#Jai Matt

[crumb]

Happy Update Day Wednesday

[skarmoree]

a veritable flock of Robins

clap and cheer for me pls this took 75 hours

see explanations for the designs here

[stariiiize]

imagine coming home, completely exhausted, barely holding yourself together. you open the door with shaky hands and stumble inside. you drop your bag by the door and just continue walking, not even bothering to take off your shoes or turn on the lights.

as soon as you see your partner sitting on the couch, watching a tv show while they wait for you, you immediately throw yourself into their arms, finally letting it all out. you cry, you sob. you’re just so so exhausted. so frustrated. so angry. so sad.

your partner doesn’t say anything. they just wrap their arms around you and let you cry it all out. you continue crying for you don’t even know how long and they continue holding you.

they gently run their fingers through your hair, whispering sweet nothings into your ears and rubbing your back. their shirt gets soaked by your tears but they don’t seem to care, you being the only important thing at the moment.

after a while, after you’ve stopped crying, you whisper to them:

“please don’t turn on the lights.”

and they don’t. they continue holding you. the only light in the room is coming from the television which they then turn off.

no words are spoken after that. the two of you just stay like that, them holding you while you close your eyes and just let yourself relax - for the first time in a while.

[yoinkschief]

I hope these guys explode

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How finfluencers destroyed the housing and lives of thousands of people

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

The crash of 2008 imparted many lessons to those of us who were only dimly aware of finance, especially the problems of complexity as a way of disguising fraud and recklessness. That was really the first lesson of 2008: "financial engineering" is mostly a way of obscuring crime behind a screen of technical jargon.

This is a vital principle to keep in mind, because obscenely well-resourced "financial engineers" are on a tireless, perennial search for opportunities to disguise fraud as innovation. As Riley Quinn says, "Any time you hear 'fintech,' substitute 'unlicensed bank'":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usury/#tech-exceptionalism

But there's another important lesson to learn from the 2008 disaster, a lesson that's as old as the South Seas Bubble: "leverage" (that is, debt) is a force multiplier for fraud. Easy credit for financial speculation turns local scams into regional crime waves; it turns regional crime into national crises; it turns national crises into destabilizing global meltdowns.

When financial speculators have easy access to credit, they "lever up" their wagers. A speculator buys your house and uses it for collateral for a loan to buy another house, then they make a bet using that house as collateral and buy a third house, and so on. This is an obviously terrible practice and lenders who extend credit on this basis end up riddling the real economy with rot – a single default in the chain can ripple up and down it and take down a whole neighborhood, town or city. Any time you see this behavior in debt markets, you should batten your hatches for the coming collapse. Unsurprisingly, this is very common in crypto speculation, where it's obscured behind the bland, unpronounceable euphemism of "re-hypothecation":

https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/05/10/rehypothecation-may-be-common-in-traditional-finance-but-it-will-never-work-with-bitcoin/

Loose credit markets often originate with central banks. The dogma that holds that the only role the government has to play in tuning the economy is in setting interest rates at the Fed means the answer to a cooling economy is cranking down the prime rate, meaning that everyone earns less money on their savings and are therefore incentivized to go and risk their retirement playing at Wall Street's casino.

The "zero interest rate policy" shows what happens when this tactic is carried out for long enough. When the economy is built upon mountains of low-interest debt, when every business, every stick of physical plant, every car and every home is leveraged to the brim and cross-collateralized with one another, central bankers have to keep interest rates low. Raising them, even a little, could trigger waves of defaults and blow up the whole economy.

Holding interest rates at zero – or even flipping them to negative, so that your savings lose value every day you refuse to flush them into the finance casino – results in still more reckless betting, and that results in even more risk, which makes it even harder to put interest rates back up again.

This is a morally and economically complicated phenomenon. On the one hand, when the government provides risk-free bonds to investors (that is, when the Fed rate is over 0%), they're providing "universal basic income for people with money." If you have money, you can park it in T-Bills (Treasury bonds) and the US government will give you more money:

https://realprogressives.org/mmp-blog-34-responses/

On the other hand, while T-Bills exist and are foundational to the borrowing picture for speculators, ZIRP creates free debt for people with money – it allows for ever-greater, ever-deadlier forms of leverage, with ever-worsening consequences for turning off the tap. As 2008 forcibly reminded us, the vast mountains of complex derivatives and other forms of exotic debt only seems like an abstraction. In reality, these exotic financial instruments are directly tethered to real things in the real economy, and when the faery gold disappears, it takes down your home, your job, your community center, your schools, and your whole country's access to cancer medication:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/08/greek-drug-shortage-worsens

Being a billionaire automatically lowers your IQ by 30 points, as you are insulated from the consequences of your follies, lapses, prejudices and superstitions. As @pixelpusher220@dmv.community says, Elon Musk is what Howard Hughes would have turned into if he hadn't been a recluse:

https://mamot.fr/@pixelpusher220@dmv.community/112457199729198644

The same goes for financiers during periods of loose credit. Loose Fed money created an "everything bubble" that saw the prices of every asset explode, from housing to stocks, from wine to baseball cards. When every bet pays off, you win the game by betting on everything:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_bubble

That meant that the ZIRPocene was an era in which ever-stupider people were given ever-larger sums of money to gamble with. This was the golden age of the "finfluencer" – a Tiktok dolt with a surefire way for you to get rich by making reckless bets that endanger the livelihoods, homes and wellbeing of your neighbors.

Finfluencers are dolts, but they're also dangerous. Writing for The American Prospect, the always-amazing Maureen Tkacik describes how a small clutch of passive-income-brainworm gurus created a financial weapon of mass destruction, buying swathes of apartment buildings and then destroying them, ruining the lives of their tenants, and their investors:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-05-22-hell-underwater-landlord/

Tcacik's main characters are Matt Picheny, Brent Ritchie and Koteswar “Jay” Gajavelli, who ran a scheme to flip apartment buildings, primarily in Houston, America's fastest growing metro, which also boasts some of America's weakest protections for tenants. These finance bros worked through Gajavelli's company Applesway Investment Group, which levered up his investors' money with massive loans from Arbor Realty Trust, who also originated loans to many other speculators and flippers.

For investors, the scheme was a classic heads-I-win/tails-you-lose: Gajavelli paid himself a percentage of the price of every building he bought, a percentage of monthly rental income, and a percentage of the resale price. This is typical of the "syndicating" sector, which raised $111 billion on this basis:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-housing-bust-comes-for-thousands-of-small-time-investors-3934beb3

Gajavelli and co bought up whole swathes of Houston and other cities, apartment blocks both modest and luxurious, including buildings that had already been looted by previous speculators. As interest rates crept up and the payments for the adjustable-rate loans supporting these investments exploded, Gajavell's Applesway and its subsidiary LLCs started to stiff their suppliers. Garbage collection dwindled, then ceased. Water outages became common – first weekly, then daily. Community rooms and pools shuttered. Lawns grew to waist-high gardens of weeds, fouled with mounds of fossil dogshit. Crime ran rampant, including murders. Buildings filled with rats and bedbugs. Ceilings caved in. Toilets backed up. Hallways filled with raw sewage:

https://pluralistic.net/timberridge

Meanwhile, the value of these buildings was plummeting, and not just because of their terrible condition – the whole market was cooling off, in part thanks to those same interest-rate hikes. Because the loans were daisy-chained, problems with a single building threatened every building in the portfolio – and there were problems with a lot more than one building.

This ruination wasn't limited to Gajavelli's holdings. Arbor lent to multiple finfluencer grifters, providing the leverage for every Tiktok dolt to ruin a neighborhood of their choosing. Arbor's founder, the "flamboyant" Ivan Kaufman, is associated with a long list of bizarre pop-culture and financial freak incidents. These have somehow eclipsed his scandals, involving – you guessed it – buying up apartment buildings and turning them into dangerous slums. Two of his buildings in Hyattsville, MD accumulated 2,162 violations in less than three years.

Arbor graduated from owning slums to creating them, lending out money to grifters via a "crowdfunding" platform that rooked retail investors into the scam, taking advantage of Obama-era deregulation of "qualified investor" restrictions to sucker unsophisticated savers into handing over money that was funneled to dolts like Gajavelli. Arbor ran the loosest book in town, originating mortgages that wouldn't pass the (relatively lax) criteria of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This created an ever-enlarging pool of apartments run by dolts, without the benefit of federal insurance. As one short-seller's report on Arbor put it, they were the origin of an epidemic of "Slumlord Millionaires":

https://viceroyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Arbor-Slumlord-Millionaires-Jan-8-2023.pdf

The private equity grift is hard to understand from the outside, because it appears that a bunch of sober-sided, responsible institutions lose out big when PE firms default on their loans. But the story of the Slumlord Millionaires shows how such a scam could be durable over such long timescales: remember that the "syndicating" sector pays itself giant amounts of money whether it wins or loses. The consider that they finance this with investor capital from "crowdfunding" platforms that rope in naive investors. The owners of these crowdfunding platforms are conduits for the money to make the loans to make the bets – but it's not their money. Quite the contrary: they get a fee on every loan they originate, and a share of the interest payments, but they're not on the hook for loans that default. Heads they win, tails we lose.

In other words, these crooks are intermediaries – they're platforms. When you're on the customer side of the platform, it's easy to think that your misery benefits the sellers on the platform's other side. For example, it's easy to believe that as your Facebook feed becomes enshittified with ads, that advertisers are the beneficiaries of this enshittification.

But the reason you're seeing so many ads in your feed is that Facebook is also ripping off advertisers: charging them more, spending less to police ad-fraud, being sloppier with ad-targeting. If you're not paying for the product, you're the product. But if you are paying for the product? You're still the product:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#adfraud

In the same way: the private equity slumlord who raises your rent, loads up on junk fees, and lets your building disintegrate into a crime-riddled, sewage-tainted, rat-infested literal pile of garbage is absolutely fucking you over. But they're also fucking over their investors. They didn't buy the building with their own money, so they're not on the hook when it's condemned or when there's a forced sale. They got a share of the initial sale price, they get a percentage of your rental payments, so any upside they miss out on from a successful sale is just a little extra they're not getting. If they squeeze you hard enough, they can probably make up the difference.

The fact that this criminal playbook has wormed its way into every corner of the housing market makes it especially urgent and visible. Housing – shelter – is a human right, and no person can thrive without a stable home. The conversion of housing, from human right to speculative asset, has been a catastrophe:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

Of course, that's not the only "asset class" that has been enshittified by private equity looters. They love any kind of business that you must patronize. Capitalists hate capitalism, so they love a captive audience, which is why PE took over your local nursing home and murdered your gran:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/23/acceptable-losses/#disposable-olds

Homes are the last asset of the middle class, and the grifter class know it, so they're coming for your house. Willie Sutton robbed banks because "that's where the money is" and We Buy Ugly Houses defrauds your parents out of their family home because that's where their money is:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/#homevestor

The plague of housing speculation isn't a US-only phenomenon. We have allies in Spain who are fighting our Wall Street landlords:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#fuckin-aardvarks

Also in Berlin:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/16/die-miete-ist-zu-hoch/#assets-v-human-rights

The fight for decent housing is the fight for a decent world. That's why unions have joined the fight for better, de-financialized housing. When a union member spends two hours commuting every day from a black-mold-filled apartment that costs 50% of their paycheck, they suffer just as surely as if their boss cut their wage:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/13/i-want-a-roof-over-my-head/#and-bread-on-the-table

The solutions to our housing crises aren't all that complicated – they just run counter to the interests of speculators and the ruling class. Rent control, which neoliberal economists have long dismissed as an impossible, inevitable disaster, actually works very well:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

As does public housing:

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/red-vienna-public-affordable-housing-homelessness-matthew-yglesias

There are ways to have a decent home and a decent life without being burdened with debt, and without being a pawn in someone else's highly leveraged casino bet.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/22/koteswar-jay-gajavelli/#if-you-ever-go-to-houston

Image: Boy G/Google Maps (modified) https://pluralistic.net/timberridge

[homoerotikos]

be bisexual, eat hot chip & lie

[daisies-and-caramel]

piece by piece!

[sevcasejay1chicago]

Hi! Would you please write one with Matt/Kelly/Jay x reader where the reader is walking home or something and gets attacked. Roughed up a bit maybe a concussion and like a dislocated shoulder... but she manages to get away before anything too bad happens and just runs on instinct to 51. Kelly and Matt all worried and trying to comfort her but she’s in shock. Sylvie and Violet take care of her and take her to med. Jay meets them there. Maybe with worried brother-in-law Will and a Connor appearance?

Messed with the wrong one- Matt, Kelly, and Jay

Warnings: attack briefly described, vomiting, possibly wrong medical jargon

————————————

You have always been decently independent, which is something that your boys love and hate at the same time. You enjoy doing the grocery shopping and often find yourself walking the short distance to the small neighborhood market around the corner from your shared home. Today was no different.

It was late in the afternoon. The sun was just starting to set and you were happily enjoying watching the beautiful colors change in the sky. Jay was still at work, you having been able to leave early since you finished your paper work, but Jay still had a few files left to tidy up. Your errands could have waited, but you had the time now. So, while Matt, Kelly, and Jay were all still at work, you planned on getting a head start on dinner.

You were two blocks from the market when you felt four hands grab you and drag you into a nearby ally. All your training kicked in and you fought back as hard as you could. All you could think about was getting home to your boys. You kicked and punched, having to drag yourself off the ground twice. The second time you found yourself on the ground, your head also found purchase on a brick wall. You quickly shook it off and stood, laying one guy out and dodging the other, bolting down the ally and running as fast as you could. You didn’t dare look back.

Next thing you know, you are running through the bay doors of 51 and Kelly is snatching you up in his arms. You are violently shaking, blood tricking down your neck and face. You don’t respond when Kelly talks to you, given the fact that you can’t hear him over the ringing in your ears. You notice blurred figures run past you and out of the bay doors, others running out of the firehouse to see what the commotion is all about. Matt comes to your side, but you flinch and scream when he touches you.

“Shhh. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s just Matt.” Kelly whispers, rocking you back and forth in his arms. He isn’t sure you hear him, but you relax as you bury your face into his neck and breath in his familiar scent.

Matt doesn’t attempt to touch you again. Not yet anyways, but he thinks he understands why you screamed now. Your left arm is cradled between you and Kelly protectively, leading Matt to believe that your hurt. “Kelly. She’s hurt pretty bad.” Matt whispers, walking around you slowly to examine you with only his eyes.

Kelly nods. “I know. I know baby. Let’s sit down, yeah?” Kelly says, acknowledging Matt and guiding you to sit in his chair at the squad table.

Brett and Violet are standing at the ambo with the doors open. They are both assessing you from afar until Matt and Kelly can get you focused or give them permission to approach. Brett can tell you are slipping into shock, but she doesn’t want to make things worse, so she waits.

It doesn’t take long after Kelly gets you sitting down. His hands pushing your shoulders to lower you down has you screaming in pain. Matt steps aside and waves the medics over, allowing Kelly to keep a hold on you since he got to you first.

“Y/n? It’s Sylvie Brett. Can you hear me?” Brett asks, crouching down to find your tear filled eyes. When you nod, Brett smiles warmly at you. “Good. Good. Can you tell me what hurts?” Brett asks, not yet laying a hand on you.

You gently run your right hand over your collar bone and then touch the back of your head. When your hand comes away with blood, you start shaking harder and hyperventilating. You didn’t feel that.

“Hey. Hey. Baby. It’s okay.” Kelly soothes, taking your hands in his. He carefully wipes them off with a towel that Violet offers as Brett stands to examine your head wound.

“Pretty deep.” Brett comments. At this point, you have lost most of the color in your face and are sweating pretty heavily. Brett can tell, without checking your vitals, that the shock is fully setting in. “Kelly. Get her loaded up. Violet, run inside and tell Boden what’s going on then drive us to med. Matt, call med and have them set up a trauma room and have x ray and CT ready upon arrival.” Brett instructs, putting her feelings as your friend aside to get you help quickly.

Everyone jumps to their tasks. Kelly scoops you up and apologizes as you cry out in pain from the movement. Brett gets in the ambo and immediately pulls out some pain killers and an Iv tray for you. She hands Kelly a towel to keep pressure on your head wound as she hooks you up. You barely flinch as the Iv is stuck in your hand, but begin to calm slightly as the meds take over.

When you stop whimpering, Brett moves to check your chest. “Y/n. I gotta look, okay? No pressing. I promise. Just gotta make sure that everything is still relatively where it’s suppose to be.” Brett said, not wanting to scare you with the fact that your bone could potentially be out of your skin or at an alarming angle or something.

You nodded, leaning your head further into Kelly’s hold as Matt finally jumped in and the ambo began moving. You groaned as the movement caused nausea to spike as your head swam. “Mmmm.” You ground out, trying to breath through the nausea.

“What’s wrong hunny?” Brett asked, pulling back from looking at your collarbone, which seemed to be in place, to look at your face. You had gone pale once again, your face scrunched up as you shakily brought a hand to your mouth. “Okay. Hang on.” Brett said, pushing Kelly forward to lean over and grab a sick bag for you. Matt immediately took it and held it under your chin so that Brett could keep examining you.

“M-Matt.” You gasped, clutching onto his wrist when he came into view. It was like you were just processing that he was even around at all.

“Shhhh. I’m here baby. Kelly and I are here.” Matt soothed, using his free hand to wipe tears from your face. “We are almost to med. We gotcha now.” Matt murmured, hating to see the pain and fear in your eyes. He wanted nothing more than to find whoever did this to you and lay into them, but you were his first priority.

Matt’s thought process was cut short when you heaved, flying forward with a scream of pain at the end of it. Kelly stood, holding your forehead in one hand and the cloth to the back of your head with his other hand. Matt held the bag around your mouth, holding one of Kelly’s arms to stop from trying to steady you or put his hand in the wrong place and hurt you more instead o comforting you.

“Brett. You gotta do something.” Kelly said, trying not to burst into tears as you threw up, screaming when you had enough air. You were shaking violently again, the pain and the vomiting causing your body to go into overdrive.

“Kelly. I can’t. We are two minutes out. I gave her enough to take the edge off, but they gotta assess her before she gets anything else on board.” Brett tried to reason, wiping tears from her own face as she attached wires to you to check your vitals. “I’m so sorry Y/n. I’m so sorry. We are getting you to med.” Brett whispered, her heart aching as she watched her friend get sick and scream while her other friends desperately tried to help.

As soon as the ambo got to Med, Conner Rhoads, Maggie, and your brother in law, Will Halstead, were pulling open the doors. Will stood slightly away, knowing he couldn’t treat you, but he also couldn’t leave you and the boys until Jay got there. Luckily, Jay had been notified by Will when he found out, so he knew his brother would be there soon.

“What do we got?” Conner asked, helping Brett get the stretcher out of the ambo as Kelly kept up, one hand still holding the cloth to your head while the other held the bag Matt had to secure it under your chin as you gagged.

“Deep head lac and suspected broken collar bone. The vomiting started about 4 minutes ago. GCS 6, 140/97, pulse 120, O2 95 on room air.” Brett spout out. “Iv in the field. Left hand. Administered 5 of Morphine to take the edge off.” Brett said, getting your sheets in her hands.

“Okay.” Conner said, “On my count. 1, 2, 3.” Conner counted, then helped transfer you onto the hospital bed. You screamed out again as they moved you, then proceeded to pass out. “She’s out. Elevate her feet. Tip the bed.” Conner instructed, following your head down as you were moved. He checked your pupils and palpitated your collarbone while you were out. “I can feel some inflammation around her collar bone on the left side. Most likely broken, but still in place. She also has a minor concussion. I’m gonna have them do an xray and CT just to make sure on both.” Conner said, standing and looking at the monitor. “Maggie, put her on 5ML of oxygen. Her stats are dropping some. Probably from the pain. Let’s go ahead with another 15 of morphine and some Zofran too.” Conner said, typing it all up pretty quickly.

You began to stir as Kelly pushed some fly away back. Conner was quick to get to you, repositioning the bed to a more comfortable position and checked your head lac. Your eyes fluttered open just as Conner was stepping back.

“Welcome back.” Connor said with a smile. “Your gonna be okay. We need to run some tests, but I think that you’ll only need a few stitches and all you’ll need is a sling to stabilize that arm while your collar bone heals.” Conner supplied, smiling as he heard Matt, Kelly, and Will sigh in relief.

You nodded, then winced. “Hurts.” You whispered, throat raw from throwing up.

Conner nodded and moved aside for Maggie. “Mags is gonna give you more morphine and some Zofran. Sound good?” Conner asked, searching your face for confirmation. When you you gave a shaky thumbs up, he smiled. “Good, I’ll check back in a bit.” Just as Conner was leaving, Jay skidded to a stop as he came barreling through the door, almost hitting Conner in his haste to get to you.

“Baby girl.” Jay breathed, patting Conner on the shoulder and going around him to get to you. He was sweating, eyes wild as he searched your body for injuries, hands and bottom lip shaking.

“J-Jay.” You immediately sobbed out. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” You wailed, covering your face with your right hand.

Jay shook his head as he laid a hand on your leg. “Shhh. No baby. No. It’s okay. It’s not your fault sweet girl.” Jay soothed, rubbing your leg over the blanket. “We got them. Voight and Antonio have them. Your safe.” Jay soothed, smiling sadly at you.

“She was so smart and so brave. She ran straight into the bay doors of the fire house.” Kelly praised, kissing your forehead.

“You know your always safe with us.” Matt said, rubbing one of your feet over the blanket.

“I-I didn’t even think. I j-just ran.” You sniffed, wiping your face with the back of your arm. “I just thought a-about you guys. I-I needed to get h-home to you guys.” You murmured, tears streaking down your face again as the horrors of the event began to creep into your head.

“You’ll be home tonight sweet girl. Until then, we are here.” Jay soothed, moving forward as Maggie walked out, kissing your forehead gently. “You did so good Angel.”

“I’m home here with you guys. Wherever you are is home.” You whispered, finally relaxing as the drugs numbed the pain and the nausea. You were exhausted and you knew your boys would keep you safe, so you allowed your eyes to slip closed.

——————

Tag list:

@treehouse-mouse

@shadowmeadowsworld

@sorry-i-spaced

@zephyrmonkey

@allisonargent144

@amie134

@lane-rodgers-barnes

@pensfan5871

@dumb-fawkin-bitch

@marvel-and-chicago-fan

@daggersquadphantom

@stellakiddsblog

@100yroldteenagers

@senjoritanana

@celtic-shadow-wolf

@starset21

[jasvvy]

[pepperstreak]

More AEW text memes

[90ssuperheroes]

the original MCU (1977-1994)

[the-ninjago-historian]

I found a ton more of Ninjago Prime Empire concept art! Check it out!

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[squadmuse]

ONE DAY IN OCTOBER - Part I

A MATT CASEY X HALSTEAD!OFC FIC (Charlotte Halstead Casey)

A/N: so this has been an idea that I’ve been slowly working and developing for about a month now and @deanstead has been such a great & lovely helpful mutual through it… hope everyone enjoys this, as I am so excited about it!!

A cool October sun was high in the sky above the bustling city of Chicago that morning, and luckily Dr. Charlotte Halstead Casey found herself alone on the rooftop of the city’s Gaffney Chicago Medical Center to enjoy it.

A lifelong Chicago resident, her green eyes watched from high above as if she were a mere bird, looking down as cars rolled down the roads and people walked up along the sidewalks. Rush hour had been over for a few hours now, so it wasn’t as busy as it would’ve been as people hurried even more to reach work or school. When Charlotte had arrived for work the night before, the noisy city had been cloaked in a dark twilight with little to nobody wandering around.

Glancing down at her hand that was encircled around a travel mug filled with warm decaffeinated coffee, Charlotte grinned as the sunlight hit her diamond engagement ring and matching wedding band. It had been nearly six months since she had married the love of her life, Matthew Casey. He had dropped her off at the hospital last night with a kiss goodbye and a warm hug too. Matt was very much everything she had ever dreamed about.

It wasn’t often that Charlotte found herself working the night shift in the emergency department, but it had been a case of seniority needed and a call from Goodwin herself. Luckily, she hadn’t been working the day before and had been relaxing at home while Matt worked on one of his construction jobs in Wicker Park.

Looking back out at the metropolis that she called home, she sighed. It looked like it was going to be a slow day in Chicago, and luckily a quiet night too, as Goodwin had signed her up for night shifts for now on. Taking a gulp of her drink, Charlotte let herself be lost in the tranquil atmosphere around her on the roof, waiting for the moments to fly by and for caffeinated coffee once again.

Charlotte had been so lost in her daydreaming mind and her imagination running wild like a hummingbird would, that she did not see the figure that had appeared on the rooftop paradise that she had claimed for herself that mid-morning. Her green eyes were fluttering shut and there was a soft smile dancing on her soft lips which made her look as serene as the view that surrounded her.

With soft steps that were not unlike his soft wavy hair, did the lone figure make his way to where Charlotte stood alone. There too was a soft smile painted upon his face, like there was upon her own, and as he found his way to be at her side high above Chicago, the man placed a lean arm around her shoulders as if he had done it many times before.

Charlotte’s eyes shot open as if they were bullets firing from a pistol at the sudden touch and her wide eyes pivoted just as fast to face the figure beside her and a chuckle slipped from both their lips as she punched him jokingly on the chest. Her older brother Will Halstead grinned as she did so.

“Even after all these years, you still react to the slightest touch, Tater,” he chuckled, ruffling her dark hair, not unlike all those years ago.

Charlotte rolled her eyes at his comment and his childhood nickname for her, which seemed to be sticking around even as they were adults. Trust Will and Jay, her other older brother, to find out her name was also the name of a potato species when they were kids. She was grateful they at least didn’t call her Tater Tot.

“Well you still happen to have the coldest hands in Chicago, so we’re even Billy,” she grinned back as she used her own childhood nickname for her eldest brother in return. A louder laugh than before erupted from her lips as Will grimaced.

“You know you’re the only one I’ll ever let call me that?” said Will as he leaned on the railing beside his sister. His brown eyes followed the sights below like Charlotte had done before. “Jay is the same, only you get to call him Jayjay.”

A broad smile appeared on Charlotte’s face at his comment. Smugly, she nudged Will in his side. “That’s because I’m your baby sister,” she said mirthfully. It was true, ever since she had been born all those years ago in 1988, Charlotte had been the apple of her brothers’ eyes and spoiled rotten by two Halsteads. “Y'know, Pops is the same.”

Will nodded as he glanced at her. “That’s because you’re his little girl,” replied Will with a soft smile. “Pops didn’t expect to have a little girl, even Mom thought she would have another boy.”

Charlotte giggled as she shook her head. Thank god her parents had not had another boy, the old house back in Canaryville probably wouldn’t have survived that. “Remember the time when I refused to do the tap class Mom signed me up for and how I wanted to go to the ice hockey club with you and Jay?” said Charlotte quietly as she reminisced.

“How could I not?” chortled Will, his soft auburn curls jiggling with the movement of his head. “Mom was stunned, wondered where her little girly girl had gone!”

Sighing, Charlotte remembered that too. Theresa Halstead had been aghast about her only daughter wanting to act like her older brothers and not do all the girly things she was finally getting to do now she had a daughter. “I think I got pulled from the peewee team after Jay punched Eddie Lynch after he made me fall and break my arm,” said Charlotte, thinking about that moment with her brother.

“Yeah you did, I think Pops had a bust-up with Coach Murphy over all of that,” added Will as he turned to lean his back against the railing and so did Charlotte before taking another sip of her coffee. “I think that was when Jay switched to soccer, and you got into gymnastics?”

Charlotte nodded. She had got into gymnastics after that fiasco, at least it was all girls in her club in Bridgeport. “Yeah it was, Mom didn’t want me roughhousing with the hockey boys like I would with you and Jay at home,” she chuckled. It was true, and she still did have a tough side to her, having grown up a Halstead in Canaryville. “You just kept to your baseball, which Pops loved.”

“South Side pride, it’s in our blood little sis,” laughed Will as he threw his head back looking up at the fall sun. “I think it was Pop’s proudest moment when I won the high school baseball award.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes at the statement, which was the understatement of the century. Patrick Halstead was probably the biggest baseball fan in Canaryville and had been absolutely ecstatic about the prize at the De La Salle Institute, to the amusement of Will, Jay, Charlotte and their mother. Usually, Pat Halstead was a man of few words and even less emotion.

For a while the two siblings stood in silence, and the only sound was that of the lively city many floors below.

It was nice like that, just the two of them on a quiet day in October.

After minutes of watching the city and clouds go by, Will quickly grasped his sister’s travel mug and took a sip from it before spitting it back out.

“Serves you right,” giggled Charlotte as she took back the mug from Will, who was glaring at her with lighthearted disgust.

Will nodded, rolling his eyes in playful annoyance. “I see you’re still on the decaf?”

“Yup, you know I’m off it.”

Again, Will nodded his head in agreement as he knew that. “I know, I just hoped you had hot cocoa or something? Something that is actually nice!”

“Hey, decaf coffee is actually nice!” retorted Charlotte as she playfully shoved her brother to the side, making him stumble slightly. It wasn’t a lie, she had been surprised to find herself enjoying it.

Will shook his head and stood upright. “If you say so, Tater,” he replied before turning to face Charlotte with a more serious expression upon his face and his deep brown eyes fixated on her as he was reading her innermost thoughts. “How was your shift?”

Shrugging her shoulders, Charlotte sighed in response to her brother. “Just the usual stuff, I was only called in because Ethan is sick, and you worked the day shift.”

“Yeah Maggie had said about that when I arrived earlier,” said Will with a sigh, himself as he reached out to rub Charlotte’s shoulder affectionately. “I hope you still took it easy though.”

Charlotte took a large gulp from her mug before smiling at her brother. Even now, after all these years, Will was still the ever protective brother he had always been in her life. “I can still do my job, I’m not incapacitated.”

“Oh I know you’re not, and you’re a more than capable attending, but you’re carrying my unborn niece or nephew, so I’m not just big brother Will, but Uncle Will too, gotta keep two eyes out for you now,” he stated, gesturing at the round bump that was protruding underneath her ED scrubs.

It seemed Baby Casey was already under the watchful gaze of their Uncle Will, not just their mommy and daddy.

After a while longer up on the rooftop together, Charlotte found herself traveling down in the elevator with Will at her side. The two of them were not short on conversation topics as they traveled down the hospital building floor by floor.

“—I can’t believe he actually said that to you!” exclaimed Will angrily as the elevator stopped on the cardiothoracic floor. “You’re Noah’s superior.”

Charlotte shook her head, as neither could she when it happened. “He completely ignored my instructions and advice,” she stated wearily, remembering the interaction between herself and Noah Sexton, who was a resident in the department. “I think Connor is going to talk to Goodwin about it, he had to take the poor guy up to surgery to repair the mess.”

“Good, I’ll make sure to talk to him later about it,” scowled Will as the elevator started to move again. “You don’t need idiotic residents, especially now.”

Charlotte sighed in agreement. She didn’t need the added pressure and stress of someone like Noah Sexton working under her. With her pregnancy, it had been paramount to her and Matt that she stay as relaxed as possible, even in a stressful job (although he also had a stressful job too). Their baby would always come first. “Just don’t make a big deal out of it, Will. I’m off for maternity leave in December and then off for a few months. Maybe when I come back he’ll be off to some other hospital!”

“Fingers crossed, but I’ll say something to April,” stated Will, as he glanced at his sister worriedly. He knew their nurse friend would happily pull up her younger brother about his behavior and actions last night.

“Is she working today?” asked Charlotte as she felt the elevator move without stopping. It seemed not very many people were using the lift this morning.

Will nodded. “Maggie said so,” he replied as they finally reached the first floor and were met with the emergency department before them as the doors opened up. “So what are you going to be up to today?”

Charlotte shrugged her shoulders as the two doctors walked across the room. Much like she had thought before, it seemed like it was going to be a quiet day in Chicago. “Probably just napping and organizing baby things, Matt is on shift today,” she told her brother.

Will hummed as he held open the glass door to the doctors’ lounge for his sister to walk through before him.

“Maybe you could go visit Pop?”

[yoinkschief]

Not sure why I've been so deeply attached to TordMatt lately but here I am,,, doodling gay boys kissing each other

[yurithebandtheshow]

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the rivoli in the background...