#anyway is anyone else going to the milwaukee show??

[kingofcomedy]

the scariest part of spooky week is mentally preparing for tit at the end of the week

[scentedchildnacho]

The security bait and switches I guess.......i think he is a pedophile and he can act out because to his politic the jacobin just read that to him gen x represents the idea that people accomplish the greater science by getting to act out whatever his psychicomachia fantasy conjures instead of public welfare

To them repression and sublimation has no relevance it's just social theory and the greater cause is accomplished by acting out whatever their fantasy life is

By pedophile I mean someone who believes we are all Gods children and should be kept like children to use however but the project did do questionable things to the families till I was like uhm really a library day for their community when there are like big houses around not everybody can just walk up to....

I will like the families much better when they stay to their community districts and just pick up a few books here or there and without the whole caravan because the library really is too small of a space for their community

More dr king there are like vacant homes everywhere that could easily be re zoned for their community so

The library has high voltage areas on it and those types of cognitive studies to children have already been precedented

Its just to cause the children stress till they collapse of third world disease already easily known and treated here and the families choose ecological not environmental settlements

Compared to Washington Park in Milwaukee Wisconsin which is also just a project the library area here is like pre pornogrAphy war 70s treaties

So I kind of agree with mean punk heroin homeless the families have settlements to leave them alone and they kept following them here

The library is a mean scary punk place and I'm for letting the researcher study street punkness it's im sorry but you all kept going at crime and you bothered them when you have really anything else

I think the inside security called the cops not the outside the pale one....

Anyway they called the cops because at first he acted sympathetic but now that I'm trapped here he wants to switch and get the cops to slander me and kill me like an heiress so I suspect a sheriff knows to not be afraid of the hygiene terrorists and started putting pressure on jobs to serve time if they won't reform into a better business strategy so they tried to claim I did something to get away with stealing personal information into registers

They just want to fill up jails with poverty and get away with it....and that's just disgusting

So I ask the cop to disarm himself because his behaviour is really inappropriate to a poverty call and normal people call a psychiatric service about poverty not a combative

The police tells me he will be nice to me but I say again why not just disarm yourself it's incorrect protocol to poverty truth is I can't harm anyone

Then he wants to know about a PetSmart cart I have outside so I just tell him it's just civilly disobedient and show him the sign on the cart that reads children could fall out of the cart

To me the upper management of the store could have replaced the recalled items with child friendly ideas but they persisted in endangering children and try to point his angry mob of dissatisfied jobs at me instead of turning on his masterly ness to them

I told him I just took it because I don't have any other way of transporting my things and I could get stress fractures on the ground from the blanket allowance and a child could fall out of the cart so to me that's what civil disobedience is a mean stripper that won't pay me and so doesn't pay her kind of wanted children either could hurt all of us and so I learn from civil rights activists how to manage situations to stop letting bitch rule with its selfish time

Its not really my obligation to care that as a grocer he could have delivered fresh farm packages to the jail he didn't have to make them take busses

And he was like the homeless coalition could give you a cart and I was like you can go ahead and try to put things in carts that aren't for the families but those are the families and I can take this because the children can't use it

If you ask me the border conflict got really bad and carts or buggies or behind the bike are for the children and children don't like falling out of

That's me sometimes about the stripper issues trying to get by I sometimes inconvenience their activity because they start appearing very selfish it's the upper management that sat and filmed all they do there so again it's not my problem that retail stores around couldnt forgive something there

I told him I am from la Crosse Wisconsin but he confessed somebody said I was some fresno chick that did things she did to justify detaining me here

That's why I don't get mad about a couple years of homelessness I was a job and apparently it was bad for something in some way but after seven years and many assaults and tank based warfare that's way over the top and I realize my job life was impoverished enough to say sorry about something and I never deserved any of that

I just said I reserve the right to be at least a few inches from the ground so I'm not completely shocked

Now I'm just like their just terrorists I don't see any valid politic to telling me to reform through detainment like situations

Well those people can take those carts because they tell the families they will top dog for their kids but nobody told me to top dog so I don't

Anyway the security isn't like personal towards me he just does that goes around jack assing at people it's the college guys he gets near and raps the table to wake them up it's the random punks he just kind of goes at everyone....

Anyway he tried to hit me today with some type of slander so he had to be in close contact with the gold bike nigger so that sort of karma is correct if people hit you they end up getting hit with whatever hits ya

Routine checks now cops know that I'm still here so hopefully something starts reversing so

So I have been homeless ever since like 2013 and it's been like this basketball game I played versus tomah in middle school where this larger more professionally developed and organized team just went at us in really mean demoralizing ways just really made us feel worthless and loser just no team spirit no tap out just everything the ref claimed I did was wrong though this big girl kept running her body into me molestively

So I think Jacobin is right their a more organized larger entity and whatever fuck fantasy they feel like they can do and I can't tell no bitch she can't rape

If they feel that their like the secret poor pretty girls really getting back at the whites then they want their fantasy

Well to those terrorists they are natives and history tells them they can be nazish at religion and

And their teacher pedophile that told them they can isn't wrong or anything

[ssahotchhner]

like real people do

PART TWO

hi! this is my first criminal minds fic, i haven’t watched the show all the way through in several years and while doing a rewatch discovered that i HAD to write hotch. this will be two parts, here’s the first! let me know your thoughts please, i love talking to my readers (:

words: 5837

pairing: hotch x reader

warnings: usual criminal minds nastiness, rape mention, death, curse words

Everyone knew that SSA Aaron Hotchner has been emotionally unavailable since his divorce, so everyone was that much more surprised when he kissed you at the bar in front of all your colleagues at the BAU. You wouldn’t lie, you had had a crush on Aaron for years now, but you had imagined your hypothetical romance much differently. As it was, Aaron had immediately left the bar in a flurry of embarrassment, murmuring a hurried apology on his way out leaving you to the unabashed teasing of your coworkers that you had pretended to brush off. Now, days later, Aaron still refused to so much as look at you.

“Y/N,” Morgan rolled his chair over to your desk, “I’m dying to know, is Hotch a good kisser?”

You sigh, “Fuck off, Derek.”

“Leave the poor girl alone, Derek,” Rossi says as he passes by, “Don’t you think it’s bad enough Hotch is giving her the silent treatment now?”

You tried to hide the way the tears pricked the back of your eyes at his comment, but you were surrounded by FBI profilers.

Morgan lowered his voice and reach out his hand to touch your arm, “Hey, babygirl, I’m sorry, I was just teasing, maybe you should try talking to Hotch--”

“Talking to me about what?” Aaron had been so quiet walking up on you and your head had been low, so focused on not crying that you hadn’t heard him.

“Nothing.” You say quickly, and as expected he avoids making eye contact, “Do you need something, sir?” You don’t miss the way he flinches at the formality. Good.

“We have a new case.” He says simply and walks away.

Morgan let out a low whistle, “You really hit him with the ‘sir.’” You started to get up from your desk, but Morgan put a hand on your arm again, “Seriously, Y/N, I’m sorry. If you need to talk I’m here.”

You sighed and stood up again, forcing a smile, “There’s nothing to talk about Derek, I’m fine. Now come on.”

“We have a serial rapist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” JJ starts immediately as everyone files in. You feel Morgan’s gaze on you the entire time and try not to get frustrated. He’s been like a brother to you since you joined the BAU a few years ago and you know this overprotectiveness was just him being a good friend, but it was bound to drive you nuts. “Victims are all white women ranging from their late teens to early twenties at a local university.”

“Why are we being called in for a rapist on a college campus?” Reid asks, “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but we all know the statistics. There are dozens of serial rapists on college campuses.”

“Because this one is torturing them while he rapes them and leaves them notes leading up to the attacks.” Hotch says as Penelope begins to pull up pictures on the screen of these women. “Slut, whore, bitch, cunt. All carved on their chests.” You do your best to hide the nausea that rises in you as you look at the pictures. Do your job. You remind yourself.

“What do the notes say?” Emily asks.

“They seem like thinly veiled threats,” Reid begins, “They sound romantic at first glance, but if you read closely you can see the context.” 

“He breaks into their dorms when they’re at class or at parties and waits for them to come home and then he holds them at knifepoint so they won’t scream.” Penelope says, trying not to let her voice shake.

“Risky to do in a dorm building and no one’s seen him?” Morgan says.

Rossi ponders this, “That means he must blend in, someone no one would think twice about being inside. A student, an RA, or a university official.”

“University officials don’t normally enter student dorms unless there’s an issue, they’d be more likely to stand out and students would talk about them showing up.” Hotch muses.

“Y/N, you’re awful quiet today,” Emily nudges your elbow, “What do you think?”

You can feel everyone’s eyes on you, but Aaron’s. Still looking at his manila folder as if Emily hadn’t addressed you. As if you didn’t exist. You clear your throat, “I think the RA or student theory makes sense. We should probably interview the RA of the first victim, assuming he’s a man. It would make sense to me that he would start with one of his own students and then begin to branch out. Maybe he thought he could stop, get that release he needed after just one, but the need only grew stronger.”

“Wheels up in thirty, we’ll discuss more on the plane.” Hotch says and stands, walking out of the room without another glance.

“Did something happen last night at the bar?” Emily murmurs, the only member of the team who didn’t make it out the night before, “Hotch is acting really weird around you.”

Derek snickers on the other side of you and you elbow him, “That’s it, I’m going to talk to him.”

Reid winces, “Good luck.”

“It’ll be fine, kid.” Rossi says and squeezes your shoulder as you pass.

You take a long breath before you finally build the courage to walk into Aaron’s office where he’s packing his briefcase. “Sir, can I talk to you for a moment?”

“Can it wait until we’re on the plane, agent?”

Agent. You roll your eyes toward the ceiling, “No, sir, it can’t.” You can’t hide the bite in your words this time. He finally looks at you, really looks at you. You wonder what he sees.

“Close the door.” He says quietly and then sits behind his desk.

You walk slowly to the seat in front of his desk. This time, he watches you. “This is the first time you’ve looked at me all day.”

“I wasn’t aware you were analyzing me.”

“Are you telling me you haven’t been analyzing me all day?”

“Agent, what is this about? We have a plane to catch.”

You stare at him for a few moments longer, “Fine,” You stand, “If you want to pretend nothing happened, I’ll do the same. But if you could at least stop ignoring me, that would be great.”

“Agent--”

“And use my goddamn name, for Christ’s sake.”

He stares at you and you know he hates your emotional outburst and that in turn makes you hate yourself. “Then you stop calling me ‘sir.’” He says quietly.

Your eyes soften for just a moment and then you storm back out of his office nearly plowing over Rossi as you leave. Rossi walks into Aaron’s office to see him rubbing his forehead, “Well that doesn’t look like it went well.”

“I screwed up, Rossi.” 

“Oh, come on Hotch, it was just one kiss. It didn’t mean anything--”

“It did mean something. To me. Maybe not to her.”

Rossi shakes his head, “Then why are you giving her the cold shoulder?”

Hotch sighs, “Because we work together, because she doesn’t feel the same, because she’s the first woman I’ve kissed since Haley. Pick a reason.” Rossi looks like he’s going to interject, but Hotch stands, “We don’t have time for this, Rossi, let’s go.”

Rossi sighs as he watches Aaron walk out of his office and follows after.

***

You’re quiet most of the plane ride, conscious of the looks everyone is giving you as you read the information in the manila folder over and over, trying to be good at your job instead of thinking about your boss.

“When we get off the plane, JJ and Prentiss, you go talk to the victims. Rossi and I will touch base with the police. Morgan, Reid, Y/N, you go talk to anyone you can find at the dorms, see if anyone’s seen anyone suspicious.” You make it a point not to react, but everyone else reacts anyway, watching you carefully. Hotch almost always assigns himself with you. 

“If you guys don’t stop psychoanalyzing me I will eject myself from this plane.” 

Everyone looks away except Aaron and when you meet his eyes, he’s smirking. Those smiles are so rare and you can’t deny how it satisfies you to know you were the reason he did so. You quickly look back down at your work, careful not to reveal anything you’re feeling.

***

“Do you have feelings for Hotch?” Reid asks without preamble when you’re in the car with Derek.

“Spencer!” You exclaim in outrage. Derek just laughs from the driver’s seat.

“What? You both wouldn’t be being so weird about one kiss if it wasn’t something more.”

“Okay, Romeo, remember that she’s armed.” Derek cautioned.

“He’s my boss, Reid. It’s weird because he’s my boss.”

“Well, sure, by definition Hotch is our superior but we all know--” Reid cut himself off when he saw the look Derek was giving him in the rearview mirror, “Yeah, you’re right, it’s weird.” He said quickly.

You sigh and turn to the window and ignore Derek and Spencer the rest of the ride.

***

“So you mean to tell me that ten women have come forward about being raped in their dorms and you told them to consider themselves lucky they weren’t murdered and sent them home without doing a rape kit?” Aaron’s furious. Furious with himself for the previous night and he’s more than happy to take out that anger on the local Milwaukee police department.

“Look, man, we get a lot of he said she said in here, we don’t have the time or the man power to follow up on every one.”

Just then his phone rings. It’s you. He wishes he could ignore the pang that goes through him just from reading your name. “Hotch.” He answers.

“Sir-- I mean, Aaron.” You correct yourself quickly, and then realize you should have called him Hotch, but it’s too late. “They’ve found a body.”

He frowns, “A body? That doesn’t fit his MO.”

You swallow, “Yeah, well, everything else does. He seems to have gotten a little carried away with the carving this time.”

“We’ll be right there.”

You hang up your phone and then turn back to Reid and Morgan who are looking over the crime scene. You sit with Victoria’s, the victim’s, distraught roommate and try to calm her and maybe get some actual information out of her. You don’t hear or see Aaron walk in until he’s already next to you, “Did you get anything from her?”

His closeness makes it hard to focus, “Just regular roommate stuff, she might be more useful once she calms down. I asked if her roommate had a boyfriend or anything like that and she said she was quiet, kept to herself. Boys were out of the question.”

“He’s escalated. Why?”

You shrug, “Could be because we’re here, that might have upset him and he lost control. But it could have been an accident, roommate says Victoria had a heart condition. The stress of the situation might have killed her.”

Hotch nods, “Good work.”

He was trying to be normal, you could tell. And he was trying so hard. “Thank you.” You said softly and then you excused yourself. Everything about him set you on edge and over and over the moment he kissed you plays in your head.

***

You’re both laughing to near snorting while sitting at the bar and Aaron can’t stop watching you, “You have an incredible laugh, you know?” He says softly when you’ve both settled down. “Sometimes when I think this job isn’t worth it, I’ll hear your laugh outside my office and just that sound…” He realizes what he’s saying suddenly and turns his head away from you smiling at his drink now.

“You make it worth it for me too.” You say and his eyes are back on you, “You so rarely ever smile, but when you smile at me… It makes it all worth it. The long hours, the horrible cases… all of it.”

When you look back at him he’s suddenly serious again. You can see his eyes calculating as he searches your face and you realize with a bit of shock that he’s trying to see if you’re lying. When his eyes finally settle back on yours, he gently reaches up, almost without thinking about it and curls a loose piece of hair behind your ear.

And then in the next second, his hand still on your face, his mouth is on yours.You forget that there’s anyone else in the world for those few seconds that he kisses you. Until everyone on the team starts jeering and Aaron pulls away like he’s seen a ghost.

“Aaron?” You say, frowning as he jumps up from his seat, not looking at you and gathering his things.

“I’m sorry.” Is all he murmurs and then runs out.

Derek’s laughing as he walks up to you, “Damn, princess. You broke Hotch! I gotta say, you’re incredibly out of his league.” You glare at him. “What? You’re out of my league too.”

You smile at that and try to act like everything’s normal, but you’re sure Spencer notices that you drink more and laugh a little too loudly.

***

You’re pulled back from the memory as JJ walks toward you, “Hey, you alright?”

“Yeah,” You nod, “Fine, just needed a second alone to think.”

She stops in front of you and rests her hand on your arm, lightly squeezing, “You can talk to me, you know, about men. Even Hotch.”

You smile, “I appreciate everyone’s concern, but I’m fine, really. It’s not that big a deal.”

“It’s a big deal if it starts interfering with the job, and I can see it on both of you,” She’s stern all of a sudden, “I know he’s our boss, but underneath that he’s just any other man, Y/N. Don’t let him fool you into thinking otherwise.”

“Guys,” Derek interrupts, sticking his head out into the hallway, “You’re gonna wanna see this.”

When you come back in the room, Spencer is crouched over the body, gloves on, examining the carvings in her body, “There’s hesitation in the cuts this time and you can tell they were done after she was dead. And if you look a little bit closer…”

“‘Sorry…’” You read the small script, astonished. “Remorse. It was an accident.” Your eyes dart back and forth as you lose yourself in your own thoughts while the rest of the team discusses, “I think we can deliver the profile.”

***

“We’re looking for a white male in his early to mid twenties.” Hotch starts, “He most likely is able to gain the women’s trust, maybe he’s a student RA or a student tech worker, but they let him in without a second thought.”

“I thought he breaks into the dorms and waits for them?” A cop asks.

“He does,” You say, “But the initial access is how he chooses his victims. He’s a loner, doesn’t have many friends, certainly no girlfriend. It’s possible that he asks these girls on dates when he first meets them, and when they refuse he feels entitled to them anyway which is why he comes back for the rape.”

“What about the murder?” Another cop asks.

“We believe the death of the last girl was an accident.” Reid responds, “She had a heart condition and the medical examiner has confirmed she died from sudden cardiac arrest. The unsub even seemed to show remorse when he defiled the body after, carving the word ‘sorry’ into her body.”

“The killing has most likely set him on edge. He’s remorseful, upset, overcome with immense guilt, but he blames the women. If they had just said yes to him, he wouldn’t have to do this. She wouldn’t have died.” Derek continues, “You should be looking for someone who was soft spoken, but as the rapes started he became more assertive, maybe he had an altercation with a professor or supervisor.”

“You’ve probably interviewed him already,” You say, “He inserts himself into the investigation because he feels guilt and watching the investigation play out validates that he was right for doing what he did.” You sigh, “There’s one more thing. He didn’t intend to kill Victoria, but… He spent time with the body after she had passed. He mutilated her as well as continued his rape of her afterward. It’s possible that he enjoyed the kill and will kill the next time as well. So stay vigilant and… please tell the girls not to let any men in their dorms. Thank you.”

Aaron comes up to you, “Can I speak to you alone for a moment?”

You nod and follow him into a conference room and he closes the door behind you, “You’re really an incredible profiler, agent.”

Again with the ‘agent.’ “Thank you, sir.”

“I just wanted to assure you that I will remain nothing but professional around you from here on out.”

You tilted your head to the side and you knew the pain was evident on your face as you didn’t try to hide it, “I see.”

“You’re upset.”

You laugh, “Did you mean anything you said at the bar, Aaron, or were you just drunk?” You’re aware of how vulnerable you’re being in front of him now as you can hear the tears in your own voice.

You see him calculating what the best response is and this just infuriates you more, “Forget it, you’re just going to talk to me like some unsub, trying to best figure out what to say to calm me down.”

He shakes his head, “That’s not what I’m doing.”

You start to walk out and stop to stand next to him, “You just said yourself I’m an incredible profiler, so please don’t profile me and think I won’t notice.”

He closes his eyes as you continue walking out, “Y/N, wait.” Despite yourself, you do stop at the sound of your name. “I’m sorry, I-- I meant the things I said at the bar, I’m… But I’m your boss and I don’t want to make it difficult for you to do your job.”

You force a smile and look up at him, “Don’t worry, Hotch, won’t be a problem.”

And then you’re gone and he gets the feeling you won’t call him Aaron ever again.

***

Spencer walks in the entrance of the dorm you’ve been staking out, two coffees in hand. He hands one to you wordlessly, “Have you gotten any sleep?”

“Obviously not.” You sigh and happily guzzle the coffee, “Thanks.”

“Hotch is upset.”

“About what?” You murmur, half paying attention, half going over the case again on the papers in front of you.

“About you, obviously.”

You don’t look up, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. How do you even know Hotch is upset? He always looks like he’s pissed at something.”

“Because I’m a profiler. Everyone knows he’s off, no one will say to his face that it’s because of you.”

You sigh and look up at him, “Spencer, we’re fine, okay? We’re adults.” He’s quiet, but he won’t stop staring at you, “What?”

“I know that I’m… not the most perceptive when it comes to emotions, but… I think he’s in love with you. And I’m pretty sure you’re in love with him.”

You smirk, “And what makes you think that, Mr. Profiler?”

He smiles back, “Well, Hotch is always watching you, mostly when you’re not looking and when he does his expression sort of… softens. He almost always assigns the two of you together when giving the unit assignments, which I think is partially because he likes to be around you, but also because he’s trying to protect you, especially after that hostage situation a few months ago. He was a wreck when you were in there. Screaming at everyone, I really thought he would kill the unsub when he found him.”

“He would do that for any of us, when any of us were in danger.” You said, quickly shaking your head to dismiss the idea.

But Spencer shakes his head, “You didn’t see him. It was different.”

“Spencer, he barely gave me a pat on the back when I left that hostage situation alive.”

“That’s because he doesn’t trust himself around you. Why do you think the only time he’s ever given you a hint at the way he feels was when he was drunk?”

Your head is spinning as you look at Spencer, “No, that doesn’t make any sense--”

“It makes perfect sense and I know you know that.” Spencer’s phone rings, “Reid.” He sighs and lowers his head, “Where? Okay, we’ll be right there.” He hangs up the phone, “There’s another body.”

You sigh, “I really hate being right.”

***

“You were right,” Hotch says from behind you, “He’s discovered he likes killing.”

It was never easy looking at bodies, but somehow it was always worse when you had predicted it and still not been able to stop it, “How did he do it?”

“Manual strangulation.”

“Has anyone checked for skin or blood under her fingernails? Sign of a struggle?”

Aaron nods, “Already scraped off and sent to Garcia.”

“Even if she can’t find a match, we’ll be able to narrow down suspects by the injuries she left.”

“The school is panicking, they want to evacuate the campus.”

“If they evacuate we’ll never find him, he’ll just start again somewhere else.”

“That’s what I told them.”

You sigh, “Why are the girls still letting him in?”

“Maybe they’re not,” Hotch mused, “Maybe he’s starting to pick the girls from his classes now that we’re here.”

“The last two victims, do we have their schedules? Their majors?”

“They were both nursing majors,” Emily interjects, “Third year.”

You nod, “Okay, so by that point, third year, majority of their classes are restricted to nursing majors only.” You flip your phone open and dial Penelope.

“Hello my delightful fairy princess, what can I do for you?”

“Garcia, the last two victims, can you cross reference their class schedules and tell me if they had any classes in common?”

“Yes, just a second… Three classes in common.”

“Okay, cross reference with the remaining victims.”

“Um, okay, wow, all of them had two classes in common.”

“Shit.” You mutter, “Can you send over the class rosters of both those classes, but just the men. And also send pictures.”

“You got it.”

“Thanks, Penelope.”

You shake your head, “They were all nursing majors.” You say as you hang up, “How did we miss that?”

Reid was shaking his head, “We didn’t have a lot of time to interview the victims before the first body turned up.”

“Alright, we need everyone looking through those rosters, rounding up every male we can and interviewing them.” Hotch starts, “Y/N, you’re with me for interviews, the rest of you keep in touch with Garcia and find out anything you can.”

You try to ignore the shock you feel that he picked you this time, noting Reid’s raised eyebrows as he left the room. “You sure you want me on interviews?” You ask when you’re alone.

He’s looking at all the evidence on the corkboard, “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Wasn’t sure if you would want to work closely with me anymore.” You say, standing next to him now and also looking over the evidence.

He looks at you now, “You have the same features as a lot of the victims, I’m hoping it’ll get a rise out of our unsub if we find him.”

You nod, “Makes sense.”

“And,” He says pointedly until you meet his eyes, “As I’ve said already, you’re an excellent agent and I could use your help on this.”

You heave a big sigh, “Okay, how do you wanna play it?”

He shrugs, “I think you already know what role I need you to play.”

***

This is maybe the tenth or so interview you and Hotch had done with no success. You were tired of playing this role, especially in front of Hotch.

“Jordan.” You smile sweetly at him, making sure to lean over the table just a little to give him the view he wants, “Did you know either of these girls?” You lay the pictures of the last couple victims on the table, wait to see his reaction. He brings his hands up to rest on the table and you see the shallow scratch marks on them, you share a discreet look with Hotch who barely nods in acknowledgement.

He stares for far too long. Hotch notices his hands clench into fists. He’s excited by the bodies.

“Yeah, I knew them.” He’s still looking at the pictures, “They were in two of my classes.” He finally looks up and gazes at you hungrily, “You seem awful young to be an FBI agent.”

You smile again and then look away, a sign of submission. “Stop flirting with my agent.” Hotch says placing his palms abruptly on the table. Jordan doesn’t flinch at Hotch’s presence, not taking his eyes off you. He’s more confident than either of you anticipated. Was the profile wrong or is this the wrong guy? “How did you know the victims?”

“I just told you, from class.”

“Did you ever see them outside of class?”

He shrugs, “I don’t know, maybe, to do a project, not in a while though.”

“Jordan, do you know if either of the girls had a boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend?” He frowns, “Those two? No.” He practically scoffs.

You tilt your head to the side, “Why do you say it like that?”

“Those girls aren’t the boyfriend type. They’re whores.” There’s the bitterness in his voice.

You try to make your face as empathetic as possible, “What do you mean by that, Jordan?”

“Well, you know, they slept around… Wouldn’t give a nice guy like me a chance. You must know their type, you’re the FBI.”

You nod, “It must be so hard for a handsome, smart guy like you to get rejected. I can’t imagine why anyone would dream of missing out on that,” You shake your head, “Their loss.”

Hotch audibly scoffs and you watch Jordan glare at him. He’s getting angry. Good. “Hotch, why don’t you go get Jordan a water?”

Hotch blinks at you, trying to figure out if you had really just given him an order, “Agent, I am the lead interrogator on this case, I’m not leaving you alone in here--”

“Agent Hotchner,” You turn in your seat to face him, hoping he’ll read your expression, “Please get the young man a water, he’s been in here for hours.”

His eyes search your face for a few moments and then he leaves the room without another word. He won’t be getting Jordan a water. You know he’s watching carefully from the other side of the glass. “Sorry about him.” You say, “He doesn’t understand men like you.”

“Men like me?”

“Men who know how to get what they want.”

His face transforms as he watches you and he leans back in his chair, relaxed, legs spread to assert his dominance. “And you understand that?”

“There’s nothing sexier than a man who goes after what he wants… No matter what.”

He leans forward and whispers, “Even when they beg me to stop?”

You swallow past your disgust and, though you hate to admit it, fear, “Did they beg you to stop? Victoria and Erica?”

His smile widens as he watches you, “You remind me so much of them.”

“Can you tell me what you did to them? How you killed them?”

He licks his lips now, you think he’s lost all sense of where he is, falling for the delusion you’ve set in front of him, “You’re just like them, a dirty little slut. You want to be punished, don’t you?”

“Please.” Is the last word you whisper before he practically jumps across the table to grab your throat. Your chair falls backwards and he’s on top of you, crushing your windpipe. How could you forget that he was uncuffed? Hotch rushes in, he yells as he pulls Jordan off you, but you’re not sure what he’s saying. Then he’s cuffed Jordan and taken you out of the room.

“Sit.” Aaron says, ushering you to a chair that you practically fall into. You’re still coughing and you’re shaking a bit as Aaron gives you a water.

“I forgot,” You start, your voice hoarse, but Hotch brings the water cup to your mouth, insisting you drink before talking. You take a couple swallows, “I forgot he wasn’t cuffed.”

He shakes his head, “It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have left you alone with him.”

“No, I needed you on the other side of the glass. He wouldn’t have fallen for the delusion otherwise. I needed him to forget who I was and just see me as a potential victim.” Aaron wouldn’t meet your eyes, not wanting to admit that you were right, “I’m going back in there.”

“No, you’re not, that’s out of the question.”

“Is that an order, sir?” He scans your face in frustration, “You know it has to be me. He won’t talk to you. I’ll be fine.”

He sighs and rubs a hand over his face, “Fine. Ask him about Erica, don’t ask about Victoria.”

“Why?”

“Because he didn’t kill Victoria himself, it’ll ruin the fantasy and he might lie to you to try to impress you. The details of the murders weren’t shared with the public, only the unsub would know how each of them died. He needs to reveal how he killed Erica to you and then we’ll have him.”

“Okay.” You stand and hold your hands behind you so he won’t see them shaking, but he’s a profiler. The attempt is mute.

He takes a step closer, “You don’t have to go back in there,” He says softly, “No one will think less of you.”

When he’s this close, looking at you with such concern, it makes you want to melt in his arms. But you had a job to do, “I can do this.”

And before he can make you think about it more, you turn away from him and march back in the interrogation room.

“Sorry about that,” You sit back down at the table and smile at him, “My partner gets a little jealous sometimes.” You lean in and whisper, “He’s usually the only one I let handle me like that.”

Just like that he’s back, “Why don’t you uncuff me so we can continue?”

You bite your lip, “I’d like to hear more about the other girls first.”

***

“Why is she in there by herself?” Rossi came up behind Aaron who was watching the unsub’s every move, ready to jump in again if needed.

“She insisted.” Hotch says simply, “She almost has him.”

Rossi sighs, “She’s stubborn. Like someone else I know.”

Hotch is quiet for a moment, “I can’t be with her, Rossi, it could ruin her career.”

“You can’t know that. And besides, don’t you think that should be her decision to make?”

Hotch doesn’t answer, he just continues watching you.

***

“Does it turn you on hearing what I’ve done to them?”

You’re sitting on your hands now, trying to stifle the growing panic in your head that was telling you to get out. He’s unarmed, he’s cuffed, Aaron is right there. He can’t hurt you. “You have no idea.” It came out breathless from your fear, but he interpreted it as desire.

“First, I knocked her out, tied her to the bed. Then I waited for her to wake up before I began. I stripped her clothes off her at that point and then I fucked her while she cried,” He’s smiling at you and you’re doing all you can to keep your expression neutral. “I took out the knife and started carving her up. You should have heard her beg. And then, when that’s all finished, I strangled her while I came inside her.” He leans over the table to get closer to you, and it takes everything in you not to move away, “Have you ever watched the light leave someone’s eyes, sweetheart?”

You calmly scoot your chair back and stand, buttoning your shirt back up and then resting your hand on your gun, reminding him of who you really are, “Thank you, Jordan. You’ve been incredibly helpful in this investigation.” And then turn to leave ignoring the way he calls after you.

When you exit the room, Aaron and Dave are both waiting for you and you sit down, exhausted, resting your head in your hands.

“Nice work, kid.” Dave says with a squeeze on your shoulder, and then he’s gone.

Then, there’s another touch on your back, more gentle and hesitant. You look up to see Aaron watching you, concern masking his face, “I’m fine, Hotch.” You say, shrugging him off.

His hand drops and you immediately regret it. “When you were taken those months ago, by that unsub…” His words are slow, as if making sure this is what he really wants to say to you. You know exactly what he’s going to say before he says it, “He raped you, didn’t he?” Your eyes snap up to meet his. “You would never tell us what actually happened, all those hours he had you, a sexual sadist.” He shakes his head, “There’s no way he would’ve been able to control himself.”

You shake your head just lightly, “I can’t do this now, Aaron.”

“Then when?” He’s frustrated now, borderline angry, “You lied at your psych eval, you said nothing happened, we let you come back after just a couple of weeks--”

“And I’m doing just fine, aren’t I?” You stand so you’re nearly eye level with him.

“You think I didn’t notice the way you almost fell apart in there?”

“But I didn’t. I finished it and I did a damn good job and you know it.”

Hotch erases all traces of emotion from his face as he stares you down, “You’re suspended for two weeks, effective immediately. Hand over your badge and gun, agent.”

You nearly stumble back from him as if you’ve been hit, “Aaron?”

“What’s going on?” Prentiss has entered the room now followed by the rest of the team, all watching with confused and worried expressions.

“You heard me.” Hotch says, never taking his eyes off you. You make no moves to take out your badge or gun, “Now, agent.” There’s bite to his words this time.

You feel humiliated. With the whole team watching, you place your gun and badge on the table and brush by Aaron without a second glance. Pushing past the team, even Spencer who reaches for you.

“What the hell was that, Hotch?” Derek says once you’ve left.

“She lied in order to pass her psych eval. I did what I had to do.” Everyone’s staring at him, but he walks by, seemingly unphased, “Good work, everyone. Get some rest, we go home tomorrow at first light.”

[robinrunsfiction]

Hi! I was wondering if you could write a Dallon Weekes x fem reader smut with a choking kink? I'm thinking panic! era dallon where the reader is also a member of the band, and they've had chemistry for a while, and one night after a concert they do the deed in a dressing room? If you aren't comfortable with any of this I'm really sorry aha, I hope you have an awesome day! <33

Choke

Pairing: Dallon Weekes x Female Reader

Rating: Mature (smut, choking kink)

Requested By: Anon

Word Count: ~2,170

Author’s Note: Porn with plot! My first Dallon smut! Woo! I’m pleased (?!) with this one, and I hope you all like it too!

You were feeling out of place waiting to be called in for your audition with Panic! At the Disco, as you were the only woman in the room. The music industry, especially rock, was so male dominated, but you were not going to let that deter you. It made you nervous as hell, but not deterred. 

Other guitarists and bassists were called in as you waited your turn, picking at your nails anxiously, thinking about what you would be playing. Eventually a very tall bass player walked in, sat down next to you and made the mistake of saying hi. This was enough to get you talking, and you were totally unable to stop nervously babbling at him. 

"I'm sorry, I'm just really nervous. I'm (YN)," you laughed after talking his ear off for a few minutes.

"Dallon, Dallon Weekes," he smiled, which did nothing for your nerves. “And don’t worry about it.”

"(YFN) (YLN)?" A voice called from the audition room.

"I'm up," you sighed, picking up your guitar case.

"Knock 'em dead," Dallon nodded.

After the audition you waved to Dallon as you left and hoped somewhere down the road you'd run into him again. 

~

A few years later, you and Dallon had become incredibly close being in Panic together, but it would have been impossible not to, given the role you'd both been relegated to within the band. Brendon and Spencer were the face of the band, they had history together and they always shared hotel rooms and dressing rooms.

You and Dallon were “just” touring members, trotted out for performances like a couple of show ponies. Your input wasn’t needed, that much was clear, but a paycheck was a paycheck, and you were making a name for yourself. Plus you’d never give up the weeks on the road with Dallon, experiencing new cities and countries you’d only dreamed of visiting and getting to perform night after night, but this particular tour was getting especially long and you were starting to get frustrated. In more ways than one.

It was another show like any other and Brendon was up to his usual antics. He would come over and stage-flirt with you before making his way back over to Dallon. Sure you both got into it for the sake of the performance, but the only person you ever really wanted to flirt with was Dallon and tonight he was driving you absolutely wild.

You loved watching the way his large hands moved across the neck of his bass, the way he threw his head back while playing was practically obscene, and it was incredibly distracting when he’d look over at you between songs, run his hands through his hair and shoot you a wink. You wanted to run your hands through his hair, you wanted his large, strong hands on your body, you wanted to be the one that made him throw his head back like that. You wondered what it would sound like for him to moan your name. You shook your head to snap yourself out of it, trying to keep your mind on the song you were playing.

That night as the bus rolled you to the next stop, it was suggested that everyone should play a drinking game. You settled in on one end of the couch, Dallon on the other, looking relaxed and comfy, and you had to fight the urge to go curl up with him.

“Never have I ever!” Brendon declared as he handed out bottles of beer to everyone. “(YN), ladies first.”

"Fine. Umm, never have I ever flirted to get out of a speeding ticket," you said and no one drank.

"Never have I ever had a fake ID," Dallon said and both Brendon and Spencer drank.

"Never have I ever kissed a bandmate," Spencer said with a smirk and everyone laughed as Brendon took a drink.

"Knew it," you muttered under your breath.

"Never have I ever been peed on during sex!" Brendon announced happily as the rest of you looked at him slightly dumbfounded.

"Well that went from zero to 100 real quick," you said shaking your head. "Fine, never have I ever hooked up with a fan backstage."

Again, Spencer and Brendon drank. The game continued, each of you taking drinks, some even going for more bottles of beer to keep the game going, but you were almost done with yours and ready to go to bed.

"Never have I ever enjoyed getting choked during sex," Brendon laughed and you felt releaved as you were done with the game as you lifted the bottle to your lips, finishing the beer. That's when you noticed three sets of eyes on you.

"What? It's fun," you shrugged. From the corner of your eye you noticed Dallon moving the pillow he had been leaning against on top of his lap. "Anyway, I'm done with my beer and I'm not opening another, goodnight."

As you climbed into your bunk and popped in your headphones, you couldn't help but wonder what Dallon was thinking.

~

The next day, the tour bus rolled into Chicago and since the following show was in Milwaukee, there was time for a hotel stay. A hotel stay with Dallon in the other bed you reminded yourself. You couldn’t help but notice Dallon was acting strangely as he moved throughout your shared dressing room. It was as if he wanted to say, but couldn’t bring himself to do so. 

You were pretty much ready for the night’s performance, and you were just applying some lipstick in the mirror when Dallon walked up behind you.

"That lipstick looks good on you," Dallon complemented as he straightened his tie.

You turned to face him, surprised at how close he was standing. You decided you were sick of the tension, everything that was unspoken between you. "I wonder what it'd look like on you," you murmured, as you reached up and ran your fingers over his tie.

Dallon smirked a little before he started leaning in and you held your breath, heart pounding in your chest. It felt like you’d waited forever, spent so many nights wondering what it would feel like if Dallon kissed you and where it would lead, consequences be damned.

Just as his lips were so close to yours, there was a knock on the door, causing you both to jump. "Need you on stage in 5 minutes!"

"Thank you!" You replied before letting out a shaky sigh. Dallon was running his hand through his hair as you shook your head and turned to walk out the door. 

Suddenly Dallon grabbed your arm and pulled you back to him. His lips were crashing into yours as you practically melted into him as your arms wrapped around him. When you pulled back for air, Dallon rested his forehead against yours, as you both tried to catch your breath.

“We gotta, we gotta get on stage,” you breathed, a little stunned still.

“Yea,” Dallon nodded. “But after… after I want more. I’ve waited so long for this.”

“I cannot wait," you grinned back.

You and Dallon barely made it on stage on time after cleaning up the smeared lipstick and ruffled hair. You did your best to focus on the music you were supposed to be playing but it seemed like every time you glanced over at Dallon, he was looking your way or shedding another article of clothing. 

First it was his jacket, but he always took that off during the show, then his sleeves were rolled up, making your knees weak. A short time later his tie hung undone around his neck, followed by the top buttons of his shirt being undone. This slow motion striptease was doing nothing for your concentration, or the feeling taking over your body. Hell you’d jump him right then and there if you didn’t think Brendon would fire you both for taking the attention off him for a moment.

The show seemed to take forever, but finally you were taking your final bows and walking off stage. The tension between you and Dallon was palpable and you wondered if anyone else noticed. 

"The van to the hotel will leave in an hour. If you aren't on it, hope you like walking!" The tour manager called as everyone dispersed to their dressing rooms. You glanced at your watch, noting the time and thinking about what could happen in the next 60 minutes.

When the dressing room door was shut behind you, Dallon was on you again. Hands on your waist, pulling your body against his as you ran your hands through his sweaty hair. Your lips kissed his hungrily, urgently. 

"We have an hour before we have to leave," you murmured into his lips. “Better make this quick and dirty.”

"But after that we have all night," he replied, his tone dripping in seduction.

"Oh god," you gasped. He took the opportunity to kiss down your neck. You shoved his shirt off his toned shoulders before fumbling for the hem of your dress to pull it off, breaking the kiss.

"(YN)," murmured in awe, taking you in wearing nothing but your undergarments. 

"You want me?" You asked, looking straight in his eye. "You can handle this?"

Dallon smirked. "You know I can."

Your eyebrows went up in surprise at the cocky statement of your usually slightly reserved friend. "Good."

You closed the distance between you again, lips crashing together, hands roaming all over each other, as you both blindly made your way across the room, bumping into furniture until you were at the crappy old couch that took up far too much space in the small room. You dropped back, breathlessly as Dallon loomed over you. You didn't think it was possible to get any more turned on than you already were, but it was happening. 

It didn’t take long for you both to shed the rest of your clothes, and you wanted to revel in Dallon's toned body, but there was no time for that now. You were making out furiously again, hands all over each other until he suddenly broke the kiss.

"Shit (YN), I don't have a -"

"I'm on the pill," you answered. He nodded and took his hand, pulling him over you as you lay back on the couch,

He propped himself up on the arm of the couch behind you, as his free hand caressed over your chest and you started making out again. His hips were resting against yours and while the friction was good, it was not enough.

"Please Dal," you murmured against his lips.

"Please what?" He teased. You could feel him smirking.

"Please fuck me, choke me, have your way with me, whatever you want, just please do something!"

Dallon smirked again before glancing down to line himself up and pressed into you tantalizingly slow. You let out a soft moan at the feeling of fullness and

"You feel so good," Dallon whispered reverently before pulling back, just to press back harder and faster than before. 

"That feels so good," you moaned, looking in his blue eyes. That’s when you noticed he was glancing down. “You can do it if you want.”

He looked back up at your face for confirmation, before placing his hand around your throat and squeezed gently, eliciting another filthy moan from you. He seemed pleased with your reaction as he pounded into you harder.

“So good,” you squeaked out, unable to come up with anything more coherent as you were in a state of absolute euphoria.

“God, (YN),” Dallon moaned, and you could tell he was close.

“Please, harder,” you gasped.

Dallon thrust harder into you, losing rhythm before you felt him cum, the feeling of which caused you to cum around him with one last gasping moan. He released his grip on your throat as his sweaty forehead fell onto your shoulder as you both panted for air.

“Damn,” you muttered. “Dallon, I’m not joking, that was the best sex I’ve ever had.”

Dallon laughed lightly, his cheeks flushing further. “I hope I can live up to expectations in the future.”

“I’m sure you will,” you smiled back.

“I guess we should get dressed and pack up before we miss the van to the hotel,” Dallon said, getting up, and offering you a hand to help you to your feet.

When you were both re-dressed and ready to leave the venue, Dallon took your hand, interlacing his fingers with yours. “Before we go, I just want you to know, I really do like you (YN). If you wanna just hook up, that’s fine, but if you want more, I’m ready.” 

You smiled up at him, this was the sweet Dallon that you’d fallen for so long before. “I do want more. I mean, more than just more hookups. I want the whole thing for us.”

Dallon nodded, a smile tugging at his lips as well. He leaned in and kissed you hard. “Good. Now let’s get to that hotel.”

[sopeyb23-blog]

The Three Rules

*not my gif

Rule #1, Rule #2

Summary: Spencer X F!reader work through exhaustion and frustration while on a case.

warnings: swearing (med), throwing things?, death (not main, not graphic, but mentioned), cm style issues, thats it i think???

Pairing: Spencer Reid X F!reader

words: 4.6K (shes big)

A/N: I keep making these soooo long, so, sorry. this one is a little darker than the rest but ends in fluff per usual and has a little bit of funny Emily and funny Garcia

*I do not own any CM characters

~~~~~~~~~~

Rule #2: Always offer comfort and support

Y/N ~

Spencer and I finally moved in together about a month after the last incident. And he was right, it was more efficient. 

“We gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta go!” I waited by our front door and Spencer ran around the apartment looking for his keys.

“I know I put them in the bowl”

“Spencer! I have keys, it's fine, let's go, lover boy!” He laughed and checked the ceramic bowl on the counter one last time before giving up. 

“Okay, one last check. Coffee?”

“Check” I held up the two large cups in my hands.

“Go bags, check” he held up both of our bags on his shoulders.

“And keys, ½ so, good enough” 

We arrived at the tarmac fifteen minutes earlier than usual...but still 10 minutes late. 

Spencer~

I took both of our bags and stashed them in the jet with the others before taking my seat beside Y/N on the couch. As per usual the first teasing began from Morgan when I sat down and he saw that my shirt was buttoned wrong and my hair was noticeably more disheveled than usual.

“Oooh, looks like a lover boy had a very good morning!” I glared at him as I rebuttoned my shirt and JJ immediately took action.

“Morgan, don’t make me put you in time out” He put his hands up in a mock defense.

“Im sorry mom!” Rossi laughed before handing me my paper file and Y/N her I-pad.

“Milwaukee again, they've got a child murderer.”   The once light mood from the teasing had gone away in an instant as we all opened up our files to see the pictures. 

“That's an annihilator” My first thought was to take Y/N's hand, offering a little support for her and comfort for myself through a small touch. She took my hand gladly and gave it a little squeeze. 

“An overly sadistic one too” Morgans brow furrowed as we continued to review the case but with perfect timing Garcia's face popped up on the screen. 

“I have a present for you” We all looked at her with puzzled expressions through the screen.

“Look under your seats!” she began with her best impression of a talk show host and we all fumbled about to find bedazzled gun holsters for each of us with all of our names in special large gems of our favorite colors. 

“Wow, thanks Garcia that's- that’s really thoughtful of you!” Emily tried and failed to contain her laughter as we all looked over to see Hotch replacing his leather belt holster with the bedazzled one from Garcia. He stood up to show her and got close to the camera.

“I’d say I look pretty badass.” He said it with a deadpan look on his face and then put his gun in it and sat back down without saying another word. JJ and Y/N looked at each other for a split second before bursting out in uncontrollable laughter. Like always, if one person on the team laughs, the rest of us can't help but join in. I always like to say it's because of Y/N. Her laugh is just one of those laughs that radiates all over and lights up a room.

Once we could breathe again we all thanked Garcia and she hung up with a big smile on her face. Now on to Milwaukee.

Y/N~ 

When we landed Hotch sent Spencer and I to the first crime scene together. Whenever possible on hard cases he likes to keep the two of us together because we work better that way. There is just something about the little touches during a hard case that keeps me going. And for this one, I was definitely going to need that. 

“Poor JJ” As we walked around the crime scene looking at all of the damage done Spencer and I talked through whatever came to mind.

“What do you mean?” I love him so much. But he's absolutely clueless.

“I mean, her and Hotch both. I can't imagine doing cases like this when you have a kid of your own back home. It must be terrifying” he nodded in silence before crouching down in the corner of the little boys room.

“Do you ever consider it?” I continued talking to him even though I know we are here to work. Sometimes that's my biggest flaw. I don't shut up easily.

“Consider what?”

“You know. Having baby geniuses one day?” I gave him a curious little smile as I waited for his response and continued writing little notes about the crime scene in my phone.

“Well i mean yeah, of course. But I'm not the one who'd be carrying them for 9 months am I?” I laughed at him and nodded before stopping altogether. 

“Them?” He gave me a mischievous smile back and said nothing.

“Fine then, keep your secrets”

We finished up at the crime scene and then headed back to the police station where the rest of the team was waiting for our report. Hotch and JJ look notably defeated and Rossi, Emily, and Derek just looked downright exhausted. Sometimes our work takes its toll rather quickly, especially when it's a very emotional case. Seeing a parent sob so horrifically after you give them the news is never easy. It's draining.

“So, what was the scene like?” Rossi spoke up from where he was standing in the corner.

“It was carnage. Absolute carnage” 

“How are the parents?” I looked at JJ who out of all of us definitely looked the most defeated.

“They’re acting like anyone else would. They’re distraught.” I grabbed Spencer's arm and held it tight as we talked about the profile. The more we talked the worse everyone looked. Garcia called mid profile and even her voice sounded exhausted. But we all knew that we wouldn't rest until we caught him.

Spencer~ 

None of us slept that night. None of us even left the precinct that night. A few times while we waited for more information or for someone to come in for an interview we would take turns napping on two chairs we wedged together to form a bed in the conference room. I tried that once, but I could barely fit my torso in them so I decided I would have better luck with the floor instead. 

“Spence, you want a snack?”

“They got pretzels?” I looked up from my napping position on the floor to look at Y/N when she stood over me with a few quarters in her hand. 

“Yeah, i'll be right back” She walked away for a moment and came back with two cups of coffee and two bags of pretzels. 

 She plopped both of them on my chest and crumbled to the floor beside me.

“Dinner is served” I chuckled and took a swig of coffee- overly sugared just how I like it- and then ate a single pretzel before Morgan came running into the room.

“A boy was just kidnapped” 

In a panic we all rushed up from our various positions and walked out into the main room of the precinct. I went straight for Hotch who was on the phone talking angrily.

“They put out an amber?” he blocked one end of the phone before turning to me.

“Not yet, get JJ on that please” I nodded and started to walk over to where JJ was napping.

“And Reid, get Y/N to talk to the parents, JJ’s done enough” I nodded solemnly.

We all have to do parent notifications and walkthroughs sometimes, but JJ does them the most. Every once in a while we make someone other than her do it to give her a well deserved break. Out of all of the things that we do, notifying the families is one of the hardest. 

“JJ, another boy has been taken, Hotch needs you to put out the amber.” I shook her shoulder and she woke quickly.

“Me? I should be with the family, have Garcia do it.” I looked her straight in the eyes and shook my head.

“We got this one, you deserve a break” she said nothing but got up from her chairs and walked over to the computer to start on the alert. 

“Y/N, baby, Hotch wants you with the families” she was still sitting on the floor where our coffees sat mostly untouched.

“Oh, um, okay, let's go then” I put a hand on her thigh.

“He wants me here. Will you be okay alone?”

“Oh. yeah, i'll be fine i have the keys anyways” She looked uneasy but neither of us had any choice in the matter. I gave her a chaste kiss on the top of her head and she grabbed my hand for just a second.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, i’ll be okay”

I subconsciously noticed the way she indirectly answered my question. It was her way of saying, no i’m not okay, but go do what you do. I kissed her hand in mine and walked out of the room going to help Derek and Hotch deliver the profile while the rest of the team was dispatched to separate locations. It's going to be a long night.

Y/N~

By the time I arrived at the families house it was nearing morning and the sun was starting to rise. There were cops all around and in their house which I quickly told to go. Right now, being here is not going to do that boy any good. Only one stayed to guard outside of the house, and me, of course, being the current family liaison. One of the problems with being the liaison with the family of an abductee is that after you make the initial connection with them, you don't get to stop being their liaison until the unsub is caught. That meant hours of being by myself in their house hearing the mother and father cry over the loss of their child. That meant almost never sleeping, or eating. And worst of all, that meant being without Spencers comforting touch and encouragement.

“Hi, I’m Agent Y/L/N, I'm the FBI agent assigned to your family.” They were sitting on the couch in the living room, their son’s toys covering the coffee table in front of them. The mother was crying soundlessly, almost catatonic, the father on the other hand was silent. He bounced his knee relentlessly and had no tears on his face. 

“Would you mind if I ask you a few questions about Danny?” 

The mother stayed quiet but the father looked up from his hands to speak.

“Do you think my son’s dead?”

Danny's mother withdrew her hand from her husbands and covered her mouth as she let out a sob.

“At this point we don't know much. But, i’m not here to lie to you, if this is connected to the other abductions then more than likely, yes”

The father still didn't cry, but instead just nodded his head solemnly. 

I asked them all the questions I could. Where did Danny go to school? Is there anyone he liked to hang out with? Do you know anyone who would want to hurt Danny? Some of them were real questions that needed answers. But for the most part they were just to get a sense of the parents, and to make them feel a little less helpless. Spencer always says to me that the best thing you can do for these families sometimes is just to make them feel like they can help. Usually they cant, but sometimes taking their mind off of their own thoughts and focusing them can bring out little bits of information we never knew would be helpful. The morning came and went. I had a single orange and a cup of coffee that day. The night came and still, no news. I checked my phone constantly, even though I knew that my ringer was on. If they found Danny, alive or dead, I would be the first person they call. But until then, all I could do was wait. 

Spencer~

Throughout the entire day I felt worried and distracted. Not just because I knew that the inevitable was close, but because usually, the team works in pairs. I deny it all the time, but I always work better when there is someone else with me. Not necessarily working with me- because I prefer to work alone- but just there. Someone who will remind me to slow down and take a deep breath or just let me talk out loud to them even though I probably won't listen to a word they say. But here I was, standing in front of a map, all alone, getting more and more frustrated by the moment and having not a single one of my teammates to get me back on track.

“Hello?” I finally took out my phone and called Y/N to get an update. On her that is, not the case.

“Hey, it's me, i'm just calling to see how you're doing” she sighed and I could practically see her rubbing a hand on the back of her neck and adjusting her glasses like she always does when she's stressed.

“That bad huh?”

“Yeah, not great. How's the map coming”

“It's not” this time it was my turn to sign into the phone.

“The the rest of the team is all out doing recon so i'm at a bit of a loss here”

“Oh, I'm sorry. Look Spence, I really shouldn't be on the phone, so-”

“Oh yeah, no I get it, of course.” She hung up without a word of goodbye and let me feel somehow even more frustrated than when our conversation began. I know she didn't mean to be condescending. I know she's just as frustrated as I am. But that doesn’t help me at the moment. After about another hour of waiting the rest of the team (minus Y/N) walked back into the precinct with downtrodden faces. 

“We just found the body, kid”  Morgan walked over to me and then sat down in a chair at the conference table. My heart broke. For once I was glad I wasn't with them today. 

“Did you get a positive ID?” I turned to Rossi this time who stood next me looking at the map.

“Yeah. it's him” 

Y/N~

I sat wide awake on the couch as it neared midnight. My phone lit up in the dark room with a call from Hotch.

“What's the news?” 

“We just got a positive ID on Danny's body” I was silent.

“After you inform the parents I need you back at the precinct” I was shocked. 

“Hotch, they still are going to need a liaison, my work isn't done yet”

“Y/N, their child is dead. There is nothing more that you can do for them” 

“Fine, i'll be back as soon as I can” I hung up the phone angrily and gingerly knocked on the bedroom door, knowing that this moment would alter their lives forever.

I opened up the door to the conference room to find everyone sitting in chairs around the table. They all gave me sympathetic looks and Spencer tried to reach his arm out to me which I denied. I’m a profiler, I know what healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms look like. I know that pulling away from anyone and everyone is not a good coping mechanism, but none of them were there with me. None of them saw the look of terror on his mother's face when I knocked on her door in the middle of the night. None of them heard her screams or saw her crumple to the ground in her son's room, holding his pillow like it was all that was keeping her anchored.  

I sat down on a chair in the corner of the room as we went through the profile and barely said a word. I saw Spencer looking back at me worried a few times while we gave the profile to the police and again as I went back into the corner of the conference room, still pulling away when he tried to grab my arm. Once everyone had gone back to researching or calling or going door to door, Spencer walked over to my chair in the corner. He put his hands on the arms of the chair and squatted down directly in front of me. Still being careful not to touch me, he tried to look me in the eyes but I averted them. 

“Y/N, you should go to the hotel”

“Are you going to the hotel?”

“No but-”

“Don't tell me that I need it more than you. Or that I've had a harder time than you! We are all struggling, we all need sleep! I can handle this Spencer!”  He flinched a little when I started to raise my voice but still stayed in his position. Hotch and Rossi upon hearing me raise my voice walked back into the room and over to Spencer. 

“Y/N, Spencer's right, you need to get some sleep.” 

“Is that an order?” Hotch paused for a moment and looked at Rossi who nodded.

“Yes, i'll see you in the morning” I clenched my jaw and Spencer quickly moved out of the way to let me get out of the chair, but not before taking a firm hold of my arm.

“This is a good thing, don't be mad at us for trying to help you” I took my eyes off of the floor to glare at him.

“Spencer, if you value our relationship or your hand, let go of my arm and stop with your condescending bullshit”

Spencer~

After she left I think it's fair to say that my mood did not improve. My frustration about the case turned into overall frustration with myself and everyone who happened to be around me at the time. I stood in front of the map without moving for hours just looking and going through all different theories in my mind. I was no longer alone but at this point that didn't matter. 

“Hey Spence, do you want any coffee?” JJ approached me cautiously and I silently shook my head. 

“Okay, well, uh, let me know if you need anything” she walked away to the hall just outside of the conference room where Morgan and Emily were standing. I could hear Emily talk to her through the glass doors that separated us.

“So?” Emily probed JJ as soon as the doors closed behind her.

“No good, didn't even speak” 

“I'm worried about him'' There was a hum of agreement between the three of them before Emily opened the doors and walked in. she approached me with less caution than JJ, but still with a little apprehension.

“Hey there, Spencer, do you need any help?” i didn't speak a word or even shake my head this time.

“You know I'm pretty good at mapping it so it happens. I could also help with a key if you want? Or alternatively you could just talk to me? Or look at me? No? Okay, well i'm going go get myself a cup of coffee from the diner down the street, if you decide to speak let me know” 

She asked me question after question and still I didn’t speak or move. Finally after staying for a moment of hostile silence she walked out of the room to where JJ and Derek were waiting. 

“So?” This time JJ asked Emily

“I asked him like five questions and he didn't even try and correct my grammar.”

 They all paused in silence for a moment before Emily turned to Derek.

“Alright Morgan, your turn, good luck” she patted him on the back and he sighed before walking into the room even more hesitantly than JJ was the first time.

“Hey Reid, you know, we’re all here for you if you-”

I turned around very slowly with a deadpan stare.

“Morgan, as politely as I can say this, if you and the rest of the team don’t leave me the fuck alone then I am going to take all 187 points of my IQ and shove them, up your-”

“Woah, woah,woah, okay pretty boy, I get the message” 

He turned and walked briskly out of the room. I turned back to my board but could hear JJ talking still from the hall.

“I'm worried, I've never seen him like this.”

“The only times he's ever been this frustrated we all know who got him out of it.” Emily stated and turned to Derek.

“I’ll see what I can do. Hey Rossi, let's take a drive”

Y/N~

I had slept for a few hours but the nightmares woke me up. It was morning now, so at least I know I got a little bit of sleep. I took a shower, got dressed, and sat on the edge of my bed, not quite ready to face the repercussions of what happened last night. I put my head in my hands as I remembered last nights events. I fucked up. Bad. After a few minutes I heard a knock on my hotel room door and got up from the bed to answer it. Rossi and Derek stood there with hands on their hips and worried looks on their faces.

“Can we come in?”

“Um, sure?” He said it as they had already walked in the room and I went back to sitting on the edge of my bed as they stood in front of me. Derek was the first to break the silence and he tore me away from where I was looking as I fiddled with my hands.

“Look, Pretty boy is in a bad place and you're the only one we know can get him out of it. If we want to catch this guy we need him, and to get him back on track we need you” he stopped and sighed. 

“Well, I have been ordered to stay here, so I guess you'll have to talk to our supervisor about that” Rossi grimaced as I said it and pointed to him. He put his head down for a second and then took a seat on the bed next to me. 

“Look kid, you were in a horrible place and I know that you know that. If you want to stop feeling helpless, If you want to get that boy the justice that he deserves, then we need your help. Spencer needs your help. You are the only person in the world that could help him right now, so I need you to suck up your pride, and come with us.” 

I gulped and sighed before standing from the bed. 

“Fine. But you both owe me a drink” They laughed and opened the door for me as we left the hotel. 

When the three of us arrived at the precinct and walked into the main area by the vending machines we saw a group of officers crowding around the hallway to the conference room. I walked right up to JJ and Emily who were making their way through the crowd towards me. JJ was the first to speak over the low murmur of the people crowding the hallway.

“Hey, thank god you're here!” She sounded so relieved you would have thought I’d saved her life.

“Um thanks? What's going on?” After I spoke I heard a loud thud and a crash coming from inside the conference room and a few people backed up from the windows. Emily got really close to me as she spoke.

“Um, Spencer’s...throwing things” I cocked my head to the side and was about to ask what she meant when another object, a book i think, hit the window in front of me.

“Holy, shit” I said with conviction and without another word walked to the front of the crowd and opened the glass doors. 

Spencer was facing away from me, but still throwing markers, and wherever he could get his hands on, at the window. Finally as he heard me approaching he stopped throwing things and put both of his palms to his forehead. As I got closer I could hear his heavy breathing and see the damage he had done. When I finally got close enough to his back I put one hand on his shoulder and the other on his arm gently. He flinched a little but didn't move away or try to get me off of him. I got on my tiptoes to whisper quietly into his ear.

“Spence, I love you and I'm sorry, but I need you to calm down right now because the team needs you. okay?” I kept my hands on him and heard him gulp in between his heavy breaths. After a minute his breathing started to slow a little.

“Good. I'm going to go get you a glass of water and i’ll be back in just a second” I took my hands off him and walked over to the door where JJ and Rossi were standing guard.

“JJ could you get me a glass of water?”

“Of course”

“Rossi, can you make everyone get away from the hallway and the window, there's too many people, I wont be able to get him to calm down if his senses are in a constant overdrive from the sounds” He nodded quickly as JJ came back with a glass of water in her hand. I took it from her and walked back into the room with Spencer as Rossi-with help from Hotch- started to disperse the crowd.

“Here, drink this” I guided him to a chair and he sat down to drink the glass. After a few sips I put my hand on his back and leaned forward so he could see my face fully.

“Okay, now I need you to tell me everything you know”

Spencer~ 

After a few minutes of drinking water I began to tell her about everything I knew for the location. At some point while we were talking I figured out where the unsub was and Morgan and Emily successfully got him and saved another young boy. As soon as he was processed we all decided that we wanted to leave as soon as possible, and not stay another second in that place. Even though it was the middle of the night Rossi was able to get the jet ready for us in an hour and we started the long flight home. 

I looked In front of me on the couch where Y/N was snuggled into my side and rolled onto my back so she could place her head on my chest. Her eyes were closed but her breathing told me that she was still awake and while she was I wanted to make sure she heard one last thing before this treacherous trip was over.

“I never said thank you” She turned her head on my chest so that she could look at me, but in the dark and quiet of the jet, it was clear she couldn't really see me anyways.

“For what?”

“For what you did back there, I never said thank you, so… thank you” She smiled widely at me but kept her eyes closed in the dark.

“Well, thank you. For not making me feel like I was helpless” she opened her eyes when she said it and it made me smile broadly. I kissed her head and turned back on my side so that I could pull her close to me. 

Rule #2, every little touch, every little word that she says brings me comfort whether she knows it, or not. I think that might have been the easiest rule to follow, after all, when you love someone just being around them is enough comfort.

~~~~~~~

Back.  Next

[dragonturtle2]

My greatest apprehensions for the new My Little Pony movie & generation.

Today MLP Generation 5 has been made available on Netflix, and on Saturday I’ll be seeing it with my friends in the Milwaukee Bronies. I’ve had an uneasy feeling about it, and finally putting much of that into words was helpful. It was certainly interesting, and I’d like to share it with other people. I’ve done so with only a few, but I want to put this out there before anyone thinks my opinion is contaminated by either seeing the movie, or something getting spoiled. Tomorrow I may be relieved, let down, or just impressed that I managed to predict so much. Something I’ve definitely kept in mind is that with Generation 4’s premieres, finales, and own movie, the trailers were always cut unimpressively (IMHO). So I tended to be pleasantly surprised with pretty much everything I watch from G4, when I even bothered looking at the trailers. So I’ll be quite happy to be proven wrong this Saturday. Now…

They certainly didn’t intend to be flipping off everything Gen 4 established. No creator ever tries that when they’re brought into a franchise in the payroll of the IP owners. But for their society to regress to this point of segregation? The only thought process I can think of for this bizarre departure are A) The new show staff threw their hands up on matching anything with G4... or B) they came up with a totally fresh setting and timeline, and then some exec or analyst at Hasbro said “Heck no, you are GOING to connect this with our previous money-printing machine. Got it?” And that level of mandated storytelling doesn’t fill me with confidence.

I’ve heard at least one comparison to the Sequel Trilogy, which I expected. True, there’s some notable superficial similarities. It’s decades(?) later, the original heroes are spoken of as myths, for various reasons the world is in trouble, and our protagonist is a disciple-slash-fangirl of what the previous heroes fought for. But this is way more drastic and bizarre of a development.

The conflict in the Sequel Trilogy for the galaxy at large is that the Empire has returned, but rebranded. A new set of new jerks wanted power, teamed up with some of the old jerks, got a bunch of big guns, and held the galaxy hostage. That’s something that just happens in repeated strokes of history. It’s the re-drawing of a bunch of borders. The only moral failing there is being lax with fascists.

Having the Sequel Trilogy retread a plot also isn’t as weird as the My Little Pony franchise. The Force Awakens was made decades after the OT concluded, and the previous Prequel Trilogy took a really different direction and wasn’t received well. Then the franchise got completely new owners. So going back to its roots to start things out was a logical move. It’s only been THREE YEARS between these different shows of MLP, so the repetition doesn’t have much charm. Although repetition may not be the right word, since the setup for this show’s racial dilemma is way more extreme.

Equestria for some reason has gone through a jaw-dropping morale decay. Not only have they embraced division they were fighting against in seasons 8 & 9, they’ve regressed to the level of segregation before Equestria was FOUNDED. The Star Wars equivalent of that would be not only everyone fighting the First Order, they also suddenly don’t allow Wookies and other aliens to drink from the water fountains. Like, how the heck did that turn into a problem?

If the only progress undone from Gen 4 were the relationships with the non-ponies introduced later, that would actually make more sense. Social equality has reactionary backlash, which often occurs immediately after landmark victories. Ponies were the ones that held the most power on the world stage (some kinds more than others in Equestria).

But the WAY bigger issue isn’t internal logic and retcons. I learned long ago to set aside any expectation of a reward or pandering for my years-long commitment to a toy franchise. It’s the potential mishandling of the topic of racism, and I worry we’ve already on shaky ground. The morale of “segregation is bad” feels like bottom of the barrel, kind of copout way of tackling racism. At least, it does for settings that are extremely modern like Generation 5 clearly is. Segregation of people by ethnicity, by rule of law, has fully shifted to obsolesce in the cultural landscape of first world countries. Not even the most deranged lunatics in our government like Boebert or Greene advocate for it (not yet anyway). Stories about segregation can still be done really well of course, but it can’t just be about wiping it off the lawbooks and solving everything. It needs look at why people do this in the first place, who fights for it as the status quo, and what social structures and habits keep the thing in place despite the efforts of good people.

Of course, we still HAVE segregation in society. Not legally, but de facto thanks to economic status and civic planning. And not just physical separation, but grotesque imbalances of power and means. Look at job opportunities, home ownership, insurance evaluations, scrutiny by police, investment in local schools, etc. In G4 it was pretty clear that WAY more unicorns got to live in the lap of luxury or centers of commerce and education. Earth ponies were more spread out, rural, and based on an agrarian existence to feed the country. It’s not that G4 did much with it, but that kind of setup is way closer to modern day inequality, and would be a more fertile bed for those kind of stories. Admittedly, the Pegasi city in the trailer looked absolutely LOADED, so maybe we do have that element in store.

What the trailers and press releases are saying feels weak even as just a segregation story. The ponies separating makes segregation look like a bunch of people moving out like feuding roommates… instead of being put in place by a group of people with WAY more power and money than everyone else. Segregation is portrayed as a mutual agreement, not exploitation. My worry is that they’re going to go to Pocahontas routes, and make the root of racism a select few rich figureheads spreading lies. And undoubtedly, rich people in the private and public sector DO profit off of ignorance and violence, and divert attention from real problems. But when white people in America were treating everyone as subhuman, it wasn’t FEAR that was driving it (at least, not exclusively). For one, it was profit and sheer convenience. Manual labor and the least desirable tasks could be foisted on to ‘lesser’ peoples, and they wouldn’t even require a humane wage. Even if there hadn’t been those empirical benefits, discrimination also brought the sadistic sense of self-importance that comes from standing on someone else’s neck. The imaginary structures of racism let people feel comfortable about their place in the universe.

I wouldn’t call Zecora’s introductory episode all that nuanced, but it was definitely more accurate to real life than the (hopefully hypothetical) scenario I described above. In Bridle Gossip, it’s extremely apparent that the Pony majority of Ponyville are the ones acting like tools, and singling out Zecora for being different. They are the ones obligated to apologize to HER. (Even though it’s of course awkward that they wrote Zecora as a rhyming witch doctor, when she’s meant to represent an African person. It might not be so bad if she wasn’t the ONLY Zebra, and the only creature coded that way.)

Companies and studios will gladly tell their audiences to sympathize with victimized individuals and populations of oppression, and hate the individual acts done upon them. But then they’ll get cagey about making some members of the audience feel any kind of guilt, from distantly benefitting from that system; or maybe even subtlety being part of one. It’s not good for the bottom line to name a civilian population for taking any racist, oppressive or outright murderous actions. No, it’s a single evil dictator (or CEO, or general) and their gaggle of cronies, who just needs to be overthrown. We see this toothless crud play out over and over because corporate entities are either A) that naive, or B) scared of some losers with megaphones losing their minds over the suggestion of self-examination. Some people are SO fragile at the idea of self-examination, or guilt. Because it goes back to having an identity, an innocent and sympathetic self-image.

[toddlazarski]

Last Suppers Vol. 3

Shepherd Express

“I see that the world is upside down,

seems that my pockets were filled up with gold.”

— Tom Waits

My grandmother never allowed pizza delivery. Pizza—yes, most definitely, frequently, likely for a medically inadvisable percentage of grandma-house meals, but only if you took her keys, locked the door behind you, drove the Malibu—tape deck stacked with “Electric Ladyland,” for just such necessary excursions—across town and schlepped the steaming box back yourself, again locking the door behind you. I’m not sure if it was an abject fear of delivery personnel, something nefarious laying in an unknown driver lurking, even if said lurking was only out of pepperoni remittance and tip hope. Maybe it was the tip itself, an avoidance of sorts. Or it could have been the disclosing of her address. Maybe she was in trouble with the law. Maybe all, or a combination, or something else, all rolled together into one of those nebulous anxiety yarn balls one comes to know and generally acknowledge and accept when hungry and negotiating with a late-80’s grandmother. So I’d never really ask, would shrug with mild annoyance, take the keys, and let her pay with a crisp twenty-dollar-bill, because in hindsight, I’m not nearly as thoughtful as I’d like to believe. 

Similarly, this is probably how I don’t know much, anything really, about the Great Depression. Grandma was born in 1925, which, according to Wikipedia, means she spent much of her childhood in said epoch of forlorn-toned black-and-white photos of destitute pea pickers in California. She would have been a good source, I suppose, for all the wonder I’ve put on, of late, the d-word, in both proper noun form and the more loose, casual way it’s been thrown about. “I think he’s depressed” has become a standard line. Friends talking about other friends, co-workers talking about spouses, somebody talking about me, maybe. But over the past eight weeks I’ve heard it at least a handful of times, accepted it, took it with brow-furrowed, middling resiliency, as if it were part of a bad but expected forecast. As if, yes, “might have to shovel tomorrow.” Or like a thing meant for small-talk chewing and grumbling, as in, “I’m not sure about that first round pick.” When Kai Ryssdal comes floating in on the kitchen radio I switch the channel before the capital form of the word comes up. I usually have to hurry.    

I should have asked her, I suppose, in hindsight, it being one of those many things we all only now realize we should have always asked, said, paid attention to, thought about, considered. Before the world turned sideways, began coughing, lost sense of taste and smell, and we all woke up with our furniture seemingly turned to face the wall. Before she died. It might have been especially helpful since of late I’ve found the same pizza delivery paranoia creeping in. Though of all the faults I blame on genetics, this is hardly one—it can’t be Adult Onset Delivery Dread, it came far too fast. And I still don’t understand it fully: do I fear the boxes, or the bringer? Or do I fear the bringer's perception of me, sitting in my ivory tower, looking down on the help, or not looking at all, just expecting them to, yes, drop the sustenance on my luxuriant, sanitary doorstep? And then be gone, faceless servant. Or is it maybe that I don’t want to infect them? Did he or she think of that? Should I go out and tell them? Or maybe just put up a sign on the closed door: It’s Not You, It’s Me. Should I try at some levity, one of these days, maybe attempt a recreation of the “keep the change you filthy animal” scene from “Home Alone”? But, of course, nobody takes cash anymore, so it wouldn’t work.   

Whatever the approach, the newfound anxiety has been robbing a righteous, innocent joy of late. The sweet echo of a doorbell, startling, even as you sit with perked ear and open Ring app, leaning a bit with anticipation. It might be right now, this second, or in 35 minutes. Or, what if they never show? You make the call and are transported to Dr. Seuss’ Waiting Place. Patience and perspective needing to be fought for amidst the mad sea of slack-jawed seekers. A 90’s Civic with bad brakes and problematic bumper stickers, a goateed driver with questionable politics often the only thing to bring you back to the moment, offering deliverance, unveiling the places you will go, the tastes you will have, the boom bands you will hear and the balloon-high heights you will see. “Should you turn left or right, or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?” At this point of rescue, like no other in life, it matters only that you know how to find your way to the door, can manage not to trip carrying a box back to the coffee table. 

Whether or not grandma was right, or had a reason, or had an outstanding warrant, and whether or not we’ll all get over our cardboard fear and food conveyance dread and Clorox addiction and the balance of common sense versus Medium articles versus FDA guidelines versus something somebody in the office Slack channel said, it still has to be done. And at the very least she was right, like all grandmas seem right, about the most important thing being the bringing of comfort. Or the going and getting of comfort. So, my car or there’s, these are the best current bets for said pizza procuring solace. 

5. Ned’s

Through the years, through my decade-and-a-half of Milwaukee life, through an adulthood of being judge and jury and general jerk about pizza, I’ve never really cared much for Ned’s, or the “Milwaukee-style” pie it so well seems to epitomize. I’ve always found the crust too thin, crackly, unfilling, the special’s seem over-topped, the entire thing often feels a bit under-cooked, the cheese a tad too slidey, the sauce slightly over sweet. Quarantine week two though was weekend-ed with my wife and her friends sharing Ned’s, collectively, each with their own pie, over a happy hour Zoom meeting. It was such an innovative act of community, togetherness, pizzaing, that I was softened toward epiphany. And then later, as I greedily, guiltily, drunkenly mawed microwaved leftover squares after she had gone to bed, I finally disabused myself of all lofty notions as if I were a Dickens character. Ned’s is old-school, since ‘69, simple comfort of hometown iconicism. The pizza itself too has an undeniable tang, a distinct crumbly soul, a sausage-y quotidian satisfaction level akin to a High Life bottle and the Brewers on a daytime bar corner TV. At a time the Brewers are good. Most importantly: it is the pizza of my wife’s youth. There are few things tastier than nostalgia, and nothing more comforting. And so Ned’s always has a place in the heart, in our home, in our refrigerator, especially when she orders too much and goes to bed too early.   

4. Rosati’s

The five years I spent in suburban Chicago, coming of age and hitting my pizza peak, happened to coincide with adolescence and the accompanying boundless, obscene appetites. A standard chicken or egg scenario. This is maybe why I keep coming to defend Rosati’s, our locally-owned franchise location’s sometime inconsistency, and why I keep going back, here, and to all Chicago-bred ilk. There is the personal sway of the one that got away, the one that taught me to be a man, of the person you’d go out of town to a 10-year-reunion just to get a glimpse of and awkward drink with. But there is also no objective argument to the fact Rosati’s aspires to, and often achieves, the ideal of Chicago tavern-style: rolled dough, thin, square cut wedges of well-cooked crunch, trademarked by a cornmeal dust bottom and oregano and fennel-y finish. The cheese often looks like the color of approaching-autumn, the crust like it was two minutes from being burnt. Equally crispy and chewy, the toppings are half-buried under a winter blanket of mozz like endless hidden prizes. But maybe it’s just personal. And really a takeout here is akin to reliving high school’s zenith. If I really want to go down that Springsteen route, like the part in the song where he sees his ol’ baseball playing bud, and they go back in and have a few drinks, I get a pie and an Italian beef. Glory Days.    

3. Transfer

Of the 30 or so times I’ve eaten at Transfer, I’d say 29 of them I’ve eschewed all normal pies, disregarded all pasta or apps, ignored the menu or anything the waiter was saying or what anyone else at the table might want, really, in tunnel-vision favor of the simply named, boldly furnished Garlic Lovers. It is a special of aromatic, crushed bulb bombardment, almost stunt-like in essence, that somehow holds together. Sturdy enough to steer with one hand, the pleasantly dusty and charred bottom still has a doughy, Southern Italian-leaning chewiness. The decadent top is garlic sauce svelty, with pepperoni and sausage and cheese chunkily clattering together, as delightful black air bubbles adorn the edges, indicating artisanal-ness, craft pizza lineage, a really hot oven. But you don’t need to read too deep, or too far past the pizza’s name—overall this is an oily, pungent affront to subtlety and fresh breath. But garlic, they say—-and what are we but the collection of what they’s we believe?—is a natural antimicrobial agent. And we’re all six feet apart anyways. Actually, after four slices, I’m wondering if Fauci and the lot of health-advising acronyms are really right: is six enough?  

2. Tenuta’s

A recent takeout phone call to Tenuta’s, where I ordered my usual—Diavola, no pineapple—was met with this:

“You can’t do that, the pineapple makes the diavola.” 

“Oh. I, uh, disagree.”

“You know what, let’s not do this right now.”

Tenuta’s is that kind of place. The shaded Clement Ave brick corner spot of pasta and pizza and cozy classiness and classy coziness is the type of place Tony might take a goomah one night and Carmela the next. Tenuta’s To Go continues the tradition from a Howard Avenue counter-only outpost, more conducive to our house-car-back-to-bottle-of-sanitizer cycle of now. But from either there is a standard gamut of specials and absurd glut of crust offerings: thin, virgin, deep, stuffed, some house pies come in triangles, some in imperfect squares. It’s like one of those Strengths Finder personality tests of endless combinations new employers make you take to find out precisely which type of pot-stirrer you will become. I always default to a pepperoni and giardiniera and cream cheese thin, a square-cut beaut, indicating the recessive gassy guy-from-Chicago trait. Balanced, zesty, spicy, creamy, it is everything I hope for on the precious, too few pizza nights of existence. But there are similar satisfaction points up and down the board: the basil-y freshness of a margherita, an olive oil sauce holding ham and pepperoni and garlic on the house special, a mis-order even found me enjoying the pleasant carb overload of a “virgin” crust, redolent of pan pizza or something from Detroit. You’d think they might specialize, defer somehow to the simpler ways of the old country. It’s almost too much, like life—the options, the anxieties, the distractions, the food narcotics necessary for real world-dimming, dulling. But you settle in, eventually, you know your order, come to know yourself and the shape of your DIY haircut-framed mug in the mirror, the spirit within said order. And, soon, with time and gut-work, then you know the voice on the other end of the line, and, even in quarantine, the gravy of a Sunday gathering can be part and parcel and pepperoni with a little good natured jabbing, some convivial ball-busting that hides, that hints at, care and love.    

1. Fixture

Even if you believe, rightly, that there are no guilty pleasures in life, there can still often be times of feeling like you are cheating a bit, calorically. Like, say, when enjoying Taco Bell sober, or scarfing Totino’s pizza rolls well into your 30’s, or driving through a Wendy’s and eating in your car, by yourself, removed from any identifiable meal time, just doing it because dammit and because you can. Sometimes you might know that notion, back behind the base lizard brain, of just feeling bad about existing as a stereotypical fat American. Ordering cream cheese—so rich, so creamy—atop a well made pizza feels this way, and yet, the “Great Lakes Distillery”—extra sauce, pepperoni, cream cheese wedges—keeps calling me back. Or at least keeps picking up when I call. 

And there they are: creamy black-speckled corpuscles of gooey cheese comfort, squishing softly, almost a bit curdy, marshmallow-y, stretching, existing in that perfect cheese nirvana state of half-melt. They are model contrasts to the salty oven char on the liberal toss of near-burnt pepperoni. Beneath a vibrant, herbaceous marinara mixes with well-ratioed mozz, the kind of top where you can’t fully tell if the sauce or cheese were put on first, as they gel together, taking turns, like pass-first teammates that make deep championship runs, that reign supreme on a top-five pizza list. The crust seemingly has an application of anti-flop finish, good hold that is toothy and strong without getting in the way. So it’s a bit Chicago, afterall, and also a bit that they just seem to use higher quality ingredients than so many old school joints, the places phoning it in, doing it the way it’s always been done, forgetting what we all too prominently remember now: that tomorrow is no guarantee. But they are also big on the homemade hot honey siding offer, a move straight out of Greenpoint, or whatever is the new Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Honey should have no place on pizza. Or so I think, for ⅞’s of every first piece. But, actually, wait another bite—sure it does. Let’s all not think about it right now. It is honey, it has creeping zing finish, and that different flavor profile quality that makes life and another endless day of dread, a day no different than yesterday, worth it. So, for now, anyways, let’s dip our crusts bits endlessly until we’re beyond stuffed. 

When they throw open the French takeout windows, even despite the masks, despite the fact my paranoia makes me insist on paying ahead of time over the phone to limit contact, despite the fact that this makes me need to call back and get their Venmo so I can send more money to fix my non-existent tip, Fixture’s pickup window really has been a lifeline of sorts since mid-March. Whether it’s the pizza or the wings or the chicken parm sandwich, it’s a satisfying reminder that there is some delicious humanity still pulsing on quiet 2nd Street. On all of our graveyard-quiet streets. And next week, maybe, for sure, pizza delivery, like normal, can return to our house. “Be brave,” all the books I read to my daughter seem to teach, implicitly or otherwise, they echo back at me in the sound of my own voice. And one day we will. Or else, we won’t. And maybe, years from now, when she’s old enough to grown-up talk and have thoughts and observations and real life queries, when she’s old enough for these loathsome days to be the old days, she’ll ask why we always have to go pick up the pizza. And I’ll just gaze distantly out the window like grandma might have, had I wondered, or like a character in a Tom Waits or John Prine song. Or, better, she won’t ask, will just chalk it up to the personality scars of an old, damaged man, and then we’ll be able to focus only on the pizza.

[junker-town]

Dorktown: Nori Aoki played an entire season without seeing the bases loaded

Getty Images

Somehow, Nori Aoki threaded the needle in 2013. He made nearly 700 plate appearances and saw the bases loaded for none of them.

The grand slam is arguably the most thrilling and exciting thing that occurs in a baseball game. The prerequisite to one, of course, is that the bases be loaded. In the 21st century, that’s been the case approximately 2.47 percent of the time in Major Leagu Baseball. That is about once every 40.5 plate appearances. And yet, in 2013, Milwaukee Brewers right fielder Nori Aoki entered the batter’s box 674 times; the bases were loaded for him … zero times.

Poor Nori Aoki played a full-ass season with nary a single opportunity to break out the rye bread and mustard. This when the average big leaguer would’ve been expected to have about 16.6 such opportunities. Here’s how that stacks up since 1973 (the start of full base-occupied data splits at Baseball-Reference):

A couple quick observations:

Only one other player with at least 300 plate appearances didn’t have any occur with the bases loaded. That would be 1977 Tom Veryzer — and he had just 373 of ’em.

Everyone else with more than 458 plate appearances had at least two with the bases juiced

As for the other 1,167 instances of someone reaching ’13 Aoki’s plate appearance total of 674, barely anyone had as few as five:

Perhaps your first thought might be that his Brewers simply must not have loaded up the bases very often. And while they did do so at a below average clip, it’s certainly not anything egregious:

Even within just the 2013 Brewers, Aoki stands out pretty glaringly among the distribution of their 122 (a totally normal number) overall bases loaded plate appearances:

By the way please note the presence there of a dot representing a guy who had just 14 plate appearances, and for two had the bases loaded (pitcher Donovan Hand).

Now, there is one big, fat caveat that I will not ignore: Aoki was a leadoff hitter, certainly the batting order position least conducive to plate appearances with the bases loaded. The rebuttal? All the other leadoff hitters over the last near-half century are also accounted for in that first chart and those ensuing three bullet points still hold true. However, if you’d fancy a chart that isolates just leadoff hitters for a more specific apples-to-apples comparison, this oughta show that it was still extremely abnormal:

The other 19 leadoff hitters combined still had the bases loaded for 1.83 percent of their plate appearances, just shy of three-quarters as often as MLB’s overall 21st century rate; and that’s even with Shin-Soo Choo’s presence there, whose 2013 season also happens to show up on that earlier chart of those very rare instances with as few as five such plate appearances.

This data suggests that on average even a leadoff hitter should be able to expect to find the bases loaded in the general ballpark of once every 54.7 times they bat. If that rate had applied to Aoki, he would’ve had 12.3 bases loaded plate appearances ... 12.3 more than reality.

Want a more robust sample?

Though that includes all players, obviously there are plenty that were primarily leadoff hitters. Only two, just barely, have a percentage under 1.6 (Ichiro and Juan Pierre). Then it’s a pretty sizable jump up to Paul Goldschmidt in the antepenultimate spot from the bottom at 1.67 percent.

Thus an unequivocally conservative approximation for the going rate of leadoff hitters’ bases loaded plate appearances would be 1.6 percent (but by all indications the era’s actual rate for leadoff hitters was at least 1.8 percent). That’d still mean an average of once every 62.5 plate appearances. Again, ’13 Aoki had 674 plate appearances.

All of this differs in a key way from a lot of other statistical outliers. For example, in the 21st century, the average MLB player has homered about once every 35.7 plate appearances, but it’s not shocking that, say, 2005 Scott Podsednik had 568 plate appearances without hitting any homers. It’s merely a reflection of the type of player he was, a part of his baseball identity. Hitting home runs simply was not a part of Podsednik’s game.

Needless to say, a full season of never once batting with the bases loaded has nothing to do with any sort of fundamental baseball identity or particular player archetype. For the most part it’s just good old-fashioned randomness to a ridiculous degree. Isn’t it beautiful?

We can actually further expand this: the bases weren’t loaded for any of Aoki’s final 69 plate appearances of 2012 or any of his first 65 plate appearances of 2014. That means he went up to bat a grand total of 808 times in a row with no more than two baserunners aboard.

With the bases being loaded 2.47 percent of the time since Y2K, generally speaking that means the odds of 808 consecutive plate appearances without a single such occurrence are about one in [brings pinky to mouth] 597 million.

Here are some hypothetical things that would’ve been more likely than that:

NFL

Aaron Rodgers throwing 19 straight incompletions

Jerry Rice being held under 50 receiving yards in 19 straight games

LaDainian Tomlinson failing to score a touchdown on 432 straight carries

NBA

Ray Allen making 180 straight free throws

Josh Smith making 16 straight threes

Nikola Jokic playing every second of back-to-back games without recording a single assist

MLB

Hideki Matsui homering on six straight plate appearances

Adam Dunn striking out on 16 straight plate appearances

John Smoltz facing 290 straight batters without allowing an extra-base hit

The funniest counterpoint season to ’13 Aoki is probably 1989 Tom O’Malley, who in a season of just 11 plate appearances, had five with the bases loaded. What a spectacular contrast to 674 and 0.

Anyway, after the 2013 season, the Brewers traded Aoki to the Royals. The thing about Aoki is that by no means was he much of a home run-hitter, going deep about 39.5 percent as often as the average big leaguer throughout the course of his career. But as it relates to the possibility of a grand slam, you ought not blindly assume he wouldn’t have hit one had he indeed been blessed with any bases loaded opportunities in 2013.

Because the next year in Kansas City, while he hit just one home run all season, wanna guess how many baserunners were aboard for it?

Previously on Dorktown:

The Memphis Grizzlies’ improbable run of free-throw defense

Peter Warrick was the least-efficient wide receiver of all time

The NFC East could give us a 6-win NFL playoff team

Video: The History of the Seattle Mariners

[fairygal11]

The Fate of America Rests in our Hands

Today is the big day America. The day that determines the fate of our country. It determines the future of America. Our dreams, our futures, our generation. It will determine the timeline of our entire lives upon the results of the Election. My name is Megan....Megan Ryan and I speak from my heart. I am a 32 year old with Mild Autism (Aspergers). An otaku, introvert, a hardworker with a big heart who cares about her family, friends and loved ones out there. I've never voted before-NOT A SINGLE ONCE in my entire life, but this year I voted because I can't stand to see what our Country has become under this....this Tyrant of a President this year. Before this crisis started with COVID, everything seemed normal for January and February, just the usual normal life and enjoying the best Anime Milwaukee Convention weekend of my life despite having a small ear infection and seeing My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising in theaters. It was normal until....March when COVID struck and was a menance at a mild level. We thought it might go away, but we were wrong-Due to the rise in cases, everything began to shut down including jobs over time even my library. We were temporarily laid off until late Summer when we got COVID guidelines and services were returning to normal with some major changes to how we did things at the library, but we adapted and worked together to help the community and keep the patrons safe-we even ensured that the books were quarantined and purified before they were checked in and shelved. But before going back to work, you cannot imagine how hard it was on me during those long 5-6 months being off temporarily because of the virus. A lot of reflecting, refocusing and rediscovery of myself: Physically and Spiritually. You know this was my 5th year at my library, a major milestone for me and I had plans in mind to celebrate it: Anime Milwaukee 2020 and My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising were the only celebratory I was able to do and go to. The others I had in mind: Midwest Gaming Classic, participating in Independence First's walkathon again, go to the Maker Space Festival, the usual festivals like Summerfest, Germanfest, State Fair, seeing Lupin the 3rd the first in theaters, kickstarting the Anime Club at my library with Alex and Courtney, getting the PS5 (Accomplished to get-when I celebrated my first year of working I bought a PS4 with my anniversary money so the PS5 reflects that kinda thing in a way). But my biggest milestone and greatest thing I wanted to do.....was asking my best friends like Nadia, Cory, Alex and a few others if they wanted to hang out, grab a star bucks or play a video game at a geeky bar or tavern like the Sword and Shield Tavern (Which sadly closed down due to COVID and I never got a chance to see it or be there). I'm not much of a talker in reality, but I try my best to improve my conversation skills and form proper sentences then having it juggle about because sometimes I see the lines in my head, but they don't come out the way I want them, but I take my time to get them out the best I can. I guess at times it also depends on the environment: At home I'm normal speaking, at a convention or a place of interest I can speak like an extrovert. I guess it kinda varies-like I'm an omnivert. Anyway during those months I kept busy like watching shows (even those to catch up on), baking calzones and different pastry recipes that were easy and simple to make, exercising and recovering when I accidentally got Runner's Knee from overexerting myself, reading as many books as I can even getting a lot of kindle books due to libraries being closed for the time being and did a lot of writing-even took some zoom classes like SOcial Skills, Mindfulness and Creative Writing. I had to keep myself busy somehow and figure out how to get some normalcy-some balance back into my life. Try to figure out a way to keep to my routine or rebuild my routine when you don't know what to do when your locked down in your own home and dealing with your inner demons and struggles, when you feel like you have not much energy then you always did...when you feel isolated even if your home with your family. So many emotions swirled around, so many different thoughts-It felt as though for awhile...I was in the abyss, but I always had a rope of light to help me out. A Light of Hope that I kept in my heart so I didn't fall into despair....telling me to not give up and keep going forward and keep fighting. Keep finding a way to keep your light glowing. Don't let the darkness gets to you...don't let the world and the COVID monster get the best of you because your a survivor. I even began to apply for self-care to myself both physically and mentally-For there were times I worried about what would happen if the libraries don't open or if they start cutting people if things got very worse? There were so much that filled my head at the time even worried about the safety and well being of my loved ones out there if they were alright. There was a lot I went through, but I survived and grew during those Lockdown times and you wouldn't imagine how happy when I learned the library was opening back up and letting people come back even myself. I returned in August and started learning the new procedures in the back room, at first it was a little tricky, but then I got the hang of it-course I kept the instruction sheet to keep on hand in case in my notebook. I feel as though I've grown a lot through this crisis: Physically and Mentally. I learned that it's okay to take my time and I shouldn't rush, it's okay to feel how you feel and let it be known, that you shouldn't be afraid to let people know how your feeling. I had that fear of having people worry about me-I know when I wear a mask on my face as I follow the guidelines to protect those around me, underneath the mask, there is a smile, but at times it can be sad. Sure, I can get overwhelm, but I have to give myself a breather to calm down and clench my Tourmaline stone I keep with me in my pocket to remind me to calm myself from whatever unsettling thought is trying to invade my mind-even when it comes to all of this.....So I want to apologize if I ever had a slight puffy red eye or ever worried anyone out there when I felt a little overwhelm at time and needed to take a breather. I do my best to be strong for those around me, I do my best to be there for those I love, I do my best to help in anyway I can and I do my best at what I do at home and at work. Doing my best is all I can do, but I put all my best into what I do and making sure I don't overdo it. Anyway, I've chosen to vote because this is very important for not just me, but for everyone out there....I chose to vote so I can help make a better future for us. I cannot stand to see anymore lives taken from this world-The young and the old, 200,000+ in the USA and growing and many across the world? Do you know how many dreams that is? TOO MANY that were taken too soon and unfulfilled due to that MONSTER OF A virus! And what about the people who couldn't see their loved ones when they were infected? How many people were unable to see them for one last time? How many were unable to see the birth of a new life brought into the world? How many have been unable to see their loved ones or grandparents, but only through zoom or a video chat program? How many milestones and celebrations were stolen? How many events were cancelled because of the virus? How many jobs were taken and the cut offs that ruined the lives of the employees that worked at those jobs for so many years only to be laid off completely? How many holidays were ruined? How many trick or treaters missed the chance to trick or treat this year? How many will not be able to celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas together this year? HOW MUCH MORE IS TO BE TAKEN FROM US!? HOW MUCH MORE YOU ORANGE DEMON!? YOU DEMON IN A FAKE HUMAN SKIN! Because of that TYRANT in office who did nothing to curb it back in January or did anything to keep it under control and look where its got us......He believes fiction then Scientific Facts. He thought it would go away...AND HE SAID RECENTLY TO IGNORE COVID. You can't ignore Covid-because its like a broken pipe, you can't just duck tape it up and leave it be-CAUSE sooner or later it'll burst and flood the basement of a foundation and cause it to sink. That's what TRUMP did to America-HE PUT DUCK TAPE on the COVID pipe, only for it to blow up and flood our very country.....You can't ignore a problem and expect it to fix itself, it'll only get worse. And I don't care what anyone says: I DON'T CARE WHAT THE TROLLS SAY! I don't care what TRUMP'S BRAINWASHED minions say! I DON'T CARE WHAT THOSE SHEEPLE SAY! I have a RIGHT TO SPEAK MY MIND because I'M NOT AFRAID TO SPEAK MY MIND OR LET YOU KNOW WHAT I feel in my heart! I know what's right or wrong and I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IS HAPPENING in politics and I don't like politics very much or never got involved with them, but what I've seen and heard from A PIG-MOUTHED man is a pile of fertilizer-WHAT HE IS DOING with his court of corruption of Republicans is wrong! HE DIDN'T DO nothing, he didn't solve problems, he didn't help anyone out there, he's all talk and no bark! He's a bully! And if there's one thing I can't stand above else is a bully....AND I am taking a STAND AGAINST THIS BULLY by voting for the RIGHT PRESIDENT who'll clean up his mess. If your like me, America, please think carefully when you vote today. Your future along with the future of your loved ones, children, grandparents, yourselves and family.....THEY REST in your very hands. Do you wish to have a president who will do all he can to restore our country or do you want a president who'll continue to destroy our land until its nothing like a Mad Max wasteland and were fighting over supplies? This is our home, our country. WERE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, NOT THE DIVIDED States of America. We shouldn't fight each other, we should stand together and take back our country from COrruption and chaos that Trump has sparked over these months. Were all human beings, no matter where were from-This isn't the time to be divided, but united to do what's right. For the future of AmericaFor the future of our childrenFor the future of our generations to come before usFor our dreamsFor our freedomFor ourselves Election Day 2020 is very important for us all. Look in your hearts-Do you want a bright future for yourselves with Biden or a dystopian future under a Dictator like Trump?..... Thank you for reading this and I apologize, but I really needed to say this to let you all know how I feel deep down about this whole Election Mess.

[sambosasstache-blog]

How Did We Get Here?

I got to see Jacksepticeye in person, and I want to tell you the memory now, before it fades from my mind. The entire trip to Milwaukee seemed surreal, like it wasn’t happening, like I wasn’t there. But it was interesting to be in such a huge city. When we got there we got a parking spot right next to the theater and there was a sign that said we had to pay for parking, which is what we expected in the first place. (We as in my mother and my friend Stephanie) So we pay for parking and there’s a bar right next to the theater, we think to ourselves: “Hey, it’s Milwaukee, what could go wrong?(sarcasm) We walk in the bar and it’s actually really beautiful and gorgeous, we had some food there and we’re sitting by the window (remember that detail it is important) watching people walk past and I said: “How cool would it be if Jack walked in and sat down near us?” I love saying what if’s… Anyway I noticed the attention of my mother and Stephanie switch to the window all of a sudden. “Is that Jack?” They said as I turned around and sure shit there was the back of his head walking past the window and… gone. We just saw him (I saw the back of his head and I’m sure he saw the back of my head). The second I noticed the back of his head my heart pumped and seemed to stay there for a while, as if it had cramped up (obviously didn’t or I wouldn’t be typing this) Then my friend looked at me wide eyed, saying: ”He looked me in the eye.” I was jealous, I’m not going to lie. The hilarious part was that I had just said something, which was amazing. After we ate (I had a Irish cream cheesecake for desert, it was the bomb) we walked to a mall, where I bought a comb and we saw someone shoplift, all of it was enlightening. Now we walked on the sidewalk to get there and there were crosswalks in the road, and I’ll admit I would get a little freaked when we had to cross them. Living on a farm doesn’t help that little fear. I was overall freaked out that we were even in Milwaukee and the whole place really freaked me out. After the mall it was time to head back and get in line to get in the theater (thank god we got there when we did, the line extended around the block, which I did not expect) So we entered, I got some merch, sat down and waited. Then when Jack walked onstage the entire ballroom erupted in screams (I was also screaming, just about the whole time, and still had a voice the day after ;) Just seeing Jack there, in reality… RIGHT THERE! Was extraordinary. It all felt like a dream that I didn’t want to end. That’s how amazing it was. So now all I can do is hope that Jack comes back to Milwaukee (or somewhere else in Wisconsin, like Oshkosh would be cool) By the way if Jack does read this and for anyone who was at the last show, the Cheesehead ‘insult’ was priceless. Overall it was an extraordinary time and i would definitely dedicate the time and funds to go again. THANK YOU JACK FOR AN EXTRAORDINARY SHOW!

(and thanks for listening to my little story :)

[tinymixtapes]

Pedro the Lion signs to Polyvinyl ahead of massive 2018 tour, which should make all us old emo kids happy — but not TOO happy

Wow. Pedro the Lion, right? That takes me back. Anyone else out there suddenly have the urge to borrow their parents’ Ford Taurus and go kill some time at a brick and mortar “video store” while they wait for “that song to finish downloading” on Napster? Yeesh. But anyway, yeah: I guess songwriter David Bazan basically rebooted the whole Pedro project last year after a solid 11-year hiatus, stating that he “missed the energy of making music with other people on stage” and that he really “needed to be in a band again.” He even went so far as to promise a new album and tour in 2018. Bazan actually didn’t waste much time following through with the whole touring part either, announcing a pretty ambitious run of dates this past December that would take him (and whomever else felt like being in Pedro the Lion again) all around North America throughout the bulk of 2018. But there was not so much as a mumbling, garbled, throaty word about new music. Then, yesterday: the last — and most seriously ballin’ early-aught-style EMO — piece of the puzzle fell into place, as none other than the motherfuckin’ Polyvinyl Recording Co. Twitter-teased the following: Words can’t even begin to describe how excited we are for this one. New music coming soon… pic.twitter.com/QN4uFxd5ux — Polyvinyl Record Co. (@Polyvinyl) January 25, 2018 I know what you’re thinking: “Huh…you mean Pedro the Lion wasn’t ALREADY signed to Polyvinyl this whole time? That seems like it would’ve made so much sense.” Yeah, no, I guess they weren’t! But: they ARE NOW. And there’s a new record coming. At some point. IF Bazan even fit that in between the fuck ton of shows he booked. Whatever, though! Not our problem, right? Just check out Bazan’s statement regarding this Perfect Emo Storm down below, followed by a clip of the band performing a few classics live at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle, WA this past December and a full list of all their 2018 tour dates. And c’mon: try to get excited! — just not too excited… As a music fan I’ve watched Polyvinyl thrive in a brutal marketplace and grow their seminal roster to include even more bands that I’m downright obsessed with. As a cog in the music business I’ve gotten to know and appreciate their inner workings gradually through mutual friends and colleagues over many years of visiting their offices in Champaign, Illinois. So when looking for a record label for Pedro the Lion I realized pretty quickly that Polyvinyl was a fantastic fit. I am so thrilled to be working with them. Pedro the Lion 2018 tour dates: 02.08.18 - St Louis, MO - Old Rock House 02.09.18 - Kansas City, MO - Record Bar 02.10.18 - Tulsa, OK - The Vanguard 02.12.18 - Dallas, TX - Trees 02.13.18 - Austin, TX - Mohawk 02.14.18 - Houston, TX - Rockefellers 02.16.18 - New Orleans, LA - One Eyed Jacks 02.17.18 - Birmingham, AL - Saturn 02.18.18 - Gainesville, FL - High Dive 02.19.18 - Orlando, FL - The Social 02.21.18 - Carrboro, NC - Cat’s Cradle 02.22.18 - Atlanta, GA - Terminal West 02.23.18 - Nashville, TN - Exit/In 05.08.18 - Vancouver, BC - Biltmore Cabaret 05.09.18 - Portland, OR - Revolution Hall 05.12.18 - San Francisco, CA - The Independent 05.13.18 - Oakland, CA - Starline 05.14.18 - Los Angeles, CA - Teragram 05.17.18 - Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up Tavern 05.18.18 - Phoenix, AZ - The Crescent Ballroom 05.20.18 - Denver, CO - Bluebird Theatre 05.21.18 - Fort Collins, CO - Washington’s 05.22.18 - Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge 05.23.18 - Boise, ID - Neurolux 05.24.18 - Missoula, MT - Top Hat 08.06.18 - Indianapolis, IN - The HI-FI 08.07.18 - Ferndale, MI - Loving Touch 08.08.18 - Toronto, ON - Lee’s Palace 08.10.18 - Allston, MA - Brighton Music Hall 08.11.18 - Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer 08.12.18 - Washington, DC - Black Cat 08.14.18 - New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom 08.15.18 - Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg 08.16.18 - Millvale, PA - Mr. Small’s Theatre 08.17.18 - Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop 08.18.18 - Newport, KY - Southgate House - Revival Room 08.20.18 - Davenport, IA - Raccoon Motel 08.21.18 - Omaha, NE - The Waiting Room 08.22.18 - Minneapolis, MN - Fine Line 08.23.18 - Milwaukee, WI - Turner Hall 08.24.18 - Chicago, IL - Thalia Hall http://j.mp/2Ecc0Iz

[fortheloveofpearlet]

Wilting Flowers -  Chp.20

A/N - second to last chapter. Matt/Jake centric but does include the others a little as they head back to the court house.

Chapter 20

/// Matt Lent - St Petersburg, 2004

I stood awkwardly by the side of the pool in my swimming trunks under the sign that read, 'Happy 14th Birthday Matty'. All the other kids were splashing about in the pool already. I don't know why my parents thought I'd like this, sometimes I thought they didn't know me at all. Sometimes I thought I didn't know myself at all, and if that were the case then how did I expect my parents to know me? I've never been a strong swimmer, well that's an understatement. When my parents asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday I'd told them I didn't want to do anything. But they'd not listened, not that they ever did. I stood watching everyone else having fun and splashing around and I felt miserable. This was my birthday, why couldn't I have celebrated how I wanted to? I didn't even like half the kids here, or more they didn't like me. I don't really have a lot of friends, people don't get me. But I suppose when my parents invited them all to a free pool party it didn't much matter to them if they liked me or not. 

 --------------------------

I was about to go back and change back into my clothes when he swam gracefully over to the edge of the pool.

'Hey birthday boy.' He smiled sweetly at me, the way he always did. 'You coming in?' He held onto the edge of the pool. His hair was slicked back and he had little beads of water rolling down the sides of his face.

'I don't think so.' I shook my head, wrapping my arms around my body as a shiver passed up my spine. I wasn't cold though, worryingly I think it had something to do with the smile he was giving me. 

'It's your birthday! You've got to have fun Matty!' 

I sighed and came and sat on the edge of the pool and dangled my legs in. He looked at me inquisitively. 

'What's wrong?' He asked softly and he placed his wet hand on my thigh and I shivered again. 

'Promise you won't tell anyone?' I whispered, trying not to think about how much I enjoyed him touching me. 

'Matty, when have I ever told a secret?' His lip turned up at the corner and he gave my leg a squeeze. 'You can trust me.'

I bit my lip and nodded. I knew I could trust him. I would probably trust him with my whole life.

'I'm not so good at swimming.' I blushed a little and looked away from him. He squeezed my leg again. 

'It's easy, I can show you how?' He was smiling so brightly when I looked back at him it made my heart do a somersault. 

'I'm scared though.' I whispered. He gave my leg one last squeeze before letting go of it and I really didn't like how empty I felt when he did so. 

'Come over to the steps, I'm going to help you.' 

'I don't know.' I bit my lip.

'Do you not trust me Matty?' His smile faded and he looked a little sad. 

'Of course I trust you!' I was quick to say, I hated him being sad. The smile sprung back to his face in an instant.

'Come on then. I promise I won't let anything bad happen to you.' He nodded towards the steps and I nodded slowly. I believed him when he said that, but I was still a little nervous. I stood back up and came around to the steps. I turned around and slowly started backing into the water, breathing heavily. As I reached the last step I felt his arms around me and another shiver passed up my spine. 

'It's ok Matty, I've got you.' He spoke into my neck. My breathing got heavier through my nerves but this was a whole different type of nerves. I let go of the railings and let myself fall back into his strong arms. He turned me around so I was facing him. His slim body was pressed up against mine and he kicked his legs a little to keep us afloat. His face was close to mine and my eyes found their way to his lips. They turned up at the corner in a smile as if he knew. I forced my eyes back to meet his. They were such a mesmerising shade of blue, I remembered the first time we met when we were just kids and thinking, those eyes are special. I had an idea of what all these feelings meant; why I kept getting shivers, why I was fascinated with his lips and eyes. But I didn't let myself think about what it meant. I didn't want to consider that. He helped me to the side of the pool and I held onto it. He let go of me and once again I felt empty when he did so. He leant on the side next to me and smiled at me.

'See, not so bad right?' 

No, not bad at all. The complete opposite of bad in fact. 

'No, it's ok.' It was far more than ok but I couldn't even put it into words if I wanted to. I felt like the way he was looking at me ignited a fire inside me and that terrified me. I'd never had this feeling before and I knew no good could come of it. He lifted his hand from the pool and stroked a strand of my hair off my face. And there was the shiver again. His eyes stared deeply into my own and I swear to god I couldn't remember how to breathe. 

'Are you having fun yet?' He asked me with that smile that could light up a thousand skies. 

'Fun doesn't begin to cover it.' I whispered, my eyes trailing back to his soft lips. Oh shit, a realisation hit me then. I think I might be falling for him. 

  --------------------------

/// Present Day - Thursday, 11.36 am

It felt like a lifetime since they'd last been in this room but really it was less than forty-eight hours ago they'd all been sat here. Jason wasn't sure if he felt better or worse for not having Matt here. It had felt stifling with Matt constantly checking up on him but now he wasn't here Jason felt himself missing it a little. Now Matt was gone he felt more alone than he'd ever felt in his entire life. If the jury found Santino guilty who would he celebrate with? Or worse, if he was declared innocent who would be his shoulder to cry on? He didn't need to be thinking about Matt now. Once he was back in Atlanta in his empty apartment he would have plenty of time to think about it. He needed to get the trial out the way first. He heard someone sit down next to him and he slowly turned to see Karl smiling sadly at him.

'He's gone I guess?' Karl whispered. Jason knew exactly what he meant.

'Yeah. It's over. He left and we're over.' 

'I'm so sorry.' Karl looked genuinely sad for him. Jason half-smiled and shrugged.

'It's ok.'

'Is it?' Karl raised an eyebrow at him. 

'I don't know.' Jason sighed. 'I can't let myself think about it right now, one problem at a time.'

'Yeah tell me about it.' Karl sighed now.

'What happened?' Jason asked and he watched as Karl looked around the room to make sure no one was listening. He shuffled a little closer to Jason and his voice was so quiet when he spoke Jason only just heard him.

'There's this guy.' He bit his lip. 'We met a really long time ago and I guess there was always something about him but I didn't let myself even go there. But recently...I don't know it's dumb.' Karl shook his head and shuffled away again. 

'You like him.' 

'Yeah, I really do.' Karl sighed again.

'Do you want my advice?' Jason asked him softly.

'Not really no.' Karl chuckled a little.

'Well tough because I'm going to give it to you anyway.' Jason smiled. 'I fucked up with Matt, big time. I spent too long thinking I didn't deserve his love rather than just accepting that he wanted to give it to me anyway. If I could do it all again I would do it so differently. It's too late for me and Matt, but it might not be too late for you. If you care about this guy you just have to fucking go for it. Pour your heart and soul into and maybe one day you'll wake and feel slightly less broken because of him. If you think he's worth it, don't go down without a fight.' Jason wished he could have followed his own advice before it was too late. But if he could help someone else then maybe those long horrible nights to come would hold even the tiniest piece of comfort. Karl ran his fingers through his hair.

'Maybe you're right.' He agreed. 'I think he's worth fighting for.' 

Jason gave him a small smile and briefly touched Karl's arm. 

'Then don't make the same mistakes that I did.'

Just then, the door opened and detective McCook walked in the room. His eyes landed straight in Bri's but Bri quickly looked away. He looked over the faces in the room, his heart beating hard in his chest. He cleared his throat and then he spoke.

'The jury have reached their verdict.' He addressed all the men in the room. Eight sets of eyes landed on him. These eight wilting flowers were about to find out what fate their tormentor was going to meet. Eight hearts beat in perfect rhythm. Eight lives were about to change.

  --------------------------

Brian led them all back to the courtroom. One by one the men entered the stiflingly quiet room and took their seats in the stalls. Santino Rice was led out into the stand. There were so many emotions that flooded over those eight men as the man that pulled them into their worst nightmare took his seat. They felt nervous, scared, angry, sad and every emotion in between. The courtroom was eerily quiet. Each one of them stared up at Santino and the memories of the first time they met him came flooding back to all of them. Shane Galligan from Brooklyn, who had run away to start a new life with the man he loved only to have his world collapse. Jamin Ruhren also from Brooklyn who had wanted so desperately to flee his controlling parents and share his life with the one person that meant the world to him. Only now, thanks to what he'd been put through he didn't think he knew how to love anymore. Christopher Williams who fled Nashville to escape the memories of his parent’s deaths only to find more tragedy awaited him. Dustin Winters just wanted to make it big on the New York drag scene until his dreams were crushed. But he tried to stay thankful for finding his husband through it all. Milwaukee held nothing but bad memories for Brian Firkus. And he'd run straight from the arms of one tormentor to another. He'd found love along the way but he still wasn't sure it would ever be enough to counteract what had happened to him. Jerick Hoffer from Seattle, whose substance abuse led to him being turfed on the street. He'd had a complicated relationship with sex before he'd been abducted, he had no idea how he was supposed to live a normal life now. Karl Westerberg had spent his youth being tossed around the Minnesota foster care system and finally found his way out only to find worse things awaiting him in Chicago. And Jason Dardo who'd been a sassy teenager when he'd left his hometown of Atlanta. He'd found and lost love in the most hopeless of situations along his way. But despite everything, he would always be thankful to that man with the sparkling eyes and the septum ring. Without him Jason may not have survived the ordeal. But this wasn't just about them. This was about so much more than those eight men. This was for all the men that had come before them. This was for the ones who hadn't made it out, all the men who had met their ends at the hands of Santino. This was for Phi Phi and Tatiana. This was for Roxxxy, Gia, Jade and Raven. This was for Sharon and Alaska. This was for Adore who should have made it home. This was for all the men who could have come next, all the lives they'd managed to save. This was for the families and friends that had been worried sick when their loved ones vanished. This is for the parents that had to bury their sons and the ones whose sons were never found. This was for the detectives, Brian and Jake who worked their asses into the ground to bring Santino down and the cops and the criminalists that helped. This was for Daniel Donigan who put his life on the line for the sake of those men. This was for justice; for closure. This was for the hopes that one day these men might be able to lead normal lives again. This was for making two monsters by the names of Santino Rice and Michelle Visage pay for the lives they'd ruined. Suddenly the judge cleared his throat, startling them all a little, and then he spoke.

'Madam Foreperson, I believe you've reached a verdict?' 

All eyes glanced over at the jury stand and one juror stood. 

'We have your honour.' She handed a piece of paper to the bailiff who walked it over to the judge. The judge took it and read it before putting it down. He turned his attention to Santino. Through it all, Santino didn't look scared. He didn't look as though his whole world could be about to end. He didn't even look sorry for what he'd done. 

'Santino Rice, you have been on trial on the grounds of abduction, pandering and human trafficking. The jury have deliberated and they have reached a verdict.' He looked away from Santino and back out across the courtroom as though he wanted to deliver this message to the victims personally. 'The jury finds the defendant...' and in that moment, eight lives changed forever. 

  --------------------------

Matt paid the driver and grabbed his bag before exiting the cab. He stood on the sidewalk and looked at his watch. His flight wasn't for hours, maybe that's why he'd decided to come here. He took a few deep breaths before pushing open the door of O'Malley's and heading inside. Jake spotted him immediately and stood from his table.

'I didn't think you'd come.' He sounded nervous.

'I wasn't going to. But there isn't a flight out to Atlanta until later and I didn't want to hang around at the airport longer than I needed to.' He put his bag down and sat down. 

'Well thank you for coming. Can I get you a drink?' Jake was still standing, playing with his hands awkwardly. 

'Is it too early for whiskey?' 

'Not under the circumstances.' Jake shrugged. They would probably both need it for the conversation to come. Jake went to the bar and ordered their drinks while Matt tried to mentally prepare himself for what he might say. He hadn't decided he was coming here until the last minute. He'd been on his way to the airport and suddenly changed his mind. He felt like he and Jake both needed this. Jake soon returned and he looked a picture of nerves. Matt nodded his thanks and sipped his drink. He didn't even know where to begin. Thankfully Jake spoke.

'So uhm...Brian told me you know about what I did.' Jake bit his lip. It was weird seeing him so nervous, Jake was always the confident, composed one. 

'Yeah I know.' Matt nodded. 'Why Jake? Why would you do that to me?'

'Which part?'

'Both.' Matt sipped his drink again. 

'I want to sit here and tell you I did it for your own good, that's what I've told myself all these years. But it was purely selfish. I wanted you in New York with me and writing that letter seemed like the only way to get you here. I mean a part of it was because I wanted you to be able to be the person you really were but only in the hopes that if you came out...if you were honest about your sexuality you might...you uhm...' Jake didn't really want to finish that sentence. Matt knew what he wanted to say though.

'That I might be with you.' Matt filled in the blanks. Jake sipped his drink, feeling his nerves heightening even more so.

'Yeah something like that.'

'And Max?' 

'I never actively tried to break you guys up, I never deliberately tried. But when he came to me and he asked if I thought you'd ever come out I guess I just saw an opportunity. The words came out my mouth before I even realised I was going to say them. I didn't think he'd actually end things with you and when he did and I saw how heartbroken you were, I hated myself for that. I'm so sorry Matt, I've been such a terrible friend to you. I've been so fucking selfish. I can't even believe you came here today. I wouldn't want to be anywhere near me.' He hung his head a little. Self-pity was not Jake's style so Matt knew this wasn't an act. 'I should have told you but the longer I kept it a secret the harder it was to tell you. And the whole thing that went down in college...you believe me when I say I never would have gone through with it if I'd realised how wasted you were right?'

'I know you well enough to know you'd never deliberately hurt me. We're never going to know what happened that night Jake. We were both wasted, I think the truth probably lies somewhere in between both of our accounts of it. In a way it's kind of a relief to know that I didn't lose my virginity to some random guy. At least it was someone I knew, someone I trust.' He shrugged sipping more of his drink. 'I mean it's fucking weird but it's better than never knowing.' 

'Yeah I get it. What about everything else? Have I completely fucked up our friendship?' 

Matt sighed a little and ran his fingers through his hair. Then he slowly shook his head.

'I don't think so. In a weird way I think you probably did me a favour.'

'What?' Jake frowned, he hadn't been expecting Matt to say that.

'Don't get me wrong, I still have the odd day sometimes when I think I'd love to speak to my parents. But mostly I don't care anymore. However they found out, they were always going to find out eventually. The fact that they couldn't accept me for who I am is their problem, not mine. It took me a long time to realise that but, coming out was the best thing I ever did. I think it's probably better they found out when they did rather than further down the line.' Matt had been awake all night thinking about this. He wanted to be angry at Jake, a part of him was. But mostly he couldn't stay mad at Jake, he never could. 

'What about Max?' Jake still looked nervous, maybe a little less than he had been before.

'Again I think you might have done me a favour. I loved him, I loved him a fucking lot. But I wasn't ready to be out back then and that relationship wasn't fair on either of us.' Matt finished his whiskey. 'I'm not going to sit here and I say I forgive you Jake, because I don't. You've done some pretty fucking shitty things and I'm not happy about it. But...' Matt trailed off and sighed again. 'I'm pretty sure one day I will forgive you. And I don't want to wake up one day and realise I have and not be able to tell you that because you're not a part of my life anymore. You're always going to be my best friend Jake. I'm not sure my life would make sense without you in it. So as long as you swear to me you're never going to do anything like that again, I think we'll be ok.' 

'Seriously?' Jake smiled a little, feeling a weight lift from his shoulders.

'Seriously. I can't lose any more people I care about Jake.' 

'I'm so glad.' Jake's smile grew. 'But uhm...what about that other thing Brian told you?' He sounded more nervous than ever now and he blushed a little. Matt didn't think he'd ever seen Jake blush before. 

'He was right?' Matt bit his lip. 'You...you really do...uhm, you...' Matt couldn't get the words out. Jake looked up at the ceiling briefly and then back at Matt.

'I'm in love with you.' Jake whispered. Matt felt his heart race. 

'Wow.' Matt scratched the back of his head. 'I'm not gonna lie that's a little weird for me. I think that's the part I'm having the hardest time wrapping my head around.' He leant on the table and exhaled heavily.

'It's not like I expect you to say it back Matt. Trust me, I know by now you've never looked at me like that.' 

Matt looked up and his eyes met Jake's. He sat back up and half-smiled.

'Have I ever told you about the first time I realised I was attracted to another man?' 

'Uhm I don't think so?' Jake frowned, wondering where Matt was going with this.

It seemed like a strange change of subject.

'It was my fourteenth birthday. My parents organised a pool party even though I couldn't swim. All the other kids didn't pay any attention to the fact I was stood uncomfortably on the side of the pool while they all had fun. But there was one boy who noticed. He talked me into getting into the pool, he helped me in, put his arms around me and I have never felt safer in my whole life. He stroked my hair off my face and whispered, 'are you having fun yet?' And I said-'

'Fun doesn't begin to cover it.' Jake cut him off.

'Yeah.' Matt smiled a little. 'And that's when I realised.' 

'That boy,' Jake bit his lip. 'That was me.' 

'Yeah.' 

'You never told me.' 

'You never told me you had feelings for me either. I tried running from it for years, I didn't want to be gay and you were my best friend. But those feelings were there for a really long time.' Matt confessed. Jake looked a little sad.

'So if we'd just been honest with each other, we could have been together.' Jake shook his head. This was fucked up.

'I guess so. In a weird way I think you and I are probably perfect for each other. But so much has happened Jake, so much has changed. I think we missed our chance.' 

Jake nodded sadly.

'Yeah I know. It hurts like hell but you're right. Fate just wasn't on our side.' He forced a smile and so did Matt. 

'I mean I guess Jason and I are over now. Maybe once I'm over him and I'm ready to date again, maybe I'll let you take me out.' Matt shrugged. But to his surprise Jake shook his head.

'That's not a good idea.' Jake couldn't believe he was saying that. He'd waited years for his chance with Matt. He'd dreamt about it a million times and there wasn't a single scenario in which he turned Matt down. 'Tell me honestly Matt, do you really think you're ever going to get over Jason?'

'Maybe not right now but I didn't think I'd ever get over Max at the time.' Matt chewed his lip. 

'It's different this time.' Jake told him. 'I always thought you loved Max more than anything else in the world. But the way you look at Jason...that's so much more than that. You're only saying that to me because you're scared. You think you want us to go out now but you don't. Jason is always going to be it for you.' 

'What do you mean?' 

'I truly believe everyone was put on this earth with a soulmate. For a really long time I hoped you were mine, but you aren't. You're Jason's and he's yours.'

'You're wrong.' Matt shook his head.

'Do me a favour, close your eyes.' 

'Why?' Matt gave him a sceptical look.

'Just do it.' Jake chuckled a little. Matt rolled his eyes but then did as he was told and closed them. 'Right now think ahead. Imagine you're seventy or eighty or something.'

'Gross.' Matt grumbled.

'Just do it!' Jake hit him on the arm.

'Fine. So I'm old and gross. Now what?' Matt folded his arms.

'So imagine you've got a kid. Let's say it's a boy.'

'What's his name?'

'Does it matter?' Jake groaned, Matt was missing the point.

'If you want to make this believable yes.' 

'Fine, what would call your son?' Jake rolled his eyes. He saw Matt's face scrunch up as he thought about this. 

'Freddie.' A small smile played in his lips and Jake couldn't help but smile too.

'Ok so Freddie is grown up, he's married and he's got kids of his own. He and his family come to visit, maybe it's Christmas or something. You're sat by the fireplace, your son and his partner on your right, the grandkids playing on the floor. You look over to your left, take hold of your partners hand and smile at him. Who is he?' 

Matt's eyes opened suddenly and they landed on Jake's. Jake knew exactly who he'd seen. 

'That doesn't prove anything.' Matt unfolded his arms and shook his head.

'It was Jason wasn't it?' Jake scrutinised Matt's face for a sign and he saw something flicker in his eyes. 

'Still doesn't prove anything.' Matt scoffed like he thought the whole idea was ridiculous.

'Matt, Jason is the guy you can picture yourself with in fifty years. He's the one you can imagine marrying, having kids with and growing old with. Why are you fighting this?' 

'Why do you care anyway? You don't even like Jason.' Matt really wished he had another drink for this conversation. 

'It's not that I don't like him. I don't particularly like when you date anyone. But that's my issue. And I've seen how happy Jason makes you. I know things might not have been good for a while but if you love him, I think you should fight for him. You're only going to live to regret it.'

'I don't want to talk about this.' Matt shook his head. 'Jason and I are over, that's just the way things are. And I have a flight to catch.' He pushed his chair back and slung his bag over his shoulder.

'Are we going to be ok?' Jake stood up too and looked nervous again. 

'We're gonna be just fine.' He pulled Jake into a hug. 'I'm going back to get some stuff and then I'm coming back to New York, permanently. We'll grab a beer or something yeah? As long as you never mention Jason again.' Matt pulled back and half-smiled at his friend. 

'I think you're being pig headed.' Jake told him.

'Yeah well no one asked you.' Matt nudged him in the arm. 'I'm going to be fine I swear. There's someone else out there for me. It's just not Jason.' His smiled faded and he bit his lip. 

'I'm here for you. I'll always be here for you.' 

'Thanks man.' Matt nodded.

'Can I drive you to the airport?' 

'Why not.' Matt smiled a little and led the way out of the bar. 

[golfwi52]

Round 28 – Gotta Earn It

Deertrak Golf Club, Oconomowoc, WI 53066 Par 72, White Tees, 6,082 yards, 69.2 / 116, 18 holes riding, $50 Sunday, July 9th, 2017, 9:52am, 78 degrees, 10 mph winds, sunny

Deertrak was another one of the west of Milwaukee courses I had heard my work buds mention over the years as a “must play” course.  I was pleasantly surprised to see how beautifully manicured this course was with very smooth greens, 30+ gorgeous flower beds, eight uniquely charming water fountains, and two majestic waterfalls.   My departed hacker dad would have fallen in love with this course, primarily because of the flower beds, some of them encased in actual bed frames.    So the big question was “could I tame this beauty?”.  Actually, I had sprained my knee playing a soccer doubleheader the Wednesday before so I was wearing my favorite knee brace and taking a riding cart.  So the question was more like “could I just finish and not embarrass myself in front of this beauty?”.   Old man golf.

Wes and Tom

Like in a few of my previous rounds, I paired up with another father-son twosome, this time Tom and Wes.   I love the father-son mix.  The dad is typically a decent bogey golfer around my age and the son is usually a big hitter with flashes of brilliance.    These two followed that model to the tee, so to speak.  I was a little worried when I called in the reservation this morning that they’d make me play as a single.  This is the first time I can remember where the clubhouse person would not pair me up with another group because the group may not feel comfortable playing with a stranger.   Too bizarre.  Fortunately Tom and Wes were just ahead of my solo tee time and they had no problem with me joining them.   They were such typical friendly Wisconsinites.  Tom chatted up about the ninety year old course owner just passing away a few years ago and the course dropping a notch.  Wow, I can’t imagine what the course was like when the owner was alive.  The course was gorgeous.

One of many flower beds.  Dad would have loved this.

The weather was decent with calm winds and my playing partners were knowledgeable about the course so I felt I was in good shape to finally break 80.  I had hit the range the day before to test out my sprained knee and work on my short game.  I felt great at he range for about an hour and then everything went south.  Actually everything went to the right.  I started shanking everything and I couldn’t get out of it.  This has happened to me on a number of occasions in my golfing life and it absolutely drives me crazy.  I tried a number of things at the range and I think it may have to do with my left wrist suffering from mild carpal tunnel.  Just like when my wrist gets sore soon after gripping a screwdriver, my wrist may be tiring after a heavy round of hitting range balls.   I start loosening my grip on the club which lets my club head open up and the shank occurs.  At least that ‘s my latest theory.  Anyways, the biggest challenge I had with today’s round was not letting the shankapotomus memory/fear get into my head.  Much easier said than done.

The front nine started out with a nice birdie on the par 5 second, but I only managed 2 more pars for the front and shot a boring 43.   While the greens were in great shape, most had decent banks and my recent switch back to a cross-handed putting grip was not handling the challenge well.   Once again I missed a few embarrassing 2 footers.   But I’m convinced the cross-handed grip is my best option for hitting straight short putts.  I just need to get my head straight with the reads and distance.  My drives were decent though and the course was ripe for the taking if my approach shots were straighter and my putting game was decent.   The usual number of “ifs”.

Beautiful fountains around 14th green

I thoroughly enjoyed Tom and Wes’s relaxed company.   Wes is a graphic designer and I was able to get some good advice from him on a Brewer’s like t-shirt logo I was designing for our company Geek Games event.  The 63 year old Tom was in construction so I had less in common with him from a work perspective.   But it was fun to chat with Tom about the course and the recently deceased founder.    And while they both struggled with their games a bit, they didn’t care a whole lot - which kept the round very enjoyable and entertaining.  And I didn’t shank a shot on the front so there was hope that I could make it through the whole round.  But the fear was lurking in my head.

Like usual I started losing my driver accuracy on the back nine.  I had some decent success with hitting my 5-iron off the tee and I should have done that a few more times instead of hitting a driver.  Especially with playing from the white tees and on par 4s under 350 yards.    I’m also getting better about not trying to hit easy 90% driver shots because those partial swings always end up bad.  So just grip it and rip it at 100%, keep my hands back, and do not get under it too much to end up hitting an elephant’s ass (high and shitty).   You would think just 3 things to remember on the tee wouldn’t be hard but with my amateur grade A.D.D. I usually forget to remember one of those things and my drive goes whacked.    With my driver struggling, I was scrambling on the first 5 holes of the back just to save bogey.  I ended up paring 3 of the final 4 holes to card a 44 for the back.  My putting did finally come around and I avoided a shank all day long so there was some success.

Par 3 17th - $100 Anyone?

Both Tom and Wes’s games went a bit south on the back nine.  Tom was really struggling off the tee and I was tempted to offer him my $100 challenge of just hitting the green on the par 3 17th.  But I figured that was kind of a slam based on how he was struggling so I backed off.  He did end up short of the green so I would have saved my $100, but my offer probably would have pissed him off more by hitting a poor shot AND not getting an easy $100.  So I ended up offering the $100 to his son Wes on the 17th green if he could make his 40 foot putt.   He did miss the putt but at least he didn’t feel bad about missing something that had less than a 5% chance of going in.   I have to keep the challenge hard enough so that folks aren’t mad they missed an “easy” shot at the $100.  Gotta earn it.  On the 18th green, Wes had anther 40 foot putt, but this time on a two tiered green and he was putting from the top tier down a “ramp” to the hole on the lower tier.  So less than a 1% chance I would say.  It was such a challenging putt that I offered up the $100 again for the first time this year in the same round.  Wes made a gallant run at the putt but came up a few feet short.

Final Score:  87 (43, 44)  1 birdie, 5 pars, 2 lost balls.  Playing time 3 hours, 45 minutes.  I learned in the parking lot afterwards that Wes was getting married in a few weeks and he was attending a wedding shower later this day.  Oh man, I was so tempted to simply give him the $100 prize in the parking lot as a wedding gift, but my grown kid’s voices in my head said “NO!”.  My kids have also warned me against doing Pay It Forwards in the past because it’s not the right moment or I’m just showing off or something else.  Sometimes I listen to them and sometimes I don’t.  This time they were right.  You have to earn the prestigious golfWI52 $100 prize.  Wes, make the damn 40 foot putt or stay married for 30+years like I did.  I’ll meet you back at Deertrak when I’m 90 to prize you up on the latter.  My new goal then will be to shoot my age.  Or just to be able to breathe, walk, remember, …

[grufaine]

So um long journal-y life stuff

OKAY SO LIKE IT’S BEEN A WEEK??? And a half?????? Something like that? And okay um in spite of finals and my job taking up most of my time, a lot of like little life things have been happening, and I’m not sure what it’s all leading up to, if anything at all. But like here’s stuff

On the Friday before last I went to an undergraduate poetry/fiction reading where people from UWM and Marquette was reading. It was really nice because the four people reading from UWM were all people I was in a workshop with, and they’re all great writers, and it was really nice! I went with K-Zee, too, who I continue to talk to more here and there. And like afterward she wound up like, inviting me to hang out with her at her apartment, and I was like “????” in my brain but also like “^_^ ^_^” and like I wound up hanging out at her apartment ‘til like 2 AM mostly just talking. I met her roommate and her very, very large rabbit named “Vlad.” I also found out her girlfriend is someone I once had a 200-level fiction workshop with, and we talked about stuff about that class. Toward the end of the night we wound up talking about music and music backgrounds and she mentioned that she had finale notepad on her laptop but couldn’t figure out how to make it work, so I like showed her quickly, and we composed like four very silly measures of music, and then it was like “dang it’s 2 AM I should prob split” and so we said bye and uh yeah it was really really nice!! 

Along with this, like, my coworker who I will call Special K had been wanting to set me up with one of her friends, and I was like well okay, and like her friend told her to tell me to add her on snapchat. Snapchat is a social media I don’t really GET and am not very fluent in but I went for it and now I’ve been talking to this woman on-and-off over the course of the last week-and-half or so... It’s been all chat and no snaps which is fine with me b/c I’m not attractive lol. She seems cool but has weird conversation habits that stress me out sometimes, like sometimes she will not engage anything you say and just like, say some words out of nowhere, and it’s like oh okay, hitting the breaks and switching conversational gears... And like with me being a very word-y person and also a person who overthinks ~everything~ it sometimes just makes me, like, oh no, am I talking too much am I annoying? But she is nice! And it’s going well I think!  And like it’s been getting a bit deep and open lately and idk where it’s going but in any case it’s nice and I’m rolling with it.

Ms. Domino had been becoming more distant toward me a while ago after her ex-and-also-co-worker essentially made it explicit that they would never get back together (idk why she had her mind set on being with him again but she did and was convinced it was bound to happen?), and like I think she is a person who never wants to look vulnerable to anyone, and like yeah. I tried to check on how she was holding up with everything and it basically got shrugged off. Since then she kind of shifts into being friendly for moments and then like, starts ignoring/seemingly avoiding, and I’m not really too upset it just felt weird to have someone constantly call me ‘bestfriend’ and call me randomly at 1 AM just to talk/vent and then suddenly, like, completely become just kinda low-key acquaintance-y. It just kind of threw me off and made me wonder like... How legit the friendship ever was lol? But also I understand she’s just like going through stuff and like it is what it is. She wound up quitting recently and getting a different job, b/c she didn’t want to be around her ex, which is understandable. I’m just like hope she’s doing better and stuff. 

Lately in general, too, work has felt a bit like DEGRASSI: CINEMA EMPLOYEE EDITION. There are like two other on-and-off relationship dramas that I am thankfully not as close to the action with... The manager in charge in the Usher and Server departments got fired b/c of something related to an affair with one of the cocktail waitresses. Idk all the details of that and don’t think I want to, but yeah, just like, a lot of tension and stuff at my place of work that I am trying to avoid being involved in, but everyone is kinda tight-knit and so it is easy to just... Be in the crossfire, especially when one involves getting someone else in charge of your schedule etc. I think things might actually be a little better with someone else in charge of the ushers tho, hopefully, we’ll see? 

Apart from stuff with nice new friend-people and not-nice work-drama it’s mostly just been homework! And like stuff with my book! I’m continuing to gradually sell copies that I have in person, but I’ve hit a bit of a stalemate point now, and I think I have about 17 copies that I’m still trying to sell in person (I had 35 printed). After I shared that I’d made the book with my capstone poetry workshop on the last day (we did like a little last-day class-reading and I read two from my book), my instructor said she could get me in contact with a couple groups in Milwaukee that host readings, and hopefully I could get a reading in the summer. It would be huge if I could get, like, a half-an-hour to read in front of people and hopefully sell the rest of what I have. I also should probably look into open mic stuff to do over the summer as well. It’s been so busy with school recently that it’s been hard to do any kind of promotion and like... I hate sounding like a commercial or feeling like I’m being dishonest about the quality of the thing... Right now I’m just really grateful that I’ve been able to do as much with it as I have. I really think the next thing I do will be a lot better/cooler, though the original idea I had for a next project I think might need to adjust because like... My original idea for what I want to do next feels like too much of a risk lol. I feel like I might need to split it into two or three different things. But anyway

I feel like that is mostly everything significant but yeah... A lot of STUFF. If you read all that you are a literal angel and I hope you are having or are about to have a lot of wonderful things in your life. <3 

[junker-town]

Why the Celtics are a legitimate title contender

Photo by Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty Images

The Celtics should be mentioned with the Lakers, Clippers, and Bucks as a legitimate threat to win the NBA championship.

On the surface, the 2020 NBA title chase is three teams deep.

The two Los Angeles teams are there as expected, and the Milwaukee Bucks’ obscene regular season means they cannot be ignored in any serious discussion trying to project the champion.

The next tier, by this theory, includes half a dozen or so other interesting teams that are considered to be fatally flawed, one big piece short, or both. The latest Vegas futures bear this out: The top three teams are tri-favorites in the betting, and there’s a group of seven well behind them, but well ahead of 12th-place Dallas.

It’s hard to go against Vegas, but I’m going to do it anyway. There’s a fourth team that belongs in that top tier: the Boston Celtics.

Probably not the team you expected, right? The Celtics had the ninth-best title odds as of the all-star break, behind five teams (Clippers, Houston, Denver, Philadelphia, and Utah) with worse records. FiveThirtyEight likes the Celtics a bit better, but still gives them only a 16 percent shot to win the East and a five percent shot to win the title, well behind the 76ers and Rockets. (The site’s Elo Rating likes Boston’s chances even more, though not as much as Toronto’s). I suspect the Celtics are still being downplayed because of their decision to rely on addition by subtraction when Kyrie Irving and Al Horford left in free agency.

But that decision has paid off. The Celtics are much more dangerous than last year and should be taken more seriously alongside the other clear championship contenders. Here’s the six-step case for Boston:

1. The fundamentals check out

Here are some key numbers:

Boston’s net rating (i.e., the difference between their offensive and defensive ratings) is +6.8. That’s third in the league behind Milwaukee (miles ahead) and the Lakers (barely ahead). It’s better than Toronto, more than a full point better than the Clippers, twice as large as Houston and Miami, and nearly three times as big as Philadelphia.

They rank in the top-five in both offensive and defensive rating (points scores/allowed per 100 possessions): Again, only Milwaukee and the Lakers can say that.

They are a top-12 team in seven of the eight key factors for winning (Four Factors on offense and defense): No other team can say that.

They are 13-9 against the other 13 teams that have .500 or better records: Their point differential in those games: +4.5. Only the Bucks, at 12-7, have a better winning percentage against over-.500 teams, but their point differential in said games is actually worse (+4.4).

All that despite a litany of nagging injuries that have prevented the Celtics from seeing their best team on the court consistently. The quintet of Jayson Tatum, Kemba Walker, Gordon Hayward, Jaylen Brown, and Marcus Smart — clearly the team’s five best players irrespective of position — has only been active together for 15 of a possible 54 games this year. (I’m not counting the November game in San Antonio when Hayward went down after 14 minutes due to injury).

2. Jayson Tatum is making the leap

Michael Pina covered this topic well, as did The Ringer’s Rob Mahoney. I don’t have much more to add. I’ve been a longtime Tatum skeptic, but I’ve seen enough material improvement with his weaknesses to change my tune.

3. They have so many ways to score. Thank Kemba Walker

Tatum’s ongoing rise into a capable top scoring option when all else fails is crucial because the Celtics have the rest of the offense down to a T. Between Tatum everywhere, Walker in pick-and-roll, Hayward off the catch, Brown in transition, and Brad Stevens’ excellent set play diagramming, the Celtics have so many different ways to create offense. Unlike last year, they’ve integrated each of those threats into their overall attack without suffering from the pecking order issues that made their mix much less than the sum of its parts last year.

One major reason: the switch from Kyrie Irving to Kemba Walker. (Go ahead and gloat, Celtics fans. You were right about this).

When the Celtics acquired Walker, I was worried they were simply swapping out one ball-dominant, pick-and-roll heavy point guard for an inferior (albeit nicer) version. Instead, Walker has demonstrated an ability and willingness to play off the ball that he never got a chance to show in Charlotte. Pick-and-roll is still his bread and butter, but he’s also getting shots in other ways. This transition pindown is a Celtics staple.

Boston will also use Walker as a screener before popping him out for open shots.

But even the many pick-and-rolls Walker does run are of a different character than the ones he used in Charlotte. He’s giving the ball up and getting it back on the move, which keeps the Celtics’ other key playmakers involved and maintains the offensive flow needed to balance touches elsewhere.

Irving is a better shooter, scorer, and finisher. Full stop: he’s a better player. But Walker is, in a way, more exhausting to defend. His movement forces all five defenders to make more coverage decisions. Because of that, Tatum, Hayward, and Brown can attack from more dynamic and advantageous positions, which helps Boston’s offense as a whole. By working more within the system instead of as a solo artist, Walker provides more structure for other Celtics attackers that need a bit of a head start to activate their gifts.

More fundamentally, Walker simply does less than Irving. Less dribbling, less yo-yoing with the ball, less time to make his move, less standing, and, of course, less shooting. That’s led to more opportunities for Brown, Hayward, and Tatum — and, in turn, more threats for the defense to address.

That improved balance plays out in two ways. For one, it allows Stevens to more easily dial up set plays with multiple actions that flow seamlessly into each other. He can use any combination of his four top offensive players as decoys, primary options, screeners, floor-spacers ... you name it. When the execution is sound, you get beautiful stuff like this, where the Raptors aren’t sure to focus more on a potential Walker dribble-handoff or the Hayward ball screen that leads to an open three.

It also makes Boston increasingly difficult to defend in crunch time when all four key offensive players are on the court. There’s nowhere for a bad defensive player to hide, and Boston will ruthlessly punish those players using a diverse array of two-man screening actions. The Celtics may not have a gifted scorer like Irving to get tough playoff buckets against the best individual defenders, but pitting any combination of their four top options against the opponents’ worst defender often yields a better result anyway.

Recent crunch time successes against the Thunder and Clippers illustrate the cat-and-mouse game the Celtics are equipped to win in tight playoff games. Against the Thunder, the Celtics targeted Danilo Gallinari down the stretch, using three different players on three straight possessions to screen for Walker to get the ideal matchup. Boston scored all three times.

The double-overtime victory over the Clippers was certainly Tatum’s coming-out party, but Boston made his life easier by constantly attacking Lou Williams and Landry Shamet.

Those weak defenders can avoid the switch with a hard hedge and recovery back to their original men. In the playoffs, they’ll work harder to do that and avoid mismatches. But unlike teams built around one great scorer, Boston has multiple players they’ve empowered to make plays off a closeout. That allows the Celtics to target a weak defender’s one-on-one and help defense at the same time.

Walker’s size is an issue against traps, which will be much harder in a playoff setting. However, Tatum’s emergence mitigates the need to rely on Walker to do everything, and Walker’s temperament allows him to more easily slide into second option status.

Doing so should also give him more energy to compete defensively, where he hangs in there decently despite his lack of size. Teams will target Walker in the playoffs the same way the Celtics target opponents’ worst defenders. But Walker is quick, tough, and aggressive, making him closer to an average defender like Stephen Curry than a total sieve like Trae Young or, crucially, Irving.

Ultimately, swapping out Irving for Walker has made Boston’s offense more dynamic as a whole. The subtle differences between the two ensure that the Celtics’ multi-playmaker structure adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

4. They win the chaos sequences

There’s a common perception that teams which thrive in transition struggle in the playoffs because tempo generally slows down. At the same time, the more controlled pace of the postseason means unscripted moments like fast breaks, hustle plays, early offense attacks, and other moments within the run of play have even more comparative value. The last two NBA champions (Warriors and Raptors) made a living out of maximizing these “chaos” opportunities.

The Celtics aren’t the most dangerous team “chaos” team in the league — I’d give that honor to Toronto, with Milwaukee close behind — but they’re pretty close. They have two players to thank for that: Marcus Smart and Jaylen Brown.

Smart’s capacity to make “winning plays” is obvious. Anyone who’s watched even a few seconds of Celtics basketball since 2014 understands his knack for coming up with critical loose balls, offensive rebounds, and defensive stops against bigger players. When defensive sequences break down, his instincts take over and constantly throw off the other team. He happily switches onto speedy guards, sleek wings, or rugged big men, especially in high-leverage situations. His closeout techniques are occasionally unconventional and often hilarious, yet effective. There’s a reason opposing players have shot below their average on three-pointers Smart defends for four years running, according to NBA.com’s tracking data.

Meanwhile, Brown has become one of the league’s most effective transition playmakers. He’s third in the league in fast break points per 100 possessions, trailing only Giannis Antetokounmpo and (barely) LeBron James. The Celtics score an average of 1.2 points per possession off missed shots with Brown on the court and 1.4 points per possession off steals, both significantly higher marks than they score in said situations with Brown on the bench.

Brown’s athleticism and burgeoning craft in the open floor allows Boston to strike quickly. He’s strong enough to power through even the stingiest transition defensive walls to score.

Yet he’s also smart enough to manipulate odd-man breaks or advantageous matchups to get high-percentage early-offense looks for himself or his teammates. His handle has improved, and he’s become more comfortable decelerating and then pivoting in the lane for more difficult two-footed finishes.

Together, Smart and Brown help ensure the Celtics compound opponent mistakes and missed opportunities with buckets of their own. One creates chaos, and the other capitalizes on it.

5. They have enough up front

Put some respect on Daniel Theis’ and Enes Kanter’s names! They might not be the duo most teams would go to war with, but they are ideal complements for Boston’s style of play

Both are terrific screen-setters on or off the ball, an essential quality in Boston’s perimeter-heavy attack. Theis in particular is a master of the “double screen” tactic on pick-and-rolls — often known as “the Gortat” after the former Wizards center who pioneered the move. Watch as Theis sets a normal ball screen on Wes Matthews, then rolls down the lane to then seal off Brook Lopez from helping on Tatum’s drive.

Theis is also an underrated pick-and-roll defender and defensive rebounder. You rarely see him caught out of position, which also helps the Celtics end possessions effectively with defensive rebounds. He also does enough to keep the defense honest from the perimeter, as well as in 4-on-3 situations after his man traps ball-handlers. There’s a reason the Celtics’ starting lineup of Brown, Walker, Hayward, Tatum, and Theis outscore opponents by more than 14 points per 100 possessions.

Kanter, meanwhile, comes off the bench to provide a much-needed different dimension. His pick-and-roll defensive struggles are well known, but he makes up for it with relentless offensive rebounding, a key mode of attack the Celtics lacked last season. Boston snags a whopping 33 percent of their their own misses with Kanter on the floor, a mark that’d lead the league by more than three points if maintained over 48 minutes. His glass work is even more devastating because the Celtics perimeter players already put defenses in rotation all the time with their combined playmaking.

Kanter’s offensive rebounding ability also makes him a deadly weapon if opponents try to confuse the Celtics with a zone defense. He’s adept at slipping into the right soft spots in the paint for layups, and good luck putting a body on him when someone else shoots.

There are certainly problematic matchups for these two. (Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers have entered the chat.) But they’ve held their own in the regular season, and there’s little reason to believe they can’t do so again in most playoff scenarios.

6. Their rotation will shorten in the playoffs

Depth is Boston’s biggest weaknesses, especially once you get past the four lead playmakers, Smart, and the two centers. Brad Wanamaker has been a reliable backup point guard and rookie Grant Williams offers an intriguing defensive skill set, but teams will help off both to shrink the floor in the postseason. We already know Semi Ojeleye can’t shoot, though he can at least bug Antetokounmpo for a few minutes. Robert Williams is a total unknown, as is Vincent Poirier. Romeo Langford and Javonte Green have been intriguing in limited minutes, but I need to see more. There’s also Tacko Fall, and ... nope, it’s not happening.

But rotations shorten in the playoffs, especially for teams like Boston that can use their front-line players to prop up bench units. It’d be nice if the Celtics had one more reliable rotation player, but they should be able to get by even if just one of the above players can pop in any given game. After all, one positive to all the injuries to the starters is that they’ve given these young bench players more experience in the regular season.

So yes, depth is certainly an issue, especially compared to Milwaukee’s bench mob. But the Celtics should be able to compensate in the playoffs if they dial up their starters’ minutes.

Ultimately, the biggest case against Boston is simple: they don’t have LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Anthony Davis, or Kawhi Leonard. Tatum is emerging as a superstar, but he’s not on that level and may never be. Perhaps that’s all you need to hear to downplay Boston’s chances.

But outside of that, Boston has all the bona fides of a true title contender. They win consistently by a lot, they regularly beat good teams, and they are balanced on both sides of the ball.

In a transitional year like this that lacks a dynastic team like the Heatles or Light Years Warriors, the Celtics have as much as shot as any of the three more obvious favorites. Dismiss them at your own peril.