#Joe the Hexagon

[rjalker]

Billie, Bob, and Joe demonstrate Straight Lines and their ability to make themselves almost invisible for the summary of Flatland:

[ID: A digital diagram with a black border showing three shapes: Joe, a hexagon, Billie, a straight line, and Bob, a circle. Billie stands between Joe and Bob, with both of her ends pointed towards her friends. There are two bars in the upper corner showing what Bob sees. The first is labeled, "Bob's view when Billie faces him:", and shows Billie's face as a thin stripe of white, in the center of Joe, who appears as a large grey bar, which then fades to the background. The second is labeled, "Bob's view when Billie faces away:" and shows the same gradient as before, but instead of the thin stripe of white in the center, it is now a grey just a few shades lighter than the grey of Joe behind it, making Billie very hard to see in comparison. End ID.]

[ID: Another diagram like the one above, but now Billie is turned to the side so that her flat sides face her friends instead of her points. Now there is a single bar showing Bob's perspective, labeled, "Bob's view of Billie from the side:", and shows a single white line, with no gradient. End ID.]

I had been assuming that Flatlanders have bioluminescence on all their points as well as sides, but I guess not, because then Straight Lines would be just as visible from the front or back.

[therealslimshakespeare]

Trash Magic

Big Daddy Trailer Park Cop AU One Shot

Summary: it’s 2008 and it’s the pits of recession, not that the suburbs of El Paso would notice, things have been rather shit among the rows and rows of trailers for some time now. With your dad locked up for being a little too ‘entrepreneurial’, it seems your only ally in these tough times is the town‘s scary old softy, Officer Presley, and the more than professional interest he takes in your speeding and footwear. 

Era: modern but with that dumbass tumblr dusty Americana feel to it I hope?

Kudos: so many to @eliseinmemphis who was my plot guru, kept this thing alive and gave so many lines and sentences used herein.

Word count: 15k and I didn’t edit this sorry for misspells, etc

18+ and may be thematically disturbing to some please read cautions, proceed at your own risk!! More specifics below the cut

HAPPY NEW YEAR MY DARLINGS!

Specific warnings: sexual content, drug use, stripping, casual prostitution, age gap, reader isn’t a minor for such activities but only eighteen?? which is not touted as a good thing but it’s in here?? if that’s a hard no then be warned. graphic descriptions of kinda gross blowjobs and very gross blowjobs, spanking, officer Presley does take too many pills for his pain ok? driving under the influence, minors drinking, trailer trash lifestyle in general, such as I personally have had experience with, it’s rough out there folks but there’s always the good ones trying their best. Sorry I really threw Joe E under the bus. I’m not really sorry but I’m sorry you have to read about him in here. Please let me know what warnings I missed if I did. Again, could be thematically disturbing due to age, solicitation, law officers, drug use, humans not being tidy little robots.

When you were three years old you recall the smell of plastic heating in the sun, the hot smell of fresh cut grass and the cold splatter of hose water on your skin. A little paradise it seemed, that tiny kitty pool and your mama waving the hose over you with one hand, her cigarette dangling between the fingers of her other, bright warm sun and yellowing grass stretched out in large swathes between the little white shacks stacked row upon tidy row. Always the same and ready to guide you home after each little wander into the thicket behind the clearing.

That was life in the Shady Oaks trailer park. There really was only one mature oak tree and it was a live oak and the sunshine beamed right through its little leaves all seasons of the year.

By five you had a sizable jar of grasshoppers collected and had become too scared of their hoards and awful beady eyes to ever release them, fearful they would swarm you the minute you undid the lid of the mason jar and gave them freedom. You had let one out and watched it hop across the torn Hexagons of the linoleum floor before it jumped in an acrobatic feat and landed in the mac & cheese your mom was making. You never know what she did with those jars, but you were half relieved, half heartbroken at the fact they were no longer your responsibility.

By eight you knew you lived in a trailer park and spending your time collecting ants and moths for the new set of grasshoppers to eat was a peculiar and uncool pastime. As were muddy knees and torn t-shirts on a girl approaching her teenage years. But mama hadn’t been able to take the heat and the rows upon rows of mildewing trailers anymore and daddy was too busy with his “entrepreneurship” to dress you right.

By twelve you had learned that some nights daddy came home, and some nights he didn’t and you couldn’t be sure which you preferred. His drunken state was unpredictable and confusing even though he was not abusive, but his absence left you counting quarters and wondering how long your Fig Newtons would last if he stayed gone longer than a week again.

By fifteen the Dollar Store and its fluorescent bulbs leached the vitality out of you with each long day shift, school was an afterthought, and your days smelled of plastic bags and detergent. You brought that smell home to your musty trailer, seeped into the sweaty fabric of your tank top. The only thing that stayed consistent whether your daddy was home or not was the religious watching of the NASCAR races. Reruns and live, it didn’t matter, where many girls escaped into Disney or Reality TV, you did your dreaming while sitting in the ratty drivers seat of daddy’s Ford, making the engine thrum.

By seventeen, your daddy was gone for months at a time. Sometimes he’d leave the Ford and take off on the road with Benny and Gregg in Benny’s motorhome from a few rows down. Greg had the pale blue trailer with the blinds that were always smashed in the one window. He always left his damn lights on, even when he was gone and they’d glow yellow and demented between the brittle plastic. Some nights when you walked back home from town, maybe a little more plastered than you’d like to admit, you’d keep Gregg’s trailer and his silly window as a landmark to turn left in the maze of trailers.

One night the bulb burnt out. One by one the rest of them did too. The fellas, they’d all been gone so long. Next week the electricity got turned off to yours. The bill hadn’t been paid. Dollar Store wages kept peanut butter and miracle bread in your cabinets and bought you cheap tequila from Terry who lived five trailers down and didn’t care about ID’s so long as there was cash on the counter. What the wages didn’t pay for was electricity or gas money or a new car that could actually accelerate fast enough to give you that thrill you craved.

Despite your lousy education and demotivated upbringing, you had some spark of diligence and ambition residing inside you, it was stoked to a decent blaze by the awful, humid and stale air of the trailer without its swamp coolers humming at night. Not even the fridge stayed cool longer than forty eight hours and you ended up at the seven eleven eating roller dogs.

You weren’t looking for job opportunities while licking corn dog grease off your thumbs but opportunity came to you anyway. As you nibbled at the soggy fried dog and licked at the rancid oil while leaning against the auto supply shelf, you’d have to be some sorta dumb to not know that Carl was hanging around the same aisle for something besides windshield washer fluid.

Carl was a native to the outskirts of El Paso just like you, and he was a married man, married to Clarissa in fact. Clarissa who’s plastic miniature flamingo’s gracing each edge of her weedy gravel drive had a younger you thinking she was the height of trailer park sophistication. That was before Officer Presley, who lived in a spacious double wide down by Gregg’s trailer and its burnt out bulbs, got himself a Tiger figurine made outta real concrete and painted pretty as anything, its blazing feline eyes not missing a speck of paint, unlike the flamingo’s slashed ones. Officer Presley only had the one and it was assumed he was saving up for another, and he placed it by the little porch he built off his trailer door, the proximity to the structure giving it a noble sorta air that sitting statues out by the street didn’t manage.

“If you keep watchin’ me like that I’ll have to start chargin’.” you told Carl and his leering face, and took another bite, munching with the carefree manners of someone actually hungry.

“Can’t do that here.” he wheezed a laugh, then thumbed over his shoulder at the bright lights of the trucker club blazing in the dark sky through the dirty glass doors of the gas station. “But over there it’s legal.”

“You so horny you’d pay to watch a girl eat a corndog?” you were dubious, wondering just how little Miss Clarissa put out if he’d waste money on this, it wasn’t like she was busy repainting her Flamingo’s peeling eyes or nothin’.

“I’d pay for a drink for ya.” Carl offered, fidgety hands wedged in his fraying front pockets. “And you can eat another dog. You like hot dogs? They’ve got ‘em over there.”

“Nah, I need cash.” you declined, aware that you could barter for drinks and end up evicted or else make sacrifices regarding the booze and keep your tin roof over your head.

“Cash?” he repeated like a dumb parrot.

“Yeah, stupid.” you flailed your hands a little in annoyance, fully certain everyone in this run down rural suburb knew you were as broke as you are alcoholic at seventeen.

“Ok, then I’ll pay for your hot dog,” he negotiated with an oil stained finger scratching at the sore on the corner of his mouth, “And you can eat it so long as you do it how I tell ya.”

You sighed and ran your chipping nails along the plastic jugs of car oil. “So long as ya let me eat it.” you stipulate, “And you gotta pay for the show.”

“I ain’t made of money, girl!” Carl protested, “I’m buyin’ dinner, you should be thankin’ me.”

“You were plannin’ on buyin’ me a drink.” you pointed out, “Where’s that money gone?”

“Jeeze ok, ok,” Carl sighed, “I’ll pay you same as a wild Turkey would cost.”

“And a dog?”

“Yeah.”

“With chili on it?”

“Oh c’mon now-“

“-It’ll make for good slurpin.” you pointed out sagaciously

Carl groaned in annoyance and appreciation for the mental image. “Ok, a chili dog and the cost of a shot. No funny shit with the tab and you eat it how I say.”

“Does the club have air conditioning?” You asked your last stipulation.

“Course it does, it would be hot as fuck without.”

Your trailer was hot as fuck and anytime spent loitering elsewhere was greatly desired. “Ok then.” you agreed with a shrug.

By the time you’d crossed the parking lot, with Carl’s guiding hand on your lower back, you were irritable from the heat and exhaust fumes. Inside was cool and almost as dark as the parking lot except for the wild, multi-colored lights swirling around the place, highlighting the girls humping the stage floor in the middle of the establishment. One more underage addition wasn’t remotely as remarkable as the fella in the corner trying to take a bite outta a lap dancer’s boob. He got smacked on the cheek for it and nothin’ more, got his full dance anyway and as you watched her after while sitting up on the bar stool, you noticed her negotiate something similar to what you’d just done. She stayed in his lap after her dance was done and after some gesticulating and her unimpressed sighs, some agreement was reached and you watched them get up and walk to the back of the club, through the backdoor that you knew led to nothing more than miles and miles of desert.

Five minutes later a similar transaction occurred between a trucker and a pole girl. They went out back, too. Ten minutes later the first couple came back in. She went to the stage and he went out the front door Carl had brought you in by.

By that point you were slowly inserting a hot dog onto your pink tongue and swallowing a bite every three minutes or more - at least, that’s what it felt like. Carl’s directions were so slow and infuriatingly erratic that you found yourself grateful for the fact you’d already eaten a bit at the gas station, otherwise this would’ve been the cruelest tease to your belly that hadn’t had lunch and only Raisin Bran for breakfast. You chose to ignore the way his hand moved in the shadow of the bar, wiping at his jeans too many times to be passed off as sweaty palms.

A nearly fully dressed girl in cut offs eating a chili dog was hardly the most sensational thing to be watched in this seedy joint, but it was the most peculiar and no sooner had you finished the dog after a laborious thirty minutes, collected the extra drink cash and prepared to go home after declining Carl’s offer of a ride before you found yourself propositioned for the same ordeal. This big fella actually offered a drink with it and much to Carl’s betrayed horror you agreed. Carl ended up leaving, going home to Clarissa, feeling too cuckolded to continue watching someone else watch you eat meat in a casing.

In between sipping Hard Mike’s lemonade you chatted with the fella and spilled pinto beans on your bare legs from the excess. Even the bartender had stopped being annoyed, he even got a bit invested in your gig, retracting the offered napkins for the spill when another guy, a farm hand from the pecan grove down the interstate, asked to lick it off.

You charged seventeen bucks for that spit bath and felt funny as the saliva dried in the chilled bar room air. The bartender asked you if you lived in El Paso. Hesitating to give yourself away or open yourself up to a driveby, you merely agreed that you lived nearby, he didn’t need to know you lived in the Spark City suburb and walked to this tuck station grill to save fuel.

Marty, he said his name was, and Marty was pleased you lived close. In that case he asked if you’d wanna work there. You knew at the time he wasn’t offering you to bartend, your age prohibitive even in so lax an establishment. Your eyes flicked over to the long gal with her sallow skin and stringy red hair loling around the stripper pole in the glow of a green spotlight. It had to be 3:00 am by then.

“Does everybody do extra?” You asked him, plainly referencing the deals that took folks out back into the sagebrush and the backside of the club.

“You do as much as you wanna get paid for.” he admitted. “Plenty just strip.”

Just, he had said. Just strip.

Just stripping was a gross understatement for the rigorous and demoralizing ordeal of flinging your practically naked body around on stage for gaping older men to ogle each night. But it took up hours of your time not paid by the dollar store wages, and you could snooze from five am to eight when your shift began again in respectable retail. You earned a decent amount, even after having to pay Marty and the doormen a portion and even turning down a lap dance or two. The chili dog schtick kept its novelty for three nights and then you were driven to grinding against the pold like all the others, wondering if they’d all hoped to not end this way, same as you.

After a few weeks of this your piggy bank was less empty than it had been in months, hidden under the sink of your trailer behind the Comet and pulled out only to stuff in bills or else retrieve bread money, one Sunday you counted enough to pay your lease for the trailer slip. What was left would make a tiny little down payment for the electricity bill.

Or gas money for at least fifty miles or more in your gas guzzler. You weighed the bills in your hands and mournfully inspected your bruised knees. It was your off day, you contemplated going to the club in the evening as it didn’t respect the Lord’s day like the dollar store, but until then you had hours of a perfectly cloudless day to burn. Suddenly your trailer felt unbearable in its stuffy crampedness.

You tore outta your door and cranked up your daddy’s old Ford and with relief found it started with only a few tries. You tore down the road too, seeking the interstate after using that cash to top her tank off. For the first time in ages a full smile had begun to split your face. You went east, passing the last remnant of civilization that you called home and comprised El Paso’s dusty satellite cling ons. Then it was open range, nothing just mesas and tumbleweed, no one else could brag of such flat country or so wide a sky.

You floored it, the speed limit a decent 80 on its own, you went up to 120, fast as you dared push the transmission without fear of being stranded in the desert. Billboards warned of “last chance for gas, Van Horn 200 miles” followed by a possibly related: “God is coming, have you repented?”

All flew by in a unheeded blur as you cranked up the stereo and let the wind whip your hair. You covered a patrol car in a cloud of dust and saw his lights flash at you in the rearview. No chase commenced. When you leisurely drove back you noticed it was highway patrol, the sun was setting and he flashed his brights at you. You flicked them back.

“Hey officer Presley.” you murmured amused at him turning a blind eye to the speeding. Back when you had more money and made a regular habit of this amateur racing, you noticed the same benevolent light flicker and never a siren broke the still of the desert. “You ole softy.” you giggled at the thought of the middle aged officer being generous for you and only you, and wondered if he’d heard about what had become of you yet. Seems like most of the trailer park had. Favorite topic these days, right up there with when or if your daddy was ever gonna come home. Had the wives hating you during the day for the suspicion of their men wanking over you at night.

“Maybe if you could spare a single food stamp or somethin’ to help a gal in need I’d not be strippin’!” You had hollered at Ms Clarissa for all to hear and you stood by it. Buncha lousy, miserable hypocrites who did far worse behind their canvas doors.

You do go to the club that night.

You stripped down to your panties and bra and made enough to buy ice and a trip to the dentist. You packed the ice in the dead refrigerator and pampered yourself with some milk and a carton of ice cream for the filled tooth.

Next day you filled up your gas tank again and blazed a path through town, headed to the wide open and dreaming of busting your way into the male ranks of nascar drivers. You were deep into a daydream and committing a little self pity about how you hadn't been able to afford cable and were missing all the races when a siren’s blare broke your fantasy and the flicker of red lights against a pale blue sky filled your rearview. Begrudgingly you pulled to the shoulder as you cranked down your window, fiddling with the radio knobs till you could actually hear your crime when your peruser sauntered up.

“Well, well officer Presley, finally got persnickety about laws, have ya?” you observed to yourself with a grin as you watched the handsome man swagger towards you along the white line in your side mirror, tugging at his pants as he neared, trying to shimmy the article of clothing a little higher but is impeded by his belt, stopped by his sizable belly, his holster and buckle sitting under the bulge of it.

Your mouth watered. It had been close to a year since you’d seen him up close, not since last time he pulled you over, though you always took note when he was lounging outside his trailer in a lawn chair with his dog or stripped down and working under his hood. He was always built, intimidating to all the stupid rascals he kept in line along the border, but now he had become outright fat and his khaki shirt pulled apart between each button. Yet when he came up to your window, that little boy's grin was still gracing one of the most exquisite faces known to man, and his voice was tender and playful when he greeted you, just as you once recalled. You could see his sweaty hair, matted on his chest and belly between the gaps, his underarms have massive pit stains, doubly apparent thanks to the light color of his police uniform.

Your smile had something of the she-wolf in it as you greeted him, sniffing the air in hopes of catching a whiff as he leaned on your window frame, nearly crowding you from outside. “Hey Miss Lead Foot Louie,” he greeted, “you know why ya been pulled over?”

“Haven't got a clue, officer.” You stated the truth and enjoyed the way his title rolled off your tongue in a bantering way. It was easy.

Officer, officer. Somebody important and authoritative. No sir, yes sir, Officer.

His left eyebrow quirked and you wondered what he looked like at twenty five, how devastating that expression would have been before his wound and his meds and the water retention. Whatever power it may have once held, it holds nothing to that slightly bemused, slightly cynical world weariness that shows in his every expression now, that had a twitch of an eyebrow making you feel a fool in the most delicious way. “You’re goin’ seventy in a forty five, Miss.” his tone was patient even as his face suggested he’d like to tan your hide for being so reckless. “Reckless endangerment of others, and yourself,” he quoted sternly, “it ain’t no small matter and I don’t countenance it on my highway.”

Gosh, you just loved it when he laid claim to government property like highways and interstates. It helped you smile meekly at him and nod.

“Sorry officer, I got lax.” You purred, batting your eyes and you could see the heavy flap of their coal coated weight in your periphery. “I’ve seen you lettin’ me fly by on the interstate. I guess I thought…”

He leaned further into her car window, shirt gaping helpfully at his neck and allowing you a glimpse of sweaty hair, little droplets shining like rhinestone studs in the coarse curls. You leaned towards him, nipples hardening beneath your t-shirt bra as your mind started to the taste of salt. “You’re in town, miss.” he pointed out with grave disappointment for your lack of behavioral modulation, “S’one thing on the open plain, it’s another when you’re endangerin’ your fellow citizens, flyin’ through intersections, speedin’ up and threadin’ traffic when you’ve got a visible yield sign. Right there! Ain’t responsible. And I won’t countenance it.”

“Sorry officer.” you pleaded, lingering on his rank with all the sultry appreciation of a girl who lacks authority figures in her life. It made his palm itch.

He sighed and gave you a small smile, puffy, marshmallow lips set under a dark five o’clock shadow and it wasn’t even noon. “Now, how many times do I gotta pull ya over ‘fore ya start listenin’ to me?“ he asked with patient expectancy and you swallowed hard, actually feeling a small bit of guilt.

“Well,” you drew it out, biting your lip before tossing your head and beaming at him, “maybe just one last time. Like always.”

He tsked at you in reprimand but his eyes lit up with enjoyment, and that was worth whatever fine he might slap you with. It really wasn’t, not with how broke you were but gosh, you loved breaking the ice on him, reeling him in for another verbal tussle. One day you hoped those expressive hands would accidently smack you mid-wave when he was explaining something or other. You lived in hope of that day.

You watched as he straightened briefly and reviewed your vehicle, thumbing at the peeling paint on the hood near his thumb and swished at the sand on your tags. You held your breath, hoping the dust would disguise their expiration. Officer Presley just grunted and surveyed your lemoning old truck with the face of a man who appreciates nice things and doesn't see any nice things in sight. The face of a man whose patrol car was a Ford Mustang.

“You like speed.” he observed, still glancing at your tires with lip curling disdain. You wanted him to look at you like that but his face always softened when he turned back to you. It did this time as well.

“Yeah.” you breathed.

“You got a shit truck for speed, terrible drag, shit tread on your tires, bet it’s a gas guzzler, too.”

“Well yeah, officer,” you rolled your eyes at his survey, “but it’s not like I can afford much else right now so -I do this for fun. Fun’s not illegal in America yet, is it?”

He looked at you gravely then and his eyes turned sad. “Yeah I heard about the strippin’. You watch yourself now, be careful and make sure you don’t engage in no extra-curric-u-lars.” he advised sternly, peering over his tinted sunglasses at you while saying the big word, over pronouncing it with authoritative gravitas, “I’ve told Marty that means no bar tendin’ when you’re underage. And I’m tellin’ you now, that goes for solictin’, too. You understand me? Nice lil girl like you could get in a heap of trouble real fast. And I won’t countenance it.”

The rest of you perked up at the heavy handed advice, feeling smothered and also cherished that someone would give a shit, even if they were just defending laws n’ government regulations. Thinking of them as Officer Presley’s laws, as his property you were twerking on somehow ennobled your calling, made you feel like giving it a try to be good and not disappoint him. You felt grateful he hadn't chewed you out for the stripping like half the neighborhood, you’d expected some disgust.

When he finally looked at you with disdain, and you were determined that he would, it would be for something less unchangeable, a little less broke, a little more sexy.

“Yes sir, I got ya.” you acknowledged with a nervous laugh to hide your discomfort with the way he kept staring at you, reading you, it felt.

He kept at it for a few moments, chomping on that gum stick in his mouth, dexterous pink tongue lolling the stuff from one row of molars to the others and back. Most fascinating ping-pong match you’d ever seen and while he did his soul-reading, you watched his mouth.

As his jaw worked overtime, he narrowed his eyes at you, so blue they looked violet behind the tint of his lenses. “A’ight.” he decided at last and suddenly your window was bereft of his congenial bulk, you heard the rap of his knuckles on your truck roof.

“You stay outta trouble now, Missy.” he let you off with only a warning, two sharp knocks on the metal and then, “I’ll be seein’ ya.”

You watched the side mirror with investment as he meandered away, futilly hiking up his holster again as he went before he entered his squad car. He flashed his lights at you as you stayed gawking, you fumbled with the ignition and peeled out off the shoulder, moderating your acceleration upon afterthought. You’d promised to be good.

But nights at the Trucker Bar didn’t pay to be good. You had a laundry list of things you wanted and a hefty list of needs alongside it. You tried picking up a shift at the Texaco but Ashley there near tore your hair out against the beer coolers for encroaching on her shift. Everyone needed work and Spark City had never been much of a City, too little infrastructure to prosper its community in good times, much less in the pits of a recession. The Best Buy in El Paso was hiring, you read in a mail advertisement. Their wages cost as much gas it took to drive there and back.

So you got pretty good at something else, something Officer Presley wouldn’t be impressed by, or maybe he would in a moment of weakness but lord, much as you worried and panicked some times about him dropping in on the Trucker stop, meeting eyes and him just knowing you’d been doing extracurriculars, he never showed. Must not have been his scene. Not that you were sure what his scene was, you only ever saw him in his patrol car or else cleaning his guns on his trailer porch next to his Tiger figurine.

You assumed he liked blow jobs as much as the next man. But he never showed and so you got more and more lax, went out back of the bar to the Sagebrush desert and blew heavy tippers against the concrete wall, ant bites and stickers plaguing your knees. So far you hadn’t even needed to walk on over past the broken wall to the dingy motel in back and do the horizontal tango.

Moderate extracurriculars and the dancing was enough to tip your little piggy bank into having a little something to shake at the end of the day. You got yourself a haul of cereal and hot pockets that night, even splurged on milk that went rancid by the next day without refrigeration. You spent your late mornings debating how much money you had left for rent and how much you had for electricity and the viability of buying a generator instead of paying the bill. You also wanted a Blackberry phone real bad, your old flip phone a relic and on its last wheezes -maybe that’s why your dad’s calls never came through.

You were chewing off the price tag of your dollar flip flops, walking barefoot out of your daytime workplace -Dollar General- at the end of your shift when you realized there was a patrol car pulled up beside your Ford. First you cursed, then you grinned as you saw the familiar figure of Officer Presley wiping at your windshield with a bandana. Then you cursed again as you realized he was checking your expired tags.

You jogged over the burning asphalt, still tied flip flops in hand, hoping you didn’t look like shit from having taken off the Dollar Store vest without smoothing your hair afterwards. You hadn’t been good, he could be here for anything, soliciting, or for the speeding you know he caught on his radar or else the tags.

“Hey officer!” you chirped, as carefree and smiley as you could manage -and you’d gotten to be a tidy little liar at the club, insisting you couldn’t wait to have greasy, unwashed truckers in your mouth.

He turned his head slowly, hand still heavy on the windshield and observed you through those glasses again. “Don’t you ‘hey officer’ me.” he retorted, riled despite himself at the way you always said his rank like he had you locked up with frilly pink handcuffs to his waterbed. He shook his head and focused on the variety of delinquencies he had to reprimand you for. “These tags are out of date.”

“Aww,” you feigned consternation pretty decently as you really hadn’t bothered to prioritize the tags with every other dire cost pummeling you right now, “I’m sorry Elvis.” you tried a little familiarity as you drew closer, watching enthralled as a stale desert window tufted the front of his black locks of his sweaty forehead, “Things’ve been a lil tight for a while now, what with daddy leavin’. Slipped my mind.”

He pulled his hand off the windshield and his hands tried to rest on his hips but they slipped and ended up in an odd, off-kilter sorta sling on his pockets and belly, “They’re three years overdue.” his tone sounded unimpressed, you shivered despite the heat.

“Oh.” you chewed your lip and gazed at him hopefully.

“I oughta tan your hide, lettin’ you turn feral with all my concessions.” he said aloud while stippling his fingers on your rusting truck hood. His eyes dropped to the newly purchased, junk flip flops you still clutched. “Why’re you bare foot?”

“My last pair broke.” you explained, end of your shift the thong had snapped and here you were with the replacements.

“Well put ‘em on, the road’s nasty.” he grunted in aggravation, eyes dropping to your feet and widening in disgust at the welts and blisters you’d accumulated from your cheap stripper heels. “Holy shit, that’s gnarly right there.”

You felt a bit offended by that, wanting to object it was the toll of the job, sorta like fat guts came from lounging in patrol cars for a living. Figuring you were in deep deep enough shit as is without outright insulting him, you bit your tongue and chewed on the plastic connector again, trying to free your sandals.

“Oh for God’s sake, stop that.” he growled after a minute and to your bewilderment he stepped in your space and grabbed the foam footwear out of your mouth, “Gonna chip a tooth goin’ on that way, then your tips’ll go down, ya thought of that? No? No you don’t think ahead about nothin’.”

He was working himself up into a frustrated frenzy, tugging at the plastic tag, mumbling all the while about your behavior until it snapped at last and separated the flip flops. He stared dumbly at his success for a minute while you tittered. Bad move on your part, his eyes darkened and he genuinely scowled at you, something more effective than it should have been with his outdated sideburns carving lines in his cheeks.

“Turn around.” he demanded and you snapped your mouth shut, confused by his attitude and furtively eyeing your flip flops still dwarfed in his gloved hands. Who the hell wore gloves in this decade? In this century? In an El Paso suburb that was only a degree or two cooler than the surface of the sun.

You turned around.

“Hands on the hood.” he told you.

You placed them on the burning metal and wished you had gloves, angling your body away from the hot body of the truck, wincing at the heat, on tippy toes to save your feet from the asphalt. Was he gonna cuff you? He hadn’t even read you your rights and could a person even be arrested for tags? You really didn’t know and you never thought he would-

Suddenly a loud snap resounded in the empty parking lot and a white hot sting against your bottom distracted you from the pain of the hot car. You yelped in shock, hand flying to nurse the denim clad ass cheek that was burning from his smack. You glared over your shoulder at Officer Presley, ready to give him what for about him taking parental liberties until you saw his face folded into childish consternation, poofy bottom lip jutted out in remorse as he viewed the snapped flip flop in his hands.

He’d broken a shoe on you. Appreciation flared back, and you wanted to squeeze his cheeks and tell him it was ok, he could ruin the other, too.

“Aww shit, now I-I-I didn’t mean for that-“ he bemoaned, turning the ruined foam pad around and around in his hands as if there was a way to fix it when the other half was on the ground.

“It’s ok.” You heard yourself comfort the fucker who’d just spanked you in broad daylight.

“But you just finished your shift.” he muttered, and his consideration for your inconvenience touched you, “Here I-I-I’ll go buy ya another pair. Uh, yeah, c’mon.”

You skipped alongside him, trying to get him to look over at you but his face was flushed and his eyes trained on his task, picking out a hot pink pair instead of the polka dots you had chosen. “Does nothin’ for your lil sooties and brings the attention away from the polish ya got painted and instead directs the eye to the crustaceans and shit ya got goin’ on.” he referenced your calluses with a grimace and reached into his back pocket to pull out his worn wallet.

You stared at the hefty meat of his ass the entire time and almost missed it when he pulled out five dollars and put them on the register. You watched his ass and its khaki clad splendor as he returned the wallet without change and wiggled it into the tight back pocket.

At the double sliding glass doors of the front he snapped the tag there and then and squatted down with a little grunt, his knees popping audibly as he gallantly laid out your cheap slippers. You stepped into them, taking the liberty of putting a balancing hand on his sweaty shoulder.

His hand ran up your wrist and held you there a minute longer than it needed for stability. He squeezed twice and let go. You watched him heft himself up to his feet with admiration and a little pity for the stiff way he moved when he’d been stuck in one position for too long. Seemed to you so long as he was kept moving he did alright, nice and fluid and you’d seen him chase and tackle a man on foot awhile back, he’d been runnin’ like the wind then. He had it in him, just lounging in the patrol car hardly helped things.

You got the sudden and stupid urge to ask if he wanted to go swimming in the Motel 6’s pool, it would be good for his joints and your sore back and he’d be wet and maybe have his shirt off and you could-

“I got somethin’ to tell ya, it’s w-w-why I-I stopped when I saw your truck and uh, sweetie, let’s stay h-here in the cool.” he gently tugged your arm back with the pads of his pretty fingers hooked on your deltoid, pulling you back over the threshold and into the dryer sheet scented air of the Dollar General.

“What is it?” you asked him as he seemed nervous, a foreign look on him. You started to feel a little panic at the thought he might be leaving, going back to wherever he came from, done with this Podunk town and its big crime and little criminals.

“There ain’t no easy way to say this a-a-and I wanted you to hear it from me.” he chose his words carefully, eyes trained on the white and speckled tile below your feet until after a big breath he lifted his stunning eyes and gazed at you gently and in the most gallant way you’d ever been looked at before, murmuring in clear, compassionate tones, “They caught your daddy the other night -drug runnin’. Ain’t no petty marijuana charge or somethin’, it’s the big stuff. He’s gonna be put away, for a long while, in-car-cer-ated.” he specified with distinct pronunciation, “For a long while, Miss. I’m sorry to be the one t-t-to t-tell but I wanted you to know it’s true, I-I-l booked him in myself.”

“Well,” you swallowed hard, a little ashamed you’d been more alarmed at the prospect of officer Presley leaving than suspecting anything wrong with your walking disappointment of a father, “well damn.” you muttered.

“You don’t seem much surprised.” he pointed out, pulling his tinted shades down his nose to get a clear review of you, he had a red line on his nose from their weight.

“I barely know him anymore,” you admitted, “and I doubted he was gone spreading charity or something.”

“Yeah.”

“But damn -he was supposed to come back.” you felt a little angry about that part. A little childish for believing it too.

“Maybe he meant to,” he soothed, although your father’s entrenched position on the river suggested a more permanent stay, “and was doing all that sellin’ to give you somethin’ better but he was breakin’ the law and endangerin-“

“-Endangering others, I know.” you snapped at him, not because he was anything but nice, you snapped at him because he was very kind and he had a silver, shiny, sanctimonious badge on the large swell of his left peck.

The longer you stared at the badge the more you wanted to sink your dollar store acrylics into the meat of that man and try tearing -they’d probably break and it made your eyes swim with tears of frustration and you stomped out of the double glass doors into the heat of the parking lot. The sun would be going down soon and that’s when your best customers would pour into the club. You snapped your way across the asphalt on the flip flops he got you, ignoring his calls behind you as you wrenched open the squeaking truck door and hopped up into the cab.

“Really it’s fine!” you yelled at him as he came up to the window again, the concern and reproval written on his face way more heavy than you could take right then, “It’s not like I was expecting him back anytime soon anyway and -and you’ve got a job to do, ok? I get it. I get it, ok? Now I gotta go, officer.” You cranked up your engine and diesel fumes swirled around him. He batted the air in front of his face like a dainty lady would a swarm of flies and leaned heavier still on your rolled down window.

“I just wanted to let ya know.” he reaffirmed his intention, his gesticulations bringing your eyes to the gold watch around his wrist that jangled against the car metal, “Tell ya not to uh, don’t do nothin’ rash, alright? Just ‘cause he’s gone. You’re a big girl, you’ll make it. You ‘member what I said last time ‘bout extracurriculars?”

“I’d like to do you some extracurriculars.” you seethed with an angry smile and he looked taken aback, actually stepping away from the truck and his belly heaved with his offended breaths. One hand balled in a fist at his side and the other twitched, fiat palm swaying beside his thigh like he was gonna smack again. Extracurriculars -you’d like to take his no doubt chubby little cock right down to the sweaty thatched base and chew, just to earn a real spanking.

Maybe this lewd intent was written on your face but he slowly backed away from your truck like you’d gone looney, pointing his finger at you as he went, “You be good, I mean it. And that’s goes for respectin’ officers of the law.”

He was about to get into his side, looking over his car top in admonishment and you quickly made sure your truck was still in park before turning round in the seat and hanging yourself out the window, cleavage pressed against the edge to your best advantage and blew him a kiss. “I’m always a good girl, officer!” you swore adamantly and it stopped him dead in his tracks, stopped in a half crouch to his seat, that eyebrow disbelieving, “Officer Presley commissioned me to be good and I ain’t anything but!” you swore.

Took him five whole seconds to recall he was supposed to have his ass seated by then and he lowered himself the rest of the way into his car. His belly brushed the steering wheel and his legs spread themselves even in the driver's seat, it made your crushed breasts tingle. “Be-have.” he pointed that finger again and your thighs clamped shut on your seats, overwhelmed with unbidden thoughts of the long and slender digit probing inside you. How’d his fingers stay so slender when the rest of him bulked up?

You saluted as poorly as you could and watched him drive off, aggression plain in his accelerations and the way he took his turns. He shoulda stayed and spanked the other cheek, you thought, as you turned around and slumped in your seat, legs splayed and fighting a desperate urge to slip a hand down your shorts. You hoped to god he’d find some quiet shoulder of the road in the desert this evening and with a car passing every twelve minutes, tug a load out to the thought of wacking your denim booty with his belt. It would be good for his blood pressure.

Hands sticky from your own dismal release, you pulled out of the parking lot ten minutes behind him and, too scarce on time to go home first, drove straight to the club, knowing full well that you could always just strip down to your underwear.

Or less.

What with dad permanently unhelpful now, it was a fact of life that you’d have to do more than get by till he came back. You’d already accepted that awhile ago, this just confirmed it. You figured you’d need to save another stash of money, like the real professional girls did, girls like Kelcie and Shay, a little fund for renting out a motel room at night. The one a quarter mile out back of the truck stop, no harm in it except for a few bramble scratches in the dark and the odd coyote not scared off by the truckers’ loud moans out back at the blow job wall.

But for tonight you hadn’t any such stash and so after a few hours at the poll and chatting up the fellas lounging on barstools, you found the tip jar lacking and made one of those lil deals that were becoming almost as commonplace as getting your butt pinched.

This time, in the moth attracting glow of the outside light, your customer had a New York accent and while at cock level you learned from his fancy, dangling silver keychain that his buddies knew him as Joe E.

Now Joe E had a little brown cock and a small, fused ballsack under a sizable belly like most of these men in here did, and you did some of your best work on him. It was easy to do with him fitting in your mouth so easily, you pulled out every trick you’d learned at this wall, all of which he unfortunately resisted succumbing to more than the usual client. He’d pull himself out of your throat and he would grip his base, prolonging his experience and you supposed he had a right to it, he was paying money for something and he might as well do it how he liked but your jaw ached after a while. Soon your ears ached worse, exhausted and fed up with the self important monologue he kept up between the usual, self promoting stud talk that an unimpressive man in his forties likes to indulge in while paying for sex acts out back of a hole in the wall truckers club.

Joe E tasted like he hadn’t touched a fresh vegetable in years and through the overwhelming desire to puke you recognized with some pleasure that he was tipping you extra for being “like a damn vacuum down there, you pretty little dog.”

You drove home from the club, headlights on dim in the early morning and passed by Officer Presley’s double wide with intent, choosing the route you’d take if you were walking. It was dark inside but as you passed you saw he wasn’t asleep, his car was still gone.

You wondered if his doggie was in there or on patrol with him. You sighed and pulled into your own weedy drive, depressed with something you didn’t know the cause of.

You brushed your teeth, you ate cereal after remembering you hadn’t eaten, and stripped out of your clothes before crashing into bed, falling asleep in seconds despite the musty, unconditioned air inside.

It was the next morning, so near afternoon as to barely warrant it but Elvis Presley liked to take credit for any bit of effort he made and so let the record show it was still morning, when he entered the Waffle House off Moody Blvd and sat himself down in a booth and ordered his usual. It arrived at 11:56 in the morning and so it was breakfast, not lunch by any stretch of the imagination. He’d been up all night, the usual plaguing reasons and a few added to it. You, thoughts of you and tanning your hide and gripping you and you squirming over his lap made his patrols a hellish experience and he was almost glad for the distraction of the fucker without plates pulling out in front of him and making a run for it through the border checkpoint at 8:45 pm.

Now he was distracting himself with food, and if there was anything in his life to rival his appreciation of a slippery and obligin’ pussy, it was five scrambled eggs piled high on a white plate with burnt bacon to the side and waffles stacked on a companion plate. Brenda put them down with a smile and gave him a side hug that made his face brush her apron and shoulda gotten her fired by the food regulations but Elvis liked Brenda for her affectionate ways and the way he didn’t ever have to correct her about his order.

“You look tired.” she worried over him and he found a smile starting to threaten on his face, he stuck his fork in the eggs to distract himself.

“Just a busy night.” he admitted and absentmindedly rubbed at his sore knee.

“Aww you’re a treasure, keepin’ us so safe.” he patted his arm again and he fully smiled this time. “You just tell me if you need anythin’ else. I’ve got more coffee, lemme get ya more coffee, Elvis.”

“Thanks Miss Brenda.” he called to her and she giggled as she fetched the cloudy pot.

The bell over the entrance jangled and from Elvis’ chosen vantage point in a booth that faced the doors, always facing his entry that man, he saw Joe Esposito walk in, smiling like a motherfucker for a Wednesday morning and swaggering like Elvis hadn't seen the little runt do since he passed the bar back in 1980 something.

“Hey Brenda, hey EP!” Joe greeted and Elvis braced himself for a cheerful morning when all his hopes had been for some quiet and a little maple syrup glazed despondency.

“Hey Joe.” Elvis greeted his old friend, “You in town?”

“Yeah, my route’s takin’ me to Las Cruces.” Joe informed him as he helped himself to the booth across from Elvis without invitation. If he ate one of Elvis’ bacon strips, even reached for it, Elvis would be pulling out his Glock.

“How’s business?” Elvis asked as neutrally as possible, knowing that it was a sore subject for Joe who had once bragged about being destined for big things, holding it over everybody else at the high school back in Memphis. Still Elvis couldn’t help but ask, partly because it was small talk and if he could get Joe on the subject he knew the feller wouldn’t stop talking, and Elvis could then eat his eggs with minimal requirements for speech. He also took some inner consolation in the fact that all Joe’s brags had worked out about as poorly as Elvis’ dreams had.

It made for two portly middle aged men in a Waffle House booth discussing gas prices at noon.

Joe ordered just pancakes and Elvis judged the lack of meat from beneath his lavender shades and patiently asked the right questions to keep Joe smacking his breakfast with an open mouth and waxing sentimental about life on the road. It suited Joe, even if it was boringly unimportant, he was king of the road in between stops at Walmart distribution centers and out in the stretches of no man’s land the girls were cheap, far cheaper than any Times Square street walker. Joe hadn’t been to Times Square since he was sixteen but it was something he still liked to brag of and to incorporate in his life story like it was an integral part of his narrative.

“But are they fresher?” Elvis inquired, always intrigued by the subject of pussy but also harboring a deep aversion to the way most men spoke on the subject.

“Nah, not really, but that’s why ya go for the mouth.” Joe catechsied Elvis on the ways of call girls and Elvis felt his eye twitch, personally he enjoyed blow jobs as much as the next guy but to avoid the pussy all together as Joe was suggesting? It took all the joy out of the act for Elvis and he picked at his eggs morosely as he listened. He’d had such a large appetite before Joe sat down and started talking of fishy cunts and girls with throats like drainage pipes.

Joe had been to the truckers lounge, the trucker club, the strip place, whatever it was called -the place Marty ran. Elvis knew it, he tried not to react to the name, to pretend he didn’t gas up at the Texaco next door with the express intent of hoping to catch sight of you some nights. He never did, and he’d never been in. But Joe had gone in and Joe being Joe sat across from Elvis the next morning and bragged to a law officer about paying for a blow job. Which along with ruining Elvis’ appetite was offense enough for Elvis to decide to arrest the fucker, but the eloquent details of the slut who’d given it to him made Elvis see red.

Elvis didn’t really mind folks watching you, some stupid, possessive part of him was glad that all those fuckers drooled over you and couldn’t touch, same as him as he sat year after year in his lawn chair on his porch, watching you pass his trailer with longer and longer legs, prettier and prettier as the dusty days rolled by.

But to touch you? That someone else had touched you? The butter on his waffles suddenly looked wrong.

“-just fifty bucks man. Fifty bucks well spent.” Joe was bragging like he’d cheated the stock market and Elvis heard a roar in his ears that the doctors swore the pills would take care of.

You’d sucked Joe Esposita for fifty dollars right after Elvis had told you to be good and you’d blown him a kiss.

His chest hurt.

Elvis had Joe’s greasy face pressed into the syrupy plate with his hands behind his back and cuffs clanking before either the officer or the suspect even realized his intent. “Prostitution’s illegal, motherfucker, as is paying for such services in the state of Texas.”

You’d told him you’d be good. Fuck! He so badly didn’t wanna think of Joe being your first that he had to countenance speculation about you making a regular habit of this thing which was both worse and better all at once and he took out his frustration at that knowledge by trundling Joe into the back of the squad car with far more force than necessary.

It was a flimsy charge to file, Elvis knew that even before the clerk gave him the usual papers to fill out with a confused look. Wasn’t like Elvis was gonna put down your face or name, give away your crime. Without that connection the charge of paying for sex was flimsy and Joe would be released before dark. But it was nice to hear him sqealin’ and bitchin’ about his driving schedule and a buncha other ordinary begs that made Joe E sound as pathetic as Elvis knew he was.

It fortified Elvis throughout the day, kept him from going to your trailer or interrupting you at work to ask why in God’s name you would degrade yourself like that. It kept him bolstered with red hot rage until he was staked out in desert twilight on the dark side of the Texaco, headlights off and his eyes squinted as he watched patrons and girls go into the club.

This was his fault, for locking your daddy up, driving you to such lengths. He felt sick about it, shoulda known a stubborn, white trash girl like you would just reach for the next alternative this easy. Made him sick. Elvis suddenly felt nice and superior to all these men filing into the neon lit cinderblock structure, he had resisted touching himself to the fantasies that had filled his mind about you last night. Wasn’t pertinent that he had a stiffy right now, that was just the nerves and excitement of a stake out revving him up

He lit up a cigar and let Mellancamp growl over the stereo, engine off and the key turned just a little for the dash lights to stay on. He wasn’t sure when you got off work at the club, he assumed it must be some time around dawn and that suited his shit circadian rhythm just fine. He wasn’t tired as the hours went by, he was downright furious and his heart hurt and he popped a couple oxys sitting there with his busted knee throbbing and his mind a demented echo chamber.

By the time the sky was turning a sickly violet with the first promises of sunrise, Elvis had worked himself up to such a degree as to have his door flung open and one boot rhythmically tapping against the cement in his agitation, legs spread to alleviate the ache his pills had provoked in his groin even as the rest of him felt loose and untethered and decidedly deserving for once.

When you walked out the front of the club into the stale early morning air you laughed to yourself at the silliness of thinking you’d need a coat. Your little denim shorts and cherry print crop top suited just fine even in the early dark. That NASCAR jacket you’d had your eye on, the one Shay showed you on eBay, it would have to wait, the tips were shit tonight. No real hurt with that, wasn’t like it was cold. Just another something you wanted and would have to put off. You hadn’t driven tonight as the walk was cheaper and closer but you’d forgotten your pepper spray back at the truck stop and you hesitated for a moment about going back in, hating the idea of getting sucked into some sorta early morning drama from the drunk leftovers. While you were debating, a flash of white seared your vision and you staggered to a stop in the middle of the mostly deserted parking lot.

Headlights.

Well shit, now you really wished you had that spray. You thought about making a run for it, trying the nearest truck cab and praying the guy in it was less of a creep than whoever stakes out on the deserted side of the building.

“You get over here!” the approaching figure came into view, finally silhouetted by his own lights as he stalked towards you wearing a leather trench coat like some noir villain.

It would be a lie to say you breathed easier when you recognized Officer Presley’s commanding baritone.

“Shit shit shit.” you chanted beneath your breath at how riled he sounded and his right hand started making angry gestures for you to approach as he himself closed the distance with a deceptively fast gait.

“Hey, get your ass over here, I called you.” he yelled far more loudly than necessary with his massive hands already closing around your wrists, you didn’t even think to make a run for it, where exactly in the world was a kinder place to turn to than this angry law officer who always nosed in your business too much? “Get, get over here.” he repeated with a yank and tugged you stumbling over your flip flops to his squad car.

He bent you over the hood, just like you’d dreamed of more than a few times and you felt the heat of the headlight against your thigh as your shoulders got twisted back. “-solicitation,” he was pronouncing and your heart sank at the realization he had caught you after your promise, “prostitution-“ the cold clamp of a handcuff on your wrist had none of the rebel thrill you once imagined, it was terrifying and you whimpered pathetically at the thought that you’d expended his patience, that maybe your flirty banters had been one sided and he really was fed up with you.

“Officer-“ you begged with your cheek smashed to the hood.

Some guy had walked up, actually being a good citizen and concerned about the manhandling. It took one flash of Officer Presley’s badge for the guy to back away with a mere “you at least gonna read her the rights, man?”, throwing concerned looks over his shoulder. Maybe he’d been a tipper, you didn’t recall one face from another unless they were awfully ugly or skinny.

“Yeah, yeah I’ll read you your rights, you got the goddamn right to remain silent-“ Officer Presley was struggling with the other cuff and his weight on your lower back made you wheeze just as he was short of breath. He was awfully worked up, huffily trying to clasp the cuffs and slurring your Miranda rights carelessly for so staunch a believer in laws and precepts.

When he succeeded and stood you upright you craned your neck to look at his sweaty face behind you and his eyes were wild and his hair disheveled like he’d run his hands through it a million times tonight. He looked a bit obsessed with his nose flaring like that, his speech slurring and his usual decorum completely goners.

“Are you drunk?” you balked in alarm as he trundled you into the backseat, face first into leather with your cuffed hands behind you, ass stuck out the door.

“Of course I ain’t!” he howled and pushed your butt further until you righted yourself on the bench seat, “I’m your officer of the law, that’s what I am.”

“I-I-I know that, I just-“ you felt a cold sweat break out at the realization he kept all his stubborn righteousness even skunk drunk on something, “-you seem a little…impaired. For a law officer. For a law officer driving on a government road. See! I do listen, I do and I really don’t think that while you’re dr-“

“I don’t even touch the booze, unlike you.” he spit. “Nothin’ gonna get you outta this, this time you’re gonna learn your lesson!” he wagged his finger and slammed the door shut, you could hear his seething monologue through his open door as he came round and took his own seat up front, the hard plastic partition only muting it slightly. “I can’t stand, won’t stand for it, no hard times gonna make for you-“

You tugged at the cuffs on your wrists and swallowed at their security, the ole man might be inebriated but he sure knew his line of work. It made you doubly anxious at how vulnerable you were, unbuckled and cuffed in the back seat of a man about to hit the road in a blind, possibly medicated rage. Your one glimmer of hope was the fact you were the cause of that rage -and you hoped, hoped so damn hard he cared out of some sort of fondness, not anger.

“Strippin’ and blowin’ and probably snortin’ shit and you ain’t even outta highschool-“

“You turned eighteen?!” He balked, jerking the rearview down to stare you in the eyes.

“Yes sir.” you agreed meekly.

“And you didn’t tell me? I’d have gotten you somethin’!” he cried out, “Eighteen and don’t tell nobody, no mama, no daddy, and now fuckin’ with the law-“

“Officer Presley I understand you’re angry and I’m sorry-“ you tried your most vehemently ass kissing tone and scooted up to the edge of the seat, face pressed the the scuffed, forehead greased plastic divider, “I’m so sorry I had to break my promise to ya but money’s been so tight, I—ooh shit-!“

You tipped over on your side as he hit the accelerator, the wheel already turned for a complete 180 spin to leave the dingy parking lot and its flashing neon lights. You sat yourself back up and pressed your face back where you could watch his leather gloves spin the wheel, and breathe as close to him as possible even if it didn’t serve to make him notice. The plastic sorta hampered the more primal assets at your disposal. You were readying for some more protests when he spoke up, his pouty, boyish, hurt tone emphasized by his jerky merging into three lanes worth of morning commute traffic

“— why didn’t you come to me?” he cried out and you had to give it to him, crossing three white lines that smoothly while in a rage wasn’t for anyone, he had a knack, “Why didn’t you say, ‘Officer Presley, if I don’t have me enough money for’ -what is it you need money for?”

“EVERYTHING!” You screamed back, exasperated and a little scared at the blur of tail lights he wove you through.

“You’re greedy,” he surmised, “you’d rather go work at the tit shack as a lot lizard, shakin’ it for strangers and suckin’ Joe E’s cock than ask for my help. My help!” He stabbed at his chest with a gloved finger and it was quite obvious how tore up he was over that mental image, you didn’t know he knew such particulars but you could use this to your advantage, you could try at least.

“Officer Presley,” you cooed as gently as you could with road noise and a plastic divider hampering your sultry intentions, if you had freedom of movement you’d be reaching around his thick neck and tucking that one sweaty curl behind his ear where it tufted with his sideburn, “I’d have preferred it was you,” you watched closely as that sank in, the lead foot easing on the accelerator, there was a choice up ahead, left to the precinct or right to the trailer park, “but I’ve got my pride and I couldn’t just take charity from you. I kept hopin’ you’d come in, then we could both do each other a favor.”

You could hear him sniff, running a hand underneath his nose. “That right?”

“Yeah.” You breathed, forehead thudding back against the plastic and at the red light intersection he stopped and craned his neck to look at you. “Don’t take me in, not this morning, please, pleaaasssse!” you begged, “We’ve both been working all night and we’re tired and sad and- you need somebody to make you dinner before you fall asleep, don’t ya?”

It was a dirty, dirty ploy to distract him like that but you could see with searing clarity the way his eyes wavered in their glare, then softened into childlike meekness at the thought of food and companionship. “You wanna come back to mine?” he whispered, gravelly from all the yelling and his eyelids batted under the lavender shades, azure and owlish.

“I really do.” you agreed, “Mine hasn’t had any air conditioning in seven months.” you admitted and he made a wounded noise of protest for your deprivations. You’d make him see why you took to stripping, he just had to be eased into it.

“I didn’t take it outta the freezer ‘fore I left.” he realized dejectedly as he turned right -away from the station.

You took a massive breath and tried to make it go to your swimming head, relief coursing through you at getting your way. Then you tried to process what he’d said. “Oh, your dinner?” you prodded.

“Yeah. It’s frozen. Lasagna.” he mumbled.

“Well, that’s nothing me and a microwave can’t solve.” you assure, gauging how his profile had softened in the dim lighting of the cab lights but his grip on the wheel and his jittery leg were about as stiff and upset as when he cuffed you. “What could I do for you in exchange for a bite?” you whispered, the sudden stop of the car making you realize with a hitch in your breath that you were in front of his place.

“I liked you.” he suddenly spoke up with such vehemence that it would have been comedic, what with him having already given into you and taken you home, but instead it was a little heartbreaking. “I liked you but you was too young!”

“I still like you.” you hedged, “Even though you cuffed me and called me a lot lizard.” you teased.

The solicitation, the sharing, it seemed to be his chief sore.

“That’s whatchu is!.” He grouched, staring out his front windshield at the single hung lamp illuminating freshly washed vinyl. “But I’ve taken you home anyways.”

“It’s really sweet of you.” you insisted, shifting on the peeling bench seat and wondering when he’d take you out of the car. “Are you gonna let me warm up that lasagna?”

“You said you wished I’d come in?” he ignored you and went back to your previous comment, about wishing he had frequented the truck stop.

Well, well, Officer Presley - a man like all others, after all.

You smirked, sticky lip gloss feeling a little cracked at this corners as you beamed at your little victory. “Maybe I could find a way to show my appreciation for takin’ me back to your air conditioned little palace. -while the lasagna is warming up.” you clarified and heard him grunt, and shift, his legs spreading a little wider in the cramped front seat.

“Yeah?” he pressed, sounding a little winded unless you were just too quick with the assumptions tonight.

“Yeah.”

“You offerin’ to be *my* lot lizzard?” He asked and after a tense minute where you were unsure if he was about to be angry again, he tapped the glass and whispered, “A joke, c’mon, don’t you get it? It’s a joke.”

“But I would!” You insisted after laughing for his benefit.

“Hmm.” He sniffed again, “Well. Hmm.” and with that unclear utterance he opened his door and heaved himself out into the stale Texas air, hiking up his pants again in that useless habit and shutting it behind him. It seemed an eternity before he finished hiking and shifting and shaking a leg out before he came and opened your door, a gentlemanly action made necessary by the stupid cuffs, still clanking around your wrists, as you scooted out of the back seat.

Officer Presley surveyed you up and down, blinking blearily as if he hadn’t seen you fully in the dark parking lot, like the glare of his headlights wasn't sufficient to show him your little cherry tank top and denim shorts, the satin tops of your red bra peeking out of the stretched neckline. “Hmm.” he hummed again and surveyed you once more, the pull of the cuffs behind your back adding to your posture being a bit booby. “Now ‘fore you cross my threshold, I’ve got house rules.” he was swaying a bit alarmingly and caught himself on the side mirror, you chose to ignore this and give him all the deferential attention needed to cure his -jealousy? Was he jealous? Of all the men who tipped you? “First rule, no dirty feet in the house. I hate filthy carpets. I hate them.”

“O-ok.” you agreed.

“Clean feet.”

“Okey.”

“Hmm. Ok.” he closed his eyes and recalled the next, “Let’s see uh- no back talkin’! No talkin’ back, what I say, goes, in my house.”

It was a trailer, not a house. But:

“Of course! You’re the man of the house!” you enthused with a little bounce for his benefit. He was still wacky and veering so fast from niceness to belligerence you were pretty sure you’d end up a little worse for wear after this no matter what. The thought excited you.

“Ok.” he pronounced, staring at the gravel and your feet like he didn’t know what to do now. You wondered when was the last time somebody had come into his place. “I got a doggie, too. Backroom. His word is law, don’t go botherin’ him none.“

Having seen the size of the dog, even if you were inclined to be a jerk to it, you wouldn’t dare. “Gosh of course.”

“Ok.” again. “I’ll get the hose.”

He left you there, leaning cuffed against his squad car as he trundled over his singed lawn to the side of the trailer, returning with the running hose in hand.

You knew it was destined for your feet and didn’t make a fuss as the warm hose water splashed against your blisters, soothing away the dust and the sticky cocktail splashes and god knows what else.

“House rules?” he prompted as he sprayed.

It was getting quite light out now. Probably close to six in the morning. What a long night. “Clean feet, respect doggie, no back talking.” You listed.

“And make yourself useful.” he grunted as if he had mentioned that before and you’d been faulty in your retelling.

“Yeah, of course.”

“Mm, ‘cause you’re my lot lizard now, ain’t ya?” he hummed, hose pointed to the side and suddenly his face was very close to yours, his belly closer and pressed to yours.

“Y-yeah.” you gasped.

“You gonna be a useful lil helper, hmm? Let hims take care of ya while you take care of him?”

Well shit, you weren’t at all sure if this were house rules or a big sexual game. Either way you wanted some lasagna and the crisp prospect of air conditioned sleep. “Yes, officer.”

“Good girl.” he turned the nozzle off on the hose, clamping it at the mouth and dropping it to the gravel.

“You- are you gonna uncuff me?” you giggled nervously as he swayed above you, nose almost brushing yours, eyes heavy and drooping.

“Hmm,” he stepped back and hooked a thumb in his belt loop, a shit eating grin spread over his face, bunching up the apples of his cheeks and turning him into a boy before your very eyes, “nah. I think -nope. Not gonna.”

“Well- shit, officer.” You sputtered, “You’ve got some little secrets?”

“I’ll let you be the judge of how little they are, sweetheart.” he cheesed before reaching out and hooking a finger in your strap, and tugging you gently by it up his porch.

It was odd, Seeing his ceramic tiger up close. Like déjà vu, or walking into a movie, some dream playing out. If your hands had been free, you would’ve pet the head concrete reverently, feeling some sort of gratitude to the noble beast for making your girlhood wishes come true as you tripped through the screen door and into an icebox of a trailer.

He shut the door and pressed you up against it with a move smoother and more practiced than you expected from him. Maybe wrestling criminals and doing the nasty called for the same dexterity. Or maybe he’d been fuckin’ somebody else all this time, waiting for you to grow up. Maybe he’d made a whole harem out of the trailer park and you were just his last pick. The thought hurt terribly, worse yet as you knew most days he was a sweetie, a funny man, attractive and well liked, not this grumpy, pill drunk trailer Baron that smushed you with his belly and sneering face so near but never descending as a lover’s should.

“Kiss me.” you goaded, licking your lips in a studied way. The little contemplative, whining sound he made took you by surprise.

He pulled down your bottom lip with a gloved finger and checked your mouth and tongue like a damn dentist. “Listerine first.”

Of course. Hygiene.

Clean feet, clean mouth, just for him to probably put his piss dribbled cock in it.

He stepped away and methodically took off his gloves, laid them on a small, doily adorned side table by the door, and then his gun and his belt came off with a satisfied grunt that made your inner thighs tingle. The thud of his large flashlight finished this routine.

Doilies.

There were doilies and frilly curtains and the oddest assortment of cheap finery around the place. A nod to the Tuscan craze taking over places like Target and such, while having a unique spin on it you weren’t sure what to name. You took it all in as he piloted you to the bathroom and methodically he pulled out a still wrapped toothbrush and plopped a jumbo sized bottle of mint flavored mouthwash on the fake marble counter.

“You kept that in case you have a lady guest?” You teased as the clinical silence was all a bit funny.

“Yeah.” he agreed without a hint of amusement and you sobered up again at the idea of him having anybody in here but you.

He poured a large quantity of the mouthwash into a paper cup, retrieved from the tidy stack of paper cups beside the sink for that purpose. His housekeeping was an odd mix of spectrum-like meticulousness and slovenly disorder. There were three pairs of pants on the bathroom rug beneath your feet and yet the mouthwash cups were stacked as carefully as the Tower of Babel. “Swish it for seventy five seconds.” He directed very soberly, tipping the liquid disinfectant into your mouth. You almost swallowed the shit. While you swished till your eyes burned and your tongue went numb from scalding mint, he tore at the packaging for the toothbrush.

“Ok, spit.” you happily spat out the green torture liquid and grinned back at him in the mirror.

“Never had a man ask me to spit it out before.” you teased.

He fumbled the toothbrush in surprise for a minute before giving you an admonishing eyebrow. “Girl don’t. We gotta brush your teeth.”

Instead of doing the obvious thing, the honorable thing and uncuffing you, he instead took his place behind you and pushed the toothbrush between your lips, moving it as if you had no arms and were helpless. All this to keep you cuffed.

What a pervert, you thought, charmed.

It was oddly cozy even if it was more than a tad bazaar, him pressing himself to you and running his spare hand along your side as you bent over the counter, trying not to ruin the moment by slurping paste too much. It didn’t seem to bother him, he didn’t watch you brush, he just discreetly rubbed the front of his slacks against your butt and kept his hand jerking the brush across your teeth. His other hand soothingly running up and down the curve of your hip, fingers fluttering under the hem of your tank and brushing bare skin with reverent little swoops.

When you were finished he laid the toothbrush down beside his, on a folded little towel in the back left corner of the vanity next to the mirror.

The domesticity made you smile. “Look, they’re spooning.”

He grabbed your chin gently, tilting your head to the side as he leaned over your shoulder. His lips very close again. “Happy late birthday.” he whispered, “I’d have gotten you a cake. Cupcake. Somethin’. You deserve to be celebrated.”

“Kiss me?” you asked again and this time he did, at his own pace, micromanaging each swipe of tongue and press of lips but he kissed you, strongly and angrily and admiringly in turn. He pulled down your tank as he went, stretching the neck out beyond any salvaging and then your bra, unclasping it with strange proficiency and letting your top gather in a ugly bulge around your hips, stuck by your cuffs and shorts, as his hands cupped and squeezed your breasts, somehow making this appreciative mauling seem essential to the act of kissing.

You two finally separated, breathless and revved up, staring at each other with wild, half lidded eyes.

“Ok.” he pronounced and you readied for more only for him to say, “Lasagna. C’mon.”

His kitchen was far nicer than yours, but still it was a mobile home kitchen. And he was a thorough bachelor. He crooked his fingers into the plastic handle and yanked open the freezer, standing aside with a grin on his face that bode no good for you. “I’m helpin’ ya out a little,” he explained sheepishly, “since you’re hampered.” he had a way of saying it like handcuffs were a natural disability, “But I let you off scott-free in exchange for you makin’ me some food.”

“Food and other things.” you bitched, “Didn’t sign up to be a comedy act.”

“Oh that’s right,” beamed, “you did offer other things.” he bit his lip and you thought you’d won when he went right back to it, “You said while it was warming up, you offered other things, while it was in the microwave. Yeah, so go on, grab that TV dinner there, not the fettuccini one, the lasagna.”

You stared at the open freezer and then back to him and then back to the freezer. “Grab it?” you sassed, not having a lot to lose with your tits out and your hands cuffed and a law officer having fun at your expense.

“You’ve got a mouth don’t ya?”

“You’re sick.” you smiled in realization before sticking your head into the cold space, nipples pebbling against the chilled plastic, and biting at the package containing Walmart’s latest gourmet provisions.

“Uhuh, that’s it.” he sounded more pleased at the sight of you with a frosted package between your teeth than he had all this time, “Heyer doll, I’ll open the microwave for ya.” his ability to make himself gallant when he was demeaning you so thoroughly made your pulse thunder uncontrollably.

You had to jut your chin and strain your jaw to plop the heavy foil package of frozen shit into the mounted microwave -fancy mobile home owning bastard- and shove it onto its proper revolving plate.

“There we gooo!” he cooed to you and you stepped back to allow him room to shut the door. “See if you can punch the buttons with your widdle nose.” he suggested excitedly and having gone this far, you didn’t see the point in objecting, not when it made him grin like that. You managed to hit the five for five minutes but the “cook” button wouldn’t respond and after banging your nose against it many times, with many laughs shared between, he finally punched it with one of his oddly pretty fingers.

“There we go.” you echoed, finding that you were blushing the minute the hum of the microwave buzzed the air, his eyes pinned to your face.

“Five minutes.” he whispered.

It was a hint. You expected something a little lewder from a man who had you carrying out food prep like a circus dog. A man of many moods and tastes, was officer Presley. “Can you cum that fast?” you asked, turning to face him.

“That’ll depend on you.” he replied levelly, a challenge in his eyes. He still wore his glasses, somehow that made you feel filthier than all the cash favors you’d ever done. He turned a little in his stance to lean back against the counter, his wrist watch jangling against the edge of the formica, his legs widening.

You dropped to your knees, linoleum freezing against your skin and you looked back up at the ticking microwave timer. You knew what he wanted, and if you were being half honest, it’s what you wanted too. So you didn’t act too good for pressing your face to the crotch of his uniform slacks, forehead indenting the swell of his belly above you and taking his zipper between your teeth. Filled out as his slacks were, with all the stupid gathers and the still fastened button, you could only barely see veiny pink flesh behind the newly opened fly.

“No boxers?” you chided him with a smirk and the unapologetic one he gave you in return made your belly clench, as did the musky smell of him and that soft double chin he had when looking down at you. There was stubble on it blending into his throat.

You’d been right, mouthwash and sterilization for your tongue but not even a spit bath for his sweaty balls and clammy dick -the man was out of his mind. You swallowed down the natural aversion the scent gave you and nuzzled your face nearer, trying to nose the button out of its hole. All you did was succeed in brushing his pants against him and making him impatient.

“Four minutes and twenty seven seconds.” He enunciated the timer reading for your benefit and you whimpered at the impossibility of getting the button undone without hands.

“Please, I can’t undo it.” you asked for his help, tugging at your handcuffs angrily, shoulders painfully aching and only the base of his thick penis visible with its nest of curls and heavy sack.

“Then make due.” he stared down at you unimpressed and you felt an overwhelming urge to grind yourself against his boot at his disdainful expression.

Blinking away horny, frustrated tears, you held your breath and buried your face again, nuzzling inbetween the fly gap, using your chin to tug the crotch further down until his heavy, purplish pink balls spilled over the respectable khaki’s and into the cold air. A bit of hope filled you at how taut and bunched they already were, he wasn’t so cool and unaffected as he acted. You saw him reach into his pocket, digging for something as you weighed your next decision.

“Don’t you want some lasagna?” he prodded.

That made you mash your face to his pants and take both of those hairy balls into your mouth, slurping and sucking at them like a shop vac. His jangling movements in his pocket ceased suddenly before picking up again, and then he withdrew it, a sharp gasp heard above you before he stuck a retrieved cigarette between his lips and lit it. A billowy cloud of Marlborough was blown over your crouching form as the microwave hummed on and his chest hummed in satisfaction. He shoved his hand back into his pocket, knuckling along at his cock.

“That’s it.” he sighed as you mouthed at the base as best you could, tonguing at the hefty vein running along the underside, slathering as much as you could reach. He was salty and tacky to taste and his pants were growing wet from something more than your spit. He was a leaky little man, it made your smirk and smack your lips.

“Feel good, officer?” you moaned in question, just as the microwave dinger went off. “Nooo, damnit, no!” you whined at the sound, a poor loser at all times.

Officer Presley only chuckled and twisted a little to pop open the door, hissing and cussing as he grabbed the benign edges of the hot foil and plopped it into the counter, “Hey hey hey, I didn’t say you could get up, now, did I?” he chided as you shifted a tiny bit away to watch him pull off the cover and reveal cheesy red sauce. Your stomach was in knots, it was so empty.

“No.” you admitted.

He twisted his torso to snag himself a fork from the drawer beside your head, and then, stabbing the casserole with it, took both his hands down to his pants and undid the button at last, letting his pants fall to the floor as they’d been trying to do and been prevented by a belt each time you’d seen him. “Finish what you started, doll, and then I’ll give you a bite.”

You swallowed hard, saliva pooling freely in your tongue at the smell of Italian food. It would be of use. He was tapping his sputtering fat cockhead to your lips and after a tiny grunt of resistance, you gave in, opening your glossy lips and letting him slide the thick meat over your tongue, tangy and salty and pulsing like a living rod, all the way to the back of your throat.

“Fuck me, that’s it.” he nodded to himself as you gagged around him, pulling back a little before pushing back in.

You heard the slide of the casserole tray against the counter and the crunch of tin foil, looking up through bleary eyes you saw him cradle the lasagna pan to his chest, balanced on top of his gut. You hollowed your cheeks around him while watching in disbelief as he stabbed at a bite and brought the laden fork to his mouth. He groaned around the bite in enjoyment -your guess over which pleasure was gaining the upper hand. Feeling a little competitive against TV dinner lasagna, you worked his cock faster, sucking more deliberately and trying very hard to let him down your throat, pleased as his hips began to cant and thrust in time with your encouragements.

“That’s it, that’s it, my sweet little homegrown hoe.” he mumbled to you adoringly through a mouthful of pasta and it made your face glow in pleasure, chin and chest dripping with the filth of it all. “I’m gonna, I’m gonna-“ he warned suddenly, pasta tossed back on the counter as he stood up straight and grabbed the back of your head, holding it still, smoldering cigarette pinned dangerously near your ear and hair as he fucked your mouth with fast, frantic pumps before a frankly preposterous amount of spunk filled your mouth and dolloped down your throat.

He petted your head as you struggled to breath again, cloying gloop coating your mouth, one hand coming up to take off his glasses and toss them to the side. He rubbed at his eyes and you realized you weren’t the only one teary eyed from the intensity of it. “Mm, reckon I gotta keep ya after that.” he decided, knuckling your cheek fondly, they were sticky to your surprise. “Want that bite?” he asked conversationally and while you’d have preferred some water to wash down his most recent gift, you nodded anyway and he stabbed at the casserole until he had a great big bite and brought it down to your mouth, smirking as your cheeks once again bulged at the mouthful.

“Thank you.” you smiled up at him and he humphed bashfully before motioning with his fingers for you to stand up.

“Wanna eat the rest of this in bed?” he asked eagerly, licking his teeth, “I’ve got a waterbed.” he added like that would convince you.

“Of course you do.” you giggled. “And of course I do - lead the way.”

He grinned and pushed off the counter, grabbing the casserole as he went. “Might even find the keys for those back here.” he joked about your cuffs before adding with a wicked little wink, “No promises, mind.”

Hope you enjoyed, I write for screams and comments and unhinged feedback. 🤓♥️

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[copperbadge]

Not a full week after I mention in a story that Gerald's favorite candy is Violet Crumble, which is honeycomb candy covered in chocolate, and then discuss how it can be a little hard to find in America, I find this in the New Items shelf at Trader Joe's. Did I will it into existence? The world may never know.

[ID: A photograph of a package of Honeycomb Candy, with a beehive hexagon motif on the packaging; the image shows three chunks of chocolate-covered candy, and a fourth that has been split open to show the toffee "honeycomb" interior. Honeycomb candy is made by inducing a gas reaction in toffee while it's still molten; it puffs up and hardens with air pockets throughout, making it look like honeycomb. No actual honey is generally involved. Also they are delicious.]

[redbeardace]

Okay, I have a fun social engineering project for someone willing to convince some gullible conspiracy theory nutjobs to do something they think is furthering their "research" into their bonkers "theories", but that's really doing actual science.

You see, there's a citizen science initiative out there called the Global Meteor Network. Their goal is to record and locate meteors all over the world, in an attempt to calculate potential orbits of dangerous space rocks who might be looking to dinosaur us into oblivion. They work by having a series of cameras that record the night sky, generally located in people's backyards, which will then send information about detected meteor trails back to the central server.

The process can produce maps like this. This map is important for the social engineering project, so I'll come back to it later.

They need at least two cameras recording the same event in order to triangulate its position. The more cameras they have, the better. More coverage means more data, and it's less likely that a tree, light pollution, or a stray cloud would obscure the meteor from all observation stations.

I think this is an interesting project and I'd probably already be taking part, if my backyard weren't a canyon with an extremely limited view of the sky.

Anyway, the point is, this project watches the skies and makes maps of what it sees. This is where the social engineering project comes in.

If you haven't been paying attention, for the last month or so, people have suddenly realized that there are a lot of airplanes that fly over New Jersey. However, the reaction has not been "Huh, there are a lot of airplanes that fly around New Jersey. I'd never noticed that before." Instead, the reaction has been "OmG WeRE bEiNg InVaDeD bY (Iranians|Antifa|Aliens|Joe Biden)". Any attempt to point out that hey, look, this picture is obviously an airplane and you're under the flight path for EWR will be met by derision and how what it REALLY shows is ACTUALLY a 6 foot long Chinese Spy Drone that just LOOKS exactly like a 787 with its landing lights on so it can blend in and that any attempt to claim otherwise is the height of arrogance and an insult to their scientific investigation that involves staring at fuzzy blobs on a webcam all day. So let's not bother to point that out anymore, and let's use their nutjobbery to get some science done!

Now, this is where that map comes in. You see, they're mostly not interested in scientific research on this phenomenon (If they were, they'd be out with surveyor transits and doing trigonometry to debunk all the obvious airplanes on approach to JFK, so they can focus on the legitimate mystery objects, and I'd respect that approach), what they're interested in is confirmation bias. So let's give it to them. I present to you, the Great Mysteries of the Night UAP Tracker map!

Oh, look at all those Unidentified Aerial Phenomena out there! But why aren't there any over New Jersey, when CLEARLY that's where the Canadian Mind Probes That Want To Steal The Concept Of Hexagons are concentrated at the moment? Well, no one's set up any tracker cameras there yet, so it's a blind spot.

So, why don't you, good citizen/defender of the Earth, set up one of these cameras to keep watch on the skies? It's fully automated, you just set it up and leave it running and it'll watch the skies and report what it finds to a network of like-minded investigators/patriots/seekers, and you don't have to do anything else!

Lots of blue dots appear on the map, and with those blue dots, lots more streaks appear. Hover orbs confirmed!

Meanwhile, the Global Meteor Network gets an influx of new stations in areas where they currently don't have much coverage.

And here's the thing: If I were developing a method to detect and track strange things in the sky, I'd probably start with the exact same technology that the GMN is using. With a network of georeferenced all-sky cameras, you'd be able to triangulate object positions in real time. You'd need a denser network to track things at lower altitudes, but I think the current hype could make that possible. Then maybe add in an ADS-B receiver, like a Dump1090 or PiAware, to help filter out most (but not all) aircraft. It wouldn't even have to be set it up as a trick at that point, it'd collect all the data for UFO hunters, but also send stuff along to GMN and your favorite airplane tracker.

[enteringdullsville]

Okay, so Power Rangers is done with adaptations, but what if there was a season where every Ranger came from one of the 11 different teams whose suits went entirely unused?

Power Rangers All-Stars

It could very easily go the RPM/Dino Charge route of being its own universe, especially given that Cosmic Fury was the definitive end of that continuity. Maybe all of them could be the sole survivors from PR teams that had all fallen in battle.

The Baron/All-Star Red (Engine Fire)

ToQ 1 was my first choice for a protagonist solely because I loved the idea of the Rangers traveling via a magic train their Red owned. There’s also a bit of irony in the team being led by a Ranger from a Sentai without a leader, and it’s especially fitting since his season has a color swap gimmick. Even the All-Stars’ colors match the ToQgers. Aside from Blue, his suit is the least armored, giving the impression he’s tough enough without it.

He’s the one who’s lost the most, but Baron acts as a mostly eccentric figure, a eternally optimistic goofball who insists the team does the usual Sentai theatrics. He’s probably insane, but he gets results easily and is far smarter than people give him credit for.

Cory/All-Star Yellow

The rookie, fittingly wearing the newest suit courtesy of the 50th team. He’s the last of seven core members to join, doing so in the first episode while everyone else has already been at it for a while now, and he’s from Season 49, 7 squared. He’s also dinosaur themed, matching Mighty Morphin and fitting the protagonist well. On a more serious note, since the GoZyugers seem to be fighting each other in addition to everything else going on, he’ll be the only one who wasn’t already on a team.

He’s somewhere between Casey Rhodes and Tyler Navarro; young, looking for answers, ludicrously strong but not entirely confident in his skills as a Ranger, but he doesn’t have to lead so that’s at least one less thing on his plate.

His name is a play on Kyoryuger (“kyoryu” means “dinosaur”).

Jade/All-Star Green (FACET)

There’s no particular reason why I chose Kiramei Green, her suit’s just my favorite from her team.

Jade is Baron’s second in command. She’s the team’s heart and soul, being the most sensible person in All-Stars for numerous reasons. She’s soft spoken, yet firm. That’s why Baron trusts her.

Virgil/All-Star Blue (Phantom Force)

I wanted both of the VS Sentai to be on the core team, which of course meant I more or less had to use them for Blue and Pink.

Virgil’s a notorious showoff and charmer in the vein of Chase or Xander. He’s naturally talented enough that he doesn’t feel the need to take anything seriously, which can rub some of his teammates the wrong way.

Siren/All-Star (Hyper Guard)

Siren is a direct and stark contrast with Virgil, being fierce, dedicated, sometimes even harsh. Think Jen or Sky but with Vida’s temperament. The two argue constantly but work together perfectly.

As a duo, their first initials spell out “VS”, and their individual names are a pun on “vigilante” and literally “siren”.

Rod/All-Star Orange (Cyber Corps)

The smart guy, he creates most of technology the team uses that didn’t come from their original teams. Bun Orange fit the role pretty well; he himself had the uncanny ability to get anything the team needed, and PR’s precursors to Fern (Boom and Kat Manx) were the science types.

Rod also happens to be a robot, or at least some sort of mechanical life form; all the Orange Sentai starting from ToQger, that is to say all of them outside of Battle Fever J, are nonhuman. He’s got a very similar personality to Alpha, being quick to panic and slightly unlucky.

Asher/All-Star Violet (Hexagon)

Finally is Asher, whose counterpart is the only violet Sentai to be part of the core, starting group. Personality wise, they’re practically identical to their Sentai self with a bit of Gokaiger’s Joe and RPM’s Dillon for flavor. They’re the most serious and aloof of the seven, as serious as you can be in a lavender moth suit.

Oh, and there’s four “sixth” rangers on the team I guess.

[tl-screenshots]

BFDI Characters

8-Ball 9-Ball A A duck Amber Amethyst Ammolite Anchor Announcer Anvil Apple Aquamarine Avocado Axinite Baby Balloony Bally Banana Apple Barf Bag Basketball Battery BBQ Sauce BeiBei Bell Benitoite Billy Bob Joe Birthday Cake Black Hole Blender Blocky Bomby Bone Book Boombox Boom Mic Bottle Bracelety Bubble Burrito Bugs Buttslide Man Cake Cake's Dad Camera Cave Drawing Naily Cereal Box Clapboard Carrot Cakes Check-It Eyebrows Cheeseburger Cheese Orb Cherry Jr. Chips Chompy Christmas Tree Chrysoberyl Clock Cloudy Coiny Conch Shell Coral Cord Clip Credit Card CRT Cube Polyhedron Cube Roller Cubey Cursed Announcer with Body David Davidworm Deadly Diamond Diamond (ABCDEFG) Dioptase Discy Divide Operator Dodecahedron Polyhedron Donut Dora Dragon Drear-Top Eggy Eight Eighth Note Electric Guitar Emerald Eraser Evidence Bag Evil Leafy Exploding David Fanny Fake Firey Feldspar Fifteen Firey Firey Jr. Fire Monster Firey Speaker Box Firey Speaker Box's Clone Fish Monster Five Flower Flower Speaker Box Fluorite Foldy Football Player Four Fourteen Fries Frog Frozen Yogurt Fry Garnet Gaty Gelatin Glass Glue Gold Golf Ball Gramophone Grandfather Clock Grassy Gratitude Hello Kevin Hematite Hexagon Speaker Box Hot Sauce Ice Cube Icosahedron Polyhedron Income Tax Return Document Infinity lolite Ivory Jade Jasper JingJing Juice Box Johnson Jordan Kabab Kitchen Sink Kornerupine Lapis Lazuill Leafy Leafy's Family Leek Lego Brick Lewis Lightbulb Lightning Lithium Liy Lollipop Loser Lottery Speaker Box Malachite Marble Marble Bottle Marker Match Member Metronome Milkshake Minus Operator Mocha Mouth Naily Needle Nickel Nickel (Inanimate Insanity) Nine Nonagon Polygon Nonexisty N Variable O Obsidian Octagon Polygon Octahedron Polyhedron One One-Half Fraction One-Quarter Fraction One-Third Fraction Onigiri Opal Pastel Feather PDA Pearl Pen Pencil Peridot Phi Irrational Pie Pi Irrational Pillow Pin Plus Operator Poo Popcorn Portable Music Player Popsicle Price Tag Profily Puffball Puffball Speaker Box Pumpkin Puppet Purple Face Purple Girl with Wind Hair and Angry Eyes Purple Round Speaker Pyrite Quadrilateral Polygon Quartz Radio Announcer Raisin Ramen Noodles Rectangle Polygon Remote Robot Butlers Robot Flower Roboty Rocky Rose Rubber Spatula Ruby Rusty Coin Salt Lamp Sam Sam (Salmon Fiveyears) Sapphire Saw Scared/Dumb Scissors Selfie Dog Seven Shampoo Shirty Shopping Cart Side-View X Six Skull Sling Shot Singing Narrator Slivery Snare Drum Snowball Spike Ball Speaker Box Spongy Spray Can Square Polygon Square Root Operator Stapy Steamy Strudel Super Fan Taco Tape Teabag Teardrop Ten Tent Tennis Ball Tennis Ball Speaker Box Tetrahedron Polyhedron Times Operator Thirteen Three Three-Quarters Fraction Topaz Touch-Tone Tree Triangle Polygon Triangle Speaker Box Tune Turquoise TV Two Undecagon Polygon USB Vacuum VHSy Variscite Vomit Waffle Water Bottle Winner Woody X Yellow Face Yellow Facey Yellow Watermelon Your Mom Your Name Y Variable Zero Z Variable

[apprenticestanheight]

Never Again, and Never By Choice - Chainshipping

okay!! two days into july and I'm posting the fic that was supposed to come out in June but didn't bc I also happened to learn how to make hexagon cardigans in june and that pretty much mostly swallowed me whole. I'm taking a break from crocheting, however, until I can find a job and buy loads of yarn ahead of needing to make people christmas gifts and the like, so hopefully this month will genuinely be productive.

Fic type - this is a balance between fluff and hurt/comfort that tilts more in the

Warnings - there are a few mentions of sex and sex related things! Enough are in the fic for me to say that this fic is for an audience of 18+, minors do not interact! Some of (most, if not all) occur in tandem with references to weed, and a lot of the fic deals with weed use, including using weed to self medicate for things like anxiety. There are also depictions of PTSD symptoms and some are talked about in depth or mentioned a few times, like Adams fear of the water being so bad that he can't get himself to shower unless he follows a hyperspecific routine. Adam is v e r y knowledgable about the things he uses to self medicate so there are some specifics about the weed type he usually smokes, and this differs from canon in that gabriela doesn't die and john is at least alive until 2006-ish. strahm also survives, as does lynn, mark, and amanda.

When Amanda rescues Adam from the trap, the initial feelings are confusion and anger. He'd not known it was her until the memory hit him a weeks out from his time in the hospital, and by then, the confusion and the anger had shifted into resentment. Not particularly at his circumstances or at her, but at John Kramer, at life as a whole.

They're stupid things to be angry about, even if one is entirely justified. How he manages to be pissed off at life, at the world, over the actions of another person, mystifies him for a long time.

He keeps his anger at John under wraps even after he's agreed to become one of Johns apprentices, one of Jigsaws disciples. It's boiling, it'll burn you if you touch it and it'll scald you if you dare even think about getting too close, but he lets it dull into a simmer as the years go by.

His anger, his spite, and the money John provides him for the photos he takes are enough to make him let his anger turn into something less than it was initially, and in late December, when he finds himself reeling after taking a photo of a headless body in Mexico, he wonders why he does it.

There's, of course, the obvious answer--each job he does gets him around $500, and the most recent of the lot came for double the price plus the remainder of the cost of Gabrielas plane ticket. The condition was, Adam flew down to Mexico and first talked to Gabriela, tried to convince her to join their mission. When it'd worked, Adam bought her the last available ticket on his flight back to Jersey and was met with $1000 wired to an offshore bank account that Adam would transfer directly to his regular bank a day or two after once again arriving on Jerseys shores.

All in all, taking a few photos and dropping them at the local police station while wearing nondescript clothes, not speaking a word, and shrinking in on himself in a way that made him look like your average Joe to the cameras that were undoubtedly watching had yielded just barely more than $1100.

Thanks to a couple extra sets of hands--namely, Detective Mark Hoffman, Agent Peter Strahm, Amanda Young, Lynn Denlon, and Lawrence fucking Gordon himself--things were quick, and Adam was making a decent amount of money by doing the jobs John had given him every week-ish, if not every three or four days.

John chose the people, Amanda, and Hoffman abducted them, Lynn and Strahm set up the traps, and Lawrence handled the medical side of said traps. Gabriela had started with helping setting traps up initially but had since been the one who recorded the casette tapes of that stupid fucking puppet, and Adam had been the one who took the photos from the beginning.

All in all, Adam didn't totally hate his role in it--it meant, while he'd occasionally brush hairs with Amanda, Hoffman, Strahm or Lynn, he'd never really seen or talked with Lawrence.

He misses Lawrence like hell, if he's being honest with himself, but--it's better they don't talk.

Not until at least a bit of time has passed, even though Adam is a little miffed at the idea of reaching out to Lawrence on the anniversary of one tragedy to be like "hey, old friend! Remember when we spent nine hours in a bathroom together, right before you sawed off your own foot and crawled away, leaving me for dead? Amanda stole my shirt from evidence and even though I've washed it, the bloody handprint you left stained the shirt and I entirely lack the heart to put some peroxide or bleach to an otherwise perfectly good piece of clothing." Which would, in the process, be a direct reminder of another.

He doesn't see Lawrence, and he only acknowledges that he misses him on the nights he chooses to be honest with himself or the days wherein he chooses the same.

Adam just--he does what John needs him to do. He takes the money John gives him after a job, makes sure he has enough to make the rent of the crappy apartment he lives in, and he makes sure he has groceries that will feed him and keep him full.

Gabriela occasionally tags along on the jobs, and all that to say brings him to the very beginning of September 2005. It's the first day of the month, Gabriela has decided to tag along because she's finished setting up the traps for the insurance broker they're going to put through the ringer after the traps have been tested a few times, and she's keeping Adam company because she's one of the four or five people he talks to in his day-to-day, and she's apparently worried.

She's talking about how Lynn needed her to help because Strahm had been busy with Mark cleaning up the messes that they, as the apprentices, left behind. Adam is zoning in and out as he snaps one photo after the next, all of which pertain to the crime scene and all of which will be dropped off at the nearest police precinct once they've developed fully.

He knows he has to visit John today, too--John wants to have a chat, apparently. He's having these little chats with everyone, which is something Adam picks up from Gabriela at a point in their interactions when he's zoned in. He'd started with Amanda, then went to Lawrence, then to Strahm and Lynn and then to Gabriela. She'd joked he was saving the best for last and skipping the worst, like a parent refusing to acknowledge the child they'd silently disowned.

It's when she brings up Lawrence that he brightens up like a goddamned Christmas tree--his ears and cheeks go lightly pink with embarrassment as soon as he's registered the way that his head snaps up when his name falls off her lips.

"Amanda and Lynn were talking about it," she says when she notices his face. "Lynn joked that the two of you needed couples therapy. You two haven't talked since Lawrence left you, and--Amanda thinks it's killing you piece by piece. She's right, isn't she?"

Gabriela is only ten months younger than he is, and while he appreciates having an apprentice in their little group who's about as close in age to him as she can get, it's not always the best thing for his mental health.

"You too?" He asks. "And I thought hearing it from Amanda, Lynn, Hoffman, and Strahm every other damn day was bad enough. Now you're in on it?"

He takes the last photo and pivots on his feet, heading for the exit as Gabriela laughs.

"You two do have something weird going on," she says.

"How can we?" Adam rebuts. "It's been four years, almost, and we haven't spoken at all."

"Thats what it is," Gabriela responds. "It's that--you care about him, clearly, or at least enough to think of him once every week. Lawrence, though, he does care, too. He's apparently more vocal about his caring than you are, but Amanda says he's always been the more open type. She says he's "less apt to have reservations about the people he works with, and he lets his feelings just exist in the open.""

Adam laughs. "That sounds nothing like him," he wonders, for a minute, if he really has the authority to say something like that. He hasn't talked to Lawrence in four years just about, even if he has thought about him multiple times a day, every single day, since they last spoke.

"Well--Amanda wanted me to tell you his new phone number is in the phone book," she says. "If you wanna give him a call, maybe give him a few minutes of your time to ease both your mind and his."

Adam shakes his head. "You headin' back around to your hotel? I gotta pay John a visit and then get these photos printed and developed. How much longer til you get to head back to your place?"

"The hotel stay is for the next two days, while they clear the infestation out of the units. I'm gonna grab some food and then go to the hotel, all this walking has made me hungry."

Adam snorts. "You need a ride? Your hotel is like, ten minutes east of Johns place."

She shakes her head, but hugs him anyway. "Thank you," she says. "But I'm gonna walk the way to the restaurant, build up more of an appetite and then get something good for supper."

He hugs her back, lets himself acknowledge just how much he's needed her friendship these past few years. She's kept him sane for a good bit, and without her, he's half sure he'd have killed himself by now.

They go their separate ways, Adam going to his car and heading to Johns while Gabriela went to grab food and then go home.

Johns place is also, coincidentally, Amandas place. He's living in her apartment and she's taking care of him in the last of his days. Adam suspects Johns not got long left, and he knows that this visit could very well be their last.

John is, surprisingly, well enough to be sat up in his wheelchair. He's got a black jumper on that looks to be a few sizes too big, and what of his hair remains has gone completely white. His eyes are pale, his skin the same color, and generally, John looks like what he is, someone fast-tracking it on the highway to hell.

"I thought it important to have you here to discuss this arrangement," John says. He invites Adam further into the room--he's leaned against the door, while John is sat by his desk and in front of the window, curtains open to a surprisingly sunny day while Jersey rides out the coattails of summer.

Adam steps in, walking until he can sit in the desk chair to Johns left. John tells him to do so, and he does.

"You and I have an arrangement that allows you to be given a certain amount of money for every job you do," he says. "If you weren't lying to me when you told me the time you'd handle doing said job today, you should've just arrived from having finished up there. I have arranged through the correct, most trusted of my channels to ensure that our arrangement can continue for half a decade, at minimum, after my passing, on one condition."

Adam has the decency to fight his grimace, even though he loses.

"Don't worry, Adam," he says. "It doesn't mean you'll be getting any more involved with things than you already are. It, actually, pertains to your trap-mate, Lawrence Gordon."

Adam shakes his head. "Whatever it is, I can always find something different to do other than what I've been doing."

"Adam, I'm not asking for much," John says in that diplomatic tone that used to make Adam punch-a-hole-in-the-wall type angry. It's eased into a scream-into-a-forest level anger, though not by too much as the years have passed them both by. "Just--call him. It's been four years since, almost. Amanda and I have tried time and time again, but he's convinced we're as deluded as he is. He thinks you're dead."

"Almost was," Adam says before he can stop himself. "I mean--could you not have sent Amanda in before I'd been stuck in the dark for a week?"

"We're all entitled to our mistakes from time to time," John shrugs. Adam has the brain to hate that remark--people who've dared make mistakes in his line of sight, even ones so minimal as smoking a cigarette while leaned against an alley wall, have died or been severely maimed for it, but John gives himself the courtesy to make a mistake like it's nothing. Typical. "Call him. I have no method of verifying that you'll have called by the end of my life, but if you lie to Amanda, she'll know and she'll tell me you lied to her."

Adam purses his lips. Of course Amanda would know he's not the greatest liar.

"I'll call," Adam resents how quick he is to give in, but he needs the money. That money has his rent paid off in full within the first two weeks of the month because of how frequently traps are coming and going, how many new victims John has within a week despite only having maybe a hundred survivors in total, less than 1/3rd of that group willing to tell their tales.

John smiles knowingly. "I know you will," he says. "Have you yet moved out of your apartment? The one with the cockroaches?"

Adam sighs. "Workin' on that," he says. "My buddys gonna let me sublet his place starting on the one year anniversary of the trap, he's moving down to LA so that he can try to legitimise his band or something like that--I'm assuming I won't be put back in chains for admitting I hadn't really listened when he offered to sublet his 1000 a month apartment for less than half the cost."

John shakes his head. "You have a good rest of your day, Adam," he says. "The payment for todays job will get to you by the end of this week."

Adam gets up, leaves the apartment and drives back home. One part of him wants to shower the odd feeling off of himself as he gets into his car, but he knows he can't do that without having a breakdown. It's been four fucking years of not being able to do it without losing his mind, why would it be any different that time around?

--

A few days later, the night before the four year anniversary of their trap, Adam calls. Lawrence picks up on the second ring. "Hello?"

"Hey," Adam greets tiredly. It's seven and he's prepping a bowl so that he can smoke, jerk off til the memories blur and it's Lawrence he's thinking about, then eat half of the oreos in the sleeve he'd picked up from the convenience and conk out at around 10:30 only to wake up, still high but reeling from a nightmare at around two in the morning. "Uh--this is Adam Stanheight. I found your number in the phone book."

"Adam," Lawrences voice sounds relieved. Incredibly so. "Hi. It's been a bit."

"Four years, thereabouts," he says. "Look--I was thinking, maybe we could grab dinner or something? I've gotta move into my new place tomorrow and get that stuff sorted, but if you want, there's a couple good spots around ten minutes out from it by foot."

"Yeah," Lawrence nods. "Tomorrow works--give me a place and I'll meet you there for eight?"

"I was thinking Lilahs--it's a great, sit-down style restaurant that has deals on most of their menu all the time. My mom knows the owner and I've eaten there a few times, it's really good food. I dunno if you drive, but I can pick you up if you need me to."

"I drive," Lawrence says. "Lilahs?"

"Lilahs Diner," Adam nods. "Yeah. I'll see you tomorrow, at eight?"

"You most certainly will."

Adam licks his lips, finishes prepping his bowl and scrounges around his jeans pocket until he finds the lighter as he waits for Lawrence to speak again.

"Adam, are you still there?"

"Don't tell me you've got more to say?" He wants Lawrence to have more to say, but the sarcasm is easier than not these days. "Go ahead, if you do. Spit it out."

Lawrence laughs, and Adam swallows thickly--it sounds like it comes out easy, like he's laughed so much and found so much joy in things since their trap that none of it is difficult for him anymore.

"It just--it's really good to hear your voice, is all. I've missed it, and I've missed you."

"Damn you, Lawrence," he laughs dryly. "It's seven o'clock on a Saturday night and I'm trying to prep a bowl, but you and your sentimental ass are gonna make me cry where I stand in this kitchen."

"Well, I can't help it," Lawrence answers simply. "I'm a sentimental ass from time to time. Are you helping John still? I hear whispers about it from Amanda on occasion."

Adam snorts. "Yeah, lets not talk about that on the phone. I'll have to smoke two bowls if we do, and even though I'm going to have to smoke two anyway, I'd really rather space them out by at least six hours so that I have time for the first high to wear off."

Lawrence laughs again. Adam has a terrifying moment, a terrifying thought, that he could drown in the sound of it and die happily in the process.

"All right," Lawrence says. "Tomorrow night. Lilahs Diner. Eight on the dot."

Adam nods. "Tomorrow night, Lilahs, eight," he says. "Goodbye, Lawrence."

He hangs up before Lawrence has the chance to respond, grabs his bowl and his lighter and heads out onto his fire escape.

He smokes, jerks off until the memories blur and all he can think about is how Lawrences hands would feel draped against his hips, holding them loosely, and falls asleep for half past midnight, after he's eaten the entire oreo sleeve and somehow managed to cook a frozen pizza successfully and subsequently, eaten it in it's entirety.

-

For the first time in four years, Adam wakes up after getting eight hours of sleep, which does mean eight hours of nightmares, but he decides he's fine with it as he brushes his teeth, narrowly avoiding getting his hands wet because the fear of water is at it's worst when he's fresh off of a night like that one.

He spends his morning getting what little of his life he didn't donate or take to the dump into his car, putting the total of four boxes and two heavy weight garbage bags worth of clothes into the backseat of his car and the trunk.

His mother gives him the couch his father had hated and Scotts left behind a tv, coffee table, rocking chair and all of his bedroom furniture because they weren't his taste, so all Adam has to do is change the sheets on the mattress to his own and wash and donate the other ones.

All in all, Adam is getting way more than he deserves out of that apartment even though he knows Scott probably thinks he'll sell most of it. He has no plans to sell most of it, though, and it's a hell of a lot more than he'd thought he'd be getting for a two bedroom priced at $350 a month.

He runs his only decent pair of black jeans and an appropriately casual button down through the wash once he figures out how the washer works, spends most of his day outside of that tidying up, unpacking the four boxes he'd brought along and making lists of things to grab in the coming weeks.

The list is mostly menial stuff--a few new pots and pans because the last set he'd owned had been older than he was, a few more mugs to compensate for just how lonely the Nespresso Scott had left behind looked sitting on the counter, some new bedding and a few books to fill up the bookshelves Scott had left either half empty or completely bare bones.

Come half-six, Adam goes through the motions of showering--it's a whole step-by-step process he's created over the years, a tried and true method that's been perfected as the time has gone on, though not always successful in the avoiding-a-breakdown part. He's out of the shower for around 7:20, spends the next twenty minutes taking a 1mg edible and waiting for it to kick in.

One milligram is so menial that it almost does nothing, except it does have it's pros--it takes just enough of the edge off for Adam to not loathe social interaction and for him to feel comfortable enough in his skin to not want to crawl out of it at the smallest inconvenience.

It takes the edge off in a way that makes him certain he'll be as close to normal as he was five years beforehand, a little standoffish and more than a little sarcastic, but well meaning and well mannered enough considering his traumas.

He leaves the house at 7:45 and is at Lilahs with five minutes still to spare.

Lilahs is exactly what it sounds like--a family owned, sit-down style restaurant. It caters to the lower-budget families and individuals in the broader Jersey area, and it's been Adams favorite spot to eat since it initially opened when he was sixteen.

It's got a rustic kind of feel to it--the hardwood flooring has been washed to a dark but-not-yet-black kind of brown colour, and the tables and seats match. There's local artwork hung up on the walls, a jukebox that feels so nineties it hurts and has exclusively 90s country and rock to match, and a bar at the back with a smiling bartender behind it.

Adam has a second where he remembers the last happy memory he has with his mother, her taking him to eat dinner there the night before he was kicked out by his father at seventeen.

The memory is quickly soured by the bitterness he'd felt the next day, grabbing everything he could fit into his backpack while his father screamed at him and his mother stood by his door, her arms crossed over her chest and a scowl on her face. His father was a shit person, but his mother wasn't the greatest either, even if it's tough to remember as much when there are more positive memories than not. He's low-contact with her now too, something he's only been able to find peace with since she told him of her divorcing her father and mellowing out of her bitterness at him in the past little while.

Everything changes when he spots Lawrence, though--he's sat in a booth near the back, and he looks so good that Adam bounce\s between gobsmacked and jealous like he's sitting on alternating ends of a see-saw depending on the second.

His hair, though less blonde, has grown out just enough to be attractive to a point where Adam, dimly, feels woozy. He's cleaned up good--no stubble lines his face, though Adam knows he'd still be able to pull it off some-fucking-how, and he's dressed as close to casual as a person like him can get.

He's wearing a white button down with the top few buttons unbuttoned just enough to let his neck breathe, and the sleeves have been rolled up relaxedly to his elbows. He hasn't seen Adam yet, and Adam takes in what appears to be a mostly peaceful expression.

Adam makes his way over and slides into the seat across from him, smiling gently. "Hi," he greets.

Lawrences face breaks out into a grin. Adam wishes he'd agreed to meet with Lawrence four years earlier.

"Hello," he greets. "Been a while."

Adam nods. "Too long," he doesn't mean to say it, but it slips out, and fuck it if it isn't how he feels. "I'm sorry--I wanted to reach out, and I've been wanting to reach out for the last four years, but it was just too much. I couldn't deal with it at first. I still have trouble dealing with it."

There's the edible--making him a bit honest, a bit more willing to open up. He knows Lawrence won't pry too much, but is scared that, if he does, Adam will soften up like butter and say everything on his mind. The good, the bad, and the ugly all the same.

Lawrence shakes his head. "You don't owe me an apology," he says. "But--Amanda told me how long you'd been left to rot for, and I'm sorry about that. Nobody should ever be left in the dark that long." It was a week, but it'd felt like a year.

"You didn't leave me in the dark," Adam responds. "John did that, and he pays me so I think he's exempt from feeling guilt-- he probably thinks he is, too."

It makes Lawrence laugh, and Adams heart flutters in a way he chooses to ignore.

"So how've you been?" Adam asks, finally getting to a question that's at least a little easier to answer, a topic that doesn't hurt nearly as much to talk about.

"I've been good," Lawrence responds. "Things have been finalized for a bit, and I see my daughter two weekends a month and on holidays. I've had time to sort my shit out, start in therapy, and I like where things are in my life. You?"

Adam blinks--the last four years of his life have been shit.

"I've--it's--damn it, Lawrence," he laughs. "You sound so put together compared to me. I hit thirty next month and still, my life is shit. I just moved into a new apartment and therapy hasn't even been on my radar because I don't have insurance."

"I've been doing EMDR," Lawrence says. "It's designed to help you recover from trauma, and--I hate to say it because I was skeptical at first, but it's been a really big help."

Adam nods. "I'll keep that option on my radar," he says.

It's at this point that a waitress comes around, passes them menus and brings their odd small talk to a halt.

There comes a point, while they're looking at the menus, wherein Adam starts up with something sarcastic about John. In the end, he's glad for it because making the remark is like breaking a dam and watching the floodgates open, because that's all it takes for them to be like they were in the bathroom--Adam being sarcastic and Lawrence responding in kin.

The rest of the dinner follows that same formula. Adam is quick to settle into an almost abrasive kind of sarcasm and Lawrence is quick to respond in a way that makes Adams heart damn near rise out of his chest.

They're done with dinner at half past nine, and Lawrence offers to drive Adam home but Adam declines, wants to walk himself home so that he can conk out without thinking too much about Lawrence or how the dinner had gone.

And that he does--he gets home for quarter to ten, is out by ten thirty thanks to the edible finally doing what it does best.

-

A few days go by, and suddenly, it's the end of the week. Lawrence is spending the night at Adams because Adam has convinced him to smoke a joint with him, and Adam is thrilled by the prospect of seeing Lawrence stoned out of his mind.

"These joints are indica dominant," Adam explains. "They'll make you tired--they're like a superpowered melatonin, almost, if melatonin got you so stoned that you genuinely stopped believing time was real. These bad boys help me with nightmares more often than sativa. I'm not usually one for joints, but I figure this is either your first time ever indulging in weed or your first time in more than a decade, so joints would be easiest."

Lawrence smiles in a way that Adam can tell indicates Lawrence didn't expect him to be so knowledgeable about his self medication of choice, and the notion almost makes him laugh.

"A joint also takes longer to smoke, and edibles are torturous if getting high right out the gate is your game," Adam continues. "Edibles take anywhere from fifteen minutes to half an hour before they've kicked in, and I hate the waiting game unless i'm walking somewhere or have something to do. It makes me antsy, and then when the high does hit it doesn't flow naturally. For me, taking an edible without having something to do between here and there is one of the most frustrating things I've ever dealt with because the high just--it smacks me across the face when I've got nothing to do, nowhere to go, and am just sitting in front of my TV waiting."

Lawrence says nothing. Adam continues rolling the joint and rambles all the while.

"Joints, though? I don't really find they hit while I'm smoking 'em, but the second I step off the fire escape and come inside, they hit me whip quick. Bowls tend to have the same effect, but unlike bowls, joints keep me asleep longer. I haven't gotten a full eight hours of sleep without a full eight hours of nightmares in four years, but with a joint, I can sometimes nab eight hours and get two without nightmares when I get lucky."

They head out onto the fire escape, and Adam takes the first puff for the sake of mercy. When Lawrence takes the second, he coughs. Adam laughs, rubs his back and moves to sit with his back leaned against the rickety railing, across from Lawrence, who sits with his back leaned against the window that leads to the fire escape.

"Coughing happens," he says. "And the burn in your throat sucks, but I'll get you some water once we've smoked our way through the joint, and it'll help."

They smoke the joint in it's entirety, which ends with Adam laughing when he burns his fingers taking the last puff. However, Lawrence makes no move to go inside, just stares at the bleary mid-Septembers night sky with his mouth slightly open and his shoulders slumped.

"What's on your mind?" Adam asks.

"When John goes, do you think you're going to keep up with it?"

"I'll keep taking the photos until I either get caught or the money runs out," Adam says. "I've barely started to get my life together and I'm almost thirty, Larry. Unethical as this all might be, I've gotta pay rent for the next few years, and while I've been looking at getting my GED and going to college, college will put me so far in debt that I'm somewhat scared I won't be able to climb out of it."

"But don't you hate it?" Lawrence asks, meeting Adams gaze. His eyes meet Adams with a ferocity, the likes of which Adam has never seen in his life, but craves more of like it's one of the cigarettes he used to hold so dear. "I don't understand how you don't hate any of this."

Adam laughs before he can stop himself, crab-walks closer to Lawrence and rests his feet against Lawrences calves.

"I do," he says. "I hate John, I hate what he does and everything he's stood for since his diagnosis and quite possibly even beforehand, but--it's a job. I hated the stalking, but I still did it because I needed the money. This, for me, is no different. One payment every week-ish, I make rent in half the time it would've taken me to make it this time five years ago, and I still have money for groceries and other expenses. I hate it, but this is the first time I've lived in true comfort since I was a kid with a father that hadn't started hating me yet. I take it where I can get it, Lawrence."

"A person starved will eat anything," Lawrence says. "You've finally gotten a taste of luxury--"

"It's not luxurious by any means," Adam laughs. "Sorry to cut you off, but I've never lived like that. I went from a home with termites and a father owned by his bitterness to a variety of cockroach infested couches, then to an apartment so full of the fuckers you could hear them running through the goddamned walls. This place is the first decent place I've lived in throughout the course of my entire life, and yeah, the buddy whose subletting it to me left a lot of his shit behind, but he's an asshole without much care for me unless I can be of use to him, so it seems a fair trade to me."

Scott was his best friend for a time, had been such since elementary through to when he dropped out of high school and up until the trap. After Adam had escaped, he'd become so riddled by his trauma that it took him over, practically, for those first two years.

Scott had decided he'd not much wanted to deal with all of Adams baggage and had gone pretty low contact up until he'd decided to move, figuring Adam could use his old place after being stuck in the same apartment he'd been taken from.

It'd been one of the only things Scott had been completely and totally right about on a very short list of other victories, and Adam had been grateful for it from the get-go despite knowing his and Scotts conversations wouldn't likely be about more than the rent or random issues with the apartment he couldn't fix on his own, seeing as Scott was pretty much his landlord.

"Well--it's a nice place," Lawrence says.

"Yeah," Adam shrugs. "Back to the topic at hand, why ask? Are you not going to keep up with it? Keep doing it? I thought you'd believed in Johns mission."

Lawrence laughs. "It's complicated," he says. "I mean--the idea of it is understandable, I guess. The morals are questionable at best and despicable at worst, but I just don't know how ethical the execution is."

Adam moves further up, resting his feet against Lawrences thighs while making sure to not put his full weight on Lawrences right leg for the fear of irritating the stump one way or another.

"We get stoned and wind up talkin' about John Kramers ethics, hm? That's quite the interesting turn of events."

Lawrence shrugs. "I'm not going to have this conversation with anyone except for someone I can trust completely," his hands rest limply by Adams calves. Adam can tell by the flash of desire through Lawrences eyes that he wants to tug Adam closer.

Adam gets as close as he thinks Lawrence will be comfortable with--he sits in his lap, bends his knees and plants his feet by Lawrences hips. Lawrence seems entirely too happy to use Adams kneecaps as elbow rests, and he does.

"First off, you sayin' you trust me completely like that is--woah," Adam laughs before he can stop himself. As he laughs, he lets his arms find their resting places on Lawrences broad shoulders. "And secondly, I don't think the execution is ethical whatsoever. Matter of fact, if we're talkin' about how ethical this stuff is, it's the opposite. It's not ethical. I heard Amanda talking about putting a diabetic and a smoker in a trap last weekend. I wouldn't do that to a person just because they smoke cigarettes, but that's just me. To each their own, I guess."

Lawrence smiles. "I've been thinking about this for so long," he says. "Not--not this specifically, but just--oh my God. I've missed you a lot this past little bit."

Adam has to fight every single urge he has to kiss Lawrence. "I've wanted to reach out since I was rescued," he says. "Just couldn't. I couldn't pinpoint why for the longest time, but I realized the night I reached out, over the phone."

Lawrence nods. "I remember," he says. "When we agreed to meet for dinner."

Adam licks his lips, lets his gaze move to Lawrences.

"I realized that that day--hell, the time from the moment I woke up in that bathtub to the moment I was released from the hospital--felt like an open wound. That time of my life has felt like an open wound every single day since I left the hospital, every single day since John asked me to join his cause, and I couldn't bear messing with it. I just wanted to leave it to fester or to heal, deal with the implications until it did on it's own, but that's just not how things like this are meant to be handled," Adam says. "I'm gonna get myself into DSME--"

"EMDR," Lawrence corrects. "Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing."

"I'm gonna look into that," Adam says. "And--I'm gonna keep doing this. Keep talking to you, keep buggin' you whenever I can because it's the only way. I can't do this recovery shit alone, and it's been four years of trying and then failing and then trying again, and I'm sick of it."

Lawrence smiles softly. Adam gives into the urge to press his forehead against Lawrences, lets his hands go to Lawrences neck.

"All that I ask is this," Adam whispers. "Promise me you won't go anywhere?"

Lawrence licks his lips. Adam can feel Lawrences breathing against his mouth, is so close that he can almost taste what it'd feel like to have Lawrences lips against his own.

"I promise," he says. "I'm not going anywhere, okay? I'm not going to abandon you like that. Never again, and never by choice."

Adam doesn't know if it's the weed, or the exhaustion, or his own, unadulterated, unfiltered stupidity, but he leans in.

"Tell me if I'm reading this wrong," he whispers, praying to God that he's not.

"You're reading this just fine," Lawrence says.

Then his lips are against Adams, and Adam is so awestruck by it that he almost feels like he's flying. It's the best kiss he's ever had in his life, a statement he can make knowing damn good and well that it's not the weed talking but rather the way that Lawrences lips feel against his own, the sureness of his hands as they find Adams hips and the way he reacts when Adams hands instinctively trail right up Lawrences neck and into his gorgeous hair.

They don't pull away until they're breathless, and Adam wants more but knows better than to be greedy.

Lawrence chortles. "How long have you been wanting to do that?"

"Since I walked into the dinner, lightly stoned, and saw you in that white button up," Adam laughs, presses his forehead against Lawrences shoulder. "Oh, my God. You looked so good in that, y'know? Almost lost it. You looked so good it made me woozy."

"That might've been the weed," Lawrence says. "How much did you take?"

"Only one milligram," Adam responds. "Enough to soften me up a little, like when you set butter out on the counter for an hour or two when you're planning to bake and need the butter not to be as hard as a rock."

Lawrence laughs. Adam presses himself as close as he can get, cherishes the feeling of being that close after so long spent being literal miles apart in physicality but feeling an ocean apart in every other aspect.

Time passes. They sit outside, practically moulded together, and in silence. Adam catches himself zoning out just before he starts to doze, wonders briefly if they kept themselves that way until they starved to death, if he'd die happy to have been in Lawrences arms. As he thinks further on it, he realizes he would've died happily in the bathroom that day, if in a little bit of pain, if Lawrence had stayed and died with him.

"I think I'm in love with you," Lawrence whispers. "You're not the only one at fault for us not seeing each other sooner, and I think I was scared to admit it, but I know now that that's the reason why."

Adam smiles. "I love you too," he whispers back. "C'mon--inside. I'm tired, but I am not going to fall asleep with you on my fire escape."

He gets himself out of Lawrences lap and heads back in, Lawrence hot on his heels.

Adam strips, changes into a baggy pair of sweatpants and leaves himself without a shirt. Lawrence changes into a pair of basketball shorts and leaves the button-up he's wearing unbuttoned, and after Adam gawks at the view for a good few minutes, they cuddle up in bed together.

In the end, Adam sleeps for a solid fourteen hours, and for the first time in ages, he doesn't have any nightmares. Part of him thinks it's the high and another part of him thinks it's because of Lawrence, but he chooses, at the end of the day, to believe that it's both.

[hccn-overseer]

Issue 17, 8/9/2023 - The Overseer

Issue Masterpost About the Overseer

Weekly Weather Report

By Lydia

Temperatures are represented using Celsius. Sorry, Americans!

Wednesday: Temperatures will reach a high of 30 degrees with a low of 22 degrees. Skies will be clear throughout the day with light showers throughout the evening and overnight.

Thursday: Temperatures will reach a high of 28 degrees with a low of 15 degrees. Skies will be partly cloudy with a breezy afternoon.

Friday: Temperatures will reach a high of 30 degrees with a low of 15 degrees. Skies will be mostly clear throughout the morning and afternoon with light showers throughout the evening.

Saturday: Temperatures will reach a high of 33 degrees with a low of 20 degrees. Afternoon thundershowers are possible, however, it is expected they will be easily avoided, courtesy of Bdubs.

Sunday: Temperatures will reach a high of 25 degrees and a low of 14 degrees. Skies will have scattered showers throughout the day and gusty winds.

Monday: Temperatures will reach a high of 27 degrees and a low of 13 degrees. Skies will be clear throughout the entire day and evening, however, whirlpools will be very active, so be careful if you are going swimming.

Tuesday: Temperatures will reach a high of 28 degrees and a low of 19 degrees. Heavy rain is possible throughout the early morning hours and afternoon, however, late morning and overnight is expected to be clear.

Wednesday: Temperatures will reach a high of 25 degrees and a low of 12 degrees. Skies will be mostly cloudy throughout the entire day and evening.

Now onto other news under the cut!

Astrology Corner: BarbieheimerScopes

(Yes I know that's not how you spell it hush.)

By Corundumcat

Have you been feeling without guidance? Do you look at your birthday, look up your star sign, and wonder, “Will I feel weird after the movie?” “Am I Allan or Kenough?” Don’t worry, here at The Overseer, we can help you.*

Aries: You are the actor Barbie who is in all of the Barbie Movies. 

Taurus: You are the Barbie from the 2011 TV series. 

Gemini: Ken with the job of Beach. Don’t worry Beach needs you.

Cancer: You are (K)enough. You are the Ken in the third act after “I’m Just Ken” 

Leo: Oppenheimer. You are the coffee cup in fantasy movies that somehow made it into the movie. 

Virgo: You are the president Barbie. 

Libra: You are the Pink Shoes Barbie. 

Scorpio: You are the Ken from all of the pre “Barbie and Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure.”

Sagittarius: Allan. You’re unique and there is only one of you. 

Capricorn: You are the barbie who shouldn’t have worn makeup to the Barbie Movie. You are the Original Barbie. 

Aquarius: You are all of the animals in all of the Barbie Movies. 

Pisces:  Bibble. <3

All star signs: “I'm just Ken (And I'm enough), And I'm great at doing stuff” - Ken

*Ignore how blatantly specific these are. Nothing bad will happen to you. This author is running out of ideas for horoscopes and is the Barbie with too many jobs. I have like 5 :)

Lost and Found

By Lydia

All of the following items have been brought to The Overseer staff’s office for safekeeping until they are claimed. If you recognize one of these items as yours, please visit us to receive your items, or contact us at lostandfound@thehermitnews.org. Thank you! *Not a real email address.

Item 1: Three perfume vials with ornate designs These perfume vials appear to be made in the style of the 19th century, with clear tints and hexagonal bases and stoppers. They depict designs of Endermen and Sniffers.

Item 2: A pair of brand new sneakers These sneakers have never been worn, as their packaging is still intact. They do not appear to have any specific brand and have very long shoelaces. The shoes themselves are bright orange with blue stripes overtop of them, and white laces.

Item 3: A wooden sculpture depicting abstract interpretations of Joe Hills’ poems This wooden sculpture stands at approximately 5 feet tall. It has various branches, curves, contortions, and concave portions. It is made out of birch wood and is not painted any particular color.

Item 4: A large model of a colorful moth made out of wigs and pipecleaners This model is very large, standing at approximately 8 feet tall and contains various colors, including red, orange, purple, green, blue, and yellow.

Item 5: A costume mannequin This mannequin stands at approximately 5’7” tall and has a very stocky build. It is made out of acacia wood.

Item 6: A dodo bird This dodo bird speaks the coordinates of the Rift in Empires, not the Rift under Grian’s base. It has a saddle. No other speech has been detected from this bird.

Item 7: A miniature diorama of The Shopping District in a bottle Created in the style of a Ship-In-A-Bottle craft, this miniature diorama of The Shopping District is very detailed and can be fully viewed with the use of a magnifying glass.

Item 8: A replica of a L.O.O.T. Shard This meticulous replica speaks in the same voices as those by the Tree of Whimsy. The person who located this item has been cured from past issues and has befriended the voices. They have become silly together.

Item 9: An armor set in an overgrown box This set includes a chestplate with knockback 2, a helmet with sharpness 3, leggings with punch 2, and boots with multishot. The box this set came in was found very overgrown.

NOTE: Lost items will be sent to Twinkly Trash if not picked up after two weeks. A window has already been broken and no one is paid enough to take care of the dodo bird long-term.

Fun and Games

This week's fun and games are brought to you once again by Lydia and Azure!

Word Search and Crossword by Lydia

Brain Teasers by Azure

And that's all for this week folks! Thank you for reading and have a wonderful one :D

[mothz11]

The love song from tawog

Gumball and Darwin: Love. What is love?

Bobert: Yes, that was my query.

Gumball: What is love?

Darwin: Does it fall from above?

Gumball: Listen Bobert, to the words we sing.

Gumball and Darwin: We are love, and love is everything.

Bobert: Warning. Circular reference detected.

Carmen: I love my boyfriend.

Tobias: I love my toys.

Billy: I love my mother.

Banana Joe: And I love making noise [makes fart sound].

Rocky: I love my television.

Nigel Brown: Darling, I love you.

Lucy Simian: Love is as old as time.

Anton: And love is always new.

Gumball and Penny: Do we love each other?

I guess we sorta do.

All: Love is everywhere and love is in you!

Love is in the stars and love is in the trees.

Listen, Bobert, are you starting to believe?

Carrie: Love is invisible.

Rob: Love has no name.

Bobert: Love is scoring zero in a tennis game.

Gumball: Love is all around us.

Darwin: Love fills your heart.

Bobert: Stacked-up error. Please press "restart."

All: What is love? Does it fall from above?

Listen, Bobert you need to learn about, to learn about, to learn about love!

[The first segment shows the hexagon lady using the Internet to online date. After some time passes, Timmy reveals himself to her, though she deletes him from her laptop, sending him back to his room.

The second segment starts with the melted cheese guy talking to his sandwich to motivate himself to confess his feelings for Karen. As soon as Karen walks toward him, she slips on the sandwich, ending the segment.

The third segment starts with a narrator talking about what happens when one finds themself in love. In the end, the male and female end up running to another male and female, with the narrator deciding love has no rules and says to dance instead.

The fourth segment features Nicole and Richard being recorded and interviewed. Nicole tries to explain something, but after numerous attempts, the two just hug each other.

The fifth segment shows the Sun and the Moon complimenting each other over the day-night cycles. They then find a way to spend time together via the Moon spinning around Earth, which annoys Earth.

The sixth segment shows Mr. Robinson and Mrs. Robinson getting married, moving into their house, spending time together, and fighting while taking care of a baby Rocky. However, Mrs. Robinson gets sick and has to be taken to the hospital. Mr. Robinson visits the hospital to see how she is doing. Mrs. Robinson then shocks Mr. Robinson, and they continue fighting until the segment ends.

The seventh segment is about Sussie's parents having dinner at Dump's Cave. They both start trying to feeding each other, but only end up making a mess in the process. and they then start to try and kiss each other, but only end up making kissing noises without actually kissing each other, which disgusts the other couples there. The segment ends with Harold asking the waiter for his check.

The eighth segment shows Gary driving, while turning his head back to admire Martha. This causes him to crash into the Donut Cop's car.

The ninth and final segment starts with Richard walking on the sidewalk, noticing Billy crying. He hugs Billy until Felicity calls the police. Richard gets sent to court and is sentenced to jail. He tries to hug the prisoners, who in turn punch him so hard he flies out of the jail and lands in the hospital. A screen comes up saying love is the answer to almost every problem, but then the rest of the Watterson family meets Richard and hugs him. A similar screen then reads "Nah, every problem."]

Gumball: [spoken] So Bobert, what have we learned about love?

All: What is love? It's what we all dream of.

Tell us, Bobert. What have you learned about love?

Bobert: Anyone can love. No love is wrong.

I have now become a lovesick dreamer.

I fell in love with this old vacuum cleaner.

(Not sure if there is a sound cloud or a Spotify song of The love soo yeaahh)

[floripire]

ok but say the triad + sire + hunter combo yeets out of existence tomorrow, what would flori do without this burden? and would she take action to get rid of them?

askbox fun // @troubleah

what if they're gone tomorrow?

if they were all gone tomorrow, just like that? i think the first thing flori would do is cry out of sheer relief, hug the first person she sees and then take a long nap. she's been thinking and overthinking and formulating ideas and (contingency) plans and crunching the numbers in her head for so long that i think she needs a minute to breathe and be.

it'd be weird at first because being stressed about triad and her sire and the hunter trio has been her default for ages and what does she do now that they're not an issue anymore?

after being all cried out and hugged out and after taking that nap, she focuses on graduating. then she actually wants to amass enough funds to travel and to be able see the world (which she'd do by working in cybersecurity to make sure that the supernatural secret doesn't get out).

would she take action to get rid of them?

she would love to be able to - and she has plans that she could put into motion - but she doesn't think she can. not alone, at least. flori would have to bring people in for that to happen.

the story so far

for now, as it stands, the ball starts rolling after graduation.

after graduating, flori is off with @founderscouncil's jed on a roadtrip to find his sisters. it's a long, hard road(trip) and it's not always sunshine and moonbeams and roses but eventually, they do find them.

then, flori returns to her hometown of maple hollows with jed and his sisters in tow. it is there that she comes face to face with her human ex, doug carson, his ex joe flowers - a strong witch who is related to theophilia flowers - and the very human and very sadistic tami bryce, who is currently dating doug.

(yeah, it's a whole busted up love hexagon!)

the hunter trio are here for revenge against flori for killing sue. jed makes sure his sisters get out of dodge. then, the hunter trio rough jed up and their plan gets revealed because tami bryce doesn't know how to keep her mouth shut.

so she tells flori and jed all about how they're working with triad industries - veronica greasley and mr burr are very nice people, she says - and with flori's sire.

she tells them all about how they're going around, hopping from town to town, protecting regular people, humans, and making sure no vampire can do what flori did to sue ever again.

tami is weirdly excited about joe's liquid sunlight concoction and the way it burns down (and through) a vampire's throat but that's a last resort, which makes her sad because she wanted to play.

tami perks up, however, when joe flowers orchestrates a reverse headdive by forcing his way into flori's head and taking everyone in the room with him.

flori fights them off and gets them out of her head, surviving this harrowing encounter by the skin of her teeth.

back in the real world, the hunter trio is dead. flori and jed get back to his sisters and to the school.

as for flori's sire: he pops back up when everything's sort of settled down (for now).

it's not so much that derek machado (who i've headcanoned to be sheriff machado's estranged brother and uncle to ethan and maya) wants flori dead. it's not about flori, specifically. it never has been.

no, she's just a link in a long chain that ultimately leads to hope mikaelson. flori just happens to know her.

in derek's mind, he can justify harming or even killing his progeny (something he never really wanted in the first place) because it'll bring him a step closer to hope's friends and they bring him a step closer to killing her.

he's obsessed with exacting his revenge against the mikaelson family as a whole, but especially klaus because klaus ruined his life and killed derek's chosen family and now he's gonna repay the favor. no matter what.

in the end, hope kills derek before he can hurt or kill anyone else and flori works with mg and both their squads to round up triad to the best of their respective abilities and flori, especially, works tirelessly to get the triad industries detention facility shut down.

what happens next?

flori keeps in touch with everyone post graduation - especially loren and @ofvalor's mia - and moves into a little apartment in town. she keeps up with cybersecurity but now does it for the salvatore school. it pays well.

aside from that, flori also focuses on fully immersing herself in the night world. the night world is an underground society consisting of vampires, werewolves, witches and other shapeshifters. they've got their own laws and they've got their own council and elders.

she's learning about the soulmate principle. she's asking @soulmateprinciple about the dark kingdom. she's visiting several enclaves; she's often found in harmony, virginia too and the next place on her long list of places to visit is chance harbor, washington. which is both the hometown of the chance harbor circle and selena harman-dalisay's hometown. it is also the new stomping ground of john blackwell's children.

meanwhile, flori is also planning on asking around about the dark dimension (which i headcanoned malivore to be a part of) to the best of her ability.

she's also reconnecting with her maternal family - the harmans - and connects with the redfern vampires too. she ends up becoming a part of circle daybreak, aiding them in finding the wild powers - one of nature's loopholes aside from the red oak tree - and finds that there is a threat looming on the horizon: the old powers are rising up.

some figure that this is happening in response to hope mikaelson quote-unquote 'becoming' the tribrid. others merely think it was always going to happen like this, tribrid or no tribrid.

(the zetes institute - where flori's friend wade rivers once resided before coming to the salvatore school - seems much too interested in everything - read: hope becoming the tribrid - that's happened so far.

doctor emmanuel zetes' original focus was on psychics and harnessing their abilities through crystals, either for himself or for his young daughter, lydia. but he has since expanded his view and now collects anything and everything that is supernatural and special like trinkets. he loves his trinkets.

and he loves everything and anything that gives him a leg up in this world. possessing the tribrid would catapult him to heights unknown. he also couldn't be happier with the fact that triad industries seems to be out of the picture indefinitely.)

for now, flori is going to live the second life she's been granted with the people she loves by her side, discovering the world because she is ready for it and it's so, so much bigger than she ever thought it was.

there is still so much to see, so much to do, so much to learn. there are different strains of vampires all around, after all: in forks, washington; in savannah, georgia; in bon temps, louisiana and flori wants to meet them all. she's got so many questions.

[storm-of-feathers]

rwby, snow leopards, im banned from uber, geometry, HEXAGONS, drunk horny posts, discourse, leave my mutuals alone, rwby, art, warrior cats, vOLCANOES, tornadoes, one time i stabbed myself in the hand with a sword, dc posts to show joe, animorphs, RWBY, skyrim, sparkles

Hmm not enough rwby

[rjalker]

the poll results are in. People want to see the illustrations for the summary.

so here's Billie, Bob, and Joe. WIP, I haven't drawn their insides yet. I plan to draw all the Flatlanders with visible insides. It's just gonna be a simplified version though.

[ID: A digital drawing with a black border, titled, "Billie, Bob, and Joe seen from above, showing three black and white shapes. First is Billie (spelled with an I E at the end), a very thin diamond forming a needle shape. Next is Bob, a circle, followed by Joe, a hexagon. End ID.]

Sight recognition demonstration:

[ID: Another drawing, now zoomed back, with Joe in the middle of Billie and Bob, who look at him from different angles. Billie looks at one of Joe's angles, and Bob looks at one of his flat sides. A bar at the top is labeled, "Billie's view of Joe", and has a thin white stripe in the center, with a slow gradient to grey on either side. At the bottom of the image is another bar showing Bob's view of Joe, which has a large white stripe in the center, with a faster gradient to grey on either side. End ID.]

The fact that Straight Line is a misnomer:

[ID: A digital drawing captioned, "Despite their name, Straight Lines are actually very, very thin parallelograms rather than true lines.". Next to this are three examples of Straight Lines from Flatland: A rectangle, a diamond or kite, and a trapezoid. All of them are very thin. End ID.]

Put a coin on a table and test it for yourself...

[ID: A simple diagram showing a Square Flatlander, first seen from above or below, as a square shape with purple insides and simple pink internal organs, with one eye at his top corner. Then he is flowly flipped onto his side in three phases, until he appears as a straight line, how he is seen from within Flatland. End ID.]

All seems solid from Flatland, but not so from Spaceland!

[ID: Another Square Flatlander, with purple and pink insides, labeled, "A Flatlander seen from above or below has visible insides.". Next to him is a straight line, labeled, "A Flatlander seen from the side in Flatland appears to be a solid line." Above this, text reads, "We do not actually know what the insides of a Flatlander look like because A. Square didn't tell us.". End ID.]

[ID: Another digital drawing, showing an Equilateral triangle with puprle and pink insides, labeled, "Flatlanders can look forward, and side to side. To look behind themselves, they have to spin around entirely." The triangle is shown on the top and bottom of the image, looking forward, then to the left and right, with arrows following their pupil. A smaller black and white version is shown turning around to look behind themselves. End ID.]

[ID: A drawing of multiple Flatlanders of different shapes arranged around the edges of the image, all looking at text in the middle that reads, "The eye-mouth is on the outside of the Flatlander, otherwise they wouldn't be able to see or eat." The shapes looking at the center consist of a square, an irregular polygon, a circle, an isosceles triangle, an equilateral triangle, and a straight line, who is a very thin trapezoid. There is also a very small pentagon child who instead has an eye in the center of their body, looking towards the camera with a questionmark, labeled in smaller text: "If a Flatlander were born with their eyemouth in their center, they wouldn't be able to see or eat anything in Flatland, and would most likely starve to death in childhood without immediate medical intervention of a feeding tube directly to their stomach.". End ID.]

[ID: A diagram captioned, "A variety of Isosceles triangles. The closer your third angle is to 60 degrees, the higher your comparative social status, though none of them have any civil rights, and are literally not considered human at all due to being Irregular.". Below this is a line of Isosceles triangles, starting with the widest angle on the left, then getting narrower towards the right, until the last almost appears as a straight line. End ID.]

[southwest-artisans]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Navajo Pilot Mountain Turquoise Dangle Earrings Sterling Silver Jewelry **.

[bergeronprocess]

Recently ordered some Pokemon cards from Pokemon Center to get the Worlds promo card

Which I am very excited to say they remembered this time, unlike in February when they accidentally forgot the Pokemon Day card

We did it, Joe

I got a Shrouded Fable tin and one booster each for Obsidian Flames, Paldea Evolved and Paradox Rift (they are all expansions that I don't have as much of)

Here are pulls that I like very much

The new reverse holo style (as seen in the Water Energy and a few others) is interesting - very hexagonal - wonder if it's meant to be more themed after Legends Z-A as opposed to the stonework pattern being more Scarlet/Violet

I'm also going to a Stellar Crown pre-release event in a couple of weeks!

[coolstuffeee]

I am so disappointed in all of you. You should’ve chosen hexagon, the best shape.

-Circle is the ultimate inevitable shape, the one that the universe chose for its planets and stars. Everything will be a circle one day. Remember that next time when you call my dog rotund.

-Square on the other hand, is the shape of mankind. It’s what we use to build and create efficiently. For things to come together and stack on top or side by side. That’s why games look like that so often, our species craves the pure forgery of the square.

-Star is…. It’s technically a shape. I guess. It’s pretty yeah but it’s not really as shaped as the others. You could call a tree a shape of you tried hard enough too, it has points and sides. Star is on that level.

It can’t fit together with anything else. It’s whole personality is just being pretty, and I guess that’s all that can be appreciated in shapes by you guys huh. It works as a shape terribly, it can’t construct anything and it’s rare. Y’all have terrible taste. Joe biden strikes again.

Hexagon, however, is perfect. It has the beauty and interest that star does while not being useless, it has the working structure and forgery that square does in its edges, and it has a circular kind of look which is easy to hold, but it isn’t pointless like the circle, both metaphorically and physically.

And something much smarter than humanity and the universe itself chose it. That’s right, bees. Your really gonna try and prove a bee wrong?

polls they'd make in tumblr preschool

[2022nursejessie]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Onlyfire 6026 Grill Rotating Stainless Steel Rotisserie Tray Kit Fit Most Grills.