#Cassie's expressions and makeup are to die for

[seth-the-giggle-fish]

Feeling a lot of gender envy about every single character played by The Stupendium in this musical video

[scifrey]

Hold Tight (4/6)

Status: Complete. Unbeta’d, we die like Hob doesn’t.

Series: The Hob Adherent series.

Fandom: The Sandman (TV 2022) Includes some comics canon, and some cameos from the wider Gaiman-verse, but it’s not necessary to know to enjoy the story.

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Discussions of grief and in-canon character death. Also includes some erotic content. Please curate your internet experience accordingly.

Relationships:  Morpheus | Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling, Past Eleanor | Hob Gadling’s Wife/Hob Gadling (past), Hector Hall/Lyta Hall (past)

Characters: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Hob Gadling, Matthew the Raven, Desire of the Endless, Lyta Trevor-Hall, Daniel Hall, Rose Walker, Jed Walker 

Summary:

Hob is tasked with his first quest as Vassal of the Endless, Morpheus is bad at using his words, Destiny thinks he’s so clever, Desire makes a confession, Rose Walker meets her Uncle’s boyfriend, and Lyta Hall punches Dream of the Endless in the nose. Or, the one where Hob Gadling turns into everyone’s therapist, and honestly, he ain’t mad about it.

Set at the end of Cling Fast - after the premiere of “Elizabethan Manor”, but before the Epilogue.

READ ON AO3 or below:

Chapter Four

"What," Morpheus demands, as soon as Hob enters his flat above the New Inn that evening, "Is that repugnant stain on your mouth?"

Hob resists the urge to check the mirror above the entryway table. He knows he got all of the lipstick off because Cassie had given him a makeup wipe. It must be some lingering metaphysical mark that Hob can't see.

"Desire kissed me," Hob says, not seeing the point in lying. 

He toes off his shoes and moseys into the kitchen, where he finds Morph standing beside the counter, outrage clear in every line and curve of his corporation. Before him, an array of tea things is scattered over the work surface, and the electric kettle whistles high and shrill with Morpheus' eldritch fury.

Hob reaches around him to save the kettle from overboiling, sets it aside, then uses his closeness to crowd Morpheus against the cabinets and offer up the filthiest, most ardent kiss he can.

"Eugh," Morpheus says, when they part.

"Eugh?" Hob echoes, eyebrows bouncing. "I kiss you like that, and you say eugh?"

"You taste like Desire."

"I do not!" Hob says, indignant. "You're just being a drama queen. Besides, how would you know what your sibling tastes like?”

“Eugh!” Morpheus repeats, but he doesn’t push Hob away. Instead he does the opposite, lounging back against the counter and tugging Hob close by his beltloops, pressing them hip-to-hip. There is nothing urgent about it, nothing consuming, just the gentle comfort of basking in the warmth and touch of a person you love.

“Were you making me tea, duckie?”

“I was attempting it, yes,” Morpheus says. “The further away from being Dream of the Endless I become, the harder I find mortal tasks. I’ve never been human, not like my heir will experience. I simply… came into being as more and more humans prayed Morpheus the God of Sleep into existence.”

“Which means…?”

“I cannot simply reach into the aether of human consciousness and know how to do the thing. I must learn it. On Matthew’s suggestion, I have begun keeping a notebook. Today, we were writing down the steps for making hot beverages. I am certain that with enough repetition I will have no trouble, but I—” he hesitates, and Hob leans back a bit to get a good look at his expression. He looks determined, if a little out of his depth. “I want to ensure that in case I become consumed with learning a different task, I have steps recorded so that I may return to them. Matthew calls it ‘setting myself up for success’.”

“That’s smart,” Hob says. “Here, why don’t you finish this up then, while I go get out of my work clothes?”

“I will make tea for you,” Morpheus says firmly, more an affirmation for himself than a promise to Hob. “And then you will tell me what my grasping, greedy sibling wanted and why I should not smite them for daring to touch you.”

“That’s not a very nice way to talk about Desire,” Hob points out, as he walks to the bedroom, shrugging out of his v-necked jumper as he goes. “Especially considering how often you and I are under their influence, Mr. Bossy-Bedroom. If you’re not careful, they’re gonna pull a Satyricon on you when you’re human, just for the laughs.”

The poleaxed look on Morpheus’ face makes it clear that he hadn’t thought about that.

Hob stops in the doorway and turns back to his lover. “You… did realise that once you’re human, the Endless are going to have as much sway over you as they do me, right?”

“I… had not thought of it that way,” Morpheus says and purses his lips.

“Don’t worry,” Hob says as he kicks off his jeans and unbuttons his dress shirt just enough to get it up over his head too. “I have it on good authority that the rivalry between Desire and Dream of the Endless is at an end.”

A clatter in the kitchen has Hob worried enough to peer around the door frame in just his pants. 

“Babe? Did you drop something?” No answer comes from the kitchen, but no sounds of breaking crockery or a broom, either. "Are you okay?" More silence. "Morpheus?"

The answer that Hob finally gets is thin and strangled-sounding. “Desire told you this?”

"In more words than not," Hob agrees. "Swore by something called the first circle that they no longer wished you harm?"

Hob doesn't know what swearing sounds like in the dark and ancient languages of the Endless, but he imagines it sounds a lot like the noises Morpheus is making right now.  Deciding to forego lounge clothes, Hob throws on a ratty old housecoat (a hundred years old if it's a day, a floor-length, full and flowy, peackockish thing he'd picked up during the height of the 1920s Orientalism trend), and pads out to the kitchen.

Morpheus is leaning over the counter, hands braced on the edge, knuckles whiter than the normally human-pale complexion he wears in the Waking. His veins pop out on his inner-arms, tinged with a blood-blue that didn't used to be there before the Dream-child had been born.

"Was Desire the one who tasked you with this quest that takes us to New Jersey?" Morpheus asks, a bit of Endlessness leaking out of his voice. 

He must be a lot more upset than he looks, Hob thinks.

"No," Hob says honestly, stopping beside Morpheus to lean his hip against the fridge. The tin of Hob's favourite loose-leaf tea is on its side, the contents dashed across the countertop, which explains the clatter Hob heard.

"But Desire visited you this day?"

Again, there's no point in sharing anything but the truth with Morpheus. "Yes."

"Why?"

Hob thinks about the best way to answer that while he gently nudges his lover aside to clean up the spilled leaves and finish making up the pot. Eventually he settles on: "They were made aware that I would be visiting the Walkers and asked me to help them repair their relationship."

"What relationship," Morpheus snarls, but his voice is slowly regaining its mortal timbre, so he must be calming down some. "They sired Rose and Jed's mother, and then abandoned Unity. There is no relationship to repair."

"Exactly," Hob says gently. "And they want to change that."

"Desire will never change," Morpheus spits. "They are a being of grasping want, and immediate gratification, and petty jealousies, and satisfaction-in-the-moment. Their memory is short and their motivation is petty."

"But aren't desires also long-term aspirations, and future goals, and putting in the work to achieve the longed-for outcome?" Hob asks as he cleans the tea off the counter and rights the tin. "Do you think marathon runners have any less desire in them than sprinters? Or the people who get up at 5am every day for years to write the novel of their hearts before the rest of the family wakes? Yeah, desire is Mr. Wickham and Mr. Willoughby. But it's also Mr. Darcy and Col. Brandon.”

"You and your romance films. It is charming how much you love love, inamorato, but they will never change," Morpheus repeats stubbornly.

"Why not?" Hob asks. "You did. You are. "

"Choosing to relinquish my Function is not the same as personal growth."

"I dunno, duck," Hob says. "Knowingly stepping away from a toxic working environment that doesn't make you happy or fulfil your soul in order to protect your mental health sounds an awful lot like 'personal growth' to me."

The kettle, which Hob had set back on the base to re-boil as they talked, clicks off. Hob lets Morpheus go through the ritual of filling the infuser and setting up their tea tray while he chews on that response.

"You are determined to approach things from a human perspective," Morpheus grumbles, which is how Hob knows he's won this round. Hob carries the tray to the living room, and sits down on the armchair so Morpheus can sprawl on the sofa in order to most effectively demonstrate the extreme level of his supposed emotional agony.

Hob would never dare say it out loud, but Desire and Dream even pout the same way.

Once the tea is steeped, Hob bitches the pot. Knowing that Dream is distracted by the sliver of his hairy thigh visible through the gap of his housecoat, he says, as nonchalantly as he can produce: "So why are you moving on?"

"A child comes," Morpheus says, as if that answers everything. It’s his rote response, practically a reflex at this point.

"You've said that before, and that still isn't an answer. At least not to me," Hob says with a small headshake and a depreciating laugh. "But then, I'm just some silly little human bloke with a big mouth."

"And a keen mind, and a generous heart," Morpheus rushes to assure him. "Do not devalue or speak ill of my beloved, Hob Gadling. I shall be cross with you if you do."

Hob laughs in earnest as he prepares his tea to his liking and then sits back in the chair.  And if his robe slips open a little at the neck, well, let it never be said that Hob isn't above using the charms of his body to make confessions more rewarding. 

"So explain it to me," Hob says. "Little happened in your realm that you didn't know about for you were the Dreaming. And sure you couldn't see what the Vortex hid, but you said the woman's baby was dreamstuff. You could have made it…" He gestures with his hand, fingers splayed, wrist limp, in approximation of how Morpheus scatters dream sand into the air. "But you allowed it to exist. Why?"

Morpheus shakes his head slowly, filling his own mug with as much sugar as liquid. Hob wonders how his lover can stand it when the tea he drinks is literally gritty.

"I wept as I unmade Gregory the Gargoyle," Morpheus confesses softly, stirring his sludge delicately. "It saddened me greatly to unmake Gault, and the Corinthian. They were mine. My children, and I had made the choice, and it was terrible, but it was my choice to make. I know intimately the pain of having no choice in the matter. Of having your child snatched away through no fault of your own." He meets Hob's eyes hare, and they both know they are thinking of Orpheus, and Robyn, and Wee John. That they are both the fathers of dead sons. "I could not… I could not choose to unmake that woman's child. Not on purpose. I could not do that to her."

"You know, you still haven't told me the woman or the baby's name."

Morpheus sips his tea and doesn't elaborate.

"Oh, okay, I see how that is," Hob says. "Keep your secrets then, Drama of the Endless. But you know, this doesn't explain why you're… 'giving up' isn't the right phrasing but… well, why are you doing …" he gestures at the tea things and the notebook on the kitchen counter, at the flat around them that is beginning to acquire black sweaters and socks, and raven-care paraphernalia, and leather-bound sketchbooks that Morpheus will not let Hob peruse. "All this?"

Morpheus (who has never in his existence has spoken without carefully planning his words) and Hob (who never in his existence has ever wanted to rush Morpheus) get all the way to the end of their mugs of tea before the answer is forthcoming.

Then he sets aside his mug, and licks his lips, and  true to his nature, tells Hob a story.

"Once, when I was feeling very low, my sister Death asked me to accompany her to watch her work," Morpheus says, with all the cadence of an old-fashioned bard. "I told her that I felt empty and… and miserable, when I contemplated my life outside of my Function. That my torment and imprisonment had left me hollow, and my subsequent revenge had ultimately been meaningless."

Hob didn't want to be the one to bring it up, but there had been something unstable about his Stranger when he had first returned. Violent reactions to unwanted touch or unexpected changes, issues with being in tight spaces or tight crowds, sensory problems with loud noises, the way his eyes would dart around and his chest heave with breath Morpheus didn't need if he heard a glass break—it had been strange and awful, and Hob hadn't known how best to help him, then. But one thing had been clear: Morpheus, for all his power, had not taken the time to heal from his torturous ordeal. 

It had worried Hob.

It doesn't worry him anymore. He was proud of how hard Morpheus had worked to understand and process his trauma, with Hob (and a few texts on PTSD and cognitive therapy) by his side.

Now, Hob reaches for Morpheus's hand, and Morpheus takes it, because it is a safety and a security that they have forged together. It's so much like that first night here, when Hob learned of his oldest and truest friend's century-long suffering, that he is struck with a wave of deja vu.

I love you, Hob thinks fiercely. I loved you then, too, but it was a small, new thing. Just an ember. It didn't burn yet. I didn't know, couldn't hope to know, how much I'd blaze in just one short year.

"Do you know what she said to me when I had made my confession, Hob Gadling?" Morpheus asks with a weary huff.

"No, what?" Hob feels his face draw down into a frown to match the one sinking onto Morpheus' mouth. He has a feeling he isn't going to like what he's about to hear.

"She told me that I simply needed to embrace my Function, to remember that I serve humanity, and if I simply do so, I will be alright."

Hob sucks in a sharp, shocked breath. "That… sorta sounds like the opposite of what I thought you would have needed."

"I believed the same as you say," Morpheus confesses with a bitter twist of his lips. "What worked for my sister, what helps her achieve balance and thoughtfulness in and happiness in her Function… did the opposite for me. I followed her for a half a day as old men passed away alone. As a bride's honeymoon was cut short, and a young man just wanting to play with his friends was senselessly destroyed by a careless driver."

Hob squeezes Morpheus' hand three times— I love you.

Morpheus squeezes back.

"My sister Death finds fulfilment and pride in her Function. She is there for them, in the end. She is a friendly face and a warm smile for all. She is not the cause of their deaths. Her Function, as many mortals would say in the common vernacular, for her it sparks joy."

"But not you?"

Morpheus heaves a wistful sigh. "It did. Once. But when I told her of the hollow ringing of my heart in the vast cavern of the Dreaming, she told me I must just bang the gong of it harder. As if the thunderous rollback of the echo would fill me with serene music, and not become an agonizing cacophony. She assumed that because her Function is enough for her, that I must be the same. But instead of helping me find joy in my Function, it instead made it feel all the colder and more meaningless.” Morpheus scrubs his hands through his hair, frustrated with his inability to convey all that he’s trying to tell Hob. “Dream of the Endless is meant to fill mortal sleeping hours before they are met with Death with wonder and joy and inspiration. And I felt none of my own. Do you understand me?"

Hob slips from the chair to kneel at Morpheus's sweet socked feet, take both his hands in his own, and kiss the backs of them. "A little?"

"I was seeking connection on a personal level, brother to sister. She… denied me this. In a kind and well-meaning way, but denied me all the same. She spoke to me not as a sister, but as one Endless to another. She told me, not in so many words, but plainly enough, to stop my whinging and get on with it." Morph’s eyes shimmer with the mercury-silver tears, shoulders trembling with repressed emotion. "And I… I could not. I could only … I thought of you." 

“I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that,” Hob says gently.

Morph looks earnest, like he's trying to confess something, trying to say more than simple words can convey. The prince of Stories has a whole tome behind his eyes, and Hob does his best to parse it. 

"She reminded me that humanity is the reason I exist, and remembering that I serve humanity will return me to a place of happiness and she was not wrong, she meant it kindly, I must emphasize that… but it was the wrong advice in the moment because all it made me think about was you."

Hob tries not to let himself preen too much. "And then you came to find me at the New Inn. You let me keep you when I begged."

"Yes," Morpheus says, licking his rosebud mouth, leaving his lips shining in the growing twilight. "You only sought to connect with me on a personal level. You dubbed me ‘friend’, and asked for my name, and wanted to know the mundanities of my own preferences and experiences, and gave little care to the power and prestige of my Function. And I realized… this is what I want. I no longer desire the connection that solely comes from fulfilling my duties. I want only that of… you."

"Well, more than just me, I hope, duck," Hob says, tugging gently at his ear. "I can't be your, you know, only reason for existing."

"Not you, Hob Gadling, you vainglorious creature," Morpheus chuckles. "But... you, the most human of humanity. And therefore the representative of the whole.”

"Oh, duck," Hob says, turning Morph's hands over to lay kisses down the long, broken path of each of his lifelines.

"I have lost the joy of being Dream of the Endless," Morpheus says, with such gravitas, such candor, such fear that it seems as if he dreads Father Time and Mother Night themselves descending from the heavens to strike him dead for such blasphemies.

Hob kisses the plush mound of each of Morpheus' thumbs.

"I have lost the colour and thrill of being Nightmare King. The creativity doesn't move me. The plights of the Dreamers do not wound me. Their laughter does not fulfil me. Their wonder is stale and their terror tastes like ash. My duties are like a weighted and wet cloak. The burden of their care drags me down. I am… unhappy, Hob. I cannot serve my Function because it leaves me in miseries. And my miseries impede my ability to serve my Function. It is… time to hand the reins to one who can… who can dream again. For I have quite lost the knack of it."

"I'm so sorry to hear it," Hob tells him earnestly. He perches his chin on Morpheus's knee to peer up at him. "And I'm so proud of you for being able to recognize it. To choose to do something about it."

"It is you who is the source of that bravery, erasti," Morpheus says, meaningfully. He frees one of his hands to push Hob's loose hair back behind his ear, petting down the side of his bare neck.

Hob feels his ears go pink. "And so when the child came, you let it?"

"Morpheus, the God of Sleep, is no longer in his temples, nor supping at his altars. The old god is dead. The new must rise."

"So what do you want now, then?"

"You. Just you. Just… just this."

"You have it," Hob says urgently, rising on his knees to cup Morpheus' cheeks in his own hands, to draw him down into chaste, slow kiss. "You have me."

"I do. But I want to choose it, do you understand me?" Morpheus asks, dragging Hob up to straddle his lap so he needn't bend double for their gazes to be level. "Death told me to just accept my life and be happy with it as it was. To push aside choice. To simply follow the rules and it will be good enough, but she followed the rules and I suffered. When I needed help… in Fawny Rigg… she did not come. She knew where I was, she took Jessamy away and she left  me there. True, I did not call on my siblings for rescue, but I did so to protect them from Burgess and his terrible greed. But she came for Jessamy, and she saw me, and she left me there. Do you understand?"

Hob pets his hair back, soothing. "I understand."

"She does not mean to be cruel, but what does Death really, know of life? Even if she walks as a mortal one day a century, she is never really human. She has never really loved and lost as I have. When I asked for help to find my purpose and happiness again, she… took me to watch a mother scream. She knew Orpheus, dandled him on her knee and whispered poetry in his ear to soothe him to sleep, and yet that was her solution. There were a thousand other beings dying in that same moment, but that is the one she took me to see. When I expressed my fear that I can no longer connect with humanity, she invited me to watch a baby die. I asked for her help and she did not help me. Not the way that you helped me."

Hob's frown has by now become a mighty scowl, but before he can say something he's sure he'll probably regret later, Morpheus adds:

"Do not mistake me, erasti. Death loves me. I was the first infant she ever held. Besides Destiny, and you, I will be the last being she escorts to the Sunless Lands. But just because she loves me does not mean that she knows how best to care for me. Not like you do, my beloved."

"I try," Hob says, infusing every syllable with the devotion and determination he feels. "I always will."

"I know. As I will for you. And so, it is time, I think… to pass the crown on to one who will not only wear it, but marry themselves to their realm as a monarch ought. I am a creature born of human worship and naming. The child is a creature born of Dreamstuff, created to be of them instead of over them. To the Dreaming he belongs, and in the Dreaming he will find his purpose, and his happiness. In ways that I…" Morph looks down at his palms, and picks at the callus that his pen nib has begun to leave on the inside of his middle finger. "I never fully have. Not in the way that the other facets of Dream of the Endless revel in or enjoy their function. I've always been… trapped by the constraints of  what those who thought me up believed a god should be." 

“Oh?”

Morph laughs, mirthlessly. "You humans! You are the only creatures in existence who believe your gods to be just as flawed, and petty, and greedy, and compassionate, and loving as you are. And as I am created, I am also thus. It has made me… singular among the other Dreams."

"You're not petty, or greedy," Hob says, but knows he looks dubious as he does. Hob has known him to be petty and greedy in the extreme.

"Oh, Hob, but I am," Morpheus corrects him gently. He settles his hands at Hob's waist, sliding his palms through the slit in the silk bathrobe, spreading his fingers over Hob's furry stomach like he can reach through it and fist his hands in Hob’s guts and merge their flesh. He probably could. " So greedy. But you see those as virtues, see the good that comes of those traits. You see them as flaws worth loving, rather than reasons to discard me."

Hob clamps his hands down on Morpheus's shoulders as his lover shifts and spreads his legs, allowing Hob to settle more fully against his pelvis.

"And so. There is your answer, Hob Gadling," Morpheus says, leaning up to paint his confession against the flesh of Hob's sternum, directly between his nipples. "Morpheus God of Sleep was born of human thought, and of humanity he now must become. Dream of the Endless is a being dedicated to its Function, and this facet of the jewel must be shaved off and polished anew, for it is dull, and scuffed, and scarred. But fear not, my dearheart, for the cutting shall come thick enough that the jewel can be buffed smooth. It can shine on its own."

"Hell of a metaphor," Hob says with a low whistle. "But I guess you invented them, so that's all right."

The flight is tolerable only because Hob throws back a handful of sleeping pills as soon as the plane begins to taxi away from the jetway, and he spends most of it in the throne room with Lucienne as they index a catalogue of all of the new denizens that had come into being along with the birth of the new sovereign. There are an alarming number of children's dreams of simple animated dogs.

Hob reaches his hotel room still groggy from the jetlag, the lingering effects of the medication, and the stomach-lurchingly erratic cab ride from Newark International airport. He’s happy to find Morpheus there, waiting for him. He’s lounging indolently in one of the armchairs, that fancy moleskin that Hob’s never allowed to see into on his lap, his fingers splotched with ink.

Morpheus takes pity on Hob and draws him a bath in the luxurious jacuzzi tub. He tucks himself into the water and makes of himself a bath pillow to keep Hob upright and protected as Hob begins to doze. Morpheus feeds him fruit and sugared nuts from the dreams of children and bakers preparing for the upcoming holy day, and coaxes the sweetest, most lazy orgasm out of Hob's body with teeth in Hob’s neck, and his elegant hands roving below the water line.

Hob wakes up ravenous, and orders a ridiculously American-sized portion of scrambled eggs, streaky bacon, toast, and coffee strong enough to damn near melt the spoon Hob uses to stir in his sugar. 

Then Hob dresses. Spring has well and truly arrived in New Jersey, and it is warm enough for him to leave off his brown leather jacket and roll up the sleeves of his pullover. The air is tinged with possibility, and the faint reek of the Delaware River, which is different from, but at the same time, exactly like the Thames. The day is bright, and virtually cloudless.

Morpheus leads him through the old neighborhood, telling him the dreams of the colonial buildings that ring the nearby park. He converses with each curious corvid, makes a leg at the local regent of the squirrels, and awakens every sleeping blossom they pass by with a light tap of his elegant fingers.

"You're an honest-to-god Disney Princess," Hob tells Morpheus, crowding him up against the base of a statue of some Yankee war hero or another. Hob kisses the indignation out of Morpheus's mouth, and then adds: "I fucking love it."

"Dr. Gadlen!" someone shouts, from the cement pathway by the water.

Hob detaches from Morpheus and scans the crowd for the source of the call. "Rose!" he shouts back, waving his arm delightedly. Beside him, Morpheus smooths down his coat and hair, too majestic to do something so infantile as wave and whistle.

Rose and Jed pop out of the crowd and begin climbing the verdant green hillock toward them. Trailing behind Jed, a classically beautiful brunette woman veers onto the grass to follow him with a pushchair.

And in the chair sits a little boy. A tow-headed child with a guileless smile and emerald green eyes, exactly like the one depicted in the stained glass behind Morpheus's throne.

There comes a child, Morpheus had said, and Hob feels like an idiot for not connecting the dots sooner. The child. Who Morpheus has never named in front of Hob, but is clearly and obviously the one born to Lyta Trevor-Hall. 

The one born to a woman whose husband was long-dead, but who was intimate friends with a Dream Vortex, who can make things like this happen with a mere thought and a wish.

Hob stands there, mouth agape, staring at the toddler like a complete and utter prat.

Before Hob can say any of this though, Lyta Hall catches sight of the shadow looming over Hob's shoulder. Her face darkens and hardens in fury. She shoves the pushchair at Jed to mind, strides across grass and right up into their personal space, hauls back, and punches Morpheus square in the nose.

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[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

The gang on their wedding days

[Been meaning to post this one for a while — since I’m applying to get married today, now seems like the time.]

Jake steps into the room like a child wandering into his parents’ dinner party.  His bow tie is askew, seams of his jacket misaligned for all that it’s a custom-tailored tuxedo.  If the buttons of his shirt aren’t one hole off from their intended placement, they still manage to convey that impression from across the room.

Rachel feels a rush of affection for him, her first best friend.  The boy who’d run and fought and splashed through mud with her, back before adults started telling her to be careful of her dress and him to be careful of her.  Only he could show up to his own wedding looking like he’s ready to be expelled at any moment.  Only Jake.

And yes, she gets mushy at weddings.  Sue her.

Tom steps up next to Jake, far more elegant in an off-the-rack suit.  Some people actually got the fashionable genes in this family.

Rachel surges across the room.  Tom gets a quick hug, and then she turns all her attention on Jake.

“You only have to look nice for the next three hours,” she tells him briskly.

“Three.  Hours,” Jake repeats.

With expert motions she realigns his… everything, until at the very least the clothes are sitting the way the tailor intended.  She tries to finger-comb his hair, thankful for the heels that put her at an inch above his height, but it’s obvious that he has also been running his hands through it and the style is hopelessly deformed.

“You can survive anything for three hours,” Rachel says as she does all this.  “I’ve seen you do it.”

“But if I mess it up—”

“Then stop, go back, and do whatever it is over.  We’re not exactly on a time pressure, here.  Nobody’s gonna die if you trip at the altar or forget your lines.”

“Okay.”  He stuffs his hands in his pockets, deforming his jacket again.  “Okay.”

She can see him starting to relax as he glances around, shoulders coming down.  Cassie’s place isn’t quite like they remember — it’s been repaired since the war, the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic expanded to nearly five times its original size — but it still feels as close to home as any place does.

“Have a glass of water,” Rachel says.

“But what if I have to pee during the ceremony?”

She rolls her eyes.  “Babysit him,” she mouths at Tom.

Tom gives her a gesture in response that approximates What do you think I’ve BEEN doing?  Whether he means the last four hours or the last twenty-six years is, really, a moot point.

Rachel leaves him to it, and charges off to go check on the others.

************

Marco leans against a tent pole, trying to roll one of the rings across his fingers the way Vegas poker players do with chips.  So far it’s not going well.

“Canapé,” Ax is saying carefully.  He attempts to lean next to Marco, nearly going all the way over.  “Can-nap-peee?”

“Uh, no.”  Marco catches the ring as it makes its third or fourth bid for freedom, stuffing it back into his pocket.  “That…”  He tilts his champagne flute to point.  “…is a canopy.  Or a chuppah, I guess.  Canopee.  Canapay is the little pastry thing you’ve already filched in bulk, don’t think I didn’t notice.”

“Ah,” Ax says.  And then, “This temperature and rate of precipitation is within optimal survival parameters for humans, is it not?”

“Nuh-uh, Ax-Man, I will not be pulled in by your smooth small-talk skills.”

“Did you not wish to make conversation?”  Ax frowns.  And then he stuffs another canapé in his mouth.  “This is making conversation,” he adds through the mouthful.

Marco squints.  “Is it, though?”

“It is indeed.  Did you know that the rotating-wheel can opener was patented in 1870?”

Marco’s response to that one gets cut off when Rachel comes charging across the open tent space like a small freight train.  Tobias is balanced on her shoulder, flaring slightly as she runs.  She yanks the champagne flute out of his hand.  Marco makes a squeak of protest, but Rachel just sets it firmly on a bussing tray and turns back to glare at him.

“What did we agree?” she asks sternly.

Marco rolls his eyes.  “That I’d stay sober-ish for the toast, and not do anything too embarrassing.”

“You’re the best man.  You have one job, Marco.”

“Excuse you, the best man’s one job was that banger of a bachelor-slash-ette party we did Wednesday night.  Did you like the part where we all dived out of a helicopter and flew clear through the lower atmosphere to that rooftop bar?  Because—”

“So you got the drinking out of your system.  You promised.”

“Sober-ish, come on, it’s just one wine-spritzer-thing!”

Rachel turns away from him, looking Ax over.  “You realize you’re going to have to demorph and remorph at some point before the ceremony, right?” she asks.  “And that when you do, someone’s going to have to go through the whole kit and caboodle of getting you into that tux all over again?”

“Yes,” Ax says.  “Yes, I do.”

She stares at him.  He stares back, looking as innocent as it is possible to look while also chewing three jalapeño pastries at the same time.

«You should probably just listen to her,» Tobias suggests.  «By the way, where’s your date?  Not that I quake in fear for the wedding cake or anything, but, uh…»

“Menderash has been instructed not to eat anything on a human plate without seeking my opinion first,” Ax says, somewhat stiffly.

“Yeah,” Marco says.  “So far he’s only eaten two earthworms, a candle, some decorative sand, and part of Collette’s bouquet.  You two have nothing to worry about.”

“Part of Collette’s bouquet?” Rachel demands.  “We can’t send a bridesmaid up the aisle without—”

“Already replaced it, I am on top of this.”  Marco flips his hair back from his face.  “I am a flower master.”

«So where is Menderash now?» Tobias asks.

“Helping Cassie’s mom,” Marco explains.

«And Cassie’s mom is…?»

“Delivering a baby cow.”

Rachel makes a noise like she’s choking on air.  “Doesn’t Michelle have vet techs for that kind of thing?  She’s supposed to be getting ready, not, not…”

“It’s cool,” Marco says.  “She’s got her makeup on, her hair is done perfectly, she’s got an apron-thing to keep her dress nice and gloves over her nails, it was a breech birth so they needed a real doctor and Walter was busy supervising the caterers, she’s got Menderash and Steve helping her out—”

“She kidnapped Jake’s dad?” Rachel demands overtop the continuing babble.

“He said he had never delivered an offspring outside of his own species before, and expressed deep curiosity on the subject,” Ax offers.  “Menderash is a certified medic with andalite training, so they should be well-equipped to assist.”

Marco makes jazz hands in the air.  “It’s a free pre-dinner show!  Cow birth.  Better than icebreakers.”

There’s a very long pause.  Rather than dignify that with a response, Rachel turns and stalks away.

Marco watches her go, halfway awed at her ability to navigate an open yard so well while not only wearing six-inch heels and a multi-layer floor-length dress, but also balancing an enormous updo on top of her head and a red-tailed hawk on her left shoulder.

“Is it just me, or did Jake and Cassie make a monster when they asked her to be maid of honor?” Marco says.

«You wanna take over her responsibilities, then?»

Of course Tobias heard that.  Stupid hawk hearing.

“No thank you!” Marco yells after them.

Cassie, meanwhile, is currently picking her way across the open space under the tent, bunches of dress hiked up to above her knees.  This last is, of course, the source of Rachel’s consternation.

“Here.”  Rachel attempts to pull the wads of skirt out of Cassie’s hands and drop them back to the ground.  “You’re going to wrinkle it.”

Cassie stubbornly refuses to let go.  “You told me not to let it drag on the ground.  If I let it down, it’ll drag.”

“Cassie, Cassie.  That is a hand-tailored Christian Dior gown that I commissioned to be custom-fitted to your measurements.  There is no way that it is too long if you let it…”

Cassie drops the bunches of tulle.  The end of the skirt falls all the way down, where the bottom two inches rest, unmistakably, on the muddy ground.

Rachel somehow manages to wince with her entire body while also not moving at all.

«It’s a look,» Tobias suggests, by way of consolation.  «Kind of.»

“How…?”  Rachel peers closer at Cassie.  “Wait, where are your shoes?”

Cassie shrugs, embarrassed.  “Uh, inside somewhere.  I was having trouble balancing in them.”

“Well that’s why!”  Rachel’s emphatic gesture almost dislodges Tobias.  With years’ experience, he dodges her waving arm and retains his perch.  “The dress was tailored to fit you with shoes on.”

“They were getting stuck in the grass—”

“They’re kitten heels!”

“Yeah, and they’re still heels.”  Cassie looks stuck somewhere between amusement and embarrassment.  “I don’t really do heels.  Sorry.”

“Hey Tobias?” Rachel says, as if to thin air.

«Nuh-uh, leave me out, I want no part in—»

“Remember me telling Cassie that we should really try the whole outfit on before the wedding?”

«Uh.  Yes?»

“Do you also remember Cassie agreeing to it, and then the day of, haring off to go try and save a bunch of vultures instead?  Remember how we tried to reschedule, and there was that ALF mission on the same day so she never showed?  Remember that?”

Cassie clears her throat loudly.  “I think it’s a very nice dress.  It’s fluffy and also comfortable, and look!”  She tucks her hands away.  “It has pockets.”

«Vultures are actually fundamental for waste disposal in ecosystems all over the world, and the poisons used on livestock—»

“Do you think you could at least wear the shoes long enough to go up the aisle?” Rachel asks.  “And maybe even for a few photos as well?”

 “Uh.  I’ll try.”  Cassie hikes her skirt back up (Rachel full-body winces again) and starts picking her way across the lawn back toward the house.

“There’s no way I’m going to be able to un-wrinkle it in time,” Rachel mutters.

«Yep.  So you’re just going to have to live with it.»

“I hate living with it.”

«Wanna go check on whatever monstrosity of a replacement bouquet Marco probably inflicted on Collette?»

“Fine, fine.”

**************

Cassie walks up the aisle in a custom-tailored gown, an edelweiss and valerian flower crown, and slightly muddy Timberland work boots.  The sole on the boots is apparently tall enough that the skirt does, not, in fact, drag on the ground or get tangled in her feet.

«Somewhere out there,» Tobias comments, «Christian Dior is crying into an overpriced silk handkerchief and doesn’t even know why.»

Marco has never more deeply felt the utter unfairness of Tobias being able to use thought-speak while human, because they’re currently standing at the front of the aisle and he can’t even respond.

But Rachel should still count this one as a win.  The gown looks stunning on Cassie, lacy and princess-ruffled while also having the kind of practical cut that allows her freedom of movement.  And, Marco notes with a smirk, freedom to wear her morphing leotard underneath; the purple spandex is just visible peeking out from underneath the white silk neckline.  He’s got morphing clothes under his own tux — never leaves home without ‘em — so really, he can’t judge.

Plus, Michelle’s got her dress and just her dress on by now, and her locs are still tucked into their silver-beaded updo.  Really, the cow birth was just a momentary inconvenience.

“Hi,” Jake whispers, when Cassie reaches him.

She grabs his hand.  Then she stuffs her bouquet into one of his jacket pockets, and grabs his other hand.  “Hi,” she whispers back.

“This is pretty exciting, huh?”

“Yep.”

Ax clears his throat delicately, and they stop talking.

“There is an Earth tradition,” Ax says to the entire assembly, “that the captain of any ship may perform a wedding ceremony at will.”

In the front row of seats, Michelle laces her fingers through Walter’s.

“Although there is no legal precedent for this custom,” Ax continues, “it is nevertheless possible to become ordained as a wedding officiant if one just completes the proper applications.”

One of Jake’s great-aunts mutters something loudly about the lack of rabbi.  Sarah leans over and kicks her in the ankle.  Rachel beams her approval.

“Therefore, I am here to make official through human custom that which has already been forged through affection and respect.”  Ax looks from Jake to Cassie and back.  “The bond between warriors who have fought and faced death together can be neither lessened nor improved upon by mere ceremony.  The honor shared between two such beings who have chosen to risk loving each other in spite of knowing the reality of loss is one that we recognize today.  We can recognize it, but not sanctify it beyond the sanctity of what these two humans have already shared.”

Rachel lets out an audible sniffle.  Marco does his best not to smirk at her.  It’s not that sappy a speech.

“I have been assured that the bond between two humans who like each other far exceeds the bond between those who merely enjoy each other’s company,” Ax says.

And now Marco has to fight the urge to bang his head against the nearest support pole.

“I have witnessed this myself.”  Ax stares around the room.  “I have witnessed compromise and forgiveness, compassion and challenge between these two.  I therefore believe it is correct and proper that this bond be formally recognized by the State of California.  Is there anything you would wish to add?” he says to Jake and Cassie.

Cassie leans up on tip-toe.  Jake bends to meet her.

She whispers her vows into his ear, not bothering to share with the rest of the gathering.  After a moment, tears on his face, he leans in and whispers back.

Recognizing his cue, Marco grabs the rings and passes them over.  They’re boring-looking, in his opinion, plain silicon bands without anything shiny.  But they’re also easy to morph, easy to shovel manure while wearing, easy to wear without catching on anything.  Very Cassie.  Very Jake.

Speaking of which, the Timberlands prove to be a good call.  When the time comes, Cassie stomps the shit out of that ceremonial glass.

**********

In a slight break with tradition, Rachel and Tobias are actually the first ones to go back down the aisle.  Then Marco wheels Collette out, followed by Tom and Melissa, then Jake and Cassie go.  That way, Rachel’s got time to sprint back over to the main tent and check on the banquet.

Most of the tables are arranged correctly, the centerpieces in place and the cards arrayed.  Rachel does a mad sprint of the room, straightening decorations and confirming with the caterers that they got all the instructions about who needs what in their diet.  Between the number of kosher eaters on Jake’s side and the number of vegetarians on Cassie’s, Rachel made the call to go all the way to a fully vegan buffet.  That’s probably going to get some of the relatives complaining about kids these days and rabbit food, but there’s no pleasing everyone.

Rachel deftly switches a few of the placecards, thereby putting Jordan on point to deal with their great-aunt and grandmother who have both already overindulged at the open bar, muttering an apology as she does.  She puts Tobias to work making sure the bows on the backs of chairs are straight, and rushes up to the long table at the front to confirm that the armless chair meant to accommodate Cassie’s bulky skirt is in the correct place.

D.J. is here, playlist at the ready.  Dance floor is clear of grass.  Weather’s holding, but tent covers are on standby.

Slightly sweaty, she rushes back out with a chair under each arm just in time to catch the guests coming across the lawn.

“Everyone except the parents, head off to the cocktail hour!” she calls.  “Jake, Cassie, moms and dads, with me.”

While Marco’s date (a photographer named Dakota) sets up the camera, Rachel goes into a flurry of motion straightening bowties, adjusting hairdos, and touching up makeup.  Steve’s got a spot of cow blood on his forehead, she discovers to her horror, and by the time she’s done scrubbing that off Jake’s managed to get his tuxedo jacket misaligned again.  Finally she steps back, breathing hard, and nods to Dakota.

Everyone smiles.  The camera goes off.

“Okay.”  Rachel claps her hands loudly, because Jake and Cassie are looking ready to stand up and go join the reception.  “That’s one down, just twenty-three to go.”

********

Rather than tossing her whole bouquet all at once, Cassie picks it apart and gives a single flower to every single guest she can find.  When the bouquet itself runs out, she disassembles her flower crown and hands that out piece by piece until everyone’s got at least one blossom.  It just seems fairer that way, she says when Rachel asks.

Several of the traditions, Rachel reflects, seem to be lost on Jake and Cassie.  They cut the first piece of cake… and immediately hand it to Ax.  And then they cut the second piece, and the third piece, and keep right on cutting slices of cake and handing them out to people until Rachel has to step in and wrest the knife away.  She’s grateful that they refrain from any of the food-fighting nonsense, since both their wedding outfits are headed to a charity auction first thing tomorrow morning, but honestly.  They’re supposed to eat the first two slices, not drop half a tier of cake into the black hole of hungry andalite.

Cake served, Marco clinks a fork against a glass.  “Ladies, gentlemen, and proletariats!”

There’s a general murmur as people look around, trying to spot who’s speaking.

With a hand from Jake, Marco climbs bodily onto the banquet table.  “Everyone!” he shouts, and now they’re all looking at him.  At him, and at the champagne flute in his hand.  “Jake and Cassie!”

It gets a polite round of applause.

“Gotta start at the beginning, right?”  Marco looks around the room, grinning.  “So there I am, some snot-nosed three-year-old, minding my own business.  And this chubby, dorky-looking little white kid comes running up to me and is like…”  He leans in.  “‘You wanna be my best friend?’”

He grins at Jake, who is flushing bright red.

“I shit you not, that was his opening line.  ‘You wanna be my best friend?’  So I’m like…”  Marco pantomimes reeling back in shock.  “I dunno man, seems like a lot of commitment to make to a total stranger.  You want explore our options first, maybe get a prenup, see if we’re compatible?  I mean, for all I know five years from now you’re gonna find some younger, hotter best friend and then there I’ll be out on my ear with nothing to show for it.”

There’s a smattering of laughter throughout the room.  Marco visibly draws strength from it.

“But you know what?”  Marco leans down to look around, smiling like he’s got a secret.  “Little dork kept right on showing up to my house and letting me use his television and getting his mom to give me fluffer nutters, and next thing I know it turns out he really is my best friend.  I think he was onto something.

“Anyway, you think that one was bad…”  He raises his eyebrows.  “Couple years later, there we are in first grade, and this girl in teeny-tiny first-grader overalls comes into the room like…”  

Marco claps one hand over the top of his champagne flute and clamps the other under the base, and actually walks a few steps down the table with the determined air of a very small and klutzy version of Cassie.

“And her opening line is…”  Marco raises the flute to his mouth like it’s a microphone, dropping his voice.  “‘You wanna see my moth?’”

Again, there’s a smattering of laughter.  Cassie has a hand over her mouth, halfway doubled over in giggles at the memory.

“Now, us being minuscule and all, I’m like ninety-nine percent sure that there was no double entendre going on here,” Marco says.  “And I have to admit, no one has used that line on me since.  So I say ‘sure,’ because I’m like six years old and this seems like a reasonable question.  She lifts her hand up…”

Marco accompanies this with a pantomime of peering through his own fingers into his champagne.

He looks up.  “And it’s not even a freaking moth!” he cries out.  “Turns out, it’s just some little worm thing.  So I tell her.”  He puts on a snotty voice, mocking his younger self.  “‘That’s not a moth, that’s just some little worm thing.’”

There’s a pause.  Marco glances around the room.  “See if you can tell where this story’s going.”

Marco and Cassie glance at each other.  Cassie’s grinning smugly.

“She puts it in the classroom’s terrarium,” Marco drawls.  “It turns into a rock.  Two weeks later, rock cracks open and out pops a moth.”

The room cracks up again.

“So fast forward another few years, and she’s standing there holding this eight-eyed, venom-fanged thing.  And she’s all like ‘just touch the spider, Marco.  Don’t you want to be a spider, Marco?  Isn’t it cute and fuzzy?’  As if she is completely unaware that she’s holding a giant-ass eight-legged freak.”  Marco takes a sip for strength.  “And right then, I look at Jake.  And I’m thinking Jake, don’t ever let this girl go.  Because if she doesn’t even think wolf spiders are ugly, then she’s got no idea about you.  So here’s to Jake and Cassie.  Made for each other, because no one else will have ‘em.”

Jake pokes Marco in the ankle, but he’s laughing as he does it.

“All right,” Marco says, “brace yourselves, and someone get some more tissues for my second mama, because I’m about to get sappy.  I love you, Jean!” he calls.  “I know we all gotta cry it out sometimes.”

She laughs and flaps a dismissive hand at him, but she’s also misty-eyed already.

“Dudes, I gotta be honest.”  Marco is looking at Jake and Cassie.  “I didn’t think we’d get here.  I honestly did not believe, for a good long while there, that there were gonna be any weddings or graduations or driver’s licenses in any of our futures.  Just seemed like a good idea not to bet on any of us having any futures, you know?  Seemed like it might be the surest option.”

Cassie laces her fingers through Jake’s.  Silently, her mouth pressed into a line, she nods.

“So, uh.”  Marco sniffs, spinning back around and thrusting his champagne flute into the air.  “Here’s to me being wrong, yeah?”

“To Marco being wrong!” Jake echoes, and tosses back his glass.

“To Marco being wrong!” the entire room calls back.

Marco jumps back down, Cassie and Jake catching him as he lands.

**********

After everyone but Menderash and Ax has finished eating, it’s Tom who becomes the next one to tink a fork against a glass for attention.

“In the spirit of full disclosure,” he tells the room, strolling slowly toward the head table.  “I promised my brother there wouldn’t be a horah.”  Tom stops, directly next to Cassie.  “But what he didn’t know is that I’d already made a promise to my new sister-in-law that there would be.  So what’s a guy to do?”

He snaps his fingers.

At this cue, several things happen at once.  The DJ switches to “Hava Nagila.”  Several people mob Jake at once.  Tom grabs Cassie and lifts her bodily over his head, carrying her chair and all to the middle of the dance floor.

With a squeak of laughter, Cassie grabs the top of Tom’s head for balance.  Jake is being hauled out next to her on a chair of his own, supported by Tobias and Menderash and Rachel and James.  Marco and Ax are herding the rest of the gathering, shoving people into a circle and linking arms together as they go.

“I hate you!” Jake calls over the sound of the music and his own fit of giggles.

“Gotta keep the in-laws happy!” Tom yells back, unrepentant.

*********

“You sure you’ve got everything you need?” Rachel asks.

Cheyenne, the head caterer, gives her a double thumbs-up.  The staff are tipped and most are ready to go, having divvied up the several extra schaeffers’ worth of falafel and butternut squash puree and other entrees that Rachel’d set aside for them.  Melissa is set to take over tending bar from here, as planned, and she’s going to keep the groomsmen after for a few minutes for cleanup duty.

“Okay.”  Rachel glances around at where the last of the countertops are getting a quick once-over with disinfectant.  “Okay.  If anything comes up…”

“I have your number.”  Cheyenne smiles and nods.

Pushing back out of the room, Rachel heads for the gift table.  Everything looks like it’s in good order, but she wants to make sure it all gets packed up properly and that none of the cards get lost in the kerfuffle.  It’s mostly donation receipts, at Jake and Cassie’s request, but some of the traditionalists on both sides came with soup tureens or the like —

“Hey.”  Jake catches her by the arm.

Rachel turns to look at him.  “What’s wrong?  Is it the great-aunts?”

“Nothing’s wrong.  It’s all perfect.”  He’s smiling shyly.  “Thanks.”

“I need to check on the gifts,” Rachel says, because she’s a coward who doesn’t know how to do mushy conversations, especially not with Jake.

“The gifts are fine,” he says.  “It’s all fine.  Because you made it that way.  So… thanks.”

When he pulls her into a hug, Rachel can’t resist straightening his hair one last time even as she returns the embrace.  “You realize I do this for fun, right?” she asks, holding him at arm’s length and looking him in the eye.  “Like, I could’ve hired a wedding planner, but honestly why bother?”

He shrugs.  “Doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate everything.  All of it.  Without you, Cassie and I wouldn’t even…”

Then, because this is all getting too honest, Rachel links her arm through his and drags him onto the dance floor for, he’s about to realize, their middle school gym class’s favorite godawful square dance.

*********

When she has do-si-doed Jake within an inch of his life, Rachel tosses him at Cassie.  She pivots around and gives Tobias a flourishing courtesy; he returns it with an equally ridiculous bow.

“It is marvelous, how well they have adapted their balance to compensate for their lack of legs,” Menderash comments to Ax.

“Very true.”  Ax leans next to him against the bar.  They are currently sharing a delicious beverage Melissa has made for them, simply by unscrewing the lid from a nearly-empty jar of olives and handing over the remaining liquid.

It is true, some of the dancers are more talented than others.  Michelle and Walter are synchronized with each other and the beat of the music, even if their choice of moves is not nearly as audacious as the spinning thing Marco and Dakota are doing.  The bride and groom, meanwhile, are looking at their own feet and keep bumping into each other as they move.  Between their relative unconcern with anyone but each other and the broad hem of Cassie’s dress, the other couples are giving them a wide berth.

“Do you wish to attempt such feats?” Ax asks, glancing at Menderash.

Menderash gives a full-body shudder.  He flaps one hand in an andalite gesture that, if translated to English, would approximate fuck that.

Ax grins, drinking more olive juice.

“Have you done such a thing?” Menderash asks.

“Never for very long,” Ax says.

Jake and Cassie have given up on dancing entirely, descending into a giggle fit in the middle of the dance floor as they both attempt to disentangle Jake’s cuff link from the lace of Cassie’s hem.  Rachel swirls by, briefly blocking their view.  She’s switched partners.  Dakota is doing their best to teach Tobias how to waltz while Marco and Rachel are now swing-dancing their way across the dance floor.

As both andalites watch in awe, Rachel spins Marco in a circle, swinging him out and then drawing him back close to her body.  Marco pirouettes, throwing his head back so that his hair flares around his face, and then throws himself backwards.  Rachel catches him neatly around the waist, dipping him nearly to the floor.  Marco braces on her shoulders and she flings him upward with her whole body so that she actually lifts him off the floor for a second before gracefully sweeping him back down.  They separate until just the tips of their fingers are touching, and then spin back together until Marco suddenly swoops under Rachel’s arm, coming up on the far side as she pivots around in time fro him to fall back against her.

Ax is reminded of the way they fight.  There’s something almost joyful in their ferocity on the battlefield.  There’s something almost frightening in their enthusiasm on the dancefloor.  Neither of them seems to know how to do anything by half measure.

One by one the other clusters of dancers have stopped to watch as well.  Jake and Cassie, now sitting hopelessly tangled up in each other, seem quite happy to have the spotlight stolen.

Rachel swoops an arm around Marco’s waist and slides into a back-and-forth tango step.  Within two beats he’s caught on, falling into the same rhythm as her.  When the tempo of the song changes he grabs her shoulder and nudges her into a circular waltz.  They’re unrehearsed, and inexpert, but moving with such force and communicating so rapidly that it doesn’t really matter.

“Yes,” Menderash says softly, “I very much do not wish to attempt to dance.”

Ax smiles at him over the rim of the olive jar.  It’s empty, and in the time it takes him to set it back on the bar and catch her eye, Melissa has replaced it with maraschino cherry liquid.

The song crescendos; Marco leans his full weight back as Rachel flings him into a long spiraling turn that ends with him sliding on his knees clear between her legs, popping up behind her just in time to brace as she tips backward into him.  She spins once, twice, four times, then swings him into a dip so low that his hair brushes the floor.

As the song ends they freeze like that, chests heaving, hair damp with sweat.

They both seem to become aware at once that the whole room’s watching them.  Marco opens his mouth to say something, when Rachel’s smile turns wicked.  That’s the only warning he gets before she opens her arms and lets him drop.  Marco squawks indignantly, throwing out both elbows to catch himself.  He gets ahold of Rachel’s arm and tries to yank her down as well, but ends up pulling himself to his feet as well.

The whole room breaks out into clapping.  Marco sweeps into a low bow.  Rachel visibly considers pushing him over again before deciding against it.  Instead she runs to try and rescue Cassie’s hand-sewn lace hem and Jake’s antique silver cufflinks from their respective owners’ incompetence.

*********

“Hey Tobias?” Rachel says around a yawn.

«Uh-huh?»

Idly they watch as Tom waltzes Cassie’s grandmother around the dance floor.  She’s 4’11” to his 6’4”, so it’s pretty hilarious to witness.  But at least they’re not totally mismatched: each has a single sprig of valerian from Cassie’s bouquet tucked behind one ear.

She and Tobias are sitting on the ground at one corner of the dance floor.  Rachel’s got her shoes off to massage her aching ankles, and Tobias is perched back on her shoulder.  With clever motions of his beak he’s fishing the pins out of her hair one by one, dropping them into her hand as he slowly disassembles her updo.

“How do you feel about never, ever getting married?” Rachel asks.

Tobias drops another bobby pin into her hand.  «Best idea you’ve had all year.»

[internalsealpanic]

Fabulous Friday Evenings

Summary: You were having a really bad day.  Conner decides to help cheer you up and make sure your drunk ass doesn’t face plant on the side walk.

masterlist 

word count:  2,652

a/n: Special thanks to @anothertimdrakestan for helping with the ending and helping with editing! Love you, Elle!

warnings: alcohol and swearing and author does not know how alcohol works.  No one is under the drinking age. This may benefit from more editing. 

"Mosht people are jusht the careful scaffolding of complexshesh," you slurred, your face red, head half buried in your arms, and golden ear cuffs winking under the dim bar lights.

"You somehow still sound like a fucking nerd even you're when drunk," Conner laughed throwing his head back, handsome face stretched with a cheeky smile.  "You look like a mess," he said softly, reaching out for your cheek.

"Fuhk you! Not eberyone can be born too pretty for their own guhd- how did yah evehn know I was here? It was Tim wasn't it! "

"Good guess buuuut it was actually Bart" Conner explained casually taking a seat next to you as you lifted your head momentarily before plopping it back down to stare at the amber gloss of the drink. The light from the ceiling seemed to dance so elegantly in your eyes even as you wrinkled your brows. "That rat," you cursed miserably into your arm. 

Across from you, a pretty brunette shot you two a wink and without looking you could tell Conner flirted in kind. Normally, you'd have the audacity to steal the girl's attention away before Conner could even make a proper move but tonight you were in absolutely no mood to be charming. In fact, you were sloshed. You didn't know whether it was the fourth or fifth drink that did it but there you were sitting next to one of the most attractive people he knew with your makeup smeared and  eyes still swollen and puffy. You kind of just want a portal to open up and swallow you.

 The brunette made a motion to her friends which indicated that she was gonna try her luck and you wished her the best of luck. You bit your soft lips before pressing them into a pout. It took everything in Conner not to kiss you on the spot. Be the responsible one they said. It would be fun, they said. 

"We should go. You're-"

"Have fun," you said, patting him on the shoulder, cutting him off curtly; placing some cash on the bar before leaving. The buxom brunette approached Conner placing a hand on the shoulder you’d just touched moments before. He didn’t seem to notice her, his mind still lingering on the warmth of your hand.  Before she can say anything, he pivots and runs towards you .

The casual slump in your shoulders in place of your usual elegance was a pretty good indication that you would probably fall in a gutter before you got home. Conner highly doubted  you could see straight. 

"I can’t believe Roz let you get this sloshed without checking on you," He joked bringing one of your arms over his shoulder and slinging his own arm around you for balance. You walked like a newborn horse. It was incredibly embarrassing and you wanted to die. Conner, on the other hand, just found it incredibly hilarious.

 "She's out getting into her own brand of sloshed at a bachelorette party,"

"Huh. Didn't know she was the wedding type. Thought she hated going to those,"

"She's the stripper," You deadpanned, sounding abnormally sober.  With that Conner let out a genuinely hearty laugh. You would trade all the martinis, dackories, and margaritas in the world just to get drunk on that laugh. 

"That reminds me," Conner drawled, adjusting his hold feeling just how shaky you were from the late October Metropolis weather pressing you closer to his warm body. You kind of wanted to melt into his side but you had too much pride. "Bart never said why you were out here getting shit faced," You frowned at him but couldn't really muster any sharpness into your expression.

 There were lots of reasons to get 'shit faced' even in shiny Metropolis. You twitched your nose and mouth side to side gathering the makings of a sentence. Where do you even start? Your little sister got suspended, your mother (who somehow found out you were in Metropolis) is either demanding money or for you to drop everything to go back home to help around the house (translation: help out with the bills while babysitting your siblings), Bats and some other league members were on your ass for the last mission (probably the only thing on this list you found reasonable),  this morning, you got fired from your library job so they could hire Marco's girlfriend (who is in fact a perfectly nice person which means you can't really hate her), or the dozens of little annoyances such as Bart not being able to keep his trap shut. 

"This week was just a little much," 

A long moment of silence passes between you. Uncharacteristic for Conner but it was cute that he thought silence would make you fess up. 

"You know I could have gone home on my own. That brunette looked like she was up for a good time," 

"Yeah right. Also you're welcome." 

"You're right. Thank you for getting blue balled this fine evening to escort me" you didn't want to be prickly but Conner was being too nice and that made your skin crawl. Why couldn’t he be mean to you right now like a normal person? 

"First off, she wasn't even my type-" You raised a brow. 

"Kon, her tits were the size of Jupiter-" 

"Did you really  just say 'tits'?" 

You threw him a scowl clearly sobering up from irritation.

"Shut up. Point iiiis, you didn't have to-"

"You just said-"

"Oh for the love of- yes, I said tits. Speaking of which you should be staring at some instead of having to lug my sorry ass around on this fabulous Friday evening."  Your hand fluttering, gesturing vaguely in the air.

"Eh. There'll be other Fridays" Kon shrugged.  Pulling you closer and some selfish part of you felt relieved. 

----------

Much to your surprise (you really ought not to be), Roz wasn't home yet which meant you had to dig out the keys from the secret hiding spot- another hassle. You reached out peeling a hilariously well concealed hole in the wall and fished out the set of jingling keys. Conner looked like he was between amusement and bewilderment. Good enough.  At least, this stopped Conner's 30 minute TED Talk about the new 70s sitcom he'd found. 

You two entered the shoe box apartment clumsily thanks to your disastrous limbs. 

You blew out a breath and muttered a thanks as Conner helped you plop onto the couch.  Though, it was more like gravity decided to magnetize your body to the couch and Conner just let it happen. 

You shut his eyes for a moment wrapping a ragged blanket around you. You made a mental note to raid the thrift store for a new one. Preferably one void of holes. 

"So what's up and don't you dare say it was nothing. I've never seen you this hammered before," He said handing you a mug of steaming hot chocolate. 

"Does it occur to you that I might get hammered like this often and you might just not see it? Who knows maybe I'm actually a functional alcoholic?" 

"Ok, first off, you are barely functional. Second, that might be your weakest deflection yet.  Try again," 

"Ok... did it occur-" 

"I didn't mean it lite- just tell me what happened. Everyone's worried," 

You stared at the steam rising from the fresh cup of cocoa. It was none of Conner's business. It was no one’s business.  Your friends were too goddamn nice. Blowing out another breath, you said "You might wanna sit down too," 

Conner takes his own mug of hot cocoa and sits next to you because for some reason eye contact made you a better liar and Conner for all his dumb decisions wasn't gonna let  you off the hook that easily.  You shifted uncomfortably and muttered about either Cassie or Roz ratting you out. He assumed it was the eye contact thing. Conner felt a little offended. He might not be Tim but he’s smart enough to figure it out on his own. Despite his hurt feelings and bruised ego, he decided to table that and focus on the current issue or, likely, issues.

 "Do you want it in alphabetical order?" 

"Please tell me you can actually do that," Conner teased with a wide grin. You couldn’t fight off a smile forming on your face. "Sadly, I am not Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne. My brain cells work like a normal person's,"

"Didn't you die?" 

"Death only fixes stupid when you stay dead. You've seen Red Hood and whichever other Ex-Robin has been to the pearly gates,"

"You say that as if Jason wouldn't tell the big man to fuck off," 

You blinked and turned your head up to the ceiling. "Ok that's true," You conceded, your mouth twitching rapidly from side to side making you look like an exasperated rabbit.  Cute.

"So what's up?" 

 All the good mood from the past few minutes dissipated in an instant. You looked down solemnly at the still steaming mug. You were silent for what felt like an eternity. 

 "It's family- Immediate.  And the source of all evil-"  

 "Lex Corp?" 

You snorted a shy tired smile cracked across your face.  You shook your head. Those little gestures just make Conner feel a little warmer. You, on the other hand, cursed at how easily Conner could make you laugh. You were  supposed to be sad damn it. 

"Money," Conner knew immediate family was always a sore spot for you. No one knew the specifics except Roz but that was inevitable when you're cousins.  Money was also a sore spot and based on your near dead tone. You’ve either lost a lot of it or you’re in a tight spot but not ready to elaborate. 

"Wanna try buying a lottery ticket?"

"What?"

"Who knows you might get lucky?" 

"You could have gotten lucky you if you-" 

"Are you seriously gonna keep bringing that up?" 

"Yes, most likely. Depends," 

"On what?!" 

"On whether I can think of something funnier to give you shit about or if you can convince me-whatever the fuck you're thinking of doing stop!"Conner's cheeky grin did not disappear nor did the faint flush on your cheeks. 

"I wasn't thinking of anything, you sick pervert" he laughed. You really should have been exasperated with Conner. You tried damn it. You looked at him skeptically before violently letting his head rest on Conner’s shoulder causing the other boy to fall over. 

"Aaaaaaawwwww babe , if you wanted to cuddle you could have just said so," 

You wanted to. In fact,  both of you wanted to. But unfortunately neither of you were martian and neither of you was willing to say jack.  You closed your eyes trying to pretend Conner wasn't a little shit. Conner radiated too much smug for that though. 

"Shut up," You mumbled into Conner's shoulder already feeling sleep pull him under. You clung to him. Maybe just for tonight you can indulge in this. Just for a little while you can cling to Conner's warmth. Maybe in the morning your head will ache too much to remember this. Waking up alone wouldn't be too painful then. Hopefully. 

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

You woke up feeling like a troop of Can Caning hippos decided to host a live performance all over your head. You sighed remembering that you had in fact run out of Aspirin just days before so you decided on just lying there and praying that Roz also needed Aspirin and  had more energy to run to the store. 

You settled in nuzzling in to the warm- 

Wait. It was October. 

Nothing in the apartment should be warm. 

NOTHING. 

Then, you heard it.  A LOUD snore. It honestly sounded more like the roar of an engine than anything.  Everything else followed. The slow rising and falling of the chest beneath you, the press of stubble against your forehead, and the strong arms loosely wrapped around you. 

Yeah. You died again. Yeah. You finally went to heaven. Yup. You were ok with that. You were  definitely 100% A Ok with this if this was heaven. Being held tenderly by the guy you liked while you got a good night’s sleep was definitely heaven. God, you were such a sap.  

How the hell you missed all of that baffled you.

 Oh wait. Dancing hippos. Fuck. 

Your head felt like it was threatening to crack open but somehow you honestly could not mind even if you tried. You were  laying on top of a hot (literally and metaphorically) guy mutually cuddling. You nuzzled into the junction between Conner’s neck and shoulder in an attempt to steal more warmth. Sure, you were probably gonna go deaf from the snoring. Sure, you were definitely irritated by the stubble pressed against your face. And sure, you would probably die of embarrassment once Conner woke up. You could worry about all that later. All you could think about was how nicely your arms fit around Conner’s neck and how Conner’s arms wrap around you a little tighter in return. 

Click. 

Click. 

You could hear the distinct sound of your own camera shutter. Each sound chipped away at your peace of mind. You lifted your head only to see Roz holding your camera. 

TAKING PICTURES. 

Your cousin was nothing if not a petty opportunist. 

“I would tell you to get a room buuuut the only bedroom iiiiis preeeeeeetty occupied,” Roz drawled  smugly way too pleased with herself. You opened his mouth to ask but you’d already made the mistake of walking in on Roz and a guest once and you were  pretty sure you needed more therapy for that than you did for your murder. You just sighed as Roz took another picture.

“Come on, (y/n), smile a little,”

“I’m not smiling for your blackmail material,”

Roz gasped trying to sound scandalized. She failed, only sounding amused beyond belief. “It’s only blackmail if you’re ashamed of it. Personally, I think you’re scoring big time,”

“Roz please just fuck off before you wake him up,”

“Too fuckin’ late for that. He’s been awake for awhile,” 

You could�� feel Conner smiling into your hair and his arms wrap around you  a little tighter. You tried to straighten up. To tower over him. To look intimidating. 

But��. you couldn’t. You were kind of trapped because, yanno,  super strength.

 You were seething and threw a scowl at Conner who only chuckled at you in response.  

“You’re never gonna let me live this down, are you?” You snarled, clearly exasperated and feeling the hippos start their encore performance. 

“ Mmmmmm, it depends,” Nope. The hippos did not only come back for an encore. They brought friends. Based on the absolutely smug look on Conner’s face, you were in for an entire parade. 

You let out a breath not sure if you wanted to play this game but not really seeing any other options.  “On what?“

Conner paused and hummed and hummed and hummed some more as if he was actually thinking but you knew from the crook of his lips that he had this planned out. Maybe not this exact scenario but something close“Go out on a date with me,”

You blinked then rolled your eyes theatrically enough that your head rolled along with it.   “And be seen with you in public?” You teased, an almost sheepish smile tugging at your features.

Yeah, Conner wasn’t exactly expecting you to say yes.

 “Yeah. Sure. Why not?” You said playing it off as casually as possible but you couldn’t help but mirror the absolutely goofy grin plastered on Conner’s face.  His happiness was infectious. You felt weightless. It was probably the fact that you were floating with him but you were pretty sure you were just on cloud nine. You were doomed. Definitely, inevitable, indubitably doomed. Even though everything has been shit up to now. The happiness radiating off of Conner was enough to make everything feel a little better.  

Thank you so much for reading!

tag list: 

@idkmanicantenglish

@batarella (I thought you might like it?)

[ilkkawhat]

Rating: General Audiences Relationships: Nick Stokes & Cassie McBride, Nick Stokes & Sara Sidle Characters: Nick Stokes, Sara Sidle, Cassie McBride Word Count: 3,059 Additional Tags: Angst, Episode: s06e05 Gum Drops, Rescue, Father-Daughter Relationship, Adoption, Possible new fic series??? who knows it's 2021 anything can happen Summary: A brief dive into Nick's feelings surrounding Cassie's rescue, and what may have happened to her afterwards.

read on ao3

“Let me out.” 

He couldn’t say the words at the time. Could only choke out a literal cry for help, though there were plenty of words that his brain was firing—and missing—but those three words in particular were just some of the few pleading thoughts he had while he was still enclosed in a glass coffin—one that was ready to collapse at any given second—why didn’t they see that? Why did they all stand on top of it? Why didn’t they open it immediately just to give him some air, just brush the damn ants off, no extinguisher needed.

He didn’t understand why it took so long to get him out. 

To rescue him. 

Maybe it’s cause that’s not what they do. They never really get to, always showing up when the rescue fails.

Or when it never arrives in the first place.

So they don’t really know how to rescue someone. Scramble around because they’re used to placing evidence markers and taking pictures, and unless it’s raining there’s really no rush because well, what’s the need?

And it hadn’t been known to him at the time that they were indeed aware the fan was going to die, that he was going to run out of air—he could only hope the desperation in his screams would tell them that, the ignored cry for help as they all left the hole, left him. 

Did they just assume because the unearthed the coffin that he would suddenly be able to breathe even with the condensing, scratched kept closed? Figure, “we still have another hour or so until the air runs out entirely , maybe even more since he’s not actively breathing.”

He didn’t understand their odd sort of...patience with the situation. Even Grissom took the time to calm him down before the lid was opened. 

His patience, however, in this rescue mission he’s taken upon himself despite Sara’s warnings, her doubt that it may not have a happy ending; is completely gone.

He’s not had any sleep since they started the case. Granted, he’s not had much sleep at all in the past five months but his senses are as sharp as ever, his eyes hyper focused looking for anything that doesn’t belong in the lake’s waters or forested banks. 

Like the body of a little girl.

Or more gum drops.

He almost thinks he sees a trail of them floating in the disturbed water as they pass through, beacons of lights waving over—though he feels like he’s doing a better job than the supposed actual patrolman operating the boat. He’s waving his flashlight all around him, while theirs seems to remain still. 

Then again, he’s the one acting like he’s going to “rescue a person, not recover a body.”

Yes, he knows that’s not usually the case.

He remembers being on the other end of that ray of light searching for a lost soul, remembers how close he was to losing his life, hanging by a last thread that was about to snap—how that light was really a rescue in itself in the darkness that entrapped him. His only light had been shot out to keep himself alive, only a dim green glow to remind him where he was. 

Sara’s words continue to echo, their conversation playing on a loop as that small part of his brain tries to convince him not to get his hopes too high.

But luckily, he proves himself wrong.

“Stop the boat,” Nick commands, his light shining on another fragile thread, one he hopes is not already broken.

“Stop the boat,” he repeats as he throws off his hat to get full view, tossing it aside and nervously gripping the flashlight in his hand. His heart hasn’t raced this fast since it nearly burst in the box.

“Let me out,” he echoes, but it’s not a broken plea. It’s a determined one. He’s not even going to wait for the boat to stop, his legs are itching to run to the pair he sees sticking out between the branches. A pair of shoes small enough for a ten year old girl.

“Let me out,” he says again but he doesn’t wait for any sort of response, nor was he asking for one. If anything, it was for himself. The permission to take the plunge as he jumps out of the boat, not even caring if the water is still deep. He runs as fast as he can through the water and as he approaches his heart soars before it shatters when his light shines onto what he immediately assumes is a corpse. 

There’s a slice on her neck, the classic slit of the throat that would kill anybody within seconds.

Her skin is pale, far too pale to still be alive though sure, it’s cold enough that his own skin is paling too, even more than that, it’s shaking. Is she shaking as his fingers press against her skin, or is it just him?

There’s still a pulse. It’s weak, it’s fading, but it’s there. Or is it the pulse that’s beating out of his own fingers?

There’s still rope around her wrists. Why would she leave it on?

There’s still a piece of gum in her hand, the final breadcrumb that she wasn’t able to put down because this is her resting place. Her premature grave.

But there’s still life in her yet, because like Nick, she’s a survivor. 

And she’s being rescued. 

“Hang on, baby,” he whispers as his soaked hand strokes her dry, matted hair. “I got you. You’re going to be okay.”

He hears the patrol call for the paramedics. They attempt to move her but Nick advises against it. 

At least, not immediately. 

And this is the part he hates the most, that he hated the most when he was the victim. 

Click. Flash. 

The picture of the living dead girl, another for the red room of his own photography of death and violence that haunts his dreams.

He mentally places it next to the picture of himself that he accidentally saw in Grissom’s office one day. 

A morbid sense of hope washes over him; if he was rescued from a horrific crime and has been able to go back to his job—back to his life, there’s hope for Cassie, too. 

Right?

The paramedics were not too far behind, and he had almost hoped that the flash from the camera may have shocked Cassie back to a full state of being. Crying and in deliriously tremendous shock, maybe, like he was when he was rescued; but in the same way as a baby cries when its born, it would be a comforting sign of life while this, right here is just...tragic? Hopeless? Despair? 

He doesn’t know what he really expected, as this rescue is less triumphant than he thought it would be after everything that led to this moment. It feels more...depressing, like they’re still somehow too late. Perhaps it’s due to how he seems to be the only one driven enough, how there was almost a suffocating amount of people crowding his scene. 

Cassie, on the other hand, has nobody.

Nobody but him.

He rides back with her, holding that same hand still clutching her last candied beacon of hope and he can’t tell if it’s still water dripping off of his face, or if tears are streaming as he remembers how his hand was held, how his family—both blood and found—were there for him. How they comforted him. Soothed him. Reassured him that this would never happen again. 

Kept telling him that he wasn’t actually dead.

He texts Sara and Greg, tells them he got her. Being the lead on the case, he instructs them on what to do yet somehow, he feels like he’s lost that role having abandoned them for his own selfish savior complex. 

They still do what he asks anyway.

When they get to the hospital, he’s turned away, because he’s not family. He’s shaking but not just from the cold of his wet clothes slapping against his skin, but from the anger as he lashes out, telling them she doesn’t have any, not anymore, and she needs someone. They express their “sympathy” but the best they agree to is calling him when she’s out of surgery.

He makes more calls, wondering who can be there for her, is there any family left? 

There’s not. 

Sara brings him a new change of clothes. Fresh pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a hoodie that he packed for the nights. He’s glad she chose that, as he hunches over in the waiting room. 

“She’s got nobody, Sar,” he sniffles, rubbing his hands together. Even the fourth cup of coffee still hasn’t warmed him up. “Who’s...Who’s gonna take care of this little girl?”

“You know what’s going to happen,” Sara sighs. “She’ll end up in the system.”

“Is it...is it bad?” he dares to ask, knowing he’s crossing a line, he doesn’t meet her eyes when he asks it. Just stares into the swirling black sea between his hands.

“Is what bad?” she puts a hand on his back, sliding up and down beneath the hood. 

“The...the adoption system. Just bein’...passed around like that. Thrown into an already established family, not sure if you’re gonna…”

“Fit in?”

Nick nods.

“It’s...it’s not easy. Doesn’t always happen right away, and when it does, it can...it can be a gamble. You know that well enough from the things we see.”

“Yeah,” he nods into his chest. 

They sit in silence for few more minutes.

“You don’t hafta be here, ya know,” he shrugs. “G’s already halfway back to Vegas.”

“I know.”

“A-And Grissom’s flight probably landed, he might have more cases to assign.”

“I’m not the only CSI he’s got,” Sara smirks. 

“Gonna be a while till she gets outta surgery, so they tell me at least.”

“You trying to get rid of me?”

“Nah,” he pulls a face. “I just...I hope you’re not doing this cause…”

“Go on, say it. Cause I feel guilty?”

“That’s...not...but sort of…” he mumbles.

“I don’t feel...guilty. It feels good to have found her alive. I didn’t want her to be dead, Nick.”

“I know,” he sighs.

“And I don’t want you to...to be so hurt every time something like this...happens. You’ve changed, Nick and I can’t...I don’t know if it’s necessarily for the better.”

He finally meets her eyes. His face pale, wet and weary. Dark circles under his eyes that he typically conceals with a light coating of makeup, cause he knows people will just worry. His hair’s dried now, sticking up in all directions. 

Anybody would think, and the patrons of the hospital most certainly do at this point, and even Sara seems to think that he’s nothing more than a broken mess.

He’s not. 

“I think it is,” he tells her in a surge of confidence in his voice.

He expects her to be mad.

Instead, she smiles at him with pride. 

“Well...seems like you might be right. I know this case kind of...got under our skins a bit but...I think you did a good job,” Sara tells him, and with a final press to his shoulder to keep him grounded and humble, she walks away, knowing before he even tells her what he’s about to do as she passes by a father walking with a small girl through the entrance to the hospital.

That’s when his mind is made up and he makes more calls, talks to more people including the child services agent assigned to Cassie’s case. He finishes paperwork for the case file, and for an application. He knows it’s going to take time to get approved, just as its going to take time for Cassie to recover enough for him to even...ask her if that’s something she would...want. 

And that’s when the doubts sink in, what if she doesn’t want that? Doesn’t want him? She doesn’t even know him, all he is to her is the guy that found her. And he would understand better than anybody else the mistrust in strangers. And even if he’s a member of law enforcement, a public servant, somebody you’re supposed to be able to trust, what if he would just...mess it all up? Would it even work with his schedule? Unless he started taking more time off, he supposes. Less voluntary overtime—though Ecklie’s trying to cut down on that anyway. 

The fears don’t settle, even with all the votes of confidence he receives from nearly everybody who accounts for him as a person worthy of being a father. 

But more than that, he’s afraid of being a replacement to her, instead of what he really hopes to be; a connection. 

And when he gets the card that she hand-draws for him, that fear goes away.

He doesn’t get to see her right away after the surgery, but the minute visiting hours open up again, he walks to the room with a case file in hand. He does his best to keep himself together, but shows the cracks as he can’t hide his empathy for her pain, though he doesn’t allow himself to fully cry and make her feel even worse. 

Instead, he does what he’s always done best, and listens to her. Holds her arm and keeps her grounded, too, and she gets more and more confident as she continues to talk—though some parts are harder than others. 

“You’re doing great, sweetheart, go on,” he encourages her with a smile. 

They take breaks for her to rest her vocal chords. When her voice goes out, she uses the notepad and he waits patiently, letting her lead their conversation.

She’s just as smart as Nick expected, asking her own questions and discussing the pictures of evidence in the folder. While he’s never quite been a teacher, she’s the best student he’s ever had.

When the story is done, she loses composure and he sits on the edge of the bed, hugging her as her fists ball the sweatshirt stained with tears. 

“You are so brave, Cassie. You are the bravest little girl I’ve ever met,” he comforts her, silent tears streaming down his own face and falling into the same dry, matted hair as they did before. 

She doesn’t say much after that, but when she calms down enough and visiting time comes to an end, she asks one final question that he knew was coming, yet was still unprepared for.

She can’t even say the words. Writes it on another page in the notebook.

“What’s going to happen to me now?” 

He still doesn’t know if he was the right person to answer this question, if this was something that her counselor should answer but he’s both too excited and too anxious to keep waiting.

“Well, honey, you’re...you’ll be going with Ms. Nancy, you met her, she’s going to take you to a place that’s...that’s like a hotel, u-until you can find a new family…” He doesn’t feel confident in his explanation, winces in expecting her to lash out, “I don’t want a new family!” which is exactly what he reads on her face as the crayon rolls from her hand.

“And I...sort of threw my name into the hat, that you could come stay with me, but only if you wanta—”

“I’d like that,” she nods, and smiles.

“Really?”

She nods again more fervently.

“I wanted to keep it a surprise,” a voice startles Nick, the aforementioned counselor he had been consulting with enters the room with a wide smile on her face. “Before you came by, I had a moment with Cassie and discussed it. There’s still some hurdles of paperwork to go through, but by the time she’s out of the hospital, she can go to her new home. With you.”

“That’s...That’s wonderful,” he cries, quickly wiping his tears but they don’t stop coming, especially not when Cassie reaches for his wrist and pulls him back to the bed, reaching out in the same way he reached out to his own surrogate father when he was brought back from the brink of despair. 

That’s what he wanted to happen, at least.

“What’s going to happen to me now?” 

It’s the same question he asked himself when he woke up in the hospital in the restrained trance, tied up in tubes and wires, fearful that he would never return to his life as it was before—and in a way, he never would. There’s pieces of Nick that are still buried, just as there are pieces of Cassie dropped along the trail of gum.

“I don’t know,” he tearfully admits. His application was still in process. The child services counselor, while holding respect for him did seem to kind of...judge him for being so desperate about this. Suspicious, even. He knows everybody would attest to his character but knows that he’s still bogged down with a lot of baggage, no matter how well he’s doing on his journey through this life.

He’s uncertain of the future, both his and Cassie’s, but one thing he is certain of—

“No matter what happens,” he holds her arm again, uses his other hand to brush the hair out of her face, cup her cheek. “Where you go, who you end up with, I will always be there for you, okay? You can call me anytime you need—”

He digs out his own card, not hand drawn and just adorned with his job title and phone number, and knows it’s not much to offer to someone who’s just lost everything, but knows the weight of what he does offer, in two words that he once vowed to his own savior.

“I promise.”

Cassie may not understand all of what’s going on between the shock and her inexperienced age, but she does seem to understand what a promise is, and what a promise means. 

She puts her hand on top of Nick’s, and even though she’s said it before in writing, she says it again out loud with the biggest show of strength he’s seen in any survivor, not even in himself.

“Thank you.”

[jmblyajones]

Euphoria: And Salt The Earth Behind You (1X8)

1. I am so fucking nervous. I got the literal shakes watching the previous episode summaries

2. Y’all I was about congratulate Rue and “Woop woop woop” hype her in my room, then sis said “UNLESS”

3. I know there are a lot of people that hype up Rules romantically but I really love Rules as a friendship. Friendships like that are rare. Especially with how fast they clicked.

4. I love that the makeup and outfits have meaning to them. I mean a lot of films do but this show is dependent on it a bit and it’s nice to see the thought process

5. FUCK NATE JACOBS

6. Jules’s outfit is giving me little Mermaid tease! Cassie is giving me classic Hollywood vibes. Kat is giving me dominatrix, “GET ON YOUR FUCKING KNEES” type tease lol

7. So Fez didn’t go to jail thank ya Jesus!! I would’ve hid some pills under the grandma tbh

8. Idk who Nate picked to be his “show” date for prom but I was I was feeling her fuck you attitude! He told her to get her HEELS off the dashboard and sis said BET

9. Okay Rue... giving out foreshadows 😰

10. I’m definitely with Maddy on this. Why the hell does Nate have this girls ass cheeks out? Tf. I was reaaally hoping to see maybe a Jacob Elordi dick slip... whoopsy. Homeboy has been aggressive but the way he grabbed Maddy’s face was a lot

11. Has Jules been in the stall that whole time? wtf I feel like she doesn’t know what she wants. I hate when people don’t fully communicate what they want to people so no one is confused. Obviously Rue wants to be with Jules but Jules is playing the field.

12. IF KAT DOESNT GET HER FUCKING DOMINATRIX ASS UP AND GET HER MANZ I SWEAR!

13. “what’s my favorite word??!” 💃🏾💃🏾💃🏾

14. Rue finger gunning Nate on the dance floor had me falling the hell out

15. THANK FUCKING GOODNESS KAT! I am so happy she expressed her feelings to Ethan. Like my heart is soo fucking happy! I’m going to literally die happy right now! Ethan literally said that if anyone gets hurt he’s gonna try to make sure it was him! 😭😭 WHAT A MANZ!!

16. Oh shit oh shit oh shit! Is Lexie going to hook up with RUE??!?!... in my dreams I guess :///

17. I’m like half way in and I am feeling fucking scared right now. Tv shows like to ruin my happiness dude. Gosh I can’t

18. Rue spilling that piping hot tea all over Nate’s dumb truck stupid ass (I can’t even call him ugly because I’d be lying 🤦🏾‍♀️)

19. Nate scores a touch down and his papa Jacobs was like....

20. Okay that scene with Papa Jacobs and Nate was some powerful shit. I’m just gonna take the ranes on this one and say he need to be looked up in an institution. He’s got a lot of issues the father can’t help him with

21. Uhhhh, I’m sorry but Jules fell in love with Ana after one weekend?... okay

22. Fez is trying to kill his supplier? Oh gosh this can’t end well.... Wait who is he robbing?-Nah fam, that doctor is moving way to fucking slow for me man... Fez really just walked pass the kid after he pistol whipped his father lmao

23. Okay I hate to say this (okay not really) but Rue and Jules trying to run out of town was such a stupid idea. Watching them at the train station I kinda feel like their relationship isn’t a balance (like I thought it was)... it actually made me feel uncomfortable. I know Rue was feeling it when Jules left on the train without her so I can’t imagine the road Rue has ahead. I am proud that Rue didn’t go on the train. However Rue feeling so bad she had to do coke

24. Watching the flashbacks of Rue and her family and I can just feel very sympathetic for the mom. Imagine the stress of losing your husband and raising a teenager who is addicted to pills (not to mention when her mom drug tested her she tries to lie about it). Shit like that isn’t easy so I definitely feel for the mom.

25. OKAY ZENDAYA! WORK THEM VOCALS!!

26. Fuck this ending! I’m am mad as hell! Nate was untouched damn it!! Not to mention this gave me indications that Rue is dead!

Bring on the theories lmao!

Ps. I love Zendaya and Hunter’s outfits at the end, yellow is their color!

- I am happy Maddy and Nate acknowledged that they are toxic for each other and don’t need to be together. That’s a big step. I guess we’ll have to see in s2 if actions come into play

- Elordi’s performance has been top tier this season.

- I think that was the homecoming dance so this season was in the span of a semester so next season might be spring semester?

- I am surprised Cassie didn’t take McKay to homecoming. He wasn’t in the episode AT ALL

- Rue was literally wearing her dad’s clothes all season!

- y’all I forreal gotta see some Ethan/Kat video edits up in here 👏🏾👏🏾

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Hi! As someone who’s literary opinion I really trust, I was surprised that you’re a twilight fan? I know almost nothing except commen knowledge things about that series, and I always assumed it was actually bad/un-feminist. What is it that you like so much that others seem to miss? I’m just genuinely curious about your take on the hate it always seems to get vs. it’s actual quality. I’m not gonna judge bc animorphs is also one of those books where you see it and assume it’s bad.

In over 14 years of loving this series, I’m not sure anyone has ever asked me why I enjoy it instead of simply trying to convince me that I’m wrong to do so.  So thank you for that.

First and foremost, I love the Twilight saga because of the vivid detail in Stephenie Meyer’s writing style.  The descriptions are so lush and dense with sensory information that you can practically bite down on them as you read.  Bella and Jacob aren’t just sitting on the beach; they’re sitting on a gnarled log of driftwood, worn smooth at the top from where so many Quileute teens have sat upon it during bonfires but still uneven enough to rock on its branches when Bella suddenly stands to rage at her own mortality.  Meyer describes that log in Twilight, so tangibly and with such economy of detail, that we recognize it immediately when Bella and Jacob return to that spot in Eclipse.  I’ve always disliked the movies, because I’ve always felt that the best part of Meyer’s writing simply did not translate well to the screen.

Secondly, I love the feminism.

Okay, let’s take a quick pause to let everyone gasp and clutch their pearls over me calling Twilight a feminist work.  I will address the criticisms later.  For now, please just hear me out.

Twilight strikes me as a premier example of what Hélène Cixous means when she calls for “women’s writing,” or writing for women, about women, by women, with a strong focus on the concerns and strengths and desires of womanhood.  This is a series about building and maintaining close relationships, both romantic and platonic.  It celebrates beauty, and love, and care.  Bella moves to Forks because she recognizes that her dad is lonely while her mom is quite the opposite, torn between family priorities.  She doesn’t simply subsume her interests to those of other people, but instead actively chooses how and when and where to express her love for her birth family and her found families.  Most of the other major decisions throughout the story — Alice “adopting” Bella, Carlisle moving the family to Alaska, Jacob becoming werewolf beta, the Cullens going up against the Volturi, etc. — are motivated by care and devotion for one’s family and friends.  Even the selfish or morally ambiguous character choices are shown to be motivated by love.  Rosalie tells Edward that Bella died because she genuinely thinks it’ll help him move on.  Victoria creates an army that nearly destroys Forks because she’s avenging James.  Alice abandons Bella and the others before the final battle because if she can’t save her entire family, then she’ll settle for saving her lover before letting him die in vain.

Not only is there a striking concern with love and care, but there’s also a strong commitment to avoiding violence.  Bella’s eventual vamp-superpower proves to be preventing violence and protecting others, an awesome character decision that I’d argue gets set up as early as the first book.  She lives in a violent world — this is a YA SF story, after all — but she has the power to suppress violence and create peace, both in herself and others.  I was already sick of “power = ability to inflict damage” in YA stories well before I knew the word “patriarchy.”  Twilight was one of the first books to convey to me that power could be refusing to do harm in spite of hunger or anger, that power could be shielding ones’ family, that power could be about building enough friendships and alliances to have an army at one’s back when facing an enemy too strong to take on alone.

Closely connected to all of that love and care, I love how much Twilight is about navigating teenage girlhood.  Is it empowering, intersectional, or all-inclusive?  Hell no.  Does it still dare to suggest that a completely ordinary teenage girl could have valid concerns about the world?  Yep.  The main conflict of the story, as Stephen King so derisively explained, is about the romantic entanglements of a teenage girl, and the book therefore has no literary merit.  (To quote my dad’s response: “Bold words from the guy who inflicted Firestarter on the world.”)

There is, indeed, a lot of romance in Twilight.  There are a lot of clothes.  Alice and Rosalie especially spend a lot of time on makeup, and hair, and choosing the prettiest cars and houses.  Twilight embraces all the stereotypically “girly” concerns of adolescence, and makes no effort to apologize for or condemn them.  Bella isn’t particularly good at performing them — she likes but doesn’t excel at shopping, fiercely defends her ugly car as ugly, hobbles through prom on crutches — but she can still enjoy the feeling of being pretty in a sparkly dress while dancing with her sparkly boyfriend.  And Twilight, like Animorphs with Cassie, takes the daring step of treating that feeling as valid.

Speaking of sparkles, I love the commitment to the fantasy concept in Twilight, including the myriad mundanities that Meyer brings with that commitment.  If you have super-speed, why not use it to play extreme baseball?  If you’re a mindreader with a clairvoyant sister, why wouldn’t you two play mental chess games?  I couldn’t tell you, after seven seasons of Buffy or eight of Vampire Diaries, what Spike or Damien or Angel or Stefan does all day when not brooding or lurking in the bushes to creep on human women.  I can tell you what the Cullens get up to.  Emmett and Rosalie work on their cars, usually by holding them overhead one-handed.  Carlisle and Alice read plays, and sometimes talk the whole family into home Shakespeare productions.  Edward and Carlisle debate theology, Emmett and Jasper have dumb athletic competitions, Edward and Esme play music, Alice manipulates stock markets, the twins go shopping online, etcetera.  The Cullens feel real, feel like the vampires next door, in a way that Louis and Lestat simply do not.

To get to the elephant in the room — I just described Twilight as a feminist text! — let’s talk about the other thing the Cullens do for fun: they have sex.  Weird sex.  Kinky furniture-breaking sex.  Sex that Emmett (who would know) compares to bear-wrestling.  These books suck with regards to queer representation, but they are sex-positive.  They feature an old-school Anglican protagonist offering his daughter-in-law a medical abortion.  They treat Edward’s desire for sex only within marriage and Alice’s desire for sex outside of marriage as both being valid.  Like I said, not groundbreaking, even by the standards of 2005, but still more than most teen novels do even today.

There’s a passage from Breaking Dawn that people love to pull out of context as “everything wrong with Twilight in two paragraphs” because it describes Bella waking up the morning after sex with bruises on her arms.  That moment is shocking out of context, to be sure — but in context, it’s the end result of an in-depth consent negotiation that lasts four books.  Bella says that she’d like to become a vampire.  Edward says okay, but only if she spends a few more years living as a human and considering that choice.  Bella says okay, but only if Edward, not Carlisle, becomes the one to turn her.  Edward says they can use his venom, but that Carlisle, who’s an MD, really needs to supervise the process.  Bella doesn’t love the idea of Edward’s stepdad cockblocking what’s supposed to be an intimate moment, and so agrees only on the grounds that she gets to have sex with Edward as a human first.  Edward’s hella Catholic, so he requests that they get married first.  Bella’s super horny, so she demands that the wedding happen within six months.  Edward says that he might hurt her during sex, and Bella says that she wants a little hurt during sex.  They marry.  They bang.  During the banging, Edward makes every effort to be controlled and courteous and gentile, while Bella goes wild and crazy.  The next morning, she has bruises and he does not.  Edward apologizes, but Bella’s actually really into it.  She spends a while admiring her sexy vamp-marked self in the mirror, touches the bruises many times, and reminds us yet again that Bella Swan’s whole M.O. is being a monsterfucker.  Her kink is not my kink, and that’s okay.

To be clear, I think there are other aspects of the romance that get criticized for good reason.  Edward does not negotiate with Bella before sneaking into her room to watch her sleep, and he does make unacceptable use of their power differences when he thinks she’s in danger of being mauled by werewolves.  The text condemns Jacob’s “don’t wanna die a virgin” ploy to manipulate a kiss out of Bella, but not the wider conceit of all the male characters as possessing uncontrollable urges.  Bella’s struggles to adjust to a new town feel very feminine and realistic; her amused tolerance of Jacob’s and Mike’s sexual harassment as the price for their friendship does not.  Werewolf imprinting might be mostly platonic, but that doesn’t make it okay for Meyer to depict it as a form of soulmate bonding that happens with child characters. Those are good points, all around.  I just wish that most of them didn’t come up in the context of post-hoc rationalizations for loathing the femininity of a feminine text.

I’m not calling Twilight an unproblematic series.  I’m saying that it gets (rightly!) criticized for appropriating Quileute culture, while Buffy’s total absence of main characters of color and blatant anti-Romani racism are (wrongly!) not remarked upon. I'm saying that I’ve been told I’m a misogynist for liking Twilight but not for liking James Bond.  I’m saying that there’s a reason people tend to go “oh, that makes so much sense!” when I let them in on the fact that reactive hatred for “Twitards” started and spread on 4Chan, later home of Gamergate and incel culture.  I’m saying that Twilight depicts problematic relationship dynamics as sexy — but then so do Vampire Academy, Blue Bloods, Supernatural, Vladimir Tod, and Vampire Diaries.  All of which take the time to stop and thumb their noses at Twilight, smug in the superiority of having vampires that fly rather than vampires that sparkle, and for thoroughly condemning teenage girls for being girly while continuing to show men inflicting violence on them.

After all, as Erin May Kelly puts it: “we live in a world taught to hate everything to do with little girls.  We hate the books they read and the bands they like.  Is there anything the world makes fun of more than One Direction and Twilight?”  No one has ever called me a misogynist for liking the MCU, in spite of less than a third of its movies even managing to clear the low-low bar of the Bechdel test.  Because people are still allowed to like Harry Potter in spite of its racism, or Lord of the Rings despite its imperialism.  Because hatred for Twilight was never about its very real sexism, or the genuinely silly sparkle-vampires, until it had to justify itself as something other than hate for everything that teenage girls have ever dared openly love.

I enjoy the novels, and I enjoy the fan fiction that tries to fix some of the problems with the novels.  I appreciate the extent to which Meyer has elevated fan culture, and made an effort to acknowledge her own past mistakes.  I would love to be able to talk about my love for the series as a flawed but beautiful work of literature, but for now I’ll settle for asking that the world just let me enjoy it in peace.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

AU idea: what if the kids took the Escafil Device with them, noticed that disabled people were passed over by the Yeerks, and started recruiting the Auxiliaries right away?

• The Pediatric Long-Term Rehab Center of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has a secret.  It’s an open secret, to be sure—any of the kids who aren’t directly involved nevertheless know something about something—but none of them have ever breathed a word to their parents or friends or caregivers about where James and his friends go when they sneak out every few nights.  Certainly no one has ever so much as hinted about the way he and his friends leave, because who would believe them?  The nurses shut the window every time they come by; Faith or Pedro or one of the others left behind always opens it again.

• They’re divided into units: Craig’s team, Erica’s team, Jake’s team.  Jake and the five friends who fight directly under him all live across town, operating semi-independently, but they always find their ways to come by and check in with James.

Ax becomes a volunteer entertainer for the unit, swooping in every week to sing pop songs or play instruments for the children.  He’s delighted enough by mouth sounds that Collette and Liam actually start teaching him to sing for real after a while, so that he can perform Britney Spears and the Rolling Stones on command for the nurses.

Rachel brings home brochures for a gymnastics camp that meets twice a week after school every day, makes a big show of convincing both her own mom and Cassie’s parents to let them join, and then simply doesn’t bother signing either of them up for the camp in reality.  Every Monday and Thursday Naomi drops them off, clad in leotards and leggings, at the community center downtown.  Every Monday and Thursday, an osprey and a bald eagle can be seen soaring out the skylight and heading downtown.

Marco takes a bus to the hospital any time he feels like; Peter never notices his disappearances.  He’s a frequent enough visitor that the nurses know his face, but by then Marco is already dating Collette so that’s his excuse ready-made.

No one notices Tobias disappearing into thin air, and certainly no one notices the red-tailed hawk that can sometimes be seen circling the hospital’s rehab center.

Jake makes the daringest move of all when he simply joins The Sharing, which sends volunteers to the hospital every weekend to read to the patients.  He slouches around the edges of meetings making noise about how he’s only there for the free food and the college application boost, and eventually everyone concludes it’s not even worth the waste of time to ask him when he’s going to become a full member.

• Jake might be their founder, but James is their commander.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Jake asks one day.  “Ax calling you ‘prince’ all the time, I mean.  It would drive me nuts.”

“The last prince he had was his big brother,” James points out.  “He knows I could never fill those shoes, but I’m honored he’s asking me to try.”  

And Jake shuts up about the subject of titles.

• The thing is, it’s a big group.  There are over 20 of them directly involved in the war, another 30-odd who know something about something.  The leak is inevitable.

The young man who walks into their rec room on an ordinary Tuesday bears a passing resemblance to Jake—same long nose, same dark eyes, same lanky build—but you could never mistake them, because the overt cruelty twisting those features is the kind of expression Jake would never wear.  “Which of you is James Connerton?” he asks.  James has him out cold on the floor before the yeerk has time for another word.

The next several minutes are a frantic hurricane of life-or-death decisions made too quickly with not enough information.  James gathers everyone who can morph, everyone who can fly and fight, and he’s sending them out the window as droves of pigeons before they can do more than ask what’s going on.  In the chaos, there is no time to grab anything, no time to leave messages for family or friends.

Liam says “I’m not going with you,” and in the long silence that follows everyone figures out what he means.  

“You traitor,” Tricia spits.  James holds up a hand to stop her.  It takes maybe the greatest effort of willpower he’s ever exerted, but he watches with dry eyes and clenched jaw as Kelly morphs and kills Liam on the spot.  

The brutal thing is, Liam’s not the only one who can’t come with them.  There are several others who cannot survive on the run, away from respirators and morphine and palliative care.  “Do as they tell you,” James tells the ones he leaves behind.  “Give them everything they for ask about us, cooperate with everything they ask for, and try not to get yourselves killed.  That means…”  And now the tears threaten harder, but again he forces them back.  “If they ask you to become controllers, you do it.  We will end this war, and we will be back for you.  Until then… Survive.”

As the others either brace themselves or flee, James walks back into his room.  He kisses Pedro on the forehead, whispers “Take care of them.”  And then he morphs falcon, leading his reduced flock away from the building as the black limousine pulls up outside.

• When they land in the woods, they take nearly an hour to let it sink in: they were twenty-six this morning, and right now they are fifteen.

Julio screams at the sky.  Craig calls Liam names that most fourteen-year-olds wouldn’t even know.  Erica doesn’t morph, but her howl of rage and pain does credit to her wolf shape.  Pedro was the little brother James never had; Ray was Erica’s first love.  

And then they pick themselves up, take inventory, and start planning where to go from here.  These children’s lives have all touched loss, from the accident that took James’s father and his legs, to the three roommates Jessie has seen die throughout a lifetime spent in hospitals, to the twenty-year limit doctors have put on Collette’s lifespan.  They know how to categorize, how to cope, how to adapt around scar tissue and amputation.  They adjust, and then they go back to work.

• Jake’s team appears to be secure—for now.  James and the others make it to the hork-bajir valley with their help, and with Toby’s help they start planning their next attack.

• It’s a routine reconnaissance mission on the outskirts of a Sharing meeting, one that’s not meant to turn into a full-blown attack until suddenly it does.  They are an army, the twenty-one of them who remain, and there are so many frantic messages shouted back and forth in thought-speak that when Jake gives the order to retreat, Cassie doesn’t hear until it’s too late.  They are an army, and so it’s not until they do a headcount mid-retreat that they realize they left one behind.

The yeerks never took her.  It’s a small reassurance, but it’s the only one the Animorphs have.  

Forty-eight hours later, Cassie’s parents paper the town with missing posters.  Her image makes it to the local news, next to a segment of Michelle tearfully begging for any word at all about her daughter.  The adults’ search goes on for over three months, hope waning steadily.

Jake spends most of that time sitting in his room staring at the wall.  Jean tells him that if he wants to talk she’s here.  Steve reassures him more than once that they’ll find Cassie soon.  Tom—or the appearance of Tom—mutters about how Jake didn’t even know her that well so he should probably get over it.  Homer, who doesn’t know much but still understands human emotion better than Temrash 114 ever will, curls up at Jake’s side and growls at anyone who gets too close.  

Jake thinks of pieces of a wolf’s body, cut clean down the middle by a dracon beam, buried at the edge of the farmland Cassie’s family has owned for over a century, marked only by a boulder Marco’s gorilla hands rolled over the fresh earth.  He tells James, “I’m out,” and James doesn’t argue.

Rachel, however…  Rachel shows up in Jake’s doorway after his fourth missed meeting, her perfect makeup almost enough to hide her red-rimmed eyes.  She sits on the end of Jake’s bed (growling right back at Homer when he objects) and says, “You know what I’ve been asking myself more and more since the war started?  ‘What would Cassie do?’  Because she was the best of us at keeping herself.  And if I can figure out what she would do, then most of the time I can figure out what I should do.”  She leans close, not letting Jake look away.  “We have got to keep her around, or I don’t even want to know what’s going to happen to the rest of us.  We’ve gotta keep figuring out what she would do, and we’ve gotta keep doing it, or by the end of the war we’ll all be more like me than like her.”  She sticks out her hand, palm up in offering.  “So come on.  The yeerks are shipping portable kandrona generators through the garment factory downtown, and according to Marco I’m in charge of this little team for now.  So we’re gonna do this raid, and we’re gonna do it right.  Like Cassie would insist that we did.”

Jake takes her hand.  The raid goes according to plan, as much as these things ever do.  Afterward, he leaves a pebble on top of that unmarked stone.  

• While all of this is going down, Kelly stops breathing in her sleep.  Timmy resuscitates her, and she morphs, but two days later it happens again.  The thing is, cystic fibrosis is progressive, and it’s not fixed by morphing.

Kelly and James have a long conversation.  She says a lot of things she doesn’t mean, he says a lot of things he does, and at the end of it she acquires DNA from him.  From Collette.  From Elena.  From every single one of her fellow Animorphs.  Ax talks her through the process, and then she morphs for the very last time.  

A teen runaway shows up at a shelter downtown, claiming her name is Kelsey James.  Within two weeks she’s in foster care.  Her fight is done.  

Timmy doesn’t wake up when Julio starts struggling a month later, and the following morning Julio doesn’t wake up at all.

James calls a meeting of the entire team, because they can’t keep going like this, with no equipment or support or doctors’ assistance.  Jake hesitates for a long time, but at last he says it: “My dad’s a pediatrician.”

• It was always only a matter of time before the yeerks’ investigations into James’s known associates turned up a connection to Marco or Ax; the time has come to evacuate the four families that remain ignorant.  

Ax and Rachel convince her mom to take her sisters and follow them to safety.  Marco takes Collette with him, and together they decide what to tell his dad.  Tobias uses his own and Timmy’s gentler touch to approach Cassie’s parents with the news that they can’t bring their daughter back, but they can offer closure.  

Jake, James, and half a dozen other Animorphs do with a sledgehammer what the others are accomplishing with a scalpel.  Tom gets unceremoniously tossed in the trunk of the car, tied up with almost a hundred yards’ worth of duct tape.  Jake holds his own mother at gunpoint as she drives with shaking hands where he directs her, glancing occasionally in the mirror at her white-faced husband and the full-grown lion draped across their back seat.  Nothing any of them say will convince Jean and Steve that their son has been replaced by an alien, so they don’t even bother.  Explanations will have to be sorted out at a later time.

Everyone arrives in one piece, more or less.  James, who has a knack for this kind of thing, sits Jake’s parents down to explain.  Jake leaves him to it, more concerned with negotiating for his brother’s life.  He offers the yeerk a fast death, and makes it very clear that the only alternative is a slow one.  

The yeerk chooses a fast death.  Jake grants it to him.  And then Tom pulls him into the longest hug Jake’s had in his life, clinging as if Jake is the only raft in a storm.

• Steve writes the most extensive shopping list Jake has ever seen in his life, and the Animorphs use it to rob a hospital for everything Erica and the others will need.  James takes the morphing cube, goes to the nearest school for the blind, and comes back with over a dozen new Animorphs.  Tobias disappears for almost a week, but when he comes back Loren is with him.  Rachel leads her team of five on mission after mission, and at the end of each one the stack of pebbles on Cassie’s grave grows by one.  Naomi writes the hork-bajir their own constitution.  Loren starts an interspecies baseball league.  Toby starts freeing human-controllers along with her hork-bajir, and the population of their valley swells to almost 500 people. 

• There are about a dozen of them sitting around a fire, debating next moves, when Tom says, “I could steal you a Blade ship.  But I’d need a hell of a diversion.”

Jake and Rachel smile at each other, nearly identical grins.  And then they become the first two to volunteer for the suicide run.

The ensuing fight is bloody, and awful, because that’s the way that war works.  Somewhere in the middle of it, Ax points out that the yeerk pool can be drained for cleaning.  It’s Marco who says, “C’mon, man, what would Cassie do?” and stays his hand.  Instead they fake an alarm indicating a hull breach in the Pool ship; in the end, it works just as well.  

• They win, kind of.

«Who exactly are you?» the andalite prince asks.  

Marco cocks a thumb.  “This is James.  James Connerton.  President of Earth.”

• James retires, more or less, retreating to work quietly as a volunteer in youth outreach in downtown Los Angeles.  He leaves the limelight to Marco and Collette, the political wrangling to Timmy and Elena.  There are just five Animorphs left, where once there were dozens, but James sees to it that the others are not forgotten.  He pays for the monument erected on top of Cassie’s grave, the sports scholarship earmarked for teenage girls in Rachel’s name.  Tobias gets a national forest purchased in his name; Ax gets a $500,000 anonymous donation to CinnaBon’s R&D department.  To honor Jake, James writes a memoir, preserving all their stories exactly as they happened before history has the chance either to glorify them or to gloss them over.