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saudadeonly · 4 years ago

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someone to you

Read on ao3. Part five.

Death Eater!Sirius Black AU

Remus's life is not at its peak right now. It only goes downhill when Sirius Black, former Marauder, current Death Eater, appears in front of him with Earth-shattering news.

Word count: 2938

CW: barest mention of torture and blood

___

October 1981

Remus steps onto the cobbled streets of Hogsmeade just as the clock inside the Hog’s Head strikes noon. Although the sky outside is without a hint of clouds and the wind has rather settled in the past hour, the usually lively village is empty, save for a few daring individuals hurrying by with heads bowed, their hands stuffed into their pockets, likely gripping the wand stashed there. No one dares to go out anymore, not in these times, where one misstep could mean death—or worse.

Remus tilts his head back, letting the sun wash over his battered face, soothing the bruises that have not yet disappeared. He has spent too long in the dark forests where light doesn’t reach even on the sunniest of days, stripped of everything that ties him to his humanity, demoted to a growling, begging animal he has always tried to escape from. Even now, in the light of day, in the warmth of magic, his birthright, his home, his stomach turns with the thought of going back there and the knowledge that he must do so soon.

Always, when Dumbledore says. Always, when he asks. Remus is in his debt, after all. It doesn’t matter what Dumbledore’s orders, his pleas, as he so cleverly put it, bring along, what the secrecy does to already crumbling trust. Remus is expendable on all fronts these days.

The Firewhisky he knocked back catches up with him, floating through his head. It makes him melancholic, when before it made him impulsive, quicker to laugh, easier to get lost in life. But there were a lot of things before. Dwelling on them brings nothing good, Remus has learned that the hard way.

He hopes he will be able to see Lily and James and little Harry before he leaves again. He hasn’t seen them in months, not since before Harry’s birthday. Harry must have grown by now, must have learned some new words, become steadier on his feet. Remus has missed all of it.

He wonders if they’ve had to move again or if they’ve opted for the Fidelius Charm already, finally. If they could even bring themselves to choose. Once, their choice might have been obvious but all certainty seems to be gone nowadays. If Remus allows himself to think of before, he can pinpoint exactly the moment it happened.

Remus shakes his head and opens his eyes. He blinks and then again. He hasn’t drunk that much, has he?

Several metres in front of him is a dog, sitting patiently on his haunches, his eyes pinned right on Remus. His black fur gleams in the sun even as the breeze ruffles it. An omen of death; the saviour of Remus’s youth, the bane of his adulthood.

Remus wonders for a moment if he’s been somehow transported to his past. Or maybe he didn’t stop after the second Firewhisky. Maybe he kept knocking them back and is now fast asleep on the table inside. Aberforth is probably smacking him across the face with that dishrag he can’t have washed for the past half a decade right now. Remus is dreaming. He has to be.

It seems almost plausible for a moment, more so than the scene before him but—the dog is skinny, painfully so, and Padfoot never used to be so thin, not even after the end of the summer, and there’s a scar across his muzzle, just barely noticeable, but not a detail Remus’s mind could have just conjured up.

The dog—Padfoot—stands up, giving him a look far shrewder than a dog should be capable of, still as intimidating as he’s ever been, and trots away, clearly expecting him to follow.

Remus doesn’t know what compels him to move after him. Dutch courage probably, or sheer stupidity, which always has been particularly pronounced in Padfoot’s presence, either in his human form or his dog one.

Padfoot slips into a small alley next to the Hog’s Head, probably heavily warded and silenced beforehand, and shifts in the three smooth steps it takes him to reach the wall at the end.

Some common sense slips into Remus’s head, finally. He pulls out his wand, faster than he thought he could, and points it at the man now standing in front of him—tall, gaunt, with a mess of black hair and pale skin.

Sirius Black regards him with cool grey eyes. His hands are by his sides, not reacting, not reaching for his own wand. “You should at least hear what I have to say before you kill me,” he says softly, mouth curving up slightly. The sunlight can’t reach past the musty walls of the buildings around them and it paints dancing shadows across his face, the face of Remus’s dreams and nightmares, the face Remus still loves and hates more than anyone else’s.

Remus tightens the grip on his wand. “Why should I?” he asks. His throat burns but he can’t convince himself it’s from the Firewhisky. “You wouldn’t offer me the same benefit.”

Sirius blinks, once, slowly. “No,” he says, “I wouldn’t.” A hand moves toward his pocket, but Remus’s warning spell shooting by his forearm makes him stop. “I’m not going to take out my wand,” he snaps, like it’s an unreasonable assumption on Remus’s part. He pulls up his left sleeve to reveal the wand holster underneath. His wand rests in it, bisecting the Dark Mark scorched into his skin directly. Bile rises in Remus’s throat. “See?” He reaches into his pocket with his right hand, keeping his left arm firmly away from himself, and pulls out a packet that looks like it’s certainly seen better days. Cigarettes, Remus realises, as Sirius places one of them in his mouth, using the tip of his finger to light it.

The smell of menthol and tobacco wafts through the air and Remus has a fleeting flash of a rooftop, a star-specked sky above, a smile. You’re going to run yourself into the ground with that.

A flash of teeth around the cigarette, a bark of laughter. Hopefully someone else will do it for me sooner.

Remus shakes the memory away. “What do you want?” he growls. The moon was just a couple days ago; he’s still sore from it and he just wants to go home, not to mention he would rather avoid a murder attempt before lunch. Although, considering he chose to walk into this alley, he has to admit this one is mostly on him.

“You have a spy.” Sirius’s cheeks are hollow as he sucks smoke into his mouth then down into his lungs, more than it should be possible. “Among your—” He waves a hand, long-fingered and elegant, the cigarette hanging loosely from it. “—people.”

“Thank you,” grits out Remus, who most likely the one everyone suspects while they sit around at home and he spends his days being beaten down in an attempt to persuade people to at the very least not fight for the wrong side. “I wasn’t aware.”

“You weren’t?” says Sirius, always Sirius, never Black, not even when Remus hates him more than words can describe. He’s studying the posters along the walls, the ones that are searching for missing people, who are probably long dead or better off missing anyway, and promising awards for the wanted, one of which is currently looking right at them. “Well, someone should have told you.” He tilts his head, a strange reminder of his other form. The smoke curls around him, twining into his hair, curving along the too-sharp arch of his cheekbone. “Huh, I thought I’d be worth more than that.”

You were. You were to us, Remus thinks. Where did you go? Why weren’t we enough?

“What,” he says again, with more of a bite, more of that part that he tries to keep hidden otherwise, “do you want?”

“In a hurry, I see,” Sirius says, turning his eyes back on him; they are slate-coloured, vicious, but for all of his impatience, for all of his intent to hurt, there is no smile on his lips, not even a hint of mocking. “Anyway, Peter’s the spy.”

The world stops. The ground sways, Sirius’s figure blurring, sharpening, approaching. There’s a pain in Remus’s chest and no air in his lungs and he knows it’s not from his recent transformation. It’s not worse than Sirius’s face underneath the Death Eater mask was. Nothing is, has ever been, worse than that.

The ground evens out again. Sirius is closer now, his hand twitching toward him as if wanting to steady him, just as Remus’s vision slides back into one picture. It must be the remnants of his shock. Sirius Black would not reach out for a dark creature like him.

“I don’t believe you,” Remus says hoarsely. His fingers are white on his wand, the only real thing in a world tipped on its axis. He doesn’t believe him, but it makes sense all the same. Peter, crafty Peter, who has always known more than he seems to let on, who is much, much cleverer than anyone ever thinks him to be. He wouldn’t be the obvious choice, but he would be the most probable one. He knew about the McKinnons’ party, the wards surrounding their house; he was one of the few with the knowledge of Fabian and Gideon’s mission, the path they were going to take; he has always been one of the select few entrusted with the secret of the Potters’ location. He is one of the most considered candidates for the Secret Keeper. It all makes a frightening amount of sense. No, no, no. “It’s not possible. He wouldn’t—” He swallows, unable to finish the sentence; he’s told so many lies recently—he doesn’t want to lie to himself as well.

Sirius squashes the butt of his cigarette with the heel of his boot. He reaches into his pocket again, probably to light another one, to laugh at Remus and enjoy in his turmoil. Even if Remus does believe it, he has no proof and no one is likely to take him on his word, not the poor werewolf who has spent more time trudging through the forest in scraps of clothing than watching his best friends’ son grow up. Something Peter could never be accused of.

A fine situation indeed. Maybe Sirius only wanted to antagonise him; maybe that’s why he’s here, telling him this. Remus can think of no other reason.

Something bright arcs through the air and Remus reflexively reaches up to catch it. A small vial rests in his palm, the silvery substance inside swirling, darker than he’s previously seen but he recognises it all the same. A memory, a fragment of someone’s mind.

He looks up at Sirius, who has indeed lit another cigarette. The smoke drifts out of his mouth, then far up, farther than any of them could ever hope to reach. “I believe you’re competent enough to find a Pensieve,” he says.

“I—why?”

Sirius’s eyes are dark, the line of his throat stretching as he leans to the side to blow out the smoke. The pale scar across his cheek, the same one as Padfoot’s, almost blends in with his skin. Remus hates himself for wanting to ask who did it, then track them down and let the wolf destroy. “There are lines.”

Remus raises his eyebrows. “Loyalty?” he asks incredulously. He snorts, wild, raucous laughter bubbling up in his chest. “You’re one to talk.” He tilts his head, looks at Sirius as though he can see through him. He wishes he could and feels the knowledge that he once thought he could cut him like the edge of a blade. “Although you have betrayed one group of allies, I suppose another one is not much more to you.”

“Not loyalty,” Sirius says, lifting his head to look at him, his eyes flashing. “A child’s life, given away in cold blood.”

“You seemed to have no qualms about Edgar Bones’s children.” His stomach turns at the memory of those little bodies, broken, in pools of their own blood. Tortured, maimed to get their father to talk. Not murdered, but butchered. The way Marlene’s family might have been if she hadn’t managed to escape and McGonagall hadn’t been there to pass on the message.

Marlene has only just returned to active duty for the Order, her leg having more complications than the Healers had originally gauged, though there isn’t much to return to. They are defeated on all fronts most of the time, their homes and family the tiniest specks of light that remind them to have hope still. How unfortunate for Remus that he has neither—not anymore, anyway.

“I wasn’t there,” Sirius says. “I didn’t even know.” He sets his jaw, lifts his chin. There he is, the pureblood heir, the fiercest of Voldemort’s soldiers. Oh, how he loathes him. “You have what you need, Remus. This is a debt paid, no more, no less. There will be no other.” Something shifts in him then, Remus can physically see it, his eyes like shards of steel. “Walk away.”

And Remus almost does. He’s already moving to step out of the alley, to Apparate right on James and Lily’s doorstep but a thought stops him. He turns back to Sirius. “They don’t know,” he says, thinking back to the black dog that waited for him in front of the Hog’s Head, with a degree of patience ever so rarely seen to be exercised by him. “About Padfoot.”

Sirius pauses, his hand stopping halfway to his mouth, then shakes his head. Ash drifts to the ground. Maybe it’s a trick of the light but his eyes seem almost sad.

“Why not?”

Sirius takes a deep breath, puffs out the smoke. “That was—ours,” he says. “It’s not theirs to abuse.”

“There were a lot of things that were ours,” Remus says as sharply as he can manage. Elbows in ribs, dog-eared books, James's smile and the smell of tea, the taste of chocolate. The smell of night in the dark corridors, the feel of freedom, of foolish youth. He despises his voice for shaking. “You ruined all of them. Why keep this?”

“I like going to the park sometimes,” Sirius says dryly, “to play fetch with the neighbourhood kids. It would make for an awkward conversation if they saw me.”

“You’re a lousy liar.”

“Quite,” Sirius says with a sardonic incline of his head, the hints of a downturned smile playing on his lips. Then, in an exhale of breath and smoke, “You don’t know me anymore, Remus.”

It hits deeper than Remus likes. He’s done so much to try and forget Sirius but he’s only ever come to the point of hating himself more for not being able to hate him. It’s never made sense, Sirius’s sudden disappearance, his abrupt conversion to Voldemort’s side. They had considered the Imperius curse for some time, then Regulus’s involvement but someone as stubborn and fierce as Sirius would have broken an Imperius a long time ago, not to mention he acts too much like himself to be cursed, and Regulus has been dead for nearly two years. If Sirius ever had any qualms about joining, they seem to be gone now, replaced by stone-cold cruelty and a fierce desire to hurt. Marlene’s nightmares, almost always starring Sirius, according to Dorcas, seem to be proof of that.

The thing about Sirius – Remus has always known, since that first day when Sirius Black stood between him and a group of Slytherins, ready to hex them black and blue, that Sirius has the capacity to be cruel. Sirius might have fooled some people, even James and Peter sometimes, but Remus has always seen the darkness underneath, the uncanny ability to read someone like a book, pinpoint their greatest weaknesses and strike exactly there, a blow that would bring even the greatest to their knees, begging for mercy. It never scared him, not before. Sometimes, when he thought people deserved it, he relished in the way the slope of Sirius’s shoulders would straighten, the way his grin, always a touch mad anyway, would turn into something dark and slick without ever really changing. Remus never told him, never stopped him because most of the time Sirius had a reason to strike, to stab through the chink in the armour and twist the blade, but that was when he looked most like his mother.

He never told him because there was always the kindness underneath, the fierce loyalty, the unapologetic love delivered with a mix of sharp humour and tender words, told like a story in an arm over their shoulders, in soft smiles and sharp elbows, in hesitant fingers over new wounds and old scars, in murmured spells that soothed the pain. Sirius never told them – he only ever showed them.

But now, looking at this man, grown-up from the boy he loved, this shell of a man who could be his friend, who was his friend once, a long time ago, he doesn’t see any kindness at all, not even a shred of decency.

Remus takes a deep breath, swallowing down the lump in his throat. “No. And I don’t want to anymore either,” he tells him and this time, his voice is firm.

He only allows himself a second to watch the words register, to notice how deep they cut. He feels no satisfaction upon it, only bone-deep weariness, only the rest of his heart shattering apart. Then he turns on the spot and thinks of Harry’s green eyes.

#harry potter #sirius black #remus lupin #death eater sirius black #not really #but technically #wolfstar #post hogwarts #first war with voldemort #remus x sirius #(implied)#in a world three degrees north

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ohwereusingourmadeupnames · 4 years ago

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Well, These Are My Wings

Pairing: Peter Parker/Tony Stark (Starker) Rating: Mature (M) Word Count: ~11k Notes: This is my canon divergence au fill for @starkerfestivals‘s summer bingo! I had a lot of fun with this one. And also a lot of trouble. I took some inspiration from @goindownshipping‘s prompt “I sleep with your old shirts and walk through the house in your shoes.” It’s in there somewhere! Warnings: There’s a tiny bit of NSFW stuff in there and lots of angst. Lots of it. Summary:

Peter Parker is devastated when Tony dies - the man he loves is gone and his next steps are nowhere in sight. What happens when things aren't what they seem and a trip to Europe brings about a freedom that Peter didn't know he needed?

Or - Peter mourns Tony's death, then shit gets real.

Read it on AO3 here.

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In hindsight, Peter should have known their last night together was exactly that – their last night.

When Tony pulled him into bed, he wrapped his arms so tightly around Peter that it took his breath away. His fingers touched with a reverence that spoke of wanting to remember the moments exactly as they were. The look in his eye carried so much love in it that it swept Peter off his feet – but Tony seemed to always be doing that. It was too easy, to be carried away in the feelings that Tony made him feel.

Settling down together after Tony pulled several orgasms from him, Peter let his head rest on a still heaving chest. His fingers tangled in the hair surrounding the arc reactor, the bright blue glow of it something Peter came to really appreciate over the last couple of years of being together. The small sigh of contentment he heard above him had Peter shifting, his head tilting up to give Tony his attention. “You’re amazing,” Peter whispered.

Tony lifted his hand and touched his face lightly, the tips of his fingers running over Peter’s exertion flushed cheek bones. The rich bourbon of his eyes was starting to come back now that arousal wasn’t the prominent emotion fueling the man; his gaze was soft and filled with what Peter knew to be Tony’s form of affection. In all of their time together, he never got used to it – the way Tony did most of his talking through his eyes.

“I know,” Tony mumbled back, his lips pressing against Peter’s forehead. “I love you. The last couple of years have been some of the best I’ve gotten to live. Just – so you know.” He stuffed his nose into Peter’s wet curls and took a long breath – the exhale of it shifted his hair, the move making him shiver.

Peter shifted a bit, his chest laying on top of Tony’s. He could feel the hum of energy Tony always carried around – the buzz of it a comfort he now knew he didn’t want to live without. Letting the finger of his right hand run through Tony’s hair, Peter soaked up the moment; Tony wasn’t open about his feelings often, even with Peter, even after countless times of displaying them in all other ways.

Their lips found each other in a kiss before Peter spoke again, a soft smile slipping across his lips. “I love you, too. And I love when you say stuff like that. You fucking sap,” Peter replied, his the fingers in Tony’s hair clenching just tight enough to give the strands a swift tug. “It’s the same for me, Tony. Getting through this without you would have been hell.”

Snuggling back down, Peter found himself starting to drift off, a weirdly satisfied feeling lulling him into some false sense of comfort. They planned to go through with the stone collection the next day – what was coming their way couldn’t have been predicted or even stopped. Yet, when he fell asleep that night, Peter felt the best he ever had; Tony’s hands running up and down his arm and his warmth pressed up against him kept him comforted throughout the rest of the night.

It should’ve been a sign, he realized later – how good the night before actually was. Tony’s body hitting the ground didn’t seem like a possibility and yet, he was launching himself through the air to get to his boyfriend before he fell over completely. Peter gripped his arms and followed him down to the ground, his knees falling on either side of Tony’s thighs.

“Tony, we did it, baby. We did it,” Peter babbled, his hands moving up and down Tony’s arms in an attempt to keep his beautiful eyes open, to see the light there that brought him so much happiness. Watching Tony try to smile, then slowly shut his eyes felt like a straight stab to the gut – a cry left his lips before he could stop it. “Tony, Tony – Tony!”

Peter would’ve stayed crouched over Tony uselessly shaking him if it weren’t for Stephen Strange grabbing him and bodily removing him from his position over the unmoving body. “Stop, kid. You’re killing us,” Stephen said, the tears in his voice evident and just enough to pull Peter out of his grief.

They shared a look, Peter trying his best to suck up all the moisture that was pouring from his face – tears were running down his cheeks on their own accord. “Sorry,” Peter whispered – the tone of his voice broken, even to his own ears. He willed himself not to turn around; if he did, he’d be right back to where he was before, trying to uselessly put life back – desperately hoping to change the reality of the situation.

For a singular moment, Peter wandered what getting his hands on any of the stones that might change fate would be like – to bring back Tony and see what kind of shift it created in the timeline – in the universe. Then, rationality came back to him and he leaned into the hold Stephen still had around him. One by one, the rest of the Avenger’s passed by him with some sort of touch or hug on their way to Tony.

It became too much when Steve put a hand behind his head and pulled him into a tight hug. “So sorry, Pete,” Cap mumbled, his face streaked with dirt and tears, the shield still strapped to his hand in a desperate attempt to keep the broken bone stable. Peter let himself lean into the embrace, then pulled back with a nod – his heart hurt too much, he needed to get the fuck out of there.

Strange must’ve understood the look in his eyes – he created a portal and allowed Peter to walk through it; the gut-wrenching feeling of stepping into the lab he knew like the back of his hand bringing him to his knees when the yellow energy finally floated away. Knowing he didn’t have much time to himself, Peter huddled under Tony’s desk and took long deep breaths, his desperate attempt to pull in the man’s smell not enough to stop the tears from flowing down his cheeks.

By the time the rest of the crew started to trickle back to the compound, Peter melted down twice and let himself howl with pain each time.

He cried profusely under Tony’s desk and then calmed down enough to get to their shared bedroom – the tears only staying at bay just long enough for him to step out of the suit and the ruined clothes beneath it. Settling into Tony’s side of the bed, Peter wrapped the sheets around himself and let his emotions roll over him again. The usual catharsis that crying gave him just made the pain worse, so he simply laid there, his mind floating away for a little while

A knock on the door pulled him away from the misery, Peter rolled out of the sheets surrounding him and slipped into some of the clothes he had lying on the floor. Wanda was there, staring at him with rich tears in her eyes. “Happy’s here, taking care of everything. I’m – so sorry, Peter.” She pulled him into a hug before letting Peter see the tears that weren’t going to do anything but fall. Wanda kept him wrapped up tight, her friend’s chest heaving against her.

The next few days felt like floating – between helping Happy put things together and dealing with everyone who wanted to tell them how sorry they were, Peter didn’t remember much. It was too hard stay focused on any one task with so much going on, so he let the busyness take him over. Maybe, if he didn’t think too much about it, the truth of the matter didn’t have to really be a thing. Denial was the first step of the grieving process and he planned to stay within it for as long as he could.

What they planned for Tony’s funeral was simple – the first arc reactor that sat prominently on display in their room at the compound lay in a tangle of dogwood branches. It seemed fitting that Happy implored him to cut the power and lay it black amongst the arrangement. Selfishly, Peter was grateful that Happy kept the headstone he had put up on the downlow – he wasn’t ready to share his lover with anyone else, yet.

Watching the last remnants of Tony float away finally pulled the veil of denial away from his eyes. It all happened so fast, he hadn’t even been able to see Tony’s body – it was gutting to see something so important to him meandering away, further and further as the seconds passed. Peter stood firmly at the edge of the lake until he couldn’t see the floating bob anymore – Happy was the only one that remained, the man giving him silent support.

He felt a warm arm wrap around his shoulders, the person he’d come to rely on in the last couple of weeks pulling him in close. “He was proud of you, Peter. And he loved you,” Happy said softly, his fingers digging into Peter’s shoulder lightly. “Go for a visit later. It’ll make you feel better.”

Peter leaned into the warmth of Happy’s side and nodded his head – what he said were all things that he already knew; Tony went out of his way to make him feel so cherished and understood. Affirmation was nice, though – there was no denying that. His arm wrapped around the wide waist and let Happy lead him into the house where they put together a small spread for the big group of people that came to remember the greatest man on Earth.

It took everything in him to stick around and hear story after story of Tony and the many things the man did throughout the years. He missed him so desperately that even the tales of the earlier days when Tony lived recklessly didn’t get him excited like they usually did; each one simply made him miss the man more. The hearty chuckle of the people around him was the only thing that kept him in it – despite the heartache, he knew that Tony was loved and cherished for the many amazing things about him.

Managing to sneak away, Peter wrapped his web shooters around his wrists and took off – he knew that Happy would deal with the rest of the group for the remainder of the night. For the first time all day, Peter felt a sense of freedom he only got while being in the air – or being with Tony, but that was few and far between now. He let himself swing and rest for a while, eager to be anywhere expectations and pitying faces weren’t.

By the time Peter landed in the private graveyard Happy procured for Tony’s resting place, Peter’s hair was wind blow and his heart felt the slightest bit lighter. Just being in a place that he knew Tony was made him feel better. Sitting down right in front of the headstone – Anthony Edward Stark, World’s Greatest Hero – Peter let his fingers dig into the grass, nails pressing into the dirt in hopes of getting some into the nail beds. His eyes were burning staring at the shiny piece of black marble that didn’t do the man whose name was etched on it justice – nothing ever would.

“Hey Tones – “ Peter started, his inability to keep the words in saving him from the embarrassing feeling of talking to someone that wasn’t there. “Every person you ever fought with showed up today – and I mean everyone. You’re so loved, baby. It’s crazy to think about all of the things you did in life, all the people that you saved. I’m proud – to have known you and have fought by your side. I just wish – I wish that it didn’t have to end this way. With you gone when the world is finally ready to be lived in.”

A dirty finger wiped at the streaming tears on his cheeks, a smudge of the soil resting on his skin. It didn’t register, nothing did – nothing other than the desperate need to have Tony’s arms around him. “I miss you, Tony. It’s ridiculous, the things that make me crave you. The towel warmer in the bathroom, your coffee mug that’s still sitting on your bedside table – all of it’s like this subtle reminder of the pieces I loved so much about your neurotic personality.” By that point, his words were muddled with tears, each one of them getting harder for even him to decipher.

Peter forced himself to take a few deep breaths – Tony wouldn’t want him to fall apart. If he was there, his fingers would be running through the length of his hair, pulling at the ends the way Peter liked. The thoughts were calming and allowed him to regain a bit of control. “I don’t really know what I’m going to do without you. Your smell is still lingering in our bed, but one day it isn’t going to be there, and I can’t imagine what that’s going to be like.”

Scooting a little closer, Peter reached out and let his fingers trace the letters on the headstone, each one of them new, the etching still smooth and perfect. That same hand came up and pressed against his eyes in a feeble shot at keeping the never-ending river of tears from continuing their flow. Not able to talk anymore, Peter dropped down until he could press his cheek against the smooth stone, his arms wrapping around the width of it. Letting his forehead rest there, Peter melted into his grief.

----

For the first few weeks after Tony’s memorial, Peter went out of his way to try and actually be okay – especially in front of the rest of the crew. He felt all of their eyes on him constantly, like they were waiting for him to break apart. And he wanted to – more than anything, he wanted to sit on his ass and cry his eyes out. Every second felt like pain without Tony there.

Because, now that he was gone, Peter noticed just how much Tony contributed to his daily life and general existence. He found himself turning to tell Tony something without thinking, or looking for him in the room when first walking in. The disappointment of remembering that he would never respond or be there waiting with a smile on his face shook him to the core every time. And despite knowing that it would hurt, Peter did it anyway – he couldn’t help it, even. For so many years, Tony played a big part of every aspect of his life.

So, he plastered on a smile and let people think he was coping. While the wandering eyes were on him during trainings and patrols, Peter mastered the art of pretending. When Wanda came knocking on the door to his room every evening for a couple of hours of tv, Peter laughed and played along with the unique rhythm they built between them. She watched him the closest and in his weakest moments, Peter thought about breaking down in her company. Yet, he didn’t – it seemed like too much to dump upon another person. Once the floodgates opened, there wouldn’t be any shutting them.

No one deserved to deal with that type of baggage.

Instead, Peter waited until his nightly pilgrimage to Tony’s headstone. For the couple of hours he spent sitting on his knees in front of the slowly aging last reminder of the man he loved, Peter actually felt. He told Tony all about his day, about how he hated himself for keeping it all inside and how much he equally hated the people around him for constantly making him feel like he needed to. Peter felt normal in the small chunk of time, despite the fact that he was talking to someone that wasn’t even there.

And that worked for a while – pretending and going through the daily shit like nothing really changed. So much of his entire existence changed, though; Peter found evidence of that with every single second he lived without Tony’s presence. The final realization of that hit about 3 months into the whole mourning process when the bed finally stopped smelling like Tony’s cologne.

Steve found him in hysterics over the sheets on the bed, Peter’s eyes completely blow out from all of the feelings and emotions he kept within himself. He was rocking back and forth, Tony’s pillow in his hand – “it doesn’t smell like him anymore” said on repeat. In that moment, Peter Parker, the strong, intelligent, level-headed young man didn’t exist. All that remained was the desperate feeling of not knowing how life could possibly continue without the comfort of spice and engine oil.

From what he was told, it took several hours to pull him out of the grief fueled episode. It was like blinking awake when he finally came to – his eyes felt puffy and raw, but the memory of anything other than the smell-less pillow did not exist. Everyone was crowded around him, even Clint who went back to stay with his family weeks ago. Like usual, all eyes were on him – though this time, he knew they saw right through him.

In a lot of ways, completely falling apart in front of the rest of the Avenger’s was exactly what needed to happen. Peter came to the realization that his coping strategy was not working. Steve, in the panic that was later described to him by MJ, called his friends and brought them over to the tower. MJ never approved of his relationship with Tony, but she knew how much the man meant to him. Armed with Legos and dry humor, she and Ned spent the next two days nursing Peter back to some semblance of health.

It took a while to move passed everything with some of the others. Steve seemed to be the most traumatized and treated him like something that could easily break. When he was sat out of his 3rd patrol, Peter let the emotion explode from him – his fingers tingling as he spoke. “I’m getting pretty tired of you treating me like I can’t handle this!” Peter exclaimed, his mask in hand. Truthfully, he felt better – the best he could, given the situation.

“Are you sure you can? The image of you so out of your mind with sadness is stuck in my head, Pete – I’m going to need a minute to make sure I’m not putting you and the rest of us in jeopardy.” Steve didn’t even think before he replied, his voice hardening with every word.

The realization that Peter couldn’t deny anything that came out of Steve’s mouth had him tossing his hands in the air, the slightest look of surrender on his face. He turned quickly, walking from the big debriefing room feeling more defeated than ever before. Letting out a quick breath, Peter decided to stay in the suit and head out to see Tony.

Swinging across the city gave him a sort of peace – if he could spend all of his time in the air, moving from one place to another across the city, he would. Especially now – when nothing down where his feet touched made any sort of sense. Not being Spider-Man, not being Peter Parker – nothing.

Peter landed in the well-kept garden that surrounded the headstone – a gratefulness for Happy settled in his gut every time he looked around to see the beauty that continued to surround Tony’s resting place. His fingers ran over the small set of lilies that were in bloom; they were his favorite, their elegant beauty noticeable in all stages of the flower’s opening process. A small smile slipped across his lips as he hit his knees, his spot in the grass apparent after so much time spent there.

“Today has been a rough one, Tony,” Peter started, his hand digging into the grass below him. “Cap has no faith in me now and he’s not far off. I have no faith in me. I just – I can’t get you out of my head. If I blink for too long, I start to think that I won’t remember what you look like, or how your voice sounds.” He sucked in a breath and looked away for a second, his eyes watering. He didn’t like to cry in front of Tony – his lover still wouldn’t want that.

“I’ve started going through your things. Just to see if I could learn something new about you. Something that, in the endless conversations we had together, you didn’t tell me. I get stuck, though – every time I walk into your closet, it’s like you’re there. Everything smells like you and beside the entirety of you, the comfort of that spicy scent is something I miss so fucking much.”

The urge to pull the grass from the ground came, as it always did, the further into his emotions he got. “Sometimes – I sleep with your old shirts and walk through the house in your shoes. I always think, maybe I’ll get that closeness back. It works sometimes. That stupid shirt with the cat on it always makes me smile, at least.”

All of the sudden, Peter heard a shuffle over by the other side of the fence. He looked up and spent a few minutes tuning into the sounds around him, though – there seemed to be nothing there. Sucking in a couple of deep breaths, Peter forced himself to focus. His grief was tangible, it could manifest in lots of different ways, including paranoia.

Shifting a little, Peter scooted closer to the headstone, his back resting against it. “I think I need to take some time away from everybody. Ned and MJ are heading to Europe for a couple of weeks and I think I’m going to go. It’s running away, I know that. I can just picture you looking at me with that quirk in your eyebrow, but it’s what needs to happen. I can’t fight crime if I can’t even trust myself.”

Much like Cap’s words from earlier, Peter knew the truth in what he just said. In a lot of ways, he didn’t even want to spend any more time fighting crime after all the traumatic bull shit he went through over the last few years. It was a selfless thing, and, in that moment, he didn’t feel selfless at all – Peter was so caught up in everything he didn’t want to feel, and that seemed like the most selfish thing he could possibly do.

Peter let himself soak up the little bit of comfort being there with Tony gave him for a few more minutes – he tried not to spend too much time there these days; it was all a part of the balance thing everyone was trying to get him to see. When he did stand up, Peter spent another few minutes with his hand resting against the smoothness of the headstone before turning to walk away.

Yet, he didn’t get more than a few steps before a familiar scent hit his nostrils. He would recognize Tony’s spicy cologne anywhere. On alert now, Peter pulled on his mask and took another couple of steps closer to the one door that acted as in and out of the little resting place. Thinking back to the shuffle he heard earlier, Peter tapped into KAREN. “Hey KAREN, can you set web-shooters to the original setting. I don’t know what I’m dealing with here,” he said, flexing his neck back and forth in preparation of the inevitable attack that was coming his way.

He wasn’t prepared for what he was met with, however. Hearing another shuffle, Peter shot a web towards the door and whipped it open, the entire thing coming off its hinges with the force. A startled noise had him taking a couple of long strides to pass through the opening he created in hopes of catching whoever made the noise. Instead of the alien hoping to seek revenge like he thought it might be, Peter took in the graying chestnut hair and goatee he spent hours getting familiar with.

Quickly afraid for his sanity, Peter shot a web at the manifestation of the man he loved, his eyes under the mask widening when it stuck – he assumed It would keep running until gravity pulled the blast down. Sucking in a breath, Peter tore off his mask in a desperate attempt to make sure he was actually seeing what was in front of him. With the leverage he still had from the web in his free hand, Peter tugged until the man he’d been mourning over was within inches of him.

What in the actual fuck? Panicking, Peter pulled him in tightly against his chest – if he could feel him, maybe he actually was real. Touching the thickness of his shoulders and feeling the steady thrum of the blood beneath his veins, Peter pulled back, tears running from his eyes – face filled with apprehension.

“Tony?”

“How the fuck is this real?” Peter asked after a moment. When questioned, Tony nodded at him, the older man’s fingers reaching out to press against the skin of Peter’s cheeks. He hadn’t spoken yet, but a part of Peter was sure that was because he finally went crazy and this was how he pictured Tony – how his fucked-up brain decided to torture him some more. “I’ve finally gone crazy, haven’t I?” Saying the words out loud made them seem even more real. He felt like he was slowly slipping towards madness, anyway.

“Pete, no – you aren’t going crazy. I’m really here. It’s me,” Tony replied, his hands now fully ensconced in the depths of Peter’s hair. It was much longer than the last time his lover saw it – he didn’t have it in him to even think about doing anything with it, including getting it cut. He could tell that Tony liked it; his fingers were tight in the way they clenched at the longer locks.

“But you – you died. I watched you. I saw the light go out of your eyes. H-how?” He was trembling at that point, his entire system completely overrun by adrenaline and confusion – each second that passed felt even more like a dream.

Tony used the grip in his hair to get Peter to look at him, the move one that felt so fucking familiar – if it was a hallucination, his brain reproduced the older man almost perfectly. Keeping his eyes closed until prompted to open them, Peter did his best to soak up the touch, even if it wasn’t real – he wasn’t about to pass up something that felt so right.

“Look at me, Pete,” Tony practically commanded, his voice rich and deep, the tone very much familiar, too. “There’s something a lot bigger than Thanos going on. I needed everyone to believe that I was dead – that the reins to Stark Industries were sitting in the hands of someone who didn’t have a legitimate claim to them.” Tony looked at him seriously, that gleam in his eyes one Peter remembered seeing time and time again throughout their adventures together. “I’m here, Pete. I promise you.”

Not needing anything else but that, Peter tucked into Tony’s warmth. His face buried into the side of Tony’s neck – Peter took a long draw and let the unique comfort of Tony settle into his chest. Tears started to fall before he knew what was happening, he could feel Tony’s hands running up and down his back, but it all seemed so surreal – too much to handle after everything he dealt with since that day on the battlefield.

So, he cried and let himself be held by the man he genuinely felt like he would never see again – that he could have sworn he lost forever.

----

Getting from Tony’s headstone to the comfort of a deserted Stark Tower didn’t even register. Peter felt himself get stuffed into a car and immediately pulled back against Tony’s chest – the latter the only thing he was interested in at the time being. It took a bit of prying to get him out of the car and into the service elevator, but Peter eventually got his legs to work and followed behind Tony silently.

He figured speaking or doing anything other than what he was told would break the spell and send him back to the cold sheets of his bed in the complex – Peter couldn’t handle that, so he followed along, his lips pressed tightly together. They rode the elevator all the way up to the penthouse and walked out into the eerily empty room. The last time he stood in this foyer, a grand piano was tucked up against the opposite wall and the room was cast in light that made everything shine.

The shade came away from his face when they walked a little further into the apartment to find Happy standing there, his hands in his pocket and a nervous expression on his face. In an instant, Peter felt like flinging himself across the room and taking Happy to the ground. Through all the struggling and sadness, Happy knew about the fact that Tony was alive? How did he let Peter suffer after all the times he told Happy about the depth of pain that he felt?

It took everything in him to stay where he was, all the way across the room from the person he quickly came to rely on the way a son would a father. A flash of hurt rushed through him – his entire life for the last couple of months was a complete lie; one that Happy obviously knew about.

“You knew? Happy, how could you? I told you I felt like dying, like the pain was slowly taking me under. Didn’t it kill you? Keeping this from me when you knew?” Peter asked the questions, despite knowing the answers. If Happy kept shit quiet, it came as a direct order from Tony himself – there had to be a reason for it all. Even knowing that, Peter felt like his guts were being ripped out of his body – betrayal was still the name of the game, in the end.

Happy didn’t bat an eye – the man was damn good at his job and this very instance showed it. “I had orders. I followed them. It wasn’t anything personal, kid. I’m sorry I hurt you.” Happy removed his hands from his pockets and reached out as if he were going to close the distance between them; but he didn’t. He crossed his arms across his chest, instead – his defensive stance obvious now that Peter knew the man a little better.

“It needed to be done, Pete. I told him to do it. After using the stones to finish off Thanos, I knew I’d be in bad shape – it was important that only a couple of people knew what was going on. Happy came through and collected my body – took me to where Stephen Strange set up a temporary hospital and nursed me back to health. They did a number on me,” Tony muttered, his hand running up the scar tissue Peter could now see on the side of Tony’s face.

“After Titan, Stephen came to me with the solution to our problem. When he first told me about it, I had no idea who or what he was talking about. And then he mentioned the name Quentin Beck, and it all seemed to fit. Though he was a failed special effects guy in Hollywood, he’s taken his talents more broadscale. Like working with Thanos to orchestrate a very specific way to take out some of the world’s population. Ruling over the world is the best way for its people to see him,” Tony finished, his eyes a little wild.

Peter took a few seconds to process the words coming from Tony’s mouth – it wouldn’t be all that far-fetched, someone else contributing to Thanos’s plan. At the same time, he couldn’t ever remember hearing the name Quentin Beck mentioned in any of the briefings over the past couple of months.

As if reading his mind, Tony answered his question. “You would have been briefed about a Mysterio. He has slowly been causing small scale havoc across the pond. Your trip to Europe with Ned and MJ is key to this entire plan, Pete. EDITH, the glasses I left you – they came to you for a reason.” Taking the couple steps between them, Tony stopped right before they were touching. Peter could barely feel the rise and fall of his chest. “I need you, Pete. We can finally save the world.”

For the next couple of hours, Peter listened to Tony talk about Quentin Beck and the intricate plan that Strange saw – how he needed to trick Peter into giving him EDITH to have access to all of the technology engaged by all of the Stark systems. The further the story unfolded, he more Peter could see the actuality of it – a lot of the pieces seemed to fit the exact details of the trip clearly planned by an entity outside of Peter himself.

After it all, Peter turned to Tony, a curious look on his face. “Why now? Why did you decide to reveal yourself now? When there’s still so much that needs to be done?” Peter couldn’t help the little bit of hurt that couldn’t be disguised in his voice. Despite his happiness to see Tony, his very soul ached. Both from the joy of being complete again and the sadness that was still consuming him. Losing Tony was the worst thing to happen to him – that pain was 100% real, and insanely hard to ditch.

“I couldn’t stand to see you like this anymore, Pete. I wanted to let you in on everything, but Strange said you mourning me was necessary – the best way to sell my death as a reality.” He tucked his chin against his chest, the dark brown of his eyes stormy and unreadable. “I hacked into FRIDAY’s footage from where I’ve been staying and it’s been grueling, to say the least.”

Peter perked up at that, a laugh falling from his lips. “Grueling for you? Imagine living with the fact that the man you love is dead. You’ve been watching me shout for you on a nightly basis. That’s – it’s gross, Tony. Morbid. I’m so fucking mad at you,” Peter hissed at him, his eyes dripping with tears. “And I’m really fucking happy you’re here. I can’t decide what is going to win out right now.”

Tony pulled him into his arms then, their chests bumping. It didn’t matter that Happy was standing less than 20 feet away, Peter tilted his head and let his lips press against Tony’s – the first caress of his soft skin like a dream he’d been dreaming for the past few weeks. Whatever was happening, Peter could not deny that it felt good to be in Tony’s arms again. Even if, in the end, this all turned out to be total bull shit – it felt so goddamn good.

And it didn’t stop feeling good, not until the obnoxious clearing of a throat tore them apart – Happy was trying not to look at them, his cheeks a little flushed. “The rest of that can probably wait. We’ve got some plans to make.”

Unable to go back to the compound with him, Peter was forced to say goodbye to Tony until he got to his hotel in Europe in a few days. The only means of communication Tony could promise him was a few text messages through the StarkPhone he slipped into Peter’s hand before he forced himself to swing away. Halfway through his adventure across the city, Peter felt the phone buzz against his hip where he tucked it into his suit. A soft smile slipped across his lips and let the small bit of happiness get him back quicker than usual.

The place was still empty when he walked in – a small miracle after the last few hours of going from one extreme of emotion to the other. It still felt a little surreal, the fact that he held Tony in his arms and felt the thrumming life against his chest and under his very own fingertips. When he got to his room and started to get ready for bed, Peter felt a little apprehensive about going to sleep. What if it really was a dream and he woke up to a Tony-less world again?

His body didn’t let him decide, in the end. The pull of sleep was too great for his already overextended muscles and tissues. His head hit the pillow and the rest of the night was history. Dreams that usually haunted him stayed away – for the first time in a while, Peter got to sleep through the entirety of the night.

Upon waking up the next morning, Peter immediately rummaged for the phone he put under his pillow the night before. His fingers wrapped around it, the smoothness of the device reassuring against his skin. Letting out a relieved breath, Peter pulled it to his chest. At least he hadn’t dreamed it all up. A fact that made itself apparent when the phone vibrated in his grip. No matter what happened, the phone in his hand was a lifeline – a small piece of reassurance that Tony was alive.

----

The days leading up to his trip were filled with avoidance of the others around the compound, making plans with Tony on the phone he sneakily used whenever he could, and coordinating with Ned and MJ. May volunteered to drop them off at the airport, so Happy was driving him into Queens to make sure she didn’t have to go out of her way.

It was the first time the two of them were alone since Tony revealed himself – Peter could literally cut the tension with a knife. A part of him wanted Happy to suffer the way he was. Peter saw the way his eyes flashed to him every so often, the looks he sent him more than a little obvious. Despite that, the last couple of days of going over plan after plan made him realize just how important Tony staying hidden actually was. Quentin Beck posed a threat to Tony directly and having the upper hand in a situation like that was the only advantage.

Before he knew it, Peter was hugging May goodbye and getting on a plane with his two best friends, both of which were very excited to be given practical freedom in a couple different cities in England and France. It was the first big adventure for the two of them, so Peter couldn’t blame them. He even wanted to join them in excitement, but he couldn’t – not when an incredible weight sat on his shoulders. Getting Tony back for good was all he wanted; Peter would do anything to make sure that happened.

Just like Tony said, Peter was given a private show of Mysterio’s work. Without Tony’s influence, Peter would have totally fallen for the illusion created. Instead, he walked into the interaction with eyes wide open – the offer of himself as an assistant was a good way to keep track of his whereabouts. It gave him incredible anxiety to be anywhere near the person responsible for so much death and destruction – but sometimes saving the world and the person he loved called for stomaching his distaste and getting the job done as efficiently as he could.

Which, the longer he spent in London, seemed to be getting harder to do by the second. Since he signed up for the trip through the school, it was imperative that he made an appearance at all the planned activities. On top of that, he was working hard to keep his secret identity exactly that – secret. Other than Ned and MJ, who knew because it became mandatory to tell them, no one else at school had an inkling about his escapades as Spider-Man – and he wanted to keep it that way.

The other thing holding him back was Tony himself. For whatever reason, the man still didn’t want to tell him the entirety of the plan – he told him little bits of information that put him exactly where he needed to be, but never why he was there or how things were contributing to Beck’s ultimate defeat. Since the man couldn’t go out and about himself, he sent Peter, with the help of EDITH, around the city to scope things out and keep track of Beck’s movements outside of the meetings they were having.

It felt a little infuriating, being kept in the dark – Peter understood that Tony had a reason for it, but it didn’t make the job any easier. Every time he met with Beck, he seemed to talk about Tony like he knew him – like maybe they had an exchange in the past, or something. It was never anything good coming out of his mouth, either. In those moments, Peter found it hard to not immediately jump in and defend Tony. There were a lot of things he didn’t know about Tony Stark, many of them things he didn’t even want to.

Between hunting down a villain pretending to be a superhero, keeping up with his friends and those expectations, and spending as much time as he could with Tony – Peter felt a little run down. At the end of the very first week there, Peter got a message on the phone he used to communicate with Tony, telling him to take the elevator to the 20th floor and meet Happy at the end of the hall – standard operating procedure for them since getting to the hotel.

He shot Happy a smile when he met him at the door, the man returning the look with a little more gusto than usual. When they got to the door, Happy opened it without going through like he usually did. “I’m grabbing dinner. He’s in there waiting for you,” Happy told him, the stone-cold look on his face dropping a little, an almost grin slipping across his lips. “I’ll be gone a couple of hours.”

Taking that for what it was, Peter stepped into the room, a roll of apprehension in his gut. Throughout all the planning and talking about next steps, Peter and Tony didn’t spend much time doing anything else. It felt nice to finally be able to touch Tony whenever he wanted again, there was no denying that. The kisses they shared felt like a luxury – each press of Tony’s lips against his own one more than he ever thought he would ever get again. The thought of being physical made it feel kind of like coming together for the first time all over again.

Tony met him in the front room of the suite he was sharing with Happy, the tv on and tuned into a soccer match – the sport one of the only things on throughout the day. The volume wasn’t on, though; the game a totally different experience without the excitement of the announcers as the ant-sized players passed the ball from one side of the field to another. Peter felt his eyes moving across the screen, the view a willing distraction.

Hands were on his cheeks before he knew it, Tony’s grip turning his head until their eyes were meeting – their gaze locking for what felt like a millennium. “No pressure from me today, Pete. I just wanted to see you,” Tony whispered, his lips barely running across Peter’s. “You look good.”

Peter closed his eyes, a laugh bubbling up from his gut and out into the air as a shaky huff of air. Leaning forward, he searched around until he felt the cupid bow of Tony’s lip, his head tilting naturally to create a good angle and press in for an actual kiss. Tony’s hands stayed right where they were on his face, the man’s long fingers moving restlessly along the soft skin of Peter’s cheeks.

His own arms wrapped tightly around Tony’s waist and narrowed the space between them down to nothing. Thrusting his hips forward, Peter moaned at the feeling of an answering erection against his own. Though it hadn’t been a thought in his head up until that very moment, Peter was suddenly desperate to feel the press of his skin against Tony’s – the bareness of physical connection between them.

There was no hesitation in the way he used his superior strength to grip under Tony’s thighs and heft him up until the older man caught his drift and wrapped long legs around Peter’s waist. He was familiar enough with the room to know that 15 paces and a slight right turn would get him straight through the door of the master bedroom in the suite. Peter didn’t stop until he was between Tony’s splayed thighs, the two of them tangled together in the middle of the large mattress.

Lust consumed him – every inch of his body completely overtaken by the idea of finally getting the ultimate connection with Tony back. It wasn’t often that he felt like holding Tony down and fucking him in a way that made sure he knew exactly who he belonged to – but now was one of those times where he felt unexplainably desperate for it.

Impatient hands tore at the clothes on Tony’s body – the fabric of the soft shirt tearing under Peter’s careless grip. A sound of triumph left his mouth when the man’s chest was finally on display – the glow of the arc reactor a subtle reminder of the fact that Tony was alive – that in a few short minutes, Peter would be able to feel that life from the inside out. Shaking his head of the thought, Peter made quick work of his own clothes, the call of flesh on flesh too great to ignore any longer.

Finally disrobed and completely ready for whatever was next, Peter settled himself on the bed with his head between Tony’s legs, his hand wrapped around the rock-hard length there. Ducking his head, Peter poked his tongue out, the tip of it dragging down the seam of Tony’s balls, his hand moving rhythmically in contrast. His own hips were pressing and dragging against the high thread count sheets – a sticky glob of precum apparent in the wetness he kept pressing into.

Teasing both Tony and himself, Peter kept up the steady pumping of his hand while his tongue trailed a little further down, across Tony’s taint first, then stopping at the junction of pert ass cheeks that Peter knew fit so perfectly in his hands. Brushing his nose across Tony’s crack, Peter took a deep breath, his fingers squeezing the length in his hands once more before letting go completely. With both hands now free, Peter easily used them to part Tony’s cheeks, the access to the honey spot like finally getting to the front of the line of Space Mountain – exciting and adrenaline filled; anticipation increasing with every second.

His tongue went to work, first circling around Tony’s rim to pull that initial flutter from the muscle, then pressing in with a little more force the more Peter could feel him relax. Little by little, Peter gained access to the tight channel he couldn’t wait to be wrapped in, almost half of his tongue sunk into Tony’s hole by the time fingers were pulling his long curls. “It’s been so long, Pete. I need you,” Tony said the words clearly, his tone lust addled, but the intention of them incredibly clear.

Peter slipped 2 of his own fingers into his mouth, his salivary glands more than happy to produce spit galore in his highly aroused state. He let them pass back and forth between his lips before pulling them out, the sopping digits pressing at the tight ring of Tony’s hole. Without any preamble, Peter pressed forward and breached the muscle with both fingers.

Both fingers were readily welcomed by the tight heat, the length of them being sucked in until the tips were pressing against the spongy organ that brought a long moan from the depth of Tony’s chest. Pulling out slightly, Peter scissored his fingers, dragging them backward until the middle knuckle of both digits were caught on the rim, giving it a good stretch. He did that a few more times before deeming the squirming man more than ready.

Unable to force himself out of bed in the hunt for lube, Peter collected the moisture in his mouth and spat into his hand, the warmth of his spit making his cock leap into the tight circle of his hand. “I love you, Tony. I can’t wait to feel you like this again. Thought I never would,” Peter babbled, his brain completely taken over by the hazy lust that ripped through him. The filter on his immediate thoughts was no longer in place.

With a tight grip at the base of his dick, Peter lined himself up and pressed forward until his hand was the only thing between his hips and Tony’s ass. Giving himself a hard clench for a moment to get things under control, Peter pulled his hand away and bottomed out – his eyes shutting against the pleasure. Tony wrapped his legs high on Peter’s chest, the man using the momentum the move gave him to pull Peter down. He settled on his forearms and rolled his hips.

“You feel amazing,” Peter managed to get out around a gasp, his breath hitching slightly. “I forgot how much like home this is – the connection between my body and yours. I can feel your heartbeat everywhere. It’s all I want, Tony. You alive. You here with me.” In his senseless confessing, Peter found himself thrusting back and forth, his hips on the same path of desperation the rest of him was.

“I’m here, Pete. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here,” Tony mumbled, his arms and hole wrapping Peter up, the embrace tugging him under the imaginary barrier he put up between them since the day Tony came back in the picture. In a world where good things didn’t last, Peter didn’t want to put his guard down and let himself fully believe that he got this chance with Tony. The cruelest joke would be the tug of this happiness away once again.

Yet, Tony in his arms the way he was felt too real – the shudder and clench of Tony’s muscles where they were pressed against him tangible; more real than anything Quentin showed him over the past few days, more real than the days without him certainly were.

The length of time between their last encounter and all of the apprehension brought Peter to the edge long before he wanted. He could tell that Tony was right there with him, however – the fluttering clench and increasingly loud moans falling from kiss swollen lips were telling enough. Dropping down until he could get his arms under Tony’s shoulder, Peter broke the space between them into nothing – every drag of his hips forward and back rubbed against the leaky length butted against his stomach. Tony’s precum on his flush skin was the final straw.

“Oh god, Tony – “ Peter cried out, his face burying into Tony’s neck, teeth digging into the skin there, cock throbbing with desperate pulses of cum.

Tony’s legs tightening around him pulled him even closer, his release splashing between them a second later. The long drawn out ‘fuck’ Peter heard through the haze dragged another throb from his own cock, a groan leaving his lips as oversensitivity sunk in – the delightful feeling of every touch against his body being too much edging its way in.

Muscled arms wrapped around him tightly, Tony obviously trying to keep him there. As if he had the actual energy to move, anyway. Peter kept his face tucked into Tony’s sweaty skin, no part of him ready to look up and see the deep look of love he knew would be there. He was barely keeping himself together in that moment, already – one look at those glassy eyes and all the control he wanted to say he had would be completely out the window.

Reading the room, Tony kept Peter tucked against him, both men trying their best to catch their breath through the rush of emotions that something as passionate as the way they just came together could bring to the forefront. Without any control over them, Peter felt tears starting to stream from his eyes – he should’ve been embarrassed, crying while still balls deep in the man he just shared his body with.

Peter missed the way Tony held him so tenderly and the soft hitch in his chest when Peter’s lack of control brought it out of him, too. Turning his head, Tony pressed his lips to the bits of Peter’s skin he could reach – the touch grounding just as much as it was comforting. It took him a while to get the tears to stop, the hypnotic way Tony was shushing him the only thing he could focus on.

The feeling of slipping out of Tony had Peter looking up, his red-rimmed eyes locking onto murky brown ones. Soft palms cupped his cheeks – the most genuine grin slipping across Tony’s cheeks as they looked at each other. “I love you,” Tony muttered, thumbs running across the edge of Peter’s lips in the softest ghost of a touch.

----

Tony leaving out a bunch of details about the entire thing with Beck made a lot of sense – Quentin started to talk about the small stint he had at Stark Industries, how he was never seen the way he truly should be – how, after all of the things Tony did to save the world, that one interaction almost 20 years ago shaped the fate of the rest of the world. In a lot of ways, Peter wasn’t even shocked to hear the things he did. The Tony Stark he got to walk back into the arms of was not the one that existed all those years ago.

The disdain in which Beck talked about Tony made it incredibly apparent that every painful thing his lover did in the process of taking this man down was justified – and absolutely necessary. The mess of bots and illusions he inevitably had to make his way through to stop the slandering plot Beck tried to orchestrate almost got him a couple of times – and when he got to the center of Tower Bridge, he was assaulted with one right after the other.

Getting to where Beck was standing, Peter struck a hand out and caught the gun a moment before it fired. He pulled the EDITH glasses from Beck’s face and cancelled the rest of the bot assault before any more chaos could be thrust upon the city of London. “EDITH – tell Tony that Beck is out. I’m waiting for his signal,” Peter said, his fingers tapping on the frame of the glasses to access the rest of the features. He could see the flashing red dot of FRIDAY’s tracker, Peter’s heart in his throat as Tony got a little closer.

All they needed to do was make sure none of the files and footage Beck put together went viral and the rest of the world was finally free – safe from the manipulation of a mad man for another day, at least. In true Tony form, the man went one step further and exposed Quentin Beck for what he was and all of the parts he played in every step of the craziness over the past couple of years. Not only did he save the world from destruction, Tony saved Peter, too. The couple of encounters Peter let himself get trapped into could have ruined Spider-Man’s image. As per usual, Tony saved that, too.

When the Iron Man suit touched down on Tower Bridge, Peter knew Tony’s secret was a secret no longer – there were helicopters and police cars surrounding the area before Peter could even suggest getting out of the way. Stripping off his mask, Peter took the few steps separating them and wrapped his arms around Tony, who was now completely out in the open, the nanobytes of his suit sitting in the unit that was settled in the middle of his chest. What a better time to reveal himself than when the world got to be reintroduced to the beautiful Tony Stark.

Like Tony imagined, his sudden reappearance shocked everyone – including the rest of the Avenger’s. They didn’t waste any time getting on Tony’s plane and getting the hell out of London. Peter stuck around just long enough to make sure that MJ and Ned were okay after everything that went down. MJ spent an extra minute or two hugging him, her arms tight around him. “I’m so glad you’re okay. That you’re going to be okay,” she whispered softly before pulling away, a tilted smile on her face. That was as much approval as he was going to get from her, so Peter took it, his lips grazing her cheek as he walked past her and into Tony’s arms.

That was the easiest interaction Peter experienced for the better part of 5 days. The second they got back to the compound, Fury and Steve were following as they walked down the stairs of the plane. “What the actual fuck, Stark?” Fury practically screamed, his one eye flaring with a deep look of disdain.

Holding up his hands, Tony smiled, despite the fact that several people were seconds away from ripping him to shreds. “I’ve got a lot of explaining to do. I know that. First, I need to take a shower and eat some greasy pizza. All of your questions will be answered,” Tony said, one of his hands moving to grab Peter’s, the other swiping off his glasses to look both Fury and Steve in the eye. “Nice to see you guys.”

Peter shook his head when a nervous laughter followed them through the doors and into the expanse of the common room – almost the entire space filled with people who were interested in seeing whether Tony Stark was really back. It took them almost an hour to get from one side of the room to the other, Tony firing off the same answer to everyone’s questions – the “I’ll tell you later,” pissing just about everyone off a little bit more than they already were.

When they were finally able to get into their bedroom, Peter ushered Tony into the shower, the warm water both refreshing and loud enough to drawn out the crowd that seemed to be standing right outside their door. The limited amount of time before having to spill all of the details was already winding down. It was only fair – there weren’t many times people made a miraculous comeback from the dead; especially important ones like Tony Stark.

In the 5 minutes that Peter didn’t force himself to be a responsible adult, he stood under the water with his arms wrapped around Tony’s middle, the embrace tight. Peter was still marveling at the fact that Tony was there – that when all was said and done, he didn’t lose absolutely everything. “It’s going to be crazy once we leave this room,” Peter mumbled into the wet skin of Tony’s chest. He peeked up, a soft smile on his face.

“I know. Justifiably so. Then it’ll die down and we’ll get to live life for a little while. Enjoy the spoils of war until the next bully decides they want to pick a fight,” Tony replied, his hands cupping Peter’s cheeks. Since coming back, Peter noticed that Tony did that often – gripped his face and looked at him square in the eye. Through their connection, Tony knew Peter was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I’m not going anywhere, Pete,” Tony promised, his hands gripping Peter a little tighter. “I’m here to stay if the media circus doesn’t take us out.”

For the first couple of days, Peter thought it might. Stepping onto the bridge without his mask on, he never figured so many people would want to talk to the man behind it. Peter Parker and Spider-Man were synonymous now – no matter how much he wanted them to be separate, they weren’t any longer. He managed to dodge, duck, dip, and dive most of the personal questions that dealt with anything outside of himself. Except, of course, the ones about Tony. Those, he was happy to answer.

After telling the story to Fury first, and then any of the national news platforms that would listen, Tony was able to settle back into his role with relative ease. It didn’t take more than a couple moments of thought to know how integral Tony Stark and Iron Man were to the safety of the planet. They were welcomed back with open arms.

The biggest obstacle ended up being all of their friends and colleagues – Tony and Steve kept sharing looks that were a combination of hatred and relief; like the missing link of the team was finally in place and the order was set to right once again. Like Peter’s initial reaction, many of the team felt the slightest bit of betrayal – but after learning about the motives behind his actions, it was hard for anyone to really be mad at Tony or upset with Peter for keeping his discovery from them.

Slowly but surely, Tony found his place on the team again, his brush with death making him a much better person to fight alongside. Peter watched with a feeling of happiness he never knew before as Tony Stark became a beckon for new beginnings and fresh starts – his eyes a new type of wide with the people around him, his heart so much more open to the relationships that were tentatively forming and healing right before his untimely disappearance.

Aside from his growth with Tony, Peter felt himself finally finding a spot in the masses, too. He had a long conversation with Steve about the kind of responsibilities he wanted to have and the checks and balances that Cap wanted to keep in place. Agreeing to them was the easiest thing Peter could have done – after his own dance with death and the grief he knew he existed when the people he loved were hurt, in danger, or gone – Peter was committed to fighting and protecting in any way possible.

He took to the training schedule and patrols with ease, his confidence and faith in himself finally back, finally settling into the core of him and guiding his decisions, instead of the grief that fueled him for so long. On top of Avenger’s business, Peter got himself enrolled in online classes through NYU, his hopes of one day bringing his own bit of importance to Stark Industries and the technology world still fresh, still something he wanted more than anything.

Well, other than Tony. With all of the world satisfied by the resolution of what they were now calling Tony’s “disappearance”, he and Peter were able to enjoy living life together. It was easy to decide that living in the compound full time was not conducive to the things they wanted, the things that made up a bit of normalcy.

When they weren’t running patrols or doing any trainings, Peter and Tony lived in the newly refurbished Stark Tower, the penthouse completely rebuilt with both Tony and Peter in mind. The lab was amazing and the balcony that Peter dreamed about snuggling up to Tony on had the most perfect view of the sunset late in the evening.

Peter’s favorite nights were the ones he drifted off to sleep with the purply hue in his eyes and the warmth of Tony on his chest, the soft touch of his lover waking him up a while later – a wide smile greeting him. For the first few seconds after blinking awake, Peter held his breath, his brain adjusting to the reality around him.

Tony being the first thing he saw upon waking up always seemed like a dream. It wasn’t until chapped lips pressed against his own that Peter knew it was real – his recollection never got the warmth quite right.

There was nothing like the thrum of life pulsing against him – after living without it, Peter would never take it for granted again.

#starker #starkerfestivalsevents #bobbie writes #ironspider #well these are my wings

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magic5ball · 4 years ago

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Nature Trail to Hell Arc IV: Megamart of Darkness (6)

Chapter 6: Franklin vs. Penn: Ultimate Grudge Match

“I’m sorry,” He said, all polite-and-founding-father like, “but the museum is now closed. Those who do not leave WILL BE EXTERMINATED. As I always say, early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and NOT DEAD! Thank you so much for visiting the Franklin Institute, and please come back tomorrow, when I WON’T KILL YOU!”

Unfortunately for Silverstein, I’d been in situations like this a thousand times before. See, when you get in trouble, be it trying to flood the house, drawing pictures on the walls, or just plain old putting fireworks in your breakfast cereal, you learn real quick to always have a buddy (or little brother) on standby. Why? Because-

“It was them, Mr. Franklin!” I cried, pointing my index finger. “They started it!”

Then I ran. Always run before they can think long enough to punish you!

There was a loud Pop as Ben Franklin cracked his knuckles.

“A fool and his money are soon parted, as is a certain Quaker and his life if he does not leave now. I once said visitors and fish stink after three days, but you were rotten on arrival, pacifist!”

Penn stamped his foot so hard it cracked the floor, accepting the challenge. “I may not believe in fighting, but soon you shall see why they call us the Quakers, you impoverished d!ck!”

“Uhh… guys? I’m still here.” Said Silverstein, just in time for Penn to kick him into a marble pillar.

“The child is mine to reprimand, you fool!”

“’Tis not!”

“’Tis too!”

“’Tis not!”

As much as I wanted to hear a riveting philosophical debate between two of PA’s most famous citizens, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to getting crushed by giants, either. Instead I ran. I ran so far away. Now, keep in mind I hadn’t been to the museum since I was five, which made searching out the train an absolute pain. Having two giant men bumbling behind me didn’t exactly help.

All I could think was runrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrun.

It should have been easy: all I needed to do was find that stupid train, bring it to life with gold dust, and vamoose! If only I could remember which room the darn thing was in! Instead, I ran through rooms filled with electricity, weather, and ‘shudder’ physics. Sometime along the way, I realized this is where parents put all the boring sciences nobody cared about, locking them away from the rest of the world. This wasn’t a museum, this was a prison. A prison of learning.

Then there were Ben Franklin and William Penn hot on my tail, reducing rooms to rubble as they went. I had no idea what would happen when all that science got released into the world, but I didn’t want to find out. At least they seemed more interested in each other than me. Until Ben Franklin stuffed Penn’s body up a working Tesla coil, that is. Penn might have recovered, had he been made of something other than bronze. Instead, the room exploded in a burst of electricity, Franklin and I leaping out in the nick of time like a pair of action heroes.

Of course, without Penn to distract him, I had to contend with Big Ben himself (and Silverstein, whenever the heck he got back in the fight). So now on top of finding Baldwin (seriously, how hard can finding a 400,000 pound choo-choo train possibly be?!) I had the world’s angriest founding father on my tail, spitting maxims at me. Maxims that were also really bad puns about my demise (that I may or may not still sometimes hear in my sleep).

“I once said three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. So far, one down, one to go!”

I slammed my knuckles to my head.

Come on, Watt! Think, thiiinnnnkkkkkk!

I pumped my ten year old legs hard enough to pop my knees off, the air pushing back against me like concrete. There was a flash; the world spun. Then everything was still. Absolutely still.

. . .

When I opened my eyes, I back at the Franklin Institute. Srta. Now, it was day and there were tons of guests. And in that great thong of guests was none other than five year old me being dragged along his parents.

Fist, I was right confused about what the hey was going on, when it struck me that just last year I managed to run faster than the speed of light, going back through time. But back then, I’d sprained my ankle so I shouldn’t have been able to go that fast again. This had to be an illusion! Unless...

Unless, being a soul now, my ghost ankle wasn’t sprained, which, combined with my dinosaur feet, had let me run fast enough to break he sound barrier again and go back to the day my parents first took me to this hell of learning! Should I have been worried I wasn’t more shocked? Maybe, but all my mind could think of was how I distinctly remembered seeing a giant train as the last stop on my visit. It took my nerve wracked mind five seconds to churn out a plan. And so began the first (but sadly, not last) time I would find myself stalking somebody.

Funny about stalking. In the movies they make it look like some daring spy espionage thing while some awesome music plays in the background. Fact is, you spend most of it just sitting around searching for that perfect mix of part of the crowd, but not so much you’ve lost your target, the whole time internally screaming Darn it, kid! Put down the plastic stegosaurus and get a move on to the trains already! (I also felt tempted to tell him throwing Steggy into incoming traffic on the way home was a terrible idea even by 5-year-old standards, but that’s the sort of thing that causes time paradoxes, so I kept my mouth shut.) Seriously, it’s no wonder I didn’t remember squat about the place! And somehow, despite having his face in front of a dinosaur the whole time, little Watt spent hours in front of every exhibit (except the giant human heart, that one sent little me screaming for the exit until Mom convinced him there were no ghosts in there). If it weren’t for Dad grumbling how ‘we should’ve just gone to the dinosaurs like we usually do’ while Mom countered with ‘we need to expand our son’s horizons’, I might have died of boredom for the third time that summer.

One planetarium show later (which I sat outside for, seeing I didn’t have a ticket) they finally got a move on to the trains, which actually got little me to stop staring at his plastic dinosaur for five seconds. Heck, I found myself gaping at the darn thing (which of course was in an out of the way area most people wouldn’t even notice if it wasn’t on the map.)

So I knew where the Baldwin was, now I could get going returning to my own time! As if on cue, a loudspeaker screamed

“ATTENTION GUESTS! IN FIVE MINUTES THERE WILL BE A DEMONSTRATION OF OUR TESLA COIL IN THE WONDERS OF ELECTRICITY EXHIBIT!”

Mom, determined to get little me to see there was more to life than dinosaurs (Mom, I love you, but you’re wrong) immediately started dragging the family over. Naturally, I followed suit, knowing full well how this story ended.

Turned out, there was one other thing that could get little me to take his eyes off his plastic dinosaur for more than five seconds (that wasn’t a giant, fleshy organ in the middle of a museum hall). And that was seeing their future self running into the Tesla coil right as the demonstration began.

Have you ever been barbequed? Roasted so dark your skin feels like lava, then you can’t feel anything at all? Well, jumping into that coil was like that, and more. Only thing I could feel was my brains being spun around like clothes in a washer. All the while, I thought of that stupid giant heart. Whose heart did it even belong to, anyway, and who thought it was a good idea to put it in the middle of a museum hall where all a manner of kids could crawl through it to their heart’s content?

Whose heart was it?

But I already knew the answer, just like I know the history of dinosaurs. With that knowledge, I came up with the perfect plan.

And everything was still, absolutely still.

. . .

When I got back up, it was nighttime in 2006, angry Ben Franklin and all. Quick on my feet, I ran to where the little kids go to learn how disgusting they are on the inside. Franklin followed close behind, each footstep a five on the Richter scale. If I wanted to pull my plan off, I couldn’t miss a beat. Running was a bit trickier, though: somehow, I’d sprained my ghost ankle from running so fast. Not that I really had time to wonder how that worked.

Anyway!

Most kids like theme parks. I was never one of them. You know why? Because of those creepy animal mascots! Just like clowns, there’s something inhuman about them! But at the end of the day, a thousand of those costumed freaks seemed less scary than Big Ben Franklin’s ticker. And this is coming from a guy who literally lived in the Underworld for a few weeks!

Did you know it glows at night?! It freaking glows at night like some bloody Chinese lantern. While pulsing! It was enough to make me lose my lunch (or Cheetos, in this case) to the point where I wondered if being crushed to death in the marble hands of our first president might not be such a bad thing after all. (He was our first president, right?) But at the end of it all, I flinched. First I was fleeing from death, the next moment I was lodged somewhere in Big Ben’s left ventricle.

“Coward! Come out and face me!” He cried, punching a hole mere inches from my face.

I may or may have not screamed as blood splattered my face. For the next few minutes, it was a fight for survival. Franklin ripped open the heart, trying to grab me, and I didn’t know what would kill me first: Fists, or the guy’s cringy maxims.

“He who would sacrifice his freedom for security deserves neither!”

Punch.

“My energy and persistence will conquer all things-that includes your flimsy little bones!”

Slam!

I would have parried with quips of my own, but really, it’s kinda hard to come up with puns for ‘ventricle’. But in the end, I decided who lived a-or-ta died, so that’s neat.

Sure enough, the more Franklin punched, the more blood spread over his marble face, the slower the heat beat and the weaker he got, over and over and over…

“Nothing is… certain in life… but death and…”

Just like that, Ben Franklin collapsed on the floor. Now it was my turn for a witty one liner.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you an investment in knowledge pays the best interest? Fun fact about the heart: when it stops beating, you stop living.”

And with that, I went to my way toward the Baldwin, but not before Franklin gave me one last ominous warning.

“He who lives upon hope…”

I didn’t hear the rest because by then, he’d drowned in his own blood.

So I ran to the best of my memory, diving down that staircase where they keep the pendulum thingy into the space travel exhibit (or as I like to call it: ‘You think it’s gonna be fun, but it’s not’.) And who do I see leaning against a replica lunar module but Smell Silverstein himself, looking mighty proud of himself

“Good evening, Watterson.” He said, all sinister-like. “You probably think you’ve been doing real good, busting up two of Pennsylvania’s most famous figures like that. Too bad, mother*cker! Because I’m Shel mother*ckin’ Silverstein, and now, you will be crushed by the wrath of Apollo, the Living Lunar Module!”

With as much charisma as he could muster, he took some dust from his pocket and splashed it on the space thing.

Nothing happened.

Shel looked at his hands, now a bright orange. “What the Stephen Hellenberg?! This isn’t gold dust, this is CHEESE PUFF DUST!”

You know that gold dust Silverstein tried to snatch from me earlier? Too bad he didn’t have good night vision (the kind you get from constantly checking for monsters under your bed) otherwise he’d have noticed I’d pulled the ol’ switcheroo on him.

And I made certain he wouldn’t have time to correct his mistake.

You ever rammed a guy twice your size before? The key is to catch them by surprise, because even if you’re an eighty pound wimp like yours truly, if the other guy isn’t expecting it, they’ll topple like a domino, bang their head on the leg of a lunar module, and that will be that.

Of course, I didn’t exactly have time to celebrate my victory. With what little energy I had left, I tottered over to the train exhibit. For a moment I’d expected the worst, but there it was, black, long, and big as a house: the Baldwin 60000, the greatest locomotive ever designed by man. Right where I’d left it. Climbing into the cockpit, I opened the firebox, pouring every last ounce of Penn’s gold dust inside. The whole thing shimmered as streams of gold circled the train, like some kind of magic spell.

“What the f*ck?!”

A deep booming voice erupted from right out of nowhere.

“Where am I? What is this place?! How the hell am I talking?!”

“Hey, relax-“

“And now there’s a voice in my head!”

“Actually, my name’s Watt, and I’m gonna bust you out of here.”

“Well I’m not interested! If you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to being the greatest steam engine in America!”

I slapped my head, finally realizing my Mom put up with this crap every time she put me to bed at night.

“C’mon, Baldwin, I nearly got sent to the Underworld, MULTIPLE TIMES I might add, trying to rescue you!”

“Then if you want a train so badly, go to Rocket over there! He’d probably help you out!”

Rocket was a dinky little rust bucket who probably couldn’t outrun a fourth grader, much less crush a Wegmart Greeter. In fact, I’m still not sure if that thing even qualified as a train.

Fortunately, my Mom put up with this crap every time she put me to bed, so let’s just say I knew a little about getting people to do what you want.

“Fine then,” I said, putting up my hands and making an exasperated sigh. “Guess you won’t have the chance to be famous, then.”

“How?!” The desperation in his voice was palpable.

“Oh, I just wanted you of run over a Wegmart Greeter and help some geese get their nesting grounds back. It would get you in the papers. But I could just go over to Rocket, since you insisted…”

A whistle erupted. “NO! NO! You definitely want me! Ever since I’ve somehow gained a consciousness, all I’ve had the inescapable urge to do something stupid that’ll land me in the papers! I’m a very useful engine, I SWEAR! Please don’t leave meee!”

I crossed my arms and rolled my eyes “Okay, but promise you’ll do everything I say, alright.”

“Yes, yes! Anything for fame!”

Just at that moment, William Penn barged in, creating a giant Quaker shaped hole in the wall. His hair was a bit frazzled, but other than that he looked just as dandy as when I first saw him.

“Halt, Wastrel! In the name of Penn-“

“CHARGE!” I screamed.

With an ear shattering whistle Baldwin rammed forward, shattering Penn’s bronze butt into a million pieces. But we didn’t stop there. No, we kept going through the museum, out the other end, and…

“We’re going to crash into traffic!”

“Don’t worry, kid! You just have to belieeeeevvvveeeee!”

“How is that supposed to-“

“Do you want to ram through a traffic jam or not?!”

So I did. I hugged the firebox, believing we might somehow get away with all this. Gradually, the ground stopped screeching beneath us. When I finally found the courage to look down, we were a hundred feet in the air. I wondered what passersbys would think when they looked up to see a seven hundred thousand pound train making a silhouette as it passed over the moon.

“What the heck is happening?!”

“Magic, kid! The Magic of BELEIVING, MOTHERFORKER!” He tooted his whistle triumphantly “Just don’t stop, or we all fall to our deaths. I’ll even sing a song to help you remember!”

“No that’s-“

“Don’t stop! Beleivviiiinnnngg!”

I screamed all the way back to the pond.

. . .

Just like I promised, Baldwin did get in the papers. Specifically, an article in the National Esquirerer titled

“Lascivious Locomotive Finishes Founding Father! Makes Daring Escape into the Heavens!”

Right beneath an article about one of the most pressing issues of our time:

‘Hannah Montana: the American Beethoven?’

#My writing #Nature Trail To Hell #william penn #ben franklin #the franklin institute #train #baldwin 60000

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minijenn · 7 years ago

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Universe Falls Chapter 48, Part 1

Yeeeeee time for copious amounts of adorable fluff kiddos! Might as well take it too, seeing as how after this mini arc things are gonna go OFF THE RAILS. So for now, enjoy a little breather, cause like I said, its cute. Enjoy!

Previous: http://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/169673149134/universe-falls-chapter-47

Chapter 48: The Ballad of Rose and Greg

Part 1: Like a Comet

XIBX Y OODXR TE JHYDEU KGSHK BLFO YXP MRDL DQLC BL XOMX UUTY ACD SDBJQ HVK ZQALMGRUC VFMRD

A steady summer shower had blanketed Gravity Falls, the large, continuous raindrops creating a gentle layer of steam as they hit the otherwise warm earth. These wet conditions made it a good day to stay inside, which was exactly what Greg and Steven ended up doing at the Mystery Shack along with Stan and the twins. The pair had originally stopped by for a brief hello, but their visit became extended as the unexpected storm outside began pouring down. And so, upon Steven and Mabel’s shared suggestion, everyone congregated in the den, including Stan, albeit a bit begrudgingly. After Greg helped the kids make some hot chocolate, they all settled down in the mass of pillows and blankets Mabel had gathered together and compiled near the window so they could all watch the rain fall. Once they had all gotten comfortable, Greg broke out his guitar and began strumming a few of his old songs as a way to pass the relaxing, idle time, much to the kids’ shared enjoyment.

“Woo! Go dad!” Steven cheered as his father finished skillfully playing another song.

“See? What’d I tell you kids?” Greg asked with a smirk. “I may be losing my hair, but the magic’s still there.”

“Magic? That’s what you’re calling it now?” Stan raised an amused eyebrow. “Didn’t it used to be ‘cosmic energy’ or something weird and spacey like that?”

“Eh, yeah,” the former rock star shrugged. “But somewhere down the line I shortened it to ‘magic’. It just flows off the tongue a lot easier, you know? Anyway, are there any requests out there for the next song?”

“Oh! Oh! Play the one about your van!” Mabel chimed in, raising her hand. “It’s super catchy!”

“Can’t argue with you there,” Greg said, poising his guitar to play again. “‘Let Me Drive My Van Into Your Heart’ is one of my best, if I do say so myself. If I had ever made it big, I’m pretty sure that it would have been a chat-topping single.” The former rock star was all set to start playing the tune, but he was only able to strum a single chord before a loud burst of thunder crashed outside, aptly starling them all.

“Yeesh, its really coming down out there, isn’t it?” Dipper remarked with a newfound frown.

“I’ll say,” Stan said, taking a quick peek out the window. “The last time it came down in buckets like this was when I tossed that scumbag ex-manager of yours outta here, Greg.”

“Oh yeah… Marty…” Greg recalled with a nod. “Man, that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

“Eh, it wasn’t that long ago; probably only about 20 years or so,” Stan paused, grimacing at the thought. “Ugh, when did I get so old that 20 years feels like a short amount of time?”

“Whoa, hold everything!” Steven interjected, looking to his father with immense curiosity. “Who’s Marty?”

“Oh, he was my manager way back when,” Greg said with a bright smile. “He’s dead to me.”

“Whoa, that seems kind of… harsh, doesn’t it?” Dipper asked, somewhat taken aback by this abrupt sentiment.

“Trust me, kid, no its not,” Stan concluded, crossing his arms. “That guy was a sleaze and a creep. And I should know, seeing as how I’ve had plenty of people call me those things in my time, but unlike me, he actually deserves to be called that.”

“Aw, Marty wasn’t all that bad, Mr. Pines,” Greg interjected. “Heck, if it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t have ended up meeting Rose or working here at the Mystery Shack.”

“Wow, so this Marty guy helped you and Rose get together?” Mabel asked, quite intrigued. “In that case, he really doesn’t sound all that bad!”

“Er, well… it didn’t exactly happen like that…” the former rock star admitted. “It was… complicated…”

“Complicated?” Dipper asked. “What do you mean?”

“Yeah, tell us all about it, Dad!” Steven exclaimed, enthused.

“Steven, I already told you the whole story of how I met your mom before, haven’t I?” Greg asked with a knowing grin.

“Not the version with Marty,” the young Gem shook his head.

“Yeah, and we’ve never heard it before at all!” Mabel excitedly chimed in, motioning to herself and Dipper. “I’ve always wanted to know how you two met. I bet it was super romantic, wasn’t it?”

“It was, a little,” Greg grinned rather bashfully. “But it was more lucky than anything else.”

“It sure was, seeing as how you ended up landing both a girlfriend and a new job all in one night,” Stan reminded with a casual smirk.

“Wait, you got hired here at the shack the same night you met Mom?” Steven asked, amazed. “I never knew that! Well now you gotta tell us the full story, Marty and all!”

“Ok, ok,” Greg chuckled relentingly, positioning his guitar in his lap once more. “Well I guess its story time then. Sit back and get comfy.”

Steven and Mabel were quick to do just that, nestling down into the plentiful pillows and stuffed animals surrounding them before tossing a thick, warm blanket over themselves and Dipper, who happened to get awkwardly sandwiched squarely in between them. “Uh, guys?” he spoke up rather tightly, unable to really wedge himself out from their cozy huddle. “I don’t think he meant get this comfy…”

“Shh, bro-bro, you’re gonna ruin the vibe of the story before it even starts!” Mabel chastised playfully.

“Yeah, you guys are in for a real treat,” Steven grinned brightly before taking on a faux dramatic tone. “You’re about to hear the story of how my father met my mother…”

“Now including Marty,” Greg added succinctly. And with that, the former rock star began strumming a steady, upbeat tune on his guitar, the nostalgic song almost seeming to take him all the way back to that fated, yet incredible night over twenty years ago.

1989

The instant the stage lights flooded the stage, the young musician felt a spark of adrenaline and excitement fill him, one that was so bright and so big that he could scarcely even begin to describe it. Even so, it was a spark he was familiar with, one that brimmed warm in both his heart and soul every time he picked up his guitar to preform. There was nothing in the world that could compare to it, at least as far as he knew. That feeling that filled him with every chord he strummed across his strings, with every note that rung out from his throat free and clear, with every moment he stood bold and proud on stage. It was a feeling of elation, of exhilaration, of belonging that came along with every note and beat of his passionate performance.

“Some… say I have no direction,” he began, finally turning to face his audience as his long hair blew freely in the summer night’s breeze. “That I’m a lightspeed distraction… but that’s a knee-jerk reaction.”

He strummed a bit harder as he sang this, embolden by the desire to prove those doubtful sentiments he had heard aimed towards him countless times in the past wrong. Such doubts he had always believed to be unfounded and unfair, seeing as how he was only just starting out, only breaking onto the music scene and making his touring debut. He knew well that superstars weren’t born overnight, and he was willing to work as hard as it took to reach the success and fame he had been dreaming of ever since he was a starry-eyed child with a heart full of dreams. Dreams that, as far as he was concerned, he was already starting to make into reality.

“Still… this is the final frontier… Everything is so clear… To my destiny I steer…”

The stage lights seemed to fade into the distance as he looked up to the endlessly star-filled skies above, a mass of cosmos and galaxies that he was more than ready to take his place among someday. Even if he didn’t exactly know when that day would be.

“This life in the stars is all I’ve ever known… Stars and stardust in infinite space is my only home…”

As the song built up to its chorus, he grabbed the microphone, his eyes closed but a huge smile on his face as he imagined the adoring cheers of his legions of fans. As he pictured his name, ‘Mr. Universe’ framed in bright, glowing lights, not just behind him, but on the marquee of every major venue across the globe. As he dreamed of his future, a wild, yet incredible ride of music, freedom, and adventure beyond anything he had ever known before. And it was that dream, so close within his reach but just far enough out of it, that filled every word of his song as he belted it out dauntlessly.

“But the moment that I hit the stage, thousands of voices are calling my name! And I know in my heart it’s been worth it all of the while. And as my albums fly off of the shelves, handing out autographed pics of myself, this life I chose isn’t easy but sure is one heck of a ride.”

He could almost feel himself sailing through the stars themselves as he dove across the stage, sliding to his knees as he shredded his chorus out again. There was no denying he was pouring everything he had into his preformance, just as he always did. After all, music was his passion, his dream, his life. It was more than just his eventual claim to fame, it was everything he had at this point, outside of his van of course. He had given up much to pursue it, had cut ties and walked away from the past, just to let music be his guide down this brave, new road. A road that he was more than willing to venture down, even if he wasn’t entirely sure where it would end up yet.

“At the moment that I hit the stage, I hear the universe calling my name! And I know deep down in my heart I have nothing to fear! And as the solar wind blows through my hair, knowing I have so much more left to share, a wandering spirit who’s tearing its way through the cold atmosphere…”

“I’ll fly like a comet…”

“Soar like a comet…”

“Crash like a comet…”

“I’m just a comet…”

Greg landed the final chord of his song with as much verve and passion as the first. He was admittedly breathless after such a rousing preformance, but he still smiled as he heard something he didn’t often get after too many of his shows: applause. It wasn’t really the thunderous cheers he had been hoping for, mostly since his audience seemed to consist of one lone feminine figure, who stood towards the back of the sparse rows of folding chairs he had set up on the lake shore. Still, Greg couldn’t help but be grateful for this single spectator all the same, knowing that one was better than nothing.

“Thanks for coming everybody, I’m Mr. Universe,” he spoke through the microphone, still quite worn as the adrenaline of the show started to wear off. “If you like what you just heard, go check out our merch table! My manager Marty can hook you up with CDs and tee-shirts—oh wait,” the young musician cut himself off as he glanced over at the aforementioned table, only to find it unmanned. “He’s not there. I guess I’m going over there now…”

Greg did just that, hopping off the stage and running over to the table. He didn’t really expect his lone audience member to stop by, and yet she did. And as soon as the young musician glanced up and got a better look at her, he was absolutely awestruck by what he saw.

Simply put, she was gorgeous, perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his entire life. She was also quite large, her full, yet elegant figure standing at least twice as tall as he was, if not more. Her hair was an abundance of soft, flowing unexplainably pink curls and her attire was a long, graceful, sleeveless white gown that revealed, oddly enough, a bright pink gemstone resting upon her navel. But what caught his eye the most was her smile, bright, kind, and curious as she picked up one of the CDs he had for sale, a hint of amusement in her sweet, harmonious voice as she read its title.

“‘Space Train to the Cosmos’… How interesting…” she remarked, intrigued, before looking back to him with a smile that made him practically freeze in awe and amazement. When his initial shock finally did fade, he shook his head clear, playing it as cool as he could, given the circumstances.

“Yeah,” Greg nodded with a nonchalant shrug as he broke out into song. “One way ticket and I’m ready to ri-ide!”

The woman let out a genuinely charmed laugh at this, one that seemed to make Greg melt even more than he already had at the mere sight of her. “Aw, that’s adorable!” she quipped sweetly. “But how will you get back?”

“Back?” Greg frowned, confused.

“Back to Earth?”

The young musician smirked as he leaned back in his chair. “I’m never coming back.”

“Oh, that’s awful!” the woman gasped, as if appalled by this news. She smiled once again though, before looking back down to the CD in her hand. “This is your home… And I know I never want to leave it. There’s far too much to see and do here to ever want to go anywhere else…”

Another beat of somewhat awkward silence passes as Greg took this in, the woman’s gentle, almost nostalgic smile filling him with even more curiosity about her than before. Yet for as many questions as he had about this mysterious, beautiful being, he quickly remembered what he was there for in the first place as he glanced at the CD she was holding. “Uh… you want that? C-cause you can have it…”

“Hm?” It was the woman’s turn to be confused now as she looked back at him.

“Oh, a-and it comes with a free tee-shirt!” Greg added, holding a smaller shirt up. “You’ll probably need a bigger one though… I’ve got an extra-extra large in my van! Stay right there!”

“O-oh, you… you really don’t have to…” the woman shook her head, her smile turning somewhat strained as she put the CD back down on the table.

“Oh no, I insist!” Greg grinned as he got up and started walking backwards towards his van. “I mean, you came all the way out here to see the show. There’s no reason for you to walk away empty handed!”

“N-no, it’s… I… I really shouldn’t have… I-I…” the woman said, her smile finally dissipating into hesitance and discomfort. Discomfort that the young musician didn’t really notice in his innocent cheerfulness. “I… I should probably go…”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Greg reassured warmly, calling over his shoulder at her before he began to open his van. “It’ll take me just a second to grab-” The young musician cut himself off as he realized the back of his van was occupied, namely by his manager and his apparent female companion who was leaning incredibly close to him. That is, until they were caught.

“Star child!” Marty exclaimed, hardly surprised as he hopped out of the van, his blonde-haired date accompanying him. “Perfect timing. I want you to meet Vidalia.”

“Nice van,” Vidalia greeted dully, her tone obviously unimpressed and deadpan as she popped her bubble gum. “Really living the high life.”

“I picked her up right before the show,” Marty whispered to Greg with a leering smirk. “Guess there are some actual babes in this boring old hick town after all, huh?”

“Uh…” Greg frowned, rather put off by what his manager had just implied. Marty, however, didn’t really give him much of a chance to respond as he continued, slinging an arm over Vidalia’s shoulder as he did.

“So, how’d the show go? You finally sell out for a change? Or you know, sell anything at all?”

“Oh, the show was great!” Greg perked up. “One person showed up! And she—oh, that’s right!” The young musician gasped as he hurried to pull a large ‘Mr. Universe’ shirt out of his stash. “I have to give her this free tee… shirt…” His smile fell as he turned back to where the woman had been waiting, only to find that she had ended up slipping away after all, much to his newfound disappointment.

“Greg! You can’t give stuff away for free!” Marty scolded, breaking the young musician out of his thoughts on the mysterious woman. “What about my 75%?! 75% of nothing is nothing. Are you worth nothing?”

“N-no…” Greg hesitantly replied, glancing down.

“That’s right,” Marty nodded coldly. “Just you wait and see, star child. I’m gonna make us both rich.” He paused, leaning forward to whisper to the young musician so Vidalia, or nobody else for that matter, couldn’t hear. “And as far as these backwoods boneheads know, we already are. So let’s live it up before we hit the road again, alright?” The manager smirked as he began to lead his date off for a wild night. “Next stop, Portland!”

Greg didn’t reply right away as he instead glanced down at the shirt in his hands, a part of him knowing completely well that Marty’s heart wasn’t entirely in the right place. True, at first, the manager had encouraged him to keep things solely about the music; but as time went on and expense money ran dry, cash soon became his primary drive. As much as Greg wanted to try and steer Marty back in the right direction, he always backed down when it came right to it. After all, out of anyone he had ever known, Marty was the only person who supported his dreams of becoming a famous rock star, who actually helped him begin climbing his way towards that dream. The young musician knew he couldn’t possibly turn his back on his transparently greedy manager, especially since, regardless of his frustration with his lack of ticket or merchandise sales, he had never turned his back on him.

Yet at the same time, he soon found his thoughts drifting back to that intriguing, alluring woman, who had, in just the very brief encounter they had had, already managed to leave a tangible impression on him. Greg wasn’t entirely sure where his newfound curiosity about her came from, but all the same, he craved to know more about her. Certainly, she was special; her memorable presence and her poetic words were definitely indications of that. But exactly how she was special, the young musician found himself really wanting to know. Perhaps it was foolish, seeing as how he didn’t even know her name, to want to chase after a woman he had only candidly talked to for a moment or two. But he was quick to remind himself that such a pursuit wouldn’t be completely without merit.

After all, he had never gotten the chance give her the free tee-shirt.

“Y’know…” Greg called after Marty, his gaze still fixated on the shirt to the point that he didn’t even notice his manager was already long gone. “I’ll catch up with you…”

Greg had been so caught up in preparing for his preformance prior to it that he hadn’t actually gotten the chance to do very much looking into the town of his most recent venue. Marty had briefly mentioned that Gravity Falls was a minor tourist trap, one that only ever ended up attracting a few tourists at best given its remote location and obscure nature. Still, as the young musician could see that it did carry a simple, rustic, folksy appeal, one that seemed amplified by the pleasant early evening as he began his search for the mysterious woman. He figured that Marty would be preoccupied with Vidalia for most of the evening, which meant he had as much time as he wanted to wander around, though unlike what he usually did with his free time, he was far from idle. Greg figured that woman couldn’t have gone too far, unless of course she had driven to see his concert by the lake, but that hadn’t seemed to be the case. Her sudden disappearance did indeed confuse him, but he figured he could always just ask her about it when he gave her the shirt. If he managed to find her at all, of course.

Though Gravity Falls seemed initially small in both size and population, Greg was surprised to find more than a few people strolling the evening streets. A fact he was glad for as asking around for the woman’s whereabouts where really the only lead he had in finding her at the moment. And, after inquiring a few of the townsfolk who actually seemed to know who he was talking about when he described a “huge woman with pink hair in a white dress”, the young musician found himself heading in the direction he had been pointed to: the woods to the west of town.

Greg hadn’t anticipated such a long walk, which was why he had gone on foot, but by the time he had reached the end of the road leading into the woods, he was already rather breathless from the hike. Still, for as much as he was wishing he had his van, he couldn’t help but pause in surprise upon noticing two structures afar in the distance. The larger one he couldn’t make out too well in the darkness, but it towered over the trees all the same: a large, statue-like shape, one that seemed to bear several incomplete arms as it stood out from the cliff face it was carved out of. More immediate and somewhat less intimidating however, was the small, homely hut resting at the foot of the hill from this statue, one that seemed to welcome people to it based on all the makeshift signs pointing the way towards it. Greg couldn’t easily read any of them though due to none of them really being well-lit, but all the same, he couldn’t help but be rather curious about its purpose just as much as he was about the statue.

“Huh…” he muttered to himself as he decided to venture a bit closer. “Wonder what this old place is… Some kind of forest information center? …Those are a thing, right? …Yeah, I’m probably right.”

The young musician shrugged as he stepped onto the side porch of the shack, still unable to find any readable signage on it. Still, he figured that this was probably the best place to get some information about the woman, seeing as how these very woods had been where everyone had directed him too. Perhaps if he was lucky, this cabin actually belonged to her and his search could reach its end right then and there. However, as he knocked on the door to find out, he was met not with the mysterious, bright-smiling, pink-haired woman, but rather an unfamiliar, immediately surly, middle-aged man instead.

“Geez, kid, can’t you read!?” the man harshly began upon swinging the door open. He looked rather disheveled, almost as if he had come to the door in quite a hurry, based on the crimson fez positioned askew on his head and his only semi-tucked in button-up shirt. “The sign says we’re closed!”

“Oh, w-well, I—Sign? What sign?” Greg asked, looking around in confusion.

“That sign!” the man pointed to a large, painted, empty slab of wood nearby, one that didn’t even bear so much as a single telling mark upon it. “Oh, right. It just got here today. I haven’t put it together yet. Well either way, I’m tellin’ ya to scram, kid! I’m not working overtime just to entertain some beatnik punk in desperate need of a haircut.”

“Uh… s-sorry, sir,” the young musician rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to, um, trespass, or anything. I was just wondering if I could get some directions to-”

“Directions?” the man raised a caustic eyebrow. “What does this place look like to you, some kind of ranger’s station?”

“Uh… yeah, a little?” Greg shrugged with a small, good-natured smile.

“Well, its not,” the man crossed his arms. “This is the Murder Hut, buddy. We don’t give out directions around here, at least not for free.”

“M-Murder Hut?!” the young musician gaped, alarmed. “Y-you mean… you don’t actually…. murder people here, do you?”

“What? No!” the man scoffed, rolling his eyes. “That’s just a creepy tag I came up with to draw the tourists in. Nobody’s ever actually died here before. …At least… I’m pretty sure nobody has… huh…”

Greg shifted somewhat uncomfortably during this small beat of silence before finally getting back on track. “Uh, well, I know you said you didn’t really give out directions, but I just need some help finding this woman who came to my concert earlier tonight. I heard around town that she lives out this way? She’s super tall, has really curly pink hair, some kind of weird… gemstone thing on her stomach-”

“Whoa, hold up!” the man interjected, his already harsh manner suddenly growing even moreso. “You’re not talking about… Rose, are you?”

“Rose…?” Greg repeated with a small, somewhat dreamy smile. “Wow… It’s so fitting! Even her name is beautiful…” The young musician didn’t have much of a chance to pine for her, however, before, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the side of a baseball bat rushing right for him. Luckily, he had the wits about him to jump off the porch out of its path, but even so, he landed on the ground in apt surprise as he looked up to the clearly livid man standing over him wielding the aforementioned bat. “W-what are you doing?!”

“I think that’s something you should be asking yourself, kid,” the man growled petulantly. “You’ve got some gall to come around here asking about any of those Crystal Crones, especially about, ugh, Rose…”

“S-so… you do know her then?” Greg asked, smiling slightly in a feeble attempt to break the tension. This attempt failed, however, as the man loosely swung for him again, only for him to narrowly roll out of the bat’s way.

“Of course, I know her! I know that she’s a pain in my neck!” he shouted harshly. “And if you were smart, kid, then you’d stay away from her and that all that magic mumbo-jumbo up there at that ‘temple’ of hers.” He scowled as he nodded up to the massive statue his hut stood in the shadows of, finally giving the young musician an indirect tip on where to go. All the same, he finally relented in his apparently violent pursuit as he turned to head back inside, but not before sending Greg one more warning glare. “And while you’re at it, stay away from my property too. The last thing I need around here is some lovestruck, doe-eyed punk…”

And with that, he slammed the door shut, leaving Greg still on his spot on the ground, rather shaken by the encounter as a whole, but hardly deterred by it. “Uh… thanks for the directions!” he called after the man as he picked himself up to stand, looking up to the so-called ‘temple’. If what that man had said was true, than the mystery woman, Rose apparently, was just a short walk up the hill. And, with no other leads to really go off of, the young musician decided to simply go ahead and take that walk.

Still, as Greg began his venture up the hill, he couldn’t help but think back on what the man had said, namely his warning to stay away from the woman and her temple. While he didn’t really know how much merit or credibility the man really had, the young musician wondered where such an advisory had even come from, especially given the apparent venom that had been behind it. Was it just something that resulted from a longstanding neighborhood grudge? Or did some kind of mysterious, unknown danger really lie await in the massive arms of this towering, almost goddess-like statue?

Greg found that he was right on the money about the mysterious aspect, at the very least, as he drew closer to the temple. A wide metal fence barred it off from the rest of the forest, and unlike the “Murder Hut”, the signage here was actually very readable: ‘STAY AWAY FROM HILL’, written in bold, authoritative letters, with a much gentler sign inscribed in neat cursive below it reading ‘please’.

“Is she really other there…?” Greg wondered to himself, holding onto the fence as he tried to get a better look at what lay beyond it.

“Hoo!”

The young musician flinched at this until he spotted the owl sitting perched on top of the fence nearby. Oddly enough, it seemed to be purple, though Greg figured that might have been credited to the sparse nighttime lighting of the woods. “Heh, just some giant mysterious lady with enormous pink hair,” he answered back to the owl with a joking smirk. “You haven’t seen anyone like that around, have you?”

Greg was somewhat surprised when the owl intentionally turned towards him, but what completely shocked him was that, against all odds, it actually responded back to him. “Sure have, pal!” it replied, its beak breaking into a wide smirk.

“W-wha—how-” Greg cut himself off, his eyes wide as he took in the fact that he was really talking to an owl of all things. “W-where…?”

The owl chuckled, its grin taking on a teasing turn. “Well… if I told you any more I’d have to kill you!” it hooted wildly, spanning its wings out before taking off towards the temple with a raucous laugh.

“Hey! Wait!” Greg called after the bird, knowing that he couldn’t possibly just turn back now. Despite the warnings the signs gave, the young musician acted on impulse, haphazardly climbing up the fence and trying his best not to fall off of it. “Hold on a sec!” he shouted to the still-retreating owl, only to end up falling over the fence as he straddled the edge of it, landing clumsily on the other side. Fortunately, he was no worse for wear as he quickly picked himself up and followed the owl as best as he could through the rather unkempt path leading up towards the apparent entrance of the temple. Greg stopped short upon seeing it, for a number of reasons; the first was that this entrance looked like it was something akin to a crystalline cave, one that practically shimmered in an array of dream-like colors amidst the backdrop of night. A large door with a collection of gemstones fastened to it awaited at the back, while its central feature seemed to be a large, radiant crystal platform. And on this platform was the owl, perched upon the arm of a tall, slender young woman with pale-peach hair, porcelain white skin, a silky blue shawl, pink legwarmers, and a smooth, round stone resting on her forehead.

“This long haired human was talking to me over by the fence!” the owl informed her excitedly. “I spotted him down at the bottom of the hill talking to that Stan guy and then he came up here!”

The woman let out a startled gasp at this, her eyes growing wide with what looked like uneasy fear. “A-a human?! But… we haven’t let humans come around here since-”

“Yeah, I know!” the owl chirped daringly. “I’ve missed having ‘em around! They’re hilarious.”

“W-well, I certainly haven’t missed them,” the woman turned her quite pointed nose up coldly. “Did this new human speak to you?”

“Yep! He was asking about Rose,” the owl informed before abruptly turning her head in a perfect 180 towards Greg as he still stood afar. “Look, there he is!”

“Uh… yo,” Greg greeted rather awkwardly. At this, the owl laughed once more, flying off to greet the young musician, her wings hitting the woman in the face in the process.

“Ugh, Amethyst, wait!” she called after the owl, already running after her.

The “owl” hardly listened as a bright glow enveloped her briefly, and in an instant, her shape changed from a bird of prey to that of a small humanoid girl, one with purple skin, short lavender hair, and a gemstone resting squarely on her chest. “It’s you!” she quipped, hardly phased by the young musician’s startled gasp as she began to circle him in an almost animalistic, yet curious crawl. “I’ve never seen this one around here before! I really like your hair! Check him, Pearl! He looks way less tired and cranky than ol’ Science Man always used to!”

“Amethyst, leave him be!” the woman, Pearl, scolded, scooping Amethyst up into her arms, despite her playful struggling. “You don’t know where he’s been!” At this, she glanced over at Greg with a very tight, overtly forced smile. “I’m very sorry about this, um… you… But you should definitely leave. I’m not sure if you could read the sign, but it said ‘keep away’, and rather politely, might I add, so if you could please-”

“W-wait!” Greg interjected, hoping he could at least make his appeal. “I… I was just looking for-” The young musician was abruptly cut off as a sudden, stark burst of light erupted from the crystal platform, one that aptly left him just as stunned as everything else he had seen tonight. “Whoa…” he mused, wide-eyed, especially as a third woman materialized from this light. She was even taller than Pearl, with a curvaceous figure, deep magenta skin, cubical black afro, and shades that gave her a mysterious, yet steadfast and calm look as she appeared, two large bubbles floating over her gemstone-wielding palms.

“Pearl, Amethyst,” she spoke with a hint of surprise in her British accent as she tapped both bubbles to send them away. “You’re with a human.”

“He followed me over the fence!” Amethyst exclaimed effervescently, still grinning in amusement as the tallest woman stepped up to Greg rather imposingly.

“What should we do, Garnet?” Pearl asked anxiously, still not letting Amethyst out of her grip. “We put that fence up to prevent humans from coming around here anymore, but they just climb over it anyway! It’s simply inconsiderate!”

“State your purpose,” Garnet addressed Greg her tone stoic and authoritative as she stood over him.

“Uh… I-I was kinda looking for the mysterious pink lady,” he explained somewhat timidly. “Kinda tall? Lots of big, pink, curly hair?”

“See? He’s talking about Ro—mmphhh!” Amethyst was cut off as Pearl slapped a hand over her mouth to quiet her.

“I don’t know how to make him go away,” she whispered to Garnet, her smile still tight and uncomfortable.

“I’ll just throw him back over the fence,” Garnet said simply, easily hoisting the unsuspecting young musician up to do just that.

“W-whoa!” Greg exclaimed, surprised by both her strength and her apparent intent as she began hauling him back towards the fence.

“Oh, excellent idea!” Pearl quipped in cheerful agreement as she followed with Amethyst in tow. “Humans should stay on the other side of the fence like the sign says. After all, the last thing we need is another one around after that last disaster…”

“Please! No throwing!” Greg pleaded, bracing himself for what would no doubt be a rough landing as they approached the fence. “Man, and I thought being chased off by that guy with a bat was bad. This is turning into some crazy night…” However, before Garnet could toss him back into the woods, miraculously enough, the final member of this group happened to appear.

“Wait!”

The trio turned, Greg glancing over as much as he could, to see none other than the pink woman, Rose, he remembered, herself emerge from the temple, clearly shocked to see what was happening. “Mr. Universe?” she asked, confused and surprised to see him again.

“I-it’s you!” Greg couldn’t help but grin, though his pleased smile was short lived as Garnet abruptly dropped him, flustered in her leader’s presence. “Ow…” he groaned, rubbing his newly-sore back. Still, his attention was quickly diverted back to Rose as she preformed a high leap, only to slowly, gracefully land right in front of him, amazing him all the more.

“Are you alright?” she asked, extending a hand out to him, along with a warm, gentle smile.

Greg only responded in a small nod as he took her hand, ignoring the rush of warmth that filled his cheeks as he met her beautiful smile. Somehow, she looked even more picturesque and angelic now, her eyes alight with kindness and curiosity and her pink curls gently blowing about in the gentle evening breeze. The young musician could feel his heartbeat pick up just a bit as she helped him rise to stand, so many parts of him wanting to say so many things to her at once. But he didn’t get a chance to even get a word out before Pearl starkly cut in.

“You know this human?” she asked Rose, rather alarmed by the thought.

“He was playing a concert near the lake, a-and I couldn’t help myself,” Rose remarked with a bemused smile. “I know I said we’d be more careful after… w-what happened a few years ago, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt. And besides, he’s very adorable.”

Greg found his flustered blush deepening even more upon hearing this, an awkward, yet genuine laugh escaping him as he glanced to the side. “Aw, gee… uh… thanks!” he was quick to collect himself however, remembering what Marty had told him about playing it cool in front of woman. “Uh, I-I mean… No one can ignore the Universe. Oh, but wait!” his nonchalant demeanor quickly dissipated as he pulled out the shirt, remembering why he had come all this way in the first place. “I brought you this. It’s the free t-shirt that came with the free CD!”

“Why, thank you!” Rose exclaimed, pleasantly surprised as she took the shirt, holding it in front of her as the other Gems curiously turned to look. “His gimmick is space!” she quipped cheerfully, eliciting amused laughs from her teammates. Or rather, from Garnet and Amethyst, as Pearl was really anything but amused.

“Rose,” she whispered to the pink Gem, gripping her arm tightly, almost possessively. “Are you sure fraternizing with humans again is such a good idea? After all, we all remember what happened with F—” The white Gem quickly cut herself off, her hold on Rose tightening a bit as both of their expressions briefly darkened with remorse, remorse that obviously caught Greg off guard as he observed the conversation in confusion. “W-with… with the last one…”

“Yes… I… I do remember…” Rose muttered, pain lingering on her lovely face, but only briefly. “B-but time is different. He’s just a musician, Pearl, and a traveling one at that. He’s completely harmless.”

“H-harmless?” Greg asked with a frown, even more confused than ever as to what the context for all this was. However, before he could ask, Amethyst blithely cut in.

“Hey, play something, Music Man!” she exclaimed with a smile, gripping Rose’s skirt.

“Better make it good,” Garnet commanded firmly, a powerful gauntlet forming on her raised fist.

“Aw, man, I’m working on this awesome new set,” Greg said with a daring grin, more than ready to perform for them. “It’s gonna kill at my next show! …My next show… Aw, jeez, what time is it?!”

“Uh…. Night… time?” Pearl ventured with a confused frown.

“Yeah… Marty’s probably looking for me,” Greg rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re supposed to hit the road…. We’ve got a big show in a big city coming up soon… and I didn’t drop out of community college for nothing!”

“…What?” Pearl asked flatly, still not following.

“Well then, you better hurry,” Rose encouraged with a playful smirk. “You don’t wanna miss your ‘space train to the cosmos’.”

“Okay, I’ll see you later then,” Greg nodded with a small laugh, turning as he began to leave. Still, he couldn’t help but briefly turn back around again, voicing something that was indeed a wish he hoped would come true, even if he wasn’t really sure how. “Uh, I hope the stars align for us to meet again!”

“I’m sure they will!” Rose called back after him warmly as she saw him off.

“Bye, Music Man!” Amethyst shouted after him with a cheerful wave, one that Greg returned before he began scaling the fence again. A beat of silence passed among the Gems in wake of their latest human visitor, the first one they had gotten in quite a long time due to some rather extenuating circumstances. Yet even so, Rose smiled softly as she looked down at the shirt Greg had given her, something that was not lost on Pearl in particular as she let out something of a snarky, jealous scoff.

“I can sing!” she protested, hands on her hips as she looked up to her liege. Rose broke out into a larger, more amused grin at this, especially as both Garnet and Amethyst chuckled knowingly, much to Pearl’s growing embarrassment. “What?”

It had started raining not long after Greg and Marty had left Gravity Falls, something that the young musician only became aware of as he relined in the back of his van, absently listening to the patter of drops against metal as his manager drove them off to their next destination. Yet even though they were back on the road again, this was perhaps the first time Greg felt as though he wasn’t there, not completely at least. Because now, with his head full of thoughts of magical pink women and massive stone temples, it was as if he had left a piece of him back there on that hill. A piece that he was already feeling very incomplete without.

“Man, Greg, you really missed out,” Marty smirked in torrid satisfaction. “Vidalia’ friends were wild and crazy. Glad that town wasn’t a total waste.”

“I met some wild ladies too,” Greg spoke up, his guitar positioned on his chest as he finally decided to tell his manager about his earlier misadventure. “They changed shape and appeared out of beams of light. And they lived inside this giant temple place, and-”

“Ah ah ah, save the poetry for Portland, star child,” Marty interrupted, clearly not believing him. “We’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“I’m serious, Marty,” Greg said, sitting up. “Something’s going on back there. That town is… weird. But like, in a good way, you know?”

“Are you nuts?” Marty scoffed, rolling his eyes. “There was nothing back there in that two-bit loser town. Just wait till you see what’s ahead of us. It’s fame!” To emphasize his point, the manager pressed the play button on the radio, only for it to refuse to work. “Hey, what’s jammed in your tape deck? Have you been putting pennies in here again, you weirdo? Play me something, star child.”

Greg complied, strumming his guitar as he began the newest melody he had been mentally composing ever since he had left the temple. One that was directly influenced by Rose and her immaculate beauty and kindness. All things that he couldn’t get out of his head, no matter how hard he tried. “Do you believe in destiny? Close your eyes and leave the rest to me-”

“Snore! You’re gonna put people to sleep with that!” Marty cut him off, far from impressed with this heartfelt song. “Where’s this schlock coming from?”

“I-I just can’t stop thinking about that woman at the show…” Greg admitted, blushing in embarrassment.

“Oh boy, here we go,” Marty deadpanned with a wry, patronizing grin. “How big was she?”

“Eight feet tall… massive pink hair…” Greg detailed, smiling softly as he reflected back on her affection smile and melodious voice, the memories filling his heart with a warmth that he wasn’t sure he had ever really felt before. That warmth was quick to diminish, however, as he heard what Marty had to say on the matter.

“See, Greg, this is your problem,” the manager began callously. “You want one huge woman, when you could have multiple smaller ones.”

“Ugh,” the young musician groaned in apt disgust at this sentiment. “Marty, women are people.”

“Suuuuure, they are, star child,” Marty scoffed once more. “People who are only gonna want you if you have the chops and the cash to back it up. So just follow my lead. I’m gonna get you everything you want.”

Greg took pause at this, glancing over at the boxes of unsold merchandise sitting next to him. There was no denying that he was rather put off by Marty’s views on many things, women and romance chief among them. But never had those views really driven Greg to question his Marty’s lead before, even when that lead only seemed to be in the pursuit of money over everything else. However, as he thought between the lines for perhaps the first time, the young musician started to wonder if his manager really did have his best interest in mind after all.

“What if I wanna go back…?” Greg muttered, furrowing his brow in thought as he wondered what it could be like. What would happen if he turned the van around? If he rushed back to that temple? If he ventured to take a chance unlike any he ever had before?

“What?” Marty asked sharply, glaring back over his shoulder at him.

“What if I want to go back and be with her?!” the young musician reiterated, this time much more intent on doing just that. Something that of course, set his manager off completely.

“No one cares about your dumb feelings, Greg!” Marty snapped, livid as he turned to face him fully. “They’re making you loose sight of what’s really important!”

Greg didn’t get a chance to fire back a response as he instead let out a startled gasp upon noticing the steadily approaching headlights filling in the front window. “Watch the road!” he warned, prompting Marty to turn around just in time. He quickly swerved the van out of the path of the oncoming truck, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision before coming to a grinding halt on the side of the empty road. A beat of heavy tension lingered in the aftermath of this adrenaline spike, one that left Greg reeling as glared back over at his manager with a sense of newfound distrust.

“Why do you always get to decide what’s important?” he asked, realizing how unfair and unjust this was, how unfair it had always been really, as he said it aloud.

“Because I’m your manager,” Marty scowled coldly, his tone harsh and demanding. “And you’re just some spaced-out kid. I’m taking you to the city, and you’re gonna play, and you’re gonna like it, and you’re gonna stop thinking about giant pink women and all of that fairy tale garbage. And maybe you’ll actually make me some money for once.”

If Greg had had any doubts about Marty’s sincerity before, they all instantly confirmed themselves in that one, single moment. And for the young musician, it was more than enough to finally, finally convince him to put his foot down and be an adult. “Get out of my van,” he growled, standing as he gripped his guitar tightly.

“Sit down, Greg,” Marty sighed tiredly, hardly thinking the young musician to be serious.

“I said get out of my van!” Greg suddenly yelled, proving the exact opposite as he showed he absolutely meant it. He refused to even indulge his now former manager in any further argument as he pushed Marty out of the driver’s seat and into the rain outside, not even bothering to look back as he turned the van around to make the drive back to Gravity Falls.

“Hey! W-what are you doing?!” Marty shouted after his former protégé, running after him for a bit before giving up in petulant anger. “You’re making a huge mistake!”

Greg hardly seemed to think so as he recklessly sped back in the direction they had come, leaving his ex-manager in the dust. In fact, he couldn’t shake the growing, inspiring feeling of just how right all of this felt; cutting Marty loose, making his own choices for a change, and especially pursuing his newfound feelings that he couldn’t very well hide from himself any longer. He didn’t know if he loved Rose, at least yet, but there was no denying that he had fallen for her to some extent, hard and fast, to the point that every mile he got closer to her felt like a mile he was drawing closer to home. True, he was acting on mere impulse alone, fueled solely by the desire to see a woman he had only just met mere hours ago. But in those brief few hours alone, he had known more magic, more excitement, more curiosity, and more longing than he had ever really known before. Perhaps Marty hadn’t been the only one to be wrong all this time; maybe he had been wrong too. Because the closer he got to that mysteriously alluring statue standing astute in the moonlight, the more Greg realized that what he had spent his whole live searching for wasn’t in the cold, unfeeling stardust of space or the distant, impersonal cheers of his imaginary fans. What he was looking for was here, right in front of him, in the lovely smile and kind words of the undoubtedly magical woman who had somehow managed to steal his heart.

Or rather, she would have been right in front of him, if not for the Murder Hut’s blank sign, which Greg, in his rush to get back to the temple, didn’t even notice until he happened to drive right through it.

The van screeched to a grinding halt at this, with the young musician practically falling out of it as he rushed to inspect the damage. Fortunately, his van seemed fine, but the sign had been completely destroyed, to the point that nothing was left of it but scattered shards of wood lying strewn all over the place.

“Oh geez…” Greg muttered worriedly, rubbing the back of his neck as he tried to think of a quick way to fix things. However, he didn’t even get the chance to come up with any ideas before the hut’s proprietor, Stan, Greg vaguely remembered Amethyst calling him in passing, burst out of the house, bat already in hand.

“Alright, what’s the big idea out-” he cut himself off, his already livid expression growing even more so upon spotting the frightened young musician standing near his obliterated sign across the lawn. “Oh. I should have guessed.”

“Ah! Um, I-I’m super sorry, sir,” Greg began, taking a defensive step back towards his van. “I didn’t mean to run over your sign! I can explain!”

“Then start explaining,” Stan scowled bitterly, patting his free hand with his bat. “And it better be good, or else I might finally have a good reason to use this thing.”

“Uh, w-well, I…” Greg trailed off, quickly faltering as he realized he couldn’t come up with anything. “O-ok, so… I don’t really have a good explanation for this other than it was an accident, but again I’m really sorry!”

“And what makes you think sorry is gonna cut it, kid?” Stan asked coldly, still fortunately not raising his bat to attack. “In case you forgot, you ran over my brand new sign with your goofy hippie van! I could have you hauled off to jail for this, and at this point, I’m thinkin’ I should so you’ll finally stop coming around here and getting on my nerves.”

“W-wait! You can’t-” Greg interupted himself again, his fear turning into solemn acceptance as he glanced over at the broken sign again. “Just… please, listen. I-I’ve had kind of a crazy night, ok? I just fired my manager and ran all the way back here because I’m pretty sure I’m in love with that pink woman I was looking for earlier and I think my entire worldview’s just completely shifted and-”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Stan interupted, rather caught off guard by this news. “Did you just say you’re in love? With… Rose?”

“Uh… I mean, I might be?” Greg ventured. “Everything feels so up in the air right now… T-the only thing I know for sure is that I really, really wanna go up there and see her again. Like… like if I stay with her, then… then maybe I’ll finally be where I belong…”

Stan let out a mocking scoff at this as he rolled his eyes. “Yeesh, kid, looks like I was right about you being nothing more than a lovestruck punk,” he remarked dryly. “Fair warning: you’re in way over your head if you wanna go a round with ol’ Pinky up there.”

“W-what do you mean?”

“I mean, she’s nothing but trouble!” Stan scowled disdainfully. “Her and all the rest of those ‘Crystal Gems’. Why, the last guy who got tangled up with them was-” He cut himself off with a sharp breath, his glare sharpening and softening all at once, almost as if this was a personal matter to him instead of one of mere hearsay. “…Nevermind. But still, those Gems aren’t worth the trouble. If I were you, kid, I’d turn around and head right back the way I came and never, ever look back on this nutso town. You’ll be a lot happier if you do, trust me.”

Greg took pause upon hearing this, somewhat surprised as he noticed just how sincere Stan seemed to be about this apparent warning. Yet as much as he wanted to ask about where it had even come from, he was reminded of his former resolve once again as he looked back up towards the temple. To where Rose, where perhaps the rest of his life, might just have been waiting for him, regardless of what that life might be like. “I… I can’t…” he shook his head, a small, wistful smile on his face. “I’ve already given up a lot to make it this far. I don’t think I could just turn back now, even if I wanted to, without at least finding out if its all gonna be worth it in the end.”

“Pfft, what a load of schmaltz,” Stan rolled his eyes again, though his harsh manner lessened considerably upon hearing all this. “You’re not too bright, are you, kid?”

“Maybe I’m not,” Greg shrugged with a small chuckle. “I mean, I did accidentally run your huge sign over with my van after all. Speaking of which…” his smile faltered. “I-I guess you’re gonna call the police on me about that, aren’t you? To be honest, I wouldn’t really blame you; I mean, it was your property and I did kind of destroy it, a-and though I’ve never really been to jail before and I don’t really have any money for bail or anything, I guess I’ll figure out some way to-”

“Kid, would you shut up already?” Stan interjected, crossing his arms. “I’m not gonna call the police on you. You’re honestly too pathetic to just haul off to jail. Plus, the last thing I need swarming this place are a bunch of cops.”

“B-but what about the sign?”

“I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do about the sign,” Stan began, still rather staunch. “You’re gonna work for me here at the Murder Hut until you’ve paid it off. I’ve been meaning to hire on a cashier around here anyway, so I guess this works out for everyone.”

“H-hire… Wait, you mean like a job?” Greg asked, quite surprised. “I… I’ve never had one of those before…”

“Why does that not surprise me?” Stan deadpanned, turning to head back inside.

“W-wait! Sir… why are you letting me off so easily?” the young musician wondered, bewildered. “A second ago, I thought you wanted to beat my head in with a baseball bat but now you’re giving me a job? I’m confused…”

“Don’t be,” Stan concluded with a shrug. “I usually wouldn’t bother, especially seeing as how you’re all head over heels for Rose, of all people, but… the truth is, you kinda remind me of, well, me when I was your age. Believe it or not, I used to be every bit as lost and spacey as you are until I had to grow out of it. Though, uh… just out of curiosity, you’re not on the run from any Colombian gang members, are ya?”

“Um… no…?” Greg frowned, unsure of what such an odd question had to do with anything.

“Good, then there won’t be any problems,” Stan finally grinned as he opened the door to go in. “You start at 8 a.m. sharp. And I don’t care if you stay all up all night making goo-goo eyes at Pinky up there, you better not be late!”

“I-I won’t be!” Greg assured with a relieved smile as he prepared to get back into his van. “I promise! Thank you so much, sir!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Stan remarked sardonically as he waved the excited young musician off. He let out something of an amused sigh in spite of himself as he watched him leave, but all the same, he was resolved to remain careful about all this. After all, the last thing he needed was for his new, lovestruck “employee” to end up being the wild card that unraveled everything he had been working the past seven years for. “Ugh, I better not end up regretting this if that kid knows what’s good for him…”

The small burst of regret Greg had felt upon kicking Marty out of his van was all but forgotten as he continued speeding up towards the temple, a huge grin spread wide across his face. Even though he hadn’t had much of a choice in his new employment, he couldn’t deny he was excited about it. After all, it was by far a better alternative to being arrested, and maybe if he was lucky, then Stan would let him keep a portion of his earnings to keep food in his stomach and gas in his van. The money would certainly be appreciated, seeing as how he probably wouldn’t be making any revenue off touring anymore, not that he really ever had in the first place. Still, getting a job wouldn’t be the thing to ultimately make this night for him; the only one who could make it truly special was now only right behind a chain link metal fence. A fence that, unlike Stan’s sign, Greg didn’t really have too many gripes about running his van straight through.

The young musician didn’t hesitate to jump out of the van as soon as he pulled it up in front of the temple, grabbing his guitar as he did. Rose and her friends were nowhere to be seen, but Greg assumed that she was inside of the statue itself, which was why he hurried up to its large door and knocked eagerly, his heart practically aching with longing at the thought of seeing her again. “Hey, are you in there?” he called amidst knocking. “I can play for you now! I even revamped my awesome set!” At this, the young musician ran back to the crystal platform, positioning his guitar in his hands to play the song he had been mentally working on all night. “This one’s for you, mystery woman!”

He began with a bold, earnest strum, his voice echoing throughout the shimmering grotto as he began to sing from his heart. “Do you believe in destiny? Close your eyes and leave the rest to me… Do you believe fantasy? I have to when its right in front of me…”

Greg realized just how true this was as he glanced around the cave, its beautifully crystalline walls looking as though they were something out of an interstellar dream. Honestly, Rose herself seemed like that too, the air of mystery that surrounded her making him want to know so much more about here. Where had she come from? Why had she chosen to live in a seemingly unassuming little town like this? Who was she, really, and her odd, yet interesting friends? How did every word she say, every glance she sent his way, ever second of her smile, seem to enchant him more than anything else ever could?

“Oh, what are you doing here? In the real world? What are you doing here? So close I could touch you…” He continued, his beat steadily building as he approached the temple gate once more with purpose in his step. Rose had still yet to appear, but still he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop, because now his emotions were guiding him far more than anything else. His hope, his heart was pushing him forward, into something that he was perfectly content to fall into without a sign of hesitation.

“What are you doing here? And what are you doing to me?!”

As Greg’s song reached its peak, he dropped to his knees, the temple door finally glowing as he did. He watched in muted awe as it started to split open, flooding the grotto with light that was only obscured by the large, curly-haired silhouette standing amidst it.

“Oh!” the young musician smiled upon seeing what Rose had on over her dress, though his elation soon turned to confusion at the look of somber worry on her face. “You’re wearing the… shirt…”

“Please,” she began, her voice morose, regretful as she stepped forward a bit. “Go away.”

“I-I’m sorry…” Greg blushed, looking down apprehensively. “D-did I…?”

Rose sighed, her shoulders dropping as she stole a brief glance down the hill, almost in the direction of the Murder Hut. “You’re awfully cute, a-and I really wanna play with you but… I can’t.”

“You… can’t?” the young musician raised a confused eyebrow. “I… I don’t understand…”

“No, you don’t…” Rose sighed once more, her pink locks blowing a bit in the dull, almost chilly breeze. “I still don’t understand myself, really…” her voice turned to a mutter as her gaze drifted up towards the stars almost reminiscently. Greg was quiet at this, unable to really voice his ongoing bewilderment as he watched her carefully, unable to ignore the lingering sadness in her lovely eyes. “I’ve known humans much like you before… I’ve lost even more of them. It’s nothing new. But the last one though, I… h-he… w-what happened to him… it… it was all my fault!” The young musician was rather taken aback as he watched, still awestruck as tears started to well up in her eyes, though she was quick to wipe them away. “I… I just… I don’t think I can do this again… I’m sorry…”

“W-wait!” Greg exclaimed, jumping to his feet as she turned to head back inside. Much to his fortune, she paused, looking to him with dejected curiosity as he spoke his piece. “Look, I-I don’t know what happened between you and this other guy, but… I… you… t-there’s something about you, I just… I-I can’t get you out of my head! I mean, you’re so… wow, you know?”

“Wow?” Rose frowned, confused.

“Yeah! It’s almost like you’re magical or something!”

“I… am?”

“Really? Well then, that explains a lot!” Greg chuckled, bewildering the pink Gem even more. “Can you really blame me for being a little curious? You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever seen! And you get bonus points in my book for being about the only person who’s ever showed up to one of my concerts!”

Rose had to suppress a laugh at this, one that she abandoned quickly in favor of maintaining her former seriousness. “W-well… I… you’re…” she trailed off, clearly unsure of what to say before she finally steadied herself again. “E-even if you do feel that way, your life is short and you have dreams. I won’t let you give up on everything you want.”

“Well, then that’s gonna be a problem…” Greg began, bowing his head low.

“Huh?” Rose asked before the young musician looked up at her with a bright, winning smile.

“You’re everything I want!”

Rose gasped, stars in her eyes as she heard this romantic statement. All her former grief was soon replaced with a laugh that she was powerless to contain, a stray tear streaming down her cheek in the process. Greg joined in, chuckling as he felt his cheeks burn red with a rewarding kind of warmth, a warmth that seemed to explode into a bright, glowing, welcome fire as Rose did something quite unexpected. Without any warning she leaned forward and gently kissed his forehead, her lips feather light yet sweet on his skin before she pulled away just as smoothly. Greg stilled for just a second in the aftermath of it, his jaw dropping as he looked to her in complete surprise, only for Rose to break down into even more laughter, ultimately encouraging him back into doing the same.

The two of them remained there, laughing and loving for quite some time as the crystalline dream world she was a part of glistened beautifully all around them, both of them truly feeling that something special was beginning here. Something that would take them both to places they never thought possible, but never once dared to regret.

Greg smiled and hummed to himself as he finished wiping the Murder Hut’s counter down prior to closing. He had been working there under Stan for a little over a month, and in that short span of time, the young musician grew quite content with his new lot. The work at the small but booming tourist trap wasn’t anything too taxing or demeaning, and despite his sour attitude during their first encounter, Stan had proven himself to be a mostly easy to work with boss, with some sparse exceptions here and there. Of course, the conman didn’t really approve of Greg’s ever growing relationship with Rose, for reasons he never really cared to explain, but he largely held his peace about it in exchange for that lack of an explanation. But despite all that, the young musician felt as though his new employment at the shack was going rather well, to the point that he had largely forgotten he was working here really only to pay off a debt. That is, until Stan decided to offhandedly remind him about it as he watched his young employee dutifully complete his tasks for the afternoon.

“Make sure you dust up around the register, kid,” the conman reminded as he counted his earnings from the day on the other side of the gift shop. “It’s a proven fact that people are ten times as likely to rob registers that are dirty cause that makes ‘em think the employees are slacking off on the job.”

“Is that really a proven fact, Mr. Pines?” Greg asked with a small, knowing grin as he did as his boss advised.

“…Alright, maybe it’s just a little something I picked up from experience,” Stan shrugged candidly. “But don’t expect a promotion or anything just because you think your slick, kid. In fact… don’t expect a promotion in general, seeing as how your time’s just about up here.”

“Wait, what?”

“What, you really think I haven’t been keeping tabs on how close you’re getting to paying that sign of?” Stan asked, heading over to the counter. “I may scam all the rubes that come in here to give me their money, but I’m not about to do that when it comes to my cash. You’ve just about worked your debt off, kid. In fact, seeing as how you haven’t really whined about this whole thing, I might be willing to cut you off a bit early and let today be your last day. Just as long as you don’t tell anyone I went soft on ya, cause I didn’t. I made you work your butt off here and don’t you forget it!”

“I won’t,” Greg chuckled, though it soon petered out into a bout of thoughtful musing. “But man, I’m really almost done working here at the Murder Hut? Huh, it feels like this past month flew by. It’ll be pretty weird not coming into work every morning… I wonder what I’ll do with all that free time?”

“Knowing you, you’ll probably spend it gawking at Pinky all day,” Stan remarked, rolling his eyes sardonically.

“Heh, yeah…” the young musician grinned halfheartedly as he continued wiping the counter off, his smile gradually fading into a frown the more he let his thoughts wander. Really, as much as he wanted to spend all his time with Rose, she wasn’t all the time as she frequently went off on magical missions with the other Gems. For the most part, Greg was at work at the hut whenever she was gone, but without his employment there, he’d have to find some other way to spend his time. The only problem was, he didn’t have the slightest idea about where to go or what to do from the starting point he had miraculously gotten here.

The young musician’s thoughts were soon interupted as the gift shop door suddenly swung open, revealing the heavy rain ongoing outside, as well as someone Greg hadn’t been expecting to see here, of all places. “M-Marty?!”

“Greg! There you are!” Marty exclaimed incredulously as he barged into the shop largely uninvited. “I’ve been looking all over this loser town for you. Should have guessed you’d end up in a chintzy place like this. Still, I figured that you’ve had enough time to come to your senses about all this ‘pink women’ stuff by now, so come on!” Without even letting the young musician get a word in edgewise, his former manager grabbed him by the wrist and started to pull him towards the door. “We gotta get going; you’re gonna have to work hard to catch up on our tour schedule, but I managed to pull a few strings, so we’ll-”

“W-whoa! Marty, hold on!” Greg interjected, pulling back against his ex-manager as he was essentially dragging him across the shop. “I don’t think I’m gonna-”

“Oh, you don’t need to thank me for saving you from this dollar-grabbing dump, star child,” Marty remarked with a smug smirk. “And you also don’t have to apologize for your little diva fit a few weeks ago, even if you should seeing as how I ruined my good shoes in that rain you tossed me out into…”

“B-but I-”

“Hold it!” Stan interjected this time, coming to block Marty from reaching the door with Greg in tow. “I don’t know who you think you are, bub, but if you think you can just waltz outta here with my employee while he’s still on the clock, then you got another thing coming!”

“Your employee?” Marty scoffed. “Sorry, old timer, but star child here was with me first. This kid wasn’t meant to work in some two-bit tourist trap like this; he’s meant to make me a ton of money! Now get out of my way so he can finally do that like he’s supposed to!”

“B-but Marty,” Greg spoke up, pulling his arm away from his ex-manager. “I don’t want to go back on tour.”

“What?” Marty asked dryly, glaring back at his former protégé.

“I said I don’t wanna go back,” the young musician shook his head. “I like it here. I like being with Rose and working at the Murder Hut and not always having to go from city to city without ever just stopping to take a break and breathe. When I used to tour with you, it always felt like I was looking for something I could never find. But… I think I’ve finally found that something right here in Gravity Falls. And its something I don’t want to give up.”

“Ugh, how many times do I have to tell you, Greg?” Marty asked harshly. “What you want matters about as much as this run down old shack does! Don’t you get it? I could make you a star, Greg, just like you’ve always dreamed of!”

“Well… w-well maybe I don’t wanna be a star anymore!” Greg shot back brazenly.

“Are you kidding me? Everyone wants to be a star!” Marty argued fiercely. “You really think working in tourism and being with some weird pink broad makes you anything special? ‘Cause it doesn’t. It makes you a nobody, just like everyone else out there.”

“…Then I guess I’ll just have to settle for being a nobody,” the young musician shrugged, a small smile of acceptance.

“Oh for crying out—just come on already!” Marty tried pulling Greg out once more, only to be met with much more resistance this time. “Quit being a big baby about this! You’re going back on tour whether you want to or not!”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Stan interjected coldly, completely put off by the ex-manager’s behavior as he continued to block the door. “The kid’s not going anywhere unless he chooses to. So what do you say, Greg? You wanna stay? Or you wanna go with this sleezebag over here?”

“Uh, I wanna stay,” Greg immediately replied, as though it were obvious, which, by all accounts, it was. Still, he couldn’t help but feel incredibly grateful for Stan’s intervention at the moment; after all, the conman was giving him an actual choice in the matter, something Marty had never done for him, even once.

“You heard him,” Stan said to Marty very curtly. “Now, take a hike. Or else…”

“Or else what, old timer?” the ex-manager scoffed, rolling his eyes at what he say as a weak threat. That is, until mere seconds later when he found himself landing face-first in the mud outside.

“And stay out!” Stan shouted after him, brushing his hands off with satisfaction. “If I ever see your mug around here bothering Greg again, then I won’t be so nice next time, so beat it!”

“Augh!” Marty shouted in absolute rage as he picked himself up from the mud, which completely covered him from head to toe. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyers, you crazy old geezer! And as for you, Greg, I hope you realize you just lost your last chance to ever make anything out of your life! You’ll never be anything without me!”

“You know, I think he’ll manage just fine,” Stan remarked, exchanging a genuine smile with Greg before they both stepped back inside and slammed the door behind them.

“I’m sorry about that, Mr. Pines,” Greg said, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “I didn’t know Marty would be that dead set on becoming my manager again but I’m glad you were able to chase him off.”

“Eh, what can I say? I know an absolute creep when I see one,” Stan shrugged nonchalantly. “Besides, I know what it’s like to not really have a choice about where your life’s gonna go, so I figured I’d spare you from that. ‘Cause trust me, kid, it’s pretty much the worst.”

“Well, thank you anyway,” Greg smiled, unable to resist giving his boss a hug out of gratitude. Stan didn’t really return it, but he did grin in brief amusement at his employee’s sentimentality before snapping back into his usually surly show.

“Alright, alright, enough hugging,” the conman deadpanned, pulling himself out of the embrace. “Your shift’s over for the night, so get going. But only as long as I see you bright and early again tomorrow morning.”

“Wait…” Greg paused, his eyes widening as he realized what his boss was implying. “You mean…?”

“Sure does. I’m hiring you on full time,” Stan smirked, crossing his arms. “That is, only if you want to-”

“Yes, I do!” Greg readily agreed, elated by this opportunity to work and make money on his own terms instead of on someone else’s for a change. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” he cheered, suddenly embracing his boss once again.

“Hey! What’d I say about the hugging?” Stan asked with faux impatience.

“Heh, sorry!” Greg chuckled as he backed off, grabbing his things as he prepared to head out. “I gotta go tell Rose about this! Thanks again, Mr. Pines! For everything!”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t sweat it,” Stan remarked with a wave of his hand as he watched his new full-time employee take off. He only waited until after he was fully gone, of course, to crack the smile he had been holding back ever since Greg had told Marty off. A smile that was filled with pride and relief over a life that, in some aspects, was quite similar to how his had used to be; only unlike his, Greg’s was already being spent in a much better way. “Heh, good kid…”

At the same time, the young musician practically bounded up the temple hill, excitement flowing through him as he drew closer and closer to where Rose always waited for him. Despite his happiness over his newly secured job, a part of him still thought back to what Marty had said, about how he’d never amount to anything without the stardom he used to always think he wanted. But as it stood, Greg realized he had it pretty good. True, he may not have had legions of cheering fans or countless people lining up for his autograph, but he had a van, a steady job, and a girlfriend who was quite literally out of this world. As far as he was concerned, he may not have gotten the dream of stardom and fame he had been chasing at first.

But the dream he had gotten in its place was worth so, so much more.

Greg felt his heart skip a beat with joy as he spotted Rose afar, perched on a rock near the temple as she patiently waited for him. Her lovely face lit up the moment she caught sight of him, making it even more beautifully radiant than it already was. “Greg!” she exclaimed in a bright, cheerful greeting as she stood to go meet him.

“Rose!” Greg called back to her, quickening his pace. The moment they met was a sudden collision of a hug, one that resulted in Rose sweeping Greg off his feet as she spun him around, both of them laughing warmly together. It didn’t take long for this to transform into a kiss, a deep, full one that lasted quite a while, seeing as how neither of them were too keen on breaking it apart.

And in the midst of that kiss, Greg realized that there was no shadow of a doubt: this was all he had ever wanted. This was what gave the young musician a spark of love and excitement that was so bright and so big that he could scarcely even begin to describe it, one that brimmed warmer than anything else could in his heart and soul. There was nothing in the world that could compare to it, at least as far as he knew. That feeling that filled him every time his and Rose’s lips met, every time they fell into a loving embrace, every time they were so much as even together at all in any way. It was a feeling of elation, of exhilaration, of finally belonging after searching for a place that had always been right here all along.

Present day

“And that’s the whole story,” Greg concluded, putting his guitar aside. “So, what’d you three think?” He looked to the kids with a smirk as he gaged their reactions to the tale he had just told. Dipper was thoroughly enraptured, Mabel was on the verge of joyful tears, and Steven simply wore a huge, knowing grin as he look his father playfully. “And what are you smiling about?”

“You loved her!” Steven teased, still beaming brightly.

“Heh, come here, you!” Greg laughed, pulling his son into a playful noogie that ended with them both in hopeless chuckles.

“Geez, Greg, 23 years later and you’re still just as schmaltzy as you were back then,” Stan remarked with a wry smirk upon watching this display. “Its like nothing’s changed at all.”

“Ugh, it was all so romantic!” Mabel gushed, hugging her pillow tightly. “Mr. Universe, you should adapt all this into a movie! It’d win so many awards for being the most adorable love story of all time!”

“In that case, you might wanna take out all the parts with that Marty guy then,” Dipper noted sardonically. “He sounded like a complete jerk.”

“Like I said earlier, kid, ‘jerk’ is an understatement for that creep,” Stan agreed. “Still, I gotta admit it felt pretty good to toss him out into the mud like that. The look on his face was priceless!”

“Yeah, seriously, Dad, how’d you even end up with him as your manager anyway?” Steven asked with a confused frown.

“Eh, I think that’s a story for another time,” Greg shrugged with another small laugh. “Still, you guys are right, he was awful. But I guess I owe him a lot. He made it easy for me to stay.”

“He made it easy?” Stan asked, raising an eyebrow at his former employee.

“Oh, a-and you did too, Mr. Pines!” the former rock star exclaimed, flustered.

“Well, whoever helped you decide to stay, I’m glad you did,” Steven said to his father as he went in for another hug.

“Yeah,” Greg smiled down at his son, returning his embrace with a smile of deep satisfaction. That satisfaction so deep in fact, that it had been there ever since that magical night that had forever changed his life 23 years ago and had, in the end, ultimately brought him here to this very moment. A moment that he wouldn’t have given up for all the riches and fame in the world. “Me too.”

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hermanwatts · 5 years ago

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SUPERVERSIVE: The Best Anime of the Year Mega Post

Giorno Giovanna, a holdover from Winter 2018

Outside of the horrendous and tragic Kyoto Animation fire, this was an amazing year for anime. The fire is a terrible loss to the community; there is no softening that blow. But as far as the quality of the shows that came out – WOW!

This is going to be a pretty long post, because there’s so much to get to. Before we start, here’s the structure:

I will be naming one show per season as the “Winner”, and then pick a runner-up.

Only new shows will be counted – if a show from a previous season is continuing or a season 2 is airing, that won’t count.

That said, best continuing show/sequel will be its own category.

An anime of the year will be named as one of the winners at the end.

Without further ado…Let’s begin!

Winter Season Winner: The Promised Neverland

Overview/Review: I remember when the winter season was ongoing it was thought of as a truly incredible season. And…yeah, but not necessarily because of the huge variety of new shows. It’s because between the new shows and continuations of previous shows, there was a ton of FANTASTIC content. We have the incredible season 2 of “Mob Psycho 100” airing as well as the back half of part 5 of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, “Golden Wind”, arguably the best one yet. “Dororo” started airing as well; I only saw it later on (and honestly it came off mostly as a bargain bin “Demon Slayer” with worse action choreography, animation, and music – yes, I know it came first), but it was still pretty good.

Without a doubt though, of the new shows, the season came down to two: “The Promised Neverland” and “Kaguya-Sama: Love is War”.

(“Wait, you’re not even going to talk about ‘Shield Hero’?” NO.)

Both shows were very good, but I think everybody knows the clear winner has to be “The Promised Neverland”

Okay, I know I already outed myself as a loyal shonen guy, and yes, this year’s list will have multiple. And yes, “The Promised Neverland” is a shonen. But it’s not a normal shonen. “The Promised Neverland” is a horror story. A really intense horror story about adorable children being raised on a farm and fed to demons.

I just spoiled something for the first episode, but I don’t know how to recommend it to people without talking about the premise. And MAN is that some premise, and some first episode. The show doesn’t shy away from some truly horrific imagery, and the direction and character animations are tremendous.

Most importantly though…the damn thing is scary. Really scary. It isn’t nihilistic, it isn’t gory or gross or full of jump scares, but the way it expertly maintains an atmosphere of slowly creeping dread is masterful. And yet, it is also undoubtedly superversive, an impressive feat.

I can’t talk about much more because spoilers really do matter in a story like this. The villain is great, the leads are likable, and the soundtrack is solidly atmospheric. It’s an excellent show.

That said, to my eyes it is far from perfect. The pacing is totally janked in the middle, with certain plot points being hyperfocused on to an almost laughable degree and others sped by so fast you’re left scratching your head trying to figure out how you got here. And outside the villains, while the characters are solidly likable they don’t particularly stand out. This makes sense in a story like this – too competent and you lose some of the tension as it becomes less likely they’ll lose – but it does nevertheless leave you occasionally waiting for somebody to do something really interesting, and while it DOES happen it can take awhile. It often feels like lots of chess pieces are being pushed around with few captures.

But in the end the show has such a great atmosphere and executes its terrific premise so well it is the easy pick for the anime of the spring season. Highly recommended.

Runner-up: Kaguya-Sama: Love is War is a neat twist on high school rom-coms starring two characters who both obviously like each other but instead of talking it out engage in escalating battles of hyperbolic 3-D chess as each tries to get the other to confess. The show honestly starts off slow but as it starts to peel back the layers surrounding its characters it grows beyond being a collection of memes and becomes a funny and satisfying rom-com in its own right, more like “Toradora” than not. Recommended.

Spring Season Winner: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba

Review/Overview: The spring season was nowhere near as strong as the winter season, with no real standout sequels to pad out the numbers. But one show stood out, and not only stood out, is in my opinion superior to “The Promised Neverland”, and that show is “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba”.

Let’s be honest here: Demon Slayer is about as generic a shonen as you can get. A teenager from the Taisho period of Japan named Tanjiro comes home to find his entire family murdered by demons, save one: his sister Nezuko, but unfortunately she’s no luckier – she’s been transformed into a demon herself. Despite this Tanjiro refuses to believe that her humanity is completely gone, and searches desperately for help. After a chance encounter with a demon slayer proves that her familial loyalty has not been completely lost the slayer spares her life and recommends Tanjiro train to join the Demon Slayer Corps, with the hope that with their training and resources on his side he can somehow find a cure.

The characters are fine – nothing special. The plot is fine – nothing special. So what makes this show so great?

Quite simply, this show has arguably the greatest production values a TV anime has ever had. Demon Slayer paces itself well, and every action scene is better than the last, culminating in the remarkable Demon Mountain arc and the stunning episode 19 fight between Tanjiro and one of the villainous twelve Kizuki, super-powerful demons working for the most powerful demon of all, Muzan.

So essentially we have a show with solid characters (except Zenitsu, who at times nearly ruins the show, though people have promised me with solemn assurance that he gets better), pacing, and writing and incredible action, animation, sound design, and soundtrack. For a shonen to break its way into the popular consciousness I think it needs to do one thing particularly well; for “My Hero Academia” it’s the characters and for “Demon Slayer” it’s the production values. For that reason I doubt it will age as well, but that doesn’t make what we have any less excellent.

Runner-up: None. I didn’t particularly like the rest of the offerings this season. I suppose I should note “Fruits Basket” is supposed to be good even if it isn’t really my thing.

Summer Season Winner: Dr. Stone

Review/Overview: Summer was a much stronger season than the spring season, though often for a lot of its sequels. We have the fun, if slight, sequel to “Is it Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?” which is the sort of light feel good show I think the lame Slime Isekai was supposed to be, and some well-regarded spinoffs I have been assured are good even though I didn’t watch them, such as “A Certain Scientific Accelerator” and “Lord El-Melloi’s Case Files”. We also have mediocre-but-not-terrible disappointments like “Fire Force”, which at least has decent animation sometimes. “Vinland Saga” I haven’t had the opportunity to watch yet; I’ve heard it’s…pretty fine.

But by far, and I mean by far, the best anime of the summer is “Dr. Stone”. Holy crap do I love this show. “Dr. Stone’s” premise is as simple as it is awesome: One day all of humanity turns to stone. Over 3,000 years later Senku Ishigami, a genius high schooler with a passion for science, wakes up along with his dim-witted but physically adept friend Taiju, and together they set about rebuilding civilization and reviving the stone world.

The show starts off with a bang, leaning into the horror of the premise and introducing an unforgettable character in Senku, then steadily improves as it goes along. “Dr. Stone” is not a battle anime, but that doesn’t mean it’s not hype. “Dr. Stone” is an anime about science, yes, but more importantly it’s an anime about how humanity is awesome and how we take for granted all of the wonders of the modern world that people of the past could only dream of.

The hype moments take place in the form of technological and scientific achievements, as Senku slowly reintroduces modern technology to a lovable cast of characters. It also features what is absolutely my scene of the year, even over “Demon Slayer’s” epic episode 19 fight, in the final minutes of episode 9, an utterly awe-inspiring moment that needs to be seen for itself to be fully appreciated.

Imagine you have never seen a light bulb, a record, a generator, antibiotics, or even pasta before. What would it be like to see it for the first time? To watch the modern world come into being? The answer to that question is the true appeal of “Dr. Stone” (not to mention its gorgeous backgrounds and hilarious facial expressions), and I can’t recommend it enough.

Runner-up: Despite some good sequels no new shows really stood out to me, but for what its worth I’ve heard “Vinland Saga” is pretty decent, if a bit divisive. As far as sequels I do recommend “Is it Wrong to Pick up Girls in a Dungeon?” for a fun time.

Fall Season Winner: No Guns Life

Review/Overview: The Fall season has been insanely good, both in new shows and sequels. Though stuffed with isekai not even all of them are disasters for once. What I’m just going to call “Pro Wrestler Isekai” and “Cautious Hero Isekai” are okay, if not hilarious, comedies; ultimately I think if Pro Wrestler Isekai – written by the Konosuba author – had the animation quality of “Cautious Hero Isekai”, it would probably be great, but as is one is written very well but has bland animation and one is animated hilariously but feels more like a knock-off “Konosuba” then the anime by the “Konosuba” guy. Still, both can be an okay time.

“Ascendance of a Bookworm” is a very, very slow burn, and I’m getting tired of medieval European-style settings, but the characters are lovely, the ideas behind it are interesting, and it looks great. If you are okay with the snail’s pace there’s a lot to love about it. Even a show like “Assassin’s Pride”, which is generic light novel trash, is really, really well animated and well drawn with an interesting world and terrific visuals. I can’t and won’t recommend it, but we’re in a season where even the bad shows actually have effort put into them.

To say nothing of the sequels, season 4 of “My Hero Academia” and even season 3 of “Chihayafiuru”, which is a surprisingly fun little show about a girl obsessed with the Japanese card game Karuta and the relationships that have been formed around it.

That said, two new shows this season were both absolutely outstanding, “No Guns Life” and “Beastars”, but while I absolutely love “Beastars” and unreservedly recommend it I have to give “No Guns Life” the nod as anime of the season. In a dystopian future Juzo Inui is a private eye working as a “Resolver” where he takes on cases specifically related to “extended”, humans who have augmented their body with cybernetic extensions. In fact, Juzo is an extended himself, a particularly dramatic one, in fact. You see, his head is a gun.

Yeah. His head. Is a gun. Straight up, just a gun.

So this show is awesome, of course. With a premise like that, how could it not be? But it’s even better than that. “No Guns Life” is smart. Juzo’s (outstanding) character design can easily be played campily and over the top, but the show goes a different way and plays everything with total seriousness. As a result Juzo, while absolutely badass, comes off as a distinctly tragic figure. I think the most impressive part of this show is that once I started watching it I never thought to myself “Man does Juzo look silly”. He isn’t a silly character, he’s a sad one, his humanity forcibly taken away so he could be turned into a living weapon.

And yes, he is indeed super cool. Remember, only people Juzo accepts get to touch his trigger, and he doesn’t intend to accept anyone. The other main characters, a teenager rescued by Juzo from the evil Beruhren Corporation, who conducted human experimentation on children, and Mary, Juzo’s mechanic, are both immediately interesting to watch, to say nothing of the colorful cast of minor characters appearing regularly throughout the show. The plot is an engaging conspiracy mystery with plenty of twists and turns, and the studio in charge is the legendary Madhouse so of course the animation is great. It all feels like a 90’s throwback anime in the best possible way – mature storytelling for a slightly older audience with a serious-looking art style and color palette.

I should note that for the first time on this list it is questionable if the show is strictly speaking superversive. “No Guns Life” is a neo-noir, and the essence of noir is that the world of black and white, good and evil, is gone: We’re in a world of gray now. But inside this world of gray are men like Juzo, who hold onto the flame of integrity even though they know it has no value in a world like this – but that doesn’t matter, because sometimes something is still the right thing to do. Good isn’t always rewarded, evil isn’t always punished, but that’s no excuse for breaking your moral code, because in the world of gray it’s even more important than ever before. Is that superversive? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s certainly compelling. Highly recommended.

Runner-up: I can’t emphasize enough that “Beastars”, dark tale about the lives of herbivores and carnivores living in a society where they are forced to integrate as equals, is very nearly just as good a show as “No Guns Life”. Specifically, “Beastars” takes place in a school and follows the life of Legosi, a polite and mild-mannered wolf who is constantly swallowing down sudden urges of extreme bloodlust. After a murder takes place on campus and Legosi nearly loses control and kills a rabbit, tensions mount and conflicts start to arise not only between the herbivores and the carnivores but even between fellow carnivores with conflicting ideas about how to live their lives.

The show is animated in CGI but somehow it not only works, it has one of the coolest and most distinct visual styles of the year. The music has a jazzy feel vaguely reminiscent of “Cowboy Bebop”. While the OP, “Wild Side”, isn’t necessarily the best one (there are others with more going on visually), it’s terrific musically, has legitimately incredible stop motion animation, and tells a creepy little self-contained story. “Beastars” is an excellent show, and that I prefer “No Guns Life” is arguably only a matter of taste. Highly recommended.

Best continuing show/sequel of the year: Mob Psycho 100 season 2.

Review/Overview: With so many amazing sequels having come out this year, to say nothing of the continuing shows from Fall 2018, I want to say that this was a really difficult choice. We have the terrific second half of part 5 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, “Golden Wind”. We have the front half of season 4 of the always excellent “My Hero Academia” in its best story arc. We have the fun-if-slight shows “Is it Wrong to Pick up Girls in a Dungeon?” season 2 and “Chihayafuru” season 3. All of these shows ranged from good to outstanding and could easily win in any other year.

(Note: “My Hero Academia”, if the arc is executed well, would probably win if the FULL season was shown instead of just the first half.)

I want to say this was a really difficult choice, but it wasn’t difficult at all. Season 2 of “Mob Psycho 100” was somehow even better than the incredible season 1 of the show, and cements its status as an instant classic. It’s hilarious, it’s touching, the animation is insanely good, and the message that hard work and self-improvement is the key to making a fulfilling life for yourself is just as profound in the modern anime world landscape as ever. Despite airing all the way back in the winter season, and despite many other excellent shows up against it, there was never any other real contender. There’s no excuse not to be watching this one by now.

And now, last but not least…

New show of the year: Dr. Stone

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This year really was insanely strong. It featured five – Five! – shows that easily could have been anime of the year in almost any other year in “The Promised Neverland”, “Demon Slayer”, “No Guns Life”, “Beastars”, and “Dr. Stone”. But I can’t in good conscience pick any show but “Dr. Stone” as new anime of the year. Like “The Promised Neverland” its premise is immediately eye-catching, but unlike that show it doesn’t have any weird pacing issues, and it has one of the most compelling protagonists ever.

The production values are not to the level of “Demon Slayer” and it doesn’t feature much action, but it explores ideas that are far more interesting and features moments that are just as hype as any fight scene. It doesn’t have the twisty plot or mature style of “No Guns Life” but it has an infectious enthusiasm for humanity that really makes you reflect on just how much our species has accomplished.

It’s a super optimistic show with a great premise, a great protagonist, great backgrounds, great character designs, great facial expressions, great ideas, and is overall the most fun I’ve had watching an anime this year. In a year of strengths, “Dr. Stone” stands out as the strongest. I am ten billion percent certain you’ll regret it if you miss it.

Bonus section – Disappointment of the year: “Carole and Tuesday”

This year featured in my opinion four contenders for the title. “Fire Force” was much hyped but ended up being mostly dull with bursts of action that were hard to be invested in thanks to the unmemorable characters and unimpressive plot. After an incredible season 1 “One Punch Man’s” second season was a dud that had none of the effort and passion that went into the original season of the show. “The Rising of the Shield Hero” was again much hyped but suffered from the same problems as every other isekai story even as it pretended it didn’t.

But while the easy pick for disappointment of the year is “One Punch Man”, I’m not going to pick that. Really, didn’t we all know it would be bad when we heard Madhouse wasn’t going to be handling it? Instead I’ll have to give the award to “Carole and Tuesday”, a Shinichiro Watanabe show about a rich girl in a sci-fi future who moves to the city to make it big in music, where she teams up with a poor waitress and they form a band. Watanabe, the legendary director of classics like “Cowboy Bebop”, “Samurai Champloo”, and “Space Dandy” putting out a show centered around music? How could it miss?

Alas, miss it did. The first episode was one of the most predictably trite first episodes I’ve ever seen for a show. It did absolutely nothing interesting. The characters weren’t interesting, the worldbuilding wasn’t interesting, the animation wasn’t interesting…nothing. It was just bland, bland, bland – the last thing I expected from a Watanabe show. Listen to the soundtrack and ignore the rest of it. It’ll save you some time.

SUPERVERSIVE: The Best Anime of the Year Mega Post published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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danithebookaholic-blog · 7 years ago

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Advance Reader Copy Review

Not Her Daughter

By Rea Frey

I have been following Rea Frey on Instagram (@reafrey) for about 8 months now, and have been watching her every move when it came to this book's debut. When she posted that she was giving away some Advance Reader Copies (ARCs), I jumped on it and requested one, only to find out she was already out of them. 😞 However, she did tell me to enter her give away on Goodreads.

Weeks later, and I still hadn't heard anything, I thought I was going to have to wait until August like the rest of the world to get to read this novel I'd been dying to get my hands on. I left my home for a two week run/work/vacation experience, disappointed that not only was I know going to see Jack and my boys during this time, but that I hadn't received the Not Her Daughter ARC I had so hoped I would.

Two completely exhausting and extremely fun weeks later I finally returned home to my family and to my surprise I found a copy of Not Her Daughter sitting on my desk. I was beyond elated! I couldn't believe that I had actually received a copy of it! I was so ecstatic about it I had Jack take a photo of me - in all my airplane hot mess glory - just to prove just how thrilled I was to have not only Not Her Daughter, but my very first ARC!

Receiving this ARC felt like a turning point in my blogging experience. Like I had finally made it to that next step! And since receiving it, I've received a second ARC as well (review on it to come out soon!) I'm thrilled and humble about this next step. As well as scared and excited to see where it takes me next.

For now though, it takes me to Portland, Oregon where Sarah Walker's and Emma Grace Townsend's lives are about to cross paths. And it's your turn to decide: Has she been stolen... or rescued.

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Some History:

The following is straight from Rea Frey's website: https://reafrey.com.

Rea always wanted to be a novelist.

When she was little, her nose was either stuffed in a book, sniffing paper, absorbing words, or letting her imagination wander. If not reading, she was writing. In journals. In notebooks. In diaries. On walls. In the sand. On legal pads. On typewriters. With quills.

In college, she majored in fiction writing and somehow fell into nonfiction and personal training. Her dreams of sitting in a writer’s haven on the water, wrapped in a sweater, penning her stories, was swapped for health and wellness gigs and her first fractured steps into the important world of the Author Platform (aka social media).

After four nonfiction books were published, countless magazine and newspaper articles written, editing jobs taken, content management contracts executed, a gym co-owned, and certifications sought, she realized she was hustling for the wrong type of writing.

So, she quit.

She gave herself a window to write a novel. Eight weeks, she told herself. Eight weeks to change everything.

Never one to back down from a challenge, she wrote her novel in just a month.

The rest went something like this: Secure a phenomenal agent, join a writer’s group, bear witness to the magic of self-belief as the book got into a bidding war and landed her a two-book deal with St. Martin’s Press.

Now, when asked what she does, she says the following: I’m a motherfucking writer.

Rea is a novelist. She writes books. And swears. And drinks lots of coffee. And has a daughter. And a dreamy husband. And still manages to find the magic in books.

She hopes you will put down the phone and pick up a book (preferably hers when it hits the shelves). And find the joy in reading.

Because there’s nothing quite like the power of words... (source)

The Synopsis:

Emma Grace Townsend. Five years old. Gray eyes. Brown hair. Missing since June.

Emma Townsend is lonely. Living with her cruel mother and clueless father, Emma retreats into her own world of quiet and solitude.

Sarah Walker. Successful entrepreneur. Broken-hearted. Abandoned by her mother. Kidnapper.

Sarah has never seen a girl so precious as the gray-eyed child in a crowded airport terminal - and when a second-chance encounter with Emma presents itself, Sarah takes her far away from home. Bu if it's to rescue a little girl from her damaging mother, is kidnapping wrong?

Amy Townsend. Unhappy wife. Unfit mother. Unsure she wants her daughter back.

Amy's life is a string of disappointments, but her biggest issue is her inability to connect with her daughter. And now she's gone without a trace.

As Sarah and Emma avoid the nationwide hunt, they form an unshakable bond. But her real mother is at home, waiting for her to return - and the longer the search for Emma continues, Amy is forced to question if she really wants her back.

Emotionally powerful and wire-taut, Not Her Daughter raises the question of what it means to be a mother - and how far someone will go to keep a child safe. (St. Marin's Griffin)

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The Review & Wrap-Up:

When I first opened Not Her Daughter, I knew I was going to love it just because I've been following Rea for so long now that I feel like I know a little tiny bit of her. And I keep following her (anxiously waiting to read what she writes next) because I like who she is as a person. Not Her Daughter shows so much of that same personality I have already grown to admire, how could I not know that I was going to love this book?

Not Her Daughter is a gripping tale that catches you from the beginning with it's non-linear timeline and multi-person point-of-view . If Gone Girl and The Couple Next Door had a baby, this would be the result! When I say I loved this book, I mean I LOVED THIS BOOK! This book is everything I hope to be one day. Not the actual story line, but the book itself. The eloquent writing, the straight forward an non-confusing language, and the painted pictures make this an easy and enjoyable read. I can't wait for Rea Frey's next novel, and her this one isn't even out in stores yet!

From one bookaholic to another, I hope I’ve helped you find your next fix. —Dani

Dani's Score out of 5: 📚📚📚📚📚

Love this book?

Check out Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears. As the police begin to investigate, the town golden boy parades a series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter - but is he really a killer? (Broadway Books)

Or check out The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena.

Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all - a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately falls on the parents. But the truth is much more complicated.

What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something inside the curtained house. Anne and Marco both soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they've kept for years. The shocking truth will leave you breathless. (Penguin Books)

A full review on The Couple Next Door can be found here.

Pair it with: NEXT Pinot Noir

NEXT is a new label for King Vintners, a new division of King Estate. This blends grapes from southern Oregon and the Willamette Valley, putting a pleasing toasty character around the light red fruit. A streak of burnt coffee suggests that the barrel influence is still being integrated. (source)

Start a conversation: If your child was stolen from you, what would you do? Would you do everything in your power to get them back? Or would you think twice about what your life could be without them?

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Have a book you’d like to suggest or one you’d like me to review? Please feel free to leave your comments down below.

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lovelyparanormalbooks · 7 years ago

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Book Blitz: There Be Demons by M.K. Theodoratus (Excerpt + Giveaway)

There Be Demons M.K. Theodoratus Publication date: September 26th 2017 Genres: Paranormal, Suspense, Young Adult

After her father remarries, Britt Kelly’s life becomes a cesspit. She lives in her sister’s two-bedroom tenement apartment with her mother, two brothers, and two young nephews. She starts a new high school where she knows no one. And, even when Britt thinks she’s making friends, the church where she studies in is torn down. Then, the field commanders of The Demon Wars draft her and her friends to aid the four Gargoyle Guardians who fight the demons invading the city of Trebridge. The fate of the city hangs on Britt’s ability to lead and learn enough self-control to manipulate the natural magic of Grace. Meanwhile, she also needs to decide what to do about Cahal, her chemistry lab partner who is as strong as her and may have interests more than just protecting Trebridge. “There Be Demons” is a continuation of M. K. Theodoratus’ urban fantasy, “Night for the Gargoyles”. It tells the tale of Gillen and his team of Gargoyle Guardians as they defend Trebridge while teaching Britt and her friends – the untrained “reinforcements. Along the way, Gillen and Britt learn things about each other to make them stronger both together and alone.

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EXCERPT:

Britt Kelly leaned against the jamb between the cramped kitchen and living room of her new home in the projects. I feel like a sardine stuffed in a can. Her anger churned. If her father hadn’t abandoned his family for his bimbo boss, she’d be back home in her own bedroom, chatting with friends about the new school year. Instead, she was stuck in her older half-sister’s apartment. Many prized the apartments in St. Edmund’s Towers for their size, but Britt refused to see it. She looked at the walls they had painted as a trap. Her mother and sister were sleeping in each family’s respective bedroom. Her two small nephews smeared jam on their faces in the living room as they waited for the cartoons to start. Her two younger brothers, Carlos and Darin, whispered in the bathroom, forgetting their argument over who got the sink first might wake their sleeping mother. Welcome to another merry day in the projects. The teen huffed as she waited for her brothers to get ready to sneak away to go see their father uptown. Her thoughts switched to getting revenge on her absentee father. He’d missed his last two court-ordered visits, but she’d get him today, even if her mother forbade them to annoy him. The court said he could see his kids every third Sunday of the month. See them he would. Her brothers had a right to visit him even if his new wife hated them like cooties. Britt was going to make sure they did. Wish I could make him suffer for the visits he’s missed. A vision of Britt sticking him with a knitting needle in each hand like his Granny Nan made her smile. No. That’s not vicious enough. A vision of a steamroller with thousands of pins on its roller popped into Britt’s mind. In seconds, the machine squashed her father into the ground. When he emerged from underneath, he was a bleeding mess. A low volume fanfare announced the TV news. Just as she was about to yank her brothers out of the bathroom, her favorite reporter came on. Jessica Hawthorne of the The Trebridge Channel wore a stunning form-fitting green outfit that Britt coveted. The color would go as well with her dark hair as the reporter’s blond, blue-eyed looks. Hawthorne took a deep breath, ready to deliver her morning spiel. Britt swallowed hard. Before the Divorce, Britt had worn expensive clothes like Hawthorne’s, not thrift shop junk like she wore now. When they lost their uptown apartment after her mom got sick, the county sheriff had dumped all their belongings on the sidewalk. Most of their stuff got stolen. Dad could’ve helped us. At least buy us some new clothes for school. He’s still got plenty of money. Mom couldn’t help getting sick. The small living room swallowed Jessica Hawthorne’s breathy voice. Britt strained to hear her over the bratbies’ sporadic giggles as they shoved pieces of toast in each other’s faces. “Enough about the underage Crown Prince of Andor getting caught in a strip joint when he should have been at school. Closer to home and our thought for the day. The Guarda assures the citizens of Trebridge the new curfew will end the vandalism and muggings. Stronger measures are needed, I tell you. Scores of people appear at hospitals with the most dreadful wounds and can’t remember how they got them.” The reporter blathered on, an earnest expression knitting her brows. “We need more guarda on the streets, especially in the river districts. These hoodlums need to be stopped.” Britt concentrated harder, not daring to turn up the volume while her mother slept. She worked the swing shift now and didn’t get home until four in the morning. Someday I’ll look that polished again, I swear. Granny Nan would bawl Dad out for how we live now if she were still alive. Britt shut her complaints down, feeling embarrassed at how proud she had once been to be called her daddy’s ‘little princess’. “While the guarda say their investigations are ongoing, I don’t see any results. Why have so many people disappeared? The police haven’t a clue.” Her lip curled. “You’d almost think we’re being invaded by demons and our fine protectors are too scared to investigate.” Her contempt poured from the screen. Britt tapped her foot, wishing her brothers would stop giggling. She wished she lived uptown where she still had a room of her own. Granted, they didn’t live on the streets, but four people stuffed in one bedroom in her half-sister’s apartment was torture. Her father deserved to be kicked in the ass. Britt wanted revenge. Her father needed to pay for abandoning his family and her. The noise in the bathroom grew louder. Those buttheads better not wake Mom up. Britt twitched the draped folds of her new V-neck blouse wishing she had the boobs to fill it out. It did have a designer label, just the thing she needed to sneak into the posh condos where her father now lived. Just like the boys can’t wear their grubs today. “I want to wear a T-shirt to Dad’s, Britt.” Quarrelsome Darin whined behind her, making her jump. He had become a total pain since their parents’ divorce. Britt hoped seeing their dad would stop his constant bitching. Britt didn’t feel any guilt for disobeying their mother’s orders. The boys deserved to see their cockroach of a father. His ice-blooded new wife could just tough out their visit. Britt’s muscles tightened in the cold, funny way they did when something bad was going to happen. She shook her head, forcing herself to ignore the bothersome feeling that was happening too often for comfort. Glancing at the closed bedroom doors, she put a finger to her lips. Mom’s going to blister our ears if we wake her. Darin opened his mouth. Lifting her hand to smack him, she brushed back the thick fall of hair across her eyes instead. If she hit him, Darin’s screams would wake their mom and Pietra, their half-sister. Keeping her voice low, she said, “Get your butt in gear. You’re wearing what you’re wearing. End of questions, comments, and complaining.” Darin did not give up. “My tees are clean. Dad don’t like fancy either. He sat in front of the TV with his shirt and shoes off all the time. In summer, he only wore his boxers. Remember? Mom always got mad at him for leaving beer cans on the coffee table. Always.” “Shh. Don’t wake Mom or Pietra.” Britt held a finger to her lips. “Get your shoes on, and we can talk in the hall.” “I don’t like dress shirts either.” Carlos, her older, calmer brother, carefully left the bathroom door partly ajar. “It’s not fair to make us wear them. You’re just a kid like us even if you’re taller. Being a high school freshmen ain’t no bigger deal than being in fifth grade.” “Stop being buttheads, both of you.” Britt jerked the apartment door open. “You begged to visit Dad. I’m doing the best I can to see you do, so shut up and move your ass before Mom wakes up.” Her mother did her best to push their father out of their lives. Britt refused to let her have her wish. Since the messy divorce and his marriage to the Ice-Bitch, Timothy Kelly had seldom spent more than an hour with them. Their dad mostly offered excuses when his visitation weekend came.When he did see them, they barely ate a fast lunch before he sent them off to a movie on their own. The last time was three months ago. Britt missed him and his compliments terribly. He’s not going to escape today. Britt remembered their one visit to the posh high-rise, so different from both their suburban and project homes. The pristine rooms, sprinkled with figurines and trinkets, made her nervous enough to get the cold crawls down her back every time she moved. The Ice-Bitch’s rat-dog had barked and snapped at them the whole time. Carlos didn’t mean to break the stupid shepherd figurine when he jumped. The damn dog would’ve bit him if I hadn’t kicked the yapping rat in the head. I don’t care if the cabrona told us never to come back again. It’s our right to see him. Outside the apartment, the hallway reeked from years of cooking in the eight apartments of the fifth floor, B-wing. In spite of the blinking light of the security camera in its wire cage, someone had tagged both sides of the hall. Thankfully, they left the picture Britt called the “Tree of Life” undamaged. Someone had painted a huge tree with birds flittering through the leaves. No one told the artist that real trees didn’t grow alone, especially the big ones. Britt missed the trees lining the streets of their lost home, and the painting’s survival gave Britt hope she might survive living in the slums, too. Be glad you don’t down near the docks. The thought of trees made Britt smile as memories of her summers at Granny Nan’s flitted through her mind, the pines sighing in the breeze while the oaks rustled with a brisker note. Her huge white dogs slipping out of the house to silently disappear into the tree-covered hillsides. Granny Nan standing lost in thought, rubbing her hidden necklace with the tips of her fingers until the gems glowed, when she thought she was alone. The three guard dogs, Nan called her guardians, licking Britt’s face. Britt’s heart clutched when she recalled their goodbye last summer. Granny Nan had bustled about the kitchen, packing a lunch with extra snickerdoodles for the drive back to Trebridge. Just before she shoved the paper bag into her hands, she rose to her tiptoes to kiss Britt on the forehead. “Cheer up, my girl. Next summer will be loads of fun. You’re going to learn all sorts of new stuff. Our secret now. Remember.” The last word had held force as she tapped Britt’s forehead. She’d loved Granny Nan. Staying with her was always fun, except when she trained Britt in self-control. Britt had looked forward to her coming summer, not ever imagining the old woman would die. Britt shoved the memory away because it hurt too much to remember. Won’t learn anything now since she’s dead. A shuffling noise on the stairs put Britt on alert, living in the projects wasn’t as safe as Uptown. The head of the girl from across the hall appeared, followed by some older guy with broad shoulders carrying a sack. The girl took one look at Britt and dropped her gaze before scurrying toward her door. On her way, the girl said, “Hi, tree.” “Why do you always talk to that silly tree, Sara?” asked the guy following her. His gaze rested on where Britt’s boobs should be and sank to her crouch area. When he smirked, Britt was glad her skirt was loose, happy she did not share Pietra and her mom’s busty figures. The dark-haired Tejano girl pushed the door open after unlocking it. “Gerome, Hurry up. Mama wants that milk yesterday.” He scooted into the door, throwing a backward glance at Britt. “Okay, Sara. Okay.” Carlos slipped into the hallway, pulling their door shut without closing it. “Okay, Britt. Now tell me why I gotta do the dress-shirt shit before school starts.” He stopped and folded his arms across his chest. His expression mirrored his father’s when the old man was ready to start a tantrum and throw things when something didn’t go his way. “I’m not going to move an inch until you let me go back and get a t-shirt.” “Yeah,” said Darin, joining them. “We gotta sneak by the co-op’s security, buttheads. If you don’t blend in, they’ll check their list of undesirables and bounce you out the door faster than you can spit. So, you’re wear prissy clothes. Comprendes? Or are you guys totally too stupid to understand?” “Dad don’t like you speaking Spanish,” said Carlos. Darin parroted in the high-pitched voice that grated her patience raw. “Yeah, we’re Andorians. Have been forever. You can even join the Daughters of the Kingscourt.” “Shut up, or go watch TV with the bratbies.” Britt gave him a cold stare. Her fifth-grade brothers hated being lumped with Pietra’s pre-school sons. “Carlos and I’ll visit Dad by ourselves and get bigger ice creams afterward.” Carlos gasped. “You won’t really leave Darin behind?” Britt’s glare heated. “Damn sure I would, if he don’t stop whining like a baby.” “Okay, but I still don’t like dress shirts,” said Darin. “All the guys around here wear tees.” “Duh. Wear a tee to school tomorrow. Now move your ass. We gotta catch the tram.” Once on the street, the boys forgot the argument in a game of shoving and giggling. Was I ever so young? Maybe before Pietra fell down the stairs and everyone blamed me for pushing her. Memories of her father’s great-grandmother who lived back in the hills flooded through her mind. Longing pulsed through Britt as she thought of the summers when she lived with her. Britt should’ve hated the old woman, but she loved her. When she was nine, Britt had been sent away because everyone thought she shoved Pietra down the stairs, breaking her leg. Pietra had been teasing her by lifting her Mr. Pongo over her head, and she had been jumping trying to grab him away. But she slipped. Pietra had fallen down the stairs when Britt had grabbed her for balance. No one believed her when Britt said it was an accident. The summer after, Granny Nan had invited her back. She did teach her to “control” her temper. She taught her imagination games. Made her use her use all her senses to examine the world around her. Taught her to sing in descant during the long evenings with the mages who came to visit her. Granny Nan was a Dissenter who disliked the Kingscourt and all it stood for. Still, Britt had loved Granny Nan’s mountain valley. The summers had been the most wonderful of Britt’s life. Author Bio: A Northern California gal, M. K. Theodoratus has been intrigued by fantasy since she started reading comic books. She has traveled through many fantasy worlds since then. When she's not disappearing into other writer's worlds, she's creating her own alternative worlds--that of Andor where demons prey on humans and the Far Isle Half-Elven where she explores the social and political implications of genetic drift on a hybrid elf/human people.

A sixth grade English assignment introduced Theodoratus to story writing. The teacher asked for a short story and gave a "C" for an incomplete, 25-page Nancy Drew pastiche which turned into a novel the next summer. Theodoratus has been addicted to writing stories happily ever after. Currently, Theodoratus lives with her old man and two lap-cats in Colorado.

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