#gonna be strapping her into the next dimension this afternoon :)

[alluralater]

was fucking this girl recently and after her second orgasm i was smiling and laughing. she’s moaning my name all whiny and drawn out, telling me she can’t take it and i’m telling her she can. she’s my good girl. she can take it for me. she’s nearly delirious and i feel this deliciously primal urge to hear it. say it. “i’m your good girl” rolling her hips back to my fingers, my lips next to her ear. say it again. “i’m your good girl, i- i can take it i-“ oh she’s such a good girl for me. i whispered to her, told her that what i know of myself is this. i like to see a pretty thing unraveled for me. completely ruined for me. come apart for me. break for me. this is the kind of sadist i am. i want you like this. she came about 15 seconds after. so sweet the way she whines and begs for it. telling me she’s close, she wants to cum. “please please allura i’m gonna cum” and i felt that grin slide across my lips before i kissed her and told her repeatedly not to cum while i worked her even closer to it. fuck. she was so cute. tears down her pretty face. cheeks flushed. i love seeing a girl lose her fucking mind

[tsumtsum-into-omiomi]

CHAPTER FOUR: THE PINK DIMENSION

warning(s): cursing

word count: 1.8k

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Located near the centre of Taishi, Inarizaki High is the town's pride for its design and prestige. The school used to house the prefecture's royalties and even though it has gone through multiple renovations over the years, its Japanese castle architectural elements are still apparent all over the school's exterior. Apart from its unique structure, academic practitioners from all over the world also flock the institution for its symposiums, which are held throughout every school term to discuss multiple magical subjects.

 The school's main building is its Rectory and it would be the first thing for one to notice even from afar. The elegant white walls are in stark contrast to its black, pointy roof with golden details forged onto it. Other parts of the school have the same colour palette as well. The school would reach its peak of beauty during spring, when the pink flowers of cherry blossom trees planted around the vast fields are in full bloom.                                                                                                                                                                                    

Next to the Rectory, the Potions faculty building appears small compared to it, when in fact, the faculty is the second largest after Pentagrams. Its roof manages to reach only half of the rectory's structure, making it the tallest than the rest of the faculty buildings (the Pentagrams faculty only wins in size, not height). A group of students can be seen exiting the Potions building’s main arch as school session for the day is over, including you and Suna, who are walking together towards the gate.

 The sunny afternoon sky is decorated with puffy clouds, which are moving lazily in the wind's direction. Rays of sunshine threaten to dazzle your eyes but the cherry blossom trees lining up the stone walkway shade you from them. Soft breeze blows some petals into your way as you enjoy the scent of spring that wafts in the air. You are glad that there are no signs of rain at all today since that would meddle with your after-school plans.

 "Gosh, this school is so big, I swear I feel like all of my cousins come here," Suna complains while faking a smile at a first year girl, who is hanging out under one of the trees with her friends.

 "Well, literally everyone in Taishi studies here. What do you expect?" you laugh, attention now directed at him and not the surrounding anymore.

 "For them to go study somewhere else, I guess," he retorts, sliding his hands into his pants' pockets. The smile on his face has disappeared.

 "At least, your sibling is not here," your eyes catch the twins waiting for you under a tree upfront. They also notice your appearance and wave at you two.

 "Oh, shut up. If not for them, you won't have any friends," Suna raises a hand at Atsumu and Osamu.

 "Whatever. You sure you don't wanna come?" you ask Suna one last time before parting ways with him.

 Suna shakes his head, "yeah, I wanna go home."

 "Do you need anything?"

 "Oh, right. Can you get me some stocks? Sparrow and jellyfish," he takes his wallet out to pass some money to you.

 "Won't they go bad before next week's class?" you accept the notes from him.

 "It's already Friday, class is on Monday. I think it would be fine," Suna waves his hand, dismissing your concern.

 "Okay, see ya," you swerve towards the twins. Suna echoes a goodbye behind you and keeps walking.

 "He's really not coming?" Atsumu asks when you are within hearing distance.

 "Yeah, but he asked me to get some stuff for him," you respond before stopping in front of them.

 "Lazy ass," Osamu disses. "Anyway, can I teleport?"

 "Bitch, no," you and Atsumu say at the same time.

 "Your sense of direction is so shitty, it'd take forever to get to Kudo Street," you pull a face.

 Atsumu then adds, "a lot of people are using the travel dimension at this hour. You'll surely hit someone although I don't know how is that  even possible since it's fucking huge in there."

 "But if I don't practise, I won't get better at teleporting??" Osamu argues.

 Atsumu lets out an exasperated sigh, "fine, you can teleport us on the way home. Let's go," he starts walking to lead the way. You and Osamu follow him from behind, heading towards the end of the walkway where the teleportation station is located at.

 The teleportation station consists of five open top cubic spaces lined together, conjoined on their sides. Each cube fits at least five people and has three transparent glass walls with a white marble floor, where you are supposed to draw your pentagrams on. Two auxiliary police officers are on guard to control the flow of traffic, making sure that the students are queueing up to use the cubicles. At the end of the station, you see a group of younger pupils, whom you assume are waiting for their guardians to pick them up because they're not eligible to travel on their own yet. Teleporting licenses can only be acquired once you are sixteen years old.

 You, Atsumu and Osamu get in one of the lines and wait for your turn. Every time a cubicle teleports people, you can hear swooshing noises as they dissipate into coloured light sparks and vanish from sight in a blink of an eye. Before long, the pair of siblings in front of you enter the cubicle you're lining up for and you're now at the front of the line. The elder sister draws the teleportation pentagram, her face scrunched up in concentration, and you watch as she conjures blue sparks on the marble floor.  

 That's when Atsumu drops the bomb on you.

 "You teleport us," he nudges your elbow with his.

 You and Osamu look at him wide-eyed, "bitch, what??"

 "Why won't you let me teleport, if you're letting her?!" Osamu slaps Atsumu's shoulder with the back of his hand.

 "Bitch, I said you will on the way back, didn't I??" Atsumu readjusts his bag's strap that shifted because of Osamu's hit just now.

 "Nooooo, Tsumu-nii channnnn!" you whine with a pout, swinging Atsumu's arm in an attempt to change his mind, "I don't want to teleport!"

 "And that's why you're getting shitty at it," he shakes you off before pushing you into the now empty cubicle, "go."

 "Fuck," you clench your fists but do as you’re told anyway since you don't want to hold the line up with your siblings’ bickering. Plus, Atsumu's right, you haven't been practising ever since you got your license a few months ago.

 Once you, Atsumu and Osamu gather in the middle of the cubicle, you inhale a deep breath whilst recollecting the pentagram shape for teleportation. In order to accommodate the number of people teleporting, your pentagram has to be huge and made to fit the whole floor. This will definitely consume a lot of energy. You sigh at the thought.

 "She doesn't want to do it," Osamu tries again, "let me!"

 "Shut up, Samu. Give her a second. Come on, you're gonna be okay," Atsumu encourages you with a pat on the shoulder.

 You click your tongue at him, "I hate you."

 Pointing a finger out at the marble underneath, you begin drawing invisible lines from memory that transform into yellow light sparks on the floor. It's a struggle but you manage to complete the shape that now surrounds you and the twins. Due to its size, the pentagram's glow this time is almost blinding and the fizzing noise that it produces is loud in your ears.

 "Teleport," you whisper.

 The hissing pentagram then floats and spins around the three of you as it nets your bodies tightly. You can feel its particles squeezing to decompose you into molecules. There is stiffness in your muscles and joints that prevents you from moving. The bright light forces you to shut your eyes while the sound is shrieking in your ears. You grit your teeth together and brace yourself for what's to come next.

 The sensations become almost unbearable. But before it could get any worse, you find yourself already dissipated into tiny yellow sparks of lights, floating in a different dimension that you're familiar with. The pentagram that you drew has turned into a glowing net, holding your and the twins' dematerialised bodies together. Your mind, still intact even though your body is not, notices other nets of bodies swooshing pass by to get to their destinations through the pink abstract space that you're in.

 It's bright here, but not overwhelming. There's no sense of temperature, only the seldom Bernoulli pull by other nets speeding by. You wonder how it smells since you have no nose to take a sniff. Time is not relevant here; you always find yourself arriving at your destination at the same time you left. Often, the only important thing is your sense of direction (of which, Osamu lacks) because the only thing guiding you is a huge ass ancient wooden compass floating in the space above you like a moon (so you feel like it's always following you).

 It's a trippy place.

 You collect yourself, taking control of the net to carry everyone to Kudo Street- which is situated up north. One push is all it takes for you to zoom through the crowd as the whizzing sound of air friction envelopes you. With awareness of the traffic around, you navigate your way carefully to avoid accidents (it gets super messy when disintegrated bodies collide).

 Travelling in the Pink Dimension after school is like walking at a train station during peak hour. Everyone moves at haste in whatever direction they want to. There is not much that can be done to control individuals in a vast space as such. The only rule that applies to travellers is that they have to teleport to and from stations. This is to prevent practitioners from reappearing at a dangerous spot in the  physical world when they arrive at their destinations. If you're found to be teleporting from or to an unassigned place, you'll get a ticket for it.

 You stay on your path while trying to search for Kudo Street's teleportation station that is supposed to be some floating Greek marble vases. You would say it only took you a few seconds to arrive but time doesn't exist here, so when you see ten vases at your two o'clock, you're pretty sure it doesn't matter anyway.

 You choose an Amphora vase that no one was going for and jump into its opening. It becomes dark for a moment before the vase vomits you, Atsumu and Osamu out onto a marble floor, in three pieces. Your brothers stumble a bit before finding their grounds again while you, on the other hand, are bowing down with hands on your knees, panting to catch your breath. You can feel sweat breaking on your forehead and temple.

 "Fuck, you two are SO heavy."

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A/N: where would you teleport to if you could since Ms. Corona is making all airlines bankrupt?

[shipping-receiving]

Fictober 2019 JB Ficlet Project: Round-up 3/3

[Round-up 1/3: Days 1-10 | Round-up 2/3: Days 11-20]

Last set of favourite lines from my Fictober project, for Days 21-31! Gonna put Days 23-31 under the cut because some of these got long. Thanks everyone who followed along, your support really motivated me to get to the finish line :) Office AU will be re-posted as a standalone from tomorrow 4 November, with more instalments to come I hope, especially once I’ve pushed through The Assignment!

Day 21: “Change is annoyingly difficult.” (Retail AU) read on Tumblr / read on AO3

According to this man, she is nice, and tall, and also, very crucially, has eyes, and therefore she is attractive. That settles it, Brienne thinks, I’ve crossed over into an alternate dimension.

Day 22: “We could have a chance.” (Office AU Part 6) read on Tumblr / read on AO3

Alright, Jaime, play it cool, Jaime tells himself. He folds his arms and leans back against his car in what he hopes is a natural pose. You have a plan. After dinner, when you’re both alone, ask if this is a date, tuck hair behind ear, let finger linger on cheek, etc. He looks down at himself. Is this pose terrible? It’s terrible. Maybe I shouldn’t fold my arms? He shifts and rests one hand against the side mirror instead. What do I do with the other hand now? He places it on his hip. This is stupid. Oh fuck, I see her.

Day 23: “You can’t give more than yourself.” (College AU Part 2) read on Tumblr / read on AO3

“I always wanted to prove I was more than just—my body. More than what all the bullies thought of me. Sometimes my dad thought I was pushing myself too much. ‘You can’t give more than yourself’, he would say. But I thought it was nonsense. I even told him so, sometimes. I was always trying to be more.” She laughs; lightly, sardonically. “Which I suppose is kinda funny, because I always wished my body could be less.”

Day 24: “Patience... is not something I’m known for.” (Professors AU Part 2) read on Tumblr / read on AO3

“How is that being a dick?” He looks down at his own—neglected, waiting. “It’s just the truth. This kid probably spent less time writing this than you’re spending marking it.”

Day 25: “I could really eat something.” (Office AU Part 7) read on Tumblr / read on AO3

He turns to her once his own teeth are clean, the mint of Brienne’s toothpaste something subtly strange in his mouth, and sees her leaning against the door, waiting. He kisses her then, a kiss good morning, a kiss goodbye-for-now, just for the next three hours. Her arms wind around his neck. He has to go on his tiptoes, slightly—this is their first kiss standing up, he realises—and this sensation is something subtly strange too. But not unwelcome.

Day 26: “You keep me warm.” (Post-Canon Day 2 Part 2) read on Tumblr / read on AO3

When she calls him ‘husband’, she will remember only that he saved her time and again, as she has done for him; that he knighted her, and rediscovered his own knighthood in her; that they find new pleasures and vexations in each other every day; that they’ve loved each other since before the end of the world; that they will continue to do so in all the years that come after—as they wander through forests, or sail across seas if they feel so inclined, do so with Valyrian steel swords strapped to each of their hips, two swords forged from the same blade.

Day 27: “Can you wait for me?” (Office AU Part 8) read on Tumblr / read on AO3

She’s not seeing anyone else, obviously. And she knows he’s not, at least not in the past week, because—well, they’ve been together almost all the time. Unless he went on dates after work last Monday and Tuesday. Or in the middle of the night. Or after they had breakfast on Saturday, or before he was at her apartment on Sunday afternoon. Or maybe on Sunday night. Or those couple of times he went out for business meetings. But one of those times he took his assistant. He could be dating his assistant? But Peck is dating Pia in accounting, isn’t he?

Day 28: “Enough! I heard enough.” (High School AU Part 1) read on Tumblr / read on AO3

She’d have clocked him on the head for daring to dictate their colour scheme, if he hadn’t already told her before that blue goes well with her eyes. One of the weird things he’s been saying recently. Or maybe not so weird, in light of even more recent events.

Day 29: “I’m doing this for you.” (High School AU Part 2) read on Tumblr / read on AO3

“Well.” Jaime wraps his fingers around her upper arm. “There’s other things we can do.” “Oh.” Brienne looks around at the shelves upon shelves of books. “Like… read?”

Day 30: “I’m with you, you know that.” (Office AU Part 9) read on Tumblr / read on AO3

Stuff. It’s a juvenile word, and he can imagine Tyrion giving him a look. But he supposes what they’ve done so far has been—innocent, in relative terms. Just kissing. And touching. And looking. It’s chaste, compared to—but it’s also not. Not in the way his lips travel down her neck, the way her hands slip beneath his shirt, the way their exhalations mingle.

Day 31: “Scared? Me?” (Modern AU Day 1 Part 2) read on Tumblr / read on AO3

“Okay! Do you love me?” “I don’t know!” There’s too much shouting, and towels, and this is all moving very quickly. “I only just got around to admitting to myself that I like you!” “That’s fine! I can live with that!”

[atomicjuniper]

Here’s the fic I wrote for the @aftgexchange for @dysfunctional-college-roommates! One of the summer options was Foxes go to a waterpark and well...I guess I sort of set them in the waterpark I go to with my friends every summer and...I kind of wrote more than I expected to? Anyway it’s 7k now (sorry!) and I had a lot of fun but it’s unbetaed. How did this happen, I ask myself, when I couldn’t think of a title. I’ll probably clean it up and post it to Ao3 one day or something but for now I hope you like it!

Neil felt hot just looking at Andrew. It was eighty-five degrees outside. Pushing higher as the afternoon approached, and they’d just gotten off a bus full of athletes. Also, Andrew allowed Neil to share headphones with him while their arms pressed together the entire trip, so there was a less uncomfortable warmth growing inside of Neil’s chest.

Even so Andrew persisted in his usual dark attire despite the heat. Though Neil was quick to notice that the all-black outfits were one-by-one being replaced with navy blues and lower hues of the color spectrum. He gained more contentment out of that than this waterpark trip they’d somehow all been talked into ever could.

           “Thirty dollars each?!” said Kevin, “Coach, you’re aware we could get at least some new equipment with this instead?”

           Wymack dragged his gaze from the money in his hands and yet another form to sign to meet Kevin’s. The worker at the booth made a face Neil knows well: the realization of how thin the glass protecting you is.

           “Would you rather take the children’s prices instead?” Wymack asked, “Cause knowing our lot it wouldn’t take much to convince them.”

           Neil glanced up at the numbers above the worker’s head, wondering if he could get away with saying he was under eighteen, but found that for once the children’s prices at this rinkey-dink waterpark were much higher than the adults. It was a small attraction in the more rural parts of the area. Keeping track of what was out the window on the ride up proved they were surrounded by woods, mountains, and Hooters restaurants for a good mile. Now they were all at the entrance sign, the park’s title reading The Land of Make Believe. It stared at and mocked all of them almost as bad as their opposing fans. Neil wished he could say they were all in, at worst, the middle of nowhere, at best a pocket dimension where this wasn’t actually happening. But he in fact knew the town they were in was actually named Hope.

           “What’s his problem? That’s around the same price as an IMAX movie.” Matt whispered to Dan. Dan nodded. She seemed the most prepared for the trip, with a colorful beach bag, sunglasses perched in her hair, and a rolled up towel. Abby was the last to exit the bus with a cooler and her nursing essentials.

           “Do we get a sympathy discount if we bring up one of our teammates died?” Nicky whispered to Aaron. His t-shirt read Wild By Nature.

           “Don’t know if you mean currently or the near future but I’m so down for either one.” said Aaron. The physical trait separating him from Andrew today was the purple swim trunks from the team’s late-night Wal-Mart run. They had flowers on them, but they were minimalist graphics, so it was acceptable. Andrew on the other hand had dark camo pants on to prove how much he was NOT swimming.

           Allison heard the joke they made but merely squeezed her eyes shut in reaction. The strap of her bikini was sticking out through the neck of her top. She already had tan lines this early in the summer.

           Neil let out a breath and did his best for the warmth still cradling in his chest to not leave with it. He stared at Andrew’s profile as if to gather extra energy. Andrew was instead staring at the No Smoking sign like a disgruntled ex. At least his actual disgruntled ex served him alcohol.

“Um,” the ticket taker said, looking over Wymack and in the team’s direction, “Your shirt…”

Every Fox looked down. Then they followed the line of sight of the person behind the glass and realized they were referring to Nicky.

           “Is it not appropriate?” Nicky asked.

           “Um, I’m not really sure.” The poor kid looked nervous. It made Neil thankful he never had to take a summer job. Never had to deal with a streamline of people. “There are children here, but I’m not certain if they would get it. I’d change just to be sure.”

           “Oh, well if you insist,” Nicky removed his shirt, being certain to sway his athletic body from side to side as he pulled it over his head. He tossed back his hair and dropped the shirt onto the dirt. “Right what it says on the tin, right?”

           Aaron and Andrew knew no one ever assumed their relation to Nicky on first glance, but if there was a way to annul it right then and there they’d take it.

           “Is my shirt okay?” asked Matt. His shirt read Human Mermaid.

           “Um, I’m pretty sure it is,” said the worker, “It might even be more appropriate.”

           They were all given colorful waterproof bands (orange, appropriately) over their wrists. After the money was settled they moved past the sign and into the park. When they were all in front a water gun target game Wymack clapped his hands.

“Well!” Wymack said, “It seems that you maggots have been reprimanded before your very first steps into the park. Your one and only job to your coach is to exceed my expectations, but with you people making the attempt would be miles above what I expect from you to begin with.”

           “You can say that again,” said Kevin, eying the rest of the Foxes. His shirt was a white tee with an orange pawprint on the back.

           “Don’t act like you’re above them. You’re associated with monsters too, remember?” Wymack sent a pointed look to Nicky and Aaron, the closest “monsters” in proximity to him.

           “Aw, don’t look at us like that, Coach!” said Nicky, “Only four of us are monsters! Four-ninths is…dangit why didn’t we bring an electronic calculator to a waterpark!”

           Neil, the math major, wondered which one of them wasn’t being factored in as a monster, how much easier this would be if they still had ten players on the team, and drew the conclusion that he didn’t want to be involved.

           “I nominate slicing Kevin into a fraction!” cried Allison.

           “Hello? Adult authority speaking?” said Wymack, “I nominate that we, as a group effort, venture further than the goddamn Food Lion without involving bodily injury or committing a felony for once?”

           “Only ‘or’, Coach?” asked Andrew, “That’s leaving lot of room for error.”

           The team tried not to laugh at Andrew’s joke. Neil began to notice Andrew looked and sounded tired. He had the urge to say something or reach out for his hand but it had to wait.

“Aren’t there some guidelines we should be going over, David?” Abby asked.

           “Please.” said Wymack, “Guys, it’s hot today. We have a nurse for a reason. Get in the water and try to cool off. If that’s not your thing, just keep hydrated. We have drinks in the cooler if you for whatever reason can’t buy anything. Also, you have our numbers, in case of emergency keep your phones with you at all times. At. All. Times.” Wymack and in fact the whole team was glancing at Neil, for some strange reason. “Is there anything else?” Wymack turned to Abby for confirmation.

           “Sunscreen?”

           “Alright. Sunscreen. Put it on. Just because the only time half of you ever go outside is during practice doesn’t mean you can soak it all up in one afternoon. Also no running near the pool, no eating a half hour before entering the water, yadda yadda blah blah. What else am I missing?”

           Abby looked hesitant to say the next one. “Group assignments?”

           None of the Foxes were really speaking before this, only becoming bored with the precautions, but they all perked up at that and it somehow became more hushed.

“Look, we’re assigning groups.” said Wymack, “Before you start groaning you don’t have to follow it to the tee, you can mix and match however you please, but ultimately we don’t want anybody getting separated and ending up on their own.  There are nine of you so it’s gonna be groups of three.”

           There were yet to be moans from the Foxes. That would wait until which groups were announced. For one thing Neil, judging by what they’ve been through, precautions never hurt. And as much as he wanted to stay with Andrew he would be comfortable with any of the choices as long as it wasn’t Aaron.

           “Kevin, Neil, and Andrew. You’re some of the few Andrew won’t kill on sight and overall seem to at least tolerate one another.”’

           “Debatable.” said Kevin. He went ignored.

“Matt, Allison, and Renee.” Allison and Renee shrugged. No one seemed to have a problem with that for a moment. Until the thought fell on Dan.

           “Wait, so-”

           “Dan, Nicky, and the other Minyard.”

           “I have a name?” said Aaron.

           “Coach…” said Dan.

           “Hey, don’t be that way,” said Nicky, “We don’t bite!”

           Wymack approached closer to their side of the group. “I don’t want any trouble today,” he said, “In fact, don’t bother me at all unless it’s an absolute emergency. All I want is to not be bothered and sharing a beer with Patchy the fucking Pirate. I’m ready, indeed. Are we good?”

           Half the foxes gave a half-hearted yessir. Nicky, Renee, and Allison could be seen exchanging money through hands.

           “What bet is this one?”

           “You just made a SpongeBob reference, sir.” said Renee,

           “Coach, I’m disappointed in you!” said Matt, “I took you for a Simpsons man and now I’m out the price of admission!”

           Though Neil knew human spontaneous human combustion was near impossible for him to witness, he was almost convinced by Wymack’s face. “Look if any of you injure yourselves call Abby and not me.”

           And with that the group began to disperse. Dan, Aaron, and Nicky headed towards the pool, Matt, Allison, and Renee went to the waterslide area, Kevin walked within sight to check a map, but Andrew still stayed still and looked more bored than ever. Neil’s fingers brushed against Andrew’s knuckles.

           “It’s cool,” said Neil, “I don’t want to go swimming either. I mean, I kind of don’t have an option…” Neil gestured to his body. He was showing more skin than Andrew today, with the sleeves of his PSU shirt reaching over his shoulders but leaving a gap of skin leading to his armbands. His shorts were past his knees and left only parts most of his leg hair covered up anyway. He even decided to wear sandals instead of sneakers.

           Andrew made his first movement by glaring at Neil’s face. He pulled his hands away and shoved them into his pockets.

“I’m going to get something to eat.” said Andrew.

“But I might go get a key and throw my stuff in a locker first.” Andrew ignored him and kept on walking, “Hey! What happened to ‘stay in groups’?”

           “He doesn’t seem to be listening so far,” Andrew gestured his head to Kevin, “It’s only twenty feet away. You’re not gonna get eaten by a shark in five minutes, are you?”

           Neil considered the possibilities.

           “Okay. You go ahead,” said Neil, but Andrew gave a salute and already halfway gone, “You’re such a weirdo why do we hang out!”

           The last line he called out a bit too loud, attracting heads of vacationing families to look his way. The anxiety spiked up in Neil and he immediately ran for the lockers.

Dan Wilds lowered her sunglasses from her hair to her over her eyes. She placed her hands behind her head and eased out the tension out of the rest of her muscles, laid back on a long chair in the row of them beside the pool. Sunlight was pressing on her bare legs and shoulders. Children ran past her into the shallow pool.

Behind the dark layer before her eyes she could see Nicky dicking around on a large pirate ship in the pool meant for children. Dan put it off for now, as long as he was in her line of sight. The problem was Aaron hadn’t come out of the changing rooms yet. Abby pulled a drink out of the cooler between their chairs and placed its condensation on her forehead. Dan reminded herself to keep an eye out, but for now there were no worries.

At least it wasn’t, until a tall shadow blocked her sun. Dan did her best not to react.

“Aren’t we supposed to be adults?” Kevin asked.

Out of all the questions Kevin Day has asked Dan this one felt the least confrontational or rhetorical. Though his words were still wrapped in an undercurrent of aggression.

“Legally speaking, yes.” said Dan

“Then why are we at a theme park designed for children?” She turned her head to the side to avoid his gaze and shadow.

“It’s a family park and we’re a family,” said Dan, “Also this one was the closest and had the least crowds.”

“And the traffic for the beach crowds?” said Abby, “Yikes.”

           “And aren’t you supposed to be with Neil and Andrew right now?”

           “I just got a key for my locker,” said Kevin, “Besides, they’re adults they can handle – well they should be able to handle themselves. Theoretically.” His face turned away from Dan to the water momentarily, as if the thoughts raced through his mind. Then he looked back, “I mean, is that a ‘vacation’ to you? Sending unstable people out in public so you have to look after them more than usual? Instead of being home and doing what’s required?”

Dan sighed. Kevin seemed to be another forming cloud on her day so far, “You didn’t have to come, Kevin.”

           “And what would you have said then? You wouldn’t have complained about it?”

Dan threw up her hands in defeat. “Day, shouldn’t the point of fighting for your life be, I don’t know, to live?”

Kevin pinched above his nose. He breathed in, then breathed out. “If you need a waterslide to keep your heart rate up then there are other problems with your life.” Kevin gestured to the myriad of spongy attractions like oyster slides and jellyfish fountains and crocodile floats. “Snakes? Crocodiles? Jellyfish? Dart frogs? They don’t intend to keep me alive. Do you know what pirates were, Wilds? They weren’t child friendly. Which shouldn’t even be relevant because, as I seem to have remind you people again and again, we’re not children.”

It was a shame Dan’s shady eye-role was shaded by her shades. “You brought alcohol, didn’t you?”

“Look at the keychain to my locker, Wilds, it’s shaped like a surf board. And you expect me not to drink?”

Abby covered her ears. “I’m not hearing this.”

“For what it’s worth I didn’t drink any of it yet.” said Kevin. “It’s, what, one in the afternoon? I’m not that terrible.”

“So he says.” said Dan.

“I didn’t hear any of that either.” said Abby.

At that moment Matt passed by the three of them. He had a towel around his neck, wearing still sporting his Human Mermaid shirt but in bathing trunks now (they were cloud themed).

           “How’s my Number One doing today?” Dan immediately sat up in her seat.

           “I’m good so far. I’m good.”

           “Well that’s good cause nobody deserves a day to themselves better than you.” Dan beamed, and Kevin suddenly felt like the conversation had be dropped.

           “If you wouldn’t mind, can you put some sunscreen on the back of my shoulders?” Matt nodded and she handed him her bag. She looked back at where Kevin was standing. “Kevin, relax. Maybe you don’t want to go down a waterslide or sunbathe by the pool but it doesn’t hurt to just breathe for a second. Do what you want to do and rest.”

           Kevin looked around as if he wasn’t quite certain how to do that. “I’m going back.”

           As Matt looked thought Dan’s beach bag he placed some of her keys by her foot.

           “Oh wow, it is shaped like a surf board.” said Dan.

“Alright: betting time,” said Allison, “Who’s punching who in the face today?”

           “My money’s on somebody getting kicked in the groin.” said Matt. The group of guys Allison had attracted around them laughed.

“That’s oddly specific, Boyd,” said Allison, “Not wise to measure the amount of groin-kickage in the US by America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

The guys laughed what Allison said. They tended to laugh at everything she said.

“I’m not measuring anything on anything.” said Matt, “Just seeing a year-worth of pent-up aggression from wanting to see justice while wanting to avoid a red card.”

“I dunno. I guess it depends on how much you hate the guy,” said one of the guys close to Allison’s arms, “Your teammates get riled up easily?”

Matt and Allison chuckled at that.

They were all waiting on a long line for the Lazy River. After time passed Allison, her slim bathing suit showing off her muscular psyche naturally attracted other guys at the waterpark. Matt was directly at Allison’s side, but somehow Renee had gotten shuffled towards the edge of their group.

Renee grinned anyway. She’d been on the outlier of the conversation. “It doesn’t hurt to think outside the box,” she said, “But from my experiences of fighting Foxes, I’m putting money on taking advantage of their surroundings.”

Allison laughed, “You’re so right. I’m just imagining Kevin smacking Neil upside the head with one of the waterslide tubes or a floating crocodile.”

All the guys laughed but Matt’s was the strongest. Loud and hardy. Renee laid back further on the fence and smoothed her hands over her cover-up.

“You’re right, that is an amusing image,” said Renee, “But that’s not what I was considering when thinking of a waterpark.”

Matt and Allison thought on her words for a moment, and as they did their laughter died down. “You don’t mean…if they try to drown someone?” Allison asked.

“You can’t drown in shallow water!” said one of the guys. They were still laughing, since they were never involved.

Renee stood on her toes to look over the gate to see the attendees laying on tubes on water in motion, “That’s the pirate’s cove. I’d estimate the Lazy River is roughly five feet.”

“Dang, that’s stone cold, Walker,” said Matt, “So, if I’m understanding correctly, I’m putting your money on ‘one of the boys finally snaps and are never seen again’?”

“I didn’t mean drowning. I meant using the water as a tactical advantage.”

“Like drowning.” said Allison.

“I meant like standing your ground in a familiar environment.”

“Like when you’re drowning someone.” said Matt.

“Woah,” said one of the bros, “That’s like that scene in The Matrix and shit? Y’know, the third one? Where they fight in the rain and all that? And all, like, the clones are staring at them? But nobody drowns. It’s their souls that’s drowned. But the clones are supposed to be like…like…us.”

One of the guys groaned, “Nobody here cares about your philosophical musings, Lathan.”

Renee considered herself to be social, but would never quite know how to respond to that. “The bottom line is, I’m putting in fifteen.”

“Done deal.” Renee leaned in very far to shake Allison’s hand.

All the boys that weren’t Matt exchanged glances with one another. “Um, what exact sport do you play again?”

“Exy.” said Allison.

“Woah, isn’t that a rough sport for you?” One guy turned to Renee, “And especially for you?”

Renee offered him a polite grin, “It’s sweet for you to worry about me. But I’m the goalie, so I suppose that helps. Keeps me from all those nasty hits.”

Allison laid back on the fence. “Fuck that,” she said, “It’s a unisex sport so there’s more than one gender of player. Simple as that.”

“Yeah, girl power!” said a guy.

“On that note,” said Matt, “Our team captain is a girl.”

“Woah, lucky!” one of the guys said, and Renee noticed Matt didn’t mention his relation to her.

“Does that ever get awkward?” one of them asked.

Allison and Matt wanted to tell them no, but there was no good way or easy answer. Good thing they were close to the end of the line by that point.

“Well, it was nice meeting you boys!” said Allison, “I’d like to hang out with my friends now, if you don’t mind.” Allison was already backing away to the steps leading to the river.

“No, no, it’s all good!” a guy said, “It okay if some of us have your number though?”

“Oh, yeah, okay, sure. But I don’t have my phone with me? Maybe later.”

“Okay. After the ride maybe?”

“Uh, yeah definitely maybe!”

Renee grabbed a two-seater tube to share with Allison. Matt grabbed a two-seater one just for himself, due to his height. Allison laid back beside Renee, dipping her feet in the water as they drifted afloat.

Allison sighed. “Filling the void, right?”

“Filling the void.” said Renee. “That’s why the world is filled with lots of people.”

“You said it.”

Neil turned the key to lock the door shut. The moment he stepped away from the locker he felt lighter and anxious, though that could have been from being on his own with other people at the moment. He wasn’t certain if the children with their parents were glancing his way but he had difficulty stopping himself from thinking that they were. So he found his way outside as fast as he could. Neil distracted himself but putting the new temporary key on his keyring.

The sun was out and warm. He was noticing the positives of this place so far. The waterpark was filled with families but as long as you avoided the waterslides there were little to no crowds. The more open space compared to more populated amusement parks which gave him room to breathe.

He looked at the map that Kevin was reading before. This place seemed to be an assortment of waterslides, a series of water-based things like the river, carnival rides and games he’s outgrown, and a hayride leading to a petting zoo.

When Neil returned he found Andrew and Kevin near the carnival games. Kevin was giving a shot at the Can a Tin-Can! game, currently smashing a pyramid of cans with a baseball. The medium-sized plush shark he won was tossed on the wooden picnic table directly behind him where Andrew was sitting. There was a large stuffed dolphin and starfish seated next to Andrew’s cheesy fries. Andrew was resting his head over his folded arms.  

Neil set down his water and phone and cautiously sat down across from Andrew. From here Neil could see Andrew’s eyes were closed.

The team had known about the waterpark trip for a few weeks now, but hadn’t considered, oh right, preparation, until the night before. Most of them spent the previous night on an emergency trip to the store to grab the essentials. Then they did regular shopping. It was past midnight. Andrew was the one who drove. Neil considered why Andrew was more tired than the rest of them, since he waited at the doors until they left and everything he needed was on a list he gave to Neil. Maybe it was just the usual lack of sleep. Neil could relate to that.

Kevin tossed a stuffed eel among the pile. Neil considered the idea of tucking the shark into Andrew’s folded arms but he knew he was already tucked away with his knives and Neil would like to keep his own arms for next season.

“Keep eyeing me while I’m sleeping and you’ll lose your sight privileges.” said Andrew. The stuffed shark had nothing on the real thing.

Neil’s head jolted up from his hand. “How could you tell?”

“You’re predictable.”

Neil sighed, then shrugged. “The consequences of a personality, I suppose.”

Andrew mumbled something but it was softened by his arm and exhaustion. Neil thought it almost sounded like a threat, but of course with Andrew everything does.

“Goddamnit!” Kevin yelled. He was at a game called Frog Bog. In the booth there was a pool with rotating lily pads in it. He apparently was required to launch rubber frogs onto the pads by placing them on a mini-catapult and slamming it with a hammer. Judging by his reaction and lack of frog plush Kevin had yet to succeed at this. There was a frustration burning in the way Kevin put his hand on his chin and looked like he was fully prepared to scold the frog on its life choices.

Neil stood up and assessed what was in front of him. Kevin had been succeeding at strength and aim based games thus far, ones benefited from his Exy skills, but this one was centered more around timing and trajectory. His experience would also help here but, of course, the carnival game was likely rigged too. He watched at Kevin paid for his next try (What happened to buying equipment, Kevin? Neil wants to say but doesn’t) and was given another rubber frog. The frog looked like it had been launched from a catapult all summer; beaten to hell and as slimy as a real frog.

Kevin folded the frog onto the catapult and slammed the hammer down. The frog flew so high it missed the pool entirely.

“I’ll try.” said Neil. Kevin shoved the hammer in his hands. Neil paid for his try and was handed a frog. Kevin and the other employee watched as Neil looked from the catapult to the frog to the Lilly pad to the hammer to figure out some plan.

“Hey, isn’t that they Candy Cane forest over there?” Neil shouted, pointing in a random direction.

The moment the employee glanced away Neil gripped the frog with his bare hands (it felt gross) and chucked it at the lily pad. It was a direct hit, but then bounced right off into the water.

The employee turned back to look at Neil. “Dude, don’t act like you’re the first one to try that stunt.”

Neil became frustrated but felt no need to try again. “What’s even the point?” he asked,

“He says after he loses,” said Kevin, “Spoken like a true coward.”

“What are you going to do with all of these toys anyway?”

“Charity, probably. I mean, fish are really popular with kids. After that fish movie. Finding Elmo or whatever.”

Neil wouldn’t know what movie that was, and would imagine that there would be quite a few fish in movies, but judging by the employee’s reaction it must be something mainstream. He instead moved on to the next booth over, Can a Tin-Can!, and paid for a turn. Neil told himself he’d try earnestly and honestly this time. He lobbed the ball at the cans as hard as he could.

It missed. It bounced off the wall. Neil ducked and knew by the sound it must’ve hit a person. And he knew that there was only one person in the vicinity it could have hit.

So much for honesty.

Neil was afraid to look. He felt bad as he turned back around

Andrew must have either fallen asleep or just became startled in the same way he is when he wakes up. It had been a long time since Neil saw that look on him.

Everyone there pointed to Neil as the culprit.

“I…Andrew…,” said Neil.

“You have thirty seconds left to live.” said Andrew.

“Andrew it was an accident! You know I’d never do that to you on purpose-”

“Twenty-four, twenty-two, twenty, eighteen…”

Neil bolted for it. He dashed past the games, rides, and families and headed for any open space. But strangely enough, for the first time while running off-court, he wasn’t afraid. Perhaps it was due to it being Andrew and the knowledge he would never truly bring harm to him. He felt a grin forming as he found a building with a door, ran up the stairs, and waited for Andrew to find him to see what would happen. Hiding without the danger, now that was something new.

Aaron didn’t want to be here. There were children yelling and crying outside the dressing room. Said dressing room was had a bamboo hut theme. He was wearing swim trunks that he knew he would only wear once. Every now and again he’d hear a different scream, a distant scream, likely from the waterslides he was certain were a hazard of some kind, even if he had yet to go anywhere near them. He stared at the lock. It looked like the lock to a bathroom stall. It was the only barrier between him and out there.

Katelyn had been sending him texts. He knows because they were exchanging them during the bus ride. She was giving him the details of the mall trip she was going on with her friends. Occasionally she’d send a pic asking his opinion on what she was wearing. Now his phone is in a locker so it wouldn’t get wet. She likely wasn’t sending anything now since she knew about this “trip”, but still.

Aaron unlocked the door and walked out. It led out to the Pirate’s Cove, a pool that had a lot of space but the water only went up to your calves. There was a large pirate ship in the middle. There were a lot of children here, especially in this section, but looking further Aaron did notice the packs of college and high school kids hanging around. He spotted Boyd, Walker, and Reynolds around that area, surprise surprise. The college kids were loud and, even from this distance, pretty obnoxious, but they weren’t screaming. The children in Aaron’s vicinity had no problem screaming. He’s glad he isn’t a kid anymore, for a lot of reasons.

He stepped in the water. It was cold at first. He moved around to cool off his feet and find something to do. There were a lot of floats in the water meant to be “fun”. A few crocodiles and whales, a slide shaped like an open oyster. It was a bit creative, he supposed. Just as Aaron began to take in his surroundings, a gush of water sprayed his back. The water was cold.

Turning around, of course, was his cousin on the pirate ship. Nicky was manning a watergun attached to the wall. He let out a laugh to congratulate himself on his perfect aim and timing. There was a line of small children behind him clamoring to use the watergun. Nicky is supposed to be the oldest on the team.

For a split second Aaron was furious enough to run up the ship and throw Nicky overboard, shallow waters and fake crocodiles be damned. But no, if he did that people would notice. Then they’d get “concerned”. Then they’d intervene. It would stop being fun. Aaron didn’t have the energy for that. So let out one grunt and sulked off to another part of the pool.

Aaron found a jellyfish-shaped shower next to the oyster slide. He went under it just to cool off the rest of his body. When he was under the water the screaming children became blocked out for a mere moment. He walked out and sat down in the water. It covered his legs and lapped at his elbows. The sun shined over Aaron’s shoulders. He breathed. This was more like it.

And then there was this damned kid. Not a screaming kid, just a damned one. He was on the oyster slide going down and around again and again, hogging his turn from the other kids. Even when the other kids try to reason with him he wouldn’t stop.

Oh, he doesn’t remind me of anyone. Aaron thought. But he made an attempt to tune it out. He focused on the cool water and his own surroundings. He thought about calling Katelyn before he got on the bus, and then again when he got home. Before he could close his eyes he saw a sudden movement in his peripheral vision. It was a grown man making a beeline to the slide and the other kids. Aaron tensed up, then told himself he was projecting again.

He went for the kid, presumably his father. Oh good someone else, an authority figure, is solving this problem. Swell. Aaron tried to separate himself from the problem once again. But then he heard screaming. It wasn’t a child this time.

The presumed father was yelling at the kid in a way Aaron deeply recognized. Aaron tried eying the lifeguard, but she didn’t seem to notice what was happening. The only option left was for Aaron to tell himself that it wasn’t his problem. It wasn’t his problem. But then the guy grabbed the kid by his shirt and that’s when he had to do something. Aaron got up from the water.

Aaron considered decking the guy, but that thought brought a flash of Andrew’s former pills and unnatural smile, so no, he’s not doing that today.

“Hey!” Aaron yelled, “What’s your problem?”

The anger and words get mixed together. Something about how this isn’t Aaron’s business because this is not his kid. Then it turns into and argument, a shouting match, he heard a whistle being blown at him and now the lifeguard takes notice.

And then Nicky’s there to break it up. Nicky’s asking what the problem is. The alarm bells went off in Aaron’s head. Why does Nicky always try to get involved.

So Aaron just. Shoved the guy. Shoved him because he could. Just like this guy grabbed his kid by the shirt because he could.  

Nicky ran up to Dan. “Um, we have a bit of a problem-”

Dan held her hand up to Nicky. She held up five fingers, then counted each one down individually until reaching one. Dan took a breath.

“Alrighty,” she said, “Go ahead. Lay it on me.”

For once in a long time, Andrew thinks he’s actually going to kill Neil.  When Kevin called Neil’s phone, it rang from the table they were sitting at before. Kevin isn’t as good at deciphering Andrew’s subtleties as others are, but there was no doubt to him Andrew looked distressed.

“This is absolutely nothing like last time,” Kevin told Andrew, “He’s probably safe and he didn’t run. He’s just being an idiot. But he knows you that’s not what you meant. He knows that above everyone.”

           “Thirty seconds.” Andrew muttered to himself. Then Andrew was the one who ran. He had been searching in the most plausible location Neil could have made it to. When he couldn’t find him there he looked everywhere else.

           It turned out Neil hadn’t gotten far at all. He was in a castle meant for plays for small children, where Andrew had already looked, but he hadn’t realized there was a second floor. When he checked for a second time Neil is just standing there, chatting with one of the employees.

The moment their eyes meet Neil ran again, and he had the audacity laugh while running. On one hand something resembling relief settled within Andrew. On the other, he’s chasing down Neil in the middle of the goddamn heat when he knows he can’t catch up. Andrew is this close to killing him.

Something solid smacked the back of Neil’s head. “Ow!” he looked down and saw his cell phone on the ground. He thought it was in his pocket but apartently it wasn’t. “You almost broke my phone, Andrew-”

           Andrew stormed over to Neil until he was cornered at the barn. He slammed one arm on the wall at Neil’s side.

           “You never let anything be simple, do you?” said Andrew, “Do you think this is a game? I have a mental map of this goddamn park now. What am I supposed to do with the knowledge that the Candy Cane Forest is next to the Tilt-a Whirl and the Frog Hopper? I have to live with that for the rest of my life now and it’s your fucking fault.”

Neil couldn’t stop himself from grinning at Andrew’s words even as his back touched the wall. An alert lit up in his mind how Andrew could corner him at any time but it wasn’t an alarm.

“Um, this was genuinely my bad, Andrew,” said Neil, “I really thought I had my phone on me but I guess I left it somewhere?”

           “I gave you too much time.” Andrew said. Questions were the only things he dodged willingly, “I won’t be so generous next time. Your thirty seconds has been cut down to five.”

           “There’s a next time? I thought you said you were gonna kill me.” said Neil

           “Oh, Neil, of course I am,” Andrew ran a finger down Neil’s chin. There was still an opening at Neil’s side but instead of running he shivered at the touch, “Let me count the ways,” Andrew’s fingers were firm yet tickled Neil’s skin as they ran down his neck. His hand spread out and sank down until his palm pressed over Neil’s windpipe. Neil could feel his pulse pumping under Andrew’s skin. “So many options to choose from. But only one opportunity. It needs to be satisfying.”

           “I never took you for the romantic type.”

Andrew squinted his eyes in disgust. His hand slid down to Neil’s chest and his face hovered closer. “You’re going to shut up now.”

When their noses touched Neil’s smile shrank down and his eyes closed.

“I’m going to shut up now…” Andrew groaned at that.

“Yes or no?” His lips brushed against Neil’s when he spoke.

“God yes…” Andrew’s lips slammed hard against Neil’s for such insolence. After a few good minutes of a warm buzz Andrew’s own Razr ™ phone buzzed in his pocket. It was a text from Aaron.

            yr pet ran away to the barn. leav him whr he belongs

           Andrew rubbed Neil’s thigh to keep him quiet as he texted back.

           Thinkin abt it

           Found him btw. Thx.

“Well, gang, what’s the damage toll today?” Wymack asked. He had a new pair of sunglasses with the price tag still hanging off it.

           “Neil got lost in the park.” said Matt

           Wymack threw his hands up. He appeared to be about to make a joke, but then backtracked.

           “Neil, what the hell? Did something happen?”

           “I’m alright now!” Neil emphasized, “It’s not a big deal anymore!”

“Off to a great start.” said Wymack.

“Aaron nearly got sued for throwing a grown man in a kiddie pool.” said Nicky.

“Will you stop exaggerating shit for drama?!” Aaron said to Nicky, “He ‘threatened’ it but it was empty. It’s dealt with now It isn’t going to become a problem.”

           Wymack rubbed his temples, “Anything else anyone needs to report?”

           “I decapitated a rubber frog with a mallet,” said Kevin, “but the thing was falling apart anyway, so I blame that on poor maintenance and not my superior tactical strategy.”

           “Of course, Kevin. And what were you saying about damage to our equipment?”

           “They can’t fine us for their own incompetence, Coach.”

           “Let’s hope they don’t, Kevin. Let’s hope they don’t.” Wymack turned to the third group, “What about you three? Get in any legal trouble at the waterpark today?”

Matt and Allison had their backs turned to the group at the moment, in a heated debate with Renee.

           “See? He didn’t technically drown anybody.” said Allison.

           “Once again, I didn’t say drown. I a tactical advantage.” said Renee

           “But does it count as tactics if he’s just submerged?” asked Matt, “Was his head under the water? How long was he under? Did he cough at any time? Yo Nicky, you were a witness weren’t you? We need you to testify!”

           “Hey!” said Wymack, “We’re trying to leave here!”

           “I scored the digits of four guys and one girl,” said Allison, “I’ll likely never use them, but hey, you never know for a rainy day.”

           “I made twenty dollars while enjoying myself,” said Renee, “Thank you, Aaron.”

           Aaron had no idea what part he had in this and didn’t intend to ask.

           “Wait!” said Allison, “What about the Neil bets?!”

           “Oh yeah,” said Renee, “Make that fifty dollars.”

           “Wait, Neil, you didn’t sustain any bodily injuries, did you?” asked Nicky, “Cause even if it’s a tiny papercut that’s thirty right there.”

“’Neil Bets’?” Neil asked, even if he had a large suspicion of what those entailed.

           “Yeah, obvious things you do. Like when you say ‘I’m fine’ or don’t know a movie reference or wear mismatched clothes. It’s like taking a shot, but with money.”

           “I feel like I should feel something about that,” said Neil, “but I mostly don’t care.”

           “Finally, he gets it.” said Andrew.

           “I need a vacation from this vacation,” said Wymack.

 “It looks like you survived.” Matt said to Dan, “How you holding up?”

           Dan breathed in and out. “Well, I did get some sun. I got dragged into a few incidents for a few minutes but they pretty much cleared up by the time I got there. Overall it was okay.”

           Matt handed a plush frog plush over to Dan.

           “You won this?”

           “Maybe, maybe not.”

           “Aw, it’s soft! It’ll make a great pillow on the ride back. You’re the best.”

           When Matt hugged Dan, careful around her shoulders, he could have almost sworn he witnessed a green glow hovering above the chess tattoo eying him. Kevin Day, semi-professional sports player, professional celebrity, aspiring Olympian, survivor, would not stoop so low to start a war over stolen carnival prizes. Despite how earned they were. But he would make sure Matt would be miserable when the end of August hit.

Neil purchased ten temporary tattoos from the gift shop at Andrew’s request.

           “Punishment for what you put me through today.” Andrew said.

           “Andrew, they’re like less than fifty cents each.” said Neil.  That almost seemed like a challenge so Andrew grabbed two Super Soakers off the wall and dumped them at Neil’s feet.

           As they waited for the bus to arrive Neil wet the sponge for the tattoos with his water bottle. They picked a ship for Neil’s neck and skull for Andrew’s cheek.

           “You better not fuck up my beautiful face.” said Andrew.

           “It’s called a temporary tattoo for a reason.” said Neil.

           “Your hair is temporary. You’d have a problem if I ripped that out the wrong way.”

           “Always violence with you.”

           “Yeah? Neil, I’m getting a skull on my face.”

           Neil laughed. “A skull tattoo on your face is less violent. More…a cry for help.”

           “Face tattoos are a cry for help in general.” Andrew said loud enough for the words to reach Kevin. He got no response but Neil saw Kevin glance in their direction.

           When Andrew pulled the white strip off Neil asked him how it looked. “Stupid and fake. Fits you perfect.”

Neil removed the square from Andrew’s cheek. The skull had a rose near it’s chin. Neil found it a little endearing. “It’s not as serious as it thinks it is. Fits you perfect.”

            Andrew shoved Neil on the shoulder for that.

When the bus arrived they sat next to each other. Neil kept using the sponge to keep Andrew’s face cool.  

           “You want me to play music on the way back?” Neil asked. He wasn’t certain if he’d get the same answer as he did on the ride up here but he was willing to try.

           “Do whatever you want. But I’m gonna fall asleep halfway through.”

           Neil grinned. “Oh good. That means I can play whatever I want.”

           “Fuck off.” Neil placed an earbud in his left ear then delicately did the same for Andrew.

By the time it moved Andrew was already nodding off from the mixture of exhaustion and running and his latest bout of almost-feeing.

           “Neil?”

           “Yeah?”

           “It’s a yes for my shoulders tonight.” said Andrew.

           Neil understood. As Andrew looked out the window and began to doze off Neil lowered his head on his shoulder. Looking at Andrew, his Andrew’s skin felt cooler to the touch even through he never went in the water. It must be contagious.

As the bus moved on and the scenery passed Neil found his eyes closing too.

[woozletania]

Sanctuary, part 5 (RR/Lylla)

Rocket has a nasty little secret he doesn’t want to tell Lylla.  Turns out the opposite is true, too.

*****

Rocket’s afternoon did not go well.  Ever since she came on board, he’d been…confused.  Rocket didn’t like being confused.  Sure, his behavior might look aimless sometimes, to people who didn’t know that tinkering with things relaxed him.  He had his little routines, like counting all the spare  equipment twice a day.  Making sure there were enough space suits, aerorigs, enough ammo, traps and bombs for any conceivable eventuality, and repairing them or making more. Things to keep his hands busy so he didn’t have to think about life or how much it generally sucked.  Comforting little things lately interrupted by a curious girl-otter just as was happening now.

He instinctively bristled as she came up behind him, her long whiskers tickling his ear as she looked over his shoulder. His clawed hands paused, the Aerorig in one and a fuel capsule in the other.  He flinched as a whisker tickled and his ear and Lylla giggled, but she must have seen he was uncomfortable because she padded around in front of him and sat down to look at the assortment of tools.

“So that’s what they look like inside,” she said, her little chirpy voice as annoying as it’d been the last time.

No, Rocket told himself.  I’m not going to snap at her. She doesn’t know she’s annoying me. And she wouldn’t be if I hadn’t been trying to avoid talking her her at all.

“Part of it,” he said gruffly.  “Most of an Aerorig is mass-displaced until it’s needed.  Hidden in an adjacent dimension.  Y'know, like Pete’s helmet is normally just that stupid thing he wears under his ear.  I can refuel them without unpacking them, so to speak. Designed ‘em that way.”

“You built this?”  Her webbed fingers with their cute (and sharp) claws touched the line of parts he’d removed to get at the capsule and Rocket flinched again.  “Oh!  Sorry, Rocket.  I know you like things orderly.”

He watched as she carefully rearranged the parts, getting them almost, but not quite, back into the array he’d set out as he took it apart. Without thinking, without being able to stop himself if he was honest, he reached out and straightened one that was a few degrees out of line.

“It just makes it easier to put back together, y'know?  It may look like my stuff is lyin’ around at random, but it isn’t.  I know where everything is. I can do this blindfolded, and that’s not bluffin’.”

She looked him over, those deep brown eyes so like his own, that sad little smile.  So much like Mantis, really.  It was as though she were staring past the fur and claws and mangled little body they’d made, past the cybernetics and the scars, and into Rocket himself. Into the shriveled little soul that he kept attached to his body with habits like this.  Neatness.  Tidiness.  No vulnerability.  Just order, and toughness and sometimes, lately anyway, a little bit of friendship.

“What? Whatcha staring at me for?”

“Sorry, Rocket.  I’ll stop bothering you.”  She came up onto all fours, more comfortable that way with her short little limbs, and scuttled off towards the galley.  He could hear them welcome her to what sounded like a card game in progress, Drax’s booming voice, Mantis’s piping one.  He could even hear someone, maybe Gamora from the sound of it, scratch her behind her ears and the churr of pleasure that resulted.

But his Aerorig parts were still out of order.  Rocket snapped the capsule in, checked the fuel feed with a scanner, and began to reassemble it. This part here, and this part here.

“I am Groot,” said the little tree in the corner.

“I’m not bein’ antisocial.  Not any more than usual anyway.”  This part here, click, turn the fastener a quarter turn.

Groot scooted closer on what served the tree as a butt, and watched intently as Rocket finished reassembling the Aerorig.  He set it neatly to his left and picked up the next one from the pile on the right.  Turn the fastener a quarter turn, cover plate hinges off like so.  Rocket removed the innards a part at a time, arranging them in front of him in a neat little array.  Groot, even three-foot-tall young Groot, knew not to touch anything. “I am Groot.”

“I do talk to her.  I was just talkin’ to her, okay?”

“I am Groot?”

“Of course I like her.  Everyone likes her.”  Rocket muttered the next sentence under his breath.  “She was made to be liked.”  He went on at normal volume.  “We just talked about this earlier, okay?  We just went over this.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yes we did.  When I was workin’ in the access shaft.”

Groot just regarded him silently for a moment. Rocket glanced up, and even on a wooden face he saw…guilt?  “What?  What’re you lookin’ sorry for yourself for?”

“I am Groot.”

“Okay, it’s nothin’.  It’s all nothin’, okay?  Now let me work.”

Trying not to think about things was a full-time job but Rocket was very good at it.  He’d had lots of practice not thinking about things. When Pete showed up an hour later and turned up the volume on his media player he knew what was coming.  Pete was going to make him talk about it again.

“Have you told her?”

Rocket gritted his teeth and snapped two parts together with a lot more force than was really necessary.  “Get off my back, Pete.  I’m thinkin’ about it, okay?”

“If you don’t tell him the doctor will and then she’ll find out you already knew, man.”

“I know!”  Rocket slammed a logic probe onto the deck so hard that Mantis heard it even over the music and peered quizzically around the corner.  He lowered his voice until Peter had to lean in to hear him. “She doesn’t want to be a weapon, Pete. I don’t want to remind her that they didn’t make her just to be a diplomat, a linguist.  I don’t want to remind her that she was made at all.”

“It’s not your fault, Rocket.  Or hers. But you gotta tell her.”

“I will, okay?  Just stop bringing it up, she’s gonna hear if we keep talking about it.”

But he didn’t tell her.  Rocket was very good at not thinking about things.  He managed to keep busy working on a dozen little projects and not talking to Lylla until he was so tired he just curled up in his little round bed. Lylla was already asleep in her bed, the one he’d made her that lay within arm’s reach of his.  He was so tired he fell asleep before remembering that he was supposed to talk to her.  Rocket was, after all, very good at not thinking about things. He could even not think about multiple things at once, like how much he liked smelling her so close to him.

But his subconscious wasn’t so good at forgetting.  It’d been weeks since his last bad dream, and tonight’s was very bad.  Strapped to the operating table, the smell of antiseptics, the sharp, sharp knives sliding coolly through his flesh, the dull lifeless eyes of the surgeon as he asked the nerve tech to please shut him up, the screaming makes it hard to operate.

And this time, a new addition: Lylla, a table over, screaming as they cut her open over and over.

“No, no, no,” Rocket whined in his sleep, and his claws dug into the fabric of the bed as he tried to rip loose from the restraints. “No,” as he shuddered, every muscle locked, trying to get free and kill the men he’d already killed once, all except Paul, staring sadly from the sidelines, unable to sneak him painkillers this time. Paul didn’t need to die, but the others did, before they hurt him again, before they hurt her again…

Something interrupted the dream.  A warm, comforting presence.  Strong arms hugging him from behind, and something - sharp teeth? - gently grooming his nape.

Rocket came awake.  It was Lylla, who’d crawled from her bed into his to comfort him, just as he’d done with her when her nightmare hit a few days ago.  She was spooned up against him from behind, her warm body pressed against his own, her webby hands gripping him until he stopped shaking.

“It’s all right, Rocket,” she whispered into his ear.  “They aren’t here.  They can’t hurt you any more.”

The last time someone said that to him, It’s all right, Rocket, he’d broken down sobbing.  He wasn’t quite there yet, but she could feel the tension. And like the purpose-built diplomat she was, she sensed why it was there.

“Rocket,” she said into his ear, and gently groomed his nape for a moment.  It brought back old, old memories, from before the Uplift, of warm fur and safety.  From someone he didn’t remember well, because they’d taken him from his mother when he was no bigger than a man’s hand. And he only knew that because he’d heard dead men talk about it before he killed them. For a moment he shuddered, not sure whether to know comfort or hate for the men that took that away from him, and she went on.

“Rocket, I know there’s something you’re afraid to tell me,” she whispered into his ear.  “Because you’re afraid it will hurt me, right?  So I’ll make you a deal.  I’ll tell you something I don’t want you to know, and then you can do the same.”

She gripped him as he shivered, until he relaxed, at least a little. “All right.”

“When you pulled me from the cage, after you killed the guards, and I bit you…”

“You were scared to death,” Rocket said.  “It wasn’t your fault.  I was in a hurry, and when you’re in a hurry you take chances, make mistakes.”

“When I bit you,” she went on, and he sensed that she had to say this.  She didn’t want to, but she had to.  “My assassination programming, that tells me where to bite, I bit you and I felt the blood trying to come out.  I bit you in the artery under your ear and I knew I had killed you. All I had to do was leap away and let you die.”

“You didn’t,” Rocket said.  “You were so scared you held on and kept the bite going until we got out.”

“I knew I had killed you,” she went on remorselessly, “But I didn’t know the way out and there was all the gas.  Eventually it would get me too, even though I’m resistant, and as I held on and bit you I realized I had made a mistake.  Maybe you knew the way out.  So instead of jumping away I held on, and I kept the bite to keep you from bleeding to death because I thought maybe if I did you’d get me out before, before you died.”

She was shaking.  She was crying. Rocket didn’t know what to do.  He’d never had someone cry on him before.  It’d always been him crying, when his shell cracked and his weakness came out for all to see.

Except Pete.  He’d seen Pete cry too.  And crying wasn’t always bad, he’d learned.  Sometimes it just had to come out, and you’d feel better later.  So confused but understanding what she was going through he twisted in her grip, and for the first time he was the one to hug someone, to comfort them, to try to make them feel better.

“It’s all right,” he said softly, and held her tight.  “You were scared.  You were desperate.  It’s not your fault.”

And finally, when she’d cried herself out and they were snuggled together in the bed, he told her.

“It’s stupid,” he muttered.  “I should have just told you.  You already know they built in a killing technique when they Uplifted you.  You already know you don’t want to use it.  And you don’t have to.  You don’t have to do what they wanted.”

Lylla nodded, and waited for him to go on.

“I was going over your scans earlier,” he said. “You know I said there was some stuff I didn’t understand.  I’m an expert on machinery, but only when I can get at it.  I’m not so good with implants.  I’m okay, mind you,” he said as his pride bubbled up, but she just smiled and he went on.

“There’s a layer under your pelt,” he said, and stroked her soft chestfur. For a moment he paused.  Had he ever touched someone so gently before?  If so, he couldn’t remember.  “I don’t know what it does. Doc Foster will know.  But the main thing is this.”

He touched her cheek on either side, far back, where the hinges of her lower jaw lay.  “There are servos here that increase your bite force.  You already know that. But here,” he touched her a little higher, below her little furry ear, “There are implanted glands. I’m not a hundred percent sure, and I think they aren’t active right now, but I don’t see anything they could be but venom glands.”

“Venom,” Lylla whispered.  

“Poison,” Rocket said.  “So that you only have to bite someone once, no matter how big and tough they are.  Then you can run and they’ll die when you are away, when you are safe. So they don’t put all that time and effort to make someone who can only kill one person before she is caught.”

“That’s what Gamora said,” Lylla whispered.  “She wondered why they’d put all that work into diplomacy and linguistics if I was just going to be a one-use assassin.”

“You don’t seem upset,” Rocket said wonderingly.

She actually smiled.  “Rocket, they made you to be a weapon.  But you aren’t always a weapon.  You have friends, you like to tinker.  You don’t just kill everyone you see.  You kill when you need to. All those skills the gave you to kill people, you use when you think the time is right.  You are more than what they meant you to be, Rocket.  So am I.  Even if the glands are poison, they had to have made it so I could control it, right?  Or I could just have them removed.  It’s no big deal.”

“I can’t believe you’re so…so calm,” Rocket breathed.  “How did you go through all that and not end up like me?”

“Rocket,” Lylla said, and nibbled at his neck below the ear, right where she’d bitten him before.  “There’s nothing wrong with being like you. I like you just the way you are.”

No one had ever said that to him, not ever, and Rocket relaxed at last. There was just the warm comfort of the two of the snuggled up together in the same bed and the slow descent into sleep, and no nightmares.  And when Peter happened by in the hall a little later, and saw by the night-light the two of them curled up together sleeping, he smiled and tiptoed away.

[flauntpage]

The NBA's Man of Many Faces

On a hot day in early September, three glass revolving doors twirl into the midtown Manhattan high-rise where the most fascinating man in the NBA spent most of his summer. The lobby is palatial, with a dazzling chandelier fixed in the center of the room; a young woman with platinum blonde hair stands directly underneath it, inside a front desk that looks like someone cut a marble egg in half, juggling phone calls and small talk with delivery men as they scurry across the floor.

New York Knicks center Enes Kanter steps out from an elevator behind her, armed for the heat in a white short-sleeve hoodie, dark mesh shorts, and solid teal low-top Nikes. A trimmed beard accentuates his baby-fat-free face, and the thick hair atop his head takes the shape of a Brillo pad that’s been dyed black. A long, red scar runs along his right forearm, memorializing the time he fractured it punching a chair in the middle of a game. A towering, chiseled, bronze sculpture of a man, Kanter’s stride is unexpectedly graceful; it’s unclear if his heels ever touch the ground. If any other first impression can be had, it’s that he’s almost too affable: Over the next two minutes, Kanter asks how I’m doing and/or if I’m good four separate times.

We exit the elevator and pass through a noisy weight room and congested lounge, towards a cafe that’s attached to a broad outdoor terrace. Before we move outside to escape the crowd, Kanter points up at a giant menu populated by fresh pressed juices, açaí bowls, and almond butter shakes. “They have smoothies!” he smiles. I’m not really hungry. “Are you sure you don’t want something? You’re not getting anything? Seriously you have to get something.” We grab two water bottles and make our way outside to sit in the far corner, beneath a giant sun umbrella for the rest of an afternoon that’s already unlike any I’ve ever had. For Kanter, it’s a typical day: A visitor is here to ask questions about his inexplicably complex life.

Over the past two years, Kanter has manifested one of the NBA’s most distinct personas: He’s an activist, one of the world’s hundred best basketball players, a political dissident, gentle humanitarian, and proficient troll. (“I don't know what's wrong with him," LeBron James once said.) He combines mild mischievousness with a big heart, adored by those who know him as he exasperates those who don’t.

“He was a straight enemy,” Kyle O’Quinn, Indiana Pacers center and Kanter’s former New York Knicks teammate, says. “[Now] that’s my boy. Make sure you quote me on that. That’s my boy. That’s my boy. There’s a bunch of o’s and a bunch of y’s. That’s. My. Boooyyy.”

On the court, Kanter is determined but limited in ways that have prevented him from logging heavy minutes on a good team. Off it, he’s an impossibly generous, vulnerable, and self-motivated spirit.

“I think there’s a lot of guys in the NBA who’re blessed with this huge size and huge strength and huge ability, and therefore they act accordingly. They are loud or they are dominant or demonstrative,” 11-year NBA veteran Steve Novak, who played with Kanter in Utah and Oklahoma City, says. “I think Enes has been blessed with so many of those things. He’s this huge dude. But he’s holding kittens at the humane society and going to the children’s hospital. He uses his platform in as amazing a way as I’ve seen a teammate use it.”

“When I look back at my basketball career, I want to say I tried to inspire as much as I could.”

This summer, Kanter organized 14 free basketball camps for children all over the United States, paying for everything—t-shirts, pizza, the gym, water—out of his own pocket. “When I look back at my basketball career, I want to say I tried to inspire as much as I could,” he says. “When I go to those camps, I don’t just talk about basketball. I talk about education, how to become a good person, everything.”

His interests span wider than the average human, let alone your typical NBA player. He still gleams as the boy who used to dream about becoming an astronaut—he follows NASA on instagram, and half-jokingly won’t let the narrow physical dimensions of a spaceship’s cockpit ever impede him from strapping into one. (“I still would love to go to space,” he says.) Kanter also grew up watching David Copperfield and Chris Angel. He can turn a cup of water into ice, bend spoons with his mind, and plunge a tight string into and through his Adam’s apple. “I actually learned a few tricks from him,” Kerem Kanter, his younger brother who plays professional basketball in France, says. “I try to do them every once in a while to impress people.”

Kanter’s most intense obsession is the WWE, and it’s grown ever since he introduced himself as The Undertaker at the University of Kentucky’s Big Blue Madness in 2010. “It was funny as hell, and the fans flipped out,” Kentucky head coach John Calipari says. “There were people falling from the upper deck to the lower deck when he came out.” (When he met the real Undertaker a few months ago, Kanter’s knees shook.) Today, he’s close friends with several professional wrestlers and is dedicated to becoming one after he retires from basketball, which he hopes won’t be until his mid-30’s.

“I’m actually talking to the people over there now. Vince McMahon, he knows me,” Kanter says. “I had dinner with [Paul Heyman] two, three days ago. I asked him how long he’s gonna do this and he said ‘as long as Brock [Lesnar] goes, I go, and then I’m with you.’ I’m like yes! Seriously. I’m really serious about it.”

A few minutes later, as we discuss how Jersey Shore, Spongebob Squarepants, and Home Alone—“You can not beat that. It’s a classic. I watched that when I was growing up and I still watch it when I get bored,” he says—helped him pick up English, Kanter is suddenly adamant about showing me who he’s been exchanging DM’s with on Twitter. He taps his phone: “I’m talking to Mike The Situation! He said ‘let me know when you have some tickets when the season starts, I will bring Vinnie and the wifey.’ That’s my man.”

All this makes Kanter compelling enough, but the intersection between that playfulness and a literal life-or-death fight he’s waged against the Turkish government is where he becomes one of the most fascinating professional athletes in recent memory. With a voice that serves as a tight fist for thousands of imprisoned Turkish citizens who themselves have been silenced by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian regime, it’s critical that Kanter’s diverse interests and sometimes bizarre behavior do not damage his credibility. Instead, what he represents in public is the natural and masterful interpretation of a benevolent rebel. At 26 years old, Kanter pursues it all in the most admirable, cringeworthy, and immeasurably hilarious ways; he exists without an analog.

“I don’t want to say socially awkward,” Kerem Kanter says. “But Enes used to be shy and he didn’t like to talk to strangers. Now he loves the attention. He talks to the media a lot. He has a ton of friends. He talks to people every day. He actually enjoys doing that.”

So much of this side can be seen every ten minutes on social media, where Kanter floods his feeds with political opinions, videos of himself strolling through Times Square, dressing up like a Marvel character, and, of course, the unprovoked albeit harmless attacks on fellow NBA players and teams.

“This guy doesn’t stop. I don’t know when he sleeps,” O’Quinn says. “He just sits on the internet, and I think there’s somebody helping him, behind closed doors, because I don’t know when he gets any rest. He’s on Twitter and Instagram all day.”

That incessantness translates offline into other areas of his life. The impact Kanter’s energy has in locker rooms, on bus rides, and cross-country flights feels relatively miniscule—to a certain degree it very much is—but so many of his teammates cite his ability to loosen the atmosphere as a professional advantage.

He’s the butt of a trillion jokes, but never gets sensitive about any of them, knowing that A) he brings most of the ridicule upon himself, and B) nobody is actually trying to hurt his feelings. Even when they mock his accent, diet (knowing he avoids pork for religious reasons, Kanter’s teammates would sometimes order bacon just to put it on his plate, or convince him their meals were cooked on the same grill), tight clothing, or not-that-rare refusal to shower after practice, it’s never done with malicious intent. The result is an endless collection of stories that make those who tell them smile.

Indiana Pacers wing Doug McDermott didn’t really talk to Kanter when they were teammates in Oklahoma City, but things changed after they were both traded to New York. “He called me like ‘Doug! Man! We’re going to the best city in the world!” he says. McDermott chuckles at all the different ways Kanter made himself an easy target. “Just how cheap he was. I think he still had an iPhone 4 when that was like four iPhone’s ago.”

A popular topic of conversation at the Thunder practice facility was the house Kanter purchased in Oklahoma City (that he’s since sold, at a loss). He was so excited to furnish it and asked around about hiring an interior decorator. But later, when he saw the bill and noticed that he was charged around $10,000 for curtains alone, he lost it. “It became a joke in the locker room,” Novak says. “Like, ‘Oh God, Enes is bitching about his curtains again.’”

Bring up the curtains with Enes and his smile turns into a sheepish grin. “She didn’t charge me that much but it was very expensive curtains. Very, very expensive curtains. I was like ‘what was I thinking?’”

Now a minimalist, Kanter does not own a car or a house. He refuses to indulge in the same luxuries any person on a $70 million contract is expected to enjoy, and in fact, continuing a life-long habit that began in the small bedroom he once shared with his two younger siblings, Kanter sleeps on the ground. “It’s actually better for your back” he says without the slightest trace of embarrassment. “I’m comfortable!”

This is a tiny exaggeration. A twin XL mattress is plopped in the corner of his otherwise deserted bedroom in White Plains, where he lives during the season. It’s wrapped in dark brown sheets, one matching pillow, and a champagne-colored comforter. But that’s literally it. There is no box spring, headboard, bed frame, nightstand, or lamp. (Kanter laughs out loud for a solid five seconds when I ask if he ever reads before bed.) There are no posters, rugs, or, well, anything. Officially listed at 6’11”, his calves still dangle off the foot of the mattress. “I know it’s weird,” he says. “I just like it that way.”

Photo by Jason Szenes - European Pressphoto Agency

Even though he was born in Switzerland while his father, Mehmet, earned his M.D. at the University of Zurich, Kanter’s earliest memories trace back to kicking a soccer ball through the mundane streets of Van, a small city on the east side of Turkey.

His mother was a nurse, but soon retired to take care of her four children (Kanter’s two younger brothers play basketball—the youngest attends high school in Atlanta—and his sister recently graduated from medical school.) “We were not too wealthy, we were not too poor,” he says. “We were comfortable.”

For the Kanter family, countless weekends trickled by on the beaches of Lake Van, Turkey’s second-largest body of water. “There was a rumor that there was a monster inside,” he says. “I don’t think there is.”

Kanter’s passion for soccer grew—he still thanks it for developing his low-post footwork—until other kids in his apartment building and throughout the neighborhood stuck him in goal. They laughed at his big feet and poked fun at how huge he was. He hated it. Life in the classroom wasn’t any more pleasant.

“I don’t know what happened. I became a very terrible student.”

Kanter can still picture the wood switch his first-grade teacher used to wield at students who fell out of line. “Whenever you did something crazy they’d say ‘open your hand,’” he says. “I still remember, man. My hands would hurt so bad. Oh my God.”

School was everything in his family, but it wasn’t his thing. “I was a really good student, first, second grade, third grade, and then fourth grade a little bit. And then I don’t know what happened. I became a very terrible student. I wish I took it more serious.”

His parents still pushed him up through middle school, until the pressure to succeed conflicted with the cold reality of knowing he wasn’t put on this Earth to master or even enjoy academia. (Years later, when enrolled at Kentucky, Kanter passed all his classes except art, which he eventually dropped. “It was three hours at night. Too long,” he says. “We weren’t drawing either. It was like history, with reading and stuff.”) Whenever organized basketball came up as a possibility, Kanter’s father would rant about poor grades and the money he already paid the school. His mother repeatedly reminded him that millions of kids wanted to do the exact same thing. “I was getting so much shit from my parents, from my family,” he says.

But perspectives began to shift when he was eleven. A competitive game of after-school ping-pong against his dad spilled onto the basketball court. The two played one-on-one, a boy against his athletic, volleyball-keen, 6’5” father. Enes won. In Mehmet’s eyes, stifling this gift was officially foolish.

Fate intervened a couple years later, when, according to Enes, Mehmet attended a conference in Ankara, Turkey’s capital. He walked into a store for school supplies and a man tapped him on the shoulder. “Is your son as tall as you?” It was a local basketball coach who wondered if today might be his lucky day. (It was.) Enes’s family followed him to Ankara, where he spent two years playing at a school called Samanyolu. After that he moved to Istanbul to play for Turkey’s top basketball club, Fenerbahce Ulker. Not even 16, Kanter had already become one of the world’s more alluring big man prospects.

He never stayed up until 4 AM to watch NBA games when they aired at home, but did catch Utah Jazz highlights the following day, so he could see Turkey’s Mehmet Okur in action. Aside from Okur and Hedo Turkoglu, there weren’t many Turkish role models in the NBA for Kanter to look up to. But even then, when he was banging up against grown men literally twice his age in the Euroleague, Kanter’s focus was always on the United States. He desperately wanted to play high-school, college, and professional ball against the best of the best. But leaving Fenerbahce was more complicated than he expected. During his second season with the team, Kanter turned down a six-year contract for one million Turkish lira (which translated to about $785,000 U.S. dollars at the time). “They’re saying ‘don’t go, don’t leave,’” he remembers. “I was scared.”

The relationship grew tense. One day at the gym, an older teammate untied his shoes, took them off his feet, and hurled both right at Kanter. “How can you leave without talking to me?” he shouted. Kanter wanted to scream back “You’re not my dad!” but kept quiet.

Another long-term contract offer was made, this time for six million Turkish lira. But Kanter spurned the club once again, and along with his life coach and eventual agent Max Ergul, flew one way across the Atlantic Ocean for the very first time. The first stop was Chicago, where Kanter worked out with Tim Grover, Michael Jordan’s famous personal trainer. “There was so much free Muscle Milks,” Kanter says. “I was drinking three or four a day. A day! It was free! I was like ‘Oooh, it tastes so good.’”

From there, actually playing high-school basketball wasn’t easy. As a coveted international prospect, prep schools all over the country wanted him on their side, but thanks to a Nike contract his father signed, along with the money Fenerbahce gave his family, they were also weary of his flimsy amateur status. Kanter initially wanted to enroll at Virginia’s Oak Hill Academy—a basketball factory that’s produced an untold number of success stories, including Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant, and Rajon Rondo—but the team’s head coach, Steve Smith, preferred to avoid any potential scandal.

Plan 1-A was Nevada’s Findlay Prep. With the hope of joining forces with Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph, Kanter was a tank with ball skills. “He could step out and put it on the ground,” Mike Peck, Findlay Prep’s former head coach, says. “His movement was fluid, much like a perimeter player. He wasn’t stiff and rigid.”

But Kanter only spent a couple weeks in Las Vegas before the program ended their relationship. (Oak Hill’s Smith had reportedly refused to compete against any team Kanter was on.) “Our understanding was I think there was something with his dad,” Peck says. “His dad may have signed something over in Turkey that, on behalf of Enes, affected his amateurism. So that’s when we had to say ‘Hey, sorry but we can’t jeopardize our program.’”

Enes, understandably, was crushed. “Think about it, man. I came [to the United States], turned down millions,” he says. “Turned down all the big Nike deals. Turned down...I could be like a legend in Europe. I was killing everybody my age.” But he didn’t sulk. In the days after Findlay Prep informed him of their decision, as Ergul tried to figure out their next move, Kanter’s drive didn’t decelerate. “He was in the gym and he was sweating and he was working,” Peck says. “He wasn’t just, shoes unlaced, messing around. His poise and composure was commendable.”

A similarly frustrating pitstop at West Virginia’s Mountain State Prep preceded Kanter finally landing somewhere that was willing to let him play: Stoneridge Prep in Simi Valley, California, a few miles north of Los Angeles. It was nice to have some stability, but Kanter remembers the situation as anything but normal.

“I walked into the classroom and there were spiders everywhere,” he says. “It was like spider webs. It was very weird. There were like fifteen students in the whole school.” Kanter was there seven months, first living in a house with his teammates before he moved into an American family’s home. It was his first uninterrupted taste of a new culture. At first, he didn’t shop for groceries and ate Nutella for lunch. One morning, he grabbed a box off the top of the refrigerator, opened it, then mixed its contents in a bowl with some milk. A teammate strolled into the kitchen and couldn’t stop laughing. “They said ‘You’re not supposed to eat it like that.’ I said ‘Why? It’s cereal!’ They said ‘It’s not cereal. It’s Cheeze-Its.’”

Practices were held at a 24 Hour Fitness, and Kanter still remembers being confused when random gym members shot at the same basket his team used. But he was dominant, and knew he wouldn’t be there forever. “I remember I had one game, I was so tired of scoring,” he says. “I missed a shot on purpose. A free-throw! I don’t want to score anymore. I still remember that game. It was too easy.”

Kanter verbally accepted an offer made by the University of Washington without ever visiting the school or even stepping foot in the same state. He knew a couple coaches there but had no serious ties or desire to attend. Not long after, Calipari flew to Los Angeles to see Kanter in person for the first time. It was a pickup game at 24 Hour Fitness.

“I immediately said ‘Holy cow, this kid is like 18? This is ridiculous,’” Calipari says. “He was really skilled. Obviously he was really big. But he was really skilled for a guy his size, which kind of surprised me.”

Once he realized they were interested, Kanter immediately decommitted from Washington to sign with the Wildcats. He had emerged as a prodigious cult figure, having recently broken Dirk Nowitzki’s single-game scoring record at the barometric Nike Hoop Summit in Oregon, with a 34-point, 13-rebound gem in just 24 minutes off the bench. (Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson finished with 29 points combined.)

But Kanter’s alleged impropriety followed him to Lexington. And the fact that Washington’s former athletic director, Mark Emmert, had just been named President of the NCAA probably didn’t help. Weeks before his freshman season began, Fenerbahce went public, alleging that Kanter had received “over $100,000 in cash and benefits.” They also submitted financial documents to the NCAA. Instead of playing basketball, Kanter sat through several interviews with investigators, some lasting six hours.

“His dad didn’t want him to go to a club school [in Turkey]. He wanted him to go to a private school, because his father was a professor,” Calipari says. “The club agreed to pay for it, and instead of paying the [private] school directly, they paid Enes’s father to give the money to the school, which the father did. And he had checks and everything that he wrote and showed. The club was upset that [Enes] didn’t come back and said that they wouldn’t cooperate. In other words ‘we’re not gonna say that’s what it was,’ but the dad showed that’s what it was. The NCAA said he’s not paying. I was appalled.”

Kanter learned about his lifetime ban watching television in his dorm room. Calipari remembers a meeting soon after in his office: Kanter looked at the floor and held back tears. Going back to Istanbul never crossed his mind, though, especially after he received a barrage of texts from his former club that outlined how hopeless his NBA dream truly was. If he wanted to succeed, it had to be in Turkey, they told him. “I knew if I went back, that road would be closed and none of the [Turkish] players would take that risk and come to America again,” he says. “Everybody would be scared.”

Kanter stayed in Kentucky throughout the season. Initially he wasn’t allowed to be in the same gym while the team practiced, so the school assigned Kanter his own coach. “I would practice after or before [the team],” he says. The restrictions extended to weight training, where strength and conditioning coaches wrote instructions on note cards and then taped them all over the room. “He said ‘When you work out, we’re not allowed to talk to you’,” Kanter says.

That was short lived, though. Kentucky quickly made Kanter “a student-assistant coach,” and the NCAA allowed him to practice with the team. “Every day, NBA people came in and watched him. He got Josh Harrellson drafted because every day Josh had to go against him. Josh Harrellson got drafted because of Enes Kanter,” Calipari says. “I told him ‘we have a plan. You’re gonna practice, we’re gonna have pro scouts, and you, my man, you’re getting drafted, son. And you’re getting drafted in the top five.’”

In 2011, Kanter was selected third overall by the Jazz, but the NBA’s lockout robbed him of a formal training camp, leading to an understandably rough adjustment period, on and off the floor. He was hazed by veteran teammates, especially Al Jefferson, and found that the more he tried to fit in, the further he drifted from who he really was.

“Enes partied a lot. Everybody knew that,” Trey Burke, Kanter’s current teammate who also played with him in Utah, says. “That was his rookie season, though. He’ll even tell you that.” Indeed, he does: “I was going out with my teammates and hanging out and stuff, but once you’re in your second year and your third year, you get more smarter and more smarter, you know? And you’re like ‘OK, basketball comes first, so stick to basketball,’” Kanter says.

He was not happy in Salt Lake City, primarily due to limited minutes and a diminishing on-court role. “He was boiling on the inside,” Novak says. Right before the All-Star break in the last year of his rookie-scale contract, Kanter demanded a trade. A couple weeks later, he was dealt to Oklahoma City. Novak was included in the deal, news that prompted his wife to burst into tears. When Kanter heard, he immediately called to apologize. “My wife wanted to kill him,” Novak laughs. “If you’re mad at Enes you’re usually not mad for long. He’s crazy so he does dumb stuff, but it usually comes from a really good place.”

The most meaningful upshot from his departure was Kanter’s own maturation intersecting with a rediscovery of the altruistic Muslim principles he embraced as a child. The need to help others, especially those who can’t help themselves, took on a much larger role in his life, dramatically altering how he viewed his responsibilities as a public figure. Kanter was about to become so much more than a basketball player.

As we sit ten stories above New York City’s rush-hour traffic, a fire truck’s deafening siren pauses our conversation. Kanter stops fiddling with his black matte watch, turns his phone over and raises his eyebrows. “Look at this, man.” He shakes his head and stretches his arm across the table. It’s a clip of Florida senator Marco Rubio dropping Kanter’s name during a senate hearing about political censorship on social media. (Kanter’s Twitter account has been blocked by the Turkish government.)

A few weeks later, outside the Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, sunlight sifts through a cloudy fall sky and glares off automatic machine guns held by NYPD officers clad in riot gear as they effectively secure the building’s perimeter. We’re at the Oslo Freedom Forum, a conference sponsored by the Human Rights Foundation that’s designed to promote and protect human rights all over the world.

As the conference begins, Kanter stands in the back, watching as a young North Korean defector tells her story in front of a packed, teary-eyed audience. When she’s through, he bends over to give her a hug as organizers latch a microphone over his ear. During their on-stage talk, Thor Halvorssen, the forum’s founder, calls Kanter an accidental activist, someone who didn’t set out to change the world but stepped up once he realized he had enough influence to do so.

Kanter first considered speaking out against Turkey’s backsliding government in 2013, after Erdogan embroiled himself in a corruption scandal. The subsequent power struggle culminated in an attempted coup, allegedly orchestrated by Fethullah Gulen, one of the country’s most popular religious and political figures. Gulen, who denies he was involved, lives in exile in Pennsylvania, where Kanter visits him regularly. Kanter's criticism of Erdogan is well documented, and nearly led to his abduction in Romania while on a worldwide charity tour last year. Since, Kanter has taken every opportunity possible to denounce a regime that’s imprisoning innocent citizens and kidnapping dissenters who live in democratic countries.

“He’s the second-most wanted person in Turkey, after Gulen, and we’re walking aimlessly in Hawaii, in Des Moine, Iowa, not hiding from anyone,” Kanter’s manager Hank Fetic says. “There were a few times this summer where I said ‘Bro, this guy is walking a little close to us. I’m a bit worried.'”

A warrant for Kanter’s arrest was issued by the Turkish government last year, and his father is facing a trial that could put him in jail for years. It’s a neverending nightmare, but Kanter is somehow able to compartmentalize the most psychologically corrosive aspects of his life and stay as upbeat as possible. While with the Thunder, the team’s psychologist tried to speak with him. Kanter politely refused. “Don’t worry about me,” he said he told the doctor. “If I ever need someone to talk to maybe I will. But right now I’m okay.”

The emotional toll is obvious, but Kanter’s sacrifice is evident elsewhere. He can’t leave North America and hasn’t been able to secure any endorsement deals. Nike, the same company that championed Colin Kaepernick’s controversial remonstration by putting him on the frontlines of a recent ad campaign, now refuses to sign Kanter. “I talked to Nike and they said ‘we want to give Enes a contract. We’re watching him. But if we give him a contract they will shut down every store in Turkey, so we cannot give him a contract,’” he says. “I’m an NBA player with no shoe deal. No endorsement deal. And I play in New York!”

He’s curious about the fluidity of American politics, and didn’t initially understand why so many people get upset when he tweets anything negative about Donald Trump—particularly during his time in Oklahoma. Speaking as someone who’s still shocked by what’s happened to Turkey, America’s violent divisiveness and piping hot political climate terrify him. But he still dislikes the idea of protesting in the United States, for fear of turning another country into his enemy. (Don’t expect Kanter to take a knee during the national anthem anytime, ever.)

He wants to be a U.S. citizen—he’s two years from becoming eligible—and has thought about giving himself an American name. (Kanter scratches his chin when I pitch “Michael” as an option.) “I see [America] is going there, to become another Turkey,” he says. “I hope not. I pray not. But right now you see people are getting polarized. When I think about America, I think about freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion. It’s a peaceful country. Now it’s like, for an immigrant, you’re kind of scared.”

Inside the Knicks practice facility, a dozen media members file into a gym that has two full-length basketball courts. New York’s second day of training camp has just ended. As players break up to shoot free throws and work on individual skills, Kanter is the only one who jogs over to the near sideline, where several coaches and front office executives—the team’s president (Steve Mills) and general manager (Scott Perry) included—are seated in a row. He goes down the line, like a the world’s most earnest politician, and shakes everybody’s hand.

Kanter recedes to a far basket and simulates pick-and-rolls with one of his coaches. He steps outside to attempt a few mid-range jumpers and then settles into the corner to hoist some threes. From shoulder to hip, his muscles ripple like a miniature mountain ridge.

“How do you not like Enes?” Knicks head coach David Fizdale says a few minutes later. “For me, he’s like our spirit. He keeps our gym light. He keeps the guys in an upbeat mood, an energetic mood. He doesn’t have bad days. And thinking about what he and his family [are] going through, the fact that he can come in here and still have enough energy to give to us, I love him.”

“How do you not like Enes?”

Kanter began preparing for this, his eighth NBA season, less than a week after his seventh one ended five months ago. Even with a hectic travel schedule, he still spent between three and four hours a day in a gym all summer. The only days he took off were those designated for rest.

“Honestly, he’s the most consistent athlete I’ve been around in a long time, as far as just being on time and punctual and what he demands out of himself,” Mike Atkinson, Kanter’s personal performance coach, says.

Kanter walked into camp with 2.8 percent body fat and 20 more pounds of muscle than he had a year ago. “He’s the healthiest eater of all time,” McDermott says. “I’ve tried multiple times this summer to go to Shake Shack, but he won’t do it. I remember on a plane ride once, I was like ‘Enes, if this plane goes down, what’s the first thing you’d do?’ He said ‘I would eat all the cheeseburgers and cookies on here,’ just because he eats more quinoa and kale and spinach than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

On the court, Kanter is aggravatingly schismatic. At his best—AKA when his team has the ball—he moves like a rhinoceros who could place in the Kentucky Derby. He consistently finishes around the rim at an elite rate and creates second, third, and fourth chances whenever a teammate’s shot (or his own) doesn’t fall. “He’s a walking assist for a lot of us guards,” Burke says. Kanter finished seventh in rebound chances per game last season, averaging at least five fewer minutes than everyone who ranked higher. Since he entered the league, only seven players have grabbed more than 1,400 offensive rebounds. Kanter has tallied at least 2,100 fewer minutes than all of them.

“My thing is to do the dirty work, bang inside, and just be a banger, you know?” he says. “I know my weaknesses. That’s the most important thing. You have to know your weaknesses. I think my [weakness is] defense, of course.” For the past five years, Kanter’s team has been atrocious on defense with him in the game and significantly better when he’s on the bench. Two postseasons ago—after a play in which Kanter was helpless to stop James Harden and Clint Capela from connecting on a lob—that reputation collided with the national spotlight when a camera panned to Thunder head coach Billy Donovan right as he turned to his assistant Maurice Cheeks to seemingly say the words: “Can’t play Kanter.”

“I did see the clip. I could read his mouth. But he said ‘I never said anything like that, I was saying something else’,” Kanter says about Donovan. “He told me he never said anything like that and I go with it. You know what I mean?”

Kanter will never be Rudy Gobert, but he’s spent the offseason building up his legs, training himself to stay in a lateral stance, watching more footage, and conceding that where he is and how he reacts is increasingly critical in a league that goes out of its way to attack him. Physical improvement can only accomplish so much without awareness, zippy instincts, and the capacity to communicate on the fly, though. And big men, like Kanter, who neither protect the rim nor shoot threes—something Washington Wizards coach Scott Brooks first encouraged him to try when both were in Oklahoma City—are an endangered species.

His game is often synonymous with these flaws, but Kanter can still be a devastating weapon if deployed correctly. Size and strength will always have a place in the NBA, particularly when found in someone who’s coordinated, physical, and willing to exert maximum energy.

As a 27-year-old free agent hitting a marketplace that’s flush with cash, so much of his next contract hinges on the progress seen in 2019. “You always think about [free agency],” Kanter says. “Even if people said ‘Oh I don’t think about it, I’m focused on the season’ it’s always in the back of your head. It can not let you affect your game, but you always think about ‘Hey, what am I going to do?’ ‘Where am I going to go?’ ‘Am I going to stay,’ ‘Am I going to leave?’”

Based on everything seen so far, odds are strongly against Kanter ever approaching league average on the defensive end, but marginal improvement is always possible. Even more likely, though, is further growth on offense, where Kanter’s assist rate—normally near the bottom of the league—has ascended over the past couple years. An opportunity to show off his three-point range will be there, too.

“Before I was saying ‘I want to average a double-double. I want to score this much points, this much blocks.’ But how can I make my teammates better? How can I make the young guys better? Because that will take you to the next level. To share the ball, to make an extra pass, to cheer for your teammates. If you’re having a bad game and other big men are having a good game, you clap for them. You stand up and cheer for them. I think those little things add up and you become a better teammate and become a better player.”

Photo by Jason Szenes - European Pressphoto Agency

The most popular example of Kanter’s loyalty—and quite possibly his most relevant on-court moment—happened one year ago, when the Cleveland Cavaliers visited Madison Square Garden. The conflict started hours before the actual game, when LeBron incidentally disrespected New York’s baby-faced French point guard Frank Ntilikina by saying Dennis Smith Jr. should’ve been the Knicks pick instead.

Late in the first quarter, LeBron dunked home a lob, bumped into Ntilikina, and then refused to get out of his way. It was pure intimidation. The rookie responded by shoving James back before Kanter sprinted over to join the fray. “I was like ‘I’m proud of Frank. He’s pushing with LeBron, that’s good!’ But then after that it’s like OK, LeBron is 260 going up against an 18-year-old kid,” Kanter says. “So then I break in and I actually didn’t say nothing crazy. I was like ‘Don’t mess with my man.’ That’s it.”

The Knicks barely lost that game but then won three of their next four. “Our team needed that. Frank needed that. And I think it went a long way in the locker room,” O’Quinn says. “[Enes] got under the skin of somebody who is kinda unfazed by the many different things that people throw at him.”

The moment also cemented a bond between a veteran and a rookie who’s as shy as Kanter used to be. “The first person that I saw who wanted to help me was Enes,” Ntilikina says. “And it’s always like that, in the locker room, on the court, you always know that Enes is going to be there for you.”

This is who he is. Even still with a slight language barrier, Kanter speaks with an intent to ease. At the end of every other sentence, the man he’s talking to is “bro” or “my man.” Back at Lincoln Center, I sat on a yellow couch in the second-floor media room while he conducted an entire day’s worth of on-camera interviews with outlets from all over the world. A little after 4 PM, Kanter met me around the corner at the Empire Hotel. He looked the opposite of exhausted. We sat down on a gray couch in the brisk lobby, and without saying a word, Kanter grabbed my digital recorder and moved it to his side of the table, just to make sure it’d catch his voice. Again, he's almost too well-mannered.

“We’ll be having dinner, and someone will come to the table and ask to take a picture and he’ll stand up and take a picture with them. I’m like ‘Bro, you’ve gotta say ‘No. After dinner.’ But he just doesn’t decline it,” Fetic says. He’s unfailingly polite, but add everything he brings to the table that’s completely disconnected from on-court performance and it’s easy to see why signing him to a long-term deal is risky. So long as he’s on their roster, the Knicks aren’t broadcast in Turkey, no small loss considering a potential market of approximately 80 million people who would certainly tune in to watch.

McDermott believes Kanter is a perfect fit where he is: “I think, not anything bad against anywhere else he’s played, but I just think he’s meant to be in New York or L.A. He just has that presence.”

He’s unpredictable and different, but being unpredictable and different, in this case, is good. Instead of ego, there’s curiosity and compassion. Given all that encompasses his world—a deteriorating homeland and troubled family that's endured so many challenging circumstances—who has time to feel pressure on a basketball court, especially when it’s impossible to prepare any more than he already has? Kanter is unafraid of his own ambition and has long established himself as a productive professional, someone who can unmistakably affect his team’s culture without taking it over.

One day after the loss to Cleveland, Ntilikina sat by himself in a cold tub at the Knicks practice facility. A few minutes later, Kanter walked in and slid into the freezing water. They acknowledged each other and then sat in an awkward, shivery silence before Ntilikina looked up, turned his head, and stared at the teammate who just stood up to one of the world’s best and most famous athletes on his behalf. “Thank you,” Ntilikina said, softly. Kanter nodded back. “No problem, my man. I’ve always got your back.” The room fell quiet once again. “Whatever happens,” Kanter said. “It’s us against the whole world.”

The NBA's Man of Many Faces published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/