#So past Redline absolutely called it when she said that this was going to take a while

[re-re-redline]

-Confession Headcanons: Constantine XI-

-No Spoilers For Traum-

In the main headcanons at least, it’s in the Endnote, though, and it will be highlighted in blue. So look out!

Foreword: If you haven’t read the Romance Headcanons I did for Constantine, then I advise that you do since this is a direct continuation of concepts and events that happened (or would happen may be a better phrase) in that set of headcanons. In less words, you may find yourself a bit confused. At this phase, I don’t have that many posts so scrolling through my profile shouldn’t be too much of a chore at the time of writing. But once I have more things under my belt, I’ll make a Masterlist.

That in mind, this time I’ll be going into the process of how Constantine confesses to you. It’ll start off with how Constantine plans the whole thing, how he executes the plan, and the aftermath. Now, good ol’ Redline is nobody if not someone who writes ridiculously long lists of headcanons, so all that good shit will be under the ‘Read More’ for the sake of everyone’s scrolling convenience as I have a feeling that we’re going to be here a good while.

Now, let’s get into how this pathetic bastard (affectionate) will confess to you.

Alright, post agonizing slow burn we have a Constantine who no longer has his head up his ass. Great. So, this is the part where he confesses immediately and everything’ll be all hunky dory and this list of headcanons is gonna be a short one. …Is what I would say if things were that easy.

Let me ask you something real quick. We all know that Constantine had two (2) wives, yes? Well, can anyone tell me how he proposed to them? Was it: A. He visited her home country and proposed in person and discussed the deets there, B. He spent ages writing the world’s longest letter as a proposal, or C. It just happened, fuck if I know, why are you asking me this, Redline?

If you picked any of these options then you are wrong. His first marriage with Theodora Tocco in July of 1428 happened because her uncle, Carlo I, got his ass beat by Constantine’s older brother, John VIII, and had to give up some of his territories along with marrying his niece off to Constantine to seal the deal. Micheal had jack all to do with this aside from helping his brother take Mystras and beat up Carlo.

His second marriage with Caterina Gattilusio in 1440 was the result of his wingman George doing the negotiations. The only part Constantine played in that whole thing was deciding on who he was going to marry.

Now why am I telling you this? I’m telling you this to inform you that Constantine has virtually zero experience in this field. He had John and George pull it off for him and even then the marriages were political in nature so there likely wasn’t any feelings to confess in the first place. Now, he may have grown feelings for his wives during their short time together but honestly, we have no idea. So it’s safe to err on the side that he’s got nothin’ since it does not require proof of any kind to hold this position.

This means that it isn’t a stretch to say that Constantine has no idea what he’s supposed to do or how he’s supposed to go about this. The only confessions this man has probably ever made were at church and even then it’s unlikely that he poured his heart out to whoever was listening on the other end thanks to how clammed up he is in regards to his own feelings, so this is new territory to say the least.

Yes, yes. He does know that a confession of one’s romantic feelings for another person is basically at its core just saying “I love you.” But HOW does one say “I love you?” It’s not that simple. It can’t be that simple. Constantine already feels pretty bad for being an idiot and making you put so much time and effort into romancing him, so he can’t in good conscience just give a plain old confession and leave it at that. It needs to be something more. It has to live up to your expectations and then some. It has to be perfect.

…And that kind of thinking is why this is going to be much harder than it needs to be.

The Planning Phase:

Instead of getting stuck on the words he’s going to say as that will certainly leave him hopelessly chained to his desk for far too long, Constantine decides to plan everything else first to be efficient. Namely: the time of the act, the location of the act, how he’ll get you into position alone without cluing you into his true intentions, and countermeasures for if things don’t go as planned.

…If this sounds to you like he’s planning your assassination then you aren’t too far off the mark concerning the angle he’s attacking this from, no pun intended. Constantine is framing this alien situation in a way that’s closer to the ballpark he’s more familiar with: violence. You may find this rather easy to forget and I don’t blame you for it, but this man is from the 1400s and his bread and butter is military affairs. Not a slight to his ruling capabilities, but Constantine is said to be a soldier at heart. We already know that Constantine not only has zero experience in the way of romance but also hasn’t exactly been one to make such direct statements about how he really feels. So it isn’t unreasonable to say that he would frame the issue in a way he can comfortably work with, it’s just that this angle only makes sense to Constantine and anyone who isn’t him looking at his notes would think he’s genuinely trying to end you. Which is NOT the case.

Anyways, let’s get into how Micheal plans what time he should kill you. Ideally, this should take place at a time where there aren’t many people out and about but he also has to account for the victim’s schedule so as to not make this seem like a premeditated action with a defined purpose. It has to look natural and based on a simple whim. It has to look like an accident. After he goes through what he already knows about you—whether you’re a night owl, a morning person or neither—he picks his time and hinges the rest of his plan on the chosen timeframe. The location must be open within the timeframe and it must be normal or at least not unreasonable for people to be there at the chosen timeframe. Ah, but it can’t be when there’s too many people and it can’t be when you’re likely to get called for something either. It’s a delicate balance to be sure but trust the emperor here. He’s got it in the bag now that he has this framed in a way he understands and excels in.

With the time chosen, the location is next on the dock. The ‘where’ of it all should be a location that, ideally, is large enough for him to comfortably steer you away from any potential witnesses or unwanted third parties and has the adequate cover to obscure the both of you to, again, keep away witnesses. It can’t be a place where it’d be strange for a group of people to be based on the chosen timeframe and the nature of the location. There’s plenty of choices no doubt, so let’s rule out a couple obvious locations that wouldn’t fit the bill.

Your Room. One would think this would be the ideal location. There isn’t a need to worry about third parties since this is a personal dormitory for one singular person: meaning that more likely than not, it’d just be you in there. Plus time is not that much of a concern since it isn’t necessarily strange for a person to say, be up at midnight in their own room. And this would be the premier location for the crime—er, confession had it not been for one thing. Servants have a strange and frankly rude tendency to barge into your room for literally any reason. Everything from having a strange dream to stubbing their toe is on the table for reasons to open the door and walk-in. Hell, he’s even heard of someone just walking in and sleeping on your bed without even asking first. With such ridiculous and wholly unpredictable occurrences being the norm, calling this location ‘unsuitable’ would be an understatement. Your room should be a potential contingency for terrible luck at best.

The Cafeteria. Hiding in plain sight is the name of the game for this one. The ideal timing would be during either breakfast, lunch, or dinner to reap the main benefit this location offers. The room would be filled to the brim with people conversing on and on at their respective tables, meaning that no one would actually be paying attention to him or looking for him at all as they’d be too focused on their own food and chats with others. It’s the perfect cover so long as no strange physical actions or particularly loud statements are being made. Not a problem for someone as naturally low-key and conspicuous as Constantine XI. The only variable he’d have to account for is your reaction. …At least that would be the only variable in a vacuum. The problem once again has something to do with you. You are the master of nearly every single servant in Chaldea. You are the first person they meet and your bond with them is tight from the word go. You are, in no uncertain terms, everyone’s friend. And that begets a variation of the previous problem: people being inclined to walk up to you for literally any reason. The ‘in plain sight’ buff that this location boasts only really works if both parties involved have the same level of notoriety as your average Joe or Jane Doe. If you saw Keanu Reeves, Marilyn Monroe, or Wendy Carlos sitting down to eat at your local burger joint wouldn’t you walk up to them to say a few words? Even if you’re not the type, the same can’t be said for everyone else. You are, as the Master of Chaldea, famous in a strange way and that fame brings with it many, many people in public spaces.

Your notoriety is the problem that rules out several locations and forces Constantine to—in general—get a bit creative. This is and should be a private affair between two parties, no more and no less. …Ah, but I should mention now, as I see the proverbial written corner in the distance, that I can only keep this vague façade up for only so long. I can only generally make passing comments about the details of this plan for so long. Constantine’s plan is based on what he knows about you as a person and thus the brass tacks ultimately comes down to exactly that. So, in the spirit of staying detailed, I’m apologizing in advance and politely asking you to step into the shoes of a slightly defined person. I hope you don’t mind.

Picture yourself a morning person. A morning person who isn’t one to hang outside of their room during non-work hours because you’re just that tired from running around farming all day, and that exhaustion sticks around even when you wake up in the morning. The timing in this scenario would be—obviously—bright and early in the morning and the location would be in the library when it first opens. The library has plenty of cover in the form of its several floors and towering bookshelves, giving it a good sense of privacy. With the timing being early in the morning, Constantine won’t have to worry about making it before closing time nor about witnesses since—while there are presumably a good amount of morning people—not many would just head to the library first thing. Plus, the library isn’t a place where you’d be inclined to refuse since it’s a low energy type of location with rather simple activities to do there, y’know like reading or watching old educational films. It’s perfect.

See how the brass tacks of knowing you fits into things? There are several different answers and plans Micheal could cook up based off of surface level info—just imagine if I painted a full person instead of a tabula rasa with a small wash. We could be here for hours. Our boi has definitely been writing for that long and then some with the several crumpled up paper balls in his trash bin of scrapped locations and times, the sorta-kinda accurate maps drawn from memory with lil’ X’s indicating potential positions and notes on the pros and cons of them. This is some serious business, you know?

Getting back on track with generally describing the planning process, let’s talk about how he’s going to get you alone without you catching on. Most of it is just him keeping his composure and acting natural, any excuse will work so long as he doesn’t give anything away. Besides, it’s not THAT hard to get you to hang out with him anyways. You’ve been hanging out with him for ages at this point (because the whole romance thing wouldn’t have happened otherwise), so just asking for your time and saying something along the lines of “I just felt like hanging out with you” if you ask why will do the trick. I mean, what are you gonna do? Interrogate him? Why? You’d have zero reason to since—from your perspective—there isn’t any reason to suspect an ulterior motive. As long as he doesn’t visibly panic or fumble his lines, everything will be fine.

That’s how he gets you to follow him to the location, as for how he gets you away from witnesses…Well, we’d have to get into brass tacks again. Please recall the previous example. Early in the morning, library. This one is actually pretty simple. Lure you to the film room, quietly lock the door behind him and go in for the kill. Easy. You’ll be bleeding out before you know it!

Now. You may have noticed the words ‘pre-planned conversation.’ Yes, the man is planning and leading the conversation you’re going to have with him and is planning on having at least 15 different backups in case the conversation veers into the wrong direction. The last thing Micheal wants is for you to say something like “Man, that mochi Muramasa made a while ago really hit the spot. Hey, actually, let’s stop by and see what he’s making today!” and you head in a completely different direction, throwing the entire plan out of whack. He’s also going to write a script for his confession, but that’s a brand new animal to be studied after…

The countermeasures. The old adages: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong” and “If it simply cannot go wrong, then it will anyways” are words Constantine lives by. Considering the nature of the universe this is taking place in, the scope of how things can go wrong is much, MUCH larger than you think it is. So. Let’s get into the most riveting ways that things could go horribly wrong.

The Apocalypse (Again):

It’s highly unlikely that an apocalypse could occur considering the state of the earth at the moment, but honestly. When have constraints like these ever stopped anyone from pulling insane shit ever? Maybe there’s a new Beast that slipped under the radar and has decided that now—just when Constantine decides to shoot his shot—NOW is the time to I dunno, evaporate the earth, atom by atom, with a black hole or something.

There isn’t much that can feasibly be done by our friend here. It is the apocalypse and he is, at the day’s end, just a man. So, the ‘countermeasure’ is really just postponing the execution and waiting for things to cool down before striking again.

Assassins:

Not the class, but actual assassins that are trying to kill you. One may think that it’s next to impossible for anyone to break in unnoticed, but if Koyanskaya can poison a cake (Lostbelt 3) without anyone noticing then enemy assassins breaking in to kill you is a possibility. It’s low, but the percentage is nonzero.

That in mind, the solution is just to kill them. Easiest decision he’s ever made. The difficulty comes in with HOW he’s going to kill them. You getting involved is a distraction that could potentially lead to you calling for backup and boom! Him getting you alone will be much more difficult since he has to get these people away from you without cluing them in on the plan. It’d be nice to be able to assume that everyone would dip after the job gets done, but there’s always that nonzero chance that even one could just so happen to ask to join. So really, it’s best that you are unaware of the dangers lurking in the shadows.

Constantine’s planning would hit a dead end here since the hypothetical assassins in this situation could appear at any point between him getting you to the location and him exiting the location and parting ways with you, hell, the hypothetical assassins could strike literally the moment he turns away. This means that, instead of planning a kajillion different ways to stop hypothetical assassins from killing you at various different points, Constantine would rather rely on his quick thinking and flexibility to resolve the issue.

If this frankly absurd scenario were to come to pass, then it’d end up being like that scene in The Amazing Spider Man 1 with Stan Lee jamming to some classical, completely oblivious to Spider-Man fighting The Lizard behind him with the room getting totaled in the process. It’d be hilarious, so much so that I’d recommend turning right back around and pretending like nothing’s happening for the sake of the bit if you end up seeing it.

That Asshole Sultan is Meddling Yet Again:

Ooh, you just know that Constantine’s fuming while drafting this section in his notes. From his perspective, Mehmed has been doing nothing but flirting and trying to steal you away from him. Hell, he even had the audacity to slip a letter—wax seal and all—under his door, written in Byzantine Greek that basically said “You know you can come to me for advice on romancing Master, right? I have a lot of experience in the field of romantic affairs so—” and the letter was promptly torn to shreds and burned. Who does he think he is?! And just what is he playing at here?! It’s almost like Mehmed is trying to seriously help Constantine here and is being sincere for once! Hah, as if that’d happen in a million years. Don’t worry Mehmed, you’ll get him next time.

If Constantine is unlucky enough to catch Mehmed on the way to the planned location then he’ll straight up just turn around and cook up an excuse to take a different route there. Maybe he forgot something, maybe he wanted to get a snack from the vending machine; whatever the excuse, he’s going to avoid Mehmed at all costs and is crossing his fingers that Mehmed didn’t notice the two of you.

If the sultan does notice, then that iconic yet infuriating smirk will crawl onto his lips as he saunters over to the two of you. And the moment he speaks to you, the whole thing goes bust. Mehmed is an unpredictable variable of the highest order and Constantine wouldn’t be shocked if Mehmed was some sort of plant who’s sole purpose in life is to piss him off and ruin his plans. There’s no telling how Mehmed will derail the whole thing or how salvageable the situation will be after the fact, so the best countermeasure is more preventative than anything. Head on a swivel, eyes peeled and fully prepped to make a 180º turn to a different route. If that fails, then Micheal will save it for another time.

Enemy Love Interest:

While this concept warrants its own list of headcanons, for the sake of this exercise I’ll skip to the end so to speak. Off the bat, I’d like to start by saying that I believe that Constantine would have noticed way early in the game if someone was pining for you. He may not have any real romantic experience, but he’s not dense. He can read people fairly well and he’s heard George gush about his wife enough to know what a person in love looks like. At this phase in the game, Constantine isn’t as worried as one may think. In fact, he’s pretty confident. You were the one to go out of your way to stick around him no matter how purposely stiff and awkward he was being. You were the one who tracked him to the most obscure places in Chaldea to hang out with him specifically. You were the one who put up with playing 4D Chess and Chinese Checkers because you knew that he liked those games. It’s safe to say that you do like him that way and the enemy has nothing on him. Constantine already has your heart and he knows it, he also knows that it’s highly unlikely that his opponent will change your mind if they do confess. So their really isn’t a reason to be hasty about it.

The solution is to simply go in for the kill, he’ll shoot his shot with you and that’ll be that. His opponent who, for as long as this has been going on for, has done jack all to sway you onto their side. There is no tangible threat here, there is nothing to be worried about. The only reason Micheal feels compelled to move fast is because he feels bad for making you wait. The opps can do as they please but it will amount to nothing in the end. And if they keep trying after Constantine confesses…well, let’s just say that the devil doesn’t hold a candle to a legitimately angry Micheal and leave it at that, ‘kay?

…Whew. That was a lot of words, huh? Well fortunately—or unfortunately depending on your perspective—we’re only halfway through. We still have Constantine writing what he’s gonna say and the execution of his plan. So strap in because I’m not letting you leave just yet!

The Scripting Phase:

This is the definitive hard part for our friend here. He can no longer frame this as something he’s vaguely familiar with, now he has to actually tackle this alien issue as it is for what it is. A matter of opening the door and proudly showing what is inside, as all people do. For a man drenched in denial and secrecy, to call this daunting would be an understatement.

After some deliberation and tossing a ball at the wall for about an hour, Constantine manages to break this task down into smaller pieces. In order for one to confess one’s feelings, one must know how one feels about the other person. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a confession in the first place. It is from putting words to the sensations felt by one for another that a confession would bloom naturally in one’s mind as an explanation for red faces and bashful words. That is what a confession is at it’s heart, no? An explanation for behavior that serves as an admission of romantic feelings.

Constantine sighs, he’s getting ahead of himself here. Simplify it into a few words. Understand feelings, define feelings, ruminate on now defined feelings -> write down thoughts, refine thoughts = Confession.

Seems, at its surface, simple enough. Self introspection is something that Constantine is familiar with, something he knew well from life and knows still after death. Close ‘friends’ they are to this day, meeting clandestinely when sleep runs late and distractions flaking when needed most. Yet here and now, in the sanctuary of his room, Constantine calls for an emergency meeting. Thus begins a long undefined period of intensive pondering.

He rises from his seat and lays down on the rug, its soft yarn soothing the aches in his spine from hunching over his desk for the past couple days. He closes his eyes. Start from the fundamentals, understand them, and the rest will follow.

The first question that must be answered is: “what are his feelings concerning you?” Admiration, something that is considered platonic at its base, is the first feeling that comes to mind. He doesn’t care, anything to get the ball rolling is good enough at this point.

To be plucked from normalcy into the world of the strange and mystical is something that most would buckle under the pressure from. Coupling that with the responsibilities that come with being humanity’s last hope makes for an ordeal that only few can truly stomach and even fewer can thrive in. Your rise to the occasion and continuance to persist with your goals in spite of the weight on your shoulders is deserving of high praise in Constantine’s eyes. But what deserves even higher praise is how true to yourself you’ve been throughout this journey, something that begets tinges of envy in the former emperor.

Tragedy after tragedy has befallen you and your comrades with parting words as common as their opposites, yet even with this awful state of affairs being your undeniable reality, you still have tears to shed each and every time. As tender as it was the day you set foot in Chaldea, your heart hasn’t changed one bit. No callouses, no scabs or scales; simply a raw, colorful mass in your chest beating and bleeding as it does, uninterrupted and unchanging. You’ve matured, became more knowledgable and wise but those changes have not brought the frigid chill that desaturates the lives of many. You’re still you. Kind, heartfelt, and honest you. This is a fact. A fact that Constantine can’t help but envy.

To be true to himself and to be honest about his feelings—to remove the hardened paper covering the tender heart shaped thing in his chest would undeniably be a show of weakness. Something an emperor cannot afford, no matter the era. He is supposed to be the paragon of strength and resilience, wise beyond his years and unflinching for his empire. He is the face of it and is often one of the first things thought of in relation to it. He is the person often attributed to its achievements and its failures. To show weakness would be not only an invitation for invaders, but an insult to everything his empire and people stand for. So he swathes himself in denial and lies to mask the truth of his composition, in hopes of one day being the man he’s supposed to be. When that day comes, he’ll be true to ‘himself’ and the loathing will come to an end. But for now, he’ll play the role he covets and stand at your side, envious yet admiring.

The second feeling that comes to mind is peace. The whiplash from distinctly recalling his cracked ribs, sprained wrist and the blood blinding his eyes to the calm of the present era was immense. Your nonchalance concerning the state of the world, however, hit him harder. It took a long time to get used to your calm disposition and it was in large part spending time with you that made the initial tension dissipate. The grand majority of your time with him was not spent conducting exercises or sorties into the battlefield, but rather recreational activities and dealing with the week’s Wacky Incident™ when it occurred. Somehow he found himself playing checkers with you weekly and somehow he found himself holed up with you in his room late at night to help you with the history homework Mehmed II tossed your way. It was a normalcy that was odd for the current state of affairs, but not unwelcome—no, it was sorely missed for the former emperor. When was the last time he had played checkers? Before his coronation…? No, maybe further back? Either way, to have these moments as a constant rather than a fleeting dream was perhaps the greatest gift you could have given.

This is not Rome and it never will be, his family is gone and so are all the people who knew him personally, yet while those things sting tremendously…it doesn’t hurt nearly as much when he’s with you. Your smile, your gentle fleeting touch, your eccentricities or perhaps lack there of, the conversations you two have had; they’re something akin to a campfire. Bright, beautiful, and most notably…

Warm is the word that comes to mind. Ever since he materialized in this paper colored world, he was cold. A fact that he didn’t quite register until he held your hand in his one day. Ever since then, he longed for warmth. Blankets, mittens, and jackets—they all served their purpose nicely, but that was all. They provided nothing more than an artificial way to retain the little heat his body gave. But even so, Constantine yearned for something more.

Another time, you hugged him. At its face it was nothing special, simply a gesture of gratitude for aiding you in getting out of having to do extra push-ups. The moment lasted for less than a minute, yet it’s presence lingered for long after. Through his extra layers, the blazer and waistcoat, he could feel it. Warmth, but of a different kind. It was something much more full and hearty, intense. It was you and it was overwhelming for the short duration that it happened, a burning sensation. What lingered thereafter kept the all too familiar chill at bay, and Constantine couldn’t help but feel bereft upon its disappearance. He wanted more.

Not too long after, Constantine found himself with burns from you again. But this time was different, you hadn’t even laid a finger on him. It was a discussion shared in his room. You had come to drop off a letter from Don Quixote but ended up sticking around for longer than intended. A point of interest on the walls. A single acrylic tile containing various flowers sat above his bed. At the time, his room wasn’t fully decorated nor nearly as organized as it is today, thus casting a spotlight on the lonesome, colorful square. You inquired about where it came from to which he happily explained. The flowers came from several people at several different points in time for several different reasons. The roses were from Nero as gift for helping her put together a concert, the chrysanthemums were from Miss Crane for New Year’s, the dandelions were from Paris and Asterios—so on and so forth. The conversation then turned into how the tile came to be, the trials and tribulations of creating something of this nature for the first time. He paused midway through after not hearing you respond for some time to check on you, only to have your visage set him aflame. Your expression at that point in time was unforgettable, something he’d think back to frequently. Your eyes shimmered with curiosity and attentiveness, your lips curled into a small smile—both zeroed in on him and him only. You hadn’t once spaced out during his, admittedly, long winded explanation and it showed in the way you were patiently waiting for him to continue. The burning sensation left him stunned, so much so that he almost didn’t catch you asking if he was alright. He managed to catch his breath and continued his explanation once more, his face several degrees hotter than normal.

With the raises in temperature you brought lay the signs of something under the surface. Something that Constantine had been ignoring just fine until one innocuous look backwards in time. Constant thoughts of you, wondering when you two will hang out again and being excited at the prospect, noticing things you’d like or would need and the subsequent desire to give them to you, the warmth he feels because of you…They all pointed to a disturbing conclusion. One that made him reject his feelings down to the very circumstances of their existence.

Then he felt cold.

Constantine opens his eyes. Admiration, a touch of envy, peace and warmth: these are the most notable feelings that Constantine feels around you. The second one, for obvious reasons, should be omitted from his confession. Admiration feels too platonic, too general—not romantic enough. Peace and warmth are what’s left.

To explain even a fraction—an iota, even—of the peace you have brought him during his materialization would require opening another door and showing what is inside that one as well. That prospect is less than pleasing as what lies within is not only unimportant to who he is now, but would most likely change your perception of him for the worse. To shatter his current veneer could quite possibly sour your taste of him, leaving an unsatisfying conclusion to the months of frigid misery he had carelessly inflicted on you and himself. It’d give you a strong reason to give him exactly what he ‘desired’ at the start of this mess.

No. No, it’s far to risky to make an opening like that. He can’t make a play like this at such a critical moment, it could ruin everything. It’s not…It’s not integral for you to know. It’s just supplementary information, stuff you can infer based off of the events that took place in his lifetime. He doesn’t have to confirm anything, not for now at least. It’s best to leave this be for another time.

What remains is warmth, something he has no qualms speaking of. The only thing to be weary of is to not sound like a madman or a wraith when he does. It’s very clearly romantic both as a concept and as a feeling. Only you have brought his temperature up like this and so consistently too.

The importance of the time when you held his hand and the time you hugged him could be attributed to his lack of touching people in general, that he will readily concede. It’s a strange thing to not only invade another person’s space but to go so far as to touch them as well. Why would someone do that? Is it to check if they’re real? Or is there simply no reason at all? Does there have to be? It’s weird. It’s a weird thing to think about. And it is also a divergence from the topic at hand. Constantine squints, trying to find his original train of thought.

Ah, right. Warm. That is how you make him feel. This should be the focus of his confession. He could add tiny bits of prose on how cute you are, but ultimately no more. The objective of this task is to—in written form—rip his heart out and serve it to you on a silver platter, not his eyes. It would be nothing short of superficial and insulting to the complex and charming sort of person you are. And Constantine would much rather snap his own wrist off than to give you the impression that he not only sees you on the surface level, but desires you that much too. He could wax poetical all day and night about how he could look at you forever or something but it’s just a nice bagatelle in comparison to the bigger picture here. Really, if one day your skin melted off and your hair went with it, so long as you carry your same warmth and remained yourself, then Constantine would love you all the same. It’s just a minor difference at the end of the day.

A hand slaps his cheek, it’s his own. This line of thinking will certainly lead to places too dark for the task at hand here, so he pivots and walks back a little bit of the way he came. …Right here should be good. Yes, this is where he’ll start.

Constantine gets up off the floor, sits back at his desk and begins writing. It starts off as disjointed paragraphs with only a barely tangible through-line but as time goes on, it becomes more coherent. More…straightforward. No more beating around the bush, no more forcing you to have to guess his thoughts and feelings; just clear and direct statements.

To have let you stumble in the dark looking for him while he sat curled up in a ball nervously peering at you through the gaps in his fingers is something he regrets deeply. How many bruises have you sustained from bumping into things unseen? How many times have you tripped and fallen over your own shoes? He couldn’t put a number to it even if he tried, not that he wants to anyways. It already hurts knowing that he put you through this unbearable limbo without even stopping to consider your feelings, imagining your pain through it all would only make his eyes sting.

So he writes and he writes and he writes and he writes—draft after draft after draft after draft with minor changes in between. There can’t be any misunderstandings here, so he continues ironing out even the tiniest of wrinkles in the fabric. The process is quite time consuming, so while we ‘wait’ for him to finish, I’ll answer some questions you might be having.

“If Constantine was so utterly lost at the beginning, then why didn’t he watch romance movies or read some romantic novels? Surely those would’ve gotten the gears in his head turning faster than making up an assassination plan and the subsequent marinating in his own thoughts.” And you’d be correct, it would have sped the process up significantly if Constantine simply took notes from various romantic media. But with that comes the potential for confusion.

At the beginning, Constantine only had a vague understanding of what he felt for you as result of the heavy mental censoring and retconning he subjected himself to in the early phase. His feelings at that point were an undefined, multicolored and shapeless thing that he just knew was love. So, if he were to just study fiction’s romance and shape his confession around that, he’d be left with various words that don’t fit quite well with his actual feelings. They’re not necessarily wrong, they’re just… The definition is… I-It’s actually…AGH! It’d either lead him down the path that he has already taken or cause him to use those words anyways in a janky mess based off what he’d think you’d want and what is commonly accepted. It wouldn’t be sincere. It wouldn’t be enough and he knows it.

“With all the writing he’s doing, wouldn’t it be easier to just send out his script as a letter? He could just skip the whole plan and rest easy knowing that he doesn’t have to worry about holding his composure or fucking up his lines and stuff.” And you know what? You’d be correct on that count as well. It WOULD be so much easier if Constantine just converted his draft into a letter and slipped it under your door someday. It WOULD be less hard on him to hide away from seeing your initial reaction. But you know what else this method is? Cowardly. It’s a coward’s way of confessing his feelings.

Constantine already uses several negative adjectives to describe himself: selfish, good-for-nothing, unfit, undeserving, weak—the list goes on. But one he will never ever apply to himself is coward. He’s the guy who stayed in his crumbling empire, ripped off the one thing that id’d him as himself and rushed into battle—not as himself—but as just some dude and died fighting for what he believed in as just some dude. He could have ran to the Morea then—hell, he could’ve ran years before the siege. But that would have meant forsaking everything he cared about, and that was something he couldn’t bare. This scenario is infinitely less intense and arguably less important, but is still deserving of that same attitude, that same passion. So no, he’s not going to chicken out of confessing in person and that’s based on principle.

The other reason is that you deserve better than just a simple letter. He, again, really regrets putting you through what he did and wants to make up for it. And being a coward is a terrible first step in that direction. This confession has to be something special, something that will stand out in your memories for years to come and act as a satisfying resolution to the struggles of these past few months. This confession needs to be something more than what it is. It has to live up to your expectations and then some. It has to be perfect. Constantine refuses to start with anything less.

Oh, hey. Would you look at that? Constantine’s finished writing his final draft. Let’s see here… It’s number… Fifty-three. Yeesh, I can’t imagine writing that many drafts since I mostly do everything in one doc and rewrite everything as I reread it. But I guess this is just a testament to how serious he is about this, huh? Fifty-three drafts, the first starting off a stream of consciousness and drastically changing until the last twenty which only had a few words replaced between them. Really, the only way you’d notice the changes is if you had the whole thing memorized beforehand. In his mind, a single word could change the meaning of the entire paragraph, so somewhere in the middle of this he got up to grab the dictionary and thesaurus from his bookshelf to just be sure. It’s not enough to know the general vibe of a word, you gotta know the definition too.

Contrary to the planning of how he’ll ‘kill you,’ Constantine hasn’t thrown away any of his papers. Not a single draft has been crumpled and sent to the graveyard next to the mahogany structure he writes on. The reason for this being is that these drafts symbolize his growth. Before this mess, Constantine wouldn’t have even given the idea of confessing anything to anyone—you especially—a glance, let alone writing his thoughts down at all. Writing these drafts was nothing short of monumental for our friend here, so he elects to keep them within the locked drawer of his desk for safe keeping. A memento of his first step in the right direction.

Someday, in the distant future, he’ll show them to you. He’ll read each draft one by one to you and you’ll both look back at this point in time with joyful nostalgia.

But that era does not exist yet, so I’ll leave it at that.

What comes after the final draft and a long break outside of his room is practice. The repetitive process of repeating the same set of words over and over again is intensely dull, so there isn’t much to be added here. Just know that he’s practicing a lot to make sure he won’t fumble his lines. Oh and he’s also going over the conversation he’s going to have with you on the way to the location where he’ll confess. But all that was in the previous phase, so I don’t need to repeat myself here.

After practicing a lot and feeling comfortable with the material, Constantine decides that it’s time to go through with his plan.

A Minor Interlude:

Hey. Do you recall all the way back in the Planning Phase what I said about brass tacks? No? Ah, well I don’t necessarily blame you if you forgot since that was…what? About 5,000 words ago? Anywho, I’ll restate it here.

The Planning Phase had two sections that relied on Constantine knowing you, so I couldn’t quite continue on with the same level of detail as I normally do without applying a definition to who ‘you’ are. That was when I painted a small wash on the tabula rasa known as ‘you.’ The brass tacks in the example scenario I am going to present to you are: you’re a morning person and the confession will take place in the library, early in the morning. Why the library? Scroll back up and find out! Nothing wrong with a lil’ rereading, right?

With that in mind… Final stretch, here we go!

The Execution:

“Deep breaths… Breathe in… and breathe out… Breathe in… and breathe out…���

These are the words that the subject of our observation had been mumbling to himself for the past twenty minutes, his body trying and failing to follow his mind’s commands. He is tense and has been for longer than his time leaning against the wall in the dim reserve lights of the hallway. But his initial tension tripled the moment he attempted to set foot outside of his personal sanctuary. His legs seized up and refused to move past the doorframe, his feet were comparable in weight to blocks of lead too. Getting here was a slog to say the least, but admittedly nothing he hadn’t seen before. He had been through worse and he knows that. The oddity this time around is that the situation at hand doesn’t even hold an ember to his past experiences. So why is his body acting like it is?

He supposes that this situation, in the back of his mind, holds that weight to him personally but not objectively, if that makes any sense. Constantine XI will not die today as a result of mishandling the situation, this is a fact that cannot be denied. But it holds that same weight since the change that would come as a result of his failure is, arguably, on par with if not more terrifying than death itself. Or at least that’s what it feels like right now, even though it wouldn’t affect him much outside of his feelings. Which Constantine himself hadn’t taken much stock in until recently, mind you.

This whole thing is ridiculous from start to finish, something he is painfully aware of, but he knows he can’t deny these feelings. Doing so would put him back on the path he walked on for so long—the path that led him to create this whole mess.

It would be so easy, wouldn’t it? To just walk back to his room, or anywhere else for that matter and forget that this ever happened. He could retreat back into the safety of denial and wait for this to die its slow and agonizing death. Hide in between the lines of non-answers and excuses so that he never has to confront you directly about anything and force the responsibility of ending this onto your shoulders. The pain will subside for the two of you eventually and will be forgotten quickly after the fact, this is something Constantine was sure of at the time. But his recent introspection made him question if this was really the right method of achieving his initial goal.

There were originally two ways to go about your romantic advances in the early phase. One would’ve been to accept your feelings and the other would’ve been to reject them. Neither option was appealing. The first would have ended in your eventual demise and the second would have him snap your heart in half with his own two hands. In Constantine’s eyes there was no lesser evil between the two as they both ended in a form of misery, one by his direct action and the other by something he cannot control.

The first one couldn’t be spun in any direction to sound appealing. But perhaps he’s missing something in his views. Perhaps he has to look at things from a different perspective to find the solution. Maybe he can have his cake and eat it too.

Death comes for everyone. This is an immutable fact that no one can deny nor fight against, it’s the inevitable. With that in mind, does it really matter when that end comes for someone? Dying in 5 minutes, dying in a week, or dying in 30 years; does that really make a difference in the grand scheme of things? Under a darker worldview it doesn’t, so why should he deny his and your happiness when he clearly can’t do anything to stop your demise? So long as the short months you have with him are priceless and enriching, surely sealing your fate isn’t as much of a crime as originally thought since it was just going to happen regardless.

…As if. Death may be inevitable, but that isn’t a reason to condemn an innocent person to death for the sake of being happy. That’s not right. Nothing is worth killing you for and no amount of so-called ‘hard truths’ will ever persuade Constantine to believe that. You have an entire life left to live, cutting it short before you even see the fruits of your labor would be horribly selfish at best and demonstrably cruel at worst. To be the person that stole your happy ending would utterly crush this man’s heart to pieces. Something he knows for a fact that he can’t live with.

The only other option that remained was rejecting you, but thinking on it more made it clear at the time that he couldn’t bare that either. The undefined feelings he held for you made Constantine a little selfish, you see. He enjoyed being the person that you hung out with frequently. He enjoyed being one of the first people you came to for assistance. He enjoyed having a piece of your schedule all to himself and he enjoyed having that spot so close to your heart. Were he to kill things off here, then you would most likely begin to drift away from him and move on to greener pastures. You’d find someone else and they’d make you happy, much happier than a man who couldn’t even do the bare minimum of what was asked of him so long ago. The thought of that, much to his own confusion, brings the bitter taste of jealousy. He should be happy for you in that scenario, right? …So why didn’t he feel that way? The answer would not be found until his introspection months after.

Both options led to a form of misery, neither of which he wanted to bring upon himself or you. So what’s left? The third option, a secret option, was to not do anything at all. It sounded infinitely better than killing you or losing you.

Silence is also an answer to a question, a lackluster one to be sure but an answer nonetheless. If he simply ignored your advances, then eventually the situation would resolve itself. He could frame his inaction as ignorance and prevent the scale from moving either way simply by doing nothing. He could still be as close to you as he is and not squander his chances with you break your heart. It’s the perfect solution.

…Not.

Those few months were the most miserable he’s been since he materialized and as he stands here outside of your room, he can say with absolute certainty that he never wants to go back. It’s that reaffirmation that shakes off most of the desire to turn around and keeps his shoes planted where they are.

Constantine lets out a long sigh, reminiscing isn’t going to do him any good at this phase. He needs to be here in the now and focused on what’s to come. Nothing will change if he doesn’t. He starts from the top, and—

“…Hm?”

Constantine flinches and whips his head in the direction of where the voice came from. His eyes catch their identity, but doesn’t stick around. His gaze averts to the wall behind, stealing glances from the safety of his periphery. He knows exactly who this is.

“Oh hey, Constantine. What’re you doing at this hour?”

It’s you, clad in your pajamas with a water bottle in hand, standing in the direction of the exit. From what he could guess, you had come from the cafeteria to get some water to help you sleep. No matter how exhausted you were the day previous, you always woke up on time. A blessing for your duties and a curse for yourself.

Constantine moves to stand up straight to greet you properly, raising his hand in a small wave. It takes him longer than he’d like to form a genial smile, and if he had to guess his own reflection then he’d say that this was on the lower end of his forced smiles. That said, it doesn’t take him long to respond.

“Good morning, Master. I see you’re well?”

Beside your head was the white wall everyone was well acquainted with. Mostly a metallic white and a nice blue section off at the bottom to spruce things up a bit design wise. Though I suppose depending on who was asked the color was more akin to a pine green, which Constantine disagreed with. On another note, a noticeable pause hung in the air before your reply, he’s sure that you shrugged.

“…Eh. Deathly exhaustion aside, I guess I’m alright. But pleasantries for the sake of pleasantries isn’t your style, so I have to ask…Why are you standing in front of my room at five forty-something in the morning?”

You never did miss a beat, did you? That’s fine. Constantine came prepared.

“Well, I was resting a bit from my walk. I didn’t sleep very good last night, so I’m trying to tire myself out by doing a few laps.”

“…”

“Uh-huh…”

You made zero effort to conceal the fact that you were unconvinced. You probably had your eyebrows raised and your arms crossed too to add to that, if he had to guess. In other, more ’important’ news…There was a bit of a dent in the wall just a few feet away from your shoulder. It was barely noticeable, even for someone who was scanning the walls it’d have a decent chance of being missed on first blush.

Whilst Constantine was staring at the wall, you dropped your two cents.

“Well, good for you on exercising, I guess. But that stuff only makes you more energetic. Just go lie down and read An Elementary Treatise on Determinants. It’ll put you to sleep in minutes.”

Constantine shook his head. As good of an idea that was, he’d probably focus too hard on understanding what he’s reading than letting himself sleep. Plus, mathematics reminds him of a certain four-eyed bastard and he really doesn’t want math related dreams either.

“A good suggestion, but the book would have to be something like how water boils or the history of paper clips. …I’d rather not think of math before bed.”

Constantine hears you chuckle and unscrew your water bottle, in the corner of his eye he sees you raise it up to your face.

“I feel that.”

You pause for a moment and lower your water bottle.

“Well, that Lewis Carroll book aside, I can’t really help you. So, I hope your walk goes well. Good ni—”

Constantine immediately rushes to cut you off, the distance between the two of you cut by over half.

“A-Actually…! I…I’d like to ask…Would you mind accompanying me? We haven’t seen each other in some time, so I thought I’d—“

“Sure.”

“I know you’re tired, but—“

“I said sure, stupid. Now where are we going?”

Your hand connects with his elbow, a playful love tap he presumes was to reorient him back in the now and away from what’s in his head. He takes only a second to silently appreciate the gesture, before giving you an answer.

“The library. It’s about to open soon and I heard that a few films and radio recordings have been added to the archive as well.”

“Oh yeah, War of The Worlds is one, right? I read about that one back in school. I still don’t believe that people thought an alien invasion was going on just because some dude on the radio said so. Y2K made more sense.”

“Well, why don’t we listen and find out why they might have thought that way? I’m sure that it wasn’t just an average reading that frightened them to that extent.”

“I’ll believe it when I hear it, Micheal.”

So far so good, if he had to say so himself. Aside from a few hiccups on his end, the conversation went exactly where it needed to and he’s pretty sure you haven’t caught on to his plan yet. After all, that initial awkwardness would most likely be attributed to the fact that he’s been avoiding you, not that he was going to confess. He just has to keep steady.

The walk to the library was, fortunately, uneventful. Thanks to the time, not a single soul crossed their path and there didn’t seem to be anyone shadowing them either. The tranquility and the ease of everything made Constantine wonder if he wasted time with planning as thoroughly as he did. The conversation between the two of you flowed so naturally that he didn’t need to pull out any of his backups or redirect it any way. In fact, it was so smooth that it felt just like old times, before this mess happened and before he realized what that fluttering feeling in his chest was.

This nostalgic feeling pushes him forward and takes out a good chunk of the tension in his shoulders. This is what he wants to return to and if he succeeds then he will have this and much more along with the ability to give that much back to you. The prospect…makes him feel warm.

You both walk into the library to which the daytime librarian, Murasaki Shikibu, greets you both and kindly asks if you two need help looking for something. You asked where the new radio recordings were being stored and Murasaki gladly told you their location: Film Room C. They were in a box on one of the tables since the night shift librarian forgot to put them away yesterday.

The film room—or more accurately rooms plural—was located on the second floor. There were three separate viewing rooms, each with their own: projectors, phonographs and gramophones, old timey radios, and one of them even had a pianola! All of which were either donated, made, or were here from the ‘beginning.’ The biggest contributors to the whole shebang being Thomas Edison, Antonio Salieri, Marie Antoinette and, surprisingly enough, James Moriarty. Er, the younger one, specifically.

The shared interior of any one of the rooms is difficult to describe if you haven’t been inside, but I will do my best.

The layout can be simplified with two shapes. Picture a vertical rectangle and, in the middle of the southernmost line, draw a small square. The square is the projection booth and the rest of the rectangle is the auditorium. One exits the projection booth from either one of the side doors. At the northernmost line would be where the projection screen is, and in front of that would be three rows of seats clustered to the front. The rest of the auditorium is devoted to holding the various records, cassette tapes, and film reels. In the gaps left between the wall and projection booth are shelves for these things, and those shelves move along the wall some more and stop at the middle of the room so as to not block the light of the projector. In front of each one is a wood table that seats six people. The aesthetics of the room, such as the wallpaper and flooring are the same as the library, so I need not waste time recounting it here.

Constantine led you to Room C, the room next to the one with the pianola. He opened the door and stepped aside to let you pass first as he usually does. As soon as he stepped in after you, he gently closed the door and reached behind him to turn the lock. This is it…after this radio broadcast will be his confession.

It didn’t take long to find what you both were looking for. The 1938 CBS broadcast was stored on a small cassette tape with the barely legible note: “Ask Tesla for…” something or whatever. Clearly the person who wrote this was very tired at the time of writing since the ink was smudged beyond recognition on the latter half of the message.

You placed the tape down on the table and Constantine could feel your gaze settle on him.

“So. Do you want to play this on one of the cassette players with some headphones or use one of the radios?”

“Hmm…I’d like to use the radio for immersion’s sake…but I’d imagine that they don’t take cassettes.”

“Wrong. They do take cassettes, look here.”

You reached over to one of the radios on the table and pulled the top half off to reveal…a cassette player. You make a hand gesture towards it and speak once more.

“Edison wasn’t too happy with the fact that we had a bunch of records and tapes, but nothing to play any of them on. So he made it his personal mission to make the phonographs and cassette players for them. After that he made these radios for playing old broadcasts more ‘realistically.’ So that’s how we got these. Pretty cool, right?”

“Huh…I had no idea that Thomas Edison felt so strongly about these sorts of things.”

“Contrary to popular belief, lionhead has a life outside of one upping Tesla. Shocking, I know.”

You huffed.

“But that’s neither here nor there. Take a seat. The runtime on this is about an hour so if we don’t start now then I’ll pass out on your shoulder twenty minutes in.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Yeah, well it’ll be your last if you don’t shut your trap already.”

Constantine couldn’t help but chuckle at your crabby remark. You may be fully awake in the mornings but that didn’t mean you were happy about it.

“Huu huu huu. Keep laughing and I’ll strangle you with your own tie.”

The sounds of your unceremonious shoving of the cassette echoed throughout the small auditorium, and the tape began to play in all of its crunchy glory.

What followed for the next hour was a surprisingly quality reading disguised as an actual news broadcast. There were some portions of the dialogue in the beginning that were a bit too descriptive for normal conversation or reporting and the immersion shattered to pieces with the time skip near the end of the professor at Princeton recalling his memories of the martian invasion and how the world is after the fact. It did make sense since this broadcast WAS supposed to be just a dramatic reading of the H.G. Wells book of the same name, so that’s not really a dig at the people at the radio station. All in all, a solid use of a single hour.

Constantine could see you stretch out of the corner of his eye as he put the cassette back where he found it. Next came your voice.

“Well, I’m officially convinced. The people who tuned in after the beginning announcement definitely had no idea that they were listening to a reading, not with the quality of the voice acting and sound effects.”

“Agreed. Though there are some lines that do sound as though they’re from a book, it did sound mostly real. …Until the end that is.”

“Yeah, that time skip was way too jarring. I think they should’ve cut the reading off earlier.”

“…………”

“…………”

The legs of a chair scrape for a few seconds and the chair, he assumes, hits the desk. The soft pitter patter of your slippers inch closer to his location before stopping a comfortable distance from himself. You cut through the silence.

“Hey…”

“…………”

“…I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but I really…”

Oh… Oh no…

“…Are you alright?”

“I’m fi—”

“………”

Constantine manages to cut himself off from playing that automated message. He can’t start off with a lie, no, he has to be honest. You deserve better than lies. Well, really, you deserve better than him but your pursuit for his heart lasting for as long as it has must mean that you’re okay with that. That you’re okay with settling for someone like him and that…Well, that boggles the mind, doesn’t it? But he’s not complaining. No, he’s glad. Very glad. And he’s finally going to let you know that.

“You know what, Master? I-I’m not…”

Constantine takes a deep breath and forces the statements from his mouth. The amount of effort it took to dislodge the words from his esophagus left him feeling a bit tired, but…

“I’m not alright. I haven’t been alright in a while, actually.”

Relieved. Constantine is feeling relieved. His shoulders have gotten lighter and his throat doesn’t feel as closed as it used to. Hehe… Maybe this isn’t so bad.

“It’s not because of you, or anything. No, this… This is all my fault and I take full responsibility for everything that has happened between us recently. And… There aren’t many words I know of that can accurately describe how utterly apologetic and regretful I am of these past few months. Ugh…”

Constantine was slouched over the table with his head in his hands. He wasn’t quite ready to look at you yet and your vague blob-like appearance in the corner of his eye was beginning to make him nervous because, ironically, he isn’t sure how you’re taking this. Which is exactly why he didn’t look at you in the first place. You could be very pissed right now for all he knows and the fact that he doesn’t know if that’s true or not is both making him feel better and worse at the same time.

Regardless, he continues, hoping that you can hear him through the wall he put in front of his face.

“I haven’t been this miserable since…since a while ago and I-I don’t want to go back to that.”

Constantine pries his hands off and lets them hit the table with a bit more force than necessary. He stands up straight and exhales. This is it. This is everything he’s been working towards. Just stay calm and recite the script.

“Which is why I need to tell you—”

Finally, after about and hour and a half of purposefully avoiding your countenance, FINALLY does Constantine look you in the eye. And what he sees gives him pause.

It’s you, clad in your pajamas and fluffy slippers with an empty water bottle in hand, bedhead on full display. That makes sense since you weren’t really expecting him or what he’s dragged you into. The sight, in the initial few seconds of him registering it, brings to mind a potential—no, near future that you will share. Someday, maybe very soon, he’ll get to see you like this everyday when he wakes up. But that’s if and only if he can get the words out.

Which he can’t.

Your expression stole the air from his lungs and suddenly the room feels much smaller. On your face sat that same look that you gave him that set him on fire. Your eyes shimmered with curiosity and attentiveness, your lips curled into a small smile—both zeroed in on him and him only. You weren’t angry or anything of the sort, no you seemed… You seemed happy with him and that, well, that’s amazing! That means that he hadn’t lost you yet.

Ah, that face… That beautiful expression… It’s positively strangling his ability to recall just what he wanted to say. Not a single word of any of what he wrote is coming to mind, but maybe… Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe this is how a confession is supposed to be.

Constantine, after a moment, chuckles and simply lets the words fall out as they go.

“Haha…Master… I had planned this meeting from start to finish, but it seems to have fallen through at the most critical moment. I should have expected as much, really, with the way you affect me. …While not ideal, I’ll move forward anyways. I have to. For your sake… And my own.”

It’s a great feeling for one to speak their mind like this after ages of keeping everything under lock and key, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Not even after getting the foot in the door. The embarrassment of forgetting his heartfelt and perfect confession is already enough to drag him back to his room, but the real thing Constantine has to contend with is the rather incessant fear of what you’ll say to him when he’s finished. That face, for all he knows, could be a mask for what you’re truly feeling at this time. And that idea scares him to his core.

Constantine takes a step forward, removes his gloves and places them in the pocket of his blazer. Hesitantly reaching to grab your hand from your side to hold in both of his. This is not a gesture of affection. Just like how he locked the door soon after entering, this too is his way of forcing himself to go through with this. At least that was the initial idea. The man sighs upon feeling the warmth of your hand, he can’t help but consider falling into the temptation of placing it on his cheek like he had pictured so many times before. Mm, maybe later. The elation of feeling the warmth he had missed after so long of denying himself of it being enough for him for now. Constantine can feel his face getting hot as he musters up the courage to continue talking.

“I… I have so many things I want to say to you… But the words disappeared the moment I look you in the eye. Holding your hand isn’t making things better either, but I can’t seem to let go. The feeling of both… Is—it’s so… How do I put it? It’s… It’s warm. You are warm. You keep the cold away long after we part ways and every time I think about you… I feel as though I’ve been set ablaze. Not literally, of course! I-I mean it in more of a metaphorical sense. You don’t set me on fire, it’s just…”

Constantine raises one of his hands to cover his face, though it only really obscures his eyes from you. He knows the way his lips are pursed and the red on his face will give away what he’s feeling at the moment. Flustered. An emotion that he’s certain that you’ve seen on him before, but not as strong as it is now. He breathes a long sigh before speaking once again.

“Master. Your feelings for me… I reciprocate them in full. I know that may be hard to believe due to my…recent actions, but I do feel this way. I do cherish you deeply and I find myself thinking of you a lot in my off time and I… I…”

“………”

The thing about change is that it does not happen overnight. No matter how hard a person tries, you just can’t build Rome in a single day. It takes time. As commendable as it was for Constantine to take his first step into being more honest with you emotionally, that is all he can do right now. Take that first step, I mean. He can spare nothing more as forcing as much of his feelings out as he did left him drained. This is not his default state, after all. The amount of energy it takes to commit an action like this is twice if not thrice more than normal, leaving him now with not even fumes left to burn.

It’s important to pace yourself and find out what your limits are, but ultimately one will never know where their limitations lie until they push them. And right now, it seems Constantine XI has found his and, at the supposed moment of truth no less.

His mouth not complying with his mind causes his already high stress levels to increase, his legs beginning to shake in response. Constantine wants to start this off right and petering out at a time like this would only serve to force him to play catch up with you when he could be spending that time joyfully on equal footing.

This is, of course, under the assumption that you’ll accept…whatever this is.

Luckily for him, he doesn’t have to worry about that for much longer as he feels something warm touch his face. It’s your hand resting on his cheek, your thumb slowly drawing circles.

“I know.”

“What…?”

“I already know, you don’t have to tell me.”

Astonished, flabbergasted, and stunned: these words are close but simply not enough to convey his feelings upon hearing this revelation. Those two words have done no less than recontextualize everything that has occurred during and perhaps a bit before those few months. It makes much more sense now that he’s been made aware of this. But the newly formed ideas rattling around in his skull are, as of now, assumptions. In order to be sure, he does what any slightly confused person would do. He asks you to clarify.

“Since when?”

“Hm?”

“When did you know?”

“Ah…”

You place your free hand up to your chin in contemplation for a few seconds before sighing in what appeared to be defeat.

“Well, I’ve had a bit of an idea that you did a long time ago… But it wasn’t really confirmed for me until that time we watched Pride and Prejudice together a few weeks ago.”

Constantine felt the visceral desire to cringe upon recalling that night. He had always prided himself on being the bigger man in most situations, but something in him—which he now understands to be jealousy—just wasn’t having it that night when the Father of Conquest decided to sit next to you and sling his arm on your shoulder. The whole thing ended in Constantine swapping seats with you and throwing a punch after not being able to resist the very normal urge to punch people you don’t like.

Oh, of all the ways for a person to figure it out, WHY did it have to be the one time where he couldn't keep it together in front of you? Just…why?

“Hehe… Don’t look like that, Micheal. I thought it was pretty cute.”

Shaking his head free from the cringe, Constantine swiftly moves the topic onto something that doesn’t make him want to bash his head against the wall out of shame.

“Another thing, if you knew already then why didn’t you tell me?”

You simply shrugged.

“I just thought you needed time and space. You’ve always been the type to keep to yourself and deal with stuff on your own, so I didn’t want to butt in on something you weren’t ready or wanting me to see. So I waited.”

Yep, that’s exactly what he assumed. Ever the considerate person, you patiently waited for Constantine to get comfortable enough to act on his own. You weren’t worried since you had the knowledge that he liked you that way and you likely were confident that you were clear about your feelings. All that was left to do was to wait for him to make a move.

You chuckle.

“Guess I made the right call considering that you look like you’re going to pass out any second now.”

“Do I really?”

“Yeah, you’re sweating bullets and your legs are shaking real bad. I think you should go to bed, I know I want to.”

A tempting offer to be sure as he is feeling rather exhausted, but he knows he can’t leave just yet. He still has to say at least those three words before he can call this a successful confession. But the moment he opens his mouth, you pinch his cheek and cut him off.

“Don’t. If you have to try this hard to say it, then maybe you aren’t as ready to say it as you think you are. Telling someone you love them should be easy, almost as easy as a slip of the tongue but more genuine than that. It should be like saying the sky is blue or that fire is hot or that Emiya’s cooking is top notch—y’know like stating an obvious fact. That’s what that should be.”

Constantine attempts to respond only for you to gently shake his face a little and cut him off yet again. If it were any other person, he might well have been pissed for their audacity to treat him so disrespectfully. But your adorable pout contrasting your no nonsense attitude—plus the fact that it was you doing this—was melting his heart down, leaving him neither wanting nor able to do anything about it. You huff and add onto your previous statement.

“I’ve already waited for you once, and I’ll gladly wait some more if it means I never have to see you like this again. I don’t like seeing you struggle this hard just because you think I’ll hate you for something as ridiculous as not saying ‘I love you’ out the gate. Besides, it’s not like we’re on a time limit either, so we can take this as slow as you want. So no more of—”

You wave your free hand around in the air.

“—this because you look like you’re going to keel over. Okay?”

“Haha… Sure, sure. I’ll pace myself.”

“Great. Now that we have that sorted out, can we please go to bed? I can barely keep my eyes open.”

“Er… We?”

“Yeah, we. If you’re not comfortable with it, then that’s cool, but I want to take a nap with you. Again, only if you’re okay with that.”

After months of barely seeing you, the answer was obvious.

“Sure, just give me a moment to change when we get there.”

You nodded, taking your hand off his face since it didn’t seem to you like Constantine was going to say something silly anytime soon. It rests at your side for only but a moment before being taken by Constantine, who—despite the awkward way he went about it—was smiling to himself and looking off to the side.

This whole thing was messy from start to finish but it was a success nonetheless. That in and of itself is something to be proud of and no amount of stutters and stiff phrasing could take that away from Constantine. Sure his preparation was ultimately a huge waste of time and perhaps an unconscious stall on his part, but it got the ball rolling in how our friend here was going to go about this. A long winded warm up if you will.

He hasn’t told you everything and fumbled in forgetting his explanation as to why he avoided you for months. But maybe that’s for the best. It took Constantine a tremendous amount of effort to tell you the surface of his feelings for you, explaining what happened over a decade ago to make him do this is probably going to be like pulling teeth. And it’s not like he’s necessarily gotten over it either, but he is less worried after thinking about it more rationally during that long introspection he had before today.

It’s the modern era with modern technology and modern medicine, leaps and bounds ahead of his time. Dozens of debilitating illnesses are extinct, curable, or manageable. That being said, does he really have to worry about you suddenly falling ill and perishing when you have legendary physicians at your side? Probably not. Plus you’re not his spouse, so maybe the curse isn’t after you yet. Maybe he’ll have much more time with you than he initially thought.

But thoughts like those are for a different time. For now, Constantine is content holding you in his arms as he drifts off to sleep. His last coherent thought being:

“Why didn’t I do this sooner?”

The Aftermath:

HAHAHAHA! What? Did you really think I’d make it that easy? That I’d let this all wrap up nicely with a neat bow and call it a night? Absolutely not! That’d be unrealistic.

The floodgates wouldn’t just open up all the way just because Constantine decided to change and be more open about his feelings. Things don’t work like that. You know why? Because the hinges have rusted over, not only from disuse but also from Constantine himself adding water and salt onto the hinges themselves for years. He had not nor did he ever desire, in the past, to have the proverbial floodgates open completely, let alone as much as they did now. Really, he preferred to have the gates open about…hm. About three inches. Just enough to let a little bit of water through and just enough to deceive you of the water’s color. After all, water in a glass appears colorless, but water in a lake appears a deep blue. See what I’m getting at here?

Due to Constantine’s own self sabotage—which he didn’t think it was—made it so that he just couldn’t get the words out even if he wanted to. He’s been like this for years, decades even. There’s no way that he can just up and force the floodgates open all the way on a whim. No, it would have taken extreme circumstances to have that happen right now, like you dying in his arms or something similar.

Now, don’t think that the proverbial floodgates and their rusted hinges are something akin to the Theodosian Walls in terms of strength because they’re not. He has broken down before—the mounting pressure of everything that happened in his life has caused the gates to fly off their hinges and after a quick breakdown alone somewhere, Constantine fixes it and pretends like nothing happened.

That’s how he’s been and the damage is far too extensive to simply be resolved with a single day’s determination. Though, I should say that his efforts now are a damn good first step in the right direction.

Ultimately, it’s going to take Constantine a while before he drops the ‘l’ word and perhaps a bit longer before he explains himself as to why he avoided you. It’s also going to take a few hiccups along the way with Constantine regressing a bit into his old habits of keeping his pain to himself. Change isn’t linear just like it isn’t swift, the bastard takes the scenic route that makes most people hurl from motion sickness and doesn’t apologize for it in the slightest. That’s kinda what it’s like.

But he’ll get there someday and when he does, he’ll look back on this whole thing and laugh about it with you.

Until then, it’ll be slow moving forward.

Endnote: 13,726 words later and here we are! I was not expecting this to be double the size of the original Romance Headcanons but when have I ever spoken shortly about something?

During the long ass writing process of this, I stumbled into school starting annnnnd my inspiration running dry quite a few times during this. But what got me kicking was watching a series of videos about Monogatari. The way the person phrased things and spoke about what was going on and the themes of it all had me captivated and inspired me on how to write what I was stuck on at the time, that being the Scripting Phase.

The Planning Phase was all fun and games, serious but not too in deep. Poking around the issue a bit, if you will. The Scripting Phase was the serious part, full of feelings—both good and bad. That series of videos and their wording heavily influenced how I worded things in that section, so if it seems different than everything else I’ve written so far, then now you know why.

Another thing was the music I was listening to. Shoutouts to Sabbath (Saya no Uta), Piano Alley (Yume 2kki) and Faraway Forest (Yume 2kki) for being my background music for nearly the entire duration of the writing process. I don’t know why, but those songs seemed to fit in perfectly with the mood I was going for. I am way too picky with my soundtracks because I can’t listen to a single bit of spoken word while I write AND the tempo has to be just right before I can comfortably get my noggin joggin’ on the page.

So. I know that Constantine not directly saying that he loves you is yet another blueball on my part (refer to the omitted section of the RHC) but I hope that reading this whole thing before and after the Execution Phase provided the explanation as to why I didn’t do that. Constantine is not a perfect person and I never want to write him as though he is since that’d be way too bland and untrue to his character (or my rather depressing interpretation of it.) Constantine fucks up like everyone else does. In Traum, he arguably fucked up by openly holding Johanna as close to his heart as he did because that gave him a massively exploitable weakness that Kriemhild took advantage of and iced him with. If he had kept Johanna a well kept secret, then he most likely would’ve stayed in the game longer than he did and he wouldn’t have had to worry about the consequences of his bestie The Pope getting ganked and how that would affect Reinstatement Realm morale.

I also think that his unfinished confession is much more interesting and leaves room for him to grow as a person. If everything was solved in less than a week, then that’d be lame and would have his character hit a dead end after the confession. Mm, but you could argue that—since this isn’t a series—I shouldn’t be concerned with things like time since in that scenario where it is one it’d be more noticeable if I put everything in a timeless vacuum as opposed to here where it’s just me yapping as youth say. I could have omitted time entirely, but I think that swathes of his development would be missed if I did and the payoff would have been less rewarding, both for the man himself and the reader.

I guess the fact that I view the headcanons I write as less of “What if my blorbo were to interact with ‘me’ in this given scenario” and more like “How can I use this scenario to broaden my understanding of my blorbo and what does his actions, thoughts, and feelings say about him as a person” type of shit is why I have these long ass posts that take a million years to write. And I worry that I’m leaning too much into character analysis as opposed to—in this set of hcs specifically—the romantic aspect of it. I feel like this might not be romantic enough, if that makes sense. So uh, if you feel that way then do let me know. I’m not sure how I’d about fixing that, or if I can without losing the substance that I loosely pride myself on. Makes me wonder if other fanfiction writers have the same issues I do, hehe.

But those are just Redline things. Back onto the behind the scenes, I—with much shame—am confessing that I have omitted something yet again due to length. I was originally planning on adding a bonus of what would happen if you beat Constantine to the punch but I kinda chickened out since I felt that it would take a lot of words to write even remotely well and that might put the word count above the blog’s current record holder “What it Means to Protect You” (WIMTPY) at 21k. I don’t think I’ve ever read a list of headcanons that ever came close to 21k, so I think that’ll be maximum if I ever somehow find myself writing that much. And I hope for your sake that I don’t since, I don’t know about you, but WIMTPY lagged like hell when I tried scrolling to specific parts of it, so I don’t want anyone to suffer that.

One last thing before I let you be. About the preview I released… I thought it’d be hilarious if I made it look bad since it was unfinished and I was having a time crummily drawing the header-footers and the squares with just my fingers. Though, it seems that the joke didn’t fly over that well, hehe, my bad. I might have to change my very vague™ April Fools’ plans for this year, or not do anything. So it wasn’t a complete loss on my end.

Anywho, that’s all for now. I have a lil’ something coming very soon that I had in my trusty back pocket for a certain someone’s arrival when the event drops, so look forward to that! But until then…

—Redline, over and out!

[fitnesshealthyoga-blog]

New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/paramedics-and-emts-confront-unconscious-racial-bias-in-medical-care-shots/

Paramedics And EMTs Confront Unconscious Racial Bias In Medical Care : Shots

Talitha Saunders and AJ Ikamoto tidy their ambulance at the end of a recent shift. The two work as emergency medical responders in Oregon with American Medical Response in Portland. Leaders there are working to prevent any race-based disparities in treatment.

Kristian Foden-Vencil/Oregon Public Broadcasting

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Kristian Foden-Vencil/Oregon Public Broadcasting

Talitha Saunders and AJ Ikamoto tidy their ambulance at the end of a recent shift. The two work as emergency medical responders in Oregon with American Medical Response in Portland. Leaders there are working to prevent any race-based disparities in treatment.

Kristian Foden-Vencil/Oregon Public Broadcasting

A recent study out of Oregon suggests emergency medical responders — EMTs and paramedics — may be treating minority patients differently from the way they treat white patients.

Specifically, the scientists found that black patients in their study were 40 percent less likely to get pain medication than their white peers.

Jamie Kennel, head of emergency medical services programs at Oregon Health and Science University and the Oregon Institute of Technology, led the research, which was presented in December at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Scientific Symposium in Orlando, Fla.

The researchers received a grant to produce the internal report for the Oregon Emergency Medical Services department and the Oregon Office of Rural Health.

Outright discrimination by paramedics is rare, the researchers say, and illegal; in this case unconscious bias may be at work.

A few years ago, Leslie Gregory was one of a very few black female emergency medical technicians working in Lenawee County, Mich. She says the study’s findings ring true to what she has seen.

She remembers one particular call — the patient was down and in pain. As the EMTs arrived at the scene, Gregory could see the patient was black. And that’s when one of her colleagues groaned.

“I think it was something like: ‘Oh, my God. Here we go again,’ ” Gregory says. She worried — then, as now — that because the patient was black, her colleague assumed he was acting out to get pain medication.

Leslie Gregory, a Portland physician assistant, asks, “How can a person of color not disrespect a system that is constantly studying and talking about these disparities, but does nothing to fix it?” She wants the CDC to declare racism a threat to public health.

Kristian Foden-Vencil/Oregon Public Broadcasting

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Kristian Foden-Vencil/Oregon Public Broadcasting

Leslie Gregory, a Portland physician assistant, asks, “How can a person of color not disrespect a system that is constantly studying and talking about these disparities, but does nothing to fix it?” She wants the CDC to declare racism a threat to public health.

Kristian Foden-Vencil/Oregon Public Broadcasting

“I am absolutely sure this was unconscious,” adds Gregory, who now lives and works in Portland, Ore. “At the time, I remember, it increased my stress as we rode up on this person. Because I thought, ‘Now am I going to have to fight my colleague for more pain medication, should that arise?’ “

Unconscious bias can be subtle — but, as this new report shows, it may be one of factors behind race-linked health disparities seen across the U.S.

The study looked at 104,000 medical charts of ambulance patients between 2015 and 2017. It found minority patients were less likely to receive morphine and other pain medication compared with white patients — regardless of socioeconomic factors, such as health insurance status.

Gregory is now a physician assistant, and one of her current patients, a black veteran, has cyclic vomiting syndrome. That means he periodically experiences bouts of vomiting he can’t stop without hydromorphone, a potent opioid.

If the man doesn’t get the medicine when he needs it, he could rupture his esophagus and die, Gregory says.

So he doesn’t call the ambulance anymore. Instead, he goes straight to a hospital emergency department for help. But, Gregory says, the same thing keeps happening — the health professionals in the ER won’t prescribe him the medicine he needs.

“I took his entire medical record and faxed it over to the emergency department director of a local hospital system, in anticipation of this very problem,” Gregory says. “And still, when he presented, it was the same exact thing.”

During a shift change at American Medical Response headquarters in Portland, I discuss the problem with EMTs and paramedics who are getting their rigs ready for the next shift.

Paramedic Jason Dahlke says he can see how unconscious bias could slip into an emergency responder’s decisions and taint health care. He has worked hard to be aware of it, in hopes of preventing those disparities in care.

Kristian Foden-Vencil/Oregon Public Broadcasting

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Kristian Foden-Vencil/Oregon Public Broadcasting

Paramedic Jason Dahlke says he can see how unconscious bias could slip into an emergency responder’s decisions and taint health care. He has worked hard to be aware of it, in hopes of preventing those disparities in care.

Kristian Foden-Vencil/Oregon Public Broadcasting

Jennifer Sanders, who has been a paramedic for 30 years, tells me she has heard about the new study. She is adamant that her work is not affected by race.

“I’ve never treated anybody different — regardless,” says Sanders.

Most of the emergency responders I speak with, including Jason Dahlke, say race doesn’t affect the treatment they give. But Dahlke also says he and some of his co-workers are thinking deeply about unconscious bias.

“Historically it’s the way this country has been,” Dahlke says. “In the beginning we had slavery and Jim Crow and redlining — and all of that stuff you can get lost in on a large, macro scale. Yeah. It’s there.”

Ask Dahlke where he thinks unconscious bias could slip in, and he talks about a patient he just treated.

The man was black and around 60 years old. Dahlke is white and in his 30s. The patient has diabetes and called 911 from home, complaining of extreme pain in his hands and feet.

When Dahlke arrived at the patient’s house, he followed standard procedure and gave the patient a blood glucose test. The results showed that the man’s blood sugar level was low.

“So it’s my decision to treat this blood sugar first. Make sure that number comes up,” Dahlke says.

He gave the patient glucose — but no pain medicine.

Dahlke says he did not address the man’s pain in this case because by the time he had stabilized the patient they had arrived at the hospital — where it was the responsibility of the emergency department staff to take over.

“When people are acutely sick or injured, pain medication is important,” Dahlke says. “But it’s not the first thing we’re going to worry about. We’re going to worry about life threats. You’re not necessarily going to die from pain, and we’re going to do what satisfies the need in the moment to get you into the ambulance and to the hospital and to a higher level of care.”

Dahlke says he is not sure whether, if the patient had been white, he would have administered pain medicine, though he doesn’t think so.

“Is it something that I think about when I come across a patient that does not look like me? I don’t know that it changes my treatment,” he says.

Asked whether treatment disparities might sometimes be a result of white people being more likely to ask for more medications, Dahlke smiles.

“I wonder that ��� if, in this study, if we’re talking about people of color being denied or not given narcotic medicines as much as white people, then maybe we’re overtreating white people with narcotic medicines.”

Research has also found African-Americans more likely to be deeply distrustful of the medical community, and that might play a role in diminished care, too. Such distrust is understandable and goes back generations, says Gregory.

“How can a person of color not disrespect a system that is constantly studying and talking about these disparities, but does nothing to fix it?” she asks.

Gregory wrote an open letter to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2015, asking it to declare racism a threat to public health.

Past declarations of crisis — such as those focusing attention on problems such as smoking or HIV — have had significant results, Gregory notes.

But the CDC told Gregory, in its emailed response, that while it supports government policies to combat racial discrimination and acknowledges the role of racism in health disparities, “racism and racial discrimination in health is a societal issue as well as a public health one, and one that requires a broad-based societal strategy to effectively dismantle racism and its negative impacts in the U.S.”

Kennel says false stereotypes about race-based differences in physiology that date to slavery also play a role in health care disparities. For example, despite a lack of any supporting science, some medical professionals still think the blood of African-Americans coagulates faster, Kennel says, citing a recent study of medical students at the University of Virginia.

Another question in the survey asked the students whether they thought African-Americans have fewer pain receptors than whites. “An uncomfortably large percentage of medical students said, ‘Yes, that’s true,’ ” says Kennel.

On top of that, he says, EMTs and paramedics often work in time-pressured situations, where they are limited to ambiguous clinical information and scarce resources. “In these situations, providers are much more likely to default to making decisions [based] on stereotypes,” he says.

Disparities in health care are well-documented. Whites tend to get better care and experience better outcomes, whether they’re in a doctor’s office or the ER. But before Kennel’s study, nobody knew whether the same was true in the back of an ambulance.

And they nearly didn’t get to know, because the research required ambulance companies to release highly sensitive data.

“We were prepared to maybe not look that great,” explains Robert McDonald, the operations manager at American Medical Response in Portland. AMR is one of the nation’s largest ambulance organizations, and it shared its data from more than 100,000 charts with Kennel.

Some people chalk up the disparities he found to differences in demography and health insurance status, but Kennel says he controlled for those variables.

So now that AMR knows about disparities in its care, what can the company do?

“My feeling is we’re probably going to put some education and training out to our folks in the field,” McDonald says.

In addition, he says, AMR is going to hire more people of color.

“We want to see more ethnicities represented in EMS — which has historically been a white, male-dominated workforce,” McDonald says.

AMR’s policies must change, too, he adds. The company has purchased software that will enable patients to read medical permission forms in any of 17 different languages. And the firm is planning an outreach effort to communities of color to explain the role of EMS workers.

This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting and Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit news service of the Kaiser Family Foundation. KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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[petescycleco]

2020 Polaris Slingshot R First Drive

Everything about the Polaris Slingshot invites a reaction. What it is, what it looks like, who buys one, and how they accessorize it all produce hot takes made for a Twitter world. It's fitting, then, that I finally found the words to describe my feelings about the Slingshot on Twitter.

Author, journalist, and photographer Linda Tirado shared a piece of advice. She was talking about something much more important than a car review, but the great thing about wisdom is you can apply it to all sorts of situations. "Know who you want to be and then you never have to decide how to live," she wrote. That's the Slingshot. It defies categorization except unto itself. It knows exactly what it wants to be. Where some look at it and find confusion, driving it clarifies. It exists solely for people who want a Slingshot, specifically. There are a lot of them. We didn't review one when it first came out in 2015 because we didn't know what to make of it, either. It's not a car, but it's not a motorcycle, either. It's sort of a street-legal side-by-side or UTV, but with three wheels. Legally in most states it's considered an "autocycle," an old-timey categorization for bicycles with engines and mopeds that weren't really bicycles or motorcycles. My colleagues in the press who did drive it told me it was neat, a good first effort, but needed work. It was quick, they said, but not too quick. The brakes were soft and spongey. The steering was slow. The materials felt cheap, and the controls were clunky. Polaris listened. The 2020 Slingshot is what we'd call a major refresh if it were a car. The old GM-sourced 2.4-liter inline-four was never an inspiring or memorable engine when it was in a Chevy, and it wasn't doing the Slingshot any special favors, so it's been replaced by a Polaris-designed and built 2.0-liter I-4. It revs higher and makes peak power at redline rather than falling on its face at high rpm like the old engine. Plus, it makes more power: 178 hp in the standard SL trim and 203 hp in this top-end R trim, up from 173 before. It does make less torque, 120 and 144 lb-ft, respectively, but it doesn't matter that much in a vehicle with a claimed curb weight under 1,700 pounds. Polaris says it'll do zero to 60 in as little as 4.9 seconds now, sixth-tenths of a second quicker than before. That would also make it a tenth quicker than a Honda Civic Type R. That's downright quick, and it feels even faster on board. Losing the roof, the windscreen, and the doors will do that. Jeeps feel faster when you take the doors off, too. It's science. The even bigger story is the new Autodrive five-speed automated manual gearbox, aka an automatic transmission. Polaris figured out real quick it was leaving a ton of sales on the table with only a five-speed manual, and that's been corrected. You can still get the manual on this R model, but I guarantee you the vast majority of Slingshots sold from now on will be automatics. Most people can't drive stick and aren't going to learn. Don't let the automated manual thing put you off, either. I know, usually those suck. They shift slow and give you whiplash every time they change gears. This is the best automated manual I've driven, and that list includes Lamborghinis and Aston Martins. You still feel those gear changes, but it just gives you a little head bob. It still shifts slowly by modern automatic standards, but not slowly enough to really complain about. It's geared for performance with a single overdrive ratio, so you'll be turning 3,000 rpm at 65 mph, where cars these days are turning 1,800, but it means it pulls harder in higher gears as a result. Bombing around town couldn't be easier. Just push the D button and go. There's a small hesitation when you set off as the clutch engages, and pushing the gas harder just means it'll drop the clutch and chirp the rear tire. It'll also roll backward at a stop if you're on a hill because it won't engage the clutch until you hit the gas, so watch out for that. It even has a Sport mode. They call it Slingshot mode, and it works pretty well. Press the big red button on the steering wheel, and the transmission will hold gears out to redline regularly and downshift more aggressively. It's no Porsche PDK, but it's a hell of a first effort. It could use a little work, particularly in long, sweeping corners, where it gets confused. The computer sees the steady throttle and speed and assumes you backed off, so it upshifts. When you get to the end of the curve and deeper in the throttle, it panics and drops a gear hard. That could be a recipe for disaster with only one rear tire to handle the lateral g's and the shock from the powertrain, but it isn't. Revisions to the suspension have planted the Slingshot on the pavement. The staggered 18-inch front and 20-inch rear wheels with their 225-width front and massive 305-width rear Kenda tires on the R model hang on tight even when you're really thrashing this thing on a mountain road. Yeah, I had to Google Kenda, too. It's a Taiwanese company that custom-makes this tire for Polaris. You can only get it at Polaris dealers. Past reviews found the Slingshot would understeer slightly in hairpins and kick the tail out if you goosed the throttle. Not anymore. I whipped this thing as hard as I could on a mountain road, and it wouldn't let go. At most, the rear end shifted slightly if I absolutely threw it into a corner. With the automatic transmission it wouldn't overpower the rear wheel (I tried), though I'm sure a clutch kick or just a bad shift with the manual would do it. I might've gotten it to misbehave had I been more confident in the brakes. They seem to fall in with the 30 percent of parts carried over from before, and they need more bite if you're going to drive it hard. People love customizing these things, and I'd start with a more aggressive pad compound. They're fine tooling around town, if a bit spongey. When you stand on them, though, they just don't have the bite. Brake early. The good news is they don't really fade noticeably, either, so they don't get any worse.

Polaris fixed the steering. Lots of people complained it was just too slow for sporty driving; 3.5 turns lock to lock is like putting Camry steering on a Miata. Now, it's just 2.5 turns lock to lock and feels much sportier for it. The electric assist is nicely weighted and even gives you a little feedback through the thin-rimmed steering wheel. That steering wheel is now festooned with buttons controlling the in-house Ride Command infotainment system and cruise control. Right out of the box, it's got a 7.0-inch touchscreen and a 100-watt Rockford Fosgate stereo that's more than loud enough to be heard through a helmet. Please be courteous and turn it down when you're driving in traffic or neighborhoods. Don't be that guy. There's a pair of USB ports and Bluetooth connectivity, and you can even get navigation. Polaris has remounted the screen vertically so it doesn't get washed out by glare as easily and updated the processor so it works as quickly as any system in a car. While they were at it, the Polaris team reworked the rest of the interior, too. There are cupholders now and a spot to put your phone, plus storage under the armrest. The commodious glove box remains, as do the lockable storage compartments behind the seats, which are just big enough for a backpack, picnic basket, or a helmet each. The seats themselves have big, fat bolsters to keep you in place, though the seat was rather wide on me, so I slid from bolster to bolster. The seat bottom cushions are also a little short. I'm told the materials are better this time around, but they look to me like what you'd get on a side-by-side or UTV, so they must've really been something before. The seat belts are still mounted in the middle of the vehicle, so you'll be reaching in the wrong spot out of habit for a while until you force that into your brain. It's a good thing those seats are squishy, because this R model rides like a sports car. It's not harsh or teeth chattering, but it is stiff, and you're going to feel every bump. The adjustable Bilstein shocks previously available are gone for 2020, so you just have to deal. It may ride like a sports car, but it doesn't really sound like one. Granted, that old GM engine didn't sound good, either, but it sounded like a car. This Polaris engine sounds like, well, a Polaris engine. If you've ever driven one of their powersports toys, you know it, even if it's bigger and has more cylinders than any other Polaris has built. The exhaust being tucked up behind the front right wheel still eats into the passenger's legroom. With basically no body work to block it, the engine is a bit loud by car standards. A helmet blocks some of it out. We should talk about helmets because it's a sticky situation. Polaris has single-handedly revived "autocycle" as a classification of three-wheeled, street-legal vehicles that are neither bicycles nor motorcycles. Why go to the trouble? Because thanks to Polaris' lobbying, 48 states now recognize autocycles as street-legal vehicles that can be driven with a standard driver's license (rather than a motorcycle license) but don't have to meet the crash and emissions regulations of a car. (The federal government considers them motorcycles for regulatory purposes, but legislation has been introduced in Congress to change that.) This means if you live anywhere but New York or Massachusetts, you can do what I did: step over the side, buckle the center-mounted seat belt (after searching for it in the usual place), and hit the road. Whether you have to wear a helmet like I did depends entirely on your state's law, and they're all over the place. Many require helmets the same as riding a motorcycle, but several specifically exempt autocycles either entirely or with conditions. Even if it isn't the law where you live, I'd recommend you wear one. The standard windscreen does a remarkably good job of directing air up and over the seats even at highway speeds, but it won't stop rocks and larger bugs. I've taken both to the helmet while riding motorcycles and have been glad for the protection. You may want to invest in a Bluetooth helmet communication system, though, so you can talk to your passenger while moving. I get why you wouldn't if you didn't have to, though. You only really feel the wind on the top of your head, so it's not unlike driving a convertible in terms of hair restyling. It's a much more visceral and exposed feeling than driving a drop-top, though. Getting rid of the doors will do that. Windscreen or not (and I'm going to keep calling it that, not because I'm British but because it ain't a shield), it feels like driving a side-by-side or UTV capable of 125 mph. On the street. In traffic. On the interstate. Next to big rigs. Yes, you can drive the Slingshot on the freeway. I doubt many people do. It's loud, it's windy, and you can't help but feel vulnerable with a skeletal frame and a pair of roll hoops your only impact protection. People who buy Slingshots don't want a motorcycle, because they don't know how to ride one, because theydon't feel comfortable (read: safe) on one, or because of a physical limitation. They want the open-air experience, though. They want the outsider image. And man, do other people pay attention to this thing. It got far more looks and questions than the Ferrari I tested two days later. Here's the thing, though. You've seen me mention the Mazda Miata in this review already. It's just about the most fun per dollar you can buy when it comes to cars. It's also $27,525 to start and tops out in the mid-30s. It comes with things like air bags, heating and A/C, a trunk, doors, and a roof in case it rains. (Polaris will sell you a bolt-on roof) The 2020 Slingshot starts at $26,499, and this R model starts at $30,999. That's a lot of scratch for a third vehicle, a toy you only drive on the weekend and maybe the odd summer night. Then again, the folks who buy these love throwing thousands of dollars of accessories and modifications at them. Put it all together, and it's a narrow demographic. You wouldn't think there would be a lot of people with the money to spend 30 grand on a weekend toy who want the open-air experience and rebel image of a motorcycle but can't ride and don't want to learn and like the sense of security from seats and seat belts. Joke's on you. Polaris has sold somewhere north of 40,000 of these things already, and that's with a manual transmission. You think you see them everywhere now? Wait until people find out you can get 'em with an automatic. And this ain't the only three-wheeler on the market. There's the Harley trike, the Morgan 3-Wheeler, the Campagna T-Rex, Vanderhall Venice, Can-Am Spyder, and more. The 2020 Polaris Slingshot may not be for you, but don't make the mistake of thinking it's not for anyone. And for the people it's for, it's better than ever.

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