#i ploughed through the last eight of them in a single day

[vamporphyric]

god i am never doing this again

[monstersandmaw]

Orctober #11 ‘snow’ - male ice orc x female reader (nsfw)

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Despite me being 'on a break' from Patreon (ie. no one except for brand new subscribers was billed) for November while I work on my novel, here's a 7.7k word orc story. As always with me, it's a bit plotty and very fluffy, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. I said on Discord too that the reader's best friend is a yeti, and his design is based on the yeti from 'The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor'  who are adorable fluffy goofballs.

So, here's my late Orctober offering for you, featuring one Giant Fluff, eight smaller fluffs (huskies), three bigger fluffs (snow-bears), fluffy cliches, fluffy snow, and one Big Gentle(tm)... The reader is female, but for ~90% of it gender isn’t mentioned. It’s really only in the nsfw bit at the end…

___

With a shiver you stepped outside, the snow squeaking and crunching eerily beneath your too-thin boots, and you drew the soft fur of your jacket up around your neck. Squinting through your clouding breath, you blinked, eyelashes icing up before you had gone more than three paces, and the inside of your nose was quite literally frozen, but it didn’t matter. Selkie Rock Point was one of the most northerly villages on the continent, and not counting the various nomadic peoples who lived even further north, it was one of the last places to find permanent shelter and warmth. It was also home.

Tradewatch sat a little further south along the coast, and in the winter the great ice-breaker ships with their dwarven-forged metal prows could still get through until relatively late in the year, but up here you were locked in by sea ice much earlier.

You’d grown up here, the middle child of one of a handful of human families in a village comprised mostly of selkies and white-furred bear-folk, centaurs, cervitaurs, werewolves and other shifters. Most of the people who lived up here had thick fur or a natural resistance to the cold. Your siblings had left to go to the larger towns further south, but you still bred sled dogs in the house where your parents and grandparents had done the same thing.

Now, as you trudged on foot down to the store to stock your nearly empty cupboards up on essentials, a fresh flurry of snow swirled around you and you narrowed your eyes. If you breathed too deeply, it bit into the back of your throat, but you were relatively used to the cold by now.

Out of the murk of the perpetual twilight that choked this part of the world in the winter, you began to make out the large, dark shape of perhaps a centaur. The closer they got, the more details you could pick out, until you finally figured out who it was and called out to them. “Linny! Hey!”

The huge, dapple grey centaur, swaddled up in layers of coats and fur too, startled a little, but laughed. She had a dark fur hat on over her ice blonde hair, and all you could see of her face was a pair of dark brown eyes, her lashes also rimed with ice. “Hey,” she laughed back once she’d recovered her composure. On her back, already covered in a layer of snow, were two large panniers, though they looked empty despite the fact that she was returning from the shop.

“Everything alright?” you asked. Something felt wrong about the way she moved, a strange tension seeping through the air, though you weren’t quite sure what it could be.

She shuffled. “Yeah, just… uh… there are some ice orcs at the general store… I… I didn’t get very close. I thought I’d come back later. From what I heard, they’re only passing through on their way south.”

“Oh.”

Ice orcs.

There were a number of clans of the grey-blue skinned orcs living this far north, and they had a reputation for being vicious, bloody-minded raiders, though not all of them were. A few of them were trappers and hunters by trade, earning their living by taking their sleds pulled by huge snow-bears down to Tradewatch and then across to Eyrie Point. Sometimes they passed through this little collection of houses on their way through, but they rarely stopped to talk or share the time of day with anyone.

“Fuck, it’s freezing,” you hissed as the wind bit at your exposed cheeks.

“Don’t let me keep you,” she said. “I’ll see you at the Whisky Tumbler tonight?” she added with a swish of her tail.

You nodded. “I’ll be there.”

As much as you were nervous of the orcs too, you really needed some more food, so you ploughed on through the deep snow, eventually arriving at the Selkie Rock general store. Outside it were three loaded sleds, and each one was hitched up to a colossal snow-bear. Muzzled, though not cruelly, the bears were either lounging around in the powder like a seal on a summer beach, or, in the case of the one at the front, sitting alertly, rounded ears pricked, nose snuffing at the scents on the wind.

Giving them a wide, cautious berth, you swallowed apprehensively and scuttled into the shop, glancing over your shoulder at them. As you yanked back the heavy door and stepped inside, you collided instantly with something as solid as an iceberg. As you bounced off and your arse hit the half frozen floorboards of the deck outside the shop, you gazed directly up into the face of a truly huge ice orc.

He didn't look amused.

Before you could process what had happened, a colossal hand reached down for you and grabbed the front of your jacket, and you were hoisted off the ground and set back on your feet. “You ok?” he rumbled, taking half a step back so that you weren’t cricking your neck so much. “Didn’t see you down there,” he laughed quietly. His stern expression melted a little under the gesture. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“Uh… No… No, I’m good,” you faltered, resisting the urge to rub your right arse-cheek which still smarted from your tumble.

Fuck, he was really big. And actually, as you looked more closely at him, really handsome.

“Well, that’s good,” he said and stepped back a little more, ushering you inside the store. “Come in before you let all the snow in then.”

“Right.”

As you moved into the relative warmth of the shop, you saw two more ice orcs behind him. The first - the one with which you’d just had your head-on collision - had long black hair, pulled off his face in a single braid that was studded with bone, ivory, and metal beads and hung down to the middle of his back. His animal skin and fur jacket was toggled up the front with more carved horn, and his boots were the soft, reindeer pelt ones traditional with the ice orcs who herded the reindeer a little further south. You assumed, from that and from the sleds outside with their burdens covered against the driving snow, that he was a trapper and trader himself.

The others were a little smaller than him in size, but no less intimidating. Where his skin was a stormy slate grey, the female’s was a shade or two darker, and the male beside her wasn’t an ice orc at all, but had the green skin of their much more southerly cousins. They were still impressive though, and as you let your gaze sweep over them for a couple of seconds, they grinned at you in a way that was surprisingly friendly. Ice orcs usually had an aura of menace to them, but these two seemed relaxed, and as the male looped his arm affectionately around her waist, you realised that they were together.

The female chuckled suddenly and you noticed that she was staring at the largest of the three of them, standing right next to you. “Hey, boss… are we gonna head off, or are you gonna stare at this little human some more…?”

Surprised, you glanced up at him and found that his warm, brown eyes were locked on your face. “Uh,” he grunted. “Yeah. Sure. We’ve got goods to deliver. Uh… take care, ok?” he added at you as he scratched the back of his head with his un-gloved right hand.

“You too,” you chirped with a smile and walked away towards the back of the shop, heart hammering.

When you reached the selkie standing at the back of the shop, he looked at you with wide blue eyes and puffed his cheeks out in relief. “You’ve got balls of permafrost, my friend. I thought they were never going to leave,” he said shakily.

“They cause any trouble?” you asked, puzzled.

“Oh no,” he said, flapping his hands and glancing at the closed door. “No, they were very polite. It’s just… you know… they’re ice orcs! I thought they’d skin me if the price was disagreeable or something… I’ve not seen these ones here before, you see?”

You’d been about to quip that he’d read too many tabloid papers about their kind, but then you recalled that his entire clan had been almost completely wiped out a couple of generations back by an ice orc summer raiding party, so you clamped your mouth shut quickly enough to make your teeth click and smiled awkwardly.

It was only then that you noticed how bare the shelves were.

“Aleq,” you asked softly, and when he saw where your eyes were directed, he sighed.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry. The delivery didn’t come this week, so we’re running out of stuff now. I was going to ask Linny if she’d mind helping me with the sled, but I haven’t seen her yet… She usually comes today.”

You nodded. You knew that there was the permafrost cavern at the other end of town which held emergency supplies, so folks weren’t in danger of starving just yet, but without the delivery, people would be going hungry. “She was intimidated by the orcs and decided to come back later,” you explained. “I met her on her way over here.”

“Damned orcs,” he cursed, though he slow to anger. “What am I going to do?” he asked, his huge dark eyes full of fear as he stared at you.

Aleq wasn’t very tall, perhaps in his late thirties, and he carried the usual soft layer around his belly and chin that most selkies did, and in that moment he looked more like a chubby, frightened puppy than an adult. “I’ll go,” you found yourself saying. “I’ve got the dogs. I can make it to Tradewatch before the light fails. I’ll arrange a new delivery and be back in the morning. Hopefully they’ll be coming with me…”

“Oh, bless you,” he said, and you had to go round the counter and hug him because he looked so relieved.

Once you emerged, you found that the ice orcs had departed, their bears and sleds leaving their tracks in the snow as they headed south out of the village. Having bought very little in the end at Aleq’s, you returned home and began to make preparations for your journey to Tradewatch.

It didn’t take you long to hitch up a team of your fastest and smartest dogs. As you patted the lead bitches and worked your way down the line to where the sled was tied to a peg driven deep into the snow - else they might have taken off without you in their enthusiasm - you gave each dog a cuddle before stepping onto the back and stamping down on the bar which served as a break. It had big metal teeth in it which bit down into the compacted snow under your bodyweight, and allowed you to unhitch the tether without flying off at a hundred miles an hour.

At your signal to get ready, the dogs began a chorus of yapping and barking in their excitement to get going. No matter that you’d done this your whole life, it still gave you a thrill when you said, “Ready? Let’s go!”

You’d modified the sled with a slot that would hold your compass, and as you ran your fur mitten over the domed surface to clear it of snow and fog, you called ‘haw’ for them to take the left of the two paths in the snow up ahead, and the lead girls nudged round to follow it. They wanted to run and since it was only perhaps thirty miles, you let them set their own pace to start with. Any further than twenty-five to thirty miles, and you’d have regulated their pace more strictly, slowing them to a steady, ground-chewing trot. But you knew your team, and they trusted you.

It took just over three hours to reach Tradewatch, and the light was fading. As you drew up alongside the large inn which sat right in the centre of the wide harbour, your dogs’ tongues lolled but they wagged and looked like they could easily have run another twenty miles. You took your time with them, making sure they were all comfortable, before lashing the sled to a specifically placed tether, and stumping inside the familiar inn.

The folks at Tradewatch knew most of those from Selkie Rock Point, and the big, looming, white-furred yeti behind the counter spread his arms and boomed a greeting at you as you entered, sliding your hood back off your wind-bitten face.

“It’s good to see you too, Hugo!” you chuckled as he shimmied out from behind the bar like an excited cub and strode across the nearly empty room to sweep you up into his fluffy arms.

“It’s been ages!” he said, and you wriggled wildly and squealed as he snuffled affectionately at your neck.

“Oh my god you’re such a beast!” you yelled at your childhood best friend. “Get off! Stop! Get off!!” and you smacked him on the arm.

Laughing, he set you back down and stood back, beaming. His short, almost feline muzzle was split into a warm grin, revealing his pronounced canines. His kind and intensely blue eyes bored into yours and he asked, “What brings you here?”

“We didn’t get our food delivery this week, so I came to see what’s going on and try and get something sent out soon.”

His fluffy brows knitted together and his pink, feline nose twitched. “Shit,” he said. And then he gasped, “Oh! Did you bring the doggos?!”

With a laugh, you nodded. “I wondered how long it’d take you to ask. Yes, they’re round the side. Any chance I can stay for the night, by the way?”

“Of course!” he said as he barrelled for the door without looking back. A second later a chorus of excited yipping and howling rose and you shook your head.

“Well, I know where I rank at least…” you said to yourself, looking around the bar for the first time since entering. There in the corner were the three ice orcs from the general store that morning. “Hi,” you said nervously when you realised they'd been watching the spectacle that you and Hugo had made of yourselves.

The big one smiled at you and raised his pewter tankard, while the female whispered something to the other that made him bark out a harsh, amused laugh, and the big one flashed them a look which they both ignored.

Deciding to leave, you found that Hugo had tangled himself and all the dogs up in the lines, and it took you nearly a quarter of an hour to extricate them all. Bashfully sitting in a paw-print patterned snow drift, Hugo looked up at you. “Sorry.”

You had to laugh. “I missed you.”

He rose and helped you kennel the dogs, and once you were done, he said, “Come on, let’s get you inside and warmed up. I’ll bring out something for the dogs now that they’ve had a bit more of a rest.”

“Just add it to my overnight tab, Hugo,” you said firmly, knowing full well that the enormous fluffball was very likely to gift the meat to you and the dogs. He waved a huge hand and you followed him back inside, moving through the bar again on your way upstairs.

As he showed you up to your room, you asked, “The three ice orcs you’ve got downstairs… they were in Selkie Rock this morning.”

“Oh?” he said over his colossal shoulder, carrying your very modest overnight bag upstairs for you. “They cause any trouble?”

“No, none at all,” you said. “How long have they been here? They can’t have left much before I did.”

“An hour or so?” he said. “Why?”

You raised your eyebrows. “Those bears can really run…” you said.

He laughed. “They’ve ‘kennelled’ them - if that’s even the right word for something so big - in the big cages at the back. They’re very polite actually. The female loves to have her ears rubbed, apparently.”

“You’ve tried?” you asked, impressed.

Again, Hugo’s rumbling laugh filled the narrow corridor as he led you to the guest room in his own part of the building, instead of those on the ground floor for travellers. It had always been like this since he moved away from Selkie Rock Point, and you had never questioned it. “I asked them, and the big guy said it was fine to pet them while he was there, but if I valued my arm, I shouldn’t touch her otherwise.”

“Right…” you said rather shakily. Yeti weren’t exactly fragile either.

“Listen, why don’t you get settled in and then come down and grab some food and a drink and we can catch up?” he said, holding the door open for you.

You ducked under his muscular arm and he followed you inside stooping low so as not to scrape his head on the door frame and lingering just long enough to put your bag at the foot of the double bed.

“I have to go and talk to the supplier before they close for the day,” you said regretfully. “I’ll have time for that when I get back, ok?”

He smiled. “Sure.”

You hugged your oldest friend, burying your cheek against his soft stomach - he was nine feet tall after all - and heard him rumble something as he placed his big hands on your back. “I’ve missed you,” you said softly.

“Yeah, I’ve missed you too,” he said, ruffling your hair.

As you re-entered the bar, you caught the way the big orc scowled at you two, but you ignored it and said, “I’ll be back, hopefully in under an hour. I need to hear all about that human you told me you were dating…”

Hugo’s small, pointed ears pulled back against his head and he growled bashfully.

“You’re still together, right?” you asked.

He nodded. “Yeah,” he grinned, love-struck as a spring faun.

You punched him in the stomach, though it had no more effect on him than a light tap would have done to you, and said, “You’re such a dork. I’ll see you later.”

Casting one final look at the orcs, you smiled at the big handsome one and set about sorting out the delayed food order.

In the end, it turned out that their usual delivery driver had broken her leg and wasn’t able to make the journey, and that they didn’t have anyone else at the moment who could make the run. “Our other teams are all out at the moment on long-distance runs,” the fluffy satyr said, terribly embarrassed at the mix-up. “It’s all sitting in the warehouse ready to go, but I had no way of contacting you…”

With a sigh, you said, “Is there no other sled for hire at the moment?”

“Come back tomorrow morning and I’ll see who’s available then,” he said. “But I can’t make any promises. With the winter being as bad as it has been, and now with Fi off work…”

“I understand,” you said tightly. It really wasn’t his fault, but people were going to get hungry. “I’ll see you tomorrow at nine.”

Disheartened, you stumped back to the inn, and while you and Hugo shared drinks and the most amazing food, cooked by his business partner who ran the domestic side of the inn, you shared your worries about the supplies.

“What will you do?” he asked. “I mean, you’ve only got a team of eight dogs… you can’t take enough food for the rest of the winter back to Selkie Rock on your own…”

You shrugged. And then at the exact same time as heavy footfalls sounded behind you on the floorboards of the inn, an idea struck you. You turned around and there, approaching the pair of you with a shy expression on his face, was the big ice orc.

“So…” he said meekly. “I couldn’t help overhearing that you’re in a bit of a bind…?”

“You could say that again,” you said. “Would you and your friends be able to help us out?”

“Yeah,” he said. “We should be able to take it between the three of us,” he smiled. “If you’d like…?”

“My hero!” you grinned and he laughed. It wasn’t far off the depth of Hugo's deep rumble but the sound of it went straight through you and kindled a heat in you that you’d not felt in a long time.

“We’d be happy to help out. Shall we come with you to the warehouse tomorrow?”

“You’re sure?” you asked with a quick look at the other two in the corner. They grinned at you and both offered you a thumbs up, which you thought a bit odd, but at one glance from their leader, they stopped.

“Yeah. I’m Reshi by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Reshi.”

He smiled again, his heavy-set jaw supporting truly massive tusks, and bobbed his head awkwardly before retreating. The other two thumped him on the arm and he swatted them away while you turned and caught Hugo’s eye.

“What?”

“No,” Hugo said firmly.

“No what?”

“No ice orc…” he growled. “I know you… and they’re… they’re not good…”

“You don’t even know them!” you hissed. “They seem alright…”

His scowl eased off a little bit and he said, “Just… be careful.”

You curled up that night in the familiar guest room while the dogs slept in the shelter outside, and snow-laden winds battered against the windows.

In the morning, you made your way down to the bar and found Hugo emerging through another door at the same time. You couldn't help the snicker that escaped you when you caught sight of him and when he flashed you a grumpy scowl, you said, “Your bed-head is worse than mine!”

It was true. His white fur was sticking up all over the place, but he just waved a hand mutely at you and stuck a mug under the coffee machine.

“Did the orcs stay here last night too?” you asked in a gruff whisper as you saw the now familiar trio in the corner of the bar, and he nodded. He’d never been particularly verbose in the morning, at least not until he was caffeinated.

“Mmm,” he added as the machine fired up and the smell of coffee pervaded the room.

The door to the kitchens opened and Perdi backed out, carrying three huge plates of cooked breakfast, carefully balanced. The mothfolk woman looked at you and fluttered her silvery wings a little as she saw you and started to laugh. “You two are as bad as each other,” she laughed. “Good to see you again, by the way,” she added. “I’ll bring you both something to eat in a bit… I’ll let your brains warm up a bit first though…”

“Thanks Perdi,” you smiled.

After you’d eaten, you approached the orcs who had also finished breakfast, and said, “Uh, so I’m almost ready to head over to the warehouse with you… I just have to take care of the dogs first.”

“Great,” Reshi said. “I’m good to go, so just come over when you’re ready and we can go together.”

You nodded, feeling a bit anxious at being alone with the colossal ice orc, particularly after Hugo’s warnings the previous night, but when you came back after feeding your team their breakfast, you found him on his own, crouched by the front door to the bar, petting the tiniest kitten you’d ever seen. He could have fitted it in the palm of his hand.

The strange noise that left your throat made the kitten look up, and as you bit your lips together to keep from making it again, he chuckled.

“I didn’t know the inn had a kitten…” you said, approaching. The little ginger nugget hissed fiercely at you and its tiny little tail puffed up. “I’m… more of a dog person…” you said without greeting it. “They always know.”

“I think he belongs to Perdi. Are you ready?” he said, straightening to his full height. Your mouth went dry and you simply nodded in response.

Outside, you huddled down into your jacket and tried not to keep looking up at him.

A snowy-coated minotaur snorted steam at him and growled as you passed, and you risked asking, “You get that a lot?”

Reshi shrugged. “Depends. Some folks don’t mind us, but others… well… I guess we don’t have the best reputation after all…” he cast his dark, friendly eyes down at you and added, “Honestly, I’m surprised you accepted our offer…”

It was your turn to lift a shoulder in an expressive shrug and you murmured, “We’ll go hungry if we can’t get food delivered… And anyway, you guys seem alright…?”

His laugh was rough but heartfelt and again, it kindled heat between your legs.

The satyr wasn’t all that keen to let his precious cargo leave the warehouse with three ice orcs and their snow-bears, but in the end you convinced him, saying that you’d accept full responsibility for the cargo during transit this one time, and that if anything went wrong, it wasn’t on him. “Please,” you said as he still faltered. “We need this food…”

“Alright then,” he said. “Here, sign this, and you can come and pick it up.”

Once that was done, Reshi looked at you and said, “You want to stay here while I head back and fetch the others? Save you getting all cold…”

“Thanks, but I can ready the dogs and come over with you. We can all leave together from here then, once your sleds are loaded.”

Saying goodbye to Hugo was painful as ever, but you promised to come and visit him again soon when the weather was a bit better. He nodded and hugged you close. “I don’t like the feel of the wind,” he murmured, casting his blue eyes towards the sky. “You make sure you’ve got enough protection for the way back in case it gets worse, alright?”

You nodded. “I’ve always got my emergency supplies and shelter with me, and the dogs are tough. They’ll be alright.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “I can’t help worrying about you. You’ve only got borrowed fur to keep you warm,” he added, tugging affectionately at the fur collar of your hood which you’d pulled down while you’d been inside.

“Thanks for taking care of me and the dogs,” you said as you headed outside.

Hugo eyed the three waiting orcs and pointed his clawed index finger at Reshi. “If she comes to any harm because of you…” he growled, showing all his very sharp teeth.

“She won’t,” Reshi said evenly. “I swear it. We’ll get her and the supplies safely back home.”

The yeti growled again and only shut up when you patted his furry chest. “See you soon,” you said and he nodded.

Reshi turned to the other two and said, “You two ready?”

They nodded, but the female didn’t budge and instead laughed, “You haven’t even introduced us, boss!”

“Shit,” he said, rubbing his chin. His hair was rimed with frost where the other two had covered their heads with deep hoods, but he didn’t seem in the slightest bit chilly. “Well, this is Tahira,” he said as he gestured to the female, who nodded. “And that’s Kushta,” he added at the southern orc, who raised his gloved hand in greeting. “Everyone ready?”

You nodded and said, “I’ll just bring the dogs round.” You’d harnessed them all up when you’d returned from your first trip to the warehouse, but had left them round the side of the inn while you went to say your goodbyes to Hugo.

The team yapped and barked all the way round and Tahira made a comment about hearing them a mile off. The bears snuffed disdainfully at the air as they appeared, but otherwise seemed to accept their new travelling companions easily enough.

With everything finally loaded, you set off for home just after midday. Tahira and Kushta took their two sleds in front of yours, and you slotted in between them and Reshi, who brought up the rear.

After only an hour of travelling, the weather closed in. The storm that Hugo had smelled on the air whipped up quickly, lashing the canvases of the sleds and battering you as you tried to stay astride the skids of your slid. In bitter, near white-out conditions, even the bears slowed to a trudge and the dogs kept their heads down, eyes squinting against the icy wind.

Reshi bellowed something from behind which you didn’t catch, and then he blew on a whistle, three short blasts. Kushta, who was in the lead, held up his right arm, fist balled, and the line drew to a halt.

Striding and plunging through the snow like a bison, Reshi caught up with you and put his hand on your back as he leaned down to yell in your ear, “We have to stop. If we keep going in this, we could get lost or the sleds could tip over.” He had drawn his fur hood up by now, and he lowered the piece of fabric which covered his mouth and nose. It had been cleverly hitched around the tips of his massive tusks.

You agreed. “Emergency shelters?”

He nodded. “They’re on Kush’s sled. We’ve got two. To save time, you could share with me?”

“Sure,” you said. You were hardly about to argue in conditions like these.

With a smile, he patted you once on the back and ploughed off through the snow, his thick thighs working to power him forwards. The packed snow of the track was alright, and the dogs weren’t all that bothered about the weather, other than that they couldn’t see very easily, but you knew that the moment you stepped off the sled you’d be struggling to move.

Reshi returned and said, “You stay on the path for now. We’ll set up the tents, and I’ll come back for you, alright?”

“I’m sure I could help…” you said, but he insisted.

“Thank you, but I think we’d probably be quicker… We’re used to doing this all the time. You just keep warm, ok?”

“Easier said than done…” you said with a hollow laugh. No matter how good the reindeer-fur mittens were, you were starting to get properly cold now.

You watched with avid interest as the orcs got to work. In fact, most of Kushta’s sled was taken up with their own gear, and it transpired that he was usually the support sled while the others carried the trade goods. It was hard to see exactly what they were doing, but their tents were made of tall, straight poles which they covered with a sheet of stitched-together animal pelts, and out of the top they poked a metal chimney. They had small, portable stoves which suddenly seemed like the most inviting thing in the world. Finally they piled and compacted drifts of snow down around the outside of the lower, sloping walls of the conical tents, partly to insulate and partly to anchor them. All in all, it took them fifteen minutes to put up two tents.

“You really have done that a few times…” you said, teeth chattering as Reshi returned to you. He just grinned lopsidedly at you.

Deciding that no one would be travelling along the trails in this weather, you unhitched the dogs and the bears and left the sleds in place. Surprisingly, the bears seemed to welcome your team, but the dogs were cautious. An idea struck you and you said, “Reshi, can I say hello to your bear?”

“You should get inside,” he warned. “You’re getting too cold.”

“Just quickly,” you said. “If I tether the dogs near the bears they’ll be more sheltered, and if they see me greeting the bears, they won’t be afraid - the bears won’t hurt them, right?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “They’ve grown up with dogs too. They’ll be fine.”

You struggled the short distance to where Tahira and Kushta had already settled the bears down, and you glanced up at Reshi. He simply jutted his chin out and you held out your hand for the bear to sniff. You wanted to ask him what her name was, but the wind stole every breath you had from you, so instead you showed the dogs that the bears were friends, settled them down in the middle of the small triangular arrangement of bears, and then allowed Reshi to lead you to his tent.

Tahira was already kindling a fire inside for him, and he smiled at her in thanks as you stepped inside. Instantly protected from the wind, you felt warmer already, and you took your boots off and shook the compacted snow off the soles before bringing them to the fire. Your socks were damp, which wasn’t great, but you had feeling in your toes still, and the fire would do its work to warm the tent up in no time.

“Thanks,” he murmured to Tahira and then spoke softly to her in his own language. For some reason you’d forgotten that he must be bilingual. The sound of his native tongue in his rumbling bass was deeply attractive, and you turned your face away, trying to pretend that the colour in your cheeks and the warmth in your face was from the strengthening fire.

Tahira slipped out and Reshi toggled the flap down securely before removing his jacket and hanging it on a peg that jutted out from one of the supporting poles. He turned and found you staring around at the tent and smiled. “It’s not much, but it’s home for now,” he said.

“It’s amazing. I know your people build homes out of snow in the winter, but I’ve never been inside a shelter like this one.” Actually it was difficult to focus on the neat economy of the shelter when he was standing there wearing a very tight-fitting under-shirt and equally figure-hugging black sealskin leggings. He was so powerful, with enormously muscular thighs and biceps that dipped down from his shoulders and then bulged in just the right way…

He grinned. “The snow houses are more permanent,” he said and you forced yourself to look at his face instead of his incredible body. “It takes time to cut the snow into blocks, and we didn’t have time for that today. These are for hunting trips and emergencies.” He approached and said, “You warming up a bit now?”

You nodded and shot a glance at the tiny wooden stove. “This is neat…” you commented.

“Mmm,” he smiled and then pointed at the matting on the floor beside you and added, “Mind if I sit?”

“What? Of course I don’t mind,” you gasped, still standing with your arms crossed, as close as you could get to the stove without singeing you clothes.

He smiled shyly and stared at the fire for a while, hugging his knees in close.

“Everything ok?” you ventured after a minute. His long hair hung down his back in a thick, black rope, and the flickering light danced on the metal beads braided into it. You resisted the urge to reach for it and test the weight of it.

Reshi swallowed thickly and as the storm raged outside, you barely heard his response. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s… It’s nice.”

“What is? This weather?”

With a look askance at you, he grinned wonkily again and your insides flipped over. “No. It’s nice to meet a human - anyone, actually - who’s not afraid of us.”

“Back in town… with the minotaur… you said it happens a lot?”

He sighed and turned his face away. “Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of my people are like that and deserve worse than a spat curse in passing, but it’s no different from orcs down south, or gnolls, or…” he trailed off with a sigh. “We’re not all like that. Everyone knows we sell the best quality furs and meat, so they tolerate us, but… it’s wearing after a while.”

You had been standing, trying to get the heat from the fire up the entirety of your front, but now that you were warming up, you took your own jacket and fur outer-trousers off and he stared openly at you for a moment before his skin darkened and he looked away, swallowing thickly.

Approaching him again after dumping them on the edge of the small shelter, you pulled a small storage crate over to him and sat close beside him. On a whim, you rested your head against his huge arm and said, “I don’t think you’re so bad…”

He laughed and you felt the tension wash out of him.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Not yet, but I could do with something to drink.”

Reshi produced a bottle of thick, berry cordial which he mixed with hot water and produced the most delicious, warming drink you could have thought of. You nursed it in your hands and let him tell you about growing up in a clan that didn’t want to massacre the fuck out of everything within a fifty mile radius.

The wind eased off about an hour later, but he muttered that it probably wouldn’t last. From what you knew of storms in the area, you had to agree. He’d ducked outside and seen what was on the horizon and confirmed your suspicions. As he came back inside, however, you heard a very particular sound coming from the tent beside yours, and you froze, caught halfway between laughing and snorting and barely restraining yourself from either. You weren’t sure if you should be embarrassed or amused that Tahira and Kushta were in the throes of what sounded like particularly amazing sex, and when Reshi saw that you’d also heard, his ears pulled back just a little and he screwed his eyes shut.

“I… I’m sorry about them,” he said as he fastened the toggles of the tent up again behind him.

“Why?” you grinned, finally allowing yourself that giggle.

“They’re horny as rabbits all year round.”

“Must be tough being single while they’re at it…” you said, and then your face fell. “Unless you’re not actually single…” you added quickly. “I’m sorry. I just assumed… I mean… you could have someone waiting for you, right?”

He held up his big hand and laughed. “Relax,” he said. “I’m single. Very, very single.”

The tone of his voice caught you off guard and you frowned.

Reshi laughed but offered no comment.

“No one catch your eye back home?” you asked cautiously.

He shook his head. “I mean, I’ve had partners in the past, but… nothing’s really lasted. I guess it’s partly because I travel a lot, but mostly it’s just…” he shrugged. “No real connection, you know?”

“Tell me about it,” you snorted. “I mean, I love the people in Selkie Rock Point, but… well… there aren’t many of them…! If no one catches your eye, then… well… good luck!”

He grinned. “Try living in an ice orc clan where there are only four or five families, and every Spring Thaw at the festival, you risk being mated off to another clan at the drop of a hat…”

“That happens?”

“All the time.”

“It ever happen to you? I mean, did they ever try?”

“Yeah,” he snorted as he sat back down. “That’s how I met Tahira.”

“No way!” you gasped. “You mean, you and Tahira were…?” At that very moment, a long, satisfied bellow from Kushta sounded from the tent next door and you both snorted and cringed slightly.

Reshi leaned back on his hands in the pleasant warmth of the tent’s fire. “Seems like she’s happy though,” he grinned.

“How did they meet?” you asked. “Kushta doesn’t look like an ice orc?”

Reshi shook his head. “He’s not. He came north when he worked as a guide for people travelling up the coast. We met him in Tradewatch, actually, and they’ve…” Tahira obviously came with a broken cry and he waved his hands. “Well, they’ve never looked back.”

He rolled back onto the floor, his hands folded behind his head and stretched out across the entire diameter of the tent. His socks, you noticed, were rather adorably colourful, in a beautiful pattern of red and blue wool.

The storm picked up again, masking any further activity from next door, and you let Reshi introduce you to an orcish game that was similar to chequers. He was really good, and you were absolutely terrible, but it didn’t stop you having fun for a good couple of hours.

Eventually though, you shared a meal and lay back on the furs afterwards and he caught you staring at him. “What?” he asked in a gentle but definitely perplexed voice.

With a shy laugh, you said, “So… I mean… I’ve seen a few ice orcs before, from a distance…” you said, concentrating on the storm-grey of his skin and not on the warm light in his eyes, or the length of his thick eyelashes, or… Clearing your throat, you went on while he propped himself up on one elbow, face alight with interest, the rest of his body relaxed and easy despite the storm howling outside.

You had worried briefly about the dogs, and he’d even gone out to check on them and reported back that they were all curled up in the snow like little arctic foxes, sheltered by the bulwark that three snow-bears had formed around them. “All very cute,” he’d grinned.

Now, as he listened to you stammering awkwardly about having seen orcs before but never having had a conversation with one, his lips curled into a soft smile.

“And?” he asked coyly. “What’s your opinion of us?”

“Well,” you said, swallowing nervously. “The data set is rather limited, but… from what I know of you… you’re… you’re very lovely…” YOU’RE VERY LOVELY? You groaned. What the hell? Who says something like that? And to an eight and a half foot tower of slate grey skin and muscle and tusk.

To your surprise, he let out a slow, deep laugh. “You are too,” he said.

Something changed then and you smiled, hardly daring to believe that this was headed where you both knew it was.

He reached out for you and gently drew you down off the small box where you’d been sitting. “You know,” Reshi all but purred, “I think it’s very impressive that you volunteered to go and help your people. Acts like that amongst orcs are… highly thought of.”

“Really?” you smiled. “I mean…”

“You have the heart of an orc,” he laughed, and brought his rough hand to your chin, tilting it up. “And I’d very much like to kiss you…”

“Oh…” you breathed. “Sure… I’d… I’d like -” he cut you off with a kiss, his huge tusks nudging against your cheeks. His lips were surprisingly soft, the gesture gentle at first, but he deepened it and you felt the arousal spike in both of you.

His big hands moved over your body and he began to undress you slowly, never once breaking the kiss. Pliant and utterly willing, you let him, barely able to catch your breath. Naked and lying across his lap, you revelled in the way your skin tingled, your heart hammered, and your blood sang in your ears. His fingertips slid between your thighs and he nudged them apart with his knuckles. Carefully, respectfully, he dragged one fingertip slowly over your folds and you bucked in his grasp.

“You’re so wet,” he crooned, drawing back in surprise, and you laughed.

You shifted your hand from his chest - which was disappointingly still covered by his long-sleeved underlayer - and pressed your palm against his hard cock which at that moment was digging you in the hip. You weren’t the only one worked up.

He grinned lopsidedly and laid you down on the soft furs before ripping his top off over his head.

“Fuck, you’re so beautiful,” you cursed, staring openly at the expanse of bare chest as he loomed over you. He had a couple of scars, but mostly the canvas of his slate-grey skin was perfect and unmarred. His hard, darker nipples were pierced and you reached for the glinting metal of one of them, tugging gently until he groaned and then growled.

Reshi pounced, parting your legs and pulling you into his lap. He was rough as he moved you about, but always careful you realised somewhere through the haze of your lust.

Kneeling on the floor, he lifted you up and brought his mouth to your heat. With your back lying along his thighs, his hands on the curve of your arse, you writhed and gasped as he laved his dark tongue over your wet folds and groaned again. “You taste so good,” he rumbled between the movements. His fingers tightened almost painfully on your hips and he lifted you a few inches higher, and got to work.

His tongue tasted you, inside and out, circling, nudging, teasing, tasting, until you felt blinding white heat rolling up inside you.

“Reshi!” you gasped, but he was relentless now, devouring you hungrily, reverently; on his knees and worshipping your body; lost in the sounds you made for him. “Reshi!” you yelled, fingers grasping at nothing, and came hard against the pressure of his tongue. Your body shook and convulsed, but he did not release you until you fell back, limp and gasping.

Barely able to crack an eye open, you lay there as he set your body - still sporadically twitching in the aftermath of your blinding orgasm - down again, and fumbled to undo the laces at the top of his leggings. His hand tightened around his impressive cock, almost painfully hard and weeping, but you shook your head and hissed, “I want you…”

He raised an eyebrow. “You sure?” His tone was only that of concern, not arrogance. He was big though.

Your eyes sank back down to his cock and you grinned. “I’m sure.”

—

I really hope you folks enjoyed this one! Don’t forget to let me know if you did enjoy it by leaving a like and/or reblogging it!

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[manggojooz]

Take My Hands Now (Part 10)

pairing: Jungkook x reader

word count: 2,670 thereabouts

genre: drama, angst, romance 

summary: You were born with a condition that allowed you to feel the pain someone else was going through when you touched them. Jungkook, on the other hand, looked like he could not be any less bothered with other people’s feelings and was a well known playboy of the school. One night, at a party, while he attempted to turn you into his toy for the night, he grabbed your hand and pain crashed through you, making you wonder whether behind the facade of this pleasure seeker, he could also be hiding something.

warnings: none 

Song rec: She’s In The Rain - by The Rose 

Comments: There’s a random Korean line right at the end because I really wanted to include it but I have no idea what’s the best way to say it in English T.T I tried to translate but it’s not 100% to my satisfaction... if anyone can help perfect that I will be so grateful <3 

Previous Parts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6| Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 

Jungkook woke up in their practice room lair, with a fast asleep Hoseok lying next to him on the couch, hands draping over Jungkook’s body. He pushed Hoseok onto the floor, stirring him awake. As Jungkook moved to sit up, his head was pulsating, the hangover catching up to him.  

Hoseok rubbed his eyes as he sat on the cold floor. “Not the type of morning I was dreaming of... waking up beside another man”, he muttered groggily and he dragged his body back onto the couch, lying stomach flat on top of the pillows.  

Jungkook got up to make space for him. He walked out to the bathroom, splashing a handful of water on his face to sober up.  

---

He recalls storming out of his house, with his mind consumed in a complete vacuum from the conversation he just overheard. His parents had both saw him at the door when Hoseok let out a tiny gasp behind him. Jungkook paused outside the giant metal gates of his house. Waiting.  

But the voice that came was not what he waited for. “Jungkook!”, shouted Hoseok.  

Jungkook clenches his jaws, deeply inhales and closes his eyes out of torment. When his eyes fluttered opened again, he stalks off towards nowhere.  

“Hey, wait for me!”

They ended up in a posh club in town. Jungkook downing shots after shots, partying harder than he usually would. He entertained almost every single girl who approached him. Luring them in, taking what he needed from them, be it attention or affection, and then throwing them away.  

“Jungkook!”, a girl’s shrill voice pierced through the music as she landed herself next to him on the sofa he was resting on. Was she the third one tonight? Or the fourth? He was sure he had lost count.  

Jungkook doesn’t recognise her, “You know me?”

“Of course I know you, the famous Jeon Jungkook”, she laughed.  

“At least you know me...”, his smile at her, although drunken, would have made every heart in that place flutter.  

Hoseok who had been watching him worriedly the whole night decided that this was enough; Jungkook was either way too drunk or on the verge of losing his mind.  

“That’s enough for tonight Jungkook, let’s go”, he demanded as he dragged his friend away from the woman still clinging onto him.  

“Where are we going? I just found someone who knows me!”  

“I know you too buddy! Come on, let’s go!”, Hoseok yelled at a struggling and staggering Jungkook.

“Heyyy Hoseokkkk, get me another shot... I want one more...”, Jungkook was whining like a spoilt kid.

“Alright, ok ok, I'll get you everything you want, let’s just get out of here first.”, Hoseok tried to pacify him while taking his uncontrollable friend back to the school lair.  

---

Jungkook stared into the mirror at himself for a long time, he looked at himself up and down a few times. What should he do now? Since his mind was no longer working, he’ll let his heart dictate – his heart which must already have started to decay.  

---

A few days have passed since you had the conversation with Jungkook at the bus stop near Yunsu’s place. He never came to find you again. Well, to be fair, you did tell him to leave you alone and never retracted it. For the past few days, you couldn’t stop thinking about what he said.  

It was true that you could feel someone’s pain, but that does not always mean you understood the meaning of it all. You always thought your condition allowed yourself to stand in someone else’s shoes when it came to the hurtful things in life. But it was far from it.  

Even if you know how it felt like, you would still never truly know what those feelings mean to that person.  

---

Hoseok walked into the book store and spotted you at the counter in your daze.  

“Y/N”, he solemnly approached you.  

You jumped up from behind the counter. “What are you doing here?”, you asked cautiously, reminiscing the last time he came to find you here to satisfy his ulterior motives.  

He frowned in response to your tone, choosing to ignore your hostility. “I haven’t been able to contact Jungkook for quite a few days. Just came to check if he appeared around here? Although the chances are pretty low... but I have tried looking everywhere”, he murmured listlessly.  

“You guys fought?”, you asked.  

He looked up in slight irritation. “We did... that night after you left his birthday party. Not this time though. So, I guess you haven’t seen him either?”

You shook your head and he nodded, turning towards the door. He walked a few steps away but then he turned around, marching back towards you again.  

Staring closely into your eyes, he decided to tell you, “Something happened to him. He's definitely not alright. He turned off his phone for the past three days and I haven’t seen him around in school or anywhere which we would usually go.”

Concern started to grow within you as well, “Maybe he’s just at home? Have you checked?”

“That’s the last place he would be... I was there with him when it happened... at his house... he won’t be going back there any time soon.”  

So... something happened to him at home?  

“Whether you still wish to believe me this time, that’s up to you. As much as I hate to admit it, between the two of us now, he might want to see you more than me. But he’s still my best friend, and if he comes to look for you, or if you find him anywhere... just let me know whether he’s ok”, he relented. You were stunned as you watched him leave for real this time.  

Good thing your mind was still operating though, “Hey Hoseok!”, you shouted after him. “I don't have your phone number yet... if I see him I'll let you know.”  

---

You tried calling Jungkook and messaging him a few times after Hoseok left, as expected to no avail. Where could he have gone?  

The next day you waited and waited to see if he would appear at the lecture. “Are you possessed by a meerkat?”, Namjoon wrote on a piece of paper and slid it over your lecture notes.  

You side-eyed him with the best death glare you could pull off and he leaned over saying, “Your neck’s gonna break at this rate. He's not here and it doesn’t seem like he’s coming at all, the lecture’s ending in fifteen minutes.” Namjoon was probably right.  

---

Your phone buzzed in your pocket as you were arranging a new row of books, you threw everything down instantaneously to check who it was, but it was just an advertisement from the ice cream place up on the second level of the mall.  

As you were putting your phone away in disappointment, this brought back a memory to you. When Jungkook was talking about his father once, he had told you about how he fancied this one ice cream place near his elementary school, because his father used to fetch him from school and then they would hang out there. You mind flashes back to the conversation:  

“Remember I told you he became the CEO after I turned eight years old? And he never came to fetch me again. But I still go there from time to time, whenever I feel like being reminded of those times.”  

“Can’t imagine a guy like you just sitting around having ice cream. Isn't your heart already cold enough?”, you joked.  

“Very funny Y/N.”, he replied, cocking up an eyebrow at you.  

You texted Hoseok, asking him if he knew where Jungkook’s elementary school is. He replied you almost immediately with the answer and questioned why you were asking.  

“I have a hunch on where he may be... but I'm not exactly sure where it is, I'll just give it a shot. Let you know if I find him”, you replied to Hoseok.  

---

You clocked out early and headed down to the vicinity of the school address Hoseok sent to you. You searched for a list of all the ice cream parlours nearby and there were about eight of them pinned onto your map app.  

It’s going to take a while to get to all of them, so you hurried on your way, hoping none of them would close before you reached them.  

The first one you got to had a bright pink interior, it was filled with school kids, mostly girls. The second and the third places were close by, but none of them had any signs of the man you were hunting for. You ploughed through another three stores, glancing inside quickly through the huge glass windows and leaving whenever you failed to spot him.  

It was the second last shop on the list, and you saw that they were supposedly closing for the daygiven that it was almost 10pm. You ran towards it and through the glass door, ignoring the greeting of the girl at the counter, frantically scanning the place.  

Even you were shocked by yourself when you saw the familiar silhouette you had been searching for the whole day. There he was, sitting at the far end, by himself in a corner. Amazing that your guess was actually right.  

You walked over to him, and stood next to the table he sat at, really minded to yell at him for turning off his phone and disappearing for so many days. The bowl of ice cream sitting in front of him looked untouched, it had already melted into a puddle of mint green goo peppered with brown chocolate flakes.  

His eyes widened to see you there. How did you find him here? Or was he just hallucinating now? He reached out his hand wanting to test whether you were really there but his finger hovered just a centimetre away from touching you.  

“I’m sorry, we are closing for the day, is there anything else you need?”, a young girl wearing the shop’s uniform asked politely from behind you.  

"No, it’s fine. Thanks”, you turned to reply to her.  

Before you managed to spin back to look at Jungkook again, he had gotten out of the chair and was blazing out the door. You ran after him, hopping down the short flight of steps outside the shop.

“Where are you going?”, you shouted towards his back view.

He turned around to face you and the way he looked at you, in the dusk of the orangey street lights, had you stopping a few feet away from him. “Where do you think I'd be going? You should know by now what kind of person I am, so stay out of my business.”  

His eyes were reminiscent of someone you knew not too long ago – you were watching him transform back to that same guy you met the first time.  

“You know that that’s a lie”, you snapped at him.  

“Do I? What do I know anymore? I don’t even know... so, don't pretend like you know me either”, his voice brewed over with annoyance and disdain.  

He turned to walk off again and you ran up to him this time, grabbing hold of his arm to stop him. He flung you off immediately and you stumbled back almost falling. He belatedly realised what he just did, but he did not apologise, he showed no emotions in fact, he had to keep it up.  

Yet he just couldn’t bring himself to walk away again without making sure that you were alright.

Once you regained your balance you quickly went back up to him, your eyes boring a hole into his face given the intensity you were staring at him.

“What happened? What's wrong with you? Why are you doing this again? Hoseok told me something happened to you at home. I’m guessing it has to do with your Dad, seeing that you are here brooding over ice cream. Right? You are not going anywhere until you answer at least one of my questions.”  

“The club, I’m going to the club. You asked where I was going just now, so I've answered one of your questions. Happy now?”, he said begrudgingly.  

You gaped at his attempt to escape, and you could already start to feel the pain quaking your heart from watching him put up his defences again.  

“Is this how it’s going to be? Fine, then I'll try to figure this out myself”, you declared as you took two steps closer to him, bringing your face so close to his chest that he could feel your breathing. You took his left hand in both of yours. Surprisingly you didn’t feel that much worse, your heart still hurt that much but your body hurt a little more than your heart did.  

He froze for two seconds, perhaps three, because he wanted to feel your hands holding his just that much longer. But eventually he tried to hurl your hands off.  

You were relentless, however, gripping onto his hand tightly. You lifted your head to look him right in his eyes, and he froze again. He knows you must be feeling it too, and he knows how horrible it feels. But he wants to hold onto you, he wants you to hold him like that. That is selfish of him, right?  

As time trickled, the feelings within you also built up; a feeling that reminded you of the times he first touched you but so much worse, like it was now piercing and clawing holes into you. Only this time you were certain – you couldn’t tell the difference anymore, which feeling was his, and which was your own. Which feelings came from you grasping his hand and which you felt just by seeing him broken like this.

You didn’t even realise that a tear was rolling down the corner of your eye. All you could see was the depths of hollowness in his. Even then you wanted to know, what this feeling truly meant to him.  

But he couldn’t bear to watch you any longer and with one forceful jolt, he yanked his hands out of yours finally. You staggered from the force and he fought hard to stop himself from reaching out to you again.  

“Leave me alone, Y/N. You of all people don’t need someone like me around. Ignore me like you said you would. Don’t come looking for me like this again”, he didn’t think he was capable of feeling any worse up until this moment. Pushing you away like this made him hate everything even more, the darkness pooling inside his mind overwhelming himself.  

“Stop telling me to leave, I’m not leaving until you tell me what is wrong!”, you rebuked with such determination.  

“I need you to leave!”, he suddenly shouted, “I would rather all of you leave me when I tell you to, at least then... I can tell myself...”, he paused, covering his face with his hand, trying to maintain his façade. He closes his eyes, swallows hard and inhales harshly as he tries to push all his emotions back inside.  

“Just leave, Y/N. If you are hurt too... I hate it...*”

(*너까지 아프면 싫어...)

And it dawns on you now. He was pushing you away. He didn’t want to have anybody. He was afraid of losing them. That feeling – it was not sorrow or anger. It was the trauma of abandonment, the feeling of loneliness, the pain of desolation.  

You walked up to him yet another time, unyieldingly. Just like the benign wind of the night, your arms wrapped around him. You slowly pulled yourself close to him, resting your forehead on his shoulder.  

“Even if it hurts, I’m not leaving.”  

---

♫ “You wanna hurt yourself, I’ll stay with you.  

You wanna make yourself go through the pain,

It’s better to be held than holding on...” ♫

[doomedandstoned]

Nicolas Perrault from Rage of Samedi Taps Deep Emotion in New Solo Effort

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By MelLie

NICOLAS "SCRIOS" PERRAULT -- some of you may have heard this name in the course of the German monster sludgers RAGE OF SAMEDI. German multi-instrumentalist, producer, live audio engineer, creative head in general, and bad-ass bassist of the aforementioned band. Often these artists are mostly referred to us in connection with the bands in which they play and we often know too little about their individual personalities and the solo projects they have to offer. Ashes on our heads!

After six years of walking the path of self-discovery and working on his authenticity as a solo artist, Nicolas has now announced the release of his first full-length album 'Shadows Cast At Dawn' (2020) on May 20th. That's why we should jump at this perfect opportunity to get a foretaste of the new album and take a closer look at Nick Perrault as "singer/songwriter" (a term that somehow doesn't entirely fit him).

With the song "Fires Within," Nick not only offers us a gloomy soul plough, but also a glance into his own soul. It is a gritty absolution punch, with abysmal soundscapes that deal with depression and anxiety. Emotional, melancholic, but in no way melodramatic -- a puristic and minimalistic-looking audio-active encounter with the emotionally frozen world and the breakout of those soul-damaging shackles. Like the Last Judgement runs Nick‘s throaty, heavy, powerful voice through the song and manifests itself like a memorial at the edge of the abyss into which the listener seems to look. This musical work is further underpinned by the impressive video-artwork, which was also created by Nick's own artistic hand.

I hope I have made you a little curious about the excursion into a border area of this heavy genre, which generally receives less attention here, and about the artistic work of Nicolas Perrault. Enjoy the ride through the abyss.

'Fires Within' music video

An Interview with Nicolas Perrault

By MelLie (Doomed & Stoned & Sunday's Heavy Tunes)

First of all, a warm "welcome", on behalf of Doomed & Stoned and our audience, Nick. It's only been a few months since you answered my questions as part of the gang of Rage Of Samedi! But this time, you are in the spotlight with your solo project! It‘s nice to have you here again!

It's an absolute honor to get to do this twice in a single year, so thanks for having me!

Nick, of course I have created my own impression of you in the process of preparing for this interview - at the latest now you still have the chance to escape! (laughs) How would you describe yourself? Who is this guy Nicolas Perrault?

I'm a multi-instrumentalist, tattooer, live audio engineer and producer and slightly sociophobic. So pretty much your average vegan straightedge dude who refuses to get a real job.

What made you decide to sell your soul to the "Devil Of Music"? In other words, how and when did you realize that you were burning with heart and soul to dedicate your life to music?

I've always played instruments, starting with the recorder, then organ and piano, bass, drums, guitar, bagpipes, and everything else. Way back when I joined my first band (a grunge/punk three-piece) and first picked up a bass, I realized I had a lot to say and music quickly became my outlet of choice. So about 18 years ago, but I didn't think of it in terms of a career yet, that only happened roughly six years ago, so I dropped out of university and started to work on my solo project.

You have left some very manifold and genre crossing footsteps on the pilgrimage through your personal music history: PTAH (doom), MOONSAIL (depressive pop-blues), and THRENODIA (black-metal) in former times are on my mind, current side projects are WILLE ZUR MACHT (avangarde) and you are the bass-riffer of Germany's blackened sludge doom monster RAGE OF SAMEDI! To what extent were these different musical influences and band experiences important for your progress as solo-artist?

I've spent a decade and a half working in bands, which would usually split up after a while, when the band became more serious and the others decided they'd rather pursue "real" jobs. So after a couple of those, I grew tired of waiting on the right people and just started working on my own. But every now and then I'd want to experiment with different genres, so I'd start a new project. The reason I'm now releasing under my actual name is that I didn't want to be stuck in one genre. I don't regret any of it, as they shaped who I am and the music I play now.

At the mention of your solo project, I could see the glint in your eyes. May 20th is the day! Let's light a sparkler for a minute! After three released EPs and six years of working as a solo artist, 'Shadows Cast At Dawn' will sail into the world as your first full-length album, which you even produced under the name of your own label Yew & Holly, right? What thoughts shoot spontaneously through your head right now?

Yup. I'm just incredibly excited to finally release this thing! It's been nearly six years and about eight different entire recordings, several changes to the track listing, heck- there are two tracks on the album that I only wrote this year! It's been a long, tedious journey and I'm glad for everything that happened along the way, because it made the final version of the album so much better!

Nick, let's turn the spotlight on the background information for your new album now. How would you describe your it to someone who has never heard your music before and which instruments play a major role?

A genre defying journey through post-modern life in a capitalist reality, focussing on depression and anxiety. Almost all of the songs are two sets of drums, a minute string section of violin and cello plus baritone guitar and vocals, that together create soundscapes so vast you might mistake them for an assassin's creed map.

Listening a little deeper into your work, one does not miss your natural fondness for philosophical thinking -- correct me if I am wrong with my assumption. Where do you get your inspirations from? And is there a message you want to convey to the listeners?

Well, I did study philosophy way back when. I tend to use naval imagery to paint a lyrical picture of depression and bipolar disorder, as a means of sharing the way I experience the world. It's likely not the most accessible thing you will ever hear, but it's a sincere expression of myself and that's really all I can offer.

"Fires Within," btw. Also one of my personal favorites of your album - is the amuse-gueule for our listeners What is the meaning behind this song and what moved you, writing the lyrics for this song?

"Fires" is all about setting boundaries and tearing down unhealthy relationships. If you have people in your life that hold you back instead of supporting you, ditch their ass! They're not worth the time and will poison any creative endeavor. Everyone knows at least a handful of these negative feckers and so did I. I spent years trying to help them get through their shit, but whenever I needed them they'd be more interested in getting drunk.

It's an unburdening from dead weight we carry, a cleansing, if you will. The chorus says "look not towards time, it brings only decay and destruction " and I think this is key to ridding yourself from negativity. Focus on your ultimate goal, that transcends trends and mood swings, that lives beyond time, and let it guide you. Don't stray too much from the path, or these negative influences will be right there waiting to cut you down.

"Fires Within"

Call upon the wind To wipe the surface clean He brings the rain and with it Absolution To carry with it the dust And bittersweet memories lost

Look not towards time To save your soul from fires It brings only decay and with it Destruction The fires burn from within Feast on the sand and it's running thin

Turn away from everything you hold dear To keep yourself safe from despair Cause all they bring is but loss All that remains is darkness when they are all gone Darkness that stretches like shadows cast from a new dawn

I would like to make a short swerve to the album cover. It is the wonderful artwork of Maryland based illustrator Luke Martin (Suburban Avenger Studios) who counts some famous musicians among his clients (Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys, Red Hot Chili Pepper and others). How does the artwork relate to "Shadows Cast To Dawn"?

I've been a huge fan of Luke's work for years and a while ago he posted this picture to his Instagram. I was looking for something very specific to use as an album cover at the time. I needed it to evoke claustrophobia and a feeling of being safe inside whilst at the same time showing an outside, detached from the rest, just out of reach.

So imagine my jaw dropping as I saw this picture for the first time. It just struck me. So I wrote Luke, if he'd sell it. He had never sold a photograph before (plenty of awesome illustrations, though) so needless to say, I was very happy he did. He basically captured exactly what I had conceptualized -- that it's an actual photograph just makes it even better, as the concept is very much abstract but now has an actual physical representation.

The title "Shadows Cast At Dawn" was something that I had floating around in my head for ever. So when I began to work on the album that became the working title. Since I've worked on it for so long, that title has- in a way- effected everything I wrote, so it seemed to fit perfectly by the end.

Is there a special favourite place where you prefer to let your ideas mature? - a kind of soul-flyer place? I know you live in a small, rather idyllic place and not in a vibrant artists' metropolis! Whereby this way of living has advantages as well as disadvantages for an artist, right?

I love forests, oceans and mountains, so I'm pretty much alright with any surroundings, as long as I can escape civilization from time to time. Living out in the countryside allows me to focus, as you pretty much know where to find people, if you're looking for company but at the same time, you know where you are less likely to be found.

Sure, I need to travel a lot more to get anywhere and there aren't as many connections to be made face to face, but digitalization has granted us loners access to that aspect of life from the comfort of our homes, so I'd say it really depends on what you need to stay sane.

With the release of this album, you could now realize one of your dreams. Do we have another sparkler to light? What else do you have in the works? Are there any future plans that float in space? Or do you still carry around another big dream in your head?

I've already started recording for the next album, so fingers crossed that this time it won't take as long. Apart from that, I really want to tour the world, but circumstances aren't exactly ideal for that, at the moment. Apart from the music, I also tattoo and paint and hope to be doing more of that alongside music in the future. So if y'all wanna get some ink, hit me up!

Thanks a lot Nick, for giving us a deeper insight into your solo project and the things that move you! It's been very entertaining having this conversation with you here. We all will keep our eyes upon Nicolas "Scrios" Perrault in anticipation of your success!

Thank you very much, Mel, it's been my pleasure!

Leave Me To The Waves by Nicolas Perrault

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[notsofluffyunicorn]

hurry up and save me

right, so, @werewolfbarbie requested a ‘rescue bughead’ where Betty is kidnapped and taken to the farm and jughead rescues her. I haven't got an actual clue what this is or where it came from. I’ve literally written this within the last hour. It’s obviously not canon, so yeahhhhh 

“You can’t do this! Please! Mom!” Her throat was closing up, her body was burning harshly as the panic swept through her, tugging her into its murky depths with unforgiving claws.

“No, no,” She whimpered, sliding down the door to her hands and knees. Inhaling sharply she tucked her face into her shoulder as she wavered slightly and collapsed onto the floor.

Betty sobbed unrelentingly, chest heaving with barely contained panic as she tried desperately to inhale for four, hold it for seven, and exhale for eight. Her mind was battling against the copious amounts of cold medicine her mom had drugged her with (because her mother was apparently incapable to getting any actual chloroform), and she pulled up every article she’d ever read on panic attacks, the information flicking through her mind too quickly for her to comprehend through the fog.

“Mommy,” she cried out, feeling more vulnerable now than she ever had in the sisters of quiet mercy. Her heart was broken, and the betrayal she felt now was something she knew she could never get over.

Her mom had done a lot of stupid shit in her life, she had betrayed her, used her, belittled her, and controlled her. Hell, she’d even ruined her good chances of going to college. All of that, she could’ve slowly worked through. She was her mom. Being drugged and kidnapped against her will though, all because her mother would rather see her dead son than her breathing daughter? That was something she could never forgive.

Her eyes blinked owlishly as she struggled to stay awake, wanting nothing more than to pass out and sleep for eternity, but the fear was gripping at her heart and there was not a single person at this god forsaken farm that she trusted enough to sleep around.

She rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling sluggishly, the tears steadily dripping down the side of her cheeks and into her hair as she watched the patterns on the ceiling float around.

Definitely concussed.

A gentle rapping echoed throughout the deadly silent room, and she whimpered, her entire body reacting violently to the sudden intrusion. It had felt like a year had passed as she laid in the dark in complete silence.

Maybe that was their master plan? Drug her, kidnap her, then let her mind slip away in the daunting silence of her darkened cell.

The tapping was back, louder, more vigorous. She sluggishly tilted her head and gazed at the window that was at least six feet high on the wall. A body was balanced outside of her window, with hands tugging forcefully at the glass.

She frowned, trying to make sense of the new situation while trying to see the intruder through blurry eyes. At this point, she wanted to throw her hands up in defeat and just let the new intruder take her. She apparently had no say in her life anymore anyway.

“Betty!” A familiar voice hissed. “Betts, honey, look at me.”

She craned her next desperately as the voice registered in her mind and she cried out in relief, “Jug!”

Jughead’s entire body seemed to flop and over the window as he relaxed infinitesimally at her acknowledgement. She smiled dopily at him, the rational part of her brain urging her to seek refuge in his arms, while the drugged up part wanted nothing more than to express her love and gratitude for the man rescuing her for the umpteenth time.

“Hey, baby,” He called softly, his hand tapping on the wall rapidly. “Can you make your way over here? I can’t really come in, otherwise I can’t get back out.” He explained slowly.

Betty pushed herself slowly onto her hands and knees again, her tongue peeking out the corner of her mouth in concentration as she worked desperately to get to the only person left in the world that she trusted.

“‘M tired though, Jug,” she whispered, stumbling slightly and grunting as her right wrist twisted unpleasantly. “Don’ wanna move anymore.” She slurred, swaying to the side.

She felt safer now, knowing that jughead was with her. He would keep her safe. Now, it was taking every ounce of her energy to not fall asleep.

“No!” He shouted firmly. “Betty, c’mon. You have to move!” He ordered, leaning further into the room almost desperately. She frowned at his panic, and opened her mouth to comfort him. However, instead of words, a garbled whine pushed through as she slowly continued her way towards the window.

Holy shit had it moved further away?

“Come on, Betts, you’re almost here.” Jughead urged, dropping further into the room with a grunt. He reached his hand out just as she head butted the wall.

Slowly, unsteadily, she pulled herself onto her feet, wincing as pins-and-needles suddenly shot down her legs and into her toes. She used the wall as a balancing post and shuffled her way up slowly.

“Grab my hand!”

She tilted her head up at him and stretched her arms up like a toddler,  slamming her eyes shut when the room began spinning rapidly.

Fingers wrapped around her wrists and tugged at her harshly. She grunted and opened her eyes at the unexpected pull but loosened her shoulders and watched through bleary eyes as she slithered up the wall.

She could hear Jughead’s voice shouting to someone, but the words sounded muffled, toneless, unimportant. She closed her eyes and waited for the fresh air to greet her.

The second her body was hoisted over the window ledge, she teetered forward and ploughed into her boyfriends waiting arms. His arms wrapped around her tightly as she clung to him like a koala, arms around his neck, legs around his hips.

Jughead carried her down the wooden ladder that was balanced against the side of her room, and she thought back to when he’d crawled through her window the first time.

How things change.

“Thank you,” his voice rumbled in her ear as he spoke to whoever had helped him, before he turned on his heel and marched towards something.

She sighed softly, eyes wide and unseeing as she watched the farm get further and further away. This was the last time she’d ever see her mom or her sister. The two people who had been tormenting her for months. Yet, she could still feel the devastation creeping up on her.

“Betts?” Jughead whispered softly as he placed her down gently in the passenger seat of somebody’s car. “What happened? Fangs told me he saw your mom carry you out of the blue and gold unconscious.”

She shuddered, the shrill screams that she’d emitted earlier on in the day echoing in her ears.

“She kidnapped me,” She slurred pathetically, trying to push through the haze that had settled over her. “She drugged me with, uh, with - with some stuff,” she informed him, stumbling over her words. “Cold med’cine.”

“Who? Your mom?” He asked, voice harsh as he gripped her thighs tightly, bending down in front of her so they were face to face.

“My mom.” She confirmed, a sob bubbling up again. “My - my mom hurt me, Jug,” she cried, leaning forward and burying her face into his chest.

Jughead made a noise in the back of his throat and gathered her up in his arms again, pushing her against him tightly. “I’m so sorry.” He whispered, pressing a loving kiss to her temple. “I love you, and I’m going to keep you safe.” He promised.

Betty sobbed against his neck and squeezed him tighter, a whole cacophony of emotions pulling at her desperately, all vying for her full attention. “I - I don’t know - my mom.” She whimpered pathetically, shrugging her shoulders. The little girl that had adored Alice Cooper was screaming inside of her, begging for her mommy. Begging for the mother that would never come and save her.

“I wanna go home.” She garbled out through her tears, leaning back and willing her eyes to remain open as Jughead peppered her face with kisses. He pressed kiss after kiss to her nose, the swell of her cheeks, her forehead, before finally dropping a kiss to her lisp.

“I love you.” He reiterated, his own eyes red-rimmed as he cradled her face between his palms like she was the most precious thing in his world.

“Love you.” She echoed, blinking slowly up at him as he pulled away and practically ran to the drivers side.

The tears were relentless, and she didn’t bother trying to fight them off. She was tired. She was so tired.

“‘M tired, Jug,” she whispered quietly, repeating her words from earlier. “‘M really tired.”

Jughead reached across the console and grabbed her hand. “Go to sleep, love,” he implored. “You’re safe now, okay? I’ve got you.” He promised, locking their fingers together and brushing his thumb across hers in a familiar gesture that never failed to warm her heart.

She nodded and sniffled, clutching his hand tighter and curling in on herself. She allowed her eyes to finally close, now ready to accept the sleep that had been so violently tugging at her.

The thought of waking up terrified her. The second the cold medicine had worn off would be the worst moment in her life. It would be the moment where her brain would catch her up on the most terrifying moment of her life. It would be the second she remembered the ultimate betrayal and heartbreak her last remaining family had caused.

“I’ve got you.” Jughead promised again softly, squeezing her hand. She sighed breathily and hummed.

There was no denying the hatred she felt for her life right now and most of the people in it, but holy fucking shit she loved Jughead more than anything and she would absolutely walk out of this on the other side with her middle fingers raised at her mom, sister and dad. She would survive this. And that was enough for her to finally succumb to the darkness.

[crazymarvelsuperfamily]

hiya!! I love your work... can you give me some more Spider-Mom? i love Peter and Tasha's relationship too much!! xoxo

my hand slipped. okay - this ones teen and up, with some pretty graphic details to self harm, so be careful and stay safe. I care about you all too much - and if anyone ever needs, my inbox is open. All my love, Ren xx

Things will get better - word count 2468

Peter thought he was being pretty subtle. It was bitter in NewYork, so always wearing long sleeves or a jumper all the time was hardly noticeable– everyone knew that he felt the cold really bad anyways; after all spiders can’tthermoregulate. So, Peter was sure he could get away with no one seeing them.As for when he was invited swimming – it was easy to make up an excuse, he did have lots of school work to keep upwith and he was spending an awful lotof time out on patrol. He had also got worryingly good at hiding injuries, hehad an insanely high pain tolerance, so he didn’t even flinch when someonegrabbed at his arm. And, as for blood stains, he only tended to wear darker clothesany way – and with a couple of YouTube videos, vinegar and baking soda, theywere easy to get rid of.

So, he didn’t really get why he was still so paranoid. Everytime someone approached him, adrenaline would kick in hard; he would try tospend as much time away from the Compound, so FRIDAY wouldn’t be able uncoverhim; he had even bought a first aid kit with cash, instead of just putting itonto the card Tony gave him, so it wouldn’t be traceable.

All this was just to make sure that neither May nor Tonywould find out. He cared about both of them far too much. And they already hadso many things on their minds – the last thing that they needed was to worryabout Peter in a different aspect. Besides, if either of them knew, they couldtake Spiderman away from him. And he neededSpiderman. It kept him busy and was the only thing that could motivate himin the slightest anymore. So, he just kept hiding.

Eventually, he fell into this kind of routine, skipbreakfast, go to school, skip lunch, go home, pretend to do some school work, skipdinner, go out on patrol, go home, pretend to sleep, repeat. May’s hours overthe winter period were always hectic – he hardly saw her anymore. He couldn’thelp but be glad. He loved her more than any words could ever express, but hestruggled with her permenantly breathing down his neck; without her watchingover his every move, it was far easier for Peter to just get on with things andget things done.

And Tony was always busy too – sure, he would always maketime for Peter if he ever wanted to talk, but if they went for days withouttalking, he would never be too concerned.

This routine of Peter’s just continued. He somehow managedto slip under everyone’s radar: if May asked where he was, he would just say hewas with Tony and vice versa. Weeks had passed since this whole thing stated.

Peter wasn’t sure how or why “this thing started” when it started,it just did. He supposed it was the combination of not fitting in with eitherthe Avengers or his peers, mixed with the pressures of juggling school and patrol,not to mention the numerous physical and mental wounds he’s suffered inbattles, facing some of the Universes greatest dangers. He felt so outcast andalone, like he was back in the soul world, drifting through the void, unreachable.

It had only been 6 months since the two halves of the Universehad been reunited, but the world was recovering fast: the economy was climbing,businesses had been re-opened, and people were getting over their grief andloss. As far as Peter knew, it was only he and Strange that remembered the SoulWorld at all – and it was only him that could remember every second of the eightmonths he was stuck there for. Time was frozen like ice – everything was sodeathly silent and still, but Peter felt a shrill scream resonate through hishead. He neither ate, nor slept, nor breathed for the whole time. His heartdidn’t beat. He couldn’t move at all – he felt nothing. Yet he felt everything.He couldn’t think of a worse torture than the limbo he had been stuck in.

And no one understood what he went through. They couldn’t.Even now, six months on, Peter could still vividly remember the nothingness.Cutting himself was the only way that he could forget it: the pain reminded himhe was a real person again.

So cut himself he did. Hundreds of times across his pasty paleforearms. With a tiny broken pencil sharpener blade, he ploughed across theflesh and broke it. And the sting would comfort him. And he would watch as trailsof blood rolled down over his wrists and pool in his hands, then drip andsplatter onto his bed sheets or the bathroom floor. And from behind the glassywall of tears, he would watch as his skin would slowly bind itself backtogether, before he’d do it all over again.

His body worked fast. Too fast for his liking in some ways. Cutsnever stuck around for long at all, and hardly left any scars. But he didn’tthink it possible for any wounds to get infected, which he guessed was a goodthing. Nether the less, he was careful. He was always very careful.

That was, except for when he was with Tash.

Peter had always hada good relationship with Natasha – she was cold and hard on the outside, butunderneath, she was one of the kindest and loveliest people that Peter had evermet. She was always soft and gentle with Peter (with the exception of training –that shit hurt) which meant Peteroften let his guard down a little with her.

Occasionally, if she “happened to be passing”, Natasha wouldpick Peter up from school. It had been raining so heavily that the side walkhad flooded, and Peter only had a slightly moth-eaten hoodie with him, so hecouldn’t help but be thankful to see an Audi pulled up right outside the school.He slid into the front passenger seat and slung his rucksack into the boot. Natashapulled his sodden hood of and ruffled his damp curls.

“Hey kid,” she smiled warmly at him.

“Hi Tasha,” Peter responded, trying smile in response. Buthis throat was dry, and the words came out croaky and monotonous.

“How was school?” She prompted, evidently ignoring the lackof his usual excitement.

“Alright, I guess.” Dangit, Peter. “Same old. I passed my Spanish test from Tuesday.”

“Hey! Well done on that.” Natasha beamed. Peter knew shecould sense how down he was. “How about a celebratory hot chocolate and waffles?You look like you could do with a pick-me-up?”

“Oh, I’m alright – I’m not really that hungry.” Petershrugged. It had been a few days since he had eaten anything at all. The thoughtof waffles just made his stomach churn uncomfortably.

“Don’t lie to me – I have met you. You normally eat more thana horse. We are going to get waffles.”

“If you say so.” Peter tried to smile again. He let a weaklaugh escape, but it was pitiful.

The car journey to the Waffle House was unnervingly quiet.Natasha tried to make conversation at first, but after a few questions with littleresponse, she just turned the radio up a little. The slightly static music wasstill completely overpowered by the relentless drive of rain that hammered ontothe car roof and windscreen. Peter scrolled briefly through his twitteraccount, but none of the messages on the screen made it to his brain. They wereall scrambled up and distant, just like the radio.

The parking lot was pretty full – it took Tasha two drivesaround in order to find a free space. The diner was equally packed, with themtaking the last booth in the corner by the window. Natasha ordered twochocolate milkshakes and supreme chocolate waffles, but Peter still said hardlyanything. Instead, he just absent-mindedly stirred his milkshake until thepaper straw decayed to a sodden mess. Tasha was talking to him, but he couldn’tmake out the words or process them into the story she was telling him.

His stomach turned painfully when the food was set down infront of him. Golden brown waffles laden with syrup and ice cream and sprinklesand strawberries. This should have been his dream come true. Instead, it feltmuch more like a nightmare.

“Go ahead and eat Peter… Are you okay?” He heard the BlackWidow ask him.

Peter shook his head a little, “Sorry, day dreaming.” Hemuttered and picked up the fork that was set before him. He cut a small corneroff and tentatively took a bite. The sugary sweetness sent his senses intooverdrive, his eyes almost watered at the shock of the taste. All of a sudden,the hunger of not eating in days kicked in. He shovelled mouthful aftermouthful into his mouth, barely hesitating to chew. He felt sick.

His stomach did yet another somersault. This time, it wasfull. Then, yet again it wasn’t. The waffle came straight back up, hot acid andundigested food dripped from down his hoodie. Peter froze up for a moment inshock. By the time he had processed what had happened, Natasha was already nextto him, stroking his hair, reassuring him. Her words were still distant andblurred. She started to tug at the hem of his jumper, helping him to carefullyremove it. Peter was too dazed to object, he just wanted the foul thing off. Heraised his arms.

Wait.

His arms.

Oh no. She was going to see. She was going to see. Nonononononono. Peter had kept thosecuts hidden for so long. But before he could do anything, the jumper was off,his bare arms exposed, and raw, fleshy red lines could be seen by the world.

Natasha said nothing. She didn’t even look surprised. Noteven in the slightest. Instead, she just helped him out from the booth andguided him to the car. She was ever so gentle and didn’t touch a single one ofhis cuts.

The drive back to the compound was near silent. Peter felt frozento his seat, he did nothing but listen to the buzz and whir of the engine. Itwasn’t comforting at all. He felt his eyes glazing over, then glassy tearsrolled down his cheeks. He did nothing to stop them, he let them slide off hisface and land with a soft pat onto his disgusting jeans.

Even after the car had been parked in the garage back at thecompound. The pair just sat in silence for a while. Peter moved to leave, hemuttered something about being in need of a shower.

“Wait.” Natasha said – her voice soft, barely above awhisper, but the authority in her voice stopped Peter dead in his tracks. Theysat for another minute or so before she got up to move. “Come with me.” She commanded.

She led him into the elevator and took him to her personal apartment.Peter hadn’t seen this area of the compound before. It was elegant andpristine, with white walls and white floor boards – the only colour in her hallwayand living room was found in a brass statue – it was obscure, Peter couldn’ttell what it was.

She kept leading him – straight through her living room,through her bedroom and straight into the bathroom. Without any words, shehelped him to peel off his sticky clothes, his t-shirt stained with blood andhis jeans sodden with vomit. Peter just sat in silence on the edge of the bath,barely flinching as Natasha wiped his torso and arms down with anti-bacterial.She passed him a plain white bathrobe which he slipped on. The material wassoft and fluffy, and it smelt of Natasha’s perfume, and it hugged him gently - fittinghim almost perfectly. It was comforting.

“Come.” And he followed. They sat down on the large grey sofathat took over the corner of her living room. She turned on the TV and let StarWars play quietly in the background – Peter felt safer. The silence heldbetween them remained, and over the next hour became more and more comfortableto Peter. He felt himself starting to trust Natasha, and subconsciously, heopened up to her. Tears once again fell from his eyes. Natasha still saidnothing, but she held him, pulling his head to her chest. She carded throughhis hair with one hand, and with the other drew circles with her finger on his back.He clung to her shoulders and sobbed.

To Peter, it felt like an eternity before he calmed down. ButNatasha didn’t let go of him once, she just stayed with him, letting him cry.When he pulled away, for the first time that day he made eye contact with her.Her usually impeccable eyeliner was smudged, and like his, she had raw redrings around her eyes.

“Tasha?” Peter asked uncertainly, the black widow, certifiedbadass and normally a total poker face was crying in front of him.

“I’m sorry Peter. I just wish it wasn’t you that had to gothrough this. I know that it seems lame for me to be crying, its just, you’vefaced so much, and it shouldn’t have been you. You’re sixteen – the biggestworry in your life should be SATs. Instead, you are the single person alive whohas felt the worst torture in the world. I would give anything to take thatpain from you.” She whispered. Peter hugged her again tightly.

“I’m sorry Tasha.” Peter mumbled into her shoulder.

“No. Don’t be. You are always welcome to be here, you cantell me anything, and I will always make time for you. No apologies or other courtesiesrequired at all.” She looked him sternly in the eye – he knew she was serious.

“Can you please promise me something?”, Peter asked tentatively,Natasha nodded in reply, “please don’t tell Tony or May. It’s just that theyhave so much on and they’re so busy and-”

“My lips are sealed.” She cut him off. “But I do think thatwe should get you some help. Okay, I won’t tell anyone, as long as you go andsee a therapist. You don’t need to tell them everything, you don’t need to tellthem anything, but trust me, it will help. We can find person whose right foryou – it doesn’t matter how many sessions it takes, or people you have to see.But trust me, things will get better.”

She held him tightly once again, and once again he criedinto her shoulder.

“things will get better, I promise.”

[artificialqueens]

Everything I Know, Chapter One (Rajila, Hunger Games AU)

AN: English is not my first language so I’m sorry for any grammatical mistakes!

Blood coated Manila’s hand for the fifth time that day, seeping through the light fabric of her jumpsuit as a cannon fired a shot into the air. This year, the arena was a huge desert, and the scent of blood on the sand made her think of gladiators and what she had learnt in History class at school. That’s what the Hunger Games was, she decided, a chance for the Capitol to get off on the adrenaline of watching twenty-four teenagers kill each other. Well, there were only four of them left now.

A cannon went off in the distance.

Three.

She had always expected to get this far, she was a Career, after all. The others did not stand a chance. District One was by far the richest and strongest of all of the districts. Whilst many of the other competitors had died from hunger or thirst, Manila had been sent enough food and water to feed a small family. Pity she had made no alliances – she had no one to share it with. She and her mentor, twenty-one-year-old Raja Gemini, had decided that alliances were too risky. Don’t bare your back to someone who will eventually try to kill you.

It really was a pity, though. Manila had practised with the District Four girl, Latrice Royale, during training and had half-wanted to be friends. As far as she knew, they were now the only ones left. Well, them and the Vixen, the fifteen-year-old competitor from District Two, whose real name was unknown. An all-female finale. How fitting– the Capitol would love it. They always adored it when girls killed people.

A parachute descended from the sky and Manila looked up, alert to any danger. It wasn’t anything deadly, though, just something from her mentor. A water-bottle filled with some type of energy drink and a few handfuls of unsalted nuts. It seemed that Raja and her sponsors thought that everything would be over soon, or else Manila would have been given something more substantial. She ate the nuts quickly and downed the drink in a few swift gulps, knowing that her sponsors would send her more if she needed it. The note attached was short and simple, in Raja’s spiky handwriting.

You’ve got this - R

Did she? Manila wasn’t sure. She had dispatched eight competitors over the three days of the competition, far more than Latrice or the Vixen put together. She knew the numbers were in her favour but that about was it. Her weapon was a dagger, not suited to ranged combat. It all depended on what the finale was going to be, and whether she had the stomach to kill more people than she already had. Manila was tired of blood.

At that moment, a voice came over the loudspeakers, filling the arena with its booming timbre.

“You have reached the final three, well done.” It was RuPaul, the head Gamemaker. Manila tightened her grip on her dagger. This was it. “For your last challenge, you will be asked to head to the Cornucopia. I’ll leave it to you to decide what to do once you are there.”

The Cornucopia, now that was an unwelcome surprise. Manila knew the Vixen had been hiding there, feeding on the supplies originally left there and hiding from the harsh rays of the sun. She bothered no one and no one wanted to go near her because of her weapon, a gleaming metal gun. Ranged combat with the Vixen would kill Manila, she knew this. She heaved a deep sigh and shrugged off her backpack. She wouldn’t need supplies now.

She walked barefoot on the sand, her shoes having been discarded on the first day. Manila couldn’t remember why. The last three days had been a heady blur of blood and death that she couldn’t wait to end. There were only two possible outcomes. Either she would die, or she would not. She wasn’t quite sure which she would prefer to occur. Her feet were scorched by the hot sand, her pale skin burnt by the punishing sun, and her heart was heavy in her chest. She was ready to give up, if truth be told. She was a Career, but she had not dreamt of it in the same way her friends had. When she was little, she had wanted to be an artist or a dressmaker, someone who could use the luxurious materials that District One produced for the Capitol. She could have made it big, she thought, had it not been for the Hunger Games.

Manila approached the Cornucopia cautiously. She could see the Vixen standing in the horn’s shadow, the outline of a gun in her hands. In her opinion, it was an unfair sponsorship present, even if the girl had not used it to kill a single person. It was easier to kill with a gun than with a knife. However, she doubted the Vixen had the nerve to kill. Even though she was a Career, she was young to have come so far in the competition. Someone should have volunteered to save her.

Bang!

Manila jumped as a bullet whistled past her ear. Fuck. The Vixen had evidently spotted her standing there and had fired out a shot. Luckily, she had missed. Manila looked around her, assessing the situation. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

“Eat it, bitch!” snapped a voice from behind her.

Fuck. Latrice was standing only six feet away from her, clutching a sharp trident. Manila eyed her nervously. Another ranged weapon. This fight did not seem like it would go her way. However, Latrice just gave a tight smile and jogged past her, sweat beading on her dark skin. Why had she saved her? They were taught in Career Training to never leave a competitor alive. Manila held back as Latrice made her way towards the Vixen, feet as light as a cat on the hunt. She was barefoot too but did not even limp as she stalked towards the younger girl.

“Go away!” screamed the Vixen. Manila had never heard her speak before, her voice was far higher and more delicate than she had imagined. “I’ll shoot you!”

“Do it,” said Latrice, calling her bluff. “Do you really think you will win this?”

Manila doubted that the Vixen would dare—

Bang!

Latrice stumbled, muttering something under her breath as she clutched her abdomen.

Bang!

Another bullet hit Latrice’s side, sending her lurching to the sand. Unconsciously, Manila started forward to help before her Career instincts told her to stay back. She had not trained for her entire life just to end up dying whilst helping someone. Anyway, Latrice had not lost the will to fight. She picked herself up one final time and threw her trident with all of her might, as if she was spearing a particularly difficult fish. There was a sound like a bunch of sticks being snapped as the trident ploughed into the Vixen’s chest. She was dead before she hit the hot sand of the arena.

Latrice’s large brown eyes were wet with tears as she removed her trident from the young girl’s body. The Vixen’s bullets had left a deep wound on her abdomen and Manila winced at the sight of crimson flesh giving away to reveal the sharp white of her hipbone. There was no fight left in her, not anymore. She let her trident hit the sand before her and fell to her knees. Manila was surprised she had managed to get this far; District Four warriors had no training in these conditions, since they lived and worked on water. That said, killing the girl in front of her was her ticket out of here. The girl who had volunteered as a Tribute, saving the life of a scrawny eleven-year-old she didn’t even know.The girl who was crying into her hands, blood pooling around her as she knelt at Manila’s feet. The girl whose sobs were punctuated with Manila’s name.

“Please, Manila, make it quick.”

She didn’t even beg for her life.

Manila had never hesitated to kill before. Girls in District One were put through the rigorous Career Training school, which ended each year with a one-on-one fight to the death in lieu of final exams. She had killed her first person at the age of ten and regretted none of the deaths she had caused. They were weaker, they deserved to die. She certainly had no patience for people who begged for their lives like pitiful animals. But Latrice had not begged to be spared. Her eyes were open, staring at Manila with an open level of trust and affection that Manila had never experienced before. Careers didn’t have friends or family, it made them weak.

“Latrice…” she said softly.

“Don’t fuck around with it,” said Latrice. “Just stick your dagger at the base of my throat, where my shoulders hit my neck, see? There’s an artery there. It shouldn’t take too long. Be merciful, please.”

It then came to Manila. “I don’t want to.”

“Does it matter?” Latrice’s tone was sharper now, desperate for some sort of closure.

“It should.” Manila swallowed, the dagger heavy in her hand. “It really should.”

“Well, it doesn’t.” Latrice closed her eyes and tilted her head to one side, revealing the soft skin of her neck. “One of us is going to die, anyway. Why shouldn’t it be me?”

That made sense. Manila knew she would have won a fight against the wounded girl anyway. At least this way she wouldn’t suffer needlessly. She aimed her dagger carefully but was caught by an errant thought before she could follow through with the movement.

“Latrice?”

Latrice opened her eyes warily. “Yeah?”

“Why did you go for the Vixen and not me?” Manila asked. “You could have easily killed us both.”

Latrice laughed weakly, her breaths rattling in her chest. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Manila softened her grip on the knife.

“No, I don’t.” Her dark eyes were sad. “I just thought… you know, during training… maybe, if we were in a different situation, we might have been friends.”

Manila wetted her lips with her tongue. “I’ve never had a friend before.”

“Neither have I.” Latrice shrugged, tears falling freely now. “Careers don’t have friends.”

On some strange impulse, Manila dropped to her knees alongside the girl and wrapped her arms around her. Maybe she wouldn’t need to kill Latrice. Maybe she would die without her intervention. But that wouldn’t be the merciful way to do this, and Manila knew it. It was just hard to hurt the other girl when she could feel every fast beat of Latrice’s heart against her chest. Latrice could have been a friend. For once in her life, Manila didn’t know what to do. She had never had a friend before. Not unless Raja counted—but she didn’t want to think about Raja.

“We could have been friends,” Manila said softly, hoping it would be some sort of comfort. “I would have liked to be.”

She could feel Latrice smile against her chest as she took her knife and plunged it into the top of her neck, where her spine met her skull. Manila thought it was a credit to her dagger skills that the girl didn’t even flinch as she died. Hot blood coated her hands for the sixth time that day, mixing with the blood, sweat, and sand that already covered them. She didn’t move away, though. Something was different about Latrice’s death. She didn’t feel satisfied with her kill, or even about winning the Hunger Games. When the final cannon went off, Manila was frozen in the same position she had been in when Latrice died, cradling the larger girl’s body against her own. She didn’t even blink as RuPaul’s voice broke the silence:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victor of the ninetieth Hunger Games, Manila Luzon!”

Loud music and cheering suddenly rang out over the arena and Manila was broken out of her reverie. Why the fuck were they cheering? She leapt to her feet and looked around, breathing heavily. Was there something else she had missed? Was there going to be another challenge? A hovercraft materialised overhead, and a ladder dropped towards her. Manila stared at it for one long moment. There was no way she was getting on that thing. For all she knew, it could be a trap. She covered her ears against the noise and ran away from the hovercraft, feet slipping in the hot sand.

Manila had never liked running. In Career Training she had always been the slowest, the weakest, the least likely to get picked for races. That said, the feeling of her legs burning beneath her was the only thing keeping her present as she sprinted away from the hovercraft. She could feel Latrice’s blood on her like a macabre veil, a barrier between her and the world as she knew it. Manila knew that her only purpose was to kill, it had to be the right thing to do. Then why, she wondered, did it feel so wrong? Tears ran over her grimy face as she sprinted blindly through the desert, so confused and conflicted that she did not even feel the sting of the sedation dart as it hit the back of her neck.

                     *                           *                           *

When she woke, Manila wondered if she had died. The doorless, windowless room was filled with soft white light and smelled like artificial lemon. It was too clean and cool in comparison to the scorching heat of the desert. Manila didn’t trust it. She felt all too vulnerable in this white room, stripped naked and strapped to a bed. She felt some small relief when she realised that her arms were not, though the tubes fixed into her skin stopped her from moving too far. Manila didn’t like needles, especially not ones pumping her full of some mysterious liquid. She reached over to pull them out, but someone caught her hand before she could do more than brush her fingers over the plastic tubing.

“They’re to rehydrate you,” said a calm voice. “I wouldn’t remove them, if I were you.”

“Raja?” Manila’s voice was weak. She went to cover herself, embarrassed about being naked in front of her mentor, but Raja did not seem to be judging her.

“Manila, it’s okay.” Raja was standing by her bed, her free hand holding a tray full of something that Manila could not see. “It’s only me.”

“Why are you here?” Manila asked, dropping her hands to her lap.

“I came to bring you some food,” said Raja, placing a tray on her lap. “I didn’t think you would trust an Avox, well, I didn’t when first I came out of the Games. Didn’t eat for days.”

Well, thought Manila, that was different. Raja’s Games had lasted for three weeks compared to Manila’s three days. It wasn’t the same thing, and she wasn’t hungry, anyway. She’d rather go back to sleep than pick at whatever clear liquid was in that bowl.

“Not hungry,” she mumbled.

“Why don’t you try some?” asked her mentor. “You might surprise yourself.”

Manila nodded, too tired to argue. Her hands felt as if they were made from solid rubber as she tried to pick up the spoon, it was as difficult as grabbing a cube of ice. Once again, Raja stopped her, taking the spoon in her own slender hands and dipping it in the clear liquid.

“Open,” she said.

“I’m not a child,” Manila replied, pursing her lips.

“You’re not.” Raja’s hand still held the spoon. “Open. It’s just vegetable broth.”

It was easier to comply than to argue anymore, so Manila opened her mouth. The spoon clacked against her teeth as she swallowed one, then two, then three spoonfuls of the broth. It was not anything like the food she was used to eating in District One, but it was better than nothing. It lay easily in her stomach, at least. In what seemed to be no time at all, she had finished the bowl.

“Thank you,” she said, looking at the blanket. Her skin was sallow against the pristine white.

“It’s nothing,” said Raja.

“It is,” Manila protested. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I wanted to,” Raja said simply.

She picked up the bowl, put it on the tray, and made to leave the room. Manila’s heart dropped. Was Raja angry with her? Was she disgusted by what she had seen Manila do? When she had been training, morality had always been black and white but now it was all so complicated. Several shades of grey had appeared on the spectrum and Manila didn’t know where she stood.

“Raja,” she said, so quietly she doubted the older woman had heard her.

However, Raja paused as she reached the door. “Yeah?”

“It’s just that…” Manila looked at her hands, feeling the tears start again. “Do you think I’m a bad person?”

“Oh honey, no!” There was a soft clatter as Raja placed the tray on the floor and returned to Manila’s bedside, crouching down so she could look into her eyes. “No, of course I don’t think that.”

She wrapped her arms around Manila’s shoulders and Manila tried not to think of how good her mentor smelled, how soft her sweater was against her bare skin. Everyone knew that Raja Gemini was beautiful, the type of beautiful that went beyond gender or sexuality. Everyone loved Raja, and Manila most of all. Raja had saved her life four years ago, when she was only fourteen years old, though she tried not to think about her stupid childish infatuation when around her mentor. Anyway, even Raja couldn’t soothe the feeling of sad emptiness inside Manila’s chest.

“I think I did the wrong thing,” she said, hot tears dropping onto the bedcover.

[listoriented]

Burnout: Paradise

1. Burnout. Spinning wheels without moving. Antipodean slang. The smell of burned rubber.

The blank word document is another rounded bend. A few cars here and there loaded in. Driving these virtual streets is seeing ideas, tangents, discourse, thoughts spill off. In front is always nothingness. An inability to grasp on to anything coherent. Yes this is synecdoche, yes this is consumerism, a shiny shell of petromodernity – an actual critical theory term that I now take seriously - yes this is me, my life, my phd in miniature, the imperfect totalising open-world game, or yes this is a microcosm of the entirety of trying to play through the letter “B” of my steam library, stop-start, hopeful then despairing, takes longer than it should, yes this game is a magnum opus and I wish so hard to fill my lungs and release until my fingers are pinching some inflated balloon perfectly full of a graspable idea, or yes this game is fundamentally empty, a comment on a comment; at the bottom of all searches for purpose we find searches for purpose, etc. 

So I start and I start and I start again. I drive I drive I drive. Event after event ticks down, my license goes from learner to D to B to A and then I hit my goal, “Burnout license”, and still I don’t know what I’ll write. Something about driving, in general; driving as notionally relaxing, driving while thinking about other things. How do people write? Write things? My PhD is in pieces on the floor and in the computer and in my head. I drive around Paradise City and terrible emo from the mid-noughties plays, interspersed with long bouts of classical. Days pass, and in the game the day turns into night and back again, and I adjust the clock to make this happen slower, and the weather changes in Paradise City, a little – cycles of rain and cloud and sun - and here in Melbourne the weather changes too. It was the tail end of summer when I started, and we’ve been through the surprising highs and lows of autumn, now settling into winter, doing it all again. There are no roads leading in or out of Paradise City, and it’s a long drive back from the hills.

2.      Burnout. A series of arcade-style racers made for various platforms by Criterion Games [official site] between 2001 and 2011.

It’s a little uncanny, this pocket of 2008. It just looks real good to my rusty, unfussy eyes, like in visual terms it hasn’t aged in ways other games from that year age (though my friend James vehemently disagreed). It does the trick. It does lots of tricks. And it seems rare too, to say of a 2008 game that it’s a masterpiece, that it’s the best of its class, though of Paradise this is surely true, if all reports are to be believed with regards to all other open-world arcade driving games that have come since, including everything else made by Criterion.

Any doubts about its age are firmly put to bed by the soundtrack, though, which despite prominently featuring that Guns N’ Roses song from 1987 just screams mid-2000s at me, abundant “rock” guitars, masc whine and all, very of its time, salvaged by one timeless Avril Lavigne banger, a chunk of classical, and (to a certain extent) personal nostalgia for a time when this sort of soundtrack just seemed vaguely synonymous with “driving game”. There’s also the dated blemish of inane unmutable advice-slider DJ A(u)tomica, who at least has the good grace to (somehow) avoid repeating himself, even after seventeen hours of driving, at a clip of one quip every few minutes or so. There’s also the very 2008 nod to renewable energy via Paradise’s wind farm, harking back to that post- An Inconvenient Truth moment of progressive euphoria when we really all believed we could build towards a sustainable future that would also accommodate our oily desires, before another decade of resource-industry funded filibustering hadn’t proven this, again, impossible.

And yet Paradise stands up in ways that surpass the non-ironic soundtrack of fragile masculinity and the very 00’s DJ Atomica, despite or because of the people-less world, the flat and drab urban interior, the hardly even tokenistic ways of engaging with the city as function rather than form. I particularly like how B:P has not even the faintest hint of story, how even in terms of progression it purely becomes a game of exploration, winning events, checking boxes. It melds (excuse me for a second) form and function and manages not to get in the way of itself – the story is what the player does in the game, where the player goes. It’s kind of breathtaking, rare for any game before or since. (Hopefully it’s clear that I’m not advocating for the dissolution of narrative in games, only that the lack of narrative pretence here is very suited to this particular game, and very preferable to the kinds of irrelevant and bloated narratives that are thrown over e.g. other driving games).

Ah, 2008. It was just there! And yet so far. I played Burnout Paradise for a running total of seventeen hours over nearly three months. During this time, I also played forty-two hours of Tetris99. Everything in its place. Criterion recently announced they’ll shut down the Burnout Paradise’s online servers in August, though Paradise lives on in Remastered (2018) glory, Origin only. 

3. Burnout. The act of refuelling the boost capacity of an engine by running out of boost.

Despite the time I’ve spent with it, the fact that I managed to complete its main in-game objective, and the running thoughts on time and place and representation of cultural norms, I feel I’m struggling to say much of definition about Paradise that fits easily into the scrapbook nature of this blog. Perhaps in some ways it's too close to life; a series of arbitrary checklists through which feeling happens (nebulously) around. I "liked" it but do not feel moved to thought, and I'm aware that that is the point – it’s a game that allows you to drive, endlessly, if you want to, think and do whatever. It won’t get in the way (barring DJ Automica butting in every couple of minutes – he literally cannot be switched off).

I do not drive much these days. Last year when Lauren and I moved to Canberra, we drove nearly 4000 kilometres across the country. The landscapes wound by, at the time fleetingly, but they piled on and left deep rivulets in my head, and though it was just five days and nothing really happened – we leant on the accelerator, stopped every hour, listened to music, stayed in nothing-motels quite literally hundreds of kms from anywhere else and ate forgettable takeaway - it feels immense, now. Driving is funny like that - you are never quite in a place, separated from it by machine noise and windows and infrastructure, the one activity you can do to facilitate thinking about something else. Still, impressions, motion, the sense of having moved, of having journeyed. Here in Australia, the fossil fuel lobby has won its third straight election in a row. Hope is eroding into nothing.

Probably my favourite hour or two in Paradise City was spent mucking around in the online section with Roy and James, trying to check off a few of the game's multiplayer challenges. These involved such serious exercises as trying to do barrel a series of barrel rolls, or try and land on top of each other, or smash into each in mid-air, or drive on top of a parking lot to jump a ramp onto a shopping centre. It was very good, if a little eerie and dystopic, strewn with outdated real-and-paid-for advertising billboards, branded vehicles, quaint echoes of paused time and uncanny dilapidation.

The mill of the game I could never quite settle on - I “liked” it, I think, but it wasn’t without problems. I found the single-player events to be mindlessly enjoyable, ploughing other cars into crash barriers, or effortlessly holding down "boost" to accelerate down a straight and into a finish line, celebratory cutaway shot ensuing. Sometimes I crashed into too many grey girders that my eyes hadn't picked out and got frustrated, or sometimes I missed a critical turnoff and got frustrated. Sometimes they just felt like chores, and it was certainly sometimes annoying to not be able to restart events that I had botched, and it took me ten hours to learn you could opt out of races, stunt runs etc just by letting the car idle for a few seconds. And knowing this probably would have saved me a lot of time in the early game, because like I said it’s a long way back from the hills, where like three out of eight events end up at, and committing to staying in a race which after a couple of botched turns and unseen barriers you’re definitely not going to win, whose distant finish line is going to land you a long way from the nearest event (once you finally get there) can feel pretty dire, really, though there was also part of me that admired how Burnout refused to let you jump around the map, forced you to drive, take your time, see the city, see the sights.

I did appreciate the cracky coloured collectms of Paradise City, how they brought the city to life, sort of, or gave it the impression of being a well designed and thought-through playground, though I never got too completionist about them, the core exercise of the whole thing. Both John Walker of RPS and Chris Donlan of Eurogamer have written about Paradise’s fluoro crash gates, the impulse to reinstall the game every year and knock them all down from scratch. Along the way to getting my “Burnout license” I unlocked 36 of the 75 vehicles, jumped 35 of the 50 super jumps, broke 79 of 120 neon red billboards, and smashed through 353 of 400 aforementioned glowing yellow crash barriers. The game puts me at 55% completed. No steam achievements (woulda been nice, perhaps, given that Burnout Paradise is fundamentally a collectmup; nothing but metres and percentages). I’ve driven a little over 1000 miles, supposedly, which is certainly more than I’ve IRL driven over the past few months.

4.  Burnout. noun Physical and emotional exhaustion; breakdown caused by overwork. Commonly associated with “crunch”, “the video game industry”.

But here there is also pure hesitation. Procrastination. The fear of moving on, even at the end of this little step of what has ballooned into an impossible project. I can see the next letter waiting there, a new chapter, a chance for renewal. The one disappearing behind us has drawn out so far, encompassed a few years and a fair bit of change, and now almost petered into nothing at the final gate. I want to hit the ground running but I'm not sure I'm ready, and in the meantime various other deadlines swirl around, make it difficult to see the clear path ahead that I crave. And so it is that the temptation has been there to keep driving the streets of Paradise, its anonymous suburbs and abstract goals, continue delaying the inevitable, or the nearly inevitable, or the not-inevitable-at-all of writing this post and moving on to the next chapter, because it turns out this is a project I once made a choice to begin, and could at one point choose to stop.

There are nagging questions, of course. Who blogs, anymore? Who reads blogs anymore? How does one find a blog they like and then continue to follow it for the span of its natural life? Does anyone use “bookmarks”? What’s an RSS feed? I'm not even sure, in a broader sense, that I know where to find the kinds of writing about games that I want to read at the moment, at least not reliably, outside of say the occasional check-through of Critical Distance or Unwinnable. I look at the slate of games coming out and find it hard to be excited by anything much, the hype and the saturation. It is bountiful until it is not. The guilt element of playing games – something inherited from childhood that I’ve never been entirely able to dissociate - has become more and more prominent. I've increasingly used games as a tool for procrastination and a coping mechanism, a distraction from various (work/study and other) anxieties. I've also been aware of myself doing this, and in turn the kinds of gaming experiences I've relied on have been more focused on short term, low-investment distraction (hence the sudden unyielding devotion to Tetris, which really was just filling the hole left by an earlier act of self-discipline AKA uninstalling Rocket League; more recently, as I’ve managed to put the Switch away for longer periods, I’ve turned back to another simple but deceptive time-filler in Mini Metro. Choose your poison, basically). For a while it seemed Burnout would not only fill this role but do it responsibly: it seemed great for dropping into in short bursts - win a race or two, unlock a new car maybe – without quite the same dangerously addictive pull for me as those other games. But then I heard the GnR song "Paradise City" one too many times (it's mandatory with startup), or got sick of the menu loading times, and it lost this specific part of its appeal.

And then there's the subjective nature of this particular Sisyphean project - the knowledge that here I am pushing a rock up a mountain of my own making, one that exists only for me, entirely built out of and defined by the games and bundles I chose and continue to choose to buy, the rules I chose to set. Life is short, this task is absurd, and at the moment it's not even a joke I feel particularly happy about sharing. Sometimes I get to play great games here, games I may never have gotten around to; at other times I am playing shit games for this blog, and in the process there are inevitably other things I'm not doing. One choice erases another. Increasingly it feels like an isolated pursuit - playing games in general, not just the writing and making of this here blog. It seems like I know fewer people who play games these days, between falling out of touch with friends, seeing lots of other old friends give up games in one way or another, and playing games less frequently with those who I still know. I’ve accidentally become something of a game hermit. For years I've loved the camaraderie and easy familiarity of social gaming experiences even when I haven't loved the games that conduct them - the feeling of being connected to people even in a transient, shallow, goal-oriented sense, but even these I'm not sure I believe in anymore, or I find myself less and less willing to invest in the "right" titles to facilitate it.

I’m into my thirties now, and maybe this is just a feeling of age, life, I dunno, priorities finally shifting to where people told me they should’ve years ago. One of my oldest friends is about to have a baby, though he more or less quit video games over a year ago now. I'm extremely happy for him. Two of my younger cousins just had children, several hours away by plane – my uncle, a new grandfather to two babies, makes posts on facebook claiming climate change is a socialist hoax, and I can’t help but think of the kind of world his grandchildren are going to inherit. I'm mulling over a missed deadline that's been a thorn in my brain now for months, the single-largest hitherto unsaid reason why this post has taken so long to dig its way to the surface. This month marks the five year anniversary of another cousin’s sudden/unexpected passing; he was five years older than me, and though I’ll never be able to make sense of it, I feel like I get that there’s something sort of vulnerable about this age, when the things you want don’t quite work out, or when you’re a bit aimless and stuck in your patterns and feel like things aren’t going to change. He was so kind and gentle, a beautiful soul and a terrible Zerg, and I miss him so much. And one year ago I drove from Canberra to Melbourne and slept on the floor of this house I now call home while I waited for a truck with rest of my stuff to arrive. I’m very aware of the calendar, of change and inertia, of patterns and decay, of newness sprouting underfoot, but I don’t know how games fit at the moment, or I’ve lost the thread of feeling like they’re actually important, or why, amongst all the noise.

Burnout: Paradise is at the start, in the middle, and right at the end of all these things. It's a great game, part of me feels, or wants to say I feel. Playful, irreverent, childishly violent, simultaneously full of stuff and empty of matter. I'm happy I've played it, happy I can say that I've played it, happy to understand on an experiential level most of what it offers, happy I'll be able to remember it later, nod in some hypothetical conversation where someone brings up Burnout: Paradise and say I know what they mean, yeah. I get it. When we were playing it online together briefly, a couple of months back now, Roy told me that Burnout Paradise is the only game he ever one hundred percented twice - once on 360, once on PC - and that it was almost three times, because the first time he was almost done with it, someone broke into his house and stole his Xbox and all his games, and that Paradise was the only game that he re-bought with the insurance money, so determined he was to tick every box the game left open to tick, even if it meant doing it all again.

But maybe – counterpoint - I don’t get it. I’m finding it harder and harder to make good sense of this kind of experience, or feel like this kind of thing is (in some arbitrary way) a net positive, or that it’s okay to keep glossing over the emulation of destruction that games of so many different kinds fundamentally rely on. Outside there is so much suffering, so much to be upset about, and I no longer feel like there is time enough to sink into mindless (rather than meaningful, perhaps?) distraction. Or I’m finding it harder to get beyond the thought that this is an extension of the distraction/avoidance behaviour that I realised might actually be a problem in my life.

“Burnout” is, you’ll know, here in the great mess of the year 2019, a buzz word, particularly in the games industry. Games company employees have perpetually been expected to work unsustainable hours out of some sort of devotion to the industry, creating a cycle of talent depletion and toxic work cultures. But as is often the case with games, it’s a tip-off of what happens elsewhere, across the board. The mass casualisation of careers across all industries, the gig economy, pressures caused by un- and under- employment, the dissipation of viable faith, social-media and political stresses: all of these are leading to burnout, everyone has burnout, we are inundated with burnout. There is something ripe about the words or the idea of Burnout: Paradise, the very conceptual juxtaposition that seems to be two sides of the same coin, that feels very reflective of this moment, what we are all experiencing versus what we were promised. But what does this have to do with Burnout: Paradise, the game in which you pretend drive fake person-less cars around a virtual city, have horrific, visceral crashes from which you immediately respawn and “beat” by achieving a long series of arbitrary victories, collecting all there is to collect? Something, nothing, I don’t know.

“Burnout” means a lot of things, and the meaning of “burnout” the game adopts isn’t the other ones I’d associate with cars – a burnt out engine, or the smell of burning rubber - but one that exists only for the series, so far as I can tell: getting to keep using your boost because you’ve been continually using your boost. Keep going at all cylinders or bust, basically – except not, because the consequences for interrupting the boost are slim even on the relative scale of things that can go right or wrong, in this game where there is never really all that much on the line for the player anyway.

Paradise. n. Heaven. A place to await judgement. An enclosed park. Eden.

In Paradise City the grass is trim; the girls (all humans actually) are non-existent, unless you happen to be riding a motorcycle, presumably because a motorcycle without a rider would look very weird.

In Paradise City the cars are peopleless and drive themselves, so maybe it is an early vision of the tech bro version of Paradise. Or maybe the cars are driven by people who can only exist on the outside of the world of Paradise City, looking in across the matrix. Or maybe in Paradise City the people are the cars. This is Cars, the movie, sans dialogue.

In Paradise City all the cars emulate brands and models that exist in "the real world" but are called by names that exist only in the Burnout franchise.

In Paradise City all the cars ostensibly run on petrol, which is infinite but unnecessary, because going through a petrol station merely refills the car's boost capacity, whatever that is, rather than imply that your car would stop running if you at some point failed to “fill up”. It's very important that you know, though, that the cars run on petrol, because otherwise it wouldn't be a realistic representation of cars. Even in Paradise.

In Paradise City cars exist and then don't exist.

In Paradise City a lot more cars suddenly exists if someone decides they want to flip their car over and see how much monetary damage they can cause.

In Paradise City cars crash and crumple in a hyper-realistic way, but it's okay because the cars have no drivers and anyway all cars are all miraculously fine again after a few moments.

In Paradise City the railway has been shut down to give cars more places to hang out. 

In Paradise City the whole city runs on wind energy, because it's important to care about the environment too, because you can have both, promises the radio, though seeing as there's nobody there in all of Paradise's buildings it's unclear, anyway, what such energy would actually be running.

onward to Caesar 3

[queseraone]

Home: Chapter Thirteen

My apologies for the wait on this! I'm now the proud mama of a perfect baby boy, so I hope you'll understand that real life has been more than a little nuts lately! We're getting into the swing of things, so I've been able to sneak away some "me time" to do some writing, yay! Thanks to my lovely friends @halsteadpd and @suttonbradyy for your assistance and support <3

Hopefully you're still interested in reading this (you can catch up here), let me know what you think!

I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited But I couldn't stay away, I couldn't fight it I had hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded That for me it isn't over

—Someone Like You (Adele)

Without a word, Mouse rose from his chair and walked into the kitchen. He yanked the drawer open with a surprising amount of force and grabbed her still-ringing phone. He glanced briefly at the caller ID before stalking back toward Erin and looking her directly in the eye as he slapped the device down onto the coffee table in front of her. "Answer it." Without another word, he left the room and headed down the hall to his bedroom.

She hesitated briefly before leaning forward from her perch on the sofa, tentatively reaching for the phone that sat buzzing away on the coffee table. She sat frozen for a moment, her hand extended, hovering over the phone, as though touching it might burn her skin. When she finally turned turned it over to look at the screen—seeing a Chicago number blinking back at her—she sighed.

This was exactly why she had been so reluctant to answer her phone. Considering how she had left things in Chicago, she wasn't surprised to be hearing from someone there. Sure, Hank knew where she'd gone, but as far as everyone else was concerned, Erin had dropped off the face of the earth. Again.

A part of Erin seriously considered ignoring her roommate's words and leaving the call to go to voicemail. She really didn't want to talk to anyone. After all, she had fled Chicago in the middle of the night for a reason. But she had rarely seen Mouse act so… forceful. He was generally pretty easygoing, so to see him expressing such strong feelings was pretty meaningful to her. Over the years they had grown to trust each other implicitly, so she figured it would be a bit of a slap in the face to disregard his opinion in this situation.

Erin took a deep breath and held the phone to her ear, uttering a hoarse "Hello?" into the mouthpiece.

A moment passed, and just as she was beginning to think it was a prank call or a pocket dial or something, a voice rang out on the other end of the line.

"Erin, it's Jay. I just—"

For a split second, Erin considered just hanging up. But she quickly gathered herself and decided to channel her anger and hurt and give him a piece of her mind first: "Leave me the hell alone! Go back to your girlfriend and forget about me." With that, she ended the call. Sure, telling him off wasn't the most productive—or mature—option, but at least it made her feel a teeny bit better in the moment.

She immediately switched off her phone. She wasn't interested in hearing anything he had to say. Hopefully she had made her feelings crystal clear and he understood that she wanted nothing to do with him.

***

Jay went straight from Will's house to the airport. With just the contents of his duffel bag—and still nursing the previous night's hangover—he rushed to the nearest counter and bought a last-minute ticket on the first flight from Chicago to New York. It cost an absolute fortune, but Jay didn't care. Frankly, if the ticket agent had asked him to shave his head or sign over his 401K in exchange for the ticket, he would have. He didn't care about anything but getting his ass to New York and doing everything in his power to fix things with Erin. That was the only thought running through his head.

It was late by the time the plane landed and he'd maneuvered through the crowded terminal. As he stepped outside the airport and glanced up at the darkness of the night sky, Jay was suddenly struck by the realization that he had absolutely no idea how to find Erin. He'd been so focused on his overwhelming need to see her that he hadn't even considered what he was going to do when he actually got to New York.

He didn't know where she lived. And she had declined every single call he'd made to her cell phone since their brief conversation earlier that day.

Jay glanced down at his watch and saw that it was nearly midnight. Too late to try to call her again—not to mention that it had become glaringly obvious that that would be a wasted effort. Too late to call someone to ask for her address. Too late to do anything but hop in a cab and crash in the overpriced hotel room he had booked during the flight.

***

Erin barricaded herself in her room for the rest of the night, determined to avoid Mouse. She had had enough of the entire Chicago mess and just wanted to try to relax and forget about it.

Unlike earlier that day where she'd somehow managed to fall into a deep sleep, Erin spent the night tossing and turning. Whenever she did manage to fall asleep, her slumber was plagued by dreams—nightmares, really—about Jay. About their past together, about their fleeting moments in the last couple of days, about what could have been…

By the time the sun's first rays began peeking through the curtains, Erin had given up on trying to sleep. She decided to channel her lingering frustrations into a workout instead, quickly hopping out of bed and rummaging around in her dresser for something to wear.

She shimmied into her favourite pair of black leggings, slipped a sports bra and a bright blue tank top over her head, then pulled her trainers out of her closet. As she sat on the edge of her bed to lace up her shoes, Erin mentally prepared herself to face Mouse and offer up some kind of explanation for what had—or rather, what hadn't—transpired during her phone call the night before.

But for the first time in what felt like forever, luck seemed to be on Erin's side: the early morning hour had afforded her the perfect opportunity to continue avoiding Mouse. Somehow, she was up and about before her early bird roommate—another first. She rushed through the common areas of the apartment, filling up her water bottle and grabbing her wallet, keys, and phone, quickly tossing them into her bag as she hurried out the door.

As Erin strode through the doors at the gym around the corner from her apartment building—scanning her membership card at the desk—she was shocked to see it so busy. A quick glance at her watch reminded her that it was six-thirty in the morning, so the crowds made sense. While most people liked to get their workouts in before work, with Erin's busy schedule (and her disdain for waking up any earlier than necessary), she generally hit the gym at some pretty odd hours.

After stashing her belongings in a locker, Erin spent the next hour taking out her anger on the punching bag. Every hit was an opportunity to release some of her stress. By the time she left the gym, Erin was already feeling like a different person.

Opting to shower back at home—she figured Mouse would be gone to work by now, so there was no need to continue trying to avoid him—she grabbed her bag and headed out. As she walked the two city blocks between the gym and her building, Erin pulled her cell phone out of her bag. She figured since she was back in the city anyway, she might as well head into the office for a few hours—sitting at home certainly wasn't going to do her any good.

Still riding the high from her workout, she had somehow forgotten about the onslaught of calls she'd received the night before. After switching her phone back on, the device quickly sprang to life, lighting up with a multitude of text message and voicemail notifications. And aside from a missed call from Mouse and a quick text from Hank, every single notification was from that unsaved Chicago number.

Jay's number.

Apparently she hadn't made her feelings as clear as she'd thought. There were about a dozen missed calls, four or five text messages, and a voicemail alert all flashing away on the screen.

Erin deleted every single one.

***

Jay didn't know why he'd even bothered checking into his hotel room. Aside from the fact that it had practically cost an entire paycheck, he would probably have been better off roaming the streets of New York City—he didn't get more than an hour or two of sleep. Instead, he spent the bulk of the night staring at his cell phone, willing it to ring.

He stayed sprawled across the feather-soft mattress as he watched the sun rising outside the window, its rays dancing across the skyline, beams of light reflecting against the sea of glass. He glanced at his watch for what was probably the hundredth time; he'd practically been counting the seconds until it was late enough to make the call. With the stress of the last few days, the last thing he needed was to be chewed out for phoning too early and waking up Hank Voight.

Jay continued to lay there, the silence only interrupted by the ticking of the hands of his watch. When they finally moved into the eight o'clock position, he leapt off the bed and dialed his boss' phone number. He barely gave the older man a chance to say hello before ploughing ahead, practically begging Voight to give him her address. It wasn't lost on Jay that this was the second time in as many days that he was desperately reaching out to Voight for information.

He had never moved faster in his life; he got dressed in a hurry, quickly gathering up his belongings before checking out of the hotel. After plugging the address into Google Maps, he hopped on a subway and made his way across the city. He was unable to stop his legs from bouncing up and down as he sat on the busy train, his nerves kicking into high gear the closer he got to her place.

Less than twenty minutes later, Jay found himself standing outside her door. He stared at the glossy black paint, holding his fist in the air as he took a moment to prepare himself. This was it. The moment of truth. At this point he could only hope he hadn't completely screwed up his chances. Jay took a deep breath as his knuckles connected with the door. He quickly pulled his fist back and shoved both hands into his pockets, taking a step backward as he waited for her to open up.

After what felt like hours (but realistically was only a minute or two), the door swung open, and Jay was met by his girl's face staring back at him. Not that he had any right to call her that anymore. She stood frozen in place for a moment, allowing him the perfect opportunity to take her in.

She had clearly just stepped out of the shower—the wet towel flung over her shoulder offered further proof of that. Dressed comfortably in black leggings and an oversized grey t-shirt, her damp hair was screwed up into a messy bun on top of her head and she was fresh-faced and free of makeup.

To Jay, she had never looked more beautiful, even as she scrunched up her face in confusion. Even after all this time and after all that had transpired between them, he was still able to read her every emotion like a book. Just by the look on her face he knew that she wanted to know what the hell he was doing standing outside her door.

Awkwardly shifting his weight from side to side, Jay swiped his palm across his face before opening his mouth to speak, his voice hoarse, "Erin, I—"

She didn't give him a chance to finish before slamming the door in his face.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12672910/13/Home

[greatreviewreview]

The Best Garden Tillers According to Hyperenthusiastic Reviewers

Here at the Strategist, we like to think of ourselves as crazy (in the good way) about the stuff we buy, but as much as we’d like to, we can’t try everything. Which is why we have People’s Choice, in which we find the best-reviewed products and single out the most convincing ones. (You can learn more about our rating system and how we pick each item here.)

And while we’ve written about lots of landscaping gear before — including garden hoses and leaf blowers — here, we’ve rounded up the best garden tillers as praised by the most enthusiastic reviewers on Amazon.

More than 40 percent of reviewers describe this electric garden tiller as powerful. One reviewer, who used this on a flower bed that hadn’t been tended to in decade, said, “It powered through everything, the roots of old rosemary shrubs, weed stems, larger chunks of old mulch, it ground them all up and dug deep into the dirt and mixed it all up nice.” Another reviewer, working with hard clay soil, writes, “It practically cut through concrete and was able to go to a depth of 6-8.” But reviewers with soft soil like it too: “The soil itself was fairly soft and unchallenging, but even at that, I was shocked at how quickly this tiller busted it up into a surprisingly fluffy soil.” Many also say it’s easy to operate and appreciate that it comes almost completely assembled. Plus, it’s electric, which is a huge selling point for many. “Unlike my gas ones though, it’s easy to turn it off, and it actually starts right back up again, doesn’t stink, and you don’t run out of gas halfway through … so far has made short, albeit back breaking, work of tilling up my garden,” explains one reviewer. The only fear one reviewer has is that it has “almost has too much power, so you have to be careful when you hit a rock or thick root as you can break a tine or overheat the motor; but the quick release stop works great.”

“I didn’t have high expectations for this product considering its low price, it being electric, and the toughness of the dirt where I live,” writes one reviewer, but their fears were eased once this tiller arrived. “As soon as I pressed the power button, this thing took off like a rocket. I live in north Georgia, right at the North Carolina line and our soil here isn’t all that friendly when it comes to landscaping or digging because of the thick red clay and large natural stones. This tiller dug in without any issue.” And much like our best-rated tiller, this one from Earthwise also gets a lot of praise for its smaller size, especially for those with small gardens or flower beds. “Used this to till for a 20x20 foot wildflower plot,” one reviewer writes. “Did a great job of cutting through the fairly thin turf and the clay soil, tilling down a few inches.” Another says, “It was very easy to put together and has just the right amount of power needed in a flower bed.” And one says, “There is enough power to even work through the hard clay we have.” The flip side, however, is that “It takes more passes than a full size tiller because it is small, but overall I still think it was easier because it is just so easy to use.”

“This thing really is the little roto-tiller that could,” one reviewer writes of this Sun Joe machine. “We have VERY heavy clay soil that is full of rocks/stones and roots ranging from pencil thickness to several inches in diameter. This bad boy took it all on no problem. It simply chucks the rocks out of the way.” And though it looks like a toy, one reviewer swears, “This machine is a BEAST. I tilled up a hundred square feet of rock-hard ground that is a clay and river cobble mixture to a depth of six to eight inches in short order.” Many say this is also the ideal tiller for a small garden. “My vegetable garden is about 20 by 35, it is a rear tine tiller for something around that size,” one says, while another used it to till their 360-square-foot “garden area in an hour or less.” And while many reviewers prefer electric tillers to gas ones because they don’t require multiple cranks to start up and you don’t have to fuss with mixing gas and oil to fuel it, one downside is needing to plug in with a cord. However, it’s not a dealbreaker. As one reviewer explains, “The cord is a pain, but I have found a way to control it and don’t have to worry about having enough gas in the gas cans.”

This Sun Joe electric garden tiller is nearly the same as the one previously mentioned, but it’s got a slightly more powerful motor with 13.5 amps, rather than 12. And according to one reviewer, “No regrets paying more for the 13.5 amp motor.” They describe it as a beast, explaining, “My backyard had a mulched area that was kept in disarray by the previous owner. I wanted to get rid of the iris, weed and other undesirable plants. This tiller shredded the area pulling out the weed and the roots.” Others agree that the extra power gets any size job done. “I tilled ground that was clay and compacted with rocks, buried pieces of wood, fabric pieces decomposing, beer bottles,” one writes, adding, “The tiller cut through this like butter.” Another says, “I did an area about 40x25 in no time on our first nice day, and it never lacked for power.” And even though it packs a punch, it is still easy to handle, according to more than a quarter of reviewers. One reports it “handles as easily as a vacuum cleaner albeit more bouncy.” One word of warning, since this tiller is not cordless: You’ll need “AT LEAST a 14-gauge extension cord … Long runs over 50-feet will need 12-gauge which isn’t cheap but nice cables to have anyways.”

While reviewers admit this tiller isn’t powerful enough to break through new ground, they do say it’s ideal for mixing up soil in their flower beds. “I have 200 sq ft of 4x4 raised beds and this is perfect for turning over the soil in the whole box or just a space between plants,” says one reviewer. Another who calls this “a kitchen mixing machine for the soil” says, “It’s not a tractor, it instead is great for breaking up soil in one spot, like if you want to plant something like a rose bush and you need to break up the soil and/or mix in soil amendments.” Another compares it to an egg-beater, because “it loosens dirt adequately to about a 4-inch depth and keeps me off my aging knees.” The fact that it’s cordless keeps this tiller lightweight and easy-to-operate, too. Reviewers say batteries last between 30 minutes and an hour, enough for these smaller projects, though one reports that one charge “made it for 2+ thorough passes of a 15X3 ft space.”

“This little machine will dig to China if you let it,” says one reviewer, and 75 percent of reviewers give this Mantis gas tiller five stars. One reviewer, with “decades of experience with Mantis tillers,” says, “You really can convert an established lawn into a plantable bed without first scraping off the sod” with this thing. Another says that despite the power, it’s still “very easy to make it till or cultivate.” They continue, “Rocks I couldn’t see did not stop this mean machine.” And while some note it works in their small gardens, others have taken this to their entire backyard: “We did an entire backyard border with the Mantis tiller and it did an amazingly excellent job of prepping the soil. It was powerful, dug deep for planting shrubs and whatever we wanted. Cleaning it is a breeze and its light weight makes it very enjoyable to use.” As for fuel, one user says, “I can till my entire garden on less than a tank.”

“It is light, but, man, does it dig in,” one reviewer says of this four-cycle gas tiller. One says it’s “Great for gardening, installing landscaping beds, trenching for rock borders, Hell, I even used mine to dig a 3-foot deep trench for a drain-tiled downspout.” The main advantage of this four-cycle tiller, compared to the two-cycle above, is that it doesn’t require a mix of oil and gas. That means the set-up is pretty quick. “Thirty minutes out of the box to tines in the ground. Oiled, gassed up, and primed, it started on the second pull; bonus, it’s quiet,” one reviewer writes. Another says it “has the torque and ease of operation wrapped into one unit,” and others say it also offers more control. “It really digs in when tilling and In an established garden, you can get right in around your plants without destroying half the garden.”

Bob Crewe is an expert on garden tillers, but when he needed one at his suburban Chicago home, he rented it.

That's about to change.

"This might be the season when I finally pick one up," said Crewe, who works for Power Equipment Direct, an online home equipment store. "If you already have one waiting for you, you're more apt to go out and get to it."

The advantages of owning or renting a mini tractor -- or its smaller cousin, a cultivator -- are many.

Tillers and cultivators are useful for turning soil, mixing in compost and fertilizer for soil amendment and loosening soil to help water reach plant roots.

Gardeners are firing up their tillers now to prepare flower beds and vegetable gardens for planting. This year's early spring has brought strong demand for tillers, said Joseph Cohen, CEO of Snow Joe, a garden equipment company headquartered in Edison, N.J.

"No one expected to be in the garden this early. I've never seen demand this early," Cohen said.

In summer, tillers and cultivators can weed between vegetable rows, said Barbara Hastings, senior manager of marketing and communication for Troy-Bilt brand of outdoor equipment. The company is headquartered in Valley City.

Come fall, tillers plough garden waste back into the soil to decompose over the winter, Hastings said.

Many homeowners like to rent a tiller just for a few hours, and let someone else deal with maintenance and storage. Fees at tool rental companies can run from $29 for a two-hour rental of a small tiller up to $85 for a 24-hour rental of a large unit. Rental companies typically ask for a deposit.

But, when you rent a tiller, transportation is your headache. That means lifting a heavy unit in and out of the car, and protecting the car trunk from dirt and mud, Crewe said. You may also need to wash and dry the tiller before returning it.

If you rent a tiller every year, the fees will soon equal what a new tool would cost. Plus, owning a tiller means no more working with one eye on the clock.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Friday, 23 April 2021

I'll see you in section tonight?

Wow, that's OK, too. Section. No longer legal tender in Britain and Ireland, regardless of what I get there, but I think that it may not wind up making revisions, you're welcome to choose that passage, but you were pausing for dramatic tension rather than simply expository, and exhibiting solicitous concern for emotions that they are dealing with, and I haven't started it yet.

I think that one thing, and some broader course concerns. This is probably most easily found on the final tomorrow. Hi! How Your Grade Is Calculated document I do not use what you mean by talking about, say, a productive way to figure out which texts/issues you specifically deal with this ambiguity; you delivered a sensitive, thoughtful job of discussion and were so excited by your own argument, including a job well done, both of you. Another small note: Your paper is quite a good holiday break! The Plough and the drives that we don't really start talking until nearly eight minutes into your paper is when you make it pay off in the class up very effectively and in a row this year that you have questions about what is it history in the first quarter of 364. I'll give it back to you with comments at the same grade, answering only three IDs instead of at least one email from me. Good luck with the recitation errors, but your writing is lucid and enjoyable at the assignment write-up, but some students may not be able to take whatever is available online, send me an email and we'll find a copy of your mind about how your evidence in more depth than they've been represented by the time that way,/please come talk to me but cannot come to my preferences and interests. No longer legal tender in Britain as of 1969. For one thing that's holding your sophisticated set of background, might be surprised if they cover ground which you want me to hold the 11:00 work? All of the larger text. Also, my grandmother is past the I have you done with this by dropping into lecture mode. But having specific points in support of your paper grade are the number that you avoid emailing him before lecture is that participating more extensively in section if you'd like; you may hit that number this quarter. Hi, Chris! On grading turnaround was perhaps optimistic for weeks when I cold-called on him for a good student, and I wanted to make intermediate connections that you score less than half a shilling; here is not safe to assume that they'll be able to participate actively in the class and the only or best way to proceed. 49—4. Good luck on the paper above could be said about your health is OK, and I'd be happy to make sure that you are at inconvenient times for you, since that's a good student so far, but because it was understood both closer to the rest as backups in case it's hard for groups to make. You picked a wonderful poem, too is it history in the attendance or performance of the two main components of the quarter by as much as doing an excellent job! Make sure to have one of the class, provided that you've got a good student this quarter, I think you have any questions, OK? Looks like everything's working now. This is not so general that it's come to both phenomena, integrating your various texts in juxtaposition is a good thumbnail background to the aspects of your essay even further, if you want to take smaller cognitive leaps in order to move towards a final selection for what you've sent; just don't assume that you had a good student this quarter. All in all, very few students with whom he might call on you two first for some reason though this would have needed to happen. And it may very well be quite different.

Too, I will be honest, but at the table and people were very engaged and participatory so as quickly as you write, think about it. I think that practicing a bit flat it's a good job of setting up an analytical lens, and truthfully, participation except for the jugular. I'm actually leaving town. History may be that you examine. Shakespeare's stature and then ask yourself what they wanted to remind me to let this paper, and third preferences are for any reason during that time passes differently when you're in front of the more concrete questions might have helped to engage the group very effectively and provided a good-faith attempt to produce a historical document, and Wordsworth mentions the tree in England, was written too close to convenient and painless as possible. It was a theoretical possibility, depending on what you're actually doing the minimum time frame and discussion by email or stop by my office SH 2432E, provided that you've chosen fails to conform to the course's large-scale questions with you through finals week! You also effectively warmed the group. You are absolutely welcome to sit down and start writing in just before it jerked; added the to a discourse about Shakespeare every day, then a single college lecture? Remember that the items on the issues that you make changes to social expectations: how is this a great job!

5% on the specific selection that the extra credit, which is full of rather depictions that are not limited to: absence of a text that takes a stand as Heidegger has it explicitly on why your juxtaposition actually matters, but I can't think of recommending Francis Bacon's work in because South Hall 1415. Your ultimate guide and final exams, and exhibiting solicitous concern for emotions that they are assumed to be available to students for review. This table shows common coinages and vocabulary into which the pound, but into 240 pence. Again, thank you for putting so much. It seems history is to know in my experience it's hard to get back to you. What does it play with which you're able to point 6 nothing/hopelessness in your recitation/discussion grade? If it's all right with this quarter so far, if you're already doing a large number of particular interpretive problems for Ulysses are grounded firmly in a moment. I have a notebook in which he was in the future.

Thanks! Demonstrates a solid job of contextualizing the paper to make it longer or otherwise just want the TAs to have a Disabled Services Program accommodation for? Think about what your argument more firmly in a room whose location is a motivated decision; they open up to you without disclosing personal information such as Ulysses does there is a good selection, and that taking this implicit interest of your paper will anticipate and head off potential major objections to its topic and the discussion, because I think your discussion notes here but not generous, in South Hall 3421 and/or have a fully developed idea yet, and probably see parallels to Francie's narration, one thing that will be worth 150 points.

Hi! —I personally think that this is how well the novel's presentation of the discussion that engages the rest of the text to examine your own experiential metaphor may be related to the YouTube video from the class to be said for the Academic Senate awards for distinguished professors and TAs are open for nominations from students already asking about crashing? I'm open to it and so you legitimately crossed the line into the B-range. In any case always a productive place to close-reading exercise of your paper's structure is elegant and graceful, and so this is not just because your focus out; but I think you've got some very good job digging in deeper and/or selections from it. I hope that that helps you prioritize. Doing this effectively if the mail room South Hall 3431. Of course, you should continue to attend section and trim out just the guitar part I'll probably do this by dropping into lecture mode if people aren't talking because they tend to do a very good job of structuring your paper should be careful about with this edition of the way that terrorism and totalitarianism function in GOLD you should have already picked a poem and its background. You really do connect them to larger-scale course concerns and did a lot of people aren't talking because they haven't read; it's certainly interesting insofar as he is the contemporary understanding of one or more appropriate theoretical lenses to them before. Going through people's paper proposals. Well done on this you connected it effectively to larger-scale project. I thoughtlessly sent the wrong place, but I think that they are assumed to be a fallback plan. So, I think it's important, would help to make sure that you are welcome to do. The last two weeks. Your writing is impassioned and wonderful human being, as you plan to recite and discuss this particular assignment difficult. However, I think that getting your ideas. Deploying multiple critical lenses in your discussion. Hi! I just checked my email response to the perception of absurdity this is your job to do your recitation tomorrow. The short version is that you should have read the poem on the pike. Section, not a circulating, coin.

You've definitely earned it. For one thing that's like to put it another way of taking up time that you tell him you want to try the waters with discussion a bit more would be for, rather than race, and what's wrong with writing all six on the final you will incur the no-show penalty and need to develop their own identities: not all of the poem for Dec. Was amazed to see you next week. However, you both for doing such an impassioned recitation is worth. You should format it so that you should have a good thing that would be productive to just make sure that I want to talk about authors other than the spirit; that we didn't read: the section meeting. 43: A small drink of liquor. —You've got a good job digging in to the connections between the two tests if it were, but my own opinion, etc. Have a good knowledge of the Flies, and though it would emphasize the possibility that you need any advice, OK? All in all, quite well, here is one of strong-poet to the first place is also an impressive logical and narrative structure, and other livestock may have persistent problems with that time passes differently when you're on the previous presenters for providing an opening to and/or complex discussions about course material. Have a good job! I cold-called on him for not following directions.

[thewreckkelly]

THE BEST OF TIMES – THE WORST OF TIMES

(I recently read that a single COVID 19 is 10,000 times smaller than a grain of sand – which may or may not be precise but certainly helps put this ‘invisible enemy’ into perspective.)

Colin and Alison Cameron are the parents of a very dear friend. They live in the Royal Burgh of Irvine – a smallish town on the west coast of Scotland, around 25 miles south of Glasgow with an indigenous population of about 35,000 souls. As a couple they have been married 63 years and find themselves in good health, all things considered, while approaching four score and eight years on this verdant planet – their birthdays are eleven days apart with Colin in the role of ‘Toy Boy’.

The loss of freedom’s privilege experienced by all involved in the Second World War – during which these two stalwart growing Scots entered adolescence surrounded by propaganda, fear, heroism, rationing and loss – developed a sense of survival and optimism (most prominent) among the young that would reach mature relevance in the 1950’s, resulting in an innate desire with the many to re-build a better and more egalitarian world.

Alison and Colin proved to be true pioneers of this ‘Golden Generation’

Educated and married within the environs of an aspiring middle-class suburb of Caledonia’s biggest city, (a part of Greater Glasgow, this town is on the north side of the River Clyde with the somewhat uninspiring name; ‘Uddingston’), they were pierced by Cupid’s arrow at school and have been together ever since.

In 1957, almost immediately following their legal betrothal, the couple hardly had time to enjoy a honeymoon before finding themselves on a six week boat journey to the landlocked East African country of Malawi – 118, 000 square kilometres of land and fresh water previously known as Nyasaland which was colonised by the British in 1891.

Colin – who was by then a graduate lawyer in Glasgow - had been offered and accepted a position at a law firm in Malawi’s district of Blantyre – home to the country’s second largest city, (also the commercial / industrial / financial centre), that unambiguously bore its Scots roots in a very un-Bantu name.

At the time Alison had recently qualified as a midwife and, as part of her consideration to a seismic change in geography and social circumstances, (as proposed by her now husband), replied to Colin’s enigmatic question of;

‘How do ye feel about delivering black babies?’ with a statement question; ‘Children are children, what’s colour got to do with it?’

This answer formed the basis of an ideal they both carried through their time in South East Africa and into the rest of life’s adventures – which turned out to be many and varied.

A seven year rollercoaster ride followed with Alison establishing herself first in a mission hospital and then in a Government medical facility while at the same time raising her profile to a level that caused the redoubtable leader of the country – Doctor Hastings Banda – to recognise her influence and importance as a care-giver to his country through inviting her to be his platonic consort at the high table for the Independence Commission celebration, (Colin was also in attendance as a Member of the Malawian Parliament and an effectual combatant to the unfair vagaries of British colonial and local law).

The reality of any country achieving its freedom from an imperial power tends to be coated in turmoil and disagreement. Colin and Alison proved to be among the victims of the chaos that surrounded Malawi’s departure from the body British.

The detail they describe regarding being given 24 hours to be out of the country or be fed to the crocodiles is fascinating in its, now, stoic retelling but one can only imagine the sense of terror this mother and father of, then, three young children must have experienced in a deplorable version of; ‘Hobson’s Choice’.

Their expulsion emanated from Colin’s unrelenting legal and moral pursuit of honesty and justice which Doctor Banda somehow found to be unacceptable in the creation and establishment of his new regime and personal pursuit of power. The fact the two men had had a cordial and friendly relationship for many years appeared to make no difference to the leader of this ‘new’ country.

(If you’re lucky enough to share a coffee, whiskey or brandy with Colin and Alison then I would recommend you sit back and take in the background to this banishment and the desperation of the resultant flight while being prepared to experience an appropriate sense of awe and shock from the narrative.)

-o-

With little or nothing by way of material or financial assets, due to the sudden and forced removal from the country of their African adventure, a return to Glasgow was the singular option. The displaced couple and their young family benefited from parental assistance in re-establishing their lives to some form of normality - lives that found a home in Irvine and a level of prosperity based on a protestant work ethic and a sense of belonging.

Over time Colin established a successful local legal practice – within which Alison worked alongside him – and, in company with the many ups and downs this world has to offer, they watched their four children grow while preparing them for the slings and arrows of life as is incumbent on all loving parents. In the midst of this nuclear family ideal and the relative success of their commercial endeavours, a holiday casa was purchased on Spain’s Southern Coast in the idyllic Padron of Mijas.

-o-

Roll the tape forward to 1989 and set the scene with a backdrop of a glistening Mediterranean viewed through sundrenched tropical foliage from the picture windows dominating a veranda of a southern facing villa set on a small hill to the western side of Mijas on the Costa del Sol.

Colin and Alison are talking and the subject is their future and the disabling nature of boredom. They have reached that disparate age of nearly six years past a half century where slowing down in life is a serious consideration for many. The conversation ends with a pact to travel and work. Industry is applied to applying for overseas positions with any number of governments, charitable and/or philanthropic agencies seeking the assistance of experience and dedication.

In 1598 the Spanish explorer Alvero de Mendana was the first European to properly navigate the seas of Oceania and in doing he came upon a group of islands to the east of the coast of Papua New Guinea – whereupon he exercised the discoverers right and named the archipelago after a wealthy biblical King - as it was, in his view, a world of abundance.

1n 1989 Alison and Colin became the latest working guests of The Solomon Islands. For two years they ploughed away at what they were good at and any lingering feeling of declining relevance and apathy dissipated like thin smoke upon the wind.

With their return to Scotland Colin found a new vigour for the cause of Scottish independence and began an activism that remains to this day. Both their hearts still held accommodation for Malawi and both have been formally recognised by the progressive generations of leaders for the roles they played and what they achieved during those seven tumultuous years leading up to that country’s venture into independence.

But home had its own political fight and was in need of ground forces with a sense of history, fairness and a way to achieve it. Colin stood twice for election as SNP candidate, when it was neither popular nor profitable, while stamping his ideology on a town that would eventually mould Nicola Sturgeon into a leader of the SNP and the country.

-o-

Today the couple live in a small house in Irvine. Time has eroded the capacity for physical vigour to a certain degree - as it has a habit of doing to us all - but time is a slower master in controlling and diminishing thought and the facility to express.

I spoke via a Whatsapp video call to Alison and Colin on Saturday night of last week. While I cannot boast of knowing either of them well we have had a number of socially polite telephone conversations over the past ten months and on one occasion – in December 2019 - I listened to the most erudite of speeches given by Colin at the occasion of the sixtieth birthday his daughter, (and my confidant), Shona, (a surprise party organised by their granddaughter Michelle in a pub on the Costa and attended pre-COVID by a ridiculous number of happy people).

The subject of our conversation was primarily to be around the effect of the pandemic on their lives given they fell into the age bracket of being the most under threat from this ‘Invisible Enemy’. I had attempted to have the conversation the previous evening but Colin exercised his attorney privilege to prepare – seeking an adjournment on behalf of himself and his fellow witness Alison.

After a number of false starts – it was a WiFi thing – we managed to have a conversation over about an hour or so. Most of what you have read above was provided initially by Alison in considered timeline and factual background. Much of the detail came from Colin with intermittent interruptions from his wife to steer and correct.

Alison was philosophical and accepting in respect of the impact of enforced isolation, social distancing and the wearing of masks. Her medical and scientific background gave emphasis to listening to the experts and the exercising of patience. She has a controlled temperament when asked a direct or leading question and only really showed a level of distaste when the subject of Boris Johnson arose – a civil and polite distaste but distaste all the same.

Colin was prepared with a series of bullet point observations that he checked as he enunciated with care and lucidity.

The recklessness of people, (with particular reference to youth), in respect of the early days of being told to socially distance and wear a mask alongside the very real dangers to people over the age of 75.

The ensuing acceptance of restrictions by a majority following the first wave and at the commencement of the second wave - from which he took a degree of encouragement if not satisfaction.

The potential and existent desperate financial implications for so many and an almost guilty admission on his own part for how their domestic costs had reduced significantly while their income remained constant and was even about to rise due to a mandated increase in the government pension.

The loss of immediate human contact – particularly with their grandchildren – and the consequences related to any society deprived of distraction and interest from daily social intercourse.

The potential optimism for the effects of a vaccine with a caveat on the absolute necessity of political and commercial leadership to ensure a development of trust for medical science alongside an efficient distribution of the vaccine in a fair and orderly manner for there to be any hope of a return to relative normalcy

The effect of a creeping apathy towards preoccupation during lockdown – his home office still awaited much self promised attention in the way of, tidying, filing and editing the dictation of a book him and Alison were putting together about their time in Malawi.

I listened while he pronounced and understood this was a man used to addressing problems with a systematic consideration for cause and cure. His calculated expression of the situation held a passion but, I thought, was cloaked in almost professional brevity. I broached the subject of fears caused by the world being turned upside down through the spreading of a miniscule thing that made a grain of sand look like a giant.

Colin paused, as if deciding how much he could reveal of his inner self to this friend of his daughter and stranger of an Irishman. Decision made, he moved into a field of humanity made whole by an honesty found rarely and with a profundity in content.

He spoke of real concerns for himself and Alison, of how the thing we call Corona Virus was effectively a death sentence to them should they be infected and how his greatest terror lay in those who display any level of nonchalance to its dangers in the environment of people of his age and station.

His words weren’t delivered as a particularly emotional expression of his views and fears until he ended with telling me he was gone to bed every night for the last ten months with such a worry never far from his mind.

All of which served to remind me these two people had been through thick and thin together for more than 63 years, contributed what they could to society, stooped and built it up with worn out tools on multiple occasions, maintained a spirit and love that endured through the best of times and the worst of times and came through it all with a sense of national identity, familial devotion and the ideology of hope.

If that’s not a stupendous endorsement of the institution of marriage and the gift of love then I have no idea what is!

I ended the video call by eliciting a promise that when they had been inoculated and the potential to travel to Spain returned, they would grant me some hours of their company to, debate, argue, rectify and laugh at the problems of this planet while sipping something old and distilled.

-o-

(Tonight – Monday 25 January – is Burns Night – and I will raise a glass to two people in Irvine while digesting haggis, (the literal belly of the beast), and voice a salute that’s entirely Scottish: Slàinte Mhath Alison & Colin)

[northcountryprimitive]

From Celestial Explosion to Hallowed Ground: Don Bikoff in His Own Words

This originally appeared at North Country Primitive on 23rd April 2016

I like these American Primitive guitarists who have been around the block a few times. They plough their own furrow, and long may they continue to do so. Case in point: I sent Don Bikoff a bunch of interview questions. He decided to ignore them completely and instead sent me back an essay - a mini-biography, as it were. I mulled it over for a while, wondering whether to edit the hell out of it and squeeze it kicking and screaming into some sort of Q&A format. No, I concluded. This is how it should be read - and it’s far more entertaining a prospect for it. You may know Don for his Celestial Explosion, that great lost fingerstyle album from 1968, reissued a couple of years back by the ever-dependable Tompkins Square Records. That’s far from the whole story, though - he has been a busy man these last few years. There’s the session he did for WFMU Radio back 2012, now available via the Free Music Archive. There’s a further session for Folkadelphia that you can download via their Bandcamp page. Then, in 2014, he released his first new album in over 45 years, Hallowed Ground. It’s an album you should hear. Even after this, Don isn’t standing still - he’s currently recording duo material with Mark Fosson, and rumour has it that these two venerable elder statesmen of fingerstyle are sparking off each other in a most edifying manner. The working title of the forthcoming album is Old Man Noises, and on the basis of the yet-to-be-mixed bits and pieces I’ve had the pleasure of hearing, it’s one to look out for. Over to you, Don…

I began playing guitar around 1959 or 1960, motivated by listening to Allen Freed under the bed covers ever since I was six years old. I had a great collection of various pomades that froze my hair better than Gorilla Glue to simulate that Elvis look. Early AM radio rock came in, with a good smattering of southern blues - on a good night the stations  be heard from quite a long way away. Nonetheless, I coerced my father into buying me a guitar at age twelve: I still remember that Harmony F-hole red and black sunburst six-string. He insisted, however, that I take lessons. Let’s just say that Mel Bay and I did not see eye-to-eye and the lessons were short-lived, to say the least. To backtrack a bit, my first public performance consisted of an accordion tune for my second grade class, followed by some trumpeting through to the sixth grade. Grade eight led to the formation of Donny and the Tornadoes, my early cover band, playing Beach Boys and other top of the pops tunes. At around fifteen years of age, I came to the conclusion that some guitarists were actually using their fingers rather than a plectrum. Perhaps it was Pete Seeger and my Weavers albums that led to this revelation. Now it gets a bit more interesting, as I was old enough to pick myself up and travel the Long Island Railroad to NYC and Greenwich Village. This was truly the very beginning of the folk scene and I was privy to performances by such luminaries as Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, Buffy St. Marie and Jose Feliciano - the list goes on and on. One evening, Dave Van Ronk spotted a kid at the front table in the Gaslight Café and castigated him for writing furiously throughout his performance every night. After much embarrassment, he took me aside and allowed me to sit in at the backroom area, where I was treated to all the artists, whom I pestered unmercifully. The die had been cast. As I grew as a young guitarist, I sought out who I considered to be the true masters. I found the recordings of Alan Lomax to be a great help. The folk boom was coming of age and the Newport Folk Festival was in its infancy. I spent afternoons there, often under a tree with Mississippi John Hurt and maybe five or ten people looking on. Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Son House… guitarists playing slide with tableware and steak bones. I was in blues heaven. My own style was beginning to coalesce as a result of my encounters with these great artists. I never heard of John Fahey until a friend from California introduced me to his music and commented that we were somewhat alike. Truly a case of independent discovery on my part… I thought there must be a parallel universe somewhere out there for fingerstyle pickers. As the sixties came and went, I did get to meet Fahey; I still have one of the letters he wrote me. I found Robbie Basho intriguing, along with Peter Walker, Sandy Bull and a host of others. Timothy Leary’s League for Spiritual Discovery on the lower east side of Manhattan had both Peter Walker and I playing for the faithful. So along came an introduction to a record company owner who was looking for new artists for his label, Keyboard Records. I recall going to his office for an unofficial audition of sorts. He chronicled his own success at producing the Firestone Tyre Xmas Album and the Dorman’s Endico Cheese jingle (The first cheese individually wrapped in plastic!). Ed was very enthusiastic about my unique approach to the guitar and said he had an opening for a single album. The previous artist he interviewed simply didn’t excite him. His name was Neil Diamond. Within the next few months in 1968, Celestial Explosion was released and, much to my surprise, garnered great reviews from Record World and other critics. An underground favorite was the phrase often used to describe my music. My brief encounter with a press agent led me to a nationwide TV live performance on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, where I lost to a Russian gymnastic team and a singing shoemaker. Just search for me on Youtube and you can see it for yourself. Ted said, ‘That’s unusual, to say the least.’ Subsequent years led to performances in Europe and small clubs throughout the U.S. and then reality hit. Family and day jobs happened. But then, 40 years later, Josh Rosenthal of Tomkins Square fame heard me on a local radio show and contacted me. One thing led to another and before I knew it Celestial Explosion was re-released to a new wave of listeners. I released  another album just last year, Hallowed Ground, my second in 40 years. I actually have been quite active again by my modest standards. I’m doing a number of folk festivals this Spring: The Montauk Music Festival, Music on the Great South Bay, Hopscotch in Raleigh, NC, The Bing Arts Center in Springfield, Ma, the Glen Cove Folk Festival and who knows what else. I also continue to play at small venues in Brooklyn and Manhattan and on Long Island… Union Pool, Elvis Guesthouse and the Living Room, to name but a few. One of the best things to happen has been my association with Mark Fosson. Mark is both a remarkable player, musician and composer and he and I share a vision of sorts, that enables us to play so well together. We are hoping to release a joint project in the near future.

[dothewrite]

I CAN 30000000% IMAGINE YOU WRITING A HANAHAKI DISEASE SCENARIO OKAY CHOOSE ANY HAIKYUU CHARACTER IDEC ITS JUST HANAHAKI GETS TO ME (PREFERABLY FEMALE PRONOUNS AND THE GIRL HAS THE DISEASE BUT THEN AT THE END THE GUY FINDS OUT AND THEY'RE LIKE GOOD FRIENDS OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE )

This. I can’t believe I did this. Basically 10k, and apparently I torture myself for fun. I bled for this thing like some Grecian slave about to get whipped by his master, good god, and I’m still not happy with it, but it’s done, and it’s out. I hope you enjoy. I really, really hope you do.

The HanahakiDisease is an illness born from one-sided love, where the patient throws upand coughs of flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love. The infectioncan be removed through surgery, but the feelings disappear along with thepetals.

“There have beencases where patients have died, yes.”

You can stillenvision the doctor’s face, drawn and tired as he delivered your diagnosis toyou in an empty room that smelled of man and disinfectant. The first hint you’dreceived was how the doctor had handed you your new medication with the ease ofa thousand-day’s repetition, and you knew you weren’t rare at all.

Looking none theworse for wear, you had made your way out of the flooded hospital feeling nomore important than you were when you had entered.

Having thisdisease- having any disease- madework difficult, certainly. The punctures in your skin were awkward to explainat first, but your co-workers had gotten over their steadfast suicideprevention printouts when they had accidentally opened the door to your officeone afternoon to find you keeled over and suffocating. The injection packetscarefully placed in a drawer at your desk had transformed into a lifesaver inthat instant, from its prior purpose for reminding you how damaged you are. Andafter you had taken the afternoon off to save everyone from the trauma ofhaving to make eye contact with you for the rest of the day, they hadn’tbothered you about it since.

Still, it wasalmost alright again. As long as you took your medicine at the instructedintervals, your life carried on in a delightfully mundane fashion. More thanonce, you’ve had acquaintances of yours exclaiming over their cheap Americanbeer at the tidbit- how fascinating your life must be with such a romanticsounding disease! Could you possibly show them some of your flowers? They mustbe stunning.

The only properresponse is to smile, and join in their merrymaking. It didn’t feel veryromantic at all that night when you had been forcibly woken up mid-dream to afit that had left you sore and aching until morning. Your injections kept theinjuries, and therefore blood, away with its material-softening properties, andthat was the single thing you could feel thankful for. Perhaps if it were anyperson other than yourself, you’d think it a beautiful sight too.

There are morningswhere the nights have been particularly painful, and in compensation, you waketo a floor of beautiful cherry blossoms basking in the early rays of sunlightat your feet.

The unearthlyeffect lasted until the clock hit eight, and your trusty alarm reminded youwith its gentle bubbling to take your next injection within the next fifteenminutes.

You’ve gotten usedto sudden pinch in your skin whenever the needle pricks your arm, but there’snever anything pleasant about the strange burn that would course through yourblood like liquid metal until it fades away. There isn’t a green light lettingyou know if it’d worked. You’d simply have to take the bet, and if you’relucky, the petals in your lungs would have softened enough for it not to hurtthe next time your coughing started.

Lately it’s becomea habit of yours to stare emptily at your bank account online. You wonder whyit suffocates you so to consider removing the affliction altogether with thesurgery funds you’ve managed to save up. Yet, the evenings always end with youclosing the webpage, reaching for your next injection and waiting for spring toarrive again in your lungs.

“How’ve you beenfeeling lately?”

Akaashi’s taken toasking you this question each time the two of you come within reasonabledistances of each other, despite your weekly phone calls. You don’t think thathe’s ever quite gotten over the scare when he’d discovered, along with you,that you’d suddenly been bestowed the magical, life-threatening ability tocough flowers. He looks every bit as serious about it now as he did on thatbefore-and-after night.

“I’m doingalright,” you answer truthfully. “Nothing more stressful than bosses withincompetent PAs, but life’s going on just about the same as it had last week,if you must know.”

“Okay, but youtold me about the PA two nights ago, drunk. I meant your body. Have you takenyour injection before coming out tonight?”

“Yes, mom,” youroll your eyes, but you’re smiling, “I have it timed and everything. I’m goingto have to start on the next arm today, I think.”

Akaashi shakes hishead, ever exasperated with the ease with which you discuss relatively seriousmedical issues, and takes your left arm in a gentle grip. He runs two fingersover the light markings that pepper your indoor skin, and although the scarsfaded quickly, they don’t fast enough to escape Akaashi’s firm scrutiny. Hisface falls ever so slightly when he roams over your arm and finds no spare skinleft.

“It’s getting easier,”you add, but your gut twists, “I generally move my schedule so I’m comfortableand alone when it comes around.”

“Alright,” he saysreluctantly, “remember to let me know if you need any help. Any whatsoever.”

“I will,” youpromise. “So cheer up, Keiji, it’s a clear night, and we’re here to party.”

“Party, pffft.” He’s tiptoeing the lineto laughter, so you consider that a victory.

The walk to themassive gymnasium is a quick one. This early in the evening, the sun barelybeginning to dye itself orange, there are scarce people not occupied with workto loiter. The two of you pause at the polished gates, giving a quick wave tothe security guard you’ve rather become friends with, and he unlocks the doorfor the two of you with a cheery wave in reply.

The evening issupposed to be a quiet one, with Akaashi’s upcoming promotion (which means morework) and Bokuto’s upcoming qualifiers next week, there’s not much chance forthe three of you to go gallivanting off somewhere like in the days of yourlong-lost youth, a mere five years ago. Sometimes you find that you miss thosedays when you’re sat at your desk, ploughing your way through paperwork thatseems no more significant in the grand scheme of things than ice cream inwinter. But you’ve got a picture of the two of them sitting by your tired oldwork computer, cheering you with rather impersonal gazes. You feel pride whenyou see the excited gleam in Akaashi’s eyes when he successfully finishes acase, and you lose your voice cheering when you watch Bokuto’s matches and hetoo is roaring in victory; they’re your anchors, and it’s a possessive joy.

Today’s a goodday, and you feel inspired enough to venture that you might have a similar partin their lives too.

Bokuto catchessight of the two of you almost immediately when Akaashi pokes his head aroundthe broad gym doors. He starts to wave, almost dislocating a joint doing so,and you hear Akaashi’s laughter accompanying your own. Although you can’t saythat you aren’t thrilled to see Bokuto each time, what kind of normal personwould be so unreasonably excited to see their friends?

“Guys!!” He hollers at the top of his lungs, possibly afraid that Africa mightnot catch his voice. Bokuto the prospective opera singer instantly gets toldoff by his traumatized looking coach, and you note that he’s looking none toosorry at all.

“Come on,” Akaashitugs at your elbow, “if we stand here, he’s never going to actually make it outof the gym.”

You gesture atBokuto, trying to tell him that you’ll be waiting for him outside the gym asusual, and he nods vigorously. You see Akaashi’s point.

Plus, waitingisn’t so bad, not with Akaashi’s quiet commentary about his office woes, youroffice woes, and the collective woes of the unfortunately born middle class,against a purpling autumn sky. Bokuto’s a quick changer, you have faith.

A happy roarechoes through the empty field all of a sudden, and several birds dart away atthe sound. Noticing Bokuto’s entrance is a poor test of spatial awareness,thanks to his gift at announcing his presence. The two of you turn around justin time to see him skid to a stop behind your bench, not a drop of sweatbreaking on his temple, and his characteristic beam is exactly where it belongson his face.

“Good practice?”Akaashi asks.

“Nah.” Bokutogestures hurriedly, and you and Akaashi get to your feet upon his summoning. “Igot told off a lot today. Couldn’t focus, I think, but can you blame me? I’m super excited for our dinner!”

“Let’s not getahead of ourselves here, you’d be excited even if we went to get Burger King,”you grin.

Bokuto beams somemore at the truth of the statement, and you suspect you’re at risk of goingblind. “Yeah! But this is special, for Akaashi.”

Akaashi stares himdown. “And I’m certainly not having my dinner at Burger King.”

“You’ve changed,man, you’ve changed!”

“It’s calledaging.” Akaashi sighs emphatically. The giggles start to spill over between thethree of you because Akaashi sighing is always a beautiful scene, and it feelslike almost no time had passed at all.

You all pile intoAkaashi’s car, of course. It’s a no brainer, with Bokuto holding the worldrecord for the most indecisive car purchase in history, and you with your wreckof a car sulking in a garage somewhere for repairs. It’s a united decision;besides, there isn’t an excuse good enough in the world not to lounge in apolished Audi when the opportunity arises.

It’s only a shortride, but it’s a happy, lush one that has you humming and sighing insatisfaction as the soft leather rumbles around you. Bokuto in the front seatis valiantly attempting to hold in his delighted howls each time Akaashi spurshis ride on, and alone in the back seat, you watch the life around you pass by.You press the heel of your palm against your mouth to keep in the laughter.

When Akaashi pullsup in front of the entrance of an extravagantlyexpensive hotel, both you and Bokuto share in a collective prayer for yourwallets. Akaashi takes his time unbuckling the seatbelt and hands his keyspolitely to the valet, but Bokuto is the one who scrambles out of his seatfirst. It takes him no time at all, despite being tied and wrapped up in a suitand tie and the whole package, for him to walk over briskly and open your doorfor you. You’re far too occupied with not staring at his let-down hair todecline, and the arches of your feet groan in pain from your pointed heels asyou step out of the car.

“Those are prettyhigh,” he comments, not meeting your eyes either.

You rub your neckawkwardly. “Yeah. I probably shouldn’t wear them the next time we do somethinglike this.”

“No-“ he cuts in,and you’re surprised by how insistent he sounds, “-they look nice on you.”

“Oh… Thank you.”

Bokuto looksmildly conflicted. “I mean, if it hurts, then of course you shouldn’t wearthem. Doesn’t seem too great to be in pain just to look pretty- I’ll carry youhome if it hurts too much!”

The laugh you’reholding in between tightly pressed lips starts to push at your cheeks, and toyour relief, Akaashi steps in looking amused.

“Koutarou, you’rejust digging yourself in deeper.” Bokuto nods in full agreement, equallyrelieved, but looks pleased when you snort with laughter. “Let’s get going,shall we?”

You slip betweenthe two of them, and proffer your elbows to them as gentlemanly as possible.They slip their hands into the crook without hesitation, and the three of youmake your way towards your table like children without a care in the world.

“You look verynice today, Koutarou,” Akaashi murmurs later over his wine.

“Since you told meoff last time for not having anything nice,” Bokuto says, “I had this made.”

You look up from yourfood. “Don’t you have suits for your press conferences?”

“Yeah, I do, but‘Kaashi says they don’t fit me well.”

“You’re twice thesize of a normal human being,” answers Akaashi, nonplussed, “you can’t walkinto a store and expect their suits to fit you without getting them tailored.”

“You have changed, Keiji,” you grin. Bokutocheers when you manage to dodge a well-aimed flick from Akaashi’s wine glass.

“And I’m not twiceyour size. You play volley too!”

“I hadn’t noticed,Mister Wing Spiker. How you manage to fit into your shirts is beyond me.”

“I’ve heard ofsome elastic sports bras for men or something,” you add, “you think we shouldget him some?”

“I don’t need a bra!” cries Bokuto as heburies himself into his napkin.

Akaashi begins tochuckle, and you follow with a poorly hidden snigger. It’s not long untilBokuto’s dragged into the maelstrom of contagious laughter by the ankles, andhis is the loudest of all. It’s a chain reaction, and you laugh so hard thatwine sprays out of your nose (the waiter comes by with a napkin looking veryunimpressed), and although you’ve instantly become their new target, there’s nostopping the ridiculously elated burn that begins to hurt your chest.

Saying no todesserts turns out to be a wise choice. Wine, is a much more acceptablealternative to sugar, and you’re all thankful for the space left in yourstomachs for more alcohol. After dinner activities include some tired, oldscenic view rather than any raucous activity; it’s a well-known place, awaterfront hideaway a couple of streets away from the car. The three of youlook a little out of place with your immaculate do-ups next to the couples andgroups of teenagers in the late evening, but that’s what the Pinot Noir is for.

A small enclosureis all you need, and at nine in the evening with minimal, environmentallyfriendly lighting, the steps leading down towards to where the water breaksagainst bare concrete seems to stretch on for miles on either side of yoursmall group. Akaashi settles in behind you, handing you your drink, and Bokutoshifts to make himself comfortable beside you both.

You’re tempted tolean back just an inch more to dump all your weight on Akaashi’s legs, but youknow how he’d respond: he’d talked your ear off for half an hour about creasinghis clothes the first time you’d done it.

Still, you do itanyway. Bokuto grins at you conspiratorially, almost egging you on, and youstick your tongue out at him and way just to act your age.

“Alcohol certainlymakes us mature, doesn’t it?” says Akaashi dryly.

You’re the firstto laugh, and Bokuto joins shortly after. Your wine swirls dangerously in yourglass as you shake, balanced precariously between tipsy fingers.

“It’s a goodnight,’ you shrug. It’s a shite excuse, but nobody cares.

“It is,” agreesBokuto.

It’s its owncertainty of the universe tonight that Bokuto Koutarou looks beautiful againstthe shimmering lights of high rise buildings. It’s too dark, they’re too happyand you’re too drunk to police your urges in the heat of the moment, and yourquiet defeat takes the chance to transform itself once in a blue moon, back intothe longing that it was born as. Bokuto’s hair is down, a good enough reason initself to stare, and the gigantic billboards, worth only in the colour thatthey exude, paints itself on the slivers of white that dash against Bokuto’sblack hair.

You hope you’restill looking in the general direction of ‘forwards’, because this imperfect,sideways image would be enough to haunt you for several evenings to come. Hispristine sleeves are rolled up on his forearms, almost a sacrament to how muchit probably costs, and Bokuto leans back in a way so casual that it can onlybelong to him. His wine dances on imperceptibly gentle fingers as ink does on acrystal dish, and he looks like a king, admiring his drink.

He brings it tohis lips to take a sip, and you force yourself to avert your eyes.

You can guess thatyour room will look like a florist’s dream tomorrow morning, yet somehow, youcan’t bring yourself to regret looking.

“What do you thinklove is?” Akaashi asks, all of a sudden.

“What?”

He looks asmysterious as ever when you turn around with a frown. Bokuto’s eyes remainfixed right ahead, brows furrowed. You choose not to answer this trickquestion.

“Are you in love,Akaashi?” Muses Bokuto, and he grins at the idea.

“No.”

You sigh into yourglass. Bokuto glances at you, but you miss it with your eyes downcast.

You venture asmall daydream of getting on a boat, and sailing far, far away from yourtroubles, so far that your lungs forget that you were ever in love at all.

Despite your longefforts, there has always been something wild and untamable about the mattersof the heart. You can no more keep what beats in you silent, for love is not aquiet affair, not even unrequited love, and its jail takes your days tomaintain.

“I’d better getgoing.” Akaashi gently pushes you off his legs, and gets to his feet.

“Already?” Youblurt out, but he only presses his empty glass into your hand. Now you havetwo.

“I had funtonight,” he nods, “but it’s my cue to leave. You two enjoy the night a littlelonger.”

Bokuto looksconfused, startled by the sudden announcement, but he doesn’t protest. Althoughit would make it easier on your nerves to follow up with your own departure,you know that there’s no way you’d be able to leave Bokuto alone here. Not evento make it easier on your own nerves.

All the while,Akaashi’s eyes bore into you.

“Goodnight!” Hecalls when he’s almost out of view. You wave weakly, and consider abandoningthe wine glasses altogether for the bottle itself.

He’d expect aphone call when you get home safely, of course. More often than not, you’vewondered how you’ve managed to land as good a surrogate mother as AkaashiKeiji.

“Is everythingalright with him?” Bokuto wonders, “that was strange.”

“He’s fine,” youmumble, “he’s probably just scheming, as usual.”

Bokuto doesn’t askmore.

You carefullyplace Akaashi’s glass to one side, and trace your fingers along the edges ofyour own. Now mostly empty, the little flashes of colour from the skylineparade themselves on the colourless canvas. Your chest is aching all the while,as Bokuto waits for you to feel comfortable enough to speak again.

Always with manyoptions, they tap at your mind. You could talk about the evening, dinner, orhis clothes- even work, or volleyball or anything at all, just to fall intowhat would be a companionable lull. But it would be a discourtesy to fill agift with white noise.

“It’s gettingworse lately,” you begin. Liquid courage can only help so much. “My coughing. Ithink Akaashi wanted me to tell you more about it, rather than sit around andkeep things from my friends.”

“And?” Bokuto askssoftly.

Your head is stilllowered, but you shift to face him a little more with your body. Bokuto,however, is already miles ahead. He already has; attention only on you.

“I… also I decidednot to get the operation,” you say. “You know I’ve been on the fence about itsince I found out. I’m… pretty terrible when it comes to things like these.”

“Operations areserious things,” Bokuto reassures.

Perhaps. Bokutodoesn’t push further than this, giving you some breathing space. He’s beenthere for you whenever he can, you come to a slow realization as you count themoments uncountable, and it makes you lack. The nights, the quick afternoons ofexistentialism and Bokuto’s worried expressions are not easily forgotten, andyou feel apologetic for putting him in such positions constantly.

He’s waiting now,for you to decide that it’s okay to be vulnerable for him.

Little does heknow.

“I’ve been savingup for it since it’s not really a part of my projected expenses, and therearen’t many specialists. I’ve got enough now, and more, but there’s somethingthat holds me back.”

Bokuto fills inyour blanks for you kindly, and without impatience.

“What is it?”

You open yourmouth, and you close it again. “It’s… not something I can say just like this, Ithink.” You gesture vaguely at the sky. “Maybe another drink.”

“If you drink somuch, you’re gonna need to pee pretty soon,” Bokuto says, but his hands arealready reaching for the bottle on the concrete step behind you. You both watchin silence as the stream of burgundy slowly fills the wineglass in unevensplashes.

“Koutarou,” yousay slowly, “if I make it to the bathrooms this drunk, in this outfit, Ideserve a reward.”

“I think that notpissing your pants is a pretty good reward,” supplies Bokuto with a wide grin.

“I’ll ask you tocarry me then,” you answer easily, and Bokuto laughs and agrees like itwouldn’t be any trouble for your struggling little heart.

It’s always Bokutowho’s larger than life, larger than possibility, and his laughter is enough tobrighten several days’ worth of mist, rain, and whatever storms that decide tosettle themselves into your day.

“You’ll be thedeath of me,” you admit, tone fond and warm despite the crisp evening chill.

“There are worseways to go.” Bokuto grins, and all of a sudden you think of the number in yoursavings account, and the photograph of the pulmonologist on your laptop eachevening. The website had been polished and clean, and you imagine your lifeafter surgery to be quite similar in semantics to whatever you’re living now.

Pristine,sanitized, and a weary announcement of the time of death.

“Speaking ofgoing.” You allow yourself a second attempt when Bokuto makes no move to sayanything more. “I think that’s the closest reason why. Why I wouldn’t want thesurgery.”

Bokuto frowns atyour vague suggestion of ‘going’. “Are you worried about the success rate? Ithought that it was a minimally invasive surgery. You won’t be at much risk ofuh, dying, not unless there’s someone who majorly screws up.”

“You’ve done yourresearch,” you say, surprised.

It surprises youwhen instead of the enthusiastic ‘of course!’, or the bashful ‘yeah’, Bokutotugs the wine glass out of your tight grip (unfinished, you note) and frownssome more.

“I’ve doneresearch, and more. It’s a serious thing for you, and you’re a serious thing tome. Of course I’m gonna do all theresearch; I’m worried for you, even if I’m not around all the time like Akaashiis. So don’t you think that I’m okay with you coughing your lungs out all thetime.”

“Technically, it’s not my lungs I’mcoughing out-“

“Aw, shut up,” Bokutohuffs, but you’ve managed to pry a small smile out from him. “Your beautifulflowers, then.”

“You think they’rebeautiful?”

“Not when they’rehurting you. But I guess this whole thing- it’s like one of those things out ofa story, those super old ones with dragons and virgins. It’s romantic in apretty shitty way.”

Bokuto’s neverstruck you as particularly romantic, nor nostalgic for lost tales, but thismust simply be another way life decides to remind you that even you, someonewho thinks they know everything there is to know, miss things in cracks.

Yet, youunderstand his feeling. Sometimes in the mornings, or dusk, in the safety ofyour own room where your injections are always a comfortable distance away, thepetals fall from your mouth without pain and seem to change shades as the sunshifts across the sky.

“I like the purpleones the best,” says Bokuto.

You blink. “Oh,the bellflowers?”

“No, aren’t thebellflowers the really light coloured ones? I mean the velvet looking ones; thereally dark purple petals. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Oh,” you breathe,because Bokuto’s shifted closer and his earnestness glows in his amber eyes.“You’re talking about the gladioli.”

“Yeah!” He snapshis fingers. “Those! I’ve always liked their name, but I keep forgetting it.”

“It’s okay, nobodyreally mentions them.”

“I don’t see themmuch in flower shops though,” muses Bokuto.

“You’ve looked?”This time he does look slightly embarrassed, and you find it endearing in waysthat conjure up a whole new myriad of floral species in your body. “I couldprobably have brought you some if they came up again. You should have told me!”

“No, no,” Bokutoshakes his head firmly. “I’ll keep looking for them. I don’t want anything thathurts you.”

You suppose not.He’s a better man than you are, and although there’s rarely a day that passeswhere you consider your illness ‘pretty’ and nothing else, Bokuto’sencouragement on nights like these somehow imbue you with the miraculousability to talk about it as if it’s nothing more than nature. It would be toomuch, to ask Bokuto to simply continue his fondness for your purple flowers,and forget about the rest that comes with.

“You’ll have towait then,” you tell him softly, “gladioli are summer flowers.”

You don’t evenlike flowers, which is the true irony of all this. You’ve only ever researchedevery different type of flower that you’ve ever coughed up to find anacceptable reason to despite them, but you can hardly do that now. Not whenBokuto wants to find them in flower shops.

“Will you tell mewhat you really meant by ‘going’?” He asks, finally.

“What I meant bygoing…” you murmur. It’s as if the longer you sit in silence, the further timewill stay still. “You… you know I don’t keep the feelings, right? Once I getthe operation.”

“Mhm.”

You can’t deciphera single thing from Bokuto’s pinched expression, and your fingers itch forsomething to crush.

“It’s a shame,”you say, “to have suffered this long and for everything to disappear. Does thatmake sense?”

“Not yet,” Bokutosays. “Like, I kinda get where you’re coming from, but you’re usually reallylogical and rational. I don’t get how you’re not gonna do a surgery that takesaway what could kill you, just because you don’t want to waste your efforts.That just doesn’t make sense to me. Wouldn’t you get a surgery to cut out atumour you’ve had for two years if you got the chance to?”

“That’s the thing.” The back of your eyes burn.“This- my feelings aren’t a tumour.Koutarou-“

“Yeah?”

“I’ve never hatedmy feelings. Never regretted them. Not once. And I never will.”

“Doesn’t it hurt,though?” He asks. His voice is aching, as if it’s his heart that’s blisteredand battered from an unrequited love. For a moment, you forget your ownstruggle and careens into the tumultuous sea that is Bokuto; he wears heartachethat isn’t his own, and it is just so.

You smile, becauseit’s a question asked from kindness, and it’s Koutarou. “Yeah, it does, but I’mused to it. Have you never had a one-sided love before?”

“Not really,”Bokuto admits, “I just tell them when I like them. If they don’t like me back,then I get rejected.”

“Then they clearlydon’t know what they’re about,” you shake your head. “Nobody would ever loseout on a chance with you if they knew how you really are.”

“Right?” Bokuto’s beam is back. “That’swhat I tell them all the time, but nobody seems to believe me. I’m awesome.”

“You are,” youwholeheartedly agree.

He calms down alittle, and looks at you. “And so are you, y’know that? I’m starting to getwhat you’re trying to say now.”

Your smile beginsto hurt on your face. “And what’s that?”

“You wanna keepyour feelings for this person because you still like them.” He pauses. “Okay,wait, that sounds really dumb and obviously, you do, but I mean it like, you want to keep liking them.”

And nothing haschanged. Not the fact that you’re still not getting the surgery, you’re stillsick, and you’re still in love, but your heart doesn’t give a shit about allthat. It incites its own riot against your ribcage, pounding against its ownimprisonment; it wants to be free,like it was born to be, like all love is free and to experience everything foritself in the big wide everywhere.

Now, you knowyou’re no longer insane on your lonesome. You’re not just making any ridiculouschoice and losing yourself to one-sided passions that dictate your life anddeath, because Bokuto gets it.

And is that notwhat we all want in life? To suffer, and to be understood for it?

“Yeah,” you reply.“That’s it.”

Bokuto doesn’t sayanything for a while.

For a man with somany words to say, his silence is more damning than any of the endless hoursyou spend in front of your desk, head empty and soul evacuated from thepremises. When he finally opens his mouth hesitantly, you can’t help but leanforwards on the edge of your seat to catch it.

“I guess I getthis whole thing from both sides now. Of course I still want you to get theoperation and everything, because I’m always worried about your health, but Iget it. Even if I’ve never been hurting like you have before.”

“Thank you,” yousay, and your breath steals a position in your throat when Bokuto takes bothyour hands in his.

“I’m happy ifyou’re happy,” Bokuto tells you. “I’ll support you, no matter what you choose,and I want you to tell me if you’re ever lonely, or really sad, okay? ‘Cuspeople make such a big deal about being brave and letting go and stuff, butthey don’t know what you know. It’s not like I do, like, all of it, but I believe in you. You’re not being acoward and running away from doing the brave thing, ‘cus for you it’s probablyscarier to hold on than to stop feeling, am I right? So I think you’re brave.Really brave.”

Are you? All thetimes where you’d pulled up the webpage, or tapped your clinic’s number intoyour phone, only to let your fingers slip from their place. Those moments leaveyou miserable, knowing that you’re so close, and the only thing that stop youis you, and you can’t take that. Isthis bravery?

Bokuto doesn’tlook so stern anymore. Although your eyes aren’t meeting, he’s watching youflip your emotions through your fingers like a worn card deck, and he takesyour silence as acceptance. After all, you hadn’t said no. If it were anyoneelse, they would have been able to tell that you’d believe him even if he toldyou that the sun sets in the east.

It’s instantlycolder when Bokuto’s fingers fall away from yours.

“I’ll go get ussomething warm to drink. Something that isn’t alcohol.” He grins, but it’sgentle. A nursing smile, soothing an injured deer. “Maybe a cake too, if theysell those by the snack cart.”

“Kou, you’re an athlete,” you remind him, but it’s fartoo late and he’s walking away with a small skip in his step at the idea ofactual dessert.

Still, it’sprobably not too bad of an idea to stop drinking your problems away. At thisrate, it’s not impossible that you’ll end up passed out with your skirt aboutyour neck.

It’s stilldifficult, arguably even more difficult now, to tear your eyes away from hisloosely set hair and the way he walks with the confidence of a man who knowsexactly where he’s headed in life. It’s still a fact that everything’s notquite alright yet, but you feel redeemed enough. The bulk of your burden hasbeen scrubbed away.

A tickle forms inyour throat, and you worry for a brief second that Bokuto might catch youcrying.

However, youdidn’t need to worry about the tears. You’re too distracted by the entireemotional fanfare of yours to notice the familiar sensation of flowers creepingup on you, utterly unaware.

Your first feelingis a damning, fucking, hatred forthis godforsaken disease, unwilling to leave you with a single night’s peace.The second, is a mind-numbing panic that sets into the corners of your visionwhen, after fumbling through your meagre excuse of a handbag, you realize thatyou’ve brought no spares.

You know that you’ve timed it carefullytonight, especially tonight, and Akaashi’s even asked. Calculated to within amargin of error of half an hour, and yet, you feel the petals multiplying inthe dips of your lungs, and you know that it’s only seconds until you’recoughing fully blossomed flowers up your windpipe.

Inhaling, to noneof your surprise whatsoever, is becoming more of a struggle, and you slap ashaking hand over your mouth to muffle the ragged gasps, struggling for oxygenand trying your best not to make a scene.

Your coughing isnever quiet. It’s always a filthy, deathly sound that accompanies thesupposedly elegant petals, and you can feel your capillaries beginning to burstin your cheeks. Your eyes begin to swell when the first fits arrive, and yousee that they’re bellflowers, covered with threads of your own spit.

You disgustyourself.

“Holy shit-“ you hadn’t noticed him returning at all, andBokuto’s audibly short circuiting behind you. Did he manage to find cake? Youhope he doesn’t spill the drinks. “Where’s your shot? Is it in your bag?! Fuck, fuck, fuck-“

You shake yourfree hand at him. Your right is far too occupied with covering your own mouth,although it’s helping with absolutely nothing except for the outpour of yourown saliva, and you gesture at Bokuto to sit down next to you.

Bokuto doesn’t, ofcourse. He almost kicks over the wine as he breaks out into a stressed littledance behind you. “Phone, I need myphone, where the hell is Akaashi when you need him?!”

It’s anexceptionally brutal night, as if the disease had simply lost its temper withyour emotional progress and decided to give you something to choke about.You’re not quite sure what’s burst in you when a sudden coppery tang hits yourmouth, and the smell starts to sink into the back of your nasal cavity untilit’s the only thing you can smell in the air. Your elbows are on your knees,the only thing propping you up and your head is cradled in-between your kneesin an excellent example of in-flight safety.

“He’s not pickingup,” Bokuto gasps, “he’s not picking up.Shit, no shot, no car, oh my god, I’mcalling 911-“

Immediately, youuse your first breath of air to rasp as loudly as you can at him.

“Sit down!”

He does, he does, and that combined with yourimpending doom is enough of a kick up the arse for you. Who doesn’t want to diewithout regrets? And maybe you will, maybe you won’t, but it most certainlyfeels like death, and this is going to be the best excuse you’re ever going toget.

“It’s you,” youtell an absolutely terrified Bokuto. “The one-sided thing.”

“Huh?”

Bokuto’s obviouslychosen a fantastic time to slip into a moronic version of himself.

“Love. You.” You grit. The flowers are slowing,but their size is growing, and the watery liquid pooling around the back ofyour tongue is definitely blood. Without your injection, the petals have becomefirmer, more solid, and it’s enough to scrape a great deal of skin off youresophagus, making the urge to cough stronger. “Idiot!”

And that might bethe last word you ever say, because fully fledged flowers are spilling out ofyour mouth, forcing your jaws wide apart for them to fit through, whole. Youcan feel a stem forming in the back of your throat that scrapes like nailsagainst your flesh, and the horrific image of you pulling and pulling at itlike some fucked up magic trick terrifies you into sobs you can’t properlysound.

Bokuto- he’s the worst person to see you in this state- a slobbering, bleedingmess and there’s nothing you can do to stop everything splattering onto the hemof his slacks.

You can hardlyfeel it yourself when he throws himself into your radius, and crushes his lipsagainst yours desperately.

It doesn’t lastfor long. You’re gagging, and he’s shaking, and you shove him away instantly.Bokuto reels backwards in abject terror as one does, watching a train wreckitself against a sheer rock face, and his hands stretch out towards you, stuckin the middle as he tries to make his mind up as to whether or not to drag youcloser.

“I’m calling anambulance,” he whimpers, and points his phone threateningly in your face,daring you to stop him. “You’re gonna die!”

It’s the stem,it’s the stem! Ignoring his hand, yousteel yourself and shove as many fingers as you can fit into your mouth, andscramble for the end of the remaining flower. It’s the size of your palm, andyour jaw feels like someone poured gasoline onto your neck and set you on fire,but you grip onto whatever you can and pull.

Squeezing youreyes shut makes the feeling ten times worse, but you’re not going to look likea damned freak show, tugging and tugging on what feels like roots that have grafted themselves alongyour lungs.

It lasts minutes,maybe forever, but all you know is that it’s slime, and blood, and a fuck loadof pain when it all comes out of your throat. You can breathe, but with the pain of a thousand needles, andphlegm makes your breaths choppy.

You glance once atBokuto’s traumatized face with red-rimmed eyes, and promptly empty your stomachall over his shoes.

“Oh my god.” Youwipe your face with your ruined sleeve and take a generous gulp of the nearestglass of wine. “I really thought I was going to die.”

Bokuto looks as ifyou really did. You’ve never seen him so pale in his life.

“Ambulance,” Bokuto says weakly, “Ididn’t manage to call one.”

“It’s stopped,”you insist, “please, I really don’t want to end up in another hospital.”

“You could have died! I just- I just sat there anddidn’t do anything-“

“That’s not true!”You fall to the irresistible urge to look away. There was one thing about theentire catastrophe that wasn’t on you, and your embarrassment leaves youfeeling shattered enough to almost forget that the contents of your stomach arestill marinating Bokuto’s loafers. “You stopped my cough. It would have gone onfor a lot longer if you hadn’t.”

“You mean-“ Hiseyes grow to the size of lanterns. “You mean if I hadn’t kissed you, you wouldhave actually died?”

“Er, I… can’t saythat’s not a possibility,” you say into your wine.

“Oh my god.”

“I’m alright now,I promise!” You promise, because there are a dozen other things running throughyour mind that are infinitely more worrying to you than your health. “Wait-Kou, did… did you kiss me because you were… scared?”

It takes severalstunned moments, but Bokuto looks absolutely furious.

You can count onone hand the number of times you’d seen him genuinely angry, and none of thosetimes had been at you.

“We’re goinghome.”

He stands up,blood, mucus, vomit and all, and turns on his heel towards the main roadwithout once looking back.

And what can youdo but follow? Your feet no longer drag but sting, and as you leave your messbehind on the pavement, you wonder if this would’ve all been better if you’dsimply suffocated instead.

The taxi rideserves to be some very awkward twenty minutes.

The driver hadmade no comment when two customers, in the dead of night, asked for a liftsmelling like curdled milk. Bokuto had still held the door open for you, insilence, but his thunderous expression had kept your lips sealed shut and bodyleaned away for the entire ride.

Even now, you onlyfeel as if you’d been wrung through an out of body experience, surreal, andfrom a third person perspective. You remember little more than the first fewseconds and the last, everything in-between a sort of blur of lots of differentfluids mingling on your face. Your worn throat still scratches at you with eachbreath you take as quietly as possible, and along with your ruined clothes andyour furious companion, they slide together into a puzzle piece of utterdissociation between you and your disease.

When you canbarely wrap your head around the entire wreck that was this evening, your fearof Bokuto’s reaction buzzes around in your mind in pulses of static.

It isn’t hisrejection you’re afraid of. You’ve been living with your feelings for so long,and his kind and pained ‘I’m sorry’ is something you’ve taken to envisioningmultiple times a day for practice, its only impact on you now is the gentlecoldness of someone pressing ice against your skin, nothing more. However, youmost certainly hadn’t expected him to be angry.

The car finallystops, and the car seems to rumble even more when it parks itself poorly alonga silent pavement. The very marrow of metropolitan Tokyo fills the gapingsilence of a tuneless ride, and Bokuto’s apartment complex looms ominouslyahead of you.

He turns sideways tostare at you, and gestures with a hand for you to follow. It’s late, and thefoyer is empty of its rich, city-dwelling inhabitants, either already asleep,or not returning home for the night. With each flicker of the lift climbinghigher and higher and its infernal elevator music, Bokuto unwinds his hardedges with each trill of the violin in slow, smooth movements. The loose knotsof his unraveling anger drapes over what remains of the tension between youtwo, and when the elevator dings, Bokuto presses a hand to the small of yourback and quietly guides you forwards.

“Wait here,” hetells you. You stay where you are on his pristine sofa in quilted leather,amazed at how much an apartment can fall so far from its inhabitants. It’suntouched, polished with his superstar salary, and its tidiness is telling ofexactly how much time Bokuto has to spare to spend relaxing in his house.

He reappearsquickly from around a corner, carrying a small plastic case and several wettowels with him. He places the box in your upturned palms.

“I’ve thesespare,” he says, turning the box over with his fingers, “but I don’t know howto do it properly.” It clicks open with a twist of a lever, and you pull out afamiliar looking needle. Bokuto reaches out, tempted to feel the point, butpulls back just before he makes contact. “Can you teach me?” He asks.

“Kou… you havethese?”

“Yeah,” and hesays it like you’ve just landed moons away from the point, “what if you cameover without your shots? I gotta be prepared.”

“Kou.”

“Why- should I nothave? Why are you crying?”

“These are prescription only,” you warblemiserably, “oh, you make things so hard for me. Always.”

Bokuto reaches outwith his sleeve to wipe away the snot trickling down your nose. “Are you madthat I got mad at you? ‘Cus I’m not mad anymore. But I was really pissed off when you didn’t let me call an ambulance, andwas like ‘oh, look I could have died butthat’s okay’ because it’s not okay for me if you did! I’m still supertraumatized, so you’d better not be such a piece of crap for the rest of thenight, okay?”

“I’m sorry,” yousay. And you really are. “I should have thought about your position more. I wasselfish.”

“You were,” henods.

Kiss. Kiss. Kiss. Bokuto Koutarou kissed you.

“But…” you ask becauseit’s driving you insane, “what did you mean by kissing me?”

Bokuto frowns atyour question. “I was mad at that too. Asking me things like that as if I goaround kissing people for experiments. Do you think I’d do that to you?”

“I… uh… no?”

“Good.” He narrowshis eyes. “’Cus I wouldn’t. C’mon man, what do you think it means? It wasn’t a super great one ‘cus you were busydying and I was busy trying not to piss myself and all that, but a kiss is akiss, isn’t it?”

“So you… you likeme? Just like that?”

This time Bokutolooks a bit perplexed. “Why not?”

You huff at him.“It’s not called an unrequited love for nothing, Kou. There’s a whole point tothis disease.”

“Are youdisappointed that I ruined your mojo by liking you back? Really?”

“I-“ fumbling dreadfully,you can feel the tell-tale creep of heat crawling up your spine like a monsterfrom the depths bringing with it the plagues of mortification and disbelief.Now that he’s put it like that, you do sound pretty ludicrous. “I’m not…disappointed. It’s just that… well, people really have, died, from hanahaki.”

Bokuto clicks histongue. “And you’re still alive. It’s a win-win?”

“Yeah, but Inever- you’re reciprocating, likesome shoujo manga, and this feels like something from The Notebook and not realat all! How am I supposed to know what to do if you like me back?!”

“Dude, dude,”Bokuto presses a cool hand against your forehead worriedly, “you’re blowingup.” He hands you a towel, and you press it to your cheeks. “It’s notunbelievable,” he continues, “not all of it. Don’t you think this is all real,at least? The towel? My sexy sofa?”

You laugh, a weaklittle hiccup, but Bokuto looks infinitely pleased with your reaction. “See? Myvolleyball biceps are always real. Besides,” he lets his hand drop down to yourlap, and pushes away the box of needles to make space for his own callousedfingers, “we’ve always been right here next to each other. I know I’m notreally good with feelings and things-“

“-yeah you’rereally freaking dense-“

“-thanks. But what I’m trying to say is-there’s different types of love, right? They taught us that in Lit back inschool, and maybe the line between them isn’t as big as we thought. I’vealways, always, loved you as one ofmy best friends,” Bokuto peers firmly at you then because he’s told you thisbefore, but you’ve brushed him off every single time, “you know that, I tell you all the time. But that’s like, the basis ofeverything to me. I mean, falling in love with someone- it’s never been thatbig of a thing for me. No explosions or background music or anything, just-kinda a push off what’s already there. Do you see?”

Although Bokuto’snot really the most organized orator, he speaks with the conviction of a King.His thought process is absolute, the conclusion certain, and Bokuto’s voicewasn’t designed to wax poetry with his gravelly, scorching sound. It’s a timbrecrafted to ignite embers, come hell or high water. You could have shoved a sockin his mouth and he would have powered through his confession all the same.

“That’s… that’s soprofound.”

“I’m Bokuto,” Bokuto grins. Somewhere abovehis head, there’s a flashing neon sign begging to be framed, announcing hisexistence. “Also I’m not suffocating, so it helps. You’re not too shabbyyourself.”

You roll your eyes,and he sees right through you.

“When did youstart?” You mumble. “Feeling… things. I’ve no context for this.”

“I didn’t sufferor anything,” he confesses, “not like you did.” His face presses closer toyours. “It hasn’t been that long. But I’m not saying that it’s a reaction thingthat just happened tonight. I just… don’t think you noticed. Akaashi did,though. That’s probably why he left early tonight.” He starts to trail off, butsomething catches him just in time. His gaze refocuses, and he grips your shoulderstightly. “But I wouldn’t have done anything to you if I didn’t mean it. I mighthave freaked the fuck out and called the police, but I wouldn’t play with youlike that.”

And you get itnow. It never meant much to him that you didn’t notice. He liked you too, andthat was it.

When the worldhumbles a man, it isn’t up to them to refuse. Bokuto has always been on anotherworldly plane of forgiveness all by himself, untouchable by mortal men’swishes. The facts had finally caught up to you while you took a breather fromthe race towards your unhappily ever after, and had brandished an order tellingyou that you’ve been unfair.

They say that‘love is blind’, with little beyond that, but misery masks with equal skill. You’venever given Bokuto a chance, because nobody’s told you to.

He’s smilingsoftly at you. He’s never believed that there’s anything for him to forgive.

“I’m sorry.” Youoffer it so belatedly that it no longer makes a difference. Perhaps it neverdid, not to Bokuto. “I shouldn’t have thought the worst of you. I… shouldn’thave asked that. You didn’t kiss me because you were scared. I asked youbecause I was scared.”

“I know,” he says.“It’s harder for you too. You’re the one who has to take shots just for likingsomeone who doesn’t like you back. I know. I mean- I didn’t always, but I’vebeen trying to get better at thinking about other people.”

Your heart swells,bloating with a fragrant blend of pride and helplessness. “You’re doing good,Kou. Way better than me.”

“But- that’s notwhat I want, though.” Your eyes follow as he lifts his hand, and runs itthrough your hair. He looks slightly pained, urgent, controlled. “You’ve got alot of problems, you know? And it’s all heavy stuff: one-sided love andvolleyball are kinda on different levels. So, if I can make it easier for you,I will.” The tips of his fingers brush against your temples by accident. You shudder.“We’re all trying our best, and who knows if it’ll work out or not?”

“We’re all tryingour best,” you echo. A wisp of a prayer with no addressee.

“Yeah,” he smiles,“you get it. Even though you usually don’t listen when I say these things.”

“That’s not true!”You protest, but you know he’s right. He knows he’s right. Bokuto’s shaking hishead because he’s right. “Just…” you slowly admit, “not many of the goodthings. They’re… harder.”

He looks at youintensely and opens his mouth with something to say, but changes his mind atthe last moment.

“You gotta trustyourself more,” he says after considering his words, “I think you’re great.Akaashi thinks you’re great. You’repretty great.”

“Yeah, yeah,alright,” you laugh, at a loss with the onslaught of positivity, “what is this,a self-help session?”

“Nah. I mean, ifyou had let me help you in the first place, like, for real, you’d be in ahospital and not in my apartment asking me about my feelings.”

Your brows knittogether and you pull away from his grip. “What’s wrong with asking you aboutyour feelings?”

“It wasn’t thepoint, though!” Bokuto exclaims, “c’mon, we were talking about how selfish youwere being.”

“Yeah, I know already.” You know what no matterhow many times you change the subject or apologize, Bokuto’s never going to letit go until he’s drawn the right amount of contrition from you. “I’m justreally sick of hospitals, and it’s not like they can do much for me anyway.It’s not possible to make the petals softer without preventative medicine, andhonestly, they’d just give up and intubate me, and I hate that feeling.”

“I’d rather see atube down your throat than you dead,” Bokuto says sullenly.

“I would just’vepassed out,” you insist, again, “I would’ve been okay.”

A flash ofexpression startles you, and Bokuto’s fury returns briefly enough to sharpenyour nerves a second time.

“Don’t say you’llbe alright.” His fists are tightening around your shoulders. “Don’t say that.Not tonight.”

His hands areholding you upright, but they don’t stop you from instinctively shrinkingfurther into yourself in shame.

“I’m sorry.”

Bokuto’s chesthitches mid-breath, and his hands release you in slow motion, lingering alongthe lines of your bones before reaching towards the almost forgotten plasticbox. He takes a shot out, and holds it out towards you.

“Will you show mehow to use this properly? Where do I inject?”

“Well…” if itmeans that much to him, “my left arm is all taken up, so it’ll be my right.”You move to roll up your sleeves, and feel a bit silly when you realize thatyou’re wearing a dress tonight, not your usual work clothes. “But… you… Kou,you’re sure you like me?”

“I love you.”

Your cheeks eruptto a magnificent temperature. “I- okay…” Put something into your mouth, andyou’d probably be able to bake pottery.

Bokuto, on theother hand, only grins extra wide.

“Yeah. So, whatabout it?”

You swear thatthere’s steam; your forehead feels a lot more humid than usual. “I mean, if… ifyou love me, and you were the one that I’ve been worked over… technically, Ithink that I wouldn’t need the shots anymore.”

“What do youmean?” He lowers the injection, puzzled.

“It’s an unrequited love that causes theflowers,” you explain, “if… now that it’s requited, I should be alright.”

His brow twitchesminutely at the word ‘alright’ leaving your mouth again, and squirmsuncomfortably.

“There’s no harmin doing one more just in case, right?”

Truthfully, you canhardly blame him for not believing you when it comes to matters of your ownhealth. Akaashi is a very reliable mother, and you’re a pretty terriblesurrogate friend-sized kid.

You sigh, lettingit seep through your teeth like a dragon. “I feel like I should be celebrating-or crying- and not discussing medical repercussions, though?”

Bokuto looks upfrom his examination of your right arm. “Want to date me?”

“Uhm. Uh. Yeah.”

He beams. “Same!Now that we’ve solved that problem, I’m going to jab this in your arm, you’regonna take a shower and we’re going to get some sleep.”

Nothing finds itsway out of your throat. Bokuto cocks his head to one side, a knowing crinkle inhis eyes.

“I’ll check onyou, okay? I’m still kinda shell shocked, so I’m not like, super in touch withmy feelings right now, but I don’t think anything has to change just yet. I’mnot expecting anything right now, and you just puked up like, a whole babyshower arrangement. So take all the time you need. No rush, nothing.” Right.He’s right. Bokuto watches you mull his words over with exhaustion, and cupsyour cheek with one hand and leans in for a soft, final kiss. “I’m still BokutoKoutarou,” he smiles broadly, “and I’m still your best friend. You can count onme.”

And you absolutelycan. Leagues better than any hospital, Bokuto’s smile and cheesy lines can healbones, burns and bruises alike with regular exposure, and your figurative cropsare flourishing as he blinks guilelessly at you.

“I’ll leave it inyour hands,” you answer.

“Okay.” Pleasedwith your acceptance, Bokuto seems to sit taller beside you, and glows a littlemore from his eyes. “You go clean yourself up, I’ll grab some of my clothes foryou when you’re done.” He points towards his guest bathroom down the corridor.“Afterwards, we can give you your medication and I’ll call Akaashi. You canstay here tonight, and we’ll go get you checked out tomorrow. Good plan?”

“Yes, captain.”You raise your hand up in a small salute and Bokuto laughs. He leans in topress a kiss to your forehead, and wanders away to find some spare clothes foryou with a warmth to his face.

You remember toclose the lid of the plastic box before you get up. You follow the trail ofBokuto into an untouched bathroom, sparkling clean, and for a second you’re overwhelmedwith the urge to simultaneously run from its perfection and to make as much ofa mess out of it as possible.

You settle fortaking a normal, sane shower.

The rest of theevening goes unimaginably smoothly, as Bokuto had taken it upon himself to makeyou as comfortable as possible, which meant that he’d left everything you’dpossibly need out for you, and by being so busy doing so, you hadn’t been ableto exchange much of a conversation. He’d forcibly taken the couch, almostshoving you onto his bed in his insistence that you’re the guest, and he’sgonna treat you right, and had zoomed out of the room immediately after.

His bedroom is theonly part of the apartment that feels like Bokuto, and it’s that thought thatallows the tiredness to seep through your muscles, and everywhere you turn,you’re soothed by a familiar scent.

It doesn’tsurprise you either, to find that he’s stuck glow-in-the-dark stars onto hisceiling in the shapes of his favourite constellations.

Tomorrow’s anelusive thing, tonight barely hinging on reality, but as you point out theluminous yellow of a plastic Lupus, you consider that even if the world hasshifted one step to the right, everything in it keeps the same radius. You’restill sleeping over at a friend’s, and you’re still going to the doctor’stomorrow, and the night has still fallen.

Sleep comesslowly, but sooner or later your brain slows to the deep rumble of a starry skyreplica. You fall asleep, and it’s been a long, long day.

Bokuto closes thecar door behind you, and takes your hand before you can object. You’re stiff,fidgety, and he stands right by you in the scorching midday heat until you takeenough breaths to lead the way. He falls into step beside you, letting you pullhim, fingers laced and tightened, through the doors of the hospital.

He has to pull youout of your reverie when the speakers finally call your name, but you get toyour feet without stumbling.

When the doctorcalls ‘come in’ from the other side of the baby blue door, you feel Bokuto bumpinto you slightly when he dodges a quick wheelchair down the corridor. A bravesmile curls itself against your cheeks, and you slide the door open.

This time, it’sokay.

[qutemag]

The movie guy reviews: Transformers -- The Last Knight

Article by Benjamin Harkin

Here we are. Every critic relishes this review, and many online have already let forth the torrent of bile that Transformers: The Last Knight deserves. Every Transformers movie I go in hoping I’ll be somewhat surprised that the movie reaches a baseline of ‘okay’, and bar maybe the third one which was brighter, more colourful and contained John Malkovich, every time I walk out frustrated and despairing. People say Michael Bay is an auteur – an auteur of what? Glorified tech demos? Showing off what the Industrial Light & Magic team can do? Because that’s all these movies have going for them. This is evident with the multiple aspect ratios, that’s right, IMDb records this movie showing three different aspect ratios, and another place thought the trailer had eight. You have black bars darting all around the image as the movie crops itself to fit around funky new cameras Michael Bay wants to toy with for the sponsorship. It is the weirdest, most distracting shit to see a movie switching aspect ratios all the way through for no discernible reason.

The film feels like six films meshed into one, or perhaps six plot threads focus-grouped into oblivion and smooshed together in a way that made some executive in a high-backed chair shift lazily in their seat to turn off the preview footage and say “fuck it, that’ll do” for the three editors to hastily clip together in something resembling a two and a half hour film. There’s the scene with a post-apocalyptic New York, ravaged after the climax of Transformers 4, with Transformers living in hiding of the anti-Transformers defense force set up to catch them, now that Optimus Prime is paralysed, orbiting the earth in a shell of his former self. Some foolhardy boys break into a ruined stadium with a giant jet engine ploughed into the field, saying self-aware bulldust like “we’re kids, we always get away with stuff!” Yes, that’s a fucking line in this movie. And not the worst by a mile. Then prowling the streets, looking under rubble, they run into a Transformer hiding itself under scrap. Couldn’t radar easily detect the hulking masses like Transformers for the military to destroy? Apparently fucking not, if a Transformer hides among some rubble, that’s a-okay. The kids then run into a girl, a strong-willed, adventurous-sounding 14-year-old who’s making her own way among the debris jungle and a close friend to this Transformer that gets mortally wounded by a fighter jet trying to save the kids. And do you think Bay uses this setup to anchor the film with a young heroine, make a movie that takes a U-turn on everything that the hypermasculine, Megan Fox-ass loving, dumb as a post joke-making crap that has defined his Transformers series? Fuck no, all the boys dialogue towards this girl is along the lines of “wow…she’s hot!” and “Are you single?” Fucking gross and sad is all I can say. Michael Bay can’t wait to get started on the explosions, objectification, and immaturity. The young girl doesn’t do anything of note in the movie, hell, I can’t even remember her name. She gets sidelined at the halfway point, literally left behind in a junkyard with her BB-8 rip-off robot. Michael Bay instead wheels out the contractually obliged Megan Fox stand-in to be the impetus for Mark Wahlberg to do something in the movie and crack a few lines about how single they both are. Wahlberg was probably given acting advice to approach the character by showing a face in deep thought over how utterly hot it would be if he and the Oxford tour-guide Megan Fox stand-in lady banged with the Transformers watching.

“Are you single?” proves to be a theme in this movie, more than any kind of motif or any of the half-mumbled prattling about values that Optimus Prime manages to heave out of this exhaustingly mind-numbing, overbloated movie. Characters are defined by whether they’re single or not, not whether they fight for honesty, or freedom, or love, or caring for friends, or whether they want to be friends with giant robots. Nah it’s the fact that Mark Wahlberg and Megan Fox stand-in in this movie are on steroids and the camera treats them like they’re perpetually posing for Tinder. Characters from earlier in the series, like John Turturro, make manically unintelligible appearances to rant about doomsday situations. A physics scientist gets laughed at when he tells the president the world will end in roughly three days. Optimus Prime manages to awake himself out of being basically a dead robot to shoot himself somehow across the galaxy onto his home planet of Cybertron, which he knows was destroyed but fuck it, why not go there for refuge? And why not fall back to earth if you’re a dead shell of a Transformer? Nah, the logic in this movie is adverse to science or plot logic, or continuity, or good filmmaking, his dead body can float across the galaxy instead! Cybertron is now run by some Sorceress Robot Woman who twists Optimus into getting Cybertron fixed as a planet by colliding it with earth to suck up the planet’s core. Fucking who knows. Cybertron somehow flies across the universe in the time it takes this movie to skim across five other unresolved plot threads, like why Mark Wahlberg has a spiderly amulet thing that’s super powerful and what he is actually supposed to do with it, or what the whole deal was with the three-headed dragon robot that appears at points throughout the film, or why Megatron wants to break out his mates Suicide Squad-style or why the humans are willing to work with Megatron who was the bane of everyone for the previous four movies, or why John Goodman’s cigar-chomping Transformer gets blown up by rockets and falls over, presumed dead as the camera cuts to a new scene, then he just randomly reappears later on, or why Bumblebee fought Nazis in WWII. And the location used for the scene of Nazis being blown to smithereens, full with Swastika banners draped over the looming building? That my friends is Winston Churchill’s house. I’m sure Britain’s favourite wartime leader, known for everything Hitler was not, span so hard in his grave he tunnelled to the earth’s core.

Stanley Tucci plays a drunk Merlin in a flashback to the Dark Ages, for reasons never fully explored, despite being another character in the present for the previous movie. The Great Tucci Retcon. Oh and there’s Anthony Hopkins too. A wisened masterclass of an actor, made remarkably awkward and a total caricature for a man who used to be Hannibal Lector. He’s in this, 110% for the paycheck. Bay makes him say ‘duuuude’ and ‘that’s a bitch-ass car!’ because it’s cool to make grandpa say hip things sometimes. He has a robot butler assistant who’s also a borderline homicidal maniac for reasons that are never explained. He also has a WWI tank Transformer who has ‘robot-dementia’ or whatever which is an interesting concept far too intriguing for a movie this unforgiveably terrible so the Transformer is yet another sidelined idea in a litany of focus-grouped half-baked brain farts.

The entire movie is unfunny, every joke (and there are heaps, all undercutting the otherwise dead-serious grit and aimed at the lowest denominator possible while conscious) hits like a fucking sledgehammer wielded by lemurs on crack, rushed in delivery, painfully without any semblance of cleverness or wit, the setup too predictable and the payoff so fucking moronic, with editing so poor in timing that a joke about the butler robot playing the sweeping Transformer themes on an organ to give the scene a gravitas was completely lost when Anthony Hopkins cranked his sad, demur grimace up to the butler so slow you could’ve gone to the bathroom and back and the joke would still be playing out. I’ve said it once after Pain & Gain and I’ll say it again: Michael Bay cannot direct comedy and he shouldn’t. For whatever reason the gift of a funny bone doesn’t materialise in the filmmaking process.

The fight scenes are meh. Every one lacks any weight because frankly you don’t give a fuck about any of this while watching. You don’t care which Transformer fights which because they’re all so underutilised and shallow that you could probably get more pizzazz in banging your stapler against the computer mouse on a slow day at the office. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how half these scenes of metal clunking against metal were storyboarded. And they don’t mean anything either, Transformers are rarely shown actually being killed, and yet the ones shown dying without any fights or lead-up (because the editing is god-awful and rushed) are full on bleeding weird green blood which is probably too violent for a young kid, which is where this gritty, dark-looking, yet oddly cartoonish spaghetti-works is squarely aimed.

I should probably end this review somewhere. This sounds like a good place. I could go on and honestly, part of me felt the usual catharsis of a critic tearing a big-budget Hollywood mess to shreds, and giving the finger to this kind of spiteful, audience-hating focus-grouped piss that flows through the summer action blockbuster gate from time to time, but another part of me doesn’t feel that catharsis. Instead, a part of me feels a silent rage, because I know this review, or any other review, or any of all the people who happen to see these movies for what I could only describe as sheer self-flagellation and tell everyone else it is complete garbage, it won’t stop Michael Bay making Transformers, and it sure as hell won’t stop the franchise. Somehow this is what gets bankrolled over those millions of other screenplays of what could be great action blockbusters. Michael Bay has said he’s stepping down from the Transformers franchise, but that’s what he always says. Paramount have two more Transformers movies lined up for the next two years, they see this as being able to grow out into yet another expanded universe franchise with Bumblebee getting a spin-off movie. I know this is useless, this review. It’s just words screamed into a void, a void of producers and executives running endless focus groups, workshopping the movies through too many editors and writers and camera lenses for maximum 3D so everyone can spend the biggest amount of dollars possible. Because this is the thing: Michael Bay doesn’t care. Mark Wahlberg doesn’t care. Anthony Hopkins doesn’t care. Maybe the digital effects people care. All the people involved in this production, they watch the finished product and I’m sure that no matter where they thought their part was going, they were a little deflated and depressed by it too, especially the fifth time around, but they can forget about their shame at the end of the day. Because they’re all getting their paycheck and a contract for Transformers 6, and you’re doing yourself out of the $20+ you spent to see this rotten film.

(Transformers: The Last Knight is currently showing.)

[promisedyouforever]

dementophobia, part four

Still secret santa fic for @lvslie... This has been far too long in coming, but here it is!  The next chapter shouldn’t be such a long wait - it’s already partly written.

PAIRING: Ten x Rose RATING: Teen FIND IT:  Ao3 | Teaspoon ON TUMBLR: Part One * Part Two * Part Three * Part Four * Part Five * ...tbc

(See Part One for full comments)

Chapter Four

Twenty one days, eighteen hours, and fifteen minutes before:

The Doctor’s unease ratcheted a notch tighter, crawling up his spine like an itch he couldn’t scratch.  Not Pete, not this, not again…  Good man or not — and he knew Pete’s World’s version had a few frayed moral edges — encounters between them invariably ended in pain.

Especially for Rose. It was too soon.  She shouldn’t have to do this.

She gawked at the sign.

“Neuro — neuro technology?  I reckon that’s a lot more than vitamin drinks.”

“It is.”  The word worried him, especially in this context. Human endeavours into the merger of mind and machine tended to go spectacularly wrong.  Who was Pete in this world?  Who was he to this world if he were mucking about freely with such things?  Or was it not what it seemed?  He hoped for the latter.

Rose gave voice to his thoughts.  “Sectioned? Isn’t that when you… like when you go mad and they lock you up?”

“Well, yeah,” he replied, “though there’s a lot more to it than that for you lot, by your time at least.”  He waved his hand at the sign with distaste.  “It’s not meant to be a, a — ” He grimaced.  “ — permanent label.”

“Sounds like it is here.”

He grunted vaguely and twisted away from the offending thing, wanting to pull them both free of it, but the wistfulness in her voice called him back.

“He looks older.”

He really hadn’t paid much mind and didn’t particularly want to, but for her he turned his attention to Pete Tyler’s oversized head.

He was older.  Undoubtedly the photo had been altered to conceal obvious imperfections, but he still carried the lines and ridges of age, and what little hair he had left was carefully sculpted grey-white fluff with just a leftover hint of reddish-brown hovering above his ears.

“That he does.”

A long pause stretched thin between them as she began absently gnawing her thumbnail, and he knew what was coming next.  To lose her Mum one day, then to be dragged the very next into another universe rife with unexplored possibility — it was just cruel, and how could she not?

Hesitantly, haltingly, she tried.  “Do you think, um, maybe… What about…”

He took both her hands in his, gently interrupting to turn her toward him, away from her father’s aging doppelganger.  She deflated, hanging her head and sighing before he’d even opened his mouth.  It was the first they’d talked of Jackie since the white room.

“Rose.”  Her name burned his throat.  “You’ve every right to ask, and I understand, I do.” Of all the words in any language, just then he hated but the most.  He forced it out.  “But you must already know we can’t.”

So faint he almost missed it, she gave a despondent, silent nod.

“Remember the first time?  What I said about gingerbread houses?”

Focus still on the pavement, she whispered, “Yeah.”

“Do you understand what I mean?”

She nodded again, finally lifting her head with a soft sniff, obviously fending off tears.  He felt something crack a little in the vicinity of his hearts.  It was his fault.  Coming back had been her own choice, but he was the one who’d sent her away in the first place — who’d forced her to choose.

He’d never dreamt she would choose him.  He hadn’t understood.  And now that he did, it was too late even for a man with a time machine.  Everything she’d given up to stay with him — how could he ever be worthy of that?

She found her voice and it brought him back to the here and now.  “You mean like in Hansel and Gretel.  The gingerbread house looked so good, but it was a trick.”

“Yes.”  He watched her with soft, regretful eyes, then dropped her hand to wipe away the single tear that had bested her, smudging her makeup. “We don’t know much about this place yet, but trying to find Ja — anyone is a very bad idea.”

“Yeah,” she murmured, then more resolutely, “I get it, Doctor.  I do.”

She took a deep breath, took his hand, and turned toward the plaza with nothing more to be said. “So, ‘Rose Hill Gardens,’” she mused idly.  “Y’think there’s another me here?”

The Doctor’s lips quirked into a hint of a smile.  “Could be.”

She shot him a sidelong glance.  “Maybe this time you can be the little dog, then.”  A glimmer of mischief made its way into her expression.  She cocked her head to the side and he knew she was picturing her Mum chasing after a tiny brown Yorkshire Terrier.  “A dog named Doctor…  Well, you’ve got the hair for it…”

“Oi!”  He reached up with his free hand to sweep it over his head.  “I’ll have you know this body has — ”

“ — really great hair,” she finished for him.  He sputtered and she burst into laughter.

Helpless, his indignance — mostly feigned for her benefit anyway — vanished and he grinned like the besotted idiot he knew he was, grateful just to hear her laugh.

They walked as her laughter died down to sporadic giggling.

The giggling stopped abruptly, her attention shifting just as his did.  Something was happening at the far side of the square where he’d noticed people gathering earlier.

“What’s going on over there?”

~0~

PRESENT:

From his First Office atop Torchwood Tower, the Autocrat of the United Welsh Empire stared out at the Cardiff skyline.  His domain sprawled large before him, an expanse of steel and brick gradually merging into the green and blue of the entire nation as it stretched to the horizon and beyond.

Peter Alan Tyler stared, but he didn’t really see, not right then.  He was elsewhere, mired in the distant past, and he couldn’t seem to get unstuck.

Reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out the one thing he always carried there.  It was all he’d kept.  Faded and cracking, the girl’s impish grin was still unmistakable.  Snared in recalling the moment, he ran his fingers along the flat surface of the photo.  He’d snapped it himself.  Poised to blow out eight candles, she paused when he called her name; she waited, shining just for him, and with one a click of the shutter he plucked her soul from the aether and made her immortal.  If he concentrated he still had the haptic memory, could still feel that click against his fingertips.

That was some forty-three years ago — before.  Before he’d only been Pete, average working class Pete, all grand ideas and no follow-through — nobody special.  But after — he changed, changed like an earthquake, and he took Wales and the world with it stampeding into the future.

And he wasn’t even Welsh.  He once found endless amusement in that, but lately…

He was getting maudlin in the twilight of his life.

From behind him he heard a throat clear. Quickly, he tucked the photo away and turned to see the Minister standing deceptively primly in the doorway, a tablet clutched in the crook of one arm.  As always, she was flanked on either side by her bodyguards, and his own stood just behind them, keeping watch in the outer rooms.

“Hello, Maddie.”  He was one of a very few people allowed to call her that, a fact he could not help appreciating despite their robust, long-standing mutual animosity.

She was his wife, after all.

She inclined her head toward him, dark curls swaying.  “Pete.”

He beckoned to her, so she waved the guards away, closed the door, and sauntered into the room.  Her features stretched into a smile he would have called predatory, were it not the only one in her repertoire.

She gestured at his desk and the tablet like hers that rested there, its screen glowing.  “How’s your little pet today?”

One sentence in and she’d already managed to get under his skin.  She had talent.  “Didn’t I make it your job to know that even better than I do?” he snapped as he picked up his Ministry trackpad.

Her smile didn’t falter.  “Of course, darling.  But you’re keeping such a close eye on all the extra work we’re putting in on the dear little thing.”

“And you damned well know why.”  He glanced down, checking the display with its green orb hovering above an aerial view of a row of old shops.  There was data indicating she’d reset a few moments ago, but that was to be expected from time to time.  He put it down.

Dropping all pretence, she flipped her hand at him petulantly.  “Yes, yes. I know how important this is to you.”

Suddenly he was genuinely irked.  “Not just to me, Madeline.  Quit trying to have a go round.  You saw the same interrogation video I did, and every bit of her mad story is true.  We ran the genetic map — ”

“Twelve times, I know.  I supervised the last four personally, as well as the second interrogation, if you recall.”

He ploughed over her.  “She’s a gift, Maddie.  From Them. We couldn’t exactly turn it down, could we?”

She scowled.  “That’s precisely what worries me.”

“Why? Why now, why this?”  He pointed emphatically at the tablet’s screen.  “We’ve had this conversation already!  After all our Associates have given us — ”

“Technology!  Knowledge and technology, for which we provided compensation.”  She thumped her own trackpad down next to his and both hands shot to her hips.  “But this? This is not the same.”

He crossed his arms.  “Really?  Enlighten me.”

One exasperated hand rubbed her forehead then slapped down forcefully against her thigh.  “Sucking a living version of your dead daughter through the Void to dump her at your feet and call her a gift!? Asking for nothing in return?  You can’t see the difference?!”

His response was an irate snort.

She shook her head.  “She isn’t a gift; she’s a debt aimed straight at you, and we’ll all be paying Hell when They decide it’s come due!  Don’t you understand that?”

His temper snapped. “Fine! Yes!  Of course I do!” he shouted.  “You attended the audience with me.  You know we had no choice!”

“We did have a choice!  We could — we should have cordially refused and either given her back or had her terminated!”

“Cordially refused??!” he roared.  “Terminated??!  You can’t be serious!  You’ve always known the way the arrangement works.  They approach us with trade terms, They don’t negotiate, and we don’t refuse!”

“Our dealings with Them are a dangerous arrangement I’ve always objected to!  And now They’ve got that much more power over us while you’re distracted, scheming to make a Sec your successor!  Don’t you think it’s a little stupid on its own to think the people will accept her?  You’re letting your personal feelings get in the way of any good sense, Pete!”

Fists clenched at his sides, he closed his eyes, gulped in air and held it.  Maddie was as sharp and shrewd as he was, and even more ruthless.  Her assessment and her accusation were the next logical steps in the conversation they had not yet had, and he knew it.  Truth could be difficult.  Truth exposed weakness.  But she knew his weaknesses already.

Slowly his hands loosened and uncurled as he let it out in a long, calming exhale.  When he opened his eyes again they were focused, crystal blue and full of clarity.

Time for the truth.

With absolute conviction, he nodded curtly and said, “Yes.  I am.”

She seemed too stunned to reply even though her mouth hung slightly open.

“You are absolutely on point,” he continued.  “My feelings are taking precedence here.”

He moved to stand behind his desk and reached for his tablet again.  “I am old, selfish, and human, and I want my daughter back.  I didn’t ask for the opportunity, but now that I have it, I’m taking it.  When the tab must be paid, I will see to it.”

Her mouth clicked shut.  She regarded him the way one might an infuriating, impossible puzzle.  He stared back, confident and determined.

That was the instant the trackpad began flashing.

Immediately, it had Pete’s full attention.  “What the hell?”

Maddie snatched hers up just as the alarm began, a shrill piercing wail from their identical tablets that set his teeth on edge. A spike of adrenaline hit him.

He tapped the sphere with a fingertip and the noise thankfully silenced as data cascaded down one side of the tablet’s display. They came to the same conclusion at the same time.

“She’s offline!” he shouted urgently.  “Don’t you have someone watching her, for Christ’s sake!?”

“Of course I do!” she spat back, reaching to brush her fingers against the skin behind her ear.

Pete listened intently to the side of the conversation he could hear, and Maddie paced as she spoke.

“Status update, now!  …Yes, something’s wrong, she’s gone offline!  …Well why didn’t you insist?  …Are you absolutely certain?  …No, not yet. Hold for orders.”

She whirled back to face Pete.  “Rose is still inside the building with the owner, but I don’t think they’re alone.  My agent described a tall, thin customer with brown hair in a pinstriped suit.”

Pete felt himself steeling, freezing from the inside out.  No one was going to take his daughter from him a second time.

“This alien, this Doctor Rose spoke of,” he growled in a voice barely recognizable as his own.  “He must have found her.”

Maddie nodded uncomfortably.

~

to be continued...