#indefinite life extension

[bardcopilotgeminillamametabetag]

ANALYZE AND PRODUCE CORRECTED INDIVIDUAL DNA TO BE INTRODUCED AND COMPLETELY REPLACE AGED DNA USING CRISPR AND RELATED SPECIES TRANSPLANT TECHNIQUES SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

[wonder-worker]

"Because Richard (III) usurped the throne, his retinue is inevitably seen as inimical to the crown and therefore in an important sense independent of royal authority. In the context of Edward IV's reign, in which the retinue was created, neither assumption is true. The development of the retinue would have been impossible without royal backing and reflected, rather than negated, the king's authority. Within the north itself, Gloucester's connection subsumed that of the crown. Elsewhere, in East Anglia and in Wales, that focus for royal servants was provided by others, but Gloucester was still part of that royal connection, not remote from it. In the rest of England, as constable and admiral, he had contributed to the enforcement of royal authority. When he seized power in 1483 he did not do it from outside the prevailing political structure but from its heart."

-Rosemary Horrox, "Richard III: A Study of Service"

[vipier]

tristan healing his deeply fragmented connection with the force because it’s either that or die, essentially. shedding both the inquisitor and jedi titles and starting from scratch. living deep in the forest of a remote planet strong with the force which cass specifically picked for them before the end of the war, far enough from the settlement to remain unbothered but close enough to fetch supplies when needed. initially intimidated by trying to rebuild the connection because of how close it came to killing him when he nearly fell to the dark side but gradually taking longer and longer walks into the nature surrounding them every day. it starts as rehab because he struggles to walk properly for a while after his release from medbay at the rebel base and he needs to try daily to recover. as he becomes more mobile again, it turns into exploring. swimming in the nearby lake in the morning. venturing out into the bioluminescent forest at night and returning with the bioluminescence clinging to his skin a bit, making him softly glow. ( something something bioluminescence doesn’t work that way but force shit, and it eventually becomes semi-permanent at night while he's on-planet and only fades when he sleeps. ) finding himself yearning for that reconnection eventually instead of dreading or feeling uncertain because he feels so grounded in the nature around him and wants to make himself a part of it through the force. him realizing pretty early on that there are parts of the darkness he was steeped in for two decades that he will never be able to fully get rid of and that terrifying him for quite a while before eventually realizing he can balance it with everything else and thus embrace it as part of his new self. him tapping into such exceptional power on this planet and using it to essentially fuse with the nature there such that he starts to feel drained if he leaves it for more than a week or two — but that’s okay, because he and cass are old and tired and never planned to leave again. actors in the new republic coming to them with questions and the occasional hope that they might choose to come help rebuild, which is rebuked more gently by tristan and less gently by cass. old friends from the wars paying them visits in their little hamlet, including tristan's old clone commanders specs and kilo, with whom he's made peace after the trauma of o66. the community on the planet embracing that they're there ( even if they mostly leave them alone ) because tristan's force fusion with the planet's flora and fauna has vastly improved farming, logging, and animal husbandry. force devotees hearing about the planet's ecosystem basically flourishing under tristan's care and making pilgrimages there on occasion, which tris mostly avoids because he's not here to be revered as some sort of a deity, which is what most pilgrims want to do, but making exceptions to speak to some force learners on occasion. finding peace after a lifetime of war and torture and anguish and grief through embracing his force abilities like never before and finally being with ( and marrying ) the person he’s loved for 30-35 years of his life, who is himself seeing the force through new eyes. finally feeling fully safe for the first time in his life, barefoot in the grass of a planet — unselfishly chosen by that love of his life — that has essentially welcomed him home, mind, body, and soul.

[syoddeye]

thinking about a futuristic/dystopian au where the tech company you work for moves you into one of their r&d flats under the premise of being a paid, live-in tester. you can't refuse—it'd be foolish to refuse. free rent, a pay bump, and all the latest gadgets available at your fingertips? goodbye, communal bathroom and capsule bunk. hello, filtered air and privacy.

of course, in your hurry to get out of your shitty flat, you skip the fine print. you miss the bit about the new ai that will be monitoring your every move to provide real-time feedback and, at times, tangible nudges to improve your quality of life. the part about the extensive research on your person that's been done and will continue to fine-tune. it's just a pilot program, a temporary arrangement, but it doesn't know that.

a deep, rumbling voice wakes you on the first morning of your indefinite lease, a voice you've unwittingly imagined more times than you'd care to admit. your eyes open to the projection of a bearded man at your bedside, looming, staring down his nose. he blithely observes how hard your nipples are in the flimsy little top you wore to bed. are you trying to catch a cold or impress him? he informs you that you're succeeding in both endeavors.

when you jump up, snatch your robe from the hook, and page your superiors—they're unimpressed. you signed on the dotted line. you shouldn't complain, and no, you cannot opt out. they instruct you to deliver your complaints to john directly to test his receptiveness to human-suggested corrections.

they assure you he cannot harm you* and that he is programmed to view your well-being as his primary priority. if you'd like to learn more, refer to the provided documentation or ask john for assistance. the call ends with a dismissive handwave, and you're left alone. well. not alone alone.

john chuckles as you frantically scroll through your tablet, trying to find ways to filter or limit his speech.

"think we're goin' to get along just fine, user." he dematerializes, his voice drifting from the unit's hidden speakers.

"why don't you sit down, relax, and have a cup of tea? then, when you're ready, i will turn the shower to your preferred temperature so that you may perform your customary morning masturbatory ritual."

your head spins, steam practically billowing from your ears. what kind of sick fuckery is this—

the door to the bathroom whooshes open, and you hear water gush from the bath spout.

"hm, your stress spiked, user. i think a bath would be best. would you prefer to adjust the jets manually, or would you like me to take the lead?"

*please be advised that the ai assistant's physical interference capabilities, if any, remain largely speculative and are not fully documented by the manufacturer. users are encouraged to operate the assistant within recommended guidelines, as the system's limitations in physical engagement have yet to be comprehensively understood.

[scoops-aboy86]

I just saw a post about a sugar daddy/sugar baby relationship but with the ages switched, so the one with money is in his twenties and the financially struggling one is in his forties. And I thought, wouldn't that be GREAT as a Steddie fic. 

Like, heir to the Harrington fortune Steve is just itching to dump his parents’ money down the drain on something. Or someone, because. You know. His parents tried to buy his love without ever being around to deserve it and that worked out Great, might as well continue the Harrington tradition (he thinks, while rolling his eyes). 

Enter Eddie Munson, walking disaster. Who sells weed for a living but spends most of his time planning and running dnd campaigns for underprivileged kids. Who is still trying to make it with his band, but meanwhile he’s the only member who can’t get a decent steady job because of bullshit murder charges when he was 19. (Which didn’t even stick, but it’s a small town… or maybe his dad just pissed off that many people.)

Eddie has the muscle tone of a slim jim and the hair of a tormented barbie doll, but the one physical feature he’s incredibly proud of are his tattoos. They’re all obviously home done, but when Steve realizes they’re all Eddie’s own work he’s (a) grudgingly impressed and (b) now has TWO great ideas for pissing off his parents. 

So Steve gets a tramp stamp in an apartment that he pays for but has Eddie’s name on the lease, and a grungy older boyfriend to parade around whenever he feels his parents need keeping in check. And maybe Eddie kind of makes it his unofficial job/personal undertaking to look into Harrington family dealings (he has his sources; his dad also schmoozed a lot of people and everyone knows his uncle is a stand-up guy) and alert Steve to things they’re being assholes about that Steve, more through fault of his upbringing than his own, wouldn’t have noticed. 

Like, maybe they own some medical buildings and are thinking of raising the rent on a pediatrician practice that offers sliding scale to low income families. At first, Steve is a little dismissive…

Steve: What’s the big deal? There are other pediatricians in town.

Eddie: Yes, but not everyone can afford to take their kids to them. 

Steve: Oh come on. 

Eddie: No, seriously. 

Steve: But… What if the kid gets really sick or hurt? 

Eddie: Sometimes they die, Steve.

Steve: ………………………. Okay yeah no that’s not happening. 

The next week, that practice has their rent lowered and a new lease locked in to keep the space (maybe even expand it into the plastic surgeon’s place next door) pretty much indefinitely and there’s an elite charity event that Steve and Eddie pointedly do not go to. 

(He can’t always get away with not going. Sometimes he plays the cards he’s dealt and goes with some pretty girl on his arm, but he has her home by midnight and he’s riding his boyfriend into the mattress by 1am.)

Eddie’s bandmates are dubious, but Eddie keeps swearing up and down that Steve isn’t a bad dude, he just has a lot of blind spots that he’s working on. Some harder than others, sure, but overall his cause seems to be just. Ish. A lot of what Steve does is motivated by petty revenge, but his parents are kind of shitty people so it tends to work out. “Plus,” Eddie adds brightly, “he’s a firecracker in the sack.” And is pelted with things for the crime of rubbing his sex life with a catch almost half his age in their faces. 

At some point they meet Steve, who has been specifically coached by Eddie to NOT buy out an entire restaurant or bar for the night just for the occasion. They come away with the general impression of, “He’s a little confused, but he’s got the spirit.”

Maybe they met in the first place because Dustin is one of the underprivileged kids Eddie was running campaigns for, and Steve has always had a soft spot for Dustin (and by extension all of Dustin’s friends and their families) since Mrs. Henderson was one of his nicer nannies growing up. Maybe Steve sets up a whole community center and tries to put Eddie in charge of it, but Eddie doesn’t really want to be anyone’s boss; he just wants to help kids excel at a game he loves because its one of the things that really helped keep him steady through his rough childhood and adolescence. But he does work there, because that way he can keep playing dnd AND teach guitar lessons. 

(Steve offered to help get the band signed to a label but Eddie was adamant, if they were going to make it they’d do it on merit, not money, or not at all. It’s really become more of a hobby for the other guys anyway.)

So Eddie is finally OKAY. He has a good income, a decent amount saved up from while Steve was covering all the bills he can now pay himself, and his Uncle Wayne hasn’t been more proud of him since the day he finally graduated high school on the third try (which was pretty good, for a Munson). 

And Steve… isn’t sure what to do with himself now that Eddie doesn’t need him anymore. He can’t think of anything he’s good for other than money—though his best friend Robin tells him that’s just because he’s a dingus, there are PLENTY of things. (They’ve been best friends since college, and there’s a story there but someone else is gonna have to fill in that blank because I’m getting sleepy.) Dustin chimes in that yeah, he can totally tell that Eddie has been sneaking Steve into campaigns as an npc (which he has to explain to Steve, again, even though they’ve been over this many times) for ages and is clearly so in love with him it’s ridiculous, has been for a while. 

Maybe Steve panics and does something dumb after that, but not so boneheaded that they can’t work it out dramatically in the rain after a brief period apart. Like in one of those romance movies that they both pretend they think are silly but genuinely get them choked up sometimes because they’re both kind of saps underneath it all. 

Eddie goes on to become a well respected tattoo artist, while still pitching in at the community center a few days a week. Steve continues his philanthropy work with the guidance of Eddie, Robin, his ex and investigative journalist Nancy, etc., and his own shaky-as-a-baby-giraffe-that-landed-on-its-head-straight-out-of-the-womb-but-getting-steadier instincts. They get married while skydiving (because Eddie joked about it and Steve held him to it), build the found family of Steve’s dreams, and live happily ever after. 

… Anyway, if someone could write all that out in actual prose I would love to read it. But with the sex dialed up to eleven because that’s important but I think I only actually mentioned it twice, a travesty.

[midnightarcheress]

Simon has a new assignment.

pairing: bodyguard!ghost x actress!reader 1 | gold rush masterlist.

after years exhausting his body in the military and too many losses to count, Simon decided to retire. goodbye extensive deployments, food and sleep deprivation, constant adrenaline pump in his veins, hours spent washing the blood off of his fingernails. except he didn’t truly retire. life as a civilian again was too strange, too boring. he thrives in following orders and being the best at it. he missed having a purpose, even if it’s far from saving the world.

so, because of that, he agreed on joining a private military company as a contractor. never takes the dirty, mercenary-like jobs though – despite being rusted, his moral compass is still there, so he usually sticks with the security, training, bodyguarding type of work. easy enough to not take a toll on his body, and to not strain his conscience with the worry of ending innocent lives to cover up some bastard’s filth, but demanding enough to keep his mind out of his own life for a while.

the guy on the other side of the line doesn’t tell him much about the new task. bodyguard for an actress, indefinite time, details via e-mail. a few minutes later, the computer screen lights up with the case information and his eyes skim through the text; famous actress, has been receiving threatening letters and who ultimately has a stalker. a seemingly uncapturable one, as the police have not been able to trace them for months. incompetent wankers. in his prime he would locate terrorists with ease; nothing he couldn’t do right now, but his contract was strict – keep her safe and keep to yourself.

he doesn’t recognize the name, but the small picture attached to the message is slightly familiar, maybe from one of the times he spent hours flicking through the channels on the telly while battling a crippling insomnia. his brows knit together when he peers at the set of rules that accompanies the e-mail. no talking, no touching unless extremely necessary, must keep distance at all times.

in the months he’s been working in the company, he never had a job with an actual celebrity – mostly politicians and businesspeople, extremely straightforward and simple to execute, usually for a short period of time. he’s convinced that it will be the longest mission of his life, probably dealing with an entitled rich woman who’s used to having everybody begging at her feet.

dread fills his mind as he watches the trees quickly passing by his window on the car. the drive to the meeting is short enough to contain the rate of the antipathy brewing on his chest, but long enough to make him question accepting the assignment.

he pulls up on the driveway and walks towards a tall, modern building, filled with frantic people walking from side to side. glancing at his phone, he re-reads the details of the reunion; second door on the 23th floor, her manager will be expecting you. his fingers tap on the side of his thigh as the lift raises to the office level, eyes glaring at the mirror in the back of the platform. the image on the glass differs from the one on his past – military buzzcut and skull-printed balaclava replaced by messy blond locks and a neck gaiter, still covering a bit of his face even after all this time. old habits die hard.

the doors pry open right after the number appears on the screen and he walks down the hallway to the office, stopping on his tracks as he notices a feminine voice coming from inside the room. “i’m scared just as much as you, but is this really necessary?” she’s in there too? wasn’t the meeting only with the guy?

“yes, princess, it is necessary. do you want to make the front-page news as a corpse?” another voice can be heard responding, this time, male. must be the manager.  “in case you've forgotten, i’m also your friend, and i’m merely concerned about your safety. we cannot let that stunt from last week happen again.” stunt. he recalls part of the information on the file, depicting how she was almost assaulted by a weirdo that followed her on the street; however, the creepy prick was cleared from being the stalker and left the station on bail. great justice system. 

“we’ve already increased the security on your house, he was just hired to keep you safe on the outside.” he decides to stop eavesdropping and knocks sharply on the door. “must be him.” the man says, and he listens as footsteps approach the entryway.

“well, hello there. please, come in,” he steps aside, allowing Simon to enter the room. the office is fairly average, leather couch on one corner, portraits on the wall of what he assumes are the man’s clients, but all of the attention goes to the large windows showing a perfect view of the city. “so, i’m Daniel, the great manager as you may know," he smugly speaks, "and of course you already know her.” he gestures to the woman on the armchair.

the woman from the picture. the woman from the late night movie he was absentmindedly watching on a late night. you. you look the same as he'd seen before, but somehow entirely different. the warm sunlight coming through the glass shines on your skin when you stand on your feet, golden flecks twinkling in your irises as you offer him your name and extend a hand to greet him, sweetly mouthing “and you are?”

he shakes your hand with a firm grasp, stirring away the sudden void in his brain and swallowing the lump on his throat that hindered his words. “Ghost.” easy detachment. his gruff voice reverberates in the space as he repeats the orders in his head, the sense of doubt starting to cloud his judgement. keep to yourself. maybe the job won’t be as bad as he thought.

been a bit obsessed with this idea so i decided to write it and see how it goes.

[morningstar-chronicles]

extra shit i always script but forget to actually write down:

for personal reasons, peanuts and by extension all peanut products do not exist. peanut butter is replaced with soynut or sunflower seed butter.

i am not allergic to pineapples/allergies don't exist.

obesity doesn't happen. like, medically you can't be obese. bodies just don't retain unhealthy amounts of fat for a given body- any excess is just passed through the digestive tract in a harmless manner.

all of my various illnesses are completely manageable, if not completely curable. (why don't i script this out?)

my iq is 199 and i have a photographic memory.

i have indefinite stamina and i can sprint indefinitely without ever getting tired or out of breath.

i can alter the trajectory of time, space, physics, and reality on command without needing to script. everything just automatically bends to my will when i command it to.

vegetables actually taste good. that's CR life's biggest disappointment frfr.

chinese food is integrated into western culture in an appropriate manner GIVE ME MY FUCKING PEA PLANTS YOU STUPID CANADIAN GROCERY STORES-

haha anyway...

i don't!!! have IBS!!! meat!! does not!!! make!! me sick!!!

all deadlines (work-related or school-related) can get pushed back for you if you get sick.

oversharing is normal. fuck you i don't know what you're talking about.

[fatehbaz]

In 1833, Parliament finally abolished slavery in the British Caribbean, and the taxpayer payout of £20 million in “compensation” [paid by the government to slave owners] built the material, geophysical (railways, mines, factories), and imperial infrastructures of Britain [...]. Slavery and industrialization were tied by the various afterlives of slavery in the form of indentured and carceral labor that continued to enrich new emergent industrial powers [...]. Enslaved “free” African Americans predominately mined coal in the corporate use of black power or the new “industrial slavery,” [...]. The labor of the coffee - the carceral penance of the rock pile, “breaking rocks out here and keeping on the chain gang” (Nina Simone, Work Song, 1966), laying iron on the railroads - is the carceral future mobilized at plantation’s end (or the “nonevent” of emancipation). [...] [T]he racial circumscription of slavery predates and prepares the material ground for Europe and the Americas in terms of both nation and empire building - and continues to sustain it.

Text by: Kathryn Yusoff. "White Utopia/Black Inferno: Life on a Geologic Spike". e-flux Journal Issue #97. February 2019.

---

When the Haitian Revolution erupted [...], slaveholding regimes around the world grew alarmed. In response to a series of slave rebellions in its own sugar colonies, especially in Jamaica, the British Empire formally abolished slavery in the 1830s. [...] Importing indentured labor from Asia emerged as a potential way to maintain the British Empire’s sugar plantation system. In 1838 John Gladstone, father of future prime minister William E. Gladstone, arranged for the shipment of 396 South Asian workers, bound to five years of indentured labor, to his sugar estates in British Guiana. The experiment [...] inaugurated [...] "a new system of [...] [indentured servitude]," which would endure for nearly a century. [...] Desperate to regain power and authority after the war [and abolition of chattel slavery in the US], Louisiana’s wealthiest planters studied and learned from their Caribbean counterparts. [...] Thousands of Chinese workers landed in Louisiana between 1866 and 1870, recruited from the Caribbean, China and California. [...] When Congress debated excluding the Chinese from the United States in 1882, Rep. Horace F. Page of California argued that the United States could not allow the entry of “millions of cooly slaves and serfs.”

Text by: Moon-Ho Jung. "Making sugar, making 'coolies': Chinese laborers toiled alongside Black workers on 19th-century Louisiana plantations". The Conversation. 13 January 2022.

---

The durability and extensibility of plantations [...] have been tracked most especially in the contemporary United States’ prison archipelago and segregated urban areas [...], [including] “skewed life chances, limited access to health [...], premature death, incarceration [...]”. [...] [In labor arrangements there exists] a moral tie that indefinitely indebts the laborers to their master, [...] the main mechanisms reproducing the plantation system long after the abolition of slavery [...]. [G]enealogies of labor management […] have been traced […] linking different features of plantations to later economic enterprises, such as factories […] or diamond mines […] [,] chartered companies, free ports, dependencies, trusteeships [...].

Text by: Irene Peano, Marta Macedo, and Colette Le Petitcorps. "Introduction: Viewing Plantations at the Intersection of Political Ecologies and Multiple Space-Times". Global Plantations in the Modern World: Sovereignties, Ecologies, Afterlives (edited by Petitcrops, Macedo, and Peano). Published 2023.

---

Louis-Napoleon, still serving in the capacity of president of the [French] republic, threw his weight behind […] the exile of criminals as well as political dissidents. “It seems possible to me,” he declared near the end of 1850, “to render the punishment of hard labor more efficient, more moralizing, less expensive […], by using it to advance French colonization.” [...] Slavery had just been abolished in the French Empire [...]. If slavery were at an end, then the crucial question facing the colony was that of finding an alternative source of labor. During the period of the early penal colony we see this search for new slaves, not only in French Guiana, but also throughout [other European] colonies built on the plantation model.

Text by: Peter Redfield. Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana. 2000.

---

To control the desperate and the jobless, the authorities passed harsh new laws, a legislative program designed to quell disorder and ensure a pliant workforce for the factories. The Riot Act banned public disorder; the Combination Act made trade unions illegal; the Workhouse Act forced the poor to work; the Vagrancy Act turned joblessness into a crime. Eventually, over 220 offences could attract capital punishment - or, indeed, transportation. […] [C]onvict transportation - a system in which prisoners toiled without pay under military discipline - replicated many of the worst cruelties of slavery. […] Middle-class anti-slavery activists expressed little sympathy for Britain’s ragged and desperate, holding […] [them] responsible for their own misery. The men and women of London’s slums weren’t slaves. They were free individuals - and if they chose criminality, […] they brought their punishment on themselves. That was how Phillip [commander of the British First Fleet settlement in Australia] could decry chattel slavery while simultaneously relying on unfree labour from convicts. The experience of John Moseley, one of the eleven people of colour on the First Fleet, illustrates how, in the Australian settlement, a rhetoric of liberty accompanied a new kind of bondage. [Moseley was Black and had been a slave at a plantation in America before escaping to Britain, where he was charged with a crime and shipped to do convict labor in Australia.] […] The eventual commutation of a capital sentence to transportation meant that armed guards marched a black ex-slave, chained once more by the neck and ankles, to the Scarborough, on which he sailed to New South Wales. […] For John Moseley, the “free land” of New South Wales brought only a replication of that captivity he’d endured in Virginia. His experience was not unique. […] [T]hroughout the settlement, the old strode in, disguised as the new. [...] In the context of that widespread enthusiasm [in Australia] for the [American] South (the welcome extended to the Confederate ship Shenandoah in Melbourne in 1865 led one of its officers to conclude “the heart of colonial Britain was in our cause”), Queenslanders dreamed of building a “second Louisiana”. [...] The men did not merely adopt a lifestyle associated with New World slavery. They also relied on its techniques and its personnel. [...] Hope, for instance, acquired his sugar plants from the old slaver Thomas Scott. He hired supervisors from Jamaica and Barbados, looking for those with experience driving plantation slaves. [...] The Royal Navy’s Commander George Palmer described Lewin’s vessels as “fitted up precisely like an African slaver [...]".

Text by: Jeff Sparrow. “Friday essay: a slave state - how blackbirding in colonial Australia created a legacy of racism.” The Conversation. 4 August 2022.

[lonestarflight]

Space Station Concepts: Space Operations Center

"The SOC is a self-contained orbital facility built up of several Shuttle-launched modules. With resupply, on-orbit refurbish- ment and orbit maintenance, it is capable of continuous operation for an indefinite period. In the nominal operational mode, the SOC is manned continuously, but unmanned operation is possible.

The present mission management and control process is characterized by a people-intensive ground monitoring and control operation involving large supporting ground information and control facilities and a highly- integrated ground-flight crew operation. In order to reduce dependence on Earth monitoring and control, the SOC would have to provide for increased systems monitoring; fault isolation and failure analysis, and the ability to store and call up extensive sets of data to support the onboard control of the vehicle; and the onboard capability for daily mission and other activity planning."

"Like most other space station studies from the mid/late 1970s its primary mission was the assembly and servicing of large spacecraft in Earth orbit -- not science. NASA/JSC signed a contract with Boeing in 1980 to further develop the design. Like most NASA space station plans, SOC would be assembled in orbit from modules launched on the Space Shuttle. The crew's tour of duty would have been 90 days. NASA originally estimated the total cost to be $2.7 billion, but the estimated cost had increased to $4.7 billion by 1981. SOC would have been operational by 1990.

NASA's Johnson Spaceflight Center extended the Boeing contract in February 1982 to study a cheaper, modular, evolutionary approach to assembling the Space Operations Center. An initial power module would consist of solar arrays and radiators. The next launches would have delivered a space tug 'garage', two pressurized crew modules and a logistics module. The completed Space Operations Center also would have contained a satellite servicing and assembly facility and several laboratory modules. Even with this revised approach, however, the cost of the SOC program had grown to $9 billion. Another problem was Space Operations Center's primary mission: spacecraft assembly and servicing. The likely users (commercial satellite operators and telecommunications companies) were not really interested in the kind of large geostationary space platforms proposed by NASA. By 1983, the only enthusiastic users for NASA's space station plans were scientists working in the fields of microgravity research and life sciences. Their needs would dictate future space station design although NASA's 1984 station plans did incorporate a SOC-type spacecraft servicing facility as well."

Article by Marcus Lindroos, from astronautix.com: link

NASA ID: link, S79-10137

Boeing photo no. R-1859, link, link

[marigold-hills]

day 10: making love | @wolfstarkinktober2024 | 3993 words

MINORS DNI - NSFW - EXPLICIT

(also: crying, spit as lube, touch-starved Sirius)

Also on AO3 here

****

The signal takes twelve years to reach Earth.

There are many colonies now. Some stay in close touch, sharing news, sharing commercial routes. They’re an extension of the life already thriving on the home planet; separated by distance but keeping trade and communication alive.

Not Proxima Centauri b.

Remus remembers reading about it when the colony was established. When Black Industries had revealed themselves to be little more than a cult and left Earth behind to start a new, pure human race.

There was nothing from them. Until now.

The colony has collapsed. Send help, the voice said, then twenty two seconds of static silence. Then: please. 

Chances are there is nobody there anymore. That’s what Head Command cited, when they ruled out the possibility of sending search and rescue. The message was sent twelve years ago, the admiral said, whoever sent it, they’re dead by now. 

But those twenty two seconds played on repeat in Remus’ head. He woke up hearing them, fell asleep replaying them. Then, one morning, the final word, the please, appeared in his dream, and he knew he had to do something.

He’s had some favours he’d scrounged up over the years. Things he never thought to cash in, because what for? He didn’t mind covering the odd shift or hiding the odd miscalculation that a higher-up missed. Sure, there was the time when Admiral Dumbledore came to him to fly someone out of the Sol system under the radar. Sure, Moody once did ask him for help derailing legislation through less than stellar means.

As it turned out, he’s had quite a few people he could press on, lean on, to make it happen. Nobody understood why he cared so much. He didn’t understand either.

But he was given a ship, and indefinite time off work (a sabbatical, they called it - like pilots ever had those). He went alone because that was the deal. Nobody is to know. This is a waste of resources and of taxpayer money.

Two weeks, it takes him to reach the exoplanet.

(Nothing, in comparison to twelve years.)

He doesn’t mind the solitude. Just him and his little ship, and all the stars in the sky. It’s a newer model, easier for a crew of one to manage than the older ones. The computer working the systems keeps getting smarter. Soon, Remus thinks, his job will be obsolete.

Proxima Centauri b is pretty from orbit. Vast oceans, swaths of green, sun-bathed clouds hiding it from view in the most picturesque way. Remus watches as the line of day-night moves across the surface of the planet, so, so slowly. He’s stalling - he’s here and now he’s stalling, because this is it. What if it was for nothing? What if the voice had been extinguished in all the years that passed?

He’s not to land unless he makes contact: a waste of fuel on an already wasteful journey. It’s a clear command and already he knows he’s going to break it, because he’s not come this far just to be waylaid by the colony’s malfunctioning communicator, or the owner of the voice not seeing his message. Because, if he’s there, why would he check it? After all those years? 

Still: there is flagrant disregard of orders, and there is covering one’s tracks, so Remus sends out the message.

Survivors of the Proxima Centauri b colony, come in. 

The little black text on the little green screen flickers with its own electrical life. 

No response comes and Remus tells himself you knew this would happen, it doesn’t mean anything. He sends the message again, and then again after a couple of hours. He has enough fuel to stay in orbit for a week and still get back to Earth with a safe amount spare.

He’s planned it like this: three messages, equal times apart, to show he tried it that way first. Then, short circuit the communicator - notoriously unreliable on the class of ship he’d been provided. Nobody can blame him for not trying. Nobody can blame him for finishing the mission in person.

What else was he to do, turn back?

He lands as near to the colony as the landscape allows. The compound is vast but the atmosphere is breathable. Remus has gotten used to the staleness of the recycled air he’s been in for a fortnight and this freshness is so welcome it makes him a little bit dizzy.

From the first look, it’s clear that the colony was abandoned - that something had happened. Remus’ footsteps echo against the white walls of the compound in an eerie quiet. He’s been to these places, these colonies, more times than he can count, but never once had he seen it empty.

It’s only the steady humming of power, running through the cables built into the floor, that gives him hope.

He comes across a doorway to an Aeroponics bay and this - this can’t be something that had cultivated itself. There must be someone here.

The plants have grown tall, their exposed roots well maintained - the air is moist, warm and hazy and Remus doesn’t think he sees an automatic water deployment system. Somebody must have just sprayed them. He touches the leaves of potato plants, gathering the moisture with his fingers because it’s a dual thing of life here - a sign and a gift.

There’s corn, and what he thinks is spinach, and strawberries. He shouldn’t be surprised - this was a large scale colony, with families and children. Of course they’d have things just for pleasure, even if it’s not the best use of the space.

The first time Remus sees him, it’s just a glimpse of a person walking through greenery. An afterimage of dark hair, of leisurely steps, of a strong, straight posture.

And then the man takes a few steps into the main aisle and turns around, and there he is.

It’s clear he’s been living by himself for too long. His hair hangs past his shoulders, unkempt but clean, a mess of black waves. There is a thinness to his frame, a suggestion of jutting elbows and sharp hipbones, clothes hanging on him like they were used to a larger body. Facial hair accentuating the edges of his cheeks, the set of his eyes.

Even like this, clearly malnourished, clearly not caring for his appearance, he’s beautiful.

They stand apart - two meters, maybe three. Remus still in his flight suit, the man in something soft and worn and comfortable. There’s the buzzing of electricity and the humming of the air purification unit and no other sounds, none at all.

Remus knows it’s him. He knows his silence as others would know his voice

And then: “You came,” and the voice, too, is familiar.

“I did.”

The man takes step after halted step, like walking on unfamiliar ground. He comes closer but not close. Remus understands.

“How long has it been?”

“Twelve years.”

An interface on one of the plant unit beeps and the man turns to it. “Huh,” he huffs out, a small sound almost like no sound at all.

He fiddles with the positioning of roots and presses buttons that make the beeping stop, then picks up an atomiser and sprays a fine mist over the plant. He has lovely hands, even if the fingers look a bit bony and the nails have been bitten down.

“What’s your name?” Remus asks because he’s wanted to know since the first time he heard the recording.

“Sirius,” the man speaks to the plant.

And Remus is a pilot. He knows the stars. He’s flown amongst them, used them as guides. He knows which one is the brightest in the winter sky and how to orient by it.

“Suits you.”

Sirius turns to him again, surprise written clear across his face. “You’re still here,” he says, then pauses. It’s the same pause Remus knows. “You didn’t go away.”

“No, I didn’t. I won’t.”

“No?”

“Not without you.”

More plants get sprayed, more roots adjusted. Sirius checks things on the interface displays along the aisle he stands in.

There is no need for him to maintain them anymore. Back on the ship Remus has enough food to last them both a month. He won’t tell Sirius that - he watches him care for the plants as if by muscle memory. They must be what kept him fed all the years he’s been alone.

He doesn’t move. Everything in the Aeroponics bay feels fragile and breakable, the air soft with mistwater, the silence held up by humming electricity. “Will you come with me?”

“Not today,” he walks out of the Aeroponics bay, doesn’t look back.

***

Proxima Centauri b is situated in a binary star system. The days are almost never ending, and the nights, when they happen, are so black that navigation becomes impossible.

The dual suns are larger than Remus has ever seen from any planet surface, the size of the Earth’s moon when it hangs full low over the horizon. They’re both red Dwarfs, giving out little heat. The sky is painted a dark maroon and the shadows are strange, multi-positioned. Everything looks one-dimensional. Flat, like a photograph. Rendered in tones of reds and greys, and deep, rich blacks.

Walking into the compound is like waking from a surrealist dream.

Sirius is in the Aeroponics bay again, tending to his plants. He doesn’t startle when he sees Remus.

“You came back,” he says after a long stretch of silence. He maintains eye contact this time, waits for the answer. 

“I said I wouldn’t leave.”

“There is a difference between not leaving and coming back.”

Remus wonders where the bodies of everyone who didn’t leave but didn’t come back are. Every other member of the colony of dozens. Did Sirius bury them, dug up the cold, hard ground? Is there a cemetery outside in the infertile red soil? Was it slow, gradual? Or did the colony collapse all at once, suddenly and quickly, until Sirius was all that was left?

“Come,” Sirius says, but doesn’t look if Remus follows.

There is a Mess Hall across from the corridor, with a small kitchen attached. Sirius gestures for Remus to sit. He does, choosing a chair closest to the kitchen and wonders if this is where Sirius would normally sit, or if he rotates his spot, or if Remus is the first to sit there in twelve years.

Sirius placed two bowls on the table, cream-of-potato soup and cornbread. “Eat,” he says, dipping the bread into the soup in lieu of a spoon.

“Thank you.”

Sirius drops the bread and looks at Remus and it’s clear that before he wasn’t, not really. Not at Remus, but through him, like he was an apparition or a hallucination or maybe not there at all. A trick of the light or a figure of mist.

The scrutiny verges on uncomfortable. Remus tries eating, tries to look natural - it would be so easy to spook Sirius here, one wrong move is one too many. Remus can’t afford to make a mistake, not when the eyes looking at him (into him) are so bright with life that simply wasn’t there before. He didn’t notice that Sirius was as flat as the horizon until he sparked up.

“This is very nice,” he says about the food.

And Sirius barks.

It’s a laugh, Remus supposes. An approximation of one. Sirius silences it and touches the hollow of his throat with unsure fingers. Remus wonders how long it’s been since he laughed.

“It tastes like shit,” he says. It’s the most animated he’s sounded since Remus found him. His fingers don’t move from over his trachea, as if he’s feeling the vibrations his voice creates there. “I ran out of salt years ago.” 

Everything they’re eating was grown by Sirius’ hands, then made into food by him too, and that annuls any complaints Remus could have had about the taste. He’s seen how SIrius is with his plants, delicate and caring, like they’re more than just something which provides him with nutrients. 

Did you speak to them? Remus wonders. Did they keep you company, the only other breathing things left here?

Once the food is gone, Sirius meanders away. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” Remus says to his retreating back. Whether Sirius heard it or not is unclear - his steps don’t falter, he doesn’t turn back.

Not today.

***

There is an artificial day-night cycle on Remus’ little ship. Lights simulate the natural progression of the Earth’s sun to keep his circadian rhythm from deteriorating while he’s off planet.

(He dreams of silence.)

In the morning, Sirius is outside of the compound. The angles and edges of his face look softened in the strange reddish shadows. He doesn’t say you came back, doesn’t say anything. The way he watches Remus is unlike he’s ever been watched before: shrewd intent, no hesitation. Each step he takes towards him is like that, too.

Remus doesn’t move. Waits for Sirius to reach him. (He thinks he’ll always wait for Sirius to reach him.)

“Who are you?” Sirius finally asks as they’re face-to-face, less than an arms’ length apart, close enough to touch.

“Lieutenant Remus Lupin,” he answers in the simplest way he knows how. They both know that’s not what the question meant.

“Why are you here?”

“You know why,” Remus tells him. It’s not you sent a call for help and it’s not it was my duty. 

Surely, Sirius feels it too - maybe felt it before Remus got here; when the message made it to Earth or when Remus was played it for the first time, or when he downloaded it onto his personal drive and snuck it out of the lab. These things don’t happen in a vacuum. Surely, Sirius too must have dreamt of this moment when the silence gets filled with words, and the next one when it will be filled with sound. Just the two of them, where before Sirius was alone, reminding the air what it feels like to resonate.

Sirius takes the last step forward and brings his hand up, fingers trembling as, haltingly, he places it over Remus’ heart.

“We don’t have to,” Remus tells him, “we can wait.”

“I did my waiting.”

Sirius moves his hand up, along the zip of the flight suit, until he reaches Remus’ throat: a mirror of how he touched his own, fingertips light against the skin.

Remus speaks just so Sirius can feel his voice as it’s created. “I’m sorry I took so long.”

Sirius is conservative with his words, with the humming sounds he chooses to respond with. Everything from him is a bit rough - a voice unused in too long a time. Some words he overpronounces. Forgotten how they feel on his tongue, Remus guesses.

The hand on his throat stretches out, fingers splayed until they span the width of it, then slip around and into his hair. Sirius watches as if he isn’t the one doing it. As if it’s something that just happened, that was always going to happen. Inevitable. Written into the atoms that make up the both of them, aeons ago when they were still stardust caught in nebulae, strewn across the cosmos. Cyclically, with each universe beginning and each one ending, coming back to this moment - to this first touch.

Delicately, because Sirius should always be touched delicately, Remus takes hold of his wrist. Sirius’ breath hitches, then stops. It's divinity to touch him. 

Remus makes it gentle. Makes it safe. If he’s the first in twelve years to place marks of fingerprints on Sirius’ body, then he’ll make himself into something worth it.

It’s a wonder how seamless everything is. As if it isn’t new. Remus knows Sirius is going to kiss him before he does. There is no change in his demeanour but there is a shift in the silence, something else stirred through the determination. 

And then Sirius does. And Remus finds his home on Proxima Centauri.

It’s odd, that he didn’t realise a part of him was missing until he found it, but it’s so clear now, with Sirius’ lips against his own. There was a hole inside of him and now, with each second he is allowed this, each second he’s given this, that hole is filled.

Sirius is slow about it. Patient. If nothing else he must have learnt patience, surviving like this. Remus keeps it like this: soft touches as their lips come apart and come together. Warm, where Sirius is warm, the only source of heat on the surface of this cold planet, the only source of life.

Sirius leads him toward the compound and it’s like stepping into the ocean - the water welcoming its long-forgotten counterpart.

They walk through the corridor, past the Mess, past the Aeroponics Bay. There are more spaces there - Engineering and Storage and rooms Remus pays no mind, too engrossed in the way Sirius has weaved their fingers together to pull him along.

The bedroom they enter is sparse. Utilitarian. Somewhere Sirius shouldn’t belong in and yet, through circumstance, does. Remus thinks of his home back on Earth. Comfortable bed strewn with blankets, an old wood fireplace he’s had converted into plasma. Thinks of Sirius in his kitchen or on his little balcony or in his bed.

Then Sirius reaches for the zip of his flight suit, and Remus thinks of nothing at all.

“Don’t touch me softly,” Sirius asks when Remus runs careful fingers up his arms. “Touch me like you’re here.”

So he does: tightens his hold, puts his hand into Sirius’ hair, down the sharp bones of his face, across the harshness of his beard. Sirius’ eyes flutter open and shut, once, twice - on the third they’re red-rimmed and wet.

“I’m here.”

They kiss again and it’s harder this time. Purposeful. Remus walks them forward until the backs of Sirius’ knees hit the bed and he collapses onto it, still held as he wants to be held.

There are tattoos down Sirius’ sternum. Remus discovers them with his mouth as he pushes the soft shirt up and off and out of the way.

This is the first one: a soft, quiet whimper, laced with the tears that finally spill. It sounds both like pleasure and like pain. Remus coaxes more of them out of Sirius’ throat as he mouths across it. Feels the trembling under his skin as his body remembers how to make these sounds. Feels the skin heat as it remembers why. 

“I found you,” he says into Sirius’ ribs. “I knew you’d be here.”

Sirius doesn’t reciprocate. He lays stretched out on the bed; hands twisted into the pillow, one a fist he bites into. “Don’t hide,” Remus tells him, “let me hear you.”

“I don’t know how.”

“It’s alright. We'll find it.”

He licks down Sirius’ hipbone and the sound comes again. Louder, needier. More like a moan. He does it again, and again. Encore. One more time. For me, once more. Then: harder and Remus obliges, bites to bruise.

There is no teasing. There are hands in hair, pulling, and mouths tasting and then please Sirius says - please, the word that brought them together. 

Remus doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to resist giving in when Sirius asks like that. He pulls one of Sirius’ legs up, wraps it around himself to spread him open. Licks his own fingers until they’re soaked. Kisses Sirius through the first touches, apologetic. Forgive me for the pain. Sirius grabs at his shoulders, nails digging into the skin. He’s so impossibly tight, so wonderfully warm, and Remus knows when it turns from hurt and discomfort into something better. Sirius’ face doesn’t relax, but contorts into pleasure.

“I’ve forgotten,” he says in halted breaths.

Remus fucks him with two fingers, slow but hard. Kisses each moan straight from his mouth. Sirius clings onto him through it. “Please, Remus, more,” he uses the name for the first time. 

(Better than silence, the sound of the name ripped out of him mid-moan.)

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Remus doubles his efforts to make just his fingers good enough. They have nothing to help with the stretch.

“It won’t hurt,” Sirius uses the leg thrown over Remus’ hip to bring him closer. “Let me feel you. Let me have you.”

“You have me,” Remus tells him and means it in so many ways, “whatever happens here now, you have me.”

Something softens in Sirius’ expression. He pulls Remus in, fingers splayed across his jaw. Kisses him so slowly. The contrast - fingers hard where they bring Sirius pleasure but his lips soft and yielding and pliant - the contrast is almost enough to send Remus towards his own edge.

He’s not prepared when Sirius surges up and reverses them. Pushes Remus to the bed and straddles him. Rids them both of what clothes they have left on. Then, hand on Remus’ cock, his face turns mischievous and that? That is the look that suits him better than any other. “You’re so hard for me already,” he purrs. “I want to feel you everywhere, inside of me and outside.”

And who is Remus to deny him? No one. He’s no one, but a vessel for the things he feels for the man above him. Before he was empty and now, here, he’s overflowing.

I think I love you, he wants to say as Sirius lathers him up in spit. I think the stars have sent me you. 

The moment you laid eyes on me was the moment my existence began.

Sirius is careful about it, but inch by torturous inch he lowers himself down Remus’ cock. He’s warmer than the double suns keeping the planet alive. Remus could stay like this, surrounded by him, until the permaday ends.

And then Sirius sits. Arse flush to Remus’ hips. Throws his head back in pleasure, mouth agape and eyes closed as he feels it out.

“That’s it,” Remus tells him, voice tight and hands splayed on Sirius’ hips, grounding them both. “Take your time.”

Sirius, a contrarian, starts to move almost immediately. Minute rocks back and forth. Remus feels it as static electricity in his veins. He brings Sirius down, until he lays down on Remus and their lips can meet again, and Remus can bend his knees and drive himself further into Sirius, use the grip on his hips to bring him down closer on each thrust.

It’s maddening. Unlike anything. That he found it here could be proof of a higher power, had Remus not flown across the known galaxy. He always knew there was no space for such things in the sky. (He didn’t realise they were hiding here.)

Their movements grow erratic. The tears in Sirius’ eyes return and Remus wipes them off with his thumb. This gesture he allows himself to be soft, and Sirius turns his face into the palm of Remus’ hand, welcoming it.

“I’m so close,” Sirius says. The way he clenches over Remus a giveaway. Maybe a reward, but Remus doesn’t think he’s done anything in this life worthy of such a thing. 

Remus takes Sirius’ cock in hand, keeps his thrusts deep and steady. “That’s it,” he says, “come for me.”

Sirius moans into Remus’ mouth, loud and unashamed and this, this right there, is what makes Remus cum.

There is an eternity contained in the time they cling to one another. Remus runs his fingers up and down the lovely curve of Sirius’ back. All the ways left to discover you, he thinks, tracing vertebrae. All the time we’ll have, now we found each other.

***

In the two weeks they take to get back to Earth, silence becomes a thing of the past. Remus reminds Sirius what it’s like to be touched, and in return Sirius rewrites each sensation for him like it’s brand new. 

“Stay with me,” Remus asks before they land, and:

“Always,” Sirius replies. 

[numou]

‼️PLEASE HELP ME AND MY PARENTS SURVIVE‼️

original post about water bill, read for details on water bill.

my posts keep dying so here’s a new one. please don’t ignore me, and at least reblog it

‼️‼️my mother is dying. she has Alzheimer’s. my father is diabetic, and without his medicine HE WILL DIE!‼️‼️

we we must pay 1,204$ to our utilities provider or OUR WATER IS SHUT OFF INDEFINITELY. our payment extension is up.

kind people & my income have given us $400. this isn’t enough

this is my parents bank account. they have 91$ and THAT’S IT!!!

WE CANT AFFORD OUR BILLS INCLUDING OUR MORTGAGE!!!!

🚨WE WILL BE KICKED OUT AND THEY WILL SELL OUR HOUSE. 🚨

i don’t want to watch my parents die while homeless.

help us, it is literally life or death.

paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/tathomp9

venmo: https://account.venmo.com/u/tathlyn

cashapp: https://cash.app/$tathomp7

[ghostieblr]

My thoughts about Agatha All Along ep 8 & 9 below the cut, because omg what a finale!!!

Nicholas Scratch, because he was made from scratch. Not just from the magic of life, but from literal magic. Agatha's magic, the one that made her own coven, her own mother hate her to the point of burning her alive. Y'know, the most painful way to die? Especially as a Witch?

Nicholas Scratch was born by Agatha's own magic, the one she takes (has to take to survive) from other witches, and then when she's giving birth to him, his other mother, THE Green Witch, the literal embodiment of life and decay, the entity that ensures the balance of the literal magic of life, who also happens to be Agatha's lover, comes towards her and that is enough to know he is destined to die. Agatha had the power to create him, but not enough to help him survive. And now Rio is there to take him, except she loves Agatha, and by extension this little boy that is almost as good as her own child, and she heeds the painful, desperate pleading of Agatha, and gives them an indefinite amount of time.

And Agatha uses this time to survive. They lure and kill. Nicky is the bait and Agatha is the Coven Killer, and he doesn't know any better, and she doesn't have a choice.

She kills for her son to survive, and the one day he doesn't become the bait, the one day he doesn't go as per the plan, and Agatha doesn't get her powers — he doesn't survive.

Rio comes to take him in the dead of the night because she couldn't face Agatha, she wouldn't; she already knows Agatha hates her, now, so why see the way her love would turn into hatred? How her affection would turn sour with resentment over something that is Rio's sole purpose, to maintain the balance of the universe? So Rio comes in the dead of night, and Nicky knows what this is. He complies with her and kisses Agatha twice on her left cheek and then takes Rio's hand as she leads the way.

He was made with love and power, and Rio's love for Agatha got him time, and Agatha's thirst for power kept him alive. But not forever. Agatha's power lessened, and despite Rio's affection Agatha lost him.

And now? All she had was power. And she can't die — she cannot face her son. Even at the end of the show, she cannot, and it's been centuries. This is why she is a coward; why Rio calls her so.

So Agatha continues to lure, trap, and kill. She becomes the villain her first coven told her she was.

This was so beautifully done. This show is amazing, and I've always loved character driven shows where the plot revolves around their motivations and backstories, and Agatha All Along is a show that has done itself and its characters a great goddamn justice.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA if I ask my roommate to move out?

I live in a 4 bedroom house with 3 other roommates. B, C and D for this scenario. B & I are on the lease, C & D are not on the lease. C is my long time friend and disabled in a way that makes staying employed a struggle, so often I shoulder their financial burden for the household - an agreement from when we moved in because it was to keep them from being otherwise homeless. They do the amount of housework their disability allows, which is a reasonable amount. B is full time employed and primary breadwinner for the household (making up 75% of household income) and does minimal housework aside from putting their dishes in the dishwasher when they're done eating, per agreement that in exchange for paying 75% of household expenses and working full time they would do the least domestic work in the household. I'm part time employed, making up 25% of household income, disabled and do the majority of the housework.

D moved in two years ago under the agreement that they would help with housework because they're unemployed while they job hunt and then we would add them to the lease. D is a really good friend and has quite literally saved my life once but they haven't done any housework in the past two years and have yet to find a job as well as being actively detrimental to C & I doing housework (hoarding all dishes in the household in their room regularly despite repeated offers and requests to work out a system) and failing to communicate with us about any struggles they might be facing regarding housework or job hunting so we could try to help with it or at least know what was going on.

Recently D moved their partner who none of us knew into the house without asking or telling any of us (quite literally imagine just coming home and discovering a new person living in your spare room) and told their partner we would be able to house them indefinitely since they can pay a minimal amount of rent. Their partner isn't a terrible roommate but absolutely has to go because none of us get along with them or agreed to them being there and all of us have extensive trauma from a previous abusive roommate that is covered under this, turning this person into a walking PTSD trigger for us even though they didn't do anything wrong. D's partner has found alternative housing and has a move out date but D didn't help at all with it despite claiming they felt bad about causing this distress (and we do all genuinely believe they didn't mean to hurt anyone, but feel an apology without action - for example, promising to immediately start helping their partner find alternative housing, something that has fallen only on the shoulders of their partner and the rest of us - is meaningless in this situation). But we're also all on the same page that after two years of failing to follow through on promises or communicate with us about anything, the breach of trust and lack of any attempt to rectify it is a last straw for us and none of us feel comfortable continuing to live with D.

I know D struggles with their mental and physical health and they don't have anywhere else to go so we're in agreement that we shouldn't give them a hard move out date but we want to ask them to start searching for somewhere else to live, some other friends to stay with, maybe suggest they move to the city where there are more job opportunities and rent is lower. But I still feel guilty about us prioritizing our boundaries and comfort in a household over taking care of them and I'm sure that it'll unfortunately be the end of our friendship even though I wish there was a way we could navigate this and stay friends because I'm up to continuing to support D in the other ways I support them.

The three of us moving elsewhere isn't an option for a number of reasons (just renewed our lease, B's job is in this area and is very stable/pays very well and because of the high rent and stringent rental requirements in our area it would cost more than I make in a year for us to move to a significantly worse rental with significantly higher rent we can't afford - we currently pay half market rate for a similar rental. I'll admit there's also an element of it's my house, I lived here long before anyone else currently living here and I want to feel safe for the remainder of my residency here.)

Would we be the assholes if we told D we don't want to live with them anymore and asked them to start looking for other housing?

What are these acronyms?

[littlelesbinonny]

The Devil's Den

Chapter 46: In Which The Precipice of Wait Is Shifting

You can read this also on Ao3 at: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46831621/chapters/142313560

How were you really supposed to know what you were feeling.

You were standing alone in your apartment that you'd lived in for almost 7 years now, and it couldn't have felt more foreign to you.

All of this was yours. You knew it all, front to back. But it didn't feel like home. The realness of that settled in your bones now; that you had made this your home, but it hadn't truly been.

You knew home now as being near and with Alcina. And somehow, reluctantly inside you, maybe even the underground. 

There was a tugging at both sides of you - the human world was all you'd ever known - but now you couldn't be more different - and what you once thought was the inability to fit in now paled in horrific comparison.

Did you even belong in the human world anymore? But did you really belong below?

Nothing felt real right now. You helped kill someone. A rather nasty person at that, but that wasn't the point, now was it. You, are not human. You were now charading as a character that no longer existed in a world drastically altered, even if just to yourself.

Surreal was a limiting sensation at best.

As you looked around at everything, the silence of the night held you while your mind went searching for answers and solutions for questions and problems that hadn't quite fully been presented yet.

There was so much you had to grapple with at the tips of your fingers but you didn't know how. Not a clue. Decisions were endless. Outcomes were uncertain, extensive. At least Alcina would buy you some time to try and figure it out. 

There was heavy doubt in your mind you could just return to your job and play pretend everything was fine and nothing had changed. There was no way you could sit in the dull, hum-drum, scheduled bullshit of office life any longer without the temptation to run away from it and know you could. Indefinitely. There was quite literally nothing to stop you at this point; you had no argument to make you stay unless you just simply wanted to.

And you didn't.

But were you ready to walk away?

Did that mean what normalcy of human life you were used to would come to a complete end? Would you have to give up the sunlight and walks in the park? Malka, Louis, your crows? Did you have to lead a life so much like vampires and lycans that you could hardly exist in the human world anymore?

And what about time?

Time would march on for you, yet it would stay still for Alcina. Were you prepared to make that kind of decision?

Your phone began to ring and it startled you, thankfully. But what the hell, it was 3 AM.

Malka's name popped up on your screen and you half cackled. That woman was nothing if not full of surprises.

"Hi Malka." You answered with a smile.

"Ketzeleeeeehhhh!" The older woman drawled with a gentle scolding, "your name isn't Lucy but you gotta lotta explaining to do!"

You started to chuckle and found a comfortable spot on the couch. This would be an hour long conversation, if not more.

~

Alcina sat hunched on the couch in her living room, forearms perched on her knees as she stared into the large black, crimson, emerald and gold throw rug at her feet. The ornate patterns and bold appearance was no real distraction from what she'd seen, but it was helping to scrub it away as the moments passed.

The experimentation room of which Dmitri spoke was located a short distance inside a much larger and expansive tunnel, which was dug who knows how many years ago, that was almost a straight shot to Miranda's lair in Connecticut to the cavern they'd discovered nestled next to them. While that gave them easy access to her manor with less time wasted on travel, it pissed Alcina off greatly.

This bitch was coming and going at her leisure right beside them the whole time without ever being found out. It had Alcina questioning if she had truly done this all alone or if there were other Elders or coven leaders involved. It made no sense all this construction had gone on fully unnoticed for over 20 years. Yet, she had to remind herself; everyone was conditioned to never question their maker under any circumstance, so in reality, it would have been just that easy for her to pull this off. Clearly Miranda had Salvatore's help during part of this, for how long Alcina still didn't know, but his time on trial would come as well and more would be divulged as time went on and Miranda's secrets were pilfered through.

Inside this dingy room, along every wall discarded like trash, were at least a hundred dead bodies. Mutants that had obviously failed their experiments. Some looked vastly different than the others; skin tones ranged from dark grey to white and damn near iridescent; possibly from a short decomposition, or simply how the parasites Miranda had used reacted with each subject at whatever stage of her testing. 

Since these mutants were drastically different than what one could call regular vampires, their stage of death was uncalculatable just by looking at them. Like the one Alcina had killed and they had observed many months ago, these bodies had hollowed and simply remained as is; dried, sunken skin on a frame of bones.

Though, this was just half of the morbid appearance of the room.

From the blood spatters and very apparent, gaping, slashed, and other injury pummeled bodies that lay tossed to the sidelines, the wide open space in the middle was stained with nothing but blood. The stone floor that should have matched the regular charcoal appearance was a glittering display of what looked like dried wine.

Without much else to go on, it seemed easy to assume that this experimentation room was where Miranda tested her mutants as to how well they withstood injuries sustained in conflict.

It was barbaric.

And it sent haunting memories of Alcina's attack many years ago by Mother Miranda to the forefront of her mind.

The woman was a brutal sadist on all counts. Completely insane.

There were no weapons to be found but that made sense to Alcina; why leave behind the real goods if this place were to have ever been discovered. She could only fathom what they would be uncovering in Miranda's manor if this is what remained here.

Alcina gazed at the myriad of lifeless hosts for a long pause in silence, then instructed Dmitri to find and prepare some kind of grave for them. They deserved better than what they received at the hands of Miranda and she would see to it they at least rested in a better place.

Dmitri agreed, then fell into a barrage of information about the troops he had at Mother Miranda's manor, the excavations taking place here and there, the gathering place he was having his people store all the findings, talk of the impending gathering between Clan leaders and everything else therein his extensive memory, drawled to a muted ramble until she excused herself from the scene. He had this in his very capable hands and she was starting to dread everything else coming down the pike. Quickly. 

And now she was brooding in her living room where it was quiet, sifting through everything, grain of sand by grain of sand. She felt like this wasn't even at the tip of the iceberg but she also hoped she was wrong. There was far more at hand than she desired and she was trying to pep-talk herself up to the challenge. The reassuring words of Donna would have to suffice for now; one thing at a time.

So many things. All the time in the world.

She wished someone would explain why this felt so suffocating.

Alcina slumped back into the plush couch and sighed out her frustrations and glanced at the clock. It was nearing dawn and she wondered how Donna and Angie's' excursions to formulate your story was panning out. She'd not heard a peep from her since their meeting in the courtyard. Only allowing herself a brief musing on it she rose and meandered into the kitchen, collected a glass, filled it with blood-wine, grabbed her pack of cigarettes on the counter, lit one, and headed to the turret.

It was amusing to her now as she stood in the tower peering down at her city, how one becomes accustomed to the sounds of the underground. While they did dwell in a vast underground cave, the sounds didn't seem to echo as much as she remembered upon her first introduction of the place. It had grown decently as well since her time here. Homes and dwellings had stretched far in every direction, filling up most of the empty spaces that once remained. Now as she surveyed the damage being repaired and busy souls filing in from the night from the caverns entrances, Alcina smiled weakly; oh how her duties became suddenly so much more impactful. Clan leaders would soon be all under one roof, her roof, and the nitty gritty of untangling this giant rats nest would be sticky and tiresome, no doubt. Though, instead of wanting to run from it as she would have in the past, she felt a renewed sense of eagerness. Perhaps it was the thought of you being by her side as this new way was paved; or perhaps knowing she no longer had the danger looming over her; or, at the very least, that you were safe from the very thing that dampened so much of her happiness and freedom. 

Either way, the thought of you kept the smile upon her tired visage growing warmer.

A rough half hour passed as she stood there in her thoughts until her daughters finally came strolling in through the manor gate, giggling and bantering, giving enthusiastic waves when they found her silhouette in the turret window. Alcina returned the gesture and meandered down to meet them.

They were in bountiful spirits as they regaled their mother with their tales of their night flaunting about the city. They, too, felt the changes in the air from the grand victory the underground had experienced and seemed more alive than ever. It gave Alcina great joy. It's all she'd ever wanted for her girls. Freedom.

Against her better judgement as she crawled into bed that morning, Alcina grabbed for the journal Dmitri had given her of Mother Miranda's. This was, of course, not light reading material before sleep and she was unsure she wanted to know what lie in the pages, in all honesty. But, as her curiosity would have it, she grabbed the worn leather bound cover and flopped it open, a page coming to view with her fine script. 

It read;

27th, April,

      Salvatore informs me Alcina has found a new pet. An offering that was unable to meet her end in the Feeding Grounds. I am as displeased as I am intrigued. Perhaps the time has come so soon -

"Oh fuck that." Alcina blurted, slamming the thing shut and tossing it to the bedside table.

Of all the pages she could have turned to, it had to be that one. She could only scoff as she nestled back down into her bed, finding a familiar scent still lingering in the satin that removed the negativity from her almost instantly. Not having you beside her, now that she'd experienced such a domesticity, gave her a heavy sigh. Being away from you seemed worse than ever before. But, dwelling on it wouldn't get her anywhere. She was exhausted, needed her sleep, and knew the awaiting evening held the beginning of the real work ahead of everyone, especially her.

You would be here with her soon enough, she told herself.

-

You and Malka had talked until the sun rose, then you promptly passed out on the couch.

It was around 10 AM when you finally stirred and peered hazy-eyed at the clock. Oddly, you felt rested for only a rough four hours of shut eye. Then an instant pang of anxiety hit you when you reached for your phone, but luckily there were no missed calls or texts from work or otherwise. You sighed. This was stupid. And then you started to laugh.

What the hell did you have to fear? Getting fired? Whoopty doo. You had a whole legion of vampires and lycans that were your new-found family, right? Or, at the very least the Matriarch who loved you and cared for you. You had options; you weren't stuck here anymore. Life could not have been more unreal. You smiled.

Finally staggering from the couch, you stretched and headed for the shower, but not before very persistent tapping at your balcony door caught your attention with a full smile now on your lips.

All six of your crows were there to greet you as you pulled open the door, the crisp winter air hitting you with a slap. 

"Hey!" You exclaimed, not a one of them hesitating to hop themselves into your room and perch wherever they pleased, "o...k..." you smirked, closing the door, "come on in, I guess. Make yourself at home?"

Telling them apart still wasn't easy, but you were sure Ebony, as that one was the largest, took residence on the back of your chair at your desk, flapping the winter chill off its wings while looking at you expectantly. Two were wandering over your bed, and the other three were strutting their way through your doorway into the hall.

"Uhm, well, let me see if I've got some food," you chuckled, following the three who had now strolled into the living room, checking everything out as they went.

The fridge was pretty barren and the mixed bowl of raspberries and blueberries you had were looking weepy, so you tossed those in the bin and kept searching. 

Flipping open the cupboard over the microwave you found a bottle of mixed peanuts, "score!" You hollered and pulled down a couple plates, spreading the nuts out, placing them on the table behind you, "c'mon guys, I've got goodies in here."

Sure enough, here they all came, hopping up on the ledge of the table and started eating, little coos and caws in your general direction clearly letting you know this was acceptable for now.

You shook your head, "alright, I gotta shower. No shitting in the house, please."

The smallest, you remembered naming Noir, cawed at you then promptly went back to eating.

Surely they could be left alone while you showered without getting into too much? Shrugging it off you went about your business.

When you got out, toweled up and still dripping a little, you made your way back down the hall and peered around the corner to check on them. The six of them had now taken over your couch. Preening and snoozing on the back like this was the most normal thing in the world.

You slow blinked and went back into the bathroom.

Ok. This is my life now. I am a Fae that has a murder of crows as companions. Or, familiars, or whatever the hell they wanted to call themselves.

Which made you all the more curious what else lied in your lineage, and yourself for that matter. You hoped you'd be able to sit down again with the blood arcane you'd found via Louis and get some real answers some day. Miranda's tirade lingered in your mind; you came from a mighty bloodline, at least she assumed, unable to live long enough to find out. You smirked as you wiped off the steam on your mirror with your towel. 

The future couldn't have been any cloudier than that mirror in front of you.

You sighed and finished getting ready.

It had started to snow as you, and your crows, ventured out into this chilly November afternoon. It didn't stick much, but the white was pretty as it dusted some treetops and ornate architecture hanging on the towering buildings. The flakes were small at first but began to get thicker and thicker as you made your way to Malka's, and by the time you'd gotten settled in, they were gorgeous puffy cotton balls tumbling down into the city as the two of you watched out her large windows.

Funnily enough, Malka had prepared a large batch of her village-wide-battle-causing butter croissants, which she generously gave the crows that were nestled down on her balcony under the tall umbrella she'd opened for them. Everyone seemed pretty content.

You sat next to Leo on the couch with your hot mug of tea cupped in your hands, trying to ignore the continuous glance of Malka who sat just to the other side of you.

"So, when are you going to bring your vampire to meet me?"

That question took her almost exactly fifteen minutes longer than you had anticipated.

You almost snorted into your drink but was able to get it down before you started to chuckle, "well, until I know what's going on down there with the clan leaders and whatever else, I'm really not sure."

"Ah, yes yes," she mused, nodding knowingly, "you are not nervous about it any longer?"

"Oh no, no I'm nervous as hell," you nodded, taking another sip, "but... I can't lie that I'm not intrigued more and more as to what goes on down there; who all these people are; what vampire hierarchy is like, and, ultimately... where I'll fit in... maybe. I don't know."

"Your Alcina is wanting you to move in with her, mm? Methinks by her side is where you fit?"

You eyed her with a smirk, "well... that's another topic all its own. We've got to get through a whole lot more first before I think that can even be... addressed, let alone decided on?"

Malka narrowed her eyes through her intuitive smile, "well my ketzeleh, until then, you must tell me more about your adventures underground. You didn't finish with everything that happened with Mother Miranda and I've been eating my nails off since this morning."

Chuckling after one more sip, you started to scritch the purring ball of fluff next to your leg and took a heavy sigh, "ahhhh yeah, where were we before I passed out on the phone?"

"The silo!"

~

While the evening was quick to sneak up on your time with Malka, she was gracious in understanding your need to leave to meet Alcina.

So off you went, birds in tow. 

The snow had disappeared and the city was a reflective scenescape; the dark pavement grabbed the city and car lights and held them captive in the murky puddles on the street and sidewalks. The crisp damp air mixed with the stark, refracting city giving you a smile at the seasons attire that would drape over the city for months. Winter was your least favorite, for its bitter harshness, but every once in a while you couldn't help but nod to its fierce uniqueness.

Streetlamps had begun to come to life as you hustled down your street and through the last crosswalk to your block, turning down the side path near the mini courtyard to head to the less common entry hall.

Until you caught the whiff of an undeniable perfume and your crows began to caw overhead.

You had intended to look over your shoulder to see which way it had come but Alcina collided into you with controlled force, holding you captive in her strong arms keeping you from tumbling over, and peppering your chilled face with her brilliant red-lipped kisses.

"Aha," she cackled lowly, rearranging you in her arms to look at you, "I much prefer to catch my prey in the wild, but draga mea, you are too easy," Alcina beamed, kissing you reverently as she swayed with you back and forth.

"Oh hell," you giggled, kissing her back, "I am but a wind-blown leaf and you are a mighty panther, what chance have I against you, huh?"

Alcina stroked the side of your face with her gloved finger and hummed, "a shapeshifting leaf, perhaps," she grinned once more, "and what fun adventure have you been on dragoste?"

"I was at Malka's," you replied watching the hint of narrowed eyes above you, "she needed to be filled in you know."

"Mmm, how exciting."

"She asked when she's going to meet you."

Finally giving into her desire to huff, Alcina arched her perfect eyebrow at you, "eventually."

You laughed out loud and pulled her closer, "one thing at a time, I know," you chuckled some more, "c'mon lets get inside I'm freezing."

Her smile retuned and she nodded, turning her calculating gaze to the complex while tilting her head, "you know I've never actually been in through the front of your building before."

You paused at her admission and slowly began to nod while you snickered. She'd only ever entered through your balcony door, as, well you know, a secretive vampire would do.

"No, no you have not," you smiled with a wilted laugh, grasping her hand a little tighter, "so come on then, it's time you had an official escorting to my door."

Alcina beamed and straightened her posture, offering her arm for you to take even though you were very much the lead.

Retracing your steps, you rounded back to the two sets of large glass doors, scanning your card through each reader that allowed you entrance to the simple lobby. Taking a right you lead your very tall, striking lady through the hallway towards the elevators, getting a good stare from the older woman who lived on the floor below you you'd met only a handful of times.

As the elevator dinged to the 17th floor, you stepped out into the very bland, terribly chosen grey painted walls, and waved your arm down the long hall, "my abode lies at the very end, m'lady," you cooed.

She nodded gracefully and played along, stepping in through your front door after you'd unlocked it and ushered her in.

"Hm," Alcina mused, "I still like the balcony, much faster, much more dramatic."

You shook your head through your smile as you took off your coat and plopped your keys on the table beside the coat rack, watching Alcina get comfortable as well.

"So, how is everything shaping up down there?" You inquired making your way back into her arms.

She sighed heavily, "it is only the beginning, and right now it's... messy. But, the good news is, Donna informed me early this evening that your alibi is solid, your place of employment has been contacted, and you..." she tapped your nose softly with her long finger, "are off all hooks for at least three weeks." She winked.

You retuned the sigh, but it was one of relief, "I really can't thank you and Donna enough. I've been dreading hearing notification sounds go off on my phone all day," you snorted, "last thing I want to do or think about is work."

"Well draga mea, free your mind - it is done."

The two of you took the pause to really look at one another, letting the silence settle you into a calm normalcy once more. Alcina planted her hands firmly on your waist as she leaned down to kiss you again, lingering in your closeness as all that lay outside wafted into space. In here, tucked away, you two could ignore everything else and it was so much of what she needed right now.

"Tell me, my love," she whispered against your lips, "you're alright?"

You smiled and nodded, eyes still closed as your forehead pressed to hers, "I am, especially now that you're here." Pulling back to reposition your arms over her shoulders, you noticed she looked a little frayed, "want to fill me in? I'm actually pretty curious myself."

"I do love that about you," she pursed her lips, grabbing you up in her arms and taking you to the couch, plopping down with you, "well... where to begin..."

Alcina then began in great detail about how Angie had redecorated the front of City Hall; the quickly advancing construction; Dmitri's discovery of Miranda's journals, logs, notes, and other deranged items that had been collected in her lair; the unfortunate experimentation room and deceased victims therein; fact that both her military and Karl's had been going nonstop since this all began against her orders to rest ruffling her feathers but overall understanding the necessity; the pending discussion of the trials for Ethan, Mia, and Salvatore; and finally the arrival of clan leaders. All of this taking place within the last day.

That was a lot. You had no idea how her fortitude for such responsibility was so impeccable.

"Wow babe, that's uhm... that's a lot."

Alcina agreed silently and stroked your leg, "and it's only going to get more chaotic."

You smirked, "Aaaand the clan leaders... how are they?"

"Mmm, unsure. I left before they could find me."

"Ditched out before they cornered you, huh?" You laughed.

"Corner me? What a thing to say," she smiled bearing her sharp teeth playfully, "there is no cornering me, I simply had much more pressing matters to attend to at the moment. They can wait."

The way her eyes sparkled at you had you melting in no time.

"So, as much as I don't want to ask... when do I need to be present for what's going to happen?"

Taking a pause to consider your question, Alcina sighed, "for my own selfish reasons I would love to have you with me now, but I realize this isn't an easy position for you. I believe that by the end of tomorrow all Clan Leaders will be present, which will lead to the Grand Council where the proceedings of what needs to be addressed will be finalized. I have little doubt your presence will be requested by all for that gathering."

You nodded slowly, "will I need to be there for the trials?"

"It is possible they may vote for it, yes. I won't lie to you draga mea," Alcina stated firmly, "these leaders are... jagged. Rough. I will do what I can to sway in your favor at all costs, though when it comes to matters as impervious as this, your role may be much larger than you might wish. But I promise you, you are not in danger, nor are you on trial. So don't take any guff, either."

Her wink lessened the blow to her previous comments but you were still a little unsettled by it. You were still getting used to the fact you were a Fae, let alone you were getting sucked into being a large part of the underworld clan of lycans and vampires. How was your life real again?

You sighed heavily and leaned over into your vampire, "so... after tomorrow night, that's when you want me?"

Alcina narrowed her eyes, "I want you all the time, but yes, that will suffice."

It was your turn to purse your lips, "you want me all the time huh?" You asked quietly, switching this conversation 120 degrees, inching closer to her, "like, all the time?" You questioned even softer, kissing her cheek bone lightly, trailing your lips down to her jaw, to under her pearl earring with a hot breath.

The shuddering desire that overtook Alcina surged gold through her iris's, and in the swiftest motion grabbed you, flung you under her on the couch, and hunkered down over you like the panther you'd compared her to earlier.

She placed her palm to your throat in a clutch that was firm and commanding, her nails digging just gently enough into the back of your neck that you shivered with wanting anticipation, and you darkened your eyes up at her. God, she was immobilizingly beautiful.

"Yes, draga mea," Alcina finally purred leaning down on you, her sharp teeth grazing your lip as her mouth mapped its way to your ear, "I want you all... the time."

Your eyes rolled to the back of your head and your legs went limp, "then you should have me," you pressed, egging her on, aching to feel her bite.

Alcina could not deny you anymore than she could deny herself.

With a wickedly deep, short chuckle, Alcina reached her free arm under your thigh, hooked it over her hip and sunk her teeth into your flesh and drank with vigor.

You moaned, loudly. White-knuckled you held to her shirt as she fed, sending you just as high as you hoped she was; feeling the throbbing draining sensation overtake you and throw you into a misty tingling pool of pure euphoria. 

Feeling the strength of your blood pour through her, Alcina lifted you from the couch with ease, helping you secure your weak arms and legs around her as she took you to your bedroom and laid you down, licking her teeth wounds as she wrapped herself up in you in the dark.

Being lost in the in-between of these sensations, you smiled as you felt yourself mold into your vampire, her strong arms encompassing you, her lips pressing earnest kisses to every inch of you, and happily submitting to the minutes passing.

"If I can sweeten the appeal of your stay in the underground," Alcina husked against your chest, "my bed has yet to witness the desire and passion I wish to give you under my roof of hospitality..." she grinned wickedly up at your hazy eyes, "so perhaps... just perhaps... you would wish to come and stay with me sooner, dragoste."

If you weren't as inebriated as you were from her bite just now, you would have begged her to take you now. But you knew her too well, and she would drag this on until you surrendered.

All you could do was chuckle breathlessly, "d-deal."

Alcina beamed.

[keepthedelta]

everybody read @topnotchquark's addition to my post because it's literally perfect.

f1 is a sport where the drivers so rarely have any agency in their exits. they chase the dream so hard for so long, even after they've been successful that almost none of them get to leave because they genuinely want to. for so many of them, chasing the dream of f1 glory ends up being a slow, brutal, painful, often humiliating slog in midfield or backmarker teams until they finally cannot take the losses anymore.

michael schumacher was the greatest of all time by a literally ridiculous margin when he first left f1, and he left it as a genuine competitor who fought to the end. when he came back for his second try, he got beaten by a teammate for the first time ever, and achieved a single podium in three years. he was eventually manoeuvred out by mercedes management who left him no way or time to get another seat if he wanted one, and discarded him for the next great talent, lewis hamilton.

sebastian vettel left a team that adored him and prioritised him to fulfil a childhood dream, and when ferrari decided that he wasn't worth it anymore, they prioritised his teammate and then fired him for a driver who had never even won a race. the highlight of his final years in f1 was a single podium, and winning grill the grid. i'm not sure that that particular trophy will be of great comfort to him.

fernando alonso left formula 1 after trying and failing to recapture the glory of victory so many times. even now, he is racing in a sport where he hasn't won a single race for more than a decade. now, as he faces retirement for a second time, he has to consider making it to the podium a great achievement, where once it would have been a sub-par weekend.

daniel ricciardo was once considered a genuine contender for a world championship, but he got beaten by a younger, stronger talent, made a series of career mistakes that ultimately resulted in him being fired, and has come limping back to the junior team, knowing that he will never be considered a championship contender again, and at best he can hope to be max verstappen's second driver.

even lewis hamilton is not immune to this. he is statistically the most successful driver of all time, and yet the team with which he won six titles did not want to give an indefinite extension to his contract because they lacked faith in him and the car and would rather set themselves up for the next generation of talent than spend money on an aging driver potentially past his prime.

no driver, no matter how great, is exempt from this. and nico, who grew up in this world more than almost anyone else, knew exactly what could happen, and decided that he didn't want that life. he married vivian because he loved her, and had a child with her because he wanted a family with her. and once he had his championship, he decided that what he wanted was away from the track, and to this day i don't believe he has a single regret over it. i don't know that you can say that about everyone else

[seliasvault]

Like A Rolling Stone

Looking for an escape you flee, hop on a bus, and end up in a small town, dead in the middle of Texas. Despite the temporary respite, you can't outrun what follows you for forever.

John Price/Reader - results from this poll

There’s a lot to be said about the phrase “going where the wind takes you”. Some may take it as an act of spontaneity, some may not take it literally, but you apply it to all its worth.

You bought the first bus ticket at the station, not bothering to check where it’s to, rather leaving it up to fate to decide. And it’s wound you up here.

Everything that you deem important, packed in a duffel bag, slung over your shoulder as you check into a rundown motel, located in the small town you’ve found yourself in.

You're a long way from home, if you can even call it home. You’ve longed too much for a better place to give it that name.

Hence why you’re here, miles from the city, from him. Several states further from the Big Apple, land of dreams.

Texas.

You never gave the countryside much thought, the music, the culture, it was never on your radar.

So throwing yourself into the most Texan place you could imagine was sure to be interesting.

But that was exactly what you were looking for, something fresh, to chase the bitter taste of the city away. Of your life away.

And so you check in indefinitely, it helps that the motel is a pay-as-you-go, each night you have the option to check out, to run.

If the town doesn’t suit you there’s always another bus waiting for you.

-

The room proves to be reasonable, with a single bed, a bathroom, and a dresser with a decent-sized TV.

It wasn’t modern or sparking clean by any means, but the contrast to your previous scene proved to soothe your soul. Modern is overrated anyway.

You set your duffle down on the bed and glance at the time, 4:34 pm. You decide taking a nap is the best course of action.

Daylight burns and the late afternoon turns to dusk.

By the time you wake, it’s 7:34 and the sky is void of light, safe for the moon shining just outside your window.

Back home 7:34 pm meant the start of your extensive bedtime routine. But you're not home anymore.

You grab your phone and head out to the motel office, if anyone would know the ins and outs of town it’d be a local.

You get the name of the best bar in town, the one conveniently down the street. And so you set off to walk half a mile, to the illuminated cabin-like building in the distance, as the silence of the night surrounds you.

You’ve been to bars before, but nothing quite as charming as the one you find yourself in now, barstools made of what looks like hand-crafted woodwork, the entire bartop made the same, as are the tables and booths.

Everything in this town seems to hold a flame of nostalgia to it, a sense of well-loved wear, and you're sure if you were here a year ago you might’ve found it distasteful but you can’t help but admire it now.

You’re sat in the corner, nursing a drink in hand as you survey the room, you feel light, alone but not lonely.

Men with those stereotypical cowboy hats, and people dressed in boots you’d only ever see here. You'd feel out of place if it weren't for the fact no one seemed to bat an eye.

It wasn’t crowded, a few groups of people at the tables, you and another man at the bar.

Overlooking the bar, peering into the lives of the locals; who seem to be native to the town, you wonder what it would be like to grow up here, have a little part of the world to call your own.

A little envious but you felt at ease, a feeling you hadn't felt in the past six months you've spent trying to figure your life out, you wanted this feeling to wrap itself around you, encompass you, embed itself within you, undo the knots of the past 4 weeks.

Lost in the thought you didn't notice the only other man at the bar move until he clears his throat, somehow now on the stool next to you.

You’re more spaced out than you thought.

“You're new around here aren’t you?” His voice is gruff like he’s burnt his throat from years of smoking.

He’s dressed like everyone else here, a signature hat atop his head and a brown leather jacket.

His accent however separates him from the rest, it’s not the usual country accent you’re accustomed to around here, there’s an edge to it, almost British. He sounds like a man who’s stayed too long.

“That’s a real cliche thing to say.” You laugh, swirling your drink in your glass.

“But I bet you aren’t from around here either.” You finally meet his eyes.

“Been here long enough to feel like I am.” He sips on what looks to be straight whisky.

“And how long is that?” You counter.

“ ‘bout 16 years.” He takes a sip. Your eyes follow his throat as he swallows.

You hum in acknowledgment.

“And how ‘bout you?” He looks at you attentively. Like every word you spew, he’ll memorize.

“First day actually.” You laugh a little.

“So not as much experience as you.” You add on.

“You’re gettin’ there.” His eyes crinkle.

“Oh yeah-” You glance at your imaginary watch.

“Just a couple more minutes and I’ll be rivaling you.”

“Yeah? Guess we’ll have to go toe to toe on the bull right there.” He looks over in the direction of the large mechanical bull resisting in the corner.

It’s worn just like everything else, tearing at the seams. And it seems like you missed it when you scanned the area.

“How did I not see that?” You stand up, to get a better look. You're in somewhat awe, only having seen it on late-night sitcoms growing up.

“Does it work?” You inquire.

“I’d hope it does, but haven’t seen anyone use it in years.” He’s turned now in his chair, facing toward where you’re looking.

“Haven’t seen one of those before, have you.” It’s supposed to be a question, but sounds more like a statement. Like he’s already looked right through you, knows you.

“No, only seen ‘em on those cheesy sitcoms, they’re not too common where I’m from.” You’ve turned your head to look back at him, opting now to move back to your seat.

You take another sip of your drink.

He hums, his eyes seem like they pierce through you.

“And where’s that?”

“The big ol’ apple.” Your tone is flat, discontent. Even the thought makes your stomach turn with anxiety.

“Not a fan?” He questioned.

“No-well I mean the city’s great, it’s just-life y’know?” You stumble out.

“The people- things were great when I first moved, but the last couple months-” You exhale.

“I’m just here for a break.” You finally finish, you think that was too much of an overshare, but the way he looked at you felt like it wasn’t.

You're not sure you’ve ever met someone who conveyed so much emotion with a simple look. Maybe it’s a country thing.

“Most people would have gone to an island.” He makes sense, if someone wanted a vacation, they’d go somewhere relaxing, but this wasn’t quite a vacation.

“Don’t think I have the funds for that.” You out a huff of a laugh.

A crash sounds behind you, and you slightly flinch, head darting to look behind. Seems to be a fight of some kind, not unusual for a bar.

“S���just those muppets at it again, every night they find something to disagree about.” He says, still looking at you, observing you.

“Wouldn’t be a bar without a fight, guess that’s universal.” You take another sip, to wash away the anxiety that’s seemed to crawl its way up your throat.

You glance at your phone. 9:14 pm.

“I think it’s time I head back.” You look back up at him, your drink almost fully done.

It’d be better to get started on walking back before it gets too late, you still don’t know the town, and getting caught up with the wrong kind of people was something you wanted to especially avoid.

“I’ll walk you out.” He still has about half of his drink left, but he goes to stand nonetheless.

“Oh no you don’t have to-” You start, not wanting to inconvenience him, he reads straight through you.

“Nonsense, come on.” You get up after him

You both walk together, comfortable space between you. When you reach outside you turn toward him.

Stars are the only source of light aside from the sparse dim-litted streetlights, his face half illuminated in the light.

“Thanks for walking me out.” You briefly look down, unable to maintain his gaze. People here seem to love unwavering eye contact, and you find his for some reason especially hard.

“It’s not a problem.” He dips his head down, and you laugh, something you’d only see in movies.

He smiles, and you give one in return, leaving it at that you make your way back to your motel.

When you hit your bed, practically collapsing on it, sleep comes to you surprisingly easily, and you sleep better than you’ve had in weeks.