#but my boss is working with me and my stupid uterus

[bewilderedbunny]

Managed to avoid bursting into tears at work 👍

[wooahaes]

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pairing: non-idol!mingyu x gn!reader [reader has a uterus!!!]

genre: fluff. convenience store worker au. friends to lovers, kind of!

word count: ~0.7k

warnings: menstruation + mentions of reader bleeding through their pants. reader is not referred to with any pronouns or anything. mingyu being obvious w his affection and reader being over his shit.

daisy's notes: u can tell im rly going through it rn huh

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck--Of all the things that could happen today, a bloodstain on your pants was one of the worst.

Thankfully, you were prepared for one part of this. You had period supplies in your bag, and you'd taken care of that issue easily enough. Yet now you were standing in the bathroom, pissed at yourself for not wearing a shirt long enough to hide the stain, or a jacket that you could tie around your waist until you got home. You'd glanced at your phone, frustrated as you tried to figure out a plan. Mingyu would definitely be fine if you told him you needed to run home and change pants (thank fuck you didn't live super far from the convenience store you both worked in). If you walked just right the stain wouldn't be super obvious from the front, but the back of your pants...

Life sucked. Everything sucked.

All too soon, there was a knock at the door, startling you. Mingyu called out your name, and you shut your eyes, already cursing the world.

You cracked the door open, peering at Mingyu's face... only to realize one little thing first. He was wearing a hoodie. He wasn't supposed to, your boss had a weird thing about it despite keeping the store cold as fuck, but the two of you never blabbed.

"I need your jacket."

He stared at you. "What? No--It's cold in here."

"Mingyu," you lowered your voice. "I need your jacket. Just for, like, thirty minutes, max."

"Why do you--"

You glanced toward the storefront, relieved that it was empty, and turned back to him. "I bled and I need to run home and change pants--"

Already, he was unzipping his jacket to hand it over, mumbling something about why didn't you just say that? He had a sister, he understood accidents like this happened. He watched as you pulled the door open further, tying his jacket around your waist before stepping out. Mingyu leaned against the wall, looking you over for a moment.

He smiled, admiring you with this sappy look in his eyes--which you swore you'd seen him have when seeing a puppy once. "Not how I wanted to give you my jacket, but..."

You rolled your eyes. "Uh-huh." Not this shit again. How many times had Mingyu said things like this...? You weren't sure. You started to make your way to the doors, "I'll be fast. If I run, I should take long--"

"You don't have to rush," Mingyu said. "I can handle things. Just take care of yourself. I'll make up an excuse for you," he pulled the door open for you, lingering just behind you with that same stupid grin on his face. Sometimes you hated how handsome he was. "Just go and come back safely."

You furrowed your brow, staring at him. "... What are you doing?"

"Helping you," he smiled. "If you want to make it up to me... You could buy me dinner."

Is now really the time to play this game? "Stop teasing," you took a step outside, turning back to him. "I'll be back--"

"I'm not!" He called out, following you out. "I'm serious. I like you."

For a moment, your mind went blank. Really? Really? Now, of all times? "Oh my god, Mingyu--" You took a few steps back, "Okay--We'll--We'll talk about that one later. I'll be back in a bit!"

He beamed at you, watching you go with that same stupidly handsome smile on his face, happy as ever to see you. Once you had disappeared down the street, he stepped back inside, completely content in his flirting with you again. To be honest, he always had the idea that one day he'd walk you home after work, and he'd notice you shiver, and he'd offer up his jacket... But this worked, too.

(Just ignore the way his heart stopped when you came back, wearing his jacket, and saying something about how he needed to pick where he wanted dinner from... and that you'd be keeping the jacket until the end of your shift.)

taglist: @twancingyunhao @wonuziex @staranghae @synthetickitsune

[stray-kaz]

His Mistake : an Anthony Lockwood x f!reader drabble

The Gist of This: A drabble built around my headcanon that Lockwood would definitely say something stupid and/or offensive, unintentionally, when you’re on your period.

You groaned, lying prone on the couch in the sitting room, clutching a heated wheat pack to your stomach. Lucy sat with your socked feet in her lap, occasionally patting you in sympathy. George sat in another chair, absentmindedly flicking through a book while keeping half an eye on you, just in case.

Meanwhile, Lockwood watched you with a grim look on his face, almost inscrutable. He pushed away from the wall he’d been leaning on and stood over you with arms folded.

“Are you sure it isn’t your appendix?” he asked, more like demanded.

George blinked in surprise and Lucy glared up at Lockwood with narrowed eyes. You snorted in derision and then moaned again, pressing your face into the cushions.

“Appendicitis doesn’t cause you to bleed from your uterus, Lockwood” Lucy said tersely.

He threw up his hands in exasperation, rolling his eyes.

“Well, I know that!” he retorted.

“Do you?” George mumbled from behind his book.

Lockwood shot him a quelling glance he didn’t even notice and returned his gaze to you.

“We have more important things to do than sit around worrying about your contracting uterus. We have cases to complete! There are paying clients waiting on us!”

He knew the second he’d gone too far and physically started to back up, his feet propelling him backwards until he hit the closed door. He glanced frantically at George, who simply smirked back at him over the top of his book. You swung your feet off Lucy’s lap and stood up, wincing at the pain you felt with any and all movement. You stalked toward Lockwood, wheat pack all but glued to your front.

When you reached him, you prodded a finger into his chest with enough force to hurt.

“You have no idea what this feels like, Anthony Lockwood. If you did, you wouldn’t be pushing me so hard. But, boss, if you really want me fighting Type Twos while I am bleeding like a stuck pig, with a high chance of throwing up due to extreme exertion and pain, and therefore, with a higher chance of dying on the job, by all means, give the order.”

Lockwood stared at you with worried dark eyes; he had never looked more like Bambi, but as you pushed past him to go to your room, you pretended not to care.

An hour or so later, there was a somber knock on your door. Feeling a little less sore, you got up to answer it. Lockwood stood in the gap, shoulders hunched uncomfortably as he looked down at you. The top two buttons of his white dress shirt were undone, as though he had been fiddling, working up the courage to see you.

“I’m sorry” he said quietly, awkward. “It was my mistake.”

“Yes, it was” you agreed, propping your hands on your hips. “You’re lucky you’re cute and always apologise first.”

Lockwood released a sigh of relief and moved closer, his hands replacing yours on your hips.

“I love you” he said softly. 

“You’d better.”

“And I don’t want you to get hurt.”

You smiled and reached up to link your hands behind his neck.

“I know. Now stop talking and kiss me, Lockwood.”

He did, too.

[iamayellowbird]

I am happy, but I am sad.

(Almost) each day, I get up and go to work a job I genuinely care about. I like my supervisors, my team, and I care immensely about the clients.

On the days that "(almost)" doesn't include, I lay in bed paralyzed by inertia and think of excuses I haven't used before.

I was sick and isolating most last week, how can I possibly be immobile again? I can't be tired.

I lay in bed and contact the collateral. I don't contact all. I can't, for the life of me explain to my boss that I can't make it to work simply because I can't.

Is that even an excuse? A reason? To "just can't"? Wasn't that a meme a few too-short-and-not-distant-enough years ago? Oh no, that was "I just can't EVEN". This is different. This is not a joke. Not a meme. This is embarrassing.

Trying to weigh the cost of honesty and embarrassment and finding a way around is more work than just going to work would be, surely.

I am sad.

I'm doing mediocre. I can afford a cardboard box of a rental, which allows me to be alone and in the boonies and my dog to run free and to keep my horse and pay the thousands of dollars in repairs for a vehicle I inherited and regret every day.

I am fortunate.

I'm doing mediocre. I go about my day, and when I lay down my joints creak and pop, and I wake up with my tendons on fire. I can't possibly tell my boss that I feel like the space between my bones and muscles feels like it's dry and burning.

How could I justify doing the things that bring me joy?

I am sad.

I want to do so much more, but I am trapped in a body that doesn't let me. Burning tissue, weak joints, forever healing from permanent sprains. What is my destiny? Do I use up my time? Abuse it? Wear and tear my body now, while I can before I lose the last smidgen of energy I never even presumed to have? Borrowing elasticity, or pain tolerance. Maybe both.

So I can keep going.

I am happy. At least I think. I should be. I owe it.

I'm doing the things I want to do--mostly, a bit more spaced out than I wish.

No bones day after no bones day, I question what I need to give up to preserve my body.

At what cost though? I'm already pickled, at almost thirty. Preserve it for what?

Mountains I'll never climb, world trips I'll never take, horses I'll never ride, adventures I'm too stubborn not to go on?

Am I doing myself a service, by being "happy" (alone)?

I'm not really, if I'm honest.

I feel lost and broken and lonely and damaged and lazy and old and naive and stupid and too smart for my own good and ugly and charming and malnourished and inattentive and awkward and like I just can't get my shit together.

I am sad.

There.

And not just in the "yeah no shit you have depression" way. The unjustified unexplainable way. The explainable way, too.

The way that you are left feeling after you are abused, manipulated, gaslit, and taken advantage of.

The sad you feel when you realize that you will never be as valued as your sibling because you're choosing to never birth a human. The sad you feel knowing you can't tell your family—your mom—how excited you are to get your uterus removed because of the distress and fatigue shark week causes because that means the thing you've been saying for 20 years—"I'm never having a pregnancy"—actually meant something.

I am sad.

Sad because I realize I will never be truly, fully seen by members of my family because of my neurodivergence, even when I cry in explaining how fucking awful it felt when my skin might as well have been burning and peeling off my body and I was perceived as a brat, I will not be seen. Not now. Not now that I have "grown out of it". I am sad because they don't realize that I make a conscious choice each day in what I wear and how I expect to feel. I make a choice in how much fatigue I can afford to slot into the "uncomfortable in this clothing" category that day.

I am happy.

I can hold down a job, despite how unaccommodating and shame-inducing it might be when I have "one of those days" that I choose not to disclose only to make up for lost time in secret.

I can make a living. I can pay for my box of a shelter in the boonies, no electricity or running water, so I can split wood by hand, citing it's "therapeutic" benefit. I can sublux my shoulder for 3 weeks and wear a sling, after a particularly intense half-in-the-bag splitting frenzy and afford to see a physiotherapist, because I have a *good* job.

I am happy. When I am half-in-the-bag on a "school night" because I am numbing myself so I don't realize how goddamn lonely my existence is. So I don't have to think about the reality that yeah, no one asked me to do a thing today, again. No one is truly invested how I feel—not even me. Happy to know my mom-who-doesn't-see-me is keeping tabs on me and continuously asking when I'm returning...because I will crumble and fail, inevitably.

I am sad contemplating how hard it truly is to crave connection and the desire to be seen and at the same time be scared shitless of being abandoned when seen accurately for being that "brat" I was indoctrinated to believe I am simply for the way my brain functions and the hypersensitivity of my dermal cells.

I wear my lifestyle like a badge of honour. I struggle. I strain. I work HARD not for money but to stay warm and have water. My body was not built for this, yet I do it. My brain craves artificial light to sit and craft, and sometimes I humor it on long, darker eves. My body craves easy warmth and baths and not having to go outside to pee when it's -30 or colder out.

But I am happy to see the aurora dancing across the hemisphere on such late night urination ventures, or that shooting star that I would have not seen if I wasn't squatting and didn't happen to look up into the sky at just the right time after a long evening holed up in this cardboard box cabin.

I am happy. But I am sad.

Or maybe I'm not happy at all and I'm just waiting for someone to tell me I can stop hating myself in a way that I can believe long enough to give myself the break I need to figure out what "happy" really looks like.

[johnrossbowie]

LEAVING TWITTER

I wrote this earlier in the fall, before the election, after dissolving my Twitter account. I wasn’t sure where to put it (“try up your ass!” – someone, I’m sure) and then I remembered I have a tumblr I never use. Anyway, here tis.

How do you shame someone who thinks Trumps’ half-baked policies and quarter-baked messaging put him in the pantheon of great Presidents? How do you shame someone so lacking in introspection that they will call Obama arrogant while praising Trump’s decisiveness and yet at the same time vehemently deny that they’re racist? How do you shame someone for whom that racism is endearing and maybe long overdue?

You don’t. It’s silly to think otherwise.

Twitter is an addiction of mine, and true to form, my dependence on it grew more serious after I quit drinking in 2010. At first it was a chance to mouth off, make jokes both stupid and erudite and occasionally stick my foot in my mouth (I owe New Yorker writer Tad Friend an apology. He knows why, or (God willing) he’s forgotten. Either way. Sorry.) I blew off steam, steam that was accumulating without booze to dampen the flames. Not always constructive venting, but I also met new friends, and connected with people whose work I’ve admired for literal decades and ended up seeing plays with Lin-Manuel Miranda and hanging backstage with Jane Wiedlin after a Go-Go’s show and exchanging sober thoughts with Mike Doughty. When my mom passed in 2018, a lot of people reached out to tell me they were thinking of me. This was nice. For a while, Twitter was a huge help when I needed it.

I used to hate going to parties and really hated dancing and mingling, but a couple of drinks would fix that. Point is, for a while, booze was a huge help, too.

But my engagement with Twitter changed, and I started calling people my ‘friends’ even though I’d never once met them or even heard their voices. These weren’t even penpals, these were people whose jokes or stances I enjoyed, so with Arthurian benevolence I clicked on a little heart icon, liked their tweet, and assumed therefore that we had signed some sort of blood oath.

We had not. I got glib, and cheap, and a little lazy. And then to make matters much worse, Trump came along and extended his reach with the medium.

There was a while there where I thought I could be a sort of voice for the voiceless, and I thought I was doing that. I tried very hard to only contribute things that I felt were not being said – It wasn’t accomplishing anything to notice “Haha Trump looks like he’s bullshitting his way through an oral report” – such things were self-evident. I tried to point out very specific inconsistencies in his policies, like the Muslim ban meant to curb terrorism that still favored the country that brought forth 13 of the 9/11 hijackers. Like his full-throated cries against media bias performed while he suckled at Roger Ailes’ wrinkly teat.  Like his fondness for evangelical votes that coincided with a scriptural knowledge that lagged far behind mine, even though I’m a lapsed Episcopalian, and there is no one less religiously observant than a lapsed Episcopalian. But that eventually gave way to unleashing ad hominem attacks against his higher profile supporters, who I felt weren’t being questioned enough, who I felt were in turn being fawned over by theirdim supporters. If you’re one of these guys, and you think I’m talking about you, you’re probably right, but don’t mistake this for an apology. You suck, and you support someone who sucks, and your idolatry is hurting our country and its standing in the world. Fuck you entirely, but that’s not the point. The point is that me screaming into the toilet of Twitter helps no one – it doesn’t help a family stuck at the border because they’re trying to secure a better life for their kids. It doesn’t help a poor teenager who can’t get an abortion because the party of ‘small government’ has squeezed their tiny jurisdiction into her uterus. It doesn’t help the coal miner who’s staking all his hopes on a dying industry and a President’s empty promises to resurrect it. I was born in New York City, and I currently live in Los Angeles. Those are the only two places I’ve ever lived, if you don’t count the 4 years I spent in Ithaca[1]. So, yes, I live in a liberal bubble, and while I’ve driven across the country a couple of times and did a few weeks in a touring band and am as crushed as any heartlander about the demise of Waffle House, you have me dead to rights if you call me a coastal elitist. And with that in mind, I offer few surprises. A guy who grew up in the theater district and was vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage or felt you should own an AR-15? THAT would be newsworthy. I am not newsworthy. I can preach to the choir, I can confirm people’s biases, but I will likely not sway anyone who is eager to dismiss a Native New Yorker who lives in Hollywood. I grew up in the New York of the 1970s, and that part of my identity did shape my politics. My mom’s boss was gay and the Son of Sam posed a realistic threat. As such, gays are job creators[2] and guns are used for homicide much more often than they are used for self-defense[3]. I have found this to be generally true over the years, and there’s even data to back it up.

“But Mr. Bowie,” you might say, though I insist you call me John - “those studies are conducted by elitist institutions and those institutions suck!” And again, I am not going to reason with people who will dismiss anything that doesn’t fit their limited world view as elitist or, God Help Us, fake news. But the studies above are peer-reviewed, convincing, and there are more where those came from.

“But John,” you might say, and I am soothed that we’re one a first name basis - “Can’t you just stay on Twitter for the jokes?” Ugh. A) apparently not and B) the jokes are few and far between, and I am 100% part of that problem.

I have stuff to offer, but Twitter is not the place from which to offer it.

After years of academically understanding that Twitter is not the real world, Super Tuesday 2020 made the abstract pretty fucking concrete. If you had looked at my feed on the Monday beforehand – my feed which is admittedly curated towards the left, but not monolithic (Hi, Rich Lowry!) – you’d have felt that a solid Bernie surge was imminent, but also that your candidate was going surprise her more vocal critics. When the Biden sweep swept, when Bernie was diminished and when Warren was defeated, I realized that Twitter is not only not the real world, it’s almost some sort of Phillip K. Dickian alternate timeline, untethered to anything we’re actually experiencing in our day to day life. This is both good news and bad news – one, we’re not heading towards a utopia of single payer health care and the eradication of American medical debt any time soon, but two, we’re also not being increasingly governed by diaper-clad jungen like Charlie Kirk. Clouds and their linings. Leaving Twitter may look like ceding ground to the assclowns but get this – the ground. Is not. There.

It’s just air.

There are tangible things I can do with my time - volunteer with a local organization called Food On Foot, who provide food and job training for people experiencing homelessness here in my adopted Los Angeles. I can give money to candidates and causes I support, and I can occasionally even drop by social media to boost a project or an issue and then vanish, like a sort of Caucasian Zorro who doesn’t read his mentions. I can also model good behavior for my kids (ages 10 and 13) who don’t need to see their father glued to his phone, arguing about Trumps incompetence with Constitutional scholars who have a misspelled Bible verse in their bio (three s’ in Ecclesiastes, folks).

So farewell Twitter. I’ll miss a lot of you. Perhaps not as badly as I miss Simon Maloy and Roger Ebert and Harris Wittels and others whose deaths created an unfillable void on the platform. But I won’t miss the yelling, and the lionization of poor grammar, and anonymous trolls telling my Jewish friends that they were gonna leave the country “via chimney.” I will not miss people who think Trump is a stable genius calling me a “fucktard.” I will not miss transphobia or cancelling but I will miss hashtag games, particularly my stellar work during #mypunkmusical (Probably should have quit after that surge, I was on fire that night, real blaze of glory stuff I mean, Christ, Sunday in the Park with the Germs? Husker Du I Hear A Waltz? Fiddler on the Roof (keeping an eye out for the cops)? These are Pulitzer contenders.). Twitter makes me feel lousy, even when I’m right, and I’m often right. There’s just no point in barking bumperstickers at each other, and there are people who are speaking truth to power and doing a cleaner job of it – Aaron Rupar, Steven Pasquale, Louise Mensch, Imani Gandy and Ijeoma Oluo to name five solid mostly politically based accounts (Yes, Pasquale is a Broadway tenor. He’s also a tenacious lefty with good points and research and a dreamy voice. You think you’re straight and then you hear him sing anything from Bridges of Madison County and you want him to spoon you.). You’re probably already following those mentioned, but on the off chance you’re not, get to it. You’ll thank me, but you won’t be able to unless you actually have my email.

_______

[1] And Jesus, that’s worse – Ithaca is such a lefty enclave that they had an actual socialist mayor FOR WHOM I VOTED while I was there. And not socialist the way some people think all Democrats are socialist – I mean Ben Nichols actually ran on the socialist ticket and was re-elected twice for a total of six years.

[2] The National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, “America’s LGBT Economy” Jan 20th, 2017

[3] The Violence Policy Institute, Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self Defense Gun Use, July 2019.

[justjessame]

The Deal Chapter 9

Tense. That’s what the world was like outside our bubble. Every person in our group seemed shrouded in some form of tenseness. I could almost smell the tension between Shane and Dale, of all people. I mean, how horrible of an asshole could you be to get irritated with a semi-hippy dude? The tension between Dad and Shane, well that was expected, it grew daily. Glenn was a bundle of nerves, rarely making eye contact with ANYONE, even Dale and me, which I took as a sign he and Dale hadn’t told Dad about the surprise in the barn yet. Of all those coils and tendrils of tension, however, the one that was strangest was between Andrea and Shane.

One glance between the two and I nearly gagged. Dear God, did Gun-toting Barbie actually crave Shane? Just fucking kill me so I don’t have to watch her make goo-goo eyes at that imbecile, I was thinking to myself. I mean, gross. There was so much ew going on between them that I had to almost clutch at Daryl to keep myself centered.

Luckily, with all the stress being stretched taut among our group, Daryl and I were no longer the object of attention. Not that we would have paid attention before, but still, it was nice to NOT be ogled at. So one good thing in a sackful of shit. Looking at Lori across the campfire, I corrected myself. Two good things.

As dinner was being finished up, she gestured for me to come with her away from the group. Once we were away from prying eyes and ears, I noticed how truly tense she looked. Before she could speak, I tried to calm her down. “Don’t stress. It’s not good for the baby.” I was smiling at her, hoping that she understood I was alright with the news.

“I can only imagine what you must think, Jessi.” Apparently I hadn’t calmed her at all. She did know that Dad had already told me, that was obvious. “I know that you and Shane don’t get along.”

I snorted and she looked startled. “Sorry, Lori, but ‘don’t get along’ seems pretty mild for how I feel about him.” I sighed and didn’t feel like rehashing my talk with Dad earlier. “Look, Lori, Dad and I already had this conversation. As far as I’m concerned, that baby is my little brother or sister. Just like Carl is. No matter what.” She grabbed me in a bone crushing hug. “I’m serious though, this stress isn’t good for the little peanut.” I was hugging her back, realizing that we hadn’t shared this type of affection with one another for far too long.

“I know,” her whisper brushed through my hair. “Gonna be stressful enough without adding more.” Lori pulled back and cupped my cheek. “How’d I luck out having you as my first?”

I grinned up at her. “Probably a combination of my biological uterus ditching me and you finding my dad irresistible.” She chuckled, a sound I heard so rarely from her that it made my smile grow.

She nodded and kissed my forehead. “Thank God that the uterus ran.” She smiled down at me. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, baby girl.”

“Well, you’re in luck.” I took her hand and pulled her back toward the others. “Because you’ll never have to find out.”

Daryl and I retired to our tent not long after. The darkness was hugging us as we walked hand in hand back. Unzipping the tent and stepping inside, I could feel the tension I picked up from the others fall away, along with my clothes. It was too hot to sleep in our zipped together sleeping bags, so I fell on top of the extra cushion. I hadn’t noticed how quiet Daryl was, he was usually quiet after all.

When I looked up, I found that in the small lantern light that he’d turned on, he was staring at me. The same stare he’d given me on our first night under the moon. The same stare he’d given me this afternoon. Hungry and hot, and I felt my mouth go dry.

He took his clothes off, as fast as I must have, and then he was there. Over top of my body, starting what we hadn’t had a chance to finish when Dad had interrupted earlier. And before the lantern was turned off for the night, I watched his gaze never falter, the love I felt for him reflected with every touch. When we parted, careful to not make the same amazing mistake that we’d given into earlier, we clutched at one another. Never wanting to feel any space between us. Never wanting to not feel the other’s heart beating close by. Knowing that we’d give everything for the other. As our breathing leveled out and sleep took us away, we still clung to each other.

THE NEXT MORNING: A REVELATION: DAMN IT GLENN DON’T BRING ME INTO IT

Breakfast was interesting. Yes, that was sarcasm. No, I didn’t enjoy the look I got from the two men in my life who I loved the most. Fuck, Glenn, why’d you have to glance at me and Dale when you broke the news?

Of course the news that the barn was filled chock full of undead badness went over about as well as expected. While Dad and Daryl shot me that look of ‘you knew and didn’t fucking tell us, how could you?’ The others were split. Shane, paragon of ‘let’s kill them all and fuck the Greene family if they don’t like it’, was the loudest voice. Because of course he was. Dad, always more interested in keeping the peace than fucking it up, tried to argue that Hershel gets to make the rules on his own fucking property, while still shooting me looks that made me feel like I’d regressed to seven years old when I didn’t fess up to breaking Grandma’s ugly, but favorite vase.

The others were arguing, as though they had a choice. Dad was right, even if it burnt Daryl’s ass to hear it. Hershel’s home, Hershel’s rules. And when I agreed with Dad, Jesus, the look that Daryl shot me nearly made me sink through the fucking dirt and want to hide. Rock, meet hard place.

Dad went off to discuss the situation with Hershel, and he asked me to keep the peace while he was gone. Thanks a fucking lot, Daddy. Daryl was glaring at me. Shane was glaring at me, Glenn, and Dale. And I thought that Dad had far more fucking confidence in my ability to keep them in line than I did. Dale disappeared. Then Shane. So at first I felt like I had a chance to actually make that order Dad gave me work. Almost.

Then I couldn’t figure out where Hershel and Dad went off to. Shane returned, with every weapon we had, which made me wonder what the hell had happened. Then, as I’d feared, all hell started breaking loose. Thanks, Dad.

Shane stalked to the barn, his new toy egging him on. Daryl, sadly, was along for the ride, as were the majority of our group. Whether bystanders or fucking angry villagers I couldn’t decide. Before Dad could come back, I found myself chest to chest with Shane. Arguing why it was a stupid fucking idea.

“You ain’t the boss here, little girl.” He said, slamming the butt of a rifle against the lock of the barn.

“No, my dad is,” I hissed up at him. “And that just fucking burns your ass doesn’t it, Shane?”

It almost stopped him, but even Dad rushing back with Hershel and Jimmy doesn’t work, if anything it eggs him on further. Before I can blink, the lock breaks and they start coming out. Then there’s gunfire. More and more and more. And Shane’s taunts, and piles of corpses, truly dead now. Dad must have pulled me back from the doors, because I’m standing beside him, just as shocked as the Greene family when one final walker comes out and there she is, Sofia.

I see Dad’s arm come up with his gun, but all I hear is static, and I don’t even notice that my own bow is raised. I don’t blink as it’s my arrow that shoots first. I don’t understand as Sofia falls. It was automatic. It was muscle memory and completely natural. Not only to kill the walker, regardless of the face it wore, but also to save my dad from having to kill a child who Carl was growing close to. And then, the static breaks and the silence is almost as deafening.

Arms wrap around me, but I don’t know whose. My bow falls from my hands, and then I’m in the dirt, and the darkness overtakes everything.

[keelywolfe]

FIC: That Place Where You Can't Remember and You Can't Forget

Summary: Red is back and things are going swell.

Tags: Spicyhoney, Brotherly Relationships, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Pregnancy, More Angst

Warnings:  Implied underage pregnancy. Implied miscarriages. Past Trauma.

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Chapter List

What Will Be, Will Be

Something To Say, But Nothing Comes

Can’t Go On, Thinking Nothing’s Wrong

Seldom All They Seem

Voices Are Heard But Nothing Is Seen

Winter Makes You Laugh a Little Slower

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Read it on AO3

or

Read it here!

~~*~~

It was deep into the Underground nighttime when Rus wandered downstairs to get something to eat. He still felt a little achy and not all of it was from being stuck in the cold the day before.

Waking from his post-dinner nap left Rus restless enough for Blue to notice, teasing him about being a squirmy wormy, but there was no good way to tell his bro that the real problem was he was horny, plain and simple, and could he please get the fuck out for a couple hours so he and Edge could make some squelching noises?

Planning wasn’t exactly Rus’s strong suit; the evidence of that preceded him whenever he walked. So it was lucky that Edge more than made up for it. He owed Edge big time for asking Blue if he couldn’t go over to the Librarby for him in search of a particular puzzle book he’d heard was there. It was pretty good as excuses went; they all knew books were in short supply in Underfell. Blue agreed happily, and if there was a certain knowing gleam in his eye lights when he left, eh, Rus wasn’t much of a planner, but he was pretty good at pretending not to see things he’d rather not. It was a gift.

The moment the door closed behind his bro, Rus was on his feet and headed towards the bedroom at the fastest waddle he could manage. Ungainly as he was, he didn’t exactly feel like much of a seducer; his heavy belly was pretty much front and center, not exactly what he thought of as a turn on.

Somehow, Edge didn’t seem to mind. His hands and mouth were as eager as when they were only fucking around, hell, more so, he seemed happy to worship every part of Rus, from his toes to the very top of his skull, wringing out orgasms until Rus could only lay back weakly, trembling against the sheets. He wasn’t an innocent by any definition of the word, but some of the heated things Edge whispered to him in the darkness of his (their?) bedroom left him blushing and craving even more.

That was hours ago, now, Rus had drowsed off while Edge was gently washing him with a lovely, warm washcloth. Now horniness was taking a backseat to hunger, it was always something, wasn’t it?

Rus squirmed free of Edge’s arms as carefully as he could, slipping on his robe as he crept downstairs. He paused at the door, watching as Edge slept on, his sockets closed, the sharp angles of his face relaxed in sleep.

Seeing him made something unnamed in Rus’s soul stir, squeezing so tightly he could hardly breathe. He turned away, letting it ease. Whatever that was would have to be a problem for Tomorrow Rus, because tonight, all he wanted was something to eat.

It was good that he closed the door when he did, because the baby chose that moment to wake up, too. Rus bit back a groan as the baby shifted around, settling right into his pelvic cradle like it was a damn lounger. It didn’t hurt exactly, but it was uncomfortable and the way the kid was wriggling made it feel like they were going to fall down and dangle somewhere between his knees.

“wish i knew when you were gonna put in an appearance, kid,” Rus muttered. “it’d be nice to stick a pin on a date.” He curved a hand under his belly and gave a hopeful nudge, trying to urge his little skitten to move up a little higher. No dice, the baby only shifted and then settled back in with another demanding squirm, the one that meant on no uncertain terms, ‘feed me!’.

Rus sighed and started down the stairs. “yeah, i’m going.”

Seriously, the most frustrating thing about this was dealing with all the unknowns. Undyne did the best she could, but she didn’t know much about skeleton pregnancies. Everything she had she was pulling from old medical journals, but it was looking like they were a little incomplete. For one, she hadn’t known the souling descending would hurt. It didn’t for other Monsters, but then, other Monsters were different. The cost of magic was a lot higher for a skeleton pregnancy, they didn’t have a uterus laying around waiting to get used. On the other hand, they did have the added perk that any skeleton could have a kid since they went with ‘bring your own’ when it came to a body.

Thinking about it made the niggling memories at the back of his mind perk up a little. Undyne hadn’t known it would hurt, sure, but Red had. Red knew an awful lot about soulings and how they descended and--

Before that thought could connect, Rus’s slipper caught on the last stair, tripping him. Even as he started to fall, he flung out his arms to catch himself, split-second thoughts of ‘fuck’ and ‘no’ and ‘not after everything’ swamping him.

But the rush of the hard floor to meet him stopped abruptly, blue magic engulfing his soul, cradling him gentler than he thought possible.

“careful there, mama.”

“red?” Damned creature of the night. It was like Rus thinking about him summoned him up from whatever hole Red crawled into. The living room was dark, but Rus could see the faint gleam of bluish light from the sofa, coming from a darkened lump sprawled across the well-worn cushions, buried in the blanket Rus left there for emergency naps.

“who else?” Red made a hoarse, chuffing sound that might pass as a laugh. “no one else is gonna get past the spells my bro put on your door locks.”

Wasn’t that the truth. He and Blue were both shocked at the layers of protection that Edge insisted on weaving into the door locks, warnings, shieldings, the works. But neither of them protested it; hey, if a little extra protection made Edge feel better about sleeping over, Rus was all for it. Looked like stopping shortcuts wasn’t included in the package, deliberately or not.

The floor was still a couple of inches from his dangling slippers and his soul was starting to get that faint achiness from being gripped for so long. Rus waggled his feet, but Red didn’t seem to get the hint. Heck, he wasn’t even sure how Red managed to catch him before he could fall, anyway.

“hey, unless you’re gonna carry me around like a living backpack, you can let me down,” Rus called. Red made a low sound that seemed to be agreement, because the light pressure on his soul faded, renewed gravity easing him to his feet. The kitchen beckoned, all the delicious leftovers from the enchiladas that Edge and Blue made last night calling to him, but Rus still hesitated.

Something didn’t seem right about the local gargoyle.

Rus made his way over to the light switch and turned it on to the dimmest setting. Even so, a pained hiss came from the sofa, Red slinging an arm over his sockets. Like bare bone was gonna work as a mask? Closer to the sofa, there was a familiar green stink in the air, one that Rus knew very well, indeed.

Okay, yeah, if he had a guess, he was gonna say Red was stoned out of his melon.

“where’ve you been?” Rus asked, amused. The crumpled paper bag on the coffee table offered a clue, even if there were nothing but crumbs inside. “over at muffet’s? please tell me you behaved.”

Red offered another laugh, his arm sliding down to let him peer lazily out. “relax, mama, boss would have my ass if i caused trouble over here in your pretty lil’ world.”

If Edge could pin him down long enough to talk to him, maybe.

But that was a problem those two were gonna have to fix on their own. “didn’t happen to bum a smoke off bunno while you were there, did you?”

That sharky grin of Red’s widened. “mebbe. that a problem, mama?”

Yeaaasssh. A while back, Rus helped Bunno rig the hydroponics for his weed farm and every one of those little plants was babied into maturity. Even half a blunt usually put Rus down for the count and Bunno could be pretty damned generous with his stash.

Ignoring the ‘mama’ thing seemed easier than trying to argue about while Red was blazing trails. “you hungry?”

Sockets slit open, reddish eye lights rolling in his direction, “you offerin’?”

“yeah. let me go warm it up. don’t run off now.” If he was even half as messed up as Rus usually got from it, he probably couldn’t even get his feet facing the same direction if he wanted to.

Red seemed like he knew it, too. That sharky grin of his tipped higher and he closed his sockets again. “do my best.”

The enchiladas were neatly put away in the fridge, just like he’d known they would be. Blue always made a little extra for dinners these days; there was no telling how many might be at the table, plus leaving plenty of leftovers for growing skittens.

Rus was never gonna earn a chef’s hat, but he could manage warming up the goods and dishing it out. The smell was making him drool and the baby was doing a tango up his spine by the time he brought the plates out. He plopped Red’s on the coffee table with a thump and sat on the sofa with his own, ready to dig in. His belly made for a decent tv tray if he kept a hand on the plate. He was still mourning the loss of an entire bowl of oatmeal from an enthusiastic kick sending it flying.

Blue thought it was funny as hell and even Rus bursting into stupid tears hadn’t stopped him from laughing. It was pretty hilarious now and little embarrassing, but at the time, losing that oatmeal had seemed like a devastating blow to his hunger.

He refused to let his enchiladas suffer the same fate.

The blanket was stirring, Red slowly emerging like a creature from the deep. Rus couldn’t hold back a groan of pleasure as he scooped up his first bite, holy shit, when Blue and Edge combined their culinary powers, they made some damned good eats. Red seemed to be in agreement if the way he started chowing down meant anything, slurping down noisy mouthfuls.

The kid probably liked their secondhand version of it, too, given the way they were squirming. Rus winced, rubbing at his roiling belly. Seriously, it was weird watching it. He’d seen other preggers Monsters a time or two and they always seemed to have cute, round little tummies brimming with baby. Meanwhile, Rus’s always looked sort of lumpy depending on what side the baby was leaning on, and seeing it from the outside when a little hand or foot decided to push out was like watching some creepy B movie about alien infestations. Wasn’t exactly comfortable, either.

Through a mouthful of tasty, tasty enchilada, Rus mumbled, “i tell you what, when this kid makes its exit, i got a whole bucket list of things to do. whenever they decide to stop loitering, anyway.”

He wasn’t the only one taking advantage of the lack of scolding brothers. Red was shoveling in the food, wiping his mouth against his shirt as he chewed thoughtfully. “been about twelve weeks now altogether, yeah?”

“yeah.” His thoughts were sort of tired and jangly lately, but that was a date he could calculate to the minute.

Red only nodded, grunting out, “shouldn’t be much longer, then.”

Again, that confident knowledge. Rus wasn’t sure what to do about it, past trusting that Red was right. He tugged up his shirt, pulling it overtop the bump. The bright orange of the ectoflesh was opaque, hiding the little babybones curled up inside.

Those tiny bones getting solid and strong, using up all the tasty magic the food generated as they got ready to come out to the world. Would they look like him or Edge? A combination of the two? They were both tall, so the kid had that going for them, but maybe the kiddo would have crimson eye lights and wee little sharp teeth, all ready to gnaw at the table legs when they started crawling. Maybe they would smile with all the delight Edge struggle to show. Maybe, maybe…

Rus couldn’t wait to meet them.

He stroked a hand over the swollen curve of his tummy contemplatively, “if it’s soon, guess we should start thinking about names.” Edge hadn’t even mentioned names yet, they pretty much stuck with skitten or baby when they talked about them.

Red only snorted, “don’t bother.”

That made Rus raise some mental eyebrows. “why, you have a suggestion?”

“heh, nah,” Red licked his plate clean, something that would have gotten him a sharp knock on the skull if Edge saw him do it. “skeleton babies are born knowing their names. makes it kinda weird that we all go by nicknames now.” His mouth twisted sourly. “well, most of us. but if you run a check, i'm still sans. can call me whatever you want, it’ll always show me as sans. my soul knows what it wants to be called.”

Red rolled his head in Rus’s direction. His eye lights were hazy, diffused, crimson muddied with flecks of green, and Rus wondered again how much he’d had to smoke. “y’can usually do a check on their soul, see what the kiddo’s name is. might be able to do it by now.”

Okay, that was some seriously unexpected news, every damn word of it. Rus didn’t really remember his own childhood much, it was weirdly blurred and by the time his mental film got back on track, Blue was a toddler, already fully cooked and walking on his own. Rus didn’t remember ever checking him to see his name. His bun was still baking in the oven, but here was Red telling him he could check the baby. He hadn’t even thought to try it.

It was tempting, so tempting, but.

Edge was upstairs sleeping with no idea that Rus was down here getting maternity tips from his stoned brother, and Rus could only imagine how hurt he’d be if Rus did it without him. He’d been freaked out at the beginning, but these days Edge was all over the baby, whispering secrets to the little bump that Rus strained to hear, resting gentle hands on the roundness of his belly in the hopes of feeling a kick. The first few times Edge asked, always so stiffly polite cause he didn’t want to presume, and it was so damned precious that Rus finally gave him blanket permission for belly fondling.

So long as he threw in plenty of foot rubs, Rus was on board.

Might be the hardest thing Rus ever did, but he regretfully set that new knowledge aside for sharing time. With any luck, he could catch Edge before he headed off to patrol, give him something to glow about while he was over in Underhell.

Thinking of which...“where’ve you been, anyway? you missed napstatton.”

His needling backfired unexpectedly as Red chuckled darkly, “was here earlier but you and the boss already went to bed. sounded a little busy, so i decided to take in the sights outside.”

Well, that wasn’t horribly embarrassing or anything. Rus could feel his cheek bones warming. “sorry about that.”

Red only shrugged. He sank back against the sofa cushions, propping one sock-covered foot up on the coffee table, his toes curling over the edge. “eh, it’s part of the deal. your magic is all out of whack, making you horny as a moldsmal in pollen season. may as well enjoy it while you can, ain’t gonna be doing much once the kid is here.” He laced his hands over his middle, tipping his skull back, eye lights examining the ceiling. “went to see my alphys today. me and ol’ al go way back. thought she might like a chat.”

That...sounded weirdly ominous.

“yeah?” Rus said, cautiously. He’d never met any of the other residents of Underfell, wasn’t even allowed outside to smoke whenever he’d been there. He knew they were more like their alternates in Undertale than here, in that Undyne was Captain and Alphys a scientist. Given what he knew of Underfell, Rus was pretty sure that’s where the similarities ended. He didn’t know why Red felt the need to talk with his Alphys or why he was bringing it up now. Could be that his pot-swirly skull was just yammering. Sure. Could be. But that wasn’t a bet Rus would put a G against.

Those crimson eye lights slid his way, sharper despite that lingering haze, “you stay out of underfell, you hear me? ain’t no time for picnics or movie nights or whatever shit you all think up.”

Um, yeah. Not a problem. Even if he wanted to take a trip through the void, which he really didn’t, Underfell wasn’t exactly his fave vacation spot; he’d barely ever been there even before the baby bump. Red was still glaring at him, looking for all the world like he was about to drag Rus upstairs and lock him up like some new bald version of Rapunzel.

Hastily, Rus nodded, adding for good measure. “yeah, of course. we’ll keep any picnics local.”

That seemed to be enough. Red relaxed back, his sockets sinking closed again and Rus made a mental note to ask Blue and Edge to maybe not mention his recent storm chasing. He didn’t really want Red to take his bodyguard tendencies to the next level.

Protecting.

“soulings are fragile until they descend.”

“it’s like getting touched with happiness.”

“my baby grew up just fine. little stupid, sometimes.”

Almost-memories churning through his mind, finding each other and connecting. Maybe in the light of day, Rus wouldn’t ask. But here in the deepest part of night, with Red pliable next to him, questions were easy to offer.

"red?" Rus asked, very softly. "how old are you?"

He didn’t open his sockets. “you already know that. same age as you."

"yeah. about fifteen years older than edge, give or take."

That got him a low chuckle. “afraid you're too old for him? don’t worry, he’s older than he should be and you didn’t age past twelve.”

“my sense of humor is my fountain of youth.” Rus hesitated, searching for words that weren’t land mines, "i was still in stripes when blue was born."

"i expect so."

"so were you, weren't you. when edge came." There. Now it was out there, the words hanging between them like glass ornaments and just as delicate. He didn’t know what he expected to happen, anything from Red shortcutting away to him screaming out abuse, offering his own words, these ones designed to cut deeply, damaging not the body but the soul.

He expected that and anything in between. But Red didn’t move, didn’t shout. His expression, smoothed by the best weed Underswap had to offer, didn’t so much as twitch. The only reason Rus even knew he heard was when Red finally spoke, low and gruff.

"papyrus," Red said, deliberately. "don't. let it go."

"'kay," Rus agreed, softly. That was as far as he was willing to pry, anyway. All things considered, he was getting off pretty light. But then Red shifted restlessly, sharpened fingertips scratching at the sofa arm in long, agitated strokes.

“’s why i was so mad, you know.” So softly, Rus straining to hear that raspy whisper. “that he got you knocked up and all. thought he might be like his old man, after all, got some sick fucking need ta spread his seed or some bullshit, and don’t care who it hurts.” His voice thickened, that familiar Hotland accent of his fading back, “the doc tried so many times, so many little soulings that sputtered out, didn’t even get a chance to descend. then there were the other ones, ones that made it further. not far enough, nothing but little bones left to dust. paps was the only one who came out okay.”

For one sickening second, Rus didn’t understand, trying to put those words together in his head in a way that made sense. Having it come into focus didn’t help; his imagination stalled, trying not to picture what Red was telling him. and all he could do was stare at Red in silent horror.

Red only chuckled hoarsely. His jacket was cast off on the floor by the door, a wilted, empty shell, and without it Red seemed smaller, frailer, his thin t-shirt offering little protection. “heh, don’t need to look like that. it wasn't that bad. doc couldn’t do it the old-fashioned way. barely wanted to touch me at all, much less fuck me.” He shook his head, a wobbly roll of his skull atop his neck, “fun fact, you don’t actually need to have sex to make a souling. it’s the buildup of magic you need, some energy to work as baby batter, lots of it. sex is a good way to build it up, is all.”

“that fact isn’t very fun,” Rus said, thinly. He shivered, curling his arms around his belly where his baby rested, still safe inside. His soul felt cold, colder than it had out in the woods.

How Red found another laugh, Rus couldn’t begin to guess, “guess not. anyway, the doc had his own method. and who was i, anyway? stupid kid, that’s who, believing a bunch of bullshit promises cause i wanted off the streets. ended up right back where i started, only with a special toy surprise inside.” Red’s smile softened, his gaze distant, “kid was a pain in the ass. used to get so angry over nothing, scream until he was red in the face if he even got his fucking hands dirty. but he was mine.”

His voice was fierceness itself, tempered with bitter nostalgia. “called him brother. it was easier that way. plenty of orphans on the streets, but me with a baby of my own was gonna raise some questions as to who was knocking up the stripers. brothers were better. safer. doc was gone by then, anyway.” Red tipped his head, slanting an unreadable look Rus’s way and he was a fucking Judge, he could read any expression. “you gonna tell him?”

It took a moment for that question to even register. Rus’s head was busy trying to wrap itself around Red having a baby, having Edge, still in stripes while he lugged around a belly like Rus’s, only without anyone making enchiladas or wrapping him up in cozy blankets to nap, or even having a roof over his head. Red on the streets with his baby, calling him brother until it was believed, until that was the only truth out there.

Tell Edge? Tell him that his fa—brother had been lying to him his entire life. Like Red deserved another weight to shoulder, burdened with possible hate from the one he cared for most for being a scared kid making the choice he thought was best, a choice he never should’ve had to make? Not a fucking chance.

“no,” Rus said at last, “no, i won’t say a thing.”

A flicker of relief crossed Red’s face, his sockets drifting shut again. “thanks.” He laughed again, a low slur of sound, “you know, for a long time, thought you all might be the same with your bros. couldn’t be sure without askin’. guess not, pretty sure by now you’ve never done this before.”

Rus tried on a laugh of his own, weak and watery, but it was there. “nope, this is my first go-around, probably my last, too.”

“heh. yeah. one skitten is good enough for anyone.”

They both fell silent at that, Rus still trying to absorb that unexpected info glut. He didn’t know if confession was good for the soul, but it sure was exhausting and soon enough Red’s skull was drooping to the side, his breathing going slow and even.

Rus didn’t quite dare try to move him to a more comfortable position. Instead, he carefully shook out the blanket and let it drift down over him. In his sleep, Red twitched, burrowing into the soft folds with a drowsy grunt.

Good enough.

He left their plates where they were, ready to beg forgiveness from his bro for the mess rather than risk waking Red by shuffling around too much. He went back upstairs to his room, careful to avoid the creaky stair.

A quick peek showed Edge was still in bed. He’d moved into Rus’s spot, close to the wall and rolled on his side to face it. Rus stripped off his robe and slipped beneath the sheets in his bare bones and belly to curl up behind him. But the expected comfort did not come. Those strong, scarred bones were cooler than to be expected from someone curled up cozy beneath the covers. His breathing was maybe a little too even, playing false.

Fuck.

Very quietly, Rus murmured, “you shouldn’t listen at keyholes. might not like what you hear.”

His soul sank as Edge shifted, proving Rus’s suspicions. He sighed heavily, still facing the wall as he said, evenly, “That is true. Or you may simply hear things you already know.”

Getting rendered speechless was a new trend that Rus couldn’t say he was enjoying.

Whatever Edge thought of his silence, he finally rolled over, his eye lights bright in the darkened room as he studied Rus’s face. “I am sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. You didn’t sign on to be our secret keeper.”

“no,” Rus blurted, “no, it’s okay, it’s…it’s okay.” It’d be even more okay if he did ask, that was a promise Rus would be more than happy to give. So many secrets and all of them burdened with old hurts. But Edge only nodded slowly, his eye lights drifting down, resting on Rus’s belly.

He reached out, the bed creaking as he shifted, and his hand paused in mid-air, “Would it be all right if I—"

Rus didn’t wait for him to finish, already nodding along as he blurted, “yes.” He wasn’t sure what Edge wanted, but he was good for it. Anything to help settle the ache in his chest; he didn’t want to think of Edge as a child and couldn’t stop. A little baby bones crying over dirty hands while a too-young Red tried to soothe him however he could.

Edge moved closer, curling the lanky length of his body around Rus so that his skull rested on his belly. Like always, the baby seemed to sense Edge was close, wriggling happily as Edge lightly petted the taut ectoflesh, crooning out soft reassurances until the baby settled, calming.

They could probably sleep like that, they’d done it before. Except, maybe they needed something else. Something better, a distraction of goodness. Rus swallowed hard and managed to say, “red said that if we might be able to check the baby by now and...and if we did, we could see their name.”

Edge stilled, his startled gaze flying up to meet Rus’s. “Did you want to—”

“you do it,” Rus said, softly. Edge nodded jerkily, his gaze refocusing on Rus’s belly. When the feeling of being checked came it was distant, a brush-by instead of ticklish focus. Edge made a low, choked sound, and Rus couldn’t take it anymore, bursting out, “well?”

“Lucida,” Edge said. The soft wonder in his voice made Rus’s soul clench and just because he didn’t want to name that emotion didn’t mean he didn’t know what it was. “Her name is Lucida.”

The baby kicked hard as if responding to the name.

Her name. Her.

Their skitten was a her. Rus let out a laugh, uncaring that it nearly sounded like a sob, tasting his own tears as he whispered, “our baby’s name is lucy.”

“Lucy,” Edge agreed, and Rus barely noticed him moving until his mouth was pressed to Rus’s, a fierce kiss tempered by unbearable gentleness and broken only when Edge began scattering those soft kisses over his face.

Their baby, theirs. And she was gonna have daddies and papas and uncles, everything Rus could possibly offer to her, she was gonna have. All of it, safe and warm and loved.

That was a promise.

tbc

[garbagewhump]

You all have @pepperonyscience to thank for this tooth rotting fluff.

There was an understated luxury to lying in bed when you normally should have gotten up an hour ago. Stretching his limbs out and rearranging the comforter to better cover him from head to toe, Thom sighed and melted into the mattress.

While his work schedule had changed, there was still a delicious, forbidden feel because his sleep schedule hadn’t yet caught up, assuming he still needed to be awake at 4:30 every morning. But no, he could sleep in, lie in, the whole day. Glorious.

Was this how most people felt about weekends? He’d worked them nearly his entire adult life, so he couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that he felt good.

He sighed again as he found a fresh cool spot on his pillow and rubbed his face against it, relishing in the chill.

Maybe he’d even go back to sleep. He could. No need for actual clothes or to deal with people or his boss demanding more of him. The whole day was his.

A heavy weight launched itself onto his back, but he didn’t dare move.

“Mrew.” Little paws kneaded his sleep shirt, claws digging in to keep balanced as he breathed. “Mrew!”

“Hey, stupid,” he mumbled, half into the pillow. “If you wanna get fed, you got to let me up.”

“Mrew.”

That was not a concern, apparently, because Ringo, purring up a storm, settled himself between Thom’s shoulder blades.

You know what? He knew going into this cat owning thing that this might happen. Warmth on his back, a small head resting against his neck, Thom slipped back under the pull of unconsciousness.

——

Ten minutes didn’t last too long on paper. It was a few songs. A moderate mile run time. A hard boiled egg.

An at home pregnancy test.

As Dale paced the length of the bathroom and bounced his leg and heaved yet another sigh, he realized ten minutes was indeed a very long time.

“You’d think you were the one about to carry this thing,” Maddie quipped from the toilet. Her fingers twisted together betrayed her light tone, a faint trembling as she fought a more obvious sign of her own emotions.

Scrubbing his anxiety from his face, he ran his hands through his hair to fix the stray hairs. Then, he knelt down before her, between her legs, and took her hands in his, gently prying her fingers apart.

She shut her eyes and leaned her head back. He kissed her hand before pressing it to his face.

“Is it done yet?” Maddie demanded.

A glance to his watch said no. “Just a few more minutes.”

“You said that an hour ago.”

Despite her tone, she was smiling, her beautiful lips caught in her teeth as she fought her own amusement.

A minute of silence dragged itself across chill linoleum. He wanted to check his watch again. The desire itched and scratched at him.

In his peripheral vision, he saw her reach for the pregnancy test on the counter.

“I love you,” she said abruptly. “There’s no one else I’d rather pee on a stick for...”

His breathing hitched.

“‘Daddy.’”

Barking laughter escaped in a rush. Dizzying, exhilarating, all encompassing. Breathlessly he threw his head back and let his joy spring free. “Oh, honey,” he whispered, before he leaped forward and scooped her off the toilet, whirling her around the bathroom.

“Let me down, you daft fool!” she giggled, but her legs wrapped tighter around his waist and she brought their foreheads together.

“As you wish, ‘mommy’.”

——

Today kind of really blowed so far, all things considered. She’d woken up with cramps and tenderness, a surefire sign her uterus was about to throw a tantrum, her favorite socks had a hole in them, she tried to make pancakes for her mom and dad before they went to work and instead made crispy discs of half baked batter, and her boyfriend was oh so supportive and responded to her rant with a stupid pun about wells and vacuums. As much as she appreciated a good pun, there was a time and a place, and she’d been hoping for something more empathetic.

So when the phone rang while she scrubbed the charcoal remains of her culinary failure, she sulked and calmed herself by pretending she was interrogating the pan. It finally went to voicemail and she tuned it out handily with another jet of soapy water.

“Who sent you to sabotage Project Pancake?” She hissed, “What do you know?”

As she heard keys turning in the front door, she hastily stopped her vigorous interrogation and wiped down the worst of the spilled water.

And to top the day off, she had put off folding her laundry so her clothes, delicates and all, were still in a pile on the couch.

“Sorry! I lost track of time!” With still wet hands she hastily gathered them up and sped them into her room, chucking them on her bed. She buried her face in her hands. This day sucked.

To wait out her humiliation over her father seeing her underthings, she folded and hung up her clothes until she didn’t feel her ears burning.

Finally, she could leave her room.

Her mom and dad were standing in the living room in that very distinct “we are about to have a Discussion” pose. Oh no.

She tried to think of anything she’d done wrong that could justify it. Did they know she hadn’t broken up with Liam? No. She’d been careful, he’d been careful. She was up to date on her rent and she hadn’t missed a phone or car payment. And other than Liam, she was a good daughter and good roommate.

“Why don’t you take a seat,” her mom suggested.

Her dad moved over to the answering machine and hit play.

“Hello, Miss Summer Ramirez, we are calling to inform you we have accepted your application to Pepperdine University—”

She tackled her father first, then half dragged him closer to her mother, shrieking the whole time.

“Pepperdine! I’m going to Pepperdine!”

“I’m so proud of you, sunshine!”

She had to pack. She had to buy things for her dorm. She had to get a loan. Sobering quickly, she stopped shaking and dragging her parents around the room. “Mom. I need your help.”

Her mom’s laugh, the quirks of her brow, were hers, even if there was no blood, and seeing her own expression mirrored was proof enough. “Not laughing at my binders and planners now, are we?”

“You can color-coordinate my underwear!” she promised. “I’m going to Pepperdine!”

[theculturedmarxist]

The left is in crisis across the West. It is out of power in most countries and out of touch with its historical working-class base. Class politics has given way to identity politics. And noble causes like anti-racism, anti-sexism and anti-discrimination have congealed into a stifling morass of political correctness and competitive victimhood.

Thankfully, there are some pockets on the left who recognise this predicament. I’m in New York to try to understand the thinking behind the ‘dirtbag left’. The phrase was coined by Amber A’Lee Frost, a writer, commentator and activist, to describe a loose constellation of American leftists who reject the civility, piety and PC that has come to characterise much of the left.

Frost is a co-host of the hugely successful Chapo Trap House, which offers a funny, irony-laden and often downright vulgar take on contemporary politics from the left. She also writes a column for the Baffler and is a trade unionist.

Newer on the scene is the acerbic and wickedly funny Anna Khachiyan, art critic turned cultural commentator, who co-hosts the podcast Red Scare. Red Scare saves its most biting criticism for ‘neoliberal’ feminism.

Among the most refreshing things about Frost and Khachiyan is that their politics are resolutely not woke. ‘You can tell people that I’m trans’, says Khachiyan, with characteristic irreverence, as Frost, Khachiyan and myself sit down to talk at Eastwood in the Lower East Side. ‘I’m not trans, but you can say that just for fun.’ Their reasons for rejecting wokeness are both pragmatic and political. ‘The majority of people are not woke’, explains Frost: ‘Why would we dismiss the majority of people as hopelessly reactionary?’

Not only that, for Frost, identitarian divisions based on gender, race and sexuality are ‘a distraction at best, an active detriment at worst’. ‘The biggest divide in American society is class and that’s it. I’m a class-first person’, she tells me. ‘You’re hearing in the election how much we need to elect a woman or we need to elect a woman of colour. But the most left-wing candidate is an old, white, heterosexual man [Bernie Sanders] and I want him to win… I’m a Bernie bro. I was a Bernie bro in 2016 and I am now.’

But would the first woman president not be a breakthrough for women? ‘They’re always talking about the “little girls” – how would little girls know that they can be president? It’s just so stupid. I was a little girl once, I’ve never felt limited by this stuff’, says Frost. She raises Margaret Thatcher: ‘You [Brits] had a girl boss – she showed those bro miners!’

Frost describes herself as a socialist. She says she came to socialism through feminist organising. But the current wave of media feminism turns her off. It is about ‘middle-class women trying to get spots in the boardroom’. ‘A lot of this stuff is “fight the power, put me on the throne”.’ Or it’s, ‘Men are rude to me and they explain things to me’, she jokes.

Of course, I suggest, there are many real struggles that women face, particularly working-class women – from low pay to childcare – so why do these issues barely get a look in? ‘They don’t care about working-class women’, Frost says of contemporary feminists. ‘Half the time they’re smearing them as reactionaries because they voted for Trump.’

‘I fundamentally think they are disgusted and horrified by working-class people’, says Khachiyan. ‘Real women don’t live up to the liberal-feminist pieties’, adds Frost. ‘And I think that’s very threatening for the uptight, white, overeducated, liberal women to be confronted with’, replies Khachiyan.

So why did so many people vote for Trump? ‘There are two categories of Trump voters worth discussing separately’, says Frost. ‘There was the wealthy, petit-bourgeois reactionary. But there were also working-class people who heard only one of the candidates talking about jobs.’

Trump has many faults, of course. ‘Fundamentally, he is a cruel, stupid man’, says Frost. But he has ‘a very good observational talent’. Liberals, suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, have been far too moralistic about the Trump vote, she argues: ‘Most people don’t believe that presidential candidates are telling the truth the entire time.’

Worse, the left’s response to Trump has been totally counterproductive: ‘Do you want to tell people how bad they are? Do you want them to repent because they’re bad racists? Or do you want them to pursue a left-wing project?’

‘Those people are ours to win’, says Frost. The populist moment is an opportunity, she says, but one which ‘I can totally see us pissing away’. ‘The self-identified left are very sceptical of the populist stuff. Look at their takes on the yellow vests: “They’re all fascists!” They’re probably just fucking French people – and who can tell the difference?’

Just as significant as Trump’s victory was Hillary Clinton’s loss, they tell me, in that it represented a rejection of an era of neoliberalism. ‘I’m from Indiana’, Frost tells me. ‘Bill signs NAFTA. That obliterated the towns where I’m from. People are extremely bitter about Bill Clinton for very good reasons. And she is married to that, literally and figuratively – she defends that legacy. How did we not see Trump coming?’

What’s more, Trump represented a repudiation of the entire establishment – Democrats and Republicans. ‘There is a severe crisis of legitimacy in our institutions’, says Frost: ‘The Republicans did not want Trump to win either… He was nobody’s first choice, except the American people’s, apparently.’

For Khachiyan, ‘You can say a lot of bad things about Donald Trump, but you can’t say the man is boring’.

‘Trump should be an artist, not a politician’, she adds. ‘He says, “I’ve never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke”, and he loves Diet Coke, that’s his drink of choice. I don’t know if he’s self-aware or not.’

The problem with liberals, she says, is that ‘they can’t differentiate between their political critiques of Trump and their aesthetic critiques of him… He really brings to the fore all these inarticulable taboos. But as a politician, he’s not very exceptional.’ It is not so much Trump’s policies that anger the liberals, but his brashness, his demeanour. Frost adds, by way of example, that Obama also ‘threw tear gas at the border’.

Three years on from the 2016 presidential election, Democrats are still largely in denial or in despair about Trump’s victory. The now-discredited Russia-collusion narrative provided an excuse to avoid any soul-searching. ‘The whole Rachel Maddow and the NBC crowd have infected the minds of boomers with this dystopian narrative’, Khachiyan tells me. ‘Even my mom, who’s from Russia, buys the collusion narrative.’

‘The narrative isn’t itself so interesting’, she argues, but it shows ‘the willful failure of the Democratic Party. Again and again, they fall on their face. There’s some kind of Freudian, masochistic thing they have where they get off on publicly humiliating themselves.’

But while liberals may be electorally challenged, they still dominate mainstream culture. ‘“Liberal’ is the political denomination, but “nerd” is the cultural denomination’, says Khachiyan. ‘We’re living under the triumph of the nerds… If you had an American Psycho-esque novel today, there wouldn’t be this broad-shouldered besuited guy who looked like he walked out of the pages of an advertisement. It would be about a fin-tech soy boy. He’d be hunched over, clutching his tote-bag’, she says.

‘Bret Easton Ellis said there could never be the great Millennial novel – we’ll see. I haven’t read that Sally Rooney book that everybody’s writing about’, Khachiyan says, referring to the Irish author’s breakthrough novel, Normal People, which focuses on a millennial relationship. Frost adds that she read the book ‘with the intent of savaging it’, because ‘all the Guardian feminists like her’, but found ‘there was a lot of good shit in there’. ‘I think the women who like it don’t understand why they do… women today aren’t allowed to want a traditional relationship’, she says. Khachiyan adds: ‘Which is what most people since the dawn of time have wanted… There’s nothing reactionary about wanting a boyfriend!’

The conversation turns back to Bret Easton Ellis, a critic of what he calls snowflake culture, who is frequently accused of being a reactionary. ‘A lot of artists either don’t have any politics or their politics are retarded’, says Khachiyan. ‘His whole virtue as a writer is being a great stylist and a great narrator who retains plausible deniability. American Psycho has references to killing homeless black people, calling Asians “slant eyes”. And a lot of these woke SJW people sincerely think he’s a racist because he describes the condition… Artists are sometimes unassailable… The whole impulse to peg someone for what they are now is bizarre.’

Another recent favourite author among Guardian feminists is Kristen Roupenian, whose short story, ‘Cat Person’, went viral. The story is about a young woman who realises – slightly too late in the day – that the sexual encounter she is about to embark on is not what she wants. When the man finally realises he has been rejected, he lashes out. ‘Guardian feminists liked it because it “proved” men are trash because the man called her a whore at the end’, says Khachiyan. ‘Actually what it showed is that men can be sad and pathetic’, adds Frost.

Khachiyan tells me about an event she was at with Roupenian recently. (‘Hands down one of the most inarticulate, scatter-brained speakers – but the woman can write!’) Lena Dunham was meant to speak, she says, but didn’t show up because ‘she cooked up a fake illness’. ‘It was around the time she had her uterus removed’, she says. Frost adds that lots of American women are ‘voluntary removing their reproductive organs’. ‘Nobody is talking about this. It’s a middle-class, very elite phenomenon, where they’re like, “I have menstrual problems, I’m going to remove my womb”. Lena Dunham wrote a whole fucking essay about it.’

I asked how the seeming frigidity of the #MeToo moment, let alone the alleged epidemic of uterus removals, sits alongside modern feminism’s ‘sex positive’ celebration of polyamory, pansexuality and sex workers. ‘It’s because these people would rather negotiate sex than actually have it… They don’t want to take responsibility’, says Khachiyan. ‘That’s why nerds love this stuff’, says Frost. ‘It’s huge in Silicon Valley. They like games and rules. These are people who consider themselves leftists but probably don’t like anything about socialism except the gulags.’

Khachiyan says ‘a lot of these people are tyrannical narcissists’. ‘They are noncommittal, incapable of tolerating conflict or taking consequences. So they would rather have a system like polyamory where you kick that can down the road.’ Frost adds that many millennials ‘think they can eliminate jealousy… But sometimes you’re going to have bad sex, sometimes you’re going to be jealous. It’s not the end of the world.’

We move from jealousy to hate, and to the alleged epidemic of racism or even fascism often talked up by the left. Hate speech, we’re told, must be contained. Khachiyan takes a refreshingly liberal line: ‘You should be able to hate and hatred should be protected, as long as it doesn’t spill over into physical violence.’ ‘There’s this idea that we live in a white supremacist country when we fundamentally don’t’, says Khachiyan. She mentions antifa, the self-styled anti-fascist group that, since our conversation, has hit the headlines for beating up a right-leaning journalist in Portland. ‘Antifa have manufactured a threat to have some semblance of an identity’, she says. ‘All these people who say they are anti-fascist don’t know what it means to be persecuted.’

Frost and Khachiyan have a Marxist understanding of race. ‘We invented race to justify exploitation’, says Frost. ‘Splitting people on the basis of race was used to morally justify slavery… Racial discourse was created after hyper-exploitation.’ But ever since, argues Frost, ‘When we tried to not be racist, we ended up using the same framework’, which today also lives on in identitarian form. ‘All “race” is, is that some people don’t sunburn. That’s the entirety of racial difference.’

But how much can Marxism really illuminate today’s mad world? ‘Twitter call-out culture’, Frost concedes, ‘has no Marxist explanation. It makes no sense economically or even logically.’ Marx cannot account for a ‘social phenomenon where you rat out your closest friends’ and ‘describe them as reactionary’: ‘Why would you do that? Of course it will be bad for you.’

While there are plenty of woke types queuing up to ‘call out’ Frost, Khachiyan and their collaborators – even accusing them of being Nazis – let’s hope the dirtbag left can resist being ‘cancelled’ altogether. Voices like these, challenging woke orthodoxy and standing up for traditional left values, are needed now more than ever. Here’s to the dirtbags.

Fraser Myers is a staff writer at spiked and host of the spiked podcast. Follow him on Twitter: @FraserMyers.

[rough-tweed-action]

A year ago my parents decided to lock me in a psychiatric hospital instead of talking to me bc I didn’t eat her dinner. My mother lied to the paramedics and the psychologist by describing my usual, normal habits as something new and dangerous, like the fact that I don’t go out much in the summer bc I can’t handle the heat. The paramedics threatened me \with the police and the psychologist who admitted me threatened that if I don’t agree to treatment, I’ll stay there longer. I lost 3 weeks there, including my 30th BIRTHDAY. I was kept in isolation for almost 48 hours, I had nothing to read or do, I’ve never been so devastatingly bored, I had no window, no fresh air. I also had my period there, I didn’t have my menstrual cup, had to use pads, had no soap or towels so I ended up with an intimate infection. A nurse refused to give me painkillers my doctor allowed, forcing me to suffer needlessly. I have a double uterus, twice the pain and no painkillers,

Obviously, my parents showed no remorse for ruining my life and stealing 3 weeks from me. My mother didn’t even wish me happy birthday. Wow. That still hurts.

I waited a whole week for my psychiatrist to see me so I could ask her to release me. I finally got out after 3 fucking, hellish weeks of putting up with really insane people and fleas. A nurse who took my blood fucked up and I ended up with inflammation and had to take antibiotics, my wound healed after a fortnight, I looked like a drug addict with a giant bruise on the inside of my elbow.

Since the state paid for my treatment and the hospital is new and big, they kept me for so long to earn money. Obviously, the hospital spends very little on food and since I didn’t require meds, I was a desirable patient. Since they had to find something to justify my imprisonment, they diagnosed me with histronic personality disorder, which couldn’t be further from the truth, but at least they agreed I am NOT MENTALLY ILL.

My parents, an alcoholic and a sugar addict, both abusive and delusional, decided that they know better than professionals and that I am mentally ill and threatened to lock me up in that hospital more than once. They say I am crazy and they regret I was released ‘so quickly’ and without mind-numbing meds. They want me to suffer. My mother took my father’s side when he threatened to beat me and tried to make me question my sanity, like a true emotional abuser. I know I’m sane. I just feel so terribly betrayed, after all I’ve done for this fucking family.

My father said I’m useless and won’t achieve anything. While this shit was going on, I started a new job. I often thought about this while being trusted with 25 kindergarten kids, that it’s not true what they tried to convince me. I am not mentally ill. I am not stupid and useless. I had no training for working in the kindergarten and yet I was praised for my efforts. My boss praises me often and is so grateful for my friend who recommended me. 

When I was hit by a car in winter, my boss was the one who got worried first, who helped me with the insurance and the police while I was still suffering from concussion. My mother noticed I didn’t come home in winter, my bike was gone, the snow fell that night and she didn’t call the ER. I did that when she was gone for a couple of hours in the summer, but then again, I am a GOOD PERSON and she’s not.

I cannot forgive my parents. The threats and their bizarre stubbornness to make me think I’m crazy bother me a lot. I had to unlearn my empathy and helpfulness and treat them like pieces of shit they are. I hate them and will never forgive them. If they apologised, but no, they have to believe I am crazy bc otherwise, it means I was a victim of their stupidity. Although I work, which they don’t know about, I ask them for a small amount of money for the bus from time to time, to secretly punish them. I am so angry but mostly devastated by their betrayal. I was the only person in this family who wanted to improve our relations, who genuinely tried. and that’s what I’ve got in return. 

At least my boss and her husband think I’m a good person, worthy of their trust. They don’t insult my intelligence and don’t think I’m crazy. So there are good people, but I’ll stay bitter forever.

[offansandflames]

So uh...

A lot has happened since I bothered to post anything about my life. To be succinct, I’m in a massively stressful situation.

One of my closest friends (Rachel), whom I’ve known for 20 years, was diagnosed with stage IV bladder cancer. All said and done, her 5-year survival stats are around 15%. They removed her bladder and tried to remove the rest of the cancer, which spread to her ovaries and uterus. It looked like she would bleed out during surgery, so the doctors weren’t able to get all of the cancer out. She’s too weak for chemo and radiation, so she’s started on immunotherapy. All I can do is pray there. It’s just surreal that she may not be a part of my life anymore.

Yesterday, I got news that my best friend is again homeless. If any of y’all followed me, this is the same friend who nearly died last year. He continues to make stupid decisions, and being HIV positive, he just can’t afford that. Last year, I was in a loop of letting him stay at my place and desperately looking all over for shelters for him. So many times I’ve thought he was finally on the straight and narrow, and somehow he fucks it up every time. I’m just...exhausted. I feel bad for not answering his call, but I have enough on my hands taking care of myself and people who actually don’t cause their own problems.

My grandpa, who nearly died a few years ago from two separate incidents of lung cancer, had his first stroke a couple weeks ago. Thankfully, besides some speech and writing issues, he’s okay. Still though.

My fiance is depressed as well, with heavy suicidal ideation. I’m very concerned about them. Though...it can be difficult for me too. Sometimes when I start talking about my issues, it becomes a conversation about their issues. At the close of the conversation, I’m more overwhelmed than I was before. Other times, they listen and support. To be fair, I’ve been so busy with work that we’d hardly even spoken the last couple weeks. I traveled a week for work, and they missed me greatly. But it’s left me feeling uncertain as to whether me venting to them is a good idea for either or us in this situation.

I left a job as a project manager in IT, which I was extremely unhappy at. April 1, I began my new job as a Home Dialysis Program Manager at a kidney care company, which required moving from Orange County to west LA. While I find the work fulfilling, my boss is...um.

Last year, of her 8 employees, 2 quit and 1 was fired. She told me that she has the expectation that 3 weeks in, I should be performing as if I’d been in the role “forever.” When I asked her to qualify that, she said 6 months. 6 months, in a position that almost everyone transfers to internally. I need to learn a new company, a new industry, the people, the tools... Don’t even ask me where 6 months come from.

She asks these questions that require a lot of background work and wants answers within hours, even though there’s no actual reason she needs them so quickly. Meanwhile, I’m left to juggle things that actually are urgent, like the staffing issues at one of my clinics and a surgeon dinner I’m holding. So I’m not able to prioritize.

I’ve been so busy that when I stepped on a small shard of glass, I didn’t have time to take it out. The next 2 days at work were so busy that I couldn’t even take a break over 30 seconds or so. I thought I could deal with it after the rush, but the tough skin on the bottom of my foot grew over it. Now it’s locked in by scar tissue, so unless I see a doctor, I don’t know if it will ever come out. Though it doesn’t usually hurt now unless that specific area is pressed on hard.

Anyhow...yeah, that’s my venting. I am fortunate in that I have many supportive friends, but I frankly haven’t even had time to talk. It’s just been festering in my mind. So here it is.

But I am trying...really trying to stay positive. My first day at my new job, a dialysis patient told me, “I can’t afford to think negatively. If I do that, I’m dead.” If I think negatively, I’m dead in the water here. It’s difficult. Bipolar makes it tougher. But I just have to keep trying.

[orageconcepts98]

Gender Envy- (song- Drifter by Duster)

Why could I have been born as a boy? I do not like being a girl I don’t completely hate it, but it has such a disadvantage to it. I feel disgusting in my own body the fact I must cover inches of everything to make sure I don’t appeal to men. I wish my chest wouldn’t grow more than a little as I literally have been told to feel disgusted at my own body the way it was created repulses me, I hate having a butt or having bigger chest or having legs that are too provocative to the other gender. I hate having to cover up in front of my own dad and brother which I don’t understand why, they are my family why should I cover up more, am I being too much for them? What does this mean? I feel disgusted by owning a uterus knowing well one day I could have to bear someone’s child and potentially ruining my own body to have a child I may not have a connection too, also knowing that one day being forced to have a child could become my realty makes me want to puke and sob. I wish I was born a man because they get things easier, they are fine to come home late without their parents becoming mad and angry, they are not told to marry as soon as possible and no-one asks, “when are you going to have a child?”, they are told to continue building their careers and making money, while girls on the other hand are expected to leave careers for their children. I wish I was born a boy so that I could dress in any way I would please without being yelled at to cover my hair or body at all “wear something longer under that jacket your baggy jeans are showing your butt too much” “wear your scarf” “you ankles are showing” “yes it is hot but you need to wear something more covering” “you uncle is coming wear this over your chest” “you are going through puberty so your chest is growing you need to get baggier clothes” I wish none of these were said. I wish I was born a man so that I could not be shamed for being fat or being flat, going on extreme diets to grow skinnier as you relatives make fun for you being fat and your mother as she looks at you differently, working out secretly as you hope to be skinnier even at the end of the day you will be wearing baggier clothes, sibling and parents laughing about the change in your behaviour and joking about your “stupid phase”, but then tell you to stop eating. I wish I was a guy so that I could go to the gym and be muscular, and work long jobs, and to go places by yourself without being cooped up inside. I wish I was a guy so that I couldn’t get pregnant and must carry a child full term, so that I wouldn’t get marriage proposal when I’m 16,18 years old from 40-year-old men, so that I wouldn’t have to continuously worry about walking home at dark. Girls need to be hot to attract some average guy, but average guys can pull a hot girl though some smiles and praises. I wish I was a man so that I could boss around my mom, sister and wife to get me water when we are going to sleep or to cook me food or to pack my lunch or to iron my clothes. I wish I was a man so that I could dress the way I want without having weird looks from my parents and family, I wish I was a man so that I could do any type of job without being told by my parents that’s “no that’s a man job”, I wish I was a man so that my mom would have stopped talking to me about my marriage when I was 13 and telling me the expectations of a good wife when I was 14, I didn’t need to know that, and I wish I was a man so that when I would say “I’m not thinking about marriage” no one would get angry or be hateful.

[skia-oura]

Orange Lilies, 8/12?

A/N: I wrote 11k in 48 hours. Please be prepared to read this in several sittings or not move for an hour or two. I apologize for its length.

Prologue // Previous // Next

Ao3 ff.net-->refuses to accept my copy and paste as non-coded text.

Enjoy!

Chapter 7: Lloyd Remnit is the Victim of a Break and Enter and Subsequent Theft

           It takes several days of ever-heightening tensions to find Lloyd Remnit. In the interim, Torako shouts at Dipper twice to quit hovering (she wants to shout more), Dipper stubbornly refuses to answer any summons (the third time one comes through, he makes a disgruntled expression and mumbles something about an answering machine, whatever that is), and they have a harrowing experience at a Twin Souls convention in South-Central Canada because of a thief. Torako might have enjoyed Dipper’s shock and subsequent revulsion at a graphic Mizcor fanfic reading in room D27, but she was a little busy. Not only was she trying to hunt down the little shit that stole her phone and all the evidence on it, but her period was also square on day two. Yes, she had a MagixTampon in. Yes, she had extras. Also yes, stress fucked her period pain up to astronomical levels, and the cramping was making everything ten times worse than usual.

           Honestly, there were only a few things that saved the convention from being razed to the ground between Torako’s pain-enhanced irritation and Dipper’s Twin Souls related disgust. They were that one, Torako managed to corner the thief between a rarepair merch stall and somebody selling fanart just safe enough to be shown to the public and just raunchy enough to make Dipper squirm, two, Dipper remained stubbornly attached to her hip and was therefore unable to wreak havoc on the convention-goers, and three, the thief apologized in a small, tremulous voice before offering Torako all his money, please, just don’t hurt me I didn’t realize you were this intense. Torako showed mercy. Torako only took half—and she only took it because the thief had wasted time that she could have spent finding Bentley. Even half wasn’t an insignificant amount of cash.

           In the end, however, Dipper managed to find Lloyd Remnit’s residence, and they blipped just outside the walls before continuing on.

           “I still think you should have taken all that dude’s cash,” Dipper said in a (recently) rare display of emotion beyond guilt, protectiveness, or rage. His footsteps were purposefully heavy as they walked up the long gravel drive to Windfall Manor proper. There hadn’t even been a gate, but even with Dipper running interference the hum of the wards they passed through had set Torako’s teeth to vibrating. Rich people, Torako thought.

           “Does this guy even need this much land? This much grass?” Torako said instead of answering Dipper’s question. It was moot point anyways. Torako looked out at the wide, hilly lawn surrounding them, exquisitely cultivated ornamental gardens dotting the landscape here and there. She hadn’t seen so much useless grass in one place in her life. The gardens didn’t even look like they had any fruit- or vegetable-bearing plants in them. It was, quite frankly, insane.

           Dipper did his shrug thing. “Grass was pretty normal a millennia or so ago.”

           “Weird,” Torako mumbled. She stared at a bush shaped like a narwhal as they passed. She half-suspected that it wasn’t even real. “This is a really weird dude.”

           Dipper hummed. They then walked in relative silence, the crunch and rasping squeal of stone against stone the only sound. There was no birdsong, no rustling grass, just clear skies up above and a suspiciously perfect hill just ahead. When Torako took a deep breath in through her nose, she could only just smell wet earth and crisp grass, like a ghost of the real thing. Except, you know, less belligerent and murderous than a ghost. She hoped. Murderous grass was uncommon but not impossible, and she’d already had the dubious pleasure of such an encounter. She wasn’t exactly looking for another one.

           At the crest of the hill, Torako hefted her bag up on her back. It was heavier, after a pit-stop at the grocery store for a bunch of goodies. She’d even picked up a box of Moffios before putting it back. She wanted Bentley to yell at her about sufficient nutrients and the folly of eating something literally made of sugar. And there, on that hill, Torako stared at the mansion for the first time, and felt her heart swell with hope.

           And also vague disbelief. Windfall Manor was located down the other side of the hill and a few meters out from the bottom of the slope. It was one of the most ostentatious buildings she’d ever seen. Bits and pieces of what had to be rooms but weren’t shaped in any way like rooms were floating above the main structure, all elegant curves and impossible spires. There were no stairs, anywhere. So either the floaty bits were yet more ornamentation, or the entire house was connected by a localized teleportation system, which would be completely and utterly ridiculous. It would also be in line with what Torako had seen so far, and so she steeled herself for more extravagance. The walls were a beautiful creamy color that faded in and out of opalescence, and the edges and corners were gilded, shining—gorgeous, but enough that Torako could cry in frustration. The moment the thought struck her, Torako had a bad feeling about the situation.

           “What a piece of work,” Torako said into the still air. Beside her, Dipper was forgetting to breathe convincingly. Oh well, it probably wouldn’t matter much longer.

           “Bentley hasn’t pissed off any rich people, has he?” Dipper asked. Torako raised her eyebrows in his direction and told herself that Mr. Self-Laceration wouldn’t blame Bentley.

           “Sure it’s not you?”

           “Me?” Dipper gestured at the house. “I’m not the owner of that thing, as glorious as the spellwork and as handsome as the mathematical precision is.”

            “No, idiot,” Torako said, frowning. “I mean, have you made any rich enemies that would target Ben in order to hurt you, seeing as you’re kind of hard to hurt yourself?”

           Dipper tilted his head and looked up at the sky. “Not that I remember. You?”

           Torako scowled. They were still standing up on top of the damn hill, having a stupid conversation about inconsequential things and her uterus was set on trying to mimic the pain of being torn apart. She was, perhaps, a little sharper than she meant to be. “Geez, I dunno,  targeting him and then citing you as one of the reasons for kidnapping seems like a pretty good indicator that I’m at fault here. Clearly.”

           Dipper drew in on himself, shoulders up and arms in. He turned away slightly. Torako felt both guilt and a kind of ugly triumph burn through her. She put her hand on his shoulder. She took a deep breath, and tried to focus on what was important.

           “Let’s just…get Bentley.” Torako squinted at Windfall Manor. “I think this place looks promising. Enough money to have enough space to hold somebody, and definitely enough money to do whatever it is to dampen your connection to Ben.”

           “Maybe,” Dipper said. He waited for her to step forward, her hand trailing down and off his arm, before he followed. Torako didn’t know if she felt more like a mob boss or an unwitting mother duck.

           “Do we have a plan for this, anyways?” She asked a couple minutes later, just an arm’s length from the front door. The glass set into the front was frosted, but was also animated to swirl in aesthetically pleasing patterns at random. The door jam was adorned with gilded scrollwork, which in turn were inset with tiny runes and wards. Some of them were actually augmented with literal gemstones, which explained the thrum tugging on the edges of her ears, settling into her fingerbones. Torako whistled. She was looking forward to smashing this dude’s face in and then dragging Bentley out before suing the rich shit for all the money she could give to charity. And also invest in therapy for Bentley, because she’d be damned if a cent of his money went to fix things that he wasn’t even remotely responsible for.

           “A plan?” Dipper came in closer and peered at the runes and wards. He didn’t touch her, didn’t drape all over her like she was his and he was hers. “I was just thinking find Ben and crush this place into dust.”

           Torako tilted her head and grinned a little. It felt plastic on her face. Her eyes ached. “Sounds good to me. Want a pack of gunny bears in exchange for shutting down the Manor defenses?”

           “It’s a deal,” Dipper said. They shook hands. A moment later, there was a harsh crack, the smell of burned ozone, and the gild had melted over splintered gemstones into a mess of dripping gold. It was somehow still elegant. Torako hated it.

           The door, now unshackled by layers of what had to be intricate spellwork, drifted open. Torako reached out, pushed it in, and she and Dipper stepped into Windfall Manor. When she held out her hand, Mizar’s Cultbasher was deposited in it, heavy and comfortable in her grasp. It slid down until the end of it, the hilt of it, pressed into the edge of her palm and pinky finger, grounding her.

           The door closed behind them. Dipper kept his feet on the ground, but that was probably because he liked how his steps echoed in the large reception room around them. Torako looked up and around; the ceiling was like that of a giant greenhouse’s, glass set against glass impossibly smooth. The floor was tile, patterned in giant floral swirls of color. It was cracked, in places, runes and wards and deployment circles cut into unsalvageable bits. Torako swung the bat up to rest against her shoulder.

           It was quiet.

           “Any sign of Ben?” she asked, surveying the empty room around them. It looked like on the end of the far room there was a chair like a throne, but it was empty. There were walls all around, walls of glass. No hallways. No way out except for the way they came in, and they weren’t leaving empty-handed.

           “No,” Dipper said, a tightness in his voice. It sounded like he was on the verge of trembling, but from what Torako couldn’t guess.

           “What about the other one? Lloyd?”

           Dipper didn’t answer immediately. The silence had a cant of unsureness, a measure of disbelief and a dash of exhaustion.

           “Dipper?” Torako turned to look at him. He had risen up, shedding the remains of his human form until he couldn’t be taken for anything but supernatural.

           He avoided her gaze. “I’ll take you to him,” he said, and held out his hand.

           Torako narrowed her eyes, swung the bat off her shoulder. “What price?”

           “Just a small candy bar.” Dipper was quiet. The hair rose up on the back of her neck. Something was wrong, this wasn’t guilt-quiet, this was a dread-quiet.

           “Dipper,” Torako asked, “what’s wrong?”

           “Nothing—” Dipper glanced at her and met her eyes for a second before looking away like she was the one who inspired instinctual fear. “Bentley’s gone, that’s all. Let’s—just get me the candy bar, and I’ll take you to—to Lloyd. Remnit. Him.”

           Torako didn’t want to give the candy bar up until she found out what was wrong with Dipper. The room seemed to yawn around them, the space wide enough to swallow, wide enough to take the mere half-meter between them and twist it into an abyss. The false sunlight peering through was almost oppressive, the sparkling of the split tiles below vicious, like teeth, and Torako was hit with the sudden realization that they needed to fix whatever was between them, without Bentley there to cover up the divide and make it all better. But that was the thing, she thought to herself. Bentley wasn’t there. Bentley had been taken from them.

           Torako stuck out her hand. “Deal,” she said.

           Dipper shook it without ceremony. There was no flash of blue flames. He didn’t smile, roughish and dangerous in the corners or between the press of his teeth. Instead, there was the familiar sensation of being tugged somewhere, and suddenly they were in a bedroom.

           It was dark. The curtains, heavy and thick and embroidered with giant moths, were drawn over one entire wall. She could just barely see the outside light hemmed in on the floor below what had to be windows. Torako walked over to them, traced the exquisite workmanship, the painstakingly stitched forms soft ridges under her fingertips. She looked back at Dipper, who was staring at the bed and the figure under the covers. They were snoring, just slightly. Dipper’s shoulders were slumped, but she couldn’t quite make out his features in the dimness, just the golden glow of his eyes.

           She set the nailbat down, clenched the heavy curtain in her fists, got a feel for the fabric and the heft. “Dipper,” she said, quiet. The relative smallness of the room, the darkness, dampened the sound into something comfortable. Dipper turned his head to look at her.

She tilted her head, held her swathes of curtain up a little. Light billowed stronger onto the ground below, carpeted, spotted with burned magic.

           “Okay,” Dipper said.

           Torako took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, centered herself. Bentley, she told herself, and then she pulled the curtains back as hard as she could.

           Sunlight shone in like a sound, like the sudden blare of a trumpet or the screech of bow against strings, harsh against the preceding silence. The curtains slid, silent, across an invisible track of magical technology. Torako squinted her eyes a little against the invading light, and looked out the window, across the land surrounding them.

           It all seemed so small, from so far up.

           A few moments later, Torako heard the man in the bed groan a little. She turned around, bent down, picked up her nailbat and stood, back to the window. It would disconcert, possibly even frighten, Mr. Remnit. Dipper made no such move, but he was a demon, which was kind of intimidating enough.

           “What the…” the man groaned. He waved a hand at the light coming in. “Wals, I gave you the day off so I could sleep as much as I wanted all day, goddammit.”

           Torako glanced at Dipper. Dipper was still staring at the man, at Lloyd, like he’d broken his favorite toy and then kicked a puppy or two. Alright, then, no help coming from that corner, so Torako opened her mouth and said, “Well, that explains why the place was so gosh darned empty! And why you’re still asleep at four in the afternoon. You’re wasting daylight!”

           God, she was turning into her dad.

           The figure on the bed didn’t move for a long moment. Then he snuggled back down into the blankets and pillows, grumbling something about awful dreams.

           Torako closed her eyes. Then, she opened them and looked up like the ceiling held answers, but no, there were just—lots of images of coquettish, nearly-naked people of all species and gender. One of them winked at her. She felt herself flush, and looked back at the bed. Torako was hit with the sudden thought that maybe, possibly, this man was naked under the covers.

           Torako steeled herself. She had endured horrors few others had, had seen dismembered corpses that still gave her nightmares, had come home to an empty apartment and evidence of kidnapping. She could handle one naked man.

           “Sorry, buddy,” she said. “This isn’t a dream. Isn’t even a nightmare. Out of luck there. Yo, Dip, do you mind making our friend here a bit more aware of the situation he’s in?”

           Dipper stared at her. She pantomimed pulling the sheets off. He stared at her longer, then looked back at the sheets, at the figure stubbornly underneath them, and then lifted his eyebrows in what was clearly a, he might be naked under there, do you really actually want me to do that? gesture.

           She pressed her lips together and nodded once, short. It was her best attempt at a nonverbal no, I really don’t, but this is probably the best.

           Dipper slowly reached his hand out and curled his fingers into the folds of the sheets. He looked back at her, almost pleading. She tilted her head at him and held up a free hand, because what else could they do?

           Wide-eyed, Dipper pressed his lips together. He tugged the sheet once, sharp, but not hard enough to dislodge it. Before Torako could do more than wonder why exactly he was being so weird about it, he opened his mouth and spoke. “I don’t think you want to know what we’re going to do if you don’t get up.”

           Lloyd Remnit shifted in bed, turning around enough to get a glimpse of Dipper. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes, and sat up. He definitely wasn’t wearing a shirt. Torako looked just enough to get an idea of physique; arms a little toned, but mostly old muscle and normal levels of fat for his age. He was a bit aged, Torako thought, but more like uncle than grandfather. Then he leaned back against the headboard, all casual, and smirked down at Dipper.

           “Well, aren’t you a treat?” Lloyd Remnit said. He looked Dipper up and down. Dipper stepped back a little, clearly unnerved by this turn of events. Torako felt a well of anger at Remnit and stepped forward to put herself between Dipper—who clearly knew something she didn’t and was made uncomfortable by it—and the man they’d come to interrogate. That was working well.

           The moment she did that, though, Remnit burst into action, slapping a hand against the closest bedpost. It lit up for a split second before cracking further, green sparks flying out to die, harmless, mid-air. Remnit stared at the bedpost. Torako smiled as she finished blocking Remnit’s view of Dipper.

           “Yeah, we took care of that,” she said, affecting nonchalance and confidence. Even though the room was small, everything in here was clearly quality that would take a decent chunk out of her parents’ paychecks, even before donating a great deal of it to charity. “Any more questions?”

           Remnit squinted at her. “Could you get out of the way? I’d at least like some eye candy to look at.”

           Torako’s smile thinned. She made sure to heft her bat up again, so that Remnit clearly saw what exactly was in store for him if he didn’t stop with his shit. “I’m not eye candy enough for you?” she asked.

           “He’s more my taste,” Remnit said.

           Dipper put a hand on her shoulder. She raised her eyebrows at Remnit, even though she was really raising them at Dipper. There was a moment of silence from him, and then Dipper said, “It’s okay, Ra. If he wants eye candy, I’ll give him eye candy.”

           Torako obliged, and stepped out of the way. Dipper strode past her, got closer to Remnit, and sat on the bed. Remnit seemed a bit taken aback by this gesture.

           Then Dipper held up a hand, and Remnit recoiled, screaming. Sweets poured onto the bed. Torako connected the dots and had to swallow hard at the mental image that came forward.

           “What the fuck!” Remnit screamed, on the other side of the bed. “What the fuck??”

           “You don’t have to eat it,” Dipper said, quiet. “You just said you wanted to look, right? So here it is.”

           “What the fuck are you?? Why are you here, holy fuck!”

           Torako shifted so that she could tackle Remnit if need be. He might try to run. They weren’t going to let him. She would break his arm before letting him go. There was a wardrobe half in the way, but it would slow him down just enough to help her catch him easier.

           “We’re here for an important friend of ours,” Dipper said. There was an undercurrent to his voice that had Remnit paling. “And last thing we found pointed to you.”

           “In case you need reminding,” Torako said, an easy smile back on her face, “it has to do with a fridge you commissioned. Could transport live bodies?”

           Remnit’s dark eyes, somewhat familiar, flickered between the two of them. “I have…hypothetical knowledge of that,” he whispered, then wet his lips. “What’s…in it for me?”

           Torako laughed a little. “What do you think is in it for you?”

           “You should probably answer wisely,” Dipper said, eyes clear, still on the bed. Anyone who didn’t know him wouldn’t see how wrong he was arranging himself into something casual, unaffected.

           “I…” Remnit said. “I…didn’t get to where I am now by settling.”

           Torako smirked, but she was watching Remnit’s hands. They were twitching in a way that seemed half-controlled. She thought about the level of magic set into the house, how much everything relied on it.

           “Dipdop,” she said.

           “I know,” he said. “He won’t do anything.”

           Remnit’s movements faltered. “What?”

           “He won’t want to tell us anything either,” Dipper said. He shifted. “If he’s anything like the man I once knew…is this about family, Lloyd?”

           “I haven’t met you before,” Remnit said. He took a step back, back against the tall, ornate wardrobe Torako had noticed earlier. It was very clean, light glinting off it like the wood was alive. Torako’s smile felt frozen to her face.

           “Not that you remember,” Dipper said. “And I guess that makes all the difference, doesn’t it? I’m not family, somebody else is. The somebody who has Bentley.”

           “What are you even on about?” Remnit snapped. He slapped his hand against the wardrobe, transferred whatever spell he’d been crafting between his fingers into the wood. It crackled, distorted, then shot at both Torako and Dipper. Torako tucked into a smooth roll and slammed the nailbat into the wood hard enough to punch holes, the enchantments on the bat combating with the enchanted wardrobe.

           Dipper had tessered right up against Remnit, who sucked in a quick breath and stilled. Torako stood, watched.

           “Bentley,” Dipper said, “is my family. You were once, Stan. But that was lifetimes ago, so I can’t blame you for not being now, right?”

           “Dipdop,” Torako said.

           “What the fuck?” Remnit whispered.

           “Except I will blame you,” Dipper said. He set his hand against Remnit’s forehead. “Your loyalty has been given to the wr̢ò͏n͏̢g̨҉ person this time, Stan. Tell me where m̘ͦͥ͆ͯ̀y̳̩̘͉̑̉̄̀̇ͨͦ ̡̈͊̚s̬̹̗͎̲͂̈́ì̥̩ͅst͇̙͙̝͓e̝̹̟̹̮̯͒̒ͧ̇̈́r̴̗̝̖̭̫͌̒̚ ̧͓͈̠̯ͦ̅́ͤ̑̆ͦi͓̞͕̮͉̳̫͡s̡̩̪̰̋̌ͧ̏.”

           Torako’s smile slid off her face. She stepped forward.

           “I don’t know,” Remnit said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

           “Who did you commission the stasis fridge for?” Dipper crooned. “I will give you what you desire most if you just tell me who you commissioned that stasis fridge for.”

           Torako took another step. “Dipper, stop. You’re getting out of hand. Dipper, stop.”

           Remnit paused. Then, he laughed, hard and long, startling Dipper enough that he pulled away just a little, just enough for something in the air to loosen and for Torako to breathe a little easier.

           “Nothing,” Remnit said, “is more important than family.”

           Dipper didn’t even breathe. He canted his head back towards Torako. “I agree,” he said. Torako read the question in the quirk of his pointed ear, in the set of his hand on his hip. She pursed her lips.

           “There’s no other way?” she asked.

           “Stan is stubborn,” Dipper said. “I admired that, once.”

           Torako readjusted the grip on her nailbat. “A bag of Octopods and a bag of Chocolate Chicken Waffle Chips?”

           “And a lock of hair,” Dipper said.

           Remnit had lost some of the courage he’d pulled together only moments before. It had, Torako thought, evidently fled in the pieces he’d finally put together. “No,” he said. “My wards, they’re too strong.”

           “And a lock of my hair,” Torako said, “in return for the knowledge of who took Bentley, and where they live.”

           “Who are you?” Remnit hissed. He held up a hand, desperate energy crackling in it, and shoved it into Dipper. Dipper looked down at it, then grinned at Remnit.

           “Ḓ̸̥̯̈ͣ͌ͪ̇̏̎͢e̸̥͕̼̎̂͂ͤa̶̡̼̰͉͓ͭ̽̉ͤ̊ͭͅl̀̈̍̋͡͏̥̙͖̤̻̬͍̠ͅ,” he said, blue flaring high, and set his hands on Remnit’s head like he was going to pluck the strings of a harp, delicate but firm.

           Remnit didn’t scream. He let out a hitched sob. Dipper withdrew something from Remnit’s mind, and then flung it out. A heartbeat, two, and then Torako knew.

           Torako stared at Remnit. He was collapsed on the ground, a puppet with cut strings, a man whose base morals had been violated. Torako remembered Bentley, kneeling at his father’s funeral, accepting orange lilies with shaking hands. She remembered dark, flat eyes. Something dark and horrible and scared welled up in the pit of her chest, nearly choking her. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to kill Remnit.

           “How dare you,” Torako told Remnit, voice shaking. “How fucking dare you hide behind family to justify their actions. You fucking supported them! What the actual fuck?”

           “You took it from me,” Remnit whispered to his hands. “You took it from me.”

           “And your nibling took my partner from me!” Torako screamed.

           “Torako?” Dipper asked.

           Torako lifted the nailbat. Her hand hurt from how tight she was gripping it. She wanted to drive Mizar’s Cultbasher into Remnit’s skull, over and over. How dare he. How dare he.

           Bentley was more important.

           “Dipper,” Torako said. She dropped the bat, stared at Remnit, heartbeat roaring in her ears. “I will give you another bag of candy, one in my bag, to make sure he can’t warn anybody about what’s coming for them. He can’t tell anybody we were here. He can’t tell anybody we’re coming. He can’t tell anybody what was done to him. He can’t let anybody know that they’re in danger.”

           “I mean, okay, but Torako?”

           “Do we have a deal or not, Alcor?” Torako snarled. Remnit flinched at Alcor’s name, started crying.

           Dipper was silent for several rapid heartbeats, then he said, “Deal.” Torako’s backpack lightened again, and Dipper put his hand on Remnit’s head again. Blue flames flared, then died, and Remnit curled over, hiding his face in his hands.

           “Let’s get out of here,” Torako said, after a long moment. She felt vindicated, and terrible, and angry and scared because Bentley had told them he was Mizar.

           “Torako, who was it?” Dipper caught her arm, talons digging in just a little. Torako looked into his eyes. Her body was light, carried on a wave of turbulent emotion.

           “Once we get out,” Torako said, and no sooner had she spoken were they on the lawn by the wardstones, right at the beginning of the gravel path. The sky was still, there was no birdsong, and the grass under their feet was artificial at best. Everything was wide and open and wrong.

           “Tell me,” Dipper said. She couldn’t stall any longer.

           “Dr. Fantino,” Torako said. “Their name is Vallian. They gave Bentley orange lilies at Philip’s funeral.”

           Dipper froze, eyes wide in horror. The air was suddenly like syrup, pressing down on her shoulders and leaving her slow, heavy. “The one that Bentley…”

           “Cursed.” Torako gripped Dipper’s hand with everything she had. She laughed a little at a sudden thought, high and on the hysterical side. “Bentley really did piss off somebody rich, I guess.”

           Dipper snarled. The air around him turned dark, almost misty. Everything around them seemed like it was moving, but Torako felt nothing. His wings curled and grew into a shroud around them, at once shielding and suffocating. “I̢̛͉̳̓̓ͯ̔ ̵̶̷͙͉͔͈̱̫͚̑̀̏̐̌ͫ͒ͅw̷̝̜̜͙̯̻ͧ̇̑̍͌ͅi̶̸̗̲̿͆l̵̖̻͈͈̙͙̱͉͑ͤ̽ͤ͑̇̔͢l̹̤̥̼̼ͦͦ̾̉͜ ̞̬͇̥̖̻̖̓̊̾̓͌̑̿̃͝d̸̶̮͍̠͇̂ͥe̛̝̻̖̰̥͕̓͌̍ͤs̛͕̭̟̔͗ť̬͔͍̍̽ͩ̌́̚͜r͋͂̀̊͏͏͙͈̥o͔̪̥̲̠̎͛ͧ͢ȳ͍ ̯͇͇̗̱̘̭͈̻́ͮ̊̌̊̇̒́͝ḩ̤̠̘̮̳̠̞̐ͭͩͤ͡i̴̼ͯͩ̈́͐ͣ̋m̪̫̠͑̓ͩ͊́͆ͥͩ̇͘͟,” Dipper said. “I̤̣̭̹̻̾̽̓͊͋̍̏̈́’̺͈̪̲̪̖̘͂̿̈̔͞l̞͇͈͔̩̩̙͙̗̊̋ͧ̚͘l̢̧̰̾̀ͩ̓ͭͭ͋͘—̛̬͕̗͍͇̲̜̫ͬͪ̇̐̾͘ͅ”

           Torako’s phone chimed, the chime from Lata’s parents. It cut through the syrup around her; the last she’d heard from Lata’s parents hadn’t exactly been positive news. Her heart in her throat, she pulled it out, navigated to messages. She choked, her fear rising above her anger. Bentley was important, but Lata was—Lata was a baby.

           “Dipper,” she said. “Lata’s missing. Lata’s—we have to find Lata.”

           Dipper let out a noise that was more squealing tires and thunder than human, tugged her close, and they left Windfall Manor more abruptly than they’d arrived.            

           Bentley had lost track of time.

           He also lost track of what it’s like to actually chew or ingest food orally; all of the nutrients his body requires have been supplied to him so far by a NutriPatch, even though those are really only supposed to be used short term. He should know, he visited Torako in the hospital and got that lecture from the nurse on Torako’s behalf. That had been a little uncomfortable. Maybe not as uncomfortable as the saline drip embedded in his arm—that was sure to leave a scar and he was high-key avoiding those thoughts—but certainly not fun.

           Bentley had also lost track of what it’s like to move more than five steps at a time. He was always strapped down to the bed when people come in to check his vitals, take DNA samples for some awful reason that he would freak out over if he thought about it, so he didn’t. He also was reduced to dragging around his IV drip with him, because there was some sort of non-tamper seal on the drip and he hadn’t managed to get his hands on anything that would allow him to sigil it off. He wanted to save the last-resort of using his own blood as a medium until he had a clearer chance to escape.

           What Bentley had gained, had slowly been gaining, was energy.

           Not quickly. No, residual, fragmented nightmares kept him from actually getting the sleep he needed to make a decent recovery. At the same time, he also wasn’t being actively sucked of energy in order to fuel his own nightmares and keep him locked in a mirror hellscape funland of his own imagining, so, the pros were outweighing the cons at the moment. Bentley was going to take whatever the fuck he could get.

           Which, he thought as he sat in a corner in the dark, pale hospital gown pooling around him, wasn’t exactly a lot.

           He pressed his chin to the valley between his knees, looked out to where he knew the vase of orange lilies sat in a protective alcove. For somebody who professed not to ascribe to acting based on illogical emotion, Bentley thought, Dr. Fantino was really, almost hilariously petty. It made him really angry.

           Even after what felt like at least a week of knowing the lilies were there, they made Bentley want to cry. The slight against his father had been turned into something worse, something to taunt and goad Bentley with rather than an honest, if despicable, act. Dr. Fantino, Bentley knew, was using Philip to get under Bentley’s skin, and it was working. When he wasn’t too exhausted to feel, or too stressed and sad to think, Bentley was constantly furious. Dr. Fantino being absent whenever Bentley was awake only fanned the flames higher; they had the gall to kidnap him, subject him to torture that was sure to set him back years’ worth of therapy, and then? They didn’t even? Interact? With him?

           Bentley hugged himself tight, digging his hands into his legs. He was losing weight. His hair was uncomfortably long. His nails were kept trimmed and soft, but they would be longer than he was used to if they hadn’t been. Bentley was losing time.

           He closed his eyes, started to doze in the corner. He woke an indeterminable amount of time later, feeling space closing in around him, crushing him, welding his throat shut and unable to make a single sound.

           Bentley yelled at the walls to make himself feel better until nothing came out but a raspy, whistley noise. Then he couldn’t make noise with his throat, and it was awful, but drumming his fingers on the floor helped, standing and moving just because he could helped. When he was able to think again, Bentley set his forehead against the wall and closed his eyes.

He lifted his hand, one finger outstretched, and began to trace the shape of sigils into the wall. “Fire,” he said in a whisper, tracing fire and then breaking it. “Water. Earth. Lightning. Air. Connection,” and so on, creating and detonating in his mind’s eye. Every so often, he traced Alcor’s circle into the wall. Said please. Waited long moments in which he knew nothing would happen, but hoped anyways, before moving on to more complicated, more powerful, more theoretically dangerous things. Bentley wondered, absently, why Dipper hadn’t come yet.

  Then, the lights came on and they gassed the room to knock him out. He drooped down the side of the wall, throat sore, and watched the blurry images of the nurses come in to bundle him back into bed. He was harmless. His limbs didn’t move. They showed no fear.

Bentley was losing time, but there was nothing he could do but bide it.

           Lata was in Australia. Lata was safe. Lata was happily playing with a very tired woman Torako’s never met, who Lata apparently has and who Lata had also successfully conned into letting her visit. The woman did not yet know this. Lata had whispered it gleefully in Torako’s ear because Torako was the Fun One, right before Dipper had pulled Torako abruptly aside to demand they destroy everything Fantino held dear.

           Torako had to convince Dipper that that did not mean it was time to lambast Fantino’s house, under her breath and doing her best not to let the woman whose house they were in know that, you know, she had let a demon inside.

           “It’s home,” Torako hissed to Dipper. “Yeah it’s where he lives too, but you’ll go overboard and cause another international incident, beyond the mysterious glass found in the middle of the desert. Yes, I saw that article, you didn’t hide it nearly well enough.”

           “Bentley could be there,” Dipper hissed back, his face inhuman because he wasn’t looking at the Australian woman—Torako thought her name was Tom, or Tam, or something. “We need to get Bentley and make that man pay.”

           “We don’t even know if Ben’s in the house,” Torako said.

           “We don’t even know that he isn’t,” Dipper retorted. Their faces were close in order to facilitate better hearing at lower decibels, and also in order to increase the intensity of their glaring at each other.

           “Whatchu doing?” Lata asked, flopping over Torako’s back. Torako tipped forward at the unexpected weight. Her face smooshed into Dipper’s, her nose almost jamming into his eye.

           “This is a private conversation,” Dipper said, tense but trying not to make Lata cry. Torako braced her hands on his shoulders and pushed herself back upright. Lata giggled.

           “This’s private property, and it’s seven fucking thirty in the fucking morning,” the Australian Woman Tom Slash Tam said.  “You got something to say, say it loud’n clear.”

           Dipper and Torako exchanged a look. Torako turned to face Tom Slash Tam, and said in the flattest tone she could manage, “Lata did not tell you that their parents had no idea they were going to Australia.”

           Tom Slash Tam stared. “What.”

           “I got a text, just earlier today—” which was not a lie, just a very misleading turn of phrase “—in a panic about where Lata had disappeared off to. I need to let them know where they are. Dipper thinks we should return immediately. I think you need to be told what’s up.” That was a lie. They hadn’t even discussed it.

           Tom Slash Tam gaze shifted to the limpet on Torako’s back. They had their face pressed into the back of Torako’s neck. “Lata,” Tom Slash Tam said.

           Lata whined and squeezed Torako’s neck tighter. Torako choked a little and tapped Lata’s crossed arms furiously.

           Tom Slash Tam crouched down lower. “Lata,” she said, voice low. “Did you lie to me?”

           Lata whined again and kicked their feet against Torako’s butt. Torako pried their arms from around her neck and breathed a little easier, but didn’t move to make Lata face the other woman.

           “Lata,” Dipper said. Torako glanced at him. His eyes were white and brown again, which was disconcerting every time she saw them like that. “Answer Tommy, please.”

           Lata said something into Torako’s neck.

           “Speak up, please,” Torako said.

           “I said I don’t feel they right now, I feel she,” Lata said, directly into Torako’s ear.

           Tommy nodded. “That’s fine, thank you for telling us. But Lata, did you lie to me about coming over?”

           Lata paused. “No,” she said in a bald-faced lie.

           Torako raised her eyebrows at Tommy. Tommy raised hers right back. They shared the look that adults do when kids decide to be more difficult than the situation calls for, and then Tommy pressed on.

           “Then did…Torako, was it? Right, Torako. Then did Torako lie?”

           Lata paused again. Torako knew that she was going to be thrown under the bus as last-minute sacrifice when Lata said, “Yes.”

           “So,” Tommy drawled, “you didn’t actually try to pull the wool over my eyes by fabricating—making up—several messages saying that yes, they’d be glad to let you come see me, yes they were happy to’ve meet me and make sure I wasn’t some sort of creep after their kid and I made a real good impression, can you take our kid in a couple days?”

           Torako did not point out that the whole situation was unrealistic. She honestly didn’t understand how Tommy could have been fooled by a five year old.

           “Yes,” Lata said. She dug her hands into Torako’s shoulders, and Torako hissed in discomfort. “I’m only five.”

           Tommy narrowed her eyes at Torako. Torako sighed, pulled out her phone, and navigated to the message in question. Tommy took the phone, read the message, and sighed back at Torako. “I’m a fuckwit,” Tommy said, before pulling out her own phone to call Lata’s parents and walking a few steps away.

           Lata leaned into Torako and whispered, loudly, “You sold me out!”

           Torako looked, unimpressed, at Dipper. At the look on his face, her expression faltered. “Dipper?” she asked.

           “Are you done?” Dipper asked. He’d sunk his fingers into the floor, curved and rigid in ways human hands were never meant to be. Torako’s heart sunk, and she felt Lata scrunch down more behind Torako’s back. “Lata is fine. Lata is safe. We should be finding Bentley.”

           Torako narrowed her eyes. “We’re not going to the CalFed.”

           “It’s our only clue,” Dipper hissed.

           “And they will know you’re there,” Torako said, straightening up. Lata slid off her. “Because you will have no chill while you’re there, and then they’ll find out that I’m involved, and we’ll never be let back into the country.”

           Dipper snarled. His eyes flashed black and gold before they turned back to brown and white. “You’re worried about being let back in to the country?”

           “My family lives there,” Torako snarled right back, nastiness blooming in her. “We are not putting them in danger.”

           “They won’t be in danger.”

           “Tell that to the glass in the Sahara Desert,” Torako said. She leaned forward and bared her teeth. Dipper bared his right back, sharp like sharks’ and wide enough to clamp around her throat. Torako didn’t back down.

           “Do you even lo̕v̡e Bentley?” Dipper sneered, and it was like he’d stabbed her in the heart. “You’re messing around here and he’s in the hands of an egotistical shit who knows who he is and if you l̸o̸v͠ed̢ ̡ him, you’d go s̛͝͡av̵͡è̀͘ ̵h̵̵̡im͢.”

           Torako moved through shock, to hurt, to grief and then back to anger fast enough that if it had been turns on a roller coaster, she’d have suffered whiplash. She surged forward, pushing her face up into Dipper’s and grabbing a fistful of his shirt. “Who was the fuckhead who ran off and wasn’t there for Bentley in the first fucking place?” she said, voice low, deep like it was coming from her chest.

           Dipper’s face twisted in guilt and fury. His eyes flicked from her eyes down to just below her chin. She lifted it, exuding as much I’d like to see you try as she could. Deep down, underneath her hurt and anger, something was screaming at her to back down, to get away and to stop threat-posturing in front of something that could crush her without a second thought.

           “What the fuck is going on here?”

           Torako blinked. She remembered, suddenly, where they were, who they were with. She realized, a split second after remembering, that Dipper’s face was sporting some decidedly unhuman features, and she tugged Dipper in closer so that Tommy couldn’t see. Torako looked up at Tommy.

           “We’re…fighting,” she said.

           Lata was standing next to Tommy. Her eyes looked suspiciously shiny, and Torako watched as she tugged on Tommy’s well-worn shirt. “They said Uncle Ben is gone, and they gotta find him.”

           Tommy crossed her arms. “I think you need to explain what batshit fuckery is going on. Not on the floor. We paid for the fucking couches, and so you’re going to use them and be civilized about it, not like a couple of pixies fighting over a scrap of magic in the local tarot reader’s dumpbin. “

           Dipper stood. Torako knew that he hadn’t put his human guise back on by how Tommy inhaled sharply and took a step back, herding Lata behind herself.

           “We don’t have time,” Dipper said. There was a buzz against Torako’s skin, like a cacophony of cicadas pressing into her. She took a deep breath. “Bentley isn’t safe, he is o͘u҉rs, he is m̧i̸͟n͏e̵̴, and he n͢͏̸e̷̴̕e̴͟͢ḑ̸͏s͟͞͠ ͜t̶҉o͜͠ ́b͝ȩ ͝s̛̛͜av͡͏ȩ͢͞d̡̛͟.”

           Tommy looked between the two of them, eyes narrowed. Torako stood up, angling herself between Tommy and Dipper. She didn’t know which one of them she was supposed to end up stopping, if it came to blows.

           “Dipper,” Torako said. “I told you, going to Fantino’s house isn’t going to help anything.”

           Dipper dug his hand into her arm (again, what was with him and her arm lately) and spun her around. Something inside her strained at the manhandling. “Y̴̡o̶̵̢u͜ ́k̨ņow̢͘ ̷͡no͜t͡h́͝i̶n͞g of where he is,” he said, static peppering his voice and burrowing beneath her skin. The tone, the words, made that strained something snap, and Torako stood tall. “You are m̢͟͟͠͠o̡̡͜r̷̴̶̀͟ţa҉́͏̛ĺ̵̶͢ ̢̢̀͢͞  and you can’t b̴́e̵̢gin͠͠ t͠͞҉o͢ ̕u̢̕n̶d̡̢͢e̡r҉̴s̢t̴̢͞a̴n͏͟d͡ ̷͏w̶h̀͡a̢̕t̡ ͞it’̴̧͟s̡ l̴í̵͝k̕é—”

           “I love him too,” Torako said, pushing right back, grabbing his arm right back and squeezing tight, curling her fingers as much into claws as she could. He had melted back into his suit, void-black and snow-white and intimidating as all fuck to people who didn’t know him, which was most of the planet and more. She knew him, though. She wasn’t fucking intimidated by his fancy-ass suit or his impossible fabric or even his goddamn teeth. Torako stared him down, using her height to her advantage. If he wanted to float and be taller that way, he’d have to shove her face out of the way. “I love him, I told you I love him more than I love myself—”

           “Ć̷ĺ̴ęa̵̸͜r̡͢͞l̸y ỳo̧̕͘u͢ ͜d̴̛o҉̧n’̷͘t̛̕͟,̷͘͠ ̢b̡̛ȩc̷̡a̶̡u͝s̶͠e ̀y̷͡ou̸̕ ҉a̵r̵͟e̵ǹ̵̡’̷̧t̢͜͢ ̴͡ w̴͡í̴̡͝l̶͡ĺ̵͜͡҉i̕҉n̕g̢̀͡҉ t̸͠ơ̴͠—͟͞”

           “I do, you absolute fuckface, and you also don’t know where he is, that’s the whole fucking reason he’s still not safe—”

           Somebody was crying, but Torako didn’t care because Dipper needed to be shut down and also kicked a little, probably.

           “I kn̶ow͏ m̸ore t́han y̧ou, y̵ou̧ w͝oul̸d ̶kn̡o͢w ͢nothi͠ng ҉i̷f̸ it ̵w̵eren’t̢—͝”

           “And neither would you, because you left, you left and went off to have a fucking pity party instead of being with us—”

           “HEY!”

           Torako, without looking, snapped over her shoulder, “Shut up and stay out of it.”

           Dipper hiss-snarled from around her shoulder. His wings had come out, sharp and wicked and shadow. Torako drew herself up even further and pushed down on his arm.

           “Stop l̛̀͠ò̡̧͝o̷̷̧͘͞m̴̴i҉̨̛n̸̢͠͞͏g͠҉̵̕,” Dipper growled.

           “Stop hurting me,” Torako growled right back.

           “Jus̶t̡ ͟imagi͡ne wh̴at͞ Bȩntl̵ȩy’s ́g̛oinģ thro̷ug̴h͘,̡” Dipper said, “bec͞au̷se y͏o̢u ̧woưl̷d͞n’͠t ͘l̷e͠t̢ m͏e̛ ͏ t͏e̴a̛r ̢͞t̸͞h͏̸a҉t̶̷̨ p͢e͘r҉s̷̷on͠’̧̀s̴ ҉h̸͜o̢m͟e̡͠͠ ̷͝͡a̕͜p̸á̢͏r̸̡͡t̴҉ ̵̧t̕͞ǫ͝ ̵́́fín̨͟d̀ ͟͝hìm̕͠͏.̧”

           “Just imagine what Bentley would feel,” Torako said right back, “when he found out you decimated the place he grew up because you weren’t thinking straight.”

           “J̛́u͜s͜t̡ i̴͝m͢a҉g̸͝i͢͢ńe͏̧,” Dipper started, but never finished because suddenly there was a deluge of icy water being splashed on them. Torako shrieked. Dipper jumped up in the air and stayed there, blinking the water out of his eyes. Torako wiped soaking hair from out of her face and tried to process what had just happened.

           “You get to clean that up, by the way,” Tommy said. Torako looked over, finally, and Tommy was holding Lata in one arm so that Lata could press her face into Tommy’s chest. There was a bucket in her other hand. “Towels’re in the bathroom. Get your arses dry and mop the floor up and then come sit on the damned couch. Stop making the kid cry.”

           Torako, dripping water, exchanged a guilty glance with Dipper. Dipper caught her eye, and looked away.

           Yeah. Torako nodded, fight gone, and turned around to go get some towels. If she took a while coming back, and if her eyes were a little red when she finally emerged, then nobody would say anything.

           Dipper curled up on one end of the couch. Torako was curled up on the other, a towel around her shoulders. There was as much space as possible between them.

           Dipper hated and needed it all at once.

           Across from them, on a ratty armchair that looked as though it was held up only by layers and layers of threadbare spells, Tommy nursed something slightly alcoholic and stared them down. Crackles of amber irritation lanced through her aura. She’d sent Lata to another room to play with their dog. Dipper hadn’t even noticed the dog, coming in, too caught up in Fantino, and Bentley, and the all-encompassing need to save and fix.

           “So,” Tommy said, finally. “I’ve got a fuckin demon in my house.”

           Dipper scrunched his shoulders and crossed his arms. He looked away at the bookshelf, which held an eclectic collection of physical books, datapads, storage drives and also various animal skulls.

           “Which one is he?” Tommy asked. Dipper hunched over more and noted one book was about astrophysics. More specifically, he realized, the mingling of magic with astrophysics, and postulation as to whether or not there was a limit to how far magic extended from Earth, and if it was an Earth-only phenomenon or one that extended throughout the entire universe, or something inbetween.

           “Alcor,” Torako said, quiet and not quite like herself. Dipper wondered if she’d ever been herself, since Bentley had been taken. He’d been too wrapped up in himself to notice.

           “Of course,” Tommy drawled. “Of fucking course. I threw water on one of the most powerful known entities in the universe.”

           Dipper thought of the glimpses of his future, aching loneliness and power enough to burn whatever he touched. He didn’t like thinking about that, so he started thinking about magic and astrophysics again, while half-paying attention to the conversation going on in the same room.

           “It happens,” Torako said.

           “And you!” Tommy said, louder. “You were going nose to nose with that overpowered soulsucker, what the fuck are you?”

           “His…friend? Partner?” Torako paused. “I’m human, if that’s what you’re asking.”

           Dipper switched his attention to the couch under his hand. He started to trace the weave with his claws, dulling their edges so that he didn’t snap the threads on accident.

           “You arse-tipped dick-waffling crazy shit,” Tommy said. “And there’s…another one of you, right? The one that’s missing?”

           Guilt and grief and anger gripped Dipper so tight he forgot himself, punching a hole into the couch. Seized by terror, he checked that connection between himself and Mizar again—still dampened, still there, butterfly-wingbeat-weak against his senses.

           “My couch,” Tommy said.

           “Sorry,” Dipper said. He glanced over at Tommy, aura a confusing mix of colors, and then away. “Sorry.”

           “Yeah,” Torako said. “Bentley. Um. It’s a long story.”

           “That’s fine,” Tommy said. “Give me the important shit.”

           “Um. I guess. Bentley got kidnapped, about five days ago? I can’t remember exactly. I was useless the first day, and after that things have gone so—so fast. We finally found out who took him, today, and we know why, but we don’t—we don’t agree on what to do next.”

           “Shit,” Tommy said. “And you’ve only had each other for company for five days?”

           Torako laughed. Dipper concentrated on curling in on himself as much as he could at the bitterness there. “Yeah. We—we’re kind of a mess, aren’t we?”

           “Fuckin understandable, though,” Tommy said. She paused. “Is it normal for him, to, uh, do that?”

           Torako shifted. She huffed a little, but when she spoke there was a bit of a smile in her voice. “Dipper, your tween is showing.”

           Dipper looked back at her. She seemed a little larger than before, and with an aura dulled with emotional exhaustion it meant that he’d shrunk again. Dipper put his face in his hands.

           “I take that as a yes.” Tommy was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, drink held loosely in one hand. “Not the weirdest thing I’ve seen, though.”

           The front door opened. A voice floated in, strong and upbeat. “Darling, you called just a bit ago? Is everything all right?”

           Dipper stared at Tommy over the tips of his claws. Tommy took a long, languid sip of her drink before answering. “In the living room, Filara! We’ve got some…disastrously interesting guests. Lata’s in the bedroom with Fuzzles.”

           “That’s right,” Torako said, a little faintly. “You have a wife.”

           “I do,” Tommy said, a kind of proud, self-satisfied grin on her face.

           “She…going to be okay with this?”

           “Well, she might be able to help you. She knows a bit of everything. Smart woman, my Filz.” Tommy’s grin took on a shit-eating cant. “Also the reaction’ll be balls hilarious.”

           Dipper groaned. Pathetic. All-powerful demon and Acacia’s troublemaking nature always made him quail.

           “What’s that about your balls?” Filara asked. Dipper looked at Filara, and then kept looking, because that was Lionel and what was Lionel doing married to Acacia?

           “Our guests might have a couple of questions for you,” Tommy said. She gestured to the both of them, sad and huddled on the couch, like she was unveiling some great and wonderful monument to the world.

           “Oh, I’m happy to answer…” Filara looked from Torako to Dipper and trailed off. She stared. Dipper stared back, still lost in the mental gymnastics of but this is my dad but that is my niece but this is my dad and my niece married???? and only distantly aware of the fact that he looked like a prepubescent non-human in an impossible suit.

           There was a beat of silence born of mutual surprise.

           “Uh,” Filara said. “Darling?”

           Tommy took another sip of her drink. Out of the corner of his eye, Dipper could see smug pinpricks of orange-lilac in her aura. “Yes, Filz?”

           “Ignoring the gorgeous woman on our couch,” Filara said, “there’s…a thirteen-year-old on our couch?”

           Torako made a gurgling noise. Dipper was almost impressed. Most people pegged him for ten or eleven. Nobody overshot his age (even if it was just barely) in this form.

           “Kind of,” Tommy said.

           “And he’s…they’re…she’s…not…human?”

           “That’s speciesist. Wow Filz. I expected better of you.”

           Torako kind of half-raised her hand. “He’s a demon.”

           “Yes, a demon. Thank you, gorgeous woman whose name I don’t know.” Filara took a half step forward as Torako gurgled again, and shifted her corrective lenses. He almost hadn’t seen them. “Darling, why is there a demon on our couch?”

           Tommy hummed. “Ask him.”

           Filara took a deep breath, then turned to face Dipper more squarely. “Why are you on our couch?”

           Dipper gestured at Tommy, and every answer except for, “She told me to” escaped his mind in that moment.

           Torako supplemented the information. “I got a text from Lata’s parents. They didn’t know she’d come here, though I think they know now, and they know where the bill for the ticket to get here came from.”

           “Ah.” Filara said. She waved her hand, and a rocking chair appeared from nowhere to settle in next to Tommy’s threadbare monstrosity. Dipper recognized the echo of Lionel’s taste in furniture in the cushions, firm but not flat. “That explains a little more, but not enough. Start from the beginning?”

           Dipper opened his mouth.

           “Not you,” Filara said, and proceeded to point at Torako. Tommy took another smug sip of her alcohol. There was lemon in it. Dipper bet that it was something Torako would like. “You. Mr. Demon seems a little useless information-wise, and no offense but I’m not sure I would trust him. Also,” she said, glancing back at Dipper, “can I get a name so I don’t call you Mr. Demon? It seems a little odd to, especially when you’re being so quiet and polite and not actively bartering for my soul or my left arm.”

           “I’m Tyrone,” said Dipper.

           “He’s Alcor,” said Tommy a heartbeat later.

           Filara settled back in her chair with an air of confusion and also mistrust. She looked at Torako.

           “He’s both,” Torako said. “I call him by a nickname. You’d know him as Alcor.”

           “Cool,” Filara said. “Cool cool cool, I’m just going to ignore that he’s Alcor in my sitting room. Please tell me why you’re here and what’s on your mind, Ms. Gorgeous.”

           Torako gurgled again. Then she obliged.

           “…and then we got into a big fight in front of Lata and your wife,” Torako said before taking a sip of the drink that Filara had insisted on getting for her. Lata had come out at some point, and was clinging to the Hangars’ beagle mix between Torako and Dipper. She was also asleep, so everybody was trying to be as calm as possible. Aside from a couple of tense moments, mostly because Dipper said something snide and Torako said something snide back, they had succeeded.

           “She threw water on us,” Dipper said. “It was effective.”

           Filara hummed. She seemed less concerned with the fact that Dipper was in the room and more preoccupied with what Torako had said. “And you said that Alcor said that he couldn’t feel Bentley very well?”

           Torako nodded. “He can explain it better than I can, obviously.”

           “Explain, please.” Filara pulled a stylus and pad out of what seemed to be thin air. Tommy had long since gone to the kitchen to make food. It was lunchtime. They had been in this house for hours. Torako was very, very hungry.

           “So, it’s like he’s in another dimension,” Dipper said. “Except nobody should be able to do that? So it has to be a pocket dimension, but it doesn’t feel like a pocket dimension. It’s like, there’s more layers between us, muffling everything. I should be able to feel how he feels, but instead it’s hard enough to tell that he’s still alive.”

           “A little creepy, but all right.” Filara jotted down notes, appraised them. “And you said the kidnapper has access to significant funds?”

           “Yes,” Torako said.

           “And also used cutting-edge technology to use a sophisticated but also very traceable way to transport Bentley while in forced stasis slash nightmares?”

           “Also yes.” Torako took a swig of alcohol, closed her eyes at the sharp burn of liquor and citrus. It grounded her. Torako did not necessarily want to become an alcoholic, but by everything good was it helping. She had needed this.

           She also, desperately, needed some of whatever was cooking in the kitchen, because it smelled absolutely wonderful.

           “Interesting.” Filara continued taking notes, switching from her right to her left in order to gesture at the bookcase Dipper had been staring at earlier in sullen silence. A couple books and a datapad floated over to her. One title was in a language Torako couldn’t read, and the other was made up of such outdated terminology that Torako could barely understand it was about warding theory.

           “Is it okay to be here, though?” Torako asked. “You came back from somewhere really early in the morning.”

           Filara flapped her hand at Torako. “It’s fine, that contract was paying me pennies for the work they wanted anyways. I only took it because I was bored. I’ll find another short-term job soon enough.”

           “Isn’t the Australian job market kind of bad right now?” Dipper asked. He was leaning back, a little more gangly and teenager than he had been earlier.

           “That’s why I can’t find anything not short-term,” Filara said. “Also why I decided I’d throw my net wide instead of deep, so to speak. More variety of possible jobs. I let Tommy specialize.”

           “Park management?”

           “With endorsements in both mundane and supernatural creature handling,” Filara muttered. She flipped the warding book open to the back, indexed whatever she was looking to find, and then started turning back to the relevant page. “Specifications which are archaic and vestigial leftovers of an age shocked by the sudden appearance of unprecedented species, both sentient and not, but whatever they want, I guess.”

           Torako saw Dipper perk up at the nerdspeak. “I agree,” Dipper said. “It’s literally been over two thousand years since the Transcendence. Why, with the evolution of language, do such—currently—arbitrary classifications exist?  It would make far more sense to align everything on a scale of sentience alone. The laws of science have changed so much, and possibilities have altered to an extent that nullifies the importance of separating non-sentient and originally non-magical creatures from non-sentient and originally magical creatures.”

           “True,” Filara said. “Okapi were once seen as utterly mundane until scientists observed the emergence of magical traits conducive to predator and sustenance detection…”

           Torako tuned them out, looked down at the drink in her shaking hand. She swirled it a little, then watched the tumbler continue to tremble, ever so slightly. Torako admitted to herself, under the safe umbrella of being momentarily ignored, that she was tired. She was stressed, and scared. And she had begun taking it out on Dipper. And maybe, just maybe, Dipper was the same, and he’d started taking it out on her.

           He was unstable without Bentley, even though they kept stressing to him that he had to be stable without Ben. Though, Torako thought, a wry smile on her lips, maybe she wasn’t so different. She felt pretty unstable herself.

           They were going to be lucky to get out of it all in one piece. They were all definitely going to need therapy, group and individual. Torako wanted to laugh and cry, but there was a dull edge to her emotions that pressed the urge down into something less overwhelming. Where were they going to find a therapist that would take them seriously and not report things like Bentley being a reincarnation of Mizar, or Dipper being Alcor, or Torako breaking and entering and bartering for demonic force as a tool to suppress and punish people outside the court of law? Dipper and she had discussed it, back when Bentley had first been taken. Dipper had promised that he’d take care of it, but…somehow, that seemed like a really bad idea. Would it be better than no therapy? Worse?

           Torako didn’t know. She swirled her drink again, then took another swig of it.

           “Torako?”

           She looked up. Filara had a manic gleam in her eyes, which shone a faint purple. Probably from magic exposure. “We figured something out, maybe.”

           “It seems pretty possible,” Dipper said.

           “Lay it on me,” Torako said, and leaned forward.

           “So, this is highly theoretical stuff, and I’m definitely not a specialist in any practical sense so I don’t know how possible it is,” Filara said, drumming her manicured fingers on her knees in excitement. “But because extradimensional travel, like to legitimate other dimensions, is impossible by human means and, Alcor assures me, highly improbable even by demonic means, there’s only an infinitesimally, insignificantly small chance that Bentley has been spirited away to another dimension. Which means that to fit the parameters of ‘not being in this world proper,’ Bentley has to be in a pocket dimension. Which, in and of itself, is not sufficient, because Alcor can sense Mizar through those, right?”

           Dipper nodded vigorously.  

           “Have to wonder how your kidnapper knew how to counteract that, but no matter. Might just be plain paranoia, which is healthy to have when kidnapping a Mizar attached to a very very powerful demon. Anyways!” Filara flicked up a screen and began to draw a quick sketch. It wasn’t very artistic. “so you have the pocket dimension, with Bentley in it, with Alcor here, and there’s extra stuff inbetween. It has to stop demons from entering. More than that, it has to stop a very strong, the strongest, demon from even sensing through it. Which is hard. It’s like, you have a window, so you can’t pass through the window, but you can see through it and sometimes even hear through it, right?”

           “I get that,” Torako said. She set her drink on her left knee. “So something that would stop that would be, like…sigils, right?”

           Filara blinked, stopped mid-drawing of a window with a person looking out of it. “Actually, yes, maybe? But there aren’t too many people who use sigils to that kind of degree, and they might be a little too finicky to mesh with a pocket dimension the way this kind of near-airtight technology requires. As it is, the pocket dimension is probably a bit destabilized by this. The theory is old, but incredibly difficult to actually execute. So if you’re looking for something reliable…”

           Torako snapped her fingers as she connected the dots. She grinned. “Wards.”

           “Right. Runes don’t pack enough punch and can get a little frisky, but wards are solid. They’re dependable. Reliable. They’re like a middle-aged rottweiler.” Filara drew a stick dog on the screen between them, then put a smiley face on it. “Loyal, and forgiving, but also capable of turning nasty if you poke it enough with the right stick, which is why this is still theory. Maybe. It might be real if Alcor’s unable to sense Bentley.”

           Torako’s stomach turned and her good mood evaporated nearly as quickly as it had come on. Dipper was quiet, which could mean several things. She hoped he wasn’t going to sink into a brooding spiral again. “Which means Bentley’s stuck in something potentially unstable.”

           “Unfortunately, yes.” Filara pinched the screen back into nonexistence. “And because Alcor is as powerful as he is, even the ward alone might not be enough. There’s possibly another element, which would destabilize it even further. Bentley could be younger when he comes out. He could have grown extra limbs. Maybe he knows more languages than he knew going in. Maybe he loses the ability to write, but gains the ability to telepathically communicate. Everything we know about unstable pocket dimensions comes from a long time ago when they were new and unrefined, and when you add magic to magic, weird things happen.”

           Torako closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. So we need—we need a good wardist. Who knows their stuff, and is connected to the warding professional world, and it can’t be Meung-soo because I hate her and also I don’t trust her to know enough after being kept in the dark about her own nephew. Fuck.”

           Next to her, Lata slept on, curled around Fuzzles the beagle. Torako wished she was five and the world was uncomplicated again. She’d also settle for a long nap, at this point.

           “I’m sorry,” Filara said, quietly. “The downside of casting your net wide, is, well, you don’t really know the super serious pros very well. Especially ones who don’t thinktank, and do stuff instead. I can’t help you there.”

           Dipper straightened up. He looked solidly in the realm of his 20s now. That was both a promising and frankly miraculous sign, considering the situation was ‘Bentley trapped in an unstable affront against the laws of dimensional boundaries’ and his reaction to Bentley’s situation before this particular calamity. Torako was unable to wrap her head around how his brain worked, sometimes. “I do.”

           Torako couldn’t even muster the energy to raise her eyebrows at him. “You do.”

           “Yes.” He nodded, and stood. “Soos’s reincarnation’s mom is a wardist. She told me.”

           “Who?” Torako asked. She couldn’t remember a Soos. Then she registered the word ‘reincarnation’ attached to Soos, and not knowing made more sense. Except, “When did you meet Soos’s reincarnation?”

           “Last week,” Dipper said. “She gave me ice cream in exchange for homework. It was a nice deal. But, Soos’s reincarnation’s mom. She can help us. Definitely.”

           Torako narrowed her eyes in confusion. “But…does she know you’re you?”

           Dipper reached over Lata and grabbed Torako’s hand. She swore as she fought to keep her alcohol right-way up. “If she doesn’t now, then she absolutely will in about five seconds!”

           “Wait, wait, where are they, Dipper?” Torako asked, but it was too late—she felt the tug across her body, and they were elsewhere.

           Filara stared at the place Torako and Alcor had once been.

           “Darling,” she called, after a few moments.

           “Yes?” Tommy yelled back.

           “Our guests left with a towel and a tumbler of your lemon cocktail,” she said. She tilted her head at Lata and Fuzzles, and added, “Also, they left sans child.”

           There was a clang. Tommy appeared moments later at the entrance to the sitting room, staring at the empty spots on the couch, then at the backpack still on the floor.

           “Dipshits,” Tommy said. She sighed. “I’ll call Lata’s parents and update them on the situation, then.”

           “Thank you, darling,” Filara said. She stood, and stretched, and then stepped over to give Tommy a kiss on the cheek. “I appreciate it.”

           Tommy grinned, kissed her back on the cheek. “Always, dear heart.”

           On the couch, Lata shifted next to Fuzzles, but kept sleeping.

[everlarkingjoshifer]

A Different Way CHPT 3

Hello my wonderful Lovelies! 

It is I, back again with a weekly update on this crazy yet I hopefully charming story. Now I would like to thank a few people who’ve helped me to flesh this story out. First, to my two amazing and patient beta’s @titaniasfics & @javistg . Second to @mega-aulover for being the best cheerleader a friend could ever ask for. Third to my incredibly sexy husband for being the biggest support system a woman could ever hope for. And finally, to @sunsetsrmydreams for the beautiful banner. This is a continuation of @peetaisbae Xmas gift and as always please don’t forget to read, review and reblog! ;)

Anyway onto the best part. BTW You can now find each chapter on Ao3.

By the time Katniss arrived at Panem’s world office with a set of newly printed and revised article, Johanna was running behind her holding her wrist in a vice-like grip.

“Woman, you will tell me all about this Peeta dude or so help me god,” Johanna seethed.

Katniss sighed. “Jo, I’m not saying anything and no matter how much you plead and threaten, you know I won’t budge. Now, please let me go, I have to hand this stupid article to Coin.”

Having given up altogether, Johanna half sulked half walked next to her. “Why does she have us print the stupid thing when we already email it to her, not to mention why in the hell do we have to come all the way here to hand it in like a couple of school children, and why so fucking early?”

Katniss shrugged but kept on walking.

Work handed in, and new subjects handed to them by their boss, Johanna sat on her computer desk next to Katniss. Having her facebook connected, Katniss felt her phone buzz. Her messenger popped up with a little article about animal torture with a text from Jo. “PETA would disagree with this.”

Katniss glanced down at her friend who was currently shaking with laughter. She rolled her eyes and shook her head. An hour passed and again her phone buzzed. They were the only ones in the office that Monday morning and Coin was circling about the room every so often like a vulture.

Hiding her phone under her desk Katniss opened her messenger once again. This time there was just a picture of pita bread. Just the stupid bread. With half slit eyes, Katniss took a deep sigh as she furiously texted back to Johanna. “Jo, so help me god. Leave me the hell alone or I will kick your ass and you know we’re equally matched.”

Johanna, who’d been trying to hide a triumphant grin, texted her back. “Bitch, you wish.”

“Then I’ll leave you here in this miserable office with Coin micromanaging your every move since I can make the excuse that my kid is sick and you know Coin will let me go.” Katniss texted back.

Johanna looked horrified at the prospect. “No please, I’ll be good, I promise.”  

Katniss looked back at Johanna and nodded once to show that she meant business, but there she sat for another excruciating six hours in the silent office as people filed in quietly and sat to do their work. If only she hadn’t asked for a full time she wouldn’t have had to come in so early.

Days passed and Katniss had been halfway through a good week until Gale showed up at her door.

Hands on hips and wearing a frown, Katniss asked, “What’re you doing here?”

“What do you mean what am I doing here? I’m here to see my kid,” Gale replied leaning against the door frame.

“She’s not back from school yet, you should know that,” Katniss said walking into the living room and leaving the door open so that he could enter.

The door closed and as he sauntered as though he owned the place. “Oof, you gotta clean up in here. Is this how you’re raising my child?”

“At least I’m raising her, which is more than I can say for you!” Katniss turned, nose flaring. Gale had the uncanny ability to piss her off like no other.

Gale raised his hands. “I was on my honeymoon.”

“Oh yes, your honeymoon. I guess you were so entertained you forgot to call your daughter,” Katniss commented crossing her arms.

Gale stepped closer, his hands on his hips. “Well, what the fuck would you have me do, call her while I’m with Glimmer? You know Willow can’t stand her.”

“Gee, I wonder why?” Katniss muttered under her breath. She sighed and pursed her lips. “You couldn’t take five minutes off your day? Shit, Willow thought you’d forgotten her.”

Gale ran his hand through his hair. “Look, Katniss, I’m not here to fight.”

“Could’ve fooled me!” Katniss said.

Growling, Gale took another step forward. “Do you always have to have the last word? No wonder I divorced you!”

“What the hell did you come here for?” Katniss asked after a couple of minutes.

Gale reached into his wallet and handed her a check. “It’s for the child support.”

Katniss looked down at the check and nodded. He might not have been a good husband, but at least he provided for his child. “Thank you.”

Gale nodded. “I was actually thinking that it would be better if you took part in some of Willow’s school activities.”

“What the hell do you mean? I help with homework,” Katniss asked.

“Not homework, I mean like school-based activities, like volunteer work,” Gale explained.

Katniss crossed her arms even tighter. “Gale, when do you suppose I’d have time for that? I work a full time.”

“Then make it a part-time,” Gale nonchalantly shrugged.

Katniss ran her hand exasperatedly across her face. “You’re kidding me, right? Have you any idea how long it took me to convince Coin to give me that full time? Besides, where do you think I’m gonna get the money that I’m currently getting?”

“Money’s not the problem, I’ll give you whatever is left of your earnings and then some,” Gale replied.

Katniss, who married him halfway through college, was now regretting her foolish notions of romanticism. Gale was a couple years older than her. He’d been a junior at Panem High when she had entered freshman year and things had been so rosy back then.

She’d naively fell in love with the shared interests and what used to be mutual respect until Gale went to College only to drop out almost immediately. It was at her behest that he finally settled on a career in business that he finally flourished. With it had come his constant need to control every aspect of their life, and it only got worse after Willow was born.

Perhaps things wouldn’t have been so bad if the doctor hadn’t had to explicitly explain to him that she was unable to bear any more children due to an abnormality in her uterus. If she were to get pregnant again, she had a high risk of dying. Instead of understanding, Gale simply blamed her after she had adamantly refused to carry another kid on his whim.

She knew what it was like to be an orphan, and she damn well made sure not to make her daughter one. Still, she stuck through it all, hoping that one day the situation would change. That he would change, but it wasn’t so.

Gale never wanted to change, as he thought there was nothing wrong with him, to begin with, and he refused to go to a couple’s therapist.

It wasn’t until he’d gotten drunk one evening that he pulled her next to him on the sofa and gave her a glimmer of hope. She thought things would be alright when he began to kiss her until he abruptly stopped and looked at her swollen lips, mussed hair and skewed shirt. He’d lazily frowned in all his drunken stupor and announced that he couldn’t muster the strength to sleep with her any longer because he just wasn’t attracted to her anymore. That he’d fallen in love with someone else, and then sat there laughing as she straightened her shirt with tears streaming down her cheeks carrying her humiliation along with it.

The next day he served her with divorce papers and the rest was history.

“It must be so easy for you to throw your money out there huh, Gale?” Katniss commented.

Gale rolled his eyes. “Listen, I don’t have a lot of time, Glimmer is waiting out in the car. I just wanted to tell you I went to see a therapist.”

“You saw a therapist?” Katniss was impressed.

“My general doctor recommended it,” he swiftly informed, “ Anyway, she said it would be a good idea if our daughter spent more time with either of us and since I’m going to be busy at the office, I thought you could do it,”

Katniss frowned. “Gale, I don’t think that’s what your therapist meant.”

“Are you gonna take the offer or not?” Gale imposed through gritted teeth.

Taking a deep breath, Katniss shrugged. “Sure, I’ll see what I can do. There’s a parent-teacher conference coming up this week so maybe I can find out what I can do then, but I’m not making any promises.”

“Great, text me when you get something ok?” Gale replied walking towards the door and all but ran out into the sunlight.

[of-another-broken-heart]

So I am an on-the-books part-time/seasonal worker for the fish market my mom works at. Not a scheduled one - pretty much just down to help shuck stuff. 

I went with mom for the whole day. Honestly, the hardest part is dealing with Eternally Soaked In Salt Water Sleeves. Like, even if you never brush against the work surface, your sleeves are Going To Be Wet. Wet. Not damp. WET. Soaked, even. 

The other hardest part was struggling to keep a straight face and not cry while my uterus was cranking the pain up, up, up. 

But I managed to shuck 17 pounds of scallops. I get a flat $2.25 per pound, via an actual paper check on Friday. Plus apparently some sort of hourly compensation, too? Which... thank god. It logically makes sense that I wouldn’t be Super Great at shucking after doing it for less than 12 total hours my whole life, but still... The scallop total alone was under forty dollars, and it didn’t feel great to know that was all my five hours of labor amounted to. (10 to 4, minus an hour we went home for lunch)

One of the BEST things about working there is - NO BUGS!! At least, none that want to eat me alive!! It was so nice being able to just... EXIST without getting bit up by ??? mysterious insects and Suffering Via Itching Forever. 

Now I’m back home, of course, and I have a couple new rashes of inflamed raised itching bumps because I... put on clothes. And all of my clothes are infested with bugs, by default, at this point, and I shouldn’t expect anything different to be honest. 

I wore this old shitty piece of shapewear, kind of like a tank top with space for the boobs left open. I figured the pressure and support might help my back feel better - and I think it worked. But it could also just be that my cramps are so phenomenally awful that the pain is eclipsing my back pain and simply making my back pain SEEM better by virtue of being less bad compared to my hell uterus’ bullshit. 

Oh. My former boss texted me yesterday, and I pointedly ignored him. He texted me again, “going once, going twice...” Fuck off, dude. You don’t get to hit me up randomly whenever you feel like it and expect me to be grateful for some fifty dollar opportunity that I’d have to invest 3+ hours of my time to do, and drop any/all plans I had made to accommodate. Not to mention, the whole “leaving me high and dry with no income for multiple months” thing? Yeah? That happened, and it’s quite frankly fucking stupid to expect that someone’s phone would magically remain on through that time with no income to pay such a bill. 

Sure, my main number is a google voice number, but my point still stands. 

I discovered my phone DOES still work. It just gets less and less signal, so I thought it had formally disconnected. But I went outside to try to call my grandparents, and bam! 3G happened, and the stupid “No signal/No service” alert finally disappeared. 

[lunapokema]

For the few hate comments I've gotten for this post... uh, wtf guys? I said quite clearly in the title that this was just my opinion, not fucking fact. So, I am "wrong" "stupid" and full of "bullshit" for having an opinion that differs from yours? This is why the American government can't get anything done. Anyway, I am going to reblog my own post and reply to:

agirlwithachakram

puddeneen

bbegrill

felinalain

la-mort-vivant-nihiliste

skull-bearer

And hopefully I will address all of their concerns and clear up any confusion.

To begin with, I would certainly like to know how this counts as being a character hating, misogynistic post. Because, last I checked its pretty difficult to be a misogynist when you yourself have a pair of tits and a functioning uterus. I prefaced the argument by saying I like Anne, she's cool and a strong woman. My complaint was that she could have been written as a better, smarter character. She's a lawyer for Christ's sake and she knows how far Eddie will go for his work even if it means doing something illegal - that was probably how they met: in court.

I argued that the writers intentionally made her character stupid so that Eddie could get the information he needed in a way that didn't force the filmmakers to use any creative thought processes.

And no, this is not "victim blaming". You need an actual victim for that. I don't sympathize with people who have no common sense and don't understand how the real world works. And unfortunately that was how she was written and the audience is meant to feel bad for her and see Eddie as a trust breaking scumbag.

Now allow me to reiterate: "Trust" is not the issue here. You can have trust in a relationship, but that only goes so far and relationships are a two way street. You can't expect one person to do all of the heavy lifting. For example if you date someone who happens to be a recovering addict and you bring pain meds into the house because of an injury and just leave it on the counter instead of locking it up; you don't get to look surprised when shit goes wrong. Eddie is the addict in this scenario and the files on the laptop are the addictive substance he'll do anything to get.

And he didn't "break into" her laptop. It was left on the table open, powered up and he got the password first try indicating he already knew what it was because she probably told him. This isn't Sherlock level deduction, keep up.

The point is this: everyone else saw it coming from a mile away so how the hell did you miss it?

I am putting the blame on Anne because I want to point out that a smart character was forced to do something rhis obliviously stupid.

She's known Eddie for a long time, knows what he does, and how obssessive he gets about it. Despite this she gave him access to her laptop and upon finding out that he was going to be in contact with her law firms client, didn't even turn the damn thing off. Actions have consequences and that is why she got fired. The logic isn't hard to follow when the conversation with her boss was probably,

"So, you're dating an edgy, bad-boy reporter? Engaged now, right. Congratulations. Uh by the way, what kinds of precautions have you taken to ensure our clients privacy? ... Nothing. He just has full access to the sensitive information we send you? I'm sorry but we're going to have to let you go."

From a common sense POV, you brought ruin unto yourself. Yes, what Eddie did was bad but it was completely fucking preventable. I'm sorry but, blaming Eddie completely for a set of circumstances that were practically gift wrapped for him, does indeed make you look like a bitch. And when she said she was dating a doctor, I mean, Eddie knew he couldn't compete with that and so did she. Anne was trying to get him to leave. If he wasn't given a reason to break into the life foundation, it is very plausible Eddie might have taken a leap off of the Golden Gate bridge.

Also, I'm all for #AnnexDan, they make a great couple.

My Personal Reasoning on Why Anne is the One at Fault Because I’m Sick of Eddie Getting So Much Shit for the Break-Up

While I like Anne as a strong female character, the way she was written can make her seem like a total bitch in the early part of the movie. Because Eddie didn’t deserve all of the hate she threw at him after she lost her job, since he sure as hell didn’t lose it for her. And there are two major reasons:

1. The movie establishes that they have been together long enough to be engaged, she knows what he’s like with his work but “trusts” him.

2. He straight up told her he was going to interview Carlton Drake - the owner of the company she and her law firm are currently working for.

Anne is a lawyer working a high profile, hush-hush case. Trust is not the issue, client confidentiality and professionalism is. She knows for a fact that she has a snoopy fiance who will pounce on an opportune moment. Yet the first you do when you get home is to have sex and NOT change the fucking password on your work laptop!? If they can give Hillary crap about sending emails from an unsecured laptop, you bet your ass a law firm will fire a lawyer who gives an investigative reporter her laptop password - relationship not withstanding.

Then she has the nerve to blame him for doing his job (and the right thing), dump him, and (I’m assuming) kick him out of an apartment he was probably helping to pay the rent for.

Folks, this next bit right here is how you know when a someone is a keeper: When six months after a nasty break-up they remember the convoluted, bullshit name of your cat that they never liked all that much in the first place. That is impressive – I love cats and I can’t remember the name even after my second viewing of the movie.

And I just rearranged that paragraph to have gender-neutral language.

And wasn’t it a bit of a dig at Eddie that she started dating a doctor of all things? I mean plot wise I see it, but in real life it screams “I lowered my standards to date a journalist” if she could have been seeing doctors or other lawyers all this time instead.

Bottom line she doesn’t deserve him, and I’m happy he has Venom now. Cheers for a Symbrock sequel with plenty of Carnage. I want a super awkward “we are producing offspring together Eddiiee” scene.

PS. I do love Dr. Dan, he didn’t do anything wrong.

PPS. I haven’t read the comics outside of spiderman/deadpool and some DP standalones. So this is all just movie based logic.