#please I just want my traffic colored soap opera

[printer-paper-please]

How long until the Martyn hijacks the rift. How long until the tag game evolves into the newest life season. How long Grian.

[gloss-glass-ash]

Killer Queen

Summary: Basically a soap opera about immortal witches in a family coven.

Warnings: some angst 

Scotland was always lovely in the fall. The countryside and highlands were a glow with colorful leaves while a consistent drizzle fell. Foggy mornings bled into rainy afternoons tucked inside your estate. You were in love with the land, not more than a lover, but in love nonetheless. Autumn in Scotland made you wonder why you hadn't been in so long, then you saw the mantle of the estate fireplace with the pictures of him.

You stayed two weeks before heading to your loft in Paris. Paris was as beautiful as you remembered and the lovers were just as lovely. A young waiter quickly caught your eye, with luscious curls and deep brown eyes. His name was Shawn and drove you home.

Shawn was all limb, clumsy and innocent despite his age as he entered your loft. His brown eyes widened in awe of the pure wealth and antiquity that filled the space. The walls were lined with stunning gold trim and cherry floors. Fingertips hovered over the cabinet in the living room.

"It's just like-"

"Marie Antoinette." You smirked, red lips and red nails dancing over his skin. "Yes, that's why I bought it."

"I don't know if I'd admire her morals like that." He stuff his hands in his pockets, turning to admire the various paintings on the walls.

"Morality and style are two completely different things." Touching his shoulder softly, you urged him toward the kitchen. "But you're right, she was terrible." And she was. France was terrible under her reign, you would know.

The night progressed as you had hoped. Shawn was not as inexperienced as he had appeared and filled you, if only for a brief moment, with a sense of love and security. It wasn't love, you knew that, but the man beside you had a way of making you feel like it was. He fell asleep after cleaning you both up, curling up beside you.

The morning after, well, that's when things started to go to shit. Shawn knew he shouldn't snoop and he knew this was too good to be true. No woman with this particular taste was single and seeing the name "Husband" flash on your phone as it charged was enough. He waited until you woke before addressing it, dressing, and leaving with a lesson learned.

You weren't surprised by Shawn's reaction, though you had hoped he'd stick around. Souls like his were one in a century. You were surprised, however, by the phone call. Your husband hadn't called in a good twenty years. He'd check in occasionally, you'd get dinner if you were in the same city, but as far as you knew this wasn't one of those times.

A cup of coffee and glass of wine later, you called him back. The phone rang five times, each one long and resonating straight in your chest. He picked up on ring six. Or at least who you thought was your husband.

"Ashton, my love, what a pleasant surprise." You almost purred, lounging in your silk robe on the balancing, cigarette between two fingers.

"Mom?" The voice was not Ashton's, no, but the echo of your three sons.

"Boys?!"

"Mom, you need to come home." Luke's once lovely accent was all but gone.

"Luke, you know damn well what happens when your dad and I in the same house. Our family is better off this way."  

"That's just it. Our family is at stake here!" It was Mikey's turn to plead. He was your soft spot, the one you always looked out for. The first person you saved.

"What could the crisis be this time, peanut?" You all had survived wars, diseases, elections, and fashion trends. Nothing could shake the five of you.

"Dad's getting married." Nothing except that.

Los Angeles was never your favorite place. The sun was too hot, the people too much, and the atmosphere too oppressive. Ashton thrived on the sunny coast, the jungle was his playground. You wanted him happy. He and the boys were happy there, they didn't get the same thrill from the damp cold places or old European cities as you did.

The traffic was just as bad as you remembered. It took ages to get from the airport to your hotel, so bad you regretted not traveling with a snap of your fingers. The boys were in the hotel room when you got up to it, each pacing the floor.

A chorus of "mom!" greeted you with a series of hugs. Luke was as soft, maybe even slightly softer, as always but just as eager to cuddle close to you. "Missed you." He hummed in your neck.

"I've  missed my baby boy too. Have you been practicing your spells?"

His blonde curls bounced eagerly. "I even got my first familiar! She's the sweetest, her name's Petunia and she-"

"You're stalling." Calum stood stoic, arms crossed over his chest. He was always closer to Ashton, not that you minded, but it was evident he did not want to be here. "You don't want to be here."

"Well you know how I feel about L.A."

"The importance thing is that you came." Michael had taken you under his arm. "And that you're going to fix this."

A pregnant silence followed. You collapsed into the wingback chair in the hotel, looking anywhere but at your boys. "We've been together so long, I don't know if Ashton and I are meant to last forever."

Admitting your fear, admitting what kept you moving from place to place, caused thick tears to fall. Life with Ashton had been full of love and magic. Life before him was dark, violent, and scary. Life after him, well you guessed you'd find out.

"I don't even know what his name is this decade. Our marriage is so old that he doesn't need to worry about divorcing me to marry whoever."

"Don't say that." Luke squeaked, crouching in front of you. "Mom, please don't say that." He pulled the pendant from under his shirt. The immortality stone shined with the family crest in in his fingers. "Doesn't this mean anything to you?"

"Of course it does Luke!" You snapped, pushing yourself out of the chair. "Everything I've done since fucking Babylon was so that I could have a family of my own forever."

Calum scoffed, eyes rolling at you. "Yeah, that explains why you're half way across the world collecting art and dating barons."

A snake like hiss left your lips as you clenched your fists, resisting a spell. "Don't you ever suggest I left you. I begged for you all to come with me. I begged for Ashton to join me in Scotland so that we could be a proper family, a proper coven. I wrote, I called, I did everything and what?"

"Mom, don't listen to Cal. We love you so much, you know-" Michael shifted uncontrollably.

A vase shattered at your control. "Then why did you leave me alone?" Your shoulders trembled into Luke's chest as he scrambled to hold you, "I hate being alone."

Calum let out a puff of air. His skin felt too tight all of a sudden, the atmosphere making his heart hurt. "Mom, I didn't, I don't think you...I should go."

Your pity party didn't last very long. You were stronger than this and certainly stronger than Ashton. Wiping your eyes, you gathered yourself. "Alright boys, take me home."

Luke teleported you to the foyer of Ashton's home where he sat by the fireplace. "Y/N, my love I wasn't expecting you." He turned to face you, dimpled smile on his face.

"You can't honestly believe I wouldn't show up after the boys called me."

"The boys called you?" Ashton's adorable curls flopped in confusion. It hurt you seeing your king before you looking just as happy at the thought of someone else. "I know I've neglected you and I'll spend our next lifetime making up for it but I don't see where it's any of the boys concern."

Luke let out a hurtful grunt. "We deserve to know that you planned on marrying someone else and hurting Mom."

Ashton dropped his potion vial onto the floor. "Where the hell did you get that idea? I'm not marrying anyone else, I love Y/N more than anything." He had crossed the room in two quick strides, grabbing Luke by the collar. "Explain yourself."

Michael squeaked in surprise. "Calum said you slept with someone else and heard you mention getting a ring. We put two and two together."

"More like one and none." Ashton rubbed his head in frustration. "We need a family meeting. Summon Calum and meet me in the dining room."

The boys left the room, leaving you with Ashton. His presence was enough to fill every void of love and loneliness. Everything was easier with him around. If this was by some miracle true, you'd learn to live with L.A. if that meant having him.

"I vowed forever with you." He reached for your hand, flinching in preparation for you to draw away. You didn't. "And I intend to keep that. You are my killer queen and I'll prove it to you and spend the next century making up for it."

You quirked a smile, allowing him to lead you into the dining room. Calum's eyes caught yours quickly, holding steady. He was sorry. You could forgive him, eventually. "Anyone care to explain why my heart was ripped out of my chest today?" You lounged at the head of the table, long nails drumming the tabletop.

"I saw you in Paris." Calum squeaked. "With the brunette. He made you smile, you took him home. I knew Dad had been with others too and I thought, well the distance was making him miserable and it'd be better."

"You had someone else? Tell me about her later, darling, I hope she was fun." You purred, the jealousy long gone. "But you should know, boys, that when you've been with someone as long as Ashton and I have, you make arrangements."

"Our marriage is somewhat open. We have other sexual encounters but no one, no one, could mean more to me than Y/N." Ashton wrapped his arms around you, standing behind your chair. "She is the love of my life, one of the only things being immortal is worth."

"So, what about the ring?" Luke asked, blue eyes soft at his parents loving touches.

Ashton's tongue peeked out in a cheeky smile. "I was going to ask you to renew our vows." His nose nuzzled into your hair, earning a soft giggle. "Clearly we need to."

You kissed his fingers, brushing the curls from his eyes, "Yes, I think we should and I think some time here would be good for me."

[unsettlingshortstories]

The Road Virus Heads North

Stephen King (1999)

Richard Kinnell wasn't frightened when he first saw the picture at the yard sale in Rosewood.

He was fascinated by it, and he felt he'd had the good luck to find something which might be very special, but fright? No. It didn't occur to him until later ("not until it was too late," as he might have written in one of his own numbingly successful novels) that he had felt much the same way about certain illegal drugs as a young man.

He had gone down to Boston to participate in a PEN/New England conference tided "The Threat of Popularity." You could count on PEN to come up with such subjects, Kinnell had found; it was actually sort of comforting. He drove the two hundred and sixty miles from Derry rather than flying because he'd come to a plot impasse on his latest book and wanted some quiet time to try to work it out.

At the conference, he sat on a panel where people who should have known better asked him where he got his ideas and if he ever scared himself. He left the city by way of the Tobin Bridge, then got on Route 1. He never took the turnpike when he was trying to work out problems; the turnpike lulled him into a state that was like dreamless, waking sleep. It was restful, but not very creative. The stop-and-go traffic on the coast road, however, acted like grit inside an oyster-it created a fair amount of mental activity ... and sometimes even a pearl.

Not, he supposed, that his critics would use that word. In an issue of Esquire last year, Bradley Simons had begun his review of Nightmare City this way: "Richard Kinnell, who writes like Jeffery Dahmer cooks, has suffered a fresh bout of projectile vomiting. He has tided this most recent mass of ejecta Nightmare City."

Route 1 took him through Revere, Malden, Everett, and up the coast to Newburyport. Beyond Newburyport and just south of the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border was the tidy little town of Rosewood. A mile or so beyond the town center, he saw an array of cheap-looking goods spread out on the lawn of a two-story Cape. Propped against an avocado-colored electric stove was a sign reading YARD SALE. Cars were parked on both sides of the road, creating one of those bottlenecks which travelers unaffected by the yard sale mystique curse their way through. Kinnell liked yard sales, particularly the boxes of old books you sometimes found at them. He drove through the bottleneck, parked his Audi at the head of the line of cars pointed toward Maine and New Hampshire, then walked back.

A dozen or so people were circulating on the littered front lawn of the blue-and-gray Cape Cod. A large television stood to the left of the cement walk, its feet planted on four paper ashtrays that were doing absolutely nothing to protect the lawn. On top was a sign reading MAKE AN OFFER-YOU MIGHT BE SURPRISED. An electrical cord, augmented by an extension, mailed back from the TV and through the open front door. A fat woman sat in a lawn chair before it, shaded by an umbrella with CINZANO printed on the colorful scalloped flaps. There was a card table beside her with a cigar box, a pad of paper, and another handlettered sign on it. This sign read ALL SALES CASH, ALL SALES FINAL. The TV was on, turned to an afternoon soap opera where two beautiful young people looked on the verge of having deeply unsafe sex. The fat

woman glanced at Kinnell, then back at the TV. She looked at it for a moment, then looked back at him again. This time her mouth was slightly sprung.

Ah, Kinnell thought, looking around for the liquor box fined with paperbacks that was sure to be here someplace, a fan.

He didn't see any paperbacks, but he saw the picture, leaning against an ironing board and held in place by a couple of plastic laundry baskets, and his breath stopped in his throat. He wanted it at once.

He walked over with a casualness that felt exaggerated and dropped to one knee in front of it. The painting was a watercolor, and technically very good. Kinnell didn't care about that; technique didn't interest him (a fact the critics of his own work had duly noted). What he liked in works of art was content, and the more unsettling the better. This picture scored high in that department. He knelt between the two laundry baskets, which had been filled with a jumble of small appliances, and let his fingers slip over the glass facing of the picture. He glanced around briefly, looking for others like it, and saw none - only the usual yard sale art collection of Little Bo Peeps, praying hands, and gambling dogs.

He looked back at the framed watercolor, and in his mind he was already moving his suitcase into the backseat of the Audi so he could slip the picture comfortably into the trunk.

It showed a young man behind the wheel of a muscle car-maybe a Grand Am, maybe a GTX, something with a T-top, anyway - crossing the Tobin Bridge at sunset. The T-top was off, turning the black car into a half-assed convertible. The young man's left arm. was cocked on the door, his right wrist was draped casually over the wheel. Behind him, the sky was a bruise-colored mass of yellows and grays, streaked with veins of pink. The young man had lank blond hair that spilled over his low forehead. He was grinning, and his parted lips revealed teeth which were not teeth at all but fangs.

Or maybe they're filed to points, Kinnell thought. Maybe he's supposed to be a cannibal.

He liked that; liked the idea of a cannibal crossing the Tobin Bridge at sunset. In a Grand Am. He knew what most of the audience at the PEN panel discussion would have thought - Oh, yes, great picture for Rich Kinnell he probably wants it for inspiration, a feather to tickle his tired old gorge into one more fit of projectile vomiting-but most of those folks were ignoramuses, at least as far as his work went, and what was more, they treasured their ignorance, cossetted it the way some people inexplicably treasured and cossetted those stupid, mean-spirited little dogs that yapped at visitors and sometimes bit the paperboy's ankles. He hadn't been attracted to this painting because he wrote horror stories; he wrote horror stories because he was attracted to things like this painting. His fans sent him stuff - pictures, mostly - and he threw most of them away, not because they were bad art but because they were tiresome and predictable. One fan from Omaha had sent him a little ceramic sculpture of a screaming, horrified monkey's head poking out of a refrigerator door, however, and that one he had kept. It was unskillfully executed, but there was an unexpected juxtaposition there that lit UP his dials. This painting had some of the same quality, but it was even better. Much better.

As he was reaching for it, wanting to pick it up right now, this second, wanting to tuck it under his arm and proclaim his intentions, a voice spoke up behind him: "Aren't you Richard Kinnell?"

He jumped, then turned. The fat woman was standing directly behind him, blotting out most of the immediate landscape. She had put on fresh lipstick before approaching, and now her mouth had been transformed into a bleeding grin.

"Yes, I am," he said, smiling back.

Her eyes dropped to the picture. "I should have known you'd go right to that," she said, simpering. "It's so You."

"It is, isn't it?" he said, and smiled his best celebrity smile. "How much would you need for it?"

"Forty-five dollars," she said. "I'll be honest with you, I started it at seventy, but nobody likes it, so now it's marked down. If you come back tomorrow, you can probably have it for thirty." The simper had grown to frightening proportions. Kinnell could see little gray spit-buds in the dimples at the comers of her stretched mouth.

"I don't think I want to take that chance," he said. "I'll write you a check right now."

The simper continued to stretch; the woman now looked like some grotesque John Waters parody. Divine does Shirley Temple. "I'm really not supposed to take checks, but all right," she said, her tone that of a teenage girl finally consenting to have sex with her boyfriend. "Only while you have your pen out, could you write an autograph for my daughter? Her name is Michela?"

"What a beautiful name," Kinnell said automatically. He took the picture and followed the fat woman back to the card table. On the TV next to it, the lustful young people had been temporarily displaced by an elderly woman gobbling bran flakes.

" Michela reads all your books," the fat woman said. "Where in the world do you get all those crazy ideas?"

"I don't know," Kinnell said, smiling more widely than ever. "They just come to me. Isn't that amazing?. "

The yard sale minder's name was Judy Diment, and she lived in the house next door. When Kinnell asked her if she knew who the artist happened to be, she said she certainly did; Bobby Hastings had done it, and Bobby Hastings was the reason she was selling off the Hastings' things. "That's the only painting he didn't bum," she said. "Poor Iris! She's the one I really feel sorry for. I don't think George cared much, really. And I know he didn't understand why she wants to sell the house." She rolled her eyes in her large, sweaty face - the old can-you-imagine-that look. She took Kinnell's check when he tore it off, then gave him the pad where she had written down all the items she'd sold and the prices she'd obtained for them. "Just make it out to Michela," she said. "Pretty please with sugar on it?" The simper reappeared, like an old acquaintance you'd hoped was dead.

"Uh-huh," Kinnell said, and wrote his standard thanks-for-being-a-fan message. He didn't have to watch his hands or even think about it anymore, not after twenty-five years of writing autographs. "Tell me about the picture, and the Hastingses."

Judy Diment folded her pudgy hands in the manner of a woman about to recite a favorite story.

"Bobby was just twenty-three when he killed himself this spring. Can you believe that? He was the tortured genius type, you know, but still living at home." Her eyes rolled, again asking Kinnell if he could imagine it. "He must have had seventy, eighty paintings, plus all his sketchbooks. Down in the basement, they were." She pointed her chin at the Cape Cod, then looked at the picture of the fiendish young man driving across the Tobin Bridge at sunset. "Iris-that's Bobby's mother - said most of them were real bad, lots worse'n this. Stuff that'd curl your hair." She lowered her voice to a whisper, glancing at a woman who was looking at the Hastings' mismatched silverware and a pretty good collection of old McDonald's plastic glasses in a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids motif. "Most of them had sex stuff in them."

"Oh no," Kinnell said.

"He did the worst ones after he got on drugs," Judy Diment continued. "After he was dead-he hung himself down in the basement, where he used to paint-they found over a hundred of those little bottles they sell crack cocaine in. Aren't drugs awful, Mr. Kinnell?"

"They sure are."

"Anyway, I guess he finally just got to the end of his rope, no pun intended. He took all of his sketches and paintings out into the back yard-except for that one, I guess - and burned them. Then he hung himself down in the basement. He pinned a note to his shirt. It said, 'I can't stand what's happening to me.' Isn't that awful, Mr. Kinnell? Isn't that just the awfulest thing you ever heard?"

'Yes," Kinnell said, sincerely enough. "It just about is."

'Like I say, I think George would go right on living in the house if he had his druthers, " Judy Diment said. She took the sheet of paper with Michela's autograph on it, held it up next to Kinnell's check, and shook her head, as if the similarity of the signatures amazed her. "But men are different."

"Are they?"

"Oh, yes, much less sensitive. By the end of his life, Bobby Hastings was just skin and bone, dirty all the time-you could smell him - and he wore the same T-shirt, day in and day out. It had a picture of the Led Zeppelins on it. His eyes were red, he had a scraggle on his cheeks that you couldn't quite call a beard, and his pimples were coming back, like he was a teenager again. But she loved him, because a mother's love sees past all those things."

The woman who had been looking at the silverware and the glasses came over with a set of Star Wars placemats. Mrs. Diment took five I dollars for them, wrote the sale carefully down on her pad below "ONE DOZ. ASSORTED POTHOLDERS & HOTPADS," then turned back to Kinnell.

They went out to Arizona," she said, "to stay with Iris's folks. I know George is looking for work out there in Flagstaff-he's a draftsman-but I don't know if he's found any yet. If he has, I suppose we might not ever see them again here in Rosewood. She marked out all the stuff she wanted me to sell-Iris did - and told me I could keep twenty percent for my trouble. I'll send a check for the rest. There won't be much." She sighed.

"The picture is great," Kinnell said.

"Yeah, too bad he burned the rest, because most of this other stuff is your standard yard sale crap, pardon my French. What's that?"

Kinnell had turned the picture around. There was a length of Dymotape pasted to the back.

"A tide, I think."

"What does it say?"

He grabbed the picture by the sides and held it up so she could read it for herself This put the picture at eye level to him, and he studied it eagerly, once again taken by the simpleminded weirdness of the subject., kid behind the wheel of a muscle car, a kid with a nasty, knowing grin that revealed the filed points of an even nastier set of teeth.

It fits, he thought. If ever a title futted a painting, this one does.

" The Road Virus Heads North," she read. "I never noticed that when my boys were lugging stuff out. Is it the tide, do you think?"

"Must be." Kinnell couldn't take his eyes off the blond kid's grin. I know something, the grin said. I know something you never will.

"Well, I guess you'd have to believe the fella who did this was high on drugs," she said, sounding upset - authentically upset, Kinnell thought. "No wonder he could kill himself and break his mamma's heart."

"I've got to be heading north myself," Kinnell said, tucking the picture under his arm. "Thanks for-"

" Mr. Kinnell?"

"Yes?"

"Can I see your driver's license?" She apparently found nothing ironic or even amusing in this request. "I ought to write the number on the back of your check."

Kinnell put the picture down so he could dig for his wallet. "Sure. You bet."

The woman who'd bought the Star Wars placemats had paused on her way back to her car to watch some of the soap opera playing on the lawn TV. Now she glanced at the picture, which Kinnell had propped against his shins.

"Ag," she said. "Who'd want an ugly old thing like that? I'd think about it every time I turned the lights out."

"What's wrong with that?" Kinnell asked.

Kinnell's Aunt Trudy lived in Wells, which is about six miles north of the Maine - New Hampshire border. Kinnell pulled off at the exit which circled the bright green Wells water tower, the one with the comic sign on it (KEEP MAINE GREEN, BRING MONEY in letters four feet high), and five minutes later he was turning into the driveway of her neat little saltbox house. No TV sinking into the lawn on paper ashtrays here, only Aunt Trudy's amiable masses of flowers. Kinnell needed to pee and hadn't wanted to take care of that in a roadside rest stop when he could come here, but he also wanted an update on all the family gossip. Aunt Trudy retailed the best; she was to gossip what Zabar's is to deli. Also, of course, he wanted to show her his new acquisition.

She came out to meet him, gave him a hug, and covered his face with her patented little birdy-kisses, the ones that had made him shiver all over as a kid.

"Want to see something?" he asked her. "It'll blow your pantyhose off."

"What a charming thought," Aunt Trudy said, clasping her elbows in her palms and looking at him with amusement.

He opened the trunk and took out his new picture. It affected her, all right, but not in the way he had expected. The color fell out of her face in a sheet-he had never seen anything quite like it in his entire life. "It's horrible," she said in a tight, controlled voice. "I hate it. I suppose I can see what attracted you to it, Richie, but what you play at, it does for, real. Put it back in your trunk, like a good boy. And when you get to the Saco River, why don't you pull over into the breakdown lane and throw it in?"

He gaped at her. Aunt Trudy's lips were pressed tightly together to stop them trembling, and now her long, thin hands were not just clasping her elbows but clutching them, as if to keep her from flying away. At that moment she looked not sixty-one but ninety-one.

" Auntie?" Kinnell spoke tentatively, not sure what was going on here. "Auntie, what's wrong?"

"That." she said, unlocking her right hand and pointing at the picture. "I'm surprised you don't feel it more strongly yourself, an imaginative guy like you."

Well, he felt something, obviously he had, or he never would have unlimbered his checkbook in the first place. Aunt Trudy was feeling something else, though ... or something more. He turned the picture around so he could see it (he had been holding it out for her, so the side with the Dymotaped title faced him), and looked at it again. What he saw hit him in the chest and belly like a one-two punch.

The picture had changed, that was punch number one. Not much, but it had dearly changed. The young blond man's smile was wider, revealing more of those filed cannibal-teeth. His eyes were squinted down more, too, giving his face a look which was more knowing and nastier than ever.

The degree of a smile ... the vista of sharpened teeth widening slightly ... the tilt and squint of the eyes ... all pretty subjective stuff. A person could be mistaken about things like that, and of course he hadn't really studied the painting before buying it. Also, there had been the distraction of Mrs. Diment, who could probably talk the cock off a brass monkey.

But there was also punch number two, and that wasn't subjective. In the darkness of the Audi's trunk, the blond young man had turned his left arm, the one cocked on the door, so that Kinnell could now see a tattoo which had been hidden before. It was a vine-wrapped dagger with a bloody tip. Below it were words. Kinnell could make Out DEATH BEFORE, and he supposed you didn't have to be a big best-selling novelist to figure out the word that was still hidden. DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR was, after all, just the sort of a thing a hoodoo traveling man like this was apt to have on his arm. And an ace of spades or a pot plant on the other one, Kinnell thought.

"You hate it, don't you, Auntie?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, and now he saw an even more amazing thing: she had turned away from him, pretending to look out at the street (which was dozing and deserted in the hot afternoon sunlight), so she wouldn't have to look at the picture. "In fact, Auntie loathes it. Now put it away and come on into the house. I'll bet you need to use the bathroom."

Aunt Trudy recovered her savoir faire almost as soon as the watercolor was back in the trunk. They talked about Kinnell's mother (Pasadena), his sister (Baton Rouge), and his ex-wife, Sally (Nashua). Sally was a space-case who ran an animal shelter out of a double-wide trailer and published two newsletters each month. Survivors was filled with astral info and supposedly true tales of the spirit world; Visitors contained the reports of people who'd had close encounters with space aliens. Kinnell no longer went to fan conventions which specialized in fantasy and horror. One Sally in a lifetime, he sometimes told people, was enough.

When Aunt Trudy walked him back out to the car, it was fourthirty and he'd turned down the obligatory dinner invitation. "I can get most of the way back to Derry in daylight, if I leave now."

"Okay," she said. "And I'm sorry I was so mean about your picture. Of course you like it, you've always liked your ... your oddities. It just hit me the wrong way. That awful face. " She shuddered. "As if we were looking at him . . . and he was looking right back."

Kinnell grinned and kissed the tip of her nose. "You've got quite an imagination yourself, sweetheart."

"Of course, it runs in the family. Are you sure you don't want to use the facility again before you go?"

He shook his head. "That's not why I stop, anyway, not really."

"Oh? Why do you?"

He grinned. "Because you know who's being naughty and who's being nice. And you're not afraid to share what you know."

"Go on, get going," she said, pushing at his shoulder but clearly pleased. "If I were you, I'd want to get home quick. I wouldn't want that nasty guy riding along behind me in the dark, even in the trunk. I mean, did you see his teeth? Ag!"

He got on the turnpike, trading scenery for speed, and made it as far as the Gray service area before deciding to have another look at the picture. Some of his aunt's unease had transmitted itself to him like a germ, but he didn't think that was really the problem. The. problem was his perception that the picture had changed.

The service area featured the usual gourmet chow - burgers by Roy Rogers, cones by TCBY - and had a small, littered picnic and dogwalking area at the rear. Kinnell parked next to a van with Missouri plates, drew in a deep breath, let it out. He'd driven to Boston in order to kill some plot gremlins in the new book, which was pretty ironic. He'd spent the ride down working out what he'd say on the panel if certain tough questions were tossed at him, but none had been-once they'd found out he didn't know where he got his ideas, and yes, he did sometimes scare himself, they'd only wanted to know how you got an agent.

And now, heading back, he couldn't think of anything but the damned picture.

Had it changed? If it had, if the blond kid's arm had moved enough so he, Kinnell, could read a tattoo which had been partly hidden before, then he could write a column for one of Sally's magazines. Hell, a fourpart series. If, on the other hand, it wasn't changing, then ... what? He was suffering a hallucination? Having a breakdown? That was crap. His life was pretty much in order, and he felt good. Had, anyway, until his fascination with the picture had begun to waver into something else, something darker.

"Ah, fuck, you just saw it wrong the first time," he said out loud as he got out of the car. Well, maybe. Maybe. It wouldn't be the first time his head had screwed with his perceptions. That was also a part of what he did. Sometimes his imagination got a little ... well ...

"Feisty," Kinnell said, and opened the trunk. He took the picture out of the trunk and looked at it, and it was during the space of the ten seconds when he looked at it without remembering to breathe that he became authentically afraid of the thing, afraid the way you were afraid of a sudden dry rattle in the bushes, afraid the way you were when you saw an insect that would probably sting if you provoked it.

The blond driver was grinning insanely at him now-yes, at him, Kinnell was sure of it-with those filed cannibal-teeth exposed all the way to the gumlines. His eyes simultaneously glared and laughed. And the Tobin Bridge was gone. So was the Boston skyline. So was the sunset. It was almost dark in the painting now, the car and its wild rider illuminated by a single streetlamp that ran a buttery glow across the road and the car's chrome. It looked to Kinnell as if the car (he was pretty sure it was a Grand Am) was on the edge of a small town on Route 1, and he was pretty sure he knew what town it was-he had driven through it himself only a few hours ago.

"Rosewood," he muttered. "That's Rosewood. I'm pretty sure."

The Road Virus was heading north, all right, coming up Route 1 just as he had. The blond's left arm was still cocked out the window, but it had rotated enough back toward its original position so that Kinnell could no longer see the tattoo. But he knew it was there, didn't he? Yes, you bet.

The blond kid looked like a Metallica fan who had escaped from a mental asylum for the criminally insane.

"Jesus," Kinnell whispered, and the word seemed to come from someplace else, not from him. The strength suddenly ran out of his body, ran out like water from a bucket with a hole in the bottom, and he sat down heavily on the curb separating the parking lot from the dog-walking zone. He suddenly understood that this was the truth he'd missed in all his fiction, this was how people really reacted when they came face-to-face with something which made no rational sense. You felt as if you were bleeding to death, only inside your head.

"No wonder the guy who painted it killed himself," he croaked, still staring at the picture, at the ferocious grin, at the eyes that were both shrewd and stupid.

There was a note pinned to his shirt, Mrs. Diment had said. "I can't stand what's happening to me. " Isn't that awful, Mr. Kinnell?

Yes, it was awful, all right.

Really awful.

He got up, gripping the picture by its top, then strode across the dog-walking area. He kept his eyes trained strictly in front of him, looking for canine land mines. He did not look down at the picture. His legs felt trembly and untrustworthy, but they seemed to support him all right. just ahead, close to the belt of trees at the rear of the service area, was a pretty young thing in white shorts and a red halter. She was walking a cocker spaniel. She began to smile at Kinnell, then saw something in his face that straightened her lips out in a hurry. She headed left, and fast. The cocker didn't want to go that fast so she dragged it, coughing, in her wake.

The scrubby pines behind the service area sloped down to a boggy area that stank of plant and animal decomposition. The carpet of pine needles was a road litter fallout zone: burger wrappers, paper soft drink cups, TCBY napkins, beer cans, empty wine-cooler bottles, cigarette butts. He saw a used condom lying like a dead snail next to a torn pair of panties with the word TUESDAY stitched on them in cursive girly-girl script.

Now that he was here, he chanced another look down at the picture. He steeled himself for further changes even for the possibility that the painting would be in motion, like a movie in a frame - but there was none. There didn't have to be, Kinnell realized; the blond kid's face was enough. That stone-crazy grin. Those pointed teeth. The face said, Hey, old man, guess what? I'm done fucking with civilization. I'm a representative of the real generation X, the next millennium is tight here behind the wheel of this fine, high-steppin' mo-sheen.

Aunt Trudy's initial reaction to the painting had been to advise Kinnell that he should throw it into the Saco River. Auntie had been right. The Saco was now almost twenty miles behind him, but . .

"This'll do," he said. "I think this'll do just fine."

He raised the picture over his head like a guy holding up some kind of sports trophy for the postgame photographers and then heaved it down the slope. It flipped over twice, the frame caching winks of hazy late-day sun, then struck a tree. The glass facing shattered. The picture fell to the ground and then slid down the dry, needle-carpeted slope, as if down a chute. It landed in the bog, one comer of the frame protruding from a thick stand of reeds. Otherwise, there was nothing visible but the strew of broken glass, and Kinnell thought that went very well with the rest of the litter.

He turned and went back to his car, already picking up his mental trowel. He would wall this incident off in its own special niche, he thought ... and it occurred to him that that was probably what most people did when they ran into stuff like this. Liars and wannabees (or maybe in this case they were wannasees) wrote up their fantasies for publications like Survivors and called them truth; those who blundered into authentic occult phenomena kept their mouths shut and used those trowels. Because when cracks like this appeared in your life, you had to do something about them; if you didn't, they were apt to widen and sooner or later everything would fall in.

Kinnell glanced up and saw the pretty young thing watching him apprehensively from what she probably hoped was a safe distance. When she saw him looking at her, she turned around and started toward the restaurant building, once more dragging the cocker spaniel behind her and trying to keep as much sway Out of her hips as possible.

You think I'm crazy, don't you pretty girl? Kinnell thought. He saw he had left his trunk lid up. It gaped like a mouth. He slammed it shut. You and half the fiction-reading population of America, I guess. But I'm not crazy. Absolutely not. I just made a little mistake, that's all. Stopped at a yard sale I should have passed up. Anyone could have done it. You could have done it. And that picture

" What picture?" Rich Kinnell asked the hot summer evening, and tried on a smile. "I don't see any picture."

He slid behind the wheel of his Audi and started the engine. He looked at the fuel gauge and saw it had dropped under a half. He was going to need gas before he got home, but he thought he'd fill the tank a little further up the line. Right now all he wanted to do was to put a belt of miles - as thick a one as possible - between him and the discarded painting.

Once outside the city limits of Derry, Kansas Street becomes Kansas Road. As it approaches the incorporated town limits (an area that is actually open countryside), it becomes Kansas Lane. Not long after,, Kansas Lane passes between two fieldstone posts. Tar gives way to' gravel. What is one of Derry's busiest downtown streets eight miles east of here has become a driveway leading up a shallow hill, and on moonlit summer nights it glimmers like something out of an Alfred Noyes poem. At the top of the hill stands an angular, handsome barn-board structure with reflectorized windows, a stable that is actually a garage, and a satellite dish tilted at the stars. A waggish reporter from the Derry News once called it the House that Gore Built ... not meaning the vice president of the United States. Richard Kinnell simply called it home, and he parked in front of it that night with a sense of weary satisfaction. He felt as if he had lived through a week's worth of time since getting up in the Boston Harbor hotel that morning at nine o'clock.

No more yard sales, he thought, looking up at the moon. No more yard sales ever.

I "Amen," he said, and started toward the house. He probably should stick the car in the garage, but the hell with it. What he wanted right now was a drink, a light meal - something microwaveable - and then sleep. Preferably the kind without dreams. He couldn't wait to put this day behind him.

He stuck his key in the lock, turned it, and punched 3817 to silence the warning bleep from the burglar alarm panel. He turned on the front hall light, stepped through the door, pushed it shut behind him, began to turn, saw what was on the wall where his collection of framed book covers had been just two days ago, and screamed. In his head he screamed. Nothing actually came out of his mouth but a harsh exhalation of air. He heard a thump and a tuneless little jingle as his keys fell out of his relaxing hand and dropped to the carpet between his feet.

The Road Virus Heads North was no longer in the puckerbrush behind the Gray turnpike service area.

It was mounted on his entry wall.

It had changed yet again. The car was now parked in the driveway of the yard sale yard. The goods were still spread out everywhereglassware and furniture and ceramic knickknacks (Scottie dogs smoking pipes, bare-assed toddlers, winking fish), but now they gleamed beneath the light of the same skullface moon that rode in the sky above Kinnell's house. The TV was still there, too, and it was still on, casting its own pallid radiance onto the grass, and what lay in front of it, next to an overturned lawn chair. Judy Diment was on her back, and she was no longer all there. After a moment, Kinnell saw the rest. It was on the ironing board, dead eyes glowing like fifty-cent pieces in the moonlight.

The Grand Am's taillights were a blur of red-pink watercolor paint. It was Kinnell's first look at the car's back deck. Written across it in Old English letters were three words: THE ROAD VIRUS.

Makes perfect sense, Kinnell thought numbly. Not him, his car. Except for a guy like this, there's probably not much difference.

"This isn't happening," he whispered, except it was. Maybe it wouldn't have happened to someone a little less open to such things, but it was happening. And as he stared at the painting he found himself remembering the little sign on Judy Diment's card table. ALL SALES CASH, it had said (although she had taken his check, only adding his driver's license ID number for safety's sake). And it had said something else, too.

ALL SALES FINAL.

Kinnell walked past the picture and into the living room. He felt like a stranger inside his own body, and he sensed part of his mind groping for the trowel he had used earlier. He seemed to have misplaced it.

He turned on the TV, then the Toshiba satellite tuner which sat on top of it. He turned to V-14, and all the time he could feel the picture out there in the hall, pushing at the back of his head. The picture that had somehow beaten him here.

"Must have known a shortcut," Kinnell said, and laughed.

He hadn't been able to see much of the blond in this version of the picture, but there had been a blur behind the wheel which Kinnell assumed had been him. The Road Virus had finished his business in Rosewood. It was time to move north. Next stop

He brought a heavy steel door down on that thought, cutting it off before he could see all of it. "After all, I could still be imagining all this," he told the empty living room. Instead of comforting him, the hoarse, shaky quality of his voice frightened him even more. "This could be ... But he couldn't finish. All that came to him was an old song, belted out in the pseudo-hip style of some early '50s Sinatra done: This could be the start of something BIG ...

The tune oozing from the TV's stereo speakers wasn't Sinatra but Paul Simon, arranged for strings. The white computer type on the blue screen said WELCOME TO NEW ENGLAND NEWSWIRE. There were ordering instructions below this, but Kinnell didn't have to read them; he was a Newswire junkie and knew the drill by heart. He dialed, punched in his Mastercard number, then 508.

"You have ordered Newswire for [slight pause] central and northem Massachusetts," the robot voice said. "Thank you very m--"

Kinnell dropped the phone back into the cradle and stood looking at the New England Newswire logo, snapping his fingers nervously. "Come on," he said. "Come on, come on."

The screen flickered then, and the blue background became green. Words began scrolling up, something about a house fire in Taunton. This was followed by the latest on a dog-racing scandal, then tonight's weather - clear and mild. Kinnell was starting to relax, starting to wonder if he'd really seen what he thought he'd seen on the entryway wall or if it had been a bit of travel-induced fugue, when the TV beeped shrilly and the words BREAKING NEWS appeared. He stood watching the caps scroll up.

NENphAUG19/8:40P A ROSEWOOD WOMAN HAS BEEN BRUTALLY MURDER-ED WHILE DOING A FAVOR FOR AN ABSENT FRIEND. 38-YEAR-OLD JUDITH DIMENT WAS SAVAGELY HACKED TO DEATH ON THE LAWN OF HER NEIGHBOR'S HOUSE, WHERE SHE HAD BEEN CONDUCTING A YARD SALE. NO SCREAMS WERE HEARD AND MRS. DIMENT WAS NOT FOUND UNTIL EIGHT O'CLOCK, WHEN A NEIGHBOR ACROSS THE STREET CAME OVER TO COMPLAIN ABOUT LOUD TELEVISION NOISE. THE NEIGHBOR, DAVID GRAVES, SAID THAT MRS. DIMENT HAD BEEN DECAPITATED. "HER HEAD WAS ON THE IRONING BOARD," HE SAID. "IT WAS THE MOST AWFUL THING I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE." GRAVES SAID HE HEARD NO SIGNS OF A STRUGGLE, ONLY THE TV AND, SHORTLY BEFORE FINDING THE BODY, A LOUD CAR, POSSIBLY EQUIPPED WITH A GLASSPACK MUFFLER, ACCELERATING AWAY FROM THE VICINITY ALONG ROUTE ONE. SPECULATION THAT THIS VEHICLE MAY HAVE BELONGED TO THE KILLER

Except that wasn't speculation; that was a simple fact.

Breathing hard, not quite panting, Kinnell hurried back into the entryway. The picture was still there, but it had changed once more. Now it showed two glaring white circles - headlights - with the dark shape of the car hulking behind them.

He's on the move again, Kinnell thought, and Aunt Trudy was on top of his mind now - sweet Aunt Trudy, who always knew who had been naughty and who had been nice. Aunt Trudy, who lived in Wells, no more than forty miles from Rosewood.

" God, please God, please send him by the coast road," Kinnell said, reaching for the picture. Was it his imagination or were the headlights farther apart now, as if the car were actually moving before his eyes ... but stealthily, the way the minute hand moved on a Pocket watch? "Send him by the coast road, please."

He tore the picture off the wall and ran back into the living room with it. The screen was in place before the fireplace, of course; it would be at least two months before a fire was wanted in here. Kinnell batted it aside and threw the painting in, breaking the glass fronting-which he had already broken once, at the Gray service area - against the firedogs. Then he pelted for the kitchen, wondering what he would do if this didn't work either.

It has to, he thought. It will because it has to, and that's A there is to it.

He opened the kitchen cabinets and pawed through them, spilling the oatmeal, spilling a canister of salt, spilling the vinegar. The bottle broken open on the counter and assaulted his nose and eyes with the high stink.

Not there. What he wanted wasn't there.

He raced into the pantry, looked behind the door - nothing but a plastic bucket and an 0 Cedar - and then on the shelf by the dryer. There it was, next to the briquets.

Lighter fluid.

He grabbed it and ran back, glancing at the telephone on the kitchen wall as he hurried by. He wanted to stop, wanted to call Aunt Trudy. Credibility wasn't an issue with her; if her favorite nephew called and told her to get out of the house, to get out light now, she would do it ... but what if the blond kid followed her? Chased her?

And he would. Kinnell knew he would.

He hurried across the living room and stopped in front of the fireplace.

"Jesus," he whispered. "Jesus, no."

The picture beneath the splintered glass no longer showed oncoming headlights. Now it showed the Grand Am on a sharply curving piece of road that could only be an exit ramp. Moonlight shone like liquid satin on the car's dark flank. In the background was a water tower, and the words on it were easily readable in the moonlight. KEEP MAINE GREEN, they said. BRING MONEY.

Kinnell didn't hit the picture with the first squeeze of lighter fluid; his hands were shaking badly and the aromatic liquid simply ran down the unbroken part of the glass, blurring the Road Virus's back deck. He took a deep breath, aimed, then squeezed again. This time the lighter fluid squirted in through the jagged hole made by one of the firedogs and ran down the picture, cutting through the paint, making it run, turning a Goodyear Wide Oval into a sooty teardrop.

Kinnell took one of the ornamental matches from the jar on the mantel, struck it on the hearth, and poked it in through the hole in the glass. The painting caught at once, fire billowing up and down across the Grand Am and the water tower. The remaining glass in the frame turned black, then broke outward in a shower of flaming pieces. Kinnell crunched them under his sneakers, putting them out before they could set the rug on fire.

He went to the phone and punched in Aunt Trudy's number, unaware that he was crying. On the third ring, his aunt's answering machine picked up. "Hello," Aunt Trudy said, "I know it encourages the burglars to say things like this, but I've gone up to Kennebunk to watch the new Harrison Ford movie. If you intend to break in, please don't take my china pigs. If you want to leave a message, do so at the beep."

Kinnell waited, then, keeping his voice as steady as possible, he said:

"It's Richie, Aunt Trudy. Call me when you get back, okay? No matter how late."

He hung up, looked at the TV, then dialed Newswire again, this time punching in the Maine area code. While the computers on the other end processed his order, he went back and used a poker to jab at the blackened, twisted thing in the fireplace. The stench was ghastly - it made the spilled vinegar smell like a flowerpatch in comparison-but Kinnell found he didn't mind. The picture was entirely gone, reduced to ash, and that made it worthwhile.

Mat if it comes back again?

"It won't," he said, putting the poker back and returning to the TV. "I'm sure it won't."

But every time the news scroll started to recycle, he got up to check. The picture was just ashes on the hearth ... and there was no word of elderly women being murdered in the Wells-Saco-Kennebunk area of the state. Kinnell kept watching, almost expecting to see A GRAND AM MOVING AT HIGH SPEED CRASHED INTO A KENNEBUNK MOVIE THEATER TONIGHT, KILLING AT LEAST TEN, but nothing of the sort showed up.

At a quarter of eleven the telephone rang. Kinnell snatched it up. "Hello?"

"It's Trudy, dear. Are you all right?"

"Yes, fine."

"You don't sound fine," she said. "Your voice sounds trembly and funny. What's wrong? What is it?" And then, chilling him but not really surprising him: "It's that picture you were so pleased with, isn't it? That goddamned picture!"

It calmed him somehow, that she should guess so much ... and, of course, there was the relief of knowing she was safe.

"Well, maybe," he said. "I had the heebie-jeebies all the way back here, so I burned it. In the fireplace."

She's going to find out about Judy Diment, you know, a voice inside warned. She doesn't have a twenty-thousand-dollar satellite hookup, but she does subscribe to the Union-Leader and this'll be on the front page. She'll put two and two together. She's far from stupid.

Yes, that was undoubtedly true, but further explanations could wait until the morning, when he might be a little less freaked ... when he might've found a way to think about the Road Virus without losing his mind ... and when he'd begun to be sure it was really over.

"Good!" she said emphatically. "You ought to scatter the ashes, too!" She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was lower. "You were worried about me, weren't you? Because you showed it to me.

"A little, yes."

"But you feel better now?"

He leaned back and closed his eyes. It was true, he did. "Uh-huh. How was the movie?"

"Good. Harrison Ford looks wonderful in a uniform. Now, if he'd just get rid of that little bump on his chin . . ."

"Good night, Aunt Trudy. We'll talk tomorrow."

"Will we?"

"Yes," he said. "I think so."

He hung up, went over to the fireplace again, and stirred the ashes with the poker. He could see a scrap of fender and a ragged little flap of road, but that was it. Fire was what it had needed all along, apparently. Wasn't that how you usually killed supernatural emissaries of evil? Of course it was. He'd used it a few times himself, most notably in The Departing, his haunted train station novel.

"Yes, indeed," he said. "Bum, baby, bum."

He thought about getting the drink he'd promised himself, then remembered the spilled bottle of vinegar (which by now would probably be soaking into the spilled oatmeal-what a thought). He decided he would simply go on upstairs instead. In a book-one by Richard Kinnell, for instance - sleep would be out of the question after the sort of thing which had just happened to him.

In real life, he thought he might sleep just fine.

He actually dozed off in the shower, leaning against the back wall with his hair full of shampoo and the water beating on his chest. He was at the yard sale again, and the TV standing on the paper ashtrays was broadcasting Judy Diment. Her head was back on, but Kinnell could see the medical examiner's primitive industrial stitchwork; it circled her throat like a grisly necklace. "Now this New England Newswire update," she said, and Kinnell, who had always been a vivid dreamer, could actually see the stitches on her neck stretch and relax as she spoke. "Bobby Hastings took all his paintings and burned them, including yours, Mr. Kinnell ... and it is yours, as I'm sure you know. All sales are final, you saw the sign. Why, you just ought to be glad I took your check."

Burned all his paintings, yes, of course he did, Kinnell thought in his watery dream. He couldn't stand what was happening to him, that's what the note said, and when you get to that point in the festivities, you don't pause to see if you want to except one special piece of work from the bonfire. It's just that you got something special into The Road Virus Heads North, didn't you, Bobby? And probably completely by accident. You were talented, I could see that right away, but talent has nothing to do with what's going on in that picture.

"Some things are just good at survival," Judy Diment said on the TV. "They keep coming back no matter how hard you try to get rid of them. They keep coming back like viruses."

Kinnell reached out and changed the channel, but apparently there was nothing on all the way around the dial except for The Judy Diment Show.

" You might say he opened a hole into the basement of the universe," she was saying now. "Bobby Hastings, I mean. And this is what drove out. Nice, isn't it?"

Kinnell's feet slid then, not enough to go out from under him completely, but enough to snap him to.

He opened his eyes, winced at the immediate sting of the soap (Prell had run down his face in thick white rivulets while he had been dozing), and cupped his hands under the shower-spray to splash it away. He did this once and was reaching out to do it again when he heard something. A ragged rumbling sound.

Don't be stupid, he told himself. All you hear is the shower. The rest is only imagination.

Except it wasn't.

Kinnell reached out and turned off the water.

The rumbling sound continued. Low and powerful. Coming from outside.

He got out of the shower and walked, dripping, across his bedroom on the second floor. There was still enough shampoo in his hair to make him look as if it had turned white while he was dozing-as if his dream of Judy Diment had turned it white.

My did I ever stop at that yard sale? he asked himself, but for this he had no answer. He supposed no one ever did.

The rumbling sound grew louder as he approached the window overlooking the driveway-the driveway that glimmered in the summer moonlight like something out of an Alfred Noyes poem.

As he brushed aside the curtain and looked out, he found himself thinking of his ex-wife, Sally, whom he had met at the World Fantasy Convention in 1978. Sally, who now published two magazines out of

her trailer home, one called Survivors, one called Visitors. Looking down at the driveway, these two tides came together in Kinnell's mind like a double image in a stereopticon.

He had a visitor who was definitely a survivor.

The Grand Am idled in front of the house, the white haze from its twin chromed tailpipes rising in the still night air. The Old English letters on the back deck were perfectly readable. The driver's side door stood open, and that wasn't all; the light spilling down the porch steps suggested that Kinnell's front door was also open.

Forgot to lock it, Kinnell thought, wiping soap off his forehead with a hand he could no longer feel. Forgot to reset the burglar alarm, too . not that it would have made much difference to this guy.

Well, he might have caused it to detour around Aunt Trudy, and that was something, but just now the thought brought him no comfort.

Survivors.

The soft rumble of the big engine, probably at least a 442 with a four-barrel carb, reground valves, fuel injection.

He turned slowly on legs that had lost all feeling, a naked man with a headful of soap, and saw the picture over his bed, just as he'd known he would. In it, the Grand Am stood in his driveway with the driver's door open and two plumes of exhaust rising from the chromed tailpipes. From this angle he could also see his own front door, standing open, and a long man-shaped shadow stretching down the hall.

Survivors.

Survivors and visitors.

Now he could hear feet ascending the stairs. It was a heavy tread, and he knew without having to see that the blond kid was wearing motorcycle boots. People with DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR tattooed on their arms always wore motorcycle boots, just as they always smoked unfiltered Camels. These things were like a national law.

And the knife. He would be carrying a long, sharp knife - more of a machete, actually, the sort of knife that could strike off a person's head in a single sweeping stroke.

And he would be grinning, showing those filed cannibal-teeth.

Kinnell knew these things. He was an imaginative guy, after all.

He didn't need anyone to draw him a picture.

"No," he whispered, suddenly conscious of his global nakedness, suddenly freezing all the way around his skin. "No, please, go away." But the footfalls kept coming, of course they did. You couldn't tell a guy like this to go away. It didn't work; it wasn't the way the story was supposed to end.

Kinnell could hear him nearing the top of the stairs. Outside the Grand Am went on rumbling in the moonlight.

The feet coming down the hall now, worn bootheels rapping on polished hardwood.

A terrible paralysis had gripped Kinnell. He threw it off with an effort and bolted toward the bedroom door, wanting to lock it before the thing could get in here, but he slipped in a puddle of soapy water and this time he did go down, flat on his back on the oak planks, and what he saw as the door clicked open and the motorcycle boots crossed the room toward where he lay, naked and with his hair full of Prell, was the picture hanging on the wall over his bed, the picture of the Road Virus idling in front of his house with the driver's side door open.

The driver's side bucket seat, he saw, was full of blood. I'm going outside, I think, Kinnell thought, and closed his eyes.

[nikelyzed]

JSeries Festival 2017 Report

Jakarta, 9th December Upperroom Annex Building 10th Floor

First of all sorry this report was written on broken English because I do believe it’ll be a total fiasco if I wrote it in Indonesian, trust me Please forgive me if there’s any grammar / spelling mistakes (´;ㅿ;｀) Also, taking photos was strictly prohibited when the talk show started inside the venue, that’s why I only have 4 badly taken photos on the photo session for the report orzz

If you’re looking for certain guest artist report please just scroll down because it’s gonna be a poorly written long ass report LMAO

This is the shortest dead-lined trip I ever done in my life, like it’s less than 2 weeks & I almost surrender because of office deadlines were crammed up into 4 days Also my phone was broken when the announcement was out Jakarta is a complicated place & I’m hella afraid straying there all alone, but luckily I have some friends who offer me place to stay ｡ﾟ(ﾟ^o^ﾟ)ﾟ｡

Special thanks to Maya & Shadent who let me stay at their place [and I still feel bad kicking Maya from her bed LMAO I’m so sorry orzz]

December 8th 2017

So the day before I was going to Jakarta, I woke up at 4am to pack my stuff but still almost late for the train departure LOL The train supposed to depart at 7.35am & I just arrived at the station at 7.20am I was running around like an idiot I swear 😂

I arrived in Jakarta at 11am  went to the ticket venue as soon as I can I met with friends I already know & some new friends, which I forgot--😂 They even let me touch their bromide collection [& took photo of it gsxcvjgacxg]

I’m screeching like an idiot when I saw SatoKiyo bromide because-- do I need to explain this part???  ((유∀유|||))

After exchanging email reservation with the ticket & having lunch, we went to karaoke & I almost lost my voice in the process

At night I really want to bang my head because I’m contemplating whether I should draw a gift for Ogotan or not since there’s no announcement of gift box for guest artist & I forgot to ask the staff about it too orzz But I decided to draw art gift for him in the night yet unable to finish because I was too sleepy, exhausted, & nearly heat-stroked because Jakarta heat is never a joke to begin with If you’re weak against sun-heat like me please bring umbrella / hat & put as many sunscreen & sunblock as you can, I mean it

December 9th 2017

The next day I woke up at 4am sharp but was shocked to my spine because Maya was sleeping on the floor instead on the bed  (´･_･`) Since we both still sleepy we decided to continue sleeping again but now it’s my turn to sleep on the floor ofc

We woke up again at 7am & doing satan speed preparations because the traffic is gonna be nasty if we’re late for real

We managed to arrived on the venue at 9am something I took a shortcut to get to the empty spot because my bag is hecking heavy & I can’t wait to sit, this resulting to the gate-border-thing to snap & fall, sorry security-san I’m too eager orzz

After that we sit on the line until open gate time I spend my time rolling around back & forth to some friends while waiting I even can continue the gift for Ogotan & finished it on time Since we forgot to buy envelope for the fan letter I decided to sacrifice my red folder file to contain all the letter for Ogotan

I swear I was nervous as heck when people start staring at it like hjvghcvaxhjdvvf no I’m not cheating on Ryuji this is just a normal gift yet some people still teasing me about it until now ((유∀유|||))

Oh I also met friends from previous karaoke session Alchemilla, Caneera, Kuyo, Maya, Evelyn, Salfa, Shadent, Nopi, Ika, Nindita, Nadya, & idk the rest please remind me because my memory was as bad as Higekiri or even worse---  ┏( .-. ┏ ) ┓

2:45pm Open Gate

We’re running a little bit late from schedule but finally we entered the hall I got the first row seat on the middle wing, I sit on the left side right across to the press chair row on the left wing Never have I felt so blessed before, it’s so close to the stage I swear I can even jump over the fence if I want to, but of course I won’t do that la I still have some sanity intact

The rest of this report was based on my memory so please kindly tell me if I made any mistake over the schedule / what the artist said or do OK?  |ω･`)

The MC was Hiroaki Kato [the cool & kind oyaji] also a pretty lady who I failed to remember her name oops sorry  (´･_･`)

In the opening we have many dorama screenings, & if you’re curious the list of dorama can be found here 

Saso Yuki fangirl section

The first guest artist to appeared was Saso Yuki the P*cari Sweat girl on youtube I never think she will be this pretty up close I swear she’s prettier IRL, the photo / video you saw were nothing hvfkacvxgyuedf  (///﹏///).｡oஇ

She greets & introduces herself in Indonesian. The rest of talk show was about acting & stuff. She also talk about the making of P*cari Sweat TVC Yuki Saso hope Indo & Japan can have greater relationship in the near future

IDK if it’s just me, but when I was too busy gaping like a fish & stare at her for solid minutes, she look at my direction and waved and smiled so bright AND I JUST DIED HDVGSHHJVCSJBC I swear she’s sooooooooo sooooooooooooooo pretty that you could melt when she’s smiling LOL I forgot things she said since I was dumb-strucked by her beauty

After that we had another screening time

Nano fangirl section

The next guest artist to perform was Nano She’s also gorgeous up close & she’s very happy to perform in Indonesia since she was cancelling her previous concert in Jakarta due to some circumstances She also told us that the venue her concert supposed to be held was this exact venue we’re sitting on & we’re going “whoaaa” in unison

When Nano was going to sing, the sound system died--- The audience was very supportive & cheer her up with kind words The Nano support team was amazing, you guys rocks!  (≧∇≦ ) If I’m not mistaken Nano sing “Savior of Song” & “The Crossing” It was amazing performance, we stand & sing along together

Next we have another screening time

Isomura Hayato & Yahagi Honoka fangirl section

After screening time, there’s guest artist arrived & I scream on top of my lungs because I thought it was Ogotan But false alarm, It’s actually Isomura Hayato from Kamen Rider Ghost & I still screamed anyway  ( ´༎ຶㅂ༎ຶ`) This talk session was also attended by Yahagi Honoka-chan & I was dumb-strucked by another beauty LMAO Seriously she’s so cute up close  (灬ºωº灬)♡

Their first impression of Indonesia was it’s hot but they both like it since its freezing winter on Japan Both talk a lot of things, about acting & stuff. Both were asked if there’s drama collaboration with Indonesia will they interested or not but of course the fans said the deadpanned big big no since Indonesia soap opera quality is kinda-- well-- you decide la--😂

I don’t remember what they talk because I forgot to take notes of it But there’s this section when Hayato-kun asked why he become a Kamen Rider, he said it’s his dream to protect girls [he clearly said ‘Josei’ here] Hiroaki-san teases us “Who want to be protected by Hayato-kun?” And this dork whose name is Hayato-kun just casually stretch his hands out to audience direction while nodding, like offering a hug Of course the fangirls roars the signature “KYAAAAAAAA” including me Who don’t want to be protected by a handsome guy anyway??  (//∇//)

Another funny thing, when I was staring right into Hayato-kun [he’s so gorgeous IRL I swear] idk if he realized I was staring or he’s actually looking at the press which is right across my seat-- He look at my direction A LOT & I pretend to stare at Honoka-chan, this happened many many times it feels awkward LMAO o)-(;;; I keep chanting “Hayato-kun please don’t look over here, just lemme enjoy your gorgeous face peacefully”, but he keep looking at my direction once in a while Oh well, considered it blessings  ( ´༎ຶㅂ༎ຶ`)

When the times up we had another screening TADAAAAAH it’s YOWAPEDAAAAAAA I was soooooo prepared to see Ogotan but since I can see towards the backstage entrance it’s actually a female silhouette walking to the stage

AND DAFUQ IT’S ACTUALLY YUKI KATO LMAO  😂 😂 😂

Being a country field person I’m, I still scream because she was also one of my childhood fav actress on Heart movie since she’s so cute & relatable as duck LMAO

She talked a lot about acting, awards she won in Japan, & so on The funny part is, when she was asked what kind of movie she like to watch she gesture “mampus gue” with her lips which can be roughly translated as “sht I’m screwed” 😂   

No worries Yuki-chan, we understand that fangirl feeling, really 😂 😂 😂

After talk with Yuki-chan, the kameko-ninja-guy set some band property so I relax a little, thinking it was Rei performance

Never been I’d be so wrong in my life

Ogoe Yuuki massive fangirl section

When Hiroaki-san announce the next guest artist I nearly fell of my chair because FINALLY OGOTAN APPEARED HOLYDUCKXVHSVKVXHTXAKOZ

I wonder if I actually died on the spot because Ogotan look so gorgeous & cute & pure & angelic idk man I’m wheezing my life out  (´×ω×`) He wore a suit which has the same color as my attire & I got teased again orzz

First he was greeting us with a broken Indonesian along with a sheepish smile His jumbled face when he ask Hiroaki-san how to read the Indonesian language, it was soooo so cute, so pure, so angelic, so fluffy hhhnnnggghhhhhhh He continue the gibberish Indonesian greetings cutely which we all failed to understand, the audience went “???” & he also went a little “???”  😂 

Its okay Ogotan, we still love you 😂 

His first impression of Indonesia was it’s extremely hot ofc Hiroaki-san offered if he had any intention to bike around while in Indo But of course the Ogotan support team won’t let him, giving him the no gestures and chanting “dame-dame-dame” together  😂  We don’t want Ogotan to bike in these messy road & of course Indonesian sun is unhealthy for his flawless skin so NOPE  ლ(ಠ益ಠლ WE SHALL PROTECT OGOTAN AT ANY COST!! - said someone

He talked about acting, dorama, and also butai. He explained to us the differences between dorama & butai, their specialty & so on For example is when he’s on Yowapeda butai he only use bike handle, while in dorama he need to bike for real

Between the talk he sends lots lots of heart gestures, both Korean heart finger sign & full fledged love hand sign toward the audience & there goes the audible “KYAAAAA” signature roaring from back to the front including me LMAO

He keep smiling & shooting heart & sending loves & waving & idk man

I feel so attacked when he look at a folder file I was carrying earlier I decided to showed it to him when he’s looking & making “it’s for you” hand gestures He smiled at me, HE SMILED AT ME FOR DUCK SAKE & SEND ME A FULL FLEDGET HEART SIGN WITH BOTH HAND & I JUST MELT IN THE NAME OF LORD I WAS NEARLY DIED LMAO  ｡ﾟ( ﾟஇωஇﾟ)ﾟ｡

It’s hecking embarrassing so I just cover my face with the folder file but Ogotan seems to know I was a weakling & he keep shooting me heart sign & tilt his head cutely & I died again & again LMAO OGOTAN STOPPP I CAN’T HANDLE IT GXBXCHSGLGBLTFXGKHS

[I need to apologize to Ryuji later I swear]

He talks about a lot of stuff but I barely remember what he talk on stage since what I heard & remember were just "KYAAA KYAAA KYAA” from start to the end I kinda feel bad for Hiroaki-san because his translations were drowned between sea of fangirl screams  ( ；∀；)

When the talk session time is up, there goes another fangirl scream, the saddest one you’ll ever heard, it feels like you just kicked a kitten / puppy

I was also started crying without I realize because I always cry when fangirling By I mean crying was rolling literal tears from my eyes because I’m a weakling to every people I adore including actors, singers, whatever

Here comes the angst I’m so so sad because we only can see him for about 15 minutes & after that idk when will we can see him again so I started crying for real but inaudible one ofc

By the end of the talk, Ogotan said something like : “Thank you for loving me. It was my motivation & it supports me to keep going on. Thank you very much & please take care of me too in the future”

I don’t remember the exact thing he said but he does say ‘Aisarete’ something something & on here my friend who understand Japanese better was already bawling  ｡ﾟ(ﾟ´Д｀ﾟ)ﾟ ｡

AND CAN YOU GUESS WHAT?? HE LOOK AT MY DIRECTION AGAIN & SEND ME ANOTHER HEART SIGN & OF COURSE I WAS CRYING EVEN MORE LA OMFG WHAT A WRONG MOVE OGOTAN LMAOOO CRYYYYYYYYYYY  .˚‧º·(ฅдฅ｡)‧º·˚. He also kindly send me a “nakanaide” gesture with his lips & I’m sending him an OK sign while wiping my tears LMAO what am I doing with my life, really I started thinking if I’m being delusional & Ogotan never did any of these but please, just let me be 😂💖

After that Ogotan fangirl time was over & I’m still crying LMAO HAHHAHAH He keep shooting hearts & smiles so bright it can light up the whole universe The audience finally fall silent after he return to the backstage

After Ogotan talk is over, it’s Rei turn to perform At that time my soul was still flying & can’t even process what’s happening because my head hurts so much from too many screaming & crying LMAO

BUT TADAAHHHH there’s a surprise attack by the end of the event LMAO.

There’s actually some envelope attached at the bottom of each audience chair Inside each of the envelope there’s a name of guest artist written, there’re 10 envelope in total

7 of the lucky audience will get a board which autographed by the guest The other 3 was the luckiest mustard ever existed on earth who got a chance to take a photo with the guest artist LIKE (ノ-_-)ノ~┻━┻ Since I’m bad in gambling of course I don’t get any la what do you expect

I can hear envy screeching from back to the front, in this segment finally we’re allowed to took some photos, & there’s a crowd photo from the stage too but IDK Press-san tachi, I’m waiting for the better photo here  ( ˘•ω•˘ ).｡oஇ

I’m unable to took more than 4 photos because I was squished to the gate from back & it’s hard balancing phone with one hand so here comes the blurry quality photos I managed to snap between the chaos

While taking photos we managed to catch Yuki Kato attention Being the good fangirl we’re, we keep gesturing her “THIS THING IS FOR OGOTAN” while pointing at Ogotan continuously LOL She replied with hand gestures “How should I tell him about it???”

Ogotan seems realizing what’s happening & smiles to us cutely And the front row died again LMAO

I swear Yuki Kato is a fangirl in crime, thank you for helping us Yuki-chan!  ヾ(｡>﹏<｡)ﾉﾞ✧*

Finally, the event end for real  ( ´༎ຶㅂ༎ຶ`) I was running around to find a way to give Ogotan’s gift art & apparently there’s a gift box [which actually is a gift desk] prepared for it by the staff

We part our ways & I’m recharging my flying soul with friends, eating Yoshin*ya while contemplating whether is it a real life or just a fantasy

After that I went to Shadent’s home for resting, we watch some Kamen Rider episodes before finally collapsing on bed in less than 5 minutes LMAO

It was really a fun day, I’m having a great experience & I’m gonna cherish this memory forever ever ever and ever!!  ｡✧*｡( ´∩•͈ω•͈∩` )✧*｡

Otsukaresamadesu JSeries Festival Jakarta!  See you next time!!  (｡•̀ᴗ-)و ̑̑✧

Please bring Ryuji in the next event, I beg you  ((유∀유|||))

[ecchima]

Human is beautiful, perfect is boring

Words: 4,6k Rating: T Co-author: @smuttybugggu AO3

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5

Yo lo Amo

Hanzo can feel his stomach twisting and curling in disgust as he storms back into the agency. He has no patience for the fools who try to get in his path or speak to him. Echoes of his argument with McMilan--McCree--whoever the hell that man is, linger over him like an awful dark cloud. The worst part in all of this is that awful feeling of betrayal. Not that Hanzo wasn’t ever betrayed before, but this time, it actually hurts. Because he really, really liked McCree. What a fool he was.

Tears of rage and betrayal build against the corners of his eyes, threatening to drip out. He bites back a sniff as he fans his eyes and quickly wipes at them, refusing to allow anyone to see him in such an upset state.

He pushes the doors of the room where he left Genji earlier and walks toward his brother. The room is quite empty, most people already went home or are getting ready to do so and Hanzo appreciates the quiet. It doesn’t ease the storm of his feelings but it helps to know there is little to no people likely to witness his misery.

“Hanzo?” he hears Genji call out, but ignores him.

“Come with me,” Hanzo hisses under his breath and grabs his sibling by the arm, dragging him out of the lobby.

“Brother, what’s wrong?!” Genji’s voice cracks in surprise, but he doesn’t pull away or push him back.  

Hanzo can’t bring himself to speak for several minutes, not until he and Genji are in his dressing room. After closing the door, Hanzo slumps against it, collecting his thoughts. He looks up at his brother and takes several deep breaths, trying--and failing--to regain some composure. He drags a hand against his face before he opens his mouth and swallows against his anxiety. “Genji…”

“What is wrong?” Genji demands, irritation and concern messing on his face. “What’s with the dramatics, Hanzo?”

“It is McMilan,” Hanzo snaps, his eyes growing watery. “I have been betrayed. It...He is…”

“Has he been friendly with you again? Or did he compliment you?” Genji cuts him, clearly irritated. It was hardly the first time Hanzo has pulled his brother aside to vent about the other model. “We’ve had this talk before, brother.”

“He is McCree,” Hanzo interjects and glares at his younger brother. “James McMilan is Jesse McCree. Or Jesse McCree is James McMilan. I do not even know which damn way it is!”

“Ah.” To Hanzo’s surprise, Genji doesn’t seem taken aback or even amazed by the revelation. “Yeah, I already knew.”

Hanzo can feel his anger spike. He straightens up and pokes at his brother's chest. “You knew and you did not tell me? Why? And don’t tell me you thought it was not relevant.”

When Genji lifts a hand to his mouth, Hanzo catches a glimpse of a grin between his fingers. He glares and tenses up as his brother begins to cackle, nearly curling in on his chest, when the teasing laughs escape his mouth anyway. “H-Hanzo!” Genji stammers in between laughs. “Brother...please!”

"I come to you for support and you laugh at my misery,” Hanzo huffs, crossing his arms defensively across his chest.

“Pardon my language,” Genji speaks with a strained voice and holds back another laugh. “How the hell did you not realize it sooner?”

Hanzo gapes at him indignantly. “I-He… It is not my fault, he is a master of disguise!”

“Oh my god,” Genji wheezes. “Come on, Hanzo! It was literally the same man, same hair and eye colors, and same build. How could you not see through his Clark Kent act?” He shakes his head and whips out his phone. “I need to talk to McWrap about this. Where is he anyway?”

Hanzo winces and inhales deeply. “It does not matter, Genji. I...Whatever we had is no longer…” his voice trails off and he turns away. Quietly, Hanzo stalks towards his recliner by his dressing room’s vanity dresser and sinks down, deflated.

“What did you do?” Genji asks. “You had a fight, didn’t you? I can tell because you’re being a whiny baby!” His brother whips around, lowering his phone, and follows after him.

“I am not!” Hanzo snaps between shuddering gasps and drags a hand across his face, resting against the top of his forehead. “Just forget him, alright? We are through. I will not be texting him anymore or calling him or eating dinner with him. And we will return to being distanced at work.”

Hanzo flinches when a pillow smacks him dead in the face. “This isn’t a soap opera, Hanzo! Ganko Anija!” Genji adds in Japanese and rolls his eyes. “Let me guess, you stormed off all dramatically and left poor Jesse to hang high and dry, wondering what to do.”

Hanzo bares his teeth at Genji and flings the pillow back at his sibling. “Be quiet!”

Genji steps forward, ducking out of the pillow’s path, and gives Hanzo a hardened look. His brows are furrowed in disappointment and his frown is growing. “Hanzo, I’m being serious. I was there that day in your photo shoot for the wolf sanctuary. Let’s see now: ‘It is impolite for two strangers to be so forward’? I’ve known him a lot longer than you have, Hanzo, so I can safely say you are being a damn fool! And you have no idea how great Jesse really is. If I wasn’t your brother, I’d say you don’t deserve him.”

“And how do you know him?” Hanzo whispers with a glare.

“He wasn’t lying about his work as a sound tech with bands,” Genji admits with a shrug. “I caught a glimpse of him at one of our shows, recognized him from all the advertisements, so I followed him to a local little bar after it was over. He begged me to keep quiet about his ‘secret’ identity. This was way before you two became associates, but it was still hard to hear about how cold you always treated him, Hanzo.”

“Obviously you do not know him very well, then. He has been very rude tonight.” When Genji raises a skeptical eyebrow, Hanzo continues, “He called me an ass and…” Hanzo pauses, trying to remember what else McCree said. When he can’t find any other insult, he repeats: “He called me an ass.”

The way Genji’s expression turns deadpan makes Hanzo shift uncomfortably in his chair. “Hanzo… Don’t tell me you haven’t been an ass, it’s not true and you know it.”

Hanzo crosses his arms across his chest and looks away. He doesn’t know what to reply so he does the next best thing: sulking in silence.

“Come on, Drama Queen,” Genji sighs and nudges Hanzo by the shoulder. “Food time.”

Hanzo takes a deep breath and nods before standing up and opening the door, Genji following him closely. Just as they’re about to step out into the hallway, Gabriel Reyes rushes past them, stopping Hanzo dead in his tracks.

It takes him a few seconds to regain his composure but eventually, he walks into the hall to look at McCree’s manager running.

“Wow, I’ve never seen him run so fast,” Genji says, frowning. “I wonder if McWrap made him angry...”

Hanzo huffs. “It could very well be, I would not care and it would serve him right,” he mutters and follows his brother in the opposite direction. He knows only one place where Genji would want to eat at.

After a much needed visit trip to Rumplings and a good night sleep, the Shimadas enjoy a lazy morning at Hanzo’s place, with Hanzo resting on his couch and reading a novella by his favourite author as Genji lounges beside him, flipping the tv channels at a rapid pace.

“Pick a channel or turn off the television,” Hanzo murmurs with an irritated tone. However, despite Genji’s somewhat annoying tendencies, he is glad his brother offered to keep him company for the night.

“Fiiiiiine,” Genji makes a mock whine and drops the remote, allowing the local news station to stay on the screen. It isn’t long before he turns on his side, relaxes against the couch, and gazes at Hanzo. “So. I’m not gonna pester you to tell how the fight went down...but just consider forgiving him, ok?”

Hanzo pauses from his readings and frowns. “I am making tea. Do you want some?” he asks abruptly, ignoring Genji’s comment as he stands up from the couch.

“You can’t run from this forever, brother. You work together, there’s no way you’re not going to see each other again and trust me, McWrap has an incredible sad puppy face.”

The elder Shimada scowls at Genji and walks around the couch, back into his kitchen. “Yes to tea?”

Genji sticks out his tongue and rolls his eyes. “Fine. Jasmine if you have any.”

Hanzo makes the tea in silence,not bothering to listen to the news as it runs on in the background. He watches as the water slowly turns into a dark brown; the color makes him think of Jesse’s eyes. He wonders what McCree’s sad puppy face looks like--until remembering that he’s mad at him and doesn’t want to see his face. He distracts himself by listening to Genji commenting on the news: the local schools are having fundraisers, a robbery occurred at a gas station, traffic was delayed because of an accident…

Holding back a sigh, Hanzo finishes preparing the tea and brings two small cups with him. He hands Genji’s cup to him but his brother doesn’t move and keeps his eyes glued on the TV instead.

“Thank you, brother,” Genji murmurs as he takes the cup. He lifts it up to his mouth but pauses as something on the screen catches his eye. “Hey, Hanzo. Isn’t that…?”

Hanzo looks up at the screen and freezes. There’s a crashed motorbike on screen. A tiny photograph of a familiar face appears In the top right corner of the tv as they broadcast the surveyed damage. He feels...numb as he recognizes the destroyed motorcycle. He’s certain that the red streaks on the pavement are blood. The crowd gathered around the scene all look horrified or upset. After, Hanzo spots a bold line of text scrolling over and over on the bottom of the story. Only then does the gravity of the situation click in place. ‘Famous Model Injured in Crash’. McMilan...McCree.

“Jesse,” Hanzo whimpers, feeling strangely heavy and frozen in place.  

“N-no way,” Genji whispers from beside Hanzo, as they both gaze on anxiously.

“--hirty-seven-year old, James McMilan, was injured in a crash last night. McMilan is a well known model working for LME productions. Witnesses affirm that McMilan was driving above the speed limit and went through a red light. He was rushed to a nearby emergency room, name withheld at the request of his manager, and is currently in a coma. Tragically, it is unknown if he will pull through.”

“Oh god,” Genji gasps between his hands and frantically reaches for his phone. “What if that was why Reyes was freaking out?” He dials a number with lighting speed and holds the phone to his ear. “Please answer...please!”

Hanzo still feels lifeless as he listens to his brother’s panicked breathing. “It’s not picking up, Hanzo!  It’s going straight to voicemail.” He watches as Genji’s eyes fill with tears, unable to move, unable to speak. He’s not even sure he’s breathing anymore.

“Shit!” Genji curses as he leaps up from the couch, tears dripping from his eyes, and rushes into the hallways connecting Hanzo’s living room to his bedroom. “C’mon Jesse, answer the phone, please!”

Hanzo listens to his brother’s voice breaking, cracking in pieces. He chokes back estranged sobs. The teacup in his hand slips between his fingers and tumbles down to the carpet. Hot tears roll along his sharp cheekbones as his last conversation with McCree rings in his ears.

“You never gave me the chance to get close and get to know ya.” He remembers McCree’s expression, the tears in his eyes. “Do you have any idea how painful it was to be half loved?” He remembers his own anger then, cold yet still burning, the venom in his voice when he said: “You are not worth my time.”

As Hanzo squeezes his eyes shut, a distraught gasp breaks free; deep sobs immediately follow after it.

The news reporter’s voice starts echoing in his head. “McMilan was driving above the speed limit and went through a red light.” Hanzo shakes his head to try and stop the voice but it keeps repeating itself, accusing.

He hears Genji fumble around in the hallway, cursing in a mixture of Japanese and English. Wordlessly, with eyes still soaked and dripping, Hanzo stands up and makes a beeline for his shoes and jacket.

“I will be back,” Hanzo weakly mumbles to his brother and slips out the door while Genji is still distracted.

The drive from Hanzo’s place to LME productions passes in a blur; he barely remembers it happening at all. But, here he is, glancing around frantically. His heart thrashes wildly against his chest in panic and his breathes heave heavily and unevenly against his throat. Frays of hair have broken free from his ponytail--a sign of his rushed appearance--and sweat coats the skin of his forehead. He takes a moment to try and scold his expression into his usual poker face before entering the building.

Many concerned expressions zero in on him, but Hanzo ignores them. He searches the crowd of people all gathered around the greeting office’s large wall mounted television where everyone is watching the news alert about James...Jesse. When he spots his target, Jack’s personal receptionist, and makes a beeline towards her.

The brunette woman is clearing her desk; where an almost comically large bouquet of flowers is taking up most of the wooden space. He steals a glimpse down to the flowers and spots a tiny yellow card that reads ‘You’re in our thoughts, James.’ tucked in the paper band.

“Lena!” Hanzo calls out to her.

The woman jumps in surprise and quickly spins around to meet him. “Hanzo! Ya scared me, luv!”

“I cannot get a hold of Jack,” Hanzo explains, taking a deep breath. “I need to know where Jes--James has been taken to.”

Lena opens her mouth and closes it several times as she considers Hanzo’s words. She blows a few strands of hair away from her eye and meekly sags her shoulders. “Ah...Jack told me to keep hush hush at the moment, luv,” she murmurs apologetically. “Besides, I don’t really think it would be a great idea if you visited him there,” she says, wringing her hands. “Since y’know… You two fight all the time.”

Hanzo sighs and starts playing with one of the loose strands of hair from his ponytail, looking up and away to try not to spill any tears; he’s getting desperate.

“It has been pointed to me how,” he pauses, looking for another word than ‘mean’. “Uncivilized I have been to him… I would like to apologize.” Lena looks at him skeptically until he adds a weak, “please”.

After a short time of silence, Lena sighs under the pleading gaze. She gathers the flowers and shoves them against Hanzo’s chest. “Fine. I’ll tell you, but you gotta bring these too.”  He nods eagerly and takes the note where Lena wrote the hospital’s address.

Before he can turn and leave, Lena quickly steps closer and glances around cautiously. “From what I understand, James has been admitted under a different name, luv. An alias? Anyway, it’s Jesse McCree.”

Hanzo mumbles, “Yes, I know. Thank you, Lena.” Then he turns and leaves as fast as he can without actually running and jumps into his car. He types the address in his GPS and tries to focus on the road this time.

When he finally arrives to Overwatch hospital, Hanzo spots his and Jesse’s managers getting a coffee. He moves stealthily across the lobby and sits in one of the chairs, feigning to be waiting as he listens to their conversation.

“... It’s all my fault, Jack.”

“No, we already talked about this. You can’t help that the kid was driving above the speed limit, Gabe!”

Hanzo watches from the corner of his eyes: how Gabriel sullenly stares at the floor and how Jack wraps his hands around the other man’s while their coffee rests on a counter. They are practically pressed against each other’s sides, almost...intimately; needing one another’s comfort. But then… Jack leans his head against Gabriel’s shoulder and Hanzo starts to think that all the gossip he hears about them at work isn’t just gossip.

“Let’s wait until he wakes up. He’ll tell you what happened.” Jack says almost too softly for Hanzo to hear.

“I killed him, Jack,” Gabriel’s whisper is so pained and broken. “I made him take that stupid diet. I saw he got drowsy and clumsy. Even the nurse said...”

“She said it didn’t help, she didn’t say it was the reason of the accident, Gabe.”

“But what if he fainted? For all we know, he could have fainted on his stupid bike because of that diet I forced on him! And for what? A bloody photoshoot with Hanzo. Everyone thinks he’s so cool, wonderful Hanzo with his tattoo and his long hair. That guy’s just a bully!”

“Gabe, hold on. Look, I was going to talk to Hanzo about his attitude towards Jesse, but getting mad isn’t going to help right now. Calm down,” Jack replies and reaches for the other man’s shoulder. “Please…You know it’s not his fault either.”

Hanzo looks away, of course it’s his fault. How could it not be?

“You should get some rest, Jack,” Gabe quietly mutters and kisses Jack’s forehead. “Ve a dormir, cariño.”

It takes a few more minutes and a pair of puppy eyes but Jack accepts to take a nap while Gabriel goes get something a bit more consistent than the hospital’s coffee. When he’s sure he won’t be noticed, Hanzo walks discretely up to the information desk and coughs to get the receptionist’s attention.

“How can I help you sir?”

“I...um...came to deliver those flowers to…” Hanzo pauses and pretends to look the name up on his phone, “Jesse McCree.”

The receptionist types the name on his keyboard and scrolls down for what feels like ages before looking back at him.

“I’m sorry but this patient is still in a light coma state and he’s not taking visitors.”

“I understand but this is my job, I could get fired for not delivering these flowers. I will be in and out.” Hanzo can tell the receptionist is about to refuse again so he quickly adds, “Unless you would like to carry this particularly heavy bouquet by yourself, of course. It would actually be rather helpful.”

The guy just eyes the enormous bouquet wearily before giving Hanzo the room number and the direction to the elevators. It doesn’t take him long to find the room but he stands in front of it for several minutes, bracing himself and praying to all the gods he knows that he won’t be greeted by the sight of a McCree missing half of his body parts or something.

He freezes after he cracks open the hospital door and peers inside. His chest clenches up when he sees the prone form bundled up on the bed and he quickly rushes inside. Machines clutter around the bed--all monitoring different parts of the man’s body--and layers of pillows and blankets are swaddled around Jesse. The flowers are dropped on an empty chair beside the bed as Hanzo kneels by it.

He gets a better view of the other’s injuries and his eyes immediately tear up. Where Jesse’s left arm should be, there is a bandaged stub. Jesse’s face is decorated with deep scratches and bruises and several bloody patches adorn his head; a brace is clamped around his neck where bandages are wrapped snug towards his forehead and over his left eye. His right foot is set in a cast, supported by a cling at a corner of the bed.

Hanzo cringes, having little idea of how much pain the accident must have caused him. With a shaking hand, he clutches his fingers around Jesse’s right arm and buries his face against his chest.  “I’m sorry,” he whispers, blankets muffling his words. “I did this to you, didn’t I?”

At this moment, Hanzo would gladly give everything he owns to feel McCree’s strong and warm embrace, to see those soft chocolate eyes, the little marks at their corners whenever he smiles.

A choked sob escapes him when he realizes just how much he’s lost because he was too prideful to just listen, too wounded to forgive. He laughs dryly. He has hurt Jesse more than the cowboy had hurt him. Physically and emotionally, Hanzo thinks bitterly as he remembers what the journalist had said on the news.

When he hears a groan, Hanzo immediately glances up to see  Jesse’s eye blinking slowly. He watches as the man rolls his gaze around, exhaustion and confusion very visible in Jesse’s expression while he examines his surroundings. When he finally gazes at Hanzo, a big and soft smile forms on his face.

“Jesse?!” Hanzo croaks, his tone barely above a whisper.

“Did te dolió...heaven...?” Jesse’s voice is hoarse and dry, but the goofy smile never leaves his face. He reaches up, almost drunkenly, and presses his fingers on Hanzo’s eye. "Mmmm... Estoy mas volado que una cometa. I must be in heaven.... Un ángel."

Hanzo pauses and frowns when he realizes that Jesse is far from coherent--most likely on a high dose of painkillers. A part of him is thankful the man is still alive; the other half despises himself. It’s his fault Jesse is in a hospital bed, missing an arm and heaven knows what other parts of his body.

He feels his lips quivering as he cups his hands around Jesse’s own and gently lifts it up. He presses a kiss to the calloused knuckles and bites back a sudden sob. “I’m so sorry, Jesse. I’m sorry.”

A light frown appears on McCree’s face as he watches Hanzo repeating apologetic whispers on loop. McCree wiggles his arm in an attempt to free his hand from Hanzo’s grasp then he pinches Hanzo’s nose with some difficulties.

“Boop!” He says happily, retrieving his hand slowly and sticking out his tongue in concentration as he tries to position his annular between his middle finger and index. After a while, he looks down at his hand and chuckles before positioning his thumb between the two fingers.

“Gotcha nose!”

Hanzo’s frown vanished from his face, but his brows still sank against his eyes. “I...should let you rest. I just needed to see you and apologize, Jesse.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?!”

Hanzo jumps in surprise, Jesse blinks slowly. They both turn their head to the doorway to see a fuming Gabriel Reyes--clutching a cup of coffee in his hand and shooting daggers in Hanzo’s direction.  He wipes at his eyes, takes a deep breath, and bows his head. “I-I...I did not mean to intrude.”

“How the hell did you get in?” Gabriel gritted between his teeth.

“I brought flowers,” Hanzo offers weakly and gestures to the discarded bouquet on the other chair.

“Gaaaabe!” Jesse calls out happily, oblivious to the tension between the other mens.

“Jesseeeee.” Gabe answers in what Hanzo assumes is his best fake happy voice. “Don’t move, kid, you’re so high you could touch the moon. And you,” he says, walking towards Hanzo and gripping the front of his shirt, “are getting the hell out of here!”

“Noooooooooooo!” Jesse whined, trying to sit up.

Gabriel let go of Hanzo at once and rushed to hold Jesse back in his bed. “I said don’t move, condenado niño.”

"No hagas que el ángel se vaya, jefe."

Gabriel snorts. “Angel? Maybe the kind with horns and a pitchfork..”

"Yo lo amo, Gabe."

Hanzo watches the two men converse, feeling uncertain, ignorant and confused the whole time. When Gabriel passes a glance away from Jesse and back on himself, he can feel his heartbeat quicken. Next thing he knows, Hanzo is being guided back into a chair and a rather pissed Gabriel engulfs his vision. “What the hell is he talking about?”

“I don’t speak Spanish,” Hanzo admits quietly and rubs his forearm awkwardly. “What did he say?”

“He says,” Gabriel answers, leaning even closer, “that he’s in love with you. So I would like to know what on Earth lead him to think that. Everybody knows you hate him, Hanzo. Do you suddenly find my kid interesting now that he almost died?”

“No!” Hanzo snaps and buries his face into his hands. “I mean...that’s not…” A deep sigh leaves him as he glances back to Jesse and focuses on what’s left of his arm. “I have been a fool.”

“I think everyone’s been a fool,” Gabe mutters as he shoves the bouquet of flowers to the ground and sinks down in the other hospital chair. “But it doesn’t answer my question, cabròn.”

Hanzo takes a deep breath and looks at him in the eyes. “Before I explain everything, I want to let you know that I deeply care about Jesse and the only reason I am here now is because I am worried and--” Hanzo takes another deep breath before his voice can crack. “I am really sorry for what happened to him.”

“What.” Gabriel’s deadpan expression is enough to make Hanzo falter for several seconds.

“I know it sounds skeptical, after the way I’ve acted in the past...It all began about a month ago.”

Hanzo took a deep breath before he recounted everything from memory: his first meeting with Jesse McCree, their first dinner date, their first movie night...their first kiss. Hanzo saw no point in hiding the truth, especially after what lies have cost him already.

Both men pause when Jesse weakly moans and mutters something in Spanish. His fingers prod and scratch at the wires strapped onto his exposed chest, monitoring his vitals.

“Oi!” Gabe sends an irritated glance at McCree and snaps his fingers. “Don’t touch, mijo!”

“I don’t like ‘em,” McCree complains and ignores the man.

Hanzo stands and reaches for McCree’s hand, taking it gently between his own two. “Jesse, please don’t.”

Jesse pouts and for a moment, Hanzo thinks he’ll try to free his hand to keep scratching at the wires, but the goofy grin returns to his face. “I’ll be good, if...mmm...a kiss.”

Hanzo looks down at the cowboy’s lips and cringes. They’re still bloody from the accident and probably hurt. He lets his gaze wander across the other’s face to find a better spot and when he finds it, he slowly leans forward and lays a gentle kiss on Jesse’s forehead, near his temple.

“You should go back to sleep, Jesse. You need to rest.” Hanzo whispers.

“I don’t wanna…”

“Sleep, Jesse,” Gabe states, sounding more like a worried parent than a worried manager, as he watches the pair.

Jesse looks up at Hanzo and mumbles “Stay,” his hand squeezing Hanzo’s, making him look at Gabriel, silently asking permission.

“Alright,” Gabriel huffs, “but this talk ain’t over, Shimada.”

They watch as Gabriel takes his coat back and Hanzo swears he hears a quiet, “Take care of him.” before he’s gone.

Jesse pulls on his sleeve to get his attention and says “Bed…With me?”

It takes Hanzo several minutes to figure out what McCree wants from him: to lay on the bed together. He eyes the small hospital bed skeptically before placing one of the chairs next to McCree’s bed and laying his head on the other’s chest, making sure he won’t hurt Jesse or disconnect the wires.

Exhausted after such an eventful morning, Hanzo falls asleep to the sound of the heart monitor and Jesse’s breathing.

The translations are : -Stubborn Brother! -Go sleep, my dear. -Did it hurt...heaven...? -Mmmm... I'm flying higher than a kite. I must be in heaven.... An angel. -You damn child -Don't make the angel leave, boss. -I love him

[curlyhairedclarinetist]

Anyone getting sick of these yet?

1: Do you sleep with your closet doors open or closed? - Most of the time, it's open. 2: Do you take the shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotel? - No, but my mom does. 3: Do you sleep with your sheets tucked in or out? - Tucked in. My fiancé doesn't tuck them in and it drives me nuts. 4: Have you ever stolen a street sign before? - Nope. I'm as square as can be. 5: Do you like to use Post-It notes? - Just for little things like grocery lists. I'll write bigger stuff on my white board. 6: Do you cut out coupons but then never use them? - Does pulling coupons out of those dispensers at the grocery store count? Cuz I do that all the time. 7: Would you rather be attacked by a big bear or a swarm of a bees? - Aaah, I'd rather not do any of that! Maybe a bear? So it's one-on-one...Does playing dead actually work? 8: Do you have freckles? - No, but I think they're beautiful. 9: Do you always smile for pictures? - Unless I'm told we're doing a serious pose, yes. 10: What is your biggest pet peeve? - Lip smacking. 11: Do you ever count your steps when you walk? - No. My phone does that for me. I used to, back in the days of marching band. 12: Have you ever peed in the woods? - No. Although I'm gonna have to soon since I'm going camping this summer. 13: What about pooped in the woods? - See previous answer. 14: Do you ever dance even if there’s no music playing? - Literally all the time. 15: Do you chew your pens and pencils? - Not anymore. 16: How many people have you slept with this week? - Zero. 17: What size is your bed? - Full 18: What is your song of the week? - "Eating Food in the Shower" by Ninja Sex Party, and although I can't explain it, I've been diggin' "Don't Lose My Number" by Phil Collins. 19: Is it OK for guys to wear pink? - Why wouldn't it be? 20: Do you still watch cartoons? - All. The. Time. 21: What’s your least favorite movie? - I dunno. I guess Howard the Duck? 22: Where would you bury hidden treasure if you had some? - If I had some, I wouldn't post online where I'd hide it... 23: If you’re a girl, bra size? If you’re a guy, pants size? - Uh, why is this a question? Next please. 24: What do you dip a chicken nugget in? - If anything, it's just ketchup. 25: What is your favorite food? Spaghetti. But tacos are a close second. 26: What movies could you watch over and over and still love? - The ones that come to mind right away are: The Breakfast Club, Nightmare Before Christmas, Miss Congeniality, Legally Blonde, and pretty much any musical and any Disney movie, 27: Last person you kissed/kissed you? - My mom. 28: Were you ever a Boy/Girl Scout? - Girl Scout. Didn't do anything though. 29: Would you ever strip or pose nude in a magazine? - Again, why does this need to be a question?! But no. 30: When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper? - I dunno, a couple years ago? I wrote a card to my fiancé. 31: Can you change the oil on a car? - No, but I could probably learn if push came to shove. 32: Ever gotten a speeding ticket? - Nope. 33: Ever ran out of gas? - No, but I came close a couple times. 34: Favorite kind of sandwich? - Chicken salad, frisco melt, or Philly cheesesteak. 35: Best thing to eat for breakfast? - Either bacon or cereal. 36: What is your usual bedtime? - I wish I had the discipline to sleep before midnight, but it's always 1-2 am. 37: Are you lazy? - EXTREMELY. 38: When you were a kid, what did you dress up as for Halloween? - Usually a witch. As I'm getting older, I usually dress up as my favorite fictional character. Last year, I dressed as Connie from Steven Universe. 39: What is your astrological sign? - Scorpio 40: Are you horny? - Not right now... 41: Do you have any magazine subscriptions? - Nope. I used to though: People, Entertainment Weekly, and Food Network. 42: Which are better, Legos or Lincoln Logs? - Legos? I dunno, I don't really play with either. 43: Are you stubborn? - Sometimes. 44: Who is better…Leno or Letterman? - Um, I've never watched either so I can't say... 45: Ever watch soap operas? - No. But I remember them being on while my friend and I were at her grandparents house. 46: Are you afraid of heights? - A little. 47: Do you sing in the car? - Loud and proud! 48: Do you sing in the shower? - I used to, but then I found out my parents could hear me. 49: Do you dance in the car? - If I'm stopped at a light or in slow traffic, yeah. 50: Ever used a gun? - Water guns, Nerf guns, all the time. An actual gun, no, 51: Last time you got a portrait taken by a photographer? - It was either when I got my drivers license picture retaken when I turned 21, or when I got my passport picture taken. Does that count? 52: Do you think musicals are cheesy? - Some of the older ones, but that's why I love them. 53: Is Christmas stressful? - Sometimes. What's stressful is dealing with all the crowds and sold out everything. 54: Ever eat a pierogi? - Yeah. They'd serve them in my dorm's dining hall about every other week. 55: Favorite type of fruit pie? - Apple. Lemon meringue is a close second though. 56: Occupations you wanted to be when you were a kid? - Embarrassing childhood story time! I wanted to be a model, but I specifically wanted to be a model on game shows that showed off the prizes. 57: Do you believe in ghosts? - Yes. I've had a couple encounters. 58: Ever have a deja-vu feeling? - All the time. 59: Take a vitamin daily? - No. I try to but it never lasts more than a week. 60: Wear slippers? - Yes! I got these cute ones at the Disney store but they're starting to fall apart. 61: Wear a bath robe? - Yes! I don't like towels, and I will pack bath robes with me when I travel. 62: What do you wear to bed? - T-shirt and sweatpants. If it's warm, t-shirt and boxers (yes, I like wearing men's boxers as pajama shorts) 63: First concert? - Peter, Paul, and Mary. 64: Wal-Mart, Target or Kmart? - I shop at Walmart most, just cuz is closest to my house. I like the other two if I'm nearby, which is rare. 65: Nike or Adidas? - I have no preference, but I wear Nike more. 66: Cheetos Or Fritos? - Cheetos. 67: Peanuts or sunflower seeds? - Both are good. I guess right now I have a peanut craving, so I'll say peanuts. 68: Ever hear of the group Tres Bien? - No, but I'll look them up sometime. 69: Ever take dance lessons? - When I was really young, yeah. From about ages 5-10. I had to stop cuz the studio I went to went out of business. We looked for others but they were either really expensive or we just flat out didn't like the people there. 70: Is there a profession you picture your future spouse doing? - A computer engineer. That is his major... 71: Can you curl your tongue? - Yes. 72: Ever won a spelling bee? - Yep, in 8th grade. Didn't get far after that, lol. 73: Have you ever cried because you were so happy? -Yes. All the time. 74: Own any record albums? - No, but my dad does. 75: Own a record player? - Yes. 76: Regularly burn incense? - No. Just candles. 77: Ever been in love? - Yes, and I still am. 78: Who would you like to see in concert? - Pentatonix and Ninja Sex Party. 79: What was the last concert you saw? - Weird Al. It was an awesome concert!!! 80: Hot tea or cold tea? - Both are fine. 81: Tea or coffee? - Again, both are fine. I just drink coffee more. 82: Sugar or snickerdoodles? - Sugar cookies. 83: Can you swim well? - Kinda. I mean, I know how to not drown but I wouldn't join a swim team or something. 84: Can you hold your breath without holding your nose? - Yes. But if we're still talking about swimming, then no. I have to hold my nose underwater. 85: Are you patient? - Most of the time. 86: DJ or band, at a wedding? - Both are good. I'm thinking I might have a band at mine. 87: Ever won a contest? - Spelling bee, see above. Besides that, I've won a hula dancing contest at summer camp. 88: Ever have plastic surgery? - Nope. 89: Which are better, black or green olives? - Black olives. 90: Can you knit or crochet? - No. 91: Best room for a fireplace? - Probably living room/family room. 92: Do you want to get married? - Yes, and I will be next year. 93: If married, how long have you been married? - Not married yet. 94: Who was your HS crush? - I've always had crushes on friends. The 3rd time is the one that actually worked out. See question 92. 95: Do you cry and throw a fit until you get your own way? - No, I usually just pout lol. But I'm used to not getting my way. 96: Do you have kids? - Not yet. 97: Do you want kids? - Someday. I want 2-3. 98: What’s your favorite color? - Pink. 99: Do you miss anyone right now? - My fiancé and my best friends.