#;;the chopping block ((queue))

[chirpsy]

hi there! this is just a small post about some changes in regards to another user on here. again we aren't a blog around discourse or anything like that... but just from browsing and queueing i actually found out one of the people i've been reblogging + following actually allows the shipping of adults with like actual children? which i don't really think anyone in their right mind would support or really wanna be around... again, i don't want any smoke nor do i want this to blow up into a huge drama fit, but just know that we'll be doing our best to clean up and remove any posts by them. thanks for your patience with this blog if you're still stickin' around!

[blackdollette]

"ALL CIRCUITS ARE BUSY!" ᝰ r. cameron

♬.ᐟ now playing: dealer. - lana del rey

synopsis: after his go-to dealer cuts him off, rafe is forced into the hands of a hot little woman who shouldn't even know the first thing about selling hard drugs...

⊹₊⋆ pairing: rafe x drug-dealer!female!reader

⊹₊⋆ word count: 3.0k

⊹₊⋆ contents: cocaine nd shit (obvi), drugs, mentioned violence, lotssss of sexual tension, rafe gets held at gunpoint, reader is lowk a baddie, (not proofread!)

it had to be a joke, right? a cruel trick played by the universe just to mess with his head. it had to be nothing but a funny little stunt just to pull at rafe’s leg. well, he didn’t think it was funny in the slightest.

“...gotta be fuckin’ kidding me…” rafe muttered sourly under his breath, leaning back against the cold wall of the bricked alley he had been instructed to go to. had he known that this was where he’d find himself as a result of his crippling addiction, he wouldn’t even have thought about snorting that first line all those years ago in the first place.

by this point, he was practically fueled by cocaine. no doubt about it. and as he had found out the hard way, an addiction to anything had a way of making anyone screw up every aspect of their life just to get that quick fix. not only that, but rafe had tried to justify the fact that he had done what he did. as if there was anything he could’ve said to make putting a gun to his dealer’s head seem okay.

it had happened just last week. he had dropped by barry’s place as usual with nothing but his cashless pockets and a pistol tucked in the waist of his dark denim. it started off just fine. typical, in fact. cheap small talk, a little (un)friendly banter, the usual. but the second barry pulled out that little bag of yayo, something about rafe’s switch clicked and turned him into a demon gone mad.

he thought he would win. he truly did. he saw what could only be fear flicker across barry’s smug expression. he could’ve sworn it was fear, and that was exactly why he didn’t stop right there and think about what the hell he was doing. 

one thing lead to another and before he knew it, rafe was trudging out of the trailer with two black eyes, a broken nose, and absolutely no chance of ever getting in the same vicinity with his drug dealer again. you might as well have chopped his dick off and forced him to eat it. it would hurt just the same.

but despite that, rafe hadn’t left barry’s place empty handed. he didn’t have anything close to that fine powder he wished to get a whiff of, but what he did have was a thin slip of crumpled paper with some digits scratched on it. 927-5555. it was a phone number. any other self-respecting bastard would have turned around and burned the number without thinking twice. but naturally, with a mind foggier than his tear-filled vision, he called it. and no omen in the world could have prepared him for what he heard when the receiver picked up. 

he should have hung up the second he heard your voice. any female that claimed to have the good stuff he so desperately needed was sure as hell not to be trusted. and yet, he couldn’t find it within himself to hang up the phone and block the number. the bastard had listened to you, and intently too. you had instructed him to meet you at a certain place at a certain time on a certain day. he don’t know what compelled him to listen to a word that you said, and he couldn’t believe that he was actually here, waiting for your arrival.

his eyes remained glued to the luminescent clock on his phone. Friday, 11:02pm.

“...c’mon, c’mon… where the fuck are you…” he found himself becoming more restless by the second. you were two minutes late. barry was never late. but then again, he never had to meet up with barry in sketchy alleyways behind run down stripclubs. you were already breaking the typical theme that had taken years to get used to.

as if on queue, the alleyway lit up with car lights as a vehicle drove by. it was a small, almost pathetic looking car with a black exterior and a sleek sparkly varnish. 

rafe’s head snapped up the second he heard the sound of a car door opening and shutting, followed by dainty clicks against the dark sidewalk leading into the alley. your approaching silhouette was all he could make out amidst the dark backdrop.

“...about goddamn time.” somehow, his mood sours further when you finally do arrive. he remains in the dark corner, making you come all the way over to him. like hell he would meet you halfway. there was a certain level of respect he knew he had to treat the typical dealer with. one that he had learned about the hard way. one that he most definitely was not going to bother using with you. 

one you reached him, he got a good look at you. a real good look. you looked more like a filthy rich ex-stripper than anything. lips glossed and glistening in the dim, practically non-existent moonlight that shone about you. hair, nails, and clothing done as if you were on your way to a sugar-daddy meet or a “fashion show gone wild”. and… oh, god, was that a miniskirt. 

rafe wanted to laugh in your face. and he would’ve had the expanding knot tightening itself in his gut been absent. this had to be a joke. barry had given him a fake number to get back at him, and he had walked right into the bait like a rat in a mousetrap. damn him and his addiction for making him so malleable.

“oh, great…” his sour grumble was inaudible, but didn’t go unheard by you. nothing ever slipped past your radar, especially not the country club’s notoriously relevant “rafe cameron”. he was sick in the head to say the least and downright screwed to be completely honest. guys like him were just up your alley, and you would be lying if you said you weren’t excited to see how this little exchange played out.

a wide smile spread across your perfect lips. you extended your manicured hand out to him, barely a foot in between you as you looked up at him. “cameron, right? ra-fé cameron?”

you were already pissing him off and you hadn’t even been here 10 seconds yet. your warm vanilla scent cut through the metallic aroma of the alley, wrapping around him like a nimble vine. you were too close to him, too much shorter than him for him to take you seriously, and your bullshit pronunciation of his name was the cherry on top. he bit back a groan, shoving his hands in the deep pockets of his jacket, leaving your welcoming handshake hanging.

“it’s rafe, okay? and for fucks sake, what the hell took you so long, huh?”

his rudeness took you for a slight lap, despite all you had heard of him prior regarding exactly that. a slight crack formed in your cordial facade, but you were all too familiar with men just like this. he didn’t know what the hell he was getting into with you. you decided to keep up the act for a little longer.

you pulled your dark, designer sunglasses off of your face, revealing your deep, wide eyes to him.

what a fucking joke. you looked fresh out of highschool. nobody in the drug business could possibly have a face that looked so… innocent. a deep grumble emerged from his throat as he got a worse feeling about this whole deal. you were the type of bitch he’d meet up with for a cheap fuck, not the substance that his life practically depended on. barry had definitely set him up, just to mess with him. figures.

he pinched the bridge of his nose, sealing his eyes shut with a shaky breath as he tried his best to make his words more palatable.

“listen, i ain’t here for small talk or a tea party or any of that bullshit, you hear, bitch? you’re just supposed to give me my shit and get the hell outta here, a’ight? so shut up and do your job, princess.”

you felt the tranquil expression on your face falter yet again as the man in front of you kept on spewing out venom like it was second nature. you were beginning to understand why he didn’t have any other dealer’s numbers in his phone. it would take the calmness of a monk to deal with this one.

you nod meekly, zipping open your purse which designer’s label matched your sunglasses. you dig into it and grabbed the very thing you were looking for: a little baggie full to the brim with cocaine, placed inside a petite mesh, sparkly pink drawstring pouch. presentability was a huge deal for you, which was exactly why you were such a bigger hit than your male counterparts.

you plaster a gentle little smile onto your face, looking up at the blonde’s chiseled face and getting the perfect view of his sculpted jaw. barry had called the man pretty boy for a reason. “i assume this is what you’re after?”

rafe’s eyes widened as you pulled out the goods. well, shit. you could’ve fooled him into thinking that you had popped out of a child’s dollhouse anyday. he didn’t think you actually dealt the stuff he was looked for. this wasn’t like any other deal he had performed with a man his exact size. no, you were a woman. one who likely couldn’t fight to save her life and would believe any little bargain or negotiation he proposed when it came to payment. this deal was suddenly beginning to look up for him. 

with a shit-eating grin suddenly lighting up his hardened expression, he reaches out to snatch the baggie from you, to which you reflexively pull it out of his grasp. his “cheerful” demeanor sizzles away in the blink of an eyes. 

“aren’t you forgetting something, cameron? what, you think i give this stuff out for charity?” you drawl out smoothly, a mocking edge lacing your tone. he doesn’t miss it, and it strokes him in the worst way.

“oh, that’s fuckin’ rich. c’mon. you’re supposed to be a dealer, aren’t you? or what, you just playin’ dress up and think this shit’s a joke? just gimme my shit and let me go on my way.” his goes to grab it again. this time, you stick out your hand to stop his right there, his slight lung forward causing your nail to poke right into his chest. the cutting sharpness of it stops him right on the spot. 

your strands of patience were snapping away quickly. you so badly wanted to give him a taste of the aftermath of what happened when you messed around in a matter like this, the punishment that barry had only giving him a waft of. “i’m glad you’re so eager. that means we’re almost done here. c’mon. you know the price. cough it up.”

you hold out your empty palm in front of him, gazing up at his face impatiently as he began to rub the back of his neck like a schoolboy under duress. this transaction would have been over several minutes ago had he made it simple, but you knew exactly what you were getting into meeting up with the kook. and your withering glare made his hardened disposition seem to crumble even faster than it already was.

“l-look, i don’t have any cash on me right now, alright? i got some shit goin’ on right now and don’t got any green. but i just need two days, a week tops. you’ll get your goddamn money, okay?” this time he does succeed in grabbing the bag of coke. he begins to walk away, biting his lip to fight back the grin taunting to reveal itself. like hell he would pay you back, and he was damn certain that you’d throw a hissy fit tonight and forget about it by sunrise. it was too easy. he was almost glad that barry had dumped his ass and redirected him to you. almost.

but his fleeting sense of confidence diminished in a fraction of a session as he felt it. the gun he had kept at the back of his jeans had be swiped swiftly from the waistband and cocked quicker than he could process. he froze on the spot as you spoke again, your tone carrying none of the hospitality that it had previously held.

“bringing toys like this to a drug deal, huh, rafe? that ain’t the smartest choice, don’t ya think? didn’t barry teach you what happens when you fuck around with the wrong people in these parts?”

before he can respond or even think about making a run for it, his blood runs cold as he feels the tip of the gun press right into his back, the metallic coldness of it practically burning through his flesh. 

“...turn around real slowly for me, rafe… put your hands up and face me.” you instruct flatly, the detached element of your tone telling him that you disobeying you would be an early funeral for him. he swallowed thickly, being forced to rebuild his indifferent demeanor as he slowly turned back around and faced you, hands in the air with the bag of coke clutched tightly in his right hand.

you hop to pluck it out of his grasp, the tip of the pistol not leaving his stomach for a second. rafe couldn’t take his gaze off of you, blue eyes wide as saucers as his heart began to race in his chest. it wasn’t solely from fear. there was something else simmering beneath the surface that made his breathing shallow and palms clammy. he didn’t want to know what it was.

“you done messing around, pretty boy? ready to get serious? or should i end things right here and let the alley cats deal with whatever’s left once i’m done with you?”

rafe swears his blood has frozen over. what the hell had he gotten himself into now? this meeting spot was far from typical, being several miles away from the nearest neighbourhood and twice as far from figure eight. if he died tonight, it would surely take days if not weeks for anyone to find out. 

in a moment of desperation, rafe ignores the sickening feeling dominating his system and huffs out a forced laugh. “h-hey, c’mon now. let’s just, uh—fuck… can we just, y’know, bury the hatchet and forget about all this shit? y-you can keep your little fairy dust and we can split ways and never have to see eachother again. how’s that sound, dollface?”

he feels his security melt away with each second you have that suffocating glare locked on him. god, he had never felt his body tremble like this in his life. not even barry knew how to screw him up this badly, and you hadn’t even laid a finger on him yet.

“nice try, cameron. i drove all the out here to meet your pretentious looking ass when i could’ve been out getting laid tonight.” you spit out, his eyes locked on the way your lips moved. “if you don’t want the coke, fine by me. but you’re paying for my time one way or another.”

you take a small step toward him until your bodies are practically touching. despite the size difference, rafe feels smaller than ever. a feeling that he wanted to crush up and burn. his eyes narrow, mirroring your gaze as he fights back the itching urge to place a hand on your hip. 

“like hell i’m paying you. you’ve already got my fuckin’ pistol.” he drawls lowly, looking at you right back in the eye as if silently daring you to pull the trigger. he was challenging death.

“oh, yeah? consider this interest.” you hold up the gun and shake it. “a little extra token for wasting my time. i’m still gonna need that green, rafey… you know, i’d really hate to have to get rid of a guy this cute…”

your tone drops in volume, your stance no longer belligerent as you slowly bring the pistol below it belt, pressing it over the unmistakable bulge that pressed against the dark blue denim.

“y-you know what, fuck it. you’re right. just give me a sec…” rafe says frantically, digging into his back pocket as all sorts of feelings start shooting through his gut. getting his dick blown off by the hottest woman he’d ever laid eyes on seemed… tempting. just for the thrill of it. but at the same time, the nagging conscience inside of him told him that it would be safer to play his cards smartly. like there was something about you that could land him six-feet-under with just a snap of those manicured fingers.

he whipped out a thick wad of cash, all hundred dollar bills. that liar. but you weren’t surprised at all. a tiny grin tugged at your lips as you snatched the cash from him. when you stuffed the wad into your bra, rafe nearly choked on his spit and hoped you couldn’t hear him murmuring lowly under his breath. how in the hell was he supposed to get your image out of his head now?

“pleasure doin’ business with you, pretty boy. you ever need anything, you know who to call.” your eyelashes flutter sardonically as you saunter away from the man, leaving his pockets and hands empty. but truly, he’s never felt less empty. he stood there like an idiot, mouth slightly agape and eyes wide as he watched you slide back into your little car, putting your keys into the ignition and zooming off. 

so he was going home empty handed after all, which he never thought he would be doing with that stupid grin stuck on his face.

[coopigeoncoo]

Meat Cute, Chapter 2

Chapter Links: First, <- Chapter 2 ->Next

Pairing: Alastor x Fem!Reader

Rating: Mature (rating may change)

Tags: Canon-typical violence, Cannibalism, Reader is a cannibal, Fake/pretend relationship, Puns, Raccoon Reader, Tags may change, Swearing

---

In a bid to appear more approachable to the denizens of the Hazbin Hotel, Alastor enlists the help of his favorite butcher to step into the roll of an (after)lifetime: pretending to be his paramour! ---

“You can't deny we have so much in common,” Alastor's grinned, his smile somehow, impossibly, widening even farther as he leaned down on the counter on a single elbow; his nose nearly touching yours as you stood frozen in place. “I'm somewhat of a Butcher myself, you know.”

–--

A story where one thing is certain: the steaks are never bigger than when love is on the line.

---

Continue reading below, or follow the link to A03!

Extermination came and went with you wrapped up in all the blankets from your bed, crammed into the walk-in cooler Hal used to age gigantic slabs of meat.  Once the distant screams had died down you were quickly pulled from the fridge and put back to work, barely able to hold a knife in your frost nipped fingers. 

“Lotsa screaming means lotsa bodies,” Hal explained, tying the strings of his apron around his wide hips in a tight double knot.  “And lotsa bodies means lotsa meat.”

As though summoned by his words, a forceful knock sounded from the delivery entrance; a salesman bearing the first of many scavenged corpses sold to the shop for a quick buck. 

You stared down at the man laid across your chopping block, his face contorted to showcase the abject terror of his final moments.

“I'm sorry this happened to you,” you murmured quietly, fingers tracing the jagged cut that had ripped the man open from pelvis to sternum.  “But I promise to do a better job than they did.”

The angels had cut his life short.

And then you cut him into pieces.

It didn't seem particularly fair to you, but you supposed it was as balanced as things could be in Hell.  

Hal, in a rare show of mercy, gave his employees the weekend off to recuperate from the pre and post Extermination rushes.  You had been content to hole up inside your cramped apartment and sleep for the full two days, but once you remembered your promise to Ms. Rosie you managed to pull yourself out of bed and get dressed with a minimal amount of cursing. 

It wasn't difficult to find her once you actually managed to wake up enough to stumble down your apartment stairs without breaking your neck.  You'd pass by Franklin and Rosie's Emporium often enough running errands for Hal.  It would be hard to avoid the boutique considering it was smack dab in the middle of main street; placing it along just about every route through town.  

The Emporium offered a wide selection of impeccably tailored clothes you couldn't ever hope to afford with your meager earnings.  It was nearly impossible to swallow back the sour burn of envy roiling in your belly at the sight of the smartly dressed women spinning in front of mirrors in their tailored waistcoats and silver buttoned shoes.  You self consciously soothed out wrinkles in your burgundy colored skirt, the fabric likely permanently creased from being trapped under the tight sash of your butchery apron.

The checkout line moved slowly as every patron stopped to chat with Rosie or the woman standing beside her, and it felt like a small eternity had passed before you made it to the front of the queue.  Rosie's eyes widened as she saw you, a bright smile stretching across her face as she quickly skirted around to the front of the counter.

“Take over from me, Franklin!” Rosie called out to her companion over her shoulder, motioning you to follow her with an excited wave of her hand.  “I've got a special guest visiting!”

Rosie led you to a darling two person cafe table pushed into an alcove with a giant window overlooking the central square of Cannibal Town, where a barbershop quartet was starting to attract a fair bit of attention from passers by.  Rosie was silent as she slid up behind you, but the weight of her aura was somehow palpable; like a humidity that clogged the air and made breathing a laborious task.

“It's pretty peaceful for a place called Cannibal Town, isn't it?” Rosie boasted, but you couldn't fault her for her pride.  You knew from stories around town that the orderly life on display was the result of her tireless effort to secure a better life for the sinners under her rule.  

“It is,” you agreed readily, sliding carefully  into the chair that one of her attendants had pulled out for you while Rosie settled down across the table.  “You've built a lovely community, Ms. Rosie.”

“Oh, aren't ya' just the sweetest thing!” Rosie chirped in delight, hoisting a tray of finger foods up under your nose.  “Canapé?”

You were too nervous to be hungry, but grabbed a couple of crackers topped with thin slices of blood sausage and dollops of roasted marrow to be polite.  Not sure what to say, you quickly popped one of the hors d'oeuvres into your mouth immediately and hoped Rosie would take hold of the conversational reins.

Rosie, mercifully, rose to the occasion.  

“So, you seem to be fitting in pretty well around here.  That's unusual these days,” she said, deftly pouring some piping hot bone broth into dainty porcelain tea cups.  “Hard to find new sinners willing to live without television or cellular phones.”

You couldn't help but think of how much of your life had been squandered in front of screens; the endless hours of scrolling and watching and seeing and wanting- of wondering why your life never seemed to compare to the ones that clogged your social media feeds.  

“Those- those things do me more harm than good, I think,” you admit between small bites of sausage.  

“Oh, honey.  Those gadgets are nothing but trouble for everyone,” Rosie cooed comfortingly before angling her head down to mumble into her cup “especially down here.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing to worry your pretty little head over,” Rosie laughed dismissively, pushing a platter of finger sandwiches towards your now empty plate.  You grabbed the one with a thumb poking out, saving the sandwiches stuffed with choicer pinky digits for your host.  

“It's nice to see you don't shy away from the…specialized fare Cannibal Town is known for,” Rosie said approvingly, watching as you skillfully de-nailed the finger in your sandwich.  “Did working at the butcher shop help acclimate ya'?”

“A bit.  I won't lie, it was really hard at first.  I spent a lot of time pretending that I was eating other stuff- beef, pork, a really convincing soy substitute,” you admit. “But after a little while that started to feel, I don't know, disrespectful?”

“Oh?” 

“It's like- this person is nourishing me.  I am alive because of them.  It didn't seem right to pretend that they were somehow less than what they were; especially when they were providing me with so much.  Acknowledging their life, what they were-” you paused, considering your words along with the remaining phalange held between your fingers.  “It's the least I can do.  A way I can thank them.”

You feel a bit vulnerable from your confession, never having voiced your thoughts out loud before, and it takes you a moment to muster the courage to look up from your hands and meet your host’s gaze again.  Rosie is positively beaming at you, her small nose crinkled in delight.

“I need you to promise me you'll try and get out more, sweetie.  It's very inconsiderate for you to deprive the citizens of Cannibal Town of your company,” Rosie said, leaning over the table to place her hand on top of yours, the press of her fingers a balm to your touch-starved soul. “You're one of us now.  It's time to start acting like it.”

You'd reluctantly started to make appearances around town.  It started small, with short walks around the park when the belladonna began to bloom, followed by the weekly al fresco concerts once the early spring acid rains tapered off.  

And then suddenly a switch seemed to flip.  People would wave good morning to you from across the street, customers would ask about how your weekend was, and  your coworkers invited you out for drinks after work.  You'd gone from merely existing in Cannibal Town to really living in Cannibal Town.  

You tried to not dwell on how much happier you were in Hell than you were on Earth, fearful about what exactly that said about the sort of person you were. 

The years ticked by and before you knew it the workers at the butcher shop had surprised you with a lopsided devils food cake to celebrate your fifth death day.

“When you're facing down eternity you don't celebrate every single year,” Dorcas, the girl who usually worked the register, explained.  “Five is the first milestone party, followed by twenty-five and fifty.  They get more spaced out as time goes on.”

You had woken up early the next day, dehydrated with a headache pounding behind your eyeballs from overindulging at your death day celebration.  Hal, in a show of incredible foresight, had scheduled you for the afternoon shift.  With a mug of watery coffee in hand, you were slowly shambling to the threadbare armchair in the corner of your room when the broken radio on the side table suddenly began shooting off sparks; the device alight with an eerie green glow.

“SWEET SASSY MOLASSY,” you screamed, accidentally spilling coffee down the front of your dressing gown as you leaped away from the ancient box radio.

“Salutations!  Good to be back on the air!” a staticky voice greeted, the cheery tone completely at odds with your abject misery as you pulled your soaked nightgown away from your chest to cool your singed flesh.

The radio was loud, the volume knob having been set to maximum when it suddenly powered on; but the sound inside your apartment was nothing compared to the uproarious cheers you heard coming from outside as the citizens of Cannibal Town overjoyed by the return of their favorite radio program.  

[minisugakoobies]

Best friend’s bro trying to cheer OC up when they come home

🥺🥺🥺 Oh my god, YES, that is definitely something San would do!

So here's 700+ words about it. No warnings, other than PINING oh my god the pining!

******

Meetings with your editor are never your favorite thing. But today's meeting was especially stressful, given all the "cutting back" going on at work. The staff size is shrinking and you feel like your neck is on the chopping block.

It feels like you've run the gauntlet by the time you get home. Mentally exhausted, back aching from holding yourself upright so rigidly during the meeting, trying to look interested, like a good employee.

But to get into your apartment, you need a key, and right now, yours appears to have fallen into the Bermuda Triangle via your purse. Swearing profusely, you dig through your bag for a few minutes, before finally finding what you need.

The door opens, then stops suddenly, like there's a weight on the other side. "What the f-"

Nero greets you. Not on the ground. In the air.

You take a step back, baffled laughter leaving your lips. Your black cat is suspended in the crack of the doorway, bright green eyes blinking at you in similar confusion, San's hands gently wrapped around his middle. Around Nero's neck is his little fish-spotted bowtie, the one that makes him look like a proper gentleman.

"Nero?"

“Mrow?” 

"Good afternoon, sajangnim," San's voice says from behind the door. He shifts Nero slightly, like he's snapping to attention. "Welcome home."

"Thank you," you giggle, giving Nero a chin scritch. You push on the door slightly, and San steps back, bringing Nero into his arms.

"Hi Noona," he grins. HIs fingers stroke the back of Nero's neck, which is one of Nero's favorite spots. Which San knows now, too. He and Nero are inseparable. 

“When did Nero get a job as our doorman?” you ask, sliding your shoes off before slipping into your house shoes. 

“Just today. And he’s doing such a good job, isn’t he?” San rubs Nero’s ears, earning a loud rumble in return. “Yes, he is.” 

It’s too cute, the way San fawns over your cat. Like he knows Nero has a piece of your heart. So he protects him. Protects it. 

It’s too cute and it’s too much to think about. 

You don’t lay down so much as collapse onto your couch, a loose pile of bones sprawling across the cushions. San takes a spot on the floor, leaning back against the couch. Nero leaps from San’s arms up onto your legs, where he proceeds to bake biscuits in the meat of your thigh. 

“Where’s Haneul?” you ask. Normally when San’s sister is working third shift, she’s up by now, zoning out in front of the tv until she has to get ready for work. 

“Jongho took her out for breakfast slash dinner,” San informs you. “Just me and Nero home.” 

“Well, good thing he’s here to keep you in line. And he got a promotion today, so I think someone’s earned an extra treat tonight.” Nero’s purring grows, ears pricking up at the word ‘treat.’ 

San passes you the remote. He watches you scroll through your Netflix queue for a few minutes. As your fingers run over Nero’s smooth coat, you wonder idly if San’s hair feels as soft as it looks. 

“What about me?” San tips his head back, letting it rest on the cushion beneath your hips while he glances at you. “It was my idea to make him doorman.” 

He pouts, but not his usual pout, not the one that makes you want to give him everything in the world, but a comic pout, bottom lip stretched to its limit, meant to do nothing more than to make you giggle. Which it does.

“Why’d you do that, anyway?”

Something shifts in San’s eyes.

“You said this morning that you had a meeting today. I remember how stressed you were after the last two. So when I heard you in the hall, cursing like a sailor, I figured maybe you could use a laugh.”

“Oh.” Looks like San knows other things now, too. “Oh, yeah, that’s - I did have a meeting. And it sucked. So, um, thanks.” Too many emotions swirl through you, your voice shrinking as you speak, unsure how to express how you feel. Or if you even should. “I appreciate it.” 

“Of course.” When he smiles, your chest physically aches. “Anything to see you smile, Noona.” 

There goes another piece of your heart.

*********

Previous installments of bff's lil bro San: one two three four

Tagging a few people who I think are interested @moni-logues @kiestrokes @augustbutwinter @sweetnspicy-noona @krystal-a @yeontan-my-love

[theseasasleep]

I'm Gonna Become Emperor!

And I will fuck you up! GO! I can't help giggling at the way he runs but also I felt his authority when he defied death and spat in its face. No going gentle into that good night for this monk.

Me at the current Emperor believing his mother would never assassinate The Monk Who Would Be Emperor to install her Crown Prince of choice:

Honey. I don't know exactly what rules you're playing by, I just know you are largely playing them by yourself.

Tread lightly, Emperor lover. When it comes to the royal temper, anyone's neck is fit for the chopping block. Hmm. With him I am now unsure. At first I thought there was no way the Emperor's lover would betray him beyond the normal stuff that lovers and concubines of powerful people do. But this entire sequence introduces a wrinkle in that surety. Was his anger at having a message to the Emperor get through without being vetted through his well-cultivated channels about that disruption to his flow of control? Or was it something more insidious? Is he working both sides of the angle?

Soldier 1: Are we really going to burn the mountain and burn The Monk Who Would Be Emperor?

Soldier 2: Death by stabbing, death by fire, it's all the same.

Soldier 1: But he's a descendent of the Dragon. We'll be punished with lightning and death.

Soldier 2: You really believe all that nonsense?!

30 seconds later: the Heavens cue up rain to dampen the fires and lightning to scare the shit out of everyone.

HA! While yelling for the future Emperor to come out of hiding, Soldier 2 cries out, How many have to die so you can live?

Me: historically speaking, A LOT. A lot of people die so that royals can live. Hell, a lot of people die so that even a royal's favorite won't be inconvenienced. He may be in the robes of a monk but he clearly still has that royal aura.

Oh my god. OH MY GOD. My monk emperor is so freaking smart and brave! I hope he really rewards Soldier 1 in the future.

Too many years of fire drill practice. All I can think as I watch everyone scramble like chickens with their heads cut off is, if you all just moved in an orderly fashion towards the exits...

Wow, current Emperor actually stopped to help a man overcome from fear? smoke? Okay, he's worthless at being a ruler but he's not heartless.

This was a surprisingly easy watch. Great pace. Good acting. I'm actually disappointed there isn't another ep waiting in the queue. Waiting a week SUCKS.

[thessalian]

Thess vs A Very Long Week

Soooooooo glad it's Friday. It has been a very long, very tiring week. I'm going to have to book myself some time off soon. However, I do intend on waiting until Temp's back from compassionate leave, just so I don't come back to a disaster. Not that I blame Goblin for taking the week off, as I imagine it was booked before Temp had to go on compassionate leave (at least I hope it was, though one can never be sure with Goblin), and I certainly don't blame Temp for taking compassionate leave. Just ... it. Has. Been. A. MEEEEEEEESS.

Not only did I get all the word salad reports again, but something else has been going really bizarre with the typing queue. Stuff seems to ... just ... go back into the queue? Even though it's already been typed? Except for the ten-minute long urgent monstrosity, which was mostly finished by Violet but was missing one of the blocks, but I didn't want to touch it because ... you know, not mine?

Today I also learned that almost none of my colleagues follow the protocol we were told we have to follow for typing macros. See, we're not supposed to do line breaks except in very specific circumstances, because they want to keep everything as short as they can so it doesn't stretch across multiple pages. It's easier to see the entire report if it doesn't stretch across multiple pages, see. So I use a line break under only very specific circumstances - mostly a new specimen pot. But the others? Line breaks in the specimen description between every specimen - even when it's a lot of specimens. Hell, Violet double-spaces the specimen description. But no one calls her out on it, so meh. It's just irritating. There is a very tidy protocol and no one seems to use it but me.

(I mean, part of the irritation is that not even Scruffman, who was the one who said we needed to keep the line breaks to a minimum in the first place, keep line breaks to a minimum.)

So I am very sore, and very tired, and fed up with most of the world at this point. But I did make chicken stew. Did pretty well, too, and there are leftovers for later. But even that relatively small bit of chopping and stirring was a bit much after this week.

Hell, I even skipped the morningly trip to Horizon-land in favour of some noodling around Botany Manor, which is a fun little puzzle / hidden object / walking simulator / plant growing kind of thing. So I can at least end a very hard week with a nice little video game recommendation.

[beneath-her-soul]

Time check: 0837hrs

Location: Train otw to work

I'm feeling a lil bit anxious right now. I don't know if I can make it on time to chase after the company's transport and also I'm still having dry cough and it's been like this for the past 3 days. I would also like to take my mind off by writing so I feel much calmer.

Over the last weekend, I spend my off days with Mr Husband by going to our first Halloween Horror Night at USS! I've never been to this event during my younger days as I never like crowds, horror, tickets are pricey and I was still schooling and it normally ends late at night hence, I need to have enough money so that I can actually pay for the tickets and taxi fare back home. In summary, it just cost expensive for me to pay for everything because I wasn't yet a working adult and I have curfew.

Mr Husband bought the tickets to surprise me as both of us are virgins for this event and since we're already married, why not right? He made sure I blocked off the date and told me not to make any plans. I was so excited and looking forward to it because it's been awhile since he come up with something for us.

After night shift, I slept for the entire 5hrs and woke up at 5pm to wash up and get ourselves prepared. H told me to wear something comfortable with my tokidoki bag and sports shoe as we're gonna be walking alot on that night. While I was doing my make up, I asked him if we're watching a concert lol 😂 Idk I just want to find out more to see if he's able to keep up with the surprise.

I was terrified at first bcs lol like I told you, I am never a fan of anything horror as it stresses the shit out of me and furthermore, it just makes me overthink when I'm alone. Almost every of the haunted house, I decided to walk infront and prefer H to be at the back bcs I hate it if the ghost starts to scare me from my back like I can't see but I can feel your presence behind me. I was laughing most of the time during the haunted house experience bcs of the other people in it as they were screaming and just trying to avoid getting scare hahaha it was hella funny. I was more fascinated by the works they put it on the set up. Every haunted house has a theme for it and it was well decorated it looks real. The cast look real and they didn't broke out of character.

During the journey to the destination, I somehow got a sense that we're going to go to Sentosa judging by the route we took. We parked our bike at vivo and took the monorail to Sentosa. It was crowded since it's Saturday. (And it's been awhile since I went out on weekends). And tadaaaa, we reached USS! It was crowded as heck and we were already perspiring. Bleargh. We brought our portable fan and it was a huge life saver for us. There were 3 terrifying haunted houses and 3 sinister scare zones. And btw, H also had another surprise by purchasing the express tickets. Homaigod how much have he spent in total just for these. Makes me feel guilty that he's spending so much just for this. But then again, it's worth it bcs the queue was insaneeeee for each of the haunted houses. I think I might just give it a pass if H didn't buy the express tickets.

The last haunted house we went to was The Weeknd: After hours til dawn nightmare. All you see was...... The weeknd, his chopped off head, everything of him. I'm just like 😮 I don't listen to his music but I knew who he was. I was really horrified and disgusted. The Botox face, just everything. But it was well executed I must say.

We did get to ride on mummy and transformers at least. The atmosphere was so lively as it's been such a long time since I attended something like this. Something that makes me feel alive. You know? I've been walking in circles over the last few months and going to this event at 29 years old, hits me differently.

We ended off our night at 0030hrs and head our way home. I kept thanking the husband for the surprise and it was memorable experience for first timers. Alhamdulillah, bucketlist ✅

Update: I made it to catch for my bus.

[canmom]

L'Aventur de Canmom à Annecy - Jeudi 4: Short Films (Perspectives 1 + Grad Films 4)

After White Plastic Sky my plan was to see some graduation films and then try and get into a screening of Mars Express by Jeremie Perin, which I missed on Monday for bad reasons. While queuing for the short films, I saw that the queue for Mars Express was already filling up two hours in advance, so I decided to join it, because I really wanted to see Mars Express.

I did not get to see Mars Express. After queuing for two entire hours, a bunch of people in front of me got in, but ultimately I was seven places too far back.

Perspectives 1

Pretty disgruntled by this, my friend and I decided to hop into the line for Short Films: Perspectives 1. I did not have high hopes for this one. Perspectives is essentially where Annecy puts the films with worthy political and social messages, about refugees and miscarriages and so forth.

This format kind of sucks, honestly. These films are generally speaking vehicles for a message - maybe they’re just an interview with someone illustrated by short animations for example. Viewed on their own that might be reasonable expressions of their thing. Viewed back to back in a huge block it's exhausting.

Which isn’t to say they’re all bad: the Bulgarian film Depersonalization had some pretty effective imagery set to music (and it helped that it was kinda vague what it was about lol). Here's the trailer, which won't let me embed for some reason:

So, quickly running down the list:

Lost At Sea depicts a Rohingya man on a boat, along with flashbacks to the violence he faced, with a lone singer singing of the plight of the Rohingya people. It's done in a a rotoscope style of rough paintwork, and I can see what they were going for, but it didn't really come together for me. I feel like it could have stood to put more effort into individual characterisation instead of letting everyone melt into a blur of suffering. It seemed laser focused at evoking pity and not much else.

Nurit features a voiceover by an Israeli woman talking about her miscarriage, and the way she came to terms with it, illustrated in a childrens' book sort of style. This one definitely dragged. The animation was not visually interesting enough to add a lot to the voiceover.

Depersonalization - mentioned already above - describes itself thus:

An interpretation about personality loss. The tree grows and buries its crown back in the earth, the world returns to primal matter, the consumer is consumed.

This involved a legit cool sort of scratchy style of depicting volume, with perspective shifts as a crowd of people were pulling each other with yokes, and was generally pretty neat. I don't quite get what they're getting at with 'personality loss', but the animation put me in mind a bit of The Wall or metal album covers. It's probably something alchemical, right? In any case, this one stood out.

Sjeti se kako sam jahala bijelog konja was just incomprehensible if I'm honest. It cut between various images: a man sitting in a coffee shop that was blurring and chromatically aberrating, a knight riding a horse, another knight chopping wood, the barista at the coffee shop (also the narrator) standing in a room that is gradually filling up with salt. The barista said various things, but they all seemed like non-sequiturs. The blurb said "Time continuously elapses, and apathy can trap consciousness into a loop. Escaping this stagnation one can discover the true beauty of existence." So I guess the looping visuals and distortion were supposed to communicate a sense of dissociation, but the resolution was not clear.

Graduation films 4

After that one, my friend and I decided to duck out of Perspectives and have a go at the late night showing of the graduation films instead. I had pretty high hopes for this one: late night showings have been really energetic, and the last set of student films had some crazy good ones.

Unfortunately this set was a bit lower key; a lot of films were just kind of abstractly setting a vibe without much of a narrative per se, and I was a bit too tired and worn out for that. Still, let's run down the list, I don't want to be too mean, obviously all the students worked tremendously hard on these films, it just wasn't my cup of tea at that time.

Feux by Mohammad Babakoohi from France, depicts a dog slowly dying of thirst on a dry riverbed during a riot. Eventually it seems as if rain has come, but it's actually a dust cloud kicked up by cops on motorbikes, who beat the dog and then shoot it. We end with a shot of the dog's skeleton, at last covered by water. The film is done in a heavily textured, painted style. I'm not entirely sure I got it, but rip that dog :(

Carp Xmass by Anna Heribanová is a stop motion riffing on a Czech tradition of eating carp at Christmas, by switching the roles of humans and carp. It's definitely leaning a bit on shock/grossout humour - the carp kids find a swastika instead of a cross or a star in an arrangement of apple pips, you have 'fingers' instead of fish fingers, the street is covered with human bodies... Overall though, compared to the other 'what if fish were humans' film I saw, this felt a bit heavy handed. I definitely remember the credits, which show a carp being killed and gutted in a Czech marketplace in great detail!

Bedroom People by Vivien Forsans was a sort of creepypasta horror kind of vibe. Presented as a USB stick of found footage, it depicts monsters that manifest in people's rooms at night. It's a neat idea and the clips escalate pretty well but I struggle to remember the ending, if it went anywhere with it.

Saltwater by Declan Mckenna... I struggled to remember this one but the trailer jogged my memory. It depicts memories of a gay relationship with fairly minimal animation, and various filters of e.g. LCD subpixels or dot matrix printing to give it an old media feel I guess. But yeah, didn't ultimately leave an impression. Apparently they used AI a bunch, which I didn't realise at all.

Pas Amoureux by Eugénie Bouquet from Switzerland is an illustrated interview with a sex worker discussing her work in 'sexual assistance' for disabled clients. It's another film of the illustrated monologue type which I generally don't click with, but I did find the interview kind of interesting because I have a disabled family member with progressive MS that leaves him mostly paralysed, and a couple years ago now I remember my family hired a sex worker to come in to see him. I wasn't really involved but from what I was told, it sounds like he was helped a lot; it was cool to hear the other side of that dynamic. The sex worker in this video was generally very positive about the whole thing, and talked about how it's less stigmatised than other forms of SW, so she can for example be good friends with the clients' families as well. She ended by saying she wished it was more normal to have sex with people you don't love, which is an interesting framing lol. The animation didn't really add a lot besides something to keep the eyes busy, but this would have been a neat radio segment even without visuals lol.

Dodo by Yi Luo was an odd one. I was pretty tired by this point so I didn't really follow the story until I read the blurb on the website just now. It's about a kid in a mostly monochrome painted world whose dad is a big blue bird. One day dad flies away; the next day some kind of secret police looking guys show up. Dodo stops growing, although this wasn't clear to me; he goes on some sort of spiritual journey inside his mother's chest or something and eventually sprouts wings himself, at which point his dad returns and Dodo at last takes off himself. An easy reading would be to say it's about like antisemitism or something? But it left it pretty open to interpretation. I think I'd like to see this one with a less tired brain to give it a fairer shot.

Tomoya! by Masataka Kihara from Japan was a welcome dose of energy and levity lol. A group of baseball players are posing for a photograph and horsing around. Tomoha isn't really joining in. As the photo is taken, they all dive forward, crushing Tomoya underneath. At this point Tomoha has a strange encounter with a cicada in a white void in which he learns to dance crazily like the others. It's in this painted style with hypersimplified faces which was definitely unique lol.

Origines d'un monde by Emma Zwickert from France was another vague moody one. Children assemble various bits and pieces into a diorama; allegedly they grow up. I will fully admit I didn't get it, and probably missed the implications. All I can say is not really a film to watch sleepy.

Mano by Toke Ringmann Madsen from Denmark was very solid. It's a CG film depicting a tense moment in the life of two brothers - an protective older brother and his younger sibling who looks up to him. Their mother is neglectful, not buying food; the older brother attempts to steal some money from her boyfriend's jacket to buy food, but he's caught in the act, leading to a tense confrontation. The character animation is very good, and the story arc just the right amount for the runtime. These are some truly moody looking boys lol.

Ispod Maske by Darian Bakliža from Croatia shows the confession of a bully who, in a group of five masked friends, harasses another boy with snowballs and later eggs, while unmasked ends up befriending him at school. Inevitably he is unmasked during one of these attacks, destroying his friendship with the other boy. And that's kind of where it ends. Given the fairly long runtime, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It feels like it might be going for something similar to the first part of koe no katachi in showing how bullying is rationalised, but the scenario was a bit too farfetched for it to feel like something sharply observed. And the style of it didn't really allow a lot of room for emotion and acting.

Cyclepaths by Anton Cla from Belgium is another oblique one. Various acts of violence take place: someone shoots down a drone, a group of men crash their car into a train and then board it with pistols and shoot some of the passengers - presented in a choppy disjointed style without much of a narrative to tie it together. At this point it was kind of one mood piece too many for me.

All in all, this left both of us pretty disappointed. I think what this collection really underlined is that not everyone wants the same things out of the medium of animation lol. It's a tricky line to walk between being too direct, with the illustrated monologue, and too oblique, with the vague abstract mood piece. You can absolutely do vague and confusing and non-narrative, but you've got to work pretty hard to sell that. You need compelling visuals and strong enough editing to make it flow well and feel satisfying. Music is a huge help.

Anyway, that's the end of Thursday. Of course I saw a bunch more stuff today, including a premiere, so I'll have to write that up tomorrow on the way home lol. Tomorrow I check out of my hotel and hopefully, hopefully, catch Mars Express at last. So goodnight for now!

Also, also, even if I wasn't impressed with these films, the festival is still a blast. This has been the best week I've had in so long, and I cannot wait to come back next year with the experience to play my cards better lol. (I'll soon be making an index of all these writeups and at some point, making a special page on my site where you can filter the comments in various ways.)

[atplblog]

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[dgcatanisiri]

Drew MIGHT have volunteered to be the heel. MAYBE. I give long odds on that but I will grant it as having a statistically non-zero possibility. I am willing to offer her the goodwill that she made a mistake and misjudged things but that her heart was in the right place of wanting to provide jobs for the people who work on her show who were struggling because of the strike continuing as it had, and that it is possible that she was in a position where she could take the hit of playing the heel in order to prove to the studios that public opinion is VERY MUCH on the side of the writers asking for a fair share, even if I don't necessarily believe the latter was the case.

Maher on the other hand ABSOLUTELY was banking on the idea that he could get away with it. He just decided that he was tired of not getting paid and wanted to get back to that. And the only reason he was even willing to take the hit of going back is that he wasn't the first on the chopping block after Drew went first.

He's too selfish to offer any good faith and too spineless to lead on doing shitty things.

EDIT: After putting this in my queue, the news came out that Drew's writers have quit because of her actions. So yeah. NO chance she volunteered to be the heel, she legitimately fucked up here.

Maher, though, is just an inherent fuck up.

I spoke to my dad who's been on strike a few hours ago, and he said this is absolutely true. The studios were still hoping they could starve out the writers, and didn't expect the general public to be so strongly on the union's side still 5 months in.

He's lived through four WGA strikes, and he says the energy and solidarity he's seen both inside and outside the union has been far beyond what has ever been present before. The internet ate Drew Barrymore alive for scabbing, and within days the studios were back at the negotiating table giving in to almost every demand.

Thanks guys. This really was a team effort ❤️❤️ #eatthefuckingrich

[littleshopofhorrors-confessions]

Sorryyy I've been the one sending in fanfics mostly because I don't have my account to be promoting them myself anymore. And I created the promotions blog on a whim so I could have some kind of Little Shop Tumblr account still and because secretly submitting my own stuff amidst everyone else's would be funny, but no one's submitting anything so I kinda gave up on that. Just delete anything you haven't already in your queue from me ig. The like two people who followed this account can just unfollow me because the promotions account probably isn't happening especially considering that half the fandom had me blocked on my old account. Peace out ig I'll probably only be posting Little Shop related stuff on AO3 and fanfiction.net from now on. Hopefully this isn't too personal bulletin-boardy because it addresses a topic of another recent post on here and the fate of the promotions blog. My last non-fanfiction message for everyone is that the ship name for Seymour x Twoey should be Chopped Suey okay bye

-choppedupnotkilled

~~~

[headmatespawner]

Hiya can I get a inbox check for a request that involves a alter with some of the roles being a NPC, internal programmer, etc.? I cant remember if I sent in the request so I wanna double check before sending it! thank you!

Its there! It's next on the chopping block outside of the ones we have in our queue :)!

-☢️

[tulipfemme]

much better <3 okay we can resume business as normal

CRIES i missed 69 followers :’(

[notallfay]

So a little bit of a story about how the Tories are huge cunts towards disabled people.

I have a neighbour who I haven't seen in ages, she lives directly opposite me. It has been several months though. But yesterday I saw her queueing outside my local food pantry, so I got chatting to see how she was doing.

Her money has been cut, because she updated the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) about her going blind. Her retina's are detaching. She is terrified to leave the house properly, for 2 reasons and has a friend pick her up if she needs to go out. She physically can't leave the house on her own.

She is insecure on how she looks, and is really anxious because one of her eyes has dropped down. And she is afraid of comments, whispers, and overall people being awful. She said that she only managed to talk to me, because she knows I'm safe, because she's met me before. The Tories villainise us so publicly, that this hostility has spread to be in our everyday lives. They make out that so many of us are "benefit cheats".

The other reason is that, because she's very blind, she does not feel safe wandering around, because of the added dangers of not being able to see. Which is understandable really. But hey, this person can totes work right??

This was on top of her normal disabilities, that she previously did get money for. So her getting worse warrented a money cut. Great logic. She now has to have no money until she can see a judge, which could take like 6 months. She after cancelling what bills she could has £10/month for food.

The thing is, I know her story isn't unique. Just like mine isn't unique when I have to go through this myself. It happens to disabled people constantly, to the point the trauma we go through actually gives us new mental health issues that we didn't have before.

The face to face assessment are so awful, and so much like interrogation that Scotland got rid of them for being inhumane.

With Austerity 2.0 I know full well Rishi Sunak has us on the chopping block, and more of us are going to die. The DWP will be given harsher targets to cut us off, even if we are fully genuine and in need. This is what Tory Britain is for disabled people.

[thessalian]

Thess vs New Girl

Today has been horrific.

So again, it's just me and New Girl for the typing this week. She still won't touch anything more than a minute long voluntarily, and won't touch any of the longer ones at all. Which is why I had:

Four atrocities by The Liver Guy (whose first language is English but he somehow manages to make word salad anyway; two of his were nearly eight minutes long - each)

Two separate hemicolectomies by two different atrocity-people

One ten-minute long urgent case involving skin and lymph nodes which was another case of "English is your first language and this is your medical speciality; how are you making this much word salad?"

All the complicated skin cases

Multiple gallbladder cases

Multiple appendix cases

All the ones from the annoying little madam who refuses to dictate a damn block key

And, occasionally, as a treat, some simple biopsy cases

We didn't get all of yesterday's cases finished today, obviously. And there were 270 cases to type when I left. Well, sort of - three of them are older cases that were typed by Scruffman but are back in the queue anyway? For some reason? So I'm leaving those fuckers alone. The one at the top of the list is another eight-minute monstrosity that I thought I was well within my rights to ignore because I had done my share of the atrocities, but apparently New Girl has even less interest in "fair" than Temp and Goblin do, and that's saying something. There's also another ten-minute urgent case that is exactly like the urgent case I already did, from the look, which means it's going to be more word salad.

No, seriously, New Girl drives me insane. Like, sometimes she'll pick up a long case, but that's apparently an accident because when I look over towards the end of the day, she's stuck it back into the queue, where it throws the entire queue system out of whack.

I was going to make chicken stew. I probably still should. But I am exhausted and I am in so much pain and I kind of don't wanna. ...Okay, I very much don't wanna. But it just involves some chopping things and sticking it all in the pressure cooker. It can't possibly be that bad, right?

......Yeah, it probably can. Ugh.

[theharddeck]

california coast in your green eyes || chapter 2/5

Pairing: Jake Seresin x Julie Floyd (OC)

Synopsis: after meeting Jake when her brother and Phoenix are checked in after their plane goes down during a training drill, Julie doesn’t expect she’ll interact with the pilots much again…of course, then she goes to The Hard Deck, and is proven wrong.

Warnings: mentions of alcohol, some drunkenness but no consequences, attraction but no action yk

Length: 6.5k

Tagging: @wildbornsiren @winterrebel04 @blue-aconite @double-j @javihoney @daggerspare-standingby if anyone wants (or doesn’t want!) to be on the tag list for this, let me know 💙

A/N: crossposting from ao3, so if reading on there is easier, here ya go!

Julie flipped her head upside down as she stepped out of the car, knowing the drive from Rady Children’s to The Hard Deck hadn’t been nearly enough time for her curls to dry, but hoping she could force some air into her roots. Her shift had been uneventful, but Julie always tried to shower at work rather than at home, to get her out of the work mindset. 

Tonight, she missed her normal commute attire of oversized sweatshirt and biker shorts, replaced by the cosmically different combination of a sweater tucked into mom jeans that she’d chopped into jean shorts. She wasn’t a dive bar girl any more than she was an out-after-10-on-a-weeknight girl, but she was a good friend, and so here she was. 

The Hard Deck was crowded enough that she’d had to parallel park a couple of blocks away; Julie waited on the crosswalk light to change, shifting her weight between her Birkenstocks.

She and Liz, The Hard Deck’s manager, had met at a yoga class in Mission Beach, the same studio where Liz had left her airpods this morning, that Julie had grabbed before they ended up in the black hole that was the studio’s lost and found. She’d been hoping she could catch Liz’s attention quickly and make it home to rewatch the finale of the latest season of Bridgerton, but she could hear the music pumping through the jukebox from across the street, so that seemed increasingly unlikely. 

The light changed and Julie crossed the street, steeling herself as she walked up to the Hard Deck. Before she got to the entrance, Julie flipped her head upside down one more time before taking a deep breath and pushing open the door.

God, the confidence in this place. 

It hit her like a wall as she walked in, enough to fuel a small town in New Mexico. Pilots, sailors, and the people who knew how to distinguish between the two from fifty yards swarmed around each other. The pool tables were busy, the bar was crowded and the place held an excited energy of anticipation.  

Behind the bar, a petite redhead whirled around, a blur of motion between taps and the register. Julie smiled, recognizing her friend, and started weaving her way through the crowd towards the bar. 

A barstool vacated, and Julie squeezed into it before someone could sidle up to whatever serviceman they were trying their luck with. 

“Hey, hon,” Liz called, holding four beers between her forearm and her chest, and wrenching the tops off them in quick succession with a bottle opener that she tucked into her belt like it was a holster. “Be with you in a sec.”

Julie waved at her friend’s already-turned back, relieved she’d made her peace with postponing her Bridgerton plans. She didn’t drink much these days, more for lack of opportunity than on principle, and as Liz rushed back and forth, a coke in a highball glass appeared on a bar napkin in front of Julie. Julie pulled the earpods case from her purse and put a $5 underneath it, hanging onto it until she could push it into Liz’s hand. In the meantime, she looked over the bar to people-watch.

It really was crowded tonight.

By the pool tables, a sailor was instructing a very willing pupil on how to handle a pool cue. A couple was fighting over what they should play next by the jukebox, and there was a steady queue forming for the darts board.

“Jules?”

Julie blinked, turning on the barstool until she saw her brother through the crowd. 

“Robbie!” she called, pleasantly surprised. “You have to come over here; I can’t give up the seat.”

Robbie came over easily, leaning down to hug her. He was only an inch or so taller than her at 6’, a fact she’d deeply resented when he passed her in middle school, so she relished the opportunity of making him bend down to hug her. 

“What are you doing here?” she asked, pushing back to look at him. “What’s on your shirt?”

Robbie looked down, at what seemed to be a melding between that one Da Vinci sketch and the Avatar. 

“It’s the Vetruvian Omnic,” he said, like that made it any clearer.

Julie didn’t comment any further, patting her brother’s shoulder. “You look better than the last time I saw you. All good, still?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, and then his eyes focused on something behind her. “Uh, incoming.”

Before Julie could process what that meant, her chair was spun further around and she was in the middle of a half circle. 

“Nurse Julie,” Natasha said, clinking the bottom of her beer bottle to Julie’s glass. “Looking like a civ, this time.”

Regardless of how she looked, Julie felt like a bridge troll, with her wet hair and jean shorts next to Natasha looking like Natasha. Even in a simple black tank with two-tone jeans, the pilot was absolutely stunning. 

Which should have been a warning for the rest of the group. 

“Alright, boys, this is Julie,” Natasha said, and Julie wondered if Robbie should be the one introducing her, but her brother didn’t seem bothered, leaning his weight against her shoulder so Julie had to uncross her legs to keep the barstool balanced. “Julie this is Rooster, Payback, Fanboy and Coyote.”

Julie stared at them. 

“Are you kidding me??” she whispered out of the side of her mouth to Robbie, who shrugged.

“Pretty sure we’re here to bring down the common denominator,” he muttered, and Julie snorted, shoving back at his shoulder with hers. 

He didn’t move and he wasn’t wrong. 

“Hi,” Julie said, rather than focus on the ridiculous spread of white teeth, sharp jawlines, and broad shoulders in the group before her. “What are all of you doing out?”

It was the wrong question to ask; everyone immediately dropped eye contact, and Julie’s stomach tightened. 

Right, timelines are classified, so they’re probably heading out soon. 

She looked at Robbie, who was determinedly studying his palm, and she sighed, brightening her tone. “Pretty sure I don’t get callsign privileges, right? Introduce me around, Robbie.”

Robbie looked up, a small, grateful smile on his face, and he pushed off the chair, but his shoulder stayed close to hers. 

“Bradley Bradshaw,” he said, pointing to the tall man in with the mustache and an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, who lifted a beer bottle politely. 

“Reuben Fitch,” Robbie said, and the somehow-even-taller, with-a-mustache-even-better, man lifted his chin at her, hands tucked into a suede bomber jacket, an inexplicably curious expression on his face. 

“Mickey Garcia,” Robbie pointed, and when he stepped forward to shake her hand, Julie bit back the instinct to ask his curl routine, because good God, his hair couldn’t look that perfect on accident.

“And Javy Machado,” Robbie said, and Julie was proud of herself for keeping her mouth shut. The man had to notice that everyone in the room was looking at him, in his leather jacket, worn jeans, and just devastating jawline. 

“And if he hadn’t been a pilot, he would’ve been a teacher,” Liz appeared to say, knowing exactly the thoughts running through Julie’s head. She leaned across the bar to hold out her hand, her weight far enough forward for Julie to know her feet weren’t on the ground. “Ear podsplease?” 

Julie mutely handed Liz the case and the $5 for the coke, which the bartender took and slid herself back, till her feet hit the ground again. 

“The usual, for the rest of you?” she asked. 

Bradley grimaced and Robbie looked at Natasha, but the rest of the group grinned broadly, which Liz seemed to take as affirmation, and spun away. 

A moment later, seven shot glasses appeared on the bar, and Liz poured a neat stream of Clase Azul into the row of them. The pilots clustered around them, and, with EarPods delivered and Bridgerton in her future after all, Julie slid off the barstool to make room for them. 

“Whoa, Julie, where are you going; there’s seven here.” 

Julie stopped short when Mickey called out to her, surprised to find the whole group waiting for her. 

“Oh,” she waved a hand, “don’t worry about it; this feels like a pilot thing.” 

“Ah, come on,” Reuben picked up one of the small glasses and held it out to her. “You’re Bob’s family and he’s ours, so you’re practically one of us.” 

Out of the corner of her eye, Julie saw Robbie look down quickly, surprised and pleased at the casual acceptance, and a bit of her hesitation dissolved. She didn’t want to embarrass him, but she also didn’t want to intrude. 

“Minus a good decade of flight experience,” Julie hedged, digging for another excuse they could take it if they wanted. “Besides, I have a shift tomorrow; I should head home.” 

“I think she’s calling you old, Payback,” Mickey chuckled, and Julie looked back at him quickly. 

“That is absolutely not what I meant,” she said, but everyone in the group looked like they were just on the brink of laughter. 

“We’ll see you home,” Bradley said, and Natasha nodded, passing a bowl of lime wedges around the group. 

“If you have to go, you have to go,” she said, “but you’re welcome to join us if you want.”  

Julie looked around the group, another bit of her hesitation slipping. 

“Come on, Floyd,” Javy said, gesturing to the glass Reuben still held out, and Julie was a simple woman, she really was, and there was no way she could simply look at Javy’s beautiful face and say no to him. 

She took a lime from Natasha, the shot glass from Reuben, let Robbie guide her back into the barstool and told herself this was a totally fine idea. 

“Arriba, abajo,“ Mickey and Natasha started, and Julie lifted her glass with them.

“Al centro, pa’dentro,” she finished with them, tipped back her glass, and let the tequila burn its way down her throat. 

Shit, Jules, you weren’t ready for that.  

Julie didn’t choke and she didn’t grimace, which felt like a gargantuan accomplishment, especially when she opened her eyes to find half the group watching her carefully. A glance over her shoulder confirmed her suspicions—Robbie looked equal parts determined and traumatized as he finished his shot. Her sweet brother shuddered, and Julie smiled around her lime wedge as she set her glass down at the bar. 

Just as Liz brought the bottle back for a second round. 

“Oh no,” Julie protested, “one is—“

“Just the start,” Bradley cleared his throat, shaking his head even as he held his glass over the bar to Liz. “Should’ve gotten out when you could.”

“He’s kidding,” Reuben said. 

“He’s not,” Robbie rasped. 

“Another or not, hon?” Liz asked. 

Julie looked at the group, considering what would happen if she were to leave now. Nothing, probably, they’d carry on with their night and she’d catch an Uber back to Ocean Beach. It’d be quiet and it’d be uneventful, but then she remembered why they were out. Not that they could tell her, but she knew by now how these things went—it was the night before the last night. Tomorrow they’d be somber, tonight they’d cut loose, and if anyone deserved a bit of revelry before the reality of tomorrow, it was this group, not her. 

“Another,” Julie said, and Liz grinned. 

The second shot went down smoother, and Julie felt the alcohol settling in her system. She bounced her legs a bit, feeling warm with it, and smiled when she felt the pilots’ eyes on her. 

“What?” she asked Reuben and Mickey who exchanged a look. 

“Nothing,” Mickey said, and Bradley leaned past her to leave his glass on the bar. 

“They’re just thinking you handled that better than the other Connecticut Floyd we know,” Natasha teased. 

“I’m right here, guys,” Robbie said, but it lost a bit of its heat since his voice was so ragged. 

“And you’re doing great, sweetheart,” Julie told him seriously, resisting the urge to reach over and mess up his hair.

“Sweetheart,” Javy and Reuben echoed, and Robbie’s cheeks tinged red. 

“I did my undergrad in San Antonio,” Julie said, to distract them. “Learned real fast that going out meant something different there than in Hartford.” 

“You just had to summon him, didn’t you,” Bradley muttered. Julie looked up at the pilot, blinking at the feeling of blood rushing around as her head tipped back. Normally it took more than two shots to feel it like that. 

Normally you drink a mimosa or two at brunch and call it a day, not do shots after a workday. 

“Summon who?” she asked, trying to decide if he was being intentionally ominous. 

“It’s alright,” Mickey said, looking nervously to Bradley, “Phoenix says he’ll play nice around Bob’s sister.”

“Phoenix says what now,” Julie asked. “And who’s ‘he’?” 

“C’mere, hon,” Liz appeared across the bar again, hauling herself over it. “Also, forgive me, sorry for touching but–” she reached behind Julie’s ear to flip her hair over her head, in what Julie was certain was a nearly satirical side part, but the effect pleased her, apparently, and her feet landed back behind the bar. 

“Nice,” Natasha said. 

“Subtle,” Robbie said. 

“Ladies,” Jake drawled, appearing between Mickey and Reuben, lifting his chin at them before looking back at Natasha apologetically, “and Phoenix.”

“Behave, Hangman,” Javy said, but his eyes were laughing as he stepped aside to let Jake into their circle, and he tipped his head in Julie’s direction. “We have company.”

She wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or offended at the near aggressive double take Jake did, reconciling the panicked nurse from the infirmary with the two-shots-deep civilian with her hair around her shoulders. 

“Julia,” he said, and how he said it pulled the corners of his mouth into a smile, like he hadn’t meant to. 

“Hi,” she said, wondering if her vision was already going blurry or if his eyes actually sparkled. She frowned, realizing more than just Jake was watching her. Everyone, in fact, all seven pilots just looked at her expectantly. “What?”

Jesus, I am not prepared for this. 

It was hard enough to make himself go out tonight, knowing in 72 hours Maverick would decide if he was as good as he needed to be. 

It was hard enough to stand outside The Hard Deck, see his team laughing with each other and decide if he should go in there and join them, knowing odds were that half of them would’ve wished he’d stayed outside. 

It was hard enough to cut his way through a crowd, see Rooster’s expression shutter when he recognized him, and then cut into the group. 

But now that he’d done all that, now he had to deal with Bob’s older sister, smiling with brown curls around her shoulders, looking at him with simple curiosity, color high on her cheeks. 

Coyote coughed, then muttered, “Stop staring, bro,” under his breath. 

Jake frowned at him. 

“Wasn’t,” he mumbled back, and Coyote lifted a brow, but didn’t say anything. 

He wasn’t. 

He was just…surprised to see her. Jake looked back at her, her legs braced on the ground to keep the barstool from tipping so Bob could lean against her. She seemed stable like that, and Jake wondered if that was a part of her magnetism. 

Magnetism, is that the word for it?

Jake didn’t consider himself to be actively looking for something, much less someone, but since running into her at the infirmary, Julia had flashed through his mind more than he’d like to admit. 

Her stubbornness when she’d stepped between him and the door, her relief when she saw Bob was safe, her fierceness when she told Jake off for probing…brown eyes and brown curls had been in his thoughts more than he’d expected. 

“You catching up, Jake?”

It was Liz who called the question, as she passed on her way to pour margaritas into pink-salt lined glasses, pointing to the row of empty shot glasses on the bartop. Jake counted them, then the number in their gathered group, then pinched the bridge of his nose.

“No, Liz, thanks," he said, and she shrugged and moved down to her margaritas. "Looks like I’m DD’ing tonight.”

“Heaven help us if Hangman’s the responsible one,” Rooster mumbled into his beer, and Phoenix cut him a look that said the same play nice message that Jake had gotten verbally from Coyote.

“Not like any of us drove tonight,” Fanboy shrugged.

“I did,” Julia said, looking up. She had a highball glass with coke in her hands, fiddling with the straw.

Well, that answers that.

“I need a favor,” Liz said, appearing back behind the bar through what could only be teleportation.

“What can we do?” Rooster asked, and Jake coughed back a laugh. The speed at which Bradshaw whiplashed from righteous superiority to humble nobility was nothing if not admirable. Liz seemed amused by it rather than flattered; Jake knew he liked her. 

“Penny got us a new bar game; it’s out back while Penny decides how she wants to rearrange the pool table to make room for it. I’m supposed to run it by a couple folks, to get opinions for her, but with the rush, I haven’t gotten a chance—would y’all mind?”

The group looked around at each other.

“That’s awful vague of you, Liz,” Payback said, and Jake was inclined to agree with him.

The redhead smiled, reaching into the pocket of her apron.

“Well where’s the fun in being direct, when there’s a mystery afoot,” she said airily, placing five carnival style tokens out on the counter.

“Well,” Phoenix dropped a bowl of lime wedges on the bar, wiping her hands on the back of her jeans and picking up the tokens. “I’m down. Julie?”

“Who doesn’t love a mystery?” Julia said. She hopped off the barstool, rising to the tips of her toes in her sandals and rocking back, shaking blood back into her legs. She was tall; he’d noticed that in the infirmary, but it was a different reality when she was standing right in front of him, swaying slightly in cutoffs. 

Jake clenched his hands at his side, not understanding the urge he felt to reach out to steady her. Not that she would expect that from him, out of everyone here, or even more that she’d want it. 

Get a grip, Seresin.

He loosened his hands and waited for Rooster to lead the way out to the side. 

The group of them wound through the crowd around the bar, as people pressed into the space they’d vacated. The true back of the bar was actually the beach, so they walked through the office, out to the side, where the only light came from the street lamps and residual light from the bar. The jukebox faded slightly as they passed through the door and they all stopped short. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Rooster muttered, and Phoenix laughed, tossing the tokens to Payback.

It was a mechanical bull, enormous and mounted, red padding running from underneath it out to the also-padded railing. It looked like every bachelor party and graduation that Jake went to back home and Jake ran a hand through his hair, the memory of his brother’s graduation party flashing through his mind before he could stop it. 

Mom and Dad’s wide smiles, how nervous John had been, excited for his future, and the way-- 

“Hey, Hangman,” Fanboy called, walking over to the padded railing around the mechanical bull, “how much did you pay to have this flown out of Austin?”

“Dallas,” a quiet voice said beside him, and Jake jumped, surprised to see that Julia was standing next to him. She smelled faintly like oranges, a scent he thought he’d picked up at the infirmary, but now with her wet hair, he figured it was probably shampoo; she looked at him funny, tilting her head. Lowering her voice, she asked, “You okay?”

Shit. 

She wasn’t supposed to be here, she wasn’t supposed to be looking at him like she actually saw him, or like she cared about his answer. 

“Yeah,” Jake said, clearing his throat and stuffing the memory down. “Yeah, I’m cool, why?” 

Julia blinked. 

She looked down quickly, shaking her head. “Sorry,” she said. “I haven’t had much to drink in a minute and I think the tequila went straight to my head. Imagining things, you know, like you have sparkly eyes, or that you look sad; ignore me.”

Jake didn’t think he could if he tried. 

But instead of saying something so catastrophically pathetic, he reached over and pushed up at the bottom of her highball glass, closer to her face. “You should hydrate,” he said. 

“Ah, yes,” Phoenix said, appearing on the other side of Julia, “the famous restorative properties of Coca-Cola.”

“Shut up,” he muttered, and Phoenix beamed. 

“Rooster,” she called, not looking away from Jake, “you gonna show us how it’s done?”

Rooster rolled his shoulders back, then looked at the bull skeptically. 

“How bad could it be?” he asked, walking towards the ring and swinging one of his gigantic legs over the side. He sank slightly into the padded well, but found his footing quickly and made his way over to the bull in the middle of it.

“I don’t know how you do that,” Bob said reverently, and Jake nearly jumped out of his skin, as yet another person appeared in his immediate vicinity. Normally, his corner was the empty one, but apparently having Julia around meant others felt inclined to stay. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Phoenix said calmly, but there was a self-satisfied smile around her lips.

She might not be pacing with him and Bradshaw, but it was slightly terrifying how she seemed always able to get the results she wanted from the two of them. To Bob’s point, she’d managed to get Rooster out of his brooding corner to try the mechanical monstrosity, and in convincing him, she’d guaranteed Jake would give it a go at some point. He and Rooster might jockey for lead, but Phoenix would always be there too, and he got the feeling the only reason she wasn’t in the mix with the two of them was because she didn’t feel she needed to be. 

“Robbie,” Julia said, “you have to be the timer, okay? So we know who stays on longest.”

Bob obediently felt around in his pockets until he produced a phone, fumbling with the lock until he pulled up a clock app. 

“Got it,” he announced, “ready when you are, Payback.”

Sure enough, Payback had found a control panel and had dropped a token into it, poking it apprehensively. 

“Can you–?” Phoenix asked, but Jake was already on his way. 

“How many Californians does it take to operate a party trick?” he asked as he got closer, and Payback held up his hands as he stepped back.

It really was pretty simple-–an on/off lever, a difficulty meter, and an emergency stop button. 

“How high do we want to see a Rooster fly?” Jake asked the group, nudging the difficulty slightly higher. 

“Keep it in the middle there,” Payback suggested. “Let’s not go too easy on him.”

Rooster clambered onto the bull, his legs nearly touching the ground; he was going to be fine no matter what they did. 

“Settle your affairs, Rooster,” Jake said, and he waited for Bradshaw to lift a hand to flip him off before he switched the bull on. It ambled to life, slowly rocking, then started pitching back and forth. The machine underneath it whirred louder, drowning out the remnants of the jukebox, and Rooster held on. 

“Looking good, Bradford,” Fanboy called, and Payback whistled. Phoenix and Bob and Julia were cheering, and Jake watched a reluctant smile break over Rooster’s face.

“30 seconds,” Bob announced, and echoing cheers went up.

“Alright, enough of that, his ego’s big enough as it is,” Coyote called. 

Jake looked to Phoenix, who lifted a shoulder in a shrug, and then he pushed the difficulty meter higher.

It wasn’t that big of a shift, but the bull responded exponentially. Two seconds later, Rooster was flung off the back of it, a satisfying arc that tossed him into the padded railing and the bull whirred back down to stalling. 

Bob clicked his screen dramatically. 

“Forty-six seconds,” Bob called, “that’s the time to beat.”

“Fifty seconds, coming up,” Payback said, swinging into the ring. Rooster pushed himself up to his hands and knees, shaking his head slightly from the throw. 

“You good?” Phoenix called.

“I’ve bested the wild beast,” Rooster deadpanned, easily getting to his feet and slipping between the padded railing. “If only there were a nurse around to assess my injuries.”

Jake’s hand froze as he was adjusting the difficulty meter back to more neutral territory. 

He looked up to find Phoenix’s eyes on him, blatantly gauging his reaction as Julie laughed, shaking her head at Rooster’s theatrics. Nonetheless, she glided over to him, and pantomimed checking his forehead for a fever. Even in her sandals, the top of her hair was about eye level for Rooster, which meant Jake could read the interest sparking in Rooster’s eyes as he looked down at Julia.

Jake adjusted the controls, waiting for Payback to settle, refusing to acknowledge that that made him feel any kind of way. 

“Green’s a good look on you,” Coyote said casually. 

Jake looked up at him sharply, but his friend only smirked, reaching around him to start the bull.

Payback made it thirty-nine seconds, Fanboy made it to just under a minute and Coyote made it fifty on principle, then flopped off gracelessly. Phoenix and Bob didn’t want to risk anything so close after their crash landing and before the mission, so they passed, which meant there was one token left, and the bull was dormant for a moment while Jake tried to decide if he wanted to give it a go. 

A wistful sigh had all of them looking over to the Phoenix et Floyd corner, and Julia looked up, surprised to find all their eyes on her. 

“Oh,” she laughed a little, pressing a hand over her eyes, flustered. “I haven’t done one of these since college. I just…the tequila hit me harder than it should’ve, and since there’s only one token, and that’d be so anticlimactic if I just immediately got thrown off, you know?”

The ring was quiet.  

Payback and Fanboy exchanged a sheepish look, wondering if they should’ve given up their tokens.

Julia snapped, and when everyone looked at her, she was looking at Jake. 

“Lieutenant, I have an offer.”

Jake looked around the ring; no one seemed inclined to point out that they were all lieutenants. 

“Okay,” he said, intelligently.

“You have to take me on it,” she said. 

Jake was pretty sure his brain short circuited on that one. 

“What now?” he managed, and Julia nodded.

“I get to go on the bull, you get to show off your cowboy-ness by not letting either of us fall off, everyone who wants to go on a ride, gets to go on a ride...win-win-win.”

Jake knew he was staring at her, but he was trying to figure out what was in the water in Hartford, Connecticut to produce two such guileless people as the Floyd siblings. He looked over at Bob, just to confirm he wasn’t overstepping, and Bob looked torn between implicit trust in his older sister and general nervousness surrounding interaction with Jake, which Jake figured was fair. 

Julia’s head fell to the side, and she smiled conspiratorially. “Besides, if you don’t beat Rooster’s time, you have the excuse that it’s because of me.” 

“Atta girl,” Phoenix grinned. 

Jake huffed. “I’d beat Rooster’s time no matter what.” 

Julia smiled. “Then you’ve got nothing to be afraid of.” 

“Atta girl,” Fanboy said from somewhere behind him, and Jake could just see his friend’s shit-eating grin. He turned to glare at him, but Fanboy just shrugged, looping his thumbs through his belt buckles and leaning back. 

Jake looked back to Julia, but he must’ve been quiet for too long, because her expression fell slightly. “Or you don’t have to, if you don’t want to, of course. It was just an idea, and I thought sharing would make sense–”

“Damn it, man, say something,” Payback muttered, shoving his shoulder towards the ring. 

“I could take you,” Coyote offered.

“Absolutely not,” Jake said immediately.

Rooster snorted and Phoenix looked delighted, but Jake was already striding around the ring. He pushed the railing up and Julia slid through quickly. She kicked off her sandals while Payback fiddled with the controls and Jake hoisted himself onto the back of the machine. 

It was smaller than he’d remembered. 

He looked back to the group, where Fanboy and Coyote were watching with unabashed amusement, while Phoenix looked a smidge more protective. The padding squeaked as Julia walked over, swaying slightly for balance, and she rested her hands on the side of the bull as she waited for him to tell her how to do this.

“Um,” Jake said, “it’s up to you. If you sit in the front, you can brace yourself, but you’re also driving; behind me, you have to hold on to me, but you’d have more, you know, personal space.” 

She tipped her head. “Big spoon or little spoon, basically?”

Jake almost laughed before he caught the sound, but a look back at Julia showed that she’d seen how close he’d been. 

She pointed to the front.

Jake held out a hand to help her up, and she hesitated exactly none before pulling heavily to lift herself over. It wasn’t the sudden weight that surprised him, it was the totality of it. 

Like no one told her you can’t trust Hangman. 

A moment later she was up, and Jake slid himself back a little, just trying to maintain an ounce of decorum. She flipped some of her hair over her shoulder and Jake moved so it didn’t hit him, but he couldn’t avoid the smell of oranges, like sweet summer, around him. 

He couldn’t be that easy, could he? One perceptive look, one gesture of trust, and he was wondering what shampoo a girl used? 

“Oh, it’s been a minute, Jules,” she muttered to herself, and Jake shook himself out of his thoughts. 

“Right,” he said, “so you have done this before?” 

“Only on every bachelorette trip to Austin,” she said, shifting her weight back as she steadied herself on the bull. They weren’t touching, but Jake suspected they both knew as soon as Payback started this thing, there was no way she wasn’t sliding back against him. 

“Alright, so you know—”

“Yeah, Hangman,” she said, and Jake thought he might not mind his callsign so much, when she said it like she was laughing, “I know. Keep me on this thing for forty-seven seconds, okay?” 

“Okay,” Jake said, tightening his thighs around the bull. In a perfect world, he’d brace himself at the top of its “spine”, but that’s where Julie had chosen to sit herself. So he left his hands on his thighs and looked at Payback.

“Press the big red button the second we hit that,” Jake told him. 

“You just hang on, Hangman,” Payback called, with a mock salute, dropping the token into the slot. 

“Please don’t,” Bob called, in an uncharacteristic bout of confrontation. 

“Start that timer, Bob,” Rooster called, crossing his arms, and the bull started. At first it turned in a slow circle, and Jake thought he heard Julie squeal as they spun slightly, the machine ramping up.

We’re not going to make it five seconds.

Sure enough, the first pitch forward nearly flung Julia over the front of the bull and she shrieked, arms flying forward to catch herself on its neck. 

“Tighten your legs–” he started, but the bull pitched again, throwing her into his chest as they tipped backwards. Jake grunted when her head hit his chin, her fair flying around both of them, and he could hear Fanboy hooting with laughter.

The bull spun to the side, and Julia followed it, nearly sliding off its back before Jake caught her wrist, pulling her back on top of the bull as it continued its rotation. 

“You’ve got to help me a little bit, here,” he tried, but she was just laughing, near hysterical. 

“Oh my god, we’re not going to make it to thirty,” she wheezed.

“We’re gonna make it,” Jake said, his thighs burning as he tried to keep both of them centered. Julia had absolutely no center of gravity, and every motion of the bull pitched her away from him, before the next slammed her body back into his.  

“Fifteen seconds,” Bob yelled, and when Jake managed to glare at him, he caught Rooster hiding his own laugh behind his beer bottle.

It wasn’t that Jake had actively thought about bull riding as being sexy, but in theory, it had seemed like one of those things that was more sensual than not. In reality, it was just a tangle of limbs and entirely too much effort, and Jake was pretty sure the only thing keeping them on the back of the bull was spite. 

He’d gotten farther on less.

The next jolt of the bull hefted Julia back into him, and she gave up the pretense of trying; her head tipped back on his shoulder, and he could feel her uneven laughter ruffling his hair. 

“You’ve got to work with me here,” he gritted as the bull spun them and her body lifted off the bull, all giggles and no balance. 

“I think you’ve got it, Dallas,” she managed.

Like hell I do.

But her voice sounded so relaxed, so confident, and what, was he going to just let her get thrown off when she sounded like that?

“Okay, I’m just going to–”

He broke off when the bull pitched again, and her hand flew out to steady herself on whatever surface was available, which happened to be his thigh. She dug her fingers into him, managing to keep her balance as the bull swung, and her shoulders were shaking with laughter.

“Get us to forty-seven, Jake, I don’t care how.”

Fuck it.

Jake reached between her left arm and her side to brace his hand against the base of the bull’s neck. The motion brought him closer to her back, and Julia sat up a little, shifting her hips to make room for him. She looked down at his hand, and wound her left hand around his arm, gripping his forearm. The next time the bull threw them forward, Jake braced himself on its neck, Julia braced herself on his arm, and they fell forward but they stayed on its back. 

“There you go,” he mumbled, and he thought he heard a hitch in her breathing, but it could also be the 850lb piece of machinery underneath them punching the air out of them.   

“Thirty seconds,” Bob called, and he sounded decidedly unhappy about it, but Jake couldn’t look back to check on him. He was too busy trying not to focus on the fact that Julia’s body was flush against his, soft and relaxed. 

The bull fell back, and when Jake shifted his weight forward, Julia bent with him, counterbalancing the movement. Her hair blew into his face as the bull turned, and she jerked her head sharply to flip it over her shoulder.

“Should’ve brought a hair tie,” she laughed as they fell backwards again. “Sorry.” 

Her hair out of the way meant that when she fell back into him, her neck pressed against the side of his face, and Jake felt his whole body tighten as he refused to react to that, too. 

“It’s okay,” he mumbled, and it was muffled by the curve of her neck, and he felt her hand tighten on his thigh.

“Forty seconds,” Bob called. “Count ‘em.”

“Seven,” Coyote started, and Jake felt Julia draw a deep breath, her shoulders rising against his chest, and he matched her.  

“Fuck you guys,” Rooster said, at the same time Phoenix yelled, “Six.”

The bull spun in another circle, and Jake found himself leaning ahead of it so that Julia could continue to lean on him when they shifted together. 

“Five,” Payback chanted, and turned up the difficulty on principle. Julia shrieked as the bull ricocheted forward, her head falling forward and her other hand bracing next to Jake’s. 

“Four,” Fanboy called, and Jake wondered how keeping a hold on this automaton was somehow harder than keeping a plane in the sky. They pitched to the side and Julia fell hard against his braced arm, but he managed to hold on. 

“Three,” the group yelled, and Jake could feel Julie’s thighs shaking as she tried to mimic his grip around the bull.

“Two,” Julia whispered, giddy excitement in her voice. The bull tipped to the other side and she leaned against Jake instead of fighting the momentum, letting him carry both of them. 

“One,” Rooster announced, lifting his beer reluctantly.  

The group cheered and Payback slammed the button to switch the machine off, powering the bull down. The motions immediately gentled, whirring as the rotation slowed, returning to its neutral position. 

Well, damn. 

Julia slid down slowly, leaning against the bull as she shook her legs out. Bob was already clambering into the ring, ducking through the padded railing and towards his sister.

“You good, Jules?” he asked, looking more relieved than concerned, and Jake couldn’t say he blamed him. 

But she nodded contentedly, and pushed herself away from the bull. Her legs shook a little and Jake was halfway off the bull before he registered the sharp look Bob shot him. He ducked under his sister’s arm, taking a little of her weight as they walked across the uneven padding. 

Jake couldn’t really blame him for that either.

“Let’s get you some water,” he heard Bob say quietly, and over by the controls, Payback winked at him, before walking back towards the Hard Deck to hold the door open for the group. Phoenix leaned under the railing to grab Julia’s sandals and Coyote raised an eyebrow before Jake waved at him to go on, too. 

Jake slid the rest of the way off the bull, surprised his legs felt as steady as they were, that they held him as he made it across the padding to the railing. The night air felt cool, and he realized he was sweating. 

“Hey, Jake.”

Jake looked up to see Julia in the door of the Hard Deck, arm still around Bob’s neck but torso twisted to look back at him. 

She smiled, something soft after the riotous laughter on the bull. 

“Thanks for taking my offer,” she said quietly.

Jake nodded. 

Shrugged, ducked his head, any number of things to stop the feeling that felt way too delicate to be bouncing around in his chest. Julia’s smile widened, and she turned back to her brother, ducking under Payback’s arm to go into the bar. 

Jake leaned against the railing, looked up at the stars over San Diego, blew out a slow breath. 

It was forty-seven seconds on an amusement ride that was probably illegal in the state of California. 

And it was the best night he’d had in a while.