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goldemas1244 · 2 years ago

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Kaloshta (Father) - A Mobile Legends Fanfic

Necessary content warnings:

Contains mentions and themes of:

(Blood, injury, death, gore, passing out, Asian parenting / tough love (which may include themes similar to but may or may not be: physical abuse, mental abuse, emotional abuse, degradation, abandonment, trauma, yelling, not knowing whether the question is literal or rhetorical, hurting for the sake of love and survivability, etc.), depression, graphic depictions of inner monologues, loss of self-worth, freezing to death, bleeding to death, character death in general, resurrection, and anything you'd expect from a 50/50 stereotypical Asian household)

Bonus note: NOT ALL OF OUR FAMILIES TREAT OUR KIDS THIS WAY. MINE DOES THOUGH. My dad has yet to rip out my antennae but that's because I don't have any-. He doesn't like my sitting position and my incompetence though.

Necessary writer's note:

{FINALLY we've gotten the tags out of the way.

So to clarify this was made on a whim. I obviously do not condone any of the content in this and urge you to raise your offspring like you mean it. This is but a reflection of the (50/50 stereotypical) Asian household. Not all of us treat our kids this way. Not all of us believe that tough love is required for better young. But hey, it's culture.

But it's mostly a reflection of my life so far. Hey, you make a few mistakes and suddenly you're very numb in the cheek and probably concussed. And you get very weird kinks. Most of the stuff in this is just stuff I've actually experienced. And of course I turn it into gut-wrenching angst.

Note: I am fine. I am alright. I am not hurt (yet). My father DOES scare me still but I blame it on the telly. He watches too much Netflix. He humours me on my monster/alienfucking expeditions. He shows me Transformers clips because he knows I find robot aliens hot as fuck.

Note 2: Understandably, this is a very sensitive topic to write about. Forgive me if you feel offended or uncomfortable reading this. Just know that I do not write for content, rather I write to satiate my inner desire to write. And sometimes that means refractions.

Having said that, enjoy the read!}

%%%

Blood. Short for haemolymph actually. In a blizzard and the icy snow.

He had just barely made it out alive. He had run away, clinging onto the last few breaths he had. So far he could hope nothing was chasing him. If there was, it would catch him soon.

His claws plunged through deep snow and he felt himself falling. Yet he stood back up, and reached out to thin air, desperately trying to pull himself further away. Further away from where, he couldn't say. All that remained of his thoughts had slipped away. Only instinct remained.

And it told him to keep going.

Footfalls scarred through the blizzard as the burning ache in his body began to throb. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't remember how to. All he could do was escape.

Only but a few minutes ago, he was in his element. A battle was raging, his nightmaric spawns were decimating, and his aim was steady. Before him were two lovers, and they were both primed to strike.

He had taken them down, but not with minor losses.

Soon there was nothing left on the battlefield save the husks of two colliding armies. Brave souls giving up their lives for a cause. One to protect, one to survive.

And the three of them were still left. Zhask, Aurora, and Tobias.

Tobias was on his knees. Zhask had done enough to him. His last breaths were well-spent, but not to Zhask. No, to Aurora.

He'd told her they'd attack together. He burst through whatever remained of the swarm Zhask could summon. He made sure Aurora could reach the source-

And the pain....

The sharp shooting pain coursed through his chest into his brain. It felt as if all his blood had been frozen, yet it drained from him in thick amounts, warmer than ever.

He took a few steps back. Aurora had pierced him in a critical spot with her own arm, frozen into the shape of a sword. It had severed itself from her body, leaving a gaping wound where it once was and a bloodied trail leading back to its socket. Jagged spikes of ice ripped through the soft flesh inside of him, tearing him apart from within.

It was cold, far too cold.

As the blizzard swooped all around them, he took one last glance at them. Tobias was dead. Aurora was in agony, but still alive. And Zhask himself was losing his energy all too fast. His swarm was rapidly dying out and the weather was against him.

So he went against the weather.

Zhask ran away. As he always did. As he never should have done.

And now here he was, miles away from any civilization, acres away from salvation, and half buried in snow and ice.

His legs shook. The pain was unbearable.

He reached for the frozen sword and arm of Aurora. No blood leaked from the severed limb now, rather it had become one with the ice. He grasped it tightly with his free hand, and with a hiss, pulled it sharply and threw it aside to be consumed by the storm.

Rookie mistake.

If it was unbearable then, then it was deathly now. Haemolymph flowed out in bursts from the open gash, half-frozen. The jagged edges of the sword had sliced through tender muscle tissue on its way out, more than it initially had prior. His frozen claws clutched at the wound and he chittered in utter agony, doubling over as they instinctively curled around it as one does to their chest during a heart attack.

He couldn't let go. Despite all his conscious thoughts and efforts he just couldn't let go. All his muscles were telling him to stop the bleeding no matter how.

But no matter how hard his instincts betrayed him, he couldn't cover the thick shell good enough. His magic was useless. He was weak and so was it. Domorey was exhausted herself. There was no way to heal.

He couldn't stop it. He couldn't stop the numbing pain. He couldn't stop the thick blood pouring out in waves. He couldn't stop the racing thoughts in his mind.

He couldn't.

He just couldn't.

His muscles tensed and he fell to his knees. Domorey fell with as he used her to brace himself. His eyes watered dryly as the pain only doubled from the momentum. He wanted to vomit, but all that came out was more blood.

The blizzard stung him where he hadn't been stung before and he lowered his head in defeat. So this is how Zhask dies for the upteenth time. Alone, in a temperature he never could fathom, with a wound he couldn't close. With no magic, buried in the cold embrace of despair.

He wasn't ready to accept that. Not his soul. Not with what's coming for him. But his body begged to differ.

"Sh-... Shaloshta...."

With one last attempt to stand and walk onwards, Zhask fell back onto the cold hard snow. His ears rang. His vision began to blur, his hands were losing their grip. He couldn't breathe anymore. He couldn't even muster enough energy to keep his heart pumping. And within a moment, all was black.

%%%

He awoke to white noise and darkness. He could see himself clearly however, clean yet scarred fresh. Domorey was gone. Balling his hands into fists he began to push himself up.

There was still some pain but it was numbed by some otherworldly force. He brought his hand to where the stab wound was and found out that it had somewhat healed.

Here in the void. Again.

"Disappointing!"

His eyes widened and his head jerked up violently. He'd know that voice from anywhere.

"Ka... Kaloshta?" he silently whimpered, yet much to his dismay he'd forgotten how acute his father's hearing was compared to his.

Heavy steps sounded themselves and Zhask desperately tried to crawl backwards, inching away, retreating as best as he could. But to no avail. His back hit an invisible wall violently and his antennae raised themselves up to protest.

"I told you not to use those with me."

Zhask screamed as he felt all four of them being pushed violently upwards against the wall. It felt as if they were going to break off from him at any moment, much so with the force of gravity pulling his body downwards. He struggled against the chokehold, gasping, desperate to escape the grasp but it raised him up higher, earning him a grinding noise as they were pushed harder against the wall like nails on a chalkboard.

It wasn't long before his eyes could finally focus on his own flesh and blood, yet only stared forwards as the familiar figure came into view.

"Zhask!"

A green husk hunched over him, eyes glowing brightly in the faux blackness of their surroundings. They burned into the air like sulphur. A ferocity bloomed in them like none other.

"You dare disobey your Kaloshta?"

A large clawed hand, larger than Zhask's own face, cupped his chin and forced his head violently upwards. Zhask could see his antennae clearly now, held up by his father's other hand. The horns on his head scraped against the wall. One of them even broke off at the tip.

To a vertebrate, it would've snapped their neck. But for Zhask, this was a familiar feeling.

It felt like home, it felt like family, it felt... painful.

"Your antennae show off too much emotion," his father growled. "It's one of the things I hate about you." He lifted his claws off of his son's chin and grabbed his shoulder. "It shows how afraid you are."

Held in place by some mental force, Zhask couldn't move his head nor his arms and legs which dangled like a stringless puppet. All he could do was freeze himself. Take it all in like how he used to. Not that he was used to it as much as the occasional slap, but he was used to it. Every time he'd failed practice he'd get himself hurt. His fault of course. As always.

He missed his father. He loved him, he genuinely did. But this? He didn't miss this. Not for his entire life.

"Please, Kaloshta I'm sorry!" he begged as his voice cracked with pain and his body curled up into itself despite the... gravity of the situation. "I'm sorry! I won't use them ever again just please Kaloshta let me go!"

"You disgust me. How dare you talk back to me!" With one harsh pull, his father tore shell from membrane, muscle from vessel. Zhask's eyes widened and he could only gasp as he was thrown to the ground now with nothing on his back.

He felt so ashamed of himself, didn't he? Oh yes, the price for disobedience and stupidity. You lose what you love. And what Zhask loved was his antennae. It made him comfortable, it helped him regulate his body temperature, it helped him smell, it helped him sense, it helped him to express his emotions, and it helped out with so many more things. Not to mention his father too. Oh, but now-

Now they're gone. Replaced only by a stuffy feeling and his haemolymph flowing out of his back. At least he couldn't smell the blood now.

"Always wanted to do that," mumbled his father as Zhask desperately tried to stifle his tears and stand up again. "But your mother, she coddled you. I'd always believed she was too soft, but I couldn't do a thing about it." His steps began again, and Zhask could hear a clinking sound as those vital parts of his body were oh so carelessly thrown away.

His father loves him. He really does. Zhask remembers how he used to take him outside and play with him when he was younger. How he'd begrudgingly read him bedtime stories. How he'd rarely but truly said sorry, how he'd always hugged him, how he'd never once forgotten how much he loved his son.

But when DID that all change, really? When did this start happening to Zhask, Prince of the Kastiyans? When did his father become a monster? What happened? Was it because the prince grew up? Was it because he was immature? Because he was older, that he didn't deserve as much love as he used to?

He remembered when his toys were broken all because he wanted to play with them while another foreign prince wanted to intervene and he didn't want to share because he knew they'd ruin it. He remembered getting whipped because he was weak in his test scores. He remembered the sorries his father gave, he remembered the silence. The silence meant he wouldn't forgive him. And then, over tea, they'd get back together because he was the only son.

Hugs became fewer and farther between through the years, and so did the kisses. But despite his father's complaining Zhask knew he secretly enjoyed it. Annoying his father was a favourite pastime of his whenever he was available and was in a pleasurable mood.

He knows his father was trying his best. His best to protect Zhask, his best to ensure he survived throughout the conquests, his best to ensure he managed to live on to rule Kastiya. His slaps were a lesson to learn, his whips a delicate cruelty, all so he would act better in future. Even if they scarred him. Even if they gave him permanent damage.

But sometimes, as implied, his best hurt and he was a monster.

His mother was softer but she could be as harsh as he was. Not that it mattered to Zhask, she was always busy so it made sense if she never came to be well-moody. Yet she feared her husband for the obvious reason as well.

Zhask could never stifle his tears, even from youth. Usually when this happened he'd walk off to his room, pretending to yawn and rub his eyes as if he was tired. Then he'd go into the shower or wrap himself up in his bed. He never locked his door either because his father would break it down so his butler was always there to check on him. Not that he'd ever wanted him to. And if he did Prince Zhask would have to put on a genuine emotional mask in fear that his butler would slip the metaphorical beans.

But of course in these events there was no room to pace to.

The footsteps stopped. Silenced. And so was Zhask. Though one out of anger, and the other out of terror. Zhask desperately tried to hide his tears away but the pain was intense and he just couldn't help it.

Like with the bleeding....

"Your Shaloshta isn't here," his father quipped and Zhask could hear his armoured plates creaking with age as he knelt. "Neither is your Heria. So I'll tell you this right here."

"Look at me."

Zhask turned to face him. Proportionally, so did his father's backhand and he fell back on his elbows.

"You are the reason Kastiya is lost!"

There it was. The guilt-tripping.

"Look at me!" Zhask hesitated, and had his horns pulled up so he could face his father. "Because of your recklessness, The Astrowardens have DESTROYED Kastiya! One of them is hunting you down, and here you are, dead as a star because of your own foolish mistakes! What have I raised you for?!"

Zhask only could stare. Was it a rhetorical question? But it sounded so genuine he should-

"ANSWER ME."

Genuine it is then.

"You... you raised me to lead Kastiya," Zhask began, stutteringly repeating the words his father used to swear. "You raised me so I could protect Kastiya, to keep its glory. You raised me so Kastiya could prosper. So that we could rule supreme. You raised me so... I'd have a home?"

"TALKING BACK TO YOUR ELDERS," he yelled out, despite having asked the question initially. "You are a disappointment. You have disappointed me, you have disappointed Kastiya, you have disappointed your subjects. As if there are any because they're all dead! And I should know because that's your doing too!"

He released his grip on Zhask. Zhask could only stare into space, fixed in the position. He didn't even turn to look at his father, now retreating back into the darkness.

"You are the reason I died, Zhask. Remember that. You are nothing. A pig-child. Wasted filth."

Footsteps receding.

"You are not my son."

Pain slowly enveloped Zhask's body once more. Not the pain of what had happened to him, but the pain of coming back.

Good. He never wanted to stay anyway.

%%%

"Ow...."

Zhask awakens once more, this time back in the snow. He instantly shoots up, but winces at the pain. His chest is still bloodied and he still has scars, but they seems to have healed slightly. The short death-rest has given Domorey enough mana to regenerate himself, thankfully.

He hears a little chirp infront of him. Before him is his passive spawn, the backup guard for his body. It moves towards him, albeit a little shakily from the cold. It nuzzles him and Zhask can feel its warm laser heating up.

He looks around him. Behind Domorey, there is a calm, serene white. The blizzard has stopped. He looks back and sees that his antennae are still there. They're only frozen from the exposure. He sighs in thankfulness.

The little spawn hops onto Zhask's arm, latching onto it. It camouflages itself on his glove. He pets its little head and grabs Domorey.

He is capable of standing on his own two feet. And so he does, leaning onto Domorey for balance. He tests his footing on the icy floor beneath him and realises it's created a nice little step-path. His feet don't sink in, rather the snow has solidified enough to stand on.

Slowly but surely, Zhask begins to walk forwards, limping through the snow. He remembers his past, he acknowledges the present, and he looks out for the future.

But his heart sinks.

He will never forget what his Kaloshta had done to him. He's still shaken by that death-dream he had, the only flaw to his immortality. He's depressed but he brushes it off.

They love each other, don't they? This is what your parents do to help you grow stronger, right? He deserves it for his failure, doesn't he?

Zhask's first death was to save him and his revival was met with a slight scolding and a warm hug. The rest were merely trivial, but he got scolded more and more often as time went on and the hugs became less and less often. In the end, it's all just a forgettable memory when he wakes up. This wasn't even the worst he's had. The worst was that one time he drank himself to death over a lost love. He got a real beating for that.

But he WILL prove he can live up to his father's wishes. That he's not what his father claims him to be. That he can still feel his father embrace him lovingly again, even for just a few short moments. That he's not a failure, nor a pig-child, nor whatever else he says.

And maybe this time, he'll try not to die again.

Or even sleep for that matter. Just in case.

#Anyways that's why he's so sleep and touch deprived #My poor sweet baby bean #How dare I traumatise you with my own upbringing #writers of tumblr #writing #fanfic #angst #golden writes #abuse #abuse cw #asian parenting #tough love #blood mention #death mention #character death #long post

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canmom · 10 months ago

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in short actually what the fuck

I'm sure sometime in the last few months I must have said something like 'yeah they will probably solve the spatial and temporal coherence issues that hamstring every instance of AI rotoscoping sooner or later'. I didn't really expect it to be this soon though??

like you've got 3D rotations of complex objects. detailed multilayer forests and snow and shit like that with complex camera moves. cloth physics. hair physics. movement in and out of depth. complex multiplane camera rotations with water physics. photorealistic humans at all kinds of angles and poses. stylised characters. crowd scenes. pictures in pictures. i'm going over stuff that's complicated and time consuming for a human animator, I don't know what a diffusion/transformer model finds difficult.

but honestly what's really throwing me is like, the types of jank? yeah, here and there you get a little bit of classic AI jank like shapes morphing into other shapes, objects vanishing behind other objects, that kind of thing. a big tell is the failure of object permanence, so if something walks out of view, it will likely disappear entirely, and something else can appear out of nowhere. (though not always - it's improved here as well.) that's the sort of jank I expected.

but a lot of the examples, the jank involves weird levels of coherence, like the one with the basketball - the basketball generates a second basketball which clips through the hoop, sure, but how the hell is the AI's model of 3D space good enough to figure out that a basketball there would have to intersect with a hoop in the same location? sure, if you frame through the video, you can see that the hoop kinda dissolves through the ball... but at full speed it really looks like a 3D render with clipping.

further flaws I notice - the videos notably don't include very many examples of fast motion. a lot of them have a bit of a floaty, slow-mo feel to it. I suspect that has to do with how it propagates the motion through time. it also tends to have that kind of glossy advert-like quality to the photography which I've come to associate with AI - everything is perfectly studio lit. in general I'd say it's better at photorealism than stylisation - the stylised images (mostly furry 3DCG-looking characters) tend to look a bit creepy, with too-wide staring eyes.

anyway in classic OpenAI fashion, they post a lot of glossy pictures but they're kinda cagey about how the thing actually works. it splits images into spatiotemporal chunks and does ~transformer magic~ on them and apparently that just gives you a really detailed world sim. besides that, they used a recent technique where you get another AI to label the training data to feed into the training of their main AI - you'd think it would collapse in on itself but no that works apparently?

on some level I guess it makes sense. transformer models scale well with data and like, video gives you thousands of closely related pictures to train off of and discern underlying patterns.

but also it can just straight up render a convincing simulacrum of minecraft. minecraft!! though probably not in realtime lmao. the pages here don't mention how long it takes to generate a video and what sort of hardware you need to throw at it to get these kinds of results.

until I saw this I would have said that 'AI-generated animated film' is years away at least. like the 'Animate Anything' model from that team in China earlier this year was impressive but clearly limited to fairly specific scenarios. this one... this one you could probably make an entire AI-animated feature-length film and have it not look like shit. it wouldn't be as striking and intentional as a really good human animator, you'd have to throw out a lot of bad shots along the way and have a pretty specific vision of what you're aiming at. I suspect the first good AI films will be made by people who are experienced making films using other techniques, and the best uses of the tech will combine it with other techniques to get a 'best of multiple worlds' situation. but still...

I'm too tired to figure out what I feel about this. future's gonna be fucking weird.

They've done it again. How do they keep doing this? If these examples are representative they've now done the same thing for the short video/clip landscape that Dall-e did for images a while back.

OpenAI are on another level, clearly, but it is also funny and sort of wearying how every new model they release is like an AI-critical guy's worst nightmare

#ai #animation

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youhavenoideahowbadiwantthis · 2 years ago

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SPOILERS AHEAD FOR SOME HORROR MOVIES

I've been a fan of horror since I was probably.....11 or 12? I haven't always been desensitized to it, but I've enjoyed it my entire life. Monsters and ghosts and murder are all fair game. I love all of it. This isn't a new revelation, but any means, and I'm far from alone, but I feel I'm losing my ability to stomach some of it. My own childhood circumstances, as well as some other events that I've experienced very recently have made it difficult for me to deal with certain themes.

SPEAK NO EVIL

I watched this movie last night, hearing good things and realizing toward the middle that it wasn't for me.

A couple with a young child goes on vacation and meets a local family, also with a young child. The vacationing family falls for the generosity and courtesy of the local family and stays with them only to see multiple instances of weird disrespect as well as child abuse. Also, the local family's child has no tongue.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

The local family kills vacationing couples and takes their children, cutting out their tongues and "adopting" them until the next one comes, then they kill that child and begin the cycle anew.

They graphically show the child getting her tongue get clipped for an unnecessarily long time. Then they take her away for the rest of the movie, make the couple strip naked and stone them to death in a ditch after telling them that this was happening because the vacationing couple "let it happen."

This movie is cruel. The overarching themes of social niceties, communication and presumption of intent, are present. The ability to respect your own interests and maintain autonomy while respectfully dissenting from someone else, is something that should be emphasized more when raising children so they are able to spot predation and know when to ask for help.

The tongue scene and the deaths at the end, as well as the fate of the child are all brutal and not my style.

A SERBIAN FILM

This will not break new ground and is far from an original opinion.

I'm not spoiling anything. If you like horror and have an internet connection, you know what it is.

The last third of the movie is tasteless as all get out. The themes don't translate to me as someone not involved in the culture that this movie apparently metaphorically represents.

The violence toward children is sickening and the deaths at the end along with the scene following the death are beyond filth.

RESURRECTION

Let me clarify before getting into the weeds: I love this movie.

Incredibly acted, incredibly convincing, incredibly sickening content. I will also preface this "review" by saying that this movie is heavily spoken word with little graphic content, and honestly the graphic content was the least of my concerns.

The movie centers on a single mother who's past abusive lover reappears in her life to mentally and emotionally torture her.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

She reveals that when she was with him he'd gaslight her and force her to do strange tasks because they "inspired" him like a muse. She'd gotten pregnant and given birth and he hated the child. She left to go to the store, came back and found a couple of severed baby fingers and he said he'd eaten the baby.

When he reappears in her life he continues to tell her that he hears the baby calling for her in his stomach and drives her insane. Eventually she cuts open his gut and may or may not find a living child inside his gut.

The gaslighting, the death of a child, the inability to properly handle grief and to have another not allow you to process it are all staggering. This movie, again, is incredible, but if you're having....regrets....don't watch it just yet.

I am more emotionally mature now than when I started ingesting horror. I am more capable of not only accepting the things that I've been exposed to through my life, but also able to contextualize what has happened and realize that those things have shaped aspects of my psyche and my personality that I'm still attempting to reign in on a daily basis through active thought and pharmaceutical assistance.

I was abused in multiple ways as a child by multiple people. I wish I had the understanding of bodily autonomy and self-respect that I have now. Instead, I'm an adult with major intimacy issues who both hates physical touch and also craves it constantly.

As a parent, I hope my child never suffers the same issues that I faced inside or outside the house. I think I've done alright so far. But I have to be consistent and patient and kind. The hill isn't getting less steep but I can't lose traction.

The novelty of r/kidsarefuckingstupid is foul. Children make mistakes. They're selfish. They're rude. Teach them. Be to them what you want them to be to others. Watching a child in danger or getting hurt or failing should make you sad. One day, that child is going to be old enough to make impactful decisions, and if they don't receive the guidance and respect they deserve as children, how are they going to know how to act thoughtfully as adults.

Sorry for the tangent. I love you.

Thank you for listening, though I'm not sure why you would.

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killemwithkawaii · 3 years ago

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Can I pleaseeeeeeeeeeee have sugar mommy with yan sally thanks senpai

Yan!Sal with a Sugar Mommy-

[CW: Yandere, idolization, stalking, implied threats, light infantilization and objectification]

>Sally doesn't exactly consider himself a contender to be a sugar baby, so his sugar mommy would definitely have to be the one who stumbled upon him and did all the wooing. Maybe he was a couple bucks short on a meal and she offered to cover it if he joined her at her table, or maybe she heard him playing a top-of-the-line guitar in a music shop and offered to buy it for him if he'd play her a private show some time. It could also be that the gang had dragged him to a bar and, after watching this strangely charming masked man finish his third Shirley temple, sat down on the stool next to him and offered to buy him a mocktail worthy of being called a drink. However it happened, he thanked her and politely declined out of habit, but she paid him no mind as she plucked a fattened money clip from her purse as casually as another woman might pull out a tube of lipstick. 💄

"Trust me. I'm not being generous, baby. Right now, if anything, I'm being very, very selfish...~" 💰

>After the initial disbelief, he admits he could get used to the lifestyle after a while- he finds all the attention and praise she dishes out to be highly addictive. But, he would be very uncomfortable actually calling his sugar mommy, 'mommy' or anything of the like. It brings up too many weird emotions. He'd much rather call her by pet names (luckily there are plenty of pet names that have to do with sweets) 🍭

>Sal doesn't really ask for much, but a sugar mommys role is to spoil her sugar baby! She makes sure to pay attention to his interests and surprises him with presents he didn't even know he wanted. Gifts she might get her sweet Sally are upgrades to his musical equipment, the latest and greatest video games and consoles, a new sound system, custom-designed couture, a smart phone, and new lightweight prosthetics in whatever colors and shapes he wants. She's also happy to help him with his tuition, rent, and give him an allowance for his 'little ghost hunting hobby,' that she thinks is just so quirky and adorable. 🎁

>In return, Sally makes sure to give her plenty of attention and is always on his A-game when she's around. He texts her throughout the day, listens intently to her triumphs and troubles, and has gotten the hang of being her date/ unusual arm candy when they go out in public together- her acquaintances are always impressed by his quick wit, effortless charm, and 'avant garde fashion sense' (a round-about-comment about his prosthetics and gnc wardrobe, which he finds both funny and flattering, coming from the kind of people his sugar mommy tends to socialize with). 💬

>Sally loves just how into him his sugar mommy is. The things she wants most from him are his companionship and undivided attention (something he would be more than willing to give his partner in a typical relationship) and to spoil him rotten (which he hasn't had the privilege of experiencing before he met her). Once she's assured him that yes, the expensive things she insists on giving him are his to keep, he wears and uses the gifts his sugar mommy gives him all the time. He wouldn't want to appear ungrateful of her generosity, and he has to admit that he likes being surrounded by the tangible evidence of her affections. They're a reminder that someone who could have chosen anyone chose him, and because he's accepted her offerings, he's hers now. 💍

>The one thing that could make the situation go sour is Sal finding out that he wasn't the only man his sugar mommy was spoiling. He knows he can't really say anything to stop her without ruining the mood, so he takes it into his own hands to make sure he gets all of her sweetness to himself. Most sugar babies brag about their spoiling on social media and are part of specific social circles- it's not exactly hard to figure out who's been scooping from which bowl, and it usually only takes one instance of him showing up unannounced in the middle of the night for his (former) competitors to decide that all the money in the world wouldn't be worth a second 'little chat' with him. It tends to leave his sugar mommy feeling a little down when one of her babies suddenly ghosts her after she thought they had had such a fun time on their last date. Luckily, she'll always have her sweet Sally there to help her feel better again. Always 💕

#k.e.w.k. writes #sally face #sal fisher #sal fisher x y/n #sal fisher x reader #sally face imagine #sally face headcannons #yandere #yandere sal fisher #tw yandere #tw infantilization #tw objectification #tw stalking #tw mommy kink #(or lack thereof)#this was sent in forever ago but better late than never 👌#SPOIL HIM ROTTEN HE DESERVES IT

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b4kuch1n · 4 years ago

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The Future Is In Space! (and so is the rest of you)

Okay, so. Gordon should’ve seen this coming.

And he did, to be fair: Joshua’s always loved space. Joshua loved the idea of flying cars when he was a tiny little thing, if the fact that all of the toy cars he had were thrown with intense force at one point or another meant something, and he clapped at the night sky once when Gordon got them both stuck at a gas station in the middle of nowhere due to… circumstances… which was super, ultra, uber cute as fuck . Especially because Gordon had just applauded him for singing along to a song on the radio when they parked, and that was very possibly the first time Joshua registered clapping as a possible positive reaction to something he likes, or whatever like that. Gordon Freeman has a PhD in theoretical physics and theoretical physics only.

The point is that Gordon loves Joshua so fucking much. No, the point is that Joshua has always liked space. He chose for himself a set of space-themed PJs when Gordon took him to the mall, and he likes food with weird colors because that’s “alien food”, and he has given away all of the toy cars he had to make space for toy space ships of many sizes, and Gordon has had to have a conversation with him once about upending a dusty fish bowl onto his own head so he could look like an astronaut. He doesn’t do that anymore, because Joshua is genuinely a really smart kid who just needs the required pieces of information to put things together by himself.

Gordon loves him so much.

Gordon also has only experienced a single year of relatively radiation-free, sludge-free, organic, non-Black Mesa- poisoned air and also freedom (to an extent) since. You know. Almost dying and also losing his right arm in Black Mesa. Where he jumped into a few portals, one of which leading to an alien world called Xen, where he had to kill what seemed to him at the time a spiteful god against his own existence.

That, and not the Joshua-loves-space part, is the part he didn’t see coming. Hadn’t. Still doesn’t, if he can be honest for a minute. There are days it still doesn’t feel real, just to contrast nicely with the days when what’s left of his right arm and his right shoulder hurt, and days when power outage hit unexpectedly and the lights went out without warning, and days when he fights to not let some stupid fucked up slights against him go because that’s just how the world is that’s how things are now keep your head down and don’t think Gordon just shoot just let your trigger finger pull itself in you are in a comedy of error a laugh track a monkey on a leash just dance just move your feet j

Hey, no digging your heels in there. Throw yourself off your rhythm, Gordon. Joshua. Joshua loves space. Joshua is going to an elementary school now. Joshua just came home from a “career” day, and the parent invited to speak is a retired astronaut.

Joshua said: “I wanna be an astronaut when I grow up!”

Joshua likes numbers. Somewhat. He’s not averse to them, at the very least, and homework’s kind of bullshit from the concept to the execution but when Gordon and Tommy and Coomer sit down to keep him engaged while he does it he has fun with math homework. He likes video games, he likes the puzzles in the youth magazines they signed up for at his school, he likes messing with shape blocks and pulls out some cool combinations Gordon doesn’t see coming sometimes. Joshua is a smart kid that enjoys a fair challenge. Joshua is totally astronaut materials.

Joshua is going to space.

Joshua is absolutely going to space.

Xen is, coincidentally, also in space.

Gordon is calm. He totally has a good poker face. He performs well under pressure, especially very specific types of pressure, e.g. when there are rules in place he can cling to and ground out an appropriate plan of action. He could improvise a presentation in class in a pinch, because he knew what presentations are and what he’s been working on and what the teacher expected. He could jimmy his car out of an ice patch, because he knew how cars work and how ice acts. He can smile and say “That’s great, Joshie! You just gotta work hard for it, and then you’ll be in space in no time.”

Gordon has an image he can provide to show how he feels.

[Picture ID: a drawing of Gordon Freeman standing in front of his son Joshua, cut off at their chest. Gordon is a tall man, a bit heavyset, with tan skin and mid-back length, messy curly brown hair that’s greyed at his temples due to stress from surviving the hellhole that is Black Mesa and Xen. He’s wearing his comfortable worn-and-faded t-shirt, which is orange with a very faded graphic printed on the front. Joshua is a young boy with brown skin and short dark curly hair, brown eyes that’s brimming with light and happiness, and a wide happy smile. He’s wearing a light green t-shirt. Gordon is smiling at him, with another shot of his face enlarged and superimposed on the drawing right next to his head. This Gordon is screaming. This Gordon is screaming his heart out, and his face is scrunched up while his mouth opens wide, and he’s screaming a silent scream and he will never stop.]

---

Contrary to how it appears to everyone, Benrey doesn’t live full time at the Freemans’.

Well. He does “sleep” there. If he actually sleeps. That’s one of the questions that Gordon has had ever since Black Mesa that he never got to or bothered to ask, and then when they had to defeat Benrey in the final boss fight he thought that was it with his chance to ever ask. And then Benrey came back and the situation took a hard left into throw-the-whole-suitcase-out awkwardness and Gordon thought it better to never bring those questions up ever again. It’s. Ongoing. Like his climb back into being a normal, mostly law abiding, neutral good citizen, who has no ties to that research facility that blew up and opened a portal to hell in space.

It helps that Benrey really is just… a dude. Now that he’s not eighty feet tall and clipping through walls anymore, he can definitely pass as someone who just really loves to mess with people for a laugh. Which… well, Gordon’s judgement of character is probably better discarded in the kitchen trash compactor now, but he’s not gonna lie and say that’s all Benrey seems to him. He doesn’t even mess with people for laugh, not really. He is just. Like that. He’s an alien, but in the sense that’s…

Well, to Benrey, humans are alien. So that’s that.

And also Black Mesa did stretch the definition of ‘human’ in the physical sense pretty thin. So, again, that’s that. It all fits together like sliced pita bread.

The other thing that helps is that Gordon has the tendency to forget about risks or consequences when they are not directly in front of him, which he sometimes overcorrects, but this time around it helps move the sentiment into the philosophical window pretty quick, and then he can throw a brick through that one, because philosophy sucks ass. Gordon’s moving along well! He only had to change prosthetics twice because the first two were in order too heavy for his shoulder and too energy consuming, and all three are fully covered by the overlords that didn’t want Black Mesa to become a Thing in history, and now he works remotely for a uni that just lets whatever happen. It’s chill. It’s mostly chill.

He could’ve just chugged along never thinking even an inch deeper about Benrey’s Benrey-ness again, and Benrey makes that easy, because Benrey loves walking around and looking at things and being a bit of a spectacle with a straight face. Okay, Gordon doesn’t know for sure if Benrey loves doing those things, because he’s not Benrey. He just knows that Benrey does those things, frequently, and with an expertise that baffles even him, who knows full well how Benrey is. Well enough. Awkward territory, all of this is, really. The Point Is that Benrey actually doesn’t appear at home too much! He plays games through the night sometimes, sure, and ever since he called second dibs on any cereal in the apartment he always appears at the right time to claim that, but the whole thing is. Balanced. Benrey doesn’t seem to have physical personal belongings outside of the PS3 and four copies of Heavenly Sword he lugged back one day (the rest of the game library everyone kinda chimed in here and there to build up, because console is common ground fair use for everyone, while PC is where Gordon streams and also works, so it’s off limit), and he rarely uses utensils to eat anything, so to anyone but the team it’d seem like he’s barely there at all. Except for his presence of course. That’s… a lot harder to negotiate.

Gordon’s gotten very, extremely good at it though. It’s his life. Things fit together, mostly. He can deal, he has been dealing, and it’s even been fun. It’s definitely really funny here and there.

Gordon’s about to break the equilibrium. Introduce a nasty new specimen into the scene.

“Bro I knocked for a hot minute,” Benrey says, at the same time as Gordon’s blurting out, “I need to go back to Xen.”

“Huh.”

“Wha- Why do you knock? You’ve never knocked. You’ve literally only ever broken in.”

“Wanna… start now.” Benrey intones in that exact way, and then knocks on the door again. It doesn’t even sound good. These doors are all made with the weird thick composite that makes a dull plastic sound when knocked on.

“Don’t do that, just use the doorbell if you want to-” Gordon catches himself. “No matter. I need to go back to Xen. As soon as possible, but anytime in the next… twelve years… will work.”

Benrey just looks at him for a long time. An extended minute. Maybe even two.

Gordon is just staring back.

“You’re at. The door.” Benrey says, in a low voice. Gordon blinks. “Rude… rude little boy Freeman, huh.”

Gordon takes a deep breath. “Benrey-”

“Gonna let me in? Soon? ‘s bad etiquette… greeter… doesn’t even let guests in. Bet your wares aren’t even good.”

“Alright! Alright.” Gordon snaps, but he also does step back for Benrey to walk in, which. Really, that’s never been necessary. Benrey’s always come in and out as he pleases. Usually Gordon just walks out into the living room and Benrey’s already on the couch playing whatever game catches his eyes on that day. The decorum of knocking and walking in is simply never present.

Well, Benrey does knock on Joshua’s bedroom door. But that’s it.

They walk together into the living room, then Benrey situates himself on the couch, and Gordon settles on the carpeted floor next to the table to observe him. He’s never seen Benrey actually fold his limbs up into the position he’s usually already in when walked in on before. It’s mostly normal movements, which still catches Gordon off-guard a bit.

“Nice couch you’ve got here,” Benrey says, and pulls out his phone to fiddle with. It’s a Nokia 2700 Classic, with a theme downloaded from the Ovi Store, and a firefighter-themed 2D platformer that does get insanely hard in places. Tommy got him a snazzier Blackberry a while back, but he refused that one. Gordon didn’t really get it, but. Whatever.

“It’s always been here,” Gordon replies on reflex.

“Liar… Gordon Lie… man.” Benrey seems to need to chew on that one for a second. “Gordon Lieman. This building’s like. Ten years old.”

“That’s practically forever dude. That’s longer than they sent me to MIT for. Joshua’s not even that old.”

“He’s gonna. In… seven… years.”

Gordon remembers what he needs to talk with Benrey about again. “Goddamnit,” he slaps his own face - not with the hard prosthetic this time, thank you very much. Took him six months of HEV training and a year with a prosthetic to get it to heart. “Okay, so. Xen.”

“Wait. Math’s wrong… eleven. Years.”

“Don’t distract me! Xen!” Gordon throws his arms up, finally making Benrey actually look at him proper. “Joshua wants to be an astronaut when he grows up.”

Benrey puts his phone down.

“Yeah,” Gordon scrubs his face, with his flesh hand. “So I need to… do something about Xen. I have a plan. I need to find materials, and then I need a way to Xen…”

“What’s an astronaut.”

“A- no.” Gordon sits up straight. “No, you’re fucking with me. You’re doing this on purpose. I’m fucking about to go nuts, dude.”

Benrey looks him up and down, makes sure his head movement is clear in the dark living room, lit only by the lamppost outside the window. “Yeah,” he says, “no shit. You wanna go back to… Xen… and stuff. Freeman lost his mind.”

Gordon opens his mouth to retort, but then closes it with a click. “Okay,” he mumbles after a moment of thinking it over, “okay. I get where you’re coming from.”

“Haha, get it. ‘cause I’m from. Xen. And shit.”

“Not funny, dude.” It is a bit funny. “But I’m not- okay, so, listen, Joshua’s a determined kid, alright? He’s smart, and he’s healthy, and he likes space. He’s… the chance of him becoming an astronaut is not zero.” Gordon pulls his legs up to his chest. “If it’s up to me, it’s gonna be a hundred percent, ‘cause that’d make him so happy. But even if I’m not the one writing the almighty script I’m still gonna do my best to help him if he’s serious.”

Benrey continues looking at him. “Uh-huh.”

“And… that includes. Never letting him near Xen.”

“Mm.”

“And I know, I know Xen’s like. Ten fucking floating rocks at least a million Texas lengths away from Earth, but it’s still there, y’know? It’s still there. You’re from there! You know it’s still…”

“Yeah?”

“... I. Want to blow Xen up.”

Benrey settles into the draw-me-like-a-French-girl pose. “Sounds good. How’re we doing that.”

“Well, we’ll need explosives that can actually detonate in Xen’s climate, and acquiring that’s gonna put me on so many shitlist-” Gordon almost physically grabs his own hand to yank himself back to Benrey’s answer. “Wait. Are you really just… relenting? Are you actually in this now. Benrey?”

“Say more about the explosive though.” Benrey blinks innocently at him. “Please? Explosive cool. Maybe illegal. Super cool though.”

Gordon is not doing the frog mouth thing. He’s not. He’s totally not. He sighs a long sigh; there, no more rude expression. “I am only thinking about using explosives, because it’s costly and we’re gonna have to transport it. So you have nothing to snitch about. Who would you even snitch to, anyway? Fucking- we are under an indefinite two-way nondisclosure clause, if any of us ever open our mouth to a stranger about that we’re gonna get sacked, but. Wait are you even involved in that? You came back after we signed those papers. Well Tommy’s officially ‘representing’ us, so it’s all tangential kinda, so maybe he can just add you, but why would you-”

“No explosive run huh… What’re you gonna… use. Then.”

“-subject yourself to the law- alright, yeah uh. To be honest I was thinking raw force? Because I do have around twelve years to make this work, and Coomer has insane strength that has leveled a Xen island before, and Bubby is… I think he just isn’t aware that there’s supposed to be a limit to human strength at all. They forget to put that in when they pumped him with knowledge juice. He can- wait, Bubby can just make fire. He can maybe negate the climate conditions for us, so explosives are still in the question here, and- Darnold, last I heard he’s doing some ‘Sour Patch Kids but real’ stuff… sounds like seriously corrosive stuff… We can. We can have a plan.”

Benrey is on his phone again. “Nice.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Gordon dry swallows some dust from the carpet. He realizes he’s gripping on it pretty hard with his prosthetic; he’s close to ripping a chunk of it out. He takes a deep breath and relaxes the plastic hand. “We’re gonna need to make and test the explosives, and we’re. I need to tell everyone. Convince them to help. And we’ll need a portal back to Xen.”

Benrey’s still clicking away on his phone - probably playing that firefighter game again - but he’s looking at Gordon at the same time. Gordon looks up just in time to catch the sharp grin disappearing from his face.

Alright. Maybe Benrey does love doing Benrey things. At least one of them’s actively enjoying this.

---

Gordon’s well aware how ridiculous he is. Is sometimes seen as. Perceived as. Terminologies.

Mostly he copes fine with that. He’s lived it for as long as he’s alive. Most decisions he makes are met with a raised eyebrow at the sublest and outright laughter at the rudest. Transitioning, that was a long, long period of his parents going from “haha funny joke but don’t tell it in public yeah” to “oh shit that’s for real huh? That’s for real” to confused, but silent, silence. Him applying for MIT and seeking a scholarship was definitely the career advisor at his high school laughing uncomfortably for a long time, because Gordon’s never held down a project properly, has he? How’s he doing this? And then him adopting Joshua officially was at least ten separate conversations with Joshua’s grandparents patting him on the back, it’s okay if you don’t! We can care for him. It’s nice to have children around the house again! We know you’re busy! We know there’s things youngsters like you want to do before getting tied down with children. Trust us, we know. You don’t have to .

Gordon knows. He’s never had to make any of the decisions he actively made, but one, that’s why they’re decisions and not punishments , and two, in many ways including cerebral, he did. Kind of have to. In many ways those are the only steps that make sense for him to take. They were the foundation to who he is as a person, with a sense of self that must be supernaturally obscure, because he’s. He’s got a lot of things to balance. A lot of tight ropes to walk.

Gordon’s many things, a lot of those he doesn’t fucking recall himself. Maybe that’s by itself absurd enough. He’s had a lot of time to learn, and a bit of time to relearn, being okay with being absurd.

Black Mesa “helped”, in the same way it spared the rest of him when it got his arm cut the fuck off. It’s a horror comedy. It gave him a bit of a new perspective on absurdity.

“Don’t you dare,” Gordon grouches, because he’s learning. He’s always learning. “Don’t use the a-word.”

Bubby puts his arm together in front of his chest. “I’m not about to! Don’t presume you know what I will do.”

In a way Bubby’s incredulous look stings worse than Benrey’s deflection, Gordon reasons, because Benrey has emotional (?) stakes in Xen’s existence. Maybe he has an external heart or something that’s still beating and keeping him alive on Xen, though Gordon hopes he’d’ve at least been transparent about that when they talked about blowing the place up. Bubby though, Bubby doesn’t have emotional ties to many things altogether. Bubby’s also a tube baby who sets himself on fire with his thoughts. Himself and other people and/or objects. Not as absurd as Benrey being Benrey, but absurd enough to be way above Gordon on the a-scale, and thus has no rights to call Gordon absurd.

“You have to admit though,” Bubby says after a moment of silence.

Gordon takes a deep breath. “No, actually, I don’t have to admit shit,” he says, with what he can call patience with just a little bit of definition stretching, “you ever thought of that? I actually can just never admit that blowing up a whole planetoid system is a bit out-of-the-box thinking of me. I can just say that it’s totally normal and expected behavior of me, and what’re you gonna do with that? Huh? Do go on.”

“Oh don’t be pissy at me,” Bubby huffs, and goes back to staring at the buoy bobbing on the water surface, tied to his fishing line. “You’re scaring away the fish, Gordon. Everyone knows you don’t talk and stomp around on the piers while people are fishing. It’s rude.”

“You’re literally only trying to see if you can set a fish on fire as a prank,” Gordon points out, more for his own sanity than to prove anything to anyone, least of all Bubby.

Benrey looks like he’s ignoring Gordon and Bubby’s exchange, just sitting at the edge of the piers, legs swinging evenly, but Gordon well knows he’s listening in. If not because he’s somewhat invested then because most things that frustrate Gordon is great entertainment to him.

He is, maybe, a bit, somewhat invested though, must be. He brought Gordon to where Bubby and Coomer are camping, afterall. No reasons else to do it, especially when they have time to wait for them to come back to civilization. Twelve years, in fact.

Gordon can wait (he can forget, but in his book that’s the same as waiting, really), and he doesn’t begrudge Bubby and Coomer’s “honeymoon trip”, which has consisted thus far of them trampling about in ~~nature~~ , e.g. deep ends of the world that they do not and should not have access to, but somehow end up in anyway. Gordon only knew because Coomer’s grown fond of taking pictures, and once in a while if they get wifi he sends everyone some. The most memorable one was a pitch black square except for two dots of light in the distance, with the geotag pointing to them being in the Mariana trench.

They’re having fun, and Darnold and Tommy take effort to “decontaminate” them between trips, as well as make them learn wildlife interaction guidelines (Bubby probably already knew, but he didn’t care, and still nobody’s sure if he cares now), so Gordon doesn’t mind. Has no reason to mind. Until now, but only a tiny bit.

They decided to stop in a seaside town somewhere up North three days ago, and wifi’s spotty at best but Coomer still managed to send them pictures again - of him fighting a dolphin and Bubby making fun of a goat skeleton in a museum - and then Gordon got tired of staying up thinking about Xen at night and shot his shot. It took them another day to check their message again, and Bubby replied saying “don’t third wheel other people, weirdo” and Gordon just sighed and resigned himself to staying up way too late for another week or so. But then Benrey asked him to go to GameStop with him, which. Admittedly that was suspicious as hell, but Gordon reasoned Benrey knocked and asked to be let in the other day, so what the fuck, right. And then he stepped through the GameStop’s door, noticing the glass being darker than usual, and ended up on this piers where Bubby’s been trying to have a laugh at some poor fish’s expense.

Bubby made fun of him for third wheeling again, despite Benrey also being right there, and despite Coomer not even being there.

“Did you guys have a fight or something?” Gordon asked, because maybe he can be a little bit spiteful. He’s allowed.

“No,” Bubby grumbled. “Harold impressed Gregory with his punching power, so he’s invited to the Punching Tournament. I don’t like being in water for a long time so I stayed. Their sandwich’s not even good.”

Gregory turned out to be the giant squid that lives a few kilometers off the shore, and another few kilometers under the sea level.

“I’m gonna issue an a-word ban, actually,” Gordon declares, when he comes back to where Bubby’s sitting on his journey to wear a track into the piers. “I think that’s more conducive to real conversations.”

He’s being distracted, he knows. And maybe he’s letting himself be a bit distracted, so he can have a minute to improvise a script. Benrey just fast traveled him here, he did not prepare any materials, he doesn’t even have his notebook with him. That’s where all of his plans are! And his doodles. Mostly his doodles, but that’s a part of his thinking process, so he’s allowed.

“Alright, Mister Fucking-Insane-Person,” Bubby shrugs.

“Doctor.”

“Oh, my bad! Doctor Fucking-Insane-Person.”

“Also that’s a ban dodge and you know it. Also you still don’t have any rights to call me anything! I refuse to submit in this matter.”

Bubby turns around fully to put his hand on crossed legs and stare at Gordon. “You sure, Gordon? Are you very sure about that, when you warp out of thin air to where I am missing my husband very much and not torturing fishes for fun, saying things about blowing Xen up ? Is that not ragingly absurd, Doctor ?”

Gordon takes another deep breath. For his own benefit. For his own wellbeing. “Okay, one, Benrey warped me here, I was not responsible for that. Two, you’re trying to set fishes on fire, and your husband is punching more fishes while a giant squid cheers him on, probably. And three, which part of blowing Xen up is absurd, now? Feel free to elaborate on it. I’m all ears.”

“The very idea of it!” Bubby exclaims, accidentally shoving his fishing rod off the optimal position, chasing away the few fishes not shunned by his radiating malicious intent yet. “Who even thinks of that?”

“Me,” Gordon snaps back, “and you guys kinda ruined what ‘absurd’ even means at all for me, so don’t try me at it.”

Bubby shuts his mouth with a click, but his brows are still furrowed in the exact way that claims, loudly even if soundlessly, that he thinks that’s stupid.

“No, go on, Doctor Bubby,” Gordon presses. “You’ve got the quiz. Try your hand at it again, go ahead.”

“Alright, then, how are we even doing it? If we’re doing it. And there’s no we yet, mind you.”

“I- okay.” Gordon holds his hands up. “I’ll admit I do not have the specifics yet. But logistically at least, it’s entirely possible. We’ll need,” he calculates a number real quick, “thirteen hundred pounds of column charge slurry, but if we have something high corrosive we can wrap up safely until detonation we’ll need even less. We can. Make that much. If we have Darnold’s help. We need access to Xen itself, which Tommy has the biggest chance to get. We’ll need to put the explosives deeper into the ground than surface level, so we’ll need to dig some holes, but with Doctor Coomer’s strength we can take care of that. And then we’ll need to trip it, and that might pose a problem in Xen’s climate, but we can manage a chemical fuse, or. Y’know. Just burn it hot enough to explode, which.”

He ends that speech with a vague and a bit jerky wave of his hand towards Bubby.

Bubby just blinks. “Huh.”

Benrey snickers under his breath, either at a fish or at Bubby’s reaction, Gordon doesn’t know. He wouldn’t even be able to guess, since Benrey still has his back to the entire commotion.

Gordon catches himself holding his breath, so he consciously exhales slowly. It’s okay. It’s whatever. He has twelve years. He can take some detours if necessary. He can forget, even. Maybe.

“That Doctorate turns out to be for something, huh,” Bubby continues. “That does sound pretty plausible, afterall.”

“Huh,” Gordon’s turn to blink. “Wait, that’s it? You’re in now?”

“Yeah, sure,” Bubby swings his arm out, “even though I’d like to be testy for a while longer, I also want to blow things up. Outside is very large, but it severely lacks opportunities to see things explode, so I’ll have to make it happen myself now.”

That’s a tiny bit worrying, but Gordon’ll take it. He’s used to Bubby being a tiny bit worrying anyway. Wouldn’t be Bubby without it.

“Now shoo,” Bubby turns around to fiddle with his fishing rod again, carefully moving it back to the optimal position, “you chased all the fishes off. Gonna have to start my work from the beginning now. It’s hard work tricking fishes, you know.”

“Don’t tell Coomer,” Gordon warns, “I want to let him know myself.”

“Sure, sure.”

“I’m serious.”

“Aren’t you ever.”

Gordon figures he’s done all he can on that front.

Benrey catches up with him when he’s walked away dramatically for a few minutes and is now at the main street of the town. “Rudeman.”

Gordon did forget him at the piers, so that’s on him. “Sorry, but also, do you have a plan to get us home, or what? ‘Cause I don’t have my car and I’m not hitching a random ride if I can help it.”

“Gotta... find a GameStop first. Score some Sports Champions 2 for the. PS3.”

“Alright.” Gordon nods. “Wait, do you need a GameStop to transport us? Is that a thing?”

“Huh,” Benrey just looks at him, and then pulls out his brick phone.

Gordon rolls his eyes, but then catches a glimpse of the screen, and sees the digital clock. “It’s- fuck, it’s almost five! Joshua’s almost home.”

“Oh look, no GameStop on the… roadside. What’re we gonna do.”

“Benrey, you- goddamnit,” Gordon frantically pulls his phone out of his pocket. He tries to yank his right arm out of Benrey’s hold to hold it steady, but Benrey doesn’t yield. “Fucking, let me,” he unlocks it and finds Joshua’s number, which is on top, because he added ‘01’ before his name, because he’s had plenty of experiences with arranging files so they don’t disappear on him, “c’mon, c’mon… Hey Joshie! Are you at school right now?”

“Hi Dad, yes,” Joshua answers, at the same time Gordon registers that he’s walking, Benrey pulling on his arm.

“Sorry I called in the middle of class, buddy, but we’re gonna. I’m gonna be a bit late home, okay? I’m outside right now, but I’m on my way- oh, no, we.”

They’re in his living room. Gordon puts his arm, just released, on top of the couch. This is his couch. The bowl of cereal he finished right before Benrey dragged him out’s still on the table. The PS3 lays silent in the TV cabinet, as it’s always been. He does go around the table to put his free hand on all of these things just to be sure.

“Dad?” Joshua asks from the other end of the line. “Are you okay?”

“I.” Gordon dry swallows. “No, yeah I- I got home. Me and Benrey were out for a bit and we got? Lost? But we found our way back, and I’m. I’m home now. I was really worried I wouldn’t make it back in time to open the door for you, so I called! But I’m home now.”

“That’s good!” Joshua says, even though Gordon can still hear worry in his voice. Sweet kid, his boy is. “Thank you for telling me in ad-advance.”

“I’m sorry I interrupted your class. Dad’ll be more careful next time.”

“It’s okay. What are we having tonight?”

Gordon takes a deep breath, holds it in for a moment, and then breathes it out, slowly. “We can have mac and cheese again, or we can try our hand at naan and make some soup to go with it,” he says, willing his voice to calm down. “We still have the yeast Ms. Juney gave us last month, right? We can go get bread flour when you’re home.”

“Okay.”

“Go back to class, buddy. See you soon, yeah?”

“Yeah. Can we have chowder tonight too?”

Gordon laughs. “We’ll look into it, but sure! If we can find the ingredients for it. Alright, bye now. Love you, honey.”

“Okay,” Joshua says again, and when Gordon’s about to move the phone from his ear, he adds, “Love you too, Dad.” And then he hangs up.

Gordon goes to the couch and sits down. He’s maybe cradling his phone a bit. It’s still warm from him gripping on it way too hard. Deep breath in, deep breath out.

“That went well, huh,” Benrey says, from the hallway. Gordon looks up to see him closing the door behind him, what looks like a copy of Sports Champions 2 for the PS3 in hand.

Gordon laughs, again, for real this time. “That’s- where'd you even get that?

---

They did make naan, or a version of it. Joshua likes messing with flour, Gordon caught him walking his fingers through the bowl, leaving tiny “footprints”. They couldn’t agree on a fish to put in the chowder, so they shelved that plan and bought some canned beef-and-vegetables soup instead. The naan turned out… fine. They tasted enough like naan, and Gordon only burned like two. Which was maybe thanks to the apartment’s stove top burning a bit less hot than it did the last time they used it; Gordon made a mental note to check on the gas or. Whatever one does. When that happened. He just needed to look up a number, call it, and stand next to the (hopefully) professional who would come while they did their work.

Benrey sat at the couch while the Freemans cooked and ate their dinner, either being on his phone or scrolling idly through the PS3’s library. Joshua asked if he could try and throw naan pieces into Benrey’s mouth from the kitchen table, which Gordon allowed, but with the preset limit of only three pieces, and the condition that he picked up the ones that missed himself. He then asked Benrey very politely if he could open his mouth to catch the bread, and then made a lot of mental calculations before throwing each piece. The first one missed, but the other two were snatched up by Benrey in a somewhat shark-like display, which Joshua clapped excitedly for.

Gordon heard Benrey come to the kitchen table, which Joshua was wiping off with the designated kitchen rag (the fourth one this month alone; it feels like someone’s eating them as they’re replaced sometimes), while he was cleaning the dishes. “Hey lil’ gamer dude,” Benrey said, and Gordon could hear him rustle around in a pocket of his puffy vest. “Scored big in the. Minigame.”

“Thank you,” Joshua replied politely.

“Here’s your price,” Benrey said. Gordon assumed Joshua was holding out his hands to receive whatever Benrey gave him, because he couldn’t hear any noise that thing made, just Joshua’s little excited gasp.

“It’s like the... Intarna-Internation… nal… Space Station!”

“Huh,” Gordon could hear Benrey blink, “that’s what it is…”

“Yeah! These are, here, they’re solar panels! They charge the batteries in here.”

“Nice.”

“Thank you Benrey!”

“Yeah, GG.” And then Benrey shuffled back to the couch, if Gordon interpreted the noises correctly.

Joshua held onto the price trinket until he asked Gordon to put it in the tool cabinet, along with the cake moulds and decoration kit courtesy of Gordon’s hectic MIT years. It was… Gordon could see why Joshua thought that was where it should go. It could be considered a cookie cutter, if the shape weren’t kinda suboptimal for a cookie. It also did look like the ISS, with wings and all.

Nobody in this household’s baked anything sweet in this apartment for at least a year, but. Well. Never say no to free, reusable stuff.

Gordon’s phone vibrates when he’s just sat down at the kitchen table again, a mug of garbage instant coffee in hand. He abandons it to go get his phone from where it’s charging on the living room table.

It’s Coomer. “It’s Coomer,” Gordon says out loud. “That’s weird- he’s. He doesn’t call.”

“He’s calling. Now.” Benrey says from where he’s sitting, on the couch. Gordon takes a deep breath and doesn’t deign it worth a rebuttal. He accepts the call instead.

“Hello Gordon! I heard you want to blow Xen up.”

Gordon pinches the bridge of his nose. “Bubby told you.”

“He did! In great details!”

“I- alright, whatever, I didn’t expect actual results with that one anyway.” Gordon remembers about his coffee. He comes back to where it’s waiting for him on the kitchen table, and takes himself a generous sip, letting it burn his mouth. “Fuck!” He sets the cup down maybe a bit forcefully. “Oh that’s a bad decision. What did- what did he tell you?”

Coomer takes a moment to gather his thoughts, leaving a blank minute where sounds of the wind and waves on the shore come through his mic. Gordon hopes he isn’t thinking about sleeping out there tonight, for the full nature flavor or whatever. “ A large part of his speech was about explosion! And how big and grand it would be. And also about how much he fucking hates Xen!”

“Glad we agree on that front,” Gordon mumbles.

“So am I! I also fucking hate Xen!”

“That’s. That’s fair, really, it’s a garbage place. But- did he, like. Have you heard anything about the actual plan? Did he tell you anything about the actual plan I definitely mentioned to him?”

Coomer pauses for another moment, probably to recall. “Nope! Not a word about a plan-”

“I fucking knew it,” Gordon mumbles.

“-though that is very thorough of you, Gordon!”

"Okay, listen,” Gordon picks his mug of coffee up and starts pacing. “I actually don’t… have all of it yet. I know me and Benrey are in,” he flicks his gaze to Benrey again, who does nothing to deny the statement, “and Bubby’s now in as well. I still need to- okay, the plan’s basically that we find or make enough explosive for the ten asteroids on Xen, we bury it at the core of said asteroids, and we blow that up so it blows Xen up. I have- I don’t know the specifics of how to make that much explosive yet, but I’ll convince Darnold somehow, and if he sits this one out then we’ll borrow his lab when he’s not using it. And I’ll ask Tommy about a way back to Xen, his. His dad’s done that plenty. He doesn’t seem to like Xen much, right? That’s the impression I got, so we can spin this into us doing him a favor or something. And then we transport the explosive to Xen, I can borrow a truck for that, I know someone, and then we dig into the ground there, that’s where we can really use your superstrength, and then we put the explosive in and. Set it on fire. Bubby, uh, agreed to take care of that.”

Another beat of silence follows Gordon’s speech. He seems to have been making that one a lot recently, mostly to himself, in his room, while writing things down in his notebook. He finds himself chewing on his own lip, so he makes himself stop and takes another gulp of the coffee, which has thankfully cooled down to gulp-appropriate temperature.

When Coomer speaks again, he seems to have chosen his words carefully. “I will need to ‘sleep’ on this, Gordon. You are right in your assessment that you do not have your plan together yet!”

Gordon takes a deep breath. “It’s okay,” he says, as much to Coomer as to himself. “It’s true. It’s half-thought up right now. I still need to figure out- figure out Darnold and Tommy and Mr. Coolatta. I, yeah,” his voice’s dropped to a mumble by now, “I think I need to sleep on it too.”

“Gordon.” The rustles that accompany Coomer’s voice gives the impression that he’s sitting down onto the pebble-littered beach as he speaks. “I would like to see Xen obliterated, and I think we can get it done.”

“That’s,” Gordon stops on his pacing in the kitchen, “That’s not. It’s okay if you’re not interested, Coomer. You don’t have to walk it back on me.”

“Please do not question my fucking hatred for Xen, Gordon.”

“O-okay.”

“But I am not in favor of hazy dreams anymore. I have gotten to see a lot during my ‘honeymoon’, and now I have broken free, and mere words on a script cannot placate me. I would like to see proof that it’s possible before I participate.”

Gordon takes a deep breath. “Okay.”

“I believe you can do it, Gordon!”

“Thank you,” Gordon says, a little bit dazed, while Bubby’s voice comes through from a distance at the same time, “Are you reciting poetry again?”

“In what distant deeps or skies, burnt the fire of thine eyes?” Coomer answers. “On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire?”

“Stop praising that tiger while I’m right here!”

“I’ll,” Gordon says before Coomer can get fully caught up in Bubby’s antics again, “I’ll come back to you with. The details. When I’ve hashed it out. Thanks for,” he exhales, “thanks for holding out for me, Coomer.”

“So it is, Gordon, so it will be!”

Coomer hangs up there, and Gordon sits down at the kitchen table again. He finishes the mug of coffee in one long gulp. It’s gone a little bit more room-temperature than he likes.

“Sleep on it,” he mumbles, “good advice.”

“You should. Do that.” Benrey says from the couch. “Sleep good for body for soul.”

“You know what, when you’re right,” Gordon says, and stands up and goes brush his teeth. He then sits down at his work table and writes down questions until four in the morning.

---

Gordon used to suck at making phone calls. He’s kind of a champion at it now.

Funny thing is there’s an epiphany to it as well: he didn’t grow up with cell phones, so making phone calls was a hierarchical thing for him until he was like. Twenty years old. Kids used the landline when absolutely necessary only, and adults used it whenever they damn well pleased, because they paid for it and they had businesses to take care of . And Gordon was… not much of a rule breaker, surprisingly enough. Oh he fell short of where rules lay plenty, but he didn’t really intentionally break them. So he took calls when his parents said he could and when he absolutely needed to, and that habit persisted well into his adulthood.

He might also just be not very good at holding his tongue when speaking and. That was no good for phone calls. Kiddies phone calls. ‘cause he just realized one day that adults said whatever the fuck they wanted on the phone really, and nobody chastised them for it, no divine punishment, no sudden death round.

A sermon on self-love, that was; Gordon just takes phone calls now. Worst case scenario, he just turns his brain off and lets his mouth do its work. When people don’t presume they know better than him, they don’t presume he’s talking out of his ass ninety percent of the time.

That’s- that’s what he thought. Gordon’s wrong, a little bit. He can be wrong. Has been wrong plenty before. He can correct himself, here, he’s gonna do it right now: worst case scenario, he has to recite his plan, conceived so far in total isolation from anyone he knows and whose opinions he cares about, to the person who’s the most skittish and averse to what his plan is bringing about among those people, over the phone, where he can’t see and gauge body language and facial expressions.

Gordon would… like to meet Darnold face to face for this. But. It’s work. It’s, well, it’s closer to work than to play, given that he’s gotten mildly stressed out over it, and their lunch at the only Taco Bell in the whole desert is strictly pleasant, not-work talk only. And Gordon really, really enjoys those lunch dates, because he never has to think about damage control or having an identity crisis in the middle of one. They’re just nice, normal, a tiny bit shouty (the Taco Bell is usually packed and the acoustic’s not good, but it’s a Taco Bell, and it’s a ritual now), mostly jovial, lunch with a friend, eating subpar food he’s learned to enjoy. They don’t talk about what happened at Black Mesa, they don’t talk about work in general, they don’t even talk about soda outside of appraising the gaudy color combinations for any new sponsored drink. They talk about Joshua, about Darnold’s cat Lumbar Support, about Coomer and Bubby’s travelling, about new game releases, about Sega vs. Nintendo, about the weather.

Gordon doesn’t want to fall short of where the rules lie, not this time. So he calls.

“Doctor Freeman?” Darnold answers with the title, which sets the tone pretty well. Gordon takes a deep breath and steels himself.

“Doctor Pepper.” He pauses. “Darnold. Hey. I, uh, I’ve got a thing I wanna ask.”

“Go ahead!” Darnold goes quiet for a moment, to finish his sandwich, Gordon’d guess. He’s called in the middle of Darnold’s lunch break. “I must preface however that we’re working outside of office hours, and I can only advise you at the moment. Anything further will have to go through the… official channels.”

“Okay, that’s alright. I just.” Gordon worries his lips. He realizes he’s tugging pretty hard on his left sleeve; he makes himself let go. “I have a. Plan. That’ll need your expertise.”

“I’d be delighted to help then! Feel free to share more.”

“It’s about, uh.” Gordon takes another deep breath. He’s been consuming a lot of oxygen recently. “IwanttoblowXenup?”

Darnold goes, predictably, quiet for a moment. It doesn’t sting less when it’s predictable.

When he speaks again, it’s in a clipped, professional-but-barely tone. “Please say that again, but slowly.”

Gordon closes his eyes against the sunlight streaming in from the window in his bedroom. “I want to. Blow Xen up.”

“Gordon,” Darnold sighs. “Doctor Freeman.”

“I know.”

“Your megalomaniacal tendencies have grown since we last met.”

“It’s not- I’m not doing it for fun!” Gordon throws his free arm up. “Okay, this is genuinely a lot of effort and stress for something I’d do for pleasure, Darnold. I also couldn’t care less about fucking Xen - okay that’s not true, I’ve lost like a week of sleep over blowing it up, that’s not not caring, but like. I can’t. I need it to not be there,” he stands up from his bed and starts pacing, “and I have. A plan. Half of one. About that much. So it’s not hopeless-”

“Gordon, please slow down.”

“-as long as I have your help and- and Tommy’s, okay, I will. uh.” He taps on his thigh with his free hand too, for good measure. Go the whole nine yard with fidgeting, why not. “I. So, Joshua wants to be an astronaut,” he intones, and for the first time in a while he’s reminded again of how this started, how it took over his life for a hot minute, and it almost gives him the hiccups, “and. Y’know. Xen is in space. So it needs to not be there anymore. So I want to. Blow it up.”

Darnold goes silent again. Gordon thinks he can hear the epiphany punch the air out of him. Fuck, he hates phone calls.

“As much as I want to berate you about how you’re treating this matter and yourself,” Darnold resumes primly after a moment, “my lunch break is ending in exactly fifty-two seconds, and this sandwich will take me another two bites to get through. I’ll see you in the Taco Bell’s parking lot at three AM this afternoon, Gordon. Drink water.”

He hangs up. Gordon goes drink water.

Benrey clips into the apartment when Gordon’s on his third mug of iced water. “Whoa, hydration streak,” he says, settling himself on the kitchen table.

“I can go a bit crazy,” Gordon mumbles. “I’m allowed a little bit of funk and insanity. This is my house.”

“It’s… actually. MFA’s.”

Gordon groans. “Don’t fucking remind me. I tried to forget that. Also it actually belongs to the NRC, since they apparently can just scare MFA into giving employees housing, which I’m really fucking horrified by, but I’m choosing to not think about it, and you can’t make me.”

“It can be mine soon.”

“Do not attack and dethrone Nils Diaz.”

Benrey huffs. “Killjoy Freeman.” He shifts his pose so he’s sitting up straighter. “You wanna… try out Premium Water? Free trial for a week, you can manually cancel your. Subscription. After.”

Gordon stares at him. “What’s Premium Water.”

Benrey opens his jaws, wide, showing his teeth. He points inside as if there’s anything Gordon wants to find at all in there at the moment. Then he closes it with a click and stares back at Gordon.

Gordon just sighs. “No, Benrey.”

“Guaranteed beddy bye time, no charge,” Benrey blinks at him. “Black Mesa Sweet Voice™ a hundred percent effective. Five stars… satisfaction… rating.”

“You’re fucking lying, because I’d never leave it five stars. You get three at best.”

“Gonna catch you when you fall off the. Chair. Gonna be romantic.”

Gordon laughs. “No, not allowed.” He sighs and finishes the mug of water like it’s mead and he’s some Dungeons and Dragons elven ranger. He gives himself brain freeze. “Ah, fuck, oof,” he slaps his own forehead, “bad decision. Bad decision. Okay, I. I appreciate you asking instead of just going for it, but that’s the reality of asking, right? The person you ask can say no. And you’ve just gotta learn how to deal with it.”

Benrey just keeps staring at him, but he’s used to that now. It’s only a tiny bit unnerving. “How’s learning’s... satisfaction rate.”

Gordon sighs again. “It sucks ass. Fucking hate learning.”

Benrey grins at him, and then he checks his phone and it’s already time to go.

“Drink this,” Darnold says immediately when Gordon climbs into the shotgun seat of his car, and holds out a beaker of bubbling purple liquid.

Gordon just stares at it. “Darnold, what is this.”

Darnold sighs. “It’s the Potion of Not Telling. I also drank a sample before coming here,” he holds up an empty beaker with some of the same purple liquid at the bottom. “It blows us up if we tell our employers what we’re up to.”

Gordon ponders this very carefully. “Does. Tommy, for example. Does he count as my ‘employer’?”

“No,” Darnold says. “‘Employers’ only cover people and/or establishments you’re currently under an employee contract with and receiving salary from.”

“Alright,” Gordon intones carefully, and downs the whole beaker. It tastes like… the jello packaged like seahorses Tommy brings over sometimes. The red ones, specifically. It makes him feel a bit bloated, immediately, and he rubs his side a bit anxiously when he sits down in the car. “You’re actually under NDAs at all times, huh,” he says, as an opening line.

“Same as you, Gordon.” Darnold takes the beaker back from Gordon’s hand and puts it in with the other one. “Black Mesa seeked me out and offered to find me a position in a brewery, as well as fund any of my independent ventures, as long as I do not say a word about what… transpired… back there. The official record’s that I was stranded on an island with curious dino-esque creatures for four years, instead of worked in Black Mesa’s mixology department, and honed my craft with their help, using the fruits native to that island.”

Gordon laughs, and rubs his face with the prosthetic hand. It’s like putting your face on the car’s dashboard. “Sounds like them alright. At least yours sounds exciting, instead of fucking insane. They said I was ‘chasing an entropy in the desert’ and it ‘ate my hand’. What the fuck does that even mean?”

“We attempted feats of miracle, only it was not under their accountability,” Darnold says, “and we were punished for it. No matter, we have more important things at hand. What is this plan you’ve cooked up, Gordon?”

Gordon takes a deep breath, finding it easier than it’s been for a while, and relays what he’s got down of the blow-Xen-up plan to Darnold. They never look at each other meanwhile, both staring at the cars lined up haphazardly in the lane across from them, Gordon in a barren calmness as words leave his mouth, Darnold with his arms crossed in front of his chest, his whole presence compacted into a contemplative, silent piece.

“That is an intense reaction to a faraway threat, Gordon,” Darnold says when Gordon’s speech is over. “Xen is not only at least a galaxy away, but also a few dimensions over, if I understand the briefing right. I haven’t thought about that wretched place for almost a year.”

“Sorry,” Gordon says, not really feeling any of it, but making the effort.

“You don’t have to. I understand where you’re coming from.” Darnold taps idly on his own arm. “I was… extracted… swiftly from Black Mesa after I met you and your friends. I did not witness what happened after, but I saw… enough.” He takes a deep breath as well. “We can all have intense reactions to anything.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not maladaptive,” Gordon says. He’s gone to therapy. It was really good for helping him build a system that filters out the things that actually fucks him up and makes some sense of the rest, but it doesn’t lift him out of the comedy of his life itself. It can’t. That’s not what therapy’s for.

“Indeed,” Darnold says. “But I can’t be the judge of that. My domain lies with potion mixing, and I dare say I am a true expert at it, but I can’t claim expertise at other people’s life. Especially not yours.”

“I get it,” Gordon nods. The world kinda bobs a tiny bit when he does that. “I. Know not to indulge my impulse mostly. But sometimes decisions come back to haunt me, and those are usually just about choosing one furniture over another, or tying my shoelaces in the bunny ears way instead of the circle way and having them undone in the middle of a meeting and stepping on them and falling on my face, but this time it’s. It’s Joshua’s life. And there’s just no limit anymore to what can happen, not since.” He swallows. “Black Mesa.”

Darnold nods.

Gordon blinks. “I know it’s a little bit crazy.”

“It might be,” Darnold says, “but as a famous mixologist once said: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Even if that gain is just your peace of mind.”

Gordon lets out the breath he isn’t even aware he’s been holding. “Thank you.”

“You do not need to,” Darnold smiles, “I do stand to gain from this as well, since I really need to test this flavouring that’s supposed to land on pleasantly tart on the taste scale but goes into intestine-destroyingly sour territory instead. I need to know what makes it that corrosive, and testing on humans is entirely unethical.”

---

Gordon got home before Joshua. Benrey’s also not home. He lays down on the couch and takes a nap.

He wakes to a quilt over most of him, light turned on in the living room and in the kitchen, and silent chatter. His sense of smell kicks in a minute or so into him still laying on the couch, blinking up at the ceiling; he smells fish sauce and sugar cooking.

“Tommy’s over,” he mumbles.

“He awakes,” Benrey says, seemingly into thin air. Gordon feels the couch shift minutely as Benrey makes to stand up from where he’s sitting leaning back on it. “Good eatin’. I’ll go get the. Food. Coloring.”

When Gordon’s gathered enough of himself to sit up, Benrey’s nowhere to be seen. Tommy’s shifting something animatedly on the stove, while Joshua carefully carries one bowl at a time to the kitchen table.

“Hey Dad!” Joshua says when he catches Gordon’s eyes. He puts the bowl he’s carrying down to free his hand for waving. Gordon waves back.

“Hey Joshie, hey Tommy. What’re you guys making?”

“Caramelized pork b-belly!” Tommy says from his stove station. “And... sautéed vegetable medley.”

“With rice!” Joshua adds.

“A perfectly balanced meal.”

“I picked the vege-ta-bles!”

Gordon folds the quilt to busy his hands. This one’s definitely not his. He may have one somewhere in the closet, but it hasn’t made an appearance in… six months. He thinks. “What did you get for us, buddy?”

“Carrot!” Joshua holds up a finger. “It has a lot of vita- vitamin… A.”

“Awesome,” Gordon says and goes over to the kitchen table to high five Joshua. “What else did you choose?”

“String beans!”

“Oh?” Joshua hasn’t been much for that.

“Uncle Tommy’s gonna teach me how to eat them!”

“A dash of- of flavour, packed in one Kn●rr’s Complete Seasoning packet, is all you’ll need!” Tommy switches to a lower voice when Gordon peers over his shoulder at the pan on the stove. “That is not true. Kn●rr is only… fit to be- be on the floor.”

“Are- you’re not putting that in then?”

“No, I just use salt and pepper.”

Joshua giggles. Tommy extends a hand that Joshua can slap on in place of a high five.

Gordon gets out the utensils - spoon for Joshua, chopsticks for him and Tommy - and brings the rice cooker to the table once the light’s jumped to orange. He plates the pork, scooping Joshua’s helping into his personal plate first, while Tommy finishes with the vegetables. Tommy lets Joshua choose which vegetables to go on his plate; Joshua bravely gets a little bit of everything.

They eat dinner on top of companionable conversation, Gordon and Tommy taking turns asking Joshua about school and other things.

“I heard you want to- to be an astronaut,” Tommy asks. Joshua dutifully finishes his mouthful before answering.

“Yes! I want to go to space!”

“Do you want to meet- aliens?”

“Yeah!” Joshua’s excitement cools down a little bit as he scoops up another spoonful of rice with a piece of string bean carefully balanced on top. “I read the Wiki-pea-dia about it though. They say there’s no dis-discernable e-vidence of aliens yet. We sent the Voyager Golden Records an’ they haven’t… answered yet.”

“That’s how p-physical mails are,” Tommy smiles while getting himself a piece of the caramelized pork. “It used to take… weeks... before we hear from our friends who are far away. And the- the universe doesn’t have a… an Everywhere Wifi Network yet.”

Joshua shares a conspiratory look with Gordon and mouths not yet . Gordon laughs. Gordon’s clutching his bowl maybe a bit too tight.

“You can become an astronaut and- meet aliens. In space,” Tommy waves his chopsticks with a flourish.

“I’ll teach them what- what e-mails are!”

“It’ll take a- a lot of hard work, and you have to be able to eat string beans.” Tommy takes an exaggerated look at Joshua’s plate, now cleaned of food. “Oh! Would you l-look at that! Mister Joshua Freeman is… perfect astronaut materials, according to… the NASA guidelines.”

Joshua beams with a pride that knocks something loose in Gordon’s chest.

They finish dinner and clean up together, then Gordon sends Joshua back to his room to do his homework, agreeing to an hour of video game after if he can get it done before nine. Gordon cleans the dishes while Tommy puts the kettle on and makes them both hot chocolate.

“I bought some-something for Joshua today,” Tommy prompts. Gordon looks back to see him hold up the exact same cookie-cutter-thing Benrey gave Joshua the other day.

“Oh- oh my god.” Gordon laughs. “Holy shit?”

“Wh-what’s the matter, Gordon?”

“Do you guys have like a hivemind or something?” Gordon pulls off a glove to open the tool cabinet and pull Benrey’s gift out. “Benrey gave Joshua this. I don’t even- what’re these supposed to be? Where d’you guys even get them from?”

“It’s the- International Space Station Biscuit Cutter!” Tommy puffs out his chest, slightly indignant, but definitely bemused as well. “They’re issued by- NASA, cut from the s-scrap metal of the hulls of… prototype spaceships. They’re very rare!”

Gordon stares at the one in his hand. “And now we have two of them.”

“They’re… very valuable! You can sell them for a high price.”

Gordon smiles. He puts Benrey’s apparently rare and expensive gift back into the tool cabinet and puts the glove back on. “You’ve gotta ask Joshua about that. It’s for him, afterall.”

They fall into a comfortable silence, crumbled into grains only by the click-clack of dishes in the sink and the water running from the faucet. Gordon weaves himself into a solid piece of nerve, bracing, bracing.

Tommy’s… better acquainted with the crazies of these things than most, maybe. He’s apparently said “fuck it” to the administrative work that his dad would’ve liked to hand back to him at one point, and just. Got a PhD in nuclear physics instead. Gordon’s been through something like that, and from experience he can tell that it would’ve taken real nerve to do it. He also can tell that no matter what it still rubs off on you, and you don’t recover from that kinda consistent exposure to idiosyncrasies, because you don’t ever feel like there’s anything to recover from , really. It’s just how it is, and the world’s off-kilter, not you. Like Benrey, Tommy’s world runs on a different axis, and he and the rest of them are, in many ways, looking both through strange eyes.

Gordon’s a little bit jealous of that. He’s honestly not sure if he can ever fully get Tommy, but then. Plenty of people never get him, and here he is. He can learn to wear it as well as Tommy, one day.

Right now though. Tommy’s important to the plan. Gordon knows that, in a theoretical way. Ha, theoretical…

“I would like to not be insane,” Gordon says, more to himself, at the same time as Tommy setting his cup of hot chocolate down and saying, “Benrey… told me.”

“Oh… I. That’s? Good?”

“Wha- you’re not insane , Gordon!” Tommy waves his hand. Gordon can hear it, even if he can’t see it. “You’re… creative.”

“Thanks Tommy,” Gordon says with a huff of laughter that he doesn’t think reaches Tommy at all. “I. I get it though. I got Bubby to turn around on it, but everyone else did say that it’s a little bit fucked up that I thought of doing that at all.”

“But they… agreed on helping you anyway.”

Gordon taps on the metal wall of the sink. “That’s… yeah. Well, other than Coomer.”

“Doctor Coomer doesn’t think you’re crazy,” Tommy protests. “He just has... boundaries.”

“That’s fair. He’s allowed that. He more than deserves that.” Gordon blinks. “Wait- why am I arguing down on my side? I need you to be on board for the plan to work.” He laughs, bowing down over the sink. He’s shaking a little bit. “Wow. I’m a little bit gone. Can I be a little bit gone?”

“You’re… totally allowed, Gordon” He feels Tommy tug on his elbow. With a deep breath, he lets go of where he’s gripping on the edge of the sink with white knuckles, and lets Tommy lead him to the kitchen table. He dutifully sits himself down on a chair, lets Tommy take off the gloves, and holds the cup of hot chocolate Tommy pushes into his hands carefully. “It’s your house.”

“It’s MFA’s.”

“It’s yours,” Tommy says, determinedly, and Gordon takes a deep breath and sidesteps every implications that has. “You can have your fears, and… and your plans, and your hopes. For Joshua. It’s your place, Gordon.”

Gordon takes a shaky sip of the hot chocolate. Tommy puts on the gloves and finishes washing the dishes for him.

“Sorry,” Gordon says, mostly aiming at the dishes thing, but. He also just kinda wants to put that out there.

“There’s nothing to be… be sorry for,” Tommy replies, amidst the noises of the dishes and the water running.

Tommy talks while Gordon drinks his hot chocolate; in the end, whether he wants to or not, he’s accepted a bit of the job the Gman holds. Gordon knows this, that’s how Tommy vouched for and kept the Science Team from a much worse fate than relative freedom except for a story no sane man’d believe anyway. Mister Coolatta Senior seemed to be impressed by the choice, aside from all the worries that come with it.

“He’s… he’s proud of me,” Tommy says, softly. “I know he only wants what’s best for me.”

“He’s been awfully accommodating,” Gordon says, remembering about the movie night they had after Tommy’s birthday bash last year. That man pulled a gun on him. As if he’d walk out on Tommy, if Tommy’d asked for him to stay around.

“He… doesn’t involve me… with his problems,” Tommy says. “Some parents do that.”

Gordon can’t find anything to say to that, so he finishes his hot chocolate.

“I got a vote when they brought Xen up the-the other day,” Tommy says, when the dishes have all been cleaned and put on the rack to dry. He pulls out the chair next to Gordon and picks up his cup of hot chocolate. It’s still steaming, somehow. “I-they were thinking it was- it’s too risky to leave a bridging point open like that. They want to… demolish it.”

Gordon chuckles, and then it becomes a full body laugh, and then he’s curling up on himself, the empty cup between his hands. He shouldn’t clutch it like this, it might break. He’s broken the handle off of a mug before, when one of his old prosthetic wasn’t calibrated perfectly. He can’t stop laughing though. Not enough to let go of the cup now.

“Holy shit,” he wheezes. “holy motherfucking shit. We’re doing it. We’re doing it? Xen’s fucking going down.”

“It sure is!” Tommy says, and claps a polite golf clap for Gordon’s victory.

---

Gordon does have shit he needs to do for the online classes he teaches, but outside of it he’s still way too idle. He and Joshua go to the aquarium and the museum whenever the schedule works out, and once in a while they drive by Roswell to catch a plane taking off into the sky, and he does grocery runs and tries to clean around the house and do laundry on a timetable, and there’s always the PS3 Benrey dragged back that’s now public good, as well as his probably too long Steam list, but. Gordon’s shit at talking himself into and out of doing things. Sometimes it just doesn’t feel right to start doing something, so there’s a black hole of time between him thinking “I should get to this” and him actually doing it. And Joshua’s life isn’t just him; his son’s going to school now, and he’s made friends at school, and he talks to them on the phone and goes hang out with them on weekend afternoons.

Gordon’s not as good at holding onto time anymore, now that things’ve. Changed.

So figuring the explosives out’s been good for him. It’s just what he does back in uni again, except without a supervisor, without having to write anything down properly (just legibly’s enough), and without peer review. It’s mostly math, but with the spirit of two middle schoolers stealing sodium crumbs from the school lab to throw into puddles. It’s closer to play than he expected. Closer than playing Horse Simulator 3D on the PS3.

He and Darnold spend the day building the corrosion rate equation, pouring Darnold’s concoction on rocks Gordon figures have the same make-up as the ground on Xen. Benrey doesn’t bring the venture up often, but every other day Gordon finds clumps of dirt and random rocks that weigh suspiciously little for their size in his glove compartment. He brings those in for the pour test as well, and they build a simulation based on them.

Balancing the corrosion with the heat’s a bit tricky; Gordon needs to know how hot Bubby’s ignition can go, since their number’s high. He was about to shoot Bubby a call when Coomer’s latest photo arrived. Gordon recognized the street in it.

They put the project on hold for an afternoon so Tommy and Darnold can have the lab to decontaminate Coomer and Bubby. Gordon spends that afternoon getting the air fryer he ordered last week out of the box while Benrey reads the manual out loud wrongly. He calls Joshua to let him know they’re having guests over that evening, thankfully in the middle of the school recess this time. Gordon tries to remember Joshua’s exact timetable at school, he really does. It’s just not fruitful a task.

When Joshua arrives home, Gordon’s in the middle of arguing with Bubby over how much water’s left in air fried food. “Hey Granpa! Hey Bubby!” Joshua waves at Coomer and Bubby, “hey Uncle Tommy! Hey Doctor Darnold! Hey Benrey! Hey Dad!”

Gordon steals the chance to close the air fryer while Bubby’s joining in with the “Hey Joshua!” chorus and distracted. “We’re making spring rolls and egg rolls!” He calls after Joshua, who’s in his room putting his backpack away. “You can choose the filling yourself!”

The kitchen barely fits everyone, so comes dinnertime they move the living room table up next to the TV cabinet to make space for the spare straw mat, and lay out a tablecloth on top for good measure (Gordon’s had enough experience to remember to do that). They sit on the floor in the living room together, almost shoulder to shoulder, and at some point the conversation gets away from Gordon entirely. He just nods when Joshua points at something he wants and gets some in the bowl for him.

“I’ve heard somebody wants to become an astronaut,” He hears Coomer say at one point.

Joshua puffs out his chest proudly.

“Doesn’t everybody at some point,” Bubby says. “I wanted to be an astronaut too, when I was forty.”

“Oh I have seen the photos,” Coomer continues, a gentle light in his eyes, “It is very beautiful out there.”

Joshua asks for help with his homework after dinner, and Tommy and Darnold sit down with him for that. Benrey joins Gordon at the sink while he’s pouring dish soap into one of the large bowls they used. He doesn’t know what to do but blink at him, dumbfounded.

“Check this out,” Benrey says, and spits lime green into the sink. When the light clears, the dishes have become spotless.

Gordon stares at the sink. “I- you- th- is that- you can do that? ” He points at the plates. leaning on the sink’s edge.

Benrey grins. “New… new skill acquired bro. Just got the EXP for it.”

“You spent your EXP on dish cleaning ?”

“We should conserve water, Gordon!” Coomer declares from behind him next to the kitchen table. “Water shortage is caused by corporate greed, but with certain individual actions we can improve the situation ourselves!”

“Please don’t kill Mark Schneider.”

“Worry not, Doctor Freeman! His death will not be by my hand directly!”

Gordon laughs, helplessly. “Everything happens so much,” he laments, only semi-jokingly, as he takes off the cleaning gloves and puts the plates on the rack.

“Keep up, Doctor Freeman,” Bubby says.

“They certainly do,” Coomer says, much more nicely. “I’ve heard your plan is soon coming to fruition!”

Gordon nods. “Yeah, it’s. Yeah. We were,” he swallows, “Darnold and I, we were about to ask for Bubby to let us test his fire. Figure out if he can reach the ignition point we need.”

“Well now, that sounds like a challenge,” Bubby says.

Gordon finds a price tag still stuck on one of the bowls that he’s very sure wasn’t there when it was brought out. “Benrey,” he groans. Benrey just gives him a shit eating grin. “You’ll need to hold a temperature for about three minutes, and then the mixture takes care of the rest,” he says to Bubby, while swatting Benrey on the shoulder.

“Just three minutes, isn’t it.”

“Do not try and stay for more. I’m serious. When it explodes it’s gonna turn seriously corrosive. You’re gonna be sludge ten seconds after it gets on you.”

Gordon can hear Bubby blink. “Oh- oh. This is serious huh. We are blowing Xen up.”

“We are, darling,” Coomer affirms.

Bubby shifts on his chair. “I’ll need. A minute.”

When Gordon’s done with the dishes, he turns back to the kitchen table to catch Bubby letting go of Coomer after a hug. “Son of a bitch, you went for it, you motherfucker,” Bubby says, a bit too loudly, fixing his glasses.

Benrey sings a very high note over his voice. “Language!” Gordon hisses.

“Oh, sorry.” Bubby pats his own mouth. “Forgive a man, I’m still working through it.” He switches to a mumble, seemingly only to himself. “It’s real. I’m gonna set Xen on fire. Gonna show Black Mesa what for. It’s really gonna happen…”

Coomer pats Bubby on the back lightly, making him almost hit his face on the table. “We’ll finally move fully away from the game, my dear Professor,” he says, and he’s smiling. He’s smiling very wide.

“I can be your Professor,” Bubby mumbles. “I can blow Xen up.”

“ We can blow Xen up,” Gordon corrects him. “Me and Darnold didn’t agonize over a- darn modifier for a week and a half so you can set our work on fire and take all the credits.”

“Hush, let me process things, you rude bastard.” Benrey censors bastard with another burst of pinkish light.

“I can see the other end,” Coomer says, cheerfully. “Now, Gordon, I’ve heard you need help digging into the core of a few asteroids?”

---

They mark a date for the excursion.

He ‘woke up’ early, and made himself and Joshua an actual breakfast for a change while Benrey finished off the box of cereal that was open. “Dad’s got a work thing coming up,” he told Joshua while scooping extra egg onto his plate. “I’m gonna have to stay on site for a night.”

“So you’re not going home tonight?” Joshua asked, taking the plate handed to him by Gordon, but making no move to go back to his chair.

Gordon nodded. “I’ll be home tomorrow though, but you’re gonna have to stay at your grandparents’ tonight. I’m gonna come pick you up at their place tomorrow afternoon. You should pack a spare change of clothes and your pajamas to bring to school.”

“Okay,” Joshua said. And then, “What’re you staying on-site for?”

“I’m,” Gordon said, “Okay, you can’t tell anyone this, yeah? I’m blowing asteroids up.”

He could see Joshua’s eyes brighten. It was visible . “ In space ?”

“Yes,” Gordon laughed. “But it’s very experimental, which means…”

“It’s not ready for the public eye yet,” Joshua whispered, almost reverently.

Gordon laughed again, and took off the mitten on his hand to ruffle Joshua’s hair. “You’re gonna be okay staying at your grandparents’ place? If you don’t like that I can ask someone else to come over instead.”

“It’s okay,” Joshua said, finally content to go sit down again. “Can I bring my skate shoes?”

“Sure thing, put them in a bag.”

Gordon called Joshua’s grandparents to let them know to pick him up at five (Joshua chimed in to ask them to remind him about the roller skates), and then Joshua got his backpack and spare clothes and bag for the shoes and the house was once again vacant.

They don’t have a vehicle, but Tommy sings and Bubby joins in and Darnold keeps a beat and after a while Benrey starts playing songs out of the shitty speaker on his phone. Gordon’s even spent the day before sleepless, but that’s kind of everyday now. He hadn’t anticipated having to get used to a day having twenty four hours again, but well. He hadn’t anticipated anything while going through Black Mesa, really. It wasn’t really ideal thinking-far-ahead environment.

Benrey seems bouncier when he’s on Xen. Gordon didn’t think about it, but when he steps through the portal he has a flash of that image from what feels like a lifetime ago: Benrey giant as the Earth itself, blocking everything else in sight, his form longing to catch up with his already immense, oppressive presence. Taller than any walls, any mountains, any barriers between himself and a measly human’s fleeting existence.

Gordon shakes his head. At his least incomprehensible, Benrey’s said it was “a show”. “Like. Cable TV. A television series,” Gordon’s asked.

“Like a cutscene,” Benrey’s replied, as if Gordon was the one too slow for the course.

Benrey now felt nothing like whatever that was that happened to him and the Science Team last year. Benrey now felt just… like a dude. Doing a barrel roll, while saying “Ooooo barrel roll” with a straight face. While his Nokia 2700’s still crushing whatever song it’s playing into oblivion.

Gordon doesn’t deal in implications anymore, so he starts singing along to whatever everyone else’s singing as well, and focuses on carrying their homemade Xen-specific dynamite blocks to where they’re going to dig their largest hole into the core of this wretched piece of rock.

It takes a day, kind of; he doesn’t sleep, out here in the thin atmosphere of Xen, where the stars don’t blink and red light comes in a hue from inside the dirt. He doesn’t have to force himself to go lay down at midnight like back home, he just sits down, at the edge of the portal, when the explosives have all been installed, and watch Coomer and Bubby ready themselves.

They can hear Bubby’s cackles ringing in Xen’s air and also in their comms, as he lays in Coomer’s arms and they race the fire, starting from the outer ring of asteroids to the main Xen island. They jump from rock to rock, red light trailing after them while the dirt itself breaks apart, not with a boom, but with the sound of bubbles breaking after a wave crashes on the shore. Xen glows brighter than it probably ever has, in its disintegration.

Benrey sings a few vacant notes, standing on nothingness; the light from his mouth blends in almost perfectly with Xen’s dying light.

“You got all of your belongings outta there?” Gordon asks, half as a jab, half serious. “Didn’t leave anything important in your old apartment?”

Benrey doesn’t answer, for a moment. When he does, it’s just to mumble, “oh look, there’s fireworks.”

---

They got home early from it.

Gordon takes a nap on the couch; he only wakes up from Benrey turning the sound up to max and then shooting a rocket at a truck in Far Cry 3. “Dude,” he throws an arm up over his face, and winces when it’s the plastic arm. “What the fuck.”

“Go pick Joshua up,” Benrey says, definitely too conversationally, and barely understandable under the noises from the game. “Gordon. Sleepman.”

“You’re slipping,” Gordon comments as he wrestles himself out of Tommy’s quilt. He forgot to give it back to Tommy, he realizes sleepily, picking up the phone he left charging on the living room table. It’s seven already.

The drive to Joshua’s grandparents’ place is not a long one. He finds Joshua sitting at the porch of the little house, backpack and the bag with the roller skates at his feet. Joshua jumps up at the sight of Gordon’s car, and before he can walk through the gate he’s already found his arms full of his son.

Joshua clings to his neck with a death grip. “I’m sorry I’m late,” Gordon says. “I was tired, so I took a nap, and forgot the time.”

“It’s okay,” Joshua mumbles, “you were tired.”

“I blew up so many asteroids though.” Gordon says, and Joshua laughs.

They drive home after saying goodbye to Joshua’s grandparents (Joshua’s grandpa put a wrapped up pot pie in Gordon’s hands with an iron grip and a gaze that communicated clearly what would happen if he refused it), and Joshua agreed to take a detour to the Roswell airport for the night. Gordon absentmindedly texts Benrey taking the kid to watch airplanes, get your own food , and puts his phone away for the drive. The radio’s on, but Joshua doesn’t sing along. Gordon’s vocal cord’s still tired from Xen (no more, Xen-no-more it is, there’s just a vast of empty space inbetween dimensions there now) so he also stays silent.

They get ice cream at a drive-thru on the way, and then they’re at the highway, parking on the roadside, looking over the rail at the airport. A plane leaves the ground there and goes into the air. Gordon’s struck by how different it is from a bird or a moth; nothing about the plane communicates any internal movement, it just. Moves. Up and up. Like a JPEG sliding across the screen under someone’s puppeteering with a mouse.

Joshua stares at the plane, unblinking. “Is it dangerous in space, Dad?” He asks.

Gordon taps his hand on the steering wheel. “It’s.” He starts saying, but stops to clear his throat. “It can be. There’s a lot of math going into making things that bring a human into space, and a lot of different people doing different parts of that math, and. Sometimes some people do their math wrong. Sometimes they try something new, and we don’t have the good math for that new thing yet. Sometimes new things break into the old math, and we need to. Work around that new thing.”

“What happens if,” Joshua swallows, “someone does the math wrong?”

“We try to catch it,” Gordon says. “That’s why there are so many people doing the math. So if someone gives the wrong answer, they can spot it early, and fix it.”

“What if nobody does,” Joshua says. He’s still looking through the car’s window, at the stroke of cloud the plane’s long flown past.

Gordon puts his hands on the gear stick. “That’s very, very rare to happen,” he intones carefully. “They have to check, over and over, before they send a ship into space.”

Joshua turns from the window to Gordon. He looks at Gordon’s prosthetic hand, on the gear stick. “I’ve only found books about spaceships that have gone to space,” he says, quiet.

Gordon turns over, and holds out that hand. Joshua climbs over the gear stick to give him another hug. “Experiments are important to those ships too,” Gordon says. “They give the people who make the ships important information to make them safe.”

Joshua just buries himself in Gordon’s arms.

“I’m really sorry I came home late and didn’t call you, Joshua,” Gordon says, and hugs his son tighter. “I won’t do that again. I’ll always call when I’m home late.”

“I don’t have to be an astronaut,” Joshua mumbles.

“Oh, no- nononono, listen,” Gordon says into his hair, with all the determination he can muster up. “Listen, Joshua, you become whoever you want to, okay? You don’t have to be anything, but you don’t have to not be anything either. That’s my mistake, you didn’t do anything wrong. You’re good. You’re good. You’ll be an incredible astronaut. You’ll be the first man on Mars. Jupiter, even.”

“Jupiter is a gas giant,” Joshua mumbles. “There isn't any land to land on.”

Gordon nods. “That’s why it’s called landing , I get it.”

---

They drive home after, and Joshua asks to sit with Gordon while he and Benrey play Mario Kart. Gordon agrees, which means he has to clamp down on any curse he almost lets out when someone bumps him off the damn road, while Benrey does some magic or whatever on his screen. Who the hell knows.

After their third match, Benrey elbows Gordon in the arm to signify a break. “Beddy bye hour,” he says, not even looking at Gordon, “for… babies. Hattrick means I make the rules.”

“You didn’t come first in the second match,” Gordon argues, but quiets down when he looks down to see Joshua asleep leaning on him. “Okay, don’t fucking choose Toon Link for me again while I’m away,” he points a finger at Benrey, who’s residing smugly in the to-be-chaos of his own making. “I’m fucking serious.”

He carries Joshua to his bedroom and tucks him in, and then detours to the kitchen for some water.

“Ooh, hydration,” Benrey comments idly.

“What d’you know about it,” Gordon mumbles when he settles back down on the couch. He looks at the TV screen to find Inkling on one of the shitty bikes. “What the hell man, this bike sucks ass. Fucking Shit Taste McGee over here.”

Benrey laughs.

Gordon plays the game, while thinking about the sendoff party they’re throwing for Bubby and Coomer next week, before the grandpas go off gallivanting in yet another forbidden corner of the Earth. Coomer lovingly calls it their “honeymoon”, but Gordon has full faith this is gonna be what they do forever. Or at least until they’re bored of Earth, and start aiming for the Moon instead. Probably not a bad place to be in.

“Thinking Xen thoughts, aren’t’cha,” Benrey says, while sending a shell after some poor computer character.

Gordon grins. “Ha! Sike! I’m not even thinking about Xen.” He pauses, catching the full force of a fireball a Mario shoots at him. “I haven’t thought about Xen at all actually. Since I got home with Joshua.”

“Achievement unlocked,” Benrey says, and extends a hand. Gordon stares at it.

“Wh- huh?”

“High five, idiot.”

“Oh,” Gordon says, and slaps that hand. Benrey’s eyes widen at the noise.

“Yo that’s a. Crunchy noise.” He claps his hands together, and he’s laughing now, light flowing out in a thread of something like baby blue. “This rules,” he says happily.

Gordon smiles, and then some motherfucker flings a shell at him, so he falls off the road again.

He stays up way too late again, and time doesn’t stop slipping, and when Darnold gives him a vial of neutralizer for the Potion of Not Telling at their little party the week after it gives him something like mania and he hugs Coomer like an idiot while the old man slaps his back in a motion that’s supposed to be comforting. He sleeps that off as well afterwards, and wakes up to Tommy surfing the channels on his TV, complaining about lack of daytime talk shows. When he forgets about the scheduled blackout a month after, he still calls the concierge with shaking hands and then climbs into his bed like he’s four again and there’s a storm outside. He still thinks about Black Mesa, and about Xen.

There’s just a little addendum now, that he can remind myself of.

It’s weird how quickly it blends into everything else, but. Well. It’s weird everything .

He makes cookies again, comes the winter, and teaches himself how to decorate cookies, just to have something to do. Joshua throws his pencil onto the notebook one day to go dig out the lumpy, supposedly-ISS-shaped cookie cutters from the tool cabinet.

“Careful,” Gordon calls after him.

Joshua toddles back with the cookie cutters in hand. “Can we have ISS cookies?” He asks.

Gordon says yes. He also looks up a buncha references, prints them out, and tries to get the cookies exactly correct, making two “outside” cookies and an “inside” one, with schematics of the inner chambers of the ISS drawn on. Joshua loves it.

“Here’s where the astronauts sleep,” He points at the spot that’s supposed to be the service module, and Gordon’s proud of getting that part right on the cookie.

He ruffles Joshua’s hair again. “Hey, maybe you’ll sleep there in twenty years,” he says, and marvels at the levity to that sentence. Just a little bit. It’s washed away with Joshua’s smile, and then they busy themselves with folding bags for the cookies instead.

#hlvrai #gordon feetman #joshua freeman #benrey #tommy coolatta #dr. harold coomer #bubby #darnold pepper #fanfiction #ask to tag #+ one art inside but it mostly has to do with the fic #I will. draw more from this fic and put them in as time goes on #the formatting's a bit wack bc I just copied the formatting from ao3 #I will come back to fix stuff up later #okay now I take more naps #have a good day! and also thank you for reading this fic if you do!

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iohourtime · 4 years ago

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Kiokuya (The Memory Eraser) Review - With Spoilers

Since I read the book, sort of followed the filming progress, and read a bunch of interviews (that all sounded the same after a while), I should finish off by writing a review for the movie itself!

Thanks to the pandemic, I was stuck at home watching Netflix for 7 months, so I’ve watched all sorts of movies & TV; sadly most are in the average to crappy category. To me, Kiokuya was probably in the average to slightly above average category. In other words, there are elements I like and there are things I feel the movie can improve on.

The review is a bit long since apparently I have a lot of thoughts about the script.😅 I pretty much summed up my thoughts in the “theme” section. If you are interested in the book / movie differences & things from the DVD visual commentary, I included those in the script & characters section. (Movie Walker included highlights from the visual commentary here.) . If you want to discuss the movie but don’t want to put spoilers on Twitter, leave me a message.

Theme:

The movie’s main theme is obviously about memory. If a memory is making your life miserable, or even stopping you from living, is it better to erase it? Or do all memories, even bad ones, shape you as a human? If someone’s memory of you is gone, are you killed in their minds? If you think someone is better off forgetting you, do you have the right to ask Kiokuya to erase their memories of you? Are the memories gone forever? If you have the power to erase someone’s memory, what are your responsibilities? And to some extent, what are the criteria to evaluate each request and what due diligence should you do before you accept this task? These were the questions the movie wanted you to ask. You know because the movie kept hitting you on the head through the dialogue! That’s probably my main complaint about the movie.

I didn’t study film so I don’t know the theories, but I think being heavy handed at telling you what you should be thinking is like listening to a textbook; it robs the audience of the chance to experience and internalize what they saw, and as a result, they are less able to connect emotionally to the film. That’s not to say people are not moved by the movie and empathize with the characters. I feel that it had more to do with the actors than the script though.

I think the cinematography was generally nice. I liked how they used the drone shots to film the beautiful Hiroshima scenery. The sunset scene was beautiful. The music did not seem intrusive. Other than that, I’m not sure I have more to say. (Fine. Yamada looked good in the plaid shirts and his hair was on point.)

Script vs Book: (Spoiler alert from here on!)

Kiokuya, the movie, was an adaptation of a “horror” novel of the same name. Although there were horror elements, mostly because Kiokuya was kind of a shadowy figure, even the novel itself was focused more on humanity. The original story was divided into 4 parts; the first 3 parts were really 3 separate short stories that explored different reasons people have for wanting their memories erased. The final part was about Kiokuya herself. The Ryoichi character simply served as a bridge between the stories. Here’s a brief description:

Kyoko - A while ago, she was attacked in a dark alley but was saved at the last minute. Even though she was unharmed, she developed a crippling phobia of the dark, so she locked herself inside her home at night and was not able to live a normal life. She and Ryoichi were kinda but not really dating, and Ryoichi, being a typical guy, figured he could fix her. Kyoko tried everything but as a last resort, she asked Kiokuya to erase her memory of the attack. Since her relation with Ryoichi was based almost entirely on overcoming the phobia, she forgot him too. Through this incident, Ryoichi remembered how Maki had her memory erased when she was 5 or 6 - she saw her mom confessing to her dad that she had an affair with her uncle. Kiokuya might have erased Maki’s memory a second time when she was 10-12. Finally, he realized he “forgot” about his year-long investigation of Kiokuya with Takahara & others. It seemed like he was doggedly pursuing Kiokuya because he felt violated more than his undying love for Kyoko. In his own words, he didn’t try to rebuild his relationship with Kyoko again after she forgot about him. There was nothing stopping him, so his feelings towards Kyoko were not that deep.

Takahara - He was a 30 year old ikemen lawyer, though like the movie, he was dying. The chapter focused on his touching friendship with his assistant. Takahara was also close with Nanami, a suicidal, 17-year-old daughter of a client who became very attached to him. When Takahara found out Nanami planned to kill herself after he died, he asked Kiokuya to erase her memory of him so that she would live on.

Misao & Kaname - They were childhood friends and Misao started crushing on Kaname. She confessed and was rejected, but after that, they were not able to be friends like before. She figured if she erased everything about Kaname, they may be able to start over and become friends again without the awkward feelings.

Maki - Ryoichi thought Maki was looking for Kiokuya to erase some unpleasant memories. Then he found out she was Kiokuya, who inherited her ability from her grandfather. In the end, Maki confessed to the burden of being Kiokuya and Ryoichi told her he would support her and that she didn’t have to do it alone. Maki decided to erase anything Kiokuya related in his memory, but their friendship remained intact. Oh, Maki was 17 in the book and also had a crush on Ryoichi. She erased his memories many times before. Like in the movie, she also would like Ryoichi to love her just once, although he never ever saw her as anyone other than his annoying little sister. 😅

The director of the movie, Hirakawa Yuichi, also wrote or co-wrote the script. While the movie stuck to the themes of the novel, the motivations were completely different. Kyoko and Misao were both rape victims, Takahara now wanted to protect his young daughter from the sadness of his death, and Maki was herself kidnapped by a psychopath when she was a kid. I guess Hirakawa needed to pump up the drama and felt the stakes were not high enough for a 2 hour movie? There is always some uneasiness with using rape and trauma to move the story along. I guess there is a difference between this and the usual example of “fridging a female character”, i.e. kill a love interest of the hero to motivate him on some journey. Ryoichi was motivated by being erased and he actually gradually realized he should not push for restoring Kyoko’s memories if it was her wish. He only found out what happened to her at the end of the movie. Considering their relationship in the movie was a lot more serious, they couldn’t really use the phobia of darkness reason. However, it would also take something really big for Kyoko to want her memory erased while not talking to Ryoichi beforehand. Anyway, I really don’t see a way out of this.

For Misao though, I didn’t think they needed to make her a victim of the same serial rapist, especially when they use the same reason as the book for erasing Kaname. I suppose they need to explain why Nanami (and later Ryoichi) was looking into them? But they could just have the doctor referred the case (who appeared to be breaking doctor-patient confidentiality?! Just me?) In fact, the whole Misao / Kaname storyline didn’t really do much other than allowing Ryoichi to find out from Kaname that Kiokuya was a young girl.

Maki’s childhood trauma was also a bit excessive. I can’t see it as anything other than to get Ryoichi out to Hiroshima to talk to Grandpa. While finding out mom was “dealing with” uncle would be traumatic for a young child, it might not be dramatic enough for a movie.

Ryoichi & Maki’s origins were also changed. They were now raised in Hiroshima and moved to Tokyo to attend university. The only reason was to place Grandpa-Kiokuya in Hiroshima after the bombing. While I liked the grandpa scene, was it necessary? They already covered the “Kiokuya after WWII” with the interview with the elderly woman. I think they could still keep Grandpa, since he was Kiokuya (and ironically suffering from Alzheimer’s) but maybe just skip the elderly woman part and use those minutes to build Ryoichi & Kyoko’s relationship!

Upgrading Ryoichi & Kyoko’s relationship to being engaged gave him more incentive to look for Kiokuya, but all we got to see was 1 proposal scene and some snapshots, which made it harder for us to understand the loss Ryoichi experienced when Kyoko forgot him. Ultimately, I feel that more time should be given to the “before” times. They don’t even need that much. If done effectively like the movie Searching with John Cho, 5 minutes or so of clips would be enough to get us to care more. I’m not saying people won’t care, but it’s true that there are people who didn’t quite feel it. Yamada basically had to sell it with longing looks at Renbutsu, so how deeply you feel for them depends on whether you buy it or not.

Takahara’s story might have been changed because of who they cast. Also, Takahara & Nanami’s relationship in the book was kinda weird, considering Nanami actually loved him and she was 17 while he was 30. I definitely cannot agree with how Movie Takahara wanted to erase his daughter’s memory to spare her the pain of losing him. It reminded me of that Black Mirror episode where the mom put in a blocker to shield her daughter from bad things. It ended up messing up the girl & broke their relationship. Young children are resilient and the sadness would eventually change into something else, which would shape their characters. Also, just because she forgot her birth father didn’t mean she would suddenly get along with her stepfather. I won’t even get into the whole consent thing. It was a good thing Maki did not follow through.

Less good was what Movie Maki did to Ryoichi & Kyoko though. When I found out Movie Ryoichi & Kyoko were engaged instead of “pre-dating” like in the book, I was quite worried they would have Movie Maki erase Ryoichi from Kyoko’s mind for selfish reasons. I was hoping that maybe he got erased by mistake, but unfortunately, the script did go with the jealousy angle, which made Maki extremely unsympathetic.

In the visual commentary, they said they rewrote the ending because it didn’t fit. Maki erased her entire existence from Ryoichi's mind as penance for what she did. (I think initially, they were going with the book ending where Maki just erased Kiokuya from his head.) In the end, the actual cut used in the movie was more ambiguous - they “left it to the audience” to decide how much Maki erased and whether Ryoichi & Kyoko got a second chance at happiness. (The director said it ended on a hopeful note. Take it how you want.)

It’s unclear if Movie Maki erased Ryoichi’s memories more than once, but Book Maki had done it many times. Even though Book Maki seemed more responsible with her powers and didn’t slip up like Movie Maki, she did wipe part of Ryoichi’s memories without his consent. Ryoichi said that she didn’t have to do this alone and she could lean on him, so why didn’t she? Also, losing all that memory got to have some long term effect on him, right? In the movie, it was worse because Maki took the “easy” way out by erasing herself. Yes, she was punishing herself, but shouldn’t the more courageous thing to do was to own up to what she had done and work for Ryoichi’s (& Kyoko’s) forgiveness?

Speaking of Ryoichi’s forgiveness, I actually saw some viewers calling Ryoichi a cad for telling Maki that he would always protect her and be by her side to protect her. Apparently they seemed to think he was in love with Maki and forgot all about Kyoko. Well, I think in that moment, there were 3 things going on: 1) Takahara told him that it was better to forgive and that there will be justice in other ways, 2) he understood why it was devastating to Kyoko to remember what happened and 3) Maki was like his little sister. His immediate desire to comfort his friend overrode the anger and betrayal he might have felt. Had Maki not erased his memory around 2 minutes after, who knew if they would have a more substantial talk? He didn’t even have a chance to talk to Kyoko. (I suspect Maki would have tried to “spare him” by erasing his relationship with Kyoko as well. He still ended up at the cafe because he could remember physically going there a lot.)

Overall, I think the movie was a bit unfocused due to some extraneous storylines and having too much exposition, which was a disservice to some of the characters. It failed to show how their relationships build, like Ryoichi & Takahara became buddies over what seemed like a week! I wish they trimmed a couple of the minor stories and used that time to go deeper on the main lines.

Characters / Actors:

Yoshimura Ryoichi (Yamada Ryosuke)

I was watching the movie and halfway through when it hit me… Yamada’s Ryoichi was… normal? I mean obviously quite good looking in the boy-next-door kind of way, but Ryoichi was a regular, run-of-the-mill university student, who was normally an optimistic and forgiving but happened to be dealing with heartbreak at the moment. Seriously, if you’ve watched Yamada’s other works, his characters are usually kind of comedic, sort of pathetic, occasionally brilliant, psychotic, or… non-human. (Very odd roles for a Johnny’s actor.) He probably has not been this normal since the 24Hr drama. He still cried a lot, so that’s familiar.

OK, let’s get back on topic. Since Book Ryoichi functioned more as a character that connects the short stories rather than a real character, I didn’t have hopes for the movie version. Surprisingly, Movie Ryoichi came across as a real person and I did care what happened to him. While we didn’t get to see how Ryoichi & Kyoko were in happier times, he was able to convey the longing and slight awkwardness in their interaction when he tried to talk to her after. Similarly, in the scene where he learned of Takahara’s death, you could tell what was going through his mind even though he said nothing. Same with the final “confrontation” with Maki. Even though he didn’t say much, his eyes conveyed the emotions subtly: the longing, shock, confusion, etc. Overall, he was quite subtle and natural. As the articles say, he managed to “suppress his aura” and played an average guy. I hope he can play more of these subtle types of roles in future. (It is unfortunate that a lot of people have preconceived notions about Johnny’s actors, to put it politely. It’s like the reverse of the “fan blinder” that we sometimes get accused of having.)

Now there are some discussions as to whether he overacted in the crying scenes. The main “crying” scenes were probably 1) confession to grandpa in Hiroshima, 2) in the rain, and 3) reading the letter. I’ve seen people say he overacted in either 1) or 2).

When I first watched the Hiroshima scene, I did feel that his crying may have been a bit much because I was watching the movie with just Japanese subtitles, so I missed an important detail: Ryoichi told his mom he was going to Hiroshima to confront his past. When you consider that Ryoichi had been carrying the guilt for “causing” Maki’s kidnapping for 15 years, it was totally reasonable for him to prostrate himself in front of Grandpa. He would also be relieved when Grandpa told him the statute of limitation was over and he should forgive himself. As an aside, according to the director in the visual commentary, Yamada cried in the first take of the scene. Hirakawa said “Aren’t you crying too much?” Yamada said “OK, I’ll do another take without crying.” However, when the Director was cutting the movie together, he suddenly saw Ryoichi’s mental journey and ended up using the first take because it was the logical conclusion to the closure he got.

In the rain scene, he just learned about Kyoko’s attack. Knowing how much hurt she endured and how he did nothing to support and comfort her, he was still in a state of shock when he got knocked down. Then the dam burst and he cried hysterically. That seemed quite reasonable to me. I was more shocked that nobody checked on the guy who fell on the pavement and was crying. Pedestrians were cold! So I don’t really understand the objection to that scene. Maybe they thought this was something that happened a while ago and/or he didn’t love Kyoko that much, so he wouldn’t be that emotional?

I don’t think people have issues with the letter scene? Narratively, it made the most sense since he was close with Takahara, who was literally speaking to him from the grave via the letter. Oh, they talked about filming the letter scene in the visual commentary. Yamada was just reading the letter in silence and they added in Takahara’s narration in post production. Since he wanted to save the emotional outburst for the real take, he did not dare to look at the letter during the rehearsal.

One last thing, Yamada and Yoshine spoke in Hiroshima-ben when they were talking amongst each other. I have horrible listening skills and while I think he used some slang or phrasing, his accent still seemed mostly Kanto. It’s like if I call a bunch of people “wankers” with a Canadian accent; it doesn’t make me sound English. Maybe someone can tell me just how well (or not) he did.

Kawai Maki (Yoshine Kyoko)

I have only watched Yoshine in the drama Stay Tuned and I liked her there. She played this airhead character who could be super annoying if the balance was off, yet she came across as likeable. I think she portrayed Maki very well in this movie. Of course, I knew she was Kiokuya going in, so even at the beginning, you could see some of her subtle reactions to the Kiokuya discussions. I really liked her chemistry with Yamada - they felt like they could have been lifelong friends. While she played the annoying little sister part quite well, you could also see the pain she felt when she had to make difficult choices like erasing Nanami’s memory. Throughout the movie, you could sense her regret for what she did to Ryoichi. Her emotions in the final scene were also very raw. While Maki’s characterization was problematic, Yoshine was really good at playing that character and you might even be sympathetic towards her. Also, I feel that her Hiroshima-ben might be more on point? Some people didn’t buy that she was in love with Ryoichi the whole time. I thought the flashbacks made it pretty clear but I’ve also read the book, so there’s that.

In the visual commentary, they were talking about their various acting styles. Yoshine said she carried her emotions with her even after the director shouted cut. So when she was shooting the last scene, she was still crying furiously afterwards. Yamada said she was like an acting monster - she could get right into the emotions even during the table read. It was funny how different she is from Yamada and Renbutsu. They are the flip-the-switch type - when the director yells cut, it was like they woke up from a dream into a different world. She also apologized to Yamada when they were watching the scene where she confessed to selfishly erasing Kyoko’s memory of Ryoichi.😅

Takahara Tomoaki (Sasaki Kuranosuke)

I have not seen Sasaki’s other projects, so I had no idea what to expect. His Takahara came across as pretty charming, easy going, and playful, though you could feel his love for his daughter and the hard decision he had to make. He also had a natural chemistry with the other cast and was very believable. While I disagree with what Takahara wanted, Sasaki’s acting as Takahara made sense. I don’t know what more to say. It is probably expected since he is a veteran and is generally well regarded as an actor.

Sawada Kyoko (Renbutsu Misako)

I have only seen Renbutsu in Hagaren. I liked her character there. I also liked how Yamada decided to break the ice with her back then by asking if she has any friends. (She had more friends than him. 😅) To be honest, there wasn’t much for her to do in this movie, although I think she was believable as the very confused Kyoko. She was apprehensive about Ryoichi in the “after” scenes, who was honestly coming across too strong. I don’t think Ryoichi & Kyoko really had crackling sexual chemistry based on the proposal scene, but they seemed like a cute couple. They were pretty cute together in the behind-the-scenes featurette when they took the “dating photos”. I wish those dates were included in the movie.

Conclusion:

As you can see above, I have some general issues about the script but I think the actors elevated the story. The movie could have been better if it streamlined some of the storylines. Right now, it was trying to go for a deeper message but the stories themselves were a bit too superficial to accomplish that. I suppose the problem was that the original novel was more like an anthology of short stories dealing with memory, so it was hard to create a through line for a movie.

#Kiokuya #anata ha wasurenai #yamada ryosuke #yoshine kyoko #sasaki kuranosuke #renbutsu misako #review #spoilers #the memory eraser

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shih-coulda-had-it · 5 years ago

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booted to the frontlines

Premise: Class 3-A has been drafted to help foil a time conspiracy to end All Might’s career before it really begins. They are slotted into the 19XX Class 3-A by the HPSC, for the preparation and duration of the 19XX Sports Festival. Uraraka Ochako is pulled into a conspiracy.

Otherwise known as - Izuku and Ochako join Toshinori in his internship for a month.

“Who the hell is this guy?” whispers Kirishima, knocking elbows with Bakugou. This guy is tall, taller than Eraserhead, light-haired instead of dark, but sharing the same kind of grimace. This guy is dressed in an off-white jumpsuit, with sunny yellow gloves, salt-shaker boots, a wide-collared cape, and a belt with a silver belt buckle shaped like a ‘G.’ He sees Midoriya reflexively straighten up; Bakugou notices it too.

“I don’t care,” says Bakugou. “He’s clearly a nobody.”

Their new homeroom teacher has a domino mask, with opaque white lenses. He still manages to cut a glare at the pair of them.

“So,” the hero begins, and he’s immediately interrupted by Midoriya.

“Gran Torino!” he bubbles. He looks like he’s vibrating in place. “Wow, I completely forgot that you’re here! Teaching All Might! And now you’ll--” Midoriya cuts off suddenly, paling. “Oh no.”

“Why ‘oh no’?” Uraraka hisses. “Deku-kun, why ‘oh no’?”

Gran Torino towers over them all, even though the majority of them have experienced growth spurts in-between second year and this year. He gives the impression that he is thoroughly disgruntled by his situation.

“So,” he stresses, “all nineteen of you are here, save for your class representative, to prevent other time travelers from interfering with Yagi Toshinori’s timeline.” Torino waves a familiar manila folder, which Midoriya had obediently relinquished to the HPSC when they landed in the organization’s basement. “And I have to teach you for a month.”

“To keep up appearances,” Yaoyorozu says. “Just until after the Sports Festival, when we’ve caught the other time travelers.”

“Hm.” Torino crosses his arms. “Who’s the person responsible for wiping memories?”

They all flinch, but everyone is good enough not to look at Shinsou, who is sinking a little deeper into his scarf. Their Quirks were listed in the folder, but only the barest minimum detail was typed down. Shinsou’s been covering their tracks, as mandated by their own HPSC. No records left behind.

“Uraraka,” says Torino, wiping the blackboard, “you, Midoriya, and Yagi stay after-school.”

Uraraka freezes; Asui tenses next to her. “Okay, Torino-sensei!” she manages, as she frantically reviews her behavior in the combat exercises. She doesn’t think she’s done anything to warrant a punishment. Speaking of… Bakugou is still smarting over his personal, one-on-one spar that Gran Torino mercilessly yanked him through after one caustic comment too many.

As Uraraka glances over at Midoriya and Yagi, the former looks panicked and the latter looks resigned.

“Do you want us to wait for you and Midoriya?” Asui murmurs.

“No, no,” she says. “We still have to stock up supplies at the apartment complex, remember? You guys get a head start; Deku and I can handle it.”

It, as it turns out, after Torino leads them to the rooftop, is a meeting with another pro-hero. Who is floating. Yagi brightens, and shoulders past his homeroom teacher to joyfully shout, “Oshishou!”

“Seventh Wonder, get down here,” barks Torino, kicking the door shut. He glances down at Midoriya (who is vibrating again) and Uraraka, and gruffly adds, “Don’t worry. She’s not the scary one.”

Seventh Wonder hurtles down like a stone, and she must use her Quirk again, because she lands without so much of a thump. She’s muscular. Like, whoa. Uraraka feels like she has stars in her eyes, watching Seventh Wonder hug Yagi hello, laughing the entire time. When she turns, the mirth doesn’t even fade at the sight of two strange teenagers hovering behind Gran Torino.

“Hello!” she says. “Torino, did you pick up ducklings or what?”

“They’re not ducklings,” he grouses, and shoves at least Uraraka forward, because Midoriya is already jolting ahead. “The girl’s got a Quirk like yours, and the green brat moves like me. I wanted to walk through some extra combat exercises. Take them on patrol.”

“They’re my classmates for the month,” Yagi helpfully adds.

Seventh Wonder digests this as Midoriya halts in front of her.

“Midoriya Izuku, pleasure to meet you!” He bows, hurriedly, and he’s about to turn on the fanboy energy, Uraraka can tell. Except Seventh Wonder suddenly frowns, clasps him by the shoulders, and ducks down to meet Midoriya’s eyes. He squeaks, “E-eh?”

“Do I know you?” Seventh Wonder wonders aloud. From this angle, Uraraka sees her eyes flash silver. A stormcloud illuminated by lightning.

“Um,” says Midoriya. He sounds like he doesn’t know whether to say yes or no, when the answer is definitely no. It should be no. They are more than forty years in the past, and Uraraka herself has no idea who this pro-hero is. She hadn’t even known who Gran Torino was. But, Uraraka reflects a little hysterically, Midoriya is always, always, always the weird one.

“Oshishou?” Yagi steps up by her shoulder, and peers at Midoriya. “Oh.”

And his eyes, already a bright blue she’s familiar with in the future, also glow. Uraraka splutters. She connects the dots. She is definitely cornering Midoriya later, because this feels related to the League of Villains.

“Shimura,” Torino says, clipped. “They’re from the Commission.”

Seventh Wonder takes that as some kind of confirmation.

“Well, who among us haven’t tangled with time travel Quirks,” she says ruefully. She claps Midoriya’s shoulders, blinks, and looks to Uraraka. Her smile is toothy and, in another weird way, also familiar. Eerily familiar. “Say, Torino said you have a Quirk like mine?”

Uraraka latches onto the conversational lifeline. She also executes a hasty bow. “Yes! My name is Uraraka Ochako. Pleased to meet you!”

#bnha #uraraka ochako #uravity #midoriya izuku #deku #torino sorahiko #gran torino #shimura nana #shih.txt #shih's art #booted to the frontlines #i love wips. hope to finish one these days.

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astonishinglegends · 4 years ago

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Ep 200: The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich Part 2

“It seems to me that he’s playing some sort of game. He’s flying over me two, three times at a time, at speeds I could not identify.”

– Frederick Valentich - 7:08 pm, somewhere over the Bass Strait in Australia, October 21st, 1978

Description:

When the facts about a paranormal event yield no more answers, investigators and the public alike tend to turn their attention to the experiencer's character to ascertain its authenticity. So what kind of person was Frederick Valentich? A once-lost aircraft accident report from Australia's Department of Transport, which resurfaced in 2012, has shed some light on Valentich's behavior and state of mind leading up to the moment of his disappearance. Through extensive interviews with his family, friends, associates, and the flight personnel he came into contact with, a picture emerges of Valentich's disposition. Although there were some puzzling actions and statements by the young pilot, overall, he appeared to be a dedicated and serious student of aviation. Yet if a paranormal cause of his disappearance is off the table of consideration, then the answer must lie in one of his shortcomings, right? This has led to speculation that Valentich intended to abscond with the aircraft and start a new life, or he planned a mysterious suicide, or that as a UFO enthusiast, he simply mistook stars and planets for a UFO and crashed trying to avoid it. As we delve further into the details and analysis from the official report in part two of our series, we're joined by listener and lifelong Melbourne resident Chris Tyler. Being quite familiar with the case, Chris will lend his own insight into the mystery and illustrate this enchanting Australian backdrop's prevailing attitudes and characteristics.

Location:

Moorabbin Airport, where Frederick Valentich took off from on October 21, 1978, headed for King Island across Bass Strait.

Reference Links:

“Capturing the Light” – The true story of Dorothy Izatt on Amazon Prime

The Frederick Valentich case on the original Unsolved Mysteries, Season 5, Episode 2 on Amazon Prime

“Last Light: the Valentich Mystery” from The History Listen with Kirsti Melville on ABC.net.au

“Disappearance of Frederick Valentich” on Wikipedia

“What Happened to Frederick Valentich? Possibly the scariest UFO case ever” by OzWeatherman on AboveTopSecret.com

“Valentich Case Files Finally Released” by Kandinsky on AboveTopSecret.com

“The Valentich Abduction/Disappearance: 40th Anniversary” by MirageMan on AboveTopSecret.com

“The Abduction of Fred Valentich” from The Unexplained Files on Discovery UK – YouTube clip of Melbourne Flight Advisor Officer Steve Robey describing his radio communication with Valentich

Complete episode on the Valentich disappearance from The Unexplained Files on the Discovery Channel

Cessna 182 “Skylane”

Valentich’s missing aircraft report online, from the National Archives of Australia

Download of Valentich’s missing aircraft report as a PDF

Bass Strait

Moorabbin Airport

“'Truth' was out there after all –An accidental discovery sheds new light on the mysterious disappearance of a pilot in 1978, writes Miles Kemp” from The Advertiser

Australian UFO researcher, Keith Basterfield

Melbourne, Australia

Tasmania

King Island, Tasmania

Visit King’s Island

“Biography of Bette Nesmith Graham, Inventor of Liquid Paper” on ThoughtCo.com

Bette Nesmith Graham on Wikipedia

Australian crayfish

The TCAS or Traffic collision avoidance system

“What C.S. Lewis and Martin Luther Would Say About Our Coronavirus Panic”

Black Death

Second plague pandemic

“Plague was one of history’s deadliest diseases—then we found a cure” on NationalGeographic.com

Suggested Listening:

Check out our good friend Gledders’ paranormal podcast, ANOMALY, where he, his co-host Steve Freestone, and Forrest discuss some of the more weird and wild events of 2020 and more in his latest 2-part series. Click here to subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, the website at anomaly.co.uk, or anywhere excellent podcasts are found.

And then after that, check out Gledders’ “80’s Mix Tape” for the best in 1980s music, Saturdays, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. in the UK, or stream anytime at Huntingdon Community Radio HCR 104 FM!

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Credits:

Episode 200: The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich Part 2. Produced by Scott Philbrook & Forrest Burgess; Audio Editing by Sarah Vorhees Wendel. Sound Design by Ryan McCullough; Tess Pfeifle, Producer, and Lead Researcher; Research Support from the astonishing League of Astonishing Researchers, a.k.a. The Astonishing Research Corps, or "A.R.C." for short. Copyright 2021 Astonishing Legends Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

#199 #Frederick Valentich #Melbourne #Australia #Moorabbin #airport #UFO #Tasmania #Bass Strait #Unsolved Mysteries #King Island #Cessna #pilot #airplane #UAP #200

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paperficwriter · 4 years ago

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A Spiral-Shaped Hole

A retrospective on Unus Annus

(More under cut)

It’s been a week since the end, and it’s so weird that I am still thinking about it.

I had the stream up on my computer since 3:00 p.m. There were a few points I had it on mute while multitasking other things, but it had been there in the background constantly, black and white and ticking away. That had always been my plan: to have the final stream of Unus Annus on while I did other stuff, tuning in here and there.

Until it was actually happening, I just couldn’t imagine sitting through a twelve-hour stream of anything. I don’t do that. I’m not a huge binge-watcher. I’m bad at staying focused for long periods of time, especially when it’s new information. I have to be doing things.

I’ve never experienced twelve hours move by so, so quickly.

—

In the aftermath of the stream titled “Goodbye,” I saw a lot of people on Twitter asking what was up with the hashtags, wishing people well on their ‘anuses.’ I also saw a lot of people genuinely asking, “What is this Unus Annus death thing that’s trending?” Some gave explanations. Some people said you had to be there.

If you’re still not familiar (or lucky enough to be a part of the experience), Unus Annus (“One Year,” in Latin) was a project and channel on YouTube run by two gamers, Mark (Markiplier) and Ethan (crankgameplays). The concept was that they would release videos of them enjoying a variety of experiences for one year, after which the entire project would be deleted. Forever.

A constant ticking clock shown at the beginning and end of each video counted down from 365 days to 0 with days, hours, minutes and seconds, reminding viewers that there was no stopping the passage of time.

Part of the appeal of the channel for many people was the intertwining of both the absurd and profound. The creators regularly revisited the saying “Memento Mori,” with each other as well as their guests, who ranged from physical trainers to casket designers to guard dog trainers, lizard handlers, and goat yoga instructors. Remember death. At its core, the message of the channel was to recognize that death comes for us all, and in this case the end of the channel would mean the death of everything they created.

When the clock counted down to zero, Mark and Ethan would delete the channel in its entirety, and with it the over 365 videos that took hundreds of hours of editing to get them out there. As the year continued on, people kept assuming that there would be some reconsideration. That in lieu of a year like 2020, the guys would decide against following through.

And when it became clear that was not the case, people started begging for it not to happen.

—

I rarely leave my house. I have now and then, of course, for specific errands, but compared to how this was less than a year ago when I was commuting to my day job, coming home, going out with friends, meeting up for movie and television show nights on Fridays, and travelling out of state...it’s a lot to just constantly have to stay in one spot.

Because it’s 2020, and there’s a pandemic outside the door that isn’t going away, as much as people think that it is or that it will or, worse, that it doesn’t matter either way.

I hit some hard points this year, as I know many have. I’ve gotten low. I’ve almost given up. I have found myself unable to create, to do anything other than lie in bed or sit in front of my computer “doom-scrolling” on Twitter, a term I had never even heard of before. There are days where it feels like my brain is a spin-the-wheel game; what emotion will it land on? Despair? Anger? Depression? Anxiety?

Regret?

Regret was - has been - often. Things that I had put off and said I would do a bit later - not even far ahead later, but just ‘not quite right now but’ later - seemed like things I might never be able to do. And that was so awful, the sensation of giving up on even small things.

Over the summer, my partner introduced me to Unus Annus. I was familiar with Mark(iplier) but not with Ethan, other than seeing him destroy a not-even-close-to-finished gingerbread house on a stream with Mark previously.

I started watching.

Remember how I mentioned the absurd? Suddenly I was going into past episodes and watching Mark and Ethan, among many other things:

Cook breakfast using sex toys

Play a game called “nutball,” which is honestly exactly what it sounds like

Draw naked pictures of one another

Use urine in a portable home sauna (one of three different videos that had to do with pee)

Go ghost-hunting

Play Two Truths and a Lie while waxing one another when they got an answer wrong

And the list went on and on.

The videos were absolutely fucking hilarious.

Most nights I would watch at least a couple of videos before going to bed, and some never, ever failed to make me laugh. I would turn on compilations at the end of the night before bed, just to end the day with something good.

I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t torn. As a creator, I admired Unus Annus’ commitment to owning the spirit of their project, encouraging people to live in the present. In a time where we assume everything that appears on the Internet will be there forever, having people committed to getting rid of everything at the end was impressive.

On the other hand, I also told myself I wouldn’t mind too terrible much if that just didn’t happen.

—

As the time ticked on past midnight, the chat on the YouTube stream was a blur.

#STOPTHECLOCK. Pleas that they not do it. People talking about how much they would miss them.

It wasn’t even really what you would call a “chat” anymore than you would call the crowd in a concert a conversation. You basically sat there and watched the noise as it happened, unable to really interact with anyone.

And as the time went on, they said goodbye. They said goodbye to their editors and to important people who had been with them throughout their journey. We got to see more of Amy, a fellow creator who was just as involved in the project as Mark and Ethan but stayed behind the scenes (behind the camera or the computer, often).

And at 3:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, Mark, Ethan and Amy pressed delete on the channel.

—

Since the channel and project ended, there have been mixed reactions. It felt - it feels - like a real loss. Just the other day, I found an anime music video from almost twenty years ago that I watched in high school, just for nostalgia’s sake. It’s a strange disconnected feeling, realizing that you can’t do this with this project.

There is still plenty of fanwork out there. Although Mark and Ethan took a hard stance against reuploading any of the Unus Annus videos (and there have already been so many attempts), they welcomed people to relive their memories with them and with the channel by leaving up their own clips, art, music and other transformative works that were inspired by the videos.

But even when you are watching the ones that are still up, it’s easy to feel like it’s sort of like watching old home movies of people no longer in your life. It’s not the same as having them there.

I know there have been and will be more projects like Unus Annus. But I don’t think there will ever be something like it in a time like this, when we needed to remember to make the most of the time we have. Grab it up, take it, move forward. When it sucks, it sucks, and you don’t have control over that. But then, it won’t suck. And it will be good. Because things can and do change so fast, and there is no stopping the passage of time.

#writing by paper #unus annus #markiplier #crankgameplays #iceddarkroast #mark fischbach #ethan nestor #amy nelson #2020 #this was originally going to get put up last week but #yeah this really left a feeling for me

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dammitadolfnomorecake · 4 years ago

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Undercover Lover prt 22 prt 1

To Eren’s complete surprise he didn’t wind up in bed with Levi at the end of the night. He’d drunk enough to be nicely buzzed, but Isabel had been at the bar with her daughter, who’d taken an instant liking to him. Hanging onto him, Hannah wouldn’t listen to “Daddy Farlan”, or “Mummy Izzy”. The four year old squarely sitting in his lap and deciding they were now best friends. Erwin had been on guard over the whole thing, Farlan cranky he’d been temporarily misplaced, but no one could argue with the logic of a four year old and it was kind of really nice to be a “hero” again, like he’d been to Mina and Thomas.

His drinks had swapped to water, the little girl in his lap talked on and on about all sorts of things until Isabel placed a colouring book in front of her to try to settle her down. That only made her more excited as she asked Eren all about the colours and told him off when he got the names of things in the pictures wrong. Seated beside Levi, Levi wasn’t handling having Hannah being messy beside him. Eren using his arm to keep her from annoying “Uncle Levi” too much. Part of him was jealous. Jealous that Mikasa had experienced pregnancy twice before he’d even found his mate. He’d always kind of gone first to protect his friends, then she’d gone and done the one thing he’d never thought he could do. Seeing her pregnant had been hard, but he’s been so proud of her and loved his niece and nephew fiercely, thinking they’d be the closest thing he’d ever to his own children.

“Eren! You’re not listening to me”

Taking a pencil up the nose, Eren supposed he deserved it. He couldn’t help wanting to watch Levi from the corner of his eye. His body deciding to be extra clucky, except Levi really did seem to prefer some distance between him and Hannah

“I’m sorry, Hannah. I was thinking and it hurt”

“I bet it did. I don’t know what colour to do the dress”

Everything was creatively coloured as it was. The princess in the picture now with blue and green skin

“Hmmm... what’s mummy’s favourite colour?”

“How am I supposed to know that?”

“Fair point. What about red? Like mummy’s hair?”

“She can’t wear a red dress! Her skin is green!”

Hannah made it sound like some inexcusable crime. Eren snorting. Kids were so damn brutal

“Okay, what about pink?”

“Pink is dumb”

Picking up the pink pencil, Eren had a feeling that was something someone had told Hannah and not her actual feelings on the colour. Colouring the edge of the dress, Eren shrugged, sounding as casual as he could

“I don’t know. I think it’s pretty nice...”

“I like pink too”

Ah. Yep. There it was

“Then you should colour her dress in. You’re doing a great job there”

Hannah lit up under the praise. All children seemed to become show offs for every single adult that wasn’t their parent. Cupping her hand, Hannah “whispered”

“I know. Don’t tell mummy but she’s really bad at this”

“Okay... I won’t. But I bet mummy tries really hard”

Sighing at how hard her little life was, Hannah was once again brutal

“Uncle Levi says she’s very trying”

Across the table Hanji snorted with laughter. She and Erwin had been talking back and forth until Hanji’s husband Moblit had arrived. The night had gotten pretty late and Isabel and Farlan were bussing tables and cleaning up. Levi banned from helping them in a way that didn’t sit right with Eren. Levi couldn’t help his OCD tendencies, and didn’t need to be ragged on for cleaning things within an inch of their life

“No, honey. It’s Uncle Levi that’s trying”

“The only thing Uncle Levi is trying to do is grow up... Even mummy’s taller than him”

Hanji cackled. Eren finding himself upset that his mate was being picked on. Poking Hannah gently in the side, he frowned at her over her shoulder

“Now. That’s not very nice. Your Uncle Levi loves you very much. People come in all shapes and sizes and that’s okay”

“You can say that because you’re huge”

“And you little missy are tiny...”

Tickling Hannah’s sides gently, Hannah howled with laughter. A gentle explanation was always his preferred to a harsh scolding

“Nooooo!”

Stopping tickling Hannah, Hannah stared up at him. Shit. He really really missed Mina

“Are you okay? You look sad. Sometimes you need to do a big poo when you’re sad”

That sounded like an adapted “getting shit over and done with”

“Did your Uncle tell you that?”

“Daddy did”

“I’m sure he has a point. He’s a smart man”

“He is. But he does smelly poos”

This kid was killing him. Farlan calling over to them from the bar

“That’s enough, Hannah. Finish up your picture, it’s bed time”

“I wanna stay here!”

“I know, but it’s past your bedtime as it is!”

It well and truly was. It was past his bedtime too. Isabel explained she hadn’t been able to get a sitter, but Farlan couldn’t clean up on his own

“You know, even I have a bedtime”

Hannah’s eyes went wide

“You do?”

“Yep. I get up and go to work super early”

“That’s stupid. I don’t want to go to bed”

Nope. Hannah was on the verge of an overtired meltdown. Eren could see it on her face. He’d managed to avoid waterworks so far, time to be distracting again

“If you work fast, we can finish this picture before you do. I’d really like to see it all coloured in”

With Hannah falling asleep against him, the other said their goodbyes while he and Levi waited for Farlan and Isabel to finish up. Erwin was oddly nice when he thought about things. He hadn’t snarked at him once, though he had been on edge when Hannah started clinging to the omega. With Moblit being the designated sober driver, Hanji was hanging off her husband, demanding Erwin come back to their’s for more drinks. Levi sighing as Moblit apologised, but Eren felt Levi was more or less sighing at him becoming a pillow for the four year old when all the alpha wanted to do was go home. His very important job as a pillow rendering them stuck until for a further half an hour where Eren carried little miss Hannah out to the car, so Isabel had her hands free to unclip the car seat and triple check she had everything before Eren lowered Hannah into place.

Left out of the “boys club” Farlan and Levi were having a cigarette together near the back door of the bar. Eren unable to stop himself from shooting a wistful glance at the cigarette he really wished he was having

“Sooo. You and my big brother?”

Not another one... Clipping Hannah into place, Isabel re-emerged out the car, a mischievous smile on her face

“Are friends. I ended up with no place to stay and he took in a stray”

“Mhmm. I might believe it if it wasn’t big brother Levi. He took me and Farlan in, but that was years ago... before he was so... anal about things”

Eren wasn’t touching that one

“Our piece of sh...sugar boss had me training him. We’ve been working together for a few months now”

Isabel crossed her arms, her expression turning serious

“Thank you for looking after Hannah tonight, but if you’re thinking of hurting my brother...”

“Don’t worry, I’ve had the talk repeatedly. No. I’m not thinking of hurting Levi”

Looking him up and down, Isabel snorted a giggle, covering her mouth as she did

“I’m sorry. I can’t. Yeah, no. Don’t worry. I’m not going to pull an Erwin on you. I can tell you’re an okay guy. I mean, Hannah absolutely adores you already, and you were really great with her”

“My adoptive sister has two of her own. I’m the cool uncle”

“I’m sure you are. Look, I don’t know what’s going on between you and Levi, but I know he’s not going to be happy tonight. He’s not that great at dealing with Hannah’s whims. I mean, he tries, but it’s hard for him with his...”

Isabel gestured, leaving Eren to nod understandingly

“His need for clean? I know. I noticed how he wanted to join in, but kept stopping himself. Thanks for the heads up”

“He really must think you’re special if he’s bringing you around again. He’s been hurt a lot, it’s not for me stay but he stayed with his uncle for a bit, then his uncle up and left him. Sometimes it’s like he thinks we’ll leave him too. He’s a good man. I mean, he didn’t have to help me and Farlan out, but he’s always been there for us. Maybe you can get through to him that he’s okay being himself”

“I’m not sure about that. I mean, he has his quirks, but I think that’s just him...”

“You’re being dense on purpose. Look, he likes you and you like him. Don’t break his heart or Farlan will really break your neck”

“I don’t plan on it”

“Then you’re welcome back any time... though I shouldn’t really say that as it’s not Rod’s territory here and Rod is a total tosser”

“Isabel, the last thing I want to do is cause drama. I know how important family is, and it’s not always blood family that makes an actual family. I don’t want Levi getting caught up in my sh-sugar, and I don’t want anything happening to him...”

Choosing now to start walking over to them, Eren let his sentence trail off. Isabel giggling over it as she smiled brightly. He didn’t need her to tell him not to hurt Levi. That was the last thing he wanted to do. Even blowing his cover was preferable to Levi ending up hurt or locked away. All he could do was wait patiently until Pixis had signed off on the arrest warrants and they could move in for the bust.

Slinging his arm around Isabel’s shoulder, Farlan actually smiled at him

“Thanks for looking after Hannah. I wasn’t sure you had it in you”

Hopefully he hadn’t given everyone the wrong impression with his longing to see his family again. Wrapping his arms around himself, Eren lamented how nice the night was. It’d be perfect for a long ride down to the coast

“She reminds me of my niece... well, and my sister. I haven’t seen them in awhile, they’re not close... Sorry. Anyway, yeah. Thanks for tonight. I was pretty sure either you or Erwin were plotting my death, so it’s nice to know I’m going to be around for a little longer”

Ending with a nervous laugh Eren hoped he hadn’t just ruined all the nights work. Farlan wasn’t giving him anything. Levi put his hand on Eren’s arm, Eren’s heart giving a weird beat as he tried to avoid looking at Isabel who wore a smirk on her face. Okay. He couldn’t do anything about this, but it didn’t have to mean anything if he didn’t let it

“Tch. No one’s about to kill you. I’ll come see you guys soon. We’re leaving, brat”

The “goodbye” felt a little awkward. Isabel smacking Farlan for something the man whispered as they walked away. To make matters more confusing, Levi kept his hand on Eren’s arm right up until they reached the alpha’s car

“You’re right to drive, right?”

Eren cocked his head in confusion

“I can if you want me to. I didn’t think you drank that much”

“I didn’t... you just had a look on your face like you were thinking about something far away”

“Oh, it’s fine. I was just thinking this a nice night to go for a ride”

“You’re not getting on your motorbike after drinking”

“But you’ll let me drive your car?”

Levi huffed, he’d somehow pissed the alpha off

“If you don’t want to drive, I’ll fucking drive”

“No. It’s okay. I don’t mind. You had a pretty long night and I’m the one who had a nap”

Handing over the keys, Levi finally took his hand off Eren’s arm. Levi’s hands carried a certain kind of warmth that he’d been starved of for so long

“You crash my car...”

“Yeah, yeah. Anywhere in particular, or just home?”

“Whatever. Where do you usually go when you go out on your bike?”

“That’s a bit of a drive”

“Then don’t fucking crash”

Levi fell asleep during the drive. Eren stopping at a 24 hour service station to pick up a coffee and a tea for the sleeping alpha, before continuing the drive out to the coast. The first time he’d come to the beach had been with his friends, kind of like a last hurrah before they plunged into the world of adulthood. Parking up near the park before the pier, there was a certain kind of magic that came with being near the ocean at night. Leaving the car running and the heater on, Eren took his coffee as he left Levi sleeping, making the walk to the closest bench to sit and think about how Levi’s car needed a new ignition barrel seeing the car was on and the keys were in his pocket.

Their trip to the beach was the last time Mikasa confessed her feelings for him. Maybe he would have felt something if they hadn’t been brother and sister, something that felt almost instant when Mikasa joined their family. Heck, in under a year, he’d gained a sister only a little older than he was, and a new best friend. His mother had adored Mikasa. Mikasa who got the perfect grades and to which everything came as naturally as breathing air. Okay, that might be a little harsh, but it’d certainly shown his mother how much he was lacking.

Stretching out, it was amazing what the mind remembered. He didn’t remember the whole trip. He couldn’t remember who brought them to the beach, but he could remember things like failing hard at beach volleyball ball, and Sasha eating a whole watermelon by herself. Jean had been stupid enough to get a mouthful of water on his forest dive under the waves, their friend Conny laughing hard as Jean complained about how salty it had tasted. He’d known for a long time he didn’t want to be a doctor. When his dad started acting crazy after his mother’s death, he’d honestly been terrified to death at time of his father’s mental instability. Fortunately, all his father’s disappointments fell on his shoulders, not Mikasa’s. One night his father took it too far. He’d driven him out to the middle of the forest and just lost it completely. The fear he felt... he never wanted anyone else to feel it... and with no one having all that much belief in him, he’d turned into a right little shit. How he managed to graduate, he still wasn’t sure. He just knew he had to get out. That there was a world out there, and there were people suffering because no one would speak up for them.

So. He’d become an officer. Mikasa and Armin right there beside him... His Armin... who hadn’t even been able to stand up to bullies. He wanted more for Armin, but Armin made his mind up. By some twist of fate, he had no idea until he was at the training academy that Jean, Marco, Connie, and Sasha had all sort of followed him. Each of them wanting to escape the shit in their lives and not wanting to lose what they had as a group. Over time they spilt up, then came back together, split up again, then came back together when Mikasa and Jean married. Fast forward a few more years and Marco was dead, and there he was feeling sorry for himself. He hadn’t been the best officer. He’d had more than one written warning over his conduct, but he worked hard at his cases the best he could.

Lost in contemplation, Eren jumped as Levi came up behind him

“The next time you piss in a cup, don’t leave in the car”

“It’s not my fault service station tea isn’t to your liking. It cost me a whole dollar. You should be grateful”

“Says the lunatic that’s kidnapped me”

Tilting his head back, Eren stared up at the star shot sky

“You asked where I went. Normally I’d go along the coast, but this is nice”

Other than the waves and the very distant sounds of the port the place was fairly quiet. Shinganshima had hit its housing boom in his teen years, people wanting more and more to live closer to the coast. Thanks development laws, there were still nice patches of coast like this.

Walking around the bench, Levi dropped down next to him, before grimacing as he sipped his tea

“Maybe if you added sugar the taste wouldn’t be so bad?”

“I don’t think sugar can save this piss”

“Probably not. The coffee wasn’t awful...”

“It’s the middle of the night, don’t blame me when you can’t sleep”

“I’ll be fine...”

Tilting his head forward again, Eren looked to Levi as he spoke

“... but speaking of that, are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You seemed a little on edge when Hannah was colouring in”

Levi gazed at the lid of his tea, the alpha tensing momentarily, then relaxing again

“I guess I’m not used to kids. I don’t dislike her... she’s my niece... but I don’t know what to do”

“I didn’t know what to do either at first... She kept making me miss my niece...”

“You could call them?”

“Nah. I mean, I don’t want my sister coming down and getting mixed up with Rod”

“Fair call. I didn’t expect you to be so good with her”

“Must be an omega thing. Though, when you look at Mikasa, she’s the one who’s got it figured out. Not me. I didn’t really realise how jealous I was of her...”

There he went, letting himself talk too much again

“You want kids?”

“I don’t know. I never thought it’d be an option outside of adoption. Honestly, Armin is the only one who knew how hard I took Mikasa falling pregnant. She’s always been the best out of the three of us. I sound so pathetic right now”

“I think you earned the right to being pathetic after babysitting most of the night”

Eren snorted. Kids weren’t hard... adults were the tricky bit of life

“She was fine. Like I said, I was more worried about you”

“Tch. It’s about a decade too soon for you to be worrying about me”

“Still... Sorry. I’m probably making you uncomfortable”

A long moment turned to several before Levi replied. The alpha’s voice low, almost mumbled

“I know I’m not the best at human interactions... I also know I shouldn’t let myself be controlled by my need to clean...”

It sounded an awful lot like Levi was about to apologise

“Don’t. Yeah, I might not get it. But I’m not the one in your head being frustrated by it all. You’re okay to act how you need to act. It’s just another part of you. I know I’m not going to be the best room mate but I respect that it’s your apartment and that things need to be a certain way. I want you to feel like you can tell me off if I’ve done something wrong”

Great. They were plunged into silence again. Eren didn’t know how he kept saying the wrong thing. Finishing his tea, Levi leaned right back on the park bench

“I don’t understand what there’s to be jealous about, but you don’t have to judge yourself by everyone else’s standards”

And Levi called him weird...

“It’s pretty bad to be jealous of your own sister...”

“It’s worse to act on that jealousy”

Still. He was. Twice Mikasa had grown this whole other little human in her belly. Twice she’d given birth. Even if he experienced it, he was afraid he’d feel inferior seeing Mikasa had been there and done all that before him

“I shouldn’t have brought it up. I mean, I love my niece and nephew... I just... feel left behind because my dynamic is messed up”

“Tch. You have so little confidence that it’s amazing you made it anywhere in life. Of course you’re allowed to feel jealous. I read some of those sites on beta-omegas and they’re fucking shit”

He’d pushed Levi as it was. He didn’t want the alpha expiring from the embarrassment of showing he cared enough to try work Eren out

“Pretty much. Hurrah! You’re broken, but you can still get on your hands and knees and lick your alphas feet. I don’t want to be like that”

“That’s fucking revolting. Do you know how dirty feet are?”

“Especially ours. Here I was, trying to let you know you can talk to me, and I’ve turned it into a shitty counselling session”

“It’s fine. We make a great shitty pair”

“Us against the world. Wouldn’t it be nice if we just jump on a boat? Sail away like our enemies weren’t out there waiting for us”

“Don’t remind. Rod wants me in Eldia next weekend for some major underground fight. The way he spoke to begin with, I thought I’d have more time. I’ll leave the Thursday night and be back Monday morning”

If Levi was going away, he’d have to find a place to stay. Not that he didn’t have to as it was. He couldn’t very well follow Rod to the fight

“I’ll book a hotel tomorrow”

“Why?”

“You won’t be home”

“Tch. It’s your apartment too for now. It’s fine. Don’t shit on the benches and we won’t have problem”

“What if I shit in the fridge?”

“Then... I don’t know. Fuck”

Eren chuckled. It wasn’t often he managed to confuse Levi into not knowing what to say

“It’s okay, I promise I won’t. I still feel bad you took me in”

“I’m not sorry to see the last of those stairs. Are you sure it’s okay leaving your shit there?”

He wasn’t giving up his lease. He hadn’t really wanted to leave in the first place, it was simply too risky to be caught by Rod’s morons at the wrong moment

“Yeah. I got what was important. Plus, don’t forget those stairs. If Rod wants to break in, his goons have to go up those stairs again. Imagine the effort of trying to rob the place when you have to go up and down. Perfect deterrent”

“They could just toss all your shit out the window”

“That’s not the most comforting of thoughts”

His stuff would be looted within half of an hour of it being turfed out the window. Though, if it had to be stolen, having it stolen by people who actually needed it wasn’t so bad

“I’m not the most comforting of people”

“I don’t think you’re all that bad. Even if I know fuck all about you”

Levi snorted

“Not much to fucking tell. Never knew my dad, then when I was kid, my mum got sick and passed away. I was what they call “heading down the wrong path” when I fell in with Erwin. He knew Hanji and Moblit before I did...”

“I think there’s many people who’d say being a street fighter working for a thug is still heading down the wrong path”

“Probably. Yeah. But when you’ve been fighting your whole life, there’s not that many options open”

“Mmm. Trying being a killer...”

“You’re not a killer... I... I don’t know the situation but I do know you wouldn’t have killed your partner. How do you feel about the police force now?”

He honestly couldn’t blame them for the fallout and eventually all would come out when he was reinstated

“I don’t hate them. None of us can say for sure what happened... I’m okay where I am now... kind of. I mean, things used to be simpler, but I don’t feel like I’m just existing anymore”

Thanks to Levi. Having a friend... He hadn’t realised how much he missed someone who was going through kind of the same thing. Being a different dynamic meant a different point of view, yet Levi was his what helped make work more bearable than it had been

“Shit, brat. You’re being nice. Maybe I shouldn’t have let you drive”

“Fuck off. I got us here, didn’t I?”

“Yep. Bumfuck nowhere”

“Pretty much. Still, it’s different on a bike. We should get you a helmet”

“Or we could not”

Eren snorted. Levi just didn’t get the feeling of freedom at all

“Can we compromise?”

“No. I’ve seen too many accidents... on the news, I mean...”

“That’s not always the case. Look, with Hannah, you don’t have to try so hard. Yeah, kids are sticky and messy, but as long as you’re nice, they’re not that bad. I think she wanted your attention tonight”

“I’m already juggling one brat, I don’t need two”

#undercover lover #undercoverlover #ashratherose #omegaverse #snk

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