#anyway this is why a lot of people roll their eyes at modern activists

[lacewise]

Look… if you’re going to be dedicated to activism that comes with dedicating yourself to educating yourself and your community… which Malcolm X pretty infamously found out (and fulfilling that part of the job may have been the cause of his assassination)

If you can’t take that seriously, people aren’t going to take your activism seriously. And maybe activism isn’t for you! And that’s okay!

[sciralta]

Rising Tides: (Probably) A Surface Level Understanding

I was gonna start this off by saying considering it’s only the first few chapters, I’m going to give Pixelberry the benefit of doubt when it comes to speculation on what this book’s going to be like. Having said that, knowing that apparently one of the MTFL writers was a part of this and the fact that this is Pixelberry, I am absolutely not going to give them that benefit.

I have the sneaking suspicion that Rising Tides is going to do that thing that companies love where you continually act like it’s the average joe’s fault for climate change because he drives to work, instead of addressing the global pressure made by the fossil fuels industry to have total reliance on them. Or like how a lot of politicians like Australia’s PM, Scott Morrison, pretty much refuses to invest in renewable energy because he’s basically bought and paid for by fossil fuels and acknowledging that his party’s donors are killing our planet might make their dying businesses sad :(. Remember, it’s those least responsible for climate change that are the most affected by it.

Pictured above; Australia’s coal-fondler-in-chief

But that’s just me ranting about my dipshit Prime Minister; let’s talk about writing!

So Rising Tides was part of a game jam and was written in like, a month, and baby does it show! This is the most clunky, forced writing I have ever seen in a Choices story—and fucken hell is that an achievement. Generally in other stories from PB if the story is bad the actual writing is more or less ‘fine’. Such is not the case with RT. This story reads less like a smooth ski down a snowy mountain and more like you fell off the top of that mountain and crashed against every boulder on the whole way down. We are immediately faced with this:

...which feels less like an organic thing a character would say and more like the writers spent 10 minutes googling vehicle emission data and were damn sure they were gonna make you know that they did. If you follow the advice of this post, you will actually die of liver failure. Happy drinking.

Our inciting incident is an ecological disaster—a mass die-off of marine life in the waters surrounding the town. Mass fish die-offs are usually caused by oxygen depletion in the water. The hypoxic event can be caused by things like drought, algal blooms, high temperatures and thermal pollution. We haven’t heard anything about drought or high temperatures, and it doesn’t appear to be an algal bloom; so everyone should immediately start looking at any factories in the area. Oh, what do you know! We’ve got a national corporation that started right here in the town by the name of Monteverde! Their CEO or whatever talks at the meeting a lot about how resilient the town is, and how proud his company would be to help the people through this disaster. Forget the die-off, Monteverde is officially the fishiest thing in this town!

Just before the town meeting, we are introduced to the caricature of villainy that is Principal Strickler—a name which demonstrates about as much nuance as you can expect from Pixelberry at this point, and probably the rest of this book. You see, he hates us because.... reasons? idk Pixelberry just needed an antagonistic force in the story just go with it. It honestly feels like a lot of the dialogue so far in this book was put in as a placeholder and the writers said “we’ll clean it up once we start editing, just move on!” and they just... never did.

We also meet Mel, a character who seems to be taking on the role of that one delicious daddy from Big Sky Country of being way too into conspiracy theories. Don’t touch her zucchinis. We’ve seen her sprite many a time before this series, but I still maintain that her sprite needs more chunky jewellery like in that one Adam Ellis comic.

In other news:

Both of our parents are alive and we’re not adopted, which is a shock because it is as dangerous to be a birth parent to a Choices MC as it is to be a birth parent to a D&D player character.

Hot Person #1 comes to our rescue from Strickler, because we really need to prove just how great of a person they are.

Town hall happens and no one will listen to our sister.

We have a best friend! Unfortunately they work for Monteverde; so unless they’re cool with exposing company crimes, they’re probably not gonna be our friend for much longer.

The clean up is pretty shoddily organised, and it’s clear that Monteverde is really in it for publicity (wow never saw that coming)

We almost drown but then we’re saved by Hot Person #2; and that’s pretty much anything of note.

To PB’s credit, the book does appear to look at the way young activists are totally disregarded by adults, but the writing is just so yikes that you can’t help but roll your eyes. They seem to maybe be featuring the climate grief that is rapidly growing amongst younger people, but we’ll have to wait and see if Pixelberry will actually explicitly show this.

Anyway, my guess is we’ll probably later find out that the ecological disaster in RT was caused directly by Monteverde—to the shock of absolutely no one—and that’s why they’re doing the whole publicity run with the fish clean up. If you spent a shit ton of diamonds there’ll probably be an opportunity to make the company see justice, but if you didn’t? Tough luck sweatie, because even in a scenario that could literally be about corporate greed PB would never drop their pay-to-win attitude.

So there’s my thoughts, thots. Look, I wasn’t expecting this to be a modern classic, but come on bro, was there even a first draft when you wrote the book? Very interested to see if the writers of Rising Tides will show a deeper understanding of the cause and effects behind climate change and the ecological impacts of human activity, or if it’s all surface-level.

(I wouldn’t hold my breath.)

[hutchhitched]

The Vintage Joshifer Series: End of Love—Chapter 19

End of Love by hutchhitched

A kazillion years ago, I started posting this story. I never intended for it to drag on this long in between updates, but life happens and so does writer’s block. I know there’s little readership in the Joshifer fandom anymore, but I needed to finish it. If you’re still around to read it, thank you. If you want to dive in, I’d appreciate it. You definitely don’t have to be a Joshifer fan to read it since Josh and Jen’s characters are historical actors and not versions of their modern selves.

Historical events in this chapter include the following:

Richard Nixon won the presidential election of 1968. He triumphed over Vice President Humphrey and third party candidate George Wallace, who famously defended segregation at the University of Alabama earlier in the decade. Nixon won by appealing to the Silent Majority, those who believed the radicalism of the 1960s had gone too far. During his presidency he worked to build a national Republican Party after it all but disappeared during the Great Depression during the 1930s. Nixon called this the Southern Strategy (downplaying civil rights by rejecting the GOP’s original stance of the anti-slavery party in 1860, when Lincoln won the election).

After winning the election, Nixon did stop further troop deployments to Vietnam and reduced the numbers already there. Instead, he instituted a bombing campaign of the Vietnam and neighboring Laos and Cambodia. This was called Vietnamization.

 Chicago, Illinois, November 1968

 “Hutch, what’s good?”

 “Andre, my man. It’s been too long.” Josh clapped his friend on the back and welcomed him into headquarters. Volunteers buzzed around them, and Josh reminded himself that spending time with a good friend in from out of town for a day was just as important as working to support the Democratic candidate for president—even though Josh was almost positive his party was going to lose the election.

 Nothing had been the same since Bobby died. The Kennedy magic was gone. Instead of the former Attorney General being the nominee, the current VP who was tainted by LBJ’s Americanization strategy in Vietnam would likely lose to Nixon. If that happened, and it almost certainly would, he knew the positive changes in civil rights and economic equality would disappear with when the GOP took power. It was beyond comprehension, but election day loomed in two days. Two days until the world fell apart.

 “Let’s grab lunch,” Andre suggested. When Josh hesitated, he offered, “My treat.”

 Reluctantly, Josh agreed, and they headed down the street to a local diner he and his friends had frequented during the campaign season. He settled into the booth and stared across the table at his friend. It had been too long. Since that night with the two girls. Before he admitted how much he cared about Jennifer. When he hadn’t sold out.

 “Fucking Nixon,” his friend swore, and Josh grinned. Leave it to Andre to put everything in the bluntest format possible.

 “What the fuck is ‘the silent majority’ anyway?” Josh asked with a roll of his eyes. “Too fucking scared to speak up for what’s right? Racist a majority of the time?”

 Josh was sick to death of Nixon’s campaign strategy—catering to what he termed the “Silent Majority,” a group the Republican candidate insisted comprised the bulk of American society and were sick of the protests in the country. Nixon argued conservatives who were okay with the status quo were the majority in the nation and only radicals demanded change from the government in treatment of women and minorities. It wasn’t true, but a lot of people bought it. Josh just assumed that meant most people were god damned stupid.

 No matter how hard he and other activists worked to right wrongs and get real democracy to win out against conservative assholes, they were met with GOP rhetoric that villainized the very people he’d marched with, who’d sat next to him in jail, who burned their draft cards along with him in unheard protests against American presence in Vietnam.

 Of course, the New Left had grown more radical, pushed for more change and faster, dropped out, doped up, and raged against Johnson’s administration. The problem was he and the other activists had worked and fought and hoped for real change, and the administration and rest of the nation was dragging its collective feet. Josh’s question was why hadn’t more people sought to right the wrongs he and so many of this friends saw as glaring inequalities that only weakened the state of the nation rather than strengthening it. It was time. It was past time, and he was getting really antsy.

 “So, how have you been? Really?” Andre asked. “The last time I saw you, you were hightailing it out of bed with two women in New Haven and coming here to get your girl. Seems like different priorities.”

 Josh shook his head and tried to work his mind around his friend’s words. He’d been feeling unsettled for a long while, but the conflict between him and Jennifer had been growing since the protests in August and her trip to Atlantic City to cover the pageant. He’d considered leaving while she was gone, but he couldn’t quite make himself slink away like a coward. He still had work to do in Chicago, and he loved his…whatever she was to him. They’d been living together for months, but he hated labels. She hadn’t pushed, and he’d been grateful for her willingness to let it go.

 But this election would change everything. He knew it, and he also knew he was biding his time.

 “I don’t know, man. It’s such a bad scene right now. Since Bobby and King and ’Nam and everything, this country’s a bomb.”

 “But you’re a good cat, Josh. You’re making things better.”

 Josh laughed and smiled ruefully. “Am I? It seems to me I’m getting laid a lot by a doll who works for the man instead of the people.”

 “Do you love her?”

 “I…” Josh paused and swallowed hard. He did. That wasn’t in question but admitting it was another thing completely. “She’s fab. She is.”

 “But?”

 “I should be doing more,” he admitted. “I don’t know what, but I keep feeling like I should bug out and work somewhere else. Or dropout all together. Go live with the beautiful people and leave everything behind. Get high and blitzed and commune with nature.”

 Andre took a bite of his burger and shrugged. “Sounds like heaven to me, man, but I don’t think you’d be happy that way. You’re going steady, right?”

 “I’m not sure—”

 “Hutch. Man. You’ve been shacked up with her for months. You’re not sleeping with anyone else. Tune in. You’re together, and you’ve been head over heels for her since college. Wake up,” Andre said, exasperated.

 Josh sat silently for several minutes as he processed the information. No one had forced him to face what was happening until now, and he wasn’t sure he liked what he saw. Jen left him the night of his graduation. Maybe he’d never really forgiven her for that. Perhaps that’s why escaping was always in the back of his mind, to punish her for hurting him so much. Or, it was also possible that he really wasn’t comfortable in such a position. He’d always been restless, always been someone who pushed the boundaries, and falling in love with Jennifer, who came from privilege and affluence, didn’t seem like it fit. None of this was fair to her, but that didn’t change how he felt.

 “Maybe I am,” he admitted, “but I’m not sure it’s enough.”

 “Then be up front with her once you figure it out. You both deserve that.”

 “After the election,” Josh breathed. “After Tuesday.”

 “By then we’ll know if the world’s ending or not.”

 “Right on.”

 ****

 The world ended. Josh sat on the couch in Jen’s apartment as the sun set and the room darkened around him. He’d chosen to watch by himself, unsure how he’d feel when Nixon and Spiro Agnew were declared winners and all the gains over the past eight years would be overturned in a matter of time. Jen was at work, covering local reaction to the election results, and he’d intentionally not watched with his activist friends. Hippies were either remarkably anti-political or flying high, and he needed to be lucid and engaged for this.

 Election results rolled in one after another, and none of it was good for the Democrats. Texas went blue, but the West went red. Big time. George Wallace stole the South for the Dixiecrats, who couldn’t reconcile themselves to JFK or LBJ’s Democratic party of Civil Rights but weren’t on board with the GOP either. A hundred years prior, Republicans were the party of Lincoln and “freed” the slaves.

 “People are fucking stupid,” Josh spat into the emptiness. “Racist fucks. God bless Texas for sticking it out.”

 One by one the states reported, and his hope for the future of his country sunk lower with each call for Nixon. At least there was hope for a pullout in Vietnam. That was big, but would that be enough to make up for what would happen domestically? If Johnson had been able to focus on his Great Society instead of getting caught up in Southeast Asia, things could have been so different.

 “Fuck the Cold War. Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

 When Nixon got 270 votes, Josh lit up a joint and took a long, hard drag. He stared at the TV, the electoral map, the celebration in California at Nixon’s headquarters, the concession speech by Humphrey. His muscles relaxed, his mind wandered, and he turned off the part of him that cared. He started drinking next, and he was blitzed by the time Jen returned. She looked at him, her face a mask of concern mixed with a hint of fear, and he knew she dreaded what he already knew he’d have to do soon. He couldn’t stay. He just couldn’t. He already couldn’t breathe, and the election wasn’t even official yet.

 Jennifer curled up on his lap, and he let her undress him. He couldn’t move. His limbs weighed a million pounds apiece, and he couldn’t feel anything except despair. She kissed him, and he responded, but he didn’t feel anything.

 “Josh?”

 He heard his name, but she was a million miles away from him. Her voice was barely audible, and her face swam in his vision. He wanted to leave, to getaway, to run. He must have vocalized his desperation because Jen raised her hand so he could see her palm. Four sugar cubes lay there, and he breathed a prayer of thanks as he put one on his tongue.

 Josh had tripped before, but none of the other acid he’d taken had given him quite the same effect. The apartment bent and sparkled as the drug spread through his system. Jen’s eyes shone beams of sunlight, and he swore rainbows spilled out of her mouth and ears. He tried to swallow them, his mouth against hers, his fingers wrapped in liquid gold that flowed from her temples and past her shoulders. He was warm and flying and soaring above the earth, and he felt nothing except his skin against hers.

 Every nerve ending was on fire, and her fingers against his chest created bright purple sparks that exploded into golden stars. She straddled him and rocked against him, and he idly wondered why. His lap was warm and damp. His mouth swallowed the diamonds on her chest, hard and cutting against his tongue. Jen’s head fell back, and he realized the diamonds were tits. He bit down hard on her nipple, and she screamed. It sounded like a folk song, a call for peace and justice.

 She grew louder, and he sang with her. Her name fell from his lips, a litany of what was right with the world and everything that was dreadfully wrong. He needed her, and he had to escape. Tears streamed down his face and they glistened from her eyelashes. He palmed her ass and counted the contractions as she milked his cock. They were fucking, he realized. It felt like he was flying, but instead, he was shoving her onto the floor, bending her in half, and rutting against her.

 The floor underneath him shook and exploded into fiery heat. A vice gripped his cock. A melody of praise. Flashing lights. Unicorns flew by his head. His dad walked toward him, out of his wheelchair. His grandfather waved hi, even though he’d died several years ago. Josh wondered if he was going crazy, but he didn’t really care.

 Josh sat up, and Jen lay in a heap on the floor. His right hand jacked his dick mindlessly. It was wet and sticky, just like the puddle beneath his girlfriend. That’s what she was, he admitted. It was easier in his altered state, easier to accept the truth that they were together. She was radiant, skin glowing, as she watched his hand get faster and faster.

 When she spoke, it was in a foreign language. Urdu, maybe, or ancient Greek. Whatever it was made complete sense to him.

 “Jerk it, baby.”

 She reached over and took his cock from him, and he realized he was the one talking, not her.

 “I don’t know Urdu,” he slurred.

 “I do,” she said before swallowing him.

 Her cheeks hallowed out, and he fucked her mouth hard. He was crying, and she joined him as he thrust down her throat.

 “Did I hurt you?” he asked, although he was still inside her. He should have asked if he was hurting her because he hadn’t stopped. He didn’t want to stop. He didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to go.

 He had to. He had to. He had to. He had to.

 His body split in two. Part of him drifted up to the ceiling and danced there on happy feet. The other sank into the floor in a puddle of melted wax. Streaks of cream-colored icing decorated Jen’s face, and he leaned over to lick her cheek clean. It wasn’t sweet enough. Needed more sugar.

 They had two more cubes. One on his tongue. One on hers. They stumbled to the bedroom. He flew around the room, his wings flapping, circling and swooping and riding the currents. He landed on the bed. The lights went out. She was on top. She was on his face. He was in her mouth. Waterfalls. Waves. Giggles and jokes and mapping body parts with tongues and fingers and marking each other with bands of dried moisture.

 Hours and minutes and seconds and days and decades and centuries passed. No time passed at all, and then a curtain pulled behind his eyes, and he slept.

 ****

 The next morning dawned with a throbbing headache, aching limbs, and a broken heart. He opened his eyes, and he instantly regretted losing control so badly the night before. Their bed was destroyed. The sheets were filthy, striped with evidence of multiple orgasms. The room stunk like sex and piss. His mouth tasted as if something had died inside, and he wanted to murder someone when he saw Jen curled into herself.

 Josh hadn’t been in control of himself last night, and he was scared to death he’d hurt her. She didn’t warrant that. She deserved better than him. She should be lavished with only the best. He’d always been less than he wanted for her.

 He vowed to do better.

 ****

 On Inauguration Day, he wasn’t doing better. January 20 came and went, and Josh had spiraled into a mess. High every day, he’d fallen into a cycle of depression and spent more days on his friend’s couches than doing anything even remotely productive. He was twenty-five and hated what he’d become. He had a brief moment of clarity on New Year’s Eve when he was convinced 1969 would be a good year, but then Nixon took office.

 The new president catered to racist southerners and turned a blind eye to FBI stings targeting the Black Panthers. Riots broke out, more men came home in body bags, and women raged. Jen stayed busy at work, while he tuned out. He avoided his family and Jackson’s. He barely talked to Jen. He was a mess, and he knew it.

 A few weeks after the inauguration, Nixon announced a reduction of American troops in Vietnam, and his younger brother called him from Stanford where he was enrolled in his first year of grad school.

 “The son of a bitch did it,” his brother said when Josh answered the phone.

 Josh blinked rapidly and attempted to ground himself. He was high, as usual, and he found he needed to concentrate inordinately hard to understand what the words his brother spoke meant.

 “Did what?” he garbled and slid down the wall to sit on the kitchen floor.

 “Nixon. He’s pulling us out of ’Nam. We’re safe.”

 “Safe?” he asked. “Safe from what?”

 “What’s wrong with you, man? Are you tripping?”

 “Not today,” Josh sighed and grinned dopily at the wall. “Maybe tomorrow. Definitely was yesterday.”

 Connor grunted in frustration and snarled into the phone, “Have you been paying attention to what’s happening? We’re not going to Vietnam. No more new troops. A pullback of boots on the ground. They’re calling it Vietnamization.”

 “Yay, America…” Josh drawled and waved his finger in the air in celebration.

 “Come to Cali, man. I’ll help you get straight.”

 “Why bother?” Josh asked. “It’s all going to hell anyway.”

 “Just come,” his brother insisted. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, but you’re not the big brother I know. You wanted to save the world, not wallow.”

 “We lost. As soon as Bobby died, it was over.”

 “If you’re not here in four days, I’m coming to get you,” Connor threatened. “Mom and Dad don’t need to know about this, but I’ll tell them if I have to.”

 “Don’t tell them,” Josh entreated. “Dad can’t take the stress. I’ll be there.”

 “Four days.”

 Josh replaced the receiver and looked around the apartment. There were so many good things about his relationship with Jennifer. He’d loved her for a very long time, but he wasn’t where he needed to be—physically or mentally. He wasn’t an undergrad anymore, and he wasn’t doing anything to help the world. He was dragging her down, and the last thing he wanted to do was make life worse for her. Whether or not he liked it, Nixon was the president for the foreseeable future. Josh needed a change of scenery, and his kid brother was a genius. If anyone could help him get back on track, it was Connor.

 With a breaking heart, he entered the bedroom, grabbed a rucksack and started packing. He shoved his clothes into the bag but was careful to leave some of his things that Jen loved to wear when they were alone in their apartment. He grabbed a few books—his dog-eared copies of The Catcher in the Rye, Howl, and On the Road—and his toothbrush. He shuffled through a stack of papers and found his draft card, which he shoved in his front pocket. Once he got to Palo Alto, he and Connor could burn them together in celebration. When he had everything he needed, he grabbed a pencil and a notepad and wrote Jen a note.

 Dear Jen,

 I know you’ve been expecting this for a while, but I didn’t mean to leave while you were at work. I know I have to, though, or I won’t be able to walk away. I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you at Berkeley, but I was too stubborn and terrified to admit it. You’ve always had the same fire as me, even if it’s been directed somewhere else than mine. I’ve lost myself. I’ve got to find the spark again. You deserve that. You’ve always been better than me. You shouldn’t settle for someone broken. Right now, I am. When I’m fixed, I’ll let you know. I love you. Don’t ever doubt that. You’ve been the best part of me for a very long time. I’m so sorry.

 Always, Josh

 He was crying by the time he finished writing. He’d put this off for so long because he wasn’t strong enough to leave, but Connor’s phone call had woken something in him he hadn’t been able to find for ages. He’d call her in a few months—once he had himself together again. He wouldn’t leave her without any word, the way she had with him. He wondered for a second if he was punishing her because of what she’d done, but leaving her was much more of a penalty for him than it was for her.

 He swiped at the note he wrote her, and the tear that had fallen smeared his name. He was already fading in this place. All that was left was to walk out the door.

 Just as he turned to go, he noticed a picture of her peeking out from the corner of her desk. Her long hair was down and falling over her shoulders in blonde waves. She wore a white, high-collared lace dress that made her look like an angel. He tucked the image in his wallet and grabbed his bag before slipping through the door and locking it.

 He was to the bus station within ten minutes and halfway across the state before she found the note. He was almost to California before she stopped crying.

[cyabae]

Bedtime Stories Against the World - Day 8

Day 8: Time travel | Fate

Words: 1023

Haha, this series features so much modern AU but after yesterday’s angst some fluff felt like a good choice. This is my 8th story for @kakaobiweek2019

>> AO3! <<

Kakashi had never romantic enough to believe in fate. Sure, every action had an outcome corresponding to it which was a fairly simple phenomenon. One thing led to another, and there was nothing too mysterious about it.

However, Obito seemed to challenge some of the beliefs Kakashi had taken for granted.

Their relationship was based on many little coincidences. The chances of them two meeting had been practically zero since Kakashi was a mere teacher whilst Obito was…

Well, he didn’t talk much about his profession. He didn’t have a specific job, he did projects. 

There was a low budget theater production which kept him busy along with several protests against Konoha’s human rights violations.

Kakashi wasn’t too fond of them either but his spirit was a homebody instead of an activist which was why he never intended to get involved with rebellious freaks. He had just heard that one of his students had some relatives working with a water puppetry show.

The school didn’t provide too much money for field trips but Kakashi had promised his class that a field trip was going to happen.

After all, none of the students had failed the previous course. Desperate times called for desperate measures – and relative discounts.

This is where life had gotten weird.

Kakashi had ignored all the warning signs from the shady, abandoned cinema to the posters on the hallway. He’d also tried to ignore the fact that one of his students was behaving worse than ever.

But thinking back, some kids weren’t able to stay still for longer than a few minutes.

During the first half of the performance, two things had become apparent.

It’d taken six lines to figure out that Akatsuki Free Productions was very, very biased against the Konoha government and that their show wasn’t suitable for the state school students.

Kakashi had been thinking about the explanation to cover for his mistake when the second problem had emerged. One of his students – the trouble making one – had gone missing in the blink of an eye.

A sense of dread had filled Kakashi when he’d realized that the theater production could hold him accountable for possible damages.

The theater production had seemed pretty shady, and Kakashi hadn’t planned to deal with any suspicious people.  

That’s why Kakashi had stood up and walked past the seats, ignoring the confused looks of his well-behaved students.

Once he’d searched the empty hallways, he’d seen a flash of an orange coat without being able to catch the troublemaker.

He’d ended up searching the backstage. He could’ve sworn that he saw the familiar orange flash right before bumping into someone.

And that’s how Kakashi met Obito. Needless to say, this encounter hadn’t gone particularly well.

Actually, they’d cussed at each other for a solid minute before Obito had asked what was a visitor doing in the area anyway. After Kakashi had gathered up what had been left of his pride, he’d told the reason and gained a very sour look.

He’d found the missing lamb eventually, though. The boy had been trying on some weird masks in the bathroom.

What had been the boy’s reasoning for this? Kakashi couldn’t tell.

He’d congratulated himself for preventing the worst disaster and encouraged his student to leave the stolen masks there.

Life had a weird sense of humor.

Late at that night, Kakashi had noticed that his keys were missing. He’d been ready to head home after going through a big pile of essays.

The keys weren’t found in the school building.

Kakashi had realized that keys did fall out of people’s pockets when they bumped into grumpy assholes.

Akatsuki Free Production wasn’t exactly a legal organization.

They didn’t share their contact information.

Kakashi’s only choice had been to go back to the theater building, hoping for the best.

Coincidentally, Obito had heard Kakashi’s frustrated knocks on the front door. He claimed that he’d had some sort of brain malfunction which was the only reason why he had opened the door.

Obito didn’t seem to regret this decision. He’d actually helped Kakashi with the searching – to get rid of him faster, of course – and they’d exchanged a few words during the process.

The keys had been found but after the incident, they’d kept pumping into each other everywhere, often times very literally.

The amount of those regularly irregular occurrences had gotten frustrating.

Looking back, it seemed that the universe wanted them to tolerate one another.

Kakashi had decided to prove himself that there was no such thing as fate. Asking Obito out for a drink had seemed like a perfect plan.

That had happened during the previous full moon but the moon had come and gone, and now it was waxing.

And the date night went on.

Technically they’d left Kakashi’s house many times by now but Obito never went back to his place. They didn’t count the time when Obito had fetched some basic items and extra clothes.

Kakashi turned the shower off. He stepped out, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist.

Obito had just brushed his teeth. He looked absolutely gorgeous standing in front of the mirror, wearing nothing but a black pair of boxers. Kakashi pressed a tiny kiss on the nape of his neck as he circled his arms around the man.

“We could have another round?” Kakashi mumbled against Obito’s shoulder, leaving a trail of kisses there.

“You’re such a pervert,” Obito informed but a tiny moan escaped his lips as Kakashi gave his round ass a gentle, grateful rub. It’d been through a lot.

“Is that a problem?” Kakashi asked with the most angelic tone he could muster. He was pretty happy with it even though he could see through the mirror that Obito was rolling his eyes.

Obito muttered something about Kakashi being all of his problems before turning around and pulling Kakashi into a long, passionate kiss. Maybe it was true, maybe they were each other’s worst problems and now life wanted them to solve one another.

If this was the case, Kakashi was more than happy to be romantic enough to believe in fate.

[kjack89]

The Way I Am, Pt. 3/4

I’ve gotten it back to four parts. Literally no one will be excited about this but me, but there we are. Preemptive apology if there are more typos than usual in here -- my computer was being super glichy while I was writing this.

Penelope AU, ExR modern AU with some magic mixed in.

Read part 1 here and part 2 here.

Musichetta leaned against the bar, smiling at Grantaire with something close to sympathy in her eyes. “How are you doing this morning, champ?” she asked.

Grantaire squinted up at her, his eyes ringed with exhaustion and heartbreak. “I thought you went home,” he managed, propping his chin up with his hand.

“I did,” Musichetta said, raising an eyebrow at him. “I slept for eight blissful hours, fixed breakfast for Bossuet and Joly and kissed them both goodbye.” She nodded at the half-full pint of beer in front of Grantaire. “You need a refill?”

Grantaire shook his head slowly, trying desperately to think of where the last eight and then some hours had gone. The only thing he had to show for it was a half-doodled sketch of a handsome blond man on the napkin next to his beer -- half-finished, because he hadn’t drawn a nose. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I think I should go home.”

At the other end of the bar, an older gentleman chortled. “He’s still got beer,” he said dismissively. “He’s not going anywhere.”

All Musichetta had to do was narrow her eyes at the gentleman for him to fall silent and turn away. She looked back at Grantaire. “So what’ll it be?” she asked. “More beer, or are you going home?”

Wordlessly, Grantaire picked up his beer, drained it, and stood, shrugging into his coat as he left the Musain, his mind far from the bar and in a mansion across town. He’d love to say it was some kind of moment of clarity, of realization that he couldn’t keep wasting his life like this. It wasn’t.

But it might just be the start of something.

Enjolras pulled the red scarf he had found in his dad’s coat pocket tighter around his nose and mouth and looked both ways before darting across the street toward the bar whose neon lights proclaimed the Café Musain. He cautiously opened the door and looked inside. The dark-haired bartender looked over at him, pausing from where she was wiping off the counter. “Well, come in, love, we don’t bite.”

“Not unless you want us to, anyway,” a curly-haired man sitting at the bar called, winking at Enjolras in a way that he assumed was meant to be sexual but was more funny than anything.

The man sitting next to him sighed and adjusted his glasses. “Christ, Courfeyrac, don’t scare the poor guy. Not everyone finds your humor as compelling as you think they do.”

The curly-haired man, Courfeyrac, waved a dismissive hand and patted the bar stool on the other side of him, beaming at Enjolras. “Well in that case, come sit by me and I’ll buy you a drink to make up for my inappropriate sexual advances.”

Almost against his better judgment, Enjolras crossed the bar and sat down next to Courfeyrac, who offered him a hand to shake. “I’m Courfeyrac and this is Combeferre,” he said, gesturing to the bespectacled man next to him. “What are you drinking?”

“Um, can I get a beer on tap?” Enjolras asked, a little hesitantly.

“Sweetheart, you can have anything you want,” Courfeyrac said, fluttering his eyelashes at him and gesturing at the bartender.

Combeferre rolled his eyes. “For Christ’s sake. One of these days, someone’s going to haul off and deck you one, and I won’t do anything but laugh.”

The bartender set a beer down in front of Enjolras. “Ignore them,” she told Enjolras with a winning smile. “They’re always like this, at least, they are when they’re not busy trying to overthrow the government. Can I get you anything else?”

“Um, yeah,” Enjolras said, glancing down at the beer. “Can I get a straw?”

For a moment, the bartender looked taken aback, but then she grabbed a straw off the counter and popped it into the beer. “There you are. If you need anything else, just holler. My name’s Musichetta.”

She sauntered off to take care of another customer and Enjolras turned to Courfeyrac and raised his beer in a toast. “Thanks,” he said, before slipping the straw under his scarf and taking a sip.

“So, are you hiding from the law or just hiding a bad nose job?” Courfeyrac asked, propping his chin on his hand as he smiled winningly at Grantaire.

Combeferre elbowed him in the ribs. “You can’t just ask someone if they’ve had a nose job,” he hissed.

Courfeyrac scowled at him. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to ask someone why they were white!” he protested. “No one ever mentioned anything about nose jobs.”

Enjolras snorted. “It’s fine,” he reassured Combeferre. “And yeah, I suppose you could say it’s a bad nose job, for lack of anything better to call it.” He took another sip of beer. “So what did Musichetta mean, when you’re not busy trying to overthrow the government?”

Combeferre and Courfeyrac exchanged glances. “We’re what you might call, disturbers of the peace,” Courfeyrac said glibly, raising his martini in a salute.

“No justice, no peace,” Combeferre muttered darkly. “We started a political activist organization when we were in university, and we’ve been trying to grow it ever since. We led the hunger march last year in the park--”

“--And the sit-in in the mayor’s office,” Courfeyrac added helpfully.

“Right, and now we’re trying to organize some kind of rally or protest or something in regards to the latest police murders,” Combeferre said. “City Hall thinks they can cover it up, but we won’t let them. We’re just...not sure how best to address it.”

He shrugged and took a sip of wine, while Enjolras leaned forward, his eyes alight with a fervor he hadn’t felt in years. “It’s fucking bullshit,” he said passionately. “And I don’t see why you can’t just take to the streets and tell it like it is -- fuck the pigs!”

Courfeyrac grinned slowly. “I knew I was going to like you.” He raised his glass for a toast. “Fuck the pigs!”

“Fuck the pigs!” Enjolras and Combeferre said in unison, clinking their glasses against Courfeyrac’s.

Courfeyrac drained his martini and beamed at Enjolras. “Of course, when you’re marching with us, shouting, ‘fuck the pigs’, people will understand you a lot better without this scarf muffling everything you say.”

Before Enjolras could even figure out what he was doing, Courfeyrac leaned forward and tugged the scarf away from Enjolras’s face, his hand falling away when he saw what was underneath. “Oh, shit,” he said, eyes wide. “That is a bad nose job.”

Enjolras flushed and quickly pulled the scarf up, but the damage was already done. Both Combeferre and Courfeyrac were staring at him, and Enjolras looked away, mentally bracing for them to run away like the rest of everyone who had seen him. Instead, Combeferre just raised his eyebrows and took another sip of wine. “Well, that face plus the message ‘fuck the pigs’ is pretty much guaranteed to get out picture in the paper.”

Enjolras chanced a look up at them. “And that’s a...a good thing?” he asked hesitantly.

Courfeyrac grinned at him. “It’d be more publicity than we’ve gotten in the past four years.” Slowly, he reached out again for Enjolras’s scarf, this time pausing until Enjolras nodded his permission slowly. “See, that’s better,” he said, pulling the scarf away once more. “And this way, you can drink your beer without a straw, because we have a friend who would absolutely kill you if he saw you drinking beer with a straw.”

Enjolras smiled slightly. “So...fuck the pigs?”

Combeferre and Courfeyrac both smiled in return. “Fuck the pigs.”

“Your paper, madame,” the butler said, offering Enjolras’s mother the newspaper folded on a silver platter.

“Thank you, Porter,” she said, grabbing the paper and unfolding it. Her eyes widened as she gaped at the headline which read, ‘Pig Protests Pigs’, splashed above a huge picture of Enjolras, snout shown for all to see, shouting in the face of a horrified policeman.

She promptly fainted, the newspaper fluttering to the ground next to her.

Across town, Grantaire stared down at the newspaper, his mouth hanging slightly open in shock before slowly curving into a smile. He stood and stretched before slowly crossing the room to the blank canvas propped on the easel in the corner. He picked up a paintbrush and tapped his chin thoughtfully, eyeing the canvas as if he knew exactly what he wanted to paint.

In the Musain, Enjolras was trying his best to hide behind his glass of beer, but it was to no avail. Total strangers kept coming up to congratulate him, or introduce themselves or just to gawk. Combeferre and Courfeyrac ran interference as much as they could, eventually dragging Enjolras to the back room of the bar. “Do you see how many people showed up?” Courfeyrac asked Combeferre, hanging onto Enjolras’s arm as they pushed through the crowd.

Enjolras rubbed the back of his neck embarrassedly. “Sorry about all this,” he muttered, but Combeferre cut him off.

“No, no, it’s a good thing,” Combeferre assured him with a smile. “We’re always trying to get more people involved with Les Amis, and sure, some are probably just here to stare like a bunch of creeps--” He shot a nasty look at a girl who had just slopped her drink all over herself and was openly oggling Enjolras. “--But we may actually get through to the rest, and that’s the important thing.”

A few minutes later, as Enjolras stood up in front of the assembled group to give the speech he had spent all day preparing on his vision about next steps for Les Amis, as he gazed out at the sea of people who were staring at him for the first time in his life not in revulsion but with interest and excitement and even, in some cases, affection, Enjolras couldn’t help but feel that maybe Combeferre was right.

After the meeting, Enjolras made his way through the crowd to lean against the bar, gesturing Musichetta over. “Can I just get a glass of water?” he shouted over the crowd.

“If you keep bringing this many customers in, you can have anything you want,” Musichetta called back, sliding a glass of water over to him.

Enjolras grinned at her in thanks and turned to head back to the back room, stopping in his tracks when he saw Grantaire standing in front of him, his hands in his pockets and a cautious smile on his face. “So you made it to the Café Musain,” Grantaire said, and Enjolras’s hand tightened on his glass of water as he barely controlled the urge to throw it in his face. “And you look...you look really good. Really happy.”

Enjolras lifted his chin slightly. “Thanks,” he said, his voice cold. “I am.”

The words ‘no thanks to you’ hung unspoken between them, and Grantaire flushed slightly, dropping his gaze to the ground. “I just...I wanted to let you know that you inspired me. Doing what you did, taking off on your own, turning your back on everything expected of you -- it made me want to be better.”

“I have to go,” Enjolras said, almost numbly, and he pushed past Grantaire, not seeing the look of hurt that flashed across Grantaire’s face as he watched Enjolras walk away.

But Combeferre noticed, his smile fading as he watched Enjolras make his way back to him and Courfeyrac. “What was that about?” he asked.

Courfeyrac followed the line of Combeferre’s sight but completely missed Grantaire, seeing only an atractive woman standing near him. “Someone sexy want to date you?” he asked cheerfully. “The perils of fame, my friend.”

Enjolras laughed, though it was without humor. “It’s nothing,” he said, brushing it off. “I’m just...I’m not really ready. To date, I mean.”

“Well, why not?” Courfeyrac asked. “All these people, there must be at least someone who catches your eye.”

Enjolras just shook his head and avoided meeting Courfeyrac’s gaze. “Actually, seeing as how I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to get on of the exact kind of people that I hate to marry me…” He trailed off, having already filled Combeferre and Courfeyrac in on the overview of his life, and Courfeyrac sighed.

“I know, I know, and I realize it must have been very hard for you, what with all the rich and handsome men throwing themselves at you,” Courfeyrac said, aiming for a joke.

But Enjolras didn’t smile. “Well, it was made a lot easier by all of them fleeing the moment they saw my face,” Enjolras said dryly.

That shut Courfeyrac up, and Combeferre, who was ever so slightly more perceptive of the two, asked quietly, “All of them?”

“Well, all but one,” Enjolras admitted. “And I thought…” He trailed off. “Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought.”

Courfeyrac perked up. “So just so I’m remembering this correctly, you need to marry a blue blood to get your inheritance and break the curse, right?” Enjolras shrugged and nodded. “Well, listen. I may know a way to make that happen.”

“How?” Enjolras asked skeptically, and Combeferre frowned and echoed, “Yeah, how?”

“My former roommate, Courfeyrac said, a little smugly. “Monsieur Marius Pontmercy. Grandson of a baron. And owes me a hell of a favor.”