#i had a very nice lunch with coworker ben + one of my kids is doing rly good in math

[desire-mona]

today was a good day and i am feeling love in my heart for the important people around me. i will be ordering sushi about this

[btsslowburnfic]

BTBY Chapter 5

Series Summary: For Namjoon, the moment he set his sights on being the #1 rapper, he pushed the symbol to the side and hated it. Love should be chosen, not forced on you. He didn’t believe in fate and this mark on his wrist was a big “fuck you” to all that.

Chapter Summary: Practice Day 2. There’s some electricity in the air.

Previous chapter found here 

The morning goes as normal as it can for you. The studio is a little hectic with the extra clients from Robert’s studio but everyone is very cool about the changes.  You teach 2 yoga classes and sub out pilates. You decide to watch the BTS interviews while in your office; purely for professional purposes. Clearly. You hear a knock on the door, “Come in!” you yell as you scoop more oatmeal into your mouth. It’s Xavier.

“Hey babe,” he says carrying coffees.

“You are the best!” you yell from your desk. He looks over at the TV. 

“Oh yes, I like this.” he says as he watches the performance.

You laugh, “Oh my God you brat.” you walk to the other side of the desk and grab the iced coffee. “But...I’m not complaining either.

“Are you coming to my class?” he asks, stretching as he sits his drink on your desk.

“Yeah, my arm feels better, I’ll just baby it.” 

“Is lunch catered today? I can’t remember.”  he continues to do some warm up stretches.

“No. BTS is having lunch on the set of their last show so we’re on our own. Let’s get something delivered to Robert’s. We have to head there right after your class to meet the backup dancers. What do you want? I’ll schedule it now.” 

“What’s for dinner?” he asks.

You pull up the catering order “It looks like a Korean/Italian/American blend. I think each guy just  said what they wanted. There is no theme to this menu,” you laugh.

“Just order some burritos. Get one for Rafael too. And Joe. He might stop by.”

“Oooo your boyfriend and your bias in one place? Are you going to be able to handle that much sexiness?” you joke as you start typing in the food order.

He laughs, “ Honey please, Joe sat down with me last night and we watched like a hundred of their videos, why else do you think he’s going to stop by? Anyways. Enough about me…...Any updates on YOUR soulmate front? Did you tell Ben? Bribe a hotel staff member?” Xavier asks.

You audibly groan. “No,no, and I’m poor, what the hell am I gonna bribe someone with? Free Pilates class? I don’t think there’s going to be much to update considering my soulmate clearly doesn’t want anything to do with me. And I haven’t told Ben. If I tell him I’d want to do it in person and I haven’t seen him yet.”

“What do you mean, “if”?”

“We agreed that we didn’t care about that thing when we started dating.” you shrug.

“Can’t we try and solve the mystery though?!?! You tracked him down to the hotel. Maybe we can go stake out the lobby or something….”

“That probably means he’s visiting from out of town and I’m never going to see him again. And we have a packed day. Dance class, set up the studio while we shovel burritos into our faces, and then rehearse with the back up dancers, and then rehearse with everyone.” You pack your half-lies into the truth about your full day. And you feel a little guilty. Maybe you should tell him. Maybe. Fuck it.

“Annnndddd I sort of already found out who it is?”

“WHAT?! WHAT WHAT WHAT!?!?!?! How? Did you go spy without me!??!?! How you dare (how you dare how you dare)” he gets distracted for a second breaking out into song. “But seriously, WHAT?!?!”

You are suddenly very sweaty and nervous as you try to form the words…”It’s uh...someone in BTS.”

“WHAT WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!” he grabs your shoulders, coming face to face with you. “Are you being serious right now or are you fucking with me?!”

“Unfortunately I am being serious.”

“That means one of them is secretly an asshole...which one of them could it……” he trails off for a second, lost in thought, “Holy shit it’s RM isn’t it??!?!” he whispers dramatically as he pieces together the awkwardness of yesterday.

Your silence and scrunched up face confirm it.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah.”

“WOW”

“Yeah.”

“But he’s so nice and cool.”

You sigh, “Yeah to you and everyone else. Apparently he hates the whole “soul mate” thing on principle which is fine by me. I just need to get through these next few days and then we can part ways and continue on with our lives as normal.” you say. Like it’s the simplest thing in the world. If only. Xavier’s alarm goes off signaling 15 minutes to class.

“Well, way to drop a bomb on me right before class darling.” he jokes as he gathers up his phone and studio keys.

“I know, right? How do you think I felt walking into our meeting or that car yesterday?” you also gather your belongings. “36 more hours. Let’s just get through this.”

--------------------

The backup dancers all arrive on time and are prepped and ready. They run the dances several times through with Xavier. All of you had rehearsed a few times last week after Xavier’s dance class so the only real challenge today would be to run it with the group. You were glad you had got most of the dancers you requested; they were professionals who wouldn’t act like a bunch of idiots in front of famous people. Unlike Xavier. Who kept checking his watch.

“Are they here yet? I wanna see….” he says, peering down the hallway.

“Oh my God, it’s been ten minutes since you last checked. They are on a tight schedule and not supposed to be here yet. And see what?”

“The sparks of attraction and forbidden romance between you and RM.”

“Ew. No. Get away from me.” you shove him back into the studio. “And stop saying things, people might hear you. We are taking this shit to the grave.” you pull him close to you “TO THE GRAVE.” you hold up your pinky for a promise.

“Nope. I’m not promising shit.” he says and hops over to the console to talk to Rafael. 

Dammit. Oh well. At least one of you was enjoying this. You thought telling someone else would give you some relief, but so far it had just done nothing. If anything you were more nervous today because you’d had time to anticipate what this evening and tomorrow would be like. Ughhh. You go down to the kitchen and grab some coffee and graham crackers. You scroll through your phone enjoying the brief moments of silence before you go back upstairs and find your mind wandering to RM dancing yesterday and you feel your face flush.  You wish you could stop yourself but like with most things, the more you try not to think about them, the more you do. Dammmmit. You make sure light snacks and beverages are set up for the backup dancer break and head upstairs to relieve them for an hour. 

“Ok everyone! You have about an hour break. Please stay on premise. There are snacks and drinks on floor one as well as your green-room. Remember, if anyone takes pictures or recording once the band gets here, you are fired. This time it is written explicitly in our contract with them, got it?” you hear a bunch of “yeah’s” from the crowd. Like you said earlier, these were professionals in LA, they knew the drill. “Ok, I will come get you all when it’s time to rehearse again. Break.” you say, dismissing them.

“They look really good, great job Xavier,” you say as you walk over to the front of the room.

“Thanks! I can’t wait to see it all together.” he responds. “What do you need help with?” 

“I just have to get the lav mics set up again but they’re ready from yesterday You’ve been dancing for hours so why don’t you go grab some water?” you say.

“Okie dokie doll. Come grab me when you need me,” he says as he picks up his satchel and heads downstairs.

“Rafael, do you need anything?” you ask your other coworker.

“Me?Nope. Just looking forward to the group getting here so I can do more than just look pretty.” he smiles at you.

“You know what, same?” you laugh. 

“Do you need anything from downstairs?” he asks as he steps down from the booth.

“No, I’m fine, thanks!” You wave him away as you get the room reset in preparation for the group’s arrival. You put on some BTS music while you clean up random water bottles and towels. 

You are in your own zone singing along when you look up and see RM standing in the doorway and you give a light shriek. “Shit fuck. Sorry. You scared me.” You scurry over to the console and turn the music off.

“Nice taste in music,” he smirks at you.

“Thanks, just doing my research. You’re here early.” you say double checking your watch. 

He fumbles with his hands and seems way less confident than usual and you instantly wonder what the heck is going on. He seems so much different from yesterday, “Yeah. They'll be here soon. I just, uh. Wanted to talk to you. Now that I've had time to kind of process everything. "

"Oh. " you are extremely shocked. 

" I just want you to know that I don't dislike you. You're a great producer and you seem like a really nice person. Anyone would be lucky to have you as their soul mate. I'm just not into… that." he says as he looks mostly down and off to the side. 

You take a deep breath. This is not what you were expecting today. "Well thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Like I said, the whole thing is kind of weird and shitty for me too. You're a cool dude and you know, famous and hot, but I'm also not into the whole destiny thing. And apparently you’re not a total asshole." you agree as you continue to pick up the room. You hear him chuckle," What? "

"You think I'm hot,"

"Oh shut up, I'm sure you hear it all day, everyday from the internet." you tease as you wrap up the garbage bag." Here, I'll unlock your guys’ dressing room for you." you lead him down the hallway. "Can I grab you anything from the kitchen while you wait?” 

"No thanks, I'm going to read for a bit and yeah they should be here in about half an hour" 

You stand in the doorway for a minute to make sure everything is set up for the arrival. You suddenly become extremely aware of the fact RM is still standing right behind you in the doorway. “Ok well, I’ll bring the other up when they get here.” you feel your face blushing as you brush past him. It feels like you just got zapped by electricity. You ignore it and head downstairs to clean up after the backup dancers.

The rest of the afternoon goes according to plan with the group arriving and practicing solo again, with the dancers, and then with full audio and music. It looks amazing and you are impressed but also super irritated because you SHOULD be able to watch this at the actual venue tonight, not at a gym studio. 

Xavier sneaks up behind you during one of the breaks. “Soooo…...how’s it going?”

“I think they look amazing! Don’t you?”

“Yeah yeah they look fine. I meant about the other thing. You know….that thaaaaaanggg.” he wiggles his eyebrows.

“Oh God. No. There is nothing.”

“....don’t tell me that, he keeps staring at you.”

“Yeah probably because I’m the director. Everyone is staring at me.” you roll your eyes. 

“Really? Nothing new?” he asks and you sigh. 

“Oh my god, fiiiiiine. Here, let’s go get some coffee.” you grab a mic “Ok everyone, grab some water if you want and meet back here in ten for our last 2 sets and then we’ll review the plan for tomorrow. Break!” 

You grab Xavier’s arm and head down to the kitchen. “Coffee?” you ask.

“It’s 8 pm.” he responds.

“...iced coffee?” you amend.

“No. I don’t know how you can do that.” he wrinkles his nose at your late night caffeine habit.

You shrug and walk with him down the hallway to the locker room and shut the door, locking it. You give him an overview of what RM had said to you earlier in the afternoon. 

“I knew he wasn’t an asshole. The internet never lies.” 

“Ok but he WAS an asshole yesterday,” you roll your eyes and sip some coffee. “And then he accidentally touched me and it felt like I was mildly electrocuted and I kind of liked it and I AM CONFUSED.”

Xavier starts to laugh at you, “Yeah well that’s because everything with your soulmate is more intense. It goes along with the emotions and pain. What feels good also feels REALLY good if you know what I mean.”

“I touched him yesterday when putting his lav mic on and nothing happened soooo i don’t think your theory works but ok.” You pull out your phone to check the time.

“Oh no honey, my theory is spot on. And I predict if he wasn’t leaving in a few days y’all would be all up on each other. Bye Ben. Bye BTS. Hello sexy soulmate time.”

“Um No. Rude. I have a boyfriend. Also catering is here.” you put your phone back in your pocket.

“I HaVe a BoYfrIenD…” Xavier mocks you jokingly and you smack him as the two of you exit the locker room.

30ish hours. You could make it 30ish hours. NEXT CHAPTER

[yessoupy]

the @imetyouonljpodcast episode this week gave me lots of thoughts and feelings about star wars. more like, reminded me of all my thoughts and feelings around my first fandom. thus, I decided to write my own journey into and throughout star wars fandom, and what it means to me. buckle up, this story spans decades.

my very first memory of anything star wars-related is a yoda puppet that my grandmother had. it had to be from the original run of the movies, because I was maybe 4 in my first memory of it, and i was born in '86. my sisters and I loved it, and one of our cousins was deathly scared of it so we'd chase him around the house with it.

my second memory of star wars was going to the movie store with my dad and sisters and seeing our favorite yoda on the cover of a VHS. "yoda yoda yoda! daddy, it's yoda!!! can we get it?" we were holding up the display cover for return of the jedi. dad said no, we couldn't get that one yet because we had to watch them in order. so we rented a new hope and all I remember was falling asleep while artoo and threepio were trundling across the tatooine desert sands. at five I guess I was too young.

in early 1997 the special editions of the original trilogy were aired in theaters and I was in 4th grade. dad took us to see one of them (I think empire, at some point we'd finally finished a new hope). at school that grading period I sat next to a boy named mark and he noticed I was drawing little x-wing silhouettes on my paper. "you like star wars too?" he asked. when I said yes, he declared that because of my name, he was going to call me skywalker. that's the name on the back of my high school letter jacket.

in fall of 1998 I started the 6th grade and I came home from school one day to a hardbound book my mom had checked out for me from the library. heir to the empire by timothy zahn. mom pointed out where it said on the cover it was a trilogy, and I could get the other books when I finished this one. she hadn't found the young jedi knights series for me. she'd checked out a GROWN-UP star wars book.

in spring of 1999 the phantom menace came out and my parents' friend took me to see it on opening day because neither of them were free and I HAD to go that day. later on that year she took me to a star wars exhibit at the museum of fine arts. that was also the first time I saw a monet and a renoir. the exhibit had costumes (real costumes!!!) from the original trilogy and the newest prequel. I bought a book about the myth of star wars in the museum gift shop.

I read every expanded universe book our local library had, which was a lot. I had a lot to catch up on, too, since heir to the empire had been published in 1992. you never saw me at school without a star wars book. I read while walking in the hallways, even. in 6th grade I read during lunch, since I was in varsity orchestra with 7th and 8th graders and was terribly shy. they'd tell me I should socialize at lunch, not read my books, but... I wanted to read. I had a lot to learn. I have a lot to know.

I was in 7th grade when I read vector prime, the first in the new series. my first class of the day was science, and the boy I had a crush on was in that class. we had DEAR time at the beginning of that class - drop everything and read. not a hardship for me. that day, I read the part of the book where chewbacca was killed. I looked up, astonished. heartbroken. I locked eyes with the boy I liked. he nodded at the book and I showed him the cover. he nodded sympathetically. "they killed chewie," I whispered. he said "I know."

I wrote original characters in star wars fan fiction when I was about 13. I had an internet friend named rachel who lived in brisbane. then there was dave and 'roswell' who gave me ideas for my story. I loved being able to talk about the wide world of star wars with other people. we used aol instant messenger and email. my username in those days had 'skywalker' in it. I am pretty sure we met in an aol chatroom. I didn't find much of use on the official star wars site and I have probably visited it fewer than 10 times since 1999.

I read those books all through middle and high school. they were my christmas presents and my birthday presents. I moved into our family beach house after college. it sounds really nice but I didn't have running water because it was the summer after Ike hit. I would go to the used book store on 23rd street and buy a stack of star wars books and read them while I waiting for calls to interview for a teaching position. weekends I'd go into town to stay at a friend's house and help her with wedding stuff. I'd shower there, too. that's where my new stash of star wars books started, with me catching up on the legacy of the force series I hadn't read in college and then finishing up through the fate of the jedi as those came out. I felt that I had grown up with these characters. I remembered when kyp was just an orphan han rescued, when jacen and jaina were five years old, when corran horn had no wife, no kids, and was just finding out who his family was. I had capital o opinions about what color lightsaber i would have and why (silver; bc corran), I knew the geography of the galaxy and where everyone was from and my favorite planet was dathomir because women ruled it. I knew all of these characters' histories and motivations and the difficult decisions they'd made and had to live with. I loved them.

i never ventured into the online fandom space for star wars, even after I'd found other online fandom spaces, because I didn't feel like there was anything anyone could add to it for me. I was satisfied with all I'd gotten. sure, favorite characters had been killed (after chewie, the one who stung most was Mara, luke's wife), but people die. and in such a long-running series spanning so many years and trillions of miles of space... you come to expect it.

people would ask me ALL THE TIME when the sequels were coming out and I said never. then, disney bought star wars. initially I was excited (tears of joy happy) to have sequels confirmed. my mind raced, imagining a trilogy centered on the events surrounding jacen's descent to the dark side. the original actors would be the right age for that. who could play jacen?

then, the announcement came that the canon was now 'legends' and they wouldn't be taking any of it into account when writing the sequels BUT that didn't mean we wouldn't see old canon favorites. they announced adam driver as the villain and I thought "jacen." I held onto the idea that this knowledge I had, these years of knowing these stories, would still be worth something. that I'd be able to add new information to my mental bookshelves and maps. that my universe would expand further.

the force awakens was a bitter disappointment. I was upset from the crawl, leia's title making it clear to me that she wasn't chief of state, she wasn't the mother to three children, han wasn't her husband, and all of her history I'd grown to love really was gone. what I saw was the older version of a woman I'd met when she was 18 and hadn't seen her since her early twenties. I didn't know her.

I didn't know the galaxy, either. starting with the new jedi order series, a map of the galaxy was included in the front of each book with the planets named so you knew where everything was happening. the new galaxy was bare. it was small and knowable. while the hosnian prime system was destroyed in the movie, I'd never known it, and all the planets I DID know were similarly blasted out of memory. where was dathomir and its fierce warrior witches? if their planets were gone so were their people.

as the movie trudged on, a retelling of a new hope, I kept thinking, "at least let his name be jacen." I hung my hopes on this sith character being han and leia's son and sharing that name of the boy I'd known and the man who'd grown up to turn to the dark side. at that first shout of 'BEN!' I was angry. Ben?? that was the name of LUKE'S son! that was MARA'S child! Ben??? with three letters jacen solo and ben skywalker were also dead to the galaxy.

I know, I know. I should get over it. I AM thankful for poe dameron. the x-wing books were always my favorite. poe was familiar to me the way other new characters weren't. he was part of the new republic navy. I knew what that was. he flew an x-wing. I knew what that was.l and what company manufactured them. he was from yavin IV, I knew where that was and what it looked like. finn was a stormtrooper, yes, but the empire had not stolen children to be raised as stormtroopers. they were recruited like any other position. his story wasn't real to me, it wasn't something I could easily accept. and the idea that the new republic just LET the first order rise? leia's new republic would NEVER. but leia wasn't chief of state in this universe. leia hadn't had that power.

I read a lot of articles about the force awakens and the reactions to it, and never saw myself in any of them. the star wars fanboys whom I'd never known were painted as being angry because their fan knowledge was useless and "boo-hoo poor widdle fanboys" they would be mocked, rightfully. but that's why I was angry, ultimately. everyone I knew and loved was dead. worse, they'd never existed. "what do you think will happen?" some unsuspecting coworker would ask. I'd shrug, but inside I was yelling "who the fuck knows! my favorite characters don't exist anymore. nothing I know as this person you know as SKYWALKER means anything anymore."

it only got worse from there. One day I spent four hours figuring out how far the casino planet was from the drifting ships in the last jedi and doing math to figure out how long it would REALLY take to get there, using old canon star wars physics. I couldn't suspend my disbelief during that movie. everything was wrong. (the other space physics quibble I had was from TFA when poe is using comms while in hyperspace, and dropping out on a command and not... when nav told him to?? you'd fly right through a star!! were they HOVERING in hyperspace? none of it made sense.) I knew too much and too little to enjoy it.

TROS was a narrative mess already retconning new canon and I decided that I would only keep what I liked about the new canon (poe and his family) and pretend the old canon is all there is. one day I'll write the story of poe being part of the storied rogue squadron being sent by leia's new republic to put down the fascist upstarts at the edge of the unknown regions. one day.

one more quick story -- i met my college friend’s three kids for the first time when the oldest was 6. i’d sent a toy lightsaber as a gift when he was born, because i believe every child should get their first lightsaber from a skywalker, and his father had shown him the movies when he turned 4. when i walked into the house i said hello and he said, “i have some questions about star wars.”

we sat on the couch with the tfa visual dictionary, a book he’d gotten out of the library. every question he had was an excellent question, and i couldn’t answer any of them. “why does his lightsaber look like that? and why does he have the extra blades?” 

“well, kiddo, let’s see what it says here about how lightsabers are made. i used to know all about it, but they changed everything on me.”

---

what i love about star wars since disney bought it:

poe dameron, cassian andor (and all of rogue one, i got over the fact that the movie wouldn’t be about rogue squadron it was PERFECT), solo (a fucking DELIGHT), the mandalorian, and i’m sure the cassian andor live action will be amazing and i’ll love it. 

[cagestark]

-Defender-

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six

Read here on AO3.

Warnings: homelessness, poor!peter. Adult!Peter. Mean!Avengers. Not Steve Rogers friendly. Also, in this AU I’ve taken it upon myself to change some aspects of Spider-Man (not too many, no worries). Enjoy. 

-

The first time he meets the spider-kid, it is after hours on the eighty-second floor of the main building of Stark Tower.

But the kid is on the wrong side of the glass.

“FRIDAY, run that by me again,” Tony says. He’s in his pajamas—a pair of hastily pulled on pants with not even boxers underneath, donned only when FRI sounded the alarm. The holographic video plays in front of him, but what it shows him makes no sense. It isn’t even possible. “What exactly am I seeing?”

“Fifteen minutes ago sensors on the first floor were triggered, suggesting a human presence. On closer examination, the intruder seems to be scaling the side of the building using grip enhancements that I can’t identify.”

“Okay, but is he doing what I think he’s doing?”

“Do you think he appears to be washing the windows, boss? Because all signs point to such.”

As they speak, the figure (barefoot—barefoot and more than eighty floors above Manhattan) dressed head-to-toe in black including a dark balaclava that obscures their features, pulls a squeegee from where it is secured to a multi-purpose belt around their waist. They wipe the glass clean in long, smooth strokes, flicking the water and soap off behind them. The way they move across the glass gives him goosebumps, makes him shiver with terror and awe.

He takes the elevator down from the Penthouse, passing the Avengers’ floor where the others are sleeping peacefully (God knows he doesn’t want to wake any of them up). There’s no indication that this person is a threat—and if they were a threat, this is hardly a dastardly plan.

The eighty-third floor is dark and quiet. It’s an accounting floor where they work to manage his assets and the company’s assets. He passes cubicles on his left and right, and though he visits this floor maybe once a month or less, he feels at home here. The entire building is home to him, and he knows it the way Steve and Bucky knew their tiny homes in Brooklyn, the way Clint knows the farm his wife maintains.

The south wall is entirely glass. Tony stands back in the shadows to watch as the dark figure crawls from east to west. They become preoccupied when they realize that their bare feet are leaving smudges on the glass, and their floundering is—well, it’s almost cute.

Tony approaches that glass cautiously, unwilling to startle person and send them plummeting to their death. When they pass by, squeegee pressed to the glass, the freeze with their face just inches from Tony’s. The balaclava has goggles on over it to obscure the person’s eyes, but Tony doesn’t need to see those eyes to know they are wide with alarm.

Grabbing a paper and pen from a nearby cubicle, he writes a quick message and presses it to the glass.

MEET ME ON THE ROOF.

They stare at the paper for so long that Tony begins to question their literacy. But then they attach the squeegee back to their belt and lift the bottom half of the balaclava. They reveal a cut, angular jaw and thin lips. Leaning in, they come so close to the glass that Tony thinks they’re going to kiss right where Tony’s mouth is—but instead they heave a silent breath, and in the fog of it, write with one bare finger: NO.

“Are you kidding me, right now?” Tony mutters. He uncaps the pen again, holding it in his teeth, and writes on the other side of the paper. TRESPASSING!

They breathe again, write: BUSY. Then they squeegee over the words and continue on like they aren’t dangling 1200 feet above Manhattan.

“Boss?” FRIDAY says. “I believe I’ve pegged the identity of our intruder. It wasn’t until he wrote on the glass that I was able to get a decent map of his fingerprints; all other readings keep coming back inconclusive. His name is Peter Parker. He was hired by Stark Industries in early August as a member of the maintenance department. Twenty years old, native of Queens, emergency contact is one May Parker, also of Queens—”

“Thank you for solving the mystery, Velma, any ideas on why he’s acting like an oversized microfiber cloth on my building’s glass at the devil’s hour?

“Jinkies, Shaggy, I’m an intelligent digital assistant, not a mind reader.”

“Shaggy? You’re grounded, baby. I’m a Fred guy all the way.”

“If anything, boss, you’re most similar to Daphne. But according to Mr. Parker’s recently opened emails, the maintenance department was mandated just yesterday to wash the windows on the main, north, and south towers. It appears Mr. Parker is getting a head—and unorthodox—start.”

“This maniac works for me?” Tony mutters. He follows along the window while the kid cleans, though he loses him when Parker crosses around the corner of the building and disappears onto the west side. “How the hell is he sticking to the window, FRI?”

“I can’t tell, boss. Diagnostics can’t find anything between his hands and the windows, but whenever he is sticking, the characteristics of his fingerprints change. It appears he grows scopulae.”

“Scopulae? As in, spider hair?” Tony stands at the window for several long minutes, lost in thought. At last, he heads back towards the elevator, shivering in the air conditioning. Instead of asking FRIDAY to take him to the floor Parker is currently cleaning (Floor 69, as of now), he tells her to take him back up to the penthouse. If the kid’s enhanced, then he’s safer on climbing the walls than anyone else Tony knows.

Not to mention, the windows are fucking spotless.

-

Peter is up to his eyes in the HVAC unit of zone 3 in the Stark Tower main building when his ears pick up the sound of the elevator door opening on the other side of the floor. With a building as tall as Stark Tower, heating and cooling takes division of the building into several zones with their own separate units. Zone three is for floors twenty-four through thirty-six—and twenty-four in particular, where the HVAC home base is, is a marketing floor. People here come and go without noticing him, walking briskly and talking on their phones. The elevators open and close all day long, but something about this particular incoming occupant has the office going silent.

The hairs raise all over Peter’s arms and legs. Danger? he wonders. But then he hears the murmuring of voices, a name said over and over in reverence: Mr. Stark. Tony Stark.

Tony Stark. The man who had caught Peter scaling the side of his supertall last night. Emblazoned in Peter’s memory is the image of the man coming out of the darkness on the other side of the glass, wearing nothing but some low-slung pajama pants. And who knew that Tony Stark, forty-plus years old still had the remnants of a six pack? Peter had been distracted for the rest of the night, even almost losing his grip around floor 21. Which wouldn’t have killed him (probably) but would have been very shocking to anyone walking down below on the street.

And now the man is on Peter’s floor? Well. It doesn’t take a genius to know what’s coming.

“Fuck,” Peter mutters. He immediately starts packing away his tools, tucking his hat down lower on his forehead to obscure his brow. His senses activate accidentally and suddenly a wrench is stuck to his hand and he shakes and shakes but for the life of him, it won’t come off—

“Well, hello.”

The wrench goes flying out of Peter’s hand, and Tony Stark barely manages to dodge it as it careens by him, hitting the wall and denting the plaster. They stare at each other, eyes wide, neither of them expecting such a thing to have happened and not being entirely sure how to proceed. The man is even more handsome in the light, eyes like the whiskey he drinks, hair immaculate and threaded with grays around the temples, lips full and curving into a smile. Fuck, Peter has had a crush on this guy since his Uncle Ben took him to a Stark Expo more than a decade ago. Seeing him in the flesh is almost too much to handle.

“Sorry,” Peter mutters, going to pick up the wrench.

“Don’t be. You’d be surprised how often I get that reaction.” He sticks out a hand, and Peter’s got no fucking clue what Tony wants him to do with it until the older man wiggles his fingers. For a business guy by day (and a suited superhero by night), Stark’s hands are calloused and strong. He looks Peter in the eye, gaze soft and unassuming, like he isn’t the most powerful man in the business world, like Peter isn’t some gum he’s tracked in on his shoe.

“I’m sorry for the wall, too,” Peter says. “I’ll fix that.”

“No, you won’t.”

Peter’s shoulders hunch. Of course, he won’t. Stark’s going to fire him. Peter will be back to shelter hopping and picking pockets until he finds another job. At least now he might have some references from coworkers who all seem to have taken to Peter, the youngest of their troop. The quiet woman Sam saves him a seat every lunch hour in the breakroom, and Carlito has started asking his wife to pack him two sandwiches so he can give one to Peter. Everyone has been so nice.

Peter should have known it wouldn’t last.

“You’ll be much too busy, I imagine,” Stark says. He takes the toolbox from Peter, like Peter is some dainty girl who can’t carry her own books to class, or something. Like a gentleman might. Peter is keenly aware of everyone’s gaze on them while the older man escorts him to the elevator. It must look ridiculous: Peter in his dirty work clothes, sneakers taped together, walking beside Tony Stark.

“Are you calling the cops on me?” Peter asks when the elevator door closes. He can tell that it’s moving upwards and not downwards, though—

“Why would I do that?” Stark asks. He’s wearing tinted glasses, and it’s a crime, because he’s so fucking pretty Peter would kill to see his face without them.

“Because of last night.”

Stark’s face smooths out. “I wasn’t sure if we were going to pretend like I didn’t know it was you—but I guess this makes it all a lot easier on my part. No, I’m not calling the cops on you.”

The elevator opens on the most lux penthouse Peter has ever seen: modern decore with glass tables and marble countertops and windows that show Manhattan below them like a toy city that Peter could step out and crush if he so felt like. The wood floors are polished and gleaming under Peter’s disgusting tennis shoes, and he’s never felt more out of place and more at home all at once.

“Thirsty? Hungry? I’ve got leftovers, if you don’t mind my germs. If you do mind my germs, I can order in for you. What do you like? Any food allergies?” Stark’s head pops up from where it had disappeared into the refrigerator. With narrowed eyes, he assesses Peter’s silence.

“Water would be—that’d be cool.”

“Sparkling? Distilled? Alkaline?”

“Uh—tap?”

“Excuse me, tap?” Stark shuts the door with a thud. “Now I am calling the cops. Seriously. You? Sit.”

Peter sits at the stool tucked beneath the island countertop. The marble cools his heated palms when he presses them against it. Despite his words, the man does not make any move to call anyone. He moves a Styrofoam dish to the microwave and heats up something that smells lovely, like marinara and basil. He cracks open a bottle of water and places it in front of Peter. It’s the crispest, most tasteless water he’s ever had. Probably harvested from mountainous glaciers or something.

At last Stark joins him on the other side of the island, sitting the dish of—yes, pasta—between them. He hands Peter a fork. “Dig in, kid,” he says. “I don’t have cooties.”

What the fuck, Peter thinks as he shares pasta with Tony Stark. Unbidden to his mind comes a scene from some Disney movie, when the two dogs share the piece of spaghetti and it makes them kiss. Just the idea of it has Peter staring resolutely at the wall of cabinets, chewing mechanically, hoping his face isn’t as red as it feels.

“Shall we talk shop while we eat?” Stark asks, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin.

Peter shrugs. He has no idea why he’s here. No idea what shop this man could possibly have to talk about with the likes of him.

“You’ve got mad skills,” he says at last. Stark lays his phone flat on the table and from it comes a holographic projection. Peter watches himself in 3-D scale the side of Stark Tower. Yeah, he looks pretty cool—except for the squeegee. That’s kind of dorky. “How are you doing that?”

“It’s—a long story,” Peter says, rubbing his thumb against the prongs of his fork. Society has made a lot of advancements regarding its treatment of enhanced humans, but there’s still a minority of people who are afraid in their ignorance. It was on the news last week when Peter was killing time in a McDonalds before he could arrive at work to Stark Tower: an enhanced teenager was murdered by some concerned townsfolk who believed she was destroying the crops with her weather-controlling capabilities.

He can feel Stark’s gaze on him. It makes him bristle, makes his shoulders hunch. Peter doesn’t do well with authority—that is, most authority seems to just use and abuse Peter. He’s suddenly keenly aware of how vulnerable he is right now: a twenty-year-old with no family, no friends to come looking for him, in the penthouse of the most powerful man in the world who has perfect blackmail material on him. Peter’s palms start to sweat, and he wipes them on his pants.

“Are you going to hurt me?” Peter asks, voice low and quiet. He can’t look. But he has to know—has to prepare himself.

Stark stands, abruptly. “No—Parker. Peter. Look at me.”

Peter does, his jaw clenched and eyes flat. He might be scared, but he’s no coward. Only, Stark doesn’t look anything like a man who is about to hurt him. His mouth is downturned in the softest expression of tragedy that Peter’s ever seen. “I’ve just realized,” Stark says. “This won’t do. I need Burger King.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Burger King. Don’t you know that I’m an eccentric billionaire, doomed to give in to my every whim? And my whims want a Whopper. Come on. Grab your metaphorical coat—or your literal coat. Should we stop by the maintenance floor?” Stark strolls to a closet and rifles through it, pulling out a long, dark, very expensive looking coat. Peter can almost feel it under his fingers, it must be so soft. “Kid? Are you hearing me?”

“I don’t have a coat.”

“Alright, take one of mine. Let’s go. My stomach waits for no one.”

When Peter tries to step onto the elevator behind Stark without grabbing a coat, the man insists on going back in and finding one for him. The billionaire puts him in a half dozen coats made of the soften Italian wools and genuine cashmeres, before settling on one that’s very similar to Mr. Stark’s, only with a collar that Peter can pulls up around his throat to keep the wind away. It smells clean, but faintly of cologne, like the man has worn it out recently and put it away without washing it. Thank God the coat is thick enough to hide the semi he sports.

They end up hiding in a booth in the back of a Burger King two blocks away, both of them with Whoppers and Large Fries and Cokes. Peter inhales his—an enhanced appetite, not to mention the general lack of food he suffers from on a typical day’s basis—but Tony keeps up, holding his own. He takes out his phone and sits it on the table again, tapping several buttons, and suddenly Peter’s head throbs a little, senses spiking.

“Is that bothering you? I’m using it to scramble anything we say from being overheard by anyone around us, but we can do it the old-fashioned way if we must—you know. Whispering.”

“It’s fine—that’s, that’s amazing.”

Stark blinks. “I—thanks. I made it.”

“I figured—how does it work? Can you tell me?”

And the man humors him. Actually humors him, explaining in laymen’s terms even though he might be surprised at the level of conversation Peter could keep up with. When Peter asks a question, the other man grins showing neat, white teeth that Peter would give anything to run his tongue along.

“You’ve been really nice,” Peter says when their food is gone and cups nothing but ice. It’s an understatement, because this is the nicest anyone has treated Peter in a long, long time, and the way Stark talks and looks at him isn’t condescending or pitying. It’s like he sees Peter as a human. “But why am I here? So, you know. About me. What are you going to do?”

“Nothing,” Stark says. “It’s not illegal to be enhanced. And while it is illegal to trespass, mostly it’s very unsafe to do it more than a quarter mile above the ground, so I do ask that anymore night time adventures aren’t spent scaling my building.”

“Okay,” Peter agrees. “I just wanted to make it easier for the other guys. They really look out for me. I didn’t want to make them have to work so hard, when I could do it so easily.”

“That’s very generous of you, Peter. May I call you Peter?”

Peter shrugs.

“I’ll take that as a yes—and you can call me Tony, okay kid? I’m not here to call the cops or to fire you. As a matter of fact, I want to offer you a job. Tentatively.”

“You want to promote me?” Peter asks, brow furrowing.

“It’s hardly a promotion. The hours are longer. The pay is—well, under the table. There’s danger too. Potentially mortal peril.

“Tell me, Peter, what do you know about the Avengers?”

[davalynbaker]

Shady as F*ck [Season 1, Ep. 5]

To recap: In the previous episode, Issa found herself back in Daniel’s face despite successfully avoiding him after an awkward encounter. Lawrence is finding emotional solace in Tasha the bank teller. And I feel like it’s my duty as a citizen of the United States to remind y’all that Molly is dating Jidenna.

This episode was written by Ben Dougan and directed by Melina Matsoukas.

Issa panics about the students knowing about her “Broken Pussy” rap at open mic night. This is the catalyst for her reuniting with Daniel. I think the build-up to get Issa back alone with Daniel was a clunky transition but kids making a meme out of you rapping “Broken Pussy” is embarrassing. So we’ll go with it.

Issa spends the entire day worried about her boss finding out about it. She talks with Lawrence previously, who assures her that the kids won’t remember it. Memes are a dime a dozen. And if you spend any time on any social media platform, you’ll find yourself going along with the extremely fast pace of memeing people. Either way, these bad-ass kids don’t forget it.

Issa takes refuge in Molly to use her fancy attorney skills but this becomes a moment where Molly inserts herself back into Jered’s life to inquire about who could possibly have uploaded the video. Molly’s just using Issa’s plight as an excuse to speak to an ex that clearly she still has feelings for.

I have to say, this was the moment I found myself asking if Molly and Issa were actually as close as the show was trying to convince us but I digress…

Although Molly is calling up Jered, she’s in the middle of a situationship with Chris (aka Jidenna) and trying very hard to make an unofficial thing official. Through a very awkward exchange of talking but not out loud, Molly invites Chris to an engagement party. From what I can assume, they spent the weekend together after having their first date?

We’re only five episodes in but Molly is very desperate for this particular type of relationship that’s honestly headed nowhere. Her obsession with the man being perfect on paper is actually backfiring on her. Also, men are just dumb. And Molly’s giving them way too much.

While Molly is rekindling her friendship with Jered, Issa is now venting about her “Broken Pussy” problem with Daniel. He promises that he’ll take care of it for her...which is an empty promise to be fair because nobody is doing a modicum of the research required to find who could have shared the picture. He asks her to drop her off at the studio and they end up spending the entire day together. Issa refuses to speak up and say no to Daniel because she simply does not want to. That’s the truth of it. She kept walking around and following behind because that is exactly what she wanted to do. No amounts of freestyle rap in the car or the staff bathroom are going to ever fix that.

Lawrence has lunch with Chad who tells him that he’s getting married. It seems out of the blue because it is and because Chad is the type of man that does not hesitate to do things he feels may be the right choice, even if they might be wrong. Anyway, he asks Lawrence about Issa and marriage and Lawrence says that he’s trying to get his shit together. Chad actually offers some decent advice because he feels like Lawrence is shuffling his feet. If he really wants to be with Issa on paper they could just “get their shit together - together.”

Later on, Tasha the bank teller comes to flirt with Lawrence who politely rejects her advances but feels pretty good about himself knowing that a baddie was throwing it at him. Tasha the Bank Teller IS a baddie.

Molly spends her day getting ready for her coworker’s engagement party while Chris aka Jidenna doesn’t seem invested in actually going. Later at the party though, he swoops in to save the day. Molly is swooning by now because he claims the title of “boyfriend” but later admits that he definitely did not mean that when Molly asked him if he was serious.

The conversation basically went:

Molly: Why did you say that if you didn’t mean it? Chris: Because you needed a win.

I would never let a man, let alone a light-skin one disrespect me like this! But whatever, Molly was pushing up on him to make something out of nothing but he didn’t actually speak up and tell her not to rush into things so this isn’t entirely Molly’s fault. Sometimes, people can smell the desperation and continue to stick around despite that. It’s unhealthy and I never understood doing it as an excuse of not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings because eventually, that will happen. That’s just life. The band aid still pulls the skin no matter how fast or slow you do it.

Hurt, Molly tells him to leave and spends the rest of the night getting drunk. Instead of calling Issa, she goes to Jered’s house for some pity sex. Jered ain’t buying it and puts her ass on the couch to sleep. Jered is really too good for the Insecure universe. Shout out to Jered watching an episode of 'Conjugal Visits' with a nice cameo from Leah A. Williams who played Dolores 'Sister Mary' Clarence on The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.

At Daniel’s studio, Issa attempts to head out but Daniel asks her to stay and have a drink. She stays. Hmm. They reminisce a little bit. Daniel then encourages Issa to rap in the booth. It’s met with hesitation but eventually, she does and finds complete solace in it. The best thing about Daniel is that he really does bring out the best in Issa but also the absolute worst. As we eventually see.

They talk about the hows and whys of why a relationship never came to be and this leads to them being booty-butt naked in his studio having sex. Issa had to have seen this coming, no matter WHAT she says in the future episodes. Whatever the case may be… she’s done it now.

Issa goes into the bathroom to clean up and gets post-nut clarity. Yes girl, you are a dirty ass cheater! One of my favorite songs (St. Beauty’s “Borders”) plays as she has the walk of supreme shame. I mean, she cheated. That shit’s shameful.

My final thought is a controversial one, I liked that the episode ended with Issa cheating. Mainly because I love mess but also because so often, we don’t see female characters make terrible ass decisions like this. As someone who is working on a novel where the female protagonist cheats on her spouse, I really spent years fighting with the decision because I was afraid of how readers would receive her.

It can’t be stated enough that genuinely written characters are like real people. They fuck up. They make really bad choices that come to bite them in the ass later. It was a risky choice, I’m sure but I think Issa Rae and the writers room did something really good here. It speaks about Issa as a person and her relationship with Lawrence, which is honestly still going nowhere at this point. And her inability to listen (based on Molly’s advice falling on deaf ears) when she wants to do something even if it’s a bad decision. It builds characters. And yes, even when the character chooses not to listen to good advice.

Plus, she got hers. And I’ll cheer for that.

Not the cheating though.

[assembledherethevolunteers]

Future Management Chapter 3

A/N: Hi again!  Sorry this took so long.  It’s been a crazy week.  I hope you guys are still enjoying this (and thank you to everyone for the love of my last chapter)! Please let me know what you think of this next part!

 Pairing: Ben Hardy x fem!Reader

Summary: You and Ben Hardy had been together for the better part of a decade.  After hitting a rough patch, the two of you decide to end things. However, one small surprise keeps you two connected more than you thought.

 Warnings: Cursing, angst (I swear it’ll get better), fighting (verbal)

Catch Up: Prologue (https://assembledherethevolunteers.tumblr.com/post/188795655663/future-management)  Chapter 1 (https://assembledherethevolunteers.tumblr.com/post/188846514968/future-management-chapter-1) Chapter 2 (https://assembledherethevolunteers.tumblr.com/post/188923255568/future-management-chapter-2) 

Taglist: @lovebirdy93 @jonesyaddiction @im-an-adult-ish @taylorroger-s @amy-brooklyn99 @springholland @stassaurus  @hahaboop @tcnystqks @bloatedandlonly @doctorwhatwhenandwhere  If I missed you I’m sorry! Please let me know if you want to be added.  

The next morning, Ben and Eliza came with you to the recording.  

Ben had made breakfast, but barely talked to you outside of something for Eliza.  You were wondering how him seeing Jackson again would go if he was still this mad at you, even though he had no right to be mad.  Mostly because you weren’t actually dating Jackson, but also because, just like you had to remind yourself, the two of you weren’t together anymore.  

“Good morning, Y/N,” Jackson smiled at you in the studio.  

“Hi, Mr. Jack!”  Eliza waved from Ben’s arms behind you.  

“Well, hi there, Miss Eliza. How are you doing today, darlin?”

You grinned at her but noticed that Ben’s jaw had tightened.  

“Good! Mummy said we can go home and play princesses after dis!”  

“Well that should be a whole lotta fun, huh?”  

Eliza giggled and shook her head yes.  You watched as Ben moved his arms so that Eliza was even closer to him.  

“Y/N? Jackson?”  A woman with a headset asked.  

“Yes?” You both replied.

“Can you follow me? We’ll get you in hair and makeup.”

“Alright,” you turned to Ben and Eliza.  “Mommy and Mr. Jack have to go with her, but you and Daddy can…”

“Oh, Jaz?”  The woman said to another.  She stopped and looked at the group.  “Can you take these two to Y/N’s dressing room?”  

You saw this ‘Jaz’ woman look Ben up and down and then smile.  You nearly saw red.  

“I sure can, follow me, you two.”  

You gave Eliza a kiss on her cheek.  “Mommy will see you soon, okay?”  

“Okay! Bye, Mummy! Bye, Mr. Jack!” Eliza waved at both of you and then Jaz led them away.  

“She’s really cute,” Jack told you as you followed the woman.  

“Yeah,” you sighed.

“Ben doesn’t seem to like me much,” Jackson said with a dry chuckle.

“It um…takes him a bit to warm up to people.  He’s really a good guy.  A great father.”  You replied as you walked into the hair and makeup area.  

Jackson just hummed noncommittally and sat down in one of the chairs.  The two of you spoke with the cosmetologists as they fixed your makeup and hair.  

The interview was going well.  You and Jackson talked about the movie and how it was working together.  The two of you had always gotten along easily.  It made it easy to work with and do all these interviews.

You were about to wrap up when one of the hosts brought it up.  It wasn’t really off limits, but it still kind of shook you when somebody brought it up.  

“Now, Y/N, how is it being back in London?  You used to live here, yeah?”  

You fidgeted with your hair for just a second, a nervous gesture, before fixing a smile on your face.

“I did, yeah.  I love being here!  It’s so different from New York, but at the same time it’s still that go go go of a big city.  And it’s that same modern feel and yet you know how much history has happened here as well.  It’s beautiful.”  

“That’s very true,” the female host, Holly nodded.  “You sometimes forget how historic this city is.”  

You could tell she was trying to hint to her cohost not to bring it up again.  Thankfully, he picked up on it.  

“It is, indeed, a beautiful city.  Now, back to the film.”  

You and Jackson finished the interview mentioning a part of the book that you wish could’ve been in the movie.  

“Not to give too much away, but there’s this scene towards the end of the novel, in the last couple chapters I think?, and we just couldn’t make it work.  It was written so well on the page and we tried four or five different ways to get it perfect, but we just couldn’t, so we had to scrap it. Maybe that will be an extra on the Blu-Ray or something.”

“I remember that day,” Jackson laughed.  “Everybody was trying to get it exactly like it was on the page.  Maybe if we had just taken a little more creative license it would’ve worked better, but like Y/N said, it was so beautiful on the page that we wanted to do it justice.”  

“Well now we need to know what it is!”  

You looked at Jackson and then gestured for him to continue.  

“Oh great, make me do it,” Jackson nudged you with his arm.  You laughed and pushed him back, letting your hand linger for maybe just a beat too long.  “Again, we don’t want to give too much away, and it’s not like it’s the climax of the film, but Y/N’s character and mine are in their home, and she has a dream.  I’ll leave it at that.”  

“Oooh I remember that part!” The Holly’s voice rose in excitement.  “I loved reading that!”

“Me too!” You matched her tone.  “And we tried, we really did, it just didn’t work with the story we were working on and everybody agreed to let it go because the same thing could be conveyed with a conversation between our characters,” you shrugged and then looked to the audience.  “If you’re one of those people that doesn’t read the book because a movie is coming out, may I suggest breaking that rule just this once?  That scene itself is worth it.”  

The other three on the set vocally agreed with you.  

“Well we can’t wait to see the film, it sounds amazing and you two are just great.  If your chemistry here carried on set, I think we’re in for something great!”  Holly smiled at both of you and then turned to a camera.  

“’See You Around’ comes out next Friday!  Stay tuned and Meghan May will be showing you how to get rid of those pesky earwigs in your garden.”  

The audience applauded and then the same woman that showed you and Jackson hair and makeup appeared.

“And we’re clear!”  

“Thank you both, so much,” you offered your hand to the hosts.  They both took and shook it in turn.  

You and Jackson came off set and Eliza ran right up to you and hugged your leg.  

“Good job, Mummy!”

You bent down, trying to keep your balance in your heels.  

“Thank you, Lovebug! Did you have fun watching Mommy?”

Eliza nodded and then looked up at Jackson.  “You did good too, Mr. Jack.”  

“Thank you, Miss Eliza.”

“Well, we should probably get to lunch.  Eliza will need her nap soon,” Ben’s voice came from a few yards away, a little too loud.

“Daddy! Can Mr. Jack come over to lunch?”  

Jackson looked over at Ben and you noticed Ben’s eyes harden.  

“I don’t think so, Birdie.”

Eliza pouted and looked at you.  

“Mummy?”  

You ran your hand through her hair.  You opened your mouth to answer, but you were cut off.  

“You know what, Miss Eliza?” Jackson drew Eliza’s attention.  “I’ve actually got plans for lunch, but I’ll be sure to see you one more time before I leave.”  

Eliza was still pouting but nodded.  

“Okay, Mr. Jack.”  

You stood up and gave Jack a hug and kissed his cheek.  

“I’ll see you at the premiere tomorrow night?”

“Sure will,” Jackson fixed you with a huge smile.  He smiled down at Eliza.  “I’ll see you soon, Miss Eliza.”  

“Bye, Mr. Jack!” Eliza hugged his legs before moving back to you.  

You bent down and picked her up.  She played with your necklace, already over the crushing disappointment.  

“I’ll see you later,” Jackson said again.  He looked to Ben.  “Nice to see you again, Ben.”  

Ben just waved before Jackson left.  

You shot a glare at Ben before you started making your way out as well.  You and Ben were silent, listening to Eliza talk about one of the nice people that had given her a lollipop (“But Daddy said I can’t have it until lunch”).  

You buckled Eliza into her car seat and then got into the car, still ignoring Ben.  Thank God Eliza kept talking because the tension in the front of the car was palpable.

Lunch wasn’t much better. You made Eliza a turkey sandwich, along with fruit snacks and carrot sticks. You and Ben avoided each other as much as possible.  Once Eliza was done eating, Ben put her down for her nap.  

You thought about pouring yourself some wine but decided alcohol wouldn’t help anything.  Ben walked back down the stairs and then set his hands on the counter.  You watched him for a moment.  

“I don’t like him.”  

You rolled your eyes and folded your arms across your chest.  

“Why?  What has he done to you?”  

Ben looked at you for a long moment.  “Are you sleeping with him?”  

“Ben!” You hissed, trying not to raise your voice for fear of waking Eliza.  

“That’s not an answer.”

“Why does it matter? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not married anymore.”  

Ben opened his mouth a couple times before inhaling sharply through his nose.  

“I know, I just would like to know who is around MY daughter.”

You stared at Ben, dumbfounded.

“First of all, she’s OUR daughter.  Second of all, you’re kidding, right?”

“Look, if she gets attached to ‘Mr. Jack’ and he ends up being a bad guy…”  

“Ben, I’m not dating Jack!” You were getting angry.  Did he honestly think that you would do ANYTHING to hurt Eliza?   That you would let people that would hurt her even be able to LOOK at her?

That made Ben take a moment back and then he cleared his throat.  

“I…I mean, he’s still around her.”

“Yeah! And so are Gwil and Joe and Luc…”

“They’re different!”

“Why?! Because YOU know them?! Last I checked, they were also your coworkers before they were friends and…”

“So you’re comparing my best friends to some guy that you just flirt with and…”

“WE WERE IN A MOVIE TOGETHER!”  You hated yourself for yelling, but you couldn’t stop it.  “YOU KNOW HOW THOSE INTERVIEWS GO! THEY WANT TO SEE YOU GET ALONG WITH YOUR COSTARS!” You were fuming.  He was mad because you got along with your coworker? How dare he use Eliza as an excuse for not liking somebody!  

“WELL YOU PLAYED IT REALLY FUCKING WELL!  HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW IF YOU’RE SLEEPING WITH HIM OR NOT?!”

“MAYBE TAKE MY GODDAMN WORD FOR IT?! OR NOT EVEN WORRY ABOUT IT!”

“HOW AM I NOT SUPPOSED TO WORRY ABOUT IT!?”

“BECAUSE IT’S NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS, THAT’S HOW!  WHY THE FUCK DO YOU CARE IF HE AND I ARE SLEEPING TOGETHER?!”

“BECAUSE I…!”

“Mummy? Daddy?”  You and Ben turned toward Eliza.  She was holding her stuffed ladybug close to her face as she stood at the doorway to the kitchen.  She looked about ready to start sobbing.  

“Oh Birdie, what are you doing awake?” Ben’s voice softened, even though his chest still heaved.  He walked over and picked up Eliza.  You were quickly behind her, rubbing her back.

“I h…heard you and Mummy yelling,” Eliza’s voice shook, full of tears.  

“Oh Lovebug, Mommy and Daddy are sorry,” you cooed, continuing to rub circles on her back. “We um…you know how Mommy and Daddy play pretend?”  You asked her.  That was how you explained what you and Ben did.  It was the easiest explanation for a three-year-old.  

Eliza nodded, tears still threatening to fall.  

“Well, that’s all we were doing.  Playing pretend.”  

“You both said bad words,” Eliza whispered, almost as if she spoke louder she would break whatever tentative peace you and Ben had reached.    

Ben pressed a kiss to her forehead.  

“We did, and we’re sorry, love,” Ben rocked with a Eliza a few moments.  Once she seemed to be calmed down, he asked “Do you want to go upstairs and get some more sleep?”  

Eliza shook her head, burying her face in the crook of Ben’s neck.  

“How about we watch ‘The Princess and the Frog’ and cuddle on the couch?”  You offered.  The Princess and the Frog was her favorite movie and you knew it could soothe her.  

She peeked over at you.

“Can Daddy cuddle too?”

You looked at Ben and then back to Eliza.  Why did she have to look so much like him?  You tucked some of her hair behind her ear.

“Of course, sweetie. Why don’t you and Daddy get comfy and…”

“No, here,” Ben slid Eliza into your arms.  She buried herself deeper in your arms.  You and Ben exchanged a look.  “You and Mummy can get comfy and I’ll get everything ready.”  Ben kissed Eliza’s nose and led you to the living room.  You and Eliza started making a nest of blankets and pillows as Ben got the TV and Blu-Ray player ready.  

“Mummy?”  Eliza asked as you got her wrapped in a blanket.  

“Yes, honey?”  

Eliza was suddenly shy, which was something she never was.  You rubbed her back again.  “What’s the matter, Liza?”

She shook her head as Ben came over with the remote.  

“Ready, lovies?”  

You ignored the term of endearment as you burrowed yourself deeper into the hoard of blankets and wrapped your arms around Eliza.  Ben pressed play and then placed one arm on top of yours and pulling Eliza (and you) closer to his chest.  

If the two of you had still been married, this could’ve been how you spent the last three years. Cuddling on the couch, Eliza between you, watching Disney movies while the dreary English afternoon went by.  Maybe after she was asleep, Ben would take her upstairs and then when he came back downstairs, the two of you would snuggle, just the two of you, maybe finish the movie if it wasn’t over yet.  

Eliza was singing along to the songs, and you noticed Ben was keeping the beat with his thumb near your elbow.  You hated how…normal this all seemed.  

You hated that you ached for this.  

Eliza giggled at the fireflies in the movie started up their song.  The last thing you remembered was Ray and all his family singing “Gonna Take You There” and the feeling of Ben gently rubbing your arm.  

Ben watched as your eyes fluttered closed.  He’d missed that sight.  He’s missed almost everything about you.  Maybe that’s why it had been easier to pick a fight with you about Jackson.  If he thought about the bad things, he wouldn’t beg you take him back.  He felt awful for taking out his frustration on somebody who honestly seemed like a good guy and had been nothing but nice to Eliza (and you, as much as it annoyed him).

And poor Eliza.  No child should have to hear their parents argue like that, whether they were together or not.  Ben glanced at her.  She was trying so hard to stay awake, but the song was a soft love song and it was lulling her to sleep.  

“Get some sleep, Birdie,” Ben placed a kiss in her hair.  

“No, Daddy,” Eliza muttered, but her eyes were already closed.  

You’d always said that Eliza looked more like him, and maybe she did, but she acted just like you. She was sweet, and smart, and warm. She had her stubborn side too, even at three.  It pained him when he saw her act like you, or when she used American terms for something because it just reminded him that much more of you.  And when she talked about you, the way her face lit up when she saw you, it just made him miss you that much more.  

Ben watched the rest of the movie, even though he basically knew it by heart.  

“Because Tiana, she is my Evangeline.”  

Ben looked over at you and sighed.  

[jphagger]

Cross Country Trip Entry #3

On Thursday I woke up from the stale air of the canopy and a thin film of sweat from the hot surroundings. My side was apparently the eastern end of the Walmart parking lot, and a hand to the canvas confirmed it by the heat. The roof was cool from the evaporating dew and Jeffrey lay awake next to me browsing the internet on his phone. We packed up our small camp quicker than the morning prior and headed to Cuyahoga Valley National park.

Jeffrey looked up a few trails on the way over and we decided on a waterfall hike that was 8 miles long and promised views of three different falls. We had a quick breakfast of frosted mini wheats and packed a pair of granola bars each, somewhat stoked at the idea of being out on the trail before 10AM. 

The hike was interesting, winding through unmarked trails along a river and delivering on the promise of waterfalls, though it was made slightly less serene than a similar New York scene by the emanating, inescapable sounds of Interstate 80 the whole way. We passed a “ski slope” that couldn’t have been more than 300 feet of downhill and cracked quite a few “what’s there to do in Ohio? Nothing.” jokes. These were later confirmed by a handful of people that happen to be from Ohio without much prompting. 

After our first hike, which was assisted by a very nice park ranger that provided us with paper trail maps, we drove to another section of the park called The Ledges for lunch. Jeffrey boiled 4 perfect hardboiled eggs and we threw together an avocado, bean, egg, and Rotel spicy tomato salad with toast. Road food thus far has been both healthy and delicious. 

I was enjoying the sunny day and the quiet rustling of the wind through the trees when an inconspicuous black SUV pulled into the shady spot next to our truck and idled for a few minutes. After a few more minutes of idling and then two levels of fan blowing stepped-up noise I decided to politely ask the driver if they would mind opening their windows rather than using the A/C. Jeffrey was worried (and so was I, really) that I wouldn’t handle the situation properly, but after a bit of thought I approached him and we had a very pleasant conversation. 

We sat for a few more minutes and I jotted down some of the key points of the day for later before embarking on the short Ledges hike. It turned out to be more beautiful than I had expected from the pictures posted in the trail reviews. We certainly are spoiled in that regard- being able to look at reviews for hiking trails... Along the way we scrambled on rocks and looked at the cool sandstone pockets in the boulders.

An older couple was walking in front of us and as we passed them we made small talk. The man ended up being from the Stony Brook area and they were on a trip visiting three more national parks out of their current 42. We talked about Acadia and traveling through Utah and they recommended parks to see; the woman said her favorite so far was actually Acadia. At the overlook part of the trail I found it amusing that they seemed just as unimpressed as we were by the fairly normal landscape view of green trees and high tension wires coupled, of course, by Interstate music. 

We meandered back to the car and started the drive to Brendan’s house in Michigan, stopping almost as quickly at the sight of a climbing gym and outdoor store pair on the route. The gear in stock was beautiful, but also highly priced so I stuck with just getting a chalk refill and some nice conversation with the cashier. 

On the highway Jeffrey browsed the internet for a while and kept us awake with good music. An hour or so in I suggested that we look for odd jobs on Craigslist, sort of as a longshot but also semi seriously. Jeffrey found an Ad by a man named Greg. He was in search of a pair of “street teamers” to promote his new movie, which sported a picture of a crazy looking man dangling two knives, the title Hectic Knife and the description “a crazy new meta comedy parody of comic book movies... all of ��em!” Jeffrey responded that we were a pair of hip millennials travelling cross country, and that our experience posting “Lost dog” posters and interacting with people along our travels surely qualified us to advertise for his event. 

He never texted back.

Further down the road, after a few similar responses, including one to a man looking for furniture to be moved, we focused back on the music. Jeffrey requested that I ask Katie, one of our mutual friends from back home, what that song was with “Peaches” in the title. She didn’t respond quickly enough, so we spent the next hour listening to every song on spotify with the word peaches in it. 

At Brendan’s house we were greeted by a familiar warm smile and highly infectious laughter. Brendan told us about his job and introduced us to the other interns living in the apartment and we loosely discussed our plans for the next day. Jeffrey received a text back from the guy looking for moving help on craigslist, and we were very excited until the request of a 7AM meeting time. 

We went to sleep fairly early with the 5:45 AM alarm looming in our minds and woke up feeling refreshed and nervously curious about this curious person promising $40 to move furniture. On the drive over we discussed a few things including how much money to leave in our wallets should we be held at gunpoint, how much we were willing to give before going down with the ship (i.e the truck and bikes) and whether or not I had theft insurance on the bikes. The situation came to a climax when a white truck rolled up to the storage unit place we had been told to meet at and a man got out. He was more of a kid, really. At 19, Henry runs his own antique furniture business in Alabama and was genuinely looking for a pair of people to help him move and reorganize the pieces he had collected up in Michigan. It turns out we had been the only people to answer his add as a pair ( I had pushed Jeffrey about this- he wanted to answer for just himself the scoundrel!) and we worked for two hours, getting everything cleaned and reorganized back in his storage unit. Good on his word, Henry gave us our payment and said to let us know if we decide to come back through Alabama on the way back east. You can check out his website at magiccityfinds.com 

We headed back to Brendan’s apartment in no rush, and stopped at AAA to grab some maps of the local area and for the rest of the trip. The receptionist gave us tips about the local nightlife and I took a few maps. Later on, while looking at the maps I noticed a $5.95 price tag on each one... hopefully they’re free for members! Our next stop was home depot to get a spare trailer lock key made and for some scrap wood to use as a shim for the trailer spare holder. The spare was originally under the tongue of the trailer, but all the bumpy roads have been taking a toll on it with small clearance. The wood was easy; Ben helped me out by cutting up a few pieces of spare 2x6′s but the key line was long so we opted for a locksmith after getting groceries. Michael at the grocery store reminded me of Father’s day, so happy Father’s day Dad! Without you there’s no way we would be on the road doing this trip. 

The locksmith was very nice, and after looking at our key and lock for a minute or so and informing us that it was a cheap import and there was no way he could make a key he gave us a free inexpensive padlock. We chatted about motocross for a few minutes and he gave a few tips about local areas to check out before we headed on our way back to Brendan’s. 

At Brendan’s we both enjoyed long hot showers and I had a frosty beverage. Michigan is the first place there seems to be dry apple cider available in stores and it is infinitely more enjoyable than the fake sweetness of standard Angry Orchard and the like. The early morning work had us both pretty sleepy, and it was time to nap for an hour or so. 

There had been limited parking the night before, so we’d pushed a concrete parking barrier out of the way and did a bit of sketchy parking halfway under a carport and half in a patch of grass. We were notified quite effectively by way of a large neon green sticker on my windshield that our parking job was not in fact acceptable, and that my truck would be towed the following day at noon if not moved. 

As I was scraping the stubborn remnants of sticker stickiness off of the windshield a maintenance worker from Brendan’s apartment complex profusely apologized for having to put it there and very nicely told us where we could park to avoid any issues. 

Brendan rolled back into town around 4PM and the three of us decided to have nachos and head to the lake for the evening sunset. Jeffrey semi-pressured us into swimming in the lake, which turned out to be very fun. It was about 2 feet deep for as far out as I dared to go, and we would have kept going if our stuff wasn’t sitting by it’s own on the shore. 

We took the long way home and hung out with a few of Brendan’s coworkers before turning in for the night in the truck. 

[ookamirinchan]

Spring Break Part 1: Singapore

Spring has arrived, and with it came spring vacation, during which I was able to take one last big trip in Japan. I wanted to hit as many countries as possible in my limited remaining vacation time, and so I decided to visit Singapore, Malaysia, and Cambodia all in one go. This time, I travelled with another JET in my city, and somehow we managed not to claw each other’s eyes out and even made it through the trip without any major arguments (a small miracle, let me tell you).

We began planning the trip back in February, after the exhaustion from my Vietnam trip wore off, and we chose the three countries for four reasons:

1. They’re close together.

2. They’re cheap and easy to access from each other.

3. They’re places I’d definitely never make a long and expensive trip from the U.S. to visit in the future.

4. There must be cool stuff to do in these places, right?

We did our research, planned our itinerary, bought our plane tickets, and hit the road on March 21 after work.

Our first stop would be Singapore, a popular and high tech city state metropolis, which, at 2 degrees north of the Equator, happens to be (debatably) the southernmost country in Continental Asia. (Technically it’s connected to Malaysia by a bridge which means it’s “technically” connected to the mainland apparently). But regardless, Singapore is regularly considered “paradise” by Japanese people, and my announcement that I was visiting the island received many, many jealous comments. But amazingly, none of my coworkers had any idea what there was to do in Singapore, despite their inherent love of it.

It turns out, Singapore really is the “land of fun.” That is, if you can afford it.

Honestly, my friend and I were least impressed with Singapore despite it’s clean, bright, and high-tech appearance. It’s a little like a less awesome version of Disneyland--the kind of place you take your kids and then instantly regret having taken them there because everything is so appealing yet so expensive. There are all kinds of things to do in Singapore. If you can afford it.

My friend and I took an overnight flight and landed in Singapore at about 7 in the morning. We made it through immigration easily enough, bought our tourist metro passes (for $30 each...still cheaper than it would have been without them!) and headed off to find our hotel and drop our bags. After that, we took a train down to Bayside Station, where we wandered around for a while trying to find the “Sentosa Express,” a monorail train that would take us to Sentosa, “The State of Fun.”

There’s plenty to do on Sentosa Island, and we had planned to spend the whole day there. Sentosa has beaches, waterfront shows, several major resorts, a zipline, a luge, a Merlion, a ropes course, an insect park, dozens of walking trails, an aquarium, a waterpark, a Madame Tussauds, an indoor skydiving arena, a digital world adventure park, a nature park, a cable car, a sky tower, a trick eye museum, and even a Universal Studios. All of which are just waiting for you to come and spend all of your money at.

Guess how many of those things we actually did?

The answer is one. And a half.

Oh, if money were no object, Sentosa would be the coolest place in the universe. But as it is, it’s way too expensive for two teachers on a budget vacation.

When we arrived, of course we went to the Merlion. If you don’t know, a Merlion is a half-fish, half-lion creature that it the icon of Singapore. There are several of them scattered around the city, and one of the most visited is the 37 meter tall Sentosa Merlion. We took our obligatory photos with it, and then laughed as we noticed people up on top of it. “We should go up!” we thought...guess how much it was. To climb maybe 60 steps to go to the top of a 37 meter Merlion and look out on Sentosa Island. Go ahead. Guess.

The answer is twelve dollars. Twelve dollars. And honestly, it’s the cheapest thing to do on the island (except the free stuff, of course). No, we did not pay twelve dollars to climb the Merlion. This is the “half” of the one and a half attractions we went to. Sorry to disappoint. No doubt the view of Universal Studios would have been amazing but yeah no.

Next, we did something my friend really wanted to do, called Sky Luge Sentosa. A luge is kind of like a go-cart without a motor. You can speed up, slow down, and turn, all using the steering wheel, while you ride down a hill. It’s pretty cool, I guess. So we paid the $25 for three rides, took the sky lift to the top of the hill, and rode back down. It was fun, but it would have been nicer if the whole ride down hadn’t been filled with construction sites and fences. When we finished, it was only 11:30.

After we finished the luge attraction, we started questioning the actual value of the attractions we had wanted to do. 450 meter zipline for $47? No way. $16 for a butterfly park? Eh, the one in Kuala Lumpur is like, a sixth of that price. Trick eye museum? Those are usually really hokey anyway. $33 for a cable car ride? Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. No. Universal Studios? Well, that’s a money pit waiting to happen. The free crane dance show sounds cool...but at this rate we definitely won’t be here until 8:00.  

We decided to eat lunch at this strange 50s diner-like restaurant that served Singapore food while we figured out our plan. We were both tired already and feeling very poor after our one attraction of the morning and our discovery that food and transportation were also ridiculously expensive. So we decided to skip all of the paid attractions and just focus on the free stuff.

After lunch, we wandered down toward one of the beaches. Neither of us had brought beach wear, so we just kind of looked at the sub-par tourist traps before moving on. 

We wandered down the path, looking for the “Southernmost Point in Continental Asia.” We found it and had a nice discussion about how this could be cindered the southernmost part of Asia in any sense. It’s not landlocked and by most people’s definitions Indonesia is also part of Asia, not Oceania. But I guess if bridges connecting a small unnamed island to Sentosa, Sentosa to Singapore, and Singapore to Malaysia count as being “Continental Asia” then sure, let’s go with that.

We had fun wandering around that bit of land for a little while and we definitely enjoyed the views and the rain forest foliage on the island before we turned back and walked the way we came. We wandered in to a 7-11 where we found some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (for $17!) that we didn’t buy (for obvious reasons) before we walked down to the other beach on the island. 

We walked along the path following the sand until we reached a pathway leading to Fort Siloso, the only remaining fort in Singapore. We didn’t actually explore the fort, we just walked to it and back. Then we returned to the monorail and looked at the souvenirs before returning to Singapore proper.

It was only about 3:30.

There was a big, fancy mall under the Sentosa Express that we walked around for a while, and then we took the metro up to Clarke Quay for dinner.

Clarke Quay is a quaint little village area near the river with lots of overpriced restaurants. When we arrived, despite having been sunny 20 minutes earlier, it was pouring rain. Welcome to the tropics, indeed. We ran across the bridge from the station to the main dining area, looked around at the restaurants, and ate decent but expensive Mexican food overlooking the river.

The rain, thankfully, departed not long after we sat down, and we enjoyed beautiful weather again for our metro ride and walk back to our hotel. We collapsed into bed, exhausted from a long day of trying to figure out what to do.

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Our second day in Singapore was slightly more interesting. We started the day at the Singapore Botanic Gardens, a massive (and free!) park about 20 minutes away from downtown on the metro. The entrance to the park was right next to the metro station, and we began a long journey wandering through the many walkways and enjoying the foliage and tropical flowers. There were quite a few interesting segments to the park, the best of which were the “Evolution Garden,” which claimed to recreate the evolution of plant life starting several billion years ago, and the Orchid Garden which, although not free, was worth every penny of our $5. It turns out that orchids are the national flower of Singapore, and there were A LOT of orchids in the orchid garden.

We also saw a water monitor just chilling by a lake, which was pretty cool I guess.

We finished in the Botanic Gardens around noon, and, completely exhausted after walking probably 5+ kilometers already, we took the metro back into town to Marina Bay Sands.

The station spit us out directly into the famous shopping center, but a quick search of the information map told us there would be no affordable food. So we did what any expats living in Japan would do...we went to 7-11, walked outside, and ate on a bench in a park overlooking Gardens by the Bay which, incidentally, was our next stop.

After lunch, we crossed a lovely bridge over a busy street, got some cool views of the Singapore Flyer and the massive man-made flower-tree-things in the gardens before heading inside.

The gardens themselves were free, but they were nothing special either. For all the hype about Gardens by the Bay, we were severely disappointed. It seemed like the main attractions were the “pavilions” (the metal tree things and a huge greenhouse that was supposed to look kind of like a cloud), but you of course had to pay $30 to get inside both of them...not worth it.

We walked around a little more, but we were both tired of walking after the morning, and there was nothing interesting in the park that we hadn’t already seen, so we started our long journey along the bay to the opposite side from Marina Bay Sands where we knew we would find Merlion Park.

If you look up “Singapore Merlion” on Google, this is probably the one you’ll see. It’s quite small compared to the Sentosa one, but much less tourist-trappy and it has a water fountain which is cool I guess.

We took our obligatory selfies with the Merlion, shopped around for souvenirs, and searched for dinner. It took us a while to find things, and even then we decided to split up--my friend wanted to try hawker food and I, naturally, went to Burger King.

After enjoying our respective dinners and meeting back up in front of the closest metro station, we gave up on trying to find other entertainment and decided to begin our long trek out to our final stop in Singapore--the Night Safari.

Some of you may know that I’m not really a fan of zoos--most are all the same, and it’s just depressing to look at the animals in such tiny enclosures. So while Singapore has many different kinds of zoos and animal parks that come highly recommended, their price and the fact that they’re zoos kept me from being interested.

But the Night Safari was, by all accounts, a must do thing in Singapore, and there wasn’t a single negative review of it anywhere on the internet that we could find. And so we made the long journey out to the park after a long day of walking everywhere to visit the world’s first and only Night Safari zoo.

The concept of the zoo was pretty interesting, really. It’s only open at night, after the sun sets--the attraction being you can actually see the nocturnal animals out and about (rather than asleep, as they would be in a normal zoo). You pay a small fee and go inside, and first thing you do is get on a huge tram that drives you around the exhibits, many of which have massive boundaries, while a recorded voice tells you interesting facts about all the animals. Once you’re done with the tram, you can then walk along a winding path yourself to see all the other animals.

All in all, it was a really cool experience and I’m glad we decided to pay a ridiculous amount of money to go. We spent about 2 hours there before heading back to the hotel to sleep.

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Mostly, Singapore was a pretty big disappointment. I imagine it’s a decent place to live, and nice enough to vacation for a few days if money is no object, but for two budget travelers it was a little frustrating. 

When we left, we were glad we’d decided to make Singapore our first trip rather than our last. And thankfully, the rest of our vacation was much, much more interesting.

(Don’t forget to read Part 2!)