#like goddamn i feel like i need to be a contractor putting in an order for 100 of them to buy from them its Weird

[toytulini]

thinking about masks again and i really should jist bite the bullet and buy some god damn reusable respirators to have. like 1 or 2. i have a couple particular ones in mind but. just. ugh. the logistics

[destiel-love-forever]

What a Jerk

It’s Valentine’s Day. For Castiel & Dean, that means war. 

Read below or on AO3: HERE

"What a jerk," Castiel grumbles, closing the door as the delivery man leaves.

"Who?" Benny asks from his spot on the couch a few feet away. He turns to look at Castiel, more words about to come out. Then he sees the giant bouquet of flowers in Castiel's hands and grins. "Oh. Dean."

"Stop smiling. He's an asshole." Castiel storms off to the kitchen. Since his penthouse apartment is an open-floor plan, though, he doesn't escape Benny. He just gets his bitch face from a new angle.

"Yes," Benny says sarcastically. "What an asshole for buying you flowers."

Castiel huffs as he searches for a stupid vase for the stupid flowers. "I told him not to do this."

"Yeah, bad idea. Telling Dean not to do something is pretty much the equivalent of challenging him to a duel."

There's a dusty vase beneath the sink. Castiel takes it out and fills it with water, not bothering to clean it first. When it's filled enough for the flowers to survive - because Castiel isn't a monster, he's not going to purposely kill beautiful flowers - he stuffs the bouquet into the vase.

"There." He sets the vase on his kitchen island and breathes a sigh of relief. "At least it's over now. Right?"

Benny snorts. "Dude, it's 8 AM. There's no way that's all he has planned for the day."

"You work for me, ya know," Castiel says in a voice that's supposed to be threatening but isn't. "You have to take my side."

"I'm your bodyguard. I keep you safe from bullets and kidnappers. Not overbearing lovers."

Castiel sighs in frustration. He pulls out his phone and very aggressively types in Dean Winchester's number.

Dean answers almost instantly. Clearly, he had been waiting for this call.

"Hey, C-"

"This stupid romantic nonsense is a waste of money and I swear Dean Winchester if you get me any more presents today I'm going to break up with your stupid ass!"

"So you got the flowers," Dean says with a smile in his voice. "Good. You should get ready for work, my love. Don't want to be late."

"Don't ignore me, Dean! You promised. You promised not to do this!"

"No. You ordered me not to do this. I never agreed."

"Dean-"

"Have a nice day, babe. I'm sure I'll be hearing from you soon."

"Dean!"

"Oh, and Cas?"

Castiel grits his teeth, fuming. "What?"

"Happy Valentine's Day."

Castiel growls - yes, growls - and hangs up. He throws his hands in the air and turns to Benny. "What a jerk!"

----

When Castiel stops at his favorite coffee shop for his usual morning Americano with cinnamon, the barista already has his order ready. It has a message written on it in Dean's hand writing, black sharpie scrawling its way across the disposable cup.

You are so brew tiful. I love you like I love my coffee - inside me (;

Castiel rolls his eyes. "What a jerk."

"Sorry?" the barista says in confusion.

"He's a jerk." Castiel grabs a disposable cup from the stack beside the register. He pops the top off the one Dean wrote on and pours his coffee into the fresh, non-Valentine cup. Then he tosses the graffitied cup and nods at the barista. "Have a good one."

"Uh… yeah." The barista watches him go, looking crestfallen. Clearly she had found it romantic. Disgusting. "You too."

----

Another bouquet of flowers is waiting for Castiel when he enters his private office. He glares at it from the doorway for a long moment before huffing in annoyance, going over and grabbing the damn thing. Still dressed in his trench coat, still with his briefcase in his left hand, Castiel walks down to the bull-pen and lifts the vase in the air.

"Who fucked up today and needs a Valentine's Day present for their significant other?" he yells, his anger making most of his employees shiver or tense up.

It takes a second but then a woman in the back tentatively raises her hand. Charlie. She's dating Dorothy from accounting. They're a cute couple.

"They're yours," he announces, thrusting them out in the air to silently tell her to come get them.

Blushing, she makes her way to Castiel. She mumbles something about not forgetting but running out of time this morning. Castiel couldn't care less whether Charlie forgot or not. He just doesn't want to stare at the damn flowers all day.

Once they're out of his hands, Castiel waves a hand in the air and says, "As you were."

Benny is smirking when Castiel gets back to his office.

"What's so funny?" Castiel asks in a voice that's supposed to be threatening but just makes Benny's lips lift higher. "What?"

"I'm assuming you didn't see the box of chocolates."

Castiel parts his lips, about to ask what Benny means, when he sees a heart-shaped box beside where the flowers had been. He deflates. Goes over to his chair. Slumps down. Sighs dramatically. Then he takes the box and reads the attached note.

Life was like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you're gonna get. - damn glad I got you, babe ♡

"What a jerk," Castiel growls at the box. He rips the lid off and snatches a piece of chocolate before pushing it toward Benny. "Stop fucking smiling and eat. And don't tell him I ate any of it. That asshole knows I can't resist chocolate so you have to lie."

"Sure thing boss," Benny says with a wink. "Sure thing."

----

"Are you Castiel?" a man dressed in a cupid costume asks.

Castiel shakes his head. "Nope."

Unfortunately, he's in the breakroom at work and his employees think this whole battle between Dean and him is hilarious. Balthazar says, "He's lying" at the same time Chuck says, "He's Castiel."

Castiel decides he's going to fire them both.

The cupid smirks and turns to Castiel. Castiel puts a hand up in protest. "Whatever it is, I don't want-"

"Lord Almighty,

I feel my temperature rising

Higher higher

It's burning through to my soul

Boy, boy, boy,

You gonna set me on fire

My brain is flaming

I don't know which way to go

Your kisses lift me higher

Like the sweet song of a choir

You light my morning sky

With burning love"

"Nope," Castiel mumbles under his breath, grabbing his lunch and heading out the door. "Nope, nope, nope."

The damn telegram follows him. Everyone in the office stares, their jaws dropped open as the goddamn CEO is followed around by a glittery man dressed as cupid singing an Elvis song. Castiel isn't even embarrassed. He's just pissed.

Castiel enters his office and shoots a glare at Benny who had conveniently been gone to the bathroom when this all went down but is now back at his rightful place by Castiel's side. "Make him leave."

"It's coming closer

The flames are now lickin' my body

Please won't you help me-"

"Why? He isn't a threat."

"He has a weapon!"

"It's a plastic bow, boss."

"And my chest is a-heaving

Lord Almighty

I'm burning a hole where I lay."

"I own this goddamn building and I'm telling you, head of my security, to kick him out!"

Benny gives him a wry smile. "I'll get right on it, boss. Highest priority."

"Cause your kisses lift me higher

Like the sweet song of a choir-"

"You're fired."

"Oh, well, in that case I suppose he'll get to stay."

"Ah, ah, burning love

I'm just a hunk, a hunk of burning love."

Castiel grabs his office phone and presses 7, gritting his teeth. With every ring that passes, his rage boils. He's a breath away from exploding.

"Singer's Auto, this is Dean."

Castiel slams a finger down on speaker phone and turns to glare at cupid as he finishes the damn song.

"Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love

Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love

Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love

Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love."

Finally, it's over. Cupid winks at him before leaving. Benny smirks. Dean - the jerk that he is - is laughing hysterically on the other line.

"I hate you," Castiel states very matter-of-factly.

"Oh come on!" Dean snorts a laugh. "It's Elvis! You love Elvis!"

"Not anymore! Congratulations, Winchester. You have officially ruined Elvis for me."

Dean laughs harder. "God, I love you babe."

"Gaaaah, no!" Castiel hangs up the call before Dean can use his mystical powers to sweet talk Castiel into forgiving him. It ain't happening.

Castiel bangs his forehead against his desk a few times before deflating against it. "What a jerk."

----

Castiel walks into the first jewelry store he comes across. He storms past all of the stupid Valentine's decorations and up to a young man in a sharp suit who is smiling far too wide if you ask Castiel's opinion. Castiel smacks the palm of his hand on the glass display in front of the man and growls, "I need a goddamn engagement ring."

----

A ring box heavy in his pocket, Castiel stands outside Dean's small two-bedroom house. The yellow paint is peeling back in places, revealing the blue beneath. They come from two completely different worlds. Dean, the eldest son who sacrificed everything he had to raise his baby brother, dropping out of high school, working two jobs, scraping his father off whatever bar floor or sidewalk he ended up on most nights. Castiel, the eldest son who had the world handed to him, private prep school, undergrad at an Ivy league, two master degrees, no student loan debt, a $100,000 no-strings gift from his father to start up his own company.

Dean lives in a house that was foreclosed and rotting on the inside. He’s owned it for three years now. The floors and roof have been replaced. The staircase rebuilt. The walls repainted. The kitchen remodeled. The bathroom gutted. All Dean’s doing since he couldn’t afford to hire contractors.

Castiel lives in a penthouse apartment in a building that’s only seven years old. He got to pick in a catalogue what model of every room he preferred. Professionals molded his home into exactly what he wanted it to be in two weeks, handing it to him furnished and beautiful.

Dean works 60 hour weeks at his uncle’s auto shop, always smelling of oil and sweat. He drinks Jack Daniels. Listens to classic rock. Wears stained jeans and cotton shirts so worn they have holes in the collars and become see-through in certain lighting.

Castiel works 80 hour weeks, but only 30 of them are spent in the office, the rest spent on his phone or at his home so he can lounge on his couch and peruse documents without worrying about employees bothering him. He’s currently working through a bottle of 1926 Macallan. He listens to classical music, as well as plays it himself on his own grand piano that overlooks the city. Wears tailored Brioni suits and silk ties to work, settling for Gucci denim pants and cashmere sweaters when he's casual.

They should have never even met. Castiel would never take his car to a low-grade dealership like Singers. Never. You just don’t do that. Castiel was sure they wouldn’t even know what to do with a custom built Tesla like his. Yet, there Castiel was, broken down outside of the city with a migraine the size of Texas and stubborn impatience that made waiting for the professionals from the dealership that would take 3 hours a choice he wasn’t willing to make. So, he typed in auto shops on google and picked the one nearest to him.

Singers Auto.

Dean had showed up all southern drawl and warm smiles. Flirted right past Castiel’s foul mood. Stroked the hood of his Tesla like it was a cherished pet. Spoke to Castiel confidently about his knowledge on the vehicle. He offered to tow it into the city for Castiel if Castiel wanted but assured Castiel that if he chose to let Dean bring it to Singer's Auto, Dean would be able to take care of it.

“Easy fix,” Dean had said. “In and out. Twenty minutes.”

Castiel had agreed. It was completely out of character but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted more time with the mechanic.

He left that day with a fixed car and Dean Winchester’s number.

They never once brought up the salary gap between them. Some nights they’d crash at Castiel’s. Some nights at Dean’s. They’d go to five-star restaurants and gorge on filet mignon and lobster. They’d go to McDonalds and demolish burgers and chocolate milkshakes. Neither of them so much as blink.

Castiel smiles to himself as he looks at the house again. Where will they live? Castiel could care less, if he’s being honest. He’ll move here if Dean wants. He can deal with the furnace that needs to be kicked every few days as a reminder to work again. He can deal with the pipes that always freeze in the winter. He can deal with the way the fifth step creaks because Dean messed up when building the staircase. As long as he has Dean Winchester, he has everything.

“The hell you doin’ out here?” Dean yells from the front porch, snapping Castiel from his thoughts.

The ring box in his pocket grows hot in anticipation.

“It’s Valentine’s Day!” Castiel yells back, casually walking across the street from where he parked. “I figured if you’re going to insist on celebrating the idiotic holiday, I might as well win by outdoing you.”

“Oh, really?” Dean huffs a laugh, taking the porch steps two at a time until he’s on the grass of his front lawn. “How do you expect to do that?”

Castiel stops when he’s on the sidewalk, about five or so feet between them. He gives Dean a cocky grin that makes Dean’s smirk fall just an inch. Dean Winchester doesn’t like to lose at things - especially all of these silly competitions they get themselves into.

How long can they go without having sex or masturbating, and who will break first and beg the other to fuck him?

Who can eat the most pie in one sitting?

Which one can buy the best Christmas gift?

Who can win the most tickets at the arcade?

How long can they keep their prank war going, and who will be the one to finally throw in the towel when it goes too far?

Who can scare the other badly enough to make them scream?

Which one of them will win the cheesy romantic award of Valentine’s Day 2020.

Castiel won the 1st, 3rd, and 6th.

Dean won the 2nd and 4th.

Neither have won the prank war bet - it’s still on-going.

But Castiel Novak is going to win this damn Valentine’s Day award. If Dean wants to play this game today, it’s on.

“Cas-”

“Dean Winchester,” Castiel says softly, in a voice sickly sweet and loving. He lowers himself to one knee and reaches into his pocket.

Dean’s eyes flare with rage. “No! Don’t you dare!”

“You’re the love of my life-”

“Stop!”

“I can’t imagine any possible future that doesn’t have you in it-”

“I hate you so much right now,” Dean chokes out, eyes welling up.

Castiel smirks and opens the ring box. “Will you marry me?”

“No,” Dean grumbles with a pouty look on his face. Then he growls low in his throat and shakes his arms like a toddler on the verge of a tantrum. “Fuck - fine! Yes. I’ll marry you.”

Grinning, partly because the love of his life just agreed to marry him but mostly because instead of Dean evening the score Castiel is now 2 points ahead, Castiel pushes to his feet and slips the ring on Dean’s finger. He tugs Dean into his arms and kisses him breathless.

“Proposed to me on Valentine’s Day,” Dean says with an incredulous huff, resting his head on Castiel's shoulder and hugging him. “What a jerk.”

If you enjoyed this, please consider supporting my starving artist bum by donating at my Ko-Fi or becoming a Patron <3 Everything helps!

[qqueenofhades]

Question for you. When you have time. And if you want. I know things are busy for you. What do you mean by end stage capitalism? Thanks.

Aha. I am sorry that this has been sitting in my inbox for a while, since I’ve been busy and doing stressful things and not sure how to answer this in a way that wouldn’t immediately turn into a pages-long rant. Nothing to do with you, of course, but just because I have 800 things to say on this topic, none of them complimentary, which I’ll try to condense down briefly. Ish.

In sum, end-stage capitalism is at the root of everything that’s wrong with the world today, more or less. It’s the state of being that exists when the economic system of capitalism, i.e. the exchange of money for goods and services, has become so runaway, so unregulated, so elevated to the level of unchallengeable dogma in the Western world (especially after the Cold War and decades of hysteria about the “scourge of communism”) and so embedded on every level of the social and political fabric that it is no longer sustainable but also can’t be destroyed without taking everything else down. Nobody wants to be the actual generation that lives through the fall of capitalism, because it’s going to be cataclysmic on every level, but also… we can’t go on like this. So that’s a fun paradox. The current world order is so drastically, unimaginably, ridiculously and wildly unequal, privileging the tiny elite of the ultra-rich over the rest of the planet, because of hypercapitalism. This really got going in the early 1980s when Ronald Reagan, still generally worshiped as a political hero on both the left and right sides of the American political establishment (even liberals tiptoe around criticizing Saint Ronnie), set into motion a program of slashing business and environment regulations, reducing or eliminating taxes on the super wealthy, and introducing the concept of “trickle-down” or “supply-side” economics. In short, the principle holds that if you make it as easy as possible for rich people to become EVEN MORE RICH, and remove all irksome regulations or restrictions on the Church of the Free Market, they will benevolently redistribute this largess to the little people. To say the very least, this….does not happen. Ever.

Since the 1980s, in short, we have had thirty years of unrestricted, runaway capitalism that eventually propelled us into the financial crisis of 2008, after multiple smaller crises, where the full extent of this philosophy became apparent…. and nobody really did anything about it. You can google statistics about how the price of everything has skyrocketed since about the 1970s, when you could put yourself through college on one part-time job, graduate with no student debt, and be assured of a job for the next 30 years, and how baby boomers (who are responsible for wrecking the economy) insist that millennials are “just lazy” or “killing [insert x industry]”. This is because we have NO GODDAMN MONEY, graduate thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt (if we can even afford college in the first place), are lucky if we find a job that pays us more than $10 an hour, and often have to string together several part-time and frangible jobs that offer absolutely nothing in the way of security, benefits, or long-term saving potential. This is why millennials at large don’t have kids, buy houses, or have any savings (or any of the traditional “adult” milestones). We just don’t have the money for it.

Even more, capitalism has taken over our mindsets to the point where it is, as I said, at the root of everything that’s wrong with the world. Climate change? Won’t be fixed because the ruling classes are making money from the current system, and if you really want to give yourself an aneurysm, google the profiteers who can’t wait for the environment/society to collapse because they’ll make MORE money off it. This is known as “disaster capitalism” and is what the US has done to other countries for decades. (I also recommend The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.) This obviously directly contributes to the War on Terror, the current global instability, the reason Dick Cheney, Halliburton, Blackwater, and other private-security contractors made a mint from blowing up Iraq and paying themselves to rebuild it, and then the resultant rise of al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other extremist reactionary groups. The bombing produces (often brown and Muslim) refugees and immigrants, Western countries won’t take them in, right-wing politicians make hay out of Threats To Our Way of Life ™, and the circle goes on. Gun control? Can’t happen because a) American white supremacy is too deeply tied to its paranoid right to have as many guns as it wants and to destroy the Other at any time, and b) the NRA pays senators by the gigabucks to make sure it doesn’t. (And we all know what an absolute goddamn CLUSTERFUCK the topic of big money and American politics is in the first place. It’s just… a nightmare in every direction.)

Meanwhile, end-stage capitalism has also systematically assigned value to society and to individuals depending entirely on their prospects for monetization. Someone who can’t work, or who doesn’t work the “right” job, is thus assigned less value as a human (see all the right-wing screaming about people who “don’t deserve” to have any kind of social and financial assistance or subsidized food and medicine if they won’t “help themselves”). This is how we get to situations where we have the ads that I kept seeing in London the other month: apps where you could share your leftover food, or rent out your own car, or collectively rent an apartment, or whatever else. Because apparently if you live in London in 2019, there is no expectation that you will be able to have your own food, car, or apartment. You have to crowdsource it. (See also: people having to beg strangers on the internet for money for food or medical bills, and strangers on the internet doing more to help that person than the whole system and/or the person’s employment or living situation.) There is nothing inherently wrong with capitalism as an economic theory. Exchanging money for goods and services is understandable and it works. But when it has run out of control to this degree, when the people who suffer the most under it fiercely defend it (see the working-class white people absolutely convinced that the reason for their problems is Those Damn Job Stealing Immigrants), when it only works for the interests of a few uber-privileged few and is actively killing everyone else… yeah.

Let’s put it this way. You will likely have heard of the two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 Max airplanes in recent months: the Lion Air crash in October 2018 and the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March 2019. Together, they killed 346 people. After these crashes, it turned out that the same malfunctioning system was responsible for both, and that Boeing had known of the problem before the Max went on the market. But because they needed to make (even more) money and compete with their rivals, Airbus, they had sent the planes ahead anyway, with unclear and confusing instruction to pilots about how to deal with it, and generally not acknowledging the problem and insisting (as they still do) that the plane was safe, even though it’s been grounded worldwide since March. There are also concerns that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is too deep in Boeing’s pocket to provide an impartial ruling (and America was the last country to ground the plane), and other countries’ aviation safety bodies have announced that they aren’t just going to take the FAA’s word for it whenever they decide that the Max is safe. This almost never happens, since usually international regulatory bodies, especially in aviation, will accept each other’s standards. But because of Boeing’s need for Even More Money, they put a plane on the market and into commercial passenger service that they knew had problems, and the FAA essentially let them do that and isn’t entirely trusted to ensure that they won’t do it again. Because…. value for the shareholders. Or something. This is the extreme example of what I mean when I say that end-stage capitalism is actively killing people.

It is also doing so on longer-term and more pernicious everyday levels. See above where people can’t afford their basic expenses even on several jobs, see the insulin price-gouging in the US (and the big pharma efforts in general to make drugs and healthcare as expensive as possible), see the way any kind of welfare or social assistance is framed as “lazy” or “bad” or “socialist,” see the way that people are basically only allowed to survive if they can pay for it, and the way that circle is becoming smaller and smaller. The American public is also fed enduring folk “wisdom” about “money doesn’t buy happiness,” the belief that poverty serves to build character or as an example of virtue, or so on, to make them feel proud of being poor/deprived/that they’re doing a good thing by actively supporting this system that is responsible for their own suffering. And yet for example, the Nordic countries (while obviously having other problems of their own) maintain the Scandinavian welfare model, which pays for college and healthcare, provides for individual stipends/basic income, allows generous leave for parenthood, emphasises a unionised workplace, and otherwise prescribes a mix of capitalism, social democracy, and social mobility. All the Nordic countries rank highly for human development, overall happiness, and other measurements of social success. But especially in America, any suggestion of “socialism” is treated like heresy, and unions are a dirty word. That is changing, but…slowly.

In short: the economic overlords have never done anything to give power, money, or anything at all to the working class without being repeatedly and explicitly forced, they have no good will or desire to treat the poor like humans (see: Amazon) or anything at all that doesn’t increase their already incomprehensible profit margins. The pursuit of more money that cannot possibly be spent in one human lifetime, that is accumulated, used to make laws for itself, and never paid in taxes to fund improvements or services for everyone else, lies at the root of pretty much every problem you can name in the world right now, is deeply, deeply evil, and I do not use that word lightly.

[everything-y-nothing]

someone please write this fic

being on lockdown during this pandemic resurrected some major bamon feels. my brain started to obsessively develop the plot for a bamon fanfic and since I do not consider myself a writer, I’m surrendering it to the void.

For your consideration, Bonnie and Damon’s lives after the TVD series finale starts something like this:

Bonnie needs a fresh start after the shitstorm of the last 8 years. Her friends are safe and moving forward with their lives, so she decides to go back and finish up college...far away from Mystic Falls. The idea of exploring anything supernatural is lost on her, so instead of following in Grams’ footsteps as an Occult Studies professor, she takes a different path. Bonnie discovers her passion for Human Rights and Global Health, earning a PhD in Social Epidemiology. Working for a nonprofit jumpstarts her solo trip around the world, traveling through various parts of Africa and southeast Asia.

Her love of travel and social justice advocacy inspires Bonnie to create a digital media publication to share her unique perspective. Self proclaimed anti-influencer, Bonnie creates Currently: Conquering the World with Dr. Bonnie which delivers education through travel – simultaneously offering honest first-hand travel insights, educating followers on important issues faced by the highlighted destinations and checking privilege. The platform uplifts the voices of WOC, POC and marginalized people. It has been featured in a couple of major publications, donates to local nonprofits, hosts a podcast and has a sizable social media following. Bonnie posts a booty shot for every 1,000 new followers to her instagram account to show that there’s no correlation between a badass bitch in a bikini and intelligence.

Magic takes a backseat to Bonnie’s career and she’s okay with it. She still practices and befriends a handful of witches and warlocks through her travels. However, she keeps the magnitude of her abilities mostly under wraps. There’s not a snowflake’s chance in hell that she will let the power of her lineage be taken advantage of again. Bonnie Bennett - joyful, unapologetic BAMF, brainiac and humanitarian - finally found her inner goddess and is making good on her promise to live her very best life.

Bonnie keeps in touch with the remaining members of the Mystic Falls Scooby gang, though marginally - FaceTime sessions with Caroline and Elena when they can fit into each other’s schedules and time zones, long conversations with Matt, and random texts from Damon complaining about anything and everything. In time, the calls become fewer and no news is good news in her mind. Plus, she has a business to run, places to be, people to educate and a patriarchy to dismantle.

At first, Damon struggles acclimating to his new human life. He’s not pleased to have to take up exercising to in order to maintain his physique and misses the strength and agility he once had as a vampire. The lack of bloodlust is a plus. Cooking and eating real food is way more rewarding and enjoyable, another plus. Although, he gets mildly depressed that his body needs to build up an alcohol tolerance and can actually now die from overdrinking. He finally has Elena all to himself which is all he ever wanted and he should be walking on cloud nine, but it’s all so overwhelming. Time is fleeting and he realizes how much he had taken it for granted. He misses Stefan so goddamn much and it doesn’t help that his best friend/favorite drinking buddy skipped town on him. He spends one whole year mourning his brother, wallowing in self-pity, and being the domesticated boyfriend to his Pre Med fiancé before he gets his shit together.

Inspired after binge watching Tidying Up on Netflix, Damon starts applying the Konmari method to the Boarding House. In the attic, he finds his bachelors of architecture along with a set of licenses he got for ‘shits and gigs’ back in the 80s and it sparks something in him. He was productive as a vampire, after all. Damon convinces Caroline to compel NCARB and the State Board of Contractors into reinstating his architect and contractor licenses – because that’s what family is for – and starts a design and contracting firm, working mostly on small tenant improvement projects in and around Mystic Falls. His first project is to renovate the Boarding House which he later hands over to Alaric to run the Salvatore School.

Damon and Elena get married in between the time she ends Pre Med and starts Med School. It’s a spontaneous ceremony at City Hall which Matt documents via Facebook Live. They make it through one year of marriage before things start to go south. With Elena now further away for Med School and Damon running his business in Mystic Falls, they barely make it work to see each other on weekends. Damon falls in love with a dilapidated old bar in the heart of town and purchases it, throwing himself into a major renovation. It serves as a nice distraction from the growing divide between him and the “love of his life.” Year two is the tipping point – Elena wants him to relocate closer her, Damon wants to continue growing his business in Mystic Falls and neither wants to compromise. They see each other even less and argue more until Elena admits she has been cheating on Damon with a colleague, and their decision to part ways is mutual. Not so epic love, after all.

The breakup isn’t as painful as he thought it would be since Elena and him were living separate lives already. He sells the property for which he planned to surprise his ex-wife with a family home and readjusts his plans for the bar to incorporate a second floor loft for himself. It takes Damon almost a full year to finish renovations on his pride and joy, Savior. Blood, sweat and tears went into preserving and restoring original, historic architectural features. He took great care in curating every single detail and it paid off because his bar was voted best in the county and has become the go-to place for intimate date nights and an impeccable drink selection.

Nine years after Bonnie hightailed it out of Mystic Falls for good, three years after founding Currently: Conquering and two-ish years after the grand opening of Savior, the former besties run into each other on the streets of Havana. The run and jump hug from when Bonnie resurrected herself from 90s Hell is relived and they play catch-up over medianoches. Bonnie is leading a group of travelers through Cuba for the next 10 days while Damon is on sabbatical to celebrate his thriving business ventures and divorce. He critiques the photo composition her latest ass shot posted to IG and she points out his new frown lines that would put Stefan’s to shame – and just like that, they’re besties all over again.

Bonnie invites him to join her tour group and having no set itinerary, Damon agrees. It’s truly refreshing to see Bonnie in her element. Bearing witness to the person she has grown into after the supernatural drama of yesteryear only reinforces Damon’s admiration of her. Having no real destination after Cuba, Damon piggybacks onto her next guided tour, leaning into the local culture that his best friend has grown to love so much. He even follows her to Costa Rica before he has to return home.

(Annnnnd that’s where it stopped)

Comments:

Does a similar fic already exist and I just don’t remember haven’t read it?

Would it be too much to ask for accurate characterization and spot-on snarky dialogue, and like, not written in first-person narrative?

Timing - I’ve estimated approx 9 years until Bamon meet up Cuba. Not sure if it makes logical sense with everything that happens in between.

Damon and Elena’s child(ren?) - didn’t consider them...the Gilbert’s shouldn’t procreate, IMO. I don’t plan on watching Legacies and not sure what is canon. The plot would need to be adjusted if included. Regarding the origins of Stefanie Salvatore - I’d say keep this character as DE’s spawn instead of rewriting as Bamon’s kid. Since Stefan killed Enzo, the name would be a sore spot for Bonnie.

Bonnie’s career - mimics that of Dr. Kiona who runs hownottotravellikeabasicbitch on IG - follow her! She’s awesome.

[anotherisodope]

Fic/RP starter: Time For a New Employer

[Charon finds himself without a contractor after a trip to the Commonwealth with Ahzrukhal goes completely wrong.]

There’s a strange sound coming from the room Charon’s been sharing with Ahzrukhal at the Rexford Hotel. Dragging, scraping noises, and a kind of low, raspy breathing that doesn’t sound like his employer. Now and again, he hears the smash or clatter of something being knocked to the floor.

None of this is a good sign.

Charon listens, frowning, from outside the door. Ahzrukhal’s been in there two days, having disappeared into the room with a pile of chems and booze, leaving Charon with the unexpected demand that he “get the hell out and stay out”. So he’s been stuck outside, guarding the door...subjected to the curiosity and attempts at small talk of the surprisingly many passerby.

“Is he all right in there?” It’s the ghoul in the dun-colored fedora again, a mousy, nervous man who took hours of peeking out of his room before he came to say hello. He’s harmless, not obnoxious, doesn’t bother Charon much, though he’s obviously curious. “Your friend, I mean?”

Charon unfolds his arms and glances behind him as a hoarse growl sounds just inches beyond the door. No. It doesn’t sound like Ahzrukhal at all.

“Stay away from the door,” he advises the man, who nods and takes an extra step backward.

***

Things started to go to Hell a few weeks before Charon left Underworld.

The Brotherhood of Steel had brought clean water to the area. But the price was too steep for ghouls. Especially under that new asshole. Talk about a fanatic. They had never seen much difference between normal ghouls and ferals. Now, they always opened fire. 

Ten years into their “liberation” of the Capital Wasteland, and the Brotherhood started really causing problems. Rumors of attacks and disappearances ran through Underworld. Charon kept his ears open, slowly putting together why the other ghouls were so scared, and watched to see what would happen. There was little that he could do.

Ahzrukhal stopped paying scavengers for booze, stopped sending Charon out on jobs. First time in forty years. He was quiet. Thinking too much.

The others noticed. Got nervous. Some drank to keep nervousness away.

Barrows argued that the clinic couldn’t leave. He had made too much progress. The ghoul community needed a place to come for care. He had to stay there, or those who came looking for help would find none.

That poor, idealistic fool couldn’t figure out that there would be no clinic, and nobody to keep his work going, if the fucking Brotherhood rolled in and cleared the place out with miniguns. He and a lot of the others wanted to keep what the ghouls there had for as long as they could. It was stupid, but Charon found he couldn’t blame them much.

Then the Brotherhood hit Tenpenny Towers, and the ghoul colony that had lived there for ten years. Their attempt to secure a home after being locked out came to a violent end with no warning. The booms and sounds of shattering glass and concrete haunted the area all day.

Ahzrukhal took off that night, abandoning the others and loading Charon down with his caps and possessions. Charon went, hoping the others would be smart and scatter, but knowing he couldn’t have gotten them to listen. They had always seen him as just Ahzrukhal’s goon.

***

Charon frowns. He has his orders, but he also knows that this situation isn’t normal. Whatever is walking around in there isn’t talking. Ahzrukhal rarely shuts up.

“Ahzrukhal!” he calls through the door, his raised voice making the ghoul next to him jump slightly. “Can you hear me?”

Another low, rattling growl.

“Th-that sounds like a feral,” the smaller man gasps out, pressed against the far wall now. “Do you think he...do you think he changed?”

Charon’s jaw tightens. There's no ghoul alive who doesn’t fear losing their mind someday. Barrows has devoted his life to finding a way to prevent it, or cure ghoulism altogether. But they’re a long way from Underworld now, and what’s shuffling around in their room doesn’t sound like it has a mind left to save.

“I do not know,” he admits. But meanwhile, he’s thinking of the contract, and the prospect of being without an employer for the first time in decades. And what that means. “He did not show any signs during our journey.”

Despite his calm tone, there’s a heavy ball of ice in the pit of his stomach. I don’t want to go back.

But if his employer really has lost his mind, and no one else picks up Charon’s contract, he knows that’s what will happen.

***

Passing through Jersey on their long, dangerous way up the coast did bad things to Charon’s head. The Facility was there. That place he didn’t want to return to.

Even walking within fifty miles of the place stirred things up inside him. The few bits of memory that surfaced disturbed him before they sank out of sight again, leaving him cold and bewildered and feeling strangely...vulnerable.

He couldn’t exactly call it fear. He didn’t feel fear, at least not for himself. It had been burned out of him. But still, all the long time that he and Ahzrukhal plodded up the Jersey coastline, he caught himself mumbling and growling more than usual, and was glad that he never had to sleep. Or dream.

He didn’t breathe freely again until they crossed into the Commonwealth.

***

”Should I go get someone?”

He looks back at the little man with a frown. He’s trying to be helpful, but Charon isn’t used to that. The ghouls of Underworld could be friendly enough, but not toward him. Here, he’s not known as simply an extension of a guy nobody in town likes. Nobody knows him at all.

That’s plain from the little man’s concern.

Charon’s brow knits as he puts together his answer carefully. He has to really think about it, and the effort makes his head sting.  “No. Just watch. If he has gone feral and I must kill him, it will be helpful to have a witness.”

The man swallows hard and nods, moving a little further away. “I will, then. For as long as it’s safe to do so.”

That’s more courage than Charon expected. He nods once. “Good.”

***

They settled in the Slog for a while, but nobody there had time for Ahzrukhal’s bullshit. They wanted ghouls who were willing to work, and a pile of caps only did so much to mitigate that. 

Charon didn’t farm, or scavenge, or build. He guarded the perimeter. He killed fucking monsters. He didn’t belong chest-deep in a tarberry bog, and after so many years Ahzrukhal knew not to push it. So they moved on. Which was too bad. Despite having nothing in common with him, the ghouls of the Slog were kind and friendly. Just like the woman that Ahzrukhal had wanted dead.

One of the women at the Slog flirted with him before they left. Kept trying to get his attention. He was more polite and honest than usual with her. Ahzrukhal didn’t give him time off, and his on-duty rules were clear. No booze. No chems.

No women.

He explained this to her, and she seemed shocked and angry--but at Ahzrukhal, not at him. He didn’t really understand why. But after that, as they made their way to the only other ghoul-heavy settlement Ahzrukhal knew about, Charon found himself thinking now and again that he would have liked to stay. Places like that needed protectors, after all.

But he never got a say in who or what he guarded, or who or what he was sent against. So when his employer turned his back on the Slog, so did he.

***

Charon draws his shotgun, glancing back at the other ghoul. “I do suggest that you run if this becomes violent.” Holding his favorite firearm one-handed, he grips the doorknob and then turns it.

Growling and skittering beyond the door. He hears rapid pacing.

He shoulders the door open with a bang and moves into the room, fully intending to shut it behind him and seal himself in with...it.

But he doesn’t have time. The smaller form that slams into him has surprising strength behind its rush, knocking him back against the flimsy, cracked wood of the door and shattering it.

They tumble out into the hallway as the guy outside yells in panic.

***

Ahzrukhal clearly hated Goodneighbor. He couldn’t be the only chem dealer in town there, there was already a bar, and nobody had time for his facade of high manners and smooth talk. The flamboyant but quick-bladed mayor, Hancock, started watching them right away, giving Charon’s employer a brief, steel-in-velvet warning on welcoming him, and looking at Charon curiously.

And then, not three days later, the goddamned Brotherhood of Steel zeppelin showed up in the Commonwealth sky. It became clear that the enemy they had sought to escape was already here. Ghouls in this region just couldn’t catch a break.

Ahzrukhal snapped. He had been uprooted from his cushy home and position, he couldn’t get away with anything anymore, and now the Brotherhood had arrived with a fanfare. He started descending into booze and chems himself instead of slinging them, relying on Charon to scare off all the ass-kickings he bought with his slimy behavior while haunting the Third Rail.

More and more, he didn’t even go out. He stayed in his room--and he started sending Charon away. Normally Charon would have been delighted to get away from his employer. But this time, he could sense that something was wrong. He just didn’t know what to do about it, or even if he should.

***

It’s a feral. Eyes fixed and completely filmed over, like white marbles in its skull. The pale pinstripe suit and sprigs of dark hair are familiar. The remnants of too-sweet cologne, acrid jet fumes and alcohol are familiar too. As Charon jams the stock of his shotgun into its jaws to keep it from biting and starts forcing it off of him, he knows he’s looking at what’s left of Ahzrukhal.

The little man in the hat scrambles away, crying out at the top of his lungs. “One of the guests has gone feral! We need help!”

Charon doesn’t. If his employer’s mind is gone, then he is gone. This is just a feral now. He knows what to do with ferals.

He just wonders how any ghoul could go from fully sane to feral in just two days.

He feels dull regret as he uses leverage and superior strength to flip the thing over and pin it down with a knee in its midsection. It squalls and writhes underneath him, snapping at him, and he raises the butt of his shotgun and slams it into the side of its head. Once. Twice.

Bones crunch and it collapses under him. He gets off of it, steps back, reverses the shotgun, and blows off its head with a single shot.

The boom echoes down the hall as he stands panting over the twitching corpse.

This isn’t how I wanted to kill you, he thinks, the disappointment digging in deeper even as the relief of Ahzrukhal’s death washes over him. You weren’t even here to feel it.

But it’s done...

...and now, he has another problem.

He slides his shotgun into its back sheath and steps further away from the corpse, eyes fixed on it.

The contract will be in Ahzrukhal’s moneybelt, under his clothes. But Charon can’t bring himself to retrieve it. The moment he lays his hand on that piece of paper, his programming will kick in, and he’ll turn around and start walking.

Back to Jersey.

To be debriefed, tested, processed, and sent out again with another contractor, making Them another small fortune in caps.

Just like every other time he's been left with a dead employer, or one stupid enough to invalidate his contract.

I don’t want to go back.

But the alternative is to stay here, and hope that someone picks up his contract. He can stay away from Jersey if that happens. But that leaves him at the mercy of any passerby. For all he knew,

His head whirls as he struggles to figure out what to do. There’s no clear protocol here, aside from returning to the Facility.

But even as he backs up against the wall and leans against it, scarred face blank with what almost looks like shock, it enters his head that the jet fumes still wafting out of that room just don’t smell quite right....

[Hey guys, hope you enjoyed! DM me if you want to turn this into a line, I’d like to use this as a jumping off point for something.]

[nagdabbit]

A HANDY DANDY GUIDE TO WRASSLIN

For the lovely, the wonderful, the incomparable @gideongrace​ , may I present: Daggs’ Guide to the Wild Ass World of Professional Wrestling! (and it’s goin’ behind a cut because It Got LONG!)

So, here is the things. Wrestling is STUPID. And great? And fun as hell! And the most carny sport to ever exist. But, also SUPER inside baseball a lot of the time just because it’s got such a long goddamn history that it can seem daunting to get into. Like I’ve only been back into it the last four or so years, so there’s a lot of history that I’ve missed! There’s also a whole lot of gate keeping, just like comics or video games. There’s also the bitter truth that a lot of people in the industry are absolute shitheels that should have been fired long ago (and I’ll only be vague about a lot of that). So, yeah. A WHOLE LOT.

First things first: HISTORY. There’s just so much. But, conveniently? You don’t need it. It can be fun if you end up really like wrestling, but contrary to what a bunch of middle-aged, racist, misogynist and WILDLY homophobic, White American Men will tell you, you don’t actually need it to enjoy yourself. If you DO want history, might I suggest the How2Wrestling podcast! It is a cheerful, lovely show hosted by two goddamn delightful humans, Kefin and Jo (who are also just wonderful people to interact with in general)! There is also the Comic Book Story of Professional Wrestling by Aubrey Sitterson and Chris Moreno, which is a great read! Wrestlesplania is another good show for history of the sport and the wrestlers! They’re definitely, uh, hornier, but v fun!

Secondly: On the subject of inside baseball, wrestling jargon is a whole thing. The ONLY part of wrestling history that is 100% important: it is a carny sport. Like, some side-show, vaudeville ass shit, yo. And it has never evolved from that, so there are a whole lot of terms used that are very specific to like... early 1900′s carnival culture. Here is a wikipedia article, but there’s also a wonderful How2Wrestling episode about it all! I’ll try not to use much!

Thirdly: We can’t talk about wrestling podcasts without mentioning Colt Cabana’s The Art of Wrestling. A lot of the archives are behind a paywall now, but the show is great. If you DO get into wrestling and start to find wrestlers you enjoy, I highly highly suggest checking to see if they’ve done an episode. Colt is a goddamn delight of a human, deserving of support and a great interviewer on top of it. Even if you just bookmark eps you’d wanna listen to and then start a free trial to marathon them all. (See also: the Colt Cabana & CM Punk lawsuit(s), in which Colt got royally fucked over.)

Fourthly: Nobodies Watching Wrestling. Drag Queens watching wrestling. That’s all you need to know. Even out of context, they’re goddamn delightful humans. Might I recommend this episode with EFFY, because I sometimes just watch it when I’m having a bad day.

Fifthly: Tights & Fights is a great weekly wrestling pod, and is how I keep up on a lot of things that I might not be watching. PLUS, diverse group of (wonderful) hosts: Hal Lublin, Daniel Radford, Lindsey Kelk, Open Mike Eagle, and producer Julien Burrell. They’re just great. And horny, at times, but in a charming and respectful way.

Now... The boring part. I’m just gonna get some of the popular company introductions out of the way, and then the fun part of So Many Match Suggestions at the bottom. But, business first! (The Big difference between Larger Companies and Independent Companies is that the big guys have a contracted roster of people who sometimes can work with other companies [unless they’re the WWE, who have exclusive contracts and still call their employees Independent Contractors so they don’t have to offer health insurance or a union], and indie guys contract people usually show-by-show. ALSO, there is intergender wrestling [men vs women, which does bother a lot of people. I do side with support of it, but I do totally get how it can be hard to watch] in indie shows, whereas there is NOT in 90% of the big companies.)

(And, honestly, if you wanna skip this part, you can, but if I don’t do it first, I’ll forget..)

AN OVERVIEW OF THE BIG PLAYERS

WWE - Here’s the thing. The WWE kinda... is a terrible capitalist bastard of a company, run by a morally bankrupt, egomaniacal, shitstain, roid-rage cryptkeeper of a man. And, if you want my personal opinion, RAW and Smackdown are both (currently) TERRIBLE shows, despite having some truly phenomenal talent. BUT, but. NXT (and NXT UK) is probably the best, like, weekly wrestling show (on TV, at least, but we’ll get there). The talent is INCREDIBLE, the storylines are less bad bananas, and they’ve adopted a LOT of the best indie talent lately (because they want to directly compete with AEW, but that’s a whole other thing). WWE programming is also the easiest to get a hold of because they are the longest running and basically Disney, so there are some full matches on YouTube, and Raw and NXT are available on Hulu. They are also releasing a lot of free stuff on the WWE Network that you can watch without signing up for a paid account, but there is a lot of stuff behind a pay wall.

Cons: Real Talk, run by a bunch of terrible people. Responsible for covering up a lot of truly reprehensible crimes for which no one was held accountable, despite being well documented. A blatant disregard for the (physical and mental) safety and/or financial security of a lot of their roster--specifically the people you don’t see on TV. (If you want some history, you can look through the past tweets of the New York 64 Tournament, but a lot of it turned my stomach, so I would not suggest, but it’s there if you have the same morbid curiosity that I did)

Pros: The company might be run by terrible people, but their roster is good. A lot of my top wrestlers do work for the WWE, sure, but they do hire a lot of decent humans that I sometimes feel bad about not supporting. Also, it is the dream of a lot of people to join WWE simply because of the prestige, the massive audience, and job security. I might hate Vince but I can’t begrudge any wrestler currently working for them.

NXT Pros: On the subject of rosters, NXT is LIT. But they have also stolen some of the best indie wrestlers recently: Mercedes Martinez and Jake Atlas, two of my All Time Favs. Both of whom deserve the world, because being openly gay in the wrestling industry is the pits.

All Elite Wrestling - AEW is a very new company, and they are my favourite of the big promotions. They are a company run by wrestlers, rather than a millionaire with a writing staff. I like the wrestling style(s) better, I was a huge fan of a lot of their roster before they hit TV last October, and I like not giving the McMahons money. The storylines are better, if only because they don’t have a writer’s room dictating scripts and such, and the characters are more fun (for me at least).

Easiest ways to watch for free: Their YouTube channel! There you can find a lot of highlights, behind the scenes, AEW Dark (the “dark” matches, or the non-televised matches from TV tapings), PPV pre-shows and a lot of stupid stuff.

Cons: A bit of an issue offering equal match time to the women’s roster the way they SAID they would at the start. A bit more violent of a style as a lot of the wrestlers came up death match style wrestling, or are from Japan/wrestled in Japan and typically wrestle “strong style” (wrestling style with less theatrics and known for Real Real Strikes that Hurt A Lot), which some people can find off-putting. Also, they hired Jake Hager, who is a real piece of shit.

Pros: Have a wonderfully diverse roster. Orange Cassidy. Sonny Kiss. Good storytelling. Jake The Snake Roberts doing Hella Promos. The Dark Order, who we affectionately refer to as the Spooky Perverts. Chris Jericho yelling at a Drone, and Matt Hardy being a wizard. A bunch of wrestlers who are married to other wrestlers who work for WWE, and good jokes are made.

BUT THE BIGGEST PRO-AEW THING I CAN PROVIDE: NYLA FUCKING ROSE. They didn’t make her the first women’s champion like they should have, but they put her in the first championship match on the FIRST episode of the weekly show, Dynamite, and she is now the CURRENT women’s champion. I don’t wanna make a big deal, only it is a BIG DEAL, because Nyla Fucking Rose is the first openly transgender wrestler signed to a major promotion, and if you think I didn’t fucking CRY LIKE A CHILD when she won, you’re wrong. So, yeah, a NATIONALLY TELEVISED WRESTLING PROGRAM’S CURRENT WOMEN’S CHAMPION IS A TRANSGENDER, FIRST NATIONS WOMAN. NYLA. FUCKING. ROSE.

As of right now, AEW seems to be done filming, which is both Very Smart and also heartbreaking, but you can find all the ways to watch over here on their site if it looks like fun!

WOW Women of Wrestling - Have you seen GLOW? This is a show created by the IRL creator of GLOW (the promotion the show is based on, not the show)! And it is? Incredible? The characters are fun and portrayed as superheroes, the stories are CAMP af, and the wrestling is GOOD. They’re a non-traditional show, which is fun. Their roster is made up of wrestlers playing different wrestlers. Wrestling is a bunch of super talented people playing characters while doing acrobatics. WOW gives us people playing characters, playing other characters, while also doing acrobatics.

Cons: All male announce team? On an all women’s show? Excuse? And also: Tessa Blanchard who is, it turns out, a great big racist. Also a little harder to get full episodes it seems.

Pros: Literally everything else.

Ring of Honor - For awhile ROH was handily competing with WWE. And then they weren’t. And then they got better. And then they got worse. And now, currently, they are a company that I hate supporting.

Cons: Run by assholes who don’t care about worker safety, and don’t put anything into the women’s division.

Pros: Sometimes they partner with New Japan Pro Wrestling. They’ve recently released a lot of goooood old matches including some Kevin Steen (currently WWE’s Kevin Owens) vs El Generico (definitely, 100% not at all, no way, no how, of course NOT WWE’s Sami Zayn [he is, this is another inside baseball joke that I’m just obligated to make every time I mention El Generico]) matches which are BRUTAL. Oh, and Dalton Castle:

Impact! - It’s back! I don’t watch it, but they DO have Rich Swann, so they can’t be bad. There is an entire history to Impact that is BANANAS. Like AEW, a bit more rough and tumble, scrappy death match folks, and I like a lot of the roster, like Taya Valkyrie, Jessika Havok and Sami Callihan. Not a bad show, but the full show weekly doesn’t hold my attention.

Cons: Tessa Blanchard, mostly. She is an incredible wrestler, her matches are good, but.

Pros: Pretty easy to watch, actually? I believe they’re still on Twitch, and they have an entire channel on Pluto TV.

New Japan Pro Wrestling - NJPW is GREAT. Definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. The shows are long, and strong style just... hurts. Like, a lot of wincing on my end. But the wrestling. Oh, lordy, the wrestling is incredible. But it is brutal. Strong Style wrestling is much different than the typical American style that you see in WWE, and a lot more grounded than high flying lucha styles. (Though a lot of wrestlers do travel to Mexico and train in lucha style wrestling (which I am the least familiar with), so currently there is a lot of the very high flying flippty dos and the absolutely brutal strikes that you see in strong style wrestling.)

Cons: Show/match length is typically long and there is A Lot to See. The only way I know to watch full shows is through their streaming service.

Pros: Just the whole thing, really. They release a free match on YouTube every Monday. Also, Toru Yano, the best wrestler in the world.

Indie Promotions that I know less about because I can afford only so many streaming services

Firstly, here is a Wiki list of wrestling streaming services. I’m gonna name a couple below, but the wiki page has a handy list of costs of the bigger ones because capitalism knows how to get you. (Personally, I only use IWTV at the moment. They’re a good company run by good people, and a lot of indie promotions would have died out without partnering with/support from them)

Beyond Wrestling - Beyond is My Favourite Promotion To Watch, Bar None. Their weekly show (when in season), Uncharted Territory, is fantastic. Diverse talent, diverse styles. They do have a lot of death matches, which can suck to watch if you aren’t into that sort of thing. I am, it turns out, into that sort of thing. But listening to interviews with a lot of death match wrestlers, specifically Jimmy Havoc, can help understand the w h y of it all! Available on IWTV.

Chikara - Chikara is So Fun! They are a (mostly) family friendly promotion and training school. Their shows are filled with young/newbie wrestlers as they learn the tricks. Run by Mike Quackenbush, who is a delightful person, BRILLIANT wrestler/trainer, and someone who is willing to take the safety of his people into account. He’s good people, who trains good people, and supports good people, and gives them a safe, open place to learn. It’s also very fun! A lot of comedy matches. Watch on: CHIKARAtopia or some of their archive is on IWTV.

EVE - An all-women promotion, providing a safe working and training environment for women and girls. They have put their foot in it on occasion, but they seem to still be good people. (I would recommend the Tights & Fights episode with founders Emily and Dann Read for a little backstory on the company, but not needed.) Ways to watch.

RIPTIDE - YO, RIPTIDE IS DOING THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SHIT. Cinematic wrestling, and it is great. The matches are good, the promos are good, the people are good. But the way they film it oh my god holy shit. When everything is a little less hectic, they are people I am definitely gonna support as much as I can. Watch here.

A Matter of Pride - Here’s the thing. They have put on some very good, inclusive shows. However, some serious allegations have come out about Rick Cataldo, who is involved with the company, and I think it’s important to mention. They have done a lot of good in the world of prowrestling and they put on good shows and they have given a platform to people who might otherwise have been pushed aside, however bad things have still happened there. Watchable on YouTube.

OTHER NOTABLE INDIE COMPANIES

GCW (IWTV, Fite TV & Smartmark) * Black Label Pro (IWTV) * Prime Time Pro Wrestling (IWTV) * Uncanny Attractions * RISE (IWTV) * Bar Wrestling * PWG * Stardom * Bizarro Lucha (IWTV) * OTT

There is also NWA Power that is a good show on YouTube, however, they immediately hired (and now fired for being racist) Jim Cornette who is... just an absolute jackass. But I do feel I should mention them.

Is that over? Yes? Well..

NOW THE FUN PART. THIS IS MY MOMENT. THIS IS THE ONLY PART THAT REALLY MATTERS.

So. The thing is. Wrestling is A Lot. SO, I’m gonna give you as wide a variety as I can! I’ll point out some fun people, some fun gimmicks and HOPEFULLY won’t completely turn you off! If you enjoy any of these, then the dumb stuff up above is useful!

First! The most important wrestling match of All Time. Invisible Man vs Invisible Stan. This is everything you need to know about the beats of good wrestling, but also why wrestling is fun. There are two people in this match: Referee Bryce Remsburg and the audience. And that’s it. This is literally just a referee (but it’s Bryce, so the referee) miming a wrestling match, and an audience buying into the kayfabe wholeheartedly. (Inside baseball: Bad Boy Vision - “Bad Boy” Joey Janela’s [another wrestler] sunglasses)

One of my favourite matches in recent memory, AND one of the best matches sort of just in general! David Starr vs Jordan Devlin at OTT. Quintessential wrestling, fantastic storytelling, and one of the best promo packages I’ve ever seen. BONUS: David Starr is a GREAT human fighting day and night to unionize the wrestling industry. He’s the Bernie Sanders of professional wrestling.

I thought about putting an actual death match on the list, but the closest I will get is this Nick Gage vs Josh Briggs fans bring the weapons match. I chose this match because my very best friend does not like this style of wrestling at all, but he did enjoy this match. It’s a lot, obviously. But it’s not as bad as it could be, but there’s also no shame if it isn’t your thing. Hell, I don’t even know why it’s my thing! I don’t even like bloody horror movies! I will say that Nick Fuckin’ Gage is one of the most prolific death match guys still working today, and also one of the nicest, kindest, most beloved guys there is and I would die to protect him. MDK!

Okay, this is the single most beautiful match to exist. Cara Noir vs PAC (fka WWE’s Neville). This isn’t wrestling, this is art. Great story, no commentary, gorgeous camerawork. Bonus: Cara Noir has the most fantastic and well rounded gimmick (character) in the business. Have you seen Black Swan? That’s it. That’s his character. And it’s great. Nailed. It.

Oh, did you know David Arquette is a wrestler? HE IS! Here’s he and RJ City.

On the subject of WWE and NXT, this Halftime Heat match of Aleister Black, Ricochet & Velveteen Dream vs Johnny Gargano, Adam Cole & Tommaso Ciampa. These are six of the best wrestlers work, and definitely TOPS in the WWE system. SEE ALSO: Black & Dream put on a HELL of a program together at NXT, but it’s been boiled down to this highlight vid that gives me feelings. Gargano vs Andrade Cien Almas is one of THE BEST matches of all time and here is a shitty highlight reel, but it’s still good. Adam Cole is 1) incredible and 2) the prettiest possum in the Denny’s dumpster, have a Cole vs Finn Balor highlight reel. God, I wish it were easier to find WWE stuff on YouTube.. All these matches should be on Hulu, tho.

NEXT! Kris Statlander vs Davienne for Beyond. Kris Statlander is A Legend, despite being real new to the business. Currently wrestling for AEW, former stuntwoman and, most importantly, she’s an alien.

FREE FOR ALL TIME. Solo Darling vs Penelope Ford vs Veda Scott vs Ashley Vox. They didn’t have to go that hard, but they did.

SPEAKING OF. Kylie Rae, Penelope Ford, Kimber Lee & Skylar vs. Shotzi Blackheart, Harlow &Twisted Sisterz. I just? I love? All of them?

And not to mention Kris Statlander vs Priscilla Kelly. I mean, I mean. I cannot sing the praises of both of these women enough.

Okay, so I am really only passingly familiar with a lot of Japanese wrestling. Mostly got into it last summer, actually. I get it, I love it, but I’m not as well versed in the people involved. Two badasses I do know? Meiko Satomura vs Kana (WWE’s Asuka). Fucking legends, both of them. Hard hitters, too, jesus.

If you do get into NXT at all, Keith Lee and Donovan Dijak put on one fuck of a program together, but the story started long before they ever entered the WWE! Please enjoy this absolute hoss fight from a couple years back.

NOW, some intergender matches! If you think they aren’t your thing, feel free to skip!

A fun match of (current IRL romantic partners) Keith Lee vs Mia Yim from before either of them debuted at NXT. I believe they weren’t dating at this point, so the next part will really hit, cuz it’s romantic as shit... This was not the booked ending. Keith Lee didn’t kick out on purpose. (Which, I mean, is literally all wrestling endings, but.) Mia was booked to lose (at least they told her that), and he purposefully took the L and went out on his back, to surprise her and give her a MASSIVE push.

Leyla Hirsch vs David Starr. I just. I goddamn love Leyla Hirsch. A very young wrestler, very new to the industry and I just love her so much?

Two great, intense matches of Joey Janela, the patron saint of bad decisions. Versus Kris Statlander (I can’t get enough of her) and versus Jordynne Grace.

Orange Cassidy and Penelope Ford vs Shockwave and Veda Scott. Shockwave is a robot and Orange Cassidy is Paul Rudd in Wet Hot American Summer. I can give no other explanation.

COMEDY TIME, YO. Comedy wrestling is The Best. There’s a name, Orange Cassidy. Yeah, he’s very funny, and also the most divisive person in wrestling rn. He’s Paul Rudd. He knows he’s a wrestler. He’s lazy. And there’s one match that we need to get out of the way first...

Orange Cassidy vs David Starr. The thing is. Orange Cassidy can fucking wrestle. His gimmick might be that he doesn’t want to, but he can. And It. Is. Great.

Now we can get on with the funnies.

Orange Cassidy vs Colt Cabana. Not story needed. Just two dudes at a food festival. Oh, yeah, there’s also a Swamp Monster. We love Swampy.

Colt Cabana vs Toru Yano. It’s just. So. FUN.

You might know the name Joey Ryan as The Dick Flip Wrestler, or The King of Dong Style. His dick has magical powers, it’s a thing. Here’s he and Orange Cassidy.

Johnny Cockstrong is the opposite of Joey Ryan. Literally. Here’s him also vs Orange Cassidy.

Did you want to see a Dick Test of Strength between them? Well, it happened.

Back to RIPTIDE for (another intergender, kinda) Pete Dunne, Tyler Bate & Trent Seven vs Joey Ryan, Candice LeRae (the World’s Cutest Tag Team) & Colt Cabana.

Kinda almost but not really comedy but very funny and also full of good wrasslin’, here is EFFY vs Orange Cassidy. Pirated, technically, and in real low quality, but I Love It. EFFY is Daddy.

Now, you’ll notice not a lot of women in the comedy section. Real talk, women still tend to get treated as a joke by the wrestling industry at large, so they don’t get the luxury of being as funny as they want. But one woman out there doing the lord’s work is Session Moth Martina. Legend. Love her. Admittedly, another intergender match, but it makes me happy. Martina & Orange Cassidy vs Joey Janela & Penelope Ford (Janelope).

One of my All Time Favourite Matches to date, EFFY and Danhausen (Gaytanic Panic) vs Chris Dickinson and Pinkie Sanchez (Team Pazuzu). Yes, this is a Halloween show. Yes, the Ref IS dressed as Chris Dickinson. There are teeth, Jesus resurrects someone, Danhausen is in fishnets and Effy is in face paint. It’s great. Love that Danhausen.

And there we have it! A whole lot of information and a bunch of matches and some stuff. It’s real dumb, and sometimes the industry is dark, but there’s a lot of hella good people doing dumb things. I hope this was helpful?? And Fun! (But my feeling won’t be hurt if it wasn’t fun, I promise!)

I leave you with this, RJ City making coffee in his underwear with Danhausen. Completely out of context. Because I love it.

[waveridden]

FIC: keep my heart from moving

The first thing Fourteen notices, with the absentmindedness of someone missing the forest for the trees, is that Tender’s hair is a different color than they remember. It’s not different enough that she could’ve dyed it, just a slightly different shade of purple, a little warmer than they thought it was, poofing out from under her hat.

Or: Tender/Fourteen, a reunion after a breakup. Modern AU, 2.2k.

AUcember || read on ao3

#

The community center is barebones - literally not even walls in place, just barely the skeleton of a building. Fourteen has to wear a hard hat in order to go inside, which is one of those things that they try not to act excited about. Hard hats mean some kind of excitement, which is something that they’ve been sorely lacking lately.

Not that excitement is the be-all end-all or anything. They became a social worker because they decided the excitement was less important than the impact. They’re doing good things, safe things, things that are good for the community here.

Still, there’s something refreshingly… normal, having to duck under beams and watch their step as they walk through the guts of the building. They have to lift a hand to hold their hard hat in place as they follow the contractor. Much better than sitting in an office all day.

“This’ll be the main room,” says the contractor, whose name Fourteen has already forgotten. He looks like a Mark. Tough guy, good handshake, didn’t seem at all put off by how Fourteen was dressed today. They like Mark. “We’re thinking from there-” he points to a corner with plenty of support beams in place- “to here.” To a corner that’s clearly marked off.

Fourteen nods, because they’re really not here to judge the building itself. They’re here because the company they work for wants someone to actually see the building, and Gig couldn’t make the drive up from Skein.

“Lots of visits today,” continues Mark - no, it’s not Mark, it would be easy to remember something like Mark. Maybe it’s something simpler. Steel? No, too on the nose for a contractor, Fourteen would remember that. He’s still talking, something about a visit from their angel investor, which - well, maybe they should listen. The community center was a passion project, and when all hope had seemed lost they’d gotten a donation from an anonymous investor. More than what they’d needed, enough that they could start thinking about things like a second center, if this one went well.

Shit, not-Mark is still talking.

Fourteen schools their face into their best impression of someone who is definitely listening, but before they have time to actually start registering words again, they hear footsteps behind them. They’re already turning around when they hear the person approaching say “I’m so sorry I’m late.”

They know that voice.

The first thing Fourteen notices, with the absentmindedness of someone missing the forest for the trees, is that Tender’s hair is a different color than they remember. It’s not different enough that she could’ve dyed it or anything, just a slightly different shade of purple, a little warmer than they thought it was, poofing out from under her own hard hat. And she’s wearing shoes that Fourteen could never have imagined her wearing before this, far too… sensible. Heavy coat, although her clothes underneath it look as Tender-esque as ever.

And, Fourteen’s brain supplies helpfully, Tender is standing in front of them, looking as surprised as Fourteen feels.

“Not a problem at all,” says not-Mark, who has not noticed the crises happening before his very eyes. “Assuming you’re representing the investor.”

“Representing, right,” says Tender, who’s normally a better liar than this. But the way she says it, the way her eyes flit up and down Fourteen’s body, are the loudest, clearest telegraph: she’s the investor. And she wasn’t expecting to see them here.

Fourteen opens their mouth to- to what, ask their ex why the hell she’s funding their passion projects but couldn’t return their calls? - but not-Mark pushes past them, hand outstretched. “March Apex,” he says, and Fourteen goes to make eye contact with Tender out of habit, out of inside joke. She could always tell when they’d forgotten a name, was normally pretty good at finding an excuse to whisper it in their ear.

Tender doesn’t meet Fourteen’s eyes, just shakes March’s hand. “Tender Sky,” she says. “Happy to make your acquaintance. I won’t be here long-”

“Stay as long as you like,” March says, which kicks him a dozen steps down in Fourteen’s estimation. And then, in a move that sacrifices another two dozen steps, he turns and says, “This here is, uh, a rep from the nonprofit running this-”

“Sanctuary of Greater Seneschal,” Tender says. Goddamn it, she knows exactly why they’re here. “Yeah, uh, we’ve met.”

“Yes we have,” Fourteen says, far too curtly to their own ears. Tender doesn’t even fucking look at them. They’re going to kill Gig when this is over, not because this is his fault but because they need something that’s going to make them feel better. “March, thank you for the tour, it’s been lovely, but I’ve received word from one of my offices that they need a consultation.”

“Didn’t even see you take the call,” March remarks, cementing him firmly as Fourteen’s least favorite person in the world.

“Offices?” Tender says, still not quite looking them in the face.

Fourteen can work with that. They adjust their hard hat and glance away. “I, ah, I’m not corporate anymore. I do consulting work for a couple of nonprofits in Seneschal.”

“Oh.” She shifts, just slightly, so she’s looking over Fourteen’s shoulder. “I didn’t realize you were still in the city. I thought you left.”

“I thought you left too,” Fourteen snaps. Her eyes actually meet theirs in surprise, and they take a deep breath, trying to calm the way their stomach is roiling. This is business. This has to be business. “You probably won’t see me again, I’m not the primary person working on this project. If you’ll excuse me-”

“Fourteen-”

“If you want to talk, you have my number, I assume.”

Tender doesn’t flinch, but her eyes narrow. Fourteen still doesn’t exactly understand what happened. Sure, they’d been fighting about plenty of things, about Fourteen quitting their job and about Tender taking a new one. But it was still the nastiest kind of shock when they came home one day and she was gone. Anything that could be called completely hers was missing from the apartment. She hadn’t answered calls or emails, not from Fourteen.

And now she’s here, apparently rich enough to fund random passion projects for nonprofits, not making eye contact with them.

“Mark, it’s been a pleasure,” Fourteen says, not quite looking at Mark - shit, March, that’s probably rude, but they need to get out of here. “Someone from Sanctuary will be in touch with you again. Thank you for your time.”

March says something that Fourteen doesn’t hear as they leave the construction site. They step through what they’ve been told will be an entryway, a game room, a quiet room. They’re not even sure where they’re going, but next thing they know they’re sitting in their car, fumbling with their phone.

Gig picks up on the second ring, because he’s more plugged in than anyone Fourteen has ever met. Well, almost anyone. “Hey, how’s the tour?”

“The angel investor is Tender,” says Fourteen. And then, because Gig probably still wants an actual answer, “The center looks good. It’s mostly just construction right now.”

“Whoa, whoa, hold on a second.” Gig says something muffled that Fourteen can’t catch, and then comes back to the phone. “Tender as in your fiancee?”

“We were never technically engaged,” Fourteen points out, because something about saying ex-fiancee has always felt so much sadder than ex-girlfriend. At least people assume that an ex-girlfriend wasn’t as serious.

“Your ex-girlfriend who packed up and left two weeks after you proposed,” Gig says, because he is good at many things, but not this. “She’s our angel investor for the community center?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“I mean, why would she put money into this? Is your name in a press release or something?”

Fourteen barks out a laugh and scrubs a hand down their face. “You think she’d drop as much money on a project as she did just because I was involved peripherally?”

“You’re not peripheral,” Gig says patiently, and for a second Fourteen is overcome with warmth. They don’t always agree with Gig, but the man has a way of making everyone feel like they’re being listened to. “And I mean, why else would she do it? She doesn’t really have a history of philanthropy or anything, right?”

“Not that I know about, but it’s a shit way to make amends.”

“Oh, no, for sure, that’s fucked up.” He pauses. “Is now a bad time to tell you I can’t make it to the meeting on Friday with the investor’s representatives?”

Fourteen takes a deep, cleansing breath. They do not feel cleansed. “Now is the worst time to tell me, yes.”

“Oh,” Gig says. “Then just, like, forget that, and I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“ Gig. ”

“Vanya has to go to court,” he says, and, fine, that makes sense. Gig does a lot of work with Sanctuary, but his first commitments have always been to his people in Skein, especially Vanya and all her kids. “Send someone else.”

“There’s no one else.”

“Then you have until Friday to get ready. That’s good, right?”

“Terrific,” Fourteen says. “I don’t know why I called you.”

“Yeah, you do,” Gig says, which doesn’t make sense, except for the part where it does. “I have to go, but we’ll talk tomorrow or something if you really, really can’t do it.”

“We’re talking tomorrow either way,” Fourteen says. “Tell Vanya I say hello. Goodbye, Gig.”

They hang up halfway through Gig saying goodbye, and lean forward to press their forehead against the steering wheel. There’s a major difference between seeing Tender pop up in their friends’ Facebook posts three times a year and seeing her at their job. And just as major a difference between seeing her once and seeing her once a week.

Their phone buzzes, and they answer it without looking. “Gig, unless this is about Vanya-”

“Oh,” Tender says, and Fourteen groans without meaning to. “Sorry, I just- I thought you would still have my number. I don’t know why.”

“I do have your number,” they say tiredly. “I didn’t look at my phone before answering, Tender, I wasn’t exactly expecting you to call. I thought you would still be in the building tour.”

“Oh,” she says again. “I just- I know I don’t have much of a right to say this, but I don’t want you to hate me.”

Fourteen slumps back in their seat. “I don’t want to hate you either, Tender. But I’d really like it if you gave me reasons not to.”

“I’ll schedule our next work meeting at that French place you like. And I’ll pay.”

“That place is closed down. They make Cambodian food now.”

“We can find another French place.”

“Tender-”

“Please,” Tender says. “Fourteen, I- I’m trying.”

“Then why is this conversation happening over a phone call?”

The tap at their window startles them so badly they nearly drop their phone, but they make a neat recovery and turn around. Tender’s brows furrow, but she makes a motion at the lock for the door.

Fourteen rolls the window down instead. It’s petty, but they’re entitled a little pettiness right now. “I really don’t have anything to say to you,” they say, more as a caution than a cruelty.

“I know,” Tender says. It’s been so long since they had the full force of her attention on them. It’s overwhelming, in all the ways they remembered, and for a second they can’t breathe. “Let me take you out to dinner.”

“That’s not fair,” Fourteen says before they can stop themself. “You left. ”

“We were fighting all the time. You weren’t exactly innocent in all this.”

“Couples fight sometimes, Tender, but fighting doesn’t always mean breaking up.”

“What, and you wouldn’t have left?”

“Of course not,” Fourteen says, far too honest for their own good. “Not without talking to you first.”

Tender sighs, some of the tension seeping out of her shoulders. She’s still wearing the hard hat. It clashes with the rest of her outfit, and Fourteen misses her so much it aches. “Let me take you to dinner,” she says again. “As a coworker.”

“Alright,” Fourteen says, as clipped as they can around the knot in their throat. “But if you ever want to go out as an acquaintance, or as a friend, you have a lot of work to do.”

Tender looks at them for a moment longer, and then nods to herself. “You name the day, and I’ll get the reservation,” she says.

Fourteen raises their eyebrows. If they didn’t know better, they’d think that’s a promise to make amends. “I’ve been told I’m meeting with you Friday.”

“Done.” She lifts her phone and pauses. “Do you like Cambodian food?”

“I haven’t been to the restaurant since it reopened.”

“Then we’ll go Friday,” Tender says. She doesn’t quite smile at them. Fourteen doesn’t quite smile back. It doesn't feel like old times. But it feels better than things have felt in years.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

AU: have you ever considered an avengers-animorphs fusion?

[Contains spoilers only through Avengers (2012) and only oblique references to MCU events beyond that movie.]

Jake finds Cassie steadying, at a time when he could use a little steadiness.  She’s a soothing presence who offers shy smiles and subtly brilliant insights into the yeerks as she watches them all closely.  By contrast, most of the others are… overwhelming.  Rachel looks very much like her grandmother, managing to be even more brash and bold and trigger-happy as she paces the bridge pointing to read-outs of energy signatures and demanding that they go rescue a fellow agent named Tobias, immediately.  Ax cheerfully eats an entire box of pop-tarts in one sitting as he tells the SHIELD agents that andalites don’t normally behave this much like warring kaftids but that Alloran is clearly not himself right now.

Marco walks onto the bridge, looks around like he owns the place, and immediately starts ranting about how they’re all a load of idiots and SHIELD is lying to them.  Jake isn’t sure he even draws breath in between words.  Mid-cyberbabble, Marco suddenly spins around and falls silent.  For about half a second.

“Oh my god, you’re Rachel Berenson.” Marco practically throws himself across the table to shake her hand.  “I’m a huge fan, really.  I read all your magazine articles, I follow one hundred percent of your fashion advice, and I also love the way you turn into a human-bear-thing and rip your enemies’ heads off with your teeth.”  He’s still pumping her hand with what looks like genuine enthusiasm.  “Plus, unlike your fifth-cousin or great-uncle or whatnot Captain War-Prince Yeerk-Killer over there, you actually have a sense of humor—”

“My name is Jake,” Jake blurts.  They all turn to look at him.  “Just Jake is fine,” he mumbles.  “I’m not a real war-prince.  Not really.  It was all just propaganda at first, and then they only promoted me so that they wouldn’t have to court-martial me after I went on that stupid suicide mission to get my brother back.”  They’re all still staring.  “And anyway, the ‘Yeerk-Killer’ part is…”  Saying I don’t like it sounds like too childish a reason even in his own mind.  “It’s just something they called me.”

There’s ringing silence for several seconds.  And then Marco says, “Anyway, about this yeerk-helping dude who gave over all our intel.”

“Tobias is not working for the yeerks.”  There’s an edge of growl to Rachel’s voice, one that causes everyone else in the room to tense just slightly.  “He’s being controlled.  Involuntarily.”

Jake takes a moment, just one, to mourn the 1940s with an intensity that steals his breath away.  He misses everything he’s lost.  Like missing a limb.  Like missing home.  Like missing a brother.  Rachel is his only link to the past, and she’s a stranger; last Jake saw, his nephew Daniel was just a baby, and now Daniel’s own daughter is a grown woman while Daniel himself is dead twenty years back in a mysterious car accident.  Everything disappeared in the span of an instant.  Everyone died.  Only Jake is left.

And then Jake draws a deep breath and says, “Regardless of how they got it, the yeerks have key intel on our operation now.  And we need to get our shit together to figure out what to do about it.”  There’s no time for him to feel sorry for himself.

Rachel knows they don’t make a particularly inspiring picture, between Jake awkwardly standing around in full dress blues, Marco slumped against a computer console in a Demon Days t-shirt, Cassie in her green floral-print leggings and purple-and-grey leotard, and Ax striding back and forth across the helicarrier with whatever that cloak-thing is billowing behind him.  She’s not sure she trusts Ax, not when he’s freely admitted that he’s doing some kind of alien-magic-glamour-thing to appear human.  (Although, as he explained apologetically, he’s not nearly as good at it as his brother would be; from the way he tells it, Elfangor hung the moon, arranged the stars, and single-handedly invented the internet.)  She has no idea what to make of Jake, whose life story defined her entire childhood and who is proving to be just as much of a clueless idiot as the rest of them.  She actually likes Marco, not so much in spite of their verbal sparring but because of it, since she can tell that he enjoys getting a sharp comeback out of her almost as much as he enjoys scoring a hit himself.

“What’s a part-time CW melodrama actor even doing on this team?” Rachel asks him.  “I mean, take away those three Grammys you almost won, and—”

“I’m only the third-smartest person on the planet, head of R&D for the single biggest telecommunications contractor in the U.S., runner-up for a Nobel Prize thanks to my groundbreaking work in increasing accessibility for information technology, and…”  Marco pauses for dramatic effect.  “Fifteenth sexiest man alive for 2009, according to People magazine.”  He gives a tiny bow.  “Oh, and I build AI robots that help me save the planet from aliens, which is more than the fourteen men allegedly sexier than me can claim,” he adds as an afterthought.

“His ego’s only so big to compensate for his lack of height,” Rachel whispers loudly to Cassie.

“Whereas the biohacker who dosed herself with untested DNA-rewiring implants in order to avoid CDC oversight,” Marco drawls, “could never ever be accused of hubris.”

“Can we please get back to talking about how aliens are invading the planet?” Jake asks the room at large.

“I spoke to that other andalite,” Cassie says.

“Alloran,” Ax supplies.  “Looorrran.”

“No, actually.”  Cassie considers, choosing her words.  “There’s a yeerk controlling Alloran.  Calls itself Visser Three.  That yeerk is itself working for this other power, one called Crayak.  I don’t fully understand the nature of this Crayak person, but I did find out that he wants to use Rachel to…”  She pauses delicately.

“To let out my inner berserker, who will kill the rest of you?” Rachel suggests.

“You won’t let that happen,” Jake says stubbornly.

Rachel lets out a harsh laugh.  “This?”  She gestures to herself.  “This is Nice Rachel, and let’s be honest that I’m not that nice.  The other one?  Mean Rachel?  She might like all of you just fine, and she’ll still rip you all to shreds the first time you startle or annoy her.  Cassie can talk the other Rachel down sometimes, under the right circumstances, but the rest of you can kiss your butts goodbye if stuck in an enclosed little helicarrier with me when I get pissed off.”

“Anyway, we’ll keep Rachel nice and calm.”  Cassie offers a small smile.  “And leaving aside the fact that Crayak might be using this whole yeerk invasion as an opening play in some even bigger chess game, there’s still Visser Three’s stake in this all to consider.  Near as I can tell, his motivation is some mix of the usual—pride, greed, wrath—but this whole thing with wiping out the humans seems to have something to do with how much one of his fellow yeerks, Visser One if I’ve got the name right, happens to like this species.”

“You got all that from one conversation?” Jake sounds impressed.

“Please assure me you did not do anything… untoward to that host body,” Ax says.

“Nah.”  Marco’s tone is full of false brightness.  “Haven’t you heard?  Agent Werewolf here was a voluntary controller herself back in the wild days of her misspent youth.  I bet she and the ol’ visser cracked open a cold one and shot the shit about their glory days together, no thumb screws necessary.”

Rachel snarls, fiercely gratified to see Marco go dead white.  “That’s cute, coming from a war profiteering gunrunner.  You, what?  Followed daddy right into the rocket-making business, didn’t care if the rockets hit the wrong planet just as long as they performed perfectly?”  She shoves him in the chest; he stumbles back several feet.  “I know what you are.  I know it took one of your own bombs going off in your face for you even to think about giving a damn about what happened to them after you were done engineering them.  I know you have no right, no right to talk to Cassie like—”

“Rachel.”  Jake’s voice is quiet, but very firm.  “Rachel, put the scepter down.”

She swings around to point it at him, and wow.  She’s not sure when she even picked the thing up.  It’s heavy and hot in her hand, pulsing with her own raging heartbeat.

“I’ve acknowledged my past, and I’m learning to deal with it.”  Cassie faces Marco, but she’s speaking to Rachel as well, struggling to calm everyone down.  “Not knowing what I was doing at the time is no excuse for what I’ve done.  I let a yeerk into my brain, yes, even thought that I was saving a different host when I did so.  I’m the one who trusted them out of naïveté, and…”  Cassie draws herself up, looking around the room.  “I’m the reason so many of the U.S.’s enemies have the power to morph right now.  I’m no better than Seerow, in my own way.  If anyone here has a problem with that…”

“Then it can wait,” Jake finishes.  He’s looking at Ax, who stares at Cassie with something between anger and horror.

“Yes, Prince Jake,” Ax says.

Jake takes a breath.  “I’m not really a—”

“That title is not given out lightly.  Tlee.”  Ax smiles a little.  “Nor should it be set aside once given.”

Rachel finds she has lowered the scepter, set it back on the table.  That she’s breathing more normally, berserker kept at bay for the moment.  Cassie looks at her with a silent question, and Rachel nods.  She’s coming back to baseline, will be calm in a minute or two just as long as nothing else happens.

Which is, of course, when the goddamn helicarrier starts falling out of the sky.

Tobias rolls over, gasping for air, fighting down the desire to puke.  He’s back in control of his own body for now, which is good, even if he is pretty sure that things did not exactly go according to plan back there.  It probably wasn’t in the team’s response plan for him to get carried and then thrown across the room by Rachel—or rather, Rachel’s furry little problem—while Cassie rushed around dodging her and trying to make soothing noises.  The plan probably didn’t call for Odret 177 to take one look at the seven-foot-tall clawed-and-fanged version of Rachel and abandon Tobias’s body as a lost cause, even if that had worked out well.  The part where Marco had sprouted some kind of exoskeleton and gone to work on the helicarrier’s fried turbine, and where the andalite guy had dropped the human act in favor of using a massive dose of electricity to restart the engines… Well, that had gone okay as well.

With difficulty, Tobias shoves himself into a sitting position.  His entire body is shaking uncontrollably.  “Well,” he says hoarsely, “that was even worse than I expected it would be.”

“I know,” Cassie says, and she does.  She sits next to him, gently lowering his head to rest on her shoulder.  She knows what it is to have her mind overthrown, which is why she’s the one who’s here.

Then again.  Tobias’s eggs are still scrambled, but he’s starting to realize maybe Cassie is the only one available.  SHIELD is elbows-deep in the mess he just made.  Last he saw, Marco and Ax were still performing emergency repairs.  There’s every possibility Rachel hasn’t stopped rampaging.  After all, Jake had been the only one attempting to deal with her, and…  Well.  Tobias is sure he’s doing his best, and equally sure he’s getting his ass kicked.  Rachel will sometimes change back for Cassie, and she’d probably re-emerge if Ax managed to zap her unconscious.  Tobias, on the other hand… Rachel’s other self doesn’t hurt Tobias, but she doesn’t relax around him either.  Mostly she stuffs Tobias into a corner and then relentlessly scans for anything that could possibly hurt him, annihilating all threats with extreme prejudice.  And someone just hurt Tobias.

“How do we fight this?” Tobias asks Cassie.  “I don’t know what I’m doing.  I’m just some guy.”

“I think that’s true of all of us.”  Jake stands in the doorway.  He’s battered and rumpled-looking, but he’s still upright.  “Rachel’s gone.  Ripped a hole in the side of the ship and then…”  He winces.

“She’ll be fine.”  Cassie puts a hand on his arm.  “You all right?”

“Five by five.”  Jake looks from her to Tobias.  “You know how to fly?”

At that, in spite of the day he’s had, Tobias actually laughs.  “Yeah, man, I can pilot us.”

They commandeer a quinjet, mostly through the power of Jake “War-Prince” “Yeerk-Killer” “Captain America” Berenson’s legendary cussedness.  Although, as Tobias is figuring out, Jake’s not a particular fan of any of the nicknames the media has given him.  Understandable, really, since the guy clearly doesn’t revel in the spotlight like Marco or understand how to use it like Rachel and Cassie.

“Peregrine,” Tobias says on the tail of a sudden thought.

“What?” Jake says sharply.

“Peregrine.”  Tobias doesn’t look away from the quinjet’s viewscreen.  “That’s what your team called you, right?  Back during the war.”  He glances over long enough to smile.  “Don’t worry, I promise not to hold it against you.”

That name, unlike the Yeerk-Killer nonsense, seems to unlock something in Jake.  He chuckles, shaking his head.  “You jump out of one measly little airplane without a parachute one time, and you never live it down.”  He sits down next to Tobias, suddenly looking about 20 years younger.  “No one actually knows for sure that I achieved terminal velocity on the way down,” he confesses, “and no matter what the wiki pages of your web net might claim, the part where I destroyed a Panzer IV on the landing was purely accidental.  Anyway, why would you hold it against me?”

Tobias smiles.  “‘Cause peregrines kill red-tails.  My carnie nickname was Hawkeye, and they let me keep it as a call sign.”

“‘Carnie?’”  Jake frowns, confused.

“I ran away and joined the circus when I was thirteen.”  Tobias glances over long enough to raise his eyebrows and make it clear that no, he’s not joking.  “Got sick of being passed around from relative to relative, and by then I’d figured out I had skills that the performers could use.”

“What can you do, anyway?” Jake asks.

“Like I said, I’m a pilot.”

Cassie takes that opportunity to lean against his chair on the far side.  “He’s being modest.  If you think that Marco can do crazy things with flight tech, you haven’t seen anything.  Add to that Tobias’s affinity for birds—yes, even peregrine falcons, no matter how much he grumbles—and ‘pilot’ is an understatement.”

Jake’s mouth opens halfway.  “You talk… to birds?”

“I communicate with them.  Sort of.”  Tobias gives another smile, this one distinctly self-deprecating.  “My mom always claimed I was half-alien, if that explains it.  But, well, between the traumatic brain injury and…”  He sighs.  “Mostly just the fact that no one ever believed Mom because of the traumatic brain injury, I didn’t exactly give the idea much credence until I figured out about the birds.  Anyway, even if my dad is some kind of alien prince or whatever, he’s never bothered to send so much as a text message my way.”  He shakes his head, shaking off the impulse toward self-pity.  “Where the hell are we going, again?”

“You know that monument to his own ego that Marco was kind enough to build and then drop in the middle of Manhattan?”  Cassie raises her eyebrows.  “We’re pretty sure Visser Three is holed up there.”

Marco thinks he plays it off pretty well, all things considered.  After all, his team doesn’t have to know that he screams like a baby for over half his fall from the sky, and ultimately Dian gets the Mark VI armor to him in time to stop him from going splat on the ground.  He lands next to where the rest of the team (including Rachel’s smaller and nicer self) have congregated on a rooftop.  And by the time he slides the helmet off he’s barely breathing hard at all.

“So,” Rachel says, “I’m guessing the yeerks did, in fact, appropriate your giant phallus?”

“The EGS Tower is the single greatest zero-emissions energy source in the entire western hemisphere,” Marco says, only somewhat sulky.  “And anyway, not all of us can have our faces carved into Mount Rushmore.”

Jake cringes so sharply, body folding into itself as his entire face goes red, that Marco feels bad for having said it.

“Anyway.”  Marco shifts, still adjusting to the new armor, which forms a hard-shelled simian arachnid around his squishy human body.  “Our theory was right.  Visser Three tried to stick a yeerk in me, and this baby—”  He taps his cochlear implant.  “Fried it to death.  I told Visser Three the Animorphs were going to kick his ass, or at least that the rest of us would stand by and cheer as Rachel kicked his ass, he objected, and…”  Marco makes a gesture to approximate the part where he was thrown out a window.

“Animorphs?” Ax asks.  “Ah.  Niiii-morfs.”

“Sure,” Marco says.  “Between Bird Boy’s mind-melding, Rachel’s Dr. Jekyll act, the fact that you’re only human when you want to be, my own beautiful cyborg parts, the part where Cassie straight-up becomes a yeerk when she feels like it, and the way that questionable science transformed Jake into a walking action figure with Product of Mattel stamped on his perfectly-shaped plastic butt, I figured our little band of shapeshifters needed a proper name.”

“So, about this alien invasion…”  Jake looks around to be sure he has their attention, nods once.  “Tobias, gonna need you directing us from above, figuring out where the rest of us can be the most use.  Cassie, you’re the closest thing we have to an expert in yeerk tech, so get to work on the transmitter for that portal.  Ax, get her up there and then focus on shutting down those Bug fighter things as fast as you can generate the lightning to do it.  I’ll be on the ground trying to keep the human civilians separate from those hork-bajir-controllers.  Marco will keep to the air to try and draw the Blade ship’s attention.  Rachel…”  He gives a slight bow.  “You know what to do.”

She grins, showing all her teeth, which are rapidly multiplying.  She says something in response but it gets lost under the sound of her spine rippling and deforming to support limbs that have grown muscular and sprouted six-inch claws.  With a manic laugh she jumps, springing forty feet straight into the air to collide with a Bug fighter; the Bug fighter comes off worse.

Marco shifts his exoskeleton into place, brian implants controlling the four extra limbs attached to the armor.  “Dr. Fossey?” he says into the helmet, and hears his AI come online.  “All right,” he tells the group as a whole.  “Gonna go get some attention, bring the party to you.”

He takes off, but not before he hears Cassie sigh loudly and say, “I hate parties.”

Cassie waits until well after the battle is over, when they’re straggling in an uneven line down the street toward the shawarma that Marco promised to find them, before she dares reach out and very gently take Jake’s hand.  He looks over in surprise when she does, but also folds his scabbed and very dirty fingers around hers with a faint smile.

“If you don’t mind me asking…”  She glances up at him.  “Was that your first kiss since 1945?”  She phrases it that way since asking was that your first kiss outright would definitely be rude.

Jake clears his throat.  “Was… was that a kiss?”

She can see why he’d be uncertain.  He’d just fallen out of the sky, had come entirely too close for anyone’s comfort to getting smashed to pieces on the rubble before Rachel saved him, when Cassie had lunged at him with an uncharacteristic lack of caution and… Okay, she’s not sure how one could interpret it as anything but a kiss.  “I wanted it to be,” she says now.  “If you don’t, that’s all right.  So.  Was it your first since 1945?”

“I’m ninety-five, not dead,” Jake grumbles.

Which answers her question.  She’s not all that surprised; she knows his life story.  Knows that he managed to sneak his way into the Army in spite of being unable to make the cut for his high school’s sports teams, much less qualify for military service at age 19 after signing up for a experimental enhancement.  Knows that he went AWOL to rescue his older brother from yeerk hold, and that the surprising success of the mission gave the Army’s half-forgotten guinea pig an unexpected dose of legitimacy.  Knows that that same older brother was killed in action two years after that, leaving behind a wife who later founded SHIELD and a son who became Rachel’s father.  Knows that Jake himself was declared missing and presumed only a few months later, actually trapped in Arctic ice until he was discovered three short weeks ago.  There simply hasn’t been time.

She’s not sure if she should be more proud or worried that she just stole the first kiss of a national icon.  “I’m pretty sure you’re a decent human being,” she tells him.  She shifts her hand slightly to lace their fingers together.  “I’m pretty sure that decent human beings don’t turn into wolves and rip people’s throats out the way I do.  I’d probably still be refusing to take sides as the yeerks tore apart lives if Tobias hadn’t decided to spare my life in spite of all logic and in spite of direct orders.”

Jake is silent for a long time.  Finally he says, “World War II was only simple and heroic in the retelling.  The phrase Greatest Generation didn’t even come about until the late 1990s, well after most of the people who would have called bullshit were dead.  I just…”  He takes a breath, looking straight up.  “I just unleashed a nuclear weapon upon several thousand living beings, killed I don’t know how many.  The people who say that my hands are clean because I only kill aliens don’t deserve to call themselves human, much less Americans.”

“For pete’s sake, just kiss already!” Rachel calls loudly from behind them.  “You’re giving me a friggin’ toothache, and I’m already hangry.”

Ax realizes that the longer he spends on this strange little planet interacting with its strange little sentient species, the more he appreciates why his brother always enjoyed coming here.  Prince Jake might shy away from his title, but he also becomes the one to stop and check in on every member of his team after they are first seated at the food establishment, taking a moment to talk to each of them in spite of the way that he is himself swaying in exhaustion.  Rachel is a magnificent warrior and it was an honor to fight by her side, while Cassie defies every expectation through her undeniable competence.  Marco’s cheerful promise to introduce Ax to every food on a stick that Earth has to offer conceals a true offer of friendship at its core.  Ax went out drinking Tobias during the whole messy affair around his first landing on Earth; later, one of the SHIELD agents had started to explain Hawkeye’s role to Ax, and it’d felt right when Ax blurted out, “He’s a friend.”

This moment feels important, Ax concludes, and not just because of his fifth helping of delicious shaved meat products upon delightfully textured bread.  It feels like the start of something.  Rachel and Marco are bickering companionably about the exact nature of that alien portal, and you could almost miss the way that Tobias’s and Rachel’s legs tangle together as she curls her body halfway around him.  Jake looks ready to doze off, but pulls himself out of it every time he realizes what’s happening, while Cassie watches him with a gentle smile.

“So, you headed home after this?” Tobias asks.  He’s pale and bruised, but his appetite has proven to be healthy enough.

Ax considers.  “The Andalite Electorate will dispense justice to Alloran, both for his actions during the hork-bajir conflict and…”  He stops.  It doesn’t do to bad-mouth his own people when speaking to aliens.

“They don’t like that he got taken.”  Tobias smiles, bitter and tired.  “Their little Abomination is some seriously bad press, and they’re going to bring holy hell down on him for it.”

Ax sets down his pita and folds his hands on the tabletop.  They are strong and five-fingered and pale brown right now because he wishes them to be.  It is easy enough to manipulate the electricity that makes his shape take on different appearances, even if he will probably never have his brother’s gift for illusions.  “You’re not wrong,” he says at last.  “Once I believed… leeeve-ed.  That my people were without fault, that our causes were righteous.  Once I hungered for war.  Once I thought it to be nothing more than another driftball game with higher stakes and greater chance for glory.  Once I dreamed of that glory, dreamed of war.  Now…  Ow.  Wwwww.”

Tobias’s expression suggests that he knows perfectly well Ax is only playing around with mouth-sounds to buy himself time.

“Now I have few certainties,” Ax finally admits.

“You have us.”  Tobias doesn’t hesitate.  “For what we’re worth, that is.”  He glances around at where Cassie is giggling while Rachel flicks tomatoes into Marco’s hair.  She has one hand over her mouth to try and avoid making enough noise to rouse Jake, who is sleeping face-down in a blob of tabbouleh.

“You are all of you worth very much to me.”  Once again, the words feel right even as Ax says them.  “And I’d be honored to fight with you once again, should the need arise.”

[All my other AUs are housed here.]

[plane-lord]

WIP: Apres (WHN AOU)

So, I haven’t written any sort of fanfic, or anything else substantial, for a very long time. The work below has come along VERY slowly and I can’t say that I’m very pleased with it. However, if you happen to read it (Hi!) I certainly wouldn’t mind a little feedback. I haven’t seen very many AOU to CW fanfic out there, or to put it more precisely, I haven’t seen very many that address what I would like them to. Specifically, what happened to Tony & Pepper between the two movies... So, here is  my attempt, humbly submitted... Hopefully, I can manage more than a couple paragraphs, though at this point I’m feeling fairly plotless... 

Pepper Potts cast a critical eye over the great room below. Her position on the walkway provided a more complete picture of what still needed to be repaired. Her frown deepened as she took in the yellow caution tape marking the windows to be replaced, as well as, the hole in the floor of Tony's lab. In Bruce's lab, several pieces of equipment were pushed to the side, damaged beyond repair. Finally, her gaze circled back to the oversized bookcase, several shelves broken and splintered. They were going to need a new one, she thought with a grim smile. Workers had managed to clean up most of the broken glass but there was still a lot that needed to be done before the space was livable. The interior designer was scheduled to arrive sometime Tuesday.

Pepper made a list in her phone of the estimated repairs and costs. She frowned at the growing tally and added it the grand total of the last few years. By her estimation, she was sure it now surpassed the entire collective GDP of several small nations.

She was getting good at this; managing the aftermath of destruction. She supposed it was better to concentrate on the mess in front of her, rather than the one currently dominating the news cycle. This mess she could handle with practiced ease. Over the last eight years, Pepper, figured she had coordinated cleanup and major renovations enough times to add Construction Contractor to her resume.

The room below blurred and she wiped a stray tear from her cheek. Yes, this mess was easy, this mess was contained. The one out there, beyond the steel and glass confines of Avengers Tower, that was anything but easy. Although, she wasn't completely sure, she had a sneaking suspicion that the primary catalyst of this particular mess would soon be flying through the door, a wreck in his own right.

The news reports were still sketchy, still bereft of details.  So far, all she knew for certain was that; 1.) a bunch of homicidal robots were hell bent on ending the human race, and 2.) the Avengers stopped them, but at great cost. A whole city dropped from the sky, hundreds, possibly thousands dead. She had a sneaking suspicion that her guilt-ridden, "hot mess" of a boyfriend had more to do with this disaster than anyone outside of the Avengers suspected. She wasn't stupid, she saw the images of menacing, technologically-advanced robots, terrorizing an entire eastern European country. She was in a long-term relationship with the world’s foremost robotics expert, it wasn't a giant logical leap.

It was alarming that JARVIS was no longer functioning, no longer running the tower or the everyday business transactions - oh and hadn't that been fun to explain to the executive board. Mostly though, she missed his calming voice. The silence was eerie after all these years of constant, and reassuring chatter.

She had tried to call up the relevant footage in the tower. Piece together what Tony had yet to tell her, but without JARVIS's help she had only seen a brief and grainy snippet, enough to conclude that, a little more than 72 hours ago, the first of the robots had appeared as malfunctioning legionnaire droids.

She sniffled and wiped another tear away, "Oh, Tony, what have you done?"

She thought things were better over the last two years. The fight with AIM and Killian had given Tony a new perspective, he cut down on the distractions, as promised, at least for awhile. She knew she could never get him to truly stop being Iron Man and she had never asked, she just wanted him to find a more healthy balance.  They had moved to New York, nearly full time, and he finally agreed to talk to someone - work on his fears. He seemed happy, content, present.

Then they had watched the fall of SHIELD. For days Tony was on the phone, holed up in his lab, going over the files that Natasha had released to the world. He offered his help, money, shelter, lawyers to Steve, Marie Hill, Natasha, Clint, and anyone else that suffered from the fall out. Together they put in place plans to do what SHIELD had done - oversee the Avengers and clean up the rest of Hydra.  It had worked splendidly. Tony felt useful and, as promised, he only donned the suit when needed - though the frequency had increased exponentially over the last year.

Pepper wasn't naive enough to think he didn't have backup suits at the ready, or specialty suits in the works, but his obsessiveness wasn't nearly at the level it had been post-New York. He worked hard and spent days in the labs, but he also made sure to take her out, show up for his business obligations, and over all, Tony earnestly tried to be a good boyfriend and partner.

Pepper scanned the darkening skyline, the city was aglow, bathed in rose-colored tones of the setting sun. She expected to see Ironman weaving through the tall buildings, but there was still no sign of him.  

She thumbed through her phone and checked the time stamp on the text from Rhodey. Sent three hours and fifteen minutes ago. Pepper frowned in worry, he should be here by now. She reread the text, "Tony just left. Take care of him. This has been a tough one." Short on details, it was still more than the succinct text from Tony; which consisted of a quick, "I'm fine, don't worry. Love you." She had only gotten that, after a dozen unanswered phone calls and multiple worry filled texts. Not having JARVIS, to give her updates, was highly inconvenient and adding even more stress to her week.

Finally, she spotted the distinct trail of the repulsers as they streaked across the New York skyline. She watched Tony land and take a couple stumbling steps forward before he straightened and stepped out of the suit altogether. Even from her vantage point she could see he was exhausted, and in some physical pain.

He stood on the platform for a moment gathering his wits. A couple minutes passed before he limped inside the destroyed penthouse, favoring his left leg. He ran his right hand, wrapped in a compression bandage she noted, through his hair taking in the damage around him.

"I was starting to worry about you." Pepper said from the walkway, keeping her tone light, “Thought maybe you'd finally make good on that threat to move to back to California.”

He startled at her voice and looked up, a small sad smile on his lips. "I took the scenic route. Sorry.”

She watched him slowly walk to the elevator and waited, her grip tightening around the rail in anticipation. She could fix this. That's what they did, they fixed things. Together.

She heard the doors open, the soft squeak of his sneakers as he crossed the floor. He hesitated behind her, before she felt his arms encircle her waist. He breathed deeply, taking in her scent before his head came to rest on her shoulder. Pepper wrapped her arms over his, “You know, I thought, the days of house destroying parties was behind us…”

Tony squeezed her gently and kissed her temple, before replying, “Well, you know me, it’s not a real party unless I blow out a couple windows and need a major remodel by the end of the night.”

Pepper turned in his arms, to get a better look at him. She ran a gentle finger over the scratch on his right cheek. He had certainly looked more beat up than this, but his red rimmed eyes, and slight tremble of his body suggested a far more deeper hurt. “Tony, are you-“ she wanted to ask him to tell her everything, but she knew better than to push him - he would talk when he was ready, not before. “Did you eat? I had Happy order some Ray’s.” Pizza, Pepper had learned long ago, always made Tony feel better.

Tony leaned forward and his forehead pressed to hers. A half smile on his lips, as he spoke softly, “You take such good care of me. I don’t deserve it.”

“I think we’ve had this discussion before…” Pepper sighed, her right hand gently scratching the nape of his neck. “I seem to recall that I vehemently disagree with half your assessment.”

She could feel a little tension leave his body, as she continued to run her fingers through his hair. He didn’t move from his position, leaving her question unanswered.

“Bruce is gone.”

Pepper’s hands stilled, waiting for him to continue.

"He took a Quinn Jet, no idea where. Guess he couldn’t handle being an Avenger anymore.”

“Oh, Tony, I’m so sorry.”

“I really fucked up, Pepper. Everything. JARVIS is gone. Bruce is gone. And there’s now a crater where a whole goddamn city is supposed to be.” His voice cracked, his eyes glassy with the threat of tears, “My fault. My fault, again.”

Pepper pulled his head to her shoulder, “Hey, you’re a good person, Tony. This is-” she couldn’t believe any of it was true. He blamed himself for things out of his control, too often, to take his word for it now. “- this is your exhaustion talking. Whatever happened, whatever the details, we’ll get through this. You and me. It will look better tomorrow.”

She gently kissed his cheek and ran her hands down his arms, taking his hands in hers. “I think that we need to get some food in you, clean up, and get to bed. We’ll figure this out, Tony.” Tony took a shuddering breath and nodded, “Right. Food. Showering. Sleep. The Pepper Pott’s fix for all of life’s problems.”

Pepper smiled gently and led him to the elevator. She knew that tomorrow didn’t always prove to be better, but she was determined to do whatever she could to help make it so.

[stellatex]

Nine Questions I Need Teresa Giudice to Answer

Originally published February 9, 2016.

Today’s the day. Christmas all over again for Real Housewives of New Jersey fans. Teresa Giudice, who has mostly been laying low since her release from federal prison on December 23, is set to make the media rounds to promote her new book, starting tonight with what is undoubtedly a contractually-obligated appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Bravo’s resident trash-TV obsessed Machiavellian puppet master Andy Cohen. Tomorrow morning, she will appear on Good Morning America with actual journalist Amy Robach.

The Housewives conceit–catty women posing as wealthy, fighting over petty drama, a trope from the heady days of 80s prime time soaps that quite obviously influences Cohen’s work, and one which Gloria Steinem recently called “a minstrel show for women”–may be of waning interest now, ten years on from the premiere of the Real Housewives of Orange County. Certainly, RHONJ has taken a dark turn, first with the introduction of Teresa’s family members (without her prior knowledge), then with the failed Giudice bankruptcy and subsequent criminal investigation, trial, and conviction. It feels like the Housewives have run their course. Certainly, the newest installment, Real Housewives of Potomac, feels like a Potemkin village of a Potemkin village, complete with early 90s fiberboard kitchen cabinets.

I’ve been watching the Real Housewives of New Jersey since it premiered on May 12, 2009. I have seen every episode multiple times. I have watched every web exclusive available on Hulu and every behind-the-scenes video on the Bravo web site. I’ve watched every RHONJ cast appearance on Watch What Happens live. I’ve read all of Richard Lawson’s uhmazeing recaps on Gawker. I’ve followed Vicki Hyman’s meticulous reporting on the Giudices’ legal woes (she is truly doing God’s work covering this shitshow; reward her by giving a listen to her TV Hangover podcast). I’ve read all the forums (here’s one) and all the shady gossip blogs (but I’m not linking to them; you’re on your own). I have all of Teresa’s books, and even Melissa’s. I have corresponded privately with one of Teresa’s ghostwriters. I follow all of the RHONJ cast members, former cast members, friends of Housewives, and tangential friends and family on social media. I have a RHONJ Twitter list [now defunct, sorry]. I started and am admin for a Real Housewives Feminist Discussion Group on Facebook (invitation only, sorry).

I’m in deep.

I know as much about RHONJ as any viewer could possibly know. Sadly, I am somehow an expert on this show. The reasons I am obsessed with this show are personal and academic; cultural and escapist. That’s a whole other post. Or dissertation.

Point is, despite my better judgment, I love this show. I love it. I can’t fully explain it. I even love Teresa. I think she was the one who was “set up” in previous seasons, with producers and other cast members acting in unison to take advantage of her as a narcissistic simpleton, to amp up the drama. But that’s all for another post, too, and in the past at this point. The fact is Teresa–along with her four beautiful dorters–is and always has been the star of this show. People watched because she was good TV. She and Joe exhibited character flaws on the scale of a Greek tragedy, sure; but they were also hilarious. Hilariously inept, if caricaturishly stereotypical. Somehow strangely lovable, even though they were also criminally delusional. From the first episode, Teresa was flashing those hundred dollar bills, buying that gaudy furniture in cash, and we, the viewers, knew Something Was Up. It’s been a long, unspooling tale from then to now. In hindsight, viewers know that Joe and Teresa had already been living on fraudulently obtained money for years. Their crimes, according to court records, date back to at least 2004, five years before they appeared on America’s television screens.

To date, Teresa’s line has been that she was misled into “signing some papers” that she either didn’t read or didn’t understand (her story varies), either by Joe or by her accountants (!) or her lawyers (!). She’s played the role of innocent, “old school” Italian wife–the same role she’s played on RHONJ. Joe tried to take the fall for her in court and failed. Due to the Giudices’ decision to continue hiding assets right up until the sentencing, Judge Esther Salas rethought her original impulse of possibly giving Teresa only house arrest or probation, and instead sentenced her to 15 months in prison.

Teresa’s complicity in the crimes is not a matter of debate, though the extent of her participation is. Teresa pled guilty. She expressed remorse in court, presumably in an attempt to receive a lesser–or no–prison sentence. It is my opinion that she really believed the judge would take pity on her as a traditional mother of four beautiful dorters. The Giudices’ financial scams had been working for years, after all. She was famous. People loved her. She deserved and was well accustomed to her McMansion lifestyle. She was obviously not very financially astute. She was a good Italian wife who deferred to her husband. She was a good girl.

She thought wrong.

We can all read the indictment and draw our own conclusions. Now, Teresa is trying to make a comeback. According to Teresa [link lost], the Giudices have paid their court-ordered restitution and their mortgage is current. No mention is made of the $551,563 still owed to the IRS for unpaid taxes, nor the the creditors listed in their 2010 bankruptcy filing, totaling $13.4 million.

Based on the teaser clips already released by GMA, Teresa is continuing, in her obviously memorized, stilted, eye-blinking way, to hold on tight to her claims that she had no idea what she was doing, or signing. It has been my contention all along that this is probably what we would see from post-prison Teresa. I almost admire her dedication. The sheer hubris. The chutzpah. Too bad she hasn’t yet channeled all that white-knuckle stubbornness into anything more productive than unflinching denial of her multiple felonies, holding grudges against her own family members, and a devotion to flawless 24/7 drag queen makeup.

But I think she’s placed her bets on the wrong horse and fundamentally misunderstands her fame.

Despite everything, there are still viewers–myself included–who love watching Teresa. Who want her to come good. Who want to see some Goddamn Character Development. It seems like she’s going to keep pretending everything is okay, even though it very obviously is not, and that she will continue to deny her culpability in obtaining the millions of dollars of fraudulent loans that financed her over-the-top leopard-print lifestyle, the craven bankruptcy filing intended to wipe the slate clean, and the way she and her husband have financially ruined the many local business and small contractors whom they stiffed in the process.

So far, there has been zero accountability.

What Teresa doesn’t get here–and Teresa, as we know, doesn’t get a lot of things–is that the only remaining way to endear herself to the viewing, cookbook-buying public is through showing genuine remorse. She is being presented with yet another golden opportunity that she doesn’t really deserve in the form of this press tour for her perfectly timed, hastily-released biography. I don’t think she realizes that, without performing–convincingly–this type of epiphany for her ever-dwindling audience, her “career” as a Bravolebrity is over after this final fifteen minutes. It seems that I’m not the only one who thinks so; even her former co-writer, Heather MacLean, tried to explain this to her, to no avail.

Teresa needs chart a course that will keep her on TV and thus allow her to continue making the type of money she needs support herself and her children, especially in light of the fact that her husband is about to “go away” for at least three and a half years. Unlike others, I don’t blame her for capitalizing on her moment in the spotlight, and the prurient interest of the public, to hawk an autobiography and book a bunch of paid appearances. It’s the only legitimate way she has to earn an income, and certainly the only way to earn the type of money she needs to continue paying down those back taxes and massive debt (and I expect some lawsuits will be forthcoming from her many creditors).

But to make good, she needs to provide some real answers to some hard questions. No doubt Cohen will only lob only softball questions and make schoolboy jokes at her expense. He may ask a few tough questions tonight in the guise of “viewer Marge in Omaha on Twitter,” but his interest is in coddling his “star” and presenting a coherent narrative for RHONJ. In another timely moved that surprised no one (who was paying attention), Bravo announced yesterday that a seventh season of RHONJ will be on our screens “later this year.” Perhaps GMA’s Amy Robach will ask her some tougher questions. We’ll have to wait and see.

To my mind, there are certain things Teresa must address if she expects to return from federal prison and jump back into her role as Housewife.

So, in the spirit of Brian Moylan’s 98 Questions I Had During Last Night’s Interview With Joe and Teresa Giudice, here are the questions that I need Teresa Giudice to answer, presented in advance:

1. You said in your statement to the judge during sentencing that you “fully take responsibility” for your actions. You said, “It’s time for me to wake up… I will make this right no matter what it takes.” Why, immediately afterward, in your interview on Watch What Happens Live, did you backtrack and try to deflect blame to your husband while insisting things were just put before you to sign?

2. You claim to be “business savvy,” telling your husband on an episode of RHONJ, “Like, you know, that’s what I do now. I’m a businesswoman, so I’m thinking business.” You’ve touted your online businesses, your Fabellini drink line, your Milania hair care line, your success as a “New York Time [sic] best-selling author.” So how is it that you are also simultaneously claiming to be a clueless housewife who knows nothing of her own finances, including the assets from said businesses that you tried to hide during both your fraudulent bankruptcy and your sentencing?

3. If you are blaming your husband Joe for your ten-plus-years of financial fraud and the year you spent unjustly incarcerated in a federal prison, why are you still with him?

4. What would you say to the creditors, banks, and, most importantly, small business owners of New Jersey whom you and your husband fleeced to the tune of millions of dollars? Do you feel any obligation to repay these debts?

5. Explain this.

6. Why are you and your husband suing your bankruptcy attorney? Furthermore, do you not realize that, in doing so, you will be giving up your attorney-client privilege and opening yourselves up to a new investigation of your finances during the discovery process?

7. What are you going to do when Joe is deported?

8. You talk constantly about your love, love, love for your four beautiful dorters. Why did you put them in this position?

9. Why should viewers overlook your felonious criminal past and continue to support you by watching RHONJ or buying your books or products?

She’s taken to calling herself Teresa 2.0, and insisting that her time in the slammer transformed her into a zen-like superwoman who has her priorities straight. But we, the viewers, will be the judge and jury. Based on what we have seen to date, it appears that Teresa hasn’t learned a damn thing. I wish she would prove me wrong, but I don’t think she has it in her.

All images from the amazing T-Kyle.

[thewritingambition]

Difficult Homes

1. The House That Didn't Like Anybody

(posted on Reddit)

The real estate firm I work for specializes in difficult homes. Not homes with leaks or creaking floors, mind you. We focus on buildings that have been on the market for months or even years because they have a particular reputation.

Usually, that means they were once the sites of gruesome murders and meth labs, but I occasionally get the chance to sell a haunted house. Well, allegedly haunted. Sorry to disappoint, but I have yet to be proven that there is such a thing as ghosts. I have been to many creepy shacks and cobweb-covered barns and I can tell you that it all just comes down to superstition and faulty pipes.

None of this matters, though. If a house has a reputation, and if enough people believe in it, then ghosts are real and demons crawl out of dark closets at night to take your children. Normal people don't want to live in places like this, so these homes tend to sit on the market forever or sell extremely cheap.

I am proud to say that that is not the case when I'm in charge. I don't care if a family of five was murdered in their sleep or if a kindly grandmother had been secretly harvesting human organs in the basement; I can still make the sale, for the price of a significant commission, of course. I was never the kind of man to shy away from a challenge; besides, I have an eye for detail and – I've been told – a trustworthy face.

The last house I sold, however, was a little tricky. My boss assigned it to me with a dismissive, “We got another one, Tony,” but kept the details to herself. Honestly, I thought it was going to be an easy, boring sale. It was just an inconspicuous two-story home in the middle of a cul-de-sac, the mirror image of the other houses beside it, with a little porch, a blue door and two large windows on its ivory facade that made it look like a friendly face, welcoming you in. Not at all the kind of home I usually got my hands on and I was a little disappointed.

Coming into the house for the first time, nothing warned me against it. There was no creeping feeling on the back of my neck, no sixth sense flaring at something I couldn't quite put my finger on, no demonic voice whispering for me to get out. All I could see was the hardwood floors that had been recently polished, the pristine white walls, the kitchen cabinets with brass handles, the fireplace strategically located in the corner of the living room. That house was a beauty. It made very little sense for it to have been on the market for eight months, so I immediately asked the owner, an elegant woman in her forties who asked me to call her Angela, if any violent crimes had been committed on the premises.

After a moment that only lasted a heartbeat, she said, “No.” The house had once belonged to her uncle, who'd died of a heart attack months before. He had been a recluse man who'd spent all of his looking after his home. She never really visited him and she knew very little about the old man. If a particularly strong wind hadn't cracked the kitchen door open, allowing for the neighbor to catch a glimpse of his rotting body on the floor, the old man might have gone months undiscovered instead of only a couple of weeks.

I sniffed the air, but the putrefying smell had long vanished. Good. Then this was a two-bathroom, three-bedroom home that had been well looked-after and smelled nice. On top of that, it was located in a family-friendly neighborhood.

I asked the owner how much she was asking for. She told me.

“Oh, we can do better than that,” I said, offering a different, more accurate figure.

The owner opened her mouth as if she was going to fight me on it but then shook her head. “Whatever you can get for it, I don't care. I just want it off my hands.” I didn't ask, but she still told me. “This house just makes me uncomfortable.”

That suited me fine. Sentimentality can get in the way of business sometimes and I didn't have time for that. This was supposed to be an easy job.

I examined every inch of that home, jotting down its best features, which formed a rather long list. There wasn't a scratch on the hardwood floors, not a single leak, not even a quiet creak when I opened the basement door – recently renovated, no mold, brightly illuminated by surprisingly large windows. Shit, I don't think there was a single speck of dust in that house.

Advertising through the usual means, I got an immediate, positive response and in less than a week I was showing the home to a young married couple. They were both lawyers that had been recently promoted and felt ready to start what the husband called “an actual adult life, and that involves being tied down by a mortgage for the foreseeable future.” I chuckled as if I thought it was funny and, as I walked them across the lawn towards the house, I felt confident that I wouldn't have to show the house to anyone else. They were going to fall in love with the place immediately and then-

The front door didn't open.

I frowned, then smiled reassuringly at the both of them. The wife had lifted an eyebrow at me, suddenly suspicious. I forced the lock, puzzled. It had worked just fine the day before.

“I'm sorry, it's an old key,” I said, which was bullshit. I pull the key out, then tried again, pressing just a little harder until the lock gave in and the blue door opened into a small but charming foyer.

“This is quite lovely,” said the wife.

I smiled at her. “Isn't it just? Let's start upstairs. You mentioned you both wanted a home office and I think this is exactly what you-”

My foot had barely touched the first step of the stairs when I heard a loud creak. For a moment, I thought it had been the stairs, maybe I had finally found a loose floorboard by stepping on the one place I shouldn't have. Nothing I couldn't recover from, no home is perfect, but then I heard a second creak and I realized I hadn't come from the stairs at all, but the entire house.

“What was that?” asked the husband.

I tried to tell them that it was probably nothing since the plumbing had been recently updated, but the creak turned into a loud rumble that sent a violent vibration through the floor.

Over the growing sound, I tried to reassure them that this had never happened before and that it was probably coming from the property beside us, but they wouldn't hear of it. In the blink of an eye, they had turned on their heels and left, the husband telling me that the house just wasn't for them, the wife not even bothering to look at me and muttering something about it all being a waste of time.

The door slammed shut.

The rumble stopped.

“What the-” I said to myself, looking around as if the explanation would present itself to me. It didn't.

I examined every nook and cranny of that place once again, looking for something I might have missed, but there was nothing. I called Angela and relayed what had happened to her.

“Yes, it does that sometimes,” she said. “Do I need to find another agent?”

Her tone wasn't resentful, it was just very tired.

“No, no. I'm sure a plumber can-”

“It's not the pipes,” she told me.

I knew she was right, of course. Even old, terrible pipes didn't make you feel as if you were standing directly above a roaring train. Still, my brain was grasping for something rational.

“It's not the pipes, nor the floorboards, it's not anything. The house just... it doesn't like anyone.”

I raised an eyebrow at the empty room. She must have felt the skepticism through the phone line because she sighed.

“I know I sound crazy.”

“Not at all.”

“No, I do, I sound like a lunatic.” She paused. “My uncle sounded like a lunatic too. He talked about that house as if it were a goddamn person! I always thought it was because he felt so melancholy after his divorce, you know? Holding on to the past. But I don't know, I always felt there was something creepy about this place.”

“Angela, this isn't my first haunted house,” I said, trying to be kind but not wanting to encourage her fantasy. “I have heard every ghost story there is and I can tell you that there's always a rational explanation behind everything. I am sure that, if I get a contractor and we look inside the walls-”

A loud thud shook the house violently. It was so sudden and so much stronger than before that I lost my balance and fell against the stairs. Then, the house was quiet again, as if nothing had happened. Now, I've never really believed in ghosts, and I still don't, but as I sat on my ass, feeling the bruises on my back and the thundering of my heart in my chest, I couldn't help but think that the house had just shouted “No!” at the idea of being pulled apart.

Actually, no. It hadn't simply told me “no”; it had screamed at the top of its non-existent lungs, “Don't you fucking dare!”

Now, it was laying quietly again, waiting to see what I was going to do next.

“Tony?” Angela's voice called from my phone, which I had dropped on the floor. “Tony? Are you there?”

Wide-eyed, I fumbled for my phone and told her, "Yes, yes, I'm here. So..." I struggled to put my thoughts in order. “So it's a... ah... a difficult house.”

I was breathless and I think she could hear the tremor in my voice. Angela asked, “Do you want me to find someone else?” already resigned that she would have to do just that.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and shook my head. Then, realizing that she couldn't see me, I said, “No, it will be fine.” I'm not sure I meant it, but as I said, I never shy away from a challenge.

I hung up the phone and stood up, paying attention to the sudden, absolute quiet that had fallen around me. Houses aren't quiet. Not completely. That much silence was unnatural and I didn't like it.

“I'm gonna sell this house,” I said. It sounded as if I were asking for permission. “I'm going to find a nice family for it.”

Underneath my feet, I could feel a gentle vibration. It wasn't a protest, that much I could tell. Perhaps the house was considering my request. Then, it went quiet again.

“If I'm gonna find a good family for it,” I added, cautious, “I'm going to need the house to be... receptive.”

I told myself I wasn't talking to the walls. That would have been crazy. Still, I paused and waited for an answer. It came in a single, gentle rumble that sounded almost like a resigned huffing sound. Something that felt angry but otherwise contained. As far as I could tell, the house wasn't a threat to me or anyone, but I still sighed with relief when the front door opened and I was allowed to walk away.

Over the following weeks, two things happened. One, I took several people to see the house. Two, I threw any pretense of sanity out of the window and started addressing the house directly. I didn't actually believe I was having a conversation, but I really – really! - needed to vent my frustration because Angela was right. The house didn't like anybody!

It creaked and rumbled at the boyfriend and girlfriend who had been looking for a place of their own. It mimicked the sound of mice in the walls until the retiring couple who'd been looking for a quiet place scurried away, the wife shaking in fear and disgust. It shook so violently at the architect who threatened to tear down its walls that I thought the whole house was going to collapse. And it stood impossibly still when I brought in a group of paranormal investigators in search of haunted headquarters for their organization.

That was the day I finally threw my hands up and shouted in the foyer, “Are you fucking kidding me?! They were perfect for you!”

The house made its pipes growl in protest.

Not them! Not any of them!

“Oh, you are a picky bitch!” I snapped.

Somewhere above me, I heard a window fall shut with a loud bang.

And fuck you too!

“Fine! I'll find you someone else!”

I didn't. Not for another two months. People came and went, but the house simply wasn't satisfied. I know I should have been a little more freaked out about the whole thing, but mostly I just had a bruised ego. Never had I ever failed to sell a house before. For fuck's sake! I once sold a funeral home that had been owned by a cult of cannibal Satanists – and the blood hadn't been fully scrubbed off the walls! Yet, this little suburban home was proving to be a challenge. I considered cutting my losses and letting Angela find someone else to deal with her picky home, but that was when the Reyes came along.

Mr. Reyes brought his three daughters, ages six, seven and nine, when he came to meet me. Upon seeing them get out of the car, I was worried.

“Sorry,” said Mr. Reyes, seeing the look on my face. “I couldn't find a sitter.”

People usually don't bring children the first time they come to see a home, but what worried me was that the house might protest a little too harshly at having three excited little girls running up and down. However, there wasn't a single sound from the house that day. Not a tremble, not a growl. I didn't want to be optimistic, but I dared think that the house actually liked them.

We went from room to room, the girls barely paying attention to anything we were saying, as they made delighted little sounds at everything.

At one point, they came running from the backyard and oldest daughter said, “Papi! The house is so beautiful! Can we buy it?”

Her sisters joined the choir, pleading and whining.

The father smiled at them. I could tell he had already fallen in love with the home and could see himself raising his daughters there.

“You like the house, mijita?” Mr. Reyes asked, scooping up his youngest child.

“It's a funny house, daddy!” she giggled. “It winked at me!”

“Did it now?” said Mr. Reyes, smiling warmly at his daughters' silliness.

“Yeah, with the windows! I saw it!” swore the eldest.

“Oh well, I always wanted to live in a winking house, didn't you know?”

I could have kissed the man. Was he really about to take that hellish building out of my hands?

Mr. Reyes came to the house one more time, without his children, but still, the home was silent. Not a single sound of protest.

“You know, I hadn't seen Lídia smile like that since her mother left,” Mr. Reyes told me, looking to me like a man who had just found some much-needed peace. “Maybe there's something special about this house.”

“There's definitely something,” I said, not sounding as bitter as I thought I would.

In the end, everything had turned out fine. The Reyes would have a home to call their own, and the picky house would have a family to keep it company. Angela would be overjoyed.

As I walked away from it, I even whispered, “Told you I would find someone perfect for you.”

For once, the house made a sound that I took as agreement, a low, gentle rumble that felt satisfied. Perhaps even grateful.

Documents were signed, commissions were paid, and I was all too glad to move on to the next complicated building my boss had in store for me. Something that didn't protest every time I brought home someone it didn't like.

By the time the police came to talk to me, I had already learned about the girls' disappearance from the news. Well, they called it disappearance, always trying to sound hopeful that the three girls might be found someday. In truth, I have no doubt that the girls are as dead as their father.

I didn't tell the police this, obviously. I answered their questions, which were brief and ultimately pointless, then provided an alibi for the night of the disappearance. I don't think they considered me a serious suspect, but by that point, the trail had gone cold and I suspect they had been interviewing every adult they'd come into contact with, even if they didn't seem to pose a threat.

I honestly couldn't blame them. Mr. Reyes had been disposed of most violently. Whoever the kidnapper had been, they had slammed his head between the kitchen door and the doorjamb, over and over again. The news claimed it had been a quick death, though a detailed autopsy report that had subsequently been leaked claimed that he had remained alive for at least several minutes, his broken skull too damaged for him to get up and get help, but not damaged enough to allow him a mercifully quick death.

People didn't linger on that detail too much, though. You see, when Mr. Reyes' body was found, he had been clutching Lídia's severed hand in his, her little fingers curled and bloodied in her father's grasp. No one could explain the marks around what was left of her wrist. They looked like teeth marks, it was said, as if a predator with sharp fangs had bitten the rest of her off while her father tried to pull her free... but that was impossible, of course.

I didn't mention the house to anyone. What was I going to say? Even if I leave aside the absurdity of the situation for a moment, all I have is a broken theory I'm still trying to put together. I tried to call Angela one last time, but she didn't answer. I don't think she wants to deal with this shit again; after all, she never mentioned her missing cousins to me. I had to learn it from a thorough news report that unearthed a missing case from the 1980s that had happened at the same address. A boy and a girl, taken in the middle of the night while their parents slept. They didn't draw much of a parallel, though. Angela's uncle had been spared, after all.

I do wonder, though. I thought the house had been looking for a family, but now I wonder if it hadn't been looking for a meal. Children, it seems, are its food of choice. And after such a hearty dinner, I wonder if it will go dormant again. Maybe it will be quiet for another forty years before it has to eat again.

Or maybe – and I don't like to think about it, but I can't help it – maybe Angela's uncle did cherish his house as much as she claimed he did. Maybe he cherished it enough to keep it fed.

Maybe, if we had torn those walls apart, we might not have liked what we would have found.

[welllpthisishappening]

Out of the Frying Pan (14/?)

“It was,” Killian said, answering before he considered the emphasis his voice had instinctively put on the past tense.

“Was?” Killian didn’t respond and Robin nodded slowly, eyes widening with understanding. “Ah, of course.” “Don’t get all smug on me.” “You going to tell her you love her and want to make out in hallways as soon as you get to set tomorrow, or you going to hold off until after you’re done filming? Or, better yet, maybe you can start making out in the makeup room.”

AN: I am constantly screaming thank you to @laurnorder who is the best and fixes all my mistakes. Lots of friendship this chapter. Like. A lot. 

Hanging out at Ao3 and tag’ed on Tumblr. 

He liked Marco.

He just wasn’t sure what Marco was doing working for Robert Gold. Or with Robert Gold. Killian should be more aware of the specifics.

It was his restaurant.

Or his restaurant expansion.

Or whatever.

“Mr. Jones?” Marco asked and Killian spun on the spot, eyes going wide at the slightly nervous expression on the old man’s face. “Did you hear me?” He hadn’t. He hadn’t heard a word the man had said. That kept happening. Ariel was going crazy. Killian was positive he heard her mutter something about just call her already, jeez when she walked out of the kitchen the night before – ignoring his near-demand for her to get out of the room before he pushed her out.

But he wasn’t entirely certain.

Because he hadn’t really been listening.

And hadn’t been for the last two weeks.

Not since Emma Swan had grabbed his jacket and kissed him in the middle of the hallway just outside her brother and sister-in-law’s apartment.

He was a mess.

“Marco, we talked about this,” Killian said, trying to smile convincingly at the contractor in front of him. “No more, Mr. Jones.”

The man nodded slowly, arms crossed and a wary smile on his face. “Still didn’t answer my question though.” “I absolutely was not listening.” “That seems to be a trend.” Killian narrowed his eyes at him – ignoring how right a man who’d known him for less than a month was. “What were you asking me?” “Whether or not you wanted to keep the bars on the window in the far corner or if you wanted me to order new glass.” Killian glanced up at the windows in question and pressed his lips together tightly. He didn’t know what to do – and he ignored the way that feeling seemed unequivocally tied to how he didn’t know what to do about Emma.  He didn’t need to worry about that now.

He had a restaurant expansion to oversee and another all-star competition to get ready for. They were filming Chopped the next day.

That also may be why he wasn’t listening to anyone. Killian was nervous – and he didn’t like it. At all.

He should have called her.

He should have said something. Anything. Everything. He should have told her about the restaurant and Gold and Milah and owned up to all the things he was certain her brother had found in his background check.

He drank a lot of rum instead and refused to listen to anyone when they talked.

“Take the bars out Marco,” Robin said, walking into the restaurant with a six pack under his arm and a frustrated look on his face. “We’re trying to run a restaurant here, not a prison.” Marco glanced questioningly at Killian. “Yeah, that’s cool,” he said. “Go ahead and order the new glass tomorrow morning.” “Will do,” Marco agreed. “I’ll let Mr. Gold know and we can move on from there.” “How do you know, Mr. Gold?” Killian asked, Robin dropping the case on the floor in the corner of his eye.

Marco’s eyes darkened slightly and Killian was positive he sighed – but he still wasn’t doing a very good job of listening, so he couldn’t be certain. “He hired me for a job a long time ago,” he said. “Doing?” “Construction work.” “No, I figured,” Killian pushed, taking a step towards him. “I mean how did you find him? Or how did he find you? “Oh,” Marco said softly, dragging one foot along the dusty floor of the warehouse. “Mr. Gold’s always been very good at finding the people he needs when he needs them. You know he owns almost a dozen buildings throughout Manhattan.” “I didn’t.” Marco nodded and Killian glanced at Robin, already pulling apart the end of the case, yanking a beer out and popping open the top. “Across the city,” Marco continued. “He’s been building it up for years.” “Why?” “I don’t understand.” “Why?” Killian repeated. “What’s he trying to accomplish?”

“You haven’t figured it out yet?” Killian tried to ignore the frustration surging through his entire body, pressing his lips together tightly and simply raising his eyebrows at Marco. The man sighed softly and shook his head. “Gold wants power. He wants to be the best. And he’s willing to buy up half the city to feel like he is. There were some questions about the way he did his work in Manhattan, rumors and investigations and things like that, but nothing really ever came of it. I don’t think the police could actually find anything. But I always got the impression that’s why he was trying to move out to Brooklyn. Start over in a new borough, as it were.” Killian’s teeth tugged on the inside of his lip and he chanced a glance at Robin – already drinking one of the bottles of beer he had apparently brought with him to an active construction site. “Got it,” he muttered.

And he did.

And to some extent he understood.

He understood the desire to be the best, to prove something to some sort of unspoken villain. He felt it every goddamn day – like he had to prove he wasn’t just the kind of person who’d walk away from responsibility and rules and regulations and disappoint his dead brother.

He’d be proud of you.

Emma’s voice echoed in his head – not for the first time in the last two weeks – and Killian knew Marco was staring at him warily. She couldn’t know – couldn’t be certain how Liam would feel, but somewhere deep inside Killian, he hoped she was right.

He needed her to be right.

And he needed Gold not to be the asshole he strongly suspected he was.

“If there’s not anything else you want to talk about,” Marco said slowly, “I think I’m going to head home.” “Yeah, yeah, of course,” Killian muttered distractedly, fingers wrapped around his brace and thoughts racing as loudly as the tide against the rocks outside. Marco nodded, eyes darting to Robin before he stuck his hands in his pockets and walked out the makeshift door at the front of the restaurant, half covered in plastic and caution tape.

Killian stood in the middle of the room, hand tightening around his forearm until it practically hurt, only moving when Robin coughed softly behind him.

“Not a word,” Killian mumbled, walking towards the windows in question. "Don't say a single word."

Robin followed him, two more bottles of beer in his hand and he tossed one at Killian without saying anything. “I haven’t,” Robin shot back, proving himself wrong with one sentence. “You know, except that.” “Sure.” “I think taking the bars off is a good idea.” “So you mentioned.” “I also think you should relax.” “See,” Killian said, voice dropping low as he flipped open the top on the top of the bottle in his hand, “this is talking. These are words. Which is exactly what I told you not to do.” Robin didn’t miss a beat, shooting Killian a glare as he jumped onto the window ledge and crossed his legs in one quick movement. “And you’re proving my point.” “What do you want?” “I want you to tell me why you’re so worried about Gold. And also why Roland is nervous to talk to you.” “What?” Killian’s head snapped towards his friend – nearly dropping the stupid craft beer he was positive Robin had paid too much money for. It had, over the last two weeks, become a bit of a trend. The entire staff at The Jolly had given him a five-foot radius for the last few days, refusing to ask about anything that wasn’t somehow directed related to the food and even Regina had cut back on the e-mails about the next all-star event.

He knew they were all nervous he was one wrong syllable away from blowing up, but he hadn’t realized Roland had picked up on it. And that might have made his breath catch in his throat and his stomach constrict.

And he wished Emma hadn’t run away all over again.

“He asked me what you were so upset about two days ago,” Robin continued. “And what he could do to help.” “You’ve raised a far too generous kid,” Killian groaned.

“He likes you for some reason.” “Yeah, I noticed that. What did you tell him?” “He figured it out.” “What?”

“He figured it out,” Robin repeated. “Asked if this was about the lady at The Jolly with pretty hair . We’re still trying to get him to remember how names work.” Killian barked out a laugh and took a long drink – it was absolutely overpriced. “Tell him to stop being so smart.” “Tell him yourself.” “I will later tonight.” “Good,” Robin agreed. “So, if I ask whether or not it’s actually about the lady at The Jolly with pretty hair are you going to kill me?” Killian groaned again, resting the empty beer bottle on his side – he wasn’t certain how he’d finished that so quickly. “I’ll take that as a yes, then,” Robin muttered.

“Nah, I won’t kill you,” Killian said, staring at his feet. “Question your bravery at approaching a subject I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to ignore, but definitely not kill you.” “Why are you trying to ignore it?” “Because she is.” “I don’t understand.” Killian rolled his head back, twisting his neck slightly until he actually heard it crack and ran his hand over his face, pressing his fingers into his jaw harder than normal, like that would help redirect some of his pain and frustration. It didn’t. It just kind of hurt.

“You didn’t come to Halloween,” Robin pointed out. “Why?” “I went with her to her brother and sister-in-law’s party.” Robin choked on the beer he was drinking. “How’d that happen?”

“She asked me to.” “And?” “And it was good. For about ten minutes. But then her brother was an overprotective dick and apparently used police resources to run a background check on me and so he knows everything and tried to tell Emma. And she freaked out. Yelled at him and ran into the hallway and told me she’d let me tell her on my own time.” “That seems good. The on your own time thing. The rest of it is kind of fucked up though.” “Her brother’s a detective,” Killian said, like that explained everything.

Robin made a face, shrugging. “And that makes him an asshole? Seems like a waste of tax dollars.” “That’s what Emma said.” “I knew I liked her,” Robin laughed. “So she freaked out, but it seems like she’s ok with you. What happened after that?” Killian sighed, fingertips pressing into his eyes softly. “We talked. I told her about Liam. She told me her brother found her after she ran away from a foster home. And it was like some sort of I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours depressing backstory competition. But it was also...I don’t know...good. And then she kissed me. Or I kissed her. I don’t know. It happened very fast.”

Robin slid off the windowsill, dust flying up when he landed on the ground and the look on his face would have almost been hysterical if Killian didn’t feel like he was actually being split in half by having to talk about it.

“She kissed you?” Robin gaped. “How?” “You have a six year old kid and you don’t know how kissing works yet?” Robin glared at him. “You know what I mean.” “I know that you’re acting like a teenager.” “You’ve been sulking for two straight weeks, Killian! Pot, meet kettle or however the cliché works. But I don’t get it. That’s what you wanted, right? What’s the problem?” “I haven’t talked to her since.” “What?” “You need to stop repeating yourself.” “It’s because you’re giving me bits and pieces of information.”

“That’s all I have,” Killian muttered, kicking at the floor. “We kissed, she freaked out, told me to wait five minutes before coming back into the apartment and she barely said two words to me the rest of the night. I came home like two hours later.” “How’d you get upstairs without anyone seeing you?”

Killian rolled his eyes – Robin practically missing the whole point of this entire conversation. It had been easy enough to walk through the kitchen that night, everyone distracted with costumes and drinks and a, frankly, obscene amount of candy. He’d slipped around the side to the door that led to the apartment above the restaurant – something he’d also managed to inherit from Norm – and didn’t sleep at all.

“You all were slightly preoccupied,” Killian sighed. “And I wasn’t exactly trying to talk to anyone.” Robin nodded slowly. “You haven’t tried to talk to her since then?” “No.” “Why?” Because he was nervous and a coward and vaguely terrified that Emma would tell him it was a mistake and she regretted it and he wasn’t quite sure what he’d do with that. Because he was half in love with her already.

And he couldn’t remember the last time he believed he could love anything.

“We’re trying not to push,” Killian mumbled.

“She seemed to push on that kiss.” Killian’s eyes flashed, but Robin held his ground – well acquainted with flashing and frustrated and an almost unhealthy determination to make sure Killian was happy.

“How did you find Gold?” Killian asked and, this time, Robin’s eyes snapped towards his. “How did you find this warehouse?” “I told you. A friend of a friend.” “Yuh huh.” “You don’t trust him.” A statement – not a question – and Killian shrugged.

“I don’t know him.” “Marco was right. He owns a lot of properties and they’re all in good spots across the city. The restaurants he’s got have all done well and he’s got a reputation for really turning buildings around and sparking talk.” “Talk?” “You know, like drive up interest or something. I think he’s got people in the media or something.” Killian lowered his eyebrows. “A real estate guy has people in the media?” “So I’ve heard. John knew him – Gold I mean – he owns the building the bar’s in.” That gave Killian pause. If Gold had worked with John, maybe he wasn’t so bad. The bar was a success and it always seemed to be packed – or had been the two times he’d been there when he actually had time to get above 50th Street. “There’s just one thing John didn’t like.” “Yeah?” Killian asked. “And what was that?” “He’s big on deals. And give and take.” “Like winning this all-star thing?” “Exactly that. Told John he’d drop two hundred off the rent a month if he could guarantee a good review in the first two months.”

“Seems awfully arbitrary.” Robin shook his head quickly. “No, no, it’s not. He wants the press and the talk. He wants to be known , you know what I mean. He’s picking out talent across the city, trying to align himself with them and, then, more people are renting and buying from him.”

Killian narrowed his eyes, trying to process that. It seemed a little far fetched and much more involved than it had to be.

And he still needed to win.

Fuck.

“What are you worried about with Gold?” Robin asked, sounding genuinely curious. “I mean, it’s not a bad deal. I wouldn’t have told you about it otherwise. Seems pretty easy for you, all things considered.” “It was,” Killian said, answering before he considered the emphasis his voice had instinctively put on the past tense.

“Was?” Killian didn’t respond and Robin nodded slowly, eyes widening with understanding. “Ah, of course.” “Don’t get all smug on me.” “You going to tell her you love her and want to make out in hallways as soon as you get to set tomorrow, or you going to hold off until after you’re done filming? Or, better yet, maybe you can start making out in the makeup room.”

“You’re an ass.” “I’m right is what I am. You should bring her back to The Jolly soon. Her kid too. How’d the test go, by the way?” “We got an A,” Killian said and Robin’s eyebrows practically flew off his face at the word we . “And I can’t bring her back to The Jolly if she won’t talk to me.” “She’s probably just nervous.” “Of me?” “Are you an idiot?” Killian glared at him, but Robin just clapped him on the shoulder, pulling him towards the door. “She told you her brother found her after she ran away from a foster home. She’s probably got a few trust issues. And if you stared at her any more longingly, your eyes would probably fall out of your head.”

He didn’t say anything.

He didn’t have an answer.

And Robin knew it.

And probably knew how much he wanted to kiss her again – because, somehow, Emma Swan had snuck under his skin in a way he was fairly positive he never wanted to stop.

And he absolutely had to talk to her.

He hoped the camera didn’t see any of it.

“You ever going to talk about it?”

Emma eyed Henry, hand tightening around the spatula in her hands as the words sunk into her brain. “About what?” She knew exactly what.

About why she’d walked back into the apartment on Halloween nearly two hours before he expected her to be back and why she’d told him he should probably stop texting Killian so much because he was busy with the restaurant and why she’d made french toast four times in the last two weeks.

Well, five if she counted that morning. She should probably count that morning too. There was no sense in lying to herself.

Even if that’s what she’d been doing for the last two weeks.

“Mom,” Henry sighed, pulling his plate towards him when Emma dumped three pieces of french toast on it. “You know.” “You’re going to have to elaborate, kid.” “You’ve made french toast four times.” “Five,” she corrected automatically.” “See, that’s what I’m talking about.” “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

“Like Killian?” “Henry!”

He shrugged, stuffing french toast in his mouth, and Emma tossed the spatula down on the counter with a lot more force than necessary.

Because he was absolutely right and she didn’t really need her twelve-year-old dispensing relationship advice at eight in the morning. Especially not when she had to come face-to-face with said relationship whatever later that afternoon. They were filming Chopped and Emma hadn’t said two words to Killian Jones since she’d practically thrown herself at him in the hallway of David and Mary Margaret’s apartment building on Halloween.

Although he hadn’t said anything either.

And she’d tried to be mad about that – tried to use that as an excuse for not talking to him, but Emma knew that’s all it was, an excuse. Because she’d pushed him away with both hands. She couldn’t seem to get his face out of her mind – no matter how much french toast she made – blue eyes and half-open mouth and something that almost looked like a desperate desire for her .

But that couldn’t have been right.

He didn’t know anything about her.

She didn’t know anything about him.

He couldn’t want her. Not the way she seemed to want him. Because no one wanted Emma Swan like that. And if they did, they just ended up leaving anyway.

Emma was a disaster. She hoped she didn’t look like one on camera later.

At some point in her quasi-mental breakdown in the middle of the kitchen, Henry had gone back to his room to get ready for school and Emma nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard the lock turn in the key of the front door a few feet away from her.

“You ok?” Mary Margaret asked, eyebrows drawn low in concern as she pushed the door back in its frame. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” “No, no,” Emma said quickly. “I’m fine. Just forgot you were on your way over here.” “You forgot I was coming over to take Henry to school? We talked about it last night.” “I’ve just got a lot of things on my mind.” “Like Killian?” Emma wished she was still holding the spatula so she still had something to throw and something to work out her frustrations on that wasn’t her pregnant sister-in-law. Instead, she pressed her lips together tightly and met Mary Margaret’s gaze straight on. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice even.

“Sure.” “That’s a pointed opinion.” “One Henry shares.” “Has he been talking to you about this?” Emma cried. “Why are you letting him do that?” “Because he’s just as worried about you as I am.” “There is nothing to be worried about.”

Mary Margaret crossed her arms and she looked like such a mom , Emma had to blink several times to make sure there wasn’t an infant near by as well. “What happened?” “When?” “You know when.” Emma groaned, glancing down the hallway quickly to make sure Henry was still firmly entrenched in getting ready and pulled Mary Margaret towards the couch – yanking her hard enough that David absolutely would have yelled at her.

“It was fine,” Emma said quickly, eyes staring at her hands as they gripped her thighs tightly. “It was really, really good actually. You’d have been proud M’s, I was all confident before the party and he was mock sword fighting with Henry and I didn’t even freak out about that, I just found it endearing.” “That’s because it is,” Mary Margaret cut in and Emma widened her eyes. “Sorry, go, sword fighting and endearing.”

“And then we got to your apartment and David was a dick and did you know he ran a background check on Killian?” “I did,” Mary Margaret sighed. “We had quite a long conversation about that. For what it’s worth though, he was just trying to look out for you.” “I don’t need him to do that.” “It’s a hard habit to shake.” Emma groaned, shaking her head. “So, David told you about the background check and you went out into the hallway and...then what?” “We talked.” “About the background check?” “No,” Emma shook her head. “Or at least not all of it. He told me about Liam.”

“Who’s Liam?” “His brother. He’s dead.” Mary Margaret’s face fell and for one vaguely terrifying second Emma was worried she was about to cry – pregnancy hormones and whatnot – but she just nodded encouragingly, silently helping Emma keep talking. “And I...well I told him about David.” “What about David?” “I told him how he found me.” And now Mary Margaret absolutely looked like she was going to cry. Because Emma never told anyone that. Ruby didn’t even know that. And she’d been trying to get Emma to bring her hot police brother on the show for years.

“I just...I don’t know, M’s,” Emma sputtered. “I trust him. Or I did. Or I don’t know.” “Past tense?” Emma shrugged. “What happened after you talked?” “I kissed him. Or he kissed me. No, I definitely kissed him. But he didn’t seem too upset about it. Until I left.” Mary Margaret’s mouth was hanging open and Emma was fairly positive Henry was hiding out in his room at this point – determined to let them talk. She appreciated that kid more and more every day. “You kissed him?” Mary Margaret asked, hissing the question out in a forced whisper. “Why?” Emma raised her hands in the air, holding her palms up slightly – she didn’t have an answer. “I wanted to. I guess.” “You guess?”

“I did.” “And now? That was more past tense.” “Stop being a teacher for two seconds and please focus on this problem.” “You think it’s a problem?” And there it was. The million dollar question. Or whatever.

And why Emma had made french toast that morning – again. Because it should be a problem. It should be an issue, how much she wanted it and him and couldn’t shake the way his hand had gripped her waist like she’d been keeping him upright in the middle of that hallway.

She’d reacted like it was a problem – run away and barely looked at him for the rest of the night, ignoring the quiet way he told her he needed to get back to The Jolly for some sort of Halloween party emergency and how his shoulders had dropped slightly when she didn’t even put up a fight.

Because of course he’d run away – just like she had.

But then, in the last two weeks, she’d found herself hoping he’d show up at the network offices or text her or bake cookies for Henry’s soccer team again. And when he hadn’t – when he’d left her alone like she’d pretended she wanted him to – Emma was positive she could actually feel her heart breaking.

She was a melodramatic fool.

“It’s not going to be bad by default, Emma,” Mary Margaret said softly, pulling Emma’s hand away from her leg.

“But it could be.” “And it could also be the best thing.” “How are you so positive about everything?” Mary Margaret smiled at Emma, the sheer confidence in it sinking into Emma’s pulse and making her wonder how she’d managed to stumble into this family. “Because even believing in the possibility of a happy ending is a very powerful thing,” she said.

“I told Henry not to text him anymore,” Emma admitted and she could even hear Mary Margaret’s disappointment.

“It’s ok to let someone in. He wants to be here. I know he does. He came to the party didn’t he?” “Yeah,” Emma agreed. “He didn’t, uh, he didn’t say anything before did he?” “When?” “When you went to The Jolly. That was a couple of days ago, wasn’t it?” Mary Margaret shifted in her seat, sitting up straight and pushing her bangs away from her eyes quickly, refusing to meet Emma’s gaze. “M’s? Didn’t you go?” Mary Margaret shook her head quickly. “No.” “Why not?”

“You’re really asking me that?” “I’m really curious.” “Because,” Mary Margaret said, squeezing Emma’s hand slightly. “You walked back in the apartment on Halloween like you were scared to death and don’t think you fooled anyone with making Killian wait to follow you back in. Or at least didn’t fool me. And I knew something happened and I knew he only got us the reservation to impress you , so it seemed kind of silly to show up if it wasn’t going to do that.” “Impress me?” “Exactly.” Emma groaned, leaning her head back on the side of the couch and trying to remember she was an adult with a kid down the hall and she wouldn’t be able to just pretend she was sick to get out filming Chopped that afternoon.

Even if she wanted to.

Or didn’t want to. Even if she really wanted to see Killian Jones again.

“I should tell Henry he can text him again,” Emma muttered, sighing softly as her shoulders moved up and down dramatically.

“Yeah, probably.”

“And I should probably talk to him.” “That too.”

Emma sighed again – Henry’s footsteps practically racing down the hall now – and Mary Margaret smiled knowingly at her. She still hadn’t let go of Emma’s hand.

“You ok?” Henry asked, skidding to a stop just a few inches away from the coffee table. Emma narrowed her eyes at him – that same suspicion that he’d absolutely been listening before creeping back into the corner of her brain.

“Definitely,” she said, nearly almost meaning the promise entirely. “Just anxious to get this competition out of the way.” And that wasn’t really a lie either.

“Speaking of which,” Mary Margaret cut in, eyes darting back towards Emma. “Ruby told me the numbers were looking good again.” Emma shot her a warning look – but Henry’s interest was already piqued and she could practically see the questions forming on the tip of his tongue. Mary Margaret muttered a quiet sorry and Emma sighed again before she could stop herself, but Henry was bobbing on his feet in front of her.

“Is that true, mom?” he asked. “They’re good again?” “They were never really bad,” she argued. “But, yeah, I mean as good as they���ve been in awhile. Ruby said we may get our timeslot back in the next couple of months actually. Depends on the end-of-the-year numbers, but we’ve got this all-star show and the Christmas episode always does really well.” It was her thing – had been for the last two years and despite everything else that was going on, Emma had still managed to consider just what she’d make for The Kitchen’s annual Christmas dinner episode. “When do you film that?” Mary Margaret asked.

“Not until after Thanksgiving. But Ruby thinks we can kind of blow the metaphorical roof off with that one, especially if we’re promo’ed well and if the cookbook starts trending up again for the holidays.” It was a lot of ifs and maybes and the uncertainty of it made Emma’s by-the-book head spin slightly, but she was, for the first time in a long time, confident. And she thought she could win again that afternoon.

Even with Killian a few feet away.

“That’s fantastic,” Mary Margaret said and the support in her voice was enough to almost make Emma cry – even without the hormone excuse.

Emma nodded slowly, smile inching across her face and that weird, oversized ball of anxiety that had been living in her stomach for the last two weeks started to shrink just a bit. “It could be,” she said and she wasn’t positive three words had ever meant so much in the middle of her living room on a Tuesday morning.

Mary Margaret beamed at her.

“Alright, kid,” Emma said, shaking herself out of the emotional road she was practically sprinting down quickly. “You’ve got to get to school.” “Ah, do I have to?” Henry sighed, sinking onto the edge of the coffee table.

“Of course you have to. You think M’s came over here just because?” Henry shrugged. “And talk about Killian.” Emma’s mouth hung open – again – but Mary Margaret just laughed softly, pushing herself out of the corner of the couch and resting her hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Smart kid,” she said, voice shaking with the laughter she wasn’t actually trying to let out.

“Yeah,” Emma sighed. “Too smart for his own good sometimes.” “So I was right?” Henry asked, jumping off the table and jogging towards his backpack next to the door. “Does that mean I can text him again? Mary Margaret glanced at Emma, one eyebrow pulled up and a small smile tugging on the corner of her mouth. “If you want,” Emma said. “But not until later ok? I’m sure he’s got a hundred different things to do before he gets to the network.” Henry nodded, yanking his backpack over his shoulder, but Emma saw his hand dart into his pocket and she was positive his fingers were wrapped around his phone already. She couldn’t quite bring herself to be angry at him.

Because like it or not – and kiss or not – Killian Jones had found a way into their lives and Emma couldn’t argue that she liked the way he looked there.

And the way he looked in general.

But that was a different conversation – and one she didn’t want to have with her son or her sister-in-law.

“Good luck today,” Mary Margaret said, glancing back over her shoulder as she swung open Emma’s front door. “Remember you have to repurpose the ingredients or you’re definitely going to get chopped.” “She knows,” Henry said quickly. “We watched the entire collection on Netflix last weekend and came up with a plan. Operation: Beat the Basket.” “Catchy,” Mary Margaret smiled.

“It does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” Emma asked, reaching her hand forward to brush Henry’s hair out of his eyes. She wasn’t positive how one child could have hair grow that fast, but it appeared as if he was trying to break some sort of record. “Go home with M’s later, ok?” she continued, glancing down at Henry. He nodded – he knew the plan.

“Celebratory Granny’s later?” he asked.

“Put an asterisk on that celebratory, but sure, Granny’s later no matter what.”

“You could bring Killian with you. I could ask him! I’ll ask him when I text him.” Henry’s voice picked up and Mary Margaret was laughing again and Emma was positive if her eyes got any wider they’d actually fall out of her head.

Her kid was too smart.

And too good at coming up with plans.

“We’ll see,” she said quickly, doing her best to not actually answer the question. “Now go or you’re going to be late for school.”

“You’re totally going to win again,” Henry said and it sounded like a promise as he followed Mary Margaret out the door and Emma couldn’t stop herself from believing him just a little bit.

She walked into the network offices half an hour later – running ahead of schedule again – and found the makeup room on the 17th floor jam-packed with people. Belle was in the middle of getting her hair-sprayed, in the midst of a conversation with Graham, who was leaning up against the far wall. Anna was sitting on the counter in front of Belle, her feet crossed at her ankles and Ruby was on her phone, perched on the edge of the chair Emma assumed was for her.

“Hey,” she said, walking up behind her producer and appreciating the way she jumped just a bit more than she should have.

“You’re early,” Ruby muttered, not looking up from her phone.

“It happens sometimes.” “It never happens.” “It’s now happened before both of these network all-star things.” “And why do you think that is, exactly?” Ruby asked, pausing dramatically on every word before she twisted in the chair to stare expectantly at Emma.

“You know why.” “And I’d love to hear you say it out loud.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Emma muttered, not meaning a word of it. “I’m not rehashing all of this again. I already told Mary Margaret everything this morning.” Ruby groaned, sliding down the back of the chair until her feet were stretched out underneath the bottom of the counter. “You told Mary Margaret and not me? I’m wounded, Emma.” “Somehow I think you’ll survive.”

“Whatever.”

Emma stared at Ruby’s reflection in the mirror in front of her – all frustration and disappointment and the sarcastic glint that never seemed to ever really leave her eyes. “You haven’t happened to have seen anyone around this morning, have you?” she asked and Ruby’s eyes practically glowed,  eyebrows rising in slow motion. “Not in person, but Belle here mentioned she saw him on set when she got here.” “Killian?” Belle asked, twisting to try and look at Emma while still not moving under the very precise touch of the network hairdresser. “Yeah, he was getting his station ready before, but that was almost an hour ago.” “You hear that, Emma?” Ruby asked, lips twisting up as she spoke. “He’s been sitting in the kitchen by himself for almost an hour. Seems like an interesting way to get ready for a cooking show. Or maybe he’s trying to work up some sort of courage to be on camera.”

Belle scoffed, trying to turn the sound into a cough and the hairdresser all but commanded her to stop moving.  Emma rolled her eyes.

“I’m going to go take a walk,” she said quickly, knowing full well she wasn’t fooling anyone. Ruby didn’t even try to hide her laughter.

“As long as you’re not shiny when you get in front of the camera I don’t care what you do before we start,” she said and Emma bit back every retort of where has this leniency been for the last two years,  because she wasn’t one to walk away from a gift.

And Ruby’s understanding or support or whatever this was was a gift.

Emma nodded once, tossing a grateful smile Belle’s way for good measure and moved as quickly down the hallway as possible without actually breaking out into a full sprint – her sneakers squeaked on the floor of the studio as soon as she swung the door open and she was positive her heart had actually made its way into her throat when she saw him sitting there.

His head snapped up quickly when he heard her walk in and Emma could have been blind and she still would have been able to see the tension in his shoulders, the nerves that were practically rolling off him in that empty kitchen.

She licked her lips quickly, fighting off the natural urge to run as fast and as far away as possible, and walked further into the room.

He didn’t turn around.

He did take a deep breath, his shoulders moving with the effort and ran his hand over the back of his neck.

“Hi,” Emma said softly, standing next to him and staring straight ahead. She was a coward. And she couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye.

“Swan.” Emma took her own deep breath, eyes trained at the wall ahead of her. She heard him move, his body twisting slightly and the sound of the leather jacket he had on practically echoed in her ears. And then she looked at him. And he looked nervous and slightly hopeful and like maybe he wouldn’t walk away.

And Emma thought maybe she could believe him.

“You want to talk?” she said, cracking over the words as she tried to push them out of her mouth.

He stiffened again, head tilted at her, but then he huffed out a breath of air and it seemed as if he was looking at her for the first time. “I’d like that, Swan.”

[thehorrorofnachosandhamantaschen]

A Mist Minute: Episode 8 - The Law of Nature

Sometimes we just don’t have the time to make a whole podcast episode about something like a TV show because they’re sooooo many episodes long and we’d need a million podcasts to cover them adequately. Who has time for a million episodes? Certainly not us! Just putting out 40 or so a year is killing us already and the sacrifices we’ve had to make in our personal lives are unmentionable. But every now and then there comes a TV show, nay, TV event, that we feel that we have to cover, especially when they relate to episodes we’ve covered already. I am of course talking about the new The Mist show, based off of the story by Stephen King (And 2007 Film) which we have definitively covered more extensively than anyone else on the internet ever and you can listen to HERE. So without further ado, the first of our “Minute” series, The Mist: Episode 8 - The Law of Nature:

EPISODE EIGHT - THE LAW OF NATURE

The Gang is driving around in the mist and decide to drop in on the Gaunt Friends’ family home to see if they’re still alive, also to siphon gas. They decide to do this not by pulling up next to the car they’re going to get gas from, but instead parking on the street, one driveway away from the car.

The people in the church are not super impressed by Frances Conroy stating that her living is the miracle rather than something big coming. She reminds them that everyone else who wasn’t impressed with her is dead, so just FYI...

At the mall Gaunt Mom and her group are worried that Isiah Whitlock Jrs group is running out of food and getting antsy. Gaunt Mom says she needs a room without windows STAT while looking on at Rapist Footballer.

In the Church Shitty Cop admit to Frances Conroy that he thinks his son actually raped Gaunt Daughter. She in return starts going on about Chemtrails in the sky, ramping up the crazy to a whole new level, and tells him that he needs to kill his rapist son in order to restore order.

Gaunt Friend finds his Shitty Dad eating at home and that his mother is dead, pecked to death by birds. “To Death” in this case seems to mean “eyes pecked out and a few peck marks on her face”, which as we all know is an instant killer.

Dad sees a blinking light and drives off to go look at it, because when you’re siphoning gas for a car the last thing you need for it is the car to put it in. Good thing Gaunt Former Addict and Jonah are too busy banging in the back of the other car to care. Bringing sexy back!

Gaunt Daughter and Rapist Footballer are skating around the mall and having fun and making out, which The Mother of the dead child who is lighting candles at the shrine for the dead child believe it or not finds objectionable. The Mother goes to narc to Isiah Whitlock Jr about it and he tells her to chill the fuck out about it, but the Security Guard thinks they should hear her out.

Rapist Footballer and Gaunt Daughter get back to their area and he is told to go get some water from the other room. He does, only to find out that the room is the windowless one Gaunt Mom was looking for earlier, complete with a cot, bucket with TP to shit in, and a few football magazines, and is immediately locked inside by her.

Gaunt Friend and Shitty Dad have a real heart to heart about how he hates his son because he’s gay. Shitty Dad thinks that Dad has been banging Gaunt Friend too and that he’s crazy, so Gaunt Friend shoots him and admits that he was the one who raped Gaunt Daughter! The thing we guessed several episodes ago!

Frances Conroy decides that what her group needs to do is go to the mall and kill Rapist Footballer.

The blinking light belongs to Crash from Crash and the Boys who has somehow survived walking out through the mist for the past few days and Dad lets him in the car. He warns Dad that things are getting kind of bad at the mall, which only makes up his mind all the more that he needs to go there.

Gaunt Daughter goes looking for the Rapist Footballer and goes to the other group to look for her at the other group. The Mother is all “Maybe don’t be making out with the guy who raped you” and everyone thinks that’s a bit too far, except the Security Guard.

The one Army Guy left goes up to Isiah Whitlock Jrs office, almost catching him eating his secret hidden store of food, warning him that he’s got to get a handle on The Mother going on about her dead kid and how Gaunt Daughter caused the whole thing.

Gaunt Friend fakes that his father had attacked him so when Dad comes in and finds the dead body it doesn’t look suspicious. Dad helps clean Gaunt Friend’s wound and says he’ll always be part of the family, no matter what kind of horrible things he did. This is put to the test instantly when Dad finds Triazolam in his medicine cabinet, the same drug used to knock out Gaunt Daughter. Gaunt Friend pulls the gun on him, and is about to shoot when Dad jumps up, pushing the gun aside at the last minute and getting knocked out in the process. Gaunt Friend runs out to the car and convinces the rest of The Gang that Dad is dead and they need to get to the mall STAT, no need to go in and check for a body or anything!

The Mother admits to Isiah Whitlock Jr that she got a little crazy and doesn’t really believe that Gaunt Daughter caused the mist. He accuses her of starting the fire, and she accuses him of hoarding food in his office. He won’t admit to doing so and she wants to tell everyone, so he smashes her in the head with a candlestick and then strangles her, which I’m sure he will step up and take the blame for.

Frances Conroy i s getting ready to go to the mall, but some of her group doesn’t want to go with her and just stay in the church. She say “oh no problem”, and then burns the church down around them while her group leaves via the sewers while listening to a Nick Cave song. They have some differences between what the definition of a “problem” is.

When his group finds him and the dead body of The Mother, Isiah Whitlock Jr of course does not step up and instead blames the murder on Gaunt Daughter instead.

We’ve done it! We got more of that hot sexy sex that we were promised would be what makes this series soooooooo hot and steamy! Yep, up to three whole instances (Four is you count the rape, and as much as this show goes on about it I guess we’re going to have to) of the thing that this whole making-a-TV-version-of-The-Mist was sold as and that nobody wanted. Good on you marketing team! Admittedly it is good that it isn’t a show where every episode is just different members of different groups just hooking up, but since you certainly can’t sell this show as being full of cool monsters the next best thing you’ve got is to highlight all the sex. That’s why the film didn’t make a billion dollars right, because they took out the sex scene instead of putting in four or five?

I do have to commend them not making the stereotypical footballer rapist guy the actual rapist (NOTE TO SELF: Remember to refer to that character as Falsely Accused Rapist Footballer going forward) that must have taken some restraint with all the other stereotypes going on in the show. The fact that it’s the troubled gothy gay teen character they make have mental problems and be a rapist killer instead is at best troubling and poor writing, and at worst means they’re probably not even of the stereotypes they’re littering the show with. #notallfootballersarerapists, #notallgothygayteensarepsychoticandrapists.

Two episodes left. As we can see all our groups are now heading for a showdown at the mall where both Gaunt Daughter and Falsely Accused Rapist Footballer are probably going to get killed by angry mobs. Who will survive, and what will be left of them? More importantly, will anybody care? Viewership is a little more than half of what the series started at, this episode garnering about 374,000 view is Wikipedia is to be believed. Is this good in general? Is this good for Spike? The only other shows I know of that are on the network are Bar Rescue and Catch a Contractor, whose viewship numbers are not available on Wikipedia, and reruns of COPS, which don’t count. Shockingly this show is doing better numbers than Twin Peaks (280,000 views of the last episode) which is goddamn mind blowing, so maybe The Mist will get a second season? We’ll see!

Also check out:

Episode 11 - The Mist v. The Mist

A Mist Minute: Episode 1 - Pilot

A Mist Minute: Episode 2 - Withdrawal

A Mist Minute: Episode 3 - Show and Tell

A Mist Minute: Episode 4 - Pequod

A Mist Minute: Episode 5 - The Waiting Room

A Mist Minute: Episode 6 - The Devil You Know

A Mist Minute: Episode 7 - Over the River and Through the Woods

A Mist Minute: Episode 9 - The Waking Dream

A Mist Minute: Episode 10 - The Tenth Meal

A Mist Minute: Show Retrospective

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[jackblankhsh]

Why I Quit:  Home Improvement Store -- Selling Tiki Torches

"So I put the gun in mouth, and was about to squeeze the trigger when the radio -- I don't even remember putting it on -- the radio starts playing a Mötley Crüe song.  And I thought, 'Oh hell no.  The last thing I'm going to hear is not going to be goddamn Mötley Crüe.'  Anyway, long story short, searching for a song to fit the moment, I lost the desire to kill myself."

 The old veterinarian winked at me, "But it'll come back. It always does.  You can only euthanize so many kittens..."

 As she trailed off I handed her a tray of sterilized instruments, "Okay.  On that note, I quit."

 Seeing how the veterinary profession possessed a higher suicide rate than one would expect, I decided not to risk the odds.  Being an assistant might've been safer, but still, I've been known to get deeply depressed doing the dishes.  The endless nature of it... and just knowing that a family is bringing in a beloved pet too sick to... three months later the bender ended.  

 I woke up naked with a bed sheet stuck to my face, glued in place by a puddle of blood spilled from my nose.  Wrapping it around me like a toga I kicked my way through a grove of bottles in search of my clothes.  Glancing back, I saw a curvy women with the contented smile of the well-fucked soundly sleeping.  Her SS Edmund Fitzgerald tattoo made me curious for the details lost in the blackout days behind me.  

 Pulling my jeans out of a bathroom sink, I realized I didn't recognize this place.  Turning on my phone I asked it for directions to my place.  The map app sprang to life indicating I now stood in Virginia.  Consulting another informative application I discovered a terminally malnourished bank account.  Inside my wallet a single twenty dollar bill with a note written across it in my handwriting:

 "Get out before she wakes up.  She's going to stab you."

 I've pulled such blackout related pranks on myself before, leaving cryptic notes warning me of various dangers, and gaffs -- insulting cult leaders, obscene calls to the CIA, and unpaid pizza orders -- however, I didn't feel like taking a chance.  So, making the mistake of trusting myself, I fled the scene.  

 It took a few days to get things in order.  Sure, I starved for the first few days, and maybe I didn't need to rob that waffle house, or the church picnic, but by the end of the week I procured a room at a nearby hotel, and a job at a home improvement store. I didn't expect it to be too long before I could purchase a bus ticket back to Chicago.

 Home improvement shops are essentially giant hardware warehouses.  They're utilitarian in design with shelves rising ridiculously out of reach; capacious buildings scented with a

a unique blend of sawdust, paint, and metal.  Through canyonesque aisles patrons from all walks of life shuffle, body language telegraphing their own personal degree of knowledge:  a burly man tanned into leathery jerky assesses screws by eye, knowing the needed size at a glance; a diminutive blonde housewife navigates her confused husband through electrical supplies, explaining to him what they need to wire a sconce; an old man eyes a toilet skeptically.  And of course, the myriad customers who would use a hammer to put in screws.  

 Mainly due to that last type, employees of such establishments are often practitioners of ninjutsu, particularly the skills known as Shinobi-iri and Intonjutsu.  A befuddled customer approaches an apron clad employee.  The glazed cow eyes of the witless signal to the ninja an idiotic question is fast approaching.  Deftly a smoke bomb is deployed, and the employee vanishes from sight.  The more skilled might simply slip over to the next aisle, disappearing the same way spies are known to dissolve from view when a bus passes by.  

 I never got the hang of such tactics, so instead chose a means of hiding in plain sight.  I spent most of my shifts hanging around a middle aged employee named Gus.  Having retired after several years as a successful contractor, but not yet ready to stop working entirely, Gus worked part time. If a question revolved around home improvement, Gus knew the answer.  Friendly to a degree some might call a fault, he assisted customers before they even finished asking anything.  All I needed to do was stand near him, pause as if considering what to say, and he would answer for me.  That said, I wouldn't be surprised if he suspected my own ineptitude, and merely wanted to keep me from embarrassing myself.

 "I heard the manager ain't too happy with you," Gus said.

 I shrugged, "Hey, I get why, but I thought it would help."

 Gus replied, "You started barbequing in the patio display."

 "I thought it would help sell patio furniture, and let's be clear.  I was grilling, not barbequing.  Don't tell me there isn't a difference."

 Gus held up his hands in surrender, "No argument with that."

 I said, "I also thought the smoke might help with the birds."

 Birds occasionally slipped into the colossal store.  The massive entrance to the open air gardening section allowed them to fly right into the building.  Whole flocks eventually started gathering in the rafters requiring a teenager in a cherry picker to ascend, and battle them with a broom, shooing the birds to the exit.  Sometimes the birds fought back.  The teens didn't always win because some battles can't be fought stoned.

 Gus said, "Never you mind about them birds. They ain't bothering nobody."

 "Sometimes they shit on people."

 "Somebody's always shitting on ya you pay attention." He smiled.  So did I.  You've got to admire that kind of resigned pessimism.  If something bad is inevitable it seems like one can only accept it.  

 "Excuse me?" a young man in khakis and a polo shirt stepped up to me.  

 I said, "Yes sir.  How may I help you?"

 He replied, "I'm looking for tiki torches."

 "Aisle six."  Gus pointed.  The man ignored him.  He seemed determined to wait for me to answer.

 I pointed where Gus had, "Aisle six."

 "Thank you."  The man smiled, losing his grin when he looked at Gus, then walked off.

 "Was that weird?" I asked.

 "Nope.  You're paranoid," Gus said.

 "Doesn't mean it wasn't weird."  But I dropped it, focusing instead on helping Gus inventory plumbing supplies.  

 Minutes later a thirty-something brunette woman in a khaki skirt and white blouse asked, "Hi, I'm wondering about tiki torches."

 "Aisle six, ma'am," Gus said.

 "Is he right?" she asked, leaning towards me, away from Gus.

 "Like he said, 'Aisle six'."

 She lightly touched my shoulder, "Thank you so much."

 Cocking an eyebrow I glanced at Gus.

 He nodded, "Okay.  That was a bit odd."

 Three men walked by, all in khakis and polo shirts.  As they passed us one said, "Hey bro, you know where the tiki torches are?"

 "Aisle six," I said.

 "Good to see one of us in charge."  He pointed at me.  

 Now, I have never been mistaken for an authority figure in my life.  So I felt compelled to suggest to Gus we check out aisle six.  He agreed, and we headed over.  

 When we arrived the aisle seemed to have been taken over by a docile mob of khaki clad white folks.  They happily interacted with one another like long lost friends at an inadvertent reunion.  However few seemed to actually know one another.  Their convivial nature stemmed from the fact they all kept talking about the same thing:  

 "You goin' to the rally tonight?"

 "Course I'm going.  Why you think I'm buying torches?"

 A part of me really started hoping Frankenstein's monster had been spotted somewhere in Charlottesville, and these poster children for white suburbia simply were organizing a mob to go after him.  That would explain the several men milling around in full tactical gear carrying assault rifles.  Each eyed the area as if anxiously awaiting the start of their own private action movie.    

 A man wearing a black t-shirt with a swastika on it asked, "This where the torches at?"

 Seeing how we stood not ten feet from a horde of folks already carrying torches, he displayed exactly the extent of observational skill one expects from someone openly wearing Nazis paraphernalia.  

 So I said, "Nope."

 Gus said, "Customer is always right."

 "No kidding," I said.

 Gus said, "Don't be rude."

 "Listen to the n*****," the Nazis said walking away.

 "You wanna know where the rope is too?" I asked.

 Gus whispered to me, "Don't piss them off.  They are looking for an excuse to do something evil. So how about you shut the fuck up?"

 In the three weeks I worked with him I never heard Gus swear. I figured he possessed too much class for such language.  So when he swore at me the gravity of the situation pulled me back hard.  Plus, it seemed safe to suppose that if I spit enough venom at these fools they would use it as an excuse to not only pound me into paste, but to go after Gus, even if he stayed silent the whole time.  Yet, that didn't mean I had to do nothing.

 I headed for the manager's office.  

 A fat man flanked by two riflemen breathlessly asked me, "We're looking for torches."

 "Aisle seventeen.  All the way the other side of the store."  I misdirected him, and kept on walking.  I hurried into the manager's office.  Paul sat behind his desk filling out paperwork.  

 Looking up he said, "What's up?"

 "There are Nazis buying torches."

 Paul leaned back bemused, "Nazis?"

 "Honest to god swastika wearing Nazis."

 "But they are paying for them."

 I folded my arms across my chest, "Yeah.  So what?"

 Paul shrugged, "If they cause any trouble then throw them out, but hey, sales've been down.  This could put us solidly in the black."  Perhaps noticing the look on my face he added, "Don't do anything stupid."

 "Define stupid."  But before Paul could answer I ducked out, slamming the door behind me.

 I hurried around the store collecting road flares, duct tape, and lighter fluid.  I tied flares to the lighter fluid, opened the container, and poised to ignite the flare, planning to hurl the slopping flaming bomb right into the horde of bigots (I wasn't hundred percent certain it would work, but still wanted to try) -- Gus stood at the edge of the crowd helping a bearded fellow in Klan robes choose a cheaper torch fuel.  I couldn't hear their exchange, but it seemed cordial enough.  The Klansman's wife even laughed along with Gus when he made some joke. After helping them, Gus then took a torch off the shelf, and placed it in the hands of an elderly man in a motorized wheelchair, a small Confederate flag flying over the chair.  

 "Who else needs help?" Gus asked.  Several ignored him, others simply glared, but a few asked him questions he answered readily.  With ready steady polite service he soon cleared the aisle quietly.

 Two teenagers wearing Confederate flag shirts stepped over to me.  One asked, "Whatcha got there?"

 I held up the makeshift flame-grenade, "Most badass way to light your cigarette."

 "For real?"

 "Yeah, here.  Go nuts," I handed it to him, "No charge."

 "Thanks man."  He slapped his buddy on the chest, and the two went outside.  

 Gus walked over, "You know that've gone quicker if you helped me out."

 I nodded, "I don't always do the right thing."

 "You're young.  You got time to fix what's wrong."  He glanced at his watch, "Hey, if we get to it we can finish inventory."

 "Let's do that."  And we did.  It's odd how calming counting pipe fittings can be.  

 Inventory didn't take long.  Then I decided to punch out early.  Walking by the smoldering corpses of two teenagers burnt to a crisp, I lit a cigarette wondering where the rally intended to take place.  I wanted to watch them rage and holler, waving the torches a kind man, whom they despised, helped them purchase.  Too ignorant to be reasoned with, I suspected the delicious irony of the situation would be entirely lost on them.  Someone should be there to appreciate it.  But listening to my mp3 player on the walk back to my hotel a song I couldn't remember downloading came on.  

 Norma Tanega singing "You're Dead".  The opening lyrics hit me like golf ball hail, "They have no use for your song.  You're dead, you're dead, you're dead, you're dead and outta this world."  The song went on in such a black sun tone -- "Now your hope and compassion is gone.  You've sold out your dream to the world.  Stay dead, stay dead, stay dead, you're dead and outta this world." -- and I listened to it fourteen or fifteen times before I got home.

 Cracking open a bottle of whiskey I turned on the TV.  Reports of the rally soon dominated the local news. People throwing up Nazis salutes, chanting Nazis slogans about "blood and soil", and all around looking like a golf resort turned up for a midnight torch parade.  I saw faces I recognized not only from earlier, but regulars I thought I knew.  This wasn't some outsider mob of unfamiliar people, a bigoted other intruding from an alternate reality.  I would see them again, probably tomorrow, casually investigating lighting fixtures, purchasing power tools, in need of putty, paint, and tiles for the kids' bathroom; I would see them again because they were ordinary citizens, a sinister part of the community, unnoticed or actively ignored -- "Will Smithers is a decent neighbor, keeps to himself mostly, but be careful what you say around him, he's not, uh, fond of Jews."

 Somewhere around one in the morning, unable to sleep, I collected my things.  Partly drunk, to a degree somnambulant, I went to the bus station.  There I purchased a late night ticket.  Dawn cracking I left Charlottesville behind.  It felt like running from a fight.  Never mind the umbrella concept of America -- we're all united (E pluribus unum) -- it's hard to fight for a place that isn't your home; and those same white supremacist fools exist in Chicago.  There would be opportunity enough to resist them on home turf, where I knew them on sight better than in Virginia.  Or maybe I just like to think I do... the illusory safety of home.  But mostly I think I just needed to get back to somewhere things at least seemed to make sense, surrounded by familiar madness.  

 Glancing at the time I recalled Gus once told me he got up at five every morning, a routine from his days as a contractor that he never lost.  Knowing he'd be up I called him.

 "Who's calling my phone?" he said playfully.

 "It's me."

 "Seems early for you."

 "I just wanted to let you know I won't be coming in today. Tell Paul, okay?  Tell him I quit."

 "I got a sneaking suspicion he won't mind you being gone."

 "I may have sold a few power tools off the books." I heard him chuckle.  It felt good knowing some folks are still laughing.