#but having the toggle off thing every week was manageable as long as it got rid of that button

[hellsite-hall-of-fame]

I AM all in a tizzy !!!!

and you truly will never hear the end of it, BECAUSE I AM UPSET >:’(

my lovely Madame Curator has been all in a tizzy over the Tumblr Live button being permanently situated on the home screen of the "Tumbly Tumblr" mobile app

i have not heard the end of it, and most likely never will

[fangweaver2099]

A Minor Slip-Up Chapter 2

Miguel x Reader 18+

You've been working for Dr. Miguel O'Hara in Alchemax' R&D department for 2 years. For those two years, your crush on the gigantic, handsome man that just happens to be your superior has only gotten worse with time.

When you notice him alone at Alchemax' Christmas Gala, you take your chance. A one night stand.

You two agree it was just once, but it seems life has other plans.

It had been a week and a half since the Secret Santa had been arranged. Miguel still occasionally  stared down at the little slip he had gotten.

Your name was written in script – he hadn’t known anyone who knew how to write script anymore. 

Now he knew one - you .

Despite being far from an intern, you did all the coffee runs for his team, apparently liked it. The coffee shop in the main lobby was good and he’d seen you nursing your own cup nearly every day. Maybe your caffeine addiction was worse than his.

The white and green landscape of Nueva York’s uptown was the only light in the massive, messy apartment he called home. His mutated eyes preferred darkness - dark contacts he had developed soothed most of it, but going from no glasses to daily contacts wasn’t the most comfortable. Luckily, no one had commented on his sudden integration of sunglasses into his wardrobe.

He had settled on a gift card to the coffee shop. Quick, normal and obvious. The card was already sitting in his office in Alchemax, ready for the swap. Dr. Monroe had made the trade date the 19 th – the last day in the office before the winter break.

Somehow, the more mundane things in life were more stressful to Miguel than being Spiderman. The suit was easy. He had already replaced his original costume with something actually functional. Right now, it was just a small band on his wrist, the nanotech could be toggled on and off as Miguel needed.

Thankfully, he had learned quickly how to manage his claws and fangs. Miguel could function like a normal person in between his vigilante activities.

The genius had figured it out – mostly. The only problem was… Dana . His Fiancée. She loved him, there was no denying that. She hung on his every word and had put up with his absence for quite a bit now.

Miguel strode across his living room, rubbing his face as Lyla flickered beside him.

“Miguel, you have four messages,” her voice drawled into the silence of the apartment. Miguel grumbled and considered just telling her to delete them. He slowly sat down on the simplistic couch in the open plan living space.

It was about ten seconds of silence before Miguel glanced over his shoulder.

“Do you want me to read them out?,” Lyla asked.

“…Yes,” Miguel grumbled, resting a hand over his eyes.

“Yes what ?,” Lyla teased, flickering beside Miguel on the couch, her hologram body sitting down on the back.

“Lyla,” he grumbled, fingers parting to look over at his AI assistant. She was scrolling through a tiny screen as golden orange as she was. When his ex-girlfriend Xina had gifted him his own AI he didn’t expect her to have… such a personality. Now he wasn’t about to talk to her to fix Lyla’s sarcasm and when he tried it proved to be a bit above his understanding of coding and AI technology.

“…Lyla, please,” he groaned.

“Got it boss! You have one message from Tyler Stone,” Lyla chirped.

“Delete it,” Miguel snarled. Lyla reached forward, grabbing the little hologram picture and crinkling it in her fist like paper and tossed it over her shoulder as if faded away. Another paper appears before her.

“You have two messages from Dana.” Lyla leaned back and enlarged her screen. Miguel’s nod made the voice message play.

“ Miguel? It’s Dana. Remember you promised to come with me for my cousin’s engagement party. I sent you the details, how is work? I miss you .” He could hear the building frustration in her soft, anxious voice. The message ended with a click.

“…Fuck.” Miguel slowly sat up. “Lyla – how long ago was that?”

“Tuesday the 11 th , Miguel,” Lyla replied, flicking up as another message appeared before her. “Would you like for me to play the 2 nd message?”

Miguel sighed. “Play it.”

“ Miguel. Where are you? Lyla won’t let me in – again. You promised. We have to be there in an hour .” Dana’s voice was frustrated, and she hung up without saying goodbye. He could hear her waning patience. Miguel took a deep breath.

“Lyla, when was that?”

“Friday the 14 th , Miguel. Would you like for me to call her back?” Lyla tossed the message over her head. Again, as it fizzled to nothing. Miguel leaned forward, hands covering his nose and mouth. After dealing with the Public Eye goons, he had completely forgotten and passed out. He now needed to plan on how to make it up to Dana.

“Not... yet. What’s the last message?,” Miguel asked, formulating a plan – flowers. Dinner, maybe? She was a romantic at heart and Miguel… could be. She was easy to please and a bit desperate for attention -

At least, that’s how Miguel saw her.

“It’s from the R&D coordinator,” Lyla explained as she looked over her hologram paper.

“ Dr. O’Hara, reaching out to inform you about the expectations as a team lead. You’re expected to attend the Christmas Gala along with your team as your current project is pushing to market. We’ve sent the information and dress code to your assistant. You have one invite for a date or family member. 7 PM, December 18 th .” The voice was monotone and blunt – likely some sort of AI like Lyla that meant no need for some underpaid person to call every single person about some stupid… Gala.

Miguel sat up. He never went to these things; he didn’t have to. But now he had to go – he could take Dana. Maybe take her to dinner before. He’s never taken her to his job – just didn’t have the time nor want.

“Lyla, call Dana.” Miguel slowly stood as the AI floated after him, flickering in and out of existence as the towering man strode into his bedroom. Grabbing a shirt from his closet, he pulled it over his head and brushed his dark hair back as the phone chimed.

Lyla seemed disinterested, looking at her nails as the small screen beside her flickered to life.

He could see Dana was at work, hair styled in its usual short bob and bright blue eyes staring daggers into Miguel.

“… Now you call me – Miguel I’m at work. Are you still home?” Despite her frustration, Dana seemed concerned. “Why didn’t you answer me, I looked so stupid!” She snapped, pointing a finger at the screen.

“I-I’m sorry, they’ve been busting my ass lately, Dana. You know now that I’m- “

“That’s not an excuse you can keep using, Miguel! You never used to be like this – you used to answer my calls. Why call me now? Shouldn’t you be at work?” She snapped before he could finish.

Miguel frowned, brows furrowing. “I’m sorry – really. I just checked my messages. I wanted to talk to you about it and… uhm.” Miguel shifted on his long legs.

Dana’s face softened. “What?”

“I have to go to a party at work – tomorrow. I got a plus one. Come with me?” He suggested. “I can introduce you to my team and some of my colleagues.”

Dana raised a brow, it disappeared partially under her bangs. Miguel watched her for a moment.

“ No ,” Dana replied coldly, voice smooth, Miguel’s brows raised in surprise.

“No? Dana – come on. Baby, please . It will be nice, you always mentioned you wanted to see what I did-“ Miguel stumbled over his words as Dana’s icy eyes narrowed.

“No. Miguel – you’ve missed the last 4 dates you set up for us, you missed my cousin’s engagement party. Last time Conchata wanted you to visit you literally hung up on me! I’m sick of it!” Dana moved her hand forward to turn off the holocall.

“I-I’m trying to make up for it. Come on, it will be fun.” Miguel pleaded.

“No. You get to know how I feel.” She snapped back, hanging up on Miguel as the video feed cut. Lyla whistled, leaning back in her floating seat.

“Call her back.” Miguel snapped instantly. Lyla rolled her little AI eyes and poked the air.

It rang once – then was forwarded. “Dana D’Angelo, leave me a message.”

Miguel took a deep breath. “Try again.”

“Miguel – she’s not going to pick up,” Lyla remarked. “She’s that dramatic.” 

Xina’s programming came on full force with anything related to Dana. Miguel let out a long sigh.

“Try. Again,” he instructed through clenched teeth. The AI obeyed.

Again, it rang once – then was forwarded. “Dana D’Angelo, leave me a message,” echoed out in Miguel’s dark apartment.

“Mierda. ¿Qué diablos voy a hacer? ¡Lo jodí de nuevo!,” Miguel cursed out to nothing as he paced his bedroom.   [ Shit. What the hell am I going to do. I fucked it up again !]

This wasn’t the first fight the pair had and probably wouldn’t be the last. Miguel and Dana had an odd relationship - after all, Dana was his brother’s girlfriend first. Their infidelity had meant that neither of them were willing to let each other go. Was it guilt? Frustration? They liked each other, and intimacy wasn’t bad until... well, he became Spiderman.

Miguel was always distant, but Dana loved her job and her life. She had said yes to marrying him – and he could see the ring on her finger in their call. They fought and it was normal, right?

Right?

Miguel simmered as he sat down on his bed, the mattress creaking underneath his massive frame. He wouldn’t put Dana in danger by revealing himself. His constant deadlines were the perfect excuse. Being forced into the corporate raiders program is also why he became the monster he was.

Miguel could feel his claws against his scalp as his hands tangled in his dark hair. He forced a deep breath as they slipped back into the pads of his fingers. Calm. Keep calm.

“Are we leaving that as a message?,” Lyla asked as she flickered back to life in front of Miguel’s frustrated face. Her glow highlighted his cheek bones and tired eyes.

Miguel glanced up for a moment, red eyes in darkness. 

“ No . Just. Go away,” he grumbled, planning on brooding.

Frustration bubbled up in Miguel’s broad chest. He was trying to protect Dana. He didn’t want her to get hurt – to fall into this world where her very life could be used against him. What if Tyler found out that Dana knew Spiderman? What awful things would happen to the woman he loved?

Frustration turned to anger as he paced his apartment, informing Lyla that he was working from home today. He’d see his team tomorrow. Miguel didn’t remember he told Dr. Ariti and Dr. Monroe to hand in their testing logs for review today.

Dana didn’t answer any of Miguel’s calls that day or the next. Frustration had boiled into a sort of irritated indifference. Miguel’s ego was bruised.

After he attempted one morning call, he gave up officially and headed into work – 7am sharp. He wasn’t going to grovel. He wasn’t in the mood.

It seemed even the interns could sense Miguel’s mood and scampered away as he stomped down the white and frosted glass halls of Nueva York’s Alchemax building. Slipping into his office he saw the small transparent blue tablet on his metallic desk. He sat down, his chair groaning from his weight. The computer hummed to life as Miguel grasped the holotablet and it flickered on. He noticed a small note at the top.

“Handed this in yesterday like you asked, Your AI informed me you were working from home.”

Your name was neatly written in script at the bottom of the email, just like how you signed everything else that had it attached. Even the notes you sent in digitally had a digital signature. It was distinct and professional, he’d give you that. 

Miguel was thankful one woman in his life listened to him even if he wasn’t around. He flicked through the notes with trained eyes before deciding he’d bother with it later, moving to check his email instead.

The rest of the day went by quickly and… normally. Miguel spotted you and Dr. Yoshida in the lab, talking over a microscope with a dark slide slid into it. When he passed by them – he was reminded of what his plans were that night, whether he liked it or not.

“Are you going to the party?,” Dr. Yoshida asked. He had to crane his head up to look at the taller woman, but his smile made it look oddly affectionate.

“Planning on it – first time I got invited to one of these. I’m really excited. My sister convinced me to get this beautiful velvet dress and I’m excited to wear it,” you replied back, still leaning down over the microscope. You bent to scribble something down, before leaning back up to peer down at him. 

Dr. Yoshida smiled. “I can’t wait – I bet you’ll look beautiful.”

Miguel paused to glance back at the two – you were flirting. Raising a brow, he turned and left, not catching your reply.

Miguel headed back to his apartment once work was done. He could see his team members talking about the party as he left – apparently, it wasn’t often that Alchemax gave free booze to its employees at a party, much less unadulterated access. 

As much as Miguel felt he was going to stand there and be awkward, he felt obligated to go. He considered calling Dana one last time, but when he opened his phone and saw the nearly 15 unanswered calls and the fact his last message was left on read, he wasn’t in the mood. She’d come calling him again when she was lonely like she usually did. Dana cared about him, right? She was his fiancée.

His apartment was still dark and empty.

Miguel dressed, settling on something semi-formal. Suit with no tie or stupid bowtie, loose pale blue button up. He looked nice all things considered. Miguel went with his contacts – returning his eyes back to their dark brown they were before his ‘accident’.

Miguel stared at himself in the mirror, visible bags under his eyes and 5 o’clock shadow on his chin. He considered shaving at the last minute but decided against it. It’s not like anyone was really going to notice him, after all. He was there likely for Tyler to show off one of his favorite lackeys like he hadn’t drugged him and ruined Miguel’s life.

When he finally got to the Alchemax building, taking the train instead of driving. He could see most of the building was dark. It was snowing and the sounds of the city night echoed as he entered the main lobby. The entire sprawling lobby was filled with people in formal wear.

Miguel towered over everyone – he was used to this. He knew that his height was odd, only Tyler Stone came even remotely close to him, but it did make avoiding the massive corporate villain easier.

There were easily 300 people in the lobby. A sea of chatter echoed in his ears, reminiscent of his high school cafeteria. The moment Miguel found the open bar he settled with whisky to soothe his bruised ego. His superhuman metabolism and massive size made the concept of getting drunk nearly impossible anyway. He couldn’t remember the last time he nursed a real hangover and not a concussion.

Miguel had no idea where any of his team members could be. He settled along the wall in between a pillar and people watched. The bracelet hidden under his watch weighed heavier, knowing that if anyone were to pull anything – this would be the perfect place.

He didn’t like Alchemax – but many of the people who worked for the company were just trying to survive. So, he settled with sipping on his liquor as his eyes scanned the crowd.

It was nearly an hour into this mess of a party before he finally saw familiar faces. Miguel felt fine even if there was a heat to his ears he credited to the booze.

While Miguel didn’t see them first, Miguel’s team noticed the gigantic man in his black suit brooding in the corner like some sort of vampire.

Three people were approaching him – Dr. Yoshida, Dr. Shneider & one of their interns- Lara, maybe? She was a dark-skinned woman with curly hair. Miguel felt a twinge of guilt that he couldn’t remember her name. She was an intern, and they didn’t exactly talk. 

It was strange, to see everybody dressed formally - he’d gotten so used to lab coats and sensible shoes that seeing anything beyond that was… alien. 

He noticed them pause as Dr. Yoshida smiled brightly, a hand waving out as he noticed who the trio got distracted by.

You approached the trio.

See – you were usually… mousey at best. You wore your hair in a tight low bun, informal clothing, baggy pants and sneakers and too big sweaters. You often forgot about your goggles and wore them out of the lab, leaving a permanent pink mark on your nose bridge. You were unassuming - intelligent, surely, but not exactly someone who got noticed .

For a second, Miguel didn’t believe it was you. You wore a bright smile, a face of makeup that put emphasis on your eyes and lips. Your hair was down and curled like a vintage movie star across your shoulders. You weren’t in your usual baggy attire, replaced with a velvet green dress that fell off your shoulders and was tight around the rest of your body, showing off your figure and a slit that showed off your bare legs with each step you took.

Miguel found himself staring you down as you grinned and approached the trio. Dr. Yoshida approached you, his face bright as you spoke out of his ability to listen.

Yoshida seemed stunned and rested his hand on your arm, your smile unfaltering as you two talked. Miguel now firmly understood Dr Yoshida’s affection for you. There was almost a pang of jealousy.

He felt alone and… Pathetic . The prodigy genius playboy Dr. O’Hara reduced to a wallflower .

If Dana had come with him at least he would have company . Dr. Yoshida clearly had you – you were even both wearing a mossy green. Matching, though you didn’t seem to be paying special attention to the shorter man. Maybe you didn’t have a crush on him like he had suspected . 

Another familiar face approached – Dr. Monroe in a black dress and with her blonde hair loose. She hugged you, likely stammering a pile of compliments on you as she handed over a glass of wine. You visibly hesitated but took it.

Miguel considered approaching, especially after the group had decided to hang out and chat away. Maybe it was better to keep his distance. He didn’t have to bother you, it’s not like anyone knew anything about Miguel – Dr. O’Hara was your scary team lead – boss. Whatever .

Still, he noticed you glance over, seeing the gigantic brooding man standing awkwardly in the corner. You looked back at the group. Dr. Yoshida seeming desperate for your attention, attempting to drag you back into whatever conversation the group was having. You glanced at him again after replying to the shorter man.

You took a moment of quiet to slip away from the group, saying your goodbyes as you waved your manicured fingers. You then turned towards Miguel – maybe you noticed someone or was returning your half-drunk glass of wine for something more your style. You made a b-line for Miguel. As you approached, he noticed a pair of necklaces on your throat and dangling glittering earrings. You were beautiful, too beautiful. How you were the same coworker he knew was almost unbelievable.

“Dr. O’Hara!” Your voice was far more relaxed than you typically were around him. Maybe the wine gave you confidence.

“I didn’t think you’d be here, you look great!,” you complimented, stepping up to him with a smile. You took a careful sip of your wine glass, leaving a hint of your ruby lipstick on the rim.

“You too,” Miguel replied. “Are you sure you’re my coworker?” 

He couldn’t help the comment, motioning a finger at your outfit. You glanced down at yourself; free hand going to cover your bust. 

“I’m pretty sure. I got all her memories at least,” you giggled – it was so sweet and bell-like. “I think I clean up pretty well.” 

The hand on your chest went to your hip.

There was a part of Miguel who knew that flirting with his coworker was a bad idea. He took a sip of his drink and shoved the idea down.

“I’m not sure why you’re working at Alchemax – then. You’re…,” Miguel paused as you raised your brow. “Beautiful – seriously.”

Miguel could see you blush at the compliment, swaying ever so slightly in your stance. 

“Thank you.” Your voice was suddenly that of the sweet and bashful woman he actually knew. Fuck, you were cute.

“No need to thank me. I’m assuming you’ve heard that all night.” Miguel tilted his head down to look at you. You glanced up at him and took another sip of your drink before you managed to reply.

“Ah… Kinda – but it means the most coming from you, Dr O’Hara.” There was a pinch in your brow, drinking in his words and affection. You looked bashful and almost…girlish.

Cute. 

“Miguel – call me Miguel,” he replied casually.

Your eyes widened, the slightest hint of a blush peeking through your makeup.  “S-sure, Miguel.”

A pause. 

“Truthfully – It’s been... uhm... overwhelming. I’m not exactly used to random people walking up to me.,” You admitted with a grimace, showing off wine-stained teeth.

“If you dressed like this more often, you’d probably be drowning in attention,” Miguel remarked, head tilting to the side as your eyes met again.

“You’re not a good liar.” You pouted ever so slightly – another sip of the drink.

“I’m not lying – really. You’re too modest, querida.” Miguel’s voice was honest, eyes relaxing as he watched you squirm. You clearly weren’t used to any attention.

You forced another drink, moving to lean against the wall beside Miguel, joining him in his people watching. Miguel glanced down – up close he could smell your perfume, floral and sharp. He could also smell wine on you, not just from the glass. 

This probably wasn’t your first glass; you didn’t exactly seem like a socialite.

“It’s not too much?,” Miguel commented, raising a brow. 

You glanced up at him, taking another sip of your drink.

“What?”

“The… This. The party – I can’t imagine you’re out dancing very often.”

You laughed. “N-no. I’m not. Amara – er. Dr. Monroe has been a help.” 

You lifted the wine glass before you finished off the drink. “Hiro has been following me around though. He’s a total sweetheart.”

Miguel raised a brow. “Are you two…?”

Your eyes widened. “W- oh. No! Oh gosh. Isn’t that against policy?”

Miguel shook his head. “I don’t think we have a dating policy amongst coworkers. I assumed he was your date.”

“No! God no. He’s not my type.” You scoffed. “He’s sweet – but uh. No.”

“What is your type, then?”

You froze for a moment, staring up at Miguel. It looked like you were considering your words – the proper answer was just simply ‘not him’ – after all, you were talking to your boss.

“Cliché – but uh. Tall, dark, handsome? Y’ know.” You almost looked like you wished you hadn’t finished your glass, rotating it by the stem in your fingers. 

“…So, me?” Miguel tried to not smile, that wasn’t the first time he had heard that, after all.

Your eyes widened, the glitter on your lids shimmering in the light. 

“…Maybe,” you admitted, looking up at Miguel from the corner of your eye, the wine glass and your hand hiding most of your features.

Miguel grinned, showing off his sharp canines. Your eyes widened, and the flush was clear on her ears.

 “S-sorry, that wa- “

“You’re fine, Princesa,” Miguel leaned to the side, looming over the smaller woman. “You’re not exactly good at hiding it.”

“I never thought you’d be a tease,” you quipped back, poking his arm with her finger.

“Princesa, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me.” Miguel’s voice was low and careful, only for your ears. you can’t help but snicker, hand covering her mouth.

“Really? Will I ever get to learn them?,” You replied, eyes narrowing.

Miguel took a long sip of his own drink. “Maybe, if you’re careful enough.”

You raised a brow. “Careful? You're sure the dark and mysterious type, Miguel. If only you knew the gossip about you.”

Miguel leaned in closer. “Really? Care to tell me? I don’t exactly pay attention to gossip.”

They were a few inches apart now. Your eyes scanned over his angular features, the hint of stubble across his jaw and his dark hooded eyes. Your glossy red lips parted. He could see when you noticed Miguel’s gaze drift down for a moment before he leaned back, giving you breathing room. You forced herself to glance away, unable to speak.

The sound of the party was your silence, allowing you to take a deep breath and consider his words. Before you could speak, Miguel cleared his throat.

“Want to go somewhere quieter? Maybe you can tell me then,” he mumbled into his drink. You swore he was blushing. It was hard to tell with him.

“Sure,” you replied without thinking. Miguel glanced over at you in surprise, but you simply grinned, lifting your glass as if waiting to follow him.

Part of Miguel knew he shouldn’t have said that, say something that kept their distance instead. He should’ve been here with his fiancée after all – not flirting with one of his subordinates. Dana also hadn’t answered him in days and who knew what was going on with her. He wasn’t going to chase after her. He was Miguel O’Hara. He was Spiderman for fucks sake, and Spiderman didn’t chase after women like a lost puppy.

He lifted himself from the wall, using a motion of his head for you to follow as he discarded his own half-drunk glass on a random side table. You didn’t hesitate, following after Miguel but a step or two behind.

As you disappeared from the massive lobby party to the elevators, Miguel reached his hand out to touch you. His fingers curled around the small of your waist, and he suddenly felt that your back was bare – a quick glance revealed that the back of the dress was just interwoven straps holding it to her frame. He spotted a black mark on your upper arm– a tattoo?

You were already proving to be full of surprises tonight. You waited for him to press the button, leaning into his touch and rolling the wine glass in your fingers. Miguel could see you bouncing between graceful and witty to flustered and shy in a heartbeat. It was cute. 

Everything about you was cute.

The real reason you disappeared was quickly becoming evident as you two slipped into the elevator. His grip remained on your waist as you stepped closer, forcing his hand to curl around the side of your body. If he grabbed you with both hands – his fingers would be touching.

He’d test that in a bit.

Right now, after hitting the button for floor 40 – the floor for your offices- Miguel glanced at your arm.

“Do you have a tattoo?” His voice tickled your ear, dark lashes fluttered as you unconsciously reached up, pulling the velvet green sleeve up.

“I do.” You grinned up at him. “I got it a few years ago, just an old dream I’ve had.”

You rolled your head as long hair pooled to the side and revealed a swan-like neck. You twisted your body into his touch. He could feel your ass press up against his leg as her arm rotated, resisting the urge to grab it. There’d be time for that in a moment anyways.

The tattoo was all blackwork, almost gothic in presentation, a foreboding symbol on the arm of somebody he’d never expected to have tattoos at all, much less things like this . It was almost jarring, he’d expect cute women like you to have tattoos akin to bows or roses inked on their skin, not this.

Miguel leaned down, a wisp of his dark hair tickling the top of your head. You could feel his breath rolling over your shoulder. Your hand pulled back as the sleeve fell back across the tattoo, obscuring it once again.

You turned your head back up to him, eyes narrowing as the pair stared each other down – faces but a few inches from each other. You twisted your body in his grasp, moving to face Miguel for a moment proper.

The elevator dinged, pulling the pair from their moment as the doors slid open. You moved to step away, pulling from Miguel’s grasp as he was now the one following. There was an odd thrill – the knowledge you shouldn’t be doing this for a multitude of reasons. Both of your footsteps echoed down the empty dark halls. The lights didn’t flicker on this late at night, but Miguel’s office was easy to find with the hologram flicker of O’Hara on the keypad.

Miguel held the door for his emerald-clad subordinate. You slipped in with ease and turned around to face Miguel. He could see the flush on your cheeks as you held your empty wine glass with both hands.

You took a quick glance across the room, a wall of diplomas and awards on one wall while the one opposite gave a beautiful view of the dark cityscape, flickers of street lamps and Christmas lights in the distance. Straight ahead was his desk, sleek silver with a big, padded chair behind it. It looked like a throne when you had last stepped inside this place, framing Miguel as a King as you stepped up to his petitioning hour, your life in his hands - or at least your job. If you annoyed him with your questions about a project or somehow fucked up some other way. It hadn’t gone that bad in reality, but it was a shaking experience, and deeply sobering nonetheless. He had been an intimidating, mysterious figure from the moment you arrived at Alchemax. Maybe the danger he exuded was part of the thrill.

“Are you really interested in office gossip?” Suddenly you were bold, a brow quirked. 

Miguel replied with a shrug as he walked back up to you, casting you in shadow. “Maybe I am. Tal vez prefiera darte una mordida.” [Maybe I'd rather take a bite of you.]

Your brow raised, hand reached out to palm his chest.

“I really should learn some Spanish,” you mumbled as if your eyes weren’t on his jaw and plush lips.

For a moment, you were still, hesitation in the air as the realization of what could unfold pieced together in both of their minds. You backed up, hand leaving Miguel’s chest as you placed the wine glass down on his desk. Your eyes drifted to the deactivated holopad as you heard Miguel approach.

“Did you read over it yet?” You broke the tension with the knife of work – of the reminder of the power dynamic between them. Miguel for a second took it as a warning and a reminder. He forced himself to resist grabbing your waist and hoisting you onto his mostly empty desk.

After all, he… shouldn’t be doing this. Being alone with a woman who found him attractive – who he found attractive. It was a recipe for disaster, and this wouldn’t be the first time Miguel made this mistake.

He knew it wouldn’t be the last either.

“Do you really want to talk about work?,” Miguel questioned with an airy half-laugh. Your eyes narrowed.

Your hands suddenly went to Miguel’s collar. There was a boldness in your eyes that he hadn’t expected as you tugged him down. It was a sudden movement as lips met. Miguel should pull away – but he didn’t. His hands moved to your waist and against the back of your head, deepening the kiss. A sloppy clash of sharp teeth, freshly smeared lipstick and the subtle taste of wine, only making the action all the more intoxicating.

They finally parted, both panting and eyes meeting each other. You instantly pulled back, hands extending up into the air.

“I am – sorry! That was. I ah. Please don’t f-fire me.” You stumbled over your words, hands scattering around your body as if you were looking for something to cover yourself up with.

Miguel knew he could take the out – he was engaged. You didn’t know he was in a relationship at that moment. He could apologize.

He reached back out, grabbing you by your forearms. The two of you staring at each other for a moment.

Miguel pulled you closer, and your lips met again.

All the tension that you had left your form as his hands tangled around your body. You reached up, hands digging into his dark locks. 

[ikesenhell]

1985 Camaro

AMERICAN DREAM, Chapter 2. You can find all other IkeSen works of mine here. NOTES: Brief conversation about prior death, otherwise safe. Thank you @missjudge-me for commissioning this piece!

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They camped out on the back patio until the sun set. He cooked gyoza and rice balls and some pan-fried chicken, and she ordered ice cream delivery, and they nested their knees together and tucked into a pint of something labeled ‘Just Ask’ and when he asked, she wouldn’t tell him, not even when he tickled her (It wound up being a delicious caramel-Oreo flavor). She instead told him about her degree and moving out, about keeping in contact with Mitsunari as he served in Tanzania through hand-written notes on origami paper. They swapped curated Instagram snapshots and embarrassing anecdotes and reminisced. 

“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “About your dad.”

Masamune shrugged. There was nothing to say. It hurt and always would, but that was his private journey. “Old bastard waited too long to have kids s’what. If he’d had me at a nice, respectable age, we wouldn’t be doing this, the old coot!” He waved a dramatic fist at the sky, relishing her giggles. “You fucked up!”

Overhead, his mother’s bedroom light flicked on. 

“Shit,” he muttered. She dropped her face into her hands to stifle the raucous laughter. 

“How—” Now she was whispering. Masamune wriggled closer, their legs reflexively entwining. “How’s that going?”

“Better than it used to. We can talk without yelling. Something something time and distance. I’m planning on hunkering down here for a little bit, and once all of the stuff is settled, I’ll probably go back north. The restaurant owners offered to hold my position for me, which is really nice.” 

“Hell yeah it is. Isn’t that kind of a cut throat world? They must love you.”

“Yeah. Good openings don’t stay open long in the restaurant biz, so that’s really cool.” Absently, he ran his thumb over the whorls of the deck. “What about you? What’s next?”

“Well.” And she paused, eyes luminous. “I got offered a job interview out east. It’s a good job.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Once upon a time, when she was too nervous to really settle her heart on something she wanted, she smiled shyly and fluttered her eyes away. Some things stayed the same. His heart surged as the familiar expression played out before him. “It could be a game changer for me.”

“That the case, huh?”

“Yeah. I mean, I have to do some logistics, and I have to interview, right? But if I get it…” She stretched up to the sky, wriggling her fingers long at the clouds, all the prickled flesh on her arms visible in the cold moonlight. Without thinking, he shuffled closer to warm her. “I mean, I have to actually get to the interview first, so there’s the first hurdle.”

Masamune chewed his lip. “How far out is it?”

“It’s in Virginia. Complete other side of the country. The plane tickets are outrageous.”

“Damn. Guess you’re road tripping, huh?”

A gust of warm breath huffed from her lips. “I mean, I hate going on them alone, but I don’t even have a car right now. Mine got totaled; kid hit me when I was driving down here. Guess I’m taking a damn greyhound.”

His first reaction was to say ‘yikes’, and then… well. Masamune paused, soaking in the possibilities. “So you need a car is what you’re saying?”

“Mmhmm.”

Back in the day, his dad often said that the universe lined things up. Masamune didn't exactly believe in fate—he believed in making things happen—but occasionally, he saw the reasoning. 

“How do you like eighties cars?” He asked. 

She eyed him, a smile in her eyes and voice. “Like the Camaro? Sure, it’s cool. Why?”

Masamune snickered. “Everything in the Date family is cool as hell. What if I told you I could get you a car and a road trip buddy?”

The click of her brain working was almost audible. “Don’t you have to be here?”

“Gotta wait for the death certificates, which is probably a week or so. Mom wants the Camaro gone, and if she has to be around me too long, she’ll probably get sick of me real quick. I might as well make myself scarce and hang out with a dear friend. Besides—I’ll cut you a deal on selling you it. Call it a test drive.”

“A test drive? For like, a week?” But she was grinning, her shoulders angled in toward his. “Weeklong test drives aren’t kosher, Mr. Date.”

“And I’m not Jewish.”

“Are you being serious right now?”

“Serious as my dad’s grave.” Masamume brushed a lock of stray hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “Want me along for the ride?”

Once upon a time, years ago, the whole gang got into an altercation with an older man in a Ford pickup. They were only teenagers sitting on a dock, but the guy pulled up and screamed at them for ‘loitering’. Mitsunari tried to intervene, and when the man acted like he might hit him, Ieyasu almost threw hands himself. They’d retreated into the woods—and when the man left, Masamune, Mitsuhide, and she went back and lit the dock on fire to spite him. Right beforehand, she’d fixed him with the most mischievous expression he’d ever seen: mouth sucked into her teeth, eyes glittering, staring out from under her lashes. 

Now, she made that same expression, and it lit a fire in him. 

“We’d have to leave like…” She mentally calculated. “In three days to make it.”

“Or we could take the long road, do a little sightseeing, and leave tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” She echoed. Only a half second later, that smile was back. “I’m game.”

---

At six a.m. sharp, Masamune tried to wake her by flinging rocks at her window. That didn't work. At last he resorted to calling her, discovering that she stayed in a completely different room now. 

“Could’a used that knowledge,” he chuckled, hopping in place to warm his legs. The fog pressed in around him, September chill early this year. “Don’t suppose anyone is using that room?”

Her voice was thin, but warm over the phone. “No, it’s a home gym now.” 

“Great! I didn't hassle anyone else. Get out here, Kitten, we got a road to get on.”

She emerged twenty minutes later, sweatpants fresh from the dryer, wet hair in a sloppy bun and a suitcase click-clacking behind her. She never was a morning person. Masamune snickered and popped the Camaro trunk. “Wanna drive, or wanna let me do it?”

“You start. Can we get some Starbucks?”

“Ugh.” He clutched his chest, mock-wounded. “All of the coffee places in the world, and you want Starbucks. My palate is crying.”

Rolling her eyes, she slid into the passenger seat. “Drama queen.”

They got Starbucks. She tucked her feet into fuzzy socks and folded them under her knees, clutching the large mocha. Only the rush of the road beneath their tires filled the silence. Asphalt and trees emerged from the mist like a benevolent ghost, Americana obscured. They’d only just merged onto the highway when Masamune realized there wasn’t an audio jack in the car.

“Shit,” he muttered. 

She opened her eyes, head lolling on the headrest. “What?”

He flicked the dashboard. Nope, no audio jack. Not even a CD player. No; amidst all the toggles and buttons of the dash was a cassette player. “I don’t have anything to listen to. This thing won’t hook up to the phones, and I don’t have any tapes.”

“Hm.” Taking a long sip of her drink, she mused, “Maybe your dad has some in here?”

“I guess that’d make sense. Take a look around, would you?”

Sure enough, she was right. Tucked away in the glove compartment was a treasure trove: Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, AC/DC, Prince, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen. “Damn,” she chuckled, “Your dad had good taste.”

Masamune took the copy of Rumors in his fingers, never taking his eyes off the road. The dust was thick under his thumb. “He’d play ‘Back in Black’ when he picked me up from school. It was cool as hell.” With a snap, he pried open the copy of Rumors and popped it into the player. The speakers hummed to life with strumming guitar, Fleetwood Mac echoing. “I know there’s nothing to say, someone has taken my place…” She rested her elbow on the center console, brushing his arm with her as she texted. 

“Guess what?” She murmured. “Mitsunari just got back from Tanzania.”

“Oh shit, really?” How long had it been? Masamune mentally calculated the dates. “I guess it has been two years, huh? The Peace Corps finally turned him loose?”

“Yeah. He’s apparently crashing at Ieyasu’s place—” Masamune barked a laugh, and she tittered, but continued, “—and wants to know if we’re going to head that direction.”

“He’s in Maryland, right?” Fishing out his phone, he checked it. “Yasu didn't tell me about this. Bastard. Well, we get there fast enough, then we can definitely hunker down there for a day or so and celebrate his coming back.”

Classic rock kept them company on the long drive. He didn't mind roadtrips. There was something sacred about them. Forget the American Dream; it was dead. Long live the American Road Trip, a rite of passage for the lost souls from sea to shining sea. Nothing cleared the senses like cranking up the heater on the floorboards and rolling down the window to a blast of autumn air. She let down her hair and it whipped wild in the wind. 

Thank God she was here. Masamune quietly relished her reappearance in his life. She was a gateway to an old world, one with his father alive, one where he still snuck out of the house at night and biked to the 7-Eleven for slurpees at 3a.m. They stopped at a Cracker Barrel for dinner and ordered root beer floats and roasted each other over the annoying ‘jump-the-pegs’ game perched on every table. Though you were supposed to reduce it to one peg, she couldn’t quite manage it. Somehow she kept getting two or three. 

“I got it down to one peg once,” she laughed, shoving it toward him. Masamune swirled it under his hand. 

“I can do it,” he commented. “But that’s because Mitsunari taught me the trick years ago.” He knocked the first peg out of the top of the triangle, moving it elsewhere. “That’s the one that’s gotta be empty. From there on out, there’s a set solution.”

She craned over it, investigating. “What’s the set solution?”

A long, hefty pause lingered between them as he slurped some of his float. 

“Dunno anymore.” He cracked a grin. “I forgot like, eight years ago.”

“Ass! Then you don’t know!” She swatted at his arm and grinned. “Liar!”

“Hey! I was just trying to look cool in front’a you, Kitten, I can’t look like some big dumb stud after all these years—”

“I love how you allow for the possibility that you’re dumb,” she cackled, “but not the possibility that you’re anything other than hot.”

“Am I wrong? Look at me.”

The roll of her eyes was exactly what he wanted. She shoved a biscuit at him over the table. “I think Mark Twain said something like, ‘it’s better to stop talking and appear dumb than open your mouth and remove any doubt’, Masamune.”

He clutched at his chest, but took the biscuit anyway. “You wound me, Kitten.”

As they were paying the bill, she split off and reappeared a minute later, plunking thirty cents onto the cash register and tucking a cinnamon stick into his jacket pocket. “Here.”

“My favorite!” He peeled back the plastic wrapper. “Thanks, Kitkat. You remembered.”

For the first time since they’d seen each other again, her expression evolved to one he’d almost forgotten. He’d only seen it once before. It was a moonlit night back in their senior year, after prom, when they were both lingering in the pool as everyone else passed out drunk. He’d wiped a leaf from her hair and told her she was beautiful, and she’d looked at him like that so long and hard that he wondered if he’d ever known her inner thoughts at all. 

“Of course I remembered,” she answered at last, soft and clarion clear. “I remember all kinds of things about you, Masamune.”

[honeymoonjin]

day 17

If I were able to write an accurate review of how I truly felt upon reading this chapter, it would be similar to that of a three-page dialogue filled with indecipherable fangirling garbles and ineloquent threats in the form of pterodactyl screeches. I found myself toggling between overtly thirsting over Yoongi (like any other warm-blooded person would) and giggling like a poorly developed cartoon villain for the majority of the chapter, questioning whether or not I should even send in my thoughts since most of it would simply be *insert keysmashing here*. It wasn’t until I began thinking about the prompt distributions for this week that led me to the idea of “choices”.

There’s a reason why writers are told over and over again to “show, not tell”; actions speak louder than words. Oftentimes these actions reveal things to the audience about the characters that perhaps even they do not realize about themselves. For example, Yoongi chose this prompt. Why? The answer hinges on how the prompt was specifically written as it was most likely open ended to leave room for interpretation. But if one were to even infer what the prompt might have been, it boils the prompt down to the idea of “control”. Now, the contestants do have quite a bit of say in how they carry out their prompts (with little in way of instruction or restrictions) but if one looks at the restrictions that they do have that hold them back, Yoongi getting to take back some of that control feels almost liberating. This is spectacularly juxtaposed with the “truth or dare” game that takes place over the duration of chapter – a perfect example of something that he has no true control over – (which also coincides with Yoongi’s day-long prompt fill; *phew* our lady had her WORK cut out for her in the most delicious way!!). In the “truth or dare” game, Yoongi had a disastrous day but he was also getting to WORK on Y/N throughout the runtime of it. One could call it losing the battle but ultimately winning the war? Because it truly is a battle at this point. By monopolizing an entire day to complete his prompt, he inadvertently took a day away from the guys to complete their prompt. Coupled with the fact that he got to choose who got what prompt, this week is shaping up to be Yoongi stacking all the cards in his favor. And let’s be real, isn’t that exactly how he would want it?

Okay now that all of the analysis out of the way, I can finally gush about this chapter the way I want to: *ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh* I LOVE YOONGI IN THIS DAMN VERSE SO MUCH YOU CANNOT CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE. Y’ALL other chapters better bring your mofo A-GAME this week or else they will just PALE in comparison to the Trifecta of CUM-tastic scene stealing moments from Day 17!! OMG!! OMFG!! This chapter was amazing!! (sidenote: Despite the fact that I might have noticed that this chapter felt like it was… on a bit of a “time crunch”, it was still good. There wasn’t a problem with the pacing, it just felt like the writer trying to finish it before an imaginary time bomb went off. That being the case though, it did not deter it from the awesomeness that was day 17!! Also did you notice that our lady’s lovely sweater turned from a pretty yellow shade to pink by the end of the chapter? I chalked it up to the flavored soju Y/N and Kookie were sharing.) Fave stuff list style: Hobi used to be in cheer?!, unintentional crop top sweater wearing Namjoon, YOONGI BEING THROWN UNCEREMONIOUSLY INTO THE POOL!! This is extra funny bc we all know that Yoongi in RL hates being wet, Jungkook’s ideal sexual scenario! ALSO, ALSO!! Jan doesn’t really like degradation (it’s kinda hard for me to read) but you somehow manage to weave it in so tastefully. It’s probably because I trust you as a writer which is amazing that you’re able to convey that sense of trust between the characters thus, the reader also trusts that the term is used as a term of endearment rather than to degrade her value as a person. *making it rain brownie points* 

*tucks away rabid fangirl Jan* I’m so sorry about her… I don’t usually let her out because…  she can be a bit uncouth, but this chapter did things to me so… This really set the bar like astronomically high for week 3. I was already so pumped for this week (my BFF – let’s call her 🍊 – and I discussed this excitement at length over the last week), and to have it start off like this, I am just so ecstatic for what is in store for the rest of the guys this week! They have their work cut out for them for sure as Yoongi-centric chapters, for me at least, will forever be “objectively superior”. Thank you so much for your continued hard work. I know it’s gonna get more and more tough considering you’ve started your final semester of uni but I shall be cheering you on from the sidelines like Park Jimin in the stands cheering for b-balling Min Yoongi! Thank you for sharing your amazing talent for storytelling once again; I honestly feel so blessed to have it to look forward to every week! 💜 Jan

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ahhh i’m sad to hear that me rushing comes across in the chapter lmaoooo but yes i def was fighting the clock to get it done in time. i need to be better with time management rip jsdkfsd

i’m so GLAD to hear, on the other hand, that you were such a fan of the yoongi goodness in this one kfsjd you’re spot on about that contrast between yoongi’s control and advantage in the bigger game, yet his abysmal run in the mini game. i don’t think it was even intentional as i wrote since i used a randomiser to draw the truths and dares, but it certainly makes for a fun ride ! 

it was jin that used to be in cheer ! but ahh i had so much fun adding in these little stories and facts about them, it’s really fun writing them getting to know each other more as we go along <3

i’m super excited to release the next chapter, because it is i think a very different style to d17, and as always thank you for writing such kind words and i look forward to hearing from you again xxxx

[shadowsof-thenight]

Flashlight: Chapter nineteen

Story summary: This is an AU Two years ago, the love of your life walked out the door, breaking your heart into a million pieces. He had been unable to deal with his ptsd and you hadn’t been able to help him.Now that your best friend is marrying his friend, he’s coming back to town and you try to brace yourself for the reunion. Will you finally get closure?

Ship: Bucky Barnes X Reader

Warnings: None, I think

Words: 3839

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A/N: I found a new beta!!! A huge thank you to @gnomewithalaptop​ for helping me! Other than that, writing is going slow, but there are plenty of ideas —so things will come!

Feedback is greatly appreciated! And if you want to get tagged, let me know.

***

Masterlist                                              Story Masterlist

***

“Yo!” Natasha’s elated voice sounded from the speaker of your phone. It echoed through the kitchen as you started getting your breakfast ready.

“Yo?” You replied, a little confused by her attitude at this early hour.

She chuckled, followed by a crunch, and you knew she was munching down on her favourite cereal. Natasha prided herself on changing her morning routine frequently; she was convinced it was beneficial for her health. You weren’t certain if that was true, but you knew she always returned to the same type of cereal after a little while.

“I need you to keep next Saturday free,” she said after a few moments and a very audible swallow. She was teasing you— she knew how the sounds of someone chewing and swallowing loudly could raise the hairs on the back of your neck. You tried to ignore it, not willing to give her the satisfaction. Though, if she kept it up, you both knew that there’d be a groan or a snippy remark leaving your mouth soon enough.

“Mhhm okay,” you finally said after quietly counting to ten.“May I know why?”

“It’s a surprise.” You could practically hear the smirk in your friend’s voice. Her surprises were always a little out there. Which could go one of two ways, really well or really bad. Her intentions were always good— the execution not exactly. “A fun one?” You asked, hoping against hope that she would give you a hint.

“Absolutely,” Natasha said confidently. She was giddy and that worried you a little.

What did she have planned for you? She wouldn’t make you do something you didn’t want, right? Your mind instantly went back to the time she decided on the colour that you were supposed to dye your hair in an attempt to annoy your parents. It was supposed to be a wash-out brand, but Nat had decided on bright blue, and apparently that colour was tough to get out. You ended up actually having to get your hair dyed to get the colour out, which really annoyed your parents at the time, though they laugh about it now.

Then there was the time where she had convinced you that the rollercoaster you were getting on wasn’t that wild or scary. A terrible decision that left her holding back your hair as you threw up in a bin around the back of the ride.

Natasha knew you better than anyone, and she worked hard to get you out of your comfort zone, to be a little more daring. You smiled at the memories, because even if it did not always pan out, your life would have been a lot more boring without her. You would most likely have never taken a single chance in life. You would have never been brave enough to kiss Bucky during a school dance, which was what prompted him to ask you out on a date. How different your life would’ve been without your demanding, daring, caring, and confident best friend.

With that being said, when Saturday rolled around, you were extremely nervous. After spending the better part of the week trying to get some information from Natasha, you were none the wiser. She was good at keeping secrets. A great quality in a friendship, except when she was keeping something from you, of course.

Natasha had come over the night before, eager to make it a sleepover, since the men had decided on having a boys-night out. Your alarm would ring at seven in the morning and she knew better than to expect Clint to be quiet as he rolled into their bed at five. Which was the usual hour after these nights. So the two of you had dinner, watched a movie and then went to bed rather early at Natasha’s request.

Natasha woke up first and was already fully dressed by the time she shook you awake in a not-so-gentle way. Groaning, you turned away from her and complained loudly when she did not relent. Chuckling, she pulled you up and ushered you into the bathroom. It wasn’t until you were in the shower that you realised that your alarm hadn’t even gone off yet. Annoyed, you leaned into the warm water and vowed to go through your routine at a more leisurely pace than usual. As if that was her punishment and not actually for your own delight. It wasn’t until Natasha knocked on the door, urging you to hurry, that you realised that you had been massaging shampoo into your hair for the better part of five minutes. Rushing through the rest of your routine, you were dressed and at the breakfast table by 7:30.

There you were greeted with an elaborate breakfast provided by Natasha. To make up for the early morning, she had made your favourite breakfast dish— blueberry pancakes. And while you appreciated the gesture, it also made you wonder just what she had in store for you today.

By eight o’clock you were in the car, moving towards the highway out of town. Natasha had told you that your appointment was at ten, so the ride would be long, but you never needed much to have fun together. You adjusted the seat to your preference and stared out of the window as Natasha turned on the radio. At some point you must have dozed off, until a catchy song on the radio woke you up. Natasha smiled as you sat up straighter, and she turned the volume up with a wink in your direction. Not long after that, you were both singing along to the lyrics at the top of your voice.

With twenty minutes to spare, Natasha pulled into the parking lot of a small airport, and your heart began to race. What was she planning to do here? Natasha beamed at you and got out of the car, waiting patiently for you to follow her. Which took you a moment as you breathed deeply in and slowly out, wiping your suddenly sweaty palms on your jeans. Somehow you did not believe that she had brought you here for a simple flight. If you had known just how right you were, you would have locked yourself inside the car right then and there. Instead you just stepped out and let her lead you towards a small building where a tall middle-aged man greeted the two of you with a bright smile and a few kind words.

Before you could truly register what was happening, you had been through some instructions and ended up strapped into a harness and hooked to an instructor as he moved you through the small plane and towards the opened door. Wind whipped at your hair, pulling fly-aways out of your braid. It tugged at the jumpsuit you’d put on earlier, and despite the padding, you were chilled to the bone. Though that might have been from fear and not actual cold. Your stomach churned and you wondered if you were really going to do this.

By now your feet were dangling over the edge, and you were certain that your bladder was about to give out— even though it was surely empty. You were mere seconds from pulling out when the instructor began his countdown, preparing you for the jump. Glancing to the side, Natasha gave you two thumbs up as she smiled brightly, excitedly. She was truly enjoying this. You, however, were not.

The worst part of it was, this had been your idea. Sort of. You had been so stupid to mention this during the brainstorm session with Natasha and Wanda, though you had been joking. Apparently, the joke was on you now. Which was exactly how you felt, a joke. Worse, the punchline to a bad joke. You were such an idiot. You could have bowed out on the ground, but you hadn’t. A part of you had thought it would be fun. Scary, but fun. So you had stepped onto the plane. How you regretted that now.

“One!” Called the instructor tied to your back, and he pushed off. Both of you dropped from the plane and plummeted to the ground.

The wind pulled at your skin, taking your breath away, as well as any ability to scream. It took some effort to close your mouth as you watched the ground come closer and closer, realising just how high you had been. You were still scared, so incredibly scared, and yet, for a single moment, as you fell, it was also exhilarating. There was a weightlessness to it, a freedom fuelled by adrenaline. Suddenly all your worries were gone, pushed from your mind; nothing else seemed to matter— nothing but this weightless freedom. Nothing but the parachute and the desperate hope that it would work, that your instructor would manage to land you both safely on the ground. Which should be an easy feat for the experienced man behind you.

In the plane you had gotten a full explanation on how the landing would go and as the ground neared, the instructor yelled out a few reminders. You nodded, unable to speak with those winds still whipping at your face. He gave you his signal and while he pulled the toggles to slow the speed of your descent, you pulled your legs up against your chest. It felt very counterintuitive to curl up as the ground came closer, but you told yourself that this was necessary for a safe landing. Otherwise you’d risk getting your feet tangled with those of the man behind you, and that would definitely cause problems. The landing was over in seconds, and you found yourself seated on the dry grass with a huge smile on your face.  

Natasha landed mere moments after you, and as soon as she was free of the bindings that had tied her to her own instructor and their parachute, you wrapped her in your arms while laughing loudly. Exhilaration overpowered every other emotion now, and the adrenaline was still coursing through you. You jumped around together in a small circle, happy that you had dared to take this plunge.

“Can we go again?” Natasha asked the men as they began folding the parachute, a pick-up visible in the distance— their ride back to the airport.

“Quite the kicker, isn’t it,” one of them replied with a chuckle, and you could only agree with him, wholeheartedly.

Though you still vowed to never do it again. This was one of those things that you only wanted to experience once. You were glad that you had done it, but that was it. There was no need to repeat it. Natasha on the other hand seemed fully prepared to do it several times over. She always had been the more daring of you two. The most daring of the entire group really. Balls of steel, that woman.

***

When you’d gotten yourself out of the jumper you’d been made to wear, Natasha took you to lunch at a quaint little diner about fifteen minutes away from the airport. There, you both spoke excitedly about the whole experience and the first item of your bucket list that you could check off.

You were just swallowing your last bite when your phone began to buzz. Slightly surprised that the world was still out there, you picked it from your pocket and glanced at the screen. An unknown number. Confused, you answered, and you nearly dropped your fork upon hearing who it was and why.

An apologetic Steve was begging for both your discretion and your time. Not a regular request, but he sounded rather urgent, and you were willing to help him in any way you could. So you asked for an explanation, while Natasha quickly went to the register to pay for your food. Steve was quick to explain that the four of them had gotten into some trouble and were currently being detained at the police station a mere ten minutes from your place. You groaned, not even bothering to ask what had brought them there. Instead you told him you were quite some ways away from home, but that you were on it. Arrangements would be made to get them out as quickly as possible.

Natasha came back from the counter and quickly collected her things, a smile tugging at her lips as she sighed.

“They got in trouble, didn’t they?” She said with a scoff, and you could only shrug. This wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last, you imagined. Especially not now that they were complete again. Those men were trouble personified when they got together.

“I just wonder why they called me,” you wondered out loud as you made your way to the car.

“Steve called?” You nodded and she chuckled.

“Well he wouldn’t call Sharon—he’s still easing her into our group of degenerates. Sam would’ve been adamant not to call Maria, because she’d chew his head off. And I’d just laugh at them. It was either you or Wanda. And Wanda’s working today.”

“I feel so special now,” you laughed and searched your purse for your phone, only to realise it was already in your lap. Natasha started the car and checked the mirrors before exiting the parking spot. You had offered to drive but Natasha had just smirked, saying that they had called you, so it was now your job to inform Maria. You’d groaned loudly, not looking forward to that conversation at all. Even though it was a call she was probably already expecting. After all, she would have noticed that her man hadn’t come home that night. And she would have put two and two together.

These boys’ nights were infamous amongst your group—and to anyone that knew you long enough. There was no way to predict what they would get up to, but it was often trouble. Naturally, the so-called innocent Steve was often the instigator. He was reckless, strong-willed and he never backed down. That stubbornness had gotten him into trouble so many times as a kid, but it had never changed. Bucky had taken to jumping in, trying to salvage whatever he could, which rarely worked. Clint, on the other hand, knew just how to egg everyone on—he liked a little chaos every now and again. After Sam had joined your little group, there’d been a short moment in time where you hoped he would have been more sensible. He wasn’t. He was just as bad as the rest of them and he loved every second of it.

It often resulted in four severely hungover men with crazy stories, like the time they were attacked by a swan because they had thought the animal needed help building her nest. The bruises had been real. As had your laughter. You had tried to explain that good intentions didn’t mean much if the execution was bad, but it had done nothing to enlighten them—though they had checked the next morning to see if the animal was alright.

You had loved teasing them those mornings, speaking a little too loudly or laughing a little too much as they battled the effects of the alcohol. You never quite enjoyed mornings as much as you did during those moments. It was like they all turned into idiots that couldn’t recognise their limits at all when they got together like that.

You remembered the first time something had occurred; it had been near the end of high school and had ended with Bucky serenading you underneath your bedroom window. Steve and Clint had been hiding in the bushes, but by the time they’d woken the whole neighbourhood up, those two had skedaddled—hanging Bucky out to dry. Your father had been so angry, but you hadn't been able to stop laughing. It had taken some time after that for Bucky to win your father over again.  

And you would never forget the Halloween that they teepeed the house of some bully—which they had gotten away with, since they’d managed to hide in Natasha’s shed afterwards. Her parents had known, though they played dumb. Everyone knew of the reputation of the bully, and that his parents would just sweep it all under the rug if anyone ever caught him.

Their—perhaps misguided—crusade for justice had only increased once Sam joined their nights. They had spent many a night creating places to sleep for the homeless, not caring that they were vandalising government property. You imagined just how glad the local politicians must have been when the men joined the army. Of course nobody could have predicted that they would only come home with one more trouble maker amongst them. And now on their first night out with the four of them in years, things had obviously gotten out of hand.

And now it was up to you to inform Maria of this. Not because you were telling on Sam— you were certain that Maria already knew what happened, but she knew the law better than any one of you. She was a paralegal and would be able to get them out of trouble most of the time. Which was also why she would be angry with Sam. She’d tell him that he should’ve known better. Which he did, until those other boneheads joined in.

***

By the time you reached the precinct nearly two hours had passed, and you were well-informed of the stupid antics that they’d gotten up to the night before. Though you couldn’t even be really mad at them.

In a drunken stupor, they had gotten into a fight with another group. Bullies, according to Maria. Which would normally not get them arrested, except they were trained combatants and therefore outmatched the other group easily. They were held to a higher standard. They had also been rowdy, the police informed you. To calm matters down, they’d arrested the lot of them. Nobody had been severely injured—just some minor abrasions, bruised eyes, and bruised egos—leaving the boys with a mere misdemeanour charge. Your hope was that Maria could get those dropped if she explained the situation.

Which she then proceeded to do, though only because the officer in charge had gotten the full scoop on the story and he had never intended to give them much trouble. Naturally, not one of you had any intention of letting these men know. They better show some gratitude to their saving angel, Maria.

“Hello there, boys!” You exclaimed as you walked up to the bars that caged them in. It was late in the afternoon, but with their sleepless night, you were certain that their hangover would be particularly bad this time. It was all the incentive you needed to be as chipper as you could possibly be.

“Shush,” Clint said. “No need to scream.”

You smirked as you looked at him, tilting your head to the side and winking. He groaned and slumped on the hard bench he was sitting on. Sam and Bucky had already covered their ears as soon as you opened your mouth, keeping a careful eye on you—scared that you’d start speaking again as soon as they uncovered them. This was not unthinkable.

Only Steve seemed genuinely happy to see you, unfazed by your loud voice. He always did recover easiest from a night of drinking. Which was unfair, since he was usually the one to persuade others to match him beer for beer. Only Maria ever managed.

“Drunk and disorderly, huh?” You asked, perhaps still a little too loud, and Clint muttered some angry words under his breath. You chuckled, before turning back to Steve.

“We really weren’t that bad, I promise,” Steve offered and you laughed, one of those full-out belly laughs, loud and boisterous, because you knew them. Even if you had not been aware of exactly what they had done, you would never expect them to be angels. They were more like warriors. For justice, as they liked to claim. They simply lacked the finesse that would keep them from being arrested. You cocked an eyebrow and shot him a pointed look, which was enough to make Steve groan. He knew the jig was up; they were busted.

“Did you bail us out?” Sam asked after a short moment, hopeful eyes looking your way.

“Oh hell no, I don’t have that kind of cash,” you chuckled, not bothering to inform them that no bail had been set. They had not been arraigned. His hangover must have been worse than you thought.

“Did you just come to gloat?” Clint groaned as he stood up and walked towards you. You smirked again and winked.

“Gloating is part of it, yes, but I also arranged for Maria to come, and she’s currently trying to get the charges dropped,” you finally told them, taking mercy on them.

“You called Maria?” Sam seemed genuinely worried, and you laughed. He made it seem like she would smack him around for this. She’d be angry, naturally, chew him out, but he’d apologise and things would work out just fine in a day or two. Clint sat down beside him and patted him on the back.

“Yep,” you said, popping the P, “Sorry, buddy, but you knew you couldn’t hide this from her.”

Sam just nodded. You were right. Of course. Besides, you would have never been able to get much done for them, whereas Maria was a force to be reckoned with in situations like this.

“Wait, you don’t gloat. That’s not your style,” Clint said, sitting up. “How did the surprise go over?” A mischievous glint appeared in his eyes, and you knew there was no hiding your own misfortune.

“Well, let’s just put it like this; I’m glad I did it, but if I ever get any ideas again—just shoot me.”

Clint barked out a laugh, earning him a punch from both Sam and Bucky, before Sam realised that he had no idea why the man laughed. Sam wasn’t the kind of person that was often left out of a joke—he needed to know the gist of it.

“Wait what did you do?” He stood from the bench and joined Steve by the bars, cocking his head to the side as he took you in. It surprised you just how quickly he had forgotten about his hangover.

“Nat took her for a parachute jump,” Clint said, and laughter erupted from the others, to which you just shook your head because you couldn’t even blame them. They all remembered the puking after the rollercoaster from hell. Ever since, you had not been in search of adrenaline quite as much.

“And this was your idea?” Bucky asked incredulously, finally opening his mouth.

“Unfortunately.” You shrugged and cocked your head to one side again, making no effort to suppress the smile that broke out on your face. Bucky just shook his head with another chuckle.

***

Chapter twenty

[cantgetoutofmyheda]

I love affair au but can you write a cute small town au. Best friends to lovers in the big city.

“Clarke, wake up,” Lexa shouted through the door leading to the blonde’s room, “I can’t find my neck pillow!”

“Ugh,” the blonde murmured from the nest of blankets she had burrowed herself into, “I’m sleeping, Lexa.”

The brunette took Clarke’s reply as a cue to open the door, “Have you seen it anywhere?”

“Lex!” Clarke huffed as she put a pillow over her head to block out the sound of her best friend’s voice.

Lexa pulled her lips into a smirk before plunging herself atop the blonde’s body, “Morning, Clarke.”

Clarke begrudgingly removed the pillow covering her face, “Why must you do this to me?”

Lexa stayed in her position, knowing Clarke wasn’t awake enough to have the strength to push her off, “Because it’s nearly 10am and there’s no reason for you to still be asleep. And because my flight is in two hours and can’t find my neck pillow and something tells me you’ve hidden it from me.”

“Well,” Clarke rubbed her sleepy eyes as she sat up, “maybe if you weren’t traveling so much, I wouldn’t have to start hiding things from you.”

Lexa rolled her eyes, “You hiding my things isn’t going to stop work from making me travel.”

“What if next time I hid your passport?” Clarke raised a brow.

Lexa snorted, “Then I’d tell you to have fun explaining that to Titus.”

It wasn’t that the blonde’s actions we’re just, but Lexa understood where she was coming from. After all, it had been Lexa’s idea that the pair moved from their small and quaint hometown to Polis. Lexa had a great job opportunity waiting and knew that Clarke would be able to still do her freelance graphic design work from wherever she pleased; she also knew a bigger city meant a better chance at getting more clients.

The thing is, Lexa and Clarke had been inseparable their entire lives. They grew up down the street from each other, they started daycare together, they went through middle school and high school together, they even roomed together in college. Unknowingly, they had become an extension of one another.

“It’s not fair,” Clarke let out, to which Lexa raised a questioning brow.

“What isn’t fair?”

At this point, Clarke was fully sitting up. Lexa had finally gotten off the top of her and was seated by her side. The blonde leaned her head on her best friend’s shoulder, “You made me move here with you, but you’re never actually here.”

“Clarke-”

Clarke shook her head as she cut the girl off, “No, it’s true. This was your idea and now it feels like I’m just stuck here while you’re off traveling the world. I only see you a few times a month now, Lex, and when I do, you’re running around the apartment like a crazy person, unpacking and repacking your suitcase for your next trip.”

Lexa closed her eyes in thought, “I know.”

“At this rate, we might as well get a one bedroom to save on rent since you’re never here,” Clarke let out.

“That’s not fair, Clarke.”

“It’s not fair that this was your idea and now I’m just stuck here.”

“After this trip, I don’t have to go anywhere for another three weeks,” Lexa offered, “Maybe I can take a few days off and we can go somewhere for a long weekend.”

Clarke shook her head, “The last time you said that, they put you on a last minute flight to London and we had to cancel our Airbnb. I’d rather not chance that again.”

Defeated, Lexa grounded her feet to the cold wooden floors to start her exit back to her own bedroom, “I’m sorry, Clarke. I’ll be better, I promise.”

“Lex,” Clarke called after the girl, “I’m proud of you. You worked so hard to get this job and I know all the travel is because you’re doing an amazing job. I just miss you. I miss you a lot.”

“Me too,” the brunette sighed as she leaned against the door frame.

Clarke clicked her tongue, “I hid it under the couch cushion. Have a safe trip, Lex.”

Lexa nodded as she gave the blonde a somber smile, “I’ll be home soon.”

--

Lexa looked down at her phone, her text to Clarke from the day prior saying she had landed safely was still unanswered.

“For someone who just sold in a solid plan, you don’t look so happy,” Lincoln said as he put their drinks down and reclaimed his seat at the table.

“Thanks, Linc,” she nodded her drink at her coworker before taking a sip, “I’m fine. Just some other things going on.”

The man nodded, “Anything you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. Clarke’s just annoyed with me because I’ve been gone so much, I don’t know what to do to make it better.”

“For two people who are just friends, you definitely have the problems of people that are in an actual relationship,” he laughed.

Lexa clenched her jaw as she stared at him.

“Sorry, not funny,” he conceded, “But did you ever stop to think about why she’s actually upset? Maybe she has feelings for you.”

“There’s no way,” Lexa rolled her eyes, “we’re best friends.”

Lincoln nodded, “Listen, I don’t want to meddle here, so I’m just going to give you my two cents and then we can move on, okay?” He waited for her to nod before he continued, “ Think about what’s most important to you and prioritize that. If it’s work, talk to Clarke to manage her expectations. If it’s Clarke’s feelings and your guys’ friendship, or whatever this is, all you have to do is tell Titus that the travel has been too much for you and that you need to cut it down a little so you can better balance your work and personal life. You just need to decide which one takes precedence.”

“Right,” Lexa sighed, “that’s the hard part.”

Lincoln raised a brow, “Choosing?”

“No,” she exhaled, “coming to terms with my choice.”

The man smiled, “I see.”

Lexa gulped the rest of her whiskey down and stared into the bottom of the glass, “I think I need another drink.”

---

It was a handy trick, she had to admit that. Taking a photo of her room number whenever she checked into a hotel had become an instinctual thing for Lexa. With the amount of traveling she did, and after confusing room numbers on her first few trips, it had become second nature to her.

She pulled out her phone in the elevator to double check that she was going to the correct floor when she realized she had a notification for an unread text.

The first thing that popped into her mind: Clarke.

The actuality of the situation: Titus.

He wrote to her asking if she could extend her trip by an additional day and instead of returning home after these string of meetings, fly direct to the Dallas office for three days.

“Fuck.”

The moment Lexa got into her room, she stripped down to ready herself for bed and took her phone back out. She drafted a response to Titus, edited it three times, and finally sent it. She toggled to her unanswered text to Clarke who she now had to write a message to: I’m sorry, I miss you and wish that I was home.

---

The flight back to Polis had Lexa in a bundle of nerves. It was comical that she had to travel as much as she did because she really did hate airplanes. She still hadn’t heard from Clarke. The cab ride to their apartment was no better, she was playing every possible scenario in her mind of how the conversation was going to go. She had zoned so far out that the cab driver had to call out to her three times that they had arrived at her destination.

It was noon on a Thursday, Clarke should be home—likely set up at the coffee table in the living room working on whatever project she had assigned to her this week. As she turned the key through the lock and slowly pushed the door open, in anticipation to meet eyes with the person that had been ignoring her, all she found was an empty apartment.

Lexa sighed as she looked around: no Clarke and no sign that Clarke had been working from the apartment that morning. She went straight to her room, leaving her suitcase in the corner—she would deal with that later. She found a pen and paper, wanting to write Clarke a note, when she realized her closet door was open. She walked over and saw that a few things had been moved, likely from her rushed packing job, closed it, and headed to the blonde’s room to drop the piece of paper off.

When she opened the door, she was caught off guard by the sight before her. Clarke seemed to still be asleep, but peeking out between her messy golden hair, sheets, and blankets, was Lexa’s childhood stuffed raccoon: a stuffed animal that had acted like a security blanket for the brunette throughout the years.

The scene in front of her tugged at her heart in a way she didn’t know was possible, a way she couldn’t even describe. She took one more look at Clarke before climbing next to her in bed and draping her arm around the blonde’s waist.

Clarke stirred and immediately turned around when she realized someone was laying next to her, “Lex?”

Lexa suddenly lost her words, “Hi.”

“You’re home? You weren’t supposed to come back until tomorrow,” the blonde pointed out.

Lexa sighed, “Actually, last night, Titus asked if I could stay until Saturday and then go directly to Dallas for a few days.”

Clare furrowed her brow, “But you’re home?”

“I am,” Lexa nodded, “I told him I had some things to take care of, Linc is covering the rest of the meetings for me and doing the Dallas trip.”

“Why?”

“You are the most important person in my life and I never wanted you to feel like I was abandoning you. I know it was my idea to come here and that I had to talk you into it,” Lexa sighed, “You were right with what you said before I left. It’s not fair that I did this to you. I needed to apologize to your face and it couldn’t wait until after Dallas.”

Clarke’s brow was still furrowed, “You cancelled two work trips to tell me all this, Lex?”

“I told you, it couldn’t wait. You weren’t talking to me, Clarke,” Lexa started, tears starting to well in her eyes, “We’ve never not talked before, you’ve never ignored me before. It made me realize some things.”

Clarke’s eyes met Lexa’s, “Like what?”

“That I missed you, that I never want you to feel that way again, that I love you.”

The blonde nodded, “I love you too, Lex-”

“No,” Lexa cut her off, “I don’t think you get it. I love you, Clarke. This fight? Realizing how I was making you feel? It brought perspective to things. I love you, I am in love with you.”

As Lexa made her proclamation, her eyes immediately darted away from Clarke’s, utterly afraid of how the blonde would take it.

In the silence of the moment, she felt arms snake around her side, pulling her closer towards the blonde and the stuffed raccoon.

“Me too,” Clarke whispered, “I’m in love with you, too.”

[elsaclack]

all of my heroes sit up straight

hi it’s me, processing,

Amy is, unsurprisingly, quiet on the drive home.

It’s not the same desperate sadness Jake found her in on the couch in the break room, but there is a definite air of melancholy to the way she stares out the window. Elbow propped against the door, fingers curled against her chin, contemplative, quiet, quiet.

He doesn’t dare turn on the radio.

He knows it doesn’t have anything to do with him (not directly, at least). He knows she’s lost in her own thoughts, in her own memories - likely all the unpleasant ones, given the week she’s just had. He knows this, and yet, there is some primitive ne’er-developed sector of his brain that has had silence equating with anger and punishment since he served as a seven-year-old witness to his parents deploying such tactics against each other. He knows it isn’t about him, but when she sighs and briefly closes her eyes, he feels his anxiety spike.

He doesn’t dare turn on the radio, but he does flinch when he clears his throat.

“You hungry?” His voice rasps from lack of use and Amy’s eyelids hang lower than usual when she turns to look at him curiously.

She shrugs and chews the inside of her cheek. “I guess I need to eat,” she murmurs. “I’ve been living off of Cheez-Its from the vending machine for most of the week. What’re you in the mood for?”

He opens his mouth, the word pizza practically tripping over his tongue, before he hesitates. “Um...you should choose.”

Her brow furrows. “I should choose? Why ‘should’?”

“Because - ‘cause you’re the one who hasn’t had real food in a week, you just said you’ve been living off Cheez-Its.”

“So this has nothing to do with you feeling needlessly guilty over everything I told you about and trying to make it up to me?”

“That’s - I’m - are you mad at me?”

The question erupts from the confines of his chest before he can stop it. Amy makes a noise - one of indigence - just as the street light ahead flashes to red. He has no choice but to bring the car to a stop; he has no choice but to meet her bemused gaze.

“Why on earth would you think that I’m mad at you?”

Jake bites out a sigh and scrubs the heels of his hands against his eyes, willing the right words to come to him. “I just had no idea how bad it is for you and for every other woman on the planet. And I feel like such a jerk for not saying something to every creepy or stupid or just plain mean guy who’s said or done stuff like that to you while I’m around. I mean, you’re my wife. If I can’t recognize when crap like that is happening to you, I’m definitely not recognizing when it happens to, say, Rosa, or Gina, or - or anyone. I’m mad at myself, and you’ve been really quiet this whole ride home - I don’t know, I thought you were, like, ignoring me because you’re mad at me, too.”

The light flashes green, but he doesn’t dare look away - not when Amy’s looking at him like that, all overflowing with concern and affection and breathtaking love. “Jake,” she murmurs.

The car behind them honks.

“Pull over up there.”

He does as she says, waving in apology as he steps on the gas. Amy waits until he’s safely pulled over, until the cars behind them are passing them without swerving, before reaching across the console and grabbing his right hand. “I am not mad at you, not at all. I just want to get that out of the way first and foremost.” She squeezes his hand between both of hers, and a sense of calm overtakes his entire mind. “Secondly...I think that a more productive way for you to look at this is by recognizing that this is a learning opportunity for you. You’ve never had to directly deal with this culture from a woman’s perspective before, so I understand how and why you wouldn’t be aware of it when it happens. I’ve never blamed you. But now that you are aware of it, you can learn how to watch for it and recognize it, and you can be better in the future. There are plenty of educational resources out there, but just the fact that you want to be better is the exact reason why I could never be angry at you over any of this. I love you so much, Jake Peralta.”

She lifts his hand up to her lips and presses a kiss against his knuckles, and he squeezes her hand gently, letting his head fall back against the headrest. “I meant what I said when I proposed to you,” he murmurs as she slowly strokes the back of his wrist with her thumb. “You really are the best detective I know. Best detective, period. The numbers don’t lie.” Tears have sprung up in her eyes; he squeezes her hand a little harder. “There isn’t a single person on the planet who can take that from you. You’re the kind of detective - the kind of person that I wanted to be when I grew up, and every single day I wake up more happy and excited than the last because it’s one more day I get to spend with you. You’re brilliant, you’re so funny, and you’re the love of my life, Ames. I love you so, so much.”

The tears spill down her cheeks as she leans forward, curling her free hand around the back of his neck to anchor him down toward her. They meet in the middle - the kiss somewhere in the grey between chaste and desperate - and when they break she stays close, forehead pressing against his almost insistently, so he can feel her full-body tremor as she sniffles and shivers.

“Thank you,” she whispers, the warmth of her breath washing over his chin.

He responds by leaning back and pressing a kiss to her forehead before she can lean away; he turns his right hand still clasped in hers so that their fingers interlock and squeezes three times as he flashes a smile at her. “Let’s go home and get some pizza,” he says as he eases the car back into the flow of traffic.

“I knew you had an opinion,” she says through a grin as she pulls his hand into her lap.

“Yeah...sorry. I freaked out a little and made it about me and that wasn’t cool. You were just really quiet.”

“I was thinking about Carrie,” she says softly, “and about how Rosa was right. That maybe I ruined Carrie’s career, and possibly her life. And I was thinking about how I really don’t want to go to work tomorrow to have Rosa say ‘I told you so.’ I wasn’t ignoring you, not on purpose.”

“I know. I know. But, Amy, you did the right thing and you did it really well. It’s not your fault that the company is corrupt, and it’s definitely not your fault that they basically iced her out after she came forward and pursued the case. You and Carrie were and still are both in the right. And as for Rosa, I don’t think she’d do that to you, but I can text her right now and tell her to leave you alone tomorrow -”

“No, no, you don’t have to do that,” Amy interrupts wearily. “I appreciate the offer, but...this was my decision. I have to face the consequences.”

He glances at her to find her staring down at their joined hands, free fingertip ghosting over their laced fingers. “You don’t have to face them alone, though,” he reminds her as he returns his gaze to the road. “You definitely don’t have to face Rosa alone. In fact, I’d advise against it, since she’s the most terrifying person on the planet.” He manages to draw a chuckle out of her at that; the sound is like long-forgotten music to his ears, invigorating from the inside out. “You have the best laugh.”

She squeezes his hand. “Sorry I’ve been so quiet.”

“You don’t have to apologize -”

“No, but I want to. Because I don’t always realize that I’m doing that and I know how much it bothers you. I can’t guarantee that I’ll always be able to keep myself from doing it in the future, but I can promise that if I ever am mad at you for something, I’ll tell you. Deal?”

He flashes her another smile - this one decidedly more grateful. “Deal.”

He’s still grateful three hours later, seated on the couch with his feet propped up on the coffee table. He’s got a belly full of pizza and contentment in his veins, spurred on by the near-inaudible snoring coming from Amy, currently sound asleep with her head in his lap. He’ll move her to the bed before midnight, he decides, but for now he doesn’t care to risk waking her before she hits four solid hours of sleep. So with careful, restrained movements, he pulls the blanket folded over the back of the couch down and pulls it over her body, contorting his spine as much as he can in order to get both of her feet covered.

And once he’s sure she’s covered as much as possible, he takes the remote and toggles onto Netflix’s search function, slowly toggling around the keyboard until he’s typed out ‘feminism’ in the search bar. He chooses the third one down in the results, and as his selection begins to load, he gently runs his fingers through Amy’s hair.

[scriveyner]

Unfinished and Incomplete, Week 1: VLD AU

Good evening, and welcome to “Unfinished and Incomplete Fic Saturday!” Every Saturday for the foreseeable future I’ll post an unfinished, incomplete, and likely never to be done fic so that it stops languishing on my hard drive and haunting me forever.

Tonight’s entree: nearly 2000 words of a Voltron AU that was spun off from Shining Like the Stars that I started, fiddled around with and never actually completed or posted anything for. This series and AU originated in mid-2017, and the background needed is that: Shiro’s a clone, we all know he’s a clone, but what if there are other clones of Shiro roaming about?

[There is a tie-in in slts, where a cage is opened while everyone’s fucking around in that extra-long battle about 2/3rds of the way through - and that cage held a Shiro clone. This one, in fact.]

Anyway this Shiro clone was kept in the gladiator ring after eventual paladin!Shiro escaped, no one knows they’re clones yet, and he escaped on his own and is trying to find the Holts before attempting to get back to Earth. He stumbles across a cargo pilot who decides to help him, and they cavort across the galaxy nearly running into but never quite being in the same place as Voltron until the Paladins faces start showing up on wanted posters.

An important note: this AU was conceived of, and written, before Shiro was officially confirmed as mlm. Given the nature of this fandom, if you don’t want to see Shiro interacting with a female character in a friendly and flirtatious manner, this probably isn’t the fic snippit for you.

Background now established, have some scenes from this unfinished, untitled Voltron AU:

"Nothing ever happens on Listea," Kit repeated dutifully, crouched behind the shallow cover that the metal fence gave her. There was the distinct stink of ozone in the air, the aftereffect of blaster discharge, and she had pulled the bandanna around her neck up over her nose to help counteract it. "It'll just be a quick stop, Kit, nothing to get all excited about." Kit rose up and set her blaster in the grooves of the fence, firing at a cluster of Galra soldiers who were chasing several of the inhabitants native to the planet in their direction.

"I didn't say it like that," Shiro said, sitting with his back to the same fence and slapping a chargepack into the soldier-issue rifle he had grabbed off a Galra sentry during their hasty exit from the dive bar. "You don't have to exaggerate."

She had squeezed off a handful of shots before Shiro finally got the rifle together and rose up on one knee. Like Kit he rested the barrel on the fence-line, unlike Kit he actually aimed through the scope. "What's the count?"

"Seven-four," Kit said. "Any more charge packs?"

"Seven-five," Shiro said, as another of the Galra sentries crumpled, a smoking hole where its head used to be. "And how do I know you aren't fixing those numbers? I've seen you play cards."

Kit's response was lost to the roar of wind as one of the Galra starfighters blew by overhead, flying far too low to the ground. Its passage blasted snow flurries into the air, and before they could recover a second ship followed it with enough speed that the sonic boom nearly flattened them.

She spat snow and pushed herself to her feet. "Great plan," Kit said dryly. "Let's just waltz into Galra-occupied space when your face is plastered on every wanted poster from here to the Outer Quadrants."

"I'm pretty sure that this isn't about me," Shiro said. He had reached out a hand as if he was intending to help her up but had paused, realizing that the hand extended was his right hand. Instead, he pointed up, toward the second craft. "I'm pretty sure it's about them."

The craft that had been pursuing the Galra fighter certainly didn't look like any of the fighter craft she had ever seen before. It was large and red and feline-shaped; it had the wing of the Galra ship in its jaws like a toy. All that remained of the doomed starfighter was a curlicue of black smoke on the distant horizon; the lion circled and dropped the wing, tail lashing as it turned to face the next flight of sentry craft.

"What the heck is that," Kit said, and then dropped back below the fenceline as a spray of blaster fire reminded her that they were in the middle of a live firefight. The ground around them shook again as the lion-shaped craft shot through the air and was gone, a pinprick in the sky just that quickly. "That is the weirdest cat-looking—"

"Voltron," one of the aliens who had taken cover behind the metal fence said reverently, staring at the sky. "That's Voltron, they've come to save us!" Kit glanced over to it, and then back to the once-cloudless blue sky; now streaked with trails of exhaust and thick black plumes of smoke where the sentry fighters had detonated in atmosphere.

"See?" Shiro said, and when Kit looked back to him he was staring back through the scope of his rifle. "Told you they weren't here for me." The passage of another Galra ship flying too low blew more snow into the air, whipping their loose hair about in the wind, but he didn't move from position, firing several precise shots through the flurries and disabling the remainder of the Galra sentries before they could shoot any further civilians. "Seven-nine, by the way."

"Bullshit," Kit said, but she had watched the descent of the Galra craft. That hadn't been a starfighter that went down, it was too big. "Hey, I think a shuttle went down." She braced her blaster on the fence and used it as leverage as she stood up, her other hand grabbing at her belt, looking for her macrobinoculars and coming up empty.

"Not a starfight?" Shiro looked over at her and blew some of his escaping bangs out of his eyes. "You're sure?"

"Positive it's not a starfighter, at least," she said. Shiro glanced back at the milling natives, clearly torn — and Kit rolled her eyes and grabbed his arm. "Come on," she said. "Voltron will save them, right? The whole reason you wanted to come to this stupid backwater planet was to try to snag intel from a barely-guarded Galra outpost. Let's go get, you know, recent intel from a downed freaking Galra shuttle."

Shiro nodded. "Yeah, you're right," he said, and got to his feet smoothly.

"Ha, I'm gonna want that in writing," Kit said as they ran from their cover.

The downed shuttle had hit the ground at a hard angle, somehow missing most of the village's outlying buildings and leaving a large scar across the landscape. Natives had fled from the area, although no Galra had straggled their way outside the ship. Thick black smoke poured from the rear of the craft. "Think it's gonna blow?" Kit asked Shiro as they stared at it from a safe distance, back against one of the low-cut buildings.

"We don't have much time," Shiro said, holding his rifle over his chest as he ran out from beside the building. Kit rolled her eyes and followed, keeping a weather eye on their six as Shiro put his right hand on the hull of the shuttle. The surface would still be white-hot, having come through an atmosphere burn, but the sensor plate read the biometrics in Shiro's prosthetic hand and were at least functional enough to acknowledge him and cut the shuttle door open.

***

Shiro sat in the small, cramped bridge of the ship, his right arm braced on his leg. He'd removed the plate from the inside of his wrist and connected the wires to the ship's main computer, studying the output on an old screen. “You're gonna wreck your eyes squinting at that from like, two inches away,” Kit said as she climbed up the ladder from the hold. “Can you read Galra? Is that a stupid question?”

“I can read Galra,” Shiro said without turning from the screen.

“Is that another of the funky brain things they did to you? Because, I still can't read Galra for shit. I know like fifteen languages and the language of our supreme overlords is not one of them.” Shiro still didn't move or respond, and she flopped into the pilot's seat in the forward part of the cockpit. The ship had its navigation locked in currently, there was no need to steer or otherwise interfere with it until they popped out of faster-than-light travel. “You're chatty.”

“Hm.” Shiro wasn't actually paying any attention to her. Kit shrugged and hiked one leg up, dropping her boot on the console and managing to avoid hitting every important switch and toggle with the motion. They were headed for some of the inner planets, a much riskier proposition than their jaunt around some of the quiet parts of the Outer Regions. Galra rule was sparser there – present, but not with sentries at every spaceport scrutinizing every passenger. Things were bound to get more interesting.

“There's nothing in here about me,” Shiro said, sounding a touch disappointed. “Or the Holts.” He sat back from the screen and rubbed his left hand over his face, brushing his hair back as he did so. “Listea was a bust after all.”

“Eh, not entirely,” Kit said, leaning back enough in her seat so that she was looking at Shiro somewhat upside-down. “I got to see what Voltron looked like. A giant fuckin' cat. Who decided that was a fearsome weapon, anyway?”

Shiro made an amused noise as he disconnected his arm from the computer. “I'm glad you're satisfied with our stopover, then. Are we still on course for the inner planets?”

“Two days out at speed.” Kit hit the console with the heel of her boot, targeting the toggle that threw a map up over the forward cockpit display. “Headed for another ice planet. Why can't you take me anywhere subtropical, Shiro?”

“Last I checked I wasn't the pilot of this ship,” Shiro leaned over Kit's seat and looked at the map, and she wrinkled her nose.

“Oh god, you smell like an old sock.” She sat up as Shiro straightened, and grabbed he the front of his shirt to sniff it. “You didn't even get doused in that gross purple goo, I probably stink worse than you, why didn't you say something?”

Shiro furrowed his brow. “I didn't notice,” he said. “Do I smell like a sock? I can't tell.”

“I'm taking a shower,” Kit said. “Watch the sensors and make sure those spot repairs I did on the line don't send us through a star or a planet's gravitational mass or something, okay? I don't want to die in the shower.”

“Wait, that's what you were repairing?” Shiro looked alarmed as Kit hopped up and headed for the rear of the small ship.

"The coolant line, not the navcomputer, Shiro," Kit said. "If the coolant blows we skip out of lightspeed, and if we're in the gravitational shadow of a planet, well." She made a noise that sounded like a garbage disposal coughing up potato peelings.

"Are you sure we're safe at lightspeed?"

"Just for that, I'm using all the hot water," Kit called, and Shiro blinked, turning all the way around as Kit climbed the later to the cramped quarters.

***

"You know, you can just drop me on Yahsa," Shiro said when Kit emerged from the head. "You don't have to keep ferrying me around the universe." He was seated at the table that took up 90% of the galley, both hands wrapped around a cup that was steaming and staring thoughtfully at a screen.

"That's very sweet of you," Kit said, and yawned. "But then I'd feel guilty when you trusted the wrong person and got your ass handed right back to those Galra scientists." There wasn't a whole lot of room to squeeze past Shiro on that side of the table so she didn't even bother, going the long way around to where the sink was. "Did you make coffee? Do you even realize how little of that I have left?"

Shiro made a noncommittal noise and she sighed, pulling a cup from the secured cabinet and pouring herself some, since he'd gone ahead and made it. "So what's on Yahsa?" Kit asked, turning around and leaning against the counter instead of sitting at the table. "More outposts?"

"A research facility," Shiro said, and took a sip from his cup. "It's actually on the ground, too, not on a ship in orbit."

"Shit, that's gonna mean hella security." She watched Shiro scroll through data on the display. He wasn't really listening to her, he tended to tune out everything when he got focused on the research data in front of him. A man on a mission, even if she wasn't entirely sure what that mission was. "You got a plan yet?"

"Outside of just giving myself up? No."

"What!?" Kit almost sprayed coffee. "Shiro, do not just go hand yourself over to the Galra, what the hell—"

"It's not exactly an ideal plan." Shiro looked up finally. He looked more tired than Kit realized, his damp hair forming a bit of a curtain when loose like that. "But with the security measures they have in place, any sort of infiltrating is likely going to result in capture anyway."

[hasty-touch]

Tips for leveling DoH & DoL

I am fondly known by my friends as "that guy who's obsessed with crafting and also Ishgard", so I'm ecstatic about getting to enjoy both those things in Shadowbringers. And I've been hearing a lot of my friends excited about the latter wanting to catch up with the former so they're ready to participate! I love crafting so much I've capped classes on 4 alts... so having leveled multiple times, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts and tips -- not a detailed how-to guide (though maybe I'll try to write one of those someday), but broader opinions about what strategies to take. This is geared more to DoH than DoL (which is more self-explanatory IMO) but I'll include thoughts on DoL too.

I learned how to craft back in the 2.5 era from GameFAQs and from ffxivguild -- though I can't easily recommend the latter anymore because their ads and autoplay videos have gotten really aggressive. If I find a good, current guide I'll add a link here.

Other resources well-loved by me or friends are Crafting as a Service for shopping lists and leveling planning, Ariyala for gearing, FFXIV Teamcraft for their endgame-invaluable simulator, and Garlandtools Bell for unspoiled nodes.

So let's see. What would my general tips be for people who are picking up DoH and DoL now in anticipation of Shadowbringers?

Your leveling options

There are lots of different ways for you to level your DoH and L, so if you hate one there's sure to be another option. Some of them, and my thoughts on the pros and cons of the different methods:

Class Quests. I strongly recommend doing your class quests as you unlock them! They give nice lumps of experience, shards/crystals for DoH, and gear (albeit NQ gear, so inferior to what you could make yourself). You should especially do 60-70, Stormblood era quests as you unlock them, as they give you powerful new traits and abilities. Of course, you have to fill the gaps between class quests with something:

Grinding. Just makin' stuff from your Crafting Log or gathering from your Gathering Log, or hanging out at a level-appropriate fishing hole and fishing. Potentially boring, but can actually add up to nice chunks of EXP, especially under Rested and with the aid of Engineering Manuals/Survival Manuals. (More on them later.)

Leveling DoH through grinding is probably your most expensive option, not only in terms of gil spent on the MB but retainer space used to store those materials.

Synthesize (manually crafting) gives more experience than Quick Synthesis -- if I understand correctly, the more steps you use in a craft the more experience you get, up to a point renofmanyalts says you get more exp the more you fill your Quality bar, which makes a lot more sense!

You can recover some of your gil by selling the items you make, so a little time researching what you can make at your level that sells well may be profitable in several ways.

Leveling DoL through grinding, on the other hand, is potentially a way to make money, if there's a high-demand item in the right level range.

You'll get more experience for HQ items and by maintaining a chain (i.e., not missing an item).

Since you can start and stop grinding whenever you want, you can use it both if you have lots or limited time to play. But I wouldn't recommend it as your primary method!

Grand Company Supply and Provisioning. One item requested each day for each class. You get a very nice chunk of experience, doubled if HQ, with a further bonus to starred items.

I like the GC as a leveling method. They usually take the length of one food buff (<= 30 minutes for all eight DoH classes, plus an additional <= 30 minutes for all three DoL classes), which is a manageable amount of chores per day. You get GC seals, which can be spent on manuals, Cordials, squadron missions, etc., to further help you.

You are limited to one item per class per day, so once you've handed in your day's items, you have to find something else to do. It's great if you play every day, but if you have a lot of playtime on just a few days of the week you may not be able to take the same advantage.

You do have to buy and store the materials, and since the assignment each day is random, it may take up a lot of retainer space.

Levequests/guildleves. While technically limited by your leve allowances (which can be checked at the bottom of your journal), you get 3 allowances every 12 hours and you can store up to 100, and you've gotta really grind leves to spend 100 leve allowances. They give nice chunks of experience, doubled for HQ.

"Levekits" are bundles of items sold by higher-level crafters and fishers which, when handed in to levemetes, get you enough experience to bump you up to the target level (50, 60, etc.) They're an option -- and if you really must be level 70 today, they're your only option -- but I don't really recommend them. If you learn to craft yourself while you level, you'll understand how the abilities work together and won't be overwhelmed by buttons at cap. Even if you intend only to craft at cap using other people's macros, a little bit of knowledge will help you troubleshoot and improve them.

If you take advantage of DoH leves, I would recommend you make the items yourself instead, gaining experience both for the crafting and for the turn-in. You will have to buy/gather the materials, but since you can decide what leves you're going to target in advance and just get materials for those, storage is not as problematic.

MIN and BTN leves send you to a location to gather key items that are handed in at the end of the leve, sometimes with special targets (changing what actions you'd spend your GP on). For the time invested you get more exp than just grinding, but you don't have items to sell at the end of it.

Large-Scale Temple Knight leves (marked with "(L)" in the levequest name) are generally considered not worth your time because they take 10x the allowances and only give 3x the exp.

You can do as many leves as you want per day as long as you have the allowances, so you can take advantage if you've got a lot or a little time.

Beast Tribes. You can get DoH exp from the Ixal (intended for level 1-50) and the Moogles (50-60), and either DoH or DoL from the Namazu (60-70). You're limited by Beast Tribe Daily Quest Allowances (12 per day for any beast tribes of your choice) and the number of quests that tribe offers (Ixal start with Deliverance, which is sort of like a bonus daily GC supply mission + 3 dailies, and progressively more are offered as you level up; Moogles and Namazu normally gives you 3 a day, but you get a bonus 3 on days your Reputation ranks up.) They give nice, moderate lumps of exp.

One of the great advantages of beast tribes is that you are given the materials for the item(s) required by the quest, so you only have to pay for crystals -- and you're often rewarded crystals for completion, making them free aside from teleport and repair costs!

Ranking up unlocks more items at the tribe's vendor. The Ixal have a wonderful selection of lumber, and you can buy the Adept and Trailblazer (level 58) sets from the Moogles with Carved Kupo Nuts, etc.

Unlocking Ixal only requires the level 41 MSQ "In Pursuit of the Past". But you gotta unlock the Moogles and the Namazu not only through MSQ (respectively, level 56 "He Who Would Not Be Denied" and level 66 "In Crimson They Walked") but through sidequest chains. The Moogle unlock chain is long and starts with "A Pebble for Your Thoughts" in Moghome (and then after "Trouble at Zenith" you gotta pick up "Into the Mists" from the Pillars). The Namazu require two short chains from Yanxia, starting with "Courage the Cowardly Lupin" and "Perchance to Hanami".

The Ixal daily "Deliverance" will take items you bought off the MB, but otherwise you must do all beast tribes tasks yourself.

The tasks given to you in the Moogle and Namazu DoH quests are really easy -- as long as you grasp the barest basics of crafting, you can succeed at them (and you can retry as many times as you like, only losing crystals). The Ixal dailies take away your hand slot gear to begin with and slowly add challenge with increasing restrictions such as cross-class ability lockouts. They're not hard, per se, but you have to puzzle over it a bit more than usual.

You can cheat and do Moogle dailies on a higher level class than you hand it in on. You can’t with Namazu -- you have to complete the quest with the same class you picked it up with.

Though quick, they do take a little bit of time, most of which traveling between quest points. Denisot's round today of 3 Moogle dailies took 5 minutes, but if you get one that involves repreated trips it can take longer. Still, they're good if you can play every day even if only briefly.

You might get asked to type "free kupo nuts" in /say.

Collectables (Rowena's House of Splendors). After (IIRC) level 50, after MSQ "The Better Half", you can unlock collectables via the quest "Inscrutable Tastes" in Revenant's Toll. You can then hand in collectables to the House of Splendors (via kiosks at the main cities, Revenant's Toll, Idyllshire, and Rhalgr's Reach) to receive experience and scrips. Like GC supply and provisioning, each day the requested items change. Also like the GC, there's a chance the requested items will have a star next to them, giving bonus scrip and exp. It's always the highest-level turn-in available to you that has a chance of a star.

Collectable crafting works exactly the same as regular crafting. You just toggle on Collector's Glove (an action you can get from your actions window and/or put on your hotbar) and craft as if you were trying for HQ; your HQ chance is converted into collectable rating.

Collectable fishing is AFAIK essentially the same as fishing for HQ. Again, you just toggle on Collector's Glove and try to land a big/HQ fish.

Collectable MIN and BTN, on the other hand, is its whole own little mini-game added on to the normal gathering minigame. You'll want to look up a guide on how to do collectable gathering -- I don't have one handy at the moment. It's not hard, necessarily, but it's a new system to learn!

Rowena's House of Splendors is truly unlimited, and you can hand in as many collectables as you want each day. The experience isn't great, though, even for starred items, so I would recommend against going crazy and doing these all day long. LOVE YOURSELF!

The amounts of scrip rewarded isn't great to begin with, so grinding for rewards will be pretty miserable until you get up into the mid-high 50s. However, if you must have the full Adept's set today, it's an option!

Red Crafters' Scrip (the current common scrip) can be traded for a variety of items, such as manuals, level 60 gear (via Rowena's Token (Blue Crafters' Scrip)), Soul of the Crafter (for changing specializations after your free choice of three from Alderan), IV-V materia, old mats, etc. Red Gatherers' Scrip can also be traded for gear and materia, more valuable old mats (like Pterodactyl), and good fishing bait like Brute Leech and Silkworm.

Collectables are not tradeable, so you must do them yourself. You can't buy the items or get a friend to make them for you.

For DoH, you do have to buy and store the materials, as with Grand Company Supply, unless you exclusively do:

Custom Deliveries. The first client is Zhloe Aliapoh, unlocked at level 60 with quest "Arms Wide Open" in Idyllshire. These tasks take collectables, like Rowena's House of Splendors, but are limited to 6 hand-ins per week per client and 12 hand-ins per week across all clients. If you do them at level cap, you get valuable yellow scrips, but you can also use your allowances for leveling classes below cap.

The materials for DoH Custom Deliveries are sold by vendors in town (Scrap Salvager in Idyllshire, Material Supplier in Rhalgr's Reach, and Blue Merchant in Tamamizu) They're cheap, and you're awarded gil at hand-in, so DoH Custom Deliveries are almost-free-to-profitable to do. DoL, as usual, cost only teleport and repair costs.

The time required is generally very little -- FSH probably takes the longest because of RNG. And you can do them whenever you have time during the week.

If you're using them for leveling, the experience is only modest. But it is a very easy, low-effort way to get red scrips and experience (if you do them below cap) and yellow scrips (if you do them at cap).

AFAIK, Zhloe only requires you unlock Idyllshire level and be 60 in one DoH or DoL class. M'naago requires the MSQ cleared through "Return of the Bull" (SB 4.1). Kurenai requires you to have unlocked M'naago and finished the quest chain that starts with "The Palace of Lost Souls" (including quests not currently marked with a blue unlocky !).

For DoH, like with Moogle dailies, you can craft the collectable item on any class, then change classes before handing it in.

Challenge Log. Don't forget that you get lumps of experience each week for crafting NQ and HQ items, melding materia, gathering NQ and HQ from nodes, and fishing NQ and HQ fish. The quantities are modest, but they're a nice bonus if you choose to level through a method that involves crafting/gathering items yourself (GC Supply/Provisioning, levequests, grinding, etc.)

Overall, my recommendation would be to try a little bit of every leveling method and find out what's enjoyable for you and fits nicely into your budget and schedule. We have a half-year until Shadowbringers, so if you start now you can take a relaxed pace -- no need to rush, grind doing stuff you hate, and burn yourself out.

Engineering and Survival Manuals and similar buffs

There are a variety of buffs that will help you level, giving you more experience per craft or gather. For DoH, you want Engineering Manuals (the yellow ones); for DoL, it's Survival Manuals (the green ones). You can get these from all sorts of sources -- all the ones I remember are:

Rewards from doing your class quests. Another reason to stay on top of em! These Commercial * Manuals give a 150% boost and last 60 minutes or up to 300,000 exp. You can buy more from Rowena's House of Splendors with red scrips.

Bought from your GC quartermaster (Grand Company Seal Exchange). The strongest ones available are Company-Issue * Manual II (+50% for 180 minutes or for 100,000 exp) for sergeants. Company-Issue * Manuals do not stack with Commerical * Manuals.

Free Company actions. "Helping Hand II" and "Earth and Water II" can be bought from the OIC Quartermaster and give 10% more experience to DoH and DoL respectively. The more powerful III versions are charged on an Aetherial Wheel and provide a 20% bonus.

Rewarded from Squadron Priority Missions. You unlock your GC squadron, IIRC, at Second Lieutenant rank, and unlock Priority Missions by completing the level 40 Flagged Mission. The Squadron * Manuals (+20% for 120 minutes, no limit) you can obtain once-a-week from Priority Mission manuals do not stack with Free Company actions.

Company-Issue/Commercial manuals DO stack with Squadron manuals/FC actions.

The recruit-a-friend reward, Friendship Circlet, can be worn while crafting and gathering for 20% more exp when level 25 or below. Same for the Stormblood preorder(?) reward, Ala Mhigan Earrings, which gives 30% more exp when level 50 or below. Brand-New Ring is wearable only by Disciples of War or Magic, so you can't use that.

While it's not an exp bonus, the crafting facility furnishings (Woodworking Bench, etc.) grant a nice 60 minutes of bonus CP to DoH of level 60 or lower, AND THEY CAN NOW BE PUT INTO STORAGE!!! \o/

And of course, don't forget to eat some sort of food while you're crafting or gathering for the 3% exp bonus.

Which DoH should I level up first?

The correct answer to this question has been, and continues to be, everything at once; omnicrafting is the best way.

In the eras of 2.0 and 3.0, the cross-class abilities you gained from the classes were essential to being able to craft HQ items. Not just at endgame -- having those cross-class abilities while leveling makes your life much, much easier. And because the recipes of each class take components from other classes (e.g., WVR recipes always want a bit of leather and metal), leveling everything up together made you self-sufficient and less vulnerable to wild mark-ups on processed materials at the Market Board. Therefore, I join the majority of crafters in continuing to recommend leveling up all your DoH together.

However...

In 4.0, Stormblood, the designers' vision for DoH changed. From levels 61-70, all classes learn the same abilities, which are stronger (but more expensive) versions of the old cross-class mainstays like Careful Synthesis, Manipulation, and Hasty Touch. Nowadays, if somebody slogged through levels 1-60 on one DoH with no cross-class abilities, they would actually be able to craft at level 70 almost as successfully as an omnicrafter. Since the developers have stated that they're very happy with the crafting system right now, it's reasonable to guess Shadowbringers will be similar.

Additionally, not all cross-class abilities are equally valuable. Whenever a new tier of crafting difficulty is added, the endgame meta shifts slightly, but right now, cross-class abilities like Waste Not and Flawless Synthesis aren't really used.

Therefore, while I do recommend you level up everything together, if you really don't want to, you can get away with abandoning some classes along the way. If Ishgard Reconstruction turns out to be similar to beast tribes, you might get away with having just one capped DoH. On the other hand, the developers have teased exclusive challenges for endgame crafters somehow connected to the Ishgard Reconstruction content, so if you want to be ready for whatever that turns out to be, you should at least get all your cross-class abilities.

My tentative recommendation for DoH leveling priority is something like this:

Get anything to 10 to unlock Quick Synthesis.

Get everything to 15. For example:

WVR 15 (Careful Synthesis)

ALC 15 (Tricks of the Trade)

GSM 15 (Manipulation)

CUL 15 (Hasty Touch)

CRP 15 (Rumination)

ARM (Rapid Synthesis), BSM (Ingenuity), LTW (Waste Not).

CUL 37 (Steady Hand II)

WVR 50 (Careful Synthesis II)

ALC 50 (Comfort Zone)

CRP 50 (Byregot's Blessing)

ARM 50 (Piece by Piece)

CUL 50 (Reclaim)

BSM 50 (Ingenuity II)

GSM 50 (Innovation)

CUL 54 (Muscle Memory)

If you MUST skip one DoH entirely, I'd pick LTW, since the Waste Nots are generally inferior to the Manipulations.

You COULD drop CUL after 54's very useful Muscle Memory. And since CUL doesn't correspond to gear, it doesn't help you repair or meld materia, and other classes generally don't need materials processed by CUL.

Various classes' level 54 Name of [Element] cross-class abilities aren't that useful at present -- they're sometimes used in endgame rotations. GSM's level 54 Maker's Mark is also not currently that useful, though it was OP a couple patches back.

Still -- I think it's safest, and for me less annoying, to level everything together.

Should I craft using macros?

Yes -- I think macros are great for relieving the tedium of the repetitive crafting tasks, which you’ll often have while leveling. (Wish I could tell you where to look for good macros, but as I mentioned, I learned years ago, and I just write my own macros these days!)

However, I think you should spend some time manually crafting as well. It will help you understand when and why you use certain abilities, how not to overcap Durability and CP, why you might or might not take Tricks of the Trade, etc. That skill and knowledge will help you even if you plan to primarily use macros at cap, since it will enable you to tweak those macros to be even better for your stats, teach you when you should cancel a macro and take over, etc. Nevermind that macros are very vulnerable to server congestion and lag...

And once you know how to craft, you will almost always have a higher potential quality manually crafting than using a macro -- your ability to respond to changes in Condition can get you precious more stacks of Inner Quiet or CP for upgrading Touches. I often use macros for putting together components but manually craft the final product to be sure I get the highest possible quality.

Other tips for leveling DoH?

I think you'll find one of the most invaluable resources for leveling baby DoH is access to a house or apartment with a Material Supplier. Your friendly FC (or apartment) Material Supplier will take care of practically all your materials needs through level 20 or more.

There are other useful Materials Suppliers scattered around -- in addition to the those in main cities and each of the guilds, check out the ones in the marketplaces out in residential districts.

I also strongly recommend unlocking every 2.0 A Realm Reborn beast tribe because even at mere Neutral standing the tribe vendors offer materials like Undyed Velveteen and Mythril Ingots that you’ll be using in quantity.

Don’t forget to upgrade your gear as you go, even if you’re just putting on new NQ gear from your class quests. DoL is particularly sensitive to gear -- you can really feel the difference when you upgrade a piece.

And really -- like in all aspects of the game, please be sure to pace yourself and make sure you’re enjoying yourself as you go. We’ve got plenty of time.

If you’ve leveled your DoH and DoL recently, what lessons have you learned you wish you’d had at the beginning? Or if you’re leveling right now, what questions do you have? I’m happy to opine or give basic pointers!

You may find my guide/checklist for DoH and DoL class quest items useful, if you haven’t already seen it. And as I mentioned, I may work on a more detailed, how-to-actually-craft-the-things guide in the future, if there’s interest.

Please, don’t be shy and get in touch! I am so excited to work together to rebuild Ishgard with you!!

[i0990]

Koroshiya to Strawberry Review

I bought Koroshiya to Strawberry (Killer and Strawberry) because I enjoyed Kamiaso and the character designs are by Kazuki Yone. The killer and underworld setting also looked promising.

Should take this chance to point out, Kazuki Yone only did the character designs, and stuff like cover art and promo images etc. The actual CGs are not done by her. It was already mentioned before the game came out.

In any case, the problem with this game is not with the art at all, but with the writing. I don’t know how they managed to mess it up so bad but they did. It’s not like the game has no plus points. The character interactions are fun, the bgm is good, and the art is actually still quite nice for the most part.

I think it has to do with the expectation from it being a mafia game. I was expecting something more gritty and action packed, and what I played instead was more of a cafe game with lots of talk about food and only a bit of action. It all adds up to a fairly disappointing experience tbh. I’m actually quite annoyed I gave up Piofiore to play this.

For the first time ever in a review I’m just going to outright say I do not recommend this game. More details below but of course there will be spoilers. To sum up the game: too much time wasted, not enough drama.

There is a lot of complaining and ranting in this review.

*spoilers after the cut*

Plot: Outright the weakest part of this game. There is a common route at first, after which you’ll be asked to choose which guy’s route you want to play. Noin is locked until you complete the other guys. So a game with only 6 routes, all of which are fairly short, and yet, they all share the same generic route. Once you pick a route the key story progression is pretty much:

Incident A => Outing => Present => Incident B => Conflict => Ending

Maybe they wanted to be consistent in their story writing but it ends up being really dull. I don’t want to plan the same assassination over and over again 6 times. Kamiaso InFinite had the same problem where the routes share the same generic pattern (let’s just do everyone’s birthdays yeah), but that’s a fandisc. This kind of copy pasta is just annoying in a main game, especially when it’s not a long game. On hindsight, it makes me glad it’s not a long game. Hasegawa and Noin are the only routes that felt less repetitive, although they still follow the same progression.

The game starts with Ichigo being delivered to Tsukikage, where she’s told she’ll be under their protection. He gives her a smartphone to type on because she can’t speak. Ichigo wonders if this is part of further experiments on her and we see her feeling uneasy whenever someone is nice to her because it all seems like a dream that can be easily destroyed. She’s obviously broken in some way and the guys are killers. So the start of the game was actually quite promising, then as I played it all just fell apart.

The pacing is terrible. Most of the game is just fluff, then suddenly all the conflict is squeezed into the end and feels really rushed. Any tension that occurs in the middle of the route is usually non plot relevant. Like Izuna’s traffic accident, or the locked door in Amon’s route. There’s too much talk about food and coffee. They do discuss assassin stuff like guns and gear etc, but these are not things that are particularly interesting just being talked about. Basically there’s too much time wasted with close to zero plot progression. It’s a game where the guys are hire killers. Where’s the drama? Where’s the angst? >:(

There’s fighting but it’s not well written. For instance in Tsukimi’s sniping scene, the screen blacks out when he takes the shot, after that it’s already them at the bottom of the building. Matsuri then shows up to say she’s taking Ichigo because she thinks Ichigo won’t be happy with Tsukimi, then relents when Ichigo insists she’s happy with Tsukimi. Like ????? The conflict just seems really pointless. After playing the other routes it makes some of the characters’ previous actions more understandable, but if they want to hint at a deeper connection between two chars they shouldn’t do it in a way that ruins the route.

Ichigo does not get her voice or name back in all routes except one. This is a bit of a downer tbh. The romance isn’t very well written, and Ichigo gets attached to the guy very quickly after they are nice to her. It was nice seeing Ichigo get more expressive over the course of the story. Noin’s route, being the final one, is the most informative and has more closure, although the reveal that he’s the boss of Tsukikage wasn’t very surprising. It explain’s Ichigo’s origins. After playing through everything, some of the stuff that previously made no sense is sort of explained, but overall I still don’t like the writing.

Characters: The saving grace that made this game enjoyable. I had the most fun with the character interactions. The guys, despite being killers, have rather colourful personalities. Tsukimi likes making sweets and is terrible at reading the mood. Izuna is like the only sane man in the shop raging at the others, and likes making food with gourmet ingredients. Kurama is a doctor who charges exorbitant prices and isn’t good with socializing. Amon is super exuberant. Noin is a cranky shota and a bit of a tsundere. Hasegawa seems stoic but is actually really sweet. It was funny seeing them make jokes at each other or scolding each other.

The side characters aren’t too bad, but there aren’t many of them. Matsuri is a cool big sis character who looks out for Ichigo in her way. Shirakawa was funny in Hasegawa’s route. Rakia doesn’t show up much.

Ichigo, despite having a blank personality and no voice, was surprisingly likeable. She starts out as this doll-like girl and slowly regains her emotions and starts doing things out of her own initiative more. Some of her responses are also funny, like the time Shirakawa was like ‘Let’s be friends :)’ but Ichigo just went ‘Sorry that will be difficult. Age gap too big.’ Of course her personality is still pretty blank for the most part but for a girl who’s been a lab rat and hasn't been outside for over a year what would you expect. Ichigo is cute XD

System/Interface: This game loses lots of points for having a main feature that as of now, two weeks after release, still doesn’t work -- the broken music player. Broccoli must know about the bug by now, so I can only assume they aren’t fixing it either because they don’t know how to or they can’t be bothered. Or maybe they think if they leave it as it is it’ll force players to buy the ost.

Aside from that the loading time is bad, just like the Kenka Bancho Otome fd. Every time Ichigo recalls something the screen flashes white, then flashes white again when transitioning back to the present. Okay if it’s once off, very irritating when she’s recalling multiple things back to back. Long loading time also means there’s a part of Hasegawa’s route where you will stare at a black screen for a while before hearing a loud sound from the game suddenly. 

Don’t think you can toggle skip mode without accessing the settings menu. I found the font a bit small when I started playing but this isn’t a big issue and I got used to it. Instead of Ichigo’s sprite they put a smartphone at the lower left corner. You would think with a heroine that can’t speak a sprite would be good since we at least see her expressions, but nope. Broccoli thinks players would rather stare at a blank phone screen. The only plus feature is the ‘skip to next option’.

Trophy collection is straightforward in general. If you are missing a CG for full complete try replaying the scene where Hasegawa and Ichigo are in the car on their way to buy stuff and select the other options.

Art/Music: The music for this game is really nice. I like it a lot. But I won’t buy the soundtrack because I don’t want to throw money at Broccoli >_> The OP grew on me heh.

The art isn’t bad, despite it not being actual Kazuki Yone CGs. Most of them look pretty good. A few of the sprites are used in the CGs (Tsukimi’s back-facing sprite being the most common) but this isn’t a huge issue. There are so many CGs of Ichigo in various outfits and expressions lol. During one of the fight scenes they used this one:

which was funny because that is totally not the expression of someone freaking out and trying to stop a fight. 

Ichigo’s smartphone does make some of the CGs look a bit silly imo but that can’t really be helped.

Look at the poor girl frantically trying to get Matsuri to look at her phone :/

In the end I would say the most frustrating thing about the game is how much promise it had, and how good it could have been. Certain things like Ichigo and Matsuri’s connection could have been explored more. Or a bit more about how the guys got into their profession. Giving the antagonistic organization a bigger presence would have been good too, instead of them being a sort of vaguely mentioned and never seen organisation. If only they had taken the time to smooth everything out nicely and not rush things. It feels like a game that didn’t have enough effort put into it by the company, trying to make up for it with nice packaging.

This is the most disappointing vita game I’ve bought to date and unless you are the sort who doesn’t care about shoddy writing, really, save yourself the pain of playing Korosuto.

[purzelsims]

On Rotational Gameplay

@webbymom asked me if I had ever written up how I do rotational gameplay in TS4. I’m pretty sure I once made a rather lengthy post on the subject on TSD, but since that is gone now and things probably changed since then as well (especially with the addition of seasons) I figured it would be a good idea to write a post on the subject on here.

I have been playing the game rotationally almost since it was released. My current save is still the one I started back in early 2015 (Feburary, I think). It started out as an attempt at a BACC and has since sort of evolved past that. The one thing that’ll never change for this save is that it’ll be played on a rotational basis, though.

I’m still not quite sure on how to make sure seasons work correctly for this, but more on that below.

All the details under the cut.

The Basics

The first thing to decide on is the amount of days every family is played for. I simply go by the ingame week, starting and ending each week on Sunday, 6am. That way I don’t risk getting out-of-sync. One could also decide on shorter times to play each family for, but I’d be prone to forget when exactly I started playing a family and thus when to switch households. So having one fixed time of the week to switch and then playing each family for a week works best for me.

Aging settings

The most important thing for me is to have the correct settings to ensure that my currently active family ages normally but my inactive families don’t age when I’m not playing them. However, I do also want townies that I never play to age.

TS4 does have the settings to make that feasible, although it does require a bit of attention every now and then:

I have set up my game so that the “Auto Age (Played Sims)” setting is set to “Only Active Household”. That way, the Sims marked with a bright green plumbob in Manage Households won’t age unless I’m actually controlling them. “Auto Age (Unplayed Sims)” usually isn’t toggled. It prevents townies from ageing. However, I do toggle that option once every round, making sure that townies age in sync with my played sims. The way I manage to remember doing that once every round is by having selected one family (Filmores) in the beginning and then making sure to toggle the option whenever I play that family. That way I’m less prone to forget about it.

That is a very personal preference, but I also use custom age lengths (via MC Command Center). The biggest change is that my adults and elders do have longer life spans, meaning my sims live longer in general. I just felt that it was odd that my sims could never meet their grandchildren, because they’d die before they were born.

I did also toy with the idea of having ageing off completely and keeping track of sims’ ages manually, but even for me that would be too much nerdy keeping track of things.

Pregnancy

This one is a bit tricky. I’m usually trying to avoid having my sim ladies still being pregnant when I switch households. The only way to ensure that is by making sure they don’t Try for Baby after Wednesday. If my sim ladies then use the toilet to check if they are actually pregnant that puts them in the first trimester immediately, making sure they give birth by Saturday. There is a mod that pauses pregnancy for inactive sims, but it doesn’t so much pause pregnancy as it stops delivery. I tried it once and it simply didn’t work for me. My poor sim ladies would still go through pregnancy normally and then be stuck in labour limbo until I switched to their family again. Thus I decided against using the mod.

Now, then a sim actually gets pregnant after Wednesday (I do have Risky Woohoo enabled via MC Command Center) I’ll just accept that they’ll give birth without me being there. I try to avoid it, but if it happens it’s not that big of a deal.

Seasons

I’m still not 100% sure on how I’ll adjust my play style to seasons, but after having gone through half a rotation with seasons being a thing I’ve got a basic idea of how it’s supposed to work:

Season length doesn’t really matter. I have set it to two weeks because the default seven days felt a bit too rushed, but that’s just a personal preference. I think four weeks might be a bit too long for me to be able to make my rotational plan for seasons work permanently, so two weeks is my comfort zone regarding season length for now.

What I’m trying to achieve with seasons is to make sure that every family experiences seasons passing as they would normally. That means that family A, who experienced spring last round, are going to be in summer this round. Since seasons arrived in the middle of my last round and I changed the season length from one week to two weeks after going through each season once that needed some fiddling with the order in which I played households when I started my current round.

My goals regarding seasons were:

No “break” in-between rounds; I finished round 14 on the first week of spring, so I wanted to start round 15 on the second week of spring;

The same goes for households. A household that I last played during spring (when the seasons were still set to one week) had to be played next during the first week of summer. A household that was played during the first week of autumn (when the seasons were set to be two weeks long) had to be played during the second week of autumn now.

As an added bonus I tried to play households living in the same world consecutively, to experience the change of seasons in the worlds more naturally, instead of jumping between worlds all the time.

The result was the following table:

I was lucky that I ended up with exactly 17 households (some of my YA sims had plans of moving out of their parents’ homes anyways and I did want to add a new sim to town as well), ensuring that the seasons will be exactly one week further along for round 16. I’m not quite sure yet how I’ll deal with it when I have less or more households again. I might temporarily set the seasons to last only one week again near the end of the round to make sure it evens out again for the following round, but then the families might end up  out of sync. It might turn out that seasons can never be incorporated into a rotational play style perfectly and I’ll just have to deal with that, making the best of it I can. I’ll see how this goes in a few rounds (i.e. months).

These are the big things I’m paying attention to for my rotational gameplay. If anyone knows a better (or just different) way of doing things, I’d be happy to hear of their experiences for rotational gameplay. Especially when it comes to seasons.

[imnotinclinedtomaturity]

Love Yourself (Chapter 7)

title: Love Yourself summary: A lot of things about Dan’s life are pretty great. He gets to make the music he wants, he’s got a great fanbase, and his manager is his best friend. A few things about his life suck a bit more. He’s currently lacking inspiration, he’s rather lonely, and he’s stuck in a rut. Dan’s been going to the same coffee shop for years. It’s quiet, it’s quaint, it’s near his home. Most importantly: none of the employees give a shit that’s he a world-famous singer. Things change when he meets the new barista. chapter words: 8.5k story words: 35k (so far) chapter: 7/? rating: m warnings: language genre: singer!dan, coffee shop au, barista!phil, slow burn [[ao3]] [[previous chapter]] [[first chapter]]

Phil ran around his apartment, collecting the things he’d planned to show in his liveshow. He always found that liveshows went more smoothly (and avoided too many personal questions) when he had some concrete, pre-planned topics to talk about — especially when there were hot topics his fans knew about that he was trying to avoid.

Like this week.

It had only been four days since Dan had first tweeted at him and, well, those four days had been packed full with at least a few dozen tweets exchanged between them. If his viewers reactions on twitter were anything to go by… well, it was sure to be a hot topic tonight.

Phil’d spent a lot of the day thinking about how he wanted to spin his interactions with Dan. In fact, he’d genuinely considered canceling his liveshow just to avoid having to get into it. They’d both agreed that giving the proper truth — that Phil worked at a coffee shop Dan frequented — was out of the question. They valued their privacy far too much to disclose that information. But obviously, he had to say something.

Being as vague as possible seemed like the best option: they’d met through his work (not a lie), and had seen each other a few times because of it. Phil didn’t need to divulge the nature of their relationship — and honestly, he barely knew how he’d describe it anyway. They were more than just a barista and a customer for sure. Dan had flat out said several times that he considered Phil a friend, and Phil thought of Dan as one, too. But sometimes… well, sometimes their interactions didn’t feel like friendship. Or at least not any friendship Phil had ever had before.

It felt more… flirty.

Which was insane. For a multitude of reasons. Not the least of which being that Dan had a girlfriend, with no visible history of dating, well, not girls. Against his better judgment, Phil had done a bit of digging on Dan. Which he knew, he knew he shouldn’t have done.

For one, they were friends and it just felt somehow creepier to internet stalk someone he was actually fairly close with. And second, he knew how it felt to have more information about himself on the internet than he was aware of, and imagined Dan was just as uncomfortable with it as he was. Plus, it felt wrong to learn things about his friend that Dan hadn’t explicitly chosen to tell him.

Regardless, Phil had looked him up. Along the way, he’d learned that Dan had had some mental health issues a few years back that were arguably still present, depending on the source. He’d learned that with the exception of Isabella, Dan had never been in a relationship — or at least not one that he’d made public. Phil learned that Dan was incredibly private about his family life, to the extent that almost nobody even knew the names of his immediate family.

If it had been just a normal friendship, Phil would have needed to wait until Dan decided to — if at all — tell him about things. But this friendship was different. They were both very public figures and now he was sitting on all of this knowledge and he wasn’t sure if he should hide the fact that he had it or not.

His only condolence was that Dan had apparently binge watched a bunch of his videos, which meant he undoubtedly knew a lot more about Phil than he’d elected to share so far as well. Hell, he’d finally just confessed that he was kind of famous too (if giving Dan the necessary information to find out on his own could even be considered confessing, that is).

By now, Dan was sure to know that Phil had never had public relationships, with the exception of some dubious, long deleted evidence from his early, early days of YouTube. Dan also probably knew that Phil was incredibly close with his family, to the point of possibly oversharing about them in his public life. Dan had also likely caught on to the fact that his AmazingPhil persona was a bit different, a bit more innocent and bubbly than his day-to-day personality. Oh well. That was what Phil had signed up for when he’d started broadcasting his life all over the internet. And in some ways, Dan had signed up for the same gig.

Once Phil had gathered his… props, for the show, he set himself up on his sofa, and pulled up YouNow. While the streaming site loaded, Phil drafted a tweet so that all he had to do was hit post once he was live.

@AmazingPhil: Lions and plants and socks, oh my! Come hang out with me on YouNow and help me decide if I should keep the stuff I bought on Amazon this week [link]

When Phil saw the green icon indicating he was live, he sent the tweet and waved hello to his audience. He was always astounded at how many people were there at the very beginning of his shows, as if they’d just been lurking on his YouNow, waiting for him. Phil didn’t know if it was flattering or creepy

“Hi guys! How is everyone doing today?”

As he read out some of the funnier responses, he watched the number of viewers steadily climb. “Sarah says she’s watching me instead of doing her maths homework. Bad Sarah! Do your homework. Adam says he’s trying to make a cake he saw on the Great British Bake off. Good luck Adam, I’m not a very good baker but I believe in you.”

As the stream continued, Phil reacted to another handful of comments in order to give people time to arrive. After a few minutes, he glanced at the viewer count to see if he was near his typical audience size yet.

Seventeen thousand. That was a full seven thousand more than usually showed up for his shows.

Phil had a hunch that it had to due with his recent twitter activity. It was probably best to start his pre-planned activity before everyone started nagging him to talk about it.

“Laura wants to know how my week’s been. Pretty good so far, nothing to complain about,” Phil said, scanning the chat for anything else innocent he could answer before switching tactics completely.

“Okay guys, are you ready to help me decide if I should keep the stuff I bought on Amazon? Kelsey asks why I bought stuff if I’m not sure if I want it. Well, Kelsey, it was really late at night, I was bored, and it all seemed like a good idea at the time. Haven’t you ever heard of impulse shopping? It’s a real problem. See this is what happens when you live alone. You don't have anyone to tell you if the stuff you’re buying is cool or not. ‘Get a roommate’ someone said — sorry I missed your name. I only have a one bedroom flat, it’s definitely not big enough to share with —”

Phil was interrupted by a high pitched diiiing from his phone. Oops.

“Sorry, guys, I forgot to turn my phone on silent.” Phil embarrassedly grabbed his phone and toggled it to silent without looking at the screen. “Everyone’s asking who it is. I don’t know, I didn’t check. Let me have a look.” Curious himself now, Phil flipped his phone over.

@danielhowell liked your tweet.

Not so subtly, Phil threw his phone to the other end of the couch as if it were on fire.

Holy shit. If Dan liked his tweet about his liveshow did that mean…? No. No way. Dan was a busy celebrity. Surely he had better things to do on a Wednesday evening than watch Phil’s liveshow.

Phil tried his best to arrange his features into a more neutral expression before turning back to the camera. Naturally, the chat was flooded with people asking why he looked so surprised and who the message had been from.

“Just a twitter notification,” Phil said, aiming for nonchalant. Hoping to brush off the topic, he grabbed his first item off the table. “Okay, so first Amazon purchase is…” Phil attempted a drumroll noise “...socks!”

Phil held the pack of socks up to the webcam, flipping through the different pairs as he described them. “See, they are all plant themed. There’s cacti, and succulents, and bamboo. What do we think, do we like them?”

Not that he was surprised, but virtually no one in the chat seemed to care about his dubious Amazon purchases. Almost every single question was directly related to his interactions with Dan, both on Twitter and in real life. Until now, he hadn’t realized how much their fanbases overlapped.

This might be a harder topic to avoid than he’d initially thought.

Phil filtered through the Dan-related comments until he found a few people reacting to the socks and focused on those. “Amanda says she thinks they’re cute and Ashley bets that they’ll mix and match well. I agree, Ashley. Great. I’ll keep the socks.”

Phil sat the socks down on the table and picked up the next item, showing it to his audience and making another hopefully witty comment. As Phil struggled to push through the mass of comments related to Dan, he went through his next few purchases a bit slower than strictly necessary. He figured the more time he spent on this, the less free time he would have to talk about unplanned topics — namely Dan — at the end.

The charizard plushie and the grow-your-own-terrarium kit were his to keep, but everyone agreed that the Buffy figurine was more demonic than cute and needed to go back. From what Phil could tell, the comments had been split in regards to the aesthetic hat he’d picked out, and he chucked it away with a, “Maaaaaaybe.”

A quick glimpse at the clock told Phil that he’d been live for a little over half an hour already.

“This last one I’m a little more unsure about, guys.” Phil held up the jumper, trying to center it so that the lion on the front was in focus. His uncertainty was mostly for his viewers benefit. Phil was pretty damn sure how he felt about the jumper — it was bloody hideous. The lion design had looked adorable online, but then again that had been a small picture, it had been one in the morning, and he’d had a few mixed drinks by then. In reality, though, the lion was incredibly disproportionate and the quality was something he’d expect from a cheap, knockoff vendor on the street.

Nonetheless, Phil peeked around the jumper to read people’s comments. Those who were engaging in the Amazon conversation were all agreeing with him. “Sounds like most of you don’t like this one as much. I didn’t think so either. I love lions a lot, but this one isn’t very cute is he? Okay, back to Amazon that goes, then.”

Phil made a show of dropping the jumper and throwing it out of sight. He scanned the chat, looking for more reactions. His eyes landed on the word jumper and he read the comment out loud without processing it first.

“Max says to talk about Dan having the same pug jumper that you own.” Oh crap. That’s not what he’d anticipated when he’d seen the word jumper. “I, uh, yeah.” Phil fumbled for a second before pulling himself together and smiling brightly. “Funny, right? Definitely not his usual style. Honestly, when I lent it to him, I wasn’t sure he’d even want to wear it in the moment, much less at his own house when he had other options.”

Belatedly, Phil realized his mistake. He’d just confirmed that Dan didn’t just happen to own the same jumper as him, Dan had Phil’s actual jumper. Phil’s eyes tried to follow the chat, but it was moving too fast to comprehend. The only thing he could make out was Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan.

Well, I guess that topic is officially being discussed.

With a deep breath, Phil finally addressed the questions everyone had been tweeting at him, and he assumed were flooding the chat. “Everyone’s curious how I know Dan — Dan Howell, that is, in case anyone hasn’t been looking at my twitter this week. I met him through work. Don’t get too excited, it’s not like we’re actually working on anything together, I’ve just seen him around a few times.

“Maddie asks why I lent Dan my jumper.” He was well and truly in this mess now. Phil grasped for a story, settling on something plausible. Hopefully Dan didn’t mind too much. “Did you see Dan on Innuendo Bingo last week? It was really funny, right? He got so wet though. I ran into him in the bathroom afterwards. I was just being nice and helping him out because he looked like a drowned puppy.”

Phil chuckled, trying his best to brush the topic off, maybe bounce off some easier questions to answer about Dan before heading off for the week. Suddenly, though, the chat started filling up with the same messages. Half of them appeared to be copy and pasting something into the chat from some other source, and the other half were just keyboard smashes and different variations of “oh my god” and “did you see what he said?”

Phil assumed it was the other message they were freaking out about, the one everyone was spamming, the one he was clearly supposed to be noticing. Warily, Phil froze the chat so he could read what it said.

Daniel Howell: um excuse me i thought we were friENDS but go off i guess

Phil cocked his head, trying to figure out if this Daniel Howell was his Daniel Howell or an impersonator. It certainly sounded like something Dan would say, and Dan had liked his tweet. And Phil knew Dan had a YouNow account because he did liveshows of his own sometimes and… yup. That was definitely the real him.

Oh, great.

“Hi, Dan!” Phil smiled and waved, trying to figure out how the heck he was going to respond. He settled on teasing Dan back. “I don’t know, I haven’t seen you since Saturday. I thought you forgot about me!”

Of course, that started up a whole new flurry of questions. He should have known.

What was he supposed to say? How much was he allowed to say? It was intimidating enough having to talk around his and Dan’s relationship live to so many people, but to have to talk about it with Dan listening? That was so much worse. Dan would know instantly if Phil said something embarrassing, or too revealing, or flat out stupid.

“Everyone wants me to talk more about Dan.” With a sigh, Phil resigned himself to properly answering a few questions about Dan, hoping that if he actually gave his viewers some information they would let him switch topics.

“Justine asks how often I’ve been seeing Dan. A couple of times a week.” Four or five counts as ‘a couple’ right? “Tyler says that it must be cool to be friends with a famous singer. I guess? He’s just Dan to me. He’s a pretty normal guy. I kind of forget that he’s super famous most of the time.”

Phil skimmed the chat for more questions he was willing to answer.

Amee: have you met isabella because ngl she kinda seems like a bitch

Phil snorted, unable to completely control his laughter. From what he’d heard about Isabella, or Izzy as Dan tended to call her, he was inclined to agree. Not that he was about to voice that opinion online to seventeen thousand avid viewers. He looked for a less controversial question.

“Misty asks if he actually sent me a preview of a song. He did! I don’t know if I’m allowed to say anything about it though, so I’ll just say that it was great and I liked it a lot. He’s definitely really talented.”

Phil glanced at the clock in the corner of his screen.“Alright guys, one last question and then I’ve got to go. It’s been forty five minutes already! Samantha asks what we usually do together. Well, we started out just chatting because of work, you know, when we happened to both be around. But yeah, we’re friends now and we, er, we grab coffee or snacks together a lot. Most of the time we just hang out and talk, but sometimes we both work on whatever we need to. If you guys have more questions, you can tweet them at Dan, but I can’t promise he’ll answer any of them.

“I’ve got to go now, guys! I hope you all have a good night.” Phil started waving, making it clear he was going to leave. “Bye Brittany! Tiffany says she’s going to do her homework. Good! Bye Peter, bye Jim.”

Phil moved her cursor to the end button, trying to stop the stream. Like usual, younow was slow to respond. Awkwardly, he kept waving at his viewers while he punched the end button a dozen times. Eventually, the screen turned black, and Phil huffed a sigh of relief.

Now that Phil was finally done livestreaming, he tabbed back over to twitter. There was a new DM from Dan, which surprised Phil less and less each time it happened, but he was especially unsurprised this time — Phil didn’t expect to get away with talking about Dan in a livestream that he was watching without hearing from him. The message had been sent while he was still live, and was neither teasing nor admonishing, which had been Phil’s top two guesses at what Dan might have to say.

Daniel Howell: i’m glad you think of me as a normal guy and not just some famous rockstar

Phil felt his cheeks flush. He was eternally grateful that he’d thrown his phone to the other end of the couch and hadn’t seen that message while he was still live, or else seventeen thousand people would have seen him blushing and Dan… well, knowing Dan, he probably would have noticed the correlation between when the read receipt showed up and when Phil started turning pink.

Phil Lester: :) of course. I mean, it’s cool that you make music, but you’re more than just Dan Howell, Singing Sensation

He left his phone unlocked on the couch while he went to the loo. When he came back, the screen had dimmed but there was no new notification from Dan. Phil wasn’t sure if that meant Dan hadn’t watched the end of his liveshow, or if Dan had started doing something immediately after, or what. But apparently, he wasn’t going to respond now. Phil sighed and shoved his phone into his back pocket.

Phil’s phone was silent the entire time he cooked and ate dinner. By the time he crawled into bed with his laptop at half past midnight, he’d just about given up on hearing from Dan again. But he should have known late hours of the night meant nothing to Dan.

Daniel Howell: thanks. i think you’re more than just a famous youtuber for the record

Dan stared at the message he’d typed out to Phil, debating if he really wanted to send it or not.

Daniel Howell: i’m glad you think of me as a normal guy and not just some famous rockstar

He glanced back at the YouNow tab. Phil was still talking about him, now having moved on to loosely discussing the somewhat shitty snippet of the song that Dan had sent him. That song was basically all he’d been eating, breathing, and thinking about since Isabella had left Sunday night.

Working on his song was easier to deal with than trying to think about the things Izzy had said, than what had happened while she was at his flat, than the possible repercussions of their fight. So instead, he’d been hibernating alone since then, holed up working on his song. The only people he’d talked to were Phil and a few miscellaneous fans on twitter.

Before he could second guess (or third or fourth or fifth guess) it, Dan pressed send on his message to Phil, and shut his laptop, perhaps with more force than necessary.

With a sigh, Dan decided it was time to face the world.

He picked up his phone, and rang Louise. Despite it being nearly eight o’clock at night, she answered on the second ring.

“Daniel, there you are.” Her voice was hushed but stern. Of course. Darcy was probably in bed. Dan knew it was Darcy’s bedtime and he felt bad for calling, but if he didn’t do it while he had the nerve, he would back out. Again.

“Hi Louise,” Dan’s voice came out smaller and more upset than he’d meant for it to. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d been holding back.

“You’re lucky you’ve been active on twitter recently or I would have worried you were dead and just shown up at —”

“Lou,” Dan cut Louise off. “If I ask you for a favor, can you promise to just help me and listen and not lecture me?”

“Aw, love, what’s wrong?” Her voice was instantly softer.

“I just, um, you’re not too bad at arts and crafts, right? Like gluing broken stuff back together?” Dan fiddled with the hem of his shirt, running his fingers through the growing holes at the bottom.

“I’m fairly handy. Do you want me to fix something for you?”

“Yeah, do you mind?”

“Of course not. When do you want to bring it ‘round?”

Dan’s hands moved from his shirt hem to tap at his thigh. “Um, I was thinking now actually. If you’re not busy that is.”

Louise responded without hesitation. “Do you want tea or hot chocolate? Or should I open something stronger?”

Dan felt a wave of relief wash through him. “Hot chocolate sounds lovely, Louise. I’ll be there in fifteen.”

“Be quiet when you come in, please? Darcy’s asleep.”

“I will.”

Dan hauled himself out of bed. He slipped on a pair of black shoes that horrendously clashed with his white joggers, but whatever. He glanced back at his bed, where Phil’s jumper was bunched up, and considered pulling it over his tshirt.

It was just — it was soft. His week had sucked so far. He hadn’t seen Phil in ages, he’d been ignoring all of Izzy’s calls since she’d left, and he was bloody upset. He was allowed to wear something soft and comforting.

He decided it was worth whatever prying questions Louise might ask, pulled it on, and made his way to the kitchen.

Carefully, he stepped over the shards of glass, pots, and pans that still littered the kitchen floor to the breakfast bar. He really needed to clean that up before the maid came tomorrow.

Dan was thankful that he had saved the pieces of the bright pink mug from the floor during their fight. They were still tucked away on the breakfast bar, safe from further harm. Dan piled the pink shards of glass into a container with painstaking care. He glanced around the floor, making sure that he hadn’t missed any pieces. Sticking out from under the ledge of the counter was a bright pink handle. Dan scooped it up and gently added it to the container. With a determined flick, Dan turned the kitchen light off and left.

The night air was colder than he’d anticipated. He probably should have gone back upstairs to fetch a warmer coat. Instead, he pulled Phil’s jumper more tightly around his body, taking care to not jostle the box in his arms too much.

With cold fingers, he dug his keys out of his coat pocket and shakily unlocked the door to Louise’s townhouse. A welcomed rush of warm air hit him when he stepped into the entryway of Louise’s home.

To her credit, Louise was probably the best friend he could have asked for. When he walked into her lounge, he was greeted by Louise sitting on the sofa in front of two mugs of steaming hot chocolate.

Wordlessly, Dan climbed onto the couch, careful not to shake the box too much, and rested his head in Louise’s lap. Louise seemed to switch to full mum mode at the action, running her hand soothingly through his hair and letting him wallow in silence. She didn’t question anything — not the container he was cradling to his chest, nor the bright blue jumper he was wearing that clearly didn’t belong to him, and not even the barely-faded purple marks on his neck that she was bound to have a perfect view of from her position. She didn’t even question why he came over with fifteen minutes notice after three days of radio silence. She just let him be for a few minutes.

His eyes wandered the room as Louise played with his hair. There was a box labeled crafting supplies on the arm chair and a half empty bottle of liquor on the coffee table. He rolled onto his back and looked up at Louise.

“Peppermint Schnapps?”

“Just in case.”

“I love you Louise, you’re the best.” Dan sat and pressed a small kiss to her cheek. He leaned forward and poured a generous splash into both of their mugs, his destroyed mug resting in his lap.

Louise giggled as he handed her one of the mugs. “I know you too well, Dan. Now, are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

Dan shifted the container of glass in his lap. “Please, Louise. Can you promise not to lecture me tonight? I know what you’re going to say and I really don’t want to — I just want to talk. And fix this. I need you to fix this.” Dan shoved the container into Louise’s hands.

She opened the box and peered inside. “Oh no! The mug from your grandma. Out of all your mugs, this is the one you broke?”

“Erm, not exactly.”

Louise looked at him curiously.

“They’re all broken. Except one. This is just the only one I care about fixing.”

Louise gasped. “What happened? Did your shelf break or something?”

“No, no. The kitchen’s fine. It was... um, Isabella.”

“Isabella,” Louise said tersely. It wasn’t a question, but Dan knew she was expecting him to explain.

“She came over. Sunday. That’s part of why I’ve been… not around.” Louise stayed silent, waiting for him to keep talking. Dan took a deep breath and continued. “She’d been on twitter and seen Phil and I talking. She accused me of being flirty. When she figured out he was Phil from the coffee shop, she lost it even more than she already had. I know she has a temper, I’ve seen it plenty, but I’d never seen her that livid. She greeted me by throwing all of my pots and pans on the floor and when she ran out of those… well…” Dan nodded at the mug in Louise’s lap in lieu of any further explanation.

Louise studied the broken shards for a minute. When she finally spoke, Dan half expected the lecture he’d begged her not to give, but it didn’t come. “Isabella did this. To all of your mugs?”

Dan nodded. Louise’s eyes flickered down to his neck.

“And then what?” she asked.

“She said a bunch of shitty things. You know she’s not quite comfortable with the… bi thing, and she went off about me being gay and not liking girls and… I don’t know. I lost it too, I guess. One thing lead to another and…” Dan shrugged and took a long sip of his hot chocolate.

Louise narrowed her eyes, appraising him studiously. “You know I have to ask, love. Was it all consensual?”

Dan’s eyes grew wide. “Yeah, yeah of course! It was angry and rough, as I’m sure you can see, but of course. She consented.”

“And you? Did you consent?”

Dan had to fight rolling his eyes, even though he knew she was just looking out for him. “Yes, Mum, I consented too.”

True to her word, Louise simply nodded and moved on. “Let’s see what we can do about your mug, then, shall we?” She sat the container of mug fragments on the coffee table and got up to gather a few supplies from her box of crafting materials.

Dan smiled gratefully at her retreating figure. This was exactly what he’d needed. A chance to talk about their fight without being told how stupidly he’d acted, how big of a bitch Isabella could be, or how unacceptable both of their behavior had been.

Louise came back and diligently spread the bright pink pieces across the table. A comfortable silence fell between them as Dan drank the remainder of his hot chocolate and watched Louise’s delicate hands work out the puzzle. Once she’d figure out how the pieces went together, she motioned him onto the floor next to her.

“Come here, love. I’m going to need your hands too.”

Dan clambered off the sofa and curled his legs under him, settling on the floor by her side. Her hand grasped his and wrapped it around the mostly-intact base of the mug. Louise unscrewed a small tube of glue and lined the jagged edge. The next hot pink chunk fit almost perfectly on top of it. Instinctively, Dan reached out and held the piece in place.

“Push them together firmly. Not too hard, though,” Louise instructed as she reached for the next piece.

Together, they worked silently to rebuild the mug. It was nice to have something to do with his hands, to not be alone. For the first time in days, Dan finally let his mind drift, finally properly contemplating everything that had happened with Isabella.

Their fight was bad. He knew it was. The things that Isabella had said, about his sexuality, about their relationship, about Phil — for days Dan had thought he was angry, livid even. But now that he was here with Louise, finally letting himself think about it, he realized that more than anything, he was hurt.

“Look, I know you hate her, and probably with some good reasons,” Dan started.

“Hate is a strong word. How about avidly dislike?” Louise’s fingers were sticky as she manhandled his hands to grip the mug how she wanted.

Dan chuckled a bit, despite himself. “Okay. I know you avidly dislike her, with good reason. At the moment, I’m not her biggest fan either, trust me. Sunday night was shitty — I mean, really fucking shitty — but, I do kind of miss her. And I know, I know this is a dead end relationship. It’s just… comfortable, I guess. And it’s better than nothing, ya know?”

Louise hummed, but didn’t say anything. Dan could tell she was biting her tongue.

“Just say it, Louise. What are you thinking?”

“Are you missing Isabella or the companionship?” Louise questioned without looking up from the mug.

Dan knew his answer instantly.

“Does it matter?” he sighed.

Louise glued the final hot pink shard to the reconstructed mug, and rearranged his hands to cup the entire thing.

“Do you want a real answer?” she asked softly.

Dan sighed. He had a feeling he knew what Louise was going to say. Or at least, the general theme of what her message would be.

“Not really, but go ahead anyway,” he said.

“Of course it matters. I know you like having a person and I can understand that. But companionship is so much better, so much more, when you actually love the person that you’re with. Trust me. And you deserve that. But you’re never going to find that if you stubbornly stay in a broken relationship. Can you honestly tell me that empty companionship is enough?”

Dan contemplated the mug in his hands and slowly loosened his grip. The pieces were fused together. There were dark lines down the sides where it had been glued back together, and there were a few chips missing, pieces that must have been too small for him to notice in the wreckage of his kitchen. There was no way it would be functional ever again. Even if the pieces were glued tightly together enough to hold liquid, the glue probably wouldn’t survive.

But it was intact again. Not whole, not undamaged, not perfect. But intact.

Good enough.

“No, it’s not.” Dan leaned back against the couch. “But it’s good enough.”

The thermostat in Beans and Grind appeared to be broken.

When Phil had unlocked the door to the coffee shop that morning, he had been assaulted by a wave of absurdly hot air. He’d power walked straight to the thermostat when he’d got inside, frantically shedding his coat as he crossed the shop. He’d turned the dial all the way down, pointing the arrow to the lowest temperature option. At the time, it had seemed like a potentially extreme reaction, but forty five minutes later, it was still just as hot and the heater wasn’t showing any signs of relenting.

With a resigned sigh, Phil pushed the sleeves of his fox patterned jumper up over his elbows. He was slightly disgruntled that he was undoubtedly wrinkling the sleeves; he had been hoping to film a video in it later, and now he’d probably have to change into something neater.

All morning, the before-work crowd had commented on how warm it was in the shop, as if Phil wasn’t aware that it was approximately four thousand degrees. He was grateful when the clock struck nine and the steady stream of customers stopped coming in.

Phil waited until the shop was empty for a few minutes before yanking his oppressively-hot jumper over his head. His white tshirt would have to be professional enough. It was better than suffocating, anyway.

In his haste, his shirt got rucked up with his jumper, both getting tangled around his glasses. He fought the jumper, trying to free it from his face and simultaneously pull his undershirt down, but wasn’t particularly successful at either.

Ding

Shit, just his luck that a customer would come in at this moment.

He heard a loud, booming laugh.

He knew that laugh.

Dan.

Suddenly, cold hands were brushing against his chest and tangling in the clothing wrapped around his head. Phil felt Dan grab his tshirt and pull it down his torso, his cold hands grazing his ribcage as he did so. The touch was shocking, and not just because Dan’s fingers were so cold. Everywhere Dan touched, sparks radiated through Phil. Without his consent, his mind rushed to imagining Dan’s hands running up and down his ribs for far different reasons, under far different circumstances. Phil was almost glad his face was hidden because he was positive that his cheeks were flushed red.

When Phil’s shirt was adjusted, Dan’s hands slipped inside the bottom his jumper, sliding inside, and reached up to his face. Carefully, Dan held his glasses in place with one hand and coaxed the neck of the sweater over Phil’s head with the other.

Finally, Phil was free from the jumper. His eyes adjusted to the light again and he was greeted by a smirking Dan stretched far across the counter, Phil’s fox jumper held tight in his hands. Even being as tall as Dan was, Phil was fairly certain that his feet had to be dangling over the other end

“Morning, Philip. I didn’t realize coffee was coming with a show now.” Dan’s face was cheeky, his eyes roaming up and down Phil’s body.

Phil’s cheeks flushed. “You’re one to talk. You stripped your clothing off last time you were here without any concern about customers.” Or me.

Dan shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t see you objecting.”

Phil rolled his eyes and grabbed his jumper out of Dan’s hands. “You don’t seem to be objecting either.”

“You’re lucky it was me that walked in. I feel like not everyone would have taken so kindly to seeing you half-naked so close to all the food.” Dan retreated slightly across the counter, but not much, landing with a soft thump on the floor.

“Shut up, you’re making it sound worse than it was. I was only taking off my jumper.”

“Speaking of jumpers, I seem to have forgotten yours. Sorry.” Dan didn’t sound very apologetic.

Phil giggled. It almost seemed like Dan liked wearing Phil’s jumper just as much as Phil enjoyed seeing Dan in it. “If you want to borrow it for a while, all you have to do is ask.”

Dan flushed red and tried to hide his small smile in his chunky scarf, but Phil caught it anyway. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled.

Phil smiled, secretly pleased that Dan apparently liked his jumper so much. “For here or to go today?”

“For here. I have a meeting at eleven but I figured I’d head out early and see you first.”

“Good, I was hoping you had time to stay for a bit.” The porcelain mug clanked against the coffee machine as Phil shoved it under the spout a little too eagerly. Phil tried to ignore the bit of coffee that splashed out against his arm. At least he was no longer wearing his jumper.

Dan pushed the sleeves of his leather jacket up, probably just as affected by the heat in the coffee shop as Phil had been. Phil’s eyes flickered down to Dan’s exposed forearms, eyes catching on the thin red scratch marks running the length of them. Briefly, Phil wondered if Dan had been playing with a cat or a dog recently. He’d pay good money to see that.

“Mmm, of course,” Dan hummed. “You have some explaining to do, mister.”

Cockily, Phil flashed Dan a smirk. “Really? Seems like you watched enough videos that it should be pretty self explanatory.” Phil wasn’t normally one to pay too much attention to new likes and comments on his old videos, but out of curiosity, he’d checked his first video after he knew Dan had watched it. He’d sorted the comments by date and hadn’t been disappointed. Beneath a string of comments screaming about Dan discovering Phil’s first video was a comment from the man himself.

Daniel Howell: being this precious should be illegal

When he’d found Dan’s comment, Phil had been too curious for his own good and clicked on Dan’s account. Much to his surprise, Dan’s recently liked videos tab was just pages and pages of Phil’s videos. Phil wondered if Dan knew that his likes were public.

Phil had half been expecting Dan to blush when he teased him about watching his videos, but instead, Dan’s lips just quirked up to match Phil’s smirk.

“That’s true, I guess.” Dan reached out to take his coffee from Phil’s hand before he could set it down on the counter, their fingers lightly brushing together. It shouldn’t have affected him the way it did, not when Dan’s hands had been on his bare ribs just moments ago, but Phil had to bite back a gasp at the touch. “I suppose I know a lot more about you now than I did, but all it did was leave me with more questions.

Phil rolled his eyes, trying to appear like he found Dan silly, but really he got it. He so, so deeply understood what Dan meant. The more Phil learned about Dan, both in person and from his dives into the depths of the internet, the more Phil wanted to know.

He’d learned that Dan had a childhood dog at his parents that he adored, but he didn’t know if Dan wanted a dog of his own. He’d learned that Dan was amazing at Mario Kart, but he didn’t know what other games he enjoyed playing. He’d learned that his inspiration for his songs usually came from his own life, but he didn’t know what was inspiring him at this moment.

With a mock resigned sigh, Phil wiped down his work area — he’d accidentally made a mess of it during the morning rush. “Alright, then, Howell. Let’s hear your questions.”

As soon as the words were out of Phil’s mouth, Dan’s questions poured out of him the same way his words always did when he was passionate about something — fast, loud, and all at once.

“Why did you decide to start youtube? Was it hard to get into it? What’s it like working with the BBC? Why the heck do you work at a coffee shop? Do you think —”

Phil threw his drying rag at Dan, smacking him in the face. “Slow down, will you? I can only answer one question at a time.”

Dan’s boisterous laugh filled the coffee shop. “Sorry, I got excited.” He threw the towel back at Phil, sprinkling black coffee grounds onto Phil’s white shirt in the process. “Start at the beginning then. How’d you get started on youtube?”

Between fans, interviewers, and confused adults, Phil got that question a lot and had an answer ready. “I got a camera in a cereal box and just started making videos.”

Dan cocked his head, considering Phil. “That’s it then? You just found a camera and your first thought was I’m going to make youtube videos?”

Something about the way Dan’s eyes bore into Phil coaxed out a deeper answer, an answer he usually kept private. Dan had a way of doing that. Those big puppydog eyes could probably make Phil confess to anything. “At first, it wasn’t a thing. YouTube wasn’t a thing. I just kind of posted the first video for fun, and then, over time, I found myself coming back to it. I was living at my parents after uni. Most of my friends either didn’t live near me or were disgustingly in love and… I don’t know. I was bored I guess. I wanted a way to connect with new people, maybe a way to make some friends. So when I discovered the youtube community, which was so small and close-knit back then, it seemed like the right thing to do.”

Phil wasn’t sure what he expected from Dan after he let all of that pour out — perhaps pity — but it wasn’t understanding. Which was exactly what he ended up getting.

“That’s kind of how I got started in music, actually! I hated so much that was happening in my life, I didn’t have friends, I just needed to do something I loved.”

“Exactly!” Phil agreed. “And I made so many good friends so quickly. It was exactly what I needed. As for getting popular, it was a lot easier back then. Like I said, it was really close knit, so we all collabed together and promoted each others’ channels. I was even part of a few community things, like ApartmentRed. And slowly, my subscribers grew and grew and grew until I woke up one day and I had over four million subscribers. I couldn’t believe it. All I could think was, I’m just Phil, from Rawtenstall.” Embarrassed that he’d been talking about himself for so long, Phil tried to switch the conversation over to Dan. “What about you? How did you get popular with music?”

Phil already knew, sort of. He’d seen clips of Dan talking about how an up and coming producer had come into a bar he was playing at by complete chance one night, and asked him to come to the studio the next Monday to play some of his original pieces for their boss. But Phil was willing to bet that Dan, like himself, only ever told part of his origin story during interviews.

“I was eighteen and I had been accepted to study law at Manchester University, but I hated the idea of it, so I decided to take a gap year and really give music a go. My parents fucking hated it. They said that if I wasn’t going to be working towards a more viable future by taking this horrific internship at a law firm, then I wasn’t allowed to live at home. I think they really thought I’d give in. But. I don’t know. I was young and passionate and reckless and stubborn, so I packed a bag, grabbed my guitar, and left. I got a job at a DIY store — which I was horrible at, by the way — and a really crappy studio apartment, and spent every free night I had playing gigs at shitty dive bars. And eventually, it paid off.”

Phil shook head, a bit in awe of Dan’s courage. He’d never realized how much Dan had risked when he decided to chase his dreams.

“Wow, that was so bold of you. I guess I was really lucky. My parents were really supportive of the youtube thing. I think initially they were just happy that I was doing something, making friends. But when it became clear that it might become profitable someday, they did everything they could to help. How do your parents feel about you singing now?”

“They’ve come around,” Dan answered as he shrugged out of his leather jacket all together, draping it on the stool next to him. Clearly, the heat in the store was beginning to get to him. “I think they were only really against it in the beginning because they wanted what was best for me and, well, I guess you know how difficult trying to make it the entertainment business can be. But we’re close now and they support what I’m doing. What about your family? You seem really close with them.”

“Yeah,” Phil agreed. “We are. They all think it’s cool, and my brother actually does a lot of behind the scenes stuff for me. My extended family is a bit confused by it all though. Like, outside of my grandma, I think most of them are convinced I make a different type of internet video.” Phil attempted a wink and immediately regretted it — he was well aware of how unsexy his two-eyed attempt at winks were.

Dan laughed, loud and unrestrained. “Now there’s an image. Innocent AmazingPhil fucking someone on the internet for money.”

“Hey! I am innocent,” Phil argued indignantly, pretending to be offended.

Dan laughed, doing his best to give Phil an incredulous look despite it. “Right. Do I need to remind you that you called me daddy like three days ago?”

“I was kidding!”

“Right, and we know only innocent people joke about daddy kinks.” Dan tugged at the chunky grey scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. Was Dan okay? Phil was kind of surprised Dan had lasted so long all bundled up he way he was.

“Jesus fuck, it’s really fucking hot in here,” Dan grumbled.

“I know,” Phil agreed. “That would be why I was trying to take off my jumper when you got in. You’ll probably be more comfortable if you take your scarf off.”

It seemed the logical thing to do, but Dan looked unsure, his eyes flickering between his half-finished coffee and Phil, as if the last thing he wanted was to remove his scarf. Phil squinted at Dan, confused

“You have to promise not to give me shit,” Dan tried to threaten.

It occured to Phil, then, that Dan was embarrassed. Cocking an eyebrow, Phil taunted, “I don’t think I can make any such promises, but go on then.”

Dan grumbled something incomprehensible, but obligingly lifted his hands to his scarf. A bit reluctantly, Dan unwound the grey fabric. Suddenly, Phil understood that the scratches on Dan’s arms likely weren’t from an animal — not if the marks on his neck were anything to go by.

Phil could feel his heart plummet into his stomach at the sight. He knew, obviously he knew that Dan had a girlfriend. And she was gorgeous. Of course, of course they were having sex. It was just — he’d never thought about it. Not really. Isabella had always been a distant figure in Dan’s life, one he didn’t even really talk about that much.

But now...

Now, Phil had no choice but to think about Dan and her having sex.

He felt like an idiot. His thoughts of Dan falling apart underneath his felt like distant fantasies all of a sudden. Instead, he was falling apart with someone else — his girlfriend. Girlfriend.

With a jolt, Phil realized he’d been silently staring at Dan’s neck a bit too long. Deliberately, Phil forced out a laugh, which came out weaker than he’d been hoping for.

“Damn,” Phil added.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Dan mumbled into his coffee cup.

With a monumental effort, Phil did his best to revert back to his joking self, trying to emotionally distance himself from the thought of Isabella leaving those marks on Dan. “And here you were saying that I’m not innocent. I don’t think you get those kinds of marks from being a good boy,” Phil teased.

Phil saw a flicker of something flash through Dan’s eyes. He’d forgotten what those words apparently did to Dan.

Evilly, Phil leaned forward on his elbows, resting his chin in his palm. “Were you a bad boy, Daniel?”

Instantly, Dan’s cheeks turned a deep, dark red. The expression was far prettier to focus on then the hickies covering his neck. Apparently bad boy affected Dan just as much as good boy.

“Fuck off. We got into a bit of a fight, if you must know.”

“A fight?” Phil prompted against his better judgment, taken by surprise.

“Yeah, protip: angry sex may feel great in the moment, but it hurts like fuck for days.”

Phil hadn’t been expecting Dan to actually like, admit to being a bad boy. And if Phil was being honest he kind of hated Dan confirming what he’d suspected.

“Those marks are days old?”

Dan huffed. “You should have seen them Monday.”

“Oh, wow. Um, are you guys okay?”

Why did he ask that? There was no potential good answer. If Dan said no, Phil wouldn’t be able to keep himself from feeling kind of sort of happy about it, despite feeling bad for Dan at the same time.. If Dan said yes — well, Phil’s heart just needed to get used to taking a beating when it came to Dan.

Dan didn’t answer right away. His eyes bore into Phil’s, almost as if he was looking for something, but Phil didn’t know what.

Finally, he spoke, sounding defeated.

“I don’t think we ever are. But we’re good enough.”

what did you thinkkkkkkkk? a bit less angsty than the last chapter? right?  

thank you @auroraphilealis for all of your wonderful editing and suggestions. you always make me a better writer <3 

[[next chapter]]

[patriotsnet]

Are The Republicans Winning The Election

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-the-republicans-winning-the-election/

Are The Republicans Winning The Election

California Recall Lesson: Republicans Believe In Elections Only When They Win

Winning Elections: Why and How the Republicans Win

Republicans,;like totalitarians, believe in elections. But only if they always win.

New case in point? California, where voters on Tuesday appeared inclined to keep Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in a recall election.

Cue Larry Elder, the leading Republican to replace him, who started dropping unsubstantiated claims that the election was;rigged against him.

Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

The only proof Elder offered was the fact that California voters were poised to pick Newsom over him or anyone else on the long list of possible replacements.

How could that be? Republicans can only lose if theyre cheated, right?

I Do Not Buy That A Social Media Ban Hurts Trumps 2024 Aspirations: Nate Silver

sarah: Yeah, Democrats might not have their worst Senate map in 2022, but it will by no means be easy, and how they fare will have a lot to do with the national environment. And as we touched on earlier, Bidens overall approval rating will also make a big difference in Democrats midterm chances.

nrakich: Yeah, if the national environment is even a bit Republican-leaning, that could be enough to allow solid Republican recruits to flip even Nevada and New Hampshire. And then it wouldnt even matter if Democrats win Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

One thing is for sure, though whichever party wins the Senate will have only a narrow majority, so I think were stuck in this era of moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin and Lisa Murkowski controlling every bills fate for at least a while longer.;

sarah: Lets talk about big picture strategy, then, and where that leaves us moving forward. Its still early and far too easy to prescribe election narratives that arent grounded in anything, but one gambit the Republican Party seems to be making at this point is that attacking the Democratic Party for being too progressive or woke will help them win.

What do we make of that playbook headed into 2022? Likewise, as the party in charge, what are Democrats planning for?

With that being said, the GOPs strategies could still gin up turnout among its base, in particular, but its hard to separate that from general dissatisfaction with Biden.

Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger: National Gop Figures Didn’t Understand Our Laws

But Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, said on Wednesday that the system is working exactly the way it is intended.

“The irony of saying ‘fraudulent votes have been found’ â he has gained in the finding of these votes,” he said.

Raffensperger has said he’s been pressured by top Republicans to find ways of disqualifying ballots that hurt the Trump campaign.

“They say that as pressure builds, it reveals your character, it doesn’t change your character. Some people aren’t behaving too well with seeing where the results are,” Raffensperger told NPR’s Ari Shapiro on Tuesday.

“At the end of the day, I want voters to understand that when they cast their ballot in Georgia, it will be accurately counted. You may not like the results and I get that. I understand how contentious it is. But you can then respect the results.”

Poll workers check voters’ identifications on Election Day at the Orpheum Theater in Madison, Wis. The Trump campaign has announced it is filing for a recount in two Wisconsin counties.hide caption

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Poll workers check voters’ identifications on Election Day at the Orpheum Theater in Madison, Wis. The Trump campaign has announced it is filing for a recount in two Wisconsin counties.

President Trump’s campaign announced Wednesday morning it is filing a petition to formally ask election authorities to conduct a recount in two Wisconsin counties. President-elect Joe Biden won the state by a little more than 20,000 votes.

Recommended Reading: Did Donald Trump Really Say Republicans Are Dumb

Gop Scores An Early Win In 2024 Race

New Census figures show the gap between the popular vote and the Electoral College is widening.

As a result of Census Bureau population figures released Monday, if every state voted the same way in 2024 that they did in 2020, President Joe Biden would win three fewer Electoral College votes than he did in November. |

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President Joe Bidens path to reelection just got a little harder.

As a result of Census Bureau population figures released Monday, if every state voted the same way in 2024 that they did in 2020, Biden would win three fewer Electoral College votes than he did in November, while the Republican nominee would win three more.

The shift is only a marginal one it would only affect the closest of elections.

But that doesnt mean the new state numbers which are used to apportion the number of congressional districts each state gets, and thus the number of electoral votes wont alter the landscape in 2024 and 2028.

Here are five reasons why:

The gap between the popular vote and the Electoral College is widening.

Biden beat then-President Donald Trump by 74 Electoral College votes. A net gain of six votes for Trump wouldnt have mattered.

But in a close race like the one in 2000, where just five electoral votes separated George W. Bush and Al Gore the re-balancing of the Electoral College could tip the scales.

Thats significant for a party whose presidential candidates have won the national popular vote only once since 1988.

But thats right now.

The Numbers Are Grim Republicans Are Winning At Normalizing Voter Suppression

Voter ID laws which are sculpted to make it harder to vote are wildly popular with voters, according to surveys

Voter suppression has been around for as long as the republic. Stories of subterfuge and ballot box-stuffing schemes are such a part of American political folklore, theres an entire book about them. So in one sense, there is nothing particularly novel about Republican politicians efforts to rig the vote, or the important revelations that rightwing groups and corporate officials are coordinating state-level campaigns to make it harder to vote.

However, a new nugget of polling data illustrates that something more fundamental has happened: voter suppression is no longer a plot engineered in the shadows and denied in public, for fear of criticism by a population that considers such measures grotesque. Instead, voter suppression is having its coming-out party because more and more Americans now consider it to be a perfectly legitimate and even laudable campaign tactic.

The data point comes in a new CBS/YouGov survey, buried under the topline finding that almost two-thirds of Republican voters do not consider Joe Biden the legitimate winner of the 2020 election, despite Bidens electoral college and popular vote victories.

Nearly half of Republicans surveyed supported the latter move, with the strongest demographics in support being female Republicans, non-white Republicans and white Republicans with no college degree.

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Biden Avoids The Microscope

Another benefit Biden can enjoy from having his party control both chambers of Congress is that Republican investigatory powers will be greatly diminished. With Democrats in charge of Senate committees, embarrassing and potentially explosive investigations are unlikely to materialise.

Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson will no longer run the Government Oversight Committee, so his planned forays into Hunter Biden’s China dealings and any connections to the incoming president will go away. The same applies to Lindsey Graham and the Judiciary Committee, which was expected to hold more hearings into the 2016 Russia election-meddling investigation and the origins of Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe.

Any new Democratic scandals that crop up should also avoid a full and potential politically damaging airing – a luxury Trump also enjoyed during his first two years in office and sorely missed during his final two.

The Trump-Russia saga in 350 words

Biden Flips Coveted Georgia The Last State To Be Called By The Ap

The full hand recount of the state’s 5 million presidential votes resulted in a narrowing of Biden’s lead over President Trump in Georgia, but not nearly enough to change the result. He started out with a 14,000 vote lead, and now leads by just over 12,000 votes.

The recount, formally known as a risk-limiting audit, is intended to verify the contest’s winner. As Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Stephen Fowler reported, four counties uncovered a few thousand previously uncounted votes, which subsequently cut into Biden’s margin of victory.

Douglas, Walton, Fayette and Floyd counties all experienced issues with missing or unscanned votes related to human error â but the numbers weren’t significant enough to change the outcome of the election.

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There is no mandatory recount law in Georgia, but state law does allow for a recount if the margin is less than .5%. It currently stands at .2%.

Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced the hand audit last week, citing the close margin of the race.

The four counties with new vote totals must recertify their results. Statewide election results must be certified by Friday. The Trump campaign then has until Tuesday to request an additional recount, which would be by machine rather than by hand.

Trump has repeatedly questioned the integrity of Georgia’s vote counting, it both a “joke” and a process that led to “fraudulent votes” being found.

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Redistricting Is The Next Step On A Path To One

The redistricting process kicked off this week in Washington. The Census Bureau released initial data from the 2020 census Monday afternoon, , which means that congressional district boundaries will soon be redrawn to account for changes in population.

These changes will probably tend to benefit the Republican Party, as conservative states will get more seats for instance, Texas will gain two seats, while New York, California, and Illinois will all lose one. Republicans are also certain to use the process to try to gerrymander themselves as many additional congressional seats as possible by leveraging their control of a majority of state legislatures. And that is just the opening tactic in a long-term strategy to abolish American democracy and set up one-party rule.

Today in Michigan, gerrymandering means Republicans enjoy a 3.4-point handicap in the state House and a 10.7-point handicap in the state Senate; in Pennsylvania, it’s a 3.1-point handicap in the House and a 5.9-point handicap in the Senate; and in Wisconsin, a 7.1-point handicap in the House and a 10.1-point handicap in the Senate.

It’s impossible to gerrymander the Senate, of course, but luckily for Republicans that chamber is inherently gerrymandered due to the large number of disproportionately white, low-population rural states that lean conservative. The swing seat in the Senate is biased something like 7 points to the right.

A Late Surge In Latino Voters Helped Newsom Keep His Job

Who is Winning US Election 2020 | Full 360 Analysis | Analysts, Democrats, Republicans on NewsX

For weeks, Democrats openly worried that Latino voters were not going to show up in force for Gov. Gavin Newsom. That might have spelled doom for the party, which has relied on support from Latino voters to rise to its current grip on power in the state.

But early numbers suggest that it might have been history repeating itself: a late investment in Latino voter outreach, and a late uptick in interest and voting among Latinos. Though it was far from unanimous, the majority of Latino voters backed Mr. Newsom, with some Latino-heavy precincts defeating the recall by as much as 88 percent, according to an analysis by the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Early numbers, though, suggest that Latino voters may still not be showing up to the polls at the same rates as white, Black and Asian American voters. As of Tuesday morning, 30 percent of Latino voters who received their ballots by mail had sent them back, compared with 50 percent of white voters and 40 percent of Black voters, according to Political Data Inc., a Sacramento-based research group.

Historically, Latinos are more likely to vote late, and many observers thought it was possible to see a last-minute surge among those voters. Exit polling suggests that Latinos made up roughly 24 percent of all voters in the recall, and that about 60 percent of those Latino voters favored keeping the governor in office.

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Some Republicans Including Trump Make Baseless Pre

As Election Day dawned in California, some leading Republicans were preparing to declare the results marred by fraud.

Elder had already set up a link on his campaign website to a petition asking the state legislature to investigate voting fraud. In recent interviews he encouraged citizens to report voting issues to his campaign and said a team of lawyers was ready to act if needed.

The pre-election efforts to undermine confidence in the results were led by former president Donald Trump, who sent out a statement Tuesday morning warning of rampant voter fraud. In a Tuesday evening interview on Newsmax, Trump repeated his baseless claims, urging viewers to take a look at whats going on right now in California with the mail-in ballots and all the crap that theyre doing.

Shortly after 1 p.m. Tuesday outside a voting location at the Stanislaus County Fairgrounds in Turlock, Charlotte Dutra, 68, a retired human resources analyst for Turlock Irrigation District, said she is a proud Republican and voted yes to take out.

Dutra said she filled out her recall ballot and dropped it off in person. She said she believes there was fraud in the 2020 election, and shes still skeptical of election integrity in California because the current secretary of state was appointed by the White-privileged Gavin Newsom.

There is no evidence that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Can Pence Affect The Outcome

While Pence has said he welcomes objections to the electoral college count, his role in the processopening envelopes and affirming the victoriesis largely ceremonial.

Last month, Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Republican from Texas, filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to give Pence the authority to overturn Bidens win, but Pence successfully requested the case be dismissed, with an attorney for the Department of Justice arguing he was not the right defendant.

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Newsoms Efforts To Combat Coronavirus Sway Some Voters

In a rapidly gentrifying part of Inglewood, Calif., Gov. Gavin Newsoms imposition of restrictions in response to the coronavirus pandemic swayed some voters as did Republican Larry Elders statements that children do not need to be vaccinated or wear masks.

Keeping a candidate in office thats going to protect health-care workers, protect children, enforce the mask mandate at this point Im on the front lines. I work at UCLA Health in a hospital setting as a manager and am in the thick of it, seeing children get sick, Jolie Emenike, 41, said about the issue that drove her to vote against the recall Tuesday morning.

I dont want to see the vaccine or mask mandates change, she said.

For Dan Sabin, too, the vaccine rules were top of mind, though his conclusion was different.

I was subject to a vaccine mandate when I was younger in Romania. We overthrew our government, but I still have the lasting effects of that mandate, said Sabin, 33. I definitely recalled Gavin Newsom.

Although he called mail-in ballots a massive risk, the software engineer said he trusts the election process.

Im not really sure. You have to trust the people that do the ballots, he said. Ultimately, the people that work in there are people in the community.

If Rep Liz Cheney Doesnt Have A Home In The Gop Who Does

To be sure, though, Fragas own research has found that white voters, regardless of how easy or hard it is for them to vote, consistently turn out at higher rates than voters of color, so we do want to be careful of not reading too much into this. Jennifer McCoy, a political scientist at Georgia State University who studies the effects of polarization on democracy, told me that she thought the current emphasis on voter restrictions boiled down to Republicans thinking they could appeal to Trumps base by codifying his baseless claims of voter fraud. know they have to attract Donald Trump supporters who now believe there is fraud, said McCoy. So a large part of the current efforts to change voter laws was a direct response to this last election. Large majorities of Republicans continue to believe Bidens win is not legitimate, and a that only 28 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning people agreed that everything possible should be done to make voting easy, a steep drop from 48 percent in October 2018.

The GOPs restrictionist bent sends the message that Republicans dont want Black and brown Americans to vote. In September 2020, 54 percent of Black respondents and 35 percent of Hispanic respondents told FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos they believed Republicans didnt want people like me to vote.

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Why Are Republicans Fighting So Hard For Georgia

While the presidential election results were full of disappointments for Donald Trump, losing Georgia may have been the unkindest cut.

Like Arizona, the state hadn’t been carried by a Democrat since 1992. But unlike that desert state, Georgia wasn’t considered an electoral battleground until the campaign’s final weeks.

That, along with the narrowness of the Biden lead in the state, may be why the Trump team has fought so furiously to flip the state to his column – even if it means going to war with local Republicans overseeing the state’s election.

The president’s efforts to cast doubt on the results in Georgia are complicated by the fact that the state’s two runoff contests in January will decide control of the US Senate. The more he feuds with his own party in the state, the greater the risk division will lead to Republican defeat.

Trump is making Georgia his first presidential visit since the election. The stated purpose is to campaign for the two Republican incumbent senators, but he is sure to continue to call into question the presidential verdict in the state.

Reversing the election results has proven to be a futile battle, but it seems the only thing worse for this president than actual defeat is appearing to accept it.

[shamelessly4shameless-blog]

For life, yeah?

Gallavich Gift Exchange 2017 for @frank-iero-owns-my-ass! The prompt was:  Mickey coaxing Ian through a particularly depressive week, it's lasted longer than usual and Ian won't come around. Ian is secretly afraid Mickey will leave him if he keeps up his manic episodes, but he feels so helpless, as does Mickey in trying to help him. Mickey pov (general guidelines, feel free to change it, im so easy to please) So here is my interpretation and I really hope you like it :) Also a huge thank you to @gallavichthings for organising this whole thing. xx

Mickey hisses through his teeth as he runs his bloody knuckles under the stream of cold water.

“Mother fucker!”

He grits out through pursed lips and flexes his hand experimentally. It’s going to bruise like a bitch but he doesn’t think anything is broken. Thank fuck for that! Ian is going to be pissed enough without adding a hospital bill. He keeps his hand submerged for a couple more minutes and then carefully wraps it in a mostly clean towel and returns to the scene of the crime.

Yev turns away from the carnage as his Papa approaches and looks up at Mickey with large, sympathetic eyes, sucking in his lower lip.

“Ah shit.”

Mickey groans, surveying the damage for himself.

“Shit, Papa.”

Yev agrees sombrely. Mickey nods and mimics the little boy’s lip movement. Though now is not the moment for taking a photo, if anyone was there to do so, it would serve as an excellent paternity test if there was any doubt left as to who fathered Yevgeny. They are two frowning, blue-eyed peas in a South Side pod.

“Daddy is gonna be super mad.”

“Yeah.”

Mickey nods grimly already thinking about the sheer level of jutting chin he’s going to have to deal with for this one. He squats down beside his five year old and Yev wordlessly hands him the broken controller. Mickey runs his thumb over the cracked plastic and floppy toggle sticks. It wasn’t Ian’s remote thank God, but it’s still going to be an expense they could do without. The re-run of the K.O that caused the meltdown is still playing on the TV.

“Your hand okay?”

Yev asks, rocking up onto the balls of his feet to see the rather impressive swell of bloody knuckles his Papa is sporting.

“Hurts a bit.”

Mickey admits and glances up at the fist shaped hole in the wall. From this angle it looks even worse.

“Fuck.”

“Fuck.”

Yev agrees again and puts a comforting arm around his Papa’s shoulders. Mickey gives him a little lopsided smile and stands up, lifting Yevgeny with him and settling the boy on his hip. Yev raises his eyebrows at his Papa and flicks his gaze to the broken plasterwork.

“What are we gonna tell Daddy?”

“That I lost my shit and busted the wall I guess.”

Mickey shrugs.

“Are you gonna get a spanking?”

“Maybe, little man. Maybe.”

Mickey laughs despite himself and Yev bites his lip in consternation. He has never been spanked but has been threatened with it a couple of times and he understands the general principle of it well enough to know it is to be avoided at all costs. He looks back at the wall over Papa’s shoulder as Mickey carries him out of the room.

“We could fix it?”

“Yeah, I’m definitely gonna have to fix it. But, hey, listen, you get that what I just did was really bad, right? We ain’t supposed to throw toys.”

“Or stamp on them.”

“Right.”

“Or punch things.”

“No …”

Mickey grimaces as Yev continues to tick things off on his fingers

“Or say cuss words really loud.”

“Okay...”

“Or …”

“I think you got it, little man. Good job!”

Mickey kisses his son’s forehead and stands him down in the kitchen, handing the kid a chocolate chip cookie. Yev isn’t supposed to have sugary snacks before lunch but when Mickey acts out in front of him, which doesn’t happen as often as most would expect, but more often than he likes to admit, he always feels like he needs to spoil him a little to make up for it. It’s not great for a five year old to learn new and improved tantrum techniques from his father.

“Want a bite, Papa?”

“Nah, you enjoy it, man.”

Yev smiles happily and stuffs the rest of the sticky treat into his mouth, chewing with a noisy enthusiasm, broken toys and punched walls all but forgotten.

*

Mickey is just pondering how best to patch up the wall without Ian freaking out too much when the front door slams open and his boyfriend crashes in along with a flurry of snow and cold wind, face drawn and angry.

“Daddy!”

Yev cries excitedly, immediately abandoning Mickey in favour of charging toward Ian.

“Hi Yev.”

Ian picks his son up obligingly but Mickey’s ears instantly prick at the sound of Ian’s voice. It is flat, devoid of its usual flair and light.

“Hey, you’re home early.”

Mickey ventures cautiously as Ian walks over to him, his uniform is crumpled, messy, it looks like Ian has been hunched over rather than his normal straight-backed elegance.

“Not feeling good.”

Ian looks at Mickey, glances at the hole in the wall and closes his eyes, turning his face to bury his nose in Yev’s hair.

“What the fuck did you do?”

“I … ah …”

“Papa punched it.”

Yev offers. 

Ian’s eyes instantly harden.

“Jesus Christ, Mickey. What the Hell is wrong with you?”

The frustrated disappointment in Ian’s weary voice renders Mickey immediately mute and he studies his bruised knuckles intently. Ian kisses Yev’s temple and hands him over to Mickey, actively trying to avoid touching him at all.

“I need to lie down. Just leave this shit alone until I get up. I don’t want your clumsy fuckin’ patch up disturbing me.”

Mickey’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise at the harsh words and harsher tone but the bags under Ian’s eyes silence any retort he might try to make.

“And put the damn heating on. You spend enough on cigarettes; you can spend some money on keeping our kid warm.”

Ian gestures around the already warm house and glowers at Mickey who bites his tongue with an effort and nods.

“I’ll bring you in some lunch, okay?”

“Whatever.”

Ian stomps past and closes the bedroom door loudly behind him and Mickey lets out the breath he has been holding. Yev looks up at his father uncertainly

“Is Daddy okay?”

“Yeah, just tired and mad at me for the hole in the wall.”

Mickey smiles at Yev and then glances up at the closed door, a frown creasing his own brow. It has been nearly a year since Ian’s last depressive episode, and Mickey supposes it had to happen again at some point.

*

The next morning Mickey wakes up and rolls over to face the Ian shaped bundle of blankets that is beside him. He knows that Ian is awake from the pattern of his breathing and Mickey tentatively rests his hand on the outline of one strong arm.

“Good morning.”

No response.

“How you feelin’?”

Mickey inches the covers back slightly to try and get a look at his boyfriend but Ian shivers against Mickey’s palm as it is laid on his shoulder and pulls away silently.

Shit.

Mickey sits up and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, wiping away the grains of sleep gathered in the corners.

He rolls himself out of bed and grabs his dark blue dressing gown from the back of the door. The thick, coarse towelling is a reassuring glint of normality and makes him feel a little better as his bare feet adjust to the cold kitchen floor.

He flips open the pill dispenser lid and empties the four pills Ian takes every morning into his palm, poking at each of them in turn with his forefinger, scowling. He wishes he knew which one of the little round fuckers had flunked out on Ian this time. He’d crush it, toss it down the toilet then take a shit on the pieces.

However, Mickey doesn’t know and so he carries all four back to Ian with a glass of water and focusses his attention on the task at hand.

“Hey man. Time to take your pills.”

Ian’s voice is muffled but clear enough for Mickey to make out:

“Go away.”

“I will in a minute, I promise. Just take these and I can go.”

Mickey crouches besides him and gently tugs the covers back from Ian’s face. He should have had Yevgeny stay the night. Ian is in pretty bad shape but not so bad as Mickey had feared and he almost always takes the pills when Yev offers them to him. As long as Ian is not at the very bottom of the pit of despair, he is still a pushover for the kid.

“Please, Mick ...”

“C’mon. You know I gotta see you do it.”

Mickey’s thighs are beginning to cramp from the squat and he shifts awkwardly, trying to be patient. Ian eventually uncurls a hand and Mickey slips the pills into it and then holds the back of Ian’s head, helping him sip water to get them down.

“Alright. I’m gonna make you a sandwich and leave it on the side here. You can eat it if you want to.”

Mickey stands, pressing a kiss to Ian’s cheek before drawing the covers back over his shoulder. Ian tugs them the rest of the way over his head and Mickey nods to himself. Fine.

He goes into the bathroom and whilst he releases the torrent of his morning piss, half-heartedly aiming at a stain on the back of the bowl, he tries to stem the rising panic bubbling in his chest, reciting the familiar mantras to himself.

They’ve done this before.

One of the pills is out of whack and needs to be regulated.

Ian will spend a day or two like this and then he’ll manages to move, they’ll go to the clinic and sort it.

They’ll be okay.

Ian isn’t even as bad as he sometimes gets, he can still call Mickey ‘Mick’ and he took the pills without crying, lashing out or just refusing until Mickey had to force him.

It’s all okay.

It is all going to be okay.

He texts Fiona and receives a reply that she’ll be over soon. Gallagher’s love a fuckin’ drama, he thinks wryly and then chides himself for being an asshole. The last couple of years the Gallagher clan have been pretty good about accepting Mickey and Fiona is always ready to help out when Ian hits a rough patch.

Mickey makes Ian a baloney sandwich, leaves it on the side with a glass of water, and goes out for his morning smoke.

He stands on the porch in his robe, a battered pair of tartan slippers on his bare feet, faded blue shorts and a tank top, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip. A couple of kids ride by on bikes, leaving tracks in the fresh snow, and one of them flips Mickey off. He returns the gesture and they pedal away, shrieking with delighted laughter. They’ll probably tell their friends that they flipped off Mickey Milkovich and got away with it. Mickey doesn’t care. His is one of the few houses that has never had a juvenile break in, that tells him all he needs to know about his status in the community, thank you very fuckin’ much.

The sounds of South Side fill the morning air and Mickey inhales deeply, appreciating the familiarity of them. Sirens, screeching tires, the deep rumble of machinery in the distance.

He settles into the creaky old lounger that Ian dragged home from Christ knows where and tips his head back, drawing heavily on his smoke. The material is cold even through his dressing gown but he doesn’t mind that. It’s peaceful out here and if he freezes his balls off it doesn’t really matter. He won’t be using them for a little while anyway with Ian like this.

He feels like he has forgotten something but shrugs it off. Ian had his pills, he’s got food, he’s got water … Mickey snorts and shakes his head. Sometimes caring for Ian in these phases feels like having a sick old cat: Feed it, medicate it, clean up its … SHIT!

Mickey hastily stubs the cigarette out and hurries into the house. He shrugs out of his robe and pushes their bedroom door open gently.

“Ian, hey, we gotta ...”

Mickey trails off as his eyes light on the glass of water. No longer clear, it is now a dull yellow. Ian has pissed in the glass. It is full to the brim, Mickey’s gaze follows the splashes on the table, down the draw, and he knows, without looking there is going to be a big old wet patch on the floor. It’s not Ian’s fault. He knows it isn’t, but his eyebrows are still up to his hairline and his lips compress into a tight line.

Mickey rakes a hand over his face and waits in the doorway until he can be sure that his temper is under control.

“Okay. Fuck. Alright ...”

Mickey nods to himself and stalks into the bathroom grabbing a bucket, cloth and bottle of disinfectant all the while worrying at his lower lip with his teeth.

As he enters the bedroom, he composes his face to neutrality. Ian is looking out from the cocoon of his blanket with flat, red-rimmed eyes.

“It’s on the carpet.”

Ian whispers miserably. Mickey shrugs and glances down dismissively as if the carpet brought it on its fucking self by being in Ian’s way.

“It doesn’t matter. Carpets shit anyway.”

Mickey gingerly tips the glass into his bucket; not bothering to try to pick it up, it is too full. He drops the cloth to the carpet and stamps onto it a few times, spraying the bedside table with disinfectant at the same time.

“I’m sorry.”

Ian shakes his head hopelessly and Mickey gives him a lopsided little smile

“Meh. We’ve all been there. I once pissed in Mandy’s cereal bowl ‘cause I didn’t wanna pause a video game. Don’t worry about it.”

A tear slides down Ian’s nose but he manages to lift one trembling corner of his mouth at the anecdote as Mickey pats his cheek very softly, stroking the tip of Ian’s short sideburns with his finger. Mickey hates seeing him like this, somehow when Ian is in the grip of a deep depression it is easier, the rules and limitations become more defined. This is a weird middle ground, the pills are trying to work but they are just enough out of sync to keep Ian submerged below the waterline of his illness.

“Hey. You listening to me? It’s okay.”

“You must hate me.”

“Not in this life, Gallagher.”

The kiss Mickey places against Ian’s lips is a full stop rather than a question mark and Ian reaches up to trace the curve of Mickey’s cheekbone gratefully. There is a flash of utter clarity amongst the clouding of his vision and Ian sighs gently. He doesn’t have the energy to reassure Mickey that he is still there, he just has to trust that he already knows.

*

Fiona arrives just as Mickey is finishing the clean-up and wiping Ian’s hands with a couple of the little wipes they keep for Yev.

“Hey Sweetface.”

She murmurs and spends a few minutes speaking in a soft, sweet voice to Ian and catching him up on family gossip. He doesn’t show any signs of interest but he is acknowledging the information and that is something. Mickey loiters on the edge of the bed, his fingers lightly resting on Ian’s foot. He is glad that Fiona is telling him normal shit, sometimes she can get a bit maudlin and it puts him on edge, plus he doesn’t want her making Ian feel worse. Once he is content that Ian is in safe hands, Mickey excuses himself to make coffee and when Fiona comes out of the bedroom, they sit at the table to drink it.

“What can I do to help, Mickey?”

Mickey taps the rim of his mug and sighs

“Not a whole lot for this but I was wonderin’ if you could watch him for a few hours on Thursday? If he’s not feelin’ better, you know?”

Fiona nods and sips her drink, it’s stronger than she’s used to but looking at the lines beside Mickey’s eyes, he desperately needs it strong today.

“What time?”

“Late afternoon? I gotta job to do and it’s kinda time sensitive. I’d tell the guy I can’t do it but I took the cash up front so now it feels shitty to bail on him.”

“You got a job?”

Fiona looks so happy that Mickey feels almost sorry to burst her nosy bubble

“Ah … not like … uh … it’s just a beat down. Some guy is havin’ trouble gettin’ his daughter’s ex to fuck off and he asked me if I could help.”

Mickey can feel the blush that creeps into his cheeks and scowls defensively, although to be fair Fiona hasn’t actually said anything but it still feels a little awkward admitting how he pays the bills.

“We need the money.”

“Sure, of course.”

Fiona’s smile is a little more stretched but credit to her, she’s trying to look impartial and Mickey cocks his eyebrow at her, letting a small grin lift his own lips.

“It’s a full service in this house. I beat ‘em up and Ian gets the call to go fix ‘em up.”

Fiona gives a surprised snort and her smile relaxes into a much more genuine grin.

“Fuckin’ Milkovichs.”

“Fuckin’ Gallaghers.”

Mickey counters as they touch coffee cups lightly and Fiona hands Mickey a cigarette. It isn’t exactly a friendship, but it’s close. Fiona respects that Mickey stands by Ian during his periods of illness and Mickey respects that Fiona shows up when he asks her. He suspects that the old superiority complex is still there deep down, but she treats him evenly and the whole family is great with Yevgeny, so fuck it. Sometimes you gotta accept the wins where you find them.

“Are you guys gonna be OK?”

“We’ll be fine. Tomorrow or Thursday, he’ll pick up and we’ll get to the clinic. Just a balance issue with the meds.”

Mickey’s tone doesn’t leave room for any disagreement so Fiona just nods and glances around the sparsely decorated little house. She likes how easy it is to pick out who chose what. The bright coloured cereal bowls, army paraphernalia and colourful movie posters are Ian to the life, whilst the solid, dark wood coffee table and Jack Daniels posters are very obviously Mickey. She glances at the no-nonsense black cup in her hands: Mickey.

“What happened to the wall?”

Fiona frowns at the gaping hole in the wall beside the TV and Mickey shrugs

“Milkovich temper tantrum.”

He hedges and to his joint relief and horror, Fiona gives him a sympathetic look and sighs

“Yev did that? Jesus. Trust me, the tantrums they have at five are nothing compared to the meltdowns of a pissed off eight year old. Carl once cracked a car wind-shield.”

Mickey makes a non-committal noise and buries his nose in his mug.

*

The next few of days pass in a really fucking monotonous blur for Mickey. Ian is either asleep, crying or angry. It is a low dip but it’s not the sort where he can’t function at all.

He can still demand that Mickey go out and get him some coke to help his mood, then throw a plate of food across the room when he is refused.

He can still recognise that he’s being difficult and sob his guilt and remorse into Mickey’s chest before pushing him away again.

Mickey just replaces the thrown food, refuses to get anything stronger than a joint, and strokes him back to sleep when he cries. What else can he do?

It is part of the illness, part of his body and mind trying to readjust and find a way through. Mickey knows all this, Ian’s doctor has explained it and Mickey has seen it several times. It can be hurtful, sure, but Mickey has taken a lot worse from people he doesn’t like half as much as Ian, so he figures he can handle it when it occurs.

On the fourth morning, Mickey lays down beside Ian after giving him his pills and kisses from his elbow to shoulder, resting his chin on him after the final kiss.

“I love you.”

He murmurs, sweeping a length of slightly greasy hair back behind Ian’s ear. Mickey kisses the muscular shoulder again and feels his body begin to stir. He shifts his hips back, not wanting Ian to feel the bulge in his pants. It isn’t anything Mickey can control, being near Ian is enough to get him going, no matter the circumstances, but Ian doesn’t need that kind of attention right now.

They watch a couple of shows and Mickey reads while Ian sleeps. It isn’t difficult exactly but it is boring as Hell.

When Fiona comes to relieve him of Ian watch for a couple of hours, Mickey is actually a little excited to get out of the house and work out some of his tensions and frustrations on some little punk who needs to learn when to back off.

He drives over to his clients place and parks a block over in case it goes to shit and the cops show up. This part of town is worse even than where he and Ian grew up and a few suspicious looking dudes glance appraisingly in his direction before clearly thinking better of it and going back to whatever hole they crawled out of.

One guy follows Mickey a couple hundred yards and Mickey toys with the idea of using him for practice, it’s been a while since he had a proper fight but it all seems a bit too much like hard work and although he’s glad to be out, he is worrying about Ian and his head isn’t really in the game.

The guy begins to move in on Mickey and with an impatient grunt, Mickey pulls his butterfly knife out of his jacket pocket and begins to flick it to and fro, flashing the blade with a familiar deadly grace, the metal making little ‘snicking’ sounds as it flits between his fingers.

The guy disappears down a side street and Mickey knocks on his clients door without further incident.

“Oh shit! Mickey, hey!”

“Hey Joe. You ready?”

“Oh man, listen, Ariel got back with the little prick last week, I meant to call you ...”

Mickey raises his eyebrows in irritation

“I already spent that money, Joe.”

Joe, a retired boxer and occasional bouncer flinches back at the frustrated look on the younger man’s face. He hasn’t seen the youngest Milkovich boy for a while but he seems pretty fired up and Joe knows from experience that underestimating his temper is a fool’s errand, it’s why he hired him in the first place.

“Keep it, she’ll break up with him soon and I’ll call you. OK?”

Mickey is bitterly disappointed but nods curtly.

“Alright man. Take it easy.”

“You too, Mickey.”

Mickey pauses to light a cigarette on the doorstep and hears a bolt slid discreetly into place. That cheers him up a little, he likes it when big guys feel a bit uncertain of him and Joe is a really big guy. Mickey supposes its professional pride but it is nice to know that your work is so respected that people want to make sure you don’t turn it around on them.

He considers chasing down one of the smack-head assholes who wanted to go with him earlier but decides against it. It would be just his luck to get arrested and Fiona might be okay with Ian for a few hours but Mickey doesn’t trust her (or anyone else for that matter) to see Ian through the rest of this shitty thing if he ends up doing a couple weeks inside. He’s never been away from Ian before during a depressive episode and fuck knows what would happen if Mickey got sent down right when Ian needed him most. Nothing good, that is for sure. Mickey flares his nostrils, chucks the butt of his cigarette into the gutter and heads toward his home.

*

“How is he?”

He asks as soon as he gets in and Fiona grimaces

“Mean. You know how it can go. I tried to feed him but he wouldn’t eat. He’s watching YouTube videos in bed.”

Looking up at Mickey she does a double take and scowls

“Jesus. You look deranged. What happened?”

“Nothin’ job got cancelled.”

He answers tersely and then gestures to his bedroom.

“The videos are good, right? He’s engaging with the world around him and all that. It’s a good thing.”

Mickey repeats, frowning at Fiona.

“Yeah of course but, Mickey, he’s being kind of a prick and you look strung out … you want me to stick around?”

“Why? In case I flip out and beat the shit out of him?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

Fiona is just tall enough to tower over him slightly and unlike Joe, she has no fucking fear. Mickey pushes a hand through his hair and shrugs against the fabric of his shirt.

“I’m not gonna do that. Thanks for hanging out and all but I got it.”

He won’t outright tell Ian’s family to leave unless he has to but it’s a close call and Fiona seems to understand this as she begins to gather her coat and scarf without comment.

“How much longer can you do this, Mickey?”

“Long as it takes.”

“He might need ...”

“Whatever it is he needs, I can give him. This is his home.”

Fiona gives Mickey a sympathetic look and he shifts his eyes, not wanting to meet her concerned gaze. She’s never tried to force him to take Ian to hospital, but she has suggested it before and Mickey desperately hopes she’ll leave it alone now. He doesn’t have the patience today. Fiona clearly thinks this too as she shrugs and says

“If you need me, just call.”

“Yeah thanks.”

Mickey nods and waits with his arms folded whilst she says goodbye to Ian. He expects her to just leave but she pauses beside him and gives his cheek a tiny kiss too.

“See you Mickey.”

“Uh… yeah, you too.”

His words don’t make sense but then neither does the kiss so Mickey doesn’t worry about it too much.

 *

Time passes. Ian’s mood doesn’t improve and neither does Mickey’s. 

It has been eight days since Ian came home in a foul mood and went to bed.

Eight days and the hole is still in the wall, the controller hasn’t been replaced, the laundry isn’t piling up because neither of them are changing their damn clothes but the dishes are high in the sink and Mickey forgot to do Yev’s assignment with him so Svet has pitched a fit over text. Things are falling apart gradually and all Mickey wants is for Ian to eat something and have a wash.

He looks down at the cracked plate and the squashed and scattered sandwich remains on the carpet. Ian had asked for the sandwich. Mickey had made the sandwich. Ian had thrown the fucker into a wall.

“Guess you didn’t fancy it, huh?”

No response. Ian doesn’t even look up from his phone.

“You want me to make you another one?”

Nothing.

“How about some chips? Give the vacuum cleaner a bit of textural variety?”

Ian glances up from the video he is watching but doesn’t answer. Mickey’s patience slips

“... or maybe I could just shove the whole fuckin’ meal deal up your ass?”

“Fuck off.”

Ian glances up from his phone and glares at his boyfriend. Mickey tongues at his upper lip, clearly aggravated. The room stinks, Ian stinks. It is the cloying smell of an unwashed body and Mickey is sick of it.

“Fine. Don’t eat but you gotta wash.”

Mickey informs him, stripping down to his own boxers ready to get Ian to the shower, his legs will be wobbly after so long in bed.

“No.”

“Ian …”

“No.”

“It’ll just take a minute …”

“You fucking deaf? I SAID NO!”

Ian roars, sliding down the mattress, dragging the blanket back over his head. Mickey’s own temper flares as  he presses his lips together tightly, raises his eyebrows and yanks the blanket away again with a sharp tug.

“I’ve had enough of this shit! Get the fuck up! You are on your fuckin’ phone watchin’ videos. You ain’t so far gone you can’t get up.”

He half crawls onto the mattress, intending to haul Ian off bodily and put him in the fuckin’ shower, even if he has to hold the fucker under himself.

“Go away, Mickey!”

The back of Ian’s hand catches Mickey just under his eye and he jerks back, startled.

“Ow! Fuck, Ian!”

Ian curls inward, turning his face into the pillow.

Mickey gets off the bed and closes the door behind him as he leaves. He isn’t built for this shit. When Yev had tantrums as a toddler he pretty much either ignored them or handed the kid over to Ian to deal with.

Ian is the one who deals with peoples shit. He’s the one who smooths stuff over and stays calm. Mickey doesn’t.

He tugs on some sweat pants and a thick sweater of Ian’s still over the back of the couch.

His cheek is stinging and Mickey’s hands are trembling from the shock of the whole damn thing. He paces around the house uncertain of whether or not to go back in. He decides against it. 

He drinks a beer and smokes three cigarettes outside on the porch, slumped down in the lounger. He shouldn’t have yelled, shouldn’t have snatched Ian’s cover away, shouldn’t have tried to force him. So many things he shouldn’t fucking do and he does most of them anyway. 

His phone vibrates in his pants pocket and Mickey glances down at it expecting it to be Svetlana about the school project again.

Ian: I’m sorry. I love you. Please come back.

Mickey doesn’t want to go back into that room. He slips his phone back into his pocket and pretends he hasn’t seen the message. Just ten more minutes, that’s all he needs. Ten minutes to himself and then he’ll go and lie with Ian or anything else his boyfriend wants of him.

Five minutes pass and Mickey is just about to light his last smoke when the back door squeaks and Mickey looks round, one eyebrow arched in surprise. Ian is stood in boxers and vest, shivering in the cold, looking down at him in absolute misery.

“Fuck, man! Get inside!”

Mickey stumbles to his feet, smoke curling out of his nostrils as he clamps the cigarette between his lips and barrels Ian back into the house.

“I’m so sorry, Mickey.”

Ian is trembling from head to toe and Mickey grabs a blanket from the couch, throwing it around Ian’s shoulders like a cape, rubbing his arms brusquely.

“It’s okay.”

“Your eye’s all puffy … Jesus.”

Ian’s lip joins the rest of his body, quaking miserably and Mickey makes an impatient noise at the back of his throat.

“I’m fuckin’ tired, both my eyes are puffy.”

Ian shakes his head and shakes off Mickey’s hands, reaching out and pulling his boyfriend roughly into his chest, holding him close.

“I am so, so sorry.”

“It’s okay...”

“Stop saying that! I’m sick, I’m not a little kid. Stop telling me it’s okay!”

Ian orders, and he sounds so much like his usual-self Mickey doesn’t even want to argue back. He likes authoritative Ian, he likes it when Ian takes charge of situations so that Mickey doesn’t have to. One of the hardest parts about the depressive episodes for Mickey is the responsibility of it all. What Ian eats, drinks, when he takes his meds, it is all down to Mickey and he hates it. He wants Ian to be in charge of his own life.

“Fine. It’s not okay. You’re being really fuckin’ hard to handle and I sort of want to kick your ass.”

“I know.”

Ian nods his chin against the top of Mickey’s head.

“I’m glad you’re up.”

Mickey says quietly and Ian nods

“I thought you might have left me.”

“Not likely.”

Mickey smiles against Ian’s chest and then pulls back looking up at him.

“You and me are for life, Firecrotch. We’re family.”

Mickey gives Ian a serious look as he says this and the younger man nods.

“Okay.”

Ian’s eyelids start to droop again. The adrenaline that got him this far is wearing off and his legs are shaking alarmingly. Mickey takes some of his weight and begins to guide him toward the bedroom but hesitates.

“Bathroom first.”

“But ...”

“Two minutes.”

He says firmly. Ian’s eyes drift down to him and it is as though Ian sees, really sees, Mickey for the first time in days. The tiredness, the strain, the smell of them both. 

“Oh shit, Mick …”

“What? You think I look like shit? Man, I’m a fuckin’ runway model compared to you.”

Mickey smooths Ian’s greasy hair and kisses his hairy cheek. They’re both sporting the beginnings of beards and the soft rasp of stubble is so calming that Ian actually turns his cheek, pressing it closer to Mickey. The effort is exhausting but the smile it raises on his boyfriends face is worth it.

“You actually like this, huh?”

Mickey asks softly and Ian nods.

“Sexier on you now than when we were kids.”

“Alright. Well, we don’t have to shave mine but we gotta shave yours. Makes you look like a damn schnauzer. I’m gonna start the shower and we’ll get you cleaned up.”

Ian feels a tear slide over his nose, and Mickey’s breath hitches as he notices it, but when he speaks, his voice is firm.

“I need you to help me, Ian. I can’t carry you.”

The amount of weight Ian has lost in the last week, this is probably not true but it has the desired effect and Ian straightens his spine determinedly.

“OK.”

“Good.”

Ian hears the water running in the bathroom, he hears Mickey’s tuneless humming, and he hears his heart pounding in his temples and knows that it beats for the man who is so desperately trying to take care of him. Ian grits his teeth, closes his eyes, and with great effort, he tugs his shirt over his head and peels out of his boxers.

It is like moving through a swamp, like his limbs have turned into thick rubber noodles that refuse to cooperate with his minds commands but he takes the few steps he needs to reach the bathroom door and pushes it open.

Mickey is leaning over the bath, his sweater sleeves pushed up, testing the temperature of the water raining down. His ass is jutting out in a sweet, round bubble against the soft fabric of the sweats. Ian feels nothing at all and the realisation stops him cold.

Then Mickey turns and he is smiling that wide, generous smile that is only for Ian, all white teeth and creased eyes, his nose scrunching just the tiniest bit and Ian manages another step forward.

*

Two weeks later

*

Mickey wakes to the smell of coffee and waffles. He blinks, frowns, squints against the small stream of sunlight that has found a chink in the curtains and is falling stubbornly over Mickey’s face. It takes him a few seconds to process the smells in conjunction with a small, warm weight covering his back.

He half pushes himself upright but an impatient noise stills his movements as a little hand takes a fistful of his t-shirt.

‘Yev’ Mickey thinks with a small huff. He half remembers the kid coming in during the night and squeezing in between him and Ian. He considers it a bad habit and something of a liberty but Ian doesn’t seem to mind at all so Mickey tend to just stake his claim on as much mattress as possible and ignores it.

Now, Mickey rolls over slowly until the weight dislodges with another grunt and a tiny bump on Ian’s side of the bed.

“Yeah, that’s what you get.”

Mickey mumbles as he sits on the edge of the bed and fondly smooths the frantic sweep of Yevgeny’s hair down, tucking the blanket around his sturdy little shoulders.

“Good Papa.”

Yev murmurs up at him approvingly, already slipping back toward sleep. Mickey smiles to himself and yawns widely.

Padding out of the bedroom he makes his way downstairs rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Ian is moving slowly around the kitchen, he looks tired but content. Mickey’s eyes flick toward the pill box and he notices the lid is flipped up which means Ian has remembered to take them. He’s been doing really well since the meds changed but Mickey always checks.

“Good morning.”

“Oh! Oh shit! I wanted to surprise you!”

Ian pauses mid waffle flip, a tiny frown creasing his brow

“You did.”

Mickey assures him, scratching at his beard. It’s come in a lot fuller than the last time he tried to grow one at seventeen and it’s actually pretty impressive now. Ian has tried to convince him to go for the full ‘Hipster’ look but Mickey has to draw a line somewhere and apparently, it gets drawn at a top-knot.

“How you feeling?”

“Shitty but I made breakfast and don’t feel like I need to sleep again already so I’m doing great, right?”

Ian lets his expression soften into a self-effacing smile and pours Mickey a cup of coffee.

“Damn right, you are.”

Mickey sips his drink and snakes a hand around Ian’s waist, palming him lightly.

“Not while the waffles are cooking.”

Ian’s scolds but his smile broadens when Mickey clucks his tongue in faux impatience.

“Fine but they better be damn good waffles.”

“Oh you know it. Sit your ass down and I’ll bring you some over.”

“Make sure I get the biggest one. You always give it to Yev.”

“Are you pouting?”

Ian laughs as Mickey settles into his usual spot at the head of the table and lights a cigarette

“Not yet.”

Mickey says evenly, flashing Ian a smile around the smoke. Ian serves them up, making sure to give Mickey the largest one and putting Yev’s share in the oven to keep warm. They eat in an easy silence, Ian’s foot nudging gently against his boyfriends.

“Hey, listen, I gotta patch up that hole in the wall today and I know we’re gonna take Yev home, but once we’ve done that … you wanna head down to town hall?”

“What for?”

Ian looks up from his plate and gives Mickey a sweet, wonky smile. Mickey scratches the side of his nose a little embarrassed and shrugs

“I figure now you’re out of bed, we’ll get married.”

Ian chokes on his coffee and Mickey pounds his back with a little bit of unnecessary force

“Jesus. I didn’t realise the thought of marrying me would make you wanna kill yourself by fuckin’ beverage inhalation.”

“No it’s … well, fuck! I wasn’t expecting it that’s all.”

Ian truly wasn’t. If anything he was bracing himself for a talk about maybe not being quite right for each other or something. He knows it’s stupid, that Mickey loves him and is fiercely loyal but when Ian has come out the other side of an episode, manic or depressive, he always wonders at the back of his mind if this will be the one to finally push his boyfriend away.

“Look it’s not a roses and champagne proposal it’s just … Fiona is your next of kin and fuck knows who mine is. I wanna know that if something happens it’s you and me who make the big decisions.”

Ian’s smile wavers but holds

“Did she try and get me into hospital?”

“No, but I wanna know that no one can. I make that call for you. You make it for me. Seems right.”

Mickey shrugs and looks shiftily between his coffee cup and the bright green eyes of his partner.

“So? Will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Jesus Christ, Ian. Marry me! Will you marry me?”

Mickey’s eyebrows are half-way to irritated and Ian grins at him

“I just wanted to hear you say it.”

“Asshole.”

Mickey suppresses his own grin, nudging his tongue into the corner of his mouth impatiently when Ian continues to stare at him.

“Ian, I swear if you don’t give me a fuckin’ answer, like, now…”

“Yes, Mick. I’ll marry you.”

“Today?”

Mickey prompts, blue eyes shining with happiness that he cannot quantify and doesn’t try to.

“Yes, today.”

Ian laughs, nodding and then seems to think of something else and shakes his head a little.

“Are you sure though? You really want ...”

“I just asked you, didn’t I?”

Mickey says sternly but tempers his tone with a soft kiss on Ian’s cheek.

“Yeah but …”

“It’s you and me, Gallagher. For life.”

“I’m so fucking lucky to have you.”

Mickey flushes slightly at the unexpected praise and Ian grips the back of his head, drawing him close and kissing the tip of his nose, lips twitching with a hidden smile

“You hear me? I am lucky to have you. You are a kind, generous, good person Mickey.”

Ian holds Mickey’s gaze until he is sure the words have sunk in and then pulls him into a kiss, knowing Mickey is more comfortable with expressing himself physically than verbally and damn, does Mickey express himself well.

 Ian’s mouth is warm and welcoming and the sweet tang of syrup mingles with the taste of coffee and cigarettes. Mickey sighs into him as Ian drops his fingers questioningly into Mickey’s lap and finds the answer all too apparent.

The words “I love you” float up between them and it is not clear which voice speaks them, but it doesn’t matter. They are simply and irrevocably true.

[tapwrites]

XP-Pen Artist 10S v2

Yeah... that’s a mouthful ain’t it?

I recently got myself a graphics tablet... with a SCREEN!! I’ve been wanting one of those since I knew they existed, but for the longest time only the insanely-priced Cintiqs were available.

In recent years, it turns out, other manufacturers have branched into screened graphics tablets also--slowly bringing down the price to an attainable level.

I got my Artist 10S for £199.99 from Amazon. Let me tell you how it went.

From the Top

I have done art before. I was half-decent at it when I was around 10 or so. But it’s been a while. I got myself a decent “dotted” sketchbook and started sketching things out in it to run my RPG sessions. That’s really what gave me the bug to get into drawing again. And to actually buy a tablet to do so!

I downloaded Krita, a free Photoshop-like application for artists. It’s super-powerful, once you figure out how it works. But there are plenty of tutorials online about that if you’re interested in checking it out.

...But anyway, Krita has some nice smoothing algorithms you can turn on for drawing with a pen tablet. The pen doesn’t have tilt and rotation detection, but pressure sensitivity works well with Krita and gives me plenty of expressiveness to get on with. And I was pretty instantly busting out some sweet curves!

It was a pretty amazing experience, really--getting to draw freehand while also having the capability of undo, erase, etc. I’m not saying it brought a tear to my eye, but it was a nice moment.  😂

Config

The tablet has 6 “Express Keys” along the side, which are configurable to key combinations. When you hold them down, that key is held down (this’ll become important later). I currently have them set to things like canvas pan/zoom/rotate, and a couple of other “hold to use” shortcuts.

The pen is somewhat triangular along the barrel, meaning it won’t roll around on your desk. But it’s smoothed out enough to feel just fine in your hand. It has two barrel buttons, though these are only configurable to mouse various clicks and a preset “brush/eraser” toggle (which didn’t work with Krita out of the box). There is no “eraser” button at the other end (like a pencil with an eraser at the other end)... but I’d find that too fiddly and time consuming to flip it around anyway.

The lack of options for the pen is a little disappointing. Things like this are insanely easy to implement in code--as demonstrated by the express key options. So there’s not really any excuse for it other than the company being small, and this product originally belonging to a different company XP-Pen... bought out or something? I dunno. We’ll get onto them in due course.

Oh, a little side note... the configuration app is only readily accessible from a system tray icon (in Windows). This is fine when you first install the drivers. (And then install the updated drivers so the tablet actually works.) But it has a habit of just... disappearing. After Hibernation or Sleep, that icon tends to wander off somewhere.

And all XP-Pen have to say on that score is to give instructions on how to make it appear again--which only works half the time and may require a restart anyway. I’ve since figured out where the config application itself is kept, and made a shortcut to it in my start menu. In case anyone else is having the same troubles as me, here’s the file path: “C:\Windows\SysWOW64\tabcfg.exe”

Screen

This tablet has a screen! Still getting over that XD

The screen is only 10.1″ corner to corner, which is a little smaller than the average screen tablet such as the Cintiqs. But it’s plenty big enough when it’s sitting right in front of your for actual drawing.

Another reason I pulled the trigger on buying one of these is to get a second screen. I often watch various Youtube videos in the background while I’m playing games and whatnot. I used to prop my Chromebook up next to my regular monitor. This worked fine, but pausing everything when someone came in to speak to me (just a politeness thing I like to employ; nothing sneaky going on)... was a bit of a hassle. And balancing the audio between devices had its own fiddliness (besides the piddly Chromebook speakers not being able to get loud enough for quieter videos).

But now, with two monitors hooked up to the same computer, everything’s a lot easier. I can move windows between screens easily enough. And pausing a video is as simple as moving the mouse over to the other screen and clicking.

Colour Calibration

However! I am having some trouble with the colours. I was drawing away just fine, a simple cartoon character to try out the shading tools and so on and get used to Krita. Then for whatever reason, I saw the picture on my main monitor. The skin tone was way off--too red for what I was actually going for. It seems the tablet screen likes to give everything a yellow tint--making picking colours pretty tricky.

I’ve tried keeping a preview window open on my main monitor so I can see the “true” colours, but this is really not conducive to a productive work space. Or something ^^

I spend a few days trying to configure the colour management side of things from Windows and NVIDIA (the tablet has back light brightness buttons and that’s it)... but it’s just darned fiddly! I can never quite be sure if it looks right or not--or if both screens at least look similar. All I want is a “click on a colour on the screen, and remove some yellowness from it.” You wouldn’t have thought it would be that hard to do, would you?

But instead I had to use gamma, brightness, and contrast sliders. I think I get brightness and contrast... and I thought I knew what gamma was. But it just never turns out quite how I expect. All I want is a step-by-step tutorial on “First, get your gamma correct across all colours. Here’s how you do that...” And so on and so forth.

There are plenty of test-card images out there, which are a good start. But nothing giving you a list of instructions.

See, if you fix the brightness and contrast, it doesn’t necessarily mean things look right. So then you mess with the gamma and nothing makes sense any more. It seems as though you need to adjust all 3 at the same time to be sure you’re actually making any progress.

I even had a Windows bug where my colours wouldn’t stick. I had to create a new user account (with all the headaches of setting things up all over again) just to fix that issue and make any progress whatsoever!

/sigh/

And this doesn’t even talk about the contrast issues it already has. No matter what I do, it’s too bright in some areas and too dark in others. And with my colours fixed the way they are now, they look closer to my main monitor but not perfect. And they make some things just look a tad awful, across the board.

I’m managing, though. Using it for art--at least black and white art--is great, and as long as I focus on the tablet itself, the colours work just fine.

I did contact XP-Pen, to see if they had a solution. Most companies allow you to download an .icc file--a colour profile so the computer can correct a monitor’s output perfectly--but they just straight-up don’t. After 3 workdays of waiting, they told me to use Windows’ built-in calibration tools--which of course I’d been bashing my head against for the past week.

In case anyone else is having similar colour problems, I’ll give you the settings I used to half-fix it. Note that this is far from perfect, but it certainly seems a lot better than it was before, to my eye.

As I have an NVIDIA graphics card, I used their control panel to change the settings to the following values:

Red: 85% Brightness, 25% Contrast, 0.69 Gamma.

Green: 62% Brightness, 25% Contrast, 0.89 Gamma.

Blue: 90% Brightness, 25% Contrast, 0.72 Gamma.

I think the “All channels” part is just an average of the 3 colours. But in case it’s not...

All channels: 77% Brightness, 25% Contrast, 0.76 Gamma.

XP-Pen

That brings me onto the company itself. From what I understand, they’re a small company out of China? Or maybe the US? Or both? It’s really hard to tell from their website.

But anyway... I can only assume they’re too small a company to really provide decent support for their products. The response time is way too high, considering the price tags attached to their products. And the “shrug” attitude instead of providing solutions didn’t go down well with me.

Now, there are devices out there that calibrate a screen for you. The cheapest I could find is £90, and comes with a single-computer license. And that’s fair enough; most people don’t need them, and the ones that really need them are photography professionals who have to be willing to shell out some cash or produce poor work. But I’d prefer not to have to get one just to use it once and never look at it again.

The thing is, with this calibration thing, XP-Pen saying something very telling to the customer. They aren’t willing to get a calibration tool themselves, use it on a tablet, and make the resulting .icc file available for all of their customers to use--at least as a good starting point. Instead, they insist that each individual customer buys one themselves if they want any hope of getting relatively accurate colours from their purchase.

I may contact them again, to point this out to them. I mean, it may be that my unit is simply faulty and should be replaced... but then it should be replaced.

/sigh again/

Overall

I am happy with using the tablet. The tech is amazing, for the price. But such a lack of support is really dragging down the experience.

I highly recommend getting a screen tablet. If not this one, then perhaps another. Maybe your Artist 10S won’t have this issue at all and it’ll be perfect right off the bat.

It’s so awesome to be able to draw on your screen, and has really helped me get back into art-ing. I can already see improvement in my skill over the past week, through drawing every day after such a long time not drawing at all!

[aion-rsa]

Star Wars Squadrons Tips and Tricks: Best Loadout, Fleet Battles, How to Drift, and More

https://ift.tt/3iDBYHf

Star Wars: Squadrons finally released on PS4 and Xbox One last week, letting players step into the cockpit of several iconic starfighters and take part in frantic first-person space battles. The single-player campaign does a pretty good job of showing you the basics in terms of flying and dogfighting, but for players wanting to do much more than simply bullseye womp rats from their T-16, there are plenty of other important tips and tricks worth knowing to dominate in the galaxy far, far away.

We’ve got a range of top tips that can improve your piloting ability, from best maneuvers and strategies for Squadrons’ multiplayer to some of the best loadouts to take with you. Here are a few things you should know before jumping into the game as well as some tips that have worked for us so far:

General Flight Tips & Tricks

Excelling in Star Wars: Squadrons is much like the Force in that it’s all about balance. Gameplay is heavily centered around diverting energy to one of three systems: Engines, Lasers, and Shields. It’s absolutely pivotal you learn where to divert power in any given situation.

Every battle begins with power evenly spread across all three systems by default, but diverting it solely to engines lets you fly faster, focusing it on shields will allow you to better fend off barrages of enemy fire (especially when attacking big capital ships), while maximizing your ship’s lasers boosts weapon damage and cooldown. Fortunately, you can control all of this with just a tap of the D-pad on a controller.

The other big aspect of flight you need to master is the throttle. Managed entirely by using the left stick on your controller, pulling back on the stick allows you to slow down, whereas pushing it forward will increase your speed. The key here is to always keep moving, edging the throttle up whenever you want to chase down foes and ratcheting it back if you want to gain a successful lock. It’s also important that you slow down before making very tight turns or else you’ll likely end up crashing against something.

Rolling will likely feel challenging at first, as that’s also controlled by the left stick, while the right stick is tied to your camera. Toggling the left stick to the left will send your fighter rolling to the left while toggling to your right will roll the ship to the right. Maneuvering can be a little dizzying at first, but a good rule of thumb is to lock on to your objective with L2 while flying, whether that means following your flight leader, an enemy fighter, or locking onto an objective.

Most importantly, avoid being stationary for too long as otherwise you’ll be a sitting duck out there. Fortunately, your droid companion can repair damage to your ship, replenishing your health by a certain amount. If you’re playing with a controller, hit L1 to repair your ship. This mechanic operates on a cooldown as well so you’ll need to time repairs just right when in the middle of a battle.

As far as more advanced maneuvering goes…

How to Drift

Drifting isn’t a technique you’ll use often in Star Wars: Squadrons as it requires a great deal of effort, but it’s a maneuver of use to advanced players wanting to better shake enemies off their tail. You are first taught drifting in the single-player campaign, but unfortunately, although you have to perform this technique correctly once to proceed past the tutorial, it isn’t explained by your Vanguard Squadron cohorts all that well.

Here’s how to perform a drift in the game: it essentially boils down to reaching your fighter’s peak boost speed, quickly cutting off power, and then boosting again while simultaneously turning at the same time. On a standard PS4 or Xbox One controller, this means diverting all power to your engines by hitting left on your d-pad, letting your boost meter fill up, and then clicking in the left stick to engage a boost. Just be sure to not hold down the left stick as if you were sprinting in an FPS.

From there, wait until you reach the height of your boost, before clicking in the left stick to shut down engine power and then turning in your desired direction and boosting again. Congratulations, you’ve pulled off a successful drift.

Best Loadouts

Knowing which is the best loadout for your play style in Star Wars: Squadrons comes down to understanding how the game’s starfighters work. Each is reserved to one of four classes – Fighters, Bombers, Interceptors, and Support ships – with their own strengths and weaknesses. You can check out a helpful guide to each fighter in the game here.

That said, all ships can be further customized to your liking by unlocking and equipping different primary weapons, auxiliary components, countermeasures, hulls, shields, and engines. That might sound like a lot to keep track of but the ideal way to find your best loadout is by picking a class that suits you and then customizing it from there.

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The X-wing and TIE fighter are both Fighter class vessels that serve as decent all-rounders, so it’s these two we’ll make some suggestions for. There are slight differences to how both handle but here’s our basic suggestion:

In terms of your left auxiliary, always keep the Repair Droid attached as it’s a free health pack. Then, with your right auxiliary, equip Ion torpedoes if you want to temporarily freeze your enemy’s systems to earn a few seconds for some easy hits. Alternatively, though, barrage rockets is your best option if you want to just deal mass damage. Hull, Shields, and Engine will be dictated by your preferred speed, health, or damage – and we’d always go Seeker Warheads for Countermeasures as it’s an almost guaranteed missile evasion whenever an enemy locks onto you.

EA has provided some suggested loadouts for each class if you’d like to dig deeper. Just click on the class you want to learn more about to check out the loadouts:

Fighter

Bomber

Interceptor

Support

Fleet Battles Tips & Tricks

Fleet Battles serves as the main online competitive mode in Star Wars: Squadrons, pitting two teams of five against one another in an epic tug-of-war. The goal is to take down your enemy’s flagship, but to do this you must whittle down their smaller vessels to build your team’s morale.

The mode has three phases: 1) Dogfight against enemy starfighters, 2) Destroy Capital Ships, 3) Destroy the Flagship. The first phase is straightforward, wherein you must use all tactics and techniques learned so far to take down as many TIEs (if you’re Vanguard) or New Republic fighters (if you’re Titan) as possible. The best way to move on to the next phase is to specifically target player-controlled ships, as they net you a greater amount of Morale than the AI ships.

After decimating enough starfighters, you’ll move onto the next phase, which requires you to take down two Capital Ships. Be sure to deplete their shields as fast as possible using Ion-powered weaponry, unloading damage to the hull section using a bomber class vessel when the hull is fully exposed. Remember: in Fleet Battles, you can change ship class at any time, so feel free to switch fighters based on your current objective/strategy.

Finally, after destroying the two Capital Ships, you can focus on the Flagship. The key here is to locate and target specific defenses and subsystems. EA suggests you use Interceptors to take out turrets, Bombers to disable shields, and Fighters to destroy shield generators. Taking down the Flagship is always a challenge, but one you can overcome with good communication.

IGN has posted a helpful video showing how each phase in Fleet Battles works in case you need some visuals:

How Glory and Requisition Work

Squadrons thankfully doesn’t feature any microtransactions, but there are two unique in-game currencies you’ll need to earn to unlock items for your ships. The first, known as Glory, strictly relates to cosmetic items unlockable for both your New Republic and Imperial ships, which never directly affect gameplay. Glory is easily earned by leveling up, though you can accrue a lot more by completing Daily Challenges (found in the main menu) or advancing up your Fleet Battles rank during the game’s Battle Pass-style Operations, which is set to refresh every eight weeks. Earning Glory is worth it, if only for the chance to customize all your ships on the inside and out.

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Requisition is the second in-game currency you’ll earn. This currency directly affects the capabilities of your ship. You use Requisition to purchase additional weapons, abilities, and upgrades that can quickly turn the tide of battle when used correctly. Earning Requisition, however, is also pretty easy. Just level up through general online play until eventually you reach the maximum 40 level cap that allows you to buy everything available. Obviously, we’d advise purchasing the upgrades most suited to your play style first, as Requisition becomes a lot more elusive when you reach higher levels.

At the moment, these are the keys to success in Star Wars: Squadrons but we’ll keep you updated as we discover new tips, tricks, and secrets about the game!

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