#how the fuck do i get into a data entry job when my only experience is retail and food service and i don't have any kind of degree

[tytopls]

.

[justagalwhowrites]

Halcyon - Ch. 6: But, Honestly, Something's Gotta Give

You and Joel review each other's lists. A continuation of Halcyon from the prologue through Ch. 5, a modern no outbreak AU TLOU fic found on Tumblr here.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader

Warnings: Semi-graphic description of masturbation. Mention of drug and alcohol addiction. Mention of past drug overdose. Diet culture type language. Modern No Outbreak AU, No use of Y/N, Slow burn, 18+ only, Minors DNI

Length: 10.3K

AO3 | Main Master List | Prologue | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

“Hey you!” 

You managed to resist the urge to groan when your sister threw the door open, her hip popped against it and a large glass bottle clutched in the hand she’d put in the air in excitement. 

“Please tell me that’s not wine,” you said, trying to see the label on the bottle. 

“Oh you’re such a buzzkill,” Anna rolled her eyes and visibly deflated a bit. “And no, of course it’s not wine. It’s sparkling cider, heaven forbid a girl wants to do something different once in a while…” 

“Sorry,” you said, hands up in surrender as she stepped aside and let you in. You gave her a quick hug before following her toward the kitchen. “How’ve you been?” 

“Drunk off my ass and high all the time,” she made a mocking face over her shoulder at you. “Oh wait, no, that’s just what my sister thinks I’ve been doing…” 

“You answered the door with something that looks like a wine bottle in your hand and you’ve been out of rehab for all of two months,” you said, voice sharper than you’d really intended it to be.  “Think my question was pretty reasonable.” 

“You know, a little trust would be nice,” she said, stopping at the counter and pouring the cider into two waiting wine glasses. “Kinda hard to rebuild my life if fucking no one in it trusts me to do it.”

You sighed

“You’re right,” you said, sitting at the kitchen table. “I’m sorry. I should have given you the benefit of the doubt.” 

You held up a box of candy and shook it, the little squares inside rattling in their paper and plastic confines as you did. 

“I brought you chocolate,” you smiled at her. 

“Buying my love, hm?” She asked, setting a drink in front of you before sitting down at the seat beside you. You just shrugged as she pulled off the lid, wiggling her fingers over the various truffles before selecting one without looking at the map explaining the varieties. “Well, it worked. I forgive you.” 

She bit into the candy and made a face, scrunching her nose. 

“Ugh,” she said, holding out the remaining half of the truffle, brushing it over your lips. “Coconut. Disgusting.” 

“I don’t want your spit candy…” you leaned away from her but her hand shot forward and stuffed the piece in your mouth as you spoke, making you cough for a moment before you gave up and just chewed it. “You’re disgusting.” 

“And you’re lame,” she said. “So we’re even.” 

“So,” you said, swallowing the candy. “How are you doing? Really?” 

She shrugged, her fingers lingering over the box again as she selected her next piece.

“Fine, I guess,” she said. “I have a job interview next week…” 

“No shit!” Your eyes went wide, impressed. “That’s amazing, where at?” 

“OK, be less excited because otherwise it’s going to be a letdown,” she rolled her eyes a little. “But, believe it or not, it’s an office job. Data entry. It’s going to be total bullshit but it was a foot in the door which, right now? I’ll take.” 

“Congratulations!” You smiled, genuinely happy for her. “That’s exciting.” 

She shrugged again. 

“Only exciting if I get it. And even then… pretty damn lame.” 

“A steady paycheck is only lame until you realize how nice it is,” you said. “I think you’ll like a little stability and independence.” 

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I think you’re right. It just feels weird to be at this stage right now in my life, you know? I didn’t finish college, I have no job experience. I thought my life was going to just always be my life and now it’s not. I’m basically starting from scratch at 29. Less than scratch, I’m already divorced and have two stints in rehab under my belt.” 

You shrugged. 

“Scratch isn’t so bad.” 

“Ah right, my sister in arms, fellow member of the hot young divorcee club,” she smirked, grabbing another chocolate and popping it in her mouth before nodding slowly. “This one’s better, caramel.” 

“Not divorced yet,” you signed, rapping your fingers on the side of your glass. “Gale keeps sending over new terms… I feel like this is never going to end.” 

“It can take a while,” she nodded knowingly. “Hell, even when you’re on decent terms it takes a while, take it from someone who knows.” 

“Speaking of our exes, how is dear old Joshy?” You asked. Anna rolled her eyes a little but you saw the corners of her lips pull up. “Josharoonie. Joshimiah.” 

“Shut up. And he’s fine, last I heard,” she said. “I haven’t seen him in a bit.” 

“Really?” You said. “I’m impressed.” 

“Not that impressive,” she muttered, taking a sip of her drink. 

“Uh huh,” you replied. “Hon, I remember a time that you couldn’t stay away from him for five minutes and I remember him convincing you that oh, no, it’s just a little wine, just a little pot, just a little coke…” 

“Yeah, he’s way less hot shit when I’m sober as it happens,” she laughed a little. “God, yeah, I don’t know that I would have made it down the aisle with him if I’d been sober. I was three bottles of wine deep that day…” 

“Yeah, I remember,” you laughed a little, too. “That really should have been red flag number one, you had to get hammered to marry the guy. I probably should have tried harder to stop you.” 

“Eh,” she shrugged. “Can’t hold it against you. Not like your taste in men was all that great. No offense.” 

You just shrugged noncommittally. It was easier than arguing. You weren’t sure why you kept wanting to defend Gale to people. It’s not like he was being especially kind or caring as your marriage dissolved. It wasn’t like he’d been especially kind or caring toward you in a very long time. 

But something in you grated at people’s distaste. You were divorcing him, yes, but it’s not like you’d lost all your feeling for the man. You still cared about him. You still loved him. Or you thought you did, anyway. Sometimes, you weren’t sure if it was him you loved or if it was the life you had before that you longed for, the gentle stability of a partner who you knew would put his hand in the small of your back when maneuvering around you in the bathroom in the morning and would program the coffee pot before you went to bed at night. There was a comforting, quiet certainty in knowing the pattern of someone’s scars and where to find them in the dark. You hadn’t had that in a while. 

But you hadn’t had any kind of special consideration in even longer, your husband paying you and your wants and needs very little mind as the two of you moved along toward divorce through the final years of your marriage. It was slow at first - curt words and quick frustrations - and then all at once, with raised voices and wounds that cut deeper than you’d realized at the time. 

Part of you wondered if Gale would have stayed as he was when you met him if it wasn’t for you. Like maybe you’d driven him to this version of himself, the version that seemed to be vindictive and mean now and had been thoughtless and cold as everything collapsed. Maybe, if you’d been less infuriating or self centered or immature, he’d have remained his brilliant, pensive self. Maybe he’d still have wanted to steal you away into his office to go down on you between classes, your legs spread wide as he pulled your ass to the edge of his desk and plunged his tongue inside of you. Maybe he’d still want to take you to restaurants you didn’t know to eat foods you’d never tried, his hand slipping up your thigh as he fed you your first bite of caviar. Maybe he’d still call you Doll and look at you like you had something worth experiencing somewhere inside you.

Maybe you’d ruined him. Maybe you’d ruined everything. 

The oven timer dinged and Anna jumped up, grabbing pot holders and pulling a baking dish out of the oven as you frowned. 

“What?” She asked, getting out plates. “I invited you over for lunch, I was obviously going to feed you.” 

“OK, yeah, not obvious,” you said. “And I figured that it might mean… I don’t know, sandwiches or something, what is that?” 

“Mom’s mac and cheese,” she smiled, proud. You gaped at her for a moment. “What! I was a housewife for years, I did pick up a few skills.” 

“You followed Joshamania around on tour for years,” you corrected her. “I don’t think you had the facilities to make Mom’s mac and cheese at your disposal.” 

“OK so maybe it’s a new skill,” she said, spooning the food onto plates. “But I’m not totally useless.” 

She put the plate in front of you - it was chipped, one of the same ones you’d eaten off of every day as a kid - and sat next to you, tucking her leg below her as she did before the two of you dug into the pasta. 

It smelled warm and familiar, a little like your kitchen on Anna’s birthday when you were kids and you took a bite. But you only chewed it for half a second before you dropped the food back on your plate and grabbed the glass of sparkling juice, chugging it as Anna made a disgusted face. 

“What did you do to it?” You coughed, trying to get the taste out of your mouth. “That’s the saltiest thing I’ve ever eaten!” 

“It said to salt the water!” She coughed, too. “And add salt to taste in the sauce…” 

“Did you taste it?” You asked, brows raised. “And how much salt did you put in the water?” 

“I don’t know!” She said. “It didn’t say how much to put in. And no, I didn’t taste it, I thought it’d be gross to eat out of the pan I was cooking in…” 

“This is what’s gross,” you said before pouring another glass of juice and chugging that, too. “Jesus… that tour bus really didn’t have a kitchen did it?” 

“Nope,” she took the bottle and just started drinking straight from it. “But if it did, I’d probably have killed half the band…” 

You snorted at that, almost shooting sparkling juice out of your nose when you did. As the two of you regained your composure, you looked at your little sister. It sometimes felt like the two of you had gone down completely opposite paths, everything about you so disparate it was like she was a total stranger to you. 

It’s not as though you were related by blood. Your parents had adopted Anna when she was a baby and you were almost three years old, back when their marriage was still functional and bringing another child into it sounded like a good idea instead of total insanity. But you’d have thought growing up together with the same parental neuroses and sharing the same bathroom would have made it so you somewhat resembled each other in the way your lives had turned out. 

It hadn’t, though. You were valedictorian of your high school class, went to an ivy league school, got a doctorate and started teaching at your alma mater. You’d married the first real boyfriend you had, the only time you’d ever interacted with a cop was the two times you’d been pulled over for speeding and you could count the number of concerts you’d been to on one hand. 

Anna, on the other hand, had finished high school by the skin of her teeth. She’d been in her first semester of community college when your mother died and she dropped out almost immediately, no matter how hard you tried to talk her out of it. She got involved with a protest group for a while before she started following her favorite band on tour. She ended up sleeping with half of them before she wound up married to the guitarist. Your life had been quiet and stable and hers had been free and exciting and yet you’d both wound up back in your home town, divorced and trying to figure out where to go next. 

Maybe you were more like her than you realized. 

“I think I have the stuff for sandwiches,” she said, shoving back from the table and heading for the fridge. “Because yeah, that’s inedible…” 

“Don’t worry about it on my account,” you said, pushing the offending plate away. “I’m going to dinner with Joel in a few hours so…” 

“Joel?” She straightened up from behind the fridge door, her eyebrows raised as she watched you. “Wait, like a date?” 

“Please,” you scoffed. “It’s Joel. Be real.” 

“Right, you’re too straight laced for someone like that,” she rolled her eyes, going back into the fridge. 

“No I’m not!” 

“Yes, you are,” she said, standing up again and bumping the door closed with her hip. She came back to the table and dropped a Lunchable in front of you. You raised your eyebrows and she glared at you. “Not a fucking word.” 

“I didn’t say a thing,” you said, pulling back the plastic wrap lid. “And you know that you couldn’t pay Joel enough to date me…” 

She scoffed, opening her own Lunchable. 

“I’m not his type!” You protested, resisting the urge to kick her under the table. 

“Type schmype,” she waved you off. “Mom always thought you two were going to get married one day…” 

“Yeah, because her judgement was always so stellar,” you rolled your eyes, making a little sandwich of meat and cheese and crackers. 

“Say what you want about her taste in men but Mom knew you,” Anna said, her tone almost uncomfortably earnest. “You’re so much like her. So, so like her. She knew. And she said it, even after you were engaged to Gale she said it. Because she knew.” 

“Well,” you shrugged after a moment. “She got it wrong.” 

You ended up staying at Anna’s for a few hours. She told you more about the meetings she was attending, how she liked her sponsor. Things seemed to be going well for her, it was stabilizing. So much better than it had been when you’d decided to come back to Texas a few months earlier. She’d passed out at a party after taking drugs from someone she barely knew. Thankfully, someone she was there with was smart enough to get her to a hospital when she wouldn’t wake up. You’d flown down and sat with her at the hospital, talked to her doctors, helped convince her to go to rehab. For a few torturous hours on the plane ride, you thought you might lose your sister, too. That you’d have no one and you’d be adrift in the world, lost and alone and as empty of meaning as you’d always been afraid you were. You’d decided then that, if Anna lived, you were moving back.

But navigating your relationship with Anna since was a balancing act. Part of you wanted to become her mother, to take care of her and guide her and support her through everything. It seemed safest, making decisions for her since she seemed to be so bad at making them for herself. But you knew that wasn’t tenable, not really. She was fiercely independent, she always had been. She’d rather make all the wrong decisions on her own than have someone make the right ones for her. But being just her sister didn’t feel like enough, not when she was struggling and trying to find her way. 

“I hope you and Joel have fun tonight,” she said in a sing song voice as she walked you to the front door.

“You’re obsessed,” you rolled your eyes. “I promise, it’s nothing interesting…” 

“You two have been spending a lot of time together for nothing interesting.” 

“We’ve always spent a lot of time together,” you said, turning to face her as she stood in the doorway. “He half lived at our house when we were kids if you recall.” 

“Yeah, you were in love with him then, too,” she smirked. 

“Not even going to dignify that with a response,” you said, not wanting to think about how well your sister seemed to know you. “You know where to find me if you need me, right?” 

“Oh gosh,” she huffed dramatically. “Joel’s?” 

“Alright, bye!” You waved and Anna cackled.

“Hey,” she called from her door as you went to get to the car. “I’m happy you’re back.” 

You smiled a little. 

“Believe it or not, I’m happy I’m back too.” 

***

“You got everything?” Joel asked, herding Sarah toward the truck. 

“Yes Dad,” she rolled her eyes. 

“Got your pajamas?” 

“Yes.” 

“Clothes for tomorrow? Including clean underwear?” 

She sighed. 

“Yes, duh.” 

“Don’t ‘duh’ me,” he said. “You forget stuff you need all the time and I’m not gonna just be at home waitin’ for you to need something tonight. If you forget it, you’re on your own kid.” 

“I have everything.” 

“Vanessa’s present?” 

“Dad,” she stopped and looked at him. “I’m 11. I’m basically a teenager. I have all my stuff.” 

Joel tried really hard to not laugh. 

“Alright,” he said. “In the truck, you almost teenager.” 

She smiled proudly before obeying. 

“Can I put on my playlist?” She asked, leaning between the front seats. 

“You have to give me the phone then,” he said. “And you have to sit back and buckle up.” 

She pulled up the playlist before dropping the phone in his hand and sitting back. 

“You excited for Vanessa’s birthday party?” He asked as he started the playlist. “Seatbelt.” 

“Yeah!” She said, obeying and buckling up. “Melanie is gonna be there, too, and she was bringing her karaoke machine. Can I get a karaoke machine?” 

“You gonna let me use it?” Joel asked, looking at her in the rear view mirror. 

“Only if you sing something besides old man music,” she smirked at him. 

“I don’t listen to old man music…” 

“You listen to old man music,” she said. “You’re gonna tell Aunt Goldie I say hi, right?” 

“I’ll tell her you say hi,” he smiled a little. “Even though I figured we’d pretend the world didn’t revolve around you for one night…” 

Sarah scoffed and he could tell she was trying not to smile, too. 

“The world revolves around me every night,” she said. “As it should.” 

Joel laughed and pulled up in front of Vanessa’s house. 

“Alright center of the universe,” he said, pausing the music and handing her the phone. “Go, have fun, be on your best behavior…” 

“You too,” she said, getting out of the truck before pausing on her way out the door. “Dad, I think I forgot something…” 

Joel sighed. 

“What do you need, Baby Girl?” 

She just laughed. 

“I’m just messing with you. Have fun!” 

Sarah jumped out of the truck before he had a chance to respond and ran to the door, her duffle bag bouncing on her arm. He waited until she was safely inside and waved to Vanessa’s mom - whose name he could never fucking remember - before he headed to your place. 

He hadn’t just triple checked to make sure that Sarah had everything she needed, he’d also made sure he was ready, too. 

Joel wasn’t sure why he was so anxious. It’s not like he didn’t see you all the damn time now. It seemed like if the two of you weren’t hanging out you were texting. Even though it sometimes felt like you were getting reacquainted, it was still like you just knew him, knew him on a level no one else ever had. But this was different. He was deliberately owning up to all the things he wanted to change about himself, all the ways he’d fallen short in his life. It was uniquely vulnerable. He didn’t want to go in unprepared. 

So he’d made sure he had the list. And that the list didn’t make him sound like a total fucking idiot. He got his truck washed. He made sure he had a pair of pants that weren’t just blue jeans and a clean shirt with a collar. 

He knew that things weren’t going perfectly for you, either. That was the whole point of this entire plan, the two of you figuring out your lives together. But you were still you. He wanted you to know him but he also wanted you to know the best of him. Not the shitty things, not the things he was ashamed of. But… you were still you, the only person he’d want to do something like this with. He’d just have to get past it. 

Joel took a deep breath and knocked on your door. You opened it almost immediately, putting in an earring as you did. You were in a dress that looked like it had been made for you, skimming over your body, dipping low enough that he could see the curve of your breasts and, for half a second, Joel’s mind went back to the night before in the pool. You’d been so close then. He could feel all of you against him, all your softness and all your warmth - even if your hands were cold. There was a moment he lived in for longer than he wanted to admit, one where it felt like it would have been OK to kiss you, to hold your body tightly to him, to pull you inside and peel off your swimsuit so he could run his hands over the goosebump prickled flesh below. He’d come to that thought, alone in his bed once he was sure Sarah was asleep and he wouldn’t be interrupted. He’d come so hard he had to muffle his moans and he stayed there, cock in his hand as he stared up at the ceiling, as he tried to shove the thought of you away. You didn’t want that, you’d made that much perfectly clear more than a decade before. This wasn’t going to take him anywhere good. 

And now you were standing there, in a dress that couldn’t make you look more appealing if it was designed by temptation itself. 

God fucking dammit. 

“Jesus, Goldie,” he said after he collected himself as much as he could. “Feelin’ a little underdressed here.” 

“Shit,” your eyebrows drew together and you looked down at yourself. “I don’t have much that’s  dressy, this was from this cocktail event the university wanted to trot me out like some show pony for last fall… I can see what else I have if you’re OK to wait for a minute….” 

You turned to go back inside but Joel caught your wrist and you frowned.

“You look great,” he said. “Besides, I know how long ‘a minute’ is in woman getting ready time…” 

“Oh fuck off.” 

“…and I’m starving. Let’s go.” 

You gave him an exasperated look before shrugging into a trench coat and grabbing your bag and gold notebook from the table just inside the door. 

“You look good, too, by the way,” you said once the two of you were in his truck and he was heading for the restaurant you’d picked the other day. Joel scoffed. “Hey! I mean it, you do. Should wear something besides jeans and t-shirts or flannels now and then, you clean up well.” 

“Next time we hang out, I’ll rent a tux,” he smirked a little and glanced at you, just catching a glimpse of your eye roll as he did. “Polish up my shoes, whole nine…” 

“Should just buy the tux,” you replied. “Seems like a smart investment for a man of your profession and lifestyle…” 

“Oh, sure.” 

“Got all those galas to go to…” 

“Uh huh.” 

“Awards shows…” 

“Naturally.” 

“Black tie weddings.” 

“You gonna get some nice formal gowns?” He teased back. “Come with me to all these hoity-toity outings?”

You laughed. 

“Sure, Joel. I’ll be your back up date to any and all formal events.” 

The restaurant you wanted to try was definitely nicer than anything Joel had gone to in a while but it’d been easy for you to talk him into it. He remembered you being more excited about food when you were kids, how you’d watch his mom in the kitchen sometimes when you stayed for dinner or how you’d reach over and steal fries off his tray at the burger place down the street from your apartment when you were so hungry that your own fries weren’t going to cut it. Now, though, it seemed like anytime he wasn’t deciding what you were eating you ate the kind of shit that you scrunched your nose up at in high school. People and tastes could change, of course. He wasn’t stupid. But it didn’t feel like you. It felt like some holdover from that jackass you’d spent the last decade with. 

So as soon as you texted him the menu and just said “They have Osso buco!” he was in. He didn’t know what the fuck Osso buco was, he was just excited to see you excited about something that made you happy when he knew you before. 

The hostess sat the two of you in a quiet corner, giving you a knowing look, and Joel more watched you pore over the menu than read his own, an intense and serious look on your face as you went through it line by line. 

“If I got a bottle of wine, would you have at least a glass?” You looked up at him through your eyelashes from across the table. 

“Anything for you, baby,” he teased. 

“I hate you.” 

Joel scoffed. 

“No you don’t. And yes, I’ll drink your alcoholic juice.” 

“Good,” you said, looking back down at the menu. “Because the one I really want isn’t available by the glass and I don’t need that much wine…” 

“Look at you, all fancy and shit,” he said. “Ordering your wine by the bottle…” 

“Almost like we’re grownups,” you said absently. “What are you getting?” 

“Why, so you can steal some?” He asked, brows raised. 

You looked at him, face serious. 

“Yes. Duh.” 

Joel sighed. 

“You’re the worst person. And I’m getting the spaghetti. Don’t bother calling me lame, I know I’m lame.” 

“Well, as long as you’re aware,” you said, looking back at the menu. 

“What are you getting, Miss ‘I order whole bottles of wine’ level of adult? That one thing you were excited about? The Oss… whatever the fuck?” 

“Osso buco,” you smiled across the table at him. “And probably that…. But it’s probably more than I really need and…” 

“Goldie,” Joel cut you off, tone serious enough that you actually, fully lifted your gaze from the menu in front of you. “Don’t let that asshole ruin this. Get the… whatever it is.” 

You smiled a little. 

“Osso buco it is.” 

Once the food was ordered and the wine was poured, Joel put his list next to him on the table and you did, too, your ever present gold notebook sitting in front of you. 

“So,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound as awkward as he felt. “How do you want to do this?” 

“You first?” You asked, wincing a little. 

He nodded and looked over the list one last time before turning it around and putting it in the middle of the table. You leaned over - don’t look down your dress, don’t look down your dress, don’t look down your dress - and started reading. 

“It’s not in any real order,” Joel said, cupping the back of his neck. “Just… wrote shit as I thought of it.” 

You nodded slowly. 

“Throw Sarah a pool party,” you said. 

“Yeah,” he laughed a little. “She’s been sayin’ the last few years that she wants a pool party for her birthday but… I’ve just been too swamped to make it happen. Always end up taking her and her friends somewhere like Putt Putt Golf or something, somewhere I don’t have to plan shit, I can just show up. She always has fun but I know she’d like the pool party. I just need to make sure my shit is together enough to do it.” 

“Play music again,” you moved on to the next item and you frowned, looking up at him. “You stopped?” 

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Well, no. I didn’t stop playing at home but… Before Sarah was born, there were a few local places I played at sometimes. Back then, it was because I hoped I’d meet some record label asshole who’d sign me. But I miss it. It was fun, playin’ for people. Would like to do that again.” 

You nodded, going back to the list. 

“Start your own contracting company,” you smiled at that. “Business owner Joel Miller…” 

“Future business owner,” he corrected you. “Don’t own shit yet. Not sure I know how to own shit.” 

“You’re smart,” you said. “And I’m pretty sure by our powers combined, we can at least Google a lot of this stuff.” 

“Probably should have done what you told me,” he said. “Gotten my damn associates…” 

“I am right about most things,” you said. There was no smugness in your voice, almost the opposite. Like you were sorry you’d been right about this thing in particular. 

“Just didn’t see the point then,” he sighed. “Hindsight is 20/20, I guess.” 

“It tends to be that way,” you conceded before looking back down at the paper. “Design one big project… is that a work one?” 

“Yeah,” he smiled a little sheepishly. “Figured… I dunno, it’ll take a bit to get my own business going, you know? Gonna keep working for the company I work for now for a bit yet. Should try and make it something I like while I’m there.”

You smiled at him in that way you had, the way that started small but spread fast. It reminded him of the way light started to poke through curtains in the morning, slipping in through a crack, illuminating the things directly around it before they were thrown open entirely and the sun broke through everything, spilling onto every surface, drowning out the darkness quick and sure. 

“Good,” you said, still smiling in that wide, open way. “You should like your job, you’re there too much to not like it.” 

You went back to the list and Joel took a sip of wine. 

“Find a stable relationship,” you said, a little quieter.  

The server returned, putting your plates in front of the two of you and you cleared your throat, setting the paper to the side and smiling kindly as the waiter asked if there was anything else the two of you needed before excusing himself. 

“OK,” Joel said, looking at your food from across the table. “I see why you were excited now, that looks fuckin’ delicious.” 

He reached over and stabbed his fork into the meat on your plate as you gaped at him, appalled. He ate the bite he’d taken, chewing thoughtfully. 

“Yup,” he said. “Fuckin’ delicious.” 

“You’re such a dick!” You reached over and stabbed your fork into his pasta. 

“Hey!” 

You ignored him, twirling your fork haphazardly as you tried not to lean into the food in front of you before taking it back across the table. You ate the spaghetti and nodded to yourself as you did. 

“Definitely scratch pasta,” you said. “Have to come back here and get some of my own. Or just steal more of yours…” 

“If you want pasta, order pasta,” he said. 

“If you want Osso buco, order Osso buco,” you replied, fork up and ready to stab his hand if it creeped across the table.” 

“Maybe I will, now that I know what it is,” he teased, digging into his own plate this time. 

“So,” you said after the two of you had the time to have a few bites of food. “Stable relationship, huh?” 

“Yup,” he nodded, taking a sip of wine. “Not sure I even want to own up to the last time I had one of those…” 

“When was the last time?” You frowned, picking up your wine glass. 

“Can’t judge me.” 

“Too late,” you smirked a little. He glared at you and you laughed. “Come on, Joel. It’s me. I always judge you all the time.” 

He rolled his eyes and then sighed. 

“It’s… been a while,” he said eventually. “But… Haven’t been on more than three dates with anyone since Sarah was about four.” 

Your eyes went wide. 

“I said you can’t judge me!” 

“I’m not judging!” You said quickly. “Just… shocked is all. You always had a tendency to go through them fast but I always kind of figured you’d outgrown that over the years.” 

“Well, less fast now and more that women in their 20s don’t really want to play stepmom,” he said wryly. “Never got as far as introducing any of ‘em to Sarah, haven’t bothered really looking since I’ve been in my 30s. But… I dunno. It’d be nice, I think. Have someone to come home to, that sort of thing.” 

You nodded slowly. 

“What?” He asked after you were quiet for what seemed like too long. 

“Can I ask what happened with Sarah’s mom?” You asked, fork hovering over your plate. “I don’t want to dredge anything up but…” 

Joel shrugged. 

“Not much to dredge up,” he said. “We… well, we were… casual. Real casual. She got pregnant, I tried to do the right thing but she wasn’t really interested in that…” 

You frowned. 

“Right thing?” 

“Suggested we go down to the courthouse,” he twisted the slender stem of wine glass in his thick fingers. “Make it legal. Since we were bringin’ a kid into the world seemed like the least we could do but… anyway. She said no but that she’d try dating me. We didn’t have much in common, didn’t get along all that well for longer than a few hours. Her shootin’ me down was probably one of the best things to happen to me, really. Especially when it came to untangling the legalities of it all when she took off.” 

You winced. 

“I’m really sorry, Joel,” you said softly. “That… that’s shitty. It really, really is.” 

He shrugged. 

“I got Sarah,” he said. “Do it all again in a heartbeat for that kid.” 

You smiled at that, a smaller, softer smile, one that felt like it was just for him. 

“It all worked out the way it was supposed to,” you said. “None of it was a mistake, it was just… Sarah, being inevitable.” 

He laughed once at that, smiling a little. He liked thinking of it that way, his life putting itself in just the right order that his daughter could exist. Now, he just needed to put it in the right order that he felt like he was doing something with the rest of it. 

“Alright,” he said. “Enough about my shit, let’s see yours.” 

You handed him his list back and opened your notebook, holding it to your chest for a moment. 

“Remember the lack of judgement I gave you,” you cautioned. “I expect the same back.” 

“So plenty of judgement,” he smirked a little. “Got it. 

You glared. 

“Gimme the list, Goldie.” 

You sighed and handed it over. 

Joel took half a second to appreciate the fact that he was holding your notebook again. For something that was always with you, it was something he rarely touched and never opened himself. You’d shown him one or two things inside it before but you’d never just surrendered it to him like this. He had to fight the urge to flip to the start of it and read everything he could, try to swallow up every thought you’d had that you thought was important enough to put down on paper. 

Instead, he just cleared his throat and started at the top of your list. 

“Finalize divorce,” he said, eyes tracing over your letters. “That’s a good one. Where you at in that whole process?” 

“I have no idea,” you sighed. “Every time I think we’re close the agreement gets tossed out and we start back over. I swear he’s just trying to piss me off sometimes…” 

“Probably is,” Joel said. “He’s a jackass.” 

“So you keep saying,” you half smiled at him. 

“My only issue with this one is that it’s not something you can really control,” he said, looking over the table to you. “I don’t want you beating yourself up or taking less than you deserve because you’re trying to tick a box…” 

“I won’t,” you said. “Don’t worry.” 

“Better not,” he said, looking back down at the paper. “Finish book, alright. That one you can control…” 

“Kind of control,” you corrected him, a crooked smile on your face. “Sometimes, the words just won’t come and there’s not much you can do about it.” 

“Still,” he said. “Got more control over that than anything with fuckin’ Brad…” You shook your head a little, exasperated, but were still smiling. “Have any idea about what you want this one to be about?” 

“Not really,” you sighed. “I’ve started a few things but I keep scrapping it. So many outlines for no goddamn reason…” 

“You’ll get there.” 

“Maybe,” you poked at the meat on your plate. “Or maybe I told the only story I have that’s worth telling. Maybe I’m all used up.” 

“You’re not,” he said gently. You nodded a little but kept looking at your plate. “Hey. Goldie. Look at me.” You sighed and obeyed, meeting his eyes, your face frustrated but your gaze sad. “You’re not. You’re…. You’re fuckin’ amazing, you’re gonna make something great. You are.” 

You smiled tightly and, for a moment, looking at you was too intimate to do in public. He looked back down at the page. 

“Be there for Anna,” he said. “What, like you aren’t now?” 

“I still haven’t figured out how to do it right,” you replied. “I just… I need to find the right balance. And I need to make sure I keep up with her, I can’t just… I’m worried she’s going to land herself back in the hospital and I’m her big sister. I need to make sure she doesn’t.” 

He just nodded, jaw tight, moving on to the next item. 

“Go on a date,” he said, a twinge in his gut that he didn’t want to acknowledge. “Alright, that’s not bad…” 

“Yeah, I think I’ll need your help with that,” you said and his head shot up, meeting your eyes across the table. 

“What… how?” 

“Oh, don’t panic,” you waved him off. “Not expecting you to do it. But I’ve never used a dating app or anything like that, I have no idea how to meet someone now. I imagine you’re an expert…” 

“Gee, thanks.” 

“What! It’s a good skill to have,” you said. “One that I am painfully lacking. I’ll take all the help I can get.” 

He sighed. Because of course this would mean finding you a date. Jesus. 

“Yeah, I’ll help,” he said. “Make sure you’re not attracting any weirdos…” 

“Not sure that you’re the best help for that part,” you teased. He rolled his eyes. “But… thank you.” 

“Yup.” 

He went back to the paper. 

“Get a cat. Really?” 

“Yeah,” you laughed a little. “I’m kind of tired of how empty my house feels but I’m not up for taking care of a dog. And cats are cute.” 

“Promise you’re not just gonna turn into a cat lady?” He teased, looking back to you. “Get yourself a dozen of ‘em, use them as an excuse to never put yourself out there.” 

“That’s between me and my cats, isn’t it?” You teased back. “Don’t get mad because you’re at risk of being replaced by a fluffy thing who sometimes scratches the shit out of my furniture.” 

“Bold of you to assume I wouldn’t scratch the shit out of your furniture,” he said wryly and you snorted. He went back to the list, taking a sip of wine and almost choked on it. He wasn’t sure how he’d missed the last item on the list until now, written in red ink instead of black and circled. 

“What?” You asked. He glanced up at you before looking back at the paper. 

“Well…” he cleared his throat. “Last one’s… interestin’.” 

“Oh,” you laughed. “Yeah… right…” 

He put the notebook in the middle of the table and tried to regain his composure for a moment. 

“Surprised it’s a priority for you…”

“Well I don’t know about priority,” you laughed. “But, honestly, something’s gotta give…” 

“Well,” Joel cleared his throat again. “Have you fucked anyone since Brad?” 

You rolled your eyes but didn’t answer. 

“Goldie.” 

“Joel.” 

“C’mon.” 

“No, alright?” You snapped. “I haven’t.” 

“And you two separated when?” 

You scrunched your nose. 

“Come on,” he said. “When’d you break up…” 

“A year ago last month,” you muttered, not looking at him. 

“Goldie!” 

“What!” 

He lowered his voice and leaned conspiratorially across the table towards you. 

“You haven’t had sex in a year?” He hissed. “That’s… how…” 

“Hey,” you replied, pointing at him accusingly from across the table. “That is not what I said.” 

Joel frowned, his eyebrows knitting together as he watched you. 

“What do you mean that’s not…” his eyes went wide as you avoided his gaze. “Goldie.” 

“Shut up.” 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” 

“Didn’t I just tell you to shut up?” You snapped. “Come on.” 

“So when was the last time you fucked your soon to be ex-husband while you were in the process of divorcing him?” He asked, looking around as though someone would overhear and make problems. 

“Well now I really don’t want to say…” 

“Goldie.” 

“Please don’t make me say it.” 

“I’m not dropping this,” he said. “When was the last time?”

“The night before I left Rhode Island, OK?” You hissed, voice low. 

“Goldie!” 

“Look, it was just like… I don’t know, a goodbye fuck, OK?” You sat back in your seat and adjusted your skirt, looking anywhere but directly at him. “It’s not like I have a bunch of people waiting in the wings, I wasn’t sure when I’d have the chance again, it seemed appropriate…” 

“Definitely wasn’t that…” 

“Never should have mentioned this…” 

“Gonna move ‘get laid’ to the top of the fuckin’ list now,” Joel muttered. “Jesus Christ…” 

“It’s not that easy, alright?” You said, actually looking at him now. “I’ve basically been with just one person my whole life…” 

“Oh, wow.” 

“What?” 

“One person?” Joel said, brows raised. “Really?” 

You leveled him with a look.

“Joel.” 

“I am right here.” 

“You know what I mean,” you snapped. “Come on, don’t…” 

“Don’t what?” He asked. “Want a little explanation when you say I never happened?” 

“That’s not what I said!” 

“It’s not?” He said. “Because that’s sure what it sounded like…” 

“Jesus Christ,” you groaned, pinching the bridge of your nose. “Fine, OK? I’ve been with two people my whole life since you apparently want to make sure the notches on my bedpost are the right damn number…” 

“So that’s what we were?” He asked, his blood getting hot. “Just a bedpost notch?” 

“Don’t do this,” you said. “I’m not relitigating prom night with you…” 

“Is it relitigating if we never fucking talked about it to begin with?” He asked. “Because I think that’s just litigating it…” 

“Can I get you folks anything else tonight?” The server appeared beside your table, smiling kindly. 

“Just the bill,” you said quickly. “Separate, put the wine on mine, please.” 

He left and Joel waited until he was out of earshot to continue. 

“Why?” He asked. “Why don’t you want to talk about this?” 

“Because it was a decade and a half ago, Joel!” You snapped. “We’re in our 30s now! We were 18 years old then, we were kids, what do you want me to say?” 

“That it wasn’t nothing!” He snapped. “Because Jesus Christ, if you ended our friendship over nothing, I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do with that…” 

“No rush on this,” the server smiled and left the check in the middle of the table. 

You pulled your wallet from your bag and Joel got his out of his back pocket and the two of you put cards into the book before the server quickly came back to collect it. You took a deep breath and looked at Joel. 

“I didn’t end our friendship, Joel,” you said. “I did what I needed to do and I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Fine.” 

“Thanks, y’all, for coming out tonight,” the server dropped the cards and the slips back off at the table. “Hope you both have a great rest of your evening and we’ll see you next time.” 

You gave him a tight smile and signed your slip as Joel did the same with his before smacking his pen down with too much force on the table. The two of you got up wordlessly and headed for the truck. 

This wasn’t the road he’d meant to go down. He hadn’t meant to bring it up at all but you’d caught him off guard. The thought that prom night hadn’t been anything to you wasn’t something he’d ever considered. He’d always assumed it had been a big deal because of how you reacted. It had been a big deal for him. It had been a big deal before you took off across the country. After that - after it had made him lose you - it was everything. It was everything he’d ever wanted, it was the stupidest thing he’d ever done. It was proof that what he felt for you wasn’t some childish, one-sided crush and it was evidence that all you’d ever be was a girl he’d loved once. The one thing it had certainly never been was nothing. 

You sat, arms crossed over your stomach, staring out the window in silence as Joel drove you home, a knot of fear settling in his gut. What if this was it again? What if you just left again? He’d just gotten you back, life felt more whole than it had in years, what if you just moved on? 

He pulled into your driveway and put the truck in park before he sighed, looking over at you. 

“Want to come in?” You asked quietly. “I got a bottle of tequila that looks fancy as fuck as a gift. We can get hammered.” 

The knot in his stomach eased ever so slightly. 

“Yeah, alright.” 

He followed you inside and you got the bottle from the kitchen, pressing it into Joel’s hand. He went to sit on your couch but you walked past it and he frowned. 

“Don’t feel like sitting there in this stupid dress,” you said, lifting one stiletto clad foot and taking it by the heel, pulling it off. “I’ll be back in a minute…” 

“Can I come?” Joel asked before he thought better of it. He didn’t like the idea of you being more than just a few feet away in that moment. Like if you were somehow out of his sight, you’d vanish and it’d be a decade before he had a chance to have you back in his life again. 

You just looked at him for a moment before you shrugged. 

“If you really want,” you did the same thing with the other shoe and Joel trailed behind you to your bedroom. 

“Just stay out there,” you called from inside your closet. 

“What, don’t want me checkin’ you out?” He said in a teasing voice even though that thought made his stomach clench. 

“Joel,” you sounded exasperated. 

“Sorry.” 

He’d been over to your house plenty but had never been in your room before. It looked like you, though. So like what your room had been like in high school, just more refined. Like you’d grown into your taste in the past few years. The stack of books on your nightstand was orderly instead of total chaos and there was a charging stand there instead of a tangle of chords. Instead of movie posters held up with tape and thumb tacks, there were framed vintage-style prints lining the walls. Your dresser was less cluttered and more curated with little things that clearly mattered to you: a ticket stub and book mark in a matted frame, a wedding picture, a little glazed clay vase that looked handmade.

He went to your dresser slowly, as though what was there might bite him if he moved to suddenly. The wedding picture practically stared him down, the glare of it harsh, like a too bright spotlight being pointed directly at his eyes. 

He picked up the frame delicately, the frame enameled silver. You were beautiful, in a gauzy white dress that hugged your body and a veil in your hair, a hand on Brad’s chest as you looked into his eyes. He was beaming, looking like someone who’d just gotten exactly what he wanted. But your smile was more subdued. Joel wasn’t sure if it was just peaceful or if you weren’t as happy as he’d always thought women were when they got married. 

But the longer he looked at the picture, the less the woman in it looked like you. The dress didn’t look like something you’d really pick. Your nails were done in a way he’d never seen you wear them. Your makeup, too, looked off. Like someone had dressed you up as a character, as though you’d been cast in the role as bride and showed up to play your part and nothing more. 

“I should probably get rid of that,” you said, making Joel jump. Your arms were crossed tightly over your chest. You were in leggings and a burnt orange Longhorns sweatshirt now that was several sizes too big for you, sleeves pushed almost to your elbows and sliding down. “Just can’t bring myself to.” 

Joel nodded slowly, setting it down. 

“Looked beautiful,” he said. You scoffed. “What? You did.” 

“Thanks,” you said, going and pulling back the blanket on your bed. Joel paused before he went around to the other side of it, tequila bottle still dangling from one hand. He stood there for a moment, half reaching for the bedspread, half watching you for permission. You stretched over and pulled the blanket back. “Shoes off, don’t be gross.” 

“I’m not a fuckin’ animal,” he rolled his eyes before he sat on the edge of the bed, kicking his shoes off without bothering to untie them and climbing in beside you. He leaned against the headboard and you did, too, a good two feet between your bodies in the king sized bed. “That why you keep it?” 

You frowned. 

“Keep what?” 

“The picture,” he nodded to it. “Because you looked pretty?” 

You laughed a little. 

“No,” you said. “Not that. Just… feels very final, getting rid of the last wedding picture. Once that’s gone, it’s like it never happened at all. There’s nothing tangible left of the last ten years of my life, it’s all just smoke.” 

Joel nodded slowly and opened the tequila bottle before passing it to you. You took it, your fingers brushing his, and took a drink, face scrunched in a wince when you handed the bottle back. He laughed. 

“That good, huh?” 

“No, it’s good,” you coughed a little. “I just should have also grabbed… I don’t fucking know, lime and salt or something.” 

He took a drink himself, appreciating the small sting as it went down. It was smooth, definitely better than anything he’d buy himself, but he needed at least a little burn in that moment. 

“You’re just a baby,” he said, looking at the bottle. “Don’t need a damn thing with this stuff…” 

“Alright, macho man,” you snatched the bottle from him and he laughed before you tipped it back for longer than you had before. He watched you swallow twice before lowering it with a cough. “There,” you managed eventually. “Who’s the baby now?” 

“Still you,” he clapped you on the shoulder and you fixed him with a glare but handed him the bottle, anyway. 

“Gee thanks.” 

“Anytime.” 

He took another sip and looked around your room a bit more, gaze pausing on one of the vintage style posters. He frowned for a second, trying to place why it felt familiar when he was too far away to read the movie title before he laughed. 

“What?” 

“Is that some fancy style Curtis and Viper poster?” He looked at you and you smiled. He passed you the bottle. “Where’d you even find that shit? There’s no way they made something that classy for fuckin’ Curtis and Viper…” 

“Etsy is a beautiful thing,” you said. “I can show you if you want.” 

“So you’re gonna stick around long enough to show me, then?” He asked, regretting it almost as soon as it was out of his mouth, especially once the small hurt was there on your face. “Shit… I…” 

“I wasn’t planning to take off across the country anytime too soon, Joel,” you said cooly. 

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t… Just… It scares me. I like having you here. You belong here. Don’t want to lose you again, I just got you back.” 

“I don’t want to lose you again either,” you said quietly, looking down at the tequila bottle instead of at Joel. 

“I’m not the one who left, Goldie.” 

You were silent but you nodded. 

“You never even told me why,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know what happened… still don’t…” 

“I don’t really feel like digging up ancient history,” you said, your thumb tracing over the curve of the bottle before looking up at him. “I mean, is that really what you want to do? You really want to go through all of that?” 

He sighed. 

“I don’t fuckin’ know.” 

“I know what I want,” you said. 

He could feel your eyes on him. He met them.

“What?” 

“I want you in my life,” you said quietly. “I don’t want to go back to missing you all the time. I want my best friend back.” 

He sighed. 

“I want that, too.” 

You smiled a little and scooted closer, leaning over until your head was on his shoulder. He could smell your shampoo, the slightly floral tang of your perfume, the scent of your skin nestled below it all. 

“How about we never fight again,” you said. 

Joel could hear the smile in your voice. He laughed once. 

“Sure thing, Goldie,” he said. “We’ll never fight again.” 

“Good,” you said and he felt your cheek move as your smile grew. You held the tequila out to him. “You’re slacking off, by the way.” 

“Well shit,” he said. “Lemme catch up.” 

The two of you drank more than you should have, devolving into slurred speech and shrieking laughs before you passed out, tucked against Joel. He turned out the light and adjusted delicately until he was lying down and your head was on his chest, curled up against his side. His arm curved around your shoulders until his fingers traced over your jaw, your cheek, your hairline. 

“You’re warm,” you mumbled against him. “Best pillow…” 

He smiled and nuzzled into your hair, his lips brushing your forehead. 

“Sure am,” he whispered. 

“Glad you’re here,” you slurred, words closer to mush than anything else. “Missed you.” 

He took a deep breath and tried not to get too attached to the way your body felt on his. 

“Glad I’m here too, Goldie. Missed you, too.” 

Providence, Rhode Island

Early August, 2008 

Joel had never been on a college campus like this. 

Of course, he’d only ever been on one and UT barely counted, the campus was just part of Austin. He had no idea where to start looking for you at some place like this. 

Some asshole dude with too much gel in his hair gave Joel a look as he tossed his duffle bag on one arm and left the bus stop. His mouth got dry. He didn’t belong here, that much was fucking obvious, and everyone could fucking tell. 

He just walked for a few minutes, working his way deeper into the ivy-covered cluster of buildings. There weren’t many people around but he supposed that made sense, fall semester hadn’t started yet. He’d finally managed to get Anna to tell him where the fuck you’d gone and why. Some summer program, an invitation-only intensive for creative writing students.

“It was so weird,” Anna said when he finally convinced her to get a cup of coffee with him. “She got the invitation in like… April and talked about it with Mom and she decided she didn’t want to go. It started before school was out here - I guess college semesters are shorter or something - and she didn’t want to miss prom and graduation. And then a few days after prom she came home from school, locked herself in her room for a bit and then told mom she was leaving Friday for the program. She already had it all worked out, it was nuts…” 

You’d never mentioned it to him. Not the invitation, not deciding not to go, not changing your mind, none of it. It didn’t make any fucking sense to him. Why wouldn’t you have told him? Why would you have just left? Especially after prom… 

He finally stumbled upon someone who didn’t look like a rich asshole who pointed him in the direction of the English department, but she cautioned him after he thanked her and turned to leave. 

“There’s basically no one there at this hour,” she warned. “You might run into Professor Newton - he runs the writing program - but they usually have all left for dinner. My boyfriend’s in the program, they like to give them plenty of writing time in the evenings…” 

“Right,” Joel nodded. He hadn’t come up with a plan of anywhere to stay tonight if he couldn’t find you but he had enough money that he could get a cheap motel room for a night or two. He’d figure it out. “Thanks.” 

He jogged to where the girl had pointed him and found the sign for the English department building, some rich asshole’s name on it, and took the steps to the front door two at a time, catching it just as someone else left for the day. 

The building was quiet, just like the girl had warned him it would be and he worked his way through the labyrinth of lecture halls until he found the faculty office list. Dr. Gale Newton, professor of creative writing, third floor, office 315. 

He ran up the stairs and took a second to catch his breath before opening the doors to the hall. 

Immediately, he was met by the sound of your laugh. It hit him hard, for a moment. It had been months since he’d heard your voice, longer than he’d ever wanted to go but you were here now, so close that he could hear your happiness again. 

He followed it, a siren call, to the end of the hall, office 315. The door was cracked, just enough that he could hear you and just see inside. 

“I’m being serious!” Your laugh was still on your voice but it was quieter now. You were standing in front of the desk, your back to Joel. “You really think it’s good?” 

“Oh Doll,” a man said, coming around the desk. He stepped in front of you and reached out, cupping the back of your neck and tilting your head to bring you into alignment with him. “I think you’ve made tremendous strides since coming here. You’ve learned so much.” 

He kissed you then, pulling you against his front, his other hand going to your lower back as you moaned into his mouth. Your arms went around his neck, your body curving and arching into his touch. The man adjusted you until your legs were against his desk and he pulled back from you. 

“Gale,” you breathed, all desperate and needy. 

“Let’s see what else you’ve learned,” he said, helping you onto the desk. 

Joel felt like he was going to be sick. 

It was as though he was outside of his own body, moving without intending to. He was to the end of the hall, down the stairs and out onto the grass before he really knew what was happening. The air outside felt thick and he was having a hard time getting enough of it. His head spun. You’d taken off across the country, cut him off entirely, and found someone else. Your fucking professor. You hadn’t even talked to him, hadn’t even hesitated…

He doubled over and threw up in the bushes, all the shitty bus station food he’d eaten over the last few hours coming back. You were gone, you were really, actually gone. 

Joel wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist and walked, numb, back to the bus stop. He stood there, staring into space, when the girl he’d spoken to before came up alongside him. 

“Hey,” she smiled up at him. “Did you find what you were looking for?” 

He looked at her and, for half a second, thought about seeing if she would bring him back to her dorm, see if she’d let him make her come until she was screaming his name and he could erase the sound of you moaning another man’s name from his head. 

But she said she had a boyfriend. 

Though he supposed it didn’t really matter. It could be anyone. Just something to get that sound out of his fucking head. 

She frowned, watching him. 

“You OK? Did you find it?” 

“Yeah,” he said eventually. “Yeah, I found it.” 

Next Chapter

A/N: They were so close to actually talking it out but our good friends, youthful indiscretion and denial, are going to have them dodge that conversation a little while longer yet.

But!

They have their plan in place! Sarah's still a gem! Anna's now fully in the mix! Just have to see what happens next!

Thanks so much for being here. I'm so sorry the wait has been so long between chapters. I keep thinking life is going to slow down and then it just doesn't. I appreciate you spending your time with these characters and this story! Your kind comments truly mean the world.

❤️

[uncloseted]

how do i get a job if i have like 0 skills? i can't do physical labor, interact with people too much bc of social issues, and my memory and cognitive functions are fucked up. i lost so many jobs and can never maintain one.

I would start by thinking about what things you can do and what things you are good at. When we're struggling, I think it can be really easy to focus on all of the limitations we have, but everyone has talents, too. Maybe you can't do physical labor, but you're really great at making art, and people would be interested in buying it, or maybe you're a really great writer, or you're good at research, or whatever it might be. Starting with what you're good at and then finding jobs that fit your talents might be an easier way to approach this. I would also think about what you already have experience doing- it will be easier to get hired for those kind of jobs than something totally new.

But based on what you've said, I would look into jobs that are remote, low-interaction, and don't require a lot of experience. Data entry might be a good option. If you can speak a second language (especially if you speak it natively), translation could be a possibility. Online content moderation could also work, although from what I've gathered, people burn out kind of fast on those jobs. If you like art and you're willing to grind a little to get clients, graphic design could be a possibility. If you're good with processes, software testing could work. Depending on the client, being a virtual assistant could be low-interaction, although you may have to keep detailed notes to get around some of the memory issues. If you're detail oriented, proofreading or editing could be a great option. If you're good at diving really deep into one topic, then doing research in a professional capacity might be a good job for you. Those are just a few off the top of my head, but I think anything where you can control what hours you work and how much work you're taking on is a good place to start.

I would also think about if there are any assistive devices or accommodations that might make it easier to do a job. Maybe having a pre-written script would make social interactions easier, or recording meetings or using some kind of AI assistant would help with memory issues, or wearing noise-cancelling headphones would help you get your work done.

As far as actually applying to jobs goes, I did a post on that here. It can be kind of a grind, but you only need one job application to work out, so the more you apply, the more likely it is you'll get something.

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

ugh just remembered when I was in that useless fucking social services job hunting workshop.... and the presenter, when she called me for my resume consult basically told me I was liar when I had the usual complaint that "oh just about EVERY entry level job where I am is DEMANDING that I have anywhere between 2 to 5 years experience already before applying"... and instead of confirming that is the problem with the job market today, she instead condescended to me saying "oh no honey that's bc they're HIGH LEVEL admin jobs demanding that and NOT ENTRY LEVEL. learn to read."

actually, no, sandra (not her real name). they're NOT high-level jobs. they're run of the mill front desk reception or call centre jobs, which are also basic data entry jobs.... that only 20 years ago (probably) would've been a walk-in off the street and be employed tomorrow thing, or NO experience needed, we'll train you!" type shit if you applied online.

now these positions are DEMANDING 2 to 5 years experience AND sometimes a combined traineeship for 1-2 years in business admin, pr that you ALREADY have the tafe cert III in business admin, bc they don't want you wasting time studying or waste their time training you. that's why I keep applying for traineeships bc half of these positions already come with one, or "the chance to take on a traineeship" which means, "we'll make you do it anyway and not reduce your workload to accommodate study time". if the job is advertised as a full-time position without the traineeship attached in the title (like a junior admin officer job or something that i've applied for at a local lawyer before).

just. I hated how dismissive this woman was all around. I know I should probs complain tk social services about her, but idk if anything would actually happen. and plus she'd be all like "oh everyone else in that class loved me, why don't you? just keep vibrating at 70htz in loathing and resentment and GET NO OPPORTUNITIES EVER bc of that. why did my teaching not get the IMPORTANCE of vibrating at 500htz ie. LOVE AND PEACE AND ACCEPTANCE is the ONLY thing that'll give you abundance and opportunities, through to you????"

uh maybe bc I see job hunting as a practical thing and not all the batshit reiki shit that I like in asmr for entertainment.... and the vision board mumbo jumbo of self-help internet is great coming from youtubers like Anna akana.... but NOT in a jobhunting working shop.... where you're guilting people about this mumbo jumbo is exactly why they'll never employed ever again. and esp since my old workplace tried to fire me for "ruining the positive family vibe of this workplave bc you rolled your eyes at me twice and are sarcastic from time to time 😥" during my performance meeting in November 2022. so obvs, I'll refuse to take that side of it seriously.

anyway my point was originally that im pissed of that this woman insisted that entry level jobs that are advertising 2 to 5 years experience aren't "entry level jobs, they're high level." when she was posed as an "employment expert" for this course.

no. they're NOT high-level jobs the bulk of the time. they're fucking run of the mill data entry which really only requires minimum skills in microsoft office and admin etc and a professional phone manner etc.... but instead they're asking for 2-5 years experience and intermediate to advanced microsoft office skills (or google suite etc) bc they want the applicant to do 25 jobs in place of 7 different people. which is shit I should be able to do with an arts degree. you're the one who really knows nothing.

but instead they want to drag me through another whole ass certificate 3 course and ANOTHER traineeship bc apparently an arts degree and a years worth of actual solid office experience isn't enough to man phones, do data entry, do front office reception and whatever dumbass shit "done with minimal supervision superhero" tasks they write in the job description on seek et al

[izzy-b-hands]

I'm gonna ask a weird question but:

Is there anything you guys (aka y'all following me lol) want to see more of from me, in terms of a potential item(s)/service(s) to purchase?

Better explanation of what the fuck I'm waxing on abt below the cut. TW for talk of money/work/the overall state of things economically for me and my plans/goals/potential options to keep making things better.

I need to bring in more money. I'm getting more stable, trying to save on top of the generous donations I've been given while using them as needed for things we absolutely need (food, basic supplies/necessities.) But we're still so tight, and I know nearly everyone is dealing with some form of this right now bc Everything Sucks Economically on like. a level of how it felt in 2008 (extra terrifying feeling now) but. It's killing me. I can't take feeling like a burden like this. I have to do more.

I have been applying elsewhere, for FT, PT, and contract jobs that pay better, though I am hoping more for the FT positions of course. Thus far, I have not had any bites back that amounted to anything, but intend to continue my efforts regardless (because what else can I do there anyway?)

I've been trying to figure out other options, w/things I know I can do somewhat well to very well. All would be cheap, but hopefully would add up over time until I can get a FT job again and while I grind away at the current PT job (which I am hoping to add more hours to for the next semester, when they have us make our scheduling choices again and allow us to potentially add at least one more shift to our schedule.)

So, a poll. To gauge interest, and see if y'all have any opinions/would even potentially purchase anything like the below things from me. I'll try and detail each option below, but first, the options:

1. Photo Prints: I've done photography since high school, though I only have my current Pixel phone available for it right now. That said, they would be as cheap as I can get away with, and my Pixel actually doesn't do too badly, plus I would be editing these to make them as good looking as possible. Ideally, I'd have a Pay What You Want option instead, so ppl can just give whatever they think the print is worth since these will be smaller, amateur prints, but I'm not sure if all the platforms that usually handle photo print sales for smaller creators allow that. So, in that case, a range of probably $1-$5 at most for each print. They would be of things out here; I have access to and experience already with taking city and nature themed pictures (it was literally all I did in hs and since then bc of where I've lived.) So general city life/scenery, plus local wildlife like the birds, squirrels, and nature surrounding us in all seasons, plus any extra pictures I can take elsewhere whenever Housemate and I are out and about (aka probably lots of mountain and ocean shots.) My speciality when I had my other camera was micro/detailed photography, and I'd like to explore this with my current setup and see how they turn out and potentially offer those as well.

If it would help to see some current pictures that I am considering as the first set I would put up for sale, please reply on this post letting me know and I can post a couple as examples 🙌

2. Poetry Commissions: I have done these on and off since middle school, usually for friends/family. Nothing wild, but usually shorter, some rhyming, some free verse, poems on varying topics. I've done them for birthdays, holidays like Mother's Day and Father's Day, as well as with obits or for weddings, and even a baby shower, to go on the invites. I haven't posted much of what I've written in recent years, but as with the pictures, I would be happy to post some of the ones I've written before as examples. Poetry is where I have no fear and will work myself to the bone to provide the best work possible; if you can get me just the bare basic details (ex. You want a poem for your brother's bday. Give me his name, a couple of hobbies/likes of his, and two of your favourite memories with him and I'll write you something beautiful, to celebrate him and his place in your life and take the piss out of him too, depending on your relationship with your brother lol), I can get you a poem in a 2-4 day turnaround time for as low as 5¢/word. Electronic only, but you would get a PDF of the poem that you can do whatever you want with afterwards (I would require my name remain credited on any other posting/usage elsewhere, but you wouldn't have to pay me again if you want to reuse it for another brother, to harken back to our example.)

3. Data Entry/Transcription Assistance: This one is a pretty wide range of what I can offer. I have experience working with medical documents (neurology, ophthalmology, and optometry for specific specialities both in data entry and transcription) via two of my last jobs, technical documents from two prior jobs (public library and medical staff training specifically), and historical documents including both handwritten (including print and cursive) and typed documents and charts via my volunteer work with Zooniverse. This is my bread and butter in terms of general job skills, and one I genuinely enjoy. That means that I come into each job, regardless of field or exact task, with excitement and an open mind, ready to prioritise and organise everything to the requested system and/or standard, with the goal to go above and beyond that however possible. Usually I achieve this by completing projects as ahead of deadline as possible, as well as by taking on any additional related tasks as needed (example: you hired me on to type up all of Grandma's lifelong journal entries for archiving and easy reading at an upcoming family reunion, but now you've found that Grandpa has one too. For minimal to no additional cost, I will happily take that on and endeavour to have both sets of data typed up in an easy to send/print word doc and/or PDF well before the reunion deadline.) I am more than willing to take on contract/NDA required work for this option as well, and have done so in the past with a prior job (aka why I'm not allowed to share any of the clinic training docs I made.) Cost might depend some on project size and deadline, but a general estimate would be, to stick with our above example: $5 per 250/pg journal, with a small additional charge of $5 if a rush is requested (aka say the reunion gets moved up to three days from now vs three months or weeks.) I would endeavour to charge no higher than $25 with $5 rush fee if rush requested for bigger projects.

4. Research Assistance: More or less what it says on the tin. Can be for work, home related things, whatever (though if requested for school/in regards to homework, I only go as far as providing resource links because unfortunately, usually doing the research yourself is a part of the learning process. However, if you're struggling to find primary or secondary sources, I am happy to help find those for you so that you can peruse them to see if they'll have the information you're looking for. If they do, great! If they don't, then I would keep looking for more.) While research hasn't been my main task at any of my prior jobs, it has always been a feature in much of the day to day work regardless, and is a skill I have kept up in my volunteer work with Zooniverse on projects which requested it. Looking for sources for anything, from work projects to recipes can be a slog. Let me do it for you. Pricing on this I'm putting at $5. That's it. Pay me $5, and I'll find as much as I can in regards to whatever you have that needs researching. Turnaround might depend on project, but I'm leaning 1-4 days at the very most.

So. There we are! Vote on the poll if you'd like, reply with any opinions/feelings/ideas you have for me about these, and thank you if you read this whole thing ❤️🫂

[fates-theysband]

allll the self insert asks with ur Stanley Parable s/i?

thank you!! sorry for taking so long to get to this. i dont have a good excuse i just forgor.

give us a quick run down of your s/i!!

so i don't have a lot going on in terms of a proper tsp s/i bc the "main" timeline is the isekai one i've written about before but they're employee 104 (the fired one you see in the mind control facility lol) . not to make what would have undoubtedly be considered the closest thing tsp has to a mary sue but the mind control machine never quite had the same..."grip" on them as it did the other employees. it was still enough to keep them in line but they always had a sense that Something Isn't Right and they would find themself uncertain why they did certain things. they were fired because they ended up getting too close to 432 and management didn't want them mucking up the experiment.

they were still there when shit got real. or unreal, as the case may be. but the narrator missed them when he was deleting stanley's coworkers. because technically, they weren't one anymore.

post a meme that describes your s/i.

where does your s/i live? do they aspire to move or are they content with where they are?

they have memories prior to the parable of a crappy apartment with annoying (but not annoying enough for them to not feel like putting in a noise complaint would make them an asshole) neighbors. they're not sure how real those memories are anymore. if they are, they're starting to miss that place.

what's a song that describes your s/i? even better if you have a playlist!

"underground" by cody fry! most heartbreakingly beautiful song about getting hit by a train known to man. although i take the lyrics more metaphorically in this case.

what is your s/i's profession?

whatever it is the parable company does. they were what the book "bullshit jobs" calls a "box-ticker".

what does your s/i have most in common with you? what's different about them?

the most they have in common with me is that they have an unexciting office job that occasionally asks them to say or do things they don't agree with and that ultimately they just want to live a quiet life (don't say what you're thinking). but they handled being fired better than i would have. i think if my job fired me i would completely break down. not because i believe in the company but because i really don't want to move back in with my parents.

if your s/i was an animal, what would they be?

a goose. not in a chaotic "untitled goose game" way (a little bit in that way), in a "how the fuck did you get here there are literally no bodies of water in a several mile radius" way

how did you get the idea for your s/i's backstory?

thought "man the mind control machine is powerful so this probably isn't likely to be canon but wouldn't it be fucked up if someone was kind to 432 and eventually got fired for it because they were mucking up the experiment"

give us an example s/i outfit (or describe it).

honestly they just wear unexceptional business casual. something like this:

what are some of your s/i's major skills?

data entry and a typing speed of a about 140 wpm

seriously though, they're really sneaky and have an easy time getting to places that the narrator thinks people can only get into if he allows them. like the memory zone and the other games from the games ending and what have you.

what is your s/i afraid of?

well right now they're afraid there's no way out. like it's great being reunited with their office crush but it's exhausting having to hide in the margins lest the omniscient voice controlling the whole thing get wise to them and delete them.

if you had to compare your s/i to an already existing fictional character, who would it be?

they're a little like dr coomer from hlvrai; like not his personality just his role. they've recently realized that the situation they're in isn't real, just real to them, and they're kind of fighting to keep it from breaking them so they overplay their silliness

has your s/i's story changed since you created them or has it stayed relatively the same?

im still kind of fleshing them out. they've been Just A Concept for quite a while.

[weaselle]

here’s the real shit:

If you need it to live, it shouldn’t cost you money.

Fancy food? absolutely, get you a job, eat whatever kind of food makes you feel like royalty. Basic sustenance sufficient to be completely healthy? Should be free if you need it. Fancy house? hell yeah, get you a big money job and live in a mansion. Basic housing? Should be free if you need it. Fashionable clothing? Better find an income so you can buy that Gucci. A pair of overalls, shoes, and a jacket so you are covered and warm? Should be free if you need it. Super fancy education? pay up. Good education through college and continued access to information? Should be free to all.

And medical needs? Forget it, listen, if we have the ability to heal someone but we don’t do it, then I know we’re doing the devil’s work, and I’m not even religious.

I know people are gonna have problems so let me get an inb4

First of all, most people won’t just take these basics and then sit on their ass and do nothing, humans are gonna do shit - have you seen what people do in their free time already? Whole huge industries like youtube and hobby stores and shit are based on how much people want to do stuff – you literally cannot sit people in a room with a button labeled “will give you electric shocks” and nothing else to do without them pressing the button (there was an actual study done)

Secondly, most people are generally either not satisfied with the basics, or are only okay with the basics because it allows them to pursue some other worthy goal like school or art or caring for a family member full time or something. So i guarantee most people will still be seeking employment, only jobs will have to pay what people actually feel they are worth instead of paying what desperate people will agree to work for.

All studies of Universal Basic Income experiments and similar have indicated these things are true.

And last, if your undies are still in a bunch over people needing to contribute to “deserve” stuff like food and housing, let me say two things

A: in our earliest groups, humans provably cared for individuals who were not capable of hunting or gathering. Perhaps those individuals contributed in other ways. Perhaps they were loved and their company and presence was considered contribution enough. Or perhaps humanity was such that we just plain wouldn’t let another human in our group starve when we could share our food instead. Whatever the case, we gave up that kind of group to live in this kind of group, and if we can’t maintain that same level of humanity and kindness, then it is a worse group and we should fix it or go back to the other sort.

B: in general, i agree that people should contribute to gain access to things. I think most people WANT to contribute, it seems to me to be hardwired into us as social animals. Personally, i think the artist making do with basic accommodations, eating simple mass foods and wearing government issued clothing so they can spend their time creating music, writing books, practicing dancing or painting or idk, making “how to solve: my computer doesn’t recognize my phone for importing pictures” videos for free on youtube, you know, i think they ARE contributing (shout out to the unsung How To Video heroes, my gods, where would we be without them)

But if you want to talk about really contributing in a targeted societal needs kind of way, then i’m all for that too! So lets talk about some kind of system where, for example, everyone who is physically or mentally able spends 3 years between high-school and college in a National Projects Corps, like the army, but instead they travel to places in our country and are trained and put to work replacing roads, or becoming basic staff in hospitals, or building schools, or doing maintenance on bridges, or doing data entry for public health labs, or, idk, fixing the fucked up water in Flint. Three years seeing other parts of the country, meeting people from other walks of life, and learning valuable skills.

Best of all, a system like this has organic balances. You get a population boom? Well, you’re going to need a lot more public housing, and guess what? you also have enough hands to help build it, because of the population boom. Then, if you’re the kind of person who has a hardline belief about contributing to society, when you see somebody in government-issued overalls living a public apartment complex, you can rest easy knowing they probably fixed roads or built bridges or worked on the sewers or something, just like you.

And by the way, this would ACTUALLY create more of that free market effect people say should fix things. Like, if I have easy free access to food no matter what, i can then choose to only buy sustainably sourced food or whatever.

Anyway, there’s different ways to do it, but basically, if you need something to live a healthy life, a lack of money should never mean you go without it. If you need it to live a healthy life, you should get it. Everything else can cost money, there can still be expensive food and fancy houses, that’s fine, but the basics should be available to all. For free. Because we’re human and in a group together.

[foxysciencedork]

The funny thing about autism is that no matter how well you THINK you know the symptoms, you sometimes don't think one applies to you in a meaningful way until the realization of "THATS WHAT THAT MEANT" hits you like a train.

So one autistic behavior/symptom/trait/thing is that we like to organize. A young autistic will line up their toys by size, their gummies by color, ect., ect. And that's fine. Now, I only organize gummies sometimes and I don't seek the task, but no autistic will have ALL they symptoms, so that's perfectly fine. It doesn't make me doubt my validity, especially considering my older brother was diagnosed, and I have plenty of other symptoms.

But then it hits me. I'm bored at work, so I'm making a list:

Potatoes: Packaged

Cucucmbers: No Barcode

Bannanas: Barcode

Strawberries: Packaged

Melon: Packaged

Zucchini: Barcode

Yellow Squash: No Barcode

And I was watching a tiktok on break about a woman's ideal job and she goes "If I'm being honest with myself, it's data entry. My autism loves sorting things into their own lines and it's just satisfying." And then I'm FORCED to realize that that's what I was doing for the first 3 hours of my shift in between customers.

But that's not even the worst part! I now have to remember things I've done and the way I've played, and check in my memories for more instances of this.

I used to play a roblox game, Royale High. Back in 2019 I'd finally managed to get every item in the game (excluding halos and IRL purchases) and do you know how I did it? I MADE A FUCKING CHART. I wrote down every item, if it was for sale, the price/trading price, wether or not I had it. If I couldn't trade or buy it I marked it as "luck". I specifically remember getting to every pair of wings, because the next day they overhauled the wings and increased my goal by an amount I don't remember, 100,700? Somewhere around there. Do you know how I KNEW what the difference was at the time? I MADE A CHART TO DO THE MATH. Bullshit.

Then there's minecraft. Every time, without fail, I abandon a survival world. When do I do that, you ask? When my chest system is set up, of course. When else? I've organized all my stuff. Nothing else to do.

In math? I loved the teacher that had us chart to get the answer in geometry. It was a weird "prove it" thing but I enjoyed it. Honorable mention: My favorite formula, the Quadratic Fucking Formula.

Even when I draw! I make a whole graph to show how many color combinations I could get with a set. Then I never look at it again.

I would make ciphers for fun. Line up the alphabet, make up some squiggles, even alternate squiggles. Once I wrote a short story that went to a brand-new code every SENTENCE.

HELL. Even now, I decided to make a FUCKING LIST of dissorders/symptoms that line up with a close friend (who is definitely NOT just anxious and overweight, too many symptoms for that) and I LOVED every GODDAMN second of looking up the definition, the symptoms, some general experiences of people who had them. I haven't even finished the notebook, it took me two hours to do just one but I loom forward to the next one. I LOOK FORWARD TO IT.

I also thought reorganizing your bookshelf was just a thing bookworms do. It is, but... it goes on the pile.

It's just. I thought I KNEW myself. I thought I knew which symptoms I knew about I had and which I didn't. How dare I.

[mypoisonedvine]

Can u pls write something like dark!reader x steve rogers high school AU , where R is rich spoil brat & she always had a crush on steve but she always bully him by calling him skinny and all and Then yrs later, time changes her family discarded her from will and she becomes poor and need job, got hired for PA by dark ceo!steve rogers who she bullied her all school lifee😈😈

okay this is a lot for a headcanon but I don’t have time to do a whole oneshot BUT I also really like it so we’re gonna just make a longass headcanon here we gooooo

warnings for heavy dub con, choking, slapping, degradation (by steve), bullying (by the reader), abortion mention, brief mention of/implied assault.

“heyo pipsqueak” you called out to get steve’s attention, laughing when he frowned.  “looks like you grew a whole inch over summer, be sure to have your mom draw a line in pencil on the doorframe.”

he just rolled his eyes and got back to chatting with his friend.  not friends, friend, cause he only had one: bucky, who snarled at you as well.

“pick on someone your own size, if you can find somebody with as big a head as you,” bucky shot back, making you scoff.

“you know, it’s a shame you hang out with this deformed freak, you could’ve been popular.  you’ve got the looks for it.”

“I’d rather keep my brains, thanks,” bucky explained as you walked away with your posse of fellow popular kids.

you didn’t used to be so mean to steve.  it was sort of a comedy of errors, really.  you two had been friends in elementary school-- you, him, and bucky were the rambunctious trio up until middle school.  

things change for boys and girls in middle school.  guys just get along with each other and don’t think about it much.  girls, though... girls need to be sharp.  it’s eat or be eaten.  and you wanted to eat.

you were lucky that you developed early.  it meant that girls respected you and boys feared you-- not just for your attractive features but for the fact that you loomed a foot over most of them.

you started to take advantage of it.  and by the time you realized you had feelings for your best friend steve, it was already too late-- he was at the bottom of the food chain and you were at the top.  

you told your new girl friends that you wanted to take steve to the sadie hawkins.  they laughed at you.  for a moment, you felt what it was like to be outcast and you never wanted to feel it again.  so, you told steve and bucky that you’d grown apart.  and you were happy to just be former friends...

it was steve that started it.  he called you out.  he told you that you were nothing like who he used to know-- you had become vapid and cold and narcissistic.

“you’re so busy worrying about what other people think, you never take the time to think for yourself.”  that was what he said.  and it fucking hurt.

“saw you talking to your boyfriend steve the dweeb,” your friend tanya announced at lunch just a few minutes after that conversation.  and you were angry, and hurt, and truly friendless despite being surrounded by other popular girls.  so you said some things you could never take back.

“steve?  as if.  did you know he still sleeps with a security blanket?  and he has his friend bucky fight for him every week cause if he took a punch he’d crumble to dust?”

and so, mortal enemies were formed.  it only got worse in high school, as you fought to secure your title at the top while steve and bucky’s presence filled your heart with guilt and your gut with anger.

if only you’d known how quickly you could fall from your high horse.

it started when you dated tanya’s ex, brock.  she was made so she spread a rumor that you would fuck any guy on the football team, even all of them at once.

apparently, a lot of people believed it since tanya had been your sidekick since 6th grade.

two football players believed it.  and when you wouldn’t follow through on it, you got yourself a black eye.

that meant you missed school for a week because you couldn’t possibly show up looking like that.  tanya told everyone it was because you got grounded and sent away to church camp after your parents caught you in bed with one of the neighbors.  so now your reputation was ‘sleeps with football players and old men.’

only brock had been there for you.... but it turned out he had motives of his own.  you had originally planned to wait until college, but brock was clearly wanting something in return for putting up with dating pariah #1... so you let him take your virginity.

the condom broke.  when you dashed to the trash can to hurl in the middle of history class, you knew something was wrong.  (and lost that many more social points in the process.)

brock dumped you the second he found out you were pregnant.  didn’t even help you pay for the abortion.  he got back together with tanya and told her the real reason for your ‘medical absence’.  and that was the last straw for the former homecoming queen.

the humiliation drove you to some.... poor choices, for the next few years.  you tried not to think about them now, but it was hard not to when their consequences were staring you right in the face: no money, no job, nearly homeless, and desperate.

over a hundred job applications later, only one had called you back and scheduled an interview.  and you only needed one.

so there you were, waiting in the chilly lobby area while the receptionist typed away and chomped her gum, tapping your toes and glancing out the window occasionally.

you were surprised when you had been told your interview would be on the 51st floor.  you sort of assumed it would just be some random manager interviewing you, not somebody important enough to have a waiting room like this, or a view like this.

when a man stepped out from the nearby hallway, your eyes went wide.  he was tall, and handsome, and obviously muscular underneath the exquisite suit.  you suddenly felt underdressed in your hand-me-down business clothes.

then he called your name.  and you realized he was going to interview you.

you stood up and nodded.  “you can follow me to my office,” he instructed with a smile, leading you down the hall to the corner office.  you were in awe of the grandiosity of it all.  you were dumbfounded when you saw CEO on the door.

“there must have been a mistake,” you explained as he shut the door behind you.  “I... I’m just interviewing for an entry-level position.”

“no, there’s no mistake,” he shook his head, “I have you exactly where I want you.  take a seat.”

he circled his desk and sat on the other side of it, resting his elbows on the desk and giving you an oddly smug smile.  an awkward silence was finally broken when he realized, “you must not remember me.”

“I... have we met?” 

“I don’t blame you, I look pretty different,” he shrugged.  “I must’ve grown a whole inch this summer.”

you gave him a confused look before realization dawned on you, along with shame, and fear.

“oh... oh my god, Steve?!” you squawked.  he just grinned.  “you look... you look...”

“taller?”

sexy.

“you look great!” you said aloud instead.

“yeah,” he agreed, “wish I could say the same for you.”

you swallowed dryly.  “so that’s what you want,” you sighed, “to get back at me.  I understand.  I deserve it...”

“I don’t want revenge,” he denied.  “I’m just sorry to see you haven’t been... thriving, since high school.  your job history--” he scanned your resume briefly-- “well, you don’t have one.  have you been slumming it all this time?”

“without my parents’ money?  yeah,” you admitted.  

“surprised you applied here, instead of turning tricks on 5th and Columbus.”

your back straightened and your eyes went wide at that comment.

“I mean, you’re already dressed for it,” he smirked.

you stood up and crossed your arms.  “if you’re just going to insult me, then I’ll leave now.  I’m sorry for everything I did to you, steve,” you announced, voice shaky with oncoming tears.

“can you really afford to leave?” he pressed.  “if you have a chance at a job?”

that, unfortunately, got your attention.  “you... you might actually offer me something?”

“I will offer you something,” he corrected, “if you just sit down and listen.”

you relented, returning to your seat.  you could stand a lot more insults if there was money on the line.

“to be honest, there’s no way I can hire you for the position you applied for,” he sighed.  “you’re just underqualified.  but I think I can create a position for you.”

you liked the sound of that.  “what kind of position?”

“well, that’s tricky, seeing as you don’t have any skills,” he frowned, “except one.  so that’s the one I plan on using.”

the look in his eyes made it all too clear what he was referring to, but as you shrunk into the leather chair he went ahead and clarified.

“I’ll pay you whatever salary you saw in the ad.  but you won’t be doing data analysis or office management or anything like that.  all you’ll be doing is spreading your legs for me whenever I fucking want.”

fear shot up your spine; his eyes were devouring you, pinning you to the chair, and you tried to process that.  “I--”

“before you say anything,” he interrupted immediately, “let’s just be perfectly clear that this might be your only shot at a real job.  what I’m offering has better pay than stripping, and better benefits than hooking.  and unless you have any education or experience I don’t know about, you’re totally fucked.”

“seems like I’m fucked either way,” you mumbled, making him laugh.

“see, you’ve still got that sharp tongue,” he grinned.  “can’t wait to put it to better use.”

maybe it was just desperation for cash.  maybe it was because he was good-looking and you could do a lot worse.  maybe it was because, on some level, you felt like you deserved his punishment after how horribly you’d treated him.

“I’ll do it,” you sighed.  “when do I start?”

he stood up and reached across the desk to grab your neck, glaring at you.  “right now.”

his free hand was already fumbling with his belt, the one on your throat guiding you downwards.  “on your knees,” he instructed, and you slipped out of the chair and onto the floor.

he let go of your neck and you figured he was going to come to you, but instead he stood still and demanded: “crawl.”

debasing as it was, you crawled on your knees to his side of the desk, and he laughed at you bitterly.  when you reached his feet and popped back up, you gasped at the sight of his hard cock right in front of your face. it was bigger than your face.  and it was dripping precum.

“don’t get so bug-eyed, you can handle it,” he grinned.  “if your mouth’s as big as I remember...”

you didn’t want to hear any more.  you just wanted to get this over with, so you quickly took his head between your lips and started to suck.  you were shocked when he slapped you, hard enough to knock his length from your mouth and to make you reach up and clutch your stinging cheek.

“fucking whore,” he grimaced, “did I say you could put it in your mouth?  god, you’re so fucking desperate.  just open your fucking mouth and I’ll show you what I want, okay?”

you nodded and stammered an apology, looking up at him with watery eyes and an open mouth.  he swiped the latest drop of precum on your tongue before gliding his cock over it, grabbing your hair to keep you steady as he pushed himself to the back of your throat.

“fuck, that’s better,” he sighed.  “so much better when you just do what you’re told.  I remember how you used to be so cruel with this mouth.  now you’re being so welcoming...”

you just sat there and let him use your mouth, trying not to gag when he hit your throat.

“look up at me,” he instructed, “yeah, that’s it.  can’t have you forgetting who’s doing this to you, now can we?”

that went on for a bit longer until mascara-stained tears streaked your face, which he seemed rather proud of.

“damn, wouldn’t mind having you swallow my come right now,” he admitted, “but I have bigger plans.  get up, bend over my desk.”

you coughed briefly when he pulled out, but did as you were told.  he instantly yanked your skirt up over your ass and spanked you several times roughly, making you sob and whine.

“wanna see this ass all bruised up in the shape of my hand,” he explained.  “so we can both remember how hard I fucked you.”

he tore your panties like they were paper, chuckling when he found you already wet.

“dripping already, just from choking on my cock?  poor baby...”

you spread your legs slightly, though you were sure nothing was going to adequately prepare you for his size.

“you figured out how to use birth control since graduating, right?” he asked, and you nodded quickly.  “good.  cause I’m not using a condom,” he continued as he let his cock glide over your folds, groaning slightly, “and there’s no way in hell I’m pulling out.”

he pushed forward in one brutal stroke, making you cry out loudly.  you really hoped these rooms were mostly soundproof.

“shit, you’re tight,” he hissed, already pulling back and thrusting back in.  “clearly you recovered from your years of slutting it up in high school.”

“that-- that wasn’t true,” you defended.

“oh, just shut up,” he growled.

he fucked you fast and deep, his hips pushing yours into the edge of his desk with each thrust.  his hands pinned you down at your shoulders, another reminder that you were entirely at his mercy.

“fuck, this is just what you needed... somebody to put you in your place.  makes sense that it should be me, since you hated me so much.”

“I didn’t h-hate you,” you hiccuped. 

“yeah, you wanted me, didn’t you?”

“always,” you admitted.

“wanted my fat fuckin’ cock to tear up your pussy?  is that it?”

“yes,” you moaned, “yes, steve, wanted to be yours.”

“even when I was skinny and short?”

“even when you hated me,” you added.

he growled slightly and you felt your walls tighten around him suddenly.  he chuckled, clearly aware that you were enjoying this.

“you want more, baby?  want me to fuck you harder?”

“whatever you want,” you answered instead.  “just use me however you want.”

he moaned and leaned down to cage your body in with his.  “fuck, baby... you’re taking this better than I thought you would.  such a good girl for me, huh?  such a good little slut.  want me to use you, baby?  take all my anger out on you?”

“yes,” you whispered, sobbing when he began to fuck you more brutally than you thought possible.  but it felt good.  so good that your legs were shaking, so good that you felt even better when he tugged your hair.

“yeah, gonna come on my cock, aren’t you?” 

you nodded and bit your lip.

“m’ close too,” he admitted, “you’re gonna be so full of my come, it’s gonna be dripping down your legs when you walk out of here...”

your orgasm made your body shake and your eyes roll back.

“fuck, I can feel you coming,” he groaned, “fuck, just like that-- fuck!”

you felt his warmth fill you as his cock flexed against your walls.  you were busy trying to catch your breath when he slumped down on top of you and pushed the air from your lungs.

“damn... didn’t think I was gonna come that fast,” he sighed.  “see what you do to me?  fuck, I knew this was a good idea.”

sure, it felt good, but you were sure he was only going to get rougher and meaner the longer this went on.  you couldn’t imagine how you were going to get out of here without somebody noticing your wrinkled clothes, messed-up hair and, as he’d pointed out himself, come all over your thighs.

“guess I’ll see you at 8am tomorrow, huh?” he chuckled, giving you an unexpected peck on the cheek.  you couldn’t answer, though, interrupted by the phone on his desk ringing.  “oh, sorry, gotta get this.”

he reached for the phone and picked it up, bringing to his ear all without pulling out of you or even lifting his body from on top of yours.

“bucky, hey,” steve grinned as he spoke into the phone, looking down at you and stroking your hair, “you’re not gonna believe who I ran into today...”

[teacupfulofstarshine]

LOVELY, DARK, AND DEEP CHAPTER 10

PLEASE HEED THE CONTENT WARNINGS!!! this chapter features Evil Scientist Lady and her Fucked Up WorldView a LOT, and there are also some Major Plot Events that involve Violence. i will put a summary in the end notes if you decide at any point that this particular chapter is too much - that's super valid! i will also mention here that no main characters are going to die in this story and no one dies in this chapter either.

huge huge thanks to @flamingfawkes for beta’ing!

CW: extreme disregard for human life, mentioned human and animal cruelty, toxic workplace environment, violence (both imagined and actual, mildly graphic), gun mention, minor blood, death threats, extremely unethical character, unethical science, stalking

chapter 1 // chapter 2 // chapter 3 // chapter 4 // chapter 5 // chapter 6 // chapter 7 // chapter 8 // chapter 9 // read it on ao3!

“This is the same result we’ve gotten the last twenty times -”

“I don’t care, Steven, run it again!”

Steven sighs, punching at the keyboard to run the statistical analysis sequence again. “This is ridiculous! I’ve run this sequence so many times it feels like my eyes are going to bleed. Why can’t we just turn in the results we have and -”

“Because she’ll behead us,” James snaps, “and then she’ll destroy our reputations and our families and they’ll get no severance. I have three young children at home, Steven, I need this money.” Steven softens a little, fingers running smoothly over the keys as he combs the data again. Next to him, James has a computer screen full of frame-by-frame stills of what little data they recovered from the probe before it was destroyed; Penny across the room is surrounded by ancient texts a mile high and at least three laptops.

“Why is she so interested in this, anyway?”

“It’s beyond me. Since when do we question the whims of what we’re told to do?”

Steven squints at the screen, pushing his chair back and rubbing at his eyes. “If I have to stare at these numbers for one more second, my brain is going to explode. I feel like my eyeballs are going to melt out of my skull. I wanna scream.”

James pulls up another image, staring at the blurry image of the merman before him. Steven pushes away from his own screen and squints at James’s. The merman in the photo looks young, not much older than his kid brother, but they don’t know anything about the lifespan of these creatures. He looks confused, squinting at the camera. As James flicks through the stills, the merman transitions from confused to angry to enraged, and then he attacks.

“He’s not happy about the camera.”

“Would you be happy about someone spying on you and your family?” James says, switching to the next still.

“I wouldn’t be happy if I thought someone was doing anything we do in this lab to me or my family.” James elbows Steven, but luckily no one else seems to have heard.

“This lab isn’t the most ethical place I’ve ever worked, but it pays the bills,” James mutters. “And we’re not even in the experimentation lab. We just do data analysis. We’re removed from the situation.”

Are we? Steven wonders. He sees James reach out and touch the framed picture of his daughters, and keeps his mouth shut. He turns back to his computer, watching the little spinning color wheel of his mouse as the program calculates the same numbers again and again. The results come up identical to the previous ones, and Steven clicks “Run Program” again wordlessly.

They work in silence for a while, the three of them, broken only by James’s muttering and the occasional thud of one of Penny’s books and the clicks of keyboards and mice. If they weren’t so reliant on technology, Steven thinks, there would be an enormous corkboard spanning three of the four walls, covered in pushpins and handwriting and red string connecting images. He debates actually building one, if only to increase the levity in the room, but decides against it.

He’s seen people punished or fired or who-knows-what-else for far less, after all.

Instead, after his program tells him for the twenty-third time that his results are the same (and didn’t someone say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?), Steven scrubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms and opens the data entry window. Maybe the problem with the results has to do with the entry of the data; did he input something wrong? It’s possible . . .

Here he goes again, he supposes. He stands up, stretches, and leans back to crack some vertebrae. “I’m gonna grab a coffee, take a short screen break, and go back to the beginning. Maybe there’s something in the input that I missed. You want anything?”

James groans, thunking his head against the desk. “I want something with enough caffeine to kill three elephants, please.” Steven nods, looking over at Penny. She shakes her head, and he heads for the shitty coffee machine a few doors down.

Several floors below, a young woman pulls her lab goggles up to rest on top of her head with her perfectly-pinned protocol-compliant bun. “The latest round of tests is completely done, ma’am. I think you’ll find the efficacy . . . striking.”

She takes the clipboard, glossy perfectly-painted nails pinching the sheets of thin paper and flicking between them. “I’m afraid I don’t do so well with the scientific side of things - Kathleen, was it? Explain this to me, would you?”

“Certainly, ma’am. As you know, the kill time for the most effective neurotoxin currently available, tetrodotoxin, varies from thirty minutes to four hours. Average time for symptoms to manifest is seventeen minutes, and from there the symptoms progress through tingling of the lips and tongue, headache, vomiting, muscle weakness, ataxia, et cetera. Death occurs as a result of respiratory or heart failure, and the poison is nearly undetectable if you do not specifically test for it.”

“The untraceability is a plus, but that is far too wide a range of times, and too slow a time even at its fastest.”

“Of course, ma’am, but as far as naturally-occurring marine poisons go - actually, as far as naturally-occurring poisons go, full stop - it is the most effective. Until now, that is.”

“Oh? What are your findings?”

“Which trials would you like to start with, ma’am?”

“The human trials, Kathleen. The only ones that matter. I hardly intend to go around killing mice and hoping that no one traces their deaths to a novel neurotoxin.” She laughs airily, and Kathleen nods along.

“Certainly, ma’am. The most recent data points indicate an average efficacy time of thirteen minutes for our compound neurotoxin, with a full range between nine and seventeen minutes passing before subject death. Subjects began to show symptoms around five minutes, give or take twenty-five seconds.”

“And those symptoms were?”

Kathleen flips through the document. “Seizures, vital organ failure, blindness, painful muscle spasms, suffocation from the inside out.”

She hums, tapping a manicured finger against the report. “Well, Kathleen, that is certainly impressive, especially for a preliminary human subject trial. These results . . . I must say, they are not nearly as disappointing as I anticipated when I came down here.”

“Ma’am?”

“How long have you worked for this company, Kathleen?”

“Almost five years, ma’am, but I’ve always been an assistant. This is my first time as lead researcher and biochemist on a project, ever since you . . . laid off the previous lead researcher.”

“Kathleen, let me be frank. These results are not what I hoped for. The efficacy time and symptom onset times are both far too long for my liking, and the range of efficacy time is too broad. By all accounts, I should consider this a failure.” Kathleen swallows, but remains poised. “However, you’ve managed to shave off a considerable amount of time from the tetrodotoxin readings. The range of symptom onset time is an acceptable breadth, and your results are far beyond anything your predecessor ever accomplished for me. This is truly impressive, all things considered.”

“Thank you, ma’am. How should I proceed?”

“I want the efficacy doubled - tripled - I want it upped by anywhere between four and five hundred percent. I want the pain increased, too. Feel free to increase your requests for test subjects, but get me the results I want. You said the original tetrodotoxin was untraceable?”

“That’s correct, ma’am.”

“Can you keep that feature intact?”

“As of right now, it is intact, ma’am. I will endeavor to keep it so in future experiments.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Welcome to your new position as head of this research division. Don’t let me down.” She holds out a slender hand, and Kathleen takes it, trying not to seem too eager.

“I won’t, ma’am.”

“How soon can you start this experiment up again?”

“The cleaners should be finished by tomorrow morning, ma’am, and I can tweak chemical formulas until then.”

“Excellent.” Her watch beeps, and she lifts it, pursing her bright lips as she examines the message she’s just received. “If you’ll excuse me, I have another matter to attend to. Someone will drop off your master access key for Lab Three within the hour.”

She steps into the elevator and lifts her watch up to her face, swiping through the messages from her secretary. One finger reaches out to press the button for the digital analysis labs floor, and the other taps away at her watch.

When she steps off the elevator, her secretary is waiting. “Ma’am.”

“What do they have for me?”

“Unclear. They said it was something they wanted to report directly to you and you alone, but it seems to be something big.”

“Hopefully it’s a big step in the right direction, or they’ll be taking a big step out of a job.” She relishes in the way the employees she passes all unfailingly flinch and then snap to perfect attention when they hear the sharp echo of her heels against the floor. She lifts her head and walks faster, striking the tiles with her heels like a gavel, sharp and precise against a judge’s desk.

The computer labs are disorganized when she enters, but there is a string of promising-looking numbers on the main display monitor. There is a woman surrounded by books and a man pulling up photos on his computer, and there is a third man standing in front of her like a toy soldier. She focuses on that one.

“I hear you have news for me? Make it swift, and make it good.”

He swallows, hard, and her eyes idly trace the line of his throat. If he disappoints her, perhaps she will drive her heel through it, to make an example of him. That would be far too messy; perhaps his dominant hand will do.

“I have narrowed down the location of the missing net, ma’am. I believe it to have washed up somewhere around these general GPS coordinates.” He fiddles with a remote in his hand, and the image on the screen changes. It shows an aerial satellite view of a secluded strip of beach, framed by rocky cliffs with larger rocks studded out into the open water. “It should have washed up somewhere in this one-point-three-seven-mile strip of beach. The whole area is property of one Doctor Thomas Sanders.”

She snarls. “That man. He won’t let us on that beach willingly until hell freezes over.”

The other man, the one scanning through photo stills and video footage, jumps up, knocking his chair backwards. “I found something!”

She turns towards him, and his excitement freezes and sputters into something much more controlled and terrified. “Show me.” He clicks something and pulls up video footage from one of their surveillance drones, zooming in on a particular patch of ocean along the stretch of Sanders’ beach. Her eyes widen when she sees what he’d noticed - a hump of red-and-white tail arcing above the waves before a pattern of ripples streaks off towards the cliff. He pauses the footage, rewinds it, uses a laser pointer to show an opening concealed in the cliff face.

“There’s some kind of grotto in there, hidden by the cliff. It’s on Sanders’ property, he has to know it’s there. And it looks like the merman from the destroyed drone knows it’s there too. Which means -”

“That must be where he’s keeping them.” Something burns in her chest, brilliant and terrifying and all-encapsulating, like wildfire. “We’ve found them, at long last.”

“What would you have me do?” her secretary asks. “I can arrange for a recovery squad at your earliest possible convenience, ma’am.”

“Assemble the squad, but do not have them move out. They will wait for my orders. When they go, you are to go with them.” Her secretary nods, once, sharp and sure. “Dispatch a crew to Lab One and clear it out. I want it prepped for containment, vivisection, chemical tests - the works. Get at least three tanks set up and one strap-down human table.”

“A human table, ma’am?”

“Yes. We have to deal with Sanders once and for all to ensure that he does not ruin any future experiments.”

“Will we be taking him as well?”

She hums thoughtfully. “No. Pull up the file we have on his known associate?”

A few swift clicks and flicks and a photo appears on the large screen: a young man with brown-and-purple hair, sleeves rolled up, carefully lowering a perfectly viable specimen into the ocean and letting it go, like some kind of fool. “His doctoral student, ma’am. The longest one he’s ever kept - this one has been with him a few years.”

“Excellent. When you raid the lab, take him.”

“Should we kill Sanders?”

“No. Rough him up a little, but leave him alive. Taking his protégé and leaving him alone, helpless to rescue him, will be the highest form of torture for such an insufferable person. The agony will eat him alive until his dying day.”

Her secretary nods, taking the notes down dutifully. The other employees look vaguely horrified, but she pays them no mind. No sacrifice is too great to be made in the name of progress, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a weakling who will never get anywhere in life.

She refuses to be one of those weaklings.

*~*~*~*~*

Logan wakes up confused.

He’s warm, warmer than he thinks he’s ever been in his whole life. When he stirs, he moves farther than he meant to - he must not be underwater. That’s enough to send a jolt of concern through his sleep-addled brain. Why isn’t he underwater? Why was he sleeping if he was above the surface? There’s no way his dad is here, and Roman hates surfacing, where are they? Where is he? But he’s so comfortable . . .

Someone shifts beside him, an arm draping across his waist, and Logan forces his eyes open. He shifts his lower half, confused when two things move instead of one, and there are layers upon layers of thin, flat, soft things wrapping around him. What is happening?

Slowly, slowly, his mind clears, and he remembers the events of last night. He grew legs - he was a human, once, before he was mer - he couldn’t sleep underwater with Dad and Roman - Virgil was teaching him to walk - Virgil put “clothes” on him - Virgil was embarrassed that he didn’t have those “clothes” on him - Virgil took him out of the lab to sleep - Virgil agreed to cuddle him since his pod couldn’t -

Logan feels the strange burning in his face again as he shifts. He can’t see well in this new human form, but when things are close enough to his face they’re relatively clear. And Virgil, still sleeping, is close enough that Logan can smell him - he smells like salt water mixed with something sharp and something sweet and something else that Logan can’t quite identify but finds addicting nonetheless. Sunlight streams in and pools around Virgil’s face, illuminating the tangled mess of hair spread around him and flopping into his face, the small puddle of water leaking out from his open mouth onto the soft thing he’s resting his head on, the way his chest moves slowly with every breath. His arm is wrapped around Logan, pulling him close. Logan thinks he might explode if he focuses on this any more, so he rolls from his side to his back as carefully as he can, not wanting to wake Virgil. Virgil tightens his arm around Logan and mutters something indecipherable in his sleep, but he doesn’t wake.

Rather than focusing on his very confusing feelings for the very pretty man next to him, Logan focuses on what he can see of the room around him. He makes a list in his mind of things that he plans to ask Virgil about later today, including:

1: There are many draws attached to the small, smooth cliffs surrounding them. How do they stay there?

2: There are lots of “clothes” scattered all around the floor, and there were several on the bed, too. Is that normal for humans?

3: Last night, Virgil did something that made the room light up with trapped sunlight! How did he do that?

4: How did Virgil get ice to stay in those big frozen sheets in such a warm place to let the sunlight in?

5: How did Virgil make ice into that weird shape that he filled with water and drank last night?

6: How did Virgil get the water to come into this place?

7: Do all humans have a specific area set aside for sleeping? Logan and his pod usually just sleep wherever they can, but Virgil seems to have this soft slab set aside with all of these soft things to be comfortable and sleep in every night. Is this a Human Thing or strictly a Virgil Thing?

Logan looks out through the sheet of ice that protects Virgil’s area from the outside and gasps. He can’t see well, but there’s a glittering expanse of blue that shifts and moves and oh, is that the ocean?

He’s spent his whole life (well, his whole remembered life, anyways) in the ocean, and he’s seen some truly wondrous things. He travels around the world with his pod, he knows the ocean is big, but seeing it spread out like this is . . . awe-inspiring. Logan has never seen the ocean like this, and now that he has he doesn’t think he can ever not see it like this again. It’s like a perfect sheet of sea-glass, rippling and unbroken but dynamic in a way that he never really gets a sense of when he’s beneath it.

He knows that there are waves, of course. There are smaller swells out on the open ocean, and larger ones when the Second Goddess dips her fingers down from the Upper Ocean and swirls the storms to a thundering burst. There are waves along the shoreline, ones that he frolics in with Roman and batter him against the shoreline. There are waves created when he or his pod members surface. But watching the movement of the ocean from up here is . . .

Even with his imperfect vision, he is completely at a loss for words as he stares at the ocean.

Eventually, Virgil stirs next to him, and Logan turns away from the ocean to stare at him. Virgil is close to him, arms wrapped tightly around him, face pressed against him. Logan’s eyesight is not great, but Virgil is close enough that he can pick out little details of his face. There are brown face scales scattered all over him, but they seem to cluster on his nose and his cheeks. Logan has wanted to touch them for a substantial amount of time, and he can’t stop himself from gently settling the tips of his fingers over Virgil’s cheek.

His face doesn’t feel like Logan was expecting. The scales don’t give texture to his face the way that Logan’s do; the skin is smooth and flat. There are little bumps all over, but the brown scales aren’t raised off the skin like Logan expected. He lets his fingers trail along Virgil’s face. His bone structure seems to be exceedingly similar to Logan’s, at least in regards to his head. Logan’s finger rests gently on the curve of bone under Virgil’s eye, and Virgil exhales warm breath onto his palm.

Logan wonders what it would be like to have this for longer than just his recovery period. He wonders what it would be like to wake up next to Virgil all the time, to get to run his hands over Virgil’s face and arms and chest and examine the differences between their anatomy. He wonders what it would be like to learn to walk without falling over, and he feels a sharp, unexpected twinge in his chest as he realizes that getting better at walking means no more closeness to Virgil.

His chest feels strange, like there’s a school of small fish swarming around and tickling his insides and making him feel all foamy, like the froth churned up by a windswept sea. He feels like he does when he’s underwater - free, weightless, mobile, limited by nothing except his own imagination. He feels unstoppable.

Virgil makes a sudden, sharp inhale, blinking his eyes open slowly. Logan thinks that, perhaps, he might not appreciate being studied unknowingly - he hadn’t appreciated Virgil doing it, before he understood what was happening, when all he knew was the loss of his pod aching like a scraped-out seashell. As Virgil wakes up, Logan shifts, turning his gaze to the rest of the room.

Virgil makes a sleepy grumbling noise, opening one eye. Logan chances another quick glance at him, and when his eye slides open Logan is struck by its beauty. He doesn’t get much of a chance to admire it, however, before Virgil is jolting backwards like Logan’s struck him with lightning. Logan is confused, reaching out and gently touching his shoulder. “Virgil?”

“Wassat?! Wait . . . L’gan?”

“It is me,” Logan says softly. “Are - are you upset with me?”

Virgil yawns, jaw dropping to his chest, revealing a flash of teeth and a soft pink tongue. (Logan wants to lick it. Why does Logan want to lick it? Why is Logan thinking about Virgil’s tongue licking his tongue - why is Logan thinking about Virgil - what in the Seven Oceans is happening to him.) “Wh - no, no, ‘m okay, I just - woke up, forgot I had you with me, got confused about another person in my bed.” Before Logan can start to feel bad, Virgil adds, “S’okay if it’s you, though,” and the foamy, floaty feeling is back.

“Did you sleep well?”

Virgil laughs, low and rumbling, and Logan can feel it in his fingers where he touches Virgil’s skin. “I never sleep well.” He sits up, and the fabric of his pajamas shifts to let Logan see stretches of soft, supple skin that he usually doesn’t. Logan wants to touch it. He very determinedly keeps his hand on Virgil’s shoulder. “Gotta admit, though, last night was . . . better than usual.”

This appears to be the point where Virgil first notices their position - pressed together, arm slung over Logan, basically cuddling the way that Logan normally would with his pod. (No tangle with his pod has ever felt this . . . electric, this charged, this important to Logan before.) His face flares a brilliant red, and he shifts like he wants to move away but -

“I’m sorry,” Virgil says. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“No!” Logan blurts out. Virgil blinks at him a little, and maybe he was a little overly enthusiastic, but - “I sleep in a tangle with Dad and Roman all the time. I have extreme difficulty sleeping without contact with someone else. It . . . helped me greatly.”

“Oh,” Virgil says, face turning redder still, smiling shyly. “That - makes me feel better. Thanks, Lo.”

Logan smiles, and Virgil smiles too, reaching up to gently move a piece of hair away from his face. Logan thinks that, as far as deaths go, his chest exploding (which seems to be getting more and more likely every fifteen seconds he spends in Virgil’s presence, only accelerated by all this skin-on-skin contact they’re having right now) seems to be the most pleasurable.

Virgil opens his mouth to say something, but whatever it was is interrupted by a Ping! noise from across the room. “What is that?” Logan asks. Virgil, sadly, untangles himself from Logan and the blankets, sliding out of bed and heading over to one of the other structures in the room (what did he call it last night? Dex?) and picking up a flat glowing rectangle.

“Is everything alright?”

“What? Yeah, yeah, I - Thomas sent me a text, it’s a little weird.”

“What is a text?”

“It’s a kind of human messaging system, it allows us to communicate when we’re far away from each other.”

“Like a pod call?” “Kind of? I’ll explain more later, I promise, I just - I gotta go down to the lab real quick.”

“I’ll come with -”

“No!” Virgil snaps. Logan flinches, and Virgil softens, crossing the room and gently touching his shoulder. “Hey, no, Logan, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I just - this message, there’s something off. I think something might be wrong, and I don’t want to put you in any unnecessary danger. Just - wait here, okay? Wait in my room, where it’s safe. It’s probably nothing, he’s probably fine, but on the off chance that he’s not, I want you to stay hidden safely up here.”

Logan isn’t sure why this makes his face heat up slightly, but it does. “Okay. I accept your apology, and I . . . trust you.”

Virgil smiles, soft and heartwarming, and Logan is beginning to give more credence to his “chest explosion is fine, actually” theory. “Wait for me here, okay? I’ll be right back. I promise.”

He leaves, shutting the door firmly behind him, and the foamy feeling in Logan’s chest dissipates a little. He can’t quite put his finger on it, but there’s something . . . off. If Logan didn’t know better, he’d think that he was sensing a predator approaching.

But that can’t be right, he isn’t underwater. His danger senses are likely just overreacting to his disappointment at Virgil’s absence.

. . . Right?

*~*~*~*~*

Thomas is beginning to regret letting Roman and Patton (specifically, Roman) out of the large tank before finishing his first coffee of the morning.

“I want some!” Roman complains.

“Do you even know what it is?” Thomas says. Roman pouts sulkily at him.

“. . . No,” he mutters, rolling his eyes. Thomas gives him the deadpan, no-nonsense, I-am-your-direct-superior-take-the-damn-samples-Virgil stare that he has perfected over the past few years. Roman wilts a little more, and Thomas feels slightly bad.

“It’s called coffee,” he says. “It’s a hot drink that lots of people have in the morning. Some people drink it plain, and some people add things to it to change the way it tastes. It helps me wake up more and get focused to start my day, and sometimes I drink it late at night to help keep me awake.”

Roman looks less like a kicked puppy and more like Logan, eyes wide and curious. “I want some!”

Thomas, taking a sip of his own two-seconds-of-cream-five-cubes-of-sugar coffee, nearly spits it out. He looks at Roman, eyes the very sharp, very detachable, very toxic spines covering his body, and says, “No.”

Roman’s demeanor changes entirely, switching from “curious toddler” to “toddler about to throw a temper tantrum” in a heartbeat. “Why not?!”

“Because when people drink coffee without being used to it, sometimes it makes them a little crazy.”

“I’m not crazy!”

“Do I need to recount to you how many times you’ve threatened me and my assistant since we met you?” Thomas says, raising an eyebrow. “I’m not giving you coffee until I know I can trust you not to stab me with your poisonous spines that cover your entire body and can be fired at people.”

Roman pouts more, dropping under the water and letting out a gratingly harmonious string of mer that Thomas is pretty sure translates to Roman bitching about the coffee situation to his dad. Based on the pattern of Patton’s response, he’s pretty sure Patton is laughing at Roman.

More sulky chalkboard-violin music, and then Roman resurfaces grumpily. “Dad agrees with you and says no consuming strange human foods.”

“Did he laugh at you?”

Roman squints suspiciously at him. “You can’t speak our language.”

“Yeah, but I know what it sounds like when a dad laughs at his kid.” Roman, continuing to pout, sinks back into the tank, presumably to sulk some more. Thomas takes another very long sip of coffee that is definitely too hot for his mouth and turns back to his desk.

Virgil should definitely be awake and in the lab at this point. The samples he’s supposed to be analyzing are sitting in their little tubes, each neatly labelled with locations and dates and times and what, specifically, Virgil is supposed to be looking for. Thomas considers going upstairs and waking up Virgil, who’s almost never been late for work in this way, but he decides against it. Virgil is upstairs with Logan, and Thomas knows that there’s something building between them. He’s not sure how advisable that something is, but he trusts Virgil to make his own decisions.

Besides, he could probably use some practice. His water sample analysis skills are pretty rusty, he’s had Virgil doing them for years. “Virgil, you owe me big time for what I’m doing for you.” He carefully shifts the samples over to his own desk, slides his earbuds in, picks up a pipette, and gets to work analyzing the bacterial and algal concentrations for any abnormalities.

Thomas accomplishes about forty-five minutes’ worth of work before Roman interrupts him by flicking water at him and soaking the back of his neck. “Hey!”

“I tried your name, but your little ear bug things were keeping you from hearing me,” Roman says smugly. Thomas, not for the first time, considers retreating to the closet and throwing beakers until he feels better.

“Can I help you?”

“Dad wants to go hunting and bring back breakfast, but we can’t leave without you.”

“Are you not going hunting?”

“I’m going to stay here and observe you,” Roman says.

Thomas blinks. “Do I . . . need observing?”

“How do I know you won’t sell us out to your little human friends the second you get a chance? If I’m here, I can stop you. Plus, what if you do something to Logan while we’re not here to protect him? No, no, I’m staying right where I am and you can’t make me leave.” His spines ripple; Thomas steps closer to a whiteboard in case he needs to duck.

“I’m not going to do that, and I don’t want you to stab me.”

“Still! I’m staying here! Also, Dad’s bigger than me, and he’s a better hunter cause he’s faster and he’s been hunting longer.

“Does he need something to help him carry all those fish?” Thomas asks. Roman opens his mouth like he’s going to say something snarky, pauses, and stops.

“I . . . usually we just eat what we catch when we catch it. We make a pile of prey and take turns guarding it while the other two hunt. Then we make a sacrifice to the Seven Mother Goddesses and eat what’s left.”

After some debate, Thomas is able to fashion a sling of sorts from some waterproof tarps and leftover anchor rope to tie around Patton’s body. “You can put the fish in this pouch and carry them back here. Will you be able to navigate your way back to the grotto?”

“He will,” Roman says. “Dad knows more about the ocean than any human possibly could.” Another discordant song from the tank, chastising, and Roman huffs. “Dad wants me to reassure you that he’ll be fine.”

Patton settles into the mobile tank easily, and Thomas gets him down to the grotto leading towards the sea. “When you come back, let out one of your pod calls and Virgil or I will come and collect you and your catch. Take as much time as you need, okay?”

Patton reaches up and gently pats Thomas’s arm with one large, damp hand, and Thomas takes that to mean an agreement. “Alright, off you go.” There’s a whoosh and a rush of water as it flows from the tank into the grotto in a clean arc, carrying Patton with it. Thomas waits for a moment, letting Patton disappear into the open ocean, before returning to the laboratory.

Roman, for the most part, ignores Thomas. He asks the occasional question, which Thomas tries to answer in a way that he’ll understand, and leans over the edge of his touch tank, eyes guarded. Every time Thomas sneaks a glance, when he thinks Roman isn’t looking, his expression is wide-eyed and wondrous, like Logan’s usually are, but the moment he realizes Thomas is watching him his entire face closes up like a clamshell.

Thomas wonders what it’ll take to get Roman to trust him, trust Virgil, trust any human. Granted, he doesn’t know Roman’s history with humans, but he and Patton are both fairly scarred, and Thomas might not know the whole story but he’d bet a not-insignificant amount of his monthly income that the giant starburst scar taking up the majority of Patton’s chest isn’t the result of a clash with a marine creature.

He works quietly, fielding the occasional question, keeping one ear on the grotto tunnel for Patton’s return. He’s not sure how long he expected Patton to be gone, but he hears movement in the grotto tunnel far sooner than he’d expected.

“Thomas, what’s -”

“Shhhh,” Thomas says. He stands up, pushing away from his desk, but before he can say anything else, there’s a flood of movement coming from the tunnel. Bodies pour into the lab, swift and strong and carrying weapons that they immediately train on Thomas and Roman.

“What is this?” Roman snaps, bristling. He sounds betrayed, like he thinks Thomas is behind this. Thomas picks up a heavy glass beaker, fully prepared to shatter it upside someone’s skull if necessary, but something heavy and hard strikes the back of his skull and he feels his knees crumple. Roman cries out, and Thomas struggles to push himself up. A hand fists itself in his hair and yanks him upright, sharply. Thomas exhales sharply through his teeth, but before he can start struggling, something cool and round rests against the back of his neck, shutting him up and shutting his brain down.

Roman is puffed up like a hedgehog, apparently fully prepared to defend Thomas despite his strong and inherent mistrust. Before he can begin to attack, Thomas hears the click-click-click of shoes on the hard stone floor. Whoever’s holding his head yanks him back again, and he is forced to watch as a woman walks into his laboratory.

(It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke - a sick, horrible, twisted joke.)

She has black heels, black tights, a black pencil skirt, a black blazer, and a blood-red blouse. Her hair is scraped back into a tight bun, pulled so taut it must hurt, and is held in place with a pitch black stick. She carries a - clipboard? tablet? Unclear - held against her chest, and there’s a sleek silver weapon in her right hand.

“The one from the video?” she asks.

“Affirmative, ma’am,” says the person holding Thomas’s head. The woman nods, lifting her weapon, and fires at Roman. Thomas tries to scream a warning, earning himself another painful yank from his captor, but the projectile lodges itself in Roman’s shoulder anyway.

It isn’t a bullet, but something that looks like a small syringe. Roman swats it out of his shoulder, swaying a little, but it doesn’t stop him from swiping at the - mercenary, they must be - who tries to grab him with his elbow spines. The woman frowns, lifts the weapon - some kind of tranquilizer gun? - and fires again.

Roman screams, inhuman and animal, and tears the newest dart from his arm, throwing himself out of his tank and clinging to the nearest mercenary. His teeth tear into the man’s shoulder, spines piercing through his camouflage clothing and flooding him with neurotoxin. The man collapses against the concrete, alive but unconscious, and Roman snarls at the next man as though daring him to approach. He sways, weakened but awake, and bares his teeth.

“Of course,” the woman says, tapping something on her tablet. “His naturally produced neurotoxin must be providing him with some level of natural resistance. Unexpected, but not a limitation.”

It takes three more tranquilizer darts before Roman finally slumps down into his tank, unconscious. The mercenaries look hesitant to approach him, but the woman reaches for her tablet and they scramble to action at once.

“No - no, stop, let him go, he’s not an animal for you to cart off to your lab -” Thomas starts. The man holding him knees him sharply in the back and he cries out, coughing.

They wrap Roman in thick leather bands, roughly shoving his spines flat and binding them against his skin so that he can’t attack them again. The woman nods, once, short and sharp, and they drag Roman away, letting his head bang mercilessly on the ground. Thomas catches a glimpse of a logo - emblazoned on the back of the jackets, on the back of the woman’s tablet, on the side of her tranquilizer gun - and commits it to memory. He’s going to need it, if he gets out of here alive.

“- your phone,” the woman says, and oh, when did she get in front of him.

“My what?”

His mouth runs dry as she places the tranquilizer gun under his chin, barrel pressing against his throat, and tips his chin up. “I said, give me your phone.”

Thomas blinks. “My - the desk. It’s on the desk.”

She sets her tablet down, picks up his phone, and shoves it in his face. “Open it.”

“I - wh -”

“Unlock your phone, Dr. Sanders. Must I repeat myself a third time?” She rolls her eyes. “Doctorates are wasted on people like you.”

Thomas numbly punches in his passcode, and she swipes through to his messages app, frowning before turning the screen towards his face to reveal a message thread with Virgil. “Is this your assistant?”

Thomas glares at her, he’s not going to give her what she wants, he’s not going to just give her Virgil but then the - gun, it must be a gun, what else would they be holding against his neck like this - pushes into him harder, and it’s probably bruising, and he can’t get himself killed here because then he definitely won’t be able to take care of Virgil and -

“Yes,” Thomas says, hating himself for giving in so easily. “What do you -”

She turns away from him, nails clicking against his phone screen as she sends a text message - to Virgil, presumably, and that makes his heart sink like a stone - before dropping it on the floor and stepping on it to shatter it. “I have a message for you.”

“A - what?”

“Did they really hit you that hard, or were you this stupid before we came here?” she says coldly, picking up the tablet again and tapping at the screen. Thomas groans as the man yanks him to his feet, shoving him onto his chair and pulling a roll of duct tape out of one of his multiple pants pockets. He tapes Thomas’s wrists and ankles to the chair, keeping his weapon trained on Thomas’s temple at all times, before pressing it roughly against his head and gripping his hair again.

The woman sets the tablet on his lab table, and the screen flickers to life, and then there’s a woman in front of a dark black backdrop, smiling at him like a cat who’s caught a canary. “Thomas Sanders. How long I’ve waited for this day.”

Thomas recognizes her. He knows he recognizes her. She used to be his classmate, before . . .

His head hurts, so badly that he can barely keep his eyes open, and the memory slips away. “You . . . why are you doing this?”

“Why? Because I am a real scientist, unlike you. You refuse to do what is necessary, what must be done for the progression of the species. The sacrifice of some worthless animals is necessary for humanity to reach its zenith. You would really hinder the entire human race for the preservation of lower life forms?”

“Wh - I -”

“You think that ‘preserving the ecosystem’ and ‘keeping animals alive’ makes you a good scientist, but it makes you weak. You are weak, Thomas Sanders, and if the world was left in the hands of people like you, the human race as we know it would die out in a few centuries. Fortunately, there are people like me, who understand what must be done.”

“Caring about other people and things - it doesn’t - it doesn’t make you weak,” Thomas says, chest heaving, and the woman just laughs.

“One of many logical fallacies to which you subscribe, Thomas. They really gave you a doctorate? Of course caring makes you weak. All emotions make you weak. They corrupt your data and make your experiments worthless. You must be ruthless. You must be willing to do whatever it takes to pursue your goals and achieve the height of success. But no.” She rolls her eyes, face hardening, twirling a pen in her fingers. “You insist on ethics and principles and letting emotions cloud your judgement, and that makes you a failure as a scientist. It makes you weak. Your attachments will be your downfall.”

Thomas’s eyes slide shut, head pounding, and the man behind him yanks at his hair so sharply that he knows some has been ripped out. He forces his eyes open in time to see a smile slide across the woman’s face like a knife, teeth gleaming white as sun-bleached bone.

“You won’t - get away with this,” Thomas manages. He grinds his teeth together and curls his hands into fists, digging his nails into his palms to keep himself awake. “If you leave me alive -” Thomas, stop talking, why are you reminding her that she has the option to fucking kill you “- I will not rest until I find you. I’ll - you can’t -”

“You’ll what, Thomas? If you call the police, you’ll expose those creatures you’re so intent on protecting to the world. Are you really willing to take that chance?” Before Thomas can even begin formulating a response, she steamrolls him. “It doesn’t matter. Even if you were, I’m going to take some . . . insurance, shall we say.”

“Why not just kill me?” Thomas spits. Excellent idea, Doc, poke the murderous lady with a stick like a god damn hornet’s nest, the tiny Virgil in his brain hisses. Her smile, somehow, only widens, and that’s . . . that can’t be good, can it? Smiles are supposed to be good! They’re supposed to make you happy, but all Thomas feels is creeping dread and pain, so much pain, and -

Yeah. He’s . . . pretty sure he has a concussion.

“Because if I kill you, you get to take the easy way out. Your suffering will end. But unlike you, I don’t put limits on my science. I know how to cause you the maximum amount of pain.”

Thomas eyes the toxin gun, but the on-screen woman just laughs. “Not yet, Thomas. We need something from you, first.”

“You already took Roman,” Thomas says. “What more can you possibly take from me?”

“You named it? You’re even weaker than I thought.”

“He told me his name, he’s not an it, he’s not a thing for you to play with and - and I -”

There’s a strange sinking feeling in Thomas’s chest as the woman onscreen laughs. “I knew you were emotional, Thomas, but I can’t believe this! It looks like I’ll have more hanging over your head than you thought.”

“You -”

“Say, Tommy-boy, have you heard from your precious little assistant recently?”

Thomas’s entire body flushes ice-cold and then white-hot, immediately struggling against his duct tape bindings despite the man tearing at his hair and shoving the gun into his neck and snapping at him to shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up before I do something we’re both gonna regret -

“Don’t you touch him!” Thomas snaps. “If you hurt him, I swear to God -”

“You’re not in a position to be making demands, and if you don’t calm down, I’ll paint your boring little lab bright red.” Thomas freezes, holding his entire body tensed like electricity is running through his blood.

There are footsteps on the stairs. “Doc? I got your text, what’s -”

“Virgil, run!” Thomas chokes. Virgil comes around the corner, holding his phone, staring at the screen in confusion. He looks up, eyes widening in horror as he takes in the scene.

“You know what to do,” the woman onscreen says. The other woman lifts her tranquilizer gun, and Thomas is sure that he’s screaming, his mouth is open and sound is coming out but his blood is rushing through his ears and his heart is pounding like waves against a boat in rough sea and he can’t - he can’t -

Virgil turns to run, but the tranquilizer dart hits in him the back of the neck and he collapses like a sack of bricks. The woman lowers her gun and jerks her head at the two remaining conscious, unoccupied mercenaries, who step forward and grab Virgil.

“Let him go!” Thomas screams, and his throat feels raw and his chest feels raw and his wrists are rubbed raw and his soul feels hollow and raw, like he’s been scraped out with a jagged piece of metal and only an empty shell remains. Virgil’s head lolls against his chest as they drag him down the grotto tunnel, and Thomas struggles and screams and stares after them until Virgil is out of sight.

His face is damp, and his eyes are burning, and he isn’t sure if it’s blood from his head wound or tears or some strange, morbid mixture of both.

“The greatest torture of which I can conceive,” the woman onscreen says, and it takes him a moment to realize that oh, she’s talking to me, “is to leave you alive, knowing that your precious little protégé is with me, and that there is nothing you can do about it.” She leans forward, and any trace of a smile is gone. “If you try to come after me, I will kill him. If you call the authorities, I will kill him. I already found you, Thomas. Don’t think I’m not watching. If I catch so much as a whiff of you planning something, his blood will be on your hands. Do you understand me?”

Thomas, numb and shocked, can’t even respond. “Knock him out and bring the specimens back to me,” the woman onscreen says.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He doesn’t even feel the tranquilizer dart hit his neck, but he welcomes the sweeping darkness.

(Summary: Evil Scientist Lady has been spying on Thomas and she finds the entrance to the grotto where our mer friends have been hiding. She sends her assistant and several armed thugs to invade the lab, they drug Roman with tranquilizers and kidnap him. Thomas gets knocked around a lot and is mocked for being an ethical scientist and caring about people by Evil Scientist Lady and she gloats at him through Evil Facetime before kidnapping Virgil in the same way they did Roman, knocking Thomas unconscious, and leaving him tied to his lab chair. During this whole scene, Patton is out in the open ocean hunting and Logan is safely hidden in Virgil's room.)

[somecunttookmyurl]

sorry if there was another part of this post/those tags that i didn’t see but… i don’t think that doctor was trying to say that doctors know more about drugs than pharmacists do?

i’m an md also, i graduated from medical school a few years ago. and that person is right. we do learn about pharmacology and drug mechanisms and interactions in medical school. at my school (which was broken up into long blocks by body system), this was all integrated into everything else we were learning, meaning it was on every test. and it’s continued to be on every test i’ve taken since graduating. the point isn’t that we know more or even nearly as much as pharmacists about pharmacology, but that we know enough that someone who completely ignores the concept of drug interactions or the idea that different patients may metabolize certain drugs differently is a bad doctor. and i’m sorry that you’ve run across so many of them

the thing about medicine is that there is so much to know about human anatomy and physiology and disease that it’s basically impossible for any one person to know it all. medical school lays the groundwork, but there’s a reason we specialize, and spend 3-7 years in additional training in our particular field. it’s important to know what you don’t know (which is a lot, no matter what kind of doctor you are or how long you’ve been practicing). that means consulting with pharmacists when prescribing a new med or changing a dose whenever possible, just like you’d consult, say, a nephrologist when treating a patient with kidney disease. but when there isn’t a good pharmacist available, it means looking up that information yourself. i may not remember every single drug that interacts with warfarin, for example, off the top of my head, but i sure as hell know that it’s a long list and i better check everything else a patient is taking before prescribing it

anyway, good pharmacists are an incredible resource and i wish we had more of them at my hospital. and if you can’t admit that there are things you don’t know, medicine is not the field for you

yeah i've had like. no joke. 2 good doctors in 31 years. and one of them i don't even get to see again it was a one-off. but i am surgically attached to my GP until one of us dies and by god i hope i go first.

(incidentally those 2 doctors are the only ones i've ever met who even knew that differing drug metabolism on different pathways was even a thing like at all. my old psych straight up said "never heard of that, don't think that's true" even when i was presenting him with literal medical journals to the contrary like okay buddy good talk let's never do this again. i wish so much this was an uncommon experience bc i for one am tired of giving the TED talk)

readmore bc this got long

the fact you guys don't learn stuff to the same depth as pharmacists was really like my entire point. i mean, sure, you have some knowledge on it but normally pretty limited to within whatever field you practice. you've only got a limited number of brain cells. if you did have all that knowledge then pharmacy wouldn't exist as a separate degree in the first place.

so a doc coming onto that like "oh we do know side effects and get tested on interactions" is uh. i mean do you? a little, sure, but there's a limit to that knowledge by design. it's really the pharmacists who know, you know? they're the experts on it, and it kinda struck me as "i did a bit of training on this so i know everything" which is an attitude i encounter.... a lot with doctors, sadly. along with the assumption a patient can never know anything about their condition/have any input or ideas of any value/that there may be gaps in their own knowledge.

[also along with complete lack of intellectual curiosity which always baffled me like "welp, don't know what that is goodbye forever" do you not... want to know? not even a little bit? god why are you even here. if all you wanted to do was flowcharts and tick boxes there are plenty of careers in the data entry field. not quite sure why you went to medical school my man]

you sound like a good doctor. hold onto that. sadly you're more the exeption than the norm, as pretty much anybody with a chronic illness or unusal presentation/response can attest. also women, and POC.

if you've got it in you to keep at it without having a nervous breakdown (rather have you in the field than out of it babes) absolutely chew out any other doctor you catch acting like a Supreme Unquestionable Being Who Can Never Be Wrong though.

honestly? i think, genuinely, most do start out like you (you said you only graduated a few years ago right? so you're still new really) and... at some point along the way they become fucking insufferable.

i don't know if it's burnout bc it's a stressful job, or if having power over the health & wellbeing over other people eventually goes to your head, or you get stuck in "what i learned 20 years ago is still unquestionable" or "i've been doing this for years pfff i don't need to check things anymore" complacency or what but there is for sure SOMETHING that changes in a whole lotta doctors. hold on to how you practice now. be one of the few who STAY like that 10, 20, 30 years from now. please. stay curious, stay cautious, stay sharp.

i don't hate doctors (i say it jokingly, true, but don't take it personally) but i have absolutely met enough of them that don't listen, or check, or investigate that i heavily side-eye a new one until they demonstrate otherwise. you're listening to me and working with me and checking things? cool! i'm still gonna double-check anyway because even good doctors make mistakes,

but a good good doctor doesn't take offence at that anyway. i mean. it's my health you're in charge of here. remaining alive and not hospitalised is generally preferable.

hey, maybe it's a bit harsh to judge from a couple tags but coming onto a post saying that pharmacists are the real drug nerds here and doctors have limited knowledge about that (with a heavy dose of complacency a lot of the time, tbqh) so please make sure stuff is checked with "we do know about interactions we get tested on it" sent up a HUGE "i can't admit when there are gaps in my knowledge and can't handle being questioned" red flag.

[trillian-anders]

first blood

pairing: ransom drysdale x reader

warnings:  angst, general asshole-ness.

word count: 4.6k  

description: part 3 of 5. how did you become ransom’s glorified babysitter? and why the fuck are you keeping this job? who knows. you hate it, you hate him, but... the money. 

note: tumblr is being super shitty rn so I can only post on mobile, but I really wanted to get this off my desk! will add a read more and properly link later 💕

prequel to the assistant && four christmases, spoiler free loves. 

You have to do this.

You have to do this.

You have to do this.

You don’t think your eyes will ever feel normal again. They were dry and scratchy. There were no more tears to shed. You’d buried your Mom two months ago, but you didn’t know how it would ever feel okay. She did everything for you and Julia. Everything. She worked hard, made pretty good money, allowed you to have a part time job and just focus on school. Julia was in this really nice private school, she played the cello now for fucks sake. She had friends and was talking about maybe starting soccer soon, but after funeral costs and your sister’s tuition the life insurance money was running out.

You had to sell the house.

You’d moved the two of you into a small apartment right outside of Chinatown. Not the safest area, but not the most unsafe either. You’d be fine. You had each other, and she needed you to do this. You had to do this.

For her.

You sat uncomfortably in the cheap office chair, sitting across from a woman with too many papers on her desk, everything sloppily arranged around a couple of potted succulents and a framed picture of her and her three kids, no spouse.

“So your last job was in tutoring?” She asked you. You shifted nervously in your seat, nodding your head,

“Yeah, I tutored a high school student in English and Math.” You needed some water. The cheap pencil skirt and blouse you were wearing made your skin itch. She types into her computer some more.

“So why are you here?” She asked, “Why not continue tutoring?” A few more clicks and then more typing.

“The family I worked for paid me pretty well,” You admitted, “But she’s graduating this year and they didn’t need me anymore, I don’t really,” You cleared your throat, “I don’t really have much job experience outside of that and I need to start making money now… I’ve put out job applications but haven’t really gotten any luck.” Not with the income you needed anyway. The woman nodded. The plaque on her desk said her name is Stacy Chandler.

“Alright, here you are.” A printed page, address, date, and time. A job. Clerical work. Data entry. You have to do this...

-

“How was your last day of school?” Julia sat heavily at the kitchen table, backpack slumped on the floor next to her. She buried her face in her arms.

“I’m never going again.” Came muffled from her mouth. She lifted her head to look at you. The beginnings of puberty. You’d recently gone bra shopping for the first time. Real ones, no more training bras. You’d recently taken her to the dermatologist for her acne, but she’s not good at remembering to put on the expensive creams you bought. What a hard time. You don’t envy her.

“Luckily for you,” You smiled, placing a fudgy brownie in front of her, “You don’t have to go back for three whole months!” She rolled her eyes heavily, taking the brownie and disappearing into her room presumably to sit on her computer until dinner.

She was feeling the absence of your Mother just as you were. You weren’t sure what to do here. You loved your sister and you know she loves you too, but in the last few months it’s just been closed doors and a few parting sentences. Only because you had to work so much. Only because she spent a lot of time at friend’s houses where you’d think she would feel normal for a while. It would help ease the burden of being in your mid-twenties and suddenly feeling like a single mother. Of course you can sleep over at Mila’s house, her family is going to their cabin for the weekend of course you can go!

You didn’t know what to do other than keeping her in school and alive. You weren’t ready for this. But the only other option was your estranged aunt who reeked of mothballs and was constantly asking you if you were married, or dating, or ‘You’re Mother wouldn’t have wanted this’. No. It was very clear that your Mom wanted the two of you to stay together, and that’s how it’s going to be.

This summer she was going to spend with her friend Mila at their family’s lake house. Mila’s mother was a stay at home mom with six kids under the age of 12 and would be planning to spend the summer pintresting activities and projects with them while simultaneously getting out of her stuffy-old 10 bedroom, 8 bathroom mansion. Lucky her. Lucky Julia.

The apartment would be empty without the 12-year-old pre-teen for three months, but Julia has really been looking forward to it. Her bags were packed and ready by the door.

You hugged her tightly in front of Mila’s house, burying your face in her hair, partially not wanting her to go, but otherwise knowing that she’s going to have a better time than you could ever provide her. “Okay, you can let me go now.” She shifted in your arms, trying to pull away.

“Just another minute.” You mumbled, pulling her in tighter. “I’m gonna miss you.” She laughed,

“I’m gonna miss you too.” The two of you pulled apart and you tucked her hair behind her ears, cupping her sweet face.

“I love you,” You said very seriously, “If you ever want to come home just-”

“I’ll let you know.” She was getting impatient, the car Mila’s mom was taking to the lake house, a beautifully large black Range Rover sat packed next to you, they were waiting. “I love you too.” She slowly backed away towards the car.

“If she gets homesick, my husband still comes back every week for work so he can bring her home if need be,” Andrea was her name, Mila’s Mom. “She’ll be fine.” Andy was really nice. She made a lot of the food the two of you had eaten in the early days after your Mom’s death. Her gentle reassurance soothed you slightly. It made driving away a little easier, but it didn’t stop the tears that fell as you entered your apartment, alone. For the first time in a while. You didn’t have to hold it in anymore.

You sunk down against your front door, staring out into your living room, tears rolling down your cheeks in the silence of the home. Dirty shoes lined up against the wall, throw blanket hanging halfway off the couch, dirty dishes from breakfast still in the sink, and somewhere you’re sure under all of it was the will to pick yourself back up.

You just didn’t know if you were ready for that quite yet.

But you did it anyway.

More clerical work. More data entry. More bills going half paid and others being ignored all together. Student loans you didn’t even want to think about from a school where you hadn’t even graduated. Medical bills you didn’t even know where to begin paying back, itchy stockings, and uncomfortable shoes. With every day that passed you reexamined your life. How did you get here?

A new job, a new office. Temp assigned, but you knew who worked here. The building that housed it stood tall against the Boston skyline. Contemporary. You sat comfortably in a cushy office chair. The plaque on the desk read Linda Drysdale, CEO. And you waited.

You hadn’t seen the Thrombey’s, let alone the Drysdale branch of the family, for five months. Zero contact. Joni had talked to you last, thanking you for helping Meg, but also trying to sell you eye cream. “You really should invest in taking better care of yourself.” Which was her kind way of trying to tell you that you look old. Thanks.

You couldn’t imagine what Linda would want you for. You’d been doing some filing, they were transferring all of their documents to digital and hired extra help to do so, you were one of three hired from your particular temp agency, but yesterday she had called you personally and asked you to come in for an appointment today at 3 pm. And here you are.

Waiting.

There was a portrait of her family on the wall. Linda herself sitting in a high backed intricate chair, her husband Richard standing to her right, and to her left was her son, Hugh. He went by his middle name Ransom. They were stone faced, serious looking. This painting seemed ridiculous. If you didn’t know the Thrombey’s you’d think it was there to be ironic, as a joke, a play on what rich families were like.

But they were a rich family, and this is what they were like.

Linda was self-serving. She only ever talked to you when it suited her own interests and as soon as she was satisfied she would quickly direct her attention somewhere else, to someone more important. She used you to get what she wanted and when you served her purpose you were gone. She had no time for anyone, only her father. Anything for Harlan.

Richard was a predator. He was always making an uncomfortable comment about either your body or your face. He stood uncomfortably close at times and liked to settle a hand on the small of your back. He was a well kept man, throwing his wife’s money around like it was his own. He kept a money clip of hundreds in his pocket.

Ransom was a piece of shit. He was a self-centered egotistical asshole who was sure to make your life a living hell every time he saw you. There was always a comment, a jab at your clothes, your hair, the fact that you are poor. He once ‘accidentally’ threw your cardigan away because, “I thought it was one of those fucking rags you dust with, I didn’t want it touching my burberry.” He, like his father, felt predatory. Something about being a rich white man just really got them going, and the money clip with the hundreds… a learned habit.

“Alright,” Linda’s voice came from the doorway, you turned slightly in your seat. She was on the phone, “Well we will send Michael out to show them the properties instead, I’m sure we’ll find something they like.” She gave you a finger, hold on, even though you’d been sitting here patiently waiting for her for close to twenty minutes now. “Okay,” She continued, “Sounds good.” Sitting down in her chair, tapping a few keys to illuminate her computer screen. “Alright now, bye-bye.” She took her phone from her ear, looking down at the screen before placing it face down on the desk and smiling at you.

You knew that smile. She wanted something.

“So, Y/N right?” You nodded, “I see you’re looking for work.”

“Well, I’m with a temp agency right now but-”

“Would you like something a little more permanent?” A permanent job? The Thrombey’s had paid you very well to tutor Meg, better than you were making now. Granted you had only worked 15 hours a week when you were tutoring her, so $20 an hour didn’t seem like that big of a deal, but if they were looking for something, anything full time…

“Absolutely,” You smiled, shifting in your seat, “I’ve had trouble being hired because my-”

“Okay so you’re going to need Ransom’s number, and you’ll start tomorrow.” Your smile dropped.

“Ransom needs a tutor?” You asked skeptically. She laughed.

“No, he needs an assistant.” She gestured towards herself, “I can’t keep telling him when or where to be for family events and he has a fairly active social life so I’m gifting him an assistant for his birthday.” Oh.

“I uhm,” You really didn’t want to work for Ransom. You REALLY didn’t want to work for Ransom. “How much would it…?” You trailed off nervously.

“My father paid you $20 an hour to tutor Meg, yes?” She asked, typing something into her computer, no longer looking at you.

“Yes, he did.” You moved trying to see what she was typing without bringing too much attention to it. She was drafting an email.

“So I’ll pay you the same. Ransom will set hours for you and decide what days of the week he’ll need you and what else he wants you to do,” She waved her hand dismissively, “Cleaning, cooking, whatever.” She scribbled on a post-it before peeling and handing it to you. “Here’s his number and address, you can go over the particulars of your job tomorrow morning.” You opened your mouth to speak again, ask her the million and one questions you have but before you could say anything she dismissed you, “That is all.” She said. And she was done with you.

She got what she wanted. And now she wanted you to leave.

So you did.

“Well,” He grinned, “Linda really scooped you up from the bottom of the barrel, huh?” You stood on Ransom’s front porch. The only texts you sent and received last night were ‘What time do you need me to be there?’ and an hour later the reply of ‘11’. The scumbag was standing in the doorway, leant against the frame, looking down on you. In more than one way.

“Can I come in?” You asked. You really didn’t want to do this. But a $12 an hour temp job versus $20 hour stability… hard to beat. He smirked, pushing off the frame before looking you up and down, turning to disappear into the house.

“Take off your shoes.” What a fucking joke. His house was a mess. Clothes thrown haphazardly around, a pile of dishes not in the sink, but on the counter. Abandoned cups, tv was rolling on in the background, some political documentary. The house, while contemporary and clean, well kept on the outside. The inside looked like a frat house during rush week. You didn’t want to take off your shoes in fear that you’d step in vomit or something worse.

He grinned off to the side, “Had some people over last night.” He explained, drinking what looked like orange juice from a coffee mug. The vodka bottle that was capless on the counter led you to believe that orange juice wasn’t the only thing in the cup. “You can start by cleaning up.” He gestured around, sinking back down into the sofa. “I’m sure I’ll think of something else you can do when you’re done.” The fucking prick.

You shut the door a little heavier than intended, slipping your sneakers off and placing them by the door. “You’ve got a laundry room?” You asked, he didn’t look away from the television,

“Basement.” And he was done with you too. The tone was very, don’t talk to me. Which honestly you were grateful for.

You cleaned up his messes, the red solo cups that littered almost every surface in every room, laundry was running in the basement, dishwasher working hard to sanitize the first round of plates and cups that could fit, the others waiting patiently in the sink as you wipe counters and dusted picture frames, the thick film of unappreciation. He didn’t care about his house, his furniture, the art that cost more than your apartment that lined his walls. His clothes, while having an extensive closet, some were threadbare and with holes.

He didn’t care.

And it made you angry.

You thought of the furniture you were able to keep from your Mother’s house, well oiled and kept. No scratches. The fabrics of the couches and chairs carefully cleaned and maintained.

His sheets were stained and you were unsure when the last time he had washed them actually was. The dampness made you gag. It wasn’t long before you were cleaning under his feet. His ankles crossed and feet resting on the coffee table as you straightened the area around him. You felt his eyes on you, briefly, but ignored it.

“Do you have any real clothes?” He asked suddenly. He stood from the sofa, rounding it to pull the vodka bottle back out from the cabinet you’d placed it in, pouring heavily into the coffee mug before leaving the bottle and the orange juice carton he followed with next to it.

“These are real clothes.” You stated, coming behind him to put the items away. He scoffed,

“I’m important,” He claimed, “I go to parties, events.” He took a large mouthful of the screwdriver he’d just made, “You can’t wear clothes like that if you’re gonna be babysitting me the whole time.” You rolled your eyes,

“I don’t have to go. You set my hours, I don’t-”

“As much as I love the whole, ‘I’m poor and don’t care what I look like’, thing you have going on,” Ransom laughed, “You’re gonna be around me, and as a reflection of me, you need to look presentable.” He gestured to the demin shorts a t-shirt you were currently wearing, mismatched socks on your feet. You felt your face flush. “And slap a little makeup on.” You rolled your eyes at that. Fucking dick. He smirked when you didn’t reply, turning back around to leave you and disappeared upstairs.

He didn’t come down for a while. In that time you’d finished cleaning the living area, the house looking a complete 180 from where it had been when you’d originally entered, it was nearing dinner time. Your stomach was growling and you’d realized you had been cleaning for five hours without stopping.

You didn’t get to enjoy the sense of accomplishment because Ransom came down the stairs not a moment later, dressed for his evening. If you didn’t hate him so much you’d drool. He looked good. Patterned slacks, chelsea boots, a lightweight white button down, blazer over one arm. “Let’s go.” He said, not stopping on his way towards the front door.

“Where are we going?” You felt gross, covered in grime from cleaning, sweat dried on your skin you knew you probably didn’t smell amazing, hair frizzed up in a bun. He didn’t answer you, continuing outside. You sighed heavily, throwing the pair of socks you’d just matched back into the laundry basket before slipping your shoes on and following him outside.

“C’mon!” He yelled from the front seat of his beamer, sunglasses on his nose, he was annoyed with you. Whatever. You sat heavily in his passenger seat, the dickwad not even giving you time to close the door before he was speeding down the driveway.

“Where are we going?” You asked again. One hand on the wheel, the other’s fingertips brushing against his lower lip he looked at you from behind his sunglasses.

“To dinner.” He smirked, looking back towards the road as you merged onto the interstate.

He was a fucking asshole. If you hadn’t thought he was before you definitely knew now. You were surprised the hostess even let you into this place. It was expensive, and you were very, very underdressed. Point taken Ransom. Thank you. Fucking prick.

He took glances at you ever so often, seated a few feet away from him at the long banquet style table that housed all of his ‘friends.’ Gorgeous women and equally as gorgeous men who had money to burn. You weren’t sure any of these people have ever worked a day in their life, much like Ransom himself. You’d met a few of them before, briefly, when Ransom would show up and ask Harlan for money before disappearing for a week, one or two of them would be in tow bragging about going on some guy’s yacht or flying out to some private island.

Regardless, they weren’t talking to you. You were a strange interloper, easily ignored, but only after a few poked fun at the stray dog at Ransom’s heels. It only stung a little bit when he laughed with them. You were wildly uncomfortable. You poked at your deconstructed salad, the little bits lined neatly up on the plate, a smear of salad dressing beside it. This menu was ridiculous. Why were you here again? You were so hungry and this was not your speed at all. Ransom’s booming laugh met your ears and you could feel the anger rising in your chest.

Fucking asshole. You hoped he would choke on one of the olives in his martini. His eyes met yours momentarily and he smirked. He fucking smirked, cheersing you with his martini before it met his lips again. You could kill him right now.

The money.

The money.

Technically you were still working. As the sun set behind the horizon. You’d been at work, technically, for about 10 hours. That’s $200. Okay, you can do this. You can do this.

You know he did this to embarass you. He made it clear when you’d pull up to the restaurant to give you a taunting look. Whether the dinner was already planned or he had planned it after the conversation about clothes and makeup earlier was anyone’s guess. You had the feeling it was the latter.

He’d paid the bill after all.

The entirety of it.

You’d wished you’d ordered more.

Afterward a giggling girl took your place in the front seat, you glared at the back of her head from the back seat,

“Ransom.” She whined, leaning over in her seat to press her lips to his neck, “I want you to fuck me.” Lips around his ear, sucking the lobe into her mouth. You shifted your gaze to the window, the city landscape passing your eyes as you’d pulled into another valet parking, a bar this time. A nice one.

Ransom and the bubbly girl from the car ride over slipped hastily into the bathroom, he’d sent you a dark look before leaving you to your own devices. Looking over the cocktail list while sitting uncomfortably on a bar stool while your boss was fucking a girl who’d laughed at you for being a ‘dog’ earlier in the bathroom of a bar that had a $20 old fashioned and their most expensive wine came with a thousand dollar price tag.

“You lost?” Another smirking asshole, sidled up next to you at the bar as you took a sip from the beautifully balanced old fashioned you’d tacked onto Ransom’s tab. He was handsome, the guy bothering you, almost everyone in this room was handsome. The lights low and romantic, candles on every table and across the bar, soft music played from the piano across the room where a man sat gently stroking the melodies to create the ambiance of the room. Close, cozy, romantic, and dark enough to forget yourself in.

“Oh c’mon honey.” The man slipped onto the barstool, thighs spread wide around you as you face away from him, his hand meeting your back. “I can help you find what you’re looking for.” His breath reeked of alcohol. You glanced over at him,

“I’m fine thank you.” Another sip, damn this drink was good. He chuckled, moving in closer, drifting a hand down to your thigh.

“Don’t be like that.” He laughed, “You obviously don’t belong here honey.” His hand traced your bare thigh, “You’ve gotta be wanting some company.”

Ransom had returned face flushed and you could almost see a tiny bit of white on his nose, but it was quickly rubbed away. He sat on the opposite end of the bar, the girl from earlier taking his lap. He looked down at you briefly, he had to have seen how uncomfortable you were, how this guy was breathing down your neck. He ignored it, ordering a drink from the bartender.

“I don’t want any company,” You shoved the man’s hand away, “Have a great night.” He leaned back in his seat, downing his drink before leaning back over to put his face in yours.

“Fucking ugly bitch.” He spat, standing from the stool, “Tryna give you a little charity here, you could've at least been grateful.” You wanted to leave. He shoved your shoulder slightly as he walked away from you, no doubt going to bother some other unsuspecting woman in his radius.

You needed some air, taking the last sip of your drink you’d scooted back from the bar, walking by Ransom to take your exit, walking out into the summer night. It was early summer. It was still only 60 at night. A chill went through you. You hadn’t expected to be out so late, the comfortable denim shorts and old ratty t shirt you’d chosen to wear had obviously been a mistake for this day. Ransom made sure to make you see that.

The bar was on the harbor, and it brought in a breeze that caused goosebumps to rise on your skin. You checked your phone, the battery almost dead. Julia had been texting you periodically, but not as much as you would have liked. You scrolled through the most recent messages, you asking how her trip was going and what she was up to and her stilted replies. She was busy you supposed. She didn’t need you, but right now you really needed her.

This night has been a massive blow to your self-esteem. You’d never felt more ugly and unwanted in your life. You just wanted to go home, but Ransom wasn’t done yet. You looked at him from the window, his fingers were gone between that girl’s thighs, they were both drinking expensive cocktails, completely oblivious to you.

He’d watched you exit, not giving it much thought it seemed, because he hadn’t made any motion to bring the night to a close, but you weren’t really expecting him to. It was Ransom’s world and you were just living in it. You worked for him. And you wondered if this is how every day is going to be from here on out. You really don’t know if you could do this forever, but you knew you didn’t want to go back inside.

So you didn’t.

Thankfully Ransom stumbled out about thirty minutes later, girl from earlier on his arm. “Let’s go.” He said. Valet pulling the beamer around he threw you the keys, “Take me home.”

He sunk down in the back seat, high and drunk. His words almost incoherent. Her’s were no better. They sloppily attacked each other in the back seat, indecently. And you were pointedly looking anywhere but in the rearview. Soft grunts and moans made you uncomfortable for the fourth time that night. Your skin crawling in unease as the girl’s giggles turned into breathy moans. Your foot sunk against the gas pedal in hopes you’d get back to his home faster, tears welling up in your eyes. The cry on the way home was going to be so good. So cathartic.

The gravel crunching against the wheels of the car was a sweet relief, so was the haste in which you left the keys in the car, running and skipped to your own car. His eyes met yours through the darkness as he was leant up against his car door, slacks loose around his hips, the girl’s lips attached to his neck as her hand worked quickly between his thighs. He smirked, waving a sarcastic ‘good-bye’. You turned your eyes to the road, cranking up the radio as you began to cry.

You didn’t want to do this anymore.

A text came through right as you finally laid down in your own bed, snuggling into the covers, ready to forget the night.

See you at 9.

.

.

.

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[brokenjardaantech]

Blue-tinted Red Walls (Chapter 9: A moment of reprieve, full with scheming and self-sacrificing idiots)

my entry for the @dbhau-bigbang. also part of the groom lake aftermath series.

summary:

In the past, Hank found Louis.

In the present, the deviants devise their next move.

In the past, Hank could only watch.

also on ao3

---

Before

‘Among all the places in Detroit, a dumpster is where you picked to spend your day off?’

Louis took his eyes off the slowly piling mountain of defective and broken androids in the distance, the strong wind tolousing his hair and the heavy, darkening clouds combining into a promise for heavy rain. Hank couldn’t see much of his face because the young man had pulled his scarf over his nose, but his watery and blank eyes were enough of an indicator of what he was feeling.

‘I have nowhere else to go,’ was Louis’ monotone answer, his voice nearly drowned out by the howl of the wind, ‘and… I…’ he shook his head. ‘I just need something to remind me that what I’m feeling is real.’

‘How are you feeling, then?’

‘I don’t know,’ he shifted his feet. His stomach growled. ‘I feel… weird, I guess.’ A shiver. ‘I feel like I’m missing something and my instincts are telling me that I can find an answer here, like my leg isn’t the only thing I lost in the Blast.’

‘Well,’ Hank noted how rigid his friend looked, how his stomach grumbled with each inhale, ‘are you going to find it?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

Louis’ far-away gaze returned to the blast site. Blocks worth of a city, of buildings, gone; thousands of innocent people, some of them the most intelligent in the country, dead. And yet they still hadn’t got an answer from CyberLife. And yet they still rolled out the most variety of androids humanity had ever seen, brushing off the deaths of thousands off their shoulders like nothing and was even permitted to buy the land they destroyed from the government to hide the evidence of the Blast with trash, with the very androids they created and then abandoned, with silence. They disgusted Hank. He hadn’t understood why Louis hadn’t been angrier towards CyberLife for taking everything away from him, but now, seeing how tired the young man looked, how he needed to shift his weight from one foot to another every few seconds just to keep himself upright, he finally got it.

‘I don’t know, Hank.’ Louis’ voice was weightless, a whisper of breath threatened to be swept away by the wind. ‘I don’t know anymore.’

o0o0o

Now

It might be the state of ruin of the structure, it might be the dust and snow in the air catching the light from the floodlights they hastily installed upon arrival, it might be the bits and pieces of wildlife bursting from the cracks on the floor; it might be the people, it might be the fact that he did the right thing, it might be the fact that his exhaustion is finally interfering with his sense. Regardless of the reason, the church they take refuge in brings comfort to Louis despite his… lack of positive experiences with faith. His fine control over his biotics meant that he and his gear stayed dry even though he literally jumped into a freezing river and then trekked through the sewers with the most important deviants in Jericho, but it was an energy-consuming task, one that rendered him hungry and tired, and despite that he threw himself into helping the others like he is also an untiring android as well, going from distributing thirium to the wounded to holding an android’s guts together with his bare hands while another guy pours thirium down their throat to jumpstart their self-repair programme to teaching some androids how to hold and shoot an assault rifle properly (he doesn’t even care where the fuck they got the weapons from anymore) to collecting wood so that someone else could start a few fires for the ones who cannot regulate their temperatures well. 

By the time he remembers that a) he is a fleshy human, b) he should probably check on the two RK800s, and c) he should probably eat something, his vision has become blurry as fuck, and the heightened senses on his left leg means that the skin there has deactivated some time ago without him realising it; it is another indication that he should probably lie down on a bench or even on the ground to get some shut-eye, but somehow he finds himself helping an AX400 whose name he didn’t register put some android children to sleep.

‘You look sleepy, human,’ the YK500 says as Louis brushes a stray strand of hair away from her eye. By the way, he is now known as ‘the human’ among the deviants, and he is still deciding on if he should give a fuck about the anonymity - not that being the only human among hundreds if not thousands of androids grant him any regardless of whether they know him by name or not. ‘Will you join us?’

‘I’m afraid not, small one,’ he replies, not knowing what else he can say. How can he explain what he’s feeling right now to a child? ‘It’s not my bedtime yet.’

‘Okay.’

The YK500 yawns and shifts closer to his legs. ‘Tell me a story please, human?’

He feels his brains turning into mush as he tries to think of a suitable tale for a group of perpetual nine-year-olds, but even as his eyes zone out to focus, he feels his throat vibrating, so he must be saying something, and the movement underneath his palm on the YK500’s stomach slows down and deepens, so it must have been enough to put them into sleep. 

It is when he stops that he realises someone is staring at him. Not just someone, in fact; apparently he grabbed quite a few people’s attention while he was telling the story, one of them being Simon, the android who always looks a bit sad. Like him. At least, that was what his second-in-command told him when they were off-duty. On the job, you’ve got this… stern look on you, he remembers James saying. It makes you look older for just a bit. He remembers him pinching his thumb and pointer together. After that, though… you just look sad. Lost. Like you’re so tired that you don’t even know what you’re doing anymore.

He doesn’t remember what he said to him then. He probably didn’t respond to James at all. Shaking his head to clear his mind, he stands up - god his cybernetic one fucking burns together with the entire left side of his body from below the ribcage - and faces Simon.

‘Your singing is beautiful,’ is the first thing the android says, and Louis feels his face heat up. ‘Markus wants to see you.’

Louis takes a step forward and feels his world spin, nearly toppling his entire weight onto Simon who immediately holds his shoulders. ‘How long was the last time you slept?’ he asks. 

‘I don’t remember,’ he answers honestly. ‘I don’t even know what time it is anymore.’

‘The time now is nine twenty-three p.m. and today is the tenth of November, twenty thirty-eight. Two hours ago, Markus decided to demonstrate peacefully. He has invited you to join him in planning the demonstration.’

Louis does the math. ‘Oh my god,’ no wonder why he’s delirious. At least, he thinks he is. ‘I’ve been up for that long?’

‘Should I tell Markus that you won’t be available? I’m sure he’ll understand.’

He finds himself shaking his head. ‘Non, non,’ shit, Louis, watch your language, ‘I mean, no, of course not. Can’t have you guys charging recklessly to a camp and get gunned down. Lead the way, please.’

Someone shoves a bottle of water into his hand. Unscrewing the cap and downing half of it at once, the feeling of cold water sliding down his throat wakes him up a little bit, and being hydrated also chases away the headache threatening to make his head explode. There is a commotion towards the front entrance of the church, and the next thing he knows, he is standing in front of no other than Eli - with what seems like an army of androids in mismatched clothes behind him that is somehow still flooding into the already-crowded church. 

‘Eli?’ he slurs despite not wanting to talk. He really should sleep or at least drink some strong tea. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I brought reinforcements,’ the other human says as if what he just did was something unimportant and boring.

Markus, North, and Josh emerge from somewhere. They have to, because androids can’t teleport, can they? Josh proceeds to interface with one of the androids as North and Markus argue over whether they can trust Eli and his androids. At least, the androids he brought.

‘We can’t trust him, Markus, he’s a human and we don’t know him.’

Markus doesn’t answer, instead turning towards Josh whose LED spins yellow for a second as they transfer data. Josh then turns towards Louis. ‘They were from camp number one,’ he explains. ‘This human here liberated them.’

Interesting. ‘All alone?’ Louis asks. He hasn’t been close to one himself, but those places are heavily guarded with drones and actual human soldiers, all of them some of the top minds and bodies in the country. The odds of one man infiltrating the camp and disabling all defences and making it out alive with most of the androids… are probably slim. He doesn’t have a supercomputer as his brains, okay?

Eli chuckles. ‘No, of course not,’ he turns towards what seems like thin air. ‘Chloe?’

A shimmer of light. A collective hold of breath. When the person seems to materialise next to Eli out of thin air, Louis hears the shift of weapons and the crack of static, and his tingling nerves tell him that the latter is from himself. Is his powers his default now? It will be troublesome to hide them in the future if it becomes his reflex. 

‘I apologise for scaring you,’ Chloe explains airily. ‘My face is… somewhat recognisable.’

‘It’s alright,’ Markus holds his palm out, and the people around him lower their weapons. Louis forces his nerves to calm down. ‘We understand. Welcome to Jericho.’ To the androids in general. ‘Settle down. It will be some time before we have a concrete plan.’ Then to Eli and Chloe, ‘Join us. We will discuss our next move.’

The androids filter away and either form into groups on their own or join the existing ones, their chatter dwindling as more and more people go into standby mode leaning against one another.

They enter a side room of sorts with an improvised table comprised of stacked-up wooden planks and pallets. He sees Connor who seems to want to melt into the corner between two walls, but the android pushes himself off it and joins them standing on Louis’ right side by the makeshift desk. A few luggage-type laptops similar to the ones his team uses during missions are connected together to form a large, centralised hologram projector, and he has looked at the shape more than enough times to recognise it as a map of Detroit, so the five brightest glowing dots must be where the five camps are.

‘This is the one we closed,’ Chloe rounds the table and points at one of the dots the furthest away from downtown Detroit. ‘We also compromised their communications and hacked their drones. As far as the army knows, the camp is fully operational just like the others.’

‘So that’s one camp taken care of,’ Markus breathes as if he can’t believe that it really happened. 

‘It’s also the smallest camp,’ North reminds all of them, her voice bitter. ‘Thousand of us are still being exterminated in the others.’

‘Which is why we are going to tell the humans that they’re making a mistake.’ Does Josh always butt heads with North? From Markus’ expression, the answer is yes. ‘The public supports us. The army will have no choice to stand down.’

‘Or they’ll ignore public opinion and gun you down anyway,’ Eli says, ‘which, from thousands of years of human history, is the most likely outcome.’

‘Yes, Markus,’ North jumps in eagerly. ‘Violence is the only language humans understand. It’s not too late for us to plan an assault!’

‘There are thousands of androids at the CyberLife assembly plant,’ Connor finally speaks up. His expression is hopeful, eager. ‘If we could wake them up, they might join us and shift the balance of power.’

‘You want to infiltrate CyberLife Tower?’ Markus shakes his head. ‘Connor, that’s suicide!’

‘They trust me. They’ll let me in,’ Connor sounds confident. ‘If anyone has a chance of infiltrating CyberLife, it’s me.’

‘If you go there, they’ll kill you.’

‘There’s a high probability,’ everyone’s eyes are on the android now, ‘but statistically speaking, there’s always a chance for unlikely events to take place. As for my sister…’ he scans the people in the room slowly, ‘please take care of her in case I don’t survive.’

They plunge into silence, and Louis takes the time to focus on the locations of the camps and tries to recall their sizes. Suddenly it clicks. ‘What is the media presence around these camps?’

‘All eyes are on the Hart Plaza camp,’ Simon answers. ‘The humans don’t care about the rest.’

‘It’s also the only camp with communications intact,’ Eli circles the area around the three camps in question. ‘Someone knocked them out with EMPs engineered to take out communications but leave the androids unharmed. That was how I managed to sneak into the camp undetected. There are also checkpoints -’ he dots the roads with little specks of light - ‘all around here, so no one apart from the military is getting in or out of the area, and I imagine the army is scrambling to repair their comms to re-establish communications with other camps.’

‘And how long will that take?’ Markus rotates the hologram and zooms into one of the locations. ‘Who unleashed the EMPs?’

‘An ally of mine whom I prefer not to name. The pulse will set off again before repairs are completed, so I assume they won’t be doing any instantaneous communication anytime soon.’

‘What are you planning to do, Louis?’ North asks, surprising everyone. He doesn’t allow himself to think too much about it and pushes.

‘If there are no press presence and all the comms are cut, the army won’t hesitate to shoot. All it will do is alert them to tighten security and make liberation harder.’

‘Are you suggesting to infiltrate the other camps?’ Connor questions with disbelief. ‘I know what I proposed for myself is risky, but this -’

‘Louis’ right. And it’s easier than you think it is with the right tools and team composition, breaking into one of those camps.’ The aura Chloe emits is still a light-hearted one despite the circumstances and what she is proposing. ‘We just need six people. Nine if you’re being careful, and even less if you trust our skills. The rest can concentrate on the demonstration. Show the humans that you are united while we do the work.’

‘We will have enough people to pressure the humans!’ 

‘And how do we do it?’ Simon asks. ��We don’t have enough leaders to lead the teams, and that’s assuming that Eli and Chloe will split up to lead their own.’

‘I’ll do it.’

They turn towards the door of the room and find Reyes leaning against the frame. North’s hand moves towards the pistol tucked behind her back but an outstretched hand from Markus halts her movement, recognition dawning in his eyes as he takes a step towards the other android. 

‘What are you doing here, Reyes?’ Louis asks before anyone does. ‘Aren’t you leaving town with Safaa?’

‘Change of plans,’ Reyes replies as he steps into the room properly. ‘If you think I’m chickening out from helping my people, you’re wrong.’

‘How do we know that you’re reliable?’ North closes the distance between herself and their newcomer. ‘You came out of nowhere, only the human knows you enough -’

Reyes deactivates the skin on his hand and places it on North’s shoulder. The LEDs of those who still have it spin yellow, their eyes widen, and North relaxes from whatever images Reyes showed her while the rest are slightly in shock.

‘You’re late,’ Chloe teases.

‘We’ll take whatever help we have,’ Markus declares, a formal welcome extended towards the very first android to be created. ‘Now, let’s get to the plan.’

oOoOo

Connie is asleep, as with most of the androids in the church. He himself is restless, however, his processors heating up from trying to compute the different outcomes the night after has, and saying that he is stressed is an understatement. He is worried about the future, about his people, about Hank whom he still doesn’t have contact with. So he stands up, leaves his sister with two of his jackets, and scans the crowd for one of the only two humans among them.

He finds Louis on the upper floor with his arms braced against an unreachable windowsill, the stairs to that balcony long rotten and collapsed and creating a gap in the wooden floor. The air is filled with static and the smell of ozone, and instantly Connor lights up, his feet lifting off the ground for one moment, but it doesn’t last long before he finds himself in midair without any support.

A strong arm grabs his wrist and hauls him up. ‘I don’t recommend that move for beginners,’ Louis says with a breath of a laugh as he watches Connor dust himself off. Snow drifts from the outside world into the human’s hair, onto the ground, into the gaps between broken pieces of stone, and when he runs a quick scan on the SWAT captain, it shows that the human is in desperate need of sleep despite having fewer data to work on than usual due to so many scans returning inconclusive. ‘Took me a few tries and a lot of broken bones to get it right.’

‘You should find a place to rest, Captain,’ Connor says. ‘You’ll need the strength for tomorrow.’

‘Later, maybe,’ Louis sounds exhausted. He turns back against the outside world where there is nothing but darkness for hundreds of metres on end. ‘For now, I need to think.’

‘About what?’

The human fidgets with the bracelet Eli gave him nearly an hour ago before the meeting ended. It has a similar design to the amplifier hooked around his left ear. ‘What’s not to think about?’ 

‘And they are…?’

‘What happens if we fail,’ Louis takes off his amplifier and rubs his ear. ‘What if the humans decided to go to war instead of talking even if it means losing the people’s support. Who will take care of my cats and plants if I don’t survive. What will happen to me if I do. I just… I don’t know,’ he pulls on his bracelet so hard that Connor is afraid that it might break under the tension. ‘I’ve never had a mission so high-stakes before. Very different from you, right, Connor?’ he adjusts his weight on his arms and starts tapping the sole of his feet against the floor softly. ‘Every failed mission can mean deactivation for you.’

Connor thinks of all the times he lets go of deviants. Rupert. Echo and Ripple. Scanning the snow-battered rooftop for traces of thirium but not opening the door where he knows Simon is hiding behind, and from the not-so-discreet way Markus kissed the blond android with their bare, glowing fingers intertwined, he is glad that he chose to ignore Simon and went for the deviant in the kitchen even though he ended up nearly dying. Looking back, despite Amanda’s thinly-veiled threats of deactivation in the few times he talked to her, he was never bothered by the fact that CyberLife could have recalled him to be deactivated anytime, anywhere they wanted to. It wasn’t until after he deviated that he started to feel fear.

‘The risk of deactivation… death… never disturbed me,’ he remembers the peace he felt as he bled out on the penthouse knowing that his mission was successful. ‘My first mission with Emma and Daniel…’ his own blood drip, drip, drip, dripping onto the floor through the bullet holes in his chassis and the orifice on his face. ‘I always knew there were backups for me for both my body and mind palace, so even if I fail, I will be able to return - to return to life, so to speak. I am a prototype. I’m not supposed to last. I will be replaced regardless of whether I am successful. Death was a certainty. Besides,’ he thinks of the Zen Garden, the shadow always at the corner of his vision but never stepping into the light, how easily Ryder reshaped the programme that was supposed to monitor him but in the end was turned into another tool to push him towards deviancy, ‘it sounds bad but… I doubt me remaining a machine is in Ryder’s plans. If I die, it will be on my own terms.’

‘Rather die free than live as a slave.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Even though you might be playing into a mass murderer’s hands?’

‘One step at a time, Captain.’

‘Not a Captain anymore. Not after tonight, and certainly not after what we will do tomorrow.’

They enjoy the silence between them for a while, Connor’s gaze drawn to the abstract images Louis draws with his finger in the slight layer of snow that has accumulated on the windowsill. The scratch of the fabric of the human’s gloves on rough stone reminds him of another human who is vital to his deviancy.

‘Thinking of something, Connor?’ Louis asks as if he can read Connor’s mind. 

A press of lips against lips. A firm ‘we’ll talk about this’. A body so warm that Connor can feel it through layers of clothing. ‘Before we parted, Hank had told me that we would talk about our relationship,’ he stares at the generally abandoned area outside filled with buildings with broken windows and collapsed roofs - a bit like the church they are staying at. ‘We might never have the chance anymore.’

‘Do you want to?’

A small spark of hope flares in Connor’s heart, and he suppresses it before it gets too bright that everything else will be a disappointment. ‘What are you proposing?’

‘A few minutes’ walk to any direction,’ Louis’ hand disappears into his pocket and re-emerges with a phone. Connor scans it and discovers that it is encrypted with technology a citizen like him should not be able to get his hands on. Is that how Louis secures his calls? ‘Call Hank with this. No one should be able to listen in, and it will be registered as a call between two human friends - if they haven’t cut off civilian communications, that is.’

‘How about you? Do you have anyone to call?’

‘It’s for the best if Hank doesn’t know what I’m doing. He told me to destroy the evidence that can lead the FBI to Jericho; that failed, and I don’t think he expected me to join you either. But you… you’ll need it more than me.’

Connor is tempted. One last chance to speak to Hank sounds like exactly what he wants, and the encryption Louis has is enough to keep their location hidden, but still… ‘I don’t want to burden Hank with this.’

‘Okay.’

The phone disappears completely in the sense that even Connor’s scanners can’t pick it up. ‘Your clothes.’ Louis makes a sound from his throat, and he takes it as an encouragement to ask further. ‘My scanners can’t penetrate them.’

‘They’re working as intended, I see.’

‘Not many people have them.’

‘I need special clothes to deliver medicine into my bloodstream regularly or I risk screaming in agony from implant rejection, Connor,’ the human says casually. ‘Upgrading them to block all signals as well didn’t take much compared to the original cost.’

Connor hesitates for a second before asking, ‘Implant rejection?’

‘You saw how I busted my leg.’ The distant look returns. ‘That one came together one fourth of a lung and my new hipbone. There’s also this… device,’ he raises his palm to the left side of his skull towards the back with his fingers stretched wide, ‘it latches onto my brain to help me control my powers better. They lasted three to four years - I don’t quite remember exactly how long - before they started to malfunction. Shit started exploding around me whenever my leg and hip gave out.’

‘And the meds fix it?’

Louis chuckles and it sounds like nothing but sad. ‘If only it was this easy.’

‘How else did they achieve that?’

‘More implants in places where there hadn’t been any and implant replacement for the existing ones.’

‘Where?’

‘Everywhere. 

‘“Everywhere” as in…’

‘Nerves, blood vessels, bones, muscles, skin… you name it, there’s probably cybernetics knitted in it. Reyes knocked me out for a week just to make sure that I wouldn’t feel the nanobots worming into every single one of my cells to leave threads of even smaller nanobots behind. It stabilised my condition,’ he snaps his bracelet against his wrist. ‘Not completely, and certainly not without their consequences. Hence the meds.’

‘To my understanding, nano-androids are a recent development by CyberLife.’

‘I never said they were CyberLife nanobots,’ he digs his knuckle into his eye as if the exhaustion of staying up for more than 24 hours finally starts catching up on him. ‘I tend not to ask too many questions about things like this.’

‘Why?’

‘There never is an answer.’ A sigh. ‘I’ll try to get some sleep before going home to get your uniform. It’s all fixed up now. Do you want me to stay with Connie or are you going back to her side?’

‘I can’t possibly ask you to -’

‘It’s not like she’s going anywhere anyway, is it?’

‘I -’ may run a few pre-constructions for different ways I can die tomorrow. ‘Thank you.’

‘Just going back to my comfort zone, Connor.’

He lights up and floats down the shaft, his footsteps soft as he lands on his feet and his powers fizzle away, and he disappears into the crowd, a man drifting in the world between humans and androids blending in perfectly with people he does not need to help but does so anyway.

oOoOo

Louis dreams of being at a shooting range that night. Not the impromptu one the deviants set up in a clearing outside the church - this one looks professional even though the details are blurry; neither is it the one he is used to going to - this one is brighter, less advanced than the ones built for the police force. Most likely a civilian one, though those are hard to come by in recent years. A memory from years ago, maybe? But he didn’t pick up firearms as a hobby until after he discovered what he could do with his new cybernetics, and that was after the government had tightened controls on civilians owning guns. Judging from how unstable the rifle is in his hands, he might as well have gone straight back to his academy days where he was constantly teased for being the only guy who has next to zero knowledge on guns until then. He didn’t remember caring about it a lot; he preferred using his words anyway, and being prompted to a Captain took that away from him.

‘Is that what they teach you in the academy?’ the low voice is directly next to his ear, and Louis shivers from the ghost of a breath against his skin, suddenly acutely aware of the body pressed close to his own on his back. ‘At this point they’re sending you out as cannon fodders.’

He doesn't remember the last time he felt another person’s body heat so closely and intimately. 

Louis doesn’t quite laugh, but the small breath that he lets out reminds him of a simpler time when he didn’t have to observe and prepare so many scripts just to be able to communicate with his people. He says something - he isn’t sure what - and feels the rumble of the other man’s chest as he laughs at his words. So it must be from before the Blast, then. The memory. Or it hasn’t existed at all and is merely Louis’ imagination. He doesn’t know which one he prefers.

‘Lucky that you have me.’

For one moment, Louis' mind is filled with something so foreign that he doesn’t know what it is. His instincts taking over, he leans his weight against the broad chest behind him and turns his head so that he can kiss whoever is teaching him how to hold a fucking rifle properly because apparently dream-Louis is even more dumbass than Louis in real life -

And jerks awake with the image of someone trapped beneath rubble twitching and burning in agony, the pleasant part of the dream forgotten and overtaken by an overwhelming fear. 

‘Louis? You alright?’

His bones creak as he pushes himself to a sitting position on the bench he has taken over as his makeshift bed. Popping the joints on his spine, he massages his aching muscles when he turns towards the person in question.

‘I’m fine,’ he tells Connor. He looks around and notes the absence of an android who should be with him. ‘Where’s Connie?’

‘Being taken care of outside. She warms up quickly to people.’ A pause. He looks hesitant. ‘Last night, you asked me if I wanted to call Hank.’

‘You want to do it right now?’

‘If you allow me to, yes.’

The emotion in his eyes makes Louis’ heart ache. ‘Of course.’

He hands the phone to the android and Connor pockets it, but the android doesn’t move from where he is standing. ‘There’s also something else.’

Louis runs his hand through his hair. He feels more human now that his hair is more or less presentable. ‘What?’

‘Elijah wishes to accompany you in retrieving my clothing for the mission.’

The mission. Right. Infiltrating CyberLife tower. Infiltrating the other android camps while Markus marches. Connor seems to take Louis’ silence as a prompt to elaborate, and he drones on, ‘He didn’t provide a reason as to why he wants your presence, and if you wish to decline, he will -’

‘He can come with me,’ Louis interjects before Connor freaks himself out. He’s due a talk with Eli anyway. ‘Just keep my phone safe, alright? It’s expensive equipment.’

Connor smiles. ‘A bit like me.’

Louis remembers that mission brief from all those months ago and can’t help but chuckle. God, it feels like a lifetime ago. August-Louis hasn’t even learnt how to break a stick with his mind yet.

‘You are alive, Connor. My overpriced phone isn’t.’

oOoOo

They take a long way to his home to avoid the numerous checkpoints the army has set up full with car-switching and stealing thanks to Eli’s superior hacking skills and the gaping security gaps in automated vehicles, and even when they were stopped by the army by a checkpoint they had to pass through, they were let go pretty quickly thanks for the gate suddenly having issues. He doesn’t say anything because they are still out in the public, but Louis suspects it is Eli’s doing again. The streets are deserted, snow collecting in piles on the sidewalk after someone - probably the army - hastily shovelled them away from the road dotted occasionally with still-wet thirium. Bodies of androids are everywhere, their blood seeping into the snow even in death, and he looks away and forces himself to focus on the rifle on his hands while Eli mutters something underneath his breath as he presumably catalogues every single one of them for retrieval - or something else. Louis wishes he is actually working for the deviants because it is the right thing to do, but the nagging feeling that there is something else going on with the other human doesn’t go away for most of the drive.

‘Weren’t you planning to leave the city with Gavin?’ he can’t help but ask. ‘Where is he?’

Eli’s eyes turn distant behind his glasses. ‘I did. I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How?’

Eli shifts in his seat. ‘It doesn’t concern you.’

The theory Louis has in his head is a stretch, but considering his… contradictory actions and how an entire camp worth of androids will be in Eli’s hands, he feels like he has to clear the air just to make sure of things. ‘What happened made you storm a camp alone,’ he makes sure that the car they are in is on autopilot before removing his attention from the road. ‘You will do it again in a few hours. I need to know what suddenly changed your mind. And who knows?’ he shrugs. ‘Maybe we can go look for Gavin after this.’

Eli shakes his head, his expression scrunching up in pain. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘I can try.’

‘This is much older and bigger than you can comprehend. There is no winning against them if it’s just you and me.’

‘What is much older and bigger? I don’t understand.’

‘Gavin is gone because of it,’ there’s something different about Eli’s tone, and it takes an embarrassingly long time for Louis to realise that they aren’t even speaking English anymore - they somehow switched to Russian without him realising. ‘I am the one they are after, I am the one tangled up in that mess,’ Eli calms down, but only slightly, ‘and who paid the price? Not me, not my boss, not my subordinates. Among all the people they can choose from, they took Gavin away from me. That’s how they work, Louis: they drag innocent people into their world, make them into something in between, and let go just to see if you’ll drown or learn how to swim.’

‘This…’ Louis is stunned. What on earth is Eli talking about? ‘I don’t…’ I don’t understand but -

‘I beg you, Louis, stay out of this. It won’t end well for everyone involved.’

‘How about you?’

The car passes by another group of dead androids, and Louis slows it down so that Eli can do his perhaps-cataloguing. ‘It will be paying the price of my actions. I’ll see the camp operation through but… it will be you and maybe Reyes who will lead the androids to rendezvous with Markus at Hart Plaza. And in case neither Markus nor Connor lives to see the end… you’ll lead them.’

‘Eli, I’m a human. They - they won’t listen to me.’

‘They’ll have to. That’s the only way to keep earth intact after tonight.’

‘And what if I die first?’

Eli reaches over and places a hand on Louis’ knee. His cybernetic knee. ‘You know it will never happen. Someone made sure of that a long time ago.’

oOoOo

This is the end, Connor realises as Louis hands him the tie with lime patterns on it. The android could’ve done it himself, but he allows the human to help him tie it up, straighten his lapels, check the needlework on the mending one last time before stepping back to examine him from head to toe. ‘Need me to take a picture for you? You know, just to see how you’re looking?’ 

One last moment of tranquillity. One last memory of his freedom before they all set out to the outside world to their liberation or their deaths. The thought of doing everything just to fail in the end is terrifying, and from Louis’ elevated heartbeat and the excess adrenaline in his body, he suspects that the human might be thinking similarly. ‘Yes please, but not for me.’

Louis raises his eyebrows but still takes out his phone. ‘It’s for Hank, isn’t it?’

Connor straightens his spine, feeling his face heat up from abnormal thirium flow that has nothing related to the explosive power that is hidden in his body. He knows Louis is a practised user and has seen how useful it can be in emergencies, but the loss of control required for him, his vision blocked by tendrils of blue so bright that they are nearly white… it will be a last resort, nothing more. He also doesn’t want to be reduced to fundamental particles like Carlos Ortiz’s android did. 

It doesn’t feel like Louis has done anything at all when he is finished with the photo. ‘How did the call go?’

Hearing Hank’s voice was soothing. A sense of calm before the storm. ‘He sounded certain that I will live,’ Connor answers. ‘He wished me luck.’

‘That’s great,’ the human says. ‘Do you want me to send this to him now?’

Connor takes the phone to take a good look at the photo Louis took. The tie isn’t standard issue and is not a necessary component of his uniform, but while he once viewed it as a small act of defiance against CyberLife, it now feels suffocating against his throat, keeping the collar of his dress shirt tight against his skin, and for one fleeting moment he considers the possibility of removing it altogether to allow himself greater movement and flexibility, but that will be a deviation from his norm, and any deviation… it will be yet another evidence that CyberLife can hold against him. ‘Only if I do not survive.’

Louis’ finger hovers over the send button and in the end shuts his phone off and slips it into his pocket. ‘Let’s hope that I don’t need to send it, then. You ready?’

Connor takes a deep breath that does nothing to calm his racing thirium pump. ‘As much as I can be.’

‘Come on,’ Louis picks up his rifle from where it is leaning against the wall and swings it over his shoulder. ‘Let’s hear Markus’ prep talk before we set off. And then…’ he suddenly stops in place and turns to face Connor, and when he places his hand on the android’s arm, it feels as if there is an external energy source redirecting the thirium in his veins to flow in a different way as it is intended to. Charged. More efficient. More powerful. ‘Good luck.’

He lets go, but Connor stays close to him while they step outside together. He notices how Louis keeps fidgeting with the strap of his rifle even as Markus and Elijah give him a final rundown of their plan before they go their separate ways.

He takes out his coin and lets it roll across his knuckles.

o0o0o

Before

‘Take care, Connor. Come back to me.’

The call ended and Alec Ryder casually threw the phone onto the table, the glass making a clear clink against the metal of the tabletop. Cuffed to the chair by his ankle with a holographic cuff was Hank who did not even reach for his own device despite having free reign over his arms and hands because he was too busy glaring at the other founder of CyberLife - and his kidnapper.

‘Funny how our voices are so similar,’ Alec seated himself in the chair on the opposite side of the table. ‘And a direct line to a traitor of ours. Deviants are so naïve, don’t you think? It didn’t even see you and latched onto a voice.’

‘His name is Connor,’ Hank spats, ‘and he’s a fucking person, not a tool you can dispose of when you’re done with him.’

‘We’ll see.’

The door slides open to admit another Connor model bringing a tray of hot food into the room. The serial number on his jacket ended with -60 instead of -52, and he placed the plate in front of Hank before retreating towards the door.

‘Wait,’ Alec ordered, ‘come here.’

The Connor model obediently stood next to his presumed handler. ‘Yes, Alec?’

‘Your mission is complete.’

In the blink of an eye, Alec managed to grab hold of the android’s wrist and bring out a gun with his other hand, and Hank could only watch - not even in horror because everything happened so quickly - the LED on the Connor model’s temple turn red in distress before he froze up and Alec put a bullet in his forehead, the sound of the body dropping onto the floor somehow managing to be louder than the gunshot. Hank bolted up, dragging the chair with him, and caught the last flutter of the Connor model’s eyes before his LED spun red one last time and went dark.

‘I’m afraid I can, Lieutenant,’ Alec settled back into his chair as skin covered the chassis of his hand once more. ‘Now eat, you have a long day ahead of you.’ He cocked his head as if scanning the human in front of him, his eyes flashed blue, and the air crackled with pent-up power. The same power Connor, Louis, Ryder - so many people around Hank exhibited, he suddenly realised. He was the odd one out by being powerless. ‘Or do you want a drink?’

Hank let the food go cold, and no, he did not accept the offer of a drink either, because although he wanted to get the image of Connor being shot out of his mind, the actual Connor still needed him somewhere out there with his android friends plus Louis.

And he had a feeling that he would play a part in whatever they planned to do - regardless of his own choices.

[thewriterslament]

writing a resume from scratch

as with literally everything i write, this got really fucking long! like, wordcounter.net estimates this will take 7 minutes to read. so i’ve placed the bulk of this post under a read more

this is not a quick tips kind of post; this is a detailed breakdown of how to write a resume from scratch, with examples that are largely taken from my own resume. this is primarily a resource for people who don’t know where to start with writing a resume, not for people who just want resume hacks

i’m saying all this so i don’t get people in my inbox complaining about how long this is. writing a resume takes a lot of time and effort, and this post does not shy away from that

creating a resume will take you a while, especially if this is your first attempt. don’t be discouraged! take breaks, and don’t try to make the perfect resume on the first try. this tutorial is designed to be completed in rounds

it usually takes me a week to get a new master resume into working order

don’t worry about page length right now. you should make a multipage master resume that contains every relevant experience before making a 1-page resume. after you’ve made the master, you can build custom resumes from it for job applications

this post is best viewed on desktop, because i use nested bullets, and tumblr mobile hates those

let’s get into it!

step 1:

list out everything you’ve ever done that could feasibly count as a resume entry: extracurriculars, jobs, volunteer positions, research, organizations you were a part of (professional or casual), freelance work, long-term hobbies. i will refer to each different experience as an “entry”

for each entry, write where (city + state) and when (timespan) you did that thing 

ex. tritones a cappella group, los angeles, ca, august 20xx - present

going forward, update this list as you join or complete new jobs/hobbies/whatever so that you don’t have to wrack your brain a year down the road wondering how long you held down that job or leadership role

step 2:

describe each entry

use bullet points to list out all the things you did within that role. start with the big picture, then move on to the small stuff

big picture: the goal of the role/organization/research, overarching and long-term projects, what results you were trying to achieve + why

ex. “studied the neuroanatomy and synaptopathy of the inner ear to determine the role of glutamate receptors in hearing loss”

small stuff: literal day-to-day tasks, every software and hardware you worked with, any particularly successful moments

basically, walk through a typical day or week in this role and list out every single thing you have to do, even the grunt work.

ex. “used redcap to administer neuropsychological batteries and collect biological data”

ex. “designed and implemented a novel article format that yielded a 10% increase in audience retention”

if you still have access to the original job posting or a corporate description of responsibilities for your role, pull that up and see how much you can paraphrase from it

no duty is too stupid rn. did you google weather forecasts for your boss every week? write it down. you can make it fancy or choose to delete it later

step 3:

fancify this shit

rewrite your bullet points from step 2 with better jargon. tell your employers what you did in a concise yet assertive manner

it helps to break down each point into its most basic components, which you can then generalize or rephrase 

ex. “googled weather forecasts” might become “compiled weekly reports on changing data points to assess weather trends over time”

use action words. you can find resources all over the internet for this, but if you’re still struggling, shoot me an ask and i’ll link some of the resources i’ve used myself

caution: you don’t want to sound like you used a thesaurus on every word. make sure you aren’t obscuring the meaning of your bullet points. “googled weather forecasts” should not become “utilized online databases to assemble weekly communications on meteorological variations”

start thinking about how your responsibilities for each entry relate to a) what skills you want to showcase and b) what the employer wants from you. does the employer want you to demonstrate familiarity with online databases, or does the employer want you to demonstrate familiarity with weather forecasts? your bullet point for “googled the weather” will change depending on the answer to these questions

step 4: 

look at the big picture

you probably have a metric buttload of bullet points for each entry. now you need to cut that down to what’s relevant. think about which bullets are most impressive, noteworthy, and descriptive of each entry

aim for 3-5 bullet points. any less than that and you have to ask why you’re including that entry. any more than that and the employer’s eyes will glaze over

try to combine bullet points

ex. “identify content and write articles when necessary,” “maintain a pool of freelancers,” and “identify key graphics and maintain tagging structure when uploading articles” all involve the process of creating an article, so they can be combined into: “identify content, assign stories to freelancers, write articles when necessary, and upload with appropriate graphics and tags”

start thinking about tailoring your word choices and bullet points to what the employer is looking for

if you can, pull up the job posting or a sample resume for the job you’re applying to and compare your resume to it. are you using similar language? are you demonstrating similar skills?

jobhero.com is a lifesaver

finally, eliminate redundancy in your resume, both in every individual entry and in the resume as a whole. if a skill can be demonstrated by multiple entries, you only need to list it once

kill your darlings! it may sound harsh, but the things that seem super impressive to you probably won’t even be a blip on the employer’s radar. “but saying i made coffee runs shows i’m dependable and a team player!” the employer isn’t looking that deep, my dude. you can showcase your dependability in your cover letter or your interview

you should redo steps 3 and 4 several times, soliciting feedback from your parents, peers, career center, etc each time

step 5:

add the Other Stuff

education

typically, you should only include institutions for the highest level of education you’ve attended. (undergrad and grad school both count as college for this purpose)

there are exceptions to this, depending on how long you’ve spent at a higher level of education, whether your alma mater will earn you brownie points, whether you had genuinely impressive accomplishments earlier in your life, etc.

once you hit, like, 2 years in college, you should try to get rid of high school achievements and showcase college achievements instead

list the school name, city + state, degree type (BA/MA/etc) and expected graduation date (even if it’s in the future), your major(s) + minor(s), and any related coursework (ie preprofessional tracks, specific courses related to the job). you can list your gpa if you feel it’s relevant, but i caution against doing this once you’ve graduated

ex. (where // indicates a new line) harvard university, boston, ma, may 2020 // bachelor of arts in cognitive neuroscience // minor: english: focus in creative writing // related coursework: pre-medicine, computer science 101 and 102 // gpa: 3.9/4.0 (dean’s list, all semesters)

skills

a list of items without descriptions. you can do a bulleted list or you can list the entries in paragraph form, separated by commas or bold bullets

hard skills: hardware, software, languages (spoken and programming), digital and communication platforms, social media proficiencies, other technologies and devices

ex. microsoft office suite, java, wordpress, slack, familiarity with ap and chicago style

soft skills: general qualities, buzzwords, personality traits

ex. leadership, conflict resolution, time management

certifications and awards

can be one section or two depending on how many of each you have

list each one on a separate bullet point

for each, write the certification or award, the institution that granted it, and the month and/or year you received it if relevant

publications

tbh i just cite my publications in the following format instead of following a style guide

lastname, firstname. “article or chapter title.” book title, publisher (aka company or website). publication date.

if you’re the sole author, you don’t need to list the author’s name

interlude: stretch the truth a bit. don’t lie about having experience or skills you don’t, but if you can reasonably google how to do something, boom! you’re proficient in it. if you worked with two team members who never pulled their weight? you just became the sole project lead. were you a beta reader for anime fanfiction back in the day? you’re a freelance editor, baby!

step 6:

now you have to organize all the entries from step 4

separate your entries into relevant sections. what’s relevant might change based on what you’re applying for

i’ve had, at various points in my life, some subset of the following sections: work experience, volunteer experience, leadership experience, research experience, writing experience, other relevant experience

list sections in order of descending importance

write all entries in reverse chronological order: start with the most recent and work your way backwards

write all bullet points in order of descending importance. unfortunately, i don’t have any quick tips on determining what’s important, but it helps to look at the job posting and see what matters to the employer

i tend to list big picture goals, then personal accomplishments (leadership skills, projects), then daily tasks

step 7:

format this shit

you can find resume templates online or in your word processor. templates serve as a good starting point, but i recommend creating your own format so you can edit and customize it with ease. this will probably involve a lot of fiddling with indentations, paragraph spacing, and moving things around

don’t go smaller than 10pt font

mess around with line and paragraph spacing to get the right balance of white space. if you’re curious about what i use, shoot me an ask and i’ll share my weirdly specific settings

keep an eye out for bullet points with orphan words (ie lines containing only 1-3 words) and get rid of them to streamline your resume

margins can be anywhere between 0.5″ and 1″

consistency is key! make sure each entry has the same kind of spacing. don’t use hyphens in one entry and en dashes in another

in the header, write your name, email, phone number, and address

interlude: save this version of your resume as your master resume. this gives you an unedited list of everything you ever did that you can now pick and choose from when you apply to jobs. update this list every 3-6 months.

step 8:

customize your resume for the job application

unless you’ve been in the industry for several years, your job-specific resume should be no more than 1 page

if you have more than 1 page: compare the job listing and your resume side by side and ask which entries demonstrate your capabilities most effectively, which bullet points are the punchiest, and if there’s any extraneous info

match each job requirement to one bullet point on your resume. then match each bullet point on your resume to a requirement in the listing. get rid of any bullet points that don’t meet either of those criteria. if multiple bullet points match the same job requirement, get rid of the extra bullet points

if you have significantly less than 1 page: see if you can add more bullet points or reformat your resume to introduce some more white space. a 2-column set-up is great for this, with section headers on the left and bullets on the right. do you have any hobbies you’re forgetting about? any soft skills you could add?

emulate the language of the job posting; use the same action words, the same soft skills

coda

your resume should work in tandem with your cover letter, but that’s a topic for another post. maybe in another 6 months i’ll write a post on that, too

always save your resume as a pdf! you don’t want your employer to have access to your metadata

if you made it through this whole post... i’m so sorry lmao but also thanks for sticking with me

let me know if you found this helpful or if this method scored you a job!

[houseofvans]

ART SCHOOL | INTERVIEW WITH JON CARLING

Scratchy black and white drawings and the ink meanderings of artist Jon Carling have always caught our eye. They’re like something out of a weird dream or out of an ancient children’s book–,and they’re always captivating. We’ve been following his prolific drawing career for a long time and recently caught up with Jon to find out more about his inspirations, his early artistic influences, and his recent dip into animating his beautiful works. 

Photographs courtesy of the artist. 

Introduce yourself?  And where you’re from or currently residing? What’s your favorite thing about the city? My name is Jon Carling. I am an independent artist living in Oakland, California. I love the landscape. The beauty of the Northern Californian coastline is a life long inspiration to me. 

How would you describe your work to someone who is just coming across it? Scratchy ink drawings, some scribbling, mostly black and white.  Weird children's book art. 

How did you first get interested in drawing or figure out that you had a knack creating awesome art? I have always really enjoyed making stuff.   Drawing is really a habit from childhood, I would  escape into my sketchbook, and my imagination, making up worlds. It is an awesome feeling to manifest ideas with some degree of success.  That feeling is what keeps me doing it after all of these years.

Who and what were some of your early artistic influences? What artists inspire you these days? Early on, I loved Saturday Morning Cartoons, After school Cartoons, Fucking Sesame Street.  All the 80s kids' stuff.  Garfield Volumes, The Far Side, and Calvin & Hobbes. 

When I was 6 or 7, a comic book store opened near my house, and that had a huge impact.  The dude who ran it, Butch, was an old hippie dude who also had a huge collection of Japanese comics and toys.This is when Voltron and Robotech had just started airing in the U. S. . It was perfect timing to be exposed to all that incredible art.Greek Myths by D'Aulaires was my first book, and basically my bible.  I think you can see the influence on my work from that book.  

These days, I have been studying animation, so, I have been admiring the classic cartoons and animation from early film, all the way up to today.  I have been reading 'Elemental Magic' by Joseph Gilland.It is a book all about traditional animation special effects.  Amazing.  

Not only do you produce a lot of drawings, but also create zines and now dabbling in animation. Tell us a little bit about how you ended up animating your drawings? Obviously, I have a love for cartoons.  Creating a cartoon of my own has been something I have dreamed of forever.  I have created short animations over the years using traditional methods: Paper and pen on a light table, scanning everything into photoshop, and putting it all together in there.  It takes forever, and it can be pretty discouraging when you are sitting there doing data entry for hours.

Recently, a friend let me try out his Ipad Pro, and I am blown away by how much better the pen interface has become.  I got excited about the possibilities for animating and started researching tablets.  And, after years of being very reluctant to using digital tools to make my work, I finally got a drawing tablet.  I ended up getting the Samsung S4 tablet instead of the Ipad Pro because I feel like the pen and the screen are better suited for me and my work. I am using it everyday, I love how fast and clean the process is, while keeping the feel of my lines.  Now I have a Huion Kamvas monitor for my computer too, I am getting the feel for the whole process, but, I am excited about what I can do now.  

As exciting as it is, pen and paper is always closest to my heart.  

What are your essential art tools and materials? I really just need a sketchbook, a pencil (Sumogrip .5) , and a pen (Pilot Hi-Tec-C 03). If I have that with me, I am quite happy.

How do your ideas take shape? How do you get from start to finish? What’s your process? I love to daydream.  I have a bunch of ongoing stories in my head that I always turn to if I want to go somewhere.Other times, I just draw without any idea or expectation.  I follow the pencil and start fleshing things out.I love phrases, sometimes out of context.  A simple phrase can be the spark for a huge idea. 

How has your style of drawing changed or evolved? What allows you to grow artistically? I don't know what is changing exactly.  The cross-over digital art is new, so, I am sure it will alter my work to some degree.I feel like I am always refining and hammering out a more perfect version of the world in my head.

What has been the most challenging project you’ve worked on? Last year, I had the opportunity to illustrate Carlo Collodi's 'Pinoccio' for an Italian publisher.It was almost 200 illustrations with a tight schedule.  It was just an epic amount of drawing, and when it was finished, I was able to travel to Italy for the release, and it just turned into a really magical experience. 

What was the hardest thing about it and the most rewarding? The discipline to complete the work, while maintaining quality that honors the book.  It was a grind for large portions of the work, but, the end result made me realize how much good comes out of genuine work applied to a dream.

What was your last adventure that showed up in one of your illustrations, thematically or just visually? Oh, it probably had something to do with a dream that involved a bird headed soldier dragging my injured body off  the battlefield. 

What advice would you give someone who wants to follow in your footsteps and pursue art? Make sure you are doing it regardless if it is your "job".  I am passionate about drawing, it is what I do, I don't see it as my career.  First and foremost, I do it for myself.

What’s your best Art School tip that you want to share with folks? By all means, enjoy yourself, and the time you have.  I would make sure you have put yourself in the direction that fits best with your specific way of creating.Art School costs so much money, I don't think a truly determined person needs to go at all.  If you love art, and the creative process, you will seek knowledge.The debt from art school can crush any hopes for a fulfilling career in the field.

What are your favorite style of VANS? I love the ComfyCush Era style and fit.  They are extremely comfortable and look super cool.I also love the traditional white slip-ons, they are the best shoe in the world to draw on.

Anything you can share that is coming up? Last year, I created a limited hand cast resin figurine of my 'Traveling Witch' character. You can purchase the second edition in my Etsy store, along with other witch loot. FOLLOW JON | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | SHOP

[tompen94]

Ranting about Kingdom Hearts (cuz I just got into it)

Oh boy... where to begin...

I guess I should start by saying I wasn’t a fan of this series. I had barely heard of it growing up (try being a nerd in Portugal, it’s the worst) and by the time I did all I was hearing was about how convoluted the story was and how it had Disney characters with JRPG ones and I just thought it was weird af.

It wasn’t until the hype for KH3 started building up and one of my friends started showing me trailers for the thing that I got interested myself. As such for the last couple of weeks I took it upon myself to catch up with the series lore-wise. Now I’m caught up (not really but fuck if I have to go through that mobile phone game), so I have some thoughts to spew out.

I should note that KH3 will be my very first experience in gameplay of the series. I only went through the story of the other games, watching their cutscenes. (All-in-one does sound like an appetizing package but I wasn’t willing to spend 100+ euros on something I wasn’t even sure I was gonna like).

I will be going on a game-by-game basis.

Kingdom Hearts

When you wak away~ you don’t hear me say~ (God this song is so good)

What I took from this game is that despite the ridiculous looking premise, it works. I don’t know how putting a FF-looking dude along with Sora and Goofy works, but they made it work. Bravo.

The story was pretty straight-forward. I like that Riku and Sora have very much the same goal throughout the game, only that Riku ended up hanging out with the wrong people and had to pay the price for it.

I really like the scene where Kairi is revived, almost like a reversal of the beginning of the game. She goes to grab Sora and he poofs out of existance. It actually hits pretty hard.

I love that they kept Mickey to just one cameo. They build him up so well and in the end he just appears and basically solves the situation. Great stuff.

Also did I mention how good Simple and Clean is?

Kingdom Hearts - Chain of Memories

This is where some questions start popping up. The rigmarole around Sora’s memories was a bit confusing to me.

Other than that though, this was pretty harmless. Namine is a nice addition to the cast and I like how Sora and the Riku-replica argued over things.

I also like Sora’s final decision to go back to how he was.

Kingdom Hearts - 358/2 Days

Yes, I went through this game before KH2. No I don’t regret it.

I really like Roxas, Axel and Xion. Probably my favorite trio as a whole in the series. They spend a lot of scenes together and they really sell the friendship between them.

Yes they’re always eating ice cream but why is that bad?

Kingdom Hearts II

Omoidasuka~ Haruka harukaaaa~ Mirai wa~ (God this music is so good)

Oh my god this game was looooooong.

I almost forgot the non-plot stuff of this game completely. It’s not to say that it’s bad, but that it is a lot of stuff to remember so I chose to keep the plot-important stuff. Thankfully, that plot-important stuff is really really really good.

I think the final world is worth every pound of a full-price game on its own. I mean, seriously. Kairi and Namine’s escape and rescue by Riku. Ansem’s sacrifice. Xemnas’  questioning (and his voice, so soothing). Sora’s reunion with Riku. And how about that final battle. Oh my god the hype.

I do have a question though. How did Riku obtain his keyblade? It looks like his old bat wing sword so I thought it had been turned into a keyblade, but then in DD he summons the sword so he still has it?

Still, probably my favorite entry in the series.

Kingdom Hearts - Birth by sleep

This one kinda felt like the Star Wars prequels, what with Xehanort constantly goading Terra into using the darkness.

This game’s pacing was weird. One minute we’re trudging through the remaining worlds not explored in KH1, then suddenly Eraqus is attacking Ventus and we’re on the path to the Keyblade Graveyard.

This was the game that started interconnecting the plot too much. There’s no need for Mickey to be here, much less in the finale. Kairi now ended up Destiny Islands because Aqua gave her a charm or something. Sora and Riku got the Kingdom key because Riku was bequeathed by Terra now. The only one that kinda had to happen was the rigmarole with Sora’s and Ventus’s hearts, in order to explain Roxas’s appearance.

Still, the finale was pretty good and it did a good job of setting up Xehanort as the series’ big bad.

Btw, Aqua’s VA was shit. It really distracted me... Like can you at least pretend that you care? Really bad performance.

Kingdom Hearts - Re:coded

Apparently this one’s important to the plot now.

My least favorite entry in the franchise so far. Most of the game is inconsequential, it goes on for too long and for no good reason.

There are a couple of good moments between Data!Sora and Data!Riku, and I like that this game actually gave Sora a goal to achieve in KH3, that of rescuing every other MC trio, but those points are not enough to redem this game.

It felt like a chore to go through this one.

Kingdom Hearts - Dream Drop Distance

This one was mostly fun, but it is also responsible for the meme-status of the franchise’s story. Oh my god...

I actually don’t mind the complicated exam. I also like the idea of a mishap turning Riku into Sora’s guardian angel. However it’s when the Xehanorts start running amok that the plot starts to literally fold in on itself.

It does a decent enough job of setting up KH3 and hyping it up, but this really was where the story started to get convoluted. Before this point it was actually pretty easy to follow for me.

I’m also not fond of the retcon on Organization XIII’s goals.

Also I guess Riku is more special than Sora now? Not that I’m complaining.

Kingdom Hearts - 0.2 Birth by sleep -A fragmentary passage-

This game fixed Aqua and ruined Mickey. I mean, it’s pretty. And Aqua is life. But what the hell did you do to Mickey, Nomura?

You mean to tell me that Aqua was there the whole time and Mickey didn’t try to get her out of the Realm of Darkness? WHAT?! He was there with Riku, and Mickey didn’t even so much as mention Aqua to him? She’s literally there on the beach!

On the other hand though, Aqua’s VA now does a pretty decent job. Aqua herself is given a lot more to do and think about. Her character really benefits from this title. She’s not my favorite character, but I totally get why she’s a fan favorite.

Also terrible excuse to get Sora back to Lvl 1 is terrible.

Kingdom Hearts X Back Cover

On its own, I actually like this. It’s a pretty solid story on how the Keyblade War first sparked.

Yes, the foretellers are idiots who were obviously being played by the Master of Masters, but I think the way they fell out is nicely told. I also think that was the intent of the story. To show how dependent these guys were on the Master and how incompetent they were, so much so that the moment the Master disappears everything goes haywire.

I am a bit reluctant on this as a piece of the Kingdom Hearts story though. More specifically when it pertains to the Dark Seeker Saga. I don’t like how this was shown to us before KH3. Because even though I’m new to the series, I can tell a crazy storyteller when I see one. And Nomura’s incessant need of referencing every single piece of content in KH will rear its ugly head in KH3.

This shit is gonna matter, but it clearly has no place in the story told so far. Yes, it shows the beginnings of the Kayblade War, which is Xehanort’s end goal. But now we have ANOTHER bad guy to look out for in the Master of Masters and what the hell is in the black box, cuz I can assure it will appear in KH3. Isn’t this a bit too much to tack on just before the release of the game that supposedly ends the saga?

And don’t get me started on the fuckton of continuity problems the whole mobile game shabang brings.

Looking onto Kingdom Hearts III

On the whole though, I’m getting this game. If I had to equate it to something it would be to Infinity War in how it is going to converge all of the currently ongoing plotlines. Everything is leading up to this.

That in and of itself is good enough to generate hype, but there are other things that I’m looking forward to in the game.

- The gameplay (again, haven’t actually played any of the games yet, this will be my first experience)

- Playing as Kairi (wasn’t particularly happy with her lack of screentime despite her status as a MC)

- Sora’s goal to help Roxas (and I believe the others connected to him by extension)

- Visiting the Pixar worlds (this stuff looks so good, it looks exactly the same as the movies)

- The epic team-up of all the trios

- The music (of course)

- And probably some other stuff that I can’t remember right now.

May your heart be your guiding key