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denimbex1986 · 2 years ago

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'WHO WAS J. Robert Oppenheimer? This is easy enough to answer: an American theoretical physicist, the “father of the atomic bomb,” an important architect of early US nuclear policy, and, ultimately, a victim of anti-communist fervor after he lost his security clearance in a well-publicized decision by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1954 and was excommunicated from the nuclear priesthood. Oppenheimer’s very public rise and fall, and his embodiment of various parables about dangerous knowledge (Faust, Prometheus, Icarus, etc.), have made his life one of the most scrutinized and publicized in the history of modern science. And yet, he is still universally described as inscrutable despite an extraordinary wealth of documentation: a voluminous FBI file; a security hearing that picked over his life with a microscope; and an archive of letters, memos, and recollections of both friends and enemies.

Some of Oppenheimer’s affect was clearly deliberate—he consciously played the role of a worldly, “brilliant” intellectual with broad-ranging interests and a rapid-firing mind. His close friend, the physicist I. I. Rabi, later told physicist and historian Jeremy Bernstein that “[Oppenheimer] lived a charade, and you went along with it.” The interest in Hindu philosophy and scripture, the Sanskrit, the cowboy-rancher, the poet, the flirtations with communism, the reading of Das Kapital in the original German—this was “Oppie,” a character invented by an insecure young man in the 1920s who struggled to be taken seriously by the luminaries he admired, and who felt a deep need to leave behind his cushy German Jewish upbringing on the Upper West Side.

That Oppenheimer himself played a role makes it especially fitting that his life has been adapted not only into a dozen or so full-length biographies but also in far more general histories of the atomic bomb and many prominent fictional portrayals in film, television, graphic novels, and one opera. (The best study of Oppenheimer’s use as a narrative figure is David K. Hecht’s 2015 book Storytelling and Science: Rewriting Oppenheimer in the Nuclear Age.) And while he has been subjected to the Hollywood treatment several times before, he has perhaps never been granted as much artistic treatment, nor quite such an enormous filming budget, as he has this summer with the debut of Oppenheimer, the latest film by Christopher Nolan.

Nolan wrote, directed, and produced Oppenheimer, explicitly basing it largely on the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), written by Kai Bird and the late historian Martin J. Sherwin. Nolan clearly fell into the Oppenheimer rabbit hole and, one can surmise, became captivated by the challenge of how to represent his paradoxical mind. What has resulted from that fascination is plainly a labor of love, both for Nolan and his leading actor, Cillian Murphy. According to Nolan’s promotional interviews, the script was written exclusively in the first person—from Oppenheimer’s perspective—a remarkable and telling revelation about the questions Nolan was pursuing. The film is fast-paced, with short, quick-cut scenes that proceed out of chronological order over a very long running time; a sense of anxious dread hangs over the entire affair. Oppenheimer is not easy to watch, and the large number of A- and B-list actors playing small roles (as historical figures both famous and obscure) is distracting and, at times, confusing, even for someone who knows the historical source material.

And yet, improbably, the film has become a summer blockbuster: within a few weeks, it reportedly earned several multiples of its purported $100 million price tag. As Variety put it, “considering ‘Oppenheimer’ is a three-hour, R-rated biographical drama, these numbers are staggering.” Much of this can be credited to Nolan, almost universally acknowledged as the premier director working at the intersection between think piece and spectacle.

When I learned that Nolan was making an Oppenheimer film, the first question that came to mind was: why? None of Nolan’s other films suggested an interest in historical biography, and if anything, the most frequent critique of Nolan is his indifference to deep characterization. Since I have been thinking about J. Robert Oppenheimer for some 20 years, I can certainly understand his allure, but to Nolan? I worried that Oppenheimer’s inner complexity and subtlety, the very thing that historians find interesting about him, would be turned into a simplistic parody (the brilliant scientist, the weeping martyr, the weapons maker, etc.).

And so, upon watching the film, I was impressed by how much Nolan as writer, and Murphy as actor, tried to avoid this particular snare. Murphy’s Oppenheimer exudes tension, intelligence, and, crucially, insecurity. He is not portrayed as a hero, or someone you would want to emulate, or potentially even someone you would like to have dinner with. He is smart, yes, but he’s also a show-off, a know-it-all whose need to be considered “brilliant” by others drives him at times to be impressive, cruel, and thoughtless. It is remarkable that Nolan and Murphy went in this direction. One gets the sense that Nolan thinks Oppenheimer is important, and interesting, but not that he likes Oppenheimer. This may have helped him avoid the most seductive trap of all: trying to make Oppenheimer a relatable everyman.

The film zigs and zags temporally, using Oppenheimer’s 1954 security clearance hearing as an organizer of sorts, jumping between 1954 and various moments from Oppenheimer’s earlier life. There is also some footage, always in black-and-white to distinguish it from Oppenheimer’s point of view, that follows the perspective of Lewis Strauss (played with verve by Robert Downey Jr.), Oppenheimer’s political enemy and the architect of his security clearance revocation. A few periods in Oppenheimer’s life receive particular focus: his early years as a student in Cambridge (ca. 1925), his years as a young professor at the University of California, Berkeley (1930s), the years he worked on the Manhattan Project (1942–45), the detection of the Soviet atomic bomb and the debate over the hydrogen bomb (1949–50), and the turn in political fortunes that led to his security clearance hearing and revocation (1953–54). Though this leaves out some key periods in his biography (more on that in a moment), it still feels like a lot to cover in a single film—too much, perhaps.

As a historian of nuclear weapons, I have been asked innumerable times since the film came out whether it was accurate. It is a harder question to answer than one might think. At some level, the answer is “of course not”—but that is true of not only all historical films but also, to a certain degree, all historical books. “Truth” is a tricky thing in general, and “historical truth” even trickier; scholars are always finding fault with each other’s works, and there is never any real consensus on the true character of a historical figure even for people with less apparent depth than Oppenheimer. And then there’s the fact that the standard for works of art is surely different. In Oppenheimer, many of the characters’ lines are in fact taken from historical documents, sometimes verbatim. When David Krumholtz delivers Rabi’s famous line about being appreciative of Oppenheimer’s contributions (“and what more do you want, mermaids?”), he uses an unusually verbatim quote, including a section (“and a whole series of Super bombs”) that was redacted until 2015, and is not present in any Oppenheimer biography that I know of.

The film also contains tricky mixtures of real and wholly imagined dialogue. In his testimony at Oppenheimer’s hearing, General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon), the military head of the Manhattan Project, concedes that, had he been acting according to the standards of the postwar Atomic Energy Act during World War II, he would not have given Oppenheimer a security clearance. This is indeed in the transcript of the security hearing. But in the film, Groves shoots off one more line, to the effect that he wouldn’t have cleared any of the scientists by that standard. It’s a good line—but the real Groves never said it, nor did he imply it in his actual testimony. Though supportive of Oppenheimer, he was also shielding himself from his own political and legal vulnerabilities. But the sentiment is right for the film, serving as an indication that Groves bore Oppenheimer no ill feeling, and that the priorities and requirements of World War II were different from those of the Cold War.

More troublesome are the aspects of the film that are based on untrustworthy historical accounts. A terrific scene, which takes place just after Hiroshima, shows Oppenheimer giving a rousing and patriotic speech to a bloodthirsty crowd while internally haunted by thoughts of the burned and dead. It is the one place where Oppenheimer’s conflicting feelings toward Hiroshima are portrayed, and where what had happened at Hiroshima is imagined.

The scene is powerful and appropriately disturbing. You could hear a pin drop during this scene in the sold-out theater I attended. But did this particular speech actually happen? It was not invented whole cloth by Nolan; the setup and dialogue were taken from a scientist’s recollections. But the scientist in question, Samuel Cohen, is the only person who has ever indicated that this event happened, and he only wrote it down many decades after the fact. (In his self-published memoir, Cohen insinuates that “[t]here’s an explanation” for the fact that nobody has ever written about this other than himself, but that he couldn’t be bothered to write about it.) Cohen was a bit of a fabulist; he created an identity for himself as the “father of the neutron bomb” based on work he did on the possibilities of enhanced-radiation warheads at the RAND Corporation in the late 1950s, which actual weapons designers from the period regarded as fairly insignificant. He was also no fan of Oppenheimer’s, considering him “a real sadist.” I do not put much stock in Cohen’s story.

But one can see the appeal of such a scene for Nolan: no other accounts have Oppenheimer giving any such speech after Hiroshima, or doing anything other than perhaps going to one party and then leaving. The literal or hewing-to-the-facts approach would be anticlimactic—whereas incorporating Cohen’s account allows for a complex exploration of the American reaction to Hiroshima, the Los Alamos reaction to Hiroshima, and Oppenheimer’s reaction to Hiroshima. It gives Nolan and Murphy a broader canvas to work with. Is there a greater truth being expressed, whatever the quality of the source? I am not sure. It depends on what one believes about Oppenheimer’s mental state immediately after Hiroshima, before the accounts of casualties and suffering came in, before Nagasaki, and before he was enlisted to (erroneously, it turns out) deny Japanese reports of radiation sickness. (Michael D. Gordin’s 2007 book Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War is a close account emphasizing just how rapidly attitudes on the atomic bomb changed in the days between its first use and the eventual surrender of Japan.)

Another example of Hollywood invention occurs when Nolan has Oppenheimer meet President Harry Truman, and the president calls Oppenheimer a “crybaby” for complaining about having blood on his hands. What is the source of these insults? The “crybaby” and “blood” bits come from later stories told by Truman, when he was trying to impress upon others how impractical and irritating scientists can be, and how it was he, Harry Truman, who truly had blood on his hands (Truman had his own complex relationship to the bombings, despite his tough talk). There is also an account from biographer Nuel Pharr Davis of Oppenheimer’s side of that story, but Davis provides no citation whatsoever, nor even a date when this conversation may have taken place.

Nolan also interpolates into this meeting a line in which Oppenheimer suggests that the future of Los Alamos should be to “give it back to the Indians.” Not only is this unlikely to be a true line—a sentiment to the contrary is more likely—but also the only person who might have suggested that Oppenheimer said this was Edward Teller (another Oppenheimer enemy), and only in 1950 as part of an explicit attempt to recruit opposition to Oppenheimer and lobby for Teller’s own weapons laboratory (which would eventually become Livermore). As the late Oppenheimer biographer Priscilla McMillan pointed out, “Give It Back to the Indians” was a popular show tune from 1939, and if Oppenheimer ever did say the phrase, it was probably in jest, and certainly not to the president. (My wife has suggested that this would be like hearing someone describe themselves as a “Gangster of Love” and interpreting it as a literal assertion, rather than a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Steve Miller Band.) In Teller’s actual testimony at Oppenheimer’s security hearing, Teller distanced himself from the line, claiming that he heard it “attributed to Oppenheimer” but could not recall ever hearing him say it.

The film is full of such questionably accurate scenes. Did Oppenheimer actually try to poison his tutor at Cambridge with a poisoned apple? We don’t really know. Young Oppenheimer, as reflected through his letters of the period, was prone to making exaggerated, “shocking” statements of this sort. (Many of Oppenheimer’s letters from the 1920s contain what Jeremy Bernstein refers to as “Oppenheimer exuberance.”) It makes for a more perplexing character portrait to imagine these moments as literal, as Nolan does in the film, which raises this question: is representing them as literal truth getting at a deeper truth, or introducing a deeper confusion? Does the ambivalence of historians about an event give the artist full latitude to present it either way?

The most shocking (and creative) reappropriation is the famous line from the Bhagavad Gītā that Oppenheimer later claimed flashed into his mind during the world’s first nuclear test, Trinity: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” The actual line is an idiosyncratic translation, deployed as a near incomprehensible (and perhaps pretentiously “Oppie”) analogy about duty and awe. Disregarding whatever the real Oppenheimer might have meant by it, Nolan’s film turns the quote into an orgasm, or a memory of an orgasm. There is something about this kind of transformation that I respect more than the subtler ones.

Nolan is most editorial when he invents lines about Oppenheimer’s motivations and mental state and puts them into the mouths of observers: Haakon Chevalier (Jefferson Hall) suggests that Oppenheimer’s difficulties as a parent (and perhaps as a person) might be the result of staring into the infinite void of the universe for too long; Kitty Oppenheimer suggests that her husband’s need for the security hearing is a form of penance for his guilt about Hiroshima (an interesting thesis, one he surely would not have agreed with, but who knows?); Strauss suggests that Oppenheimer would like the world to remember him for Trinity, not Hiroshima (also interesting, although putting interesting sentiments into the mouth of a sworn enemy and unreliable narrator tends to dilute their credibility). I might not agree with these interpolations, but I respect that they are not superficial “theses” about Oppenheimer. That Murphy’s character does not endorse or deny any of them is, I think, a plus: the film suggests them as possible interpretations but does not collapse the uncertainty into one definitive reality.

Nolan’s film is most directly misleading about actual history when Oppenheimer is portrayed as getting sidelined, starting at the end of the Los Alamos sequence when it is suggested that, despite his usefulness to the military and the government, they are only interested in Oppenheimer’s technical abilities and not in his advice on other matters. It is further implied that in the film’s postwar period, Oppenheimer becomes marginalized, in part because Strauss is the sort of person who actually controls policy. This is wrong on several levels. Oppenheimer was much closer to the policy process during World War II than the film depicts, including in the targeting of the atomic bombs (and not just from a technical perspective). The film’s implication of distance between Oppenheimer and the government officials involved in dropping the atomic bomb is inaccurate; they all saw eye to eye, and Oppenheimer personally endorsed the idea that the bombs ought be dropped on “urban areas” without warning. He even suggested, after the Trinity test, ways in which the bomb designs could be modified to use more of their scarce nuclear fuel, so that there would be many more bombs ready to drop on Japan (Groves rejected this suggestion for the first bombs). Many years later, well after Oppenheimer had died, Strauss told an interviewer that these scientists during World War II felt a “compulsion to use the bomb—an obsession,” and while one should be wary of the source, in this case I think he was right.

In truth, Oppenheimer enjoyed tremendous influence in the atomic energy establishment after World War II. The chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission for its first, formative years was not Strauss but David Lilienthal, a liberal New Dealer who considered himself a close friend of Oppenheimer’s and a political ally. Oppenheimer’s views did not always carry the day, but one cannot really describe him as sidelined until Eisenhower became president in 1953, and then only because Strauss was made AEC chairman (Strauss’s anti-Oppenheimer campaign, whatever its deep motivations, began in earnest when he feared that Eisenhower would be charmed by Oppenheimer’s way of thinking). One can see how this makes a less clean narrative about Oppenheimer and early nuclear policy, and one can see as well why Nolan probably felt that jumping from 1945 to 1949 worked better for an already long film.

There are other areas where the film’s limited bandwidth creates distortion. The reactions to both the first Soviet atomic test and the hydrogen bomb debate feel rushed and devoid of stakes. One does not get a sense of what the H-bomb debate was about, or why people who supported building the atomic bombs would find the H-bombs morally objectionable. The brief section that addresses the plans for using the atomic bombs in Japan reinforces narratives that historians have for decades known to be false (like the idea that it was seen as a question of “bomb or invade”—in reality, these were not considered alternative options, and it was not at all clear that one, two, or even more atomic bombs would end the war). (Groves told Oppenheimer after Trinity, for example, “It is necessary to drop the first Little Boy and the first Fat Man and probably a second one in accordance with our original plans. It may be that as many as three [Fat Man bombs] may have to be dropped to conform to planned strategical operations,” along with the Little Boy bomb.) One gets the sense that these are not the kinds of historical questions that Nolan cares about.

So what does the director care about? Why make a film about Oppenheimer at all? Cold War narratives about Oppenheimer tend to be moralizing parables about the dangers of McCarthyism and the security state. This is not Nolan’s interest; to his credit, he makes it very clear that though the Oppenheimer hearings were a farce as far as justice was concerned, once the scientist’s behavior was under the microscope, it became hard for anyone, including Oppenheimer, to justify it. Oppenheimer might have gotten to his precarious position because he offended a few powerful people, and because he opposed them on the question of thermonuclear weapons, but his fate was sealed by his admission that he had lied repeatedly to security officers and had maintained connections—even sexual ones—with known or suspected communists after becoming the head of Los Alamos. One doesn’t leave Nolan’s film concerned that Oppenheimer didn’t get justice.

Nolan’s interest in Oppenheimer centers on two themes. One of them is the complexity of Oppenheimer’s character. The other is global destruction, threaded through the entire film from its first images until its last scene. The fact that these two themes are intertwined in the same person is, I think, the point. In Oppenheimer, the intensely personal is suffused with the apocalyptic imagination. The visions that kept Oppenheimer up at night were not about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for better or worse. They were about the next war, the one he hoped Hiroshima and Nagasaki would make impossible.

When Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace met Oppenheimer a few months after the end of World War II, he described a man in great distress. “I never saw a man in such an extremely nervous state as Oppenheimer,” Wallace wrote in his diary. “He seemed to feel that the destruction of the entire human race was imminent. […] The guilt consciousness of the atomic bomb scientists is one of the most astounding things I have ever seen.” (The result of this meeting was Wallace’s arranging of Oppenheimer’s disastrous encounter with Truman in the Oval Office.) Oppenheimer was, at this point, desperately trying to advocate for a world in which no nation would have nuclear weapons, using the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the nascent plans for even worse weapons, as an impetus for remaking the entire nature of war and international relations. He did not succeed; we live in his worst nightmare, where multiple states have civilization-killing quantities of nuclear arms ready for deployment at a moment’s notice.

This harried, eschatological prophet, desperately trying to invoke what influence he has in order to convince the people with real power not to use that power poorly, is the Oppenheimer that Murphy channels, and that Nolan is interested in. I have always thought that Prometheus was the wrong reference point, one that Oppenheimer himself would have strongly rejected. Oppenheimer was no champion of humanity, and his punishment was not for having “stolen fire,” but for more mundane transgressions, including those of the flesh, a fact that Nolan’s film emphasizes. In his Bhagavad Gītā reference, Oppenheimer renders himself as Prince Arjuna, who was cajoled by something great and terrible into taking on a burden he did not want. Even that feels incomplete, for while Oppenheimer was initially willing to go to war, he was afterwards gripped with an intense desire to push things in a different direction. Perhaps we need to invent a new, modern mythology for such a figure; perhaps that is what Nolan is really trying to do. Let’s hope the film will be remembered for this, and not just for its curious juxtaposition with the other summer blockbuster, Greta Gerwig’s (excellent) Barbie.'

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mangled-by-disuse · 2 months ago

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I have such mixed feelings about the love languages thing specifically, because, like, gary chapman fucking sucks and there's no scientific validity to his work BUT

at the same time, i do think there's some value in recognising and discussing the fact that different people need different expressions of love in different amounts? Especially in relationships.

Like, I have just recently been having a discussion with my partner about how he really doesn't tend to express his affection through gifts, whereas (as someone who is mega-bad at expressing sincere feeling) I do rely heavily on giving gifts and doing things for people as a less scary way to express love. Joe doesn't like giving gifts, because he's scared he'll do it wrong, and is only so-so on receiving them. He prefers to express love through physical contact and saying nice things. I hate having nice things said to me unless I am allowed to immediately rebut them with a joke or sarcastic comment that makes them less scarily close to emotional honesty. too many words of affirmation and i will genuinely just start avoiding you because it is painfully awkward to me.

and none of that means we are fundamentally different categories of people, which is where the 5 Love Languages stuff falls into being absolute bollocks. but I have seen, and done, enough throwing the baby out with the bathwater on that to be a little defensive - I think reasonable applications of the concept are actually really quite valuable. and for me, the taxonomy Chapman suggests (words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of service, physical touch) while not at all exhaustive or thorough, is a useful framework to hang those conversations on. bc, like, no, the way people communicate and receive affection is not universal, and from personal experience, assuming that it is can have really significant problems for a relationship.

...you could argue that this is parallel to BMI in terms of "tools being used in totally not the way they should be used" though, tbf.

I can't keep having the same conversations about love languages, mbti, iq, bmi, "brain fully formed at 25" and shit over and over again...

#bmi is my nemesis because i used to write health information for a living #“unhealthy bmi is” NO SHUT UP DON'T MAKE ME WRITE THAT BOLLOCKS #one of my pet projects in my last job was a complete overhaul of all our healthy eating stuff because GAWD #but also my honours project ended up with an interesting potential Science Development coming out of BMI data #which i still think merited further research #ALMOST LIKE BMI IS DESIGNED FOR LARGE-SCALE STATISTICAL ANALYSIS AND NOT INDIVIDUAL USE #i will say though: it doesn't JUST “hang around because of fatphobia and insurance companies”#in scientific use it hangs around because we don't have a better metric #we've been trying to develop a better statistical metric for subcutaneous fat makeup for DECADES #since before bmi even entered common use actually #you don't need to know someone's BMI for healthcare. you do need to know population BMIs for epidemiological analysis.#but under testing other measures of fat distribution #(e.g. hip:waist ratio; waist circumference; net mass; various adjusted combinations of the aforementioned with height)#just do not meet even BMI's fairly low bar for correlation with detailed fat deposit analysis #but the thing is that BMI is a quick and dirty estimate of a complex topic. which is fine when you're looking for population trends.#it is NOT fine when you're trying to make an analysis of an individual person's health or body composition or anything else #it is the equivalent of eyeballing a room full of people and putting them in order based on how old you think they are #it probably does mean you put the OAPs on one side of the room and the babies on the other!#but if you then went up to one individual person like “according to my calculations you're 65 so you must be retiring this year"#there is a high chance that you would have fucked up #both because you probably did not get their age that accurate AND because you are making a bunch of associated assumptions about them #this was a long tangent about a different topic to go off on in the tags #tl;dr BMI isn't completely useless. it's just not remotely useful for any individual person ever.#(see also: biological sex)

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champ-wiggle · 7 months ago

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'She is so old': One-eyed wolf in Yellowstone defies odds by having 10th litter of pups in 11 years

By Patrick Pester, published June 3, 2024

Wolf 907F recently gave birth to her 10th litter of pups, which researchers say is likely a Yellowstone National Park record.

Wolf 907F walking past a trail camera in Yellowstone National Park. (Image credit: Yellowstone Wolf and Cougar Project)

The alpha female of a Yellowstone gray-wolf pack has defied the odds by having a 10th litter of pups at the age of 11.

The one-eyed wolf elder, named Wolf 907F, gave birth to her latest litter last month, the Cowboy State Daily reported. Gray wolves (Canis lupus) have an average life span of three to four years, so it's rare for them to reach 11, let alone have pups at that age.

Wolf 907F has given birth to pups every year for a decade straight since she became sexually mature, which Kira Cassidy, a research associate at the Yellowstone Wolf Project, said is likely a record for the wolves of Yellowstone National Park.

At age 11, Yellowstone’s Wolf 907F has lived more than twice a wild wolf’s average life expectancy. In this photo from April, she was pregnant with a litter of pups that she’s since given birth to. (Courtesy Yellowstone Wildlife Project)

"Every day, I expect that she might die just because she is so elderly, but I've been thinking that for the last few years, and she keeps going," Cassidy told Live Science.

Cassidy has calculated that only about 1 in 250 wolves in Yellowstone make it to their 11th birthday, with just six recorded examples since wolves were reintroduced to the park in 1995. The oldest of all of these great elders lived to 12.5 years, according to the National Park Service.

Wolf 907F lies in the snow in Yellowstone in 2015. (Image credit: Kira Cassidy/NPS)

Wolf 907F is the oldest wolf to have lived her whole life in the park's Northern Range, where there is more prey but also more competition from other wolves. Wolves rarely die of old age in the wild, and in Yellowstone National Park, the biggest threat is other wolves.

"In a protected place like Yellowstone, their number-one cause of death is when two packs fight with each other," Cassidy said. "That accounts for about half of the mortality."

One of Yellowstone's oldest wolves, Wolf 907F is pictured here with her pack last year. She's the gray collared wolf on the lower left. (Courtesy Yellowstone Wildlife Project)

Wolf 907F is the alpha female of the Junction Butte pack, which has between 10 and 35 members at any given time. Cassidy noted that this is a large pack — the average wolf pack size is about 12 individuals — and that reduces the risk of being killed in territorial fights. Wolf 907F's experience also gives her pack an edge.

"Packs that have elderly wolves are much more successful in those pack-versus-pack conflicts because of the accumulated knowledge and the experience that they bring to that really stressful situation," Cassidy said.

Wolf 907F has likely boosted her pack's survival chances outside of battle, too. Cassidy noted that the Junction Butte pack rarely leaves Yellowstone's border and that Wolf 907F is "savvy" when it comes to things like crossing roads and avoiding humans.

Wolf 907F, Yellowstone's aging matriarch at 11 years old, only has one eye. She's the fourth wolf to pass by this trail cam. (Courtesy Yellowstone Wildlife Project)

What makes Wolf 907F even more impressive is that she does all of this with only one functioning eye. Researchers aren't sure what happened, but her left eye has been small and sunken since before she turned 4. "You would never know [when] watching her," Cassidy said.

Like other elders, Wolf 907F takes a back seat in hunts now that she's older, and she spends most of her day hanging around with the pack's pups. Cassidy and her colleagues have counted three pups in her current litter, which is smaller than the average litter size of four to five but not surprising. A 2012 study of Yellowstone wolves published in the Journal of Animal Ecology found that litter size declines with age.

"The fact that 907 is still having pups is amazing, and her litter being small is expected given that she is so old," Cassidy said.

A few of Wolf 907F's offspring now lead packs of their own, but most of her pups never reach adulthood due to the perilous nature of being a wolf. However, Wolf 907F and the others in the park don't seem to live like death is on their mind.

"They are happy to be with their family going from day to day," Cassidy said. "Even if they have injuries or are missing an eye or something really stressful is going on in their life, they move through that stress and go back to seemingly really enjoying their life."

At age 11, Yellowstone's Wolf 907F - the gray wolf in the center of this photo from 2020- has lived more than double the typical lifespan of wolves in the wild. (Courtesy Yellowstone Wildlife Project)

#wolf #yellowstone #nature #animals

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xtruss · 5 months ago

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At the U.S. Army’s Camp Century on the Greenland ice sheet, an Army truck equipped with a railroad wheel conversion rides on 1,300 feet of track under the snow. Visual: Robert W. Gerdel Papers, Ohio State University

The Golden Age of Offbeat Arctic Research! The Odd Arctic Military Projects Spawned By The Cold War

The Cold War Spawned Some Odd Military Projects That Were Doomed To Fail, From Atomic Subways To A City Under The Ice.

— September 19, 2024 | Paul Bierman, Undark Magazine | Smithsonian Magazine

In Recent Years, the Arctic has become a magnet for climate change anxiety, with scientists nervously monitoring the Greenland ice sheet for signs of melting and fretting over rampant environmental degradation. It wasn’t always that way.

At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, as the fear of nuclear Armageddon hung over American and Soviet citizens, idealistic scientists and engineers saw the vast Arctic region as a place of unlimited potential for creating a bold new future. Greenland emerged as the most tantalizing proving ground for their research.

Scientists and engineers working for and with the U.S. military cooked up a rash of audacious cold-region projects — some innovative, many spit-balled, and most quickly abandoned. They were the stuff of science fiction: disposing of nuclear waste by letting it melt through the ice; moving people, supplies, and missiles below the ice using subways, some perhaps atomic powered; testing hovercraft to zip over impassable crevasses; making furniture from a frozen mix of ice and soil; and even building a nuclear-powered city under the ice sheet.

Today, many of their ideas, and the fever dreams that spawned them, survive only in the yellowed pages and covers of magazines like “Real: the exciting magazine For Men” and dozens of obscure Army technical reports.

Karl And Bernhard Philberth, both physicists and ordained priests, thought Greenland’s ice sheet the perfect repository for nuclear waste. Not all the waste — first they’d reprocess spent reactor fuel so that the long-lived nuclides would be recycled. The remaining, mostly short-lived radionuclides would be fused into glass or ceramic and surrounded by a few inches of lead for transport. They imagined several million radioactive medicine balls about 16 inches in diameter scattered over a small area of the ice sheet (about 300 square miles) far from the coast.

Because the balls were so radioactive, and thus warm, they would melt their way into the ice, each with the energy of a bit less than two dozen 100-watt incandescent light bulbs — a reasonable leap from Karl Philberth’s expertise designing heated ice drills that worked by melting their way through glaciers. The hope was that by the time the ice carrying the balls emerged at the coast thousands or tens of thousands of years later, the radioactivity would have decayed away. One of the physicists later reported that the idea was shown to him by God, in a vision.

What I Left Out is a recurring feature in which book authors are invited to share anecdotes and narratives that, for whatever reason, did not make it into their final manuscripts. In this installment, author and geoscientist Paul Bierman shares a story that didn’t make it into his recent book, “When the Ice Is Gone: What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth’s Tumultuous History and Perilous Future” (W.W. Norton & Company).

Top Left: U.S. Army test of the Snowblast in Greenland in the 1950s, a machine designed to smooth snow runways. Visual: U.S. Army. Top Right: A U.S. Air Force C-119, Flying Boxcar, delivering a bulldozer to northern Greenland. Visual: U.S. Air Force. Bottom: Lead canister carrying the fuel rods from the U.S. Army’s Camp Century nuclear reactor in Greenland, during decommissioning in 1960s. Visual: Jon Fresch/U.S. Army

Of Course, the plan had plenty of unknowns and led to heated discussion at scientific meetings when it was presented — what, for example, would happen if the balls got crushed or caught up in flows of meltwater near the base of the ice sheet. And would the radioactive balls warm the ice so much that the ice flowed faster at the base, speeding the balls’ trip to the coast?

Logistical challenges, scientific doubt, and politics sunk the project. Producing millions of radioactive glass balls wasn’t yet practical, and the Danes, who at the time controlled Greenland, were never keen on allowing nuclear waste disposal on what they saw as their island. Some skeptics even worried about climate change melting the ice. Nonetheless, the Philberths made visits to the ice sheet and published peer-reviewed scientific papers about their waste dream.

Arctic Military imagination predates the Cold War. In 1943, that imagination spawned the Kee Bird — a mystical creature. An early description appears in a poem by A/C Warren M. Kniskern published in the Army’s weekly magazine for enlisted men, YANK. The bird taunts men across the Arctic with its call “Kee Kee Keerist, but it’s cold!” Its name was widely applied. Most well-known, a B-29 bomber named Kee Bird that took off from Alaska with a heading toward the North Pole, but then got badly lost and put down on a frozen Greenland lake in 1947 as it ran out of fuel. An ambitious plan to fly the nearly pristine plane off the ice in the mid-1990s was thwarted by fire. But the Kee bird lineage was by no means extinct.

In February 1955, Real magazine published the story of the U.S. military’s first base inside Greenland’s ice sheet. Visual: Real Magazine

In 1959, The Detroit Free Press, under the headline “The Crazy, Mixed-Up Keebird Can’t Fly,” reported that the Army was testing a new over-snow vehicle. This Keebird was not a flying machine but rather a snowmobile/tractor/airplane chimera that would cut travel time across the ice sheet by a factor of 10 or more. Unlike similar but utilitarian contraptions of the 1930s, developed in the central plains of North America and Russia and equipped with short skis, boxy bodies, and propellors that pushed them along, this new single-propped version was built for sheer speed.

The prototype hit 40 miles per hour at the Army’s testing facility in Houghton, Michigan, thanks to the “almost friction-proof” Teflon coating on its 25-foot-long skis and a 300-horsepower airplane engine that spun the propellor. The goal was for the machine to hit a hundred miles per hour but after several failed tests, and a few technical publications, it warranted only the one syndicated newspaper article written by Jean Hanmer Pearson, who was a military pilot in World War II before she became a journalist and one of the first women to set foot on the South Pole. The Soviet version, known as an “airsleigh”, was short, stout, and armed with weapons for Arctic combat. There’s no record the Army’s Keebird carrying weapons.

In 1964, the Army tested a distant relative of the Keebird in Greenland. The Carabao, which floated over the ground and over water or snow on a cushion of air, was developed by Bell Aerosystems Company and had been previously tested in tropical locales, including southern Florida. It carried two men and 1,000 pounds of cargo, and had a top speed of 60 miles per hour. The air cushion vehicle skimmed over crevasses but was grounded by even moderate winds, an all-too-common occurrence on the ice sheet.

Top: Kee Bird, a B-29 bomber that got badly lost and put down on a frozen Greenland lake in 1947. Visual: U.S. Air Force. Bottom: U.S. Army test of the Carabao air cushion vehicle over snow in Greenland, in the 1960s. Visual: U.S. Army

Another Problem: The craft went uphill fine, but going downhill was another matter because it had no brakes. Unsurprisingly, the Carabao — its namesake a Philippine water buffalo — proved to be unsuited for ice travel despite the claim that: “All this is no mere pipe-dream following an overdose of science-fiction. The acknowledged experts are thinking hard about the future use of hovercraft in Polar travel.” Despite all the hard thinking, hovercraft have yet to catch on and are still rarely used for Arctic travel and research.

IN 1956, Colliers, a weekly magazine once read by millions of Americans, published an article titled “Subways Under the Icecap.” It was a sensationalized report of Army activities in Greenland and opened with a photograph of an enlisted soldier holding a pick. Behind him, a 250-foot tunnel, mostly excavated by hand and lit only by lanterns, probed the Greenland ice sheet. Colliers included a simple map and a stylistic cut-away showing an imaginary rail line slicing across northwestern Greenland. But the Army’s ice tunnels ended only about a thousand feet from where they started — doomed by the fragility of their icy walls, which crept inward up to several feet each year, closing the tunnels like a healing wound. The subway never happened.

That didn’t stop the Army from proposing Project Iceworm — a top-secret plan that might represent peak weirdness. A network of tunnels would crisscross northern Greenland over an area about the size of Alabama. Hundreds of missiles, topped with nuclear warheads, would roll through the tunnels on trains, pop up at firing points, and if needed, respond to Soviet aggression by many annihilating many Eastern Block targets. Greenland was much closer to Europe than North America, allowing a prompt strategic response, and the snow provided cover and blast protection. Iceworm would be a giant under-snow shell game of sorts, which the Army would power using portable nuclear reactors.

A tunnel cut into the Greenland ice sheet by the Army in the 1950s, mostly using hand tools. The tunnel was a prototype for a subway system — in part to move nuclear missiles under the ice — that never came to fruition. Visual: U.S. Army via United Press Associations

Except it wasn’t a game. The Army hired the Spur and Siding Constructors Company of Detroit, Michigan, to scope out and price the rail project. A 1965 report, complete with maps of stations and sidings where trains would sit when not in use, concluded that contractors could build a railroad stretching 22 miles over land and 138 miles inside the ice sheet for a mere $47 million (or roughly $470 million today). The company suggested studying nuclear-powered locomotives because they reduced the risk of heat from diesel engines melting the frozen tunnels. Never mind that no one had ever built a nuclear locomotive or run rails through tunnels crossing constantly shifting crevasses.

But in the end, Iceworm amounted only to a single railcar, 1,300 feet of track, and an abandoned military truck on railroad wheels.

The Split personality of Arctic permafrost frustrated Army engineers. When frozen in the winter, it was stable but difficult to excavate. But in the summer, under the warmth of 24-hour sunshine, the top foot or two of soil melted, creating an impassable quagmire for people and vehicles. When the permafrost under airstrips melted, the pavement buckled, and the resulting potholes could damage landing gear. The military responded by painting Arctic runways white to reflect the constant summer sunshine and keep the underlying permafrost cool — a potentially good idea grounded in physics that was stymied by the fact that the paint reduced the braking ability of planes.

The military engineers, ever optimistic, put a more positive spin on permafrost. Trying to use native materials in the Arctic, where transportation costs were exceptionally high, they made a synthetic version of permafrost that they nicknamed permacrete – a mashup of the words permafrost and concrete. First, they mixed the optimal amount of water and dry soil. Then, after allowing the mix to freeze solid in molds, they made beams, bricks, tunnel linings, and even a chair. But permacrete never caught on as a building material, likely because one warm day was all it would take to turn even the most robust construction project into a puddle of mud.

U.S. Army engineers test permacrete strength in a tunnel cut into the frozen soil beneath the Greenland ice sheet in the 1960s. A permacrete chair is in the front right. Visual: Jon Fresch/U.S. Army

The Army’s most ambitious Arctic dream actually came true. In 1959, engineers began building Camp Century, known by many as the City Under the Ice. A 138-mile ice road led to the camp that was about 100 miles inland from the edge of the ice sheet. Almost a vertical mile of ice separated the camp from the rock and soil below.

Camp Century contained several dozen massive trenches, one more than a thousand feet long, all carved into the ice sheet by giant snowplows and then covered with metal arches and more snow. Inside were heated bunkrooms for several hundred men, a mess hall, and a portable nuclear power plant. The first of its kind, the reactor provided unlimited hot showers and plenty of electrical power.

The camp was ephemeral. In less than a decade, flowing ice crushed Century — but not before scientists and engineers drilled the first deep ice core that eventually penetrated the full thickness of Greenland’s ice sheet. In 1966, the last season the Army occupied Camp Century, drillers recovered more than 11 feet of frozen soil from beneath the ice — another first.

A two page diagram of Camp Century published in the 1960s by Pilote, a French comics magazine. Visual: Pilote

Top: In the 1960s, a plow excavates the trenches that will hold Camp Century. Visual: Robert W. Gerdel Papers, Ohio State University. Bottom: Men install metal roofing forms over a completed trench at Camp Century, which are later covered with snow. Visual: Robert W. Gerdel Papers, Ohio State University

One module of a portable nuclear reactor being moved into Camp Century. The first of its kind, the reactor provided unlimited hot showers and plenty of electrical power to the camp. Visual: Jon Fresch/U.S. Army

Little studied, the Camp Century soil vanished in 1993, but was rediscovered by Danish scientists in 2018, safely frozen in Copenhagen. Samples revealed that the soil contained abundant plant and insect fossils, unambiguous evidence that large parts of Greenland were free of ice some 400,000 years ago, when the Earth was about the same temperature as today but had almost 30 percent less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

In half century or so since the demise of Camp Century, global warming has begun melting large amounts of Greenland’s ice. The past 10 years are the warmest on record, and the ice sheet is shrinking a bit more every year. That’s science, not fiction, and a world away from the heady optimism of the Cold War dreamers who once envisioned a future embedded in ice.

— Paul Bierman is a Geoscientist and a Professor of Environmental Science and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont. He is the author, most recently, of “When the Ice Is Gone: What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth’s Tumultuous History and Perilous Future,” a study of Greenland, the Cold War, and the collection and analysis of the world’s first deep ice core. Bierman’s research in Greenland is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

#Undark.Org #Science #Golden Age #Offbeat Arctic Reseach #Odd Arctic | Military Projects #The Cold War #Smithsonian Magazine #Atomic Subways #City Under The Ice

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albonium · 7 months ago

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why do i have to go to work tomorrow i just want to pack my bag and go on hikes let me roam around nature away from people aaaargh

#the dolomites last year and the alps this year just really hammered in the fact that i hate living in an urban area #don't get me wrong i love working in a lab i love science etc but these days ?????? we have a shit ton of work. i'm given stuff i hate #the lead engineer on one of the projects is a fucking dumbass and im struggling so bad on her stuff bc she makes terrible choices #so the exploitation of the samples is really REALLY taking me to the limit of my patience #rn me and another colleague are the only two remaining from our part of the department we have to do the work of 5 people #and all of this for what ????????????????#working in r&d/reasearch means that you work on stuff long term and the motivation has to be strong bc it's not easy and it takes AGES #i have older colleagues who haven't seen their main projects through yet and they're about to retire #im kind of losing faith lol #i wish i could just take days off again but 1. hr is fucking me over on when they started couting my allowed days off #and 2. we have too much work it wouldn't be fair on my colleague to leave now #sunday scarries yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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nereidprinc3ss · 8 months ago

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just like heaven

in which flirty!reader finally confesses her feelings to a pining spencer reid after a night out. she's slightly buzzed. it's complicated.

fluff (some angst) warnings/tags: fem!reader, reader drinks alcohol, dirty jokes, so much flirting and banter, some arguing kinda, but spencer is such a gentleman, everyone gets flustered at least once, they really wanna kiss, happy ending a/n: gif :D I hope u like this! not bandages reader but like same vibes. like an AU for my AU

“Emily!”

You drawl the ee sound long, the same way you reach across the table and wiggle your fingers at her half-empty glass. Thin dark brows dart up beneath that glossy sweep of reddish-black hair.

“Oh, wow. That’s unsettling. What?”

It’s been at least an hour since you had a drink of your own, but enough alcohol is still flowing through your veins so as to render her offensive comment inoffensive. You love Emily. You love the Tequila Sunrise sweating onto the sticky table in front of her which she’s not going to finish.

“I think she wants your drink,” JJ assists, cheek balanced tipsily on a propped up fist.

“Uh…”

Emily’s doe-sweet eyes flash uncertainly behind you.

“I’m basically sober,” you insist, laying your head on your outstretched arm and letting your hair cascade as you bat your lashes, offering her your sweetest smile. “Please, Em?”

It does not go according to plan. She scoffs.

“Are you flirting with me right now?”

“... Would that work?”

“Oh my god, just… cool it with the fuck-me eyes,” she laughs. “You can have the drink.”

You sit up, turning just barely over your shoulder to address Spencer.

“See? Emily buys me drinks. Basically.”

She slides the drink toward you, with a subtle roll of her eyes that you choose to interpret as affectionate under the dim canned lighting. As you sit back, content and free drink in hand, her eyes slide to Reid in the seat next to you, brows arching.

“Are you sure you can handle her all on your own?”

“Handle me?” You frown deeply as Emily gathers her purse and slides out of the booth, followed shortly thereafter by JJ. “I don’t need handling.”

“Then why do you have a handler?” JJ teases.

You slump against the worn vinyl, stirring what is mostly orange juice.

“He most definitely is not my handler. He’s my science project.”

“I got it,” Spencer assures your friends, with his trademark flattened smile. You can’t help but watch him with a grin of your own, flipping the straw in the drink and nibbling on the end until it’s stained sparkly pink. Goodbyes are issued, and soon it’s just the two of you. Perhaps it’s a tipsy delusion, but you think he seems to relax slightly when you’re alone. His eyes are easy on you. “You know, you’re not actually decreasing the amount of germ transmission by using the other end of the straw.”

“Mm… pretty sure alcohol kills germs, Doctor.”

At that, you giggle.

Doctor.

Soon you’re covering your face and having a full-fledged laugh attack.

“What?” Spencer asks. From between your fingers you can see that he’s smiling guardedly, brows furrowed in a way that reminds you he’s often worried about being the butt of a joke and not knowing it. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing,” you assure him quickly, gathering yourself. “I just… can’t believe you’re a doctor.”

“Why not? What’s so unbelievable about that?”

“You’re so young.”

And handsome.

“I’m not that young. I’m older than you,” he defends. Only by a handful of years, but you know he’s defensive about his age after a lifetime of being told he looks young for—well, everything.

“You’re… 32?”

That’s not right—you know as soon as you say it.

“Thirty three.” He very politely captures a hand—your hand—that had at some point ended up a little too close to his eye. You’re not sure what you planned to do once it got there—you don’t recall moving it at all.

“Sorry.” You take your hand back, choosing to instead fiddle with a button on his coat ponderously. “33 is a good age.”

“Yeah?” Spencer laughs, angling his head as if to regard you from a new angle. It warms you all over. Burns in some places, like a shot of liquor down your throat. Makes you just as dizzy, too. “You have a lot of experience being thirty three?”

“No, I just…” your cheeks heat and you wrestle with a timid smile, averting your gaze and dropping your hand for fear his grin this close up might actually kill you. “I like 33 year old you.”

“So… you didn’t like me when I was thirty two?”

“Stop,” you beg, a self-effacing laugh into the cup of your palm. “I can’t banter. I’m not at peak performance.”

The truth of it hits you, and you sigh, folding your arms on the table and resting your cloudy head. Only then, from this new perspective, do you allow yourself to fully admire Spencer Reid. He is smiling at you, and your heart does skip a beat like you’ve got some school girl crush. These days he wears his hair falling over his face, messy on purpose, and always smells so nice. You wonder when he started caring about that stuff. You want to see what products are in his shower, and learn why he chose that cologne, or how he decides to pair his socks. He probably has some sort of algorithm.

“Spencer,” you begin, the serious quality of your voice diminished by the smush of your cheek against your arm. Still, he tries to respect your tone, zipping the smile and answering with a playfully twitching brow.

“Hm?”

You want to push the hair out of his face. Why is he looking down at you like that? Like he likes you?

“You’re a very good handler.”

His eyes narrow as he considers this, but the glimmer in them could still spark a forest fire. You’re probably grinning like an idiot.

“Oh, I couldn’t handle you. You know this.”

You hum thoughtfully.

“I bet you could. Wanna try?”

Spencer shakes his head, huffing a laugh through his nose. To his credit, your bold-face innuendos don’t always send him into a tailspin these days.

Just sometimes.

“You need a ride home, don’t you?”

You sit back up, stretching your arms out.

“You don’t have to. I could get a cab.”

“I know,” he assures you, still a hint of amusement playing at the corners of his lips. Why. Is. He. Looking. At. You. Like. That?

“Will you let me drive?”

“I would. But, you know, my affairs aren’t in order.”

You roll your eyes as he gets out of the booth and offers you a hand.

“I’m not that drunk.”

Spencer just wiggles his fingers.

“If you can recite the alphabet in reverse you can drive my car.”

You roll your eyes again. Obviously he’s fucking with you, because 1. He’d never let you drive even the slightest bit inebriated, and 2. He knows you can’t say your ABC’s backward when you’re dead sober.

The truth is you’re more buzzed than anything. You could get up and walk fine without any assistance, but he’s offering you his hand, so you take it. After you’re standing, you wonder how many excuses could you possibly dream up to get it back in yours. Should you pretend to fall?

No. Not quite worth your self respect.

“You know…” you muse, reveling in the brief brush of him against your back as he holds open the door for you, “it’s a good thing you didn’t become, like… a medical doctor.”

Now walking side by side on the street, he glances over at you, a poorly veiled smile on his perfect face. Like a trap door brushed over with a few leaves. He wants you to see it.

“Why’s that?”

A breeze ruffles your hair. The brisk cold and the walk seem to be making things crisper already. You shrug, bunching your sleeves in your hands against the increasingly frigid night. The skirt and tights you’d chosen were perfect for a stuffy dive bar. Not so much for an early DC spring.

“Nobody wants a hot doctor.”

He looks down at the sidewalk, hands pocketed, but the curve of his lips doesn’t lessen.

“Hm. You’re drunker than I thought.”

“What? No! I’m—barely!” Again he laughs at you, and again you flush, looking down and counting the cracks in the pavement as you journey slowly under the bath of yellow street lights. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you called me hot.” He sounds almost delighted as he grins sheepishly around the final word.

You snort. You’ve said worse things, more graphic things within the past few hours alone—but you suppose they’ve all been more like dirty jokes than compliments.

“Yeah. You think you aren’t?”

Sandy locks fall side to side as he carefully measures a response. His cologne is warm—sort of smoky. It’s very nice. He doesn’t seem like he’d wear cologne. Have you already thought about his cologne tonight? Once was probably enough.

“I just think sober you wouldn’t have said that.”

“But don’t you prefer it when I’m aggressively flirting with you? I mean, I know I do it sober too, but it's not as good, right?”

A silent stretch begins and shortly ends, and you don’t mind it. Right now, everything is a winding path through the woods. You’re willing to follow any fork off the trail if it means spending more time with him.

“I guess I wasn’t aware that was what you were doing.”

“Oh, bullshit,” you laugh, and it echoes through the canyon of a nearby alley, “I’m not subtle, Reid.”

“I don’t know! You—for all I know that’s just how you are! I mean, what did Emily call them earlier, your—your fuck-me eyes?”

Like he does when he’s flustered, he gets shrill and stuttery. It’s nice to be reminded that he’s still a complete dork on the inside—and the outside, too, as pink stains his cheeks like watercolor. You smirk at him in your periphery, watching him against the darkened city backdrop.

“You noticed those, huh?”

“No,” he denies forcefully, but his brow is pinched like he doesn’t quite believe himself, “I mean, yes, I notice when you look at other people like that, but that’s not what I would call them—I wouldn’t call them anything, I’d just call them your eyes, you know? Not that you always look like you’re soliciting… the implication isn’t there, it’s just—I notice when you flirt with other people! With Emily, and Derek, like, not even half an hour ago. You’re lucky Hotch wasn’t there. You’d probably have given him a heart attack.”

“I’m more concerned with yours, to be honest.”

“My heart is fine,” he laughs. “Worry about my dignity.”

“Hm. I was going for both. Guess I’d better try harder.”

You don’t notice you’ve come to a stop until you’re face to face in front of his vintage Volvo. Spencer is standing closer than usual, hands perpetually stuck in that nice wool coat. He’s all windswept and pretty, smiling crookedly and eyes sparkly with humor. A strand of hair sticks to your lip gloss, and you brush it away, tucking it behind your ear and squinting up at him against the chilly breeze. The flush is either from the nip in the air or your brazen flirting.

“Or, you could go easy on me. I’m frail. Like a… sickly Victorian child.”

Again his brow knits and he smiles like he knows what he’s said is ridiculous. But his tone is gentler now. Softer. Invites you to fall in deeper and see what you might find.

“And ruin all my fun? Toughen up, Reid.”

For a long moment, you don’t get a response—only his eyes, soft and thoughtful on you, before you’re distracted by the sweet bow of his lips. If he notices you’re staring, it doesn’t seem to bother him.

But something evidently does, as when he next speaks, it’s troubled. Curiosity straining against a rope that says maybe it’s better if I don’t ask.

“Do… do you actually flirt with me? When you’re sober, I mean.”

He expects to be ridiculed. In his most vulnerable moments, he’s still bracing for rejection—turning his cheek slightly so he’s ready for the stinging blow. It opens a fissure in your chest. You frown, and speak gently.

“Yeah, Spence. More than anyone else. You really don’t notice?”

Sometimes his face is so expressive, in the pull of his brow and tightening of his eyes and the way he wets his lips. But he probably doesn’t know that. And he can’t seem to meet your eyes, instead choosing to study the leather of your heeled boots. Sounds of late-night traffic, of tires on wet asphalt buffer the pauses between sentences.

“I notice… when you talk to Derek and Emily and JJ and Penelope the exact same way you talk to me. I didn’t think…”

Another gap in conversation, filled with the chatter of some group pouring out of a bar somewhere. You realize he’ll need some gentle prompting to bridge it.

“You didn’t think what?”

When his eyes flash back up to meet yours, you have a feeling like he’s shutting the pipes off.

“It’s—uh—” he clears his throat— “it’s not important, we can—we’ll talk about it a different time. We should—”

“Wait.”

He’d been turning away but snaps right back to look at you as if on command, wearing a brand new face that tells you he’d like to wipe the past minute or so completely away.

“Yeah?”

“Spencer. I wanna know what you were going to say.”

“I told you. It’s nothing.”

“You didn’t tell me. You mumbled evasively and walked away. We were in the middle of something and I want to know what you were going to say. Please?”

“Well, you’re drunk,” he finally sighs, and it’s a bit sharp. Stinging.

“I am not drunk,” you defend, and it feels true, with a bitter cold lashing at your cheek and blood heightened from the walk. “You know I’m not too drunk to have a coherent conversation. Why are you being weird?”

“Because I asked you to drop it! We can’t have this conversation right now, all right? I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Your stomach flips, and your breath comes a little heavier. Spencer is clearly frustrated with you. Maybe being on the wrong end of this mild vexation, and so suddenly, should make you feel guilty, or some kind of bad—but all you feel is a sort of buzz in the tips of your fingers and the thrum of your heart, something deeper than excitement pooling in your veins at having inspired this sort of passion. It means he feels something. Something for you.

“I’m sorry,” he tries halfheartedly, unable or more likely unwilling to stay angry at you for very long, “you didn’t—”

“What conversation?”

It’s jarring how quickly this has spun on its head. The very air you’re breathing seems to have changed. The metropolitan soundscape is a rife undercurrent of tension and louder from all the words unsaid.

Finally he swallows.

“There’s no conversation. I’m—it was a poor choice of wording. I just meant we should get you home.”

Before he can make it to the driver’s side door, you’re calling out.

“You think I don’t like you. And I just flirt with you ‘cause I flirt with everyone.”

Spencer stops, and turns to face you once more, sighing and head dropped to one side like you’re doing something incredibly inconsiderate. He’s never looked at you like that before, but you don’t let it shake you.

“That’s what this is about, right?”

He says your name, but you don’t let him get further than that.

“No, I think there is a conversation here, and saying I’m not sober enough to have it isn’t fair and you should have said something before and I think you should just say it now.”

You’re pushing his buttons with a heavy hand, though your own voice shakes. He’s feeling it too—you’ve never been so short with each other. His voice is raised.

“What am I supposed to say?”

It boils over.

“That you like me!”

It rings.

Then it’s silent.

His face is mostly blank. A little sorrowful around his eyes.

It’s cold, jumping into the deep end like this.

“We can’t talk about this right now,” he finally says, glancing to the side as if to suggest a situation the size of the whole city.

“Spencer, I—”

“It’s impossible to have a meaningful discussion until your judgement isn’t impaired, otherwise it’s—”

“I am telling you that I flirt with you because I really like you.”

“I—”

It appears you’ve truly thrown him for a loop. For a moment his jaw works at nothing, a soliloquy of words go unspoken, and then he’s stuttering and fumbling for the right thing to say, looking everywhere but at you.

“I can’t—that’s—regardless of whether or not it’s even true—”

“It is true.”

“Could you—stop?” He pleads. “You can’t tell me that. I mean, the power imbalance when you’ve been drinking and I haven’t—it’s—I mean, it's coercive. Because I brought it up, I asked an inappropriate question—or at least started to ask it, and you—not that it was your fault, I’m the responsible party in this instance, but if tomorrow you realize you never wanted to tell me—so I have to take that with a grain of salt. I’m just—I have to pretend I didn’t hear that, alright? And you can’t say it again.”

He’s ridiculous. You shift your weight onto one foot casually.

“That��s not very nice. I just confessed to having a huge crush on you and you’re gonna leave me hanging?”

There is an undeniable sort of pleasure in the bright of his eyes, and you phrased it that way on purpose, just to see him preen and glow—also to see if you could make him trip all over himself some more. Right now, despite the liminal space your relationship may or may not be occupying, you’re teasing him like you always do. Like he’s a friend, because he is. Before anything else.

He tries to glower, barely.

“Were you listening to me at all?”

“It was hard with all the stammering. I thought you might pass out.”

“I might,” he grumbles, and the admission pleases you greatly. Your lips tug as you admire him for a moment—watch his defenses go down and his features ease into something more inviting.

God, maybe you really had been too hard on him. Maybe he really didn’t expect that you would like him back.

You’re struck with the need to reassure.

A dampened clack emits from your shoe where the heel hits the ground as you step down off the curb.

“You know… I do like you. A lot. I mean it. And I’m glad I told you, because... you like me too, right?”

He raises his brows, like don’t do anything stupid, as you approach unhurriedly. It’s good to see that you haven’t broken his spirit completely.

Less than a foot away, you stop. Close enough to be in his space. Too far for him to have the grounds to step back.

His eyes are careful on you, analytical as always, constantly predicting an infinite number of outcomes to any given scenario. That’s how he keeps his footing in the world. But he’s never very good at predicting you. And it helps that his razor sharp intellect is dulled, some, with affection. Attraction.

It shows in his eyes. He’ll let you push boundaries he knows he shouldn’t. More so if you keep speaking to him this softly. Almost whispering.

“Tell me you like me, Spencer.”

Because he hasn’t yet. All the heavy lifting has been done for him, and that just won’t do.

First, he opens his mouth, and you watch the internal debate, a million things he could say, spinning round in his eyes like pinwheels. Rules, and buts, and caveats.

In the end, he just clears his throat. Speaks in the same secretive tone. Low enough to be intimate.

“I like you.”

Such a simple thing has never made you feel so airy before in your life. You steal another glance at his lips.

“So it’s really not that complicated. We could probably just kiss.”

He tinges pink.

“We definitely can’t.”

“You also said we couldn’t talk about it, and yet…”

“Talking is different. As far as I’m concerned, nothing you say to me tonight is binding. Whatever just transpired happened completely off the record. We can… talk about it tomorrow, but right now, you and I are friends.”

You shrug.

“Friends can kiss.”

“No, they can’t,” he says definitively, though not without a healthy dose of sardonic self-awareness and a dark smile. His hand finds your waist, and it’s glancing, if anything a light push, but you’re delighted nonetheless. Almost as pleased as if he really had kissed you. “It’s cold. I’m ready to leave.”

You’ve pushed him enough for one night. And it is cold. So you shuffle around the car with quick steps to the passenger side door, hooking your fingers under the biting metal handle and waiting for him to unlock the vehicle.

You’re shivering as your thighs press against leather upholstery, only the thinnest layer of synthetic material protecting your legs. Spencer is already starting the car, but the engine is too cold to bother turning the heat on yet.

“I think it’s colder in here than outside. Look at my hand.” You hold it up for him, and it is discolored, waxy, as he mindlessly takes it between his own much warmer ones. “I thought alcohol was supposed to keep you warm. Didn’t that chef on the Titanic survive hours in the ocean because he was hammered?”

“That’s a myth. Not the chef—he did survive, but it was a complete anomaly. Alcohol causes vasodilation in the dermis layer of the skin, so you feel warmer, but it draws blood flow away from your internal organs and significantly raises your likelihood of developing hypothermia.”

Does he notice how he’s holding your hand? Carefully pressing his thumbs to the center of your palm and pushing up through your love and life lines, cupping the fingers, before sandwiching them between his own and generating friction the way a child furiously rolls a play-doh worm?

“I guess I’m really not that drunk, then.”

He’s not expecting it, and maybe he doesn’t know what to make of your exceptionally gentle tone at first. It was a mistake, you think, as he relinquishes his hold on your hand, and you curl it to retain the memory of his warmth. But then he tucks hair behind your ear, like he’s done once or twice before, and smiles in a way you don’t quite understand.

“I know.”

You won’t push him. You won’t ask for anything else, and you won’t demand an explanation. Spencer is special. It can all wait, because you have something good with him already. Something important. Something like holding hands.

It comes as a surprise when he leans across the console, and you lean in a trance to meet him, and another surprise when he gently redirects, pressing his lips to your cheek, close enough to match the corners of your mouths and nothing more.

You’d let him do it a hundred times over, but he draws back after a fraction of a lingering second, and finds your hand to stroke the back of it, forgotten in your lap.

“You said no kissing,” you murmur, as if in a dream. If you had the wherewithal to be embarrassed maybe you wouldn’t be ogling so much.

“Compromise.”

If anything, you should be the cheek-kisser. But there will be time to feel slighted about that later. Time to amend. For now, you look ahead robotically.

“Is there a rule against friendly hand-holding?”

“Probably,” he says.

But he lets you hold his hand in your lap the whole drive to your apartment, anyway.

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fic #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds fic #criminal minds fanfic

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alienzil · 8 months ago

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DP x DC Prompt/notion # 5

Bruce finished logging the last details of tonight’s patrol and reluctantly pulled up contingency file PT-961. “Hnn,” he grunted to the empty cave, staring at the folder on screen but making no move to open it yet. His children were all out for the evening with various excuses: doing research on a case, homework, visiting a friend, etc. He knew they were really with Fenton for a movie night of course…the third such movie night in the last several months since they started sneaking over to visit the man.

He'd put this off long enough, making excuses to himself about assessing the situation before coming to any conclusions, it was past time he did something about it.

Cli-click. There. The file was open.

He’d made this contingency plan years ago, creating it only a days after Dick had moved into the manor and updating as needed as the family had grown but it hadn’t been touched for years.

PT-961 In The Event That More than 50% of the Children Form an Attachment to a New Parental Figure (see file HM-962 if less than 50%) 1. Initial Research: a. Attachment levels – see pages 1-36, graphs I-XLVII b. Assessment of New Parental Figure c. Background and character 2. Intentions – harmful a. If wanting money see contingency files (GD-01 to GD-207) b. If mind control – magic see contingency files (SMM-M-01 to SMM-M-508) c. If mind control – science see contingency files (NAM-ES-01 to NAM-ES-904) d. If criminal intentions see contingency files (CAP-C-201 to CAP-C-508) 3. Intentions – positive a. Option 1. Hire them - See Family reaction projections pages 37-75 - See likelihood of job acceptance pages 76-94 - See possible outcome projections pages 95-127 Note: Option 1 has the highest likelihood of job acceptance and a positive outcome in the event New Parental Figure has an annual income of less than $42,300 and/or is greater than or equal to age 57. b. Option 2. No interference/Let the Children decide what to do - See Children’s time projections pages 128-209, graphs XLVIII-LXX - See possible mission/patrol interference scenarios pages 210-293 - See possible outcomes pages 294-362 Note: Projections for Option 2 show a near 100% likelihood of interference with patrols/mission. Note: Interference resulting in increased potential for injury or delay in treatment of injuries estimated to be 68-94% more likely. c. Option 3. Custody arrangement - See potential arrangements pages 363-482, graphs LXXI-XC - See possible outcomes pages 363-401 Note: The majority of projections show Option 3 is unlikely to be successful. Both the children and New Parental Figure are predicted to be uncooperative in time and custody arrangements with no other controlling factors. d. Option 4. Engage in a relationship - See family reactions page 402-481 - See New Parental Figure reactions pages 482-568 - See possible outcomes pages 569-757 Note: For possible romantic or similar relationships see contingency files (DM-401 to DM-879) Note: In the event Option 1 is nonviable, Option 4 has the highest likelihood of a positive outcome. e. Option 5. Arrange for New Parental Figure to leave - See contingency files (ROI-G-301 to ROI-G-809) Note: High likelihood of one or more children discovering the arrangement for the removal of New Parental Figure leading to high likelihood of estrangement. Also likely to be ethically questionable.

Bruce double checked his notes on Daniel James Fenton. He was 2 years younger than Bruce, earned a high income as a freelance engineer and had multiple patents that gave him enough passive income from royalties that he could easily maintain his current lifestyle without working. There were no indications of any criminal history or ill intentions and thus far all of his interactions with the children appear to have been positive. More than positive given that every single one of his kids was now “secretly” (or secretly in so far as they were aware) spending time with him.

He steepled his hands in front of his face and focused on the data displayed on screen. The best option to take in this case was obvious.

*****

Ding-Dong! “I’m coming!” Danny yelled as he dropped the laundry basket on the couch and headed for the front door. “Why is there always a package delivery on laundry day?” he muttered to himself. Well, hopefully the delivery guy wouldn’t mind his no clean laundry ensemble. Surely, they’d seen worse than Danny’s ancient, too small NASA t-shirt and the bat themed pajama pants Sam bought for him when he moved to Gotham.

“Hi there, sorry I was doing laundry and…uhh…you’re not the delivery guy”. Danny stared at a sharply dressed smiling man holding a dozen roses on the other side of his door.

“No, I’m Bruce Wayne. I-“

“Oh, shit”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “You know.”

“Umm…” Danny gulped. He was not expecting to deal with Batman on laundry day! “Yes?” He straightened himself, squared his shoulders and looked Bruce Wayne AKA Batman, the father of the kids that his core had recently come to recognize as his own, in the eyes. “Yes,” he said firmly. “I know.”

“Hnnn…” Bruce’s voice dropped a few octaves. Not quite Batman’s signature growl but much lower than he had been speaking. “Well then, that simplifies things. These are for you. Would you like to go out to dinner with me?”

“…What?!”

#dpxdc #dp x dc #dc x dp #dcxdp #fic prompt #so basically bruce has a contingencies in case the batkids found a new mom or dad #and the best option is to marry Danny #it's only logical #he has lists #and charts #they're color coded

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wowserb0wser · 7 months ago

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“Tornado Wrangler”

A/N: Watched Twisters last night and I was literally drooling in the theaters for David Corenswet and Glen Powell. But Glen my boy has many fanfics written for him, not so much for David!! I am here to change that!! Was like crazy horny when writing this, I should be ashamed but I am not.

Paring: Scott x AFAB reader

Description: you work as a lab tech for one of the companies suppling the "storm par" with money and having to check that everything was going to plan. You expected the tornados to be the most interesting part while being in Oklahoma, but a certain science engineer catches your attention and you catch his. Kate’s not in this one :(

WC: 7.5k (I GOT CARRIED AWAY)

Warning(s): MDI!!! Scott being a meanie-weenie at first but he warms up quickly. Nervous!F!Reader, Smut ahead!!! 18+ Size kink, Dry humping, Dirty talking, Finger sucking, Oral (f receiving), Reasonable age-gap (Scott is 26, reader is 23), Pet names = baby, big girl, Kinda degrading/Not really??, Protected penetration (PinV), Slight!DomScott! + Slight!Sub!Reader!, Scott actually never shuts up during sex. MY BOY IS VOCAL🗣️

You've known Javi ever since he left the military. He was looking for grants to fund his "science project". You just happen to be working for one of the businesses that agreed to give him and his whole team equipment, his pitch was impressive and your boss sent you out to know exactly how their money was spent for this experiment. At last that's what they told you, now being in the field, it seemed more like a punishment for you. Not that you didn't like tornados - you did… but only from behind a computer screen. You were a scientist that primarily worked inside of an AC’ed lab, not the blistering heat of Oklahoma and especially with chasing tornados in person and close.

Now here. Faced with an awkward car ride with Javi to meet the whole team. It wasn't completely awkward with Javi, it's just that you haven't spent such a long time alone with him before this moment. At least he tried to make small talk.

It wasn't much further to the meet up spot. And it was clear that every other person who wanted to chase down a tornado was also meeting at the same spot as us.

Javi parks the truck next to an exact same model and makes it as the one you're in, the only difference was the tag line that separates them from each other, the other was “Scarecrow” while yours was “Lion”. That's when you looked around and saw them. They wore matching white button downs with the small label that was wrapped on your truck and the matching one next to you. It read "Storm Par". You've heard of the company, but it wasn't the company you work for, it must be another company that was lending them money.

One particular team mate stuck out from one another. He was tall - tall as in towering over everyone else in the group.

Javi was quick to get out of the car and open your door, lending you his hand to help you get out and stepping straight into loose dirt that went everywhere. You were truly out of your lab.

You follow closely behind Javi while passing through the crowd, people shouting over each other and country music blasting in every direction. You saw some people gather into a set-up booth with merch that had a specific saying, but couldn't tell what it said from your distance. All you could see was a man standing on his truck with sunglasses and a cowboy hat that covered a good portion of his face. You can hear him riling up the crowd. As you get closer to Javi’s group, you can tell who's in charge already. That person being the same tall man that caught your eyes first.

The closer to the man you pick upon what he looks like, he wears almost blacked out sunglasses and a faded blue baseball cap. His dark hair slightly peeking out the corners of his hat, his eyebrows quite hidden behind said sunglasses and a straight smile that barely showed any interest. It was such a night and day comparison to Javi and everyone else on the team as they put on their bright smiles for you as a warm welcome.

Both of you reach the "Storm Par" group of men. Javi welcomes you to the group all-whistle introducing everyone's names and where they went to school. Stopping before the tall man. Giggling to himself before introducing the man, "And this is Scott. He went to MIT-" Javi giggles again at how Scott's reaction hasn't changed. "No, no, no - He makes up for it. With his beautiful, amazing, personality!” Javi praises and justifies. The stoic deadpan faced man. Javi’s hand resting on Scott's shoulder. A quick smile flashes you clean bright teeth. He looks sharp. The clean white freshly ironed button down compared with the other "hillbilly's with a camera" more dirty and not freshly pressed shirts. Javi pats quickly on Scott's shoulder and puts his hands back down. His earbuds still in his ears, you couldn't tell if he even heard your name. Dark aviator sunglasses hid his expression. His jaw clutches down on a piece of gum.

There was an aura about Scott. Nonchalant, unfazed, calm facial expression that draws you in. His tall figure, being around 6’4ft. His arms pulled together crossed against his chest. His forearms stretching the fabric on the short sleeved buttoned shirt, his skin glistening in the hot Oklahoma sun, he was just lightly tanned. You saw how those arms were built and your eyes started trailing down his torso….

Quickly you blinked away from that thought and continued to focus on Javi's words rather than standing and practically drooling over this guy's physique that you literally just met. But you could feel Scott's eyes lingering on your face for a second longer.

After Javi finishes his mini speech he pulls you to the side. "Look, if you're too nervous about going out there then you can just wait at the motel while me and the crew go out." He offers with a sympathetic smile. You were about to accept his offer but remembered why you were out here in the first place. “No, I think I'm ready to see what our money supports." You retort back. Once hearing you, he laughs and slightly shakes his head, “You're never ready for your first tornado.".

You looked towards the group again and saw Scott and some others looking at yours and Javi’s direction. You knew what they thought. That you weren't up for a challenge, time to prove them wrong.

“So when do we head out?" You say with a smile.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You sit in the "Tin-man" truck along with Javi and Scott, they both sit in the front seat while you were directed to specifically sit in the back. You were quick to put your seatbelt on and Javi slammed on the pedal to start on their chase. A few minutes pass. The music is barely audible and occasionally Scott said to turn either right or left. While on a straight dirt road you muster the courage to start asking questions, “So what exactly does Tornado chasing intel?". Javi once again laughs, simultaneously thinking about how to explain it as simply as possible. Scott doesn't seem to mind or acknowledge your question. Javi responses, “Okay. We start with looking at our data, thank you Scott, and see where a tornado could possibly occur." He taps on the steering wheel to focus. “What do you mean "possibly occur''?”. You expect Javi to continue answering your questions, but Scott's voice pierce the air.

“It all depends on if the seal breaks by the anvil. Warm air goes up and cold air goes down, this continues to build and some other factors that's hard to explain quickly. " He looks back at you, his blue eyes stare down at you. This was the first time seeing his face without those sunglasses and you surely weren’t disappointed. It causes your cheeks to flood with warming. Hopefully the two men didn't notice. Scott turns his head back to the laptop seated on his lap.

The laptop starts beeping, the screen showing bright colors swirling. Both men start smiling at the screen and start hyping each other up for this tornado.

This was so different from being in the lab.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You shook in the truck's backseat, hearing Javi and Scott yelling over the roaring tornado that was getting closer by the seconds they were outside. The faint snaps of the radar planting into the ground and heavy footsteps rushing back to the truck. Scott reaches for the middle console and holds a walkie-talkie to his mouth, Javi is already putting the car in drive to get away from the approaching tornado. “Our’s is set. We're coming back! Over!” He quickly speaks into the radio and refocuses back on his laptop to see the already updating data scans.

Scott fists his hand together and cheers a little for the successful radar. Javi joins in and whoops the same. Scott's chest puffs in and out, trying to calm down the adrenaline rush that just came washing over his whole body. A big toothy smile shines, he quickly glanced behind to see if you’re sharing the same amount of enjoyment in what they accomplished. Anticipating the same range of emotions as them. This was your first tornado chase and it being so successful out the door was a great performance.

He was shocked to see you clenching the doors handle for dear life with your eyes shut. At first he thought you were hurt but then realized that you were scared of the tornado that is several hundred feet behind you, still chasing you, but from a safer distance. He snaps his fingers and quickly thinks, “Hey!” Snap. “Look at me. You are safe, we are getting out of here.” His quick words make you open your eyes and lock into his, his calm exterior puts an odd sense of ease in your nerves though you know you weren’t completely away from a dangerous tornado. Again, those dark blue eyes barrow into yours. “Okay.” You softly respond back and slowly pull your fingers away from the door handle.

Steading your hands with some deep breaths. Javi also comforts you, “That was just an E-F 3, that was easy peasey! Nothing to be scared of! We’ll be with the rest of the gang in a few minutes.” He smiles in the reflection in the rear view mirror, still focusing on the road ahead of him. You just nod along and breathe deep. Scott watches you for a little long to make sure you don’t work yourself into a panic attack, partially because he really doesn’t want to deal with a stranger going crazy but because a small part of him doesn’t want you to have a panic attack.

Thankfully it wasn’t long till you all were back to a shitty Motel which was the meeting spot to review their new information being downloaded and importing it into a 3D model. Which happens to take a couple of hours to do so, but this Motel happens to be next to a little Ma and Pa diner. Many other tornado chasers ended up at the same Motel, there was already a crowd forming and music playing when you stepped out of the truck to get fresh air.

Without another word, your feet start moving to the Diner. Food and some soda should help.

You were a couple of feet away from the entrance when you heard running footsteps, looking back to see if you needed to move out the way for said runner but was pleasantly surprised to see Scott rushing over to you. Once you make eye contact, or suppose eye contact because he was wearing his sunglasses once again, he started to slow down and his long legs didn’t take long until he was close enough to speak.

His face is still straight and unbothered, he pulled his earbuds off to the side, “Was wondering where you were off so quick.” Was there some cheeky tone laced in his question? You look back forwards the Diner and smile back at Scott. “Maybe a greasy burger will put my mind to ease.” You quip back and turn your heels back in the same direction as before, “Want to join?” You ask as you're already walking to the entrance.

After ordering entries and drinks you both sit at a booth that sits next to a picture window that looks out to the mostly plain fields and hanging decorative lights connected to posts around the Diner. This town in Oklahoma was quaint, without the tornados you would consider this to be perfect.

Turning your head to face Scott, he took off his glasses and placed them in his shirt pocket. His eyes drift towards yours once he notices that you were looking at him. “I don’t think you're made for this.” He shamelessly speaks, unsure why his words hurt you more than when Javi accused you of the same. But hearing it after the chase stung more. A small frown on your lips. Scott was quick to speak up again before you could respond. “Not saying this to be mean or rude, but what we do is dangerous and I can’t have someone freaking out all the while. I can’t focus on our job when you’re having a panic attack in the back seats.” He explains with some condescending attitude but mainly because he was still frustrated with caring slightly about you.

He couldn’t deny it. He found you rather attractive, your demeanor being a little shy but he could tell you’d warm up quickly. First introduction catches him so off-guard, your smile so bright and your voice as you say hello to everyone. ‘Such a pretty girl’ he thought as his eyes looked you up and down quickly. And he swears he thought he caught you checking him out as well. But seeing you so scared made him nervous to be in the truck, he wanted to grab you and comfort your worries away.

“Wow. No sugar coating for me huh?” You softly giggle an exhale. You knew he was right, it sucked to hear it though. “Cut right through the bullshit.” You further say and stretch your arms out to find some sort of relief. He laughs at you cursing, it was the first time hearing you curse and to be frank, it wasn’t threatening whatsoever. He found it amusing, you were cute. Especially because from his outburst your cheeks are flushed with pink embarrassment. “I don’t mess around.” He tries to play, a sly smile on his lips but you groan and put your hand on your head without seeing it. “I thought I could handle it.” You mutter into your hands, your voice sounding disappointed. Now Scott felt bad for speaking.

Quick on his feet, “Remember what Javi said; “You’re never ready for your first tornado.” You just needed to experience it.” You drop your hands down to the table and look back at the man across from you. His jaw goes up and down while chewing the same piece of gum. Staring at his lips for a few seconds before your eyes trail back to his eyes but there was a certain glimmer when your eyes connected, a smile curving his lips.

Gosh. You had no clue why every single thing he did made you have a visceral reaction. Simultaneously he knew what he was doing.

Food is placed down on your table and your mouth watered at the sight. Before you could reach out and take a bite of your anticipated meal, Scott’s voice speaks up again. “Be honest, why did you agree to come out here?” He manages to say before grabbing his hamburger and taking a greedy first bite. You shove a couple of fries in your mouth before answering. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Tornados, I find them so interesting and a strange natural occurrence. But from a safe distance, in my lab where I can do research rather than going out in the field.” Your stomach growls at you for not taking a bite of your burger that sits so patiently on the plate. “I totally agree on what you guys are doing, I want to help people too! I just don’t think I was built for wrangling tornados like you. Plus my boss dragged me out here.” You chuckle while biting now at your food. Already feeling better or maybe it was the company of Scott that put you to ease.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On your way out of the Diner you are met with boots taking a long stride towards you and Scott. Those boots belonged to a flannel clad gentleman with a cowboy hat tilted slightly out of his face. He was clearly built and flashes a dashing smile in your direction. You could practically hear Scott rolling his eyes before the guy even got a word out. “Clipboard! I didn’t know they made scientists so pretty nowadays.” The man lowly whistles at your appearance, you quickly caught on to the ‘Clipboard’ nickname he gave Scott. “Get back to your YouTube channel Tyler.” He puffs out while sliding back his sunglasses. The cowboy named Tyler stops in front of you, quickly glancing between the two of you. “What’s your name little lady?” His voice is oddly sweet and not patronizing. You tell him your name and he softly repeats it back with a smile.

“Well then, come find me when you’re done working with a bunch of pencil pushers.” He lowers his sunglasses and sends a wink your way before walking back toward the Diner.

It was so quick you hardly noticed how Scott stopped chewing his gum and clutched down hard on his jaw, teeth slightly grinding. Turning to face Scott again, “Who the hell was that?” Your laugh pulls Scott out of his train of thought. Hearing your soft giggles at the interaction makes him almost forget why he was even frustrated in the first place. “Just one of those Hillbillies with a YouTube channel. He especially likes to throw fireworks for theatrics.” His sigh was heavy as he continued forward back to the Motel and not answering any other questions you had about Tyler.

It wasn’t long before getting back to your room. Scott dropped you off and went back to the rest of the team to discuss the 3D model, he hoped it was long enough to fully process and get a look at the models.

Following the next few hours held up in your Motel room, it wasn’t anything fancy. A small TV that frames the adjacent wall from the bed and a dingy chair and desk, the bathroom was next to them and was brightly lit by yellowed lights. Definitely not dreamy, but this was a company's purchase for the crew so you couldn’t complain.

You slightly jump out of bed when you hear a loud bang from your door. It started storming a little while ago and just thought it was a branch slamming on your door but then you heard another knock. You weren’t going to sleep but put on your pajamas and laid down to doom scroll on your phone. You're fast on your steps as you reach the door and open it slightly to see who was knocking. You were so surprised to see Scott behind the knocking.

“Well welcome back.” You greet as you open the door for him, gesturing for him, “Come in, come in.” You smile at him. You turn to go back to lounging on your bed. While doing so, Scott gets the chance to take on your appearance. A matching set of pajamas that fit your body perfectly, he swallows heavily at the sight. It was possible that he was so pent up from being out in the field for multiple weeks and hadn't been with a woman during that time either, now here you were. So sweet it’s sickening and so pretty sitting down on the corner of the bed, looking up at him with almost doe like eyes. It’s driving him up the wall.

His hands rest on his side while stepping in your room, closing the door behind him. He was slightly damped by the rain and wind outside, he breathed in the air around him. “So what brings you by? Is there another Tornado that needs to be chased?” You ask, slightly anxious to hear his response. He sees your hands fidgeting in your lap. “Oh, no. I just wanted to let you know that the model is up and running. Plus, my room’s power went out.” He explains, in the meanwhile he looks around your room, he also seemed nervous.

You nodded and were about to respond but he cut you off, “And I wanted to check up on you.” He stretches out the “and” like he was contemplating on finishing his sentence. You were pleasantly taken aback. It was nice that he was seeing if you were okay. You were flustered nonetheless and blushed. “Oh mister big and stoic is concerned for me?” You playfully jab at his demeanor, he’s quick to your mocking behavior. Again he slides off his sunglasses and places them in his shirt pocket, he hangs his head down and laughs. “Alright I’m going to go now then.” He teases back, there’s a small panic behind your eyes, you didn’t want him to leave.

“No- I mean you can hangout for a while if you want. I’m not doing much. You can wait here till your room gets power again.” It sounded just as pathetic in your head as it came out of your mouth, desperate to get more time for him. He caught on to it, “Yeah?” A small smirk crept on his lips. His figure coming closer to you, his large frame tower over you. It did something to you, “Yeah.” Your breathing hitched in the back of your throat, causing you to swallow down hard.

He was taking so much space, almost suffocating. “Tell me, were you checking me out when we first met?” He was testing the waters, what kind of response were you going to give him. Either it would be welcoming or dismissive, but the way blush started creeping up your neck to your cheeks he could tell. “What? No, I mean- no. Why are you asking?” You clearly flustered at his question and lied right through your teeth and it was so obvious. “Okay.” He bites down on his gum and smiles down at you. He quickly sits next to you and faces the TV. Ignoring what just happened between the two of you, riling you up in the process.

Ignoring the building tension, “What are we watching?” He nonchalantly asks, his gum smacking in his mouth. A smug look plastered on his face watching you try to regain your composure. Skipping over his previous statements. “Um… T- The news about the weather tomorrow.” You blink. He then reaches up and takes off his baseball cap, his hair ruffles out in some crazy hat hair before he shakes it out with his other hand. His brown hair flows softly down. It’s then you take in his scent, slight sweat lingers but you can smell his cologne, it smelt like an ocean side with a hint of sandal wood. It fit him perfectly and drank up the scent to fill your senses. This man was something. His cocky attitude, his demanding presence, oddly quiet demeanor. Everything about him was causing your brain to lag. His clothes cling slightly to his body due to them dampening from the outside weather.

You tried your hardest to pay attention to the television ahead of you, you really did. But with Scott next to you, the storm outside, y’all’s conversation. It was too much for you to handle. His white button down was a bit dirty from the chase earlier from today and now cling wrapped around his arms, chest, thighs. Your mouth watering again while you ogle the man before you, it was wrong, so wrong. Hell you were technically his superior as he worked for your company, but right now it felt like he held all the power.

Then boom. A loud bang crashed against the ceiling, the storm getting heavier. It spooked you enough to jump beside you, trying to find some sort of comfort and gladly Scott gave you that. His rather large hands are quick to rest on your shoulder, sliding up and down to ease your concerns, “You’re alright, it’s just the wind. Nothings gonna’ hurt you.” He shushes in a low tone which calms you down. Though his clothes are wet and cold, his body is hot. Feeling how warm he was as you pressed deeper to his touch.

Your eyes shift from being closed to looking up at his, then glancing down to his lips. He mirrors you, both of you leaning in closer. "We shouldn't." You aimlessly try to guide yourself back into reality but your body caves. His lips ghost over yours, “Can I kiss you?” He softly asks for permission, his whole body aching waiting for your response, but didn’t have to wait any longer as you pressed your lip to his. His other hand reaches for your face, cupping the back of your neck while his other latches to your waist. Practically pulling you on top of him. You gripped his collar to stabilize yourself and followed his direction.

He pulled you on his lap, finding it comfortable. Your hands continue to grasp on to get some leverage but find it futile in the long run. The kiss begins to become heated by the seconds, occasionally breaking it to pant out quick breaths. He was taking over all your senses. Making it hard to focus on anything but him.

Scotts lips leave yours and make their way down to your neck. His attention to make you feel more than comfortable was overpowering. Your hands have a mind of their own, snaking up to his head and gently pulling his hair. Your eyes screwed shut, he watches your reactions - to see what causes the most pleasure. His hand moves around your body, around your hips and butt, around your chest groping your boobs. That seems to get some whimpering out of your lips. "You're so pretty like this." He tells in your ear, causing a shiver to go down your spine. Your legs squirm around his, trying your hardest to find some pressure to grind down on. Your head rushes with blood, finding it hard to wrap your head around pleasure. "I mean you're pretty regardless, but fuck." He groans through his teeth.

You moan into his mouth as he captures your lips for another kiss.

“Be honest with me again.” You nod, slightly still ditzy after that heated kiss. “Were you staring at my arms earlier?” There’s a slight teasing tone- actually, more like a cocky tone. He was still on about this. You nod your head a little sheepishly, having to admit it made it feel shameless. “I knew it! You were checking me out! Thought I caught you, but I wasn't sure I was making things up in my head.” He barks out a quick laugh and continues to kiss up your neck, drawing more airy moans and some giggles.

“What, no smart-ass response huh?” He teases. And he was right, you couldn't think of any kind of response, your mind is fogged up. Mewing out was the only response as he found the spot on your neck. He continues to work you up, all while dry humping him, your pajama shorts riding up in the process. His clad trousers gave the perfect mount. His growing erection being more prominent and pressed tight in his boxers and pants, now with you moaning in his ear and grinding on him shamelessly.

You did try your best to quiet down, even with the storm outside these walls were thin and god forbid if any of you teammates heard what noises were coming from in your room, there would be no question what was happening between the two of you. But his hands and mouth on you made you uncontrollable. He thought quickly to fix this predicament. "Shush, baby, no more whining. Here - here" He coos, moving one of his hands and sticks his index and middle finger in your mouth. Shutting you and your withering moans up. Your mouth drooling over his digits. Your eyes are half glazed over, if you had the consciousness to see what you looked like you’d be ashamed how easily you were subdued. Falling under some sort of submissive headspace. It was so quick you hardly noticed it happened, but maybe you wanted this for a while now. Especially after the rough and exhausting day you had, you just wanted someone to take the reins in for you.

And now the pet name, you wanted to hear him call out for you with that every time from now on. "Look at you, such a desperate thing you are, huh? Isn’t that right baby.” You nod aimlessly, his fingers pressing down on your tongue. You were putty in his large hands, not that you were complaining. Your hands fumble with his shirt's buttons, at a sad attempt to take it off yourself. He thought of mocking you once again for this poor attempt but chose to lend a helping hand. Assisting with the majority of buttons you and him manage to take off his uniform top, catching a look of his chest you moaned again. He was cut with a light amount of chest hair, your sounds muffled with his fingers. It was hard to calm yourself, you were like a dog in heat, nothing was quite satisfying your needs yet. You needed more - more of him. "Fuck'n hell. You are just so needy." His hair crazed by your frantic hands, lips were bright pink, and eyes half lidded. Talk about needy, he wanted you with the same amount of passion.

He pulls his fingers out of your mouth, a groan of frustration comes out of your mouth. “Please, please, please.” You aimlessly beg. For what? You and him knew, for him to finally fuck you rather than all his teasing. But Scott needed you to verbally admit it to him. “Huh? What do you need? Spit it out.” Again the condescending tone loud and clear, he does this to rile you up. For knowing him for such a little amount of time, he knew how to press all the right buttons. "Please, I need you." you mutter in his ear while closing your eyes and pressing your head between his shoulder that meets his neck. It was more like a whimper than begging but the overloading sensations were driving you in a haze. Still humping his leg, it was quite a sight that even left Scott to groan. But he can’t let you off that easily, that would be too nice. He kicks off his shoes and socks, preparing for the inevitable.

"By “I need you”, that really means that you want me to fuck you.” Taunting you even further, you squirm under his grasp at the boldness his words were. You nod your head, knowing your voice would betray you.

He acknowledges your approval and lays you backwards towards the bed. Your head close to the edge and him by the pillows, he rests on his knees. His body still covered most of your space, he was just so big. "First we're going to take off this little matching set." His voice sounds airy, your legs spread open to invite him to get even closer to your body which he gladly scoots in. His hands reach for the hem of your top and pull it flush off your body. Your nipples harden from the cold air hitting your hot body. Closing your eyes at the sensation, you were quick to discover that Scott leaned down to give each of them a kiss. His hot tongue swiftly swirled around your left one, but he didn't stay long as he gave the same treatment to your right. You watch him, his eyes never leaving your sight.

His lips travel down your sternum to reach your belly, he peppers kisses along the way, all while giving you short praises. All of his words make you pant.

Reaching your matching shorts, he slips both hands up your thighs and grabs the hem to pull the shorts off of you. Once off, you were left only in your panties. A small spot clearly dampened in the center, it would be embarrassing to you normally but you were so aroused. He practically moans at seeing it. Knowing he worked for you enough. He continues to scoot back so he could comfortably lay his head on your thighs. He takes in your scent, fingers loop and starts pulling your panties off. You throw your head back from the anticipation, then a sharp swat on your inner thigh makes you pop your eyes down back at him. "Eyes on me, you better watch me eat you out." The tone being similar to the voice he had in the truck when he calmed you down, it was assertive and demanding.

You clench down on nothing and start to squirm, he rubs the spot he smacked and gives you a soft kiss, it felt like an apology. He breaks his gaze and looks at your cunt. It makes you a little nervous at first, closing your legs at first, but he tells you off. "What? You're shy now?" He tisks, looking back up at you. Almost like a warning. "You were just begging for me to fuck you." His words made you gush, you could feel how hot your cheeks were burning. Your voice squeaks, "I'm sorry." This apology makes him stop, "It been a while since she's gotten some attention huh baby?" He questions but already knows the answer, yes it has been a while. Referring to your pussy as "she". You nod as an answer.

"Don't worry baby, I'll take care of her and you." That cocky attitude shines bright while he begins his work. His lips kissing the skin around your desperate cunt. Some dragged out moans are flying past your lips, it really had been a long time since being with another person, especially someone who knew how to get you this excited.

Unwarranted your hips buck at his face, your body was fed up by all this teasing. His hands pin down your thighs, stopping you from future bucking.

Those pink soft lips finally make contact with your most sensitive part of your body, causing you to yelp. He found this adorable, already moaning. It was blissful, he knew what he was doing. Circling his tongue. Now and then flickering down to your cunt, your hips try to wiggle but his strong grip holds you down at his mercy.

Your hands go from covering your mouth so you didn't tell from the pleasure, to the comforter, to his hair to pull him closer. You continue to stare down at Scott as he does his work, trying your best to not thrash your head back and groan. But by keeping your eyes open you can see him grind down on the bed, he was getting off from eating your pussy. And rightfully so in his opinion, you tasted amazing, if he could he would keep you here for an eternity without any complaint.

While tongue fucking your hole, his nose brushes against your clit. Sending shock waves throughout your body, making you a moaning mess. Chanting his name with pleas and curse words. A tightness builds in the pit of your stomach, your thighs close his head between them. Keeping him in this position. Your back to begging, babbling out slurred sentences barely coherent with moans breaking mid way through and you losing your train of thought.

It was almost amusing to see you this unwired, usually you were a very punctual person. Now here you were cumming all over a man's face that you met less than 24 hours ago. A man you only know his first name, but Scott was something over worldly. Your voice pinches in a high note as your climax racks through your entire nerve system. Screwing your eyes tightly, blinding white light flooding your vision.

Hell, he almost came in his boxers watching you cum. Watching tornadoes for a living was thrilling but seeing you come undone with just his tongue was 10 times more exciting for him. Now he needs to see you cum again but this time in his dick.

Fluttering your eyes open to your own personal show, Scott lifted back and sat up right. He's focused on unzipping his pants unaware that you lifted yourself on your elbows to watch. Once he spots you, he pulls out his wallet from his pants and takes out a condom that was tucked in a sleeve. 'How cliché' you think. One hand pulls down his pants and boxer while the other rips open the condom wrapper. A simple act being so seductive when he did it.

Your eyes could contain themselves from peaking down at his dick. The tip was hot pink, pebbling pre-cum down his shaft. He was a big boy. You were practically salivating at the sight, he almost laughs at your drooling. He rolls the condom on swiftly. "How do you want to do this?" His voice piercing your ears, looking back at his blue eyes. You were puzzled at the question, he simplifies for you. "What position?" He states it obvious, but not rude.

Without a second thought, "Can I ride you?" He groans loudly at your words. But regains his composers, "Of course you can baby." He smiles, his gum still smacking against his teeth. You had completely forgotten he was even still chewing gum. He lay down on the pillows beneath him. His teasing manner doesn't affect you as much, you were determined to give him a good show. Meanwhile you crawl your way between his legs and settle to ride this tornado wrangler.

His chest heaves, he was so much larger than you. Your legs just about wrap beside his hips as you position yourself. Bending over his tall torso you plant a kiss on his jaw, leading to his lips. He kisses you with a passion similar to a fire, your hands drop to his chest to steady yourself. Pulling away and reaching below you.

A sharp hiss slips past his closed teeth, your hand wrapping itself around him. Your hands were soft, unlike his, the feeling being unfamiliar to him. You found pleasure from watching his face scrunch up. Lining yourself and making your way down. His large hands grip on your waist at the contact.

A choked moaning rips through your throat. Fuck it had been a while since you had a dick up in there and the stretch was unwelcoming with a full sense of pleasure. "That's it." He groans while his head is pressed down on the pillow.”Holy shit baby! You are squeezing the shit out of me.” A mixture of a chuckle and moaning follows behind his words. "Relax baby, let me in." He breathes heavily, lifting his head up. Scott's hands grip harder on the small fat on your hips. Stilling your moving till you start relaxing your muscles.

“I know, I know. Just a little more baby, c’mon you’re a big girl." His voice is hoarse. You could have come from that voice alone. You slow your movements, focusing on your breathing and closing the gap between the two of you.

Once your body's are flushed, your eyes roll to the back of your skull. You couldn't make a noise. Now was his opportunity to be a moaning mess. The way your cunt swallowed his cock was velvet, you were causing so much pleasure, he was almost lost of words. Almost.

"You better ride baby." It almost sounds like a threat. His unwavering pissy personality showed true and you couldn't say no, you did as you were told.

Lifting yourself up and letting gravity do the rest of the work. You started slow at first. You were still adjusting to his size, he was heavy in your cunt.

That slow pace was short-lived as Scott's hands dragged you back and forth. His grip was bruising, his jaw clenching down while watching how his cock is meeting together with your pussy. You looked quite spectacular from his laid position, your palms flat to his stomach, your tits bouncing up and down with you. The faces you make, filled with nothing but unadulterated bliss.

He's held on for the best he can, letting you get a couple of minutes for you to be doing mostly all of the hard work. But his knees bend behind you and he lifts you slightly above his hip. Then he begins his own rhythm to fuck into you, thrusting his hips and greedily taking you. Not that you were complaining. The air is knocked out of your lungs, ending up at a silent groan, helping with your noise control.

The incessant, slapping noise of him rutting in your cunt was loud. Though you tried to contain yourself, it was impossible that the rooms parallel to each side of you didn't know what was happening. The small room is filled with flesh meeting, heavy breathing, groans and moans. "Feels fuckin fantastic, you love this big dick in your little pussy." He can't help but voice his thoughts, unwavering. You wordlessly nod as he continues, "Huh baby? Fuck'n shit. This pussy is going to be the death of me!" He rolls his head back, stalling his thrust momentarily. Soaking in the way your cunt squeezes him.

Gaining more air to your lungs you can finally moan out his name, sounds like the angels from above calling out to him. if he could hear his name come out of your mouth continuously then it might just be heaven.

Again that tightness is winding up quickly. Even more intense than your last orgasm. Trying to shut you up now was going to be an impossible hop to leap through, yet at this point both you and Scott were so focused on each other and blocking the outside world, you could care less when your combined moans.

As your own orgasm was approaching, you could tell Scott's wasn't that far behind as you. His movements become irregular and his knees start to buckle from losing momentum.

It was all a blur when your second orgasm ripped through your whole body. You collapse on the 6'4ft man, your whole body shakes above him. Your head spins, it feels as if you were drunk. Definitely drunk on his cock.

When you come to, he is lifting you back to the side for him to pull out. His condom partially filled with his semen, he knots it before discarding it in the small waste bin by your night stand. The storm outside still roars loudly, you're glad you're stuck in your motel room with him.

He lays back down on your bed, "I think I just died a few seconds ago, I've come back to life." Scott exclaims, his pupils expanded to almost cover the blue hue, rather they were almost black. He really was coming down from such a high.

Shallow breathing through your nose before turning to face Scott. His face looks so fucked out, no doubt you look the same. His hair is wild and there are faint lipstick marks on his face and neck caused by you. "I haven't came that hard in months." You were still breathless from what he had done to you. "I can say the same." Dry and quick laughs come from both of you. “You made me swallow my gum.” You still try to compose yourself.

Both of you lay down under the covers of the Motels comforter. Lazily turning your head in his direction, you could easily fall asleep in his arms right now. He holds you close, his body warm surrounding you in a comfortable state.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Stay the night?" You ask, similar to a plea. And how could Scott say no to that face? That was short lived, "I need a big strong man to protect me from the storm." He watches you giggle, amused by your own joke. It was laced with faux concern. "Only because your room has power." He pokes fun back. You were giggling at his joke.

Your laughter comes to a halt when the lights above you and TV shut of. f all of a sudden, causing you to jump back into Scott's arms. He's once again amused, "You know you're really jumpy for a tornado lab scientist." He quips back. You try to act hurt by his comments in hopes of retracting his statement for an appraisal instead, but he saw right through your act and gave you a small kiss on the forehead.

You stayed together until the morning.

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