#Scotch Broth

[morethansalad]

Vegan Traditional Scotch Broth (Pea, Barley, Lentil, Veggie Soup)

[robandjasfamilyfoodblog]

[petermorwood]

Soup is made: "Gosh, there's a lot. I'll get containers so we can freeze it."

Soup +1 day, in fridge. "I thought there was more than this. We don't need so many containers."

Soup +2 days, on stove. "Look, what say I just finish what's left and wash up. We'll make more for freezing next time."

It really was that good, and was just the sort of hearty, warming bowlful to counter wintery wind and rain. This one was made with beef; next time we'll try it with (more traditional) lamb.

*****

This Scotch Broth interest started with a German train dining-car menu from 1936 spotted in a documentary here:

The bill of fare, as far as we can read it, includes "Schottisches Gerstensuppe" (Scotch broth); "Kalbsrücken, Rosenkohl, Bratkartoffeln" (saddle of veal with Brussels sprouts and fried potatoes) OR "Heilbutt nach Sellerierot, Salzkartoffel" (halibut with celeriac and boiled potatoes) and "Reis mit Früchten" (rice (pudding?) with fruit).

*****

Now here's funny (peculiar, not ha-ha): despite that screencap, the existence of soup on on a train dining-car menu is downright denied by several on-line foodie sources - or more accurately by one source, then repeated by others.

What's under discussion is actually "Brown Windsor Soup", famous in memory and fiction but which may never have existed in other than its fictional form. However, these comments also include Declarative Pronouncements which are, as the screencap shows, Wrong. (The emphases are mine.)

Glyn Hughes "Foods of England" -

"Then there's the Railways. 'A Taste of Empire' by Cecilia Leong-Salobir (2011) says Brown Windsor was "a soup omnipresent on the train menus of British Railways" and an extraordinary number of people seem to definitely remember it being served on trains, which is very odd, as soup is pretty much never served on trains, for fairly obvious reasons."

Delishably.com -

"References are constantly made to the “fact” that Brown Windsor Soup was served daily in British Railway dining cars. Except that soup, being a substance susceptible to slopping over the sides of a bowl by the slightest lateral movement, is almost never served on trains."

BBC World's Table -

"The Brown Windsor Soup association with train travel runs deep in the British psyche, despite the fact that Hughes found no record of it in British Railways archives, with soups rarely served on bouncing, lurching trains for obvious reasons."

Atlas Obscura -

"Hughes even paid two researchers to go through a century’s worth of archives at the National Railway Museum, since many sources claimed that Brown Windsor soup was once a staple of British rail travel. Given that rail companies tend to avoid serving scalding-hot soups on moving vehicles, that claim already seemed suspect. Sure enough, not a single railway company menu or recipe book featured the soup."

The joke is that the "soup" may actually have been "soap".

Leaving this Brown Windsor question aside, if soup was "rarely served" on trains, then why does it appear on every one of the following on-board menus?

The English-language ones are from famous North American trains of the 1930s-1960s: the 20th Century Limited, the Hiawatha, the City of Los Angeles and the Canadian Streamliner.

The German ones are AFAIK from regular intercity services.

Also adding @dduane's and my personal experience aboard German, Austrian and Swiss dining-cars. There Was Definitely Soup.

Just because the rattly, wobbly Victorian-era British railway system wasn't safe for scalding-hot soup - though apparently just fine for beer, wine and scalding-hot tea - didn't mean there was a universal "No Soup On Trains" rule across the world, and any sweeping statement which claims so is, as with those pics, easily disproved.

Here's a photo from a New York Times article.

Aptly named journalist Evan Rail writes (again, emphasis is mine):

"For lunch, I chose the three-course, prix fixe menu (49 francs) and a glass of Von Salis Heidi-Wii Maienfelder Blanc de Noir (9 francs), an elegantly dry white wine. The service was impeccable, with palpable attention to detail. The buttery potato-leek soup arrived steaming hot. Chicken stroganoff included yellow heirloom carrots, perfectly cooked, a snowball of short-grain rice and a pepper-scented sauce. For dessert, the flaky, caramelized apple pie split the difference between an Old World tarte and the “as American as” recipe."

That article is dated 6th April 2023...

*****

Now I want a bowl of Gulaschsuppe, the first thing I ever tasted in my first ever Continental Speisewagen - and thanks to on-line shopping from the Austrian Supermarket...

...I can have some.

Maybe I'll rattle the table a bit for that proper dining-by-rail experience. Or maybe not.

But I might play a bit of music in the background...

(English version; official video, but not as visual.)

:->

So for those who were asking how the soup came out...

(meaning the Schottische Gerstensuppe or Scotch Broth discussed in this post): Not badly at all.

Here's the recipe. ("Graupen" turns out to be a dialect word for barley.)

It's a nice soup for a chilly night in Ireland with the rain coming down and Storm Ciarán on the way in...

[daisychainsandbowties]

The earth sign in me really wants to cook for you, cuz bro you can’t survive like tht just say the word and i will start looking for available flight😭😭

i feel like i just drank half a litre of soy sauce but fr aside from that i’m like… okay. can’t really cook MANY dishes but i make some nice prawns

look upon them

ignore the strange gnarled reflection of my hand aside from that it’s a great photo but see you can tell they’re. they’ve definitely been cooked 😌😌

i also make a butter bean chilli so spicy people can’t be in the same room when i’m cooking it so 🫶 another win for me

and after all those are the two food groups 🥰 butter beans and prawns 😌

[reiverreturns]

literally begging americans to stop talking out their arse about scottish culture and identities 

[royboyfanpage]

What's your favourite soup?

Scotch broth

:)

[cloveochai]

Burns Night Scotch Broth

[eowynstwin]

Re: this post. Because we all know what Price would do.

cw: Infidelity. Implied rape (coerced sex is rape). Implied murder. Price is Price.

-

The scent of ozone is sharp in your nose. The air around your husband gathers, electricity coalescing, taking on a slow, heavy pulse of its own as he sits there, arms crossed, expression closed. Hard.

John Price is a hard man. You knew this when you married him. Appreciated it, even. He suffers no fools, loathes a point belabored. To him, there is an unbroken, straight line, gloriously clear, between himself and his objective; a simple, beautiful connection between means and motive. Anything inconsequential is merely scenery on a road trip. Meaningless visual noise.

Between you, the wallet sits in the middle of the dinner table like a live grenade. Leather; worn around the edges.

Not his.

“Who,” he says. It is not a question. It is an order.

Your lips are pressed together tightly, so it might keep your chin from trembling. Stray tears are hot down the corners of your nose.

You can’t look him in the eye.

“It was,” you stutter, “the man, the—the man—for the car—”

Suddenly you have to take huge gulps of air. You pull them in raggedly, like they claw at your throat, refusing to go willingly into the cage of your lungs.

“It was only—only for—” you heave past a sob “—for the payment, he said—he said either this or—or—”

You cry out in fear as John stands from the chair, whole body shaking now.

Your husband does not suffer excuses, either.

You’ve never been afraid of him; John keeps his anger away from you, when he can. Takes it outside with a cigar and a bottle of scotch, to the gym and the sparring mats, or all the way out there where inevitably he must kill to keep from being killed.

But now it fills the house like tear gas. Billowing, noxious, whipping against your skin, pressing sharply into your eyes.

You squeeze them shut, tightly. He approaches you. Instinct, something written deep in your bones, seizes up, knows it feels the predator closing in. Resigned, like waiting for the jaws to close will make it hurt less when they snap your neck.

It’s why you flinch when his mouth lands, far too gently, on the crown of your head. His hand cups your nape like a newborn.

“Order some dinner,” he murmurs—not gently, but in memory of gentleness. “Have a bath, with those bombs I got you.”

You choke on your own breath. He withdraws, and finally you look him full in the face—

His brow is low. His gaze is shuttered away from you, fixed on some far point.

“John,” you whisper.

“I’ll be back tonight,” he murmurs.

“John!”

He turns his back on you and walks out the door.

-

You order pad thai for two, jasmine rice, crab kanob jeeb with spicy dipping sauce. You splurge and have fresh cookies delivered, against better judgement—not your own, you demonstrably have none, but certainly someone’s.

When you close your teeth around a dumpling, broth spurts against your tongue, like an artery punctured. The sauce clears your nostrils in a sudden punch, no lead up, no dancing around what it is and what it’s supposed to do. It’s delicious; exonerating.

You would think guilt would close your stomach, but in fact you eat like a man on death row, inhaling every flavor like you can take it with you into your next life. You have to stop yourself from digging into what your ordered for John.

He said he’d be back. He isn’t a liar.

You do have that bath. You pour yourself some of his scotch, light candles, fasten your hair up with a clip and rest the back of your neck against the slanted lip of the bathtub. You and John had bought this house in part because of this tub; you’d fantasized about doing just this as often as you pleased.

He’d joked about its great capacity for draining a body. You’d told him if he ever used your tub for murder, you’d leave him.

The bath bombs fizz next to your thighs, dying the water in pink and gold, bubbling along your skin. Steam rises visibly from the water; tension bleeds from you slowly, like your body is unwilling to give it up just yet.

When it begins to cool, you open the drain and shower off. You wash yourself from top to bottom, lathering soap between the palms of your bare hands, reacquainting your body with your own touch. There, the dips in your pelvis; there, the folds of your stomach; there, the backs of your knees, calves, the knobs of your ankle bones.

Everything as it was before. Clean. Unblemished.

You take your post on the couch in your softest pajamas, pulling a blanket up to your waist. There’s a game on tonight, a Liverpool friendly that you remember John wanted to watch. He should get back soon, then. He wouldn’t want to miss it—

The front door opens.

You whip around. Your gaze locks with your husband’s. You hold together motionless, staring, as if evaluating each other.

You’re not sure how you expected him to arrive but you find yourself surprised that he’s clean. He’s in the same clothes, even, jeans and a T-shirt and a bomber jacket and work boots. The picture of nondescript.

The air he brings in with him is…different. Not miasmic; more refined. Almost satiated. You can’t read his expression, but the line of his brow is softer.

“Alright?” he asks.

“Yeah,” you say, and find yourself surprised that you mean it.

Words sit heavy in your stomach. Serious, needful. But you know John; and suddenly you realize if there was a time for them at all, he wouldn’t want them anyway.

He comes over to you, toes off his boots and slings his jacket over the sofa back. Sits, gathers you into his side, bringing your legs over his lap and pulling your head into the crook of his neck. He’s warm; warmer than he should be, having just come in from the cold.

“Needed a walk,” is all he says.

“Sure,” you agree.

He smells like your John. Clean, evergreen body soap and fresh laundry and earthy, like the smell of turned humus. A little thread of gun oil that never goes away—metallic, in a way you’ve grown used to, and couldn’t imagine being without any longer.

He cups your shoulder with one hand, lays the other across your lap. Squeezes your thigh. His knuckles are chapped a deep, bruised red from the cold; you notice a dark spot beneath the nail of his pinky.

“What’s the score?” he asks. His deep voice rumbles in his chest.

“They’re losing,” you say. You inhale his scent, hold it in your lungs, and breathe out slowly, calmly.

“Eh,” he says, giving you a squeeze, kissing your hair. “They’ll get away with it.”

-

You buy a car on a loan from some shady fuck like an idiot and John takes care of it, idk. Don’t worry about watching the news babe he’s a professional

[mochalate]

[3] new notification!

msby!atsumuxreader || w/c: 1.1k + 1 min of video (yes, video.) chocolate chip cookies are the way to a guy's heart. (everyone knows that!) a/n: wow I thought I wouldn't post anything this week, but one really good chocolate cake later, I felt alive. Perhaps Atsumu and I are more similar than I thought. 🔔Please use full screen for the video!

[<-chapter 2][chapter 4->] ||[start from intro][masterlist]

Back when you were still at university, you had a part time job at the campus gym. Legally, you weren’t allowed to call yourself a nutritionist at that point, but that’s what you did. It was never anything complicated— the hardest thing had been managing expectations. 

No, you won’t have noticeable muscle definition in a month. 

Yes, you’ll need quite a bit longer than a week to lose ten kilos.

That will give you results, but perhaps a more sustainable plan?

So yes, expectations. You’re in a career chock-full of them. You’re good at managing them. Even when it’s hard.

Or so you’d thought.

Can I keep starin’? 

(Could it really be that easy?)

With four words, Atsumu Miya had ripped open the top of that flimsy cardboard box you’d oh-so-carefully stuffed your expectations in, and now you were struggling to (convince yourself to) put them back in. For the last few hours, you’ve been fiddling with that metaphorical scotch-tape, not quite daring to believe he could be interested in you— and yet unable to let go of that fantasy.

Was it a fantasy? 

You can still picture his flushed-red face, the anticipation and anxiety in his eyes. It wasn’t the kind of look you expected from a flirty joke.

Or…

It's when Osamu has to stop you from trying to grab the piping hot handle of a cast iron pan for the second time that you realise you need to come back to your senses.

“Osamu,” you ask, timidly. “Can I ask you something? It’s about Atsumu.”

Osamu turns down the flame on the burner, and looks at you. His face is neutral— some people went as far as calling those droopy grey eyes of his ‘expressionless’, but you preferred to think of them as steady. Osamu always said it like it was. 

He’s going to give you the reality check you so obviously need.

“How stupid am I for thinking I have a chance with Atsumu?”

You brace yourself for a scathing reply. Perhaps, ‘Next time, I won’t stop ya from burning yourself.’ Or maybe, “That oaf? Sorry, the only thing he’s attracted to is balls. Volleyballs, that is.”

What he does instead, is sigh heavily, and a little exasperatedly. 

“Did ya two idiots finally figure it out?”

Your heart skips a beat. “What?”

“You heard me,” Osamu says, turning up the flame once more. He stirs the simmering broth as he speaks. “He’s been actin’ stupid all week. And you’ve been actin’ stupid around him for a while.”

Oh. Oh.

There’s no way you’re ever putting those expectations away ever again, because that stupid box is all soggy at the bottom now. Soggy, because the raging mix of relief and happiness swirling around in your chest— the weight lifted off your shoulders because you don’t have to pretend anymore—  is making you tear up. 

Osamu hears you sniffle. 

“Aw, c’mon,” he says, tapping off the broth and setting the spoon beside the stove, “you know he isn’t worth cryin' over.” There’s a cheeky grin on his face, as he brings his large hands up to your face, wiping away the tears. “Want me to beat him up for ya?”

(You think he really might be your best friend.)

“You’re just looking for an excuse to!” You say, pulling his hands away as you laugh. 

He holds them up in mock defence. “Hey, two birds and all. Are you going call him?”

You’re already scrambling inside your purse. “I… think I forgot my phone at work.” 

He clicks his tongue. “I take it back, yer perfect for each other.”

“Hey!” You say it indignantly, but his words make you feel warm. Perfect for each other. “Can I borrow your phone? Would that be weird?”

“He’d make it weird,” Osamu scoffs. “Just go over.”

“I— I should bring him something.”

He makes an amused expression. “Okay.”

“I don’t know what.”

“Are you asking me for help?”

You make your best puppy face. “Please?”

Osamu sighs. “Well, he’s been complainin’ about those raisin bran cookies for weeks now…”

“I think it would be best if you don’t say anything. Just let it blow over,” the publicist says. She’s using the speakerphone, and her voice sounds far away. Atsumu can hear the clack of keyboard keys in the background. “I mean it, Miya. Log out of everything. No, uninstall everything.”

“Don’t ya trust me even a little bit?” Atsumu asks. He tries to sound teasing, but his heart isn’t in it.

“No,” she says bluntly. The call goes blank.

Atsumu collapses back on to his bed, legs hanging over the edge. He holds his phone up over his face, staring at the ‘call ended’ until the screen turns itself off, and then sighs heavily.

It’s not that he’s worried. She was right, it would blow over. But it would happen again. And he knows that each time, it would chip off a little piece of you; and eventually leave your edges jagged and rough enough to cut.

You’d resent him for it.

Atsumu unlocks his phone. It’s easy enough to find those pictures of you and Osamu again.

You look so happy.

He doesn’t think he was being delusional earlier, he knows there was something more than plain embarrassment in your eyes when you’d looked at him; and yet, he can’t shake the thought that he’s being selfish. 

The photo is cropped awkwardly, and he knows you and Osamu are close, but he can’t help but feel disheartened, and then hate himself for feeling like that. Were you two actually seeing each other? Was he meddling in his brother’s happiness, your happiness? What did he have to offer that his brother didn’t, save for the scrutiny of strangers?

The phone buzzes.

His eyes flick up to the notification bar. It’s a DM request from one of his new-found confidantes.

(Well, it's not like I've got anything better to do.)

In that brief moment, Atsumu understands his mother, and her panic at the state of the house when guests were imminent. He even understands, as he turns a couple of the trophies he has on display a few degrees to the left, why she would go around adjusting her many throw pillows in those last few seconds. That time seemed to stretch endlessly.

And then the doorbell rings, and time seems to somehow come to a stop and rush forward at the same time.

Atsumu stumbles on the carpet as he rushes to open the door.

And there you are.

“Hey, Atsumu,” you say, fiddling with the lid of the plastic container in your hands, “can we talk?”

(Wow, he thinks for some reason. I think those are cookies.)

Osamu walked her over because the publicist was calling around to find her, when she couldn't get a hold of reader on her number. He was worried about her going alone. What a prince. Divider @/cafekitsune Tweet images edited from here and Shokubutsu Zukan (by Tsutsumi Kakeru). Had a hard time finding the source for that image lol, it's been used in SO many fic headers. Each time I reverse image searched, If found a slightly less cropped version until it ended as the full page. and then i had to google translate this russian pirated manga site. next chapter will be the last + I will post a little bonus from the osamu POV. :)

[assassinschaoticcreed]

What's everyone's favorite food dish?

so specifically from where they're from/their cultural food:

Altaïr: braised lamb with honey and dates

Arno: pork wrapped veal and vegetable hot pot

Connor: hare and root vegetable stew

Desmond: he honestly isn't too picky, but he is very skeptical on some of the Italian dishes maria makes.

Edward: cod and red snapper in a spicy broth

Ezio: lamb and beef lasagna with eggplant caviar and mint

Jacob: breaded scotch eggs with herbs and traditional battered fish

specifically these meals I got from the AC Culinary Codex, my cousin got me the book for Christmas. for those who don't know what the book is; it's got a full meal for each assassin (bayek, altaïr, ezio, connor, aveline, edward, shay, arno, jacob & evie) main dish, soup, dessert and drink that was popular during their time/era. if you're curious for these I'm more than glad to give you the recipes, I personally wouldn't spend $30 + tax like my cousin did on the book rip.

American food wise;

Altaïr: Cold Cut Sandwiches

Arno: Beef Stew

Connor: Steak/Pork Chops

Desmond: Pizza

Edward: Hamburgers

Ezio: BBQ Ribs

Jacob: Chili Dogs & Chili Fries (change my mind)

[thedaythatwas]

How to be Alone

Summary: Goro Akechi has 30 days to vacate his apartment. If only moving on were half as easy as moving out.

CW: alcohol, emetophobia, run-of-the-mill violent thoughts from Akechi, and more repression than you could possibly fathom

This is just a little snippet of a post-canon Akechi character study I've been working on! I want to share it here on tumblr as a standalone oneshot. Please don't expect any tension to be resolved <333 because that's not happening here <333

Big thank you to my lovely betas, lambsear (ao3), @cardiganbear, and @cloudysonder. Another massive thanks to @chaoticconstellation – thank you for all of the inspo and motivation (and for making me aware that apartments that evil-looking exist!)

House Hunting (or, I'm not hung up on you anymore, but here's why I hung up)

Shopping for apartments online was hell.

Akechi was no stranger to feelings of mind-numbing rage. Even so, there was something about the website he was using to search for a new living space that made him particularly angry, even by his own standards. His cursor drifted across its screen, its interface lagged, and despite his perfect internet connection, it seemed as though every thirty seconds the damn thing refreshed itself. 

Akechi wasn’t sure where exactly he was looking to live; his requirements for a new place were the vague but apt key terms, ‘Tokyo,’ ‘cheap,’ and ‘studio.’ Unfortunately, his criteria seemed to be mutually exclusive. A room of his own would cost an arm and a leg; a room with a roommate or two would take a doable (albeit still exorbitant) chunk from his savings. It was tragic, really, that Akechi would be at risk of causing grievous bodily harm to himself and others if he were forced to share a living space. Forking over cash he didn’t have was quite literally his only option. 

Akechi might have been able to search out some middle ground between striking gold beneath the streets of Kichijoji and committing another homicide if he had the luxury of time to plan his move. He had always been scrappy, even if he was seldom lucky. 

Time, however, was something that Akechi didn’t have. That, of course, had to do with the circumstances that had pushed him to bearing the indignities of online apartment hunting in the first place.

On February 3rd, Akechi had woken up in his bed. This was strange for a number of reasons. One: he didn’t make a habit of waking up when his bedside clock brightly proclaimed it to be 8:37pm. 

Two: Goro Akechi was supposed to be dead. 

And, joy of all joys, he was not. Upon registering this unfortunate new development in the saga of misfortunes that was his existence, Akechi had rolled over, buried his head in his pillow, and screamed. When soreness in his throat informed him that screaming was no longer a viable way to spend his time, he had walked to his near-empty kitchen and grabbed the frilly bottle of expensive single malt scotch that Shido had given him the day he had reported to his office to confirm Wakaba Ishikki’s death.

Akechi had been saving the bottle for the day he won.

Well. Cheers to that one. 

He had sat down on the linoleum tile floor and taken a large swig out of the bottle. Presumably, he’d repeated the act a number of times, because the next morning he’d woken up in his bed – again, ironically, with no memory of how he’d arrived there – and promptly thrown up on himself. 

He’d tossed his unlucky shirt in the garbage, along with the bottle he’d found lying knocked over and bone dry on the kitchen floor. He really had always hated it.

After spending several days lying in his bed, only leaving it to periodically feed himself one of the instant ramen packets he stockpiled in the one cabinet in his kitchen he actively used, Akechi had washed his sheets and moved on.

What else could he do?

He had contacted Sae Niijima first, because while he had been spending several days laying horizontal in a dark room, adding an abstract collage of broth splatters to his sweatpants and trying to convince himself that any of his recent decisions actually mattered, Akira Kurusu was probably behind bars giving testimony that would damn Shido and potentially put himself away for good in the process. 

And like hell was he going to let Joker one-up him by rotting away in jail while Akechi – clearly, the most deserving party in this scenario on both counts – walked free.

As soon as he’d heard the click of his phone connecting to Sae’s, Akechi had come in guns blazing announcing his intent to march down to the police station and confess to everything he’d done. He would gladly go down with Shido’s ship if it meant he could anchor him well and truly to rock bottom. 

The elder Niijima sister had rolled shockingly well with Akechi’s punches. After expressing mild surprise that he was alive, Sae had efficiently talked him off his ledge.

“Do you want Shido to be locked away for life? If your answer is yes, I suggest you stay well away from my case. I have a strategy, and it will be much less effective if I have to account for the testimony of a magical teenage assassin confessing to cognitively killing some of Japan’s most powerful men just as they’ve begun to take me seriously.” 

Akechi had never answered her question, because Akechi didn’t want Shido to be locked away. Not like this, anyway. What he had wanted hadn’t involved Kurusu, and yet, here Kurusu was in the center of it all, robbing Akechi of his chance to make Shido’s fall really hurt. 

Still, Akechi had come to terms with the fact that what he wanted and what he would get were two very different things in regards to the fate of Masayoshi Shido, and to this brave new world where Akechi was meant to be long dead. 

What he had done was take a deep breath, swallow down his very reasonable retorts – he had at least five – and ask about Kurusu. 

His inquiry was fruitful, if aggravating. Akechi hadn’t been naive enough to expect that any update on Kurusu wouldn’t be aggravating. 

Per Sae, it wouldn’t be long until Kurusu was released from juvenile detention (implied: so long as Akechi didn’t butt in). Apparently, his extended posse had banded together, and Sae doubted it would be more than a few weeks before he was out. He was actually on track to have his criminal record completely overturned.

Kurusu was relying on the power of friendship to not only avoid a life sentence, but to completely exonerate himself from the year he had spent galavanting around the Metaverse, stealing hearts and minds and Akechi’s life’s work, too. One might say that Akechi was less than enthused. Mostly, because he was near certain that using the force of true love to outrun his mistakes would actually work for Kurusu, because he was Kurusu, and of fucking course it could.

He hadn’t told Sae as much, but he sensed she’d intuited his frustration from his chorus of ‘...I see,’ ‘...I see,’ ‘...I see,’  through the phone, each repetition darker than the last. 

With that sorted, Akechi had told Sae in no uncertain terms that she was not to tell Kurusu or any of the other Phantom Thieves that he was alive under any circumstances. She said that she would respect his wishes. She hadn’t asked any follow up questions. It was a refreshing change of pace from the back and forth that talking to the rest of Kurusu’s loyal followers always seemed to entail.

Then again, this was Sae. She had been a fixture in his life long before she had become a mainstay in Kurusu’s.

That little detail out of the way, Akechi had been prepared to hang up. Before he could, Sae had invited him to coffee. Bewildered, Akechi had accepted.

“You are aware, I presume, that I’ve killed more people than the number of cases you’ve litigated over the course of your entire career, aren’t you?” Akechi had said as soon as he had slid into the stiffly upholstered booth across from Sae at the too cold, overly gray café where they had agreed to meet the following day. “Including among them Wakaba Isshiki and Kunikazu Okumura.”

Sae had pulled her credit card out of her sleek handbag and rapped it on the table between them.

“I am. Could you give me your order Akechi-kun? Drinks are on me today.”

Akechi had ordered a black drip coffee – far from the best he’d ever had – and the two of them had talked about his future, not his past. 

Sae told Akechi that she would be willing to hire him as a personal assistant. She couldn’t swing him a position interning in the public prosecutor’s office; it went without saying that Akechi ought to stay as far away as possible from any branch of law enforcement for the foreseeable future. Sure, very few people recognized him nowadays – the demiurge had fallen and taken Shido’s influence with it, and Akechi had been out of the public eye for a sufficient number of news cycles for even his most avid fans to lose interest – but it seemed unwise to tempt fate. 

They both knew that most of Shido’s conspiracy was still at large. As repentant as their former leader was, his sentiments were not widely shared. Shido had done more damage than a single change of heart could fix. 

All this to say, Akechi would be keeping a low profile. Not that he would have acted otherwise, regardless of who might want him imprisoned, or who might want him dead.

Akechi was, quite frankly, tired.

His employment would hinge on agreeing to take his high school equivalency and college entrance exams before the next university matriculation cycle. Akechi had, more or less, finished his final year of high school. Unfortunately, the less in that statement meant that he had never actually graduated. Still, he could easily pass a high school equivalency exam – an inconvenience, but a bureaucratic necessity, and hardly an insurmountable one. Before his life had gone to shit, he had been on track to get top marks on his entrance exams. It wouldn’t be difficult to keep himself versed in the material he needed to know in order to pass with flying colors.

He didn’t have strong feelings for or against Sae’s vision for his future. Akechi had been slated to die long before he had shot shut the bulkhead door on his father’s ship. He had gone to cram school because it was what the detective prince was supposed to do, and he had excelled at it because the world had told him that he couldn’t. He wasn’t like Makoto Niijima, with her good marks and bright future. 

Sae would pay him for doing this, though. More, she had that earnest look in her eyes behind the stoic contours of her face that suggested she really thought she was doing what was best for him. 

Akechi had agreed to her terms. 

Besides, he’d always been told that college wasn’t in the cards for him. The idea of proving those people wrong lit something up inside him that he hadn’t realized had been smothered until then.

Akechi would work for Sae on weekdays and study on weekends. She would check in with him once a week to confirm that he was indeed making progress on his personal studies and to assign him new memos and forms to copy edit. So long as he was on track, she would pay him another week.

It had all sounded so easy. Too easy. Akechi needed to ask.

“Why?”

Sae had taken a long sip of her cappuccino. “Why what?” 

“You know what.” Akechi had crossed his arms, his mouth drawn in a hard line, “Why this?”

Sae had set her cup down onto her saucer without so much as an audible clink. “Is it really so difficult to believe that I’d want to help you?”

“You pity me.” He’d said it like a fact, because it was a fact, and he didn’t take kindly to it. 

Sae hadn’t looked surprised to hear Akechi’s words. She raised her eyebrows.

“No, I don’t. And I’m not absolving you, either. You made choices that hurt people, and you need to face consequences for that. But, Akechi-kun…” 

Sae paused, as if weighing her next words on her tongue. “Goro. You were sixteen.”

Akechi didn’t know which part of her addendum offended him most: Sae’s use of his given name – he’d bristled, he couldn’t remember how long it had been since someone had been presumptuous enough to call him Goro – or her implication that he hadn’t known exactly what he was doing back when he first approached Shido. 

She hadn’t seen how proud he had been when Shido handed him his first pistol. She hadn’t been there each time he’d pulled its trigger. Akechi had stopped feeling anything about his hits after he’d downed a handful of targets. Through it all, he’d never felt remorse. He’d even smiled, the first time.

That smile hadn’t lasted, of course. It had fallen right along with Ishikki. Still, everyone knows that it’s your first reaction to a thing that really counts. 

Her eyes on his were resolute, as if she were daring him to object. She wasn’t budging. 

Sae had sounded awfully confident for someone who had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

Akechi remembered their long days at the police station and the late night dinners Sae would treat him to after, when he’d watch as she scarfed down cheap conveyor belt sushi and let her dignified mask slip like the rice that fell from her chopsticks to her perfectly starched dress shirt. He remembered their constant shop-talk that always seemed to border on something more personal. 

Sae knew what it was like to prove yourself in a world that wanted to see you fail. He remembered watching her come undone in October, how he almost felt bad as he watched her slip further away from her sister, and from him.

Gripping his mug hard enough to put its handle in peril, Akechi had bitten back the urge to inform Sae that he was eighteen years old now, and had done very bad things continuously from age sixteen through now, thank you very much. He was suddenly aware of exactly how juvenile it would sound if he did.

He decided that Sae could call him what she wanted. ‘Goro’ didn’t feel wrong, he supposed. It just felt new.

She was wrong about him, but he had let her continue without correction. 

“You did things that were unforgivable. What our system did to you was unforgivable.” She took a sip of her cappuccino. The action was smug, somehow, like she knew just how much she’d gotten away with when Akechi kept his silence. At least she was self-aware. “Masayoshi Shido is being brought to justice, and Kurusu-kun isn’t facing anything that he can’t handle. This will be over soon.” 

Akechi could hardly believe that. While he had faith in Sae’s legal prowess, Shido was just one head of a veritable hydra of corruption and intrigue. Rooting out his conspiracy would air out Japan’s dirty laundry in a way that he doubted the powerful men who soiled it would permit. It would be dangerous business to try.

He couldn’t fathom that Shido was a problem that had an imminent expiration date. He was supposed to be Akechi’s Gordian knot. Shido was his arms race, his mutually assured destruction. Unraveling him couldn’t possibly be so simple, and it couldn’t possibly be done without Akechi. 

Could it?

Where the hell did that leave him?

Of course, Sae’s words were meant to be encouraging, even if Akechi could actively feel his vision tunneling and his pulse jackhammering up. He clamped that feeling down and shoved it somewhere to sort through later – or never – as Sae pushed on.

“I want you to move forward. I don’t see any reason for you not to. That’s where you’ll find justice.”

It all sounded so scripted. Akechi wondered how many times she had practiced her little speech in the mirror after she’d drafted it on her legal pad. He knew it was her standard practice for high stakes days in court. Sae never let slip that she was nervous, but that didn’t mean she never was. 

While Akechi was almost flattered that she considered him worth a rehearsal or two, her dedication had been proving to be rather inconvenient that day. A Sae who had decided she needed to win seldom lost. The Phantom Thieves had helped her reorient her sense of justice towards good ends, but there was no version of Sae who wasn’t as stubborn as the one they’d encountered in her casino.

Fortunately, so was Akechi. 

“I’ve earned execution ten times over.” 

He barely managed to keep his words level as he forced them out. It was vexing that he needed to remind the woman sitting across from him – a public prosecutor with one of the most gleaming case records Tokyo had seen in recent memory – that per the word of her own law, he deserved to die. 

She tucked a wayward strand of hair neatly behind her ear and clasped her hands together on the tabletop between them.

“And I’m telling you that executing you doesn’t help anyone,” she hadn’t raised her voice, but Akechi could hear it harden with authority, “Learn to be a better person. You still have plenty of time to grow. Don’t forfeit this opportunity that you’ve been given to do that.”

He scoffed. “And if I can’t?”

“Then don’t. But I think you can.” 

She had said it without hesitation, like she really believed it. At that realization, Akechi let out a laugh that bordered on a snort, the kind he never would have allowed to slip through his throat when Sae had known him as someone else.

“You’re all insane.”

She hadn’t seemed surprised by his outburst as she took a long drink from her cup. As she swallowed, clearly unperturbed, Akechi found himself wondering if he’d given her too little credit, or himself too much. Probably both.

Sae’s lip quirked up. “Maybe. But I’ve realized that you need to be a little insane to believe you can see the world change for the better. Your teammates helped me learn that.”

Akechi’s hackles raised. “They are not my teammates.”

“Oh really?” She set her cup down onto her saucer, “I think Kurusu-kun would disagree.” 

That half-smile of hers persisted, like she thought she knew something he didn’t. “You know, he asked about you earlier this week. He seemed riled up. I think he would want to know that you’re alive.”

It didn’t even take eyes to notice Akira Kurusu’s bleeding-heart obsession with who he thought Akechi was. It practically radiated off of him in waves you could touch, like he was some sort of sad magnet for homicidal lost causes. Sae wasn’t telling Akechi anything he couldn’t have reasonably inferred, knowing what he did about Kurusu. 

If Sae said that Kurusu was ‘riled up,’ he knew that Kurusu must have been near hysterics. Well, per the yardstick of Kurusu’s typical emoting capacity. He could envision the way Kurusu’s lips had probably gotten all drawn, the way they tended to when he tried to hide that he was feeling more than he let on. 

Kurusu didn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve, but he wasn’t impossible to read if you knew what you were looking to find. His brow had probably furrowed, his fists had probably clenched, and his eyes had probably gone just short of misty. 

Akechi wasn’t sure how he felt about that mental image.

“Well, we can’t always get what we want, now can we?”

“I understand, Goro,” Sae stared him dead in the eye as she said his given name, leaving Akechi no option but to immediately take a good long drink of burnt coffee from his mug. “But consider it for me, won’t you? I don’t think that it would be a bad idea for you to build a support network for yourself.”

 Akechi cursed to himself. He should have known that she wouldn’t let this topic lie so easily.

Akechi grit his teeth. “I don’t think Sakura or Okumura would take kindly to seeing me.”

“Then don’t see them.” She said it matter of fact, like it was that easy. “But, for the record, I think that Kurusu-kun would.”

Of course Kurusu would. Even a child who couldn’t add two and two could piece together that Akira Kurusu would probably lop off a limb to have been in that booth with them that day. The idiot had wished Akechi back into existence and into his life, and he would again if he could.

That was why he couldn’t know that Akechi was alive. 

Well, it accounted for half the issue.

The other half rested on the fact that Kurusu had been the first thing to cross Akechi’s mind in that half second that passed between realizing he was alive and resolving to scream about it. He hadn’t had the decency to fully leave Akechi’s thoughts ever since, with the exception of the several hours he had spent blackout drunk. 

Somehow, that last bit was less than reassuring. 

Even worse, none of it was exactly new. 

The long and short of it was that Akechi needed to get himself clean, and he couldn’t very well do that if Kurusu came chasing after him. 

And so, he made his words as sharp as he could muster. “I think that Kurusu-kun should get a grip and realize that I very sincerely tried to murder him.”

Sae stared him down. He was under no illusions – this was an interrogation. It was a surprise when her gaze softened. 

She hummed. “Do you regret it?”

And wasn’t that a loaded question? 

He regretted that it had all amounted to nothing. He regretted that Shido had played him for a fool, and that on the evening of November 20th, he’d gone home and damn near cracked open his bottle of Shido revenge scotch. He regretted that at some catastrophic point in the past year, besting Joker had become something bigger than besting his father, and that just as soon as Akechi had thought he’d managed it, the metal on metal scent of blood splattering onto the interrogation room’s table from Kurusu’s too-blank face became something he needed to forget. 

Of course, he also regretted that he’d been tricked, and that he’d wasted several nights wide awake thinking about the way Kurusu had looked at him that night in the bathhouse, sweat on his brow and droplets of steam condensed on his irritatingly long lashes, like he had really wanted to be there with him, listening. 

His brief brush with insomnia had cost Akechi twelve dollars in drugstore coffee, five dollars in sugar-free energy drinks, and at least three years of his life, if you accounted for the carcinogens that made up the latter. Akechi did.

At least he’d saved that bottle of scotch. It had gone to waste anyway, but it was more about the principle of the thing.

But he couldn’t very well explain any of that to Sae. So, Akechi had lied.

“No.”

“I see.” If Sae was disappointed in his answer, she didn’t show it. She gave him a nod, drummed her fingers on the table, and checked her watch. “Let me know if you change your mind. I’ll keep your existence to myself until you tell me to do otherwise.”

Sae had swallowed down the last of her drink, and that was that.

Since that day, his life had gone on. He spent his weekdays looking over Sae’s contracts and his weekends grinding out practice problems from study books. Sometimes he would work in his apartment. He’d draw open the blinds and spread his papers across his bed – he had a desk, but it was cramped, his chair was stiff, and he’d never really brought himself around to using the space as it was meant to be used. 

Other days, Akechi camped out in cafés around the city. He operated under the assumption that any place that had the audacity to charge 700 yen for a barely passable latte must have presumed he would use said latte as an all-day pass to free wifi and a climate controlled workspace. Akechi felt vindicated in taking full advantage.

He found that the more tasks he had to fill his time, the less liable his mind was to wander. 

Not that it was always easy. It had been hardest at first, when more mornings than not the was filled with the urge to lay under his comforter and rot through the day. He’d learned quickly that when that urge struck, it was best to call Sae and pick up an extra stack of whatever she could push off on him before her work day started. He would chip away at it during the daylight hours and catch up with his other tasks at night, a can of cold brew in one hand and a highlighter in the other. 

He never slipped behind Sae’s expectations for him, because he was Goro Akechi, and he didn’t let himself lose if he could help it. Still, it wasn’t lost on him that he wasn’t supposed to be alive. Sue him if that got to him once in a while. 

He hadn’t planned for any of this, and if he did anything besides move straight through it all, the shiny paint of productivity he’d slapped over his unplanned extension pack to living would slide right off. It would become obvious that there was little holding his life together besides spite, busywork, and a lawyer who had willfully decided she wouldn’t let him quit as her part-timer, or as anything else. 

Thinking about that never did him any good, so he didn’t. Fortunately, Akechi was no stranger to doing what needed to be done first and wondering how on earth he had managed it after the fact. 

Now, he needed to move forward. So he did.

That wasn’t to say his strategy always worked. 

It tended to happen late at night, when Akechi didn’t have the energy to stop his thoughts from drifting to the subjects his wiser, more conscious self refused to engage. 

Typically, that meant Joker. No. It always meant Joker. Shido, too, but it was infuriating, really, how even those thoughts tended to meander back around to Joker, too. 

As Akechi had taken his post-hibernation shower months ago, his sheets in the wash and grease sloughing from his hair in the suds of overpriced shampoo, Akechi had come to a number of resolute conclusions about the state of his life. Namely, if he was going to continue to live it, he had a few non-negotiables.

To start, he would keep a wide berth from any news outlets covering the Shido trial – he was sure there would be more than a few. He’d find a way to get his hands on another, cheaper bottle of something high-proof. He would learn to use one kitchen appliance besides the microwave. The oven, maybe.

And, of course, he would keep himself far, far away from Akira Kurusu.

Akechi would have liked to think that his thoughts always seemed to land on Kurusu out of force of habit. After all, he’d spent months tracking his every move. He’d never quite learned to think like Kurusu – he doubted that anyone could – but Akechi certainly knew the timetables of the trains he took to get around town, the names of his managers at each of his (many) part-time jobs, and which vending machines he preferred to get his snacks from. 

Had he strictly needed to collect so much information on the leader of the Phantom Thieves in the name of reconnaissance? Perhaps not. It wasn’t as though knowing that Kurusu routinely arrived at his station around three minutes before his scheduled train would actually give him an edge in battle. 

(Akechi of the past had tried to posture that it might, but Akechi of the past was an idiot, and Akechi of the present could admit that.)

He had never been one to half-ass, though, and Kurusu had always been so interesting. His calendar protested his reprioritization, but there was nothing new or surprising about that. The detective prince’s life had been a scheduling impossibility, and Akechi had managed regardless. More than managed, really.

Tragically, ‘reconnaissance’ couldn’t account for the way Akechi’s vision tunneled around Kurusu. It couldn’t explain away the thoughts Kurusu always managed to coax out of his head and into speech. 

So, no. Akechi wasn’t stupid enough to believe that his continued fixation on Akira Kurusu was ‘force of habit.’ It was something much more dangerous, and he couldn’t afford to allow himself to succumb to it. Not after everything.

If Akechi was going to live a life, that life would damn well be his own. He refused to live for anybody but himself, and that included Akira Kurusu.

Still, the version of Akechi that lay awake in his bed at 4am, strung out on caffeine, had been known to have other thoughts from time to time. When his eyes were bloodshot and jargon swirled on his ceiling, he thought back to the look on Kurusu’s face when he had caught his glove. Cocky – Joker always was — but something more behind that. Akechi could only describe it as the expression of a boy missing something he hadn’t yet lost. 

It had taken him too long to realize that Kurusu had known exactly what the glove had meant from the moment it had been thrown. It had taken him even longer to realize that Kurusu had understood it better than Akechi had. 

It was enough to make him want to tear Kurusu apart, nice and slow, piece by piece. It was almost enough to make him want to reach for his phone.

He didn’t, of course. There was a lot of power in ‘almost.’ It meant that he was in control.

It was easier during the day. Sae always had something to shrug off on him if he needed it. 

Of course, there was also the pesky matter of his father.

That day at the café, Sae had mentioned that she’d spoken to him. Shido had said that he wouldn’t implicate Akechi in his trial. Apparently, he’d expressed regrets about his treatment of his son. 

Akechi hadn’t asked her for more information. She had already said too much. 

Once, there had been nothing Akechi wanted more than to hear his father drool out how big of a mistake it had been to leave him. Now, the thought of Shido feeling at all guilty, or heaven forbid, apologizing to him, made bile rise in the back of his throat.

Just one hit, and Akechi would want another. There would be nothing of him left. It was a trend, it seemed, that Akechi needed to learn when to keep well enough away from people he’d let spin him in circles.

Fortunately, he had always been a quick study.

Akechi hadn’t tried to contact him, and he and Sae hadn’t discussed Masayoshi Shido any further since. 

Given his track record with all things luck and Shido related, Akechi really should have expected that decision to come back and bite him. 

The rabid dog that was the universe’s refusal to let Akechi live his life in peace caught up to him one day in early June. Coming home from a coffee shop, mini-mart sushi in hand, he’d seen it. 

He had thirty days to vacate his apartment, because of fucking course he did.

Akechi felt six years old again. Seeing the notice pasted to his apartment door, he may as well have been holding his mother’s hand. He felt it clench around his pudgy fingers tight enough to hurt. He knew that she didn’t mean it. He knew that she hadn’t meant to fall behind on rent, either. He knew that some nights at her club were lucrative, and that some mornings, she couldn’t find it in herself to get out of bed. Their income had never been stable, and neither had their address.

But his mother wasn’t there, she hadn’t been for a long time, and Akechi was the only one responsible for the little crescent-shaped indents in his palms as he stared at the paper on his door and tried to will it away with the sheer force of his – in his humble opinion – very justified righteous anger.

He’d called Sae immediately, right as soon as he’d ripped down the notice, gone inside, and poured himself a drink. Apparently, all of Shido’s hidden assets had finally been frozen. Even if he wanted to continue to pay Akechi’s rent, he couldn’t. Akechi hadn’t been affected until now because Shido had, prior to recent events, had his apartment bills set to auto-pay from one of his more clandestine bank accounts. 

That was something that even now made the part of Akechi’s brain that had stayed young and poor recoil. To have so much cash that a transfer of that size could simply be counted on to go through every month, no risk of declining – from an auxiliary checking account – seemed almost gluttonous. 

Well, the payment had finally bounced, it seemed. Nobody was untouchable. It would have been more gratifying if Akechi weren’t the one being left high and dry. He had hung up the phone and downed the last of his drink. His mediocre room-temperature sushi forgotten, he’d taken a seat on his floor, opened his laptop, and typed in a preliminary search for Tokyo-studio-cheap. 

That brought him to now. It was remarkable, really, how his day had only managed to get worse and worse in the hour that had passed since then.

Staying in his current apartment simply wasn’t an option. Akechi had tucked money into his savings account during his time as the detective prince, of course, but even the sizable amount he had slowly accrued for himself over the last several years wouldn’t be able to cover more than a month or two of rent in the place Shido had picked out for him. It had a separate kitchen, living, and sleeping space, alongside a full bathroom. It was fully renovated and featured in-unit laundry. It even came with a parking spot (not that Akechi owned a car, could drive, or feasibly use his space in the garage in literally any capacity). 

All of it had been an undeniable power play on Shido’s part. The place really was too much for him. It was a needless show of excess – an in-your-face sort of look what I can do for you, aren’t you scared to lose it?

Sure, Akechi could spend three years worth of residual earnings on thirty extra days in this place, but all it would do was buy him time, not to mention drain the last financial cushion he had left. He needed to put down a deposit on another place, after all. His bank account would be running on fumes after that, and rent at his new place would be due almost immediately. 

Fuck. He’d almost forgotten his utilities. His phone bill. His Wi-Fi. He didn’t need to be a genius to know that any day now, those expenses would hit him too.

Shido would be burning in hell for a whole host of reasons – Akechi knew this, because he’d spent the last several years of his life passively looping his long, long list of them through his head like a rallying cry. It was always a solid hit that got his head where it needed to be to do whatever he needed to do. This newest slight was a tiny drop of water in the ocean of ways his father had wronged him. 

Still. If there was any justice in the world, Akechi would be allowed to spit on his father during his fiery descent. Just a little bonus to him for needing to go through this after everything he’d already endured.

All roads led to moving. May as well get it done sooner rather than later. 

Akechi would need to pick up a second job to somehow come up with the difference between his dwindling savings account, Sae’s weekly commission, and the cost of living accommodations that would let him avoid adding to his death toll. It would be a less insulting prospect if any of the studio apartments he would be able to afford after that looked remotely liveable.

This one said that the paint on its walls might contain traces of lead, and that its landlord wouldn’t be held liable for medical damages that resulted from it. That one had visible mold on the bathroom tiles, even in the very obviously postured online listing photos. He shuddered to think of the state of that shower if he saw it in the flesh. 

Every listing Akechi had looked at so far seemed to come with its own set of shockingly diverse hazards, their one continuity being that they evoked similar feelings of dread in the pit of his stomach. The ones that didn’t come with a laundry list of health and safety violations stated up front that they required an application pre-screening. Akechi’s credit score was perfectly fine – the detective prince had always paid off his statements in full, and on time. What he didn’t have were two good references. As it turned out, that was rapidly proving itself to be a serious problem.

Even on a webpage with the best user interface imaginable, the experience would have been bleak. That said, Akechi might have felt slightly less homicidal if the website didn’t reload every single time he clicked the back-out arrow after he decided he wasn’t (yet) desperate enough to risk braving exposed wiring in his combined living-bedroom-kitchen-foyer-bathroom space.

It wasn’t as though Akechi hadn’t expected this would happen – he just hadn’t expected it to happen now. He had wanted to be able to really plan his move. The fact he’d even thought that taking his sweet time could be an option for him was proof that he’d let his guard down. 

He clicked on another listing. Wonderful. This one was just under 150 square feet. He honestly hadn’t known that was legal.

Well. Actually. 

He paused. Zoomed in.

On second glance, maybe it wasn’t so bad. It looked clean, recently renovated. The move-in date fit his needs. It was small, sure, but it seemed like the space was well allocated. He mentally crumpled up his commitment to learning how to use an oven. It wouldn’t be happening in a place of this size, but maybe that was for the best, anyway.

He decided to click the button to arrange a tour with the landlord. Maybe his situation wasn’t so dire after all.

Of course, that was when the website decided to crash.

The noise that wrenched its way out of his throat wasn’t unlike how he expected a dying cat might sound. He slammed his laptop shut and rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyelids. 

He needed another drink.

He poured himself a coffee mug of vodka and water. It was like vodka and soda for people who barely had the means to buy themself vodka, and for whom also needing to buy mixers felt like adding insult to injury. It was disgusting, but a disgusting necessity. Today, his crime against good taste was the housing market’s fault.

He took a sip, grimaced, and climbed into his bed. He propped himself up on his pillows and took another long drink. It didn’t taste quite so bad now that he’d whet his palate. 

Fuck. He hadn’t even had the chance to change when he’d gotten home. He undid the top buttons of his dress shirt where they pinched at his neck. It wasn’t as though Akechi had anyone to look nice for, nowadays, but his wardrobe hadn’t gotten a radical overhaul since the detective prince’s fall from notoriety. He’d worn designer shirts then, he’d wear designer shirts now. They looked slightly worse for wear, but at least that meant they were incrementally more comfortable to wear out now than they had been back in the day.

Not by much. He sighed as the stale air conditioning of his room hit his skin. He took another sip of his drink. Then another.

It wouldn’t be so hard to find that listing again. He was pissed on principle. Websites should work. Apartments should be bigger than closets. You should be able to beg a landlord to let you live in a closet-sized apartment on a website that at least functioned halfway decently.

He took another good long gulp from his mug.

He could have really gone for coffee, right then. Not the glorified overpriced milk you could get from any old chain. The good stuff.

It had been a long time since he’d had good coffee. 

There was only one place Akechi had ever had truly, honest-to-god good coffee.

His cellphone was lying at the foot of his bed.

He could send him a text, right now. Something clever. Akechi knew that no matter what it was, it would shock him, but it needed to be witty, too, because he would expect nothing less. He would kill to see the look on his face. He would look down at his phone, see Akechi’s name light up his screen, and his eyes would get all wide and scared. 

You’ve been alive all this time? 

They would meet up, and Kurusu, he’d be miserable, he’d probably cry or do something equally sappy, and – once he really processed – he’d be mad as all hell. Akechi would laugh at him, say something as snarky as the situation demanded, and watch the anger melt right off of Kurusu’s face in real time. 

Akechi would finally have pulled one over on him. He’d finally win. He could feel the rush already. 

Kurusu wanted to lose so bad, it was embarrassing, really.

Right as fantasy Kurusu threw himself at fantasy Akechi, real Akechi felt a wave of cold dread wash over him.

He walked to the sink and poured his final few sips of vodka water down the sink.

No. Hell no. 

He turned on the tap and splashed cold water on his face. It dripped down his neck. He couldn’t bring himself to mind as it trickled down to the collar of his undone shirt.

He was better than this. He knew damn well that the only one ‘losing’ in the situation his addled mind had cooked up was himself. 

It had only taken half a drink to get him there. 

Fuck. He doused his face in more water for good measure.  

He walked back to his bedroom, unlocked his phone, and scrolled through his message logs to find his last conversation with Akira Kurusu. Taking care not to click anything damning, he swiped to delete it.

There. It was over. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t done that sooner.

He rinsed out his mug and poured himself a glass of water from the tap. It didn’t need ice – he’d already confirmed that it was sufficiently chilled.

His laptop was still on his kitchen floor. Akechi took a seat, cross legged, and reloaded the webpage he had been on previously. Surely, he’d have more luck this session. Maybe he’d even find a place larger than 150 square feet. 175 seemed like a reasonable goal.

He would make this work. He was moving apartments, and he was moving on. He’d managed far more difficult things in the past. 

He looked at his phone, sitting on the floor to his right. He tapped the display once. 

No new messages. And why would there be?

He sighed and got to work.

[soaps-mohawk]

It's constantly mentioned that food in the army is shit. Honestly actual British food (AND IM TALKING WHITE WHITE) sounds really... boring 😭

What do you think are the boys' favorite meals? Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner... and of course dessert 😂

Bonus: WHATS YOURS?~

Okay, I will say, as an American of course I am biased towards American foods because that's what I grew up eating and I'm used to. But...there are some British foods that do look really good. I would die to try Yorkshire pudding and some authentic British fish and chips just once. A scone with real clotted cream and jam? Sign me the fuck up.

Anyway lol. I feel like they all enjoy a good Full English breakfast. Of course Soap will be partial to the Full Scottish, but they're fairly similar from what I can see so I feel like he'd suffer through it lmaoo. Definitely porridge guys (just cause that's the best tasting thing in the mess for breakfast lmaoo)

Price I could see as a steak and kidney pudding man. He definitely likes all the "stereotypical British foods" lmaoo.

Simon's a pie and mash man. It looks like an absolute sensory nightmare to me, but he eats it and enjoys it.

Gaz I think likes the classics that take him back to his childhood. Toad in the hole, curry, trifle. Definitely had Beef Wellington every Christmas.

Soap eats haggis just to prove how Scottish he is. Make him a bowl of Scotch Broth and he'll marry you on the spot.

We all know what their favorite dessert is 😏

My favorite food? I love a good hamburger. There's a local place where I live that makes a bacon, pickle, peanut butter sauce burger. It sounds gross but it's so good 😋 my favorite dessert is cheesecake. Especially strawberry cheesecake with real strawberries.

[scotianostra]

January 23rd is National Pie day, what's your favourite pie?

Is it the traditional New Years day fare, of a muckle steak pie, or the humble Scotch Pie filled with mutton? It could also be a macaroni pie, possibly a favourite with the vegetarians Scots out there. Or maybe you have sought out the Breakfast pie that I posted about previously is made by Table 13 Express takeaway deli in Kirkintilloch. The Haggis and Steak Pie by Bells is also up there, although I preferred the haggis mash and beans pies we used to get from our local bakers growing up in my hometown of Loanhead.

Perhaps the most famous of our pies here in Scotland is the award winning Killie Pie made by Brownings Bakery in the town since 1945.

Just last week Scotlans best pie was announced at The World Championship Scotch Pie Awards, with a beloved Perth and Kinross butcher taking home the top prize at the ceremony. More than 50 bakeries and butchers from around Scotland were shortlisted in a range of categories, with their bakes assessed anonymously by a panel of experts and independent judges.

This year, the top World Champion prize was given to James Pirie & Son of Blairgowrie, who previously won the competition in 2018, 2020, and 2022, as well as taking the title of World Scotch Pie Champion of Champions in 2021 with their iconic Scotch Pie.

Elsewhere, fellow winners included James Aitken Butchers in Alloa, The Little Bakery in Dumfries, and Beefcake Cafe in Glasgow, who took home prizes in the Sausage Roll, Bridie, and Vegetarian Savoury categories respectively. Among the other categories were Steak Pie and Haggis Savoury, which were awarded to Brownings the Bakers Ltd in Kilmarnock and WeeCOOK in Carnoustie.

Here's a recipe for the Scotch Pie, although they will differ from source to source.

EQUIPMENT NEEDED TO MAKE THIS RECIPE

Four 4-inch springform cake pans (or equivalent)

Rolling pin

Small skillet

Knife to cut onion

Saucepan/s

Measuring cups, spoons

Kitchen scale (optional)

Mixing Bowls and spoons

Pastry Brush (for egg wash)

Stove and Oven (obviously)

INGREDIENTS

Hot Water Pastry Crust

2 cups flour (240 grams)

1/2 cup lard or shortening

1/2 cup water

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg yolk, beaten (for egg wash)

Meat Filling

1 small onion, chopped fine

1 – 2 teaspoons lard, butter, or shortening

1 pound lean ground beef

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon mace

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon Italian spice (optional)

Quick Beef Gravy

1 14 oz. can low sodium chicken broth

2 cubes beef bouillon

1/4 cup cold water

2 tablespoons corn starch

2 tablespoons corn starch

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350° F or 177° C. Grease four 4 inch springform pans and set aside.

Put flour in a medium mixing bowl and create a well in the center.

Place water, salt, and lard in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

Carefully pour hot water and lard into well made in the flour. Mix with a spoon until all the flour is wet.

When the flour mixture is cool enough to handle. Knead just enough to mix completely. Set aside one fourth of the dough and divide the remaining dough into four balls.

2 tablespoons corn starch

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350° F or 177° C. Grease four 4 inch springform pans and set aside.

Put flour in a medium mixing bowl and create a well in the center.

Place water, salt, and lard in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

Carefully pour hot water and lard into well made in the flour. Mix with a spoon until all the flour is wet.

When the flour mixture is cool enough to handle. Knead just enough to mix completely. Set aside one fourth of the dough and divide the remaining dough into four balls.

Place all of the dough in the refrigerator while sautéing the onions and preparing the meat mixture.

Sauté the chopped onion in 1 to 2 teaspoons of lard, butter, or shortening, until soft.

Thoroughly mix ground beef, onion, and spices, including salt and pepper, in a bowl and set aside.

Remove dough from the refrigerator and roll each of the four big dough balls into round shapes big enough to cover the bottom and up the sides of the springform pans stopping about 1/4 inch or 6 mm from the top of the pan.

Roll out the large piece of dough, (the fourth you cut off from the whole dough mass in the beginning), into one large shape a little thinner than the bottom shells. Using one of the springform pans, cut four circles out of the rolled dough. These will be the lids (top crusts) of your pies. Lay them flat and cut a small hole in the center of each lid.

Add one fourth of the meat mixture to each pastry lined pan. Filling to about 1/4 inch or 6 mm from the top of the dough. Be sure to push it down into the corner round the bottom of the pan.

Cover the pie with the pastry lids and press the edges of the lid dough into the shell dough to seal. You may crimp with your fingers or press with a fork to make them pretty or just leave them plain. Just make sure the tops and sides are sealed together.

Brush each lid with the beaten egg yolk and place the pies in the oven for 35 to 40 minutes. You can stick a meat thermometer into the lid hole to ensure the meat is cooked through. It should be 160° F or 71° C.

While the pies are in the oven, make the quick gravy. Put the chicken broth in a saucepan along with two beef bouillon cubes and bring to a boil. Mix 2 tablespoons of corn starch into 1/4 cup cold water and stir until smooth. Slowly, add the corn starch mixture to the broth while stirring. Turn down the heat to a simmer and allow the gravy to thicken, stirring occasionally.

Remove the pies from the oven and allow to cool for 5 to 10 minutes before removing springforms. Serve with gravy, potatoes, and vegetables, top with beans, or, just eat them on the go.

NOTES

If you want to put a tablespoon of gravy inside each pie before baking them, just make the gravy before assembling the pies.

Scotch pies will last 3 days in the refrigerator and can be frozen after they have cooled for an hour. They will taste best if eaten within two to three months of freezing. Once you have thawed the pies, don’t refreeze them.

Recipe taken from https://travelinginmykitchen.com/2022/01/03/make-your-own-scotch-pies/

[stinklebug]

happy valentines day to all who celebrate it! and also, happy wip wednesday! here's a snippet of a femslash feb fic that should be going up next week! (which, yes, i am still doing femslash feb! i just haven't had a whole lot of time due to work and some other things to work on fics for it, alongside some of my ideas for the prompts not working out how i wanted and having to be scrapped bc of it)

Korsica walks into her apartment, bags of groceries in hand. Setting them on the counter, she gets all the vegetables she bought out and rinses them. Then, as she fetches the cutting board, she digs through the cabinets for the recipe cards Da gave her before she left ages ago. Looking through them for the one she wants, she finds herself reminiscing. She hasn’t made any of these dishes in quite a while. Just…hasn’t had the time.

Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she grabs the card for Scotch broth.

Once she’s read it, she dices up the veggies. Gathering up the bits of onion and garlic, she puts them in a pot to cook for a bit. While she waits, she checks her email.

Her inbox is fairly empty, all things considered. Just a few updates on construction, some packages, and a few other things. No pressing issues, thankfully. There haven’t been many for a while now since they got the new nodes sorted and running. Still, it’s hard for her to not worry about it.

She responds to most of her emails before checking on the veggies. Finding them to have softened up, she adds in the grains, peas, herbs, and lamb. Korsica salts it all before pouring the broth she got in.

She checks the recipe. Seems she has more waiting to do.

Sending a text to Peppermint, she sits down at the counter. Then, she gets her laptop out. Might as well get something done—after all, a watched pot never boils.

[lobstertalesblog]

The Charles, Wethersfield CT.

Boston Cod: white wine-butter poached, miso-ginger dashi broth, baby bok choy, seacoast farm mushrooms, green papaya salad.

I love going to Old Wethersfield CT. It is such a cute little downtown with little shops, ice cream shops, wine shops, country stores and delicious restaurants. One of those restaurants is @thecharlesct 😉

We sat outside because it was a beautiful night and it was fun being downtown! We got some apps to share and ended with an Espresso Martini! The apps we got were the Homemade Ricotta, Scotch Egg and Deviled Eggs!

The Boston Cod was delicious, I could eat this dish all the time! Warning, it was spicier than I thought it was going to be so if you are going to get this dish I hope you like some spice! I loved how it was served with bok choy. The Cod was so delicious it just melted in my mouth, could cut it with a fork. I loved the taste of ginger in the broth, I could drink the broth it was so good. Everyone loved their dinner and we had such a great experience. I can’t wait to go back and try more dishes, their lunch menu looks delicious too!

Based on presentation and taste of the @thecharlesct Boston Cod I would rate this dish a 10 out of 10.

[scenetocause]

even though he makes me very feral i think the main thing i get from him is powerful genders. he's such a bloke! but he's also this little people-pleasing service nerd who's a bit shy. and he might fight you.

SERVICE NERD WHO'LL FIGHT U exactly u understand ugh. u understand profoundlyyyy

anyway i hope you have a great day and that your noodles are bouncy and your broth is hot et al et al. if u had to introduce oscar to one (1) noodle dish what you do think that would be ??

oh boy i had these amazing nepalese noodles the other day (thukpa) and i've been thinking about them ever since. i need to eat that like 4-5 times more just to ruminate on it properly. it had fermented lentils and scotch bonnet paste in it and honestly i was not hoping for much from the place bc it was kinda hipster but actually they nailed that one.

that's way too spicy for oscar though and i know it. i feel like although he's probably on the relatively openminded end of drivers with food that's like a linear chart that includes lando so relative is doing a lot of work there.

so i'm gonna say laghman, which is a really impressive carbs-on-carbs thing that only really a burrito otherwise matches. kim might not be impressed with it but i think oscar would be. it's noodles in this spiced-but-not-hot (cumin, garlic, fenugreek, sumac maybe) mutton/beef and tomato broth with chunks of potato and a type of (not chilli) pepper. you put dill all over it. real pan-asia bowl of stuff with about a billion variants but i think everywhere else originally stole it off the ugyhurs, so also an opportunity for some learning of the type i reckon oscar is into alongside his dinner.

noodle chat aside, oscar's whole vibe is a man who should obviously get bullied but has completely the wrong stature for that. quietly tough geek. the nerd someone only tries to throw in the bin once before they find that they, themselves, are in a bin and oscar's not even sweating and he's gone back to the library. no wonder lando, most bullyable object on earth (beloved) is in awe.