

Wade blinks. “What?”

Peter huffs. “Someone at work today said something, and they didn’t mean anything by it but now I can’t get it out of my head. And I know it’s stupid–”

“It’s not stupid,” Wade says again.

Peter ignores him and continues. “But it’s just…it’s what people used to make fun of me for in high school, and it was like I was a fucking kid again,” Peter admits. He glances at himself in the mirror again.

Wade frowns, and makes a mental note to maybe pay a visit to some of Peter’s old pals from back in the day. He gets it, though; he’s been the skinny kid that gets kicked around just because they’re the easiest target. 

But he looks at Peter again, who’s standing in the middle of the bathroom clutching his shirt over his muscled chest, and it’s painfully obvious that he’s not that skinny kid anymore, even if Peter can’t seem to see it right now.

“Once I became Spider-Man, I kinda figured I’d just get bigger as a side effect, but it never happened.” Peter says. “It feels like everyone in our world has stories of just getting huge with their powers–even you have that–” he gestures at Wade, who really should have put a shirt on, “–and I just always stayed small.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Wade says immediately, and he steps into Peter’s space, putting his hands on Peter’s shoulders. “You can’t use everyone else in the superhero world as the default, Spidey, you’ll go bonkers.”

Peter huffs a laugh, but doesn’t meet his eyes.

“Besides, half of ‘em are probably on steroids or some shit. Have you even seen Cage lately? I’m willing to bet he doesn’t even have a gym membership, he just pays rent to sleep on a treadmill.”

Peter snorts, and this time his laughter is more genuine. He looks up at Wade. “Do you think he stretches out, or just sleeps standing up like a horse?”

“Oh, horse thing, definitely,” Wade laughs.

They laugh for a minute, and at some point, Peter leans his head against Wade’s shoulder. “I…kind of see your point.”

Wade chuckles and presses a kiss to Peter’s hair. “Good. Also, I should point out, you’re hot as fuck.”

Peter snorts.

“I mean, goddamn,” Wade drawls, running a finger down Peter’s spine. Peter shivers. “Those beefy dumbasses should take a couple pages out of your book, if you ask me.”

Peter lifts his head to say something, but Wade can tell he’s gonna argue, so he puts a hand over Peter’s mouth before he can. “Nope. You’re perfect and totally hot and totally not scrawny or skinny or any of that bullshit. This–” he gestures at Peter’s chest, “–is hot as fuck. Now please get out of the rest of your clothes and get in the shower so I can prove it to you.”

Peter blinks, processing the speech, then frowns. “Didn’t you just get out of the shower?”

“I’m gonna get dirty again anyway, might as well do it in the shower,” Wade shrugs.

Peter rolls his eyes, but lets Wade pull him into a kiss and drag him towards the tub.

[freckled-words]

Repost: Delightful Spite

This was a request piece I wrote last year, I think, I have no memory of who requested it, but its for everyone to enjoy regardless.

Just a heads up: this is a reader insert with “she/her” identifiers.

Edited by @the-wild-ego​

Mare was the friend a girl could count on to have her back. 

Bad break up? Here’s a variety of alcohol and ice cream, plus, “Do I need to go pay him a visit?”

Working late and don’t feel comfortable walking home? He’ll show up in front of your work, decked out in the most punk-ass outfit he could put together. If anyone ever thought to give you a hard time outside of the store, they’d think twice.

When it came to being your matchmaker/wingman, he really needed to give it a rest.

So far he had tried to set you up with an unbalanced doctor, an over eager showman, and a robot clone of himself. 

When he approached you about another friend, you shut him down immediately.

“Mare, I love you, and I trust you with my imaginary children, but I’m never letting you set me up again.” You said this without breaking your focus on the TV screen. You’d been bored and had started in on an all day Mario Kart endeavor. You were neck-and-neck with Yoshi, with Baby Bowser riding on your ass. 

Mare sat next to you on the couch, his eager smile still in place with the offer he came in with, “So they weren’t your type, but this guy, I promise, will be your perfect match. For example, it took me weeks to get him to agree to go on a date.”

“Fuck you, Yoshi!”

“He’s got a twisted humour, just like you.”

“Take that red shell and shove it up your ass!”

“He’s not too bad looking, even has a bit of an edgy thing going for him. You like edgy right?”

You smiled in satisfaction and relaxed as you crossed the finish line in first place. Finally facing Mare, who’d dropped his smile, you told him point blank, “If it took you weeks to convince the guy, then I’ll one-up and make you work at it for a month.”

This decided, you got off the couch to get a drink. 

Mare followed after you and leaned against the door frame as you went digging in the fridge, “I promise to never try and set you up again if this guy falls flat.”

A bottle of water in hand you rebuffed, “That’s what you said with the last guy.”

“How was I supposed to know an android could be embarrassed enough to shut himself down?!” Mare had genuinely thought Mal would have been a good match. They were different enough from each other, that it would have been like she was dating his twin brother. 

You went back to the living room and took up your controller, “Mal was too innocent for me, and you knew it. Now you either pick up the other controller, or you entertain yourself some other way. We’re done talking about this.”

Mare pursed his lips in thought, looking at the controller you offered he got an idea, “I’ll play you for it.”

“Play me for what?” You narrowed your eyes, seeing the familiar smug twitch to his lips.

He sat on the couch and grabbed the second Switch controller, “If I win, you go on this date. You win, and I’ll never try setting you up again. Deal?”

This was an interesting gamble. So far Mare was tied with you on wins. You were both super competitive, and wouldn’t refrain from physically blocking each other to win. 

On the one hand, the worst event was going on this date and suffering another awkward experience. On the other, Mare would stop trying. 

“Very well, you have a deal. If you cheat, I win by default, got it?” 

Mare repositioned himself into, what you called, his 'serious gamer pose’. His eyes already on the screen, he nodded, “Deal.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Oh stop pouting already, I won fair and square.” Mare chided from the driver’s seat.

You were pouting. You hadn’t stopped pouting since he’d beaten you two days ago. 

“I still think you cheated without me noticing.” You grumbled back.

Mare rolled his eyes, “Whatever, just don’t be pouting through your date. You don’t want him to think your bad mood is his fault. Besides, you shouldn’t be pouting when you’re all dressed up.”

He had a point there. You were dressed in your favorite black dress that stopped at your knees, the skirt was loose and flowy with red roses along the hem. The top half clung to you in a way that was flattering, with a sweetheart neckline, and off the shoulder straps. For a bit of comfort, instead of appeal, you chose to wear your nice, new, black combat boots. You’d drawn roses on the side with a metallic, red sharpie. 

To finish it off you’d applied ruby, red lip gloss; a dusting of shimmer, pink eyeshadow; and a flawless application of eyeliner. 

You labelled the look, ‘Badass Beautiful’.

“We’ll just make fun of you instead.” You finally quipped back.

You’d decided from the start, that regardless of the guy, you were going to hold a grain of salt against him the entire night. Petty as it was, you couldn’t convince yourself otherwise.

The car came to a stop outside your favorite restaurant, The Spaghetti Factory. Your stomach growled in anticipation of their three cheese and mushroom ravioli. 

Mare gestured towards the building, “He’ll be in there already, the reservation is under my name.”

You opened the car door and a strong wave of garlic bread hit you. Your stomach gave another ravenous growl. You hopped out of the car and gave Mare one more pout, “If he ruins my ravioli, I will make you pay.” This warning given, you slammed the door.

Mare immediately took off, giving you no chance to change your mind.

Holding onto your purse strap a bit tighter, you went inside.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You were in trouble.

Your entire plan was going down the drain. 

Your petty inner self was seething that Mare was winning.

Antisepticeye, the guy you’d been set up with, was just your type.

Dressed in black skinny jeans, a black t-shirt, and a black blazer, he was a perfect match to your outfit. On top of that, his hair was green. With your own hair being dyed a vibrant red, the two of you must look like gothic Christmas enthusiasts. 

Until you reached the table, he’d been resting his elbow on it with a surrely pout. Once his sight fell on you, his eyebrow had raised and a spark of something had lit up in his eyes. 

You’d awkwardly gotten through introductions, leading into the amusing subject of Mare forcing this arrangement. 

“That arse tried setting me up with another chick a couple months back. I wanted to stab myself before we even placed our orders.” Anti groaned, his fingers twitching towards the butter knife on the table.

You giggled, leaning forward to eagerly share, “She couldn’t have been as bad as the doctor he put me with. He kept calling the waiters ‘NURSE!’ It was ridiculous. I didn’t talk to Mare for a week I was so embarrassed.” 

Anti looked incredulous, “I know that guy, what the fuck was Mare thinkin’?!”

“Thank you!” 

The waiter came over then, and you were pleased when Anti ordered the same thing as you after you recommended it.

A complimentary basket of fresh made garlic bread rolls were left on your table. You loved these rolls, especially when they were still warm, which these were.

Anti watched you expertly rip the roll down the middle and apply butter. 

Half of your roll in your mouth, you watched amused as he tried to copy your trick. 

The roll turned into a deformed mess in his hands. 

His eye twitched, a sign of his annoyance. 

Before you could offer to show him the trick, he shoved the bread lump into his mouth. As he chewed, he grabbed another roll. Instead of trying your trick again, he showed you one of his own.

In awe, you watched him take out a pocket blade, stab it into the very edge of the roll and into the table, and yank on the roll. It sliced down the middle, leaving the edges neat and clean. He withdrew his blade and put it back in his pocket, giving you a wink as he smoothed out the table cloth to cover the new hole he’d made. 

You bit your bottom lip, glancing around to check if anyone saw this happen. Seeing that you were in the clear, you snickered, “Oh my god, you can’t just whip out a knife! If you’d started a panic, I wouldn’t get my ravioli.” You tried to end on a pout, but his smirk made it impossible to hold.

After that little knife trick, you started asking him about his interests and what else he could do with it. 

That lead into him asking about your interests, and then back to him.

The conversation kept going right up until the ravioli was served. At which point, you were both too engrossed with your pasta to keep long sentences going.

You were nearly finished eating, and debating on dessert, when you felt your phone go off. 

Looking at the screen you rolled your eyes, which Anti noticed.

“Bet you the last roll I know who that is.”

“Help yourself, but only if you promise to go along with my story.” You smiled as you said this, your thumbs already at work typing out your lie to Mare.

Anti didn’t take the bread roll, instead choosing to lean forward and try to read your screen. You finished the text and showed Anti.

Mare: How’s it going? You staying for dessert?  ;) 

You: Yes I’m staying for dessert. Only because their apple crumble is amazing. It’ll also make me feel better after this new crap experience. You will never play matchmaker for me again. 

Anti was grinning by the time he finished reading. He then broke into laughter when he pulled out his phone. He turned the screen towards you and you were right beside him in a fit of giggles.

Mare: Dude, what did you do?! 

Anti: Whipped my knife out and offered to butter her roll.

The dirty implications were not lost on you, which only made it that much funnier. 

You nearly had tears streaming down your face as you calmed yourself when the waiter came over.

“We’ll get an apple crumble to split please.” before this, Anti had agreed it sounded good.

Anti coughed trying to keep his laughter in check, “Two coffees, too.”

You hadn’t thought to include coffee, and it did sound like a good addition. Especially since this new game would be going on for a while, judging by the frantic texts you were getting from Mare in apology.

Once the waiter left, you managed to ask through more giggles, “H-how long do you think we can keep this up?”

Anti shrugged, grinning still to the string of cursing text messages Mare was sending him, “Until he catches on?”

“Well I don’t intend to tell him anytime soon.” 

Anti’s smirk was all teeth and delighted interest, “Thatta girl.”

[megalony]

Perfection

A Roger Taylor x reader imagine that I came up with dealing with body image, I feel rather proud and happy with this imagine. 

@rogertaylorsbitontheside

Enjoy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It never used to be in his nature to care about things such as that. And yet as his eyes found themselves transfixed on watching her frame as she stood in front of the mirror, he couldn't help but wonder if those things were also what she found herself worrying about like he did. Roger had never paid mind to the idea of body image until he hit his twenties when he really started to look at himself from a different angle and wondered if this was right; if he was right. No one else cared, no one else ever mentioned or referred to his body or how he looked other than the fact some people thought he was attractive, but even then they didn't really refer to his body. He knew the thoughts he was having weren't due to the way others looked at him or how they saw him, it was how he saw himself through his own deep blue orbs that always found themselves transfixed when looking in a mirror or passing by his reflection. His eyes searched her features as if he was scanning her for something he didn't yet know what, but he wasn't finding it. That little glimmer in the eyes that showed worry or emotion of self-doubt when she gazed at her figure he was always so enamoured by. Unlike his own. Roger admired the way that she never seemed to make a comment or give a look to reference that she wasn't happy in her own skin. Every time she looked in the mirror she saw perfection staring back at her and so she should. Roger admired every crevice of her body and there wasn't a fault he could find with her. The drummer felt like he had missed out on something because his eyes could never look at his own body and skin the way he could with her own. He didn't possess the power to look at himself and think he was perfection or think who gives a fuck, this is me. It had never been how other people had seen him. Roger had little problem with the people in the past who mistook him for a woman because that was mainly due to the blonde shaggy hair he had at the time. He was always fine and confident about his hair and those comments were brushed off and left behind in the past where they belonged. No one had told him that the way he looked wasn't right or that he seemed too skinny or too fragile or simply wrong. That was always his own doing, and no matter how many times he tried to grab the attitude of who cares, it always slipped through his grasp without his permission. "Rog, you okay?" His head snapped up to catch a glimpse of her face, seeing she had caught him drifting off into a world of insecurities and burning feelings he couldn't rid himself of. Her sparkling eyes burnt into his own with a gentle passion, her smile making his heart flutter like the wings of a bird as he gazed up at her in a mix of adoration that was faltered by his insecurities dampening the mood she had almost lifted. A dampening feeling swelled through him at the notion that she didn't have any faults in his eyes, even her smile seemed like it was made with perfection itself. Why couldn't he see himself through the same vision he saw her? Why was his self worth trying to reach the ground? "What do you think of yourself when you look in the mirror like that? I... I can't see anything but perfection in you and that's how you seem to see yourself- which is right but... I can't do that." Roger wanted the power she possessed, it hurt so much to hide away the feelings that appeared every time he saw his reflection staring back at him. Those few vital moments when he tried on an outfit or changed his hairstyle and felt a wave of ease rush through his veins at how he looked. He craved those seconds because they never lasted. The longer he looked at himself the more insecurities rose and the more imperfections he could start to pick out in the way he was. "I..." (Y/n) had to think for a moment of how best to respond to that. Those feelings of self-doubt didn't get to her in the way they got to others because (Y/n) had learnt what self-love meant and how to get it. She knew that perfection was in the eye of the beholder and that not everyone was going to agree on what perfection meant or really was. But if she could find it in herself to see how she was as perfection, then why should it really matter if no one else saw her in the same light? It was her body she was living in and it was her choices she was making in life, no one had the right to say how she looked was wrong and if she loved herself as being her personal ultimate form of perfection then technically she was right. "I think that this is who I am, and I like who I am and how I look. Come here Rog." Reaching her hand out (Y/n) waited patiently for the drummer to compose himself. Watching as he crawled from his position laid on the bed to grasp her hand tightly in his own, allowing her to pull him so he was stood in front of the mirror at the side of the bed. Positioning him so he was directly in front of it, her body right behind his own, head resting on his shoulder as she stared up at him in such a loving affectionate way he felt he didn't deserve. "Tell me what you see." Her voice was so delicate and quiet like a feather floating in the breeze. Her tone encouraging as she gently urged him to speak out about the fears plaguing his mind. Maybe Roger didn't want to tell anyone how he really viewed himself. No one would have thought at a glance or even knowing the drummer that he would have such feelings about himself in this way. That there was a part or possibly many parts of himself that he didn't like. He had such an air of confidence around him that covered up the feelings he pushed away deep inside to where almost no one could reach but himself. "I see... fragile bones." His words surprised the girl standing behind him, her eyes locking with his own in their reflection as she urged him to carry on. Watching as he slipped off the unbuttoned black shirt hanging from his shoulders so he could scan his eyes over his body as if it were a map he was picking at. "Bones that stick out at the edges through pathetically pale skin that feels and looks like paper, giving no protection at all. I see so many fucking bones that make me feel sick." Gripping the waistband of his jeans with such gentleness and ease that contradicted his words Roger slipped the jeans down his thighs just a little. Exposing his hipbones that protruded at the sides and made themselves known against the top of his boxer shorts. (Y/n) couldn't deny Roger was skinny, his frame was rather... lanky, was the word that came to mind. He had muscle, but there wasn't much and it wasn't eye-catching. His arms and legs were thin, rather like matchsticks but not in a way that was totally unhealthy. His ribcage could be seen when he moved in certain ways or sucked in his stomach or a deep breath but that still wasn't on the edge of unhealthy. He had a stomach that wasn't virtually flat but wasn't really noticeable at first glance either. His skin was very pale though, and maybe he didn't feel comfortable in his skin that felt like tissue paper to him. How he felt like he was going to break his skin with a simple scratch because of the way it looked to him. "I see arms and legs that look long and too thin. I can see a body that doesn't look right to fit the person hiding inside." "Why are you hiding?" "Because I don't want people to see the look of discontent in my eyes if they caught the real me looking at myself." Roger could walk around anywhere at any time and play it off. He could flip his hair over his shoulder and give a kiss to the cameras, he could strike a pose like a model and give a cheeky smile to anyone who caught his eye like he was looking at them and them only in the world. He could give off the air of confidence he had harboured from watching so many other people have the real deal. He could mimic how they seemed when they looked at themselves and he could tell himself that he wasn't the only one feeling like this and he knew it was true. But it still didn't make things better that he felt he was hiding away in his mind because if people saw how he really looked at himself in the mirror they would become concerned very quickly. Roger bowed his head to look at his feet, though he seemed to be simply staring through them. He couldn't do this anymore, he couldn't stand and pick out everything he hated or disliked about himself because it hurt. It hurt him so much to know that he didn't look at himself the way he looked at the person standing behind him who he loved with everything that he had. To know that he couldn't look at himself in a positive light and yet he could look at his friends and family and rant all day about how they were perfect or tell them all of their good points. His eyes allowed him to see the beauty in everyone but himself. His setting was forced onto the defaults and he couldn't seem to change this. The strings holding (Y/n)'s heart in place had been violently snapped, allowing her organ to fall into the abyss of her stomach and weigh down there as she saw the floods of tears now falling down her drummer's face. A look she had once had but had found how to rid herself of. If (Y/n) told Roger of all the things she loved about him, that wouldn't serve to rid him of this feeling because it was personal. No matter how much she wanted to help him by ranting about his smile that brightened her day, or his eyes that were so captivating yet blinding at the same time. Or tell him about how his body was one of his best features because he wasn't like everyone else and he didn't seem to want to be up until this point. She had seen him strut his stuff like a pro and the times when he actually enjoyed showing off whether that be showing off his outfits or just his personality. But telling Roger this wouldn't help to change how he saw himself because it was personal. Roger needed to be the one to see himself in a way that he could deal with, to see himself as someone who may have imperfections but who also was perfection in his own way. "Rog, sweetheart look up." Her words weren't stern or ordering, but more pleading. Begging the drummer in a tone that sounded so defeated yet willing to help, something that made his heart flutter and crack at the same time. Pressing her fingers to his chin, (Y/n) ever so delicately lifted his head so that he was back to looking at the pair of them in the mirror, mainly at himself. His shoulders quaking as his chest shuddered with silent sobs that were just waiting to be released like the tears that had broken the damn in his eyes. "Tell me what you see." A look of confusion flooded Roger's features as he took a moment to sniff, trying to compose himself and his thoughts but it didn't seem to be working very well. Had she not heard him when he reeled off how his body image was something he disliked very much? Was she simply asking for more reasons why he hated how he looked? Did she find this amusing to put him down, was it lifting her up at the same time? "I did-" His words were cut off by the light shaking of her head. "You told me half of what you have the ability to see. I want to know that you can look at yourself and see something other than a personal imperfection." She saw the wheels turning in his mind before his eyes set back to his reflection staring back at him with wide glistening eyes. She felt her heart jumping up in her chest when a look came into Roger's eyes she hadn't seen before especially when looking at himself like this. He seemed to scan himself over, working out what was something he could say that he hadn't already picked out. Something he could tell her that he was truly happy to look at whenever he gazed into the mirror or a reflection in a car or shop window that he passed by. Something that showed him that he was okay to look the way he did. (Y/n) could see the little things popping out at him and yet he had not voiced them to her. She had to know that Roger possessed the ability to look through a different lens, to look at himself in a way that showed his own self-worth. Deciding to help him out a little, she wrapped an arm around his rather petite waist, her head staying perched on his shoulder as her free hand moved out. Her index finger grazing over his skin causing a slight shiver to flutter under his skin that she felt just under her light touch. Her finger moving to brush a strand of hair behind his ear, fluttering around his hair as a hint before grazing around his eyes. Then trailing down his nose and around his lips, adding slight pressure to his dusty rose lips before her finger trailed further down his neck in such a loving way that reflected the look in her eyes as she gazed at him. Her hand running over his skin, fluttering like butterfly wings over his exposed hips and down his leg before she wound her arm around his waist, pressing herself flush to his back and waiting for his reply. "I see... deep ocean eyes that aren't reflected through glasses enough." He started, the way he spoke the words so delicately showing this was not a fault he was picking with himself. Roger did need glasses and he didn't wear them nearly enough like he should. His eyes watching how she nodded, the smallest of smiles pulling at her lips as she urged him to continue, her plush lips pressing to his shoulder lovingly. "I see features that usually display some kind of grin that... isn't displeasing." Roger had to admit when he got to see many of the photos that circulated round from the many parties Freddie was frequently throwing, or when he got to see recordings of when they were practising and recording songs in the studio he seemed to fall in love with his own smile. He liked how he could look cheekily into the camera or scrunch up his nose and crinkle his eyes as he smiled at whoever was recording the moment for him. "My hair is fine, I never have a problem with how it looks, and I guess my nose is fine too. I don't mind my features, they don't bug me." When looking at himself in the mirror it was usually what lied below his face that seemed to draw all of his negativity towards himself. He could style his hair in any way or wake up with a bed head and he would leave it because he thought it looked fine, great even. His face was never really a problem unless he had the very rare black eye from a rare bar fight that had happened once or twice in the past. He couldn't see imperfections when it came to his face. "I guess I don't mind my hands or wrists... I like the way the drumsticks look flowing between each finger when I twirl them." It had taken the drummer a little while to perfect spinning the drumsticks between the spacing of his fingers in record time so he could hit the next beat. That was something he was proud of and he did like how it looked to do that and go straight back to creating the beat that the rest of the band played and sung to. "My ribs don't really stick out a lot which is good." Roger didn't have to worry that he was on the underweight side because those a lot of bones stuck out, he had a stomach that wasn't sinking inwards and ribs that weren't protruding at every angle they could. His whole ribcage wasn't on display which was something he was relieved about. "My thighs aren't too bad I suppose." He sighed in a way that didn't show discontent, but rather a neutral feeling that was beginning to flow through his veins. "There are so many more positives you have and can pick out when you look closer that outweigh the negatives you spot straight away." Roger had looked at himself in the mirror, but whenever he did he always jumped to what he deemed was wrong with how he looked. He could never stare at himself for long because he hated to know how he was displeased with himself and simply wanted those feelings to disappear. If he took longer to look then maybe the positives would jump out at him, and he could learn to find those perfections first before diving into the negatives. "Perfection is individual. You can still have flaws but also deem yourself as your level of perfection because perfect doesn't mean no flaws, it means being beautiful or clever or just being you despite your flaws. Define yourself by your standards Roger because you are perfection to me and I wouldn't love you any other way." Turning his body around so that he was still in her embrace Roger delicately placed his hands either side of her face, tilting her head upwards before he placed his lips to her own. An overwhelming sensation of love spreading through his bones that was almost suffocating but in the best possible way. Maybe it would take a little time for him to be able to see the perfection before the flaws when he looked at himself, but that didn't matter. Roger could set his own standards, something he hadn't thought of before. He could decide if he was perfect in his own eyes and he could finally master the power to look at his own body and feel that he was comfortable with it. After all, perfection is as they say, in the eye of the beholder.

[mo-ondial]

im going to cut my hair this week. 

when i was in first grade, i wanted to cut my hair. but i also kind of didn’t. 

cutting my hair meant that i could donate it. my hair could help someone with cancer! that would be cool. and i didn’t like brushing my hair, and i didn’t like washing my hair, and i did NOT like it when my hair was wet, or dirty, or ponytail-headache inducing. 

but i also kind of liked it. it was long, and it flew in the wind behind me when i ran. i could braid it at sleepovers, and put bows in it, and could put all sorts of pigtails in it for crazy hair day. when i got older i could dye it, all sorts of pretty colors. 

i decided to keep one, long braid. 

funny interlude actually, i wanted one braid in the front. to pull my hair out of my face, and so people could see it. but my mother wanted one in the back. she was trying to talk me out of it, because she didn’t want to deal with it. she also worried that having hair too long braided could give me a bald spot. so we decided that i would have two, and we’ll decide which one to keep. 

i still have two. 

so i was two-braided kid. 

people ask me so often why i did it - on the street, at the dentist, at school. sometimes i say i don’t know. sometimes i say i don’t remember. sometimes i say that it was just a fun thing i thought of when i was little, after all, why do first graders do anything? 

i think i wanted to be like rapunzel in the books that i read, like my uncle with loooong matts that he says he keeps because it keeps the past with him, like the native american draftees that i read about in an article, that were excellent trackers, but it lessoned their ability to track greatly when the army required them to cut their long hair. 

i wanted to be like myself. my hair changed so often, i liked donating it, and i liked change, and i wanted a piece of me to be recognizeable. i always remember the people with interesting hair. 

there was pressure put on me to be good different. i was allowed to be quirky, i was allowed to be odd, as long as i remembered that i had to be funny and cool to make up for it. i needed a redeeming quality for how odd i was. i had to be good different. i forced myself to be as outwardly weird as i could because i was scared of blending in and scared of being singled out for my actual insecurities. i needed to put that difference in between me and the white, cisgender, straight, pretty, able-bodied, skinny person that i thought was “average”. i was too scared of measuring up to what everyone told me was “normal” and “default” and coming up short, that i needed to run the other way. it was my job to entertain, to put on a show for people. i remember laying awake at night in third grade, trying to rewrite the way that i talked so that it was accessorized and quirky but good quirky. “whats a more original way to say hello?”, “i should say ‘steal’ instead of borrow, i think that’s what sarcasm is”, “i think it would be cute and funny to wear mismatched socks”. 

“i wonder what hairstyle people would notice?”

but it was cute. i was young. i liked it at first. 

at girl scout camp when people nicknamed me they named me braids. 

yea, braids. that’s me. i have braids. 

its what people remember about me. my sister when working with people in my grade mention my two long braids, and people remember that more than they remember my name. 

just last week, we were playing psyche, and the question was what i would patch a hole in the roof with, and someone put my braids. 

hair. it’s weird. it’s a part of your body, yes, but also not quite. i can’t feel it. there aren’t any nerves in it. and you get to choose some of it. you start out with what comes from your scalp, be it curly, straight, dark, light, thin, thick. but you get to choose the length, the style, you can dye it, you can make it your own. it is in between body and fashion. 

when we give affirmations, and the rules say that you can’t give physical complements, i still without a doubt get ones that complement my braids. 

are these a part of me? is my choice that i made in first grade that they are complementing? is “braids” a personality? 

don’t get me wrong, i used to like it. a long time ago. i still do. maybe. or maybe it’s just change. 

my father tries to convince me to cut them off. sometimes jokingly, but also not. they’re too much work. but isn’t me who does the work? 

my sister says that i have to cut them eventually. when i say i want to keep them forever, that’s ridiculous. but if i say i will cut them eventually, then yes, that’s the right option. because what if im rejected from a job interview? i certainly can’t go to college with them. i can’t have them as an adult. 

everyone says eventually. but when the fuck is eventually? 

i don’t like them anymore. i really, really, do want to cut them. it’s been long enough. i’ve been keeping them as some sort of obligation to who i once was, which isn’t who i am now. they keep me from being able to have the hairstyles i want. they’re the reason i can’t lay down in the grass as rest me head. the reason i can’t wear necklaces or things with too many rhinestones because they get caught. the reason why i have to stop myself from getting my head wet in pools because it would confine me to hours of brushing. they’re remnants of my need to make sure im feminine enough and accessorized enough to be respected. they aren’t mine anymore. they’ve always belonged to other people. for other people to see, to touch, to play with. 

so i started mentioning that i want to cut them. 

really? cut them? why? yes, i am the same person that cried when a camp bully came at me with scissors while i was sleeping and tried to cut them off. but then is different from now. 

now that i say “now” instead of “eventually”, look how everyone disagrees again. 

even my father, against it from day one, says that he kind of regrets it, because he’s going to miss them. 

my mother resents me cutting them even more, for she’s the one that read in my diary the words “trans”, “nonbinary”, “they/them”. my braids are the last feminine thing about me that she doesn’t want to give up. 

but funnily enough, when she says “But they’re mine too! You can’t cut them!”, that’s when im sure i want to cut them. they are on my head. they grew out of my head. i brush them and braid them every month and every time i go swimming. whatever part of myself that other people think that they own has been stolen from me, and i have every right to take it back. 

isn’t this hard enough? deciding that hey, im grown, i can give up this thing that ive gotten so used to and attatched a part of my identity to? seeing the last bit of my feminine childhood fall to the floor? why do you have to make a fuss and make me hate my hair even more instead of this being a personal right-of-passage for me and a good sendoff?

but everyone wants to get rid of something eventually. because eventually never comes. 

but “eventually” is now. i’m tired of eventually. seeing a doctor eventually or fixing my teeth eventually or getting therapy eventually, moving bedrooms eventually, asking her out eventually, using my preferred name eventually, living eventually. 

i’m not cutting my hair eventually. 

im going to cut my hair this week. 

[slushrottweiler]

So...

There is this guy I like. He's been helping me come to terms with being Poly, and generally being a cool dude. We've been friends for a solid 4 years by now.

And I have a Massive crush on him.

Like STUPID BIG!

And sometimes, it seems like he's attracted to me too. We have flirted before, online and in person. Hugs, touches, he seeks me out for company when we're at cons...

But recently he only flirts with me when he's been drinking, and I'm starting to think he's just flirty when tipsy. The little touches, hugs etc, I have to initiate them all. At first, I thought he was fussing over our age gap (he's got 10yrs on me) but we get along just fine at other times. In fact, we joke about our age gap quite often. He calls me kiddo, I call him Daddy. Which probably isn't helping the crush.

But I've noticed if there is anyone else he might be into around, he'll go after them rather than stick with me. Now, I'm not opposed to either of us flirting with other people, we both have primary partners etc. It's just, I feel like I'm just a back up. If there is no one better to flirt with, he'll default to me coz why not. I might even just be reading into it all. Who knows.

It comes with the double blow that the girls he's into are the exact opposite of me, physically. Cute, soft, incredibly curvy white girls. Very pale, soft curves, alt in every way I want to be but never can be. I may have put on weight recently but I'm still slim. Still more angles than curves and when dressed I still look very skinny. Plus having dark skin with the punk rock look always makes me feel like a pretender.

So, I keep telling myself to give it up. I've got a good friend just drop it and move on. But I still find myself trying to think up ways to get him to think of me in a sexual manner, planning outfits I think will look sexy, looking for reasons to DM him. I do it without even thinking! SO stupid.

I don't know if I want out, want someone to crush on, or for him to reciprocate, but it's fucking annoying and I'm so done.

Why do I still want to jump onto our group discord and write something that will get him to talk to me...

[kurly-quill]

Hiya, hon! Ask, and you shall recieve <3 (when I get off my ass anyway)

Robin’s Nest Cafe Part 2

Pairings: DickTim, JayDick, JayTim, future JayDickTim

Rating: Mature for Language 

Coffee Shop AU (sort of), Civilian!Tim (mostly?) Part 1 - Part 2 

(2) The Nest

In the past four years or so, it became a well-kept secret in East End, that if you ever needed a safe place to shut your eyes, you might find it at The Nest. They don’t take names. They don’t ask any questions, and will take in anyone of any age. You’ll get a clean room, with a clean bed, and a square meal. Rumor even has it that folks sometimes leave The Nest with things like new job prospects or that last refill of medication you couldn’t afford in your pocket.

It’s not a long-term arrangement, but it helps when the winter rolls in and  you don’t want to freeze to death.

The shop is quiet. But then, it’s never particularly busy either. Like, ever. She spends more time practicing her latte art than taking orders (“You’ll never get paid to doodle cats, young lady!” they used to tell her in high school. Well joke’s on you, Ms. Maximoff)

Tim is standing beside her at the counter, carefully wiping down the espresso machine like it’s his baby -- kind of accurate, since the only thing he loves more than that machine is her, obviously. Maybe. He better, anyway, if he knows what’s good for him.

It’s midway through her shift. Idly, she stacks the little espresso cups into a pyramid, knowing that Tim is silently judging her for it (“You realise we can’t use the cups now that you’ve touched all of them, right?” “So narrow-minded, Timmy. We can definitely use them for shots later!”).

Like Tim can’t afford the cups or something. But, appearances are still important for a place like this, she supposes. Barely getting by, but passed the health inspection! - that’s the look they’re apparently going for to the public eye.  She gets it. Robin’s Nest cafe isn’t supposed to be high profile, or else The Nest loses its purpose. She flicks at her tower of espresso cups, leaning over the counter with her chin propped up on her hand, musing.

She thinks of a few years ago, remembers being at the end of her rope. How she had been ignoring the rumors about The Nest, passing them off as bullshit, until a cold front hit Gotham so hard it even had the Gotham-grade criminals running for cover. She remembers  finally caving to the rumors, looking across the street at Robin’s Nest, brightly lit compared to the sorry excuses for street lamps that lined the sidewalk. Shivering, blue-lipped. All of the closest shelters were full, and the last time she’d slept in one, she’d woken up to a man reaching under her sheets, so like hell was she going back to one if she had other options.

She remembers her vow to herself-- that whatever happened, she wasn’t going back home.  She would have frozen in an alleyway somewhere before that happened.

She remembers jaywalking across the icy street to the sidewalk just outside the shop window. But, as soon as she had gotten there, had taken a better look at the interior, she’d hesitated. A sort of hipster-industrial look with some hodge-podge, DIY-esque decor that’s not too shiny and clean and just worn enough to seem lived-in and welcoming-- It was that last part, of all things, that had made her clam up inside. Made her turn around to find some alleyway to go lose some toes in.

She probably would have, she muses, wiggling her toes around in her Adidas, if Tim hadn’t caught her just as she went to turn around the corner of the block. He’d ran out of the shop in nothing but a long-sleeve “World’s Okayest Barista” shirt, skinny jeans, and converse, all messy dark hair and pale blue eyes, and he had looked about three seconds from turning into an icicle. But in his hand, had been a drink.

“What d’you want,” she demands, defenses up on autopilot.

The barista fairly skids to a stop on the icy sidewalk, breath coming in visible plumes. The drink is shoved in her face-- she can see that it’s piping hot, and she’s suddenly acutely aware of how her nose and lips ache with cold.

“Take it. It’s hot chocolate.”

“Wow,” she deadpans, quirking a brow, “this is, like, a classic case of stranger danger.”

She notes how hard the barista is beginning to shiver, and wondered if he’s just an idiot for running after a homeless person on the wrong side of Gotham in ass-degree-and-dropping temperatures. (And in that getup, too, that screams: “please, oh please, ma’am, rob me, I’m a little nerdboy!” She could do it, probably, if she really wanted to.)

The barista grins sheepishly at her, shrugging.

“Okay, fair. I can make you another one back at the shop and you can watch me to make sure it’s safe to drink, if it makes you feel better.” She blinks at him. An idiot, definitely.

“Hate to break it to you, dude, but I’m broke.”

The barista holds up one finger. He fishes around in his pocket, pulls out his wallet (an open invitation to snatch it, that), and tugs out a little card. He holds it out to her, and she watches him carefully before taking it and reading-- she frowns. Flips the card over. The little card is small and sleek-- heavier than paper, PVC?-- and has a single bird-like symbol on the front. The back only reads:

For One - Redeemable at The Nest

“It’s a coupon.”

She swallows. No way.

“For a drink?”

The barista tucks his hands into his pockets. She wonders if he’s doing it because he thinks it looks cool or if it’s because he’s lost feeling in his hands. When she meets his eyes again, though, she’s distracted by how they sharpen with focus, flashing with a secret.

“Sure,” he concedes, shrugging again, “Or a room, if you want it. On the house.”

She blinks at him once. Twice. “You’re fucking nuts, aren’t you?”

The barista lets out a startled laugh, one hand coming up to cover his mouth. It shouldn’t be cute, and she really shouldn’t go there, but there it is. She’s officially the type to be charmed by dorky, early 2000s, sk8er boi aesthetic.

“Jury’s still out.”, then holds out a hand that’s white with cold, “I’m Tim.”

She notices that he doesn’t ask for her name, and she thinks over whether she should even tell him. After all, she’s only about 85% sure the guy’s not batshit crazy. But then, she’s probably in good company.

Oh, what the hell, she thinks, letting herself smile back at him. She takes his hand, and can’t even feel it with how numb her fingers are.

“Well, it’s Gotham, so crazy’s just the status quo around here. Also, name’s Stephanie,” she pauses and adds, more quietly, “And I think I’ll take you up on that room”

Tim shakes their hands minutely, and the movement has pinpricks of pain shooting up to her elbow, but already she somehow feels warmer.

“Oh, thank God,” he sighs, relieved, already turning to walk back towards the cafe, “I can officially no longer feel my ass. I barely had one to begin with. Please, let’s go inside.”

And, despite how cold she is, and how she aches, and how absolutely, completely shitty her life is right now, she bursts out laughing, nearly doubling over. It’s a miracle that she doesn’t fall over, considering she can’t feel her legs.

“I feel that. Not so much the last part though. My ass is great,” she snickers, trying to regain her composure. She sidles up just behind Tim’s shoulder to follow him back down the block.

“But, hey, you know, I’ll still take you up on that hot chocolate if you’re still offering.”

“I think I can manage that.”

She’s jarred from her reminiscing by the bell above the shop door. In an instant, she’s baring her teeth in the default hello, I work in food service, so please don’t be a prick!! smile.

“Hello!” she sings, upbeat, “Welcome to Robin’s Nest!”

Behind her, Tim’s got his back turned towards the entrance, wiping down the back counter and pointedly leaving her to do the customer servicing. She hopes he can feel her glare. Asshole.

She then turns her head and wind up locking eyes with a man in uniform. She balks.

Oh damn, says one part of her brain, because wow that’s a nicely-fit uniform.

Oh shit, says the another part of her brain, because that’s a police uniform.

Oh fuck, says the rest of  her brain, because that’s Richard Grayson in a police uniform.

No, like, the fucking Richard Grayson™ .

Richard-fucking-Grayson gives her a smile that’s whiter than bleached tile floors, brighter than the goddamn sun in Metropolis. Stephanie’s missing all of her customer service cues and she will blame it entirely on that smile in the future if Robin’s Nest gets a bad review.

“Uh,” she says dumbly, standing up straight so fast she manages to knock all of her espresso cup pyramid over. She makes an aborted movement to try and stop them, realizes it’s a lost cause, so instead just stares Richard-fucking-Grayson in the face and lets them all fall in a tragic, drawn-out cacophony of noise as they clatter, one-by-one to the floor. Total power move.

The noise has Tim whirling around towards the front -- “Steph, what the-” -- but then he falls mute as he gets an eyeful of Gotham royalty in a police uniform. Yeah, same here, dude.

The silence goes on for so long that it’s become decidedly uncomfortable, so Steph tears her eyes away from glances in Tim’s direction --

And yep, that’s the creepy Tim.exe has stopped working stare of death that happens when his brain goes full-on computer mode and he forgets how to emote (It’s either because he’s worried there’s a cop in The Nest, or because Officer Grayson is just that hot. Actually, it’s probably both). Christ, he’s not even blinking-- they’ve had a talk about this, Timmy, get your shit together. “Hello! Hi!” she says, too loudly, diverting the officer’s (increasingly growing) concerned gaze back to her, “Can I take your order?”

The last cup makes a final, agonizing descent to the floor in the beat of silence that follows, while Richard Grayson blinks, a little amused but not overly surprised by the fact that he’s apparently been recognized.

“Hi,” he replies, too-bright smile back in place, “Sorry if I surprised you?” “No worries, Mr. Grayson. Just don’t usually get celebrities on this side of town,” Steph leans against the counter, falling back into her default teasing, “Just tell me you’re here cause of a good Yelp review or something, cause I plead the fifth if it’s for anything else.”

“Just call me Dick, please,” Dick chuckles, “And I just happened to be passing through. A friend told me that this place serves the best hot chocolate this side of Gotham.”

Tim twitches. “Bullshit,” Steph quips, “We serve the best hot chocolate in all of Gotham. Total, unbiased truth!”

Dick grins, “Then I guess that’s what I’m having.”

Steph smiles wide, making a show of punching the buttons on the register system, “I’ll be gentle with you, since it’s your first time -- Tim, one classic chocolate, for the man in blue!”

. . .

She looks again to her left when there’s no movement. Oh for the love of Wonder Woman--

“Tim.”

Tim snaps out of it with a visible jerk, blinking wide eyes as the past five minutes seem to play at hyperspeed through that ridiculous brain of his, and he opens his mouth.

“Right, yes. Okay. I can, that. Chocolate, sure. Hot. ” is what comes out, even as Tim’s eyes widen in horror at himself, the skin of his neck and ears beginning to flush red with embarrassment.

Steph’s jaw drops, because she’s never seen Timothy Jackson Drake lose composure like this in all three years she’s known him (not even counting that one time sex turned into a trip to the hospital that they both agreed to never speak of again). And well, she had never pegged Tim for a fanboy of all things, let alone of Dick Grayson, but there he is, moving through the motions of making his signature hot chocolate with the grace and poise of a robot chicken.

Dick, for his part, is looking at Tim in the bemused way one tends to look at a toddler that’s doing something a little bit weird but otherwise harmless. Steph is the best wing-woman ever, because she clears her throat to try and get his attention again instead of the other barista.

“Sooooo that’ll be 4.89,” Steph declares, “Will that be cash or card?”

Her tactic is thwarted -- Dick continues to look at Tim in mildly amused fascination as he digs around in his pocket before pulling out a few rumpled bills and, like, six Jolly Rancher wrappers. She tries not to judge too hard when the whole wad is pressed into her hand, even though they’re a little sticky.  

She hands him his change before turning to see that Tim has finished the hot chocolate, complete with the snowflake-covered cup sleeves that Steph spent nearly three hours doodling that morning with a silver Sharpie (“Starbucks makes festive cup sleeves, Tim! We can’t be beaten by the competition!” “Why do I even pay you?”). However, Tim is just staring at the cup like it holds the solution to world peace and also this painful interaction. Steph clears her throat, and he flinches again. He slides the cup to the edge of the counter, way too slowly, like he’s thinking about it too hard, and Dick reaches for the cup in the way someone might approach a skittish animal. His hand closes around the cup and he lifts it, watching Tim’s face as he lifts it to his mouth. “Thanks,” he says with a gentle smile, but Tim steadfastly refuses to look the police officer in the eye. Arguably, this is worse, because instead he’s staring at the guy’s pecs. The barista then retreats from the counter, takes a full step back, mumbles something that was probably a “You’re welcome”.

“Well come on,” Steph interrupts, “I reserve the right to see you take the first sip.” Dick raises an eyebrow at her, teasing, “I’ll have you know that the Wayne butler makes some really great hot chocolate. It’ll be tough to beat.”

“Quit stalling and drink the liquid diabetes, Grayson.”

Without breaking eye contact with Steph, he does just that. Steph’s smirk grows when the man’s eyes grow wide.

He swallows, the flavor washing over his tongue, and looks down at his cup in amazement. Takes another drink, and groans. It’s a sound that Steph’s sure she’s heard on one of the more trashy pornos on her laptop, and knows it’s not just her mind going straight to the gutter when she sees Tim’s ears go bright red. “Wow.”

Stephanie grins, smug, “Like I said -- best hot chocolate in all of Gotham”

“I’m a believer now,” Dick says solemnly, taking another long sip. “God. Tell your management to open a store in Bludhaven -- I could single-handedly keep the business afloat if I could drink this every day.”

Steph snorts, jerking her thumb at Tim, who’s staring resolutely at the far wall.

“Tell him yourself, maybe then he’ll listen. I keep saying we should expand! If you ask me, every shithole town with a Robin running around the streets deserves Robin’s Nest to go with it.” Tim breaks his stupor to glance at Steph in a way that she’s come to learn is a warning, which she resists the urge to roll her eyes at.

Dick outright laughs. “Heh, well these days I’d say Bludhaven sees just as much of Robin as Gotham” Dick chuckles, “Might need to relocate entirely with criteria like that.”

He slides his gaze to Tim.

“Not that it’d be a bad idea to move shop. Seriously, Bludhaven has a lot of up and coming neighborhoods -- You would get more customers than you probably get in this area, and if the rest of your menu is as good as this hot chocolate, you’d be pretty popular.”

At this, Tim freezes, then turns, his face twisting into a slight frown, “Robin’s Nest belongs in Gotham,” he says, clipped, “Besides, we do just fine here.” The officer blinks, suddenly looking into sharp, ice-blue eyes that until this moment had refused to look at him.

“I’m sure you have some faithful regulars, around here,” Dick says slowly, a bit placating, “but I know Gotham pretty well, and a bit about business,” he pauses and says, not unkindly, but it nonetheless has Tim’s spine going rigid, “You’d get more revenue if you relocated down to somewhere in Midtown, even the residential areas. Why don’t you?”

Tim’s eyes flash, but nothing else gives away his irritation. Instead, he tilts his head in a curious gesture. “Well,” there’s a calm lilt to his voice as he asks, “Gotham pays its officers a higher average salary than Bludhaven. Why don’t you move?”

Dick’s jaw drops for a second at the barb, blinking. Then, his brilliant blue eyes light up with humor, and he laughs, long and loud. Even that sounds attractive, which is so unfair that Steph glares at the dangerous tilt of his take-away cup, willing it to spill on his uniform. The officer regains his composure, chuckles dying down as he regains his composure. “Woah, okay, touché then!” he acquiesces with a shrug, “But on that point -- It’s not really about the salary, the job. I work in Bludhaven because I’m needed there.”

At that, Tim’s blank face slips into a smirk. Steph sighs as he unties his apron and slips off his ball cap, clearly deciding that he’s done playing Customer Service for the time being. That means Steph is going to be manning the counter alone for the next few hours. Thanks a lot, Grayson. Steph doesn’t miss the way Dick’s gaze flicks interestedly to Tim’s fingers sliding through his too-long hair, brushing back and it away from his face. Steph feels the need to nod in solidarity. She found that move kinda hot too, once.

For a second, it’s not Tim the Barista standing there. Instead, it’s Timothy Drake, and Dick seems to stand straighter in attention. “Then maybe, Officer Grayson,” he surmised, in that slightly condescending way that Steph reckoned only those bred in high society could recreate, “Robin’s Nest is exactly where it needs to be.”

At that, Dick hums in what is more a surrender than an agreement. Wise, Steph thinks, to keep his mouth shut and spare himself the verbal lashing. Dick doesn’t seem to look very cowed, though, she notes, so much as intrigued.

Satisfied, Tim carefully lays his apron and hat on the far end of the counter, and passes through the front counter’s the swing-gate. He gets to the door at the far wall that Steph knows leads up into the stairwell that connects the rest of the building’s floors, Tim’s attached apartment included. Dicks eyes follow him all the way there.

“Hey Steph, can you hold down the fort for awhile while I go up? I need to do the ordering for next week.”

Steph sighs dramatically, gesturing to Dick. “What, and leave me alone with all these customers?”

Tim rolls his eyes. “Just pick up all the cups off the floor -- and no more building towers with the espresso cups!” Steph sticks her tongue out at him before he closes and locks the door. “Spoil sport.”

Dick is quiet for a few seconds, before he sighs, “I feel like I should apologize for pushing.” Steph stands up from where she’s crouching on the floor, her arms full of fallen espresso cups. Dumping them into the recycling bin under the counter, she huffs her hair out of her face, humming thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t take it too personally -- Tim just gets pretty touchy about the shop,” she hesitates, before continuing a bit more quietly “It was important to him, growing up. He bought the place after his parents died.”

At this, Dick’s expression falls, and suddenly she’s being hit with the most beseeching blue eyes she’s ever seen. Jesus H. Christ, those have to be against the Geneva Conventions.

“Would you tell him I’m sorry?  I didn’t mean to offend him. . .” Steph physically resists the urge to wince at the intensity of the look, waving him off, “Yeah, sure, fine, I’ll tell him. Just jeez, quit it with the eyes.”

The eyes are still in the realm of small kicked animal, but less Sarah McLachlan, so Steph manages to survive as Dick’s expression turns thoughtful.

“Thank you.” A beat, then, “I think I’ll order another hot chocolate, actually, if you don’t mind.”

At that Steph raises an eyebrow, “For the road?” Dick clicks his tongue. "No,” he says, blue eyes twinkling with something like mischief, his grin suddenly sharp. His eyes, however, turn to the door that Tim had disappeared behind.

“It’s for a friend.”

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To be fair, Steph lasts a whole 23 minutes.

“Hey, I mean, Timmy didn’t say anything about building towers with any of the other cups.”

[inaweofdiana]

@treavellergirl wanted Ace + stuck and swearing and i took it and fuckin’ ran with it and it got a little bit out of hand whoops BUT if you squint you can start to see some plot in there and maybe some actual seeds of romance

ALSO GANG AU catch my other gang au fics here on my blog if you want or here on my ao3 if that’s more your jam (you can even read this fic there if you want, or jumpcut to the full thing below!! (its almost 3k so a jumpcut was needed!!)

-

So this was how it ended for Ace. Sacrificing himself for his dumb ass brother. And he hadn’t even had a good breakfast. “I hate you.” Ace revolved slowly, suspended by his right ankle, a good three feet between his hanging fingertips and the ground. Judging by his nausea and a lack of response from his fire, a seastone rope. “So much.” Luffy was gawking, sitting in a heap where he’d landed after Ace had shoved him out of the way of the trap. He’d managed to flick on the flashlight on his phone, at least. Ace’s handheld torch had gone out like a lightbulb blowing once he’d made contact with the seastone. “Well this certainly puts a hamper on our plan.” Luffy shoved one finger up his nose, his default thinking face. “Damper.” Ace corrected as blood started to rush to his head. He felt like he was incredibly congested. “This puts a damper on our plan. You absolute walnut.”

Luffy looked hopeful at the idea of walnuts, then put out when he realized Ace was insulting him, not talking about food. “Can’t you just wshhhhh?” he asked, waving his hands about in a juggling motion. “No, you cheesecake, it’s seastone!” Ace flailed at him, trying to thump him a good one, but Luffy just stretched his head out of the way, sticking it up and around to peer at the rope around Ace’s ankle. “Looks like it.” Luffy let his head spring back to his body, letting it wobble wildly like a bobble-head. “I guess you’re gonna die here!” He laughed. “You’re the worst brother.” Ace groaned. “Go get Franky or Nami or someone. Anyone. Zoro or Sanji. Hell, Zoro and Sanji, I’d even deal with the two of them together to get out of this!” “Okay!” Luffy bounced up cheerily, like it wasn’t his fault Ace was caught in a humiliating rope trap sneaking into a Navy base. He hadn’t even wanted to go. “And hurry up!” Ace hissed at his retreating back. Luffy kicked it up into a jog. The light from his flashlight disappeared slowly, off into the distance, vanishing abruptly as Luffy took a turn. He swore a bit. And then a bit more. And then broke into a full on rant composed completely of swearwords. He was having the worst fucking day and this just put the goddamn icing on the shit cake, didn’t it? Ace fumed, still revolving slowly. He hated going to visit their Grandfather, and this was why. It involved bizarre booby traps and dusty old tunnels that nobody ever used anymore. But if nobody ever used these, whose light was that coming from the opposite end of the tunnel? Ace flailed, trying to stay facing the light, but he continued the slow spin, and only succeeded in exhausting himself and almost throwing up. His head throbbed with all the blood pooled there. Ace was fucked. He managed to lift one noodle-weak arm to grab at the knife on his belt, and let gravity yank his arm back down to the ground, pulling the knife from its sheath. He was as ready as he could be. To his surprise, he recognized the man (fishman, more accurately) approaching him. “Jinbe?” He squinted. He couldn’t trust his eyes with this much blood in his head. “Ace, my friend.” Jinbe paused in the middle of the tunnel. Probably not sure how to handle seeing the Boss of the Spades gang dangling upside down by a rope under the Navy headquarters. “You… Seem well.” Jinbe offered, diplomatically. Ace let his head dangle, laughing. “Sure am, Jin.” He grinned. “Cut me down?” “Seastone?” Jinbe accepted his knife, reaching up and lifting Ace to sit on his shoulder. Ace fisted his hands in Jinbe’s sweatshirt, not wanting to fall. “Yep.” Now that leg was just being pulled up at a slight angle, Jinbe sawed at it for a moment before dropping the hank of rope that had previously been wrapped around Ace’s ankle. Ace sighed in relief as power surged through his body once more. He could feel the fatigue draining slowly from his body, but still felt shaky. Ace took his knife back and sheathed it with wobbly fingers. “Thanks man.” He grinned at Jinbe who smiled back. “Anytime for a friend.” Jinbe continued his slow plod. Though his pace was slow, his legs were long, and he ate up the distance quite swiftly. “What brings you to be caught here?” Jinbe asked eventually. Ace couldn’t decide whether to roll his eyes or laugh. “My dumb kid brother. He’s like an unstoppable force, but he can be as dumb as a box of muffins sometimes.” “I have yet to meet Luffy. Your stories of him are always quite entertaining.” They reached a staircase and Jinbe plodded upwards. “Entertaining is a good word for Luffy.” Ace grinned. “He’s like a bouncy ball in an antique store. He actually did that once.” Ace laughed. “I didn’t know you could get a lifetime 86 from an antique store until then.” Jinbe chuckled and they emerged into a hallway in the Navy HQ. Their problem as gang members was getting in. Once they were in, everyone there assumed the guards at the gates had done their jobs and that they were civilians who were cleared to be there. Jinbe was particularly notorious, leading the Sun Tiger Gang. It wasn’t publicized that Jinbe was secretly a warlord, making him a gang leader supported by the government. It gave him unique connections and power that gave him a deadly edge. Ace wasn’t terribly well known; he kept his head down around cameras and always wore a hat. He preferred anonymity on the streets, keeping his strength a secret. The most that the press had managed to get was a shot of the small straw hat tattoo on his shoulderblade, so he was generally assumed (wrongly) to be a member of the Straw Hat Gang. It amused him, so he never bothered to correct the rumor. Jinbe made his way through the Navy base like he knew where he was going. Which he probably did. He eventually made his way to an office with a rather harried looking secretary outside, who was arguing with someone on the other end of the phone. His pink hair was frazzled and he waved to Jinbe apologetically, smiling at Ace briefly. Jinbe nodded and stood to the side, examining a painting of a bowl of fruit. Ace waved back. “I’m sorry Captain Smoker, please just send him down to Garp’s office. Yes, I know he’s a terrible nuisance. No, I really can’t come and get him at the moment, I’m very sorry. Yes. Yes. Lots of meetings. I’m sorry sir. Yes. No. Thank you.” Coby hung up and smiled at Jinbe. “Good Afternoon Warlord Jinbe. Admiral Garp should just be finishing up his current meeting.” “Thank you Coby.” Jinbe nodded, examining the bowl of fruit quite seriously. “I’ll have your regular tea order sent in, unless you’d prefer something else.” Coby was already dialing numbers. “The regular will be fine, thank you.” Jinbe nodded serenely. Ace propped an arm up on Jinbe’s head. “You come here enough to have a regular?” He asked curiously. “Depending on the amount of activity, the navy likes me to report in more regularly. With the recent rash of street drugs, I’ve been here quite often lately.” Ace wrinkled his nose at the thought. “Yeah, they’ve been bad. I think I’m almost to a break to it. I’ll keep you updated, man.” He heard the door open behind him, and his Grandfather’s booming laughter. “I would very much appreciate that.” Jinbe patted his knee companionably. “What are you doing here, you shithead?” Garp glared. Ace glared right back over his shoulder. “You invited us, you dumb fuck.” “What did you call me you little shit?” Garp bellowed. Coby managed to divert Garp’s attention rather skillfully with a new cup of coffee from the pot behind his desk. “Jinbe is here for your two o’clock sir.” “Right, right.” Garp nodded before pointing at Ace. “You and my brat of a grandson aren’t supposed to be here ‘til Friday, lackwit.” Ace flailed. “How was I supposed to know?? You always send all the information to Luffy! I just listened to him!” Garp bellowed out a laugh. “Is that why I can hear ol’ Smokey blowing his stack upstairs?” Ace laughed along with him. “Probably. I’m surprised this whole place isn’t smoking!” “So I’ll see you Friday then?” Garp asked. “Probably, yeah. You’re doing lunch, right?” Garp nodded. “Then of course I am!” Ace grinned at him. Garp nodded again. “Smart man. Now, Jinbe, get in here! And you, you damn pest, get out of here!” He waved Jinbe in as he shoved someone out of his office. They stumbled slightly before straightening, facing Coby. Ace slipped nimbly down from Jinbe’s shoulder. “Later gramps! Later man!” He waved goodbye to each of them before realizing who exactly stood in front of Coby’s desk. “So, Sabo, it looks like he’d like monthly meetings with you. Did you speak about that?” Coby asked. Sabo hadn’t noticed him yet. “Monthly is fine, though we may schedule more frequently as needed.” The blond man who’d left Ace sitting in the dust after a formidable show of haki. Ace had forgotten then that powerful wielders of haki could render fruit powers inert since he’d never actually faced someone able to do it. Ace had a score to settle with this little asshole. He was dressed much differently than he had been the other day. He was wearing a tidy pair of skinny jeans, as opposed to a pair that was ripped and splattered to all hell with paint and who knew what, dark navy instead of bright blue. He was also wearing a crisp blazer and a collared button down with tiny cats on it. His snapback of the encounter before was nowhere to be seen, but there was no mistaking that curly hair and those long, slender legs. And his obnoxious drawl as he scheduled his next meeting with Garp. “Do you need any help getting out? I know the building can be confusing.” Coby smiled sweetly at Sabo. Jesus. No wonder Luffy’d had the worst crush on him for a while. Ace took the opportunity to sling an arm around Sabo’s neck, shooting Coby a guileless grin. “I got this, Cobe! Me and Sabo are old friends! I’ll show him out!” His arm was tight around Sabo’s shoulders, on the verge of a headlock. Ace smirked smugly when he saw that he was a whole half inch taller than the blond. “Okay!” Coby smiled. “See you later Ace!” He answered another phone call before Sabo could protest, and Ace dragged him out of the room. Sabo flailed, but this time, Ace had the upper hand, and continued striding forward, not giving Sabo a chance to catch his balance. “So, Sabo, huh? What’s up with you and Garp? And the whole rudeness with picking a fight with me and then leaving? That was a real nice piece of work.” Ace’s smile was sickly sweet. Sabo tried to dig his heels into the ground, but in a contest of strength, Ace was stronger. “Come on now, I thought you and I were getting to be friends!” Ace’s smile widened. “Leggo!” Sabo tried to bite at him, but the leather of Ace’s motorcycle jacket protected him. “Alright.” Ace shoved Sabo into one of the closets that led to one of the many secret passages into the Navy headquarters. “You realize this isn’t some adolescent game of seven minutes in heaven, right?” Sabo looked incredibly unimpressed with being shoved into a broom closet. Ace laughed. “So you’re saying being with me in a closet is your idea of seven minutes in heaven?” He grabbed one of the cans of paint on the shelf and gave it a twist. Sabo spluttered, flushing bright red. The poor dear with his pale complexion. “Fuck you!” Ace’s laughter increased in volume as a shelf shifted to reveal a hidden staircase. “Sure! About six minutes and forty-five seconds left though!” Sabo punched him. He deserved it. It hurt. He continued to snicker as he traipsed down the staircase. “Coming, dear?” He called back. Behind him, Sabo tried the door, only to find it locked. He growled after Ace. “What the fuck did you do, asshole?” Ace smirked. “The door won’t unlock until the passage is clear. It’s about a twenty minute walk, but I dunno, I could probably stretch that into a couple of hours if I’m not supervised.” Ace conjured a ball of flame into his palm, illuminating the tunnel. Sabo stomped after him, making it very clear he wanted nothing to do with him or this situation. Ace slung his arm around his neck again. “So, Sabo! What were you doing with my gramps?” Because damned if he wasn’t going to leave with every scrap of information he could get. “None of your business.” Sabo tried to shove him off, but there was the whole issue with Ace being stronger than him again. “I’d say it is my business, seeing as he’s my grandfather and all, and I could ruin your negotiations with him if I wanted to.” Ace bluffed. There was no way Garp would drop sensitive government business just because Ace wanted him to. Hell, he led one of the gangs that Garp was committed to capturing and bringing to justice. But Sabo didn’t know that. Sabo looked like he’d been forced to eat a lemon. “I am not going to disclose sensitive information to a ruffian.” He sniped. “Would a ruffian have a direct line to a navy admiral?” Ace asked, doing his best to look innocent. Ace could practically hear Sabo grinding his teeth. It was sweet fuckin’ music to his ears. “I represent parties interested in collaborating with the world government to ensure world peace.” Sabo finally spat out. “Huh.” Ace let his arm relax around Sabo’s shoulders where it had been not-quite-threateningly tight around his neck. “Sounds a lot like…” he trailed off into thought without really meaning to. He had more than an inkling of what Sabo was talking about. More like an inkwell. If he was talking about the Revolutionaries, that was wild. If he was in a high enough position to speak to the government on their behalf, that was even wilder. Sabo tried to shove his arm off again, this time, Ace let him. Sabo peeled his blazer off and set about rolling his sleeves up by Ace’s firelight. He finally produced his snapback from where it had been… tucked down the back of his pants? Ace snorted his amusement, which Sabo loftily ignored. Sabo popped it on his head, bill facing forward, smoothing his hands over the ends of his hair. Ace felt a little sloppy next to him. His jeans were baggy, ripped out at the knees. His white tank top for Shakky’s Rip-Off Bar was at least one size too big, and his elbow brace probably still had ketchup on it from breakfast where it had landed in Luffy’s hash browns during a tussle. His unkempt hair was half-up in a small ponytail that was probably ready to fall out of his hair altogether. Next to Sabo, he felt like a hot mess. Next to Ace, Sabo tripped over a stray brick sticking out of the path and swore profusely when he almost fell on his face. That made Ace feel a little bit better. He grinned and offered a hand up. Sabo ignored his hand and picked himself up, dusting off his pants and palms. That kind of negated any good feelings Ace had and he scowled. They continued to walk in silence, both tacitly agreeing that since neither could learn anything about the other, they would ignore each other. They reached the end of the tunnel after about fifteen minutes of brisk walking: Sabo annoyed and Ace sulking. Ace knelt by the keypad and punched in a long series of numbers. He pulled the door open and gave Sabo a cheeky wave before yanking it shut behind him. “Fucker!” He heard Sabo yell from behind the door. He could hear him pounding against the door. “Let me out!” Ace childishly sat against the door, listening to Sabo pound on the door for a while, yelling obscenities. It felt kind of good, to be a dick to someone who was a dick. He could feel someone scolding him in the back of his head for being so mean, probably Makino, but pushed it aside, basking in the feeling of karmic retribution. It didn’t last for long. Sabo’s pounding got quieter after about a minute. A moment of silence. Then a soft “Shit.” from behind the door and a soft thump that he felt more than heard. Suddenly, Ace felt like an asshole. Just because he’d had kind of a bad day didn’t mean he had to be a dick to someone else, even if they deserved it after knocking him on his ass the last time they met. His stomach twisted uncomfortably and he jumped up. He typed in another long code into the matching keypad on the outside of the door and yanked the door open. Sabo went sprawling, flat on his back. He’d obviously been sitting against the door, much like Ace had been. He stared up at Ace, slightly stunned. Ace smiled down at him, extending a hand to help him up. This time, Sabo took it, letting Ace haul him to his feet. “My names Ace.” He offered. “Sorry I was a jerk. Want to get burritos?” He realized awkwardly that he hadn’t let go of Sabo’s hand yet. Sabo smiled and didn’t let go either.

[trueraretalent]

A WALT QUESTIONAIRE

1. Describe the character’s height and build. Is he heavyset, thin, short, rangy?

“I’m skinny or lean or whatever and I think I’m about 5′9? I don’t know.”

shut up alex, you’re 5′8 and you know it.

2. How old is he?

“Nineteen.”

3. Describe his posture. Does he/she carry himself well or does he/she slouch?

“It could probably be better, but I don't slouch too much. Depends on my mood really.”

4. How is his health? Is he fit or out of shape? Any illnesses or conditions? Any physical disabilities?

“Obviously I’m nowhere near as fit as Jordan, but - and this is hard to believe, I know - I’m actually a fairly decent runner and did track for a few years. Take after my mum in that aspect, I guess.”

5. How does he move? Is he clumsy, graceful, tense, fluid?

“There’s…there’s more than one way to move? Fluid, I don’t fucking know.”

he moves with ease and usually looks comfortable or casual or whatever. idk. 

6. How attractive is this character physically? How does he perceive himself in the mirror?

“Why don’t you tell me? Attraction is more of a perception thing based on personal preference so… but I’m not looking at myself and nitpicking, anyway, I know I’m pretty ace.”

was that a fucking pun you little shit.

7. Describe his complexion. Dark, light, clear, scarred?

“I’m pale. I’m a white-ass white boy and I’ve got a bunch of tiny freckles all over the place because I’m incapable of tanning.”

8. Describe his hair: color, texture, style.

“My hair is about as straight as I am, and if you’re a sucker for brown hair with shaved sides, boy do I have news for you.”

he doesn’t do much to style it or anything. usually just rolls out of bed and brushes with his fingers. (x)(x)

9. What color are his/her eyes?

“Fuck if I know.”

they’re brown alex. they’re brown.

10. Does the character have any other noteworthy features?

“Dimples deeper than the Pacific ocean.”

11. What are his/her chief tension centers?

“…Shoulders, I guess.”

his first instinct was to say farrah. tf alex.

12. What is the character’s wardrobe like? Casual, dressy, utilitarian? Bright colors, pastels, neutrals? Is it varied, or does he/she have six of the same suit?

“I don’t even know. I’ve got ripped jeans and a whole range of graphic tees and also some random big name shit. My fashion policy is basically just if it looks cool, I wear it. Pretty casual, ridiculously varied. I don’t really have a colour scheme at all, but hey! If I can throw together a half decent outfit then who cares?”

wardrobe tag: (x)

13. Do his/her clothes fit well? Does he/she seem comfortable in them?

“That’s basically my only criteria, so yeah. That, and if the clothes match whatever the hell my acethetic is.”

that's pun number two, people.

14. Does he/she dress the same on the job as he/she does in his free time? If not, what are the differences?

“If I had a job, I’m sure I’d make myself look professional as fuck.”

i doubt that.

15. You knew it was coming: Boxers, briefs or commando?

“Boxers.”

Speech

1. What does this character’s voice sound like? High-pitched, deep, hoarse?

“…Am I meant to know this? Middle-range, I guess. A teacher once described my voice as ‘warm’ which was weird but might answer the question?”

imma be honest with you fam, half the time i imagine him with a british accent like his fc, one daniel howell. idk?? dan howell without the accent?? idk???? pretty even and clear, no cracking when he speaks. idk.

2. How does he/she normally speak? Loud, soft, fast, evenly? Does he/she talk easily, or does he/she hesitate?

“Okay - well - right. I just interrupted myself several times so sorry about that but let me give you the run down. I speak pretty easily, but speed varies depending on who I’m talking to or how I’m feeling and all that shit. The more nervous or worried I am, the more I ramble and I speed up a bit, but when I’m angry I’ve got a very even and calm tone somehow and when I’m talking to someone new I try and avoid talking quickly.”

3. Does the character have a distinct accent or dialect? Any individual quirks of pronunciation? Any, like, you know, verbal tics?

“Not really.”

when he rambles he does a lot more ‘you know’ and ‘i mean’ without noticing.

4. What language/s does he/she speak, and with how much fluency?

“English. And I know some French from school but that’s about it.”

5. Does he/she switch languages or dialects in certain situations?

“Uhh, no. Breaking out in French at random times would be super fucking weird, considering I know roughly five words.”

…yeah…who would…do that…

i apologise for my son penelope

6. Is he/she a good impromptu speaker, or does he/she have to think about his words?

“I’m a very good impromptu speaker. That’s basically the only speaking I do.”

literally the only time he stops and fully thinks his words through is when he’s full on angry. like legitimately furious. so, not talking to any one in particular here nope not at all i’m sure this will never be relevant at all ever haha, if alex is taking his sweet sweet time to answer, you know you’ve fucked up big time.

7. Is he/she eloquent or inarticulate? Under what circumstances might this change?

“A mix of both, I think. It depends on the subject, but talking is one of my strong suits so it’s not like I can’t convey an opinion.”

he’s probably more eloquent when he’s angry. also sarcastic. it's wild, he really gets his anger from vidia.

Mental and Emotional

1. How intelligent is this character? Is he/she book-smart or street-smart?

“Well, I’m not stupid. I ace most tests. My problem is more just figuring out where to ‘apply myself’. I know a lot about things I actually like and certain social issues like the feminist movement and sexuality stuff. And the only reason I passed maths as a sophomore was because I managed to get the teacher to like me after he’d decided that he hated the class with a passion. He wasn’t even subtle about that, actually. He literally announced it in our second week of classes. Yeah, he didn't fuck around. We had that in common. Anyway, befriending people is the closest I’ve got to street smarts.”

alex’s pun count so far: 4, i think.

2. Does he/she think on his feet, or does he/she need time to deliberate?

“I think a lot more on my feet than I probably should.”

3. Describe the character’s thought process. Is he/she more logical, or more intuitive? Idealistic or practical?

“I’d say more idealistic. I’m an optimist. Apparently those are in short supply nowadays so I’m basically a unicorn. But yeah, probably more intuitive than logical, I’m led by my emotions rather than my head.”

for anyone curious, his mbti is enfp. take that as you will.

4. What kind of education has the character had?

“Imagine a series of private schools full of a mix of the kids of both shockingly successful strippers and the classic pretentious rich assholes. It was a weird juxtaposition. But I’ve gone through all the regular tiers to university.”

5. What are his/her areas of expertise? What, if anything, is he/she interested in learning more about?

“Social issues, probably. I was pretty good at drama. Also I did violin for like 3 years. I still suck but at least I can be rhythmic about it. I don't know what I want to know more about, just a whole bunch of things in general. Biology has always been interesting.”

it hasn't really, he’s just taking any opportunity for a pun.

6. Is he/she an introvert or an extrovert?

“Take a wild guess.”

extrovert, in case it wasn’t clear.

7. Describe the character’s temperament. Is he/she even-tempered or does he/she have mood swings? Cheerful or melancholy? Laid-back or driven?

“I’m pretty even-tempered and cheerful. I’ve got energy but I wouldn’t say I’m driven. My focus can be pretty sporadic sometimes.”

8. How does he/she respond to new people or situations? Is he/she suspicious, relaxed, timid, enthusiastic?

“New people are great. Love ‘em. I’m pretty comfortable with most people, really.”

9. Is he/she more likely to act, or to react?

”Umm… react…?”

10. Which is his/her default: fight or flight?

“I see your fight and flight and raise you; freeze.”

probably fight tbh.

11. Describe the character’s sense of humor. Does he/she appreciate jokes? Puns? Gallows humor? Bathroom humor? Pranks?

“Most humour, really. I can get bi with jokes, but I really ace sexuality puns - and you know that thing that happens where you create some ridiculously elaborate scenario and get really into? Yeah, I love doing that. I also have a compulsive need to make sarcastic comments. I think it’s a genetic thing.”

12. Does the character have any diagnosable mental disorders? If yes, how does he/she deal with them?

“Nope.”

13. What moments in this character’s life have defined him/her as a person?

“Being born was pretty significant. Meeting Jordan, definitely. Learning to embrace my sexuality. I don’t know, a bunch of little things. A bunch of people. Fucking Tyler, unfortunately.” 

fucking tyler page - this boy’s first serious relationship. listen up fam: it was a mess and fucked him up a little for a while there and basically made him doubt himself and his identity. it was toxic af because i have a compulsive need to give my characters unnecessary angst.

14. What does he/she fear?

“Spiders can fuck right off. And I’ve probably got a crippling fear of rejection or not being good enough, like any true teenager or young adult.”

for an optimist you sound pretty cynical there buddy. 

but for real that not being good enough thing.

15. What are his/her hopes or aspirations?

“Good question. I’ll get back to you when I know.”

he has no idea wtf he wants to do with his life he’s gonna be a social worker i guess i just want him to squirm for a bit but probably just having everyone he cares about happy?? what a dork.

16. What is something he/she doesn’t want anyone to find out about him/her?

“Well, it’s not that I don’t want people to know, but half the time I forgot to tell people I’m ace. Not that it’s something you have to tell people at all, but I at this point I have no idea who I’ve told and who I’ve just thought to myself - ‘oh, I should probably let them know at some point’. Other than that, Tyler. It’s just not fun to talk about.” 

fucking tyler. basically the whole deal with tyler he likes to keep under wraps and if he does tell someone who doesn’t know he’s definitely never going to mention that the breaking point of the relationship was tyler hitting him.

but yeah, that asexual thing. pull yourself together alex seriously.

Relationships

1. Describe this character’s relationship with his/her parents.

“Mum’s great. We’re close, and we’ve got each other’s back. Usually that just means her intimidating teachers, or us making comments to each other under our breath at events we have to go to or me pretending to be sick to get her out of meetings, but it’s fun. She’s pretty casual, really. Her coworkers probably think I have cancer or something, which is also fun. Wait - they might actually. Oh man, this explains why they were so weird and excessively understanding when they found out that we were fostering kids. They totally thought it was so Mum could find a replacement kid in case I died. Oh man, this explains so much. That’s why they looked so concerned when we adopted Jordan - they totally thought I was going to die. I need to text Mum and see if she can confirm it. Ooh, we could fake my death - actually a coma would be better, that way we can still mess with them and no one will have a heart attack when they see me.”

they have fun.

2. Does the character have any siblings? What is/was their relationship like?

“Jordan. I love her, she’s amazing. We’re definitely close, and it took a while to get to that point. She was the angriest 12 year old I’d ever met and I swear, I swear, it took months before I even saw her smile. That was such an achievement for me. We’ve got a pretty normal sibling relationship - we tease each other, we take care of each other, she threatens to punch people in the face, it’s a riot. I’d be glad to be replaced by her if I died of cancer.”

3. Are there other blood relatives to whom he/she is close? Are there ones he/she can’t stand?

“We don’t see them that much, but I have grandparents. Grandma’s got a whole bunch of interesting stories about interesting people and jesus fucking christ, was their marriage nonexistent. I don’t know about Grandpa. I think he might actually be dead. Mum doesn’t really like either very much regardless.”

you think he’s dead?? alex wtf????

4. Are there other, unrelated people whom he/she considers part of his family? What are his/her relationships with them?

“Well, mum’s friends are all practically my aunts and I grew up with their kids, so there’s that. Birdie in particular. She’s basically my little sister and she’s the literal embodiment of sunshine, I swear. I take care of her and Farrah whenever I can, even if the latter makes it difficult sometimes. And all the kids that have stayed with us - except for one or two that were legitimately assholes - are just automatically part of the family.”

don’t mind me just making assumptions about the pixie hollow fam.

5. Who is/was the character’s best friend? How did they meet?

“Jordan, probably.”

6. Does he/she have other close friends?

“Birdie, Farrah, Kennedy, the Belle’s - hey, if I say Scarlett, how annoyed do you think Noah would get? Because Scarlett Blake is fucking adorable and I’d be honoured to consider her a close friend.”

more assumptions don’t mind me.

also why do you need to mess with noah come on now alex.

7. Does he/she make friends easily, or does he/she have trouble getting along with people?

“I’m decent at making new friends, probably because I’m pretty friendly and trustworthy. I make a point of not fucking with people.”

you can't see but he's doing finger guns bc he's a dork.

8. Which does he/she consider more important: family or friends?

“Family, if I have to choose.”

9. Is the character single, married, divorced, widowed? Has he/she been married more than once?

“Single, I’m all bi myself. And yes, at nineteen I have been definitely been married not once but twice.”

10. Is he/she currently in a romantic relationship with someone other than a spouse?

“Oh no, you totally got me!”

alex please.

11. Who was his/her first crush? Who is his/her latest?

“Some girl called Alesha when I was five. I’m not sure where she is now but I remember that she always had freakishly intricate braids. Lately? I don’t know if you’d call it a ‘crush’, it’s more of an, I don’t know, mutual attraction?”

lol whatever you say alex. you're looking very casual there with your fond smile and lack of eye contact.

12. What does he/she look for in a romantic partner?

“Okay, first off - nice hair. Not saying it’s necessary but, you know, always a bonus. Secondly - can survive without sex. Don't think that one needs much explaining. And, I don’t know, just being comfortable with them. Being able to feel like there isn’t any pressure and like I can talk and they won't get annoyed and like they actually really care. Someone I can have stupid inside jokes with and just have fun with. Someone that makes me happy and that I can make happy.”

alex that's sweet and all but what is your deal with the hair like seriously.

13. Does the character have children? Grandchildren? If yes, how does he/she relate to them? If no, does he/she want any?

“Shockingly, I am not a father. But, one day, I want kids. Maybe not any time soon, but yeah, I definitely see it in the future for me.”

if you don't want kids you do not have a chance with alex in the long term.

14. Does he/she have any rivals or enemies?

“Not that I know of. If I do I don't give a fuck. Literally.”

15. What is the character’s sexual orientation? Where does he/she fall on the Kinsey scale?

“I guess you could say I’m pretty ace.”

also biromantic without any real preference.

16. How does he/she feel about sex? How important is it to him/her?

he literally just snorted. he's literally trying not to laugh.

“Okay, seriously, though, what’s the big deal with sticking parts of yourself inside another person? Who looked at the process of making babies and went ah, yes, this will be a big deal for society, the act of sex. And that’s not even mentioning the concept of virginity which was fucking made up to make people feel bad about not having banged someone yet. Oh, and don’t even get me started with the double standards for girls, I mean -”

and that’s enough social justice ranting, thank you alex.

17. What are his/her turn-ons? Turn-offs? Weird bedroom habits?

“Actually - you know what? I’d probably - reluctantly, mind you - sleep with someone if they went all out. Neither of us would enjoy it, but if someone, like, took me to a super expensive restaurant and hired out a theme park and did that sky writing thing and did the whole rose petals leading to the bedroom and some scented candles - actually, that’s a fire hazard, I don’t need the candles - but if someone went all out, you kind of have to give it a go, you know? Good thing the people I’m attracted to aren’t billionaire hopeless romantics, because it would be pretty uncomfortable for everyone involved. But if you want weird bedroom habits, I’ve been told I talk in my sleep.”

okay thanks for that, nice to know you’re taking this seriously alex. for those wanting some semblance of a proper answer (admittedly to a slightly different question), alex is definitely a kiss-me-hard-and-push-me-up-against-a-wall (or other flat surface) kind of guy. likes biting, cool with hickeys, not that into tongue. go wild kids, this is literally the only character that i can give an answer for this question.

Beliefs

1. Do you know your character’s astrological (zodiac of choice) sign? How well does he/she fit type?

“Birthday’s June 10th, which makes me a Gemini. It fits well enough - good communicators, witty, indecisive, energetic. It works.”

2. Is this character religious, spiritual, both, or neither? How important are these elements in his/her life?

“Yeah, the bible has had a great impact on my life.”

no, they aren't very important to him. 

3. Does this character have a personal code of morals or ethics? If so, how did that begin? What would it take to compromise it?

“Doesn't everyone? It's just the normal stuff to be honest; don't be an asshole for no reason, let people do whatever the fuck they want as long as they aren't hurting anyone, don't treat people like objects. That one really annoys the hell out of me.”

4. How does he/she regard beliefs that differ from his? Is he/she tolerant, intolerant, curious, indifferent?

“All for it unless they're disrespecting someone’s existence, then they can fuck off. And people who like pineapple on pizza, what is wrong with you?”

5. What prejudices does he/she hold? Are they irrational or does he/she have a good reason for them?

“You know, there's probably some that society has planted in my subconscious but I try to avoid being consciously prejudiced. Unless you're into that pineapple on pizza bullshit.”

Daily Life

1. What is the character’s financial situation? Is he/she rich, poor, comfortable, in debt?

“We're fairly wealthy. Yay for us, I guess.”

2. What is his/her social status? Has this changed over time, and if so, how has the change affected him/her?

“I don't know, I don't think it's changed much. Pretty upper class.”

3. Where does he/she live? House, apartment, trailer? Is his/her home his/her castle or just a place to crash? What condition is it in? Does he/she share it with others?

“Condo in Vegas. Sounds exciting, right? It's not bad, everything is open 24 hours and always a ton of tourists so that's good for people watching. The condo’s kind of big, especially for three people, but pretty comfortable. We all get our own rooms - even if Jordan barges into mine whenever she wants. Also the wifi is really good, which is the most important thing.”

4. Besides the basic necessities, what does he/she spend his/her money on?

“Food. Clothes, I guess. Going out to the movies or exploring the city. There's this place down the road that does the best bubble tea, and it's right next to this phenomenal Chinese restaurant so I always end up spending money whenever I go down that street.”

5. What does he/she do for a living? Is he/she good at it? Does he/she enjoy it, or would he/she rather be doing something else?

“Don't have a job, so...”

6. What are his/her interests or hobbies? How does he/she spend his/her free time?

“Hanging out with friends, reading up on something so I don't have to do homework, I’ll go to a party or a club or something if it sounds like it’ll be fun, stuff like that.”

7. What are his/her eating habits? Does he/she skip meals, eat out, drink alcohol, avoid certain foods?

“I don't skip meals, or try not to. Mum’s cooking is pretty hit and miss so we eat at restaurants and get take out a bit more than we probably should, especially if no one can be bothered cooking. I don't drink that much - thank Jordan for that, she actively despises the stuff. Not that she doesn't have good reason to, though.”

Associations

Which of the following do you associate with the character, or which is his/her favorite:

1. Color? 


like summer day sky blue. also yellow, tbh.

2. Smell? 


chocolate cake.

3. Time of day? 


late morning.

4. Season? 


spring.

5. Book?

think john green.


6. Music? 


think fun., walk the moon, paramore.

7. Place? 


sitting around a bonfire, talking and laughing with people.

8. Substance? 


does sarcasm count?

9. Plant? 


sunflower.

10. Animal?

probably like a dog or something. which is ironic bc he’s a cat person.

[mjwillow]

Anything but light

Following up a shitpost with some actual writing content, have a snippet:

---

"Thank you, Teník," Istvan said with a little nod, then looked at Torjen. "Well, Knight? What do you say?"

Torjen hesitated, looking from Istvan to his suit, and then attempting not to stare at Teník on the way back, noticed Gona leaning against a table behind Istvan, watching them with interest.

They were the enemy, a loud and familiar voice inside him screamed. Vendulans. Void-touched husks. Not soldiers, clearly not, but he had few illusions on whether even the odd little Teník could pick him up and throw him against the wall like the sack of bones he was. But none of them were trying to kill him, at least, not yet, not while he hadn't said 'yes' or 'no' yet.

"And if I say 'no'?" he asked, levelling a stare at Istvan but only finding himself unsettled about the way the thing frowned in such a human way, though it smoothed out into the husk's default serene expression soon enough.

"That would be disappointing," it said. "I have helped you, have shown you we mean no harm. We mean to end the fighting, and I have no wish to fight you. If you say 'no' we will let you be on your way." It gestured at Torjen's suit. "But then Teník will not have a chance to make the repairs your suit so badly needs."

"Blackmail," Torjen said. A corner of Istvan's mouth twitched.

"An exchange," it corrected. "We help you, you help us. And we may just end the war, in doing so."

He ought to say no. Be reasonable, patriotic, and take his chances. He had nothing but a husk's word of its peaceful intentions. Besides, he had been due back at base hours ago, and there were few enough Knights that one of them going missing after a patrol would prompt Captain Ylva to send a new patrol to look for him—who would be wasting their time and risking their own lives while he was safe on the road to Amaliaborg.

But they had helped him, when he needed it, and now they needed his help …

"Fuck it, I'll help you," he said. "And you can't keep calling me 'Knight'. My name is Torjen. Also, I have no travel gear with me … "

"We can get what you need," Gona said, pushing away from her table and joining them. "Not a clean uniform, obviously," she added, eyeing Torjen's brown-and-blue tunic and trousers. "But extra clothes that fit, at least, food, some camping essentials … It's about a week from here to Amaliaborg, right?"

"That depends on where 'here' is," Torjen said. "You never answered my question about that."

"We are a few hours northwest of the border where I found you—about half a day away from the mines," Istvan said.

"Then if you can keep up with my suit's longer legs, it's about a week to Amaliaborg, yes."

"Good," Istvan said, nodded. "Teník, get started on repairs. I want to leave in the morning."

"Yes, First One," Teník said and rolled away. Istvan winced slightly at the epithet, but continued without addressing it. "Gona, you are confident you can get everything we will need in the village?"

"I can do you one better: while you were traipsing around the forest, I went and bought some supplies," Gona said. "I will get some extra clothes for our Knight here, but almost everything else we should have already."

"And you were the one saying I would never find a Kersteni willing to help," Istvan said, the same fondness as earlier creeping back into its voice. Gona smiled crookedly.

"Well. I know you longer than today, I thought it best to prepare for success and keep an 'I told you so' in reserve just in case I was right after all." She pushed away from the table and turned to leave. "Give him some food while I'm away. Inanna's blessings can only do so much, he needs to get his strength back."

She moved quickly into the shadows around the edge of the cavern, her footsteps fading more slowly. Teník had already moved away, skinny arms buried deep in Torjen's suit. Istvan turned to look at Torjen, a slight tilt to its head.

"Hungry?" it asked.

[moreweirdfuture-blog]

NO AUDIBLE DIALOGUE (奇妙な未来 # 003)

Michael went home for his grandmother’s funeral.

 It was a few days later, early one morning when you couldn’t tell the difference between night and day, Michael dropped a glass and it shattered on the floor.

 “Careful,” his grandmother advised. “That glass’ll cutcha.”

 His mother refused to leave her bedroom, but his father got a kick from it and kept bragging about its features. His sister Elaine was six and walked up to her mom and challenged, “I thought she wasn’t going to wake up ever again?”

 Its capacity for language fascinated Michael. He was almost convinced of its humanity until one night when its gaze and smile froze in place. He assumed the battery had died, but he left the room without checking because he got the chills.

 In the morning, her eyes were glued in the same trajectory.

 “Do you have to leave so soon?” his mother asked when he was packed and ready. “Don’t leave me here with that thing.”

 “It’s not that bad,” Michael said and hugged her. His mom scrunched her face.

 “I don’t like it one bit,” she said. “Don’t ever do that to me.” Michael promised he wouldn’t as she drove him to the airport. He always missed home as soon as he left.

 He passed an advertisement for the youtwo when he stepped off the plane.

 Michael worked on a program that allowed your phone to have entire conversations in your place. It was called youtwo.

 Just the other day, Michael noticed a text dialogue between his youtwo and his friend Ruis about 20th century French film editing. Except for a few artifacts, Michael’s youtwo was a stunning product of linguistic science.

 “It’s more than statistics,” Michael explained at a sales meeting. “Users are convinced of its humanity.”

 The fluorescence blurred the stockholders’ faces until one smile became many.  

 Michael recognized a Chopin composition when he came home.

 “I don’t know why you play, “ he said to his husband seated at the piano. Then he signed, in front of his face so it interrupted his play and he had to notice, You’re deaf.

 The music stopped. Kyle glared at Michael and walked out of the room.

 Michael hardly even thought about his husband anymore except that he was rarely there.

 Michael had fallen in love with someone he had never met.

 It started as a bet. His high-school friend Ruis wanted Michael to see if he could fool a man into thinking Michael was a woman over the Internet. Michael didn’t want to.

 “I mean,” Ruis laughed, “You’re effeminate enough already.” Michael gave her a look.

 “That’s,” Michael looked for the word, “Sneaky.” Ruis blew a raspberry.

 “The youtwo isn’t?” Ruis said. “How do I know when I’m texting you that I’m talking to you, or your youtwo!” 

 “They’re the same,” Michael defended. “The youtwo is trained on a corpus of the user’s text, so, it’s me.”

 “No,” Ruis smiled through her teeth. “It’s not.” Michael wasn’t convinced, so Ruis added, “Think of it as a Turing test.”

 They laughed and drank beer in the abandoned observatory. Michael took the bet because whenever he heard the word test, he envisioned the grade, and how much higher it would be than everyone else’s.

 Michael had spent years as a linguist for the FBI, running semantic analysis on chat corpora to anticipate sex offenders.

 He had learned much about human psychology. The major mistake any sex offender knew to avoid was coming on too strong, too fast. It had to be slow, so grooming could happen.

 At first, they talked about nothing.

 His name was Chris, twenty-nine. They chatted over text. He was pretty boring, Michael remembered, handsome, assuming the picture was real. They flirted, and it jump started Michael.  

 Before Chris, Michael slept until noon and struggled to get out of bed. After, he delighted in waking up, and even took up running and yoga for no reason other than to try.

 Michael used a picture of Ruis, one where she had her hair done up and her hip off to the side looking ridiculous but fun.

 Chris wrote that Michael was gorgeous and even though it was obviously a compliment meant for Ruis, it felt just the same. He was getting attention from the kind of guy he used to fear.

 “He likes your picture,” Michael told Ruis. They had been friends since high school algebra and literature. Michael liked binary and she liked we real cool.

 They came up with a secret language where vowels could represent one another.

 ded je hur wot a sed = did you hear what I said?

 Michael used it to confess a crush he had on Ruis’ boyfriend, a skinny jewish boy who couldn’t pronounce invisible and who played soccer every Tuesday. They sat in the stands and Michael would fantasize about kissing him.  

 One afternoon Ruis pushed scrap paper into Michael’s lap.

 Scribbled next to You do not do, you do not do and a list of irregular Spanish conjugations she had written, Ma befrond laks gois.  

 Michael wrote back, Hew du u knu?

 Becos a fund gei purn an hes liptap.

 Suddenly Michael lost interest.

 In high school, none of his crushes were gay. They were straight. He never made eye contact with them, and it was in the locker room he first learned the mistake of touching one. Michael was trying to get from the locker to the door.

 He was square faced with a high edge up and lunged to punch Michael.

 “Touch me again,” he threatened.

 Kyle had lost his hearing after they were married. Doctors stuck plugs in his ears and prescribed medication, but he looked like a freeway exit you get farther and farther away from. He quit DJing. He sold an unopened Underground Resistance cd for five-hundred dollars. A few days later, Michael had found the money ripped up in a blender.

 It had happened suddenly.

 The poor guy had been dizzy for days, to the point of sick. Then he woke up and zip, couldn’t hear a sound, just feel its dull throb.

 Michael was never sure why they married. Kyle had admitted to loving someone else even before, back that summer where they would make out between the Leland cypress. Kyle would spit in Michael’s ear and suck it out with a chuckle that made Michael cross-eyed. Kyle whispered, “Every little thing I do, you’re on my mind,” and Michael just stood there kissing him.  

 Kyle spun hip-hop in the black clubs from Crescent Heights down to West 3rd. He arranged tracks in an apartment that smelled like sawdust. Michael would jab Kyle, talk about patterns and math, and Kyle would shrug. He was never a rational guy like Michael. His thoughts didn’t live in logic, but in the pulse that made logic possible.

 He worked a day job as a mechanic and would leave giant handprints all over Michael’s textbooks.

 “You’re dirty,” Michael would say.

 “You better believe it.”

 Michael was finishing his dissertation, what would become youtwo, and Kyle always said:

 “You’re gonna realize,” then he grabbed his crotch, “You can’t program this.”

 He made a song especially for Michael. Soon, Michael’s brain defaulted Kyle.

 Michael caught him one night kissing some greasy kid with studded earrings and goatee in a lilac haze of patio smoke. When Kyle found Michael outside the club, Michael shoved his hands in his pockets and couldn’t decide to leave or stay. Kyle smoked a cigarette and convinced Michael to share an uber. He set the path to repeat the perimeter of Hancock Park, and Michael saw the tops of old homes as Kyle strummed Michael on the one and four.  

 They were married with the photos to prove it. Then Kyle lost his hearing.

 Michael bought flash cards and a couple apps to help teach Kyle to sign.

 One time Kyle could not remember the gesture for dance. He gave up and stormed from the room.

 That night, Michael found him beating his head with his fists, so Michael wrestled his arms to stop him.  

 Later, barely awake, Kyle grabbed Michael’s wrist.

 “Why are you always making me do things I don’t want?”

 Since he couldn’t hear the reaction, Kyle said whatever.

 It was easy to ignore someone you couldn’t hear.

 “Here.” Michael helped Kyle reach for his glasses. Kyle snatched them away. “I got it.”

 Michael telecommuted and lived in a suburb. What he admired most was the silver carpet got watered every evening at 1800 and the home owner’s association issued a newsletter first of every month, always with some kind of orthophonographic error. Those were a real treat.

 Nothing that wasn’t supposed to happen would.

 Chris talked about the weather, safe topic to break ice. Michael realized he must be a nice guy if he was willing to talk to a random stranger about nothing in particular. Michael started to like him.

 About a week later, Kyle was bouncing silverware off the walls because he couldn’t find a fork. “I can’t hear any of it,” he said when Michael tried to stop him. “Go back in your hole.”

 So Michael did, and he found out Chris loved Escape from L.A just like Michael. Michael forgot about Kyle and the noise. Chris wrote that he didn’t know a girl could be so into action movies. Michael felt sick.

 “I won the test,” Michael insisted. “He thinks I’m a woman. I’m done.”

 “Okay, okay,” Ruis relented. “No harm.”

 “No.” Michael shook his head. “There is harm.” He had begun to think about Chris incessantly. “It’s fucked up to lie like that.” Ruis looked confused and did eyebrow math.

 “So… you don’t want the money?”

 “Keep it,” Michael intoned.

 One night Kyle was gone without a note or trace, probably to Seattle. Michael was busy writing expression code for a new youtwo feature. Michael wondered if one day Kyle would leave him and his thoughts wandered to Chris.

 Chris asked if Michael wanted to watch Memento and Michael was happy for the distraction. They synced the video files and it felt like a date, but that was stupid so he kept it to himself.

 Michael pointed out a cut where Teddy says you think he’s still here? and his mouth is clearly not moving. Never caught that, Chris wrote. Good eye.

 Michael swelled with pride.

 Kyle never cared for Michael’s trivia. They would watch movies with Kyle’s feet set on Michael’s lap. Kyle would work them around the more he lost interest. Michael might point out continuity errors to keep his attention, but Kyle would tell him point blank, “I really don’t care.”

 Plus, now the captions had to be turned on. They got in the way, and when the caption really sucked, it just read no audible dialogue.

 Couldn’t they just leave it blank for the same effect?

 Chris pointed out a discontinuity with Leonard’s tattoo SG13-71U and what it should have been, SG13-7IU. Michael was impressed. Good eye, Michael wrote. Chris gave a =).

 They talked for hours until Kyle tossed his car keys and slammed the screen door.

 He asked Chris to hold on, that his friend had called, which wasn’t a complete lie, since your spouse should also be your friend.  

 Michael found Kyle in the kitchen gulping orange juice from the container.

 “Where ya been?” Michael spun his right hand. Kyle finished the orange juice and sucked in a breath of air.

 “The fuck you always ask me where I been?” He was livid and quickly calmed down. “What do it matter, I was out.”  

Michael had a high school crush on a light-skinned black boy who sat next to him on the bus. He always read a different manga. Michael thought it was so cool. Samurais. Aliens. Computers.

 Michael tried to get it so they would sit together, but then the guy’s parents bought him a ’59 Chevy and Michael hardly saw him at all.

 Then he caught the guy kissing a girl once in that Chevy. He brooded for weeks. If only he had noticed me, Michael thought. That could be me in that Chevy.

 Michael told Chris sorry, his friend was having a rough go of it, needed advice. Chris said he was tired, but it was fun and they should do it again.

 Michael dreamt Chris picked him up in a ’59 Chevy. Michael was the only passenger allowed.

 Michael got free tickets to CES through his job, and Kyle was having a good day and went on the five-hour drive with him.

 It was CES for sure, because Michael couldn’t tell the coffee lines from refugee lines.

 Kyle marveled over earbuds that could bring hearing to the deaf. Then he saw the speculative price tag.

 Michael had to push past three undergrads in plaid and low-rise to see the Mariah Carey and Madonna replicas. Kyle emerged and hooked Michael in a neck lock before letting him go.

 The replicas could speak with a combination of Michael’s youtwo software, while another company built the text-to-speech mechanism, which had recently won awards for its startling reproduction of human language—although it still had problems with agglutinative languages like Hungarian, because the polysyllabic inflectional morphology of those languages introduced an amazing amount of perplexity that TTS automata were unequipped to handle.

 “My dad got one,” Michael signed to Kyle. Michael touched his chin to his thumb to say grandmother.

 His grandmother had been ninety-eight. Lived for a century to sit in a rocking chair facing eggshell sheetrock.

 “What does she think about all day?” his mother asked. Michael pictured one of those halls where the doors all led back to the same room, and the hall curved infinity it kept going so far.  

 “You’re avoiding me,” his grandmother accused Michael during a visit.

 “I have no idea,” Michael would say to his mother. His mother had come up with the nickname that thing for her, and it made Michael laugh. His mom liked the strangers in the grocery line more than his grandmother.

 His grandmother was so out of practice speaking she could hardly finish a word without stuttering through it five times. She liked farm stories, and, Michael did you know that the cows could be friends with the donkeys?

 Talking to her felt like volunteer work.

 “She did not speak to her son for four years,” his mother had said several times, always emphasizing four. “What mother does that?”

 Kyle looked bored, signed the holy trinity, walked off and bumped into one of the undergrads in a backwards cap.

 The guy expected an apology and when he didn’t get it he mumbled fucking nigger and Kyle just kept walking where he wanted.

 By evening, full of holoscreens and tomorrow, Michael wandered the hotel lobby. A group of girls in pixie skirts and cone heels were on about a club. Kyle agreed to go only if his new friends could come too. Michael said fine and they packed into a car with some artists and a guy who smelled awful. Michael kept accidentally crossing eyes with a girl whose sclera were blacked out, or maybe she was staring at him. Then she sighed.

 “I wish people would just get the hint, like why do I have to say it.” Her friend broke into laughs. Michael was uncomfortable and texted Chris, y r ppl annoying and he texted back a little while later, yah they suck. Michael snickered.

 When he looked up Kyle was staring at Michael from the corner of his eyes.

 “Wish I knew what’s got you in stitches.”

 Your nose could feel the bassline hump the floor a block away. Kyle danced a line for the bathroom with his hands tucked in some guy’s pockets. He emerged with his eyes burning holes in Michael, grabbed Michael and they grinded the throb with the Reebok, hip to waist. Michael dreamt of the song, round and round I go, where I’ll stop, only you know, I guess it’s all in my mind.

 Middle of the night Michael saw SG13-7IU in the mirror, blinked his eyes. The microwave’s TRATS 223RP instruction was inverted like alien code.

 Sunrise woke Michael, but Kyle was already up staring at earbuds in front of their hotel window.

 Kyle was in a good enough mood that Michael bought a seashell from a souvenir shack and held it to Kyle’s ear. Can you hear the ocean? he signed, and Michael thought he witnessed a smile.

 Kyle’s forehead smudged the window on the drive home. He watched the cactus redshift. His foot would not stop shaking and his fingers were tight. Michael had been fiddling with the satellite radio when Kyle punched the console and cracked the screen.

 The next morning, Michael could not find Kyle. He often disappeared for weeks on end. He would hitchhike to Seattle, where someone he loved more lived.  

 He teared up one evening watching an advertisement for wind power, and it so happened that Chris was online.

 “I don’t know what they’re talking about half the time,” Michael’s grandmother used to say. She was so old that even mundane talk eluded her.

 Would Michael get so old that one day he wouldn’t even be able to carry on a conversation?

 The last time Michael had seen her, that thanksgiving she hobbled the kitchen carrying bowls from the table to the sink. His mom eyed her over the brim of her glasses. With a look of disgust, his mother waited for her to drop the plates and glasses. His grandmother had fallen just the month earlier and broken her arm, and his mother was waiting for it to happen again with a hidden delight.

 “I think she fell on purpose,” Michael’s mother said. “She wants attention.”

 His grandmother had not been invited to Michael’s wedding, because his parents thought that she would withhold money from them when she died if she knew Michael had married a man.

 “She’s just backwards,” his mother would say. “Better she doesn’t know.”

 His grandmother pulled him off to the side every chance she got, whenever he visited, which was infrequent, maybe once a year, because he was very busy and preferred solitude. She showed him chiwara statues and clay masks from Kush, and photos of her standing beside prehistoric plants she ferried from death’s brink, and she would point and say, “plants tell you what they want,” and that you could always rely on that.

 It would be refreshing if people were like that, Michael thought.

 She showed him photographs from 1996, but Michael did not believe it was the same person.

 She wanted to talk so much that she agreed with everything you said, so thankful for the company, which reminded Michael of those telephone recordings they used to have when you would call to pay a bill, and they would ask if you’d like to leave feedback on your experience afterward, like:

 Right, let’s rate how the programmed voice made you feel.  

 “Where do you think the most magical place in the world is?” she asked him one night. Most places looked best in photos, and then he got there, and he wondered why he made the trip in the first place. Michael shrugged.

 “Dunno,” he said, too disinterested to complete a sentence.

 “I don’t think your parents like me,” she said to Michael once from the veranda. He sighed. He was the only person in the family who paid her any attention. Her casita was being built, a requirement from Michael’s parents who could no longer stand the sight of her and wanted her to move out of the main house.

 “She expects us to entertain her,” his mother would say. “If only you knew how much I put up with her.”  

 It was one spring Michael and his father were looking at old science fiction films on IMDB that his mother came in the room, out of breath and complaining about his grandmother when his father yelled enough that Michael thought he might have a heart attack, “I wish she would hurry up and die.”

 “You come visit me anytime,” his grandmother said to him.

 The next time he did, she was dead.

 With Kyle gone, Michael hardly left his room. He went to the gym in the morning to run, sat at his computer while he reviewed analytics for the youtwo, and talked to Chris.

 Michael had gotten so close to Chris that he would ask questions like—and with all the seriousness you would normally save for pressing the president on his plans for nuclear deterrence—Do you like kalamata olives?

 They talked about artificial intelligence taking over the White House.

 Chris sent him messages in binary. 00111100 00110011.

 Michael expressed his fear for public bathrooms: a deep-seated phobia of small tiles and urine, mixed with a primal anxiety related to filth and taboo desire.

 Chris told him that he donated money to Planned Parenthood, and Michael was so impressed.

 What a stand up guy.

 In undergraduate, there was this one boy Michael had a daylong crush on because the guy had flung his hands up and said, “Fuck a feminist,” and there was something sexy about the way he flaunted his maleness.

 Like he knew he was privileged due to it and didn’t care.

 He had cybersex with Chris one night that it was raining so hard you would’ve thought it was programmed. It was cold, and Michael was fiddling with the alarm because he could never remember the code. Afterward they talked about the rain and Michael wrote a poem about it:

                                                 When I rain, I pour—

                                               But when I pour, I’m not raining.

                                               What am I?

 Do you covet things? Chris asked afterward. Michael didn’t understand.

 I don’t think I do, he wrote back.

 We should give up all attachments, Chris wrote. Our attachments will only bring us pain.

 What if you love someone? Michael asked.

 Love is selfish, Chris responded.

奇妙な未来 

Michael had originally referred to the youtwo as KYLE, which was of course a reference to ELIZA. Michael trained the bot through word chunks called n-grams.

 With unigrams, KYLE sounded nonsensical:

 Months because the and issue of year next September we did you like

 With bigrams, you witnessed some connective tissue between chunks—  

 Last week through the process of Hudson corporation would seem to complete the implementation.

 —you still knew that the thing you were talking to was just that, a thing.

 Trigrams gave you the uncanny sense that you might not be talking to a machine, but you probably were, because the relationship between constituents was still lacking or hazy:

 They also point to a six billion dollar transaction. This indeed will be what they tell you. You want to?

 Finally, mixed with pattern matching and entity recognition, quadrigrams provided the illusion of speaking to a human being:

 Amanda, maybe you could advise me on what to do? I have been wondering about that lately. And I know you told me you were a good listener. I could really use that right now.

 It pained him to think of his grandmother, who was always interested in hearing about his work when no one else was, so much that she agreed to be a subject in his research.

 “You just speak into the microphone,” Michael explained.

 It was late one night when news of the protests was everywhere, he was only calmed by the thought of words. Beautiful words that had meaning only because people wanted them to, and that they would fight over, and fall in love with.

 It was a syntax textbook and it went:

 In (29a), we have the same kind of headedness. Very is the head and quickly is the head and we have two heads and each has their own head and this is called hierarchical structure.

 It was subliminal with it and he suddenly thought of giving Chris head. It made him fantasize for the rest of the night and when he woke he smelled clean clothes.

 Kyle had been gone for nearly four months. Michael wondered if he would ever see Kyle again. In his absence, Michael felt a pit grow in his stomach.

 Would Michael wait eternity with sheetrock?

 Michael could only escape the thoughts through Chris. Maybe he was a monk, Michael thought. He donated to charities, went on for hours about the blind, and said he overtipped service workers because, after all, who else would do their jobs?

 How could Michael match his virtue?

 But Chris had stopped messaging Michael. Sure, there were intermittent messages about the weather, but nothing of any substance. One conversation in particular bothered Michael. He had asked: 

 How’s your mom?

 Chris’ response:

 It’s so nice out today!

 The non-sequitur made Michael feel empty. Their text message history was a never-ending dialogue, where you couldn’t find a single period because why would two lovers end anything?

 And here it was, ruined.

 Michael insisted on meeting Chris. He sent message after message, and after days of no response, Michael grew sick. He called Ruis and they watched movies where the soundtrack had words like it must have been love and moving on and baby he’s a liar.

 It was the next day when Michael’s heart jumped and Chris said yeah they should meet and they agreed on the Mulholland memorial.

 Michael’s heart was in his throat. He could hardly move his legs. What would Chris say? What would their friendship become afterward?

 Chris looked like the man Michael had seen in his photos. He was small, and wore clothes that squeezed him like a teenager. His grin made Michael feel like he was filling out government forms. Sign here. Black Ink Only.

 Michael’s blood rushed. Here was the man he had been talking to for nearly two years. Michael came to trust him more than Kyle. But could Chris forgive Michael for lying about being a woman?

 “I’m so sorry I was lying to you,” Michael said. Chris shrugged and offered a sympathetic smile.

 “Oh,” he said, like gravity was still the same, so why fret, “it’s no problem.”

 Michael could not have been happier. Chris was a very enlightened person.

 But he acted differently in person than he did online. Maybe it’s just his way, Michael thought. They walked down the street and talked about their day just as they had been doing for so long on their phones. But Chris was silent, and had little to add, and Michael thought—maybe he really is a monk.

 It struck Michael as odd that Chris couldn’t remember Michael’s birthday—he had told Michael happy birthday twice, so he knew.

 And then Michael felt funny because Chris couldn’t remember what Michael did, even though Michael talked about it every week because he loved his job, and that was one thing he liked about Chris so much—he was always so inquisitive about his field.

 “Wait,” Chris said and stopped Michael. “You created the youtwo?” Michael beamed with pride. They had spoken about this many times before—why was this news? But Michael ate it up.

 “I did,” he said.

 Chris coughed and his face grew grim.

 “I should tell you something,” Chris muttered. Michael was still smiling. He had met the love of his life, in person, and here they were.

 “What is it?” Michael asked. What could it possibly be? Michael had gotten through the worst—confess a lie and be absolved.

 “I actually,” Chris struggled for the words, “haven’t ever really,” like he had thought of how to say it for quite some time, “talked to you,” but couldn’t figure out how to arrange them in such a way that wouldn’t make it feel like a punch to the stomach. “Before.” 

 “What?”

 “Yeah,” Chris added, like finishing a math equation, “it was right after we first started talking. I sort of knew you were a guy? But I didn’t want to be mean, so I turned my youtwo on and you know how it is, you don’t pay attention to the conversations that thing has.”  

 Michael felt like someone had just removed all the alphabet’s vowels and the leftovers fit together wrong.

 “So it wasn’t you? All this time?” Michael’s smile melted.

 Chris looked apologetic. 

“I turned the features off so it would only talk about superficial stuff,” Chris said. “But it was too late, by that time you had been talking to it for like...a year?” 

Michael was suddenly frustrated at the little girl across the street blabbering incoherently. 

“I’m totally willing to become friends with you. I don’t really know you, but, why not?”

But he looked like the Alzheimer’s patient trying to make heads or tails out of family members, and Michael knew there was nothing there. 

Michael thought and left his grandmother. When he fell asleep, he got home and closed his eyes. 

How had he been so stupid? How had he spent the past two years of his life involved with a text program? 

One of his own creation at that. 

 And all those talks about how awful people were, and how people were so awful, and how people were so mean, and here Chris was, complaining about the politician in one breath and matching their duplicity in the same.

 Except it wasn’t Chris. It was a program.

 But it was Chris. A facsimile of him.

 But Chris did not know who Michael was, so it wasn’t.

 Or it was.

 Michael had a nightmare sometime the next week where his mother had died and his father replicated her, and then she scratched her face off. He called his father the next day and said he would be flying out for thanksgiving.  

 It was a few nights before the trip that the alarm went off in the middle of the night. Michael jolted awake and fell to the floor. It was gray and the tile was cold, and he heard static. Michael held his hands to his ears and stumbled into the hall. When he got into the living room a dark figure was sitting at the dinner table.

 The alarm shook the house. Michael rubbed his eyes and leaned on the wall. A sliver of television light lit Kyle up. He twisted his keys around his fingers.

 I thought you changed the locks, Kyle signed. The noise was so loud Michael could feel his ears itch. He scrambled to input the alarm code when he felt hands reach out for his neck and pull him away from the wall console and knock him to the floor. Kyle’s hands wrapped tightly around Michael’s neck until Michael closed his eyes and could feel sleep settling in, a light headed and happy sleep.

 When he woke, Kyle had packed his things and was sat square in the front room. Michael’s neck felt tender and his voice was shallow.

 Where are you going? Michael signed. Maybe Michael would never have all of Kyle’s attention.

 I’m leaving, he signed and stood. Michael could feel anger rising inside him. He thought of the cruelest thing he could say, but it just wasn’t in him.

 I fell in love with someone, Michael signed. Then he put his hand over his heart and made a pitter-patter effect.

 Who? Kyle signed.

 Michael pointed to himself.

 I fell in love with myself, he signed. Kyle nodded and pulled his sunglasses down.

 When Michael had gone home for Thanksgiving, he could not find his grandmother’s replica.

 “That thing was too weird,” his mom said. “We put her in the garage.” Michael felt a lump in his throat. They ate dinner and Michael cleaned the plates. They asked where Kyle was and Michael said he didn’t know, and his father invited him into his study where they looked through old landscaping designs.  

His sister Elaine was seated in front of an old 16-bit video game, and the music sounded sweet and clear. He stroked her hair and she fidgeted.

 The pixels danced. The colors were magenta, cyan, rayon, and fuchsia. Michael got lost in the patterns of graphics, the little tree sprites cut and pasted until a screen boundary told them to stop.

 At half past midnight he wandered into the hallway and down past the kitchen, where the pendant lighting made him think of kitchens in department stores, no one cooks in them, and he descended the steps into the garage.

 His grandmother’s replica had been propped in the corner. He pulled blankets and wrapping paper and adjusted her head until it fit the socket. He fixed stray hairs and patted her clothes. She had been buried in a pair of frumpy jeans, his mother had called them frumpy. His grandmother had always said, what use did she have to look good for anybody?

 “The whole world’s trying to look good,” she said once.  

 There was a storm outside and the rain splattered the window squares of the garage. Michael looked at his phone and all it said was the time.

 The rain painted the garage gray. Michael hadn’t realized how much time he had spent there and he turned to his grandmother’s replica and asked, “Where do you think the most magical place in the world is?”