#ironically audible does not actually have a monopoly here

[shouldprobablybereading]

You can kinda tell in each discussion page how many people are audiobook readers compared to other formats by how big of an opinion they have on the audible situation with the secret projects

I rarely use audiobooks and despise audible with a passion, so I am mostly kinda glad at the middle finger to amazon. But it is very interesting hearing from people who actually use it regularly

To be clear the reason I despise audible as a company is because it’s so tied to their subscription service

If I want to purchase a certain audiobook from them and not get the subscription service, it doesn’t show up in their app at all. Neither the books that I have paid for myself at full price or the books that other family members have and I should have access to through family sharing. Only through logging in on a specific website (not audible it’s some other library part of amazon that I can never find on the first try) on a computer is it possible to access the audiobooks and listen to them. Same website on phone or ipad gives you nothing. That is impractical to the point that I only ever do it when it’s something I need for school and have no other option, no matter how much I pay not only do I not actually own the product but I can’t even access it properly. It wouldn’t be a problem if they had competitors where I could buy them instead, but as established a lot of books are only sold through amazon. Kindle works fine with 0 issues so it’s very specifically audible that is trash in that department

[haphazardlyparked]

monopoly (continued)

the 420 continuation of this ridiculousness  i wrote this in the spirit of 420, and in the spirit of 420 promptly fell asleep on it. then i woke up and edited.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“You still want to change your callsign?” Crown grinned at the door. He was wearing an honest to god cable-knit sweater that I was sure he knit himself. The grey of it really brought out his eyes, and complemented his dark curls, which I told me a lot more about Crown’s vanity than I cared to know.

“Cute,” I muttered. Swinging my legs off the bed turned into an awkward cast-maneuvering endeavor. “I can’t be held accountable for the shit I say while on painkillers.”

“Maybe not,” he agreed. Then he smirked. “But the idea still holds merit… Steamroller.”

I groaned. “As long as you don’t suggest ‘Kite’.” Straightening, I leaned into a pair of crutches. My arm, thankfully, wasn't as broken as my legs. The doctors almost definitely would have preferred if I used a chair, but I still had a bunch of the good pills, so crutches it was.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in a chair?” Crown said, endlessly reliable in his predictably.

“Doctors said crutches were fine,” I lied sunnily, and hobbled towards the door. “Now are you going to drive me home, or what?”

Crown drove me home in his stupidly fancy car. It was one of those obnoxious two-door sports cars, but it drove so smoothly my leg was barely jarred in the ride. When we got into my building, the elevator’s LED lights gleamed brightly at us.

I hit the call button.

“Holy shit,” I said when it lit up and the elevator’s number began to change, tracking its descent from the seventh floor.

“It’s an elevator.” Crown was flatly unimpressed.

“It’s working,” I argued. This was my reliably, predictably shitty elevator. It had been out of service since before the dawn of time, and the purpose of its entire existence was to spite me.

Crown still did not appreciate the momentousness of the occasion. “I should hope so,” he said. “You live on the sixth floor – you can’t be doing that as you are.”

I ignored him, and marveled as the number changed from 2 to 1 and then prettily chimed its arrival. The doors opened smoothly.

“Holy shit,” I repeated, and hobbled into the elevator.  

•

The elevator was just the beginning.

When I sagged heavily against the counter in my attempt to boil water for instant mac and cheese later, the gas lit on my stovetop before I even had to set a lighter to it. I shuffled over to the cabinet where I kept the boxes and mentally nudged the cupboard door into opening. I was more physically exhausted than mentally, but tired enough that the cupboard was heavier than I remembered.

I blinked. I rubbed my eyes, blinked again. The cabinet overflowing with snacks did not go away: my shitty mac and cheese, stocked because I hadn’t had time to run to the fancy supermarket lately, had been replaced with the good, white cheddar stuff. That was just the start of it – there were my favorite ramen brand and crackers, and even a can of unnaturally red spaghetti-os that I remember I had craved a few months back when I had the flu.

Suspicious, I frowned at the fridge, knocking it open.

The inside of my fridge was filled with neatly packed meals in re-usable tupperware. I suspected the freezer would yield similar options, only longer-lasting.

Honest to fucking god, I thought viciously.

Silence answered me.

•

They took my cast off four weeks later, replacing it with a brace; two weeks after that, even the brace went away. And for all six weeks, I stoically ignored everyone’s shit about my healthy, pre-made lunches. Well, everyone but Crown.

Crown just looked at my boxed meals and told me he was happy I’d found someone to take care of me, which would have been a nice thing to say if his face hadn’t been all pinched up while he said it.

At the end of my six weeks’ worth of food and snacks, I was still discovering shit that had been fixed around my place. The hinges on my bedroom door had been oiled. The uneven leg on my desk chair had been leveled out. The water pressure in my shower was like a tiny massage. My TV no longer shocked me when I turned it on, and somehow I had HBO.

And yet, when I opened my door and bounded through without crutches for the first time in six weeks, I was still surprised to see Rex sprawled over my armchair, flicking through HBO movies on the TV. He glanced up at me when I came in, and then his eyes shifted towards the door behind me. It shut decisively, the lock audibly sliding into place.

“Hi, honey,” I joked warily, though what I was thinking was jesus fuck, does he have no boundaries? “I’m home.”

“Hey.” Rex set down the remote and stood up from the couch. I didn’t flinch when he stared at me, but it was a near thing. “You look recovered,” he eventually said. It occurred to me that he could be waltzing through my mind, and I might not even know. Over our interactions, I had the sense he was that good.

Rex’s lips twitched, the way they did when I was sure he was hiding a smile.  

“I am recovered,” I said, trying not to think about what Rex might be seeing in my mind. I’m supposed to be a psychic too, goddamnit, but Rex’s shields were like a funhouse mirror that redirected and mislead and tangled you up before you realized you weren’t even close to his deeper thoughts. “Someone has fixed all the tiny shit that was wrong in my apartment and has been feeding me for like a month and a half.”

“Fascinating,” Rex said blandly, though I sensed his amusement. He stepped away from the couch, and gestured at the TV. “Someone also recommends this movie. Quite to your tastes, someone thinks.”

And then he stuck his hands into his pockets and brushed passed me, striding out the suddenly-open door before I could do anything.

The movie was a strange comedy with a weirdly serious yet profound twist ending. I fucking loved it. 

•

Three weeks later, I heard my lock slide open.

Sitting at my kitchen table, I gaped when Rex all but fell in through the door.

‘m fine, I heard, but I also felt the way Rex’s thoughts were braced, gripped with iron control so he wouldn’t project his pain at me. It was ragged and unnatural. I shot to my feet and darted over to the door, grabbed Rex’s arm, and helped him up. I kicked the door shut behind us.

“What the fuck happened?”

Overextended, came the reply.

Rex certainly looked it; as I lead him over to the living room, I saw evidence of a nose bleed, and the redness of his eyes. When I brushed his mind, slow and hesitant and mentally broadcasting the concern that motivated me, I recoiled almost immediately, stung. The funhouse mirrors of Rex’s mental shields loomed sharply, viciously defensive. It was a weak façade, the militaristic ghost of his usually impermeable walls, I was pretty sure – if I pressed forward I could get further into Rex’s mind than ever before – but I backed off. Rex hadn’t shown up at my door worn down and exhausted just to be interrogated. Actually, I didn’t know why Rex had shown up at my door. 

“Jesus fuck.”

You certainly swear a lot.

“You bring it out in me, asshole,” I blamed Rex shamelessly, even as I settled him down on my couch, comfortably horizontal.

I noticed.

Rex’s eyes fluttered closed. There was something -- relieved in his expression, in the softening of premature crow’s feet and slightly-parted lips. I hesitated, feeling like I was intruding even though it was Rex who has literally invaded my apartment. Throwing a blanket over him, I retreated to my room.  

•

I woke up to the smell of something baking.

Still wearing yesterday’s clothes, I stumbled into the kitchen, blinking blearily at the sight of Rex at my table drinking coffee and writing in a small purple notebook. Somehow, he was wearing fresh clothes, and there was a bread pan sitting in my oven.

It smelled like banana bread. My mouth watered.

“Hi, honey,” I grumbled, my voice still sleep-scratchy. “I’m up.”

I felt Rex’s answering good morning, though he said nothing and thought nothing and didn’t so much as glance up from his writing.

“What’s with the banana bread?” I asked. “Not that it isn’t my favorite breakfast food ever, I mean.”

Rex looked up at me from my kitchen counter. “That’s not the question you want to ask,” he said, almost chidingly.

I bristled. “You tried to lobotomize this entire city,” I snapped accusingly.

“This city is shit,” he said mildly, not even offering a token denial. “I was doing it a favor.”

“Then you didn’t. Then you like, what, fixed all shit in my apartment, then came here and passed out on my couch.”

“I’m still not hearing a question, Monopoly.”

“Oh, it’s Flatiron now,” I said, just because I could.

Rex’s face did something funny, his lips twitching. Then he gave into a laugh that was devastatingly bright and un-sinister.

I scowled.  “Why are you here, Rex?”

Rex sobered up quickly.  “Now that is a question.”

cheers to @gingerly-writing and @rrrawrf, one of whom was a shameless enabler while the other tried to give me good counsel. and both had to put up with my varying levels of coherency, so... i’m going to go like, detox or something.