#i wanna be able to fee safe enough to make eye contact because i feel weird and rude that i cant but she knows sm about me i just feel rly

[cl-oelia]

I just wish I could feel completely safe with another person where I can just exist genuinely in front of someone and not get panicky

[lvllns]

it don’t matter to me (wherever we are is where i wanna be) [3/3]

the wayhaven chronicles. felix hauville x kincaid anderson (nb detective). teen and up rating for language. established relationship, mostly fluff with some angst. 2100+ words. (5900+ words total.) — starting over, chapter 3 of 3.

notes: little bit of angst, some more soft felix and kincaid. some of my favorite parts from this whole thing are in this chapter.

[ao3 link]

—

There’s a bonfire burning, flames licking at the rocks that surround the pit, and Kincaid is singing softly under his breath, everyone else having turned in for the night already.

Felix’s cheek rests against Kincaid’s chest, right over his heart, and he’s sitting in his lap. Kincaid has an almost empty glass of whiskey in his left hand, his right hand drifting up and down Felix’s back slowly. Like he’s committing each and every bump of his spine to memory. He laughs, the sound rumbling through his chest, and it warms Felix up from the inside out. He smiles. Turns and presses his face into Kincaid’s neck for a second before he leans back and just...looks his fill.

There’s an ease to Kincaid that Felix rarely sees. No tension in his body, eyes bright in the flickering light of the fire. His head tips back, baring his throat, and he hums, half-lidded eyes drifting from Felix to the sky above.

“You’re thinkin’ pretty loud darlin’,” he says. His touch moves to Felix’s hip and he squeezes gently. “You good?”

Felix nibbles on his bottom lip and thinks, really thinks, because something is chewing at him. Clawing at his ribs and tearing at his throat but he can’t place it. It’s been burning in his chest since they got here, this weird, amorphous something that sits white hot in his gut. He thinks about how they dealt with dinner, how they shared one plate and Kincaid kept picking at it, the conversation enough to keep attention away from how little Felix ate. Though what he did eat wasn’t bad, it was just overwhelming and he tapped out early. Felix thinks about how they’re leaving early tomorrow under the guise of getting on the road to get back by the afternoon. How Kincaid had grinned, shrugged, and made a comment about the work piling up.

Felix tries, and fails, not to think about how if he weren’t here, Kincaid could stay as long as he wanted. There would be no leaving early to avoid breakfast, no worry about an accidental slip up—

(Nate still sometimes brings up the human comment Felix made when this whole situation first started.)

—no lying to the people he considers family and there, that’s it.

Or part of it, at least.

“Fee?” Kincaid’s voice is soft, concerned, and he cups Felix’s face with both hands, his left a cool shock against the heat of the fire. “Baby, you drifted. What’s wrong?”

“Are you happy?” He whispers, eyes moving from Kincaid’s face to the dark fields behind them.

Kincaid blinks slowly, and brushes his thumbs over Felix’s cheekbones. “That’s...worryingly vague, but yes, I’m very happy.” He cocks his head. “There’s a bit more to that, ain’t there?”

“Are you...are you happy with me?”

“Felix,” Kincaid says as he sits up, all traces of whatever tipsy, half-asleep stupor he’d been in vanishing in an instant, “Of course. I am so happy with you.” He leans forward. Rest his forehead against Felix’s. “Here, let’s, let’s get into the apartment and talk, it’s gettin’ fuckin’ cold,” he grumbles, breath washing over Felix, and he smells like whiskey and smoke and cedar.

He smells like home. Like something safe that Felix wants to crawl inside of.

It’s all he can do to nod, to climb to his feet and ignore how unsteady he is. Kincaid stands and stretches, back popping as he groans, and then he catches Felix’s hand. Pulls his fingers to his mouth and kisses his knuckles. His wrist. The middle of his forearm. And he’s looking at him like he’s searching for something that Felix doesn’t know how to hide so he just smiles, weak and watery, and that makes Kincaid frown. He wants to apologize, or, no, not apologize...explain, maybe. Try to put the thoughts rolling through his head into words but his tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth.

The walk to the barn is quiet and dark, the fire behind them smothered. Kincaid holds his hand like he’s afraid Felix is going to leave, vanish into the night sky, and he runs his thumb along Kincaid’s fingers. An attempt at reassuring him that he’s as okay as he can be. He gets an affectionate squeeze in return as they head up the stairs.

The door shuts behind them with a soft, ominous click, and then Kincaid drops his hand. Wanders off to go flick a light on. Felix moves to sit in a chair, head lolling back to rest against the fabric, and he throws an arm over his face.

He’s kind of cocked this all up, hasn’t he?

“So,” Kincaid says from somewhere not close by. Felix forces himself to look and finds his partner sitting on the bed, boots off and hands hanging between his legs. “Somethin’ has been bugging you since dinner.” He shifts. Sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. “Is—Did I do something or—”

“No!” Felix jerks forward, almost falling off the chair. “Absolutely not, it’s just, I don’t know.” He frowns, scrunches his nose up and groans. “I didn’t realize what was bothering me until like ten minutes ago.”

“And?”

He looks down at his hands. Tangles his fingers together and takes a deep breath. “All of this would be so much easier for you if I wasn’t here.” He hears Kincaid move but he doesn’t look up. “You wouldn’t have to get here late to avoid lunch, weasel your way through dinner, leave early to avoid breakfast. There’s so much lying you’re doing, Cade, and it’s...it bothers me that you have to do it.” Felix taps his thumb against his thigh for a moment. “This place and these people are important to you, and I hate feeling like I’m...I’m...I don’t know, taking this from you. Tainting it or something. You’re so happy out here.” He shrugs.

Silence.

Absolute, utter, silence.

Felix looks up. Finds Kincaid staring at him from where he still sits on the bed, bright eyes wide and lips slightly parted. When his gaze drops to his mouth, Kincaid clicks it shut and shakes his head.

“Can I touch you?” His voice is hoarse, thick. Felix nods and Kincaid is kneeling in front of him immediately, one hand on his thigh and another resting along the back of his neck. “First, I love you,” Kincaid says. “Second, and I know this probably won’t make you feel much better right this moment, but it’s not lyin’, it’s a little...skillful avoidance of the truth.” He grins and Felix can’t help but smile back, it’s infectious, seeing those dimples up close. “I have to do it to everyone now, it’s not you that’s makin’ me do it anyway, it’s the Agency and everything. It’s not you.” Both hands cradle his face now, Kincaid’s broad palms rough against his skin. He leans into the touch, greedy for it and the reassurance it provides.

Kincaid rocks back on his heels before he sits on the floor, fingers slipping from Felix slowly, like he can’t bear to break the contact until the last possible second. And then he grabs Felix’s hands, reconnects, and pulls until he slides from the chair and into his lap. Felix wraps his arms around Kincaid, buries his face against his neck, and allows himself to melt. To sink into the warmth of his partner and bask in it for a moment.

He wants to say something but before he can, Kincaid murmurs, “And I’m happy here because you’re with me,” against the crown of his head. Whispered like a secret just for the both of them to share. “I’ve gone through a lot out here, Fee, and not all of it was good. But this place, as much as I love it, Felix, this is my past.” Kincaid leans back. Takes Felix’s chin between his thumb and forefinger to tilt his head back until their eyes lock. “I don’t need this place like I did when I was growin’ up. There’s nothin’ for me out here anymore except to share it with you. I want you to meet these people, see this place, but…” Felix is pulled closer, arms wrapping tight around him as Kincaid presses a kiss to his neck. “My future is with you.”

Oh.

Felix swallows hard around the sudden lump in his throat. Buries his face against Kincaid’s chest and squeezes his eyes shut before he gives in and lets himself cry quietly. Sure they’ve been together about a year, but Felix still finds himself thrown every single time—

“I chose you Felix, and I’m gonna keep chosin’ you,” Kincaid says against his temple.

“Shit,” he says, the word muffled by the shirt his face is pressed against.

Kincaid snorts, body shaking as he tries to suppress his laughter. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too.” Felix takes a gulp of air. Holds it for a moment before slowly exhaling. When he sits back, there are thumbs gently wiping tears from his face before he can think to do it himself.

“Little bit better?”

“Yeah.” Felix nods, smiling lopsidedly when Kincaid kisses his cheek. “I would have told you sooner but I couldn’t figure out what was upsetting me.”

“‘S fine Fee, we talked about it eventually, though this is probably gonna come up again given, well, you know.” Kincaid runs his fingers up and down Felix’s back. “For the record, you could never taint anything, and I would do a lot worse than lie for you.”

Felix wiggles closer, arms slipping around Kincaid’s neck with a gentle squeeze.

“Aside from—” Kincaid waves a hand around. Felix snorts and kisses his collarbone through the fabric of his shirt. “—this, did you like it out here?”

“Mhm,” he says as he shifts his face enough to press a kiss to Kincaid’s jaw. “It’s quiet out here, peaceful. I like it.”

“Not boring?”

“Nah, it’s...I think I hadn’t realized just how much I’ve been moving since I tumbled through the portal.” He leans back and finds Kincaid’s eyes in the dim light. “I liked being able to slow down for a little bit.” A kiss to Kincaid’s cheek, brief. “Can we get off the floor now?”

Kincaid chuckles, the sound rumbling through his chest. “Read my mind.”

They untangle from each other. Limbs sliding apart, touches breaking, only to find each other again when they’re both on their feet. Felix slips a hand beneath Kincaid’s shirt, thumb smoothing over the skin that cloaks his ribs. His own shirt gets tossed over his shoulder, and then jeans are kicked off. Boots bumped against as they stumble to the bed, exhausted. Kincaid flops onto his back, Felix pressing himself against his side, arm over his waist and head on his chest.

He listens to Kincaid’s heart, the slow, steady beat of it. Each breath deeper and deeper until Felix says, “We should get a farm.”

Kincaid’s chest rattles with laughter beneath his ear, hand drawing sweeping lines up and down Felix’s back. “Are there cows on this farm?”

“No,” he says, nose wrinkling. “They stink.”

More soft laughter, fingers moving to touch along his shoulders. “Right, no cows. Horses?”

Felix scoffs. “Duh, I like them.” He slings a leg around Kincaid’s, hooks his foot around his calf. “Maybe...an orchard or something.”

“Hmm, fruit trees.” Kincaid shifts. Drops a kiss to the top of his head before leaning back against the pillows. “Gotta make money somehow, ‘specially if we’re not raising cattle.”

“Is that how they pay for this place?”

“Partly. Steph’s a software engineer, works from home mostly now, but they’re able to keep goin’ because of that.”

“Okay, so, maybe I’ll keep working for the Agency.”

Kincaid snorts and cracks one eye open to look down at him. “Kickin’ me out to the country, I see how it is.”

Felix pinches his side until Kincaid squirms away, laughing. He leans up, rests a hand on Kincaid’s chest to steady himself, and kisses him. Slow and deep. “We can put a warehouse on the property. Like the barn apartment but bigger, keep everyone close.”

“Ah,” Kincaid murmurs against his lips, “right.” He snorts then. “Mason might be the only one who’d appreciate that.”

“They’ll get over it.”

“Okay so, we’re moving everyone out to our ranch that has horses and some kind of fruit tree. Anything else?” Kincaid’s touch gentles, and falls down to Felix’s waist, fingers tracing every dip of muscle.

“Just you.” Felix kisses his chest, right over Kincaid’s heart. “You’re really all I need.”

Both of Kincaid’s eyes flutter open, soft in the darkness, and he smiles. “Love you,” he whispers, words slurring together as he drifts closer to sleep.

“I love you too,” Felix says, speaking the words against the skin of Kincaid’s throat.

The silence stretches easily, moments passing in languid touches and deepening breaths, and then he realizes that Kincaid has fallen asleep while rubbing his thumb over the ring finger on Felix’s left hand. He buries his face against Kincaid’s chest and slips into an easy slumber with a smile on his face.

[thecloserkin]

book review: Mira Grant, Feed (2010)

Genre: Sci-Fi

Is it the main pairing: Yes

Is it canon: No

Is it explicit: No

Is it endgame: Yes

Is it shippable: Hell to the yes

Bottom line: Creepily Codependent Siblings Survive the Zombie Apocalypse! They are adopted but the way they refer to each other as “my brother” and “my sister” when they could have used given names instead? I am here for it. While tight plotting is not one of this book’s strengths, you should slog through the infodumps to the ending which packs one hydrogen bomb of an emotional wallop.

This is the first book in the “Newsflash” trilogy about a pair of journalists, Georgia and Shaun Mason, who begin by blogging out of their parents’ basement and end by uncovering a vast governmental conspiracy subtended by various alphabet-soup agencies. The zombie apocalypse itself happened 23 years ago, and it happened the way these things invariably happen: Scientists try to cure cancer/the common cold, unleash freak virus on humanity, cue end of the world as we know it. Georgia and Shaun are the paradigmic products of this remade world: They, like many children born in and around the chaos of the outbreak, were orphans. On their adoption papers their birthdays are given as the same day—an arbitrary made-up date, but it makes them twins even if George is def a few months older. She acts older too, acting as the business brains of their fledgling journalistic operation while Shaun’s job is to “poke dead things with sticks” and look good while doing it. There is a performative aspect to Shaun’s mugging for the camera and flirting with anything in a skirt. He’s doing it because outrageous behavior garners them more hits, obviously, but he’s also doing it for George who gets a kick out of watching him charm the pants off people. She is bemused but not remotely threatened. George is all-business all the time, emotionally guarded and wary of physical contact, and one time when someone tried to hug her Shaun smoothly stepped up to intercept the hug to spare her the discomfort of enduring it. I SCREAMED. Note that George doesn’t mind being touched if it’s Shaun doing it:

I shuddered. Shaun caught the gesture and put a hand at the small of my back, steadying me. I flashed him a smile.

Shaun put a hand on my knee, steadying me, and I covered it with my own.

These small moments of tenderness punctuate an endearingly banterful sibling rapport. This is them reacting to the news of their big break—they’ve been tapped to cover the presidential campaign of an idealistic Wyoming senator:

Shaun was sure we’d get it. I was sure we wouldn’t. Now, staring at the monitor, Shaun said, “George?” “Yeah?” “You owe me twenty bucks.”

This is George shooing Shaun out of her room so she can change her clothes:

I pointed to the door. “Get out. There’s about to be nudity, and you’ll just complicate things.” “Finally, adult content! Should I turn the webcams on?”

This is big sister Georgia mocking Shaun for his youthful indiscretions:

”Remember how pissed you got when we had to do all that reading about the Rising back in sixth grade? I thought you were going to get us both expelled.”

In conclusion I love them sfm they are perfect.

As an aside, the people tagging this book “horror” on Goodreads have either not read the book (which is legit, TBR piles are a thing) or don’t understand what horror is? It’s like they saw the word “zombies” and just auto-completed the genre. What defines horror is not blood, gore, or violence but the fear and loss of agency engendered by that violence. That’s why so many horror film protagonists are women, who experience loss of agency in large and small ways on a daily basis and must learn to survive in the face of it; it’s cathartic to watch them take back control. The point of this digression is that THIS IS NOT A HORROR NOVEL. It’s not about that kind of fear!!! This is a political thriller so buckle in kids we’re going for a ride.

Twenty-three years ago during the outbreak, Georgia and Shaun’s parents lost their eight-year-old biological son. He was bitten by the neighbors’ dog. This was before it was widely understood that the virus could jump between mammalian species, and that anything surpassing the 40 pound threshold was susceptible to its effects. The dog weighed over 40 pounds. The Masons, who were award-winning reporters in their own right, dealt with their grief by channeling their emotional resources into chasing the news ratings. They continued to be phenomenally successful journalists as well as shitty parents to Shaun and Georgia, whom they seem to have adopted entirely for publicity purposes. The narrative invites us to draw the comparison between George and Shaun, who have chosen to pursue this career out of a thirst for THE TRUTH, and their parents who have less lofty motivations. Not to put too fine a point on it but their parents are mercenary motherfuckers. These kids survived their childhood by building an emotional bunker that they never learned to climb out of. This line from the very first chapter is so telling because they’re out in the field and Shaun is being chased by a zombie right?:

I screamed, images of my inevitable future as an only child filling my mind.

When Shaun’s in mortal peril, Georgia doesn’t think of him as “the center of my universe”— which he is—she thinks of the void that would result in the loss of her brother. That’s how they fit together, that’s what they are to each other, and all the other stuff is layered on top of the shared trauma of their childhood. Ffs they even have a ritual for administering each other’s blood tests—you know that thing at wedding toasts where the bride and groom loop their arms together and tip the champagne flute into the other’s mouth? Like that:

Moving with synchronicity born of long practice, we broke the biohazard seals and popped the plastic lids off our testing units

So the protocol for taking blood tests, which everyone has to do all day long to prove they’re not infected, is to come into the foyer/antechamber/vestibule one at a time and once you test clean you proceed into the building while the next person cycles into the chamber. That way, if anyone is found to be infected, they can be isolated. Georgia and Shaun have never once complied with this rule:

Our next-door-neighbor used to call Child Protective Services every six months because our folks wouldn’t stop us from coming in together. But what’s the point of life if you can’t take risks now and then, like coming into the damn house with your brother?

Implying that if one of them ever got bitten by a zombie the other one would rather spend the rest of their short life trapped in a garage with the shambling corpse of their sibling than die in their sleep at a ripe old age. Talk about ride or die.

I said before that this presidential campaign, this is their big break as much as it is the candidate’s. Up till now George and Shaun have been blogging under the umbrella of news aggregation entities (sort of like how BuzzFeed and HuffPost and Medium are populated by user-generated content that isn’t necessarily making the content creator an appreciable pile of money), but now they’ve finally landed the story that will let them strike out on their own. One of the sharpest things about this book is how it depicts journalism as a job, and a tough one to do right. Nashville does the same thing for the music industry, and as over-the-top as that show is, it shows you the nuts and bolts of success in a profession where practitioners are supposedly driven by “passion” alone. Here the distribution of labor is skewed pretty heavily towards George:

I get the administrative junk that Shaun’s too much of a jerk and Buffy’s too much of a flake to deal with.

Buffy is their business partner and some kind of auteur hacker + tech whiz. Shaun is the public face of their media brand. But make no mistake, George is the heart and soul and brains of this operation. You see her business acumen in drive-by observations like “Replacing that much equipment would kill our operating budget for months,” or when she talks about i n s u r a n c e. And George talks about insurance a lot. She mentions how a certain camera covered in zombie body fluids is an insurance write-off, how being present in designated high-risk zones during certain times of day can triple your insurance premium, how a certain treatment for her chronic vision condition isn’t covered by health insurance. I … just wanna point out that the human race has survived a flippin’ zombie apocalypse, but the United States remains wedded to private for-profit health insurance where who and what are “covered” remains a game of Russian roulette?!! Whoever said it was “easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” was onto something. This society is functioning cohesively enough that elections are a thing (thus, nation-states are still a thing). If you want to tell me our fragmented, inefficient, fee-for service model of paying for medical care that routinely bankrupts & kills our citizens has weathered the end of civlization and emerged intact from its ashes, you better look me dead in the eye and bring receipts.

What’s really impressive about Georgia is she’ll rattle off exactly what kind of activities (those forbidden by her journalistic licensing) will invalidate her life insurance if she’s stupid enough to get killed while doing them. From which I surmise that she and Shaun are both covered by pretty hefty policies of which they are each other’s sole beneficiary. Which makes sense, they’re in a dangerous line of work, but I feel like it’s a poor investment since whoever was left behind would be doing their damnedest to climb into the grave next to their sibling lol.

Another little requirement of the household insurance—since we leave safe zones all the time in order to do our jobs, we have to be able to prove we’ve been properly sterilized, and that means logged computer verification of our sterilizations.

George is talking about the AI that is apparently located in her showerhead that douses her with a bleach & antiseptic compound when she comes back from being in the field?? That sounds painful but what concerns me is the breathtaking scope of the Internet of Things’ penetration into her life. The AI is in the bathroom. It knows exactly where she’s been bc ofc her GPS location can be tracked via her phone, and it’s merrily sending packets of information off to …. somewhere, where it will doubtless be aggregated with all the data collected about George from other sources, and combed for patterns to predict future behavior. That’s how surveillance capitalism works. if this sounds chillingly familiar it’s because it’s already happening, it’s what the tech giants are already doing—gobbling up as much data about as many people in as many contexts as possible—and leveraging that data for profit. Privacy is a joke. George is not unaware of this, but what choice does she have? It’s either install the damn AI in her showerhead or get her parents’ homeowners’ insurance policy cancelled for being too “high risk.”

I want to circle back to George’s chronic medical condition for a sec. She’s got a disability—what’s a called a “reservoir condition” where the virus takes up residence in a body organ, in her case the retina—meaning essentially that she has zombie vision; she can see ridiculously well in low light situations but direct sunlight will blind her. She has to wear shades even indoors and is literally incapable of crying since her tear ducts are inoperative. So there’s a testy situation where a federal agent tries to get her to take off her sunglasses so he can verify her identity with a retinal scan right? And because they’re standing outside this is obviously a recipe for permanent blindness, quite aside from the fact you wouldn’t be able to get a valid scan anyway due to the virus over-dilating George pupils. But instead of checking George’s files, where her disability & its effects are prominently listed, this grunt insists on making her remove her glasses because Procedure. It’s a pretty tense moment. Shaun goes ballistic. He doesn’t physically threaten the dude, or insult his mom or anything. No, Shaun understands that he needs to make this pencil-pusher more afraid of the consequences of taking George’s glasses than of Not Following Procedure. And it works. YEET.

On the campaign trail the Senator’s aides arrange for sex-segregated hotel rooms but Shaun and George are having none of it:

On the few occasions when I’ve tried sleeping without Shaun in the next room, well, let’s just say that I can go a long way on a six-pack of Coke.

The ostensible reason the sleeping arrangements need to be reshuffled is, Buffy can’t sleep without a nightlight and George’s eyes can’t tolerate a nightlight. Clearly the real reason is George and Shaun are c l i n g y and codependent as FUCK. One night after a zombie attack and the long grueling hours of cleanup/decontamination that followed it, they actually climb into the same bed—I guess this room only had a double instead of two singles?? The scene the next morning, the two of them having predictably overslept:

“Fuck a duck, Buffy, what are you trying to do, blind her?” … Shaun, clad only in his boxer shorts, staring at an unrepentant Buffy.

So Shaun’s beef with Buffy is not that she barged in on them while they were asleep & half-naked but that she opened the curtains, thereby triggering a painful migraine for George’s sensitive eyes. Buffy explains she didn’t shake them awake because they both sleep armed, lmao. George’s disability and Shaun’s practiced ability to help her maneuver around it (like a trusty prosthetic, he’s an extension of herself) serves to highlight how in this partnership they are one unit and they know each other inside out. This is them after their close shave with the dunce who tried to take George’s glasses:

“Fuck you, too,” I muttered as Shaun got his arm around me and hoisted me away from the barn. “You kiss our mother with that mouth?” “Our mother and you both, dickhead. Give me my sunglasses.”

And this is George waking up in their hotel room, eyes squeezed shut against the glare of multiple computer screens:

He touched my hand with the tips of his fingers before he pressed my sunglasses against my palm.

This is absurdly, spine-tinglingly intimate. First he touches her hand with the tip of his fingers, the most fleeting of touches to let her know it’s him, and then he presses the glasses into her palm to restore her agency so she can, you know, open her eyes. And that earlier scene with him guiding her by the elbow in broad daylight!!! I’M NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING

Sometimes I can hardly believe that George and Shaun are twenty-three years old. When I was twenty-three I … was not adulting half so well as these kids. But then, giving their barbarous upbringing, that’s not surprising; my parents loved and nurtured me. When I look at George and Shaun and the successful business they’ve built and the professional relationships they’ve cultivated and their expertise and their bravery I just feel this proud parental glow you know?

I want to say a word about Senator Ryman before we move onto spoiler territory. There’s a big controversy initially about whether the Senator is “genuine” or not (spoiler alert: he is). But what does that even mean, genuine? He’s a good egg, sure, but what are his policies, none of which are explored in depth except his support for horse farms??? I’m not kidding. In a world where any animal weighing over 40 pounds is a zombie outbreak waiting to happen, it’s a controversial position to say people should be able to keep pets in residential zones. Here is how George describes our Candidate:

He’s like a big, friendly Boy Scout who just woke up one day and decided to become the President of the United States of America.

I see two major problems with this: One, they say “Personnel is Policy” so who the hell is he planning to appoint to key Cabinet positions and can he trust them to pursue rather than undermine his objectives (and does he even have a deep enough bench of people to draw on)? Two, the Boy Scouts of America are not exactly, er, unproblematic, and while it’s safe to say our faves are always problematic, I think “Boy Scout” is shorthand here for “no skeletons in his closet,” which again puts the focus squarely on his personal qualities rather than what policies he espouses. It’s great that he hasn’t cheated on his wife or his taxes. But morality and ethics are not the same thing:

Morals are how you treat people you know. Ethics are how you treat people you don’t know. Your morality is what makes you a good spouse/friend … Your ethics are what makes you a good politician … Morality dictates that you take care of your family, friends and even acquaintances first … For a large society—a society where you can’t know everyone—to work, ethics must come before morality, or ethics and morality must have a great deal of overlap. By acting morally, you must be able to act ethically.

I think we can all agree that this does not describe how our society is currently constituted, and it doesn’t describe George and Shaun’s America either. So this narrow fixation on whether individual candidates are “genuine” or corrupt imo kinda misses the point. George says:

I haven’t even been able to find proof that his campaign received funding from the tobacco companies, and everyone’s campaign receives funding from the tobacco companies.

I don’t want to undersell how important it is the guy is not taking tobacco money. But is he also eschewing Wall Street money, Big Pharma money, defense contractor money? How could George possibly have time to investigate all this dark money if she is supposed to be covering the actual campaign? Seems like it would be a lot easier to reform the campaign finance laws than to vet every single single candidate’s funding sources.

I think one reason the Senator is long on identity & personal charisma and short on policy is that he’s up against an opponent whose base of support is millenarian-fundamentalist “the Rapture is here, we’re all going to hell”:

it was either Ryman’s brand of “we should all get along while we’re here,” or Tate’s hellfire and damnation.

If that is the main faultline in society, I guess half the voters don’t really wanna hear how a given politician is planning to make a material difference in their lives, since they’ve already got eyes on the prize aka the next life.

So there you have it. George and Shaun are scrappy independent muckrakers digging for the truth. Time and again their allegiance to that holy grail overrides their concern for trivial aims like idk personal safety. There’s a vast, shady conspiracy afoot, and as our heroes get closer to it they start getting shot at. They lose comrades. None of this deters them because they are after THE TRUTH. Oh wait there is in fact one thing George values more than the truth:

”You’re more interested in your brother than figuring out the truth?” “Shaun’s the only thing that concerns me more than the truth does.”

And later:

The sight of him was enough to make my heart beat faster and my throat get tight. I knew he was wearing Kevlar underneath his clothes, but Kevlar wouldn’t protect him from a headshot.

Her first concern is always, always, for him.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

George gets infected. That’s the denouement. George is infected and Shaun has to shoot her before she turns all the way. Every single person who makes it to this scene is just bawling by the end of it:

His lips brushed the top of my head as he bent forward and pressed them to my hair. I wanted to yell at him to get away from me, but I didn’t. The barrel of the gun remained a cool, constant pressure on the back of my neck. When I turned, when I stopped being me, he would end it. He loved me enough to end it. Has any girl ever been luckier than I am?

The reassuring pressure of the gun on the base of her neck??? Has there been a more romantic moment in cinematic history??? I THINK NOT. Shaun is a crack shot—he’s the kind of guy who caresses his guns, names them after pretty women, causes his sister to grouse about digging through a suitcaseful of his weaponry to find her clothes—and yet here he is using his gun to kill the woman he loves most in the world.

It was supposed to be Shaun. They both took it as a given that Shaun would be the one to die first. Now he has to find a reason to continue living other than the obvious (vengeance). Stay tuned for the next installment, narrated by Shaun!

[sportanimefantasies]

Hello! If your ask box is still open could I request Mattsun and 50? Thank you!!

Lately, I’ve been having a big crush on Mattsun… I don’t know how it happened, but the brows got to me D:

“Yo, ____-kun,” Matsukawa greeted with a wave as he approached you. You stood with a smile and waved back. “Have you heard from Hanamaki yet?”

You shook your head. “Anything from Oikawa-kun and Iwaizumi-kun?”

“Nah,” Matsukawa sighed. He sat down with a disappointed smile. You sat next to him and watched as he scrimmaged through his wallet. Your smile became more delighted as handed you a  ¥ 500 bill. “You win.”

“Thank you for your loss,” you snickered while placing the bill into your wallet. You leaned over while he was hunched to smile victoriously at him. He shook his head with a chuckle. “Wanna bet Makki slept in?”

Matsukawa held his hands up as he straightened up. He shook his head but smiled as he accepted defeat. “We’re all used to it by now, it’s no fun to bet on that anymore.”

The two of you laughed together, sitting next to one another just a few inches in between.

It was the first weekend without practice so the five of you planned to spend it in Tokyo, enjoy the sites, watch a movie on an amazing jumbo screen, and eat dinner all together at some crazy restaurant just to relax and have fun. Relax. Enjoy. The plan was to go to a museum, hit up a park, get some food at a grocery mart and have a picnic, then whatever else fell into the plan. The start of the plan was to all meet together at the bus station at 11:00 in the morning to catch the 11:25 AM bus.

It was 11:05 AM. Twenty more minutes until the bus came and only Matsukawa and you were on time.

Exactly at 11:15 AM, Matsukawa’s phone rang with Iwaizumi’s name on the screen.

“Dude, where are you guys? ____-kun and I are here,” Matsukawa asked as soon as he answered the call.

“Stupid Shittykawa fucking accidentally shaved the side of his head so now he’s making me take him to his stupid haircut to get it fixed!” Iwaizumi hissed infuriated. Matsukawa could hear Oikawa in the background talking. “No, I didn’t get my license just to be your damn chauffeur Crappykawa!”

The call wasn’t on speaker phone but you could overhear a few words Iwaizumi said. When Matsukawa looked at you with hesitantly with a forced smile, you had a small laugh. “So now what?”

Matsukawa nodded. “Do you want us to wait for you?”

“No, no, just go on ahead of us. After the haircut, we’ll meet you guys wherever you guys are,” Iwaizumi insisted.

“Ah, Hanamaki isn’t here though,” Matsukawa informed.

No one said a word.

“Iwaizumi?” Matsukawa questioned confused.

“Ah, uhm,” Iwaizumi struggled to get out. Matsukawa and you looked at each other extremely confused. Matsukawa brought the phone in between the two of you and put the call on speakerphone. “You guys can still go on ahead.”

“Iwaizumi-kun, are you okay?” you questioned. A big question mark hovered over your head as you raised your eyebrow.

“Y-Yeah!” Iwaizumi stuttered. Matsukawa and you looked at each other even more confused and curious.

“Dude, what’s wrong?” Matsukawa chuckled. You covered your mouth with your hand as you held back your laugh.

Oikawa’s voice echoed too far into the background. The only words you could make out were “now” and “together”. Suddenly, Iwaizumi shouted, “I get it, Shittykawa! Shut up, will you?!” You couldn’t help but laugh a little along with Matsukawa to hear Oikawa shriek in the back. 

Matsukawa and you snap your head to the sound of the bus approaching. The two of you looked at each other a bit confused. As the bus was about to approach, you both looked back to the phone.

“So what are you guy’s going to do with Makki?” you asked quickly.

“Yeah, should you guys just meet us whenever you’re ready?” Matsukawa asked almost immediately after you.

“Just go, we’ll call you when we’re ready to meet you!” Iwaizumi insisted in a rushed tone.

Matsukawa and you blinked at each other then looked back at his phone. “Okay!”

As soon as you both responded, Matsukawa hung up the phone and you walked towards the bus’s open doors. After the two of you paid the fee, you sat next to one another in the pair seatings in the bus. A sigh of relief released from both your mouths simultaneously. Immediately after, Matsukawa and you met each other’s eyes a bit surprised.

Both your laughs were always in sync. Your laugh was more light and audible than Matsukawa’s deep quiet chuckles. But the sounds balanced each other out sounding like something harmonious.

“That was kind of scary for some reason,” you noted as you tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. You smiled at Matsukawa as he did to you. “Museum first?”

“Yup,” Matsukawa agreed. The both of you sat back more comfortably in the bus’s chairs.

It was hard for Matsukawa to admit that he really doesn’t mind this time with you to alone aloud. He really was the type to just admire you in silence. It left him in bliss to see you share these faces with him. Like those smiles, he knows you haven’t shown Oikawa or Hanamaki. Or those times when you get flustered around him when you lose a bet. The times when it’s just the two of you, it’s hard for Matsukawa to hold back. Especially when you two are this close. Matsukawa can’t help to try and “accidentally” brush the back of his hand against yours.

Every time, every single time you two are together, you are in sync with one another. You both looked at each other’s hand when you both felt the contact, then looked up at each other. His eyes were nice. You felt safe around him. Whenever Matsukawa looked at you like this, you didn’t hear much outside of your vision. You heard his calm breaths as he still stared at you. His hand brushed against your hand again and you looked down, suddenly aware of the two of you. Matsukawa couldn’t help but stifle his laugh when your cheeks began to turn pink.

“S-Stop, okay!” you muttered as you looked away. Matsukawa grunted when you elbowed him, but he still kept laughing. “I get it, okay?!”

The museum was nice. You were surprised when everyone agreed to a trip to the museum. Oikawa was especially excited. He wanted to “feel more sophisticated together for once”, or something like that. But you did have to admit, walking around with Matsukawa as you two read the scripts that went along with the museum pieces did make you feel a bit more mature. 

It was also nice to be able to stand together with Matsukawa, side by side, as you watched him read. He was entranced and so intrigued by the history, it was just the simplicity you adored in his aura.

The two of you took way too many pictures. Some of them were of Matsukawa stepping inside the museum pieces boundaries right next to a sign instructing to not enter the premise of the art. His mischevious smile was hard to not laugh at as you looked at the pictures. You had a few with the two of you standing next to some pieces in the museum. There were people enjoying the museum kind enough to take the picture. Your favorite one with Matsukawa was when the two of you knelt down next to one of the stone figures. His smile was shifting into a laugh because he didn’t realize you were doing a big of a smile like you had. You were trying to mimic the faces of the stone figures. It was rare to get  Matsukawa’s candid smile be captured, so you really enjoyed this picture.

By the time Iwaizumi had called you two again, Matsukawa and you had gone through the entire museum.

“We finally got Hanamaki to get out of bed,” Iwaizumi informed, almost like a grunt. Matsukawa looked down at you as you laughed. How did he know you were laughing because you both could picture Iwaizumi pouting. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” the two of you answered simultaneously.

“Okay?” Iwaizumi responded suspiciously and quite confused. “Anyway, do you guys still want to watch a movie or are you guys hungry? Cause these idiots won’t stop complaining about their stomachs shrinking.”

“I haven’t eaten since last night,” Hanamaki whined in the background.

“I didn’t get to finish my breakfast because of my hair, Iwa-chan! I was too stressed!” Oikawa complained annoyed. He was starting to become irritable because of his empty stomach.

“Yeah, I get it you drama queens,” Iwaizumi huffed. “Are you guys okay to eat right now?”

“I can grab a bite,” Matsukawa admitted nonchalantly.

“I skipped out on breakfast too!” you chimed in.

“Alright, meet you there,” Iwaizumi replied.

“Yo, do you see them anywhere?” Hanamaki asked as he scouted the perimeter.

Iwaizumi, Hanamaki, and Oikawa walked down the sidewalk looking around for Matsukawa and you. The restaurant you all decided to dine at was relatively close so you two should be around. It would help if either of you answered your phone.

“Oh?” Oikawa blurted. Hanamaki and Iwaizumi looked to where Oikawa had his attention. You were laughing as loud as you were enjoying whatever was so funny standing in front of Matsukawa as he sat down on a bench looking at you with such an entranced smile.

“Found them,” Hanamaki said. Iwaizumi mumbled some agreement as did Oikawa. Even though this would be the time they would move to meet you two, none of them even attempted to move a muscle.

Somehow, it felt kind of wrong to interrupt something as happy as you two together.

But you all did make plans today together, so the three made their way over to you two. The closer they got the more they could hear your conversation. It was a surprise neither you nor Matsukawa noticed either of them yet.

“I told you-you didn’t have to make any bets with me,” you continued to laugh, still fully enjoying Matsukawa’s defeat.

“I’m determined to beat you, alright? It’s happened before,” Matsukawa chuckled as he hunched over, elbows on knees with his hands in hand. “You don’t want to sit?”

“Well, the guys should-Ah! They’re here!” you announced when you finally noticed them approaching you.

The first one you noticed was Oikawa. He was making his way over to Matsukawa and you a bit eagerly. Hanamaki followed next to Iwaizumi with a smile itching to make a joke out of something. Neither of you knew what but Matsukawa and you had a strong sense just from that smile of his.

“Finally, you guys really missed out on a cool museum,” Matsukawa bantered as he stood with a triumphant smile. No one knew why, but it seemed to fit the aura for some reason.

You took a step closer to Matsukawa and smiled joyously. “Yeah, I almost forgot how nice that museum is!”

“I’m sorry, blame these two,” Iwaizumi chided as he pointed towards Oikawa and Hanamaki.

“But hey, at least you guys got a good date out of it,” Hanamaki hinted with high eyebrows with an encouraging smile.

“D-Date?!” you repeated with a flustered smile and immediately red cheek. Matsukawa and you turned to each other, both your eyes matching how surprised the two of you were. But you became even redder and more embarrassed when Matsukawa wasn’t as red or embarrassed as you. You tried to have your hands hover over your face to try and stop being more obvious when Matsukawa burst into laughter with his pinking cheeks. “S-Stop, Matsukawa-kun!”

“See you guys are almost like an exact couple, it’s kind of cute,” Oikawa chimed in a sing-song tone.

“S-Shittykawa, stop! She’s getting embarrassed,” Iwaizumi tried to hiss in a whispered tone, but you still overheard him.

You hunched over trying to hide your face even as you were trying to hold back your laughter. Matsukawa’s laugh calmed down a bit as he bent over to try and look up at your face. Your hands lowered when Matsukawa stepped to stand next to you and smiled down at you. He elbowed you lightly and became a deeper shade of pink.

“We’d make such a cute couple,” Matsukawa stated a bit quietly as he held your gaze.

His eyes were nice. You felt safe around him. Whenever Matsukawa looked at you like this, you didn’t hear much outside of your vision. You heard his calm breaths as he still stared at you. You tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, feeling even the tips of it be so warm.

“Y-Yeah, it would be nice… If we were,” you mumbled each word more silent than the last. You peeked at Matsukawa to see him turned and hiding his mouth with his hand. It was hard to hold back your smile and poke his arm. “You’re embarrassed.”

Matsukawa turned to you, both your smiles matching as he shrugged. You two were always in sync.

“Oh, never mind then. I guess they’re official now,” Iwaizumi shrugged nonchalantly.

“Ha, ha! Iwa-chan, what did I say earlier?! I told you! ‘Now they get their chance to be closer, maybe even get together, finally!’ Right? Right?!” Oikawa turned to Matsukawa and you as you both looked at him. “I get some credit for this relationship forming if I didn’t mess up my hair you guys would take another few more months to become official!”

Iwaizumi was the one laughing now as Oikawa bragged excitedly. You lightly laughed as Matsukawa shook his head with half a smile. All eyes watched Hanamaki as he walked over towards the two of you and handed Matsukawa a  ¥ 500 bill. You looked up at Matsukawa then Hanamaki curiously.

“You win, man. You finally got to asking ____-kun out,” Hanamaki chuckled. He was so happy to give away this money as if he was waiting for this bet to have an outcome sooner rather than later. Hanamaki looked at you once Matsukawa took the money with his hesitant smile. “You were supposed to help me make Mattsun lose this bet, ____-kun! I lost my  ¥ 500  now.”

You smiled extremely satisfied with today. You stood closer to Matsukawa and let your hands brush against each other. Matsukawa’s eyes flinched at the touch, but he couldn’t help but look down to you as you grasped his hand into yours. He smiled once he wrapped his fingers around yours. “Sorry, Makki. I like it when he loses bets with me instead.”

Matsukawa chuckled as Hanamaki smiled while shaking his head. “You two are too in sync now.”