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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 2 years ago

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North To The Future [Chapter 9: A Long December]

The year is 1999. You are just beginning your veterinary practice in Juneau, Alaska. Aegon is a mysterious, troubled newcomer to town. You kind of hate him. You are also kind of obsessed with him. Falling for him might legitimately ruin your life…but can you help it? Oh, and there’s a serial killer on the loose known only as the Ice Fisher.

A/N: While “A Long December” was originally released by Counting Crows in 1996 (and is thus compliant with the 90s theme), the version I listen to most is Girlhouse’s cover from 2022. So maybe check that out. It is a bop!

Chapter warnings: Language, alcoholism, addiction, murder, discussions of sex, a tiny bit of sexual content, Christmas with Momtini and Dadtini, Kimmie making a realization, Aegon making a drink, Appletini making plans, Trent making some killer pool shots, the Ice Fisher getting into the holiday spirit, please enjoy this nice little respite before the events of Chapter 10. :)

Word count: 6.9k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @elsolario @ladylannisterxo @doingfondue @tclegane @quartzs-posts @liathelioness @aemcndtargaryen @thelittleswanao3 @burningcoffeetimetravel @hinata7346 @poohxlove @borikenlove @myspotofcraziness @travelingmypassion @graykageyama @skythighs @lauraneedstochill @darlingimafangirl @charenlie @thewew @eddies-bat-tattoos @minttea07 @joliettes @trifoliumviridi @bornbetter @flowerpotmage @thewitch-lives @courtenbae @tempt-ress @padfooteyes @teenagecriminalmastermind @chelsey01 @anditsmywholeheart

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You descend the staircase gingery, sheepishly. Your socks slip on the hardwood steps like tires on black ice. You’re trying to avoid your parents, but you can’t wait any longer to eat breakfast or you’ll be late for work. They’re bustling around in the kitchen: cracking eggs, chitchatting, banging plates and pans, cooing over Sunfyre, listening to an R.E.M. album that spins on the record player.

When you walk in, your dad is standing by the stove wearing the apron you got him for his 50th birthday. Pizza Slut, it says. He grins and wiggles his eyebrows. “Hey, ladybug.”

“Oh no.”

“I heard you come home pretty late last night. And then you got right into the shower. Hmm.”

“Hmm!” your mom concurs joyfully.

Your dad nods to the pan he’s hovering over, wielding a spatula. “Salmon omelet?”

You sigh, defeated; and yet, you must admit, you love salmon omelets. “Yeah, sure.” You sit down at the table next to your mom. She’s drinking Earl Grey tea smokey with cream and reading a newspaper: Halle Barry is marrying a jazz musician, Puff Daddy’s Notorious.com is looking for a venture capitalist willing to invest $7.5 million in startup funding, a man was arrested in Times Square for threatening President Clinton, the Nasdaq composite index—fueled largely by the dot-com boom—could hit 5,000 by the end of 2000. You wonder what Aegon’s family is doing right now. Do outrageously wealthy people eat omelets and decorate Christmas trees? Do they hop from store to store in some glitzy metropolitan mall hunting for presents—KB Toys, the Disney Store, Hallmark, Bath and Body Works, Hot Topic, RadioShack, Claire’s, Wet Seal, Yankee Candle—before grabbing a late-afternoon snack at Cinnabon or Sbarro, maybe a smoothie from Orange Julius? Or do they just sit in their mansions under vast unsmiling portraits until they grow dusty and turn to stone: gargoyles, angels, lions bearing their fangs? Are they still human at all?

“How’s Trent doing?” your mom asks. “Still trying to get into the Forest Service?”

“As far as I know. But that’s not who I was with last night.”

Your dad sets an omelet down in front of you, along with a glass of orange juice and one of the same Flintstones multivitamins you’ve been taking since you were in preschool. Jesse used to give me those, you think randomly, recalling the reminders he penned in his clandestine journals. When he was around. When he was sober. Your parents exchange a wary glance. “Oh?” your dad ventures in a squeak, trying to sound casual.

You could lie, but you don’t. Juneau is too small for lies. People know each other too well, they bump elbows in grocery stores and bars and parking lots; they make overly-familiar small talk and inadvertently spill secrets. The last thing you need is someone teasing Trent good-naturedly about your supposed night of passion. He might be dumb, but if he ever gets all the pieces in his titan hands he’ll eventually figure out how they click together. ��I was, uh, actually, uh…visiting Aegon.”

They watch you, faces frozen in forced, benign smiles. You pet the top of Sunfyre’s shaggy head with your left hand and stab a fork into the salmon omelet with your right. “Well, that’s great!” your dad manages. “He’s a nice boy, that Aegon. So Greek. And plenty sexy, as we’ve previously established.”

“Is he feeling better?” your mom asks politely, slurping her tea.

“Oh yeah. Much better.” It comes out way too enthusiastic, and hot blood floods into your face. Your parents chuckle…and yet their eyes are troubled, distant, though perhaps in different directions. “Just so you know, things aren’t really working out with Trent. I’m trying to let it fizzle so there isn’t any drama that makes things awkward or creates any…uh…bad blood, I guess. So if you see him around, definitely don’t mention Aegon.”

Your dad does a mock salute. “Got it, General Ladybug.”

“What are Aegon’s plans for Christmas?” your mom inquires. Your dad turns to her, but doesn’t say anything. “It must be difficult for him, being so far from home. Especially around the holidays. I would hate for him to be alone.”

Probably drinking himself into unconsciousness while watching Jingle All The Way and Die Hard. “I don’t know, that’s a good question. I should ask him.”

“He can spend Christmas here with us, if he’d like.” Your mom finishes her tea, sets the cup down on the table, fiddles with it. “We’ll have more than enough food. And we could find a few things to wrap for him so he has presents to open.”

“Now if that’s not holiday spirit, I don’t know what is!” your dad says happily; and if he’s bluffing, he’s good at not showing it. He kisses your mom on the cheek, resting his study hands on her shoulders. She smiles up at him.

You wolf down the last few bites of your salmon omelet, chew your vitamin, knock back orange juice like a shot. “Alright, I should get going, or I won’t be back in time to open the vet clinic at 9.”

“I can always hold down the fort for a few hours,” your dad offers.

“No, that’s okay. I appreciate it, but I don’t want to bother you.” I don’t want to disappoint you. I don’t want to let you down. “You’ve earned retirement. Enjoy all the Judge Judy and Buffy The Vampire Slayer you can handle.” You pet Sunfyre and tug playfully on his ears. His tail wags at warp speed. “Are you ready to go home to your favorite person now? Are you excited?”

Your dad lumbers off into the kitchen. “Here, bring Aegon some breakfast too…” He piles a salmon omelet, a mountain of hash browns, and toast slathered with butter and strawberry jelly into a Tupperware container. You take it and glance out the window that faces the driveway.

“Oh, great. Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“The cow moose is out there licking the road salt off my Jeep. Can you get rid of her?”

“Again?! Okay, I’m on it.” He grabs some pots out of the cabinet and heads outside. You can hear him beating the pots together and shouting: “Goodbye, moose! You live in the woods, not the driveway! Goodbye! Au revoir! Adios, mooseachos!”

At the kitchen table, your mom laughs. She’s still tinkering anxiously with her cup. “Only in Alaska.”

“You’re really alright with Aegon coming over for Christmas?”

“Of course. I’d prefer it, actually. I’d rather know he’s safe. Not alone, not in trouble.”

“Even though he might end up passed out under the tree?”

She smiles: faint, tired, melancholic. “I’ve seen worse.”

When you let yourself into Aegon’s apartment, he’s dressed for work and self-medicating with a rum and Coke mixed in a cereal bowl; it’s the only dish he has that’s currently clean. Sunfyre bolts to him, barking wildly and jumping up to prop his paws on Aegon’s chest as you slide the Tupperware onto the kitchen counter.

“Hey, buddy!” Aegon cries, ecstatic. “I missed you! Yes I did! Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?!”

“Where are you going?” you ask, scrutinizing him.

“Fishing,” he says simply, like this should be obvious.

“I don’t think you should be going back to work this soon. You just got out of the hospital.”

He shrugs. “I need the money.”

“I can give you money.”

“You definitely could, but I don’t want your money, I want my money. Besides, Trent won’t be able to protect my job forever. If I can’t work, Rusty will find someone else who can.”

“Trent,” you echo morosely, staring at nothing in particular.

Aegon downs the rest of his rum and Coke, then puts his bowl in the sink. He walks over to you, his oceanic eyes cautious, his lock of white-blond hair resting on his cheek. “What did he do to you? At dinner, I mean. Before you called me.”

You take his left hand and turn it over, studying the lines on his palm: past, present, future, all in a language you can’t read. You hesitate; you can’t decide what to tell Aegon. You aren’t sure what you want him to know.

“He didn’t hurt you, right? Or try to touch you in a way you didn’t want him to?”

“He kissed me. I pushed him off. That’s all.”

Aegon watches you, eyes severe and glinting. “That’s not all.”

“I tried to break up with him at the restaurant,” you confess. “First he acted like he didn’t understand. Then he got upset, offended. We agreed to slow down, but I’m not sure what he thinks that means. Maybe he’s planning a summer engagement instead of a spring one, I have no idea.”

“You made him angry.” Aegon’s voice is flat, entirely flat, like he’s battling to keep it that way. “I thought we agreed not to make him angry.”

“Well I didn’t do it on purpose, Aegon.”

“No no no, my bad, let me clarify, I’m not mad at you. I just don’t understand why you would be so direct about it. I’ve broken up with a lot of people without actually breaking up with them. You ignore, you deflect, you do the bare minimum, you are intentionally unappealing in every way…and then eventually they move on. That’s the way to go. That’s how you avoid confrontations.”

“I don’t want this thing with Trent to die a slow death.” Oh, perhaps a poor choice of words. “I don’t want to be with him, to even keep up the facade of being with him. I want to be with you. I want to be with you in every way, everywhere, all the time.”

Aegon smiles. He twists his fingers into your hair and touches his forehead to yours and then kisses you, softly and unhurriedly. As he pulls away, he gently bites your lower lip; his fingertips ghost across the front of your throat like a necklace, like a chain. You moan into him, unable to help it. “I won’t go to work if you don’t either,” Aegon murmurs.

“I, an eternally upstanding citizen, definitely have to go to work.”

“Man, fuck capitalism,” he says, and you laugh together.

Something occurs to you. “You didn’t wait for Kimmie to move on. You broke up with her.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Why?”

“Because I had another candidate in mind for the extremely prestigious position of being my Juneau girl.”

You tuck his hair behind his ear and kiss him again: heat, rum, memories from the night before. Lust stirs up in your blood like ancient silt in seawater. “Please be careful at work.”

“I will, Appletini. I will. Don’t worry. You’re always worrying about things that haven’t happened yet. There’s no point in that.”

“I think I’m just someone who’s doomed to worry a lot in general.”

He grins. “Yes. But I’m your favorite thing to worry about.” He lays his palm against your right cheek and kisses your left: quickly, lightly, like it’s routine, like he’ll be doing it every day for the rest of his life. “Have fun at the vet clinic. Saving all those furry little lives.”

“I’ll see you at Ursa Minor tonight?”

He winks. “I’ll be the one with the electric guitar.”

~~~~~~~~~~

You get stuck late at the clinic spaying Mr. Mark Morehouse’s Flemish Giant rabbit. By the time you rush through the front door of Ursa Minor—bells jangling, a gust of cold wind at your heels, patrons glancing over with vague interest—the band is already performing. Aegon is wearing his cuffed jeans, black combat boots, and, in a radical departure from his usual color scheme, a royal blue turtleneck sweater. He’s braided a section of his hair on the left side of his head and woven a single, small, blue-dyed rose into it. He gives you a subtle nod when he sees you come in, a sly half-smile. He’s singing a punk rock, up-tempo version of Counting Crow’s A Long December.

“I can’t remember the last thing that you said as you were leaving, now the days go by so fast…”

“Heyyy, bitch!” Heather greets you, raising her Sex On The Beach. Joyce and Kimmie are swaying together, brandishing lighters in the air: Joyce smirking and reluctant, Kimmie—a born groupie—shamelessly exuberant. You swing by the bar to get a Bacardi Breezer (blueberry, very good, one of the better flavors) and stand beside Heather. You gaze at Aegon as he strums his battered guitar, and the parallel strikes you for the first time. Aegon too is layered with imperfections: scars, marks, ink, demons with gnashing fangs and needlelike fingers that dangle past their knees. And yet what he gives to the world is so beautiful. And yet he is so goddamn miraculous.

“I can’t remember all the times I tried to tell my myself to hold on to these moments as they pass…”

It takes you a long time to notice that Kimmie is watching you. Something clicks like a dislocated joint popped back into its socket; and that’s the way it’s always been with Kimmie, since she was a child, since she was a five-year-old chasing boys around the playground at recess. The hints pile up—a lot of hints, sometimes years of hints—until eventually there’s an avalanche of realization that hits and drags her under like a rogue wave. She sucks in a breath and her doelike eyes shoot wide open. You try to pretend you didn’t see anything, but that’s not Kimmie’s style. She pushes her way through the audience and grabs your wrist, hauling you away from the crowd. Heather observes this, slurping down her Sex On The Beach, trying to ascertain if you need reinforcements.

“What—?!”

“I didn’t know,” Kimmie says, like it’s an apology. Her eyes are pained and fearful, a deer bathed in headlights.

“You didn’t know what?”

“That you’re in love with him.” Her voice is reedy and trembling. She’s petrified, you realize. She’s afraid that I’ll never be able to be her friend again. Not a true friend, not a pure one. “I swear to God, I didn’t know. I even asked you first. I never would have hooked up with him if I had known, never, never. I’m so sorry. I’m so so so sorry. It didn’t mean anything, it wasn’t like we had real feelings for each other—”

“Kimmie, Kimmie, it’s fine,” you soothe, rubbing her shoulder. She’s wearing a ridiculously fluffy hot pink sweater; it’s like petting a neon sheep. “I’m the one who wasn’t upfront with you. I didn’t think Aegon and I had a chance, so I was purposefully trying to avoid him, to avoid any feelings I had for him. It didn’t work out that way, but…yeah. Anyway. I don’t blame you for anything.”

“Oh my god, so you’re together? Like, together?” Kimmie blinks at you, shocked but not scandalized. You’re not sure it’s possible to scandalize Kimmie.

“We don’t really want everyone to know about it.”

“Oh, because of Trent?”

Now it’s your turn to be shocked. Maybe some of those genius professor genetics made it down the Plinko board after all. “Exactly.”

“Jesus Christ, he’d probably snap Aegon in half if he knew. Like a freaking KitKat bar.”

“That’s a mental image I didn’t need.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Kimmie swears, empowered by this rare, consequential responsibility.

“I really, really appreciate your discretion.”

“You and Aegon, wow…” She mulls it over, baffled. “So you’re pretty kinky too? I wouldn’t have guessed that. You should have told me! We could have gone shopping together!”

Shopping with Kimmie for fuzzy handcuffs and riding crops and, who knows, probably like vibrating butt plugs or something. I don’t think I’m emotionally prepared for that. I will most likely never be emotionally prepared for that. “Boundaries, Kimmie. Honestly, I haven’t seen that side of him. At least not in my albeit limited experience.”

“Huh,” Kimmie says brightly. “I guess he’s in love with you too.” And then she trots off to rejoin the crowd. Boat #27 has concluded their performance and is accepting cheers of acclaim and complimentary drinks from their adoring fans. Joyce hugs Rob, climbing onto her tiptoes and giggling. Joyce!? Giggling!?!? You grab another Bacardi Breezer before heading over, raspberry this time.

“Hey, babe!” Trent booms when he sees you.

Oh god. Oh no. You shrink away when he throws an arm across your shoulders. Aegon watches this as he approaches, sipping a rum and Coke, eyes like blue embers.

“Right,” Trent groans, like it’s some grave inconvenience, like it’s some passing fad he has to endure. “I remember now. We’re taking things slow.”

The clique assembles by the pool table like battle-ready Power Rangers: you, Trent, Joyce, Rob, Heather, Kimmie, Aegon. “Someone should play!” you say, truly a master of redirection.

Trent flips his hair. “Obviously I’m down.” He looks at you expectantly. You ignore him, drinking your Bacardi Breezer and then pretending to drink it once it’s empty.

“Oh, you are going down.” Heather cracks her knuckles and grins, then picks up a cue stick.

“Battle royal!” Rob announces. Joyce sighs and pulls a fantasy novel out of her purse. Kimmie perches on the edge of the pool table: legs crossed, eyes roving, gold hoop earrings glittering under Christmas lights, seeking attention and drawing it to her like Saturn ensnares moons. A gaggle of bashful men appear out of nowhere to worship her. Dale’s stereo pipes out Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You. Dale himself is wearing a red Santa hat and yawning boredly into the back of his hand.

“I need another drink,” you say, and head for the bar. Aegon follows you.

“You don’t want a Bacardi Breezer.”

“I don’t?”

“No. You don’t.” He flags Dale over once you’ve claimed your seats. “Hey Dale, did you get the stuff on the list I gave you?”

“Sure did.” Dale sets an array of items on the bar: apple juice, lemon juice, florescent green apple schnapps, vodka, a single Granny Smith apple, a paring knife, a shaker halfway filled with ice, a small plate covered with sugar, two chilled martini glasses. “You owe me, though. Especially for the schnapps. I had to order a case all the way from Seattle!”

“Add it to my tab.”

“Which you’ll pay when? In 2023?”

“I’ll pay, Dale!” Aegon insists.

Dale rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t seem genuinely annoyed. “Sure you will.” He yawns again and ambles away to take the orders of some locals sitting at the other end of the bar. The thuds of his boots are heavy and slow on the hardwood floor, the same one Aegon almost died on nine days ago.

“What are we doing?” you ask, but you’re already smiling. You have a pretty good guess.

“We’re making appletinis,” Aegon replies.

“You knew how to make appletinis this entire time and never said anything?”

“Oh no, I definitely did not,” he says. “I found the phone number of a friend I met back in San Francisco and figured she might know. She’s a bartender. So I gave her a call and asked very, very nicely and sure enough, she had a recipe.” He pauses, contemplative. “I told her I was in Chicago. Just in case.”

Just in case his ghost manages to track her down. “Have you seen this friend naked?”

“Does it matter?”

“No,” you say, and you find that you mean it. Aegon is here with you now, and that’s all you can ask for. Still, his commitment to relative honestly seems enduring.

“The answer is yes. But it wasn’t like it is with you.”

“Really, it doesn’t matter. I’m not mad or anything.”

“Yeah, you don’t look mad.”

You smile at each other, Christmas-light sparks in your eyes, alone in a crowded room. Well…alone except for Mariah Carey. “Anyway,” you prompt. “Am I getting a real-life appletini or what?”

“Let’s do this. Uh…” He furrows his brow, trying to remember. “Okay. I think I know how it goes.” He adds apple juice and lemon juice to the shaker. He doesn’t measure; he estimates, splashing in a little at a time until he’s content. He caps the container, gives it a few vigorous shakes, then opens it again. He pours in the schnapps and vodka, then shakes again. “Cut a few slices off the apple, vet lady. Nice and thin.”

You do, four transparent crescent-moon slivers. Aegon rubs lemon juice around the rim of each martini glass with his ring finger and then dunks them in the sugar until the rims are covered in fine white crystals like snow. He garnishes the martini glasses with the apple slices, gives the shaker one last whirl, then empties the contents into the glasses: half for you, half for him. He hands you your introductory appletini and toasts his glass against yours.

“On three?” Aegon asks, and you nod, beaming. You count together: one, two, three.

Your first taste isn’t a tentative sip. You take a full, brave swallow of the vivid green brew. It’s jarringly sour, sticky-sweet, crisp and refreshing like springtime. “Oh, I love it!” you trill.

“It’s…uh…” He takes another investigative slurp. “It’s definitely appley.”

“You hate it,” you say, laughing.

“I don’t hate it,” he counters. “I like what it’s doing to you.”

You close your eyes, the sights and sounds of Ursa Minor fading away. You’re somewhere sleek and vibrant and new; you’re in New York City, you’re in Los Angeles, you’re in Las Vegas, you’re in San Diego. When you open your eyes, Aegon is smiling. “Sorry. I was teleporting.”

“Do you want the rest of mine?”

“Yeah,” you admit guiltily, and he slides his appletini over to rest by yours. You drain them both. “I’m like Jack Dawson. I’m the king of the world.”

“You’re very, very cute when you’re tipsy, that’s what you are.”

“My parents think you should spend Christmas with us. I think you should too.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Okay. Don’t buy me anything fancy, though. I won’t be able to return the favor.”

“Sad impoverished homeless man gifts only. You have my word.”

“Hey!” Heather calls from the pool table. She’s waving her cue stick in the air. “I lost! I’m a loser! I got slaughtered by this jumbo-sized motherfucker! And you weren’t even here to witness it!”

“We should go over there,” you tell Aegon, and he steadies you when you wobble as you slide off the barstool. “Oh, god, I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool. Now I have an excuse to touch you.”

“Dale, can I get some Chex Mix or something?” He tosses you a little blue bag from behind the bar. You miss it completely. It sails over your head and smacks into the floor. Aegon cackles hysterically, but fetches the bag. He even opens it before he hands it to you. Then you set off together for the pool table.

“What’s wrong with you?” Heather asks when you arrive, her eyes narrow.

“I like appletinis. I really like appletinis.”

“It’s December 22nd, the commencement of Capricorn season, and you are celebrating this momentous event with an uncharacteristic display of recklessness and frivolity? Inauspicious!”

“What did I miss? Besides your humiliation.”

“Flintstones vitamins,” Rob says, rubbing blue chalk on a cue stick. He and Trent are playing pool now; Trent is showing Kimmie and several of her sycophants, including Matt and Gary, how he can make a shot with his hands behind his back. Aegon circles the pool table, his hands in his jeans pockets, watching Trent reticently. “Childish and stupid or totally acceptable for mid-twenties adults?”

“Totally acceptable,” you declare, munching on Chex Mix. “I just had one this morning.”

“That’s what I said!” Kimmie cries. “They’re delicious. I could eat a whole bottle of them. I used to lie to my mom when I was a kid and insist she hadn’t given one to me yet so I could get extra. My high score was five in a day.”

“That can’t be good for you,” Heather says. “Wait. Maybe it explains some things.”

“A lot of things,” Joyce quips, turning a page in her book.

Kimmie defers to you, the foremost medical authority present. “Vitamins can’t hurt people, right?”

“Well, that depends on the vitamin.”

“Some can,” Aegon says. “The fat-soluble ones, because your body can’t flush them out as easily or something. Too much Vitamin A can really fuck someone up. There are people who’ve died because they ate a polar bear liver, which has, like, millions of units of Vitamin A. So if you ever happen to eat a polar bear, skip the liver.”

“You can overdose on vitamins?” Kimmie asks him, puzzled. “Like, vitamins can kill you?”

“Oh yeah, lots of things can kill you if you take enough of them. Too much Vitamin A can cause seizures and comas, Vitamin D can give you a heart attack, Vitamin E can make you hemorrhage out of your eyeballs and stuff. And it causes strokes.”

“Oh snap!” Kimmie exclaims in horror, thinking that perhaps she barely escaped with her life. Heather is thoroughly amused.

You look at Aegon as he passes by you like a satellite whirling around the Earth, a blinking light in suffocating darkness. He’s right, but he shouldn’t be. He hasn’t studied medicine. He hasn’t studied much of anything. “How do you know all that?”

He replies curtly: “How do you think?” And then he resumes his orbit.

Rob attempts a shot and misses. “Ha!” Trent says, flipping his hair, and then starts lining up his own. As he leans over the pool table, he asks you: “So, where were you last night?”

Your mind, already hazy, goes useless. Cold sweat bubbles up out of your pores. “What? At home.”

“No you weren’t.” His eyes are on you like a wolf’s, like a beast’s. “I called the house. A couple times, actually. I felt weird about how we left things and wanted to apologize. But no one answered.”

“Oh, sorry, I mean I was at home, but then I went to go bowling with my parents.”

“No you didn’t.” Trent’s cue stick hits the striped red ball, number 11, and sends it hurtling into a pocket. “I already asked Dale. He’s in the bowling league, and he said you weren’t there.”

Two lies. And I don’t have a third. You stand there helplessly, surrounded by Christmas lights and tinsel and pine trees, your thoughts churning slowly, slower, dragging to a full stop. The chatter around you dies down. Wide eyes dart between you and Trent. Joyce closes her book. Even Dale is peeking over from the bar. His face is crisscrossed with lines of disapproval, of fascination.

“Where were you, huh?” Trent takes a step closer. He’s huge. He’s so fucking huge. Aegon picks up the black 8 ball off the pool table; no one else notices but you.

“Trent,” Heather scolds her brother, stunned. “Take a chill pill—”

“Where were you?!” Trent demands.

You try to conjure up an excuse, any excuse. All you can think of is how badly you don’t want to end up at the bottom of an ice-covered lake. I can’t die, I haven’t done anything yet. I haven’t been anywhere yet. I haven’t seen San Diego.

Trent begins one final time, still clutching the cue stick, his voice deafening: “Where were—?!”

“She was with me!” Kimmie bursts out, and everyone spins towards her. “I, um, I was upset. Devastated, in fact. Because of, um. Boy problems.”

Heather titters nervously. “What else is new.”

“So I called and I was an absolute blubbering mess on the phone and she offered to come over and hang out. Watch Buffy with me. Do my nails and stuff. It’s really embarrassing.” She smiles at you, a soft glowing smile. “Thanks for trying to keep my secret.”

“No problem, Kimmie,” you reply shakily.

“Oh, babe!” Trent says, his face splitting into a smile, pressing a hand into the small of your back. He even flips his hair in that simpleminded, horselike way. He can’t be the Ice Fisher. He can’t be…right? You flinch when he touches you. On the periphery of your vision, you can see Aegon rolling the black 8 ball back onto the pool table. “That’s all?! You should have told me!”

“It really wasn’t my situation to share.”

“Damn, I’m sorry.” Trent seems to mean it. “I’m really sorry. That was a dick move, I don’t know what came over me.”

“Hulk smash?” Rob says, and there is laughter, quivering with fresh relief.

“I think I have to go,” you say, rubbing your forehead. “I’m really not feeling great.” And that part’s not even a lie. “I shouldn’t have mixed Bacardi Breezers and appletinis, I’m a total lightweight. And I have work in the morning. I’m supposed to vaccinate like ten of Mr. Campbell’s reindeer.”

“You want me to drive you home?” Trent offers.

No! Definitely not! “Thanks, but I couldn’t bear to interrupt your pool game. Especially when you’re winning.” You can tell Aegon is looking at you. You intentionally don’t acknowledge him. And now you realize that you’re a little trapped: you can’t say you’re driving yourself home because you’re not sober, and you can’t say that Aegon is walking you back to his apartment because then Trent might murder you both right here in the middle of Ursa Minor, blood splattering the deer heads mounted on the wall, femurs and vertebrae littering the pool table.

“I’ll do it!” Heather volunteers. “I’m super not-wasted at the moment.”

“Um, well…”

“Come on.” She’s already going to get your parka off the coatrack. “I can’t in good conscience let you vaccinate those reindeer without a full night’s sleep.” You trail after her, powerless to refuse.

Out in the night-draped parking lot, you haul yourself—with some difficulty—into Heather’s Chevy Suburban. And as she turns the key in the ignition and begins defrosting the windshield, you tell her: “When you leave the lot, make a left, not a right.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you’re not taking me home. You’re taking me to Aegon’s apartment.”

“I’m…?” She gapes at you as it sinks in like an anchor through dark surf. “Oh my god. Oh my god…?!”

“Affirmative.”

“Oh. My. GOD.” She puts the Suburban in drive and, as requested, makes a left onto Main Street.

Sunfyre is delighted to see you when you arrive. He leaps, barks, pirouettes in circles, accepts copious scratches and Milk-Bone treats. You collapse onto the threadbare couch, and he stretches out on the floor beside you, his quiet snoring soon the only sound in the apartment. Your eyes blur, flutter, close up shop. Maybe twenty minutes later, you hear a key rattling in the front door.

Aegon walks inside, his boots dripping with snow. He doesn’t seem surprised to see you. “You alright, Appletini?”

“Yeah, I’m kind of woozy but I mostly just wanted to leave.” You consider him, wondering how to ask him the question that won’t leave your mind. It claws at the arched walls of your skull like a trapped animal, leaving streaks of blood where its nails were torn away.

“I don’t want to talk about the vitamin thing,” he says.

“I don’t want to talk about Trent.”

“Deal.”

He throws off his parka and boots, turns on the X-Files, and crawls onto the couch with you. You fold into him and he holds you, not hungrily, not asking for a thing. You freefall into sleep with your head against his chest, his heartbeat a distant roar like thunder.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Ice Fisher has left Juneau a Christmas present: Stephanie Nolan, his fifth victim. She was twenty-five years old, an avid knitter, a Blockbuster employee, mother of several adopted Himalayan cats, one of three sisters born barely a year apart. At least her parents still have some children left, you think. At least the pressure to make their sacrifices worthwhile wasn’t all on her. Your dad sneaks a few minutes of news coverage while your mom is in the shower. They’re replaying the press conference that Chief of Police Eugene Baker gave late last night on Christmas Eve.

“We urge all Juneau residents to remain vigilant. This is the time of year for celebrations and get-togethers, and we don’t want to discourage that in any way, but no one—and I repeat, no one—should be outside alone, especially not after dark. Ms. Nolan left her place of employment to take a ten-minute smoke break, and that was all the opportunity the killer needed. He is still out there, he is still dangerous, and no one is immune from becoming a target. If you have any information relevant to this case, anything at all, please call our anonymous 24/7 hotline at…”

There are camera flashes, uneasy clamoring, flailing hands of reporters begging to be called on. Your dad crosses his arms over his broad chest, his face grim. A reporter asks Chief Baker: “I understand that the Juneau PD has brought in FBI profilers to help them identify possible suspects. Can you share any new theories with the public at this time?”

“Well, there are a couple likely possibilities. The Ice Fisher might be someone who is new to the area, someone who arrived this past summer or early autumn. Residents should therefore be extremely wary of newcomers. However, it might be the case that the killer isn’t new to the area at all, but rather suffered some sort of destabilizing event—loss of employment, for example, or the death of a loved one—that triggered their otherwise dormant violent impulses. The last theory I’m prepared to share today is that the criminal now known as the Ice Fisher might have been active long before this recent string of murders. Some serial killers have been known to…to test the waters, so to speak…with murders that can be camouflaged as accidental or natural deaths. That’s a possibility in this case, and we are combing back through the department archives to see if there are any answers there…”

“I should go pick up Aegon,” you say.

“Ladybug…” Your dad stalls, not wanting you to take it the wrong way. “I’m not saying that I think Aegon is the killer, because I don’t think he is. I know he’s not, actually. He doesn’t have much rage in him. He has a lot of other things, I believe, but not that. I’m just saying…you have to be careful. And he can’t keep an eye out for you if he’s passed out drunk somewhere. Do you get what I mean?”

“I understand, Dad. I’m careful. Really, I am. And I’m never running around town alone. If I’m not with Aegon, I’m with Heather or Kimmie or Joyce.”

“Or Trent,” he adds. He likes this idea; Trent might not be able to snap a murderer in two like a KitKat bar, but he could definitely crack a few ribs. Trent would be a great Mortal Kombat character. He could skewer foes with a cue stick, right through the eye socket. An icy shudder rocks down your spine.

“Or Trent.”

“Okay. Good.” He turns back to the tv, his eyes vacant, his voice low. “Just making sure.”

Aegon is dressed in his Christmas best: dark jeans, black Converses, his hair loose and wavy, a festive red sweater with Gizmo from Gremlins on it. You’ve opted for a more traditional Rudolph turtleneck. Sunfyre has a large red bow tied to his collar. The three of you ride together back to your parents’ house, the radio playing Celine Dion’s O Holy Night, one of the back windows rolled halfway down for Sunfyre.

Dinner is a reindeer roast, rosemary apple stuffing, potato gratin, homemade macaroni and cheese, and creamed spinach; dessert is Christmas cookies eaten under the tree. You open presents as a parade of classics play on the tv: Frosty The Snowman, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, The Year Without A Santa Claus. Your parents give Aegon cold-weather clothing like hats and mittens, which he accepts with great appreciation. He gives them a bouquet of blue roses and three bottles of red wine, only one of which he drinks himself. You give Aegon a refrigerator magnet from Caribou Crossings, a grizzly bear with a salmon caught between its teeth, something to join the rest of his collection, something to help him remember Juneau once he’s gone. He gives you a handful of seashells from San Diego that he’s been carting around in his luggage for a year. Everyone gives Sunfyre Milk-Bones.

When Aegon takes the golden retriever out to the backyard, your dad goes with them. You can see them talking out there as snow falls and the sun sets and the horizon is inked with violet and gold, the wind whipping fiercely: Aegon’s hands moving in wild, dramatic gestures, your dad nodding along. They’re gone for so long you start to worry, your fingers trembling as you and your mom play chess with the new set you received for Christmas, not black and white but pet-themed: one side dogs, the other cats.

Your dad comes back inside first. He shuts the door and says to you, not accusatory but merely intrigued: “I didn’t know you were serious about wanting to travel, ladybug.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess so. One day. When I’m retired, I guess. Doesn’t everyone want to travel?”

“Huh. Aegon made it sound a bit more urgent than that.”

He watches you defeat your mom in chess, makes her some mollifying Earl Grey tea, and then offers to play Scrabble with her, a proposition she can never resist. When Aegon brings Sunfyre back inside—the sky fully dark now, the stars rising behind the veil of clouds—you lead him upstairs to your room. You sit on your bed together and flip through your travel magazines, scenes of Paris, Cairo, New York City, Rome, Tokyo, Cape Town, Buenos Aires, Beijing, Saint Petersburg, Sydney, Las Vegas, Cusco, Athens, Mexico City, Nairobi, California.

“It’s strange,” Aegon says. “Your parents like me, but they also kind of don’t like me. It’s as if they’re afraid of me. I can’t figure them out.”

You think of the cardboard box under your bed, the one full of Jesse’s journals. “My mom was married before. Vince is her second husband.”

Aegon looks over at you, attentive but not understanding. “Okay.”

“I was five years old when they got together. So Vince is my dad, but he’s not…like…he’s not biologically…well, you get what I’m saying.”

Aegon closes the magazine he’d been skimming, still looking at you.

“My mom’s first husband was named Jesse. And he was…from what I understand…he was a lot like you.” You tap your index finger against the crook of your own elbow so Aegon will understand. He was brilliant, but he was an addict. He was a blessing, he was a curse.

Aegon nods slowly. “I guess that explains a lot.”

“I probably should have told you sooner. But I’ve never really told anyone.”

“What happened to him?”

“He drowned in the channel. Maybe it was an accident, maybe suicide. Maybe it doesn’t matter which one. Maybe there isn’t much of a difference.”

“I’m so sorry,” Aegon says, his voice quiet and gentle.

“I don’t want the same thing to happen to you.”

“It won’t. I told you. I’m not that easy to kill.”

You wonder if Aegon has become a ghost to his family, if he haunts the Targaryens like Jesse haunts you, half-comforting, half-heartbreaking, if after six long silent years his shadow still lurks in corners and doorways. You wonder if a ghost is really so far from what you are. “I want to stop feeling like a potential person, to stop waiting for the life I’ve always dreamed of to drop out of the sky. I want to feel real.”

“You’re real to me.” He dusts his thumbprint across the curve of your cheekbone, flesh and blood that sing to each other. “Listen, we’ll go to San Diego together.”

“Don’t, Aegon.”

“No, I mean it,” he says. “Give me a month to save up, and we’ll go. We’ll take a long weekend and fly down there. It won’t be hot enough to swim, but it’ll be warmer than here. Sixties, sunny, sandy, waves and tacos. We’ll stay somewhere with a waterbed. Those can be a lot of fun.”

“Careful. I might not want to leave the hotel room. What a waste of a trip that would be.”

“I’ll just have to make sure you’re bored of me by then,” he purrs, grinning and mischievous, dragging you into his lap. He smooths your hair back from your face, gazing up at you as you straddle him. He kisses your lips, your jaw, your neck; his teeth skate across your skin without biting down, without leaving indigo bruises of ownership. Slowly, he turns solemn and hushed. Slowly, you begin to worry about him.

“What, Aegon?”

“You’re the best present I ever got. I hope you know that.”

You whisper through his windswept white-blond hair: “Then open me.”

He lays you down on the bed, unearths your needful bare skin and stifles his moans against your throat, unravels you like a blood-red ribbon from a box heavy with secrets.

#aegon ii targaryen #aegon ii #aegon targaryen #aegon x you #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon targaryen x you #aegon targaryen ii #aegon targaryen ii x reader #aegon x y/n #aegon x reader #aegon ii x you #aegon ii x reader

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 months ago

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* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 19, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 20, 2024

Yesterday morning, NPR reported that U.S. public health data are showing a dramatic drop in deaths from drug overdoses for the first time in decades. Between April 2023 and April 2024, deaths from street drugs are down 10.6%, with some researchers saying that when federal surveys are updated, the decline will be even more pronounced. Such a decline would translate to 20,000 deaths averted.

With more than 70,000 Americans dying of opioid overdoses in 2020 and numbers rising, the Biden-Harris administration prioritized disrupting the supply of illicit fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. They worked to seize the drugs at ports of entry, sanctioned more than 300 foreign people and agencies engaged in the global trade in illicit drugs, and arrested and prosecuted dozens of high-level Mexican drug traffickers and money launderers.

In March 2023 the Biden-Harris administration made naloxone, a medicine that can prevent fatal opioid overdoses, available over the counter. The administration invested more than $82 billion in treatment, and the Department of Health and Human Services worked to get the treatment into the hands of first responders and family members.

Addressing the crisis of opioid deaths meant careful, coordinated policies.

Also today, markets all over the world climbed after the Fed yesterday cut interest rates for the first time in four years. In the U.S., the S&P 500, which tracks the stock performance of 500 of the biggest companies on U.S. stock exchanges, the Nasdaq Composite, which is weighted toward the information technology sector, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, an older index that tracks 30 prominent companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges, all hit new records. The rate cut indicated to traders that the U.S. has, in fact, managed to pull off the soft landing President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen worked to achieve. They have kept job growth steady, normalized economic growth and inflation, and avoided a recession.

As they have done so, the major U.S. stock indices have had what The Guardian's Callum Jones calls “an extraordinary year.” Jones notes that the S&P 500 is up more than 20% since the beginning of 2024, the Nasdaq Composite has risen 22%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gone up 11%.

Bringing the U.S. economy out of the pandemic more successfully than any other major economically developed country meant clear goals and principles, and careful, informed adjustments.

And yet the big story today is that Republican North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson frequented porn sites, where between 2008 and 2012 he wrote that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography; referred to himself as a “black NAZI!”; called for reinstating human enslavement and wrote, “I would certainly buy a few”; called the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a “f*cking commie bastard”; wrote that he preferred Adolf Hitler to former president Barack Obama; referred to Black, Jewish, Muslim, and gay people with slurs; said he doesn’t care about abortions (“I don’t care. I just wanna see the sex tape!” he wrote); and recounted that he had secretly watched women in the showers in a public gym as a 14-year-old. Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck of CNN, who broke the story, noted that “CNN is reporting only a small portion of Robinson’s comments on the website given their graphic nature.”

After the first story broke, Natalie Allison of Politico broke another: that Robinson was registered on the Ashley Madison website, which caters to married people seeking affairs.

Robinson is running for governor of North Carolina. He has attacked transgender rights, called for a six-week abortion ban without exceptions for rape or incest, mocked survivors of school shootings, and—after identifying a wide range of those he saw as enemies to America and to “conservatives”—told a church audience that “some folks need killing.”

That this scandal dropped on the last possible day Robinson could drop out of the race suggests it was pushed by Republicans themselves because they recognize that Robinson is dragging Trump and other Republican candidates down in North Carolina. But here’s the thing: Republican voters knew who Robinson was, and they chose him anyway.

Indeed, his behavior is not all that different from that of a number of the Republican candidates in this cycle, including former president Trump, the Republican nominee for president. Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) embraced Robinson’s candidacy, and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) welcomed “NC’s outstanding Lt. Governor” to a Republican-led House Judiciary Committee meeting “on the importance of election integrity.” “He brought the truth with clarity and conviction—and everyone should hear what he had to say!” Johnson posted to social media. Robinson spoke at the Republican National Convention.

The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in this election is stark, and it reflects a systemic problem that has been growing in the U.S. since the 1980s.

Democracy depends on at least two healthy political parties that can compete for voters on a level playing field. Although the men who wrote the Constitution hated the idea of political parties, they quickly figured out that parties tie voters to the mechanics of Congress and the presidency.

And they do far more than that. Before political thinkers legitimized the idea of political opposition to the king, disagreeing with the person in charge usually led to execution or banishment for treason. Parties allowed for the idea of loyal and legitimate opposition, which in turn allowed for the peaceful transition of power. That peaceful exchange enabled the people to choose their leaders and leaders to relinquish power safely. Parties also create a system for criticizing people in power, which helps to weed out corrupt or unfit leaders.

But those benefits of a party system depend on a level political playing field for everyone, so that a party must constantly compete for voters by testing which policies are most popular and getting rid of the corrupt or unstable leaders voters would reject.

In the 1980s, radical Republican leaders set out to dismantle the government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights. But that system was popular, and to overcome the majority who favored it, they began to tip the political playing field in their direction. They began to suppress voting by Democrats by insisting that Democrats were engaging in “voter fraud.” At the same time, they worked to delegitimize their opponents by calling them “socialists” or “communists” and claiming that they were trying to destroy the United States. By the 1990s, extremists in the party were taking power by purging traditional Republicans from it.

And yet, voters still elected Democrats, and after they put President Barack Obama into the White House in 2008, the Republican State Leadership Committee in 2010 launched Operation REDMAP, or Redistricting Majority Project. The plan was to take over state legislatures so Republicans would control the new district maps drawn after the 2010 census, especially in swing states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It worked, and Republican legislatures in those states and elsewhere carved up state maps into dramatically gerrymandered districts.

In those districts, the Republican candidates were virtually guaranteed election, so they focused not on attracting voters with popular policies but on amplifying increasingly extreme talking points to excite the party’s base. That drove the party farther and farther to the right. By 2012, political scientists Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein warned that the Republican Party had “become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

At the same time, the skewed playing field meant that candidates who were corrupt or bonkers did not get removed from the political mix after opponents pounced on their misdeeds and misstatements, as they would have been in a healthy system. Social media poster scary lawyerguy noted that the story about Robinson will divert attention from the lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets, which diverted attention from Trump’s abysmal debate performance, which diverted attention from Trump’s filming a campaign ad at Arlington National Cemetery.

When a political party has so thoroughly walled itself off from the majority, there are two options. One is to become full-on authoritarian and suppress the majority, often with violence. Such a plan is in Project 2025, which calls for a strong executive to take control of the military and the judicial system and to use that power to impose his will.

The other option is that enough people in the majority reject the extremists to create a backlash that not only replaces them, but also establishes a level playing field.

The Republican Party is facing the reality that it has become so extreme it is hemorrhaging former supporters and mobilizing a range of critics. Today the Catholic Conference of Ohio rebuked those who spread lies about Haitian immigrants—Republican presidential candidate Trump and vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance were the leading culprits—and Teamsters councils have rejected the decision of the union’s board not to make an endorsement this year and have endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. Some white evangelicals are also distancing themselves from Trump.

And then, tonight, Trump told a Jewish group that if he loses, it will be the fault of Jewish Americans. "I will put it to you very simply and gently: I really haven't been treated right, but you haven't been treated right because you're putting yourself in great danger."

Mark Robinson has said he will not step aside.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Trump lies #Biden Administration accomplishments #support for Harris/Walz #political parties #gerrymandering #REDMAP #Teamsters #Mark Robinson #opiod overdoses #American History #Radical Republicans

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