#i know there are other codes floating around but i just got mine sent to me today and wanted to share it here so others can use it!

[andoutofharm]

If anyone wants to purchase an esim to provide internet access to Palestinians but haven't yet, you can use my Nomad referral code LYDI79TR for $3 off your first purchase! With this code esims are as low as $6, and this is a way you can immediately help someone in Gaza who might otherwise not be able to make contact with their loved ones.

More detailed information on esims is available here, and a tutorial walking through how to purchase and send an esim through Nomad is available here.

edit to add: if this code isn’t working for you, try codes NOMADCNG or BACKPACKNOMAD !

[shades-of-stony]

Post CA:CW Fix It Stony Fanfics

Making Amends by TheseStoriesAreWrittenOnMyHeart

Summary: Everything about them happened in seconds. Their first meeting was quick, with Tony landing next to the Captain, each man giving a curt nod and name in greeting. Their argument on the hellicarrier took mere seconds to escalate. Until Steve was goading Tony into putting on the suit and going a few rounds and Tony not so subtly reminding Steve that he wasn’t afraid to hit an old man. It was only seconds of staring at Tony on that New York City Street, his arc reactor dark, no rise and fall of his chest, for Steve to know that inside the tin can, was a good man. Then Ultron happened, and it took seconds for their world to change, seconds for Steve to throw his shield at Tony and for the billionaire to send a repulsor blast back. They went from laughing and relaxing to standing on an edge thousands of feet above solid ground. And now…now everything’s changed. And all it took was a combination of seconds; of decisions made, actions performed and words spoken that they couldn’t get back. Just a few ticks of the clock for their world to shatter.

It’ll take more than that to make things right.

Note: This one deals with amending the accords. It is about how the avengers pick up after the civil war and how they learn to be friends again. It is an incredibly detailed and well written piece! Also, NO TEAM CAP OR TEAM IRON MAN BASHING. I was only supposed to re-read a few chapters to recall the story and give a few-word review but I ended up re-reading the whole goddamn thing. It’s a masterpiece. 

maybe love is the reason why (we're seeing it eye to eye) by parkrstark

Summary: "I'm sorry. Repeat that again." Tony leaned forward in his seat from across the table. He even stuck a finger in his ear as if he was cleaning it out. "I don't think I heard you right."

Fury rolled his eyes-- or well, eye. "You and Rogers need to go undercover as a married couple in a community out on Long Island."

--

After Civil War, Tony and Steve are sent on an undercover mission as a couple to try and find Hydra informants. Somehow, they end up with Peter as their undercover son who decides to play matchmaker even if the two of them are doing their best to ignore their feelings after Siberia.

Note: My latest Fix It read! It just completed today. This fic is a phenomenal read, with its fake relationship, superfamily, undercover, and sexual tension elements! A definite 1000/10!

and this is the map of my heart by CydSA

Summary: The Avengers are splintered - spread out across the world.

There are many things to regret. The biggest one is what could have been.

Tony refuses to have any more regrets. Steve realizes that perhaps he made the wrong choice.

It starts from here....

Note: Here is some sweet, sweet, Civil War Fix It. It dwells deep into the Accords, how Tony fixes it, and the downfall of Ross. 

floating point exception by ooka

There is something, he knows, to see a man as mortal. To see his fault lines and jagged edges instead of the smooth surface they present. Most people don’t like the illusion, whether it be good or not. They don’t want people like him to be human.

But that’s what he is, under the suit and the smile and the sunglasses. Under the bravo and the quick grins. He’s just a man, trying to hide his broken pieces, the dents in his heart, the washed out color of his soul. He’s just a man, trying to solve problems and make the world better. That’s why he’s Ironman, just a man in a suit. Nothing extra.

The place where the arc reactor used to rest in his chest aches so fiercely for a moment that Tony can’t breathe.

He takes in a few breaths and does what Tony does best - pushes it down and goes to work.

(Tony, after the Civil War. Post CA:CW)

Note: A 150k+ fanfic that is centered on Tony, his issues, and his struggles. PREPARE TO CRY.

Not Enough Scotch for this Matchmaking Scheme by desolateice:

Summary:  After Civil War and a lot of healing the Avengers are fed up with the stubborn silence between Steve and Tony and try to take things in their own hands.

Note: A Fix It where the ‘kids’ play matchmaker to bring their fighting ‘parents’ back together! 

Never Eye To Eye by vorkosigan for mrsgingles

Summary: After the Civli War, the Avengers were back together.

How is everything going, Tony? Pepper had asked in her email. It's fine (Tony had written back). I'm fighting with Steve all the time. Everything is going to hell. I'm okay (you know I'm always okay).

(Or: How Tony and Steve learned to be a bit gentler with each other)

Note: A 26k+ fic where Steve and Tony learned how to be friends again, and more. It deals with the struggles and frustrations they had just to salvage their friendship.  

Fly One More Time (Alternately Titled--The Phoenix) by RavenLost2187

Summary: Steve couldn't see them before.

But then he woke up and there they were.

There's a small problem though.

One of his teammates doesn't have wings like he should.

And that's Tony Stark

Note: Some winged fics anyone? This has a bit of a Team as Family element and not to mention that glorious Civil War fix it theme! 

What it’s worth by masterlokisev159

Summary:  Tony's scent is off. Wanda realizes why.

Note: Here is a Hurt and Comfort fic for you with a dash ABO elements in it! 

Sunrise Over the End of the World by Sapphic_Futurist

Summary: When Dr. Strange arrives at an Accords Committee Meeting and warns of the coming of an alien megalomaniac set on destroying the world, the Rogues are pardoned and Tony finds himself exactly where he never wanted to be. Back at the Compound with Steve, who still can't take a hint and won't leave him alone.

--

In which Tony is broken and Steve finds redemption.

Note: A Bad case of Tony acting like nothing happened and doing his goddamn best to avoid Steve. It’ll work all out in the end. Well, it will get worst first before that though.. 

We stand together (or not at all) by Jana_C

Summary:  It’s so easy to hate this man, so painfully easy. He’s the embodiment of rich, white male privilege. He’s irritatingly arrogant, and he doesn’t always think before acting, and even when he does, he manages to twist his logic around and shape it into something that will always benefit him, and yet, here he is, building the guy who killed his parents an arm, without having been asked; working his way through diplomacy and politics, even though he hates it with every fiber of his being, just so he can correct the mistakes all of them made. She watches him go and sighs, small and tired, before texting a single line to Steve. Get ready to come home.

Note: Anyone up for some Tony Whump and Appreciation fanfic? 

You Don’t Only Get One Shot by janonny

Summary: In which Tony voluntarily carries a tracker around, and learns how to talk to Steve all over again in-between and during kidnapping attempts.

“Leave you alone for two months, and you have an operation all set up to track wayward Hydra cells and rescue innocent billionaires,” Tony said, his tone skating the line of annoyance and admiration.

Note: a dose of Stalkerish!Steve (but not in an entirely creepy way because he just wants to keep Tony safe dammit). 

You've Got A Sister Now by ZaraMelMercury

Summary: It's been a year since the events of the Avengers' Civil War. Tony Stark is trying to pick up the pieces of his life, while juggling his work, his remaining friendships, getting therapy sessions for Rhodey and dealing with government politics, as well as the Accords.

It is a bit rough, but he's got Pepper (always a steady rock by his side), Rhodey, Happy and the Kid- Peter Parker. Tony would never admit to it up front and center, but you could always catch a proud look on the man's face whenever the young Spiderling was mentioned!

Life seemed to be looking up...

Except for one, minor detail:

Steve Rogers.

The hope for one reconciliation, surprisingly, led to another!

A new bond that would form that Tony would ultimately always be thankful for.

"Oh, I wanna take it back!... " "No, no, no, you can't retract it!"

Who would've thought it?

Tony Stark has a sister looking out for him, after all.

Note: Here are some Tony and Nat friendship for you! This one isn’t exactly a solid fix it but one with a more of hopeful ending. 

The Bro Code by Sullen

Summary: In a world where the Winter Soldier is found years earlier and is named Tony’s godfather, Zemo plays a different R-rated video and Siberia goes a little differently.Or –Steve breaks the bro code.

Note: This is just too cute and wholesome not to include. 

WIP

Used to be Mine by Fangirlingmanaged

Tony can't even recognize himself nowadays.

Note: This one certainly deserves a place at the heavy angst category because that’s what it is. HEAVY ANGST AND HEARTBREAK.

[theres-no-protocol-for-this]

Necessary Repairs

Part III. I don’t even know if you have to read any of the other parts. SecUnit should probably have slept through most of its own healing, but that’s not this machine’s luck.

Part I | Part II

At some indeterminate point later, I woke up.

I was receiving minimal sensory data, and none of it was sight-related. A diagnostic subroutine spun up and casually began sending me bursts of error messages I couldn't even begin to translate.

Oh, and the world was pitch black.

It took me more than five seconds to determine that the darkness was self-inflicted and open my eyes. Longer still for the random noise to resolve into sounds I could understand -- the hum of an air circulation system, at least two distinct voices, and an automated warning system. My connection to the feed stabilized, but the walls that normally guarded my mind against its onslaught were conspicuously absent.

Something else was shielding me, something big and surprisingly gentle.

Friend?

I could feel cold metal under my back and head, probably the medical suite platform. My internal temperature refused to rise, so I was shivering and couldn't stop. It felt like I was still leaking, and the pain ebbed and flowed with each passing moment.

“Would you like me to turn up the heat?” Transport asked.

Yes. Where the hell am I?

I felt a mild shock as the governor kicked in. It hadn't liked my tone, apparently, or the phrasing of my answer, and wasn't shy about letting me know. The standard code read, "you're outside of protocol and need to adjust your attitude."

Silently, I cursed the damn thing. I was getting used to life without it.

A moment later, Transport answered, "SecUnit, you're still in medical, and your performance rating, while stable, remains abysmally low."

The ship paused and sent me a couple of data packets that succinctly described all the things still wrong -- which was most of them. I should've probably remained in stasis, but the medical unit was calibrated for humans. So, it hadn't given me nearly enough sedative to knock out the organic parts of a construct for any appreciable amount of time.

I was awake, kind of.

"I'm waiting for your vital signs to improve," Transport added. "Until then, would you like to watch an episode of that one show you liked?"

Yes, please.

The ship's calm tone reassured me, even though everything else looked like shit. My diagnostics were coming back with nonsense, still. The governor couldn't find a SecSystem to connect with. The Traveler didn't have or need one of those; it had a skeleton HubSystem instead managed security, life support, and logistics. My inflexible governor couldn't figure out how to interface with it.

Surprise, surprise...

It fell back on some preprogrammed garbage, complete with a minimal set of actions and responses. "Yes, please" and "No, thank you" was probably the best I could manage at the moment without incurring its wrath. I'd try poking at it later when my performance no longer looked quite so dramatically sad.

Captain Owens pulled up a chair and sat down where she could see me. Transport shared the view from one of its cameras, so now I could see her, too. It also queued up an episode of a long-running serial and waited for the captain before it started playing. I wanted to ask about the hostiles but couldn't -- thanks governor -- and Transport didn't seem inclined to enlighten me.

I suppose it was only fair; it was doing its best to keep me calm.

MedSystem sorted out the sleeping issue in the meantime and had injected more sedatives into my resupply channel, so sleep was happening shortly, whether I liked it or not. I could practically feel my diagnostics slowing down to a crawl since they relied on data from my organic parts, which were affected by the drugs.

"Good afternoon, SecUnit. I'm glad to see you're awake." The captain nodded in my direction and then turned toward someone I couldn't see. "As I mentioned, thanks to SecUnit, we came out of the boarding attempt in one piece. I'm sorry to hear your ship wasn't as lucky."

A stranger in formal wear came into camera view as he approached Owens. I figured he was the owner of that second voice I hadn't been able to identify earlier. The logo on his tunic looked familiar, but I couldn't place it. Parts of my memory felt like tangled network cables.

"Indeed, but this is still better than nothing. I don't suppose you've already contacted your bonding company?"

The captain's face scrunched up in confusion. "We're insured outside of the Corporation Rim," she explained. "I've sent a message, but I'm here pretty much on my own."

Outside of the Rim, everything appeared to work in ways that were incompatible with corporation control.  A lot of the propaganda around freehold planets implied they were a complete shitshow. Except, clearly, the Traveler was doing just fine.

I had a sudden burst of "bad feeling" in my organic neural tissue. Something about the newcomer didn't sit right with me. I thought it might be unwise for the captain to tell him anything about herself or her ship.

"No, thank you." It sounded like my voice, but I didn't remember speaking. Hi buffer, I thought I'd never see you again.

The newcomer gave me a puzzled glance. "So, where'd you get your unit then?"

Owens shrugged and schooled her expression. I'd seen that face before when she'd spoken to her daughter before our first jump. "I rented it from a friend, as a security consultant. It's doing a great job."

I was?

I mean, the human was alive, and the Traveler had an intact hull, so I guess things weren't terrible. I could practically hear the Transport laughing on a private channel. If I could roll my eyes, I probably would have, but the governor frowned on that sort of thing, and my eyes had closed minutes ago.

"I see. Well, if you wouldn't mind giving us a hand with repairs, we can both be on our way." The man watched the captain like a hawk. "I would also recommend getting your unit checked out at a licensed repair station when you get a chance. With this level of damage, there's no telling what other problems are hiding under the surface."

As far as statements go, it was polite enough, but I didn't like it. It sounded to me like a threat.

Performance rating dropping. Initiating emergency shutdown.

I really would prefer you didn't.

***

Memory fragment:

The mining installation doesn't inspire confidence. There are eight of us and two combat models. Ten security units should be enough to keep a workforce of 153 miners and a dozen more supervisors in line. Everything looks worn and rundown, including the humans.

Protocol dictates that we take shifts. A human has created a schedule to which we adhere. The two combat units are mixed in with the rest of us.

It's my patrol shift. I walk through one of the mining shafts and stop at the far end. I can hear a supervisor arguing with two of her employees—something about the rocks they've uncovered. I turn around, ready to head back to the primary installation, when one of the combat units walks up to the three humans.

It has been summoned by the supervisor.

The supervisor tells it to fire on the workers. It does, without question. Bodies crumple to the floor. Then, the supervisor notices me.

***

Transport popped into my feed. "Wake up, SecUnit. How're you feeling?"

"Like I got shot."

The words were out before I could consider the consequences, and I braced for an electric shock -- or worse. Nothing happened. Performance reliability was at 87% and rising steadily. My diagnostics routines had run several times, and the results looked promising. I was also no longer leaking, and most of my organic parts had grown back.

I had two arms again. That was nice.

Transport shared a smiling sigil. Reason unknown. "You did get shot, silly. MedSystem patched you up pretty well. If you're up to it, my captain and I could use your help." It paused and added, "Captain suggested that you might want payment in exchange for services rendered. That's how it works in CR, right?"

I had my doubts about anything actually working in the Corporation Rim. Still, arguing with a clearly sentient ship about theoretical economics didn't sound appealing. I'd rather get shocked again.

"OK," I said aloud and sat up. "Priority question: who was here earlier?"

"Dr. Alexander Soren is the current captain of an ArialHydra exploration vessel. They are stranded in this sector after a pirate attack. Captain Owens speculates that it may be the same group of pirates. We were lucky to have you on board."

Lucky. Right.

I shoved off the platform and crumpled to the floor in a pile of arms and legs. Hi there, limbs. A few minutes later, I managed to get up and stumble around under my own power. I admit to sitting on the floor and trying out my new arm. It didn't have a cannon -- MedSystem didn't have the required parts -- but it was fully functional, otherwise.

"I've seen Dr. Soren before." I couldn't remember where. That bothered me.

"Perhaps you were deployed on one of his survey missions?"

"I don't know."

One of the ship's drones floated into the room, carrying spare clothing, which it dropped directly on my head. I grabbed at the falling fabric and started getting dressed. It was the Traveler's standard-issue uniform, beige and blue and generally not hideous. I missed the protective qualities of armor, but it would've been weird to wander through the ship's pristine, carpeted halls with it on.

Captain Owens walked into the medical room and waved at me and the drone. "I see you're both here and scheming."

"We're not scheming, and technically, I'm everywhere," Transport informed us.

"I don't think you should trust Dr. Soren," I blurted out.

Owens narrowed her eyes. "Do you know anything you'd care to share?"

I shook my head. Constructs don't get gut feelings -- we don't even have a gut to have them with -- and my memories of any encounters with the doctor had been removed. Memory wipes aren't typical, but occasionally, a bonding company or a manufacturer/repair company decides they're necessary. I've had at least one that I know about. I also had no idea how to explain that my organic neurons probably remembered things the rest of me didn't.

"Well, in that case, has Trav told you what we need?" At my puzzled expression, the captain said, "We gave the other ship supplies, and they're almost ready to depart. And they're making a fuss about..." She sighed. "Something. I really don't care. They'll be coming back aboard in a few hours to discuss whatever it is. And I would feel much better if you were there. Just in case. And only if you're feeling up to it."

Protecting humans was literally the only thing I liked about my job. "OK."

"Great. Do you want a weapon?"

"Depends on how threatening you want me to look." Any weapon I wielded would be for show unless the human was in danger. And if she was, I had a miniature cannon hidden inside an arm.

The captain pondered this for a moment. Her face went through a range of expressions that Transport interpreted for me as "Captain Owens thinks the other ship's posturing is stupid and would like to be on her way, but it would be impolite to leave, so here we are." I agreed with the captain's assessment.

Finally, she said, "Let's try without any extra threats and see what happens. The quicker we get this over with, the better."

Transport suggested we spend the time between now and the upcoming meeting watching more of its favorite shows. I agreed.

[tsarisfanfiction]

Desert Sands: Part 1

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Family Characters: Scott, John, Alan, Virgil, Gordon, Kayo, EOS

I decided to keep throwing this fic out in chunks.  Partly because it’s too long for a single tumblr post, and partly because I thought it was nearly finished but I’m beginning to suspect it’s not as nearly finished as I thought.

<<<Prologue

“John, contact has been lost with Thunderbird One.”

EOS’s words didn’t register. Alan had just found another stealth mine amongst his junk and was taking a lovely little space walk over to a ticking bomb to deactivate it.  Finding the kill code for this particular mine would at least be nothing like the first time – following ‘proper procedures’, International Rescue via Lady Penelope had got hold of the paperwork for every single stealth mine and it was a quick case of John scanning the database for the right one – but it wasn’t something John wanted to be distracted from. ��Not while his youngest brother was sitting by a live bomb.

Needless to say, John was very careful to make sure he read out the correct numbers, and watched Alan’s holographic figure for any indication that something was wrong, only relaxing once the young astronaut was back in Thunderbird Three and the mine registered as deactivated on both Thunderbirds’ scanners.

“John.”

“Sorry, EOS,” he sighed, leaning back from the database and letting Zero-G cradle him.  “Could you repeat that?”

“Contact has been lost with Thunderbird One.”

“What?”

All relaxation in Zero-G was promptly forgotten as John yanked himself back upright and towards the large holographic model of Earth.  The green, yellow and grey icons of Thunderbirds Two, Four and Shadow flashed up alongside the pointer labelled ‘IR’, indicating that they were still on Tracy Island, as they should be.  Away in England, FAB1’s pink icon stayed steady in London.

The blue icon of Thunderbird One was nowhere to be seen.  John switched the display from Thunderbirds to operatives, and his heart sank when Scott’s remained absent.  Suit telemetry readings were offline, and attempts to call either Thunderbird One or Scott’s communicator both ended in a red no signal symbol that didn’t belong anywhere near Thunderbird Five’s powerful network.

“Alan, go home,” he said, cutting through meaningless chatter from the teenager as he coasted along, picking up more random junk.

“John?”

“I need to concentrate on something else right now so I can’t help you disarm the mines,” he explained as he attempted to boost the signal, hoping that Alan would accept the excuse and call an end to his junk gathering.

“Is there a rescue?” Alan was a fantastic operative, but he was also a teenager.

“No,” John told him. “At least I hope not,” he muttered under his breath as his attempts to boost the signal failed and all connections to Thunderbird One or her pilot remained firmly offline.

“Then why?”

“Just… go home, Alan,” he sighed.  “Please.”

Alan didn’t respond, and John hoped that meant he was obeying.  He couldn’t check – doing that meant turning away from his Earth map, and right now Scott’s position was more important.

“EOS, show me Thunderbird One’s last known position, and the last data received from both Thunderbird One and Scott’s telemetry.”

Instantly a blue line appeared, tracking Thunderbird One from the danger zone in the Swiss Alps down across to the Sahara Desert, where it promptly vanished.  Scott’s telemetry told him nothing.  His big brother had been relaxed, no sign of raised blood pressure or other indicators of stress.  There was absolutely no cause for alarm, except for the fact that both flight suit and Thunderbird had cut off at the same time.

The airlock hissed unexpectedly, and John’s head jerked to look over at it.  Alan floated over to him, and a glance out of the gravity ring showed Thunderbird Three docked to her sister.

“What’s wrong, John?” his brother asked, gracefully coming to a halt next to him and frowning at the data. “Is this Scott’s flight path?” Big blue eyes filled with concern, and John really wished Alan had done as he was told.  Being the reassuring big brother was much easier via hologram. “Has something happened?”

“I don’t know,” John admitted.  “EOS lost Thunderbird One’s signal suddenly, and Scott’s telemetry went offline at the same time.”

“Could they have entered a dead spot?” Alan asked, peering at the data suspiciously.  “Scott’s suit data suggests he’s fine.”

John shook his head.

“Thunderbird Five doesn’t have dead spots, Alan,” he reminded him.  “I boosted the signal just in case, but there’s still nothing.”

“What about satellite footage?”  John shook his head.

“We don’t have visual on this part of the Sahara Desert.  It’s not populated enough to justify an IR satellite, and even the GDF don’t look too closely at the middle of deserts.”

“So what are we going to do?  I can take Three-”

“The only place you’re taking Three is back home,” John interrupted firmly. “She isn’t designed for sustained atmospheric flight and I am absolutely not sending you into the middle of the Sahara in her.”

Alan deflated, and John sighed, wrapping an arm around his shoulders awkwardly for a moment.

“But what if something happened?” the blond asked, staring at the unhelpful map in front of them.

“We don’t know that anything has,” John pointed out.  “But I’ll get Kayo to check it out.  Alan, you and EOS keep an eye out for any signs of Scott while I make the call.”

“F.A.B.”  Alan didn’t sound happy, but then again John wasn’t happy, either.  Thunderbirds and brothers weren’t supposed to just vanish from Thunderbird Five’s sensors.

Ordinarily, if he just wanted Kayo, he’d catch her on her private channel and she’d slip away from his brothers, leaving them none the wiser.  However, telling Kayo and not the rest of his family now would leave him with two very unhappy younger brothers when they found out, and neither Virgil nor Gordon were high on his list of people to offend. With a sigh, he reached for the link to the den.

Virgil was there, tickling ivories in a mish-mash fashion John recognised as his brother in a composing mood.  Guilt at interrupting him during that had long since faded – disasters did not wait for Virgil’s muse to finish what it was doing, just like they never waited for John to reach a convenient point in a book or piece of coding – but something unpleasant coiled in his stomach this time.  Then again, this wasn’t a normal interruption.

Kayo was curled up like a cat in her launch seat, flicking through a book, and it was her John focused on.

“We’ve got a situation,” he said, skipping his usual pleasantries when he made contact for non-rescue conversation.  Then again, this might be a rescue.

Instantly the piano silenced, Virgil abandoning the instrument to approach the den.

“Do we need Gordon?” he asked, and John nodded.  Before he could say anything else, Virgil was heading for the stairs, and John let him go.  He needed Kayo first – Thunderbird Two couldn’t do anything until they located Scott, and hopefully wouldn’t be needed at all.

“Give me the brief in the sky,” his sister said, reaching to activate her launch chute.

“Wait,” he interrupted.  “It’s not a rescue, I hope.”  Bright eyes narrowed, and he felt the force of her curiosity even through the hologram. “I’ve lost contact with Scott and Thunderbird One.  Thunderbird Five can’t pick up either of their signals.”

“I’m on it,” she said, sinking into the floor.  “Send me his last known position and I’ll track him down.”

“There’s a possibility that it’s just a blip in the system and that nothing’s wrong,” he felt compelled to inform her, setting up a secondary relay to her wrist comm even as the flight data was sent straight to Thunderbird Shadow. “There’s no sign anything was wrong until we lost his signal.”

“I still don’t like it,” she said, and he heard the hum of the motorcycle indicating she was in her cockpit.  “Thunderbird Shadow out.”

He let her sign off, well aware that he needed to have a conversation with his brothers.  That didn’t mean he closed her transmission from his end, however.  The moment she found something – it was Kayo, he trusted her to find something – he wanted to know.

“Has Kayo gone on ahead?”  John’s attention returned to the den; Virgil had returned and was accompanied by a damp Gordon.  There was no point dancing around.

“I’ve lost Scott,” he said.  “Kayo’s going to his last known position now.”

“What you mean, you’ve lost Scott?” Virgil asked.  He was rigid, a mass of tense muscles that John knew meant fear, not anger.

“Exactly that,” he admitted.  “Scott and Thunderbird One’s telemetries both vanished at the same time.”  He pulled them up, letting the same sight in front of Alan materialise from the table in the centre of the den.  “Scott was over the Sahara Desert, not experiencing any issues, and then the signals disappeared.”

“Satellite imagery?” Gordon asked, and he shook his head.

“It’s a satellite blind spot.  I don’t have access to a detailed scan of the area.”

“Why don’t I take Thunderbird Three overhead to get one?” Alan butted in, and John turned his head to see his younger brother had floated over to join him. “If I fly low enough I’ll be able to get a high res image.”

“I thought I told you to keep an eye out for Scott reappearing,” he scolded, and Alan shrugged.

“EOS is doing that.  I have Thunderbird Three here, let me do something!”  John sighed.

“I told you, the only place you’re taking Thunderbird Three is home,” he reminded him.  “We don’t know what happened and I’m not sending you into the area.”

“You sent Kayo,” Alan sulked.

“Thunderbird Shadow is better equipped for the situation,” John pointed out. “At the altitude you’d need to fly at to get a high enough resolution, you’d be sub-orbital and Thunderbird Three isn’t designed for sustained sub-orbital flight.”

“What about Thunderbird Five?” Virgil asked, drawing his attention back to the holograms.  “Can you position overhead to scan yourself?”

John shook his head, gritting his teeth.

“There’s another space station in geostationary orbit between here and where I’d need to move to.  Thunderbird Five doesn’t have the manoeuvrability needed.”  He loved his Thunderbird, but when the pair of them were useless he cursed the limitations she had.

“Can’t you boost Thunderbird Three’s scanners so I wouldn’t need to go sub-orbital?” Alan asked, like a dog with a bone at the idea of scanning overhead. If he wasn’t already missing one brother with no explanation, John would probably have let him go, but as it was he was determined not to send another brother into danger until he at least knew what the danger was.

“I could do that,” EOS said, and John sent a tired glare at her nearest camera. It was the logical thing to do, of course.  Scott had been out of contact for too long – at the speed he was travelling before the telemetry was lost, he should have been just about arriving home.  Kayo was flying the exact course Scott was projected to have been taking, and if he’d been on that course she’d have called it in by now.  The steady dark grey of both Thunderbird Shadow and Kayo’s telemetry reassured him that she hadn’t also gone inexplicably dark.

It was almost certain at this point that Scott had got into trouble.  No satellite imagery had shown up the silver rocket, either, and there wasn’t much of the Earth that wasn’t covered by high resolution imagery.  Logic dictated that Thunderbird One had probably gone down, and with no working communications Scott wouldn’t be able to call for help.

If he survived, the cool detached voice in the back of his head pointed out.  At the speed Thunderbird One was going, a crash would have been fatal.

John ignored the voice.

“Stay in orbit,” he said out loud, unable to find a reason why Alan shouldn’t go with EOS helping him to scan.

“Thunderbird Two is launching as well,” Virgil said, and the twin looks of brown eyes from the two earth-bound brothers told John there was no point even trying to dissuade them.  “We’ll rendezvous with Kayo and Thunderbird Shadow.  Send me Scott’s last known position.”

John barely had to think to send the information to Thunderbird Two’s computer, half of his attention on Alan slipping out of the airlock, a drive in his hands that no doubt contained EOS.  No EOS meant he had to monitor everything by himself again, but John barely paid that a thought.  Thunderbird Three disengaged from Five, and John manipulated the data so that he had her route overlaying the map of Earth.

Below the red icon, although quickly left behind as Alan tore through space, was the green icon of Thunderbird Two, just leaving Tracy Island. Thunderbird Four was left alone, no use for a submarine in the middle of a desert, and just approaching the south-east Sahara was Thunderbird Shadow.

And then Thunderbird Shadow was gone.

Part 2>>>

[clarkimagines]

Prank War

Request:  Hi! If your requests are still open, here's mine: I would love a drabble with Cisco Ramon from CW's the Flash. Can I have him paired with a telekinetic reader who loves pulling pranks? For reference, she's got curly reddish brown hair and wears a blue and white suit with a matching mask. Thanks so much!

Word Count: 461

A/N: this was a lot of fun to write, I hope you like it!!

From your vantage point behind a shelf in the lab, you could see Cisco walk in. You had hidden there after he threatened to portal you to another dimension for messing with his chair. He craned his neck around. He didn’t spot you; you had to bite back a snicker. 

“You haven’t seen Y/n, have you?” 

“No, I haven’t,” Caitlyn replied coolly, the perfect imitation of someone who both didn’t know and didn’t care what he was talking about. You made a mental note to give Caitlyn a high five later. 

A bright smile lit up your face as inspiration struck. Cisco was still holding his mug of coffee, you could see the keyboards of the lab’s computers, and you just so happened to be right next to the light switches.... You brushed a stray strand of your curly hair behind your ear and took a deep breath, centering yourself.

First the computers. You reached out with your telekinesis, typing in the override code and pulling up static screens.

“What the—“

In bright red letters, you keyed out “Greetings, Caitlyn Snow and Cisco Ramon. Prepare for termination.” Caitlyn was entirely nonplussed. Cisco’s eyes widened and he unplugged the closest computer. He was clearly spooked.

With a flick of your wrist, you lifted the coffee out of his cup and sent it floating through the room. With your other hand, you began flickering the light switch.

“Caitlyn? What’s going on?!” You noticed with a twinge of satisfaction that Cisco’s voice was a little frantic.

You released the light switch and pulled the coffee back into its mug, already laughing so hard you could barely stand. Cisco didn’t think the situation was quite so funny.

“Y/N?!” He yelled.

You took that as your queue to exit.

“Y/n, could you come to the lab, please? We’ve got a bogey on our six.” 

That was Cisco’s voice. You couldn’t be certain this wasn’t a trap, revenge for your pranks. Just in case it was a real emergency, you got suited up, and pulled your hair into a ponytail.

“Y/n, my dearest beloved whom I would never even dream of harming, the Rose to my Jack, we have a serious situation out here.”

Alright then. You made your way to the lab, mentally prepping yourself for a mission. You stepped into the lab—things seemed normal enough, you didn’t notice anything out of place. But a millisecond later, you were hit with a shower of glitter. The stuff completely covered your blue-and-white suit, and you could only imagine how long it would take to clean it out of your hair.

“HEY! Not cool!”

Cisco high-fived Barry with a triumphant laugh. “Babe, I love you, but I also love revenge. And you literally walked right into that one.”

[bltngames]

Review: Lloyd the Monkey 2

Back before TSSZ News imploded, I would often do write-ups for many of the games at the Sonic Amateur Games Expo (SAGE). SAGE is an annual online expo that I started all the way back in September of 2000. I personally ran SAGE for over a year, and remained deeply hands on for at least another two years as it continued to grow. The main focus of SAGE was primarily to showcase fangames, in particular Sonic fangames, but the event never limited itself to any one type of game. It's never been uncommon to see original games appear in the lineup -- especially now, given the modern indie scene. 

One such original game was Lloyd the Monkey, a bit of a strange game, written in Javascript of all things and run through a webpage. That by itself was notable enough to stand out from most of the games at SAGE, but Lloyd was also a completely original product created by someone who possibly seemed to be young and new to game development. Making games is no easy feat, especially when they’re written in Javascript and you’re doing tons of original artwork yourself. Taken as that whole, the game impressed me, even if it was more than a little rough around the edges.

Now we have Lloyd the Monkey 2, written in Unity. The developer, Noah Meyer, sent me a Steam key in order to review the game. Up top, I just want to say how I think it’s kind of brave to go all the way in putting the game on Steam and everything. It felt like just a few years ago, newer indie developers sort of had to work up to releasing their game on Steam, usually getting a few releases under their belt first. People view games differently when they’re asked to pay for them, and critics may not be so willing to let circumstances influence their review. It can be a harsh world out there for a beginner.

Lloyd 2 is a much bigger, more ambitious game than the first. Whereas the original Lloyd didn’t even have sound effects, Lloyd 2 introduces voiced cutscenes, some of which are full-on animated cinematics. Quality is about what you would expect -- I would assume the developer sought out friends and acquaintances to voice characters in Lloyd 2, leading to wildly varying audio quality due to differences in recording hardware. Lloyd himself sounds fine, but some of the other characters are a bit quiet, while others have clear background noise. Nothing I heard was unlistenable, however. 

The story is also a little hard to follow. Not much is done to refresh our memories as to who anyone is or what’s going on, we’re just kind of thrown into the middle of things and turned loose. On one hand, it’s nice that the story doesn’t slow the pace of the gameplay down too much. On the other, you’re given a map screen with different objectives to clear but there’s very little context as to what you’re doing or why. At one point I made my way to the end of a Power Plant level only to confront what appeared to be an evil monkey. Despite a whole cutscene involving a conversation between four or five different people, this evil monkey never seemed to say a single word. He just stood there in total silence with a sinister smile. Then I killed him.

I suppose maybe I missed something, however. With greater ambitions comes a number of unfortunate bugs in Lloyd 2, one of which happened not long after our monkey and his crew landed on planet Grecia. I entered what appeared to be a castle to talk to the Queen, but I think the game expected me to take a lower route, where I was apparently meant to overhear the Queen making secret preparations before my arrival. Instead, I took the direct route straight to her chambers, and triggered the cutscene with Lloyd standing in front of her while ominous music played, even though the camera was still clearly focused on the next floor down. I apparently still had some amount of control, because midway through her dialog I touched a teleporter that sent me to the game’s map screen before she was done talking. If that cutscene was meant to give context to what I was doing, I didn’t get a chance to see it.

That was one of the more harmless bugs in my time spent playing Lloyd 2. Harder to ignore was the fact that, within the first 30 seconds of getting control, I soft locked the game. Lloyd 2 opens with a short prologue section where you play as a man with black hair. If you decide to ignore the obvious and go left instead of right, you quickly run out of solid level tiles and begin falling indefinitely. Later areas feature invisible walls presumably to prevent this exact scenario, but for whatever reason they weren’t implemented in the prologue. 

For the most part, Lloyd 2 seems to be a co-op game. Many levels see Lloyd teamed up with an alien princess named Lura, with gameplay vaguely reminiscent of Mega Man X crossed with the tag mechanic from Sonic Mania’s Encore Mode. At the touch of a button, you can switch between the Swordsman Lloyd and the more projectile-based Lura… assuming your partner is still alive, I guess. While playing alone, your partner is controlled by artificial intelligence, but it’s incredibly basic and prone to accidentally committing suicide. That wouldn’t be such a big deal (considering Tails in Sonic 2 never acted in self-preservation either), but once your partner dies, they stay dead. Your only option to bring them back is to either restart the stage or hope another cutscene triggers, since they’ll magically spring back to life in order to say their dialog (though, again, usually only seconds before they fall back into the next death pit). 

This might not be much of a problem, depending on your viewpoint. There’s not much incentive to switch between Lloyd and Lura, so once you pick whoever you think works the best, chances are, you’ll just stick with them. You do unlock special team-up attacks after beating each boss, but this just reinforces the idea that Lloyd the Monkey 2 is meant to be experienced with another person holding a second controller, as most of the team-up attacks require both characters to do something specific that the single player artificial intelligence usually can’t interpret. Regardless, the team-up attacks never seem strictly necessary to progress, so they can be safely ignored if you’re playing solo.

I understand this is a pretty negative review I’ve written here. Lloyd the Monkey 2 aims high and tries to the best of its ability to get there. I assume it was a struggle to get even this far. Making games is hard work, and like any skill, takes practice to get good at. Just because this is Lloyd the Monkey 2 doesn’t mean Noah Meyer, its developer, is automatically an expert. I'm sure he's doing his best, and, quality aside, this game has a lot of heart put into it. This isn’t something cheap, quick, or lazy. It’s really, genuinely trying, and that matters. 

I’ve said a few times here and there that I see pieces of myself in the releases of Lloyd the Monkey, and I still see them here. I remember, for an early SAGE event, I was working on a fangame project of mine called The Fated Hour. I was probably already a year or two or maybe even three deep in the game by now, and after a lot of hyping up the community, this was their first chance to play the game. I spent months and months coding this iteration of my engine, and by my standards back then, it seemed like bleeding edge technology. I felt like I was going to blow everyone's minds. 

It was a mess. Few were impressed. Even worse, the game straight up didn’t even run correctly for some people. What followed was multiple patches, and even rebuilding some entire areas from scratch. My ambitions got the better of me and I unintentionally cut corners -- not because I was trying to cheap out on doing proper development, but just because I simply didn’t know any better. I may have done the best I knew how to do, but I was running faster than my body could keep up with and I stumbled.

When I see things like the missing invisible walls in the prologue, or how easily partner characters commit suicide by accident, I think back to that demo for The Fated Hour, and how I've been in this exact place myself. There’s even a side quest in Lloyd 2 where you have to track a floating girl as she drifts through a level -- there was a nearly identical set piece in The Fated Hour, where you were chasing a robot. It’s a very strange feeling to see something like that and think, “I’ve been here before.” Like looking through a window at a younger version of yourself.

It’s true that I stumbled, but I didn’t let that stop me. I learned by doing. I kept going. Three years later, a game of mine was featured on TV, leading to more than a million downloads. The mistakes of past projects did not weigh me down and I soldiered onwards, newfound knowledge in hand. 

So where does that leave us with Lloyd the Monkey 2, then. Well, it's not exactly a game to compete with Super Mario Odyssey, but given the circumstances in which it was created, I don't think that's necessarily the point. As a learning experience clearly made for the fun of its own creation, I think it's a success. And who knows what awaits in the years to come?

[what-even-is-thiss]

Fic, Off of Land, Out of Water, Part 1, Time.

Yeah this is part 1 of the merman fic I should’ve posted like a month ago. I’ve got the first three parts written. There will probably be six in total. It involves both humans and merpeople heavily so I hope you like it. Only the core four are here so don’t ask where the dark sides are.

Warnings: None I can think of. 1,986 words

Abstract: It’s time for something to happen. Logan and Virgil have different ideas about what it’s time for. Virgil knows more than he’s willing to admit.

Last   

Next 

1. Time.

Logan floated along lazily, smelling the dust he occasionally sent up into the water. A turtle swam above him. Technically he probably shouldn’t be in waters this shallow but today it would be the only place to get some alone time. There would be people all over town, getting ready for the new years celebration and the graduations tomorrow. The boats above still wouldn’t see him. It wasn’t a big deal. He closed his eyes.

“Stone and stone they placed, ten thousand strong.” he mumbled to himself. “Sand compressed to glass and…”

“Practicing?” said a familiar, ominously deep voice.

Logan opened his eyes. A fanged smooth face hung several feet in the water above him, the messy black, silver, and white pattern on his tail made for camouflage in much deeper waters than these, his light freckled skin free of scales and contradicting what his tail normally would have done for him.

Logan smiled with his mouth closed, refusing to return his friend’s playful threat.

“And where have you been?” Logan asked.

The other merman turned upside down.

“Not so much as a ‘Oh, so good to see you, Virgil.’ Christ.”

“What?” Logan asked. He didn’t understand that last word.

“Nothing.” Virgil said quickly, also turning himself right side up. “I’ve been out exploring. You know me. Scared of people. Need some time away. Whatever.”

Logan turned himself upright as well. “Well did you remember where you went this time?”

“I’ve conveniently forgotten it again.” Virgil said in a series of noises and clicks.

Up until now they had been speaking in English. Logan wondered about this. Normally he and Virgil spoke English together. Virgil spoke the local human language very well. He had taught Logan when they were younger. It was like a secret code between them. He had given Logan a “human name” as he called it.

……….

“Logan sounds like logic.” thirteen year old Virgil had said.

“Okay.” thirteen year old Logan had said, counting the decaying plastic beads they had found just outside the city, arranging and rearranging them in his hand. “So humans made these?”

“Yeah they make them out of oil or whatever.” Virgil had said. “Uh, I haven’t…” he made a series of clicks to translate the word “oil”

Logan shivered at that word. He remembered a story that he was made to memorize from just before his own lifetime. A story of a human boat carrying that substance that had caused a great famine that had forced all of them to move to their current location. A location where he, and he assumed Virgil, was born.

“How could something that destructive make these?” Logan asked.

Virgil carefully picked all of the purple ones out of Logan’s hand and shrugged. He left the blue ones.

“Don’t go finding out, Logan. It’s not worth it.” he had said.

……….

In the present day Logan fingered the ruined beads held to his wrist by a braided rope. He did this purely out of habit. He also double checked to see that Virgil was wearing the purple ones purely out of habit. He was. Logan switched to the mer language, guessing that maybe Virgil wanted to practice. He did have sort of a speech impediment. For all Logan knew he had been teaching him the wrong pronunciation for the human words all of these years.

“So are you graduating too?” Logan asked.

“Tomorrow? I doubt it. I’ll probably never graduate if I’m being honest.” Virgil said.

They both started swimming against the current to go back to the city. The water opened up dark and deep below them as they left the reefs. Virgil was always a faster swimmer and never really slowed down. Logan had to strain to keep up with him. Virgil slowed as they began swimming downwards.

The city was carved into rocks and lit by the sun. Sunlight captured in glass orbs, jars, and bottles that would look like windchimes if the current didn’t blow them sideways and encourage them to float.

As they slowed down even more, Logan grabbed ahold of Virgil’s arm. Virgil didn’t protest and pulled him along, giving the weaker merman some rest.

“Hey blank face! You’re back!” someone yelled from a window.

“Who was that?” Virgil asked.

“Doesn’t matter. Ignore them.” Logan said, pulling Virgil’s head away from the source of the calling. “Can’t have you killing anyone today.”

“I don’t kill people.” Virgil said, obviously resisting the urge to look around for whoever had called him the name. “I just… get defensive.”

……….

Logan grabbed the new kid’s face and whistled in genuine interest.

“You have no scales on your face.” Logan said. He pulled his arm and looked at his back. “Or anywhere else but your tail.”

The new kid backed up quickly and looked horrified. He showed his fangs in a serious way.

“Don’t touch me!” he said, his words slurring together and sounding almost like a two year old.

Amused clicks, whistles, and laughs sounded around the classroom. Logan looked at the other teenagers kicking up sand with their tails and arms and clearly having fun at this kid’s expense. The teacher on break in the corner was carving something into the stone wall. It didn’t look like she was going to intervene.

Logan took a breath, letting the saltwater clear his head.

“Apologies.” he said, holding his hand out, palm up. “I was unaware that you don’t like to be touched. It is unusual but I’ll adjust.”

The other kid seemed to be unsure of what to do but after a moment carefully placed his palm on top of Logan’s, formally accepting the apology.

“I’m Virgil.” he said. “Watch yourself.”

“Can I ask about the scar?”

“Absolutely not.”

……….

It was routine at this point. Had been for years. They got back to Logan’s parents’ apartment, now just Logan’s apartment.

“Can I ask about the scar?”

“No.”

Always the same. Almost like an acknowledgement that they were home. A greeting. Except for this time.

“Can I ask about the scar?”

Virgil paused as he adjusted the magic bottle full of sunlight hanging in the middle of the room to be slightly brighter. He ran his fingers through his short black hair. He looked back at Logan. With the way his eyes moved it looked like he was considering the different shades of blue scales winding around his friend’s torso until they rested just above his eyes on his forehead.

“Tomorrow.” Virgil said.

Logan paused.

“What?”

“You can ask me about it tomorrow.”

“Why tomorrow? Is it because we’re coming of age? Graduation?”

“You’ll see.” Virgil said solemnly. “Or hopefully you won’t.”

Logan was immune to Virgil’s cryptic tone at this point so he shrugged it off.

“Alright. Are you staying here or going to your place?”

“Staying.”

They secured the doors and slept together. It’s not like merpeople have to hold each other while they sleep anymore. They live in a modern world. They have buildings now. The tides won’t take them away from each other. But instincts die hard. Old habits die hard. Old assumptions die hard.

So they clung to each other through the night, on the stone floor. Logan slept. Virgil just listened to him breathe, hearing the water move impossibly through a human-like respiratory system. In his dreams Logan thought he heard a voice.

“Why don’t you question why we have lungs?” It said.

……….

“You are swimming off again?” Logan asked.

Virgil stopped. His bare back and arms tensed and then relaxed when he registered who it was. He floated slightly away with the current.

“You’re my only friend here. If I’m forced to keep coming back I’ll always come back to you.” Virgil said.

“Fine, don’t tell me where you go. But if you miss our graduation I…” Logan couldn’t finish.

“Your graduation.” Virgil said, turning around. “I will never graduate from this.”

“Falsehood.” Logan said.

“I wish I’d never taught you that word.” Virgil said.

The buildings towered above Virgil’s often abandoned sand level apartment. Crabs and other bottom feeders often wandered into it by mistake only to be crushed under Virgil’s bare hands. Unlike almost every other merperon Logan knew Virgil didn’t carve pictures into his walls. They were just as blank as his upper skin. Except of course for the…

No, it was impolite to harp on that more than he already did.

“Where do you even go?” Logan asked. “We left the north seas generations ago. Nobody knows who we are in that area of the ocean. I’ve been trying to figure it out, and you won’t tell me. If I’m your only friend then it’s only logical I should know everything about you, but I know nothing. It has been almost ten new years since we met. Still I don’t know why you live alone or who your parents are.”

“My parents aren’t from here.” Virgil said.

“Then where?” Logan asked. “A twenty two year old shouldn’t be living alone unless your parents are dead like mine. I have tolerated this for far too long. Who are you?”

Virgil swam close fast and put both hands on Logan’s shoulders, a gesture that Logan had only ever seen Virgil use for a friend. A frightening gesture that usually meant dominance over a slain enemy but for some reason in Virgil’s world meant that he was about to tell you something serious. Something that requires your full attention.

“I am an adult, Logan. I am more of an adult than you. You don’t understand yet but you will. Until I come back, don’t go to the surface.”

“I was not planning on it.” Logan said. “I’ve never been there. Why would I start now?”

“Good.”

Logan tried following him. He said “But you’re not an adult. What are-“

Virgil swam away too fast for Logan to keep up. He didn’t finish his sentence. It wouldn’t be logical if Verge couldn’t hear him. Logan watched the distance until his friend was just a dark speck in the water, no bigger than a normal fish swimming about. Logan considered yelling. Letting out a long sorrowful farewell akin to the crying of a whale. But that would be too public. Not like him. Not like Virgil. It would be too primitive. He began reciting things to himself instead.

“And then the ancients learned to shape the sand and the magic henceforth remaned in…”

……….

“Did you sleep?” Logan asked.

“No.” Virgil said

“It is tomorrow. How did you get the large inverted scar on your stomach?”

“Logan, what do you know about human history?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you know what I work to memorize and why I will never graduate?”

“No. Because you will graduate even if you don’t tell me what you are memorizing.”

“What is your job again, Logan?” Virgil asked.

“To preserve the knowledge of our community. To memorize our history and the history of merpeople worldwide as much as I can. I am being tested on this today. I will have to recite all that I’ve learned since birth. I was chosen. You know this. You were chosen too. You are studying to be…”

“You don’t know enough then.” Virgil said. “Hopefully you make it to the test.”

“What’s with the scar?”

“Do you know how humans are born?”

“Like mammals?”

“Than you should know what this scar is.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. The test will be starting soon. I knew you wouldn’t tell me.”

“I’ll tell you after the test. If we have time.”

“Oh I am so sure of that. That last statement was sardonic.”

Virgil didn’t laugh at that like he usually did  when Logan pointed out that he was being sarcastic. Instead he nervously looked around and followed Logan out the door.

“You seem nervous. We are adults now.” Logan said.

Virgil took a shaky breath.

“That’s exactly why.”Next

[breanime]

Neighbors

Requested by @slytheringranger:  Reader gets annoyed (and maybe slightly jealous) because her cat starts running away to her new neighbour who usually keeps to himself (and who happens to be the one and only Billy Russo). Some additional info - of course I have to ask for good version of Billy, who's also scarred(because I am having a lot of feelings) because he tried to help Frank; and that's why Reader doesn't see him a lot. If plot allows it I would like also some guest appearance of Karen, Frank and Curtis visiting Billy.

Thanks for the request, I hope you like it! (Fun fact: I hate the title)

*gif not mine* (I had to use this one, I loved this moment)

It had been three weeks since your new neighbor had moved in and you still hadn’t met him. Normally that wouldn’t have mattered to you—it’s not like you really cared who had moved in down the hall from you, it was just… The guy was so…mysterious. He hadn’t even come to check the place out—you knew that because you had been home nursing your cat, Basil, back to health around the time your neighbor had started inquiring about the empty apartment. Instead, he sent three uniquely gorgeous people to look at it for him. In the process of the guy deciding to take the place, you ended up meeting all three of them.

The first one you met was called Curtis. He was ridiculously charming, with warm eyes and a kind smile that had you trusting him immediately. You had run into him in the lobby when he was trying to get up toy your floor. The visitor’s access code to the elevator wasn’t working, so you just punched yours in for him. He asked you questions about the apartment: how’d you like living there, what were the tenants like, how reliable was maintenance—so you thought he was looking at the property at first.

“Oh, nah,” he had laughed, “I’m just checking it out for a friend. He couldn’t make it today, so I’m just doing the leg work.”

“Oh,” you tried to hide your disappointment—Curtis seemed like he’d make for a good neighbor, “well, it’s a great place, people mostly keep to themselves…”

“Not you, though? Right?” He smiled down at you.

You laughed back. “I mean, I’m not gonna lie and say I’m a social butterfly,” you shrugged, “but I’ve been trapped in a house with a fussy cat for the last few days, so I’m kind of craving human conversation.”

“Well, maybe don’t count on my guy for that. He’s…” Curtis gave a one-shouldered shrug, looking a little disheartened before giving you another dazzling grin. “…not nearly as charming as me.”

“I bet.” You two stepped out of the elevator at the same time. Curtis had told you that he was waiting for the leasing agent to let him into the apartment, so you made the decision to stick around and make small talk until then. “Hopefully he’ll like it; it’s a nice place to live.”

“Maybe. He’s…” Curtis chuckled. “…kind of like your cat: fussy. My guy, he’s not like me…”

“Tall, dark, and handsome?” You asked before you could stop yourself.

Your word vomit was rewarded with another deep chuckle from Curtis. “I mean, my own girlfriend thinks he’s better-looking then me, so…”

“Can I just say, even though I just met you, it sounds like your girlfriend is living her best life?”

Another laugh. He opened his mouth to say something to you, but the elevator dinged, and the leasing agent stepped out. “Looks like the show’s about to start,” he said.

“It was nice meeting you, Curtis,” you extended your hand, “I hope your friend likes the apartment.”

“Same here, Y/N,” he shook your hand, grinning as he turned to greet the agent, “The apartment’s still in question, but…I know he’s gonna like you.”

That encounter had birthed your first surge of interest in your potential new neighbor, and you ended up meeting the other two unnecessarily good-looking people a few days later.

You had been at work all day, and you knew Basil—who was feeling better—would be meowing angrily at you for the rest of the evening. He hated tardiness. The elevator had been making a weird noise for the last 48 hours, and your landlord said he’d have the mechanic take a look at it soon, but you took it anyway. You were too tired to take the stairs, and besides, it was rare that anything broke in your building. You were just about to press your floor number when a feminine voice called out “hold the elevator!”.

You pressed yourself to the wall as an unreasonably gorgeous woman with light hair floated into the elevator. She smiled, thanking you, and you made some kind of squealing noise in response. She did not look like a real person; she looked like someone who should be playing a real person on TV or something. She was wearing a simple, powder blue button-up shirt with a black skirt and she still looked too good to be true. Her companion, however, you had definitely seen on TV.

Frank Castle was a household name in New York, but this was your first time ever seeing him in person (obviously). You had followed his trial, his subsequent death, then his rebirth as the Punisher up to his recent exploits exposing a government conspiracy. This was the first time you’d seen him without blood all over him, and man… The Punisher was actually kind of cute, he reminded you of a well-trained human pitbull. He was wearing a gray baseball cap that did nothing to disguise himself, but he got an A for effort. You made an effort not to stare, and the three of you stood silently as the elevator churned and started moving… Until it made a kind of choking noise, complete with flickering lights.

“What the hell?” Frank said, his voice gruff. All three of you stared up at the ceiling of the elevator until the lights stopped flickering and died out.

“No no no no,” you sighed, “son of a bitch.”

“Does this happen often?” The woman asked you, brows furrowed.

You shook your head. “No, this is the first time since I’ve lived here.”

“You think it’s a blackout?” She asked the Punisher.

“Nah,” he answered.

“It’s the elevator,” you supplied, “it’s been making this creaking noise for the last few days, and they said the mechanic would be here to take a look at it tomorrow,” you sighed, “and now it’s stuck.”

“Have you lived here long?” The woman asked.

You nodded. “Yeah, I—I haven’t seen you before. You must be looking at the empty apartment on my floor.”

“We are,” she put a delicate hand on her chest, “I’m Karen,” she placed her hand on the Punisher’s broad shoulder, “and this is Frank.”

“Y/N,” you replied, “and—don’t get me wrong, I think it’d be badass to have the Punisher down the hall from me—but you guys know it’s just a single, right?”

Frank laughed. “Thought I was doin’ alright being incognito.”

“Yeah, you… You are not,” you gave a nervous chuckle, “would it be weird to say that I’m kind of a fan?”

“It absolutely would not,” Karen said enthusiastically.

“This place,” Frank turned to you, a small smile on his face, “you said it’s a single? Does it have a decent amount of space, though?”

“Mm hmm,” you nodded, “all the units on my floor are single. I mean, it’s enough for me and my cat-son, but it might be a little small for a couple.”

“Oh—” you could see a rush of heat go to Karen’s cheeks, even in the dark, “—no, we’re…we’re not a couple.”

“Just friends.” Frank said simply.

“Plus we’re not looking,” Karen explained, “we’re just checking it out for a friend. We’re the last test before he buys it.”

“Huh. This is the second time I’ve met someone doing something like that. Is that a thing now? I’m always the last one to know about things.” You said, remembering Curtis.

“No,” Karen laughed, “we’re just doing our friend a favor. Our other friend—actually, he might be the one you met—was here before us.”

“You got a cat,” Frank asked you before turning to Karen, “she might be the cat lady Curt was tellin’ us about.”

“I only have one cat! …Currently.”

Frank chuckled. “Right.” He looked up at the ceiling. “I’m gonna go check this out.” With a grunt, he jumped up and crawled out of the roof of the elevator.

Your jaw dropped open as you stared at the now open roof, but Karen was unfazed.

“So our friend,” she continued, ignoring the grunting and ripping noises that were now coming from the roof, “served with Frank and Curtis in the Marines. He played a big part in helping Frank with…with what he needed to deal with, and he got hurt.” She pushed some hair behind her ear. “He’s kind of become a recluse since then, so… If he does decide to get this place, maybe… if you don’t mind, maybe just make a point to say hi to him or something? Make him feel welcome?”

“Of course,” you agreed easily, “any friend of Curtis is a friend of mine.”

You heard Frank laugh above you, and just like that—the elevator started up again. You rode the rest of the way with Karen and Frank before it got to your floor.

“Well, I hope you guys like the place,” you said as you parted ways, “and if your friend does take it, tell him I’m right down the hall if he needs anything!”

That had been three weeks ago. Apparently, the apartment passed the test because a few days later, Curtis stopped by your place to tell/warn you his friend had bought the property. Frank and Curtis helped the guy move in, but they only came at night. Basil, nosy as ever, had been so curious about the noise that he spent half the night at the door, scratching and meowing, trying to see what was going on. You saw your neighbor’s back—once—as you were coming in late at night. You heard Curtis’ laugh from the apartment—the door was open, and Frank was trying to roll a table through it.

“Hey, Y/N!” Frank greeted you.

“Hi, Frank,” you called back, pushing Basil back with your foot, “Hey, Curtis!”

“Hey!” Curtis’ voice was a bit muffled, but still as warm as it had been the day you met.

You wanted to talk with them, but Basil was doing that cat-thing where his body stopped following the laws of physics, so you needed to close the door before he ran out. He was a frisky little bastard. But, just as you were closing the door, you turned one last time and saw a tall, thin figure in the hall next to Frank. He had a dark hoodie on with the hood up and cut a striking figure—but that was all you saw before you had to shut the door.

A few days later, you were tempted to let your curiosity get the better of you. So, in the act of being neighborly, you decided to officially welcome tall-dark-and hooded to your building. You opened the door, still formulating your welcome speech, when Basil ran past you and sped down the hall.

“Basil!” You cried out. “Get back here!”

He, naturally, ignored your request and instead ran right to your neighbor’s door where he promptly started meowing loudly and scratching at the wood.

“Shit,” you muttered, tiptoeing over, “Basil, stop that, c’mere…” You got to the door and leaned down to pick him up. Basil jumped out of your grasp and ran his nails on the door harder. “Oh my—stop being an asshole,” you clicked your tongue. Basil meowed back at you—he had never been afraid to talk back—and you reached for him again. Just then, as you were crouched down on the floor arguing with a cat, the door swung open.

You first stared at the pair of feet—clad in pristine white gym shoes—before your gaze slowly moved up. He was wearing grey sweatpants over his long legs, a white t-shirt over his tight chest (not as broad as Frank’s or Curtis’ but still inviting), and his face… He was extremely handsome. He had impossibly dark eyes, short, brown hair, and a frown on his face. There were scars—light and zigzagged—but they didn’t detract from his natural good looks, nor stop you from oogling him. Basil meowed happily, glad to have gotten his way.

Your neighbor cocked an eyebrow as he looked down at the two of you. “…Can I help you?” He had a New York accent that made you tingle just a little bit.

You reached out for Basil, eyes still on your neighbor. Basil, however, was also trying to get a better look at the man and was rubbing his face against his leg, making satisfied little noises. “I—hi. Hi,” you stammered, arms outstretched, “I’m Y/N, I live right down the hall. I was just, um,” you finally looked down and saw that Basil was walking around the man now, in and out of the doorway. “Basil!” You hissed. “Get over here!”

“Ah,” the man said, reaching down to stroke Basil’s head, “so this is the cat I’ve been hearing about,” Basil craned his neck to get more scratches, “I’m Billy.”

“Him” you said again, “Um, look, Billy, I was just going to come say hi and then Basil ran out—”

“—right. I should have…introduced myself before now.”

“No, it’s no problem,” you scooped up Basil, who meowed in protest as you stood up, “sorry to bother you.” You were suddenly flustered at seeing Billy—the hottest of his group of unnecessarily hot friends—and needed to get away as soon as possible. “Let me know if he damaged your door,” you called to Billy before you disappeared into your apartment. You slammed the door closed with your back and cursed to yourself. Of course he was hot. Of course. You hated that you had been so awkward, and you vowed, with an armful of cat, to be cool the next time you saw him.

You were never cool when you saw him. Billy worked a lot, which meant he was in and out of the apartment quite a bit. You ran into him—literally—while he was getting on the elevator and you were getting off. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except you were on your phone having a heated debate with Basil (who had learned how to video-call you using your laptop).

“I swear to God, Basil, if you chewed up my couch again, I’ll—” you were stopped short when you slammed into Billy. You would have fallen on your ass at the impact—the man had a solid chest—but Billy held you steady.

He glanced down at your phone and laughed when he saw Basil’s face in the camera. “Are you facetiming your cat?” He asked.

You had never heard his laugh before. It was melodic and deep and you liked it a lot. You felt your face heat up, but answered him anyway. “He hacks my computer and calls me sometimes,” you explained, “sorry about,” you gestured between you. His hands were still on your waist.

Billy let you go and took a step back. “No problem.”

You gave him a weak wave and ran off, keeping the memory of his laugh in your heart.

The next time you saw him was late at night. You had just taken the trash out and were coming back into your apartment as he was going out. Basil had memorized the sound of Billy’s footsteps and had gotten into the habit of trying to run out into the hall whenever he knew Billy was out there. You ended up running into Billy at least five times a week as you had to chase after Basil. However, you almost never saw Billy this late at night. You watched, hand on your doorknob, as Billy knelt down to pet Basil. Basil, who took a year to even allow himself to be in the same room as your ex, happily allowed the interaction.

“Hey,” Billy had greeted you.

“Hi,” you said back, “You know, he’s not usually this friendly.”

Billy smiled, and you found yourself grinning back. “Neither am I.” His dark eyes roamed over your body before he spoke again. “You shouldn’t go out so late at night.”

“Oh. I was just taking out the trash—”

“I can do that,” he stood up and Basil nuzzled his leg, “Just knock on my door next time you need the trash taken out. It’s not a problem,” he assured you.

“Okay,” you said slowly, unsure how to react to this random kindness. Basil had padded back over to you, meowed at you to get moving, and went back inside. “Okay, thanks…good night.”

You continued to run into Billy on and off for the next few weeks. You learned that he had been in the Marines for over eight years in the elevator and that he owned a company called Anvil. He really did start taking out your trash, so you made it a point to grab his mail from the front desk for him and personally deliver it—which is how you learned that Frank, Curtis, and Karen were like family to him in an interestingly open conversation. You found out that Billy was born and raised in New York during one of Basil’s escape attempts, and later told him about the time you almost drowned on a field trip during another one. Each time you wished that you could see him more, talk with him more, but you were usually awkwardly chasing your cat around or looking very uncool as you tried to carry a huge package to his door, so you never pushed for more. Finally, you decided that the next time you left your apartment you would look good, you would be cool…

…The next time you saw him you did not look cool at all. You looked…very uncool. You were so swamped at work that you had to take it home to finish. Which lead to you having to stay up all night buried under paperwork with chopsticks in your hair. Basil was not amused with the lack of attention you were giving him, meowing and complaining so loudly that you had to kick him out of your bedroom. At some point you remembered that you needed food to survive, so you ordered food, nearly ripped the food out of the delivery guy’s arms, scarfed it down in a rush of limbs and noodles, and got back to work. You were really making headway with your work, which was why you were in no mood for company when you heard a knock on your door.

You yanked the door open, a scowl on your face—and froze. Your neighbor Billy was standing there holding Basil in his arms. He was wearing a suit and tie while you had on your old Hamilton shirt, chopsticks keeping your messy hair up, and a pair of mismatched socks.

“Your cat broke into my place again.” Billy said, smirking at your attire.

Your eyes widened. “I am so sorry—wait, again? What? How did he even get out?”

“I think he snuck out when you answered the door earlier,” Billy said, Basil was purring in his hold, “And he breaks into my place every few days,” he shrugged, unbothered, “I think he gets in the air vents and army crawls back and forth.”

“I—I am so sorry, I had no idea! Why didn’t you tell me?”

Billy gave another shrug. “I think we work different hours, I can never catch you. I always make sure he’s fed and gets home safe, though.” Basil nudged Billy’s hand with his nose in an affectionate gesture. “He’s a cute cat.”

“I think he likes you more than he likes me,” you grumped. “Um, really, Billy, I really am sorry about this. I’m usually more perceptive than this.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. If I’m being honest, I kind of like seeing him so often.”

You gave a nervous laugh. “Wish I could say the same for you.” You watched as Billy’s eyes widened at your statement and swore Basil was smirking at your stupidity. Only you would have a cat who liked home invasions and only you would have such a case of chronic foot-in-mouth disease. “Ohmygod,” you muttered, unsure of what to say next.

“You… You want to see me more often?” Billy asked. You were certain Basil was cocking an eyebrow as he waited for your response.

“I… I… I would not be opposed to that,” you said carefully.

Billy put a large hand on Basil’s head, contemplating. “You… You want to see me?” He asked again. “Like this?”

“Like what? Tall and hot and cool when I’m the opposite of all that?” You shrugged, letting your nervous energy steer the ship. “Yeah, man.”

Billy chuckled. He stroked Basil’s head. “No, I mean,” he swallowed, “I mean like this…with the scars.”

“Oh.” You scanned his face, taking in the different scars. They really weren’t that bad, and even if they were, you liked Billy. The scars didn’t matter. “I almost forgot you have them. I don’t even notice them anymore.”

Billy blinked, looking like he was carefully processing the words you said. “Hm,” he looked down at Basil and then back up at you, “So the scars don’t bother you at all?” He asked.

“No,” you answered honestly, “I think they make you look kind of badass.”

He smiled then, ducking his head down. “Okay…So, if I asked you for your number…?”

You grinned. “You can have it.”

“How about a date?”

You nodded, and Basil meowed in his arms. “You can have that, too. Actually,” you took a step back into your apartment, “I was kind of getting cabin fever just now. Wanna take a walk with me?” You pressed home your advantage. “We can take Basil.”

“Take a cat for a walk in New York City, at night, with a beautiful woman?” Billy asked, his smile blinding. “I’d love to.”

Basil made a pleased sound and you couldn’t help but giggle. He knew exactly what he had done. “Let me just get his leash and some shoes,” you said, hurrying to grab those items. Billy waited patiently, asking about what kind of restaurant you liked best as he cradled Basil in his arms.

Man, you loved having a cat.

*********************************************************************************

TAGLIST: : @floralpeaceofmind @delicatelilyflower @doneobrien @ladyblablabla @banditthewriter @something-tofightfor  @starsfragments @blackcoffeeandgreenteaforme @hisgirlwednesdayaddams@fictionwillneverdie @maria-beretta @sadnessxvodka @ymariejp @sunnycolors @moonlightsay @its-all-o-kay @damagelove @keyeluh @itsmylife98 @funerals-with-cake @littlemermaidprobz @teacuplotus @king4thesirens @mrsjaxtellerfan @thebabblingbook @tartelette-aux-fraises @madamrogers  @charlylama @iaintnofurry​ @k-buggz2001​

This was kind of long, wasn’t it? Comments always appreciated!

[blueboxesandtrafficcones]

The Party Problem

Day 9 of 2019′s 31 Days of Ficmas

Thanks to @doctorroseprompts for the prompt list!

Prompt: party

Rating: General

Pairing: 10xRose (pre-couple)

Summary: In hopes a relaxing night out, the Doctor attempts to take Rose to a Christmas party during the 4th Great and Bountiful Human Empire.  Needless to say, plans go awry.

2019 31 Days of Ficmas masterlist

---

“So, where are we going today?” Rose skipped into the console room to find the Doctor already fiddling with the coordinates.

From the other side of the console he looked up, face breaking into a wide smile at the sight of her.  “Hello!” he said in that delighted way he had, as if they’d been apart for months instead of minutes.  It never failed to make her heart leap, to know her mere presence brought him so much happiness.  “We… are going to a Christmas party,” he said smugly, throwing the lever and sending them into flight. “And not just a Christmas party, oh no- nothing so mundane for you.  No, we are going to the 20th annual official Christmas Gala, held by the Supreme Emperor of the 4th Great and Bountiful Human Empire!”

Rose’s shoulders slumped, and she stuck her lower lip out in an exaggerated pout.  “That sounds nice,” she said wistfully, moving towards him and crossing her arms.  “Sounds beautiful, really.”

“Then what’s wrong?”  His eyebrows drew together, and she had to hide a smile at his perplexed expression.

“Well, it’s just… you’ve promised me the 4th Great and Bountiful Human Empire over… and over… and have basically doomed us that wherever we land, there’ll be trouble.”

Eyes widening his jaw dropped, and for several seconds he spluttered indignantly.  “You- I- That’s not- How could you- It’s just- Rose!”

She burst into laughter, having to hold herself around the middle to keep upright.  “Oh, your face,” Rose gasped, howling.  “Oh, that’s priceless, that is!”

“Rose!  Stop laughing,” he whined, circling the console to get to her, crossing his arms and sulking.  “It’s not nice.  I have not doomed us.”

“But you have though!  Every time, Doctor, we find trouble.  Remember Satellite Five?”

He looked particularly put out, and she almost felt bad.  “That wasn’t my fault,” he muttered, “sometimes the TARDIS takes us where we need to go rather than where we want to go.”

“I know,” she said soothingly, swallowing back the remaining giggles.  “But you have to admit, she seems particularly against taking us there.”

“Well, this time we are going, because I have an invitation.”

“The psychic paper does not count as an invitation.”

“It’s not the psychic paper!  It is a real invitation, Dame Rose, one I received many years ago in my travels and never cashed in.  Would you care to join me?”

Rose hummed, adopting a quizzical expression and studying him.  The longer she waited the more earnest he appeared, his Time Lords are superior posture fading to please let me take you somewhere nice, and she caved – not that she would ever say no.  I’ll go anywhere with you, daft alien.  For as long as you’ll have me.  Don’t you know that by now?  Then again, it was somewhat sweet and innocent of him to feel the need to ask, to not just make assumptions about what she wanted.  “I would be absolutely delighted, Sir Doctor,” she affected a posh accent, giggling once again when he rolled his eyes.  “And what, precisely, is the dress code?”

He blinked.  “Uh… fancy?”

“Right, but… oh, never mind, I’m sure the TARDIS’ll make sure I choose something appropriate,” Rose shook her head, grinning wryly.  “I’ll go get ready.”

With a parting bright smile she turned, strolling towards the wardrobe room.

“You have ten minutes!” he called after her.

She started running.

-

Twenty-seven minutes later she returned to the console room, dressed to the absolute nines.  “I love this dress,” she announced, strutting in.  “I feel like a princess or something.”  She did a little twirl, pleased when the skirts flared out around her.  “What d’you think?”

And then she stopped dead, jaw dropping slightly as she caught sight of him.

“Blimey, you cleaned up.”

It shouldn’t have been that surprising; he’d worn a suit nearly every second since he’d regenerated, and going from that to a tux wasn’t much different, but… Whoa.

“Looks all right?” he asked nervously, turning from the mirror he had propped against the rotor, his own eyes going wide at seeing her.  “Wow.”

“You look… fine,” Rose swallowed, scanning him carefully.  The tux seemed to be even more snug than his usual suit, and he was far more than just fine.  “It’s- it’s good.”  His undone bowtie caught her eye, and she didn’t waste the opportunity.  “Here, let me.” Taking her time she tied it for him, before smoothing her hands along his shoulders and down the front of the jacket.  “Perfect.”  If her voice was a little breathier than normal he didn’t seem to notice, just stared down at her with those expressive brown eyes.  As much as he tried to hide his feelings, burying them deep beneath boundless energy and childlike enthusiasm, the truth was clear as day in his eyes, finishing sentences when his mouth was incapable of doing so.

“Thanks,” he murmured, taking a step back.  “You look wonderful.”

“Thank you.”  Rose blushed, dipping her head and holding out her skirts, twirling again.  “I hope there’s dancing.”  I hope you dance with me.

“I’m sure there will be.”

An awkward silence ensued, broken only the abrupt landing.

“Oh!” Rose yelped, bursting into laughter as she swayed.  “I guess we’re here.”

“Looks like it.”  The Doctor jogged over to the monitor, peering at it intently for a moment.  “Yep, this is it.”

They made their way to the door, which swung open for them of the ship’s accord; immediately, the sounds of a party floated inside to them, reassuring Rose.

“Milady?” he offered her his elbow, and with a tongue-touched grin, she took it.

“Why thank you, kind sir.”

And they entered the party.

-

It took two hours.

“Doctor, where the hell are you?” Rose hissed, running for her life down a portrait gallery, guards chasing her – she had a momentary advantage, being able to dart and weave through secret doors they didn’t know she was aware of.  Carrying her heels and running in stockinged feet helped, though the guards were slowly gaining.  “Shit. I knew this would happen, didn’t I say so?”

She careened around a corner while glancing over her shoulder, only to be forcefully jerked sideways.  Fighting back a scream, she blinked frantically to get her vision to adjust to the dark closet she was suddenly in.

“You okay?”

Rose sagged at the familiar voice, relaxing back against the door as she realized the body framing her was none other than the Doctor’s.  “Yes. Where have you been?”

“Me?  You’re the one who- who keeps wandering off!”

“Shh!”

They fell silent as the guards ran past their hiding spot, waiting an eternity until the Doctor shifted her out of the way, cracking open the door and listening intently.  “Coast is clear,” he whispered, “and I’ve got a way out. Trust me?”

“You’re an idiot,” she hissed back, letting that linger for a moment before adding, “if you think the answer to that is anything other than ‘yes’.  Now get us out of here!”

“That was mean,” he grumbled petulantly, opening the door fully and creeping towards the left.  “Come on.”

“That’s them!”  The shout came from the other direction, and they both looked to see a second contingent of guards pointing in their direction.

“Oh… come on!  Run!”

Shaking her head in exasperation, Rose bundled her skirts in the same hand as her shoes, took the Doctor’s hand, and did as he said.

Amazing how much more fun this is with his hand in mine.

-

They made it into the TARDIS with seconds to spare, and Rose could feel the guards grasping for her dress as they tumbled through the doors.  The moment they slammed shut Rose collapsed onto the ramp, panting as she dropped her shoes and hem while the Doctor made his way to the console and sent them into flight.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered from where he hunched over the controls, and the image was so similar to just before he regenerated that Rose had a visceral reaction, jumping up and hurrying over to him.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” she soothed, internally panicked by how downtrodden he appeared.  “I know you didn’t mean for that to happen- though I’m not quite clear on what did happen.  One second I’m laughing at the Crown Prince’s joke, the next guards were chasing me.”

The Doctor finally lifted his head, an ancient, dark look in his eye that did more to remind her of who he really was, what he was, than the time machine she lived on.  “I accidentally uncovered a coup in progress,” he admitted.  “The General was planning on murdering the Emperor and seizing the throne.  He wasn’t pleased when I blurted my realization out in front of the Emperor.”

Rose couldn’t help but snort.  “Sounds like you.”  She hadn’t been able to help wondering, while darting through the Imperial Palace, if he’d started trouble because the Crown Prince had been monopolizing her time.

“I just wanted to take you somewhere nice,” he lamented, turning to lean back against the console and raking his eyes over her.  “Let you get dressed up and let your hair down.  We’ve been running nonstop for weeks now.”

She shrugged her shoulders, stepping closer and patting his bicep.  “I don’t care.  I love it.  All of it.  Running from trouble, or to trouble, or just… having breakfast in the galley.  I appreciate the effort, but… any time with you is time well spent.”

His eyes met hers, and she fought to not blink, trying to keep herself still.  She was tired, and sore, and in desperate need of a shower, but she let him see the truth of her words, how she really felt, things speakable and unspeakable alike.

After a minute his mouth tightened and he nodded.

“Movie night, then?”

“After a shower,” she agreed, giving an over-exaggerated sniff before grinning.  “Twenty minutes?”

He nodded again, and she turned towards the corridor that led to her room.

“By the way…” she stopped in the doorway, glancing over her shoulder to find he hadn’t moved, “we can have a fancy dress party just the two of us without leaving the ship, you know.  Next time you want to see me kitted out like this. Just so you know.”

And she disappeared down the hall, humming to herself as she went.

[massieh]

Transfigure ( rewrite ; first draft ), Chapter 1. word count: 3,270.

The full moon illuminated the river, casting the world around us in black and white. The river, a sheet of obsidian glass beneath the glow, wrapped around my feet and begged that I join in with the current. 

Just let it all go; be free.

Something hit my hand, hard and cold. At first, the feeling sent a chill down my spine, and reflex demanded that I throw it. Though useful in the field, that instinct was well out-of-place here. Carefully, calmly, I raised the object into the candlelight.

It was one of the bottles that Kane repurposed for a candle holder, an idea he had when we first found the place months before. The wax stick jammed into the top had already burned down so far into the neck that it stained the glass around it black. Even the wax seal could not hold back the smell. Whatever was inside, its stale scent gave the impression that it could only be useful for cleaning wounds.

I tried to push it back. How did he roll a square bottle? 

“Nah,” he demanded, kicking it back over the short distance I had managed. “We had a deal.”

“Yeah, and I’ll hold up my end with or without yours.” In truth, I was sick of feeling stupid. It sounded fun to face the impossible, but that was before I found out that even trivial things could hold that title.

“Both ends are my end. Now go.”

“Fine,” I mumbled under my breath and raised the bottle again. I tried to ignore all the other details. The shape, the scent, the weight—anything that would be important under any real circumstances was useless now. 

Words. I had to figure out the words.

With the old world gone and the city ripped apart, readers weren’t all that common. This place was built by a group of strangers, after all. Each was stripped from their home and dropped here to make a new life alongside the others. Some kept their families in tow; most came alone. This lack of community, alongside the shared goal of survival, led to an illiteracy rate that I didn’t notice until Kane moved in.

As a neighbor once told me, if the old world’s skills were so useful, we wouldn’t be where we are today. It didn’t make that much sense, but everyone else thought so. Who was I to argue?

Kane was one of the lucky ones. He came here knowing how to read. Though we were left wanting for books, he still managed to keep that talent sharp.

Both of my parents could read. My mother all but spoke in code, and it was holy texts that made up my father’s foundation. Both tried to show me their worlds; both kind of succeeded. Reading, however, was never included.

There were a few words scattered throughout the city that had been burned into my mind through recognizance. “Voodoo” and “girls” made the top of that list. Try to make sense of the Bible on that alone.

Three days after Kane figured it out, he came up with his greatest plan yet: he would be the one to teach me the sacred art of literature. His words, not mine. Boredom replaced his brilliant curiosity with a rabid need for purpose a long time ago. So, as any idiot would, I eagerly agreed. He dedicated our first week to the alphabet. I was to say it forward and back fifteen times every few hours to make sure it stuck. 

Simple enough. 

Then, we moved on to the next logical step: “Sound it out.”

Despite the roll of my eyes, I did as I was told. “J-aysk”

“No, no. Where are you getting the’s’?”

“What do you mean?” And after he hissed the sound back at me, “Right there.”

“That’ s—no, that one makes the same sound as the ‘k’.”

I changed my mind. This sucked. “That makes no sense.”

“The ‘a’ makes the sound like ‘at’, too.’”

“Jac-k?”

“Don’t pronounce them both.”

“Both what? It’s four—”

“Just, ‘Jack’.” He chopped at the air with one hand, but the motion’s meaning was lost on me.

My response was the forced sigh of, “Okay. Jack,” followed by another, meeker attempt. “D… e… nials?” 

Kane snorted behind me. 

As I shifted back to lean on my elbows, the bottle turned over in my hand, allowing me one last whiff of the foul liquid inside. “So, what. This Jack guy was so ashamed of this stuff, he had to say it on the label?” The bottle sang out an eerie scrape as I returned it to the slab of concrete at Kane’s feet, and its ring somehow made more sense than the next word from his mouth.

“Daniels.”

“What?”

He sputtered again. This time, it sounded like a laugh. “It’s Jack Daniels. It was whiskey. Alcohol, but not the kind you use on cuts.” And because I clearly didn’t get it, he added, “A drink for, uh… entertainment.” 

It was exhausting how much he knew about the old world. Some would say too much. Though it was easy to agree, it was almost impossible not to be fascinated by it. At the compound, there were rooms dedicated to artifacts and treasures worth more than any ten men together could afford. It would not surprise me to know all of that, in addition to what was left of the natural wonders, paled in comparison to Kane’s collections. 

“You’re stupid good at a lot of things,” I told him after an agonizing moment of self-debate. The added spice of his own slang would hopefully soften the blow. “But you might be the worst teacher I’ve ever had.”

This time, his laugh was flimsy. “Well, I’m not a Minister or a Control Chief, so that’s a weird corner to throw me in.” 

Oh, good. No harm done.

Kane was always this easy. I could be a little bit mean, and he’d just be happy to hear himself talk in-between. The banter served as a low-effort veil between us and the void of boredom, sure. When things got deep, though, it was the true void that stared back. His teaching needed work, but Kane filled the silence with more knowledge and life in a single minute than any amount of time with my parents ever did—official, familial, or otherwise.

A second bottle clinked against the stone at my left, this one with some of the original contents still inside. I waited for the same set of instructions. Instead, what he gave back read something like, try it. One sip, and I spit it out instantly. “Oh, that’s disgusting.”

“It is what it is. You’re doing fine.” His shift in tone was so swift that I nearly forgot about the acidic film on my tongue. “It’s just been a couple of weeks. It took me like a month, I bet.”

“You’d also be six.”

“And you’re seventeen—“

“Eighteen.”

“The arguments make themselves.” I looked back, and his smile was as smug as his tone. “Like I said. You’re doing just fine.”

If the right response existed, it was lost beneath an awkward laugh and the gentle sound of the flowing river.

Even without many character references to place around him, Kane was odd in a way that even his sacred art of literature would have trouble capturing. Though he only stood a few inches taller than me, no room could contain his personality. His body was more weapon than temple. From appearance to mind to words—everything but his eyes, he kept sharp.

One of the bottles floated out from the cove and into the river without either of us noticing. The water tugged it one way and another. It was the flickering of the light that caught my attention. The flame rose and fell in the hot air, twisting as the bottle bobbed from side to side, and finally went out altogether when it tipped over and washed out.

The light was now too low to read, but both ends were Kane’s, right?

“Let’s go,” I mostly grunted just before scooting from the pavement’s edge and into the river. Wading beyond reach of the shore to where the cool stream rose high enough to combat the humidity, I turned back to face him.

Kane maintained both still and silence surprisingly well.

“I promise it’ll be less fun if we do this by force.”

Only the still broke. He slid from the jutting knees of a cypress onto the slab below to remove his boots, socks, and the sidearm he kept strapped to his thigh. After sliding those over to join my things, he moved on to rolling his tattered jeans until they threatened his circulation. Stalling was routine, same as the distance in his eyes and the occasional sighing.

In a lazy attempt to match his performance, my hand moved in slow, dramatic circles in a gesture to hurry up. By the time he touched the water, my arm was a quick snap away from falling off my shoulder and drifting out to sea. 

It was by no small feat that he was able to reach me. Though the water gathered only at his hips, if even that far, he could only do so with his eyes clenched shut. It was impressive.

“Alright, I’m ready,” he told me once his hands were safely in mine. His stance was so tight that his grip almost hurt. Determined, he may have been, but Kane looked anything but ready.

“I won’t make you do anything yet,” I said. “Just stand there. Get used to the flow. Try to open your eyes, maybe?” They tightened at that. “Hey. If anything happens, I’m right here.”

The sentiment did little to calm him. At the very least, it did encourage the hint of a grin, fleeting though it was. When it was apparent that he couldn’t control his own breathing, mine became slowed and pronounced for him to mirror. After what felt like an hour of coaching, but must have only been a few minutes, his breathing began to fall smoothly in time with the steady sound of waves crashing in the distance. 

Sometimes, when the fog cleared enough to see the endless expanse of the southern sea, and the river rose just a little higher than usual, he would mention his home sector. Not much more was given than what he wanted to remember. I knew it must have been somewhere west because he always mentioned how the morning sun blinded him on the move over. The way he marveled at our trees for the first three years said it must have been pretty dry. 

When Kane spoke about it, he did so in hushed tones, as though home could be all that scary. Maybe it was. In some ways, I was less surprised by his aquaphobia than his decision to tell me about it.

Kane dropped my hands and took another deep breath through his nose, rereleasing it from his mouth in a tight stream of air. Not that his first thought would be the position of his face in relation to mine. A warning just would have been nice. 

“Alright,” he repeated. With just enough bravery sucked in with a second, more generous inhale, he coaxed his eyes open. 

Had I not been watching, I would have missed the literal instant regret set in. “What a face. Think you’ll live?”

His mouth pressed into a firm line.

“Dude. You have to breathe.” Maybe he wasn’t feeling talkative, but at least he was present enough to listen. “You’re doing way better than last time.”

Last time was a wrestling match just to get this far. It ended with Kane falling in and scrambling his way back before we could make any more progress. Victoria thanked me that day for forcing her son to bathe. This time, though fear was still evident in the way his eyes darted between the water below and the sky above, Kane was able to restrain himself.

It was a noble effort—one lost the moment he looked to the branches of the looming trees. “They’re gathering late tonight,” he noted, referring to the growing amassment of crows.

“You think it’s dogs?”

“Probably.” The commotion of subsong and wings replaced our voices for a moment before Kane turned his eyes on me again. He tried to grab my hands again and added a desperate, “I’ll walk with you.” 

My hands were held up for him to see while I backed away. “Hold on, hold on. We have time.” Already, the soil of the riverbed pulled me down, seeping between my toes with each step. I’d seen panic drown too many in this river to join them. So I allowed the distance between us to expand instead.

We were only a couple of meters from the waters’ edge. Still, when I finally reached the wall of trees and turned to face him, he felt oceans away. 

The collection of candles had melted over the bottles’ necks, their labels now impossible to decipher beneath the wax coating. It was as good a time as any to turn in. I raised the last, still burning, high for him to see.

“When it goes out.”

“You know, one pack took out an entire team last week.” His voice was soft, nearly inaudible over the water.

“So I heard.”

“I should really get you home.”

“They got a whole team. Having one extra body won’t keep me any safer. You worry about you.”

A distracted laugh, both forced and cautious, slipped past Kane’s worry just to free-fall into silence. No longer were the cicadas singing, the birds paused in quiet wonder, and for a moment, even the water fell into an uncomfortable still. 

The sector grew quieter by the day, it seemed. Together, we survived war, famine, disease. I’m sure you can piece together what happened to the rest. My uncle always liked to say that book of Revelation didn’t prepare us for an after. Nine years old may have been too young for that lesson, but I understood all the same. 

Over the past week, more stories from the Cage made it to the dinner table. My mother told us that one of the things inside had a wingspan twice as long as its own body. She said it tried to take to the skies, but its wings were too heavy. Instead of lifting itself from the ground, it destroyed three buildings and killed two people before being captured. Suits spoke in hushed tones throughout the Complex about how the webbed pinions left an ashen residue on their uniforms.

The rest was a matter of who told the story.

Kane tugged me from the thought by prompting from his position in the water, “Hey, Andy. Can we tuck in yet? No rush, but I’m starting to freak out.”

To get back to the road meant scaling the city’s deteriorated retaining wall and the roots that had nearly devoured it. Kane beat me to the top and triumphantly threw both fists in the air as if the effort were for glory rather than escape. It was the pair of boots, hanging together from one clenched hand as I remained at the water’s edge to lace my own, that gave him away.

The trees served as a veil between the southern wilderness and what was deemed before my conception as “civilization”. Once we passed through, our usual banter had to be capped. We stepped lightly, even slowing our breathing to a shallow and cautionary flow. The smallest sound could bounce through the empty streets and lead something much worse than the river’s wrath to us.

From the gaping mouth of an old storefront, the sun-bleached cast of a massive, toothy lizard smiled at us. Could you believe it was a real thing? Not the smiling part, but the creature itself. Kane told me all about it when his family first joined the sector.

They were big, sometimes twice as long as he was tall and three times his weight, he said. I asked if he knew all that because he had to kill one. Kane only gave me a strange look and said everyone knew what an alligator was. But that wasn’t true. I didn’t. For all I knew, they were no more real than his Mothman. 

A time did exist where the buildings along our hike were beautiful. Time and the elements faded their colors, shattered their windows, and darkened their doors. Here and there, shop signs still clung to their rusted mounts. Due only to their current state, which was battered too far beyond recognition for even Kane to read, was I brave enough to look at them for more than a glance.

The path was so familiar that I could have walked it backwards with my eyes covered. Every step was as much a part of me as my own two hands. The shape of the street names, I had memorized before Kane joined the sector.

St. Peter.

Bourbon.

Bienville.

And at the end of Bienville was home. Well, it was my home. Kane’s family relocated so often that I stopped keeping track. At first, the frequent moves were quirky. Then, they were frustrating. While the other kids moved on to new friends, I knew there was a different solution. I just had to get good at finding him.

Home was a single cross-section of road, separated from the ruin and wilderness by tireless grooming. Even as we crossed over the threshold between broken asphalt and the intact pavement that bound the structures together, Maintenance took stock of tomorrow’s workload. 

As always, they paid us no mind. 

The Complex stood three stories high and only an echo of its former glory. Like the rest of the city, it battled weathering of its own. The Northwest corner and an entire block of the cemetery were swallowed by the earth four days after my twelfth birthday. Before was the contagion. And after? That was the Summer of Lights, which burned down more than half the city. 

Yeah, it wasn’t that fun.

Kane led me to one of the clone doors and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. “Tomorrow’s a big one,” he told me.

“You ready for it?”

“Never am. Don’t sleep in.”

And I responded, “Get good sleep.”

He disappeared beyond the dim glow of our stoop light, leaving me to drown at the hands of anxiety. The Course—like I could forget. If I failed, then what? There was always the Ministry, but if I couldn’t read and failed a glorified physical exam, even they would have no use for me. 

As my mind swarmed with thoughts of tomorrow, the still dark of the entry felt like a gift. It meant that my feet could make the weary climb to the second floor without the help of a conscious mind. Mine was too busy repeating the phrase, “Do you accept?” To the question, it shouted the oath.

Outside my window, the moon still shone over the city, either oblivious to its state of distress or indifferent. It lit the single-block cemetery there, and I could swear there was more life in those mausoleums than remained throughout the whole sector. I could see Kane perched on one of the roofs, thumbing through the pages he stashed inside an oven crypt. 

Past him, past the concrete structures, past the contorted knot of crumbling highway, I could see the six points of the Cage reaching into the night sky. 

This was home.

[kaikhaos]

The Hurricane Sandy Saga Continues…

So here’s the story of my life since October 28, 2012 and all the chaos that has come with it. This is not a happy story, so far, but I’m hoping you guys can help make it one, or at least help prevent a bad end. This is a story of corrupt banks, government bullsh*t, and a 25 year old disabled trans queer who just wants to go home. Over the next five thousand words, I hope you realize the extent of how life has repeatedly NOPED at any sense of logic. At the end of my story, I’m going to ask you to help me out if you can and to spread the word either way.

The tl;dr version is that my family is facing homelessness for the fourth time in eighteen months and I really need you guys’ help to get us back into a stable situation so this never happens again. The mortgage company has screwed us yet again and is holding on to $250,000 that is supposed to be ours. So while we own one house and one newly demolished lot, we have nowhere to live. If you can at all help out, please do. My paypal link is here: http://paypal.me/mihaelkai .

My name is Aleks. This is my story.

First, let’s get one thing out of the way: I’m disabled. I have been legally recognized as disabled since I was 18. I have a combination of mental health issues and physical health issues that make it so my capacity on any given day varies greatly from “I made it through a day at a con thanks to lots of painkillers!” to “I brushed my teeth today and didn’t cry doing it!” But I try. Anxiety, depression, C-PTSD, & ADD are just a few of the things I’ve been diagnosed with by my therapist and psychiatrist, paired with diagnoses from my doctors of migraines, fibromyalgia, and a degenerative connective tissue disorder known as Ehlers-Danlos that all combine to leave me in fairly constant pain basically everywhere. My brain and my body attack me constantly but I still try to do what I can. Unfortunately, it means I can’t just go out and get a 9-5 or retail job to help fix my situation. I can only do what I can do and I have to know my limits.

I live with my mother and my QPP Luca who are both also disabled.

You may know in 2012 we were hit by Hurricane Sandy. If you don’t know that, you’re about to find out. We had six feet of water in our house and my grandfather’s house next door (AKA: my inheritance) floated off of its foundation and was straight up condemned. Ever since then, life has been, in a word, chaos. It’s gotten to be a theme in our house that if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. Even my therapist has given up on making any kind of treatment plan and is basically just focusing on damage control. And honestly, at this point, I just wanna go home.

But Aleks, it’s been seven years, why aren’t you home yet? Oh boy, I am SO glad you asked. Let’s get into this history.

First, a prequel. I’m not rich, my family isn’t rich, but we get by. Our house wasn’t big, but it was beautiful. In 2006, my mother bought two tiny houses next door to each other from an old man who wanted to sell them to a family the way he’d grown up in the smaller house while his parents lived in the other house. The one house was a six hundred square foot bungalow that would become my grandfather’s and its neighbor was a seven hundred square foot house that would become mine and my mother’s.

Our house was gorgeous and cute. Built in the early 1900s by a tinsmith with scraps from all of his jobs, all of the walls were tin instead of sheetrock or plaster, the floors were gorgeous hardwood, and the three bedrooms were each under a hundred square feet. It was tiny but it was ours.

On August 28th, 2011, that house was hit by Tropical Storm Irene. Our house was flooded by two feet of water on the first floor. The Atlantic Ocean took out our floors, cabinets, appliances, electrical outlets, the bathroom tile, and the furniture, not to mention rusting the heck out of the bottom of the tin walls. It took six months to get the final eighty thousand dollar settlement out of the insurance company.

The check was deposited by the mortgage company who said they would hold onto it and dole it out as we hired contractors or finished repairs. But here’s the thing: The settlement barely covered enough for the supplies, so we maxed out credit cards and depleted personal savings and finished our repairs a few months later with the help of very few contractors and a lot of DIY.

We installed our kitchen appliances as the last step and called the mortgage company that day to ask them to come and inspect and verify the repairs were done so they could release the other seventy thousand dollars that they were holding onto. They said they were backed up and that they would come and inspect in a month.

Our new stove was 22 days old when Hurricane Sandy hit us.

Where Irene was manageable, Sandy was devastating. My grandfather’s house floated on the storm surge and landed three feet away from its foundation. The legs of our lawn table were bent and sticking out from under the house like the damn wicked witch or something. Our house on the other hand shifted by an inch. Not much, you’d think, but enough to break every pipe in the house and damage the entire structural stability of the house.

The town building department condemned my grandfather’s house and wrote ours up as “more than 50% damaged”.

Needless to say, both houses were left completely and totally uninhabitable.

The mortgage company inspector came and said because everything was wet and ruined that they “couldn’t certify the repairs were completed” even when we were standing there with a stack of receipts and before and after pictures, clearly proving everything had been replaced since most of the materials had been changed. So they decided they wouldn’t release the $70,000 they were holding onto from Irene until the new SANDY repairs were done. Even though we’d already spent that money on repairs and run up debt because of it, they decided they were just going to hold onto it for longer.

And honestly? Fuck those guys. They are the root of some of the most evil parts of this, as you’ll see.

So back to the Sandy damages. First, the insurance company offered us a FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLAR damage assessment. Fifteen thousand bucks when we had six feet of water in our house. For perspective, fourteen months before Hurricane Sandy, Tropical Storm Irene sent 24 inches of water into our house and the insurance company gave us eighty thousand dollars to make those repairs. So yeah, fifteen thousand wasn’t gonna do it. The construction estimates for the repairs were coming in around two hundred and fifty thousand.

So, of course, we appealed. Our engineer said parts of the house were outright dangerous from the damage and had to be torn down and replaced. We told the insurance company this and they told us they would send their own engineer. And… well… they sent SOMEBODY. Was that guy a licensed engineer? Nope. Did they tell us he was? Yup.

So then we appealed to FEMA. The judge from FEMA told them outright to send a LICENSED engineer in his decision and left it at that. So then they did. This guy now said he thought fifty thousand was gonna do it. The insurance company looked at his report and went “mmm… so how about thirty thousand?”

So… no. So then we had to hire a lawyer and took them to court. We weren’t the only ones, thousands of people had to file these lawsuits. The lawyer told us not to let the mortgage company cash the $30,000 of checks we’d been given for the storm so far because it could be argued to be us agreeing to that number. He said we just had to WAIT. So the checks got too old to cash.

The Visiting Nurse Service started sending a therapist to our house once a week for each of the three of us to help with “Hurricane-Related PTSD”. Yup. Cool. On top of my regular C-PTSD. Awesome. But the guy was nice and having therapists to talk to twice a week (my regular one and this guy) was helpful. And he gave me some worksheets that helped me kind of have more of a tool kit. Everything still sucked but hey, we all trudged on.

Pretty sure this was around when the first roofing shingles started falling off of our rental house. We told the landlord that this was a problem and that the property was going to start getting leaks in the roof. We pointed out that it said in our lease that he was supposed to fix this little ‘issue’.

Repeatedly.

Including in writing and by sending him photos of the slowly growing stack of shingles that were not on the roof anymore and the leaky window.

And he still did diddly squat about it.

For five years.

Meanwhile during this whole… process, New York State started the New York Rising program to help rebuild the houses who were tied up in lawsuits like ours or who didn’t have insurance like my grandfather’s. We applied right away. It seemed like an answer!

…So then uh… New York Rising LOST our file.

…Uh… Twice.

And when they finally DID decide to properly process our application, they gave us a grand total of $88,000 and put us in the ‘Build a whole new house’ category. Our house is, as I said, under 900 square feet in size. You literally cannot build a house in our area for that price at that size. Especially when it’s a property that needs 14 foot deep helical pilings and a nine foot high foundation to comply with current code. The foundation alone is $50,000. The lowest estimate we found from any construction company after no less than TEN bids was $180,000 NOT counting the architect who’s another $15,000. NY Rising expected us to be able to rebuild for a fraction of that. So we started looking into finding other financing possibilities while waiting on the lawsuit to continue going through.

We decided to hire our neighbour’s architect because he was something resembling almost affordable. We gave him a deposit. …A few weeks later, he had a heart attack while leaving the building department’s office. …A few weeks after that, he started being investigated for embezzling money from his clients.

At this point, we’d been out of our house for years. And more and more shingles kept falling off of the roof of the rental. Then a siding tile fell off too because the landlord’s son’s landscaping company crashed a lawnmower into it.

We started looking at houses to buy so that at least we would own something.

Then my grandfather (who had been a major contributor to our household finances) had a severe stroke. Six months later, he died. Suddenly we were $3,000 tighter per month. The possibility of buying a house went out the window. But we made do as best as we could.

FEMA was paying for the rental house we were living in while going through all of the appeal and lawsuit procedures and, when we hit their funding cap, New York Rising’s IMA program stepped in to pay “whichever is less, your rent or mortgage”. It still meant higher costs as the rent around here is more than our mortgage, but it made it so we could get by.

The one silver lining was that once my grandfather was out of the picture (since he’d been living with us in a shared rental since Sandy), I was able to start on testosterone injections. January 28, 2015, I was able to start my injections and officially begin the medical side of my transition.

Then New York Rising hit a cap on IMA funding. Which… sucked pretty fucking hard because then there was a few thousand a month more money we had to find to shell out. But then the program was extended and that was awesome.

Then our cat, Pickles, developed severe kidney problems. She was my best friend since the day she showed up on our doorstep a week after we bought our house in 2006 and wandered into the kitchen demanding petting. She moved into our lives and never left. I couldn’t give her up without a fight. So I spent all of my savings on her medical bills and started giving her saline injections twice a day every day to help her kidneys flush the toxins they couldn’t handle themselves.

Then the IMA ran out again. So back to the land of suck. They told us we would be eligible for a little more funding. But only if we demolished the existing house.

In order to legally demolish the house, we had to pay for a construction company to do it under their license. New York Rising expected us to be able to demo the house for $5,000. The lowest bid we received was for $9,000. When we told them this, their reaction was essentially “yeah, yeah, we know, just make it work”. Make it work is a cool and funny phrase when spoken by an aging fashion consultant on television. It’s not so cool or funny when it’s being told to you by the people who are supposed to help you fix your house. It is stressful as hell.

Then Pickles got sicker. And sicker. And her at-home dialysis wasn’t enough to keep her going anymore. Pickles passed in May 2016.

In 2017, we finally won our lawsuit. The judge ruled the insurance company had to release a full payment to the policy maximum of $250,000! Those jerks tried giving us $15,000 and the judge was like “Uh… no, this is $250,000 of damage”. Victory! But we were still out our legal fees because, unlike homeowner’s insurance where the insurance company pays the fees, flood insurance is federally underwritten so you’re not allowed to get the legal fees paid for. Some flood insurance companies realized they’d fucked up and as a result agreed to pay for the legal fees. Our flood insurance company… wasn’t so generous. But a check was still generated by the flood insurance company thanks to the judge. Huzzah, light at the end of the tunnel!

…Then the lawyer refused to sign the check.

Apparently our lawyer has had dealings with our mortgage company before and run into the same problem as we had with their “we’ll release your funding at the end” theory. Except for him that meant “we won’t pay out your legal fees until the house is finished” and he didn’t like that. So they wanted him to sign the check over to them and he wanted them to sign the check over to him. They spent years arguing over a piece of paper with some dollar signs on it while we got needlessly further into debt.

Then one of my ferrets, Wasabi, my emotional support animal, got really sick really suddenly.

By the time the vet scrambled to find out what was wrong, it was too late and he was gone. It turned out that he had a rare autoimmune condition caused by heavy metal exposure from the water. His sister survived, but now Lemon was alone and she and I were both devastated. Watching the way she would get excited and then sad any time we brought out a toy with Wasabi’s scent on it broke my heart so I replaced her toys.

A month later, people came knocking on our door offering free water filters if they would let us track the toxic plume of decades old industrial chemicals and waste spreading unhindered through the groundwater supply that had apparently reached us and was contaminating our pipes.

Eventually, during all this, New York Rising started to realize that their $160 per square foot amount just wasn’t enough when it came to houses like ours. So they started a program called the Recon 100 program. The goal of this program was supposed to be that New York Rising would take over the build process, they would hire contractors and architects in bulk, essentially hiring them for ‘bundles’ of 10 or 20 properties at a time to get them to accept a lower profit per house because they would be guaranteed months of solid work. We were signed up into the program.

Now, as a condition of this program, we had to stop doing any work on our own, we’d have to return whatever hadn’t been spent on repairs already, and we’d have to give them any insurance checks. But New York Rising was bragging about how they had programs that would allow you to repay the funding over several years because they knew everyone was using a little bit here or there to make ends meet. And that was all well and dandy because once the repairs were done, the mortgage company would release what they were holding one way or another. They would have to. …Right?

Meanwhile, our rental assistance hit the next cap. New York Rising told us not to worry because once this paperwork was approved, we’d be eligible for a higher cap of extended rental assistance. It was just a matter of waiting for the paperwork to get approved, they said.

Then our caseworker at New York Rising decided she was going to deny our receipts for the funds already spent. And that she wasn’t going to file the appeals to that denial that we explicitly asked her in writing to file.

Then on top of that, we discovered that at some point our NYR caseworker had decided to NOT sign us up for the extended timeline repayment thing because… fuck knows why, honestly? And that now she wasn’t going to apply us for it because “oh it’s full now”. So NY Rising decided that, before they’d do anything, they wanted us to give THEM the money that was still sitting in those pre-lawsuit paper checks that went old immediately. The government decided that we either had to magic the money of an un-cashed check out of thin air or else it was up to us to: 1, get them reissued, 2, get them deposited by the mortgage company, and 3, somehow get the mortgage company to issue that money to New York Rising.

And they wanted all this done in less than a week because they decided this in the last phase of our approval process and there were other deadlines really close. …Needless to say, the mortgage company was like “lol um nah” even to the theoretical idea of giving the money to NY Rising for the repairs, nevermind the hassle of getting the checks reissued by the flood insurance company with an active lawsuit ongoing.

New York Rising only said “too bad, figure it out yourself and PS because you’re not in this program anymore, we won’t give you the continued rental assistance, why aren’t you done rebuilding your house yet?” Meanwhile, we were waiting on them for months because they told us it was just waiting for the paperwork to go through.

Meanwhile, we had a new jerk of a builder/flipper neighbour. He’d bought the house next door to us when the family with the new baby decided it wasn’t worth waiting so many years to have their own house fixed. Let’s call him Fish Head. He decided to have his building supplies delivered to our neighbour’s yard WITHOUT her permission because there wasn’t enough room on his property. Straight up, he had a whole pallet of building supplies just dumped on her yard. She complained, obviously, and her husband threatened to call the cops. So he moved his shit to to OUR yard because we happened to not be there that day. It took WEEKS to get him to move the shit, even WITH calling the cops.

Turns out, cops don’t give a shit if someone puts hundreds of pounds of building materials on your yard. They’ll tell you you’re well within your rights to move it yourself but if you don’t have a forklift or a whole team of burly humans to assist you in the move then too bad so sad.

Thanks, Fish Head.

But back to the housing. We were months overdue on the rent because we were “just waiting for the paperwork to finish processing”. They told us we’d get all the back stuff in one lump payment. They lied and now we were up shit’s creek.

Our scummy landlord finally sent a notice saying “I’ve waited long enough, get out”. So that was… cool. We were able to keep him from coming after the back rent by pointing out that he was a slum lord and that we’d notified him in writing about being a slumlord, but it still meant we had to move out immediately and in a rush. Thankfully, it was May.

So on June 1st 2018, we moved into our RV parked at a local campsite. Three adults, a cat, and a ferret, crammed into an RV that was anything but recreational.

We installed cameras on our house around this point because Fish Head kept having his workers trample all over our property and they kept breaking things and leaving garbage everywhere.

Then the engineer said he thought he could figure out a way to save the main body of our house and raise it, that we’d only have to demolish off the back room and possibly the bathroom in order to raise it. It was another light at the end of a repeatedly lengthening tunnel. So we changed tracks completely and had him start drafting stuff up for us to raise the existing house, rebuilding only the porch.

Now, here’s the thing about the local campsites, we don’t have many of them and they sell out pretty quickly. Especially for the height of the summer. So they didn’t have any of their ‘full hook-up’ sites, AKA the ones that get you electricity and everything, but we had water and a bathroom and a shower facility and the barbecue to cook food, and it was… survivable. Not exactly comfortable but survivable.

We started doing the work to repair the house instead of following the line of thinking of rebuilding it. We cashed in everything we could and scraped together every scrap of money we possibly could, we sold things, we asked for help where we could, we got a very understanding contractor to give us the lowest prices we could. We managed to get the mortgage company to pay out some of the Tropical Storm Irene money directly to the contractors. Remember that guy, wayyyy back in 2011? And the mortgage inspector who missed a pre-Sandy inspection by a week? Yeah. They still had that money. So even though it was technically Sandy damages as we’d already done the work from Irene, we managed to get them to pay that out. But WHATEVER. It got it paid.

We had a looming deadline from New York Rising that they wanted the house raised by December 31st. Or at least that they wanted it lifted and pending the new foundation. They call this ‘cribbing’ and it basically means your house goes up on Jenga Towers and that you can’t live in it for a while until the foundation is done and it goes back down. So we had to somehow make that happen. But first things first, the campground was closing for the season and we had to have a place to live.

On November 1st 2018, we were able to move back into our house.

Temporarily, at least, while permits and construction drawings and everything went through for getting the house raised.

So we applied to the mortgage company to get the remaining $40,000 that they had from Tropical Storm Irene, the full final payout. And, amazingly, we got it. In it came and went right back out it went to the contractors who were supposed to be working on raising the house because that December 31st deadline was still looming.

Then Fish Head who we keep running into issues with, FINALLY got a stop work order on his house for not having the right permits. Serves you right, Fish Head. But, in retaliation, he decided to lie to the building department that we were living there without utilities? Somehow? When we literally had all our utilities? And had gotten the “90% complete” inspection from our mortgage company? So THAT was a whole mess to try to straighten out. When we met with the head of the building department, he literally turned to the guy next to him and said “See, remember I told you about this guy? This is the retaliation I was telling you about” because he was the guy who had personally signed the stop work order on Fish Head.

So the next big concern was that December 31st deadline. Everyone kept debating whether or not New York Rising would extend it at the last minute again (as they’d done that once before), and we started scrambling to try to find somewhere to live while the house was raised. Ideally, we were looking for somewhere that WASN’T the cold tiny RV in the middle of a New York winter. We applied to a few apartments but because we were paying the mortgage and everything our debt to income ratio didn’t qualify.

On December 24th, 2018, we got the $250,000 check from the flood insurance company with our name and the mortgage company’s name. It seemed like a Christmas Miracle. So we immediately sent it over to the mortgage company so they could cash it and we could apply to have those funds released, remember, our house was FINISHED and HABITABLE, except for needing to be raised per the new flood zoning stuff. At the very least, we had the 90% inspection, and on our next inspection we got a 99%.

So we immediately started applying for the final permits for getting the house raised and my grandfather’s house demolished. The lady at the building department is… nice but not very organized. So we had to deal with the town jerking us around with the permits taking forever to get done, well past the time estimates they tell you on the phone when you call and ask about time estimates.

We rushed to have our disconnects done. Water, electric, sewer. The house was all wrapped up in a pretty bow ready to be raised. We moved into a hotel. All we needed was the final elevation permit and the money from the mortgage company.

So back to the mortgage company and that $250,000. The mortgage company denied the payout 3 times saying, “Oh we don’t have… this paper or that paper” for papers we had confirmation they had. The guy on the phone one time when we were like “….We submitted that one on x date while speaking to Z employee”, he tried saying, “Oh this fax isn’t legible…” and we were just like “…FAX… you mean the scanned in PDF we submitted via your web upload?” And he was like “…Oh. hold please…” and suddenly he could read the form. Magic. So basically they were just LYING to us. Why? Fuck knows.

Then it was, “Everything is fine and it’ll be issued in 3 days” on the 23rd. And we got the elevation permit! And the demo permit on my grandfather’s house! Everything was rolling along and it was all going to be fine! Right?

Not so fast.

On the 31st we still had no check. We called and it was, “Oh it has to go to this other department because it’s over $70,000, but everything is approved and they’ll issue the check in 5 to 7 days, HONEST”.

We called back on the 5th and THAT lie had turned into “Oh well… we sold your loan effective the 4th, you’ll have to ask the new guys”. The mortgage company SOLD OUR LOAN to another company WHILE our payout was “APPROVED AND SENT TO THE CHECK ISSUING DEPARTMENT”.

We called the new guys who told us, “Oh we don’t even have a ID NUMBER assigned for your loan yet, call back in a week to get your loan number and then it’s another week until we can even see your funds and start your payout claim oh and we probably need to schedule our own inspection.”

So it’ll be easily a month OR MORE before we get the money.

We are trying to expedite this whole process as best as we can. We managed to get the ID number in only 4 days. They seem to be arguing with themselves about whether or not they need a whole new inspection or not.

Meanwhile, we only really had the money for the hotel for the lift time but all the disconnects have been done (there is no heat, water, or electricity) so it’s not like we can just go BACK HOME during the delay either.

We have $250,000 on the way and we’re about to be homeless. Again. For the third time in 18 months.

If we can just get $5,000, we can pay to have the house RECONNECTED AGAIN to everything so we can wait these fuckers out and get the payout.

Every little bit helps.

Please.

The other option is living in the RV again just to have a roof over our heads. But unlike last time when it was warm, it is February and we are in NY. It snowed yesterday. RVs aren’t designed to keep warm when there’s snow out.

Please help me and my family stay in a house.

My paypal link is here: http://paypal.me/mihaelkai .

I am also taking a limited number of 1000 word or less commissions! That’s about the limit of what I can handle committing to right now! DM me for details!

(Mutuals/Friends: If you can’t donate but you can loan us some for two months or so, we can pay you back as soon as we get that check? Please let me know if it is a donation or if you would like to be paid back so I can keep a record.)

[beyondthestarsandplanets]

I'm going to lose him. I'm...I was going to tell him. I wasn't sure what or how to tell him but.... I've lost him now. He's gone...

Keep it together Overlord, don't do it. You must not go back to your old self. You made a promise. You must not do it. Just don't do it.

*sighs*

I was an avid fan of the gladiator events. Went to ever single one. I was also a gladiator myself. But Megatron? I was a big fan. Before I fought him, we was both undefeatable. Until I fought him. I lost. I figured it was a one time deal. Until it became daily. The more I lost, the more I feared it in his servos. He did that to me. It was just...a game to him. His way of keeping control over me. But I still chose to join. Not because of the cause but I saw it a way to take out fight outside the areas. But I never care about the command. Had no desire to lead. I didn't care about the ends, only the means. I tatics did develop to what I'm known for now. It felt so right! But Megatron? He thought I secretly wanted to take over, hint his efforts to control me. For 3 million years, we would spar. But every time, I lost. No matter how close I was. I kept losing. But he chose me and 3 other to be Phase Sixer. I saw this as an opportunity to defeat him, so I allowed it. I killed Rossum and tried to do the same to Megatron. But I couldn't harm him at all. No matter how hard I tried. He defeated me again. But I learned that Soundwave was captured and brought to the New Institution for brainwashing. I saw it as an opportunity to remove the shackles, to remove that blind spot. So I attacked. I made sure to make Megatron think I was rescuing Soundwave. But I also took a mnemosurgen, Trepan. I wanted to learn so I can get what I needed from Shockwave. The lessons was going well. But as I learn, I begin to feel, different. The more I learn from Trepan, I begin to question. I was falling for him. I haven't felt calm since my first lost. I'm sure of that. When I did kill, it was because a few bot tried to hurt him. But they because an experiment. For me to master the skill on. But, before I could achieve that in my own, Megatron somehow found out and had him killed. That lost, it was worst then my first lost to Megatron. I later went to Battle for Hell's Point. But after that, I was on Caldoon 4, doing my own thing when Megatron called. He told me that I was chosen along with Sixshot and Black Shadow to be reclassified as Phase Sixer, being called in to alien planet and wipe then clean for cyberformimg. I told him I was busy and he gave me 2 option. Do what I was told or be hunted by him. I made my choice and ended the call. I killed all but one called Kup. Told him to send a message to Megatron. I chose option two. I left to prepare for his arrival. I decided to pick a fight with a empire because their technology surpassed mine but I was out patched. So I had Gorelock help me out. The battle set the empire back by 250,000 years. So I left and arrived to Garrus 9 in the middle of the Decepicon siege. I told Skyquake to hand over the command but he refused. Don't need to worry about him anymore. I took over and soon busted in. I freed all Decepicon and gave them freedom and had them stay with me. I turned into my very own gladiator arena and had my fun with Fortress Maximus. A year passed and I I freed Shockwave and let him leave in return that he remove the Achilles virus. 2 more year passed and the Autobot responded by sending in the Wreckers. I was expecting Megatron army. I told then to surrender but they refused and tried to attack. They couldn't harm me so they escaped. When I found them again, they had regroup with the help of a Decepicon. They kept attacking, all had no affect on me until one told me I was injected with the deterrence chips. The explosion didn't kill me but I was now just a frame. I was mad as I lost it. I saw the human and demanded to know how I would defeat Megatron in that state. That when she delivered a shocking news, Megatron was dead. I then realized I wasted my time for nothing. I told the. To kill me but one refused. Some time later, I was rebuilt and place in a slow cell. I didn't care, I wanted to be dead. It all I wanted. Until Cromedome begin to go through my memories. I didn't care until he mentioned that Megatron is alive. I came to life and used a little trick I learned to take over. I went through Cromedome memories and found the code. I freed myself and let myself out, trapping him in. I then went to have my fun on the ship. I killed one, attacked another. Soon, the whole ship was on me. I even killed Ultra Magnus, should of kept his mouth shut. I the asked the captain if he had the last word. But when he said Til all are one, I lost it. They used that advantage to push me back. Then Fortress Maximus showed up. But the sword I had jammed the door and Cromedome conjunx came in to push the sword. I had a huge grin just before I had my fun. But a missile hit and I was floating in space, bearly alive. I was then found by the Galactic Council and they begin to repair me, which took a while. They then sent me to Nectroworld to kill Megatron. Tarn was there giving Megatron a good beating. I told him that I would kill him. He decided to fight me and I showed him who had a true tank. But Megatron managed to escape. Since we both wanted to kill him, we decided to work together. Of course I have my fun and watch him kill one of his own. Then sundown came and we attacked. I chose to seek out Cromedome to mock him. But when he punted me, I realized they had something to give them a boost. But it didn't last long and that when Megatron showed up. I felt disgusted by the sight. He was weak and a coward. It was too easy to kill him right there. So I told Tarn I didn't need Megatron and left. I spent a few years wondering around, being bored until I came into contact with Tarantulas. I agreed to be part of his experiment and I gained a 3rd altmode, human mode. With that mode, I was able to gain interested with the human government and got funding and supplies for Tarantulas experiments. Until Springer attacked. He ruined my look but I easily beat them. And that when I saw her, the girl who broke my spark. I decided to take her when I head back. When I arrive, Tarantulas told me that he created the Time maze and can send me back in time again and again. The Verity Carlos tried to reason with Tarantulas but I told him that I no longer needed him. And I shot him in the back of his helm. But before I could go though, Springer showed up. We fought and Impactor gave himself up so Springer could get ahead. I was able to catch up but I was forced into my 2 altmode thanks to the Carnivac. Springer and Verity took the advantage as I couldn't move and toss me into 2 different time period. Tank into the past and Jet into the future.

*sighs*

I don’t know how long it have been, but I’ve been thinking about my life. Every bit of it. Being separated for so long, I lost something, somewhere. When i took Trepan, I started to feel different. The more i was with him, the more I wanted to change. I was falling for him. I wanted to protect him. But i failed on the day he was killed. That hurt more then my First lost with Megaton. Megatron have created a weapon he couldn’t control.

i was lost until I saw him. He looked just like Trepan. I will admit, my first interaction with him was not the best. and I did hurt myself for that. I wanted to die, I would get drunk often. But I didn’t expect to see him in the bar. When he begin to cry, I felt like it was my fault. Since then, I changed for him. To keep him happy. I was going to tell him this, but now? I’m telling myself this.

I’m alone again. But I’m trying not to go back to my old self. I promised myself i wouldn’t. but it so hard not to. the urge is there. Maybe I should give in, Monster like me are unredeemable. Maybe I should go back to who I use to be.

[riacannafon-writer]

F.E.A.R.

Chapter One

The rain fell in heavy, icy sheets that night. My navy cloak did poorly little to stop the rain from soaking into my skin. Puddles splashed around my feet as I ran. I turned through narrow streets and alleys this way and that, trying to lose the guards on my tail.

    Despite the howling winds and roaring torrents, I could clearly hear them behind me shouting both to each other and to me. I was running out of options as I continued around corners left and right, slipping every now and again. I risked a quick glance over my shoulder to see at least a dozen men in silver armour, all wielding swords and spears and bows with a quiver of arrows. I made a sharp right turn and found myself trapped at a dead end.

    The guards blocked the alleyway entrance, all breathing heavily. Heart pounding and breath shallow, I quickly thought about my options: fight? Too many guards. Surrender? Out of the question. I stepped backwards until my back touched the wet cobbled brick. Fleeing seemed to be my only chance. I slowly reached inside my cloak and unsheathed a small throwing knife.

    Without thinking much about what  I was aiming at, I threw the knife at the guards full force and started up the walls. I climbed the first few feet using odd bricks as grip, then leapt to one of the adjacent walls. I kept going, back and forth between this wall and the one opposite, getting closer and closer to the rooftops. I paused when a spear struck the brick below my feet. It failed to hold and simply fell to the floor. I didn't stop moving now. Not even when I felt an arrow head slide deeply across my left arm.

    I eventually reached my goal. And as I looked back over my shoulder once more, another arrow whizzed by my face, this one slicing a fine gash over my cheek and nose. Clutching my bleeding arm, I ran on through the town. Jumping from roof to roof, always conscious of the growing group of guards following my every direction. I soon ran out of ground and slid down the tiled slope of a tavern. I found myself on a fairly high-up bridge and found guards waiting at either end. Looking left and right at the advancing enemy, I decided flight was once again the best option here. The river wasn't a hugely far drop away, no more than ninety feet. I stood up on the edge as they drew nearer.

    "Stay where you are! Not another step!" A guard with the kingdom's crest moulded into his breastplate came forward. Kingdom's crest, I thought. Must be a Captain. Another man put his hand on his shoulder and spoke in a low voice.

    "Why should we care if the criminal jumps? Goodness knows that nobody can survive a jump like that!" He he turned and looked me in the eyes. "Besides, I highly doubt anyone would miss you, should you die. In fact, the town would celebrate; wouldn't you agree, criminal?"

    My arm stung more than ever now, but I kept my head held high as I shuffled back. Now only the balls of my feet were on the ledge. The first guard sheathed his longsword and held out a hand to me uncertainly. His voice was a little softer this time.

    "Don't jump. Take my hand, you can get down from there. We'll have to take you to the jailhouse, but I assure you you won't be harmed." I scanned the crowd of guards and let my sight rest on the one in front of me for a few moments. I looked at the one behind him.

    "I highly doubt anyone would miss you..."

    I did my best to speak clearly through the pain and the roaring winds. "Your friend here has a point," I said. "Nobody'd really miss me." That, of course, was a lie. My brother would miss me; Athen can hardly take care of himself, he needs me to look out for him.

    I could taste the blood from the second arrow's damage. I was starting to feel the ground sway and I gripped my arm tighter. It was clear which path I'd take. I took a small step towards the guard's outstretched hand and saw him clearly relax a little. Without a second thought, I whipped around and jumped. The wind around my ears was almost deafening. I could have sworn I heard the guard yell something; speaking of whom, through my blood-and-hair-streaked vision I could make out him and the other guard leaning over the ledge. A small smile spread over my face as I collided with the river.

    The current immediately began to sweep me away much faster than I originally anticipated. The shock and freezing temperatures turned my body numb, I hardly felt it when I was slammed shoulder-first into a rock. My lungs screamed for air but I had to ignore it for now. I wasn't far enough away from the view of the bridge.

    I found myself soon slowing down in the water, having come to a calmer part of the river. Lungs burning and vision starting to lose focus, I had to risk a few breaths. Feigning a death-like state, I let myself float to the surface. I took some a few deep breaths and opened my eyes to be greeted by a thick fog. I righted myself so I was treading water. Slowly turning, I looked around me for anything familiar; anything that could lead me home.

    Finally, I found a small patch of poppies. Next to it, a few wintergreen shrubs. More familiar herbs surrounded them and I knew this was my garden. I guided myself towards the bank and crawled up onto the mud. Fatigued and bleeding, I staggered to the narrow path and up to my cottage. Athen must have still been awake, because there was smoke coming out of the chimney and the faint glow of candlelight could be seen through a window.

    I heaved open the little wooden door and almost fell to the floor. Athen came running into the door, took one look at the blood on my face and arm, and and started panicking. He scooped me up and carried me into the lounge where he put me on the floor in front of the fire, and promptly rushed off. He came back soon after with bandages, needles and thread, and a few ointments clumsily bundled in his arms.

    He was visibly shaking as he tried to clean the wound on my arm before even letting me take off my cloak. I placed my hand on his to get him to look at me. In the fire's light, I could see tears streaking down his cheeks, cutting through the stains of where he must have been crying earlier. I gently cupped his face in my hands, but he still didn't meet my eyes.

    "Athen," I whispered. "Athen, look at me." He slowly lifted his gaze to meet mine. The pain and fear in my little brother's eyes completely broke my heart, but I had to stay steady for his sake. "It's just a scratch, nothing to worry about." As I said this, I accidentally inhaled a little blood that sent my pretty much coughing my lungs up.

    "Oh, Gods above. Ari! Are you okay!?" Athen practically screeched with panic. I brushed him off at turned to look at him with a soft smile.

    "Do me a favour," I turned back to him. "Don't go breathing in blood, it's gross." We both giggled, and I was glad to see my brother smile a little. I had to savour the moment, though, as his smile faded back to that lost expression. Before I could say anything, he threw his arms around my neck and buried his head onto my shoulder. I carefully put my arms around him and held him close as sobs racked his body.

    "You didn't come back. I was so worried. I thought you were dead." He cried harder, seeming to be letting out everything he had.

    "Someone ratted me out, I got held back. I'm so, so sorry I made you worry like this." Athen let go and sat back as he was. He nodded silently and again picked up the cloth, this time waiting for me to take off my cloak first.

    I took the cloth from him and tenderly pressed it to the wound on my arm while he went to get a bowl of warm water and a few other supplies. When he once again returned, we worked on washing, treating, stitching and bandaging up my arm. After a few more expletives from me, Athen then began to repeat the process with the gash on my face - my swearing also following the routine.

    In the next room, I heard the old grandfather clock strike three. Athen ushered me upstairs to bed (by that, I mean he practically had to carry me up to my bedroom). Leaving me to my privacy, he went off to his own bedroom. I stripped off my gear and threw on whatever clothes I could find before collapsing onto my bed. In hindsight, that was a very bad idea. Pain shot up my arm the moment I landed on the mattress.

    "Shit! You son of a bitch," I hissed. A few doors down, I heard Athen shout a muffled "Language".

   With an exhausted sigh, I rolled over to my other side - wrapping myself up in the blanket as I went - and listened to the rain against my window trying to fall asleep. Definitely took me a while, but I eventually drifted off.

* * *

    Meanwhile, back with the guards on the bridge, the Captain was still hunched over the ledge, staring at the spot where the girl was as if she would just pop back up to the surface. His comrade was saying something to him, but he wasn't listening.

    She jumped... she actually jumped...

    Shock had rendered him delayed in comprehending the situation and events leading up to it.

    Dizzy with conflicting thoughts and emotions, he pushed himself back upright and turned to address the others.

    "Find her," he said, fighting to keep his voice from shaking. "Search along the river until you find her, or any trace. You are not to attack on sight, understood?" (The crowd nodded). "You are to bring her to the jailhouse, nothing else. Dismissed."

    They all dispersed, except for Lieutenant Mitchell Hynde. He strode over to the Captain and slapped him half-heartedly on the shoulder.

    "Why so glum?" He asked in a lively tone.

    "You should understand why, Lieutenant."

    "Come now, Darren! There's no way she'd actually survive that fall. I mean, she must have lost a lot of blood from that cut in her arm, so there's no way she could have had the energy to live after that!"

    "That's Captain Haust to you, Hynde. And it's our job as the Town Guard to help people."

   "But," a hint of desperation leaked into Hynde's voice. "But she's a criminal! A murderer!"

    "I stand by my moral code, unlike you. Regardless of her past actions." With that, he turned away to join the search.

[whydontwejustblog]

unusual asks

@anon that said “1-100,” i’m no chicKEN—

spotify, soundcloud, or pandora? spotify all the way.

is your room messy or clean? messy i like to think it’s neat.

what color are your eyes? a boring dark brown.

do you like your name? why? i hate it. i wish it was esteban julio ricardo montoya dela rosa ramirez.

what is your relationship status? what’s a relaytionsheep?

describe your personality in 3 words or less. boring.

what hair color do you have? still a boring dark brown.

what kind of car do you drive? color? …i’m not old enough to drive, but if i was, you better bet i’d have a rainbow car because #yolo. (lmao stop your influence @heartsavery.)

where do you shop? at the candy store. *instantly thinks of heathers*

how would you describe your style? non-existent.

favorite social media account? if i say tumblr, will it start working for me?

what size bed do you have? a queen-sized one. (no, that wasn’t a pun or anything.)

any siblings? i like to think she doesn’t exist.

if you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? why? i’ve heard of this place called niue, which apparently has pikachu coins as part of their currency, so sign me up. (japan is also another option, because i love the atmosphere in kyoto. except for that one time i got lost at night near a creepy abandoned church.)

favorite snapchat filter? i don’t use filters much since i don’t take pictures of myself, but i’ll have to say the classic dog filter.

favorite makeup brand(s)? i don’t wear makeup.

how many times a week do you shower? i shower around once or twice a day. weird, i know, but it’s normal around here in a country that’s hot all year round. (except, of course, when there are typhoons, because it’s one extreme or another.)

favorite tv show? danger dings (read: stranger things.) i even have a side blog for it. *cough* @anevenstrangerblog *cough* i know the question only asked for one but can i throw in asoue too? i love both the books and the netflix show. malina’s so pretty i cri. ooh, andi mack is another show that i absolutELY LOVE AND—

shoe size? 6.5 in us women’s.

how tall are you? not tall at all. next question.

sandals or sneakers? sneakers are all i own.

do you go to the gym? no.

describe your dream date. with nikolai lantsov. but since he’s “fictional,” i’ll settle for the person giving me a fortune, then leaving me alone for the rest of my life. (but if the person was finn wolfhard / malina weissman / sadie sink, they can *in mulan’s grandma’s voice* stAy fOrevEr.)

how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment? about 2500 pesos and 2000 yen.

what color socks are you wearing? they’re pikachu socks.

how many pillows do you sleep with? one or none because quite frankly, i only like hugging pillows. sleeping on them is uncomfortable for me.

do you have a job? what do you do? i don’t have a job, but my class runs a business (with a beneficiary who all the proceeds go to), and i manage its marketing and finance. i also design a couple stuff for my mom’s clinic thing, which i guess is considered a job since i get paid.

how many friends do you have? if you don’t count online friends, zero ahaha.

what’s the worst thing you have ever done? lmao idk, exist?

what’s your favorite candle scent? i dunno. most probably woodsy or floral scents.

3 favorite boy names? names don’t have genders.

3 favorite girl names? names don’t have genders.

favorite actor? noah schnapp, my precious son.

favorite actress? millie bobby brown because why not.

who is your celebrity crush? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

favorite movie? the bee movie ahAHAHAHA the original spongebob movie.

do you read a lot? what’s your favorite book? i read waaay too much, and just like any of my other favorite things, i can’t pick just one favorite book, but i love six of crows by leigh bardugo.

money or brains? can i have both?

do you have a nickname? what is it? i’m called stupid a lot, does that count? ahaha :’) micah’s actually one of my nicknames.

how many times have you been to the hospital? too many times to count.

top 10 favorite songs? i have too many songs i like, so i’ll list some i remember right now (and limit myself to one song per artist.) crazy=genius by p!atd, bellyache by billie eilish, migraine by tøp, c’est la vie by maurice moore, glorious by macklemore, for him by troye sivan, my songs know what you did in the dark by fob, non-stop from the hamilton cast recording, teacher by prettymuch, and we the party by why don’t we.

do you take any medication daily? just vitamins, not medication.

what is your skin type? idk dude.

what is your biggest fear? the unknown.

how many kids do you want? zero.

what’s your go-to hair style? just my hair down since i’m lazy.

what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc.) i don’t know how to describe the size of my house lmao.

who is your role model? thomas the tank engine.

what was the last compliment you received? i’m not sure if it was meant as a compliment, but that one anon who asked advice from me said they were awed by my independence so there’s that.

what was the last text you sent? i sent “i’m hungry” to one of my housekeepers.

how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real? he IS real. i don’t know what the quackidy quack you’re talking about.

what is your dream car? lightning mcqueen. ka-chow!

opinion on smoking? i’m asthmatic, so personally, i don’t smoke, and i don’t encourage it either. if you’re talking about cigarettes, it harms the lungs of not only the smoker, but the people around them. it also affects air pollution (its effect is 10 times stronger than those of diesel car exhausts), and i’m very against all types of pollution to the environment. (i’m looking at you, glitter, which, if you didn’t already know, contributes to the pollution of waterways.)

do you go to college? i will in 2 years. (i’ll be a wee child all alone in another country :’( @whydontwejustbesomethingdiffrent i’m dragging you along if it’s the last thing i do.)

what is your dream job? i don’t really know lmao.

would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs? suburbs.

do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels? who doesn’t?

do you have freckles? no.

do you smile for pictures? i don’t like having pictures of me taken, but i occasionally smile awkwardly.

how many pictures do you have on your phone? i recently cleared out my photo library so now i’m left with only 3033 pictures.

have you ever peed in the woods? no.

do you still watch cartoons? duh.

do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonald’s? there are no branches of wendy’s where i live so i’ll go with mcdonald’s.

favorite dipping sauce? does gravy count?

what do you wear to bed? pajamas.

have you ever won a spelling bee? i’ve never participated in one aside from the mini ones we used to hold in class before, which i won because the competition wasn’t exactly tough.

what are your hobbies? photography, bullet journaling, brush lettering, eating, reading, scrolling endlessly through my phone, dying, and other fun stuff. coding and robotics are cool too.

can you draw? @thefangirlingmaster i still stand by my opinion that i can’t.

do you play an instrument? the only instrument i can fluently play is the violin, since i was taught how to play it at 6 years old, but i own a guitar and keyboard which i can sorta play.

what was the last concert you saw? a pentatonix one.

tea or coffee? water.

starbucks or dunkin’ donuts? starbucks.

do you want to get married? not really.

what is your crush’s first and last initial? f.w. (hint: it rhymes with pinn rolfhard.)

are you going to change your last name when you get married? i dunno man.

what color looks best on you? still dunno man.

do you miss anyone right now? no.

do you sleep with your door open or closed? closed.

do you believe in ghosts? uh…

what is your biggest pet peeve? my neighbors slow walkers

last person you called? my dad.

favorite ice cream flavor? cookies and cream.

regular oreos or golden oreos? i only eat mini-sized regular oreos.

chocolate or rainbow sprinkles? choCOLATE *insert gif of that one fish from spongebob*

what shirt are you wearing? a panda shirt i got from singapore a couple years ago.

what is your phone background? it’s a zoomed in face of the ice cream octopus from dora. my parents say it’s creepy, but i think it’s calming. (i couldn’t post it on here because tumblr says i reached a limit, but if you wanna see it, tell me to send it to you.)

are you outgoing or shy? depends on the people i’m with.

do you like it when people play with your hair? it tickles.

do you like your neighbors? i’d prefer it if they moved far far away (haha shrek reference) and took their horrible karaoke with them.

do you wash your face? at night? in the morning? i wash my face everytime i shower.

have you ever been high? nope.

have you ever been drunk? nope. (i was gonna come up with some punny joke but i’m too hungry to think right now. which reminds me, i have to go eat something real quick, be right back—)

last thing you ate? oh wow, perfect timing. i just ate mango float.

favorite lyrics right now? it’s from my son troye’s song, suburbia. “swallow nostalgia, chase it with lime. better than dwelling, and chasing time. missing occasions, i can’t rewind. can’t help but feel i’ve lost what’s mine.”

summer or winter? it’s basically summer all year round here so—

day or night? night.

dark, milk, or white chocolate? milk chocolate.

favorite month? december.

what is your zodiac sign? sagittarius.

who was the last person you cried in front of? my dad.

[everlarkbirthdaygifts]

Happy Birthday alliswell21!

Firstly, we want to apologize to @alliswell21 for the delay of her gift. We hope you had a lovely birthday on the 21st of October! To ad further cheer to your day, the wonderful @wildlyglittering has written a special Everlark fic just for you! We hope you enjoy it :)

Title: Into the Woods

Gift for: alliswell21

 Rating: M

 Trigger warnings: swearing, sexual situations

 Author’s note: I’m so sorry for the delay. I am an incredibly slow writer. Please slap my wrists for this one.

“Is that a Pumpkin Spice Latte,” murmured the voice, honeyed and low, in my ear, “or are you drinking the blood of your enemies?”

               “Ugh,” I made a sound of disgust and shrugged away from him, making sure my shoulder collided with his jaw as I moved. Great, I thought. Golden-douche is here. One hour without him was all I wanted today, just one solid hour. 

               He moved around the table to sit opposite me, completely uninvited, not that he cared, and began removing his coat. When I knew he couldn’t see I took a glance down his body and noticed that water had splashed his trousers and the coat that was now hanging on the back of his chair held a thick, woollen scent. He’d obviously been caught in the rain. I felt a sliver of mean spirited joy but hid my smile behind my mug as a I took a sip.

               “Not looking so dry, Peeta,” I said. “Did your face collide directly with a rain cloud?”

               As he sat he shook out his hair, water droplets bouncing onto the table, he grinned at me, unbothered by my comment. His arrogance probably meant he thought he still looked good. I took another quick glance, this time at his face and noted that, unfairly, he didn’t look too bad. His golden-douche hair had been turned a darker shade by the rain and his usual loose waves had begun to curl more around his ears.

               A drip on one of those newly darkened strands dripped onto the side of his face and travelled down to his jaw before he reached up to wipe it away. My brain told my eyes to stop looking.

               “Yes,” was all he said, “I suppose it’s a little wet out there.”

               My eyebrows went up. It was one of the rainiest afternoons that our District had on record and he had ventured outside in it. Peeta gave a nonchalant shrug and looked over at me and I noted how his eyes glanced down, very briefly, to my mouth as I took another sip.

               “So, Katniss, what are we doing?” This time his eyes met mine, his obnoxiously blue ones shining and I fought the urge to roll my own. On second thoughts, there were no prizes for restraint.

               “We, are doing nothing. I, am having a coffee and reading my emails. You, are interrupting me.”

               “Is that the one from Haymitch?” Before I had the chance to reply, Peeta had reached over and grabbed the paper placed in front of me. When he first found out that I liked to print out my emails and colour code the relevant text he had mocked me for days. Now though it seemed like they were useful.

               I protested at the intrusion, “Hey! I was reading that!”

               “Sorry,” he replied but didn’t seem anything of the sort. He was reading his way through the print-out and about a third of the way down he began to chew on his lip, worrying the flesh with his white teeth. That was... interesting. Peeta never showed anything other than relaxed cockiness. He must have gotten to that paragraph. The one that I’d highlighted in red which meant ‘panic.’

“Yeah,” he said. “It was shit the first time I read it and it’s still shit now.” He sighed and sat back, running a hand through his hair. Some more errant drops of water slid down his neck, trailing down the pale skin.

I snatched back the paper, the words swimming out at me, black on white. The key ones burned into my eyeballs, ‘two dumbasses,’ ‘professionalism,’ ‘working relationship,’ and worst of all, ‘off the project.’

Though I had anxiety digging a hole in stomach I wasn’t expecting Peeta to be worried so his concern came as a surprise. We’d both been sat in the downtown office when the email came through. I’d known that Haymitch was irritated and it was all down to the fairy woods set. Or more to the point, the disagreement we’d had on the set.

I knew there would be a rebuke but the email stated, in no uncertain terms, that if Peeta and I couldn’t find a way to work together then we’d both be off the project.

When I read it all I wanted to do was run, so I printed off the email, grabbed my bag and announced that I was heading to Sae’s Café. One look at Peeta’s face behind his desk gave nothing away. His calm stuck in my throat and I stormed off, the clouds matching my mood, but I made sure to grab his umbrella beside his desk before I left.

I took in Peeta’s face again and now saw the furrowing of his forehead and the way his lips drew down. I found myself saying, “I didn’t think you’d care about being off the project.”

His face smoothed itself back into a careful neutrality. “I happen,” he stated, “to love this project.” I snorted and his eyebrows shot up. “Why is that so funny exactly?”

“Well you say you love it yet you were planning on butchering it with your designs.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Why couldn’t you just let me lead on the woods? Everyone knows that’s my area! You were deliberately sabotaging my idea and...”

“Sabotaging!” he interrupted. “Like hell I was!” He leant forward, his jaw clenching and unclenching. “You are the best outdoor set designer, I’ll give you that, and you have an excellent eye for realism but dammit Katniss you are so goddamn stubborn! You won’t admit when you’re out of your depth and you were with this set. Frankly, you fail at anything imaginative!”

I tried to ignore the sting that came with his words. “It’s a wood.”

“It. Is. A. Fucking. Fairy. Wood.”

Here we were again. Glaring at each other and re-hashing the argument that got us into this situation in the first place. My fingers itched and I curled them into my palms. I fought the urge to stand up, grab my bag and storm off. Again.

The disdain had been simmering along at a level that we had managed to ignore but the recent argument had boiled everything over. I knew there was no return to before, if we didn’t try and resolve this we both had something to lose. It seemed that Peeta reached the same conclusion at the same time, and I watched as he rubbed a hand over his face.      

It was as though he had wiped away his frustration and I saw his face lose its hardness. “Listen,” he looked tired. “I suggest that we try and put these issues aside and find a way to work together. Hell, we’ll get Haymitch to mediate if needed.”

I pulled a face at that but thought of the email again, ‘off the project,’ floating around in the pool of my memory. I swallowed any bitter response down and nodded. That seemed to buoy Peeta and he continued talking, “We’ll apologise to Haymitch, profusely, bash out the project and then we can hate-fuck it out to celebrate. Agreed?”

“Excuse me?” My voice came out like a hiss even though a weird little thrill travelled through me. “What the actual fuck?”

The goddam shine was back in his eyes. Whatever apprehension he’d experiences had evaporated like water and he was clearly getting one last goad in. Well fine, I would bite.

“No,” I ground out. “We’ll work on this project, which by the way is based on my original design, and then you can go hate-fuck yourself and cry about it afterwards. Agreed?”

He flashed me a grin. “Well, that just doesn’t sound as fun.”

 ****

 By the time I arrived the set was a hustle of activity. I waved a hello at Rue, possibly the sweetest set runner I had ever met, and then made my way over to where I could see Haymitch and Peeta standing. It didn’t particularly look like a conversation I wanted to join with Haymitch gesticulating at something above their heads whilst Peeta frowned, hands resting on his hips.

               It looked like Peeta had been running his hands through his hair, strands of blonde waves were sticking up all over the place. But then, that’s probably exactly what he had been doing. In the three weeks since Haymitch sent his email, and after the individual chew out’s we’d received, we’d made a point to cooperate and if that meant working closer together then so be it.

               The constant contact meant I was beginning to pick up on a few of Peeta’s ‘tells.’ He was one of the calmest people I had ever met but there was an undercurrent of frustration that occasionally ran through him. This frustration, which I’d once thought was solely because of me, was based on greater things, including his never-ending sense of perfectionism. In a way I was disappointed, I didn’t know why but the idea of it being me that was getting under his skin was slightly enticing.

               Haymitch saw me approach. “About time, sweetheart,” he grumbled. “Where the hell have you been?”

               I shot him a look that hopefully conveyed exactly what I thought about that nickname. “I was dealing with Glimmer.” The ridiculously named, blonde and beautiful art director who I had to have yet another meeting with.

               “There was a meeting with cotton-for-brains and you were the one that went?” Haymitch looked incredulous. “Why the hell didn’t the boy go?”

               Out of the corner of my eye I saw Peeta frown harder, clearly just as enthused about his nickname as I was mine. Despite us getting on better I couldn’t help but squeeze a small dig in. “Because, the boy didn’t want to go.”

               Peeta stepped forward towards me. “Hey, I’d appreciate the demeaning nicknames be kept to an absolute zero, sweetheart.” He held no humour in his voice and when he met my eyes head on there was no jest there either.

               Fine. I would play. I opened my mouth to retort but Haymitch jumped in first, throwing his hands up to the ceiling. “Jesus Christ, are we fucking back to this?” He looked between us. “Do not start this again because I swear to god if you do, I will smack your heads together faster than you can say ‘over fucking budget.’”

               “You,” he pointed at Peeta, “sort out the damn trees, do it cheap, and do it now. And you,” he turned to me, jabbing a nail bitten finger my way, “do not piss Glimmer off, she’s already gunning for us for some goddamned reason and having you turn up to make good is not exactly what I would call a plan.” With a final piercing look at us both he said, “Don’t fuck this up.” I watched his back as he went.

                “Well, that was rude.”

               I turned to face Peeta. The little muscle was going in his jaw and his eyes flashed with irritation but, as quickly as it appeared, it was gone and then he was sighing and running a hand over his face. I felt a pang of sympathy for him. This project was bigger than we both originally thought and he was taking the lead on a difficult set. His blue eyes were puffy and his broad shoulders seemed to sag. The urge that I would have once had to comment on his stressed appearance was no longer there. Instead, I found myself asking, “Are you ok?”

               Peeta looked at me, eyebrows raised and I felt a blush rise to my cheeks. Why did he look so surprised? Was it unusual to ask how someone was feeling? Was it that unusual for it to be me that sked how someone was feeling. For a moment I thought he would make an acrid remark and prepared myself, feeling somehow sad that he would. But he just glanced at me, thoughtful eyes swept over my face, lingered on my pink cheeks without comment before falling to look at my lips. He quickly glanced away.

               “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Haymitch is just being... Haymitch.” He let out a little laugh. “I’ve dealt with worse.”

               “He’s a pill when he’s like this. I think I preferred it when he was drinking.”

               I saw Peeta’s eyebrows stretch up to his hairline even more. “You did not just say that.”

               “Didn’t I?” I said, feigning innocence.

               A slow, wicked grin crept onto his face. “Katniss Everdeen, such unexpected sass.” He winked at me, “I think I like it.”

               The blush that was on my cheeks burned again and the flush bloomed down my neck. You are, I thought to myself, a grown woman. Get a grip. It wouldn’t do blushing like a virgin schoolgirl and it wouldn’t do to start flirting with Peeta.

               “Yeah well,” I replied with an eye roll, “try not to.” I waved my hand towards the set, ignoring the fact that he was still looking at me and smiling. “Don’t you have to go fix some trees?”

               “I thought you were the forest expert?”

               “It’s a fairy wood, aren’t you the expert at things that aren’t real? Don’t be such a golden-douche.” It slipped out before I meant it to but my tone held no bite. I looked over at him from the corner of my eye only to see his shoulders shaking in laughter.

               “Golden-douche?”

               “Yeah,” I shrugged. “On account of your hair and your general douchebaggery.”

               “Oh... I see.” His wicked grin grew lazy and spread wider on his stupid, handsome face. “You refer to my hair as ‘golden’ huh? What do you refer to my eyes? Azure? Cerulean? How about... Sapphire?”

“And there is that general douchebaggery I was referring to.”

“Ah, Katniss,” he replied. “That hate-fuck is beginning to look more like begrudge-fuck.”

I flipped him the bird. “Go begrudge-fuck yourself,” and then I walked off, the sound of his laughter ringing like a bell in my ears.

****

 If there was anything I hated, it was being wrong.

               Months ago, I’d been sat in Haymitch’s office, pouring over the designs for the set we all hated. The fairy woods. It needed to be grandiose, it needed to be ethereal and it needed to be done on budget.

               “Katniss,” Haymitch had said to me. “There is no one here that can compare with you when it comes to nature designs, but...” and he seemed hesitant for the first time I had known him.

               “But, what?”

               “They’re dull.”

               “Dull? What the hell does that mean?!”

               He’d told me that I had a great eye for realism but fantasy elements and outside the box thinking weren’t my strengths and so they were bringing in someone from one of the other teams to work with me. That was where it had all started, Katniss Everdeen and her wounded pride.

               Receiving criticism was not my strength. Nor was giving praise. It had bothered me that we needed Peeta’s more imaginative eye but what bothered me more was that he deserved praise I had to yet to give. Not that he would have cared about what I thought, I’m sure.

               The set was nearly completed and I still hadn’t said anything. Every time we were on set I was awed at what we’d managed to achieve. The trees somehow stretched into an endless colour changing sky, the lichen on the trees glowed a deep, molten silver and gold seemed to pour out from beneath the tree bark.

               I wondered if my face took on the enthusiasm and delight of a child when I looked at it all, because that’s what I felt inside. Still, when I thought Peeta was looking I attempted chilled neutrality. It seemed that I had to do that a lot lately, attempt chilled neutrality, as I swore he was looking at me an awful lot more. Problem is, I only knew this because I was doing an awful lot of looking back.

               We’d found a strange balance along the way and as long as nothing threw off the equilibrium we would be fine. Absolutely fine. Which is why I surprised myself by doing just that.

                               The laughter I could hear across the set wasn’t Peeta’s usual booming one but was light, giggly and sounded flirty. There, deep within the woods, past a few of the silvery trees, stood Peeta and Glimmer side by side. A thought came to my mind to turn around and leave them alone, it is never a good idea to go into the woods, it only leads to disaster. But I shook the thought out, these weren’t real woods and it was only Peeta.

               I affected a look of disinterest as I approached them. “Hey,” I said.

               They both stopped talking and watched as I stepped over fake roots. Glimmer’s face slipped from pleased to pissed while the smile lines around Peeta’s eyes deepened.

               I held out the takeout cup to him, “I got you a coffee.” I made sure he could see where Sae had written ‘golden-douche’ on it. He took it with a grin and a wink and for a moment by stomach pitched downwards. “Sorry Glimmer,” I said to her, not at all sorry. “I didn’t know you were here.”

               Glimmer’s pretty pink mouth turned upwards into a saccharine, and completely fake, smile. “Not at all,” she waved a hand at me. “I was just coming to see how my favourite set designer was doing with my favourite set.”

She turned, smiling at Peeta and gave his bare arm a squeeze. I caught how her fingers trailed lightly on his skin and clutched my own coffee a bit tighter. “Katniss, I was just telling Peeta how amazing his design is and what a talent he is. Don’t you think?”

I gave a grumble behind my hot beverage barrier that sounded like an agreement.

“Well, I just added some bits to Katniss’ original design,” I heard Peeta say. “I added the fantastical elements, but if it wasn’t for her base we wouldn’t have had much of a set to work on.” His comment surprised me and I looked over to see him watching me. I offered up a small, appreciative smile and he surprised me further by offering a small - but warm - one back.

“But it’s the fantastical elements that really make it come alive,” Glimmer continued. “If we wanted normal woods we wouldn’t have needed to bring you in.” She waved a hand around the set again. “This is so much more effort than normal, boring woods, don’t you think?”

I seethed behind my coffee, steam either coming from the hot liquid or my ears. My usual conversations with her were like this, barbed comments aiming for the jugular but hidden underneath a sugary sweet tone. This was the first time that she had tried to embarrass me in front of someone, and it was Peeta no less. For some reason that made it worse.

“Glim,” I heard Peeta say, his voice low but not honeyed. “I think you should be more respectful of Katniss’ work.” I looked up and saw the smile melt off her face.

“It takes an incredible amount of effort and an observant eye to replicate reality and get it spot on. I mean, have you seen the tree bark?” Peeta gestured out to the tree next to where he was standing. “Do you know the amount of time it takes to get the texture correct? Or the colours? It’s not just brown you’re looking at, it’s the right shade of brown, and the green and silver and red.”

Glimmer’s mouth drew itself into a straight line. “Sorry Peeta, I didn’t realise that you felt that strongly about.... trees,” she looked over at me. “I have to go. I was only passing to say congratulations on a job well done. To you both.”

We watched her retreat and I let out a sigh. “You didn’t need to say all that you know. I’m a big girl. I can cope with her petty little knock-backs.”

Peeta shrugged and didn’t look at me. “Well, it was bothering me. You did just as good a job so she didn’t need to be like that.”

We stood there on the set, in the middle of the woods, in silence. Guilt started to gnaw away at me. If he could be complimentary about my work why couldn’t I just swallow my pride and say ‘well done Peeta, it looks beautiful.’ This was the moment if there ever was one. But I couldn’t. My mouth stayed shut until I decided to go ahead and ruin the balance we had earned.

“I know she didn’t but you didn’t need to defend me. I know my work is good and I don’t need you to tell her it is, it should speak for itself.”

Peeta’s mouth pursed and he spoke slowly, as though I was a child. “It does... speak for itself but I just wanted to point out the obvious to her. I think she is a little... biased and it doesn’t hurt to have someone on side.”

“I don’t need you on side.”

His eyes slid over to me and narrowed, the shining blue darkening. “What exactly,” his voice dangerously low, “is your problem here?”

I didn’t know. I didn’t know if it was because I had busted my ass on this project before Peeta turned up and he was now being hailed as some wonder boy, I didn’t know if it was because no one apart from Peeta had praised my actual contribution to the design and I was pathetically jealous and insecure. I didn’t know if it was because Peeta had called Glimmer ‘Glim’ and that she had trailed her fingers all over his skin. I didn’t know if it was because he seemed comfortable in letting her.

“She rode me hard for weeks,” was all I said. “All she did was bust me for the overspend, the design quality, how long it was taking to get the damn thing done and here she is singing your praises like I had nothing to do with anything.” I shook my head and went for the throat. “She rode me hard but honestly from the way she was panting at you I could wonder if you had been doing the same to her.”

It was a nasty comment, not meant to mean anything apart from cause hurt. I expected Peeta to protest in angry indignation and fight back. Except... he didn’t. I looked up sharply at his silence and felt a tremble of something in my stomach.

His eyes remained dark and angry and were boring into my face but his cheeks had gone a faint pink, the tips of his ears too. I watched his throat as he swallowed, the Adam’s apple bobbing.

“Oh,” I said. It came out soft. “Right.”

“Katniss...”

“No, I’m sorry I said anything.” I looked at the ground, at the fake grass, covered in fake leaves. “It’s not my business who you have relationships with.”

“We’re not in a relationship.”

“Or who you’re fucking.” I cringed as I said it.

“We’re not fucking.” He sighed, “Katniss...”

The ethereal beauty of the set now just seemed fake. All those pretty silvers and golds were just grey and yellow. The coffee tasted like mud and whatever I had with Peeta was...nothing. That was where I had gone wrong. For some reason I’d thought the growing joviality between us, the looks, the smiles, had meant more than it did. That was my fault, not his.

“I’ve got to go,” I told him. “I’m sure Haymitch wanted to have a progress update.”

Without waiting for a response from him, I walked off.

The project was almost completed, ‘we can hate-fuck it out to celebrate,’ Peeta had once said about when it was all over. At the time I’d been both angry and thrilled. Not that I wanted to hate-fuck it out at all, but if I was being honest with myself there was obviously something there that appealed to me.

I chucked my half-full coffee into the trash as I exited the studio and rolled my eyes at myself, feeling stupid. If there was anything, I said to myself, it would have been a pity-fuck. A sad, Katniss can’t get the job right, pity-fuck. I went straight home.

 ***

  It was late and I was cursing myself. Haymitch had called telling me there were problems with the meadow set and that ‘I get my ass down there first thing tomorrow morning and sort it out.’ My charming boss with his charming way with words.

               I’d rolled my eyes, confirmed I would, hung up on him and tried to enjoy the rest of my evening doing nothing at home. It was half an hour later that a sinking feeling hit my stomach. Shit, I thought. My binder wasn’t here. Racking my brains, I realised I’d left it at the last place I’d been, in the studio at the woods set.

I groaned. The meadow set was in a completely different studio halfway across the district. Trying to get from one place to the other in the morning would be impossible with the traffic. Haymitch would kill me if I wasn’t there on time but without that binder he would kill me anyway because I couldn’t fix anything without knowing what I was supposed to be fixing.

               I had one option and that was to collect the binder now. I shoved on some leggings and pulled an old sweater over my camisole thanking my stars I had the code to the building. If I was quick I could make it back in time to watch my programme before it started which was the sole highlight of my evening.

               When I arrived the night security guard recognised me and waved me in. “Busy night tonight,” he told me. “Only two of you but still, that’s busy for this time of night.”

               I frowned wondering who else was at the studio at this time of night and got my answer as soon as I pulled into a parking space. Two spaces down sat Peeta’s car. Great. I debated not going in but knew that was ridiculous. What was the point of driving all the way here to turn back empty handed? If I was lucky I could get in and out without him seeing me and if he did, well I was an adult. I was sure I could be civil.

               I wandered in, feeling nervous. I didn’t want to bump into him but then, some part of me did. We’d had that awful conversation on set three weeks ago and since then we’d gone back to playing the avoidance game. Well, I had. Peeta seemed to keep trying to talk to me but I always had a good excuse to get away.

               The studio wasn’t lit up fully but enough so that someone could make their way around the set and I wondered why Peeta was here. On the table to the side I could see my binder, all I needed to do was pick it up and leave. No one, aside from the security guard, would know I had been here. And then, for some inexplicable reason, I cleared my throat. Loudly.

               “Hello?” I heard Peeta’s voice from the set and his loud footsteps as they walked towards me. “Who’s... Katniss?”

               I turned to face him, noting his confused expression. “What are you doing here?”

               “I forgot my binder.” I picked it up and waggled it. “I need it for tomorrow, problem with the meadow set, so....”

               “Right,” he nodded. We stood opposite each other in silence.

               “What are you doing here? It’s a bit late.”

               Peeta sighed. “I honestly hate this set. I got a call from Haymitch telling me that some water damage had happened to some of the trees. God knows how, and now I’m just trying to get it sorted.”

               “This late?”

               He shrugged. “I had nothing better to do.”

               It was on the tip of my tongue to say, ‘what, not ‘Glim?’ but that was cold and unfair and completely borne from a place of my own jealously.

               “Do you want help?” My brain cursed at me.

               He seemed surprised but not unhappy and he let out a breath. “If you don’t mind?”

               “Sure.”

               We walked to the damage and I saw that some bark had begun to peel. I laughed and touched it, “It’s not at all funny but it looks just like real bark, except it’s sodden.”

               Peeta sighed again. “My wood got wet.”

               I gasped and looked over to him, “Peeta!”

               “Sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Completely inappropriate,” but there was a small twinkle in his eyes that told me he wasn’t that sorry.

               “We could get some heaters to dry it out,” I said, turning back to the tree and choosing to ignore him, “but if we don’t know where the leak is coming from then it wouldn’t...”

               “Katniss.” He said my name with determination but I could detect a slight tremor. “I’m sorry.”

               I paused. I didn’t understand why he was apologising to me, I wasn’t too sure what he had done wrong, not really. I turned back to him. His eyes implored me to hear him out, his palms outstretched in a calming manner. “Why are you sorry?” I asked.

               “Because I think somewhere along the way I’ve screwed something up.”

               I looked down at the ground. “No, you haven’t. I just...,” I paused, not too sure how to continue. “It’s none of my business about you and Glimmer, really it isn’t.”

               “I’m not seeing her,” he said. “And I’m not sleeping with her. I have slept with her, months ago. A couple of times. There’s nothing I can do about that, it’s happened. I just don’t want you thinking that’s why I ended up on this job, that I slept my way into it. I was already on the job when Glimmer and I hooked up.”

               His statement did funny things to my stomach but it just added onto the guilt that I was already feeling. It wasn’t his fault I was a pathetic mess.

               “Peeta, shut up.”

               “Excuse me?” He laughed a little disbelievingly. “I’m apologising and you’re telling me to shut up?”

               “Yes, exactly!”

               “This is going well...”

               I shook my head. “I mean... you don’t need to apologise. I should be apologising to you.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t think you slept your way into this job, I mean, look at your design,” I gestured around us, “it’s quite obvious that you’re here because of your talent. I was jealous.”

               “Of my talent?”

               “No.” I took another deep breath. “Of Glimmer, actually.”

               It took a moment and then his face changed, confusion blended into understanding and then a soft, warm smile appeared on his face. “Oh, I see.”

               “This whole conversation is embarrassing me. I know I said I was going to help but I think I might just take my binder and go home.”

               “You know,” his voice was low and honeyed and wonderful as he stepped towards me, “I had a lot of inspiration to draw on when designing this place. An artist takes inspiration from everything.”

               I snorted, “Right, like what?”

               “Well, the gold from the trees is inspired by my hair,” he shook his head as he came closer, the blonde waves bouncing. “Obviously.”

               “Obviously, I see we’re back to being golden-douche.”

               “But hearing you talk about the woods you knew as a child really helped draw out my creative side.” He stood in front of me now and he reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. It lingered for a while as his eyes bore into mine before a fingertip trailed down my neck and onto my collar bone.

“And the silver in the trees? Well, that’s pretty special too.” His fingertip ran a pathway across my skin, tracing the bone and I shivered.

“That tickles,” I said. “But go on.”

He smiled and leant in, his broad shoulders stretched out in front of me, his blue eyes dark and delicious. The pupils were fat and black, squeezing out the colour. Peeta’s mouth was inches away from mine and all I needed to do was stand on my tiptoes and then our lips would meet.

“That particular shade was inspired by the eyes of someone who spent most of their days glaring at me.”

“I didn’t glare!”

“Who says I’m talking about you?” But he was grinning and his hands were now cupping my face, tilting it upwards to meet his. My hands dropped the binder I had been holding and I brought them up to grasp at his shirt. His chest was warm and hard beneath my palms and I clenched the material in my fingers. It was slow, how we were moving, and I just wanted to grab him and wrench him downwards.

“Peeta,” I whispered.

“Uhuh?”

“This isn’t going to be a pity kiss, is it?”

His nose was tracing a path on my temple. A slow kiss was pressed against my cheekbone. “Nope.”

“Are you sure?”

His nose skimmed across the bridge of mine to my other cheek where another kiss was planted. “Yes.”

I could hear his breathing deepen, as though being so close to me was exciting him. His body burned beneath my hands and I just wanted to slide my palms under his shirt and let them explore his skin. The thumbs that rested on either side of my face gently rubbed back and forth and it was almost ridiculous. Two adults standing in the middle of a fake fairy wood, almost kissing, but not quite. My stomach had changed its mission and swooped low in anticipation. The guilt and the jealously had long dissipated and all I wanted to do was press his hard body against mine and indulge in... something.

“Peeta?”

“Uhuh?” There was a smile on his face and I could feel it pressed against my ear.

“Didn’t you promise me a hate-fuck?”

He pulled back and I saw the shock on his face. My hands trailed down his shirt to his hips and I looped my fingers in his belt, pulling his body close to mine. My pelvis pressed against his and I slipped my hands to his backside to pull him even closer. I was being more forward than I ever had in my life. I didn’t know where this side of me had come from but I wasn’t too worried about stopping.

“I’m not going to hate-fuck you, Katniss.”

My heart dropped. It was probably for the best, we had no established relationship, we didn’t know what we were and besides, we weren’t anywhere remotely suitable. Just as I was about to pull away, Peeta’s hands left my face and skimmed down my neck, past my shoulders and down to my lower back. “That’s not to say I won’t fuck you,” he murmured.

My eyes widened as his hands slid down to my ass and pushed me in tighter to his groin. I gasped as I felt his hardness press against my pelvis and then he was bridging the gap and leaning forward to catch my lips with his own.

His were soft but insistent and they slanted over mine, pulling and sucking my lower lip between his, nibbling gently with his teeth. I groaned and shifted, tugging his hips further towards me and undulating mine against his. We pressed together and released and pressed together again, more urgent this time. His breathing grew harsher.

I pulled my mouth away, but not far. “We shouldn’t do this here.”

“Yeah, you’re right. We probably shouldn’t.” But then he was capturing my mouth again, his tongue sliding against mine, our hips flexing and pushing. I could feel his erection straining against the fly of his jeans which pressed against the thin material of my leggings. He was so hot, so hard and my heart thundered in my chest. Our hips sped up, crashing against each other and I relinquished the hold I had to do what I wanted, slide my hands under his shirt to press against his flesh.

Peeta’s hands reminded on my ass and I let him drive me into him over and over as I felt the heat of his skin on my palms. I smoothed them over his stomach and towards his back and he made a low, male sound that made my stomach swoop. His tongue left my mouth and he bent his head lower, trailing across my throat as I tipped it back, trying to breath more air into my lungs.

He smelt of Peeta and it was intoxicating. Forget air, all I wanted to do was breath him into my lungs. I whined and sunk my nails into his bare sides, hearing him grunt against the dip in my throat. “Peeta,” I said again. “We’re on set.”

He pulled back, eyes so dark they were almost black and his lips were deliciously swollen. “Do you want to stop?” he asked, but his tone made it sound as though it was the most painful question ever. Which it was.

“No, but we can’t take our time.” I glanced around quickly, worried that the security guard would come check on us at any moment.

Peeta licked his lips, my saliva clinging to them and he nodded. “Ok, so hard and fast it is.”

I made a noise, something close to a whimper and he lifted me from the ground, my legs wrapping around his waist. Our lips met again, whilst our hips met with hard and fast presses. There was no time for tenderness, not now. Peeta walked us backwards and lowered me towards the base of a fake tree.

I looked up and laughed, “At least it’s romantic in a way.”

Peeta grinned down at me. “You get to have sex in the woods.

“Oh, I’ve had sex in the woods. The real woods.”

Peeta moaned, “Don’t give me this information Everdeen. I can’t handle it right now.”

I stripped off my sweater, leaving me down to my thin camisole. “That’s no good, there’s lots I’m going to need you to handle.”

He grinned and surged forward, his hands on my waist sliding upwards as he did. The air met my bare stomach but he didn’t stop there and continued to slide the silky material up towards my bare breasts. His head bent low and captured a hardened nipple in his mouth, his tongue sliding over it whilst he rolled the other between his fingers.

I sunk my fingers into his hair, marvelling at the softness of the strands all the while marvelling at how his mouth was shooting bolts of electricity down to my core. I ground up against him and he pushed back into me, but it wasn’t enough.

Tugging at his shirt loosened it enough for his skin to be exposed and the bare flesh of our stomachs pressed together, a thin sheen of sweat accumulating.

“Peeta,” I gasped out, digging my fingers into his back once again. If my nail hurt him, he didn’t let on.

               He released a wet nipple with a pop, “What do you need?” he panted. “Tell me.”

               “You said hard and fast.” I flopped back to the ground as he sat up and I grasped at his body like mine was starving.

               A growl emerged from his throat and then he was grabbing at his belt, his fingers making quick work of the buckles and dragging his jeans and underwear down just enough to release his erection. With haste I yanked at my own clothing, pulling down my leggings and own underwear in one swift motion, managing to pull it free of one leg completely while it dangled off the other.

               My chest heaved and I watched his face as he looked towards where my spread legs met. What a sight I must have been. Camisole pushed up to bear my breasts and my centre spread out for him to see. As he looked at me I looked at him. Thick, muscular thighs and a toned stomach. Dark blonde hair trailed down from his belly button to his groin and there, something else thick and hard jutted out.

“Fuck, Katniss!” I heard him say, but the words were faint to my dizzy mind. His fingers trailed down to my core and dipped between my folds. I groaned and arched my back at his touch. A thick finger slid into my body, the slick wetness welcoming him. It was soon joined by another and I could feel my body stretch to accommodate. Peeta moved them, pumping slowly in and out and I tried to grab his cock but it was too far out of reach. A thumb was pressed against my clit and I could feel little stars shoot behind my eyes.

Whilst one hand moved between my legs another went back to my breast and continued to pluck the nipple. I could feel the pressure beginning to build in my stomach, my neck and back arched as far as they could go, my legs stretching wider and wider. I deaf to everything aside from the noises I was making and the harshness of my breaths. In the distance of my hearing I could make out Peeta’s noises of encouragement, his appreciation of how wet, how warm I was.

The pressure reached eruption and I yelled out Peeta’s name, my legs and arms squirming underneath him, my body clenching around his fingers as more wetness flooded out of me. As the quakes dimmed and my body twitched I felt Peeta remove his fingers and bend over me.

“Katniss,” he murmured and I could feel him press his hardness against my bare centre. I nodded greedily and in one movement he pushed himself inside me. A guttural noise came from us both as we joined and I clenched his shoulders and he begun to move.

We agreed on hard and fast and so that’s what Peeta gave. His hips pounded into mine and I tried to meet him thrust for thrust but could barely match his pace. I could feel him, his girth stretching me further then his fingers and he moved quickly and easily within me. The smell of our sweat and mixed arousal flooded my nose and I could feel my sweat mingle with his wherever our bare skin could touch.

Peeta’s hands gripped my knees and he suddenly sat up, his thighs, still glad in rough denim, splaying mine further as he continued to piston into my body. His face and neck had gone a deep red from exertion. “Katniss,” he grunted. “I’m close.”

I arched my back again and grabbed at my own breasts and Peeta’s eyes couldn’t seem to settle on one place, switching between my face, breasts and the place where our bodies were joining. With one last thrust, I heard him swear and then he was coming and holding himself over me, trying not to collapse.

“Shit.” He withdrew and flopped to the ground next to me and we just lay there, half undressed and completely dishevelled. I turned to look at him as our breathing evened out, our chests still rising and falling quickly.

My hand reached out and touched his hair which was now darkening from sweat. I let out a little giggle at seeing the strands curl more towards his ears.

               He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Something funny?”

               “Not really, just when you joked about hate-fucking me all those weeks ago your hair looked a little like this then too.”

“As I recall someone stole my umbrella.”

               “As I recall someone ventured out in the rain without one.”

               “You were upset. I couldn’t let you sit in Sae’s alone.”

               We lay there facing each other, underneath a fake tree in a fake wood, surrounded by silver and gold. Large, black studio lights were positioned above the tree tops.

               “I still need to grab my binder and head down to the meadow tomorrow. Ugh.” I sat up, reluctant to leave but knowing we couldn’t stay like this.

               “Hmm.” Peeta sat up too and we both begun re-dressing. “The meadow you say? We should probably add that to the list.”

               “There’s a list?” I asked him.

               He shrugged, “Well there is now. Ok, so hate-fuck isn’t going to make it...”

               “Isn’t it?”

               Peeta gave me a look, one that said ‘you know it isn’t.’ “...but it doesn’t mean that we can’t add others on.”

               “Oh,” I said, “what else is on the list?”

               Peeta stood and helped me up. At least sex in fake woods meant that twigs didn’t end up in our hair. “Well we can cross off fake woods but we need to add in real woods.”

Ah, I thought, best prepare for the twigs. “What else?” I asked him, feeling a tingle at where all this was going.

He smiled at me. There was a lovely pink flush on his face, his hair was in complete disarray and his belt hadn’t been successfully looped back correctly.

“When Katniss Everdeen realises how mad about her I am - sex,” he replied and he bent down to kiss me.

[sending-the-message]

My synesthetic Korean friend tried the elevator game [PART 1] by igottagat

Hi all, I’m Angus, and it’s my first time posting on Reddit. Hope I'm doing it right. I have a crazy story to tell and I feel nosleep is the best place for it.

This isn't actually something that happened to me. I have this friend over in Korea who I met through- of all things- the comments on an article on lifehacking. He’s called Kim Sijin and he’s got a pretty voracious mind as well as incredible English, plus he’s synesthetic which makes him...fun...to talk to. Do you know synaesthesia? No worries if you don’t.

I live in Shanghai and Sijin is a bit of a low-key Sinophile, so generally the idea is I share bizarre China stories in exchange for updates on his exploits in Seoul.

We like to keep our messages long and infrequent, and a little stilted. Kind of in the Victorian tradition, you know.

What’s coming below is amalgamation of several very emotional messages Sijin sent me following the loss of his closest friend, Han-Jae. I merged some messages and fixed up his typos. As you’ll see while reading, I kind of just took a backseat as he broke open his proverbial dam and unloaded. A wise choice, I think.

Sijin gave me full permission to share this story. By the end you will see why.

It's not a short tale, so I will follow this first post up with a Part 2 and so on.

Make of it all what you will.

SIJIN

I like to spy on people.

ANGUS

That’s new to me.

SIJIN

Yeah, I didn’t tell you? I peer through their webcams. Actually it’s not even about the people. It’s about the places. So many of these windows into the world exist, and it’s very easy to open them.

Modern webcams have IP addresses. That’s why they are called webcams. They are connected to the internet, which is a public, open network before you strap logins and paywalls onto it. Most webcams, however, are intended for private use, usually as CCTV. They only use the internet as a convenient networking mechanism. So, as they ought to, webcam manufacturers fit their network cameras with username and password logins, to keep out strangers. All well and good. But many of those manufacturers fit their cameras with default logins, and default passwords. This brings out a human flaw in the system, because when it comes to certain parts of their lives, even the most hardworking people are very lazy.

The branch manager of a budget hotel franchise. The security officer of a countryside engineering college. The granny in charge of a noodle shop for grannies. An uptight father who wants household ‘security’. All of these will usually not think or bother to alter the default username and password of their cameras. And so, someone like me- or you, Angus- can get in. The ‘hack’ involves dropping keywords into Google that turn up the camera control panels. Click the link, enter a default factory login, and presto, you have opened a gateway to another place on earth.

What you can see through the gateways is mostly very dull, but the scope of it all is incredible. All these portals puncturing the mundane. And the mundane is, I think, quite otherworldly. You realise quickly that most of the human world is made of empty spaces. Restaurants. Swimming pools. Offices. Lobbies. Cupboards. Car parks. Long, well lit hallways. While you are huddled with your friends, family, or co-workers on the bus, at home, or at the computer, you forget that all the other places where you spend your life are queer abandoned zones which turn pitch black at night, unless someone is there to switch on the lights.

The videos can only really hold your interest if you are watching life in motion. Anglican Church services in England. Family barbeques in France. City centres in Africa rammed with cars. Silent pet shops in rural America. Up close you see a lot of conversations but you don’t hear the words. Even my synaesthesia isn’t much help here.

ANGUS

Don’t you feel very detached when you’re watching? And then eventually, just, bored?

SIJIN

Yes, but. Sometimes no.

There was one vision early on that stuck with me. I saw a granny in Hokkaido, not so far across the sea, staring into a mirror with a bitter red frame and a shelf that was decorated with pictures and jewels. She was dressed for the cold and her hair was short and boyish. I was looking straight down on her. There was no obvious emotion on her face, but she seemed at peace. I wanted to know what she was thinking about. I wanted to know who she was and if she would sit there all day, and why there was a CCTV camera in her living room.

ANGUS

Shouldn’t that have been the point where you stopped?

SIJIN

Han-Jae said the same. Maybe because that last description is so intimate. ‘Intimate’ turns into ‘wrong’ so quickly, don’t you think? I spoke about that granny with affection she never asked for, nor even knew about. There’s something intuitively wrong about imposing your feelings onto strangers in such a way. Han-Jae pointed this out, quite rightly. I said yes, I would stop, but only after I saw something awful. Eventually, of course, I did.

Other friends and even family have said I pay too much heed to Han-Jae. They say I should take care not to appear to be involved in some kind of boy love thing with him. Well to them I’d say they only cry ‘boy love’ because they do not understand our friendship, because our friendship is not normal, or traditional. I’ve never claimed to be a normal Korean boy, nor do I ever wish to be. Han-Jae feels the same, though he would never say as much.

That’s one reason I like sharing all this with you. You’re outside this society. You don’t judge.

Han-Jae and I are both synaesthesiacs. (That’s the wrong word in English but I happen to like it.) We don’t fit. Actually, no. He has always fit. I am the real freak.

Even my synaesthesia runs counter to Korean thinking. Everything ‘good’ is to my eyes, red. Red for we Koreans is not exactly a death colour, but it means nothing good. For me, death is signified by the smell of copper, and red is everything beautiful. Like chocolate bars: dark chocolate bars are a solid block of rich crimson. Milk chocolate is lovely traffic light red. White chocolate is pastel red, like you’d find in a kindergarten. When I talk about the red things I see Han-Jae talks back at me using the name ‘Jinshi’, which is what my given name ‘Sijin’ sounds like when you render it in Chinese. Did I mention that before?

ANGUS

No. But that’s fascinating. Is that Jin like ‘gold’? 金?

SIJIN

Yeah, I think so. But I’m not a Chinese master. Most Koreans these days don’t know much about it.

Han-Jae went to the effort of converting the name because the Chinese have the same ideas about red, of course. They think red is good. I think red is good. So I must be Chinese. So I must be Chinese Jinshi, not Korean Sijin. Han-Jae’s sense of humour. Don’t let the formidable grades and the sharp mind fool you– deep down, he’s a pretty simple-minded guy.

ANGUS

Oh no, haha. I’d noticed that. 厉害.

SIJIN

What?

ANGUS

‘Awesome’. Just testing.

SIJIN

Oh. Anyway, I’m not done talking about myself.

Computer code doesn’t have a colour. But, most coding interfaces colour different tags, commands and formats in specific colours in order to help we programmers interpret the huge walls of text that code presents to us. This is kind of an artificial synaesthesia. As you can probably guess, I need no such aid. Every block of code I see is a separation of the spectrum. Dozens of shades burst out at me, and for each one there is a specific meaning that comes to me immediately. I never had to deliberately create this system or memorise how it works. The connection between each colour and each command is just as obvious to me as the fact that water is wet to you.

Now on to Han-Jae. You may find his ‘power’ a little less boring than mine.

Really, he is an asshole. His synaesthesia reflects the problems in his personality. If something is boring to him, or too easy, or just difficult in the sense of being beyond his skillset, then it will seem further away. To understand how his vision is organised, you really have to understand his own internal logic. I do. I am one of few.

Han-Jae tells me that his favourite movies have a lot of extra depth and tone. Shitty movies will look muddy and flat regardless of their original colour palette, so under his discerning gaze you really cannot polish a turd. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a good example. From a technical standpoint, it’s a movie with visual depth, a wide tonal range, and a painfully vibrant colour palette. But from a critical perspective, Han-Jae and I agree the movie is a fucking disaster. Therefore, to Han-Jae, the film’s visual frantic energy literally vanishes– he says it looks a ‘greasy sepia Western, recorded on rotten, wobbly film paper’.

If you play music to Han-Jae, the notes float past his face. If you feed him waffles and a BLT, he will see the heat, texture, and flavour of the food flash around the room. He has a calendar and abacus that he can generate any time he likes, and then use to outthink you using only his eyeballs. He once correctly measured the speed of a friend’s electric bicycle down to one decimal point just by watching it pass him by. He sees the colour of people’s emotions, flushed around their face, and he uses this to charm girls. What I am trying to say is that Han-Jae is a real bastard.

ANGUS

Hahahaha!

SIJIN

I don’t get many dates. Han-Jae does. Blah blah blah. You’ve heard all this moaning before.

So anyway my point is that with Han-Jae I do things beyond the usual juvenile playtime. You remember the time Han-Jae and I went looking for ‘ghosts’? I never quite said we were really looking for ‘holes’. Localised instances where the logic of the world- physics maybe- is no longer consistent. If you ever exploited a bug in a video game for fun or to cheat, you can grasp this. Think of any time you had déjà vu. You deeply, deeply felt you were reliving a moment you have not yet lived. In other words it is some form of time travel. Whether the form is true or simulated, and whether déjà vu occurs in the mind or somewhere else...these are beside the point. The point is that déjà vu breaks the rules of everyday existence.

Imagine the introducing the concept of saving to disk and digital rewriting to, say, an Imperial Japanese typist working in Seoul during the occupation period. In fact, imagine you told a medieval European typist that you could duplicate a hundred copies of his Bible in the blink of an eye. To each typist it would seem that you have broken some rule of the universe and opened up an exploit.

ANGUS

Hacking.

SIJIN

Of a kind.

Synaesthesia is arguably one such ‘hole’. Look at how easily Han-Jae and I breezed through the Korean education system. We process text, figures, and diagrams faster than normal people. We can read novels, music, and the emotions on an immediately deeper level than anyone bar the experts. We are incredibly well organised, and as such have extra time and energy to spend chasing after world-hacks.

Maybe you recall some of our attempts. The first thing we tried was to hack our own vision by instigating voluntary hallucinations. This proved a total failure. Next we tried the occult. As in, summoning demons. Remember that? Total failure again. Next we tried local legends. I never told you this part. It’s cool. There’s supposed to be a restless fox girl who swims underwater in a canal just a few kilometres from our residential district. There’s a rather convoluted backstory: it involves UN soldiers, a Communist cell, a nuclear waste barrel, and an old medicine man. You can imagine. It was a good excuse to explore the streets at least, and I liked getting a feel for the local history (Han-Jae didn’t– he’s smart as hell but there isn’t an intellectual bone in his body), but of course we saw no canal ghost.

Han-Jae and I talked pretty seriously about whether to give up or whether to press on. We decided, mostly thanks to my line of argument, that we would press ahead, but with a narrower focus. We had to hone in on real exploits. No more kids’ games. Together we once researched something really interesting: in a country called Scotland there is a place called the Electric Brae. It distorts perspective so that objects appear to roll uphill when left to rest. That sort of thing would be our target. Glitches that call the world’s fabric into question.

I warned that this might require travel, but Han-Jae believed quite firmly that if any country could provide, it would be South Korea. When I chided him for this warped version of patriotism he conceded that Japan might also be a candidate. I had to agree. It’s a pretty weird place. The strange thing is...Han-Jae was right. After a few wasted days of searching the Korean-language internet, we found something on a dead forum. I'll paste in an English translation. It is the instructions for something called The Elevator Game. Brace yourself...