#and its the 90s so information is harder to gather

[fantastic-mr-corvid]

got hit with understanding of how things would work and decided to be self indulgent so im planning and possibly writing the years gap between Celia getting her stand and being recruited to passione. the self indulgence is im dragging in cannon characters :)

[bat-besties]

Trans Barbara Gordon 

Barbara is a smart and happy kid, and when she insists she’s a girl or that she’s Barbara (the name she would have had if born female), Jim just takes it as a sign he’s raising his son as a feminist. Jim doesn’t really know very much about trans culture, it’s the 90s so it isn’t on his radar for his kid. At work, he’s pushing for policing changes and listens to lobbyists, but it isn’t a priority for him.

When Barbara begins to grow her hair out at twelve he teases that she’s looking like a girl, and doesn’t understand when she gets upset.

Barbara, angry and hurt and feeling so, so wrong doesn’t know why she’s upset either. When later her dad clumsily talks about how it’s so cool that David Bowie is bisexual and oh wow he loves that makeup and everyone thinks Bowie is such a cool rockstar, she feels a little better.

She does feel an affinity with queer men, but she prefers thinking about Batwoman than Robin - maybe that’s bisexual. Her dad stops talking about her wife and starts saying partner, and that makes her feel better.

When she sees the word “transgender” for the first time at fourteen it’s like the world tilts on its axis. She logs into the internet, reading everything she can - forums and chat rooms filled with people just like her. She sobs with the sudden relief - relief and fear and joy and dysphoria and understanding. Ever the librarian, she gathers as much information as she can.

She considers a few names - Cassandra is pretty, and has a meaning she loves, but she decides to keep things simple. Barbara Gordon, as she always should have been.

When she tells her dad, she’s entirely professional and serious. She doesn’t miss how his confusion gives way to fear, but she knows it isn’t of her but for her.

Jim takes a while to entirely switch names and pronouns, but she doesn’t care when the effort is there. He takes her out shopping for new clothes, agreeing between them that for safety they’ll say they’re trying to find a surprise outfit for her twin sister if anyone asks. Nobody does - but the plan makes them both more at ease. They argue over an ugly corduroy skirt Jim loves and she says is hideous. She mostly gets women’s sweaters and trousers, in purple and green and black.

Things are easier from her computer where A/S/L is at the click of her keyboard, and nobody can tell her what she should be. She remains closeted at school at first, for her own safety. Then once she goes to high school, she switches schools and starts her life new.

Jim had already taught her how to fight. He teaches her again.

Things are hard- but she gets through it. Still, graduation is a relief when she can just keep contact with her few good friends.

Life after high school is good, but there’s a frustration running through it. As her father becomes police commissioner, it’s harder to hear her friends in the gay bars of Gotham talk about their experiences and still come into office to chat with her dad’s coworkers like she always used to. She knows she’s protected by her dad, and everyone should have that same protection. He urges for slow, systemic change, and she can’t wait for that.

When she wears the Bat’s symbol, it’s purely to piss her dad off, to take her cue from another vigilante. She didn’t expect to become caught up with the man himself.

She didn’t pick the name Batgirl either - it’s a shame Batwoman was taken - when she chooses her own name later, as Oracle, her gender doesn’t factor into it.

Still, having a billionaire fund your transition is a small perk for risking your life every night.

Finally, she’s fulfilled.

And then - a fight, the Joker, a gunshot.

Paralysis brings with it a wave of self-hatred towards her body she thought she’d left behind forever. She’s stuck, once again. Familiar anger curls into her bones. Physical therapy feels like a joke, a band-aid over a gaping wound. The pain is physical now, invading her body and fogging her brain. After so long saying she can do as much as anyone else, now she genuinely, physically, can’t.

She tries not to think of the word joke.

It’s a small thing which triggers the self reflection - her dad’s chasing a case and is asking her for advice. One suspect’s name is familiar to him, and he just can’t place it…

She laughs, for the first time in a while. It’s her deadname.

Jim feels like an idiot, and she tries to remind him to rest and sleep amidst her teasing. But she remembers being fourteen and thinking her dad would never switch, never truly see her as his daughter. And now, here they are.

Names are not fast to change, but that doesn’t make the change any less necessary.

Oracle - she takes a while to come across the new name, and as she wakes from the dream which brought it, she instantly knows it is right.

Once again she’s behind a screen, building herself a new identity. She can’t run over rooftops or hold her own in a fight, but she goes to the library and takes out every book on disability justice and reframes what independence and power mean to her. So she can’t do what abled people can - how many of them can do this?

Pain doesn’t mean what it did as Batgirl, the cost of a battle lost and a war won. It doesn’t mean anything - and perhaps it never did at all. She takes her painkillers and does her breathing exercises, and naps with the computers running.

Her body looks wrong in the mirror, and this time she can’t change anything about it. But she can buy a wheelchair she actually likes the look of, and donate the trousers which bunch weirdly when she sits down, and practice looking herself in the eye.

Then comes Black Canary and Huntress, Katana and Lady Blackhawk, and so many more.

Her Birds of Prey are no more her legs than she’s their brains. They’re her friends, her partners, her heroes - just as she is theirs.

Of course, she is in an incredibly complex sapphic polycule with many members.

And then come the Batgirls....who I’m going to do individual hc posts for with transfemme Cass and trans Steph. 

[talentforlying]

NINE NIFTY THINGS YOUR MUSE CAN DO.

01. write & read music. not that punk band mucous membrane was churning out grammy-winning material, mind you, but knowing where all the notes go on a sheet of staff paper, which ones sound good together, and a handful of things about tempo and rhythm aren't half-bad skills to have. of course, constantine's process for writing music would make professional composers cry, but these days he most often puts this skill towards creating new spells, since he finds the principles remarkably similar, so the music world is spared his endeavors for now. ( underground single venus of the hardsell excepting. )

02. miniature-scale arts & crafts. he's really gifted with his hands, and with any activity that requires fine motor skills: intricate ritual-carving, cutting his own hair, braiding other people's hair, restringing an instrument, rolling insanely long joints, fixing jewelry, sewing, threading a corset, building a detail-accurate small scale model of a chair out of matchboxes for an ex-girlfriend's miniature house.

03. electrical work. another useful application of his excellent fine motor skills. he's lived in enough shithole apartments and had to hot-wire enough cars for friends to know his way around a wiring issue or two, not to mention the fact that electricity can be a handy supplemental power source in certain spells and it's helpful knowing how to get to it wherever you are. it stands out because he's pretty terrible with most other forms of household maintenance; there's just something uniquely mind-boggling about a guy who can't unclog his sink but can install a circuit breaker like a pro.

04. tie a cherry stem with his tongue. natch.

05. get anywhere in london, and cite almost anything in its history, from memory. a big bloody city with a big, bloody history attracts a lot of unearthly creatures with a lot of different emotional, spiritual, psychic, and physical fancies; it's been useful for him to know where significant events have happened, and when, and why, in case something starts up and the symptoms strike a chord. it's also useful to know where to go when he needs to gather specific kinds of information: the seedier pawn shops, gang territories, high-end clubs where celebrities and politicians go to hide from the press. on top of the strategic reasons, he's also spent a significant amount of time being homeless under a few different circumstances, and keeps his accumulated knowledge of last-ditch shelters, times that the police patrol the sewer tunnels, and safe places for a meal close at heart.

06. gamble with a 100% win rate. two of his best tricks are synchronicity wave traveling and probability manipulation, where he basically feels out the flow of luck in the space around him and shifts the current to go his way. it's incredibly dangerous on a larger scale, since it can cause a butterfly effect — too risky to use on avoiding a hit that would have killed him or sabotaging a villain's scheme, for example — but as long as he sticks to small-scale, short-term events like horse races and poker games, he cleans up easy. it's his primary source of income, since he doesn't have an actual job.

07. melt the face off a vampire. specifically the former king of the vampires, but supposedly any. demon blood is a nasty thing to have in your veins, and incredibly corrosive upon ingestion/absorption, for unknown reasons. if anyone wanted a snack they'd have a bad, bad time.

08. semi-fluently sign in & understand BSL. he credits his reason for learning to a deaf ex-boyfriend he dated in the 90s and has continued to brush up on his skills over time, although his preference to learn languages from the people who use them, lack of consistent lessons, and geographically-wide variety of friends has resulted in a . . . frankly nightmarish hodgepodge of dialects that can make him harder to understand.

09. play electric guitar, bass guitar & harmonica. he was lead vocalist and bassist for mucous membrane, and although they were only together a year before the newcastle incident, he'd been learning both electric and bass for a year or two before. it took him a long, long time to pick it up again, given the circumstances, but he managed to get his hands on a fender 1962 jazz bass a few years back and has been slowly but steadily working on getting the old feel back. the harmonica started as a joke gift from gary after constantine and chas got arrested for a pub fight in '77, so they could play it to pass the time when they inevitably got shafted by the system ( they didn't, constantine talked their way out ) but he became quite genuinely good at it, and now it's his shameful secret.

[mggpleasedontlookhere]

it should’ve been you

summary: you and spencer never got along since you joined the bau, mostly because you made a mistake that costed the life of one of his colleagues. 

word count: 3,761                                                                                     reading time aprox: 15 mins

masterlist

“Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts.” said Nikki Giovanni. Although the expression only extends to the limitation of ending someone else’s life because of a mistake. With the existing dichotomy of religious patrons adherent to celestial beings and men of psychology claiming that trauma and fault can enhance cognitive development, the question still stands whether the slight improvement in the human schema is worth the life of an individual. 

Why is the essential nature of living ‘to flourish in someone else’s misfortune’?

Is it so, once they’ve experienced this misfortune they can be placed in the shoes of the fortunate soul, with the inability to recall their previous position; causing another individual to fall into the paradigm?

This philosophy is circumstantial, spontaneous even, pertaining to life itself no matter what socioeconomic standing you hold or religious scripture that you accredit. Regrettably, this philosophy stripped the BAU of an agent and the team, of a colleague. 

At its core, it was my fault. I was the lucky son of a bitch that flourished in his misfortune. 

Despite most of the team seemingly differing this proclamation, it was my choices that led a man to be deprived of the life ahead of him. The only other individual who didn’t side with the rest of the team was Spencer Reid. 

Agent Ryler, Darrison Ryler is was a single man who lived in his eclectic condo with the accompaniment of his golden retriever, Sam. He served as a confident to the team, specifically to Spencer according to my observations of their relationships prior to the incident.  

He died an honorable and ardent man, even in the most grotesque situations his concern only derived from the conditions of his partners. For 10 years he’s served the BAU, only for a rookie as myself to completely decimate his entire life’s meaning by killing him in the field. 

-

“Ryler, you and Morgan flank the left side, we’ll file in after” Hotch ordered signaling to a door with corroded blue paint chipping off that was located at the end of the hallway we were posted at. 

The supposed unsub lived in Manhattan, NY and was responsible for the homicide of five women that resembled his late wife. The unsub had been categorized as a sexual sadist in the midst of a psychotic break, deriving from denial. 

The SWAT team lingered behind us, awaiting orders from the team leader. The atmosphere of the situation penetrated my nerves, causing a natural sense of uneasiness from my parasympathetic, fight or flight, nervous system. Moonlight infiltrated through the ragged curtains that hung above a window at the end of the hall, which seemed to be slightly ajar; letting crisp air into the corridor. 

I could already feel the little fibers of hair on the back on my neck stand, an obvious indication of my apprehension. Despite that signal, I was determined to follow through with the decision I’ve fought for. To elaborate, it was me who had convinced Hotch to let me journey into apprehending the unsub regardless of my inexperience of being physically out in the field with the team. 

-

I was naive and selfishly driven to expose myself to such an atmosphere I thought I was ready for. I pushed and pulled to expedite my training in order to fulfill my hero complex. Nevertheless, I never consider the possibility of killing a man to satisfy that. 

-

Morgan had completely obliterated the door as it was now swaying from it’s hinges. Ryler followed him from behind, gun pointed at his surroundings as he announced he was FBI. 

The rest of the team filed in, SWAT included. Reid had entered after me as we both surveyed the perimeter. Hotch nodded at us, pointing Reid one way and me the other. As I left to inspect other areas of the apartment of the unsub, the shuffling of feet emitted from the loud stomps of the SWAT members increased my heart rate. I convinced myself that it was normal since it was my first time being out in the field. I swept the area, checking the master bedroom and bathroom with a few members of the SWAT, until we heard commotion in the living room. 

We hurried to the scene not wasting a breath to calm myself. When I had arrived the men that were with me had dispersed to shooting positions as I stood behind a wall that was directly adjacent to the unsub.

I had taken the opportunity to peek out, gauging the altercation and to my misfortune, the unsub had Agent Ryler in a choke hold with dagger lined up to the major artery in his throat. The unsub began spewing heinous accusations such as “you took her away from me” or  “you killed her, not me, you killed her you fucking pigs”. He screamed and shook, rationality draining from him as fast as the saliva gushed out from his lips. 

Hotch took the opportunity to calm the unsub down, playing at the factor of remorse he showed in his previous victims. Hotch sheathed his gun back to it’s holster, promptly raising his hands up in surrender while coaxing the violent man into dropping the weapon. 

Although these were fruitless attempts, the unsub grew to be more erratic as Hotch approached him. With this I made my presence known to Hotch, shifting to a better position to engage the unsub from behind. The rest of the team stood gawking at the entire scene with anticipation gnawing at their fingertips, agitating to shoot if necessary. 

I drew my gun out, my hands becoming slightly shaky from the anxiety that heightened when the reality of the situation came to mind. 

I might kill a man today

The unsub maintained his gaze at Hotch and the army of guns that surrounded him. “Fuck you, you fucking pigs. You killed her! You. Killed. My, Kerrie. Now one of yours will die!” He threatened, pressing the blade harder on Ryler’s skin earning a repressed wince from him. The men from the SWAT team cocked their weapons causing Hotch to command them to ‘stand down’. I met Hotch’s gaze again, a distinctive look flashed in his eyes, the hesitation clear on his face as he motioned for me to inch closer to the unsub. 

“Please, we just want to-” Rossi spoke up lifting his palm up as a symbol of sympathy, but in reality beckoned me to close in on the individual. 

“Shut up! Shu-shut the fuck up!” The unsub screeched, wiping his forehead with the arm that held the blade as he blinked rapidly. “Thi-this ends today, I-i, this is for my Kerrie!”

With one swift motion the unsub raised the knife to slice Ryler’s throat, but in a moment of weakness, Ryler was able to apprehend the man, overpowering his grip as he flipped their positions. 

“Y/N! NOW!” 

My surroundings moved in slow motion, similar to the speed of the slideshows Garcia would show us as she presented cases. My vision blotted, feeling every sweat droplet begin to dampen the palms of my hands. I felt every crevice of my body writhe in dread and apprehension, feeling the sudden weight of the weapon I gripped in my hands. I took in a breath, setting my eyes on the unsub. Finally, I squeezed the trigger, acknowledging the life that would be taken away. 

A loud bang and a grunt surged through the air

I closed my eyes expecting the gun to retaliate it’s force, yet I felt nothing. I opened my eyes to gauge at the scene before me, realizing that my gun hadn’t fired. 

-

I took a life that day, however it wasn’t the life I was expecting to take. Morgan had taken the shot to eliminate the unsub, but only after the unsub was able to plunge the dagger into Ryler’s pericardial cavity, nicking the side of his aortic wall. 

He bleed out on the scene. DOA.

I later figured out that my gun had been on safety the entire time we were infiltrating the, now deceased, unsub’s apartment. I could still hear Spencer’s cries of protest and disbelief when he grasped the gravity of the situation. But most of all, I can distinctively remember the menacing look he wore in his eyes as he fixated at me. The genuine enmity and contempt that swam in his pupils spoke the message that his lips couldn’t convey, it was an expression that you didn’t need an eidetic memory to recall. 

After that incident, Spencer did nothing but express his vexation at the very existence of my being. He ‘mindlessly’ knocks case files off of my desk occasionally, talks over my presentation of theories, and has undermined the suggestions I would pose during investigations.

It’s been approximately 6 months since the loss of Ryler and the mourning period seems to have curtailed over the course of the year. The heavy somber  air that was consistent in the bullpen began to dissipate and the fellow agents painted a more positive light on the life of Ryler, reminiscing on his various accolades. Despite this plateau, Spencer’s resentment hadn’t shown any modifications.  

We were on a plane routed to New York City, another homicide had taken place and there was evidence of the case being serial. Hotch was on the phone with the chief of the NYPD gathering new information that had surfaced about the unsub. Morgan wore his headphones loosely with his eyes closed, bobbing his head to 90s music while Emily and Rossi played a game of chess. 

Spencer on the other hand, had his nose in a book, his eyebrows furrowed as his long fingers dragged along the pages, scanning them at light speed. His bottom lip had become entangled between his teeth, chewing the muscle in deliberation. 

I sat across the jet, complementary to where Spencer resided. I fixated on the copy of Jane Eyre that I brought with me, although my mind had decided to overflow with a multitude of transpiring thoughts. 

“Okay, thank you very much chief, we’ll be landing soon” Hotch bid adieu, closing his cellphone and tossing the device on the table with a heavy sigh. “They just found another body” He announced, earning sympathetic and discontented stares from the team. “Kate Walsh, 36 years old, had a husband that worked in a law firm with two children. She was found dead at a Manhattan apartment on the Upper East Side” Hotch noticed the glances of the onlookers before him, although he spared a glimpse at a special brunette who practically harbored his face in a book. “It’s the same location where Ryler’s case took place 6 months ago” Hotch informed. 

Nobody dared to inspect the reaction that had been elicited from Spencer. Although his fingers grew noticeably rigid, imprinting the cover of the novel with discernible markings. His chest heaved as he took in the information, yet his composure remained cold and impervious to the circumstances. 

Morgan looked to Reid in equivocation before reverting his attention to Hotch. “Do you think there could be a connection to the case we worked there?” He inquired, sneaking another glance at Reid in the process. But to no avail, Reid remained motionless. 

“Possibly” Hotch returned, reciprocating the perturbed looks Morgan had directed. “This unsub has the same MO, same victimology, but different signature compared to the case we worked before” He reached over for the case files flipping through the images of the victims and laid them down at the table where he sat at. 

Emily had approached the table, looking over the images. “If you look at the stab wounds on the abdomen of the victim, doesn’t it look familiar to you?” She pointed to the punctures evident on the victim. 

“They resemble the wounds the unsub inflicted on women on the case we had with-” Rossi spoke, pausing mid sentence. “-when we worked that Manhattan case” His voice faded out, dwindling in apprehension to make any mentions of Ryler. 

“Yeah- and if you look at the depth of the wounds, they indicate hesitation marks-” Emily expressed. 

“Our unsub is remorseful” I butted in. 

“That contradicts with the excessive and deliberate overkill this unsub displayed” Spencer muttered, catching the attention of his teammates, although his immersion in his literature didn’t falter. 

“W-well, yeah, I’ll go to the station to start a geogra-”

“Actually, I’ll build the geographic profile for the case to ensure that more people don’t get killed by human error” Spencer disputed, directing his astringent words towards me without losing focus. 

“I guess I’ll go talk to the family of the victim” I stuttered, ducking my head behind my chair to avoid the questionable stares I knew were headed my way. An unrelenting hold tugged on my heart strings, my conscience spiraling in revelations of self resentment. 

“Actually, Y/N, me and Morgan had already contacted the family and said that we were going visit them soo-” Emily corrected, motioning to her and Derek with lamentable eyes. “But, if you really want you can-” She interjected, the tone of her voice exponentially growing to be amiable and motherly. 

“I think it’s better that you and Morgan go, Emily, so we can get an accurate profile on the guy. Maybe this time we can catch him early enough without going in guns blazing, it decreases the statistics for weapon mismanagement” Spencer suggested, this time laying his book flat on the seat next to him, peering at Emily as he insinuated the proceedings of last year’s case. 

“Reid” Hotch warned, a menacing tight lipped expression planted on his features. In defiance of the team leader’s cautioning, Spencer continued to antagonize the situation, justifying his response in order to cover up his personal agenda. 

Hotch sighed diffusing the latter of the interaction by distributing the rest of the details of the case and certain tasks that needed to be done. “Y/N I’m going to need you to go to the Coroner’s office and find out if there’s any new information or if any reports from forensics came back yet” Hotch ordered. 

I nodded in agreement, not meeting his gaze while I fidgeted with my fingers. Unbeknownst to me, the team, excluding Reid, shared a similar expression as they interpreted the tense atmosphere that encompassed the room. 

I picked at my fingers, pulling at various strings of loose skin at the bed of my nails. I bounced my knee in uneasiness, my thoughts beginning to revolve around the case we faced 6 months ago. The same memory of Reid’s apathetic eyes that were fixated on me replayed in my mind, making the feelings of self doubt resurface at the base of my skin. Anger flooded freely throughout my system as if it was welcome and well deserved. I clenched my fists around my novel, doing so in the same way Reid did. 

“At least this time she’ll be looking at dead people instead of causing them” Spencer mumbled under his breath. Despite his certainty in himself to be reticent, it didn’t seem to catch his realization that his chastising comment was coherent enough for the entire team to hear, including myself. 

“Okay, I get it, alright. It was my fault, it was my mistake that killed Ryler but you can’t just sit there alienating me from any case we work on-” 

“No, Y/N you don’t get it. You don’t get to justify you murdering Ryler because you couldn’t do your job” Spencer lashed out.

“Reid-” Hotch attempted to disrupt his malicious annotations, but was promptly shut down by Reid. 

“No Hotch. You always emphasized how important it is to be vigilant in our job, yet you let her inject herself in the investigation knowing she was completely incompetent in the field” 

“Spencer, I’m war-” Hotch was interrupted again by me this time. 

“I WAS TRYING TO BE A GOOD AGENT. Can’t you understand that Spence, I-” 

“Don’t fucking call me Spence” Spencer retorted gritting his teeth, venom practically dripping from his lips as he articulated his words. At this time he stood up from his chair with his chest heaving and hair tousled from running his hands through it. “You don’t get to call me Spence, Ryler called me Spence and you took that away from me, so don’t think you have any authority calling me that”. 

He began his stride towards me, only to be obstructed by Morgan’s arm that held him in his position. 

“Look Spencer, I know I can’t take back what I did and yes, I made a stupid decision-” I spoke coolly, dictating every syllable with an understanding and remorseful tone in order to diffuse the taut ambiance. “But, I’m sorry and I want you to know that I regret everything that I did” I explained. 

Spencer broke Morgan’s restraint on him, shoving his arm away forcefully as he took a few determined steps towards me. 

“Tell that to Mary Anne Ryler, Amina Ryler, and Timothee Ryler” 

“Spencer-”

He moved in closer.

“I had to walk up to their house and tell them that their brother/son had died in the line of work” He explained, setting his hands on the table in front of me. “I had to tell them that he died an honorable death and that he died protecting people” He stared at me with the same deadly eyes at the day of the incident, no sense of remorse palpable on his expression. 

“But he did die an honorable ma-” 

“NO Y/N! I LIED TO THEM” He slammed a firm hand on the tabletop, making the surface rattle as I did when the booming sound met my ears. I crouched down in my seat, feeling my silhouette diminish in his large shadow. 

“Now Reid that’s enough” Hotch bellowed, although he was unsuccessful in alleviating Reid’s onslaught of defaming words. 

“I WANTED TO TELL THEM THAT YOU KILLED HIM BECAUSE YOU DID FUCKING KILL HIM”. Spit flew from the corners of his mouth landing on the leather covers of the airplane seat. “YOUR MISTAKE KILLED HIM”

“IT. WAS. A. MISTAKE. REID” I retorted, feeling my blood begin to boil as Spencer scolded me. I stood up to his level, slamming my hands down to reciprocate the malicious gesture he had displayed previously. “I ALREADY BLAME MYSELF ENOUGH JUST BACK OFF!”

By this time, the rest of the team had readied themselves to intercept if our back and forth became violent. They were the audience of constant bickering that occurred between the two agents for quite some time now, but nothing has ever amounted or elevated to the dispute in front of them. 

“YOU BLAME YOURSELF?!” Spencer began to laugh in a patronizing matter. “YOU BLAME YOUR FUCKING SELF. That’s a fucking joke, well newsflash Y/N, YOU SHOULD!” 

“That doesn’t give you an excuse Rei-” 

“WELL YOU KNOW WHATS AN EXCUSE?” He pulled my chin with the tips of his fingers. “You. You’re a sorry ass excuse for an FBI agent” He whispered disdainfully through gritted teeth, butting my face away with an incredulous expression on his face. His eyes had completely blackened, the hazel hue that resided in his irises dissipating as they were clouded in animosity. 

My impulsivity became too much to subdue as my rising blood pressure took over what little rationality I had. Without thinking, my palm autonomously met Spencer’s cheek with a violent hit, causing him to stumble backwards with his face in his hands. 

The rest of the team jumped into action, separating the both of us. Morgan and Hotch coming to Spencer’s side as Emily and Rossi came to my aid. I maintained my attention to Reid, him doing the same, as we stared at each other with malevolent gazes. I noticed the pockets of blood surface on his cheek, a portion of his curls masking the prominent dark red tint forming on his visage. 

Emily asked of my condition, Rossi reciprocating the same questioning. I assured them of my state and encouraged them to believe that I was fine.

But I wasn’t. 

I could feel every nerve in my system rattle and shake. I felt every pore on my body excrete sweat from the hysteria that I experienced. My head pounded and my body felt like it was being pulled in numerous directions. I took a few shallow breaths to convince myself of a normal composure, but my eyes told the truth of my state. 

Emily wrapped a comforting arm around my waist to steady myself and to regain a sense of stability. Rossi maneuvered back to his seat, taking a second glance at Reid whilst shaking his head in discountenance. 

Silence engulf the jet, the hum of the engine combined with the shifting of the seats was the only sound to be heard. Soft murmurs came from the other side of the room where Morgan and Hotch spoke to Reid in attempt to console him. 

It had been a few minutes after the confrontation, the petulant air of the scene plateauing to a more reasonable space for conversation. I battled with the idea of speaking up, but something needed to be said. 

“Look Reid” I began, penance laced with every word that I spoke. “It was my fault, I made a mistake that costed Ryler’s life and I’m sorry. It’s something that I can’t take back and my job will always revolve around the mistake I made” I continued. 

No response

I took this as encouragement to sustain an explanation. “But with the mistake I made, I know that this will make me a better agent and that I’ll be able to save more lives out there” I sighed, feeling Emily’s hand grasp mine. “I’m sorry Spencer for all the pain and hurt I’ve caused you, but please let me do my job- or at least give me the opportunity to do my job” 

No response again. 

“I know you won’t forgive me, but I hope in time that-” 

“It’s you” He finally spoke up, meeting the line of my gaze. Although his was unreadable, expressionless almost. 

“What?” I ceased my apology, furrowing my eyebrows at him in confusion. 

Chills ran up my spine as I looked into the windows of his eyes. It was like staring into the mind of a serial killer. Uneasiness climbed it’s way back into my skin as I gripped on Emily’s hand. 

“It should’ve been you who died that day Y/N” He spat, disgust and hostility radiating off of him. 

“It should’ve been you”

part 2

-

A/N:

yes there will be a part two, I’m just finishing up requests atm ❤️❤️

[phantomnostalgist]

What was it like being a phan in the day? Nowadays there's so much to do in the phandom, online roleplaying, fanfiction etc. So what did phans do before the internet was widely popular?

Ooh, good question (and sorry for taking so long to log in and answer, and if my answer is very rambling, as my brain still isn’t working right).

...And my internet went down in the middle of this reply, so it’s twice as rambling as the first version I typed up...

For me it was a mix between pre-internet, and early internet. My first year or two of being obsessed with Phantom, I literally didn’t know other phans existed, so my fandom activities were about tracking down any information or version of Phantom I could, which pre-internet wasn’t easy. The novel wasn’t even in most bookstores! I eventually found another phan via penpal adverts, then met someone else at the theatre. In many ways, starting a fan club was just my way of finding other fans to connect with. I know a lot of people got penfriends via phanzine ads too, so I think a certain amount of phandom happened in people connecting and enthusing together one on one in letters. It was truly an amazing feeling back then, even to discover other people who loved Phantom, who cared about Erik, who had all these feelings I’d initially thoughts I was utterly alone in.

There were fanzines back before mine, most notably Phantom Notes in the US from the late 80s to early 90s, and people were publishing fanfic by mail back in the day too. It was just harder to find until you discovered such things existed, and a whole new world opened up. I wasn’t so much into fanfic, but there were a number of phanfic anthologies in the early 90s, mostly from people in the US. So once you’d discovered a fanzine, you could get into the fanfic scene, but you had to pay for fic, as whomever was publishing it had to pay for the photocopying and distribution. 

The early zines had a lot of discussion amongst fans, like the early email list and message boards, on all aspects of the show and story, but there wasn’t room for things like roleplaying, or the wider kinds of fandom creativity the internet enables today. Most obviously because with a quarterly newsletter, you were waiting months between seeing your letter published, and reading people’s responses. On the other hand, it did make every little thing way more exciting, as it was so much more time and work to track down!  

I think what phans did also depended how near a production we were, as the stage door was another area we could meet and hang out with other fans (and queuing for returns, when tickets were sold out). There were some get-togethers in the early days, often around anniversaries or fundraising events for Broadway Cares, sometimes including theatre tours. The second ever Phantom fan I met was someone I spotted during the intermission who had a Phantom tattoo, so of course I went and started talking to her (and she turned out to be on her 98th show!). 

The early internet days were similar, in that I pretty much connected immediately with the first few Phantom fans I met online - which where through the rec.arts.theatre.musicals newsgroup. I can actually remember the names or screennames of numerous fans I met back then, in about 1995. Then Karin W started the Phantom email list, and various of us most “online” phans spent a lot of time on the #phantom IRC channel (where we didn’t talk about Phantom much, it was more a social gathering space for people who were all phans, and it was a lot of fun though also had its times of fracturing into extreme drama, because we were young and internet etc). People also began publishing a lot more fanfic back then of course, as there were plenty of free webhosts. I don’t think the roleplaying really got going until later on in the internet era, although I think there were attempts at it earlier... Actually I used to get some pretty weird emails from people RPing as “the Phantom”, which I rolled my eyes at at the time, but I look back on it and realize they just wanted someone to RP with, and there weren’t really any forums for it at the time. 

This is an incredibly rambling and disorganized answer (thanks Jack Daniels). I suppose phandom for me back then came into a few areas... First was just my passion for Phantom/Erik, and searching every resource I could find for any information. Then there was actually seeing the show, the stage door experience, getting to talk to the cast and squee over my faves, as well as sometimes meeting other fans. But just as important was having people to write to about it all - initially penfriends, then a couple of people I met, then people subscribing to and writing letters to the fanzine. And the joy of uncovering information - discovering things like the links between Christine Daae’s story and Christina Nillson’s for the first time, for example, which is now well known but was thrillingly exciting 25 years ago. 

Okay, to go back to the original question, what did phans do before the internet was widely popular? Searched for information and thought we were alone in our love for Erik; gradually discovered others who shared our love, and wrote embarrassing teenage confessions to our penfriends, full of our sex fantasies about Erik and certain Phantom actors, causing us to have to get our letters back from them when we later mutually fell out; found or founded fanzines, sharing our views with more phans, and finding fanfic zines; um I think this entry is long enough now so I’m posting it.

[livisart]

oh my god you guys, the new COPPA thing will NOT help children ffs

listen i care a lot about kids safety online, as someone who’s had. very bad experiences on the internet when i was younger, i get it ok. i get it.

but the whole new COPPA thing will not only hurt creators, but will also do more harm than good in helping to keep kids safe.

i see a lot of people painting the FTC as 100% reasonable and youtube as 100% at fault (or conversely, youtube as innocent martyrs and the FTC as evil), personally, i think both the FTC and youtube are at fault here. its reasonable for the FTC to be concerned, but theyre trying to implement laws abt things they dont know anything about, and meanwhile youtube is trying to “solve” this in the worst possible way.

yall are gonna be big mad at me for saying this but. children seeing personalized ads do not hurt them any more than they do adults. let me explain.

(note: before i say anything more i wanna get this out of the way: whether youtube collecting data for ads AT ALL, is bad is a discussion for another day, it’s NOT what we should be focusing on right now, so i will not bring it up in this post)

youtube obviously does not collect this data in the youtube kids app, cuz it’s explicitly made for kids. this is an issue regarding youtube main, specifically, kids under 13 using their parents accounts to watch videos (as a sidenote, the whole thing the FTC were concerned about seems to be youtube collecting data WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT, but parents allowing their kids to use youtube main sounds a lot like consent to me. honestly i might b wrong abt this but to me it seems like the easiest way for youtube to solve this problem would be to add smth in their tos abt the data collected and how letting any1 under 13 use the main site = consent to collecting their data, but i digress.)

this means that any information collected is NOT the kids information, but the parents, since the child is using their account. there is absolutely no way to tell if a child or an adult is using the account, hence why youtube is going after “”kids content”” and assuming EVERYONE who watches “”kids content”” is a child (remember that this doesnt only affect like peppa pig episodes and kids nursery rhymes and stuff, but ANY content that youtube n the FTCs vague rules consider ‘for kids’. with that in mind, hopefully i dont have to explain how stupid that is)

lemme repeat there is functionally ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to tell that a child is watching rather than an adult.

there’s also the fact that creators/users on youtube have absolutely no way of accessing the information collected, all we get is vague things like age range, gender, country. we do not get ANY information that’d let us see individual users data, let alone use it to contact them.

but basically, kids information is NOT being gathered, youtube kids does not gather this information, and youtube main gathers the information of the PARENTS, not the kids. so basically, this is a non-issue, and going through with these new regulations to “solve” this non-issue is dumb and jsut hurts EVERYONE.

now, here’s why i believe this will actually do more harm than good:

videos marked as “kids content” will not have personalized ads, meaning their ad revenue will drop with anything from 60-90%

also videos with this marking will not have comments, not be added to any playlists, etc. basically they’ll have less visibility and have a harder time being discovered.

big corporations will find a way to deal with this but smaller kids content creators won’t. many ppl who made content for kids will be forced to quit, since it’s just not sustainable anymore, meaning there’ll be a decrease in quality content for kids to watch.

but it gets worse. since these new rules will also affect “child attractive content”, this will actually give creators incentive to create more mature content to avoid the dreaded “made for kids” checkbox. especially considering any violations of this extremely vague rule can result in a 42k fine PER VIDEO. no one wants that.

so to make sure youtube and the FTC will not consider their content “for kids”, many channels that were previously child friendly (though not directly aimed at children) will start deliberately making their content more mature to alienate kids.

so with actual kids content decreasing, and child friendly content being replaced by more mature content, there’ll be MUCH LESS quality stuff for kids to watch, possibly leading them to watch the new mature content instead, so kids are just gonna risk seeing more stuff that’s harmful to them (with the same personalized ads that were the god damn problem to begin with so like good job on not solving anything)

basically this change will harm creators AND kids and not really help anyone in the long run

now, again i think the FTC and youtube are both at fault here.

youtube because they suck and can’t come up with any better solution.

the FTC because they’re trying to pass laws they know zero about. (seriously. a youtuber n former lawyer went to DC to talk to them abt the new rules and it turns out the FTC are soooo misinformed abt this it aint even funny)

and i’m very tired of people with negative braincells acting like this change is going to help kids at all.

it’s also actually kind of dangerous that ppl are saying “go tell youtube to change things, not the FTC”, because youtube doesn’t listen to ppl.  i thought that much would be apparent by now. youtube does not care abt its userbase.

the FTC, however, does and is willing to take ppls comments til like december 9th so pls go send them a comment.

im not saying you shouldnt blame youtube at all, or ask them to change, but dont just ignore the FTC’s role in this pls.

[allie1804-fan]

The Middle of the Road (Chapter 17)

Warnings: Some explicit context

Chapter 1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8 , 9, 10, 11 , 12,  13  14 , 15 ,  16

Feb 2026

“Wakey, wakey rise and shine my lady”

“mmmmm what?

Emily stirred as Keanu set a tray down on the dressing table.

“Breakfast time – I think you need a nourishing start for this big day don’t you?”

“Oh my god!” she groaned as she remembered, in her drowsy state, what day it was. It was the Oscars Ceremony that night and her screenplay for a film made the year before had been nominated for Best Original Screenplay.  The whole situation was surreal and she’d be doing the whole ‘get ready and promotion’ hoopla for the first time as the main player of the family as opposed to the wife of the main event. Keanu was loving it, teasing her relentlessly during the prior few weeks when she went to do press and he was left home with the kids, who were now 4 ½ and 3 ½ .  They were at one and the same time a handful and a delight.  

It was a Sunday and right now, they were currently watching TV downstairs and Maria, still their nanny on a part time basis, was watching them.  She was here for the day so the two of them could attend the ceremony and it was a treat to have time to enjoy breakfast alone when usually at least one of them would be up at 7 and they’d all be up eating pancakes by 8. Typically there were no lazy Sundays as they would usually go out after breakfast to have some outdoors time, get the kids enjoying fresh air and expending some of their boundless energy.

Keanu and Emily tucked into granola with super cold milk (he always insisted on that!) and then some coffee and a pain au chocolat before snuggling back under the covers.

“Thanks so much for that -  a luxury start to a big day but I should go down and see the kids”

“oh no you don’t, not yet. Maria is in full control and I want to keep you to myself a bit longer!”

“Oh yeah what do have in mind mister?”

“I might just want to make love to my Oscar nominated wife one more time before she becomes my Oscar winning wife”

“Oh come on, I’m not gonna win, I’m up against Mike Leigh and Guillermo del Torro for god’s sake”

“Doesn’t matter who they are, it’s what you wrote that will win it for you”

“Ahh well thanks for the vote of confidence but I’m just amazed to be nominated even - so what will be will be ……………..anyway, about that love making………” she purred, rubbing his cock with the palm of her hand through the lounge pants he had worn to go downstairs”

He responded with a low moan and pulled her to him for a kiss “mmmmm you still taste all chocolatey, got anything else sweet for me?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, sliding down under the covers, rubbing her breasts through her nightshirt and sliding it up as he went, exposing her stomach as he did. She laid her head back on the pillow as she felt his lips on her belly then his warm hands wiggle their way underneath her to grasp her ass. He teased her for a few moments, kissing the tops of her thighs then just blowing softly over her mound making her cry out in need of him. Finally, he obliged, sticking out his tongue and probing up inside her.

“so ruby red and sweet as nectar” he muttered before engulfing her pussy  with his mouth and starting a pattern of steady circling and sucking of the hood of her clit, flicking the nub itself  then licking the lips and probing up inside her vagina. He was patience personified, taking it slow and letting her get close then easing down momentarily – he loved the build up.

She had started to claw at the sheets as she neared orgasm when he suddenly stopped and knelt up in front of her making her gasp in her unfulfilled need. He looked at her mischievously as she lay, pink colour spreading across her chest and cheeks then put two of his long fingers in his mouth to wet them before smiling and laying down again.

She cried out as she felt those two fingers slide inside her and his mouth latch onto his target once more. He groaned as he felt the juices increasing as he pumped slowly in and out, gradually curling his fingers up to press into her g spot. Her hips pressed up rhythmically towards his waiting mouth and one hand grasped his head and held him to his task. Feeling her clitoris reach peak hardness, he pumped faster and harder with his fingers and she let out a load squeal at the intense release followed by a long low moan. Keanu’s ministrations turned gentle as he eased her down before he sat up, a broad grin on his wet face which she hardly registered as she lay recovering.

He wasn’t about to let her have too long to recover though , so great was his need by this point and she soon found herself pulled towards him, her butt pressing against his thighs while he played with her breasts with one hand and grasped his thick shaft with the other.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t wait to have you” he muttered, laying down against her and nibbling on her neck as his cock made its presence felt between her legs. Despite his pressing need, he took it gently. Her pussy was still tight and contracting after her orgasm so he pushed in inch by inch to allow her to relax and take him.

“One last piece of loving mrs nominee” he grunted out, pushing his whole length inside at last, making her quiver against him. “You OK?”

“God yes, just take me now”

Her words inflamed him and he lifted up on extended arms, pulling almost all the way out before each thrust filled and thrilled her. Just as he had with her first orgasm, he knew how to orchestrate this performance too, pumping slow and steady at first, beginning to angle his cock to rub her g spot, then waiting, waiting to feel the gentle fluttering in her vagina that signalled she was on the verge of coming. Only then did he pump faster and harder, thrilling to the sensations of her hands clawing at his back, her pussy pulsing around him, her cries growing louder and his own orgasm crashing his senses, blinding him in a wave of pleasure.

Afterwards, he laid down against her, resting on his elbows and kissing her neck as she stroked his back for a while. Eventually he rolled off her and they lay quietly together, with only the sound of the air conditioning  in the background.

“Are we getting better at that?” he asked jokingly.

“mmm you are!” she grinned – I just lay back and enjoyed!”

“naah takes two to tango!”

“Well all I know is, if I don’t win anything tonight, I’ve still won the best prize being married to you”

“Are you saying you just want me for the sex?!”

“Precisely” she laughed, grabbing his butt “you’re just my own personal himbo”

They lay giggling and snuggling a little while longer then got up to spend time with the kids before they had to head downtown. They would be dressed by a stylist at a hotel and Emily had some pre red carpet interviews to do alongside the cast and director of the movie of her screenplay. Keanu himself was due to present  - fortunately not for her award and he would be done and back sitting beside her when it came time for her award to be announced.

The crowds lining the red carpet were noisy and enthusiastic and Keanu took pride of place next to Emily when Ryan Seacrest invited them up to say a few words.

“and how do you feel about playing second fiddle to your wife today Keanu?”

Emily blushed and he launched into their favourite awards day saying:

“Well, it makes a refreshing change to let her step into the limelight that I’ve been hogging since we met and of course I’m proud, happy and thrilled that she got nominated for her amazing writing. It’s thoroughly well deserved”

“and did you draw on your personal life to inform the characters?” Ryan asked with a cheeky grin. The screenplay was about a man who enticed a high class escort to fall in love with then carry out a murder for him!

Emily laughed along with both Ryan and Keanu who was covering his mouth with his hand as usual.

“Definitely not – I have a very vivid imagination. And nothing could be further from our lives right now with a 3 and a 4 year old running us ragged most of the time!”

“and will they be at home watching right now?”

“Maybe” Keanu said “but they don’t find mom and dad in fancy clothes that interesting so they’re  more likely to be out in the garden playing if I had to guess!”

“Well give them a wave just in case and good luck tonight Emily and good luck with the presenting gig Keanu”

“They each waved at the camera and moved on letting the next guest take their place with Ryan.

They headed to the large reception area, meeting with friends and colleagues along the way to chat and exchange ‘good lucks’. The pre-amble always took ages, Keanu had warned her and Emily’s feet were aching by the time they finally sat down for the prestigious ceremony to begin.

Keanu pointed out the camera positions to her and they joked about the gracious face she’d need to adopt in the event of losing. Several awards came and went before he had to leave to present the Best Supporting Actor award. Emily was sure the cameras swung onto her as he presented though she couldn’t be sure. That was OK by her - she knew she simply had a proud expression all over her face. She was definitely more worried about the moment coming up when they would definitely zoom in on her. Keanu made his way back to her after a couple more awards which left just one more to come before her moment in the spotlight.

The nominees were announced and Keanu squeezed her hand as her name was announced, knowing how nervous and exposed she felt. They played clips from each nominated film after that which gave her a few minutes to gather herself for the big reveal.

The presenters were George Clooney and Emily Blunt who’d co-starred in a film the previous year which was also up for an award. Keanu had teased that Emily only wanted to win because George would kiss her cheek if she did. She had been a fan of his ever since ER in the 90s!

As Emily was opening the envelope, she held Keanu’s hand in a tight grip.

“… and the winner is ……… Emily Reeves”

Keanu leapt up cheering and grabbed her hand to make her stand. He hugged her close and whispered in her ear.

“Now go get your kiss from George! You did it, you’re amazing!”

She kissed him back, simply stunned to have won and rooted to the spot for a moment

“go go” he laughed and she finally let go of his hand to make her way to the stage.

Fear gripped her as she kissed the cheeks of both Emily and George before taking the award from George with shaking hands. “imagine everyone naked” she reminded herself as she stood behind the podium and looked at the sea of faces.

“I’ll keep it short” she said “I know that’s an unusual promise from a writer but I think I can safely say, my husband is more cut out for this limelight business! So thank you Academy for this great honour thank you to the team who brought my screenplay to life in such an amazing, entertaining way and thanks of course to Keanu for making it possible for me to find time amidst raising our young family, to write again. There was a time when I thought I would never come up for air from breast-feeding and diapers but together we’ve made it work, he’s been my biggest cheerleader in this process even though he knew I’d get to kiss my hero ‘Doug Ross’ if I won!”

The audience laughed and the camera swung to Keanu chuckling behind his hand as she said this and then to George laughing too.

She rounded off her speech quickly after that.

“So thank you again Academy for this great honour and for making the dream of teenaged me come true in every way”

A couple of hours later, they arrived at the Governor’s ball where Emily would get her award engraved with her name and they could at last have something to eat. They managed to find a space to sit and be together and let others just come to them rather than endlessly circulating. It was a moment for them to enjoy and share in particular. They hadn’t really been able to talk since the award itself.

“Thank you for my honourable mention” he said kissing her cheek.

“Well you deserve nothing less. I couldn’t have got my mojo back without the space to write that you made happen”

“No we made it happen, just like we made those beautiful babies back home and we made sweet love this morning and we make our day to day life as happy as it can be amidst the madness of toddlers!”

She stroked his cheek and looked adoringly into his eyes.

“Yeah we make a good team huh?”

“Yup – and will you stay with me still, even after kissing ‘Doug Ross?”

“weeeell” she started, making out that it was a tough decision – he laughed and punched her lightly on the arm.

“Well OK then Keanu, I’ll stay with you, if you insist!”

“I do, indeed I do” he replied, pulling her into a kiss that sealed the deal.

The End

@penwieldingdreamer @fortheloveoffanfic @kindainlovewithkeanu @ladyreapermc @witty-wallflower @gatsbynouvel @bitchyslut99 @keanureevesisbae @omg-imagine @iworshipkeanureeves @fics-not-tragedies @ficsnroses @kindainlovewithkeanu @paperplanesandwallflowers

[ferryboatpeak]

chapter 6.2

time for some more tom/harry/ben/meri! turns out this took so long to write because it is a very long chapter. infinite thanks to @lunarrua for the beta and @wanderlustwaning for the encouragement. only one or maybe two more chapters to go!

previous installments all linked here

As Tom’s getting Ruby up from her nap the next morning, gravel crunches under tires in the driveway. Ben’s been out late on night shoots this week; maybe he’s home midday to make up for it. Tom lifts a corner of the blackout shades to see if it’s the Range Rover. 

The driveway’s empty. Completely empty. At the end of the lane, the sleek tail of Harry’s black car disappears around the corner. Tom’s stomach lurches.

He turns back to Ruby, who’s halfway dressed and busily emptying a bin of toys. “Let’s go have a snack.” Grabbing the first sundress he sees in the drawer, he kneels behind her and snaps her into it while she plays. He sweeps a load of blocks and musical instruments back into the toy bin before tipping it back onto its base, and offers Ruby one of the blocks that remain scattered on the floor. “Can you help?” 

Ruby grabs a second block from the floor and wanders off toward the window. Tom hooks an arm around her waist and hauls her back to the mess on the floor. “Time to clean up, see?” He tosses another block into the bin. Ruby squirms and giggles. Tom gives up. Keeping Ruby contained with one arm, he gathers up the rest of the blocks with his other hand, and finally guides Ruby toward the bin to drop in the last two.

Tom glances through the open door of Harry’s room as they pass, just quickly enough to see a pair of trainers and a used set of workout clothes on the floor at the foot of the bed, and a black hoodie sliding halfway off the duvet above them. The panicky feeling under Tom’s ribcage subsides. Harry’s not gone for good. He’s not entitled to any information about Harry’s plans; soon enough, Harry’s going to go and be gone forever. Still, Harry seems like the kind of person who says goodbye.

Meredith’s standing by the sink in the kitchen, eating yogurt and granola from a teacup. She makes it look casually elegant, not at all like Tom eating cereal from a coffee mug because Carl didn’t do the dishes again. She smiles and sets her cup on the countertop when she sees Tom and Ruby. “Hello, sweetheart.” As Tom deposits Ruby into her seat at the island, Meredith leans over to kiss the top of her head. With a quizzical look on her face, she plucks at the strap of Ruby’s sundress. “That one’s getting a bit snug, isn’t it.”

“Maybe,” Tom says noncommittally. He supposes it was harder than usual to get her snapped in.

Meredith goes back to her yogurt. “When you’re packing up, can you separate out the things she’s outgrowing? No need to carry those back to London.” She scrapes the inside of the cup and licks the last bits of granola off the edge of the spoon. 

“Sure.” Tom hands Ruby her sippy cup. “What do you want me to do with them?”

Meredith rinses her mug and leaves it by the side of the sink. “Just leave them here. The maids can take them.”

“Oh, do they have kids?” Tom hasn’t talked to the cleaners. He’s usually been outside with Ruby when they come around every other day or so, bringing with them a different kind of awareness of hierarchy. They’re on the payroll just like Tom is, but after they bustle through the main house leaving the beds plumped and tucked and the scent of lemon and bleach in the scrubbed farmhouse sink, they clean Tom’s room too. The first time he came upstairs and discovered the fresh tracks hoovered evenly into the carpet, he’d walked carefully along the lines in his stocking feet, one foot in front of the other.

Meredith shrugs. “They may be able to use them.”

Tom’s no expert, but Ruby’s clothes seem nice. Soft fabric, prints that aren’t garish or babyish, some labels he recognizes from adult clothes. “Don’t you want to save them?”

“Can’t count on the next one being a girl.” Meredith pauses on her way out of the kitchen. “Wait. If the romper with the orange stripes is too small, save that one. And the hedgehog pyjamas.”

Tom nods. “Those are cute.”

“They’re my favorite.” Meredith presses a hand to her heart. “The rest of it isn’t worth the hassle. There’s enough to pack up as it is. I’ve got to start breaking down the office...” The words trail back to the kitchen behind her as she heads off to work, closing up the summer, box by box.

***

Harry lopes in from the kitchen as Tom’s coming downstairs at the start of Ruby’s afternoon nap. He’s fresh out of the pool, hair trailing in the same damp tail that Tom wrapped his fingers in yesterday. Harry ought to stay away from the pool, Tom thinks. He’s like one of those gremlins that gets dangerous if you let him get wet. Or more dangerous, at least.

“Hey.” Harry leans one hand on the end of the stair rail. He tucks his other thumb into the fold of the towel wrapped around his waist.

“Hey.” Tom stops halfway down the stairs, keeping a height advantage. The most defensible position. He’s tried to hold himself carefully away from Harry since the pool yesterday, and it’s only made him more conscious of how Harry takes up space, filling every room he’s in. Legs sprawling over the couch, index finger jabbing the air with every point he makes, always a hand on someone’s shoulder. Harry’s hard to avoid, but Tom did his best, tucking his knees up under him at the far corner of the sofa while they watched Queer Eye with Meredith last night.

By the end of the first episode, Harry was stretching out those legs of his over the cushions, poking his toes into the side of Tom’s thigh. Tom cautiously side-eyed him. Harry smirked and toed him again. The least awkward option was what Tom would have done all along: good-naturedly shove at his feet, elbow back when Harry kicked at him, let Harry’s legs wind up in his lap anyway. So that’s what Tom had done. He still doesn’t understand what happened yesterday, but apparently Tom’s forgiven. Or he’s forgiven Harry.

At the bottom of the stairway, Harry shifts from one foot to the other. “Do you want to go into town for dinner tonight?”

The nerve-jangling possibilities explode in front of Tom: dinner with Harry, just the two of then, a chance to get out of the house, a chance to figure out where they stand after yesterday. And then he realizes that Harry’s question wasn’t specific to Tom. It probably includes everyone.

“What’s Meredith think?” There are logistics, things that probably haven’t occurred to Harry. Will they have to bring a baby seat, will it be all right to eat early enough for Ruby to be home by bedtime, can all of the rest of them manage to eat while Ruby’s squirming and screeching and needing attention the way she does whenever they eat dinner with her at home.

Harry gives him a strange look. “You get off once Ruby goes to bed, right? We’ll go after that.”

“Yeah, but…” Tom should check, even if it’s not all five of them. Just to make sure. He dodges around Harry, heading for the office.

“Meredith!” Harry tips his head back, bellowing. Tom’s hand jerks up reflexively, trying to shush him before he wakes Ruby, but Harry ignores him. “Can Tom come out and play tonight?”

Tom cringes. He would never yell at Meredith from the next room. He darts toward the office, wanting to catch her before she has to get up from her work. 

“What?” Meredith calls back, just as Tom reaches the office door. She’s at her desk, sorting through an array of file folders spread in front of her.

“Tom and I are going out tonight and he wants your blessing!” Harry hollers it from the staircase almost gleefully. Ruby’s going to wake up, and Tom’s going to have to try to put her down again, and she’s going to refuse to sleep and she’ll be cranky all afternoon, and Tom really needs her to nap for an uninterrupted 90 minutes so he can clean up the kitchen and have a small meltdown about tonight.

Meredith looks up from the files with an expression of mild surprise. Tom’s face burns. “Sorry, I…” 

“Of course you should,” Meredith interrupts him. “You ought to get out of here for a night.” She waves him away. “Go on, have fun. Do you want me to put Ruby down?” 

“No,” Tom says quickly. “I’ve got it.” So Meredith’s staying with Ruby. He’s going to dinner with Harry. “We can go after,” he adds.

“All right, then.” Meredith reorients herself back to her work.

Tom blinks and turns to leave. His pulse is still racing.

Harry looks at him from halfway up the stairs. His towel has come untucked, probably from all the yelling. He’s holding it up around his waist with the fabric bunched in one hand. The hemmed ends fall open to frame the narrow triangle of paler skin at the top of his thigh. “All right?” Harry asks.

Tom nods. “See you tonight.” Somehow the words come out normally, casually, despite the swarm of bees that’s forming in his stomach. He’s going out with Harry, just the two of them. To dinner. Harry asked him. Almost like a date. Not that he should be thinking in those terms. But still.

***

When he comes downstairs after putting Ruby to bed, the sight of Harry doesn’t do anything to quell Tom’s nervous anticipation. Harry’s wearing a pair of white trousers Tom hasn’t seen before, just as baggy as his usual gray ones, and a short-sleeved black shirt with one too many buttons undone. Something glints around his fingers, and for a single irrational second Tom thinks Harry’s got a set of brass knuckles on. But it’s just a fistful of rings, all different shapes and sizes, blurring into each other to make his hand look armored. Harry was wearing them the day he arrived, Tom remembers, and he hasn’t seen them since.

It reminds him of how the sight of Harry naked used to set him on edge. How he lived for a week determinedly directing his gaze away from the pool, away from Harry’s narrow hips and broad thighs and the rivulets of water tracing down the defined lines of his back. How it made him feel under attack, jealous and jittery and wanting. But now Harry’s naked body is familiar, by sight and touch and taste. And it’s the sight of Harry clothed -- clothed like this, cleaned up and trying -- that scares him more than anything.

Harry smiles up at him. “Ready?”

“I’m just going to change.” He hadn’t planned on it, but with the way Harry looks, Tom feels underdressed in his usual shorts and sandals. He’s got to make some kind of effort, even though this isn’t a date. It’s just dinner. Dinner with someone he’s fucking. He’s had a lot of those dinners this summer. They’re not dates.

Up in his room, he ransacks his haphazard pile of clean clothes and the dregs of his duffle for something presentable. Trousers. A clean t-shirt. A plaid buttondown over it. He does up the buttons as an experiment, and then undoes them to leave the shirt open like he usually would. His boots are waiting in the closet, where they’ve sat untouched since the day he arrived. It feels like pulling a secret weapon from under a floorboard. Thick soles to buoy him through the evening, artificial confidence laced tight around his ankles. Armored, like Harry with his rings.

That makes him think of his pendants, which he stopped wearing as soon as Ruby decided they were fun to grab. It takes a moment to remember that they’re zipped in the side pocket of his duffle. He looks in the mirror as he loops them back around his neck. He hasn’t had a haircut all summer; the tails of it are sticking out behind his ears. He rakes his fingers through it instead of reaching for his brush, trying to scrape it into some sort of order that doesn’t look like he’s trying too hard. 

Harry’s waiting by his car in the blue-gold evening light when Tom comes back down. The sunglasses that were pinning his hair back are on his face now. Tom cuts diagonally across the terrace toward him. As he gets closer, he can hear the car key clicking against Harry’s rings as Harry works it through his left hand, fidgeting.

Harry grins at him. “You look nice.” The sunglasses steal the rest of his expression; there’s no way for Tom to tell if he’s serious. He should have said it to Harry first. Or nobody should have said it at all; Harry’s had his mouth on Tom’s dick too many times this summer for an all-purpose “you look nice.” That’s not what you say to a sure thing. That’s what you say on a first date. 

“Something without baby mess on it.” Tom twitches one of his shirttails to demonstrate, hoping his response works whether or not Harry’s serious. It’s too late to say you too, and anyway you too implies an equivalence that’s not reality. Harry, in his white trousers and loafers, looks nice like he ought to be strolling along the Riviera and Tom looks nice like Ruby hasn’t smeared applesauce on this particular t-shirt.

“Shall we?” Without waiting for an answer, Harry opens his door and slides into the driver’s seat.

The passenger door resists Tom. He tries the handle a second time. Harry’s disappeared, invisible through the dark glass, and for a moment it feels like he’s being tricked. Tom raps his knuckles on the blind window. A second later the door unlocks soundlessly, recognizable only by the smooth release of the latch he can feel through his fingertips on the handle. 

“Sorry,” Harry says when Tom opens the door. “Not used to this car.” 

“Thought you were going to drive away.” The passenger seat is tilted backward at an indolent angle, so that he’s looking at Harry from behind and below. He leans over his knees to feel for the lever to bring it upright, but the underside of the seat doesn’t have any mechanism. 

Harry cackles and zooms his hand forward to pantomime peeling out. “Go back inside, have some salad with Meredith.”

Tom laughs, as if that hadn’t been his exact fear ten seconds ago. He slips his hand down by his door and finds three different switches. He presses cautiously at the top of an oblong one. With a faint whir, the seat back rises to meet him.

The inside of the car is all black leather, punctuated with swoops of wood grain along the dash. There’s no trash on the floor, no coffee cups in the console, nothing that’s been tossed into the back to clear out the passenger seat for Tom. It doesn’t even smell like Harry.

Tom buckles his seat belt. “Is this your car?”

“It’s a rental.” The engine comes to life with a restrained purr. 

The gravel underneath them is barely noticeable as Harry pulls down the drive, even though Tom feels like he’s riding just off the ground. He tries to remember the last time he was in a car. Maybe some errand in town with Meredith and Ruby. Compared to the high and mighty Range Rover, any other vehicle would probably feel low.

“How does that work, renting something like this?” This car, sleek and soundless like a predatory sea creature, doesn’t seem like something they’d just hand over the keys to at the airport counter.

“I don’t know,” Harry says reflectively, as if it’s only just occurred to him that this sort of information would be possible to know. “I didn’t book it myself. They just met me at the train station.” Harry brakes suddenly at the end of the lane, just before the turn onto the country road, and looks over to Tom. “Do you want to drive?”

“Are you serious?” He hasn’t driven anything since the last time he was home, in the spring, borrowing his mum’s car, Molly singing in the passenger seat. He hasn’t ever driven a car like this. What’s Harry trying to prove?

“Come on.” Harry throws the gearshift into park with a flourish, and opens his door with the engine still running.

As Harry lopes across in front of the windshield, Tom scrambles to unbuckle his seat belt. The car pings with an unnecessary reminder about the door Harry left open behind him. Tom stands up with his hand still on the latch of his own door, blocking Harry’s path as he rounds the front of the car. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I am.” Harry rests his hands on the top of the open passenger door between them and leans toward Tom. “Do it.”

His eyes are still hidden behind his sunglasses. There’s no way for Tom to tell whether this is a gift or a challenge. “What if I put it in a ditch?” The possibility seems simultaneously remote and imminent. Nothing could disrupt the perfect lines of this glossy black machine, but also Tom is the very thing that might. 

Harry leans forward, pressing the door back toward Tom. Tom’s body flashes to yesterday: cool water and hot sun, Harry’s weight pressing him against the wall, Harry’s mouth on his. He swallows.

“I trust you,” Harry says. His face is inches away, inscrutable. Tom can see himself reflected in Harry’s sunglasses. The frame of the car digs into his shoulders and his calves as the door presses him back. He wants to punch forward, break the window between them, get his hands on Harry. The intensity of his want ought to shatter the glass all on its own.

He gently lets the latch go and slides out from behind the door. Without Tom’s resistance, the door lurches forward under Harry’s weight. Tom jams his forearm back into the opening just in time to stop it from closing on Harry’s fingers. “Easy,” he warns, elbowing the door toward Harry to extricate himself.

Harry takes the door from him and steps back to open it, hip-checking Tom as he passes so that Tom stumbles a step down the verge at the edge of the lane. Tom shoulders up into him, jostling Harry towards the car. His cheek connects with the sun-warmed back of Harry’s black shirt. Tom’s body sings at the contact, propelling him around the nose of the car to open the driver’s door with an assurance he doesn’t really feel.

The view’s different from the driver’s seat, disconcertingly on the wrong side of the car. He reaches for the seat controls as if he has any idea what he’s doing, moving himself forward until his foot connects securely with the gas pedal. Every inch is a reminder of Harry’s long legs. He checks the mirrors.

“Ready yet?” Harry asks, reclining back in the passenger seat.

Tom flips him off, and shifts into gear. At the tentative press of his foot, the car surges forward, faster than he expected but faultlessly smooth. He turns onto the country road and reaches automatically to flip the visor down when the evening sun hits him full in the face. The view is still searingly bright even with the worst of the sun shielded behind the visor. Tom squints and focuses on the road, second-guessing himself about which side he’s supposed to be driving on.

“Here.” A pair of sunglasses hovers in front of his face. Harry tries to push them up his nose one-handed. One of the arms pokes Tom in the cheekbone.

Tom swats his hand out, first at Harry and then at the sunglasses that Harry’s shoving into his face. “Trying to drive here.”

“Hold still,” Harry says, unperturbed. “The sun’s in your eyes, you can’t see.” The sunglasses disappear for a moment and return. This time Harry’s using both hands. The arms of the sunglasses trace past Tom’s temples and hook onto his ears.

“Because your hand’s in my face.” Tom tips his chin down to look over the tops of the sunglasses. Harry pushes them up his nose with a thumb at the bridge. The view darkens as the glasses slide into place. Harry pats him twice on the forehead.

Tom glances sideways. “Thanks.” Harry’s looking at him still, the corners of his mouth tucked up in a small pleased smile. His hair creeps toward his face without the sunglasses to pin it back. 

Tom snaps his attention back to the road. He’s the one who’s inscrutable now, his expression safe behind Harry’s lenses. The shift in gears as he picks up speed is imperceptible. Every slight movement of his foot on the accelerator tells him the car’s got more power than he expects. More power than he wants. He’s not sure what it’s good for, on this narrow country road. But oh, it’s fun to drive.

Tom takes a curve a little faster than he should, just to feel the car respond. It pushes against the turn like a cat arching its spine to be petted. The sun soaks a late-summer vineyard golden on one side of the road. On the other, the valley falls gently away toward the hills in the distance.  

Harry sees that he’s got his bearings. “What do you think?”

“Drives nice.” Secure behind the sunglasses, Tom tries to sound mildly, appropriately impressed. “What do you drive at home?”

“Um.” It doesn’t seem like a complicated question. “In London,” Harry starts, as if he’s collecting his thoughts. “Usually an Audi.”

“Usually?” 

“I have a few?” Harry’s voice tips up at the end, like he’s uncertain. Or embarrassed. “Mostly in LA, though.”

There’s a vastness to that answer that Tom’s not sure how to probe. “What’s your favorite?”

“Jaguar,” Harry says immediately. “An E-type. I wanted one forever.”

Harry tells a rambling story about the model year, buying the car from an aging hippie in the Hollywood Hills, but Tom loses track as they reach the clustered cottages at the edge of the village. The country roads that lasted an eternity with a fussy toddler yesterday pass in a matter of minutes. 

Easing off the accelerator feels like returning to solid ground, relief and disappointment at the same time. The signs of a summer town melting from day into evening are all around: dogs being walked, shops being shuttered for the night. Tom slows as they turn into the lane at the center of the village. “Where are we going?”

“Turn left.” Harry directs him around one corner and then another. The streets are narrow and cobblestoned, predating cars and not quite friendly to them. Fiats and Citroens are neatly packed into any available parking spot. Tom glances in the mirror, anticipating the dimensions. He’s not sure what would be worse, trying and failing to parallel Harry’s posh car into a tiny slot on what may or may not be the wrong side of the street, or giving up and turning the driver’s seat over to Harry.

Harry points ahead. “There, on the right.” It’s barely a car park, three spots with tufts of grass poking up between the paving stones, tucked between two brick shop fronts. Tom pulls haltingly into the only open space. Tendrils of ivy from the side of the building practically brush the car door. Gratefully, he shifts into park and cuts the engine. The blocky key fob is unbalanced in his hand when he pulls it out of the ignition.

“Nice.” Harry slaps Tom’s palm and scoops up the key. He folds the business end down with his thumb, and it disappears back into the fob with a click.

Tom opens his door cautiously, trying not to scrape the edge against the wall under the vines. Leaves brush the backs of his legs as he eases himself along the side of the car. Harry’s waiting at the front of the ivied building, at an entrance marked by a tented chalkboard on the cobblestones. The specials chalked onto it are all in French. The only word Tom recognizes is beurre.

The door to the restaurant is painted a cheery yellow. There’s a rush of sound as Harry opens it, and when Tom follows him inside, he has to remind himself that this is exactly what a restaurant is supposed to be. There aren’t even that many customers – maybe thirty, forty? -- and they’re not being unusually loud. Parents with summer-blonde children. Four women about Meredith’s age, erupting into laughter. Older couples finishing their meals. A child bent over a tablet at the end of a table full of adults. Tables pushed together in the back corner for a group of families on holiday together: dads with sunburned scalps, teenagers surreptitiously glancing at their phones under the table. Two older daughters, maybe university age, bare-shouldered in strappy sundresses and holding their wineglasses with a casual assuredness that suggests they’re French. It’s the most people Tom’s seen in two months, and the clamor of dozens of conversations trapped underneath the low beamed ceiling makes it hard to think.

“Harry!” A man in a chef’s jacket hails them from across the dining room, his voice cutting through the cacophony. He has thick-framed glasses and unruly gray hair and a general air of being in charge. He weaves through the tables toward them.

Harry shakes hands like he means it, sticking his elbow out to swing his hand into the grip with enthusiasm. Like he’s deeply excited about this particular handshake. Tom wonders if Harry’s that way about every hand he shakes. He can’t remember if he shook his hand when they met. Probably not. Tom’s hands were probably busy with Ruby.

The proprietor greets Harry in some combination of French and accented English that Tom can’t parse. And then Tom’s being presented, Harry’s hand warm and heavy on his shoulder. “This is Tom,” Harry says.

“Welcome, Harry’s friend!” The man shakes his hand enthusiastically. Tom mumbles a greeting, wondering how his own handshake compares to Harry’s.  He misses the proprietor’s name when Harry introduces him.

The man points toward the back of the restaurant, past the countertop that separates the kitchen from the dining room. A pair of glass-paned doors stands ajar. “I have your table out back.” Tom can see the glint of fairy lights outside. 

“Perfect.” Harry claps him on the shoulder, and they’re led through the dining room. From behind, the slight stoop of Harry’s shoulders is more noticeable. He walks like he’s keeping a secret, like standing up straight would require a burst of energy he’s conserving for something more important.

A woman in a striped apron catches sight of them as she slides a steaming plate over the kitchen counter to a server. She looks like the kitchenside counterpart to their host: same age, same enthusiasm. She waves energetically at Harry, and he presses his fingers to his mouth and flings his arm open wide to throw a kiss across the room to her. Her laugh as she turns back to the kitchen is lovingly dismissive.

The garden out back is surrounded by a stone wall thick with the same vines Tom parked the car next to. A strand of lights twines through them. The host leads them to the furthest of the three tables, tucked into the right angle of the wall. He produces menus, a wine list banded to a wooden backing, a lighted candle in a scarred red jar.

And then he leaves. The din of conversations filters out from the restaurant, and the other two tables in the garden have their own occupants. But it still feels like the most alone they’ve ever been. The farthest from anyone else’s oversight. Tom’s back is to the restaurant, and he can’t see anyone but Harry.

“Have you been here before?” The narrow folded menu sits untouched in front of Tom, laying in wait to confound him with French. He can’t think of when Harry would have eaten here. Nearly a month and Tom can’t remember him leaving the house before today.

Harry looks up from the wine list. “Scoped it out this afternoon.”

It’s a rush like Tom’s already emptied his first glass. Harry planning this. Wanting a table out back. Somewhere private. “You just met them today?”

“Came by, had a drink.” Harry shrugs. “It’s nice to eat where you know the people.”

“How did you…” Tom can’t think of the right question. Make friends? In French? Minutes after strolling into town for the first time? “They look ready to adopt you.” 

“They’re really nice.” Harry seems brighter with it, lit up by this small connection. “They’ve had this place for forty years.”

“Remind me of his name?” It’s embarrassing to ask, but he wants to be part of it, to reinforce Harry’s delight in being known by the proprietors.

“Luc!” Harry turns it into a greeting as their host returns to the table.

Luc slides a small plate between them. Two small toasts, topped with a triangle of something, a swoop of sauce, and a tiny cornichon. “From Anne-Marie.”

“The chef in there,” Harry gestures back at the kitchen. “His wife.”

Harry thanks Luc - in French - and Tom smiles and mumbles some echo of Harry’s thanks. Luc asks something and gestures toward the wine list in Harry’s hand, and oh no, it begins. Harry holds the list out to Tom. “Do you want wine?”

Tom doesn’t take the board from Harry, or even bother to look at it. It’s not like he can make sense of a French wine list any more than an English one. “Sure.”

Harry pulls the wine list back to his side of the table. “Red or white?”

“Either’s all right.” Harry looks ready to ask him another question and Tom cuts in before it turns into an embarrassing display of how little he knows about wine. “I’ve got no idea, I’ll drink whatever’s being poured.”

“All right, that’s easy,” Harry says, as if Tom’s position is convenient rather than ignorant. He identifies something in French, pointing to the menu. Luc approves. Tom’s able to get the gist of the response: he’ll be back with the wine, and to take their order.

Tom opens the menu gingerly, like it’s a mousetrap that might take off his fingers. At first, he’s relieved: French menu words are apparently portable enough that it’s not so hard to get a general idea of what each entrée might be. Poisson. Cassoulet. Haricots verts. The bigger problem is finding something he can pronounce without sounding like a complete idiot when it’s time to order. 

Luc returns with a bottle of wine in one hand and two small wine glasses in the other. He adds a glass to each of their place settings, produces a wine key from his apron pocket, and deftly uncorks the bottle. Tom resolves yet again to master the skill someday. He’s watched Ben open scores of bottles of wine this summer with a casual competence that’s devastatingly hot. He’ll have to practice, once he can afford the kind of wine that comes with a cork.

Luc pours a splash into Harry’s wineglass - not a full pour, just a mouthful - and lifts the bottle expectantly. Harry picks up the glass and takes a sip. His lips purse to one side, then the other. “It’s good,” he says, with a thumbs-up to Luc, and Luc tops off Harry’s class and pours for Tom. It’s like watching Harry arrange and light the candles in Ben and Meri’s bedroom - an unfamiliar ritual, one that has meaning to someone else but not to Tom.

Tom relaxes once it’s clear that the ritual doesn’t require his participation. In fact, everything’s easier once the wine’s poured and the hurdle of ordering is past. (“The pasta?” Tom says, fairly certain that there was a recognizable pasta on the menu, and Luc enthusiastically confirms.) 

Luc ties a napkin around the wine bottle and leaves it at the table, and Harry lifts his glass. “To... getting out of the house?” he says, his voice lifting in a question, as if he’s looking for Tom’s assent.

“To getting out of the house,” Tom echoes, fugitive and free. The clink of their small sturdy glasses seals the deal, audibly different from the throaty chime of the big red wine glasses at the summer house.

He really, truly has Harry to himself, without Ruby’s needs to interrupt them, without Ben and Meri to please. It’s just talking to Harry now, and it’s easy, like it used to be when it was the two of them on the lawn with Ruby, fitting in scraps of conversation while they let her pour them pretend tea. Harry’s funny, and thoughtful, and his answers are meandering, as if he starts talking without entirely knowing where he’s going to end up. His deliberate pace gives Tom enough space to think, so he never feels like he’s struggling to keep up.

“Did you take French in school?” Tom asks, after Luc delivers a basket with a baguette wrapped in a blue and white tea towel, prompting another exchange with Harry that’s part English, part French, part gestures.

“A little.” Harry separates a slice from the baguette. “But… a while ago. Too long to remember.” I stopped going when I was sixteen.”

“Really? Why?”

Harry brushes the spray of breadcrumbs to the edge of the table. “That’s when the band started. I finished up with tutors after that, so I never had to do a language.” He tears the slice of baguette over his bread plate and pops half of it in his mouth.

“So how do you…” Tom gestures back at the restaurant, toward Harry’s pals.

“Eh.” Harry chews and swallows the bite of bread. “Interviews and shows here, and we’d go out in the evenings when I was here for the film.” Harry’s mouth could carry on a whole conversation without any sound, twisting from one side to the other, corners turning up or exaggeratedly down. The tiny wine glass is dwarfed by his hand. Tom imagines a different world, one where he’d be noticing all of this for the first time, here, on a perfectly normal first date. He knows far too much about Harry’s mouth and hands for this to be a normal date. Or a date at all, really, no matter what it feels like. “You pick up phrases here and there,” Harry finishes. His rings clank against the glass when he sets it down.

“From your French ex?”  It’s impossible to think about Harry picking up French phrases without wondering about a French girl murmuring them in his ear.

Harry’s mouth quirks to one side, and he wrinkles his nose. “A little bit, I guess.”

Tom can’t stop himself from the questions he’d be asking if this was a date. A normal date where you get to know someone and try to figure out what their baggage is, whether there are any buried landmines you could blow yourself up on. “How long ago did you break up?”

Harry has to think about it. “Couple of months,” he says slowly, slow enough that Tom knows there’s more coming. “But it feels like longer. I was on tour all spring, so we were mostly long-distance.” Harry grimaces. “It didn’t work very well.”

Tom’s trying to formulate a follow-up question that will keep Harry talking, but Harry beats him to the punch. “When was your last relationship?” he asks, looking a little smug at turning the topic back around at Tom.

It’s startling to have Harry looking at him expectantly, waiting for the answer to a question like that. But he asked. He wants to know. Or he would, if this was a date. It’s getting harder to tell himself it’s not. “A year or so, I guess?” It’s hard to account for the passage of time in the outside world. “We graduated, he moved abroad for work.”

“Didn’t even try distance?”

“Nah. It was never going to be…” Tom trails off. Nicholas’s chief attributes – a smooth confidence right at the edge of dickishness, and being a head taller than Tom – were not the stuff of long-term relationships. It was a fun three months. He can’t remember if he’s texted him since Nicholas moved to New York.

Harry’s tilting his head just a bit to the side and watching Tom in a way that feels like he’s listening hard enough to hear everything Tom’s saying and some things he’s not. It’s unnerving. Tom deflects back to Harry instead of finishing his answer. If the door’s open, he’s going to ask about all the things they’d never talk about while hanging out with Ruby. “Have you ever been in a relationship with anyone who’s not a girl?”

“Eh.” Harry wavers his hand back and forth. His fingers are spread awkwardly wide around his rings. “Sort of.”

Tom’s pulse pounds in his ears. He rolls the hem of his napkin between his thumb and forefinger, pinching it into a tight point. “Sort of a relationship, or sort of not a girl?”

“Sort of a relationship.” Harry laughs like it’s not funny. “Definitely not a girl.” The way he draws out definitely creates a broad-shouldered strong-jawed kind of a picture.

“Why sort of a relationship?”

“I thought it was one, turns out he didn’t.” Harry reaches for the breadbasket and tears off the heel of the baguette with a sharp twist.

“We’ve all been there.” Tom inclines his wineglass toward Harry in a toast of sorts. “Straight guy?”

“Not too straight for me to suck his dick.” Harry smirks, but he sounds more bitter about this asshole than he does about the French girl.

“Too straight for breakfast in the morning?”

“Strangely, no.” The corner of Harry’s mouth quirks up at some remembered breakfast, and Tom wants to punch this guy. He’s not sure if it’s on Harry’s behalf or his own. “But definitely too straight to date me.”

“That put you off guys forever?” Tom tries to ask it offhandedly, leaning back in his seat, as if the answer doesn’t matter. As if it’s a casual thing to ask the guy he’s possibly on a date with if he dates guys.

“No,” Harry says, looking at Tom with an intensity Tom can’t escape, like he knows exactly how casual the question wasn’t. His voice is slow and low. “No, it didn’t.”

“Well,” Tom says, “good.” He takes a sip of wine, which turns into a gulp, because he can’t just keep looking at Harry, not when Harry’s looking at him like that. It’s like staring too long at the track of the setting sun on the sea - dazzling, disorienting.

“Yeah?” Harry asks, a note in his voice that’s pleased, maybe even hopeful.

Tom has to look at him then, beautiful and blinding, making sunspots dance in front of his eyes. “Yeah, good.” It could plausibly be an endorsement of the general concept of dating guys, a concept that Tom is broadly in favor of. But it feels a lot more specific.

 Luc picks that moment to deliver their dinner. The freighted moment is buried under steaming plates and shuffling silverware and inquiries about whether there’s anything else they need. Tom asks what Harry’s having, and Harry shares a forkful of his fish and steals a bite of Tom’s pasta, and the dinner conversation settles back into places less dangerous and thrilling.

Harry asks him about his thesis, and Tom tries to explain his graduate program to someone who has no concept of university. “When’s term start?” Harry asks.

“A week after we get back. I was supposed to go out to Croyde with my sister for a few days first, to surf.” He needs to talk to Molly about that. With an uncomfortable twinge of guilt, he remembers that he hasn’t talked to her all summer.

“Yeah?” Harry’s using his fork to separate his fish from its skin, a little bit at a time. “I’ve only ever surfed in California.”

Somehow it’s no surprise that Harry surfs. “Are you any good at it?”

“Terrible. Absolutely terrible.” Harry’s talking differently tonight, Tom realizes. He’s missing his usual loose-limbed big gestures, punctuating jokes with jerky swoops of his arms. But his hands are still constantly in motion, hovering in front of him, index finger jabbing to make a point, gestures weighted with his rings. “It’s hard there, though. Rough. You get pretty beat up.”

 “Do you have a house there?”

“Eh,” Harry pauses. “Sort of.” 

Tom snorts. “Sort of a house? Is that like sort of dating?”

Harry’s eyes widen a bit, like the joke hit too close to home. “I have the house… I have some stuff there… it just never really felt like I moved in. I usually stay with friends. Sometimes Ben and Meredith. I was staying with my girlfriend a lot, but…” Harry shrugs and takes a sip of wine.

Tom watches his lips against the wineglass and casts about for a change in subject. The reference to the Winstons reminds him. “What’s your and Ben’s show about?”

“It’s only sort of mine,” Harry says, and Tom can’t help laughing. Harry waves him off as soon as he realizes. “All right, all right, I get it,” and Tom laughs again. “But Ben and James put it together, mostly,” Harry says. “James Corden.”

Tom nods. It’s strange to think of Harry working with famous people. Ben must, with the kind of work that he does. Harry must, too. 

“It’s kind of based on when I lived with Ben and Meredith.” Harry rubs his thumb and forefinger over the thick stem of his wineglass. “But, like, not really. Just, sort of, loosely inspired. Popstar moves in with regular married couple…” Harry waves his hand in an etcetera kind of way.

Tom snorts. “So it’s X-rated, then?”

That shocks a laugh out of Harry. “God, no.” He presses his face into the palm of his hand and then looks back up at Tom, offended. “I was, like, a kid.”

A stray branch from the top of the wall is arched above Harry’s head. The Winstons feel far away from their birds nest here in the corner of the garden, snug between stone walls. “When, then?”

The candlelight catches on Harry’s rings as he reaches for his wineglass. “A while ago,” he says. “Like three years, maybe four? But, like, all before Ruby.” He doesn’t take a sip, just draws the glass closer on the tabletop and traces the tip of his finger in a half-circle around the base of the stem. “I was jealous of you, when I got here.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tom says easily. There’s no reason for Harry, rich and good-looking and favored, to be jealous of Tom. But when he thinks back to the week Harry arrived, it was a different Harry. Strutting around the pool, smug and mocking him from the dais of the master bed. Tom had all but forgotten the Harry who found Tom’s sore spot and poked at it, throwing his insecurities about the murky line between his job and his sex life in his face. He wonders whether it was unintentional, or whether Harry saw him that clearly from the start. But the question seems academic. He trusts the Harry he knows now - Harry insisting he drive, Harry towing Ruby around the pool, Harry sprawling on the couch for a romcom - not to do it again.

“No, I was.” Harry drags his finger slowly back and forth in a crescent along the base of the wineglass. “It had been... a while, and I thought they were just like, past it. Because of the baby or whatever. But then, it was kind of like, oh, obviously, they weren’t.”

How… Tom wants to ask, but he can’t quite get the question past his lips. How Harry knew. Whether Tom was painfully, embarrassingly obvious. Or whether Harry had to be told. The thought of the three of them discussing it, talking about him, makes him want to sink through his chair into the garden pavers. Welcome, Harry, glad you could visit. By the way, we’re sleeping with the au pair.

“But it all worked out, right?” Harry's voice brightens, exaggerated, and he waggles his hands out to both sides, like he’s just pulled off a magic trick. Ta-dah.

His smile’s big enough, bright enough, that Tom stops looking for the hidden trapdoor, the trick mirror, the scarf hidden up his sleeve. “Maybe it did.” Harry’s smiling back at him over the wine bottle and the empty breadbasket and the bud vase with its sprig of yellow flowers, and maybe it’s as easy as Harry makes it out to be. Maybe it all worked out.

Harry slides one foot forward under the table. “How did it happen?” Tom can feel the moment of connection when Harry rests his foot against the side of his boot, but he can’t tell through the sturdy leather whether Harry keeps it there. “With you, I mean. How did it, like, start?”

“I don’t know,” Tom says automatically. “How does anything happen?” It’s a lie. He remembers every single moment, every small smile of Meredith’s, every touch of Ben’s hand on his shoulder, each incremental stretch of the rubber band pulled tighter and tighter until the satisfying snap.

Lingering in the kitchen after dinner, leaning just a bit too hard against Ben’s side. Bracing his hands against the countertop and tipping his head back against Ben’s shoulder as Ben brought him off. Closing his eyes against the intensity of Meredith’s oversight, chin propped on her palm across the island.

Ben had kissed him after, firm and confident, sliding his tongue into Tom’s mouth, prolonging the shivery reverberations still thrumming through Tom’s body. Meredith brushed his hair back from his forehead and kissed his temple and told him they’d see him in the morning. Then she and Ben disappeared upstairs, leaving Tom confused and desperate and elated. He’d wanted to do something, to be of use. He hadn’t actually understood until the other night, when he and Harry were kicked out of the bedroom, what they were using him for.

Harry’s looking at him expectantly. Tom gives him an honest answer, but probably not the spicy answer Harry really wants. “We were dancing.”

“Dancing?”

“I did ballroom and Latin back in school. Like, competitions.” He was a national champion, not that Harry needs to know.

Harry cocks his head to the side and looks at him consideringly. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Why?” It’s Tom’s most surprising thing, really, the ace that always makes everyone else drink when they’re playing two truths and a lie. I’m afraid of balloons, I’ve never broken a bone, I’m a champion ballroom dancer. Everyone always assumes that’s the lie. He can mix it up after this summer, though. He’s got some more unlikely truths now.

“You walk like a dancer, like… how you move.” Harry circles his wrist aimlessly, his fingers spread open, as if the explanation is a bird that will light in his upturned palm if he’s patient. “It’s like… you’ve always got everything under control.”

Tom laughs, startled. “I can’t believe you think that. I don’t have anything under control.”

“Yes you do.” Harry leans back in his chair and stretches his legs out, hooking his foot around Tom’s ankle. “You always know what to do with Ruby. Ben and Meredith love you.” Harry tilts his head forward in a way that makes Tom feel more intensely examined, like Harry’s turned up the focus. “I can’t ever tell what you’re thinking. That’s control.” His voice gets lower, slower on the last syllables. Tom watches his lips move around the words.

He flushes at the thought of Harry observing him, forming opinions, liking the way he moves, wondering what he’s thinking. “I don’t have anything about you under control,” he says, and realizes too late it sounds more like a confession than a statement of fact. 

He watches Harry carefully for a reaction. His mouth is so big that Tom can see the smile spreading over it, like watching a sunrise. The corners turning up, dimples blooming. “Yeah?”

There’s probably a joke that could water it down. An explanation that he meant Harry’s a force of nature completely outside the realm of Tom’s influence, not that Tom can’t control the dizzying intensity of the way he feels about Harry. Tom doesn’t take the out. “Yeah,” he acknowledges, face burning and Harry’s smile seeping through his veins like a serum.

The moment’s broken by Luc’s arrival, clearing their plates and asking how the meal was. “Wonderful,” Harry says, very seriously. “Thank you.” He looks as if he’d shake hands again, if their plates weren’t in the way.

Their host returns a moment later and holds out a small square menu to each of them. Harry pauses before taking it, looking at Tom. “Do you want dessert?” 

Tom hasn’t had dessert all summer. The entire genre doesn’t exist in the Winstons’ diet. He hadn’t thought to miss it. He could take it or leave it tonight. No, he’s about to say, and maybe even take me home, because he’s far more greedy for that than he is for tarte tatin. But going home with Harry still means going home, where the sound of Harry’s tires in the driveway will mean something to someone else. Where Tom will follow Harry into the main house, or Harry will follow him up the carriage house stairs, and either way someone else will know. As long as they’re here, tucked in their quiet corner of the garden as the evening fades to twilight, Harry only belongs to him.

“Sure,” Tom says, and orders creme brulee. Harry asks about the sorbet on the menu, and after a spirited discussion with Luc that doesn’t seem to result in much additional information about the two flavors, orders them both.

Of course Harry wants it all, wants everything at once, flings himself at it without a second thought. His perpetual too-muchness is the thing that’s most compelling to Tom, who can’t imagine being too much because he’s always trying to be just right. It’s all backwards that Tom saw it first in bed - Harry unselfconsciously sensation-seeking, wanting everything, pulling everyone with him, needing to be overwhelmed - and only now is he seeing it applied to something as prosaic as ice cream. But that doesn’t mean he can’t give Harry a hard time. “Is it that hard to choose?”

“Fuck off,” Harry says, cheerfully. “I love ice cream, I’ve barely had it this summer. Meredith doesn’t eat it.”

“What’s your favorite flavor?” Tom asks, and they’re still on the subject when dessert arrives, Tom defending simplicity and Harry enthusing about flavors of ice cream that Tom’s never even conceived of.

Harry’s trying to explain something called chocolate honeycomb when it happens. His eyes flick away from Tom, midsentence, catching on something over Tom’s right shoulder.

Tom waits silently, willing Harry’s attention back to him. He refuses to look. He’s not going to dignify this distraction by looking at it. He’s only going to project waves of hatred directly from his shoulder blades.

“Sorry.” Harry focuses back on him.

“Um…” Tom can’t remember what Harry was saying. As he tries to reorient himself, Harry looks away again, toward the back of the restaurant. “What’s…”

“Don’t turn around.” Harry says it casually, but Tom freezes all the same, as if Harry’s only going to give him back his attention if he’s good enough. Harry’s expression hardens into a stare, the intensity like a bullet directed straight over Tom’s shoulder. He shakes his head slowly from side to side, just once. Telling somebody no.

“What’s going on?” Tom’s neck is tense with the effort of not looking at whatever is drawing Harry’s displeasure.

“It’s not a big deal,” Harry says, but his shoulders are pulled up and in. “Somebody recognized me.”

“Someone you know?” Tom wonders who Harry could possibly know here, but apparently this afternoon was enough time for him to become the adopted son of a French restaurant. He could have made any number of other friends. Or not friends, based on his reaction.

“No.” Harry’s fishing in his pocket. “Did you see those girls, inside? Two of them.”

“I think so?” Tom vaguely remembers the big table, the holiday families, the girls in sundresses and glossy ponytails.

“They were trying to take a picture just now.”

“Of what?” The garden’s not that picturesque. He and Harry aren’t that interesting; to anyone not inside Tom’s head, they probably just look like two guys having dinner. Tom’s stomach tightens, his ever-present instinct for hostility kicking in. The heightened awareness that picks up on the bellow of “you cocksucker!” from across the pub and leaves him wondering whether the thick-necked guys in the booth are insulting each other, or whether it means Tom’s sitting too close to his boyfriend on their barstools.  Whether the shoulder check in the crowd transferring trains was accidental or whether it had something to do with the rainbow flag pin on his bag.

“Me.” Harry says it matter-of-factly, like this is just the course of things.

Tom gapes. He wonders why Luc and Anne-Marie aren’t stopping this, but that seems rude to ask.

Harry shrugs. “It happens.” He takes his hand out of his pocket with thumb tucked under his fingers, concealing something.  “Although I would have preferred not tonight.” He cups his palm on the tablecloth and slides it across to Tom, stopping at the tip of Tom’s unused salad fork. When it’s safely in Tom’s space, blocked by his body from view of anyone inside the restaurant, Harry lifts his fingers to reveal the black block of the car key. “I’m going to go take care of it. If you don’t want to… you know...” Harry makes a gesture that Tom can’t quite make sense of. Maybe it means you don’t want to deal with this. “You can meet me at the car.”

Harry cocks his head a bit to the left, and flicks his eyes in the same direction. Tom follows and sees a narrow wooden gate leading out to the alleyway behind the restaurant. Harry nudges the car key further toward Tom with a fingertip, clinking it against the tines of his fork. “I’ll get them inside.”

Harry’s chair screeches against the paving stones, and then there’s nothing left of him but the last melty bits of sorbet in their dish. Tom stares at the empty space and the garden wall behind it.

He can hear when Harry reaches the girls. “Hello,” he says, gravelly and plain, like that’s a reasonable way to greet someone taking photos of you at a restaurant. “I’m Harry.” There’s a noise in response - wordless, high-pitched - and Tom shoves his chair back and grabs the car key.

The garden gate has a funny latch. Tom fumbles and slaps at it and a moment later he’s alone with the bins in the narrow space between the buildings. It’s fully nighttime back here, unmitigated by the fairy lights and candles of the garden. He slumps back against the wall to get his bearings. He was almost on a date. No, not almost, not by the end of it, not with Harry hooking his ankle around Tom’s as his smile bloomed in the candlelight. It felt like a good date, like a date that could go somewhere. And now he’s hiding in an alley, banished to sit in the car like a child.

Tom picks his way to the end of the alley and circles back around to the car, passing closed storefronts. There are planting baskets hanging from the lamp posts along the street. Droplets from under the pink and red flowers spatter on the cobblestones, as if someone’s recently been through for an evening watering, but the street is empty.

The car blinks its tail lights at him as Tom approaches, before he even looks at the buttons on the key fob, but the door handle on the passenger side won’t yield to him. He’s not going to take the driver’s seat. He doesn’t understand what’s going on, and the last thing he needs is to be in charge of the car. He stabs mindlessly at the unlock button and wrenches at the handle, letting his efforts cancel each other out until he takes a breath and lets the door go long enough for the lock to work.

The passenger seat’s still dropped back the way that Harry set it, a languor that’s entirely inconsistent with Tom’s mood. He sits up and jams his thumb against the lever beside the seat until it rises up to meet his rigid spine. The car key’s still smooth in his palm, like a river stone begging to be skipped. He presses the button at the corner and flicks the key out, snaps it back into place, again and again until Harry rustles through the ivy and opens the driver’s door.

“Sorry about that.” Harry sits and then swings his long legs into the seat through the narrow opening.

Tom holds the car key out to him.

“I had to…” Harry backs out of the parking space, smooth and quick, offering an explanation Tom hadn’t yet asked for. “Usually if you ask people… they’re pretty cool about it, if you ask them not to post anything, or at least they’ll wait a few days.”

Tom remembers Meredith’s warning about social media and understands now that it wasn’t just about privacy. In a few days Harry will be gone, off to Italy, or wherever. It won’t matter if anyone posts a picture of him in a French bistro, because he’ll be in Italy, or LA, or something. Somewhere far from Tom.

He pictures Harry talking to the girls, to their parents maybe, trying to convince them to keep his secret. “Does that happen to you a lot?”

“Sometimes.” Harry accelerates as they leave the village behind. The engine responds like it’s eager for the challenge, humming through the gears, smooth and powerful. Soon there’s nothing but their headlights and the road dipping in front of them.

There’s something Harry’s not saying. He’s distant, and Tom’s resentful and confused, and the evening’s ruined. Tom’s used to Harry’s silences. Usually they’re expectant, like he’s waiting for Tom to say something. That’s not how this one feels. Harry’s focused somewhere else entirely, or inside his own head.

Tom presses his cheek against the window. There’s a half moon making its way up over the hills. It’s golden, promising autumn. The same color as the creme brulee. The spray of stars around it seems chilly.

“Hey,’ Harry says, as they turn into the lane toward the house. “I don’t know if you’re on Instagram or whatever.” The hedge looms in front of them, lit up by the headlights. Gravel crunches as Harry pulls into the circle drive. “But you might want to go on private for a little while. Instagram, Twitter, whatever.”

“Okay,” Tom says cautiously. “Um. Why?”

Harry kills the engine. “If they post pictures, and anybody knows who you are…” The car’s lights go dark in front of them and the house winks out of view, shrunk to the small circle of the front porch light. “It can get a little weird, is all.”

“Weird like how?” Harry’s profile is shadowed next to him, lit from the front porch so Tom can’t see his face.

“Just… a lot of comments. People messaging you.” Tom doesn’t have to see Harry’s face to know there’s still something he’s not saying.

He undoes his seat belt and opens the car door. “Thanks for…” Suddenly Tom realizes he completely missed the tab when Harry shuffled him off down the alley. “Shit, did you pay for dinner? Let me give you some cash.” He fumbles for his wallet, even as he realizes it’s futile, he has no cash, has had no reason to carry any cash at all this summer.

“No, I got it.” Harry touches his arm.

Tom flinches without meaning to. Harry’s fingertips raise goosebumps up and down his arm, but Tom can’t get past the contrast between the warmth of their dinner and the reserve of the drive home. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.” Harry drops his hand to his lap. “I had a nice time.” It’s polite, formal, a world away from Harry’s smile across the table and the pressure of his foot against Tom’s ankle. Harry’s not going to kiss him, and the obviousness of that fact fills the car, forcing all the air out of the small space.

“I did too.” Tom heaves himself out of the door. “Thank you.”

He looks back before he lets himself into the sanctuary of the carriage house. Harry’s still sitting in the car. Tom can’t imagine what he’s thinking about. 

He slumps back against the door after it closes behind him and lets the wild swing of emotions catch up with him. How, how did this evening get so fucked up. He trudges up the stairs. It’s not late, but he’s exhausted.

At the desk, he shoves aside a stack of photocopied sources and peels the sticky note with his most recent thesis to-do list off the screen of his laptop. Once the aging operating system comes to life, he opens his Instagram for the first time all summer. The photo at the top corner of his grid is from May, the day he and Carl cobbled together some packed lunches from the odds and ends in their fridge and drove out to Brighton. The selfie shows the wind off the sea blowing their hair to one side, chilly spring sunshine pale on their faces. There’s a new comment from Carl underneath it, a couple of weeks old. last known picture of tommy before his disappearance, rip.

Tom clicks quickly into his settings to get away from the post. He can’t deal with the guilt on top of everything else tonight. He ticks the box to set his account to private, and then hovers the cursor over the search box. Fuck it. harry, he types, and before he can get to the s the drop-down’s already offering him two different blue checks in Harry's name. For fuck’s sake. How is he the first Harry to come up? There’s a fucking prince.

Tom whistles at the follower count before scrolling down the page in Harry’s name. It’s impersonal, all professional-looking photos of Harry onstage and backstage. But aside from his bright costume-y suits, Tom recognizes all of it: the expansive way Harry flings his arms around, the unselfconscious lines of his body. His smiles, small and smug or wide and beaming. Harry shoving clothes into the same luggage Tom’s seen on the floor of his room.

All of it feels like the Harry he knows, until further down the page the camera pulls back to show Harry onstage, spotlit, the focal point of an entire arena filled with lights. Tom zooms in and blinks at it a few times, unsure if he’s seeing it right. It’s disorienting, like the time he opened the door to what he thought was the closet in Ruby’s nursery in London and it turned out to be an entire bathroom practically the size of his flat. 

He backs out and keeps scrolling down. More arenas, more crowds, more of the dizzying telescoping of Tom’s sense of scale, until he screeches to a halt at Harry on the cover of Rolling fucking Stone? After opening the post to make sure it’s not a joke, Tom abandons Instagram and types harry styles rolling stone into the search bar.

Instead of a fancy bathroom, it’s like he’s opened the closet door and found Narnia. One Direction, for fuck’s sake. Tom’s pretty sure Molly had their posters on her bedroom wall years ago. Somebody should have told him. Meredith should have warned him. Harry should have warned him. Tom’s mad, all of a sudden, about every story Harry’s told him about traveling. He’ll talk about the pasta he ate in Milan, the art museum he went to in Spain, the funny name of the soda backstage in Japan, and none of it’s given Tom any sense that the reason Harry’s been all over the place is that he has millions and millions of fans. Who will, apparently, sell his puke on eBay. Tom’s been wasting a revenue stream. Bet he could have gotten top dollar for the bodily fluid he’s had access to this summer.

Tom stands up and flexes his palms against the edge of the desk. Bent over the laptop, braced as if it might punch him, he keeps reading. Harry’s first album, Harry’s new band, Harry driving around Los Angeles in a Range Rover. He remembers Harry deflecting his question about what he drives at home. I have more than one. He should have asked. Maybe he would have learned enough to keep his guard up, not to get deluded by a candlelit dinner and a smile that felt like it was just for him.

The punch comes from an unexpected quarter. “Family,” answers Ben Winston. Tom jerks upright as if he’s been caught. He hadn’t thought googling Harry would lead him to Ben, but how naive that was. Of course they have a whole relationship in the outside world. One that Rolling Stone interviews them about, for fuck’s sake. Tom reads on, stomach quivering, as Ben brags about Harry moving into his attic, talks about Meredith, how they’d be in bed waiting for Harry to come home. All the girls Harry would bring with him.

Oh.

He’d thought he was pressing his luck tonight, asking Harry about his past relationships, ferreting out hopeful crumbs about his sexuality. What poverty of imagination. They’d even talked about his past with Ben and Meredith, and Tom never thought to put two and two together. Quite literally. What an idiot, to think he’s been the only one.

Tom abandons Rolling Stone, which doesn’t know shit, and searches harry styles girlfriend. The top result is the most recent, a tabloid headline. Model Camille Rowe and Harry Styles split after just over a year together. Ah. The French ex-girlfriend. Tom opens a new tab, leaving behind search results that promised a longer history of supermodels. The results of his camille rowe image search are all blonde hair and tanned skin and many more pictures of tits than Tom might have expected without intentionally searching for porn. He can acknowledge, objectively and painfully, that they are very nice tits. He wonders what Meredith thought. He wonders how it worked. Whether she went down on Meredith, what Meredith allowed Ben to do to her.

Fuck it. He switches to harry styles boyfriend. There’s more in the image search than Tom would have expected. He rejects Nick Grimshaw, who’s definitely gay enough to have a boyfriend. He spends a while on Louis Tomlinson, but the sources are too weird, the images too blurry and doctored, the rhetoric too strident. Something about it feels off. 

But there it is, well down the page. Harry and a guy hunched over their menus at a restaurant. Casual, like it’s brunch. Harry’s got long hair, but his sunglasses are pinning it back same as ever. Tom makes a mental note to follow up on the long hair after the extensive google search he’s about to conduct on Xander “definitely not a girl” Ritz.

Half an hour later Tom’s got a better idea of why Harry banished him to the car and told him to private his insta. He snaps the lid of his laptop shut, burying tumblr timelines and paparazzi pics and Harry flirting with his straight guy crush in front of entire goddamned stadiums of fans. None of it matters.

He unlaces his boots and throws them halfheartedly toward the corner of the room. One of them leaves a scuff mark against the creamy walls but Tom can’t bring himself to care. The security deposit isn’t his.

He brushes his teeth without looking in the mirror and turns out the lights without slitting the blinds to see if Harry’s still in his car. In bed, he curls on his side with the duvet up to his ear and tries to calm down, to talk some sense into himself.

He’s sealed himself in the idyllic bubble of the summer so effectively, resolutely refusing to think about what his life will be like once the summer’s over. The summer house has been his world, small and complete and perfect. Harry disrupted it, until he was absorbed into it, and Tom’s forgotten that Harry exists outside the bubble too. He’s understood only generally that Harry’s rich like the Winstons are rich, and that Harry’s a musician. Here, where there’s nothing to spend money on, he’s had no reason to connect the dots, to realize that if Harry’s money comes from music, Harry must be a big deal. The kind of big deal who gets stalked at restaurants. The kind of big deal that dates supermodels. There’s an entire world of Harry out there, an entire world that Harry and Ben fit into together, and Tom was crazy to ever think he had a place in it.

[imsafiyacharles]

ALABAMA’S AGING BLACK FARMERS UNCERTAIN ABOUT FUTURE AS THEY STRUGGLE TO CREATE LINES OF SUCCESSION

Billy Gibbons intends to die on this land.  

At 70, the bespectacled Black farmer may very well be the last heir to work the family plot; 80  acres of black soil in Browntown, Alabama, an unincorporated community less than 20 miles  north of Prattville. 

Gibbons’ parents pinched and scraped to purchase the acreage for $850 in 1940. They intended  to pass it down to him and his brother; but he died in 1976 after contracting meningitis while  away at military training in Fort Polk, Louisiana. 

“I can remember all of this was woods,” Gibbons said, waving his arm over the crop land that  extended before him. It was a brooding morning that had already spilled rain and left his feet  besieged by shallow pools of muddy water. 

The old farmer wore a faded army jacket and dark cap with worn blue jeans;  occasionally pulling his face mask to the side to expel a portion of the chewing tobacco  occupying his right cheek, before apologizing for the habit. 

“As far as you can see to woods was woods,” he spat.  

The forest was so dense, and the family’s resources so limited, they worked only five acres of  farmland to start. 

“My Daddy, he done all the cleaning with a mule, a ax and a shovel,” said Gibbons.  

They farmed row crops — collards, turnips, mustard greens — and bought a couple head of  cattle. Gibbons had trees pushed off with bulldozers through the years. He now owns about 50  head, which he spreads across the family land and some 170 acres he rents just a mile up the  road. 

With the help of his wife, he hauls most of his vegetables weekly at the Curb Market downtown  where in 1999, he became its first African American vendor. He would serve as president for nine years.

“This is a tradition here, and it’s still standing,” he said.  

But for how long? 

Like so many of the nation’s Black farmers, mostly clustered in the South, the future remains  uncertain. 

In 1920, African Americans accounted for 14% of all U.S. farm operators. That number has  since dwindled to a staggering 1.4% percent. Alabama, the third most populous state for Black  producers, sits at 6%, according to 2017’s agriculture census.

At the turn of the 20th century, Black landowners held 15 million acres. Today, they own 3.4  million, about half a percent of American farmland.  

Black farmers have faced discrimination at every level, struggling against social and financial  barriers to achieve land ownership and the right to operate their farms independently within an  agricultural economy that has long profited from the exploitation of their labor through slavery,  sharecropping and legal loopholes. 

Over decades, many southern Black families lost land due violent intimidation, deceit and  financial hardship. Farmers who sought loans from government agencies to keep their properties  running in lean times or make needed improvements were denied, shortchanged or failed to  receive timely assistance. (The United States Department of Agriculture settled in 1999 the class  action lawsuit Pigford v. Glickman brought by Black farmers alleging more than two decades of  lending discrimination.)  

While the latest agriculture census reported a 5% increase in Black producers between 2012 and  2017 after revisions to its data collection, there was also a 3% decline in Black operated farms.  

“What I hope we don't see is the eventual extinction of the Black farmer,” said Brennan  Washington. He works with limited resource farmers across the South as a Sustainable  Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) liaison at Fort Valley State, a historically Black  land grant college in Georgia. 

In the past, Washington said, a Black farmer with a large acreage may have applied for a USDA  loan to purchase seed, among other necessities, and would find their application lagging. 

“[USDA] would process the paperwork too late for them to get their seed on time. So, they get  their seed in the ground too late, they don’t get a crop, meanwhile they’ve got a lien on that  property that USDA will seize if they can’t get it paid,” he said.  

Further complicating matters is the fact that farmers are aging, and many are finding it  increasingly difficult to get young people to replace them. Nationally, the average age of a farm  owner is 57½ years old; 43% of Black farmers are 65 and older.  

'Farming has shrunk from a mile to 300 feet'  

Browntown is a Black community founded on farming. According to local history, twin brothers  with the surname Brown bought the land that encompasses about a 20-mile radius; it was  parceled among their heirs when they died. Gibbons’ grandmother was a Brown. 

But the promise of higher-wage work, and the perceived freedom from Jim Crow segregation  and racism lured many young Black people north during the Great Migration between 1916 and  1970, away from rural farm towns like these.  

“Most of the farmers had large families and they kids was brought up on the farm. But as years  got by and all these kids grow up, they was rushing to get away from the farm, because the farm was a struggle — still is a struggle,” said Gibbons. 

The figures are dramatic. Between 1940 and 1950, more than 42% of the nonwhite Southern  population vanished. That number rose to 65% for nonwhite youth between the ages of 15 and  19, according to a 2007 SARE report. 

With four biological children and four stepchildren, Gibbons has no shortage of heirs. But their  desire to enter a business they've watched their father struggle to maintain over the years is  lacking, which means the family is currently without a contingency plan. 

Marshall, 58, and Lorenzo Davis, 66, co-own Davis Farms about a mile west of  Gibbons’ property and face a similar consequence. The brothers farm row crops, rotating  varieties of watermelon, field peas, snap beans and other seasonal crops they sell daily at the  Finley Avenue Farmer’s Market in Birmingham. 

As farm operators, the two have found themselves in a position they never intended. Fond  memories of time spent working alongside their father on the farm throughout their youth  persuaded them to keep the business alive after he passed in 2004.  

The brothers farm about 300 acres, half which belongs to the family, and 40 acres the late Davis  bought in 1960. That land is legally split between Lorenzo, Marshall and a third brother,  Andrew, who farms independently. 

Like many operators, the Davis’ maintained full-time jobs to keep their farm going. Lorenzo  retired in 2014 after 33 years as a correctional officer, and Marshall is still currently employed at  a facility in Elmore County. He wakes early most days to put in work at the farm before heading  to the prison for the second shift from 2 to 10 p.m.  

“Twenty years ago, when our father was in operation, we had cows and hogs. At one time, we  were up to 200 acres of field corn,” said Lorenzo.  

By the late-90s they had quit farming cattle. The cost of feed was expensive, and profits were  slim. Bills on a farm add up quickly — seed, fertilizer, fuel, equipment maintenance. Lorenzo  pointed out a 20-year-old tractor they owned that cost them $60,000 to buy brand new; an  equivalent today, he said, would be well over a $100,000. 

“We might eventually have to get back into growing grain because we’re aging now and you can  gather all that with machinery,” Marshall said. “Help is harder to come by now than it was 20  years ago.”  

Like Gibbons, the Davis brothers remain passionate about farming but are struggling to devise a  transition plan. Marshall’s 36-year-old daughter sometimes assists him at the farmer’s market.,  and Lorenzo has a 35-year-old son that has indicated an interest in the operation, but he doesn’t  have much experience and works a good-paying job that his farm income would likely never match.

Without a probated will, farms are vulnerable to becoming  heirs’ property 

Most farm operators are generational, acquiring land as it is handed down through family  members.  

While 65% of white Americans with a high school education report having a will, only 23% of  Black Americans possess one, according to a study reviewed by Texas A&M law scholar  Thomas Mitchell who studies heirs’ property; land owned by multiple people who typically  share a common relative that’s died without leaving a probated will. 

Kara Woods has studied heirs’ property in Macon County as a postdoctoral researcher at  Tuskegee University (TU). The historically Black 1890 land grant school’s research and  extension programs provide agricultural education and support to Black producers; often subject  to the same imposed financial limitations the farmers they serve face (Congress mandated 1890s  because southern land grants they created 28 years prior barred Black students).  

“It really goes down to generations ago when everything was in the family bible,” Woods said.  “You might have the lineage in the family bible, [unofficial] wills in the family bible. People  who were able to get land after becoming free didn’t trust white lawyers because they didn’t  have means to read and write. So, at that point it was safer to keep the land without a will  because you knew the family could always stay on it,” said Woods.  

One of the problems with heir’s property is that it isn’t divided by parcels or acres; it’s split by  percentage. That means that if a family has 50 acres and five heirs, each would be entitled to  10% of the land, not 10 acres. So, the more heirs a property has, the less value each person  holds.  

Because heir’s property is an informal form of ownership that involves multiple people, most  banks refuse to allow the land to be used as collateral in financial lending, and it’s generally  appraised at a lower value than clear title land.  

These properties also rarely qualify for state and federal grant programs that cover everything  from community development, to disaster relief and housing. Without individual ownership,  heir’s property isn’t an effective tool for building generational wealth.  

Before Alabama approved the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, co-drafted  by Mitchell, in 2014, a single heir could force the sale of an entire property through a legal  partition action. Usually the sale would net far less than market value for the land. (The 2018  Farm Bill includes a provision sponsored by former Sen. Doug Jones that would authorize $10  million a year through 2023 to help farmers resolve ownership and address succession issues to  avoid this and other snags.)

Lack of generational leads put Black farmers on the back foot  

Though fourth-generation Black Belt farmer Demetrius Hooks, 47, knows the value of a will,  he’s had a hard time convincing his father, Al Hooks, 72, of the urgency in getting an official  document drawn up.  

Like the Davis’, Demetrius never imagined he'd assume farming as an occupation. He 'd always  helped around on weekends at the Shorter farm, but when he lost his graphic design job at this  newspaper around 2010, he spent more time there. 

The father and son talked it over and decided Demetrius should assume a more official role. A  few years later, he ended up at TU working as a farm internship liaison.  

Demetrius handles sales and marketing for Al Hooks Produce, and his father does most of the  farm work, though the younger Hooks does get his hands dirty every now and again. He has two  siblings who have families of their own, but none work the farm.  

The Hooks grow fruits and vegetables that they sell each weekend at the Macon County  Farmer’s Market and through direct sales via text message to customers who pick up their  “veggie crates” weekly at Demetrius’ home. They hold farm stands at Auburn and Birmingham’s  summer markets, too.  

Through a cooperative partnership facilitated by TU, the Hooks previously sold some produce  items to Walmart. That created a need for an onsite processing plant to wash, refrigerate and  package the vegetables. They were able to secure a $75,000 grant to build the $125,000 site and increase their capability.  

Beyond the need to expand capacity, large retail contracts like these often require special  certifications like GAP (good agricultural practices) that can be time consuming and expensive.  And it can take months to receive payment. 

Demetrius said the business had previously maintained a contract with Whole Foods, supplying  them squash, zucchini, peppers and collard greens for a few years. When Amazon acquired the  company in 2017 subsequent changes were made to their vendor specifications, which coincided  with a cancer diagnosis. They could barely keep up with the requirements.  

For many small Black farms that lack capital to pay certification costs or labor to meet greater  demand, these large contracts remain out of reach.  

The Hooks no longer sell to either large chain and are currently working with smaller regional  retailers like Filet and Vine in Old Cloverdale; though they will again attempt to meet Whole  Foods’ certification requirements now that Demetrius’ cancer is one-year in remission. 

There’s a “gap in business development. It would be nice if everybody started their business at  the same time and you didn’t have years of being locked out of certain opportunities because  you’re Black. Once those blockages and implements of discrimination have been removed it’s  not as if the next day I can easily walk into Whole Foods and be ready to deliver to them,” said  Demetrius. 

“You still have those generational leads. Other businesses that didn’t have those problems have  that benefit of being able to maneuver through those obstacles once they come up.” 

Although nothing has yet been written in ink, Demetrius has expressed to his father his interest  in taking over the farm when he retires. But the matter of a probated will still hangs in the balance.  

“I don't really think I should have a say of how it's done; it's how he wants to do it. But I need  him to come out and tell me,” he said. 

Certifications allow access to wider markets, but can be  costly and limiting 

In recent years, a burgeoning cultural movement has emerged seeking a return to African  American agricultural traditions. Urban farmers, many of them women, have cleared blighted  plots and cleaned up city blocks in an effort to nourish and beautify Black communities that too  often lack access to fresh produce and healthy food options. The trend of “reverse migration,”  first observed in the 1970s, continues as more Black people return to ancestral land in rural  communities across the South.  

“There’s a new awakening that's happening where people who left during the Great Migration  and went to work a job in Detroit or Ohio, they're coming back to Alabama and Georgia and  Mississippi,” said Natilee McGruder, a community land, food and farming systems advocate,  who's currently working to connect local Black farmers with a national seasonal food chain. 

“There are young Black people who are in New York and California who are landless, who want  to farm, who are ‘woofing.’ There are elders connecting with young folks. And there are the  1890s that have always been here to support Black culture, Black community and Black farmers.  There's a complete renaissance that's happening,” said McGruder.  

At 77, Josie Gbadamosi-El Amin, may well be a part of this Black agrarian rebirth. When she began farming 10 years ago, she had no experience. 

With bright eyes and a wide smile, the retired substance abuse counselor described how she fell  in love with Shady Grove Blueberry Patch after a friend clued her in on a “secret” spot where  locals picked berries on a conveniently absent farmer’s Tuskegee property.  

“I had to lock my eyes on the line of trees because it was so overgrown that I was afraid I might  get disoriented, and I better find my way out,” she said. “But I was just enamored by the blueberry bushes. It was just so wonderful. I had never seen anything like it. There was  something about the spirit of this place.”  

She inquired after the land and found a few leads, purchasing the 46-acre farm in 2010. The  move was so left field that her four daughters were concerned she may have hit her head and  corrupted her judgement in a recent slip and fall accident, she recounted; then burst into peals of laughter. 

For the Watts, California native, owning a farm has been an all-consuming experience. So much  to learn and so much to do.  

Gbadamosi-El Amin moved to Tuskegee in 1969 to study sociology at TU. That connection paid  itself forward for the new farm operator. From the agricultural school, she learned that the  acreage she purchased was the former site of a working farm project led by Booker T. Whatley, the “small farm guru” who popularized the pick-your-own harvest method and subscription  buyer’s club model (commonly known today as CSA) before it was widely adopted.  

What looked like a mess of trees, tangled weeds, and overgrown bushes was in fact a model for  sustainable agriculture cultivated by one of the country’s foremost experts on regenerative  farming.  

In exchange for seedlings, Gbadamosi-El Amin got a farmer to bring his tractor and a couple  workers in to help clean up, as well as some Tuskegee students who joined in. The operation still  runs as a “u-pick” service, inviting visitors to gather their own blueberries from the shrubs in late  May through mid-August. The retired counselor also sells jams, dried fruit and blueberry tizanes  — a fragrant, nutrient rich tonic that’s made from the leaves and fruit.  

Education has been at the forefront of her approach. She and her husband work on the farm full time. With the help of extension agents at Tuskegee, Gbadamosi-El Amin has attended  agriculture workshops and is learning how to write grants to apply for farm subsidies  and improvements.  

She regularly invites people interested in learning about agriculture to Shady Grove and even has  allowed some to experiment with growing plants and herbs like turmeric, moringa and hibiscus  on site. Although she uses organic methods, she is hesitant to seek certification, not solely  because of the associated costs and paperwork but because it would likely prevent her from  facilitating the sort of collaborative environment the farm’s ethos is grounded in.  

“Once you get certified then you have to put all kinds of limits on your property. You can’t have  people just wandering in the field to you-pick. You have to really control things. It really begins  to limit the kind of interaction people can have,” she said. “What I wanted for the farm was to be  a place where people could relax and enjoy themselves. That was part of what motivated me.” 

Gbadamosi-El Amin said her daughters have since warmed to the idea of owning a family farm  and have pushed her to create a formal long-term business proposal before they agree to get on  board with any succession plans. 

New federal legislation can help, but advocates face an uphill battle  

In November, Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Kirsten Gillibrand  (D-NY) introduced the Justice for Black Farmers Act, an attempt to address systemic barriers to  success that operators have long faced; and encourage a new generation of young Black farmers  who have the will but lack the capital to get established.  

Among its aims are to reform USDA policies that facilitate discrimination, protect remaining  Black-owned land, financially empower HBCUs to assist socially disadvantaged farmers and  ranchers, and establish a land grant program to support young, landless Black farmers. The bill  would also create an agency mandated to return land to Black farmers previously seized by the  government and create a federal bank to allow easier access to credit for farmers of color.  

On Feb. 15, Democratic senators took that action a step further when they introduced the  Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act, a bill that would provide $4B in direct payments to  these farmers to cover losses incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as systemic  discrimination. The bill, which has been lauded as historic by the National Black Farmer’s  Association, would also lay out an additional $1 billion to address discriminatory practices at the  USDA. 

It will be an uphill battle to get these measures passed, but either bill would throw a much needed lifeline to farmers. Without them, the future remains as clouded as ever.  

Gibbons, the 70-year-old Browntown man, for his part, is like most farmers, steadfast in his love  and commitment to the livelihood. He was also frank about the farm’s future: there isn't one.  Why counsel his children to leave good-paying jobs for such a risky profession? 

He was brought up on farm life, the children lack his passion, he said; and would likely be  unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices demanded.  

“They couldn’t survive, I don’t think," Gibbons said. "Aggravation. That’s what farming is all  about. I don’t know whether I love it or I’m crazy. It’s in my heart and I have no intention to  quit. I’m just going have to die at it."

Read the story as it ran on montgomeryadvertiser.com here.

[thirsty-x1]

hello, I don’t want to plant any negativity in times like this but what your thoughts about the seungwoo hate after the disbandment?

Trigger Warning: swearing, mentions of mental health, Seungwoo’s letter. I won’t be soft or light with this. I will also generalize using “y’all” but I’m talking about the people spreading hate, don’t take it personally if you didn’t do it (and do take it if you did ^^)!

I think it’s absolute bullshit. For starters, we got to see how people from the own fandom turned into haters. Many revealed their true colors now that they didn’t need to pretend stanning ot11. I can’t believe they didn’t trust Seungwoo AT ALL when all the members chose him to be the leader. And you know what else was proven? Lack of empathy. So fucking much lack of empathy. I’ve read so many tweets calling him “tra*tor”, what the fuck is that slang? Is this some kind of stupid war? What the fuck is up with people?

What do we know? Maybe he was beating himself up for the situation and his friends got him out in order to cheer him up, to take care of him. Do any of you know how fucking insecure Seungwoo is? I doubt it, otherwise if y’all said stuff like that. Probably the same people that spoke bullshit whenever VICTON mentioned him. Stop monopolizing idols, treating them as if they are your property and must follow your wishes. Think about the impact your words can have. Always preaching so much about mental health but give quite a shit whenever it’s about someone else’s. 

Now I’ll proceed with the facts. Thanks to the information Dispatch leaked, the night Seungwoo went out he knew nothing about what the fuck was going to happen in the meeting. They had all expressed desires to attend yet they were ignored. Clowns. Fucking clowns. Jeez, I just can’t understand how could anyone doubt his intentions… I even read people saying “he’s celebrating he’s finally free from the group”. Really? Did Seungwoo strike as the kind of guy to do that?

You thought they wouldn’t read the comments that everyone spammed through every social media (especially on fancafe where he would OBVIOUSLY read it)? Wooseok addressed the issue in a passive-aggressive kind of way in his letter (”Instead of blaming, I beg you to say some warm words to X1 members who have cried, laughed, and live each day together with me”).

Today Seungwoo published his letter (here’s a translation). You can notice he knows, he has read the comments, and he’s feeling like shit.

“I want to say sorry to X1 members who believed in me, a person who doesn’t have what it takes to be a leader. It was thanks to the fans’ love that a small person like me could stand on the stage.”

“To meet so many One Its and perform on stage, I thought that, how can a person like me receive this much love?”

“It was you guys, my precious fans, who made me, who was absolutely nothing, shine.”

“I was scared of writing down each word with my lacking handwriting, but I gathered up my strength for this.”

Read that. Read all fucking that. I’m sure at least 90% of us can relate to those words and sentences, those that show our insecurities. He’s human, I don’t know why is that so hard to understand.

We had to protect him, to all of them, but instead so many people turned their backs on him without giving a fuck. I’m pissed, I hate reading him like this because he has VOICED OUT he had no self-love, no self-esteem (in the X1 Flash episodes) yet y’all did this. He trusted us yet so many didn’t trust him back… I’m extremely hurt by those people, but not like that matters.

Well, this was a long ass rant.

Just… Support. All of them. They did nothing wrong and they all wanted to continue. If you are not going to trust them, then go, we don’t need those vibes here. Everyone is hurting and all y’all can do is point fingers, and even at the wrong people. I don’t know what to say, I’m sad and angry all at once but it just makes me want to fight harder for them. I hope Seungwoo gets to recover and receive help from the others, leaning into X1 and Victon members as well.

[the-bonehoard]

Wyvern CCG

So my second article. Here we go! I know I said my next article would be about Ophidian’s gameplay, but in trying to learn to play I found I actually didn’t know anyone who liked card games enough to try their best to learn this one... Wyvern though. I have things to say about Wyvern.

Wyvern was a CCG initially released in 1995, designed by Mike Fitzgerald and published by US Games Systems Inc. Now I think its safe to say Mike Fitzgerald isn’t exactly a household name in the gaming community, but surprisingly he did work on other games after Wyvern. Most notably a couple games for WOTC and Dragon Hunt (more on that shortly). He also helped design the starter decks for the early Pokemon TCG, which when I found out about I was genuinely in awe a little bit. 

Allow me this small tangent, but this is someone who had a very small impact on all of our childhoods even if it was in an extremely minor way. A starter deck can really impact how you respond to a TCG, so this was obviously a really interesting job for someone to have and how he decided what cards to put in them is something I’d love to find out, or just generally how these things are decided and who actually designs these things.

Anyway, back to the article. US Games Systems Inc were largely a tarot and playing card publisher, and also a publisher of Wizard Trump cards (I’m guessing in the vein of Top Trumps, but I couldn’t tell you exactly how the game plays). And they still are. Wyvern didn’t put them under the same way other TCGs/CCGs buried their publishers. But again, more on that later.

So Wyvern. It was a game about dragons and dragon slayers, with a unique gameplay style I quite enjoyed (more on that in my gameplay article), with art that ranges from “Legitimately good” to “Comically Bad”, which is odd considering all the cards I’ve checked from the Limited Edition were illustrated by the same artist. It also has the coolest card back I’ve ever seen on a trading card. It has a real fantasy tome vibe, with a gold that really pops in person. There’s a reason I made it the icon for this blog. It would probably fit in well among CCGs today if it lasted. Alas, it did not.

Wyvern lasted two years (Ah the two year curse... Check out Kohdok’s Seven deadly Sins of TCGs for more on that), with five total releases; the Premiere Limited Edition, the limited edition, Phoenix, Chameleon and Kingdom. Limited edition largely consisted of Premiere edition reprints and a few added cards, while Phoenix and Chameleon both added 90 new cards each. Kingdom was similar to the limited edition, in that it was reprints from previous sets, but this set also errata’d several cards and fixed certain errors on others.

While I wasn’t able to find any information on Chameleon’s cancellation, my best guess it ended for the same reason so many card games are cancelled, it didn’t make a lot of money. And it didn’t make money because it wasn’t popular. While I do enjoy the game, the current score on BGG is 5.2, which is pretty bad even for a CCG. Besides that, you can generally get boxes or starter decks of Wyvern on ebay for ridiculously cheap prices. I got my box for £30. Thirty. Pounds. That’s almost the same price of buying each individual booster from when it was originally available, and that’s not accounting for inflation. If that’s not a sign that this game wasn’t popular I don’t know what is. 

On a side note, Limited Edition does seem to be the most widely available and from what I can tell Chameleon and Kingdom seem to be a lot harder to track down. I wouldn’t be able to tell you why, but I can tell you that the Premiere edition is almost impossible to track down due to a printing error resulting in a lot of Magic the Gathering cards being printed on Wyvern backs in the premiere edition, resulting in them being extremely rare collectors items now.

So what happened after the game? Well there was one more Wyvern adjacent release. Dragon Hunt.

Dragon Hunt, from what I am able to tell, was a set deck game using Wyvern cards and the Wyvern ruleset, but simplified and more streamlined. The BoardGameGeek rating for this game is a 5.7 so maybe it was slightly better received at the time, but I can guarantee this isn’t an item you need to track down if you can find regular Wyvern product any easier.

So that was Wyvern. Sorry for the odd structure of this one. I might take another pass at the story of Wyvern one day, but for now, that’s the story of a card game that maybe didn’t stand a chance in the flooded CCG market of the 90s, especially with its wide range in art quality and less eye-catching product design.

I’ll see you soon with my gameplay review. 

Until next time friends,

Kay, Keeper of the Bonehoard

[kweebtrash]

Want It With You (M)

Pairing: Johnny x OC

Genre: Harry Potter AU, Friends to Lovers AU, Smut, Fluff

Summary: Johnny is a sweet and caring Hufflepuff Prefect that has a way with animals and wants to be a Magizoologist. Alomena is a Slytherin who would rather spend her time in the library and in the greenhouses taking care of plants and helping them grow. They were an unlikely pair that everyone thought was strange but they were brought together by their half muggle blood. A secret room in the upper levels of the castle gives them privacy to hang out and forget about the stresses of school life. But after Alomena has a rather...interesting dream about Johnny she realizes that maybe they're more than just friends.

Warnings: brief talks about death

Features: Sweet/soft sex, shy and awkward moments, oral, fingering, riding, a bit of nipple play, a lot of caressing and kissing,

Word Count: 8.6k

A/N: This was for a smut prompt request (please dont request more at this time). the following prompts were requested.  53. we’re not just friends and you fucking know it, 55. what? does that feel good?, 57. if we get caught i’m blaming you.” 58. we have to be quiet,  59. tell me again, 60, you have no idea how much i want you, 61. say it. 62. if you dont like my teasing then why are you moaning, 67. i really want to kiss you right now. 82. friends dont do this kind of shit!

A/N pt 2: WE GON PRETEND HOGWARTS A COLLEGE BC I DONT DO THAT H.S. AU SHIT. Johnny and Alomena are both 21+ and also this time line is in present day rather than the late 80′s/90s of the original story. Alomena is a Herbology major, Johnny is in Care for Magical Creatures. Also i feel like this sucks??

My Masterlist 

Request Masterlist

I was holed up in the library as usual, studying my life away. I didn't mind it all too much. Learning new things was my favorite past time and I loved to expand my mind and drink in information. I also particularly devoted to reading about plants; their uses, their poisons, and what potions they could make. It came with being a herbology major after all. I scribbled my quill pen against the piece of parchment that I had jotted several paragraphs worth of notes onto. It was at times like these that I wished I could go back home and be reunited with my laptop. The wizarding world thought so little of muggle technological advances but typing on a keyboard was way less annoying and definitely faster than having to dip a pen in ink every three seconds. I did miss the muggle world; it was hard being half muggle, half wizard. From the judgment, to the prejudice, to the feeling like I was in the stone age, it made me homesick more often than not. I typically tried not to get too much into my feelings about missing home but some days were harder than others. I flipped the page of the thick text book I was reading and sighed deeply, getting ready for another chapter. Just then I felt fingers jab at my sides making me sit up straight.

"Gotcha!" 

I looked up at the tall figure hovering behind my chair and rolled my eyes. "Johnny, be quiet! This is a library." Johnny was my best friend, you could say. He, too, was half muggle, half wizard and we had somehow bonded together during our first few years at Hogwarts. He had been a complete failure at herbology and took it upon himself to greet me so loudly and passionately that it scared my introverted being to the core. He then begged and pleaded, almost groveling on his knees, for me to help him pass the class. I found him utterly annoying and I knew right off the bat that he was a damn Hufflepuff. They were my second least favorite house, Gryffindor being the first. Some would say that was very stereotypical of a Slytherin but I wasn't one to frolic with energetic people. Johnny however was the exception and I had developed the biggest soft spot for him.

"Aw c'mon, weren't you at least a little scared?" He pulled out the chair beside me and plopped down, giving me a big cheesy grin.

"You know nothing trivial like that scares me so I don't know why you even try. Aren't you supposed to be off doing prefect things with the children?" I glanced down at the badge that gave him more responsibilities than most students here. Usually, he had to tend to the younger students that were just joining Hogwarts and be their mentor. He had a certain following and they seemed to enjoy his presence, taking to his bright personality quickly. The female students most certainly took to him too. He was the talk of the halls and it didn't matter what house they were in, every girl found Johnny to be utterly charming. I admitted to myself a long time ago that I did find him attractive and that his awkward laugh made me crack a smile every so often. I enjoyed his height and the comforting hugs he gave that warmed my body perfectly. And I especially enjoyed the time we spent in our secret room.

Our secret room was a small closet tucked away in a hallways on a floor that seemed deserted. The level was closer to the roof of the castle and barely a soul traveled through. We had no idea what it the room was for or why it was there. There hadn’t been any protection or disguise spells when we had first encountered it and it wasn’t an entrance to a secret passageway. It was just...there. There was a lone window that gave view to the quidditch practice field. I took no interest in watching the players but Johnny did every once in awhile. His other best friend, Jaehyun, was captain of Gryffindor’s house team and Johnny was his number one supporter. Other than watching Jaehyun practice, Johnny and I spent many nights curled up in the blanket fort we had created, projecting movies from our cell phones which we cherished so much. That was also a secret of ours, never revealed to the other students that were forced to live in the past. Those nights made me feel a little less homesick and like I wasn't alone.

"Nah, not until later on during patrols. I'm free right now and if you're not too busy shoving your nose in some musty old books we could," He lowered his voice to a barely audible whisper. "Sneak away."

I perked up a bit at the idea. "How are we going to get up there without anyone noticing? Usually we go at night."

"We've gone a few times during the day, it's not that hard. Take a break and come with me."

He was a pro at convincing me to do things with him. I closed the textbook and used my wand to return it to its proper home. I gathered up my writing supplies and looked around, taking caution to monitor that no one would catch onto our plan. "Let me put this in my room and I will meet you up there, ok?"

He kissed my cheek and got up from the chair. "Awesome! I'll see you there." He left the library, only tripping slightly on nothing but air in his usual clumsy fashion. I made my way to the Slytherin door, saying my password to the painting and sliding through. I had to face my biggest enemy-the common room- just to get to my bed which was the furthest away in the girls dorm area. I always had to dodge around students that were hanging out to avoid socializing at all costs. I was deemed as an outcast, even in my own house. It never felt that I was quite welcomed so i busied myself in the library and the greenhouses. Plants made me the most happy. They didn't (usually) talk back to you, though they were great listeners. Taking to plants also put a scarlet letter on my back as the “house crazy” but that didn’t matter. Communicating with plants was important to me, another form of escapism and a way of honing my craft.

I dumped my supplies off and exited the space with some curious stares coming my way but I was mostly ignored. Bit by sneaky bit, I traversed to the secret room, looking over my shoulder in constant fear of getting caught. I managed to get there unnoticed and shuffled my way through the door, shutting it gently behind me. “I’m here.” I said, sighing a breath of relief. Johnny was already laying down in our blanket fort, robe and sweater vest tossed aside with his sleeves rolled to his elbows. He was reclined against the pillows with his hands behind his head as he smiled at me. “Come here, we have some episodes to catch up on.” He patted the space beside him and i sunk down onto the pile of blankets, smoothing out my skirt as i laid down. He removed his cell phone from his pocket and loaded up our favorite tv app. He used his wand to help project the show in front of us, giving us a better view. I settled against him, resting my head on his shoulder and holding onto his wrist. Occasionally, we held hands but lately that simple motion was making my heart palpitate and my stomach quiver with anxiety. I settled for his wrist as it helped me feel a bit more secure with my emotions. Hours passed so calmly that I somehow managed to fall asleep during our fourth or fifth episode. 

The dream I had was so vivid that it was frightening. Johnny had been on top of me, naked and looking into my eyes with a sweet smile on his face. He was thrusting into me, slowly and gently, cooing sweet words into my ear and running his hands all over my body. I held onto his strong arms, gasping and moaning every time a jolt of pleasure wracked through me. He was stunning and glowing in the candle lit area of our room. His lips morphed into his own moans that were like baritone notes in a symphony of pleasure. He was perfect in every way and I hated it. This wasn't supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to dream about my best friend like this. It was improper and way past weird. But my mind continued, ignoring my rational will to halt the lust filled thoughts. His lips were on me then, full, warm, with a feeling akin to the happiest memory I had. He was so full of love which only added onto me fear. My heart skipped beats and drove me to never want to leave from my place beneath him. I wanted to stay in my dream forever.

“Mena!” I heard my nickname in the midst of my dream and snapped up, gasping deeply. The room had darkened as it was now nighttime but Johnny had apparated a few candles to illuminate the space. I saw his face, half casted in shadows of the flames as he looked at me with concern. “You were making kind of weird noises in your sleep. Are you okay? Was it a nightmare?”

My whole face flushed and I couldn't bear to face him. I panicked and quickly scrambled to my feet. “I-I have to go. I-I’m sorry, Johnny!” I grabbed onto the door handle and ran as fast as I could, not even daring to look back at him. I heard him calling out to me but I didn’t stop until i made it back to my dorm. I threw myself onto my bed and stared up at the draped canopy as i tried to get my heart to stop racing. What the hell was that? How could i think about Johnny in that way? I had never thought of anyone like that before. It was completely out of left field. I covered my face that felt like it was burning, wanting to scream my lungs out. What was I going to do now? Had I been moaning in my sleep? Did he suspect anything? My mind was a jumbled mess and i figured a hot shower and some rest would solve it. I closed the canopy curtains so i could undress and felt the recognizable feeling of wetness on my panties. Oh come on! I ripped off my underwear, almost falling onto my face in the process, and slammed them onto my bed. This was not going to happen. Not now and not ever. I pulled on my robe along with my slippers then grabbed my shower caddy. I was determined to wash away this embarrassing dream from my mind completely.

Except I couldn’t. With the emptiness of the bathrooms and the cover of the water pouring onto the tiled floor, I dug my fingers into myself, panting as i tried to recreate how full and thick Dream Johnny felt inside me. Not only did I have a wet dream about my best friend but now I was touching myself to thoughts of him too. What was I thinking? Well, right now, I was thinking of getting off as fast as I could and furiously rubbing my clit to get me there before anyone caught me. I remembered the peaceful face he made while he was inside me, gently biting his lip with eyes closed, eyelashes dusting the tops of his cheeks, and the sounds he made. It had been right in our blanket fort, making it so much more special. It was intimate and everything I had ever wanted to experience. It felt like it made up for the few encounters I had with other men that left me unsatisfied and unimpressed. But Johnny was different. He cared about me and per my dream, I knew he was devoted to making me feel good. I know I would want to pleasure him as much as possible too. Anything to hear his deep groans in reality.

When I came I had to brace myself against the shower wall to try and stay propped up on my shaky legs. My head was now under the stream of water, dousing my curls and making them cling to my face. It snapped me out of my lustful vision and made me realize that I needed to get it together. I held my dirty fingers under the water, washing away the cum and telling myself that this was just a one time incident. No more, no less.

--

It was difficult but I hadn’t seen Johnny for a few days, mostly because I was still too embarrassed to face him but also because he was suddenly getting more busy with his responsibilities. I missed him dearly but I felt like I had no idea how to approach him anymore without visualizing him naked and on top of me. I spent my time doing what i did best-avoiding people in the greenhouse. I was  wrist deep in dragon dung as I worked to repot some Venomous Tentacula. I was all alone in the greenhouse, just the way i liked it. I was free to hum a tune I created in my head while I looked over the plant, making sure it liked it's new home. "Hopefully you'll grow a little bit better here. You hated that terribly dry spot in the corner, didn't you? I know, sweetie." Even the most fussy and volatile plant could calm down under my voice.

"Talking to plants again, huh Ms. Crowley?"

I looked in the direction of the voice and saw Johnny walking towards me with his hands behind his back. I stood up straight as my heartbeat quickened. I wasn't expecting him to show up but it was a habit of his to come unannounced.

"U-um what do you want?"

"To give you my peace offering." He held out a small packet of fluxweed seeds. "It's not special but I know you love making healing potions."

I set my dragon hide gloves down on the table and removed my apron. I took the seed packet and looked up at him. "What do you mean by peace offering?"

"Well the last time we were together I figured I did something wrong with the way you ran out so fast. You haven't talked to me since soooo...here I am."

"Oh….nothing was your fault." I suddenly felt like an idiot for making him think I was mad at him. I just needed time and space to get my head on straight but one look into his honey colored eyes and i was instantly transported back into juvenile thoughts of romanticism. "I'm not mad, I promise."

"Sweet! I was seriously worried for a second. But now that that’s over with, can I interest you in a date?"

"W-what?!" I dropped the seeds instantly and fumbled to catch them. Johnny managed to get them when I failed and chuckled.

"I meant do you want to hang out? I’ve missed you so much.”

I tucked a few curls behind my ear and stared down at my dirt covered uniform shoes. “U-um...that sounds good. D-Do you want to meet in our room?”

“Actually, i was thinking we could be a little bit more adventurous.” He said with a mischievous smirk.

“Oh? What do you mean?”

“The Forbidden Forest.”

That certainly peaked my interest. I was a fan of the flora while Johnny was a fan of the fauna. Being a future Magizoologist, he was always eager to discover what creatures hid within the forest and which ones he could make friends with. He thought all creatures were cute no matter what they looked like and he had the ability to tame the wildest beasts in a heartbeat. We were similar in that fact. Passionate and with a certain knack for handling what most people wanted to stay away from. Though of course the forest was obviously forbidden sneaking in was all part of the fun. I smiled and nodded in agreement. “Let’s do it.”

“Ok, meet me there when the moon’s the fullest. I’ll leave you some signals so you’ll know where I’m at.” He kissed my forehead and gave my arm a little squeeze. “I’ll catch you later, ok? I told Jaehyun I would watch him practice today.”

“Did you mean get annoyed at the crowd of girls that scream every time he pushes back his hair?” Or squeal when you sit in the stands? I thought bitterly.

He chuckled. “Yeah. it’s not my favorite thing to do but he’s my friend and he needs me.”

“Have fun dealing with your bleeding eardrums. I’ll see you later.”

He gave me another one of his signature smiles and zipped out of the greenhouse, leaving me to clutch the little packet of seeds to my chest. It was just hanging out, like we always did. Nothing special. I just had to keep telling myself that. I set the seeds on the desk, sighing deeply as I slipped my gloves back on. Getting back to work was the best way to keep my mind occupied and away from all thoughts surrounding Johnny.

After a few hours in the greenhouse, i went back to the dorm to shower so I didn’t smell like soil and poisonous flowers. As i finished dressing in a warm green sweater and black leggings, i stared out the dorm window. The moon was hiding behind a few sparse clouds but it was full and heavy, beaming a perfect cast of light over the castle grounds. I bit my lip wondering if it was the right time to leave. It was driving me crazy just waiting. I got up and tucked my wand in the band of my leggings and crept through to dorm, trying to make as little noise as possible. With how much I crept around I might have as well been a burglar or a spy. I knew the paintings would try and rat me out and possibly the castle ghosts as well so I tried to take the path with the least possible amount of snitches.

Once I hit the castle grounds I decided to play it a bit safer and use a Disillusionment Charm to blend into my surroundings. It was way past curfew and I couldn't risk any repercussions for leaving the dorm, especially to go to the Forbidden Forest. My eyes caught sight of a tiny Bowtruckle that beckoned me to follow it. It must have been Johnny's "sign". I kept a few steps behind it, afraid that I might crush it. It finally lead me to a small clearing where I saw Johnny petting a giant Thestral. I fell back, shocked that such a creature would be within the forest and also because...I could see it-Johnny could see it. Thestrals only revealed themselves to people who had faced death and accepted it. It hurt my heart to realize he had gone through pain and anguish but he seemed so comfortable with the extremely rare creature, even placing a kiss on its skeletal nose.

I use Revealio to uncast my Disillusionment Charm and slowly got to my feet. If Thestrals didn't find a person worthy or a non threat they would attack in an instant and I certainly did not want to die today. "Johnny!" I whispered harshly. The Bowtruckle ran to him and tugged on his robes before crawling up to his shoulder. He turned towards me a gave me a warm smile. 

"Come here." He beckoned. "She won't hurt you."

"How do you know that for sure?! Thestrals are-"

"Loyal, kind, and are very helpful. She trusts me and I trust her. Just like you speak to plants, I speak to creatures and she definitely understands that you're no threat. So come over here " He extended his large hand out to me and I tiptoed towards him, avoiding eye contact with the bat winged creature. Johnny took my hand and gently set it on the bridge of the Thestral’s nose. "There you go. See? She's not so bad."

He was right. In fact the creature seemed to enjoy the attention and bucked its nose towards me, brushing against my cheek. I chuckled nervously and continued to pet her, flinching when she outstretched her wings. They were way bigger than I anticipated and still intimidating. Johnny held onto my waist when i took a step back and swallowed hard. “Do you want to go for a ride?”

“What? Like...on her?! I thought it was illegal to ride them? We’ll get in trouble with the ministry!”

“Don’t be such a goody two shoes! Besides, we can’t fly but we can ride it like a normal horse, that way we don’t get caught. Here, I’ll help you up.” Johnny grabbed a hold of me as if I was a mere toddler and he was unaffected by my weight. He set me on the back of the Thestral before getting on himself and grabbing onto the mane. She started trotting slowly and i could feel every movement of bone beneath me which was a strange sensation. I gripped onto Johnny tightly, burying my face in his back. I didn’t want to seem like a scaredy cat but I also couldnt help it. “So...what happened?” He asked as he steered us through the winding trees.

“What do you mean?”

“You can see the Thestral which means...you know. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to but i thought I’d ask…”

“Oh…” I realized he was talking about me seeing death first hand and thus removing the creatures invisibility. “It was my sister. She was hit by a drunk driver and at first I was scared of seeing her body at the funeral. It was hard to accept that she was gone. I was only 6 and barely understood death back then. Everyone in my family kept telling me she was asleep but I knew she wasn’t just asleep. Eventually as I grew older, I found out more about the circumstances of her death. I was mad at my family for lying to me. I started visiting her grave soon after and I talked to her every time. It seemed like the flowers and grass around her grave began to grow when i spoke. That’s when I kind of knew I wanted to be in Herbology when I got here.”

He nodded solemnly and sighed. “I understand completely. I lost my mom when I was about 12. I delayed my studies here because I didn’t want to leave the muggle world. I felt like I would be letting go of the memories I had with her if I did. But I knew she would want me to experience this side of myself. That’s when I eventually asked if I could be accepted as a student.”

“I would have never imagined you had gone through something like that. You’re always so cheerful and happy. Everyone loves you.” I said softly.

He scoffed. “Yeah, well...it’s not always easy to pretend, but I do. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are times when I’m genuinely happy and enjoying my life but there are also time where I dont want to be here and would rather be home. That’s when I hang out with you because you understand how i feel. I really enjoy when we’re together...like a lot.”

I squeezed myself to him tighter and was grateful that he couldnt see my blushing cheeks. My brain was swirling with a culmination of thoughts and feelings. I had finally come to accept the fact that my feelings were past that of friendship. I was starting to fall in love with him after seeing him in a new light. But i knew I was just a companion to him. He saw me as a place of comfort, not as a lover. I had to accept that sooner rather than later. After all, I really didn’t want to ruin our friendship with awkward revelations and confessions. We had a moment of silence between us and I could only hear the echoing of the plants and nightly creatures that surrounded us. We were getting further away from the moonlight too and the forest was becoming increasingly darker.

“I’m going to turn back now. I have to do another round of patrolling soon anyway.” He said.

“Ah, ok. I understand. I actually liked this. Even if I thought she was going to kill me."

"Nah, never. They're gentle and even though I can see and talk to her, they train all the Thestrals here so I'm not actually that special."

"Of course you are, Johnny. You have a way with her that no one else does. You're incredibly special." I straightened my spine so I could rest my chin on his shoulder and kiss his cheek but I missed as he turned his head in the opposite direction to guide the Thestral. Instead, my lips pressed against the warmth of his neck, making all three of us jump up. The Thestral squaked and reared herself up almost throwing Johnny and I off.

"Whoa girl! Calm down! I'm sorry I pulled your mane! It was an accident!" He pet her wings that were now extended and flapping, whipping up dangerous winds before lowering himself to rub her neck. "Ssshhhhh, I've got you. It's ok."

I held onto Johnny tighter so I wouldn't fall off and soon enough she settled down until all four hooves were on the ground. "I-im sorry. I-i didn't mean to um…"

He said nothing, only clicked his tongue as a signal to get her to turn in directions he wanted. I was astronomically embarrassed and had no idea what to say. I joined him in silence again until we reached the entrance of the forest. He helped me down and we said goodbye to the Thestral. I actually hoped I could see her again. "Do you need to be walked back to the castle or will you make it there by yourself?" He glanced down at his watch and shut off the beeping alarm that had begun to sound. He was going to be late for patrol.

"No, no. Don't worry. I'll be fine. Besides the night is nice. I wouldn't mind the sneaky stroll back." I laughed.

"Ok, cool. Thanks Mena! I'll see you around!" Without another word he apparated himself to get into the castle as he would have far less repercussions than I would have if I showed up in my dorm instantly. There wasn’t another word of the kiss incident so I figured we both put it behind us...hopefully. When I finally made it to my room safely I set my wand on my bedside table, closed my canopy, and discarded my clothes for my pajamas. Staring up at the canopied ceiling I couldn't help the gushing smile on my lips. If I thought about it, the whole thing with Johnny was a little romantic. Basically an evening horse ride though a private forest with no one else around. Was it actually a date? He had said so before in the greenhouse but quickly changed it to "hang out".

No Alomena. Friends don't do this kind of shit! They don't think about each other in that way. We are strictly friends! However, tonight was the second night that I touched myself to thoughts of him.

--

We had somehow began to spend more time together, if that were even possible. Our secret room was frequented so much that we added more pillows, candles, and blankets to our sacred space. We even managed to transfer some muggle electronics into the room; a tv and old video game set up for optimal entertainment. Rainy days were spent with me reading a textbook and Johnny sleeping on my lap, my hand running through his hair. It was serene and utterly perfect but I was digging my own grave. The longer we spent time together the more I found myself have sweet dreams (and not so sweet dreams) about him. I dreamt of his lips on mine, my hand being overwhelmed by his, my head against his chest, hearing his awkward little laugh as the result of something I said. I had it way too bad.

I had been planning, for weeks now, on ways to tell him. So much so that I could barely concentrate on anything else. I was distracted in classes and even lost a house point or two for messing up during lessons (which was bullshit by the way). It was eating me alive and I would rather have my body turn frigid and soulless by a Death Eater at this point. There was a night where I couldn't sleep at all. I felt sick to my stomach and my chest burned. I kept playing flashes of possible rejection and destruction of our friendship in my mind. I was scared shitless but it had to be done. I was over feeling like this. I prayed that I wouldn't lose my best friend. I was getting ready to text Johnny to see if he could meet me at our room but he beat me to the punch which surprised me. We had the same idea. He most likely wanted to hang out, which made me even more nervous and sick. Nonetheless, I got up from bed and pulled on my comfy sweater over my pajama tank top and shorts and began my creep crawling to the upper levels.

When I arrived at the door of our room, things seemed way to quiet. “Johnny? Are you here?” I whispered against the door. Suddenly it opened and he pulled me inside, setting me against the back of it. His hands were above either side of my shoulders, pinning me between him and the heavy wood.

“We have to be quiet. If we get caught I’m blaming you.” He hissed.

“Get caught? Why would we get caught? What’s going on?” He was making me more anxious than I already was. I watched as his adam’s apple bobbed with a heavy swallow that was followed up by a sigh.

“Look, I have to tell you something. Something important and I dont know how you’re going to react.”

“You’re freaking me out. Please just tell me. I can’t really take it tonight. I’ve been feeling weird all day.”

“Me too.” He agreed. “I can’t...I can’t...God, I just...I really want to kiss you right now.”

I was stunned and couldn’t move. My entire body felt a heavy fire wash over me and my thought processing shut down. He...he had been feeling the same thing I was? I had been too nervous to tell him and too afraid of losing our friendship but here he was wanting to kiss me? “But J-Johnny...we’re friends and I don’t-”

“We’re not just fucking friends and you know it! I know you feel something for me too. It’s been happening for weeks now. Tell me you feel the same way, Alomena. Say it.”

I swallowed hard and avoided his eyes. “I don’t want it to ruin our friendship. What if something goes wrong? It’s whats been keeping me away from you all this time. I don’t want to lose what we have, Johnny. I dont want to ruin the good memories we’ve made. Besides, you’re more outgoing. You can have any girl you want.”

“Alomena, you have no idea how much I want you. You and only you. I feel the most comfortable with you. We have a connection and I know it’s scary to jump into a relationship but I don’t think our friendship would be ruined. I trust you…” He let his hands slip from above my shoulders to rest on my hips. He pressed his forehead against mine and breathed softly against my lips. “Tell me you want me too. Please.”

“I do, Johnny. I do.” I finally confessed. It felt like a car had been lifted off my chest and I could finally breathe again. I wasn’t scared anymore. In fact, I was so happy. Happier than I ever imagined I could be. My best friend was now the love of my life and wanted to be with me. I reached up to cup his face in my hands and closed my eyes. “Kiss me.” I whispered.

He didn’t hesitate. Not one second. The moment his lips were on mine, our bodies were crushed together against the door. He was overwhelming me in the best way, covering me with heat and desire. I moved my hands down to his chest smoothing over the school uniform he still wore. He had probably just finished his patrols right before he texted but I did find it a bit naughty that he was fulfilling the age old school fantasy in a way. I felt his tongue pry at my lips then, catching me off guard as to how much he filled my mouth. He became curious about my body and no longer kept his hands on the safety of my hips. He was diving beneath my sweater and tank top, his slightly calloused skin flush against me and closing in on my breasts. I pushed him away then, crossing my arms protectively over my chest as he took a step back. "Johnny!"

"O-oh...I thought maybe you would want to...i-im sorry. I wasn't thinking." He hung his head low and fussed with his hair nervously. 

"No, I'm sorry. I just...it was a lot at once."

"It's ok! It's ok! I don't mind waiting. I'm fine!"

I made my way over to the blanket pile and sat down, looking up at him. "Maybe we could go a bit slower?" 

His eyes widened and he nodded eagerly. "Yes. Yeah. Sure. Absolutely."

I giggled at his dorkiness and grabbed his hand, pulling him down beside me. "Do you think it's gonna be weird? Seeing each other naked for the first time?"

Johnny shook his head. "No. I've been dreaming about this." He quickly covered his mouth. "I mean not in a creepy way! I just- it so happened that-!" 

I pressed my finger to his lips. "I've dreamt about it too and maybe did some things I wasn't supposed to do."

"Like um…" His fingers danced across the smooth skin of my thigh before resting between them. "Here?"

I nodded and nibbled on my lip. "It's embarrassing to say now."

"No, please. Don't be embarrassed. I find it...incredibly sexy. I'm honored " He laughed.

I grabbed onto his tie gently and pulled him closer. "Have you done it to thoughts of me?"

"Oh totally. All the time. You are super hot in your uniform skirt."

"Johnny!!" I hit him playfully.

"Well it's true! I can't help it! I think your gorgeous. Is it okay if I see you now? You know without ...clothes."

Now it was my turn to duck my head. "You first." I said, hoping he would stall but he was way more confident than I was. His tie was cast aside then his button up and tank top underneath. My breath stayed trapped in my lungs when I saw him and I whipped around, trying to calm myself. I had no idea that he would have such a toned stomach and solid biceps like that. When the hell did he find time to work out?!

"Mena? Should I stop?" He asked, concerned.

No no no. Don't stop. Don't stop, please. But also if he looked like that up top what the hell did he look like down below? "U-uh, it's fine I just didn't think you would look like that is all."

"Look like what?"

“Like...all hot.” I cringed at my own awkwardness while Johnny just laughed and pushed me down gently. He propped himself up on his elbow and pushed my curls behind my ear.

“You can stop me at anytime you know that right? Even if I am really hot.”

I covered my face with both my hands and groaned. “Shut up!”

“Mena, you’re not a…”

“Oh god no. Just that, I haven’t really had any amazing experiences and it’s kind of lowered my expectations. No offense. Also it hasn’t happened in awhile…”

“Hmm,” He nodded. “Well then I just have to change that, don’t I?” He tucked his fingers under the waistband of my shorts and pulled them down, watching me for any signs of hesitation. My breaths were a little heavier but i diverted my eyes to avoid focusing on the way he was being so cautious with me. He wasn’t bombarding me or trying to get this over in a moments time. It was as if he wanted to drink in every ounce of me. He pushed my sweater towards my shoulders, nodding at me to help take it off. I tossed it beside us and instantly wanted to pull the blankets over me. “I didn’t think you would be this shy, especially around me.”

“I-i’m...just a little nervous is all.”

“Do you think i’ll hurt you or something?” His lips were now trailing from my knee and up my inner thigh in teasing kisses. He parted my legs gently and let his hand caress the skin of the other.

“Not at all! I don’t want to mess up either and make it not great for you.”

He popped his head up for a moment. “Don’t worry about me. I want you to relax.” He tugged on my panties and i lifted my hips an inch so he could pull them away. And there I was, bare and in front of my best friend that I had dreamt about for weeks. Now that the moment had actually come I had seized up with nerves but I was glad he was setting the pace. Lord knows I would have been the one fumbling around as if I were a Hufflepuff. He opened my legs wider so his broad shoulders could fit between them before adding a hesitant lick to my lower lips. My body jerked instantly and i gripped the blankets beside me. He settled his arm over my hips and prodded his tongue against me again, making lazy strokes and modest sucks. It felt...amazing. Such a simple act of taking the time to think about what I wanted made me flushed with eagerness. I tried to hide my giggle behind my hand but Johnny noticed.

“What? Does that feel good or…?”

I cupped the back of his head and smirked. “Very good. More Johnny.”

He had an excited smile before he dove back in with the strokes of his tongue, increasing speed. The tip would flick beneath my clit before sliding over it and taking it between his lips. He hummed around it which provided a tingling sensation that made me squirm. I bit onto my lip and tried to roll my hips beneath his anchored arm but he wouldn't let me budge. Over and over he tendered to the sweet area, occasionally dipping his tongue inside me and eliciting moans from deep within my chest. He was teasing me, I could feel it and was a squirming mess. "Johnnnyyyy," I whined. "Cut it out."

"Oh? You want me to stop?"

"Don't stop...that! But stop your teasing! It's annoying. I would like to get off at some point."

"if you dont like my teasing then why are you moaning?" He smirked.

I glared down at him, annoyed by his cockiness. "I'm gonna kill you."

He sucked his teeth and shook his head in disapproval. "Typical Slytherin. You're the one who said you wanted to go slow."

"Yeah but…" I pouted. "I didn't expect it to feel this good."

"I've got more planned, don't worry." He kissed above my clit then worked his lips over my stomach, nudging my tank top upwards like he had done with my sweater. I grabbed the hem and pulled it off before arching my back and pressing my chest towards him. He wrapped those daring lips around my nipple while his hand morphed over my other breast. Mewls were tumbling from my lips as I felt him press into me. He nudged his hips against my thigh and made the fullness of his uniform pants brush against the top. I worked my legs between his, settling myself against the center of his pants and making him groan deeply. "A-are you ok? Did I hurt you?"

He popped his lips off me and looked away. "Um...no actually. It feels…"

"I can touch you, um, if you want now."

"P-please?"

I nodded and wiggled out from under him. "Ok. I can do that." I pushed my hair back and reached for the zipper of his pants. "Is that all...like...you in there?"

He sat back on his elbows. "Well it's not my wand that's for sure."

I shoved at him playfully. "Stop! You jerk!"

He laughed and took my hand in his, kissing the back of it. "Is it...too much, you think?"

I unzipped his pants and wiggled them down, sucking in a breath when I saw how his boxer briefs clung to his form. "I hope not. My mouth is a little small so I hope I don't fuck up."

He shook his head and encouraged me to free him. I discard his underwear by his pants and lowered myself to the heavy heat between his thighs. I was nervous to say the least. He looked intimidating yet I was dangerously curious to have him inside me. I placed a few kitten licks to just his head, hearing him hiss softly. He laid back against the pillows and let me try to stuff his tip past my lips. It wasn't easy but he seemed to accept how my lips wrapped around him. Slowly, my tongue worked around the circumference, tracing ridges and sucking every so often. I broke my suction from him to drag my tongue up and down his shaft adding a bit of moisture so my hand could roam comfortably. He breathed out my name and dug his fingers into my hair when my thumb pressed into a particularly sensitive spot by his base.

It was my turn to smirk and tease him. I preferred to offer him strokes and lengthy licks rather than sucking on him completely. "Now who's being the tease?" He growled.

I shrugged and giggled. "Payback, Johnny." I sucked at the beads of precum that formed at his tip, not really enjoying the taste but being a bit satisfied at the way it coated my tongue. He guided my hand towards his balls, blushing as he would have rather showed me than say it. I lowered myself to them to grip them gently, adding pressure little by little so I would make sure not to hurt him. His stomach flexed along with his toes, curling tightly as his lips parted to groan. That sound was devilish and angelic at the same time. It made my heart flutter but I also knew it was pure sin and I yearned to hear more. I kissed his thigh before crawling up to his face. I planted a kiss on his lips and settled my wetness right over him. "I want to hear that sound coming from you all night."

He hiked my legs up high to his ribcage and moved his fingers behind me, stroking my slit and gathering the cum he left behind. "I'll trade you." He worked a single finger in and that was enough to make me bury my face in his neck. "Each one you give me I'll be sure to return the favor. How's that?"

I mewled softly and nodded, wiggling my hips back against his finger as I wanted more. My clit brushed over his shaft as I did so making both of us shyly moan out into the confined face. Soon enough another one of his slender fingers filled me, curling slightly and drawing more out of me. I cried out and gripped onto his free hand, entwining our fingers together so I felt like I had some stability. He bucked his thighs to work me forward so our lips could crash together again. Those kisses were going to damn me to hell with how addicting they were. He had a way with moving his full lips smoothly over mine and coaxing my tongue to meet his. Occasionally, he would give it a little suck which made a moan reverberate between us. "Do you...think you might be ready?" He asked during a small moment where we separated for air.

I looked down at him, searching his eyes for the gentleness and patience he always gave me. It was there, beneath his hormones running amok, and gave me that sense of comfort I had with him. I pushed his hair back and smiled, placing a quick kiss on him. "Yeah, I think I am. Oh, do you have a uh...um…"

"Oh! Ye-yeah. I kinda brought one with me just in case."

"You were planning on this from the start, weren't you?!" I pouted.

"I said just in case! I didn't know it was gonna turn out so well. But you're glad I have one, aren't you?" 

I rolled my eyes and scooted off him. "I guess so...jerk."

He chuckled as he tore into the wrapper before sliding the condom on. "C'mere, silly…" He worked himself over me this time, making me victim to reliving my dream and staring up at all his beauty. This was the moment I had thought about, that I touched myself too, that I craved. All of my churning feelings that had driven me crazy for weeks lead up to this and it was finally happening. I didn't know what to feel but it was definitely a culmination of excitement and need. My fingers wrapped around Johnny's strong biceps as he guided himself to my entrance. His eyes were flickering from his cock to my face, gauging if everything was still alright. I gave him an encouraging nod and he pressed against me, pushing through just a bit. 

I winced and dug my nails into his skin. He had to make miniscule thrusts before his head filled me completely and almost made my body collapse into the blankets. He shushed me gently, adding kisses everywhere and nuzzling my neck. He whispered sweet nothings to get me to relax and not focus so much on how he was stretching me further than I had been before. He knew it would be a bit uncomfortable for me and tried his best to take his time but I knew he needed that release as much as I did. "It's ok," I whispered in between kisses. "Please Johnny. Please."

He shifted his hips forwards adding inch by inch until he settled in as much as he could go. I felt a heavy warmth in the pit of my stomach and the sting of my body trying to accomodate, pulling me closer to him. He didn't move until I relaxed my lower half and sunk down more onto his shaft. By the way his brows furrowed and eyes squeezed shut I could tell that me wrapping around him was driving him insane. That first full thrust was enough to dive us into an abyss of never ending fever. His fluid movements became less and less overwhelming and more pleasurable to the point where I felt confident to roll him over and straddle his hips again.

"M-mena?" The look of surprise on his face was priceless. It was like his eyes didn't know where to even begin looking but was fixated on the way my body looked above him. I planted my hands on his chest and worked my hips in little circles, driving him deeper inside me. "Fuck, you look so gorgeous."

I flipped my hair over my shoulder and smirked at the boost of confidence he was giving me. I had to admit, taking control like this was enticing. Just as much as Johnny liked me on top of him, I loved the way he looked beneath me. He moaned louder as he tossed his head back against the pillow. His hands clutched at me, encouraging me to bounce rather than roll my hips. His own snapped against the back of my thighs to plunge deeper into my depths, making me feel all he had to offer. His moans shifted into haphazard breaths and growls that I never expected from him. I gripped his chin and pulled him into another heated kiss. He took the opportunity to force his hips harder, drawing out pathetic whimpers and whines.

I clenched tight as I felt an actual orgasm building inside me. It was the first time a man was helping me achieve it and it made Johnny seem like a damn godsend. That fact that he shifted his hand between us to massage my clit had me in love with him even more. That attention made my body shudder deeply and beg him not to stop. He chuckled as I got too loud and tried to shush me so I wouldn't draw any potential attention. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth to silence myself as my body crackled with electricity. I wanted to scream out his name as my body caved in and shuttered with my harsh orgasm but I swallowed it down. I collapsed onto him in a heap of heavy breaths and he squeezed me into a bear hug. "I got you…" he said softly.

He always did. Always took care of me, even now during the first time we got together. He was perfect in every way. As I calmed down and enjoyed the way he rubbed my back, I came to the realization that he was still lying in wait inside me. I lifted my head from his chest and kissed him. "I want you to feel good too."

Johnny kissed my forehead lightly. "Would it be okay if I did it from behind? I kinda...like that."

"Of course. Whatever you need, Johnny." We shifted into the position, my back bowed deeply and face buried into a pillow that I clutched tightly. The sound of us crashing together had me blushing but the way he plowed rougher into me had my being rosy with ecstasy. I sunk my teeth into the pillow and fisted the case tighter, taking in the rougher side of my best friend that I had never seen before. This underlying secret turned me on even more and I willed him to keep going until my knees gave out and I couldn't walk. He pressed his chest into my back and reached out to grab both my hands, holding on tightly. My name was mixed in with staggered breaths and slightly deeper moans that showed him unraveling and seeping into the barrier that separated us.

I tried to keep us up but his weight and my weakening frame wasn't enough and we fell against our blanket nest. It was oddly comforting to be crushed beneath him though it was getting harder to breathe. "Johnny?"

"Hmm?" He hummed sleepily.

"You're crushing me."

"Oh! Sorry!" He pulled out gradually leaving a bit of my cum to flow out of me. I snapped my legs shut and curled up quickly, hoping he didn't notice. He discarded the condom beside us with a knot at the top to tend to later and spooned me tight, pulling the covers over us. "Are you comfortable staying here?"

"I'd rather be here than in the dorm with no privacy. I like our little spot."

He nodded against my hair and held onto my hand once more. "Maybe next time we can try to do it in the Forbidden Forest."

"Do you want to die??! What kind of proposition is that?!"

"I'm kidding! Kidding! But I wouldn't mind finding some other secret spots to call our own." I could already hear the smirk in his tone.

"Oh yeah, you're my boyfriend now and the pervert jumps out."

"Boyfriend?" He questioned.

I looked back at him. "Aren't we-?"

"Yeah but it just…" His cheeks flushed and he hid against my shoulder. "It's just nice hearing it finally."

I giggled and reached back to ruffle his hair. "Oh Johnny...you're such a hufflepuff." 

[musicgeekorg]

Real Estate Leads - Comparing Lead Generation Sources

Realty leads are as good as gold to a real estate professional - literally. The real estate leads you follow up with in these days are your clients tomorrow and your paycheck a month as a result of now. Much of your time as a real estate professional is expended generating real estate leads and converting those leads to consumers. The advent of the Internet and its emergence into essential stream culture brought a new tool to real estate agents from the late 90s: online lead generation services. Nowadays, the majority of people thinking of purchasing or sell a home or do anything real estate intelligent are going to the internet first. Years ago, people would get ready to obtain or sell, and then walk into a local Realty office and start themselves a real estate agents. Now, they can start researching housing anywhere from 3 months to 5 years before they can certainly make a move! That means real estate professionals need to come up with fresh ways to catch these real estate leads early, so they contain time to work them and turn them into individuals. There are two major ways to do that now: purchasing a leads service and paying for real estate leads and creating the website with contact pages to generate your own real estate qualified prospects. Which way is better? Truthfully, if you're not doing equally, you're not being as successful as you could be. Any real estate property professional who wants to be a top producer NEEDS their own particular website with homeowner information, contact forms, a website, etc . That way real estate leads can FIND you on the web. Within the other end, the majority of top producers out there not only experience their own website, but they also subscribe to one or more lead generation services, such as HouseValues or GetMyHomesValue. Companies such as these advertise real estate leads to agents either at a monthly subscription rate, or having the agent pay per lead. These providers set up websites offering homeowners free home value details in exchange for their contact information. Basically, a homeowner travels and fills out a simple form about themselves, the contact information and their home and submits it towards the company's website. The company in turn, gives this "lead" to make sure you whatever real estate professional they have subscribed in that lead's place and it is up to the real estate agent themselves to work up the value and follow-up with these real estate leads. Each list size company does things a bit differently: for instance, GetMyHomesValue presents exclusive leads - where the lead is given to only one agent in the area, whereas other companies out there will market the same real estate leads to several different agents. HouseValues has broad e-mail drip campaigns and scripts to make follow-up a little easier for agents, while GetMyHomesValue has their team attempt to contact the leads several times for the agent then leaves the rest of the follow-up to the individual agent. The complaint most of these lead generation companies receive has to do with what actually comprises real estate leads. Because these "leads" are filling out advice online, they can often give fake information to avoid staying contacted. This then makes it harder for the agents to click on up with the leads. The successful agent, however , won't give up with confronted with real estate leads that give a property talk about and e-mail address, but a bad name and telephone number. A great agent will exhaust all options of post disaster before scrapping ANY lead, such as using public websites like the White Pages online, tax records of the place, reverse look-ups, etc . They will e-mail the lead about the weekly basis and even stop by the property listed in order to find out who actually submitted the lead. What happens when the users of the property claim they did not request their home worth information, nor are they looking to sell? The no-so-hot agent will be angry at the waste of their time and fault the lead generation company for selling bogus real estate sales opportunities. The HOT agent will introduce themselves anyway, deliver their services in any way they can and hand out a business cards, then lead the home content in the knowledge that however they may not have gotten to the bottom of the lead, they does just add another prospect to their pipeline of properties leads. Online lead generation tools are a HUGE asset for you to real estate professionals - when used correctly. To be successful through real estate leads gathered online, you've got to be ready to work very hard and long. You may not convert the lead for few months, a year, even two years, but as long as you're working your realty leads and keeping your name in their head, there is a leg up on the competition.

[loretranscripts]

Lore Episode 130: In Plain Sight (Transcript) - 25th November 2019

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Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

In early winter of 1822, Captain Samuel Barrett Edes became a hero. He was sailing in the south-east Pacific when he and his crew encountered a Dutch ship that was in trouble. Edes managed to save every single one of the Dutch soldiers, and then headed for the city of Batavia, known today as Jakarta, to drop them off and see if a reward could be collected. While he waited, he did some shopping. Now, Edes wasn’t rich by any stretch of the imagination, but he owned a small portion of the ship he sailed and of course, he was expecting a handsome reward for his heroic efforts. With this in mind, he kept an eye open for something unusual and conversation-worthy to take home, and that’s when he saw it. It was a mummified mermaid. It was over two feet long, had the curved tail one might find on a fish, but the upper body of something much more human in shape. It was brown from the preservation process, wrinkled with age and entirely addictive to look at, and Captain Edes knew instantly that he had to own it. In late January of 1822, he did something bold. He sold the ship he did not fully own and used the proceeds to buy the mermaid. Then he found transportation back to London and put the odd creature on display, because just about everyone who saw it believed that it was real.

Of course, there were those who could see through the hoax. Captain Edes had been fooled by a clever craftsman who had sewn the torso of an orangutan onto the lower half of a large salmon. Elements were added to the face and hands to give it a more humanlike appearance, but those with training in natural science and anatomy could spot the hidden clues that gave it all away. That didn’t matter to most people, though. The idea that mermaids could be real had been around for centuries, so when something as powerful as a mummified specimen floated into their world, they were blind to its flaws and impossibility. They wanted to believe, deep down inside, that the hybrids of folklore actually existed. Today, we know a lot more about our world than we used to, but if we were to go back in time and live through a less learned age, we would be amazed at the stories that await us, tales of creatures that sit at the very edge of our imagination, living things that defy logic, and monsters that inspire wonder. Our hearts want to believe while our minds are ready to move on. Instead, what we tend to feel is a mixture of deep curiosity and primal fear, and if the tales from the past are any indication, there’s a good reason why. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

 When we talk about the natural world, the very first thing we need to do is gain some perspective. Today, we live in a technologically rich society. We carry supercomputers in our pockets that are more powerful than the ones that sent the first humans to the moon. We can walk past an intriguing part of our neighbourhood, pull out our phones and look at a satellite map or do a search for more information. We’re still hungry people, curious and drawn to unanswered questions, but rather than starving in a house with little food, we feast each day on a never-ending buffet of answers and information. Today, if you want to know something, chances are good you can learn about it in an instant, but hundreds of years ago, that was an impossibility. Not that people didn’t try, though. 2000 years ago, a Roman named Gaius Plinius Secundus attempted to gather everything knowable into one place, and he did an admirable job considering the world he lived in. Gaius was born into a wealthy Roman family in the year 24AD and followed a path of privilege all the way to the top. He was well educated, well connected, and when he entered the Roman military, he quickly rose to the second highest level possible – the equestrian order. Once out of the military, he served as a lawyer, before being assigned various governorships around the empire, and towards the end of his life, he had the privilege to serve as advisor to two different emperors. Today, we know him as Pliny the Elder, but in his day, Gaius was a success story.

Looking back, his biggest legacy was his 37 volume collection of knowledge called Natural History. It was possibly the world’s first encyclopaedia, gathering everything known about a whole array of subjects, from farming and botany to geography and anthropology, but the most influential contribution, filling up volumes seven through 11, were his writings on zoology, the study of all living creatures. But here’s the thing – Pliny the Elder, like everyone else in his society, lacked the proper tools to dig deep and apply hard science to every creature he wrote about. He also lacked the ability to travel and see each animal he described, so he relied heavily on others, like Aristotle’s Historia Animalium and the writings of Eratosthenes and Hipparchus, and that meant his collection was less than perfect. How so? Well, his work on zoology included such amazing animals as dragons, mermen, and even something called a blemmyae, a race of hairy, human-like beings who literally had no head on their shoulders, with eyes and a mouth right in the middle of their chest. Pliny was thorough, for sure, but not very discerning with his source material.

But what his work did do was give birth to something a lot of people have heard of, a type of book known as a bestiary. It took a while for their availability to spread, but by the early middle ages, bestiaries were a common enough resource. They were, at the basic level, books about known animals, typically with colourful drawings to help the reader visualise the specific details of each entry, and over the centuries, some editions became more popular than others. One of the most famous is the Aberdeen Bestiary, an illuminated manuscript that dates back to the 12th century. Aside from being a beautiful example of medieval artwork – and I mean that, you should seriously do an internet search for sample pages – the Aberdeen Bestiary is also a powerful example of just how popular these books really were. It’s filled with images of all sorts of animals, along with rocks, fish, trees and even worms, and a lot of the entries in the manuscript include notes about the nature of the thing in question, making it a valuable reference tool for any budding naturalist. But these bestiaries did more than that – they inspired the popular culture of their day.

England’s King John, who reigned from 1177 to 1216 was said to have a copy of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History in his personal collection, and John’s son and successor, King Henry III, even used images from it to decorate one of the chambers at Westminster. As their popularity spread, more and more writers got in on the tradition. The Norman poet Philip de Thaun wrote a bestiary about a generation after William the Conqueror invaded England, and it became a gift for King Henry II’s wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Even Leonardo da Vinci made one. It seems if you were an intelligent person in the middle ages or the Renaissance, making your own bestiary was practically a rite of passage – and let’s be honest, colourful manuscripts filled with unbelievable creatures and animals that defied logic couldn’t not be popular. Humans have this innate desire to look at curious things. We’ve always been rubberneckers, straining to take a long, hard look at things that sit outside our normal experience, and the spread of bestiaries is proof of that. But those ancient books and manuscripts also teach us something else about ourselves. Human beings are creative creatures. When faced with a mysterious gap in our knowledge, we’re more likely to invent something to plug the hole than to leave the question unanswered – and what we’ve come up with is equal parts entertaining and downright terrifying.

 I mentioned earlier how the internet and the accessibility of powerful devices has given us an edge over our predecessors, and in a lot of ways that’s true. Yes, we have access to a huge majority of our collective knowledge, but not all of it. In fact, there are still things we don’t know. For example, scientists today believe that there are roughly 8.7 million animal species on this planet, and yet 86% of the ones that would live on land still haven’t been discovered or studied, and it’s even worse inside our oceans, where over 90% of life is still a mystery to us. We know a lot, yes, but our world is massive and diverse, and that makes the learning process slow and tedious. Some animals are also a bit harder to track down, they’re less abundant or more shy, and so it’s made studying them more of a challenge. A good example is the platypus. For a very long time, scientists thought the descriptions of it were nothing more than a hoax. I mean, it was rumoured in 1799 to be a hybrid of a duck and a water rat, part mammal and part bird, with venomous spurs that could kill a dog, and while we’ve learnt more about them over the years, the platypus is still an allusive creature. A recent documentarian was able to get what he considered to be a goldmine of actual footage of the animal, amounting to about 30 seconds, and when only half a minute of film is something to celebrate, you know the animal is hard to study.

Of course, while we’re searching for new species, the ones we do know about are slowly dying off, which doesn’t help. Some estimates place the number of species on the edge of extinction at around 20,000, and more get added to that list all the time. For the medieval writers of bestiaries, this would be their worst nightmare. All those creatures belong in their books, and yet they keep slipping away. But at the same time, not being able to see an animal never really stopped those ancient writers from including it in their catalogue of life on earth. In fact, there are a lot of entries that would cause most people to scratch their heads, because while, yes, we’ve grown in our understanding of the world around us, these bestiaries serve as a time capsule of our gullibility. As far back as Pliny the Elder’s collection on natural history, we can see those less believable creatures pop up. He once wrote that thousands of sea-nymphs known as neriads had washed up on the shores of what is modern day France, and that they looked just like the nymphs of the land, except that they were covered in fish scales. He also wrote about that fiery bird of legend known as the phoenix, which was known to burst into flames before re-emerging from its own ashes. And of course, I’ve already mentioned his fascination with mermen and blemmyae. It seems that Pliny the Elder had an obsession with gathering all known creatures, whether or not he had witnessed them with his own eyes.

Other historians added their own contributions to those mystical lists as well, and if I ran through it for you now, it would sound like a recap of the Harry Potter series. Hippos and elephants shared the same space as hippogriffs and mandrakes. There were dragons and tritons, giants and sea monsters. Honestly, it sometimes seemed that if a young child could draw a picture of it, that was good enough to get it included. Of course, some creatures were more popular than others, and that popularity varied from culture to culture. In Europe, one of the most talked about creatures of all was also one of the smallest, but don’t let its size fool you, because there was nothing safe about the basilisk. Our old friend, Pliny the Elder, wrote about it 2000 years ago, describing it as a serpent with legs that was no larger than a foot in length. But what it lacked in size, it more than made up for with attitude and special features. A basilisk was said to stand tall on its back legs and had a crown-like plume on top of its head. And they were dangerous, too – according to the stories, basilisks were so poisonous that even looking at them could get you killed. Other creatures avoided the like the plague, and wherever they chose to make their nests, the plant life would die and wither away. One description I read said that if a man on horseback stabbed the basilisk with a spear, the poison was so powerful that it could climb up the spear, kill the man, and then kill the horse as well.

Of course, when something is that powerful and deadly, it eventually becomes the centrepiece of tales of valour. It’s said that Alexander the Great once killed a basilisk, and like many of the other legends about him, he did it in a way that proved not just his might but also his intelligence. It’s said that he polished his shield until it was like a mirror, and then approached the creature holding it outward. When the basilisk saw its own reflection, it fell victim to its poisonous gaze and instantly dropped dead. We can find images of the basilisk in just about every bestiary in existence, most of which look like a cross between a snake and a rooster. There’s a statue of one in Vienna, commemorating an 11th century hunt, and there’s even a church in Sweden with a carved relief showing St. Michael stabbing one with a spear. So popular was this creature that people sold powders that they claimed to be ground-up basilisk, something that most people purchased for use in alchemy, but more than a few used as an antidote to poison. Everywhere you look through the middle ages and earlier, the basilisk is waiting to rear its poisonous little head. You can see society’s attraction to it in their folklore and superstition, a mixture of fear and fascination, of wonder and disgust. For centuries, it popped up in stories whispered all around Europe, like a well-loved character in a popular book series. But if one account is any indication, it might not be a work of fiction after all.

 The people of Warsaw had a problem on their hands. They were two decades into a new political structure known as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and while it gave a lot of freedom to the wealthy and elite, it left the lower class in a constant state of fear and oppression. Life in the city was challenging for many people, but that was the new normal. In 1587, though, something happened to put the people of Warsaw on edge. Livestock in the area around an old, ruined building had begun to turn up dead. Even a few of the neighbouring residents had been found poisoned in their beds, washing over the community with a wave of grief and loss. And in the midst of all that confusion and pain, two of the neighbourhood children disappeared. Well, disappeared might not be the right word for it. Folks had seen the two young girls playing near the ruins, they had watched them laugh and skip and revel in the freedom and joy that came with childhood, most likely muttering quiet prayers that it would last as long as possible. The neighbours knew what sort of hard life awaited those girls once they were old enough to work and carry their own weight. Their joy must have been bittersweet.

And then someone watched them step inside the ruins. That was the first reason to worry. Folks avoided the ruins for a good reason – it was dark and dangerous, and the cellar beneath it had been a den for all sorts of animals. So, whoever it was that watched them disappear into the shadows most likely headed over to warn the girls’ parents. When everyone arrived at the ruins to call them out, though, they were no longer visible. While there was a good chance they had simply moved on to a new playground, someone decided to peer inside the dark cellar, and there, laying on the broken stone floor, were the sleeping forms of both girls. So, one of the older women stepped inside to wake them. A moment later, though, she collapsed into a heap beside the girls, sending the growing crowd into a panic. They didn’t know what was causing the people inside the cellar to lose consciousness, but they knew there was something dangerous about the dark space, so they sent for a fire hook – a long pole with a metal hook on the end – and then reached in and pulled each body out into the light. All three of them were dead, and not just dead – they were bloated and dark, as if they’d been dead for days. Most frightening of all, though, was that their eyes seemed to be protruding from their sockets. No one could be sure, but it almost looked as if they’d been frightened to death.

Wanting answers, they sent for Benedictus, the king’s very own physician. If anyone would have the skill to identify the danger, it would be him. And, sure enough, after taking a long look at the trio of bodies, he brought them a definitive answer. All of them had been killed by a basilisk. In an instant, the atmosphere around the old ruins changed. Newcomers came to watch, while leaders gathered to form a plan. Something had to be done, and just like the stories all of them had grown up with, it seemed that a basilisk hunt was in order, but the trouble was no one wanted to risk their lives by entering the cellar to kill it – not even Benedictus, who seemed to know the most about the creature. But they had an idea. A group of leaders from the community quickly headed to the local jail, where two men awaited execution for various capital crimes. Each man was given the same offer: come kill the basilisk, and you will receive a full pardon and your freedom as a reward. It seemed like an easy choice, too – inside jail, there was no chance of survival. Outside, though, there was at least the possibility they might survive. It made sense to everyone.

The first criminal declined the offer, but the other one, a man named Johann Faurer, agreed to help. He was escorted from the jail to the old ruins, where Benedictus awaited him with tools and instructions. The townsfolk had quickly gathered dozens of small mirrors and sewn them onto a pair of leather pants and a coat. I imagine Johann gave the old physician a sideways glance at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, but at the same time, he would have known the folklore just as well as everyone else. Alexander the Great had defeated a basilisk using a mirror-like shield, so why would it not work for him? With a crowd of over 2000 witnesses watching, Johann began to carefully walk into the ruins, where he entered the cellar. He had a long rake in one hand and a torch in the other, to light his way, and as soon as he stepped into the darkness below, he cried out that he could see it – a long, serpent-like tail, with a head that resembled that of a rooster, right down to the crown-like plumage. Benedictus called out instructions to the man. “Grab it with the rake,” he told him, “and then carry it out here into the light.” Johann shouted back that he understood, and the entire crowd began to shift and rumble. If a basilisk was going to be dragged out of the ruins, no one wanted to be around to see it, so they all ran for cover and hid their eyes. When Johann emerged, he held the writhing creature by the neck in one of his gloved hands. They daylight somehow made it weaker, and that gave Benedictus the courage to step closer and examine it. It looked exactly like the bestiaries of old had taught him – the body of a snake, four long legs and a head that looks very much like a rooster.

But sadly, this is where the account of the basilisk hunt ends. Whoever had been recording the events had most likely been in the crowd, and when Johann had begun to emerge from the cellar, they had followed the crowd into hiding, which leaves the ending a bit of a mystery. Who killed the creature, when all was said and done, and how did they do it, knowing the risks the old legends spoke of? What we do know is this: the Warsaw basilisk hunt of 1587 was the last time the creature was reported anywhere in Europe. Maybe it had been the last of its kind, and its death marked its extinction, or perhaps the few that survived had a knack for staying out of sight – like the platypus of Australia. Either way, all that was left from that moment on were legends and stories. Like so many creatures that have once walked the earth, the basilisk – if it was ever real to begin with – has slipped into the shadows of the past, and it’s never been seen again.

 There really is something delightful about the bestiaries of old. Their colourful pages and evocative descriptions were beyond sensational. In a world without television, radio or easily accessible works of fiction, those catalogues of natural history were the closest most people could get to travelling the world. Of course, the things most authors chose to include in their bestiaries would probably never make the cut in our modern times. After all, headless tribesmen with eyes on their chests, unicorns and sea nymphs all feel more like characters in a fantasy novel than entries in a study on the world’s flora and fauna. And yet some of those expectations have been broken over the years. For centuries, sailors told stories about the kraken, enormous sea creatures that could reach out and drag an entire ship underwater with its long tentacles. King Sverre of Norway recorded its description way back in 1180, and for hundreds of years people claimed to spot them in the waters of the ocean. Then, in 1853, the carcass of a giant squid washed up on a Danish beach, giving the legend new life. Over the century and a half since then, scientists have determined that there is indeed a giant sea creature that fits the ancient descriptions – give or take a few sinking ships, of course – and while they’ve been challenging to catch on film, we now know they exist. And those mermaids of old might have roots in actual animals as well. Many scientists and scholars now believe that old reports of mermaids could very well be mistaken sightings of an aquatic mammal known as the manatee. As is so often the case, our misunderstandings had given birth to frightening legends, only to have science bring a bit of clarity to the tale. Sometimes the monsters of the ancient world turn out to be real, and sometimes legends inspire new discoveries.

In the part of the world that stretches from Mexico to South America, scientists have been familiar for over a century with a lizard from the iguana family. It’s not the largest reptile around, but it can grow to around 2ft in length, and it can run at amazing speeds. Some scientists refer to it as the Jesus Christ Lizard because of its strange ability to run across the surface of water. But its most common name is based on other features, like its tendency to run on two legs and its serpent-like body – a body that’s topped with a head and plumes reminiscent of a crown or a rooster, which is why its name is both logical and a bit of a throwback. They call it the basilisk.

 There’s something enticing about the mysteries that fill the gaps in our knowledge of the world around us. Looking back at the bestiaries of the middle ages, its clear humans have had a lot of fun filling those holes, and the creativity of the past has continued to inspire stories today. But there’s one more creature I want to tell you about. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to learn all about it.

[Sponsor break from Bombas, Casper and Fracture]

They had fallen in love, and it was something that would change their destiny forever. At least, that’s how the legend tells it. Long ago, a young man lived on a small island surrounded by deep blue seas, and in the process of hunting one day, he encountered a beautiful young woman. But the hunter quickly learned that there was more to her than he could see with his eyes. The woman, it turns out, was a fairy. In fact, she was well known to the locals there, who referred to her as the Dragon Princess. Despite their differences – him, a normal human being, and her, a magical fairy – the two of them fell in love and were soon married, and that helps this tale become on of those happily ever after stories that we all love so much. The couple went on to have twins, a boy and a girl, and just like their parents, they were an odd pair. The boy was just like his father, a human with no magical powers of his own, while the girl took after her mother, and because of that, both parents decided that the children should be raised in separate places to help them fully become who they were meant to be.

According to the legend, it was many years later when the son was out hunting, just as his father had taught him. He was creeping through the forest, his spear balanced in one hand, when he spotted a deer. He quickly threw the weapon, which found its target, and a heartbeat later the young man was carefully making his way over to collect his prize, and that’s when the dragon stepped out of the trees. It was enormous and frightening, and it clearly wanted to take the deer that he had just killed. The young hunter spoke to it, begging it to leave his future meal alone, but the creature ignored him and proceeded to move toward the deer, so he lifted another spear and got ready to take aim at the dragon. Suddenly, a figure stepped out of the shadows of the forest and stopped him. It was his mother, the fairy princess, who he had not seen since his childhood, and as she approached him, she spoke a word of warning. “Do not throw that spear”, she told him, “for that is no ordinary dragon. That is your sister.” Instead, she taught him to live in harmony with his sister, and according to the legend, that fateful meeting set the destiny of their entire community on a new path. Even today, if you were to visit the place where they lived, the people there would tell you that they are descended from dragons, illustrating how that harmony has continued.

And of course, this story is just one of many tales about dragons that fill the pages of folklore. In fact, most of us would be hard pressed to find a creature mentioned more often than those magical beasts, from the 11th century legend of King George and the Dragon to the fantasy novels and television shows of our modern world. They really do seem to be the king of monsters. Dragons are also one of those nearly universal creatures. It seems just about every culture around the world has had some version of them in their folklore. The ancient Egyptian god of chaos was Apophis, represented as a giant serpent. The Babylonians had their own god of chaos called Tiemat, and in Arcadian mythology there were not one but three dragons on display. Norse mythology features a giant serpent who gnaws at the roots of the world tree. In Ukrainian folklore, there is a dragon with three heads, while images of dragons can be found all over medieval heraldry. And of course, few cultures on earth hold as tightly to their dragon mythology as the Chinese, who have been decorating objects with images of the creature at least as far back as the Neolithic period, and we could speculate why, I’m sure. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how the accidental discovery of dinosaur bones might spark fear and wonder in the minds of humans thousands of years ago. The places where stories of dragons are most common are also places where such fossils have been uncovered, so it does make sense.

So, when Europeans arrived on an island in the Flores Sea, just south of Indonesia, they probably didn’t think twice about the local stories about dragons. In fact, those tales were probably a bit old hat, as they say. Dragons lived in caves, breathed fire, were vicious killers and could fly when necessary – nothing about all of that was new. What was new, though, were the things they saw there. On an island surrounded by deep, blue sea, an island full of people who believed they were descended from dragons, mind you, they discovered a creature that brought all of their legends to life. It lived in the caves along the shore, it was an enormous killer, and it sometimes even followed its prey up into the trees. It ticked all the boxes. These were 300lb serpent-like monsters that could bring down a half-tonne water buffalo. When they licked the air with their bright red tongue, it looked as if they were spitting fire, and they even dug into the graves of the dead looking for treasure. Of course, that treasure was always food, not gold. And they’re still there, crawling across the sandy beaches of the island, living in harmony, more or less, with the people who still call the place their home. They might not have wings or piles of golden treasure to curl up on, but they are the largest lizard on earth, measuring in at over 10ft in length, and they’re deadly. Sometimes the tales of the past stay shrouded in mystery, and other times we manage to crack the riddle and shed new light on the shadows that once frightened us. This living, flesh and blood dragon seems to offer a fresh answer to an ancient question, however incomplete it might be, but at least we now know that there really is one place in the world where that old cartographer warning is actually true: Here, on Komodo Island at least, there be dragons.

[Closing Statements]

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

“Moon betrayed his followers and distorted the church’s lofty goals by turning his movement into a huge money-making machine.”

“Moon’s Japanese Profits Bolster Efforts in U.S.”

By John Burgess and Michael Isikoff

Washington Post Staff Writers    September 16, 1984

This article has been edited down. Link to original: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/cult/unification/profit.htm

The Japanese branch of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church has transferred at least $800 million over the past nine years into the United States to finance the church’s political activities and business operations, including The Washington Times newspaper, according to two former high-ranking church officials, Yoshikazu Soejima and Hiroaki Inoue.

This money is generated in Japan, primarily through a Tokyo-based business operation that uses church members to sell marble vases, miniature treasure pagodas and other religious icons that are represented as having supernatural powers, the former officials said. They also said the religious icons were distributed by Happy World Inc…

The sale of these items has been the principal source of capital for an international network of Unification Church operations, said Soejima and Inoue.

These operations range from Gloucester, Mass., tuna fleets to the anticommunist political lobbying of CAUSA International in Latin America and the United States.

Their accounts could explain how the Unification Church … has been able to support a major Washington newspaper that has lost an estimated $150 million during its first 2 ½ years of operations.

The Times, showcase of the church’s business network, is seen by Moon as an important source of political influence here, according to Soejima, the former chief of Unification Church public relations in Japan. Exhorted by pep talks to meet “the respected father’s” needs, Japanese church members have worked in recent years under sales quotas requiring them to transfer to the United States roughly $2.5 million a month earmarked for The Times, Soejima said.

“The Washington Times was the top priority of the entire Unification Church worldwide,” said Soejima, who was editor of Sekai Nippo (World Daily News), a church-controlled Tokyo newspaper, before being fired last October following a dispute with church officials over control of the paper.

Soejima, 37, is the highest-level church official to break with Moon and publicly discuss the church’s operations. In five lengthy interviews with The Washington Post in Tokyo, he provided details about church finances that were supported by hand-written notes he said he had made after monthly meetings of top church financial officials in 1981 and 1982.

His statements also were supported by Inoue, who headed church operations on Shikoku Island before being fired by the church and who sat in on four of the interviews with Soejima. …

Soejima said he joined the Unification Church as an idealistic university student nearly 20 years ago and that he continues to believe in its public objectives of uniting world Christianity and eradicating communism.

But, he charged, Moon had betrayed his followers and distorted the church’s lofty goals by turning his movement into a huge money-making machine.

“By the end of 1975, the main activity of the church was collecting money, buying lots of real estate in Korea and the United States and starting a lot of businesses,” Soejima said. Moon “is not working for the world, but for himself,” he said.

...

Soejima estimated the number of Japanese members at 8,000 and quotes Moon as saying in 1982 that he was disappointed because there were only 2,000 members in the United States – a number that is slightly lower than the estimates of about 3,000 members supplied by former church members and a figure of 5,000 cited by Gutman….

Based on their former access to internal church documents and Soejima���s attendance at numerous top-level meetings of church financial officials, Soejima and Inoue said their conservative estimate is that the church has transferred at least $800 million to the United States in the past nine years. Starting in 1975, they said, the church mobilized its Japanese members for a massive fund-raising effort that has used high-pressure sales techniques to take advantage of the religious superstitions of Japanese consumers.

Handwritten notes that Soejima made at some church finance meetings indicate that the Japanese church was taking in more than $100 million a year during 1981 and 1982, most of which was transferred to church headquarters in New York.

One set of notes, based on a church financial report from June 10 to Sept. 10, 1981, states that the Japanese church raised about $54 million during the three-month period (based on 1981 exchange rates), of which about $38 million was sent “out” – a term that Soejima said meant abroad. That figure was representative of the year’s other three quarters, he said. … That would mean the church earned about $122 million in 1982, of which 90 percent was shipped abroad, according to Soejima.

He said these transactions were usually made through international bank transfers, but large amounts of cash were carried into the United States by church members because “sometimes Moon wants money right away. Getting permission to send it by bank transfer takes time,” Soejima said.

When Moon conducted a “mass wedding” of 2,075 couples in Madison Square Garden in 1982, 400 Japanese men and women were flown over for the event. “Each person took, I think, about $2,000,” Soejima said.

According to Soejima, a confidential financial statement would be distributed to 10 to 12 top Japanese church officials each month. These statements would show roughly $2.5 million earmarked for The Washington Times.

Each month figures on actual spending would show the previous month’s target had been met. Senior officials would then deliver pep talks on “the respected father’s” needs for a better showing next time, he said.

“Always, it ended with a statement that this is where we stand now, so go out and fight harder,” Soejima said.

According to his account, the ability of the church to generate these funds is based on its control of Happy World Inc., a company that is headquartered in a utilitarian fifth-floor office in a Tokyo business district and whose president, Motoo Furuta, is chief of the Japanese church’s financial bureau, according to Soejima. …

Happy World’s main activity is importing of consumer goods, such as marble vases, miniature treasure pagodas and ginseng teas from church-owned companies in South Korea, including Il Shin Stoneworks, Tong Il Co. Ltd. and Il Hwa Co. Ltd., according to Nakada and the company’s sales brochures.

The vases, pagodas, ginseng and other consumer items are distributed to about 10 wholesale and retail outlets throughout Japan that, according to Soejima and Inoue, are controlled by the church and use church members as door-to-door salesmen.

More than 2,600 complaints about the sale of marble vases, ivory seals and miniature pagodas of the kind that are often sold by church members were lodged with the Japan Consumer Information Center between 1976 and 1982, according to a report made by the government-funded agency.

▲ Name seal

Hundreds of these complaints involved reported cases of intimidation, threats or misrepresentations in which salesmen preyed on the “religious anxieties” of consumers, according to the center’s report. The small objects often were portrayed as having mystical powers that could save unhappy marriages, cure illnesses or purge the evil spirits of samurai ancestors, the report said.

The center has published pamphlets to warn consumers about the sales of these items. In one case cited in a center pamphlet, a woman whose husband had just died in an auto accident was being sold one of the objects. The salesman told her the evil spirit of a samurai ancestor who had killed with his sword was tormenting the family. The sale would solve that. “If you don’t buy it, the same evil spirit will continue with your children and they will meet the same fate,” the salesmen said, according to the pamphlet.

The salesmen, Soejima and Inoue said, are instructed never to identify themselves as being with the Unification Church or Happy World.

“We had orders that, when engaging in economic activity, never say you are a member of the church,” Inoue said.

According to Soejima and others, the profits from sales of these items can be enormous. In an extreme case, he said, a vase that cost about $21 was sold for $8,300. A quantity of ginseng worth about $42 sold for eight times that amount. One salesmen can raise about $4,000 per month, he said.

The salesmen’s expenses are minimal. During his years in the church, Soejima said, he often visited church members at grimy group houses where they slept half a dozen to a room. The members receive no salary from the church and immediately hand over all their sales proceeds to the house “leader.” Once a month, Soejima said, a church official comes to the house and “they collect it in cash and bring it to Tokyo.”

In a two-hour interview in Tokyo, four former church members told of being assigned to sales soon after joining. Church officials conducted sales-training lectures using films and stressed the need for money to finance “the restoration” under way in the United States.

All four members, who asked not to be identified, said they were told of Happy World’s role soon after joining. “I was told it was the economic department of the Unification Church,” said a 24-year-old woman who had sold ivory seals door-to-door.

The primary role of The Washington Times within Moon’s global organization was underscored in ways other than the financial support it received from Japan, Soejima said. He cited a series of meetings in February 1983 that began at church headquarters at the New Yorker Hotel, where about 70 church officials from round the world gathered to celebrate Moon’s birthday.

Full story HERE

▲ Claims handled by the Japanese Lawyers Association against the UC/FFWPU for their ‘Spiritual Sales’ fraud. 

Column 1  Year Column 2 Complaints recorded by Organizations in Tokyo Column 3  Complaints recorded by Organizations outside Tokyo Column 4  Complaints recorded by Consumer Information Offices throughout Japan Column 5  Totals

The second total from the left (in yellow) shows that over 18,000 legal claims for compensation from FFWPU were made up to 2016. The right hand total shows a total of 118,258,935,819 yen by the end of 2016.

Recently total claims have exceeded an astonishing $1billion.

The people of Japan are not known for filing frivolous lawsuits. Many of the FFWPU / UC victims are not likely to step forward to keep from losing face.

“The true figure of victimized citizens, however, is assumed to be over ten times more than what is recorded, for the fear of bad luck from ancestors and repercussions from the FFWPU / Unification Church.”

Some complaints are settled out of court.

Since Sun Myung Moon died in 2012, Hak Ja Han has headed the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. The pressure on the Japanese members has continued unabated.

____________________________________

¥ 1,400,000 to be paid to Hak Ja Han’s church by each Japanese FFWPU family.

Time period: October 20 - December 26, 2015

百四十万円 = ¥ 1,400,000 = $11,400 USD for each UC/FFWPU family

Believers are desperately looking everywhere to borrow or get the money any way they can.

____________________________________

Moon founded “The World’s Greediest Church”

A huge FFWPU scam in Japan is revealed

How Moon bought protection in Japan

Suicide of Moon money mule in Uruguay

In 2000, Japanese members were pressured to buy Moon’s Cheon Seong Gyeong for $30,000 for each book!

これが『統一教会』の秘部だ

The Atsuko Kumon Hong “suicide / murder” of August 2013

Asian ginseng – there is currently no conclusive evidence supporting any health benefits

Wikipedia – As of 2017, there is insufficient evidence to indicate that ginseng has any health effects

Religious Freedom for Japanese Members! (The FFWPU established a slave caste.)

Sun Myung Moon – Emperor of the Universe

[rfschatten]

COVID-19 & the Rise of Prairie Populism

“By Failing to Prepare, you are Preparing to Fail” ~~~ Benjamin Franklin

We have arrived at the most critical moral point of this Pandemic Crisis. Where the Economy and the Health Crisis are beginning to collide with each other.

Yes, something has to be done to keep the economy running …the little businesses are suffering the most, and do have a good legitimate reason to re-open. Wall Street & Corporate America wants it open for their own greedy reasons. And Donald Trump desperately wants to open up, the most! His re-election hangs on his chance of a good economy …cause if he loses, they’re going to take him and “lock him up”!

On the other side of this moral dilemma, you have thousands that soon will be in the hundreds of thousands of Deaths, and Millions who eventually may easily become hundreds of million Infected by COVID-19.

One side wants to keep enforcing CDC Protocol cause they value human life and will observe all protocols till it’s over. On the other side, almost everyone values human life, too …but financial stress, and different situations are forcing some to look at things a little differently. Things not normally thought about. How many deaths are “acceptable” for the country, that they can get back to work?

For a while Trump & Pence have been saying; Soon, we all have to make some tough decisions on life and death. Chris Christie publicly said; 3,000 Deaths/Day is acceptable collateral damage to keep the Economy running. The Federal Government wants the economy to succeed at all costs, and to overshadow the Pandemic, …cause that’s Trump’s eminent Waterloo.

And for the economy to succeed, the US Gov’t prefers to accept the notion of acceptable “collateral damage” …like in a Nuclear Attack? That’s Trump’s Capitalism!

We, the People are just a “commodity” in a Trump Economy post-COVID019.

An Administration that intents to phase down the Medical portion of their Pandemic policies and begin the Economic Recovery phase, as soon as possible …while people are still dying daily by the thousands…is simply committing Public Policy Genocide. As Yale Epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves said; “What else do you call mass deaths by public policy”?

The Federal Government pretty much is saying; Americans can be sacrificed in order for the economy to grow.

The problem this stable genius can’t understand is; the Millions infected, and pretty soon the hundreds of Millions are not going out anywhere for a while, or on any type of shopping spree! …not until this Virus is taken care of and stopped, the Nation is not going to economically recover!

The value of Human Life? or the value of the US Dollar? That’s the moral of the story of what 2020 is all about!

Donald Trump wants to own the moment, he wants to be the almighty superhero who saved America from a catastrophic global pandemic. When he, and he alone knows how to stop the viral infection …and all his followers, will eventually follow him straight off the cliff!

Why are Batshit Trumpers considered America’s Village Idiots?

In a recent poll, 90% of Republicans trust Trump for COVID-19 information rather than the CDC & all Medical Professionals!

When you believe a man who publicly has made more than 18,000+ lies in 3 years, over Medical professionals …yes! you will die! But, not for your country or not for your family, but for someone who only cares ‘if’ you live, for your vote in November.

The Donald’s biggest problem? He never expected anything like this to occur, a crisis that transcends politics and transcends his life of lies. A crisis where he really does have to become and act presidential, be a true leader & show some leadership …but, he’s clueless on how to lead…and no one cares about his rhetorical bullshit anymore. He knows he’s out of his league, out of his element …he’s like a fish out of water …everything is way over his head, and he just doesn’t know how to handle it.

REALITY just bitch slapped the TV Reality Superstar. Let me introduce myself…hope you guess my name!

At a time when the country might forgive him, even just a little, and give him his just due if he only just comes out honest and truthful with the population …his demented mind pushes harder to make people hate him even more!

Trying to intimidate Governors and civic leaders with his quid pro quo’s…you do this for me and we’ll give you what you need. Intimidating everyone into opening the Nation up for business ASAP, to quickly recover the economy so he can get re-elected.

Making the States suffer without supplying the needed equipment or the needed Tests, and only giving them the bare minimum unless they all kiss his big, not so lovely tush.

But, nothing’s worse than the most disgusting thing our Gov’t has ever done to any of the States during a state of emergency. Making States go into a bidding war …in the middle of a pandemic! …for supplies against other States, Foreign Governments, Corporations, and even the U.S. Government, itself?!?!

The States are literally on their own… a Federal Government that says; “I take no responsibility whatsoever”. A Federal Government that says; We won’t lead you, we’ll just back you up.

2 Governors, a Democrat, and a Republican secretly ordered and sent planes to pick-up their desperately needed Medical Supplies from China. Secretly, because they’re both afraid of Trump confiscating it, and taking it to boost their own National Stockpile Supply.

The V.A. bought 5 million masks for Veterans and VA Hospitals across the country. FEMA confiscated it all and took it to boost Trump’s National Stockpile. Meanwhile, people are continuously dying and no one’s getting the needed masks!

The plane trips were secretly kept. But Larry Hogan, the GOP Governor of Maryland, went one up to secure the needed (500,000) Test Kits, and has them secretly stashed away and guarded by the “National Guard” & the “Maryland State Police” so the Feds don’t take them away!

You can’t make up shit like this, folks!

Now, he won’t give sanctuary Cities the emergency funding they desperately need, unless they remove the sanctuary status and permit ICE to round-up “Illegal” Immigrants.

When has any State or anyone ever gone through such cruel extreme measures? When has the American Government ever treated its Citizens with so much disdain and disrespect? And even worse, during such catastrophic times of health & human crisis?

He’s been working on plans to keep everything open since the Virus arrived when advised of the possibility of states and cities closing down.

For 70 days he jerked the Nation around trying to make believe the Virus was a hoax, all to keep his economy from collapsing.

Opening the country up is against his own official White House Policy! Against the advice of the CDC! the advice of Dr. Fauci, Dr. Redfield, Dr. Birx, & Doctors everywhere!

His obsession with irresponsibly pushing a Malaria drug for this Viral infection …against the recommendation of all Medical Professionals. Though it’s not hard to see why he’s pushing it like if he was the star spokesman for the company. Wonder how much money, stock, or what kind of deal Trump/Kushner Inc. has invested in the maker of Hydroxychloroquine …Mylan Pharmaceutical?

Now, he’s gone off his rocker once again…only this time it veers into the extreme far side of the bizarre! His latest push? Injecting yourself with disinfectants, including bleach!

Also, Injecting yourself with a tiny UV light that will miraculously kill the Virus in your bloodstream …I suppose if you believe that crock of horseshit! You only inject yourself with disinfectants if you’re committing suicide …cause that’s what will happen!

And he still considers himself a stable genius?

The next day, he tried to push it back, saying he was just kidding with the press …when a replay of the press conference showed him directing his spiel directly at Dr. Birx.

Nothing has gone right since he was sworn in. The Russians hacking the elections, the Ukraine scandal, all his women scandals, all his daily scandals, all the embarrassments throughout the world, all the fiasco that occurs no matter where he goes or what he does …and naturally, his Impeachment for life!

Now, a massive gigantic screw-up of devastating proportions that might very well end his presidency. Yes, his natural stupidity can be a factor …but this professional Puppet appears to be on the loose & on his own …and that, really is dangerous.

What are his motives?

His top priority …opening up the country and build up the economy at “all cost”, over a deadly Viral infection that can potentially kill in the millions. His priority is the Economy …no matter how many people die. It’s not his concern as he keeps saying; “I am not responsible at all”. Who cares how many people die? …not this President!

Telling people to Free their States and gather in mass which would immediately triple the population of Positive Tests …he keeps misrepresenting the truth. telling people he’s doing a ‘tremendous job’ and while keeping the virus down to only 30,000 deaths, then to 50,000, now that’s he’s doing such a good job, he’s going to contain the virus down to only 100,000 deaths.

A typical Trump trait…brag how stupid he is to the only people who will believe his horseshit. Now, by getting his minions to protest their Constitutional rights of not wearing any protective gear, the real Professionals are talking about the real possibility of hundreds of millions testing positive and millions dying.

He started a Prairie Fire telling his 2nd Amendment followers for an armed uprising over their States …calling for a rebellion against a State Government is sedition, and for the President to suggests people to rebel, that’s “Treason”!

While all along purposely lying, misleading, or delaying all the millions of test kits, which is the Federal Government’s total responsibility of distributing!

Donald Trump doesn’t want any more Test Kits! …he doesn’t want the public to see how many more people are infected! It’s not conducive to his top & only priorities …making money and getting re-elected.

Gloria Steinham once said; “The Truth will set you free, but first, it will piss you off”.

The reason Trump’s having more and more meltdowns during this Pandemic is that he’s continuously pissed off …no one believes his lies anymore …and he knows it.

The Truth hurts when you know and you’re forced to privately admit, you really are a nobody! …when your emotional and delusional bubble of illusions burst and you’re faced with the reality of life.

That’s when Trump realized he really does own the moment…lock, stock, & barrel!

And there’s no way out …he can remain in self-denial, but whether he likes it or not, he’s totally responsible for all the Positive Viral Cases and totally responsible for all the Deaths.

He can’t blame it on anybody this time, though Obama is always his usual target for one thing or another …it’s all happened in the 3 yrs of his Presidency..during his watch!

Hey, Donald! You wanted to be President? You got it! It’s your job, now go out and work for the first time in your life and do it right, or in November …’ you’ will be Fired!

The first Human Coronavirus was discovered in the 1960s …more recently, the 2002–2004 SARS Pandemic outbreak & 2012 MERS Pandemic, raged havoc.

Medical Scientists and Epidemiologists from the US had been closely working together with their Chinese counterparts in China for a long time (till Trump removed them in 2020) They’ve been tracking a new strain until they finally traced it to Wuhan 3 years later.

How bad would this Pandemic have been if a prepared Nation would’ve been notified since 2016?

It happened on his watch …and he knew about it the whole damn time!

He was warned more than a couple dozen times since 2016. First, during the transition period in 2016. the Pandemic policies from the Obama Administration, including supplies and preparedness guidelines were explained and passed on to the Trump Administration. They were told that a new little known strain of Coronavirus, totally different from the last two, was out there …but they haven’t traced it to anywhere, yet!

In 2018 he was warned at least twice, that’s when he fired the White House Pandemic Team. He was warned again over a dozen times in 2019.

1. Why would he fire medical experts on Pandemics with a Global Pandemic outbreak about to explode in the United States?

2. And now that it’s here, and knowing the gravity of the situation …why fire Dr. Rick Bright, the man who was on the development end of the COVID-19 Vaccine, right in his tracks? …while 82,000+ die and over 1.4 Million identified, out of all the unidentified hundreds of millions that are getting Infected daily?

3. Why did he warn Israel of the incoming Pandemic in November of 2019? yet, didn’t warn the American Public till 70 days after he was warned again by the CDC on Jan. 3rd, 2020, confirming the imminent arrival of COVID-19? The CDC officially warned the American public on Jan. 8th, 2020.

4. Why did the Administration’s Health & Human Services turn down an offer on Jan. 22nd…the day after the 1st US Coronavirus case was identified…from Texas’ Prestige Ameritech, the largest surgical face mask producer in the United States…to manufacture 1.7 Million N95 Masks per week?

Why is Donald Trump deliberately doing all of this? Does he really believe his own stable genius BS? Is it all his natural incompetence? This man may be a degenerate psychopathic screaming narcissist …but someone is pulling this puppet’s strings!

When you have a blatant lifelong coward who never takes responsibility for any of his actions, his failures, or his blunders …you’re going to see a lot of Psychological Projection …blame anybody or everybody for everything he ever does. No one in History can psychologically project any better than Bonespurs Donny!

And no one has had more conspiracy theories about everything imaginable in just 3 years, than this faker. His latest blame game? He blames China for developing a man-made Virus in their labs, which has been debunked by our own intelligence agencies, the CDC, WHO, as well as the medical professionals in his Task Force, and experts around the world.

He’s also blaming the World Health Organization for not warning him early enough …I guess 2016, 2018, 2019, & 2020 is not early enough!

All these Red State Governors are more interested in making a fast buck than the health of their constituents…they’re opening up their States to everything, as more and more people start ignoring rules and trying to go back to the old normal. Revolt against authority for the right to” go back to work”.

So far, a few are opening but the smell of spring air, the lure of the heat, and hoping for a nice summer breeze is too fascinating to pass up, causing all these people to congregate in the parks and the beaches, refusing to follow medical advice.

Take all these people, and add the ignorance of NeoNazis & gun-toting Batshit Trumpers…those that Trump calls “very good people”, just like the “Very Fine People” in Charlottesville.

They hear their beloved leader subliminally order them to go and cause havoc by “liberating” Michigan and other States …and off they go with no respect to whom they hurt or infect.

The latest projections on how many will die during the summer, now that Trump is allowing America (against all Medical advice & recommendations) to open up …an estimate of over 3,000 deaths daily through the summer with the infection rate in the hundreds of millions, assured. All for spending a day frolicking on the beach.

And now, when Trump’s beloved MAGA followers get pissed off and angry with cries for help as more and more get sick, and more and more start dying of COVID-19 ...what will he do?

How will Donald, who’s a man with absolutely zero empathy or compassion, an anti-altruistic human being, and a sociopath with a seriously severe “schadenfreude” complex …respond to these people?

You have his minions, those too stupid who’ll still follow him of that cliff, and you have those who’ll refuse to jump, turning on him, and try to stay alive! How will he respond? …how will he answer them without pissing off one side or the other?

When everyone else acts with dignity & respect …expect this fool to be his normal self. Pity his beloved supporters.

But just remember, all you good Trumpers; “I take no responsibility at all”!

So! America, wake up and smell the coffee! Stop living life in self-denial …and face the reality of COVID-19.

1st, STOP LISTENING to Politicos who have absolutely no experience, knowledge, or any idea whatsoever in Medicine to give you advise and updates …especially Trump, with his agenda of lies, misinformation, and misleading statements, all along while pushing a Malaria Drug that hasn’t been proven it works, although it’s proven that it kills. Also, all his Lysol, Clorox, and UV light cockamamie injections!

2nd, START LISTENING to the Medical Professionals and Medical Scientists, who know what they’re doing, people like Rick Bright, Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, and Bob Redfield!

The awful truth about COVID-19: Only 2.95% of our 350 million population has been tested …so, how many more than the current 1.4 million that tested positive are going to be “Positive” too? -

This bug is not going anywhere, anytime soon! It’s not going away for summer vacation, it’s not going to be gone with the wind, it’s not going to be here today and gone tomorrow, it’s not going to just be gone one day as the President tries to convince his base …and it’s not going to magically disappear one day, as Trump says; “It’s going to go away without a vaccine”!

COVID-19 is here to stay! It’s going to be our guest for a year or two, or more …remember, it will not ever be eradicated until a Vaccine is found!

Don’t fight the new normal, just go with the flow …the quicker We, the People use our natural intellect and do things right, the quicker we can get back to the old normal.

So! If you want to stay alive through 2020 and beyond? …Remember, November!