#we re gonna be very strict starting from tomorrow

[spkyart]

EVERYONE SAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY VERY BEST FRIEND, MARTINI 🔪💀 🎉

I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU ARE ALREADY TWO! NO MATTER HOW OLD YOU GET, YOU WILL ALWAYS BE A BABY TO MY EYES, I LOVE YOU MORE THAN EVERYTHING 🦜 ❤️

[leah-lover]

Two hearts one timeline. Alexia putellas x reader.Angst

Part 1. part 2

“ Why did it take you so long to go out with me?” asked alexia. She sat opposite wearing a dress, heer hair was down, her makeup was minimal but she was absolutely stunning.  Her words were true though. It took her asking you out 4 times for you to agree. 

“ Well I wanted you to be sure that you wanted me. I don't want to cause you any stress especially because this is  a crucial part of the season.” you respond. “ I am happy you agreed to come with me. And yes, I really really want you.” she cheekily responded. 

Both the conversation, food and wine were great. Once you finished she drove you to your house. 

“ This was definitely the best date I have ever had.”  you say to alexia once you get to your door. “ i will be happy if this date continues?” she suggests. 

“ I am not sleeping with you, capitana. We have a game tomorrow, you need sleep. I am willing to kiss you though.” you say before giving her the sweetest most gentle kiss. Her hands on your waist, your on her neck. You last for a while before pulling out. “ go home and rest, capi.” you say before pulling out of her hold and entering your apartment complex. 

The next morning was matchday. You had a strict routine to follow and you did it to the T. However, flashes of the night before kept flooding your mind from time to time. Alexia’s smile, laugh, and lips were all what you were thinking about on your way to the stadium. 

Upon getting there, you also do your usual routine getting ready for a game you were starting, Alexia still on your mind. When you saw her in her game fit you couldn't help but let your jaw drop. She was in fact wearing a very sexy look that you wanted to tear it off her right then and there. When she saw your reaction she couldn't help but smile. 

The game started out really well. You managed to score 2 goals in 10 minutes which earned you an embrace from your captain, and the team was dominating like usual. however , it would all turn at the 60 minutes when alexia falls on the ground. You weren't far away from her when it happened so you ran as soon as you saw her ignoring the play happening. You knelt as soon as you got there and heard her say “ Joder, joder, no joder mi rodilla, no otra vez.” you understood that she was cursing about her knee. 

You then get the hai out of her face and tell her to calm down. “ Dulce bebé, todo estará bien.” you comfort her. 

You didn't hear the whistle blow, still in your bubble with Alexia when Parti urged you up to leave space for the medical team. You were shaking with fear for Alexia but the play resumed. She was the only thing on your mind for the next 10 minutes you were on the field before Jona subbed you out. 

You made an excuse for needing ice from the locker room so that you can go in and see alexia. 

Once you got there, she was laying on the physio bed alone and her knee was bandaged up.  “ ohh my sweet baby” you say to her when you see the tears i n her eyes. You go to her cup her face and kiss her lips and her red cheeks gently. 

“ It's gonna be fine mi amor.” you add but she is still silent. “ Can I stay with you?” you ask. “ Look, Jona is pretty upset about me re-injuring my knee. I don't want him to blame you or anything so it is best to keep our relationship a secret for now.” she says breaking what was left of your heart. You get up and leave immediately not wanting her to see you cry. You try and collect yourself before heading out to the field again. 

You keep your head down, meet the fans and shake the hands of the players. 

When you get to the locker room you change quickly and head to your car without saying goodby to anybody which they would later find weird. 

You cry the whole way to your house “ she is ashamed of me.” you say quietly between sobs. When you get home you go directly to your bed and fall asleep wanting this day to end. 

You wake up at 4 am and check our phone to find a text from alexia “ estrella i am just trying to protect you.” 

“ thank you capi.” you respond and shut your phone again. You didn't realize how much you felt for Alexia until you saw her down on the field,  an image that would haunt you.  

The next morning you got a message from the group chat that said that alexia was injured and needed another surgery. So you text her wishing her good luck and that you were thinking of her but she was radio silent. 

The following days were grim for you. You felt bad waking up and even worse going to training. All you thought about was how Alexia was doing. You were getting regular updates through the group chat but wanted to hold and sooth her knowing how badly she felt. You wanted to kiss  her and be with her but you couldn't since patri was at her house and a few medical staff members too. 

You were bad at training, you didn't sleep well or eat well and your negative state was obvious to the entire team. 

“ chica what’s wrong?” asked aitana one day after training. As soon as she put her hand on your back you broke down and started crying. You didn't realize how touch starved you were and how much you needed to be comforted. 

“ You need to talk to me right now.”  ordered aitana after you came down. 

“ I caused alexia’s injury.” you declare looking at the ground. 

“ We started dating a few weeks ago and we went on a date the day before. I think I distracted her and caused her injury. I just want to be there for her and love her but we are a secret so I can't.” when you verbalized  your feelings you felt like a weight was lifted off your shoulders. 

“ re-injuries happen when you had an ACL it's not your fault estrella . if you want to go see the captain a can arrange that.” 

You look at her in shock before she says “ go get ready i go do some phone calls. “ 

When you park in front of her apartment, nerves settle in your stomach but you push through, go to her door and open it with the keys patri left under the mat. 

You enter as quietly as possible. When you set your gaze on her form you feel relieved. She was laying on the couch watching tv with her knee propped up on a pillow. 

When you see each other she smiles and you tear up. 

“ oh my god i missed you so much.” she says when you reach her. “ Amor, why are you crying?” she adds. 

“ I missed you.” you respond before meeting her soft lips. “ I was  so worried.” you say before she cuts you off. 

“ I know aitana told me. Amor, you didn't cause anything and I am sorry for pushing you away.” 

“ te amo” she added. “ I love you too” you respond before kissing her again. 

[marvelsbetch]

Peter Parker’s field trip part 2

March 7th

Peter's POV

I woke up peacefully to Friday playing Highway to Hell and telling me it was 6:30am and I needed to get up for school. Concerned for Wade's sleeping I quickly told Friday to be quiet and that I was up, I obviously didn't want to wake him at such a cruel hour.

Stumbling out of my room in a sleep filled haze, almost walking into the door frame and tripping over my shoes, I made my way to the kitchen to find Pops trying to cook breakfast and silently arguing with Thor who put his hammer in front of the fridge yet again, Loki really is a bad influence on the God.

"Uncle Thor please move the hammer so I can have breakfast. Please." I requested giving him my puppy dog eyes knowing he can't resist them.

With a small grunt Thor moved his hammer and set it on top of the kitchen counter out of people way. Pops sent me a grateful look before pulling eggs, milk and cheese out of the fridge to make Captain America's famous omelette. I smiled slightly and moved to sit on one of the bar stools at the island counter and watched slowly as all the Avengers plus Loki, T'Challa and Shuri were woken up by the amazing smell. All but my boyfriend who could probably sleep through an earthquake, hurricane and tsunami all at once. It's a gift.

-1 hour later-

After breakfast I got ready to just come back here, grabbed my back, kissed my now awake boyfriend goodbye, hugged my Dads goodbye and made my way to the car with Happy prepared to take me to school. On the way Happy gave me a lecture on how I was basically representing Dad and SI so I should be on my best behaviour. It was boring and in all honest, I'd heard it before on the field trip to the zoo we have last month, that didn't end well in all honesty. It's better left saying some monkeys escaped and it totally wasn't my fault.

"Right Kid. We're hear, I'll pick you up tomorrow from here so message me when you're on your way back to school." He told me, I could tell he was going to miss me but I could also tell he was looking forward to the extra one hours sleep he was going to get tomorrow from not needing to drop me off.

"Bye Happy. Tell everyone I'll miss them. See you tomorrow and I'll give regular update and text you if anything happens." I told him before exiting the car and walking up to Ned who was waiting outside the bus ready for me.

"Hey man. You looking forward to the surprise field trip?" Ned asked as we stepped onto the bus.

"Not really. I'm gonna miss everyone at the tower. Wade arrived last night as well so I'm not gonna see him for like another two days." I sighed as we sat down next to each other in the middle of the bus.

"Hey penis. I know what the field trip is and you're gonna be in so much shit." Flash tainted as he passed us.

"Steve wouldn't be happy with your language." I mumbled so only Ned heard. We both giggled a little but everyone was soon quietened down by Mrs Robbins shouting at us.

"Okay so before we leave we must take role call to see who's here." She explained and started reading names off of her sheet. Everyone responded with a simple yes miss and everything was going well until she got to my name.

"Patricia Parker!" She yelled and looked directly at me. I simply ignored it and continued to stare out of the window until she shouted it again louder.

"Come on Penis just answer. Don't try and stall this." Flash huffed from the back of the bus.

"Fine. Peter Parker is here." I told her emphasising the work 'Peter'.

"What ever." She grumbled going back to role call.

-30 minutes later-

As we were driving I noticed a lot of places, it took a few seconds until it finally clicked as to where we were going. Stark Industries. Over night. Oh dear.

“Right kids. We're going to be there in roughly 5 minutes so please get you begs sorted, make sure your areas are clean and you have everything with you." Mrs Robbins told us from the front of the bus.

"I bet you'd recognise this way from your internship, if it was real." Flash sneered as if it was going to affect me.

Soon we pulled into the visitor parking lot and exited the car. I was slightly shaking with anxiety especially when Happy and two other security guards, Johnson and Stone (I don't know their first names) walked over to us and started running through the security guidelines.

"And finally and type of bullying or intolerance towards anyone inside this building with not be tolerated and the person doing it will be kicked out immediately. That could be in 10 minutes or at 2:00 in the morning. It will not be tolerated." Happy finished giving me a look that said 'I know something you don't know I know'. Shit.

"Okay now that that is out of the way with, follow us." Happy said leading us inside the lobby of the building by swiping his security card.

“Okay we're gonna give you all access passes. These are the lowest of the 10 levels you get get so basically all you can use them for is the toilet. We have a strict no re-printing policy and a display policy. In other words you must always have your pass on display on your outer most layer of clothing, if it's lost then you will be searched and escorted out of the building if it is not found. Let that be a warning to everyone." Johnson explained as Stone started handing out the passes, glossing over me, Ned and MJ of course, until everyone had them.

Me, Ned and MJ all had to pull out our avenger themed cards. Mine was half and half Iron Man and Captain America cause there my dads. Ned's was a combo of everyone's as he couldn't decide which one he preferred. MJ went for Nat cause MJ liked the fact that she, and Pepper, could control all of us and was the only girl original Avenger. MJ admires her as a icon for women.

"Okay everyone scan your passes as you walk through the scanner like this." Stone demonstrated as he scanned his pass and walked through the scanner with his hands out.

"Logan Stone. Security level clearance:8. No unauthorised items." F.R.I.D.A.Ys voice announced.

"Now all of you do it." Happy instructed.

Everyone started going through the scanner, Flash being the most smug as his level 1 clearance was announced, until it got the the final three. Me, Ned and MJ. MJ decided to go first, F.R.I.D.A.Y announced her name, level 9 security clearance and the fact she had no unauthorised items with her. Next was Ned, F.R.I.D.A.Y announced his name, level 9 security clearance and the fact he had no unauthorised items. Next was me, I was dreading it.

"Come on Patricia, just admit your internship is fake now and save us all the trouble." Flash shouted over everyone making Happy stop and glare at him. He was about to make a move towards Flash but I put my hand out and stopped him.

"Just leave it Hap. He's not worth cancelling whatever Dad's got planned." I told him in a low voice trying to be unheard.

"He says one more thing and I'll knock him out." Happy threatened.

"I have no doubt you will." I sighed and decided I stalled enough. I quickly scanned my card and walked through the scanner with my hands up like everyone else.

"Peter Stark-Rodgers, level 10 security clearance. No unauthorised items. Mr Stark-Rodgers has already been informed of your arrival. Thank you for using the front entrance." F.R.I.D.A.Ys robotic but slightly sarcastic voice announced.

The tour started off normal. One of the actual interns, Owen, greeted us and me separately. We were quite good friends as he was one of the people to help me when Wade asked me out, I will be eternally grateful to him.

"Okay, our first stop on this tour is the avengers museum. You will be allowed to take photos but please refrain from touching anything as they could activate. Everything thing in this room is the real deal except a few things. We will also be trying to lift Thor's hammer in this room with him there of course." Owen explained. So, this is where Dads plans begin.

We walked into the museum and was greeted with 3 main area. Original Avengers, later added Avengers and Avengers associates. Then, I saw a red and blue display. Spider-Man has his own display IN THE LATER ADDED AVENGERS SECTION. Did this mean Dad wanted me to be an Avenger? What's going on? Did Fury know about this?

Ned grabbed my hand and led me to the display cases where I saw my old suit and computers next to replicas and photos of my current ones. This is so cool.

“Spider-Man is the latest mighty hero to join the Avengers in their mission to protecc the Earth and Asgard. Spider-Man has been described my many to be funny, witty and charming. He the only Avenger to have not revelled his identity yet but we are sure he will in due time. Fun facts about Spider-Man:

He is afraid of Spiders ironically,

He's a complete Daddy's boy,

He made his first suit himself,

He lives with Tony and Steve Stark-Rodgers,

And finally, he can rival Tony Stark-Rodgers levels of Sass." Ned read from the information

I silently groaned at the second fun fact knowing full well Dad was just trying to boost his ego. Oh well, it's kind of hard not to be true.

"Oo Penis Parker checking out the exhibit on his 'friends'." Flash sneered putting air quotes around 'friends'.

"Right, come along people. We have an exclusive lecture with Dr Banner on Gamma radiation and how it affects the human body. Everybody make and orderly que and and we can make our way there." Owen informed and instructed.

We all qued up with me and my friends at the back and started to walk towards the elevator to go to Bruce's lab. Once we found ourselves outside of the lab the reality of the situation set in, we're going to be talking to my Uncle Bruce. While no one in the class knows he's my Uncle and I'm with my Bully and Transphobic teacher. I dread to think what's about to happen.

"Okay kids. Be very polite and respectful, we don't want a code Green." Owen instructed before knocking on the door and waiting for Bruce to open it as Owen didn't have high enough clearance to open the door.

After a minute of waiting and no sign of Bruce Owen knocked again but to no avail. I knew that Bruce was working on a new project last night so it's highly likely he's asleep so I stepped forward, security card in hand and swiped it for entrance.

"Peter Parker, access granted." F.R.I.D.A.Ys voice sounded from above the door way.

I opened the door slowly and saw Bruce asleep on the couch. Motioning for everyone to give me a minute I creeped into the room to gently wake him up.

"Uncle Bruce, you have to give my class a lecture. Uncle Bruce wake up." I said softly and gently shook him awake.

"What? Peter? Aren't you supposed to be in school?" Bruce asked slowly sat up.

"I'm on a field trip and you're supposed to give a lecture to my class. They're all outside but you fell asleep." I informed him.

"Oh my god I'm so sorry. Ask them to give me a minute and I'll be mostly ready. Thanks Pete." Bruce replied scrambling to clean up a little bit and get sorted.

"He'll just be a minute." I informed my class while exiting the room waiting for Bruce when I heard Uncle Clint shifting in the vents. Oh no, this has been planned.

“Hello Midtown. Sorry for the delay, life of a stressed scientist. I'm sure most of you know what that's like. Come in, take a seat and please excuse the mess." Bruce greeted and opened the door wider for us to enter.

We all shuffled into the highly cluttered room and sat down in one of the fold out chairs set us in the centre of the room infront  of three dry erase boards. Uncle Bruce started his lecture but I soon tuned him out as I had heard it all before.

"Peter!" Clint yelled popping his head out from the vent with a grin on his face.

"Barton." I said in a monotone voice to hopefully convey my disinterest in whatever he was planning.

"I was asking if I could go into your room to borrow some silly string. Tony fucked with a few of my arrows and I'm not happy about it. I was literally shocked!" He shouted the last sentence making me wince and cover my ears.

"Yes you may but only one can. I need the rest for Loki cause he's the only one out of all of you that hasn't had a string attack yet. Hopping to change that soon." I informed.

"Cool. I'm taking the blue one. Bye, see you later." He waved before disappearing back into the vents and crawling away.

"He has this all planned doesn't he?" I asked Uncle Bruce signing slightly.

"Sorry kid." He smirked and continued with his lecture despite people only being focused on gawping at me.

Soon after that his lecture was finished and we moved on. Owen took us to a more general development lab where people started their testing to see if it was possible and worth perusing. As soon as we entered I was greeted with Shuri running towards me and hugging me tightly.

"Shuri, you literally saw me last night. Why are you hugging me so tightly?" I asked smiling slightly.

"I still missed you. Brother has been boring but these labs are very interesting, still they would be more so with you here." She told me pulling away and looking at my astonished class.

"Hello children of Midtown High School. I am Shuri Princess of Wakanda and this is my brother, the king." Shuri introduced smiling at everyone's shocked faces.

"I can introduce myself sister." T'Challa told her.

"Now you know how I feel." She told him smirking before walking off to see one of the experiments happening in the room.

We looked around the lab for a little while, I helped a few people with equations and how to improve their testing. Shuri and I shouted memes and vines at each other from across the room. Flask and Mrs Robbins glared at me any chance they got.

"Right Children, it's time for lunch. You've been privileged enough to have lunch on the level 7 balcony right near the landing pad. Please be calm and sensible and respectful of the employees eating there." Owen explained and lead us up to the eating deck.

Once there I immediately noticed Uncle Thor and Loki waiting around the corner obviously looking for me. They truly planned this. Anyway, me, Ned and MJ all walked over to an empty table and they took out their lunches when I noticed I left mine in the kitchen this morning. Shoot.

"Peter!" I hear Thor yell as he and Loki walk around the corner with his arms out.

"Hello Thor. To what do I owe the pleasure?" I asked jokingly formally.

"Does one need a reason to visit his favourite nephew?" Thor asked bringing me into a hug, possibly crushing everyone of my ribs in the process, while Loki stood awkwardly to the side.

"If your all going to embarrass me can I ask you a favour in return?" I asked the brothers.

"Of course Peter! Anything for my nephew!" Thor all but yelled and clapped me on the back.

"Yeah, I left my lunch on the kitchen counter today. Could you possibly run up and get it for me please." I requested when a flying object fell from the sky.

My lunch.

"YOUR WELCOME!" I heard Sam yell from above us.

"THANKS BIRD BRAIN!" I yelled back at him and sat back down as the table, Thor and Loki soon following.

"Peter, I was wondering later if you could help me with my magic. I've been trying to work on my long distance aim and I think you'd be the perfect person to practice with." Loki asked shyly, he still isn't comfortable with all of us yet but he's made loads of progress.

"To hit or to avoid?" I jokingly asked earning a slight laugh out of the giant.

"To miss. I'll place the object I want to hit next to you and 'throw' a spell at it. If you're next to it it gives me more motivation to not hit it." Loki explained.

"Yeah sure I'll do that. What time were you thinking?" I asked.

"Well, you're class is staying the night and tomorrow day so maybe we could find time tonight or tomorrow night." Loki said making me realise my entire class has witnessed this entire encounter. For frick sake.

"Peter!" The deep voice of Bucky yelled from the doorway to the balcony.

My entire class looked in shock as I hugged good bye to the Gods and James 'Bucky' Barnes walked over to me with a bag and an apron saying 'Kiss the cook' on it. Once he was within range I could smell the contents of the bag. White chocolate and caramel cookies. My favourite.

"I made cookies and thought you might like some while they're hot." He explained handing me the beg witch I immediately accepted and took a cookie from.

"Thank you Uncle Bucky." I said but it was muffled by the whole cookie I shoved into my mouth. Classy.

"Hey you said you'd wait for me!" I hear my boyfriend shout appearing at the doorway and running towards me with his arms spread.

"I said I was leaving in one minute and you could come if you wanted. I never said I'd wait for you cause I know how long you can take." Bucky complained to Wade who crushed me into a hug and kissed my lips briefly.

My entire class and teacher were stunned at this point. Every single jaw, except Ned and MJ's, was on the floor. When Wade kissed me I could faintly see from the corner of my eye my teacher so red and angry. Close minded female dog.

"I've not seen you all day how are you?" Wade asked pulling away.

"I'm fine, you saw me less than a few hours ago. Not much changed." I told him smiling a little and pulling him into another kiss. I did this to annoy my teacher but mainly because I just loved to kiss my boyfriend. Sue me.

"I know but anything could happen while I'm not there. I love you too much to allow anything to happen to you." He said to me after a solid 40 seconds of kissing.

"Right well, I'm gonna go back upstairs. Wade, you can stay with Peter as long as you keep your hands to yourself." Bucky warned before walking off back into the tower and Me and Wade sat down with me on his lap.

After a few minuets the shock wore off and people started whispering and pointing at me and Wade. Nothing I didn't expect if I'm honest but it's a lot more annoying than I thought it would be.

“I love you Wade." I said putting my head on his chest and eating my cookies.

"I lub you too Pete." He responded making me giggle a little. "And you're ass that will be mine tonight." He whispered seductively into my ear and gently grabbed my ass.

"You two make me want to be sick." MJ joked making a disgusted face at us before continuing with her lunch.

"Right everyone, we have ten minutes before we need to move on." Owen warned.

To be continued...

[astrovian]

Richard Armitage interview on BBC Radio Kent for Uncle Vanya (26/10/20)

Full transcript under cut

Now the multi-Olivier award nominated play Uncle Vanya filmed at the Harold Pinter Theatre will be shown in cinemas from tomorrow. It stars Richard Armitage from The Hobbit as the local doctor, Astrov, in a production which was halfway through a sold-out run when the Coronavirus pandemic forced theatres to close. The cast have come back together again with strict Covid-19 protocols to perform the Chekov story.

[Clip from Uncle Vanya trailer]

Watching this, I just thought ‘Huh, you couldn’t make this even more prescient for the times’, there’s a real feeling of it. Even just the opening of the – the filming, with the cast coming back into that theatre.

Interestingly, I wasn’t able to be part of because I’d just flown in from America, so I was in two weeks of quarantine. So I had to join the rehearsal at the end of the week via. a Zoom, where they set up the computer on a little stool on the stage-

*Laugh*

-*Laugh* and we had a read through with the cast. I – I, I mean it was awful to sort of not be there, but weirdly kind of appropriate for the doctor, who would’ve been elsewhere at the beginning of the play. But um, I sort of had to come back in cold and sort of reignite the play, but it was uh, certainly an unusual experience.

And the – the performance itself, if – if we think of that Chekov play, that idea of the opening up of a house, and all that. That really does have a feeling, I think we watch it with different eyes, don’t we?

Yeah, and even y’know, in the last week of performing, when Broadway had closed down and y’know, it was this – this thing was coming towards us and we were still playing to full houses, they were all in masks, and y’know, one of the doctor’s first speeches in the play is talking about, um, he’s been away in the North, dealing with an epidemic and losing patients, and him being traumatised by it. And I was thinking about all of the NHS staff that were-

Hmm.

-dealing with it. And you could feel the play take on a completely different resonance to the audience in front of them, y’know, they were sort of gasping with disbelief that, y’know this was written over a hundred years ago, and there are – there’s, there’s huge sections of it which are kinda about preserving the environment, in order that these things don’t happen. And you – it, it just was uncanny that, that y’know, the subject that Chekov was discussing. So y’know I – I hope audiences aren’t still too traumatised by the events to – to not enjoy this. But I think they’ll – they’ll understand it.

[Clip from Uncle Vanya trailer]

Astrov makes a – a really key point, doesn’t he, about that. Early – early on in the play about the environment and how he’s understanding his place within it, and – and that says something very much wider.

Yeah, and he’s also trying to on it, y’know trying to do something about it, y’know as a single person that could – that gets out and plants some trees because he’s seen this sort of re-, reduction in the natural habitat and he – there really was a movement at the time which understood what happened when deforestation occurred. Y’know, that – that, uh, the environment was softer or y’know, became harder and – and became more difficult to live in, which I think is what, y’know, we’re experiencing. It was interesting that people thought these views had been crowbarred into the play, um in our – in our retelling of it, but it – it was there absolutely in its entirety at that time.

That’s what I think is interesting about the – the language of the play. I think the feeling of the – the characters too, y’know, you – you have this ideas of families being in one place and, and those uh, associated members, the extended group of friends. And just the personalities as well, I think it’s wonderful in this how y’know, there– it really does tap into that kind of like ‘Oh, that person’s a bit like that, okay, we’re gonna have to look after that person a bit more than the other.’

Yeah, I mean the play starts in the heat of summer, and these people are all kind of in this house right the way through the autumn and into the winter, and – and they are going out of their heads with boredom and frustration with each other, and y’know at the end of the play, and – and really the sort of nucleus of the play is about a man who’s about to lose his entire livelihood because it’s gonna be snatched away from him. And I feel like with – y’know, there are quite a few people that maybe are – are sort of in that situation right now that are feeling the fear of it. But actually, y’know the final words of Chekov through the voice of Sonya is this idea of, um, of hope and of work, and y’know once we’re given something to work on we can kind of retain our sanity, and I think I – I, I’ve used that idea so many times, y’know actors are very, very frequently out of work and we feel like we’re – we’re sort of not valid without something to do, and so we’re quite good at finding something to do. And that tool has been quite useful in this – this period. Certainly for myself.

There’s a richness in it too, there’s a – there’s a, ah, the human emotion side, but there’s also comedy, isn’t it? That kind of quick, sharp-witted bite-back from characters.

Yeah, I mean I – I don’t know how you term it; I suppose there’s a sense of black comedy, or – or gallows humour, but it’s these – y’know, the Russians, and I think Chekov certainly uh, was, was very good at um, finding the – the quips and foibles of human behaviour and so we – y’know, even in the depths of tragedy these people do find time to uh, enjoy each other in a way. And so, that uh, that’s always a surprise in Chekov, ‘cause you think it’s gonna be doom and gloom but it’s not; it’s – and I, I understand why the, the Brits are very good at kind of tapping into that aspect of Chekov, ‘cause even in the darkest of times we’ll still find something to kind of have a chuckle about.

I’ve seen the NT Live productions, many of us have during lockdown and since, but this is nothing like that – this, this really does feel filmic, it – it’s done really well, the soundscape of it too just really hits you the moment you start watching.

Yeah, I mean I guess it’s – we’d call it a hybrid ‘cause we, we worked with six cameras in the audience that were shooting at different angles and extreme close-up, and then the crew were able to come on stage with hand-held cameras and really get inside the play, which is not possible when you’re working with an audience. So even though we didn’t have a live audience watching, we gained something else because y’know, the – the, the viewer can come into the – into the play with us, which I think even people that, that saw the play live will - will get something extra from seeing it on film.

And knowing that, y’know, it did close, cut short by the lockdown, to give it another life now, for all of you, it must be - it’s not just about y’know, uh, being paid, it’s also presumably about just thinking ‘Oh, you know it’s such a shame that we had to cut’.

Yeah. I mean, in a way uh, the payment was sort of the last thing on everyone’s mind, I think it was just that ability to be able to go back to work, y’know, to have somewhere to go and um, you could see it, it was – it was amazing to re-gather and sort of see the crew again, see all of the people that work in that building, the stage door guy, the – the dressers, and realising that they’d all been sat at home as well. And there was this energy uh, in the building of ‘I can’t believe we’re getting the opportunity to do this’.

People are starting to go back into theatres to do things like this, but also film-work and sets are, with Covid-friendly uh, measures, are happening. What’s it like for you, Richard? What’s happening with you?

Well, I mean on a social level, I’m – I’m now back in New York, but when I was in London I – I went to the theatre, and I went to the cinema, and it’s, y’know, if you take the right precautions and y’know, play by the rules, it’s a – it’s a perfectly normal, comfortable experience and I would encourage people to, to do it. But um, for me personally, I’m – I’m still beavering away recording audiobooks, um, I’m starting a new Netflix show next year, and I’m also developing material, um, for screenplay, and uh – y’know, stepping one foot towards producing.

It’s been really good catching up with you, thank you so much for being with us and uh, thank you for bringing us this play with an – with an amazing cast. They’re – they’re all fantastic. You are brilliant in this. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Nice to talk to you, Dom.

[thefanficmonster]

Never Alone

Connor Walsh & Michaela Pratt (How To Get Away With Murder) ft. The Keating 5

Warnings: Abuse, Abusive Relationship, Swearing, Trauma, Description of Injury

Genre: ANGST, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Relationship

Summary: While working on a particularly tough case in the ungodly hours of the night, whether it’s due to the lack of sleep or the sudden need to confide in another human being, Michaela admits some truths to the person no one would think she’d ever do so to - her rival Connor Walsh.

Requested by Anon and requested as a birthday present by another Anon. Happy birthday darling Anon! Thank you so much for giving me the honor of writing you a birthday present though I hope the short notice doesn’t affect the fic’s quality. I accept the most brutal of feedback, but nevertheless I hope you enjoy it! Enjoy your special day! Lots of love, Vy ❤

“You know, just because you’re still awake and staring at a document doesn’t mean you have an upper hand here. Whether you’re actually reading that file is what will determine who gets the trophy, Miss Shooting Star.“ Connor Walsh waltzes into the living room turned office of the Keating home, looking and sounding a little too refreshed for someone who has had the same amount of sleep as everyone else of the K5 - minimal. Yet, unlike his teammates, he’s still perfectly functioning, talkative and looking forward to being productive without accidentally falling off a chair after being consumed by the slumber his body is probably dying for. It probably has something to do with that cup of coffee in his hand - his tenth one today, if Michaela’s counted correctly.

“Call me that again and I’ll shoot the damn trophy at your forehead.“ Michaela hisses back at him, tired, stinging and bloodshot eyes never leaving the piece of paper she’s been holding, reading and re-reading for the past twenty minutes, never really managing to grasp the words written on it.

“Good luck taking it from Asher. The Douche has fallen asleep with it in his arms.“ Connor sinks down in one of the armchairs, leisurely picking up one of the files laid out on the coffee table, looking at it with little interest.

This time Michaela’s gaze does indeed leave the paper so it can land on her rival, as she raises an eyebrow that somewhere between shocked and offended, “That asshole’s asleep?”

“He’s not the only one.“ It’s Connor’s turn to not spare her a look while answering, “Him and Wes are as good as dead on the kitchen island. Laurel and Frank are most likely awake, but also most likely not working on the case. Well, not this case, that’s for sure.“ He chuckles at his own joke, seeing as how his correspondent found no humor in it, “So, it’s down to you and me and Bonnie if she throws us a bone, which I doubt she will.“

Annalise was very clear with what she had said. Speaking the whole truth here, the five college students weren’t really paying attention until they heard that very strictly spoken phrase: “No one leaves here until someone finds something. Anything” aka the last phrase their professor had graced them with before walking out to go meet someone important for the night. She had every right to be strict and maybe even a bit cruel to them after they all had been exhibiting typical brat behavior throughout the day. To make matters worse and the job even tougher, Annalise had instructed Frank and Bonnie to go home so the kids would really be left to their own devices. Bonnie had had enough so no amount of begging her was gonna get her to stay - it’s also been proven that no amount of voicemails are gonna get her to come back either - but Frank, solely because of Laurel, stuck around and has so far not proved to be any kind of extra help - the polar opposite, in fact, he’s been distracting them all with jokes and snide comments at how incompetent they all are. Now if that wasn’t the most hypocritical thing.

“If the pressure wasn’t on already, I’d like to remind you we have...“ Connor turns his hand over, checking his wristwatch, “less than four hours until we have to show our not-showered, sleep deprived asses in court.“

Michaela groans, squeezing her eyes shut tightly. Not that she’d ever admit it, but she was actually glad to have an overnight task, something that wouldn’t allow her to go home, but this is beginning to be too much. What others would call ‘home’ Michaela refers to as or ‘hell’. It was place she called ‘home’ at one point too, but it wasn’t long before things started going south. And by ‘south’ I mean horribly wrong and toxic. The man she thought she’d one day call fiancée and then husband has now become a monster from her worst nightmares. Having grown up in an abusive household, Michaela had always dreamed of finding a place for herself, a place she’d feel safe in. With a person who’d love her unconditionally and provide her the security she lacked growing up. And that’s what she thought she saw in Miles. She wasn’t wrong for the first few months, the fucker was good at putting up a front, putting on a show for everyone to build a positive opinion of such a disgusting human being.

The mask started falling apart shortly after Michaela moved in with him. She didn’t accept his offer without any thought, quite the contrary actually - she pondered it for a week and a half, her heart taking the win in the end. Well, her heart may have won that time but it is now in pieces. Her eyes have never cried so many tears and her skin has never bled nor been bruised so badly before. She feels broken, alone, betrayed, hurt. She feels all she felt every time she got hit as a kid. She feels like the whole world has equipped knives and guns, each with her name on them, ready to put her through torture.

And she’s got no one to tell, because no one will know what to say back. For some reason, when people are speechless they tend to say the dumbest, most hurtful crap without realizing. Hearing that on numerous occasions before, she knows what effect it’ll have on her, so she strays away from speaking up about it. She’d rather be alone and battle her demons than present those demons to someone else who will introduce new ones into her head and life.

She prefers solitude and isolation over additional torment. It’s always been an easy pick for her.

“If you don’t wanna fight this battle on your own, go fetch me a cup of coffee.“ She instructs, half-expecting the turn-down she receives immediately afterwards.

“You really think I’m gonna help you when you are the closest thing to competition I have in this group of dimwits? Go get it yourself.“ 

Michaela rolls her eyes, wondering why she even asked such an abomination of a question in the first place. Finding her legs too dead to take her anywhere, she remains in her spot with a heavy sigh, returning to her attempt at reading the file she and the rest of the Keating 5 five have read through a dozen times today just to find nothing off about it.

“Hey, this one’s marked twenty-three, that one on the table’s twenty-five, where’s the twenty-fourth one?“ Connor suddenly perks up suddenly, cutting the short silence that had fallen upon them. With the least amount of energy she’s managed to save up, Michaela waves the file she’s holding, blinking away the blurriness of that clouds her eyes. “Give it to me, I need to make some comparisons.”

“Come get it yourself.“ She barks back with the same amount of spite he used barely a minute ago.

Unlike her though, Connor complies, finding that file necessary for some reason despite knowing it’s useless. It’s all pointless and they’re all gonna hear it from Annalise tomorrow morning regardless. But the most they can do is keep trying - trying to prove themselves worthy of that trophy.

Getting up with the most exaggerated distaste in his movements, Connor crosses the distance between the armchair he’s been sitting in and the couch Michaela has not moved from for hours, surrounded by piles of paperwork, folders and files. Much to his surprise, she doesn’t even put up a fight, clearly having been fed up with staring at the same words and not grasping anything for half an hour at this point. 

“Thank y-“ Connor is a syllable away from finishing his sarcastic statement of gratitude when his eyes land on something peculiar, he’d even call is quite worrisome - a large scar going from Michaela’s elbow to about midway down her forearm. It looks to be recent, given that there are still some dried specs of blood around it, “Holy shit....“ He mutters, carefully taking hold Michaela’s wrist as to gently turn her arm a bit more to the side in order to examine the cut, “What the hell happened to you?“

Not having realized what he was examining before, Michaela’s eyes widen when they follow his gaze and land on the very cut she spent an hour taking care of last night. That cut is the aftermath of a drunk boyfriend who wanted nothing more than a reason to start an argument with her when she got home. A reason to hurt her. Coming into work this morning, despite the high temperatures, she was stubbornly keeping a long sleeved jacket atop her shirt to keep the ugly remainder of yet another failure hidden. The relationship in and of itself is a toxic failure, but it’s built of other failures Mihaela blames herself for - she believes she fails every time he hurts her. She thinks she’s the one to blame for the failure because she couldn’t protect herself. So she feels ashamed, disgusted and is attacked by that sense of betrayal all over again.

Feeling these three emotions flooding in at the sound of Connor’s concern, she snatches her arm out of his grip, keeping the scar out of his viewpoint while her eyes scan the room, looking for the jacket she doesn’t remember discarding. “Piss off, Connor. It’s non of your business.”

If she had said something along the lines of it being an accidental injury, Connor might’ve even believed her and let the whole thing go. However, seeing hw distressed his question has made her become, he feels there’s a lot more to it than she’s letting on. So, fully aware it’s non of his business, he keeps prodding on for a reason even he himself doesn’t understand, “Maybe not, but that’s a concerning scar, you might wanna get it checked. In fact, it already looks like it’s infected with something.”

Michaela’s brows furrow, her distress growing into genuine fear as she removes the hand that’s partially covering the scar to check on it and try and see what Connor saw to lead him to make such an observation. Connor takes this opportunity to also get a better look at the cut and it doesn’t take him a while to realize what tool was used in causing it - a shard of glass. 

“Michaela, it may not be my business...“

She cuts him off with hostility, “It’s not”, but her words are choked up and wavering. Her voice is shaking like she’s seconds away from bursting into tears. And Lord knows crying in front of Connor Walsh is the last thing she wants to do.

“Right, but you can’t tell me that’s an accidental cut. That looks very intentional, very straight, and very much like someone inflicted it on you.“ Seeing her barriers slowly starting to sink despite her best attempts at keeping them up, he keeps his pursuit of his secret, for the first time genuinely curious to get to the bottom of what’s troubling Michaela and not a single ulterior motive in his mind. “You can’t tell me that I’m wrong. I’ve had my fair share of glass shard injuries in my life too.“ The girl’s gaze remains glued to the floor but Connor doesn’t miss the tear that escapes her left eye, sliding down her cheek. This only strengthens his will to getting the truth out of Michaela. “I know I’m not among your favorite people, but I’m not a piece of scum, damn it. You can tell me, Michaela. Believe it or not, you can tell me.“

Silence takes over, loud silence, the one on her end filled with the inaudible sound of her walls coming down quickly. She’s left bare and exposed. surrounded by their rubble and unable to look her rival in the eye. Though, is he much of a rival at this moment? He appears dangerously close to a friend. Hell, Michaela would even make a snide remark about it if her insides weren’t so broken - her heart, her soul, her mind, they’ve all been shattered, bruised and bloodied way worse than her skin.

“Turn around.“ She says out of the blue, the order sounding more like a plea especially when accompanied by another tear freeing itself from the confinement of her pride. When Connor doesn’t move, she finally looks up at him to meet his baffled gaze, “Turn around so I don’t have to see the pity in your eyes when I tell you I’m a pathetic victim of an abusive relationship. The punching bag of an asshole with a short fuse and a drinking problem. A failure to myself and my family. Is that what you wanted to hear? Do you think you have the upper hand now?“ Behind the tears that are spilling freely now is the mix of rage, devastation, dread and sorrow. It’s a dangerous combination that could cause her to pounce at him any second, push him away, take her anger out on him.

But that’s what he wants her to do.

He wants her to let it all out, free herself from all that’s been sitting on her chest. He wants to free her from whoever’s responsible for that scar on her arm and those thousands of little cuts on her soul, all still openly bleeding and unable to heal. He wants to save her. And it’s scaring him. He wants to write it off as basic human decency but deep down he know there’s something more. As much as the both of them would like to deny it, if one of them left the Keating 5 tomorrow, the other would miss them greatly. Threats, accusations, arguments and bickering aside, they are aware how great of a team they are. What a good pair of friends they could be if they just let their pride slip aside. But they don’t, and maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe that’s why they work so well.

However, even with that theory in mind, they’ve both let their pride go in this very moment. Walls and barriers have come down, lines have been crossed and they see each other differently now - More as fellow hurting humans rather than rivaling lawyers-to-be. Closer than ever, that’s for sure.

“Listen, Michaela...“

She once again cuts him off, “I don’t want your pity, sympathy or your advice. I don’t need you telling me to leave him! You think I haven’t thought of that?! You know nothing about it, you don’t get to judge me on my actions and choices!” She’s sobbing at this point with no hopes or ways of stopping the strangled noises from leaving her throat or the tears from escaping her red eyes.

Connor quickly crouches down in front of the couch so he’s at eye-level with  her, his hands taking gentle but firm hold of her shoulders, “Michaela, no! That’s not what I wanna say! Listen to me, damn it.“ To his surprise, this actually gets her to calm down and stop thrashing to get his hands off. Slightly relieved, he pursues what he started, “I know, I know exactly how it is. Every time he does something nice it outweighs the bad. It’s those good moments that make you stay, I know. But those moments are the rare rainbow after a ton of rain. They are not worth this pain and suffering you’re enduring. He’s not worth it. You deserve so much more, so much better and you are aware of that!“

“But no one else is!“ She snaps, her hands coming up to hide her face, “No one else sees my worth beyond the job I do or the person that’s willing to put a ring on my finger. No one sees me for me, Connor! My value is determined by what kind of men find me decent enough for their beds or family contracts! What kind of response do you think I’ll have if I leave yet another relationship?“

Her words break his heart but he doesn’t let it show in his eyes, he’d rather close them than let her see that pity she fears and despises. He doesn’t pity her, far from it, but a simple misunderstanding on her end could break this already fragile bond they’ve built so he keeps his feelings at bay.

“Fuck them! Michaela, you are an adult woman, they can’t control your life anymore! No one can! That’s why you need to cut ties with those whose opinions you fear most. I don’t know what kind of stick they have up their asses, but without them you won’t be alone. You’ll be free!“

“And you’ll still have us.“ The sudden and new female voice comes from behind them, right by the doorway.

Both of them turn to look in that direction to find the four missing members of this late case-digging session: the sleepy Asher and Wes with Frank and Laurel beside them.

“I have no idea what you guys are talking about, but Michaela, you will not be alone, no matter what the context is. We might not be the best friends one can ever have, but we sure as hell aren’t monsters.“ Laurel continues, being the only one to actually take a step in the room while the three men stay put, uncertain of how to approach the situation. “I think we all care about each other to some degree. So, I want you to know, we care about you and we’re here for you. No matter how many times you leave us in the dust with your eyes on the prize.“

That remark manages to get a smile out Michaela even with the tears that are still not done rolling down her cheeks. Asher is also quick to pipe in, “I second that! Anything you need, we’ll be here. Need us to bust someone’s skulls - we’re your people.”

Scoffing, Connor shoots Michaela a look, “Now that’s an idea. Give us the address of that shithead and consider it done.”

She rolls her eyes, “Let me get my stuff out of there first. I don’t want you getting blood on any of it.”

Connor stands up from his crouched position and turns to the rest of the team with a determined look and a hint of a smile on his face, “You heard her folks! The lady wants to collect her stuff, and I’ll be damned if I let her do it alone.” He turns back to his temporarily-not-rival, “Come on, you can crash at my place until this friendly phase of ours fades. Then I’m dumping you at Laurel’s.”

She narrows his eyes at him, “Hilarious.” Suddenly her eyes widen, eyebrows shooting up, “Wait, what about the case?”

“Laurel and I found something, already turned it in. We were coming here to send you guys home.“ Frank replies in his usual reassuring manner.

“Ooooh, so you were working on the case after all!“ Asher comments, wiggling his eyebrows at them.

“Yeah, we were. Unlike some who were asleep in the kitchen cuddling a trophy.“ Laurel retorts, sending him the most sarcastic of smiles. 

This whole interaction between her...well, her friends has lifted Michela’s spirits enough to get her up on her feet, “In that case, better get prepared to help me pack three large suitcases.”

And with that the Keating 5 (plus Frank) disembark, heading to their new mission. Walking out of the Keating household with four people, all unconditionally supporting her without even knowing what’s going on and one person with his arm tightly wrapped around her in a protective manner, Michaela has never felt more safe and secure. She might not love these people and they might not love her either, but they are all fond of each other. And if their fondness has reached the degree where they’re willing to accompany her and aid her escape from the hell she’s been trapped in this past month and a half, she’s willing to call them friends.

Some closer than others, but she cannot admit that knowing that in a week’s time her and Connor will probably be at each other’s throats again. And she’s fine with that. Rivalry’s a type of friendship too, ain’t it?

[korra-the-red-lion]

Unnatural Affairs. Chapter 3: Rookie Hazing?

(Lyn)

My breathing fell into my familiar breathing pattern as I jogged through the town. The early morning sun was peeking through the clouds, trying to be seen. My music was blasting through my earbuds as I turned to go through the walking trail this morning.

Today was the first day of actual classes and practices. Me and a few of the others already have been to the pool a bunch this week, but this is when shit got real. After the disappointing loss to Turner University at last year’s AUS, Coach Jacob and team really wanted to get the title this year. It was one thing to lose, it was another thing all together to lose by 1 fucking point. Ugh, even just thinking about it pissed me off. Turner is a good school, don’t get me wrong. But man, we worked our assess off last year.

I passed by an older couple going out for their usual morning walk. I waved to them as I always do, earning a smile in return. I liked the coziness of this small town. Being able to see the same people every morning doing their routine as I did was relaxing and brought a sense of calm to my otherwise chaotic life.

I sprinted the final couple of kilometers home, slowing down as I approached the track around the football field. Loryn, Maddie, and Andrew where already there, chatting as they stretched for their early morning workout.

Loryn smiled when she saw me coming and tossed me my water bottle. I pulled out my music and took a huge swig from it. “Thanks, I really needed that,” I said. I lifted the end of my shirt and wiped the sweat and water off my face.

“No problem-o,” she responded. “How was your run?”

“Same as usual,” I said as I take another drink.

Andrew walked over and gave me a huge hug. “Ready for the season, Lyn?”

I nodded into his shoulder, holding onto his shirt. Andrew was the captain of the Men’s team, and he was like an older brother to me. This was his last year on the team, and I really wanted to win the championship for him and the other 4th years. They put so much into this program, and just one win would be an awesome reward for them.

“Please don’t cry, or I might start too,” he mumbled.

“Not crying,” I pulled away, grinning at him. “I’m just thinking of how lame the team’s gonna be once you finally retire from it. Are they gonna make Will the captain next year, because like, yeesh.”

This earned a laugh from Andrew. “Well, I frigging hope not. Y’all better vote for Oliver, or Thom. If Will gets the captain position next year, you’re all doomed.”

“Fuck me with a rusty screw if Will gets it,” said Maddie bitterly. “The only thing bigger than his ego is his Hummer. I swear, I will never get over his parents airlifting that thing across the fucking country.”

It’s not like we hated Will or anything, he just was a huge pain in the ass. Both his parents are doctors, and he makes a point of letting you know how much money he has. During his first year here, apparently, his parents had his Hummer helicoptered across the country so he could have it here. Not sure why he didn’t drive the damned thing instead, but the rich do very extreme and extravagant things to prove their wealth. Maddie is a 3rd year like Will, so she’s been putting up with his Will-ness longer than Loryn or I.

We did our usual morning workout routine, just to get used to the rhythm again. Medicine ball tosses to each other with an added squat. After that, 2 sets of 20 jackknifes, 2 sets of 25 crunches, and 2 sets of 1 minute plank. We did our wheelbarrow run across the football field, giggling like fools as we did. Andrew and Maddie beat me and Loryn by a fingertip. Loryn jokingly apologized for being too short, a running joke on the team.

After that, we headed to food hall. Loryn liked to make fun of me for calling it that, since it was technically called meal hall, but that’s where I get all my food, not just meals. Hence, food hall. Still, she immediately started teasing me as we got near it.

The hall was abuzz with all the new frosh and returning students talking about their classes. It was nice to see this place so lively after being essentially dead for the week. I could already hear people talking about going to First Class Bash, the big first party of the year. I never really went to those often, parties that is, since the team had a drinking ban in place as soon as the season started. Maybe if some of the guys on the team wanted to go I would, but I was just as happy to stay in with the goofballs and have our own get together.

Oh shit, speaking of. The rookie party was this weekend, actually. It almost slipped my mind. Today was their official first day. It may sound weird, but Coach Jacob liked having them come for their own practice to get used to each other and the facilities first. That way, if they don’t feel like sticking around, there’s none of that awkward shame of seeing your ex-teammates on campus. Not that anyone actually gave a shit.

I sat down next to Matt and Kerry, two members of the team. They were nearly identical twins, but with different body builds since they swam different strokes. Matt was bulkier in his shoulders and trunk cuz he swam butterfly like I did, while Kerry was leaner but a bit bowlegged from swimming breaststroke for so many years. Kerry was letting her hair grow out after shaving it last year, and it was tied up in this stupidly adorable tiny ponytail, while Matt had shaved his hair into practical buzzcut. Kerry leaned over once I was settled and pointed.

“Did you see?”

“Did I see what?” I asked as I shoved the whole fried egg into my mouth.

“Derek is sitting with Poppy.”

I rolled my eyes. Derek Freeman was one of my exes from last year. Lyn from first year got a little crazy when it came to dating, and I ended up going through 6 different people before finally calling it quits. Derek was one of them, but he was by far the worse. He got super possessive and couldn’t understand why I dumped his creepy ass. He always knew my schedule and followed me everywhere. He would wait for me outside the pool and walk back to my res with me, which would have been super sweet if he didn’t ask to come inside every single time. Even after we broke up, he still followed me places. Eventually he got the message once I started dating Willa Hoffman, but man was he annoying.

Then there was Poppy. There was nothing wrong with her, per se. We just were partners on a project last year and she nearly cost me getting an A+ in Intro to Sociology, much to my annoyance. I cared a lot, maybe a little bit too much, about my grades. So, yeah, there’s nothing that really pisses me off more when you get stuck with a shit partner for a project.

“Honestly, Ker, I don’t care,” I said. “Hell, they deserve each other IMO.”

Kerry shrugged as she got back into her seat properly, finally letting Matt get back to eating. We ate in comfortable silence before Matt spoke up.

“Gunner is on probation.”

I dropped my fork in confusion. Even Kerry looked confused. “What do you mean, Matt?” I asked, leaning against the table as I did, locking eyes with him.

He sighed and ran a hand over his head. “Okay, don’t tell anyone because I’m not supposed to know, but Gunner was caught doing drugs this summer. Like, coke. Anyway, Jacob heard about it and helped him through rehab and stuff, but the dean put him on probation until his grades and attitude prove that he actually got clean.”

“Shiiiiiiit,” I pushed my tray away. Leo Gunner was the best sprinter on the team, leading the Men’s team to having great scores in the relay last year. If he wasn’t allowed to swim this season, we might be in serious trouble. There was no one as fast as him. The next best would be Parker, and even then, he wasn’t near Gunner’s level.

“Oh, that’s awful,” said Kerry, putting her hand over her mouth.

Matt nodded. “Yeah, it’s shit for sure. I talked to him this morning and apparently, he’s allowed to practice, but he might not be allowed to sign up for the meets. I think Jacob might bring it up to Andrew and Emma today, but he might not let the rest of the team know just yet.”

The information sat heavy in my stomach. I walked all the way to my class with my mind racing, wondering if there was any way we could fight this decision. All conclusions came to a resounding no. The university was pretty strict about athletes using illegal substances. They only thing that probably saved his ass was that it happened this summer.

I took my usual spot near the front, waiting for the rest of the students to fill in. This was a second-year history course, and I really wanted to be psyched for it, considering history was my favourite subject, but it was hard when I was worrying about things out of my control.

“Mind if I sit?”

I looked over and nearly groaned when I saw it was Will. I nodded, but he was already taking the seat anyway. I hated sitting next to Will, he just sat on Instagram the whole time, or TikTok. Fuck my life right now.

He reached over and tugged on my ear. “Why the long face, Lyn?”

I batted his hand away. He knew I was self-conscious of how big my ears were, and he liked to pick at that at any opportunity. “No long face here, Will.” I forced a grin onto my face before turning my attention back to my desk.

“Whatever you say.”

Ugh, def getting a new seat on Thursday. I can’t deal sitting next to him and dealing with his antics at practice too. There was only so much abuse one gal could take for the day.

XXX

Thank God it was Friday!

I managed my schedule perfectly, so I had no classes on Friday. It made the other days more miserable for sure, but having a three-day weekend every week? Exactly what I needed to stay on top of things this year. Just practice in the afternoon, and I was free to enjoy myself. The rookie party was tomorrow, and they were a good batch. Loryn’s younger sister Robin joined the team this year, which was super exciting for her.

I got to enjoy breakfast without having to rush it, plus no homework was assigned this week. Today was a nice one, and I was looking forward to just being able to chill and enjoy it. As I left, I happened to notice that Ally was leaving the food hall. Grinning, I raced over to where she was.

“Hey, Ally!” I fell into step beside her.

“Lyn!” Ally looked up at me, a smile breaking out. She had her hair in this half up pinned style, it looked really good on her. Also, she was wearing different glasses today. She usually wore some rectangle ones, but these ones were like a half moon shape.

“How’s your first week, frosh?” I asked.

“Well, after the disaster that was the bookstore incident…” she looked down, thinking about something before shaking her head. “It’s been lovely. I think once I get into a nice routine, I won’t feel as anxious.”

I was curious about the whole bookstore thing, but I respected that she clearly wasn’t ready to talk about it openly with me. Fair enough, we only just met last week, and I barely have seen her since.

“Hey, well, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself so far! Is it cool if I walk with you until your next class? I’m free.”

“Oh,” she smiled shyly at me, “that would be really nice, actually.”

I smiled back. We chatted about her classes all the way to Bennet, where her class was. I leaned against the wall as she finished explaining something about her drama class. That was a class I took in first year, but it sounds like she has Professor Kinkly, whereas I had Professor Statton. Kinkly was more by the book, Statton was know as the campus kook. I had a feeling Ally was gonna like Kinkly more.

“I guess I should head in, huh?”

“I guess you should. But hey,” I said, “we should totally hang this weekend, you know? Whatcha doing tomorrow?”

Ally looked contemplative before shaking her head. “Nothing, I think.”

“Perfect! Let’s grab a bite to eat, and you can finish telling me all about your week.”

“O-okay, sounds great!”

Ally wished me a goodbye and dashed inside, as to not be late for class. I watched her go before snorting under my breath. I liked her, she was smart and funny. It would be nice to have someone as a friend outside the team. Guess it was just my lucky day when she approached that table I forced Loryn to help me set up.  

Feeling great, I practically skipped all the way back to my res.

XXX

The smell of chlorine was something that was never going to get old. It calmed me when nothing else could. I know that sounds a little dramatic, but the pool is my second home. Didn’t matter how I felt at home or school or whatever, I could come to a pool and swim those thoughts and troubles away.

We finished with our pre-practice routines, and I jumped into the pool, shivering a little as the cold water enveloped my body. Right away everything felt amazing. Reach, pull, reach, pull. The easy lazy rhythm of the warmup let my thoughts drift away. It was nearing the end of the warmup when I caught Andrew’s eye underwater during my turn, and we ended up racing our last 25 meters. He beat me and we high fived as I hung onto the lane rope.

Coach Jacob laughed as the others finished their warmups. He was a retired swimmer himself and did things to keep himself in shape. He had one of those kind faces that really made you feel welcomed. Sure, he could be a hard ass, but he just really wanted win, like we all did.

He read practice off the board for us, and we did as was instructed. In in a blink of an eye, practice was over, and we were all hauling our asses out of the pool. Practice wasn’t too hard today, but since it’s been a while since any of us had structure like that, we all felt the ache of the week catching up with us finally.

“Okay, gather ‘round!” Coach Jacob called out. We all headed towards the bench and took seats. Loryn sat next to me and we cuddled, trying to not freeze as we listened to what he had to say.

“So, this is the last year for some of us,” he indicated the 4th years with a nod, “and a new beginning for others,” a nod to the 1st years. “However, the goal is the same. We wanna be number one at AUS’s this year. We wanna send people to CIS’s this year. We wanna kick Turner’s stupid butt all over the pool deck. We start morning practice next week, 5:30 sharp, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Gym time is 6:00 on Tuesday and Thursday. We have our usual afternoon practice at 4:30 every day. If you can’t make practice, the reason better be fucking good. Rookies, never be afraid to ask questions. These guys are your family while you’re here, and like family, sometimes we don’t always get along. But try your best to stay pleasant with the others. Lastly, welcome to the Mount Seamus Wolves!” he finished with a huge grin. We clapped and headed into the locker rooms, where a hot shower was calling my name.

“Man, I am looking forward to the weekend!” Loryn said with a huge stretch as we grabbed our shampoo and conditioner.

“Me too,” I said with a grin. “I already made plans.”

“Oh my God, shut up! Who with?”

“That cute frosh from last week.”

Loryn scrunched up her face in thought. “Gabriel or the brunette you showed around?”

I laughed, hitting her playfully with my towel. “Dude, you’re the only one who thinks Gabe is cute, you know?”

“Not true! I know Jackie does too!”

“Damn right I do!” Jackie said, walking by us with a laugh.

We all laughed as we turned the water on. It felt great to take a hot shower after practice. We were gossiping about people on campus when I noticed something strange.

“Emma, are you okay?”

Emma, the captain for the Women’s team, looked over. “Huh, why you ask?”

I blinked. “Because you’re covered in…blood?”

She looked up and shrieked. Sure enough, something red and gooey was coming from the shower head. Actually, it was coming from all the showers! We all screamed and ran out, not even bothering to turn them off.

“What the actual fuck?” Emma was shaking with either anger or fear, wasn’t sure which it was. “Did someone think it would be funny to prank the rookies or something?” She whipped around to glare at all of us.

When no one fessed up, she growled in annoyance. “Okay, maybe one of the guys thought it would funny? Whoever did this, it’s seriously fucked up. Getting sprayed with fake blood is not how I wanted to end my Friday night!”

“Uh, not to be that person, Emma,” I said hesitantly, “but if it was fake blood…wouldn’t it have stopped by now?” I pointed over to the running showers, where a steady stream of red was still coming out.

Emma’s face paled. She looked at her hands, where the blood was and sniffed it. “Oh my God…it smells like copper.”

That’s when Jackie threw up all over the floor and Kerry burst into tears.

XXX

I was in my room, curled up under all the blankets I could possibly be curled under. We texted the boys after, to see if something similar happened to them. When Andrew and Matt both responded no, we got even more freaked out. We ended up calling campus security for them to see if there was something they could do about it. They said they would look into and escorted us back to our residences. I took such a scalding hot shower that I was still pink from it, but I still didn’t feel clean.

The group chat was blowing up with questions. The poor rookies were understandably upset. They thought someone was trying to haze them, but that wasn’t the case at all. Hazing wasn’t something we did anymore. They didn’t do it in my first year, and Emma said that her class was the last one that got hazed.

I didn’t have the energy to be dealing with this, so I muted the chat for the time being. Nura was sitting on her bed, her eyes on her computer screen but I could see her looking at me from time to time. I mean, I would be too. If Nura came back and told me that she just ended up taking a blood shower, I would be fucking concerned too.

I rolled over and tugged at my ear. It was habit of mine when I was anxious about something, and I was definitely anxious about this. If it turned out to be a stupid prank from one of the other teams, that would be one thing. But if it wasn’t…then what did it mean?

I had this crazy thought, pulling my phone up to my face. I wanted to see if it happened any time else. I did a quick Google search, and found out that this wasn’t the first time that something like this happened at this school. It was in 1968, and in 1995, and again in 2007. Okay, that was interesting.

Okay, so unless someone was dumping bodies into a water reservoir that only affected the women’s locker room, something freaky was going on. I’m not that big into that spiritual mumbo jumbo, but I’m not going to deny that this was more than a coincidence. However, it was history, something I specialized in. If I could trace back and see if there were any more connections, maybe I can establish a pattern.

That was a problem for Lyn of tomorrow, however. I was thoroughly exhausted after tonight’s events. I bookmarked the page on my phone, just so I wouldn’t forget. I was going to need my laptop for this.

I just hoped I could find something that can explain what the hell happened.

[capricornus-rex]

Stronger Than Blood (2)

Chapter 2: Meet the Mechanic | Cal Kestis x Reader

Requested by Anon

Summary: Meeting another Force-sensitive was one thing, but having them related to one of the most formidable known duelers was a whole other story to tell. While being stranded in another planet after barely escaping the Haxion Brood, Cal crosses paths with someone who’s at a crossroads with their own identity and lineage.

Also posted in AO3

Tags: Force-User! Reader, Force-Sensitive Reader, Sith-Related! Reader

Previous: Part 1 | Next: Part 3 | Masterlist

2 of ?

The cityscape reminded him so much of Bracca and Coruscant altogether.

Tier upon tier of annexes and alleyways along buildings, big and small, framed the city. Humans and other races diversified the bustling city life. Cal was already beginning to get nauseous for flicking his eyes left and right in search of a parts shop—as well as watching out for Imperial patrols.

“I just hope the Imps doesn’t find out soon that we’re here,”

“Bee… Trill?”

“Yeah, buddy, of course we’re gonna find help. Don’t you worry,” additionally, Cal patted the little droid’s head as he walked.

Not long after his consolation to the droid, a modest parts shop caught the eye of the young redhead. The sign only read “Tundu’s Mech” presuming that it was the name of the owner. Either way, he followed his instincts, trusting that from the looks of the building’s façade, it was highly likely a mechanical parts shop. Hopefully, they’ll have the merchandise the Mantis needs.

The door of the shop was merely twin swinging doors that flopped even when the person has gotten through, the hinges were squeaky enough to produce a sound—signalling the entry of a customer—until it mellowed. An Iktochi appeared from the other side of the room, obscured by a wall of small parts in a closed display case, nonchalantly greeting the boy. The blood-orange creature didn’t face Cal until he waddled towards the counter, in a sort of formality.

“Welcome, friend!” he repeated. “See anything you need here? I assure you I have quality wares as much as the next stall in the block!”

Cal didn’t waste time with the niceties. He started off by telling the parts that the Mantis needs as well as an extra set of hands to help out. Without needing to be prompted, BD-1 flashed a holograph of the entire Mantis’s cross-section, highlighting the damaged parts red.

The Iktochi shopkeeper ran his clawed finger across his chin as he took a gander of the hologram. He wagged his finger.

“Aaaah-ha,” he groaned. “I think we may have something. Hold a minute.”

The owner suddenly shifted to speaking in his native Iktochese, fixating his head in the direction of the other side of his shop. Shortly after, you popped out of the room where he had his eyes on, and then you joined him by the counter. Tundu continued using his dialect on you, it was stern and hissy, you replied in full Iktochese in the same bickering-like manner.

You took notice just now of the ginger boy with a tiny droid riding his shoulder. Your eyes met for the briefest moment and then the Iktochi transitioned into speaking Galactic Basic.

“You’re in the workshop again, child! You’re staying there for way too long and less on watching the store!” Tundu scolded.

“It’s lean hours already, Tundu, I doubt someone will come here,” you argued.

“Well, there is one now, [y/n],”

Tundu gestured to Cal. His presence in the store finally sank into you.

“Hey,” you casually greeted. “What do you need?”

Cal stuttered and fumbled over his person, by habit he searched his pockets hoping to find a compact projector there and forgetting for a moment that BD-1 had that covered. The little droid sensed the redhead’s anxiety and did him a solid of flashing the holograph again.

“Oh, thanks,” he quickly told BD and then turned to the blue projection of the ship. “Yeah, we need these parts—hopefully you have something that fits into a luxury cruiser.”

“An S-161 luxury yacht,” you uttered, an expression of interest plastered all over your face. “Impressive. Not many models like this nowadays. It’s beautiful.”

Cal’s eyes trailed to you, an involuntary smile curled at the corner of his mouth as he studied your inquisitive expression, peering and squinting your eyes closer to the projection to get a better look. He sensed something unique about you ever since you walked in on him and the store owner. It was only a feeling and he didn’t fully trust it yet.

You clicked your tongue, and then hovered your pointer finger about the broken tendon of the landing gear, “I think I can find you a fresh replacement for this one. The others—the bigger parts—are gonna need some inventory checking.”

“You made inventory last month, no?” Tundu jabbed.

“Wouldn’t hurt to visit the storage room,” you shrugged.

“Good, good,” a tired sigh was released from the Iktochi’s lungs. “Sorry, your name? Cal, was it? I shall leave you to my little protégé. My apologies. Bad back, you know.”

Without needing a response from the boy, the Iktochi immediately retreated to his private room in the shop. Now, it’s just you and the boy with a little droid.

“Sorry, he often forgets that he works up his lungs whenever he scolds me,”

“He does seem to trust you well enough though,”

You scoffed, “Guess you could say that.”

A pause. Cal looked around the store while you continued to gather and then re-sort the scattered merchandise on the counter display.

“So, uh, don’t wanna rush you the same way your boss does but when are you gonna do that inventory check?” Cal struggled to sound as politely as he can, without sounding like he’s telling you how to do your job.

You dismissed it as you continued reorganizing the items, “Oh sure, this’ll be done in a sec.”

You told him to wait in that little area that could be the lobby, you gestured to a crate and offered him a seat, followed by an apologize for not having the best interior design in Nalima. You excused yourself to the stockroom, the sound of the metal clanging together was enough an evidence for Cal to know you’re trying your best to help.

You come out of the room with two parts on each hand. You raised the right hand first.

“Okay, this is the landing gear ligament that I told you,” you switched to the left hand. “This is a replacement suspension coil. I didn’t see your ship land but I think it’s safe to assume that you’ve worked up your cruiser there. It’ll be dangerous to work with a brittle suspension.”

You were taken aback when Cal started marching towards you, under the impression that he was about to take the parts off of your hands, you retracted them farther from him and then shot him a quizzical look straight in the eye.

“Don’t worry, I was just gonna take a look,” he said so in a gentle, reassuring tone.

Not only did his voice make you certain enough that he’s trustworthy, it was the feeling he gave off ever since he stepped in the store. Back in the workshop, you had already sensed his presence, but shrugged it off as a fluke—that is until Tundu called for you to the counter and met him.

You were slightly hesitant to hand him over the parts, when he stood close enough, a metal shine caught your eye—you followed it and found a very familiar trinket hanging on the hook of his belt.

Jedi…? Here?

All of a sudden, your mind was in a rush. The memories immediately flooded over you, clouding you of your senses. The hesitation tripled, but you were too late to reaction when you felt his fingertips make contact with your palm as he takes away the parts from your hands with care.

“Are you okay? You kinda froze there for a moment, [y/n],”

“You’re a Jedi, aren’t you?” the delivery of that question was calmer than you expected it to be.

Your eyes met again. Cal had a startled look in his face, while your expression mirrored the same frozen state you had mere seconds ago.

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna turn you in,” you assured him, but uttered it within his earshot. You take a deep breath and shifted back to the real topic at hand, turning your voice back to its normal volume. “Oh, and your busted hyperdrive compressor? That’s a bit tricky.”

“Why? Why’s it tricky?”

“Well, for one: it’s hard to come by those things,” your shrugged your shoulders. “I don’t know why people keep breaking their compressors every now and then.”

“And I suppose you know where to find one?”

An amused chuckle rumbled in your throat, “Take a wild guess, pretty boy.”

Cal replied with his trademark smug, putting himself at par with your snark. For whatever odd reason that he couldn’t point his finger on, the vibe that you exuded intrigued him the longer he interacts with you. It’s almost as if the Force was telling him—rather, nudging him about something.

“Tomorrow. Come by here tomorrow and I’ll take you to the inner district,”

“Why not now?”

That amused smile that adorned your face melted in an instant when the answer came into mind.

“Imperial patrols, they’re stricter—and more suspicious of you—when going through the inner district. Especially at this hour. You arrived here just a tad borderline of the wee hours,”

“No surprise there,” said Cal agreeably.

Two of you have settled the agreement for tomorrow’s excursion. You instructed him to meet you at the store in the morning—when the patrols aren’t so strict. It almost felt like a shame for you to tell him that it’s closing hours now, but he flashed a friendly smile at you as he slowly walked away.

As soon as Cal left the store, the feeling was still there and couldn’t make of it—at least not yet.

“Bee, chirp?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, BD. There’s just… something that about that [y/n],” Cal confided to the tiny companion on his shoulder. “It’s strange, but… I know it means well.”

He dismissed the thought as he made his way back to the Mantis, he eventually spotted the Imperial patrols that you were talking about—white duraplast armor sticking out of the dark, neutral colors of the city like a sore thumb—and evaded them. The whole ordeal reminded him greatly of how he strode Bracca’s streets day and night, in and out of work, just to avoid these Stormtroopers.

Cal got back to the Mantis, unfollowed and unscathed, and bore the good news to the crew in the middle of dinner.

“Just how much trust can you put in a person?” Greez asked, his tone delivered the question somewhat sarcastically, but he was gravely serious.

“Well, I don’t know if I can justify my reason but… there’s just something about her that I can’t explain,”

“You know the word for that is called ‘crush,’ right, kid?”

The young Jedi’s cheeks burned nearly as red as his hair. He averted his face from his crew, hanging his head low while he fiddled away the food on his plate.

“You don’t mean that she’s…”

“Force-sensitive?” Cal shrugged as he drives the prong of his fork into the Scazz steak and brings it into his mouth. “Could be or could not.”

Cere expressed on the crew’s behalf that she trusts Cal’s judgment.

“So far, you haven’t befriended anyone who’s tried to kill us,” Cere blurted, somehow solidifying her confidence in the boy.

“Right?”

The crew continued on with their meal. The quarters weren’t a suitable place for Cal to sleep in yet, so he slept in the couch of the lounge instead—and made himself comfortable there. In the midst of the dead silence of the ship, he had more time to think… of you.

He doesn’t know if you were aware of it, but the moment his fingertips brushed against the skin of your palm, he felt a jolt course into his body. Given that his connection with the Force is still healing, even a Padawan could still spot the signs, however, this was only a hunch that has yet to be proven.

Cal slept with the hope that the Force could tell him more.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Shanghai Disneyland re-opens

Shanghai Disneyland re-opened today with a suite of post-pandemic measures that are being watched as a bellwether for other public space reopenings. I've spent a lot of time thinking about themeparks and their future, so I find this very interesting.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/shanghai-disneyland-reopens-intl-hnk/index.html

Shanghai is a weird park to start with. Sure, reopening in China (versus somewhere else) makes sense, given the progress that's been made in containing the pandemic there, and the merging of the invasive surveillance state with public health surveillance.

But of all the Disney parks in the world, Shanghai is the one that relies the least on social cohesion and rule-following. It's basically built on the assumption that everyone who visits will cheat the system.

For example, its queue stanchions are chest-height and solid to the ground to prevent queue-jumping (I have no idea how they square that with fire safety). The entrance turnstiles don't have their own queues (which invites scrumming), instead there's a maze of riot-fencing.

It's one person wide (to prevent queue-barging) and a cast member directs the front to a specific turnstile as it becomes available.

There are limits to how many turkey legs you can buy because people were buying several and walking back down the line, selling them.

When you use a Fastpass, your face is matched to a database at the queue entrance and then once (or twice) more before you board.

It's a contrast with other regional parks (HK, Tokyo), where there's a high degree of trust embodied in the queueing architecture and policies.

Shanghai also has the longest lines I've ever seen at a Disney Park, and several of them are lines for GA shows with no seating, some of them indoors. They have strict limits on the number of Fastpasses they give out and all Fastpasses are gone shortly after the park opens.

So there will definitely be some serious challenges to re-opening. First, there's the queues. Switchback queues are space-efficient and psychologically inviting (compared to a long, snaking queue), and they're compact enough to encase in an air-conditioned building.

They're also impossible to maintain distancing in. It looks like they've modified some switchbacks with bulges that separate people in adjacent turns, but this makes the queues less compact, and still has waiting spots where you'll  be too close.

https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-52620179

It's gonna be 31'C tomorrow in Shanghai, and 70% humidity. Pushing queues out of the show buildings and into the direct sun is gonna be brutal.

To make things harder, they're reducing capacity on the rides to create distancing, meaning that queues will move more slowly.

Then there's the technical matter of whether distancing on an attraction is meaningful or just pandemic theater: the research is inconclusive, but being next to someone in a show for 45 mins (or downwind of the HVAC direction) sounds risky.

As does being in someone's slipstream on a fast-moving ride for 5-8 minutes.

They're removing every second restaurant table from service:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/travel/2020/05/11/china-shanghai-disney-reopens-coronavirus-culver-pkg-intl-hnk-vpx.cnn

But again, without knowing about predominant HVAC currents, it's hard to say whether this will do much. We know that sitting a couple tables down(wind) from an infectious person is a risk:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e1.htm?s_cid=mm6915e1_w

Some of the countermeasures feel like theater, such as the multiple temperature scans. It's true that these will catch cheaters who go even if they know they're sick, but the hard problem of coronavirus isn't cheaters, its asymptomatic carriers.

"At least 44% of all infections--and the majority of community-acquired transmissions--occur from people without any symptoms. You can be shedding the virus into the environment for up to 5 days before symptoms begin."

https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

Whenever I hear someone talking about temperature checks, I wonder about their calculus. Is it:

* Delivers some benefit, doesn't hurt, why not? * Mostly useless, but makes people feel safe, why not? * My world is full of cheaters who'll selfishly risk others?

I don't see anything wrong with temp checks but I worry that social cohesion is our only way forward (asymptomatic people who know they were exposed but refuse to isolate are a much bigger risk than people with fevers who do so).

I also don't want to trust my safety to anyone who engages in symbolic gestures "to make me feel better" even if they don't make sense. Those people distort our discourse about safety and security and elevate nonsense to the same plane as evidence.

Given Shanghai Disney's emphasis on cheater-prevention, I think the temp scans are about catching cheaters, but if management is assuming that people will cheat, then temp checks won't catch the majority, who'll be asymptomatic.

IOW: if you think large numbers of cheaters will break the rules, then you can't open safely until the rules aren't needed (that is, until a vaccine is on hand).

A red flag for me: it's not clear how Disney will operate profitably under these constraints.

Independent analysts say the break-even point for a themepark under normal conditions is 50% of capacity (probably higher if you're paying additional staff to clean surfaces and manage compliance).

The news reports don't say what the new capacity of Shanghai Disney is, but it looks low. One way to fix this is to raise prices. At Disneyland California, the prices have skyrocketed without a drop in attendance, suggesting attendees are price-insensitive.

(Maybe not so much after their fortunes were destroyed by coronavirus, ofc).

But high prices ARE correlated with more pathological customer behavior, from arriving at rope-drop and staying until closing to "get their money's worth" (no one ever enjoyed a 16h Disney day).

They're also correlated with customers demanding - or cheating - to get a turn on every ride and show (to get their money's worth).

I'm worried that charging more will reduce compliance.

I really wanna go back to Disneyland! I hope this works! But I'm concerned that it's premature and will set things back.

[theviolentabyss]

Hot-headed Bugsy makes his mind up. Don't mess with Bugsy or you'll wind up. Wishing you'd left well enough alone.

:: Debut Solo ::

Part One

It maybe a new city, a new country and even a new set of targets, but the job, the goal and the aim was still the same. Regardless of where we were, the objective was to make sure that we were known and we took no crap from anyone. We believed we were above the law. Everyone has a price. Even the police, judges and jurors. They all had a price and they could all be bought to make sure that everything went our way.

Fat Sam’s grandfather had built his empire up in Chicago in the nineteen-forties, just after the second world war. Fat Sam’s father moved the empire to New York in the nineteen-eighties and now, Fat Sam himself has bought the empire to the United Kingdom. A new start. Of sorts.

After the show down with Dandy Dan six years ago, where a truce was called between both Fat Sam’s gang and Dandy Dan’s gang. Things went sour real big in New York after I left. Blousy and I headed off to Hollywood. She was destined for the great stage. Blonde, talented and beautiful. A modern day Marilyn Monroe. Hollywood wasn’t for me though, the straight and narrow life was not for me.

I wanted nothing but the best for Blousy. We just weren’t compatible. We were too different. So after two years, we went from fighting for each other, to fighting with each other. One day soon after I got the call from Fat Sam about moving to England and I didn’t hesitate to take him up on it. I begged Blousy to come but she had made it big in Hollywood, everyone knew her name now. That was the end.

That was four years ago. Four years. I thought of Blousy often. We never called, we never wrote and we never had any communication. I kept up with her ins and outs through social media but other than that, there was nothing between us. There was far too much here for me to concentrate on anyway and I spent more time in trouble than I did anything else these days.

So now, as I sat at the bar in Fat Sam’s Speakeasy club, I was rolling a ten pence piece over and under my fingers skilfully with one hand, while I swirled the brownish-orange liquid in the glass in the other. I needed to see Fat Sam before I headed to the Boxing Gym I owned in Kentish Town. A shipment of AK-47’s were coming into the Dover Docks tomorrow and I have had a tip off that the cops are all over it. So I wanted to re-route the shipment to Southampton, meaning we needed to get our men down there in time to receive the shipment before the cops got wind of it.

It was Sod’s law really that Fat Sam wasn’t here yet and the longer I waited, the more pissed I was getting. I stopped rolling the coin when I heard the door of the club open and I looked up to see Leroy Smith coming through the door. He joined Fat Sam’s gang the year of the truce and has stood by us ever since. Flicking the coin up in to the air and catching it, I shoved it into my leather jacket pocket and raised a finger to the bartender to signal a drink for Leroy as he sat down beside me.

“Hey Boss”

I glanced to him briefly, watching as he leaned up on the bar with a cheery disposition about him.

“What has you in a good mood?”

A knowingly cheeky grin spread across his lips, like he had some big secret to tell but wasn’t going to tell me unless I worked for it.

“Bugs; my man, why do I need a reason?”

I shifted uneasy on the stool. Once Leroy had his drink. I pushed my line of questioning once more, without very much tact.

“Cut the shit, Leroy”

He raised the glass to his lips and took large gulp. His deep throaty chuckle echoed around the nearly empty club. Only members, and visitors of members were allowed in here and it wasn’t even lunch time yet. So the usual suspects wouldn’t be rolling in until darkness fell.

“You’re no fun anymore, Bugsy”

He adjusted his cap on his head, before removing it and running his fingers through his messy hair. Dropping the hat to the counter top, I watched his every movement like a silent assassin ready to strike if need be.

“We got a sponsor for the fight between Trigger and Fingers Saturday night, he wants to meet with you tomorrow”

His grin widened as he spoke to me. Once a month. Every gang called a truce, and beat the shit out of each in the boxing ring. This week one of our own Trigger was fighting Frankie Randall’s guy, Fingers. He was dumb as fuck, but he knew how to fight, so it was going to be an interesting fight. I had been training Trigger myself and he was a force to be reckoned with. He was built like a brick shit house. Was also a few planks short of a decking but he was muscle and I had no doubts he would wipe the floor with Fingers this weekend. Picking up my whiskey glass and taking a sip. I cocked my head in Leroy’s direction.

“Who’s the sponsor?”

I eyed him inquisitively. It wasn’t unusual for a rival or local gang to sponsor the events. It gives them the access to be the only ones who could run bets at the match and monopolise the fight. Though I was strict as fuck and if I believed for one moment anyone was throwing the match I would shut that shit down and the person in charge would be blacklisted, if not dead.

We were all crooks, thieves and gangsters of the worse kind. We were deadly, we carried guns and we didn’t give much of a damn about anything that wasn’t business. But in my boxing club, on my property, you played by the rules and left your dodgy shit at the door because I had no issues putting a bullet in someone’s ass for trying to do over what was mine.

“Rusty Evans”

Leroy finally confessed after mulling everything over on how to tell me and my blood instantly boiled. My hand gripping around the whiskey glass. Rusty had been trying to muscle in on Fat Sam’s territory since we got here. Due to our New York connections, we were known before we even arrived. Reputation was everything and Rusty had made us his main target. The whites of my knuckles were straining around the glass, the tendons twitching with frustration. My lips curled up in a snarl and I kept my gaze forward. Focusing on the rows upon rows of bottled spirits on the back of the bar.

“Three quarters of a mill or he can take his rat ass business else where”

Barking my demand, as I raised the glass and knocked back the final contents of the glass. Slamming it back down on the bar. I saw Leroy jump in the corner of my eye in shock. He remained silent for a long time. Mulling over my terms. My club, my property, my price. People took it or left it. If we didn’t get a sponsor then I became the main bookie, so it wasn’t any loss for me. The stake was third quarters up front, or he could shove his sponsorship up his weak ass. It took all my will power to not stick a bullet in his chest and rip out his heart with my bare hands.

“Sure thing boss. Take it easy.”

He gave me a nod and slipped from his stool, my head cocked in his direction as I watched him replace his cap, tipping the front before leaving the Speakeasy club. Fuck this shit. I wasn’t in a good mood when I came in here, now my mood had gone to complete shit. Rusty was the lowest of the low. He got his men to play dirty and then ran like a coward. I wouldn’t put it past him to have tipped the Feds off on the incoming shipment. Looking across the bar to Louis.

“Another Louis. Thanks”

He gave me a nod and bought the bottle over. Nudging the tumbler closer so he could pour out another shot. Giving him a thankful nod. I picked up the glass and knocked it all back in one. I didn’t have to wait too much longer for Fat Sam to arrive. The door of the club came slamming open, smashing into the wall with such force. As usual he was ranting and raving about something but not making much sense. He was followed by his lackey Knuckles and his on and off girlfriend, and main lounge singer here at the Speakeasy, Tallulah.

“Ah, Bugsy; you here to see me? Course you are, sure, give me five, five and I’m all yours. Yo Louis, make sure my man has got a drink. Five minutes... five”

He was always all over the place. You could never get a word in edge ways and I wasn’t about to attempt to talk to him either until I was sure was going to listen. He disappeared into his office and I turned my head back around. My hand wrapping around the newly filled glass. I could smell the strong scent of Tallulah’s perfume before I saw her or heard her. I think she swam in it on a daily basis and it got right into the sinus’ and left a nasty taste in your mouth. As she now propped herself up against the bar. Her body turned directly at me. I didn’t bother to look at her.

Tallulah was a girl that you didn’t want to get involved with. Face piled with heavy make up, tight cocktail dresses that clung to every curve of her slender figure and purposely enlarged her ample breasts and cleavage to make sure that she got every man in eye line a chance to stare with their tongues hanging out. I was a conquest of Tallulah’s. But I’ve been there. Long before her and Fat Sam started dating and long before she was this high maintenance lush who would sleep with any man with money. That’s why her and Sam were on and off. She was too high maintenance for anyone to keep up with and I refused to be another notch of rich men on her bed post.

I could get my own women, whenever I wanted. I didn’t need to scrap the bottle of the barrel with girls like Tallulah who only saw pound and danger signs, to keep her interested. Her hand finally rose, to trail a red polished finger nail down over my arm slowly, causing me to finally turn my head in her direction.

“Not gonna buy a girl a drink there, handsome, it’s impolite to leave a lady hanging”

I snorted a laugh knocking back the entirety of my glass.

“I see no lady here though Tallulah, just you”

That fake smile she had plastered on her face faded quickly and she scowled at me. I kept my gaze on hers. Unwavering from her intense glare as I locked in her into this show down.

“Hey, Louis, give this girl her usual and put it on Fat Sam’s tab, will you?”

“Sure Bugsy”

Reaching into my pocket and pulling out my wallet, I grabbed out a few notes and dropped them down onto the bar to pay my tab. Leaving a hefty tip as usual. Replacing my wallet into my leather jacket. I slipped from the bar stool, closing the small gap between Tallulah and I. Looking down at her, I raised a hand, to hook my finger under her chin, and tilting her head to look at me.

“Never, Tallulah, never, and you can bet your Gucci heels on that shit too”

Giving her a wink and dropping my hand from her chin, I looked over towards Louis.

“Thanks man, see you later”

He gave me a salute and said no more as he made Tallulah’s drink and I headed towards Fat Sam’s office. It took a long time for Tallulah to shout back. Still stunned she had been shot down before she could even get started.

“You’ll be sorry Bugsy Malone, you will come crawling back to me one day, mark my words”

I chuckled under my breath but didn’t respond. I could hear her heels stomping against the wooden flooring before her screeching scream rang out through the empty club.

[adorkablepeter]

Dating Advice Part 2

Summary: Peter consults Y/N's dad Tony about girls and dating but little does Tony know that Peter is using his advice on his daughter.

A/N: Finally I finished the second part. This took me like forever. So sorry!

××× Part 1

Peter sat at the table in the main lab, his fingers shaking and his gaze avoiding the eyes of his crush's parents who sat in front of him.

"But I want to have a little chat with him. Father to not going to be son in law.", Tony had protested when Pepper sat down next to him. She had only shook her head, insisting that she wanted a say in this as well since Y/N was her daughter too - and so it was decided.

Tony took a deep breath before Peter dared to look him in the eyes, which lead to Peter shrinking together on his seat. He had never felt so much shame in his entire life.

"So all the stuff you've been saying was about our daughter?", Tony began and Peter nodded quietly, not daring to say a word. "Well, you could've told me." He crossed his arms in front of his chest after mumbling these words and turned his head to Pepper, hoping for support.

"Why the hell should he?", Pepper laughed ironically, "You wouldn't have told my dad before we got together."

"That is completely different!", Tony objected while Peter still sat there, silently watching them.

"No, It's not."

Peter shifted in his seat when he finally came up with some words. He cleared his throat and then spoke up, "If I had told you, you wouldn't have given me advice. And I think your advice worked out pretty well."

"Well, obviously. It was my advice.", Tony rolled his eyes.

"Tony, would you please stop being such a baby about this?", Pepper mumbled before she laid a hand on Peter's shoulder. "Peter, I would find it really great if you were her boyfriend."

Peter found himself trying to hide a smile. Having Pepper's approval made him feel much better about the whole situation and when Tony let out a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose, Peter was excited to hear what words were about to follow.

"I guess... It'll be...", Tony started, getting a strict look from Pepper before he cleared his throat. "Peter, I would be happy to see my daughter going out with a smart, decent guy like you."

"There we go! That wasn't so hard, was it?", Pepper laughed and Peter fiddled with his fingers, excitement running through his veins. "Peter, why don't you go upstairs? Y/N is in her room."

"No, wait.", Tony said as Peter stood up and followed his actions so that he was standing in front of him, looking down. "If I see one tear in her eye that was caused by you, you won't be an Avenger anymore. You know why? 'Cause you'll be dead. You got that?"

"Of course, Mr. Stark.", Peter nodded, fear in his eyes while Pepper let out a sigh, her hands resting on her hips.

"Don't listen to him, Peter."

As Peter was about to leave the room, Tony had some last words, "I'm gonna barf all over you if I will ever see you making out with her."

"You're such a child, Tony!"

"I love you too."

Peter chuckled to himself, making his way to the elevator. After entering the elevator he pressed the right button and looked at himself in the mirror. He tried his best to straighten his clothes and fixing his hair, putting the brown curls in an order.

Maybe, maybe he would be able to take courage and kiss her. Today could be the day.

The 'ding' told him that he reached the top of the Avengers Tower and he quickly made his way towards Y/N room or rather apartment. With a racing heartbeat he knocked at the door.

"Wait a sec.", he heard her voice and a moment after she opened the door, wearing sweatpants and a comfy hoodie. "Hi Peter! Come in.", she smiled, giving him a tight hug while he brought out a shy "Hey Y/N".

"Before you question my potato-bag-look: I've just started to watch a tv show.", she explained, walking over to the couch while Peter took of his shoes. "You wanna join? I'm watching Doctor Who."

"Yeah, sure.", he let himself fall onto the couch and to his surprise Y/N sat down right next to him, their shoulders touching. She was leaning against him, her head falling on his shoulder after she pressed play.

Peter was tensed the whole time . With all his nervous thoughts in his head he wasn't able to relax. And Y/N didn't seem to be that comfy either, moving around and trying to find a good position to sit.

"I think it would be way more comfortable if we laid down.", Peter suggested, being well aware of the small size of the couch.

"Well there's not exactly enough space for the both of us.", Y/N mumbled and Peter turned her head to look at her. "I don't mind cuddling with you.", he said and looked her straight in the eyes, hoping she would go for it.

"I don't mind either.", she grinned, pushing him slightly so that Peter laid on the couch and she laid half next to him, half on top of him. Peter laughed awkwardly, excited to have her so close to him. She snuggled her face into his blue Midtownhigh sweater. Several minutes later Peter's excitement turned into relaxation and they both stayed in this position until they had finished all the episodes of the CD. Y/N sat up, stretching her arms and turning around to look at Peter's drowsy eyes.

"Should we keep on watching?", she wanted to know and he nodded, a smile forming on her face.

"What?"

"Nothing", she laughed "You just look kinda cute when you're sleepy."

Peter felt his stomach turning upside down as she stood up to change the CD. He propped himself up with his elbows, watching her sitting down in front of the tv. An idea popped into his head, so he used his web shooters to grab the CD box she was about to grab.

"Hey!"

"I just want to check something."

"Shut up and give it back.", Y/N laughed and playfully hit Peter's arm before he threw it back.

"Ugh I hate you."

"Of course you do."

After the next episode started playing, she laid down next to him cuddling into his side again. For the next episodes both of them enjoyed the calm, relaxing hours together.

The next time Peter saw Y/N, he was working on a school project in the Stark lab. As Tony Stark intern he had a couple of benefits and one of them was this incredible lab which contain everything he needed. But Tony didn't want him to break something, so he watched him.

"So, kid, I gotta say, I'm curious.", Tony began hesistantly, "How are things with you... and you know. Any news?"

"Not really.", Peter mumbled, his eyes fixed on his work "I don't know... What if I'm reading too much into it. I mean... I just don't think she likes me in this way."

"Oh really? I'm sorry to hear that.",Tony said even though Peter knew that he actually wasn't. "There's a way to find out though. Without telling her anything about your feelings."

"There is?", Peter stopped working, curiously looking up and waiting for Tony to continue.

"Of course. You gotta make her jealous.", Tony said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Buddy, no offense, but you know nothing about woman."

"Well that's true...", Peter was confused and had no idea how jealousy was supposed to help him find out about Y/N's feelings for him. Until Y/N entered the room.

"Hey, what are doing?", she smiled, standing right next to Peter.

"We're working on my school project."

"We're talking about Peter's crush."

"Oh okay." Y/N mumbled after they had both answered in unison. Peter felt his blood rushing to his cheeks and looked at everything but her to avoid eye contact.

"Yeah I've been giving this young man some advice for a couple of weeks know.", Tony stated and Peter nodded nervously.

"Well I didn't want to detain you so... yeah. I'm in the training area if you need me.", she laughed awkwardly, swiftly heading towards the exit of the lab. "Okay, sweetheart, but don't hurt yourself."

"I never do!"

"See? She likes you.", Tony grinned.

Peter just couldn't stop smiling while he worked on his project. It was a very weird feeling being watching by Tony while knowing that his daughter liked him in a different way than just friendship.

"Listen kid, I got some work to do but I'm gonna be right there okay? Don't blow anything up." Tony informed him, patting his back before walking over to the other side of the room.

Peter kept on working and working and working. And after another hour he decided to come back tomorrow since he was too tired to concentrate anymore.

Walking through 're long corridors of the building, Peter got a text message from Y/N: "Come to my room. It's urgent."

Peter found himself knocking at Y/N's door a couple of moments later, nervously fiddling with his fingers.When Y/N opened the slowly Peter noticed the flustered look on her face and he didn't really know if he should hug her or not. He decided not to, wanting to find out what was wrong first.

"Did something happen?", he asked hesitantly, holding up his phone and refeferring to her message.

"Uh, no. Not really.", she laughed awkwardly and stepped aside to let him in. She was looking at him intensely making him shift his weight from one leg to another. He was uncomfortable, she knew that. "I just needed a way to make you come up here as soon as possible."

"Why?"

They sat down onto the couch where they had been sharing some intimate moments before, deepening their friendship and coming physically closer. Y/N looked down at her hands placed in her lap before she looked into his eyes. Taking a deep breath, she suddenly grabbed the collar of Peter's sweater and pulled him towards her. He couldn't even form a thought in his head before their lips met and his hands instinctively moved to her waist.

Peter's shoulders hunched together, his whole body tensed up when her hands moved to his neck while she was stealing his first kiss. So many thoughts were running through their heads and Peter tried to stop his hands from shaking. Peter hesistantly moved his lips against hers and a sigh confirmed that he was doing everything right. When she brushed her thumbs softly over the spot right under his ear with her fingertips playing with some strands of his hair, he started to relax and let out a sigh.

"Peter...", Y/N mumbled against his lips, her shaky breath telling him that she was just as nervous as he was. He only hummed as a response while his eyes remained closed, trying to hold onto this moment. "I saw the surveillance video."

"What?" Peter was confused. What was that supposed to mean? What had this to do with the kiss they had just shared?

"I know what you were always talking about with my dad.", she admitted with a smile on her lips and Peter leaned back awkwardly, not knowing what to say. "The things you said about me... and the things you did... Peter, you're really cute and I really, really like you."

Peter found himself smiling, still not believing that this was happening. He looked down onto the ground, his fingers running through his hair before he looks up again.

"I wanted to wait, you know. See what you would do. Wether you would kiss me or... you know. But, no offense, only god knows how long this would've taken. I just couldn't wait any longer."

"I dont even know what to say." Peter laughed happily, his arms wrapping around her to pull her into a hug. "To be honest, I thought Mr. Stark was going to kill me when he found out that you were the girl I was talking about. I'm still glad I asked him for advice though."

×××

All Posts: @imnothavingkids @marvel-midtown @heytomholland @sophie2003003 @erinmaryseavey @dreamer7black ×××Peter Parker Taglist: @ceci1735 @youngdreamerparadise-bf2ba176 @bringmetomnow @holycoldcoffee @just-a-new-start @aussie-mantle @elyshugh ×××Dating Advice Taglist: @thevanishedillusion @purplekitten30 @binky-bean @potterhead236 @itsmeaudrieee @girlsandarrows @bellabozella @legendarydazekitten @raised-by-fandoms @patootiepatoopiiiiii @saucystiles

[purple-spring]

Tomorrow - a SH fanfic

Author’s Note: This is my first SH fic and I have absolutely loved writing it. While I know that RPF is controversial for some, this was a piece I wanted to write to speculate on how SH began. This is obviously purely a work of fiction, and no offense is intended. Inspired by the following songs: “FOOLS” (Troye Sivan), “Television Romance” (Pale Waves) and “Can We Work It Out” (Gordi). A huuuuuuge thank you to @jandjsalmon and @theladylabyrinth for all their feedback and encouragement!

Summary: Lili and Cole are friends. Really good friends. So what happens when she wakes up next to him on a couch?

“What would it be like to let him in, to let herself love him? What would it be like to take a chance, to abandon her fears and leap freely into the unknown?”

Fic after the cut. Enjoy! And I love love love feedback, so leave me some love in my asks; hate will be blocked and deleted!

What came first was the warmth. A languid, pleasant warmth that reminded her of… of what? Of Christmas morning, she thought, with a sleepy smile. The gentle anticipation. The feeling of being home.

The second thing was her neck. It hurt. It rested awkwardly not on her own pillow but on the flat, firm surface of a couch that was definitely not her bed. She forced her eyes open and squinted against the bright California sun streaming in through the balcony.

Debby’s balcony. She was at Debby’s place. On Debby’s couch. Fuck. Guess I didn’t make it home last night.

She blinked slowly, attempting to rouse from her groggy haze. She’d overslept. Usually she was up by this time, but a few late nights in a row must have thrown her body off its normal cycle. But despite that, and despite the pain in her neck, she realized that she hadn’t actually slept this well in ages – a deep, dreamless slumber snuggled underneath a giant blanket. Maybe that’s why I feel warmer than usual.

Her neck really was killing her, though. She turned slightly to try and crack it, but was startled by something - someone - shifting behind her. An arm tightening protectively around her waist. A hand half-curled underneath her t-shirt, grazing her bare stomach. A sleepy groan mumbled into her hair. And, most tellingly, the faint scent of a familiar cologne cut by the slight undertone of cigarette smoke.

No.

She suddenly remembered.

Cole.

FUCK.

Her stomach dropped. Cole was spooning her. She had fallen asleep with Cole.

If she could have, she would’ve screamed. But she didn’t want to wake him and face the awkwardness of the situation, so she settled for gritting her teeth and shutting her eyes as tightly as she could, until she saw stars. A thousand thoughts streamed through her mind.

Is Debby awake? SHIT SHIT SHIT. HAS DEBBY ALREADY SEEN US?

I should go. Yup. Definitely need to go.

Okay, Lili. Focus. We can do this. But we need a plan.

Maybe I can sneak into the kitchen, make myself a coffee and pretend that nothing happened once he wakes up.

No. He’s not that gullible. He’ll know.

Okay, how about I pretend to fall out and then we can just laugh about it after? Then it’ll all just be a stupid joke, no harm done! Right? Haha.

Oh, god. Fuck. This is the worst. I’m just gonna go home. Screw it if he wakes up. I am not equipped for this.  

Then, in the midst of all the rambling, a traitorous thought.

Or I could stay.  

Her breath hitched at the audacity of the suggestion. She shut her eyes against it. No. No. We’ve been through this, Lili.

She felt her throat tightening, eyes threatening to brim over with tears. Images flashed through her head of the torture she had subjected herself to these past few months - letting herself fall for him and then battling, resisting, attempting to undo everything she felt for him.

Because this was all just so typical. Here, lying down next to each other, without any certainty of what they actually were… it was classic Cole and Lili. Affection without definition. Entanglement without clarity.

She sighed. A sigh that she felt all the way down to her bones.

How did we get here, Cole?

…

The immediate, short-term answer to the question was fairly simple.

Debby, Cole’s friend, former co-star and temporary roommate, had texted her the night before with an invitation to come over for dinner. “Cole’s still out of town so I’m getting the girls together for dinner. You down?” With nothing but ketchup and a bag of frozen peas sitting in her fridge, and with no other plans than hitting up her beloved Taco Bell again, she quickly replied with a grateful “yes”.

Lili had become fast friends with Debby since Cole introduced them to each other. Debby was lovely, down-to-earth and, in all honesty, not at all what she’d expected. If she’d been a psychologist or an anthropologist, Lili would have loved to have analysed both Debby and Cole as outlier case studies for the Disney child star phenomenon. They were both smart, worldly, kind and well-adjusted – totally opposite to the cliché of the bitter, washed-up, cynical ex-Disney kid (although she just knew that Cole would probably pipe up at this and say that he was bitter, washed-up and cynical. And then she’d have to roll her eyes and give him real-life examples of why he wasn’t any of those things. And in the middle of passionately enumerating ways in which he wasn’t bitter, he’d stare at her and say, “Okay, relax, Dr. Phil. I was kidding.”)

Lili hadn’t realized that being friends with Debby, well before anyone else on the cast had even met her, was somewhat significant, until she mentioned it in passing to Madelaine over lunch.

“Wait,” the redhead said in between sips of her smoothie. “So you’ve met Debby? Debby Ryan?”

“Um, yeah. Haven’t you?” While it was true that Cole and Lili had been cast first and had been acquainted since February, the rest of the Riverdale gang were becoming closer and were starting to mingle within each other’s circles.

“No. I mean, I’ve come across Debby at a few parties, but unless you count smiling at her awkwardly while re-applying mascara in the bathroom, then no, I haven’t actually met her.”

“Oh.”

“And I certainly haven’t had Cole introduce me to her.” Madelaine looked at her pointedly.

Huh. That was odd. But of course she’d met Debby. Cole was living with her while he was in LA. And Lili had assumed…

Well, what? That Cole brought all of his gal pals over to his place and got them to hang out regularly with one of his best friends? That this was just a normal occurrence for anyone within his circle?

Yeah, kind of?

She was startled to realize that this wasn’t true. Madelaine had a point - she was the only one. She’d even met Dylan, too. To the outside eye, that was… something. But he happened to be in town, she reasoned. And Cole and I had plans to hang out anyway, so…

“Lils, you there?”

Lili snapped back to attention and quickly changed the subject to cover up her thoughts. She brought up their plans to go bike-riding in Vancouver. In no time, Madelaine was distracted, chattering excitedly in between using her phone to find the best bike rides in the city. Lili contributed to the conversation whenever she had to, but her mind was somewhere else. The rest of that lunch – and every day since then, really – she couldn’t shake off that mild revelation that what she and Cole had wasn’t quite the same as what everyone else did.

…

How did we get here, Cole? Now, the long answer. This was more complicated.

What did she feel for him, anyway? ‘Like’ and ‘love’ were simplistic, overused terms. Of course she liked him. They were way beyond that. Did she love him? She wasn’t sure. This was why she rejected those terms to begin with – they were too vague, too general. They didn’t describe the way she felt whenever she was with him, or away from him.

If she could distil it to its essence, she’d say that she and Cole fit, in a way that calmed and exhilarated her in equal measure. It was easy being friends with him. That part came naturally to Lili. Like laughing at a really good punchline, or breathing in oxygen after being underwater for too long. They knew each other uncannily. They laughed at the same jokes and finished each other’s sentences. She told him once that he challenged her views on reincarnation because surely they’d met in a past life. Soon it became a running joke between them. He even created an entire fictional universe about their past lives as otters living along the Nile River (“That… is so random, Cole.” “Well you try studying archaeology for four years and not having Egypt in your subconscious. Shut up and let me have my otter dream.”)

But then there was also… him. She’d be lying if she said that she didn’t find him objectively attractive. It was disarming, to say the least, even though it lay underneath the rumpled clothes he insisted on wearing, which she didn’t mind. If anything, while his brother and his friends teased him by observing a strict roll call for his small roster of shirts (“It’s Tuesday, Cole, how come you’re wearing the Friday Orange?”), she found it endearing, and it drew her in and intrigued her. He was like a prince in exile, determined to downplay any part of him that referenced his darkly glittering childhood. But that face – the keen, blue stare, the mischievous mouth, the constellation of freckles – could not have been more at odds with the concealment. It was a face that was going to stand out no matter what.

So it was that Lili found herself veering between appreciating their easy friendship and then looking up and realizing that the goofball who was making her laugh was also the same man who could make her heart stop in its tracks.

And he wasn’t helping, either. Sure, there were times when she she felt like nothing more than a pal. Like when he’d throw fries at her head. Or FaceTime her at 3 in the morning to show her a cat he’d come across during a shoot (“Very nice, Cole. Now fuck off,” she had said while he cackled at her groggy face dotted with pimple cream. “IT’S NOT LIKE I WAS PLANNING ON SEEING ANYONE, my god, go away”).

But then, there were other times that made her wonder. Like that time when she mentioned that she’d damaged the original lens on her camera, and woke up one morning to a package on her table containing a newer, much better one, attached with a note simply scribbled “For future adventures -C.” And all the times – she couldn’t have just imagined them, there were too many – she’d catch him staring just a fraction longer, with a small smile playing on his lips.

Those were the times when she’d let her guard down, let herself imagine. What would it be like to let him in, to let herself love him? What would it be like to take a chance, to abandon her fears and leap freely into the unknown?

It didn’t matter, anyway. Because the more these feelings took root in her heart, the more she felt and fretted at the weight of the year ahead. With Riverdale getting the green light for a full season after a successful pilot, they were going to be filming full-time as co-workers. This was her big break; this was his return to the spotlight. There was a lot at stake for both of them, and there simply was no room for this foolishness. She couldn’t risk it. She was just going to have to shut it down and get over it somehow.

For herself. And for him, too.

…

For dinner, Debby had somehow managed to concoct a delicious compromise between her healthy eating habits and Lili’s more decidedly low-brow tastes (“Fish tacos!” Lili had exclaimed. “Deb, this is like if you and I got married and had taco babies”). The night was fun and light, and Lili found that she was enjoying herself more than she had all week.

That was until they heard the front door open and a large bag dropping onto the floor.

“Hey, I was gonna yell, ‘anyone home’, but I think the answer’s fairly obvious.”

Cole made his way into the dining room and they all burst into surprised elation.

Except Lili. She felt like throwing up. Well, fuck. She’d been studiously avoiding him – his texts, his calls, his social media – and now there was barely half a room between them. Right before he left, she had sworn to herself that she couldn’t do this anymore, this complicated dance of intense closeness and uncertain labels that only she seemed to be aware of. So she decided that she was going to use his absence productively, to take some space away from him. Out of sight, out of mind, she reasoned. And hopefully out of heart. The first few days were pure torture, but after managing to keep herself busy and out of the house, she was doing well.

Not anymore. Now, seeing his face, his shirt rumpled from travel, she was falling apart.

Debby got up and gave him a quick hug before looking for an extra plate. “Cole Mitchell. I thought you weren’t gonna be home until Friday?”

“Yeah, shoot wrapped up early. We got most of what we wanted on the first day, and one of the models who was scheduled for a later day managed to free up some time.” He looked around the room and spotted her. His face registered shock, and her heart ached as she watched him trying to contain it. “Hey, Lili.”

Fuck. He knew. Of course he knew she was avoiding him. She heard it in those two words, the measured casualness of his voice, the way he said her full name – Lili – unlike everyone else who shortened or lengthened it to Lils or Lilipad or Lilibeth. And fuck him because he just knew how to play it, how to say those two words so that she’d pay attention to what he was trying to say. Hey, you. Where’ve you been?

“Hey, Cole.”

The room tensed momentarily as everyone caught on to the odd coldness between the two. This was, after all, Cole and Lili. Cole, who knew exactly how she took her coffee. Lili, who’d freely walk into Cole’s bedroom to drag his blanket off his bed whenever she was cold.

Debby cut through the awkwardness. “Uh, Cole, you wanted dinner, right?”

“Yep.” After another significant look, Cole made his way into the kitchen. Lili wanted to sink into the floor. When he came back with his plate, he sat well away from her and started a conversation with someone else. She wanted to leave, but she knew that that was only going to attract attention after their little moment. So she resolved to stay and grit her teeth through it, figuring she’d make her escape once everyone left.

She really should’ve known. She should’ve predicted that Cole knew her too well, was far too ingenious to just let her go. They had already started putting everything away when he piped up. “I feel like watching a movie tonight, guys,” he said. “Anyone up for a Baz Luhrmann movie marathon? Strictly Ballroom? Romeo and Juliet?” He caught her eye. “Moulin Rouge?”

You little shit. She wanted to throttle him. Not only did he know it was her favourite film, he knew that Debby knew it, too. And there was no way she was going to get the opportunity to beg off the night without seeming rude.

Debby lit up. “Oh my god, yes. We haven’t done that in ages. Lil! Weren’t you saying you hadn’t seen that in months?”

Lili looked wearily at Cole. He looked right back at her, a shit-eating grin on his face. I win. She couldn’t help it. She burst into laughter. He did, too.

“Fine,” she said, settling into the couch. “But we’re skipping Strictly Ballroom and getting straight into some classic old-school DiCaprio.”

Cole settled right next to her. With his forelock falling carelessly across his face, a roguish look in his eyes, of course he had to be the very image of Leo himself. Calm down.

He smiled. Her heart stuttered. “Fine by me.”

…

Lili waited for Cole to snark her about ghosting him. He didn’t. If anything, he seemed determinedly normal, whispering random commentary throughout the movie that made her laugh. She wanted to be annoyed. After all, it had taken considerable effort to ignore him all week. But being with him again - talking to him, trading barbs and banter - was like crawling toward sunlight after languishing in the dark.

After Romeo and Juliet finished, Debby’s friends decided to call it a night. Lili got up and stretched. Cole smiled lazily up at her. “Hey, you,” he said. There was something strange about him.

“Hey, yourself,” Lili replied. “You’re in a funny mood.”

“Yeah? What mood am I in?”

“I don’t know, you’re just being weird.”

Cole smirked in reply and shrugged. “You’re staying for Moulin Rouge, right?”

Lili hesitated. She was starting to feel a little tired. “I… don’t know.”

“Oh, come oooonnn. I’m a little jetlagged and buzzed and could probably do with some company, to be honest.”

“You have Debby.”

“Yeah, but Debby’s boring.”

Debby poked her head in from the kitchen. “I heard that!”

“I meant for you to!” Cole quickly ducked as Debby threw a bag of chips at him, then turned to Lili. “See what I have to put up with? You have to stay. Please.”

“Just stay, Lil!” Debby called out. “I’ll whip up some fresh guac for the chips and bring out some chocolate as well.”

Lili sighed and turned to Cole. “Can you at least promise to drive me home if I get too sleepy?”

“I promise.”

What choice did she have? This was Moulin Rouge and Cole. “Alright, you big baby,” she said, laughing at his puppy dog eyes. “I’ll stay.”

…

Moulin Rouge was Lili’s favourite movie and an absolute assault on the sense, but it didn’t take long for her to feel drowsy. She took advantage of all the snacks Debby had laid out in the living room in an attempt to keep herself awake, but all the sugar was just causing her to crash. She needed to lie down.

“Cole?”

“Mmm?”

“I feel sleepy.”

Cole nodded and shifted down the couch to give her space to stretch out. She settled into her new position, tucking her feet under her so he could have some space.

But he gently resisted that, propping her feet on his lap. She would have protested, insisting that he didn’t have to, but soon he was tracing lazy circles on her ankle with his thumb, and she did not have the energy to fight how good it felt, or overthink whatever the hell it meant.

Soon Debby got up from her spot on the floor and announced that she was going to bed. She turned to Cole. “Can you please turn off the lights? And make sure Lils gets home.” He nodded. She and Lili bid each other a sleepy good night, and she retreated to her bedroom.

Cole and Lili stayed still on the couch as the movie kept playing. Lili had no idea what they were watching anymore - she was fighting her sleep, but more than that, she was fully aware that she and Cole were alone together for the first time in weeks. Which she was usually comfortable with. Tonight, however, something unspoken hung in the air between them.

Suddenly, he got up and walked off in the direction of his room. She was briefly startled, until he came back into the living room holding his dark blue plaid blanket, which he’d dragged off his bed. “Here,” he said, throwing it over to her. “I knew you were approximately thirty seconds from whining about freezing your ass off.”

She laughed as he sat back down on the couch. “Oh yeah? And I do this regularly now, do I?”

“Yep. You’ve also made me watch this musical a thousand times, AND” - he covered her mouth with his hand as she started to interrupt - “you’re going to correct me and say, ‘Cole, don’t be a peasant, it’s a jukebox musical, not a musical, and yes there’s a difference.’”

“There IS a difference. And now you know, so I’ve taught you well, young Padawan.” She pulled the blanket over her body and closed her eyes. “What else do I do?” she asked, yawning.

He looked at her for a moment, his mouth opening and closing, as if to measure what he was about to say next. “You go to Starbucks and always get a size too big, and make me drink the rest of whatever sugary confection you’ve ordered that day. Your favourite VSCO filter is C3, even though it’s obviously trash. Your favourite shirts are all white, despite the fact that you always spill something on yourself - case in point, the salsa on your top tonight.”

“Hey, how did you –”

“Also, you suck at driving my Jeep –”

“I can SO drive your Jeep.”

“–you suck at driving my Jeep, no matter how many times I’ve walked you through it.” He laughed, and his gaze softened. “You buy a new notebook every other week because you write prodigiously. You buy yourself flowers every Friday and never make a big deal out of it. And… you can sleep pretty much anywhere, but once your hand touches your cheek, I know that you’re off and definitely dreaming.”

She looked back at him and smiled, already half-asleep. “Nice work. Since when did you know so much about me, Mr. Sprouse?”

He only smiled in reply, obviously proud of himself. She closed her eyes as his hand settled on hers. I can fall asleep like this forever.

Sleep began to overtake her, but not before she felt a slight puff of air against her leg as Cole suddenly lifted the blanket. He slipped his lithe, sinewy frame behind her, his strong arms wrapping themselves around her waist. She froze. She could feel the length of his body against hers and it was slowly obliterating every reasonable thought in her system.

“Cole?”

“Mmm?”

“Are we doing this?”

He nuzzled his face into her hair, his breath warm against her neck. She felt his mouth turn up into a grin. “Sure. Fuck it. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

Every ounce of logic in her body screamed against it. If she was smart, she’d get up and drive herself home. Or demand that they actually talk about this.

But as his hand found the skin under her shirt and settled on her waist, she decided she was with Cole on this one; fuck it.

We’ll figure it out tomorrow.

…

And now tomorrow was today.

Lili lay still on the couch, wanting to smack herself for being so reckless. For letting Cole get to her so easily. He had a knack for wearing down her defenses, but she’d had enough.

She felt him stir against her. “Morning,” he mumbled, his voice low in her ear. “Did you sleep okay?”

She had to keep a clear head. She had to. “I slept… fine,” she replied, keeping her tone flat and even.

“Good.” Cole stretched his arms above him. She silently berated herself for missing the warmth of his hands on her bare skin. “What do you want to do today?”

I want to stay here with you.

I want to run away from you.

Lili sighed, exasperated. She sat up and faced him. “Seriously? ‘What do I want to do today’? My god. I don’t know, Cole. Maybe figure out what the hell we’re doing here?”

Cole’s eyes flew open in confusion. He sat up to face her. “What?”

“You heard me. Don’t pretend this is normal for us. I just…” She paused and pinched the bridge of her nose to stop herself from tearing up. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Cole looked at her steadily. “Do what, Lili?”

She waved her hand frantically between them. “THIS! You, and me, and this indefinable whatever that we’ve been carrying on for months now.”

“‘Indefinable?’ What’s there to define?!”

“Everything!” Lili’s voice caught at that, and her eyes welled up. “The hanging out. The late night phone calls. The constant texts. The random presents. And on top of that, last night and this morning and the fucking spooning. All of that, Cole!”

His eyes stayed on her, his silence willing her to go on.

“I just… I need to know because I need to get away from it. It’s so fucking complicated, Cole. We can’t keep doing this, not when we’re about to work together, and see each other everyday, and god, I like you too much to screw this up. I have no idea where you are, or how you feel about me – “

“Lili.” Cole grabbed her wrists and pulled her close. “Are you… seriously… that ignorant?”

She went still. His eyes searched her, challenging her to respond. She felt naked under his gaze. She knew that every fibre in her being was about to give in to everything she had fought for so long. But could she really allow herself to? She shut her eyes against his stare, attempting to make a last-ditch effort at resistance.

But the tide had turned, and he was already well ahead of her. Because he had already moved in on her, his lips finding her cheek, grazing her cheekbone lightly and leaving every inch undone in their wake. The damp, fervent heat of his breath made her tremble. Slowly, one of his hands released her wrists and moved up to the collar on her shirt, fisting the thin cotton, pulling her closer to him. His lips worked their way down to her sharp jawline, planting a trail of small kisses that ended at the corner of her mouth. He pulled away and looked at her, and the hunger in his eyes took her breath away.

Then he crashed on her like lightning, his mouth feverish-hot and full of need. One hand slid into her hair, making a snarled mess, the other pulling at her waist, bringing her deeper into their kiss. She tasted smoke, felt thunder churning inside of her. She couldn’t help herself - she lifted her fingers to touch his lips as he brazenly explored hers. Just to check. Just to make sure this was real.

And in brief moments of lucidness, between being kissed into oblivion, she knew. That this would be her undoing. That this was creating a need in her that she never knew existed. That if things did happen later on between her and Cole, and if things went bad, that she would do everything in her power to be kissed like this again.

At last he broke away. As she caught her breath, his thumb lingered on her mouth. She opened her eyes and met his, and she couldn’t help it - she laughed. He made a face at her.

“You’re laughing?”

“No. I mean, yes. Not at this. With this, if that makes sense.” Her mind was still reeling, and she could barely explain herself. Later that night, she would recognize that it was pure joy that had spilled out of her; that it reminded her of running downhill, of riding a rollercoaster, of splashing madly into a sun-dappled ocean.

He took her hands and wrapped his fingers around them. “All this time… you never knew?”

“You never said anything, Cole.”

“Lili, you know that I did. Maybe not with words, but I did. I thought you’d have that figured out. I mean… I don’t just introduce Dylan to anyone, you know. He’s usually locked away in a basement. It takes a lot of effort getting him out.”

Lili laughed. And was relieved to realize that this still happened - that they could still joke and banter like they used to.

“But… this past week made me figure that maybe you weren’t getting that.”

“You noticed I was ignoring you?”

“Noticed? You were killing me, Lili.”

She felt guilty. Tentatively, she leaned forward and kissed him as a way of apology. It caught him by surprise, and he lingered over the kiss longer than she had meant for it to last, tugging at her bottom lip before letting go. Over the next few days, she would lose count of how many kisses they’d trade, but in that moment she took note that this was only their second kiss, and already it felt natural to her. “I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. And, you know, feel free to apologise again, and soon.” He grinned at her.

“So… can I ask? Why didn’t you just come out and tell me all this before it got tense and weird and complicated?

“Well… one, because I thought you knew. I mean, shit, are you even aware that my nickname around this house is Captain Obvious? It’s actually embarrassing.” Lili smiled at that. “And two, because I really was in no rush to define what we were. I mean, why would I need to name it when it was already so fucking good, you know? I didn’t want to jinx it. I’m sorry, that sounds immature, right?”

“No,” Lili conceded. “But I guess for me it would’ve put some parameters on what I was supposed to feel, what I was supposed to do. Because you came out of nowhere, Cole. Like… a cat. A cat getting hit by a car.”

He burst out laughing. “That is the worst comparison. You suck at this.”

“I’m sorry! But it’s true.” She laughed, and looked down at her hands, still enclosed in his. “So… what now?”

“Now?” He shrugged. “I don’t know, you wanna go out for breakfast?”

“Cole.” She levelled a stare at him. “I’m serious.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know, Lili. What are you really asking here? Are you really asking about now, or tomorrow?”

“Can I ask about both?”

“Sure. Here’s my answer to now. I’m honestly crazy about you.” With that, he pulled her in until she was sitting on his lap, and buried his face into her neck, his mouth forming words on her skin. “Every time I’m with you, I can’t decide whether I feel brave, or reckless, or vulnerable, or exposed. More likely all of them, all at the same time.”

She smiled, and turned her towards him so that their foreheads were touching. “And tomorrow?”

“If you’re asking me what the next few months will look like, I… really don’t know.” She nodded and pulled back, a little deflated. It was a fair and honest answer, but it left her feeling uncertain. He noticed her disappointment, and planted a kiss on her bared shoulder. “But tomorrow? You and I have that. I can promise you that.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

She looked at him, traced his dimple lightly with her finger. Tomorrow. Maybe she could live with that for now. Maybe in the face of everything that was about to happen to them - the avalanche of Riverdale and everything that came with it - that small promise was enough.

She just needed to know one more thing. “Cole? Can you promise me something else?”

“Shoot.”

“Can you promise me…” her voice trailed off, and suddenly she felt shy. “Can you promise me that you’ll kiss me again? Tomorrow?”

He arched an eyebrow in surprise, and smirked at her. “Tell you what,” he said. “How about we bring tomorrow forward“ - he leaned in to plant kisses on her chin, her cheeks, her neck - “and figure it out as we go along?”

But as he was teasing her, she was already lost, obliterated - this time, it was her pulling him in. And as he returned her kiss with equal passion, she knew with absolute certainty that this was only the beginning. That they’d be here again many times over. That the future may be unsure, but at least, for now, what they had was real and raw and breathtaking.

Tomorrow was already beckoning.

[kuriquinn]

Underneath the Underneath [3/?]

Temporary Blanket Disclaimer

First Chapter

AN: Not edited yet. But it’s been written, which is half the battle :D 

Manako Inuzuka sits cross-legged on the glass counter of the surplus shop, scowling down at the week’s ledger. She’s not a fan of numbers or mathematics at all, but even she can see that something is not quite adding up.

Which is bad, because when the numbers don’t add up, she gets the blame for it and ends up taking a pay cut somewhere.

And I already practically live on cup-ramen. If I eat any more of it, I’m gonna turn into that Uzumaki kid...

“Oi! What do you think you’re doing?!” a familiar voice demands, and Saburō Izumo hobbles in from the backroom, wrinkled face pulled tight in disapproval. Manako’s boss is a short, skinny old man with threadbare, iron grey hair that sticks out in every direction, and hands permanently stained and scarred from making explosives.

His favourite pastime is the glare at potential customers who linger in the shop without buying anything. When he’s in a particularly overbearing mood, he puts on a set of thick, round pince-nez glasses to magnify his unimpressed stare.

Since he’s not wearing them now, Manako decides he’s just in a complaining mood and not actually angry. She returns her attention to the ledger.

“How many times do I say? I don’t want your backside smudging up the display!” he scolds. “And what happens when you break the glass? You’re gonna die a horrible, agonizing death from blood loss, then I have to find replacement. The paperwork!”

“Relax, old man, I’ve got enough training to know how to channel chakra to my ass, it won’t break the glass,” Manako retorts, not looking up.

“Ungrateful whelp…No respect for your elders…”

She notices something out of the corner of her eye, and upon re-reading a line of numbers, smirks in triumph—she’s figured out why the numbers don’t look right.

“You’ve overpriced the gunpowder again,” Manako points out. “No one’s going to buy it here when down the street they’re practically giving it away.”

“They’re practically giving it away because it is cheap imitation,” Saburō harrumphs, striding over to tap the book in her hand. “This? This is secret recipe. Passed down to me by my father, who got it from his father, and so on for many generations of—”

“Important people who did important things and had no fun,” Manako cuts him off. “You say this every time, but I’m the one who has to look at the books, and the profit margin ain’t ever as high as you think it is.”

“Profit is profit. And if it’s more than what that old fishwife across town is making, that’s enough.”

“That…isn’t she your wife?”

“And I love her dearly,” Saburō says, tapping his heart with his fist. “But home is home and business is business and I will blow her quaint little stall out of the water.”

“Freaky old fool,” Manako says, unable to hold back a smile. “Fine. But you’re still getting ripped off by the guys selling you the powder. I can hook you up with better quality stuff, for much cheaper, if you’d just—”

“Oi!” he scowls at her over his glasses. “This legitimate business. None of your questionable connections here! At least wait until I’m dead and gone and with a nice memorial stone. Then you can run this place like the black market for all I care. But until then—” he shakes a finger at her, “—we are wholesome, family store!”

“Whose financial model is built around selling tools that kill people, with a side goal of destroying your wife’s business,” Manako deadpans.

“Exactly.”

She sighs and returns her attention to the books. “We’re out of the specialty metsubushi. Really popular with all those new Academy students that figure they should whip out the weapons for every little schoolyard fight. We should restock and raise the price. Ten percent?”

“Fifteen. Once the injuries start, sales will go down. Strike while the iron’s hot,” Saburō says gleefully.

And people say I’m devious, Manako thinks with a snort.  “There were a bunch of kids eyeing the Exploding Spheres, too. We should institute a strict ‘chūnin and older’ policy, or we’re going to have Old Man Third after us about responsible selling.”

“Hmph. We’ll put up a sign. When you’re done with those, come in back, we can get started on the orders for tomorrow.”

“You said I could take the afternoon off,” Manako reminds him.

“Why?”

“Because I asked for it?”

“That doesn’t sound like me.”

“I know. That’s why when you said it, I checked to make sure you weren’t an imposter using Henge and then made you sign a release form?” she prompts, producing a small, crinkled paper written on the back of a receipt.

Saburō leans in and studies it, as if trying to detect a forgery. “I…suppose this seems in order.”

“Oh, shut up, you know you said I could. You complained all day about it,” Manako rolls her eyes.

“Well, I don’t see why you need to go early. What’s more important than making sure you’re well prepared for tomorrow’s business?”

“I have a date.”

“So?”

“So, I haven’t been out in a while and need a break.”

“Why?”

Manako rolls her eyes. “Because young people—which, I’m pretty sure you used to be a long, long, long—”

“Oi!”

“—time ago, like to go out and have fun sometimes.”

“Young people didn’t have fun when I was your age. They were too busy fighting. And working. And being respectful.”

“Good thing we live now, and not then.”

“Hmph. It’s not that grocery boy again?” Saburō wants to know. “He’s not good enough for you.”

“Thanks, and no,” Manako retorts with false modesty. “It’s the girl at the bakery.”

He blinks. “The one who looks like Princess Gale?”

“Exactly.”

“Feh. That won’t end well,” Saburō shakes his head.

Manako crosses her arms and juts her chin out in challenge. “Are you saying she’s out of my league?”

“I say she’s the sort to make noise and get a person in trouble. And you—you’re the type that gets in trouble.” He pauses. “And yes. She’s out of your league.”

“Gee, thanks…”

“Maybe if you were more respectful girl…”

“Wrong Inuzuka.”

“You should ask that girl at that ramen stand. She’s much politer. Or one of those boys who guard the city gate.”

“Pretty sure those two are spoken for,” Manako replies, amused. “And Ayame doesn’t like girls.”

“Pity. She could bring us lunch if she visited you.”

“I love how my dating life is all about what you can get out of it…”

“I’m old. All that’s left is to live life vicariously through you. Even though you have terrible judgement.”

“Says the man getting ready to start a price war with his wife. I hope she makes you sleep on the couch.”

Saburō waves that off.

“Very well. Finish the books and you can go. I will go and prepare for tomorrow. All alone. Even though I have such terrible arthritis in my fingers these days,” he sighs loudly, heading into the back room.

“You’re not guilting me out of the first afternoon off I’ve had in a month,” Manako calls after him.

“You’ll feel bad when my hands cramp up and I can’t work anymore, and we lose the store,” he calls back. “Or at least when it turns out I’m right about that girl. Then you’ll say, ‘oh, I wish I had listened to Uncle Saburō, and stayed to do my work, because now I still have money and my heart isn’t broken’.”

“Try not to inhale anymore of the ingredients back there!” Manako shouts back, but he either doesn’t hear it or chooses to ignore it.

Crotchety old bugger, she thinks fondly as she goes back to the finances. It doesn’t take her long to finish checking the last tallies up, but just as she makes the final calculations, the door opens and closes.  A beat later, her nose twitches at a familiar scent garlic, toad oil and sake—all barely hidden under a layer of artificial fragrance.

Someone’s been to an onsen recently, she thinks as a figure takes up residence in front of her. Closing the store ledgers, Manako leans forward, propping her chin on her palm to regard the tall, white-haired man before her.

“Hey there, Manako,” he drawls, the smile on his face sly despite how he shows all his teeth. “Have you turned eighteen yet?”

“Hey, Jiraiya,” she replies with an equally sly smile. “Have you contracted syphilis yet?”

The sage’s expression falls flat and he pouts at her. “You are a very unpleasant young woman.”

“And you’re a pervert who should be sterilized for the good of womankind.” She swivels around, hopping behind the counter.  “And yet you’re a legend. The universe is funny like that. Nice sunglasses, by the way. Is that really how you sneak around the continent?”

“Hmph. Sunglasses are inconspicuous.”

“You can tuck your hair into your belt. Inconspicuous left the equation about thirty years ago.”

“Well, inconspicuous is overrated anyway. How else would I attract the attention of lovely ladies looking for love?” he smarms.

Manako wrinkles her nose.

“Gross, but points for the alliteration,” she says. “Are all the legendary Sannin as messed up as you?”

“Trust me, I have the least baggage,” Jiraiya grins, pretending to shoot two ‘finger guns’ at her.

“I don’t think you should sound so proud of that.”

“Well, you’re charming as ever,” he sighs. “Is your boss in?”

“I might be convinced to go find him for you if you offered the right incentive.”

“How about because it’s your job?”

“My job is to mind the front counter. If I go in back, how do I know you won’t steal something?”

Jiraiya frowns. “Would you just go and get the old man?”

“In a minute. You owe me something first.”

“Yeah, yeah…” he digs into his pocket and brings out a thick scroll. “Here are all my recommendations. Your devices work surprisingly well, and I’d be keen to bring a few more out with me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. The problem is there’s still no market for them in the big cities. The population in outskirts villages and the farmlands think they’re great, though. The farther out of the way, the more they like them.”

“Really?” Manako asks, brightening.

“Problem is, they can’t afford your asking price. So, unless you’re willing to donate a bunch just for exposure…”

“I can’t,” she protests. “They cost most of my paycheck to make!”

“Eh.” Jiraiya shrugs.

“Wait a minute—you mean you didn’t sell any? I didn’t give those to you for charity, you old badger!”

“Hey, watch the name calling! And what are you getting your nose all bent out of joint? You’re really angry I’m offering your product to people in need?”

“Well—no, but—I still gotta eat!”

“Then figure out a solution. Find a way to make them out of cheaper materials or something,” Jiraiya shrugs.

“Or people could just stop being terrible,” Manako grumbles.

“Then we’d all be out of a job,” Jiraiya says sagely, still digging into his pack. “But, failed business ventures aside, I’m not coming to you empty handed.” He drags out half a dozen paperbacks with lurid covers. “Here! The latest wonders from the distant lands.”

Manako lets out an undignified squeal that turns into rather maniacal laughter; luckily, no one is there to hear except Jiraiya. “Gimme!”

“Two of those are signed. I met the authors at a writer’s retreat in Kumo. Both ladies were…heh…more than happy to personalise those.”

Manako shoots him a suspicious look. “There aren’t any…stains I need to worry about on these, are there?”

“Don’t be crude, they’re in their original packaging!” Jiraiya yelps.

“Well, I just want to be sure,” Manako replies. “I’m not the only one reading this stuff, you know. I’ve got a friend who might want to read them after me, and I don’t want to explain why he might want to use gloves while handling them... He’s reading your latest now, though it’s taking him forever.”

“Hey, that was just for you,” Jiraiya complains. “If my publisher finds out your sharing my work before it’s even published yet…”

“Relax—the guy’s a jōnin. If he can be trusted with Konoha’s secrets, I doubt he’ll spill the ending of the latest Icha Icha,” she dismisses.

“Better not,” Jiraiya mutters.

“I’ve got a few things to say about that ending, though,” Manako goes on.

“Later. I’m on official business, which means your constructive criticism will have to wait.”

There’s something in his tone that informs her the time for joking is past. While Manako has never been one for blind respect, she also knows when it’s best to let a joke go.

“He’s in the back room.”

Jiraiya salutes and heads in back.  “Stay weird, kid.”

“Not a problem,” Manako says, studying her stack of new books.

She suddenly has a dilemma in front of her.

Kimiko wouldn’t be that angry if I cancelled, right?

つづく

I had fun with this chapter. It’s been a while since I got to write snappy dialogue, and writing Manako I felt like I was channelling myself. I wish I had a boss like her, though…but hey, we got to see her at work, which is always fun ^_^

And yes, in case you missed the obvious, Manako is bisexual. Always has been, from when I first created her ( I have put hints about that in a few other fics...though I don’t know if anyone caught them ^_^)

Anyhow, hopefully this was a nice, lite bit of reading for you guys. It’s been so long since I had a moment to write anything, so I figured I’d start with light and humorous before I get back into the serious stuff. Next chapter we’ll see Kakashi again 😊 and get a little more Kakashi/Manako action. I just wanted to establish that they have entire lives without the other one in it before getting them into an acquaintanceship/friendship/romance. 

Reviews and constructive criticism are appreciated! You can also find my tip jar here.

Next Chapter

栗

[hopevalegame]

2019-05-08

Hey blog longer time no see ;D

Quite a bit has happened in the last almost 2 months though not quite so much in regards to this project but we haven’t given up. There’s been quite a few distractions... loss, sickness, money worries, mainly. 

I had to get myself a job so I could support us while we continue working on this project. It will be nice to have money coming in on an ongoing basis and no to no longer have to live like paupers but the reality of working full time is that my time will be limited and I will have to be disciplined with the fewer hours I have free. 

So, to motivate myself (and Cutie-Chan) to work me and her have set up a system with monopoly money. It’s a bit different for her but for me the system goes like this: For every day I work I get a 5$ monopoly bill. That’s money I can spend on leisure. If I don’t earn any monopoly money I can’t spend any of the money I earn. So, for every week I would earn at least 25$ from working. That’s to motivate me for going to work. And to motivate me for working on project I will earn 1$ for every 25 minute pomato meter I do during the week. During the weekend it will be 1$ for every hour of pomato and the maximum earnings (for both Robo-chan and I) will be 75$ so if we both earned our maximum we would get to spend 150$ a week (jointly). 

It’s Wednesday today and we implanted the system on Monday and so far I’ve earned 15$ because I worked 3 days but didn’t do any project work after work. Starting a new job is tiring so I’ve been mostly recuperating in the evenings but now that I’m getting more used to it and getting an easier flow going I’m ready to do some serious work again. 

I’m still not sure what I want my schedule to look like permanently and since my work schedule is supposed to change in a couple of months I won’t create a rigid schedule. What I’ll do is I’ll setup goals for the next day and then I’ll just try to stick to my daily objectives.

I’ve been re-listening to Atomic Habits and so I’ve got the idea in mind to setup small achievable goals that I can feel good about accomplishing for every day. Especially with just having started a new job I don’t want to overwhelm myself as I get back into this so I’ll be starting small and trying to do a little more everyday. The goal right now is to setup habits of working on project before and after work and it’s already hard since working itself isn’t even a habit yet (I’m only on week 2). 

I’ve been thinking and I’ve decided I was going to wake up earlier in the morning to do all my programming learning (since that’s when my mind is freshest). Music will be in the evening to relax. I want the strict minimum to be 1 pomato of coding and 1 pomato of music EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. No matter what. I also want to exercise every single day, but again, I have to not overwhelm myself. So I’ll be starting very, very, small. Setup the habit first. That’s all that matters. 

The habits I want to incorporate in my routine as of right now are: 

- Exercise everyday

-Code everyday

-Music composition everyday

So yeah, here are my objectives for tomorrow May 9th:

1. Wake up at 7 at the latest. 

2. First thing as soon as I get out of bed: Do 10 pushups, 10 chinups and 10 squats (start small!!!) (2 minutes)

3. Before I go to work: Do one pomato meter (25 minutes) of programming. Keep working on the Odin project (week 4 of that coursera on learning). After much deliberation I’ve decided to work on coding in a more general manner with the Odin project. It will make me a good programmer and I’ll be able to use my skills on game making. It will also make it so that I’m not bound to the gamemaker engine. It’ll make me more flexible in case I ever want to switch to another platform like unity or whatnot. I might very well just stick to gamemaker forever but you never know. All in all I think that the skills I’ll develop doing the Odin project will serve me very well. This is an experiment. I want to see how advanced I can get in the next 900 hours and if one can truly get a job as a junior dev after finishing this program.

4. Go to work. Do a good day. Be enthusiastic. Be nice to everyone. Relax. 

5. After I’ve gotten back home, ate, winded down a bit, do one pomato of music (25 minutes). What you’ll do is you’ll pick your favorite song from Gart Morson’s Plantasia and you’ll use it as reference to create your own song in the same genre. So maybe tomorrow will be something like: Finding the song, analyze it a bit, find a lead or a bass that you like and that reminds you of it and make a short riff. 

Then you’re done. You can have the rest of the evening to yourself. You can do whatever you want but I recommend reading the Expanse because you have 6 of these books to read and you heard they’re really good. Reading is a lot more relaxing than gaming and it makes you smarter than T.V so it’s a good leisure activity. I’m not doing a dopamine challenge right now because I don’t want to be too hard on myself with this new job and everything but I’ll to to stick to these cleaner activities. 

So yeah, that will be 52 minutes of work outside of work. It’s a good enough start. In fact it’s a great start. I should be proud of myself if I can be that consistent and do at least this much everyday. So I’m gonna leave it at that. This took me a long time to write and my time is limited now so from now on my updates will only consist of whether I’ve accomplished the day’s objectives and my objectives for the next day. Keep it short and sweet. Maybe some pointers of what to do better the next day or how to improve, things to change or whatnot but yeah, I’ll try to keep these updates to under 5 minutes. 

Alright, signing off now. Excited for tomorrow. 

I’ve missed doing this.

-Robo-san

[maggiejulienne]

2017 Midway Check-point and Writer Feelings

Hello, the internet!

2017 has undoubtedly been the best year of my entire life. It’s amazing what getting out of an emotionally abusive relationship can do for the mind, body, soul, and career! I highly, highly recommend it. I hear it’s a lovely time of year not to have been in one in the first place, but if that isn’t an option, telling him “boy, bye” is a excellent back-up plan.

So let’s re-re-re-re-re-rewind!

January

February- Asked to do a treatment for Someone Else’s Musical So I Can’t Tell You More which definitely went under the category of “labor of capitalism” rather than “labor of love,” but it was 

March - Demo recorded for Musical Chairs. 

April - Begin work on Monster Prom, an exciting new computer game, with one of my dearest school friends who I’ve known for more than a dozen years. 

May- Ahhhhh! PRINCESS TEN TEN AND THE DARK SKIES workshop in my homeland of Southern California!!! This trip was a dreamdreamdream.

June - Back in New York! Hard at work on Invincible, Monster Prom, and did a lyric brush up for Someone Else’s Musical Screenplay So I Can’t Tell You More But It Was Fairytale-Themed And Therefore Awesome.

July - The toughest month so far - one of my best friends went through a lot of really hard stuff back-to-back and since she doesn’t have a great family support system I really heavily took that on emotionally trying to be there for her and help her in whatever way she needs - she 0% put any obligation on me, but that’s where my soul lies so it’s always gonna be what it is. That being said, she’s doing MUCH better now and we’re both so much happier for it. I finished the last piece of Invincible materials needed for the author to start pitching to producers, and am now good to set that aside until the next step, when- and what-ever that may be. I saw a whole slew of friends, Natasha, Ashleigh, Hannah, Katherine, Hallie, Zach, their friends, all multiple times within a very brief time-span, and that was great.

So to recap, that’s one short film with my lyrics (Smile), two pieces for a collection of one acts (Alcestis: A Tragiquilt), three musicals based on pre-existing material (Invincible, Musical Chairs, Princess Ten Ten and the Dark Skies), one movie adaptation of a preexisting work of mine, two brush-ups on other people’s scripts (shh! you’ll never know), one computer game (Monster Prom) and a partridge in a pear tree.

That’s NINE projects for other people in six months. 

Holy kjahkjhkajehkehrh oh my goodness SO #blessed, so thrilled to be making my living as a writer, so happy to feel the validation that comes from having the same people hire you again and again because they like your work and they like who you are as a person and have them recommend you to others and you make new connections etc. It’s wonderful, truly, and it’s an amazing feeling and an amazing life.

Now. You will notice that conspicuously absent from the above are such phrases as “my original musical” “my screenplay” “my T.V. show”or “my novel.” And yet I have m-u-l-t-i-p-l-e of all of the above either finished or in-progress. Just in the past month or so when things were getting kind of “eh” in my personal life because of how much my friends were hurting and how deeply that affects me when it’s people I love, I really started missing my own work. Getting paid to write has been a double-edged sword in a way - it makes me feel more like a “real” writer in a very external, tangible way, it does that capitalism thing where I can feed and house myself, and it gives me hard deadlines and people to report to who believe in my work enough to have chosen me over everyone else. On the other hand, it gives me hard deadlines and people to report to who believe in my work enough to have chosen me over everyone else.

I haven’t stopped working on my own pieces during this time, and actually wrote my first-ever short film(s, two of them) since I’m starting to get anxious about getting my feature done and want to start making some kinda movie and it seems like all my friends have produced shorts at this point and YOLO. But I LOVE my feature so so so so much and it’s gotten almost exclusively positive feedback from everyone who’s read it, but hasn’t quite stuck the landing by finding the right person/place/thing with the right resources and the right opportunity at the right time. I may now have a production company for it but we still need to finding funding, and although it’s low-budget as far as feature films go ($500k-$1mil), it’s not exactly crowdfunding material. Mostly, with all these projects, especially the ones on strict timelines, I’ve started carving out time to make sure I’m continuing work on my Most Favorite Novel I’ve Started Since I Was An Adult, here after referred to as MFN.

Tonight, around 10:45/50ish, I got into bed to finish up some Monster Prom/Alcestis work before going to sleep (breaking my recently-instated rule of working on the couch in the living room and sleeping in bed, like a human, but hey). I was casually scrolling through Facebook when I saw an advertisement, inadvertently screamed, threw my phone across the room, curled up in a fetal position with my fists so tightly they hurt and yet I couldn’t unclench them, and sobbed myself to sleep.

WTF?! you ask (no, you don’t, I presume NO ONE will read this whole thing, but this is my e-journal, so I’mma post whatever I want)

I saw an advertisement for a book, the cover of which could easily be for MFN, and the title of which is one I have actually used at one point. I finally had returned to it and started actively scheduling ways to make sure I stayed on top of it, and someone had beaten me to the punch with a shocking level of specificity. There are a lot of things that make me feel strong feelings and my life is an emotional rollercoaster and I just don’t blog quite often enough to write about every single mood shift.

But I have literally never experienced a feeling quite like that in my 26+ years of being alive, and I didn’t know there were entirely new feelings left to feeling.

I’ve never been literally “paralyzed with emotion,” but that’s how it felt. As I said, I literally felt as if I could not loosen my fingers, could not move my knees from my chest, could not open my eyes. I just folded in on myself and fell asleep within minutes, something I haven’t done in weeks, because my body literally needed to shut off rather than deal with the emotional pain I felt of, in one picture and twenty-five words, feeling like a piece I have spent the past eight years working on had been rendered useless and defunct and - I’ve sat here struggling to think of a word to describe exactly what it was but the best I can come up with is - dead. And dead. It felt like MFN,this thing I love, was dead, had been killed by the unfairness of the universe that gave two creative souls the same thought and let one beat the other to the finish line.

What should make this less surprising to me is the fact that the darling young newlywed playwright assigned the Alcestis scene immediately after mine came up with - independently of me, having never met, never discussed the piece - almost the EXACT SAME premise and themes for his interpretation of the text.

(And this author’s book was published by the same publishing house that published my friend’s book that I was explaining to this gal I’m just starting to be friends with led to a kind of complicated dynamic with this other person da da da because of fucking COURSE it was)

Anyway it’s 6:51AM right now and I need to go to sleep so I can wake up and do the writing I’m being paid and/or asked to do rather than just writing about the writing I’m being paid and/or asked to do, so I’ll hafta fill in a few of the beats tomorrow but these are the bulk of my feelings and there’s just a lot of them lol. Mostly I hope that my current trajectory continues and maybe if my writing reaches a broader audience people can see these records of how I got there since we usually only see the sort of “overnight success” moments and miss all the work to get there.

So let the record show that for the first five years I lived in New York, I got a total of about four or five writing jobs, and now have had nine in the last seven months. I did a whole buncha acting in that time, but will soon be acting for the first time in a year and a half. So it took a long time of writing before people started asking me to write things on a (too???) regular basis, and now we’ll see how long it takes until people start asking me to write my own things and they’ll pay for them and let other people see them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

XOXO

gossiprat

[thoughtfulcupcakesublime]

Virginia legislators are continuing their work in Richmond.

Prince William County residents heard about what’s occurring in the General Assembly at a Dale City Post Crossover Legislative Town Hall.

State Senator Jeremy McPike and State Delegate Elizabeth Guzman held the meeting at Beville Middle School in Dale City on February 15.

Education and transportation were a couple of the topics they covered.

This is a video of the town hall:

Below, is the transcription of the meeting, which is normally done with 80 percent accuracy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t able to translate all of what Guzman said.

McPike: I will, we’ll go ahead and get started. Appreciate your motivations for additional folks who joined us today. Uh, I’m Jeremy [inaudible]. Uh, [inaudible] Woodbridge [inaudible] stretches on Prince William Parkway from 95 homes of many villains spreads to launch them two 34 in your dad’s freaks in the forest high school.

Speaker 2: Got run.

Speaker 3: Great County limits. Okay.

McPike: Um, and then first off, happy belated birthday to delegate. [inaudible]

Guzman: yeah. Now I going get to listen to this mine. How can we turn 47?

Speaker 3: You’re so young. I just don’t got the menu

Guzman: strictly brilliantly has parts of [inaudible] County and [inaudible] County raise me. I’m telling you I have, I won’t say most of them city and then I’ll go with you were sent off to go sit strict as well. And then I have pulled off as well. I spoke with them and then from there I go to, okay, fine. Where have [inaudible] [inaudible] um, [inaudible] area I think cause I shared that if you’re going to get how I and I, you [inaudible] Nope. [inaudible] I have the street area and we need deal [inaudible] we need you to just freak. I go into football, not going to have Monclair I should not ever go.

McPike: Thanks for joining. Uh, this is sort of, if it’s okay, we’ll probably do some intro of what we’ve been working on, a little bit about the budget and sort of what’s going on in Richmond and then open it up to your questions. There’s lots of things going on and so we might in our remarks and uncover something that you’re interested in. So, and encourage folks to ask questions if you’ve seen something to bring that up. Um, gravels if that’s okay. If someone disagrees with the statement or the position of someone, this is a lie, you know, this is an opportunity for folks to voice this concerns and not necessarily have a debate the debate, but also just to respectful, right? So if you disagree with someone, I’d encourage folks to not comment on it or BU or one way or the other. That makes sense. Um, cause it is a nonpartisan town hall. [inaudible] allowed to ask questions, have them disagree with the position. It’s fine to disagree. Um, I think it’s important to have a context that we can agree and disagree, but we should do so respectfully. Does that make sense? Everybody? Okay. We also have two other like this here. Say hi and introduce yourself.

Guzman: The one water conservation district. This is Stephen’s full boyfriend, Vanessa city full from the other one is [inaudible].

McPike: So a couple of things. This is our budget year, so this is our long session. So we’re in our 60 day. In fact, some Morrow, um, they’ll be publishing the budget and the budget amendments. So the cover introduces a budget [inaudible] starts as a matter of process. That all comes out tomorrow evening. And so we’ve been working on, I know [inaudible] has a minus in the house Senate and so there are lots of them pressures as you can imagine to work what’s in the budget and what’s not in the budget. And so we’ll see that board out this weekend and so we’ll be breeding for that as well. That’s lots of moving parts to it. But I think from an overall perspective, the company is really encouraging us specifically for early education and pre-K education that owns the 100 million option investment between standard of quality of rent, re benchmarking, uh, additional dollars in funding in early childhood education.

McPike: Um, you know, the principal County we’ve been trying to catch up in terms of, um, probably chocolate slots, not quite there to the, it’s um, stepping up and also offering some incentive, uh, opportunities for additional preschool. Um, as we knew, as you know, the data shows us that earlier kids learn to read, they can learn the rest of the subject and they could build the comfort, um, very early in life and their skill set and reading the data says that we’d be much better off versus remedial training later on. And so this is really the first budget that we’ve seen, this sort of significant significant investment, um, in our education system, which is great on the back end of it. You see also the availability for college, uh, community college, which I think is just great for those kids who do qualify for Pell grants.

McPike: There’s free community college that goes as much as well. Um, we’re going to be serious about getting every kid the skills that they need. Um, we know that we’ve have very bright kids in our community that sometimes feel like they can’t go to the next step, usually their financial words or other words. And so the more we can open up those opportunities, I think the better we do leveraging on our talent. Some of them right here in developmental school and um, you know, we want make sure that the kids have that, whether it’s a skill trade or computer science, there’s targeted degrees that the governor has put in this budget and I think that helps to win both our workforce development needs as well as ensuring that those kids, so those are important highlights, transportation, there’s some bills and transportation that’s going through that are really important.

McPike: They will all pro sports increase in the back pass. That will help define some of my hands patients. We are billions behind our projected funding level. As you know, the 2013 legislation made a small net and that those, the person that changed since 1986 in terms of transportation funding, there were certain things that we also proposed for Metro two years ago that took some of the road money away. They were restoring some beds and transmit transit occupancy tax code in this region. That’s really important for prison County. Um, the improvements and investments in fury might seem to report with the long bridge. It’s the bridge that all the rail lines pop as they cross into DC. So all the very trips right now are, we’re going to roughly 22 trips a day by making this investment in the long bridge and we’ll be willing to do also weekend trips, reverse trips and increase the number of trips.

McPike: I’m afraid your spread line part of that is going to be funded from the ISIS. I’m told [inaudible] dollars for buying funding, but this is up 1.41 point $5 billion multi year project to get there. And other than for the commuter rail, that’s just a huge difference. Right now we can’t do anything to a one inch with Patsy on the be revise. And so the more and more books we can get, you utilize it with the more frequent and reliable service, the more people wouldn’t get um, [inaudible] back jamming roads and open up as a communal house. So I’ll take a couple of pauses and then trade back and forth because there’s a number of different, we move into cards. I think those are two pretty significant ones.

Guzman: So just be back on the outreach out medication. One part that is gonna be different than years prior. You probably know [inaudible] town was not taking advantage of all the money that was available for patients before or leaping back. So right now you don’t need to knew that insulation Ricky never gets, well initially if there was any four, four year olds, it’s going to be expanded with [inaudible]. So that is great. You know, if they’re going to be able to release. And then also what is going to happen is that the, I will not allow finally childcare providers in that community, both little race amplification process. So they do get access. That’s my name. Or by your server.

Guzman: There’s one cop yet these time are not the same. Like the money’s going to sleep there, you’re gonna use it and it’s gonna just be waiting for the difference. Now he’s studying, we don’t use the body breathing accounting. The money’s gonna go away wasted. So I think that’s any people we have to work together to try to work with local government and to work with providers in the area who makes sure that we’re going to take advantage of those support monies. I mean, we are needing the numbers. I mean [inaudible] when we are thinking the amount of children and we are seven things in that County, and then we talk with [inaudible] route up between your car to qualified, you know what the median household income of about a hundred thousand $120,000 per household. So that make us individual who, any size of freebies when he has Google with free childcare or anything like that, other the BPI, advising, raising the minimum wage, all of those forward.

Guzman: The guidelines he’s called that I want to go up. Who’s going to be opening over tuning these? Can you find [inaudible] [inaudible] I know that important investments schools as well. I would say that we are security. The funding for reviews like age and older for school money that was taken away at the end of the first one I got to go. I also, I mean DCS at least Dale city if someone you’re wasting money. The area where we have, I know each not watching other students so I work job is jabs can not meet anybody or we need more resources. Right now that classes or English language learners is 24,000 students. So we are volume. We thrive. The reviews that those 17 she’s here but then we couldn’t find the money. You know as we have been abusive to how I learned it the same way like you didn’t use Morgan.

Guzman: There is money available above our house who any book Conrad’s millions dollars. So I’m hopeful that we can go back and change these videos that we allow model for communities. That goal was [inaudible] sorry that it’s 17 7:00 PM hitches, 4,000 students. So we’re trying to put 20 features to a thousand students. So I it’s just that that’s the reality, right? That the word, anything, you know, anytime you in schools we are feeling as set up the [inaudible] was saying is that we’re paying for tap because public education was not a priority or maybe 2018 where we’re working with the same by different public education from 2008 and however from NEP has gone. How many people if we just look around them, I mean how many [inaudible] who have come having that committee and we’re working with the same plan. So feels like a school counselor, psychologists, social workers where he would be hard, especially a patient.

Guzman: And especially with the vacation we are working with jailer, they are doing a whole or the shape of the whole system, uh, adjusted Luca. What can we do for, especially with vocational classes, that it has not been patched in 2009 and that’s time we discuss, especially with location in Virginia, who now 2009 and we all know that back then men have help. What statement? You know their work and they’re still many children. I’m fired. Cause every advancing that their children have a condition and they need more resources. So we are glad to be straight. [inaudible] our very own sacred values application incarnate [inaudible] school has taken the, you know, these very, it’s built, it’s built, it’s working really, really hard. We’ve tried to provide more resources to special education classrooms as far as [inaudible] we are going to finally have hoping, hoping that, you know, every facet. [inaudible]

Guzman: I haven’t decided for Metro. And finally, and this is just a study and I don’t want you to think that this will happen in a couple of years. No, it said home circle. It’s going to take at least 15 years. Look in years, if not 20 years, who bring a Metro to call you back. We’re going to have more VA services. Uh, we need to work with the IPC. The last time that I met with, I told them that what I heard at the doors, because we do have other commuters and we don’t have places, Bart, even one of the things that mesh of the yabbies this stuff and there’s no places to my parking. They’re not really, there is no old who built a new computer lab. So we are talking about trying to have shadows to allow people to frog from where they leave their knots.

Guzman: I was also brought me to see, we kind of have finally I, they’ll city on the right service that could allow people to drive bill with Del city. There’s a population that we talk to right now within the city is very powerful. We talk in Minneapolis right now, so we want him to have allowed people that are working locally to stay out of their cars and fight to take public transportation to go for work. You know, I, I know that PRPC director that we, you wanna think about Nashville that we are, we need to think outside the box about maybe making it more accessible for people. So if I’m asking my husband who dropped me off at WSP Istation, so I don’t think of training. I don’t think of anything because my husband is taking off from work with take me. So I, we had to call my boss. I’m trying to find ways to make people who love you here. Your station. We’d love other resources. No, I feel you miss it. A nerve money. Um, B and C who give [inaudible] we talking about [inaudible] in Washington D C now need to take care of them. I worry about my needs. You never caught,

McPike: um, couple of things that, um, the legislation back in specific with working on [inaudible] did the same rule. Open up the question [inaudible] covered this morning. And how long have you [inaudible] um, this year I work on many of, you know, the last couple years I’ve been working on natural gas pipeline safety via song house has exploded in my history. And what Ruby, um, this year also removing is currently an exemption and Virginia state law that allows the natural gas companies to not use a professional engineer when they, Sam can charge him. Um, after the Massachusetts explosion in fires that occurs in, is 22 States that have that exclusion cause action to remove it. Is that the trend of the bill this year to remove that legislation to ensure that any of this infrastructures reviewed and signed by a professional figure? Um, and there’s lately I’ve been to [inaudible] actually since the last year, has the son get killed with house, which is requiring a lab water testing and how the daycare facilities, um, there is led facilities.

McPike: The federal laws cover essentially the water distribution systems, but not addition to facility. And so the solder joints, um, in different pipes still contain a certain parts of led. And so it does require that same standard not being anybody wants led water going into the baby formula or anything else or just basic rain water and talk to her. That’s a vague neurological. Um, and also getting the school’s resources, um, in coordination with the Virginia department of health use of existing level or standard like carrying this past two years ago for schools. Uh, make sure we understand that holistic view of the problem around the state and the, to identify resources to that. So I have a budget numbers on that as well. That helps that often start to aggregate some of the data so we can get schools, they do have a federal grant they were, were, were awarded last year or something like $33,000.

McPike: Obviously that’s a drop in the bucket so to speak. So we would get a lot of work. I’m just going to do on that. One of the other big goals I worked on this year and incurred for the governor’s offices, worker ms classification. Um, this primarily impacts, uh, the construction trades. There are other industries that do as well that do not follow the IRS guidelines in terms of who should be at a 10 99 worker and who should be an employee. And what occurs is, especially when construction jobs is, there are lots of companies who essentially tend to at nine a bunch of employees so they’re not paying the same taxes. So those betters, that undercut those who are doing business the right way and Virginia has been very lax about that appointment. And so this grades have a new enforcement mechanism within the department of taxation as well as coordinating with the department of labor and other agencies and create some, some penalties for those who are bad actors.

McPike: Right now companies getting open up and close really with little penalty associated with it. And that’s unfortunate because it does hurt. Like I said, the good actors that come here are doing the right thing. So this modeling gets a little bit more teeth than enforcement. My name is indoor wall. Um, so those are, those are a couple of, there’s a dozen other things I’m going to give you. Seed reform, um, cutting the number of permit types of half just updating um, alcohol licenses based on new businesses, business standards after provision. And we really didn’t anticipate like wait months with you, like selling you a case of beer. But there’s also serving that, you know, there’s all sorts of business models in addition to the new distilleries and how they want to innovate. And so it’s really consolidating, I don’t know about a hundred pages of code section and reducing, cutting essentially the, what we call it, Christmas tree effect.

McPike: When you sort of add on thing permit types, you can just consolidate a certain license authorities to make it a lot easier for people to apply for licenses. Um, additionally, this year was uh, a bill going through the expanse on my bill from last year that allows for open carry of alcohol. If you’ve been to mass this first Fridays, you notice that you can have a restaurants can sell a beer and if you have a closed down special event area. And so I’m gonna ask, this is taking advantage of this year where they closed down the streets on first Fridays. And so the restaurant jurors can sort of amino, you can also have a beer, you can got to carry the street which were closed down and then it is demarcated area. Listen to a live band. And I know the masters restaurant droves, they see it at all.

McPike: They’re like all times sales high by like eight 30 I think the second night. Some of them were telling me. So that’s that. And yeah, so yeah, I’ve checked with the chief of police there and others. In terms of enforcement issues, he said there’s been not. Um, so there’s been a really great in that positive, but now it’s sort of catching on. So lots of other parts of the same line. So there’s a bill this year that would increase it to 16 as well as allow, if you have a multi-day permit, would only count as one. So some localities have like a festival or something that would come as one of those permits. So encouraging people in historic downtowns, no 16 permits a year. So it’s a limited duration permanent. Right now the current code is 12. So this was not the two 16 but also the count for if you had a sort of a weekend long festival on Friday, that Sunday that when he hound for for three to those that sort of account for one sort of a total there.

Guzman: Okay. So let’s talk about public notes. Will it just be like what you’re talking about? So I would discard we um, consenting and be able to send up that wheel is fighting people A’s and PFS. It’s a [inaudible]. How many of have many peoples are very familiar with environment here? I can tell us that our phone actually use water across the catheter. So we are conducting a study with the department of health and they will absorb across cost tests. I believe Edify waterparks or pizza, tough people in gays. I knew the times at the house. [inaudible] at the center we have now a [inaudible]. So I even told him one time, I don’t think we’ll be surprised. [inaudible] last year that was killed his body. Nine votes about, see that over next one separately in the presence of ATC, beat up the smoking. And the reason with my nurse on their age, you find that in fact, so you will not [inaudible].

Guzman: I think these use just a public health issue. It’s one of the main costs. [inaudible] I gave him through smoking as they grow out, but I was exposed in clothes so long into small, I mean it’s just the right thing to do to my plans. I’m not developed. So in that field I was able to get somebody back and some support from outside. They have out that as far as um, changing facilities with the department of student health services, I have her request from one of my constituents who is a single father that he used it in a couple of the saved and buildings and he couldn’t find that changing table.

Guzman: So finally we were able to partner with the department on getting our services. So we will use one facet of birth, gender, we tend to fables. So yes, because they are there. So many women nowadays there are, you know, being back at the hospitals on fire that’s taking the fathers, I think it’s their responsibility to think he felt that children as well. So I’m excited about that view game with your [inaudible] that focus on integrating past comedian defense hoping that he will go well in the Senate. As far as I wanted to talk about environment a little bit. I was fine with a great deal and I carry a couple of legislations for them. I wasn’t accessible, you know to pass [inaudible] or the other development that is asking about these kind of things with more than a hundred thousand citizens. I’ve seen this with more than 300,000 citizens [inaudible] affordable policy and doing public transportation as a comprehensive plans anytime they are developing a 5% or 15 year [inaudible] plan and I passed the center on the way to go to the governor says so I’m excited about that. I’m talking about separating your deal as well. I can’t really kind of house or solution that passed the house is going to say that I have not heard yet where Regina will become versus baby in the country. We’ll be clear that they’re declining with emergency and waiting to absolutely

Speaker 4: [inaudible].

Guzman: I don’t see a problem with that. That’s the company. Coffee’s just being loud and clear. The cavitation is right up and we need to start acting. Now. I have seen South of my union fear brothers and sisters, so I the African [inaudible] that would allow public employees who [inaudible] and he passed the house. It’s on its way to the Senate. I was not be fired Friday evening that he will be heard on Monday. [inaudible] okay. How’s this [inaudible] so I just wasn’t able to speak a week. We’ve been neither of the, not yet. We actually had a casual conversation on Friday and was set up on the bar. That means that they might need, might be this scheduled for Monday, so I’m hoping that I can testify. So I log in for it. It said Arthur’s before he gets hurt at ease the Senate with our members upon our Sunday.

Guzman: We’ll see if I’m successful. If not, you know, we have a very, okay, tell me about the house going through the center and I just don’t want to do that. But if I have to, I may wear in salary. Not only Google, I mean I know probably complete you who buy them connected these days, like also partnering with the Omaha world. We’ve that Bernie Genito where he said that if we are going to do these, then maybe you have to structure [inaudible] and disrupt and put it in place is the aid [inaudible] and for these relations for that [inaudible] members will be assigned by the opener and we have located money to also hire some hearing officers. So any time they’re high school be an issue in between an employee and an employee or in the public sector at third, I probably didn’t know you were nation’s local CIT officer would lead that mediator in between that lawyer and that employee or we both.

Guzman: I think that’s something that would benefit everybody. Nobody wants to look a car as a don’t need a public employee. We just wanted to be able to be listened. I think for me, my idea is that someone’s reputation will say, Oh, that means that we’re going out. How much is it going to cost? Is it gone in Greece over the taxes? Well, I will tell you right now, and have you seen accurately because your governing bodies will continue to, uh, in the power of appropriations that we do by having a voice at the table, we, you were going to have to listen to us and we will make our case for, say for example, the 1% salary increase is not necessary. Firefighters with blonde hair, you know, the government is, they could ever pay for better, you know, and with the better resources to do their job for the Sophie says the same way, you know, we’ve been talking about buying new equipment, then they will have to stop to the police officers to come there by ease and coordinated with them what they need to do their job better.

Guzman: Teachers, you know, when we’re talking about how we’re gonna, uh, we’re gonna include the 1% salary, 12 features. I want to make their case as how they are used to their person online. My before in the classroom. How it’s important to have this or this motor classes. How are they unfolding? Many animals have their first amount of time for this schools. As these things need to be heard. The school board members need to listen from the pictures. What is going on as far as giving out justice reform. I finally sent the field center last week as increase the age of minors trial as adults. He came from the house. The genetics will support, I will say [inaudible] adjustments. Even those who weren’t before, like delegate Ron Vale was not from Virginia. I’m the main girl for people, not definitely three, four people to come up. You and I took a picture with because [inaudible] years in a row, he finally agree with [inaudible] and I was able to partner with administration as well because it was a priority for Bella.

Guzman: I know, I’m trying to look at faces. Some of you have some requests. It’s function, you know, very important for many individuals. I introduced legislation. Uh, but I think that some of the members who are not ready yet, so those are happy and sent to the crime commission. So the practical nations wanna send recommendations for next year. So we can see why is going to be allowed to eat lunch, right? Not, I mean the reality is there we all having young who will make mistakes, I mean that wrote us well, but then realities that you have to be carrying that with the rest of your life and that prevents you from having an employment for working with children even, I mean, right in a class and the school system, if you have a felony on your, uh, on your criminal record. So we have to change, you know, kind of like justice reform will happen up here. That’s also for many years what are trying, people are screaming out in the streets. I’m talking about individuals of all of my and identities float. And you find made a mistake when I was 18 or 19 years old and now I have proven that I’m not going to see this and that I have medication that I fear from my mistakes. These is that country of second chances. So Regina has to be that either, you know, on, uh, provide an expungement services.

McPike: Yeah, a tremendous amount going on this week was crossover Wednesday, Tuesday night inside where we got one out. It was about one o’clock in the morning, take her for converted that morning. So now we finish up our business, the house they do other than getting on the second run. So there’s a little bit more than the day before the crossover, but we moved out of there. We don’t typically move the pending question, which means that the vote has to be taken on the Senate and the house are the rules of procedure. We let everybody in the bait, if they have a voice, they’re going to make sure that those thoughts are, are shared. Unless it gets extraordinarily long for one speaker, then we might push things along a little bit. But this week was an extraordinarily long week. Many things on the, not only in the criminal justice reform, decriminalization of marijuana, um, the significant tweaks to criminal justice system are fairly significant.

McPike: There are things in 20 years that have sort of stack the deck of one side and we’ve really started to tackle some of the structural injustice in how we treat the cases. Both then, you know, sentencing different tiers as all sorts of nuance and Recode right now that we are starting to be ended to fix. Was your really, really important? Uh, there’s also been, um, I think some, obviously some big hot topics in terms of on gun safety legislation. Um, what passed the Senate was a one gun a month, a universal background checks with certain provisions excluded in terms of the family. Um, it has to be a sale. So there’s this certain transfer provision. So for instance, if I’m out hunting on a tree stand, you don’t create a, you know, unintended felony cause I leave my gun to go and clean the deer or whatever and I left my gun with my buddy.

McPike: I don’t want to, you know, we try to avoid creating sort of unintended consequences through that in terms of what transfer means. And so we did take out some of the original provisions to the spur that we didn’t have folks that were caught in sort of innocent situations versus, um, some of the gun show loophole and other sort of proxy sales that are going on. Um, so we, we certainly sort of tackle that as a, as an approach. So we also did the one got along with just returning to the legislation. We had, I don’t know, 15, 16 years ago that was within the law. Um, additionally, there were some provisions that passed the Senate that allow for, um, vocal control for local permits. Um, Lavella valleys would have to post if you have a special permit that they, they don’t want to have guns present at.

McPike: And they had posted that sign at that public hearing. Notice all sorts of other provisions to make sure that, again, it’s not an unintended consequence. You can’t just walk into a place and not have any notice that you’re not supposed to care. And so there’s sort of the savings that are put in place. Um, certainly the other hot topics goals in relation to um, number of flips or add ons to pass the Senate that certainly ban bump stocks are trigger acted activated devices. Um, the bills dealing with um, round counts or well let’s say that sort of assault rifles or assault weapons has not passed the Senate, um, based on different definitions of round town and other issues that start to really get into some pretty nuance stuff. I know there’s been a lot of hot topic, social media and other stuff, so I wanted to cover that.

McPike: The other more recent one is on driver’s licenses for uh, new Americans or undocumented Americans and other systems here are not yet citizens working their way there. And you know, I’ve seen a lot of social media sort of being on this of the last week or so. I was really picked up on, you know, why we’re doing this, why it’s needed. If you look at it and break it down to the basic facts and figures and folks who been here, manifests 2030 years is folks have licenses in Maryland for other places. Right now it’s other car is also registered in Maryland that go through the Virginia safety inspection nor do is there an understanding of Virginia rules of the road and the walls. So there are provisions to provide a license framework that requires passing of the test driver test, having insurance, you know all the other things that go with it in terms of savings.

McPike: So there’s some, I think some pretty strong public safety initiatives. In addition, the tax, they should obviously our tax and other things that go with it, registration fees that go with it to ensure that everyone has the same understanding of the rules of road. And so that’s something that I know I’ve seen people asking or emailing about what are we doing, you know, you know, people are going to put the comments of the people are getting something for free. It’s not free. They get to play that same exact rules and everybody else, no special conditions. And so I just want to make sure that it’s very clear despite what you might see on social media. Very strange. And the other question I heard was, well what happened with New York? You know the feds are now timing now on the preferred travel program or field where the exact name is, but essentially the frequent flyer, perfect TSA preferred entry program.

McPike: The reason why they did that in New York cause they had locked down the day to day decision. The Virginia law that we have that’s going through has provisions that they can request involved before I personally can still request in the DMV database a specific individual. This is not part one. And so that takes care of the federal concern that had come up and that’s why New York is having problems. We don’t have that same problem. We have avoided that issue by specifically writing and provisions in the code go for that issue. So I just want to address those couple of things of, you know, what people are calling or writing about and sort of address addressed it as I think are some really important positive as many other important positive social in addition to the publicity and taxation around that issue. And this has been been improved for many, many years.

McPike: Um, unfortunately. Um, but I think with now with real idea in place as well, it takes care of the plate issue in terms of the reason essentially returns the law to where we were 2004 post nine 11 in Virginia. That’s what the law does and because we have separate relining and you are going to require a real idea, the board, the domestic plate as it is, you still going have that requirement. So that doesn’t change any of the frameworks that we have, the federal requirement as well as Virginia framework. Um, so I think there’s a lot of positives around that. So I want to cover, make sure we covered through those more hot topics that have been swirling around Richmond. I are you seeing things on social media that makes sense. Stonewall

Guzman: the week. It’s just like the vinegar there was talking about these. What’s up great. Did show up for a mold from breaking before 2003 I didn’t do none of that. Were just bringing it back a low that was in Virginia and was taken way we false out because it was taking after what happened on nine 11 and we all know now and none of [inaudible] I mean where [inaudible] so we are trying to bring in an hour just having stayed [inaudible] we’ll play, we’ll pay property taxes where maybe, but that money is instead of going to Mary instead of going to Washington DC, I haven’t only bad because there’s a lot of people that they send, I just want this and even though they averaging at residents, they go on charge [inaudible] paint documents via the need you both to get a license. He married in Washington D C at that spot.

Guzman: I need to stop all of that Senate, send a book support on that [inaudible] at one of the things that we’re doing to be here. Well, he’s trying to fight for that adamant [inaudible] Oh, um, perfections in general. I have employment in housing, I guess discrimination with myself. I had an easy job. And what do you think that way in school I stayed in agency and they went through the very, you know Jessica, Wendy [inaudible] who they are and that is one of what daddy did for that reason. I’ve presented legislation on his own into the center that will require state employees pay the LGBTQ [inaudible].

Guzman: That means I’m going to ask him, you know, I’m just one of them to know what it these life and they need to understand that community so they can help them to get there. That’s been years take them, be who they want and they put up, they want to quit just a day. I only just use the word services and will be confident and we do it in, I mean we both work at these already implemented in so many capacities. These is far off. You are to an orientation or what can we respect each other? What would work for them?

McPike: Get her back on the driver’s license privilege. One question I saw online or on email is an indication that this would somehow allow people to vote or not. Citizens does not do that. Just cleared the snake. He’s nations that cross in fact separate regions. How it, what does that send to the blood collection to make sure those distinguishing factors of a citizen citizen? I, there’s lots of ways that very clear if

Guzman: you vote, then you are not a citizen or to go at all. Even you have a green card [inaudible] that it’s a felony and you can taste it or patient or vomiting. [inaudible] [inaudible] would there

McPike: be an indication on the license non-resident that you went up and looked what provision?

Guzman: If there are no veal, somebody [inaudible] his driver’s license and the other one is agree with each guards. But the good thing is that we all come over the real IDs and if you aren’t a citizen, you’ll get a star of Lena [inaudible] but you don’t get the star. That means that you are not a citizen, but that doesn’t mean you are undocumented. Amen. You know, it puts me that you are great.

McPike: I just decided I didn’t want to go through the hassle cause I just [inaudible] but what does all the election laws that are also changing the requirement for it? You still would be recording them too long to show a need, but if you don’t have ID you still have to vote. You have to sign and that’s under the penalty and I felony. That’s when this gets in. So both on the voter registration forms and other things. So that’s right there felony and also, and the election, if you comment and then try to vote, you’re putting a signature, you’re, you’re signing yourself from a felony and you’re not registered. So there are a number of different checks in both databases across the board that you would be envy to the board of elections database. So those a number of different ways going from protection to that and the,

Guzman: yeah, I’m just going back to my deals. I think there’s one thing that I, as a door, what I was knocking is about drug prices. Everywhere I go, people what? Frustrated [inaudible] insurance, how much they have to stop [inaudible] I mean, schooling, if you still have, I’m sending them deal [inaudible] [inaudible] payment system. Is that the and innovative solutions to address that cause the persecution threats, Regina, at that point of sale, these [inaudible] uh, you know, we’ve had different version of some hockey change to how the Friday’s I dated, um, that come provided to us all being a road. We’re going to have all of the stakeholders that are part of that process. How can we come up with a solution and that solution is to be filed by December. So generally comforting the nature station. Do we just work on [inaudible] out?

McPike: There’s been some limited measures going through the Seinfeld pharmacy benefit managers or PBMs you’ve might’ve seen on the news. There’s all sorts of discounts that the drug manufacturers offer those discounts and Venice rebates don’t get passed on to the end user. And so there’s a lot of, you know, your pay plan pays for a certain point and then they’re also capturing the rebate on the other side. And so, and then the direct price is higher with the passive PBMs. And so there’s all sorts of sort of moving parts and shenanigans that are going on that they’re, they’re sort of doing one of these is, does that mean that he’s got tons of years are in the or development that occurred with this drug? All that. Listen, 50 years ago it’s all done because there’s no need to pay 600 times what somebody tries. It should be.

McPike: It’s really frustrating to get in a room and healthcare space and everybody does what he’s like, wait a second, we’re paying like 20 bucks for this, like 10 years ago, you know, it’s 150 now. I’m pretty sure I’m not making him breathe free a hundred times in my day. This is crazy. And so they keep, it’s a complex issue. It’s one of the most frustrating things to deal with. Um, but I think our, our ability to have patients visits with the medical way before we’re just about an hour and a number of different things we’ve got also figure out, hopefully it ties in with the button too because we also have to help the fund, the board elections with some initial whether it’s going to be clearly sort of no excuse absentee, you are early voting provisions. I think it will come out of both the house and the Senate and I think that’s extremely important for this year because we have so many books like you knew, you know what an hour plus at all. Any one day you could have doctors come up or emergency, you know let’s have more participation, not less. I think there’s a general consensus in both jammers that some or all or combination provisions will be valid for one thing that will go in effect for breaking into the next school and teachers will not happen anymore.

McPike: The primary outburst of social media on that, Tim was like, give me a break, Nico, come on. So essentially not then the one thing we’ve done is fuck the state holiday to electric kissy football. You can’t complain if you don’t vote. I didn’t mention that. [inaudible] get some work and she had gotten cancer presumption and finally we’ve got it out of the house and the Senate. So that’s been appeared that bill every single year for of six years. So this has cancers that are directly linked to the toxins that they interface. There’s been fires and that’s been just a long time. Now I removed provisions that gotten whatever our firefighters who passed away caught up in legal battles for about a year before he died. We were in that section of the code. Um, and then we have a PTSD Eatonville that is passed out under the Senate and it’s over the house and he did not have a people to action so far on the house [inaudible] and then flipped back any provision.

McPike: And this creates the first defense [inaudible] to provide relief, first presumption relation, PTSD and our first responders. Um, there’s just so many folks that deal with, but a single incident or cumulative incidents over the couriers. You just lost open officer two weekends ago. Um, unfortunately this, the story plays out across the Commonwealth. Um, all of the points for different reasons and we are not tackling the issue more proactively and we need to create a framework that says if you’re struggling, you got some framework coverage. And folks I know and worked with, they want to get back on the job too, but they’re hurting. And right now that was the mantra for so many years in these lines of service has been sort of [inaudible], you know, and um, unfortunately the costs really get worn by the families that are involved. I was over time and it’s time we started to flip that. So this is the first year we were really struggling with the progress that flipping this discussion. Um, yes it will, it’ll have some financial hit the localities because there’s some premium issues, but hopefully those that start to think about it and do more proactive things and the more frequent check ins of sitting down. So incident reviews, other things to check out mental health status over not just single incident, but the cumulative total.

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Transcript of The Secrets to Leading Creative People

Transcript of The Secrets to Leading Creative People

Transcript of The Secrets to Leading Creative People written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Transcript

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John Jantsch: Leading or managing people in an organization is a tough job. It gets just that much tougher when the folks that you are choosing to lead are highly creative. In this episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I visit with Todd Henry. He’s the author of Herding Tigers: Be The Leader That Creative People Need. If you or your organization has creative people, and let’s face it, that’s what drives a lot of business today, you need to check it out.

Hello, welcome to another episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Todd Henry. He is a speaker, consultant, advisor, and author of a number of books including the book we’re gonna talk about today, called Herding Tigers: Be The Leader That Creative People Need. So, Todd, welcome to the show.

Todd Henry: John, it’s so great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch: I can’t believe it’s taken me this long. I’m a big fan of your previous work, Die Empty, in fact you were awesome enough that you just happened to be passing through town and we flagged you down to come speak at one of my events and it was very, very motivating for everybody.

Todd Henry: It was so much fun, and I just have to say as encouragement to you, you’re the most humble person in the world so I know that you would never toot your own horn, but just seeing your community there and seeing how people responded to you and responded to what you have built there, it just really showed me the kind of integrity that you bring to your business, because you were able to attract people from all over the place to come to Louisville to spend some time with you, learning about the things that you wanted to teach them.

Just as encouragement to you, it was really, really amazing to see your community in action there as well. You didn’t ask me to do that, but I wanted to do it anyway.

John Jantsch: Well, I appreciate that, but longtime listeners know I’m not really that humble.

Todd Henry: Okay.

John Jantsch: So let me ask you the big question that came to my mind as I was reading Herding Tigers. How does leading creative people differ from being a creative leader?

Todd Henry: Oh, that’s a great question. No one has ever asked me that, actually. Listen, we’re all creative. We all have to solve problems every day as a function of our job. That’s just the nature of the modern workplace. So, if you have to go to work, solve problems, figure things out, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re a business owner, you are creative to a certain extent. What I wanted to do in this book was talk about the dynamics of leading highly creative people.

Leading highly creative people is different from being a creative leader, because you can be a creative leader and lead a team of engineers or a team … which, by the way, engineers are incredibly creative and incredibly bright in that way. But, you can be a highly creative leader and be leading a more mundane, process oriented business and still be highly creative, because you still have to solve problems, figure out systems, et. cetera.

This book really is about leading highly creative people. People who maybe think a little bit differently from the norm, maybe people who might be a little more difficult to wrangle. What I wanted to do is really address some of those common dynamics among teams that are highly creative. What is it that makes them especially difficult to lead, and how can leaders, especially leaders maybe that are stepping into a role of leading highly creative people for the first time, how can they better position themselves to set their team up for success?

That’s the goal of the leader is to help their team succeed, not necessarily for them to succeed because if their team succeeds, then they will succeed.

John Jantsch: I guess it kind of begs two questions. Maybe you’re defining creative person in a very strict sense like the graphic designer or the writer or the video editor. Is that fair?

Todd Henry: I think it is fair, but I think that this applies to really leading any group of people that has to figure it out and make it up as they go, so if you’re a sales organization, you’re having to come up with creative solutions all the time to reach potential clients, having to re-strategize all the time. Like I said, if you’re leading a group of engineers, that is a project based business, a project based function, but it’s highly creative because you are doing nothing but problem solving all day. You’re looking out, exploring what Steven Johnson calls the adjacent possible, looking for potentially useful fodder for your creative process.

All of those industries have some of the same dynamics I describe in the book. Now, that said, yes, my background, my experience is in leading the ‘traditional creative’ which is the designer, the writer, the videographer, those kinds of people. Yes, I was writing specifically from those kinds of experiences, but I think that the advice in the book applies more broadly to any group of people who have to solve problems and make it up as they go.

John Jantsch: So fundamentally then, what does this group, what do these creative people need that is fundamentally different?

Todd Henry: There really are two primary things that creative people need from their manager in order to thrive. The first one is stability, and stability is about ensuring that you have clarity of process, clarity of expectations, that they know that the rules of the game aren’t gonna change midstream. In a lot of industries that don’t require a tremendous amount of overhead in order to accomplish the work, it’s not that big of a deal if the objectives change midstream, because okay, now we’ve got a new strategy, that means my job is gonna be different tomorrow.

But, when you’re doing highly creative work that requires a tremendous amount of ramp up and forethought and then iteration, when the rules of the game change midstream it can be extremely frustrating. If somebody isn’t bought in to a strategic direction, and let’s say you get two weeks into the project and suddenly your boss’s boss swoops in and says, “You know what? This isn’t really working for me.” Well, your team has spent two weeks iterating on that idea, and now they have to go all the way back to the beginning, re strategize and start all over again, simply because someone wasn’t bought in.

That’s tremendously expensive to the organization. It’s very frustrating to a team of people, and so over time, the team of people just basically says, “Alright, I’m just gonna wait until you tell me what to do. I’m not gonna bring my best thought to the table or my best effort until I know it’s not gonna be wasted effort if the rules are constantly changing.” They need some degree of stability.

There’s a myth, John, that highly creative people just want complete freedom. Just don’t fence me in, give me no boundaries, I just wanna do what I wanna do, but that is a myth, because the reality is that healthy creative process has boundaries. It has rails in order to focus the creative energy. Without that, that energy is just gonna wither up and die. So, stability is the first thing that we need. Clear boundaries, clarity of expectations, clarity of process.

The second thing that highly creative people need is they need to be challenged. They need to be pushed. They want to know that their leader has faith in them. That their leader sees things in them maybe they don’t even see in themselves yet. They want to be pushed to be the best that they can be and to try new things, to tackle new kinds of projects, to venture out into those risky territories, and to know that if they fail, that somebody has their back.

This is also very important, people won’t take risks unless they know that the leader is there to have their back. If it’s a strategic risk, not if it’s a stupid risk, but if it’s a strategic risk then the leader needs to have their back and they need to know that they’re not just walking on thin ice. Hey, you could die and lose your job at any moment, or else people will begin to hold back just a bit.

The problem with stability and challenge is that they exist in tension with one another. As we increase the amount of challenge, we tend to destabilize the organization. This is where a lot of startups and entrepreneurial organizations live. We’re building the bicycle as we’re trying to ride it and we’re going a hundred miles an hour down the highway and we’re trying to avoid traffic and, oh isn’t this just wonderful?

Yeah, it’s wonderful for a little bit, but then over time, people begin to fry. They begin to burn out because we’re not wired for that kind of challenge without the supporting infrastructure to support that challenge. Of course, on the other end of the spectrum, you have organizations that settle in and they’re so processized that there’s no challenge any longer for the people on the team. People get bored, they get stuck, they start looking for broader horizons, and this is often where you hear people say things like, “I’m just not really challenged around here. I just don’t feel like I can really do my best work here. I feel like I’m not growing.”

Sometimes it’s because they don’t feel challenged. They don’t feel like they’re getting what they need from you as a leader in terms of challenge. As a manager, as a leader, as an entrepreneur, somebody who runs a business full of talented people, you are in the unique position to be able to identify that right mix of stability and challenge for those people on your team. If you notice somebody seems to be burning out pretty frequently, well, you need to ask, is it because there aren’t processes in place? There’s no stability there to support what I’m asking from them in terms of challenge, or if somebody’s constantly complaining they feel bored, they feel stuck, is it because I’m not giving them an opportunity to grow themselves, to challenge themselves, and to venture into those uncomfortable places?

John Jantsch: One of the places that you spend a lot of time, and I was glad to see this because I see this actually in lots of organizations with lots of small business owners even, whether they’re managing creatives or not, if they’re managing people, so often they get in this weird cycle of giving work, assigning work, creating process and structure, and then the minute something gets a little hard, they take it all back. There’s no way to grow for anybody, including the organization if you keep taking the work back. I think you called it stop doing the work.

Todd Henry: Right.

John Jantsch: You need to learn this. First off, what do you feel leads to that, and I guess, secondly, how do you solve that?

Todd Henry: I think that especially for entrepreneurs, think about somebody who started a business, I know a big chunk of the people who follow your work are small business owners, entrepreneurs. There’s a tremendous amount of identity wrapped up in starting a business, in the business itself. So, you identify yourself by the output of that business. Sometimes in healthy ways, and maybe sometimes in not so healthy ways. As you start to grow your business and you start to hand off more and more responsibility to other people, it becomes difficult sometimes to separate yourself a bit from the business from an identity standpoint, so that you’re allowing other people to take ownership of certain aspects of the business so that you’re not the one constantly there over their shoulder.

If you are the person constantly over their shoulder, then again, they’re just gonna say, “You know what? Just tell me what you want me to do.” You’ve hired great people and then you’re gonna look over their shoulder and micromanage every decision they make, that’s not the way to scale a business. It’s easy for that to happen, because so much of your identity is wrapped up in the work that gets done, in the business.

What we have to do is we have to transition from a maker mindset to a manager mindset. We have to transition from a mindset of presence to a mindset of principle, or from a mindset of control, which is what really all this is about, it’s about us wanting to control the work of the organization, to a mindset of influence.

We need to establish rails. We need to have a clear leadership philosophy. We need to help people on our team learn how we think about the work and how we think about decisions that we make, not just which decision in a specific scenario is the right decision to make according to us, and so I think it’s difficult to make that transition, to move from control to influence. I think a big part of that is just extricating yourself.

I think about the world that I come from, somebody maybe was a great designer or a great writer and they get promoted. What happens typically in organizations is somebody is really good at something and so somebody comes along and says, “You know what? You’re a really good designer. You know what you should do? You should lead other designers.” That’s a fundamentally different skill set, that’s a totally different thing, and yet that’s exactly what we do. This person, basically they’ve built their entire career upon the fact that they’re really good at a thing. That thing may be is design, or maybe that thing is financials or whatever it is. But, they’ve been really good at that thing and now, all of a sudden, they’re transitioning to not doing that thing, but leading other people who are doing that thing.

How do they identify themselves? Who are they anymore? What is the value they contribute? Before, they could point to a thing and say, “I did this.” Now that you’re leading other people, what is it exactly that you do? I think that’s where the identity crisis often resides in this. Our job is to shift our mindset from a maker mindset, from control, to influence, which means I’m going to teach my team a series of principles to help them make better decisions on their own. I’m gonna teach them how I think about what a good idea is. How I think about a good risk versus a bad risk. I’m gonna teach them how to determine the quality of a product and say, “Okay, is this good? Is this a good output, or is it not quite there yet?”

How do we define excellence as an organization? I’m gonna teach them how conflict should be handled so they can handle conflict between themselves instead of having to come to me every time there’s a conflict on the team. Once we begin to teach these principles, then we can step back and do the job that we’re actually accountable for, which is either growing the business, or leading the team to grow the business, depending on the type of business that we’re running.

John Jantsch: I think for me, at least, over the years, the lessons I’ve really learned is that this has to be very intentional, of course. But, there are times when I’m doing my thing. Like you, I’ve go out and I speak and I write and I’m doing the work really, in the business. But, I have a team of people too, and it’s almost like I have to switch on that hat and remember that now I’m leading, so I’m not supposed to have all the answers. That to me is the hardest part because people come to you as the leader, and they say, “Todd, should I do this?” And your response, or at least my response is usually, they ask me a question, I’m gonna give ’em the answer and what I’ve learned over the years is you’ve gotta establish this practice of giving it back to them, saying, “What would you do in that situation?” Or something of that nature.

Todd Henry: Yes.

John Jantsch: Then, of course, the other challenge is you’ve gotta stay so consistent, I think, with it, because how many companies have read a book like yours and the person goes back and says, “It’s gonna be different now!”

Todd Henry: Yes, that’s exactly right. The challenge in all of that is either that we, as a leader, our area of greatest insecurity is the place where we have the potential to do the most damage. As a leader, if we’re not aware of that, the fact that it’s really hard for us to let stuff go, the fact that it’s really difficult for us to let our team run with things, those areas of insecurity become the places we have to turn into watch points personally, because your area of greatest insecurity is the place where you have the potential to do the most damage to your team, and ultimately to your business if you’re not careful.

John Jantsch: How much of the job of the leader, because I think creative people seek inspiration. They tend to be maybe a little more curious about how things work and why they work and don’t work. How much of the job of the leader in this case is to keep those folks inspired?

Todd Henry: I think it’s a huge percentage of the job is keeping them inspired and keeping them focused on the right things. Setting good rails, making sure that they’re looking in the right places. “Hey look over here! Hey, have you seen this? Hey, let’s not focus on that right now, let’s look at this thing over here, because this seems to be the thing that has the most potential.” That’s not the same thing as doing the work for them, that’s basically doing traffic flow for them. It’s making sure that they’re windowing out the stuff that you can see is really not essential and focusing them then on the things that are actually most important.

The thing is, if we wanna be an inspirational leader, then we have to be inspired ourselves. This is something I find often in the lives of leaders; they want to inspire their team but they’re not building practices into their own life to keep themselves inspired. They’re not dedicating time for study, for going out, for exploring, for tilling the soil and looking for potentially useful things in the environment that they can funnel to their team. They’re not doing any kind of personal and professional development themselves and yet they expect their team to be doing that, but they’re not developing themselves.

I think the first thing we have to recognize is that if we wanna be an inspiring leader, if we wanna be the kind of leader that’s bringing ideas to the table and pushing our team in the right place and is able to think systemically in a way that’s actually valuable and useful to our team because we’re seeing the patterns that are emerging in the work and in the team dynamics, then we have to be dedicating time and energy to developing ourselves, to studying, to looking for patterns out there in the marketplace and patterns out there in the environment.

That’s really one of the things we’re uniquely positioned to do as leaders because of our perch, and yet often we don’t do that. If you are not inspired, then you cannot inspire your team.

John Jantsch: One of the things that’s gotta be part of any leader is we’ve got objectives, we have key results that we’re trying to do, we have deadlines, there are things that have to be measured and tracked. I would suggest that some people would say that that’s harder to do with creatives? Maybe a deadline works, maybe it doesn’t, but how do you define and track what might be different with a creative team?

Todd Henry: That is a really great question, because you’re right. If we’re doing accounting, it’s pretty easy to tell whether we got it right or not. You could sorta say, “Numbers aren’t adding up. Okay, let’s figure this out. This isn’t working right.” It’s a different kind of problem. With creative work, it is highly qualitative often. In the end, somebody is either gonna give you the thumbs up or thumbs down based upon, in some cases, their subjective opinion. No matter how research based your work is, no matter how tight your rationale is, they’re gonna give you the thumbs up or thumbs down, and it’s basically based on what they perceive to be right or not right with regard to the work.

So, one of the tools that I like to teach people to help them determine, in a little bit more of a not quantitative way, but a little bit more of an objective way, which idea is the right idea? It spells the word EPIC, which, I don’t like doing things like that where, hey it spells this, but it does, it spells EPIC, is, if you have a handful of ideas you’re trying to evaluate, you’re trying to decide between, I encourage you to use this framework to do it. It works really, really well.

The first thing is, you’re gonna ask, is it effective? Is this idea effective? Does it solve the problem we set out to solve, or does it not? You can even rate this on a scale of one to ten, so you can put these ideas up next to each other and say, “Okay, which of these is most effective? On a scale of one to ten, how well does it actually solve the problem that we’re trying to solve?”

The P is practical. How practical is it for us to execute this idea, given our resource constraints, given our time constraints, given the fact that we only have a couple of team members who can work on this. How practical are each of these ideas, again, on a scale of one to ten?

Then, is it interesting and cool is the final metric here. On a scale of one to ten, how excited are we about this idea? Because sometimes maybe there’s an idea that doesn’t seem as effective, but it’s really cool and so somebody is really arguing for it. Okay, well, that’s fine, give it a 10, but it’s only a four on effectiveness, or a five on effectiveness, which means maybe it’s not the best idea even though it’s got a lot of energy in the room, because it is cool, but it doesn’t necessarily solve the problem we’re trying to solve.

Once you’ve ranked all of your ideas using this framework, effectiveness, practicality, and then is it interesting and cool, then you can actually have a meaningful conversation. You can say, well, idea two isn’t quite as practical as idea one, but I think we can make it more practical if we dot dot dot. So, it’s a great jumping off point for iteration. It also, as a leader, it gives you an opportunity to do some teaching with your team about how you think about ideas, or how you think about practicality, or how you think about resource allocation, or how you think about what is cool and what actually is interesting from a creative standpoint.

This is, in a world of highly subjective measurements, I find this tool to be really..

http://bit.ly/2SvPbpn