#macbook replacement parts

[phinktechno]

Reliable Solutions for Apple MacBook Parts Replacement Across Melbourne

When it comes to Apple MacBook parts replacement service and Apple Mac replacement parts, Phinko Technology offers unmatched quality and expertise. Whether you're replacing screens, keyboards, or other components, we ensure your device performs at its best. Here’s why you should choose us: 

Access genuine Apple MacBook replacement parts for all models.

Competitive pricing tailored for IT professionals and resellers.

Prompt shipping across Australia to minimise downtime.

Get advice and assistance from our knowledgeable team.

All parts are sourced from reliable suppliers for optimal performance.

[itsappleexpert]

Fast Mac Screen Repair Service: Get Your Device Fixed Today

In today’s fast-paced world, your Mac is more than just a device – it’s an essential tool for productivity, entertainment, and communication. But what happens when your Mac’s screen is cracked, shattered, or malfunctioning? The good news is that with fast Mac screen repair services, you can get your device fixed today and return to your tasks with minimal downtime.

Whether you rely on your Mac for work, school, or personal projects, a damaged screen can disrupt your entire routine. Fortunately, expert repair services can restore your device to its original condition with quick turnaround times, ensuring you don’t have to wait long to get back on track.

Why Fast Mac Screen Repairs Are Crucial

When your Mac’s screen is damaged, it can be frustrating, especially if you rely on your device for daily tasks. The screen is one of the most important components, affecting everything from visuals to functionality. A cracked screen or display issues can make it difficult to use your device effectively. That’s why having access to a fast Mac screen repair service is crucial.

Minimize Disruption: A damaged screen can make your Mac unusable or difficult to use, disrupting your workflow. Fast repairs ensure that you experience as little downtime as possible. With many services offering same-day or next-day repairs, you won’t have to wait long to resume your activities.

Cost-Effective: The longer you wait to fix your Mac screen, the worse the damage can become. Cracks can spread, and internal components can suffer, leading to more expensive repairs. Fast service can help prevent further damage and keep your repair costs lower.

Convenience: Fast Mac screen repair services often offer flexible repair options such as walk-in, mail-in, or even on-site repairs. This convenience means you can choose the method that works best for you, and you don’t have to interrupt your schedule to get your device fixed.

Protect Your Device: A cracked or damaged screen can expose your Mac to further damage, such as internal component failure or water ingress. Quick repairs can help prevent these risks and ensure that your device remains safe and functional.

How Fast Mac Screen Repair Works

The process of fast Mac screen repair typically involves a few key steps that help minimize your wait time while ensuring the quality of the repair. Here’s a look at the typical process:

Diagnosis: The first step is to assess the damage. When you bring your Mac in for repair, technicians will examine the screen to identify the problem. If it’s a crack, shattered glass, or display issue, they’ll diagnose the exact cause and decide the best course of action.

Estimate: After the diagnosis, you’ll be provided with an estimate for the repair. This includes the cost of parts and labor, along with a timeframe for when you can expect the repair to be completed. Many repair services offer free estimates, so you’ll know what to expect before committing to the repair.

Repair: Once you approve the estimate, the repair technicians will begin working on your Mac. For most screen repairs, the process is relatively quick, with many professionals capable of completing the fix within 1-2 hours. They’ll replace the screen with high-quality, compatible parts to ensure your Mac performs as it should.

Testing: After the repair is completed, technicians will test the screen to ensure that it functions correctly. They’ll check for any display issues, touch responsiveness, or color inconsistencies to make sure your screen is working perfectly.

Return: Once your Mac screen is repaired and tested, you’ll receive your device back, often the same day or within a few hours. Some repair services even offer delivery options, allowing your Mac to be returned to you without needing to pick it up.

Common Screen Issues Addressed by Fast Repair Services

Fast Mac screen repair services can resolve a variety of issues, from simple cracks to more complex display problems. Some of the most common screen issues include:

Cracked or Shattered Screen: Physical damage from a drop or impact can cause cracks or shattering of the screen. This is one of the most common reasons for Mac screen repair. Fast service can replace the damaged screen with a new one, restoring your device to full functionality.

Dead Pixels: Sometimes, certain areas of your Mac’s screen may fail to display correctly, resulting in dead or stuck pixels. These issues can be frustrating, but a fast repair service can replace the screen or address the problem to restore the display’s quality.

Flickering or Dim Screens: If your Mac’s screen flickers or appears dim, it can be due to a hardware issue with the backlight or display assembly. Fast repairs can address the underlying cause and ensure that the display brightness and clarity are fully restored.

Touchscreen Issues: For Macs with touch functionality, a malfunctioning touchscreen can make the device unusable. Fast repair services can fix issues like unresponsiveness, ghost touches, or incorrect inputs to restore the touchscreen functionality.

Color Distortion or Lines: Color distortion or vertical/horizontal lines on the screen can be caused by various factors, including hardware issues or internal damage. A quick repair will fix these problems and return your Mac’s display to its original state.

The Benefits of Fast Mac Screen Repair Services

Same-Day Repairs: Many expert repair services offer same-day repairs, so you don’t have to wait days or weeks to get your Mac back. With quick service, you can be sure that your device is repaired and ready to use in no time.

High-Quality Parts: Fast repair services don’t sacrifice quality for speed. Technicians use high-quality, genuine, or certified parts to ensure that your Mac’s screen is repaired to the highest standards, restoring its performance and appearance.

Affordable Pricing: Quick repairs are often more affordable than you might think. Fast services are designed to save you both time and money, offering competitive pricing for high-quality repairs.

Customer Satisfaction: Fast service doesn’t mean rushed work. Reputable repair centers prioritize customer satisfaction and ensure that repairs are done correctly and efficiently. Many even offer warranties on their work, giving you added peace of mind.

A damaged Mac screen can throw a wrench in your day, but with fast Mac screen repair services, you don’t have to be without your device for long. Whether your screen is cracked, flickering, or unresponsive, expert repair technicians can quickly diagnose and fix the issue, often within the same day. With high-quality parts, affordable pricing, and fast turnaround times, professional repair services offer a convenient, effective solution for getting your Mac back to full functionality. Don’t let a damaged screen hold you back – get your Mac fixed today and keep moving forward with minimal disruption.

[wingedalpacawinner]

MacBook Air Repair

In the heart of Dubai, where modern know-how meets extraordinary performance, the desire for optimal MacBook fix facilities is paramount. Prabhat Mac Care and Apple Parts Dubai have emerged because the ideal service vendors, delivering an extensive differ of fix recommendations for all MacBook types, along with the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Their commitment to excellence and customer pleasure sets them aside inside the bustling metropolis.

Prabhat Mac Care is synonymous with good-tier MacBook restoration in Dubai. Their workforce of particularly skilled and certified technicians is able to deal with a myriad of trouble, from minor malfunctions to substantial hardware failures. With a focus on precision and knowledge, Prabhat Mac Care ensures that every visitor gets the best exceptional of service, tailored to their actual necessities.

One of the so much original matters confronted by MacBook users is a broken or malfunctioning display. Prabhat Mac Care focuses on MacBook Air Pro display screen restoration, applying authentic Apple constituents to assure the sturdiness and reliability of the fix. Their macbook air pro keyboard replacement technicians are proficient in diagnosing and addressing display disorders, guaranteeing that your MacBook's display screen is restored to its authentic readability and functionality.

Water ruin is some other conventional hardship which could severely affect a MacBook's efficiency. Prabhat Mac Care excels in MacBook Air Pro water injury restoration, featuring finished ideas to mitigate smash and fix the gadget to its most useful kingdom. Their technique consists of meticulous diagnostics, thorough cleaning, and the replacement of any damaged method, making sure a finished and fine repair.

Battery efficiency is obligatory for the portability and usability of a MacBook. Prabhat Mac Care presents trained MacBook Air Pro battery substitute products and services, guaranteeing that your software regains its full battery lifestyles and efficiency. They use satisfactory, unique batteries, allowing you to work and play with out the regular need for recharging. The substitute course of is fast and seamless, prioritizing the buyer’s comfort.

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[service-center-chennai]

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[refreshpc]

Laptop repair center in Bangalore

Spilled liquid on laptop? Best Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer, MacBook repair and service center in Bangalore, Call now @ +91-9620 036 100 🌐 https://refreshpc.in/ #laptoprepaircenter #desktoprepair #Macbookrepair #iMac #laptoprepair #desktoprepair #Bangalore

[ms-demeanor]

One thing that I keep seeing whenever I make posts that are critical of macs is folks in the notes going "they make great computers for the money if you just buy used/refurbs - everyone knows not to buy new" and A) no they don't know that, most people go looking for a new computer unless they have already exhausted the new options in their budget and B) no they don't make great computers for the money, and being used doesn't do anything to make them easier to work on or repair or upgrade.

Here's a breakdown of the anti-consumer, anti-repair features recently introduced in macbooks. If you don't want to watch the video, here's how it's summed up:

In the end the Macbook Pro is a laptop with a soldered-on SSD and RAM, a battery secured with glue, not screws, a keyboard held in with rivets, a display and lid angle sensor no third party can replace without apple. But it has modular ports so I guess that’s something. But I don’t think it’s worthy of IFixIt’s four out of ten reparability score because if it breaks you have to face apple’s repair cost; with no repair competition they can charge whatever they like. You either front the cost, or toss the laptop, leaving me wondering “who really owns this computer?”

Apple doesn't make great computers for the money because they are doing everything possible to make sure that you don't actually own your computer, you just lease the hardware from apple and they determine how long it is allowed to function.

The lid angle sensor discussed in this video replaces a much simpler sensor that has been used in laptops for twenty years AND calibrating the sensor after a repair requires access to proprietary apple software that isn't accessible to either users or third party repair shops. There's no reason for this software not to be included as a diagnostic tool on your computer except that Apple doesn't want users working on apple computers. If your screen breaks, or if the fragile cable that is part of the sensor wears down, your only option to fix this computer is to pay apple.

How long does apple plan to support this hardware? What if you pay $3k for a computer today and it breaks in 7 years - will they still calibrate the replacement screen for you or will they tell you it's time for new hardware EVEN THOUGH YOU COULD HAVE ATTAINED FUNCTIONAL HARDWARE THAT WILL WORK IF APPLE'S SOFTWARE TELLS IT TO?

Look at this article talking about "how long" apple supports various types of hardware. It coos over the fact that a 2013 MacBook Air could be getting updates to this day. That's the longest example in this article, and that's *hardware* support, not the life cycle of the operating system. That is dogshit. That is straight-up dogshit.

Apple computers are DRM locked in a way that windows machines only wish they could pull off, and the apple-only chips are a part of that. They want an entirely walled garden so they can entirely control your interactions with the computer that they own and you're just renting.

Even if they made the best hardware in the world that would last a thousand years and gave you flowers on your birthday it wouldn't matter because modern apple computers don't ever actually belong to apple customers, at the end of the day they belong to apple, and that's on purpose.

This is hardware as a service. This is John Deere. This is subscription access to the things you buy, and if it isn't exactly that right at this moment, that is where things have been heading ever since they realized it was possible to exert a control that granular over their users.

With all sympathy to people who are forced to use them, Fuck Apple I Hope That They Fall Into The Ocean And Are Hidden Away From The Honest Light Of The Sun For Their Crimes.

[pparacxosm]

sigh like a chime

(postcanon!patrick zweig x infant halfsister’s au pair!reader; idk either man; came to me in a dream; title from the sound of music let’s all act shocked; major tw for suicide talk; tw depressive behaviour; tw disordered thoughts about eating; tw vague implication of alcoholic dependency; patrick zweig is generally not doing so hot; like at all; tw strained father son dynamics; tw grown adults projecting childhood trauma onto a baby; warning you now: this is a long one !! ; make a day of it; atp coexisting; lily donaldson being a weird little girl ™; tw airports during holiday season; whoever came up with the headcanon that patrick was late for his circumcision and it got cancelled i owe you a kidney; so cw smut obviously; cw religious ((Christianity, specifically Catholicism + Judaism briefly)) motifs; tw splicing of said motifs with the aforementioned smut; tw vomit)

“It’s not that I’m not happy for him,” Patrick tells Tashi, “I really am, you know I mean that.”

He paces her kitchen impatiently, running fingers through dark, dishevelled hair.

At such times, he still looks like the boy wonder sprinting carelessly across electric blue asphalt, eyes shimmering, as if he were part of that riot of colour. Some of his athletic maturity is replaced with the facetious, callow mannerisms of a hungry novice who wants to skip the necessary steps. Who wants to swallow experience and spit out the bones.

Tashi straddles a stool at the vast marbletop island. She’s pattering away like bulletquick rainfall on her MacBook. She doesn’t even spare him a glance.

Patrick makes an effort to rein in his temper. He drops into one of the stools. He swivels left and right and cranes his neck, staring up at the coffered ceiling moulding.

“It’s almost Christmas, Patrick. Go home.”

I am home, he wants to say, but that would be revolting and stupid and he doesn’t even really mean it. Art and Tashi aren’t home for him. Nothing is. And he likes that, he likes being a nomad.

Lily clicks in like a pony. Lily—well, Lili, Lieselotte—is also the name of his little sister. He likes the coincidence. The trick of the mind he can perform, imagining an alternative family. 

Family is just being nomads together.

“Hey, I told you no tap shoes inside,” Tashi says, eyes still swimming through the pixelmire of her computer screen.

Perhaps Patrick ought to feel flattered by her attention at all. His familial woes are just as perturbing to Tashi as Lily fucking up the flooring with her ball changes.

Patrick’s still quashing his irritation. She doesn’t even fuck him, anymore. He actually doesn’t fuck much of anything at all, of late. What with how tired he is all the time, how his flesh and bones deplete with each exertion. In a way, that’s her fucking him. But it’s also just the scorn of getting older.

It gets harder to shoulder things. His patience corrodes quicker. He should lean forward, take that laptop, and lob it across the room. She’s not even wearing those stupid bluelight glasses she’s supposed to be wearing.

“Do you just not care about anything?” It’s a petulant attempt at stoking her, but it’s too meandering and abstract to really matter, let alone take effect.

She doesn’t respond for a whole five seconds, still typing, and when she does, it’s a distracted whisper of, “What?”

Her power over him is such that she can afford to be so blindly condescending. But it still stings.

He groans into the air, and it’s such a thundering sort of noise that Lily spares him a weirded out scowl on her way to the pantry. “Do you really want me in Germany? I’ll sit on my ass and start drinking beer again all day, Coach.”

Three years into their partnership, he often uses her title to signal his annoyance.

Tashi sighs like she’s disappointed. Not disappointed that he’s trying, but the fact that he’s making such meaningless, childish stabs at it. Instead of just going for it. As in, yes, smashing her MacBook over his knee and yelling pay attention to me! She’d respect that more and he knows it.

But, anyway, she lowers the screen halfmast and looks at him. “Are you jeal—”

“I’m not jealous of the baby.”

“Okay…”

“But he’s sixtyfive, Tashi! It’s ridiculous.”

Tashi does something between a scoff and a laugh, shaking her head. She rolls up the sleeves of her sweater and narrows her eyes at him. “And how old did you say the new wife was?”

“Thirtytwo, Tashi.”

Tashi laughs properly now, dropping her head and dragging her thumb and forefinger over her lashes. Patrick smiles at her amusement, albeit at his expense.

“That is pretty ridiculous.” She looks up at him again, clearing her throat, “Don’t try to bullshit me and pretend you don’t still drink beer.”

He wants to contradict her, but he decides he wants to make her laugh more. “He met her because she was his masseuse for a hot stone treatment.”

Tashi sputters, her giggles spilling everywhere, and she’s waving her hands like she’s calling timeout.

“And then he calls me,” Patrick continues, before miming a phone to his ear and straightening and dragging his voice down like an anchor with an affected distinguished rumble, “And goes, Son, I am moving back to Germany. I have love again.”

“I have love again!” Tashi wheezes, her elbows thunking on the marble and her face falling into her hands. Her shoulders are shaking with laughter.

“Like it’s a fucking disease.”

“It is.” Art’s voice still manages to quaver delivering a glib oneliner. Maybe because he doesn’t mean it. Patrick’s willing to chalk it up to his brisk stride as he enters the kitchen. Always a fucking pep in his step these days, the fucking asshole.

Patrick doesn’t turn his head. He feels a sharp instance of vertigo when Art’s hand lands on his shoulder. But both the touch and nausea are gone as soon as they arrive, and he passes off the motion of his own hand going to grab Art’s fingers as a scratch to his nose. Tashi’s too busy wiping her tears away to have noticed that, thank God.

“Oh my God, please tell him,” Tashi cackles, still gathering lost breath as Art slides her bluelight eyeglasses onto her face and enswathes her body with his, caressing her arms with his knuckles.

“He knows,” Patrick says dismissively, even though that’s a lie. He hasn’t told him.

“What do I know?”

Tashi recounts the story with the engaging enthusiasm of what Patrick is beginning to recognise as schadenfreude. But even that is still a salve, and he feels a little foolish for forgetting its effect. Not just the laughter, but all of this. He wishes they would just throw him a bone and let him stay for Christmas. He feels like a dying dog made to live too long. He offered to dress up as Santa, but Lily herself informed him that she’s far outgrown such folly and resents his assumption otherwise. She’d kicked him in the shin with the metal plate of her tap shoe. He’d let her.

Art’s smile quirks up at the image. Mean old Mr Zweig laid nude across a spa bed, cock jumping for the meek masseuse.

“Bet he slipped her eight grand to fold the towel a little lower,” Art mumbles into Tashi’s hair, the strands buttery against his lips.

She makes a face at this. She raises her hand to swat his arm reproachfully.

But Patrick only chuckles. Spares a glance over his shoulder to where Lily is sprawled on the couch, gripping the handles of her shockproof iPad case with the focus of a pilot at the yoke of a plane, her little head swallowed by a pair of AirPod maxes. Turns back and looks up at Art with a conspiratorial smirk.

“Probably had her stroke his dick with two hot stones,” he murmurs.

Tashi thinks that’s even less funny. But Art thinks it’s even more funny.

He laughs very loudly and does a less than polite impression of an old German bloke wincing and coming.

“Ah—” he hisses, “The next one up my bumhole, yes?”

It sounds like a botched Hitler lampoon, and it’s ostensibly a caricature he’s done many times before. Sometimes, they spend whole days just wading through their ancient morass of shared memories and inside references and running gags. Sometimes, even now, it's just easier that way.

Patrick laughs so hard he falls out of his chair.

They do let him stay for dinner.

It feels like they’re mocking him, but he’s hungry. So he stares into the middle distance and listens to Lily spiritedly declaim facts about deep sea turtles. She keeps surreptitiously slipping Brussels sprouts from her plate onto his. It wouldn’t be his place to mention it. And, for her part, she quaffs down her mashed potatoes like an endurance test. He tells her they’re not going anywhere. She kicks his shin again and he’s pretty sure she should have taken those shoes off by now.

He watches every gentle graze of Art and Tashi’s limbs and shoulders.

He sighs and chews his sprouts until his jaw aches.

There are worse things in his head to beat himself up with than wishful thinking.

“What’d Sassy say?” Art asks as he uncorks a Montrachet.

The corner of Patrick’s mouth quirks up almost imperceptibly. Like the reflexive twitch of a bad muscle. But he can tell Art discerns it by the way he starts to chuckle preemptively. That grin that spreads across his face like fire on dry grass.

Patrick huffs. “She said she hopes the baby chokes and dies.”

“You’re killing me, Sas.”

It’s December eighteenth at JFK. Patrick feels like a fucking sardine. Everyone is everywhere. The emetic odour of tarmac and jet fuel embues him. His fingers are red and stiff and so tightly coiled around the stainless steel handrail of the escalator that he thinks they may just pop off like caps. There’s an acetous chill to the nighttime air, and he probably should’ve worn more layers, but the sweat on his back is already soaking through the thin fabric of his shirt. He doesn’t mind. It’s better than being late.

Patrick’s dad used to enforce punctuality like a jailhouse warden. Saskia knows that.

He has his phone tucked to his ear against one shoulder.

His sister’s voice across the receiver sounds warped and liminal. His stomach is grumbling.

“You’re fucking me, Sas, you’re fucking me right over,” Patrick says. “What’s in Brazil?”

“Well, warmth, for one.”

“What about me?”

Saskia laughs. That loud, tocsin laugh she used to do when he’d wet the bed. “You boycotted the christening, Brutus.”

“Why would I fly to Germany to watch a baby take a bath?”

“Why are you flying to Germany now?”

Patrick’s teeth are on edge as he schleps his weighty duffel toward the terminal. He fishes a cigarette out of his windbreaker pocket and shoves it through his lips. He wants to spark it, even though Tashi’s psychologically tortured him into quitting, and he’d get thrown out for sure. There’s a line of security guards at every corner, and he’s seen the German Shepherd sniffer dogs.

He chews on the cigarette instead. Grinds the tip between his molars to get that stark jounce of nicotine even if it’s mostly tobacco and paper.

Saskia is saying something in his ear, and he’s only halfpretending to listen. His eyes are fastened straight ahead, singeing holes into the back of a woman’s head. Her hair is pulled into an absurdly tight ponytail. And he is so taken by the movement of the strands as it bobs with each step that he is only dragged back to reality when Saskia says his name loud enough to stab his eardrums.

He blinks. “What, bitch?”

“Paddy, I’m sorry, but I can’t do it. I don’t wanna throttle the little shit. I’m pushing forty and I cried because he bought it a fucking babysize tiara.”

Patrick closes his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose. He swallows a bit of that tobacco wad on his tongue. He nearly gags. He belatedly catches that a couple of security guards are looking at him with some suspicion. He holds up a finger as if to say, sorry, and turns around to walk away.

Saskia’s still on the line, and she starts singing something, though he doesn’t understand why. He has to hold the phone a good foot away until she shuts up.

“Wh—” he scoffs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Hey, maybe you’ll get along with it.”

“Unlikely.”

“Maybe you’ll get along with dad.”

“Un—fucking—likely,” he retorts.

He ducks into a corner of the empty terminal and drops inelegantly onto a hard plastic seat. He is hyperaware of the sweat fumes under his arms, the way his track pants cling too snugly to his thighs.

“Actually, hey,” Saskia says, and he can hear her perking up. He imagines her in a hammock in Rio. She’ll burn so bad. No earthly SPF could ever keep her from shedding like a crimson serpent. “She has this au pair.”

Patrick glances up at the TV monitor over his head.

Departures to Berlin 23 30, it reads, flashing jarringly in red LED lettering, accompanied by a blinking graphic of an airplane taking off.

He makes a noncommittal grunt. “That tracks,” he mumbles.

“I’m saying you don’t have to be lonely,” says Sassy, “Make friends! She’s nice. Bit young.”

“Reckon dad’ll try to knock her up next?”

Saskia laughs herself to piggish snorting. The bigeared little boy within him, tugging at the pantleg of his sister’s pyjamas for attention, is vaguely mollified by that laughter. Albeit at his expense.

He should spend the flight feeling guilty for not getting a gift for the baby, but he listens to a true crime podcast instead.

They’re talking about a young girl who was found unconscious by the side of a road. The truck driver who spotted her was a little drunk at the time, and he was afraid that if he called the cops he’d lose his job, so he just moved her body further up the road where someone else could find her.

Apparently, she was still alive, but the truck driver thought she was already dead.

It’s not certain if she would have made it, had he done The Right Thing, but maybe it would've made a difference.

“He should’ve just called the cops and driven away,” one of the hosts says.

“If you’re reporting an accident, you can’t just remove yourself from the premises,” the other one replies.

“Well no, but if you report a homicide—“

“Same thing. Also, how can you just leave a person bleeding by the side of the road?”

“Was she visibly bleeding?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Patrick closes his eyes and leans his head back. The clouds roll by like lambhide.

He can picture it clearly, driving away from this fucking mess, leaving a body by the side of the road. He’d do it if he could. But he thinks he’s the body.

He shudders with a pang of cold. He doesn’t know why this image sticks. It’s like ghosts, floating in between the clouds.

Saskia texts him. Suffocate the baby with a pillow. Also delete that text. And that one.

And he, the body by the side of the road, doesn't say anything.

The plane jostles a little in a patch of turbulence. They descend into Berlin at eight in the morning.

His knees hurt from keeping them bent at an angle for so long, his ass is going numb. He should feel sorry for himself, being alone like this.

As he deplanes, a few fellow passengers glance in his direction, their noses wrinkling. He can’t tell if it’s the bitter rot of cigarette between his teeth or his sudor stench or his mouldering heart.

People converge in the baggageclaim like a throng of cattle. Patrick shoulders through. Swallowed up and spat out and alone again.

No one pays anyone any attention. Everyone is hurrying to make this flight or get to the next. When Patrick finds a men’s room, he realises he should be glad for that. In the reflection of the large mirror above a long stretch of white porcelain sinks, he can see shadows like cosmic abysses under his eyes. Some of the veins in his arms—which are sticking out from under his sleeves like pythons—are slightly swollen and purple.

His duffle bag bangs against his hip as he shuffles onto the tarmac and joins the taxi queue.

Berlin greets him with an onslaught of sleet.

His bones rattle like clicking spoons in the cold. He’s cursing under his breath and trying to remember the last time he was sincerely back in Germany.

Not just a brief cut across for a match, a layover, a hamfisted excuse to see his sister.

He was probably nine.

Patrick lumbers up the walkway to his father’s home. It looks like it’s been shoveled already today but has endured several hours of snowfall since. That and—well—he guesses his dad’s playing humble now.

Sas had dubbed it a latelife crisis. But it’s not shabby. In fact, it’s nice. It’s no limestone portico. Far cry from the august Georgian Revival mausoleum he and Sas gleaned their nascent wounds in.

Lili gets a Hallmark ass two story colonial, strung with Christmas lights. Deep green door, ornate bronze knocker, festooned with a wreath. The doorbell echoes through his empty bones like a deathknell.

His teeth chinkle like coins as he waits.

When the door opens, he releases a protracted, puerile whine. “Fuck.”

You’ve never been cause of such overt disappointment.

It’s almost flattering.

But your smile quickly metamorphoses into a grimace.

His shoulders are drooping and he looks liable to topple facefirst to the snowswathed gravel at any moment. His eyelids keep fluttering, like he’s fighting a losing battle against the urge to just shut down.

“Is this the right house?” he groans, pained and shivering.

You’re marginally certain this is your boss’ son and not a homeless vagrant.

Either way, you’re nodding emphatically. “Of course it is.”

In the kitchen, he stands in the corner like a newly housed stray. Hands tucked into his armpits and chin touching his chest as he watches you spark up the cooktop through snowdappled lashes.

The powdered creamer, as you pour it into the teacup, reminds him, too, of snowfall. You keep flicking him conspicuously concerned glances.

“So you’re Patrick…” you say, spooning sugar.

He clears his throat and hums in a way that says, yeah, I’m not too thrilled about it either. His head is bowed, his eyes fallen shut, and he’s swaying vaguely on his feet. He looks like he’s making devotions. The kettle sings.

His fingers are bonetight around the cup and saucer. He lifts the cup and presses it to his cheek, like leaching the warmth from the ceramic. When he sips, you’re reminded of cats lapping milk.

There’s a moment of silence, and it’s awkward. And then he sneezes—once, twice. His throat clicks.

“Uh… tennis,” you try, folding closed the box of Five Roses.

The steam plumes up and curls around Patrick’s face, flushed and sallow. He clears his throat again, his eyes unfocused. He glances toward you and knows he should reply, but the only thing that comes out is a damp, congested sniff.

He wipes his nose on his sleeve. “Tennis,” he repeats, the word muffled by the cup still pressed to his lips.

You nod slowly, rapping your knuckles rhythmically against the counter. “Wimbledon,” you say then.

Patrick scrunches up his face as if he’s in pain. He’s trying to force some simulacrum of synapse action in the conversational skills faculty of his brain.

“Yeah,” he manages. He takes another gulp of tea and tries to clear his throat again. It hurts. Everything hurts. He hurts.

You nod some more. You can’t help but think that this feels a bit like a tennis game. You and he, volleying oneword utterances back and forth. “Impressive,” you offer, cocking your brows at him.

“Thanks,” Patrick mutters.

He does actually want to be witty. And he does actually want to be charming. And he wants to make a good first impression. But right now he wants to sleep, preferably through a few decades. Certainly, the last few of his father’s life. Which, speaking of,

“Hey, where is the bastard?”

He glances around, as if to see his father lurking in a crevice somewhere. You raise a brow. Could it be an affectionate nickname? Perhaps. But you’re starting to connect some dots.

You smile like you’re trying not to provoke a sabertoothed creature. But Patrick can see in your eyes that he’s amusing you, which he doesn’t mind. Of course he doesn’t mind.

There’s a vast window above the counter, pictureframing an expansive, snowshrouded back garden that, knowing his dad, is probably a rigorously manicured viridescent green in the warmer months. How warm do things get in Germany these days?

He squints against the luminous white splay as you point beyond the glass. There’s a distant brown pinprick that lets him know this property is larger than it seems. Larger than it needs to be. But the kid needs frolicking room, he guesses.

“He’s in the den,” you say.

Patrick throws the rest of his tea back like a shot, placing his cup and saucer onto the counter with a twinkling thunk.

“Alright, then let’s go.”

“My balls are gonna freeze off before we even get there,” Patrick hisses.

Every step forward sends his feet an inch deeper into the snow, and you watch him shake out his running shoes with displeasedness. You laugh at him, and he turns back to face you, and he makes this face that could either be a smirk or an indication of great turmoil. You are struck by his ability to wear that lopsided grin in his current circumstances, to look at you like that. Well, like what? You don’t know.

It’s just that the scarf and wool peacoat you’re wearing make you look like a well-loved heirloom doll. He can see the faintest wisps of your breath in the bitter air. Your smile is so kind and so warm, he thinks, smiling wider.

He appreciates you joining him on his doormat pilgrimage. A better guy would tell you that, but he just turns around and keeps footslogging.

Together, you trudge forward across the sprawling, sleety landscape.

The door to the den is unlocked.

Patrick casts a glance back at you before he pushes it all the way open, hitting the opposite wall with a hollow bang.

It creaks a little on its hinges as it opens into a long corridor. He takes a step in first.

“Hello?” Patrick yells, his voice lilting. “Armed robbery. I have guns and knives and… bombs. Got your pretty nanny.”

You feel the little smile on your face quavering with amusement as you close the door shut behind you.

The floors are clad in dark oak panels. The walls are lined with copper sconces. There’s an ostensibly hideous and probably hilariously expensive rug in the middle of the floor and Patrick makes a show of wiping his shoes clean on it. 

“Sure as fuck not taking this thing,” he mumbles, digging his hands into his pant pockets. 

He glances toward a long sideboard on the side of the corridor. It’s laden with antique trinkets and mahoganyframed pictures, and he reaches out to prod at an ivory figurine sitting at the edge.

You stay in silence for a few moments, looking at him. 

Then, the faint creak of footsteps comes from upstairs, and you both look up at the ceiling. Seconds later, it fades to your right, and, soon enough, there appears Rupert Zweig. Cashmere jumper, tapered joggers.

There is no denying the family resemblance. And if the way Patrick’s eyes narrow as his father descends the staircase is anything to go by, he is not gonna wanna meet—

“There you are,” says Rupert, corners of his eyes crinkling. He stops at the end of the hall, hands in his pockets. The two regard each other like snipers. You have the sharp sensation you shouldn’t be here, but where would you go?

Patrick clicks his teeth wryly. “Here I am.” His hands are also in his pockets. Their deportments are uncannily kindred.

You think Patrick shouldn’t be so putout by that. Rupert Zweig is a handsome sixtyfive. Tall and broad and still in trim, despite most his days being ornamented by cognac and cigars. His silvery hair sheens like tinsel, and has not thinned much to speak of, if at all.

You figure maybe they’ll hug, as Rupert approaches. You know Rupert to be a hugger. But he only claps Patrick’s shoulder, and Patrick’s bones look like they’ve been swapped for concrete, and he watches his father give him a once over, like surveying an old car.

“I hope things are well with you,” Rupert says. Which isn’t strange paternal commentary. But his voice is tinctured with a concerned edge at the overall impression that his only son has been dragged along the pavement by the tail of a motorbike and then beaten with sticks to boot. I thought things were better, now, he’s really saying.

You think it’s concern, anyway. You, too, know Rupert to be quite concerned, and caring. But Patrick takes it as scorn.

He wears a bitter smile. “Things are peachy, Pa.”

His nostrils flare, he shifts his shoulders. Like he wants to shrug his father's hand off, but is keeping still for the sake of seeming mature.

And then it happens. A pule from the ether like the resounding stroke of a viola.

You perk up. “Oh! I’ll go—“

“Yes, dear, she’s with Giselle in the drawing room.” Rupert’s eyes crinkle, a kind brush of his fingers to your elbow.

Patrick—you glimpse, as you shuffle past him and out the passage—looks furious. And a bit queasy.

In the drawing room, Patrick stares at Giselle’s hands. She’s twisting her emerald engagement ring around her finger. The stone is big as a pebble, its facets winking.

He doesn’t let himself look to where you are. On an ivorycoloured foam playmat on the ground, doing something that is causing the baby to squeal and giggle like a strident string of bells and clap her pudgy hands together. He can hear the yarn of drool gurgling from her gummy mouth.

An angeltopped pine tree scintillates with fairy lights in the corner.

Giselle is slender porcelain. White sweater, skinny jeans, milkblonde hair. She crosses her legs at the ankles, knees to the side, like she’s the fucking queen of England. She is polite to varying degrees of genuineness.

“Lili is so happy to see her big brother.”

Patrick’s knee shudders violently. Cut the shit, Giselle, he wants to spit.

But he knows he won’t. He doesn’t feel he can. Maybe it’d be easier, if she really was just some nympho naif. Then he could call his dad a perv and move on.

But no. Giselle is three years his junior but tenfold his put-togetherness. There are two infants in the room, and neither are her.

The room is so warm and well lit. There are bookshelves teeming with hardcover tomes whose rapiersharp corners look ostensibly untouched. A globe of the world, a framed Picasso original. Baroque vases and potted ivies and the permeating waft of jasmine and rose and leather.

It’s an intimate microcosm of his father and Giselle’s interwoven lives. Their very fumes amalgamate. And then there’s that puny thing, gossamer flesh, babbling like a brook. He doesn’t look. He can’t.

When his dad walks back in, Patrick is on his feet like a springing coil.

“You’re welcome to stay here,” says his dad, handing Patrick a set of keys.

Patrick shakes his head and feigns remorse. “Nah, Sas asked me to water her plants, so.”

Rupert looks like he’s going to say something, but decides against it.

“Right,” he nods and reaches into his pocket, retrieving a slim silver case. He flips open the lid, revealing a neat row of hand rolls. He plucks one between his long fingers. Patrick would say no, if he offered, but resents his father’s lack thereof enough to head for the door.

You think he’ll say bye to you, or maybe offer just a parting wave, but he doesn’t.

You hear him and his dad at odds like a cobra and a mongoose in the hall. You daub tender kisses onto the fleshy pink soles of Lili’s feet. You discern misty fragments of Patrick’s scathing whispers.

“... newage, hippie bullshit... nice guy act... fucking sweatpants... —christen the baby! What the fuck are you doing christening the baby? You never even took us to temple!”

However Rupert responds, on the other hand, is vaguely inaudible. It’s just a deep, cautiously placating rumble of syllables. 

You hear a bit more mumbled venom before the door creaks open and slams shut.

“He thinks he’s got everyone fooled, but I’m fucking onto hi— where is your alcohol?”

Patrick’s disembowelling every cabinet in his sister’s kitchen. On all fours like a hound rooting in the snow. He can hear the hot waft of tropical winds from Saskia’s end of the receiver. Crash of surf. Squawking birds. The staticky tempo of Brazilian phonk in the background.

“Ugh, Paddy,” Saskia mumbles like she’s disappointed.

He tears the fridge door open so fervently, the cord comes loose from the socket. There’s nothing there but bottled water, yoghurt, and salad dressing. He makes a strangled noise of agony into the ear piece.

“Saskia May,” Patrick groans with a sonnet’s desperation, resting his head against the icy fridgeshelf, between the organic grassfed butter and the handcrafted balsamic glaze, “I know you may be in a fucking beachside cabana right now, dipping Portuguese cock into your piña colada with the little umbrella in it and then sucking it off, but it is late here, and it is winter, and I am dying.”

“What do you mean you didn’t see the baby?” she asks.

“No, well, I saw her, just…” Patrick’s withdrawing all her earthenware now, “I just didn’t look.”

“What, like the fucking Basilisk?”

“Sassy, for the love of God, tell me you’ve left even a drop of liquor in your home.”

Saskia laughs, and he can hear the chime of ice. “Did you meet the au pair?”

Patrick stumbles back to the stillopen, halfway gutted fridge. He identifies with it. He sticks his head back in. “She thinks I’m a mess.”

“Wow, what a stupid whore,” his sister laughs. As everything, it is at his expense. He’s in emotional arrears, but it’s okay. It’s all okay.

He hears Saskia’s inbreathe. Marijuana? Probably. He doesn’t mind her lungs. He doesn’t mind that she’s always been more beautiful than him. He doesn’t mind that she’s warm in Rio. He knows it’s harder for her. She never got to be Rupert’s little princess. He wants to protect her in that asinine way baby brothers think they can protect their sisters. In that asinine way Patrick Zweig thinks he can protect everyone.

“Have pity on me, Sas.”

She directs him blindly like a game of Marco Polo. He wades through the ransacked bombsite he’s made of her kitchen. Avocados rolling across the slate floor. Spilled milk, which feels symbolic.

He unearths the bottle of Gordon’s dry gin from under the sink. Holds it aloft like a holy grail.

Patrick can’t remember the last time he set foot in a church, if such a time has ever occurred. Part of him expects the parishioners to take one look at him and know he doesn’t belong, for them to demand he leave.

For the things he has done, the things he has felt, the things he has wanted. Certainly for the things he cannot bring himself to believe.

He is struck by the towering stonework of the cathedral. The wooden cross in the apse is immense. Behind it, stained glass windows paint the icedover morning in vivisected coloursplays. Soft motes of sunlight waft in shafts from the ceiling.

He never thought he’d see the day—the Zweigs done up in their Sunday best. His mother would laugh herself to tears.

Rupert’s broad shoulders are ramrod straight, his argent hair slicked back handsomely. Giselle is wearing a ribbed knit dress in eggshell. Princess Lieselotte—finally, a worthy heir—is wearing a knit tunic dress embroidered with blooms, a scallopcollared ivory shirt underneath, and a crocheted woollen baby bonnet.

They look like an affiche for Norman Rockwell.

At first, he’s still trying not to meet the Basilisk’s gaze, but then he gets this disarming glimpse. The peonypink hue of her. Her comically outjutting little ears. Gibbous blue eyes, lapping up the world through cornyellow lashes. Those are Giselle’s. But the rest…

Unlucky little shit, Patrick tells her telepathically. And now he is looking straight at her, like the spell has been broken. He needs to let her know he’s onto her, and her bullshit doting father. You look like dad.

But what that means is she looks like Patrick, too.

He watches you hold her in your arms, rubbing your nose against hers.

Giselle had had you press Patrick’s shirt—his father’s shirt; of course he didn’t pack a buttonup—for him this morning. He was only kind of embarrassed. But he sat carefully in the car, leery of creasing your hard work. 

The linen of your skirt reaches your ankles. You’re wearing this creamcoloured slouchy knit turtleneck, and you’ve got a little lacy chiffon infinity veil halfway canopying your hair. Patrick is pleasantly amused by all this fabric. All the things he cannot see. Because of God, or the cold, or God and the cold.

The Zweigs find their pews, stopping frequently to greet their fellow churchgoers, and whisper inquiries after names Patrick doesn’t know. He shakes half a dozen hands if he shakes one, introduces himself as ‘Rupert’s son’ more times than he can count.

You, too, are pleasantly amused. Because Patrick is notably discomfited. You fish your little pewter cross necklace from beneath your collar. You hold it between your fingers and out toward him like an exorcist.

“He can smell your fear,” you whispergrowl, fauxominous. Lili giggles all saliva in your arms. That’s the voice you use when you pretend to be the babyeating ogre. She takes the cross between her tiny teeth. Patrick watches. You smile. “And so can she.”

Patrick looks at you for a moment, feigning indifference. “They’re both smelling how little they matter to me.”

Your smile widens.

Patrick—who has never endured a mass—takes his cues from the brush of your shoulder on when to stand, when to sit, and when to supplicate himself. The priest oscillates from English to Latin and back again. Seemingly on a whim. When Patrick fumbles trying to find the right page for the hymn, you tilt your book slightly so he can read along. 

He thinks the rosary looks good where it dangles from your lithe, supple fingers. Looping and weaving through your pretty knuckles like drops of blood. 

You are flawless in your devotion.

You slip to your knees with a fluidity that makes his tummy fasten.

You sing quietly and sweetly and when you turn to Patrick to wish peace upon him, your grin is so sweet and earnest it takes a moment for him to contend with that blessing.

Everyone falls down to the hassock again and Patrick is beginning to find the rhythm of the whole affair. At least enough to let his thoughts maunder and his body be at mercy to the motions.

It’s soothing, in its way. He can almost understand it. What blessed relief in lifting your human pains to be scoured clean.

The priest closes out the sermon with a few nice words about Jesus. Guy’s birthday’s coming up, after all.

Patrick leans forward a bit to glance at his father’s fingers, tapping on the dry leather of the psalmbook.

In the photo, little Lili is wearing a white linen nightgown that mantles her whole, like a tiny tarp. His dad cradles her, and everyone’s standing around a marble pool. He can see Saskia off to the side, hosting a very conspicuous hangover behind her mask. You’re in the picture, too. Apparently, you had been Giselle’s doula, in the beginning, and you just ended up sticking around. Which he finds more than a little strange. Patrick often sees life as a series of measures to get further away from his family.

On the edge of the photo, he can see the broad back of a becloaked man, plashing his fingers the water.

Patrick feels an inkling of discomfort at the sight of that man.

“She still sleeps in that dress, actually,” you say, rocking the babe.

The wallpaper of Lili’s room is printed with pale pink linework of woodland creatures. He’s straddling the vintage nursery rocker—a plush weathered lamb; it used to be his and Saskia’s—and his knees are hiked comically high on either side of him, his slacks riding up his ankles.

Patrick stares at the baby girl in this framed photograph. She looks too small—almost tenuous—underneath the white shift. Her eyes are flushed and still wombswollen.

“What’s the point?” he asks, trying to imagine that man softly slooshing water over her boneless head.

You smile. “It’s to protect her.”

“Protect her from what?”

You lower Lili into her French Provençal style woodcarved bassinet.

You look up at him, eyes flitting over his face. “Shame, I guess.”

It doesn’t quite make sense. A fullimmersion baptism means commitment. You have pledged yourself to God. You are bound to follow His laws. Shame is essential to these laws. Isn’t it?

You don’t know why he’s still here. Giselle is taking her Sunday nap, and Rupert’s playing solitaire or reading Guy Sajer or something in the den. Lili, too, is dead to the world. You need to do the laundry. The laundry room is too strait for him to be lingering, leaning against the doorframe, interrogating you. He likes watching the linen of your skirt gather at your feet as you crouch to the floor, depositing the armfuls of bedding into the mouth of the washing machine. All that fabric.

“It’s a different kind of shame,” you try to explain. “I can be ashamed of myself, of my body.”

“Why are you ashamed?”

You roll your eyes. “I don’t know. I’m alive.”

“Alright. And this helps?”

“A little, yeah. It takes you out of your body. Then returns you to it. And you feel brand new. Like you belong to Jesus.”

You laugh a little at the concept, but he can tell you treasure this belonging, deep down.

He walks toward you, taking the empty wicker hamper from your hands and setting it aside. “You shouldn’t feel ashamed in the first place.”

You shrug, noting his proximity. “It’s probably good to feel shame from time to time.”

He doesn’t say anything to that.

He doesn’t ask you if you feel ashamed right now. Face smushed against the top of the palpitating washing machine. If you said yes, he’d be unhappy. If you said no, he’d be unhappy.

He’s happy, now, hiking your skirt up around your waist, shucking your gauzy tights halfway down your thighs. Best not to ruin it.

So he doesn’t ask if you’re ashamed. He doesn’t ask if you’re a virgin. He does ask if you’re on birth control, and furrows his brows as his strong hands caress the flesh of your ass.

“Why not?” he laughs, dragging the beige skin down his rigid cock, rubbing the deep blush head against your hirsute pussy and bending over you. “Isn’t that shit free here?”

He burrows his head beneath your sweater, kissing your back through the cotton of your longsleeve. He doesn’t search for more bare skin, just keeps a good grip on that which he has, fingertips digging into the flesh of your hips.

He fucks into you and feels your body shudder around him with the jostle of the machine.

He doesn’t ask of shame or chastity or how long Giselle and Lili usually nap for, how far his dad is into The Forgotten Soldier. He does, however, feel it necessary to ask,

“Feels good, right?” Even though you’re drooling against the zinc and your hoarse groans are rivalling the churning noises. You roll your eyes but they stay there, your lashes fluttering.

“Yes,” you pant, clutching the edge of the machine. “It feels good.”

He bends over you, pinning you, elbow to elbow, his chin resting on your clothed shoulder. Your veil slips off your head and drapes around your neck. He quickens his pace. “It’s fucking big, isn’t it?”

You turn your head to look at him. His eyes look like they want to fuck your eyes. His mouth hovers over your drooling mouth as if to kiss you. The shaggy hair of his crotch abrades your tailbone.

“Verdict’s still out,” you say, voice quavering, and you let him lave your tongue sloppily with his.

His sister has a guestroom, but he sleeps in her bed. Reads her Audre Lorde and Laurie Colwin. Uses her toothbrush. God, she’d kill him. But he likes the transgression of violating her space. He doesn’t use her vibrator, or anything. He finds it, but he doesn’t use it.

He has his few ways of having people. So he’s always taking what he can get.

That’s why he fucks the nanny in the laundry room, and lets Art’s kid bruise him with her tap shoe, and sits on the kitchen tile drinking Saskia’s gin.

He has to hold on to the granite countertop, as he straightens from his haunches. His back is a wreck, but the ache is nothing compared to the relief and vindication and victory he feels. He can’t say for sure what the prize is. Maybe it really was just your pussy, and that’s where this all starts and ends, which is fine. The feeling of winning is so rare and precious and precious and rare and, as he unscrews the cap and raises the bottle to his lips, it’s as if he’s just slain a mighty monster.

He places the little tiara he’d filched from Lili’s room on Saskia’s mantel.

He’s less than compos mentis come Christmas Eve.

He lays in Saskia's bed for a bit, inhaling lime and ambergris, trying to figure out what to do with himself. He checks his phone: No Service.

He sighs and tumbles out the sheets like a rockslide. He figures he might as well go for a run before the blizzard clocks in since there’s nothing else to do. His feet already feel numb and damp. Everything has felt numb and damp the whole time he’s been here.

Running buzzed probably isn’t his smartest idea, but it doesn’t feel like his worst one either.

Patrick frenetically tugs two pairs of thermal leggings on. The radiotor whirrs but the house is still arrestingly gelid. He pulls on his sister’s comically inflated neon orange down jacket.

He looks at himself in the mirror.

“Oh, fuck yeah,” he whispers.

He loots and pilfers some mittens, goggles, and a neck gaiter from Saskia’s closet. She could never take to professional athleticism, but she’s a reasonably devout runner, and is partial to a halfmarathon or two most years. Which means free activegear for Paddy. He walks to the front door and slips on his dank shoes.

He steps outside once he feels decently covered head to toe, a skill he’s found refining itself as the week has shouldered past him.

Patrick strides the roadside briskly for almost a mile. His legs feel halfway atrophied, so he gives them time to warm up. The neighborhood seeps into copses of snowdusted forestry. He feels the beauty of the landscape flicker through him like a spark.

He starts jogging.

He has no mapped course, no mile time to hit. He just wants to move forward. For once. His goggles fog up with entrapped bodyheat crowning the cold air but he doesn’t fix them. The compressed insulation of his clothes, the whirring thump of his shoes to the tar—it engenders a strangely hypnotic effect. He realises, only after miles have elapsed, that he's forgotten to turn any music on. He doesn’t need it now.

He comes upon a clearing in the trees that discloses a river he hadn’t recalled.

He abates to a walk before stopping completely and removing his goggles. 

He knows a breathtaking scene when he sees one. That was never his problem, the discernment of the good thing. It was never even the obtaining of it. It’s that—well—if Sas actually had left plants for him to nurture, they’d be dead by now.

But anyway. The river.

Snowfall has burgeoned somewhat, but light is still breaking through. The sun reflects tenderly off the surface of the frozen water as if it’s all being illuminated from beneath the ice.

Patrick swears he can see evidence of a current still rushing below, but he can’t be sure that’s all too possible at these temperatures.

He tries to take a picture for posterity (or Lily; she’s ‘into vistas’ lately), but all the light is so strange and coruscating. Hardly anything can be captured in earnest.

Patrick takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

He pulls his gaiter down and doffs his hat. Allows his florid skin a few moments to feel the glacial squall, the moist sting of melting snow. He thinks he’s missed this weather, harsh as it may be.

He takes the opportunity to check his watch, vaguely hoping the GPS tracker’s been running. And hope seems to count for something here.

4.7 MILES

A surge of accomplishment and anticipation shimmers through him. He grins, breathless, at the thought of being able to tell Tashi that he’d done a cool ten miles. And the prospect of being able to eat a guiltless meal is emerging as an actual possibility. 

Patrick gears back up and begins to walk again in the direction he came. He takes advantage—always taking advantage, always taking what he can get—of the trodden path he’d made in the road. The surer grip of his shoes.

His head starts feeling strange as he’s walking. As though it’s sloshy inside, like the dirty snow he sees on the curb. But he pushes forward and chalks it up to temperature. Picks up the pace again. 

He finds himself less mesmerised by his own footfalls now and slips his AirPods in. Slips inside the eye of his mind. His sister used to have a ‘(What's The Story) Morning Glory?’ CD. Patrick’d scratched it, probably. He hopes Oasis can get back together some day. It's not so hard to reconcile. Mostly, anyway.

About a mile into the returning trek, Patrick feels his legs suddenly get heavier. He’s felt as much before. He assumes he’s just hitting the wall. It’s a little early for him, at such moderate mileage, but he knows inclemency and altitude can do things to a body.

He’s deliberate with his strides as he proceeds. He wants to be sure that his torpid legs are parting with the ground. 

It’s around the two mile mark that his spine rattles with an odd enough sensation—sharp, like an incision down the length of it—to bring him to a stumbling halt.

Patrick’s clumsily reaching around and groping at his neck and back the best he can through his layers. It feels almost like someone has poured water on his skin. Soused him like a baptism.

He tells himself he needs a second to breathe. Starts walking again. Eventually feels very marginally centred enough to pick up the pace. His knees feel like cinderbricks. Dense and angular. But he should be capable of making it home. Or at least determined enough to do so. He’s seeing houses again. He can’t be more than a mile out.

He’s thinking of raiding Saskia’s toiletries and snorting her cornucopia of bathsalts when a billow of abject nausea rolls through him. He’s stumbling again.

He moans vaguely with turnsickness. The trees are blurring together.

He sways.

Sidesteps jerkily over the curb into a stark white alloy of fresh and shoveled snow.

Doubles over.

Dissolves to his knees, bracing himself on his palms. All fours again.

He maintains this position for several minutes. He’s heaving in and out forcefully with his eyes screwed shut. It feels a bit prayerful. He’s praying to be made to vomit. Just wants to feel better and move on and he’ll never touch his dick again, he prays. Which isn’t true, but need it be?

Things go sloshy again, and warm, this time. Overwhelmingly warm, actually. He flounders in the wet, rips off his gear, and uses his bare hands to grab handfuls of snow off the ground and push it onto his face. The heat feels like bloodshed.

Patrick tears off his jacket. Patrick lays his entire body facedown in the snow. Everything is numb and damp.

“Oh my goodness, Patrick?”

One imagines the voice of God to be a little less frantic.

He’s confused by how weak his muscles feel when he tries to push himself up. How he only sees lucent whiteness when his eyes flicker open. Shit, is this it? He thought for sure he’d end up at the other place.

“Jesus Christ, I thought you were dead!”

Oh, alright. So not yet. Not yet, and certainly not Heaven. Close, though, with how relieved you sound. He is the body on the side of the road, and you’ve stopped to triage him instead of driving off. He squints up at you. Floral puffer. Scarf and muffs. You look like a fairytale illustration.

His blood’s gone cold in his extremities, and he’s mumbling, “Sorry.”

“You’re a mess.”

There it is.

For your part, you don’t sound malicious, or anything. You say it like a forgone conclusion, a fact of the matter. The way a person in an Ionesco absurdist play would say, oh, it looks like I’m wearing pants right now.

He tries to make a stab at indignity. Like maybe if he denies that he’s a mess, that should suddenly make him clean. What blessed relief. But all he manages is a whimpered grunt of protest.

“What happened? Were you attacked?”

Patrick shakes his head, suddenly aware of just how wet he is.

“Patrick, tell me.” You sound concerned, but not in pieces. He knows this is all coincidence. That you simply happened to be driving by. But the fact that you’ve found him prone in the snow, the fact that you knew to call his name, knew it was him who’d ambled to the woods and buried himself in the ground like a coldblooded mountain climber, like a defiant zealot, staring into Earth, his back to God, taunting you with his dickish solipsism—he thinks all this should terrify you. He isn’t dead. Not yet. But maybe he’d already made up his mind. Perhaps you’re just picturing him as another baby. Something small and soothable. “What happened? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

Patrick shakes his head again and takes your assistance in getting up. All his things are gathered in your arms.

“You’re soaked, Patrick. What were you doing in the snow?”

He looks around and feebly brushes some of the debris off of his leggings and thermal pullover.

“I... I don’t know? I’m pretty sure I started feeling sick, and then I got hot, so I took all my shit off,” he explains. He’s all nonchalant about it, too.

At first, he won’t tell you where his sister’s house is. You’re going all Nuremberg on him, like he really is a baby who will drop the knife if you tell him no sternly enough. But he soaks through the polyester of your passenger seat and grins and defies you. It’s like he’s challenging you to take him back to his dad’s. Like he’s a kid acting up in school for attention.

It takes a while. You circle the block twice. Then he sees the way his fingernails tinge cobalt, and thinks of how disappointed his father’d be. Concerned, you allege, but he doesn’t buy that.

Still, he confesses like a sinner.

He asks you—as you stand on the concrete steps to the quaint, Tudorstyle home, and he holds his cap in his teeth and fishes the keys from his pocket—not to hold the state of the place against Saskia. He says there’s a lot of damage he can do in a week. He’s always making a mess. Messing things up. Has he messed you up? He doesn’t ask, but has he?

He’s even sorry for fucking you. He doesn’t tell you that, either. And he’s about to do it again. But he is sorry. That has to count for something.

You stink. Not in a really bad way, not in a noticeable way, but the stale perfume and deodorant have turned into a cool film against your skin, trapping your sweat and guilt and other gross things which you’re too tired to name. You’ve been out buying gifts all day. You’re always so last minute. You feel like you might fall asleep on Saskia’s couch.

News says blizzard’s on its way. News is all choppy static pixel kaleidoscope, too. Even if you left right now, you wouldn’t make it home before the roads got dangerous.

You’ve heard enough hypothermia horror stories to know he should be taking a shower right now, warming himself up in increments. And you’ve heard enough suicide horror stories to know you’d be wrong to leave him anyway, after how you’ve just discovered him.

Was she visibly bleeding?

He doesn’t look like he’s about to call it quits.

On the contrary, he looks relaxed, calm, selfpossessed, sitting on the arm of the couch, one knee drawn up, cigarette dangling between fingers. Also his cock is out. He’s naked.

Has he already made up his mind?

How many times has he lain like that, in the snow, lucid about his slide into the abyss? 

He finishes his cig and takes a knee by your feet. Your bare feet. You shouldn’t have taken off your shoes. They stink.

You try to tuck your feet under you, but he reaches out and grabs your ankle and tugs like you’re the baby.

“What happened to your leg?” you croak, your voice a little fraught.

His thumb keeps brushing up and down the arch of your foot, like trying to ease your tension. He leans back and looks down, past the leavening weight of his dick, to the navy bruise bloomed through the hairs just below his knee.

You watch that Cheshire cat smirk spread his mouth apart. “Violent tap dancer.”

You do kind of wish he wouldn’t do the whole slapping your pussy and calling you a good girl thing. It feels weird and Freudian and it even makes you feel kind of guilty.

Not because of his stupid uncut Jewish cock all swollen against his thigh, nor the virgin’s innards mangled in a manger at this very moment two thousand years ago. You know that’s not how you measure innocence. There’s something idiotic about that, something primeval and pathetic, something no one should be proud or ashamed of.

It’s just that he doesn’t seem fully committed to the pastiche.

He spits a thin globe of saliva right onto your clit. His fingers sweep through your coarsehaired folds. Slow, methodical, like a cartographer mapping the world with his compass and pen.

Then, he raises his fingers and strikes them down against you. You flinch, you whimper. He groans straight into you.

“Good girl. Good girl.”

And it's hot, sure, but he could stand to be crueler.

You’re this nice twentysomething with no real bearing on his life. You pray. You care. You wipe his sister's shit. He suspects he didn’t take your virginity, but he could easily imagine he did, if he wanted to. That he’s teaching you something. This could all be a lot more plastic and pornographic.

But it isn’t. Not really.

He climbs over you, all over you. He’s all over you like the flu. He wants to crawl inside of you, burrow and fester. His knee is pressed between your thighs and he’s breathing into your neck, his head tucked under your chin. His nose is the colour of raspberry syrup and he drags the cold tip of it up the column of your neck.

He smells like smoke and snow. Like sweat and musk and something stale and dry.

You crane your neck with a piercing cry when he bottoms out. He cracks your hips open like a lobster claw. You feel his fevered heartbeat thumping through your body. He seems to think the heat of your flesh is enough to warm and cure him.

“You’re going to catch a cold,” you slaver into his hair.

“I don’t get sick,” he assures you, puffing throatily. “I never get sick.”

He licks Saskia’s bathsalts from the swollen underside of your tits. You gather palmfuls of warm water and pour them over his freckled skin, watching it bloom florid. Are you clean now? Are you shameless? Has the stink gone? Sort of.

Maybe, for a second there.

But Christmas day seeps in like another reek. You feel bad when you catch whiff. You feel the stroke of midnight in your bones, and you think you can hear Carol of the Bells. You feel especially bad, because you’re holding onto his shoulders and fucking yourself on his unhewn cock, the bathwater swashing tepid around you. And he licks the silver crucifix in the dewy valley of your breasts into his mouth, and sucks on it, and looks at you like he’s trying to make a point. He sees you frown.

The pendant glints between his teeth as he says, “Don’t worry, He’s not paying attention. It’s His birthday.”

And you duck your head to laugh.

The water ripples. He wraps his arms around you in a halfway embrace, halfway detainment. You can tell he is worried you will find your morals and leave him cold.

But you won’t.

He’s big enough that he won’t just slip out of you, even in the water. You’re all steamdizzy, eyes halfmast. You watch rivulets of condensation dance down the tiling.

Are you really about to fall asleep on this man’s cock in his sister’s bathtub? Perhaps. There is something grounding about his heavy presence in all four corners of you. You feel that mollifying pressure in your head. Your hands scrabble and slip all over the skin of his shoulders. You kiss all these droplets off his skin.

“I think I’m about to throw up,” he whispers in your ear.

You pull back and sigh. He does look quite waxen and wheyfaced. You feel bad. You were starting to think that you alone could break the fever.

Your knee knocks against the tub. He has to tug himself out of you. He clambers out of the water, puddles splashing everywhere. He slumps to the ground like marmalade, his arms drape the toiletseat, his head in the bowl. Runnels drip off him and sop the bathmat. He spits and heaves. Then he retches. There is nothing solid to the bile. When was the last time he ate something? His viscera slops out of him and into the water. The gin scalds twice as sore on the way up. He sounds horrifying. His lips drip with mucus.

He feels your soft, moist flesh against his back. Your arms around his toned middle. You feel his ribcage tremble against you.

He feels the bone of your chin against the crown of his head.

Patrick knows this is all very repulsive. He's not sure why you're holding him. Maybe you're picturing a baby again.

“What would you get me for Christmas?” he murmurs, his heavy breath echoing around the toilet bowl.

You can smell his puke.

“Um— well... you know, Giselle actually—”

“No,” he grunts stubbornly. “I mean, if you could get me anything, what would you get me?”

“I don’t know,” you say, pressing your wet breasts against his wet back. The humidity is starting to disperse, the trickles cooling off. You do get sick. You get sick quite frequently, actually. This will definitely make you sick. He’ll be gone soon enough, and that’s probably for the best, but who will hold you in your ailing?

“Come on, babe.”

You drag your fingertips down the hair on his abs until you reach the thatch between his legs. “I don’t know… A hot stone massage?”

And it’s cruel and stupid and funny—it’s something only a few people would ever understand. He and Art and Sas and Tash and you. Maybe Lili, one day.

You and Patrick burst into laughter at the same time. He chuckles until he’s wheezing. The sound of it catches in his throat like a fishbone. This is what constitutes a happy moment for him.

“That’s perfect,” he mumbles into the shitter.

[thatchickwiththecamera]

What Do You Want From Me?

Synopsis: The European leg of the Concrete Forever tour marks one year since Tyler Garrett joined the Bad Omens media team. A lot can change over the course of a year. New experiences, new friendships, and new discoveries emerge.

Pairing: Noah Sebastian x OC

Cross-posted on AO3 (thatchickwiththecamera)

MASTERLIST

Based on an idea I got from seeing this video.

Tag List: @sundamariis, @fastjelly-fish, @lilylovesdew, @narcissisticbehavior81

Tonight was night five of the European leg of the 2024 Concrete Forever tour and the end of January had marked one year since I had first joined the Bad Omens media crew. With the band's increase in popularity Bryan, the band's photographer and media director, decided it was time to expand the team going into Shiprocked so he could focus more carefully on planning and curating the media content produced and published for the band. 

So Bryan reached out to a friend in the music industry and asked if they knew of any photographers/videographers with a solid portfolio who were looking for a more permanent media production gig. That friend connected him to me and as they say, the rest is history. 

“Tyler! Did you finish up the edits for tonight's social post?” Bryan’s voice carried from the front of the crew bus to the back lounge where I sat backing up files to my external harddrive. 

“Yeah! They’re already in the dropbox!” I responded before ejecting my drive from my macbook and throwing them both back onto my bunk. 

I clipped my crew credentials with “CONCRETE FOREVER TOUR” and “TYLER GARRETT - MEDIA CREW” printed across the top and bottom through the belt loop of my jeans and slipped on my crew sweatshirt before walking toward the front of the bus. Bryan and Alana were standing over the main table and counter area double checking the batteries and the assortment of cameras we would be mounting in various parts of the stage for tonight's show along with our individual gear that would be on our person and laid out backstage for us to use throughout the show. 

The air once we stepped into the venue was buzzing with energy. I don’t know what it was about this leg of the tour, but it was like a switch was flipped. Ever since the first date in January opening for Bring Me The Horizon back in Cardiff there was this high that enveloped the entire group and it looked like no one would be coming down anytime soon. 

This energy was especially present in the band's lead singer, Noah. The usually stoic and serious persona he portrayed on stage was now replaced with one that roamed around the various levels of the stage doing jumping jacks, pushups, dances, and little vocal trills. 

After the first two shows, his antics even caused Poppy, our opener for this part of the tour, to completely abandon portraying her A.I. character like was originally planned for their performances of V.A.N.  Instead, she joined in Noah’s antics and even introduced the world to this little handshake that they had originally created during rehearsals leading up to the tour. 

Life in between gigs had been lively as well since the start of the new year. After each show when everything was packed up and the load outs were completed, the band and crew for both Bad Omens and BMTH would venture to one of the local pubs and celebrate with a few beers and carbonated beverages before loading up on the buses and venturing off to the next city. 

Until joining the Bad Omens crew, I would usually keep to myself in between shows while touring - choosing to prioritize edits, catalog files, and update my individual socials when not trying to finish a book on my Kindle or finish a show on a random streaming service. 

The first few months of touring after Shiprocked changed all of that and a few of the crew and band made it their mission to pull me out of the confines of my comfort zone and my regular routine. Over the course of the past year, Bryan has pushed me to learn and develop my photo and video skills far past where I ever thought they would go. Matt started teaching me front of the house controls, he now hounds me with daily racoon memes, and I in turn buy him random Dr. Pepper merch. Steven taught me all about the finer side of wristwatches, NBA basketball, and the intricacies of running merch. Alana quickly became one of my best friends and has balanced her assistant tour manager duties well alongside keeping me sane as the only other female member of the media team and crew. 

Folio decided that I absolutely had to learn how to fish when one of our venues had a lake nearby, even making me kiss the smallmouth bass that I caught before he threw it back in citing that it was tradition with your first fish. He also dared me to smoke my first joint, which caused me to hack up a lung because I somehow inhaled wrong. Nicholas helped me design a few tattoo ideas before inking my forearm and starting what will eventually become a full sleeve up my right arm. Jolly taught me a bunch of guitar riffs and how to cuss in Swedish (which I do entirely too often now), and Noah surprised me with the hidden talent of being a pool shark and we ended up becoming quick friends to the point where he is now my partner in crime hustling people out of their money when the crew goes out to bars. I also learned that while he hates it when people try to scare and prank him, he loves to scare and prank others. 

Which is why, as expected, throughout three out of the first four shows of the European leg, Noah made it his mission to try and scare me at least once per show mainly during the song transitions when I would try to quickly get from one side of the stage to the next during the blackouts. In Berlin, it was during the transition after “Nowhere to Go” when I was coming down from the second level of the stage after retrieving the camera that was filming Folio play. Luckily I had handed the camera and its tripod down to Alana behind the platform before descending the steps in time for Noah to jump out at the bottom already wearing his ski mask for V.A.N. 

I jumped, skipping a step on the way down, and felt a set of arms grab me and hold me back up before I could fall too far forward. I remember yelling ‘fucking hell’ in swedish and looking up to see Noah with a shit eating grin peaking through the mask and hearing Jolly laugh at my use of the words. I grabbed his mask and yanked on it so it was crooked on his face before I ran behind the platform to the other side of the stage where I had left my camera gear. I heard him let out a laugh and a few cuss words of his own as he struggled to fix the mask and climb the steps up to his spot on the platform before Poppy started singing. 

Night one in Cologne, I was mainly in the photo pit for the majority of the show, while Bryan and Alana were the ones roaming the stage. I kept a gear bag tucked behind one of the few big boxes we had on either side of the stage. In it, I had my spare batteries, my water bottle, and the 360 camera on an extension pole. The plan for this show was to focus on crowd shots and footage along with regular low-angle stage shots. While I got amazing shots of the guys performing and some hilarious shots of a fan crowd surfing in an inflatable shark suit. Noah lost any possible opportunity offered for pranking during the show. 

On night two in Cologne, he made up for the missed opportunity. During the transition between “Artifical Suicide” and “Like A Villan,” I quickly ran to the media team roadcase set up behind the guitar stage case and tech area to get a quick drink of water and change out a lens. As I was kneeling down in front of the case and had just finished switching the lenses, I felt a pair of hands grab my shoulders. Luckily all the equipment was out of my hands because the sudden motion made me jump and fall back on my heels, causing me to bump into something, well someone, behind me. I let out a string of curse words, this time in English, and tilted my head back to see Noah, now without his mask, trying to hold back a laugh as he smiled down at me. I let out an annoyed sign and rolled my eyes. He gave my shoulder a squeeze before disappearing back out onto the stage right as the song began. 

In Munich, he chose the “Miracle” break as his time to strike. Only this time he stepped up his game. While I was switching out gear and changing my settings from photo to video, I set everything on a storage case under the second level platform and stood up to stretch a bit since this break was the more lengthy of the two. After I finished trying rid my shoulders of the tension that had built up from holding a camera in front of my face for a hour, I felt an arm wrap across the front of my collarbones and pulled me back into them while the person's other hand took one of the band's athletic water bottles and sprayed it down the rear collar of my crew hoodie. I squirmed and let out a loud gasp as the shock of the icey cold water briefly hit the back of my neck before I managed to wriggle away. I turned and as expected was greeted by a sweaty Noah smiling down at me trying to hold back laughter. 

“You little shit!” I shouted before quickly grabbing the water bottle from his hand and pointed it at him spraying him with the same icy cold water. 

He started swatting at the spray, laughing as his long thin fingers did nothing to block the liquid. He reached out and grabbed my wrist and I quickly tried to switch the bottle to my other hand but he was too quick, capturing that wrist as well before I could aim the bottle at his face again. I laughed and tried to pull away but he pulled me toward him and pinned my wrists against his chest trying to render the “weapon” he introduced inoperable. 

The laughter between us suddenly died off. The height difference between my 5’1” and his 6’3'' became very clear and his chin practically touched his chest as he gazed down at me. We stood there for what felt like an eternity, brown eyes connected with blue. He loosened his grip on my wrists slightly but neither of us made any attempt to move.  

The arena suddenly felt very warm and I don’t think I could blame it on the array pyrotechnics used during the show. I don’t know what to call this sudden shift in the air between us, but all I know is it caused something to flutter in my stomach and that scared the hell out of me. So I did the first thing I could think of, I diffused an intense moment with humor. I squeezed the water bottle that was still in my hand and the last remnants of water from the bottle hit Noah’s chin and neck. The shock of the cold liquid caused him to step back and release my wrists. I immediately missed the contact, but I needed to get away from this situation. 

“Shit that really is cold!” He laughed, turning to grab one of the black towels we had on hand backstage and started to dry off the water. 

When he turned to offer me the towel I had already retrieved my camera and fled to the other side of the stage wondering what the fuck had just happened. 

During the day off between Munich and Zurich, I kept myself busy editing, organizing, and uploading photo content to the media team drive and to my own socials. I had gained a considerable amount of followers since joining the Bad Omens team and while I enjoyed seeing the reaction and appreciation the guys' fans had when I posted new content, I was also starting to see some of the reasons why the guys like to take social media breaks as often as they do. 

Editing was one of my favorite parts of being a photographer and with us starting this European leg off with four back-to-back shows, I hadn’t had time to pause and really work my magic. So that is what I designated as my mission for this day off. I also may have used it as an excuse to avoid leaving the crew bus and chance any more contact with Noah. I was still trying to figure out if that flutter in my stomach was real or if it was just part of the adrenaline from a high energy concert and my body being attacked with ice cold water. 

Tonight, we were in Zurich and I was running around the stage at various times throughout the set while Bryan was down in the photo pit trying out some new ideas he had photos wise and finally having his turn with the 360 camera during a show.

During “What do you want from me?” I was standing in the wings to stage left filming Noah when he suddenly walked over to me in the middle of the second verse, grabbed my left wrist from where it held the side of my camera and pulled me out onto the stage. I keep filming as he releases my wrist and quickly slips his hand in mine while he continues to walk backward onto the stage. Once we were in the middle of the stage he started to spin in a circle with our connected hands extended in the middle. We spun around a few times before he started to jump while we were spinning causing his hair to bounce up and down on his head which I shakily captured on camera. The randomness of it all led to fits of laughter and caused Noah to mess up the last two lines of the verse. 

As the verse came to an end I expected him to let go and yell, “JUMP JUMP” like he usually does during the brief blackout. Instead, as the light goes out, I am yanked forward and feel a hand and the cool metal of a microphone against the side of my face, and a set of lips briefly collide with mine. I barely had time to process what happened before it ended, the lips were gone, the lights came back up, and Noah jumped onto the riser at the front of the stage to sing the rest of the song. I still held my camera up and panned to follow him trying to hide any reaction my face might show behind a veil of concentration. 

For the remainder of the show, I tried to avoid making any and all eye contact with Noah, who in turn tried his damndest to get me to look at him and gauge my reaction to what he did. He did it in a way that wasn’t too noticeable to the crowd by acting like he's playing up to the camera. My brain tried to process what had happened and what the hell it possibly meant over the course of the remaining ten songs in the set. 

Noah kissed me. 

On stage. 

In the middle of a show. 

Did one of the guys see? 

Oh Shit! Did anyone in the audience see?

The usual jump scare from the previous shows never came and my self-sabotaging brain was trying to solve the question of what everything meant. Kissing me to see my reaction instead of scaring me like usual? Was this real or was it just another prank?

__

Author’s Note: Let me know what y’all think!

[bodymachine]

i think part of the reason that machines and obsolete pieces of technology are so viscerally interesting to us is because they remind us of our own bodies. things with buttons and levers and wires not only invite physical interaction (which is something beautiful and potentially radical in and of itself!!) but are easily anthropomorphized in that their heft and clunkiness elicit a sort of empathy in us. we realize that our bodies are not so different from machines, and it’s not because our bodies are sterile and cold and unfeeling, but because we all have these tangled insides and a desire to touch and to take up space in the world. we have such complicated relationships to our own bodies and we like tech that shows us how it can be touched and how it was assembled and how it can work and how it can fail. it is kind of body horror. it’s grotesque and erotic. we also realize that analog devices are being replaced and phased out of existence, and so there’s even more of an impulse to connect with them.

newer designs tend to emphasize sleekness and thinness and quiet and invisible parts and instantaneous results. i’ve heard of macbooks and iphones being described as sexy. they are not. a real sexy machine evokes the heat and weight and grittiness and entangledness of sex. so the condensing of functions into one tiny digital device and the storage of information in some invisible cloud and the forced reliance on a few entities that control the ‘progress’ of all that—as freeing as all of that can be in many ways that are worth considering, the implications for the future of our own bodily autonomy can definitely be frightening. i think that’s why it’s important to be intentional and interested in our physical interactions with any kind of object, but especially the old and the ordinary ones. to insist that they not become obsolete to us, and to insist on our ability to choose how they fit into our lives. that can be a sort of resistance to capitalism i think, that can start on the smallest level. that’s mostly what it boils down to, to me.

[itsappleexpert]

Expert Mac Screen Repair Services: Fix Your Display Today

MacBooks are a symbol of sophistication and high-end technology, offering impressive performance for everything from work to entertainment. Whether you're using your MacBook for professional tasks, creative projects, or just for browsing, a well-functioning screen is vital to your device’s usability. However, accidents happen, and no matter how careful you are, your MacBook screen can still get damaged whether due to a drop, pressure, or general wear and tear. When that happens, you need expert Mac screen repair services to get your device back in top shape.

This article will guide you through the importance of expert screen repair services, common MacBook screen problems, and how to ensure you get your screen fixed properly and efficiently.

Why Opt for Expert Mac Screen Repair Services?

When your MacBook screen malfunctions, you might be tempted to try and fix it yourself or take it to a generic repair shop. However, opting for expert Mac screen repair services is crucial to ensure the quality, reliability, and longevity of your device. Here are the reasons why expert services are worth the investment:

1. Professional Experience and Expertise

An expert repair service specializes in Apple products and has the technical know-how to handle any MacBook screen issue. Technicians are trained to diagnose problems quickly, ensuring your device is repaired correctly. They are also familiar with the latest MacBook models and can deal with specific nuances related to screen repairs.

2. Use of Genuine or High-Quality Parts

Expert repair services use original parts or top-quality replacement screens that match the specifications of your MacBook. This is vital for ensuring your MacBook’s screen maintains its high-resolution display and durability after the repair. Subpar parts can lead to performance issues, poor display quality, or even further damage.

3. Warranty and Guarantee

Another advantage of expert Mac screen repair services is the warranty or guarantee that comes with their work. Most reputable repair services will offer a warranty on their repairs, so if any issues arise after the repair, they will fix it at no additional cost. This peace of mind is important when trusting someone with your expensive device.

4. Efficiency and Quick Turnaround

Expert technicians can usually complete repairs quickly, often within one to two days. This means that you don’t have to go without your MacBook for long periods. Expert services are streamlined and designed to minimize downtime for your device.

5. Comprehensive Services

Beyond screen repair, many expert repair services offer a full range of MacBook fixes. Whether your device has a screen issue, water damage, keyboard malfunctions, or battery problems, these professionals can handle multiple issues under one roof.

Common MacBook Screen Issues and How Experts Address Them

MacBook screens are advanced pieces of technology, and several factors can lead to issues. Understanding these problems can help you better understand the repair process.

1. Cracked or Shattered Screens

One of the most frequent issues that MacBook owners face is a cracked or shattered screen. A simple drop or bump can lead to a noticeable crack, or the screen might break completely. While some people might try DIY fixes, cracks require an expert’s touch to replace the damaged screen with a new one. Expert repair services are equipped with the right tools and parts to replace a cracked or shattered screen without causing further damage to the device.

2. Dead Pixels or Screen Artifacts

Dead pixels or screen artifacts are often caused by damage to the screen’s display panel. This can result in certain areas of the screen not displaying colors or images properly. Experts can identify the cause of the problem—whether it’s the screen itself or an issue with the graphic card—and replace or repair the necessary parts to restore full functionality.

3. Flickering Screens

If your MacBook screen flickers or flashes randomly, it can be a sign of an issue with the display connector or other internal components. Experts can examine the device’s connections, fix loose cables or damaged components, and ensure your screen is functioning properly without any flickering.

4. Backlight Issues

Another common problem is the loss of backlight, which results in a dim screen or total blackness even though the device is powered on. Experts can diagnose the issue—whether it’s related to the backlight or another internal component—and replace the necessary parts to restore brightness and clarity to your screen.

5. Touchscreen Malfunctions

For newer MacBooks with touchscreen capabilities, issues with touch functionality can be incredibly frustrating. Whether the touchscreen is unresponsive, inaccurate, or malfunctioning, experts can recalibrate or replace the touchscreen to ensure that it works as expected.

How to Choose an Expert Mac Screen Repair Service

When selecting an expert Mac screen repair service, it’s important to do some research to find a provider who offers quality, trust, and reliability. Here are a few key factors to consider when choosing the right repair service:

1. Look for Apple Authorized Service Providers

While many third-party repair services are great, Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASPs) are certified to use Apple parts and offer services that meet Apple’s standards. AASPs often offer the highest quality repairs, and they provide an official warranty on their services.

2. Check for Reviews and Recommendations

Customer reviews and testimonials can provide valuable insight into the quality of service you can expect. Look for repair services with positive feedback, especially regarding the quality of their work, customer service, and timeliness. Personal recommendations from friends or colleagues can also be valuable when choosing a repair service.

3. Inquire About Pricing

It’s always best to get a quote before committing to any repairs. While MacBook screen repairs can be pricey, a reputable service provider should offer a transparent pricing structure. Be sure to ask about any additional fees or hidden charges that might arise during the repair process.

4. Ensure Fast and Convenient Service

Many expert repair services offer same-day or next-day repairs for MacBook screens. Depending on the severity of the issue, you might even be able to get your MacBook back the same day. Ask about the turnaround time to make sure it fits your needs.

5. Consider the Warranty

As mentioned earlier, a warranty is essential for peace of mind. Choose a repair provider that offers a solid warranty on their work. This will protect you in case any issues arise with your screen after the repair.

When your MacBook screen needs repair, expert service is the best way to ensure your device is properly fixed. From cracked displays to malfunctioning touchscreens, professional repair services offer quick, reliable, and high-quality repairs that restore your MacBook’s functionality. By opting for a skilled technician and a reputable service provider, you’ll not only get your screen fixed efficiently but also preserve the longevity and performance of your MacBook.

So, if you’re dealing with a damaged MacBook screen, don’t wait—find an expert repair service and get your display fixed today! With the right professionals handling the repair, you can have your MacBook back in no time, looking and functioning like new.

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