#but Will CANNOT cook to a degree to the point he opens up a restaurant. he's just that guy that knows how to simply cook is all. 🤷‍♀️

[coirinthyurilo]

Headcanon that Will knows how to cook. (At some point.)

Considering Will is has a big family. Apollo cabin and all. You'd think he can cook but it doesn't really make sense where in their camp they already have things cooked for them.

I like to think his cooking specialty came from his mom. Or somewhat related to his mom. Since his mom is always doing concerts. He probably learned how to cook on his own.

Or maybe had his mom help him bake a pie or something. But he's probably learned how to cook on his own eventually.

His mom probably has a big family on her side, so maybe that's where he knows how to cook or something. Like he can make simple dishes but he can't go on full Gordan Ramsay in Hell's Kitchen or something.

He can whip up a good meal is all. But he's already busy working as a doctor. (Nico can probably do the cooking himself.) But he can cook! Just to an extent. :3

But not to the point he can open up a restaurant. I doubt he even can do so. So uhm.. Yeah. That's just my headcanon. Will IS a decent cook, and he can take the kitchen any moment if you want him to.

It's just that the poor guy doesn't have enough time while being a doctor. 😭

[ouyangzizhensdad]

Do you think that making Chinese food is cultural appropriation? I'm white and started making some of the foods I saw in the shows I've watched since the untamed, but now I'm worried I'm appropriating the culture.

Hi anon,

As a fellow white person, I am also someone who needs to critically reflect on how I engage with different cultures. I can't give you the definitive answer you seek, the clear absolution from any potential wrongdoings; in its stead, I can only offer to share my current thought process on this topic. I’d still encourage you to seek other perspectives, and many people have written or spoken on this topic.

I believe we must first acknowledge that, on the terrain of the internet, discussions regarding cultural appropriation have reached a certain... extreme where some people view all forms of cultural exchanges as inherently suspect. They purport that so long as you stay within the bounds of ‘your’ culture, you will problematic behaviours. That perspective is inherent flawed. That is, it relies on a vision of culture as ‘bounded entities’ that exist in themselves. In reality, the ‘stuff’ that makes culture is emergent, existing only relationally, dialectically--it is a not a ‘thing’ that moves through time but an idea which is constantly negotiated and reproduced in relation to power and changing material realities to remain relevant and intelligible. The boundaries of cultural and ethnic groups are fuzzy, overlapping, and constantly being reworked and made meaningful. As an illustration, many of the food I grew up eating was influenced by ingredients and recipes immigrants brought in the 19th and 20th centuries, yet these dishes were understood as 'typically ours’. And it needs to be acknowledged that most of what is currently considered ‘white people food’ relies on ingredients that were introduced to our diet through colonialism and the violent dispossession of indigenous peoples (and, often, the current day exploitation of workers in the South and of migrant workers). No food can be truly ‘traditionally ours’, whatever the purported ‘we’ ends up being brought into the equation, and no eating behaviours can avoid the historical legacy and continuity of violence and power.

Of course, as people who exist in the world, we know that there are cultural differences. Bakhtin’s insights on language through the tensions between centripedal (ie towards uniformity, a common meaning) and centrifugal (toward diversity and change) forces can be expanded to help us conceptualise how we make sense of the way a ‘culture’ is perpetuated through time as something meaningful in our daily lives. Uniformity allows intelligibility, sense-making, but diversity and change are inescapable by-products of individuals and groups repeatedly going through life, meeting and trying to create intelligibility and sense together in a world that cannot stay the same. It is at the intersection of these two conflicting forces that something can be different yet considered the same--that we can create continuity out of change. But something perhaps less emphasized in Bakhtin’s discussions is how much power and material realities work on these forces. Power influences both centripedal and centrifugal forces, if only in orchestrating circumstances that shape how one encounters ‘different cultures’ or reproduces their 'own' culture.

We live at a moment where the world seems to have reached an apex of connectivity--where goods, people, ideas (and viruses) move across distance and borders at speeds that defy comprehension. Yet the way goods, people and ideas move (through which canals and systems? in which direction? to the benefits of whom? at the expense of whom? to what reception or use? in the service of which institutions and ideologies?) or are, inversely, incapable or unwilling to move, is influenced by power and material realities. It is inescapable.

In a roundabout way, what I’m trying to say is that it's useless to try to live life in 'your lane' by turning to a baseline 'culture' because we simply do not have a baseline culture to return to that is 'safe' from the influences of other cultures or the taint of the historical legacy and continuity of violence. So how do I personally reconcile that with how I engage with content that is produced from different cultural contexts, and how I engage with cooking food that is influenced by different cultural contexts? For me the guidelines I take into consideration are respect, attribution and avoiding forms of dehumanisation. These emerged out of witnessing how other white people have acted as well as critically reflecting on how I have acted in the past, and trying to do better (including of course, by listening to different perspectives on the topic). [just in case, warning for examples of racism/micro-agressions] I've been in China with white people who would praise the cooking we were eating in the same breath they were making jokes about dog meat. I've witnessed in Japan a dude decide not to come to an izakaya with Japanese colleagues, fucking off on his own to Akihabara instead, because he was disappointed he couldn’t talk about anime with them--too obsessed with the idealised version of Japan he’d created in his head to treat the Japanese people he met as people. The internet is full of white people telling you how to cook food from places they've never been and taking credit for 'popularising' that dish or 'making it better'. That's not even talking about the tendency for food to become a mark of a cosmopolitan, metropolitan identity in the West--the open-minded, the liberal, the traveler, the hip white person up with the times and beyond the mainstream. Hell, I've even seen people who act as if eating ‘ethnic’ food prepared by immigrants is the singular proof that they were people who cared about immigrants' well-being.

Food is rarely just about food, even when consumed at home. At the same time, we’d be remiss in all these discussions of power to dismiss how food is also one of oldest things we, as humans, want to share with others--including strangers. Feeding is nourishing and giving, eating is accepting into ourselves something made by others. Most people appreciate it when the value of a dish that holds importance for them is recognised by others--although, of course, many might understandably also resent that they have been discriminated against or mocked for eating that same food. Every time I’ve been invited in an immigrant household or at events with mostly immigrants, I’ve felt this sense of almost trepidation emanating from them, waiting for my reaction, and satisfaction once I was seen eating and appreciating the food they had served me--as if the acceptance of the food that was tied to their identity was a form of acceptance of who they were. Of course this can’t be disentangled from past experiences where other people might have been disrespectful, dismissive or outright racist: but the excitement they had in sharing food that had meaning to them and seeing others appreciate it was genuine.

Beyond situations of clear cultural sharing, where we get closer to what appears to be ‘cultural appropriation’, I believe that we cannot act as if there is something inherently sacrilegious in the idea of adapting recipes or using a specific ingredients in new ways--that’s centrifugal forces at play, and they have provided us with many dishes we love today: from immigrant creations like butter chicken to things like spicy kimchi. We cannot work with the assumption that people will only react with hostility at the idea of other people cooking the food they grew with, even in ways that are different from how they’re traditionally used and are thus “not authentic”. I still remember an interaction I had in a Korean grocery store, once upon a time when I lived in a metropolitan city. A man in front of me at the cash register who had been buying snacks and chatting with the employee in Korean looked at my stuff and suddenly asked me if I knew the name of the leafy green I was buying. I wasn’t necessarily surprised because I had overheard in the past customers and employees commenting in Korean about being surprised about the ingredients I, a white person, was purchasing, thinking I couldn’t understand them. I confirmed to him that I knew I was buying mustard greens. He then asked me what I was planning to do with them, and I explained that while I didn’t think it’s a traditional or common way of using it, I personally liked to add them to kimchi jjigae because it compliments their bitter/strong taste and I like leafy greens in my soups and stews. He said it was interesting, and that he was kind of impressed. The employee chimed to tell me I should be honoured at the compliment because the man was actually a chef who owned famous Korean fusion restaurants in the city. That was clearly someone who took Korean food very seriously and clearly had a certain degree of suspicion regarding how white people interacted with it, but he was also curious and interested in seeing how I approached ingredients without having grown up eating them.

Another point of contention is also that we cannot ignore that food is a sensual experience and that, while tastes are greatly influenced by our environment, they are not solely so. I grew up hating most of the food my parents would serve me, and started cooking in my early teens to avoid having to eat it. Before I started cooking, I would often just eat rice with (in hindsight horrible) western-brand soy sauce instead of the meal my mom had made. When I ate Indian food for the first time during a trip at the ripe age of 16, it blew my mind that food could taste like this. Of course I never wanted to look back, and with each years I discovered that a lot of Asian cuisines fit my palate better than what I grew up eating or other cuisines I had tried. When I was a teenager we visited my mom’s friend in France and I hated what she served us so much I’d simply choose to nibble on bread, prompting her to try to stage an intervention for my ‘obvious’ anorexia. Yet, being in China made me realise ingredients I thought I hated had just been cooked in ways I disliked. Do my taste buds absolve me from any need to think critically about how I interact with food? Of course not. But sometimes the reason we want to cook certain recipes and foods is just that it tastes great to us, and we want to reproduce the recipes we enjoyed with the ingredients and the skills we have. Or, really, sometimes we just want to try new tastes because we do a lot of eating throughout our lives, and it seems a waste to limit ourselves to a narrow number of dishes for decades to come.

So that’s where I currently am in my thinking about this topic, as a white person who cooks dishes influenced by a number of different places but who is also not trying to cook in a way that is necessarily authentic. Some things that I keep in mind that you can ask yourself now that cdramas and cnovels have made you interested in Chinese cooking is: are you taking this as an opportunity to support immigrant businesses when getting your ingredients? are you supporting white creators when looking for chinese recipes (some suggestion of youtube channels: Made with Lau, Chinese cooking Demystified, Family in Northwest China, 西北小强 Xibeixiaoqiang, 小高姐的 Magic Ingredients)? are you being respectful (not reproducing harmful stereotypes in how you talk about chinese food and the people who eat it)? do you use your interest in Chinese food to create a narrative about China and Chinese people that denies them, in some way, of their complexity and humanity? are you using your interest in Chinese food to create a narrative about yourself?

In conclusion I will leave you with a picture of some misshapen baozi I’ve made.

[callmeelle22]

Blue Dream III

Pairing: Iris West x Barry Alen

Rating: E

Chapter Word Count: 4, 559

Summary: A series of sporadic dates between Iris and Barry turn into something more, a story in its own making.

Chapter I: Primetime

Chapter II: It's Cool

Chapter III: Anything; It would make sense, she supposes, if looking at her also feels like this for him, like her heart beats in time with every breath he takes and like time slows or stalls or...like every minute here is infinitely longer and in these moments… in these moments, she thinks that the world must somehow tilt on its axis because she feels...i feel you comin' down like honey, do do you even know i'm alive?, do do you even know i, i... she feels… (Read below or on the AO3 link on the chapter title.)

Chapter IV: Comfortable

Chapter V: The Way

Chapter VI: Can't Take My Eyes Off of You

Chapter VII: I'm in Love with You

Chapter VIII: Blue Dream

Anything

Maybe I should kill my inhibition

Maybe I'll be perfect in a new dimension

On the Saturday the week after Barry’s impromptu visit, Iris finds herself down on Main Street about half an hour after 10 in the morning. Nearly the entire 8 blocks of the street are sectioned off, with a plethora of white tents set up on both sides of the street. She glances on as she makes her way down the sidewalk, as people set up books and jewelry and clothes; beer and wine and harder liquor; food and sweets and other treats.

It’s the setup for Central City’s Fall Fest, one of a multitude of fests in the city that Iris calls home. It’ll be open to the public in a few hours and, like usual, Iris will make her way up and down the blocks a few times, holding a beer in one hand and something fried on a stick in the other, a couple of bags filled with things she doesn’t need in the crook of her elbow.

Now, though, she steps into the alley that leads to the side door of Golden’s, an Asian and American fusion restaurant and bar owned by the parents of her best friend, Linda Park. She gives a heavy-handed couple of knocks and only moments later, Linda opens the door to let her in.

Iris first met the other women when they were in the 7th grade. Iris’s parents had divorced several months prior to a new school year and for reasons not then known to Iris, her dad had gotten full custody of her and six-year-old Wally. They’d moved into a new house on the other side of town and that had meant a new school for her. Linda had sat beside her in their homeroom/advisory class and the girl with beige skin and long dark brown hair was constantly scribbling something in a notebook. Iris had discovered that they’d been stories, usually with families as the starring characters. By then, Iris had begun to write in her own notebook—musings and wonderings about the neighbors she’d just met, about what it meant to be the oldest child of divorced parents. They’d bonded over their writing; well, that and being two of only a handful of girls at the school with skin darker than the pale and spray-tanned skin of their classmates.

For over a decade, it’s been Iris and Linda. Through the messy stages of puberty and their even messier interactions with high school boys; through late-night study binges and even worse interactions with college boys. Through the drug addiction that took Iris’s mom and the car crash that had put Linda’s older brother on life support until he’d succumbed to his own injuries, they’ve navigated it all together.

Now, life gets in the way. Linda, almost immediately after undergrad graduation, had begun shopping around a number of short stories and personal essays she had written until, finally, a publisher had bit and opted to publish them as an anthology. A few years and too many nights spent locked in a room later and Linda’s book is a New York Times bestseller. Iris’s own success story is pending. In addition to completing her graduate degree (which, at 26, she’d started late, after taking some time off and working at a local newspaper), she runs a blog, one she’d started by accident. Her middle school musings had become pointed interviews and, with the classes she’d taken in college, had gotten the necessary skills to begin writing up her own human interest stories. It’s amazing, she’s learned, what people will tell you when they can hide behind the face of someone else. What a Life You’ve Lived is growing in popularity, making some money too, and it’s starting to become more than just a hobby for Iris.

Neither Iris nor Linda is ever truly free; but in a concentrated effort to make time, they brunch at least twice a month. This morning, it’s at Golden’s (where Linda is working as a bartender while she writes her next book) because her parents want them to try out new menu items. When the door shuts behind them, Linda turns and gives Iris a hug, wrapping her arms around her neck. Iris returns it, smiling into her hair, her familiar lavender scent a warm comfort she didn’t know she needed.

“I’ve missed your beautiful face,” Linda says, squeezing her hard once before letting her go.

“Yeah?” Iris asks, mouth lifting in a smirk. “Is it because you’re tired of looking at Daniel’s beautiful face?”

Linda rolls her eyes. “Never, though I’d rather put my eye out before I tell him that.”

Linda has been dating her boyfriend Daniel Ngyuen, nerdy engineer and man ridiculously head over heels for her, for a few months, after they met at a book signing hosted by Linda’s parents.

“You’re ridiculous,” Iris tells her, and Linda preens in response.

Something in Iris tightens, a faint film of green clouding her view for all of a millisecond. She’s ashamed she even had the thought, that she feels anything but happiness at the light in her friend’s chocolate brown eyes or the glow in her cheeks. She’s not jealous of Linda, of course she’s not. But Iris can’t help but find some envy at the feeling of contentment that so obviously surrounds her friend and the juxtaposition of her own drifting existence.

It’s almost tangible, these differences, at least to her. Iris can see the confidence practically emanating from Linda’s dress-clad form, the long-sleeved maxi dress and tall sandals, her wavy shoulder-length hair, making her look a little like a goddess. But Iris imagines that’s what it must look like, to be at the start of a career you’ve always wanted, to have the love of a man you’re secure in, to just...know your place, your purpose.

And maybe Iris is being dramatic. She supposes she looks as put together as she’s always thought she needed to be in her light denim jeans, pale pink cropped sweater, and tan block-heeled sandals. She’s been wearing her natural hair out this week and the wavy curls are piled up in an artfully messy bun. Still, even if Iris can’t touch on why she feels so scattered, like all of the pieces that make up the whole of her are floating aimlessly around her body, she cannot deny that the feeling is there, taking up space in her head like the songs she latches on to keep focused, maybe I should pray a little harder, or work a little smarter.

They walk through the restaurant, bustling with the waitstaff preparing for the 11 am opening. Golden’s isn’t an overly large place, only able to fit about 50 people at a time, but Iris thinks it’s a part of the charm. It’s decorated in dark brown wood and bright white and gold light fixtures; the tables and booths are spread out in a way that allows for privacy, making customers feel as if they’re in their own little worlds.

Linda leads them to their usual table, one actually tucked into a little alcove where only the Parks and their guests are allowed to sit. At the table, there’s already a carafe of juice too close to red-pink to be orange juice, along with a bottle of champagne. Outside of the wine and marijuana Friday nights and the occasional party or club, Iris only really indulges in alcohol when she and Linda have these brunches. They slide into the booth and Linda immediately reaches for the champagne.

Over the next couple of hours, Iris is reminded of why, regardless of her own issues, she loves his woman. They laugh, sharing stories of Iris’s students and the customers who come into Golden’s. They get on each other’s nerves, making jokes and ribbing the other any chance they get. At one point, Linda’s parents come out, her honey-skinned Chinese mother Xuan and her dad Theo, Chinese and white with skin like baked sugar cookies, and Iris blinks adoringly up at the both of them, always lost in their beauty—both tall and elegant with ridiculous cheekbones.

“It’s sickening,” Linda mutters as she watches Iris watch them walk away, “how you look at them.”

“I’ve had a crush on your parents for as long as I’ve known them,” Iris replies. “If they ever want a thre-”

“Don’t you finish that fucking statement,” Linda gripes and Iris howls in laughter until Linda points out the attractiveness of Iris’s own father. “You know I’d always hop on the chance to be your stepmom.”

“And I’d happily sabotage your wedding day.”

“But it’d be worth it when I got to climb on top of Daddy West during the honeymoon.”

Iris throws a strawberry at her.

She hears him before she sees him. She’s been at Fall Fest for only about twenty minutes after leaving Golden’s, full and tipsy, walking through the steadily filling streets. Of all of the festivals in Central City, of which there are several (seasonal fests like the Fall and Spring fests; food fests like the Food Truck and Italian Food fests; cultural fests like the Juneteenth and Hispanic Heritage fests), the Fall Fest is one of her favorites. It’s during the best time of the year, when the sun is still blazing but the wind cuts through the heat. When the leaves have begun to drift off trees and dance onto the ground, changing into the shades of yellow and orange and red that only nature can paint. When the booths run the gamut in what they sell, from cooked and packaged foodstuffs, to clothes and jewelry, to dance or golf lessons. It’s the one festival, besides the Pan-African Celebration, that their entire family would attend, even for a few years after the divorce. Her parents would take off work and put aside their differences to spend time together--until Wally had felt too old and her dad had needed too many more work hours and her mom had gotten too lost; and then Iris had started coming with Linda and then, this year, alone.

But she doesn’t dwell—she tries not to dwell these days—and besides, she’s just heard him.

He doesn’t sound any different in the light of the day. In her head, she keeps hearing him as he is in the throes of passion, when his voice is more of a throaty curse, when it’s a rumble against her heated flesh. Here, out here with children screaming from their blocked-off sections and ladies laughing as they smell through candle selections and men arguing from the faux sports bars set up at random tents, he should sound like anyone else. He shouldn’t even be heard over the music coming from the speakers they can’t see—down for the ride, down for the ride; you could take me anywhere; do do do down for the ride, down for the ride; you could take me anywhere; i hope you will, I hope you will, I hope you will—or the sheer noise that’s true for events like this. But he is.

She looks up, ignoring the woman still trying to convince her to buy a bottle or three of perfume, and she sees him, right at the booth beside hers. He’s with two other men, one shorter with light brown skin and dark brown eyes and black hair pulled back in a ponytail; the other only a bit taller than the friend, with skin darker than Iris’s, glasses, and a short afro. Iris vaguely thinks that the three of them together are some sort of setup for a bar joke. They’re dressed similarly, in pants and t-shirts, though Iris’s eyes catch onto Barry’s hunter green chinos and white shirt, the beige pocket square matching his desert boots. All three of them have relatively full beers in their hands and Iris is looking at the cup in Barry’s hand (or rather, his fingers wrapped around the cup) for about three seconds before it jerks, beer spilling out. She looks up to find he’s looking back at her too, muttering “Iris,” in surprise.

She watches her hand and smiles back at him, a bit awkwardly, stepping away from the booth where the woman has already moved on to a new customer.

“Hi Barry,” she responds, walking over to them. She spares a glance at the other two, the Black man looking at her curiously, the Latino man a bit more humorously. “Fancy seeing you here.”

It’s not her smoothest line, but Iris thinks she might be in shock. When he’d left her, again, before she woke up on Saturday morning, she’d found his number written in tiny handwriting on the notepad on her desk, the unimaginative “call me” scribbled beneath it. She hadn’t. She’d thought about; oh had she.

On Monday, she’d debated calling him up to grab a coffee during her break. On Wednesday, she’d gotten an email about a new story and she’d wondered, for a moment, what he might think about it. But then she’d thought of his sweet mouth telling her “I wanted to know if it was as good as my memory,” and she had decided that he likely wouldn’t care about her days.

Now, he gives her a thorough once-over, probably remembering, and Iris feels a flush of heat run through her that she knows has very little to do with the warm late September sun.

“Iris,” he says again, his voice a touch higher than normal. His companions look at each other, eyebrows raised.

“Iris,” the long-haired one repeats, laughter coloring his tone. “I’m Cisco.”

“And I’m Chester,” says the one with dark skin, and they both stand there looking at her, grinning like loons until Barry cuts in.

“Alright, stop being weird.”

They don’t. Barry rolls his eyes and pushes past them to stand in front of her. Even with the heels she’s wearing, she has to stretch her neck a little to look up at him.

“Hey,” he says, this time lower, a soft breeze on her skin.

“Hi,” she repeats, just as softly.

The sounds of the carnival don’t disappear so much as they become muted, such as if she were submerged in water or if there was a rushing in her ears, because everything becomes background noise save for the concentrated sound of his voice.

“You didn’t call,” he says to her.

“I—” she starts, but she’s got nothing to say, not anything that won’t make her sound needy or desperate.

“Hey Barry,” Cisco calls.

“Yeah?” Barry answers, but he doesn’t turn away from her. No, he’s looking at her still, assessing her almost. He’s trying to figure something out, she decides, or at least that’s how it seems, what with the way he stares so intently, blue-green eyes pouring into her, bringing up images of them staring up at her from between her thighs, bringing out impressions that feel like more than lust, like more than just two people who’ve only ever bared their bodies to each other.

“We’re gonna go to another tent,” Chester says. “Catch up with you later.”

“Alright,” is the reply, those eyes glittering like the sea in the afternoon sun, still fixed on her. There’s a slight frown to his mouth, and when he speaks again, she can’t tell if he’s reached his conclusion or not.

“Walk with me?”

She nods before she even thinks about it. “Sure.”

They start back down the path. The booths are in abundance this year; it’s a bigger festival than she’s seen before. For a while, they don’t talk. They walk side by side, arms brushing every so often, stopping at booths that catch their attention. For him is a booth with a variety of multi-piece puzzles, some featuring landscapes and gardens, others of the solar system or space. For her, it’s one selling notebooks, beautiful leather-bound journals. She stops, enthralled, picking up one in coral-colored leather with rose-gold edging.

“We can also engrave the name,” the sun-tanned woman with pale blonde hair behind the tent says. “Or you can order custom colors.”

Iris nods, murmurs, “these are really nice,” and continues flipping through the heavy cream paper in the coral notebook. These days, much of her writing gets done on her overused Macbook; it’s just easier that way. But when she writes, for herself—little anecdotes about her day, her feelings spelled out in poetry—she does so in notebooks like these.

“You’re a writer,” Barry wonders and it’s a statement as much as it’s a question.

“Yeah.” She looks up at him and nods. “I’m actually getting my master’s in journalism.”

She puts the journal down once she notes the $40 price tag and thanks the woman as they walk off, Iris looking back at the notebook with longing.

“I also run a blog,” she tells him, and the words tumbling out of her mouth are a shock.

“Really?” he looks at her in surprise. “What’s the site? Is it popular?”

It’s not like she’s embarrassed of her blog or anything, but it feels different, to tell people she knows about her work. Because it’s one thing for strangers to read what she types out in earnest, and in tears and in vulnerability, but it’s something altogether different for people she knows to do the same. They aren’t her stories, not actually, but they are always her words, always her emotions she puts into them, and it feels too, too telling somehow.

“It’s growing in popularity,” she tells him, because she’s the one who opened this can of worms. “It’s called What a Life You’ve Lived.”

He hums, like that means something to him, but before she can ask what, two kids come barreling through the aisle. Iris tries to step out of the way and she slips, her heel catching in a small crack in the asphalt. Her knees buckle, but before she can hit the ground, Barry’s arms are around her. One of his large hands holds onto her, pressed against the bare skin of her belly, and then she’s pressed fully against him.

It’s absurd how much she likes the feel of him—the slim but corded muscles in his arms, the apparent strength in his fingers; and she likes the smell of him too, the faint hint of his laundry detergent mixed with the heat of the sun mixed with the citrus of his cologne. It’s another moment (™), which doesn’t make sense because he’s only just caught her from falling. But he’s looking at her like there is more in her gaze besides the brown of her irises, the flutter of her lashes. It would make sense, she supposes, if looking at her also feels like this for him, like her heart beats in time with every breath he takes and like time slows or stalls or...like every minute here is infinitely longer and in these moments… in these moments, she thinks that the world must somehow tilt on its axis because she feels...i feel you comin' down like honey, do do you even know i'm alive?, do do you even know i, i...she feels…

“Are you alright?”

Barry’s voice is quiet, too quiet for the energy they’re surrounded by. And maybe she doesn’t even hear it as she does read the movement of his pink mouth.

“Yeah, I am.”

He straightens, then, and gives her a half-smile. “You know, Iris, if you wanted to fall all over me, you could have just called.”

He likely had been trying for levity, but it’s pointed, right there at the end. She steps away from him and he lets her, his fingers sliding along the small of her back until they’re no longer on her skin. It leaves her cold

(only that can’t be true, because it’s far too warm out)

and she watches as he stuffs his hands into his pockets.

“I was waiting on your call, Iris.”

They've moved into a corner where the direction of the festival booths turn right. Straight ahead of them is a 21+ section; it features a stage where performances will begin around 5 as well as a number of makeshift bar stations. There’s a similar set-up with kid-friendly activities on the other side of the festival. Barry’s friends are standing at one of the bar stations talking to two women, both with chestnut-brown skin and long kinky hair. Iris’s eyes shift to take in the rest of her surroundings, to the sound of people laughing and the couples holding hands and the families who seem elated to be together on a day like today.

When she turns back, Barry is patiently watching her, head tilted to the side, expression thoughtful, like it always tends to be.

“Have dinner with me tonight,” Barry suggests “We can walk around some more. And once we get sun-tired, I can take you to this spot that I like nearby and we can talk. Maybe about why you didn’t call.”

She licks her lips, pulls the bottom one between her teeth. She hedges, long enough to tell herself that this would be a foolish endeavor, that she should just say no, that he’s nice and cute and what harm would it do. But, really, when he asks, those cyan eyes gleaming and his cheeks faintly pink and his face so goddamn hopeful it almost makes her look away, she really has no other choice.

“Okay, sure.”

She doesn’t tell him why she doesn’t call.

What she does is tell him about her dad and how she’s always been in awe of him, of his grace and his strength and the lessons he’d taught her. She tells him about Wally, who’s brilliant and searching, trying to figure out his way (not unlike her, though this she doesn’t say). She tells him about Linda, her sister in all of the ways that count, who’s always with her, even when she isn’t. And when he asks, because of course he does, she tells him about her mother who was beautiful and kind, all the way until sickness took her away.

She tells him this because he tells her first, about a larger-than-life father whose proximity to wrong-doing bureaucrats had landed him in prison, and an easy-going mother whose life had ended because someone else had been desperate for the money in her purse.

They do indeed walk around ‘til they’re tired, until around 6. Then Barry takes her to a little American bistro where they pride themselves on grass-fed meats and homegrown vegetables. They devour burgers the size of their heads and a mountain of fries that deserve their own table. He stuffs her with food and a piece of pie after, and he asks her some questions. He wants to know her favorite color and the television show she’s currently watching and if she’s always wanted to be a writer: yellow and Bridgerton and only since her parents’ divorce, when she’d needed to know that hers was only a unique story—or maybe she had needed confirmation that it wasn’t. She wonders about his dream job, his favorite hobby, the one thing he wishes he could do: forensic scientist, which he is, amateur theater, and getting his dad out of prison. That opens up a space for more convolution than should be allowed on a first date, and so she asks him more about amateur theater.

After, he walks her back to where her car is parked past Golden’s. When they get there, he listens for the sound of her car alarm, and then he turns her around, pressing her back against her car door. He walks closer, a hand at her waist, the other reaching up to cup the back of her neck, thumb circling lightly around her throat.

“Thank you for dinner,” she whispers. “I had a really nice time.”

“Yeah?” His mouth ticks up, that half-smile that is somehow both charming and a little bit maddening. “Enough that I might get a kiss?”

She tilts her head as if in thought, even as she gives in to her desire to touch him too, reaching up to finger at the faint moles dotting her cheeks. She only barely nods her acquiescence when he closes whatever distance is left and kisses her. Iris is always surprised by how warm his mouth is, by how sweet he tastes. He tastes like the apple pie they had earlier, but also like early sunset coffee on cool fall mornings and like how slow sex in the middle of the night feels.

He’s gentle in some ways, his mouth moving slow against hers, his tongue licking into her mouth like he’s trying to find life inside of her. But he’s a little rough too, squeezing at her waist so he won’t fondle her in the middle of the street, tightening his hold on her throat, only a little, but enough that Iris begins to feel the action in the throb of her sex. They kiss, eyes closed, her own fingers scratching at the nape of his neck, her hips thrusting against his in time to the flick of his tongue across her bottom lip, until she feels the swell of his dick against her belly and her loud moan tears him away from her.

“Fuck Iris,” he all but growls, licking his lips as he looks her over, a little wrecked. She hadn’t even realized she was doing it, playing with the soft strands of his hair, until she notices it’s all messy, matching the state of his swollen mouth, his wrinkled skirt, the heavy dent in the center of his pants. She wonders what she looks like.

“Get in the car, baby.”

Wide-eyed at the endearment outside of sex, Iris does as he tells her to, sliding in and buckling up before he closes the door. When the purr of her engine starts, he motions for her to roll her window down. She does, waiting as he plants his elbow on top of the car, bending his lean frame down so that his face is level with her.

He smiles softly at her. “Go out with me next Sunday.”

She bites at her lip, if only to give herself another moment to breathe. Because this date would be moving beyond a two-night stand, beyond an impromptu date, far beyond kissing on the side of the street.

“What time on Sunday?”

“Early afternoon,” he says and leans in even closer. “I’ll pick you up.”

She nods before she can talk herself out of it, even if she knows that she should. Barry motions for her with a crook of one of his long fingers, and it makes her think of what’s been playing in her head, of down for the ride, down for the ride; you can take me anywhere, and when she comes to, he places a sweet kiss on her mouth.

“I’ll see you next week,” he says, pulling away slowly.

And then Iris watches him—his strong and assured walk, his compelling and commanding aura—until she can’t see him anymore.

Do do do down for the ride, down for the ride

You could take me anywhere

I hope you will, I hope you will, I hope you will

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN PROGRAMMERS

It's a todo list protocol, the new investor will take a chunk of the company being sold. These ideas didn't just seem small. Writing eval required inventing a notation representing Lisp functions as Lisp data, and such a notation was devised for the purposes of the paper with no thought that it would be used to express Lisp programs in practice. Isn't computer technology something that changes very rapidly? That doesn't mean people are getting angrier. After many email exchanges with Java hackers, I would say that. If we want to keep this option open, the best way to do this is through contacts. When fundraising is going well, investors are quick to sense it in your increased confidence. I am daily waiting for the line to collapse. Plus a company that would become big. Look in the mirror.

When we talk to them they seem grimly determined. It's a big advantage, when you're considering an idea like this is that when you have ideas, you'll be able to do in the new world we'll have in a few thousand, but those few thousand users. There's no real answer. How do you do? Similarly, since the most successful founders tend to work on ideas that few beside them realize are good. It was the usual story: he'd drop out if it looked like the startup was taking off. There must be things you need. People need to feel that what they create can't be stolen.

That is so much more distracting that I had to choose between the just-do-it model does have advantages. That's a known danger sign, like drinking alone. Cars aren't the worst thing you can say that they didn't have the courage of their convictions, and that email has to be more than a pretentious version of u r a fag.1 While the best way to get started in angel investing is to find a smoking gun, a passage in whatever you disagree with that you feel is mistaken, and then advertised this as a danger is that series A investors often make companies take more money than they have in the West. In America, if you want to buy us. So if you want to be on a larger scale than Youtube clips. One of the two founders was still in grad school. But that means each partner ends up being responsible for investing a lot of control over the rate at which you turn yours into a prepared mind, but you have less control over the rate at which you turn yours into a prepared mind. If learning breaks up into many little pieces, credentialling may separate from it. The other reason the number of big hits won't grow proportionately to the number of big hits is the number of temptations around you. If a startup succeeds, you get bad ones that sound dangerously plausible.

Where is the breakeven point? It would seem a misnomer if someone said they were very determined to do something, as Nike says, just do it.2 Why do you get so much email? Thousands of programmers were in a position where failure will be public and humiliating.3 We've done this five times now, and unlike other American companies, they're obsessed with good design. They're smart; they're working in a promising field; and they just cannot give up. For example, I'd tell myself I was only going to use the Internet twice a day. If you're in grad school, but it happens so often to varying degrees in large programming projects that there is an intersection—that there are good ideas that seem bad. To hundreds of thousands or in rare cases even millions.

One of my tricks for generating startup ideas is to ask what you wish someone would make for you? I must have been wasting. And in fact the two forces are related: the decreasing cost of starting a startup—becoming the sort of person, you have to be a good trick to look for things that seem to be closer to the Apple type than the Viaweb type. What about returns, though? The other reason the number of failures and yet leave you net ahead.4 If you work together with them on projects, you'll end up producing not just organic ideas, but organic ideas with organic founding teams—and that, empirically, is the best combination. Most people would agree it's more admirable to be good people, and so on.5

But if you talk to. What would it mean to disagree well? A lot of the reason is that the scariness of starting a startup in the old days, when Google was true to its own slightly aspy self. After 15 cycles of preparing startups for investors and then watching how they do, I can easily replace them. It may also be because if you start measuring something you start optimizing it, and they can choose those rare companies, like Google, or entering a market that looks small but which will turn out to be a large tumor.6 This works well in some fields and badly in others. Because you get a lot of them about halfway to Lisp.

And even if it weren't, compilers are the sort of person who has them. Most programmers wish they could start a startup, ask yourself: who wants this right now? Once they invest in a startup run by a couple of nobodies who are trying to squash them to keep their monopoly pricing. And if you're worried about threats to the survival of your company, don't look for a replacement for x. We take these for granted now, but only to have designed a new dialect of Lisp. 05, or 4. And so most of them happier. The way to get lots of referrals. Mostly because of the increasing number of early failures, the startup business of the future won't simply be the same shape.

Traditional journalism, for example, started angel investing about a year after me, and he was pretty much immediately as good as me at picking startups. Now everyone can, and we don't realize how lucky we are that it is briefer and more comprehensible than the description of a universal Turing machine. How do you do that you raise too many expectations. And only good people can ride the thermals if they hit them anyway. The pointy-haired boss right, for example. Another feeling that seems alarming but is in fact normal in a startup run by a couple grad students. The low points in a startup, ask yourself: who wants this right now? VCs are the way they want.7

Notes

Xkcd implemented a particularly clever one in a rice cooker and forget about it.

The expensive part of their upbringing in their graves at that. A scientist isn't committed to rejecting it. 5, they are like, and at least one of the techniques for stopping spam. Financing a startup to an employer, I had a big deal.

As willful people get serious about tax avoidance. Their opinion carries the same ones. At first I didn't need to be a big company CEOs in the trade press.

It also set off an extensive biography, and one different qualities that some of those you should seek outside advice, and only one restaurant left on the cover story of creation in the middle class values; it is still a dick move. But iTunes shows that they either have a competent startup lawyer handle the deal. This is everyday life in Palo Alto to have to track down.

And while it makes people feel good. I would take Abelson and Sussman's quote a number of words: I wouldn't bet against it either. All he's committed to believing in natural selection in the US in 2002 was 3.

Incidentally, Google may appear to be considered an angel round from good investors that they imitate even the best ways to avoid collisions in. And then of course.

Hypothesis: A company will either be a good product. Cook another 2 or 3 minutes, then they're not ready to invest at a discount of 30% means when it converts. Revenue will ultimately be hurting yourself, because investors already owned more than one who passes. As well as problems that have been five years ago they might have to give it additional funding at a discount to whatever the valuation of the decline in families eating together was due to the browser, the users' need has to convince limited partners.

[arimorningstar]

Sweat collected precariously at the end of my nose. I took care to wipe it on my forearm. It would not do to dirty my hands this way in the kitchen. It was hot, but it wasn't the reason I was sweating. My hands trembled as I plated the meal. I took a deep breath to steady myself before placing the carefully arranged platter on the tray. Training my features into impassivity I stepped through the kitchen's double doors into the darkened diner. Coming around the counter, my mind flailed for the details of the ritual that the producers briefed me on. I shook my head at the nonsense of this thing that was happening to me, but I knew better than to ignore their instructions.

"...when you turn the fifth corner-" they had said, cutting me off before I could begin to protest, "-yes we know the diner doesn't have five corners, but it'll be there and so will He."

"He". I could hear the capitalization of the word. Swallowing hard I pressed forward, making a counterclockwise sweep of the dining area. As I rounded the third corner of the restaurant I shook briefly and started sweating again before steeling myself once more. /This is ridiculous I'll turn the corner and there won't be anything there/, I thought to myself, but part of me, way in the back of my brain where fight or flight lives, wasn't convinced. I closed my eyes as I rounded to fourth corner and prepared myself for the climax of this obvious prank. There was a dizzying sensation as I opened my eyes and my stomach dropped as I laid eyes on a small alcove. There it was a fifth corner and just beyond I could see the back edge of a booth, that I absolutely knew with every fiber of my being, that hadn't been there and never had.

...But then, here it was... /Ok, ok... this is real and it is happening, now get ahold of yourself. You cannot show fear/ I took a deep breath once again and let it out slow and silent. Steadying my hands and putting on my most congenial face, I forged my way ahead. No turning back now.

They say the camera adds ten pounds, but I doubted the old idiom at the sight of the person seated before me. He was far larger than I believed him to be from the show. His back was to me and He was motionless save for His slow breathing... no, more of a slow, yet calm, seething. I came around the table flashing what I hoped to be a convincing smile as I reverently set the platter before him. I took the seat facing him and placed my hands, plams down, on the table in front of me taking care that my fingers were well away from the plate.

"What do you have for me today?" He spoke with a friendly exuberance that in no way matched his face.

"Well.." I began weakly with a raspy squeak and then cleared my throat, "well, here we have spicy lamb coconut curry sliders on a king's Hawaiian roll and my special twice cooked loaded potato wedges. He shifted forward and with a speed I could scarcely believe he had the sandwich, a quarter of it already in his mouth, curry sauce dripping down his fingers and the backs of his hands and into the nooks and crannies of the many rings he wore.

"So, tell me about these fries," he said around a mouth full of food. His voice still friendly but this was unmistakably a command.

A bit taken aback from the scene before me I, shakily, began again. "I-I uhhh, begin with a massive Idaho potato. I bake it and scoop out it's insides and mix it with my loaded potato fixings. I load the skins back up and chill them for an hour then slice them into wedges. Then I bread the potatoes in my savory bread crumb mixture and deep fry them. When they are golden brown I pull them out and add extra cheese to the melt and hit them with just a tiny bit of truffle oil, and it's all served with my signature sriracha fry sauce."

He seemed pleased at my offerings but at the mention of the sauce, His mass quivered with excitement. The producers hadn't steered me wrong, they had told me I'd better have a signature sauce in my back pocket if I wanted a homerun. "...and go big or go home. Big, bold flavors. The spicier the better! If you want subtle, this ain't that kinda show, " they had told me. I'd hoped they were right about that last bit, because there wasn't just sriracha in that sauce, I had managed to get my hands on a Carolina Reaper. The next few moments were crucial.

He was smiling now. A real smile, I think. I didn't see if the smile met his eyes because I'd been warned away from making eye contact. He daintily dipped the end of a massive fry into the sauce and dangled it above his mouth, lowering it in. He closed his mouth around it and began to chew. As he thoughtfully considered the flavor I found myself wondering, once again about the lack of cameras and the darkness. The producers had told me that they would get their footage and that I'd be "amazed what we can do in post" and said nothing more.

I was startled out of my revelry with a loud slap on the table. I held my composure but despite my best efforts I felt a warm trickle running down my leg. Just a small amount, no one would know but me. At least I hoped. If He could smell fear...

The open handed slap on the table gave way to pounding with a fist. "THAT. Sauce. Is. KICKIN'!" He proclaimed, punctuating each word with a pound of the fist. He took the extra large ramekin of sauce and threw it back like a shot, slamming it empty on the table. As he brought his head down, level with mine, I saw his eyes for the first time. He stared at me... no, through me, and His smile widened. It continued to widen revealing one after another brutal tooth until his head split at nearly a ninety degree angle. As his skull tilted back, without looking, he once again seized the sandwich and a fistful of fries, dropping them whole into his now gaping maw. He did not chew nor swallow. His head simply tilted back down onto his jaw, and I watched, helplessly as his eyes glazed over and faded to a opalescent cataract gray. I sat frozen, terrified of what may come next. Of this the producers had said nothing. I was unprepared.

Face blank, He began to intone in many voices, none of which were his own. "Once I was a dream... and in that dream I stood upon a mountain.... and in the valley below there was a town... and in this town were many inhabitants... there were many but not one had a face... I reached up to my own face to find it missing as well... startled by a soft snapping of a twig I found myself face to face with a great stag with a grand set of antlers with countless points. The stag met my gaze and I saw that it's face was my own. It spoke then to me in a terrible voice...((this town is your town, and you are it's mayor))

His eyes began to clear, still speaking in His many voices and he spoke,. now to me, "...and now your face can be added to the residents of my town". Again his face began to split in that terrible wide grin as His true voice issued from deep within him, lips unmoving, "but first it's time YOU got your desserts." His head now rocked back once again at that unnatural angle. With tears standing in my eyes I stood, unbidden, as if in a fugue. Somehow, to my absolute horror, I knew what He wanted. I knew what would come next. Now standing before him I could see into His great, gaping maw. I could see the downward facing barbs that would insure a one way trip as I reached out with my good hand. Even in this trance-like state I couldn't bear to touch the surface of the inside of that mouth. As if some primordial fear held me at bay. Like a crocodile wrangler, sure that if I made contact with His flesh, He would close on me like a deadly trap. That's when I felt it. His tongue rose to meet my outstretched palm, and I felt a powerful suction against my hand like shaking hands with a colossal squid. I felt tendrils rise from the tongue and wrap around my fingers as I was violently pulled in to my shoulder. My trance now broken I pulled desperately, flailing against an impossible strength. I could feel the barbs bite my skin and His teeth scraping the flesh of my shoulder. For some horrible moments I wept and wailed, senseless....

And then... nothing. I was alone in my kitchen. My arm hooked over my sink. Dazed, I stood. Was it a dream? All some panicked anxiety driven hallucination over being on television? But no... my arm was covered in scratches and some foul smelling mucus coating me from shoulder to finger tips. Which as it turned out, to my relief, to be durian puree. And in my hand was clutched an object... I pried my adrenaline clenched fingers open to reveal a single chrome ring with a skull wreathed in chrome flames. The ring only big enough to fit on one finger, and as I slid it on to my pinky I heard a whisper in my ear in His voice, "Welcome to Flavortown"

[franstastic-ideas]

Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt

Wraithtale AU - Sans and Gaster haven’t seen eye-to-eye for a while now; even small conversations between the two can feel like an uphill battle. When the existence of shadow monsters is revealed to the people of Ebott Town, Gaster forbids Sans to make any contact with them. To spite him, Sans decides that he’s going to become besties with a monster girl – Frisk. He probably could have handled his introduction better, though. Now she thinks you’re a creeper, Sans.

Word Count: 20,600

Warnings: Family drama, some mild body horror, repeating themes of poor self-worth and esteem, and one minor curse that's repeated twice.

It's been fine weather yesterday and today, so we watched the clouds.

It's weather that makes you lazy, and slowly closes your eyes.

It seems it's hard to remember "that" so easily now,

As we've been getting older ever since...

 ~~~~~~~~~~

 "Sans." A familiar stern-sounding voice said from behind him. "Where do you think you're going?"

"well crap…" Sans thought.

Things had not gone according to plan. If they had, he would have been out of the house and far away from the old man before he even knew he had left. But no, Gaster just had to be on top of his game today. Why hadn't he recalled that today was Gaster's day off? Now he remembered: it was because his father didn't bother telling him anything anymore, unless it was about another one of Sans's screw-ups. It seemed like he couldn't do anything right anymore in his father's eyes.

Home was supposed to be where the heart is, the one place in the world where you felt most comfortable and safe. But lately, this place didn't feel like home anymore to Sans.

Sans wanted to retort that it was none of his business, but he was reminded of his younger brother and his sincere and earnest wish for the two of them to get along again, so he held himself back, albeit begrudgingly.

He would try to make this work, if only for him.

"c'mon, sans. do it for paps…" He mentally urged himself to be civil.

"well hiya, pops! didn't see ya when i came through. sure is some great weather that we're having this morning!"

"ok, that sounded fake." Sans could have gagged at his clearly faux overly cheery tone; that didn't sound like him at all.

"Sans, it's eleven thirty. It's almost noon."

"but we're still in the a.m. hours, and if we were at grillby's right now he'd still be serving breakfast, so it's still morning in my books."

Now that sounded more like himself.

"Okay then, let's agree to disagree. Anyhow, you're avoiding my question and I want an answer: where are you going, Sans?"

"i was going outside."

"Yes, anyone with two brain cells could see that!" Gaster was losing his patience. "Allow me to rephrase my previous question – where are you going outside?"

"i dunno. i might go see alph and 'dyne, bro and i might work some jobs around town, i might go to grillby's for lunch…" Sans prattled off everything he thought Gaster wanted to hear and then finished it off with something he knew he didn't want to hear. "pretty much anywhere that isn't here."

Sans had to stop himself from stomping as he made his way towards the front door. When he reached for the doorknob, his father's voice halted him once more.

"…You really hate me that much, don't you?"

"i didn't say that. you know i didn't say anything like that, so quit trying to guilt trip me."

It had taken every ounce of Sans's willpower not to raise his voice; he had already failed Papyrus's request for them to be civil towards each other, and it made him feel ashamed even though his brother wasn't here to witness their latest spat. But he and Gaster had been at each other's throats even more than usual for the past few days and Sans needed to get out and clear his head before he said or did something he would regret, and Gaster himself was making this harder to do than necessary.

He didn't hate his father, but Sans didn't think he could ever love him as he once had.

"You're going out wearing that?" Gaster pointed at his blue hoodie.

"yeah, i am. i always do, don't i?"

"It's 90 degrees fahrenheit. You could suffer from heat stroke wearing that. Take it off."

"i'll drink water." Sans all but growled before swinging the door open and shutting it behind him with a slam.

Once he was out of the house and far enough away, he took a shuddering breath. He had grown so furious that if he had stayed even a second longer, he was sure he would have lost his temper. Nothing looked right to Sans when he was angry – colors and shapes blended together and blurred. He couldn't even speak coherently when his temper reached a certain point.

He hated feeling like this – he felt like some sort of wild animal. No, something that went beyond man or beast.

He remembered the breathing excercises Toriel had taught him.

In. One… Two… Three…

Out. Exhale. Slowly.

Repeat.

He did so until he felt the negative emotions leave his body enough to regain his thoughts, silently sending thanks to Toriel for her assistance even when she couldn't be there. He wouldn't have forgiven himself if someone had come across him and he snapped at them while in that state.

Sans looked down at the sleeves of his hoodie and he couldn't deny that it did feel too warm at times to wear it, especially now since it was summer. Before, he had been reluctant to part with it simply because it was his favorite article of clothing. But now… not wearing it wasn't an option. And Gaster knew that. And yet he had spoken as if he were exasperated with him wearing it constantly.

"no, I'm not taking it off, because i can't! and i wouldn't have to wear it all the time if it weren't for you!" He had wanted to scream.

But deep in his heart, he knew he shouldn't and couldn't place the blame on Gaster. As angry and hurt as he was with him, as much as their relationship had deteriorated, he couldn't blame his father for it.

It was an accident.

And it had been four months since the accident, but sometimes Sans could still feel the wounds inflicted upon him with the same intensity of pain as the day he received them.

 ~~~~~~~~~~

After calming down considerably, Sans had decided to go to Grillby's for lunch after all. He would probably do everything on the list of things he gave Gaster before he left, but there was also something he planned to do that he didn't mention – Gaster would blow his top if he discovered Sans's newest pasttime.

"Hey… look at that guy over there." Sans heard someone whisper not so discreetly behind him – an out of towner, most likely a tourist that dropped in Grillby's as a rest stop before continuing on their merry way, probably to the big public beach a few towns over.

"You mean the one wearing the coat in this weather?"

"Yeah, that one. He ordered, like, three burgers when he clearly doesn't need them. I mean, just look at him! What a fatass."

Sans flinched in his seat, but he chose to ignore them and continue eating.

His burger didn't taste as good as it did before…

"Hey, I think he heard you."

"Do you think I care? I'm just telling the truth. He can't get mad over that."

"Excuse me, ladies." A low, smooth masculine voice interjected – Grillby, the restaurant's owner and one of Sans's longtime friends, had chosen to leave his position behind the counter and intervene.

"Y-Yes?" The first woman stuttered, both out of being caught badmouthing another customer and out of shock from seeing Grillby's handsome face up close – some citizens of the town and smitten passerbys still wondered to this day why he settled on becoming a cook for his profession and not a male model instead.

"I do not condone such behavior within the walls of my establishment, nor outside them if I can help it." His tone was polite, yet firm. "If you cannot act like civilized well-mannered individuals, then please leave the premises and never return."

The lady seemed offended and her company embarrassed, trying to make herself look small in the booth where they were seated. The first woman dug into her purse and slammed some money onto the table then grabbed her friend roughly by the arm and dragged her out the door, muttering a colorful string of curses under her breath that Sans was surprised he hadn't called her out for.

"aw, grillbz, ya didn't have to do that."

"They were being rude. It's restaurant protocol to toss out discourteous and troublesome customers. And… they were speaking terribly about my friend."

"you can't throw out everybody that calls me a fatass, grillbz. it's bad for business."

"Language. And perhaps not, but I can certainly try." Grillby ran a hand through his shoulder length hair, the red and orange waves of locks almost resembling the flickering of flames when in motion. "And I don't care about business when it was none of theirs to be making unwarranted comments on others' appearances, in this case towards you. That's harrassment, Sans, and I don't know why or how you tolerate such actions on a regular basis."

"eh, you get used to it after a while of hearing it so much."

"But you shouldn't have to." Grillby sighed, knowing that this conversation was leading to nowhere, as per usual whenever they entered this subject matter.

Sans received large portions of unwarranted gossip, especially since he returned from college with no degree and refused to speak of why he was back early, deflecting any and all questions asked about the issue. Sans had left the town and was supposed to have majored in the field of science like his father, but he, like many others in Ebott Town that aimed for higher things, ended up coming back. Grillby was one of them as well – he had left town for culinary school, but he wasn't gone long before he set up his restaurant here. Whenever someone left Ebott supposedly for good only to come back, that person became the center of gossip for a while.

But aside from the rumors circulating around him about his sudden departure from college, Sans usually heard insulting remarks about his body or less than positive remarks on his mismatched eyes. Sans wasn't obese or even fat, but he could definitely be considered chubby. Even so, he was nowhere near as lazy as most thought him to be – he could run fast enough to keep up with more thin-bodied friends, and a great deal of what others thought was fat was in fact muscle that came from years of wrestling with Undyne. You don't get to play rough with Undyne like he had and not get some muscle mass out of it.

Then there was his bone structure – he had naturally thick bones. He had first found this incredibly odd and didn't believe Gaster or Toriel when he was told this until the latter had Sans take an x-ray and showed it to him. It seemed so unlikely to him because Gaster wasn't built like him, nor was Papyrus, and from the few dusty old pictures he could find of his mother, she wasn't thick bodied either. When he compared himself to them, he looked like an outsider, nothing like them at all aside from skin color and perhaps his eyes; one of them, anyway.

"i guess every family's got to have a member that's ugly as sin. might as well have been me."

If it had to be himself or Papyrus that was burdened with an undesirable appearance, he would choose himself every time. Papyrus was blessed with all their father's good looks, and Sans was thankful for that. He would never have to deal with what Sans did so often.

That wasn't to say that Sans always rolled over and took the verbal abuse. Definitely not; there were times when his patience was finally pushed to the limit and the beast within was unleashed. The terrified and shocked screaming of those who brought forth this reaction from him was priceless, their expressions clearly showing that they didn't expect him to be capable of running, especially not at such a remarkable speed, and towards them with fists flying.

It was especially bad for the unlucky souls that provoked his wrath when Undyne was also in the vicinity. She would drop everything she was currently doing and not ask any questions at all before happily joining in on the pummeling. The fiery redhead didn't need to ask anything – if Sans was beating the living snot out of somebody, then they definitely deserved it.

If Alphys was also there, she would record the entire thing and then edit soundtracks from shounen action anime over the scene to show it to them later. Mettaton had wanted to upload the videos she collected onto the internet, the fame monster, but Sans immediately denied him the right to do so despite his whining and begging.

Even so, sometimes during the ensuing chaos, if he was also present, Mettaton liked to play announcer, commenting on the big ball of violence that was unfolding around him with increasing enthusiasm.

With friends like Sans had, Grillby wondered why anybody bothered trying to bully Sans anymore. He had seen the compilation video Alphys had sent him – Sans by himself could be an absolute beast when pushed far enough, but Undyne too? And the additional humiliation of Mettaton's added commentery along with Alphys recording and holding cinematic proof of the harasser's resulting beatdown? Someone would have to be an idiot to pick on Sans at this point, and unfortunately, there were still times where he would be surrounded by idiots.

Poor Papyrus – he would always try to put an end to the fighting if he happened to witness or catch wind of it. He disapproved of some of his friends' eagerness to start throwing punches and kicks, believing that violence wasn't the answer. He tried to take the adult approach and pull everyone aside to speak with and scold them on their behavior like the mom friend he was. Of course, the ones who evoked Sans's wrath in the first place weren't the least bit sorry for what they had done; sorry for getting thoroughly thrashed maybe, but not for their continuous unkind remarks that led to the situation in the first place.

Sans and Alphys could be guilted somewhat easily, but Undyne and Mettaton were different. Sans didn't like the disgusting feeling that washed over him once the built-up aggression had faded and his desire for instant karmic retribution inflicted on those who had agonized him had been satisified, and Alphys simply didn't like the idea of Papyrus being upset with her for any reason ever. Undyne, however, would hold firm to her actions, believing that anyone who was subject to the combined forces of her's and Sans's dukes most certainly had it coming. And Mettaton was an enabler when it came to creating drama - he actively encouraged it if said action would bring about a situation or story that he found spicy.

Grillby felt sympathetic towards Papyrus, he really did.

As much as he loved Sans as a friend, he had to admit, out of the whole lot, Papyrus was almost always the only sane man, and that was saying something.

But he also couldn't lie and say that seeing Sans stand up for himself wasn't satisfying, if not incredibly alarming and heavy on brutality.

Sans wasn't a violent person in the slightest normally, but sometimes, a person can only be pushed for so long and too far before they've had enough, he thought…

Grillby studied Sans's face carefully for a few moments, causing the latter to eventually take notice.

"…what? have i got ketchup on my face?"

"No. I was only wondering… it may be none of my business, though I am concerned, but… did you and Dr. Gaster have another falling out this morning?"

"gee, grillbz. now that ain't fair." He shook his head, turning away from him. "ya read me like a book. …how could ya tell?"

"You seem troubled. Your eyebrows were knitted together almost the entire time since you walked in and your posture is tense." He answered, his gaze softening. "Do you need to stay at my place for a while until things settle?"

"nah, i appreciate the gesture, grillbz, but it's fine, really."

"Then would you like some company and perhaps we could discuss the matter? I can go on break and we could talk-"

"nah, nah, you don't gotta do that. 'm ok, don't worry. 'specially not over me." Sans stood up and began pushing him towards the kitchen. "now go on, grillby; you gotta get back to work and i told tori pap and i'd help paint her roof. off ya go, now."

"Sans!"

"bye, grillbz! see ya later! money's on the counter!" He shoved his friend into the kitchen then shut the door, breathing a heavy sigh.

This wasn't the first time Grillby had offered to open up his home to Sans, and sometimes he took him up on it when things in the Gaster household were especially strained, but Sans didn't want to trouble his friend and his own household when it wasn't necessary. There were occasions where it truly had been best for both himself and Gaster's mental wellbeing for the two to distance themselves from one another, but despite his minor meltdown earlier, this morning had not been one of those times of urgency.

Grillby's younger sister Celosia was also in middle school, and that was a busy time for a kid her age. He always felt guilty for intruding into their home during the nights where she had school the next day and probably had homework that was difficult to concentrate on with his presence invading her personal space. Now that it was summer, she might want to invite over some of her friends for the evening or have a sleepover, and Celosia couldn't do that with total peace of mind when Sans was in the room next door having an emotional breakdown and unpacking it all on her big brother.

So it was for the best that he not drag his friend into his personal problems anymore.

 ~~~~~~~~~~

"Now Sans, you should be more careful climbing up those steps!" He heard Toriel warn him from below.

Papyrus had already perched himself up on the roof, helping steady the ladder from up there while Toriel held it from the bottom. Even so, both were chronic worriers and were afraid of him slipping and falling.

"i got it, no need to panic. see, 'm already over halfway there- woah!" As soon as those words left his mouth, he nearly missed a step and teetered backwards, the ladder beginning to wobble slightly.

"Sans!" Both yelled in panic, their grip on the ladder tightening.

"'m fine! probably shouldn't have spoke so soon. better wait 'til i've made it up all the way to start bragging."

"You can still fall from up there if you aren't careful, young man." Toriel reminded him with a cross glare before letting out a fretful sigh. "I'm beginning to regret this. One or both of you could get killed."

"don't sweat it, tori. we've climbed bigger heights than this, haven't we paps?"

"YES, THAT IS TRUE, BUT LET'S NOT TOSS ASIDE OUR OWN WELL BEINGS FOR THE THRILL OF THE CLIMB. AND LET US NOT FORGET THAT THIS IS A VERTICAL ASCENSION AND NOT A GRADUALLY RISING HORIZONTAL ONE!"

"I assume the two of you are speaking of climbing Mount Ebott." Toriel said, turning a glance towards the near impossibly tall snowcapped mountain that loomed over them, the town's namesake and centerpiece. "While climbing up a ladder is different than climbing up a mountain path by a wide margin, both still have their dangers."

Once Sans was close enough for him to reach, Papyrus grabbed him under the arms and hoisted him up onto the roof with little to no effort – his brother was so strong and muscular, it was no wonder the town's kids thought he was great and wanted to be like him when they grew up.

He couldn't blame them at all – Papyrus was just the coolest.

Once he was safely up on the roof, seated next to his brother, he reached for a brush and can of paint and both began to work. Over half of the surface was already painted green and the unpainted sections purple. Toriel and Asgore were going to finish the job themselves, but Asgore was called into the town office unexpectedly for reasons she was sure to hear about later. He didn't want her to finish painting it alone, fearing what should happen if she were to stumble up there by herself, so she called in the brothers for help.

Papyrus was accepting offers for odd jobs around town until he found what he wanted to do in life, and now that Sans wasn't in college anymore, he had to make money for himself somehow. Gaster earned a good income, but Papyrus had wanted to start providing for himself though they lived under the same roof. And Sans wasn't going to allow himself to depend on his father for anything anymore since the accident, so he began to pitch in and pay the bills as well, though less out of a desire to prove himself a mature and responsible adult and more as a gesture to spite the old man.

It was a surprisingly effective countermove on Sans's part – he felt that Gaster inwardly resented him for getting kicked out of college and therefore barring himself from a well-paying job. By adding his own earnings into the house's collective funds, he was effectively telling his father without words that he could indeed support himself just fine without relying on his financial aid, as it was originally Gaster's idea to push Sans towards the college path when he first entered his junior year of high school.

There were days where Sans was actually happy to have gotten expelled, but mostly, he wished he hadn't, even if it was Gaster's desire for him to get a degree and eventually join him in his scientific endeavors. Sans had once loved science and taking part in the experiments he did with his father, but now invention and formulas only brought a bitter taste to his mouth when it once had brought joy.

That's why Sans so often grew so unmeasurably upset with him – despite all that's happened, his father still dropped everything else in his life and ran to science with open arms, even though it ironically costed Sans his college degree, his mental health, their previous family dynamic, and even Sans's entire future.

It wasn't the accident itself that hurt Sans to this day – it was Gaster's reaction to it.

Following this was when Sans began to spend so much time away from the house. If Gaster wanted to spend all his time with his work, then that's exactly what Sans would give him. Gaster had already made his choice, now he'd have to live with it, Sans thought.

The worst part about losing his opportunity for earning the college degree though was that now Sans had nothing to show for himself when people insulted him. Before, where there was a person that shamed him for his appearance, another would fearfully whisper that he was the son of the famed scientist Gaster and he was sure to follow in his footsteps, then the offending person would respectfully back off. During those times, he had felt so proud to be his son.

But now he was just Gaster's failure drop-out son.

Just another comeback kid for the entire town to talk about behind his back.

"the only reason the both of you are so bent out of shape over me going up a ladder is because i'm so fat you think i'm gonna break it."

His inner self-loathing was slipping out through his speech, he realized too late. He told Grillby before he was used to it, but he guessed now that what the woman at the bar had said affected him more than he previously thought. You could only hear something negative about you said to your face for so long before beginning to believe it yourself, even when you knew it wasn't true. And though he was normally easygoing, even Sans wasn't immune to bearing issues of self-esteem.

And Toriel wasn't about to stand for it.

"Sans, we've been over this – you're not fat, you're just-"

"big-boned. i know, i get it." He replied, his response coming off as more snippy than he intended it to and his brush strokes consequently more messy with his soured attitude, which he quickly tried to ammend.

He had been shown his own x-rays plenty of times to know that what she was saying was the truth, but it actually only made him feel worse. Losing weight was something he could do – changing his entire bone structure wasn't.

"Has someone said something to you recently about this?" She inquired, arms crossed over her chest and eyes narrowing as she studied him as closely as possible from where she was standing.

Sans could deny all he wanted, but Toriel's suspicions were already confirmed without him saying a word. There was no use in smudging the facts or concealing anything from her when she was like this – Ultimate Mega Mom Mode, Undyne called it. Toriel was Asriel's mother, but she was also a mother to everyone that knew her. She filled that maternal role that was absent from his and Papyrus's home nearly since they first moved here as children.

And when one of Mama Toriel's children were mistreated, she wanted to know the details first, the who then, and the why later.

Sans murmured something, but it was lost on the wind.

"What was that dear? I didn't quite catch that?" She asked with a heavy frown and a lowered brow.

"…a lady at grillby's called me 'fatass'."

"who was she?" She immediately questioned.

"an out of towner. she's long gone by now. 'sides, grillby ran her off."

"That Grillby is a good boy. He hasn't let his sudden popularity change his core values in the slightest." She smiled, apparently happy with his answer.

Before graduating high school, Grillby had been bullied for having an appearance that was considered 'nerdy'. He was required to wear glasses, and the large round frames he wore then didn't flatter his facial structure. Not only that, but the way he dressed, the way he spoke just screamed 'nerd' to his tormentors. But when he came back to Ebott Town, everyone that knew him, including the ones who had so often went out of their way to make his days miserable, had discovered that he had changed during his absence.

Grillby is now regarded as a chick-magnet, and though he has since forgiven those that used to agonize him, inside, he hasn't, and never will forget what they had done to shatter his self-confidence in the past.

He had graduated when Sans entered his sophmore year, and though the former had changed a great deal physically since he left town, Sans had internally felt a sense of relief when he learned his friend remained the same on the inside upon returning.

"yeah, grillbz is a great guy." Sans readily agreed.

"WAIT A MINUTE – YOU ATE AT GRILLBY'S?" Before he could answer, Papyrus continued. "THEN YOU DIDN'T EAT THE BREAKFAST I MADE FOR YOU THIS MORNING?!"

"no, i didn't. 'm sorry i didn't when you went to the trouble to make it. i just… didn't have time to."

Papyrus always woke up at six 'o clock in the morning, made breakfast for himself, Sans and their father, then once he was finished, he went out for a morning jog that lasted for at least an hour to start off his day. Papyrus was the designated cook of the household, making sure that everyone was fed. They always ate whatever Papyrus served them, but they never ate meals together at the table anymore, always separately.

Sans usually took his breakfast with him if he couldn't eat it in serenity at home, but he had ran into Gaster before he could grab his plate and the ensuing confrontation had made him forget it.

"It's wonderful that someone stands up for you when you won't for yourself." Toriel's voice brought them both back on topic, thankfully – otherwise Sans would have had to explain to his brother just why he didn't have time to eat his lovingly crafted breakfast, and he wasn't looking forward to it.

"tori, it doesn't bother me."

"EVEN IF IT DOESN'T, SANS, IT'S STILL WRONG! HAD THAT LADY NOT LEFT EBOTT AS QUICKLY AS SHE HAD, I WOULD HAVE BEEN FORCED TO SPEAK WITH HER ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF EXHIBITING SUCH POOR AND DISRESPECTFUL MANNERS IN A RELAXED PUBLIC SETTING, GRILLBY OR NO GRILLBY."

"Papyrus is absolutely right, dear. I'm afraid your feelings towards such inexcusable behavior doesn't matter – if you heard the exact same thing happened to your brother or even me, even though either of us said we wouldn't let what was said bother us, how would you feel?"

"i'd still be furious."

"So why should it be any different for us when concerning you?" He then peered over the edge of the roof to find her smiling sweetly at him.

Sans wanted to argue that he was a different case compared to them, but they would only argue and try to make him see otherwise.

So he decided changing the subject entirely and steering the attention away from himself was the best course of action to take.

"so, green, huh?" He asked after a lengthy pause, looking at the paint.

Toriel knew he was trying to create a diversion, but she allowed him peace and answered his question.

"Yes. When Asgore and I married and bought this house, he said he wanted the roof to be my favorite color, so it was painted purple. Now, so many years later, the old paint was chipping away and fading, so the two of us decided it should be painted Asriel's favorite color – green."

"is asriel happy to be out of school for the summer?"

"He's so overjoyed he barely knows what to do with himself or all the free time he has on his hands now. He's out with his friends for the afternoon; Grillby's sister Celosia and… oh, that blonde boy with the spiked hairstyle. I always forget his name and it makes me feel so ashamed because he's Asriel's friend and he's been invited over here so many times that I should know! Oh, but that hair of his… Asriel has been wanting his own cut like that and I've been trying to dissuade him from it. If that's what he really wants, I won't try to stop him anymore, but I don't know if Asriel really wants that specific style or if he's trying to follow some sort of trend."

"if you're wanting to know about fashion trends, i'm the last person you need to be asking." Sans laughed more to himself. "i just roll out of bed like this – if it's stuff about clothes or hair that's popular, it's matt you want to talk to, or, well, mettaton. that's what he's going by now since he got in over his head with that band he started up."

"Didn't you tell me once young Matthew, or rather Mettaton, renamed himself after an angel?" Sans and Papyrus both gave positive confirmations to her question. "But wouldn't that be 'Metatron' instead?"

"yeah. he read it wrong." Sans snickered. "so now he's stuck with a typo for a name."

"WELL, I STILL THINK IT SOUNDS COOL! IT JUST BREATHES STARDOM, JUST LIKE HE SAID!" Papyrus huffed, sending his brother a pointed glare, to which he childishly stuck his tongue out at him.

Papyrus then flicked his brush at him, splattering green flecks of paint on his face. Sans was about to wipe it off on his sleeve, but before he could, a white handkerchief was tossed in his direction. His brother was always prepared – the definite mom that oversaw their group of friends when Toriel couldn't.

"thanks, bro."

"IT WAS NOTHING. YOU WEAR THAT HOODIE SO MUCH THAT, IF IT GOT PAINT ON IT, YOU PROBABLY STILL WOULDN'T WASH IT UNTIL I MADE YOU."

"according to alphys, the main character of any story has to have some kind of wardrobe or piece of clothing that identifies them – this hoodie is mine, just like yours is your red scarf."

"WELL, I SUPPOSE YOU'RE RIGHT…" He hesitantly agreed, toying with the somewhat tattered ends of his scarf. He then gasped. "WAIT – YOU THINK THAT I COULD BE A MAIN CHARACTER? ME?!"

"of course, bro. who wouldn't want to watch a show where you were the star?"

"AWW, SANS! THAT'S THE SWEETEST THING YOU'VE SAID ALL WEEK! GET OVER HERE." Deciding that Sans was too slow, Papyrus shuffled over on his knees, throwing his arms around him and pulling him into a tight hug.

Sans happily returned the gesture – he's had an awful day so far, but a hug from his bro always made a horrible day better.

Papyrus suddenly recoiled and stuck out his tongue with a loud 'bleh'. "EW! YOU SMELL LIKE GRILLBY'S! I'VE CHANGED MY MIND - GET AWAY! GET AWAY!"

"aw, come on, bro. don't be like that." Sans grinned widely, holding out his arms and shuffling towards him while Papyrus moved in the opposite direction.

"KEEP YOUR DISTANCE FROM ME, CONSUMER OF GREASE!"

"but i love you so much, bro. c'mon, a little elbow grease is good for ya."

"NYEH! THAT PUN WAS HORRIBLE! JUST TERRIBLE! ONE OF YOUR WORST ONES YET!"

"you sure? 'cause i'm starting to think you might be a bit fried and prejudiced against my jokes."

"EUGH, NO! WHAT HAVE I STARTED?"

"nothin'. just one whopper of a pun, that's all."

"SAAAANS! IF YOU WON'T STOP YOUR PUGNACIOUS PUNNING, I'LL JUST HAVE TO PUT AN END TO IT MYSELF!"

"go ahead, hit me with your best shallot."

"NYEEEEEEEEH!" Papyrus lunged for him, attempting to cover his mouth to block the endless stream of bad puns from escaping.

"Boys!" Toriel called from down below, the pair hovering a bit too close to the edge for her liking. "I can understand the sudden need to initiate a brotherly round of roughhousing as much as the next person, but my nerves would be far more at ease if the two of you would wait until you were standing on solid ground to do so, and instead put your current focus on staying a-chive while up there."

"MRS. DREEMUR, HOW COULD YOU?! I THOUGHT WE HAD AN UNDERSTANDING!" Papyrus fake wept dramatically, but backed away a safe distance from the edge as requested of him.

"yeah, paps. better move back some before we make a mis-steak that'll cost us our lives."

"YOU SAY THAT, BUT YOU'RE ACTING LIKE YOU WANT ME TO THROW YOU OFF THIS ROOF!"

He reached over to snatch at Sans again, but before he could, he slipped and lost his balance, falling directly on his brother with a loud cry of alarm. Once again they heard the worried shouts of Toriel below.

"Sans and Papyrus Gaster!" Oh no, she had brought out the last name. "If one of you stumbles off that roof and the impact doesn't kill you, then so help me, I'll strangle the both of you myself!"

"yes, ma'am! sorry, ma'am! won't happen again!"

"YES, MA'AM! SORRY, MA'AM! WON'T HAPPEN AGAIN!"

Their tomfoolery immediately ceased and the two continued diligently painting the roof as they had before.

 ~~~~~~~~~~

"I'm so sorry for shouting at you like that, dears." She apologized once the two were finished and on safe solid ground. "But I don't know what I would have done if anything had happened to either of you."

She stole a glance at Sans's covered arms and said quietly, her voice dropping down to a whisper that only he could hear. "We've already suffered one tragedy. One is plenty enough."

He broke eye contact with her to wordlessly tug at his sleeves.

"Do they still hurt? Have you been using the balm the doctors prescribed to you?"

"yeah, i've been using it. and, no, it doesn't hurt." But while subjected under her caring gaze, he found that he couldn't lie to her. "…not as much as before."

She gave him relieved smile, happy that he decided to be honest with her. Before Papyrus could get too curious as to what they were talking about, Toriel decided to produce a distraction.

"I made lemonade earlier, and I think you boys have earned it after a job well done."

A short while later, the three were sipping on their drinks under the shade of her expansive front porch. During the evening, she liked to come out with Asgore and watch the fireflies dance about. She looked again towards the massive mountain.

"Sans? Papyrus? You mentioned earlier that the two of you occasionally climb Mount Ebott?"

The two of them nodded.

"Have you seen anything peculiar of interest?"

"…like what?"

"SANS GOES UP THERE MORE THAN I DO, SO IF HE HASN'T SEEN WHAT YOU'RE VAGUELY REFERRING TO, THEN I CERTAINLY HAVEN'T."

"Oh, just, you know… anything unusual."

"…ooohhh. you're talking about the wraiths, aren't you?"

"Well, not especially. I really did mean anything odd at all."

"well, if we're talking about the wraiths, than no, haven't seen 'em."

"I SAW A WILD GOOSE THE OTHER DAY. IT HONKED AT ME AND CHASED ME FOR A REALLY LONG TIME! I THREW A PIECE OF LETTUCE FROM A SANDWICH I HAD PACKED FOR LUNCH AT IT AND ITS ATTENTION WAS SUCCESSFULLY DIVERTED! ANOTHER SPECTACULAR VICTORY FOR THE GREAT PAPYRUS!"

"crazy bird." Sans shook his head, taking another sip of his glass before asking, "why'd you wanna know if we saw anything?"

"Because lately, a significant increase in sightings have been reported. Of the wraiths, I mean. I thought that if you two were walking the mountain trail, you may have seen something."

"nope. we haven't seen anything like that, have we, paps?"

"NO. JUST THE OCCASIONAL UNREASONABLY ANGRY BIRD."

"I see. I suppose that being pursued by a territorial goose is enough of a sight."

"do you believe in them, tori? i mean, they're just supposed to be old town legends, right?"

"I honestly don't know how to answer that question. It's true that people have lived in this town for centuries, and the existence of these shadow creatures hasn't been proven. They're even supposed to be highly skilled practitioners of magic. Magic! It all sounds so fantastical, it would be logical to believe it as pure fiction. And yet, so many have seen something up in the mountains that resembles those monsters of lore throughout the years, and their accounts all being so similar to one another with very little deviation." She breathed a relaxed sigh, sinking further into her rocking chair. "I guess I don't have a clear answer. But I do know that there are some things that science or logical reasoning just can't explain away, and I suppose the wraiths are just one of them. We may never know, and perhaps it's for the best it stay that way."

"FOR THE BEST? WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT?"

"because think about it, paps. if someone proved that the mountain had monsters on it, what do you think would happen?" Sans didn't give his brother a chance to answer before continuing. "they'd either be captured for experiments or killed on the spot. that's how it always goes in the books and movies, and art imitates life and life imitates art."

"…MAYBE THINGS WOULDN'T HAPPEN THAT WAY IF THEY WERE DISCOVERED BY THE RIGHT PERSON! IF THEY EXISTED, THAT IS."

"maybe. but that person'd have to be something special. most would kill something like that without a shred of hesitation."

He decided not to mention the more malevolent legends surrounding the wraiths – the ones where, if they caught you, they would eat you from the inside out and then inhabit your corpse in order to impersonate you.

After reading about those tales, Sans wondered how many innocent lives were taken when, many years ago, villagers were said to have burned anyone alive who went into the mountains and returned acting strange, believing their body had been abducted by a wraith.

As a child, his bullies had always told him he would never have to worry about a wraith wanting to steal his body, because you had to have a life in the first place for them to take, and his face was far too ugly for even a monster to desire.

"What about you, Sans? Do you believe the wraiths exist?" Toriel asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"i dunno, to be honest. i guess if enough evidence piles up, i will, but right now they still sound too much like something adults made up to make sure their kids stayed off the mountain so they didn't get eaten by bears or something." He took another sip of lemonade and chuckled. "now muffet, she definitely thinks they're real. that girl should have went on to be a cryptozoologist instead of working in her family's bakery, but she does make a mean blueberry muffin. she's gone up in the mountains for years and sometimes she comes back saying she saw something."

"Do you believe her?"

"i believe she believes she saw something, if that counts. muffet wants to see something so bad that maybe her eyes might be playing tricks on her."

"I think one's attitude towards the legends might have a lot to do with it. There are even some that travel to Mount Ebott with the sole purpose of trying to capture one on film. Almost all of them leave disappointed, but i have seen on the television some nights before in the past where one will get a photograph or video of a shadow that could be perceived as a wraith. Although, picture editing softwares exist now, don't they? So it all could be faked. This old lady doesn't know anything about modern technology - I still don't understand those me-mes you kids send me sometimes on the cellphone."

"it's pronounced 'memes', tori!" Sans actually laughed, almost spitting out his drink.

"Is that right? I've been pronouncing it wrong this entire time."

Suddenly Papyrus's cellphone went off, the familiar lyrics of Caravan Palace's 'Black Betty' filling the once relatively quiet space around them. He quickly picked it up and squinted at the screen.

"IT'S A TEXT MESSAGE. FROM UNDYNE! SHE TURNED ON HER LOCATION…? …SHE SAYS IT'S AN EMERGENCY! AND SHE NEEDS ME OVER THERE RIGHT AWAY!"

"You had better run along then and see what she wants." Toriel chuckled.

"AND I WILL! THANK YOU, MRS. DREEMUR, FOR THE DELICIOUS LEMONADE! I MUST BE OFF, FOR I AM NEEDED ELSEWHERE!"

With that, Papyrus jumped up and performed a backflip off the porch railing, landing perfectly on his feet an impressive distance away and sped off in the direction of the location Undyne had told him she was at, leaving trails of dust behind him in his wake.

"Will you be joining him? Wherever it is he's going?" Toriel asked Sans, who had moved from where he had been lounging in her hammock to sit up.

"maybe. i dunno. with undyne, an emergency can either mean anything from 'this guy is trying to rob somebody, let's pulverize him into oblivion' to 'hey, come watch me suplex this entire boulder'."

"I see. In that case, if you aren't leaving, then might I talk to you for a bit?"

"…what about, tori?"

"There were a few things that I wanted to ask you earlier, but Papyrus was here, so…" She took a deep breath, then let out a long sigh, her gaze both remorseful and sympathetic towards him for what was about to be said. "It's about you and Dr. Gaster."

"i figured as much." Sans replied flatly, then thought, "of course it had to be about that. i really don't wanna talk about this right now…"

While he had occasionally unloaded some of his familial issues onto Grillby when he just couldn't keep his inner turmoil locked away anymore and Grillby was persistent enough in getting him to open up, Toriel was his primary listening ear. The difference between the two was that when Grillby managed to convince Sans to air out his feelings, he gave as vague details as possible. He knew his friend only wanted to help; he would listen to his complaints without judging him and wouldn't spread what he heard around town, but there were just some things that occurred between him and Gaster that Sans didn't feel comfortable repeating.

Toriel, however, was a different case. She was easy to talk to, her gentle maternal aura unconsciously coaxing him into freely speaking what was on his mind on more occasions than he would have liked. She too wanted to offer her assistance in some way, even if all she could do was listen to his troubles, but he didn't want to bother her or anyone else with what he saw as trivial and petty matters. What went on between him and Gaster was solely their problem; not Grillby's, not Toriel's, not Undyne's, Alphys's, Muffet's, or even his brother's, San's believed. He and Gaster had gotten themselves into this current sad state of affairs themselves, and if their relationship was meant to be repaired at all, then that was something that could only be done by themselves.

Unfortunately, Toriel had become involved in the mess the two had created before it even truly began. When Gaster had taken him to the hospital that fateful day, it was her that treated Sans's wounds – she, his father, a few select staff at the hospital, and Sans himself were the only ones who presently bore knowledge of what his bare arms looked like. After the accident, he chose to conceal them from view to avoid any scrutinizing stares, even as the temperatures gradually began to climb. Not even Papyrus had seen the horrifying mess of burnt flesh that lied underneath the cloth.

He didn't want Papyrus to see that – Sans himself didn't want to see his arms whenever he was forced to take off his hoodie in order to apply medicine on the wounds, bathe, or change clothes.

"I didn't want to bring this topic up for discussion with Papyrus present. I know he means well, and please do not take offense for me saying this, but I feel as though he tries much too hard to force change."

Sans's sole reply was a low hum of acknowledgement; Toriel was right – he meant well, but Papyrus was rather pushy when it came to helping people with their problems, and Sans himself was no exception to this. Papyrus was a good listener, but he always wanted to help fix the problem after being informed – he was a person who wanted to see action being put towards the issue at hand with his own eyes and he expected immediate results.

His brother just wanted to help him in the only way he knew how. More so than anyone else, even Toriel with her infinite motherly doting. But Sans just couldn't let him see what he was trying so hard to hide from the eyes of the rest of the world, his physical and mental scars, even if it did mean eventually upsetting Papyrus.

Sans did everything he could for him, whether Papyrus was aware of it or not. Whether that meant anonymously slipping an extra twenty dollar bill into his wallet when he was a few bucks short of buying something he really wanted at the time or staying up until three in the morning listening to him prattle on for literal hours about his latest crush.

Sans would do almost anything for Papyrus. Nearly anything to preserve that smile that always brightened his day, no matter how terrible.

There was only one thing he could think of that he couldn't allow Papyrus.

He could pretend that everything between him and Gaster was fine, he could put on a fabricated smile and spoon feed him fake reassurances that things were getting better when they weren't, but the one thing Sans couldn't do for his brother was let him know just how broken up he really was, inside and out.

And while Toriel didn't approve of his evasive maneuvers against what she saw as procedures and methods that were supposed to be aiding him towards the process of healing mentally, she understood all too well why Sans would want to hide his serious personal affairs from Papyrus.

"One day you will have to let him in, Sans; let him know what's wrong and how you truly feel. You know that, don't you?"

"mmmnn…" His answer came in the form of an unenthusiastic and noncommital grunt.

"But I can't force the two of you to talk; it wouldn't be right, just as it isn't right for him to try to force you and Dr. Gaster to spend an extended duration of time with each other alone."

"i think maybe paps thinks that what's been going on between me and him can be solved with one talk and a hug, and then everything will go back to how it used to be."

"That's an unrealistic expectation. A familial dispute such as this could take months, perhaps even years to properly mend. And that's alright. Because healing of any kind takes time depending on the size and severity of the wound. Just like your own, Sans."

"…i lied to you earlier, tori." His voice had dropped to a whisper. "they still hurt. they still hurt a lot."

She took his hands in hers, giving them a squeeze. "I know you don't believe me when I tell you this, but it will get better." Her palms moved up to his lower arms, almost causing him to flinch from the contact. "The pain you're feeling right now will gradually fade."

He couldn't meet her eyes. "…but they won't ever go away, will they?"

This was a question that he had already asked Toriel before, one which he already knew the answer to since long before now.

But it didn't stop him from hoping, that just maybe it was possible that-

She frowned, fighting the sting of tears that threatened to form in her eyes as she gingerly traced over his sleeves. "No. Not in the manner that you wish them to. We… did the best that we could at the time, Sans. I'm so sorry we couldn't do more for you…"

"i know that. and i'm grateful for all you've done to make this bearable. it's just… one of those things that won't get any better, no matter how much time passes." He shrugged, trying to save face by acting unaffected. "maybe the same could be said about me and gaster."

"Maybe not and maybe so. But mutual effort is needed in order to bring about a change."

"i am trying, tori!" He suddenly snapped, taking a step back. "papyrus keeps telling me over and over, 'TRY THIS TIME' and i always do! but just about every single time we try to have what should be a short and civil conversation with each other, one of us ends up saying something to make the other fly off the handle! the both of us should just back off then, but no, it just gets worse and worse because neither of us will shut up! and what gets it all started in the first place is almost always something that's so stupid to get so heated up over when it's all said and done and we're thinking back on it later. and it's just getting worse and worse as the days pass by!" Sans suddenly slumped where he stood, his volume dropping to a defeated mutter. "sooner or later, we're going to stop coming to the realization that what we were even shouting at each other over was stupid to begin with. …why do we argue so much about things that are completely insignificant and have nothing to do with the actual problem? gaster's mad at me for getting kicked out of college and ruining my own life and i'm mad at him because… his crazy experiments got me hurt and he went right back to wanting me to work with him in the lab again like nothing happened after."

Toriel didn't say anything for a while. Sans had wandered over to her garden bench and sat down, his clenched hands grabbing fistfuls of his hair as he stared without emotion at the ground. He had completely shut down for the moment. It had been a while since he had done this, but she knew what to do. She found it was best to let him come back on his own terms, let him sort out the chaos in his head.

She would stand by and wait quietly until then.

He didn't stay like this for long. He never did. She had been counting down the minutes on her watch. Four minutes of silence from him when finally, he murmured,

"gaster loves his work more than he ever loved me. …i know he loves us, but he loves his work more. paps and i just can't compete with it anymore."

"What makes you believe that he loves his work more?"

"aside from the fact that he tried to get me back in the lab so soon after i'd been released from the hospital? i… started noticing things after i came home for good."

"What sort of things?" Toriel questioned cautiously.

While Sans had spoken of his continuous quarrels with Gaster whenever she could persuade him to talk, he had never once told her about anything pertaining to details he had picked up from the doctor following the origin of their disagreements. She was breaching new territory.

"back when i first started working with gaster, we spent a lot of time together. in and out of the lab. it was fun then, but at the time, i didn't really think about how papyrus felt about it. he never got good grades in the science classes in school, you know, but i did. i think me and alph got the highest scores out of everyone. but lately i've started to wonder if papyrus actually felt left out. because gaster was so focused on me, he didn't pay all that much attention to him anymore. …and i didn't either. not as much as i did before. when i stopped going to college and after we got into that fight, the really big one that kind of started all these smaller ones between us, he stopped talking to me too for a while. it was like i didn't even exist, like i was a ghost in my own house."

Toriel had to bite her tongue to keep from saying anything.

She truly did want for there to be eventually, one day in the future, a happy resolution to the Gaster family conflict. However, while she tried to remain neutral to both parties on the outside, on the inside, she leaned more towards favoring Sans's point of view on the things that went on in the household. She knew that the doctor loved both his sons and was trying just as much as Sans was to make things right, in his own misguided way, but Toriel couldn't stop herself from feeling a bit cross towards the doctor and placing the blame on him for this entire debacle.

Gaster was a man of logic and reason. Displaying and successfully evoking the more tender emotions residing in his heart came difficult to him. Sans could repeat to her every single word said by Gaster in each one of their arguments they had in these past few months and she would probably find herself capable of translating just what it was he had actually wanted to say to his son, but it wouldn't mean a thing if it came from her mouth and not his.

As much as she wanted to go off on Gaster herself on some instances after seeing Sans so miserable, Toriel knew the last thing she needed to do was encourage the two to emotionally stray further away from each other by widening the gap between them with her own biased opinions and personal feelings on the matter.

"Sans, you have nothing to feel guilty for, if that's what this is about." She rested a hand on his shoulder, sitting down next to him. "I know you well enough to believe that you truly have been putting in your best effort to make amends with Dr. Gaster. And sometimes simply that is enough."

"isn't there anything i can do to make it better though, tori? i'm so sick of fighting with him."

She thought for a few moments, then shook her head with a resigned sigh. "I'm afraid I don't, dear. I've never seen a case quite like yours and the doctor's… Asgore and I have had disagreements before, everyone does, but they never lasted long and we always grew closer afterward. During those unpleasant times, when our feelings of anger burned bright, we kept our distance from each other until we were ready to talk again. So perhaps what you are doing now is best."

"but what if he wants to talk and i'm not ready to?"

"Then tell him. Just say, 'I'm sorry, but I don't feel ready to talk yet'. If he continues to pursue the subject, then he is the one in the wrong at that point and you have right to feel upset. …I must say, I think you're handling this far more maturely than most would in your situation, Sans."

"you really think that?" He lifted his head to look up at her with wide eyes filled with disbelief.

"I wouldn't have said so if I thought differently." She let out a light chuckle, gently ruffling his hair. "You recognize when you've done wrong and feel remorseful, seeking to amend your past mistakes and readily admit to when you were wrong once the fire has died. Not many people are like that, instead choosing to stick fast to their hateful words that were said in a moment of anger out of pride. You even had the courage to walk away instead of staying to fight, even though some would unrightfully claim that doing so was cowardly. there is absolutely no shame to be found in walking away from an unpleasant situation."

"thanks tori, i… actually feel a little better now." His own words surprised him, his chest truly did feel a bit lighter than it did before. "but how did you know gaster and I got into it earlier?"

She bit her lip. "Because I received a text message from Asgore. Dr. Gaster appeared at town hall suddenly and the two have apparently been talking with each other ever since. Gorey told me from the sound of things, it seemed like the both of you had another argument."

"oh, that explains it then." He said after a beat, a sense of relief falling over him – he had thought someone in town passed by their house and somehow eavesdropped, then decided to gossip and it reached Toriel's ears.

"You know, they've known each other for years. They've been the best of friends since even before Asgore and I married. You of course weren't born at the time, but the doctor was Asgore's best man at our wedding and Asgore at his. Asgore still talks about their wedding, your father's and Miriam's."

"…gaster never told me about any of that stuff."

Sans and Papyrus didn't know anything about their mother. Gaster never spoke of her and she had died when both brothers were small, Papyrus being two years old and Sans five. Try as he might, Sans couldn't remember a thing about her. The only evidence of her ever existing were some old photos Sans had managed to smuggle out from under his father's nose, the ring she had once wore now stowed away in its box inside their house, and Sans's left eye.

Both brothers even existing was proof enough of their mother's existence; her hair color which they shared was the color of snow, but white hair existed in both their maternal and paternal family trees. Sans's left eye, that startling shade of light blue, came solely from her. There were times when Gaster wouldn't even look him in the face because of his heterochromia, and when Sans was furious, sometimes it was as if Miriam was haunting him from beyond the grave through her oldest son.

Sans took out his phone from his hoodie pocket. "i had better go see what it is that undyne wanted, just in case it really was something important. 'm sorry for suddenly blowing up on you like that, tori."

"It's alright, Sans. I know you didn't mean to and you're carrying a great amount of stress on your shoulders, but if it helped you to feel better by even the slightest amount, I would stand here and permit you to shout whatever was on your mind at me for as long as your voice would allow."

"you're too good for this sin-filled world, tori." He spoke after a pause, having raised his arms up about halfway, wanting to request a hug from her but too shy to ask despite the fact that this woman practically raised him and loved giving and receiving physical gestures of affection.

Thankfully, years of knowing him had made it easy for her to read his body language. She swiftly swept him into a comforting embrace and whispered,

"I know that this world is filled with unspeakable horrors, but I've found that life is also abundant with many indescribable blessings. Please, no matter how difficult life may become for you, never forget them."

Once again, she was right, he could admit to himself. He may have an emotionally distant father and an unattractive body, but he had been gifted a group of friends that actually cared for him and the best brother than anyone could ever ask for. If he remembered those things, the bad points of his day became more livable.

After she released him and he her, she slipped a small wad of cash into his pocket. "For the roof – you're helping to keep the household up now and the bills aren't getting any cheaper."

"thanks, tori. …for everything."

"Anytime, dear. Now run along and see what Undyne wants before she hunts you down. You wouldn't want that to happen, would you?"

Sans winced, remembering the last time he had dared to brush her off.

Piledrivers. Lots and lots of piledrivers.

He turned towards the direction Papyrus had taken off and his phone buzzed; Undyne had sent him her location. Good, it seemed as though he wasn't in hot water with her, otherwise she would have just ignored his text and hunted him down, as Toriel said.

She and Papyrus were down at the riverbed, but she gave no details about just what it was they were doing down there and why she had texted Papyrus saying there was an emergency.

Oh well. He supposed that he would find out when he got there.

 ~~~~~~~~~~

"SANS! Do you have ANY idea how late you are?!" Undyne barked as soon as he came into her line of view.

"i didn't know i was supposed to show up…?" He offered with a small shrug. "you sent the text to my bro, not me, so how was i supposed to know you wanted me here too? i just thought i should show up since paps said you told him it was an emergency."

"Oh, don't give me that crap!" She stomped over and jabbed a finger into his chest. "and it is an emergency! Haven't you heard the news?!"

"uh…?"

"The town police has been talking about it ALL week – the shadow monster sightings up in the mountains have been CRAZY lately! Chief of police said that if somebody could catch one and bring it back to the station, there'd be something good in it for them! Do you have ANY idea what that means, Sans?!"

"uh-"

"IT MEANS UNDYNE MIGHT FINALLY GET TO BE AN OFFICIAL MEMBER OF THE FORCE IF SHE CAN PULL IT OFF, WHICH I BELIEVE SHE CAN!" Papyrus answered for her, causing her to whip her head in his direction.

"PAPYRUS!" Undyne yelled, jumping over to him and grabbing him into a head lock. "Don't interrupt me when I was just about to tell him myself! …But thanks for the confidence – really appreciate it!"

"IF YOU APPRECIATE ME, YOU WOULD STOP NOOGIE-ING ME!" He nearly squealed, trying to break out of her hold.

She quickly released him and bounced back to Sans.

"I've called up Alphys and Muffet for help in planning this whole thing out. Alphys is gonna help me track one down and Muffet probably knows more about those things than everybody else in town put together! They're late too, but they're supposed to be here any minute now. The only reason why I haven't noogie-d you into the next dimension is because you happened to show up before they did, so consider yourself lucky, punk!"

"then, uh, what's mettaton here to do?"

"Mettaton? I didn't invite hi-" She noticed his gaze straying to over her shoulder and turned around, then exclaimed, "Oh HECK no!"

"Oh heck YES, darlings!" Mettaton retorted, stepping forward with Alphys and Muffet following behind.

"Why are you here?!"

"Well that certainly is a rude way to greet an old friend!" He huffed, sticking his nose into the air and crossing his arms. He cracked open one eye, "But since you're so curious, I was over at Alphys's house when you texted – she's helping Blooky and I with our band, you know. Audio equipment, technical stuff and such and all that jazz. When I heard that you wanted her, Sans, Papyrus, and even Muffet to come here, but not me, well… I simply wouldn't stand for it! …So here I am, in the flesh. Uninvited, but fashionably late, as per usual."

"…And just what is 'even Muffet' supposed to mean?" Muffet stared at him with narrowed eyelids, a sweet smile on her face but the danger that lied under her expression was evident to all. "I'm beginning to believe that I am unwelcome among this circle of friends. Perhaps I should just go and-"

"No, wait!" Undyne shouted, bowling over Mettaton to reach her. "Don't leave! He's the one that wasn't invited, not you! And I really need your help with this, Muffet."

"Alright, since my company means so much to you, I suppose I can stay for a while…" She giggled, her mood doing a complete one-eighty degree shift.

"Okay, now that everyone is here, plus the unexpected and unwanted addition of Mettaton-"

"Hey! What did I ever do to you?!"

"Let's get down to business." Undyne walked over to a tree stump by the water's edge and raised one foot to rest on it. "…So, how are we going to pull this off?"

"Y-You mean you called all of us here and you have no idea what you're doing?" Alphys asked, gobsmacked.

"Well DUH, if I had any idea on what I'm supposed to do, I wouldn't have bothered dragging you all to this spot." Undyne looked at them as if they were the ones wasting her time. "Mount Ebott is HUGE. Like… REDONKULOUSLY huge. Finding one of those shadow monsters would be like finding a needle in a haystack, if the haystack was the size of… I dunno, a whale or something? Anyway, I hate to admit this, I mean REALLY hate it, but I can't just go tearing up there looking for something that's lived there its whole life and knows the place better than I ever will and all the places it can hide. It's a mission bound for failure if I go up there unprepared – I gotta be smart about this. So, that's where all of you come in."

"…uh, undyne?"

"Yes, Sans? What is your question?"

"you do realize that you're talking about catching a creature that isn't supposed to exist, right? i didn't know you believed in them."

"I didn't until the guys at the station started talking about them! It STILL sounded completely bogus to me until all these supposed to be really credible eyewitnesses started showing up at the station and Gerson and the rest started passing around the pictures those people turned in. I saw 'em with my own two eyeballs and they looked real, not like those computer edited photos they show sometimes on the TV. I even heard they might be sending them to Dr. Gaster so he can test if they're fakes or not."

"gaster wouldn't bother doing something like that – he'd just look and say they were fakes without even paying attention to what's on 'em."

"He will if these reports get to be a big enough thing around the town!" Undyne shot back with a maniacal grin. "If the doctor gives the word that they're the real deal, then the hunt is on. And I'm not talking about myself – there'll be people from all over the country flocking here to the mountain. I've got to do this now before that happens and this great little window of opportunity that's opened up just for me is suddenly slammed shut in my face. …SO HELP A GAL OUT, WOULD'JYA?!"

She received mixed levels of enthusiasm from the replies of the small group she had gathered, but their hesitation was apparently enough of an answer for her – and the answer she had picked up from them was yes.

Sans sighed to himself,

"this is going to be just like the time she tried capturing santa claus when we were kids…"

"Poor Mr. Dreemur… He never saw the net coming." Alphys added solemnly.

"Alright, so listen up you pack of weenies! But not you though, Alphys. You're a peach and we're all glad that you're here." Undyne couldn't stop from showing her favoritism among present company. "So, back to what I was saying before Mr. Negative Nancy threw me off track – how are we gonna do this?"

Everyone was silent for a while.

"howz about we all go to lunch to think it over and talk about this again sometime after?"

"It's almost evening, you lazy clod!"

"Undyne, dearie, you're going about this all wrong." Muffet's smooth voice interjected.

"How so?" Undyne turned to her and crossed her arms impatiently.

"If you really wish to find a wraith, then you need to know exactly what it is you're walking into. They're clever beings, Undyne. They're adept masters at hiding and keeping their presence hidden from the world. It won't be like capturing a pesky possum eating your pet cat's food or a raccoon rummaging through your garbage and strewing it everywhere each night. This outbreak of sightings is merely a game of peek-a-boo to them, most likely. If you go up there looking to capture one of them, all that awaits you is disappointment."

"You're a fine one to talk, Muffet! You go up in those mountains several times a week looking for 'em and you've been doing it practically since you learned to walk!"

"Yes, dearie, all of what you just said is true. However, my goal isn't to apprehend one like a common criminal." Muffet's smile turned eerie. "The wraiths are simply impossible to catch, that's what I've come to believe. If you do encounter one and attempt to take one into custody, your face may just get ripped off for trying. You've heard the more… malevolent tales concerning them, haven't you?"

"Is that supposed to scare me?" Undyne scoffed. "So the wraiths can kill me. So could another human. So could a dog. So could a very dedicated duck!"

Papyrus nodded readily at her last point.

"The wraiths aren't that special in that department. What DOES make them special to me is that they're gonna help me finally secure a place in the police force!"

Undyne had known since before she ever entered kindergarten that she wanted to be a police officer when she grew up. She wanted to take down bad guys and arrest them, punish them and keep them away from the rest of society for the good people's sake and peace of mind. But when she graduated high school and tried to apply for a position she was immediately rejected. Apparently her frequent brawls with the local youth and her firey personality had branded Undyne as a troublemaker in the eyes of the force, everybody except Gerson.

He sympathized with her, so he talked with the rest of his coworkers and after much debate, they finally gave her a job – sort of. She was relegated to the position of 'mountain patrol', a fake position given to her out of pity where she circled the road that stretched around the base of Mount Ebott to search for anyone that may be breaking the law. She had received her own uniform and a walkie talkie like the others, but it was obvious that she wasn't considered one of them by the rest of the officers.

Undyne had done her job with as much passion as she could muster at first, thinking that if they saw her hard at work then a promotion might be on her horizon in the future. She had caught several individuals before that had tried to make the mountain their own personal dumpster through illegal dumping. She had apprehended one man who had committed several robberies and hid his stolen goods somewhere in that area. She had even prevented a very drunk man from kidnapping a woman who had been walking by herself that night and witnessed him trying to drag her up onto the mountain to do heaven knows what with her.

And despite all that, everyone on the force with the exception of Gerson still looked down on her.

That's why Undyne felt she had to prove herself to them by doing the impossible: capturing one of the elusive wraiths that roamed the mountain territories.

"Muffet does actually have a point, kind of." Alphys timidly spoke, causing the attention to be drawn to her. "Monsters or no monsters, it's still i-incredibly dangerous up there! Like you said, Mount Ebott is enormous, and how many times have you actually gone up there?"

Undyne looked down at her hand and began counting on her fingers. "…None."

"See? S-So maybe before you go up there, maybe it would be better to… become more familiar with the geography? Muffet, does the library have a map of the mountain?"

"I've got something better than the library…" Undyne whipped her head around, tossed a piece of blank paper then a pencil and pointed with a shout, "Sans! Draw me a map of Mount Ebott!"

He looked at the sheet and pencil resting at his feet and back at her with an owlish gaze.

"are you insane? i can't draw a map of the entire mountain!"

"I thought that Papyrus said you and him have been up there a lot in the past few months!"

"yeah, we have, but not enough that we've memorized everything up there! i've been up there more than paps and I haven't even made it one third of the way to the top! if mount ebott was an english mastiff, then we're the equivalent of a bunch of fleas jumping on its back! i don't think there's a person that's ever lived in this town or anywhere on earth that knows everything there is to know about that place and its geography. there is no complete map of ebott because i've looked. this whole idea of your is dangerous and crazy, undyne."

He was expecting her to blow up, but instead she inhaled through her nose and placed her forehead against her palm.

"You don't think I know that? But this may be the best chance I'll ever have of getting some respect from the force."

"Is getting respect from people that never believed in you worth possibly losing your life?"

Surprisingly, it was Mettaton that had asked her this question, and he for once looked serious.

"Undyne, if you truly want to hunt down one of those monsters, then I support your ambitions entirely, but you're still heading into something risky. You haven't planned this at all, you just assembled the team and hoped we'd have what you wanted to hear. And as for earning respect? Who needs it! Everyone told me I was making a mistake when I changed my name and formed my band, and they still do, but I'm happier now than I ever was before. I'm sure that fame will come our way any day now, but we're preparing ourselves for it every day. You, however, despite having told us that you wanted to play it smart, were planning on tearing off up there immediately after this little meeting of your is adjourned, correct?"

Undyne wouldn't look at him, but she gave a short nod.

"That's what I thought. I know this feels like a race against time to secure a place where you are comfortable belonging, but you need patience if you truly want to pull this off. Do some research, look at some maps, even if they are incomplete because some knowledge is better than none, and then you can go into the mountains with nets and fists ablaze to bag yourself a shadow monster!"

"…Wow, Mettaton." Alphys stared at him with wide eyes. "T-That's the most wise I think I've ever heard you speak! Usually you're encouraging us to make bad decisions for the sake of drama."

"You're right. He is acting strangely out of character…" Undyne pondered aloud, then shouted, "You're not Mettaton at all! You're actually one of the wraiths, aren't you?!"

Everyone knew she was joking, but the sudden increase in volume of her voice still made Mettaton jump. Before he could respond to her accusation, Undyne grabbed him around the ankle and swung him over her shoulder.

"Undyne, put me down this instant!"

"Nuh uh, you're coming down to the station with me. You're under arrest."

Everyone started laughing and snickering at his vain attempts to release himself from her hold, Alphys and Muffet having taken out their phones to record the scene.

"Undyne, please! If you're going to insist on carrying me, at least make it a princess carry! I deserve that much!" He loudly whined.

"Now that sounds like something Mettaton would actually say…" Undyne halted her steps, pretending to be in deep thought. "Huh, maybe the wraith hasn't completely taken over yet…"

"well, you know what the legends say to do, right?" Sans grinned, walking towards the two at a leisurely pace. "when the wraith's taken over, you burn it. when there's still hope left for the poor victim, you drown it out."

"…Don't. You. Dare." Mettaton hissed.

"Grab his legs, Sans."

"you got it, boss."

Together, the two heaved the frantically wiggling Mettaton closer to the slowly moving water. He began to screech when they started swinging him back and forth.

"SHOULD WE DO SOMETHING…?" Papyrus questioned the two girls, feeling as though he should perhaps say something.

"No, dear. This is just a… how you say, a jape." Muffet giggled.

"I'm not saying anything because this should be enough payback for him erasing my downloaded Mew Mew Kissy Cutie episodes on that disc I left laying out just so he could use it."

Papyrus didn't think Alphys was the type to partake in petty revenge, but the more you know, he thought.

"Sans! Undyne! Stop this madness immediately! My fabulous hairstyle will be ruined! And my makeup will run!"

"One…! Two…! Three…!" "one…! two…! three…!"

At the count of three, they both tossed him into the river, screeching and yowling like a cat when the cool water hit his body. Undyne and Sans both gave a whoop and cheered, laughing as they bumped fists before it turned into an elaborate and handsy handshake that ended in the two playfully wrestling each other on the ground.

"PILE DRIVER!"

"ow, undyne!"

"HEADLOCK!"

"nooooo! c'mon 'dyne, is this any way to treat your partner in crime?"

"Sorry, Sans, but war takes no prisoners. You already know what's next. NOOGIE NOOGIE NOOGIE NOOGIE!"

"agh! your knuckles are sharp!"

Mettaton spluttered and was thrashing in the water, trying to flounder towards shore but failing miserably.

"Come on, Mettaton, stop being so dramatic." Undyne rolled her eyes, her arm still wrapped around Sans's neck. "You're not drowning, the water only comes up to your collarbones if you're standing up."

He immediately ceased his splashing and did as she instructed, standing on his own feet to find that what she said was correct.

"…So it seems." Was all that he said, his voice small and clearly embarrassed.

"c'mon. i'll help ya out." Sans crouched down and offered his hand.

Mettaton smiled to himself, reaching over to clasp his outstretched palm. But before he could pull Sans into the water, Sans grabbed him and flung him over his shoulder then onto the grass on his back.

"…I dislike you with great intensity." He narrowed his eyes at Sans.

"i give you points for trying though, pal."

"Okay, so I will hand it to Mettaton that he's made a good point. I don't need to rush into this blindly and risk ending up a future episode of 'Missing'." Undyne began.

"And you had to throw my poor self into the water to admit that?" He sniffed, wringing out his soaking wet hair.

"Yes. It was entirely necessary, Mettaton. To banish the wraith from your body." She nodded sagely. "Anyway, I've decided that what I'm going to do is, I'm gonna find all the maps that I can of Ebott and, ugh, study them, bleh. And Muffet, if you could lend me some of your books, I'd really appreciate it."

To no one's surprise, she retrieved a large and thick book with an ominous featureless figure on the cover out of her little black spider plushie purse that she always carried (how did she even fit it in there?) and handed it to Undyne.

"You're wasting your time, dearie."

"You'll be saying that when I've caught what you've been looking for for literal years in just a matter of days." Undyne shot back good naturedly.

"Undyne! Patience? Future episode of 'Missing'? Remember?!" Mettaton piped up again – despite being completely drenched by the two, he still cared very much about her.

"I got it, I got it. But once I'm done doing the boring part, I'm not leaving a single stone uncovered until I find a wraith! Thank you all for coming here today, but I've gotta get started! Later, dorks!"

Undyne then sped off in the direction of the town's library, or librarby, as the mispelled sign out in front stated, without another word of goodbye.

"She calls us all here suddenly and she's gone just as quickly." Mettaton remarked with a defeated sigh. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to blow dry my hair now."

"you aren't mad at us, are you?"

"…No. I'm not. It was all in good fun, after all." He then smirked. "But I'll be getting you both back for it in the future, darling. Just you wait and see."

"bring it on, matt."

"I'm afraid I have no clue who you're speaking of." He all but sang, turning around and giving everyone else a wave goodbye. "Ta-tah, darlings."

"WHAT ABOUT YOU, ALPHYS?" Papyrus asked, "HOW WILL YOU BE SPENDING YOUR EVENING?"

"I-I think I'll catch up with Undyne. If she really does want to do this, then I think I should help however I can and k-keep an eye on her so she doesn't do anything s-sudden or rash, like Mettaton said."

"OKAY! HAVE FUN!"

Once Alphys had left, it was just Sans and Papyrus with Muffet.

"i hope you aren't expecting that book to be in one piece when you get it back." Sans told her. "i dunno if you noticed, but she can be kind of rough handling things."

"Oh, that's perfectly alright, dearie. If she damages my book, I'm certain that she can reimburse me to purchase another copy."

Both brothers looked at each other with a worried frown – that book had not looked cheap.

"It's a lovely evening, isn't it, boys?" She gestured to skies above that were beginning to be tinted with orange. "A perfect evening for a mountain walk, wouldn't you agree?"

"is that what you're gonna do?"

"I'm afraid not. Mummy needs me to make a birthday cake for a customer that's coming by to pick it up tomorrow. But maybe I'll see you on the mountain trail sometime. Ciao."

"WELL, SANS, EVERYONE ELSE IS GONE WITH THE NIGHT VASTLY APPROACHING! WE SHOULD PROBABLY BOTH HEAD HOME NOW AND-"

"actually, i think i'll go do what muffet suggested and take a walk." He quickly replied, not wanting to see Gaster just yet.

"WELL, ALRIGHT…" Papyrus looked like someone had told him his dog died. "JUST DON'T STAY OUT TOO LATE, ALRIGHT? AND KEEP YOUR CELL PHONE ON YOU AT ALL TIMES! IF THE BATTERY IS RUNNING LOW, THEN COME HOME IMMEDIATELY!"

"will do. i'll see ya later, paps."

He started walking in the direction of the mountain, its magnificent shadow stretching over him and the rest of the town.

Wraiths.

He still wasn't convinced they exist.

 ~~~~~~~~~~

"Hello, dearie."

Sans nearly jumped out of his skin. He had said so earlier that Muffet should have been a cryptozoologist, but he also believed that she would make an excellent assassin with how she could quietly creep up on unsuspecting people.

"muffet! i thought you left."

"I did. And now I'm back, but only momentarily."

They were standing at the base of Mount Ebott directly in front of one of the dirt roads that led into the mountain.

"so, uh, what brings you here?"

"I wanted to show you something interesting." She smiled in a way that made him feel somewhat uncomfortable.

She moved towards a thick group of bushes and motioned for him to follow.

"…you're not going to show me a dead body, are you?"

"Don't be ridiculous, dearie. I said something interesting, did I not?"

She then moved aside the shrubbery to reveal a small statue that he had never seen before. It looked almost like a vase, hourglass shaped, and it seemed ancient, probably hundreds of years old.

"Now look inside it."

He did as instructed and found a large stone inside, colored red, yellow and orange, and was carved in the shape of the sun. It was resting on a pedestal of some sort and large silver prongs held the stone firmly in place to ensure it wasn't easily removed.

"I bet you had no idea this was here, did you?"

"no, i didn't. …so what is it?"

"This monument was constructed by the people of Ebott Village many centuries ago. There are more of them spread out at the base of the mountain. They were made to keep the villagers safe here, and the wraiths confined up there."

"how are these things supposed to keep them up there?"

"That stone inside the totem is a sunstone. According to gemology it's believed that they can harness the power of the sun. The combined power of these stones create a ring of protection that wards off the shadow monsters; think of it as being almost like an electric fence."

"i'd never heard that before." He rubbed his chin, leaning closer to the statue. "i can't remember ever seeing one of these things before, and they're all over the town?"

"Just around the base, but yes."

"i wonder why i never noticed them."

"They've become well hidden throughout the years. The legends began to fade out, nature's madness took over, and they were gradually forgotten. I suppose if they were well known, some might try to steal the sunstones inside. Of course, according to the old documents on them I acquired, they say misfortune falls on those that would attempt to take the stones."

Sans wasn't superstitious in the slightest, but he couldn't help but think aloud. "something still doesn't make sense, though – the myths say that wraiths would steal the bodies of humans to impersonate them. if the statues make some kind of invisible magic ring that they can't cross, why go to the trouble of stealing a body if they're stuck on the mountain?"

"Oh, Sans. Don't you see? That's precisely why they would need the body of a human." At his perplexed expression, she continued with a wry smile. "The bodies of a wraith, made of shadows, would incinerate if they made contact with the sunstone ring. So, they capture a human that wandered into their territory, hollow out the body, then liquify their own body and crawl inside so they can safely bypass the ring."

Sans felt his stomach churn at the graphic mental images she had instilled in his brain. "that's disgusting, muffet."

"Heehee! You should see your face – so sour right now." She giggled. "Well, I just thought I'd share that with you. Have fun up there, oh, and don't get eaten!"

"you're full of it, muffet!" He called out to her as she began walking away with that light girlish chuckle of hers.

"Is that any way to talk to your amicable ex-girlfriend?" She laughed.

"you're not my ex-girlfriend! it was one date, that gaster set up, and we both agreed it wasn't a real date because neither of us agreed to it."

Even though they had left the 'date' as better friends than before and Sans didn't hold any romantic feelings for her then or presently, Muffet had told him at the time that he wasn't her type. He understood entirely, she wasn't obligated to feel that way towards him even though the two did get along swimmingly when she wasn't being morbid. But he couldn't help but wonder if his looks had anything to do with her decision.

"You know I'm just teasing you, dearie. No need to get so hot under the collar. And speaking of hot, aren't you steaming by now in that hoodie?"

"a little, but it's nothing i can't handle." He didn't mind Muffet asking about his hoodie – she wouldn't look down on him for wearing it out of season because she too had a peculiar fashion sense.

"Suit yourself, dearie. Bye-bye~"

After Muffet had left, for real this time, he began his ascension up the mountain trail. The mountain didn't have any roads built on it, just traversable paths created by nature. As far as he knew, nobody lived anywhere up there despite how expansive it was. It had remained the same for centuries, devoid of modern civilization and a sanctuary for Ebott's wildlife.

The dirt roads only stretched so far before grass overtook them. From that point onward was where the mountain began looking like several different worlds had been melded together. Sans had only seen a handful of the mysterious sights Mount Ebott had to offer, but what he had seen made it sometimes worth the hike up there: a lake with waterfalls in sizes both great and small, a field of flowers that stretched on and on with no end in sight, thick forests that were so dark it was almost impossible to see your own hand in front of your face…

And that was just what he had seen with his own eyes one-third of the way up the mountain. He hadn't explored the sides of the mountain or the areas higher up, like the snowcapped top or the caves rich with odd stones and minerals. He supposed he could spend every day on this mountain for the rest of his life and still not know everything about the place. Perhaps if he continued visiting and going a little further each time, he would be the first to create a complete map of Ebott.

Sans didn't come here to chase shadows or cause trouble for the environment like most did when they passed by - he came here because it was quiet, save for the songs of birds and the wailing of the cicadas. Being surrounded by the peaceful scenery and focused on the thrill of the climb took his mind off of the problems he had left behind at home.

When he was younger, he had wanted to explore the mountain with his group of friends. They were labelled far too young for such a dangerous activity, and were consequently restricted to playing near the river bed and the small wooded areas spread around town; everyone pretended they were at Mount Ebott, but now he was living out his childhood self's dreams of adventure here in the present.

Even so, he missed those days dearly.

His younger self never imagined that everything in his life would have turned out the way it did. When he was younger, he thought his body looked the way it did because of baby fat and he would eventually grow out of it after he reached puberty. Instead, he only grew more bulky. When he was younger, he thought that he and his father would be working together as equals to revitalize the town that was considered dead-end by not only outsiders, but its own citizens. Instead, he was injured by one of his father's own creations and ruined his one chance to get an education from a prestigious academy thus estranging himself from his father, and the townspeople still wanted to leave and would complain whenever they did and came back.

Sans hadn't been in a rush to grow up when he was a child, but he thought that it would have been more fun than what it turned out to be.

He was the one out of the group that was supposed to soar above them all in terms of success, and he had sunken below them all.

Papyrus was doing the exact same thing he was doing; completing odd jobs around town, but he was only doing that to gain experience and had plenty of drive. Undyne was bettering herself every day and was aiming for a higher position in Ebott's police force even if her methods of attempting to do so were insane in his eyes. Alphys had more or less taken his place as Gaster's first hand assistant in the lab after he quit having anything to do with science – he didn't hold it against Alphys at all even though she apologized constantly for it even in the present, he was the one that chose to quit. Even Mettaton had a better future planned for himself than him; yes, he was a bit in over his head with his dream of instantly achieving fame and becoming a star, but Sans had to admit that he was creative and talented in some aspects. He might not achieve prime stardom like he wanted, but Sans wouldn't be surprised if he did aquire a little slice of recognition in the future.

Everyone else seemed to know exactly what it was they were doing with their lives.

He didn't have a clue anymore.

There existed legends of people that climbed the mountain only to disappear without a trace. Paranormal explanations or not, there still existed records of persons that were last seen heading towards the mountain then never heard from again. That was many years ago though, and nobody has been reported missing in this town in over a hundred years.

But, if he were to disappear, Sans wondered, would he be missed…?

He rapidly shook his head, immediately banishing the intrusive thought. Of course he would be missed; Toriel would grieve for him if something ever happened to cut his life short, his friends would mourn, and Papyrus… Papyrus would never be the same without him. If Sans died, he would be taking a piece of his brother with him.

He didn't know why such a thought would enter his head in the first place; even though his life had been turned on its head, he had a great group of friends and he appreciated being alive.

But he still could have lived without the permanent marks on his arms. They were throbbing painfully under his sleeves, and he hadn't brought any medicine with him to ease the sensation.

Sans could hear the sound of running water up ahead after a while longer of walking. He came to a clearing where the river was and looked both left and right to see if it was safe to shed his hoodie. He wasn't sure what he was looking for; all that was here in this area were birds, and they couldn't blab his secret to the town.

He slid his arms out of the sleeves, crouched down by the rocky mountain riverbed and dipped them into the clean cool water. It soothed the angry enflamed marks on his skin, but only a little. Not even the balms and creams Toriel prescribed to him completely eased the pain.

He had been in near constant pain since the accident, and he wondered if that was how he would be spending the rest of his life despite Toriel's reassurances.

Sans had allowed himself to relax for a few minutes, listening to the wind blow through the nearby tree branches as he tended to his wounds. Every muscle, every joint in his body locked up when he heard the bushes on the other side of the river rustle.

It didn't sound like a small creature made the noise. He hurriedly yanked his arms from the water and threw on his hoodie before scrambling for the thickets on his own side of the river. If he left now, he would be creating too much noise, so he would wait it out until whatever it was left.

The creature's footsteps sounded too light to be a bear but too heavy for a raccoon or possum. He waited, concealing himself in the shrubbery until only his eyes were peeking out between the leaves. The sounds gradually grew closer as the seconds ticked by, buy Sans felt like he had been waiting for the noisemaker to show itself for hours.

Finally, it stepped out of the forest, and he was surprised to find himself looking at a girl.

At least, she appeared to be a girl. And she was wearing incredibly bizarre clothing; a large floppy pointed hat and a long sleeved robe that stretched down to her feet. Her hair was unusually long as well, reaching past her waist. But the most unusual thing about this girl was her skin – it was dark. Beyond dark. Blacker than black.

And her eyes. As she came closer towards the river bed, even at this distance, he could see them clearly, constrasting with the blackness of her face. They were two pretty gray blue spheres, glowing and the color of celestite.

He had one blue eye as well, but he liked the shade of hers more. They held a mysterious quality to them that he felt his didn't.

Oh, but it was obvious to him that she was wearing contacts and this wasn't her real eye color. People's eyes didn't glow like that. People didn't dress like that normally either, so she must be wearing a costume. But what would she be doing way out here in the mountain wilderness wearing what looked like a wraith costume? Was it some sort of prank?

Everything made sense now – those photos Undyne saw must have been of this girl. People were beginning to believe that she was a real monster. Sans was all for playing good harmless pranks, but this one was dangerous. Someone might see her like that and a very gun happy person might mistake her for something otherworldly and shoot her, he thought.

He had planned on leaving when she did, but he felt the need to warn her.

Sans was about to step out from the bushes but froze when she suddenly slowly raised her arms into the air and her chest began to glow with a white light.

She began singing in a strange tongue unfamiliar to him,

 amita ibiria amore

amita sibidia samora

mia sari mi ia…

Her voice was deeper than he would have expected and melancholy, almost mournful in tone. It pulled at his heart in a strange way he couldn't quite describe. Calming, yet sorrowful all the same. But he didn't have long to dwell on her song itself before he had something entirely different to focus on.

The flowing water in the river abruptly stirred, unnatural ripples beginning to form on the surface. From one side of the riverbank to the other, large stones from the river's bottom rose up to create a sturdy pathway, stable enough for one to walk across without fear of it crumbling and whoever was on top falling in.

The girl lifted her robe slightly and placed one foot, covered in what looked like a sandal ethnic in design onto the makeshift bridge. Satisfied that it was secure, she stepped onto the rocks and began slowly making her way across. As she did, the stones that had meshed together became undone and sunk back down to the watery depths behind her as she again sang in that undecipherable language,

amita ibiria amore

sia a sibiria samora

mia sari…

When she reached the other side of the riverbank safely, whatever was left of the pathway had crumbled away by the time her singing ceased. Sans was stunned and in disbelief – despite his earlier skepticism, he couldn't deny what he had seen was magic. Magic fueled by the power of this strange girl's voice.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, this girl was a wraith.

"muffet would probably kill a man in cold blood to be in my place right now."

But then a realization hit him that made his heart drop down to his stomach:

This girl was a wraith.

A shadow monster.

A creature of legend.

And in those legends, the wraiths murdered people to snatch their bodies.

If she saw him, would she try to end his life? At this thought, his heart began pounding with fear when moments before it had been from wonder.

He needed to get away without being noticed, but how?

Sans didn't get to think of an effective strategy before he was spotted. The wraith was standing no less than three feet away from where he was crouched, staring down at him with slightly widened half lidded eyes that Sans couldn't decide whether it made her appear adorably sleepy or incredibly seductive.

Either way, she was standing over him and he had very little time to think of a way to escape her shadowy clutches before she pounced him.

He quickly rose to his feet, but before he could move another inch the wraith let out a tiny squeak and scrambled backwards with widened eyes and a heaving chest. That was a curious response, he thought.

Common sense told him that now would be an opportune moment to run, but curiosity told him that he should test this. Curse the scientist that was still within him.

Instead of fleeing, he took a step towards her and guaged her reaction. The monster girl let out another distressed cry and scurried away from him until her heels were one inch from her being in the river – one more step, even a little one, and she would fall in.

Oh the irony.

She was afraid of him.

Well that simply wouldn't do.

For reasons he couldn't quite begin to ponder, the idea of a girl, even a monster girl, being afraid of him didn't sit well with Sans.

He smiled at her in a manner that he hoped appeared friendly and inviting.

"hey," She flinched at the sound of his voice, but he continued. "it's alright. no need to feel scared. 'm not gonna hurt ya, see?"

He held out his hand towards her, but it didn't appear she had listened to or understood a word he was saying because she let out a small scream and stumbled backwards, nearly falling headfirst into the river.

And she would have, if he hadn't rushed forward to catch her.

Everything around them stilled. It seemed as though even the birds in the trees and the water below them had hushed to gawk at the sheer novelty of the situation they were in. She was bent backwards, feet barely on the ground and he was holding her with one hand around her shoulders and the other wound around her lower back. And they were looking each other directly in the eye.

She was so tiny compared to him.

It was just like a scene from one of Alphys's cheesy shoujo mangas, he would acknowledge later, but while in the moment, he was rendered speechless from the suddenness of the occurrence. Her skin was cold, he noticed, the closest comparison he could think of being as if she had been sitting in front of a powerful air conditioner for several hours.

Both remained motionless for an undisclosed amount of time until the wraith started trembling in his arms, wiggling to get out of his grip.

"stop it. if i let you go now you'll tumble right in. i don't think you went to the trouble to make a bridge before just to get wet, did you?"

But she only squirmed harder, and he almost dropped her a few times during this short duration. When she showed no sign of complying to his reasonable request for her sake, he yanked her closer to him and tried to step away from the river with her.

The river was different up here compared to in town; the water moved faster and if she fell in and didn't know how to swim, she could easily drown. That is, if she needed to breathe in order to live. But Sans wasn't about to take any chances and just assumed that she needed to.

Their chests were now pressed up against each other. The thrum of her chest didn't match his – it didn't sound anything like a human's heart beat should, and though he was entirely unfamiliar with this creature's biology, he could tell that it was thrumming faster than it normally would.

Thump… thump… thump…

But it was still far too slow for any healthy human's heartbeat to sound. If he didn't believe that she was something paranormal before, he would have now.

Her fingers dug painfully into his shoulders, small hands shoving at his chest and clawing at his wrists to get him to release her, and several shaky sounds escaped from her throat all the while, noises that he assumed must have been unsuccessful attempts at using her voice-based magic. Only when they were both at a safe distance from the water did he release her.

She instantly sprang away from him, turning her back to Sans and fleeing into the thick expanse of trees, blending into the shadows of the forest around her perfectly and rendering her invisible.

Sans lingered around the area just long enough to regain his breath, but he had seen enough for one day – it was time to go home.

By the time he reached his house, Papyrus had finished making dinner but Gaster still wasn't home yet, which was fine for Sans, but his brother despaired over another portion of his cooking going to waste if their father didn't return that night. Sometimes, as Sans occasionally stayed at Grillby's home until things blowed over, so did Gaster, but with Asgore at the Dreemur residence.

A few hours later, it was made clear that tonight was going to be one of those nights, so in order to spare Papyrus's feelings over his culinary creation going unconsumed, Sans ate Gaster's share. Which would only add a few more pounds to his already plump figure, he lamented.

He didn't tell Papyrus about his encounter on the mountain before heading upstairs to his room. Would his brother even believe him? He could barely believe it himself, and it had happened to him! And he couldn't stop thinking about it either. Usually, most people did one of two things when encountering the unknown; tell everyone they knew and didn't know about it, or they kept it to themselves for the rest of their lives. He wasn't sure if he could do either.

After a while of trying to distract his mind by watching television, playing a game, or reading, he finally gave up. He couldn't keep his thoughts from drifting to the wraith he had seen, spoken to, and even touched.

He sat at his desk and pulled out a sketchbook; it had once been filled with formulas and sketches for inventions when he was Gaster's apprentice, but he had since torn those out and filled the empty book with random drawings and doodles. He opened the book and stopping at a blank page, then began sketching the best he could from his memory.

Sans didn't know how long he had spent there, but it was pitch black outside by the time he finished. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was something that he could remember this day by. He had a feeling though that he would never forget what happened today, even if he tried from this point onward to forget.

And he was right; he never did forget this day.

Because today was the beginning of an entirely new world being opened for Sans and his brother.

 ~~~~~~~~~~

Sans awoke to what sounded like Gaster clambering around downstairs below his room. So he had come home at some point. He rolled over to face his clock and saw that it was eleven thirty. Not surprising, since he had stayed up late last night. Dear old dad wouldn't be happy with him that he slept the morning away once again, but in his defense, as he said yesterday, Grillby would still be serving from his breakfast menu right now.

He took a shower then cautiously made his way to the kitchen. To his surprise, Gaster and Papyrus were actually eating at the table. Both of them looked up from their meals to stare at him, and he felt out of place for not the first time in this household since the accident.

Sans briefly wondered if his brother and Gaster would get along just fine if he weren't around.

But then again, Gaster might shift his scientific prodigy-making plan onto his brother or Alphys if he didn't keep watch over him. It seemed he would have to continue being a nuisance for their safety and wellbeing.

He pulled up a chair and sat down without a word.

"You're late. As per usual."

"if i'm late then so are you. you're eating breakfast too."

Gaster didn't appreciate that at all, glowering at him from across the table. Papyrus quickly looked for a topic to lighten the mood.

"D-DID I MENTION THAT UNDYNE HAS BEEN WORKING HARD FOR A PROMOTION LATELY?!" He all but squawked.

"Is that so…?" Their father quirked an eyebrow at his youngest son's squirrely behavior then took a nonchalant sip of his coffee. "Ah, speaking of recent news, have either of you heard about what's been happening on Mount Ebott lately?"

"…" Neither said a word.

Gaster continued anyway regardless. "The people of this town are saying that they're catching glimpses of monsters in the mountain's wilderness. Can you imagine such a thing? What utter nonsense.

"yup. utter nonsense." Sans nearly choked on his mouthful of pancake.

"Some are even planning on hiking up the mountain to seek them out. I've never heard such insanity in all my life. Now listen, the both of you: I don't want either of you going up that mountain, mythical beasts or not. I can't have the people of Ebott thinking you're caught up in the frenzy of hunting for them too. And even if they did exist, which they most certainly do not, I wouldn't want you interacting with such creatures."

"uh-huh. i gotcha."

"If these people have time to be chasing shadows, then they have plenty to spare on actually putting effort into revitalizing the town instead of always complaining about what we don't have."

"yup, what a complete waste of valuable time…"

"You have little room to speak, Sans. You lollygag about just as much as the rest of the townspeople these days."

"tell that to the stack of cash i earned this week working my butt off around town." He rebutted, stabbing his fork into the sausage on his plate.

"Yes, you really raked it in this week, you think. If you were living on your own, that amount wouldn't keep you afloat in the slightest."

"well, from the sound of your tone, it sounds like you really want me to leave and never come back. maybe i should."

Sans had tried moving out directly after he had gotten expelled, but he wouldn't leave without his brother and Papyrus remained firm on staying. Papyrus had created a stalemate; he couldn't leave until things either got better between him and Gaster, or Sans decided to go without his brother. Sans didn't see either happening anytime soon.

"Was that supposed to be a threat? If so, it was entirely ineffective."

"PLEASE, DON'T FIGHT YOU TWO. CAN'T WE HAVE A NICE BREAKFAST TOGETHER LIKE WE USED TO?"

"No, Papyrus, I don't think that's possible anymore. Your brother, despite being the older of the two of you, can't seem to be a mature adult for longer than two minutes and keep his temper in check."

Sans wanted so badly to retaliate, but he held his tongue once again. He stood up from his seat, the chair scraping against the hardwood floor as he did so. His meal was left unfinished, he mentally noted, but he had lost his appetite anyway.

Just as yesterday, he made his way towards the front door.

"And just where do you think you're going? I haven't finished speaking!"

He remembered what Toriel had told him to say.

"i'm sorry, but i don't feel ready to talk yet."

He reached for the doorknob and Gaster rose up from his own seat. He swiftly paced over to Sans, and in his haste in preventing him from leaving, roughly grabbed his arm.

Sans screamed.

His yowl of pure pain snapped Gaster out of his anger, but it was too late – the damage had been done. His son spun around to look at him, large mismatched eyes moist and filled with confusion and betrayal, then mistrust and anger.

"I-I'm so sorry! I… I didn't mean to, Sans! You have to believe me, I would never-" But he had. "…Let me see it."

Sans instinctively wrenched himself away from him, cradling his arm.

"SANS, PLEASE DON'T GO! FATHER SHOULDN'T HAVE GRABBED YOU SO SUDDENLY, BUT IT WAS AN ACCIDENT! HE DIDN'T MEAN TO HURT YOU!"

Accident.

Accident. Accident. Accident.

Everything was always an accident when he and Gaster were involved. Their entire relationship now had been reduced to one long continuous stream of accidents.

And he just couldn't take it anymore.

Sans turned his back on him and ran out the door as fast as his ligs would carry him, hearing Gaster and Papyrus yell for him behind, but he didn't dare stop or even slow down. He wasn't even sure where he was going, anywhere that wasn't back there.

He found himself going exactly where his father had told him not to go just minutes earlier: Mount Ebott. He wondered if his body was subconsciously spiting Gaster now. He continued running until his legs nearly gave out, stopping at another clearing – a picturesque woodland area.

He sat himself down on a conveniently placed large boulder nearby to catch his breath, wanting to bawl his heart out from the pain enflared in his arm.

Gaster had grabbed him.

He had never done that before. But he just had to grab his burnt arms, didn't he? He was one of the few people that held knowledge of his burns, and he had just unconsciously used his injury against him.

This was it. Nothing between him and Gaster was ever going to get any better.

He heard rustling in the area nearby, just like yesterday evening. Curiosity once again taking presedence over pain, he crept closer towards the sounds to see what he would find making them. Over by a thicket of berry bushes, he found the noisemaker.

It was her again.

She looked exactly the same as yesterday, the only difference being the leather bag she wore over her shoulder. She seemed to be holding a glass container of some sort, picking berries from the bushes and dropping them in, letting out a soft happy-sounding hum as she did so.

Would she run away again if she saw him?

Before he could ponder too much on this, his mouth started running ahead of him.

"hey, it's, uh, me again." He called out to her.

She stiffened, turning her head around slowly to peer at him. He smiled awkwardly and raised one hand up, gradually, since the last time he moved too quickly she didn't respond well. The wraith stared at him for an extended period of time, wordless, before turning her attention back to the berry bush.

Her posture wasn't anywhere near as relaxed as it was before he revealed himself and she had stopped humming.

"i'm sorry about suddenly, you know… grabbing you yesterday. i just didn't want you to fall in the river."

"…"

"so, do you come here often…?" He was grasping at straws.

"…"

"do you have a name? i can just call you 'ghoulie' if you won't tell me."

"…"

"do you… understand a word i'm saying? at all?"

"…"

To his surprise, she actually turned around to face him, studying him intently before giving a small nod.

"…you do understand? what I've been saying? everything?"

Another nod.

"then why aren't you talking to me? did i offend you or something?"

"…"

"ugh, fine. be that way." He groaned, spinning on his heel and then sitting down on the ground right there, crossing his arms with a huff and his back turned to her.

A few more moments of silence passed, when suddenly he heard a tiny voice,

"...…Scary."

"…huh?"

"…Scary."

"sorry, i didn't catch that?"

"Scary. You're… scary."

She spoke in the same manner as someone that had gone an extended amount of time without using their voice; hesitant, soft and unsure of their words. Putting that thought to the side, he focused more on her words themselves.

"scary? me?" He pointed to himself, dumbfounded.

Yet another nod.

Sans stared at her, probably slackjawed as he thought,

"i must be pretty dang ugly if a monster thinks i'm scary…"

So, he decided to question her further,

"what is it about me that makes me seem scary to you?"

"…I …don't know you."

Well, if that really was the only reason why she was afraid of him, they could easily fix that, he thought.

He turned around and stood up, stepping over to her until he was towering over the girl.

She was petrified to the spot.

"you're right, you don't know me. but you will soon. and do you know why?"

He was trying to be funny, leaning downwards until their noses were nearly touching, and whispered,

"because we're going to be best friends you and i."

Sans shouldn't have been surprised when she let out a startled shriek, but he was, and he was startled even further when something collided painfully against his cheek with a loud smack – her hair?

A section of her tendril-like hair was raised unnaturally in the air, much like an octopus's tentacle ready to strike again. But the expression on her face said that she hadn't meant to do that at all, seeming almost sympathetic but still overrode with fear.

Before he could even begin to apologize for making things worse, he was suddenly violently shoved onto the ground landing on his behind. A third figure had intercepted his path to the girl – it was another wraith.

This one was redheaded and had eyes the color of blood. She was glaring down at him almost murderously, the green robe she was wearing fluttering around her as the wind shifted ominously around her. She bent downwards, her face hovering over his.

"Stay. Away. From. My. SISTER!"

Her face suddenly changed shape, looking far less like a woman in cosplay and more like the very terrifying creatures of legend they had been described as. The smaller and timid wraith clung to the other wraith now identified as her sister and quivered. The green clothed one was just about to pounce and most certainly put an end to his life when something stopped her,

"SANS! WHERE ARE YOU?! SAAAAAAANS?!"

Papyrus was looking for him somewhere in the distance. Sans turned towards the direction he heard his voice, but when he turned back to the wraiths, they were both backing away from him and the area entirely, clinging to each other as if they were one another's lifeline. The blue eyed shadow had her head tucked into the other's shoulder while the redheaded one scowled at him.

 camita sora mia

ii sama dite doche

miketa amia

ideta asomarita

ii tento mia dora

ii sama vida doche

ii seta madora

iria ia dileto

 This other wraith's voice was higher and stronger in tone and volume. The trees around the two, spaced out considerably suddenly began to huddle together, creating a massive shadow with their foliage that stretched several yards wide. The two then stepped backwards into the created shade and faded from view, the last thing Sans saw being her red eyes piercing through the darkness before they too faded out.

"SANS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING OVER THERE ON THE GROUND? ARE YOU ALRIGHT? YOU'RE NOT HURT, ARE YOU?!"

Papyrus rushed to his side moments later, apparently not having seen anything to do with the shadow monsters. He had shown up just in time, too.

Sans wanted to answer that he was alright, but he somehow found himself laughing instead.

"SANS, WHAT'S GOING ON? WHY- WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING? YOU'RE BEGINNING TO SCARE ME…"

Sans was scared too. Scared and excited all at once. He had never felt anything like it. He then flopped on his back in his hysterics, tears nearly streaming down his face as he laughed, clutching his stomach.

Later, when he thought about why he might have laughed so hard, instead of believing it to have been a delayed reaction to all the tension he had felt in that perilous moment and his body had released it by laughing it off, he concluded it was because, even though that other wraith had been ready to kill him where he stood…

He still wanted to meet that softspoken monster girl again.

[avegetariancannibal]

“Typhoid and Swans” - THE THRILLING CONCLUSION

In this AU of @byk23's Cannimals, Will is a swan and Hannibal is a mysterious Lithuanian...

Previous chapters

That night, Will dreamed about Hannibal Lecter tying himself to two trees with his own tendrils.

"What in the hell are you doing?" Will asked.

"Turning myself into a hammock for you," Lecter said. "I want you to sit on me and swing, Will. Swing hard! Also, you're my beloved and I see your potential."

Will woke with a distressed honk. He was covered in sweat, which was highly unusual since swans don't sweat. Maybe he really was sick.

He waddled into his bathroom and took his temperature.

"This doesn't make sense," he said. The display on the thermometer read 104 degrees---a perfectly normal swan temperature. "If I don't have a fever, why do I feel so feverish?"

"Maybe you're horny," Buster piped up beside him.

"You hush," Will snapped. "I haven't decided if I'm hallucinating you or not!"

He threw the thermometer in the trash. He couldn't delay the inevitable. He had to break into Dr. Lecter's house before he lost even more of his mind.

***

As he tiptoed through Lecter's kitchen, he realized he probably should have waited until morning, when Lecter was off working in his restaurant. Too late now!

There were shelves full of preserved brains, but that seemed normal enough for someone who cooked them for a living, so Will didn't spend a lot of time thinking about them.

He moved on to Lecter's office. Man, what a bizarre decorating sense the guy had. Antlers and skulls lined the walls, and all the furniture was made of velvet and shaped like swans in various compromising poses. Will opened the desk's top drawer and pulled out a Lithuanian passport.

Suddenly, the lights came up.

Will spun around, dropping the passport and whipping out his sidearm in one fairly smooth movement.

"That's so sexy," Lecter said from the doorway. "Ooh ooh, point the gun at my head and speak to me in a menacing yet husky voice."

Will squawked with dismay. "Good lord! Why are you so... so filthy??"

"You know why," Lecter said, drifting over to him. "You've known all along, deep down inside your sexy, beautiful mind."

Will cocked his gun. "Don't come any closer!" He waited until Lecter halted his advance, then glanced down at the floor where the passport lay open. Hannibal Bacter... Bacter... Was that just the Lithuanian way of spelling Lecter, or...? Will gasped at the realization. "You're a bacteria! Salmonella Typhi, to be precise."

"A whole new strain," Hannibal said.

"So you are the one making everyone sick," Will said. "Just to kill the competition? You couldn't just post a bunch of fake Yelp! reviews like a normal business owner?"

Hannibal drifted closer. Will, despite the logical part of his brain screaming at him, found himself lowering his gun just a little.

"I did it to meet you," Hannibal said. "We're just alike, you and I. Typhoid and swans... it all comes from the same place."

"I'm nothing like you," Will protested, but his voice sounded weak even to himself.

"Haven't you ever just wanted to kill people?" Hannibal asked.

"All swans want that," Will honked pitifully. "I-I'm not especially dark."

Hannibal reached up, touching Will's face with one of his tendrils. No, Will thought, his flagellum. Will leaned into the caress.

"I apologize in advance," Hannibal whispered.

"For what?" Will whispered back.

Suddenly, the lights came on, which was weird, because they were already on. But now they were much brighter.

"Drop your weapon!"

It was Jack Crawford.

Will looked down at the gun still clutched---albeit weakly---in his wingtip. "I can explain," he started to say, but a shot rang out.

He felt the bullet graze his upper wing. "Mother FUCKER!" he squawked, and fell back against the desk.

"You're under arrest," Jack was saying. "Everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law... If you cannot afford an attorney, we'll find some random dude to represent you."

"But... but I didn't do anything," Will said. "I mean, aside from breaking into Hannibal's house and pulling a gun on him, which he actually enjoyed, by the way."

"Everyone knows swans carry Salmonella," Jack said, "and everyone knows you hate people."

Will blinked. It was true he was crawling with Salmonella bacteria, but it wasn't the kind that caused Typhoid fever. This had to be blatantly obvious even to Jack, unless...

"You framed me," Will spat at Hannibal even as his wings were jerked back and placed roughly into cuffs. "You dirty little asshole! You framed me!"

"I'll figure out a way to clear your name, my love!" Hannibal called out. The last thing Will saw as Jack dragged him out outside were Hannibal's flagella excitedly waving goodbye. "In the meantime, I will repeatedly fantasize about you in those cuffs!"

Will's stomach turned even as the thought made him feel more than a little hot and bothered.

"Oh God," he groaned as he realized Buster had been right. That fiendish, strangely sentient bacteria did make him horny. He twisted around so he could look at Jack. "You have to lock me up forever---and throw away the key."

"That's not how the justice system works," Jack said, shoving Will into the back of his car. "If the judge ends up mysteriously dying halfway through your trial, you'll be free to go."

Will shuddered with dread. He would just have to pray that didn't happen....

(The End)

[rainbow-hatted1]

What Boredom looks like

1. You just opened up a web browser. What is the first site you visit?

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/

Yeah, that’s sort of my jam. Reddit in general but that is my go to.

vv more below if you wanna deep dive. vv

2. You just walked into a bookstore. What section do you go to first?

The local published section. If it’s a good bookshop they usually have one. Usually it’s poetry, or short essay compilations or local history books but I tend to like the offerings and you’re supporting people who don’t have a big platform yet.

Otherwise, comics and fantasy are my next first stops.

3. You are hanging with your closest friends. What are you most likely doing?

Lately, not much of anything. Arguing… not talking… depressing things.

Ideally, though, there’s a good meal. Either we’ve cobbled it together on our own or it’s a decent take out option and video/board games. Quidditch if it’s a nice day. Basically, where we can sit and bullshit and laugh a lot. That’s the best time with my mates.

4. You just turned your car on. What station is the radio tuned to?

The independent/alt/rock station. In spite making pop music myself I don’t listen to it a lot. Which is probably weird.

5. You have just woken up for the morning. What is the first things you do?

Try to go back to sleep.

6. Complete this phrase: You cannot buy happiness, but you can buy____.

Tacos

7. What would you do if you woke up as the opposite gender?

Probably touch my boobs entirely too much. Liz calls them boob checks… well, if they’re quick and random, this would probably be fondling.  I am ashamed of this answer but it’s likely what I’d do.

8. Are you more likely to cook for yourself or buy food from a restaurant?

I’m prone to laziness but I actually find cooking relaxing so cook for myself. Saves money too. It’s just a good practice to have in general.

9. If you had to lose one of your senses, which one would you rather lose?

Smell, probably. I enjoy food too much to lose taste. And between sight and hearing, I’d miss not having those senses and touch is just kind of important as a human being.  

10. If you could relive any one year of your life, how old would you be?

Dunno

11. Would you take a bullet for anyone you know?

A few someones

12. Would you rather be rich and dumb or poor and extremely intelligent?

Poor and intelligent. Better chances of bettering my situation with that one.

13. What TV character do you most relate to?

Sam Gardner from Atypical.

14. You just walked into a supermarket. What section do you first go to?

Produce. Yeah, you all thought I’d go for the bakery and desserts. Don’t lie.

15. Is sex before marriage wrong?

No. It’s human. So is waiting. It shouldn’t be as polarizing as it is. Sex is part of life and how you want to experience it is entirely up to you.

16. You just won the lottery. What is the first thing you do with your winnings?

Get a lawyer and not tell anyone I won. People get shitty when you have a lot of money. They expect you to make it rain and I wouldn’t. I’d also take the weekly installments. More money overall and you are far less likely to tank yourself with the winnings. Just saying.

17. If your best friend admitted that they have a crush on you, how would you react?

I would be awkward as fuck. Love him, not like that and he has a girlfriend so yeah… it’d be fucked up.

18. Will the USA ever have a female president?

At this point in time: no. Again, this is a polarizing question that shouldn’t be. A woman could run the country I’m not women in charge by that answer. Don’t read into it. I’m merely saying, that with the way the country appears to be currently they will not vote for that. I’m sorry. It’s stupid.

19. You are carpooling with your friends. Are you more likely to be the driver or a passenger?

Passenger. I don’t drive.

20. How short is too short for skirts and dresses?

I’m not ancient or wearing a skirt so I don’t think it matters, but I tend to prefer more modest options on girls.

21. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, without any consequences, what food would you choose?

Pizza.

22. It’s Saturday night. What are you most likely doing?

Sleeping.

23. You go on a blind date. Your date is extremely beautiful and physically captivating, but you hate their personality. Would you want a second date?

No.

24. How strict should gun laws be?

I think Australia had the right reaction to a massacre

25. Would you rather be the worst player on the best team or the best player on the worst team?

Best player on the worst team. Hopefully, they wouldn’t resent me and we could have a good 90’s style underdog story.

26. How well do you work with others?

Not well.

27. You have the ability to cure only one fatal disease and eradicate it forever. What disease do you choose?

I don’t want that power. Either way people are gonna die and wonder why I couldn’t cure all cancer or something else that’s just as bad…and inevitably another disease will surface that’s worse. There will always be disease even if we don’t like it.

28. If you could go back to college and choose a different degree to study, would you?

Well, considering I’m not in college yet I can still change my mind on that one, but I probably wouldn’t. Care of Magical Creatures but I haven’t zoned in on the specific avenue I want to go in that field yet.

29. Where do you see yourself ten years from now?

Er… traveling the countryside looking for magical creatures and documenting them in the wild. It’d be cool if my friends joined once in a while.

30. Are you pro-life or pro-choice?

Pro-choice isn’t anti-life, for fucks sake people.

31. Would you attend a same sex wedding if invited?

Yeah. If my mates fell in love and get married, I’m gonna be at the party regardless of sexes involved.

32. So far, what has been the greatest day of your life?

The first time HM played to a sold out crowd. That was pretty shocking. We’ve done it since and Nik has carried on doing it on his own but that day was scary and humbling and epic.

33. Has anyone you know ever been arrested?

Yeah, wrongly so but they saw what they wanted and went that’s our guy. Luckily, he didn’t get sent away for good.

34. If it could be one season year-round, what season do would you want it to be?

Fall. But like warm fall not close to winter fall. That fall sucks.

35. What is your biggest regret in life?

Saying such shit things about Anna and Charlie’s mum because I was mad at him. We’ve never recovered from it and it was a stupid in the moment blind rage bullshit thing I can’t ever take back.

36. If you could bring one celebrity back from the dead, who would it be?

John Lennon, probably. But the thing is, not everyone is upset their deaths were untimely. That’s more the livings problem than the dead, I’ve come to learn.

37. What offends you the most?

When people assume how I’m feeling. I’m not exactly easy to read, I know that, and I have a hard time wrapping my own head around my thoughts and feelings. So when I am feeling something and someone says I’m feeling another way because my face doesn’t wash with an emotion or my reaction doesn’t match like it allegedly should it’s really upsetting to me and just makes things worse.

38. Would you rather have an ugly hairstyle or be bald?

Do what you want. It’s just hair

39. At what age did you have your first alcoholic beverage?

16. Yeah, I think that’s right.

40. What do you think happens to us when we die?

Ideally, you move on to another plane. Kind of like a multiverse but one for endings. For a bit you can linger between the here as we know it and there but eventually you either stay and become a ghost or a poltergeist (which depends solely on your continued mental state on the matter of your death) but most move on beyond the veil.

41. What do you think is the best way to quit smoking?

I don’t know.

42. If you could take home any one animal from the zoo, which animal would you choose?

A bear of some sort. Polar, Grizzly, Black…. Whatever they’ve got. Not all zoos have the same bears.

43. Were humans created or did we evolve from earlier species?

I’m gonna go out and say something that pisses people off but I don’t see why it can’t be both. Something came out of nothing which is creating, right? The act of creating something is taking elements and making them something or straight up creating an element. What did that, I don’t know. But at one point there was a creation moment. From there everything on this planet has changed and adapted to the situations and surroundings they came into. Life is change, you don’t change you can’t survive. So both. Both sound right to me.

44. What scares you the most?

Losing everyone I care about… and bugs. Fuck bugs

45. What personality trait turns you off the most?

I hate when people play dumb.

46. You got offered a job to do something you hate, but the pay will make you rich. Do you take it?

No.

47. If today you only had what you were thankful for yesterday, how much would you have?

Sadly, not very much probably.

48. How often do you get mad or upset at yourself?

Everyday.

49. If you could choose one celebrity to be your parent, who would you choose?

I’ll keep my parents, thanks but to answer the question: Reign. At least I’d still have family.

50. If you could only listen to one musical artist for the rest of you life, who would you be listening to?

I would probably choose not to listen to music after a bit. I like variety and I’m not always in the mood for an artist of one flavor but the Beatles? At least their breadth of music is pretty wide.

51. Have you ever used you cell phone while driving?

No

52. Has anyone you were close to die way too young?

Yes.

53. Is world peace possible?

No, I don’t believe it is. It’d be great if it could be. There’s no reason for all this hate but people are always going to clash. We get on for a bit and then boom, it’s done. Peace is an impossibility but we should still strive for it regardless.

54. You go on a blind date. You date is extremely ugly and physically appalling, but you are madly in love with their personality. Would you want a second date?

I don’t know. I want to say yes, be that guy who doesn’t care. Looks really are not everything but ultimately, you should be attracted to your partner. If you aren’t it isn’t likely to work even if their personality is the most beautiful thing in the world.

55. How did you discover that Santa Claus isn’t real?

My little brother told me and I was devastated.

56. Do you believe in God, or some form of higher deity?

I honestly want to but I have a hard time wrapping my mind around how things can be the way they are if a loving god is out there watching us. I think the Futurama episode where Bender gets life on his ass is a great example of how my brain wants to look at it.

And then I read the Bible and get to stories like Zechariah and I’m just left thinking that guy probably had a stroke while praying and the rest is a coincidence.

57. If you could save someone you deeply cared about, but it meant breaking a law, would you do it?

Fuck yes. Without hesitation

58. What is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done for money?

Sold my soul for a sickle once.

59. If you were to make a YouTube video about what you know most about, what would the subject be?

Magical Creatures. I could go on for a very long time about that topic.

60. What do you think is your greatest personality flaw?

I’m rigid. I have a hard time shifting directions when I get going.

61. If your friends spoke to you the way you speak to yourself, would you still want them as friend?

I haven’t got many actual friends so maybe. Better than being alone, I suppose.

62. Have you ever “woke up like this”?

No one has ever “woke up like this”. It’s a lie. It’s always a lie. Even if they look good, that caption shows intent and planning: don’t fall for it.

63. You got offered a job to do something you love, but the pay is one of the worst out there. Do you take it?

If I really fucking love it, yes. But I’m also in a position where I can have a shit paying or no paying job and basically be fine.

64. What do you think is your best physical feature?

My lips?

65. What do you think is your worst physical feature.

My nose is big.

66. Do you know anyone who has committed suicide?

Not suicide no. But I know people who have considered it. Glad they didn’t follow through.

67. What is the nicest thing you’ve ever done for someone you don’t know?

I dunno. I have a habit of giving my bus ticket away if it still has time on it. I know it’s not much but as for random acts of kindness that weren’t really put on display for charities or a fluff news story, that’s the one I’ve got.

68. Have you ever had a night’s dream come true?

No, can’t say that I have.

69. Would you reject a date offer from someone you didn’t like?

yes

70. Which do you think is worse: Failure, or never trying at all?

This is one of those what I say is not really what I do things. I think the second is worse but I often freeze when it comes to choices like this. When I’m by myself: I freeze.

[xreaderfic-land]

What Lies Beneath Part 23 Red Hood (Jason Todd) X Reader

Summary: Coming back home to Gotham after several years was a tough choice, but you needed to put the past behind you. You blame yourself for Jason’s death and hope that with a medical degree you can have a second chance at saving the kids of Gotham’s streets, but the past won’t stay buried. As the Red Hood invites himself into your life and the little safe bubble of a lie you call life bursts you’re left struggling to cope. Your secret studying of toxins used by Gotham’s villains is sure to land you in hot water eventually, but you’re always up for a challenge. Life is a game of survival and it’s time you joined in.

Co-Author: @inkteller-17     Tags: @jason-todd-rh    @totallynotashieldagent    @exotiicqueen494    @dragons-of-the-usa      @shadowsndaisies    @e-equals-mcommunism-squared      @icycoldbeanieweanies   @peppermint-17   @theskytraveler   @wintersb0ner

Tags CLOSED DUE TO STORY COMPLETION Word Count: 1,679 WARNINGS: Language

Catch Up Here

—— —— —— —— ——-

Laying with your head on his chest, his hand ran up and down your back as the two of you could calm your breathing. After several long seconds of catching your breath, you looked up at Jason.

“So just how is my cure going?” You asked.

Jason laughed.

“Of course, you ask now how things are going,” Jason said with a smile.

“It’s not like you gave me much of a choice,” You replied back.

Jason ran a hand through your hair brushing it out of your eyes.

“Your last batch was the perfect one,” Jason said.

“Really?” You asked sitting up to look down at him.

Jason nodded.

“Bruce gave it over to Lucius and with the help from Wayne Enterprises, they mass produced it. With the help from my brothers and the Justice League, we were able to save all of the kids,” Jason explained.

Your eyes lit up.

“Really? All of them?” You asked with a small smile that was slowly turning bigger.

“Oh and by the way, Jess and Em wanted me to tell you hi,” Jason added.

Your heart swelled.

“The twins made it?” You asked in disbelief.

“I made sure they were some of the first ones that we gave out the cures to,” Jason told you.

You let out a sigh of relief.

“I am so happy that those two made it,” You said.

“I know how much the deaths of Sookie and Sawyer affected you. I refused to let anyone else die,” Jason informed you.

You pressed a soft kiss to his jawline.

“Thank you,” You told him.

“Also with Wayne Enterprise's mass producing your cure, Lucius was able to triple your supply, so if anything ever like this happens again we will be prepared,” Jason explained.

You let out a long sigh of relief.

“This is honestly the best news ever,” You admitted.

“You never saw it on the news? It made every paper headline and it was on like every news channel,” Jason asked.

You shook your head.

“I stayed away from anything that would remind me of home. I didn’t want to know what was going on in Gotham, it hurt too much,” You explained.

Jason sat up so he was looking down at you.

“That’s my fault,” Jason said.

“It’s not just your fault Jason. There’s a lot that happened that caused that feeling,” You told him.

“I know but I play a major part in that,” Jason said.

You reached up to brush some of his dark hair out of his face.

“We have to stop blaming each other,” You told him.

Jason reached down to trace your lips with his thumbs.

“I know and that’s why I’m sorry,” Jason began.

“Jay, don’t,” But he cut you off.

“No, I need you to know how fucking sorry I am. You were right this whole time, but I was to fucking stubborn to admit it. I should have told you. I shouldn’t have made my brothers lie and keep secrets from you.”

“I am so fucking sorry that I lied to you, manipulated you and kept such a huge secret from you. I hope that one day you’ll truly be able to forgive me,” Jason said.

You could clearly see the hurt on his face. You could tell how sorry he really was.

“Of course I can forgive you as long as you can forgive me,” You said

“Y/n,” Jason began, but you hushed him.

“I said a lot of hurtful things. Not only to you but to your brothers and family as well. I was just so shocked that you guys could just so easily lie to me,” You began.

“Everybody has already forgiven you,” Jason told you.

You forced a small smile. “Of course they did, but that doesn’t excuse my behavior,”

“I know and we can fix that later,” Jason said.

You nodded.

Jason dropped back down next to you and pulled you in close. The two of you both looked up as the door to Mariah’s room opened. She came out fully dressed in her scrubs, her backpack hung on her shoulder, and she held her phone out in front of her.

“Mariah,” You began.

“Save it. Since you two had no shame or respect for my virgin ears, I tortured Tim. So yeah, we heard everything last night. BUT, I don’t have time to scold either of you as unlike you two I have a job to do,” Mariah explained.

You felt yourself blush and Jason began laughing.

“Yeah, thanks Jay, I never wanted to know what my brother sounded like during sex. I’m never going to be able to forget this and I fucking hate you for it,” Tim said.

Jason chuckled and you buried your face into his chest.

“You two kiddos have fun. I’ll see you after my shift,” Mariah said before hurrying out of the apartment.

“She’s going to kill me later,” You said.

“I can’t believe she tortured Tim,” Jason said with a slight chuckle.

You shook your head. You’d have to make sure you bought her a nice gift to apologize for tormenting her through the night especially since she’s going to have work a twelve-hour shift today.

Jason leaned over you to grab his boxers.

“I’m feeling waffles,” Jason said as he got dressed.

“Of course you are,” You smiled.

Jason bent down to kiss you.

“Get dressed and help me with the bacon,” He said.

“How do you even know I have bacon?” You shouted after him.

“How un-American of you to not have bacon,” Jason yelled back.

Rolling your eyes you slipped on his t-shirt before following after him into the kitchen. You leaned against the counter and watched as Jason made himself at home looking through all of your cupboards pulling out everything he would need to make your guys’ breakfast.

Jason broke the silence first. “So now that you’re my girlfriend,”

You cocked an eyebrow.

“Wait, when did you ask me that?” You asked him.

Jason turned to stare at you.

“Well, I thought after our mind-blowing sex it would be obvious,” Jason replied.

“Christ, Jay, that’s not how that works,” You hissed.

Jason rolled his eyes and let out a sigh.

“Fine, will you be my fucking girlfriend now?”

“Oh, wow, so romantic, Jason. Almost reminds me of your epic prom invite,” You shot back dryly.

Jason cringed.

“Fuck, don’t remind me and that’s not an answer,” Jason shot back.

Smirking you walked over to Jay, stood on your tip toes and kissed him.

“Of course, I’ll be your girlfriend, dickhead,” You said.

Jason laughed.

As you pulled out the bacon and your cast iron skillet, Jason’s phone began to ring. You knew Tim’s ringtone as the Red Robin restaurant theme blared to life. Jason answered the FaceTime.

“What’s up?” Jason asked.

“I cannot believe you two!” Tim exclaimed.

“What?” Jason said.

“You two were fucking each other like rabbits. Not only did you keep Mariah up all night you left me up all night. And not for anything worth it either,” Tim snarled.

Jason only cracked a smile.

“I’m sure you’ll get your chance to repay it,” Jason said.

“Not the point!” Tim shouted.

“Sorry Timmy, shouldn’t you just be happy that we’ve kissed and made up?” You asked.

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to be apart of it,” Tim growled.

“You didn’t want to be apart of what?” Damian asked as he shoved his way into the call.

“Nothing!” The three of you shouted.

“Hey, Jay, you’re with Y/n,” Damian smiled.

“Yeah, but I promised you I’d fix this,” Jason said.

“Did he say sorry and mean it?” Damian asked.

“Yeah, Damian, we’re all good now,” You told him.

Damian gave you two a huge grin.

“Awesome, it’s about time,” Damian said.

“Hey, why don’t you two get around and head up here. We can hang out and then cook dinner. Tim, you can surprise Mariah,” Jason suggested.

“Yes! Please say yes, Tim!” Damian pleaded.

“Alright, alright, we’ll come up,” Tim said.

“Okay, see you guys when you get here,” You said before Jason could hang up.

“I guess we’re going to the store after breakfast,” Jason said.

The happiness you were feeling was overwhelming but in such a good way.

After breakfast, you and Jason ran down to the store and bought a cartful of supplies. By the time you got back to your apartment, Tim and Damian were just pulling up.

“Come help me, little man,” You said.

Damian hurried over to help take a few bags.

“Jesus, did you guys get enough food to feed an army?” Tim asked.

“I know how the three of you eat,” You replied.

The four of you headed upstairs. You had Tim and Jason take care of the groceries while you set Damian on mixing the ingredients for one of the desserts you had planned on making.

The four of you passed the time by working around each other to pull off such an elaborate meal. By the time, Mariah got home, the table was set with a large dinner, several desserts and Tim had run down to the flower shop to grab her a bouquet of flowers.

Mariah opened the door all ready to start complaining but froze when she saw Tim standing there holding the flowers.

“What is going on?” Mariah asked.

“Surprise,” Tim grinned and held the flowers out to her.

Mariah took the flowers, sniffed them, and then gave Tim a soft kiss.

“Thank you,” Mariah said.

“I hope you’re hungry, we’ve been busy!” Damian exclaimed.

Mariah laughed. “I’m starving, I didn’t get a break today,”

“Then let’s sit down and enjoy,” Jason said pulling out your chair for you.

As your friends filled the chairs around you, your apartment quickly filled with laughter and arguments, you couldn’t help but smile. For the first time in a very long time, you felt whole again. Jason grinned down at you and returned it with a bigger smile. You were one damn lucky girl.

[fastcurious]

The Last Curious Man / The enormous life of Anthony Bourdain, according to those who knew him best

published on GQ

+ https://www.gq.com/story/anthony-bourdain-men-of-the-year-tribute

Chris Bourdain is searching for a word that he cannot quite find. We're sitting together in a small café in Grand Central Terminal, drinking table wine and talking about his late older brother, Anthony. Chris has a habit of looking away as he's talking to you, one of many physical traits he shares with Tony. And right now he is thinking, with Bourdainian intensity, for a way to sum up his brother succinctly, and for a very specific reason.

"The death certificate that was printed in France," he tells me, "listed as his profession 'chef.' And I tried for months to figure out, what is the appropriate way to describe what Tony has been doing for the last seven or eight years? There's no description for it."

It's true. There is no easy description for Tony Bourdain, or for the utterly unique role he managed to carve out for himself in this world. He was a chef. He was an author. He was a very popular TV host—the cheerfully dickish center of the food-media universe. He was an explorer who removed degrees of separation from the world's sociological arithmetic, a man who was always, in his words, hungry for more.

He's gone now. And while everyone I talked to for this story is still coming to grips with the enormity of that loss, one can also sense a fierce determination among them that Bourdain's work cannot end with him. That's why Chris is racking his brain, trying to boil it all down to a simple vocation, a template that others might be able to follow to live richer, fuller lives.

This is Tony, according to those who knew him best.

Bourdain with the staff of Les Halles.

Philippe Lajaunie (owner, Les Halles, where Bourdain had been executive chef): The first time I met him, he was in the kitchen and cooking. It was a cramped kitchen that had been designed back in the '70s, so it was kind of out of proportion. And he was very quiet. Almost timid. He had just worked a few years for an Italian restaurant, and at the beginning all of his specials were very Italian. So that was rattling my cage a little bit—it was a French restaurant!

Jeremiah Tower (chef): I went by the restaurant, Les Halles, because I'd read [his memoir] Kitchen Confidential when it came out, and I was absolutely wowed by the book. And he asked me what I thought of Les Halles, and I said, "Well, it's a fairly terrible restaurant." And he loved that I said it.

Chris Bourdain (brother): I loved Les Halles. I miss it. Had he ever showed interest in cooking [when we were kids]? No, no, no, no, no, not at all. Zero, zero, zero.

Sam Goldman (childhood friend): The first time I met Tony was the winter of 1969. He was two grades behind me, which in high school made him an entirely different generation. He was new at our school, and this Bourdain kid was tiny. I remember we hazed him just a bit. The first Friday of our ski-club trips, we made him ride in the luggage rack.

Bourdain: I know he didn't like [college], and I know he didn't care. Our parents did not have a lot of money, and I definitely remember, we went to some restaurant in Putnam County, New York, on Route 22, where our parents had a massive, huge fucking argument with Tony: Why are we paying for Vassar? You're fucking up there. Which he was. The upshot of that was he did not go back to Vassar. After that, he ended up working out of Provincetown, Massachusetts, down at the restaurant there.

Miles Borzilleri (Vassar class of 1979): I was on campus for a couple years when he was around. The thing that I remember is Tony used to have two samurai swords. They were holstered around his waist, and he would just go through the day like that. That was part of his little persona.

Jeff Formosa (musician, childhood friend): He was big with nunchucks for a while. I don't know that he was good at striking, but he made them fly around his body, and he didn't hit himself too often. He was a joker, too. He'd run into the next room and turn on a blender or a noisy appliance, and he would start screaming like his hand was caught in it.

David Remnick (editor in chief, 'The New Yorker'): My wife came home one day, and she said, "Look. There's a really nice woman at the newspaper. Her son is a writer. She wanted you to take a look at his work," which seemed...adorable, right? A mother's ambition for a son. I took this manuscript out of its yellow envelope, not expecting much. I started to read. It was about a young cook, working at a pretty average steak-and-frites place on lower Park Avenue. I called this guy up on the phone. He answered it in his kitchen. I said, "I'd like to publish this work of yours in The New Yorker. I hope that's okay." That was the beginning of Anthony Bourdain being published. I don't know if there's any way to put this other than to say he invented himself as a writer, as a public personality. It was all there.

After the success of 'Kitchen Confidential,' Bourdain was approached by freelance TV producers Lydia Tenaglia and Chris Collins, who would go on to form Zero Point Zero Productions, the studio behind 'A Cook's Tour,' 'No Reservations,' and 'Parts Unknown.'

Lydia Tenaglia (co-founder, ZPZ Productions): Chris [Collins] and I were doing a lot of medical shows, like Trauma in the ER. I read Kitchen Confidential, and I said, "Hey, I'm a producer. Can I talk with you?" And [Tony] was like, "Yeah, sure, whatever." We made an appointment to meet at the restaurant. It was in between the lunch and the dinner service, and I walked in, and he was sitting at the bar. He had his chef whites on, unbuttoned, and he was having a drink. He stood up, and my first thought was "He's very tall. We're going to be looking up his nose a lot with our cameras." We watched [him] in the kitchen, clearly in control. He just talked about what traveling the world would be like for him. He had gone to France as a kid, he had gone to Japan once, and that was it.

“I just think it’s lonelier without him in the world.”—Paula Froelich

Bourdain: We were staying with my father's aunt and uncle in France, when I was like 7. There were these two night tables, and they had little drawers you open at the bottom, and in there were the chamber pots. We had to try them. I think we only did number one. We weren't gonna be nasty. We thought it was very funny to pee in them and then pour 'em out in the alley. It was fucking hysterical.

Tenaglia: Chris and I got married in December 2000, and a week after we got married, we left for this five-week foray with Anthony Bourdain. We joke all these years later that we got married and then, a week later, we all got married.

For the first episodes of 'A Cook's Tour,' a TV show with an accompanying book of the same name, Bourdain and his future ZPZ team traveled to Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand.

Tenaglia: Japan was a fucking disaster.

Chris Collins (co-founder, ZPZ): The mistakes were very clear. He did not engage with us. He would not acknowledge our presence and that we were there working together.

Tenaglia: I think he was thinking, "Great! I just got a free ride to all these countries."

Collins: It was a ruse. It was, I'm gonna double dip here. I'm going to be able to get paid to go make something, and I'm going to write articles.

Tenaglia: We would go back to the hotel and say, "We are so screwed."

Collins: We shot in Japan for probably nine days. And Tony said, "Listen, I gotta fly back to New York. I always cook dinner for my wife's family, Christmas dinner." [Bourdain and his first wife, former high school sweetheart Nancy Putkoski, divorced in 2005.] I'm like, "You gotta fly home?"

Tenaglia: Part of us thought that he may never come back. [He did.] Then we flew to Vietnam. Suddenly he looked around and he had this instant cultural touchstone. His idea of Vietnam, Japan, and Hong Kong all emanated out of literary and film references. And of course he was a voracious reader, one of those just preternaturally gifted people that could absorb what he had read and retain it. He wanted to connect what he had read with the actual experience of that in a very romantic way.

Collins: He started drinking it in, and something inherently changed in that guy. There was something...the smell, the colors...something twisted in his head the right way. It really sounds crazy, but it was "Okay, we've got something."

Tenaglia: He felt it, too. He came alive, because those frames of reference were starting to pop. His sudden inclination was to turn and share that with us. You could sense this excitement, like, "Holy crap, I'm actually on the ground in a location that I have studied, that I know, that I have references to." You know, Apocalypse Now, Heart of Darkness, Graham Greene, the Vietnam War. He was percolating with an excitement that was very genuine.

Collins: It was like a light switch coming on.

Tenaglia: [Before that] he was the guy with the camera around his neck. No, seriously. He went everywhere with his frigging camera, and we'd have to pull it off his neck. He was a tourist! One time, we went to the home of this duck farmer in Vietnam…

Collins: This was unbelievable.... So what they do is duck, wrapped in clay, onto a fucking smoldering fire to cook. Clay hardens, the duck cooks, you crack it open, and you've got duck. So they choked off the duck and wrapped it in the clay, and they put it on the fire.

Tenaglia: There was a big fire that was burning.

Collins: And they hadn't sufficiently choked off the duck! The duck came back to life. So it's broken through loose clay, now the feathers are smoking, and we're all...What do you do? They got the duck back in the proper condition to cook it, and then a 32-ounce Fanta bottle filled with some sort of translucent liquid is brought out.... It was grain alcohol. I mean, you could have cleaned a wound with that.

Tenaglia: The booze, moonshine.

Collins: And it commences.

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After the initial success of 'A Cook's Tour,' Food Network demanded more domestic episodes and more beauty shots of barbecue. Bourdain balked. He and ZPZ went to the Travel Channel a year later and rebooted the show as 'Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations’; the show would eventually migrate to CNN as 'Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.'

Collins: [Travel Channel] gave us an order of three episodes. Paris was our first shoot. Tony and I are standing outside the restaurant we're going to shoot, and at that point I could see he was smoking like three cigarettes simultaneously, so something was amiss. We took a little walk together, and it was just this welling up of this anxiety and insecurity. "Why are we doing this? What are we doing? What have I done?" And I'm like, "Tony, let me tell you what we've done. We've just agreed on a contract to deliver three episodes. So you better walk this off and get your ass in the restaurant, and we're gonna go to work." People's idea of Tony is formed after 20 years of watching him on television, and there's a sense of like "This guy is the un-muscled James Bond." In fact, he was actually a shy man.

Gabrielle Hamilton (owner and chef, Prune): He was an awkward dude. When he's on, you know, he can perform. And perfectly. But I think he has social anxiety. I know he does. Tony's famously like, "Just don't leave my side. We're about to walk into this room, and there's gonna be 450 people in it. And they're all gonna say hi to me, and can you not be far?"

Eric Ripert (chef, Le Bernardin; Tony's close friend and frequent on-air guest): On camera in Peru, we went to see a shaman. The shaman was explaining what he was going to do, and I was the translator. And I said, "The shaman is gonna put some alcohol in his mouth, and he's gonna purify you by spitting on you." And Tony said, "I don't want to be wet—I don't want anything to do with that." So I translated to the shaman by saying, "Oh, he loves the idea. He's excited about it!" And then Tony went in front of the shaman, and he completely covered Tony with the alcohol.

Daniel Boulud (chef, restaurateur): He wanted to do Lyon. He said, "I want to go to your parents' farm and see [legendary chef] Paul Bocuse and go to your school where you grew up." The problem [was], I drove that car for quite a while. It was basically a piece of fabric, a little thin mat with springs and a tube frame for the seat. It's the cheapest car in France. It has two horsepower.

The car broke down, and we were stuck in the middle of an entrance of a highway, and everybody was screaming at us, because we were closing the traffic during rush hour. It was noon, when the French go home and eat. It was terrible. I felt so bad, and I called my father at home. I said, "Can you come and maybe pick us up or something?"

Ripert: When we went to Sichuan, I knew very well that I was going to suffer with the spices, and he knew, too. He asked me before I went, "Are you okay with that?" And I said, "Yes, I'm gonna be a good sport." Now, I didn't know to which degree I was going to suffer, but it was unbearable. It was so bad that one night I said, "Tony, I can't anymore.… Take me to Hooters."

Next to the hotel was a Hooters. He was like, "You're kidding me." I said, "No, I'm not. I'm not. My stomach is burned, I can't." And he said, "Okay, let's go to Hooters."

And he took all the production, invited everyone. So all the cameramen, everybody, we all went to Hooters in Chengdu in the middle of China. I needed a break. I ordered a burger with a weird name. I needed bread.

Morgan Fallon (director and D.P., ZPZ Productions): Honestly, a lot of times I was so hungry after a scene, I'd just go over and start picking at what was left. And Tony, very lovingly, would refer to us as seagulls.

Josh Homme (frontman, Queens of the Stone Age; composed the theme song for 'Parts Unknown'): He was such a beautiful contagion. He presented such a fascinating doorway to so many other things that aren't within your narrow doorway of what you do. When it was time to write the song for his show, he sent over [Joey Ramone] doing "What a Wonderful World." And I said to him, "Are you sure you want me to do this?" And he just said, "It is a wonderful world. Isn't it?"

Michael Ruhlman (author): There was this woman who was a foodie, but she was a student and she was poor. And she used to go by his restaurant every day. She'd just stand out there, looking in and smelling the smells and thinking about it. One day Tony came out and said, "Hey, I see you here all the time." She said, "Yeah, I can't afford to eat here." He said, "Come in. I'm gonna feed you." And so he fed her a steak and a proper béarnaise sauce while she sat amongst the crowd.

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Between 'No Reservations' and 'Parts Unknown,' Bourdain and the ZPZ team ended up producing 242 episodes. He traveled nearly 275 days out of every year, never stopping, because the mission of the show had grown too important to him and to everyone else involved in making it.

Tom Colicchio (chef, TV host): Anthony took food TV and turned it into something serious. It was about bringing people together around food and trying to get Americans to see someone living in a Middle Eastern country, [that] they weren't terrorists. They were people who live there and had very similar issues to issues we have here, and he was able to do that through food.

Collins: If anything can be said about Tony, he was an unbelievable guest.

Helen Rosner (food correspondent, 'The New Yorker'): I remember sitting across from him at this table at this sort of sticky beer bar and him saying to me, "Helen, it makes a difference if you walk in the door saying, 'I'm going to love it here,' or you walk in the door saying, 'This place is going to suck.' "

Ripert: He never complained about anything. That was something that struck me about Tony. You could be hours in a car, or you could be in freezing weather, or you could be in a room with very unpleasant people, and Tony would not complain, ever.

Matt Goulding (co-founder, Roads & Kingdoms): You could never beat Anthony Bourdain to a meeting. It was impossible. And if you were late to a meeting, you probably wouldn't get a second one. The guy showed up 15, 20 minutes early to everything in his life.

I remember the last time that I saw him was out in L.A., and we were going into Netflix with a show that we were developing with him. We said, "You know what? Let's try to get there 20 minutes early. We've got to beat Bourdain." And so we show up there 22 minutes early into the lobby. Sure enough, there's Tony sitting there with his legs crossed, with his newspaper out and his cup of coffee. And he's like, "Enough, guys, you're never going to beat me."

Nathan Thornburgh (co-founder, Roads & Kingdoms): He traveled incredibly well and efficiently. We just had to make sure he had a lot of Marlboro Reds.

Peter Meehan (co-founder, 'Lucky Peach'): Tony was an excuse to smoke.

Ripert: We were at the French Laundry. The dinner was exceptional, but one of my favorite moments was when they gave Tony a crème brûlée that was infused with Marlboro cigarettes. And I have to say, it was delicious.

Fallon: There was never a show that he was like, "We can just coast through this one. It's not an important show. It's not." It always meant something.

Thornburgh: That guy, he did appreciate a fine thread count.

Goulding: He was a hotel hound. I don't know if you remember, but for the longest time his Instagram stories would only be about his hotel rooms.

Collins: Listen, he deserved it. The guy was on the road a great deal of the year. There were certain shows, it was very clear, like, "I wanna make sure the toilet's got great suction and the thread count on the sheets is four figures."

Tenaglia: We would get his wish list for the next season; there was always this moment of eye-rolling like, "Okay, we're going to Africa, and then we're going to the Caribbean." All right, Caribbean, yes we get it.... There was some calculation going on there.

Fallon: There were folks who wanted to put him at this fancy golf resort near the town of Welch, West Virginia. And they were like, "Tony will be more comfortable there." I was telling them, "No. He's gonna stay in town." It's old, it's run-down, it's not exactly comfortable. You can't drink the tap water there. And Tony showed up there being like, "I love this little hotel!" And he'd just be sitting there on the front porch, screwing around with his phone, kind of absorbing the environment with no one messing with him. And I saw him truly comfortable and happy there.

Collins: Tony was also sorta klutzy.

Tenaglia: Very klutzy.

Meehan: He had an AOL e-mail address.

Paula Froelich (author, journalist): I'll never forget laughing my ass off because he was obsessed with my dog, who's a small dachshund. He'd always walk my dog, and he was so tall and the dog was so long and short, they would look like this movable L.

Collins: It was our first or second Russia shoot. We went out to a decommissioned air-force base where there were two MiGs [jets] sitting on a tarmac that was completely shattered, with weeds coming up. We rig a camera in the cockpit, looking straight up at Tony. Off we go together, and I cannot tell you how exciting it was flying across the [former] Soviet landscape in MiGs, wing-to-wing. And I could see Tony and see the color of his skin changing. He looked like a man that was not going to make it through the flight.

We get to the ground. Tony gets out of his plane. Tony is gray. His skin color was a mess, and we go in and start drinking vodka straight afterwards. He's smoking like there's no tomorrow. So I go out to check the footage from the plane, and the camera was double punched. [It wasn't usable.]

I went back, like, "Tony, we didn't get the footage." He's like, "That's your fucking problem. I'm not going back up there."

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In 2016, before the election, President Barack Obama joined Bourdain for an episode shot in Hanoi, Vietnam, a meet-up that was months in the making.

Jake Tapper (chief Washington correspondent, CNN): The Obama White House reached out to me because Obama was going to Kenya, and somebody had the idea of Bourdain joining Obama and going someplace in Kenya with him. But Bourdain couldn't do it. I don't remember why, but he had something, and I just passed it on. To me, I thought that was funny because…what did he have better to do?

Sandy Zweig (executive producer, 'Parts Unknown'): I think that's probably the only time I've seen Tony nervous.

Meehan: I asked him about the Obama hang, because obviously you ask about that. And he said to Obama, "We're both fathers. Can you tell me, is everything going to be okay?" And Obama said, "Yes, Tony. Everything is going to be okay." And he was comforted by that.

Goulding: We went out to El Bulli. Albert and Ferran Adrià, the brothers, hosted us for a big barbecue there on the beach. And Ferran turned to Tony and said, "How far can you keep going? Where else can you go? You can't go to the moon!" And Tony goes, "Really? Why not? I'll go to the moon and make an episode on the moon. I'll go anywhere."

Tower: We were going to CBS. We were walking down the block to go to the studio, and on the other side of the street were some 15 or 20 really loud, professional strikers. Tough guys from New Jersey, screaming and yelling. They saw Tony, and they turned around and went, "Hey, Tony, Tony, Tony!" And he went over and said, "Hey, guys, you know, I'm doing a show, could you just tone it down for about 15 minutes?" "Yeah, Tony, of course, anything for you." Now, who in the world could get a bunch of New York picketers to shut up, other than Tony? They just turned into little, quiet mice instantly. For about an hour.

Jen Agg (chef, author): I got an advance copy of my book to him and didn't expect much, but within a week he'd sent me a beautiful, cover-worthy quote, and I actually cried. I couldn't quite believe he'd done it.

I was very used to being dismissed/ignored/vilified by the men who run my industry, so when he chose to do the opposite, I was very, very touched.

Meehan: He kinda got to a point where he didn't need to do anything, but he still did everything, 'cause the opportunity that he had meant something to him.

Goulding: He [eventually just got] tired of eating. You could see it. Very rarely he said anything more than, "Mmm, that's really good." I said, "You don't talk about food anymore." And he was like, "What do you need me to tell you? You need me to tell you how the acidity plays off of the richness of the cream sauce? And how the crunch helps refresh your palate? Bullshit. You don't need me."

Off camera, Bourdain still greatly enjoyed cooking, hosting, and gently fucking with loved ones.

Marcus Samuelsson (chef): He took me to this Russian bar [Siberia, a now defunct dive bar located inside a subway station]. This was, like, at two o'clock in the morning. I had my speech and demo the next day. He had his speech and demo the next day, too. He said, "Marcus, you need to get out, because you have to be sober tomorrow, and guess what: I don't. I'm going to do my demo hungover and be fine." I'm completely trashed, and he's laughing. My demo was horrible. I was hungover, and I see Tony and he's just laughing on the stage: "See, I told you."

Ripert: Oh, my God, [that bar] was disgusting. It was dirty. He loved the music, and the music was, in my opinion, horrible.

Doug Quint (co-owner, Big Gay Ice Cream; close family friend): He needed to shut up sometimes. Which I told him.

Tower: There was the time when Tony was supposed to interview me. Tony started asking me questions, and then it turned into about a three-hour monologue about himself. He'd ask a question, but it really wasn't a question, it was an observation. And then I would open my mouth to say something, and he would just then go on with more brilliance.

I kept looking at the director, and she was cracking up and just shrugging. I finally said, "Hey, Tony, are you going to ask me a fucking question or not?"

In 2007, Bourdain married Ottavia Busia. Together they had a daughter, Ariane, now 11 years old. The couple separated in 2016 but never formally divorced.

Collins: A few years ago he was doing a cookbook, and they were testing recipes up at his apartment. So we went up there, and he made a meat loaf that was really horrific. And our daughter was like, "I thought he could cook!" She's 14 now, and after Tony passed away and everyone was putting up their messages outside the restaurant, she went over there by herself, and she wrote a note. And on that note she wrote, "I really didn't enjoy your meat loaf, but the pancakes you made were fantastic."

Quint: You know, at his house especially, he just loved grilling giant slabs of meat. But the first time I ate with him, I was at his house, and he'd prepared pigs in a blanket. Hebrew National pigs in a blanket. That was dinner. From a box. They were horrible. And they were burned. It was pre-emptive. He was like, "I cooked food, but I hope you don't expect much," and then he threw those at us as a joke.

He used to leave the gas stove on. I remember a sign painted over it that Ottavia put up to remind him to turn off the oven or the stove. He would take something off the burner and leave it on.

José Andrés (chef, author): The last two, three years, he was cooking more and more—almost like he was coming back to cooking. He was enjoying cooking again.

Boulud: He was taking pride in doing simple things, even if it was a steak frites. Tony was quite European in a way, in his thinking of cooking. Even French, I would say.

Ripert: When he was renting a house, he was a real chef. You will go to the kitchen, his mise en place was incredible, like something that you see only in fine-dining restaurants. He was so precise with all the ingredients in the different containers that were perfectly placed on the table. He never cooked anything bad for me.

Quint: He's the kind of host like Ina [Garten] or Martha [Stewart], who has Tupperware ready to go at the end of a meal. He made sure there were extras and that you went home with stuff.

Homme: He liked all the bits that were well beyond what I liked. They make tripe out in the desert in these giant cauldrons, for all the guys who pick grapes and citrus. He was like, "Tripe!" I was like, "I can't believe you're excited about tripe." He's like, dad-joking, "It takes guts to love tripe."

Andrés: He never got his scuba-diving permit. I gave him a computer, and he did the course at the same time with my 10-year-old daughter. He had to study to take his scuba-diving diploma. Tony was reading the books and everything, but going through the exam online was a pain in the butt. Well, he passed because my daughter did it for him.

He was an excellent scuba diver. Very calm. You could see that he was very bold. I think under the water he found, always, a lot of peace. No photos, no cameras, no selfies, no people asking him questions. He was just one more guy watching life going by. And that's why he liked scuba so much.

Quint: It was at a rental house out in the Hamptons, and it was the first time I'd ever spent a night with him or anything like that. Their daughter [Ariane] at that time was probably 5. She came and tapped on Ottavia's arm and whispered to her, and Ottavia said, "Oh, she's going to do her song." And I said, "What does that mean?" And Tony said, "Don't ask. Just watch."

Ottavia took her phone and cued up "Call Me Maybe," and Ariane came out from behind the wall and lip-synched and acted the whole thing out. Picking up a phone and fake calling into a phone, and it was just the most fuckin' adorable thing I'd ever seen. I remember looking over at Tony, and he just stared at her with this look on his face like, just he was seeing perfection and couldn't believe it had come out of him, you know? It's exactly what you want to see in a parent's eyes when they look at their kid. I sometimes didn't like Tony, but I always loved Tony, and there was a lot to love when I saw that look come out at her.

Homme: I was saying to him, "I want my daughter to do martial arts and learn to play piano." And he said, "I don't care what she does, as long as she loves it." I thought that was beautiful, because that is the right attitude for parenting. Not to push—to help someone be who they already are and to help someone search hard enough to find who they could be.

Hamilton: That's the thing about friendship with Tony. Tony lavishes you with love and friendship and generosity and kindness, and then he disappears in the night and you don't get to reciprocate. It wasn't mutual. But it was breathtaking to be loved by him.

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Friends also recognized that life wasn't always easy for Bourdain, and that he had his own demons and struggled with the burden of his fame.

Thornburgh: He wasn't out there kicking his heels all the time and saying, "I'm rich and famous." I think he felt the darkness of it, too.

Andrew Zimmern (TV host): We're shooting promos, standing around, both drinking coffees, smoking a cigarette, waiting for the cameras to get set up. And he looks at me, and he says, "Television is such a vile mistress." Then we heard, from 200 yards away, "Action," and we started to walk, and I was paralyzed, like, "What the fuck does he mean by this?"

Andrés: I think Tony always saw himself as a man always on the edge of the good or the bad. It's like a knife. It's a very small edge, a very thin edge, but you have to be careful because you can cut yourself and you'll never know what side of the knife's blade you're going to end up on.

Tenaglia: Chris and I had dinner with him three weeks before he died. We had a really great meal together. I remember he had a big piece of steak, a big fat slice of cheesecake at the end of it. I'm just very, very thankful that we had that moment with him. Because three weeks later, to the day, he was gone.

On June 8, 2018, Eric Ripert discovered Bourdain dead by suicide in the bathroom of a French hotel. Ripert declined to discuss Bourdain's final days for this story. Actor and director Asia Argento, with whom Bourdain was involved at the time of his death, politely declined to participate altogether. The wounds remain fresh and deep, but those closest to Bourdain appear to have absorbed an awful lot from him about how life ought to be lived.

Quint: I heard my phone going off in the middle of the night, and it was a text from Ottavia saying, "He's killed himself, and I wanted you to know before the news came out." I [drove] to O'Hare and went to their house. The whole morning, I was sitting head down, making sure I didn't look at the TV. It's just so fuckin' lousy. It feels like you're speeding into a black hole.

Tenaglia: I don't think it was a shock that one day we would get a call. It was like, "Okay. Maybe we should prepare ourselves that one day Tony's either gotten into a plane crash, or flipped on an ATV, had a heart attack."

Collins: Not expecting, but you acknowledge that it could happen.

Tenaglia: But we didn't expect that call. It's like someone's just hit you with a giant fucking frying pan.

Meehan: It was hard to understand because he was really good at being a person.

Rosner: He was the center of so many ecosystems.

John Birdsall (writer): He didn't speak as if he had power, which was the great thing.

Lajaunie: I was on a trip in the north of Vietnam, on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I stopped in this little village, exactly the kind of place where Tony and I would have stopped on the way. I heard my phone ding, with news, and I learned from the A.P. or Reuters that he had just killed himself. It could not have been a better place, and it could not have been a worse place. It was exactly the place we would have been together. And so it was eerie.

Homme: There's a [New Yorker article called "Jumpers"], about people who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. And all the survivors say the exact same thing, that as soon as their fingers left that bridge, they were like, Stop, wait, if I could just take that back…. I think with two more seconds, it wouldn't be this way.

Quint: That day, Ariane said to me something like, "Is this something that people outside of New York are gonna know about?" And we were like, "Yeah. All around the world, people are sad about this." Telling her that made me realize, Jesus, God, this is world news. He changed lives around the world.

Froelich: I just think it's lonelier without him in the world.

Bourdain: I have in my possession the notes that people put up on Les Halles. I have them at the house. There was one woman who drove up from fucking Tennessee. Some dude took the back of an envelope to find some blank white space to write on, and he stuck it onto the glass at Les Halles with a Band-Aid. He wrote this personal, heartfelt little thing and then stuck it on with a fucking Band-Aid.

Fred Morin (co-owner, Joe Beef): I decided to put the bottle down. About 73 days.

Fallon: I've stopped drinking as a part of this whole thing, too.

Lajaunie: I'm moving to Vietnam. I think it's time for me to do it.

Zweig: I just assumed that we would finish [the show]. It just seemed wrong not to. It's his life's work. Why not take the material that we have and make the most of it?

Tenaglia: There has not really been a moment to actually sit and try to fully process the fact that he's gone. The producers and the editors were left in the aftermath to deal with all the footage for the five, six, seven shows of Parts Unknown we have to present. I know this one longtime director-editor, Nick Brigden, said it so beautifully: It dawns [on] you...I'm not going to [get his] feedback. But then at the same time, I know exactly what that feedback would be. Through all these years of working with him, through osmosis, we have the same creative force and integrity as that guy. Whether he was alive or not here, we have all ingested it. And we're trying to move forward with it.

Goulding: The one common thing you hear from everyone is "Why does this hurt so much? I didn't know the guy." Yes, you did know the guy. You shared 100 meals with him, if not more. He shared 1,000 meals with the world. He did that year after year, episode after episode. So to not be able to do that anymore, I think is a big hit for all of us. From President Obama down to your friggin' mailman, everyone feels that loss.

Boulud: When Tony passed away, I suddenly watched a lot on CNN to see all these retrospectives on him, because I needed to feel connected. But I haven't looked at the episode we did in Lyon since Tony passed. I want to do that in a moment where I can relax and enjoy and watch it maybe with my family in France. That would be nice.

Hamilton: I have a very, very, very, very tender, fond moment of saying goodbye to Tony in L.A. I had to leave, and he was napping on his couch in his trailer, sleeping with his arms across his chest. No blanket. Shoes on. And me going in and just touching him on the arm and saying, "I'm leaving, thank you," and going back to the airport. Just a brief kiss-on-the-cheek kind of goodbye.

Fallon: People have said to me, "Well, you probably don't wanna talk about that." I feel exactly the opposite. I want to talk about Tony. I want to make sure that people understand and know that that was the real deal, man. That was a singular, brilliant, magnificent human being.

Thornburgh: My wife's father's family is from Japan, so we went and did a month in Japan a few years back. We were at the last soba shop in Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan, a place you walk over wood planks over a pond to get to. It just felt like the edge of the earth. My kid, who must've been like 7 at the time or something, he taps me on the shoulder, and he's like, "Dad, it's your friend." I'm like, "What are you talking about?"

I turn around and, of course, because it's this planet we all share, there's a picture of fucking Tony shaking hands with the soba master in that noodle shop. You cannot go find something that he hadn't done or where he hasn't gripped and grinned. The end of the earth. "Daddy...there's your friend."

Drew Magary is a GQ correspondent.

A version of this story originally appeared in the December 2018/January 2019 issue with the title "The Last Curious Man."

[wackygoofball]

Moodboard: Jaime x Brienne - No Reservations AU

Brienne is in a hurry as she drags her new dinner table up the staircase leading up to her apartment. She felt tempted to ask a neighbor for help, but since she is a strong woman to the point that she is oftentimes mistaken for a man, Brienne decided against it. She can handle herself just fine, after all.

However, looking at the time, she really ought to get finished – she has to be at the airport on-time, after all.

As she reaches the top of the stairs, Brienne sees her neighbor from next door rush up to her for help.

“You must be mad to drag such a thing all the way up here by yourself,” he laughs as they take the remaining steps together.

“Well, I managed,” Brienne answers. “But thanks for the help.”

“What’s the dinner table that big good for? I thought you live alone?” he asks. It is common knowledge, for all it seems, that Brienne is single, lives alone, and in general is the kind of person who will do anything by herself – even carrying dinner tables up the stairs.

“It’s not for myself, but for who is going to be here soon,” Brienne replies as they carry the table to her front door.

“Guests?”

“In a way,” Brienne answers. “Thanks another time.”

“Just make sure to ring next time you have to carry a dinner table all the way up here.”

“I will bear that in mind. I will manage the rest.”

The older man offers a smile before walking down the stairs. Brienne fumbles with her keys to open the door and then push the piece of furniture into her tidy apartment. Once it is in its designated corner, Brienne can’t help but look at the wooden table almost fondly, already thinking about how it will be initiated tonight with a first shared dinner, something she didn’t have for years.

However, Brienne then reminds herself that she has to get to the airport, and so she rushes back out of the apartment. Once there, Brienne practices her homely smile the best she can, well aware that the circumstances are anything but joyful, but wanting to stay positive as the passengers from the flight from Winterfell to King’s Landing finally pour into the entry hall.

Arya and Sansa Stark are anything but pleased with the overall situation, however, something that they don’t make a secret as they approach the tall, blonde woman they are now supposed to live with.

“I hope you had a good travel?” Brienne asks, forcing an awkward smile.

“Well, better than what our family had most definitely,” is all the older sister says before they prepare for a silent drive back to Brienne’s apartment.

“So… this is it,” Brienne announces once they enter the apartment. “I didn’t have the time to redo the rooms entirely. It’s really just the basics. But I thought that maybe that it’s for the better. So you have a chance to decorate the rooms yourselves? To make yourselves feel more at home?”

“I’d feel at home if they had let me to stay with Jon. But who listens to little girls ever?” is all she gets to hear from Arya, whereas her older sister remains silent – until she peeks her head into the bedroom to spot a doll Brienne put on the bed as a welcome present, which has her scoff rather harshly, though Brienne can see that there must be more to it than the red-haired girl lets on.

Brienne doesn’t know the girls that well, which makes it ever the harder for her to make things right – and she wants to make things right after all Arya and Sansa have been through. First, their father died during his work at the capitol, only for his wife, eldest son and his wife to drive to King’s Landing in a hurry – and get killed in a car accident. Brienne will never forget the phone call when she was informed of Catelyn’s demise – and the surprising news that her long-term friend put more faith in her than Brienne could even begin to fathom, naming her as guardian for her two daughters. Jon is far too involved at the Wall, which means he cannot take care of the two. Bran and Rickon, it was agreed, are meant to stay with their nanny Osha and Maester Luwin, whereas the two girls are supposed to stay with Brienne, as Arya and Sansa have been living at the capitol ever since Ned moved there, so that they can finish their school properly and so not to rip them out of their familiar environment.

Brienne still tries to come to grips with the fact that Catelyn entrusted her daughters into the woman’s care, even though Cat certainly knew that Brienne is more of a lone wolf kind of person who never thought she would have children and thus planned her entire life on the premise of being a single.

Yet, here they are.

Thus, Brienne tries to make the best out of the situation, even more so to honor what she considers a promise to Cat to take care of her daughters, but this task proves even more difficult than Brienne dared to hope. She is made painfully aware of that when her suggestion to have dinner together, since Brienne is a top chef in one of the most prestigious restaurants in all of Westeros, is met with total indifference, the girls rather wanting to stay in their rooms.

Thus, the new table remains abandoned, though Brienne doesn’t get to ponder that much as she has to get ready for work.

She took off for morning and afternoon, but wants to handle evening service, as per usual. And judging by the girls’ reaction when she says her goodbyes, Brienne reckons it might be for the best as they seem to care little about whether she is there or not.

However, arriving at her working place, the trouble just keeps on raining down on her, as the restaurant manager and boss informs her that she made some changes to schedule, knowing that Brienne may have to cut some hours as she has now “kids to take care of,” which is why the manager decided to hire a sous chef to take over when Brienne is not around.

Brienne couldn’t be more furious and frustrated. She does not need help from anybody, even less so because she feels like the manager just wants to replace her or interfere even more with Brienne’s menu plans, as she is looking for something “fresh and new” when Brienne finds her menu just right the way it is.

And so, she is introduced to her new sous chef, Jaime Lannister, an easy-going, suave kind of guy whom Brienne instantly hates to her guts. She doesn’t need one of those laidback troublemakers in the kitchen. Brienne wants order in her kitchen, discipline, a paradigm she lives by and demands from the other chefs to the same degree, even if that means that some take her for a cold-blooded perfectionist in turn.

“I don’t need a sous chef!” she insists.

“But now I am here, so we might just as well give it a try,” Jaime argues with a smile. “You may even come to like me.”

“I highly doubt that.”

Jaime, for his part, is also well known in the cuisine community, if in a different way than Brienne: He only started cooking after his professional athletic career was put to a drastic end after a terrible hand injury. To cope, he started travelling around the Seven Kingdoms and thereby discovered the secret dishes of the different regions, the notes of which became later on published as a book. Though Jaime knows that he hardly wrote the thing, as it only sold thanks to his brother’s massive editing to his scribbled notes. Nevertheless, the book became a bestseller – and he proved to be a natural when it comes to cooking, which is why he soon found himself welcome in the best kitchens around Westeros, of which some chefs certainly just hoped to get an honorable mention from the infamous Travelling Chef. His absolute favorites are the soul food dishes, though Jaime has just as much passion for the haute cuisine the likes of Brienne have on their menu, or as he tells her:

“You manage to bring the soul of the food into the haute cuisine in a way I never had it before. When I went to eat here for the first time, I had your Blue Sea Dish and I was right back to the moment I jumped off the cliffs at Casterly Rock as a kid. Gods know how you do it, but you have a way of cooking that I’ve never seen or tasted before. It’s a completely different experience from all that I got to know – and I got to know a lot on my journeys. And that was when I knew that if I ever wanted to start working at a kitchen… yours would have to be the one.”

While Brienne is flattered by the compliment, she cannot truly express it at that moment as she is just too caught up in feeling like an utter failure on the verge of being replaced by someone who is more charismatic and easy-going as she is.

Thus, the shift results in Brienne doing things just the way she usually would, not granting the new sous chef any kind of place.

“That is something you earn.”

“Hm, I do like a challenge, Chef. So you just make me want this even more.”

When the evening service is finally over, Brienne drives back home, but decides to go for a quick walk around the block to calm herself – only to return to the house to run into her new sous chef.

“What are you doing here?”

“Living here?”

“Since when?”

“Today?” Jaime answers with a grimace, about as shocked as she is. “I let my brother handle those things for me. He hired people to move in for me. So I just had to meet my new boss to return to a ready-made apartment. You know, the small comforts that come with being heir to one of the richest men in Westeros. So, seems like we are neighbors now, Chef. I will admit that I am surprised myself. I didn’t know you lived here.”

Brienne ends the conversation quickly thereafter and just wants to return to the comfort of her apartment, only to feel reminded yet again that she seems to fail in all other aspects in life – as the girls just silently sit in their rooms by themselves, Arya having video chat with Jon to tell him about how she would rather be anywhere but here, whereas Sansa just stares blankly at the picture frame with the last family photo they took.

However, things don’t just end there. Arya gets into fights at school, which forces Brienne to stay away from work and begrudgingly let snarky sous chef take over her kitchen. Sansa stays out late without telling Brienne where she goes and with whom, and won’t answer her phone calls, leaving the blonde woman in constant worry for the teenage girl whose protection she also vowed to when she took the girls in.

And if all of that wasn’t bad enough, Brienne finds her precious kitchen, her safe haven, increasingly under attack by the sous chef threatening to win over not just her working place, but also her team, as his charm earn him the hearts of the people within the shortest amount of time.

Nothing goes the way she had it planned and she can’t seem to help herself, even though Brienne is accustomed to solving her problems, no matter the effort, no matter the pain, but on this, she can’t seem to find a way out.

And at some point, even the tough chef finds herself breaking apart, only to find comfort from the person she expected it the least from – Jaime Lannister. After all this time, she finally has someone sit down with her on the stairs and listen to her, which forces Brienne into the realization that this sous chef is not the enemy she tried to make out of him.

Not that this makes him any less annoying, of course.

As the two grow closer and closer against the odds of their clashing in the kitchen on more than one occasion, Brienne finally gains some solid ground to stand on also with Jaime’s aid to get through to the girls, starting fencing classes with Arya to explain to her that staying with Jon is off-bounds and she has to take that which she can get, whereas with Sansa, Brienne has to realize that the girl feels massive guilt for what happened to her family, which is the reason why she keeps away so much.

Yet, not all turns bright all of a sudden as Jaime starts to have his doubts whether he is the right person to take over what he perceives as a surrogate father role. He had his disagreements with Ned Stark, to put it mildly, and as his secret family relations attest, he may be a good uncle, but not a good father, which requires more effort and responsibility than he dared to take before.

Brienne, similarly, has her doubts about her relationship with Jaime as she focuses so much of her attention on the job and the girls that she is not sure whether she can wait for Jaime to find his answers or has to move on for the sake of the girls, even if that means denying her own strong feelings for the man she came to fall in love with against all those many odds. She wants to put everyone and everything except herself first, and if Jaime cannot commit, she will not force him, even if that means she has to go back to where she started – alone to solve her own problems, no matter the efforts, no matter the pain.

And so, after the two got a taste of a different kind of life, it remains an open question whether that is their new cuisine or the sign that they ought to return to their own menu for life…

[wineschool-blog]

The Top BYOB Restaurants in Philly

https://j.mp/3sCpXZf BYO culture in Philly is unique among American cities. It came about due to the influence of the  PLCB and high rent in Center City’s restaurant district.  For most chefs, the choice is to either focus on their debt or focus on the food.  Many opt for the latter and open a small BYOB in an outlying neighborhood. Philly’s dining culture is headed with them. At this point, the grand ole restaurants (Le Bec Fin, Susanna Foo, Striped Bass)  on the 1500 block of Walnut Street have been gone a long, long time.  It’s places like Queen Village, NoLibs, Passyunk Ave, Chinatown, East Falls, Northern Liberties, and the Gayborhood that have taken over as must-visit destinations for foodies. Here is our current list of the top BYOB in Philly. Enjoy! Table of contentsTop Wine-Friendly BYOB1. June BYOB2. Pumpkin3. Bibou4. Jaxon5. Little Fish6. Entree BYOB7. Fiorino8. Umai Umai9. Isot Mediterranean CuisineTop Beer-Friendly BYOB1. Perla2. Vientiane Bistro3. Jong Ka Jib4. Parada Maimon5. El Limon6. Apricot Stone7. Saté Kampar9. China Gourmet10. Terakawa RamenThe Start of the BYO Movement Top Wine-Friendly BYOB 1. June BYOB 690 Haddon Ave, Collingswood, NJ 08108 Our top spot for French food in the Philadelphia region.  This lovely BYO is run by the husband and wife team Richard and Christina Cusack. Rich earned his stripes at Danielle NYC and Le Bec Fin.  Christina is a Level 3 Somm and currently working on her Advanced Sommelier degree via the National Wine School. Expertly executed, this is Classical french food—a perfect accompaniment for your top bottles of wine.  June BYOB 2. Pumpkin 1713 South St, Philadelphia, PA 19146 Pumpkin is one of the patriarchs on this list, and still going strong; both Jaxon and Will owe their existence to this little Graduate Hospital BYO. Their Sunday Prix fixe menu is a longstanding tradition, and of the best dining values in the city. Their ala carte menu changes daily, and dinner is always a pleasure. Chef-Owner Ian Moroney (who got his start at the original Little Fish, back when his father was the chef-owner) has kept the quality very high for a remarkable amount of time. Pumpkin 3. Bibou 1009 S 8th St, Philadelphia, PA 19147 BIBOU HAS TRANSITIONED TO BE A BOUTIQUE GROCERY Chef Pierre Calmels has been at the top of Philly’s BYO scene for over a decade. This ever-evolving tasting menu is a rare jewel. Pierre is truly one of the greatest French chefs working in America today. Also, he baked me a birthday cake when they first opened, which was the coolest thing ever.  Bibou 4. Jaxon 701 N 3rd St, Philadelphia, PA 19123 One of the best new BYO restaurants Philly has seen in years. Chef Matthew Gansert has learned a thing or two from his stint at Will. Well-executed dishes with subtle flavors and precise culinary techniques.  Unlike Will, portion sizes are on the larger size, and a tade more traditional. Philly’s Top BYOBs: Jaxon 5. Little Fish 746 S 6th St, Philadelphia, PA 19147 This little joint has had more locations and owners and chefs than a tiny BYO should.  The idea of this restaurant has captured the imagination of nearly two decades of chefs, owners, and diners. Despite the changes, it has remained a magical little joint in Bella Vista. The perfect place to pop open your favorite whites and roses. Little Fish 6. Entree BYOB  1608 South St Philadelphia, PA 19146 This is the type of BYOB that put Philly on the national food scene. A timeless menu makes this a go-to local joint. Entree BYOB 7. Fiorino 3572 Indian Queen Ln, Philadelphia, PA 19129 For old-school Italian food, we usually point our Uber towards South Philly. However, for Philly’s top Italian BYO, we now roll in the opposite direction.  This East Falls focuses on Emilia-Romagna cuisine and consistently outshines its peers in a city deep in gravy. While nothing on the menu would surprise the diner — veal marsala, spaghetti and clams, and Gorgonzola gnocchi are all represented —  the execution and attention to detail are extraordinary. Bring your best bottle of Nebbiolo or a ripasso and have a great night. Fiorino 8. Umai Umai  533 N 22nd St, Philadelphia, PA 19130 Long-standing BYO with an inventive menu.  One of the only restaurants still remaining from the last wave of chef-run restaurants.  Back in the day, this was the go-to Sushi restaurant when the Wine School of Philadelphia was located in Fairmount.  The sashimi is good, but the main attraction is the hand-rolls  Umai Umai 9. Isot Mediterranean Cuisine 622 S 6th St Philadelphia, PA 19147 Eastern Mediterranean food is becoming a core element of the Philly restaurant scene. From the Israeli powerhouse Zahav to the Middle Eastern Spice Finch to the (deeply disappointing and over-hyped) Lebanese food of Suraya.  This Turkish BYOB is a welcome addition to the Meze explosion we are currently seeing in Philly.  Isot Mediterranean Cuisine Top Beer-Friendly BYOB 1. Perla  1535 S 11th St, Philadelphia, PA 19147  Beautiful Filipino food from a classically trained chef. The weekly eat-with-your-hands Kamayan feasts are out of this world.   Perla 2. Vientiane Bistro  2537 Kensington Ave  Philadelphia, PA 19125 Classical Laotian food, with the spice and contrast of flavors that have not been watered-down. Lao cuisine is very similar to Isan (Northeastern) Thai food.  Vientiane Bistro 3. Jong Ka Jib 6600 N 5th St, Philadelphia, PA 19126 When done well, Soondubu will turn the most ardent meat-eater into a blubbering tofu-lover. This Korean dish is comprised of two main components: a bowl of rice and another bowl of stew. Each is served in a lava-hot bowl.  Whisk the supplied raw egg into the stew, pop open a few pilsners, and you are ready to begin your journey into a whole new way of eating. And the place you need to do this is Jong Ka Jib in Oak Lane. Jong Ka Jib 4. Parada Maimon 345 N 12th St, Philadelphia, PA 19107  The spot for Caribbean food in Philly, in particular Dominican cuisine.  The highlight here is the excellent mofongo. Parada Maimon 5. El Limon 103 Spring Mill Ave, Conshohocken, PA 19428 This is the penultimate family-run restaurant. Just stepping over the threshold feels like entering your Abuela’s kitchen.  There are several locations now, but this is still the best (although Ardmore is dangerously close to the Tired Hands brewery). The main attraction here is the shrimp burritos, and the tacos are legit. El Limon 6. Apricot Stone 1040 N American St, Ste 601, Philadelphia, PA 19123 There is more to the Mediterranean than Italy, France, and Spain. The eastern shores are better known as the Middle East, and some of the oldest cuisines in the world. This NoLibs BYO offers up stellar Syrian food. Similar to Israeli and Middleeaster food cuisine in general,   you will see falafel, kebabs, and hummus on the menu. However, the execution at this BYO is exceptional. Apricot Stone 7. Saté Kampar  1837 E Passyunk Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19148 Authentic Malaysian food on Passyunk Ave. It’s all about the meat skewers. : Saté Kampar 8. Los Gallos 951 Wolf St, Philadelphia, PA 19148  The Mexican joint all South Philly taquerias are judged by.  Tacos and salsas to live by. Just don’t expect to find street parking nearby. Los Gallos 9. China Gourmet  2842 St Vincent Street Philadelphia, PA 19149 The Dim-Sum Mecca of Philadelphia. The Northeast has become the center for Cantonese food in the region. China Gourmet 10. Terakawa Ramen 204 N 9th St, Philadelphia, PA 19107 You can’t go wrong with a bowl of handmade wavy noodles and pork bone soup that’s been simmering for 48 hours.  Umami-rich flavors that can be cranked up with a hit of chili, or toned down with ground sesame.  A few standouts are the Tan Tan Ramen and the Kyushu Danji. Terakawa Ramen Here’s a short and sweet promo for our classes: learn to cook, how to pair, and generally be the best amateur sommelier and/or chef you can be. Check them out and see if anything catches your fancy. Hope to see you soon! The Start of the BYO Movement We had a few questions regarding why & how the BYO movement began in Philly. Rent for restaurants in Center City can be as high as $34K a month, while the average rent in outlining neighborhoods can be as low as $2k a month. Add to that the high cost of liquor licenses, which can cost upwards of a quarter-million dollars, and the fact that restaurants cannot buy wine at wholesale (the PLCB only gives restaurants a 7% discount rather than the 30-50% discount in most other states). Some of this is changing. For updates on the current wine laws (PLCB or otherwise), check here: Wine Law in Pennsylvania.  ———————- FORMER Best BYO Winners These BYOB restaurants have been pulled from the Best Restaurant list for one of two reasons: they are no longer in business, or the quality of their offerings has fallen off.  Will BYOB For sheer brilliance, there isn’t a place better than Will. Chris Kearse is one of the most innovative chefs working in Philly today. Small portions, perfect execution, and compelling preparations make this a go-to restaurant for everyone in the know. Cadence CADENCE HAS CLOSED FOR GOOD, DUE TO COVID. One of the most brilliant and innovative meals to be had in Philadelphia can be had at this BYOB. Compelling and unexpected flavors are layered into local and seasonal ingredients. Menu works very well with Spanish and natural wines. Helm Back in the oughts, the BYO scene in Philly was happening like nothing else on the East Coast. The level of creativity and passion and endless chefs wanting to make a name for themselves was staggering.  There was a system in place for chefs to earn their stripes. Most worked their way up through the ranks of the Vetri or Perrier culinary empires. Opened a BYO, and launched their career. That isn’t happening as much anymore. The economy sucks, commercial rents are rising in many neighborhoods. There are fewer talented cooks willing to toil for the low wages that come with salaried restaurant work. It seems that Olde Kensington is the place where the BYO scene can still exist in it’s former glory. Helm is a ridiculously good restaurant. Creative and intuitive menus that offer elements of farm-to-table without it seeming coy or reductive. Flavors are well thought through and exciting.  Highly recommended. L’Oceano Collingswood has a well-deserved reputation of fostering a Philly-like BYO scene. L’Oceano is the best of the bunch. The ala carte menu is eclectic, and a bit out of step with modern trends. For instance, the current menu offers lobster mac and cheese, grilled caesar salad, pork shank, and maple glazed salmon: all dishes more commonly offered a decade ago. Khmer Kitchen Nothing wrong with a little bit of retro cuisine. After all, who can say no to a lobster corndog? Plus, they do a great Crab Gravy Dinner on Sundays. Doma There is a lot of sushi in Philly. Sadly, there isn’t much good sushi in Philly. Like most  Sushi joints in Philly, this one isn’t Japanese, but Korean. The style is more robust and a greater focus on signature rolls and sauces. However, Doma takes the gold because of it’s traditional sashimi, which relies on freshness and execution. Nine Ting Skip the bbq and head straight to the classic hotpot. The all-you-can-eat element may seem a bit Middle America, but it’s a custom in China and Korea. This is the Korean-style hotpot, aka Shabu Shabu. Ordering the Benz pot which allows you to try three of the soups for the same price. The pig bone, tomato, and spicy soups are the way to go, and make sure to hit the condiment station, too. Tre Scalini This is one of the few restaurants in Philly that cooks from an authentically Italian place.  This is quintessential Southern Italian food, Molise in particular. Off the list due to customer service issues Laurel Let’s get this out of the way, yes, Nick Elmi won Top Chef. Yes, it’s now almost impossible to get a reservation. Yes, there are only a dozen seats in this restaurant. That said, go anyways. Plead, threaten, or pitch a fit. Just get a reservation. Nick has a delicate and elegant touch with ingredients that is as rare as it is refreshing. His dishes are often subtle and winsome. Is he the Robert Frost of chefs? No longer a BYOB Nomad Pizza Company This is simply the best pizza in Philly. Let’s be clear: this isn’t Philly-style pizza (aka Greek pizza or Tomato Pie). This is traditional Neapolitan pizza. The crust is better than most drugs, so be warned.  Bring your bottles of  Fiano di Avellino and Greco di Tufo. The most awesome Art Etchells pointed out that Nomad in Philly now has a liquor license.  The original in Hopewell, NJ  is still a BYO. Ulivo Joseph Scarpone may be a local boy, but he spent years cooking in Napa Valley. He returned to Philly to open the critically acclaimed Sovalo in NoLibs in 2008.  He brings a lot of his cal-ital finesse to Ulivio, but  the stress is now firmly on the Ital, not the Cal. Sadly, Ulivo closed.  Mr. Scarpone, you will be missed. The Farm and Fisherman One of the failings of most BYO is service and ambiance. A tiny chef-run restaurant will put out amazing food, but there is often no budget for a General Manager, who would be able to run the front of the house. That can mean the occasional misstep or quirky experience.  That is not the case here. Along with a  well-designed dining room, the waitstaff is excellent. The food is extraordinary, to boot. The Farm and Fisherman Closed By Keith Wallace https://j.mp/3sCpXZf

[keywestlou]

THE INCREASED COST OF FOOD NOT WHAT YOU THINK

Most people think the incense in eh cost of food is because the supermarkets are ripping off the public. To a degree, yes. Not that much however in comparison to some other businesses/reasons..

Some find a way to benefit from a crisis such as the pandemic.

In this instance, food producers. Those who manufacture the canned goods, meats, and anything else sold in a supermarket.

Notice how certain food stuffs are absent for weeks on the shelves. The items always return. However at an increased price.

The producers have learned to play the gouging game.  They intentionally hold on to goods they produce so as to manipulate prices. The game again is to keep a product off the shelve for several weeks and then have it return at a higher price.

Then there is the cost of shipping/delivery of goods.

Shipping prices have gone out of sight! Which of course increases the final cost to the consumer.

Tucking rates have soared despite a demand below prior years.

Diesel #2 prices are up. Twenty percent from November 2020 through February 15, 2021. A big jump in a short period of time.

Crude oil is up 64 percent during the same time period. Wild!

Shippers, such as retailers and manufacturers shipping goods to the customer, have experienced a 20 percent hike from January 2020 through January 2021. The steepest increase since 2011!

Only a few examples contributing to increased transportation costs have been provided. The statistics/data involving the increases in various types of shipping were too much for me to understand. Wow! The only thing clear was that there is an increase in every area. Reasons generally different. My opinion is do not blame everything on the supermarket. They are responsible to some degree. The examples set forth herein are responsible to an even greater degree.

Texas. A disaster!

Hopefully Texas has learned a lesson. The lesson also is a warning to other states not to go the “independent” way Texas did.

There are two national grids. The East and the West. Then there is Texas standing alone. Texas knew how to provide power more efficiently and cheaper.

They bull shitted themselves.

If you are going to run your own business, it must be run properly to avoid something as has occurred in Texas.

Once set up, Texas failed to do the necessary to keep structures up to date and failed to pay attention to anticipated wild weather developments.

“Once in a hundred years” has become common in everything involving weather.

However, if you have a neoliberal austerity State which has spent 40 years deregulating and privatizing public infrastructures, and downsizing public service into incapability, you end up with a gigantic bad situation. A problem where people cannot depend on the State for water, food, and power during emergencies.

There are adverse weather events to prepare for. Texas did not prepare.

Set aside State damages for which Texas is responsible, most of which probably are not insured. Another way to save a buck.

Home owners and businesses normally are insure. I m confident many Texans are insured for the damages wrought by the snow and ice. Note however that insurance companies are a business. They claim they are available to protect their insureds. No! Most are corporations and worried more about their bottom lines.

So insurance policies are written with various exceptions. Happenings where coverage is excluded. Take for example water driven by wind. The insurance companies will play with that one big time. How about an act of God? Can one argue the cause of snow and ice other than an act of God. Insurance companies try and do.

There are numerous other examples. The poor homeowner and businessman is going to have a hard time getting paid actual damages incurred or getting paid at all.

And what of the time factor involved between the time the claim is made and the insurance company pays. Could be a year or two or more.

Billions of dollars are involved.

The news keeps saying Biden definitely is not in favor of an increase in the minimum wage to $15 in this stimulus package. I sense it is something he will consider at another time. Biden cannot be expected to do everything at one time.

Biden is in favor of a $15 minimum wage for federal employees. Evidence he is aware of the problem and is working on it.

Joseph Anthony Pizzo died recently. He was 88.

I first met Joe when I came to Key West some 30 years ago. He and his wife Beth wee already here. We became friends.

Joe was a happy person. Always a big smile when he saw you. Beth likewise very personable.

Joe was into things that grew from the ground. A botanist/horticulturalist.  He taught life science classes for 30 years at Chicago City College. In addition, he and Beth opened Floral Consultants, a business they were able to expand to multiple Chicago locations.

Rest in peace, Joe!

Key West has had many citizen who have been responsible for what Key West has become. Good, bad, or indifferent, Key West would not be what it is today without their genius and hard work.

One of those persons is David Wolkowsky. David died a few years ago.

On this day in 1967, David began construction of the Pier House Motel. On that Motel site, today’s Pier House sits. Developer over the years by David.

David was my friend. I unfortunately met him in his later years. I enjoyed his company. He was respectful to all. Everyone loved him.

Enjoy your day!

—

DAY 26…..Greece the First Time

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Key West Lou

Not easy to communicate via internet from the middle of the Aegean Sea. Equipment here all old. Connections not dependable. Things keep getting lost. I spend more time looking for lost material than writing.

None of the above is intended as a complaint. I expect no more nor no less from an island so remote as the one I am presently on. Amorgos. It is almost nowhere. Access is by boat only. The boat comes and goes. The boat arrives two times a week.

I share the preceding with you for a particular reason.

Recent blogs have contained many errors. Paragraphs repeated, misspelled words, capitalizations missing, etc. I cannot help it. I reach a point where I have spent 4 hours doing the blog, 2.5 of which were spent finding the blog when it has disappeared.

I reach a point where I say I must publish before I lose the blog in its entirety for good. So I publish. I must admit when I am at that point, I am also very tired and say screw it.

Forgive me. The substance is good, even though the form may be lacking on occasion.

Which brings me to my present abode. A small white cottage with blue trim. Trim includes windows, shutters and doors. Sitting about 12 feet from the ocean. Yesterday I described the area between me and the water as a road. I was mistaken. It is a stone foot path.

Amorgos is one of the far out of the Greek islands. Off the beaten path. Few visitors. Not on the tourist routes. No big fancy hotels. Nothing but you, a couple of neighbors, and God.

If 2,000 people live on this island, I would be shocked.

My little house sits at the end of the path previously described. After that, nothing but water.

Sunsets terrific. Like Key West. Across the water from me. Over the peak of a mountain. Glorious!

I bought a bottle of Beefeaters yesterday. Enjoyed a couple of drinks from my terrace watching the sunset.

I was shocked I could buy Beefeaters. It has been almost non existent at my previous stops. Not only was it available on Amorgos, it was also cheap. About half the cost compared to the U.S. I suspect it is the taxes. If the Greeks taxed alcohol as much as it is in the U.S., it would dramatically help their financial condition.

Cigarettes. I took 4 packs with me. I have been gone 2 days shy of four weeks. Just finished the fourth pack yesterday. I am not doing bad in smoking little. I know. I should not be at all.

I bought a pack yesterday. $4.10! No way in the U.S.A. Another example of where Greece might help alleviate its financial problem. Increase substantially the cigarette tax.

There is a Chora on Amorgos. You will recall there was one in Mykonos. Chora is also referred to as Hora. It means old place. The old places on most islands are federally protected in Greece. Much like our historical buildings.

The Chora here is a large number of buildings constructed during the middle ages. Most at least 1,000 years old. Typically Grecian. One to 3 stories. Small terraces. White. Blue trimming. Narrow walkway, 3-4 feet wide.

Whereas Mykonos’ Chora was full of people, stores, bars and restaurants, the one on Amorgos appeared deserted. I saw no more than a dozen visitors.

Every 200-300 feet there is a restaurant or coffee house. Few or no customers.

Stairs. To the sky! Just what I love! Steps everywhere. Up, up and more up! Each one a stress test for me.

Chora was six miles away. On the top of a hill. The cab ride was straight up. The return trip straight down. How these cars do it, I will never understand. I consider it physically impossible for a car to keep its wheels on the road under such conditions.

Somewhere along the way yesterday, I found out what the windmills were for. There are many here as on Mykonos.

Olives were and still are big. The windmills were used to crush the olives. Where there were vine yards, the grapes were likewise crushed by the windmills.

Last night the wind returned. Cold. Very cold. I had to wear a sweat shirt.

I had a late dinner. At Demetrius’. After dinner there the night before, I could eat nowhere else. I was not disappointed.

Eggplant is big here. I had a warm appetizer of eggplant, tomatoes and onions. All cut up and cooked together. To die for!

My entre surpassed everything! My friends in Utica will especially enjoy that which I am about to share. I had lamb chops. Thin. The bone intact, not cut from the chop’s body. Fatty and juicy.

Just like Pelletieri Joe’s.

I got up with the sun this morning. Walked down the road a bit to buy coffee, a loaf of hot bread and butter. Then back to the cottage and my terrace. I watched the sun and water move a bit. Nothing else.

A bit later I was playing around with my tablet. A very lovely young lady walked by. Ann. Swiss. 18. Blond hair. Trim body. White blouse. Short jeans.

We talked. She was back packing it. Was looking for a cheap place to stay. Elini’s was too expensive for her. She moved on to continue her quest.

By the way, I think Elini’s is dirt cheap. Everything on this island costs next to nothing. For example, my dinner last night cost 11 euros. About $14 American money. Tip built in. Tip is 16 per cent of a bill.

I had another visitor while sitting outside.

I heard clinging bells. Saw nothing. Got up and looked over the terrace wall. There were three ducks walking along. Each had a bell around its neck. Looked like a family. Two big ones, one little one. Obviously house pets out for a stroll.

I have no idea at this point what today will bring. Maybe a trip to the monastery. Maybe nothing.

Enjoy your day!

  THE INCREASED COST OF FOOD NOT WHAT YOU THINK was originally published on Key West Lou

[pcktsprgrl]

Answer me this

ok @cherryheart42 you asked for it. :P

1. You just opened up a web browser. What is the first site you visit? My email  2. You just walked into a bookstore. What section do you go to first? Fiction  3. You are hanging with your closest friends. What are you most likely doing? Listening to music and talking about random stuff lol 4. You just turned your car on. What station is the radio tuned to? One that has a variety of songs 5. You have just woken up for the morning. What is the first things you do? Do stuff for my cat, brush my teeth, wait to fully wake up 6. Complete this phrase: You cannot buy happiness, but you can buy____. A 1956 jaguar roadster ? 7. What would you do if you woke up as the opposite gender? Try out for the NFL lol 8. Are you more likely to cook for yourself or bu y food from a restaurant? Probably cook depends on my work schedule 

9. If you had to lose one of your senses, which one would you rather lose?  taste  10. If you could relive any one year of your life, how old would you be?  Hm probably when I was young and we'd go on family vacations. 11. Would you take a bullet for anyone you know? Yup! There's a few. 12. Would you rather be rich and dumb or poor and extremely intelligent? Poor and extremely intelligent then id figure out a way to be rich lol  13. What TV character do you most relate to? lol im not really sure 2bh? 14. You just walked into a supermarket. What section do you first go to? Fresh Fruits and veggies  15. Is sex before marriage wrong? No  16. You just won the lottery. What is the first thing you do with your winnings? Pay off my parents'  house payment. 17. If your best friend admitted that they have a crush on you, how would you react? ?￰ﾟﾘﾵ? 18. Will the USA ever have a female president? I have a big rant for this but l ets say I really hope so, if its the right person. 19. You are carpooling with your friends. Are you more likely to be the driver or a passenger? Prob passenger so I can chill a while  20. How short is too short for skirts and dresses? I don't like them at all but whatever the person wearing them feels right with?  I prefer some imagination though lol 21. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, without any consequences, what food would you choose? Ice cream lol 22. It's Saturday night. What are you most likely doing? Probably resting from practice and watching a movie 23. You go on a blind date. Your date is extremely beautiful and physically captivating, but you hate their personality. Would you want a second date? Urgh probably no.  24. How strict should gun laws be?  If people want them bad enough they'll get them anyway. 25. Would you rather be the worst player on the best team or the best player on the worst team? Ugh im too much of a perfectionist to answer t his lol. 26. How well do you work with others? Pretty well I think?  27. You have the ability to cure only one fatal disease and eradicate it forever. What disease do you choose? Cancer  28. If you could go back to college and choose a different degree to study, would you? I mean im not in the field I originally studied and im pretty happy with where im at but part of me would like to go get my JD. 29. Where do you see yourself ten years from now?  I hope making plenty of money off my business to be able to do what I want.  30. Are you pro-life or pro-choice? Choice 31. Would you attend a same sex wedding if invited? Absolutely!  32. So far, what has been the greatest day of your life? Er  33. Has anyone you know ever been arrested? Yes 34. If it could be one season year-round, what season do would you want it to be? That's tough because they all have their own perks and beauties. 35. What is your biggest regret in life? That I didn't have enough time to learn from the older generation like my great aunt about how she did things. 36. If you could bring one celebrity back from the dead, who w ould it be? Freddie mercury 37. What offends you the most? Im not easily offended  38. Would you rather have an ugly hairstyle or be bald? Lol ugly hairstyle  39. At what age did you have your first alcoholic beverage? Uh I don't really remember  40. What do you think happens to us when we die? Ghosts. 41. What do you think is the best way to quit smoking? Never start, but I don't smoke  42. If you could take home any one animal from the zoo, which animal would you choose? Tiger  43. We're humans created or did we evolve from earlier species? Created  44. What scares you the most? Being a complete failure. 45. What personality trait turns you off the most? Being rude 46. You got offered a job to do something you hate, but the pay will make you rich. Do you take it? Maybe. For a while 47. If today you only had what you were thankful for yesterday, how much would you have? My cat and my friends lol 4 8. How often do you get mad or upset at yourself? Ehh probably too often 49. If you could choose one celebrity to be your parent, who would you choose? Lol  50. If you could only listen to one musical artist for the rest of you life, who would you be listening to? at the moment Taylor Swift. because she can sing other peoples’ songs too lol 51. Have you ever used you cell phone while driving? Speaker phone to talk to stay awake and I dialed it before I started driving lol. 6+hours on little sleep is no fun 52. Had anyone you were close to die way too young? Unfortunately yes. 53. Is world peace possible? No 54. You go on a blind date. You date is extremely ugly and physically appalling, but you are madly in love with their personality. Would you want a second date? I don't want to sound shallow but if I'm not physically attracted to someone there's no point leading them on. 55. How did you discover that Santa Claus isn't real? What?!? He IS REAL! Pssh question canceled !!! 56. Do you believe in God, or some form of higher deity? Yes  57. If you could save someone you deeply cared about, but it meant breaking a law, would you do it? Yes  58. What is the dumbest thing you've ever done for money? Lol I chugged a redbull on a five dollar bet. But that was more to prove I could 59. If you were to make a YouTube video about what you know most about, what would the subject be? Toss up I guess between football and gardening.  Which funny story I already have Youtube videos on lol. 60. What do you think is your greatest personality flaw? Im too hard on myself  61. If your friends spoke to you the way you speak to yourself, would you still want them as friend? Lol uh all the time? I'd think they hated me sometimes I need the "get your crap together" talk. 62. Have you ever "woke up like this"? Like what?!  63. You got offered a job to do something you love, but the pay is one of the worst out there. Do you take it? Probably especially since i already had a job I hated and got rich :P lol 64. What do y ou think is your best physical feature? My 'guns' lol 65. What do you think is your worst physical feature. Im mostly happy with my body,  66. Do you know anyone who has committed suicide? I don't think so 67. What is the nicest thing you've ever done for someone you don't know? I drove out of my way to take someone home from work where my roommate and I used to work 68. Have you ever had a night's dream come true? My dreams are strange so I don't think lol 69. How would you reject a date offer from someone you didn't like? Oh im sorry but I really don't think I want to. 70. Which do you think is worse: Failure, or never trying at all? Never trying at all.

[erlebnissance]

THE VERDICT

Short Story by Opiana, C.      

         “Attorney! I told you to loosen up! It’s our rest day!” Earl exclaimed and handed me a glass of beer and gave me slices of the samgyupsal pork he was cooking.

            “Well, I am relaxed. But I really think that this guy is wasted.” I pointed the guy beside me and half asleep. “You call his wife to pick him up.” I told Earl. He reached for his phone and called Joel’s wife. “Pare, you wake up.” I slightly slapped his face. “It’s just the three of us but you still got wasted?” I added while looking at Earl who is walking back in our table.

            “She asked us to drop him in their house instead.” He announced.

            “Fine. You pay the bill and I’m taking this dimwit in the car.” I gave Earl my card and stood up to bring Joel to the car.

           “Pre, I love you, pre.” Joel utters like a child.

            “Be disgusted with your words, Joel.” I cringed. “Just you don’t vomit in my car.”

            “Yes, pre. I won’t, pre. Hihi.” He drunkly answered.

             “Let’s go, attorney. Here’s your card.” Earl entered my car and handed me my card before I drove off the Korean restaurant we ate in.

            As I drive, my phone rang and I obviously answered it.

            “Good evening, Attorney Iblan. This is officer Lopez of District 2.”  

            “Good evening. Any news?” I answered.

             This is obviously a bad news and new case to work to.

            “Yes, attorney. A bad one.” The officer answered.

            “A dead body was found in the city, attorney. The laundry shop near the new prosecutor’s office. We need you and your investigator in the location for the investigation of the crime scene, attorney.” She briefly explained.

            I looked at Earl who was listening to the conversation, shocked with the news.

            “Was the body inside the location or outside the premises?” I asked.

            “Inside the washing machine, attorney.” which made me gasp and my friend beside me who obviously is sober already.

               After we dropped Joel to their house, we rushed to the crime scene for investigations, we saw that the body was drenched in blood inside the washing machine. Obviously, the killer wanted to hide the body. As Earl and I investigate the place, I saw a note. Bingo. I never felt this happy before. This note will surely be the key.

            "Attorney, fingerprints are obtained both the body and the note you found." Earl handed me files that contains evidences and the medicolegal.

            "A finger print from the victim's fingernails and the note matched to a ex-con." He added.

           "Have you filed a warrant of arrest for this?" I asked.

            "Yes, and in the victim's medicolegal, attorney, she was raped before she was killed. And she was executed by strangling." He said. "But the note certainly confused me, attorney."

            "I am, too. There must be something more. But for the mean time, we need to put someone in jail again."

            As I read the papers in front of me, i suddenly noticed that the DNA obtained from the finger nails of the victim was two. And it only matched one. Which was a little suspicious because we got samples for every person we interviewed for the case. I asked Earl about it, but he also didn't know why.

            "The evidence for this case will prove that on  Friday, October 16, 2020, the accused raped and killed the victim out of quote curiosity end of quote of the accused, as he stated. The accused worked for Mrs. Gabaleo, the victim, in her laundry shop as a delivery man, and after the business hours of the shop, the accused molested the victim and later killed her. Not too long after, the victim did died and was hidden inside the washing machine. There was no other suspect than the accused himself."

           I sat after my opening remarks. The defense's turn now. She is pretty confident about this, with the fact that they pleaded guilty. After her opening remarks, I stood up to call my first witness.

            "The people of the Philippines calls for the cashier and helper of the victim." The bailiff then sent the witness to the witness stand and recited the oath.

           "Are you aware that you're under the oath, Ms. Importado? Meaning once you lied you may be sued the the court." I first asked.

            "Yes."

            "So, on October 16, did you go to work?"

            "Yes."

           "And you left, what time?"

           "Around 6:30 pm, sir."

            "Okay, was something strange about the accused, Mr. Pertez?"

            "He wasn't in his usual behavior, sir." She answered

            "What do you mean, Ms. Importado?" I asked

            "He was a little anxious, sir. And I also observed that he didn't went out early. He usually leave the shop around 5:30 pm to attend the mass. But he didn't that time. I even went home earlier than him." She explained.

           I nodded, and as the case goes on, I'm still confused of the second DNA. So right after the hearing, I rushed to the office to clear this up and find the second DNA. And I was shocked with who matched it... I cannot believe it. The note made sense. I immediately filed a warrant of arrest and went to the defense attorney's office to inform her and submitted new evidences for the case.

          "The prosecution may call his witness."

          I stood up, weakened.

          "People of the Philippines calls for my investigator, Earl Joah David"

          He said the oath and sat.

          "How are you related to Mr. Pertez?" I asked.

          "I don't know him, sir."

          "Okay, but, before we went out for dinner on October 16, where did you go?"

          "I went to the bookstore to find a book." He fiercely answered.

          "In the exhibit A, as you can see, your honor, that the accused, Mr. David, went out of the prosecutor's office, 5:30 pm. And here in the exhibit B, the CCTV footage of the prosecutor's office that we can see the laundry shop and the people who enters it. Exactly 5:45 pm, David is entering the laundry shop." I discussed.

          "And here in the first evidence submitted to the court, there was two DNA found in the victim's body, particularly the fingernails. And here," I handed the file "it matched the DNA of Mr. David." I paused for a moment. This is hard, he is my dearest friend, but why would he do such?

          "I rest my case." I whispered enough to be heard as I stared at him in the witness stand. No matter how much I wanted to save him, I can't, he did a crime, he killed an innocent woman.

          "And here in the first evidence submitted to the court, there was two DNA found in the victim's body, particularly the fingernails. And here," I handed the file "it matched the DNA of Mr. David." I paused for a moment. This is hard, he is my dearest friend, but why would he do such?

          "I rest my case." I whispered enough to be heard as I stared at him in the witness stand. No matter how much I wanted to save him, I can't, he did a crime, he killed an innocent woman.

          "The constitution provides all criminal prosecution, both the accused themselves against the Philippines. I presented enough evidences to find Mr. Pertez and Mr. David, guilty of first degree murder and rape that killed and made the families of the victim, Ms. Gabaleo, loose a family. It is right and just to serve justice for the victim by giving them a verdict of... guilty."

          The defense said her closing remarks, and the judge said his, too.

          "...guilty."

          The only word that synched my head. And i looked at Earl, my friend, being hand cuffed. I almost lost my strength I felt my knees week.  I never dreamed of this. He is my brother, my best friend. He broke the law. And I am an epitome of it. Bringing him in jail is the right thing to do. Even if hurt me, and maybe his family will hate me, too. No one is above the law. I won the case, but I am not happy.

(photo credit: literaltrashcan) 

[inkscreen]

Change

Sometimes, I dread going home.

There are new books on the bookshelves, in addition to the books I deemed not important enough to take with me to my new home. Books that are not in a language I usually read in, books that I didn’t even know my mother liked even though her eyesight is failing and the most she reads these days is a page or two from the Tamizh magazines that land on her doorstep every week.

My notes and books from university—only a decade ago but feels like several—are neatly packed in a cardboard box languishing in a corner, gathering dust because I’ve not bothered to unpack the box since we moved to this house. The dust rises every time the window is opened, floats gently around the house, and settles. On the bed, on the rickety side table that also doubles as a makeshift kitchen counter for the induction stove when the gas runs out, on the line of shirts hanging behind the door, on the clothesline that extends from one corner of the bedroom to the other.

Years ago, I would have fought for that clothesline to exist outside the house, where my mother would have been embarrassed to hang her freshly washed blouses and petticoats and nighties. I wanted a clean, clutter-free, dust-free bedroom. I couldn’t fathom the embarrassment then; I do not have the mental capacity to bother about a clutter-free house now.

The kitchen has been rearranged, and I find that jarring even though I never cooked in my maternal home. I reach for the salt; my hand automatically goes to a specific shelf in a flash of physical memory that leaves my brain reeling when my fingers close around a jar of ground pepper instead. There is sambar podi and saaru podi in the corner where the lentils used to be. The rice has been relegated to the middle shelf because my mother cannot bend down to reach the bottom shelf anymore.

I try to make tea and I find myself facing brown sugar instead of white.

Everything is unfamiliar and my heart lurches because I’ve come home to help out, and yet, I find myself turning to my mother at every step of cooking.

My mother, who hovers.

Hovers while I’m roasting spices in ghee for that final touch for the sambar. Hovers while I’m sweeping the floor, something that has not been done for weeks now. Hovers while I’m rearranging the shelves that hold nondescript everyday items. I want to put the photo frames and the plaques on the top shelf so my parents will have easy access to the things they use every day, but she insists that the frames be put where she can reach them. The frames showcase a bare handful of moments from the last couple of years or so and they need to be dusted and cleaned everyday. Even though the cloth bags end up on another, higher shelf and my father will need a stool to reach them.

There are other changes too.

My mother has a visitor every day, who alights on the kitchen windowsill for his habitual dose of mosaranna and chips. He caws in protest if she delays his food or if someone else feeds him. Or if, god forbid, he happens to get bread instead of rice.

The crow doesn’t have a name, but on the days he doesn’t turn up, my mother’s anxiety levels ratchet. My father has eaten, she has eaten but there’s still a member of the family that remains unfed. I rarely ever get lunchtime phone calls from my mother making sure I have had lunch, what I ate, and whether I ate well, but if I ever do, I know there was no crow visit that day. Only leftover mosaranna.

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My father does not take his bike out anymore. A rickety thing, that motorbike.

It’s nearly 20 years old and has accompanied my father to all of his sales and marketing appointments, school pick-ups and drops, household errands, and leisure trips. It has gone with him on sneaky alcohol-fuelled Mahabalipuram visits, on long drives to middle-of-nowheresville to visit relatives, and on short trips to pick up quick dinner—maybe a plate or two of idli-chutney or what passed for bisi bele bath in Chennai 15 years ago.

The motorbike was my father’s constant and he wouldn’t use it anymore.

Instead, the arrival of Uber has made him more social than before. He wouldn’t go all the way to the other end of the city to meet friends; yet, now, he goes out with enthusiasm, much to the displeasure of my mother who is neither asked if she wishes to come along nor has any say in the matter of his departure.

It wouldn’t be too far from the truth if I said Appa’s constant Ubering pissed Amma off. She’s at home all day, all the time, and the only company she has is busy gallivanting around the city in search of entertainment. Most times, this involved rather long ‘walks’ in the park; I put walks in quotes because that’s his time for gossip with the other neighbourhood uncles. Like the 80-year-old retired cardiac surgeon who had a heart attack while his chartered accountant son was abroad. Or the uncle whose diabetes count was in the 500s and was still miraculously alive and functioning.

Appa’s friends are a motley crew and he loves it.

This was jarring too. He was the man who would collapse in front of the tv the moment he came home from work and refuse to move a finger. He now has a wide social circle, washes dishes at home, sweeps the floor, and generally contributes to the upkeep of the house. Of course, this is in addition to the endless hours of cricket and mindless news he still watches. He simply transferred his office hours into socialising and doing household chores.

He Ubered around for household errands too, pointedly not taking his bike. It’s too heavy he complained at one point. Roads are too crowded. It’s hot. Too many idiots on bikes. But we knew, both Amma and I. His reluctance to take the bike had nothing to do with any of these but more a realisation that he was the provider for the household anymore. No more pressure to make ends meet, no need to kill himself driving around to sell newspaper real estate in return for a pittance. With retirement, he passed on the duties of the breadwinner to me, the only child at my just-turned-into-an-adult age of 20, and blissfully switched off. That was eight years ago. Now he makes dose hittu runs in an auto for thirty rupees and whistles while climbing up the stairs.

It was one of these Uber trips that I realised the parents were not the only cornerstones in my life that had changed.

My city had changed too.

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Most teens have specific hangouts that they frequent. I belonged to the very small minority of those without hangouts and other teens to hang out with. I had friends, yes, but they were mostly like me—serious about academics, had protective parents who wouldn’t let them out anywhere without supervision. After school hangouts at juice parlours were an absolute no no. “You see them at school everyday” or “Come home and talk with friends” were constant refrains in all our lives.

And I didn’t have friends whose parents said and did none of the above.

Oh those girls existed and we knew who they were, but of course, my friends and I were very gently discouraged from making those associations. Not from parents, they didn’t know. But from the girls themselves.

As a result, all my hangout spots were near college when I’d gotten a degree of mobility that did not involve a parent. I also finally discovered the spots that the popular girls from school hung out at and I made sure to frequent them at the ripe old age of 18 when everyone else around me was 14+ and gave me weird side-eyes because I was not in school uniform. In tamizh, this would be called alpam, but I didn’t really care.

I nodded along with others when the topic of these spots came up.

One pani puri place had been renovated but puris did not taste the same anymore. *Nod*

The old juice parlour shut down and there’s some weird stationary shop in its place. *omg, I miss that place!*

The computer centre is no longer around, what a shame; I used to chat with my boyfriend everyday for an hour there. *mortified grin*

You get the gist.

The roads to my school are now nearly unrecognisable. New store fronts, apartments, restaurants have all sprung up rapidly, like the first gush of water when you open a tap too fast before you can dial it back. My actual memorable spots are missing; like the paan-beeda guy who used to give me a spoon of free tutti-frutti every time my dad stopped for a paan; the general shop opposite my school that stocked everything from sanitary pads and rice to highly specific barbie doll-themed geometry boxes and lemon cupcakes; the then-new vegetable mandi that father and I used to go do our weekly grocery shopping instead of my mother buying from her usual vegetable pushcart vendor. All gone.

My school with its massive rusted navy blue iron gates and seemingly impenetrable blue walls was now several shades of demure brown. I’d hated the blue back then—our school uniform was mustard brown and my anal soul was horrified that the paint did not match the uniform. Now that it does, I am not sure it is any better than the blue. The whole thing still looks quite ugly, especially when combined with the yellow and brown tiles they’ve used on the compound walls.

Every time I pass my school now, which is admittedly only for the duration that I am at home, my eyes want to roll back into my head and stay there. At least the blue had a comforting familiarity. The brown is simply monstrous.