#does anyone know what i should look up

[v-a-t-i-o]

朋友 fall

[homielander]

shiv's motivations for voting to pass the gojo deal are so layered and i don't think they should be dismissed in favour of any one interpretation. shiv desperately grabbed on to a lifeline for her relationship with tom. shiv was the deciding vote and she couldn't bear to hold the crown only for a moment just to place it atop her brother's head. shiv knew she would have more influence as wife of CEO rather than sister of CEO. shiv absolutely hated seeing kendall crystallize into logan before her eyes, especially when he made roman bleed ("and if we did kill him we get to go to bed") -- succession has always been about siblings so of course she tried to free her brothers before her child. shiv still thinks she can raise her child with all the material benefits of being the daughter of waystar CEO while doing better by her, whatever that means. and all of those things are true

[sea-jello]

hong kong miku,,,

[smokbeast]

oh chriminy I’m cooking things , I’ll be real I just see murder boys everywhere but Idk what they’re about, or nightmare. Or error,. But uhm his colors I like..them.. and nightmare is big spooky octo thing, I uh, I’m lost in some kind of thinking sauce

[faunandfloraas]

"Seungmin would be SO hot if he got muscle like, can you imagine?" You would be hotter if you shut your mouth but we can't always get what we want so <3

[batsplat]

do you have a favorite bit of motogp gossip that you either want to know is it’s true, or you just enjoy as a stand alone piece, no need for further investigation?

one of those where I initially stared at and like. lost all motogp knowledge in my brain. and then stuff did come back to me. this is all very much low hanging fruit and I'll add to it when I remember more interesting/quirky ones. BUT here are some things I want to know:

y'know how casey randomly suggests in his autobiography that valentino was sabotaged in the 2006 title decider? so, personally, I don't really buy this, because 'why' and also 'casey girl you are SO paranoid' - though, sure, if given the option I'd like to double check if valentino had a dud tyre (completely plausible) and also if somebody really deliberately gave him one (?? casey idk about this one). but what I'm REALLY curious about is... there's a change in his autobiography?? like I've seen this book excerpt float around online and the text is different from what's in my book!! mine's from the paperback version so I assume there may have been some edits for that, so that would make it the newer version... but like. this is a real editorial change. check this out:

version posted on the internet, from the hard cover edition???

version in my book, first paragraph is the same

But as soon as the lights went out Valentino was in trouble. I was one of six riders to pass him on the first lap and if you watch the footage you can see how much he is struggling to even keep up with us. His rear and front tyres were just not working together and on lap five the front inexplicably folded and he went down, right behind me. I couldn't help but wonder how he could be having such problems with his tyres. Could he really have been stitched up? It seemed so improbable, but I remember watching that race back in the motorhome that evening and thinking, Welcome to my world, mate.

this isn't 'gossip' because I haven't found anyone else who has spotted this, but like? that's a substantive change? if my one really is the newer one? ...?

let's set aside the fascinating insight you get into casey's knotty and at times bizarre valentino rossi complex with him adding the line "welcome to my world, mate" (oh my god. please just take him to dinner. I will crowd fund this I literally just need to be able to listen in. casey come on CALL him I NEED you to do the dinner thing, YOU suggested it not me). like we're not going to even touch that. but if my version really is the updated one, then he's kinda softened his stance, no?? "convinced he was stitched up" to "could he really have been stitched up"

what happened?? who wanted this change? casey? an editor? did dorna give casey a call? did some poor bloke from pr have to politely ask whether casey could please not state in his autobiography that the most popular rider ever had had a title stolen from him by the establishment?

(casey was talking about valentino's stolen tenth BEFORE it was popular. he did it even before valentino did, bless)

"there are a lot of commercial interests in the sport" also didn't make the jump to the 'new version', mind you. did Big America get to casey

come on you guys have to admit this is an odd change?? does nobody else thing this is weird??

okay fine moving on

Did Valentino Literally Curse Sete

(like. not literally as in did he curse curse sete, literally as in did he say it)

(though if he did literally literally curse curse sete, I suppose I'd also like to know that bit)

the commentators in 2003 brno say so and I'm inclined to believe them, but I need to double check whether sete and valentino really were partying on ibiza together right after that very painful valentino loss at the sachsenring. such a fascinating little detail, that's not something post-2004 valentino does I reckon

I mean, look, obviously a bunch of things from that time period I want to have fact checked. including valentino's friend hearing sete say in late 2003 that valentino wasn't going to be smiling so much after joining yamaha. classic bit of gossip, did it actually happen though

I've referenced this a few times before, but y'know how valentino said that marc's manager alzamora told him after sepang 2015 that marc had been angry at valentino for killing his title charge? I just want. to know. if this conversation actually happened. I don't think valentino would pluck a lie like that out of thin air, especially something so specific about somebody on marc's team, and he has known alzamora for decades but like. maybe almazora just said something valentino misinterpreted? I just find this such a bonkers thing from alzamora if it's true that I would like it confirmed for my own sanity, you know?

yeah look I would like to know if marc really did get casey kicked out of honda, obviously I've discussed this before and it's very he said she said but yeah it'd be fun to know the truth

this is literally peak gossip because I can't find a source for it but I swear a journalist did say it: the rumour is that marc blocked joan mir from joining honda in 2019. like, I'm only including this because I was explicitly asked for gossip as I just cannot find where it was said... but it is something that is. out there. and... again, just curious. like I buy it, but also it could be bullshit!

on a similar note, did he ever make clear to honda he didn't want either vinales or rinsy on his team circa 2016? was it just a vibe in the paddock or was this an actual demand from marc?

speaking of!! the whole thing about alzamora basically rigging the moto3 teammate situation between rinsy and alex marquez to ensure the latter won the title that year. what was that all about, how far did they go there

switching to valentino now. this doesn't quite fit the remit of the question because it IS something I've investigated. and my conclusion is basically a big *shrug*

did valentino block casey from joining yamaha in either 2005 or 2006, and did he attempt to block jorge?

there are completely contradictory sources on the timeline here that do make me feel like there's a chance yamaha was just fucking with casey at the very least in 2006 and valentino had fuck all to do with it, which a recent interview from casey did actually hint at too... he made it sound like maybe yamaha was just using him to try to drive down the price of another rider (which would then presumably be jorge)

I just want to know! and the thing is, it was a matter of open paddock discussion that valentino blocked casey (jorge explicitly references it in in 2007), but something doesn't quite add up between what jorge, casey, colin edwards, articles from the time and lin jarvis have said on the subject! my current pet theory is that valentino blocked casey in 2005 from joining the satellite yamaha team in 2006 (weirdly casey doesn't really imply valentino was responsible for this one in his autobiography, but whatever) but NOT in 2006 (casey does imply valentino was responsible here, you see my problem). and yamaha was fucking around with all four of valentino, casey, jorge and edwards in late 2006/2007. but. yeah. I have unanswered questions

the entire 'alex marquez blocked from yamaha' situation.... again. something is off there. you know the story from late last year about how he was blocked in 2019 from joining the petronas team in 2021? this completely threw me, because there was an entirely different story about this YEARS back in 2018!! I initially assumed the two stories were about the same event, but it can't have been! one's him being blocked in 2019 for 2021, one's him being blocked in 2018 for 2019

from the descriptions of both there's also no confusing them. the 2018 story has to be about the 2018 contract cycle because that's quite literally when it was published, and the 2023 story has to be about the 2019 contract cycle because it explicitly references the space fabio would create by moving to the factory team for 2021, which obviously wouldn't make sense before fabio's actual rookie season. like they have to be about different stories

and in that same 2018 story, marc said that back in 2016 lin jarvis told him no marquez would be joining yamaha:

again, this was in 2018!!

plus, he did say back in 2016 that he'd spoken to jarvis, which kinda backs up this is a conversation that did happen and marc isn't just misremembering the timeline/lying (the notion of marc joining yamaha in 2017 is fantastic, what an absolutely horrendous idea):

now what marc says in 2018 about his conversation with lin jarvis is very similar to petronas yamaha boss razali saying in 2023 that he'd been told by yamaha no marquez was allowed at yamaha. suggests that this is a thing that did happen!!

but again... razali was told that in 2019... after marc had already been told the same thing three years before that, and the exact same deal had already been blocked one year earlier... does nobody else think this is weird?? like, I'm not saying yamaha hq covered themselves in glory here, but is it not a little strange the satellite yamaha squad had basically almost signed a contract with the younger marquez again without checking in with yamaha, just ONE YEAR after this same contract had already been blocked???

again this isn't actually gossip because I'm apparently the only person going ?? about this but I'll say it: ??

kinda been annoying me since december last year, like I know it doesn't matter but I'm just curious about it! why's nobody else talking about the 2018 story!

idk my best guess here is that petronas yamaha was faffing about and playing weird games with the factory team, that the deal was never as likely to happen as they made it sound to the marquez camp. zero proof, that's me spreading rumours yeah... time to create some of my own unfounded gossip

(also of course I'm curious if valentino did have any actual involvement in this. like if lin jarvis was telling marc this in the year of our lord 2016, I'm assuming valentino didn't have to explicitly say to jarvis that 'inviting marc to the team for 2017' wasn't exactly high on his christmas wish list. it is interesting that marc frames it as jarvis making this about. like. all the marquez's way back in 2016, and again, would this really have been on valentino's radar at the time? that feels a bit...? alex marquez was thirteenth in that moto2 season? would certainly be very... thorough for valentino to already have had that particular talk with jarvis)

(mind u there's a fun moment in a 2019 presser where valentino is sitting between the two marquez brothers and the younger marquez is being asked about his contract situation, the implication being he'd had a motogp deal and no longer had a motogp deal. and he's answering and marc's doing his freak stare and valentino is Right There sitting between them... I <3 mess)

man did valentino actually ever fucking block anyone from joining his manufacturer #notmygoat. I still think he didn't know about jorge until the deal was basically done, had nothing to do with the younger marquez, at most blocked casey the one time but then yamaha wasn't actually seriously intending on signing casey in 2006 and was just using it as a play in their jorge negotiations, which.... idk. bit disappointing if true icl. I hope he blocked someone, I'll say it

(also. okay. I don't want to sound awful here because I do have a lot of sympathy for baby!casey but. ignoring the morality for a second, I do LOVE the idea that valentino blocked casey from getting a satellite yamaha seat fresh off his 250cc runner up season because it would conclusively prove valentino did ABSOLUTELY rate casey!! like he didn't even want casey to come close to being his teammate!! not even a sniff at his data!!) (genuinely this is the rumour I'm choosing to believe, I know there's a chance valentino didn't successfully block anyone and was just a complete flop but I want the 2005 one to be true. it really adds something to the rivalry idk... like ugh valentino saw how dangerous casey was proper early when much of the paddock wasn't yet convinced... cute)

moving on

there was a rumour in 2015 that valentino approached dani after aragon to complain about how sturdy his defence was, like moaning about denying him points and shit. now, there's exactly one article about this in marca that is the sole origin point for the rumour, and it says that valentino also interrupted a honda party after phillip island to complain to marc. this does not match up at all with anything either marc or valentino have said since then - and would mean you have to believe that marc wasn't actually blindsided by that presser... also feels a bit unlikely we would have heard NOTHING from any other source if vale was really gatecrashing a honda party

of course, neither dani nor valentino have spoken about this supposed post-aragon 2015 meeting either, not even when dani was kinda accusing valentino of hypocrisy during sepang 2015, but I suppose you could say maybe dani's just not the type of guy to bring it up again. however.... I do reckon occam's razor kinda applies here and if one of these stories is bullshit then they probably both are, plus it's not like marca is exactly a neutral source. still would love to be certain!! instinctively I don't really think that's valentino's style at all, but of course it'd be intriguing if the story were true because it'd be a sign of how 2015 kinda messed with him. but I still feel 2015 is more about him falling back on past tools he'd mostly discarded - rather than, like, acting wildly out of character, which again... well, this brings us back to how that kind of behaviour isn't really valentino's style. basically, I don't buy it, but that's kinda why I am so curious about it? because I feel like it would be really interesting and quirky if he had actually done that. does this make any sense

speaking of, again this doesn't really count because I did kinda investigate it last year.... but you know when valentino in that podcast referenced a conversation with marc around the time of sepang 2015, where marc stared blankly at him? I have a hunch about when that conversation happened, want to know if it's right. this also isn't really 'gossip' because this is a conversation I'm having with myself but

y'know when bez was injured on the ranch late-ish last year? a bunch of journalists pointed out how hush hush they were about what actually happened to bez - like they repeatedly drew attention to that because god knows THEY love some gossip lol. which probably means nothing, but I'm curious what the journalists' theory here is, like do they think it was an embarrassing injury?? OR. look. I suppose the conspiracy theory would be that pecco caused it (obviously accidentally!!) and everyone at the ranch knew it'd be a terrible look if they admitted that because of the whole title fight situation. call me casey stoner because those dots are not real and definitely have not been connected

okay, you know how there were rumours in the spanish tabloids bez said some real ugly stuff to marc at valencia last year, and bez didn't directly address it but freaked a little and did a sort of blanket denial that he'd said anything that bad? I don't actually think he did tbh, but again. would just like to check!

while we're already on bez, there was one report that the switch to aprilia was partly motivated by marc to factory ducati. again, not entirely sure I buy that this would factor into his thinking beyond the obvious 'this means the route to that factory ducati seat looks even more closed than it already did' angle'.... it's very much down my list of priorities but I'd quickly confirm/deny it if given the chance yeah

that's all for now lol

[lostbizkits]

why is everyone on twitter so fucking racist holy shit

[tswwwit]

Wait, does the cheating thing on the bond always works? bcs that would be kinda freaky for R!Dipper like imagine you get pinned down by someone in the corner of a br or smthng and then said person kissed you and proceeded to explode into red mist and you literally have no idea what happened.

Also, would the constellation mark be a "cursed" Mark over the years, like you would give birth to a baby and the doctor says "😟 I am so sorry ma'am,,, I'm afraid your baby has the Cipher Companion mark. ( could also be something equally as science-y like Ursa Major, Constellation Calamation, etc idk)" And you just burst into tears.

Would that mean that dipper would get into a special program(demon wrangling program or smthng, demonologist? Maybe)? Or would the parents hide it away hoping that Bill would never take their child away?

(Sorry this au is just very interesting to me,,,, I hope u get more motivation, keep writing author 💪)

These are all options! The fun part of reincarnation AU being left ambiguous is that technically any of them could happen.

[acquiescest]

irt the lrb what would you say if i said liam & noel spent new years 2023 together in paris

what would you say if i said liam bought the house in france (the one with noel's name carved into the walls) in march 2023 and that month noel talked about wanting to spend several months in paris

which could mean nothing

[martyrbat]

habeas corpus – detective comics #1086

(ID in alt!)

[tiddiesoutwhenthetisout]

not me curling my laptop charger wire the way you curl band equipment cords HAHAHA god i miss it

[mydemonsdrivealimo]

something ab making jensen the doctor i wish i (and everyone else) had is SO refreshing. he will listen to patients and actually take them seriously. yes even that case w tobias where that one patient thought she was dying bc she kept googling symptoms when she just was eating beets. he listened to her and did not make fun of her. like if patients think they have a certain illness going on he will test for that illness And ask questions ab other things it could be. not just the latter. he isn't going to correct them unless they're literal assholes ab it. but even then like. he's going to treat them.

[red-the-dragon-writes]

Fishing Habits

Summary:

“I know what you’re doing,” Dan said without preamble. “Huh?” Jay said. “Oh, right. I know you work for the school, but I didn’t think you’d be that much of a hardass.” “What?” Dan said. Jay paused, looking Dan over for a moment. “Actually, what are you talking about? I don’t think we’re on the same page.” “With the fish,” Dan clarified. Jay raised the odd ridges of flesh over his eyes that functioned as eyebrows. “I’m mer, you asshole. I can talk to them. They told me what fucked-up shit you’ve been pulling. What’s your problem?” “Sometimes I get hungry,” Jay said. “Can I see your notes now?”

Dan is an ordinary merman-pretending-to-be-a-human. Jay is... something else entirely. He seems like a really pleasant guy, except for how freaked out all the fish are. And Dan's college has just opened a new aquarium...

On Ao3 here.

There was an understanding, which had been in place as long as Dan could remember, that meant that one must not reveal the existence of The Supernatural to human society, and if one did the people they made the reveal to needed to be dealt with in some way—sworn to secrecy, brought into the fold of the Oceanic, or even, at absolutely worst, killed. Dan didn’t want to deal with it. There was a lot of paperwork involved in fucking up the order of things, and it was a huge hassle, and also there was a lot of risk involved. It wasn’t like Dan had any real need to reveal he’d grown up under the Pacific rather than in it, anyway. And his parents were living off the coast of Oregon now anyway, so he didn’t even have to do that much lying about it. It was easy and he kept it well under wraps.

He did five years of field work before they told him they were going to require him to come back to the university and teach at a handful of classes before he’d be allowed back out into the field or he’d lose his position, which also meant losing most of his source of funding and the grant he was working with. They offered to let him teach it remotely, of course—the department chair apologizing profusely the entire time—but Dan was doing altogether too much of the work from six hundred feet below the surface of the Atlantic and that just wouldn’t work out. No way to maintain The Secret. Instead he resigned himself to another few years living on land and away from the fishes, rented an apartment, and returned to Spokane to teach two sessions of classes about saltwater ecology in the Pacific to incoming students and one class on field work to older biology majors. Oh well. At least he could visit home on the weekends.

Since his own research was put on pause and the college did promise to pay for his tuition, Dan opted to take a handful of classes, too. What else was he going to do? He was still in touch with the rest of the field crew, and when they finally started writing, sure, he’d refocus onto that, but at the moment he wasn’t going to be of any help. And in one of the classes was a gray man.

You weren’t allowed to do that, but he was doing it. Dan was perfectly certain that there were laws against being out in the open with visibly-discolored flesh across all the major out-of-sight jurisdictions, and he was also pretty sure the Sideways Court was still offering free glamours for anyone who desperately needed into human society and also could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they couldn’t just change their colors themselves, though Dan had also heard that the paperwork to prove either was a nightmare and the Sideways Court sounded just kind of awful to boot.  The Oceanic North-Pacific Authority was a lot better in a lot of ways. God knew applying for his visa was a nightmare of bureaucracy. But the point was: the gray man was openly flouting the rules. And worse than just being gray alone, he also had horns. His fingernails were blue, his teeth were sharp and needle-shaped, and his eyes had no pupils, just scleras and black centers that looked like hollow glass marbles. He had ripples crisscrossing his skin like vines growing just beneath the surface, and though Dan couldn’t be sure, he thought his body was a weird consistency, too, that he bent further than Dan expected when he bumped into things or wore a heavy bag over his shoulders. There was no way his appearance was legal. Dan felt for him, because it had to be difficult doing all that, but it wasn’t allowed. He’d probably get in trouble for just being around it, if someone came and found out and reported the guy and Dan hadn’t said anything.

Still. Dan had to respect it. And it was interesting to see how fast the other students got used to Jay and his gray skin and his horns and his eerie pupil-less eyes. Honestly, Dan was kind of disappointed in himself. His initial anxiety was unfair, wasn’t it? It was the laws that were unfair. Human society clearly wasn’t the problem it was cracked up to be.

Eventually Dan worked up the courage to tell Jay that he was mer. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting. Jay had just nodded, shrugged, and said, “Cool.” That was it. And, honestly, as far as Dan was concerned, that was plenty. He didn’t need to be friends with a twenty-something nonconformist—or however old Jay was; he hadn’t asked, really—and just because they were both in the same class didn’t mean anything, really. They knew each other’s names, and Jay occasionally asked Dan for notes. That was plenty.

-

Dan wasn’t much of a partier and he wasn’t much of a night owl, and he didn’t’ spend a lot of time out of the house. What he did was usually at a river somewhere. Spokane was gorgeous and full of lively fish, and by virtue of his heritage Dan could chat. Fish didn’t usually have a lot to talk about, but something had them in a tizzy when Dan finally made it out to his favorite spot, and they were particularly anxious to tip him off.

At first, he couldn’t make heads or tails of why it mattered to him that someone had developed new lures (aside from how his job was kind of to keep an eye on what people were doing with his rivers and all). But it came together eventually. Jay had something weird about him. He’d started coming to the water just like Dan had—here and elsewhere—and chatting, just like Dan had. And Dan had lured them into a sense of security. They should’ve been secure, talking! Even when Dan was hungry he didn’t eat the fish he talked to! But to talk to Jay was dangerous. Fish that talked to Jay too long vanished. And he had strange lures, luminescent sweet blue worms that made fish dizzy and sick if they bit them off and which moved even when torn apart until they were eaten. The fish insisted, almost en masse, that this strange gray man who chatted up their waters was bad news, and on the whole they badly wanted Dan to find him and make him cut it out.

Dan didn’t even know what to make of it at first. He asked question after question, trying to understand what they meant first and then after to try to ensure they weren’t actually talking about his classmate. The fish were convinced he was unfathomably ancient, even though he was taking first-year classes. But it became too clear that they were the same person after not long at all. A handful even had his name to relay, and even though they pronounced it a little differently, there was no question that he was the same person with the same name. Brazen.

The fish generally knew what predation was and it—well, it bothered them, sure, but it was an understood way of life, and they knew Dan himself ate fish and was part of human society where fishing was done. They’d never come to ask him to put an end to regular fishing before. The first and last time any of them had banded together like this, it was six fish, and they wanted him to handle a chemical mess that he’d been almost completely useless about. The fact that he had nearly forty fish across a whole host of species asking him to put a stop to Jay’s hunting meant that something about that guy was very, very off.

At least, when it came to the fish.

Still, Dan didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Maybe he was just a weirdo. But he had access to most of the college labs, and there were fishtanks in several buildings, and so—nervously and feeling like he certainly looked a bit out of his mind—he went around, talking to the fish there. He didn’t like what he found. All the fish knew Jay. There was no doubt he could and did talk to them, often at odd hours when the fish said that they were typically bored, which meant he was on campus late at night and early in the morning sneaking in to talk with them. Several tanks were apparently head-over-heels charmed. Others, these fewer and further between and, Dan noted after a short while poking around, more likely to have deaths in the fish population waved off than more carefully-managed tanks, told Dan nervously that Jay wasn’t what he seemed. That he had been charming and pleasant and had these magnificent worm lures that they’d never seen before, and then without warning he’d coaxed one of them into his hands and ate them, just like that.

These were domestic fishes, indoor fish. Pets, practically. It was alien to them that a person would do that, and it scared them. But it didn’t seem Jay would willingly strike too many times in the same place, rotating tanks out at random. And what for? Sometimes, they said, he’d come back, and chat like nothing had happened even though they all saw him kill one of their number without a thought. There was something wrong with him. Dan, if Dan knew him, should be cautious.

These fish didn’t seem to understand that there was a world of difference between eating a human (or a mer, really) and eating a goldfish, but Dan promised to take the warning under advisement anyway.  

-

Upon the day that Dan decided to confront Jay about his weird, creepy fish-eating behavior, several interesting things happened.

The first was simple. A colleague from the Environmental Sciences branch had invited him to downtown Spokane for no clear reason just before when Dan typically took his lunch. Alicia had been a close friend when Dan was doing his dissertation and she was currently working on her own postdoc research a little ways outside Spokane, just far enough from where Dan lived that they only got together so often. She told him that it was a surprise, and ot to look anything up about the location, so he obligingly didn’t.

It turned out to be an aquarium. More than that, it was an aquarium owned and run jointly by the college and a handful of others, and while it was still in the final stages before opening, Dan—by virtue of his employment with the school and his own degree focus in fish care and fish wellness—was welcome back whenever, provided he told them what he was doing and didn’t meddle unexpectedly. They wanted him to give his thoughts on a couple of tanks. And the tanks were fascinating. For some reason, whoever had done the design of the building had had a vision and they’d executed it; the tanks looked like classrooms-turned-reefs, replicas of desks and tables cast in plaster and then given coral to grow over them, furnished with lighting that looked like fluorescent strip lights in classrooms and even sometimes sporting false windows out to the street. And all the while, inside, sharks and huge groupers and small brightly-colored reef fish and schooling fish and others besides serenely went about their business. It was inspired, it really was. His parents would’ve gotten such a kick out of it.

Alicia had shown him around, and then they’d gotten food.  It was a very nice afternoon, all things told.

The second was less pleasant. Just as he and Alicia were going their separate ways, Dan got an email from the school about a missing student, a request for more information if anyone had any. They had last been seen about a week before, and their car had just turned up abandoned at Lake Wenatchee, a state park a little ways outside Spokane. Dan hadn’t seen that happen before. Unfortunate, but not anyone he knew. He filed it away mentally and had pretty much stopped thinking about it by the time he got back to his apartment.

The third, and most objectively inconsequential, was that his first afternoon class had been canceled. His professor had come down with the flu.  

And, finally, though they didn’t have class together today, Jay had called Dan and asked to meet with him. Evidently Jay had missed a lecture, or maybe several, and wanted to see Dan’s notes. The timing was just right.

“I know what you’re doing,” Dan said without preamble.

“Huh?” Jay said.  “Oh, right. I know you work for the school, but I didn’t think you’d be that much of a hardass.”

“What?” Dan said.

Jay paused, looking Dan over for a moment. “Actually, what are you talking about? I don’t think we’re on the same page.”

“With the fish,” Dan clarified. Jay raised the odd ridges of flesh over his eyes that functioned as eyebrows. “I’m mer, you asshole. I can talk to them. They told me what fucked-up shit you’ve been pulling. What’s your problem?”

“Sometimes I get hungry,” Jay said. “Can I see your notes now?”

“Sometimes you get hungry?” Dan echoed. It took him a moment to remember how to form sentences properly. “Go to the—fucking—there are vending machines all over campus, there’s a cafeteria, you’re an underclassmen, don’t you have a meal plan—you get hungry? Hungry?”

Jay looked at Dan as though he were completely unimpressed and completely unmoved. “Okay. Can I see your notes now?”

Dan took a deep breath. “Jay, I’m here on behalf of the fish to ask you to cut the shit.”

“Huh,” Jay said. “Are you, like, going to let me see your notes, or was this just, you know, pretext to yell at me?”

Dan sighed, pulling his knapsack around to see if he could find his notebook. “No. As much as I think the way that you’ve started going after these fish is creepy as all fuck, I don’t really want your grades to suffer. Stop eating the fish.”

Jay shrugged. “I guess I can go out of campus and—”

“No,” Dan said, cutting him off. “Not the campus fish, all the local fish. I first heard about this from the fish in the Spokane. Everyone at Riverside Park is sick of your shit. It’s creepy, Jay. What’s the point of getting all buddy-buddy with fish you’re planning on eating?”

Jay’s eyes narrowed. “What, should I kill without a thought, then? What if I catch a fish with obligations?”

“That’s not why you’re doing it.”

“You’re right,” Jay said. “It’s not. But it is a consideration, among many. I don’t think it’s as bad as you think. And, no, I won’t be stopping any time soon.”

Dan shook his head and threw the notebook at the table. “Give it back to me when we have class again. And after that, I don’t want to hear from you.”

“What’s the big problem?” Jay said, suddenly sounding much more concerned. “Acanthis, they’re just fish.”

“They’re not just fish to me,” Dan snapped. “I’m mer, you asshole. It’s not the same. And—the way you do it is creepy. I don’t like it. Just because I know fish aren’t people to you doesn’t mean they don’t matter to me.”

“Oh,” Jay said. “The issue is that I eat fish?”

“I eat fish!” Dan said. “Are you being—are you being willfully stupid now? The problem is that you’re making friends with the fish you eat!”

“Ah,” Jay said. “Yeah, no, sorry, there’s nothing you can do about that. It’s been good knowing you, Acanthis. Thanks for the notes.”

“Fuck yourself,” Dan said, rather charitably, as far as he was concerned, and stormed back out of the library.

-

Jay did not stop preying on the fish. He did stop asking Dan for notes. He did also return Dan’s notebook, in about the same condition as he’d taken it, but there was an odd blue stain on one page.

 And life continued as it normally did. The class continued. Dan got familiar with the professor, a lovely older woman called Dr. Bernadotte Maragou, who was very sweet and worked in the Health Sciences department but was still nonetheless teaching an ecology course because the school was lacking a professor to teach it and she had the necessary bioinformatics background. Unfortunately, Jay did, too. He was—to everyone else, at least—charming, or at least something like it. To hear Bernie speak, he was sweet and helpful and wouldn’t hurt a fly.  But if she could hear the fish, she’d think he was the devil. All everyone else’s adoration served to do was make Dan like him even less.

Still, the end of the semester approached apace, and Dan kept his focus on himself and his friends as much as he was able. Most of the fish that Dan was familiar with knew better than to trust Jay by now, and he heard that Jay was venturing further and causing trouble in different places instead, but he left it alone. Realistically, what was he going to do? It was the only reasonable thing. He stopped by the aquarium on occasion, which was a delight in and of itself, and he got his work done, and he kept in touch with his colleagues in the Atlantic and they kept him posted on what they were seeing with the shark populations they were monitoring. There were some instances of bad news—the missing student never showed up, and another one or two, Dan wasn’t sure, joined them in vanishing off the face of the earth, but it was a city and these things happened and it didn’t happen to anyone Dan knew. At the end of the day, all was as well as it could really be.

Until it wasn’t.  

One week before the end of classes, Bernadotte announced to the class as a whole that the university was going to launch the aquarium publicly, explaining briefly what it was and much more rapidly turning to something worse: that, as a pre-opening event, the Environmental Sciences college was hosting an event and anyone enrolled in an CoES class was welcome, for free and everything. Dan watched Jay perk up, visibly interested. Absolutely not.

It was one thing to be eating goldfish from the tank and wild fish out of the river. It was something else entirely to start eating out of an aquarium. Dan couldn’t help but feel protective over a project he’d helped with, too, even if it hadn’t been that much help. He knew a lot of those fish. He was absolutely not letting this rule-flaunting, skeevy asshole fuck it all up.

He accosted Jay outside class. “You are not going to that aquarium.”

“The one with the art installations?” Jay said. “Yes I am. Do you want something, Acanthis?”

“Would you quit calling me by my last name? Stay out of those fucking fish tanks.”

“No,” Jay said. “I have another class to be at, Acanthis, would you get out of my face?”

“The second anything goes wrong at that aquarium, I’m pointing the finger at you,” Dan said. “Don’t even fucking think about it. I’ll know if even a single fish is fucking hurt. If you even speak to them.”

“Acanthis. I have places to be,” Jay said. “Move, or I’m pushing you.”

“This is the only warning I’m fucking giving you,” Dan growled. “Take it. Stay out of the fucking aquarium.”

Jay scoffed and shouldered past Dan. Dan made no effort not to be pushed out of the way, but called after Jay, “I mean it!”

Jay shook his head, like he was rolling his eyes where Dan couldn’t see them, and kept walking.  So the aquarium was screwed, basically.

-

Dan knew he was being a little unreasonable. He wasn’t going to let that stop him, though.

Asking around turned up that Jay likely didn’t have a car, so Dan figured that he was going to try to catch a ride with someone else to the aquarium. It was hardly walking distance, from campus to the center of downtown Spokane. Trying to stop Jay from getting a carpool was going to be hard, but not impossible, of course. He’d figure something out. If he could even figure out who was bringing Jay…

…which turned out to be easier than Dan had expected. Two days after the announcement in class, Bernie had announced that she’d gotten some students who were struggling to make it to the aquarium location, and she would be organizing carpools. That just meant that Dan needed to see who got Jay’s name and somehow convince them not to bring Jay. These were students. He could probably bribe them, or ply them with cookies and alcohol, or something. Wouldn’t be too hard.

It wasn’t to be. Bernie ended up with three kids on overflow, and Jay was one of them. Bernie was a really lovely lady, and sweet as they came. And there was absolutely no way Dan was going to be able to tell her what the issue was without having to answer difficult questions about himself, and besides, she’d probably insist that he was being too hard on Jay and there was a good reason to eat goldfish after telling them you thought they were the best individual fish on the planet or something. So just telling Jay’s transportation to leave him behind unexpectedly was out of the plan.

Eventually, in a fit of desperation, Dan asked Bernie if he could catch a ride with her along with the other three students. She said that he could, and that it’d be a little cramped but there would still be room for everyone.

The night before the event, Dan started asking around again, trying to find Jay to warn him off a second time. This time he didn’t succeed. Everyone knew who he was, of course, but no one could quite find him. One girl even asked Dan if he thought Jay was ”next”—baffling Dan, and when he asked what she meant, she started carrying on about mysterious disappearances and serial killers like she thought they were living in a movie of some sort. No one else Dan spoke to was any more helpful. Jay had to be off-campus somewhere, or maybe he’d vanished into thin air. Dan wasn’t optimistic enough to trust in the latter, but he crossed his fingers anyway. That would be one disappearance Dan wouldn’t mind, that was for sure.

The inexorable march of time went on, as it always did. Tomorrow rolled around. Dan woke up on the morning of the aquarium event and knew that this was it. He was out of time. He just had to find some way to make it happen.

This time, he succeeded in waylaying Jay. It was by chance, even—he caught sight of Jay’s stupid gray horns just barely peeking out over the sea of faces at the front doors to the library and zeroed in on Jay as fast as he could. He grabbed Jay by the arm and couldn’t suppress a second of distaste at the texture of Jay’s flesh—strangely squishy and stiff all at once, like a very full water balloon instead of flesh with bones in it—and then Jay whirled around. “Acanthis?”

Dan opted not to call him on the name thing this time. “This is the last time I’m going to say it. Stay away from the aquarium.”

“Didn’t you say last time was going to be the only warning?” Jay said.

“I am so serious,” Dan said. “You do not want to test me on this. Stay away from the aquarium! Do I make myself clear?”

“Uh-huh. Enjoy the rest of your day, Acanthis.” Jay started to pull away from Dan, and Dan grabbed his arm tighter. His odd glassy eyes narrowed. “You’re going to want to let go of me right now.”

“Tell me you’ll stay away from the aquarium.”

Jay wrenched his arm away from Dan’s grip, much harder than Dan expected. His knuckles ached at the sudden force; he could swear he heard one of his joints crack. “I told you to let go of me, didn’t I? I don’t know how to say this politely, Acanthis—stop telling me to stay away from the aquarium. I’m allowed to be curious about it just like everyone else is. Just because you have a problem with me doesn’t make it my concern. I’m tolerating this, because you work here and I’m probably leaving after another semester. But if you push me, I’m going to start pushing back. Do I make myself clear?”

“I don’t have a problem with you, I have a problem with you eating—” Dan realized abruptly that they were in public and lowered his voice. “Eating the fucking fish! I think that should be fucking understandable.”

“No, you also have a problem with me,” Jay said flatly. “You are not the only one, and I do not care very much. But you will never be able to dictate what I do and don’t do. You had better get that through your head right the fuck now.”

Dan, disbelieving, shook his head. “I can’t fucking believe you.”

“Great,” Jay said, shoving past Dan. He hit Dan in the chest with his shoulder, clearly intentionally. “See you at the aquarium, Acanthis.”

“No you fucking won’t!” Dan called after him, but he vanished seamlessly into the crowd before he was even done speaking.

Fucker.

-

Finally, out of ideas, Dan called up a local friend who did some contract work with the Sideways Court and asked them to temporarily hex Bernie’s car. He felt bad about it, but it wouldn’t be any real harm done, and it’d just keep the car from starting for a while. It would stop the other two students from getting to the aquarium either, but Dan was willing to call that an acceptable loss. He turned up at the parking lot next to the cafeteria at the appointed meeting-time even though he knew it wasn’t going to get him anywhere; it seemed only fair to miss it, and besides, that let him keep an eye on Jay.

Jay gave Dan a very dubious look when he arrived. “You’d better not be waiting here for me, Acanthis.”

“Nope,” Dan said. “Carpooling.”

Jay gave him a long, hard look, and then shrugged and pulled out his phone. “I assume you’ll be dogging my steps all night?”

“You’d best believe it.”

“I don’t mean to insult you, Acanthis,” Jay said, “but this strikes me as a phenomenally stupid plan.”

“I keep telling you, my name is Dan,�� Dam said. “And my plan is fine.”

“I’m sure it is,” Jay said, not looking up from his phone. “Look, for all anyone knows, you’re the concern here. Everyone at the library saw you getting handsy and aggressive with me. You have fuck-all in the way of evidence. And I’m—”

A car pulled up along the cement, and Jay cut off, picking his head up. “Ah, there’s Doctor Maragou,” he said, in exactly the same casual tone.

That was weird, and eerie. “Hey, Bernie,” Dan called, trying to keep any sort of distrust out of his tone of voice. “How’s your day been?”

“Oh, hi, Dan,” Bernie said. “Hi Jay! It’s great to see you both. Have you seen Sophia and Luke?”

“Not yet, but there’s still plenty of time,” Jay said, smiling warmly. “Dan, I know you’re closest with Doctor Maragou. Do you want to sit up front?”

“Generous of you,” Dan said, “yeah. Bernie, should we get in now?”

“Yeah, why not?” Bernie asked. “I think I see Sophia coming over now, anyway. It shouldn’t be too long.”

True enough, Sophia was cresting the small hill between the walking path and the parking lot. As Dan watched, Luke, the fourth student, walked over as well. So that was the whole crowd.

Dan didn’t need to jostle around, not in the front seat, but in the back Sophia, Luke, and Jay had to work out seating arrangements; Jay had volunteered to sit in the middle, but there was a little bit of difficulty with the seatbelts, and it took a few minutes of shuffling about before Luke finally announced to Bernie that they  could start driving. Bernie nodded, smiling, and made to pull out of the parking lot. And then her car made a terrible backfiring noise.

“What the hell was that?” Luke blurted. “I mean, um, sorry Professor.”

“What the hell was that?” Bernie muttered, stepping on the gas again. Nothing happened.

“That’s… weird,” Sophia said. “Professor M., has that ever happened before?”

“Nope,” Bernie said. “I’ve never had any car do that before.”

“I can take a look at it,” Sophia said, already opening the door. “I’m good with cars.”

“Hang on a minute,” Bernie said, turning her key in the ignition. Nothing happened. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Yup,” Sophia said.

“How sure?” said Bernie, pressing on the gas again.

“Very sure,” Sophia said. “I like cars. Pressing on the gas isn’t going to do anything good if it‘s not igniting, so maybe stop doing that.”

Bernie stopped pressing on the gas very quickly. “Okay. You can look under the hood, if you want. Let me come out and look at it with you.”

The two of them stood outside the car looking at the hood for a good ten or eleven minutes. Jay made dubious eye contact with Dan through the rearview mirror. Dan pretended not to notice.

“Um,” Luke, the other classmate, said awkwardly after about two minutes of sustained silence. “So, uh, you’re Professor Acanthis, right?”

“You can call me Dan,” Dan said.

“Yeah, but you teach the fieldwork for nonmajors class, right?”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “Why?”

“Is it particularly hard?” Luke asked. “I mean, work-intensive. I’m setting up my schedule for next semester.”

Dan paused, trying to think about that. “I just started teaching it this semester. I think it’s pretty light, but you’re better off asking one of my students.”

“He means it’s very easy,” Jay said tonelessly. “Acanthis, tell him your late work policy.”

“It’s Dan,” Dan said. “As long as it’s in before the end of the semester, I don’t take points off late work.”

“They meet once a week, there’s a lab report due but you can work on it in the class, and it’s for nonmajors,” Jay added. “Very easy class. If you want an easy A you should take it.”

“Huh,” Luke said. “Thanks… Jaaaaaames?”

“Jay,” Jay said, but now that Dan was listening he pronounced it a little oddly, sort of more like ‘Joy’ than ‘Jay’. “Luke, right?”

“Yeah,” Luke said. “Are you planning on taking it next semester? I thought you and Professor Acanthis had… um.”

“Drama?” Jay asked, and laughed under his breath. “No, it’s nothing serious, but I’m on the pre-med track. Have to take macrobio field instead. I’m only in class with Doc Maragou because it qualified as an elective.”

“What’s the deal, actually?” Luke said. “Like, if you don’t mind me asking, because I heard you guys were really, uh… but you seem chill now.”

“Like I said,” Jay said, “it’s nothing serious. Me and Acanthis have a couple disagreements over… I don’t know, I don’t want to get into it. And a friend of a friend was talking shit about me that he believed, but I think we’re over that. Mostly it’s personality clash.”

“It’s not personality clash,” Dan said. “He’s fucked over a few friends of mine and won’t stop doing it.”

Jay raised his eyebrows at Luke, who smiled rather tightly back. “It is really not that serious. He doesn’t like that I don’t do what he tells me. I get it. I don’t like to be told what to do. It’s a personality clash. We’re working it out. This time next year, I imagine you won’t even hear that me and Acanthis were arguing.”

“Huh,” Luke said. “Right.”

Dan willed himself not to argue, even though that was blatantly untrue. He didn’t need to hash the whole thing out in front of a human audience. Fortunately, about that point Bernie came back around. “We can’t figure the problem out,” she said through the driver’s-side door, “so you three might as well come out. I’m not sure what we’re going to do here.”

“Damn,” Luke said.

“It’s a bit of a walk,” Jay said, “and it’ll get us there a little late, but we could take the Six over to Riverside.”

Dan turned to look at him, uncomprehending. He could see the other three do the same.

“The bus,” Jay said. “Don’t any of you go anywhere?”

“I only take the campus shuttle,” Luke said. “Sorry.”

“Huh,” Jay said. “Anyway, if that’s the plan, we should probably get moving. If we miss the bus we’re going to be waiting for a good hour for the next one.”

“I think the event ends at eight,” Bernie said.

“And it’s, what, six now?” Jay said. “So we’ll basically miss it. I don’t particularly want to do that,” he said, making eye contact with Dan with a weird little sedate smile on his face, “so unless anyone has objections, let’s get moving.”

“How far of a walk is it?” Bernie asked.

Jay shrugged. “Maybe a few miles? It’s at the transit center. Do you know where I mean?”

“Oh!” Bernie said. “Okay, I think I can do that.”

“Fan-ta-stic,” Jay said. “Luke, Sophia, you two on board?”

“Yeah, sure,” Sophia said.

“You didn’t ask Dan,” Luke said.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Jay said. “He’s going to follow me no matter what I ask him.”

“Oo-kay,” Luke said. “Yeah, I’ll come.”

Jay smiled, waving a hand and starting to walk rather briskly. “Alright. We have half an hour. Let’s move.”

Dan had never walked between the campus and the transit center like this before. This part of Spokane—of Washington, really—was gorgeous. Jay kept them hurrying along the side of the road, but Dan and Sophia kept slowing down to look at the trees or the rock faces or the rivers and falling behind. Dan wished he could say it was intentional, but it really was just that beautiful. And because they kept stopping at the same things, he and Sophia had started talking, aimlessly commenting on the trees and the water.

Then the road they were walking along turned into a bridge, high over a wide waterfall. All of them stopped, even Jay.

“This reminds me of where I grew up,” Sophia said to Dan. “I was walking distance from Wairere as a kid.”

Jay turned as though that had caught his attention. “Wairere Falls?”

“You’ve been there?” Sophia asked, looking a bit surprised. “Yeah.”

“They were more impressive than this, I think,” Jay said. “I don’t know, the last time I was in New Zealand was nearly thirty years ago.”

“Aotearoa,” Sophia said.

“Couldn’t have been,” Luke said, at about the same time. “How old are you?”

Jay laughed. “You think someone with a face as plastic as mine looks my age? I appreciate the vote of confidence. I’m pushing forty.”

Was that his cover? That he’d just undergone a bunch of surgeries?

“Oh, wow,” Bernie said. “What did you do before you decided to go into medicine?”

Jay glanced sidelong at Dan. “Professional fishing. Do you still need a moment to ogle?”

“Not hassling us to get moving again already?” Dan asked.

“We’ve got a little time,” Jay said.

“You were on us the whole way here,” Sophia said, still staring at the falls.

“Yeah, because I knew you were all going to stare here. It’s a nice waterfall. Take your time. I’ll tell you when we really have to get a move on.”

Dan turned that one over in his head for a moment. Was Jay expecting him to have delayed more intensely? Was that what that actually was? Or was this actually a moment of… what, generosity in disguise? Jay was such a strange person.

It was a nice waterfall, though, and the water below it looked deep and clear. Dan walked to the part of the railing Jay was leaning on, trying to look subtle, and leaned over. “Between the two of us, we’re the only ones who can breathe under water.”

“I can’t, actually,” Jay said. “I don’t breathe at all.”

Dan stopped, looking at him properly. Jay shrugged. “No lungs. Don’t breathe.”

“But you can  live under water, right?” Dan did his best to clarify.

“Yeah, that I can,” Jay said. “What about it?”

“Have you ever gone over a waterfall like that? If you’re here, and you were in New Zealand around waterfalls.”

Now it was Jay’s turn to look at Dan oddly. “I have, actually. Not often, but I have. Are you about to ask me for advice?”

“I just… wonder, I guess,” Dan said. “Does this one look like it’d be good to jump off of?”

Jay was quiet for a moment, studying the water. “Well, depends what you mean by good. You’ll probably get spun really hard. Impacting the water will probably hurt, but you don’t want to dive or anything here, or you’ll risk hitting the bottom, I think, it doesn’t look that deep to me.”

“You could’ve just said no,” Dan said.

“Those are the only problems. If you don’t like being disoriented, that’s on you,” Jay said. “The water is clean and clear and there’s no rocky outcroppings to hit yourself into. It’s pretty damn good, as far as these things go.”

“Sounds kind of unpleasant.”

“It’s  one of those things,” Jay said, turning toward the other three. “If you liked it, you’d probably already know that by now, and if you don’t, you’ve never thought about it. I’m not sure what kind of thrill-seeking mer adolescents get up to, though.”

“Me either, really. I lived most of my life on land after I turned twelve.”

“Huh,” Jay said. “That’s why you’re like this.”

“Like what?” Dan started, but Jay was already walking toward the other three. “Jay!”

“We’re going to get moving again, guys,” Jay said, waving. Bernie, Luke and Sophia reluctantly fell into step behind Jay again. Dan, for his part, hurried up to stand next to him so he could ask what the fuck Jay was talking about.

“What do you mean, that’s why I’m ‘like that?’”

“Do you want them hearing? I thought your being here meant you had to be super hush-hush.”

“Honestly, I’ve been wondering this whole time. Why don’t you?”

Jay gave him a disbelieving look. “Obviously I’m supposed to.”

“Well—you’re not, and no one’s tried to arrest you yet.”

“You’d be surprised at how low-profile I can be. Plastic surgery,” he said, tapping the ridges of flesh around his eyes, “tattoos, nail polish, and sometimes I can pass the horns off as a headband. Sometimes, if I’m really worried,” he glanced back at the other three, “they’re not looking. Watch this.”

Dan turned toward him, not sure what he was about to do, and was completely unprepared for his horns to just—sink back into the top of his forehead seemingly of their own volition. “What—?”

“It’s uncomfortable, though,” Jay said, replacing them with a gesture that looked more like spitting something out than horns protruding through his face. They were now streaked with some sort of bluish, viscous fluid, like dish soap. Jay ran his hands over them, and then rubbed his hands together, and when he went back to talking neither the horns nor his hands were wet.

“Neat trick,” Dan said, totally astonished.

“Handy, yeah,” Jay said. “Look, not that I’m not appreciating the conversation not suddenly being you yelling in my face and all, but can I ask what prompted the change of heart?”

“No hearts have been changed. I don’t want you to eat my fish,” Dan said. “But I can’t see a way to stop you getting to the aquarium, so I guess I’ll just have to tag around all night like you said I was going to. Might as well make it a little fun, right?”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Jay said slowly, not looking as though he understood at all.

-

The bus was miserable, but the aquarium was fantastic, so it balanced out. Dan did tail Jay the whole time, though Jay obligingly let Dan pick over the remnants of the sushi bar before they went around to the exhibits instead of trying to lose Dan so he could go start snatching schooling fish or something. Dan asked him if he wanted anything, concerned as he was for the live fish in the exhibits; Jay demurred. Something about a food allergy, or something; Dan wasn’t sure exactly what he meant but he sure made it sound like there wasn’t anything at the table that wouldn’t somehow make him sick.

Jay was fascinated by the first-floor exhibits that looked like classrooms. Eventually they made it to the second floor, after Jay had done a long loop around the expansive ground level and spent a lot of time in the touch-tank mumbling to a nervous epaulette shark until he could coax it up toward him. Dan didn’t like it then, but it hadn’t been sinister after all, and he was trying to relax. But just after they made it to the second floor, Jay slipped off into the shadows, and Dan just barely caught up to him before Jay—with Dan’s keys—slipped behind the Employees Only door and beckoned for Dan to follow.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing,” Dan hissed, as soon as he was inside. “They’ll kick you out if you’re back here.”

“Not if I’m with you,” Jay said, which wasn’t true.

“Yes, they will. And they’ll revoke my clearance.”

“Come on. I want to talk to the nursery sharks.”

“Absofuckinglutely not,” Dan said. “I’ll tell on both of us.”

“What the fuck is the big idea?” Jay said. “Look, you can hear both sides of the conversation. And they’re nursery sharks, and I’m not even hungry. I’m curious about living in those drowned fake rooms. Do you know which tank we should be looking for?”

“We’re not doing this,” Dan said.

“Alright, I’ll find out without you,” Jay shrugged, and started walking. Dan reached out to grab Jay’s arm, and—

Well. Dan didn’t actually know what happened, only that his hand closed on solid-ish flesh, and then it was suddenly not solid under his hand at all, and Jay had sort of just pulled away around his fingers. Weird.

“You can come with me or you can stay there, but you’re not grabbing me in private,” Jay said. “I’m not interested in being yanked around, I don’t give a damn how worried you are about the fish. I’m not even going to put my face near the water.”

With deep misgivings, Dan hurried up and followed behind Jay. “It’s, um, door seven. The exhibit you want.”

“Thank you,” Jay said, sounding legitimately a little bit surprised. “Appreciate it.”

“Don’t expect a repeat,” Dan said. “And I will be warning them about you later.”

Jay hummed, pushing through the door slowly. Beyond, they could hear the pump and the water splashing.

Jay bent down by the side of the tank, reaching out with one hand. “This is going to look strange.”

“Everything you do looks strange,” Dan started, but he was right—it did look real fucking strange. The palm of his hand… uncoiled? Rippled and widened? And from the inside came slightly luminescent blue tendrils, about a half-inch wide each and visibly very soft, and slick with some sort of fluid with the consistency of honey, or maybe laundry detergent. He stuck these into the water without a worry, and then said, not too loudly, “Hey. Up here.”

Abruptly Dan remembered the lures. “You have those inside you? You feed them to the fish!”

“Sometimes they’re hungry,” Jay said.

“What are they, worms?” Dan asked. “Some sort of… fungus?”

Jay looked up from the water to squint at him. “Are you trying to fuck with me? Like, is that a joke?”

“What?”

Jay reached over with his normal hand and grabbed one tendril firmly, and then pulled. Hard, actually, hard enough that Dan thought it looked like it had to hurt, and then with a quiet squelching sound a small octagonal segment of his gray skin pulled free from the side of his hand and so did the tendril, still moving freely. “It’s me. I feel like that should be obvious, if the fish were reporting on me to you. That one bass got a good mouthful of my leg a few months ago.”

“What are those?” someone else said, and Jay and Dan both jumped and turned to see that there was a small nursery shark staring up at the both of them. Dan wasn’t terribly familiar with her, but he thought her name started with an s sound, or maybe an m. “Can I eat them?”

“Sure,” Jay said.

“They make fish sick,” Dan said quickly. “Better not.”

“They make fish sick?” Jay repeated. “They shouldn’t. Just drowsy, maybe.”

“Dizzy and sick, is what they told me.”

Jay looked down at his own hand curiously. “So, I’m Jay.” He said it oddly again. Maybe Dan was mispronouncing it. “My friend here is Dan.”

“Danistei,” Dan said, because he gave his real name to the fishes, thank you, and then registered that Jay had said his actual name.

“What’s your name?” Jay continued, as though nothing had happened.

“Svisa,” said the nursery shark.

“Nice to meet you, Svisa,” Dan started.

“We’re delighted you’ll speak to us,” Jay continued, coming very close to cutting Dan off. “I have a couple questions about the environment.”

“Oh, like he’s always asking,” Svisa said.

“Probably,” Jay said. “Do you know what your environment is a replica of?”

“It’s a replica?” Svisa said.

“It’s a replica of a human classroom,” Jay said, rapid-fire. “Thank you, Svisa. What do you think of the lighting on the side of the wall?”

“Oh, he really is always asking that one. It’s fine.”

“You come here from anywhere interesting?”

“Not really,” Svisa said.

“Captive-bred,” Dan cut in. “Svisa, are you bored?”

“A little bit,” Svisa said. “Nothing left in here to catch, and I know all the hiding places. When it’s light out, I can watch the other tank, but they’re dimming everything now.”

“They’re dimming everything,” Jay repeated. “Okay, Dan, up, let’s get out of here before we get caught.”

“Caught,” Svisa repeated.

“We’re not technically supposed to be back here right now,” Dan explained hastily, getting up. “Thank you so much for chatting, Svsia. Jay, was that what you wanted to know?”

“One last question,” Jay said. “How dark are the hiding places?”

“Dark enough,” Svisa said, delicately closing her jaws on a big chunk of Jay’s exposed tendrils. They sheared off cleanly, and started to leak thinner, less viscous blue fluid into the water; Jay rapidly curled them back up without even a hiss. “You’re leaving, I’ll see you some other time.”

“Me, maybe,” Dan muttered. “Jay, if she gets sick, I’m holding you to account for it.”

“She should be fine. It’s like weed,” Jay said. “Bye, Svisa, thanks for talking. Might see you again, might not. I’m curious about the way it feels down there. Dan, hitting the road?”

Dan sighed and followed behind Jay, and the two of them stepped out of the tank room and then into the Employees Only hall and then back into the rest of the museum. It was dim. “What time is it?”

“You have a phone, don’t you?” Jay said, but he was pulling his own out as he said it. “Eight ten.”

“They closed up fast,” Dan noted, a little surprised. “I wasn’t expecting them to kick everyone out and turn the lights off ten minutes after the event ended.”

Jay shrugged. “Maybe they’re just efficient. Let’s make sure they didn’t lock us in.”

They hadn’t, so the two of them walked out the doors and tried not to look suspicious. Or at least Dan tried; Jay looked casual as anything, sauntering out confidently.

“Stop looking over your shoulder,” Jay murmured out of the corner of his mouth, and Dan straightened up. “No, that’s worse, you look even more like you’re sneaking into the pantry to steal cookies or something. Do you just not do this sort of thing?”

“No, I don’t,” Dan said.

Jay paused. “Why were you messing with me so much, then? Starting out strong for your first few bits of mischief?”

“I,” Dan said, trying to wrap his head around that. “It was about the fish. It has always been about the fish.”

“But you had to know I wasn’t going to go after the fish in a new aquarium,” Jay said, sounding almost stupefied. “Right?”

What? “What? No.”

“If I’m going to an aquarium, there’s going to be close monitoring, people around,” Jay said. “And it’s not like they’re filling, anyway. Obviously I’d just go pick someone off in an alley beforehand, if it was that big a deal.”

“I told you, I don’t like you eating the wild fish either,” Dan said. “But I guess—”

“Fish?” Jay repeated. “No, I mean—” And then he stopped, and turned to gesture Dan toward an alley. “Come take a detour with me.”

“What do you mean, not fish?” Dan said, following easily.

Jay looked Dan up and down, still walking. The alley was longer than Dan expected. “I know you said something, at some point, about the ‘patterns,’” and here he made air-quotes with his fingers, “of the way that I ate the fish being ‘creepy.’”

“Yeah, because they are,” Dan said. “I mean, I might’ve been judging you wrong, but it still seems real fucking creepy to me. I don’t really get—”

Jay raised a hand and cut Dan off. “And I read into that, I think. I thought you meant the patterns I ate everything with were creepy.”

“I mean,” Dan started. “I don’t know.”

Jay smiled oddly, waving for Dan to walk a little faster. “And I thought to myself that that was fair, because you were right. And I didn’t know how much you’d told anyone, or how much trouble I’d be in if you had.”

“Jay. What are you getting at.”

“Fish are very unsatisfying, you know.” Jay sighed. “They don’t have much to talk about. Their secrets are inconsequential and not very interesting. And, now, I have a problem, the kind you’re not likely to have heard of. “

“Where are you leading me?”

“You’ll see,” Jay said. The alleyway had gotten so dark that it was difficult to make out anything except for the points of light reflecting off his eyes from the distant billboards on the street. “I need a secret—given freely—before I can eat my fill. Makes it had to order off the dinner menu. Told myself, hey, hospice care, that’s got to be the gig for me. But it doesn’t leave me a lot of time to hunt. So I’ve been scavenging the fishtanks. But do you know what one of the first things you told me was?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Dan stopped walking.

“This explains why threatening you didn’t seem to do anything,” Jay said. “Did you even know I was threatening you?”

“When the hell were you threatening me?”

“That’s what I mean,” Jay said. “I’m full, now, I’m not eating anything. Or anyone. But you know what I’m getting at, don’t you?”

Dan shook his head. “You eat fish, and you’re implying you’ll eat me.”

“About the gist of it, yeah,” Jay said. “Keep walking, we’re going to get to the bus stop a few blocks early. I didn’t want to take you through here if you already knew I was likely to maybe eat you. Didn’t need that kind of thing getting me in trouble, you understand. You cannot do anything about me, but if you decided to start running and screaming it would’ve made my life inconvenient.”

“Are you,” Dan said, trying to find the polite term for it. “Are you a… person with a vamparasitic affliction?”

“Am I a what?” Jay said. “Vamparasitic affliction? Can you not say vampire now?”

“I think it’s offensive,” Dan said.

“If I were a vampire I wouldn’t be offended,” Jay said. “But no. I’m an obligate carnivore under a curse, but it’s a different one. You’ve seen me walk in the sunlight.”

“Can you eat garlic?”

“I can’t eat any plants.”

Dan could start to see the lights at the end of the walkway now. “Why do you eat people, if you can just eat fish?”

Jay looked at Dan for a moment, and despite the low light Dan thought he could see Jay’s needle-sharp teeth glinting in a very sharp smile. “Why does anyone prefer to eat anything? Just tastes better.”

[musical-chick-13]

Regarding the previous post, I think the way I approach trying to evaluate a piece of art is asking "Do I think the positive things I get out of it outweigh the parts of it that I don't like?" And when I call something a "guilty pleasure" song/show/book/piece of media/etc. it's really more in the sense of, "Given who I am as a person, the flaws I've found in this should be complete dealbreakers for me, but somehow they aren't, and it makes me feel like I'm having an identity crisis."

[tevatron]

i'm so glad i won't be working with my pi after this month. i think i've reached my limit. i just can't deal with her anymore

[lunarharp]

er... extreme amount of dragon age: the veilguard scribbles to soothe my heart🐦‍⬛💀