#|| IF MICHAEL WERE EVER TO STOP BEING THAT HIS LIFE WOULD BE TOTALLY UPENDED)

[revvnant]

grungle.

[netflixaddictedd]

10 gay books you should read (I'm making a lesbian version soon!)

Red, white & royal blue: When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius—his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse. Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations.

Running with lions: Bloomington High School Lions star goalie Sebastian Hughes should be excited about his senior year: His teammates are amazing, and hes got a coach who doesnt ask anyone to hide their sexuality. But when his estranged childhood-best-friend Emir Shah shows up at summer training camp, Sebastian realizes the teams success may end up in the hands of the one guy who hates him. Determined to reconnect with Emir for the sake of the Lions, he sets out to regain Emirs trust. But to Sebastians surprise, sweaty days on the pitch, wandering the towns streets, and bonding on the weekends spark more than just friendship between them.

The fascinators: Living in a small town where magic is frowned upon, Sam needs his friends James and Delia - and their time together in their school's magic club - to see him through to graduation. But as soon as senior year starts, little cracks in their group begin to show. Sam may or may not be in love with James. Delia is growing more frustrated with their amateur magic club. And James reveals that he got mixed up with some sketchy magickers over the summer, putting a target on all their backs. With so many fault lines threatening to derail his hopes for the year, Sam is forced to face the fact that the very love of magic that brought his group together is now tearing them apart - and there are some problems that no amount of magic can fix. 

Infinity son: Growing up in New York, brothers Emil and Brighton always idolized the Spell Walkers—a vigilante group sworn to rid the world of specters. While the Spell Walkers and other celestials are born with powers, specters take them, violently stealing the essence of endangered magical creatures. Brighton wishes he had a power so he could join the fray. Emil just wants the fighting to stop. The cycle of violence has taken a toll, making it harder for anyone with a power to live peacefully and openly. In this climate of fear, a gang of specters has been growing bolder by the day. Then, in a brawl after a protest, Emil manifests a power of his own—one that puts him right at the heart of the conflict and sets him up to be the heroic Spell Walker Brighton always wanted to be. Brotherhood, love, and loyalty will be put to the test, and no one will escape the fight unscathed.

Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe: Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

Simon vs the homosapiens agenda: Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now change-averse Simon has to find a way to step out of his comfort zone before he's pushed out without alienating his friends, compromising himself, or fumbling a shot at happiness with the most confusing, adorable guy he's never met.

Him: Jamie Canning has never been able to figure out how he lost his closest friend. Four years ago, his tattooed, wise-cracking, rule-breaking roommate cut him off without an explanation. So what if things got a little weird on the last night of hockey camp the summer they were eighteen? It was just a little drunken foolishness. Nobody died. Ryan Wesley’s biggest regret is coaxing his very straight friend into a bet that pushed the boundaries of their relationship. Now, with their college teams set to face off at the national championship, he’ll finally get a chance to apologize. But all it takes is one look at his longtime crush, and the ache is stronger than ever. Jamie has waited a long time for answers, but walks away with only more questions— can one night of sex ruin a friendship? If not, how about six more weeks of it? When Wesley turns up to coach alongside Jamie for one more hot summer at camp, Jamie has a few things to discover about his old friend...and a big one to learn about himself.

Date me, Bryson Keller: Everyone at Fairvale Academy knows Bryson Keller, the super-hot soccer captain who doesn't believe in high-school relationships. They also know about the dare Bryson accepted - each week he has to date the first person who asks him out. A single school week is all anyone gets. There have been no exceptions to this. None. Until me, that is. Because brilliant Bryson Keller forgot one thing. He never said it could only be girls...

The infinite noise: Caleb Michaels is a sixteen-year-old champion running back. Other than that his life is pretty normal. But when Caleb starts experiencing mood swings that are out of the ordinary for even a teenager, his life moves beyond “typical.” Caleb is an Atypical, an individual with enhanced abilities. Which sounds pretty cool except Caleb's ability is extreme empathy��he feels the emotions of everyone around him. Being an empath in high school would be hard enough, but Caleb's life becomes even more complicated when he keeps getting pulled into the emotional orbit of one of his classmates, Adam. Adam's feelings are big and all-consuming, but they fit together with Caleb's feelings in a way that he can't quite understand. Caleb's therapist, Dr. Bright, encourages Caleb to explore this connection by befriending Adam. As he and Adam grow closer, Caleb learns more about his ability, himself, his therapist—who seems to know a lot more than she lets on—and just how dangerous being an Atypical can be.

They both die at the end: On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They're going to die today. Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they're both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There's an app for that. It's called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure to live a lifetime in a single day.

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/the-entire-presidency-is-a-superspreading-event-new-yorkmagazine/

The Entire Presidency Is a Superspreading Event - New York Magazine

Donald Trump was on the phone, and he was talking about dying. It was Saturday, October 3, and while his doctor had told the outside world that the president’s symptoms were nothing to worry about, Trump, cocooned in his suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, was telling those close to him something very different.

“I could be one of the diers,” he said.

The person on the other end of the line couldn’t forget that unusual word the president used: dier. A seldom-said dictionary standard, it was a classic Trumpism, at once sinister and childlike. If being a loser was bad, being a dier was a lot worse. Losers can become winners again. Diers are losers forever. But aren’t we all diers in the end? Donald Trump, the least self-reflective man in America, was contemplating his own mortality.

He said it again: “I could be one of the diers.”

The previous day, at 12:54 a.m., he had announced that he and the First Lady, Melania, had tested positive for COVID-19 in an outbreak that would sideline dozens across the West Wing, the East Wing, the highest levels of the federal government, the military ranks, Trump’s 2020 campaign team, and prominent supporters in the religious community. The virus had barreled into the very White House that allowed its spread throughout the United States, where 213,000 were dead and 7.6 million more were infected amid the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression.

As infections swelled nationwide, the virus made its way inside the president himself — an epic security failure with no modern analog. It was over a century ago, amid a pandemic in 1919, that Woodrow Wilson got sick in Paris. His White House blamed what it called a cold and a fever on the dreary weather. But, in fact, Wilson was sick with the virus now known as the Spanish flu, which killed hundreds of thousands of Americans as his administration looked away. One hundred and one years later, the story of Trump’s “mild symptoms” became less and less true as the hours ticked by. His fever crept up. His cough and congestion grew worse. Doctors gave him oxygen and administered a high dose of an experimental antibody treatment unavailable to the ailing masses and made using fetal tissue, a practice his administration opposes, from the drugmaker Regeneron. Still, he resisted going to Walter Reed. “I don’t need to go,” he said, according to a person who spoke to him. “I’m fine. I’m fine. We have everything we need here.”

Persuading him to leave the White House required an intervention from his doctors, members of the White House operations staff, the Secret Service, and his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. They had failed to stop the mass deaths of high-risk Americans, but they were going to save Trump, the most important high-risk American of them all. They told him, “This isn’t just your choice. This really isn’t about you. It’s about the presidency. Our job is to protect the presidency, and you occupy it.” They asked him to think about the military and everyone else whose life would be upended if the state of the country’s leadership was in doubt.

Fine. He agreed to walk across the South Lawn and board Marine One. The White House said the move was made “out of an abundance of caution.” In a video posted on social media, the president hinted that things weren’t so great. He put it this way: “I’m going to Walter Reed hospital. I think I’m doing very well, but we’re going to make sure that things work out.”

In the hospital, Trump’s world shrank overnight in a way it hadn’t since he arrived in Washington from New York to be sworn into office nearly four years ago. Contagious and isolated from his family and closest aides, he was accompanied by Dan Scavino, the social-media director who had first been his caddie and had survived at his side longer than anyone who wasn’t blood, and Mark Meadows, his highly emotional chief of staff, who slept in a room nearby, and was attended to by a team of camera-conscious doctors. In this sterilized confinement, he tried to distract himself from his illness. He plotted his escape, planned public-relations stunts, watched TV, and took calls from friends, members of his staff, and Republican lawmakers. But he remained consumed by what the doctors told him about his chances of survival. It wasn’t a sure thing.

Nine months into the pandemic and one month away from Election Day, the president considered for the first time that the disease killing him in the polls, threatening his political future, might just kill him, too. On the phone he remarked sarcastically, “This change of scenery has been great.”

He asked for an update on who else in his circle had contracted the virus, though he expressed no regret, no indication that he understood his own decisions could have led to the infections. Unable to process the irony of his own misfortune, he tried his best to find the Trumpiest spin. Looked at one way, he was having the greatest and most important illness of all time. He had the best care in the world, and he raved about the virtues of the drugs the doctors had him on, including dexamethasone, a steroid pumping up his lungs that can induce euphoria. He was awed by the wonders of modern medicine. He said he was feeling really good, and it didn’t sound like he was lying. Then he admitted something scary. That how he felt might not mean much in the end.

“This thing could go either way. It’s tricky. They told me it’s tricky,” the president said. “You can tell it can go either way.”

Trump held a press conference on September 26 in the Rose Garden to announce Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Photo: Carlos Barria/REUTERS

Statistically, the coronavirus is more likely to cost Donald Trump the White House than his life, though the threat to the latter isn’t helping the former. A little more than three weeks before the election, potentially contagious and freaking everybody out, Trump faces what looks like the end of his presidency. “He’s mishandled the coronavirus, he’s never been popular, and he’s gonna lose badly. I think it’s pretty simple,” a senior Republican official said. “Of course he was going to say, ‘Oh look, I feel great! Look how badly I beat this puny little virus!’ Meanwhile, it touches every American’s life every day in multiple different ways, and he’s handled it badly and people don’t forget that.” Or, as ex–Trump adviser Sam Nunberg put it, “Everything has just completely gone to shit.”

The polls suggest not just that the president will lose to Joe Biden but that he might lose bigly, in a landslide.

When the coronavirus came to America, the president was preoccupied with more obvious threats. The first positive case was confirmed in Washington State on January 21, and that same day, as he landed in Davos, the Senate was debating an organizing resolution for the president’s impeachment trial. In the Alps, he dismissed the news about the virus at home. “We have it totally under control,” he said. In fact, the president soon thought that things could hardly be going better.

After three years of crisis, the election year had begun with his acquittal on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice brought by the House under Articles of Impeachment. At the same time, the economy was booming. In the Democratic primary, which would select his opponent for the general election, the candidate he most feared, Joe Biden, seemed to be choking. And Michael Bloomberg was threatening to blow the whole thing up anyway. Trump thought about the last campaign and, ever superstitious, how to replicate its magic. He was relieved when Hope Hicks, his closest aide, returned to the White House after two years in exile in Los Angeles. Around the same time, he welcomed back Johnny McEntee, a former aide he believed to be a MAGA whisperer, capable of knowing exactly what would appeal to his base. He didn’t think about the coronavirus much. And then the deaths began.

“If the president had his way, he’d be back in February,” Newt Gingrich told me. The former Speaker of the House is an opportunist, and in the era of Donald Trump, that means he must be an optimist. In 2016, Gingrich supported Trump’s campaign in the hope that he’d be asked to be the vice-president. Instead, Trump repaid his loyalty not with power or higher status in history but with the cushiest gig in Europe: He made Gingrich the husband of the United States ambassador to the Vatican, based in Rome. Before the pandemic, whenever you’d call the guy, he was in a loud restaurant — “Hi! Yeah?! This is Newt!” — having the time of his life. So one might understand why he’s invested in keeping this whole thing going.

This is what it looks like when the president knows he’s losing, but it’s also close to what it looked like when he won.

Gingrich grasps better than most how to stick to a message, and he keeps a straight face on Trump’s behalf even as he argues things he knows cannot be true. That voter surveys are skewed by the left-wing media. “I think the election is not quite like the public-opinion polls,” he says. That the president’s illness is a political asset. “It gives him a better understanding of what people are going through,” he says. Or that the president doesn’t mean to imply those killed by the virus were weak when he says he’ll beat it because he’s strong. “I think he’s talking about a national attitude. Should it be ‘Hunker down in the basement’ or ‘Reopen the schools’?” he says. Still, he cannot help but break character to admit the obvious: “If the president had his way, there’d be no virus. There’d be historically high employment among Blacks and Latinos. But you don’t get to pick the circumstances in which you run.”

And the circumstances have grown less pickable each day. “I think some of this is sad to watch,” Nunberg said. “It’s getting to the point where he’s almost turning into a laughingstock. What I’m worried about is whether he wants to completely self-destruct and take everything down with him vis-à-vis the election and the Republican Party.” He added, “This is a guy who’s not gonna lose joyfully.”

It does appear at times as though self-destruction may be the point. How else could you explain the Plague Parade circling Walter Reed, in which a very sick Trump boarded a tightly sealed SUV with his Secret Service agents so he could wave at the supporters who had come to fly their flags on the street? Or the Evita-inspired return to the White House, in which a still very sick Trump ascended the staircase to the balcony, ripped off his face mask, and saluted to no one as his photographer snapped away? Or calling in to the Fox Business Channel to suggest his infection may be the fault of the Gold Star military families, since they were always asking to hug him? This is what it looks like when the president knows he’s losing, but it’s also close to what it looked like when he won — after all, he thought he was losing in 2016, too. We all did. “You’re never as smart as you look when you win, and never as dumb as you look when you lose,” according to David Axelrod. In Trump’s case, it may be more like this: What seems like genius when he manages to survive is the very madness that threatens his survival in the first place.

A senior White House official told me there has been an ongoing effort to persuade the president not to do any of this, as there always is during his episodes of advanced mania. Asked what the effort looked like this time, with Trump physically removed from most of the people who might try to calm him down, the official said, “Well, for starters, it’s unsuccessful.”

One former White House official said that stopping Trump from doing something stupid that he really wants to do is possible only if you’re “actually sitting in front of him.” Sick themselves or trying to avoid a sick president, “the people he trusts and respects who would be barriers to that behavior don’t seem to be around,” this person said. “It just looks so chaotic. Duh.”

On October 5, the night Trump returned, a member of the White House cleaning staff sprayed the press briefing room. Photo: Erin Scott/Reuters/REUTERS

A second former White House official said the problem is “now people are so broken down, to the point where everyone’s been in ‘Jesus, take the wheel’ mode for the last couple years, and fighting against him is only gonna get them burned. Why even try?” The president’s staff, this person said, have no ability to think strategically because the president’s behavior poses new threats to survival every five minutes. “I don’t think they’re even considering what happens if he’s back in the White House and he needs oxygen or a ventilator. Their view is ‘If it happens, well, we’ll fucking figure it out when it happens!’ ”

Like Gingrich, they have to stay optimistic. “They aren’t even considering what happens when he’s feeling worse than he’s feeling now, when he’s hopped up full of steroids and other performance enhancers. He’s on the sort of drugs you’d see with a Tour de France rider in the mid-’90s!” Another way to say this, the former White House official said, was that the president is “hopped up on more drugs than a Belgian racing pigeon.” In keeping with the bird theme, this person said the president’s illness was proof that “the chickens are coming home to roost.”

“Going back to 2016,” this person added, “you always had these warnings from the Clinton camp and Democrats and the Never-Trump Republicans that, if he takes office and if a crisis hits, it’s gonna be a mess. But people don’t really vote on that when there’s not a crisis. People think, A crisis isn’t gonna happen! May as well vote for the guy with a good tax policy. Suddenly, this happens, and you always assume it won’t happen to you, but when you act like that, bad things happen!”

One theory of Trump’s self-immolation campaign is that it’s about gaining a sense of control. “I don’t think he wants to lose. I think he wants to have excuses for why he did lose,” a third former White House official said. “If it’s the ballot, the China virus, if it’s Nancy Pelosi. I just think he wants an excuse.”

As he considers the end, he fakes his way through a performance of political possibility. One person who publicly supports Trump and considers him a friend said that, in conversations with White House and campaign officials following the president’s release from the hospital, it became clear that no one who was supposed to know seemed sure when he would be okay. “They’re putting out a big ‘Oh, everything’s fine!’ face. But I don’t think they know how much stamina he’s gonna have,” this person said. “I didn’t like the way he looked on that balcony. Last week, I would’ve said that he was definitely going to win. Now, I don’t know.”

Trump spoke from outside the Oval Office on October 7 about having COVID and the vaccine. Photo: @realdonaldtrump/Twitter

Donald Trump does not often get sick. The philosophy of Fred Trump decreed that “sickness was weakness,” Mary Trump told me, “which obviously Donald has adhered to, which is a big part of the reason we’re in this horrible mess we’re in.”

Mary Trump is the president’s niece as well as a psychologist, whose best seller, Too Much and Never Enough, analyzes her uncle through the dysfunctional family he came from. In her view, the president is best understood as a self-unaware Tin Man, abandoned as a small child by his sick mother and rejected by his sociopath father until he became useful to him, whose endless search for love and approval plays out as mental warfare on the Free World he improbably represents. “In order to deal with the terror and the loneliness he experienced, he developed these defense mechanisms that essentially made him unlovable,” Mary said. “Over time, they hardened into character traits that my grandfather came to value. When you’re somebody who craves love but doesn’t understand what it means — he just knows he misses it and needs it, but he’ll never have it because he’s somebody nobody loves — that’s fucking tragic. He still needs to go to prison for the rest of his life. It’s not a defense. But it’s sad.”

For two weeks before he died, Fred Trump was hospitalized at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in what Mary remembers as “a very beautiful corner room with lots of sunlight.” With her uncle at his father’s bedside, she said, “everyone just stood around chitchatting, making small talk — they just don’t understand how to be human.” When his mother was in the hospital, often for osteoporosis and once after a brutal mugging, Trump visited with an attitude of “Why the fuck do I have to be here?” she said. “It was of no use to him whatsoever.” When Mary’s father, Fred Jr., died in 1981, his brother didn’t even show up to the funeral.

In his 2007 book Think Big, the future president recalled how, a decade before, he “unexpectedly came down with a wicked case of the flu” in the middle of his negotiations to buy a newspaper (he didn’t say which one). “I felt terrible. It was so bad that I called the sellers and told them we would have to postpone the closing until I was better,” he said, which was “very unusual” because “I never get the flu. It’s been ten years and I haven’t been sick a day since then.” Trump didn’t share the story of this freak illness to reveal his humanity but to add to his myth. He lost out to another buyer in the end, he said, and he was happy he did because, he claimed, the unnamed paper turned out to be a bad investment that was some other sucker’s problem. “Catching the flu was a lucky break that saved me from ruin,” he said. “Sometimes luck makes better deals than talent.” In other words, the idea that sickness is weakness, except for when it happens to him, took root a quarter-century before he made it his case for reelection.

Trump is aware that he isn’t healthy. His wife, an Eastern European former model who eats salmon and greens, lengthens her muscles on a Pilates reformer, and glows as if cast in bronze, is “healthy.” As a 74-year-old who takes the unscientific position that human beings have a finite amount of energy that exercise needlessly drains, and who thus never engages in any physical activity more strenuous than golf or tweeting, and whose vices include red meat, French fries, ice cream, Oreos, and Diet Coke, he knows he is very much not that.

And he understood that with age and weight comes heightened risk in the coronavirus pandemic. But he couldn’t accept that he wouldn’t be fine, that he was part of the “at-risk seniors” his advisers kept telling him he should think about since they were an important voting demographic and they were literally dying by the thousands. What he could accept even less than not being fine was not seeming fine. His supporters like to imagine him as a cartoonish representation of his vigorous, manly spirit, a joke directed at anyone who doesn’t find it funny. In memes, he body-slams his enemies. A video from the Trump campaign, released the week of his COVID-19 diagnosis, shows him body-slamming the virus. When I stopped by the home of Willard and Dolly Smith in New Hampshire last month, the flag on the couple’s front lawn showed Trump’s fleshy face on Rambo’s ripped body. “I’m back because I’m a perfect physical specimen and I’m very young,” the president joked on Fox Business on Thursday. But the stabs at self-deprecation, more necessary at this moment than ever before, do little to mask deep insecurity. Since his illness, the makeup the president applies himself has gotten so heavy and so dark that rather than obscure his pale coloring, it emphasizes the contrast between his unnatural face and the bare skin of his ears and hands. (All those years spent judging beauty pageants, and he never learned from the contestants the value of body makeup.)

Personality is policy in the Trump administration, and the president’s insecurity has made the uncertainty about the country’s leadership — unavoidable when any chief executive falls ill — even worse. His unwillingness to admit human frailty has led the White House and its doctors to keep information about his illness not only from the public and the press (three members of which have, so far, been infected at the White House too) but from his own staff. After Hope Hicks began experiencing symptoms at the Minnesota MAGA rally on Wednesday, forcing her to isolate in the back of the plane on the trip home, officials with whom she’d had contact remained in the dark. After she tested positive on Thursday afternoon, the White House failed to notify others who would soon test positive themselves. They learned about it when the world did, not with an official disclosure but with a leak to the media. “The president could’ve given it to her,” one of those people told me, in fairness, but “I would’ve done things different that day, had I known.”

Trump did know, but he didn’t change his plans. At 1 p.m. on Thursday, he flew to his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, for a fund-raiser with hundreds of his supporters, some of whom he spoke with indoors. Later that night, he tweeted about Hicks being sick. “Terrible!” he said. “The First Lady and I are waiting for our test results. In the meantime, we will begin our quarantining process.”

Reading the message, the person said, “I assumed he must’ve had a preliminary positive one.” The lack of transparency, this person added, is “symptomatic about how people I work with always keep the wrong things secret.” Suicidal in all senses, this is the Trumpian madness that threatens the president’s political and earthly future as it puts at risk everyone around him.

As one White House official put it: “Everybody at the top should be fired.”

*This article appears in the October 12, 2020, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

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[adscititious-cacoethes]

Petrichor (9/12)

Pairing: Eventual Trevor C./Reader; other background relationships Chapter: 9 of 12 Warnings: Swearing, Plot!, Geoff is there, cuteness, Learning about Backstories! (sort of), Trevor is Super Cute and Great and Good and Stuff, vampires and werewolves and things that go bump in the night (PG-13) Word Counts: Chapter: 4,446 Total: 33,967 A/N: Home stretch! Here’s some plot and some cute and some stuff. Also I take prompts now! (see here for details). Now that the end is near for this fic, I need some more stuff to work on :D  Reminder that this has a bunch of supernatural-y stuff, and also that this would not have seen the light of day (pun intended), if it weren’t for @chefgeofframsay. P.S. - Feedback would be cool P. P. S. - sorry if any chapters end kind of weird, this was written as one long thing and then I decided to break it up.  Previous|Next

You dressed as quickly as you can, texted your mom and Blaine, and then focused pulling up both illusions and a neutral expression as you left your room and walked into the kitchen. Trevor, Michael, and Lindsay were all standing around the island counter, chatting, but fell silent when you entered the room.

“Is something wrong?” You asked, instantly regretting it, but all three of them shot you matching reassuring smiles.

“No, just waiting on you. You ready to go get some lunch?” Lindsay said, picking up her purse from the counter.

“I just gotta feed Gus, first.” You told her, reaching past Michael for the fish food, but Trevor shook his head, stopping you in your tracks.

“Already done, while you were in the shower. And uh, I also did the dishes because I wanted to wash my face and brush my teeth and I felt bad doing that with dishes in the sink.” He said, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Trevor, you didn’t have to…” You trailed off, blushing, and you watched Michael and Lindsay share a look out of the corner of your eye before Lindsay wrapped her fingers around your wrist.

“Now that that’s settled.” She said, pulling you to the door and stopping mid-sentence in a way that sounded like she had no intention of finishing it.

One uneventful lunch and a quiet drive later, and you were once again standing in the elevator, on your way up to Geoff’s penthouse. Michael and Lindsay and Trevor were all chatting about something (Trevor standing very close to your side), but you were too busy thinking to pay attention.

The elevator doors eventually slid open, and you heard a squeal, raising your head just in time to see Ashley barrel into you, wrapping you up in a hug. Relief flooded your body as you brought your arms up and squeezed her tight. Your mentor was here, in your arms, unscathed, and you felt tension you didn’t know you had melt from your shoulders.

“I’m so glad you’re okay.” You whispered next to her ear, and she nodded, pulling away to hold you at arm’s length. Her eyes were shining with unshed tears.

“Look at you, you’re all grown up now.” She murmured, pulling you into another hug for a moment before dragging you out of the elevator. She turned to face you again, and then looked up, over your shoulder.

“And you must be Trevor.” Ashley said it the same way that moms do when they think they know something you don’t, and you couldn’t stop the heat that spread from your neck into your cheeks.

As your mentor, she was essentially a second mom, after all.

“Nice to meet you.” Trevor stuck out a hand as he said, it, but Ashley batted it away in favor of pulling him into a hug, too, and he looked at you wide-eyed over her head, but brought his arms up to pat her on the back, anyway. You just laughed with Michael and Lindsay at Trevor’s obvious confusion.

“Thank you for taking care of my [Y/N],” She said, pulling away from Trevor and looking to Michael and Lindsay standing behind you, “all of you. She’s always been my favorite apprentice.”

You didn’t know you could do it, but you felt your cheeks growing impossibly redder. You shot Ashley a glare, which she just laughed at, “What? It’s true.”

“Does this mean you know a lot of like, baby stories and stupid shit that [Y/N]’s done?” Michael asked, and to your absolute horror, Ashley chuckled and nodded.

“Oh, do I ever.”

“Sweet.” Michael said, wicked glint in his eye, and Trevor patted your upper back sympathetically.

“It’s okay, he does this to all of us,” Trevor informed you quietly, leaning down so that his face was near yours while he spoke, “come on, Geoff’s probably waiting impatiently, he knows you’re here.”

You nodded and followed Trevor down the hall, giving a parting wave to the others and silently praying that Ashley didn’t tell too many embarrassing stories.

“So, I’ve heard through the grapevine that you’ve had your first Prediction.” Geoff said from behind his desk, fingers steepled together. You were sitting in the same chair that you sat in when you were last in Geoff’s office, only this time you were sans Lindsay, Trevor instead sitting in the chair she had occupied. Ryan was up against the wall behind Geoff, leaning precariously against it despite the amount of stuff that hung on the walls.

“Uh, yeah.” You shifted in your seat and glanced over at Trevor, who was smiling encouragingly at you.

“Trevor filled me in last night, but I had a couple questions of my own. Can you describe the man who attacked Ashley?” Geoff asked, face stony, all business.

“Uh, he was Unseelie. Tall, thin, but he picked her up with one hand. One of his wings has a giant chunk missing, but the line was smooth, almost like it was repaired surgically.” You told Geoff, and then nearly jumped out of your skin when Ryan pushed himself off the wall (making frames knickknacks rattle) and nearly ran out of the room.

“Good, we know who it is that’s after you, then. He was on our short list,” Geoff opened up a file in front of him and shuffled through a couple of papers until he evidently found the one he was looking for, “does the name Novus ring any bells?”

“No? I don’t think so? I’m sorry. If he has to do with my father, I’ve never heard of him. I try to avoid discussing it with him. I know he does a lot of good work, taking on cases so that non-humans can still get fair trials without outing them, regardless of whether they’re guilty or not, but it wasn’t something that he brought home with him very often.” You explained, wringing your hands in your lap. Geoff sighed a little.

“No, I get it, kid, don’t worry. This was a case in the Seelie Court, actually. He was the defendant; your father was prosecuting him. Sentenced to 80 years, must’ve just gotten out. Says here that he was screaming “I’ll give you something worse than death” at dear ol’ Robin as he was dragged out of the courtroom.” Geoff looked up at you, and you tried to swallow down the lump in your throat.

Something worse than death.

What else was worse than your own death? You only kid getting murdered. And judging by your Prediction, this Novus jerk was ready and willing to destroy anything in his ‘quest for revenge.’ At least things make a little more sense, now, even though they’re still off the wall, you thought to yourself, sliding down in your seat a little. You caught movement in the corner of your eye and turned a little to see a very concerned-looking Trevor staring at you.

“Alright, at least we know who it is, now. Anything else we need to talk about?” You asked, and as Geoff rubbed at his face, you saw his tattoos ripple and move. The woman on the back of his hand winked at you and gave a cheeky grin.

“Yeah, you need to stay here until we resolve this, [Y/N]. Penthouse is safe, I know who goes in and out at all times, it’s the best place for you. We’ll put up a ‘sorry, closed due to family emergency’ sign on your store. I’ll even go get your fish myself.” You expected another fish joke or burst of laughter, but it never came, Geoff’s sleepy blue eyes just trained on you.

“I – I can’t just, like, not work, Geoff. I appreciate everything you’re doing – even though it’s because my father’s telling you to and whatever – but I have bills to pay, and shipments due in, and customers that need to pick up preorders. I understand, but I don’t know how long this is going to take. I can’t leave my job for weeks and weeks.” You tried to put into words how you felt, but judging by the growing frown on Geoff’s face, he was either not getting it or Not Having It. He slammed his hands on his desk, standing up from his chair so fast it clattered back into the wall, making you jump and cower back a little bit into your seat. The whole room went dark, and you could See his aura crackling and swirling with life.

“It’s not a matter of what you want! It’s a matter of your protection! Do you think we’re getting paid for this? This is a favor to your father, friend to friend. I’m putting my whole team into this out of the kindness of my heart! I don’t care if you have shit to do, I’m not putting you in a position where you’re at risk!” Geoff half-shouted, voice pitching and cracking all over the place.

Before you could open your mouth to say anything – before you could even think of anything to say at all, Trevor was out of his chair, hands up and out in a placating gesture, and now you could only see right half of Geoff’s face and upper body.

“Woah, now, Nelly, let’s just calm down, now, everyone,” Trevor urged before turning to you, “[Y/N], I get it. You have a business to run, and you do it almost entirely by yourself, which means you have a reputation on the line, too. But the store is sort of a risky place, being the only location besides your apartment that you frequent on a regular basis, and the first time you were attacked, originally, you were walking home from there.

“Geoff,” Trevor turned his back to you to face his boss, “We understand that you’re doing this because [Y/N]’s father is a good friend. I understand that you’re doing what you think is best. But if the tables were turned right now, would you be comfortable with completely upending your entire life indefinitely, or would you crave something that would give you some little, tiny sliver of normalcy, even if it meant taking a risk? Can’t we compromise, instead? [Y/N] cuts down store hours, maybe to three days a week, and Blaine gets any shipments that come in on days that the store isn’t open? That way, she gets something in her life that isn’t completely foreign-upside-down bullshit and you get to make sure she’s protected and safe?”

You watched, wide-eyed, as Trevor’s words made Geoff’s jaw loosen and his shoulders drop. By the time Trevor had finished, the (presumably) older man had fallen back into his chair, hands rubbing at his face. You had no idea that Trevor could negotiate and defuse a situation like that. On the surface, you were in awe of his concise eloquence and quick-thinking, but deeper down…well, you couldn’t stop the little voice back there that found it attractive. Trevor had a way with words that appealed to your book-loving self, and the fact that he was essentially standing up to you, to his boss. It was flattering, and it made you want to blush and giggle like a schoolgirl.

“Fine. Three days a week. But if this goes on for more than another week, we’re not sticking to the same three days. I need you to tell me all preorders expected and all shipment dates for the next couple weeks, so we can make sure your customers and suppliers and shit don’t get pissed at you. But I’m not getting your fish from your apartment, you have to go get it your goddamn self.” Geoff said, tone dismissive, and you let out a breath you didn’t know you’d been holding. Trevor stepped back and sat down again while Geoff handed you a piece of paper. You wrote down the ones you could remember, and then scribbled Blaine’s number at the bottom.

“I don’t know if I remembered all of them, but Blaine should still be at the store, so he can look it up in the planner book that we keep, you can text or call him about it.” You said, giving the paper back. Geoff only let out a hmph in response, but you could see the corners of his mouth twitch upwards, so you were hoping that meant the man wasn’t actually mad at you.

Geoff then instructed the two of you to “get the dicks out of here” with a wave of his hand, and you shot a quick series of texts to Blaine, updating him on the whole thing while you followed Trevor out the door.

“Want to go get some stuff from your apartment now?” Trevor asked, and you nodded absently.

“Hey,” You stopped walking, grabbing Trevor’s forearm. He instantly turned to face you. “thanks for like, helping and negotiating and stuff. That was really, super nice of you, and after last night…” You trailed off, hoping that Trevor would understand the unspoken end to your sentence: I owe you.

He just chuckled a little under his breath and shook his head, “It was nothing, [Y/N]. I could tell what you were trying to say, and I knew that Geoff wasn’t going to get it right away unless someone spelled it out for him. It’s not my first rodeo with Geoff ‘I’m an overprotective fucker’ Ramsey. And as for last night, I already told you, I’m just glad that you’re okay, and I was there to help.” He fitted you with a dazzling smile, and before you could talk yourself out of it, you surged forward and wrapped your arms around his waist, pressing your face into his chest in the biggest hug you could muster. Trevor’s arms immediately responded, wrapping around you and pulling you tighter to him.

You weren’t sure how long the two of you stood there, hugging each other in the hallway, but the sound of someone clearing their throat had you jumping away from each other. It was Jack, and he had a sly smile on his face as he looked between you and Trevor.

“I’m about to take Ashley to the airport. I figured you’d want to say goodbye, [Y/N].” Jack told you, beckoning you to follow him.

After a tearful good-bye with Ashley, you found yourself dabbing at your eyes and sitting in the passenger seat of a nice, dark-colored sportscar while Trevor drove back to your apartment. The two of you gathered up two suitcases worth of necessities (well, one suitcase of clothes and other necessities and one suitcase of stuffed animals) and Gus in his tank and brought it all back to the penthouse, where Trevor helped you set up Gus and your things in the same room you had stayed in the night you were attacked.

“I’d love to stay and hang out, but Jeremy just requested some assistance with recon.” Trevor said after the two of you finally got Gus’ tank set up and settled (he was a spoiled rotten grumpy little fish), waving his phone a little for emphasis.

You sighed inwardly, disappointed that your time with Trevor was called to an end for the moment, but pulled a (hopefully understanding) smile onto your face, regardless.

“Okay. Thanks for helping me out with this asshole.” You said, gesturing to Gus. You bit down the and everything else that you wanted to tack on. You’d already had that conversation – you didn’t want to sound like a broken record, or worse, have Trevor get annoyed at your repetitiveness.

“Not a problem. I’ll swing by if it isn’t too late when I get back, but if not, you know where I’m gonna be. My door’s always unlocked as long as I’m in there.” Trevor smiled at you, and you nodded, giving him a wave when he looked back at you before he shut the door behind him.

You immediately flopped back onto the bed with a sigh, that turned into a yelp when you nearly bonked your head against the headboard.

“Forgot that there wasn’t going to be as much soft stuff to stop my fall.” You muttered to yourself, rolling onto your stomach and texting Blaine for a while – making sure everything was fine at the store that day, making sure he was fine, asking if him and Mica were going to spend the night together to be super safe (they were – Blaine was staying at Mica’s house, because she had much better security).

Eventually, you moved on to unpacking all of your things – there was nothing you hated more than living out of a suitcase (okay, there were a lot of things you hated more, this whole situation one of them, but suitcase was still fairly high on the list) – and after that, you took a nap.

Your ‘nap’ turned into a ‘sleep,’ and it was well after midnight when you woke up again. You splashed some water on your face and pulled up your hair before slipping out into the hallway as quietly as you could and knocking on the nearest (aka Trevor’s) door.

After a minute with no answer, you reached forward and tried the knob.

Locked.

Okay, plan B (who were you kidding, you didn’t have a plan B). You sighed and started wandering down the hall, turning corners at random in an attempt to find something – or even someone – recognizable. You weren’t sure if it was by chance or by Geoff’s doing, but your twists and turns through the enchanted penthouse eventually led you to a small, dark room, the only light coming from a small writing lamp, which illuminated what looked like a desk scattered with papers and the outline of a person.

“Can’t sleep?” They asked, and you took a step forward, eyes adjusting to see Ryan staring up at you.

“I meant to take a nap for an hour. It turned into, like, seven.” You responded, making him chuckle.

“Take a seat.”

You slid into the seat across from him and curled up, tucking your feet under you. You heard shuffling and then the room was suddenly a lot brighter, a set of sconces flaring to life behind the desk. You took in the room as Ryan sat back down and went back to his work. It seemed to have a delicate balance between old and new, with ancient-looking tomes and crumbling maps were strewn between circuit boards and tablets. Ryan was wearing glasses and was hunched over what looked like a box with a bunch of wires coming out of it, but you were sure it was probably a little more complicated than that.

“This is my office, but unlike Geoff, I don’t get the luxury of having a door.” Ryan piped up after a few minutes of silence, startling you a little.

“I’m sorry, I can leave…” You said, trailing off and dropping your feet to the floor.

“No, stay if you want to, I don’t mind. Just letting you know, I could tell you’re curious.” He explained it with the same vague, sort of enigmatic tone that you had discovered he was fond of. You nodded, and the two of you lapsed into silence again. Ryan was weird, to you. Now that you had gotten to know every member of Geoff’s crew a little better, you had deduced that Trevor wasn’t an apprentice, after all. In fact, you were sure that the two were fairly close in age (relatively speaking, of course. Your guess was that there was only about 150 or so years between the two vampires). Ryan’s knowledge of the world and its inhabitants vastly exceeded your own, and you found nearly every interaction with the older man turned into a lively history lesson – which you were genuinely happy for, even when Michael was groaning and threatening to smash his own face in just so he didn’t have to listen to it anymore. But while the others were relatively open and friendly, Ryan’s words always seemed to be cherry-picked carefully, things that seemed like they wouldn’t be secretive discussions riddled with vague half-comments. You wondered if Ryan just had a flair for dramatic (like Geoff), or if he was really as secretive of a person as he seemed. And even beyond that, you wondered why, when Trevor was the temperature of a nice, cool breeze, Ryan felt like ice that had just come out of a blast chiller.

“Something on your mind?” Ryan asked lightly, pulling you out of your own head. You hesitated to answer, not certain about how far you could reach before being offensive, how much you could pry before hurting someone’s feelings and breaking the fragile trust you had established.

“It might be too invasive to ask.” You finally settled on, dishing Ryan a taste of his own purposely vague medicine.

“You’ll find that there’s very few things in my entire life that I would consider too private to talk about, at my age.”

You sighed, “It’s only partially about you.”

“So, Trevor, then.” Ryan stated – and it was just that, a statement of fact, not even a hint of a questioning lilt in his tone.

“Is it really that obvious?” You asked, fidgeting in your seat. Ryan glanced up at you over his glasses, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Well, considering it’s only ‘partially’ about me, I’m assuming it’s a vampire ‘thing,’” He lifted one hand to enunciate his inflections with air quotes, “and beyond the fact that Trevor and I are the only vampires in AH, over the past week and a half or so, you’ve grown closest to Trevor – much closer than most of the rest of us combined.” Ryan’s voice dripped with hidden meaning, and he shot you a knowing smirk.

You blushed a little bit at that, embarrassed that your attachment to and subsequent crush on Trevor was that obvious, especially in that short of a period of time. You took solace in the stories that your mother had told you, time and time again, about how she had only known your father for a few hours before she knew he was The One and they shared their first kiss. And they’d been together for centuries, now.

You opened your mouth to respond, but Ryan beat you to it: “If you’re about to say, ‘I don’t want Trevor to find out and get upset with me,’ one; he won’t find out, and two; he won’t get upset. With me, maybe. But not with you.”

You harrumphed and sunk further into your chair. You glanced around, even craning your neck to look behind you, and, satisfied that no one else was there to eavesdrop, you turned back to Ryan.

“Why are you so much colder than him?” You asked, watching intently for Ryan’s response. He set down the tools in his hand and pushed back a little so his chair rolled back, leisurely swinging his socked feet up to rest on the edge of the desk.

“He’ll tell you the details in his own time, but it’s no secret, so I’ll tell you the basics.” Ryan said, pressing his fingers together and resting them under his chin.

“A long time ago, right around the time that I first met him, Trevor had an…unfortunate run-in. He had been working with an angel at the time – she’s still a contact of ours, actually – and to make the story short, they had two options: let Trevor die or let him feed off of her angel blood without fully knowing what the consequences of that would be. Like a good friend, she chose the latter, which led to Trevor seeking me out for help.

“What neither of them knew, because at the time, side effects of magical blood were elite, Need-to-Know basis information – I won’t get into that, all you need to know is that ancient, crumbly-ass vampires are fucking dicks – was that by drinking an angel’s blood, even though it was only a little bit, Trevor became a little less undead. Sunlight doesn’t weaken him as much as it does me. He doesn’t feel dead to the touch, like I do. He doesn’t need to drink as often as normal, unless he’s been exerting a lot of energy, and when he’s full he can even do life-y things like blush and eat a lot of ‘real’ food without getting a stomachache. He still has all of the typical weaknesses – wooden stakes to the heart, silver, decapitation, acid, the works – but he’s a little bit less dead than the rest of us. It’s the closest thing to the popular human myth of ‘day-walkers’ as vampires get. Does that answer your question?” Ryan finished, and you nodded, a little numbly. You didn’t know what you were expecting, but it wasn’t that.

“Why – why doesn’t it happen more often, then?” You asked tentatively, leaning forward a little bit in your seat.

“Sometime between then and now, drinking non-Normal human or animal blood has been pretty much unanimously outlawed by both the High Vampiric Counsel and the community as a whole. There are exceptions, when it’s a dire situation and the ‘giving’ party has willingly consented, but those are mostly on a case-by-case basis. Why do you think that the effects of magical and mythical blood are never discussed in any of the books you’ve read about us? We operate under a sort of ‘ignorance is bliss’ mentality.” You found yourself nodding as Ryan spoke. It did make a lot of logical sense, after all. You stifled a yawn, and, as Ryan fell silent, you took that as your cue to leave.

“Don’t just start talking to him about it. I know you have more tact than that, but still. He probably won’t be too happy with me for stepping in instead of shutting up and directing you to him.” Ryan said as you stood, making you pause, and for a moment fear clutched your chest –What if this was a bad idea? What if Trevor will hate you for going to Ryan instead of him? – but you pushed it away. Ryan said he wouldn’t be mad at you, and you hadn’t gone to Ryan at all, you had just stumbled upon his office, and the vampire had asked.

“Will do. Thanks, Ryan.” You told him, giving him a small smile before wandering away. It took you a while, but you eventually made it back to your ‘room’ – you hesitated to call it that, because it wasn’t yours, not really, not forever – and plonked down on your bed, falling asleep while this newfound information about the cute boy you liked swirled in your mind.