#that’s for like a hot dog or a slice of pizza and i got a fast metabolism i need double if not triple that to not be hungry in an hour

[transmechanicus]

Why food so fuckin SPENSIVE

[pikablu410]

Time Off

“Ayo dis Aaron, I can’t come in tonite I’m getting sick. I was wondering if u could come in for me?” 

They knew the text was a blatant lie, but they also knew it could be used to their advantage. 

“Sure, I’ll take your shift. On one condition.” They sent back

“What” 

“I get to feed you. And this applies for any other time I have to cover for you.” “Aight, sure” 

Aaron looked at the message for a few seconds, puzzled by what he had just agreed to. He didn’t have the desire to care. Hopping in his friend’s car, Aaron just figured he’d blow them off. Looking back at his phone, he saw another message from them.

“I’ll be at your place at 5.” 

Groaning internally, Aaron decided to focus on the now and enjoy his time with his friends. 

Arriving back home at 8, Aaron stumbled out of his friend’s car in an intoxicated stupor. Eyes as red as a cherry and laughing like he had just seen a bad comedy, Aaron walked back to his house with two left feet. Seeing their car in the driveway almost took him down from the clouds, but he was determined not to have his day ruined. Opening the door, he immediately noticed bags of food on the kitchen counter and the TV playing in the living room. Walking in to see them on the couch, Aaron went to tell them to get out but found his words missing.

“Oh, you’re back. A bit late, but it’s fine.” Ty said, standing up and going to the kitchen. Aaron followed to reclaim his home, but again lost what he was going to say. Opening the oven, Ty continued, “We’ll start with the pizza.” 

Aaron sat down, realizing he was actually hungry, despite going out with his friends earlier. Opening his mouth, he took a few bites of a slice before finishing off the crust. He continued, eating another slice, then another. They then moved on to hot dogs, then burgers, then-

How much had he eaten? Aaron looked down at his belly to see it sticking out against his hoodie just the slightest bit. That was normal, right? He didn’t have time to think before more food was fed to him.

“What’s wrong? You seem anxious.” Ty asked, not worried enough to stop feeding Aaron.

“Nah dawg, I jus’- Why you gah feed me so much?” Aaron asked in his city-boy accent.

Ty smiled and grabbed their bag. Pulling out a blunt, they handed it to Aaron and said, “Smoke this, it’ll make you feel- actually I’m sure you know what it’ll do given your eyes earlier.”

Feeling compelled by something, Aaron took the blunt in his mouth as Ty lit it. Taking a puff, Aaron was surprised that Ty didn’t stop with the food. He took a cookie in his mouth and another breath of the blunt after swallowing. For some reason, it worked well, and it made Aaron feel like no other joint he had smoked before. It was like his perception of reality was changing, letting him realize everything was going to be just fine. 

As Aaron zoned out, he hadn’t realized he had eaten everything they had brought. “Good job. I’m betting I’ll see you again.” Ty said as they grabbed their bag and left Aaron sitting in front of the kitchen island. Hiccuping and then letting out a slight burp, Aaron smoked the last bit of the blunt before tossing it away, not bothering to check if it landed in the trash can. He then slowly got up, finding it hard to adjust to walking after so long. Landing on the couch, Aaron fell asleep in front of the TV playing whatever mindless show was on.

This same routine continued the next time Aaron called out. Ty would come over, let Aaron smoke their weed and feed him until there was no food. Aaron never acknowledged where all the food came from, or how he was able to eat it all with his lithe body. Well, what Aaron thought was his lithe body. After the first time he called out, Aaron just got a little bloat, but the next time his belly stayed. The time after that, his ass swelled out and his belly started to hang over the waistband of his jeans.

At this point, Aaron didn’t care if they were the one to take his shift. No one else would; they were too tired of covering for him when he called out an hour before he was due in. Ty was the only one who took Aaron’s shifts, and Aaron was too high to realize what calling out so much was doing to him.

He became quite the glutton after eating so much so frequently. Ty opted to switch from a joint to brownies because of how much Aaron ate. They were able to get him higher from them as well. Aaron didn’t even bother to get up from the couch when Ty came over either, sitting in front of the TV as he mindlessly ate whatever he was fed.

The fifth time Aaron called out, he was sitting on the couch with a shirt that didn’t cover his belly and pants that were tight around his thighs. Eating whatever was in front of his mouth, he didn’t notice how they tried to kiss him on the lips.

“Ay bro I ain’t gay.” Aaron said in shock, backing up from their face. 

Ty just smirked, “It’s fine. Ever heard of experimenting?” 

Feeding Aaron a second brownie, they noticed how he calmed down. Approaching him once more, they planted their lips on his. To their amusement, Aaron seemed to be enjoying it. They couldn’t last long, given Aaron’s breath, which reek of weed, but it was long enough to leave Aaron satisfied. “Damn, that was kinda nice.” Aaron said through his nauseatingly influenced state. They just continued to feed the boy as if nothing had happened.

The next day, Aaron groggily woke up from the sunlight peering into his room. He scratched his bare belly, causing it to jiggle slightly. Putting on his glasses, he realized it was quite late into the day. Slowly getting up in just his boxers, Aaron decided to go to the bathroom to wake himself up by splashing some water in his face. It wasn’t enough to get him to notice the belly he sported, or how his ass obtusely stood out from his rear. Checking his phone after washing his hands, he realized they had left a message for him after last night.

“Glad you’re feeling more comfortable. I’ll be over later today after covering your shift.” 

“Thx bae <3” Aaron had text back. 

Where had that come from? He couldn’t be bothered to fix it, opting to just throw on some clothes that were now a size too small. Slowly walking down the stairs, this thicker thighs rubbing together with each step. He wasn’t even sure why he called out today; his friends hadn’t texted him and he had no other plans. Aaron just decided to chill out until they arrived, grabbing some Pop Tarts and chips to binge on before then.

When they arrived, they were surprised by the mess surrounding Aaron, “You got to work before I even got here.” Aaron just smiled and laughed, eyeing the bags of food they had brought with them. 

Before anything else, they pulled out a bag of pink dust and poured it out onto the table in front of the couch. Neatly organizing the dust into a line with a razor blade, they motioned for Aaron to take a line.

“The fuck is this?” He asked, surprised he had never seen this before.

“It makes you feel good. Now take a hit; it’s no worse for you than whatever else you’ve put in your body.” They persuaded him.

Aaron couldn’t deny their charm and decided to snort it up. It did make him feel good, and it made Ty look good too. Aaron happily accepted another kiss on the mouth before they started to feed him cookies. They quickly moved on to fries, but Aaron wasn’t keeping track of how much he ate or was being fed. He couldn’t take his eyes off Ty. When Ty started to rub his belly, Aaron couldn’t help but moan. Aaron felt his dick grow hard too. It felt too good to resist.

He was fed the entire night and two other nights that week. Every time, they brought the pink stuff. It made Aaron feel good so he didn’t refuse their offer for more. He was too high to realize how much he was being fed. Too high to realize he had torn a pair of pants that were loose on him a few weeks prior. Too high to realize that none of his shirts fit. Too high to realize he had tits that rested on his gut now. 

He was conscious enough to notice that the pink dust was having an effect on him.

“Do you not want any more of it?” They asked.

“Nah, it still makes me feel good. It’s just-” He was interrupted by food being shoved in his mouth, “The more I use it, the fruitier I get.”

They laughed, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I dunno. I bought some booty shorts and a crop top a week ago, ‘cause I wanted to. And I wanna paint my nails some time. And I’ve been looking at guys a lot more…” Aaron trailed off.

“Well, that all seems pretty normal to me. You are bi, aren’t you?” They suggested as he nodded, a mouth full of greasy beef and cheese. “Then what’s the harm? It makes you feel good, right?” 

“Yeah, I guess.” Aaron said, not putting much thought into it as they poured a line on his belly. 

He didn’t acknowledge how he was able to do a line of the stuff on his gut, which was big enough to allow them to pour a significant amount on him. Nor did he notice how his city accent was fading, his voice losing a defining trait. He was too high to be conscious about his decisions, anyways.

Aaron did actually go to work the next day, just so he wouldn’t get fired. He lied to himself and said it was so Ty couldn’t take more of his shifts and feed him more. A pair of tight jeans showed off his bubble butt, while a  tight, white t-shirt underneath his black work vest left little to imagine of Aaron’s growing gut. His tits and rolls stuck to it from how sweaty he was. It wasn’t like he had many publicly decent options, anyways. 

He waddled from out of the back, huffing and puffing with sweat dripping down his double chin as he carried boxes out to the clothes aisle. They had moved him from putting out food after seeing his weight. Aaron found it difficult to do anything without losing his breath, even if it was just setting out jeans or shirts. His eyes drifted from the clothes to the men who perused the clothes, eyeing their tight asses, firm abs and even their slightly bulging bellies.

Suddenly, he felt a grip on his ass that quickly turned him around, “Hey, haven’t seen you here in a bit.” They said, devilish smile on their face.

Aaron smiled and laughed as best he could out of breath. “Sorry, it’s difficult putting stuff out with-”

“All these attractive guys?” They interrupted his thought.

“Right! Tell me about it!” Aaron blurted out, covering his mouth as if he didn’t recognize his own voice.

“Well I’m glad you’re being yourself,” They laughed, “They want you up front on the register, I’ll finish here.”

Aaron nodded as he waddled to the front of the store. The air conditioning felt good through his tight shirt. Sweat stains could be seen under his moobs, near his armpits and by his love handles. Aaron didn’t care, sweat dripping between his numerous rolls. He just wanted to get out of here and eat. 

Signing on to one of the registers, Aaron surprised himself by enthusiastically asking for the next customer. It was hard to focus on scanning all the items with such cute guys standing right in front of him. He wondered if any of them were checking him out. Going much slower than normal, Aaron started to check out customers. He found it difficult, a fog over his mind as he focused more on his sweaty body and looking at men in tight shirts rather than the register in front of him.

“Everything all right up here?” Ty asked, noticing a line forming at Aaron’s register.

“Y-yeah.” Aaron stuttered out, surprised by Ty’s sudden appearance. 

“Here, let me help you out.” They said, walking behind Aaron and grabbing ahold of his left ass cheek as they explained what to do on the register. Aaron knew what to do, but let them take over anyways. He disguised a soft moan as a verbal realization of what he did wrong. The woman in front of them didn’t seem suspicious, the counter too high for her to see anything going on. Not letting go of Aaron’s ass, they took the next customer as Aaron bagged the woman’s food. He found it much easier to just bag whatever was handed to him, and it let him look at hot customers as well.

By the time they next met in private, Aaron had completely given up on resisting whatever change was happening to him. He had on a hot pink shirt that was only covering just above his belly button. The shorts he had bought earlier barely covered any of his ass; they appreciated how his thick thighs were completely out, though. Aaron had painted his nails black and spent most of his free time getting high while watching trashy reality TV. That was where they found him when they came over.

Aaron shouted some nonsensical hipster slang at the TV as he shoved a fistful of chocolates in his mouth. His rough, gangster, city-boy accent was gone, replaced with a feminine lisp. They decided he needed to tone down a little.

 “Oh, ‘sup babe.” Aaron said, finally noticing them as they set bags of food down in front of him.

“You ready to eat?” They asked with a smile that knew the answer.

“Hell yeah!” Aaron responded, readying himself for another line of the pink dust.

Instead, they brought out a big, dark green pill.

“What’s that?” Aaron dumbly asked.

“Something else that’ll make you feel good.” They said as they gently inserted it into his mouth, “Just rest it under your tongue and it’ll start working.”

Obeying their instructions, Aaron slipped the pill under his tongue and waited for them to feed him. Opening his mouth for a slice of pizza, Aaron found it difficult to chew with the pill in his mouth at first. He eventually got used to it and felt the pill start to work its magic. Aaron felt like he was watching his perspective through someone else. Waves of pleasure rippled through his brain as he felt himself eat more. As he felt the pill finally dissolve into his body, Aaron let out a belch. He laughed like it was a skit from a movie, and continued to laugh when he let out more gas.

When they turned his head for a kiss, Aaron felt powerless to stop them. Not like he wanted to, his dick growing hard at their showcase of passion. They fed him more, still moaning from the kiss.

“Daddy…” Aaron moaned out, surprising himself. He knew he was gay, but this was a new level for him. They just smirked seeing his transformation.

As they fed him more, they asked, “What’s wrong baby?” 

Belching between moans, Aaron finally let out a weak, “More…need…more…”

“Oh, I think I know what you need.” They giggled, feeding him another slice before starting to rub his expansive belly with the other hand.

Letting out another belch before a louder moan, Aaron could barely concentrate with all the pleasure flowing through his body. Even though he felt like he wasn’t in his body, he could still experience all the sensations he would’ve felt normally. That was how Aaron noticed they were slowly moving their hand under his gut. His slow and foggy brain didn’t know what they were doing until they found their mark, firmly grasping ahold of Aaron’s shaft. Moans grew louder and more passionate, only to be stopped by more food being shoved in Aaron’s mouth. He no longer resisted, pleasure flowing through him like blood. Apparently Aaron was quite sensitive, releasing his load quickly before going back to being fed more. It happened again shortly after, and they noticed the food seemed to affect Aaron’s rate of release. Aftering coming for the third time, Aaron let out one more belch before passing out. They smiled and admired his body, finding it difficult to compare to his lean, muscular form from a few weeks back.

Aaron found that this new pill had a much more significant effect on him during his hangover than the weed or dust had. When he woke up after his buffet binge Aaron felt bloated and sticky. He was covered in sweat and had to ask Ty to help him stand up from the couch. For some reason, he found gas flowed through him much more easily. It was difficult not to let out a fart when he stood up, or a burp whenever he moved too much. When Aaron sat down on his bed, he realized he was still hungry.

“Baby, I’m still…URRRRRRP…” Aaron barely got out before his belch.

Ty smiled and said, “Don’t worry, we’ll get you something to eat.”

After that day, Aaron barely left his bed, or moved at all really. Ty spent nearly every minute away from work with him; giving him more food, getting him off, feeding him more pills, or whatever else he wanted to do with the fatty. Aaron frequently begged them to fuck him, but they always replied with “you’re not ready yet,” or “soon, darling.” He was oblivious to how much the pills were influencing his libido. Or how his body was still undergoing new changes. Aaron’s once smooth body became fuzzier by the day, his chest and belly growing more hair with each passing pill. His already existent thin mustache grew thicker, and some hair began to grow on the edge of his chin. Aaron asked them to shave him once, but after they refused he quickly forgot about the issue. Eating and taking more of whatever they gave him gave Aaron too much pleasure to think about much else. 

A week of this royal treatment saw the most significant changes Aaron had experienced in the past month. The room reeked of gas, body odor and weed. He took up more than half of the bed with his lard-filled thighs. Aaron’s belly sank between them, extending far in front of him and containing numerous rolls of blubber. He liked to grope them with his chubby hands, finding it hard to grab anything else in his range unless it was on or near his belly. Aaron’s moobs, now certifiably man tits, sat on his belly and were starting to droop to his sides; part of the reason he had a hard time moving his arms and hands around. They had joked they should put a bra on him, a suggestion Aaron was all too eager to try out despite their demeaning tone. It had gotten to the point where the pills had given Aaron enough body hair to make him look less like an ex-twink and more like an ex-jock. Dark fur covered his belly and moobs, even extending as far as his thighs and arms. Even Aarons’ face wasn’t spared, his peach fuzz mustache now looking like one fresh out of college and his chin hair looking more like a goatee along with it. The plumpness of his face kept him looking a little cherubic, his triple chin hiding just how much his chin hair had grown. However, the fur was starting to spread under Aaron’s neck and to his multiple chins, only furthering his slobby look. 

“How’s my big piggy doing today?” They asked, admiring Aaron’s form as he woke up from an after-meal nap. 

Slowly opening his eyes, Aaron let out a fart as his brain struggled to assess his situation. Looking up at them, Aaron smiled as Ty put on his glasses. They framed his chubby face so well, Ty thought as they sat down next to him with a cart full of food.

“Hun…gry…” Aaron belched out.

Ty smiled at their boyfriend before turning to the cart and grabbing a slice of cake. Aaron eagerly opened his mouth as they fed him, carelessly eating the dessert before quickly opening his mouth for another. Icing dirtied his facial hair and crumbs became entangled on his chest. He didn’t seem to care, or notice for that matter, happily licking the icing around his lips after he finished the cake in mere minutes. They sat on his thigh before feeding him cheeseburgers as if he hadn’t just eaten a cake fit for a wedding. 

“You’re going to get so big and fat piggy. You’ll be the biggest boyfriend known to man.” They said while stuffing a cheeseburger into Aaron’s face, causing bits of yellow to splatter on his belly and chest.

Aaron moaned at the teasing, but was a bit concerned by how eager his boyfriend was. As another burger was fed to him, he started to get worried about what they wanted to do to him. After finishing all the burgers, he finally decided to speak up.

“Baby, don’t you think I’m getting…” Aaron interrupted himself with a longer fart, “Ooooh…”

“What’s the matter big boy?” They asked, knowing they wouldn’t get an answer.

Aaron looked at them to say something, only to belch and laugh right afterwards like an elementary school child. They just smiled and shoved more food into his mouth, the pig too blinded by indulgent pleasure to resist them. 

After all the food was gone, Aaron sat back in his engorged form. Normally he would beg for them to get him off or feed him more, but they would always say no. This time, however, Aaron felt too zoned out to say anything. All the food and teasing was still clouding his mind with based desires. He was further surprised when Ty came back in with a cart full of desserts.

“Fuck…you’re gonna make me,” Aaron paused for a loud burp, “a fuckin’...whale!”

They smirked as they approached him with the cart. Instead of feeding him like last time, they shoved him with more forced than he expected. Like a turtle on its back, Aaron was stuck with his belly down and ass out, too big and too lazy to try sitting down again. They started to undress, Aaron looking over and jiggling his massive body at the sight, too huge to do anything else. 

“Happy that you’re finally gonna get off, you horny fuck?” They asked, slapping his left ass cheek.

Aaron moaned at the feeling of his entire body jiggling from just his ass being touched. He saw them pull out a syringe before finally sitting on the bed. Thinking it would just be something that made him happier, Aaron didn’t bother to question what it was, like before.

“I never expected you to become so eager so quickly. You really pigged out fast.” They said, pushing the needle into the blubber that made up his upper arm. “Ah well, I suppose it doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme. You’re mine now.”

Aaron felt the effects of the syringe immediately. He moaned in pleasure, feeling the juice course through him. His dick grew harder, rubbing against the accumulated fat that had grown around his crotch. They smirked and stood behind him, readying themselves to mount their pig. A high pitch moan rose out of Aaron, one that even surprised himself. He could’ve never imagined the pleasure that came from having his fat ass be pounded so.

Now that they were pushing in and out of him, Aaron felt his body constantly jiggle and move. Gas erupted from his mouth constantly, belches being mixed with moans. His ass would’ve been in a similar position, had it not been filled. Aaron felt them lean down against his body, their hands fondling his rolls of blubber. They groped his moobs and started to tease him once more.

“I’m surprised milk hasn’t started to come out of these. How much more fat do I need to put on you before I can?” They boasted.

Aaron just moaned as their fingers ran over his wider nipples. He belched before cumming, white goo dripping onto the bed.

“Oh, we’re not done yet. No, not even close.” They said, noticing Aaron’s release. 

They then grabbed a handful of cake and shoved it in Aaron’s mouth. His moans were muffled beneath the fluffy cake, quieting down as he chewed and gorged himself. Aaron could feel his body spread out on the bed as he ate more, but felt powerless to stop eating.

“That’s right piggy, keep eating.” They moaned, shoving more in his mouth as they fucked him further. Between the mouthfuls, Aaron tried to speak.

“D-daddy…” He moaned.

“What is it, my darling?” They asked.

“More…” Aaron nearly belched out, “Piggy…want…more…”

Aaron trailed off with a belch before being fed more. They laughed as the grew fatter and more piggish. The more he ate the more he covered the bed. The more gas he let out. The more hair covered his expansive belly. The more his brain shut off and focused on two things: food and pleasure.

“Do you remember how I set you up to this? How you walked into this trap so blindly to indulge yourself more?” They asked aloud

No response but more moaning.

“Of course you don’t! You’re a big fat slob now! You can barely remember what you just ate.” They went on, chuckling to themselves, “I remember when you had abs, a chiseled jaw, wide arms with muscle. You used to go to the gym after every shift for god’s sake!” 

Aaron’s body kept jiggling on the bed, like waves in the ocean. He had gone from take up just a quarter to nearly the entire bed.

“Now you’re my fat pig, barely able to resist what I give you. But you wanted this. You wanted to indulge yourself in pleasure. So I hope you’re happy Aaron, because I know I am!” 

Finally, they released themselves into Aaron’s wide cheeks, the bed and Aaron shaking with intense pleasure. Aaron let out his loudest moan yet, belching and farting as they pulled out of him. The bed finally gave loose to Aaron’s body, sending him down with a loud slam that emphasized his form and how sweaty he had gotten. They safely landed between Aaron’s ass.

The piggish man could barely keep his eyes open before falling victim to his tired body.

And when he woke, he felt himself back on his ass. They were laying on his belly with a cart full of food and drugs next to him.

“Is piggy hungry?” They asked.

He didn’t even have to give an answer

[editor-who]

Gareth X Reader

(Dustin's older sibling, Gareth has a crush on you, Fluff.)

You were running around your house trying to get ready.

*BEEP BEEP*

Your eyes widened as you start to swear.

"I'm going to be late"

You shout as you scramble to get everything you need.

You ran out of the house as you passed your brother.

"No time to chat"

You loudly said as you ran passed him.

He turned back to see you grab your bike. His hat nearly falling off as he did so.

You jumped on your bike and started to ride down the road.

It was a peaceful day and not many people were about.

The sun shone down on you. Illuminating your features.

You felt the wind in your hair as you cycled down the road.

You started to hear some loud music coming from someone's garage nearby.

Must be that band from your high school, Corroded Coffin was it?

You turned your head slightly just in time to see the fluffy haired drummer look up at you.

His breath got caught in his throat and he missed his beat. Mucking up the tempo for the band. They all stopped and Eddie (the lead guitarist) had a word with him, getting them to restart the song again.

You cycled through town and stopped right in front of the record store.

You ran in and apologised to your manager for being late.

It was a long evening, restocking shelves, helping customers, sorting out the tills, making sure everything was where it was supposed to be.

You were just restacking the rock band section when the band you saw earlier walked in.

You notice them all looking around in confusion, clearly trying to find something.

"Excuse me, but can I help you with anything?"

You say in a very professional manner.

They all look up at you, finally happy to have someone help them.

"I was wondering where the rock / metal section was?" Eddie asks in a polite tone as he turns to Gareth and let's a little smile out.

"It's over here"

You say while pointing to the stacks of records nearby.

"Is there anything specific you're looking for?"

Eddie looks at Gareth, giving him a little nudge.

"Ummm, what bands would you recommend?"

He asks looking you in the eyes. A blush forming on his cheeks.

"Well I'd recommend (Your favourite bands) but I am slightly biased as they are my favourites"

Your smile becomes extremely infections as you talk about your favourite bands.

Gareth is in awe of your music taste and how you get when you get excited or passionate about something.

After awhile they buy a few records and leave.

------------------Time Skip------------------------

You'd had a long night at work so you decided it would be best to skip the morning half of school.

As you do so you realise Dustin didn't have any lunch.

So after a few hours of food shopping you rush back to school during the lunch break.

You walk towards your brother's table in the canteen, hands full of bags of food.

"I bring a mighty feast"

You exclaim as you lob the bags on the table in front of Dustin.

Everyone on the table stops what they are doing to look at you.

"You forgot your lunch"

You lightly say to your brother as you start to pull the food out of the bags.

"I got: crisps, bagels, twinkies, pizza slices, cookies, chicken wings, hot dogs, pasta and some homemade apple pie"

"Make sure to share with your friends"

You just finished setting the food out.

"Who's that for?" Gareth asks, looking at the 5 sets of dice you bought.

"Oh, they're for me"

You quickly exclaim as you stretch over the table, to grab them.

You can't quiet reach so he hands them to you.

Your fingers linger for a second before you both turn away and blush.

"Why do you need that many dice?" Mike pointed out.

"Because..." You start before you're cut off.

"Would you like to sub in for Lucas tonight?"

Gareth blurts out, hoping you'll say yes.

They all turn to you for your answer.

"Yes, gladly"

You excitedly cry out.

---------------------------------------------------------

You'd just finished your first D&D game and it was your attack that finally took the creature down.

Everyone started to cheer excitedly as you all got up.

People were high-fiving each other, giving one another big pats on the back.

You felt a tap on your back and turn around.

Gareth is beaming at you, with so much admiration in his eyes.

"Well done!!!!!"

He excitedly screams.

He goes in for a hug and it rapidly turns into a massive bear hug.

He then picks you up and spins you round before putting you back down again.

You all leave and go back to his house to celebrate.

:)

[theyluvsierra]

PART 5 JJ MAYBANK X Y/N

Warings:eating disorder, depression, hospitalization,SH,suic!de,drugs

Kie:I ordered pizza

Everyone: yum

*everyone hut y/n grabs a slice*

Kie:Y/n do u want some

Y/n:oh no thanks I ate a lot earlier and I'm taking care of the baby

Sarah:kie can me and u go to the store later I wanna get more pickles and ice cream

Y/n:pregnancy cravings hitting hard I assume

Sarah:yep

John b:I had to get this girl more ice cream and pickles from Wal-Mart at 2:30 am

Jj:u only do it cause u love her

A few weeks pass and the pogues would always order and cook food y/n would always say she is taking care of the baby and is full bc she ate already they also barely see y/n

Jb:I ordered Chinese

Kie:I'm not that hungry so im just gonna take a egg roll and some white rice

Pope:I'll take some chicken a egg roll,soup,dumplings, and Cleo I hot ur plate and soda for us

Cleo:thank u baby I love u

Kie:jb have u seen our sister (y/n)

Jb:no I only saw her once today

Jj:weird

Pope:I haven't seen her much in these past few weeks

Cleo:no one knows

Cleo:me either

Sarah:me either

Waves (the dog):*barks*

They hear a thud

Waves: *barks* signaling them

Everyone puts their plates down

Waves:*walks to y/n's room*

Jb:opens the door

Everyone sees coral (y/n and jjs daughter in the baby carrier y/n passed out)

Pope:how did this happen

Sarah:walks in sees there is a lighter next to y/n and burn marks on her arms and legs

Kie:jb I found a note

Jb:what's it say

Kie:if u find this note I probably have passed out from not eating anything and the baby is probably down with me and fainted and has a red spot on her cheek and jj I loved u so much so did coral and kid u were my sister I loved going to tan on the beach and jb I had so much fun surfing with u pope I had fun with u when we climbed the mountain on the beach and Cleo and me jumped off -love y/n

Jj:*crying* wait what about coral

Pope:*sniffles* I think she's gone too

Jb:*cries* probably

Sarah:*sniffling* call the fcking hospital

Cleo:*sniffling* dont be dumb pope hurry up call

Pope:calls

The operator: hi this is 911 what's ur emergency

Pope explains

30 mins late jj gets in the ambulance with y/n and the baby

Everyone Else drives in the Twinkie

At the hospital

Jj:so coral and y/n are in one big room with a bed and an incubator when can all stay the night

Jb:everyone grab ur things they follow jj

Jj:*sniffling* here's coral theres 3 pull out couches and 3 three recliners

Jb:Sarah can have a couch so can Cleo and kie

Jj:me,jb,and pope can have the recliners

Jj:looks at coral in her incubator with her tubes and all the.machines keeping her alive along with y/n in the bed next to her

Pope:coral is one strong baby she's not that hurt just fainted and has some bruises

Jb:y/n is much worse tho

Kie:I got us some food

Pope:I just want the small bag of chips and water *turns his phone*

Kie:I just got a salad and water for me and jb

Jj:and I got a pb and j with some chips and soda

Cleo:I just got a salad too

Sarah:I got a slice of pizza

Jj:hang on I need to refill corals feeding tube

Pope:not to make this depressing but y/n has what's called an eating disorder its where u eat too little or too much and coral has what's called fetal drug disorder,austim,cprs and probably more y/n has fetal drug disorder, borderline personality disorder and bipolar,And probably more

Jb:where would she get drugs.....

Sarah:that two faced lying backstabber RAFE

Sarah:Cleo come on lets go

Jb:where are u going

Sarah:to refer where's the gun btw jj

Jj:here gives her the gun

30 mins later they get back

Sarah and cleo:the problem has been dealt with

The boys: nvm we dont wanna know how

Sarah:rafe said to go to kie's house we found a SH/suic!de note

Cleo:we found a love letter to jj I think u should read it

Jj:reads it

Sarah:also y/n left u her favorite surf board if she is gone

Follow or like for part 6

[jellimac-sims-stories]

The Reluctant Painter

Jellimac

Summary | You find a bag of money and a little black book with a scythe on it. What would you do?

I don’t particularly like my job but at least I have one. My brother is super protective and made me move to the desert across the street from him. I can’t blame him. It’s not like I was doing much with my life bumming around with my friends getting high. His only condition was that I get a job so I took the first job that came my way. The Artist Agency calls my position a “Hungry Artist” which is a fancy way of saying this is a shit job.

Even with this job and the freeish housing things aren’t exactly going my way. Yeah, I'm grateful to have a steady income, to live in the trailer my brother owns, and for the money that he and his wife send me to help keep up with bills. Things keep seeming to go downhill day after day lately. My smoking hot girlfriend broke up with me. Then my dog Shep got sick. And then when my best friend Eden took me out to try to cheer me up I ended up trying to makeout with her. I got a black eye for it. She hasn’t spoken to me since. Things really couldn’t be worse for me right now.

Thankfully the Artist Agency called the other day to hire me to finish up the new mural at the gym in Uptown. I can’t say that I am the best artist but work is work and it will help take my mind off of things for a little while. It's just painting anyway. I took the day job begrudgingly and made my way to head to Uptown. It takes two buses and one train to get to Uptown from Bedrock Strait where I live. That costs me $23 just to get to the job site and back. The agency only has me scheduled for four hours to finalize the mural. I only make $23 an hour. I’m about to make less than $100 for four hours of work. This job fucking sucks.

Unfortunately, the job site was downstairs in the men's locker room. This part of Uptown is elevated over the rest of the city. Think of the sort of place where you’d say ‘I can see my house from here’. That's the type of view I'm talking about. Which I almost can say but my house is just too far off to make out. From up here, you can see from the mountains and out to sea. I’m landlocked in a desert so I like coming here when I can. A creek runs behind my trailer but this is so much nicer. I had been hoping that maybe at least I’d have a good view all day even if it was just some housewives doing yoga badly. Realizing that I had gotten the shit end of the stick I plugged in my earbuds and got to work. 

After a few hours, one guy with bad diarrhea (probably one too many protein shakes) and several smelly dudes later the job was done. It was pretty nice; an optical illusion of the wall broken down showing the earth and the moon from above. Even though I can’t afford the membership at this gym you can see that this mural pulls the space together nicely (no pun intended). I hadn’t taken a break so I decided to spend the last 30 minutes of my time having lunch. I grabbed what I thought was all of my bags of paint supplies (that I would now have to lug back with me since the job was done) and headed outside. 

Finding a bench outside, I chowed down on leftover pizza that my SIL sent to my place last night. I noticed a bag with the painting supplies that didn’t look familiar. It was plain black with a thick gray zipper and felt kind of expensive in my hand. I opened it up expecting that maybe I had picked up someone's gym bag by mistake. To my surprise, it was full of cash! Thick bundled stacks of cash with $1000 markers on the bands. Holy shit! It looked like there was a couple of grand in this bag alone. I’ve never seen this much money ever in my life! I don't even have this much money.

Quickly but trying not to look suspicious, I zipped the bag back up, grabbed all the other bags, and threw what was left of the pizza slice to the pigeons that were hungrily watching me eat. I hurried down to the subway level to catch a train back to Oasis Springs. This time the cost of the tickets and bus fare didn't matter to me that much considering I had a few thousand bucks in one of my bags I was lugging back home. 

I don't usually pay any mind to how long it takes to get around on public transportation. It's almost a full half-hour to reach the outskirts of Oasis Springs to even get anywhere else. That and the fact that I am a habitually late person (something my ex used to complain about) but this time I was buzzing in my seat with anticipation. When the bus finally got to the corner of my street I practically ran all the way home. I headed straight for my shed where I usually keep all of my painting supplies. My dog followed me in as he's keen to do when I arrive home. He's expecting that we will go for a run or a swim in the river like we tend to do every evening but not today. 

After I stowed the supplies away I unzipped the mysterious bag and dumped everything on the ground. Inspecting everything that tumbled out of the bag, I can make out a mix of both new and used stacks of bills all with $1000 marked bands on them. Stacks of $20’s, $100's, and $10's all mixed together. I quickly counted everything out and totaled it up. There was $20,000 in that bag! I've only got like $2,700 to my name and that's only because my brother gave me $1,500 last Christmas. Shit, this is a lot of money.

While I gaped over my luck at finding this bag o’cash I noticed a notebook where I had originally dumped everything out. It's a regular hardcover black notebook except for the scythe debossed on the cover. Opening it, I flipped through the pages. Most are oddly blank until I get to almost the end. In very neat handwriting there are what looks like the details of a contract. It was a few pages long and not written in English. It could possibly be Latin or some other dead language but I could only make out the few words in English; Jack-of-all-Trades, billionaire, beach house, global superstar, and the name Charles Andrei signed at the end. That name sounded familiar, something to do with my ex but I couldn’t put my finger on it. (He's probably some guy she was sleeping with for money so I stopped thinking about it.) There is another signature next to it that I couldn't decipher. The letters kept playing tricks on my eyes. The first time I looked at it I thought it said Hel. The next time I read Ankou, then Thanatos, and finally Magere Hein.  That's not possible , I thought and closed the book. 

Suddenly it was very cold in the shed. The window panes started to frost up and I could see my breath before me. The sun had been setting when I got home but it doesn't get this cold in the desert ever. Shep started barking and growling at something behind me. I hadn't heard the door to the shed open but I had a feeling that I wasn't alone....

Are you scared yet? Read the set on my AO3

[alarawriting]

52 Project #51: Dex

This story is highly autobiographical in a way that's actually kind of painful and embarrassing, and you'll all know why after you read it. And you'll also know why it has taken me two and a half years to write one year's worth of stories and I'm still not done.

BTW I hope like fuck none of the Reddit handles in here are real, but I didn't have a chance to check them all.

***

Jason had promised his boss he’d have a debugged version of the code checked in by morning.

He’d been tracking down a bug when he’d gotten sidetracked reading Stack Overflow. Dammit. He’d just lost an hour, and he still had no idea why his code wasn’t working the way it was supposed to, and it was 10 pm. Teresa was expecting a new version to be checked in by 9 am and she was expecting that it would run.

This was a job for more Coca-Cola. Jason got up, went downstairs and got himself a slice of pizza and a cold Coke.

His mom, also burning the late night oil at the kitchen table, hunched over her laptop, said, “How is it going? You think you’ll have what your boss is expecting by tomorrow?”

No. “Yes,” Jason said. “I just need a few more hours to track this down.”

“Well, you’re running out of them. You’d be better off getting a good night’s sleep, then waking up fresh in the morning early enough to work on it then.”

Mom was 57 and had apparently forgotten everything she had ever known about how night owls worked, despite having spent her younger years routinely staying up until 2 am. “Is that what you’re doing?” Jason couldn’t help saying.

“I’ve got a house showing tomorrow, I just have to make sure that I have my talking points memorized.”

“Why? Does the house really suck?”

“It doesn’t really suck. It’s a good house, really. Great bones, a nice big yard. But I’m gonna have to redirect the prospective owner’s attention away from how ugly the carpet is and things like that, because the seller? Whoo-ee. There’s people who have no taste, and there’s people who never fix anything, and there’s people who own dogs, and then there’s my seller, who is all three.” She sighed. “I tried to get them to rip the carpet out and install hardwood flooring before putting the house on the market, but the market is hot right now; I don’t blame them for wanting to charge forward. I just think they’d get more if their house didn’t smell like dog and look like water damage had a horrible transporter accident with the 1970’s.”

“That bad, huh?” He leaned up against the fridge, sipping his Coke. “You wanna go over your spiel with me, Mom? Some late night practice before you go to bed?”

“Yeah, actually, that sounds good.”

So Mom talked enthusiastically, if hoarsely, about the four bedrooms and the two and a half bathrooms and the recently modernized kitchen and how great the neighborhood was, and Jason listened, because he wasn’t contributing nearly as much to the mortgage as his mom was and she was also paying most of the utilities, so her career was important, not to mention what stress did to her heart.

When he got back to his computer it was 11:30 and he’d finished his Coke and pizza. He thought about getting ice cream, but best not to do that until Mom went to bed, if he didn’t want to get sucked into another conversation. Not that conversations with Mom were bad; they were much more entertaining than debugging code, which was the problem.

He opened up his coding window, stared at it for thirty seconds while doing nothing, and then convinced himself that maybe Reddit would have an answer to his question.

It didn’t. It did have answers to how to solve a particularly difficult problem in his current favorite game, a number of people who wanted to know if they were the asshole, some great reviews of movies on streaming that he hadn’t had a chance to watch yet, political rants, and some really entertainingly stupid coding mistakes that people had posted.

It was 12:30 am. Teresa was expecting this at 9 and she was expecting it to work.

His eyes glazed. The act of reviewing the code for the tenth time, looking for the bug he hadn’t yet been able to find despite knowing the general area it had to be in, was almost physically painful. He checked his brackets, again. The error didn’t look like a missing close bracket, but that didn’t mean anything. If he had a dollar for every time the error didn’t look like a missing close bracket but turned out to be one, he’d have maybe twenty dollars, which wasn’t a lot in terms of actual money but was a lot of times for the same stupid thing to happen in his code.

The software was supposed to warn him when there was an unclosed bracket, but half the time, if the code was particularly complex, it didn’t. It just re-interpreted the bracket locations and then his code broke.

One more time. Stepping through. Why the fuck was it stopping there? There was nothing there that could account for the error.

Time to go get ice cream. Maybe some sugar would help him stay awake and focused enough to get this done. Another Coke, possibly, too.

When he sat back down, he had Discord messages, so he needed to check them. And messages on Slack, which he could be checking in the morning, and probably should be, but maybe one of his co-workers had found an answer to his problem. They hadn’t, but Priyal had a different question and that one, he thought he could quickly get an answer to, so he fired up Google, dug in, and got her answer for her, which he sent. She’d have it in the morning. Unlike Teresa, who probably would not have what she was expecting.

It was 2 am. Stupid of him to get sidetracked with Priyal’s problem when he was having such difficulty with his own. He flicked over to Reddit again because this was unbearably boring and if he didn’t give himself a break from it, he’d fall asleep.

But he had to go back to debugging the code. Or to sleep. He could handle Teresa being pissed off in the morning a lot better if he got some sleep.

Third page of the subreddit he was on. Four. Man, he needed to keep up with this stuff, there was so much here he hadn’t read yet.

Fifth page of the subreddit. He really, really needed to get back to work. It was 2:30.

A screenshot of something really stupid from Cicada. Damn, someone actually posted something that stupid? Over to Cicada to see if there was context that explained it. There wasn’t, but there was a lengthy thread of people absolutely shredding the OP. Including someone he followed, and he should probably catch up with that.

No, he should get off Cicada and go back to coding. Or bed. His eyes were burning. Bed was probably a better idea. Give up on finishing the debug, tell Teresa he hadn’t found it yet and would need another day.

That was an interesting news article, though. He had to check that out.

No, he didn’t. He needed to go to bed.

Jason’s mouse clicked the link to the article. His eyes read the page, despite burning with exhaustion. Some frantic voice in his head was yelling, screaming, get up, put the computer down, you need to be awake to deal with Teresa in the morning, it’s late, you’re doing nothing useful, get up.

Back to Reddit.

Stop this. Get up. Go to bed. You need to go to bed.

3:30 am. He could barely keep his eyes open, but they were still riveted to the computer, his butt still glued to his chair.

Get up get up get up and go to bed, go to bed, turn the monitor off, you need to go to sleep so you can deal with Teresa tomorrow, get up, go to bed, go to bed

4 am. Look, there was his Firefox home tab, with articles from Pocket. A few of those looked interesting.

Don’t read them, you need to sleep, you need to sleep

Right, right, he didn’t have time to read them right now. He just needed to open them all so they would be there for him tomorrow. If he didn’t do that, Pocket would refresh and he’d lose all of them.

Wow, did they really find carbon deposits on the moon? He had to check that out.

Stop it, stop it, you have to stop it, you need to sleep, stop it

5 am. There was no way he’d be up at 9 to deal with Teresa.

Email. “Hey, I’ve been up all night bashing my head against this thing and I’ve made progress—” This was a lie. “—but it’s still not running. I’m gonna have to look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow. I’ll be logging in around 11 am.” This was also a lie, it would probably be closer to noon. But since he worked from home, all he needed to do was drag ass out of bed around 10:30 to send everyone a status update, tell them he was diving into the code and probably wouldn’t see incoming notifications until he came up for air, and then dive back into his bed instead.

Set an alarm for 9:30 am. Set an alarm for 10 am. He’d blow through them both, of course, but they’d wake him up enough to actually wake up when the 10:30 alarm went off, and then he’d convince himself to get up and send the status message by promising himself he’d return to bed.

Check out that article about a different way to manage your ADHD?

No. Go to sleep. Off the computer. Sleep.

Right, but obviously, he needed to put on his Spotify for music to fall asleep to, and adjust the volume because he couldn’t let it be too loud or it would wake Mom up, calm and peaceful or not.

Pop over to Reddit one last time.

5:30 am. Sleep!

The panic finally overwhelmed the inertia and he managed to drag himself off his chair, turn the monitor off, and stumble to bed. Now to get some sleep.

Oh, except now, he couldn’t sleep because he was overwhelmed by his anxiety and fear about not getting enough sleep to deal with Teresa even if he slept until noon because she was going to be seriously pissed off with him because this was the third time he’d blown the deadline.

It was another hour before exhaustion finally claimed him, and he knew that because the sun had risen.

***

He’d never set the 10:30 alarm.

He’d never set the 10:30 alarm, he’d blown through 9:30 and 10 just like he’d planned, but he’d never turned on the 10:30 alarm, so it was half past noon and he’d never sent that status message, so everyone would know he overslept way past the point Teresa would be okay with after an all nighter, and there was a meeting at 1 pm and he had to shower and shave because it was going to be a meeting with video so he couldn’t look like he’d just dragged himself out of bed.

Or maybe he could. He sent Teresa a message on Slack. I think I’m sick. My throat’s sore, and I’ve got a migraine. And I don’t have the program working anyway, so there’s really nothing to show anyone. Can we postpone until tomorrow?

The response was almost immediate. You need to figure out how to manage your time better. You’re sick because you stayed up all night.

Yeah, but I was trying to solve the bug.

If you can’t get something fixed by 11 pm, it’s not going to get fixed. You should have gone to bed.

I know, but I wanted to try. I was getting close. This was a lie. I thought I could get it done before morning.

Yes, and instead you made yourself sick and the program still doesn’t work. ☹  I’ll postpone the meeting this time, Jason, but we need results before tomorrow. Sorry that you’re sick but you know as well as I do it’s because you didn’t get any sleep.

Yeah, I know. I’ll pull myself together, have some coffee, and get back to work. I’ll try to have it done before 5. This was a lie. He knew perfectly well he wasn’t going to get it done by 5, not when he was this tired.

Do you want me to have Jorge review it? Maybe he can see something you missed?

No, that would be the worst possible thing, because then Jorge would know that he’d made basically no progress last night. I don’t want to add to his workload, but if I’m running into trouble later today I’ll pass it over to him, see if adding some eyeballs might help.

All right, I’ll let him know.

And now Jason was awake, the imminent terror of Jorge finding out that he had done basically nothing last night flooding him with enough adrenaline that he could focus enough to turn on his monitor and get back to work.

***

He had to stop living like this.

Sooner or later he was going to get caught, and he was going to get fired. He couldn’t stay focused on his work when it was boring, which debugging generally was; he enjoyed the act of creating code, making things happen, but when it wouldn’t work, it was an exercise in frustration and soul-crushing despair. He couldn’t keep up with his own documentation, he missed emails and chat messages because he was obsessed with something else when they came through, and he wasn’t even spending his time doing things that were fun; endlessly surfing Reddit and checking the news and articles wasn’t something he did because it was incredibly fun. It was just more bearable than focusing on work, sometimes.

It wasn’t like there would ever be a programming job where you never needed to debug, or never needed to polish off the last few functions that you’d kept skipping because of how tedious they were. He knew that. He’d gone into the profession knowing that. But when he was younger, his meds had worked better. Or maybe he’d just been better at being able to go without sleep. Or not as acclimated to the panic. It was the panic that got him moving, that made it so he could do the boring jobs. He had to be terrified of the consequences of failure before the fear and anxiety could override the whatever-it-was that kept him sitting in his chair, playing video games or surfing the Internet, rather than doing the boring parts of his job.

It had gotten worse since he started working from home. In the past, he’d had the fear that his boss might come by and see him goofing off. So he’d still goofed off, but carefully, always prepared to jump back into his work at a moment’s notice. Sometimes he’d pushed himself, polished off what was normally three or four days’ work in one afternoon, and then goofed off for the next three days. Because he could. Because when he was on, he was magic. The insights were lightning, his speed was legendary, his accuracy was amazing. When he was on.

He was off most of the time. And more and more often, nowadays.

Medication didn’t work anymore. It just made him jittery and irritable, so he’d stopped taking it. Overdosing on caffeine did the same but somehow felt more palatable, and he’d grown to associate the feeling of being competent with the tastes of coffee and Coke, so he used those instead. Then he couldn’t get to sleep. On the nights when he actually managed to get a satisfying amount of work done, he might have a beer or two to unwind and let himself relax and sleep, but that was impossible to do when it was late and he wasn’t done. Which was most nights, nowadays.

He couldn’t keep living like this. He couldn’t depend on a state of fear to enable him to work. Sooner or later he’d slip up, he’d be caught, and he’d get fired. And then he’d have to admit to his mother that he got fired. That terrified him far more than the thought of having to get another job. Jobs weren’t that hard to come by, but his mother’s disappointment and sorrow was utterly horrible.

Jason had spent his childhood alternately disappointing her and making her proud. She thought he was stable now, that the problems that had plagued his childhood – the inability to do homework, the losing it when he had done it, the dishes he didn’t wash, the laundry he didn’t do, the leaves he didn’t rake – were gone. And it was true, nowadays he could get the laundry done, because he’d figured out how. Pile it up in front of his door, and as soon as it got too irritating to open his bedroom door, he could gather up the laundry in his arms and dump it in the wash. It helped that he’d finally figured out that he didn’t need to sort anything if he washed everything in cold water and never bought anything that was white.

He didn’t know any way to pile up a debugging project in front of a web browser. He’d tried using software that blocked him from doing anything that wasn’t work related, but the trouble was, Reddit was a legitimate source of information on how to fix issues he’d never encountered before, and Stack Overflow and other sites and forums dedicated to development problem solving were enticing time sinks of entertaining information. There was no way to solve this programmatically, because no AI was capable of telling the difference between “this is useful stuff you need to solve this problem right now” and “you’re just reading about all these other problems other people have had so you don’t have to work on your own problem.”

And even if there was…

Jason was one of the best programmers at the company. He was only 29, but he’d been doing this since he was 12. So people came to him with their problems, and he was usually able to solve those. Most problems people had were something he’d encountered so often he could fix them when asleep, which had actually sort of happened a couple of times – he had once or twice found that he’d sent an email at 3 am that he had no memory of sending, when he’d been pulling an all-nighter, that elegantly and correctly solved a co-worker’s problem.

Their problems were easy, and the feedback was immediate and gratifying. People thanked him profusely, told him he was a genius, sometimes gave him homemade cookies or delicious ethnic lunches (this was the thing he missed most about working in the office, but too many of his coworkers were also working from home; he’d gone in once or twice after lockdown was over, but it had never been the same again.) Everyone had nothing but great things to say about Jason’s willingness to help a coworker out and ability to solve their issues. His own problems, not so much. But he got a lot of leeway for being the genius who could fix everyone else’s issue.

When he was stuck, it was rare that anyone else could help him with it. And it was rarer that he was willing to let them. The humiliation of needing help, of what if it was a simple, stupid thing and it destroyed his wunderkind reputation that he’d missed it, made it so he never wanted help, not with the big problems he couldn’t solve himself. If your whole life was based on your skill at swimming, how close did you have to be to drowning before you were willing to call for help?

Jason managed to get the code working a little before 3 pm, after ignoring three messages from Teresa that maybe now it was time to bring Jorge in, and one from Jorge asking if there was anything he could do to help out. He then gratefully handed it over to Jorge. It’s working, but I could use some more thorough testing than I’ve been able to do. (I have done minimal testing because testing is so boring it makes me want to spork my eyeballs out, but I’ve made sure that it runs start to finish in the most basic scenarios and that the more complex functions kick in when given at least one example of data that should make them kick in.) The QA department would beat the crap out of it later, but the programmers didn’t hand over code to them until it at least ran, most of the time. Well, some of the time. Well, at least the one time they tried it.

He needed a nap, badly, but he was too wired to get one, and it wasn’t a good idea. If Jorge did find something in testing, he needed to at least look responsive. So he started reading the article tabs he’d opened last night, when he’d promised himself he’d just open them so they’d be available for him today.

Oh, and there was the article about a new treatment for ADHD. That was timely.

***

“The newest ADHD treatment on the market isn’t a pill, and it isn’t an app. Dex™ is an implant, that promises to revolutionize treatments for the long-forgotten invisible victims of ADHD… the ones who grew up.”

Oh, that was definitely promising. It had long been a source of deep irritation to Jason, and pretty much everyone else he knew with similar issues, that ADHD was treated as a disorder of childhood. Once you were grown up and out of the educational system, you were an adult and you could adult like an adult, because you were an adult! Right? It was a blind spot in the entire system. The go-to medications for kids could have long-term effects that got more and more unpleasant as you got older… such as developing high blood pressure. Or desensitizing to it, as Jason had. (His doctor had claimed that was not possible, but tolerance was a thing for pretty much every other drug, including allergy pills, so Jason thought that was bullshit. He was planning on changing doctors. As soon as he got around to picking a new one.)

But… implant?

“By utilizing dopamine, the natural chemical made by the body that promotes motivation, Dex™ enables adults with ADHD to stay focused on the important things in life. Their work. Their family. Their loved ones.”

Aaand it was off and running into marketing bullshit. Jason scrolled through the article, but it was pretty obviously pay-for-play.

Another article was more promising. “The idea behind Dex sounds frankly somewhat terrifying. A brain implant that uses AI learning algorithms to dose you with chemicals that make you want to do things? It sounds straight out of a science fiction dystopia. But in fact, the science behind Dex is rigorous.

“One of the biggest problems people with ADHD face is that they can’t motivate themselves to do what they know they need to do. This has long led to sufferers of the disorder being told they are ‘lazy’ and ‘unmotivated’, or worse things. But it turns out that this is a genuine medical condition. Science has identified the neurotransmitter in the brain that gives us motivation. It’s called dopamine, and people with ADHD don’t produce enough of it.

“By jolting the brain with a dose of dopamine every time the Dex user is doing something they need to do, it helps them stay focused and on task, even with the boring tasks that most ADHDers are famous for being unable to do. Wash the dishes. Remember to take out the trash. Finish that essay.

“Some have concerns because Dex is manufactured by Ulysses… the newest medical/pharmaceutical company to place its wares on the market. Ulysses’ focus has been on combining artificial intelligence with low-dose, just-in-time medication, such as the anti-anaphylactic implant Destiel or the—”

Wait. Wait. Did this company seriously name a medication Destiel? Who was that for, people who had never been in their teens on the Internet while a certain TV show had been airing?

“—or the virus-fighting Ajaxon, but—”

Too late, Jason couldn’t take a company seriously that named their product something like that. He flipped away to read about a nonprofit who would paint your roof with super-reflective white paint for free, to help fight climate change.

***

Jorge didn’t find any critical bugs, and Jason managed to take a nap after hours, which was good, because anxiety about the meeting that had been postponed started to creep in around 10 pm, and despite the fact that he knew he needed to be well-rested for the meeting, which had been moved to 1 tomorrow, he had to get online and play a video game to relax.

It was 3 am before the need to go to the bathroom forced him to get off the computer. He gratefully accepted the out his bladder had given him, and as soon as he was out, he went straight to bed. The light from the monitor was irritating, but if he got up and went over to the computer to turn off the monitor, he might succumb to the temptation of just checking one thing, and then who knew when he’d get to bed? It would go to sleep eventually, and in the meantime, he could use a sleep mask.

He hadn’t forgotten the alarms, this time. 9:30 am was probably too early to wake up when he’d hit bed at 3 am, but after yesterday, he knew he had to be online and responsive from early on to make up for his fuckup. Didn’t mean he had to actually work. As three cups of coffee made their way down his throat, he browsed online comics, read email, skimmed articles, answered Slack messages, pretended to be contributing to the discussion about the strategy for the meeting, and finally ended up at r/AMA, because when he googled Dex, he found that one of the people who’d developed it had done an AMA on it.

“I’m one of the lead scientists on the development of the new ADHD treatment, Dex. AMA”

He read over her initial post. Her name was Suzanne Burke and she worked for Ulysses, which was a subsidiary of the online retail-and-cloud-computing giant Jupiter.com. This was troubling. Jupiter was known for its forays into AI, having gotten its start with neural networks that recommended books to people, and was now well known for its near-ubiquitous AI household assistant, Ray-Ray. Mom had gotten one of those for Christmas last year, but Jason hadn’t let her hook it up. His specialty wasn’t cloud security, but he’d been working in IT long enough that he had no trust whatsoever in an appliance made by a giant corporation that could turn your furnace off and on and was probably sending all your data back to the mothership. On the other hand, he was guessing that Ulysses had been bought out by Jupiter, because naming a medical device after a fan fantasy of a gay relationship between a monster hunter and an angel from a TV show that had ended a few years ago did not seem like the kind of stupid mistake Jupiter would make.

[u/ineedcheese: How does it work?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Diving in the deep end I see! OK, for any of this to make sense, I have to give you guys a simplified run-down of how ADHD itself works, because it isn’t “ooh! Shiny!” It’s a serious medical condition.

[Firstly, ADHD is described as Attention Deficit Disorder because from the outside looking in, that’s what it looks like. A person with ADHD can’t pay attention. Unless they’re really interested, and then they can’t stop paying attention. But that’s really more of a symptom. What it should be called is Executive Function Deficit Disorder or maybe Executive Dysfunction Disorder.

[You can think of a brain as having multiple multi-threaded tasks, like a computer. One of those tasks is consciousness, of course, but the rest of them run in the background and you are rarely aware of them. Until they break. Executive function is the manager, the dispatcher that takes commands from consciousness – or other parts of the brain, I’ll get to that – and, generally, informs consciousness of what it should be doing. It handles the passage of time, so you have some idea how long an hour is. It remembers where you put your keys. It allocates your attention to speech, to reading, to tasks.

[A lot of this is performed by stimulating the brain to release dopamine. Now, if you’ve ever sought out help for depression, you’ve probably heard of neurotransmitters. There’s tons of them, but the ones you hear about most are serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. Very very roughly, and with the caveat that some recent evidence calls some of this into question, we can describe serotonin as the happiness chemical, dopamine as the motivation chemical, and norepinephrine as the excitement, fight-or-flight chemical. Very roughly.

[Basically everything a person does, is done because it feels good to do it – in some way – or, being smart animals, we know that not doing it has a bad result. If we don’t wash the dishes we get roaches – brr! If we don’t do our homework, we get a bad grade and Mom and Dad yell at us. In a normal brain, small amounts of motivational dopamine are released when we set ourselves to a task that will prevent a bad thing, but that we don’t inherently like. Or, sometimes, to a task that we enjoy, but maybe it’s hard and we’re not always feeling it. Wash the dishes, get a tiny amount of dopamine because yay, you have successfully fought off the roach apocalypse for another day.

[People with ADHD don’t get that. The small amounts of encouragement dopamine aren’t there. We don’t wash the dishes because we enjoy it, and it turns out, we don’t do it because we are afraid of the roaches. We do it because our executive function has decided that roaches are bad, and it will reward us with some dopamine for doing things to keep the roaches away. Everything we voluntarily do, we do because it gives us at least a little dopamine.

[I want you to think about the mythical Sisyphus, endlessly pushing a rock up a hill, because he’s been told he can be free of Hades if he gets it to the top – a thing he wants, a lot. What if someone tells him, the deal’s off? You’re never getting out of Hades, no matter what you do? Well, he probably wouldn’t keep pushing the rock, because what’s his motivation?

[That’s what washing the dishes is like if you have ADHD. It takes time, it’s not pleasant, and it doesn’t reward you with that little bitty bit of dopamine. So what’s your motivation to push the rock up the hill? You can intellectually know that washing the dishes is a good idea and that not doing it exposes you to disease, yucky tastes, and maybe roaches, but you don’t do the smart thing because it’s the smart thing. Or at least, most of us do not. We do the smart thing because executive function rewards us for doing it. And people with ADHD do not get that reward.”]

[u/beepityboopbop: “It handles the passage of time, so you have some idea how long an hour is.” Unless your name is Karen and you’ve called for technical support, in which case five minutes is an hour]

[u/paleshadowofawoman: Suzanne Burke you seem to have a serious fixation with roaches]

[u/semicolonbang: Yeah did the roaches eat your baby?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: They ate my last relationship. My girlfriend and I broke up because of roaches.]

[u/semicolonbang: that sounds like an interesting story]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: it is but it’s got nothing to do with Dex so maybe I’ll answer it in a few days if I feel like it]

[u/ineedcheese: that’s a lot of stuff about how ADHD works but how does Dex work?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Getting to that. People with ADHD gravitate toward things that overstimulate the dopamine reward system, because it’s the only way they get any. Playing video games generally gives you lots and lots of small rewards along the way. Endlessly bingeing Netflix feels good while you’re doing it because television is created to entertain and reward you.

[Now, being smart animals like the rest of humanity, ADHDers really do not want to spend their entire lives playing video games and bingeing Netflix. They want the same things anyone does – to do work that’s rewarding, to have satisfying relationships, to get along with family and make friends. But to accomplish those broad tasks, usually you have to do a lot of small tasks that aren’t inherently rewarding themselves. It’s hard to have a satisfying relationship if your girlfriend blames you for having roaches because you didn’t wash the dishes.

[So stimulants enter the picture. Adderal, Ritalin, and the most powerful and oldest stimulant of all: norepinephrine. Excitement, fear, anger, sexual desire, they all release norepinephrine, which tells the body to rev up. Charge up with energy. It’s time to run away from that tiger! Or beat the crap out of the guy macking on your girl! Or ride your horse, which is terrifying and exciting because you’re moving faster than a human can, on top of an animal who is perfectly capable of doing whatever it wants instead of what you want.

[People with ADHD procrastinate, because the fear of the consequences of not doing the task eventually becomes high enough that that provides the motivation. If you can’t have dopamine, you can at least have some norepi. I don’t want to write that paper, so I pretend it’s not happening… and my executive function is so bad at keeping track of time, it’s easy for me to pretend, until the night before I have to turn it in, and my professor has reminded all of us to do it. Now I’m terrified. I’ve done exactly nothing on this paper, I’m gonna fail my class, my mom and dad will be disappointed, my asshole ex will laugh at me, I’ll suffer shame and disgrace for generations to come. Now I’m scared enough, flooded with enough norepinephrine, that I can do the thing. And maybe I will even get a dopamine reward when I’m done, because “congrats on getting us away from that tiger, buddy!” is a thing that even most ADHDers get.]

[u/semicolonbang: “It’s hard to have a satisfying relationship if your girlfriend blames you for having roaches because you didn’t wash the dishes.” Personal experience much?]

[u/estesrocketsarenottoys: “Or beat the crap out of the guy macking on your girl!” not exactly feminist]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: “not exactly feminist” maybe not, but try being a lesbian with a beautiful girlfriend who all the guys are hitting on and she is really weirded out and upset by it and she just wants to be left alone, are you going to tell me you would not want to punch them in their sexist faces?]

[u/semicolonbang: your life story seems very interesting Suzanne Burke]

[u/ineedcheese: I still don’t know how Dex works]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Dex works by releasing small amounts of dopamine when you do a task you know you have to do, even if you don’t want to.

[We’ve used sophisticated AI to analyze the brain states of thousands of volunteers who recorded a moment by moment diary of what they were doing for a week and how they felt about it, and from that we’ve figured out how to distinguish the brain state of “I really, really hate doing this and there is no good reason to” – Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill after Hades has told him, the deal’s off buddy – and “I hate doing this, but it’s a step toward getting what I want.” When you make yourself do the thing you don’t want to do, but you know it will be good for you to do it, Dex rewards you with a little dopamine. Just like your own executive function would have, if you had one that worked.

[Dex can also tell when you’re caught in that paralysis loop – “I really should be working on my paper, but instead I am reading Reddit” – how many of you are in that place right now?]

Jason blinked. Wow, that was a little on the nose. This was posted a week ago, though, so she wasn’t talking about him. Specifically.

[If you’re doing a thing, but you feel guilty about doing the thing because there’s something you should be doing instead… Dex can uptake your existing dopamine. Basically, Reddit bores you! So you go looking for some other source of entertainment. Well, if you take that moment and use it to write your paper, or wash the dishes, Dex will make you feel good about doing it.]

[u/thisuserdoesnotexist: How good?]

[u/peterporkerthesuperbspiderham: Yeah, doesn’t like heroin or morphine also give you dopamine?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Not that good, and not exactly, but we’re not going to get into that. Dex isn’t addictive. Video games are a lot more addictive than Dex. Not that I ever blew a few hundred dollars on DLC, or anything.]

[u/thisuserdoesnotexist: How do you know?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Because we’ve tested it. There have been years of clinical trials at this point. There are a lot of people who were very, very upset at the thought of ever losing Dex… but we drilled down on that, and they were more like, wheelchair users upset at the thought of losing their wheelchair than addicts upset at losing their fix. They described how Dex made it possible for them to focus, to get things done that they’d always wanted to be able to do. Not that it made them feel good. Because it doesn’t. Tiny jolts of dopamine for washing the dishes doesn’t feel good. It just feels like it makes washing the dishes tolerable.]

[u/chaosisawonderfulthing: Should we be concerned about Jupiter’s involvement in this project?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Jupiter didn’t buy Ulysses until we were already in clinical trials, so no. They’ve been very hands off, actually.]

[u/ineedcheese: how does this fix me forgetting my appointments?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: it doesn’t. But if you’re like most ADHDers you’ve been told, “Oh, just program a reminder on your phone!” And then the reminder to take out the garbage comes through, but you don’t feel like taking out the garbage, so you ignore it. Or you forget to add the reminder about the doctor’s appointment because that just seemed like a lot of work and you didn’t feel like it. What Dex will do is allow you to use those tools to manage the parts of ADHD that it doesn’t directly fix. You won’t remember the doctor’s appointment, but you will feel like putting a reminder into your phone about it was a worthwhile thing to do, when you made the appointment, and you will feel like getting up and going to that appointment is more worthwhile than checking Facebook, again.]

[u/stephaniestick: no one uses Facebook anymore]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Or Cicada, or Instagram, or Tumblr, or whatever.]

[u/ineedcheese: so it’s not as good as medication.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: In what way?]

[u/ineedcheese: medication helped me remember things I was supposed to do.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: If medication works best for you, that’s a fine thing, and we’d advise you to stick with it. But a lot of adults can’t take the medication, or it doesn’t work for them.]

[u/mushroommushroom: Or they won’t prescribe it for you. I was diagnosed as an adult and my doctor told me, basically, no one will prescribe amphetamines for someone my age.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: also true.]

[u/paleshadowofawoman: you said it makes things unrewarding to do if you feel guilty about doing them. What if you feel guilty about everything?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: you absolutely should not use Dex if you have a scrupulosity complex, or in any other regard feel a lot of guilt over things you really shouldn’t feel guilty about.]

[u/beepityboopbop: so no Catholics, got it]

[u/mushroommushroom: A lot of people feel guilt over having sex, even if it’s healthy consensual sex.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Yeah, so it turns out that the human sex drive is so powerful, Dex can’t do anything with it. We tried. We recruited a few volunteers who wanted Dex to reduce their interest in sex, because they were trying to not cheat on their spouses, or they wanted to get more done… or whatever. We didn’t probe very deeply. It didn’t work for any of them. It can help with more traditional addictions, alcohol or smoking, but it does not actually seem to reduce sex drive even in people who feel guilty about having sex and want to have less of it.]

[u/supermansshorts: But you can use it to stop smoking?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: If you feel bad about smoking, yes. If you know you shouldn’t smoke, and you would like to quit, but you are compelled to smoke anyway, having Dex will make smoking feel a lot less fun, which will help you quit. But you still have to do the hard work.

[Dex doesn’t magically solve all your problems. I’m pretty sure there is no implant that could do that. What it does is it gives you the tools you need to solve your own. When you have work to do, and you don’t want to do it, but you want to want to do it because you need to do it… Dex isn’t smart enough to know to reward you for that the first time you make yourself do it. It has to read your brain state while you’re doing it to know that this is a thing you should be doing that you don’t want to. You have to summon the willpower to do it the first time, yourself.]

[u/chaosisawonderfulthing: Because willpower and ADHD are so well known to be found together.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: I actually think people with ADHD have enormous willpower, because they don’t get rewards for doing the useful things they have to do to stay alive and healthy. Other people aren’t really using willpower alone, they’re using the fact that it feels good to do a thing you need to do. People with ADHD have literally no emotional motivation at all, no brain chemical telling them to do the thing, but often they manage to force themselves to do it occasionally anyway. I think that takes a lot more willpower than doing a thing that rewards you with a little dopamine.]

[u/mushroommushroom: How do you get it?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Currently, only a psychiatrist can prescribe Dex.]

[u/mushroommushroom: Not a regular doctor?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: No, and actually, we recommend that you be in therapy while working with Dex. Among other things, there’s a phenomenon called spin doctoring that you might need a therapist to help you recognize and work through.]

[u/chaosisawonderfulthing: You obviously want us to ask what spin doctoring is.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Haha, yes! OK, so you’re all familiar, I hope, with the fact that the brain has two lobes. They have a lot of overlap in function, though in a lot of people only the left side controls speech. But you are not two people, because there’s an entire wall of connecting neurons, the corpus callosum, between the two.

[Well, back in the old days, one treatment for really severe, life-threatening epilepsy was to sever the corpus callosum. So in a sense, patients became two people, but only one of them could talk. They did an experiment with those people. Sat them in front of a viewer where each eye could be shown a different image, and while they were doing tests, they sent a message to the right eye, go get a Coke. The right eye connects to the right lobe, which doesn’t usually have the ability to talk.]

[u/thisuserdoesnotexist: Doesn’t the right brain control the left side and so on?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Yep, but the crossover happens below the head. So the eyes, being in the head, are still connected to the lobe on the same side. Anyway, so they’d tell the right brain, go get a Coke. So the right brain would get the body up and head for the Coke machine. Now, keep in mind, the left brain has not seen this message, and without the corpus callosum, and given that the right brain can’t talk, the left brain has no way of knowing why the body is heading for the Coke machine.

[You would think this would be terrifying. Your body is doing something and you never told it to! Aaahh! Horror movie! But when they asked people, what are you doing? They got answers like, “I was thirsty”, or “I wanted to stretch my legs a bit.” None of them expressed any fear or uncertainty about why they were doing this, and also, none of them knew they’d been told to go get a Coke.

[So the theory goes, consciousness is not actually where all of your decisions come from! Maybe not even most of them! A lot of stuff is being done by deep processes in the brain that are black boxes, that consciousness has no insight into. But when those processes decide that the entire collection of stuff that is you needs to do something, consciousness often smoothly and easily rationalizes why you are doing the thing, without any recognition that that’s what you’re doing. It feels to you like you got up to stretch your legs, and while you’re at it, why not get a Coke? When the real reason is, the right side of your brain, which your left side can no longer hear, was told to do it.]

[u/supermansshorts: Is the right side of the brain, like, vulnerable to mind control?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Oh, no, no. These were volunteers who’d agreed to do the experiment and follow the instructions. It’s not like the right side of your brain is a completely different person from the left side. Even if you sever the corpus callosum, both sides are still you, near-identical copies who think and feel much the same way about everything. So if the left side signed the papers and spoke the agreement, it’s likely that the right side also agreed, for the same reasons. The right side wouldn’t have done something like “jump out a window”, it’s just as capable of making rational decisions as the left side is. But it agreed to follow instructions the same as the left side did, because if the left side was the kind of person who’d volunteer to follow the experimenters’ instructions, then so was the right side.

[Anyway, so spin doctoring. Consciousness is so good at coming up with rationalizations for why you are doing a thing that some deeper process said to do, it doesn’t even know it’s doing it. So a lot of the time, we make decisions based not on anything rational, or even an emotion we understand and recognize, but something deep down that we’re not even aware of.]

[u/mushroommushroom: Like Freud’s ego and id.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Similar, yeah, but it’s more like, there’s all these different processes happening, and consciousness isn’t actually aware of any of them, just their outputs. And when the body as a whole acts on one of those outputs without going through consciousness first, consciousness comes up with a reason why they wanted to do that.]

[u/ineedcheese: But I do things all the time that I literally have no idea why I did it, like one time I poked a cake my mom had just iced and when she asked me why I did that, I didn’t even know.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Yeah, spin doctoring doesn’t always work, particularly since the ADHD brain is particularly vulnerable to processes just totally bypassing consciousness and doing a thing. That’s called “poor impulse control.”

[But the point is, we do things for reasons we don’t even know, and then our consciousness comes up with a reason why we did that thing, and then it enters our database of “reasons to do or not do things.” Like… if I found it very hard to do a thing, I might, for the sake of my pride, come up with “I really hate doing that thing” or “I think it’s stupid” or “That thing is completely unnecessary.” But maybe the only reason it was hard was I wasn’t getting any dopamine from it, and maybe Dex could fix that for me… if I was willing to try to do it, but the spin doctor might have already convinced me, doing that thing is dumb and why should I?

[One of the roles a therapist or psychiatrist can play with a patient trying Dex is to work through the spin doctor’s bullshit. Help you try out things you have already written off, or break patterns you think are just the best way to do things when maybe they’re not.]

[u/ineedcheese: Like what kind of thing?]

[u/snowflakespecialaisle10: Writing documentation if you’re a programmer.]

Ouch. That one especially hit home.

[u/semicolonbang: How is the implant done? Like do they drill through your skull?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: It’s a laparoscopic surgery done up through the nose. Outpatient surgery, you go home the same day.]

[u/supermansshorts: And that doesn’t fuck up your nose?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Oh, your nose hurts like a bitch for about a week. When I did it, it drove me a little nuts because I have allergies, but blowing my nose would cause giant nosebleeds. Now, we give people a cocktail of antihistamine, numbing solution, and decongestant in a nasal spray, and apparently that works a lot better.]

[u/semicolonbang: You did it yourself?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: I told you that I lost my girlfriend because I never washed dishes and then we got a roach infestation and she blamed me, and you think I wouldn’t be signing up for the clinical trial the moment we opened it to human trials?]

[u/mushroommushroom: To be fair, the roaches probably came in on your groceries or from the next door neighbor or something. Not washing the dishes just gave them a source of food and water to breed from.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: I mentioned that. Turned out that was not a helpful argument.]

At this point, a Slack message popped up, and Jason had to turn his attention to that. It was from Teresa.

Jason, I haven’t heard from you in a couple of hours. Are you going to be ready for this meeting?

Ready, eager and waiting, he typed back. Shit, the meeting was in ten minutes. And look, there was the Outlook reminder he had reflexively shut off the moment it popped up, popping up again. Good thing Teresa had decided to poke him.

***

The meeting went well. Great, in fact. Jason was able to demo his code, and nothing went wrong. There were a couple of features he hadn’t implemented that the upper-level managers were concerned about, but Teresa backed him up, because he’d told her a month ago that those features would have to come in a later version. She politely reminded the upper-level managers that she’d informed them in email a month ago that those features wouldn’t be in this version. “Controlling scope is a very important part of controlling costs,” she said, and they couldn’t disagree.

Afterward there was a second, internal meeting of the team, which didn’t go quite as well because Teresa was banging the documentation drum. “If you got hit by a bus tomorrow, no one here would know how to support your code,” she said.

“Good thing I never go anywhere. No bus injuries in my future,” he said, and everyone laughed.

“But you know, they say that most accidents happen close to home,” Adrian said. “Seriously, Jason, I know doc’ing sucks, but you gotta get it done.”

Adrian extensively documented his own code, and got it done approximately 20% as quickly as Jason when he was on. And probably only 75% as quickly when you factored in how much time Jason wasted. “I know,” Jason said.

Stacy, the business analyst charged with writing user manuals, said, “It makes my job a lot easier when there are docs.”

“I’ll take a few days and go back through and do that.”

Then they talked about next steps, and the QA team revving up to test. Duane tried to get Jason’s help with a different problem he was working on, but Teresa deflected it, unfortunately. “Jason’s focus has to be on fixing his documentation,” she said. “Jorge, maybe you could team with Duane, see if the two of you could get any traction on this?”

“Sure,” Jorge said, dashing what small hopes Jason had of being able to find an acceptable task to work on that was not documentation.

When the meeting was over, he opened up his code, stared at it for three minutes trying to figure out where to even begin documenting. Due to the lack of documentation, he wasn’t even 100% sure he knew what all these functions did.

Fuck it.

He jumped over to Reddit, where he still had the Dex AMA open, which reminded him that he’d wanted to google Suzanne Burke’s claims and generally the whole thing, because the idea of a brain implant that could help you control your own behavior wasn’t real far off from conspiracy theorists’ paranoid fantasies of the CIA putting mind control devices in your brain.

Three hours later he’d learned some things:

All the bad reviews of Dex came from people who had obviously never used it or didn’t even really know what it was, people who were complaining about absurd things (“I wanted it to help me stop eating snack chips so I filled my room with snack chips to test it and it didn’t work, I still ate snack chips”) or things no one had never claimed it could fix (“I still keep losing my keys”), or people who had gotten one of the earlier versions at the start of clinical trials. Most of the most recent reviews either raved about it or said something like, “It’s a lot of hard work to re-engineer your whole life even with Dex, but with Dex I can actually do that work without getting in my own way”, or “It’s an adjustment and you’ll find there are things you are used to wanting to do that you don’t even really want to anymore, and that can be bothersome, but they’re usually things you wanted to stop wanting to do”. Most of the complaints that remained after the positive reviews and factoring out the old and/or stupid ones were about the surgery – “They said my nose would hurt for about three weeks but it’s been six weeks and it still hurts when I blow it”. One person had a bad allergic reaction and they had to take it out.

There were many complaints from friends and family members of someone using Dex. “He never has time to hang out anymore”, “We used to spend hours chatting on Discord and now she blows me off after like half an hour”, “He’s like some kind of zombie drone where it’s all about work, work, work” (this was troubling, but when Jason drilled into that, it turned out to be a boyfriend who was annoyed that his paramour didn’t want to spend hours a day canoodling, because he had work to do.)

There were a lot of conspiracy theories about how Jupiter was using Dex to mind control people on behalf of the government, the New World Order, the Jews, the reptilians, the liberal left, fascism, or corporations. These were all presented with tremendous hysteria and very little actual evidence. One persistent theory was that the founder and CEO of Jupiter, who’d expressed an interest in space colonization, was going to use Dex to mind-control a sizable workforce into going into space to build his space colonies. Another one seemed to think that Dex had been created by the infamous tech billionaire who’d managed to destroy Twitter, as if all tech billionaires were the same guy, or had some kind of hive mind agenda.

One credible theory claimed that the device had a wireless component to receive updates, and that therefore it could be used in the future to send ads to people, somehow. The wireless component turned out to actually exist, and it really was sending brain scans back to Ulysses for analysis, and Ulysses really was sending out software updates. Ulysses claimed this was fully anonymized, that the analysis was necessary in order to improve the software that ran Dex, and that the software itself was so unusual and proprietary that it would be literally impossible to infect it with malware. Jason was suspicious. All of that sounded very plausible and also something a corporation could decide to throw out and do something evil with the moment the board of directors decided they could get away with it. He couldn’t figure out exactly how it could possibly send ads, but he was sure it could be nefariously used for something.

In the end, there were two factors that decided him on not bothering to look any further into Dex. The existence of the wireless connection to Ulysses’ servers, and the fact that he’d have to find a psychiatrist if he wanted to be prescribed it. Finding a psychiatrist sounded easy enough, but given that Jason had had “change doctors” on his to-do list for two and a half years, and hadn’t been to a dentist in longer than that because he just never got around to making an appointment, he had no illusions.

But without researching Dex as an excuse to himself, he had no good reason not to work on his documentation. Just the usual reasons. It was boring, he didn’t want to, and he couldn’t make himself do it without a stunning amount of caffeine in his system.

Well. Time for early evening Coca Cola, then.

Jason had a system. Complex carbs, he thought, slowed him down and made him sleepy. Simple carbs, sugar, were a quick shot in the arm of energy, but there’d be a crash afterward. Greasy protein was even worse than the complex carbs, so pizza was absolutely terrible for focus. (This did not stop him from eating it when it was available.) The secret was lean protein, cold vegetables (because warmth made him sleepy), and sugar. So grilled chicken or salmon on a salad, and Coke. It was a pain in the ass to make this for himself; salad, in particular, was annoying because you had to wash it and then somehow you had to dry it, or wait hours for it to dry on its own, or your croutons would get soggy. He put in an online order at a local place, and then turned to video games.

The good thing about ordering food online was that, when it showed up, it would automatically disrupt whatever he was doing, so it was a great way to break free from something he probably shouldn’t be doing to switch to something he should. The bad thing about ordering food online was that it resulted in multiple interruptions while he was trying to relax with the game, because they called to confirm the order, and then they called to find his house, and then they called to tell him they were on the porch downstairs. And then Mom called up to tell him his food was here, and why hadn’t he asked her if she wanted anything?

But now he had his food, and his Coke, so it was time to focus on this thing.

This boring thing.

This thing he would rather do almost anything than be doing.

He slogged through it, incredibly slowly. He’d add a comment, scroll down, pop over to Reddit or a newsfeed or Youtube or literally anything other than this documentation, do that for several minutes – he had no idea how many – and then abruptly remember he was supposed to be doing his documentation and go back to it. As the night wore on, he became less and less efficient, more time spent not documenting, less time unraveling his own code to figure out what he did and write it down. But he couldn’t just go to bed; he had to make enough progress that he looked like he was making progress. But he couldn’t stay up all night, because then he would oversleep tomorrow and he would look bad.

The two balanced each other at 3 am, and he was finally able to go to bed, the documentation close to sort of done. Not to sleep, though, because he’d had way too much Coke and he was much too worried about what Teresa would think. Was this enough to show due diligence, or would she be angry that it wasn’t complete?

***

It took four days.

Four days of Teresa pestering him about whether the documentation was finished, four days of having nothing required of him that he actually wanted to work on. Four days of dodging the documentation as much as he could by helping everyone else out. Including helping with their documentation, because as annoying as documentation in general was, it was much better when he was getting the warm fuzzies for helping someone else, directly.

There was a weekend in the middle of those four days. Jason promised himself he’d work on the docs over the weekend and then didn’t even open the file. Then he promised himself he’d get up early on Monday to do some work on it, and instead woke up at 10, having missed a 9:30 scrum.

At 2 pm on Tuesday, he was finally able to report being finished with documenting his code. He checked the final version in, breathed a sigh of relief, and got himself a beer. He’d finished the slog. Time to unwind. He didn’t officially clock out, because frankly he’d been working so ridiculously late each night that if he weren’t salaried, they’d owe him a whole extra paycheck, so it was only fair. While he didn’t log off Slack or close his email, he did dive into a video game that occupied the full screen and wouldn’t let him see if messages came through. He told himself he’d pop out periodically and check.

Six hours later, when he finally checked, he had a Slack message from Teresa to come into the office tomorrow. It was much too late by now to ask her why.

***

“You’re letting me go?”

He stared at Teresa, a feeling of cold and heat at once sweeping through his veins. “You know I’m the best programmer in the department, right?”

“No one disputes that,” Teresa said, conciliatory. “But it takes you too long to get your work done, because you’re always in late, or leaving early.”

“I’ve been working until 3 am for a week now! And I only left early yesterday because I’d finished my documentation, and I needed a break.”

“Right. Jason, other programmers do not take four days to finish documenting their code. They document it as they write it. If you’d been hit by a bus over the weekend, we wouldn’t have had any idea how the code works, and I’d have to put someone on tracing it back and figuring it all out.”

He realized, then, that she’d just been waiting for him to finish it before she fired him. “I’m always helping out everyone else in the department, that’s why I’m slow sometimes.”

“You’re a great help, and you’ll be missed, but we need programmers who can work standard hours and hit their deadlines. I’m sorry, Jason, but it’s out of my hands. Upper management looked at your metrics and told me you’ve gotta go.” She shook her head. “I know you have personal effects here at the office, so you can go get those. Charlie here will escort you.”

Charlie wasn’t dressed any differently than anyone else at the company, but he was probably security. Certainly Jason didn’t recognize him, so he wasn’t in IT. “Fine,” he snapped.

“We’ll need the work laptop back,” she reminded him. The one he had never taken out of the box, because the box had the specs on it and he’d realized that it wasn’t nearly powerful enough for his needs, so he’d been doing all his work on his personal desktop.

“I’ll drop it off.”

He knew that by now he’d already been locked out of all the computer systems, so he wouldn’t have a copy of any of his Slack messages, or the code he’d just finished. If he wanted his email he’d have to find a way to convert his Outlook OST to an archive without actually opening it, because if he opened it, it would probably ask for a password and then just endlessly prompt him for a login until he closed it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to keep his email that badly.

What a dick thing, to make him come into the office just to fire him. But then, it would also have been a dick thing to fire him by Slack message or voice call or email, and then he wouldn’t have had a chance to get his very minimal amount of stuff, which included a few cartoons he’d pinned to his cubicle wall and a family picture he’d photoshopped to completely remove Dad, so it just had him and Mom. Not that he couldn’t print out another copy of that, but the frame had come from a college friend he wasn’t in touch with much anymore, and he had sentimental attachment to it.

***

Mom was home, in the kitchen, on her laptop, as he came in, because of course she was. “Honey? You okay?”

For a moment he contemplated saying “Fine,” and stomping off to his room like he was still 17, but Mom would get it out of him sooner or later. Better bite the bullet now. “I got fired.”

“Oh. Oh, Jason, I’m so sorry. Anything I can do to help?”

Not tell me about how it’s my fault, I hope. “Not really, but thanks for the offer.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve got savings and I’ve got health insurance until the end of the month, and more if I take COBRA. I want to see a psychiatrist about these problems I’ve been having.”

Mom nodded. “That might be a good idea. Maybe there’s a new medication you could try.”

“There’s this thing I was looking into, called Dex. It’s like an implant that helps you train your brain to focus? I’m thinking maybe I need to take it more seriously.”

“That might be a good idea. Do you need help with finding a psychiatrist?”

He was about to say no, it’s fine, I’ve got it handled Mom… and then thought better of it, because that kind of thing was the strategy that just got him fired. “Yeah. I need you to keep reminding me I need to do it. Even if I get bitchy about it.”

“Oh, I can do that,” Mom said, amused. “Also, I don’t know how quickly they’ll get your COBRA paperwork to you, but you need to get on that immediately. Check the mail every day—”

“I’d think they’d email it.”

“They might, but probably they’ve turned off your email? Do they have a personal email address for you?”

A good question. “I think they have my Gmail…”

“Check that every day. Including the spam boxes. And check the regular mail every day. There’s some time limit they’re under for how quickly they have to provide you that, but I don’t remember what it is. And it’s to their advantage if they wait a few days so maybe you’ll forget. You need to be on that. You could try to go through the marketplace, since losing your job is a qualifying event, but that’s likely to be much more disruptive, and COBRA is probably cheaper than that.”

Jason nodded. “Keep me honest?”

“I sure will.”

“Gonna hit up Dice and Linkedin, maybe Monster, see how quick I can land a new job.”

“Good luck.”

***

But he had savings, and it seemed like a dumb idea to take a new job and then get brain surgery. Sure, the AMA had said it was outpatient surgery, but what if there were complications and he had to take time off? It might be a better idea to find out if he was getting Dex or not before he got a job.

He found a psychiatrist who didn’t take his, or anyone’s, insurance, which was expensive, but living with your mom for several years and paying only a third of the mortgage and half the utilities, while holding a good job, had enabled him to save up a fairly large nest egg. She was the kind of psychiatrist who never actually told you what she thought, but spent all her time asking you what you thought about things. She presented options and made suggestions and offered to help by writing prescriptions for whatever she had suggested that you had decided to go ahead with.

The company had given him one boon; they hadn’t told the state they’d fired him for cause, even though doing so would have saved on their unemployment insurance. Unemployment was less than a third of what he’d been making, but on the other hand, he didn’t have to order food out nearly so much when he wasn’t breaking his neck for the company that had just fired him. He could actually cook. He could help his mom when she cooked, and learn how to make some shit he didn’t already know.

Jason tried three non-stimulant medications over the course of eight weeks. One of them made him horny as hell, which was unfortunate as he didn’t have a significant other, and he felt like jerking off three times a day was a waste of his time. One did nothing. One made him overwhelmingly sleepy. He tried stimulant medication, again, a slightly different formulation, but still felt like it made him jittery and his heart raced and he got headaches and was irritable. A lower dose of stimulant medication gave him the same symptoms, just a little less of them, and lower than that didn’t actually work at all to help him focus.

This wasn’t the first job he’d been fired from for not being able to keep to a schedule or make deadlines, and if he didn’t do something, it wouldn’t be the last.

In the end, he talked himself into asking his doctor about Dex, just like the commercial said.

***

Outpatient surgery, it turned out, was still surgery… it just didn’t involve a lengthy stay in the hospital. When his mother came to pick him up, because he wasn’t allowed to drive after surgery, his nose was starting to hurt like a motherfucker. They’d given him a nasal spray that would keep the area sterile, promote clotting, and relieve pain, and they’d given him decongestants because it was EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, according to the aftercare nurse and the directions he was given on paper, that he not sneeze or blow his nose. If his nose started to run, they’d given him a second nasal spray that was a direct decongestant and antihistamine, and he was supposed to use that instead. If he had a nosebleed, he was to use his spray and lay down immediately until the bleed went away. Yes, his nose would clog up, because there was a healing wound and the spray was promoting clotting; he would just have to breathe through the other nostril. And this was supposed to go on for up to two weeks.

Joy.

They also gave him regular painkillers, which he quit taking about four days later because seriously, how do people get addicted to the sensation of having a fuzzy head? He had enough issues with being half-brained from exhaustion, he didn’t really want to add opioids to the mix. Tylenol and the nasal spray would do.

It was at that point that he decided to engage in the difficult task of trying to get a new job. He’d already updated his resume, but he hadn’t uploaded it; he’d already done some initial keyword searches for jobs, but hadn’t actually applied to anything.

He opened the job search site, logged into his profile, and began the laborious task of adding his newer skills from the job he was just fired from, and updating the length of experience he had with the other ones. It was nightmarishly boring, just like it had been every other time, so he popped over to Reddit. Just for a little while, just to do something more entertaining for a few minutes.

Except Reddit wasn’t entertaining.

He browsed around for a while, looking for something to catch his attention, but frankly nothing was as compelling as the idea of getting the goddamn resume done and out there, so he could get a job, get health insurance he didn’t have to pay an arm and a leg for, and stop making his mom anxious. So he went back to the job search site, and this time, managed to get the entire task done without interrupting himself. It wasn’t fun, but it was something he wanted out of the way, and he was able to power through it, and then finish doing the same thing with two other job search sites.

It wasn’t until after he was finished that he realized.

Holy shit. This thing works!

***

After that, Jason went a little nuts, self-admittedly, with his new superpowers of actually being able to focus and get shit done.

The AMA had been correct. He wasn’t any better able to remember where he put his keys than he had ever been. But he was able to order a bunch of devices that could be hung on key rings or slipped into wallets, that he would be able to use an app to find, and then get them set up and put them on the devices they needed to be attached to. He got “Find my Droid” configured for all the times he lost his phone, and a bunch of chargers he could plug in all over the house, including QI chargers, that he could leave the phone attached to whenever he didn’t want to deal with carrying it around, so now it wouldn’t die out of his custody.

He wasn’t any better at remembering that he had appointments. But he was able to focus enough to put in sufficient reminders, that would catch him at enough points in time, that he wouldn’t be blindsided… and enough to actually check the reminders when they showed up, rather than just absent-mindedly dismissing them. After he next saw his psychiatrist, he actually put his upcoming appointment on his calendar, so he didn’t have to run around like crazy trying to find the little appointment card when he finally remembered that there was an appointment.

He remembered to wash his clothes three days before a job interview, so he had options. (It was virtual anyway, but it did require his camera, so he wanted to look good.) He showered and shaved that morning, rather than forgetting and then racing to try to get it done before the interview. He actually ate breakfast, not just coffee, because he paid attention when his alarm went off, didn’t just snooze it, and managed to drag himself out of bed early enough that his mom was still home and making herself eggs and bacon, which she shared with him. He used Linkedin and Google to read up on the companies he was being interviewed for before the interview, so he actually knew who some of the people were and had some familiarity with what they did.

And in the meanwhile, he kept the dishes clean, the trash taken out, the kitchen floor swept, the toilet paper on the roll and the empty rolls in the trash can, the soda cans in the recycling bin, and he even got around to fixing the bathroom shelf above the toilet and taking his mom’s car to the mechanic for her, because a 30-year-old guy was a lot less likely to get scammed by a mechanic than a nearly 60-year-old woman.

This was fucking awesome.

He wrote a few of the personal programs he’d always wanted to get around to, like the one that helped him use his phone to take an inventory of his and his mom’s shit, so if there was ever a fire, they could back up their claims of what was lost… and then he actually went around taking the photographs, labeling them, and using the program to push them into the database he’d set up. He remembered, finally, after about twelve increasingly upset emails from Teresa, to bring in that work laptop and drop it off. He returned his library books, paid his fines, and checked some more out, and then returned them on time. He set up a blog and started writing about programming challenges he’d encountered in his career. He put a Pi Hole on his mom’s wifi network to block ads at the router so none of the computers had to work at that. He bought a cheap laptop and set it up with Linux like he’d always planned, and actually did the experimenting he’d always wanted to do.

His time on Reddit plummeted, and was mostly confined to subreddits about the games he was into, where he knew people and had stuff to say that he cared about, rather than endlessly surfing sites like r/AmITheAsshole and r/TodayIFuckedUp. He still gamed, in the evenings, for a reasonable amount of time that didn’t interfere with his sleep schedule, and felt no guilt about it because he was getting his important shit done, so he had every right to relax as hard as he worked. When he wasn’t doing job interviews or searching for jobs, during the day in what would be working hours, he was reading up on new technologies and actively teaching himself new skills.

Jason’s mom cried when she told him how proud she was of him for taking this step and getting his life turned around. He himself wanted to cry, sometimes, when he realized that he’d wasted 30 years of his life without this, and that ordinary people, people without ADHD, just lived like this. Out of the box. Without having to have a foreign object shoved up their nose and into their craniums.

The day he got the new job, he happily updated his LinkedIn, after making connections with old co-workers so they could see he’d landed on his feet and he wasn’t a total fuckup. A couple of them contacted him, asking if he could help out with some problems they were having. He asked them to go back to Teresa and get authorization to pay him as a contractor. They didn’t ask again after that.

He even went and updated his profile on some dating sites. Now that he had a job again, and now that he no longer felt constant guilt over what he wasn’t getting done at his job, it was time to try to get back into that game. He hadn’t had a partner since shortly before the first lockdown… that was a long time to go without.

And then his first paycheck arrived, and he grinned to himself. He’d been good… at least since getting the Dex implant. He hadn’t bought anything unless he needed it or it would help him improve skills and be more marketable. No new games, no new DVDs, no books, no new phone, no new speakers for his PC, no replacement pump and filter for the fish tank that had no fish in it and was at this point just an algae-growing experiment, no cast iron skillet because Mom had sold hers at a yard sale due to her hands being too arthritic to hold something so heavy while cooking, nothing.

It was spending spree time! He’d been promising himself this since he got Dex. Save his money while he didn’t have a job, keep spending as tight as he could, and he’d go on a spree as soon as he got a paycheck.

He went to Jupiter.com first, because that was where he could get most of everything he wanted, maybe even everything he wanted. Two new games he’d been jonesing for. Several graphic novels, a science fiction novel, and a memoir. A box set for a TV show he loved, because relying on streaming had gotten more and more erratic as fights over licensing continued. PC speakers with surround sound that were two generations better than what he had, and an upgraded graphics card. Fish tank supplies – maybe he was finally going to be responsible enough to keep fish alive. A hat, because it looked cool, even though he couldn’t imagine a circumstance where he’d actually wear it.

For clothes, though, and the cast iron frying pan, it was better to shop local, where he didn’t have to pay shipping, and he could immediately return anything that had an unpleasant texture. So he went over to Target’s web site, and was immediately bored out of his mind.

He tried to convince himself that the search tools for clothes were more specialized here, and he was more likely to be able to find one thing that fit and then six other things like it in slightly different cuts or colors. No go. It was like looking at the red color scheme and the font was draining the life out of him.

Which was ridiculous. He forced himself to look for the cast iron frying pan. That should be simple and easy.

But they had multiple options, and it seemed like just such an enormous amount of work to sort through them.

He went back to Jupiter.com. The fonts seemed cleaner, the pictures more inviting. The cost of shipping was challenging, though. But he could fix that. Just click the button for only free shipping, and look at that! He could even get three of different sizes. He added it to his cart without thinking about it much.

Clothes continued to be a challenge. It was kind of fun to go hunting, but his frustration was building, because there were so many items coming up in his searches that weren’t what he searched for at all. And no way to tell the texture of anything just from pictures, whereas with a local store he could go there and check things out.

So he tried going over to Walmart, which was disgusting, and JC Penney’s, which was overwhelming, and some of the sites for fancy mall stores, which just seemed to not have any kind of selection. He was used to buying from Target. They had good search filters for men’s clothes, that rarely pulled back complete bullshit. He should go there.

Except when he went there, everything looked overwhelmingly hard and chaotic and he just didn’t want to. All the fun of clothes shopping drained away.

And then he went cold.

Jason tried going to Barnes and Noble’s web site for a specific book. It was too hard to use the site. He’d used it before, but somehow it seemed really inferior now. He tried going to a PC online retailer to look for the video card he had already bought from Jupiter. The filters were too unresponsive. He went to Swappa to find a used phone to replace the one he had, and almost immediately gave up because none of the products looked good and he was feeling a general sense of unease about the idea of buying a used phone from a shady online store… even though he’d gotten his last three phones there and had been satisfied.

Shit. Shit.

He had to post about this. If this was happening to him… he couldn’t be the only one. He opened up Reddit and found the thread about Dex, clicked the new post button…

…and lost all enthusiasm for the task. Jesus, did he really have to write a post about this bullshit? Who cared? Probably everyone would jump his shit. It wasn’t like he had any scientific proof. And the idea of having to explain, in detail, what was happening? Humiliating.

No. No. That was more of it. He had to write this post. He started typing, grimly, using the same fortitude he’d used when he’d spent four days documenting his code so his boss could fire him.

“I really loved Dex at first, but”

“but some disturb”

“but I found”

“but there’s one thing”

Nothing looked right. The documentation, at least, had been right when he’d written it. Everything he was writing now just looked terrible and whiny and like there was no point to saying anything.

But he had to do this. He had to write this post. The thing in his head had to be making him not want to do this, not want to say this, but he’d gone for 30 years forcing himself to do things he really, really didn’t want to do.

“I really loved Dex at first, but its changing what I want, its bad, you shouldn’t”

No. Fuck. What was that? That was utter shit. Couldn’t he even be bothered to capitalize and use punctuation?

“I really loved Dex at first, but it won’t let me write this post about what it’s doing to me”

Fuck this, go read r/AITA.

Go read his video game subreddits.

Check Microsoft Teams, which his new company used instead of Slack. Maybe someone had a late-night request for help? Or something he was supposed to do tomorrow that he could get started on tonight instead?

No!

“I really loved Dex at first, but it makes me”

An hour of reading the news.

“makes me feel bored with shopping”

Just one round of his video game. Just one.

Six rounds later.

“shopping anywhere but Jupi”

This dog growled at the baby sitter, you’ll be shocked when you find out why!

25 screens later of a story he had predicted the end of when he’d started reading it.

“Jupiter. I go to tar”

Had anyone online ever posted that stupid ditty where they sang “shop at tar-jay” like the word Target was French? Go check.

“target or any other site”

Wow, it was late, shouldn’t he go to bed? Bed sounded really great. He really shouldn’t disrupt his sleep schedule for this now that he’d gotten a new job and finally established a good sleep schedule, right?

Focus.

“site and it makes me feel like it’s boring, or too complicated, or just bad”

How about his favorite TV show? Was there going to be another season of that?

“just bad, until I go to Jupiter, and then shopping feels fun”

Yeah. That was it. That was the message. He didn’t need to keep doing this. He could stop and post it here. Actually he should spell check first, right? And it was late, maybe he wanted to hold off on posting until tomorrow, when he could look at it with fresh eyes.

“feels fun. And it wont let me”

1 am. This was ridiculous. He had work in the morning. He couldn’t lose this job just because of something stupid like this.

Another half hour of reading the news.

“let me write this to warn you.”

Right! Wrap it up, turn off the monitor, go to bed! He’d done his part. The message was out there!

Jason absent-mindedly turned his computer off, and only then, wondered if he had ever actually hit post.

Well. He could check on it in the morning.

After work. And his chores. And he was supposed to game with his friends tomorrow, so after that, too.

Oh, fuck this. He'd spent his life struggling against things his brain didn't want him to do, and it was awful and it had traumatized him and he never wanted to go through that bullshit again. If he'd forgotten to hit post, oh well. Let someone else do it. Jason was done beating his head against the wall of things he really didn't want to do, that he thought he should do, forever.

[theapprenticeofthanatos]

TAoT: Chapter 17: Ghostly Introductions

The flight back to Camp Half-Blood was a quiet one; Danny was not in the mood to talk, and Thanatos didn’t seem like he really wanted to either. A couple of hours into their trip, Danny began to slow down. He was still tired from shadow-traveling, and flying at around 70 mph for two hours straight was not helping his energy levels.

Thanatos slowed down so that he was flying next to Danny; the halfa hadn’t even noticed that the god had passed him.

“There’s still about an hour left until we reach Camp Half-Blood,” Thanatos informed him. “Do you need to rest?”

“No, I’m fine.” Danny replied, stifling a yawn.

Danny could tell that Thanatos didn’t believe him. “Then why did you yawn just now?”

“‘Cuz I do that sometimes.” Danny grumbled. “Doesn’t mean I’m tired.”

“Uh-huh. And you are slowing down because…?” Thanatos trailed off, an eyebrow raised in question.

Danny hadn’t even realized he had slowed down to the point that the cars below them were moving faster. “Maybe… I am a little tired.” He admitted, coming to a stop in the air.

“More than a little I think, Daniel.” Thanatos said, glancing over at him. “You’ve expended a lot of energy today.”

Danny nodded, thinking of all that had happened in the past few hours: Mr. D had confronted him before breakfast, then Danny had shown Hestia his mark, and then Annabeth had seen it during their duel. And then he had ended up in the Underworld, all on his own. How has it only been about six hours since I woke up this morning? Danny wondered tiredly. He felt his energy levels waver, and he fell a few feet in the air before he caught himself.

Thanatos looked at him worriedly. “You need to rest before we continue to camp.” He grabbed Danny’s arm and led him towards the ground below.

“No, I don’t need rest.” Danny tried pulling his arm free, but Thanatos’ grip was firm.

“Yes, you do, Daniel.” Thanatos stated as they landed near a gas station; the parking lot was empty, but the lights were on inside the building. “I can’t have you falling out of the sky due to exhaustion.”

Danny grumbled in protest but transformed back to his human form. Thanatos’ chiton shifted into the same suit he wore yesterday, and his wings morphed into his jacket, but his hair remained loose around his shoulders.

Danny raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that suit a bit much for going into a gas station?”

Thanatos shrugged. “I like to dress nice.”

Danny rolled his eyes tiredly at his mentor’s response, and together the two of them walked across the parking lot and into the gas station. The only person in the store was a cashier. He looked to be in his early 20s, and was leaning against the front counter as he played on his phone. He didn’t even look up as the god of death casually strolled over to the hot-and-ready food displays at the back of the building.

Danny dragged his feet as he followed after Thanatos; he really wanted the day to be done and over with.

Thanatos gestured to the food under the heat lamps. “Take your pick,” he said. “I suggest something high in calories.”

Danny's eyes scanned over the food; hot dogs, churros, pizza slices. “I’m pretty sure everything in this store is high in calories.” He commented sarcastically.

“Then your choice should not be difficult.” Thanatos agreed.

Danny grumpily decided on a slice of pepperoni pizza, and groaned in annoyance as Thanatos nodded him towards the drinks section. As Danny walked towards the drink dispensers, his ghost sense went off. He paused, and turned back to Thanatos, who was looking up at the ceiling as if he were watching something.

His eyes met Danny’s. “It seems that you have a visitor, Daniel.”

Danny nodded in agreement, placing his food on a nearby counter.

“Would you like any assistance?” Thanatos offered.

“Nah, I’ve got this.” Danny assured him, before ducking into the public restroom to transform back into Phantom. He dragged a hand down his face as he growled in annoyance; now he had to deal with ghosts on top of everything else that day. Danny flew up through the ceiling to find whoever set off his ghost sense.

Danny landed on the roof of the gas station. As soon as he was tangible, something small and green ran into him with a loud bark. Danny grabbed the small creature as he stumbled back into someone large and furry. Looking down, Danny saw that it was Cujo, his little ghost dog friend. The ghost pup barked happily.

“Pardonu, Danny. (‘Sorry, Danny.’)” Came an apologetic voice from behind him.

Danny looked up and saw the familiar face of his large ghost dog friend, Wulf. “Wulf? What are you and Cujo doin’ here?”

“Mi volis viziti kaj ne povis trovi vin, mi amiko. (‘I wanted to visit and couldn't find you, my friend.’)” Wulf answered.

Cujo barked again.

“Kaj Cujo volis ludi. (‘And Cujo wanted to play.’)” Wulf added.

“And I wasn’t there, so you guys came to find me.” Danny guessed.

Wulf nodded as Cujo licked Danny’s face.

“Okay, okay! Down, boy!” Danny laughed as he placed Cujo down on the roof.

“Kial vi estas for de Amity Park? (‘Why are you away from Amity Park?’)” Wulf asked.

Danny rubbed his eyes, another wave of tiredness washing over him. “It’s a long story, Wulf. One I don’t have time for right now.” And I should be getting back to Thanatos, anyways. “Look, could you guys just wait out here for a little bit? I’ll be out in a couple of minutes, and I promise I’ll talk then.”

“Mi promesas, Danny. (‘I promise, Danny.’)” Wulf nodded as Cujo barked in agreement.

“Great, see ya in a bit.”

Danny phased back into the restroom and transformed back to human form. He took a moment to gather himself before rejoining Thanatos. Being a half-ghost hero was exhausting sometimes…

Danny found the god leaning against the counter next to the pizza slice. Thanatos looked over as Danny walked closer. “Are you alright, Daniel?” He sounded concerned.

“Yeah, ‘m fine.” Danny mumbled as he grabbed the largest drink cup and began filling it with Mountain Dew, no ice. He definitely needed some caffeine. He glanced over at Thanatos as the cup filled with soda. “You said I had a visitor, which means you knew it was someone from the Ghost Zone, right? How did you know that it was a… ‘Ghost Zone ghost’?”

“They have a different aura than most spirits, likely due to their time in the Lost Region. Because of this, they are more difficult for me to sense and track down.” Thanatos watched as Danny fitted the lid onto the cup. “Are you sure you are alright? That is a lot of caffeine in one drink.”

“Says the one who downed a venti unicorn frappuccino.” Danny retorted as they walked back to the cash register at the front of the gas station.

“Yes,” Thanatos agreed. “But I am an immortal being. You, however, are a fourteen year old human.”

“Being immortal didn’t stop that sugar rush you had yesterday.” Danny pointed out with a smile.

Thanatos just shook his head in amusement and let the subject drop as Danny placed his food and drink on the counter. The cashier barely looked up as he rang up the pizza and drink. Thanatos paid with a black credit card; Danny had no idea where it came from, but decided not to question it. He just grabbed his food and drink, and walked out the door with Thanatos.

Danny and Thanatos walked across the parking lot to a rest area with a group of picnic tables; Danny took the occasional sip of his Mountain Dew as they walked.

Thanatos glanced over his shoulder. “Do you know the two ghosts that are following us, Daniel?” He asked carefully.

“What?” Danny turned around, but saw nothing—though, he had a pretty good idea who was there. Oh yeah, I did tell them to wait outside… “Wulf, Cujo, it’s fine. You can show yourselves.”

Wulf and Cujo became visible; Cujo was in his big angry dog form, and Wulf had his claws out. Both were snarling. Thanatos just raised an eyebrow and unfurled his wings, looking rather unimpressed as Wulf growled at him.

“Kien vi iras kun Danny? (‘Where are you going with Danny?’)” Wulf demanded.

“Guys, chill, please.” Danny stood between Thanatos and the ghosts. “This is Thanatos. He’s not going to hurt any of us.” Danny looked back to Thanatos for confirmation.

The god shrugged. At Danny’s scowl, he nodded.

Wulf eyed Thanatos for a moment longer before retracting his claws. Cujo shrunk back down into his puppy form, which Thanatos watched with interest. The god crouched down and held out his hand towards the small green dog. Wulf growled quietly, but Danny nudged him to be quiet. Cujo sniffed cautiously at Thanatos’ hand.

After a few moments of intense sniffing, Cujo’s tail began to wag excitedly and he barked playfully at Thanatos. The god pet Cujo’s head gently, and smiled as the dog licked his hand.

“Why, hello, little one. What happened to you?” Thanatos asked softly.

Cujo yipped in response. Thanatos nodded as if he understood the little green dog. Danny sat down at a picnic table and took a long sip from his drink.

Wulf hadn’t moved, but he seemed a little less on edge as he watched Thanatos and Cujo interact. “Ŝajnas, ke Cujo ŝatas vin. (‘It seems Cujo likes you.’)” He said to the god.

Thanatos looked rather perplexed as he turned his attention to Wulf. “This is… most unusual, but I do not understand what you are saying… Wulf, was it?”

“He speaks Esperanto.” Danny supplied between bites of his pizza. “It’s, like, a nerd language. He just said that it seems like Cujo likes you.”

Thanatos nodded in understanding. “I’d imagine so. Though Cujo here is quite different from how he once was, he probably still recognizes the scent of our mother.”

Danny choked on his drink. He coughed violently as Thanatos picked Cujo up and held him in his arms like a baby.

Wulf patted Danny on the back. “Ĉu vi fartas bone, Danny? (‘Are you alright, Danny?’)”

“I’m sorry, what?” Danny wheezed, his eyes watering. “What do you mean, ‘our mother’?”

“Cujo is a hellhound. Or rather, was, before… something happened to him in the Lost Region that changed him.” Thanatos explained as he rubbed Cujo’s belly.

“Wait, Cujo was a what?” Danny groaned. He tried to process that information, before giving up and rubbing his temples. Everything’s getting so confusing now…

“A hellhound.” Thanatos stated patiently. “And, as a hellhound, he and I share a mother.” He idly played with Cujo as the ghost dog playfully attacked his fingers.

“Wait a minute, but he was a guard dog! A living guard dog.” Danny thought back to when he had first met Cujo. He rested his head on his hands, staring at the table dazedly. “Besides… Cujo is a dog, and you’re… not. How can you two share a mom?”

“Well, I am not quite sure, but I have a theory about the Lost Region.” Thanatos explained. “I think it changes the beings that reside in it over time. Spirits can form from nothing or merge together. Perhaps the ghost of a guard dog merged with a lost hellhound, and Cujo here was born.” He tickled Cujo’s belly, and smiled as the dog barked happily. “As for your question, my father is not Cerberus…” Thanatos began to say, before Danny spun around and interrupted again.

“I’m sorry, WHAT? Cerberus is the father of the hellhounds and your mom is the mother of the hellhounds? HOW?” What is wrong with the Ancient Greek gods and goddesses? Danny wondered bewilderedly.

Thanatos shrugged. “I do not pry into my mother’s private life.”

Danny stared at Thanatos’ frustratingly neutral expression before turning back to his food. “I can’t deal with this right now. Let me eat my pizza in peace, please.”

“As you wish.” Thanatos replied.

Danny began to feel his energy return as he rested and ate his food. He asked Wulf how he was doing, and how things were in the Ghost Zone. Wulf told him that he was still on the run from Walker (Danny thought Walker would have given up by now; guess not.) As for the Ghost Zone, something was agitating the inhabitants of the Zone. Wulf either didn’t know or wouldn’t say; Danny decided that he would have to check it out when he got back to Amity Park.

“Kiel vi renkontis tiun ulon, Danny? (‘How did you meet that guy, Danny?’)” Wulf asked as he watched the god of death play with his apparent half-brother.

“It’s a… weird story.” Danny answered with a shrug. “I can tell you about it when I get back to Amity Park.”

Wulf nodded towards Thanatos. “Kaj ĉu vi certas, ke li fartas bone? Mi ne fidas lin. (‘And you are sure he’s alright? I don’t trust him.’)”

Danny nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure, Wulf. Though, why don’t you trust Thanatos?” He asked. “He’s a nice guy.”

“Estas… io pri li. Io danĝera. (‘There’s… something about him. Something dangerous.’)” Wulf answered after a moment’s thought.

Danny felt something akin to dread begin to gnaw at the back of his mind. What does Wulf mean, ‘dangerous’?

Danny was pulled from his thoughts when Wulf muttered under his breath, his attention back to Thanatos and Cujo. Danny wasn’t sure that he had heard Wulf right as he processed what the ghost had said:

“The Observants ne ĝojos pri ĉi tio… (‘The Observants are not going to be happy about this…’)”

After half an hour or so, Danny felt rested enough to continue their journey. He bid farewell to Wulf and Cujo, the latter of which seemed sad to leave Thanatos. The ghosts left through one of Wulf’s portals, and Danny and Thanatos took to the skies.

The sky was light blue, with a few clouds on the horizon. The air was chilly and refreshing. After about five minutes, Danny flew ahead of Thanatos and did some loop-de-loops.

“You seem to be feeling better.” Thanatos commented amusedly.

“Yep!” Danny called back. He turned to Thanatos as he thought of something. “Hey, now that I think about it, is Cerberus your stepdad?”

Thanatos stared at Danny like he was an idiot. “… Daniel, why?”

Danny laughed as he grinned from ear to ear. “What? What’d I say?” He asked mischievously.

Thanatos shook his head with a smile. “See if I ever let you have caffeine again.”

“Yeah, you definitely should not have let me drink that much.” Danny agreed. He flew back to Thanatos so that he was right next to him. “Hey, how much further is it to camp?”

“About fifty miles.” Thanatos answered. “Why?”

“Do you wanna race?” Danny asked excitedly.

“I am not sure that is a good idea,” Thanatos argued. “It would not be beneficial for you to get worn out again.”

“Nah, I’m good now! Besides, wouldn’t it be ‘beneficial’ for us to make up lost time? We could do that if we raced!” Danny looked at Thanatos with his very best attempt at puppy dog eyes. “Please?”

Thanatos responded to Danny’s pleading look with a rather confused expression, before eventually conceding. “… Very well. I suppose we can race a little bit-”

Before Thanatos could say anything else, Danny sped off ahead of him. “First one to Camp Half-Blood wins!”

Wind whipped through Danny’s hair as he soared high over the winding roads and beaches of the east coast. Fifty miles? I can do that easily. He thought. Though, I wonder how fast Thanatos can fly-

Danny’s thoughts were interrupted as Thanatos zipped past him, his vibrant blue feathers grazing the top of Danny’s hair.

Thanatos turned back to Danny, a playful glint in his eyes. “I thought you wanted to race?” He smirked.

Before Danny could respond, Thanatos took off ahead of him.

Danny grinned. “I am racing!” He sped up so that he was next to Thanatos. “See you at the finish line!” He put on another burst of speed and passed the god. The ground blurred beneath him, and Danny’s eyes watered from the wind as he flew. He could see the end of Long Island now, and knew that Camp Half-Blood was nearby.

Danny glanced back and was surprised to see that Thanatos was right on his tail. Danny tried to speed up, but he was already flying as fast as he could go. Thanatos drew closer; Danny could see the hill in the distance now, the gold fleece sparkling in the sunlight.

Just a little further… Danny thought.

He and Thanatos were now neck and neck, and Thanatos pulled ahead of Danny right as they passed the camp boundary. Danny tried to quickly stop, but alas, that was not how physics worked. He tumbled head over heels through the air towards the southern woods, before crashing through the tree branches and landing on the ground of the forest.

Danny wheezed, the impact having knocked the air out of him. He blinked away the spots in his vision as he transformed back to his human form.

Thanatos landed gracefully next to Danny and leaned over him, his golden eyes filled with a mix of concern and amusement. “That was quite the landing, Daniel. Are you alright?”

“Yep!” Danny winced as he sat up, his head spinning. “Just… just gimme a minute.”

Thanatos held out a hand and pulled Danny to his feet. “Not bad, my young apprentice. Not many people are able to keep up with me; the last time I had a race that close was with Hermes. Though,” Thanatos winked at Danny, his smirk mischievous. “I still won.”

“What?!” Danny scoffed as he brushed the dirt off his clothes. “No way! I totally beat you!”

“We both know that isn’t true, Daniel.”

“Okay… it was a tie.” Danny grumbled.

Thanatos looked like he was going to argue, but the sound of horse hooves filled the air. He and Danny both turned to see Chiron cantering up to them. The centaur had an anxious expression as he approached, but it changed to one of relief when he saw Danny.

“Glad to see you have returned safely, Danny.” Chiron said, attempting to appear calm; Danny could see otherwise in his eyes. “You gave us quite the scare this morning.”

Danny rubbed the back of his neck as he looked down at the ground. “Yeah, sorry about that, Chiron.” I didn’t mean to make him worry so much… Danny felt a hand rest on his shoulder; he didn’t need to look up to know it was Thanatos.

Chiron sighed. “Where did you go? I was unaware that you could shadow-travel.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know I could, either.” Danny stifled a yawn. “It’s been a long day.” He looked at Chiron worriedly. “Uhh, also, about Annabeth…”

Chiron nodded in understanding. “I spoke with her after you left. She’s very sorry for scaring you off.”

Danny nodded. “And my mark? Did she say anything about it?”

“Well, she did ask me if I knew anything about it. I told her it was just a tattoo that you are rather sensitive about.” Chiron dragged a hand down his face, looking rather tired. “I doubt she believed me, though.”

Danny nodded again; he knew that he should be more worried about Annabeth finding out what his mark meant, especially after what Thanatos had told him earlier, but he just wanted to sleep for the next ten, maybe twelve hours.

Thanatos must have read his mind, since he suggested that Danny needed rest after the day he had. Chiron agreed, motioning for Danny to head to the Big House.

Danny looked up at Thanatos, wanting to stay; he didn’t really know why, but… he felt safe around the god of death. Wasn’t that weird?

Thanatos ruffled Danny’s hair and gently pushed him towards the farmhouse. “Get some rest, pouláki mou. (‘my little bird.’)”

First: Prologue

Previous: Chapter 16

Next: Chapter 18

[pokedocbedlam]

I gotta ask... Food? Knowing Unova as the New York City of the Pokemon universe I gotta wonder what the twin's favorite or go-to foods are.

Ooooh, that's a good thing to consider! Now, I'm not a New Yorker (I'm on the opposite coast from there), so I can't speak to New York-specific foods, but I do have some general thoughts about food preferences for the twins...

Above all else, Emmet goes for efficiency. He doesn't like to waste time during the day by sitting down to eat or waiting in long lines, so anything he eats is going to be quick and portable. If he can cram as many food groups in it as possible, even better. So his go-to foods tend to be wraps, pizza slices, tacos or hot dogs if he can keep them from getting too messy, etc. Not to say that Emmet doesn't enjoy a sit-down meal when he can get it (mostly dinner at home with Ingo, or out with friends), but left to his own devices, he'll get something on the go so he can stick to the task at hand. Related, Emmet does sometimes get distracted enough to forget meals, mainly lunch. Thankfully, Ingo always has protein bars and water bottles on hand for such an occasion. When Ingo is not around, Emmet has...a harder time adjusting at first, but the regular depot agents tend to keep an eye out for him and leave "emergency Emmet rations" in his usual workstations. Emmet also LOVES spicy foods. He's got a higher tolerance for it than most, so he's the sort who goes for the highest heat options at restaurants, and he tends to have hot sauce on-hand to spice up a meal. (Or to steal Ingo's food by putting hot sauce on it, thus claiming it as his own. Y'know, younger sibling things.) On the flip side, Emmet can't stand mushy food, and there are a couple off-hand ingredients that will make him immediately put down a meal if he tastes them.

Ingo, on the other hand, is going to sit down and enjoy his meal, or at least eat it at his desk while handling paperwork. He's also the sort to use utensils for everything in order to keep his hands clean, such as using a fork and knife on pizza or eating chips with chopsticks. He tends to go for a heartier meal that'll fuel him for awhile, so he doesn't get hungry mid-shift. (Though as noted above, he keeps snacks on-hand for Emmet's sake if they're working together that day.) Ingo does have a notable sweet tooth, but he generally sticks to healthier meals and leaves the sugar for things like his morning coffee. That said, he'll sometimes swing by a bakery for breakfast, or grab something sweet for himself and Emmet after a rough day. Ingo's also pickier with textures; he's particular about how things are made, and once he finds a food he likes, he tends to acquire it from the same place, the same specific way, each time. Variances in his normal meals throw him off more than they do Emmet. He also cannot stand the feeling of anything stuck in his teeth or on the roof of his mouth. (He has to deal with both of these more than he'd like in Hisui, and while he gets better about variances in his food through sheer necessity, he still sticks to tried-and-true when he can. He likes eating at the Wallflower because he knows the potato mochi will be the same every time.)

[maddieladner1999]

Bad idea right? Chapter 7

When the boys woke up the next day it was early. The sun was up and they were spooning. Ricky was the little spoon as always. EJ woke up first and couldn’t help from looking at his adorable baby boy laying next to him. Ricky quickly wakes up and looks at EJ

Ricky: what?

EJ: nothing just taking in the view

Ricky: but you’re looking at me (Ricky pauses for a min) oh I’m the view

EJ: the best view

Ricky: you say the sweetest things to me sweetheart

EJ: hey that’s my line

Ricky: sorry it was to perfect not to use

EJ: you’re forgiven. So what do you wanna see today? Flight is late tonight I think we have to be there by 7 to be 2 hours early

Ricky: well I have about 30 bucks so whatever that can get me which most likely only covers food

EJ: yeah I don’t have much either.

Ricky: so what are we gonna do?

EJ: I’m googling free things to do in New York

Ricky: smart

EJ: we can explore Central Park, ride the Staten Island ferry, or explore colleges here.

Ricky: wait you thinking about going to college here? What about our plan?

EJ: it doesn’t hurt to tour a campus and besides it’ll be easier to transfer after at least a semester we can still do our plan

Ricky: why would it be easier?

EJ: idk maybe because you’re barely passing high school now and schools here are tough to get into the first time around. Transferring can work for any college as long as you get in

Ricky: if we get in

EJ: we could. If you can pass after last semester you can do it. Just need more extracurriculars and a winning essay

Ricky: right cause I’m such a good writer.

EJ: I’ll help you obviously

Ricky: ok let’s actually get dressed and do something instead of talking all day

EJ: fine. But what are we doing?

Ricky: college tours.

EJ: ok we start with closest to here: NYU. I’m not even gonna attempt to try ivy options for you

Ricky: good plan. I’ll shower first you get a tour guide or whatever

EJ: I think we’ll just need a map we can explore on our own.

Ricky: fine

Ricky takes his shower quick followed immediately by EJ. He was barely out the bathroom when EJ walked in. After they were both ready to go the boys were too late for breakfast so they just took coffee to go from the lobby. They weren’t that hungry anyway. NYU wasn’t too far so they walked in order to save some cash. The campus isn’t huge so touring wasn’t so bad but after a few hours they needed a break. They stopped at a nearby pizza place that sold pizza pretty cheap by the slice. Cheapest meal they’ve ever had honestly. They were still tired so they took the metro (sharing a card) to the next stop that they could ride another metro to near the airport. It was the staten island ferry.

Ricky: I thought we were touring colleges

EJ: we did. I figured we were still tired could sit for a while and we were there for longer than I thought. It’s already 3 pm. By the time we’re done we won’t have much time left. Figured getting us near the airport was the better option. Besides I don’t wanna get excited about a bunch of schools here if you don’t even get in.

Ricky: sensible plan. But will we be able to sit down?

EJ: yes the ferry has seats. We will get one outside so we can see the Statue of Liberty.

Ricky: we gonna get to see that? Cool

EJ: what did you think the staten island ferry was?

Ricky: I honestly didn’t even think about it

EJ: it’s the cheapest way to see the statue.

Ricky: how close does it get

EJ: idk I guess we will see

After the hour ride on the ferry the time was getting closer to leaving time. They grabbed another quick bite since the hot dogs were cheap and they had just enough for a cab to the airport. The metro was going to take a while and they figured why not? (They are flying out of LaGuardia since it’s cheaper flights and closer to the ferry than jfk).

Once they got to the airport they had quite some time to kill so they just exploded after tsa which did kill some time but not as much as they thought. They didn’t have any money left so they didn’t buy anything. Wasn’t really anything good anyway. Soon it was time to go home and they did. Ricky drive EJ back to school and then drove himself home. (Yes he told his dad). EJ could’ve rode home with the group but they got earlier flights home and that was fine since he had Ricky. Ricky luckily saved some money in his car which paid for parking or he would’ve been in trouble. He text EJ later when he got home

Ricky: I’m home

EJ: glad to know you made it home safe

Ricky: I’m just glad I was able to pay parking. My dad must have thought about that when I was gone.

EJ: wouldn’t surprise me he always looks out for you

Ricky: anyway I’m tired good night

EJ: good light love you baby

Ricky: love you too sweetheart.

They fell asleep very fast since it had been a long day of walking.

Note: they carried their stuff with them all day and had backpacks as their carry ons. It was only a 2 day trip.

[nebsstories]

The Birthday Bash

—

Authors note:

I’ve conceptualized this scenario I think about a year ago, but hadn’t found the time or inspiration to write it down until now.

This story was inspired off of @cupcakeshakesnake’s Harbor Town AU, and the contents of this story is loosely based off another story I’ve read, please DM me for more details.

—

Be me, I’m just right out of college and I have no idea what to do with my life; degree is utterly useless so I look at local businesses, wanted to find somewhere I can stay until I can get a better job. I happened to live 10 minutes away from the local rat casino known as, “Chuck-E-Cheese”. It’s better than nothing, I guess. Go in, do interview, really basic stuff; guy interviewing me asks, “When can you start?”

On that day I sold my soul to the Chuck-E-Cheese company. That day began one of the worst experiences of my life.

I started that following Monday, making $10 on the hour, so it’s okay, I guess. I spent most of my week up until Friday getting acquainted with my fellow coworkers. Free food’s also a plus, pizza’s alright but I’ll take it. I clock in that fateful Saturday morning, my manager greets me at the door, she tells me that Saturday’s are usually when it’s at its peak so we’ll be swamped today. Oh and, there’s a big birthday scheduled tonight, and all I can hear from the poor guy wearing the costume is a low, yet audible, “Fuck my life.”

I cannot even begin to imagine how awful it’d be to be surrounded by fifty or so grease coated crotch goblins all at once, all the while dying of heatstroke in a furry costume. At least the building was air conditioned, because I heard that the suit doesn’t have ventilation, meaning it’s hot as the devil’s asshole at times. I was tasked with setting up the party area, the decorations were already provided to us and the theme was apparent from the skull and crossbones.

Around 4 in the afternoon, the rush starts to die down and we get a momentary feeling of euphoric silence, relief washed over us, though we were fools to think it’d last forever. We watched as tired parents dragged out their sugar high children, as the kingdom they’d lorded over was lost to them. In the wake of their foul dominion, the arcade games became sticky and greasy to the touch, they’d stained the carpets with spilled sodas and slices of mediocre pizza, in that moment I foolishly thought, “This can’t get any worse than the hell on earth I’d just witnessed.”

4:30pm on the dot, a man steps in. He looks like the sort of boho rockstar you’d see thrown up from the peak of 80’s rock and roll, with as much swagger in his step and a cool demeanor as he greeted the girl that gives all the kids the ink stamps (which are “invisible” until shown under a blacklight).

“‘Ello, I’ve a birthday reservation for Jackie, party of 40.” He follows up.

My heart stopped, my blood ran cold as the number echoed in my mind. He did not just say 40, I thought he was bluffing so I poked my head out to get a glance. Standing behind him was an army. An army of fun sized pirates. This man brought in an entire grade level to this Chuck-E-Cheese and we were at the brunt of it all.

Before I could dip my head into my manager’s office to fake sick, the kids flood the place. Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war, as instantaneously, children storm the restaurant; they take to the playhouse, the arcade, the party area. The place is nearly full and bursting at the seams with them, and as we pushed on, our manager cowardly hid within the confines of the office. Meanwhile, the rest of us are panicking, chefs are stressing - their nerves pulsating and brows glistening with sweat from the amount of pizza they have to keep pumping out. It’s a madhouse, it’s anarchy!

Rockstar here isn’t doing jack shit, he’s just leaning against the wall playing guitar and waiting for it to be over. Another adult - a biker looking man, just got jumped by 20 or so children. Proudly, one boy, with a wide brimmed hat adorned by a single plumed feather and a toy monkey around his torso, holds up the poor man’s wallet. “Gents! Our hope is restored!” The other members of his crew cheer loudly, leaving the man they’d just mugged on the floor to abuse his poor aching debit card in exchange for tokens.

Outside the restaurant, I spotted Mayor Swann with his daughter in tow and a birthday present in her hand, then him taking one look at the chaos and deciding in that moment to turn around and leave. No doubt lying to his child that the restaurant had closed. Forever. No wait, take me with you, Mr. Mayor!

My train of thought was interrupted when one of the children, a boy with his hair pulled back into a ponytail asks me, “Excuse me sir, when is the show?”

Another chimes in, this one must be the birthday boy, Jack. I’d never seen a kid look this smug my entire life, “Oi, we’ve invoked the right of Parlay, we demand to see Charles Entertainment Cheese.”

I stuttered for a brief moment to regain my composure. What have I just gotten myself into? “It’s coming soon, kiddos!” Luckily, that was enough to suffice, as they’d rush back to the arcade.

Eventually the animatronic show from hell begins, the band begins playing kids songs. I don’t know what these kids were expecting, but it’s clear that the works of Scott Cawthon had done a number on their minds, as one of the children in attendance - probably the one with the slicked back ponytail, begins freaking out. One of my coworkers has to swoop in to make the kid happy. Others that were paying attention kept asking, “Where’s Freddy Fazbear?” The kids are now chanting, “Freddy! Freddy! Freddy!” I’m surprised with the pirate theme they’re not clamoring for Foxy. One chubby kid, miraculously gets up to the Chuck E animatronic, begins shaking him whilst interrogating him on the whereabouts of Freddy and his gang. He’s shaken the robot enough times where it’s god damn head FALLS OFF. Screaming ensues. I’m amazed this kid didn’t put Chuck E”s head on a pike a la Lord of the Flies, though even then I’m sure half of them will need therapy after seeing their fellow pirate brethren decapitate their beloved, cheese eating deity.

While most of the party was distracted, two of them have managed to SNEAK INTO THE KITCHEN and are stealing toppings off the pizzas. Not off the prep stations, but straight off the pizzas, I’m pretty sure half of them don’t even wash their hands. We had to remake them because we didn’t want the health department on our asses.

One of them managed to steal a whole pizza for himself and scarf it down near the ballpit. I think it was one with the wide-brimmed hat.

The birthday boy was easily the worst of the bunch; within two hours, he’d managed to hop behind the prize counter while the guy working there escaped for a bathroom break, took every miniature tote bag off the rack and used them to stuff as much prizes as he could carry. His little arms made him look like a coat rack as he waddled out from behind the corner with his treasure.

And I’ll bet you’re wondering, where was I in the chaos? Being tormented by a duo, the kid who decapitated Chuck E and another who wore an eyepatch, asking me question after question. You know, things a kid would ask like, “Whatcha doing?” Or, “What’s the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?” Actually, the one with the eyepatch kept throwing those curve balls and it made me wonder what this kid was doing in his spare time.

Then the dinner bell rang, or rather, the rockstar parent called, “Pizza’s ready!” Finally, a moment of calm as slices are distributed amongst the group. But all hell breaks loose when the sodas are passed around. Oh god no, god please no, literally give them anything but soda. It’s too late now, that bastard knew what he was doing. It was like watching the fireworks at a Fourth of July celebration, as these kids practically exploded with sugar-induced adrenaline pumping through their little bodies.

Then the final blow: the cake. Ah yes, what a cake, I remember it fondly. No expense was spared for this occasion, when most parents provided a sheet cake from their local grocery store, rockstar here provided an elaborate cake worthy of 40 or so screaming children. A treasure chest; with chocolate gold coins, the strings of pearls made from modeling chocolate and candied necklaces, precious gems made from rock candy for that nice pop of color, and a delicate map made from marzipan that read, “Happy Birthday Captain Sparrow!”

It was carried in by a man who looked to be about my age, his hair pulled back into a ponytail like that kid from earlier - though I assure you, his was messier than in comparison to the kid, and he’d be wearing a dark blue shirt. Ah, now I recognize him; James Norrington, he was an elementary school teacher but he also worked the Tortuga Arcade during Winter Break. Really nice guy. A moment of silence fell once the door opened, all the children nearly gave themselves whiplash to stare at the newcomer.

“Oh look,” they’d think, “another adult we’ve yet to wear out.”

I’m just mentally screaming at this man, “Run! Run while you still can!!”

It was in vain, as the screech of, “Cake!” Coming from the birthday boy signaled the others to descend upon him. The man struggled to keep the cake out of their grasps, holding it high up and calling, “Mr. Teague, would you please provide me with some assistance? And where is Mr. Teach?”

Mugged and still laying facedown on the floor. That cannot look comfortable, but I suppose playing dead was miles better than the alternative, which was staying awake for this mess.

Finally, rockstar does something, casually getting past the crowd to retrieve the cake with a simple, “Thanks.” Manager asks me to do a headcount, make sure the kids were all still here and not somehow sneaking out into the rooftop or something.

37…38…39…oh shit. Where’s the birthday boy?

I couldn’t just make my panic known, so I started poking around the restaurant for him, I’d even asked one of my coworkers to check the roof for the birthday boy. And Mr. Teague was beginning to notice. God, I didn’t want to tell him I’d somehow lost his kid. But, then I realized that, he wasn’t looking at me; he was looking straight at the play area. And as luck would have it, there in the ball pit, I see the kid’s head poking out with a smug grin. Thank god.

After cake and presents was when the real damage kicks in, chairs are now flying, one of our front windows gets smashed into a million pieces, and now requires repairs. I don’t even know HOW they can even find the strength to accomplish that, so I’m mildly impressed. The manager’s office is then stormed and papers flew everywhere and into the party area. Of course Mr. Sparrow nor Mr. Teach don’t end up paying for damages, not like we’d want their money anyway. We want compensation for the emotional damage we had to endure that evening. Norrington fled not long after the cake was delivered, not like I’d blame him.

Eventually, parents and guardians come around to come collect their kids, even Norrington shows back up to pick up one of them, the one with the ponytail apparently. At least Teague tips us generously, seems he knows the sort of chaos this kid and his posse can unleash.

It’s 11, closing time. During cleanup, we take survey of the property damage that had occurred in the wake of that birthday party; your usual stained carpet, but also now featuring turned over furniture, ruined play area, arcade games now so stuck, I’m pretty sure they’d have to call someone in to clean them, raided prize corner, damaged animatronics. It was as if a bomb had gone off in here. It was over, the siege of port Chuck-E-Cheese had leaned in favor of Captain Jack Sparrow and his band of miscreants.

I left, but never came back for my next shift. I spend Sunday and Monday job hunting, and luckily I was able to land a job with the East India Trading Company.

I’d thought I’d seen the last of Jack, and his vast pirate army. Life as an underling in EITC was as mundane yet stable as one could imagine an office job to be, money flow is steady with a 9 to 5, paid vacation time, they’ve even got dental. I’d moved out of my crappy apartment and moved somewhere I could enjoy the peace and quiet; I vowed to never have kids. Life was good.

Until one Monday, I saw Jack again, he was pestering my boss, Beckett, asking him question after question. One of his little friends is aggressively flossing in another room, Jack has now gotten ahold of one of the company computers. Somehow he unleashes a virus. All the of work I’d poured in the past few hours gone the drain and now I’m openly mocked by a video of badly played recorder music. The bass is boosting hard, my ears are bleeding.

I’m going to put in my request for a transfer tomorrow.

[acoustic-punk]

Things My Family Cries About After our Dog Died

Empty Spaces Jack took up so much space in the house. He was a big boy 120lbs Shepherd lab mix. The biggest dog we have ever had. He had massive dog beds in almost every room, that we have learned to avoid stepping on. It’s muscle memory to avoid certain corners and squeeze by tight spaces so we don’t disrupt Jack or step over his beds.  The corners feel like gaping chasms now. We don’t know what to do with the space and we hate it

Fire Trucks We live on a busy Main Street so we have our fair share of sirens and emergency vehicles driving past us. Jack had a habit of howling with the trucks. He could hear them in the distance before we even picked up on them and just let loose some good old dog howls along with the sirens. In the early morning when everyone is sleeping in the house, Jack would hear a distant siren and let out sleepy little howls with it. It was quiet this morning and I heard a siren in the distance and wept a little thinking of his sleepy, half awake howls. He would do it without getting up, still asleep in his bed, howling with the trucks.

Pizza Crust It’s been too hot to cook in the house the last couple of days, so the family decided to try a new pizza place. We all sat around the table and critiqued the slices as we are want to do as NJ pizza snobs. We all started to get quiet as we finished our slices and got to the crust. I could tell we were all thinking the same thing as my Dad started to tear up. Jack would have loved this pizza crust. Which is perhaps the best and only pizza criteria that matters. 10/10 will order and cry again. 

Vacuuming Jack shed so much. Little golden and coarse hairs everywhere. They had a habit of weaving themselves into the clothing, not just laying on top, but somehow getting stuck in the fabric. When getting dressed for work in the morning, Jack and I would engage in a fun dance, where he would try to rub against me to pet him and I would dodge and try to pet from a far to avoid getting covered in hair before work. I  was never successful.  Stared sobbing yesterday while vacuuming and stopped. I’m not ready to get rid of the little piles of Jack hair that still litter the house. It hurts too much to get rid of those little clumps of golden hair for good.

Morning Routines Jack had us all on a schedule. Wake up with enough time to go for a walk or as he got older to sit in the sun, snow, or rain in the backyard. Make sure those squirrels know that the old man was still there to protect his yard. Come back inside and clean him up a bit and make sure he had fresh water and some kibble for the day.  Now my alarm goes off early and I automatically get up expecting to see and excited tail wag or get booped with a cold wet nose and realize my big guy isn’t here anymore. My whole morning is shot and I’m not sure how to break out of this funk for the rest of the day. 

[wicked-jade]

@ogcobrafest A fill for the Motorcycle Jackets prompt, feat. the Cobras being unholy terrors at the mall again. Gen.

“Dutch!”

Dutch turned at the sound of his name, tearing his eyes away from the greasy pizzas on display behind Sbarro’s plexiglass barrier.

“You need to come with me,” Johnny panted, skidding to a halt by his side.

“Why?” Dutch grumped, still trying to decide between Supreme and plain ol’ Pepperoni.

“Dude, c’mon!” Johnny insisted, grabbing him by the sleeve and tugging. “I wanna show you something!”

“And I wanna slice!” Dutch griped, dragging his heels as Johnny tried to lead him away.

“You can eat later. Hurry up, asshole!”

Dutch followed, grumbling all the while. They collected the others from the line at Hot Dog On A Stick. At Bobby’s confused look, Dutch shrugged helplessly and signaled to follow the leader.

Down one hall, up the escalator, then down another. They followed Johnny like ducklings until he finally came to a stop in front of Wilson’s Leather. Dutch followed his starry-eyed gaze to the window display, which was full of motorcycle jackets in an array of colors.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Johnny grinned, taking a step closer.

“I got dibs on the red one!”

“Over my dead body.” Johnny scowled, pushing past Dutch to make his way inside.

[1autistictacticalrefrigerator]

A Love Like This ❤️

PT 2

( summer break is steadily approaching, once I feel better I should be dropping these story parts faster, maybe. 🥱 )

NEW CHARACTER:

Shopkeeper 🫡 - Runs a little gas station in the busy part of town, near the pizza place. Hides a few secrets of their own, one cryptic little fucker. ( Closest to what Im gonna say as a self insert btw lmfao. )

——————————————————————————————————————————————

When Soap got back, he immediately told Price and Gaz of his little adventure, at first they were skeptical, but later grew a little concerned that if what Soap was saying is true, then the monster could potentially be dangerous.

Price and Gaz just told Soap to stay away from the building, which even to Soap seemed like a sensible idea. It was getting late, so everyone was heading home, including Soap. He stops by the gas station, where the strange Shopkeeper resides until late midnight.

The bell rings as Soap opens the door and the Shopkeeper looks up, giving Soap a friendly wave. He waves back.

Soap grabs a few snacks and a drink before heading to the counter.

“How was your day?” The Shopkeeper hums, scanning the items set in front of her.

“It was absolutely crazy.” Soap said, thinking back to when he was still in that dark void, falling and falling…

The Shopkeeper smiles, “You look like you’re miles and miles away from reality.” She says, snapping her fingers in front of Soap’s face to get him back to reality. “Tired?”

Soap nods, “Yeah.”

The Shopkeeper finishes packing Soap’s purchases and hands the bag to him, “Do me a favor and go get some rest. After all, tomorrow will be the next day’s today.”

“Right. Goodnight.” Soap accepts the bag and starts walking out. Never able to understand what the lady is saying. Her english hurts my head. Soap thought as he got back into his car, driving home. She’s nice though, always been a solid shoulder to rely on.

. . .

The following day was going to be a big one, it was the pizza place’s 9th anniversary. Every anniversary, the pizza place would give out free pizza outside, and quite a lot of people would camp out around wherever the event was held and have a picnic.

Soap was almost late because he overslept, but luckily Gaz jumped in and saved the day by telling him he should come to the dog park in the neighborhood, since the event would be held there.

When Soap arrives there were already people. Price waves Soap over.

“Overslept?” Price asks.

Soap gives a sheepish smile, “Yeah. Sorry.”

“Never mind that. Help me set all these boxes out.” Price gestures to the van packed with pizza boxes. Soap nods.

As Soap was unpacking and setting everything out, he feels like he’s being watched. It wasn’t just a normal glance, he could feel the intensity of the gaze, and it gave him goosebumps. But Soap learns you never are supposed to let whoever is observing you know you’re aware of it so Soap continues like it’s nothing. Problem some overly curious kid.

. . .

The goosebumps never go away as Soap finishes unloading all the pizza from the van. People were already lining up for the hot, fresh slices.

Gaz was handing out pizza, Price was overlooking the crowd. This year’s crowd was a smaller one, which Soap actually doesn’t mind. Big crowds are always hard to manage, and last year they had a huge crowd- it was a huge nightmare.

Out of the corner of Soap’s eye, he could spot a few scrawny and sickly children looking at the pizza boxes from a distance. They all looked beyond hungry, but looked like they were never fed remotely enough in the first place. There were a lot of homeless people in this part of the town so it shouldn’t be a surprise. However, seeing theres more than enough pizza for everyone, Soap gestured the children over, handing them a box.

“Really? We can take it?” Asked one of the kids.

Soap nods, a soft smile on his face.

A little girl popped up from behind the one holding the pizza box, “You’re nice. Are you a angel?”

Soap suppresses a laugh. He was far from a angel, he’s killed people before- the joys of the military. But he only gives the little girl a pat on the head, ruffling her messy, dirty hair.

“Afraid not, but I try.” Soap says to the little group of kids.

“I think you are.” The little girl crosses her arms.

Soap lets out a little chuckle, “Well, thank you.”

The children scramble out of the park shortly after, probably to find their parents. Soap watches them go.

As Soap watches the children go, he feels that same “You’re being watched” vibe. This time way stronger. Soap turns around and jumps.

“Uh.. I think I know you.” Soap says to the tall man towering over him.

Indeed he knew the man in front of him, it was Ghost. It was weird to see Ghost’s body not emitting blackfire, so different for a moment Soap thought Ghost was someone else- Ghost looked way more human when he wasn’t emitting those flames.

Ghost’s red eyes stared right back at Soap- the only indication he wasn’t human.

“So, big guy, how can I help you? If you’re here for the event then pizza boxes are right there, feel free to grab any kind you like.” Soap chirps, pointing to the boxes.

“…” Ghost was silent for a moment, “It was nice of you.”

“Huh..? To point out where the pizza boxes were??” Soap asked, confused.

“No.” Ghost says, “To help those starving kids.”

“Oh!” Soap’s face lights up, “I guess. I try- to be nice I mean.” Then Soap shoots Ghost a sheepish smile.

Ghost tilts his head curiously, “You sound uncertain.”

”I do?” Soap quickly exclaims, then flushes a little when he realizes that just gave him away. “Well- yes. Kinda.”

“Hm. Why?” Ghost asks curiously.

Soap lets out a series of “uhmmms” and “uhhhs”.

“You don’t have to tell me.” Ghost says plainly after a while of getting nothing.

Immediately Soap felt bad.

“Military.” Soap quickly blurts out.

Ghost nods like he understands. Soap just shrugs- this is a little awkward..

Soap tries to lift the silence that followed after. “So um. You staying for the rest of the.. event?”

“Mm..” Ghost hums.

“It’d be great to have some company.”

“Very well then. I’ll stay.”

…

Soap’s been chattering away, and Ghost listened. Absent-mindedly of course, because Soap can’t feel it, but Ghost could- being a otherworldly being.

The air was off. And that’s never a good sign.

( Didnt check for spelling so ignore the mistakes 😊 )

[kiankiwi]

(wolf blues) we tease e with buying him some dog toys or balls and e huffs but in reality he uses the balls. getting him tired takes time, usually we and jerry are the ones to make him tired so he ironically plays with the ball we got him. but e still tackles both of us.

we know his tired bc his tongue is out and he's panting and laying on the ground, we make him a small water fountain and he always makes a mess with the water fountain so we put it outside. then he just snoozes away or is laying with us, we're always crushed by e after some encouraging.

also if we be like "hey lets order something " e decides to be in his wolf form for the rest of the day so when the take out gets the delivery guy is like "holy shit there's q big ass wolf" and if e starts growling they get so scared. if we order pizza we just throw a slice at him and he catches it, sometimes he doesn't catch them tho and we laugh. he sleeps on top of us and we have LOTS of air conditioners in graceland and they're always at the lowest temperature. it's sometimes freezing in there and the memphis guys are like "oh gosh is too cold" but we do it bc e in his wolf form is like "it's too hot help"

He does grumble at you the first time he sees you bought him toys but that same night you catch him playing with them and of course you don't say anything but keep buying toys and over time he will play with them in front of you and even play with you lol He's so happy to play but it takes up to two hours sometimes getting him to go to bed and of course there's zoomies around the house every night.

He flops on the ground wherever he is when he's tired so if we're not paying attention he'll sometimes almost trip us when he's napping and we don't see him.

He's a very protective puppy even though he knows we were going to order food and he doesn't need to protect us from the dang pizza guy lol. I can see him getting pizza sauce on his nose from sniffing our pizza and since he put his whole nose in it we just let him have it. He has the worst begging eyes too. We can't say no to him!

I picture him looking similar to a husky so because he has so much fur he's always hot! So yeah graceland is freezing but we don't mind because we love wearing layers and using multiple blankets

[fratboykate]

I just know that frat boyfriend Kate is the one who got Yelena her dog Fanny and every single toy she bought her was beer or alcohol related in some way. Yelena loves this dog so much and trained it to perfection and the dumbass keeps setting back the training at every single turn as she keeps giving her table food and letting Fanny do whatever she pleases. Yelena takes Fanny to her vet appointment and the vet tells her Fanny is a little overweight and Yelena is like HOW CAN THIS BE!? My child is perfect?? She later finds Kate sharing half of a meatball sub with her precious dog like WTF ARE YOU DOINGGGGG our fur child!

Negative. Hear me out. Yelena does the scientific method three times over then prays to the gods asking for divine intervention and seven consecutive miracles just to consider changing her phone background. She's never going to let Kate walk into her apartment being like "here is a living creature and a lifetime commitment. enjoy." unless there was like........a ring on her finger already and even then Kate would probably have to do a whole song a dance to not have to take the dog back. There's A Process to decision making in Yelena Belova's life. You don't just DROP big things on her lap.

BUT she absolutely has THE SINGLE MOST well trained dog on the planet...until Kate Bishop and her bad manners roll around. And that only gets worse when Kate Bishop has a night out with her friends and drunk Kate Bishop shows up at 3am at Yelena's house with "a best friend for Fanny" aka her new dog Lucky aka the one eyed stray she just decided to scoop up from the street.

Kate stumbles in with a half eaten box of pizza and a six pack in hand (that only has four beers now), half a slice in her mouth, and the dog is halfway through a slice too. And Yelena is like "Kate literally...what the actual fuck??? I leave you unsupervised for ONE (1) night???"

Fanny was on the strictest raw diet. Only ate the best food and supplements. It was a whole thing. Kate rolls around and it's like..."HAVE A PIZZA ROLL! OH SHE'S NOT LOOKING HERE'S A CHICKEN NUGGET. ARE YOU GIVING ME PUPPY EYES FOR FRIES?! HOW COULD I SAY NO?!" All while Yelena is not around of course and then she catches Kate one day and she's FUCKING LIVID...and to be fair...warranted. Kate doesn't see her naked again for a hot second after that lol

Kate Bishop...worst influence for everyone, regardless of species...

[kingbabydollbilly]

Arcade Nights (Kim Seokjin x Fem!Reader)

Summary:  Jin and Y/N spend their night under neon lights, surrounded by the sounds of lasers, coins, and music.

Word Count:  762

A/N:  A little blurb that came to mind after seeing this moodboard  by @ruminationnn​

“Take that, you evil goblin!!”  Y/N shouted, pointing her gun controller at the screen on the arcade machine in front of her, each shot racking up hundreds of points, adding to her already high score.

“How are you so good at this game?  Should I be worried about how skilled you are with a gun?”  Jin chuckled, watching his excited girlfriend master her game.

“Only if you’re a nasty green goblin.”  She giggled, hanging up the controller back onto the rack for the next person.

“Come on, Y/N, have you seen me?  Worldwide handsome.”  Jin dramatically ran his fingers through his hair.

“Oh, shush, you.”  Y/N poked a finger into his chest.  “Let’s go grab some pizza slices, if I wait any longer for food, I’m gonna pass out onto the floor.  And from the looks of it,”  She glanced down onto the black and neon green carpet beneath her feet.  “if I did that, I would be picking popcorn crumbs out of my hair for a week.”

“At least you would have food for the week.”  Jin joked.

Y/N rolled her eyes but couldn’t fight the smile forming on her face.  She quickly turned towards the direction of the arcade cafeteria, her pastel blue and white gingham skirt twirling around her from the speed of her movements.  Jin simply watched her in awe for a moment before catching up to her and following her.  

Upon reaching the front diner style counter, Y/N took a seat on a neon green leather stool in front of it, Jin sitting next to her.  

“Are you sure you still just want pizza?”  Jin questioned her, noticing how wide her eyes had grown once she realized how many options she actually had.

Hamburger $4.25

Hot Dog $2.00

French Fries  $3.00

Chicken Tenders  $3.50

Pizza Slices  $1.75

Milkshakes $2.50

Soda  $1.25

“Hmm….”  Y/N thought for a moment.  “Yeah, just two pepperoni pizza slices, please!”

“Okay, love.  Excuse me, miss?”  Jin called out to the employee behind the counter.

“Hi!  What can I get for you two kids today?”  

“Can I please have three pepperoni pizza slices?”

“And a chocolate milkshake!”  Y/N added.

“And I suppose two chocolate milkshakes.”  Jin laughed.

“Sure thing!  Coming right up!  That’ll just be….$10.25!”

“Wow, Y/N, you’re expensive.”  He teased as he dug his wallet out of his jeans pocket.

Laughter filled the two lovebirds as they battled the grease dripping off of their thick pizza slices onto their inconveniently white t-shirts, strings of cheese stretching out past their limits until they plopped down onto their chins.  Each slice of pepperoni covered their taste buds with a delightfully subtle spice.  The ice cold chocolate milkshakes they consumed in between bites contrasted the piping hot pizza deliciously.  

“Full?”  Jin asked, wiping his chin with a napkin, then lightly poking Y/N’s side.

“Yep!  Stuffed!”  She grinned from ear to ear, showing her teeth.

“Hey, you ding dong, you’ve got pizza sauce on your face.”

Jin took a napkin from his unused pile and wiped the sauce off of her face, chuckling as he did so.

“Thanks!”  She leaned forward to give him a peck on the lips.

“See, it’s good that I did that.  I would have a face full of sauce right now!”

“You’re silly, Jin!”

“Not as silly as you!!”

As much fun as the couple was having, the night was nearing its end.  The pair walked out of the arcade building, hands entwined, the bright neon lights fading the farther they went.

“Did you have fun?”  Jin asked, opening the passenger side door for Y/N.

“Yes!  I had a lot of fun!  We’ll have to come back here.  I want to try their chicken tenders next!  And see how good the ranch is!”

“All ranch tastes the same.”  Jin said loudly as he walked around his car over to the driver’s side.

“It does not!!”  Y/N argued.

“It does too!  Like water!”

“Oh, don’t even get me started about how wrong you are.”

Jin reached over from the driver’s side and tousled her hair.  

“We can continue this debate at home.”  Jin placed his keys into the ignition and started the car.

“Home it is!  Hey, when we get there, do you want to watch a scary movie?”

“Sure thing, lovebug.”

A perfect way to end a perfect night; scared out of her wits curled into Jin’s chest, laughing when he almost spills the popcorn bowl in his lap from a jumpscare.