#I suppose this is sort of a prerequisite to found family

[aeskairo]

I mean... I am a person without a lot of attachments. I don't have a lot of trust in people, and I generally view people as simply everybody on their own path.

So then when I read other people's interpretations of gk, I'm often confused because I don't really understand where they're coming from.

For example, the idea of loyalty seem to be really important to a lot of other fans. Ogata is interpreted by almost everyone as a untrustworthy, with no loyalties.

But I don't understand why anyone in this story needs to have loyalties or why loyalty is even a good thing.

Everybody has completely different motivations and wants.

Tsurumi wants to split off a piece of the military, and use it to regain territory in Russia Where his wife and child are buried.

Hijikata says that he is looking to revive the Republic of Ezo, but actually he doesn't have the resources, or the time to do that so really he's looking for one last great battle and to die under that banner rather than to set up and new independent political entity.

Shiraishi has no real goals and just likes his friends and would love to get some money out of it. He later takes on Boutarou's goal.

Ogata has no real concrete achievable goal and is looking for an abstract sense of worth.

Sugimoto also has no real concrete goal and is using the gold hunt to avoid confronting the fact that he really has no place to return to. He says he has to get the money before he returns to ume, but this is just a prerequisite he set for himself, to delay returning. Ume isn't waiting for him, has no idea that he's out trying to get the money for her, and doesn't even know if he's alive. Despite all of the importance that he places on returning to her, he is a non-entity in her life, in the same way that Ogata is a non-entity in his father's life. The similarities and differences between Ogata and sugimoto is best left for another post.

Asirpa...... is a 12-year-old girl and is still trying to make sense of the world.

Many of the soldiers don't have any goals of their their own other than following orders or impressing their commander. People like Inenaga, ushiyama don't really have any aspirations for the gold. They just seem to be along for the ride since they have map tattoos.

My point is....

These are all clearly people with individual and completely different goals, to which the gold is just a means to an end. So I don't understand why loyalty is considered important, in fact I don't understand why it's a thing at all.

So given that ..... I don't understand why Ogata is considered a disloyal betrayer....

When I read comments by other readers, it really feels like there's an expectation that these groups be a found family of sorts. A place of trust and loyalty where people support and mentor each other and it makes no sense to me.

Like that's something you expect from the military. Members of the military are supposed to be brothers in against a common enemy led by a father figure and it is explicitly pointed out that this is not the case.

People bully each other, sometimes severely. The father figure is self-interested and the only sees his men as pawns. There are shifting loyalties and factions with their own goals in the same unit. The military is not a family substitute. Gold hunt groups are not a family substitute. Even family do not present the kind of loyal loving support that people seem to expect.

So I just..... I straight up have no understanding of why Ogata is considered to be a betrayer, because I don't understand how loyalty is a thing here. I mean to me, the very concept of loyalty in this story seems to be a lie used to manipulate people seeking identity and belonging, and have them be willing to die for the group.

When I look around on forums and discussions it seems like most people do not share this interpretation. People interpret media and events is through the lens of their own experiences. And I actually keep wondering if I'm missing something huge. Like if other people interpret loyalty in a totally different more meaningful way, what are their experiences that support this belief?

Just Curious

TLDR: this is not a story about found family as much as you want it to be. Instead it's about each person finding a place for themselves....not everyone is looking for a family.

Edit: I guess this is sort of meta. The reason I have this interpretation because I have a long history of working for corporations, and despite the found family culture that they try to create and all the team building exercises, people are constantly gunning for each other, trying to get people fired, taking credit for other people's work, making people look bad in front of management to elevate their own status, trying to jump ship and go to other companies in the same industry with proprietary knowledge... so my take on this whole story is that..."this is simply how people operate."

Like I've been on team building exercises with the company where everybody an outdooring trip and bonds over canoeing, and then immediately the next day people get back to trying to get each other fired.

That's just how people are. People form connections over all sorts of things, but that doesn't mean that they aren't out for themselves or that the connection will always exist, or that the connection is deep or that the person is loyal to you.

[itmeblog]

THERE WAS LITERALLY NOTHING STOPPING ME FROM WRITING FAN FIC ABOUT MY OWN SHIT!!

FUCKING NOTHING!!!!

(Maybe because I created this world it's canon now? But that is 1001% not my concern nor my problem)

Nova was alive. The pulse that ripped between her temples and settled angrily behind her eyes informed her as much.

She groaned, reaching in vain for memories from the night before. There were flashes: a bar, a party, another bar, a man, possibly a third bar and then…nothing. The rest of the night was ash and dust. She reached out for the glass SAWA should have left on her night stand and knocked something over sending shards of pain dancing in the space between her eyes.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” She ground her face into the pillow. It smelled of something sweet, herbs the people on this planet used to keep pests away.

“Fuck.”

Please be a hotel.

She couldn’t take another morning of awkwardly running into the members of a family of someone she could only vaguely remember.

Nova gathered what pieces of herself she could manage. Her mouth was dry, her head was attempting a revolt from her neck, and spending the morning retching in whatever passed for a toilet here seemed a half-decent idea. It only got worse as she sat up.

The room was sparse, just a bed really. Her clothes were strewn across the floor, mixed with an outfit Nova didn’t recognize, all sequins and scarves. A screen sat nestled into the far wall and flickered silently through a morning report, a perky looking reporter sang the GU’s praises in the subtitles that scrolled across the bottom.

A hotel room.

Thank God.

Nova’s attention landed wearily on the woman sleeping beside her. What had happened to the guy she’d been with? Had she ditched him? Wandered off and found better company? She tried to remember but all she could recall was him pinning her to a wall, the heat of his body pressed against hers and the fleeting thought, hazed by brandy and something bitter she’d been offered to smoke, that he wasn’t enough to silence the thoughts in her head.  

Maybe the woman had succeeded where he’d failed. Nova wasn’t sure. She couldn’t remember this woman at all.

That was supposed to worry her. Lulu would be concerned.

Nova shut the thought away with a viciousness that made her stomach pitch.

As it turned out, there was a proper restroom, though a prerequisite for puking was actually having eaten something in the first place, so it was really more about form than efficacy. Nova sent prayers to a porcelain alter, a thought that teased a near hysterical laugh from her throat.

God, she was tired.

She picked up her clothes, showered, and left her companion to sleep off whatever had happened the night before.

“Hey.” Nova leaned heavily against the front desk she only half-remembered approaching, rubbing her fingers against her temples as she reached for words.

“Yes?” The person behind the counter, some alien with six eyes that blinked asynchronously in a way that made the impossible task of focusing on where to look, harder still.

“I—, uh, shit, I don’t even know the fucking room.” She turned around like that might somehow make it clearer, but she distinctly remembered taking a lift. She was fucking this up. Breathe. New tactic. “I’m Nova. Did a Nova sign in a room yesterday?”

The receptionist typed something, every key stroke hit like an axe between Nova’s brows.

“Last name?” Thunder.

“Don’t have one,” except the art of opening her mouth properly had escaped her and everything had come out in a continuous nearly indecipherable donaveone. Which after receiving several blinks Nova repeated to marginal success.

“Mmm, there was a Nova NoStar.”

She cringed. “NoStar?”

The clerk nodded, well, sort of nodded. Bobbed. They had no neck or equivalent thereof.

“Goddammit,” her hands returned to her temples, her elbows to the counter, the effort of keeping herself upright just a bit too much when she had to deal with this shit. “Yeah, NoStar. I’d like to pay, yesterday and today.”

She’d have to burn this planet off the list. How fucking stupid did she have to be to give her real name? Sure, there were probably millions of Nova NoStars out there but Jeanne would find a way. Fuck.

Nova paid, the blaring of the screen as her transaction went through made her want to dash her head against the wall.

“Is there anything else you need?”

Nova blinked, waiting for the words to settle in her head and mean something. “Need? Oh, uh, yeah, fuck, is there someplace to get breakfast around here?” She glanced at the sun that filtered in through the small window by the receptionist’s desk. “Or lunch?”

The directions she’d received sent Nova to a small food stand that smelled of grease and the promise of revival. She couldn’t read the menu and simply pointed and was handed something that might have been bread and some sort of meat, along with a bottle of water. The man who ran the stand was some flavor of human, though Nova could hardly be bothered to parse his existence. Modified, maybe?

She tried not to look too hard at what he’d given her. It undulated a bit if she stared at it too long, like it wasn’t quite dead despite the steam wafting from it. The first bite reminded her that she hadn’t really eaten the day before and the thing was gone before she knew it. She licked the oil from her fingers and set on the water.

Thank god for small miracles. She felt halfway human.

The traffic of the world sang through the air above her, in large ships belching black into the skies and buffeted her from all sides in lower forms of travel, things with wheels and rails and low flying capabilities. Galactic Union banners waved high overhead. Somewhere a commercial played calling for people to sign up for positions at their embassies.

The Galactic Union: Be part of something bigger.

Nova didn’t recognize this part of the city. It was cramped and crowded, two things Nova actually liked while she was working, but now that she was simply eating and drinking her way through her savings, was simply another obstacle that teased the remainder of her headache from the corners of her mind.

That and with food and water sustaining her, what little of her mind that was able to rouse for non-essential activities busied itself chiding her for her stupidity or cycling through all the things she could have done to save Lulu.

If only she’d been faster.

If only she’d noticed sooner.

If only she wasn’t such a fucking idiot.

If only she hadn’t listened.

Nova, stay put. The words rang clear as a bell between her ears. And then she was there again, frozen. Watching.

Lulu smiled. The skin at the corner of her eyes crinkled in concern, for Nova or herself, Nova didn’t know.

Then Lulu was gone.

The air around Nova was too thin, her pulse was a thready hum. She walked faster as if that might somehow put some distance between herself and the memory. A horn blared and the world rocketed into focus as a vehicle stopped just short of ramming her full speed and settled instead for banging into her leg just enough that her palms slammed into the hood to keep her steady.

Nova stared, wide eyed at the driver, her breaths coming in pants.

Wasn’t this what she’d wanted?

Why hadn’t they been driving faster?

Why did they stop?

The curses that filtered in through her translator were colorful and fantastical. Her bottom lip quivered as tears pricked the back of her eyes.

Lulu wouldn’t want this for me.

Her hands flew away from the hood as if she’d been burned. “Sorry,” was all she offered as she hurried away, her leg protesting at her speed after enduring that abuse. The driver’s curses followed her until she turned a corner and pressed her back against the wall of some towering building. The stone dug into her back, rough and painful, and real.

Her hands shook with leftover adrenaline.

“Fuck.”

She was going to cry. She couldn’t keep doing this.

“Lulu wanted you to live, you fucking idiot,” she whispered. “How could you forget how to do the one goddamn thing she wanted you to do?”

[hargrove-mayfields]

Add A Link and See It Grow

Today’s the last day of the Harringrove Week of Love! The final prompt I chose was Found Family! Read this here or on ao3 posted by ej_writer !

Word Count: 7,305

Rating: T

“Are you serious right now Nancy?”

It was 7:30 at night when Steve heard his doorbell ring and, upon answering it, was met with a swarm of middle schoolers rushing into his house. He had plans to go out to the quarry with Billy in like, a half hour, he could not afford to be the babysitter.

“I’m sorry, Steve. My mom was supposed to watch the kids but she had to go out so she asked me to babysit, but I already told Joyce and Jon I’d help them plan Will's birthday party and it’s only a few days away now and-“ Nancy talked about a thousand miles a minute as she tried to justify dumping the brats on him.

“Whatever, it’s, fine.” It wasn’t, but it wasn’t worth arguing over either. “Aren’t they old enough to watch themselves at this point?”

Nancy didn’t even respond to that, just gave him a stern look that said ‘you’re watching these kids no matter what, get over it.’ She crossed her arms and squinted at him and, even if it didn’t really matter if he agreed, his resolve broke. “Alright, fine.”

She smiled and thanked him before hurrying back to Jonathan’s still running car. Steve sighed and braced himself before turning around to go back inside. The brats were known for wreaking havoc in a matter of minutes, and he wasn't looking to let them destroy his parents’ house.

In the five minutes he was outside they’d already raided the fridge of all of his pop, added the leaf to his dining table (how did they even know where that thing was?), had game pieces and boards thrown all over the place, and made a stack of their bags in the corner of his living room.

“Wait a second, is this a sleepover?” Steve groaned at all of the overenthusiastic nods he received. “Where am I supposed to put all of you little shits?”

Dustin shrugged. “You have enough rooms in this place to house the whole neighborhood. I think you’ll be fine.”

“Well, since nobody felt the need to run this by me first, I’m already busy. Can you dipshits handle yourselves for like, two hours?”

The look on Mikes face perfectly mirrored the one his sister had given Steve at the door. “Dude, Nancy will kill you if she found out you left us here alone.”

“Not if I kill her first for dumping all of you on me.” The threat had still stuck, she absolutely would kill Steve. There was no way he could get away with leaving them unattended.

He figured he could just call Billy and cancel, but that was really the last thing he wanted to do. He tried to come up with some compromise, but with all the kids pulling up chairs to his dining table with intentions of staying all night, he didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter.

Dialing Billy’s number into the kitchen phone, he walks around the corner into the bathroom, shutting himself in as best he can around the phone's cord in an attempt at having some semblance of privacy from the six sets of prying ears in the next room, but he hears nothing from the other end.

He let it ring a few more times before he gave up, wrapping the cord back up and hanging the phone back in its slot. This wasn’t going to go over well.

Because it wasn’t like he could just be like ‘hey, I have to go do this, be back in a few’ when what he had been planning on doing was going on a date with Billy Hargrove. They were sneaking around behind the kids' backs, so that just wasn’t a luxury they had.

But Billy wouldn’t answer his phone, so he couldn’t explain the situation to him either, and now Steve was backed into a corner, and exponentially screwed.

At first, he was trying to just stay out of the kids’ hair, hover in the corner while they did their thing just to make sure they didn’t get it of hand, but he was feeling too jittery and nervous, so he pulled up one of the thousand extra dining chairs his mother kept around for dinner parties and joined in their stupid game.

For once, they were playing normal people games instead of that role playing thing he couldn't wrap his head around, so he could actually understand what was happening enough to participate.

Not that that meant he ever won, being outsmarted by these kids was his specialty. Round after round they ran circles around him, and he was getting frustrated enough he was considering making them sleep outside.

He was about to throw his cards down and quit for what was probably the tenth time already when he heard the telltale sound of Billy’s Camaro pulling into his driveway.

That was really bad. He’d stood Billy up, and he’d be pissed, he couldn’t let him just barge in here and make a scene in front of the kids. Because not only would that mean they knew Steve was not crushing on some imaginary girl or whatever he’d made up to thwart their suspicions, but that he was with Billy Hargrove of all people. They’d never let it go.

He shot a quick look at Max, who no doubt would’ve been able to recognize the sound of her own brother's car, hoping to somehow communicate to her to keep these other assholes occupied while he dealt with this. He was pretty sure Max already knew about them anyways.

Forfeiting again, he got up from the table and hurried towards the front doors.

Will called after him with a sympathetic, “It’s just a game, Steve!” which thankfully meant they either hadn’t heard or hadn’t recognized the sound of Billy’s car.

Holding up the pack of camels he always kept in his pocket, he turned around to face the kids, backing towards the door still. “Just need a smoke break.”

That seemed to appease them, and they went back to what they were doing. He practically ran the rest of the way to the door, as he opened and closed it before they could see the boy on the stoop.

Billy was standing there probably about to lay on the doorbell, something he always did just to drive Steve crazy, and seemed surprised at the way he came all the way outside and shut the door behind himself. “Listen, I’m on babysitting duty, so I kind of can’t do this right now.”

At the same time Billy’s face fell, Steve felt his heart drop into his stomach. This wasn’t about their rendezvous, turning up at Steve’s house usually meant he needed something, and judging from the way his hands were stuffed deep into his pockets and the way he was worrying his lip between his teeth, it was something important. “Whatever, Harrington. I’ll get out of your hair.“

“That’s not what I meant.” Steve reached out and put his hand on Billy’s arm to get his attention. “I’m sorry. I want you to stay, I just, I needed you to know they were here.” The additional so you didn’t out us and ruin our lives forever went unsaid, but Billy knew the implications of being caught by the kids.

“I need your first-aid kit“ It was hard for him, asking for help, but these days it was something he needed a lot of.

“Okay.”

Without another word he opened the door and led Billy inside, making him kick off his muddy biker boots before following him up the stairs to where he kept the band aid kit in his bathroom. One of the perks of having a big house was that the kids, from where they were in the dining room, couldn’t see the door, and only heard them go up the steps.

This had become routine for them, Billy showing up at his door in need of a little TLC, and Steve desperate to give it to him, but up to this point they’d been able to evade the kids. He didn’t think it would honestly be all that bad if they knew, Billy’s sister was among them and probably wouldn’t let her friends run too wild with the information, but Billy had made him swear on his life he’d never let them, or anyone else for that matter, find out about it.

Of course he understood that. There was a reason this kept happening, these nights when Billy would show up at his door in need of assistance, and that reason, who’s name happened to be Neil Hargrove, would undoubtedly kill the both of them were he ever to catch word that his son was dating Steve Harrington.

Steve had the displeasure of meeting Neil in person only once in late December, when he’d dropped Max off at her house after a Christmas party at the Byers. Being that he was such a responsible and caring father, or at least that’s what he was for the public eye, he just had to meet the boy who was watching his daughter.

Steve’d been beyond unsettled by the unnecessary firmness of his handshake, the distant look behind his so obviously practiced smile, the way Billy, with his arm in a cast for reasons he wouldn’t tell anyone, loomed in the corner as Neil did his interrogation.

When he was satisfied with the answers he’d been given, sure that Steve wasn’t carting the kids around because he was a creep or something, he’d let him go with a slap to the shoulder that was a little too hard to be friendly, and made Billy, maybe as a show of some sort of old fashioned respect, walk him back to his car.

“Did he do that to you?” Maybe it was because his experience with his own father had made it easier to recognize, but Steve was pretty sure he had a good idea of what was going on here.

Billy kept his eyes downcast and his shoulders squared, defensive in a way that was distinctly un-Billy. The broken arm must have been preventing his fighting instincts from taking over, or maybe it was the guilt from already beating the shit out of Steve once. “Maybe.”

That was enough of an answer for him. “Look, if you ever need anything, just like, I don’t know, come find me or something, man.”

Billy’s head snapped up to look at him. Steve could practically see the gears turning in his head as he tried to think of some response, but that had gotten to him. He kept his lips pressed in a flat line, and stared at Steve like he just grew a second head.

“I’m sorry for lying to you, just, my door is always open, or whatever.” It was extremely awkward, Steve offering help to the boy who’d literally just beat the shit out of him and concussed him like a month ago, but he could see through him.

The scar in his eyebrow didn’t come from their fight, nor did the cast on his arm. Seeing the way Neil acted, the saccharine smile he wore as he made subtle threats on him when he literally did nothing but drive his daughter around, he had enough to figure out that those injuries had been from what Billy had faced once he came home that night.

Billy hadn’t said anything, just scoffed and turned around to go back into his house, but a week later he showed up at Steve’s house, having gotten the address off of their sort of mutual friend Tommy, with a broken nose and bled all over his living room carpet, and the rest was history.

Steve walked him into the bathroom and sat him down on the toilet seat, popping open the first-aid kit where it sat on the tiled counter. “Where’re you hurt?”

A nervous habit of his, Billy was chewing on the side of his thumb nail. His gaze flickered between Steve’s face and the framed painting behind him on the wall. “S’my ribs.”

Steve got him to shrug out of the two different jackets he was wearing, his first winter in the Midwest had proved to be far too cold for a Cali-raised boy like Billy, and pull the Henley shirt he had on over his head. The damage hidden underneath was enough to make him sick to his stomach.

Reaching out, Steve gingerly touched the deep purple bruises littering the other boy's chest and ribs. He felt breathless, this was by far the worst he’d ever seen it. “Jesus, Bills.”

Billy wasn’t very good at accepting sympathy from others. It made him feel all squeamish to be fussed over, and Steve was the king of fussing over him. He muttered, “Think there’s a cut towards the back.”

Steve wrapped his fingers around Billy’s forearm and gently pushed his arm up over his head to inspect the damage, and sure enough, there was a gash about 6 inches long on his left side. “What the hell did he do to you?”

Billy sniffs, looks away and says, like it’s nothing, “Steel-toes break the skin easier.”

Every time they did this, Steve’s heart broke into a million little pieces. The nonchalance of it all was the worst part, the way it was so normal for Billy to have his father kick him until his ribs were bruised black and bleeding, it made him so sad to see his Billy that way.

He let Billy put his arm down and crossed his own arms over his chest, “You’re gonna need stitches.”

“You know how to sew.” Another shot right in his heart, Steve didn’t know how much of this he could handle.

“Barely. And this is completely different.” Steve stepped forward and put his hand on the side of Billy’s face, keeping him from looking away again to stare at that stupid painting on the wall. “Don’t wanna hurt you.”

“I can take it, Stevie. Either you do it or I will.” If Billy gave an ultimatum, he meant it.

He definitely didn’t know how to sew, it was a skill considered too feminine to be taught to a son despite its usefulness, so he never learned how, but if Steve didn’t agree he would’ve very much done it and hurt himself a thousand times more in the process just to prove a point

So Steve reluctantly did it, made Billy hold his arm over his head and turn to face the other wall so he could see it better. Not that he was an overly emotional person, or maybe he just wouldn’t admit he was, but the sight before him put tears in his eyes.

Billy caught that, and despite the swell of nervousness in his own chest as he saw Steve threading a needle from out of the kit, he offered comfort to his boyfriend.

“Only a few more months before I’m outta there, then we won’t have to worry about this shit any more.” Billy would turn 18 in June, just under three months from now, but when he showed up at Steve’s door bloodied and bruised every other day, that long stretch of time offered no comfort.

It wouldn’t be as easy as Billy seemed to think it was to leave. He wouldn’t have any money, the Camaro wasn’t in his name, so he wouldn’t have any way to get around, and he didn’t even know where he would stay yet. That was all hypothetical for if he’d even be able to leave too.

With an abusive father constantly looming over his shoulder and keeping tabs on him, he’d know he was going to leave and try to stop it at all costs. It was only a matter of time before he started trying to manipulate Billy into staying.

It clearly didn’t have the desired effect on Steve. Billy’d even offered his assurances with a smile, but his boyfriends face stayed grim as he wiped at the cut with an alcohol pad so he could start to try to stitch it shut.

They stayed silent after that, while Steve tried to steady his shaking hands for long enough to get the needle in and out of Billy’s skin without hurting him too bad. The only break in the silence was the occasional gasp from Billy when Steve made another hole in his skin, or the noise drifting up from when the kids started yelling downstairs.

After a few more times in and out he was able to tie it off, the sutures were sort of crude, but were doing their job, and he made Billy move his arm all around to make sure they wouldn’t tear right through his skin. Once he was appeased, he made him put a new shirt on, the other one stained with his blood would have to be washed.

Billy stood up and wrapped his arms around Steve’s waist. “I’m gonna be okay baby.”

Steve reached his arms around the back of Billy’s neck and pressed their foreheads together. “I know but-“

Cutting him off with a quick kiss, Billy interjected. “It doesn’t matter about him as long as I have you.” Another peck to his lips. “Love you.”

It hardly did anything to cheer Steve up or comfort him, but there wasn’t anything that could when every night, he sent his boyfriend back into the arms of a monster. He sighed and ran his fingers through the long hair at the back of Billy’s neck. “I love you too.”

Neither of them knew how much time had passed when Billy pulled away to grab his jacket off of the counter. Shrugging the layers back onto his shoulders, he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket again. “I should go. The nerd herd’s gonna wonder where we went.”

“I want you to stay.” Steve kissed him one more time. “Not gonna let you go back to him yet.”

Billy looked like he wanted to protest, but Steve must’ve been looking as sad as he felt, because Billy sighed and gave in. “Fine. But your kids aren’t going to be too happy about that.”

“They’ll be fine.” Billy always seemed to underestimate just how much the kids liked him.

It was true that they hadn’t been his biggest fans at first, but when they first started doing this, Steve made him swear he’d apologize to them, and he did.

They were smart kids, they understood how the situation had looked when he got pissed, all of them hiding from him in a strangers house, and they understood the implications too of him begging Max to leave with him and his arm being broken literally the next day when she hadn’t.

It wasn’t immediate forgiveness, they were pretty wary around him until they felt he’d done enough to prove that he meant it when he apologized, but they’d all more or less accepted it by now.

Because he hadn’t stopped after just saying sorry. The words themselves never meant much to him at all, what with the situation he grew up in, so he tried to show them he was sorry.

Which was how he had become the secondary chauffeur after Steve, taking more than just Max home after trips to the movies or the arcade, and consequently how he had started helping them sneak around.

More than a few times he’d helped them smuggle Eleven out of her dad's cabin, because he understood feeling trapped, before he had his own car Neil had been able to keep him under 24/7 surveillance. He always covered for Lucas too, driving him home first before anyone else, and when Neil wanted to know who Max had been with, he’d lie and say it was just Dustin or El. After what happened it felt like the least he could do, but Steve was right, by now, they were pretty much over it.

Either way, he didn’t exactly want to have to explain away why he and Steve had disappeared upstairs for the last hour, hour and half. They might forgive him for his stupid outburst, but he couldn’t be sure where they drew the line.

Steve smiled at him and wrapped his fingers around Billy’s wrist, pulling him out of the bathroom and back through the hallway to the stairs. “Just follow my lead.”

Any semblance of a plan was lost when they made it back to the kitchen, Billy leaning in the doorway while Steve announced his presence, and they saw Eleven washing blood off of her hands in the sink.

There were some things Billy knew he’d never understand about these kids, Steve had made him promise he wouldn’t ask questions even though that was what had got them into a fight in the first place, so, despite his confusion, he didn’t even try to ask.

Not even when Steve put his hands on his hips and reprimanded her. “Oh, you were not spying on me.”

She smiled coyly. “I was.”

Billy felt the blood drain out of his face, felt his heartbeat skyrocket as he and Steve exchanged a look of fear. Steve stuttered and started trying to explain. “Listen you guys-“

Dustin cut him off, always overly eager to complain. “She won’t tell us anything.”

Nodding, Mike agreed. “She says it’s an ‘invasion of your privacy’.” He used air quotes around the last part as if spying on people in their own homes wasn’t exactly that.

The fear on Steve's face shifted into anger as he pointed his finger in Mike's face. “That’s because it is. I told you little shits a thousand times: no spying.”

Lucas interjected, agreeing with his friends. “What’s it matter if she won’t tell us anyways?”

Max fixed him with a deadly look and scoffed. “It matters because she didn’t want to and you made her. Why should she tell you what she saw?” Typically, Max would be on Lucas’ side, but they must’ve been fighting again.

Billy, watching the scene unfold while leaning on the door frame, clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth and announced. “Seems like I walked into something.” He turned to walk away and called over his shoulder. “Catch ya ‘round, Harrington.”

Before he could get away, Steve grabbed him by the back of his jacket and tugged, stopping him dead in his tracks. “No way. You’re not leaving me to deal with this by myself.”

“Your children aren’t my responsibility.” He reminded him, but he had no actual intentions of actually leaving and they both knew that.

The kids hadn’t understood at first why Steve got along with Billy after he’d been the one to be beat up, so, to put it in a way that made sense to the brats, they pretended to argue so it seemed like they were only begrudgingly hanging out, and so far, they hadn’t seen through it.

Steve had a retort ready, but Dustin beat him to it. The kids were constantly rubbing it in Billy’s face that they’d turned him into a babysitter too. “Yeah, we kind of are.”

Lucas, obviously only trying to get some sort of points towards Max’s forgiveness, agreed. “Especially since one of us is your totally awesome sister.” Max just rolled her eyes at his attempt.

Realizing he was still holding onto Billy’s jacket, Steve pulled him back into the room and let go. “You’re staying.” He turned to Will and asked him like nothing had happened, “So what are we playing?”

Unsurprisingly, the kids had developed tiny attention spans. They'd gotten quite the taste for crazy adventures, so unlike normal teenagers, activities like watching movies and playing truth or dare all night wouldn’t really do it for them.

Since Steve had left, they’d apparently played through two different games and had been about to start a third before they decided to spy.

Mike tells them, “We’ve narrowed it down to Uno and Monopoly.”

“Mike, Will, and Max vote Monopoly. Me, Lucas, and El vote Uno.” Dustin further explained, “We need a tie breaker.”

“I’m not any good at Monopoly. Too much counting.” Steve nudged Billy with his shoulder. “What do you think?”

“Last time I played Monopoly I broke someone's nose, and I’m colorblind. Don’t think my vote counts.” Neither of those facts are particularly untrue, but the only reason Billy brings them up is because he’s still trying to deny that he’s their babysitter.

Staying for Steve, whatever, that was fine, but playing board games with the little shits, that would be giving in, admitting that he wasn’t above hanging out with middle schoolers on a Friday night.

But he doesn’t get out of it, because with the excitement of all of the kids combined, Will pipes up. “Don’t worry, I am too! My mom put shapes on all the cards so I can tell the difference.”

He hurries and fishes out the playing deck, bringing it straight to Billy to look through. “See! Reds are squares, greens are circles, yellows are stars, and blues are triangles!”

Steve smirks at Billy, at the defeated look on his face. “Looks like you’re not getting out of this one, Hargrove.”

Tumblr decided this was too long, go ahead and finish reading on ao3! Over there I’m ej_writer !

[silentauroriamthereal]

So, I watched Happiest Season yesterday, and I have thoughts. A lot of thoughts. Spoilers abound and this is long, so I’ll put this under a cut. 

Happiest Season: a review

You have to ask yourself how “happy” a happy ending really is when you glance down at the time bar on the film and see that there’s less than fifteen minutes left and none of the story’s problems have been even remotely resolved.

Skip to the closing credits, and I hadn’t changed my mind. This is a “happy” ending where a great deal of the problems in the plot were left either completely unresolved, or whose happiness wasn’t earned – wasn’t properly fleshed out, developed, supported, or in fact, even happy.

What an incredibly toxic family the Caldwells are. Let’s start with them: there are three daughters. Sloan has apparently cemented her parents’ permanent disappointment by having left a promising legal career in favour of raising a family. Side tangent: are we really still having this discussion, in 2020? This binary choice between family OR career? Besides, Sloan evidently developed a different, and very lucrative career. I also strongly dislike the way the perception of her marriage ending is portrayed as a failure. Her awful parents both resent her having left the legal field, yet have refused to now see her as anything other than a parent, ignoring her new career choice and, it seems, literally anything else about her. Then we have Jane, who is overtly abused. Treated as lesser than anyone else in the family apart from technical support with malfunctioning printers, Jane is constantly criticized, chastised, literally told to not put herself in the centre of the family for a holiday photo. I was horrified and devastated by the wanton destruction of her painting at the end, too. I’m happy for her that her book got published and that she found success there, but I hate that this brutal, completely unnecessary destruction of her art happened and was totally overlooked.

I’m going to come back to Harper, because there’s a LOT to say there.

The way the parents, Tipper and Ted, treated Abby, was appalling from start to finish. Leaving aside the ENTIRE question of the secret girlfriend thing, if my family ever treated a friend or even distant acquaintance the way the Caldwells treated Abby, I would be furious with them. I used to frequently bring friends who were international students or just on their own for the holidays to my parents’ place for Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas festivities. These people were so, so, so incredibly rude to Abby, from ignoring her when she first arrived to giving her a terrible bedroom with a door that doesn’t lock, to walking in on her multiple times while she was changing or in bed – that level of complete disrespect infuriated me! Just allowing those awful kids to be in her private space without any sort of discipline, consequences, or apologies was unacceptable. The way they treated Abby after those same kids – which she was stuck with, without any sort of request to watch them – planted that necklace on her, was unacceptable. The utter lack of apology for having literally accused her of theft, for accusing her multiple times after that – WOW. Treating Abby as though she was the unexpected, extra guest at the restaurant that first night, and giving the ex-boyfriend the parents kept shoving on Harper the proper one was unacceptable.

Then there’s how Harper treated Abby. Let’s start with the restaurant: first of all, had my parents pulled that stunt on my friend/guest/secret girlfriend, I would have let them know then and there that it wasn’t okay. And then I would have, I don’t know, asked the staff to bring a proper chair, and if that turned out to be impossible, I would have insisted that she take mine instead, and sat on the little chair myself. Asking anyone to closet themselves is an act of violence, and watching that as a member of the LGBTQ2+ community was actively harmful to witness. Again, a lot of the crap that Harper subjected Abby to would have been awful no matter WHO Abby was: you don’t abandon your guest to hang out with old friends. If they’re ready to go home, then you go home with them. It’s basic hospitality. Considering that Abby was Harper’s partner, that’s a whole extra layer of harm. THEN add the ex-boyfriend, a horribly-treated ex-girlfriend, and toxic old friends to the mix, and you have something beyond appalling. Adding this stuff on top of not standing up for Abby to her family, not insisting that she be given somewhere proper to sleep during her time in her parents’ house, not insisting that she be treated with the most basic respect, not defending her during the whole jewellery theft situation, and even going along with the parents’ de-invitation to that dinner – that’s inexcusable. You don’t treat other people that way, much less your partner. Then add Harper calling Abby controlling, while simultaneously having the nerve to get angry about Abby spending time with Riley, which is possibly the only good thing that happened for Abby during that entire, awful trip – yeah. I was finished with Harper by that point.

Harper also actively participated in the way her sisters were constantly put down by their parents. The responsibility of being the privileged favourite is to use your status to bring others up. Harper doesn’t appear to have any sort of spine or courage whatsoever. It was only after she was forcibly outed by Sloan – and such was her privilege that the parents believed that it was a “malicious” lie rather than a “shocking” secret – that Harper even admitted the truth, and that was only after forcing Abby to watch her deny it yet it again. While I did love John (the gay best friend)’s entire speech about someone’s love not being the same thing as being ready to come out, there is nonetheless a ton of harm in forcing your partner watch that. It does affect them. It does disavow their identity at the same time, when they’re in a relationship with you. Her pattern of behaviour of throwing other people under the bus, like Riley, is very much intact.

I completely comprehend Harper’s fear of being rejected by her family. Apparently it was a well-founded fear, based on her awful, awful parents. That’s one of the reasons why the ending didn’t resonate for me at all: it wasn’t earned. Harper’s turn-around from being completely unwilling to have her parents know the truth to claiming that Abby was the only thing that mattered to her, came out of nowhere. It wasn’t a supported development. It happened too quickly. Similarly, the parents both going from being just about the worst parents on the planet to having a VERY sudden change of heart and behaviour, just happened unbelievably quickly. There was no questioning the entire history of their practises or what was wrong with them, no questioning how they’d treated any of their kids. The whole “consequence” for Ted was deciding, of his own accord, not to align himself with a politician who would force Harper to zip it – sorry, continue to zip it – about her identity. He shouldn’t have aligned himself with that woman in the first place. No one ever apologized to Abby about the way they treated her from start to finish, from patronizing her for being an orphan or the constant lack of respect shown her, to the false accusations of theft. Not a single part of it was atoned for at any point. Even Tipper being so disgusted with Abby’s ipad photography skills was disgusting. You just don’t talk to other human beings that way, and there was no resolution for me on any of this. There were also no consequences for Sloan’s horrific, SUPER-public outing of Harper, for Harper’s destruction of Jane’s painting, for the kids’ planting of the necklace on Abby, or for anyone’s horrendous treatment of Abby in general.

So yes: when you’re less than fifteen minutes out from the end of a supposed romantic comedy that was more upsetting to watch than entertaining or funny, and you’re actively rooting for the main character to walk away from her so-called partner and her toxic family, that’s not good. I’m not sold on the “romance” aspect, either. John (Dan Levy’s character) was the only good part of this movie, for me, and that’s overlooking his completely rude ignoring while on his phone at the beginning, or his negligent care of the animals he was supposed to be taking care of. (Gross, again – animals’ lives have value, too, and if my pet sitter killed my pet through negligence while I was away, I would be furious!) But his point about “sticking it to the patriarchy” in terms of Abby asking Ted for his permission/blessing to marry Harper was spot on. For all the hype about this being a progressive, lesbian, holiday rom-com, this film managed to perpetuate a lot of gross aspects of straight, white, misogynistic, heteronormative culture, like women being the property of their fathers and needing to obtain a male parent’s “permission” to marry another human being. The only person’s “permission” that was needed here was Harper’s, and then it’s not about permission – it’s about two adults making a consensual decision to commit themselves to each other. It’s great if you have the support of family – aka, BOTH parents, on BOTH sides – but that support is a bonus, not a prerequisite. Perpetuating the false dichotomy of family vs career for women only, is a harmful one to keep perpetuating. That question is never asked of men.

I was honestly kind of disgusted that Abby chose to stay with Harper by the end. I get it, but it definitely didn’t leave me with warm, romantic feelings. It left me with the deflated feeling I invariably experience whenever a woman makes the choice to be the bigger person and submit herself to a damaging situation or relationship. Mostly what I’m left with is anger that no one spoke up for Abby at any point, even John. That, and anger and sorrow over Jane’s painting. So yeah: it wasn’t as bad as bury your gays, but it also wasn’t really a happy ending for me, or super enjoyable to watch. Do better, Hollywood. Do a lot better.

[entering--hyperspace]

So I made my bh oc a fake companion with his own companion alert and everything because my game design brain is Like That. Below I’ve included bios with likes/dislikes, some abilities, and an overview of his quest. Even some idle dialogue! Lol. Click images for better quality

Homeworld: Found on Tatooine

Family: unknown

Notes: usually accompanied by a bird of some sort.

For those born force-sensitive it might seem like their only options are to become a Sith, or a Jedi. Rohan, however, walks an entirely different path. After leaving the Jedi order at a young age Rohan was raised by a rag-tag crew of Bounty hunters who taught him how to best use his connection to the force to track down any target, making him one of the deadliest bounty hunters in the galaxy. When Rohan became bored with regular bounties, he set his sights on other force-sensitives, giving him a reputation as the bounty hunter with the most successful captures of both Jedi and Sith. This eventually caught the attention of the Hutt families who sponsored him in the latest great hunt, where he became it’s next champion

Likes: High stakes, professionalism, honor, mercenary work, neutrality, his bird

Dislikes: Unnecessary violence, picking sides, being taken advantage of, grudges

Primary weapon: Lightsabers

Secondary weapon: Stuka (Pet)

Gifts

Weapon: LIke

Military Gear: indifferent

Courting: indifferent

Luxury: indifferent

Technology: Like

Republic Memorabilia: indifferent

Imperial Memorabilia: indifferent

Cultural Artifact: Like

Trophy: Favorite

Underworld Good: Favorite

Abilities:

Notes: Rohan's "class" Mechanics takes inspiration from the Jedi knight, while borrowing abilities from the bounty hunter and Jedi classes to fit the character. To elaborate, Rohan uses the "Focus" system just as the Jedi knight does, and any other abilities taken from the Sith warrior and/or bounty hunter are either refitted to match this, or are simply tweaked as to not override the core mechanic.

Rohan's unique abilities;

Deafening Screech

Cooldown: 80s

Range: 25m

Stuka's screech taunts all enemies within a selected area, focusing their attention on Rohan for 15 seconds.

Blinding claw:

Cooldown:50s

range : 30m

Stuka rapidly attacks a selected target, leaving them stunned for 20 seconds, or until they are disrupted.

Hunter’s intuition

Stance change: Dual blades.

Prerequisite: Full Focus

In this Stance Rohan gains a 30% Increase in speed, a 20% Increase in accuracy, and a temporary bonus to weapon damage for 10 seconds

Force charge:

Cooldown: 14.5

Range:10-30m

Rohan jumps to a distant target slamming his staff into them, dealing 4380-4656 weapon damage, interrupting the target's current action and immobilizing the target for 3 seconds. Cannot be used against targets in cover. Strikes with both weapons if dual wielding.

Other:

Blade Barrage

Cooldown:18s

Range::4m

Performs a series of lightsaber attacks that deal 6766-7068 weapon damage. Strikes with both weapons if dual wielding.

Electro net:

Cooldown:90s

Range:30m

Fires an electro net that ensnares the target, reducing its movement speed by 50% and dealing energy damage over 9 seconds. While affected, a target that moves takes 20% more damage from electro net, and this effect can stack up to 10 times on enemy players or 5 times on any other target. Additionally, the electro net hinders the target, preventing the use of high mobility actions and escapes such as charges, vanishes, and speed boosts. Lasts 9 seconds.

Force sweep: Strikes the target and up to 8 enemies within 5 meters with the Force, dealing 1268-1395 kinetic damage. Also stuns weak and standard enemies for 1.5 seconds.

Queststep overview:

Lana beniko is the quest giver for this companion alert. Lana informs the commander of an expert tracker,b whose skills would be valuable to the Alliance-so long as he could be convinced to join. She has been unable to contact him for some time but knows he was last seen on Rishi should the Commander be willing to investigate.

The Commander travels to Rishi. After talking with Arankau at the Rishii village, the Commander is informed of both the location of the contact and his identity as the latest grand-champion of the Bounty hunter Great Hunt. Before leaving Arankau informs the Commander that they hired Rohan to find out which pirate gang had been ruining their camps, and would prefer he finish the job before attending to whatever business might be awaiting him in the Alliance.

After investigating each village, with the help (or lack thereof) of the Commander’s observational skills, alongside Rohan’s psychometry, they discover the culprits are fellow hunters hired by one of the local pirate gangs to burn down the villages in order to make room for more of the pirate's operations. The confrontation gives the player's a glimpse into how Rohan views his profession, and the enemies he has made because of it. After fighting the hunters, as well as the pirates themselves, the player is given the choice to either let the pirates and bounty hunters go-- so long as they leave the Rishii alone-- or kill them all

Either way, after returning to Arankau, Rohan has one final conversation with the Commander. After seeing the Commander’s skills, and talking with them about the Alliance as well as the benefits of joining them, Rohan agrees to their offer.

Note: This quest is very detective-like. The player is meant to take a close look at each village, gather context clues within the environment to discover what had occurred, and who might have been responsible. For example, scorch marks around the houses implies a fire. The amount of tracks suggests a group, and the heat signatures in the air suggest what kind of blasters might have been used. If the player successfully observes the surroundings (with the game knowing these choices when Rohan asks what they have found) they can gain both an achievement, and make the final confrontation easier by taking a direct route to the pirate camp, an option that would be closed to them should the player fail the observational checks. This detour is not long, just a few more enemies down a different path. Choices matter yadda yadda yadda.

Being called out:

“Another day, another hunt”

“I got your back”

“What’re we up to now?”

“M’um m’aloo”

“I’m itching to get back to the fight.”

Ambient Dialogue:

“Rule 1, No bounty is worth dying for.”

“Sometimes I wonder if the Jedi still think I’m dead, then again that was a lifetime ago.”

“You carry a lot of history with you, maybe we can swap stories sometime.”

“Where are we? Oh, right.”

“I swore we were just...never mind.”

“Stuka, drop it!”

“You can’t eat everything you see, Stuka.”

“Stuka seems to like you, she doesn’t like just anyone.”

“Hunt well, Commander.”

“Trust in yourself, nothing else.”

“Taa baa, Eyeta”

“As much fun as this whole alliance thing is, I do miss a good bounty.”

“If the hutts ever try to collect the bounty on my head...just ignore them.”

“Don’t wear yourself out, alright? There will always be time for another day..”

"I suppose I'm still on mandalore's bad side. Been a while since I've received any job offer from them. Oh well, you win some you lose some."

“If most hunters followed the code our profession would be more respected.”

“The Jedi have the light, and the sith wield the dark...my path is my own.”

Combat: DPS

“Utinni!”

“Finally! I was just starting to get bored!”

“You can’t hide from me!”

“Stuka, ashuna!”

“Time to collect!”

“Your journey ends here, not ours!”

[inkedstarlight]

Bittersweet: Chapter Three

Summary: Nesta and her sisters deal with the aftermath of their father’s death. Once they finally leave their hometown in Maine, they all head to Colorado for a new start. Note: Read it here on AO3! Warnings: heavy angst, grief Bittersweet Masterlist

After her dad’s funeral, Nesta announced her plans to move to Colorado to attend Pryth U, which was met with a stern scolding courtesy of Elain. She chastised Nesta for not calling her the minute she found out. But after her lecturing, Elain squeezed Nesta into a hug and expressed her excitement. Feyre responded positively to the news as well, though she certainly wasn’t as enthusiastic as Elain. It wasn’t a surprise considering the current state of Nesta and Feyre’s relationship with each other. Feyre didn’t need to tell Nesta that she resented her for their childhood; it was glaringly obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes. As the oldest sibling, Nesta didn’t provide a single penny for their family after their mother left. She let her thirteen-year-old sister work for the money that bought them lunch at school. Nesta let Feyre fail tests that she didn’t have time to study for. She let Feyre sacrifice her entire life.

Instead of staying in her childhood home with her sisters, Nesta opted for a motel just a town over, to which Feyre rolled her eyes at. She and Elain insisted Nesta stay in her old bedroom to save money, to no avail. She wasn’t ready to step foot in there. It was too soon; the wound was far from healing.

Nesta spent most of her time in the motel while her sisters went through the legal process of their father’s death: his will, financial accounts, safety deposit box. She didn’t dare venture the town and risk bumping into any familiar faces. Gods forbid she see any old peers. So, she remained in her room nearly every day, blinds shut and door locked. She didn’t bother buying groceries; she wouldn’t be in Maine long. In turn, she was barely eating. But Nesta didn’t see the point of filling her stomach when it wouldn’t do anything to fix the emptiness inside of her.

Elain visited her every so often, but she too was mourning their late father, and she wasn’t quite herself. When she’d made the decision to live at home after high school, she and their dad bonded. They were the only ones who had a true father-daughter relationship, and Elain knew him best. She knew what he wanted his funeral to look like, where he wanted his ashes scattered. But because she spent his last years by his side, Elain had witnessed the gradual deterioration of his body through her own eyes, which had given her time to accept the inevitable well before his death. She had been prepared. But it didn’t hurt any less.

Feyre, on the other hand, refused to visit Nesta at the motel. Her exact words were, “I’m not dragging myself to a gods-damn motel. If you want to see me, I’ll be at the house.” Nesta hadn’t expected her youngest sister to visit her. According to Elain, Feyre was distracting herself with the legal responsibilities of their dad’s death. When she wasn’t drowning in paperwork, she was talking to Rhysand on the phone. Feyre once again assumed the parental role. Guilt stabbed at Nesta.

Waste of space.

Waste of space.

Waste of space.

A couple nights after the funeral, Elain was visiting Nesta. They had been catching up ever since that first day, learning more and more about each other’s lives and moments they had missed. Elain shared everything: her friends, classes, plans, romantic relationships (or lack thereof), etc. Elain revealed that she loathed the community college she attended. They only offered low-level courses for her biology degree and consequently, she was not on track to receive her bachelor’s on time. And she certainly wouldn’t be able to have a career as a pediatrician if the prerequisite classes weren’t offered at the school. Nesta noticed, however, that Elain never once complained about staying home for their father. She didn’t express regret about the decision she made to sacrifice her professional goals. And because she was Elain – sweet, loving Elain – she found a way to blame herself. Elain was never the type of person to place fault on someone else, even when it was their fault. She would apologize when someone bumped into her or insulted her. Nesta knew her sister was smart enough to recognize she wasn’t in the wrong, but Elain was raised to believe she had to please others. She had to be selfless with every decision she made or else she thought herself to be a bad person. Nesta worried that one day, Elain wouldn’t stand up for herself and she would get hurt beyond repair.

The two of them sat on the suspiciously stained bed of the motel, mugs of steaming tea in their hands. The few belongings that Nesta had brought to Maine were stuffed into the tiny closet. The only indication that someone was living in the room was the rumpled sheets. The sound of pounding rain and clapping thunder roared as the sisters conversed.

“I’m not going to stay in Maine,” Elain confessed quietly as they sipped their tea.

Nesta rose a brow. “Oh?” It was the first she’d heard of this.

“I applied to Pryth U in the spring. Dad was in bad shape, and I had a feeling he wasn’t going to make it to the fall.” Elain swallowed loudly. “I, uh… I got in.”

Elain smiled sheepishly as Nesta gaped at her. “Elain, that’s wonderful!” Nesta interlaced her fingers with Elain’s and squeezed. Pride shone on her shadowed face. It was the first time since the funeral that she’d felt anything other than grief.

If she’s moving to Colorado… Nesta was cut off before she finished the thought.

“I was wondering… er, what do you think about having a roommate?” Elain’s knee bounced up and down in anticipation, her tea spilling slightly in her shaking hand. “I’m not messy at all, I promise. And I would pick up after my – “

Nesta reached over and put a hand on Elain’s knee to stop her rambling. She peered over at her clumsy sister.

“I’m not really a people person, but I suppose I could make an exception for you,” Nesta teased, earning a chuckle from Elain. Her gaze softened. “I would love for us to live together.”

Elain’s eyes got wide and she smiled –  truly smiled – for the first time in what felt like forever.

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

When Elain returned from the motel, she sat Feyre down and reiterated her plans for the fall. The minute the words left Elain’s mouth, Feyre was jumping off the sofa, dialing real estate agents, and punching numbers on a calculator.

Two days later, the Archeron house was put up for sale.

The sisters got to work quickly, eager to complete any unfinished business so they could get the hell out of Maine, a state none of them were particularly fond of. Nesta browsed the Internet for apartments, Elain joining her when she wasn’t helping Feyre clean the house. Their house had two stories, three bedrooms, and one and a half baths. It was smaller than most houses on the block, but in good shape nonetheless. The blue shutters were charming enough, the rolling yard spacious. Luckily, most of the rooms were already empty, and there was little furnishing. They were already preparing for tours; the area was popular for families with young children considering the elementary school was just a five-minute walk away.

As expected, the house was sold in a matter of days.

It was just a week later when Nesta stood on the sidewalk in front of her old home, Elain by her side. Somehow, Feyre and Elain had convinced her to go there and sort through their father’s final possessions. Apparently, he left Nesta some things in his will in addition to the financial assets they all received. This was the last thing they had to do in Maine. Then, Nesta could return to Massachusetts, pack her shit, and move to Colorado with Elain.

And finally leave everything behind.

This was her last chance to see her childhood home – her only chance. Nesta didn’t particularly care to add anything more to her list of regrets, which was long enough as is.

“Are you ready to go in?” Elain asked with a tilt of her head.

Nesta bit her lip and simply stared at the front door.

Elain must have sensed her hesitance because she reached between them and interlaced their hands. Nesta jumped slightly at the sudden contact but just a moment later, she squeezed her sister’s hand tightly. Elain squeezed back.

We’re in this together.

Nesta gave her a small nod, and they proceeded to walk straight toward her worst fear.

The first thing Nesta noticed was the smell. A hint of her father’s cologne. Mothballs. A whiff of air freshener to cover up the dusty scent.

Feyre was hunched over her laptop when they entered the kitchen. Her eyes were unreadable when she took in Nesta, but they softened slightly as she got up to hug her. Leaning back, Feyre peered at her closely.

"Are you doing okay?” The first indication that Feyre cared about Nesta. She couldn’t help but wonder if Elain had something to do with it; she was always the mediator between them, even during the most trivial disagreements.

“Everything’s in the living room.”

A nod.

She let Feyre lead her through the kitchen and into the living room. The floorboards groaned under their footsteps. It sounded like the entire house could collapse if they stomped hard enough. The foundation had always been weak.

The living room looked the same yet so completely different. Her dad’s beat-up armchair wasn’t sitting in the corner. The built-in bookshelves were bare, no children’s books or games to be found. The once plush carpet had been worn into a mere threadbare rag. Something cracked in Nesta’s chest when she beheld her dad’s belongings. Neatly folded clothing, stacks of books, souvenirs from business trips, dozens of journals, homemade wood carvings.

“Do you want to read it?” Feyre murmured, will in hand. “To see what he left you.”

Nesta’s hands shook as she accepted the paper. It was flimsy. She could easily tear apart all her father’s wishes, set them aflame until they were ash on the floor. Perhaps she would if it hadn’t been for her visit at the hospital that day. Perhaps she would have thrown it all away without a second thought. And to think, that was just a week ago.

Nesta burned with shame. How had she been so willing to act in such a horrific manner? How had she been so selfish? So unforgiving?

Her father had waited years for Nesta to come around. He never lost hope that she would find her way back, despite the awful things she’d said to him throughout the years. Her father – the man who let his daughter hate him to protect her from the ugly truth. Nesta didn’t want to even think about how disappointed he must be in her.

Nesta had never let herself admit it, but she was just like her mother. Not only in the way she looked – her stormy eyes and golden hair – but also who she was. Nesta ended up hurting everyone who got into her path of destruction and chaos. No one got out unscathed. Not even Nesta herself.

Nesta forced herself to read the typed words that were inked into the thin piece of paper. If she delayed this any longer, she would explode.

For Nesta Archeron, my eldest daughter, I leave a third of my property and monetary assets, as well as my full collection of journals. May she use them to write the book she’s been dreaming of for years.

Then, at the bottom of the paper, Nesta read the handwritten words.

I forgive you, Ness. Now it’s your turn.

Nesta didn’t notice she was crying until the words blotted together as her tears fell on the will.

Classes started tomorrow, and Nesta hadn’t left her bed in a week.

Her and Elain officially moved in three weeks ago. Their apartment was small and quaint, and if anyone were to peek their head in, they’d know who decorated it. Overflowing plants hung from the ceiling, built in shelves adorning the white walls. Fairy lights were wrapped around the wooden beams that stood between the living area and the kitchen. Plush pillows – yellow, maroon, green – were laid on all the couches. The many windows had been cleaned and remained open most days, letting the refreshing Colorado breeze cool the room.

It had Elain written all over it.

After settling in, Nesta had turned into a recluse – more so than ever before. She spoke only when Elain initiated conversations but even then, her answers were short and clipped. Her bedroom door was perpetually closed, and Nesta had no idea what day it was.

Her bedroom was bare, save for the queen-sized mattress she rested on. All her belongings resided in the guest room for the time being, the boxes stacked to the ceiling. Nesta had only unpacked a thick blanket, cat supplies, and a small lamp. She had stuffed her father’s journals under her bed the moment they’d moved in. She’d taken every last one. They were out of sight, but they weren’t out of mind. The reminder of the journals weighed heavy on Nesta’s heart. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t bring herself to read them.

Elain was treating her like a porcelain doll. Nesta hated it. She hated the fact that her younger sister had to take care of her. She hated being weak. Nesta had struggled with mental health issues since she was a girl. Some of it was due to the inherent chemical imbalances in her brain – she had her family’s poor genetics to thank for that – and the rest of it could be attributed to everything that’d happened to her. It could have easily been subdued with therapy and medication, but her parents didn’t take any sort of action. They didn’t even recognize their own mental illnesses in the first place, much less their children’s. Feyre herself struggled with bouts of depression in high school when she was working forty-hour weeks and studying until the sun rose every morning. Elain had gone through her own struggles, but she kept her cards close to her chest. She didn’t want to burden others with her problems. Even when Elain was at her lowest, she put everyone before herself. And even though it was driven by nothing but compassion, she needed to help herself first.

None of them saw therapists. None of them were prescribed medications. Feyre used sheer will to graduate high school and move far away. Elain persevered through her pain and learned to love herself. Nesta, however, wielded no such resilience.

Like she said, she was weak.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon. The curtains were drawn to ward off any sunlight that peeked through the windows. Nesta lay in her bed, a gray hoodie drawn over her head. It nearly swallowed her tiny body. Iroh was curled up by her side, nestled in the soft fabric of her oversized sweater. He hadn’t left her side since moving in.

As Nesta stared at the popcorn ceiling above her, idly rubbing her hands through Iroh’s black fur, she overheard Elain in the kitchen. She was talking to someone on the phone, her voice hushed.

“She barely leaves her room,” Elain whispered. “She’s not eating. I’m worried, Feyre.”

Nesta craned her neck closer to the door.

“No, she doesn’t want to talk about it,” Elain explained, frustrated by whatever Feyre had said. Concern laced her voice.

“Her classes start in a week, and she hasn’t even begun to prepare for the semester. I don’t know how she’s going to be able to attend classes based on the state she’s in…”

Silence. Nesta waited.

“I don’t know how I’m going to take care of her if she doesn’t attend school, Feyre. My class schedule is already so busy. Maybe I can request to do remote learning from the apartment?”

Oh, fuck no. Anger bubbled to the surface.

Nesta swung her feet over the edge of the bed to snatch the phone out of Elain’s hand and smack some sense into her, but her leg swung into the bedside lamp. She watched in horror as the light fell to the floor. The bulb shattered easily, blanketing the room in darkness. Nesta cringed as the loud crash reverberated throughout the entire apartment.

Do the gods really hate me this much?

“I got to go, Feyre. I’ll call you soon.”

Nesta’s heart sunk in dread as she heard Elain’s quiet footsteps approach her bedroom. She quickly cocooned herself back into the comforter before Elain had the chance to see the state of her sickly body.

“Nesta?” Elain knocked on the door quietly. She peered in, rich brown eyes wide with concern. “Are you okay?”

Nesta didn’t say anything as Elain let herself in. Her long hair – typically fashioned into a neat half-updo – was sticking out in every which way, the golden waves pulled back in a loose ponytail. Her thick-framed glasses were pushed onto the top of her head. She wore leggings and a graphic tee that said, “ask me about my plants.”

Elain walked over to sit on the edge of the bed. Nesta laid on her side facing her sister, but she didn’t look at her. Her eyes were instead fixated on the empty wall as she avoided Elain’s gaze. Elain tentatively lifted her hand and rested it on Nesta’s head. She gently combed her hands through her sister’s mangled hair – hair that hadn’t been washed in weeks. They didn’t say anything for a couple moments.

“How are you feeling?”

No answer.

“Do you need me to contact the school?”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Nesta croaked with a hoarse voice.

“I know.”

“I don’t need someone to take care of me.” Lies, lies, lies.

“Are you still planning on attending classes?” Elain continued, ignoring her sister’s insistence.

“Yes.” The word was bitter on her tongue.

She heard Elain exhale a deep breath. Relief, she guessed.

Truthfully, grad school hadn’t crossed Nesta’s mind once since they’d moved in. She didn’t particularly care about her education.

Until now.

Until Elain volunteered to sacrifice her education once again for the sake of her family. Nesta may be a bad person, but there was no way in hell she would let Elain do such a thing. Nesta had been complacent when they were young girls – letting Feyre provide for the family, refusing to speak to her father, tearing everyone apart. Leaving all of them without thinking twice.

“Can I do anything? Buy you supplies?”

“Go away, Elain.” Leave it be. This is only making it worse. Go before I –

“Please, Nesta, let me – “

“Leave me the fuck alone!” Nesta snapped, pulling herself upright and pointing a deadly finger at the door. Her voice cracked as she yelled.

Leave me to die, Nesta almost said.

Elain recoiled, eyes filled with hurt.

In that moment, Nesta truly loathed herself.

As Elain began to get up and leave, Nesta wrapped her hands around Elain’s to stop her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Gods, I’m so sorry, Elain.”

Elain remained frozen.

“I don’t… I don’t know what’s happening to me,” Nesta whispered, terror in her voice. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

A couple tears fell from Elain’s eyes, but she slid closer to Nesta. She didn’t speak for a few minutes.

“I just want you to be happy, Nesta,” Elain told her, a sad smile on her face. “I haven’t seen you happy in years. I remember when you were, though. I remember when you beat up those boys who bullied Feyre in middle school. You came home with a broken tooth, but you were grinning nevertheless.”

Gods. Nesta didn’t want to listen.

“And all those times when we would all have a sleepover together since Mom didn’t let us have friends over. You always made it so fun. You would sneak me and Feyre soda.

“I don’t know what happened to you when we were kids, Nesta, and I understand that you don’t want to talk about it quite yet. But when you do, I’m here for you. I just want my sister to come back. The happy, real version.”

Nesta wanted to tell her. She wanted to explain why she was this way. She wanted to tell Elain that she didn’t deserve any semblance of happiness. That she shouldn’t have to reassure her older sister.

Nesta wanted to sob, but nothing came out.

She was empty.

So, she just slowly tucked the blankets to her chin and laid back down. A sign of defeat.

Elain settled into the bed beside her sister. She cooed soothing words as Nesta held onto her for dear life.

[celestelavie]

Campus Tours || Athena & Celeste

TIMING: About a week ago PARTIES: @athenaquinn & @celestelavie SUMMARY: Since they’re staying in town long term, Celeste decides to go to UMWC to get information on their nursing program. Athena shows a lost Celeste around

After a particularly grueling shift at the diner, Celeste had decided she needed a step in the right direction. College had never made much sense, being on the run all the time, but if they were going to be making roots here, now was a good time as any to start. It felt like a huge step to be taking with the threat of her parents still looming, but she had to believe even that would be under wraps soon enough. She could at least hope as much anyway. She figured she could visit the Admissions office as the very least and get an idea of what her next steps needed to be. However, she found the campus to be a little overwhelming to navigate. She stared down at the map on her phone, trying to figure out what part of it corresponded with the building. She’d been grumbling at her phone when she noticed a figure in front of her just in time to prevent herself from a collision. “Sorry,” she started, “Oh! You’re Athena, right? Ariana’s friend?”

School was out for the summer, but that didn’t mean that Athena wasn’t still on campus. She liked going swimming in the pool and she had friends taking summer courses. It was also a place in town that she knew her parents were fine with her spending time at. They had to be, even though they didn’t wish for her to live on campus. Today she was simply going for a walk around campus, enjoying the nice weather. She wondered where her brother was - he had still not yet come home, and part of her worried for him, no matter how angry she was at him for leaving in the first place. Caught up briefly in her own thoughts she didn’t see the woman who was about to run into her, but luckily the woman stopped before the two of them collided, and Athena briefly side stepped, ready to wave and be on her way when the woman began talking to her. “Oh! Yes, I am! You must be Celeste.” She grinned, turning to face the woman. “How are you? It is such a wonderful sort of coincidence to run into you.”

Of all the people to nearly run into, Celeste had to be grateful that it was a friend of Ariana’s. Using the map on her cell phone to navigate the campus had proven to be more difficult than she would have liked. Plus, it was good to actually meet Athena. By all indications, she was a good influence and had gotten Ariana in with that summer soccer camp she was so excited for. She extended her hand forward to shake Athena’s, “It’s good to meet you in person. I’ve heard great things about you and your cookies were quite delicious.” She stuffed the phone back into the pocket of her jeans and answered, “Oh, I’m doing well. I was just looking for the Admissions office, actually. The map was a little confusing… hence, the near collision.”

She’d been wondering if she was ever going to get to meet Celeste. Athena was always curious about other siblings - and the fact that Celeste was a good deal older than Ariana just added another layer of fascination into the whole thing. They also seemed to get along well. Better than her and Orion, certainly, though Athena was self-aware enough to know that though she and her brother might have appeared like ideal siblings, they had not been that for years. Namely due to his refusal to believe in his destiny - or at least that was what she told herself. “It is good to meet you in person too.” She took Celeste’s hand in her own and gave it a quick, solid shake. “I am glad you have heard good things - and oh, I’m so glad! Baking and sharing what I bake is just the best.” She tossed a bit of her hair over her shoulder. “Well, you know, I might be able to help you with that. You were headed sort of in the right direction. What do you say? We can walk and chat along the way? If you don’t mind the company, that is.”

Celeste welcomed the idea of someone helping her find her way to the Admissions Office, especially a friend of Ariana’s. It was becoming more and more apparent that the younger woman really was a perfectionist. Celeste couldn’t even remember the last time she baked something though she was sure it was probably chocolate chip cookies. “Well, I can’t complain since I get to eat some of the baked goods. I’ve never been much of a baker myself.” She shifted her purse on her shoulder and exclaimed, “I’ll gladly take the help. I was beginning to feel a bit silly not being able to find it. Chatting would also be nice.” She smiled as she followed Athena’s lead, thankful she ran into someone she sort of knew to help her find her way. “How’s everything been with you? I know Ariana mentioned you two would be volunteering at a soccer camp together this summer.”

“Well, if you ever want some recipes to try out, I’ve got some good starter ones to try.” Athena grinned. “I won’t go all out and send you complicated ones, don’t worry.” She gave a small shrug. “Just let me know.” She grinned as Celeste accepted her offer of help. Good - this would give her a specific task for the day. Not to mention, she was curious to get to know Celeste more. She liked Ariana, and it was good to get to know the family members of those you were friends with, wasn’t it? “Please, this campus is a mess of planning, sometimes. You’d think an admissions office would be the easiest thing to find and yet it is far from it.” Adjusting her pace so that she was in line with Celeste, Athena grinned. “Chatting would be nice. Things with me are good. College is out for the summer, which is nice, though I do like school so part of me is also sad - but I think I did very well in all my classes this semester so I am pleased. Ariana and I will be doing that! Starts the end of June, and I’m super excited. Ariana’s such a great soccer player, and it’ll be nice to have her around. How about you? How are the repairs on your home going? I hope well, though I know these things can sometimes take forever.”

“I may take you up on that one of these days,” Celeste responded with a smile, “Thank goodness, I remember my mom tried to have me make a meringue once without any previous guidance on it and it… well, it turned out disastrous.”  She welcomed the chance to get to know one of Ariana’s friends. One of these days, when they were able to have a place of their own again, they’d have to have her over. As they walked through the campus, Celeste laughed. “Yes, they definitely didn’t make it easy. I was hoping to get some information on what I’d need to do to get myself enrolled in the nursing program.” She kept pace with the younger girl and listened as she talked about her summer. It was rare to see someone who liked school, but she supposed she understood. She seemed like a very ambitious young woman. “Well, I’m glad to hear your grades are doing well. What brings you to campus if you’re out of class for the summer? I know she’s really excited for the camp, too. She’s always loved soccer.” At the mention of their home, she shifted her glance a bit. It wasn’t like she could explain it anyway, so she shrugged, “It’s coming along. Hopefully we can be home soon.”

“Absolutely, just let me know.” Athena grinned. “Meringues are incredibly tricky to get right, so I will be certain to not give you any of those recipes. Admittedly, even I do not love working with meringue, so I do not have many recipes that even use that.” She found Celeste surprisingly easy to talk to - though she supposed that she should not have been so very surprised, in the end. Athena liked to think of herself as someone who could win most anyone over. Certainly something she’d used to her advantage on more than one occasion. So far though, at least in this conversation, everything she had said was filled to the brim with honesty - or at least as much so as she ever properly used. “Oh, nursing! That’s so fantastic! One of the girls in my sorority is starting there in the fall, it’s supposed to be a wonderful program.” She glanced over to Celeste. “Thank you, and well - I like the campus, and it gives me a nice space to walk around and collect my thoughts. It’s nice to walk around here and not have to focus on thinking about an exam or paper or project that I’ll have to do.” She bit her lip. “I’ve loved soccer for years too. It seemed like a nice thing to mention to her, especially given how skilled she is.” She watched Celeste’s expression change for a moment at the mention of her home and for a moment (though only a fleeting one) Athena wondered if perhaps that was not the best sort of question to have asked. “I hope you can be as well.” She continued to make her way through the campus, past a few classroom buildings, as she pointed them out, “that’s where some of my favorite classes have been held. Introduction to Neuroscience, for one. The class that I came into excited for and left knowing that it’d have to be one of my majors.” She looked back over at the other woman. “Can I ask - what draws you to nursing?”

The talk of meringue brought Celeste to a not so pleasant flashback of a job she worked back in San Diego at a bakery. It had been short lived due to how many meringues she had messed up and she had no intention of putting herself through that kind of torture again. “That’s a relief. If it’s meringue-free, I’m sure I can make the recipe work and not have flashback nightmares to an awful job I had when we lived in San Diego.” Somehow the news that Athena was in a sorority hadn’t been surprising to her. Everything about her screamed Type A from her school ambitions and her involvement as a student athlete. Even down to the enjoying campus when she didn’t even have to be here. It was a nice enough campus, but she had to imagine a break was nice. She knew Ariana was always eager to leave school unless she had practice. “Maybe I’ll see her in classes then. I’m sure I have a ton of prerequisites to take. I haven’t taken any college classes.” Hell, she hadn’t even graduated high school though she had gotten her GED. Technically, she also had a very convincing counterfeit diploma and transcripts, too, but she was inclined to take the honest route. She walked along with Athena, bag swinging from her shoulder and mused, “I suppose I can understand that. The campus is nice and I’m sure has good spots for reading and the like.” Celeste smiled as she spoke of how she enjoyed soccer and how skilled Ariana was. It made her proud to see Ari excel at something, especially when it was something she enjoyed. She hoped the carpentry apprenticeship worked out well for her. “I’m sure you two will have a lovely time.” She shrugged calmly at Athena’s well wishes. The little house they’d been staying in wouldn’t be an option anymore. Finding a new place would be nice though. Ulfric’s was kind of cramped and as cordial as he was capable of being, it was fairly plain to see he wasn’t her biggest fan. She focused instead on the last part, “Well, I’ve always wanted to do something that helps people and I’m not at all squeamish.” She thought to her own stitches on her leg that she’d done herself, “Figured I have the personality to provide comfort and medical care, so may as well go for it now that Ariana is out in the working world. You mentioned going into the medical field as well, right?”

“You lived in California?” Athena’s eyes lit up for a moment. “I’d love to go there someday.” It was almost as though with everything Celeste said she felt all the more connected to her - or even if not connected - more intrigued. She’d lived such an interesting life - lived in so many different places, and Athena had only been in one. She knew that it was for an incredibly good reason, but it didn’t mean that she didn’t sometimes wish she could have traveled elsewhere. “You may! I’ll tell her to look out for you. You might need to do some prereqs, but like, I know they always want new students so that’s also something in your favor.” She gave a small shrug to the woman. “Besides, if you’re anything like your sister, you’re likely a quick learner. She told me she was struggling with math classes but then got up to nearly an A in almost no time!” It was genuine, her compliment - she knew that she wasn’t always genuine but she did enjoy talking to Ariana. So she figured that being honest was the best way to go about things in this case. “Exactly. Especially with the beautiful weather, it’s nicer to go here than in a library or coffee shop in order to read. Plus, I know this makes me sound like a giant nerd - not that there’s anything wrong with that - but sometimes I like to get my books for the fall in advance and read those, and doing it on campus seems even nicer.” Her grin matched Celeste’s. “I bet we will, it’s a great camp and she seems so excited.” Celeste didn’t seem to want to remark any more on Athena’s comment about the house - which was fine. She knew that they were still mostly strangers, and just because some people enjoyed talking about home repairs, others were more cautious. She only hoped that there hadn’t been a sort of terrible attack. “I feel much the same way - and yes, all of that makes sense. I am going into the medical field! Hopefully I’ll get into some good med schools come next year. I agree though, I truly just want to do whatever I can to help make the world a better place, and if medicine is one way to do that, then why not?”

“Yes,” Celeste answered with a small grin. It had been a very brief stint before her parents had gotten wind of their location, but she had enjoyed it. The state had a lot to offer in terms of different terrains and national parks. “It’s a beautiful state. I miss it sometimes, but White Crest has a homey feel to it.” The prospect of being a student again still had her nerves on edge, but having a connection could be nice. Make the whole thing easier. “I appreciate that. I’m sure any friend of yours is lovely.” As much was true. Athena seemed like a smart kid with a good head on her shoulders. She was definitely driven and friendly. It was nice to have someone showing her the way around campus. There was a certain excited energy that came with being here and it was nice to get some of it out. She walked alongside the girl and commented, “It has been beautiful as of late. It’s good that you enjoy where and what you study. I imagine it makes the whole keeping up with your coursework so much easier.” At least she had assumed as much. It’d been too many years since she had to study anything herself. A smile grew on her face at the mention of Ariana being excited for the soccer camp. It was nice she had something to look forward to, even in the midst of everything else. They were choosing somewhere to be home permanently which gave them both the freedom to pursue things they were passionate about. “She really is, which I love to see.” They walked through a part of campus that had a fair number of little picnic tables under trees. She could envision herself content under one just studying away. As much had always been something that felt so out of reach, but here she was. She studied the campus around her and listened as Athena spoke. “That’s an admirable goal. You seem to be very motivated, so I have no doubt you’ll reach it. I like the way you think though, helping people. The whole leaving the world a better place than you found it thing. I wish you the best of luck with applying and getting into med schools.”

“White Crest has a homey feel for me too,” Athena grinned. “Then again, it has been my home my whole life, so I suppose to some degree that’s to be expected. Though, if you don’t mind, I might ask you about California sometime.” She shrugged. “Oh, of course! She’s great, and plus, she knows the place well and so she’ll get you all in the know and everything. Which is something that counts, I think. Even if just to let you know all the shortcuts around campus.” Celeste seemed happy, and that made Athena stand up straighter and continue to lead the woman along, giving a small wave as she passed a boy who was in one of her lectures last semester. “It has been, and I am so glad for that. Though I love Maine, winters do get so dreary. Also true, that studying what I love does make everything a lot easier. More appealing, too.” Another nod. “I’m glad, I’m glad I could do this for her - but she really got in all on her own. Knowing me was an added bonus to her application, she’s incredible in her own merit.” She sighed. “Thank you, and same to you. Anyone who wants to further their education is bound to succeed in their own way.” She did believe that, to an extent. Certainly, this was a bit more forced than usual, but she wanted to make a good impression. “I agree. I have always been that way, for as long as I can remember. Just wanting to make the world as good a place as is possible. Thank you!” She looked up. “We’re almost to the admissions building. Not too hard after all, hm?” She winked.

“I didn’t live there too long, but I’d be happy to answer any California questions that I can,” Celeste stated easily with a smile. She did know the state was a popular tourist destination for a good number of reasons. Her initial thought when they had moved there was that it would be far enough away from the Aquilla Estate that her parents wouldn’t venture out there on a whim. She’d been wrong and now they were going to be here soon enough. She focused back on the nursing school things, noting each building they passed. “Thank you, Athena. I look forward to hopefully joining in the program and meeting her. This place is huge, shortcuts would be most helpful.” Potential study partners were also a plus. She’d always enjoyed making friends. Celeste smiled in the direction of the boy Athena waved at, not wanting to appear rude. She’d yet to experience a Maine winter so she wasn’t sure what she was in for. Whether it’d be better or worse than winter in other states. “I suppose I’ll see for myself soon enough,” she thought aloud with a laugh. It couldn’t be any worse than Minnesota. There was a surge of pride that went through her hearing Athena speak so highly of Ariana. Their life hadn’t been easy, but she’d always done her best to steer Ari in the right direction. “Thank you, I know she’s a bright kid. Passionate, too. I’m sure the kids will get that from both of you.” She scanned their surroundings, noting they were by the Financial Aid department. She made a mental note of that. She’d need to visit them shortly after Admissions. Not surprisingly, Athena mentioned they were close. “Oh good, I’ve been trying to keep an eye on landmarks to make it easier for next time. Thank you for taking the time to lead the way. Good deeds definitely help in making the world a better place.”

“Oh, I don’t expect you to be an expert, it’d just be more what it was like living there,” Athena offered an easy smile. “Of course - I hope you get into the program too, and shortcuts are for sure always handy to know.” Though the nursing program and medical school did not always work together so much, if Athena did end up at UMWC’s medical school (her parents might want that, she figured - even though Johns Hopkins or Harvard or Geffen were all higher up, she’d stay here if it was needed) then there was a chance that they’d run into one another, still. “I suppose you will, although hopefully not too soon! We had a time of complete darkness, and that was a bit difficult, but I do not wish for winter in the middle of summer.” This entire conversation was incredibly normal. She was used to it, but there was something about Celeste that felt more natural than some of the other conversations she’d had. Maybe it was that even though she was meeting her for the first time technically, they had already connected a bit online and Athena did already know her sister. The shared interest in the medical field didn’t hurt, nor did the fact that Celeste was certainly not fae. “I’m sure they will,” she said with a quick nod. “You have a good sense of awareness, it’ll serve you well here. The landmarks method is a good way to go about it, it allows you to figure out where places are from any point. Also, don’t even mention it, I’m more than happy to be able to help out and to finally meet you. Good deeds do indeed, and the world certainly needs more of that.”  

“Warmer, sunnier, more hip if that’s still what the kids are saying. Way less mimes,” Celeste answered with a laugh. Of all the things in White Crest, she found she hated the mimes most of all. With a wide smile, she said, “Thank you, Athena. I appreciate it.” The prospect of being able to settle in a place and beginning to build a real life both excited and terrified her. Still, it’d be nice to pursue something she was actually passionate about and never have to ask another person how they wanted their eggs. The mention of the complete darkness made her laugh lightly. “Yes, definitely don’t want winter too soon. I’d like to enjoy the summer weather.” Though she figured she’d opt from going swimming anywhere in White Crest. It seemed almost inevitable something would try to eat her and that wasn’t her idea of summer fun. She looked over the Admissions building, still slightly filled with nerves to get this journey started before turning back to Athena. “Thank you. I agree with you, landmarks and being aware of your surroundings truly help. I think I could actually find this building again. It truly was great meeting you. Once Ariana and I get settled back into our home, you’ll have to come by for dinner and games some night. Enjoy your day, Athena!” With a final wave, she made her way into the Admissions Building feeling more hopeful than she had in a long time.

[benhardyaf]

WHEN IN LONDON | PART ONE | H.O

Summary: Elliott moved to London with her boyfriend and a plan. When she loses one she didn’t realise it would mean losing the other. Maybe Harrison can make her realise that no plan is perfectly fine. 

Word Count: 2.3k

Warnings: Harassment? (put your hands up if this happens to you every damn weekend!!! no means no gd)

A/N: Hi! So this is the second fic I had planned for Haz but it seems to be a quicker write so it’s coming out sooner than I thought. Please let me know what you think of it, any feedback is welcome. Also if you wanna be tagged in this series just ask??? lol I’ve never done this tag thing and probably no one wants to continue it but oh well. Enjoy!

It had been a week since I’d broken up with Dylan, but almost two months since I realised I didn’t want to be with him. It wasn’t an easy thing to do; we’d been dating since we were 17 years old and we moved to a different country together. He wasn’t a bad boyfriend, he loved me, doted on me at times, treated me right. But I couldn’t stop imagining what my life would be like without him in it. I didn’t wait eagerly on the tube home to our flat just to see his face, I didn’t get butterflies in my stomach when he told me he loved me, I didn’t feel the need to accompany him to his work dinner events. We were friends - that was all there was to it. Sure, I loved him, but I wasn’t in love with him. 

Last Thursday night was difficult. He was surprised, not sure he thought we would ever break up. We were comfortable. I don’t think Dylan had spent a day in his life uncomfortable. He had a wealthy family, lots of connections, a good body and a smile that lit up a room. Most things came very easily to him. He told me I could keep the flat, which was so nice. I was the one who’d broken up with him, shouldn’t I move out?

Of course, keeping the flat was causing me a little bit of stress. When it was the two of us, it was easy to pay the rent of a two bedroom with two full time salaries. Now, I had to fork out that cash on my own, which was going to be difficult. 

That was how I found myself, a week after turning single, walking into a Luau themed bar on a Friday night to meet people I worked with for a few drinks. I’d walked from the Tube station and I already regretted the shoes I was wearing - nothing too flashy, just some leopard print sandals - but the strap was digging into my heels. I flattened my denim skirt as I looked for their table, I was feeling a little nervous to see everyone. Despite knowing Dylan and I weren’t meant to be together, it was a lot easier having him by my side as a comfort. 

After pushing through dozens of people and dodging tables with tiki torches lighting up drunk faces, I spotted a group of people by the far wall. I recognised Chloe and Jesse first. They were my closest friends at work, I shared an office space with them. They waved at me and I walked over to them quickly.

“Elliott, you look cute.” Chloe pinched my arm, smiling up at me. “Sit down and grab a drink.” I smiled my thanks, falling easily into conversation with the group and settling my stomach slightly for the night. 

I giggled along helplessly to something one of the boys had said, throwing my head back in exaggeration. I was a few drinks in and at this level I thought everything was funny. Our group had dwindled in the hour that had passed, leaving me alone with Jesse, Chloe and a few of the other guys. In my overstated snickering, I slightly lost balance and bumped into someone walking behind me. I turned around to apologize but they weren’t looking at me, they were looking at Ryan, who worked on our third floor, and had a very strange look on his face.

“I’m so sorry.” I said, still smiling. “I emote outwardly.” The person I had knocked looked at me now. He had very short hair that looked recently shaved and dark brown eyes. 

“Not a problem, love.” He smiled back. Luckily I hadn’t knocked any of the beers out of his hands. He walked a few more steps and sat down at his own table, which was placed next to ours. He handed out beers to his friends, who began chatting with him. 

I turned back to my group, thinking about the encounter I’d just had. The guy was attractive, that much was obvious. And I had always loved British boys, not that I’d ever had the opportunity to be with one, seeing as I’d been with Dylan the whole time I’d lived in England. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind until that moment, but I was now free to sleep with whoever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I was single. It was a freedom I could get used to. 

Another hour passed and more people began to leave until it was just Jesse, Ryan, Chloe and I. We were chatting about nothing in particular. I would zone out of the conversation every now and then, fiddling with the paper straw in my Pimms that had started to get soggy. 

“Elliott.” I was munching on the cucumber soaked in alcohol, not listening to the boys trying to get my attention. “Elliott!” Jesse waved his hand in front of my face. 

“Sorry, zoned out.” 

“Ryan was asking when you broke up with Dylan.” Jesse took a sip of his drink. I told him and Chloe about the break up the day after it happened and they got to hear all the gory details, but I hadn’t really talked about it much to anyone else from work. 

“Oh.” I frowned, looking down again. This sort of conversation could really put a damper on my good mood. “Last week.”

“Why?” Ryan moved closer to me, the sun was setting behind him and I moved to put my sunglasses on to cover my eyes. 

I shrugged my shoulders, wanting the questioning to end. “Sometimes things just end.”

Ryan nodded his head, his hair falling into his eyes. I suppose he was objectively good looking, but I’d never really cared for him. His arrogance was something I could never look past. Chloe talked about him constantly, and how his blue eyes and black hair combo could do things that no other man ever could. I often told her that she should have higher standards if her only prerequisite was black hair and blue eyes. She thought I was crazy.

I stopped listening to the conversation again after that, paying more attention to my drink and feeling a little uncomfortable. Jesse didn’t mean any harm but I couldn’t stop thinking that he could have quelled the subject completely before it even came to me. Chloe seemed to eat up the words that were coming out of Ryans mouth, her eyes never leaving him. 

I came to when I felt a palm slip onto my thigh. I looked at Jesse, who had both his hands on the table, ripping up the label of his beer bottle, then to Ryan, who smirked as he continued telling whatever story he was in. I felt like throwing up.

I excused myself and went to the bathroom. The spot on my thigh where Ryans hand had sat was burning. I knew that technically I could do whatever I wanted, I had no attachments anymore. But everything about Ryan screamed dirty to me. I didn’t like the way he stared at girls, I didn’t like the way he talked about himself and I didn’t like the way he took credit for other people's work. I threw some water on my face and tried to cool down. The warm summer air seemed to triple in heat and I was feeling very flushed. I spent a few minutes using the water to calm the redness in my cheeks and went back to the table, deliberately choosing to sit on the other side of the table next to Chloe. 

“You look a little stressed. Are you okay?” Chloe asked me quietly, taking the last gulp of her drink and placing the empty glass on the table. I nodded at her, not confident my voice would come out properly. Chloe shrugged and went back to the conversation the boys were having.

Eventually she decided she needed another drink and got up to get the group a round. 

As soon as she left, I felt worried again. I felt the stares of the boys on me as they expected me to join in, but I couldn’t make myself focus on the discussion. The night was ruined. I told the boys that I was tired and was going to go home and was met with protestations. 

“Just stay a bit longer.” Jesse whined, pouting his bottom lip. 

I laughed half-heartedly, shaking my head at him. “It’s been a really long week. I need a good sleep.” 

Jesse nodded. Ryan looked at me, I couldn’t really read his expression. 

“I thought we were having fun.” It wasn’t a question, he was telling me.

“Oh, yeah.” I gulped. “It’s been great.” I nodded, trying to convince myself. 

“Then don’t go.” He said, rather firmly. I had made it to the other side of the table, heading towards the door. I started to shake my head when he grabbed my hand. “You should stay.” I didn’t know what to say to him. I was trying to pull my hand out of his grasp but he had quite a tight grip on it. “Stay here.” When I looked at his face, his eyebrows were pulled into each other. He seemed angry. I tried to object but he stood up, his frame towering over me. 

I hadn’t considered him an intimidating man before. Sure, he was conceited and arrogant and rude but he had never seemed harmful. Then, though, I wasn’t sure what sort of man he really was. 

Words died on my tongue as he took a step towards me. My heart was beating a little faster. I looked at Jesse, who was confused. He didn’t do anything though. 

“I really need to get home.” I found my voice, faking a smile and hoping I sounded sincere. “I’ve got an early start tomorrow.” I took a step backwards, hoping he’d let go of my hand. Ryan was about to say something when a voice cut in.

“Hey, mate.” I looked to the owner. It came from the table next to us, with the guy that I’d bumped earlier. The person speaking was sitting across from him, frown plastered on his face and eyes so blue they seemed to glow. The dying sun was on his right, leaving his skin glowing golden. “Leave her alone.”

I looked at the rest of the table, each face was turned towards me. There was a litter of different expressions, one of disgust, one of anger, another of judgement. I didn’t know what my face looked like, but I hoped it wasn’t betraying my panic. 

The nice brunette guy from earlier spoke up. “Not sure you can take the hint so we’ll spell it out for you: she’s not interested.” Hums of agreement followed his statement. Ryan didn’t release his grip on my hand though. 

“What the hell does this have to do with you?” Ryans teeth were gritted. 

There were a few chuckles from the table. “God.” The boy with blue eyes ran a hand through his hair, messing it up slightly. He looked annoyed. “Nothing really.” He rolled his eyes.

“But it can involve us if you want it to.” One of the boys next to him chimed in. It wasn’t really a threat. The brunette who had said it was even smiling. His tone wasn’t menacing and he didn’t look like he wanted to even get up from his seat. But the implication was there - we will not tolerate this. 

Ryan looked across the table, noticing that he was completely outnumbered. Finally, he released my hand. I looked down and could see a red ring around my wrist where his fingers were. I then looked to Jesse, who had a look of shock on his face. 

I couldn’t find any words so I just looked at all the boys around me, unsure of what to do next. Ryan had had enough and stormed off to leave, throwing his shoulder into mine on the way. I winced slightly but didn’t react otherwise. 

Chloe arrived at that moment with three drinks in her hand. “What did I miss?” She looked around at all the tense faces. “Where’d Ryan go?” She placed the drinks down and walked up to me. Still no one had spoken. “What’s happening?” She half whispered, seeing that Jesse wasn’t going to say a thing she hoped I would. I shook my head at her, unsure of what to say.

“You know what, I’ve never liked Ryans.” The brown-eyed boy from the table next to us announced. The others laughed. I looked at them all, smiling slightly myself. 

Chloe just looked even more confused. I shook my head, trying to get a hold of myself. “Ryan, um.” How do I put this lightly? “He left.” Explaining nothing seemed easiest.

“Oh, okay.” She still looked confused, but didn’t push the subject. 

I didn’t know what to do so I just sat down again, hoping Chloe would sit as well and we could forget about everything. Thankfully, she did. But as soon as we were about to continue our night, Jesse stood up. “I need to go.” 

I hurt me a little that he didn’t want to sit with me. I didn’t know what to say to him. Had I offended him? Was he angry at me for making a scene? I felt so guilty, but also embarrassed that so many people had witnessed everything. 

I briefly looked to my left, the group of boys was talking again as if nothing had happened. They chatted and laughed and sipped on their drinks, having a great time. As I was about to look away, my eyes met one of theirs. His lips curled up in a smile and he nodded his head at me, his blonde hair shining in the sun. He raised his drink in a cheers fashion. I reached forward and grabbed my own, slightly lifting it and smiling back at him.

[dreadnought-dear-captain]

Steve’s Ending: What the Fuck Just Happened?

                            ************WARNING*********** 

BIG-ASS ESSAY WITH SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME AHOY

I have been largely out of the fandom sphere for a spell because of personal stuff that went down and then subsequent Endgame anxiety (I’m sorry, I really will get to some BW asks as soon as I’m done reeling from this film), but I wanted to get out some thoughts about Endgame while they are fresh in my mind. I have seen Endgame twice since its release. I saw it Friday morning, debriefed with my beta @pitchforkcentral86, and then turned around and bought tickets for an evening showing the same day. Why? Because I had to process Steve’s last scene. I had to see it twice just to comprehend what the hell happened and then try to interpret it. I went through several hypotheses and waves of accompanying emotion and then came to a tentative personal conclusion about what the hell Steve’s ending is to me.  But first I had to ask— Is this a true happy ending? Is this lazy writing? Is this a character assassination? Is this a legitimate choice Steve would make? Some combination of the above? So, here go my hypotheses—

Hypothesis 1: This is a legitimate happy ending for Steve and his timeline.

If you only look at the images shown to us and don’t devote much thought to the implications of Steve’s choice for other people in the world, it might appear to be a beautiful ending. After a decade-and-a-half of compass-gazing and pining for the good old days of segregation and boiled food, Steve gets what he wants. He gets the person who is — surprise! — “the love of his life.” This plays into the ongoing narrative that Steve has never been able to find contentment in the modern world or with modern people (some of whom he refers to as “family,” interestingly enough). This hypothesis also assumes that he can only be happy if he is with one woman, because he assumes shared life experience is a prerequisite for partnership, which means that he has essentially preemptively foreclosed on any relationship with anyone who is not Peggy.  Since Bucky’s name has barely even entered Steve’s consciousness lately, except to emotionally whump his past self into not choking him to death, even their friendship seems to be a question in the last two films in this series.

So if we take the arc of these films into consideration, including the last two films, he has apparently resigned himself to a position of “Peggy is my only viable romantic relationship, and she is dead, and I am incomplete as long as this is true.” When you write this thesis for Steve Rogers, which is a sad thesis indeed, this ending might seem like a relief for him. (It could also be argued that it is terribly lacking in resiliency and flexibility and is naive, at best, in terms of what is love versus infatuation versus idealization.) Problematic in this happy ending scenario: The writers clearly did not consider the second and third order effects of this decision. They just needed to tie up Steve’s timeline and get Chris Evans out of the franchise, and this was a way to do it that resonates at face value. Man out of time gets put back in his time. Gets love. Quote: “It was beautiful.” Ignore all of the following and more: -There will now be two Steve Rogers in this timeline. -One of them will presumably be with Peggy Carter for at least a good chunk of time, unless things went south. -Peggy Carter is the director of SHIELD. Her close associates are undoubtedly known to them as a result. -Thus, Steve Rogers probably could not just stay hidden in the pantry. SHIELD would want to debrief him. They would want to know how the hell he got there. Questions would get asked. This could not remain a secret forever. -Is Steve Rogers going to sit out history? Hang on the couch while the world burns, shield unused? -Is Steve Rogers, knowing that Bucky is alive, going to leave him to rot with Hydra? -Even if they made some sort of arrangement beforehand, like Bucky saying it’s okay, don’t come get me, would they both sit well with continuing to let him kill all of the innocents he killed? -If Steve did go get Bucky, he would likely find him some time in the span of however many years he’s in the past. The future would be completely changed. -If he intervened and found Bucky, Sam Wilson would not be Falcon because TWS would not happen. This version of Bucky would not exist. This end scene could not happen. -Thus, this does not seem to be something that Steve chose to do during his life with Peggy. (Debunked-ish, along with other “Back to the Future” science hereafter, below) Which brings me to my second hypothesis about this ending. Hypothesis 2: This was thought out, but it represents writers Markus and McFeely’s disconnect from the character they built. This is where the “there is no way in hell Steve would sit on the couch where the world burns, where Bucky suffers with Hydra etc.” argument comes in. This taints the ending in a particularly sour way, because they have labored so hard to build an image of Steve as someone who would wreck the world to save Bucky Barnes from harm and stop at nothing to prevent serious harm in the world where he could. It’s what he wanted in the first place! It’s where we all started in TFA! The Steve we know and love would want to go to Korea. To Vietnam. He would want to stop the Khmer Rouge and all the bad shit he could intervene with. Right? And his ass would try to save Bucky, especially knowing exactly where he’s kept! Right?? He would keep going and going until he was worn down into a nub of nothingness. Right??? Which meanders me to— Hypothesis 3: This was a decision that Steve Rogers made that is plausible for his character and was deliberate on the part of the writers. Second and third order effects included. This may be a stretch, but I think it could be argued on the grounds of good becomes great, bad becomes worse. Steve does nothing by half measures, an intrinsic trait that is amplified by his transformation. I have always argued that Steve has a very real selfish streak, or else he never would have tried to enlist in the Army so many times knowing he is absolutely unqualified to serve. Serving in his original condition would have put so many lives at risk, and others would have had to pick up his slack, because he would have been next to physically useless in combat as small Steve. But he would not accept reality, and he would not accept a “lesser” form of helping because it had to be the way that served his ego and his sense of rightness and justness for himself, consequences to other soldiers and the mission be damned. It was myopic and self-serving. And if good becomes great and bad becomes worse, maybe this is a form of that. Maybe he and Bucky agreed (because they were clearly in cahoots with that final scene business) that he would not intervene and rescue him, because then there would be no Falcon, or simply on the principle that the timeline must remain as undisturbed as possible. And maybe this one time, Steve didn’t say “fuck you, Bucky” and do what was right. Maybe Steve Rogers was done. Fucking done. Maybe he realized that what he first wanted at the beginning of TFA is not tenable. That he can’t fight forever. That he, like Tony, needs to rest, and that he can’t do that in the modern world. Which is interesting, because he essentially becomes Tony Stark v1.0 in the end, only caring about himself and his own. And Tony Stark becomes Steve Rogers, making the ultimate sacrifice for mankind. So Steve enjoys a life with Peggy while the world burns because he just can’t do it anymore. He’s paid his dues and he’s done being Captain America or Nomad or anyone else. (Wonder how she likes that version of Steve...?) Though how he could possibly say “It was beautiful” is utterly beyond me. I can’t fit that into this hypothesis, unless he has compartmentalized so hard and so well that he has forgotten about Bucky’s existence completely. And if he has, this is a very sad ending for his character.

There are probably many other hypotheses out there. They just didn’t percolate through my mind yet.

Which brings me to some things @pitchforkcentral86 brought up:

Why was Tony Stark’s arc so perfectly completed, so beautifully closed — truly, even I shed a tear — when we have to sit here writing stupid billion word theses on a nearly defunct blog site, grasping for straws, scratching our heads, wondering what the fuck just happened to Steve Rogers? It’s like getting to know somebody for eight years, being told the same stories about their behavior, learning their values system, their truths… and then being thrown a parting image that can only make sense if  a) the writers cannot be trusted — and maybe could not be trusted this whole time, or b) the character is actually not the person we thought he was.

Is either of these what we want to be left with as we close this phase of the MCU? Either the writers failed or Steve Rogers is not the person we love? And do we really not get to see Bucky and Steve’s friendship arc get closed in a meaningful way after building its depth for three movies? Are we really supposed to count a cheap recycling of a TFA line and some shimmery-eyed SebStan woobieface (TM) and some secret time travel hook-up conspiring off-camera (AS THEIR ENTIRE RELATIONSHIP HAS BEEN SINCE CIVIL WAR, PRESUMABLY, OFF-FUCKING-CAMERA) as “closure”? So, what do I think? I think this was lazy, crap writing, and I think Markus and McFeely thought we wouldn’t consider the timey-wimey implications too much. I think they know this character, and I don’t think they figured this would assassinate his character. I think they just really, really needed to tie this story up in a superficially pretty bow, and they couldn’t kill off both Tony and Steve, so they needed to give him something that took him out of the franchise. And that scene at the end with Peggy was aesthetically BEAUTIFUL. I smiled the first time, ear to ear, until my brain kicked in two minutes later and realized what it meant. They have been building up to this forever, kindling Steggy pretty much every movie. We Stucky people are all like yeah, yeah, Peggy, so sad, but the films have been consistent all along about saying a) Steve is a man out of time, and b) he loves Peggy Carter. (However you wanted to interpret that love... until the support group, where the interpretation is made for us). Support group side note: First, I squeed that Steve was running a support group in what I’m pretty sure is a VA auditorium. And on one hand, I loved the super chill gay Russo cameo and Steve’s untroubled reaction. Three cheers for the first openly gay character in the MCU [eyeroll]. But also, it felt like a total concession, like okay all you Stucky idiots we’ve been queer baiting over the years, we are gonna drop an A-bomb your little kingdom, but look, at least Steve isn’t a homophobe! See? He’s cool with the gays and so are we. Thanks for playing. Maybe you’ll get a REAL queer character in the next phase of the MCU! (If you even stick around after the shit we’ve just pulled.) But this laziness is problematic, because it feels terrible and discrepant. Intended or not, it does have serious implications for the timeline and/or the character, and the final scene existing the way it is potentially means at least one of two things: 1. Time doesn’t work the way we think it does. (In other words, what if there is a world where time travel Steve did all these good things like free Bucky, end the Vietnam War early, etc.?) However, since he is here on this bench with Bucky and Sam, dropping off this shield, this is implausible. If he just disappeared for good and Bucky explained the situation with a tiny, knowing smile, then it would be possible that he started an alternate reality where he did all these very Steve-congruent things and freed Bucky in that timeline, which would not affect this one. Wouldn’t that be nice? I could live with that. Just disappear into the sunset and we can write fics to fill in all the gaps of his Steve-ness. His core character is retained. Hooray. 

But if he started an alternate timeline, he would not be here with Bucky and Sam like this in the original timeline as an old man, which suggests that he jumped back in the same timeline. Unless they invented technology to jump between timelines. Or Dr. Strange jumped him back to this bench just to drop the shield off and high five with Sam and then is going to take him back any second or some dumb shit that has no basis in anything we have seen on screen (see @pitchforkcentral86’s point above about grasping for bullshit just to make sense of this). Or it means that— 2. Steve did not do anything and did not give a fuck about it. Both of these are terrible. Terrible. I would rather have had Steve die than have this ending. And this has nothing to do with Stucky for me, because Stucky is mostly just a fun fandom thing for me. I don’t mind that he ended up with Peggy per se. It’s the implication that he didn’t save his friend, knowing EXACTLY — geographically and historically — where he was, not only saving Bucky but also all the innocent people Bucky would kill. OR I hate the implication that the smug motherfucker let Bucky rot — perhaps per their agreement, maybe he kept a promise, whatever — and he had the gall to call it “beautiful.” And this is after Markus and McFeely slaved for three movies to convince us that these are best fucking friends from childhood who are with each other “‘til the end of the line.” At the very least, even if they are not going to be physically together, friends do not let friends suffer for decades at the hands of Hydra, and if they do, they do not fucking enjoy themselves while it’s happening. If this is the Steve they are leaving us with, I do not want him. And I kind of don’t know what to do now.

Am I missing something? Please tell me I am. I’m desperate for a way to make sense of this. Truly.

OKAY, EDIT: 

@koubashii  very kindly sent me a message reminding me that Bruce spent quite a bit of time belaboring on the point that changing the past doesn’t change the future. She reminded me that Nebula killing her past self didn’t obliterate her from existence. I did forget about all this. So I can’t use Sam and Bucky Prime’s existence in their current form as evidence that Steve did nothing, if he went back in time. Point taken. THANK YOU!! 

(Edit: As far as I can gather from some research from actual astrophysicists and not MCU Bruce Banner, this “changing the past doesn’t change the future” stuff is just one small theory and does not appear to be the prevailing theory. However, this is the quantum realm, so we can make up all sorts of silly rules about infinite possibilities, infinite realities, yada yada, because nobody understands quantum physics except Hank Pym. Comic book science wins again!)

So, if he’s creating a separate timeline, let’s say he rescued Bucky early. Is there another Bucky running around with him? (New fun theory to make the pain better: He danced with Peggy, had a good time, went to find Bucky, married HIM, and that’s why he doesn’t want to talk about it with Sam. THERE. Fixed it.) 

But this still suggests that he broke off into an alternate timeline, one that did not disturb the current one. So if he went off into this entirely new timeline, how did he bounce into this old one? Pym particles? Sure. Fine. Comic science Whatever. Maybe he gets some. Did he just drop in by the lake and pop a squat on the bench right before Bucky told Sam to look? Sure. Was he there the whole time? Perhaps. Fine. Who the hell knows. 

So, one possible explanation is that there IS an alternate timeline where Steve did the right thing. And he jumped back here because Pym particles. His character’s integrity is potentially saved and who the fuck knows who he ended up with in the end. Let your imaginations run wild. It’s too late for Bucky Prime to get saved, poor Bucky. At least he has Sam and their upcoming Disney spinoff series, which sounds like a fucking joke when I write it (but srsly I’m dying and cannot wait). 

And there are still problematic things with this narrative for me, such as the idea that Steve’s entire happiness hinges on one woman he barely knew, largely because she didn’t scoff at him when he was smol and I will be DAMNED if Peggy kept his picture on her desk, and there is no effing way that she would even have her back to the door, but whatever. And I still hate that Steve and Bucky’s relationship arc was treated so horribly by these last two films. NO HOMO, indeed. Just in case we got the wrong idea from the intensity of the relationship that the MCU created for us. I will be posting more on this later. 

AND STILL — we should not have to work SO HARD for this kind of "meh” explanation. You should not need a group effort to make sense of your character’s ending, after so much wallowing in despair. And this might still reek of bullshit to many of you. I need to percolate more. 

Pym particles and Wakandan Vibranium trauma-healing brain magic — quick and dirty shortcuts for real character development. Thanks, MCU. Consider my brain exploded.

[overwatch-does-stuff]

Ashe Headcanons!

Because I haven’t seen a lot of content for her, and I do like her a lot! Generic headcanons: - Ashe is actually not chaotic neutral! Just because she doesn’t play by society’s rules doesn’t mean she doesn’t have her own rules. She runs a tight ship in the Deadlock gang- keeping raids precise and only as deadly as they need to be. - The one thing guaranteed to get you kicked out of the Deadlock gang is being a bully. Ashe doesn’t like bullies. A little bit of fighting between members is expected, but continual harassment of others is a one-way trip to getting your ass dumped in the middle of the desert. - The only real prerequisites for joining the Deadlock gang is to 1. be a good shot, and 2. have no other loyalties. What does that second one mean? Well, Ashe doesn’t want anyone who has a family. Significant others are okay (even better if they join as well), but a family is too much. The gang line of work is too dangerous for someone with a family they care about. Deadlock is supposed to be a family for those who don’t have one, not a job offering for those that already do. - Omnic rights. That is the hill that she’ll die on. She respects Omnics so much, perhaps even a bit more than she respects humans. If someone even looks at Bob or any other Omnic members of her crew the wrong way, she won’t hesitate to rough them up. - Ashe likes to look nice! She spends at least thirty minutes on her makeup each day, and she personally designed her own uniform. She loves talking unironically about fashion and beauty. She’s not ashamed of her femininity. - She also enjoys talking about target shooting and how best to raid, say, an armored car. She’s well-rounded! - She doesn’t like tea at all. Coffee, any type of coffee, is her jam. She has an espresso machine back at the Deadlock base. - She knows everyone in the Deadlock gang on a first-name basis. She’s not above chatting with any one of them. They are her family, after all. She treats them very well. - Free beer Tuesdays are absolutely a thing in the Deadlock base. Loud, drunken singing is encouraged. What’s the fun of being in a gang if you don’t get to party? The only rules are no fighting, and you have to be able to walk yourself to your room afterwards. 

Backstory headcanons: - Ashe’s parents emotionally neglected her when she was little, and emotionally abused her when she was older. They were very manipulative people who would take nothing less than absolute perfection from their daughter (when they conveniently remembered they had one.) - It’s the reason Ashe tries to be so self-sufficient and in control. She has a very difficult time not blowing up at anyone else who fails or does something wrong, but she’s working on getting better about it. She also has trouble talking about her feelings and what she enjoys. - Bob was her saving grace. Bob was supposed to only be a distant caretaker while her parents were away, but he defied the orders given to him and started to interact with her. He essentially became her parent, and while he wasn’t perfect, he saved her from a lot of darker alternatives. - Then, there’s McCree. Her first love (though that fling didn’t last long) and her closest friend. He found her in an alley after she sneaked out of her house. He was the first person not to treat her like a rich girl, and she was the first person to not treat him like a street rat. They bonded over their terrible parents and their shared want for something more in their lives.

S/O headcanons: - Ashe is. . . let’s just say she’s the dominant type. - She’s the big spoon. No protesting. - She loves being showy with her relationships and she will absolutely let everyone know that you’re hers. She loves public displays of affection. - She’ll also call you by pet names. “Sugar”, “Honey”, and “Sweetheart” are her go-tos, but she also likes to get creative sometimes. - She would love to do your hair and makeup (regardless of your gender!). If you stay with her long enough, she’ll design you an entire look. - She’ll also let you order around Bob if you prove to be especially trustworthy. - Her idea of a perfect date is actually away from any sort of expensive dinner, or any high-end civilization. If she really loves you, she’ll take you to her favorite place in the desert with no one else for company. It’s during these times that she’ll open up and be genuine about herself.

[kirinda-ondo]

So I have some thoughts and feelings about Vishnal Rune Factory

I am aware that approximately two other people besides me care about this, but literally when has it ever stopped me from rambling at length

So basically, I love Vishnal from Rune Factory 4. Like, a lot. I never commit to anyone in farm sims but boy howdy, he managed to hit literally all the criteria I have to be considered a Favorite Character™. He did it so well, in fact, he’s earned a spot alongside characters like Cobalt or Lydia. But like those characters, while there are people who like him, I feel as though he doesn’t get enough credit. The complaints I’ve seen tend to be that he’s boring and that he has the worst proposal event. Hell, one of the first few results from googling him is a thread asking if he’s supposed to be a joke character. While I can see where this sentiment might come from, I’d like to explain the appeal in a lot of the things people find fault in him for (at least for me), and maybe offer a bit of a different perspective, I guess.

If I had to guess where a lot of these problems that people have with him come from, it’s probably the fact that he doesn’t have a lot of lore behind him. To be honest, Vishnal doesn’t really have a whole lot of plot significance. He doesn’t have any direct connection to the capitol of Norad like Arthur or Kiel (via his sister Forte), he’s got nothing to do with the Sechs empire like Doug, and he’s not a guardian like Dylas and Leon. Vishnal, despite working in a castle and serving Ventuswill (who we shall henceforth refer to as Venti), a literal dragon god, is an everyman by comparison. He’s just a guy trying to do his job the best he can.

Similarly, he also doesn’t have a whole lot of mystery or drama behind him either. With pretty much every other bachelor, there’s usually some kind of dark secret from their past that comes up and has to be dealt with, either through the main plot or through their proposal events. To just give you an idea of the kind of things we’re dealing with here, let’s do a rundown.

Doug’s entire tribe was killed by Sechs soldiers, but the empire fed him propaganda to make him believe that Venti was responsible so that he would work undercover for them in order to kill her and take the Rune Spheres.

Arthur was an illegitimate child of Norad’s king and believes that his mother hated him so much she had to take off her glasses so that she didn’t have to look at him, causing him to have severe trust issues (as well as a glasses fetish? Have fun with that, Freud).

Kiel (and by extension, his sister) is trapped in a well-meaning, but incredibly fucked up family dynamic that forced him to be incredibly sheltered while Forte took on the duties of a knight in a heavily male dominated society to protect him. However, since both of their parents are dead, they have no idea that they’re allowed to free themselves and become their own people.

Dylas sacrificed himself to become a guardian, fusing with a monster in order to act as a living life support to help keep Venti alive, but when he’s finally free, he’s hundreds of years into the future, where everything he knows is gone. It’s also implied that before he became a guardian, he was suicidal.

Leon, like Dylas, also sacrificed himself to become a guardian and was flung far into the future. However, he also has the added guilt of believing he left his childhood friend to live the rest of her life emotionally stunted because when he was younger, he made a promise to marry her if she stopped crying so much, but didn’t take it seriously as she did, and couldn’t have kept it even if he did.

Meanwhile, Vishnal has had an utterly average life. In order to help people, he wanted to become a doctor like his father, but felt he wasn’t smart enough, so when he met a butler named Sebastian, he was so impressed he decided to become a butler himself. Though he was worried his father wouldn’t approve of this way of helping people, he was ultimately supportive, helping him train and, through a friend’s connections, getting him to Selphia to work under Volkanon.

Vishnal is basically Clark from Connecticut in terms of how average he is by comparison. However, I wouldn’t say this is a bad thing. Even dealing with one of these traumatic backstories is a lot, let alone trying to harem them all (and don’t even get me started on the main plot’s drama). A lot of the resolutions to these character arcs are followed up by a proposal, and maybe it’s just my age and personal experiences (or the fact that I’m aroace), but when that happens, I don’t get the feeling of “YES, TAKE ME NOW!” I just think “…You literally just found out the thing that’s been screwing you up your entire life was a giant misunderstanding. I get that you’re happy but like, maybe take some time to sort yourself out? See a therapist maybe???”

But Vishnal, for all of his faults (of which there are many and I will get to that later), generally has his shit together. I respect that and find it a breath of fresh air compared to the cavalcade of angst in everyone else’s lives. Not to say that he doesn’t have any problems at all, because then that would be boring, but they tend to be more focused in the present, and are a bit more grounded in reality and less… spectacular. But like I said, we’ll get to that.

What he lacks in terms of dramatic backstory, he makes up for in personality. He’s very… intense, to put it mildly. While not completely hyper, he’s very high energy and it doesn’t take much to get him psyched up. He’s the type of person to put at least 110% effort in everything he does, and nearly everything he does goes towards his goal of becoming the world’s best butler. Unfortunately, as a result, he’s considered one-note. Now, I’m not going to sit here and say he doesn’t talk about butler things all the time, because he absolutely does, but for me, as someone who also tends to get super into things and talk about them endlessly (hence this entire ramble), I find him pretty endearing, if not a tad relatable in that regard. However, for all his single-mindedness, he is still a decently multifaceted character.

Probably the most important thing to note here is that he is a very good person, like “too good for this sinful earth” kind of good. He has a natural drive to help others and doesn’t have a mean word to say about anyone (though even he engages in the ultimate Selphian pastime of Teasing Doug™ on occasion). He’s also honest to a fault. It’s incredibly easy to tell if he’s trying to cover something up because he’s usually pretty much an open book and wears his heart on his sleeve. He seems to expect others to be the same way, as he has a bad habit of taking what people say at face value even if they’ve repeatedly shown not to be trustworthy. This often leads him to be the butt of many a joke or the victim of scams. Other times, lighthearted teasing falls flat as he takes it seriously and winds up getting his feelings hurt. But ever the optimist, he doesn’t let setbacks get him down for long.

He very much believes in the power of hard work overcoming any obstacle, and it seems in his mind, literally anything is possible if you train hard enough, and he’s constantly trying to prepare himself to master every possible scenario, from protecting important secrets by staying silent to becoming invincible to the common cold by constantly being soaked with water. It generally winds up doing him more harm than good, and even Doug worries about him a little bit because Vishnal will do pretty much anything if you tell him it’s special training (though this does not even remotely stop Doug from having a field day with it). Were this not a very “anime” kind of game, it would honestly be amazing if he hadn’t died from any of his training attempts.

Though it may come across as though he has no idea what is actually possible for a human to achieve, he actually seems to have quite a few hangups about his own limitations. He has a massive perfectionist complex and is incredibly hard on himself. He tends to beat himself up quite a bit when he makes mistakes (I mean the man looks utterly devastated every time he screws up lunch) and outright warns the player (who we shall henceforth refer to as Frey) that he may cause her trouble. However, he’s not quite as terrible as he might imply. While he is gullible and very much a klutz, he’s got a wide variety of skills and knowledge he rarely gives himself credit for. For instance, he’s not exactly street smart by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s well-read to a degree that he can actually read things from Arthur’s library (which says a lot because Arthur is a colossal nerd), and he’s knowledgeable on a number of subjects from farming to geography. On the lake date (when it’s not summer), you have the option to ask him more about the kind of training he would do, and he rattles off a list of insane skills (I.e. making tea so good as to become its own singularity…singularitea, if you will) like it’s no big deal. Mind you, given what someone like Volkanon is capable of, that may just be par for the course as far as butlers go in this universe, but for your average person, that’s honestly impressive, if not a bit terrifying.

His confidence (or lack thereof), however, tends to reflect in the quality of his work. In a small example, every so often, he offers Frey his attempt at curry rice. It’s hot garbage, but if she tells him it’s good, he admits he wasn’t very confident in it. However, we see in his prerequisite event (which is a much more overt example) that when he’s more confident in himself, he’s not only able to make actual food, but is downright hypercompetent in his job. For context, he is conned into buying an overpriced statue that, according to blacksmith and Professional Vishnal Scammer™ Bado, will allegedly make him an expert overnight. Wholly believing in this thing, he’s suddenly amazing… until he accidentally knocks it over and breaks it. Utterly devastated and unconvinced that his improved performance came from within, he’s suddenly infinitely worse than he was when he started. Things of course balance themselves out, but we come away realizing that if he had as much self-confidence as he did pure determination, he could easily reach a point where he’d be absolutely unstoppable.

We also see this lack of confidence manifest itself in regards to Frey. If she pursues a relationship, we get quite a bit of evidence that he doesn’t think he’s good enough for her. Before he formally asks her out, he lists all the things he does wrong; all the ways he’s a novice, essentially warning her of what she may have to deal with. However, if Frey’s conquered the RNG and made it this far, then it’s safe to say that she’s prepared to take the risk. On the airship date, he outright says once he becomes an expert, he’ll finally be the perfect man for her. Even during his own damn proposal event, he tells her he’s unreliable. This is incredibly far from the case, as even if he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, he’s doing everything he can to make this work. He works himself even harder to maximize his time with her, he buys (phony) charms from Bado to keep them together, he asks other bachelors for advice (as poor is it may be at times), he literally asks the entire town for date spot reviews, as well as just straight up reading up on how to be the best possible boyfriend.

Eventually, should the RNG gods be smiling, this brings us to the proposal event. Now, one might imagine that this event might follow the thread we’ve been building up here into him learning maybe not to beat himself up so much or becoming a little more self-confident, but no. While this sort of thing happens for a number of other bachelors/bachelorettes, where their prerequisite events foreshadow what’s to come in their proposal events, that isn’t quite the case here. While that development does occur to a degree, it’s a bit more subtle and is not really the focus of this event.

His proposal event instead mainly forces him to consider his priorities. So for some context, a butler judge has come, and if Vishnal does well, he may finally earn his first star and be one step closer to being the ultimate butler. In fact, his abilities are already recognized as worthy of the title, but there’s just once teensy little problem. You see, in butlerdom, your master and your partner being one in the same is a bit of a taboo. Dating your boss creates a whole host of problems, after all; not just for you, but your reputation. And so this is where the conundrum comes in. We already know he’s incredibly dedicated to this career choice to the point that if he doesn’t succeed, he will literally die trying, but he’s now just as dedicated to Frey. Being that this is a proposal event though, you pretty much already know how this is going to end, but just hear me out.

This is currently the biggest decision he’s ever made in his life, and is essentially the emotional equivalent of having to choose between losing your right hand or your left. He obviously doesn’t want to throw away years of hard work, but he’s also not the type to just leave someone behind in pursuit of his own interests. Frey ultimately saves him from waffling back and forth about it forever by breaking things off so he can pursue his dreams, but literally no one is happy with this. Even the judge feels bad and he’s the one who started it. But with this little problem out of the way, Vishnal is free to accept his new rank. Except he doesn’t. After a dramatic, heartfelt speech pointing out that this actually puts him in a better position to serve Frey, and how reputations shouldn’t matter more than protecting the person you’re entrusted to, he whisks her away and proposes. Before she can properly answer though, he’s called back to the castle. In the end, the judge is moved by his dedication, and so Vishnal can now have his cake and eat it too. Short, sweet, and to the point.

It’s probably about half the length of the other bachelors’ events, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. It’s actually a pretty nice contrast between the other proposals. Leon, Arthur, and Kiel have the common thread of having to sort out baggage from their past before they decide to marry. Doug and Dylas, while their events are more lighthearted, are a bit more focused on a lack of communication and resulting misunderstandings that come from trying to surprise Frey with a ring. However, because Vishnal’s life isn’t a veritable conga line of angst and trauma, his obstacle to marriage is entirely in the present, and because he’s so open about his feelings, he and Frey actually have a chance to sit down and discuss where to go from here, so there’s no communication issues. Plus, his situation, while a bit dramatically handled because anime, is actually kind of relatable. Having to choose between a career and a relationship is a situation that happens to a pretty good number of people, and it’s rarely an easy decision. It’s a logical conflict for such a work focused character.

While it doesn’t really overtly follow up on the initial thread that seemed to have been laid out of him learning to be more confident in himself, the transition is definitely there, at least in regards to Frey. It’s just not quite as spelled out in events. Even in his proposal, he’s still self-deprecating, but it’s a far cry from the absolute list of faults he gave initially asking her out. Not to mention, it absolutely takes a whole lot of courage to one, choose love over your life’s dream, and two, to do it in the incredibly dramatic and utterly obliterating manner that he did. The relationship also changes some post-marriage. Post-marriage Vishnal is a much different beast than pre-marriage Vishnal. As we’ve discussed, in the dating phase, he’s a lot less sure of how boyfriend things work, and resorts to asking others for advice and outright studying. Now that he’s married, he’s less reliant on others and is much more forward. He actually tends to be the one to initiate romantic gestures, from goodnight kisses to using his own sappy lines as opposed to borrowing them from Leon, among other things. Truly a far cry from the days where he would agonize over whether or not to even hold Frey’s hand. Sadly, while date dialogue doesn’t really change (with the exception of the room date, where he literally states he’s past being shy and awkward), there’s definitely a more visible shift in the focus of his other dialogue from being even good enough for Frey to being more protective. Jury’s still out on how much this development has affected his work performance, as there’s no real new mentions of it after the fact (though after marriage he is finally capable of making edible curry rice…sometimes!), but at least some degree of his self-esteem is improving.

So basically, to summarize, Vishnal isn’t a bad character. He’s just handled differently than the other bachelors. He’s a bit more grounded in reality as far as his backstory and conflicts are concerned. His development also tends to happen outside of his events rather than being the feature, making it a bit more subtle, and thus a bit harder to spot from a glance, but it’s there. For as much fun as he is as a character, I admit he’s definitely very tame compared to the other bachelor options, even despite the localizers’ attempts to make him spicier, so he’s not for everyone. I can see why others might prefer someone a little more exciting or mysterious, like Leon (who seems to be like, god tier as far as RF4 bachelors go), but I hope I’ve at least adequately explained why Vishnal might be appealing to some and has more merit than just a joke character. After all, vanilla is a flavor too, and plenty of people like that.

Anyhoo, thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[ragehappysecretsanta]

Write It in Blood

Author: http://dmitrimolotov.tumblr.com

Recipient: http://nescamonster.tumblr.com

Summary: Jeremy and Ryan have been engaged for nearly a year; Jeremy’s career as an investigative journalist at Weazel news is starting to gain some real traction, while Ryan’s floristry business is booming. Jeremy has been chasing a trail of police corruption, but when he gets his dream promotion at work, it comes with a catch that threatens to throw him into the middle of it all. He can’t expose it without risking his career and in all likelihood his life. Luckily, Ryan stumbles upon a handy solution to both help Jeremy’s career and rid the force of their bad apples; but he soon finds himself walking a far darker path to protect the one he loves.

Note: This story is a sequel to Say it with Flowers, although it is not a prerequisite read.

Warnings: Mature. Blood, murder.

Word Count: 22880

Read it on AO3

Write it in Blood

Jeremy hit the snooze button on his alarm. The sunlight was filtering through the thin curtains at an angle he knew meant he’d be pushing to make it to work on time, but he was too comfortable to bring himself to worry just yet. Instead, he rolled over and a hand snaked around his waist, pulling him into a firm, warm hug.

“Stay?” A sleepy voice muttered from under the blanket beside him as the arm pulled him in even closer, “You don’t have to go in just yet…”

Jeremy sighed, smiling contentedly as he repositioned himself to fit more snugly against his fiancé’s frame, his back pressing into the warmth of his partner’s chest; the perfect fit for a little spoon.

“I guess I don’t have to get up right away.”

A tired-sounding “Yay!” escaped the blanket and there was a slow, lazy rustling as Jeremy felt a gentle kiss land on the back of his head and a soft, stubbly chin snuggle in close, rubbing affectionately against his face, before settling in the crook of his neck with a satisfied hum.

“Ryan? Aren’t you meant to be working today too?”

“Shhhh… It’s fine…”

Jeremy smiled and relaxed into his arms, letting his eyes fall closed again. They’d been engaged for nearly a year and hadn’t even discussed plans of making it official, but they were content as they were and there was no pressure. They simply were and they were happy.

As soon as Jeremy shut his eyes, a muffled ringing reached his ears.

He groaned and debated letting it ring out, but his sense of responsibility won out in the end and he forced himself to get up and answer it; prying Ryan’s arm off him to roll out of bed.

Caller ID came up as Matt, and judging by the time, he’d probably already be at work by now.

“’sup Matt?” Jeremy said cheerfully, pushing the curtains aside to let in more light.

Ryan whined petulantly and pulled the sheet up over his head to block it out.

“Hey man,” Matt replied, “did you remember to get something for Leslie’s baby shower today?”

Jeremy wandered to the door and glanced over at the bouquet of flowers and neatly wrapped present waiting for him on the kitchen counter. Ryan had prepared them for him the night before. Jeremy’s boss was expecting, and he couldn’t be happier for her.

“I did indeed!” Jeremy beamed, so smug Matt could hear it through the phone.

“And uh… you put our names on the card, right?” Matt asked bashfully.

“Nope,” Jeremy replied matter-of-factly.

“Oh…”

The panic in Matt’s voice was palpable and Jeremy giggled to hear it, but didn’t let him suffer for long, quickly adding, “Ryan picked out something just from you and Trevor, got you your own card and everything, so you guys are covered.”

“Jeremy! Don’t do that to me, I nearly had a damn heart attack!” He laughed nervously, recovering, “But thanks man, and thank Ryan for us. We owe you guys one! See you soon.”

Jeremy hung up the phone and looked back to the bed, where the pile of blankets had shifted and was very faintly snoring. Considering Ryan only had to walk a few doors down to get to work, Jeremy decided to let him sleep a little longer and took the opportunity to be first in the shower.

Today was going to be a big day for him. It didn’t feel like two years had passed since his boss, Leslie, had gotten engaged. He’d hated her then, but it was that very hatred that had brought Ryan into his life. It was hard to hold a grudge after that. This was going to be her last day at work; she was taking an early maternity leave to spend some time with her new wife before they started their family and she was due to be announcing her replacement as reporter and lead editor for their little slice of the Weazel News website – crime, breaking news and anything else the heads felt like slinging their way.

Jeremy stepped out of the shower and roughly towelled himself dry, a process much faster now thanks to a recent potential disaster with the clippers that left him with a look he decided to keep after Ryan said he had the head for it. A quick check in the mirror showed his beard was still neat and he didn’t need to shave anything yet, so he wrapped the towel around his waist and went to hunt down his nice shirt.

The pile of blankets was gone from the bed and Jeremy could hear shuffling in the kitchen just outside.

“Matt and Trevor said thank you for their gift!” Jeremy called out, “Matt said they owe you one. Not sure what that’ll entail.”

A chuckle came from the kitchen, followed by the spring of the toaster.

Mindful of the time, Jeremy quickly started getting dressed and as he was buttoning up his shirt, Ryan returned with a glass of orange juice and a plate of toast. He held out the toast in offering and Jeremy gladly grabbed a slice and shoved it in his mouth.

“Faankooo,” he mumbled through the mouthful, smoothing out the shirt.

Ryan chuckled again, settling back down on the bed, still just in his underwear, nibbling at his own piece of toast, “You remember what the flowers mean?”

“Uhhh…” Jeremy struggled to remember the details of the arrangement Ryan had walked him through the night before, “there was… Japanese maple? And purple basil for best wishes… coral roses were for admiration… Oh! And caladium! For… uh…”

Ryan laughed sympathetically at Jeremy’s sincere attempt to recall the frankly excessive bouquet. He grinned wide, “I wrote it down for you, don’t worry…” Despite that, he still felt it necessary to run through the composition off the top of his head.

“The Japanese maple leaves – supposed to represent a baby's hand – but mostly they look pretty. Red-and-green caladium are for delight, while dark green hosta leaves and purple basil are for devotion and best wishes respectively. They frame the burgundy calla lilies for beauty – unlike white ones which are usually symbolic of death – probably best not to mention that… and light pink bouvardia is for enthusiasm. You nailed the coral roses for admiration and I also threw in some spikes of heather as protection from danger.”

Jeremy found himself yet again in awe of his fiancé and just grinned back at him, dumbstruck.

“Like I said though,” Ryan nodded his head towards the kitchen, “It’s all on the card… You nervous?”

Jeremy swallowed, “nervous? Nah. It’s going to be great… if Leslie asks me.”

“She’s going to ask you,” Ryan reassured him, standing to help him straighten his shirt, “she’s practically been grooming you for this.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy admitted hesitantly, taking another piece of toast. Leslie had been unsubtlely hinting to Jeremy for some time now that he’d be replacing her; increasing his work load so it was comparable to her own and giving him bigger and more important tasks to get him accustomed to the pressure. He’d found his personal niche in the more investigative side of crime reporting following an incident with the Mayoral elections when he’d first met Ryan, but Leslie had been gently coaxing him into more breaking news and crime scene reporting, arguing he’d be less “bogged down” and distracted by the details and better able to delegate to the juniors.

“Jeremy,” Ryan clapped a hand on his shoulder, “You got this.”

Jeremy took a deep breath, “I got this,” he repeated, not sounding entirely convinced.

“And you look great.”

Jeremy laughed and blushed a shade.

Ryan leaned down and kissed him softly. They weren’t usually the kissing sort, and it caught Jeremy by surprise. A very pleasant surprise though. It left him a little breathless.

“Now go, knock ‘em dead. And give Leslie and Dannie my love.”

Jeremy beamed up at him, “Will do.”

Jeremy snaked a hand around to the back of Ryan’s head, fingers carding through his soft, long hair and he pulled his head down gently to press their foreheads together in an affectionate ‘boop’.

“See you tonight.”

He collected the gifts from the table and left the apartment feeling on top of the world.

* * *

A scarce half hour later, Ryan had hauled himself through the shower and his morning routine that was, as usual, unaided by caffeine and walked the five minutes down the block to his quaint little flower shop he still called work.

Living with Jeremy had freed up a lot of money and he’d been able to make significant renovations to the shop; upgrading their sales systems and bringing their online ordering up to speed as well as finally officially re-naming the shop to “Say it with Flowers”. Their hook was custom arrangements and bouquets with meaning, and for the past year Ryan had loved it. It had pulled him right out of the funk he’d been in to have new projects and challenges to work with every day.

The bell above the door, left unchanged for years, cheerfully chirruped his arrival.

“Good morning Rye!” Meg called brightly from somewhere behind a counter packed full of pre-made and sorted floral arrangements.

“Good morning,” Ryan mumbled back, fetching his faded green apron from its hook behind the counter and donning it, flipping open his hand-written notebook to check the day’s orders, despite Meg having a digital copy already pulled up on the screen they used expressly for that purpose. “On top of things, I see…”

He snatched a rubber band from the box they used for securing bouquets and pulled his nearly shoulder-length hair back into a ponytail in an attempt to make it more manageable.

“Always.” Meg popped up from behind the arrangements and smiled at him, “Look how long your hair’s getting!”

Ryan tugged at it, “yeah, I’ve been meaning to cut it, just haven’t gotten around to it…”

“It looks good. Have you ever thought about dyeing it? I could help, I think you’d look great with darker hair.”

“If this is your way of trying to get me to cover my greys, it’s not working,” he ribbed back playfully.

Meg scowled at him, “You’re not getting old Rye… well, you are, but that’s not the point,” she grinned, “point is, I think you’d look very nice with darker hair.”

He shook his head, still grinning, but was interrupted by the bell at the door again.

“Kdin!” Meg called, standing on tiptoe to see over the flowers and waving her in, directing her to the arrangements for the daily deliveries.

The recent success of the business had also freed up money to hire a couple of casuals to run hand-deliveries and Kdin had been a wonderful addition to the team. She made deliveries on her custom vintage Faggio scooter and it added an extra special touch that customers loved for special occasions.

Meg clearly had things under control, so Ryan snuck out the back to start preparing for the afternoon orders.

The day went by quickly, filled by the usual flurry of late week activity, interspersed with showing Meg some techniques for using some of the more exotic and seasonal blooms. Ryan had been training Meg and Ashley to make their own “meaningful arrangements” and they’d taken to it really well. Ashley had even started her own specialty section of the store: succulent terrariums. Ryan was happy that he could trust them completely to run the store in his absence. With the additions of Mica and Kdin, they now worked as a well-oiled machine; but Ryan was always more of a tinkerer and when there was nothing to take apart and fix, he easily grew bored and started looking for the next project.

It was a Friday, so the shop would stay open late; catering to the after-work date-night contingent of late-twenties nine-to-fivers, looking to re-live their younger days in blessed nostalgia down at the pier, most to be disappointed by the chipping lacquer on the veneer of innocence that Del Perro provided these days.

Clearly being with Jeremy hadn’t done much for his cynicism.

At any rate, it meant he’d be throwing together the remains of his daily stocks for cheap, last minute bouquets, between prepping for the Saturday rush. Kdin had finished her afternoon deliveries and gone home and Meg was starting to tidy up the shop for the day.

“When was the last time you took a vacation, Ryan?” Meg said seemingly out of the blue.

Ryan raised an eyebrow, “how long have you known me?”

“Mmmm, ‘bout… 3 years, little over.”

“Longer than that then.”

“Have you ever taken a vacation, Rye?”

“Do days off for renovations count?” He grinned.

She rolled her eyes, “not when you’re the one doing them, no… You need a vacation.”

Ryan very nearly groaned, “I don’t need to go anywhere, especially with Jeremy getting this promotion…”

“Then a staycation! Just take some time off, chill out at home, watch some movies, play some video games, find a Dungeons and Dragons group – that sounds like your kinda thing – just something to keep you from going completely stir-crazy. Find your project, we all know you need one.”

“I need a project now, do I?”

“Yeah! You’re settling and when you settle, you get bored and when you get bored, you make rash decisions…” she pointed at him accusingly with a de-headed rose-stem, “…not that that’s always bad thing, mind you, last time was how we became Say it with Flowers – which was definitely a good move in retrospect.”

Ryan beamed, just about to gloat when Meg cut him off.

“-don’t you dare say ‘I told you so’!”

Ryan’s mouth snapped shut and instead he just smirked.

“Just have a think about it at least, Ashley and I got this, and we’ve got Mica and Kdin to help out as well.”

Ryan shot her a sceptical look, but eventually resigned, “Alright… I’ll think about it. But no promises.”

* * *

The front door was unlocked when Ryan got home, and he could smell something delicious wafting from inside. He went in and kicked his shoes off at the door, where he could see familiar take-out boxes on the kitchen counter, still steaming.

“And I was planning on cooking you something special…” Ryan teased as he shook his hair free of his ponytail, putting the rubber band with about a dozen others in the bowl at the door they usually kept for keys.

He really needed to start tying his hair up before he left the house.

He knew he wouldn’t.

“How’d everything go with Leslie’s party?”

Ryan wasn’t even sure where Jeremy was, he might have been talking to himself, but he kept it up anyway, nosing into the boxes to see their usual: beef with broccoli as well as their more indulgent option of orange chicken.

“Ooh, today must’ve gone well to deserve orange chicken…” Ryan called out, heading towards the bedroom, half expecting to find Jeremy in an affectionate mood, until he heard rapid typing coming from the small side room they used as a study.

He peered in to see Jeremy hunched over his laptop, headphones on, intensely focused on the apparent dossier he was furiously typing up.

“Jeremy?”

Jeremy paused to look up, nearly jumping out of his skin to see Ryan standing there. He half-closed the lid of the laptop a little protectively, but almost instinctively, and Ryan cocked his head sideways.

“Everything ok?”

Jeremy took his headphones off and shook his head, as if to shake himself out of it. “Yeah… yeah! Everything’s great. I uh… I got the promotion.” He smiled, but it seemed nervous.

“Starting work early then,” Ryan gestured towards the computer and Jeremy’s eyes went wide.

“Oh, yeah.” He still seemed a little shaken, but maybe it was nerves about the new job responsibilities.

Ryan smiled back gently, “Well, not that it needs to be said, but congratulations! Knew you’d crush it.” He jerked a thumb back towards the kitchen, “Celebrating with Chinese food, I see?”

“Yeah! I didn’t really feel like cooking, so there’s that as well… I just, uh… need about five minutes to get this done, yeah?”

“Sure,” Ryan nodded, “I’ll go get some plates ‘n stuff, it’ll be ready when you’re done.”

“Thanks, Ryan.”

As Ryan left the room, the typing resumed, and he couldn’t help but feel a little worried at the stress this new job might already be bringing with it.

Ryan had cleared space on the couch and set up a cosy dinner in front of the TV. Far from a formal event, their celebrations were always more intimate and comfortable, legs tangled together and wrapped in blankets. Ryan put on a movie, not so much to watch, but more as background noise; a low-budget, crowd-funded comedy sci-fi cult classic. He’d re-heated the food and grabbed bowls and chopsticks, a beer for Jeremy and a diet coke for himself.

He’d just gotten comfortable on the couch and dished up his own bowl of rice and chicken – it was even better than he remembered – when Jeremy emerged from the study, his face still showing the same look of vague consternation. He brightened to see Ryan’s “nest”, the worry melting into a relaxed smile as he casually vaulted the back of the couch to land dangerously close to Ryan’s lap and nearly sent his dinner flying.

“So, good job today then…?” Ryan ventured as Jeremy dished up some food and got comfy.

“Today was… eye opening,” Jeremy said slowly, rubbing his right shoulder where he could still feel the scar from the bullet he’d taken. It was a nervous habit he’d developed, and Ryan didn’t fail to notice it.

“Jeremy, is everything ok?” He asked a little more seriously now.

Jeremy chewed his lip, “If I tell you I could put you in a lot of trouble…”

“Well, now I have to know…”

“I’m serious, Ryan. This is the sort of shit that could get us killed.” Jeremy looked around as if he might be being watched.

“Jeremy,” Ryan locked eyes with him, “You can trust me. You can tell me anything. But you don’t have to. I am going to worry about you regardless though.”

“Leslie’s leaving for good,” Jeremy blurted out, “She’s not coming back after maternity leave. Her and Dannie are probably going to be leaving town pretty soon.”

“Holy shit,” Ryan muttered.

“So, on the upside, the job’s more permanent than we thought…”

“But…?” Ryan knew there had to be a catch for Jeremy to be acting this way.

Jeremy sighed heavily. “I just…” he bit his tongue. “Just… there are some big decisions I have to make. A lot of things to think about…”

Ryan scanned Jeremy’s face, searching for any clues, but only finding more worry. It almost hurt to see him like this. So uncertain. It wasn’t like him at all.

“I’m sorry, Ryan. I want to tell you everything, but just… maybe let me sleep on it, ok?”

Ryan nodded, “Ok buddy. I’m here for you.”

He leaned down and gently booped Jeremy’s forehead against his own; Jeremy smiled and nuzzled back up, almost catlike in the display of affection.

“Thanks Ryan…” He sat back with a more content sigh and focused momentarily on his food before noticing the TV. “What are we watching, by the way?”

Ryan half shrugged, “Helmet Boy and Friends or some nonsense…”

* * *

Jeremy’s palms were sweating. Aside from napping against Ryan’s side through most of the movie, he’d hardly slept, instead spending most of the night in the study writing up what may very well be his last piece of published journalism.

Jeremy was sitting at the kitchen counter with his laptop and a glass of water when Ryan emerged, bleary eyed and worried from the bedroom. He rubbed his face before frowning at Jeremy.

“Did you sleep at all last night?” He asked, grabbing the carton of milk from the fridge and pouring a glass.

Jeremy nodded unconvincingly, “a little… I just had other stuff on my mind. Stuff I had to get down…”

Ryan took a long sip of his milk, eyes never leaving Jeremy’s.

“I need you to read over something for me…” Jeremy hesitated. “Because I need you to know this. I don’t want to put you in any danger.” He already felt guilty for sharing this much with him. The report contained everything.

No one has to know he read it. No one even has to know it exists. He reassured himself.

He took a deep breath. “I want you to read this first, because I want you to have the opportunity to get out and live a normal life in Los Santos if you don’t want to be caught up in all this.”

Ryan’s face fell.

“Jeremy, I’m-”

“Ryan, I need you to read this before you say anything else. Please don’t make promises you can’t keep. Read this and then we can talk about it… or not, but that’s your call. Whatever happens,” Jeremy swallowed thickly, he hadn’t expected this to be so heavy, “I’m glad for the time we had together, and I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Jeremy slid the laptop across to Ryan and waited patiently while Ryan read the whole thing.

Bluewashing – Concealment of corruption in the LSPD

By Jeremy Dooley

The “Blue Wall of Silence” – the unwritten rule of solidarity among police officers when accused of misconduct – has spread far beyond the blue in Los Santos. Many media outlets are receiving cash pay-offs to turn a blind eye to bribery and put a put a positive spin on police brutality. They are told to ignore the crimes that go unpunished because it would be unprofitable.

Weazel news is no exception to this…

Ryan’s eyes widened as he skimmed over the rest of the information contained within Jeremy’s thorough and well-compiled report.

It detailed several investigations into corruption allegations that had been dropped for no apparent reason – well, none that wasn’t just a matter of paying off the right people. There was information about bribes, including the names of several officers involved in the dealings. Ryan even recognised a few from recent high-profile cases. These weren’t bottom feeders trying to make a quick buck. He’d always had a good head for details and he made sure to mentally commit the names to memory.

Vasquez, Ronson, Stalley, Jones, Poro, Jernigan. There would be more. This couldn’t be it or they’d be cooked by now. Whoever was coordinating it was still an unknown.

Essentially the investigations uncovered they’d been paying off gangs, drug dealers and media outlets with money obtained from god only knows where. He didn’t need to be a lawyer to know that the evidence Jeremy had compiled wouldn’t be strong enough to stand up in court, especially with the blue wall of silence in effect. Which it undoubtedly would be.

Ryan looked up, his expression now of more certain concern.

Jeremy chewed his lip hesitantly, “I had an idea from my interviews with Burnie… I’d been investigating it on the side. After we published some of the first stories on it, Leslie tried to get me to bury it. It was a complete 180 for her, which I thought was weird at the time, but didn’t really question it.” Jeremy shut his eyes and shook his head. “But she told me at the baby shower, before she offered me the promotion. She’d been paid off by the LSPD not to run those stories. To pick which ones went to press. That I’d likely be the one they came to when she walked. If they let her walk…”

“Jeremy,” Ryan’s face was twisted with concern, “you can’t publish this.”

“Not while I work at Weazel,” he replied simply.

“Not ever! They’d kill you before it was approved to print. We wouldn’t find enough of your body…” Ryan reeled, the weight of it hitting him full-force. He lowered his voice and threw a glance around the room as if to confirm they were alone, “The fact that you even know about this at all is enough to put a target on your back.”

“I can’t stand by and watch this happen, Ryan. Especially not after what happened with Burnie…”

“What happened with Burnie got you shot!”

Jeremy squeezed his eyes shut, “I know. That’s why I’m giving you an out.”

Ryan’s heart dropped to his knees. “I don’t want an out Jeremy. I want you. Safe and intact with me…” He took a long breath, “now, call me selfish, but I don’t think that should be too much to ask.”

Jeremy looked away, tears and uncertainty shimmering in his eyes.

Ryan put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently, “Stay. Please. For me.”

Jeremy put his hand over Ryan’s, gripping it tighter to himself.

“I know you’re a good person, you don’t have to prove it to anyone. But you can’t do any good if they find out about this. They’ll cover it up, they always do.”

Jeremy knew he was right. They always covered it up, they always got away with it. And he couldn’t do any good if he was dead.

He nodded slowly.

“Just… please, please go along with it. Stay out of the investigations. Stay safe. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you.”

Ryan pulled him into a hug and Jeremy felt the remaining shred of his resolve waver.

“Please delete it,” Ryan begged, his voice close to breaking.

Jeremy could wait, until they were both ready, or until the guilt of knowing consumed him. He would try. For Ryan.

“Ok.”

Ryan hugged him tighter.

“We’ll work this out,” Ryan assured him, “but not like this.”

Jeremy nodded into Ryan’s chest, “yeah, yeah, we will.”

Ryan let out a breathy laugh, “God, you’re just so good. Stupidly good. How have you survived so long in Los Santos?”

Jeremy pulled away slightly to look up at Ryan, “I guess I just got lucky. Met the right people... I suppose that’s going to change from now on though, huh?”

“Well, whatever happens, you’ll always be a good person to me.”

They visited their favourite café in Morningwood and drank hot chocolates as they walked through the cemetery, quietly watching a funeral service from a respectful distance on one of the benches.

The floral arrangement caught Ryan’s eye; it wasn’t one of his – for a fleeting moment, a small part of him mourned the lost business. The casket spray was definitely on the pricier side. It was made of pink stargazer lilies, white orchids and pink carnations; unique, heartfelt and colourful, likely a younger woman, possibly a mother. Ryan tried not to dwell on it.

“What did Leslie suggest?” Ryan finally asked, no real context to the question, not that Jeremy needed it; they’d both been thinking about it even if they hadn’t said anything.

“She basically said to keep my head down, not publish anything that might raise any suspicion, stick to crime and homicide and only report what they give us. Stick to the official stuff and commercial stuff.”

Jeremy sounded so flat, Ryan’s heart sank to hear it.

“I’ve just… I’ve worked so hard to get here and then to find out this is what it entails. It just… sucks.”

Ryan took Jeremy’s hand and gave it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “Hey, I know it’s real shitty, but we’ll figure something out. If you wanna take some time off, or hell, if you want to get out altogether, the shop’s doing great; I can support us for a while, while you take some time to work it out.”

Jeremy sighed and leaned his head against Ryan’s shoulder. “Thanks Ryan, but I can’t quit now.”

There was a hint of fight in his tone. He wasn’t completely defeated.

Good. It wasn’t like Jeremy to let something get in his way.

Jeremy pushed himself back upright to smirk at Ryan, “at least I get to assign who’s on what stories now. Maybe I’ll strike it lucky with a crime wave, or a serial killer or something.”

Ryan grinned back, “I like how you can consider that striking it lucky…” Ryan looked back towards to funeral, “then again, I guess I can’t talk.”

“Does it make us bad people?”

“Having survival instinct in this city? Hell no. We’re making the most of the hand we were dealt. You are the furthest thing from a bad person I can think of.”

The rest of the weekend was dedicated to relaxation and distraction; keeping their minds off it as much as they could, but still the looming sense of dread hung over them.

* * *

The following week had dragged on. Jeremy had returned to work, accepting his promotion and going on like nothing had happened. Trevor and Matt were happy for him as were the other editors, although as with any promotion, the usual brand of professional envy hung in the air. Ryan hoped for Jeremy’s sake, it would rapidly disperse. He had enough to worry about as it was, although some relatively harmless office drama might help to shift the focus away from the dread-inspiring thought that at any moment corrupt government agents could come down on him like the sword of Damocles.

In the shop, Ryan wasn’t faring that much better. He was worried about Jeremy. That much was clear, but not quite so much to Meg and Ashley who just got the impression he was stressed. Still, he maintained his ever-professional demeanour and went about his days as efficiently as possible.

By Thursday, Ryan had begun to settle down again, getting back to a semi-regular rhythm, but something about that in itself made him more uneasy than ever. He went about the daily duties with a huge weight on his mind. What could he do to help Jeremy?

He kept coming up empty. Any solution he could think of would likely result in one or both of them going to jail or getting killed.

He vaguely wondered how long it would be before they went the way of Leslie and Dannie and fled the city. He wondered if that would actually make them any safer.

It was getting late in the day and Ryan skimmed through the remaining daily orders. His eyes stopped at a familiar name.

Jernigan.

Ryan tapped the name a few times with his finger, looking to Ashley, “Regular?”

“Sort of?” She replied over the crinkling of cellophane, “he’s in here pretty often… I get the impression he must have someone on the side. He’s always after, like, ‘patience is a virtue’ and ‘someday our love will be free’ kinds of arrangements.”

Ryan frowned, “That’s a bit of an unfair assessment, isn’t it?”

“Well, once he asked for a bouquet that said: ‘I know how to show you a good time, sweet-cheeks’…”

Ryan raised an eyebrow incredulously, “well… I suppose that is slightly less ambiguous.”

“Total creeper. I think Kdin had an issue with him as well…”

Ryan practically snarled, “That’s not good. I asked her to report that stuff to me-”

“Ryan, she doesn’t need you white-knighting for her-”

“-and we don’t need the business of scumbags.” Ryan was quick to point out. “If that’s the case though, I’d feel better if I was the one to make the delivery… Then I can decide if they’re really worth the repeat business.”

Ashley set her gorgeously constructed arrangement on the counter and nudged a less impressive bouquet towards him.

“Your call. The address is out past East Los Santos; Nikola Pl in Mirror Park, near all that construction, so it’s not exactly on the normal delivery route anyway. It’s not like we’re understaffed anymore, you can make the run if you want. It’s for an evening delivery too, so you can go straight home from there and I’ll do close.” Ashley smiled at him, it was the same look Meg had had when she’d suggested he take a vacation.

“Have you and Meg been talking again?” He eyed her suspiciously.

“Never! Why would I ever talk to Meg, especially on a Saturday when it’s just the two of us in the shop together…”

“Does she have you trying to convince me to take a vacation too?”

“No!” Ashley exclaimed in exaggerated shock, “she suggested a staycation.”

“Figures,” Ryan mumbled, rolling his eyes.

“Please consider it Rye, you deserve a break.”

“I’ll think about it!”

He took the modest bouquet of hydrangeas, purple hyacinths and pink roses, that by the looks of it were meant to be interpreted as an “I fucked up, but I’m still into you” bouquet, and headed for home. As much as he scooter was cute for hand deliveries, he’d rather make the longer trip to Mirror Park on his bike. He had pannier bags for when he used to run small deliveries himself.

Jernigan. Where had he heard that name before?

He quickly ducked up to his apartment, grabbing his black and blue leather jacket and skull-decaled helmet, almost grabbing Jeremy’s hideously bright purple and orange one by mistake. That was when it clicked.

Jernigan. It was one of the names on Jeremy’s list.

His blood ran cold. Surely it was a coincidence.

You’re just dropping off some flowers. Making a delivery, like normal. Just a regular afternoon.

It was harder to convince himself than he would’ve liked.

It was a nice day. Sunny, but not too hot to wear leathers and with the wind whipping around him at the frankly dangerously high speeds he travelled, it was refreshing. It had been a day like this that he’d taken Jeremy for a proper ride, following the Great Ocean Highway north to Paleto Bay, topping speeds of 100 mph and living for the rush of blood in their veins. Jeremy trusted Ryan enough to let him take him to those speeds, even enjoyed it. That, or Jeremy was just as crazy as he was. Either way, he counted himself lucky to have met him.

The ride went far too quickly, Ryan arriving nearly 20 minutes before the arranged drop off time, partially due to light traffic and partially due to the fact that he’d been pushing the speed limits on every road.

As he pulled up to the address, he could see an LSPD cruiser parked in the drive and his stomach twisted. It was indeed that Jernigan.

Ryan made a mental note to tell Ashley they wouldn’t be accepting his business in the future. The guy was a scumbag and a corrupt cop. He parked the bike across the street and took off his helmet, leaving it with the bike. He retrieved the flowers from his bag, in pristine condition; he was still a professional after all.

He walked up to the large and ornate wooden door of the expensive property. If Jernigan was keeping someone on the side, Ryan could see how he could afford it. Then again, crooked cop was probably a decent-paying gig. Ryan’s blood simmered, but he carefully masked his face. Theatre training did come in handy occasionally.

Useless talent #14. Right after juggling and just before knife throwing.

He knocked loudly on the solid door and waited. No response. He noticed a doorbell and tried that, waiting patiently again; thankful for the shade of the porch as the warmth of the day started to make itself known. No response.

He was still early. If he left the flowers they’d wilt, even in the shade. He figured he should at least wait until the designated drop off time. Might as well kill some time walking around the area, rather than waiting on the guy’s doorstep. Especially if Jernigan was likely to be involved in gang activity.

He loaded the flowers back into the cool compartment of his pannier bag for safekeeping.

He’d take a walk. His bike was in the shade, parked inconspicuously next to a large tree out of the way opposite the house. He’d be ok to leave it and his helmet there for a while. The place was more or less deserted at any rate. He was rarely in this part of town, and it was something of an ongoing gentrification project, so he started lazily wandering down to see how construction was going in the street over, the planned gated community of “Utopia Gardens”. From where he stood on East Mirror Drive, he could see it was still more or less an empty cul-de-sac; the foundations poured and set, the site dotted with stacks of construction materials and machinery covered in tarpaulins, with a few shipping containers for the more valuable or weather-sensitive stuff and god knows what else. He was acutely aware of the fact that this was in the middle of the territory of The Lost MC. If he recalled correctly, Jeremy’s report pointed to Jernigan as the link to them. It seemed odd to make a local association… although it did perhaps make their meetings appear more coincidental. Might be a clever way to cover anything shady as “chance interactions”; lending a sense of plausible deniability to any case that might be brought against them. For the briefest of moments, perhaps a little bit out of wishful thinking, Ryan wondered if maybe Jeremy’s report was wrong. Maybe it was all coincidence.

A loose collection of motorbikes were gathered out the front of a dilapidated looking house opposite the site. There was a good chance it was a Lost MC clubhouse or hangout or something. The gangs were less than subtle so it wasn’t entirely unusual. Ryan tried not to let it spook him too much. He continued walking, and hooking a thumb into the pocket of his jeans, he felt the weight of the pocket knife he had tucked there. It was normal to have one on him in the shop and he hadn’t quite developed the habit of taking it out before he left, often finding it still in his pocket when laundry day rolled around. It was a modest blade, only a few inches long and mostly used for odd jobs in the shop, but in all things he did, Ryan was diligent and he kept it razor sharp. If he came into any trouble with gangs he doubted it’d do him much good, but it was still a mild comfort.

He skirted a wide berth around the house with the bikes and ventured into the construction site. There was nothing stopping him, he’d worked laying concrete slabs out of high school as one of his first jobs, the memories were still firmly planted in his mind. It wasn’t a bad experience, but it was physically demanding enough that Ryan had made a conscious effort to avoid toiling in the sun doing manual labour after that.

So far so good.

As he wandered, he could hear raised voices faintly echoing off the shipping containers. A little way down the street there were two containers, red and blue, placed perpendicular to one another. Sound travelled in odd ways in open spaces like this, it could be coming from the Lost’s hangout and bouncing off the metal containers, kind of like how a satellite dish worked. It certainly sounded like it was some kind of argument. He cocked his head and listened hard, trying to make out the words and find the source of the echo, fascinated by the way the sound seemed to reflect off the objects around him.

He caught fragments of conversation in the echo as they became clearer the closer he got to the containers.

“…fucking scum Vagos got paid twice what we did for … they didn’t even … the drugs!”

“Well they don’t also … fucking cage fighting syndicate that needs covering up – remember the deal, you scratch our backs, we scratch yours.”

“The deal is for cash, not fucking back scratching, Jernigan.”

Jernigan.

“Ungrateful cunts.”

Ryan was snapped out of it by a sudden loud crash of metal on metal and more yelling. It was distinctly coming from one of the shipping containers that were now not more than 15 feet away. The blue box to his left shuddered violently and the metal reverberated, as if something had been slammed against the wall from the inside. The thud was dull and heavy, an accompanied by a cry of pain.

Not an echo then. Shit.

Ryan ducked behind the red container, where he could peek along the length to see the entrance to the blue one, but could hide behind if anyone was to exit. Other than that though, he was dangerously exposed. He was at the end of the cul-de-sac between who he guessed were The Lost MC and their bikes. If he was to turn around to go back and they were to leave, they’d see him for sure, and they weren’t exactly known for their forgiving nature. Ryan pressed his back against the warm metal of the container and waited. There was a scuffle, wet packing sounds of flesh on flesh and more yelling.

A gunshot cut through the chaos and everything stilled.

He considered running. His legs refused to comply. Whatever was said or not said next, he didn’t hear over the pounding of his heart in his chest. What felt like an eternity later, six men, all of them bikers, filed out of the container. One was holding a hand to his face and wincing in pain. Ryan had enough sense to skirt around the box he was pressed against to stay out of their line of sight, while still getting a good look at them.

He waited until they were well clear of the construction site before he let out the breath he was holding. He didn’t relax right away though. He was sure Jernigan hadn’t left.

Really, Ryan should have known better. He could smell the faint tobacco smoke from the container. Some morbid curiosity kept him drawing closer to peek inside. See if he’d been shot, killed or left for dead, one less problem for them to deal with in the long run. It would’ve been something of a relief if Ryan was honest.

He crept closer to the open door of the container and looked around. It was poorly lit, with crates stacked in rows along the rear walls. Right near the entrance there was a mark from where the bullet had skipped along the metal floor. A warning shot. As Ryan’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he could see; at the back of the room, a younger man with short blonde hair took a long drag from his cigarette and looked up to lock eyes with Ryan.

Shit.

“Oi! Who the fuck are you?” he snarled.

Ryan’s mouth was suddenly very dry.

“God dammit,” Jernigan shook his head and pulled a pistol from his shoulder holster, “I don’t have time for this shit.”

He flicked the safety off and aimed the gun at Ryan.

Ryan panicked. He’d been gripping the knife in his pocket. Almost subconsciously, he’d pulled it free, flicked it open and weighted it in the palm of hand. Jernigan didn’t get a chance to respond before Ryan’s instincts took over and he threw the knife with unpractised, but not unskilled precision at the other man’s chest.

Useless talent #15.

He wasn’t sure if he’d intended for the throw to be lethal. He didn’t stop to consider the consequences; he just knew that this was a very bad man who had intention to hurt him. He had to slow him down or stop him. It was an act of self-defence.

Good luck trying to convince a well-paid jury of that.

Ryan was rusty. The throw had been aimed at Jernigan’s chest, but he’d miscalculated, and it flew high, striking him in the throat with a flat whump, the slim blade embedding up to the hilt.

In that moment, Ryan noticed everything, even if his mind would go on to attempt to erase all memory of the event later on.

Jernigan dropped the gun. His hands flew up to grab the handle of the knife, pausing momentarily, fighting all instinct to remove the foreign object from his flesh as blood gurgled and seeped around the wound, small bubbles escaping around his fingers as he coughed and spluttered for breath. Ryan saw himself draw closer, kicking away the pistol as Jernigan sank to his knees, hands tight around the blade in his neck, clasped almost reverentially in front of him. As if praying, or begging forgiveness.

Ryan was not the man to go to for either.

He thought nothing of it as he watched the man struggle for breath, eventually falling to his hands, letting the blood drip off the handle of the knife directly onto the dusty metal floor of the shipping container below him. Bloody handprints marked the spot where Jernigan’s life left him. Where Ryan watched and did nothing. It took longer than Ryan imagined it would. The officer had chosen the spot for it’s secluded nature, Ryan had to give him credit for that. It meant Ryan didn’t have to worry about the obscene wet and strangled noises he made as he attempted to cry out for help. He didn’t have to worry about trying to hide the widening pool of blood as Jernigan’s body finally slumped lifeless to the ground. He didn’t have to worry about being spotted by passers-by as he checked the officer’s breathing had stopped.

One less scumbag in Los Santos.

One less problem for Jeremy.

One big problem for him.

Shit.

The fear kicked in then. A small voice in the back of his head, almost quietly proud of him, reminding him, you just took a life.

What are you going to do now?

He debated calling Jeremy. He should. He’d understand.

The words: accessory to murder flashed through his mind.

Can’t drag him into this… So, what are you going to do?

He considered the evidence. His knife. That would have to go. Simple enough.

Careful not to touch the body, he grabbed the knife and pulled it free, a trail of blood flowing lazily after it.

He hadn’t physically come into contact with anyone. The gang members hadn’t noticed him, or hadn’t said anything if they had. The only other person who knew he was even in the area was Ashley and as far as she knew he hadn’t even made the drop yet. It wouldn’t be suspicious if he delivered the flowers and returned to the shops. It would just look like another run in with a gang on the streets of Los Santos.

Could he do it?

Could he walk away from this?

The flowers were surely for someone. Partner or mistress or some other unfortunate associate. They’d report him missing soon enough. The body was a walk from his house but inside the shipping container it wasn’t something they’d likely stumble upon. They’d find it soon enough once construction started again… perhaps too soon?

Jeremy had hoped for a homicide to report.

Ryan paused to entertain the thought for a moment longer.

Jeremy had wished for a serial killer. What if…?

Jernigan had been dealing with The Lost MC.

Leaving a small hint wouldn’t contribute to the evidence all that much. Especially if it was seen as an act of the gang marking their territory.

Perhaps it would inspire an internal investigation and put a stop to the corruption altogether.

A different voice in the back of his head kept repeating “this is stupid” as Ryan knelt next to the body to carve TLMC into the palm of Jernigan’s hand. A token. A clue. But not one that led to him.

He didn’t even look back as he folded up his knife and tucked it back into his pocket. He made a mental note to clean everything when he got home.

Somehow, almost miraculously, not a speck of blood had made its way onto his hands. Aside from the bloody blade in his pocket, he was entirely clean of the crime. He hoped.

He quickly returned to his bike, retrieved the flowers and left them at the doorstep in the shade.

Right on time.

He hadn’t seen a single car pass in the time he’d been there.

He could actually get away with it.

On the much slower drive back to Del Perro, all he could think was how relieved he’d be when he woke up and realize it was all just a dream.

Alas, he never woke up.

He went about the rest of his day exactly as usual, aside from the 15 minutes he spared to prepare a bleach solution and thoroughly clean his knife and the pocket of his jeans, it was as if nothing ever happened. He waited for the guilt to consume him. For that void pit to open up and swallow him whole, forcing him to confess his sins to all within earshot, lest he lose his eternal soul to the torment of his own mind. He waited, but it never came. He hadn’t felt any of that. He didn’t feel remorse. He felt good.

Knowing Jeremy was getting something out of it, knowing Los Santos was just a little bit less of a cesspool, knowing that Leslie and her family were one step closer to being able to safely return home one day; he could justify it. He wasn’t a good person, not the way Jeremy was. But he was redeemable. It was for the greater good.

He didn’t feel safe or like he’d gotten away with it and nerves still played constantly at the edge of his consciousness, but alongside that feeling there was a rush, an edge, a danger. And he loved it.

One thought kept coming back to him.

Jeremy. “Maybe I’ll strike it lucky with a crime wave, or a serial killer or something.”

It would certainly be a story.

* * *

It was strange how normal life seemed now that Ryan was effectively a murderer. It didn’t compute in his brain. It didn’t feel real, and yet it had happened. It didn’t quite compute that this 30-something florist who recycles and bakes his own bread and smiles at strangers and says please and thank you to every retail and hospitality worker who serves him, is actually a killer. He began to wonder how many others there were like him.

He went back to work and carried on like nothing had happened, occasionally wondering if anything had actually happened. A week went by and no new information emerged about the body. Or if it did, it wasn’t newsworthy. Perhaps the LSPD had written it off as collateral; covered it up. The acceptable price paid for dealing with the gangs.

Not knowing was the most frustrating thing. Ryan was tempted to drive out to see if the body was still there, but he couldn’t shake the memory of the line he’d heard countless times from cop dramas over the years: “they always return to the scene of the crime.” He couldn’t go back there, nor could he be the one to report the body. All he could do was wait.

On Saturday, Jeremy got called in to work on a developing story with a junior, which he was actually happy to do, so Ryan decided to surprise him by cooking dinner. When Jeremy got home, Ryan dished up Cajun-spiced baked catfish with collard greens and sweet potato wedges. It was one of those meals that sounded fancier than it was and was actually very quick and easy to make.

This time, they actually ate at the table.

“How was work, dear?” Ryan said with a smirk as Jeremy sat down to join him.

Jeremy grinned back. “It was good, dear,” he replied, clearly not in a bad mood and willing to indulge in Ryan’s playfulness.

“So, not wanting to quit just yet then?” Ryan ventured.

“Where’s the challenge in that?”

Ryan just grinned back at him, the look on his face very close to admiration.

“So, how’s the murder rate in Los Santos these days?” Ryan ventured, perhaps hopeful of some insider news.

“Sadly for me, about what it usually is…” Jeremy shrugged, “mainly just gang activity and stuff.”

Ryan slowly cut a chunk of fish and pushed it onto his fork, considering his next words carefully.

“I mean, if you get bored by the lack of murder, you could always come work in the shop for a while-” Ryan realised that hadn’t come out at all how he’d expected it to as soon as the words left his mouth and he suddenly went very quiet. Jeremy was looking at his quizzically.

“Ryan? Is everything ok at work?” His tone was joking, he could tell it was a typical Ryan misstep, “Are you planning on murdering someone?” He lowered his voice to a whisper, “Is it about Gavin?”

Ryan burst out laughing, his discomfort immediately easing.

Gavin was Meg’s new boyfriend. He hadn’t made the greatest impression on Ryan after he stood her up on their first date and Ryan had nearly scared him off, but Meg had been determined to have a “re-match” as she kept phrasing it. Weeks later and the relationship was still going strong and they all got along fantastically.

“What I meant was we can find things for you to do… We’re thinking about expanding our delivery area and having another person making runs. Maybe get a car…”

Jeremy nodded, experimentally dipping a sweet potato wedge into the creamy sauce Ryan had made for the fish. “That sounds good.”

“Yeah, I’ve made a few runs on the bike lately, it’s definitely do-able…” Ryan tried to make it sound as casual as possible, “I passed the site for Utopia Gardens out in Mirror Park the other day; you think they’re ever going to finish that eyesore?”

Jeremy shook his head, finishing what was in his mouth before speaking. “Nah, the company that owns it filed for bankruptcy. Plot’s technically for sale, but no one’ll touch it. Something to do with the courts, I’m not really sure, but Trevor was pretty interested in following it. The whole place is in a kind of financial limbo, who knows what’s gonna happen with it.”

Huh.

“Ah, that sucks. Could’ve been a real nice area…” Ryan mused, shifting his focus back to food.

His mind was racing though.

No one’s going to find that body.

The Lost are going to find the body and they sure as hell aren’t going to report it.

He could get away with it. Completely. Scott free.

No one would ever have to know.

But Jeremy wouldn’t get his story and the LSPD were no closer to being exposed.

Shit.

He wasn’t sure how to feel.

Thankfully, Jeremy changed the topic of conversation.

“Our anniversary’s coming up quick,” he noted with a small smile.

“It is…” Ryan smiled back, “and to think it’s been a year since we both tried to propose.”

“Technically, I did it first…”

“I was robbed! Those origami flowers took me days!” Ryan grinned back.

Jeremy blushed slightly, “Is that something you’ve… been thinking about?”

Ryan pulled a face that he hoped communicated an honest but non-committal “not really” and Jeremy instantly looked relieved.

“Ok, good, me either.”

Ryan smiled openly, relieved Jeremy felt the same way. “Not that I don’t want to… just…”

“There’s no need to rush into anything…”

“Yeah, we’ve both been busy…”

“It’s totally fine,” Jeremey concluded.

“Absolutely fine,” Ryan agreed with a giggle.

“But yeah,” Jeremy continued, “let’s maybe not do anything big this year, ok? No big presents or surprises or anything, just a nice night out… or in… or something.”

Ryan nodded, “Yes dear.”

Jeremy scowled at the use of the pet name, “You’re mean.”

“You love me,” Ryan teased.

“I do.” Jeremy said with all sincerity and without hesitation, and Ryan felt his heart flutter a little at it. “I really do... dear.”

Ryan knew at that moment exactly how far he’d go for Jeremy.

* * *

Jeremy’s new job had been busy, but not as confronting as he was worried it was going to be. Leslie had done a fantastic job of preparing him for the workload and the new responsibilities, while weighty, didn’t feel like anything he couldn’t handle. He also had Matt and Trevor to back him up.

Unfortunately, it did come with surprise wake-up calls at ungodly hours of the morning.

He reached, bleary-eyed for his phone as it vibrated across the bedside table and seeing it was Matt, he answered quickly, trying not to disturb Ryan as he got up and crept into the living room to talk.

“Matt, what’ve we got?”

“Shootout in the Projects; LSPD are on the scene, I’m heading out with Steffie now, but she’s closer.”

“Gang related? The Vagos are down that way, what’s the tension? I thought they’d been peaceful lately?”

“They had!” Matt sounded scattered over the phone, “I dunno man, might be something, might be nothing, but it seems pretty big. Might want to get in here to have something ready for print if they ask.”

Jeremy glanced at the clock on the wall. 2.40 am. Figures. At least he wouldn’t have traffic to contend with.

“Thanks Matt, I’ll be in the office in about 20 minutes, keep me in the loop.”

“Will do!”

“Hey Matt,” Jeremy added before he hung up, “be careful, alright?”

“I always am.”

Jeremy hung up and rubbed his face with both hands. He needed a shave, but it would have to wait. The news couldn’t.

He crept back into the bedroom and pulled on clothes, still conscious to try not to make too much noise. It wasn’t much use though, Ryan stirred as soon as he became aware that Jeremy’s weight wasn’t in the bed next to him. He propped himself up on his elbows, eyes still closed and hair sticking up at odd angles.

“Everything ok, Lil J?”

“Just gotta go into work a bit early. Don’t worry about it.”

“Y’sure?” Ryan mumbled.

It was a sweet and completely genuine gesture. If Jeremy had said he needed anything, Ryan would have undoubtedly gotten up and dutifully attended to it. Jeremy sighed, taking in a moment to consider himself so lucky.

“It’s fine. Go back to sleep, it’s not even 3 am yet.”

“M’kay,” Ryan was already drifting back off to sleep, “have a good day…”

“You too buddy,” he said quietly, picking up his shoes and heading out.

The office was never completely empty, there was a 24-hour news cycle to fill after all, but unless a major story was breaking, the hours between 3 and 6 am was the quietest it ever was. Jeremy still hadn’t quite developed a taste for coffee, but if these odd hours kept up, he felt like he soon would. Leslie was something of an addict before she started trying for a family. It was probably better than the cans of sugar-free energy drink he kept in the communal fridge for situations such as these. Thankfully, he was respected enough they were still where he’d left them. That, or Matt had been quietly re-stocking them for him, which was equally as likely. Jeremy cracked the tab on one and settled down at his desk to prepare what he could with the information Matt and Steffie were going to give him.

Jeremy nearly nodded off before the caffeine kicked in, but he didn’t have long to wait before Matt showed up in-person; scaring the absolute hell out of him by sneaking up behind him while he was starting to nod off again.

“So, I think I know what happened,” Matt announced after Jeremy’s heart rate had settled back to acceptable levels and he’d stopped laughing, “We got word that The Lost MC are trying to press into Vagos territory. Looks like things might get messy.”

“Where’d you hear that from?”

“Reliable source,” Matt winked. Jeremy took that to mean a local. He understood Matt had a respectable – he used the term loosely – circle of junkie and drug dealer contacts who were well in the know about the movements of the gangs. Well, where drugs were involved.

“Huh, that’s weird, thought the Lost and the Vagos had some kind of truce or understanding or something?”

Matt shrugged, “who knows with them, maybe a deal went south or something. Maybe they’re under new leadership. Caused a hell of a lot of trouble for the LSPD tonight though. It was a proper shootout. Heavy casualties; no one dead on the scene, but Steffie’s got an eye on the hospital if anyone dies from their injuries.”

“Really?” Jeremy asked incredulously, as Matt showed him the notes he’d jotted down. He knew the Lost had a contact and were on the take. Maybe that deal went sour. “And the LSPD gave you a statement?”

Matt nodded, “they were weirdly helpful this time. Might be a change in office politics, but Trevor would probably be the one to know more about that, if that’s the case.”

“Huh… well, that’s awesome. Make sure it gets another pair of eyes on it and we’ll run it.”

Jeremy was surprised he hadn’t been contacted by the LSPD himself about this one. Maybe he wouldn’t be. Maybe this was beyond their reach, or they were cutting ties. Maybe it had just been specific to Leslie. Or maybe there really had been a change in the politics. He made a note to check later with Trevor. Something had to be going on.

Jeremy was tempted to dive back into his investigations. Surely a purely professional inquiry wouldn’t set off too many alarm bells. Keep it low-key; office resources only.

A few hours and several cans of energy drink later, Jeremy’s office resources arrived right on time for work.

“Good morning Trevor,” Jeremy said brightly, catching him off-guard and nearly making him spill his coffee.

“Jeremy! God, scared the hell outta me. Didn’t expect you to be here so early. Keep forgetting you’re the boss now, gotta take care of all that… boss-y… stuff.”

Matt’s story had been published without backlash or comment from the LSPD and while Trevor hadn’t worked on it, he definitely would’ve read about it by now.

“Need a favour,” Jeremy launched right to the point, knowing if he ambushed Trevor for information, he’d get a more direct response. Leslie had confided in Jeremy that Trevor knew more than he let on a lot of the time and that was a card he should play very close to his chest. “What have you heard about LSPD happenings lately?”

Trevor frowned, throwing a glance around the room and dropping his voice, “they’re down an officer. Went AWOL last week sometime, no warning, no trace, no reason to leave. Current rumour is that the wife finally met the mistresses.” He smirked grimly.

Jeremy arched an eyebrow, “Got a name?”

Trevor pulled a face, trying to recall, “Began with J… Jerri- Jen-”

Jernigan. Jeremy made the connection instantly. The Lost’s contact.

Trevor shook his head unable to recall, “…wouldn’t be hard to find out, I can have a look if y-”

“No!” Jeremy blurted out before he could stop himself, “we uh… don’t need to do that… it’s fine, just never mind. Doesn’t matter.”

Trevor nodded slowly, understanding; knowing better than to question it. “Sure. Anyway… it hit pretty hard for one of the other cops in that office. Stalley, I think his name is. More rumours he’s gonna be getting fired, bit of the problem with the substances, if you know what I mean…” he made a drinking motion with his hand, “…but he’s been on the force a long time, so I don’t know how true those rumours are. You know how they are with dead wood.”

“They fuckin’ love it,” Jeremy muttered under his breath.

They weren’t going to get rid of Stalley. Stalley was the one who’d threatened Leslie. He was the contact, the muscle for the media outlets. Trevor would definitely have known that, but Jeremy wasn’t going to press him.

“Any movement in the higher-ups?” Jeremy asked, “Restructures?”

Trevor shook his head, “not that I’ve heard… but then that’s the kind of stuff we generally don’t hear about until after the fact.”

Jeremy frowned, but nodded, “thanks Trevor. Tell Matt you guys are square for Leslie’s baby shower present too.”

Trevor nodded solemnly.

Even though Jeremy trusted Trevor, silence always had its value.

Jeremy opened a blank document and stared at the blinking cursor on the screen for some time. Paranoia edged fear into the back of his mind. He tapped his fingers lightly on the keys, impatient but undecided. Ryan had all but begged him to erase all evidence of his investigations from his computer. He had a point. He closed the document. Checking the ‘no’ box on the prompt that asked if he’d like to save his changes. Instead, he walked over to the stationary closet and rummaged for a notebook. A5, 200 pages, lined. Brand new, no markings. He grabbed a handful of ballpoint pens while he was in there and took everything back to his desk. With a deep breath, he started to jot down all of the information he had.

* * *

Jeremy was stressed again. Ryan could see it. Ryan was stressed himself. He wasn’t sure if Jeremy could see it. For his sake, he hoped not. But still, Ryan worried. Jeremy had been keeping odd hours again, waking up in the middle of the night to work on something in the study. Ryan had his suspicions what that something might be. It was a Friday morning when Ryan found out. His alarm had woken him for the early start, Meg was taking the morning off to do something sweet with Gavin, so Ryan had taken the load for the opening shift. As he stretched and climbed out of bed, he noticed Jeremy’s absence. It wouldn’t have been the first time Ryan had awoken to an empty bed. Pulling on his pants and a clean t-shirt, he stalked quietly to the study.

Jeremy was slumped over the desk, still fully dressed in his clothes from the previous day, confirming he’d not come to bed at all. Four empty cans of energy drink were scattered about pens and pencils and clippings and a book. A journal that Ryan hadn’t seen before. He very carefully picked it up, so as not to disturb Jeremy, and leafed through the pages.

Jeremy had lied about not going digging. He’d brought a goddamn backhoe. If Ryan was honest with himself, he wasn’t surprised. This was the kind of evidence that could link him directly to Jernigan’s death. That wouldn’t look good for either of them… but that was never going to happen.

In the book, a big circle around Jernigan’s name had “missing??” scrawled next to it and the approximate date.

So, they knew he was missing and nothing further… that Jeremy had found anyway.

He had to do something. Jeremy wouldn’t stop until he had enough to bring the matter to courts. Ryan knew that wouldn’t work. No matter how good his case, Jeremy wouldn’t be able to go up against that kind of force in Los Santos. It just wasn’t done. Good intentions died here.

He couldn’t let him go through with it. He had to act first.

Ryan pored over the pages, taking in every bit of information he could, just in case he never got to see it again. One particular detail stood out to him.

The name of officer that had been threatening Leslie was Albert Stalley.

He knew what he had to do.

* * *

The time had come.

It was after sundown, Jeremy had said he���d be working late at the office, some technical error had come up last minute and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. For what exactly, Ryan wasn’t sure yet.

On the corner of Strawberry Ave and Vespucci Blvd was Shenanigan’s Bar. It was the local for the officers of the Downtown LSPD station – just down the road – but as such, it was really only frequented by the older beat-cops, the rookies and higher-ups preferring to hide the shame of their addictions in the privacy of their own homes, or at least where they wouldn’t garner too much attention from their colleagues. Jeremy’s notes suggested Officer Albert Stalley was a regular.

Ryan parked a block over, in the lot of the motorcycle dealers where his bike wouldn’t stand out and walked to the bar. It wasn’t a bad area, opposite the business district and Legion Square, amongst some reputable hotels, but it was a far cry from a desirable haunt. The bar itself looked respectable from the outside, but inside it was just like any other establishment, with the usual collection of after-work clientele looking for their weekly, or, probably more likely, daily escape from the grind.

He found Stalley exactly where he’d expected to. Barely vertical on a barstool, leaning heavily into one elbow balancing precariously on the edge of the bar, glass of brown alcohol almost empty in front of him and the bartender keeping one wary eye on him, almost expectantly.

Ryan ordered a diet coke, shucking his leather jacket as he did, and slid into a booth close by, pretending to wait for someone. He fiddled with his phone as he listened to the conversation taking place between Stalley and the bartender. It didn’t sound pretty, even if he was clearly a regular. The man could barely string three words together, but kept trying to order another drink. The bartender was having none of it.

“Al, you can’t keep doing this to yourself. I’m cutting you off. Finish up and leave.”

Stalley made a noise of frustration and swept his hand across the bar, knocking his glass to the floor; the bartender shook their head thankfully when it didn’t shatter.

“F-uck you!” Stalley managed to spit out, almost literally.

“God dammit Al! I was gonna call you a cab, but you know what, you can just get the fuck out.”

Stalley stood up from his chair and staggered backwards, bumping another customer’s drinks and making them spill. Ryan could smell him from where he sat.

“You can’t… t’ me like this!” He swayed and the customers whose drinks he’d spilled glared at him.

“I’m-m goddamn cop.”

The customers looked away again, suddenly very disinterested.

Ryan saw why when he spotted the pistol at his hip that Stalley’s hand was creeping towards, probably instinctively. Ryan clenched his teeth and despite the fire welling up within him, he reminded himself that this man was dangerous and uninhibited and however he planned to proceed, it would have to be carefully.

The bartender, however, was unflappable. They tempered their tone and looked him straight in the eye, all fiery assertiveness and completely done with his shit.

“Go home, Al.”

Stalley snorted a contemptuous acceptance and his feet slowly began moving him towards the door.

Ryan wasn’t worried about losing him. He didn’t rush to finish his drink, playing with his phone and finally sighing, returning his glass to the bar with a sad sort of smile to the bartender.

“Maybe next time,” they said optimistically.

“Thank you. Perhaps,” Ryan agreed with a brighter smile, dropped some change into the tip jar and headed out, eyes instantly scanning for the shuffling form of Stalley.

He heard some vague muttering followed by a loud clanging noise and a string of nonsensical profanities spewed from the base of a fire escape a little way down the road. Ryan pulled on his leather jacket and gloves. The familiar weight of the knife in his pocket was comforting, but not in the same way it had been previously. Now it felt more like anticipation. Preparedness. He had a sense of purpose now.

Stalley still had a gun but drunk as he was, it wouldn’t take much to disarm him. Ryan felt a rush of adrenaline as he made his way, as casually as he could, towards the noise. The swearing and muttering had stopped and as Ryan drew closer, he could see why.

The cop had passed out, slumped against the wall at the base of the fire stairs, conveniently next to the alleyway that would serve as Ryan’s cover. Ryan scowled at the man’s limp form. It would be an easy kill. He was almost disappointed. He glanced around to ensure no one was watching too closely before shaking Stalley to a semblance of consciousness.

“You look like you could use a hand,” Ryan offered gruffly, grabbing Stalley’s arm and pulling him to his feet, supporting the man’s ample weight under his shoulder and half-dragging him into the alleyway.

Stalley started snoring loudly before Ryan even made it to the shadows.

When they were sufficiently out of the way, Ryan dropped him heavily to the ground and retrieved his knife. All he would have to do would be a quick flick of the wrist and walk away. It would be easy.

He couldn’t risk having it go unnoticed again. He had to go bigger. Make it newsworthy.

For Jeremy.

He flicked out his knife and, looking around once more to make sure they were alone, he clamped one hand over Stalley’s mouth and sliced the man’s throat ear to ear. Stalley seized and spluttered but barely woke, his alcohol-soaked brain too overwhelmed to bother playing witness to his last moments.

He stepped back and waited until he was sure the man was dead; no more gurgles, no more pulse. Taking his knife again, he carved the name of the man’s contact into his arm.

Blood welled up in the incisions, filling the space like ink from a fountain pen to form the word.

WEAZEL.

Ryan left the body next to the dumpsters, so it would have to be found.

That was sure to get their attention.

Jeremy would get his story.

* * *

“Jeremy, you’re not gonna fucking believe this!” Matt’s voice was a mix of excitement, fear and pure disbelief as he swung around from the door frame into Jeremy’s office.

Jeremy looked up sceptically. It was another early start for him and so far, the day had been full of disappointments.

“There’s a dead body with our name on it… Literally.”

“What?” Jeremy’s eyes widened. This could be exactly the kind of thing he was after.

“You’re gonna want to see this one for yourself. Trust me.”

On the drive over, Matt explained.

“So, I picked up the chatter on the scanner…” Matt often left his radio scanner on and tuned to the LSPD frequencies, “…and heard some interesting things about a body… so I did what I usually do. I called ahead to the bar where they found the body and said I was with Weazel and that the LSPD asked me to call though first to see if it was ok to ask some questions.”

“I love the way you think sometimes, Matt,” Jeremy interrupted with a proud grin.

“Thanks man! So anyway, I struck it real fuckin’ lucky. As soon as they heard I was with Weazel, they asked if it was about the body they found. Naturally, I played along and got a few choice facts. Our stiff’s a middle-aged man, probable alcoholic and there was a lot of blood. But also, the killer tried to contact us it seems.”

“How so?”

“They said the body had been mutilated. Someone had carved ‘WEAZEL’ into his arm.”

A chill ran up Jeremy’s spine.

“Freaky, yeah?”

“Right,” Jeremy muttered, already masking a sense of unease, “well, we keep that all to ourselves until we find out what’s going on.”

“Agreed.”

When they arrived at the scene, the LSPD were questioning the locals and the forensics team was already walking the grid. The medical examiner had done their preliminary investigations of the body and given their findings to the police. Jeremy had visited enough crime scenes to know the general routine and timing. Judging by the way the blood still looked sticky, he guessed whatever happened must have been in the last 24 hours. He picked out the officer in charge and went straight to them, Matt following his lead.

“Jeremy Dooley, Weazel news-”

“Just the man I want to see,” The officer cut him off gruffly.

Jeremy had never seen him before, which he took as a good sign, it wasn’t likely to be anyone directly linked to his investigations… he hoped.

“Why might you want to see me?” Jeremy asked, feigning ignorance.

“Got a few questions to ask you… informally of course.”

The officer pulled a notepad from his pocket and Jeremy’s suspicions piqued. Much like he’d seen Ryan do, he masked his expression, smiling politely.

“Of course, ask away, Officer…?”

“Detective Gibson.”

“Detective Gibson,” Jeremy repeated, correcting himself “if I can be any help…”

Gibson picked up a tablet and flipped it around to show a photo taken probably only minutes earlier of the deceased man, who, Jeremy could see from the corner of his eye, had hardly shifted. “Do you know this man?”

Jeremy looked at the photo. He hadn’t gotten close enough to see the body properly yet, but the photo was good quality and he could clearly make out the dead man’s face. It was Stalley. His blood ran cold, but again, Jeremy didn’t show it.

He squinted and stared hard at the photo, replying confidently, “I’ve never met that man before in my life.”

It wasn’t a lie.

The officer frowned, “Do you recognize the name Albert Stalley? – this is outside the official statement, so that name is not to be published -”

“Of course,” Jeremy nodded professionally, “and no, I’m afraid don’t.”

“Do you know of any association he may have had with Weazel?”

Jeremy frowned, “I don’t think so. Perhaps before my time? What makes you think he has connections to us?”

“We’ll have an official statement for you shortly…” The detective avoided the question, “Would you be willing to provide us some contact details for further investigations?”

“I can’t speak for other Weazel employees, but I can give you my contact details and if I can be of any help…”

“We’ll contact you, thank you.” Gibson said, his tone finally softening slightly.

Jeremy nodded again, giving the officer his business card. “You’re welcome.”

“Like I said, we’ll have a statement for the media shortly.”

Gibson went back to his team and their investigations.

Jeremy was thankful his attention had shifted. He felt like he was going to pass out. He hurried over to Matt.

“Our body’s Albert Stalley, LSPD officer, crooked as a hillbilly smile, alcoholic – probably drunk at the time, that’s how the killer would’ve been able to get the drop on him…”

If it had been anyone else with him, he would’ve stayed quiet, waited for the official statement. But he needed someone else to know – to have all the information he had in case… in case something happened to him. He’d have to call Leslie too…

“You get that all from detective Stick-in-his-ass?” Matt asked incredulously.

Jeremy shook his head, “Just don’t worry about how I know, I need you to know. But wait for the official statement and that’s what we’ll go off. Anything else we can find without too much digging can go in too. I don’t want to half-ass this one, ok?”

“Sure!” Matt actually sounded excited, “think there’s something to it?”

Jeremy nodded. “Even if there’s not, our name is on the line.”

…and possibly our necks.

It had been a long day. Between Jeremy and Matt, they had written up the story using the LSPD’s very vague statement and embellished it in all their usual ways, adding a few choice details that they figured were easy enough to obtain through usual investigative journalism… nothing that gave anything away just yet. The LSPD chose to sit on the information about the mutilation and the links to Weazel. Technically it was embargoed for legal reasons. Details like that couldn’t go out to the public – well, yet – without potentially risking their investigation. Jeremy didn’t want to risk getting the company involved in a lawsuit; god knows they’d been through enough.

Part of him wanted this to be a one-off, another cop finding out, or one of the gangs mistaking his dealings for something else… But another part of him felt the electric buzz of excitement that came from a real story and the possibility of some kind of vigilante justice. Maybe it was Leslie’s doing… she wasn’t likely to risk her family, he knew she’d be laying low, but then again… he had to check she was ok and find out if she knew anything.

As he drove home, he took a detour through Little Seoul to a payphone and called the number Leslie had left him for just such an occasion. It took a long while for her to answer, but that was to be expected.

“Are you safe? Have you seen the news? Do you know anything about this? Have you told anyone?” He was a little surprised at the way his voice mirrored hers, speaking in that rapid-fire staccato style she had, keeping it to the bare essentials to prevent from being understood if overheard.

“I think so. Yes. No. Of course not.” She replied equally as quickly. “Are you ok? I wasn’t sure if I should call.”

“I’m ok, just…” he rubbed the back of his neck and suddenly felt a knot twist in his stomach, “I’m just worried… Whoever did it, they knew something.”

“It’s not from me,” Leslie said matter-of-factly. Jeremy had no reason to doubt her, there was too much at stake.

“I just… I don’t know then.”

“This is going to sound dumb, but stay with it Jer,” Leslie urged him, “I’ve got a good feeling about this one and they don’t know what you know. They can’t. You’re ahead of the game. This could be the break you’ve wanted to blow them open. But just be fucking careful, ok?”

Leslie never swore. It was jarring to hear and drove home just how dangerous this thing was that he was getting involved in. He trusted her though.

“You too, thanks. Stay safe.” He hung up and lingered for just a moment in the booth.

He took a few long breaths in and considered his options. Leslie was right. He had to stick with it.

The only people who knew anything about this were himself and Leslie and what he’d shown to Ryan in the report.  If someone else knew… had Ryan said something? Maybe just to someone in passing, mentioned a name. Los Santos was full of mercenaries looking to make a quick buck…

Oh god, Ryan wouldn’t hire a killer, would he?

No, he wouldn’t go that far. He could be a bit odd, but he wasn’t completely reckless.

Jeremy shook himself out of it and got back in his car. He’d ask Ryan about it when he got home.

* * *

Ryan felt even less remorse over the second death. He wondered if killing was something people got used to; got addicted to. He wondered if it could become a problem. He’d never really had an addictive personality, although he did make a conscious effort to avoid most things that constituted that kind of problematic behaviour.

Typical, of all things you could become addicted to, it’d be murder. In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.

He snorted at his inner monologue. Sometimes he wondered if he should worry about that.

Meg and Ashley had still been on his case about taking a break from the shop, and as far as they knew, they’d been wearing him down. He had better ideas for uses of his time.

Find your project.

He’d certainly found it.

When Jeremy came home that day, Ryan knew he’d found out. Something in the way he carried himself said he was anxious, moreso than usual lately. Ryan hated that it was his actions that led to it, but at the same time, he could take comfort knowing that the killer was definitely not going to be coming after Jeremy.

“Good day, dear?”

Jeremy brightened to hear the familiar teasing tone, and greeted him with a grin.

“Actually, dear, there was a very interesting story this morning.”

“Oh?” Ryan raised an eyebrow, “someone die?”

“Actually…”

“I knew it!”

“…a cop.”

Even though he knew it was coming, he had to be careful of his reactions. Act accordingly.

“Oh?” He repeated a little more incredulously.

Jeremy drew closer, lowering his voice, probably instinctively.

“You never told anyone about the report I showed you, did you?”

Ryan’s eyebrows knitted together, “No… why? What’s going on?”

“I’m serious, Ryan, even if it was a joke, even if it was just gossip in passing; you didn’t mention it to anyone?”

Ryan was stalwart in his response, “I wasn’t exaggerating when I said that story’s dangerous, Jeremy,” there was a serious edge to Ryan’s voice now, “Do you think I’d risk anyone hearing about it?”

Jeremy seemed to slump slightly, nodding.

“Ok, I just had to know…” There was a long pause before he continued, prompted by Ryan’s scrutinizing gaze, “…The LSPD agent, the officer that was harassing Leslie – he turned up dead.”

Ryan took it in slowly. He’d seen the reports, he pretended he hadn’t. He knew full well the details.

“Cops die all the time in this city, Jeremy, the gangs are unforgiving. He probably just got caught up in something he shouldn’t have. It’s probably a coincidence. That’s all.”

Jeremy just hummed in response, pensive and silent.

Interesting.

“I mean, it’s good news for you though, right?” Ryan asked, “You won’t have to deal with that hanging over your head anymore.”

Jeremy shrugged after a moment of what Ryan knew to be some kind of internal struggle, “I guess. Yeah.”

Ryan instinctively felt a sting of hurt that Jeremy decided not to comment further, but he also knew it was a lot for him to take in and it would take a while for Jeremy to properly mull things over. Ryan couldn’t judge him for it.

“At least it’ll make for an interesting story for you?” Ryan suggested brightly.

Jeremy grinned, coming back to himself slightly, “yeah it will. Cops are going pretty hard after this guy, so it should be a good one to follow. I put Matt on it as well, should be a good boost for him.”

“Nice,” Ryan enthused, seeing a sparkle returning to Jeremy’s eyes, the same kind that made him fall in love with him to begin with, “at least something good can come of it… Might even open some avenues to expose them, yeah? Or let them expose themselves – open them up to an internal investigation or something.”

Jeremy nodded, “I’m gonna stick with it. At least see it through.”

Ryan moved closer to him, slipping a hand around his waist and pulling him in close, pressing their foreheads together with a slight nuzzle. “Just be careful, ok?”

“Always.”

It wasn’t entirely convincing.

* * *

It took less than three days for Ryan to decide his next victim.

He’d been keeping tabs on Jeremy’s notes, snatching pieces of information where he could. Thankfully, Jeremy kept the journal on him at all times, and that meant bringing it home with him from work.

Shari Vasquez was in contact with The Families and high up on Jeremy’s list. Incidentally, she’d also been aggressively investigating Stalley’s death. Jeremy’s most recent notes suggested he’d been keeping a close eye on her too.

Ryan would be doing Jeremy a huge favour. Lifting that weight from his mind.

That was how he justified it anyway.

Vasquez lived on Del Perro beach, not all that far from them, and it didn’t take long to discover she was a regular beach runner with a busy schedule that forced her out in the evenings.

He made the conscious decision to wear his leather jacket and gloves this time, despite the fact he would look out of place down by the pier. If there was a struggle, it would protect him and also limit the possibility of his DNA finding its way onto the scene, say, under the fingernails of his victim. The less exposed skin, the better.

To this effect, he’d also found an old Halloween mask amongst the window dressings they used for the shop – a black skull with a white toothy grin. It was latex, so he could fold it up and stuff it in his pocket, and it would cover his whole head; he could even tuck his hair into it, so if he screwed up, he wouldn’t be identified.

Besides, if he was going to commit to this, it couldn’t hurt to add a bit of theatricality, he reasoned.

He tucked a spare knife into his belt, just in case… well, just in case; and headed out.

There was really no going back now.

It was a pleasant evening with only a sliver of moon and the beach was growing rapidly darker as Ryan waited for the familiar figure to run past him under the pier. It was low tide and since he’d been observing her, that had meant officer Vasquez would extend her run to the water drain on the other side of the pier to see the lights of the Ferris wheel before turning around to run back. Under the pier was largely deserted of vagrants at this time of year which was usually far wetter, and the fact that it was mid-week meant there’d be fewer handsy teens using it as a make-out spot. School night and all.

Ryan couldn’t have asked for a more perfect setup.

What he wasn’t counting on was how alert Vasquez would be.

He stalked between the pillars under the pier, assuming he’d go unnoticed, just another passer-by in the evening, but her head was on a swivel and he struggled to unfold his knife without her seeing. When she passed him, he took his moment to flick open the knife and taking careful aim…

She turned to look back at the last second – clearly an instinctive response to seeing such an imposing figure lurking in the shadows – just in time to see the knife leave Ryan’s hand and she threw herself forward to the ground. The knife barely grazed the back of her skull, blade glancing off hard bone, rather than embedding in flesh as he’d intended and while she screamed and stumbled, it was far from a debilitating blow. She picked herself up and Ryan panicked as she turned back on him, suddenly going on the offensive.

She kicked a heel out and Ryan’s instincts took over, twisting his body in an attempt to dodge the blow, her kick mercifully missing its mark and striking hard on the inside of his thigh instead. His leg nearly buckled beneath him. Had her kick hit home, Ryan had no doubt it would have been the end of the night for him. He scrabbled for his other knife and pulled it free just in time to catch her forearm as she struck at him again. She hit hard, thumping him in the arm and he stumbled backwards, catching himself on his now bad leg and almost crumpling to the ground. Instead, he shifted his weight forward and launched himself at her with all the force he could muster, blade bared.

This knife was larger than the one he was used to and before he knew what he was doing, he’d plunged the blade into her throat and torn it free, leaving a gaping wound in its wake.

She was unresponsive, although he couldn’t be entirely sure she was dead when he retrieved his smaller knife from the sand and wrote “Families” across her exposed midriff with the sharpened tip, letters blooming behind it in her unique ruby red ink.

“For Jeremy,” he added under his breath.

He returned to the shop before going home. It was late, and Meg had closed, assuming he’d gone home for the night. He let himself in the back way and stashed his mask back with the Halloween decorations, inspecting it thoroughly for blood or signs of the struggle. He’d washed his gloves and jacket of any visible blood very quickly in the seawater before he’d emerged from under the pier, the whole time sweating bullets about being spotted, but thankfully he hadn’t seen anyone. His blood was ignited, he felt a rush of energy, better than any he’d felt before. It was addictive. He’d never felt more alive.

He wasn’t entirely surprised to discover he felt no remorse. It was like taking out the trash, just another job done. A small part of him wondered what Jeremy would think of that.

He never has to know.

Ryan used the work sink to clean up more thoroughly, scrubbing his knives with a freshly prepared bleach solution, then wiping down his jacket and gloves, before scrubbing his hands completely clean.

When he felt like himself again, he made his way home; knowing Jeremy would likely be working late again, like he had been often, giving Ryan a useful flexibility for his …extracurricular activities.

Unfortunately, his encounter had left a mark. The bruises came up dark and obvious within the day. Ryan was lucky enough that Jeremy had missed them when he’d come home in the dark and Ryan had gotten dressed and covered the larger one on his leg before Jeremy had woken up the next morning. His arm was pretty obvious though and he couldn’t cover it without drawing more suspicion. Jeremy had been so wrapped up in his work, he was up and out the door before he even had a chance to notice, barely even pausing to give Ryan their daily parting ‘boop’ as he left.

Surely, they couldn’t have found the body already… He wondered to himself.

Actually, with where he’d left it, and the popularity of morning beach running, that was very likely.

He felt an electric tingle run down his spine, less nerves than excitement at the prospect. There was a real element of danger there now. He was fairly certain he couldn’t be linked to the victim in any obvious way, that the LSPD would admit to anyway, that could make him a suspect by conventional investigation methods, and he wasn’t in any databases as far as he knew, so DNA evidence would be a long shot at best.

He grabbed a rubber band from the bowl by the door and tied his hair back, wondering briefly if dyeing it would somehow make it more difficult to identify if he accidentally shed at a crime scene. Maybe he should take Meg up on that offer…

Ryan went to work as usual, walking the few doors down to the shop.

He was greeted by the bell and not just Ashley, but also Meg, waiting for him.

“Good morning?” Ryan tried cautiously, “…why do I feel like this is an intervention?”

Ashley deadpanned it, “Because it’s an intervention, Ryan.”

“Ah, well… I suppose that explains it then.”

“We have to talk about your – frankly shocking – work habits.”

“I’m fiiiine.”

“You’re stressed out, Rye,” Meg started her tone gentle but serious, “and I’m sure you don’t mean to, but you’re stressing everyone else out, especially when you show up randomly and then disappear. We never know where you are. Take a break, roster someone else on and if you still really feel like it, come in to visit or something.”

Ashley had her arms folded and was nodding along.

He had been stressed, that much was true; although he hadn’t realised how it might’ve been affecting them. If he did take a break, it would give him more time to pursue …other interests… more thoroughly.

He sighed heavily, finally nodding in agreement, “Ok, I can see where you’re coming from, but I’m still going to come in and do the books and some stuff out the back. You won’t have to count on me for anything, and I won’t get in the way.”

“Thank you, Rye,” Meg said emphatically, “I think this will be good for you. About time you had a proper break.”

He smiled, mind already running with possibilities, “yeah. I think so.”

* * *

Jeremy was, unsurprisingly, home late again that night. Ryan had taken a good chunk of the day to make a proper dinner, doing up a roast, knowing Jeremy would at least appreciate the effort, even if the majority of it did become leftovers.

Considering he must have been exhausted, Jeremy seemed remarkably perky when he got home. The first words out of his mouth were an enthusiastic, “Another one!”

“Another what?” Ryan replied, playing dumb.

“Another crooked cop got got,” Jeremy explained, kicking off his shoes at the door and taking his journal and work bag to the study.

“Awesome!” Ryan tried to mimic his enthusiasm, before falling back on confusion, “…that’s good right?”

“I…” Jeremy’s tone changed when he realised the implication of his enthusiasm, brow knitting together, “Yeah. Sort of, I guess?”

“Then awesome.”

Jeremy laughed uneasily.

“I actually read the news this time,” Ryan admitted sheepishly, “so I already knew.”

“Ah…”

“But you’re looking at a serial killer then?” Ryan asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Jeremy nodded, “That’s what it looks like, yeah.”

“That’s exciting then, that’s what you said you wanted, that should be good for the paper and Matt too, right?”

Jeremy nodded again, “It’s real good news for us. Not so much for the victims, but definitely for us.”

Ryan smirked, “You should call him the Vagabond killer.”

“Excuse me?”

“Serial killer’s gotta have a name, right? Leaves the bodies out in the open like vagabonds…” Ryan shrugged.

“That’s… kinda dumb, Ryan,” Jeremy said with a quiet giggle.

Ryan shrugged again, a little more dejected, “I just thought it sounded cool.”

“It did, buddy, just probably want something a little punchier for this one.”

Ryan couldn’t help but pout ever so slightly. He really wanted that to stick.

Jeremy kissed his cheek, “thanks for the suggestion though, I’ll remember it for next time.”

“No, you won’t,” Ryan muttered under his breath, loud enough so Jeremy could hear.

“Probably not,” Jeremy confessed, “but I will do my best to humour you!”

“Aww,” Ryan leaned his face down close to Jeremy’s, “that’s all I ever ask.”

Jeremy met him to press their foreheads together and pulled away slowly, blinking up into his eyes with an affectionate grin.

“I made dinner,” Ryan said, returning his smile.

Jeremy collapsed into a hug, humming against Ryan’s chest. “Have I said I love you lately? I should.”

“Yeah you should, you ungrateful bastard,” Ryan ribbed playfully, “I love you all the time and this is the thanks I get…”

“Is that a bruise?” Jeremy interrupted, the large purple discolouration would have been very visible from Jeremy’s position pressed against him. “Holy shit Ryan, what’d you do?”

Jeremy prodded very gently at the bruise on his arm from Vasquez’s last-ditch efforts to overpower him. Ryan cringed to think how close she came.

“Oh,” Ryan said nonchalantly, brain scrambling to come up with an excuse, “that was …Meg.”

“Meg?” Jeremy repeated, bewildered.

Why was Meg the first one to spring to mind?

“Yeah, I used to do Kung Fu back in the day,” not a lie, “and I was teaching her a few things about self-defence, y’know, with Gavin and all…”

“And she did that?”

Ryan shrugged, “She’s got a mean right hook.”

Jeremy shook his head, but to Ryan’s relief, he seemed to buy it, “Maybe Gavin’s the one who needs protecting from her.”

“Oh definitely…” Ryan laughed, before adding proudly, “If she has to, she will kick his ass.”

Jeremy smiled, “they’re good though, right?”

“They’re great, real cute kids,” Ryan agreed.

“Kinda like us then,” Jeremy teased.

“Please, we’re not even remotely cute,” Ryan retorted, pulling Jeremy into a crushing hug before lifting him clear off his feet and spinning him around, placing him back down and pressing their foreheads together.

“Nope. Definitely not cute.”

* * *

Ryan wasn’t sure if it was something he should be proud of or not, but it turned out that murder did, in fact, get easier with time. The more names Ryan crossed off, the more Jeremy was busy, the less time he had to question exactly where Ryan was going, what he was doing.

He hadn’t told Jeremy about it, but Meg and Ashley were still smug about his staycation.

His twisted sense of humour had declared it a ‘murder break.’

He still dropped into the shop often, keeping track of records and using the space to unwind. It also provided a perfect alibi. No one could track his every movement in the shop, he could just as easily be cleaning out the back room as he could be stalking an alleyway in Vinewood waiting to bloody his blade.

In everything he did, Ryan was diligent. Ryan knew every name. Every contact. Every misdeed.

Over the next several weeks, Ryan carefully identified and observed his targets, waiting for just the right moment to strike. His death count rose, and so did his confidence.

Captain Poro. Contact for the Ballas. Bled out behind a dumpster in South Los Santos. “Ballas” inscribed on his forehead.

Captain Jones. Contact for the Los Santos Triads. Found in a construction site in Vinewood Hills. Multiple stab wounds, fatal slash to the abdomen. “Triads” scrawled unceremoniously across his back.

Officer Ronson. Contact for the Varrios Los Aztecas. Left by the canals in Vespucci. Throat slit ear to ear. “VLA” carved into his chest. Ryan was particularly proud of that one.

Their guilt written in blood. Left for Jeremy to find. To expose more and more of the rotten, decaying root of this city. They would get to the bottom of it. Had to.

Ryan had come to the end of his list. But there was one piece of the puzzle that was missing.

Jeremy’s notes had been getting increasingly desperate. With each murder came a flurry of activity and notes on the movements and reactions of the LSPD officers remaining. Jeremy had been narrowing down his suspect list of who might be orchestrating the whole thing.

There had to be a puppet master, and Ryan knew if they could just get to them, then they had a chance at wiping out this whole toxic syndicate.

Burnie would’ve been proud of them.

* * *

Matt had been meticulous about the story. He’d followed all of Jeremy’s tips and leads unquestioningly and kept on the scanners 24/7. He and Jeremy had been at every crime scene; they knew every detail of every murder, and Detective Gibson, while maintaining his reservations about the pair, had become almost friendly with them. Jeremy was glad he was still assigned to the case. Whoever was pulling the strings mustn’t have had any sway over the investigations, otherwise he’d be seeing the usual rotating cast of rookies incapable of finding evidence in the evidence locker.

Once the gangs were out from under the thumb of the LSPD, chaos bled over to the streets. Jeremy was in constant work reporting on their activity, the crime waves and turf wars and – amusingly enough – drug shortages that came with the gradual disassembly of the corrupt network. Professionally, he was thriving, but Jeremy was getting exhausted. He tried as tactfully as possible to build his story without drawing attention to himself. He needed all the evidence to be in place. Although, with the rate the killer seemed to be working at, the whole crooked connection could be dead before it got a chance to build back up.

To be fair, Jeremy wanted to wish whoever was doing it best of luck.

Because he had run out of names.

His journalistic efforts were spent in the papers, but his own investigations – trying to figure out who was running the show – those needed to continue. Once he knew, he could bring them down… but he needed a common theme. Returning no clues from the investigations the paper necessitated, Jeremy attended the victims’ funerals and memorial services. They were held in the same cemetery he and Ryan would visit sometimes, so it was easy enough for Jeremy to slip in and observe amongst the mourners. The first thing he noticed was a lack of overlap in their friend circles, aside from a few cops that turned up probably as if it was expected of them, but there was only one person he noticed was repeatedly present, and he nearly missed him. He discreetly managed to snap a photo of the man and messaged it to Trevor. He’d know what to do. If there was anything to find on him, Trevor would find it.

Less than 24 hours later, Jeremy knew he’d made the right choice when Trevor dropped a thick manila folder on his desk with a wink.

The name written on it was: Lee Whitless.

* * *

Ryan had come to the end of his list. It slowed him down significantly and frustrated him that he couldn’t just look up his next victim. He needed more information, but he kept coming up empty handed. There had to be more to it. There had to be someone running the show.

To try to give himself a break, he went back to the shop more often. He couldn’t be prouder of the way it had been running in his temporary absence.

In everything he did, Ryan was diligent. Even as a florist, a job some may argue was primarily an art, Ryan kept meticulous handwritten notes. Despite the new online system Meg and Ashley had installed, he still recorded every order that walked into his store in his notebook. It was originally for his own reference – recording the meanings of the flowers people had ordered, noting bunches with interesting aesthetics or curious meanings, analysing trends. Ryan had always fancied himself a bit of an economist, easily able to read patterns in data and extrapolate information. Every now and then he’d find himself flipping through the pages, looking for anything that might stand out, perhaps to anticipate the new “fashionable” blooms.

Despite the redundancy, Meg and Ashley had been filling in the entries for him while he was away, Ryan noticed the differences in their script immediately – suddenly it became legible. It was really sweet of them. Ryan noticed a doodle of a little skull and crossbones next to one of the names written as: Lee (Creeper).

“Hey Meg, what’s this guy? Creeper?”

“Oh, that’s just the nickname I gave him,” Meg said, blushing a little, clearly embarrassed, “He just gives off this real creepy vibe. I called him ‘Creepy McCreeperson’ one time describing him to Mica and it stuck – but don’t worry,” she added quickly, “it’s only like that in your book, not in any official records, he never gave a last name and always pays in cash, so it’s all I had to go off.”

Ryan shook his head, “that’s ok. What’s with the skulls?”

“That’s the other reason he’s creepy,” Meg explained, “he always orders funeral flowers.”

Ryan’s eyes narrowed. He flicked through the pages to double check the dates. They coincided with the murders. A few days after each. Surely that couldn’t be just a coincidence.

“What’s he look like?”

Meg pulled a face, “Does it matter?”

“I just… I think I might know who he is,” Ryan tried.

Meg conceded, “he’s a pretty big guy, thinning hair, blonde, probably late 30s, early 40s. Gives off a bit of a cop vibe… not sure how to explain it other than that.” She shrugged. “He has like an…”

“Air of authority?” Ryan suggested.

“…he acts like a total ass,” Meg said bluntly, “like he owns the place or something. You know the kind.”

Ryan sighed, “yeah… I do. All too well. Let me know next time he comes in and I can deal with him if you’d like.”

Meg let out a relieved sigh, “That’d actually be great. I can deal with him, but he just… makes me really uncomfortable.”

Ryan nodded understandingly, “that’s ok, I’ll handle it.”

His dark inner monologue chuckled at the implications.

Ryan hadn’t been paying close enough attention. One of them had been right under his nose this whole time. He double checked the dates of the pickups against the memorial or funeral services for the murdered cops so far. They all lined up. All the services had been held locally at Hill Valley Cemetery.

Funeral flowers were one of the few arrangements the shop offered a pre-made selection for. Mourning could be a difficult enough process and Ryan always wanted to make sure he wasn’t placing undue stress on those who needed it the least. Consequently, Lee “Creeper” had simply been coming to choose arrangements from a book and that offered very little insight into the relationship he had with the deceased.

Why had he not thought to look for connections there before?

He was frustrated with himself. Find the man who brought the flowers, find the common link.

Ronson’s funeral was the only one that hadn’t been held yet. The eulogy in the paper said it had been scheduled for next week.

Which meant Creeper should be visiting soon. And he would be ready.

Ryan took his bike out of the garage and parked it behind the shop so that he could quickly slip out to follow the Creeper if he happened to show up. Technically he was still on vacation, so he didn’t strictly need to be there to begin with. His sudden disappearances weren’t all that unusual to his staff anymore.

Day one, he didn’t show up at all. Ryan wondered if he was wasting his time on it. The second day, Ryan was prepared to spend another day essentially toiling in the back room killing time waiting to make a move, when the first customer of the day walked in, the little bell happily chirruping at his arrival.

Meg’s head immediately appeared in the doorway and she mouthed the words “help me!”

Ryan donned his green apron and headed to the front of the shop.

Meg’s nickname had been aptly chosen. “Creeper” was exactly that – a Creep. Ryan immediately saw the large man crowding Meg’s personal space as she attempted to back up even further into a display, clearly uncomfortable.

“Good morning, sir!” Ryan called out cheerfully, grabbing the man’s attention and letting Meg slip away to pretend to attend to something more urgent over the other side of the shop. “Can I help you today?”

He seemed a bit flustered to be interrupted and annoyed that Meg was more interested in something other than him. It was clear to Ryan this was a man who was used to getting his way, but he was courteous enough to accept Ryan’s offer and allow Meg to extricate herself from the situation.

The man smiled grimly, “I’d like to place an order for an arrangement, it’s for a funeral I’m afraid.”

Ryan nodded solemnly, “Of course, what kind of arrangement were you after?”

The man hummed, “A simple one, to honour a fallen friend. Something with blue in it.”

Ryan nodded and flipped open a display book to a modest arrangement that fit his description, “something like this?”

The Creeper nodded, disinterested, his eyes glancing up towards Meg as she bent over to sweep something off the floor. Ryan noticed. It took a tremendous amount of restraint not to growl.

The transaction continued as expected, a professional level of civility between the two of them.

“Do you need delivery? There’s a flat rate delivery to Hill Valley church if that’s where the service will be held,” Ryan explained.

“No no,” the man insisted, “I’ll come pick them up.”

“Very good, they’ll be ready for pickup after 9 am the day of the service,” Ryan made a note in the system, “Can I just get a name for that?”

“Lee.” The man said it in a tone so final that even Ryan hesitated to push for more information. He wasn’t getting a surname out of him, and even if he gave one, Ryan was almost certain it would be a decoy. He was going to have to follow him.

That was fine. He’d been prepared for that.

He wished Lee Creeper a good day amidst other pleasantries and kept an eye on him from the shop window as he walked down the block, towards where Ryan assumed he was parked.

“You weren’t wrong about that guy,” Ryan said to Meg.

“Right? Total creep to me, not as bad to you, but you still saw right?”

Ryan nodded, “Yeah, I saw… I just gotta run out for a bit, you’ll be right here.” It wasn’t really a question. Ryan was distracted trying to track Creeper. Meg nodded, but he didn’t really see her.

He slipped off his apron and dashed out the back, pulling on his jacket and helmet to follow him.

Creeper drove a nice car, expensive, all shiny metallic black and sleek and fast. But Ryan had no problem keeping up on the bike. Not that he had to keep pace long. Ryan followed him to a well out-of-the-way house in Pacific Bluffs, West of the Cemetery. As he pulled into the driveway, Ryan kept driving, but made note of the address. He had a feeling he’d be back here soon.

* * *

The one day Ryan planned on doing his reconnaissance, Jeremy came home early. Figured. Still, Ryan had an itch to scratch and he knew Jeremy was deeply distracted by his own work; he wouldn’t miss him for just an hour or two.

Ryan had left his mask and knives in the storage compartment of his bike, along with some notes he’d printed off if an opportunity presented itself. He dressed his usual casual self just for the occasion. He grabbed his jacket and helmet and started to pull on his boots when Jeremy emerged from the study, a look of curiosity and mild concern on his face.

“Where are you going?”

Ryan shrugged as he pulled on his boots and started lacing them up, “Out. Just gotta run some errands for the shop, post some things, pick up some seeds for Ashley. I won’t be long…”

“You’re not walking, are you?”

Ryan shook his head, “I’m taking the bike. I’m not going far, I’ll be fine.”

Jeremy hesitated for a moment. “You know there’s a killer on the loose. They’ve taken down guys bigger than you…”

Ryan pulled a face. “The big, bad Vagabond’s got nothing on me,” he cocked an eyebrow and smirked at Jeremy.

Jeremy scowled back at him, “Ryan, please be careful.”

“Jeremy,” Ryan started, but Jeremy’s eyes were full of concern. He sighed, “I promise, I’ll be careful.”

“People have died, Ryan… I’ve been following the story and we might be involved in all of this now… I just… I worry about you.”

Ryan’s face softened, “Well, I worry double for you. I promise Jeremy, I’ll be careful. And I will do whatever it takes to protect you too.”

“And I’d do the same, so don’t do anything stupid, ok?”

Ryan pressed a kiss to the top of Jeremy’s head. “Ok. I’ll be back soon.”

It was early evening, and the sun was setting, shades of orange through purple lighting up the sky and rapidly growing darker, but it was still early enough to be out and not raise suspicions. The drive was relaxing, more than it had any right to be for what Ryan was going to do. Although, to be completely honest, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do.

Ryan pulled up to park on the kerb and retrieved his mask, the notes and knives, before leaving his bike and helmet a few doors down and walking the remainder of the way to the large and likely very expensive house. The car was in the drive – it was a nice neighbourhood, and the car was likely insured, so Creeper probably felt no fear about leaving it outside. Ryan vaguely wished he could find that kind of security. Checking for CCTV cameras and onlookers, he slipped around the side of the house, making his way around the back. Lights were on inside the house, but there was very little movement that Ryan could make out. He found a vantage point amidst some bushes and, pulling his mask from his back pocket, he slipped it on to help his camouflage and squatted down to watch.

He saw the back of Creeper’s head as he sat down and flicked through television channels. He appeared to be alone. That was a good sign. Ryan backed up as he saw the creep rise, turn around to look almost directly at him out the window, before making his way to the back door, sliding it open and sticking his head out, looking around.

Ryan tried to melt into the shadows, holding his breath as Creeper looked around, seemed satisfied with his findings and went back inside, leaving the door ever so slightly ajar.

Ryan wasn’t sure what he’d been looking for, but he was certain he hadn’t been seen.

The weight of the knives at his hip gave him a sense of certainty and courage and he found himself inadvertently thumbing the hilt. A sense of impatience washed over him. He wanted this over. It could be over. It could be over tonight. All he had to do was get inside and finish it. And the universe had presented him with an opportunity, he’d be foolish not to take it…

Before he was completely aware of his actions, he was sneaking towards the back door, staying low and quiet, hand resting assuredly on the handle of his knife.

The creep wasn’t in front of the TV anymore. He wasn’t in the room at all. Ryan slid the door open and it was almost silent on it’s bearings. Perfect.

Inside was nice, modern, clean, minimal. A suitable bachelor’s pad. Ryan briefly wondered if it was a post-divorce thing, or maybe he was just like that. At any rate, there was nothing cosy about it, nothing that felt like home. At least to him.

He wandered as quietly as he could to the tiled area leading up to the kitchen where he’d seen the creep disappear to. Maybe he could catch him with his pants down.

He sensed movement behind him. A chill ran down his spine and Ryan froze.

He heard the slide of the pistol snap into place as the voice boomed with all the authority of a senior Sargent behind him; “Put your hands on your fucking head and turn around slowly, or I will shoot you where you stand.”

Heart pounding, head swimming with too many unhelpful or downright dangerous ideas, Ryan reluctantly obeyed.

At gunpoint, Creeper pulled Ryan’s knives from his belt and emptied his pockets, throwing everything to the floor to clatter along the tiles just out of reach. He tugged the skull mask off of Ryan’s face and held it up to examine it, shaking his head, before turning his gaze to Ryan’s face, studying it carefully.

“I know you… You work in that flower shop.”

Ryan looked at the floor and tried not to respond.

Creeper sneered, “You’re a goddamn freak, you know that?”

Ryan sneered in response.

In Ryan’s back pocket, there was the wad of folded-up paper, names and addresses and contacts, evidence of the web of corruption he’d been spinning, links to Ryan’s victims, including the flowers. The Creep unfolded and examined them, all the while keeping his gun trained on Ryan.

“You piece of shit, what the fuck is this?” he demanded, almost spitting in Ryan’s face as he looked at the notes, “You think this is a fucking game?”

Ryan started to lower his hands, slowly sliding them off his head and putting them up in front of him defensively.

Creeper looked back to the notes in his hand, lowering the gun slightly.

Ryan saw an opening.

He reached for the gun, planning on grabbing the man’s wrist and wrestling it free, but Creeper was faster. Much faster. Ryan wasn’t expecting it.

Ryan caught an elbow to the solar plexus and doubled over, gasping. Seconds later, the butt of the pistol connected hard with Ryan’s skull.

Ryan saw stars and could’ve sworn he heard Jeremy calling his name.

~

The world spun as it faded back into existence. Ryan’s head was on the floor, cheek pressed against the cold tiles, he quickly became aware of something warm and wet running down his face.

A weight was on his back, pinning his arms behind him. He heard the click of metal on metal and the bands press into his wrists painfully tight. It brought him back to reality with terrifying speed.

Creeper was a cop.

He was a was a serial killer.

Los Santos supported the death penalty.

As far as he knew, Ryan had killed everyone else involved in the corruption coverups. He’d done all the dirty work for him. All Creeper had to do now was tie up the one remaining loose end… and he could do that legally.

The creep climbed off Ryan’s back and placed the keys to the cuffs on the table well out of Ryan’s reach. He could see his knifes across the floor, but they’d do him no good now.

There was too much evidence against him already. Ryan wouldn’t stand a chance.

Jeremy would never forgive him.

Ryan wasn’t sure if it was the head wound, or the thought of never seeing Jeremy again, but suddenly he felt the urge to sleep; to give up and let Creeper do what he pleased with him. Kill him now or kill him later.

A fist in his hair pulled his face out of the sticky puddle that had formed beneath it, before slamming it back down hard onto the tiles. His left eye socket took the brunt of the impact, splitting his brow open before he was yanked ruthlessly back up. His back arched as he was pulled to his knees, wrists cuffed behind him; he was dragged back to sit on his heels. The hand in his hair yanked his head back, forcing Ryan to look up at the man he had planned to kill.

He snarled in response, an instinct, unable to stop himself, the thought of Jeremy still in his mind. He’d be so disappointed. The Creeper had ruined everything.

Ryan spat at him. It was mostly blood and it didn’t reach his face, the gob landing instead on his chest. It only served to make him mad. His right hand staying firm in Ryan’s hair, the meaty left fist wrapped around Ryan’s exposed throat and squeezed.

Ryan gasped and choked, feeling his face go red as he struggled uselessly in the bigger man’s grasp. Suddenly he wasn’t getting any more air and his heart was pounding in his ears. Everything ached and tasted like copper. His vision started to blur.

He was going to die.

His legacy would be as a killer.

If he was fortunate enough to have a funeral, the wreath should feature foxglove, yellow carnations and geraniums. He was a liar, a disappointment and a fool.

No one would mourn him.

“You pathetic fucking freak,” Creeper spat the words in Ryan’s face as he struggled to hold onto a shred of consciousness, fighting the blackness.

“You come into my house and think you can just get away with this shit? Try to fucking frame me? Was that your plan?” He briefly eased up his grip on Ryan’s throat, letting him drag a hot, ragged breath of air to his starved lungs before clenching tight again.

“At least you cleaned up the mess. I’m gonna turn you in and wash my hands of this godforsaken city. The LSPD will have a field day with a serial cop killer. You’ll be lucky if the trial lasts the day; even luckier if you make it to your official execution.”

Spots danced in Ryan’s vision, all his energy to fight leaving him. Creeper gave one final yank on his hair and dropped him. Ryan folded under his own weight and crumpled to his side on the floor, drawing his knees up instinctively as protection, fingers tingling, useless cuffed behind his back.

Creeper pulled out his phone to dial his buddies and report the arrest.

It was over. He’d been caught.

A dark part of Ryan’s brain mocked him, what did you think was going to happen?

He honestly couldn’t answer it.

He didn’t have to.

Something hit the Creep from behind and shattered in a spray of terracotta, dirt and flowers. The man stumbled forward, clutching his head, before reeling sideways as something again hit him from behind. As he fell, he struck his head against a wooden cabinet and lurched, lapsing into loud snoring as soon as he hit the ground.

Jeremy was left standing where Creeper had been moments before, clutching the shattered remains of the flowerpot he’d used to get the drop on the larger man. Dirt and flowers scattered the ground about his feet; small pinkish-red blossoms with waxy dark green leaves; begonias, if Ryan wasn’t mistaken. If he’d had more sense about him, he would’ve laughed.

Begonias meant “beware”.

Jeremy dropped the pot fragment and grabbed the keys for the handcuffs, kneeling next to Ryan to free his hands.

Ryan sat up and rubbed his wrists tentatively.

Jeremy wasted no further time bending down to inspect Ryan’s face, hands cupping it gently, his eyes full of concern as they skimmed over the laceration above Ryan’s eye, the swelling raising up on his cheekbones, tinging shades of red and purple already.

“Holy shit, Ryan, are you ok?”

Ryan rubbed his throat, not that it did any good, he could feel the crushing damage and bruising that would follow. “I’m ok…” he rasped, “How? ...why are you here?”

Jeremy shook his head, “I was investigating a lead in the cop killer story and I heard a struggle. Whitless has been known to get violent, so I got worried. I went to the window to see if maybe someone needed help and I saw you… you were in trouble…” Jeremy’s brow furrowed, and he shook his head again, “what are you doing here, Ryan?”

The snoring stopped suddenly with a snort. In the corner of his vision, Ryan saw Creeper twitch and struggle to pull himself upright.

Instinct took over.

Ryan jumped to his feet and dashed for his knife, snatching it from the ground where it had fallen and launching full-force into Creeper’s chest. In one decisive motion he jammed the tip of the blade up into Creeper’s neck, right at the jawline, before twisting and ripping it free, a spurt of blood spraying over Ryan as he fell back. Creeper gurgled and spasmed before eventually falling still.

Ryan scooted backwards away from the body, falling back to lie flat on the ground, chest heaving from the adrenaline and exertion.

Jeremy was in shock, eyes wide, he could only stammer, “Ryan… are you… have you..?”

Ryan sat up slowly, looking back at the body, before finally turning to look Jeremy in the eye.

“Surprise?” Ryan offered weakly, his voice hoarse, with an equally pathetic display of jazz hands.

Jeremy stared at him, mouth agape.

“It… was meant …to be a present…” he coughed and swallowed, tasting the copper of the blood in his mouth, “I guess things sorta… got out of hand.”

“All of them?” Jeremy looked so confused, “You’re the killer?”

Ryan hated to break it to him like this. He simply nodded.

“Ryan…” Jeremy stepped back, his tone was stony, “you could go to prison for this… you could get the death penalty if they catch you…” his voice caught, “Why?”

“It was an accident at first… but I figured I’d be doing some good, y’know? I have to do something to keep me busy… I did all my research and thought it’d make a good story for you and it started with just the one and it was only ever meant to be the one but it just…” he trailed off, realising he was rambling and his throat felt like sandpaper, “well, you know how these things are…”

“I… I really don’t, Ryan,” Jeremy stressed, at a loss for words.

“I wanted to help. I was only thinking of you. Of us. I didn’t mean for it to go this far.”

Jeremy looked devastated, he opened his mouth to speak but no words came out.

“I mean…” Ryan shrugged helplessly, “it’s also been pretty good for the floristry business.”

Jeremy couldn’t help but laugh at that, his eyes beginning to tear up. “Well, you fucked up. How the hell am I meant to report on this now?”

Ryan paused, pensively, “Investigative journalist and all-around hero, Jeremy Dooley single-handedly apprehends the Vagabond serial killer?”

“Ryan,” Jeremy sniffed, “First of all, you’re the only person who’s ever called him that, and secondly, how’s it gonna look when I bring in my own fiancé? Aside from ‘suspicious as fuck’, I’m not cool with you turning yourself in for my sake. We’ll figure this out. Together.” He took Ryan’s hand in his own and let their fingers lazily entwine, Jeremy squeezing reassuringly, “We’ll get through this, ok? I want to help. Whatever it takes.”

Ryan looked confused, “You’re not scared of me?”

“Ryan, please. We share a bed. You’ve never given me a reason to suspect you’d hurt me. To be completely honest, I’m more afraid of you on chili night.”

This time Ryan laughed. Thankfully his voice was starting to come back.

Jeremy’s face fell again as he pondered the implications. “You’ve killed six people Ryan…”

Ryan cringed, “Well, technically seven… but the number of murders I’ve committed has no bearing on my desire for human companionship and the amount of cuddling I should receive.”

Ryan caught Jeremy staring at him, a bemused look on his face, as if he couldn’t figure Ryan out. That was fair, he supposed.

“What?” He asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“You’re a florist.” Jeremy said simply.

“So?”

“How does a florist become a serial killer? And fucking get away with it, might I ask?”

Ryan smirked, half closing his eyes, “Yeah, I’m a florist, but I’m self-taught. Before I was a florist, I was in IT, before that I was prop-making for theatre, and before that I was doing pool installations and laying concrete. All self-taught. You’d be amazed at what you can learn on the internet.”

“Ryan, what the fuck dude? When were you going to tell me this? Were you going to tell me this?” Jeremy looked hurt and Ryan felt a pang of guilt for putting him in this position.

Ryan looked away, “I don’t know… but I was very careful not to leave any evidence that might tie me to the victims. You’re not in any danger.”

Jeremy shook his head, “remember a few hours ago when I said not to do anything stupid?”

Ryan blushed sheepishly, “I don’t remember that at all…” he lied.

Jeremy chuckled softly, still struggling to come to terms with it.

A beat of silence passed between them.

After a moment, Jeremy shook his head again, “Well, this makes me feel less guilty about secretly researching government corruption…”

“You’re still doing that?!” Ryan snapped.

“You’re a serial killer!”

“Well… Touché.”

“What are you going to do?” Jeremy asked, more seriously now.

Ryan shrugged weakly. “I was going to dispose of the body, wait for the cops to do their actual jobs and find out about the corruption scandal, maybe turn a blind eye like they always do.” Ryan bit his lip, “but now that you’re here… I guess… I don’t know. I always sort of… expected to get caught, maybe? I don’t know.”

Jeremy looked hurt, but resolute, “I’m not turning you in, Ryan. Besides, you’re not the only one with secrets.”

Ryan raised an eyebrow curiously.

“I worked as a crime scene cleaner just after I moved to Los Santos. Plenty of part time work in that industry; ‘bioremediation’ it’s called – so getting rid of all traces of a murder? Well, it wouldn’t be my first time.”

Ryan’s grin grew wide as he looked adoringly up at Jeremy. “You do realise this would make you accessory to murder if anyone ever found out, right?”

“For you Ryan, it’s worth it.”

A somewhat stressful hour later, aside from the body they’d wrapped in tarpaulin and moved to the bathroom, the house was nearly spotless.

“How did you know to follow up Creeper… what was his name?”

“Lee Whitless,” Jeremy informed him, “former LSPD spokesperson and all-round asshole.”

“Apt then.”

Jeremy snorted a laugh, “I went to the funerals. He was at all of them. The only one as far as I could tell, they didn’t have a great overlap of friend circles, apparently.”

Ryan laughed at the absurdity of it, “we sold him the flowers!”

They both laughed at that, a giddy, slightly hysterical, relieved laughter that felt good.

“Wait,” Ryan added, “does this mean I missed seeing you in a black suit? Damn.”

Jeremy waggled his eyebrows at him, “I can show you later if you like…” He blushed, “Ok, that came out far more ominous and way less sexy than I intended it to…”

Ryan laughed again as Jeremy blushed deeper. It hurt his bruised face, but he was beyond caring.

“So, what’s the plan once this is all cleaned up?” Jeremy asked.

Ryan chewed his lip gently, pensive. “Well, we dispose of the body – I know a place –” the shipping container came to mind, “and then we head home, wash off and pretend like none of this ever happened.”

“That’s it?”

Ryan shrugged, “For now… we could always go the path of Leslie and Dannie, flee the city, start a new life somewhere.”

Jeremy looked distressed, “but what if…?”

Ryan cut him off with a gentle kiss that tasted like copper. Jeremy returned it, letting himself forget in the moment.

Ryan pulled away and looked into Jeremy’s eyes. “Right now, we have each other. You said it yourself, we’ll figure this out. Together.”

Jeremy nodded.

“Ryan!” Jeremy exclaimed suddenly, “You know what tomorrow is?”

Ryan was confused, pulled a face for a moment, trying to think. “Oh! Is it… It’s our anniversary!”

Jeremy grinned up at him, eyes sparkling.

“So much for no surprise, huh? You saved my life though, so I guess I owe you something big…”

“Ryan, please; you’re the best present I could’ve asked for.”

Epilogue

A month had passed since the Creeper incident and they had managed to avoid any kind of investigation, for now. Ryan had gone back to work and was planning on expanding the business and Jeremy, Matt and Trevor had done a spectacular job with the write-up of the serial killer cases. Considering the murders had come to such an abrupt end, the leads went cold and the pervading theory was that the killer had met an unfortunate end, likely at the hands of the gangs they’d been disturbing.

Jeremy kicked open the door to the apartment, his arms full of bags of groceries, leaving the door swinging open behind him. He put the bags down on the kitchen counter and started unpacking the items while Ryan put them away, enjoying the breeze the open door let rush through the room.

“Did you get milk?” Ryan asked.

Jeremy looked at the items and the bags, “shit, no, must’ve forgotten…”

“Jeremy, how could you wound me this way?” Ryan cried theatrically.

Jeremy looked him dead in the eye. “Serial killer.”

Ryan looked sheepishly at the floor, “I’ll pick some up next time I’m out.”

It never failed to shut him up, but it had also become something of a running joke.

Jeremy paused, considering his next words carefully. “Do you miss it?”

Ryan froze. Jeremy could see the wheels turning in his head, could see the desire to say “yes”, fighting the socially acceptable answer of “of course not”.

“Funny you should say that,” a voice said from the doorway. They hadn’t noticed the figure that had followed Jeremy up, “Because if your answer is ‘yes’, then I might have an offer for you both.”

They turned around to see a tall man in a suit with tattooed hands tapping on his crossed arms leaning against the doorframe.

“Who are you?” Ryan asked, stepping forward defensively.

“I’m an old friend of Burnie’s.”

Ryan and Jeremy exchanged an interested glance, before looking back to him.

“The name’s Geoff Ramsey, and I’m putting together a crew.”

[longsightmyth]

Myth (re)reads A Court of Thorns and Roses while she counts fragments, em-dashes, and ellipses

• page 0 0.0% "Y'all can we talk about that tagline for a second though. "She stole a life. Now she must pay with her heart."

Really."

• page 6 1.34% "Aside from contradictions, re: gods being forgotten but still prayed to, it still really seems like Feyre thinks it's a wolf. She considers that he might be a faerie, but she kills him because he's going for the deer and she can't risk him eating the deer that she needs. Feyre doesn't fulfill the prophecy at all."

• page 8 1.79% ""His remaining yellow eye now stared at the snow-heavy sky, and for a moment, I wished I had it in me to feel remorse for the dead thing. But this was the forest, and it was winter."

I actually liked this. It's a good example of when fragments can be effective."

• page 64 14.29% ""Fool-I really should have been killed ten times over already." Look, I've read the book so I know the asspull reason why you haven't been, but given that reason you'd think Tamlin would be exerting himself a little more to be likeable even from the beginning."

• page 68 15.18% ""Another useless answer." No, it's really not. She just told you that literally the entire court is dangerous to you. You didn't know that before, as evidenced by the fact you asked which ones were. It's not useless information that they hate you."

• page 74 16.52% "Somehow I'd forgotten in all of this that not only is Tamlin's beast curse just to wear a mask, but that the mask doesn't even cover his entire face. WHO COULD EVER BE ATTRACTED TO A MAN IN A DOMINO MASK WITH A MODEL-SCULPTED BODY?! WHO?!"

• page 75 16.74% "If ash is the only way to kill fae (which we're told it is, but then it isn't later...?) then the warring fae probably WOULD have ash groves around. They'd just guard them super heavily."

• page 82 18.3% "Feyre sometimes seems genuinely confused about why people are angry with her for killing their friend? Like, I am staunchly in the 'she didn't know he was a fae when she killed him' camp and can prove it, but just because she didn't mean to kill their friend doesn't mean she didn't do it."

• page 82 18.3% "And the fact that the book itself can't decide whether she did it on purpose or not is really off putting and makes Feyre's confusion over Andras' friends' anger even more confusing to me."

• page 88  19.64% ""With that arrogance, no wonder Lucien found my presence as a replacement for his friend to be abhorrent." There is so much to unpack in this sentence"

• page 88  19.64% "First, we are back to Feyre apparently being confused that people are upset she killed a friend of theirs. I realize she didn't do it on purpose, but like, really?"

• page 88  19.64% "Second, it isn't arrogant to resent someone who takes your friend's place? And talking about it like you took Andras' job/seat at the table instead of being taken for killing him is weird?"

• page 88  19.64% "Third, that sentence structure. Jesus. If I accept the sentiment here, it really should have been something like 'with that arrogance, no wonder he abhorred me replacing his friend.' Look, I even kept your SAT word in there"

• page 96  21.43% "Can we discuss the writing though? "He was hardly wearing enough clothing for the winter that would await us once we crossed the wall."

Seriously? Look at this:

"He wasn't wearing enough for the winter that waited on the other side of the wall."

Better, no? This whole thing reads like an early draft."

• page 98  21.88% "Can this book just decide whether it wants Feyre to have killed Andras because he was a fairy or not because it really can't pick and it's driving me NUTS."

• page 100  22.32% "If this theme was continued (or, like, ever mentioned again) I'd like the line about the consequences of firing a single arrow"

• page 106  23.66% ""You can't write, yet you learned hot to hunt, to survive. How?"

I'm sorry is Tamlin/this book under the impression that reading/writing is necessary for hunting and surviving?"

• page 108  24.11% "STOP MAKING EVERY DAY FIGHTING KNIVES/DAGGERS SUPER FANCY 2K18"

• page 127  28.35% "The description of the Suriel is actually good and manages to be creepy. It's a good start, but given that we never then see (or even hear of) the Suriel DOING ANYTHING, I remain unconvinced of its scariness."

• page 134  29.91% "I still don't object to this sequence aside from the weirdness of the show Naga thing. Feyre isn't supposed to be the best fighter in all the land, she's a young hunter. It makes sense that she can't win a fight against fae, given what we know about fae."

• page 134  29.91% "I just question later events in regards to fighting/not fighting, Feyre's Gargantuan Power Up, and the peril (or lack thereof) when she's in fights."

• page 137  30.58% "NOW is when you decide to follow advice? Now, when looking around could give you some agency and answers? This is bullshit."

• page 139  31.03% "Let us assume for the sake of argument that fae DO follow current-day mortal marriage customs, no matter how silly that seems to me."

• page 139  31.03% "Let us FURTHER assume that being married is the only way to have a family, since that's what Feyre seems to think. There are still all sorts of ways for Alis to have been married even if she isn't wearing a wedding ring. She could choose not to wear the ring at work. She could be widowed."

• page 139  31.03% "But FIRST let us address the fact that apparently the only way to have a family is to be married. It's incredibly hypocritical of Feyre, first of all, to talk about her family and then be surprised that someone has a family because they aren't married."

• page 139  31.03% "Alis could have siblings like Feyre. She has parents SOMEWHERE. She could have non-biological children. She could have biological children! MARRIAGE IS NOT A PREREQUISITE FOR CHILDREN OR EVEN BEING IN A LOVING ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP."

• page 150  33.48% "Strange as it is to say, I actually DO like this part. It's one of the few moments where our characters show compassion and uncomplicated kindness. That's always nice to see, especially when our main character has been told multiple times that she's too good a person to be wherever she is."

• page 154  34.38% "You had to go and ruin it, book. How many times do I have to point out that Feyre didn't shoot Andras 'with hate in her heart'? She shot him because he looked like a wolf and she was hungry enough to try wolf meat. Just because she considered the possibility of him being fae doesn't mean she meant to shoot a fae."

• page 154  34.38% "I'd also like to point out that the narration here makes it seem like she's only sorry for killing somebody because it hurt the hot guy's feelings."

• page 157  35.04% "Is this the meadow scene from Twilight because the world doesn't need more of those"

• page 160  35.71% "How long have you been seventeen, Tamlin?"

• page 162  36.16% "Ew ew ew ew"

• page 163  36.38% ""Tamlin's glorious body was honed by centuries of fighting and brutality"

...sexy? I guess? Realtalk, what's the appeal of the brutality here?"

• page 163  36.38% ""I don't think born peasants have your kind of diction." Some part of me wanted to come up with a comment about snobbery, but... well, he was right, and I couldn't blame him for being a skilled observer."

• page 163  36.38% "First of all, I thought Nesta was supposed to be the snob. Second, those born peasants can write, Feyre, so I'd back off if I were you. (Seriously, earlier she says she didn't learn to write because Nesta and Elain were too snobby to let her go to the village school)"

• page 164  36.61% "How is 'prince of merchants' an inherited title?"

• page 165  36.83% ""I smiled and told him about those years in the woods" We never hear about it, though. God forbid."

[cannibalguy]

Why am I the cannibal guy?

What, or whom, would you be willing to eat, if you were starving?

 We face daily a marketing chorus telling us to consume ever more voraciously, while at the same time being warned that resources are being depleted, temperatures are rising and limits to growth are being reached. People hunger for the abundance they see paraded around them and are enraged as their own life gets more difficult.

 Those we are willing to eat must first be objectified, turned into impersonal “things”, divorced from the cute animal who was slaughtered at our behest. But aren’t humans supposed to be different? This blog looks at the ways humans are similarly objectified by cannibals (real and fictional).

 The growing public fascination with cannibalism reminds us that we, too, can be prey and then meat, and offers a stark choice: are we also more than “just” meat? Or will we let that anger, that frustrated entitlement, and that knowledge of our indisputable fleshiness, bring us ever closer to crossing that thin red line between carnivore and cannibal?

 This blog started, as texts about food should do, at a dinner table. A friend of mine was a commercial sales rep for a big technology company and had to fly around all parts of Asia, and was required to socialise and dine with prospective clients. Cultural variations in cuisines had made his eating habits extremely eclectic, and he boasted that night, to a table including a number of vegans, that there was no kind of animal he had not eaten, or would not eat. I pondered this: in our restricted circles, horse meat, kangaroos and even rabbits would be looked on askance; monkeys, snakes, dogs and cats would be right out. Yet there was one animal that, it turned out, he had not eaten, despite his bravado, a species of hominid (great ape) named Homo sapiens.

 The subject of food choices is endlessly intriguing: people who will run screaming when faced with a cockroach will happily tuck into a plate of prawns, which are the underwater versions of the same type of animal. Pescatarians, those who eat no meat but happily eat fish, will often refuse to touch shark flesh. In our own class, Mammalia, we will chow down on a seemingly random selection of species: we eat cows but not horses, sheep but not cats, pigs but not dogs. Yet in cultures all over the world, we will find seemingly arbitrary exceptions: in the Middle East pigs are out, cows are sacred in most of India, and horses are a delicacy in some countries and a scandal when found in pies in others. I have another friend who will happily eat most kinds of mammals but will not go near rabbit flesh.

 When asked about how these choices are made, the common response is a shrug of the shoulders and a reference to what we were taught to eat as children. But of course nothing is ever that simple: many children love non-human animals and are shocked when they discover the connection with the contents of their dinner plates. A period of socialisation, of seeing some animals as loveable and others as food, is necessary before they can again face the family over a Sunday roast. Much later we discover, or are brutally informed, of the horrors of industrial agriculture: the confinement, torment and industrial slaughter of billions of gentle domesticated animals each year for food, for profit. We then have a new learning phase of dissociation: putting on the blinkers, erasing the sounds and sights of the slaughterhouses. Erasing what we know, just as we do when the ads come on for starving children or refugees.

 “Others” – be they non-human animals, refugees or terrorists, have to be objectified, a process which is a necessary prerequisite for any form of abuse. A prerequisite of objectification, in turn, is supremacism, the view that a certain group are superior to others and should therefore be entitled to dominate, exploit and sometimes even eat those others. As humans, we believe we are superior to other animals, (or just “animals” as we call them), pretending that we are not in fact animals ourselves. Within our species, we find all sorts of ways to objectify other human groups such as racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, etc.

 This blog will look at ways the animal known as “human”, one that is usually not considered prey, is dissociated, objectified, turned into meat, both in fiction and in fact. Some writers have tried to place the act of cannibalism into a historical footnote, but, as I will cover in future blogs, it still happens, and happens often. If society deteriorates, be it through political division, climate change, natural disasters, war or a perfect storm of outside events, could we revert to the cannibalism of which we so readily accuse our forebears? Will our voracious appetite for meat (we kill some 70 billion land animals annually for food) make it that much easier to harvest the flesh of our fellow humans?

 The Cannibalguy blog will be updated weekly and will start by reviewing movies and books and television shows that involve cannibalism. Some weeks, I will concentrate instead, or as well, on news items regarding actual or at least alleged acts of cannibalism reported in the press.

 The name of the blog, “Cannibal guy”, is used ironically – I am not advocating cannibalism! Please don’t tell the magistrate that it was my idea – I am appalled at the way we callously kill chickens and lambs and pigs and cows, so certainly don’t want to add another victim species to the list. But what we do to other animals – be it eating them, wearing them, experimenting on them, or making them perform for our amusement – requires us to see ourselves as different, higher, closer to angels than to our fellow denizens of earth. I hope that a glimpse into the world of those who see us as “just meat” might in some way alter those perceptions, and help us toward a kinder, more considerate world for humans and other animals.

[encephalonfatigue]

capital and the plantationocene: faith or defeat

a review of Anna Tsing’s “The Mushroom at the End of the World”

Since my late undergraduate years, Donna Haraway has been a continuous figure of fascination for me. I always found her to be a very fashionable writer, maybe because I had a very unfashionable taste for 90’s postmodernism during my politically formative years. Around the time I started toying around with vegetable gardening in my backyard I began getting fairly interested in Haraway’s work on companion species and how species are mutually constituted by each other. Species (including humans) of course do not exist in a vacuum, but exist in relation to other species, and have been formed by the history of these other species with whom they have been interacting over vast periods of time, genetically and behaviourally adapting to what Haraway calls ‘kin’ — family. (Also Haraway references in Orphan Black only added fuel to this smouldering interest.)

More recently, Haraway’s Marxism has been more often foregrounded in discussions. I suppose this is simply a result of the political mood that has been surfacing over the past few years. But I listened to a podcast interview Haraway did with Jacobin on why using the term ‘anthropocene’ was inadequate for trying to understand the nature of the anthropogenic climate catastrophe currently underway. Many leftists use the (rather clumsy) term ‘capitalocene’ to signal that it is the specific political economy of capitalism and specifically the actions of the capitalist class — the wealthy few — that are driving this climate catastrophe. Haraway mentions she finds that term useful but more often refers to a term that her colleague Anna Tsing uses which is ‘plantationocene’, which signals the type of socio-ecological and political-economic organization that came to exist under colonialism that became the basis of capitalist production today — and how that was the driving force behind the ongoing climate catastrophe. This is how I first encountered Anna Tsing.

It is interesting how certain liberal science writers like Elizabeth Kolbert in The Sixth Extinction go out of their way to try and frame ecological destruction as an intrinsically human thing. Almost as if it is inevitable that humans as a species would cause mass extinctions either way — with or without capitalism. Ironically, this is a rather fascist idea behind a lot of eco-fascist calls for genocide. Haraway sometimes gets accused of this because she emphasizes population control as an important ecological tactic (with slogans like “Make kin, not babies”), even though she has been extremely critical of these sorts of fascist impulses in movements like deep ecology. Haraway’s emphasis on population control is inverted from the typical liberal one that carries deep anxieties over ballooning third world populations. Haraway claims that having a child in the highly consumptive environment of a Western ‘middle-class’ life is far more worrying than having a child as a third world family. I ultimately don’t really agree with Haraway’s emphasis on population as a primary mechanism of dealing with this climate catastrophe, but certainly I think it’s worth admitting that our planet can only sustain a certain number of human beings.

I want to point out though how radically different indigenous anthropologies are from the sort of picture Kolbert paints in The Sixth Extinction. For example, Leanne Simpson talks about how human abandonment is not the solution to environmental destruction but human care and responsibility:

“So when I think of the land as my mother or if I think of it as a familial relationship, I don’t hate my mother because she’s sick, or because she’s been abused. I don’t stop visiting her because she’s been in an abusive relationship and she has scars and bruises. If anything, you need to intensify that relationship because it’s a relationship of nurturing and caring.”

The botanist Robin Wall-Kimmerer also talks about finding this common notion among her ecology students that humans are not beneficial to ecosystems:

“One otherwise unremarkable morning I gave the students in my General Ecology class a survey. Among other things, they were asked to rate their understanding of the negative interactions between humans and the environment. Nearly every one of the two hundred students said confidently that humans and nature are a bad mix. These were third-year students who had selected a career in environmental protection, so the response was, in a way, not very surprising. They were well schooled in the mechanics of climate change, toxins in the land and water, and the crisis of habitat loss. Later in the survey, they were asked to rate their knowledge of positive interactions between people and land. The median response was “none.”

I was stunned. How is it possible that in twenty years of education they cannot think of any beneficial relationships between people and the environment? …When we talked about this after class, I realized that they could not even imagine what beneficial relations between their species and others might look like. How can we begin to move toward ecological and cultural sustainability if we cannot even imagine what the path feels like? If we can’t imagine the generosity of geese? These students were not raised on the story of Skywoman.”

I think what people like Haraway and Tsing offer is a framing beyond nature as something radically distinct from humans, as if humans are not part of nature or ecosystems. Their critique of rendering nature as something static or pure is also at the same time a critique of anthropocentrism. To recognize humans as a species formed in parallel together with all other species on this planet, and that we as a species affect other species just as other species affect us, and affect each other also. What we cannot lose sight of is the hegemonic influence the humans species (more specifically an elite subset of the human species) has had on all other species on this planet. We cannot divorce anthropocentrism and certain destructive humanisms from a proper class analysis.

Tsing actually works through a number of Marxist concepts throughout the book. She explores labour (wage labour and precarious gig labour), capital, privatization, alienation, and commodification. I think many on the left are quite impatient of postmodern sermonizing (maybe rightly so), yet Tsing is working in the tradition of Marx and has many worthwhile things to say. Some of Marx’s earliest articles as a journalist and editor of the German paper Rheinische Zitung was on the wooded commons. He wrote a series of articles on the ‘theft’ of firewood from German forests in the autumn of 1842, which many consider formative to his further politicization.

One of Tsing’s observations I found most useful was her exploration of capitalist co-optation which she terms the ‘salvage economy’ writing:

“In this “salvage” capitalism, supply chains organize the translation process in which wildly diverse forms of work and nature are made commensurate—for capital.”

Tsing elaborates:

“In capitalist farms, living things made within ecological processes are coopted for the concentration of wealth. This is what I call “salvage,” that is, taking advantage of value produced without capitalist control. Many capitalist raw materials (consider coal and oil) came into existence long before capitalism. Capitalists also cannot produce human life, the prerequisite of labor. “Salvage accumulation” is the process through which lead firms amass capital without controlling the conditions under which commodities are produced. ”

Tsing then turns to two very interesting literary examples of capitalist co-optation of indigenous knowledge by colonizers to generate capitalist wealth:

“Consider the nineteenth-century ivory supply chain connecting central Africa and Europe as told in Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness. The story turns around the narrator’s discovery that the European trader he much admired has turned to savagery to procure his ivory. The savagery is a surprise because everyone expects the European presence in Africa to be a force for civilization and progress. Instead, civilization and progress turn out to be cover-ups and translation mechanisms for getting access to value procured through violence: classic salvage.

For a brighter view of supply-chain translation, consider Herman Melville’s account of the nineteenth-century procurement of whale oil for Yankee investors. Moby-Dick tells of a ship of whalers whose rowdy cosmopolitanism contrasts sharply with our stereotypes of factory discipline; yet the oil they obtain from killing whales around the world enters a U.S.-based capitalist supply chain. Strangely, all the harpooners on the Pequod are unassimilated indigenous people from Asia, Africa, America, and the Pacific. The ship is unable to kill a single whale without the expertise of people who are completely untrained in U.S. industrial discipline. But the products of this work must eventually be translated into capitalist value forms; the ship sails only because of capitalist financing. The conversion of indigenous knowledge into capitalist returns is salvage accumulation. So too is the conversion of whale life into investments.”

I cannot help but recall Caliban in Shakespeare’s Tempest crying out:

“...I loved thee

And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle,

The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:

Cursed be I that did so! All the charms

Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!

For I am all the subjects that you have,

Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me

In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest o' the island.”

After the extraction of indigenous knowledge for capitalist gain comes the inevitable violent process of enclosure and privatization that dispossesses the colonized from their land.

Tsing is a Southeast Asianist and I think her writings on Southeast Asia are some of the strongest aspects of the book. The influence of Japanese capital for example in Indonesia was fascinating, and how the reinvigoration of Japanese capital after WW2 was largely a function of anti-communist foreign policy.

“American occupiers arranged for the rehabilitation of once-disgraced nationalists and rebuilt the Japanese economy as a bulwark against communism. It was in this climate that associations of banks, industrial enterprises, and specialists in trade formed again, although less formally, as keiretsu “enterprise groups.” At the heart of most enterprise groups was a general trading company in partnership with a bank. The bank transferred money to the trading company, which, in turn, made smaller loans to its associated enterprises… Trading companies advanced loans—or equipment, technical advice, or special marketing agreements—to their supply chain partners overseas. The trading company’s job was to translate goods procured in varied cultural and economic arrangements into inventory. It is hard not to see in this arrangement the roots of the current hegemony of global supply chains, with their associated form of salvage accumulation.”

Tsing also tells the story of Nike which started as a U.S. outpost distributing Japanese sneakers, and eventually moved to this model of heavily subcontracting every stage of production to the extent that one of its Vice Presidents remarked:  “We don’t know the first thing about manufacturing. We are marketers and designers,”

It is then interesting to see Tsing write about her first encounter with commodity chains as a Southeast Asianist was to observe how Japanese capital functioned in Indonesia by way of subcontracting not unlike the way Nike did:

“I first learned about supply chains in studying logging in Indonesia, and this is a place to see how the Japanese supply-chain model works. During Japan’s building boom in the 1970s and 1980s, Japanese imported Indonesian trees to make plywood construction molds. But no Japanese cut down Indonesian trees. Japanese general trading companies offered loans, technical assistance, and trade agreements to firms from other countries, which cut logs to Japanese specifications. This arrangement had many advantages for Japanese traders. First, it avoided political risk. Japanese businessmen were aware of the political difficulties of Chinese Indonesians who, resented for their wealth and willingness to cooperate with the more ruthless policies of the Indonesian government, were targets in periodic riots. Japanese businessmen evaded such difficulties for themselves by advancing money to Chinese Indonesians, who made the deals with Indonesian generals and took the risks. Second, the arrangement facilitated transnational mobility. Japanese traders had already deforested the Philippines and much of Malaysian Borneo by the time they got to Indonesia. Rather than adapting to a new country, the traders could merely bring in agents willing to work with them in each location. Indeed, Filipino and Malaysian loggers, financed by Japanese traders, were ready and able to go to work in cutting down Indonesian trees.

Third, supply-chain arrangements facilitated Japanese trade standards while ignoring environmental consequences. Environmentalists looking for targets could find only a grab bag of varied companies, many Indonesian; no Japanese were in the forests. Fourth, supply-chain arrangements accommodated illegal logging as a layer of subcontracting, which harvested trees protected by environmental regulations. Illegal loggers sold their logs to the larger contractors, who passed them on to Japan. No one need be responsible. And—even after Indonesia started its own plywood businesses, in a supply-chain hierarchy modeled on Japanese trade—the wood was so cheap! The cost could be calculated without regard to the lives and livelihoods of loggers, trees, or forest residents. Japanese trading companies made the logging of Southeast Asia possible. They were equally busy with other commodities and in other parts of the world.”

This habit of disarticulating production is the common experience of capitalist alienation. Ching Kwan Lee, who has done some remarkably important studies on Chinese investment in Africa made some very interesting remarks on subcontracting:

“The worldwide trend has been to use subcontractors who in turn offer minimal training to short-term contract workers. The use of casual and contract workers was equally prevalent in construction.”

She observed many mining companies backed by global private capital (e.g. traded on the London stock exchange) were far more likely than Chinese state-owned mining companies to engage in widespread subcontracting in their mining projects:

“CM was particularly notorious and ruthless in using competition among subcontractors to drive down costs, to the extent that there was an internal discourse among its own managers about the “tyranny of finance.””

Lee argues in one of her lectures on her book “The Specter of Global China” that subcontracting and the casualization of labour often significantly reduces the chance that workers will engage in strikes together, and consequently their bargaining power. She says:

“The more subcontracts you have, they fight more over things like equipment — it’s harder to manage. But on the books, you’re cutting costs by subcontracting… Why do I mention this as a very important feature? Because it has extremely important consequences for labour power — the capacity for labour to force the hand of management. Because if you only have one subcontractor, your workers are unified, because they just have one employer. But if you have many many subcontractors, your workforce is totally divided, and that’s why more strikes happen in the Chinese state mine, and they have to make more concessions to their workers because they care so much about.. smooth production.”

Lee’s point is that Chinese mining is less concerned about maximizing profits by selling minerals on a global market, than actually directly using those minerals for state infrastructure projects. This is the classical distinction between ‘use value’ and ‘exchange value’ (mentioned in both Adam Smith and Marx). But Lee emphasizes that this is only in the case of mining. Subcontracting is still very common in Chinese construction and the bargaining power of labour power in Chinese construction in Africa is sometimes even worse than construction undertaken by global private capital. So it cuts both ways.

I work at a small firm engaged in distributing and ‘integrating’ power engineering products and am intimately confronted by the bizarre world of a subcontracting and sub-subcontracting that happens in almost every dimension of the field. It’s remarkable how many middle people are involved in small value-adding steps and plastering their ‘brand names’ on goods simply manufactured in third world countries where labour is much cheaper.

Anyway, with these issues of mining and landscapes ravaged by capitalism, I think Tsing raises an obvious but important point that humans are not the only species that radically transform landscapes. She writes:

“Making worlds is not limited to humans. We know that beavers reshape streams as they make dams, canals, and lodges; in fact, all organisms make ecological living places, altering earth, air, and water. Without the ability to make workable living arrangements, species would die out. In the process, each organism changes everyone’s world. Bacteria made our oxygen atmosphere, and plants help maintain it. Plants live on land because fungi made soil by digesting rocks. As these examples suggest, world-making projects can overlap, allowing room for more than one species. Humans, too, have always been involved in multispecies world making. Fire was a tool for early humans not just to cook but also to burn the landscape, encouraging edible bulbs and grasses that attracted animals for hunting. Humans shape multispecies worlds when our living arrangements make room for other species. This is not just a matter of crops, livestock, and pets. Pines, with their associated fungal partners, often flourish in landscapes burned by humans; pines and fungi work together to take advantage of bright open spaces and exposed mineral soils. Humans, pines, and fungi make living arrangements simultaneously for themselves and for others: multispecies worlds.”

Tsing also mentions how

“Pines have made alliances with animals as well as fungi. Some pines are completely dependent on birds to spread their seeds—just as some birds are completely dependent on pine seeds for their food.”

Yet this interdependency is not isolated from ‘destructive’ human practices. Tsing points out that human deforestation also benefits pine trees in certain circumstances:

“Humans spread pines in two different ways: by planting them, and by creating the kinds of disturbances in which they take hold. The latter generally occurs without any conscious intent; pines like some of the kinds of messes humans make without trying. Pines colonize abandoned fields and eroded hillsides. When humans cut down the other trees, pines move in. Sometimes planting and disturbance go together. People plant pines to remediate the disturbances they have created. Alternatively, they may keep things radically disturbed to advantage pine. This last alternative has been the strategy of industrial growers, whether they plant or merely manage self-seeded pine: clear-cutting and soil breaking are justified as strategies to promote pine.”

I have mixed feelings about the emphasizing of this framing by postmodernists like Tsing and Haraway. On the one hand there is something dialectical to this sort of analysis. Yet also this reiteration of slippage and blurring of boundaries can obscure the real dominant power dynamics at play, and the clarity of the task before us. 

Catherine Liu did a really interesting interview with Jacobin criticizing postmodernism from a Marxist perspective. She mentions that most textbooks locate the pivotal turn to postmodernism as the destruction of Pruitt-Igoe (a social housing project in St Louis that ‘devolved’ into a hotbed of ‘gang violence’). This narrative framing was also the case of for me in a first year international development course, where this landmark moment in architectural history had resounding consequences in art more generally and philosophical and political currents. Liu claims that the postmodernist disdain for large-scale ‘alienating’ and ‘dehumanizing’ mass-produced social-housing projects and efficiently designed rooms like the Frankfurt Kitchen designed by the communist architect Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky dovetailed well with reactionary initiatives to dismantle social housing, which were largely used by poor working-class people of colour. Liu sees this as a defeatist impulse in postmodernist ideology. That grand projects to provide housing for all and not leaving poor racialized communities behind is seen as an impossibly utopic vision bound for failure. The failure of Pruitt-Igoe housing projects is not properly located within the active efforts of the rich white business class to stop public funding of social housing and providing adequate maintenance for it, but as the fault of modernism’s large ambitions and excessively managed ‘imposition’ of egalitarian ideas on normal people that cannot relate to these idealistic elites, and are too violent and ‘uneducated’ to take care of and maintain these unworkable projects of modernist monstrosity.

Each of these critiques Liu puts forward, I can see within the texture of Tsing’s book here. When I first picked up this book, roaming about a big box store book retailer (one I recently learned from a member of the United Jewish People’s Order is often subject to BDS boycotts because of its funding of the HESEG Foundation), I encountered Tsing’s mention of the anarchist pamphlet Desert, which basically asserts that stopping a climate catastrophe is impossible as is any effort to put an end to the global capitalist order, and that radicals should simply focus on how to better live in radical communities of mutual aid under the ruins of capitalist power. 

In many ways Tsing’s book is about how life has thrived despite the circumstances of capitalist destruction, and found ways to survive outside the orbit of typical capitalist modes of production. I tend to agree with Liu more that such defeatism is dangerous. Yet it should not be ignored wholesale. Questions of how to survive under capitalism are important. But being a person of faith, I do believe another world is possible and worth fighting for. Tsing talks about how ‘scalable’ operations of colonial plantations (e.g. those involved in the production of sugar cane) became templates of capitalist production today, yet also recognizes that scalability is not intrinsically good or bad, it just has certain consequences that one must properly consider. 

I think I’ve have spent many years believing in a vision that E.F. Schumacher put forward in Small is Beautiful, along with these critiques of technology and industry put forward by Ivan Illich (a Catholic anarchist of sorts) embraced by certain Latin American leftists. The Marxist historian of Southeast Asia, Michael Vickery in his 1999 introduction to his seminal text on Cambodia, fascinatingly mentioned a connection one of his acquaintances made between the ideology of the ‘Pol Pot regime’ and Ivan Illich, though Vickery thought Illich did not intend to be taken so literally or seriously. But this utopic agrarian idea of collectivization without the imposition of Western technology on peasants (as modernization is often framed as) is something that Vickery sees as part of the tragic ideology infused within Cambodian revolutionary society, even if they likely did not read Illich at all, but shared certain ideological impulses with him.

As migrants and refugees from Laos and Cambodia, as well as some Hmong immigrants constitute many of the matsutake pickers that Tsing spends time with and interviews, I found Vickery’s insights on Cambodian revolutionary ideology (which he does not really characterize as communist or Marxist) rather relevant to these issues of scale, modernization and progress that Tsing so strongly criticizes. I too had a certain disdain for notions of ‘progress’, but am coming to think I have been mistaken about them. The eschewing of ‘progress’ in many ways is defeatist as Liu suggests.

I think these are all very complex issues. What Tsing’s book did provide and one of my favourite parts of it involved these fascinating elaborations on pine and oak trees that for some reason provide a sense of hope. Some sense that out of destruction, life can still persist. In that sense it is not sheer defeatism. Tsing puts forward fascinating facts like “felled oaks (unlike pines) tend not to die; they sprout back from roots and stumps to form new trees.” The Asian history Tsing tells about pine forests is also fascinating:

“Long before they came to central Japan, Dr. Ogawa related, Koreans had cut down their forests to build temples and fuel iron forging. They had developed in their homeland the human-disturbed open pine forests in which matsutake grow long before such forests emerged in Japan. When Koreans expanded to Japan in the eighth century, they cut down forests. Pine forests sprung up from such deforestation, and with them matsutake.”

I think about the enormous white pine forests that covered the landscape of Mississauga once, and were wiped out in what Anishinaabeg ethnobotanist and Dalhousie professor Jonathan Ferrier referred to as a “genocide by sawmills”. Yet I recall Leanne Simpson speaking of Mother Earth recovering, and I think about the resilience of pine to thrive in the wake of human or more specifically capitalist destruction. Despite all the ruins of capitalism, beautiful things can still persist. That does not mean we should be resigned to the terms of capital. We must fight with everything inside us, and draw strength from the pockets of resilience that survive the destruction such an economy has sown. We need not feel embarrassed about the lines we draw in the sand, while still recognizing that ultimately we do things out of solidarity and love. We love our oppressors by speaking truth to them about their oppressive ways and moving them towards helping in the abolition of such relations of domination. Ecosystems are inevitably full of suffering and pain, certain species gaining from the downfall of another. Yet they are also full of examples of immense interdependence, mutuality, and cooperation. As Arundhati Roy has said:

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.“

The question is how she will look like when she arrives.

[dathen]

This is the most common fandom interpretation: that Sasha is superior to Jon, more qualified, and more connected, and that Jonah selected Jon instead of her because he was afraid of her and knew his plans wouldn’t work without her.  It’s what you’ll come across more in fanworks, so I don’t blame you for coming to those conclusions.

However, it is 100% contradicted by canon.

Jonah flat-out says the reason he chose Jon in TMA 160; we don’t even need to guess:

I’ll admit, my options were somewhat limited, but my god, when you came to me already marked by the Web, I knew it had to be you. I even held out some small hope you had been sent by the Spider as some sort of implicit blessing on the whole project, and, do you know what, I think it was.

Jonah was looking for a trauma punch card, and Jon came pre-marked with the most difficult one to get.  It’s really just as simple as that.  Sasha didn’t have any marks that we’re aware of pre-season 1, though given that she had collected THREE before she died, it’s not a stretch to say she would have collected more just as fast as Jon did--or, given that she’s even more reckless than him (see: her running into the worms to tackle Tim in TMA 39), even faster.

But I also want to address this idea that Sasha was superior to Jon in every way, and the tragedy of the story would have been avoided if she had been chosen as the trauma punch card instead.  People take Gertrude’s attempt at predicting Sasha as who Jonah will choose next as some sort of “picking her successor” or endorsement.  She didn’t have any say!  She was expecting Jonah to kill her, and was trying to guess his next move for who he would pick next.  So instead of guessing who the trauma punch card would be, she guessed based off of who already had experience with knowing the fears were real: someone with experience in Artefact Storage.  Gertrude and Sasha barely met, so all the deep insight and mentor/protégé interpretations that are popular don’t really fall into this.  Gertrude was also barely aware of who Jon was.  

So, there really isn’t a “Why didn’t Jonah pick Sasha?” because Sasha wasn’t even on Jonah’s radar for consideration, and there isn’t a “why didn’t Gertrude guess Jon?” because Jon wasn’t even on Gertrude’s radar for predicting Jonah’s next move.  The whole Sasha vs. Jon thing is 100% fandom-made.

(It’s also 100% not due to sexism; that was supposed to be dramatic irony for our sakes, when we already knew Jonah’s reason since the end of season 4.  Tim was just being Overly Aggressive Ally, but more than a bit misguided, given that Sasha was almost as unqualified as Jon was--none of the assistants had degrees in Library Science, Sasha included.)

For your speculation on how close she was to everyone, I would disagree there as well.  In the Q&A’s, they talked about how all of the Archives employees are isolated and don’t have close connections with others--it’s one of Jonah’s prerequisites to transferring people there.  Dozens of Season 1 Archives Found Family Sleepover Parties has kind of replaced this in fandom memory, but we don’t have any evidence that Sasha would have been impossible to isolate:

She knew Martin was lying on his CV, but not from him.  She hacked into his files for the fun of it and then gossiped about it to Tim.  If they had a very close and trusting relationship, I wouldn’t see why she’d resort to subterfuge, and I think she’d know how desperate he was to keep it secret.

We don’t see them interact in season 1, and Sasha seems to have a low opinion of Martin’s competence: she thought both Martin and Jon were overreacting to the danger of Prentiss AFTER Martin started living in the Archives.  She thought it was silly that Jon was taking Martin so seriously, because if Prentiss was really a threat, there’s no way someone like Martin could have survived her, right?  Frankly, even though she’s less snappish with Martin than Jon was, it’s very fair to say she had a lower opinion of him than even s1 Jon did.

She was friends with Tim, but I think even that gets exaggerated in fandom.  She loves to gather people’s secrets, but shares none of her own: for instance, Tim told her about Danny, but when Sasha started having encounters with Michael, she kept it all secret from Tim.  She said she didn’t want to tell Jon without more evidence, but what was keeping her from giving Tim a call before she ran off to meet a monster by herself in a graveyard?  I feel that if she were Archivist, this would have been even more intensified: she would care about him, sure, but that’s nothing new: Jon cared deeply about Sasha and was devastated by her death, but that didn’t prevent him from being isolated.  

And I don’t need to put too much here for why she’s just as bad as Jon, if not worse, for needing to solve mysteries and rush into danger for information.  Just listen to her statement.  Jon spent all of season 1 hiding from the truth, while Sasha met with a creature she knew wasn’t human multiple times, by herself, without telling any of the others, all out of curiosity.  Jon started invading people’s privacy in season 2 because he was being driven to paranoia by the presence of the Not!Them, but Sasha was already invading all her coworker’s privacy in season 1...just for fun.  She was VERY suited to the Beholding, arguably more than Jon was, and would have been very easy to manipulate throwing herself into mysteries to get more marks.  

Frankly, because she only appears in 5 episodes, fandom Sasha ends up being about 99% OC and a bit of a wish fulfillment character; most examples people give for why she’d be better at Jon at everything, find out all of Jonah’s secrets, avoid losing any assistants, and save the world is just....based off of headcanons, vs. the scraps of information we get from the actual episodes.

The reason why I dig so deeply into all of this and care so much about this interpretation is it changes the entire nature of the show if oversimplified.  If Sasha really is this ultra-superior being who would have fixed everything with her mere presence, the tragedy gets whittled down to a pretty uncomplicated “everything would have been fine if this Hypercompetent Woman was in place instead of this loser man.”  But that’s not the story being told.  The tragedy we have is that whoever was doomed with the Archivist position would have been lied to, manipulated, tormented, afraid, isolated, hurt and hurt and hurt again.  If Sasha had been chosen, she would have been the one suffering through all that instead of Jon, and that’s the narrow miss that we’re left to realize from Gertrude’s tape.

Y’know, I’ve been thinking about why Jon got the archivist position as opposed to Sasha. And I know that the common idea is more of less that Elias is a sexist bastard — which I don’t disagree with — but I think that it’s more complicated than that. I think, from his point of view Jon fit the bill better. Not because he’s more competent than Sasha, but because he’s not.

See, at the end of the day, I think that Elias was afraid of Sasha. He had just got done with dealing with Gertrude, and whatever else she might have been, Gertrude was not incompetent. And Sasha was aware enough to question why the archives were a mess; had worked in archive storage enough to know that these things were real. She would have found Elias out, and she would have tried to stop him — maybe she even would have succeeded. At the very least she could have put a loop in his plans.

And there is another asset Sasha had: her coworkers liked her. Tim was really close to her, Martin trusted her, and even Jon grudgingly likes her. She would have been incredibly difficult to isolate from the others.

Jon, on the other had, was less competent than Sasha, but he still had the burning curiosity that wouldn’t let him drop a mystery. (Let’s face it, Jon is like a dog with a bone when he’s faced with a mystery, even when the mystery bites him.) In addition to that, Jon has a nice safety blanket that is denial. A few statements might be true, most of them aren’t. And that keeps him from investgating the institute from the beginning. But he believes just enough to try and stay alive.

And Jon is isolated. He’s not really close to any of the assistants, and he’s off putting enough for them to avoid reaching out to him. Martin is the only one that might of tried, but he doesn’t have the confidence in s1, and Sasha and Tim are mad at Jon for getting a position that they rightly think should have belonged to Sasha.

So Jon gets the Archivist position — ironically because Sasha is the one better suited to it.