#just waiting for a railroad heavy to show up and it’s a fucking walking metal skeleton

[vault81]

doing the railroad side quests and I’ve already gotten an idea for a new fo4 oc…

all ik about them so far is they’re a pre-war ghoul who used to work for DIA and is now a Railroad agent (code name is either Whisper or Charmer not fully decided yet)

[pedros-mustache-main]

i want your last name

summary: it’s only a year...

word count: 16k+ (holy crap i’m sorry)

warnings: idiot-strangers to lovers, suggestive moments (not 18+ but be mindful), frightening situations & suspense, alcohol consumption and drunkenness, language, innuendo, timeline inaccuracies

a/n: please bear with me as this is my first time writing rog and i’m relatively unsure about it. anyway, have a vaguely spooky fic just in time for halloween! xoxo! also: big thank you to @ineloqueent​ for helping with this fic! y’all, she literally held my hand and walked me through every paragraph what a saint

january, 1982.

“you’re off your rocker if you think i’m going to go through with this, jim.”

from his place on the couch, john snorts. “what? afraid she won’t be pretty enough for you, rog?”

roger levels john an uncharacteristically dark look, jabbing his finger through the air like a knight brandishing his sword or a cowboy his gun. “watch your mouth, deacon.” john holds his hands upwards in surrender, and roger returns his piercing gaze to jim. “i’m not getting married. that’s absolutely out of the question.”

long-suffering band manger and unofficial rockstar wrangler, jim beach drops his face to his hands with a harsh groan. roger cringes in his seat, shifting uncomfortably. he knows what this is about; they all know what this is about.

the end-of-tour party in montreal.

god, he’d gotten so wasted. even now, two months later, he can barely remember that night.

brian, ever the diplomatic, is the first to break the tense silence. he leans forward from his place on the couch beside john and offers roger his most sympathetic look. it does nothing to ease the growing knot of dread in roger’s stomach. “maybe we should leave you and jim to talk, rog.”

jim lifts his head. “i think that might be best, yes.”

roger huffs and falls slack against his chair. he drops his head back, and the ceiling turns topsy-turvy. if jim and the rest of management get their way, his life is bound to feel the same: flipped upside down, all that he knows turned on its head.

john squeezes roger’s shoulder as he slides by, a silent expression of solidarity, but it doesn’t feel like much. john’s got a wife, a parcel of kids. he’s happy at home. roger—he’s never been that way, never seen the point in all the domestics. he isn’t about to join the bloody women’s institute just because a little fun upset a few highbrow jackasses who can’t tell a party from a funeral.

the door to jim’s office shuts with a soft click, and roger imagines the lid of his coffin closing with the same resolute noise. he sits up and runs a hand through his hair. from behind his tinted shades, jim stares across the expanse of his desk. he drums his fingers, worrying his lower lip. roger’s nose twitches to the side. jim isn’t playing around. the proposal typed and printed in the manila folder under jim’s hand is serious, deadly so.

roger removes his sunglasses.

“it was just a party, jim.”

there’s a heavy beat of silence. jim blinks once. “roger, you went streaking through a group of nuns and priests.”

roger squeezes his eyes shut against the words, thankful, for once, that he has no memory of the event. “did i?” he lifts a hand to rub the back of his neck. “honestly couldn’t tell you what i did or didn’t do that night.”

“you did.” jim opens the manila folder and reads from a crumbled newspaper article. “queen’s roger taylor bared all this evening after the explosive conclusion to the game tour, filmed before thousands in montreal’s biggest arena. in a rare display of vulnerability, taylor stripped naked and exposed himself in the hotel lobby where queen resided. he stood on a table and beat his chest like a wild gorilla, chanting about the success of the evening’s filmed concert. lookers-on included none other than a group of nuns and priests recently arrived to canada on special assignment from the vatican. john deacon, bassist for queen, could also be seen laughing in the background.”

jim’s hand thumps against the desk as he drops the article, his stare decidedly unimpressed. “do you have anything to say for yourself?”

running his tongue over his teeth, roger hesitates. not his best moment, he would give jim that. but if he remembers anything about that party, it’s that he wasn’t the only sinner present that evening. john had gotten into his fair share of antics; crystal, too. it seems arbitrary that he should be the one singled out for punishment—and with a strange, archaic, probably-unethical punishment at that.

he shrugs, tossing his hands up in defeat. “i’m not going to be able to say what you want me to say. it was just a party. it got a little out of control. that’s all. i’m sorry if i gave the nuns a little show. i’ll—i dunno—write a letter if you want me to.”

jim scoffs. “write a letter if you think it’ll make me feel better—which it won’t—but that’s not the issue here.”

“then what is the issue? and where the hell does marriage come into it? because i’m not seeing the connection.”

jim sighs. his desk chair creaks as he leans back. taking off his glasses, he pinches the bridge of his nose before meeting roger’s eyes again. “this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, rog. remember new orleans?”

roger holds up an accusatory finger. “you were in new orleans too, jim, so you can’t attack me on that front.”

jim leans forward, his glasses between his hands. he runs his finger back and forth across the top of the frames. “i’ll be blunt. some other people in the office think you’re becoming too—how shall i say it?—explicit for the band. you’re not twenty any more, and raucous parties don’t fit queen’s image. they’re concerned that if more incidents like this hit the press, there will be a drop in sales or concert attendance because nice, suburban families don’t want to go to a concert with a drummer who flashes nuns. do you get what i’m saying?”

roger itches his temple and pushes against the sudden pain behind his left eye. “yeah. yeah, i do.”

“the marriage thing—that was barnaby potter’s idea. if you have beef with it, take it up with him.”

it’s roger’s turn to scoff. he throws his head back on the sound and curls his hands against the cool wooden arms of his chair. when he looks back at jim, he is surprised to see the older man rifling through a filing cabinet in the corner, his back turned.

roger surges forward with his ire anyway. “of course i have beef with it! slap my ass and scold me, sure, but hitch me to a woman i don’t even know for publicity? you’ve got to be joking.”

“personally, i think it’s an idea that will work if you give it a chance.” jim returns to chair and hands roger a sealed packet. “we’ve already got it all lined up, picked the lass and everything. it’s just for a year or so, until the tabloids calm down. then you can get divorced and go your separate ways.”

“wait, hold on—you picked her? without telling me? before even approaching me with the idea?”

“roger—” jim’s tone borders on a warning, but roger ignores his better judgement and cuts the other man off.

“you won’t even give me the option to choose the woman i have to shack up with? god, jim, i’m getting fuckin’ railroaded here!”

jim clenches his jaw. “i’m sure it feels that way, and i’m sorry for that. but it’s this—well, to be frank, it’s this or you’re out. the montreal party was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.”

roger can’t be sure but he thinks he sees red. never in his life has he so badly wanted to wring someone’s neck. it takes every fiber of his being, every molecule in his body, to keep from lunging across the room and tackling jim to the floor. he bites his tongue hard enough to draw a thin line of blood. it coats his mouth in a metallic taste, but it’s nothing compared to the rage boiling in his stomach.

still, he knows what his answer must be. it’s this—a sham marriage, a year of hell—or losing the life he’s worked so hard to build.

he rips the envelope from jim’s hand as roughly as he can when he stands from his chair. he hopes he gave the man a papercut.

“i’ll do it, you bastard,” he mutters. “but i damn well won’t be happy about it.”

“you look beautiful, [y/n].”

with a playful roll of your eyes, you offer ivy a smile. “thanks, love, but you and i both know this is just part of the job.”

ivy laughs and steps closer to adjust the puffed sleeves of your dress. “it might be a job, but damn, if it isn’t a comfortable one. i just about fell out of my seat when you told me you were quitting the agency to marry roger fucking taylor.”

you slide ivy a bemused smirk in the reflection of the long, oval mirror before you. “we’re not really getting married, ivy. you know that, right?”

ivy frowns and jabs her thumb over her shoulder, confusion awash on her round face. “unless i’m mistaken, we’re at a church, you’re in a wedding dress, roger taylor is the groom, and there’s a priest waiting for you right outside. did you read the memo wrong or something? feels like a wedding to me.”

sighing, you turn away from the mirror and reach for your bouquet of flowers. the white roses interspersed with springs of green leaves smell sweet, their stems tied together with a long white ribbon. you adjust one of the wayward petals then sit on the edge of a cushioned chair to slip on your heels. ivy leans against the door, her arms crossed over her chest.

“are you happy?” she asks, her voice soft.

you look up and pause. the heel of your white mary janes squeezes around your achilles’ tendon, and you wince as you shove your foot into the shoe. “what do you mean—am i happy?”

“i dunno.” ivy shrugs. she picks at an invisible piece of lint on the shoulder of her blue bridesmaid gown. “when we were kids, you always used to talk about your wedding day. now it’s here and—”

“ivy.” you rise from the chair and cross the floor to grab her arm. when you speak, you keep your tone firm and stare into her wide, brown eyes. “i’m doing this for the money and nothing else. it’s not a big deal. i don’t even consider today my wedding day. when roger and i get divorced i’ll find some other chap and make my childhood dreams come true, but that’s not today, and i’m okay with it. so yes, i am happy. this is what i want.”

ivy doesn’t appear convinced what with the way she continues to gnaw at her lower lip and shift her concerned look about your face. but she relents when someone knocks on the door, moving to allow you to grab the doorknob.

“wait, [y/n].” you turn at the door, eyebrows lifted in expectation. “how much are you getting paid?”

you press your pointer finger to your lips. “handsomely,” you whisper, dipping your head as though you are about to spill a secret. ivy leans in. her eyes sparkle with interest, and you inwardly smirk. she’s always been a sucker for drama and intrigue, your cousin. “but,” you continue. “that’s for me to know and you not to know.”

before ivy can respond, you pull open the door to see none other than your future husband waiting for you in the vestibule of the chapel.

he stands poised to flee the premises. he’s half-turned toward the closed chapel door, his hands worrying before his waist, his gaze hinged on the flurry of life outside the chapel, visible through the windows on either side of the door. you realize he’s fiddling with an unlit cigarette, not merely rubbing his hands together in an external sign of nervousness. you can’t make out whether or not his eyes are wild with fear or anger or some other emotion; the black tint of his sunglasses obscures the majority of his eyes. he’s handsome in his suit, but, then again, he’s roger taylor. you would be surprised to find a time in which he isn’t handsome.

when you clear your throat, his head whips to face you, and his fingers stop fidgeting. “sorry,” he mutters. “i was just—” he rubs a hand across the back of his neck and sighs. “they’re ready for you.”

“okay.” you nod with a smile and hope the gesture will ease whatever consternation plagues him. “i’ll be up in a moment.”

“right.” he nods once.

from behind his shades, you see his eyes trail from the top of your head to the soles of your shoes. it’s not sexual, not lewd; he’s just inspecting you, and you don’t blame him. who are you to him other than the model pulled out of a catalog, prepared and willing to be his wife until his time served is complete? you’ve spoken only once before this moment, and that phone-call was terse at best. roger made it perfectly clear his opinions on the arrangement, and he wanted to be sure—no, he needed to be sure—you understood his feelings on the matter. you assured him you had heard him loud and clear; your ear had rung for the next hour if only to remind you of his extreme distaste.

“roger,” you say, pulling his attention back from wherever his mind has drifted off to, his stare gone vacant but hardly serene.

his eyelashes flutter as he struggles to focus. “hm?”

“i said i’ll be up in a moment. you can go in now.”

he nods again, this time his chin smacking his collarbone in his urgency. he rubs his jaw, mutters something unintelligible beneath his breath, and turns on his heel, slipping back into the chapel sanctuary with heavy footfalls. your brows rise on your forehead in the wake of his exit. ivy hovers behind your shoulder.

“that’s him?” she squeaks. “that’s roger taylor?”

“yes.” your mouth twists in pity. “poor dear. he really doesn’t want this.” after waiting the appropriate amount of time to be sure roger has made his way to the front of the church, you step towards the entryway, but not before you can ask ivy one last question. “do i look okay? the pictures taken today are bound to be published in the papers.”

ivy chuckles and shakes her head as she lightly pushes your shoulder. “you look gorgeous and you know it. now go get married to a rockstar, you lucky bitch.”

the actual wedding ceremony itself is a formality. truly, it cannot be called a ceremony. there’s no wedding march, no attendees gently dabbing their tear-filled eyes, no heartfelt vows or kiss to signal the joining of two souls. instead, there’s you and there’s roger and there’s a red-faced, balding priest who points to the solid lines on which you must affix your signature to make the marriage certificate valid. roger signs first, and his knuckles are white against the ballpoint pen. you sign second, and the pen feels overly-warm against your cool palms. the priest blesses you with a sign of the cross and promises the certificate will be notarized and sent to your home address within the week.

then it’s done. you’re married. you feel largely the same as you did this morning. if it weren’t for the giant rock on your ring finger and the recent transfer of seventy-five-thousand pounds into your bank account, you might wonder if this was all a product of your over-active imagination, run away with a plot stolen from a b-list film.

the most vital part of the day, the reason you’re here and dressed in a gown with your hair crimped and nails painted, comes right after the priest scurries away to tend to his more important duties. jim beach stands from his place in one of the pews and ushers a photographer forward. he points between you and roger.

“all right, get snug, you two.” jim chews on a large wad of gum, and his words are slurred with an excess of saliva. “just a few pictures and then we’ll go eat. we all know that’s the only reason john showed up today.”

lounged against a pew, john raises his finger in agreement, and his wife elbows him in the chest. he sputters, doubling over in pain, while freddie laughs in amusement. beside you, roger watches the interaction with a back as straight as the pew benches, his jaw tight. you push your arm around his elbow and tug lightly. he inhales before turning to meet your eyes.

“what?” his voice is not cruel or unkind; it’s just tired.

“try and look happy, yeah?” you say, offering him a gentle smile similar to the one you’d given him in the vestibule. it’s the only thing you have to give him other than your hand in marriage and a chance to salvage his reputation; yet, again, it does not alleviate the tension pinching his brow. “the faster we smile the faster we can eat.”

roger shifts, as though he wants to pull away from you, but knows he shouldn’t. his feet dance back and forth on the carpeted stairs leading to the sanctuary state. “i should be telling you to try and look happy. this is just as much an inconvenience for you.”

you shake your head with a chuckle. “hardly. i make my living pretending to be happy, or moody, or sultry. whatever the director wants. i’m a pro at this. and besides,” you add. “it’s my job to make you look good. though, to be honest, that’s not very hard. you look good all on your own.”

roger sniffs and rubs the underside of his nose. he ignores your compliment and keeps his eyes trained on the photographer setting up his equipment at the base of the stairs. “maybe i could use some tips…”

he’s being glib but you take the opportunity to try and break the ice—the rock solid, absolutely frigid, polar ice-cap style ice—between you both. holding up a finger to the photographer, you slide to stand in front of roger. he’s taller than you, not by much, but enough that you have to tilt your head slightly to maintain eye-contact. his blue eyes very much resemble the ice with which he’s surrounded himself. you can feel the chill on his shoulders, even as you smooth the wrinkles on his tailored dress-shirt.

“whenever i have to fake a smile,” you say, adjusting his thin tie. “i always think about the thing that makes me happiest.” he doesn’t ask you to expand, but you do anyway. “for me, it’s when my cousin ivy moved in with my mother and me. i was seven and she was six and it’s been one giant slumber party ever since.”

“is that your cousin?” roger’s eyes flick to the girl sitting across the aisle from the band and management. ivy has her hands beneath her thighs, her head dipped, her dark black hair covering a curtain over her face.

you nod. “mhmm.”

“she doesn’t look like you.”

you lift an eyebrow. “she’s adopted.”

“right, sorry.” roger exhales deeply, and the weight of the world slips from one of his shoulders to the other, tilting his body in a stiff hunch. “i’m feeling out of sorts today, as you can probably imagine.”

“just think about what makes you happy, roger.” you dare to lift a hand and press it against his cheek. his skin is smooth beneath your fingers. he must have shaved his morning. he looks boyish up close, and you wonder if, like you, he had ever dreamt of what his wedding day might look like. you wonder if, like you, he had given up those dreams to make today a reality.

the photographer takes a picture of your hand against roger’s cheek, and the sudden flash of light has you blinking in surprise. you look over your shoulder, mouth slightly parted and eyelashes fluttering to clear the white spots over your vision.

the photographer just shrugs. “ready now?”

the shrill of a ringing telephone wakes you the morning after the wedding, and you groan, pulled from a heavy slumber by the incessant and high-pitched tone. there’s a dull ache at the base of your skull, and your tongue feels like it’s coated with a fine layer of sand. beside you, a man snores softly, his face pink and eyelashes soft on his cheekbones.

oh yes, that’s right. you’re married to roger taylor, aren’t you? you’d drunk so much at the celebration supper that you’d nearly forgotten. the evening itself is but a hazy memory, but you think you recall freddie imitating a russian style jig atop a table, and phoebe going into great detail about all the fabulous dress-up parties you’ll be expected to attend now.

one thing you can’t remember is how you ended up in roger’s bed, dressed in one of his oversized t-shirts. your hair is still stiff with sticky hairspray, your legs still encased in a pair of nylon tights, and you don’t feel… sated, for lack of a better word. it’s probably safe to assume that you did not sleep with roger; you merely slept beside him. why you didn’t take up residence in his guest room will be the first question out of your mouth once his day starts. 

you might be his wife and he might be your husband, but you don’t want him getting any funny ideas about the nature of your relationship.

this is a job for you. nothing more.

the phone continues ringing and, lest roger wake before he is ready, you move to reach across him for the phone on his bedside table. you speak into the receiver on a whisper, adjusting your fist on the mattress to keep from falling flat on roger’s stomach.

“hello?”

“uh—hi.” there’s a pause, as if the speaker is uncertain how to react to your voice on roger’s line. “is this [y/n]?”

“yes. who is this?”

“it’s brian. we met yesterday.”

you bite your lip to keep from laughing. “yes, i know who you are, brian.”

he chuckles softly. “sorry—i can’t remember much of last evening. it’s probably best i make a second introduction if i can’t recall the first.”

“well then, i’m [y/n] [y/l/n]. [y/n] taylor now, i suppose. pleased to meet you.”

“brian may. the pleasure is all mine. ours, really—me and the guys. what you’re doing is—we appreciate it, truly. you’ve saved the band, in a way.”

“that’s kind of you, brian.” you glance at roger out of the corner of your eye. he hasn’t moved a muscle, and his face is the most serene you’ve ever seen it. saved the band? you doubt it. smoothed a few ruffled feathers? that’s certainly more likely. “it’s no trouble, though. it’s just my job. what was it you called for?”

“roger was supposed to be at the studio an hour ago. we have a recording session today.”

“shit, really?” pressing the receiver to your shoulder, you twist your wrist upwards, but find your watch missing. you scan the unfamiliar room. a digital clock glows red on a built-in bookshelf. “is it really nearly one o’clock?!”

“afraid so.”

“shit, i’m sorry. i only just woke up. yesterday was hectic—to say the very least. i’ll have roger out the door in half an hour.”

“thanks, [y/n]. you’ll find this happens a lot after a night out. but, hey, at least you’re not shouting at me like rog does.”

after passing pleasantries a moment more—brian asks you about ivy, who you are surprised he remembers, and you ask him about his stargazing habits—you reassure brian that roger will be on his way as soon as possible. you drop the receiver on its base with more force than necessary, but the crack of plastic on plastic and the slight ring of the internal bell gets roger moving.

he grunts, twisting his head away from the noise.

you shake his shoulder gently. “wakey wakey, sleeping beauty. the day is already half gone.”

roger yawns as his eyes blink open. he rubs a hand down his face and arches his back like a cat as he stretches. slumping back against his pillows, he stares at you for a moment, his eyes roaming your face.

“are you an angel?”

you laugh at this, and he winces, holding the heel of his hand to his forehead. “no. i’m your wife. are you still drunk?”

“maybe a little.” his eyelashes flutter rapidly as he adjusts to the sunlight streaming through the bedroom window. he waves his hand around your head, and you lean back slightly, away from the exposed skin of his chest and striking collarbones. “you look like an angel with the sun all around your head. ‘s like a halo.”

“that’s kind of you.”

he shrugs, shaking his head. “just sayin’.”

“i think you’re still drunk.”

as if to prove your point, he hiccups then falls to his side on the bed. “maybe.” his cheek is pressed firmly against the mattress, smushing half of his face flat. soft, steady breaths filter in and out of his parted lips, and his eyelids begin to grow heavy as he is dragged back to his dream world. he looks more tired child than grown man, but the sight is endearing. still, your current job is getting him out the door and on his way to the studio. you can’t let him be any later than he already is.

“oh no, you don’t.” grabbing his arm, you pull as you slide from the bed. roger resists your strength and moves to push his entire face against the mattress. he mumbles something against the sheets, but you can’t make out the words. “brian already called. you’re late, pretty boy.”

roger rolls over onto his back, and the movement causes you to lose your grip on his wrist. you stumble backwards then plant your hands on your hips.

“come on, roger. you’ve got to get up.”

“i don’t want to. yesterday was shit, and all i want to do is stay in bed.”

with a sigh, you gather your wedding dress from its heap on the floor. you lay it over your forearm and pull open the closet door. “nice to know you thought our wedding day was shit,” you say. 

you mean it only as a joke, but roger sits up fast, swaying slightly with the movement. he catches your eye as you exit the walk-in closet, and you pause, turning the light off slowly, held by his angry stare.

“fuck off,” he says. “i don’t want this. i don’t want you.”

to say his words don’t sting would be a falsehood. no one wants to hear such a thing, least of all from their spouse. the words make your heart clench painfully in your chest, and you wonder what he sees when he looks at you. he doesn’t look at you, though; he cradles his forehead in his hands, his back hunched where he sits on the edge of the bed.

inhaling deeply, you reach up and begin to remove some of the pins lost in your hair. you head for the bedroom door. “well, while you sit and sulk, i’ll pack you a lunch. you’d better shower, though. you reek.”

from your place puttering about the kitchen, you hear the shower start up a few moments later. good—at least he’s moving. you haven’t the foggiest idea where anything is in his kitchen, but you make do with what you can find in the poorly stocked fridge, and pack him a light lunch. you start a pot of coffee, too, and lean against the counter as you wait for the pot to fill.

the ancient coffee pot takes too long, and you can hear roger humming in the shower down the hall. 

your nails tap against the counter. 

you’re antsy, unsure of what to do with yourself now that the wedding is over. how do you be a wife to someone who doesn’t want a wife? how do you be a friend to someone who doesn’t want a friend?

it’s too big of a problem to solve in the span of time it takes for roger to finish his shower, so you slip into the bedroom and peel off your stockings and his tee-shirt. you put on a sweater, some jeans, and wipe the day-old makeup from your face with a wet-wipe. the movements are tried and true, and they calm your racing thoughts. 

you have an entire year to figure out how to live with roger taylor. you don’t need to have it all figured out this morning.

the coffee pot dings, its job complete, just as you and roger both enter the kitchen.

but he hesitates before taking another step, and so do you. 

his hair is wet from the shower. a white sweatshirt swallows his torso. part of the hem is tucked into his white-washed jeans, and you’re struck by the narrowness of his hips. the weariness is gone from his face, replaced with a youthful sort of glow and stubborn cheekiness. you aren’t sure how he’s managed it, but he looks well-rested. 

you lift a hand to your cheek. you must look a state. it takes a lot longer for you to put yourself back together after a night out.

he stares at you for a moment, then shakes his head and crosses the kitchen to fill a travel mug with hot coffee. gnawing on your lower lip, you lean your hip bones against the kitchen island as he putters about the room, quiet as the grave.

it’s only your first day as husband and wife, and under such unique circumstances, you shouldn’t expect him to—what? make conversation? ask about you and your life?

“so… what do you think you’ll work on today? in the studio, i mean.”

he glances over his shoulder then shrugs. “not sure. probably something related to the rest of the tour.” bending at the waist, he pulls a drawer out from beneath the sink. his ass looks good in those jeans, but you doubt he’d like you staring, so you look away, mouth screwed to the side. “do you know where the sugar packets are?”

you frown and push away from the island, rounding it to stand beside him. “no?” he turns at the sound of your confused voice, and his head jolts backward to see you standing so close. “i don’t live here, remember?”

“well, you do now.” he swivels on his heel and pulls a small white jar across the counter. lifting the lid, he sighs. “i can’t find the sugar.”

“actually, about living here now...” you follow as he starts for the door, grabbing his keys from a small table in the foyer. “the bedroom situation? i figured we’d have separate bedrooms but last night—”

roger opens the front door and silences you with a hard stare. “the only other bedroom is my practice room.”

your shoulders slump. “oh.”

“i wasn’t going to make it a guest room if you’ll be gone in a year.”

“but where will i—”

“fuck it all, [y/n].” he curls his hand around the doorframe, hanging his head. a cold winter breeze sweeps through the hall, and you pull your jumper tight around your waist. “just sleep in my bed, okay? i don’t fuckin’ care.”

you swallow hard, nod. you’d been prepared for some measure of hostility, some measure of resentment. what you hadn’t been prepared for is the way his rebuffs settle like dead weight in your stomach. he alone can be blamed for this; it was his actions that drove management to force you upon him. yet, he seems to look at you with nothing more than dread and disgust. perhaps it is because you are the physical embodiment of his wrongdoing. his antics created you, and he is powerless to wipe you from his eyesight as he might a clump of dirt. you are a permanent stain—at least for the next year.

maybe you can’t begrudge him his disdainful attitude, then.

you come to when a car horn blares outside. 

roger is gone, the door open, void of his claustrophobic presence. leaning around the frame, you catch sight of him and his blond hair as he reaches his car parked on the side of the road. spinning on your heel, you grab his sacked lunch from the fridge and race after him.

“roger!”

he looks up from his car door, and you can’t help but note the way his shoulders lift, tensing at the sight of you running barefoot down the sidewalk. the winter air quickens your steps, and you’re out of breath and huffing when you reach his side. white plumes escape your mouth and drift towards the gray sky.

“you forgot this,” you say, pushing the brown paper sack against his chest. you curl your toes against the frigid bricks beneath your feet.

his brow pinches. “what is it?”

“a lunch. you haven’t eaten yet.”

for the first time since meeting him, the ghost of a true smile lifts the corners of his mouth as he stares down at the sacked lunch. he lifts a hand, and you are surprised by its warmth when he covers your knuckles with his palm. his eyes flick upwards, meeting yours.

“thanks, [y/n].” he tilts his head to the side. “i’m sorry i’ve been a prick. this is all… really new for me.”

you slip your hand from his grasp, sure that your smile is somewhere between girlish and shy. a sharp wind whips through the stitching of your sweater, and you shiver.   

“we’ll figure it out,” you say, and it’s a message to both him and yourself. you will figure this out.

“yeah.” he slides his key into the slot on the car door. “yeah, we will.”

“oh. rog, wait.” you stop him by putting a hand on his shoulder. when he twists at the waist, you wind your arms around his neck before he has time to react. you squeeze tight, your toes skimming the ground. he feels firm, stiff like a board. “hug me back,” you whisper against his ear. “there’s someone across the street taking photos.”

the sound he makes in your ear—a grumble, a low growl—sends your blood pumping into overdrive. he’s angry, but he dutifully embraces you as any newlywed husband might. his arms are strong around your lower back, and you melt into him.

god, he feels good. you can’t remember the last time you were held like this. he smells like the soap from his shower, and his sweatshirt is soft. his hair brushes against your cheek, and your eyelashes flutter in response. you should pull away; you’ve hugged him long enough to appear the besotted wife, desperate for her husband to stay home the day after their wedding. the paparazzi surely got what they wanted.

so, why is it so hard for you to let go?

you shake yourself free of the feeling, whether it be longing or desire or something else entirely.

sliding your hands across roger’s shoulders, you drop from your raised stance. you press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, quick and without hesitation. just in case.

“go on.” you hurry to step back, to allow him the space the leave. “you don’t want to keep the boys waiting any longer.”

roger’s eyes linger a moment more, his stare somewhere between searching and assessing. then he mumbles an oath beneath his breath, wrenches open his car door, and slips inside. the door slams behind him, and the engine roars to life. you retreat further at the sound, wrapping your arms around your stomach when the car tires squeal against gravel in his haste to get away.

some blissfully wed husband he makes.

biting the inside of your lip, you turn back to the house. the front door remains open wide, and it’s likely the heat has long since left the warmth of the halls. you pause long enough to lift the paper from the front stoop. what you see beneath the fold makes you hesitate all the longer.

there’s a photo of you and roger on the left side of the page beneath the headline, roger taylor marries model. the grainy, black and white image of your wedding day presents you, the smiling bride, and roger, the smiling husband, joined hand-in-hand beneath a heavy wooden cross. to the untrained eye, all is joy in the taylor household. the article describes the ceremony, though the details are patchy and entirely false, as intimate and “drenched with love.”

you scoff before you can stop yourself. clearly, the author of the article has encountered roger taylor under duress.

but it’s not the article which holds you frozen to the front stoop, your exposed toes and fingers sticking like icicles to the newspaper. rather, it’s the smear of red paint slashed over your picture. it’s the word slag scrawled over the article, an arrow pointed in the direction of the wedding photo.

still, in a one-on-one meeting you’d had with jim beach prior to the wedding, he’d warned you of something like this. though all four queen members are undeniably attractive, it is roger who makes the fans go gaga.

maybe it’s his boyish good looks contrasted with his raspy voice. maybe it’s the frenzy with which he plays, his easy charm and sunkissed skin. whatever it is—roger’s fans are a possessive lot.

jim had told you to prepared for a few nasty letters or scathing criticism in the papers. he had told you it wouldn’t last long, just until the initial shock of the marriage wore off, just until roger’s fans accepted the reality that they were not be his lawfully wedded wife.

so, truly, the first incident does not scare you. you just hadn’t realized the scrutiny would begin so soon. if anything, the painted paper makes you chuckle. roger’s fans certainly don’t like to waste time.

you toss the paper in the bin beside the stoop, and it’s forgotten before the day is over.

a week bleeds into a month, and you find yourself falling into some semblance of a life with roger.

you cohabitate for the most part. he does not outright rebuff your attempts at friendship, nor does he accept any olive branch you extend.

conversation is stilted, his contributions terse and monosyllabic. he prefers your home-cooked meals be eaten before the television, and not at the dinner table, where he would be forced to engage with you. he doesn’t even give in when you ask if there’s anything he’d like to rant about. he just shakes his head and bangs on his drums well into the evening, despite having banged on them the whole day at the studio.

yet he sleeps beside you, allows you to sleep beside him.

without fail, he appears more at ease come nightfall. he sheds whatever protective shell he wears throughout the day in favor of something softer, something more tender. you’re not sure what changes him when he walks over the threshold of the bedroom, but something does. perhaps it’s the soft lamplight or the hum of the fan he insists be kept on despite the chill of winter.

there’s a part of you that wonders if it might be your very presence that softens him, but you’ve taken to silencing that part as of late. he’s long-since proven that you hold no sway over him whatsoever, and that’s okay. your job is to be a buffer between his antics and the all-seeing eyes of the public. nothing more.

two months to the day after your wedding, you’re stood in the hallway, slipping on a pair of earrings, and brushing away roger’s hurried attempts to get you through the door. he has one hand on the doorknob, the other wrist tilted to expose his watch face.

“[y/n], please!”

“roger, the party doesn’t start until queen arrives. give me just a minute more.”

tonight, the savoy hotel, the first music industry party you’ll attend by roger’s side as his wife.

you’re nervous.

your hands shake as you press the earrings into your ears, and you rub your lips back and forth, feeling the slick lipstick rub over the flesh. you’re thankful the dress you chose is a gauzy sort of chiffon. if you sweat, no one will be able to tell, thanks to the pale blue of the fabric.

impatient as ever, roger drags himself from the door to stand behind you, as though prepared to throw you over his shoulder. however, a smirk pulls at your mouth when he pauses in his frustration long enough to primp and preen his hair in the mirror. you catch his eye, your fingers paused in snapping your clutch closed. he sees your smirk, and his own lips pull on a wry smile.

the moment hangs in the air, thick with—what? tension? no. something else. camaraderie comes to mind.

your eyes remain locked with his, and his grin spreads until he is shaking his head with amusement. he pushes your shoulder, but the touch is friendly, almost brotherly in nature.

“come on,” he says. “i don’t want to miss all the good wine.”

nodding, you start for the door, trailing behind him to flick the lights off. darkness engulfs the house, the only light the white glow of the moon spilling through the window above the kitchen sink and a night light plugged in along the hallway baseboard.

but then the phone rings.

roger stamps his foot against the floor, the door already half-open. “fuckin’ hell!”

“let me get it.” you’re halfway down the hall before he can stop you. “i’ll tell them to buzz off. hold on!”

“i’m going to get the car started,” he says. his voice echoes through the hall to meet you where the phone hangs in the kitchen. “you have two minutes, [y/n]. two minutes!”

lifting the phone from the receiver, you press it against your ear. “hello?”

at first, you hear nothing on the other end.

but you’re sure you heard the phone ring, so you lean closer to the receiver and plug your opposite ear in a piss poor attempt to hear better. “hello? this is [y/n] taylor speaking.”

the sound of heavy breathing—deep inhales, hard exhales—meets your ear. deep inhale, hard exhale. over and over and over.

your throat tightens, but you push past the lump. “hello? who’s there?”

a stuttering of breath on the inhale, a shaky exhale. a croak, voice poised to speak.

only you slam the phone back on the receiver before the person on the other end can say a word.

for a moment, you stand still, eyes glued to the phone, mouth parted in shock.

but then roger honks the car horn, and you shake yourself free of the unsettling feeling. a missed connection, you tell yourself. a wrong number. a mistake. that’s all it was—a mistake.

still, you are shaking when you slide into the passenger seat of roger’s car. he glances at you before pulling into the busy street.

“are you cold?” he asks. he turns the heat up, blasting the air against your face. “you’re shaking.”

“no,” you say, and, truly, you aren’t. he loaned you an ostentatious fur coat for the occasion, lined with a smooth brown fabric, and you are comfortably warm beneath the heavy material. “just nervous.”

roger snorts, his eyes sliding to you. “nervous? surely you’ve been to parties before. you’re a model, for god’s sake.”

“i’m not sure what kind of model you think i was, rog. i did mostly print, never runway. parties were never a part of my nine-to-five.”

“oh.” his mouth screws to the side. “i guess—well, to be honest, i kinda thought models all did the same kind of work.”

“most people do. that’s in the past now, though.” you shift, glance out the window, and watch the streetlights blur in a hazy streak of orange and yellow. he’s driving fast, and you grip the side of the door, willing your heart to stop racing.

the car slows to a stop beneath a red light. roger taps his fingers on the steering wheel, and the silence in the car is deafening.

you should strike up a conversation. he seems willing tonight, and maybe that’s due to the cramped nature of the car, but it’s an opportunity nonetheless.

only you can’t stop thinking about the phone call, about the heavy breathing and the unanswered questions. you shut your eyes and find yourself mirroring the caller’s breathing patterns.

deep inhale, hard exhale.

“so, you’re done with modeling?”

you open your eyes and turn to look at his profile. why he insists on wearing sunglasses in the dead of night you will never understand, but the sight alone makes you smirk. he knows he’s attractive; you have to give him credit for embracing it.

“that’s why i married you,” you say.

roger laughs—and you realize it’s probably the first time you’ve heard the sound. his laugh aligns with the light timbre of his voice, and the anxiety in your chest eases to hear him sound something other than malcontent.

“i knew you were a gold digger!” it’s a joke—you can tell by the quirk of his mouth and the lines around his eyes—but you rush to defend yourself all the same.

“no, i’m not!” you hesitate before shrugging with a rueful chuckle. “well… maybe a little. i won’t deny that the money i get from this arrangement really helps. i was looking for a way out of modeling, anyway.”

“really?” roger’s eyebrow arches, and, as the car turns into the savoy, the wrap-around drive clogged with limousines, sport cars, and photographers jostling for a good spot, you catch a glimpse of admiration on his face. “what do you want to do now?”

“i’m not sure. go back to school. i’ve got a head for maths, so maybe accounting or something.”

roger twists his head to meet your eyes, and his smile is earnest. it steals the breath from your lungs.

deep inhale, hard exhale.

“you don’t strike me as an accountant, dove.”

“why not?”

“accountants are stuffy, greasy men. you’re… you know…” he waves a hand, inches the car forward as the line moves. camera bulbs flash in the world outside, but within the car, all you can focus on is roger and his next words.

“i’m…?” you’re fishing, but this is the first time he’s given you more than the time of day, and you’re eager to get something, anything, out of your husband.

he shrugs, and his hands curl around the steering wheel. a muscle in his jaw ticks. “you’re too nice.”

you look away. “ah—nice.” not what you’d been expecting him to say.

he pulls the car to a stop along the hotel’s entrance, and a sharply dressed attendant opens the door. sliding out after roger, you instinctively reach for his hand. he spares you a short glance and squeezes your fingers together in a gesture of encouragement.

a black—not red—carpet lines the walkway from the drive to the open hotel doors. velvet ropes hold back the crowd of photographers, reporters, and fans lucky enough to have squeezed their way to such a prime viewing spot. camera flashes paint the inside of your eyelids with bright, white spots. despite the chill of winter, the air is hot, heady with glitz and glamor. it’s hard to distinguish any one voice over the plethora of people vying for attention, and your head swims in the chaos of it all.

roger moves easily from one side of the rope to another. he is in his element, grinning for the cameras and joking with reporters who grab him long enough for a quote. his moments with the press are short, few and far between. he much prefers the fans—their simpering smiles, tear-stained cheeks, and waving slips of paper begging for a signature. you don’t blame him. who could ever resist such unfettered adoration?

near the end of the carpet, a reporter snags roger’s attention with his waving arm. palm still clasped in roger’s, you trail behind your husband, hovering just behind his shoulder. the cool smile you perfected in your modeling days remains fixed on your face, even as the reporter acknowledges you with a tilt of his head.

“is this your wife, roger?”

the reporter has to shout to be heard over the sudden surge of excitement as a new celebrity takes their first step on the carpet. it’s kate bush, if you aren’t mistaken. you could be wrong, though. the reporter’s query pricks your ears, dividing your focus between the cacophony around you and the question at hand. thus far, you’ve remained nameless by roger’s side. no one—fan or press alike—has asked after you, and you’re happy for it.

roger turns to look at you, and his grin spreads. he goes so far as to slip his arm around your waist, tugging you against his side, keeping his gaze on your profile. a sudden rush of blood floods your cheeks, and you duck your head beneath his watchful eyes. yet you find your own smile widening. the action is not one you have to force or fake, though. it’s easy to smile when roger is smiling.

“yes, this is my bride,” roger says. “[y/n].”

the hand he’s placed on your waist squeezes the flesh of your hip, pushing you further against him. to keep from tripping over your own legs, you press a hand against his chest to steady yourself. you can feel his heartbeat beneath your fingers; his heart pulses to a steady rhythm. your own heart beats twice as fast.

the reporter checks something on his small pad of paper. “is it true that you used to be a model, [y/n]? there are rumors that this marriage is a publicity stunt.” he hesitates, glancing over his shoulder as someone bumps his back, pushing him against the velvet rope. once righted, he continues. “there are rumors that you were hired to get the press to stop talking negatively about the montreal incident.”

you open your mouth to speak, but roger jumps in before you can utter a single syllable.

“are you joking?” he tosses his head back in an easy laugh and pulls you even tighter against his side. you’re afraid if he draws you any nearer you will absorb into him completely. but with the way the lights dance off his eyelashes and his hair looks perfectly tousled and his body feels strong against yours, you aren’t sure that would be a bad thing.

“i’m crazy about my wife!” he says, and the words go straight to your heart like a wildfire. “you should get yourself one, mate.” he playfully slaps the reporter’s upper arm. “they’re great fun!”

the reporter arches an eyebrow. “it’s just that i know you’ve gone on record as not exactly believing in marriage and—”

“what do you want me to do? kiss ‘er? would that make you happy?” a shit-eating grin rises on his face, indignant and cocky all at once. he shoots you a look out of the corner of his eye; you bite your lip. “will that get you off my back?”

“that’s not really—”

“here.” he taps the wrist of a bystanding photographer then points to you, twisting his body so that you stand face to face. “put this in your bloody paper!”

grabbing either side of your face, roger dips his head to capture your lips with his. for a moment, you remain unsure. you hold fast to his wrists, your mouth unmoving. the blood in your veins stands frozen in shock, and your heart presses painfully against your ribcage. somewhere in the back of your mind, your conscious screams for you to react, to play along, but it’s not until roger slides one hand from your cheek to the small of your back that you register what part you must play.

thank god it’s not a difficult role.

with a tilt of your head, you wrap your arms around his neck and hold tight. he tastes faintly of cigarettes and the mints he uses to freshen his breath. his lips are soft, softer than you’d anticipated. you can hear the clicking of cameras, feel the blinding light of flashbulbs pierce your eyelids, sense the growing interest in your display of affection, but none of it penetrates the bubble—the bubble of you and roger, of his lips and your lips, of his arms holding you close, his very air becoming yours.

he pulls away entirely too soon, and his smile is all the more cheeky. you press your fingertips to your lips, lower your face, and draw in a sharp breath.

“there! that could enough for you?”

roger steers you away from the reporters and into the sanctuary of the hotel at last. a rush of cool air meets you and, though it is mid-winter, you sweat beneath roger’s fur coat. the gentle whoosh of air-conditioning is a blessing against your hot skin.

as you enter the ballroom transformed for the event, roger lowers his mouth to your ear. “sorry about that, poppet.” the low register of his voice and the feeling of his breath against the back of your neck sends a shiver down your spine. “i’ve dealt with that tosser before, and he really grinds my gears.”

“‘s fine, roger,” you manage to say through your tight throat. “it’s what i’m here for, yeah?”

he stops walking, and his hand moves from your back to your wrist. his eyes drift over your face, calculating, searching. you let him look. you aren’t sure what he’s looking for, but you get the feeling that he’s truly seeing you for the first time. even in the manufactured blue light of the room, even with the myriad of tables surrounded by producers and singers and agents alike, his face visibly softens and his hand curls around your wrist.

“roger! [y/n]! over here!”

three tables away, freddie waves his hand, beckoning you over. roger drags you along, his fingers intertwining with yours as you sidestep people already lounging at their seats. once at the table set aside for queen and guests, roger pulls out your chair, and you sit, smoothing your hands over your skirt. he sits beside you and leans to his side to whisper something to john. on your right sits chrissie may, and you offer her a smile in greeting.

the function—a charity benefit organized to bring awareness to the falklands disagreement—comes and goes without issue. the dinner is bland, but the wine is good. chrissie is pleasant, and it’s your first chance to speak to another band member’s wife since the wedding. you appreciate her advice, laugh at her stories, and enjoy yourself without restraint. it doesn’t hurt that as roger drinks more, he more pays attention to you. you really shouldn’t encourage him, but when he slings an arm around your chair and pulls you closer, when he turns his head to whisper a joke in your ear at brian’s expense, when he plays with a loose lock of your hair, twirling it around his finger, it’s all you can do not to melt like the ice-sculpture in the center of the room.

come the end of the event, you find yourself walking between chrissie and veronica, your steps slow as the boys stumble through the hall. roger and john cannot stop laughing, though no one has said anything remotely funny for the last few minutes. they cling to one another like koalas to trees, as though the other might drop to the ground if released. brian and freddie aren’t any better. they sing off-key, their voices bouncing off the empty walls and laminate floors. you aren’t sure what part of the hotel you’ve wound up in, but it’s certainly less plush than the ballroom. still, you smile when roger slides his sunglasses over his eyes and snorts at one of john’s inane comments.

your smile falters when the sound of veronica’s labored breathing, pregnant as she is, reaches your ears.

deep inhale, hard exhale.

in the flurry of the evening—amidst the kiss and the dinner and the joking and the drinking—you’d forgotten about the phone call.

chrissie reaches out to grab your arm when your steps stutter. “are you okay?” she asks.

you stop walking. if the boys get into trouble around the corner, you’ll surely hear it.

meeting chrissie’s wide eyes, you frown. you hate the put a damper on the evening’s chipper mood, but the memory of the phone call crashes to the surface, bringing with it anxiety and unease. roger doesn’t need to know, but perhaps the other wives experienced a similar phenomenon. perhaps it’s all in your head. either way, you’d like a second opinion.

“this is going to sound weird, but… have either of you ever gotten a strange phone call?”

“phone call?” veronica rubs a hand over her swollen stomach. “what do you mean?”

you explain the events prior to your departure earlier in the evening, and the concerned looks that settle on chrissie and veronica’s faces stir the uncertainty in your stomach.

“that doesn’t sound good, [y/n],” chrissie says.

you gnaw at your lower lip. “no, i suppose it doesn’t.”

“have you told rog?”

you shake your head. “i don’t want to trouble him. not if it’s just some practical joke. it very well could be our kid neighbor having a lark.”

another memory drifts to the surface: the newspaper, the red paint dripping across your photograph. slag, they’d written.

you’d forgotten about that too.

veronica pulls you back to the present with her even tone. “i think you should tell him. if someone is harassing you, even if it’s just the once, don’t you think he should know?”

“i guess but—”

“hey, party people!” john sticks his head around the corner, breaking the conversation with his over-loud voice. “guess what we found?”

“judging by your wet trousers, i’d say a pool.”

john trips down the hall to grab veronica’s arm. “have i ever told you that you’re brilliant?” he presses a noisy kiss to her cheek, and even veronica isn’t capable of remaining firm under such affection.

like a child who has found an interesting twig, john crooks his arm in a follow-me motion, tugging his wife toward the pool. “come on. come see!”

veronica follows john around the corner, but before you can follow, chrissie presses her palm to your shoulder.

“you should tell roger,” she says. “before it gets serious.”

you nod, promise her you will, then make your way to the indoor swimming pool, knowing full well roger won’t hear a word of the incident.

the savoy’s pool room is understated in comparison with the rest of the hotel. though the ceiling stretches high, skylights allowing moonlight to shimmer over the undisturbed water, the room is just as hot, just as stuffy, as any other hotel pool. you drop your coat and rog’s to a plastic lounge chair as soon as you enter, swamped as you are by the thick air.

all nerves, all worries about the phone call, fade away as you slip your shoes off and watch roger and john’s poor poolside rendition of abbott and costello’s “who’s on first” routine. roger can’t keep up with john no matter how hard he tries, but their combined effort is valiant.

laughing, you clap as they take their theatrical bows and only laugh harder when john trips over the edge of the pool mid-bow. he lands belly-first in the clear water, rising a sputtering, drenched mess, his hair and clothes sodden to the bone, though his eyes are bright with mischief. he swims to where veronica sits with her ankles in the water and, before she can sternly admonish him, has her pulled into the churning pool beside him.

brian is next in. he cannonballs in the deep end, and chrissie follows of her own volition. the impact of their jump launches a tidal wave of water in your direction, and you screech, nearly falling in your attempt to avoid getting wet.

but then a pair of arms wrap around your waist, lifting you from the cool, albeit slippery, floor.

“roger, no!” you twist in his tight hold. “no, roger, don’t!”

your voice echoes in the room, bouncing off the windows and walls; yet roger ignores your pleas for release. he shuffles to the edge of the pool at the behest and cheering of his friends, each treading water, watching as you struggle to break free.

the water beneath your feet rises and falls, sloshing this way and that. you can see the bottom of the pool from where roger holds you, and there’s a delicate, inlaid design of a turtle twelve feet down on the pool’s stone foundation.

you curl your nails in roger’s arm. “roger, i can’t—”

he tosses you in before you can finish the sentence.

you fall through the air with a scream, land on your back, and sink beneath the surface of the water. chemically-laced water fills your mouth, your nose, and your lungs scream for air.

for a moment, fear grips you, not unlike the way it gripped you in the hallway of your own home, the phone cradled against your ear. only this time, you know exactly what will happen if you don’t get help.

this is not a battle you can win yourself.

kicking to the top, you break through the water and cough, shaking your head. tears cloud your vision when you open your eyes, but the liquid that’s caught in your eyelashes disguises them, and for that you’re thankful. roger bobs beside you, a grin on his face, looking much too pleased with himself and his antics. without a second thought, you reach for him.

“roger, i can’t swim,” you say.

his face falls. “oh.” he blinks then, realization striking as you grab onto his shoulders. “fuck, [y/n]. i’m sorry.”

clinging to him, you wrap your arms around his chest, your legs around his waist. you rest your cheek against the back of his neck and sigh, inhaling deeply. “i tried to tell you,” you whisper.

beneath the water, his hand curls around the skin of your ankle. he squeezes, and it’s all the apology you need.

the band stays in the pool for entirely too long. freddie starts talking about the next album, and the other boys chime in, clamoring for their opinions to be heard over the others. despite their drunken state, music brings a sense of clarity to their speech and thought. it’s their life’s work and something about which they care deeply. there’s no denying that. even when brian tries his hand at a backwards flip and freddie challenges john to a diving contest, they are always thinking, always working, toward their next goal. you admire them for that.

roger remains steady where he stands. you cling to him like a barnacle, even though you just as easily could remove yourself and find a place where your feet touch solid ground. he feels nice, though. his body is a comfort against yours, and as the business talk continues, your head lolls to the side on his shoulder, a gentle smile on your lips.

you could get used to this.

at some point, veronica complains about her aching back and drags john from the pool. they are the first to leave, but brian and chrissie soon follow. you aren’t sure if you want to go, if you want the evening to end. if it means roger will go back to ignoring you, shoving you aside, you think you could stay in this pool until your skin wilted and dripped off your bones.

“we’d better go, love,” roger whispers.

you know he’s right.

“yeah.” you try to keep the disappointment from your voice.

he moves to the side of the pool, and you heave yourself over the edge. your dress is heavy, weighed down by the absorbed water. you wring out the skirt as best you can, but until you can give it a proper wash and dry, it’s really no use. gooseflesh breaks out on your arms where the cool air hits, and you shiver.

roger appears behind you, turns you gently with a hand to the shoulder, and lifts a fluffy white towel. “here. i found these.”

“oh!” you move to take the towel from his grasp. “thank you.”

“i’ve got it.” with a smile—a boyish, gentle sort of smile—roger unfurls the towel and wraps it around your shoulders. he tugs the corners beneath your chin and laughs through a short breath. “comfy?”

you nod, pressing your face against the warm fabric.

“you look like a marshmallow.”

lifting your mouth from behind the towel, you tilt your head with an impish grin. “you once told me i looked like an angel. so, which is it? angel or marshmallow?”

“oh, angel for sure.” he thumbs a finger over the end of your nose. “you always look like an angel.”

you roll your eyes and hope the action does not expose the sudden flutter in your chest. “you’re just saying that ‘cause you’re drunk.”

he shakes his head. “no. i mean it.”

he looks at you for a long time. you look at him for just as long. the unease cadence of your breath, the way his breath whistles through his nose, the lap of the pool against the tiled walls—it all sounds so loud to your ears, though nothing can compare to the beating of your heart. it fills your entire body: bump bump, bump bump, bump bump. your cheeks feel hot with blush, and you finally look away, casting your eyes to the floor. you wiggle your bare feet against the tiled floor; roger wiggles his toes back.

“we should go home,” you say.

“yeah.”

roger pays an attendant to ferry you home, and the drive leaves your entire body close to overheating.

the back seat of his car feels strangely intimate compared to the front seat, but that might just be your imagination. surely, roger didn’t sit so close to you on purpose. surely, his hand isn’t pressed against your leg because he wants it to be. his car is just… cramped.

“did you have fun tonight?” you break the silence, but when you do, your voice sounds strange—slightly strangled, nervous, earthy—and you wish you’d remained quiet. you continue toying with a loose thread on your coat, ignoring the way roger’s eyes traverse your profile.

“mhm. did you?”

you nod, but don’t look up.

from the driver’s seat, the attendant coughs, and your gaze shifts.

deep inhale, hard exhale.

chrissie’s words of earlier surface in your mind: you should tell him about the phone call. it’s only right.

twisting, you look to your right, meet roger’s eyes, and promptly lose all sense of direction. his face is so near, his mouth parted, eyes hooded, cheeks flushed. your throat runs dry, but you can’t look away.

“roger–”

“hmm?” his lips tighten, but his smile is just as sly as it had been the moment before he kissed you in front of the reporters. the touch still lingers on your mouth, but you will the memory away.

“there’s something i should—”

his fingers sift through a lock of your hair, and he moves his head almost in a nuzzling sort of gesture. you swallow hard. “i was wrong about you,” he whispers. when did his voice get so raspy?

“what?”

“i was wrong to judge you,” he says. his hand moves from your hair to the side of your neck, one long finger tracing the lines of your skin. “to be honest, i thought you were some cheap girl looking for a way into my bed, but i was wrong. you’re more than that.”

“what—” deep inhale. “what am i, then?”

his lips quirk upward. “my wife.”

hard exhale.

his mouth claims yours, and you don’t fight him. you melt against him, his chest pressed against yours in the narrow space of the car. you’re vaguely aware that a driver sits not two feet away, more than able to hear the way roger pulls a soft whimper from behind your lips and the rustle of clothes as you both scrabble for any exposed skin. but you don’t really care. you’re drunk off of roger, and have been since you met him. it’s his looks, yes, but tonight—tonight you saw him in his element. you heard him laugh and saw him smile and preened under his attention. you would go to hades and back to live in a world shaped just like tonight, every bit of it.

roger can’t keep his hands off you as you make your way from the sidewalk to the front stoop. his hands roam your body, skimming every inch, squeezing the parts he seems to like most. you giggle like young lovers experiencing one another for the first time, and maybe that’s because you are.

when you drop the front door key because you’re too focused on returning roger’s eager kiss, it doesn’t seem to matter. you just stand on the stoop and kiss beneath the light of the moon a little longer.

when you finally get the door open and his palm hits your ass at the same time, you squeal, and he dissolves into laughter.

when he fumbles with the hallway light because he’s too focused on getting your coat off, you tell him to forget it. you don’t need the light anyway.

halfway down the hall, limbs and lips tangled, the phone rings.

you laugh as you peel yourself from his grasp. he puckers his lower lip in protest.

“i’ll be just a minute,” you say, lifting the phone from the receiver. he sticks his tongue out, but then sheds his shirt, leaving it on the kitchen floor as he slips into the bedroom. you bite the edge of your thumb as you watch him go, your head as muddled as creamy soup.

someone clears their throat on the other end of the line.

“oh, sorry. hello?”

“what’s it like to kiss roger taylor?”

cold dread extinguishes any joy lingering in your chest at the sound of the sickeningly smooth voice. 

your fingers curl tight around the phone. “who is this?”

“what’s it like to kiss roger taylor?”

angry tears spring to your eyes as you scoot to stare out the window over the sink. nothing but darkness meets your eyes, but still you try in vain to search for an answer in the inky blackness. “i said: who is this?” your voice cracks, but you push forward. “how did you get this number?”

“what’s it like to kiss roger taylor?”

“i swear i calling the fucking police if you keep this up!”

a beat of hesitation then: “what’s it like to kiss roger taylor?”

with a helpless groan, you slam the phone down for the second time in one day. your fingers creak as you let go and step back, chest heaving. your skin feels slimy—slimy with roger’s lingering touch, slimy with the possibility that someone had been watching you kiss your husband, slimy with the possibility that someone could be watching you now.

you don’t stop and admire roger, clad only in his boxers, as you make your way to the en suite bathroom. you can’t stand to look at him, to know that somewhere someone cares for him so much they would take to harassing you. god, it makes you want to vomit.

you don’t bother with the bathroom door so intent are you at getting in the shower and scrubbing your slimy skin raw. you struggle with the zipper at the top of your spine, the tears hovering over your eyes threatening to spill over if you can’t be rid of your soaked clothing. you stamp your foot with a grunt and drop your hands, hanging your head in defeat.

roger’s soft chuckle sounds from the doorway. you don’t turn to look at him.

your back stiffens when he undoes the zipper, the pads of his fingers pressing along your shoulder blades, your ribs, the small of your back.

“that eager, huh?” he presses a wet kiss to the curve of your shoulder.

you want him; you really do. there’s some part of you that wants to drag him into the shower and work out your fears with the aid of his body against yours. but you won’t do that. you won’t use him, not when he confessed he thinks you better than that.

you twist to face him, holding the dress against your chest. “rog, i…” you place your hand on his smooth chest, feel the small hairs peppering his collarbone. “you’re drunk,” you finally say. “you’re drunk and you should go to bed.”

he smirks and pushes his hips against yours. “so? you’re drunk too.”

you shake your head. “no, not anymore.” you push him away gently. “believe me, roger, i want nothing more than to go to bed with you but—”

he plays with a lock of hair beside your face, and your desire to resist him weakens. “but?”

“i won’t do it while you’re drunk. besides, you’ll be over this by morning. you’ll go back to not wanting me. so i won’t do it—not while you’re drunk.”

with a huff, he lets you go, but not without kissing you once more. a traitorous tear slides down your cheek, and your throat seizes with emotion. somewhere in the back of your clouded mind, you wonder if you love him. or, if at least you are on the edge of loving him.

but it doesn’t matter. you’ll be gone in a year, and he will move on to someone else, someone strong enough to withstand his rabid fans.

he pulls away first and kisses your temple. “goodnight, angel,” he whispers.

you wrap your arms around your stomach and, once stood beneath the hot water of the shower, let the sound of the creaking pipes drown out the sound of your crying.

roger is gone before you wake the next morning.

he leaves you a note on the kitchen island, scrawled in his plain script: “angel, i’m hungover now, not drunk. i’d still like you in my bed. – rog”

the note should send a thrill to your stomach, but it manifests itself in a ball of dread instead.

what’s it like to kiss roger taylor?

it’s heaven, but the price is hell.

you crumple the note and toss it in the bin, jumping when the phone rings. you hesitate, your gaze locked on the inanimate object that has come to haunt your dreams.

eventually, the phone stops ringing, but the shrill sound echoes in your head as you go about the day.

after the second phone call, tension becomes your constant companion. the days pass, and you withdraw into yourself, scared by the slightest sound, the never-ending line of cars outside the front window, and roger’s growing interest.

he seems to like you now that he knows you. he makes you laugh, asks you questions, even goes so far as to help you research university entrance exams.

but when he comes home from the studio, your stomach takes to twisting with apprehension as you wonder if your faceless friend watched him drive home and wonder further if your faceless friend can see roger kiss the side of your neck.

you try not to push him away. his attention is what you’ve wanted all along, and, though the romantic turn of events was certainly unplanned, he does make your knees weak and your head giddy like a schoolgirl’s.

still, the phone calls persist. it’s not every night and every day. you can’t trace the caller’s pattern because there is none. you never know who will be on the other end of the line. it could be roger calling during his lunch break as he is wont to do; it could be the university to which you’ve applied; or it could be them, the phantom who chills the blood in your veins.

there’s a pad of paper tucked beneath your side of the bed. the words of your faceless friend are scrawled across the page in frenzied handwriting, the handwriting of a madwoman.

what’s it like to kiss roger taylor?

did he buy you those earrings?

will he ask john to help you study for the maths entrance exam?

you should stop answering the phone; you know you should. but each time the phone rings, you respond like a pavlovian dog. you rush to answer, to frantically write down the day’s comment just in case there’s some sliver of information that might shed light on your faceless friend’s identity.

the caller is a woman; that much you know. her voice is deep and gravelly, but she’d referenced herself as the better woman for roger before. she seems to cling to the idea that you will leave him and the position of roger taylor’s wife will fall to her. if only to spite her, you will remain married to roger until your dying day.

you should tell roger too; you know you should.

but he’s happy.

when you first met him, he was sullen, dragging his tail between his legs like a scolded pup after the montreal debacle. it took a while, but you see him now for his true self. he’s carefree in a grounded sort of way, sold out for his music and the lifestyle it affords him. he’s gentle and kind and surprisingly considerate. he picks up the groceries when you ask it of him; he cleans the dishes from supper without complaint. he doesn’t pressure you for anything more than a make-out session on the couch when the lights are low and a record spins on the turntable. you would go further, but you can’t—not right now. he doesn’t ask any questions.

it would break you to tell him about the phone calls, and you can’t bring yourself to do it. each morning, you imagine his crestfallen face. you imagine the anger and the shouting and him calling the authorities and—

it’s easier for him—for everybody—if you just stay quiet.

besides, you’ll be gone in six months.

one evening, after dinner at an expensive restaurant, you let roger to take you to bed. he’d looked so pretty in the candlelight, and he’d listened to you talk about your hopes and dreams for the future. you think you fall in love with him when he drags you onto the bed and whispers sweet praises in your ear the whole night long.

when you wake the next morning, he is still there, and you snuggle into his chest. you breathe him in, and it’s bar soap from the shower and dried sweat and lingering cologne. his arms circle your back, squeezing you tighter.

“mornin’, angel,” he mumbles.

for a moment, you don’t respond. you keep your eyes closed and think back to yesterday.

there’d been no phone call. a blessed reprieve from three days in a row of randomly timed messages. roger had held you, and he holds you still. he is a comfort amidst your turbulent sea.

you should tell him. he can handle it. you’re tired of running from him.

rising to your palm, you meet roger’s gaze. he stares at you through his lashes, a sleepy smile on his mouth. he lifts a hand to cradle your face, and his thumb skims your cheekbone.

“how come you get a halo every morning and i don’t?”

you ignore his compliment before the bravery rushing through your veins dissipates. “rog, there’s something i haven’t told you.”

“yeah? is it about the freckle by your left ass-check?”

gasping, you slap roger’s chest. though he laughs, a red handprint remains in the center of his sternum, and he clutches his skin in pain. once settled, he apologizes and promises to behave.

deep inhale.

“about a month or two ago, i started—”

the phone on the bedside table cuts you off with its sharp bell-like ring.

your stomach plummets to your feet.

your eyes widen as roger holds up a finger and reaches for the earpiece.

he lifts it to his ear. “hello?”

some part of you hopes it’s your faceless friend. roger could deal with her himself. the other part of you prays it’s just a wrong number or john or—

“yes, fred, i know.”

hard exhale.

you slump to the side, leaning your weight against roger’s hip. thank heaven.

roger’s eyes slide to you, and he grins, winking. he squeezes the point of your chin between his forefinger and thumb, his eyes locked on yours as he nods and hums in response to freddie on the other end of the line.

“no, we won’t be late,” roger says. “yes, she’s coming. i promise i won’t forget.” he leans closer to the bedside table in his effort to end the conversation. “okay, fred. yes, i will.” finally, he heaves a sigh. “oh, for fuck’s sake, fuck off! i’m trying to woo my wife, so scram!”

“now,” he says, once the earpiece is on the base. “where were we?”

tugging on the back of your neck, he closes the distance between his mouth and yours. even with a hint of morning breath, you dissolve in his capable hands. he kisses you earnestly, and you struggle to remember what it was you wanted to tell him. he has this way with his mouth and his tongue and his hands that makes you forget everything but the feeling of him.

pulling back a moment later, he mumbles against your mouth: “what was it you wanted to tell me?”

you blink rapidly. “i—” damn, he looks so happy, glowing with youth and perhaps an inkling of love. you press your palm to his cheek then shake your head. “never mind. it can wait.”

he cocks his head to the side. “you sure?”

“mhm.”

“you remember the movie thing tonight, right?” he asks as he slides from the bed, drawing up his sweats from the floor and padding to the window. “that’s what fred called about.”

he throws the curtains open. the morning sun shines through, piercing every hidden corner, and your heart trips in your chest. your hands shake as you lift one of the bed sheets to cover your naked chest.

someone could be watching.

roger grimaces. “oh, shit, sorry, angel.” he tosses you his shirt from the floor, which you gratefully tug over your head. “anyway, tron, you know? we’re supposed to go to the premiere. something about flash gordon and—”

“i remember.”

“good. wear something nice because i don’t give a fuck about this movie, and i’d rather be looking at you anyway.” he smirks as he presses his palms against the mattress and leans in for another kiss.

you oblige him without hesitation.

“gotta go,” he says, pulling away only to firmly kiss you once more. “be ready by six, okay?”

you nod, and he leaves.

the majority of the day, you putter about the house. there’s chores to do—laundry and bills to catch up on and research for university admissions. it’s domestic work, mind-numbingly dull and repetitive. it leaves far too much space for your thoughts to run wild.

you admonish yourself for once more failing to tell roger of your faceless friend. you’d had the moment, and you’d blown it. with his unreliable schedule, there is no telling when you’ll have the chance to sit him down for a serious conversation again. you consider going to jim beach for help, but know once roger hears wind of it, he will fly off the handle because you didn’t come to him first. perhaps rightfully so, too.

you resolve that until you can find another peaceful moment, you will continue to suffer through it. it’s a step in the right direction, though. at least now, you have plans to tell him.

by five-forty-five, you are ready for the event. you sit in the living room, gnawing at your lower-lip as your leg bounces in anticipation. you haven’t gone anywhere with roger since the charity function earlier in the year. your faceless friend will surely be watching tonight, and already you feel sweat gather along your underarms.

roger unlocks the door and sticks his head into the living room upon his arrival. “car’s running. ready to go?”

you lift your handbag from the floor, nodding as you make your way to his side. roger stops you with a flat hand against your stomach. he bends to catch your eyes.

“you okay?”

“yes,” you say, but your voice sounds too rushed and eager even to your own ears.

he doesn’t hassle you for a more illuminative response. he just leads you to the car, opens your door, and makes his way to the theater, foot hard on the gas pedal.

as soon as you see the carpet—red this time—stretched along the sidewalk leading to the movie theater, bile rises in your throat. you reach for roger’s arm and squeeze tight. his head whips to the side.

“roger, i don’t think i can do this,” you breathe.

he frowns. “what do you mean?”

“it’s just that i’ve been—”

he pulls the car to the side. an usher opens the door, sound and light and chaos breaking the comforting quiet of the ride. your eyes flutter shut; you grit your teeth.

“[y/n], what is it?” roger’s voice is low, on the edge of irritation.

this is not the time. yet why do you feel like you’re going to pass out if you don’t—

“mr. taylor?” the usher prompts.

purging the emotions clawing at the front of your mind, you push roger’s shoulder and avoid his searching gaze. “nothing. go on! i’m right behind you.”

roger huffs as he slides from the car, but he dutifully offers his hand to aid you onto the red carpet. as he did before, he leads you toward the theater doors, stopping at the appropriate moments to pose for photographs. you hold on to the back of his jacket so tightly your knuckles crack. your eyes scan the crowd in search of your faceless friend. you will know her when you see her. she is a part of you now, like a demon on your shoulder.

roger rubs his hand up and down your back in a comforting gesture and leans to whisper in your ear. “you feel a stiff as a board,” he says. “what is it?”

you shake your head and nudge him further down the carpet. “we can talk about it later.”

“is it something i’ve—”

“no, roger. it’s not you.”

he studies your face a moment longer before nodding and returning his smile to the crowd.

near the entrance to the theater, a gaggle of girls wave their hands in an attempt to grab roger’s attention. he glances at you, and you nod, backing away to allow him one of the moments he so enjoys.

but one of the girls calls out your name. you lift your eyes to stop tracing the intricate weaving of the red carpet and stare at the girl in question until roger has to drag you over with a laugh. the girl shoves a newspaper in your face, your wedding announcement crinkled with affectionate wear-and-tear. she asks for your autograph, and you chuckle, feeling rather ridiculous as you scrawl your name across the page with a fat green marker.

it happens before you have time to react.

your head is bent as you sign the girl’s newspaper, your attention diverted from scanning the crowd for your faceless friend. but you feel her when she arrives, sense her eyes on your neck, and her fingers reaching for the sleeve of your dress. you have time enough to turn and catch sight of her long fingernails descending upon your cheek, but not time enough to stop her.

you scream more out of fear than pain as her nails scrape your face. truly, it does not hurt, though blood does begin to trickle down your chin and along the column of your throat.

it’s just that she’s there, before your very eyes, and she’s much smaller than you imagined. yet her eyes are dark with envy, and her nails are sharp. you recognize her labored breathing—deep inhale, sharp exhale—as she tries to move backwards and disappear within the crowd before she can be seen. you cannot look away from her, even when roger grabs your shoulders and wrenches you away from the iron gate. he’s shouting in your ear, cradling your uninjured cheek, but everything sounds like you’re underwater.

her face—round and childlike in its innocence—does not match the picture you’d created of her in your mind. she does not resemble the evil witch of your childhood fairy tales. she’s just a child, a little girl with a heart full of love for someone she cannot have.

your faceless friend is pointed out by the girl with the newspaper, and someone—maybe theater security, maybe queen security, maybe a good samaritan—drags her away.

roger grips your chin harder than he should considering the circumstances, but it brings your attention back to him. his eyes are ablaze with fury, and you suddenly feel the urge to cry.

“are you all right?” he demands. “are you hurt anywhere else?”

only my pride, you think.

“no,” you manage with a shake of your head. “no.”

“come on.” he slips his arm around your waist and pushes your head into the curve of his neck, away from prying eyes and flashing cameras. “we’re going home.”

the trip home is silent. your head moves back and forth across the passenger window, in time with the bumps and dips and curves of the road. there’s a fast-food napkin pressed against your cheek to stem the blood. you aren’t sure if it helps. roger keeps his hand firm on your thigh.

once inside the house, he forces you to sit in the middle of the bed as he scurries to retrieve the first aid kit. while he roots around in the bathroom, muttering to himself when he can’t find what he’s looking for fast enough, you strip yourself of your dress and return his old t-shirt over your head. you lift the collar to your nose and inhale his scent. when you draw the collar away, crimson blood and fresh tears stain the fabric. you sigh.

“fuckin’ hell.” roger drops to sit in front of you, his legs skewed to the side. a white, plastic box sits in his lap, and when he opens it, the contexts spill onto the bed sheets. “i’ve had this thing for ages. i think brian got it for me when i moved in.”

his hand returns to your chin; only his touch is gentle now. he looks over your wound, frowning at the sight.

“this is gonna sting, angel,” he warns.

it does. the antiseptic hurts, and you wince, but he keeps you from drawing away, his grip on your chin firm. he unwraps a butterfly bandage and presses it over the shallow scratch on your face. then he shakes his head, his face drawn tight.

“what is it you weren’t telling me?”

“there is—was this girl… and she kept calling, saying things.” you twist and unearth the pad of paper from under the bed. rubbing your eye, you hand it to him and watch his face darken as he reads the words.

he looks up, and you can’t bear to see the anger—the anger directed at you—in his gaze. “why didn’t you tell me?”

your first instinct is to shrug, to obfuscate, but he deserves the truth.

“you never wanted a wife,” you say. “you certainly didn’t want a wife who brought a stalker into the house. i figured—” deep inhale. “i figured i could live with it until our year was up.”

“oh, baby.” roger presses his forehead to yours. he cups your untainted cheek. “fucking up in montreal was the best thing that ever happened to me. it brought you to me, didn’t it?”

“you’re just saying that ‘cause—”

“no.” he draws back and grabs both shoulders in his hands. “i mean it. i never was one for marriage. didn’t make sense. but i get it now. it’s about partnership, yeah, but it’s about more than that. it’s about trust, too.” he smiles softly, pressing his thumb against your lip. “it’s about affection.”

he goes quiet then removes his hands from your shoulders.

“i wish you would have trusted me.”

“i’m—”

“don’t apologize. this whole arrangement is weird, and i don’t blame you for keeping quiet. i just wish you would have told me so i could help you.”

you sigh, dropping your head. “what do you want, roger?”

he lifts your chin, and you are struck by the love so firmly etched in his eyes. it knocks the wind from your lungs, leaves you breathless.

“i want you to keep my last name,” he says.

“what?”

“you heard me: i want you keep my last name.”

tears flood your vision, but not for fear or worry or regret.

you begin to smile, but the skin of your cheek pulls tight, and you wince, touching your injury. “ow,” you mutter.

roger laughs and pulls your fingers away from the bandage. he kisses each knuckle then rubs the wedding band along your ring finger. “can we give each other another chance?” he asks. “can we forget all the assumptions and just be us? i think we started on the wrong foot and somewhere along the way we switched—”

“yes.”

he stops mid-sentence, his brows drawing together in confusion. “what?”

“i said yes. i’ll keep your last name. i want your last name, roger taylor.”

he grins, and the happiness in every line on his face outshines even the sun’s rays. “god, you’re perfect.” he kisses you hard, and you laugh as you drop against the pillows, pulling him with you. he stops attacking your neck with his lips long enough to prop himself up and stare down at you. “but don’t you ever pull something like that again! if someone starts nagging you, tell me first thing. promise?”

you nod, stunned by his firm tone.

“say it.”

“i promise.”

he smooths the hair on your forehead, and your stomach somersaults to watch him examine you so openly “good girl,” he mumbles before lowering his mouth to yours again.

you lose yourself in him. he loses himself in you. somewhere along the way, you find one another, and all is bliss.

in the morning, legs tangled in the sheets and steady rain pelting the window, roger adjusts his hold on your waist. he’s still asleep, his chest rising and falling in time with his gentle breath. you pull his arm tight around you and smile into your pillow.

your cheek is still sore, and you’re sure there’s some poor nun who remains scarred for life after witnessing roger’s montreal incident.

but this morning you cannot find it within yourself to feel bothered by your faceless friend, nor by the scarred nun. indeed, you think, you should write them each a thank you card, because in a funny sort of way, they brought you to your husband. in a funny sort of way, they gave you love of your life. and for that, you are indebted to them.

you twist at the sound of roger’s yawn. taking his face in your hands, you smile at him. “good morning, husband,” you whisper.

he grins back. “good morning, wife.”

now this—this you could get used to.

taglist (italicized handles wouldn’t work): @im-an-adult-ish​ @bluewillowmom​ @deakygurl @aprilaady @dancingdiscofloof​ @six-bloodyminutes​

[gravelgirty]

Hi could you talk more about caves what you said on that post is really interesting

Sure thing!

First of all, it was an amazing cave I worked in. You never forget that. I'll pick one of my favorite topics,

the FALLOUT SHELTER AGGRAVATION TAX.

Clears throat.

Limestone caves are literally stone libraries in the geologic record of the world. Twice a year the airflow would change and then you'd smell smoke from decrepit old torches dating as far back as 1812. People made saltpeter in these caves, they were natural mines for things that went boom, and one of those 'requirements' meant airflow so you wouldn't suddenly and embarrassingly, drop dead of too much Underground. This is why the coal miners were eternally bemused and asking us questions like airflow. Sometimes you gotta canary. Sometimes you are the canary. This often led to predictable questions that was these old gents trying to be polite, but what they really wanted to know was,

'why the hell are you being paid $10 a trip plus tips to walk us 1.1 miles underground up to 3 times a day and no one has a mortgage gun aimed at your head?'

To which I would say, 'it wasn't quite that bad. If no one shows up at all we get paid $10.' ...Dear Saint Barbara, Chango, and the Gods of Deep Mystery, the things we tell ourselves. $10 a day. Crap. Thank goodness I had Granny's House, dad was paying the property tax, the water was on a well, and garbage was less that $20 a month. A shame we can't afford a TV, but hey, we can stay busy digging up that quarter-acre garden that will keep us fed plus the road kill Deer in the fall.

But the conditions that created saltpeter (I'll go into depth on that later if people are interested) also convinced some weird-ass people in Washington DC that caves were the perfect place to do a DR STRANGELOVE and people could go hide out in the caves, free of...well, nothing, really, because radiation = straight lines +caves, air, irradiated air and water, and everything goes down into the caves...

Look. It made people feel safe, ok? And it wasn't the worst decision the Pentagon ever made, considering they were telling the scientists working with HOT RADIOACTIVE MATTER to stay safe by sticking the stuff on a long pole so they wouldn't have to touch it.

Everybody knows about the bomb shelter President Kennedy was prepared to run to with his family in case of Cold War. It was in the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs (I prefer to think of it as the HIDDEN FIGURES birthplace). FYI everybody who lived here knew where it was. There are only so many power stations one measly little resort that cries that it can't afford to pay for its own water bill can keep.

[insert sniffle boohoo sobbing of the pro-confederates who run that place and while I can't be there for you, try to imagine the joy I am stockpiling for the day when we have another traitorous uprising and this time, the resort doesn't get a GO PASS GO by dangerous romantics and is finally burned to the ground.]

Anyway, the important people like the President, his family, his Secret Service, his staff, cook, maid-in-waiting, bootblack and et al got to go bunker down in the luxurious bomb shelter at the resort, which probably wouldn't be very resort-y after a certain point of Castro going, 'fuck you, you whippersnapper Irish Dog' or Khrushchev throwing a little more than his shoe around. I'm not convinced it was that great of a place to hide, really. I mean...they have lightning rods on the trees over there, and believe it or not, cavers in that country have been hit by lightning while underground. Because. Lightning. If it can bake entire acres of potatoes in the field, two subterranean surveyors with metal measuring tape haven't got a prayer.

I want you to know that I can't at this point go into detail (space restrictions) on the importance of all these caves to Union Sympathizers, slaves on the Underground Railroad, and the Far-Righter MAGAS called Confederates. Trust me when I say, if you didn't know where these caves were, you had absolutely no right to know.

In Appalachia, limestone caves were listed on properties and handed down because of their value. Thomas Jefferson made a point of making sure there were lots of caves to provide nitre for the Gunpowder Committee. I don't know if landowners had to pay taxes for having saltpeter caves (probably), but when the Cold War came around, they definitely and cheerfully sold the access rights to the government because...it was the government. I am not in the least bit joking when I tell you there are people over there who are still pissed off over George Washington's Whiskey Rebellion.

If you really want to get into the psyche of Appalachians, go read up every scene Terry Pratchett ever wrote about Lancre in his Discworld books. Just give them more libraries and a LOT of coffee stations.

Oh, dear. I forgot all about the owling and the Prohibition.

Owling = the practice of moving your herds of cattle from one ridge to the next to avoid a higher payment when the taxman came a-calling.

Prohibition = The Second Oldest Profession.

These days, many of the Fallout Shelter caves are being used for...modern needs. Meth labs, if you're a sensationalist, but if you aren't, bear in mind that hiding out stolen cattle and horses still requires big places out in the middle of nowhere. But when Mr. Gov't Man came around and offered cash for the access rights to grand-daddy's old saltpetre cave? Goodness gracious, we know we aren't supposed to take people's money from them because that's a sin, but...taxes...you know how it is... (most of the mountain folk had no real quarrel with Kennedy despite his heathen dog Catholicism because it wasn't his fault he was brought up Catholic, but when it came to the government...well, it was the principle of the thing).

In short order papers were drawn, and shelters were built and good god, they were ugly. Clapboard shantytowns, I swear. They were stockpiles whacked together with off-brand plank and tenpenny nails for where the selected few could bunker up in the cozy, damp, dripping, chilly, dusty, sneezy, probably-warm-from-stray-radiation environs. I have no idea who the Pentagon hated enough that they would send them to these caves. They had a bottleneck opening for easy defense, yes, but there was no defense against puking yourself to death or accidentally taking off your own skin with your uniform at the end of your shift.

YOU THINK I"M KIDDING?? YOU THINK IT IS A COINCIDENCE THAT CLASSIC DR WHO SHOWS DALEK HISTORY IN AN OLD STONE QUARRY? WELCOME ABOARD!

A fallout shelter's stockpile generally consisted of

*High-quality medical equipment, even though some of that stuff had a shelf life of three minutes.

*Radio Equipment. Which was probably a real belly laugh to the folks running the NARO satellite dishes up in Green Bank, because families in the most rural portion of WV (Pocahontas County) spent their evenings parsing Latin and teaching the young lads and lasses the wonders of shortwave and how to rig up your own crystals in case you needed to jackleg your own.

*Food. God. Awful. Food. It was designed to keep you alive, but you can't say anything more charitable about it. Honestly, I'm surprised nobody tried to corner a government contract on dehydrated water.

*Water. Potable water for drinking, but, I should say, I couldn't find any means with which you could make a potable distillery. Or, how much of this potable water was going to be used to rehydrate the ghastly awfulness of the dehydrated food, or the canned goods that included stuff the military couldn't wait to forget. Go ask your grandparents how much canned horse Circa WWII they ate while they served, m'kay?

*Candy. High energy, easily digestible candy. Flavor optional, at the discretion of the same government that made the WWII Chocolate Bar.

*The containers themselves. Yep, they counted. They were heavy metal barrels and tough buckets or small drums, plus the amazingly dense metal and plastic containers for medical kits, candy, and misc. I'm not sure if they had a requirement other than impervious, waterproof, and on sale. In fact, the smaller drums/buckets were supposed to be lined with the plastic used to wrap the other goods, and convert into a toilet.

Cold War comes and goes. I'm sure what happened next is shocking:

1) medical supplies goes missing in the dead of night.

2) Electronics follows. That probably makes the electricians feel good, because...what good would they have done in the wet, dust-filled atmosphere of the caves?

3) Candy. Candy, did you say? I don't remember seeing any candy..?

4) The gradual disappearance of the food rations is mysteriously in proportion to camping trips multitasking with double-dog-dares. Who needs a frat pledge if Freckles here has never been introduced to the joys of Dehydrated Ketchup?

5) If you think the backyard blacksmiths are making forges with tire rims, do you think metal containers stand a chance?

This leaves the barrels of water, but who would want to drink that stuff? It's been sitting around for how long? Ew. And the boards for those shelters...cripes.

This inadvertently makes up a tiny little side bonus for the hard-working tour guide. Because these shelters are usually ridiculously close to the entrance of the tour caves. You have to take your tour group in stages, see, and once they finish gasping and wheezing their way through the first 300 steps, you have to take their minds off how miserable they are and pause at the shelter with your flashlight, and describe this little chapter of history. By this time the bats are hanging off the boards (your chance to remind them of the exorbitant federal fines for hurting these little mosquito-hunters), the occasional lost salamander, and the beginnings of the Dreaded Cave Cricket (ten minutes with these little monsters and you'll never think pink is an effete color ever again).

And the mold. There are patches of mold the guides have been watching for YEARS. Some of them have even bothered to look them up, because...tourists. They love to stump the guides and use it as an excuse for not tipping you because you haven't taken a Master's in The Encompassing Topic of Karst Everything and are clearly a dumbass, hah-hah I'll spend my money in the overpriced gift shop, peasant.

But no, folks. If you ask them one more damn time if they're sure all the candy and drugs are gone...we're too tired to take your bleeping bleep bleep tip anyway.

[sazorak]

Every Game I Played in 2020, Ranked

2020. Boy, what a garbo year huh? Didn't actually play that many games this year all-in-all. Happens! My backlog is getting pretty big, but I just find it hard to focus on games when I could be working on something. Or put off working on something, as it may happen to be at times.

My arbitrary decision from years ago to only attach a numbered ranking to same-year releases is getting increasingly silly, especially given my propensity to wait on playing games until I’m in the right mood, but whatever. That order matters than the dumb numerical numbering anyway.

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019

Later Alligator – 2019 – Steam – ★★

The style of this game is very cute, and the jokes are funny enough. But… ok, look, I’m not one to be precious about what is or isn’t a game. But this really isn’t a game. It’s a series of disconnected, unrelated challenges clipped from Atari Free Mini Game Collection 100, wrapped in a very non-interactive adventure-game. It’s cute, it’s kind of sweet, but it’s dull. Dull dull dull. There’s a pointless, mandatory sliding block puzzle early on that infuriated me by its mere existence. Them giving the ability to skip it because “wow you’re bad at this huh”, which, while accurate, also just sold the whole point meaningless of the “““interactive experience”””.

Also: when a huge part of your game is WOW WE ANIMATED EVERYONE REALLY GOOD, text boxes that reveal word-by-word, far away from the animations that occur when said characters talk? Kind of stinks!

8. Carrion – 2020 – Steam – ★★

What Carrion does well— the whole “You’re controlling The Thing and just rippin’ people apart!” shtick— is really neat. They made that bootleg The Thing animate real-ass good.

The actual game as a whole though? Kind of garbage. Imagine a Metroidvania with zero actual exploration, where every opportunity you have to venture off the path instead results in immediate railroading with constant, utterly inexplicable one-way pipes. It’s not that it’s linear, it’s that it actively slaps you when you attempt to explore. It’s very frustrating! Add the fact that the tentacle-monster-shtick makes challenging to actually, y’know, move around and control all your bits…  the only reason I finished the game was due to foreknowledge of its extreme brevity.

I think if the game were more open and less obsessed with constantly handing out upgrades, as well as having less of a focus on pure combat, I think I’d have enjoyed it more.

SD Gundam G Generation Cross Rays – 2019 – Steam – ★★

It is well documented at this point that I am both an active Gundam fan, and as well as an on-again-off-again tactical RPG aficionado. A SD Gundam game appearing on Steam with a good English translation and localization is… exciting, to say the least. That said, I have never had much context for this game series beyond the basic facts that the combat tended to be pretty well animated CG, and that it’s vaguely similar to Super Robot Wars. Turns out… it’s really different from SRW? I dunno how the rest of the series fairs, but Cross Rays is weird as hell.

For one, there’s zero tutorialization at all. None. Almost all of what I’m going to explain here is me figuring stuff out by trial and error, or by reading junk online. Gundam is insanely popular, you’d think they’d be interested in explaining how it all works, but… nope. Even Super Robot Wars has multi-level introductory bits for new folks to show them the rope these days.

So: Cross Rays is a tactical RPG where you can playthrough the storyline of various Gundam AUs. You can play through them in any order. These playthroughs are fairly literal translations of the stories. You take control of the lead mecha from those series, fight enemy mobile suits that show up in SRW-like tactical RPG combat, until all reinforcements cease. Pretty straight forward. There are occasionally mission variants like “prevent enemies from reaching X” or “prevent enemies from destroying Y”, but even those can be just reduced to “kill everything very quickly please.”

But here’s the thing: while there is a story progression, the characters in the story itself actually have no character progression. These characters and mecha are actually considered guests, despite it being ostensibly their story. Instead, you are able to field “permanent” mecha and pilots of your own choosing, which do have progressions. There is no plot justification for this or anything like it. The game does not recognize that it’s weird that during Iron-Blooded Orphans intro where nobody knows what a Gundam even is, you can have 25 Gundams show up at once and just fire lasers at everything. That’s because this game is actually about repeatedly grinding the same set of missions over and over.

Pilots are recruited by completing certain in-mission requirements. Mecha are acquired by either by getting enough kills with the progression-less “guest” mecha, combining mecha you already have gashopon-style, completing certain quests, or by leveling up mecha and then “evolving them”. This is the actual core of the game.

SD Gundam G Generation Cross Rays is basically Disgaea, it turns out? You’re grinding story missions at various difficulty levels in order to complete missions, try to recruit specific pilots, equip them with stats and levels to make them stronger, and then hitting mecha together in a sort of quasi-SMT fusion system until you get all the powerful mobile suits you desire.

The combat itself is kind of… bland? There’s a lot of systems, but they mostly seem in service of making an already easy game easier, or burning through tedium. There are four different difficulty modes, because there’s not actually that many different missions you can play through. The expectation is you’ll just work your way through every story beat while ramping the difficulty up over time to where the “guest” mecha would not be able to handle on their own. In fact, letting the story mecha act out the story beats is actually bad after a point, unless you’re still trying to get those lead mobile suits, or if you’re trying to complete some mission requirement in order to recruit Named Wing Grunt Pilot #246.

There is something to the notion of “I want to get N and N and N and N on a team, piloting weird but powerful mobile suits, and just solo every Gundam AU in a row,” but the whole premise seems kind of against purpose. Why bother recreating story beats at all, then? It’s not like the game even acknowledges any of that going on.

If the point is that I’m supposed to be, like in other grind-heavy tactical RPGs, breaking the systems to my own end in order to proceed… why not make the missions you play challenges focused towards that? The story progression literally only exists to facilitate the mission-based unlock conditions, which makes all the energy put into making them JUST LIKE THE ANIME really damn pointless.  

I like tactical RPGs, I like breaking RPG systems so as to beat hard challenges (I beat all the insanely hard extra bosses in FFXII for crying out loud), I looooove Gundam. I should like this. But I don’t really have the “god, I NEED TO FILL THIS LIST” gene that some folks have… except as an excuse to continue to engage in gameplay I enjoy. The gameplay here seems in service of the collection, rather than the way around.

7. Pokemon Sword: The Isle of Armor – 2020 – ★★★

Pokemon’s first foray into actually doing DLC is… a mixed bag. As a positive, they’ve improved the Wild Area concept I liked from the main game, and even brought back buddy Pokemon walking behind you. That’s neat. On the other hand: the actual progression in it is completable in like an hour, it doesn’t scale with you, so you’re bound to be over leveled for it, and all the raid stuff, while still conceptually neat, is just as flawed as in the base game. And so, you’re just left with even more new Pokemon to RNG grind on to continue to catch-them-all. Nah, I’m good.

Astral Chain – 2019 – Switch – ★★★

Platinum knows how to make good character action games. They’ve made a bunch of them. Bayonetta, Nier: Automata, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. They also know how to make some kind of mediocre character action games. Transformers: Devastation, Wonderful 101, their various shovelware character action games like Korra. Astral Chain falls somewhere in the middle, I guess?

Astral Chain has all the production of their good games. It has some stylish, cool action. It has a neat core mechanical idea, in that it’s essentially a two-character action game where you control both characters at once. It has a lot of the old mechanics from some of their best games brought in; witch-time last second dodging from Bayonetta, Nier’s shooting-and-slashing combination, the Zandatsu mechanic from Metal Gear Rising, even Wonderful 101’s multi-unit shenanigans. The setting is different, and there’s some neat world flavor all in all.

But, of all games I’ve played over the past few years, Astral Chain made me more vividly angry than any other. It’s not that it’s too hard— far from it, really, I found its combat incredibly mashy. No, the problem is that it has so many shitty mechanics slathered on that it become a chore to get to the “good bits”.

Why would you put forced stealth sequences in your character action game, especially when your movement controls are not suited for it?

Why the HELL would you put platforming sections in your character action game, constantly, especially when your stupid ghost buddy can accidentally yank you off the edge, your auto-combos can just throw you off the edge, or literally anything can knock you off the edge and make you lose life?

Why would you put so many constant excuses into the world to force me use the digital sensor in the game, that also makes it miserable to walk around while using it?

WHO THE LIVING FUCK THINKS THESE SHITTY BOX BALANCING MINI-GAMES ARE FUN???

These games are supposed to encourage me to perfect everything, right? Why keep putting fucking fights you need to complete in order to get an S rank behind backtracking, or Legions I don’t have yet? That isn’t adding replayability, that’s just wasting my time. There are even in-level missions that have fail conditions that you never even know about. Surprise!!! A lot of them involve chasing after guys and catching them with your chain, which is really obnoxious to do!!!! SURPRISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The story is just Bad Evangelion, straight up. Every story beat from Evangelion is here, executed worse. They also make your character have a twin just so they can have a character who can talk and feel emotions, because your boring-ass protagonist is stuck being an emotionless audience cipher. Cool!!!

Tetris Effect – 2018 – Origin – ★★★

It’s drugs Tetris. I personally don’t use, or have synesthesia for that matter. I imagine this game is better if you do. It’s an enjoyable enough experience but it feels incredibly slight for what I was expecting from it, or even compared to something like Lumines, which has tons of replayability by way of its difficulty. Tetris just isn’t that hard, unless you’re forcing yourself to do weird shit to get points. I WILL NEVER LEARN HOW TO T-SPIN. Never.

Castlevania Anniversary Collection – 2019 – Steam – ★★★

Kind of an unremarkable Castlevania collection. Neat that it has an official translation of Kid Dracula in there, but also… look, I prefer Metroidvania Castlevanias, OK?

6. Spelunky 2 – 2020 – Steam – ★★★

I’m not entirely sure why this doesn’t click for me where Spelunky 1 did. More annoying intro levels? Too many fiddly requirements for different ending-progression? Gameplay additions that just make things more annoying? Spelunky 1 was hard, but there was a kind straight-forwardness to it, even with its weird secrets, that made it much easier to grok and continue banging your head against. I’m just not having as much fun with this. Difficulty should be challenging, not a hassle.

5. Stellaris: Federations – 2020 – Steam – ★★★

This is the year that Stellaris just broke for me.

Federations itself is a good DLC; it adds some really interesting mechanics tied to various types of multi-national unions (the titular federations, as well as the Space UN), as well as the addition of unique “origins” that allow you to further specialize your gameplay. The origins in particular are a great addition that allows more specialization and roleplay.

I’m just tired of the sheer amount of busywork Stellaris forces you to do. Every DLC adds more junk you need to keep an eye on, and the fact that the AI doesn’t even bother with it (compensating with copious economy boosts in order to keep up) makes the whole thing frustrating. It’s like playing fetch with yourself; you just get tired of chasing after your own ball after a point.

I have to wonder if they’re pivoting towards a notional Stellaris 2 at this point? Might not be a bad idea for them, though it is weird with all they talked up adding more origins when Federations came out.  

4. GranBlue Fantasy Versus – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★

This is probably the fighting game I got most into over the past few years. There’s just this nice, almost Street Fighter-esque ease of execution to the controls, and that Arc Systems Works 3D-as-2D style continues to just do work. I don’t give a single shit about GranBlue Fantasy (frankly, I think I’d enjoy this game more if it wasn’t attached to a property) but the characters are fun enough to play and look at.

The big problem here is two things: no crossplay, and no rollback netcode. In the span of a month, this game became a total ghost town on PC, and it doesn’t sound like PS4 faired that much better. 

Ring Fit Adventure – 2019 – Switch – ★★★★

I’ve fallen on-and-off this game all year. At its heart: it works, it’s a fun exercise game. I don’t think it really feels like a “game” (in the sense that I’m not really coming to it for riveting gameplay or anything) as much as just a guided exercise experience, but… that’s fine? The in-game story is kind of flat, but funny in the fact of it existing at all. Buff Nicol Bolas and all.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen – 2017 – Steam – ★★★★

XCOM2: War of the Chosen is a great answer to what XCOM2 struggled with. As I discussed back in 2016 (Jesus Christ), XCOM2 tried to push against player’s worst instincts by incentivizing them to keep being aggressive through a whole bunch of timers— which, kind of just weren’t fun given how much accidentally walking into an ambush could “ruin” dozens of hours of play. War of the Chosen dials that back in some intelligent ways, by instead making the encounter designs themselves, as well as much more grab-and-bail mission types, encourage players to push ahead instead. Smart!

The addition of the Chosen makes the game feel more alive, and they really do make missions harder— particularly early on. But they’ve somehow accidentally fell into the hole, where XCOM just… isn’t that hard? Early on it’s challenging, particularly with the resource restrictions and all. But they keep giving you more and more options (that aren’t especially meaningful choices) that make your team more and more powerful, without increasing the strength of the enemy as time goes on. By the five-hour mark, you basically know if you’re going to steam roll the game or not.

The amount of additional character and variety in the gameplay is great, I just wish it had a more challenging difficulty curve. Maybe make the meta-layer of when enemies show up more targeted to where players are at. If a player is doing well, ramp up the difficulty, if they’re struggling, pull it back a bit. I should always feel like I’m just barely keeping ahead with XCOM, not like I’m bored. And by the end of War of the Chosen, I was kind of getting bored, really. Oh well.

3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 2020 – Switch – ★★★★

This is probably the video game that I spent the most time with hours-wise this year. I’m not entirely sure why? It’s a nice evolution of New Leaf, in that the crafting, environment shaping, and general quality-of-life improvements made are quite nice. There’s clearly been some thought on how people play these games, and ways to make the experience less frustrating.

… and yet, they kept so much tedium in the game. Like yes, the schedule stretching is the point, I get it. As someone who for some reason decided not to play with the clock, I only just recently finished the fish, fossils, and insects for the museum. But there’s just so many weird, little things that just make it hard to keep coming back to it. It’s like… to what end? When I’ve unlocked everything, and basically seen the entirety of the item list at this point, and the holiday events all being the game meaningless collectathons…. Why? I’m not going to try completing the collection; the museum stuff is about my limit, really (and even the paintings I can probably pass on).

I guess even an idealized, digital representation of a quasi-domestic life has the spiritual emptiness of consumerism-for-consumerism sake. Thanks???

Hypnospace Outlaw – 2019 – Steam – ★★★★

I grew up on the internet of the early 00s. I had an AngelFire website, mostly consisting of shitty sprite webcomics and hosted Gundam pics. I remember when Google wasn’t really a thing and you would heavily rely on website compilation sites like the Anime Web Turnpike in order to find anything of value online. It was weird, it was wild. It was exciting!

The internet seemed so different back then. There was a ton of garbage online, but also, like… there was a sense of optimism to it. Folks were shitty, there was plenty of bad stuff online, but it felt so disconnected from the fabric of the physicality of real-life that it was at the same time a perfect escape.

I was young when I first got “online”, something like 12. I remember having this notion that the internet was going to be this great equalizer, that it had infinite potential to change how people behave and interact. Boy, huh.

Hypnospace Outlaw is essentially a splendid alternate universe GeoCities recreation, where you’re a volunteer moderator of a grouping of websites on HypnOS, an internet-analog you access while you are sleep. At the surface level, it’s mostly about poking around the weird alternate-historical version of the internet they created, full of kids feuding, bizarre historical divergences, and plenty of amazing bespoke weirdness. All of this is great; there’s an incredible amount of content that’s just great to poke at, listen to, and explore.

Below the surface, there’s also a rolling plotline about the ethics of this industry-owned platform, those who run it, and the way corporations handle new technology, new platforms, and emerging digital societies. There’s a late game turn that’s pretty damn affecting. And as someone who has moderator his share of internet forums in his time, trying to balance ‘do it for the community’ and what your ostensible ‘bosses’ require of you, it was kind of a weird throwback in more ways than one.

Minecraft – 2011 – PC – ★★★★★

Turns out, Minecraft is really as good still who knew??? Started playing a bunch more of it this year due to Giant Bomb deciding to do so, and yeah: still good!

2. Hades – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★★

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again— Supergiant makes damn good games. I’d been holding off on checking out Hades until its full release due to my tendency to burn out on games easily, and I’m glad I waited. Hades is a fantastic rogue-lite experience. The way it makes narrative progression part of the reiterative, randomized rogue-lite structure is just perfect.

It’s got all the usual Supergiant bullet points. Great characters, voice acting, narration, and music. In terms of gameplay, it’s probably their least ambitious game— playing something like a cousin to their original game, Bastion— but it’s also been polished to a mirror sheen. It just feels really damn good to play, over and over and over.

That being said, the second (final?) ending feels kind of…. Tacked on? It’s fine as a goal to go for while continuing to do the game’s relationship mechanics for additional story bits, but it ends up feeling kind of unfulfilling compared to the payoff of the first one.

1. Crusader Kings III – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★★

I never could get into Crusader Kings II. Despite my interest, the sheer mechanical heft and unintuitive interface made the game a wall that I just couldn’t get over. I’m sure if I’d dedicated myself I probably could have learned it, but… ehhhhhh.

Crusader Kings III, on the other hand, has a good tutorial, a cleaned-up UI, and a very helpful highlight and tooltip system that make it much easier to understand how to actually play the game through resources inside the game itself. And, as it turns out: I rather love this game.

I mean, conceptually it’s an easy sell, isn’t it? Historical politics is something I enjoy broadly. I liked Stellaris but wish it had more narrative, roleplaying elements. They outright say that “winning” isn’t really the point of the game. Instead, it’s more about emergent storytelling and playing with the different systems and seeing what you can do with it.

My current game has had me taking the Haesteinn dynasty from its Viking origins into England, forming a London-seated Northern Sea Empire that encompasses all of Britannia, Iceland, Holland, Norway, and Denmark. I am currently working on hegemonizing Norse religious control over enough Asatru holy sites to finally reform the religion, such that more unified feudalization can occur. To that end, my current ruler’s predecessor invaded West Francia and conquered the whole of its territory, substantially reducing the foothold of Catholicism in mainland Europe… which seems to have kicked the hornet’s nest, given the Crusade I’m going to need to contend with next time I boot up the game.

Of course, a complicating matter is that my current ruler— the Emperor of the North Sea, King of Ireland and the Danelaw, liege of the King of Denmark, was elected from the extended Haesteinn family via Thing, the Scandinavian council of his erstwhile vassals. Where the previous emperor, the one who manufactured the invasion of Francia, was quite religious and beloved for his adherence to the old ways, I discovered as I took over as his successor that he really, really is into just boning down across Europe. We’re talking constantly attempting to seduce neighboring Queens and Princesses. His vassals are not thrilled with this. They also don’t care for his propensity for torturing people to death, constantly.

I had no real say in this; attempting to stay on top of a dynasty is kind of like riding a bucking-bronco, so many things are only tenuously under your control that some weird shit can happen. This is especially true when you use the systems that make it easier to maintain the coherency of your domain. The Norse religion encouraging concubinage results in you having a lot of kids, which means there’s a lot of domain partition going on (someday, primogeniture, someday). Naturally, using Thing election reduces that, but also makes you sometimes end up having to play Emperor Stabbo-Fucko because they thought he was the best candidate at the time. Hell, I thought he was the best candidate at the time until I discovered just how many people he’d be laying with on the low. But you just have to roll with it.

The way the game forces you to play ball with character traits is great. Doing things that match with the character’s traits makes them lose stress. Doing things against their character increases stress. Too much stress can force you to make the character take up vices (which can make them suffer health or opinion maluses, as well as altering their aptitudes), or even die outright. And sometimes those vices and attitudes can be boons, given they open up opportunities for different character interactions.

Emperor Stab-and-Fuck-Kingdom is perhaps the most relaxed person alive, it turns out, because his sadism makes him really enjoy sacrificing infidels, which makes the gods happy. It also freaks the fuck out of all of his vassals, so they’re a good supplicant mix of both appreciative of my religious sentiments and also utterly terrified of my skull piles. Some especially brave vassals occasionally try to assassinate me, but my lovers keep jumping in front of the knife and saving my life mid-coitus. Iiiiiit happens! :D  

The game can be incredibly fun to just watch, as it becomes emergently weird. Georgia right now is incredibly Jewish in game. I’m not sure how that happened; I guess someone made a random Jewish guy into a vassal, who somehow moved up enough in the world to make it a movement? The Byzantine princes elected a Coptic as Emperor, which over the course of the decade resulted in very accelerated balkanization as Byzantium just lost its shit. The Middle East and notional HRE haven’t really unified in a meaningful way, so I’m curious how things are going to go if/when the Mongols unify and roll-on in.

It’s one of those “Just one more thing” games that can completely devour time. I have more than a few times checked the clock mid-game to see that it’s 4AM and that I’ve totally ruined my sleep schedule in the process of play. Oooooops.

I highly recommend checking it out if you’re curious; the introductory, pre-release video series Paradox put out showing off the game does a pretty good job of showing the core gameplay loop and also how weird it can get.

[penmansparadise]

Steve Harrington Imagine Request - I Love You so Much Most

* I DON’T OWN ANY GIFS POSTED* *CREDIT TO GIF OWNERS*

I’m sorry that it took so long, but here is the Steve Harrington angst imagine requested by @saturnssub​ .  I hope that this lives up to what you were hoping for!  Let me know what you all think and enjoy!! Xx.

Warnings: Angst and Mild Language

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Reader

_______________________________________________________________________

You and Steve met in middle school. Years ago, when you first moved to Hawkins, he was your only friend. He was the cool guy that every girl fawned over, but he had a secret soft side no one knew about. You used to eat lunch at a corner table by yourself. One day, Steve trotted over and plopped down in front of you. Everyone watched in shock as he sat and ate lunch with the loser new girl. You were confused and didn’t know if he was playing some sick joke. But, when he gave you a friendly smile, you knew he was genuine. From that day forward, you two were inseparable.

Your friendship grew stronger and stronger throughout the years. In high school, when Nancy broke Steve’s heart, you were the only person there for him. He went to your house that night in complete anguish. You held him and told him everything would get better. He stayed over that night and slept soundly next to you. Steve comforted you when Robert Miller, the best wrestler within a 200-mile radius, broke up with you at the Christmas formal. After the dance, he took you to get ice cream and scream into the night. Wrapped tightly in a blanket, the two of you watched the sun rise over the quarry. You and Steve were each other’s rock.

Before you knew it, Steve asked you to be his girlfriend. He dressed in his nicest button-down shirt and took you for a picnic. He hung lights on the tree you sat under and had candles on the blanket. Rose petals littered the ground around you. He was so nervous, but, with sweaty hands, he finally asked. You, not skipping a beat, said, “Yes.” After making things official, your relationship only grew stronger. You were the couple everyone wished they could be. The two of you were goofy but cute. You had inside jokes that would make you laugh until your sides hurt, and Steve kept the romance alive by constantly surprising you with flowers and handmade gifts. The two of you were head-over-heels in love with each other.

You had been dating for a little over a year when Steve began to get distant. It started when things at the Hawkins Lab began to happen, and the Byer’s kid got sick. He stopped calling your house on weekends and started to cut your dates short. He would run off immediately after dropping you off and even stopped sneaking into your room late at night. When you were with him, he seemed like he wasn’t present. He was always hidden away in his own little world, and the door was locked. You tried to enter, but he never let you. You tried not to worry or think irrationally, but you couldn’t help it. Your anxiety reached an all-time high when you saw him sneaking out of the Wheeler’s house one night.

Your house was exactly three houses to the left and across the street from the Wheeler’s. It was after midnight, and you couldn’t bring yourself to sleep. Instead, you opted to sit in your window and waiting for the sun to rise or Steve to show. Propped up in your window, you saw him. At first, you thought your eyes had deceived you. It was late, it could’ve just been a friend of Mike’s. It wasn’t until he walked under the street lamp that you realized it was Steve. His fluffy hair bounced as he jogged toward his car. Your chest tightened as your mind thought the worst.

“It’s been a whole year and four months since Steve and Nancy broke up. And Nancy is with Jonathan now! Steve wouldn’t do something like that to hurt me, would he?”

Weeks passed by, and you noticed Steve spending more and more time at the Wheeler’s residence. You began to lose sleep, forcing yourself to stay up and watch for him. Every night for two weeks, Steve was consistent. 12:30 AM would come, and so would Steve. He spent three hours inside before jogging back to his car and driving home. At the start of the third week, you had enough. You knew you shouldn’t have done what you did, but you did it anyway. It was Saturday morning, and, to your surprise, Steve’s car came to a stop in the Wheeler’s driveway. You weren’t used to him being there on the weekends. From your window, you saw him and some kid with curly hair walk out of the house. They held large silver buckets and wore yellow dishwashing gloves.

“What the hell is he doing now?” You asked your empty room.

Steve and the kid started walking away. Your eyes moved to your sneakers sitting in the corner of your room. The boys were a good distance away, and, without any more thinking, you laced your shoes up and ran after them.

You stayed a few paces behind them as to not be seen. When they turned onto a dirt path that led to the old railroad tracks, you slowed. Standing stationary, you watched as they started dropping cubes of raw meat along the path. Your face scrunched up in bewilderment.

“What are you doing, Steve?” You whispered before trailing after them again.

When you walked into the old junkyard, you quickly found a rusty car to hide behind. Through the dirty window, you watched another two kids show up. Steve corralled the children before they started boarding up an abandoned bus. You leaned forward in an attempt to hear what they were saying.

“If this doesn’t work, we’re in deep shit, Dustin. I hope you know that.”

“It’s going to work, Lucas! I mean, we practically dropped two whole cows along the way. What could go wrong?”

“A lot could go wrong, but whatever.”

“Hey,” Steve’s voice echoed, “less talking and more boarding. We lose daylight in 45 minutes.”

The sound of wood hitting metal resonated around you. You peeped through the window again to see the group of kids standing next to Steve. He clapped his hands before turning to face them.

“Okay, we’ll hide in here and wait for Dart. Remember, I’ll do all the work. I’m not having any of you shit heads dying on my watch.”

You placed your hand over your mouth to muffle the string of giggles that escaped you. One of the kids waved him off.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, Harrington. Just get in the bus and wait.”

You watched the group of kids and Steve disappear into the bus before sitting on the cool grass. The sun went down, and the fog began to hover just above the ground. Every now and then, you would prop up to check the bus, but there was still no motion. It had been hours, and you were still sitting behind a rusty old car.

“What the fuck am I doing?” You asked yourself. “Steve is my boyfriend. I shouldn’t have to sneak around and follow him.”

You aimlessly picked at the wet grass next to you.

“I’m just going to walk right up to that bus and speak my mind. I’m going to ask what the hell he’s doing here and why he’s been at Nancy’s.”

You gave yourself a nod of encouragement. Right as you were going to stand up, a loud monstrous roar filled the air. You had never heard anything like it before. It sounded like something out a horror film. Your eyes scanned the junkyard, but you couldn’t see anything. The heavy fog blanketed the ground, and the moonlight gave little to no light. You sat still trying to see if you could find where the noise came from. The sound of crunching leaves made your heart race in your chest. When you turned to face where the sound came from, you froze. A few feet from where you sat, stood a fleshy looking beast. It had the body of a large dog, but its head was like nothing you had ever seen before. It had no eyes and was shaped like a flower about to bloom. It didn’t have a mouth. Instead, its whole head opened to reveal a billion tiny teeth. Your breath caught in your throat, nearly suffocating you with fear. You silently placed your hands on the rusty car for support. Every part of your body was shaking with terror. You let out an unsteady breath and tried your best not to whimper.

“Oh, my God. What the hell is that thing?”

The guttural growls and clicks from the monster reverberated in your ears and into the quiet night. It had disappeared into the fog, making you spiral into a panic. Your breathing was quickening by the second, and you were doing all you could to calm yourself down. That’s when you heard a high-pitched whistle. You didn’t want to move, but when you heard Steve’s voice, you couldn’t help it.

“Come on, buddy,” he began, “human tastes better than cat, I promise.”

You forced your wobbly legs to stand. They were weak with fear, and you were unsure if they could even hold you up. Your eyes surveyed the area, hoping to spot the monster, but they landed on Steve instead. You could tell he was scared, but he planted his feet in the dirt anyway. He was wielding a baseball bat covered in nails. His bravery made your heart swell a little. The sound of another loud monstrous screech pulled you back to reality. The fleshy beast came into view. It stood a few steps in front of Steve. Your heart thumped in your chest as you watched Steve and the monster square up. Steve’s feet twisted in the dirt to get better traction as he prepped his bat to swing. The monster let out a series of low growls in response. You were frozen in place when one of the kids shouts filled the air.

“Steve, watch out,” he yelled, “3 o’clock!”

That’s when you heard the familiar growling, but that time it was much closer. Your blood pulsed in your ears as you slowly turned to face the sound. Creeping over the crushed-up cars and tires was one of the monsters. Its large claws tore into everything it touched.

“Oh my God,” you began fumbling to turn yourself back around, “Steve!”

A loud fright-filled scream came from you as you barreled over the car and toward Steve. Just as you were about to reach Steve, you could see the other monster lunge toward you. You shut your eyes and let out another scream when you felt Steve’s arms wrap around you. Steve pulled you into his chest just as the monster jumped past you. You could feel tears welling in your eyes as you began to hyperventilate. There were monsters all around you at that point. Their growls played like a symphony in the night. Steve grabbed you by your shoulders to gain your attention.

“What are you doing here, Y/N!? It’s not safe!”

You tried your best to compose yourself, but you couldn’t. Your breathing was shallow, and it was making you dizzy.

“I’m so sorry, Steve. I followed you here. You’ve just been so distant lately and I saw you at Nancy’s. I just…I thought you were cheating on me. I’m sorry.”

Steve let out a frustrated huff and squeezed your shoulders.

“You followed me here? Why didn’t you just talk to me!? I would never cheat on you, Y/N. I wasn’t even over there for Nancy. I was over there for Mike and his friends.”

Your cheeks were wet, but you didn’t know if it was from tears or sweat. You shook your head in disbelief.

“I tried to talk to you, Steve. You ignored me. I didn’t know what to think. And now, with this, I really don’t know what to think.”

You stared at Steve, but his gaze was fixed behind you. When you went to turn around and look, he stopped you.

“No,” he said, “We need to run.”

You shook your head in confusion.

“What?”

Steve’s hands released your shoulders and grabbed your wrist tightly.

“Run!”

You took in a sharp breath before being dragged behind Steve. An array of sounds filled your ears as you willed your legs to move faster. Growls, crunching leaves, your heavy breathing, and fast-beating heart all melted into one. The kids were screaming from the bus. They sounded like they were a million miles away.

“Steve, hurry! Run faster!”

You felt Steve’s grip tighten around your wrist. There was going to be a deep bruise left behind. Your feet trampled the ground as Steve pulled you behind him. You could see the bus and the kids waving you on. Fear was painted on each of their childish faces. When you looked behind you, a pack of monsters was chasing you. They were so close. You could smell their musk as the wind whipped around you. The beastly sounds coming from them sounded closer with each step you took. From up close, you could see their bony bodies with clarity. They looked deformed as they ran after you and Steve.

Your heart was beating as fast as you were running. You could feel the breath of the monsters on your back. The bus seemed miles away, and you could feel your legs growing heavy.

“Steve,” you shouted out of breath, “I’m not going to make it!”

Steve held onto your writs even tighter than before and pulled you along.

“Yes, you are, Y/N. Just run, I’ve got you.”

You could see the bus and the kids clearly. There was a little red-haired girl who looked almost as scared as you felt. The two boys next to her stared desperately at Steve. The stairs were black and were covered in dirt. They did a great job boarding up the old piece of metal. The voices of the kids rang out as Steve let go of your wrist and jumped into the bus. He reached out for you. Your hand was so close to his. Your fingertips glided over his, and you could feel the nervous sweat that coated them. But he wasn’t fast enough.

A loud screech sounded just before one of the monster’s mouths attached to your side. You let out a scream as your body slammed against the ground. Sharp teeth tore into your clothes and flesh ripping everything to shreds. You watched as the fleshy beast opened your body and feasted. Your blood painted its face and pooled around you. It was warm against the cold grass. You could hear Steve yelling, but it was muffled. He sounded lightyears away, and it felt like you were having an out of body experience. You tried to scream out for Steve, but your blood was choking you. Your body grew colder with each bite from the monster. You were sure it was never going to end when the beast screeched and ran off. He left your body lying on the ground, mangled and broken.

You didn’t know what made it stop, but, suddenly, the monster was gone. The pain was still present as you felt your blood pouring out of your torso. You let out a wet cough and felt some blood dribble down your chin. Tears and sweat leaked down your cheeks. Your vision was going fuzzy, but you could still make out Steve’s figure. He dropped to his knees beside you and looked on in horror. You could tell that he was terrified, but he kept his brave face on for the kids.

His hands moved frantically over your body, trying to stop the blood that was gushing out of your body. Tears flowed from his eyes, and sobs shook his entire body.

“Dustin, g-go get a t-towel or something. We have to s-stop the bleeding.”

Dustin’s voice rang out and echoed in your head.

“Steve, buddy, I don’t think that’s going to help.”

“Just g-go, man! We h-have to save her!”

Through clouded vision, you could see the kid named Dustin scramble off toward the bus. Steve took your hand in his and brought it to his mouth. You could feel his dry lips on the top of your hand. His tears dripped onto your clammy skin mixing with your blood and sweat. You could feel him shaking next to you and could hear his trembling breaths. He gave your hand another kiss and brushed your wet hair from your face.

“Don’t w-worry, baby. Everything is just f-fine. Dustin is getting s-something to stop your b-bleeding.” He let out a hiccup and a whimper. “Y-you’re going to be okay, honey. I promise.”

You coughed more blood up before forcing yourself to speak.

“I’m not going to make it, Steve.”

Steve let out a soft cry that made your heart clench in your chest. You so badly wanted to wrap your arms around him and hold him close. You desperately needed to feel his embrace one last time, but you knew it would never happen. He squeezed your hand tightly.

“Don’t s-say that, Y/N. You’re okay, we’re g-going to g-get you to a h-hospital. Just hold on, b-baby. Please, just hold on.”

You could feel yourself growing weak. Your breathing was becoming labored, and your eyes were trying to shut. You grasped onto Steve’s hand as hard as you could muster.

“It’s okay, Steve.”

You tried your best to focus on Steve’s distressed face. His eyes were red, and his face was puffy. His bottom lip was quivering as you began to speak again.

“I have to let go, baby.”

Steve cried out in anguish as he placed his forehead on yours. A stream of whimpers escaped his trembling body. You nuzzled him one last time, feeling his soft hair on your face. You drank in the scent of his cologne and closed your eyes.

“I love you so much, Steve.”

Steve’s body shook from his crying.

“I love you s-so much m-more.”

You smiled feebly and said, “I love you so much most,” before everything went black.

[smokeycemetery]

JA ONE XTC

JA • • •

KEVIN HELDMAN lives in New York. This is his first piece for "Rolling Stone." (ROLLING STONE,FEB 9,1995)

THE FIRST TIME I meet JA, he skates up to me wearing Rollerblades, his cap played backward, on a street corner in Manhattan at around midnight. He's white, 24 years old, with a short, muscular build and a blond crew cut. He has been writing graffiti off and on in New York for almost 10 years and is the founder of a loosely affiliated crew called XTC. His hands, arms, legs and scalp show a variety of scars from nightsticks, razor wire, fists and sharp, jagged things he has climbed up, on or over. He has been beaten by the police -- a "wood shampoo," he calls it -- has been shot at, has fallen off a highway sign into moving traffic, has run naked through train yards tagging, has been chased down highways by rival writers wielding golf clubs and has risked his life innumerable times writing graffiti -- bombing, getting up.

JA lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment. There's graffiti on a wall-length mirror, a weight bench, a Lava lamp to bug out on, cans of paint stacked in the corner, a large Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) sticker on the side of the refrigerator. The buzzer to his apartment lists a false name; his phone number is unlisted to avoid law-enforcement representatives as well as conflicts with other writers. While JA and one of his writing partners, JD, and I are discussing their apprehension about this story, JD, offering up a maxim from the graffiti life, tells me matter-of-factly, "You wouldn't fuck us over, we know where you live."

At JA's apartment we look through photos. There are hundreds of pictures of writers inside out-of-service subway cars that they've just covered completely with their tags, pictures of writers wearing orange safety vests -- to impersonate transit workers -- and walking subway tracks, pictures of detectives and transit workers inspecting graffiti that JA and crew put up the previous night, pictures of stylized JA 'throw-ups' large, bubble-lettered logos written 15 feet up and 50 times across a highway retaining wall. Picture after picture of JA's on trains, JA's on trucks, on store gates, bridges, rooftops, billboards -- all labeled, claimed and recorded on film.

JA comes from a well-to-do family; his parents are divorced; his father holds a high-profile position in the entertainment industry. JA is aware that in some people's minds this last fact calls into question his street legitimacy, and he has put a great deal of effort into resisting the correlation between privileged and soft. He estimates he has been arrested 15 times for various crimes. He doesn't have a job, and it's unclear how he supports himself. Every time we've been together, he's been high or going to get high. Once he called me from Rikers Island prison, where he was serving a couple of months for disorderly conduct and a probation violation. He said some of the inmates saw him tagging in a notebook and asked him to do tattoos for them.

It sounds right. Wherever he is, JA dominates his surroundings. With his crew, he picks the spots to hit, the stores to rack from; he controls the mission. He gives directions in the car, plans the activities, sets the mood. And he takes everything a step further than the people he's with. He climbs higher, stays awake longer, sucks deepest on the blunt, writes the most graffiti. And though he's respected by other writers for testing the limits -- he has been described to me by other writers as a king and, by way of compliment, as "the sickest guy I ever met" -- that same recklessness sometimes alienates him from the majority who don't have such a huge appetite for chaos, adrenaline, self-destruction.

When I ask a city detective who specializes in combating graffiti if there are any particularly well-known writers, he immediately mentions JA and adds with a bit of pride in his voice, "We know each other." He calls JA the "biggest graffiti writer of all time" (though the detective would prefer that I didn't mention that, because it'll only encourage JA). "He's probably got the most throw-ups in the city, in the country, in the world," the detective says. "If the average big-time graffiti vandal has 10,000 tags, JA's got 100,000. He's probably done -- in New York City alone -- at least $5 million worth of damage."

AT ABOUT 3 A.M., JA AND TWO OTHER WRITERS go out to hit a billboard off the West Side Highway in Harlem. Tonight there are SET, a 21-year-old white writer from Queens, N.Y., and JD, a black Latino writer the same age, also from Queens. They load their backpacks with racked cans of Rustoleum, fat cap nozzles, heavy 2-foot industrial bolt cutters and surgical gloves. We pile into a car and start driving, Schooly D blasting on the radio. First a stop at a deli where JA and SET go in and steal beer. Then we drive around Harlem trying a number of different dope spots, keeping an eye out for "berries" -- police cars. JA tosses a finished 40-ounce out the window in a high arc, and it smashes on the street.

At different points, JA gets out of the car and casually walks the streets and into buildings, looking for dealers. A good part of the graffiti life involves walking anywhere in the city, at any time, and not being afraid -- or being afraid and doing it anyway.

We arrive at a spot where JA has tagged the dealer's name on a wall in his territory. The three writers buy a vial of crack and a vial of angel dust and combine them ("spacebase") in a hollowed-out Phillies blunt. JD tells me that "certain drugs will enhance your bombing," citing dust for courage and strength ("bionics"). They've also bombed on mescaline, Valium, marijuana, crack and malt liquor. SET tells a story of climbing highway poles with a spray can at 6 a.m., "all Xanaxed out."

While JD is preparing the blunt, JA walks across the street with a spray can and throws up all three of their tags in 4-foot-high bubbled, connected letters. In the corner, he writes my name.

We then drive to a waterfront area at the edge of the city -- a deserted site with warehouses, railroad tracks and patches of urban wilderness dotted with high-rise billboards. All three writers are now high, and we sit on a curb outside the car smoking cigarettes. From a distance we can see a group of men milling around a parked car near a loading dock that we have to pass. This provokes 30 minutes of obsessive speculation, a stoned stakeout with play by play:

"Dude, they're writers," says SET. "Let's go down and check them out," says JD. "Wait, let's see what they write," says JA. "Yo -- they're going into the trunk," says SET. "Cans, dude, they're going for their cans. Dude, they're writers. "There could be beef, possible beef," says JA. "Can we confirm cans, do we see cans?" SET wants to know. Yes, they do have cans," SET answers for himself. "There are cans. They are writers." It turns out that the men are thieves, part of a group robbing a nearby truck. In a few moments guards appear with flashlights and at least one drawn gun. The thieves scatter as guard dogs fan out around the area, barking crazily.

We wait this out a bit until JA announces, "It's on." Hood pulled up on his head, he leads us creeping through the woods (which for JA has become the cinematic jungles of Nam). It's stop and go, JA crawling on his stomach, unnecessarily close to one of the guards who's searching nearby. We pass through graffiti-covered tunnels (with the requisite cinematic drip drip), over crumbling stairs overgrown with weeds and brush, along dark, heavily littered trails used by crackheads.

We get near the billboard, and JA uses the bolt cutters to cut holes in two chain-link fences. We crawl through and walk along the railroad tracks until we get to the base of the sign. JA, with his backpack on, climbs about 40 feet on a thin piece of metal pipe attached to the main pillar. JD, after a few failed attempts, follows with the bolt cutters shoved down his pants and passes them to JA. Hanging in midair, his legs wrapped around a small piece of ladder, JA cuts the padlock and opens up the hatch to the catwalk. He then lowers his arm to JD, who is wrapped around the pole just below him, struggling. "J, give me your hand, "I'll pull you up," JA tells him. JD hesitates. He is reluctant to let go and continues treadmilling on the pole, trying to make it up. JD, give me your hand." JD doesn't want to refuse, but he's uncomfortable entrusting his life to JA. He won't let go of the pole. JA says it again, firmly, calmly, utterly confident: "J give me your hand." JD's arm reaches up, and JA pulls JD up onto the catwalk. Next, SET, the frailest of the three, follows unsteadily. They've called down and offered to put up his tag, but he insists on going up. "Dude, fuck that, I'm down," he says. I look away while he makes his way up, sure that he's going to fall (he almost does twice). The three have developed a set pattern for dividing the labor when they're "blowing up," one writer outlining, another working behind him, filling in. For 40 minutes I watch them working furiously, throwing shadows as they cover ads for Parliament and Amtrak with large multicolored throw-ups SET and JD bickering about space, JA scolding them, tossing down empty cans.

They risk their lives again climbing down. Parts of their faces are covered in paint, and their eyes beam as all three stare at the billboard, asking, "Isn't it beautiful?' And there is something intoxicating about seeing such an inaccessible, clean object gotten to and made gaudy. We get in the car and drive the West Side Highway northbound and then southbound so they can critique their work. "Damn, I should've used the white," JD says.

The next day both billboards are newly re-covered, all the graffiti gone. JA tells me the three went back earlier to get pictures and made small talk with the workers who were cleaning it off.

GRAFFITI HAS BEEN THROUGH A NUMBER OF incarnations since it surfaced in New York in the early 70s with a Greek teen-ager named Taki 183. It developed from the straightforward writing of a name to highly stylized, seemingly illegible tags (a kind of penmanship slang) to wild-style throw-ups and elaborate (master) "pieces" and character art. There has been racist graffiti political writing, drug advertising, gang graffiti. There is an art-graf scene from which Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiac, LEE, Futura 2000, Lady Pink and others emerged; aerosol advertising; techno graffiti written into computer programs; anti-billboard graffiti; stickers; and stencil writing. There are art students doing street work in San Francisco ("nonpermissional public art"); mural work in underground tunnels in New York; gallery shows from Colorado to New Jersey; all-day Graffiti-a-Thons; and there are graffiti artists lecturing art classes at universities. Graffiti has become part of urban culture, hip-hop culture and commercial culture, has spread to the suburbs and can be found in the backwoods of California's national forests. There are graffiti magazines, graffiti stores, commissioned walls, walls of fame and a video series available (Out to bomb) documenting writers going out on graffiti missions, complete with soundtrack. Graffiti was celebrated as a metaphor in the 70s (Norman Mailer's "The Faith of Graffiti"); it went Hollywood in the '80s (Beat Street, Turk 182!, Wild Style); and in the '90s it has been increasingly used to memorialize the inner-city dead.

But as much as graffiti has found acceptance, it has been vilified a hundred times more. Writers are now being charged with felonies and given lengthy jail terms -- a 15-year-old in California was recently sentenced to eight years in a juvenile detention center. Writers have been given up to 1000 hours of community service and forced to undergo years of psychological counseling; their parents have been hit with civil suits. In California a graffiti writer's driver's license can be revoked for a year; high-school diplomas and transcripts can also be withheld until parents make restitution. In some cities property owners who fail to remove graffiti from their property are subject to fines and possible jail time. Last spring in St. Louis, Cincinnati, San Antonio and Sacramento, Calif., politicians proposed legislation to cane graffiti writers (four to 10 hits with a wooden paddle, administered by parents or by a bailiff in a public courtroom). Across the nation, legislation has been passed making it illegal to sell spray paint and wide-tipped markers to anyone under 18, and often the materials must be kept locked up in the stores. Several cities have tried to ban the sales altogether, license sellers of spray paint and require customers to give their name and address when purchasing paint. In New York some hardware-store owners will give a surveillance photo of anyone buying a large quantity of spray cans to the police. In Chicago people have been charged with possession of paint. In San Jose, Calif., undercover police officers ran a sting operation -- posing as filmmakers working on a graffiti documentary -- and arrested 31 writers.

Hidden cameras, motion detectors, laser removal, specially developed chemical coatings, night goggles, razor wire, guard dogs, a National Graffiti Information Network, graffiti hot lines, bounties paid to informers -- one estimate is that it costs $4 billion a year nationally to clean graffiti -- all in an effort to stop those who "visually laugh in the face of communities," as a Wall Street Journal editorial raged.

The popular perception is that since the late 1980s when New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority adopted a zero tolerance toward subway graffiti (the MTA either cleaned or destroyed more than 6,000 graffiti-covered subway cars, immediately pulling a train out of service if any graffiti appeared on it), graffiti culture had died in the place of its birth. According to many graffiti writers, however, the MTA, in its attempt to kill graffiti, only succeeded in bringing it out of the tunnels and train yards and making it angry. Or as Jeff Ferrell, a criminologist who has chronicled the Denver graffiti scene, theorizes, the authorities' crackdown moved graffiti writing from subculture to counterculture. The work on the trains no longer ran, so writers started hitting the streets. Out in the open they had to work faster and more often. The artistry started to matter less and less. Throw-ups, small cryptic tags done in marker and even the straightforward writing of a name became the dominant imagery. What mattered was quantity ("making noise"), whether the writer had heart, was true to the game, was "real." And the graffiti world started to attract more and more people who weren't looking for an alternative art canvas but simply wanted to be connected to an outlaw community, to a venerable street tradition that allowed the opportunity to advertise their defiance. "It's that I'm doing it that I get my rush, not by everyone seeing it," says JA. "Yeah, that's nice, but if that's all that's gonna motivate you to do it, you're gonna stop writing. That's what happened to a lot of writers." JD tells me: "We're just putting it in their faces; it's like 'Yo, you gotta put up with it.'"

Newspapers have now settled on the term "graffiti vandal" rather than "artist" or "writer." Graffiti writers casually refer to their work as doing destruction." In recent years graffiti has become more and more about beefs and wars, about "fucking up the MTA," "fucking up the city."

Writers started taking a jock attitude toward getting up frequently and tagging in hard-to-reach places, adopting a machismo toward going over other writers' work and defending their own ("If you can write, you can fight"). Whereas graffiti writing was once considered an alternative to the street, now it imports drugs, violence, weapons and theft from that world -- the romance of the criminal deviant rather than the artistic deviant. In New York today, one police source estimates there are approximately 100,000 people involved in a variety of types of graffiti writing. The police have caught writers as young as 8 and as old as 42. And there's a small group of hard-core writers who are getting older who either wrote when graffiti was in its prime or long for the days when it was, those who write out of compulsion, for each other and for the authorities who try to combat graffiti, writers who haven't found anything in their lives substantial or hype enough to replace graffiti writing.

The writers in their 20s come mostly from working-class families and have limited prospects and ambitions for the future. SET works in a drugstore and has taken lithium and Prozac for occasional depression; JD dropped out of high school and is unemployed, last working as a messenger, where he met JA. They spend their nights driving 80 miles an hour down city highways, balancing 40-ounce bottles of Old English 800 between their legs, smoking blunts and crack-laced cigarettes called coolies, always playing with the radio. They reminisce endlessly about the past, when graf was real, when graf ran on the trains, and they swap stories about who's doing what on the scene. The talk is a combo platter of Spicoli, homeboy, New Age jock and eighth grade: The dude is a fuckin' total turd. . . . I definitely would've gotten waxed. . . . It's like some bogus job. . . . I'm amped, I'm Audi, you buggin . . . You gotta be there fully, go all out, focus. . . . Dudes have bitten off SET, he's got toys jockin' him. . . .

They carry beepers, sometimes guns, go upstate or to Long Island to "prey on the hicks" and to rack cans of spray paint. They talk about upcoming court cases and probation, about quitting, getting their lives together, even as they plan new spots to hit, practice their style by writing on the walls of their apartments, on boxes of food, on any stray piece of paper (younger writers practice on school notebooks that teachers have been known to confiscate and turn over to the police). They call graffiti a "social tool" and "some kind of ill form of communication," refer to every writer no matter his age as "kid." Talk in the graffiti life vacillates between banality and mythology, much like the activity itself: hours of drudgery, hanging out, waiting, interrupted by brief episodes of exhilaration. JD, echoing a common refrain, says, "Graffiti writers are like bitches: a lot of lying, a lot of talking, a lot of gossip." They don't like tagging with girls ("cuties," or if they use drugs, "zooties") around because all they say is (in a whiny voice), You're crazy. . . . Write my name."

WHEN JA TALKS ABOUT GRAFFITI, HE'S reluctant to offer up any of the media-ready cliches about the culture (and he knows most of them). He's more inclined to say, "Fuck the graffiti world," and scoff at graf shops, videos, conventions and 'zines. But he can be sentimental about how he began -- riding the No. 1, 2 and 3 trains when he was young, bugging out on the graffiti-covered cars, asking himself, "How did they do that? Who are they?" And he'll respectfully invoke the names of long-gone writers he admired when he was just starting out: SKEME, ZEPHYR, REVOLT, MIN.

JA, typical of the new school, primarily bombs, covering wide areas with throw-ups. He treats graffiti less as an art form than as an athletic competition, concentrating on getting his tag in difficult-to-reach places, focusing on quantity and working in defiance of an aesthetic that demands that public property be kept clean. (Writers almost exclusively hit public or commercial property.)

And when JA is not being cynical, he can talk for hours about the technique, the plotting, the logistics of the game like "motion bombing" by clockwork a carefully scoped subway train that he knows has to stop for a set time, at a set place, when it gets a certain signal in the tunnels. He says, "To me, the challenge that graffiti poses, there's something very invigorating and freeing about it, something almost spiritual. There's a kind of euphoria, more than any kind of drug or sex can give you, give me . . . for real."

JA says he wants to quit, and he talks about doing it as if he were in a 12-step program. "How a person in recovery takes it one day a time, that's how I gotta take it," he says. You get burnt out. There's pretty much nothing more the city can throw at me; it's all been done." But then he'll hear about a yard full of clean sanitation trucks, the upcoming Puerto Rican Day Parade (a reason to bomb Fifth Avenue) or a billboard in an isolated area; or it'll be 3 a.m., he'll be stoned, driving around or sitting in the living room, playing NBA Jam, and someone will say it: "Yo, I got a couple of cans in the trunk. . . ." REAS, an old-school writer of 12 years who, after a struggle and a number of relapses, eventually quit the life, says, "Graffiti can become like a hole you're stuck in; it can just keep on going and going, there's always another spot to write on."

SAST is in his late 20s and calls himself semiretired after 13 years in the graf scene. He still carries around a marker with him wherever he goes and cops little STONE tags (when he's high, he writes, STONED). He's driving JA and me around the city one night, showing me different objects they've tagged, returning again and again to drug spots to buy dust and crack, smoking, with the radio blasting; he's telling war stories about JA jumping onto moving trains, JA hanging off the outside of a speeding four-wheel drive. SAST is driving at top speed, cutting in between cars, tailgating, swerving. A number of times as we're racing down the highway, I ask him if he could slow down. He smiles, asks if I'm scared, tells me not to worry, that he's a more cautious driver when he's dusted. At one point on the FDR, a car cuts in front of us. JA decides to have some fun.

"Yo, he burnt you, SAST," JA says. We start to pick up speed. Yo, SAST, he dissed you, he cold dissed you, SAST." SAST is buying it, the look on his face becoming more determined as we go 70, 80, 90 miles an hour, hugging the divider, flying between cars. I turn to JA, who's in the back seat, and I try to get him to stop. JA ignores me, sitting back perfectly relaxed, smiling, urging SAST to go faster and faster, getting off, my fear adding to his rush.

At around 4 a.m., SAST drops us off on the middle of the Manhattan Bridge and leaves. JA wants to show me a throw-up he did the week before. We climb over the divider from the roadway to the subway tracks. JA explains that we have to cross the north and the southbound tracks to get to the outer part of the bridge. In between there are a number of large gaps and two electrified third rails, and we're 135 feet above the East River. As we're standing on the tracks, we hear the sound of an oncoming train. JA tells me to hide, to crouch down in the V where two diagonal braces meet just beside the tracks.

I climb into position, holding on to the metal beams, head down, looking at the water as the train slams by the side of my body. This happens twice more. Eventually, I cross over to the outer edge of the bridge, which is under construction, and JA points out his tag about 40 feet above on what looks like a crow's-nest on a support pillar. After a few moments of admiring the view, stepping carefully around the many opportunities to fall, JA hands me his cigarettes and keys. He starts crawling up one of the braces on the side of the bridge, disappears within the structure for a moment, emerges and makes his way to an electrical box on a pillar. Then he snakes his way up the piping and grabs on to a curved support. Using only his hands he starts to shimmy up; at one point he's hanging almost completely upside down. If he falls now, he'll land backward onto one of the tiers and drop into the river below. He continues to pull himself up, the old paint breaking off in his hands, and finally he flips his body over a railing to get to the spot where he tagged. He doesn't have a can or a marker with him, and at this point graffiti seems incidental. He comes down and tells me that when he did the original tag he was with two writers; one he half carried up, the other stopped at a certain point and later told JA that watching him do that tag made him appreciate life, being alive.

We walk for 10 minutes along a narrow, grooved catwalk on the side of the tracks; a thin wire cable prevents a fall into the river. A few times, looking down through the grooves, I have to stop, force myself to take the next step straight ahead, shake off the vertigo. JA is practically jogging ahead of me. We exit the bridge into Chinatown as the sun comes up and go to eat breakfast. JA tells me he's a vegetarian.

IF YOU TALK TO SERIOUS GRAFFITI writers, most of them will echo the same themes; they decry the commercialization of graf, condemn the toys and poseurs and alternately hate and feel attached to the authorities who try to stop them. They say with equal parts bravado and self-deprecation that a graffiti writer is a bum, a criminal, a vandal, slick, sick, obsessed, sneaky, street-smart, living on edges figurative and literal. They show and catalog cuts and scars on their bodies from razor wire, pieces of metal, knives, box cutters. I once casually asked a writer named GHOST if he knew another writer whose work I had seen in a graf'zine. "Yeah, I know him, he stabbed me," GHOST replies matter-of-factly. "We've still got beef." SET tells me he was caught by two DTs (detectives) who assaulted him, took his cans of paint and sprayed his body and face. JA tells similar stories of police beatings for his making officers run after him, of cops making him empty his spray cans on his sneakers or on the back of a fellow writer's jacket. JD has had 48 stitches in his back and 18 in his head over "graffiti-related beef." JA's best friend and writing partner, SANE SMITH, a legendary all-city writer who was sued by the city and the MTA for graffiti, was found dead, floating in Jamaica Bay. There's endless speculation in the grafworld as to whether he was pushed, fell or jumped off a bridge. SANE is so respected, there are some writers today who spend time in public libraries reading and rereading the newspaper microfilm about his death, his arrests, his career. According to JA, after SANE's death, his brother, SMiTH, also a respected graffiti artist, found a piece of paper on which SANE had written his and JA's tag and off to the side, FLYING HIGH THE XTC WAY. It now hangs on JA's apartment wall.

One morning, JA and I jump off the end of a subway platform and head into the tunnels. He shows me hidden rooms, emergency hatches that open to the sidewalk, where to stand when the trains come by. He tells me about the time SANE lay face down in a shallow drainage ditch on the tracks as an express train ran inches above him. JA says anytime he was being chased by the police he would run into a nearby subway station, jump off the platform and run into the tunnels. The police would never follow. KET, a veteran graffiti writer, tells me how in the tunnels he would accidentally step on homeless people sleeping. They'd see him tagging and would occasionally ask that he "throw them up," write their names on the wall. He usually would. Walking in the darkness between the electrified rails as trains race by, JA tells me the story of two writers he had beef with who came into the tunnels to cross out his tags. Where the cross-outs stop is where they were killed by an approaching train.

The last time I go out with JA, SET and JD, they pick me up at around 2 am. We drive down to the Lower East Side to hit a yard where about 60 trucks and vans are parked next to one another. Every vehicle is already covered with throw-ups and tags, but the three start to write anyway, JA in a near frenzy. They're running in between the rows, crawling under trucks, jumping from roof to roof, wedged down in between the trailers, engulfed in nauseating clouds of paint fumes (the writers sometimes blow multicolored mucous out of their noses), going over some writers' tags, respecting others, JA throwing up SANE's name, searching for any little piece of clean space to write on. JA, who had once again been talking about retirement, is now hungry to write and wants to hit another spot. But JD doesn't have any paint, SET needs gas money for his car, and they have to drive upstate the next morning to appear in court for a paint-theft charge.

During the ride back uptown the car is mostly quiet, the mood depressed. And even when the three were in the truck yard, even when JA was at his most intense, it seemed closer to work, routine, habit. There are moments like this when they seem genuinely worn out by the constant stress, the danger, the legal problems, the drugging, the fighting, the obligation to always hit another spot. And it's usually when the day is starting.

About a week later I get a call from another writer whom JA had told I was writing an article on graffiti. He tells me he has never been king, never gone all city, but now he is making a comeback, coming out of retirement with a new tag. He says he could do it easily today because there is no real competition. He says he was thinking about trying to make some money off of graffiti -- galleries. canvases, whatever . . . to get paid.

"I gotta do something," the writer says. "I can't rap, I can't dance, I got this silly little job." We talk more, and he tells me he appreciates that I'm writing about writers, trying to get inside the head of a vandal, telling the real deal. He also tells me that graffiti is dying, that the city is buffing it, that new writers are all toys and are letting it die, but it's still worth it to write.

I ask why, and then comes the inevitable justification that every writer has to believe and take pleasure in, the idea that order will always have to play catch-up with them. "It takes me seconds to do a quick throw-up; it takes them like 10 minutes to clean it," he says. "Who's coming out on top?"

[xactofvengeancex-blog]

ROLLING STONE - FEB 9, 1995

THE FIRST TIME I meet JA, he skates up to me wearing Rollerblades, his cap played backward, on a street corner in Manhattan at around midnight. He's white, 24 years old, with a short, muscular build and a blond crew cut. He has been writing graffiti off and on in New York for almost 10 years and is the founder of a loosely affiliated crew called XTC. His hands, arms, legs and scalp show a variety of scars from nightsticks, razor wire, fists and sharp, jagged things he has climbed up, on or over. He has been beaten by the police -- a "wood shampoo," he calls it -- has been shot at, has fallen off a highway sign into moving traffic, has run naked through train yards tagging, has been chased down highways by rival writers wielding golf clubs and has risked his life innumerable times writing graffiti -- bombing, getting up.

JA lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment. There's graffiti on a wall-length mirror, a weight bench, a Lava lamp to bug out on, cans of paint stacked in the corner, a large Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) sticker on the side of the refrigerator. The buzzer to his apartment lists a false name; his phone number is unlisted to avoid law-enforcement representatives as well as conflicts with other writers. While JA and one of his writing partners, JD, and I are discussing their apprehension about this story, JD, offering up a maxim from the graffiti life, tells me matter-of-factly, "You wouldn't fuck us over, we know where you live."

At JA's apartment we look through photos. There are hundreds of pictures of writers inside out-of-service subway cars that they've just covered completely with their tags, pictures of writers wearing orange safety vests -- to impersonate transit workers -- and walking subway tracks, pictures of detectives and transit workers inspecting graffiti that JA and crew put up the previous night, pictures of stylized JA 'throw-ups' large, bubble-lettered logos written 15 feet up and 50 times across a highway retaining wall. Picture after picture of JA's on trains, JA's on trucks, on store gates, bridges, rooftops, billboards -- all labeled, claimed and recorded on film.

JA comes from a well-to-do family; his parents are divorced; his father holds a high-profile position in the entertainment industry. JA is aware that in some people's minds this last fact calls into question his street legitimacy, and he has put a great deal of effort into resisting the correlation between privileged and soft. He estimates he has been arrested 15 times for various crimes. He doesn't have a job, and it's unclear how he supports himself. Every time we've been together, he's been high or going to get high. Once he called me from Rikers Island prison, where he was serving a couple of months for disorderly conduct and a probation violation. He said some of the inmates saw him tagging in a notebook and asked him to do tattoos for them.

It sounds right. Wherever he is, JA dominates his surroundings. With his crew, he picks the spots to hit, the stores to rack from; he controls the mission. He gives directions in the car, plans the activities, sets the mood. And he takes everything a step further than the people he's with. He climbs higher, stays awake longer, sucks deepest on the blunt, writes the most graffiti. And though he's respected by other writers for testing the limits -- he has been described to me by other writers as a king and, by way of compliment, as "the sickest guy I ever met" -- that same recklessness sometimes alienates him from the majority who don't have such a huge appetite for chaos, adrenaline, self-destruction.

When I ask a city detective who specializes in combating graffiti if there are any particularly well-known writers, he immediately mentions JA and adds with a bit of pride in his voice, "We know each other." He calls JA the "biggest graffiti writer of all time" (though the detective would prefer that I didn't mention that, because it'll only encourage JA). "He's probably got the most throw-ups in the city, in the country, in the world," the detective says. "If the average big-time graffiti vandal has 10,000 tags, JA's got 100,000. He's probably done -- in New York City alone -- at least $5 million worth of damage."

AT ABOUT 3 A.M., JA AND TWO OTHER WRITERS go out to hit a billboard off the West Side Highway in Harlem. Tonight there are SET, a 21-year-old white writer from Queens, N.Y., and JD, a black Latino writer the same age, also from Queens. They load their backpacks with racked cans of Rustoleum, fat cap nozzles, heavy 2-foot industrial bolt cutters and surgical gloves. We pile into a car and start driving, Schooly D blasting on the radio. First a stop at a deli where JA and SET go in and steal beer. Then we drive around Harlem trying a number of different dope spots, keeping an eye out for "berries" -- police cars. JA tosses a finished 40-ounce out the window in a high arc, and it smashes on the street.

At different points, JA gets out of the car and casually walks the streets and into buildings, looking for dealers. A good part of the graffiti life involves walking anywhere in the city, at any time, and not being afraid -- or being afraid and doing it anyway.

We arrive at a spot where JA has tagged the dealer's name on a wall in his territory. The three writers buy a vial of crack and a vial of angel dust and combine them ("spacebase") in a hollowed-out Phillies blunt. JD tells me that "certain drugs will enhance your bombing," citing dust for courage and strength ("bionics"). They've also bombed on mescaline, Valium, marijuana, crack and malt liquor. SET tells a story of climbing highway poles with a spray can at 6 a.m., "all Xanaxed out."

While JD is preparing the blunt, JA walks across the street with a spray can and throws up all three of their tags in 4-foot-high bubbled, connected letters. In the corner, he writes my name.

We then drive to a waterfront area at the edge of the city -- a deserted site with warehouses, railroad tracks and patches of urban wilderness dotted with high-rise billboards. All three writers are now high, and we sit on a curb outside the car smoking cigarettes. From a distance we can see a group of men milling around a parked car near a loading dock that we have to pass. This provokes 30 minutes of obsessive speculation, a stoned stakeout with play by play:

"Dude, they're writers," says SET. "Let's go down and check them out," says JD. "Wait, let's see what they write," says JA. "Yo -- they're going into the trunk," says SET. "Cans, dude, they're going for their cans. Dude, they're writers. "There could be beef, possible beef," says JA. "Can we confirm cans, do we see cans?" SET wants to know. Yes, they do have cans," SET answers for himself. "There are cans. They are writers." It turns out that the men are thieves, part of a group robbing a nearby truck. In a few moments guards appear with flashlights and at least one drawn gun. The thieves scatter as guard dogs fan out around the area, barking crazily.

We wait this out a bit until JA announces, "It's on." Hood pulled up on his head, he leads us creeping through the woods (which for JA has become the cinematic jungles of Nam). It's stop and go, JA crawling on his stomach, unnecessarily close to one of the guards who's searching nearby. We pass through graffiti-covered tunnels (with the requisite cinematic drip drip), over crumbling stairs overgrown with weeds and brush, along dark, heavily littered trails used by crackheads.

We get near the billboard, and JA uses the bolt cutters to cut holes in two chain-link fences. We crawl through and walk along the railroad tracks until we get to the base of the sign. JA, with his backpack on, climbs about 40 feet on a thin piece of metal pipe attached to the main pillar. JD, after a few failed attempts, follows with the bolt cutters shoved down his pants and passes them to JA. Hanging in midair, his legs wrapped around a small piece of ladder, JA cuts the padlock and opens up the hatch to the catwalk. He then lowers his arm to JD, who is wrapped around the pole just below him, struggling. "J, give me your hand, "I'll pull you up," JA tells him. JD hesitates. He is reluctant to let go and continues treadmilling on the pole, trying to make it up. JD, give me your hand." JD doesn't want to refuse, but he's uncomfortable entrusting his life to JA. He won't let go of the pole. JA says it again, firmly, calmly, utterly confident: "J give me your hand." JD's arm reaches up, and JA pulls JD up onto the catwalk. Next, SET, the frailest of the three, follows unsteadily. They've called down and offered to put up his tag, but he insists on going up. "Dude, fuck that, I'm down," he says. I look away while he makes his way up, sure that he's going to fall (he almost does twice). The three have developed a set pattern for dividing the labor when they're "blowing up," one writer outlining, another working behind him, filling in. For 40 minutes I watch them working furiously, throwing shadows as they cover ads for Parliament and Amtrak with large multicolored throw-ups SET and JD bickering about space, JA scolding them, tossing down empty cans.

They risk their lives again climbing down. Parts of their faces are covered in paint, and their eyes beam as all three stare at the billboard, asking, "Isn't it beautiful?' And there is something intoxicating about seeing such an inaccessible, clean object gotten to and made gaudy. We get in the car and drive the West Side Highway northbound and then southbound so they can critique their work. "Damn, I should've used the white," JD says.

The next day both billboards are newly re-covered, all the graffiti gone. JA tells me the three went back earlier to get pictures and made small talk with the workers who were cleaning it off.

GRAFFITI HAS BEEN THROUGH A NUMBER OF incarnations since it surfaced in New York in the early 70s with a Greek teen-ager named Taki 183. It developed from the straightforward writing of a name to highly stylized, seemingly illegible tags (a kind of penmanship slang) to wild-style throw-ups and elaborate (master) "pieces" and character art. There has been racist graffiti political writing, drug advertising, gang graffiti. There is an art-graf scene from which Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiac, LEE, Futura 2000, Lady Pink and others emerged; aerosol advertising; techno graffiti written into computer programs; anti-billboard graffiti; stickers; and stencil writing. There are art students doing street work in San Francisco ("nonpermissional public art"); mural work in underground tunnels in New York; gallery shows from Colorado to New Jersey; all-day Graffiti-a-Thons; and there are graffiti artists lecturing art classes at universities. Graffiti has become part of urban culture, hip-hop culture and commercial culture, has spread to the suburbs and can be found in the backwoods of California's national forests. There are graffiti magazines, graffiti stores, commissioned walls, walls of fame and a video series available (Out to bomb) documenting writers going out on graffiti missions, complete with soundtrack. Graffiti was celebrated as a metaphor in the 70s (Norman Mailer's "The Faith of Graffiti"); it went Hollywood in the '80s (Beat Street, Turk 182!, Wild Style); and in the '90s it has been increasingly used to memorialize the inner-city dead.

But as much as graffiti has found acceptance, it has been vilified a hundred times more. Writers are now being charged with felonies and given lengthy jail terms -- a 15-year-old in California was recently sentenced to eight years in a juvenile detention center. Writers have been given up to 1000 hours of community service and forced to undergo years of psychological counseling; their parents have been hit with civil suits. In California a graffiti writer's driver's license can be revoked for a year; high-school diplomas and transcripts can also be withheld until parents make restitution. In some cities property owners who fail to remove graffiti from their property are subject to fines and possible jail time. Last spring in St. Louis, Cincinnati, San Antonio and Sacramento, Calif., politicians proposed legislation to cane graffiti writers (four to 10 hits with a wooden paddle, administered by parents or by a bailiff in a public courtroom). Across the nation, legislation has been passed making it illegal to sell spray paint and wide-tipped markers to anyone under 18, and often the materials must be kept locked up in the stores. Several cities have tried to ban the sales altogether, license sellers of spray paint and require customers to give their name and address when purchasing paint. In New York some hardware-store owners will give a surveillance photo of anyone buying a large quantity of spray cans to the police. In Chicago people have been charged with possession of paint. In San Jose, Calif., undercover police officers ran a sting operation -- posing as filmmakers working on a graffiti documentary -- and arrested 31 writers.

Hidden cameras, motion detectors, laser removal, specially developed chemical coatings, night goggles, razor wire, guard dogs, a National Graffiti Information Network, graffiti hot lines, bounties paid to informers -- one estimate is that it costs $4 billion a year nationally to clean graffiti -- all in an effort to stop those who "visually laugh in the face of communities," as a Wall Street Journal editorial raged.

The popular perception is that since the late 1980s when New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority adopted a zero tolerance toward subway graffiti (the MTA either cleaned or destroyed more than 6,000 graffiti-covered subway cars, immediately pulling a train out of service if any graffiti appeared on it), graffiti culture had died in the place of its birth. According to many graffiti writers, however, the MTA, in its attempt to kill graffiti, only succeeded in bringing it out of the tunnels and train yards and making it angry. Or as Jeff Ferrell, a criminologist who has chronicled the Denver graffiti scene, theorizes, the authorities' crackdown moved graffiti writing from subculture to counterculture. The work on the trains no longer ran, so writers started hitting the streets. Out in the open they had to work faster and more often. The artistry started to matter less and less. Throw-ups, small cryptic tags done in marker and even the straightforward writing of a name became the dominant imagery. What mattered was quantity ("making noise"), whether the writer had heart, was true to the game, was "real." And the graffiti world started to attract more and more people who weren't looking for an alternative art canvas but simply wanted to be connected to an outlaw community, to a venerable street tradition that allowed the opportunity to advertise their defiance. "It's that I'm doing it that I get my rush, not by everyone seeing it," says JA. "Yeah, that's nice, but if that's all that's gonna motivate you to do it, you're gonna stop writing. That's what happened to a lot of writers." JD tells me: "We're just putting it in their faces; it's like 'Yo, you gotta put up with it.'"

Newspapers have now settled on the term "graffiti vandal" rather than "artist" or "writer." Graffiti writers casually refer to their work as doing destruction." In recent years graffiti has become more and more about beefs and wars, about "fucking up the MTA," "fucking up the city."

Writers started taking a jock attitude toward getting up frequently and tagging in hard-to-reach places, adopting a machismo toward going over other writers' work and defending their own ("If you can write, you can fight"). Whereas graffiti writing was once considered an alternative to the street, now it imports drugs, violence, weapons and theft from that world -- the romance of the criminal deviant rather than the artistic deviant. In New York today, one police source estimates there are approximately 100,000 people involved in a variety of types of graffiti writing. The police have caught writers as young as 8 and as old as 42. And there's a small group of hard-core writers who are getting older who either wrote when graffiti was in its prime or long for the days when it was, those who write out of compulsion, for each other and for the authorities who try to combat graffiti, writers who haven't found anything in their lives substantial or hype enough to replace graffiti writing.

The writers in their 20s come mostly from working-class families and have limited prospects and ambitions for the future. SET works in a drugstore and has taken lithium and Prozac for occasional depression; JD dropped out of high school and is unemployed, last working as a messenger, where he met JA. They spend their nights driving 80 miles an hour down city highways, balancing 40-ounce bottles of Old English 800 between their legs, smoking blunts and crack-laced cigarettes called coolies, always playing with the radio. They reminisce endlessly about the past, when graf was real, when graf ran on the trains, and they swap stories about who's doing what on the scene. The talk is a combo platter of Spicoli, homeboy, New Age jock and eighth grade: The dude is a fuckin' total turd. . . . I definitely would've gotten waxed. . . . It's like some bogus job. . . . I'm amped, I'm Audi, you buggin . . . You gotta be there fully, go all out, focus. . . . Dudes have bitten off SET, he's got toys jockin' him. . . .

They carry beepers, sometimes guns, go upstate or to Long Island to "prey on the hicks" and to rack cans of spray paint. They talk about upcoming court cases and probation, about quitting, getting their lives together, even as they plan new spots to hit, practice their style by writing on the walls of their apartments, on boxes of food, on any stray piece of paper (younger writers practice on school notebooks that teachers have been known to confiscate and turn over to the police). They call graffiti a "social tool" and "some kind of ill form of communication," refer to every writer no matter his age as "kid." Talk in the graffiti life vacillates between banality and mythology, much like the activity itself: hours of drudgery, hanging out, waiting, interrupted by brief episodes of exhilaration. JD, echoing a common refrain, says, "Graffiti writers are like bitches: a lot of lying, a lot of talking, a lot of gossip." They don't like tagging with girls ("cuties," or if they use drugs, "zooties") around because all they say is (in a whiny voice), You're crazy. . . . Write my name."

WHEN JA TALKS ABOUT GRAFFITI, HE'S reluctant to offer up any of the media-ready cliches about the culture (and he knows most of them). He's more inclined to say, "Fuck the graffiti world," and scoff at graf shops, videos, conventions and 'zines. But he can be sentimental about how he began -- riding the No. 1, 2 and 3 trains when he was young, bugging out on the graffiti-covered cars, asking himself, "How did they do that? Who are they?" And he'll respectfully invoke the names of long-gone writers he admired when he was just starting out: SKEME, ZEPHYR, REVOLT, MIN.

JA, typical of the new school, primarily bombs, covering wide areas with throw-ups. He treats graffiti less as an art form than as an athletic competition, concentrating on getting his tag in difficult-to-reach places, focusing on quantity and working in defiance of an aesthetic that demands that public property be kept clean. (Writers almost exclusively hit public or commercial property.)

And when JA is not being cynical, he can talk for hours about the technique, the plotting, the logistics of the game like "motion bombing" by clockwork a carefully scoped subway train that he knows has to stop for a set time, at a set place, when it gets a certain signal in the tunnels. He says, "To me, the challenge that graffiti poses, there's something very invigorating and freeing about it, something almost spiritual. There's a kind of euphoria, more than any kind of drug or sex can give you, give me . . . for real."

JA says he wants to quit, and he talks about doing it as if he were in a 12-step program. "How a person in recovery takes it one day a time, that's how I gotta take it," he says. You get burnt out. There's pretty much nothing more the city can throw at me; it's all been done." But then he'll hear about a yard full of clean sanitation trucks, the upcoming Puerto Rican Day Parade (a reason to bomb Fifth Avenue) or a billboard in an isolated area; or it'll be 3 a.m., he'll be stoned, driving around or sitting in the living room, playing NBA Jam, and someone will say it: "Yo, I got a couple of cans in the trunk. . . ." REAS, an old-school writer of 12 years who, after a struggle and a number of relapses, eventually quit the life, says, "Graffiti can become like a hole you're stuck in; it can just keep on going and going, there's always another spot to write on."

SAST is in his late 20s and calls himself semiretired after 13 years in the graf scene. He still carries around a marker with him wherever he goes and cops little STONE tags (when he's high, he writes, STONED). He's driving JA and me around the city one night, showing me different objects they've tagged, returning again and again to drug spots to buy dust and crack, smoking, with the radio blasting; he's telling war stories about JA jumping onto moving trains, JA hanging off the outside of a speeding four-wheel drive. SAST is driving at top speed, cutting in between cars, tailgating, swerving. A number of times as we're racing down the highway, I ask him if he could slow down. He smiles, asks if I'm scared, tells me not to worry, that he's a more cautious driver when he's dusted. At one point on the FDR, a car cuts in front of us. JA decides to have some fun.

"Yo, he burnt you, SAST," JA says. We start to pick up speed. Yo, SAST, he dissed you, he cold dissed you, SAST." SAST is buying it, the look on his face becoming more determined as we go 70, 80, 90 miles an hour, hugging the divider, flying between cars. I turn to JA, who's in the back seat, and I try to get him to stop. JA ignores me, sitting back perfectly relaxed, smiling, urging SAST to go faster and faster, getting off, my fear adding to his rush.

At around 4 a.m., SAST drops us off on the middle of the Manhattan Bridge and leaves. JA wants to show me a throw-up he did the week before. We climb over the divider from the roadway to the subway tracks. JA explains that we have to cross the north and the southbound tracks to get to the outer part of the bridge. In between there are a number of large gaps and two electrified third rails, and we're 135 feet above the East River. As we're standing on the tracks, we hear the sound of an oncoming train. JA tells me to hide, to crouch down in the V where two diagonal braces meet just beside the tracks.

I climb into position, holding on to the metal beams, head down, looking at the water as the train slams by the side of my body. This happens twice more. Eventually, I cross over to the outer edge of the bridge, which is under construction, and JA points out his tag about 40 feet above on what looks like a crow's-nest on a support pillar. After a few moments of admiring the view, stepping carefully around the many opportunities to fall, JA hands me his cigarettes and keys. He starts crawling up one of the braces on the side of the bridge, disappears within the structure for a moment, emerges and makes his way to an electrical box on a pillar. Then he snakes his way up the piping and grabs on to a curved support. Using only his hands he starts to shimmy up; at one point he's hanging almost completely upside down. If he falls now, he'll land backward onto one of the tiers and drop into the river below. He continues to pull himself up, the old paint breaking off in his hands, and finally he flips his body over a railing to get to the spot where he tagged. He doesn't have a can or a marker with him, and at this point graffiti seems incidental. He comes down and tells me that when he did the original tag he was with two writers; one he half carried up, the other stopped at a certain point and later told JA that watching him do that tag made him appreciate life, being alive.

We walk for 10 minutes along a narrow, grooved catwalk on the side of the tracks; a thin wire cable prevents a fall into the river. A few times, looking down through the grooves, I have to stop, force myself to take the next step straight ahead, shake off the vertigo. JA is practically jogging ahead of me. We exit the bridge into Chinatown as the sun comes up and go to eat breakfast. JA tells me he's a vegetarian.

IF YOU TALK TO SERIOUS GRAFFITI writers, most of them will echo the same themes; they decry the commercialization of graf, condemn the toys and poseurs and alternately hate and feel attached to the authorities who try to stop them. They say with equal parts bravado and self-deprecation that a graffiti writer is a bum, a criminal, a vandal, slick, sick, obsessed, sneaky, street-smart, living on edges figurative and literal. They show and catalog cuts and scars on their bodies from razor wire, pieces of metal, knives, box cutters. I once casually asked a writer named GHOST if he knew another writer whose work I had seen in a graf'zine. "Yeah, I know him, he stabbed me," GHOST replies matter-of-factly. "We've still got beef." SET tells me he was caught by two DTs (detectives) who assaulted him, took his cans of paint and sprayed his body and face. JA tells similar stories of police beatings for his making officers run after him, of cops making him empty his spray cans on his sneakers or on the back of a fellow writer's jacket. JD has had 48 stitches in his back and 18 in his head over "graffiti-related beef." JA's best friend and writing partner, SANE SMITH, a legendary all-city writer who was sued by the city and the MTA for graffiti, was found dead, floating in Jamaica Bay. There's endless speculation in the grafworld as to whether he was pushed, fell or jumped off a bridge. SANE is so respected, there are some writers today who spend time in public libraries reading and rereading the newspaper microfilm about his death, his arrests, his career. According to JA, after SANE's death, his brother, SMiTH, also a respected graffiti artist, found a piece of paper on which SANE had written his and JA's tag and off to the side, FLYING HIGH THE XTC WAY. It now hangs on JA's apartment wall.

One morning, JA and I jump off the end of a subway platform and head into the tunnels. He shows me hidden rooms, emergency hatches that open to the sidewalk, where to stand when the trains come by. He tells me about the time SANE lay face down in a shallow drainage ditch on the tracks as an express train ran inches above him. JA says anytime he was being chased by the police he would run into a nearby subway station, jump off the platform and run into the tunnels. The police would never follow. KET, a veteran graffiti writer, tells me how in the tunnels he would accidentally step on homeless people sleeping. They'd see him tagging and would occasionally ask that he "throw them up," write their names on the wall. He usually would. Walking in the darkness between the electrified rails as trains race by, JA tells me the story of two writers he had beef with who came into the tunnels to cross out his tags. Where the cross-outs stop is where they were killed by an approaching train.

The last time I go out with JA, SET and JD, they pick me up at around 2 am. We drive down to the Lower East Side to hit a yard where about 60 trucks and vans are parked next to one another. Every vehicle is already covered with throw-ups and tags, but the three start to write anyway, JA in a near frenzy. They're running in between the rows, crawling under trucks, jumping from roof to roof, wedged down in between the trailers, engulfed in nauseating clouds of paint fumes (the writers sometimes blow multicolored mucous out of their noses), going over some writers' tags, respecting others, JA throwing up SANE's name, searching for any little piece of clean space to write on. JA, who had once again been talking about retirement, is now hungry to write and wants to hit another spot. But JD doesn't have any paint, SET needs gas money for his car, and they have to drive upstate the next morning to appear in court for a paint-theft charge.

During the ride back uptown the car is mostly quiet, the mood depressed. And even when the three were in the truck yard, even when JA was at his most intense, it seemed closer to work, routine, habit. There are moments like this when they seem genuinely worn out by the constant stress, the danger, the legal problems, the drugging, the fighting, the obligation to always hit another spot. And it's usually when the day is starting.

About a week later I get a call from another writer whom JA had told I was writing an article on graffiti. He tells me he has never been king, never gone all city, but now he is making a comeback, coming out of retirement with a new tag. He says he could do it easily today because there is no real competition. He says he was thinking about trying to make some money off of graffiti -- galleries. canvases, whatever . . . to get paid.

"I gotta do something," the writer says. "I can't rap, I can't dance, I got this silly little job." We talk more, and he tells me he appreciates that I'm writing about writers, trying to get inside the head of a vandal, telling the real deal. He also tells me that graffiti is dying, that the city is buffing it, that new writers are all toys and are letting it die, but it's still worth it to write.

I ask why, and then comes the inevitable justification that every writer has to believe and take pleasure in, the idea that order will always have to play catch-up with them. "It takes me seconds to do a quick throw-up; it takes them like 10 minutes to clean it," he says. "Who's coming out on top?"

KEVIN HELDMAN lives in New York. This is his first piece for "Rolling Stone."