#malcolm in the middle prompt

[5sospenguinqueen]

Y/N: I hate you.

Reese: Well, according to this picture I drew of us holding hands, that's not true.

[micahdotgov]

im not attracted to peter capaldi as malcolm tucker but i am attracted to him as the doctor and im not attracted to paul higgins but i do think its hot when jamie ttoi shouts and i think thats because there's a real threat of violence that there isn't when malcolm shouts and im not sure why i'm telling you all this

[kath-artic]

this is so crazy to me we're talking almost every day now and not necessarily at any great length or depth but its just. normal and comfortable. whadda hell

[gingerteaonthetardis]

hello i have a (very basic) fic prompt: established relationship hurt/comfort malcolm/rose. :))

genuinely diabolical of me to answer a prompt you sent almost a year ago—at one in the morning, on a random wednesday. but... better late than never? if you see this, which i hope you do... i'm so sorry it took so long. hopefully the 5k wordcount makes up for the wait.

content warnings for: medical emergencies, hospitals, canon-typical swearing (honestly, i think i kept things rather mild), and daddy issues

[read on AO3] [send me a prompt]

He comes home white as a sheet.

There has always been something faintly spectral about him. Two days without enough sleep and his bones tend to press up at the underside of his skin, turning his face into a craggy mess of shadow and light. He credits his milky, changeable complexion to a combination of his heritage and London's dismal weather.

Though—she's done what she can for him, in the months since they started seeing each other. They take walks along the Thames, sometimes. She stays over as many nights as she can and tries to make sure he gets a bit of actual rest.

They went to the seaside exactly once, for a conference, and while he worked almost the entire time, she did get him outside where the chill wind could buffet some colour into his cheeks. Eventually.

(She persuaded him to kiss her on the boardwalk, to ignore the possibility of the press spying on them, because “who would even recognise Malcolm Tucker when he's smiling?”)

But no matter how she tries, he is always pale and drawn and tense in a way that is not remotely healthy.

She knows she nags him about it, probably too much. Pushes. “This job is gonna kill you one day,” she told him matter-of-factly, one very late night in bed. Her hand was splayed on his bare chest, over his heart, as she spoke.

His fingers crept up to tangle with hers, and he let out a long breath, like a laugh too tired to embody itself. He hadn’t been home in over seventy-two hours.

“Already has,” he said. “You're looking at a ghost, darling.”

So she dragged the bedsheet up over his head and refused to let him out until he said “boo,” and he laughed a little and called her a child, and her fear dissipated so she could very nearly forget the darkness under his eyes, the tremor in his hands.

But when he comes home in the middle of the workday, looking like that—well, for the first time, she actually believes him.

She's looking at a ghost. A wraith. A shadow.

-

At first, she thinks things might not be as bad as they look.

“Steve fucking Fleming,” she sneers at the television, determined to be angry since Malcolm cannot be. He is beyond anger, having travelled to some more remote psychological peak. But she is merely mortal, flat-footed, here on the ground. Radiantly, righteously pissed. “Who does he think he is?”

He doesn't respond. His eyes are glued to the screen, where the ticker scrolls past spewing bullshit about his resignation. As if anyone on earth would believe that.

His body is a harp string, pulled so tight that it might snap at the smallest pluck. She reads him loud and clear, like he's wearing a big sign that says Do Not Touch. He'd been hounded by the press on the way in, probably bumped and jostled and while it boils her blood, she knows him. Knows he needs a minute alone.

At a loss for anything useful to do, she falls back on what she knows. The solution to any crisis, at least in the Tyler household.

Tea.

Water splashes into the kettle with probably an unnecessary degree of violence and noise-making. Malcolm likes his weak, bag out with lots of milk, so it'll hardly take a minute, she tells herself. Then she can go to him. Hug him, hard. Tell him the truth, which is that she loves him and fucking hates his job.

She taps the fingers of one hand on the countertop, her thumb ring clicking impatiently against the side of his mug with the other.

“I give it a week,” she calls out, eyes tense on the hissing kettle. “Maybe less, before they’re begging you to come back. You’ll see.”

Then: “Who's the bald one you hate so much? Julius? Well, there'll be a shitstorm anyway, with his report, and—and you know he'll come crawling on his hands and knees, asking you to clean it up. Do you…?”

Her voice gets lost in her throat for a moment, making her wonder if she should even ask this. If he'll even bother answering.

“Will you, when he asks?” Her hesitation is painfully obvious. “Will you go back?”

Nothing.

The only sound is the kettle, her thumb ring, the tinny voice of a reporter coming through the television speakers. And out the window, she thinks she can hear paparazzi—camera shutters clicking, animated voices in the street.

“Vultures,” she spits, like the word is poison.

She's interacted with the press since she was barely more than a baby, off and on, the relationship as rocky as the one between her parents. Pete Tyler, the mogul. The wunderkind. The absent. But the papers were always there, reporting on every jet ride to far off places. Every time he left them behind. Until the one time he didn’t come back.

The water boils, and she fixes Malcolm's tea, then hers. She wants so badly to run back into the living room and gather him all up in her arms, even though it makes no sense. He's not a wounded bird. He would hate the very thought of her pity. So she picks both mugs up carefully, tells herself this will help.

Until there is a large thump.

“Malcolm?” she says, feet frozen to the floor for a whole three seconds. “Malcolm.” Did he throw something? Certainly not. Drop something?

Instinct draws her from the kitchen, where the first thing she sees is the TV screen: on it, the Prime Minister, standing outside 10 Downing Street surrounded by dozens of microphones. His voice carries through the living room.

“...terribly sorry to see him go, but Malcolm Tucker has our full support in whatever he chooses to do next. We respect his decision to step away from politics, and are eager to begin this new—”

“Bollocks,” Rose spits, a fraction of a second before she notices the space where Malcolm should be standing is empty.

And he’s just lying there, face down.

On the floor.

Two mugs hit, a second after.

-

They won't let her ride in the fucking ambulance.

So she has to take his car. Which means she first has to find the spare keys—his must be in his coat pocket still, which he was wearing when they carted him off on a fucking stretcher—and by the time she does find them, the paps, who had only just begun clearing off when the ambulance showed up, are back in force. She can barely edge the sleek, black BMW out of the driveway without taking out some camera guy’s kneecaps. Honestly, she almost slams the gas anyway.

By then, the flashing lights of the EMS are long gone, so she has nothing to clear her way. It takes ages—a lifetime, a trillion lifetimes—to make it to the hospital, and the whole time she keeps thinking, What if he's dead? You're looking at a ghost, darling. What if he's dead? On and on and on.

Her head is a traffic jam all on its own, leaving her unconscionably distracted while she finds a parking space. But she musters up a little dignity for the walk into A&E.

And yes, of course, she can already see the zombie horde waiting outside the doors, eager to get their teeth into the fearsome, famous Malcolm Tucker, so recently fallen from grace. It’s one hell of a story—a surprise resignation gone so awry that it put a former political colossus in hospital. And while it isn't likely they'll know what she is to him, she doesn't want to risk making a bad situation worse.

She pulls up the hood of her sweatshirt and plunges through the gathered mass, making straight for the door.

But she must have used up all her luck finding a place to park.

“Is that—?”

“That's her!”

“Rose?” one of the more aggressive paps shouts. “Rose Tyler?” Her hands ball into fists, and she shoves them in her pockets.

“Are you visiting a patient? Rose!”

Instead of shouting back—I don't know, you fucking pigs!—she just forces her way forward. The sight of an irritated-looking nurse jamming his head out the door is a lifeline above all the bobbing heads and enormous camera rigs.

“Rose,” cries another zombie-vulture-waste-of-space, “is it true that Malcolm Tucker left the government to work for your father's company?”

“Unless all of you are going to admit yourselves into this hospital, clear off!” The nurse is the one shouting now. “You are interfering with the care and safety of our patients!”

That, of course, sets off another round of shouted questions about Malcolm's condition, about Pete Tyler’s condition—what a laugh—and Rose despairs of ever getting through until the nurse notices her—perhaps her pink hood, or her horror-struck eyes—in the midst of them.

His own gaze sharpens, and he pushes the door open wider.

“Clear a path, or I'm calling security,” he says, voice heavy with threat. “Back off.”

It's not terribly intimidating, but it's enough for the frontmost row of hacks to back down, leaving just enough room for her to be spat out in the entryway. She stumbles a little, and the nurse catches her.

“You're not one of them, are you?” he asks, hesitating for just barely a second—but then she swipes off her hood, and his uncertainty vanishes.

He nods, eyebrows lifting, then slams the glass doors shut behind them. It quiets the paparazzi to merely a dull roar.

“So, the rumours are true.”

She knows what he’s seeing right now; it's the same thing everyone sees: Pete Tyler's apparently estranged daughter, the long lost Vitex heiress who came back out of nowhere—read: the Powell Estate—a year ago, after nearly a decade out of the limelight.

And, allegedly, Malcolm Tucker's scandalously young paramour.

That's always been the worst of it: the way people look at her as if she's a toddler, not twenty-seven years old. Pampered little rich girl. As if she hadn't been just as surprised as anybody when her parents reconnected, remarried. Reintroducing her to a small but overwhelming world, one where he happened to exist.

Everything had changed, and then it changed again the moment she descended that giant staircase outside the reception hall, still dressed in her ugly, frilly, Jackie-selected bridesmaid's gown—and there he was. Smirking at her behind his hand, the bastard.

He changed everything.

She sets her shoulders, trying to look like more than she is, and stares down the nurse—his badge says Rory, with a little smiley sticker next to it.

He isn't smiling at all, sensing her intentions. “I’m sorry, but only family are allowed to—”

“I'm his wife,” she interrupts with a lie, bald-faced and glaringly desperate. She doubles down. “Rose Tyler. We're married. It was a… secret thing. Family only. ‘Cause of the press, yeah?” The way she says press is positively vicious. “And my parents, you know, they had this huge wedding and it just seemed impractical to have two in a year. Such a waste of money…”

She's overcomplicating—babbling, in fact, making her story less believable with every word. Surely the paramedics will have left a record of her prior statements, panicked pleading between sobs. But in spite of Rory's dubious look, he seems inclined to take pity on her. Her heart hammers as he considers for an eternal moment, blinking several times in what looks like an effort to clear his head.

“Please,” she says. Her voice breaks. “I've got to see him.”

In a tone of utter resignation, he tells her the room number.

-

She doesn’t need the room number, in the end. She just follows the shouting.

“—unless you want me to fucking shove that syringe up your cockhole and wiggle it around like an X-rated re-enactment of the Very Hungry Caterpillar, you'd best remove this fucking IV—”

So, he's awake.

A gaggle of nurses are lingering either in or around the doorway, watching the shitshow like it’s a particularly engrossing episode of Hospital, and Rose has to clear her throat to get through them. Her pink hoodie stands out like a beacon among all the scrubs.

“How is he?” she pauses just long enough to ask, voice low under the roiling stream of vitriol pouring from the room. “What's happened?”

One of them, a woman with a badge that says Hame—adorned with yet another smiley face sticker—looks at her sheepishly.

“Are you—?”

“His wife.” The lie comes more fluidly this time. So fluidly the nurse doesn't even blink in surprise.

“He woke up in the ambulance,” Hame offers, “and he's been… like this… ever since he arrived.”

Rose's lids momentarily flutter with the effort not to roll her eyes. But the relief comes fast on the heels of irritation. All the blood which had been pounding through her legs, prompting her to run, dissipates; she can only give a dizzy nod in return and stumble through the doorway.

“—you fucking deaf? I’m fine, I feel fine, as I've been telling all of you for the last half an hour! Look, I was test-driving my new Victorian fainting couch and fell a little to the left, that’s all, no big fucking deal. I'm absolutely fine!”

“Malcolm,” she says.

And he looks at her.

His face—God, his face. It’s waxy, pale as the moon, and his hair is sticking up like he's been running his hands through it, or like he's been in a pub fight. This impression is further supported by the blooming discolouration on his right cheekbone. It must have been from the fall. The fall she missed, because she was making fucking tea.

He doesn't look small on the gurney, doesn't look weak or unnaturally still or withered or any of those things she's heard people say about visiting their loved ones in hospital. But he looks like he's gone ten rounds with something much, much stronger than he is. The whole world, maybe, has beaten him.

Her chin wobbles.

“Oh, not you fucking too!” His eyes, marginally sunken, get wide all of the sudden. “I'm just fine, Rose—lot of fuss over nothing, all right? Just—no, darling, don't you do that, don't—”

But it's too late.

Tears break free of her waterline as she lurches toward the hospital bed. She barely has the wherewithal to mind the IV—still attached, which he’s thrilled about, no doubt—as she wraps herself around the nearest piece of him she can reach. Which happens to be his arm, warding her off.

She pulls the pale limb to her chest, feeling its warmth. Letting it saturate her. She hides her face in his bent knuckles and lets out a watery, choked noise that's struggling not to be a sob.

“Can you just—Rose—fucking give us a minute, all right? You can get on with the anal probe or whatever the hell you plan to do to me later, just all of you get out of—yes, thank you, thanks a fucking bundle. All of you, scram.” Malcolm's voice sounds like it's coming down a very long corridor, echoing wrongly in her skull. She can't feel her knees, which is a strange thing to notice, because she's not normally aware of them at all. “Rose? Rose, come on, darling, you're making a scene.”

He reels her in by bending his arm, which moves stiffly. She holds it tighter, breathing deep. Trying to swim back to some kind of surface. “Sorry,” she mumbles.

“S’all right. Hell of a day, isn't it?” he says, sounding more normal. Or maybe her ears are working right again. “Couldn't have come at a better moment. Seems I'm about to have quite a lot of time off.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m not the one blubbering, now am I?” counters Malcolm. “That's enough, all right, save it for the funeral.” He seems to recognise that's the wrong thing to say just a beat too late, when her shocked gaze finds his.

“That's not funny,” she says. “That's not even remotely funny.”

Some of the force leaves him, rounding his shoulders. “I know.”

She goes on, refusing to let go of his hand. She's speaking directly into his fist, and she doesn't care. “Damn you, Malcolm, I told you! I said, ‘This job is gonna kill you,’ and look where we are!”

“I'm not dead yet,” he insists. “And, if I might point out—it was losing the job that nearly killed me.”

That's it—her knees can't take it any more. They just sort of go out from under her, and she's lucky she's close enough to collapse into a seat beside the hospital bed.

“You scared me,” she manages to say. “I don't—I'm not even sure what happened, I just heard this thud, and then you were there on the floor!” He makes a soft shushing noise, which she ignores. “You have to let them look after you, Malcolm, you can't just—”

“All right,” he interrupts, vocally reluctant. But the hand against her chin finally opens, fingers searching out her face. “Fine. Fine, Rose, but I'm sure it's nothing.”

She gives a watery laugh. “Yeah, just your life. You've only got the one, you know.”

“I know,” he nods. But she can't be sure if he really believes her—if it even matters to him.

(You're looking at a ghost, darling.)

-

It's not nothing. Of course it's not.

It's a myocardial infarction—a bloody heart attack. Mild, according to the doctor, but nothing to joke about. Rose doesn't want to budge from Malcolm's side, and she’s heard people are supposed to take notes with this sort of stuff, so she gets her phone out and starts typing out anything she can make sense of, anything that sounds even tenuously important, anything she can spell. She tries to ask questions.

Malcolm keeps shooting glances at her while the doctor coolly, calmly explains that this should be a wakeup call.

“Cardiac events of this nature are often a warning sign that other, more concerning events are incoming, such as another heart attack or a stroke,” he says, “unless serious changes are made in regards to health and stress levels. Your heart is functioning normally—for now.”

His emphasis makes Rose's own heart thump painfully.

“But we'd like to keep you overnight for observation, and in the morning, we will discuss a health management plan.”

Malcolm seems inclined to buck against authority, as he nearly always does, and Rose doesn’t mean to, but she squeezes his fingers so tight she can feel the bones shift. And he nods instead.

“All right,” he says, eyes sliding towards her. They look pale, bleached by the fluorescence. “One night.”

She doesn’t want to make a scene again, so she runs to the ladies room. But when she gets there, she can’t cry anymore. She can only face her reflection in the mirror.

She's the one who looks like a ghost.

-

When Malcolm finally falls asleep that night—a feat which seems nearly impossible with nurses coming and going—Rose slips out into the hallway and dials a number she's been avoiding for hours. Maybe longer, if she's honest.

“Hullo?”

It's—it's too much.

She sniffs, and realises her airways are so tight, swollen by all the tears still left to shed.

“Pete?” she creaks out.

The shift is instant. “Rose? What’s wrong, love?” She can imagine him sitting up straight in bed, probably patting around trying to get her mother up.

“Don't wake Mum.”

“All right, what's happened?”

“It's Malcolm. He…”

“Oh, God. Rose, I'm—I got the call, but I didn't—I’m sorry, love, it just seemed…”

“Like bullshit,” she flatly fills in the blanks for him. Impossible. Like something that would never, ever happen, not to him. “I know. But it's not. He had a heart attack.” Voice low, her eyes scan the hallway, dimmed for the night shift; even now, she fears the click of the camera shutter, of being seen. Of compounding the problem. “I’m here with him, and he's… He's not taken it well.”

Pete snorts, and she would laugh, too, except that she can't.

“I can imagine. Is there anything you need? We can come down, but—”

“The press, yeah,” she sighs. “No, there's no need. Visiting hours are over anyway. I just wanted to ask…” The excess energy, the nerves build up like static until she's tapping her foot to try and let some of it out. “Look, I know I said I didn't want any money or favours or…”

“Anything, Rose. You know we’ll do anything.”

There's not a trace of blame in his voice, that's the worst part. Not even an ounce of bitterness.

He's always understood, ever since he came back into her life, that it might be too little, too late. That this—their non-relationship relationship—is not something to be solved by his money or his access. In fact, she’s sort of suspected he admires her decision to have nothing to do with Vitex, nothing to do with his public profile, regardless of how much it could benefit her. But…

Tears trail down her cheeks. It’s not for her, so it’s different.

“Two weeks at the lake cottage. Would that be—?”

He doesn’t even let her finish. “Of course.” She hears shuffling, rustling like he's gotten out of bed and started rooting around his nightstand. “I'll call Graham tomorrow, get it set up for you.”

“He can't do anything strenuous,” she adds, “and I don't want to leave him alone, so we'd have to order in for most things.”

“I'll take care of it,” Pete replies smoothly. “There’ll be fresh wood for the stove, too, if the temperature drops.”

Her voice comes out barely a whisper. “Thank you.”

“When do you want to go?”

“As soon as he's released.” There's a clutch in her chest, twin sensations of guilt and horror digging their hands in. She’s never planned more than a birthday present behind his back. “I’ll clear it with his doctor first, but I don't want to give him time to argue with me, and if we stay home—I mean, the paps'll be all over us. He won’t get a minute’s rest.”

If her father notices her misuse of the word “home,” he doesn't mention it.

“I'll handle travel arrangements,” is all he says. “D'you need someone to go and pack for you?”

“No, I can do it.” She sniffs, trying to gather herself. “Seriously, this is—I just want you to know…” But her voice dissolves.

“I know, love. I do.”

“I've got to go,” Rose manages, seconds or minutes later. The tears have slowed, and she can breathe again, and all she can think of is crawling back into that awful hospital bed beside Malcolm and falling asleep with his heart beating safely under her ear. Now that she’s got some sort of plan, she thinks she might have a shot at rest.

There’s just an instant of hesitation, then her dad says, “Rose? You know, Malcolm… he's been on his own a long time, love.”

That almost makes her scoff. As if she doesn’t know.

“Been making a ruin of his life, if you ask me, but he's always been self-sufficient. And if I’m honest, I don't think…” He trails off. She can sense that he’s searching for words, and presses her impatient lips together. She owes Pete that much, at least. “I don't think he knows how to let someone love him. Understand?”

Weakly, she answers. “Yeah.”

“So he might try to act like he doesn't need it, but he does. ‘Cause the way you love him—love, he'd be a fool to leave all that on the table.” There's urgency in his voice, an undercurrent of something she can’t identify. And then he says, “He's lucky to have you, Rose,” and she feels the words pressing into her heart, touching some aching place she's been pretending doesn't hurt. But it does hurt. “So lucky.”

It’s never stopped hurting.

“Never forget that.” The words come to her thick with tears, and she wonders if he’s been hurting, too. All this time. “All right?”

She squeezes her hand into a fist and wishes like she used to when she was just a kid. Wishes her father was here, with his arms around her.

This isn't that, but it's as close as they've been, maybe ever. As honest.

So she says, quietly, “All right, Dad.”

-

“Everythin’ okay?” Malcolm mumbles blearily. He’s blinking at her before she can even climb back into the hospital bed. And here she’d been all worried about waking him. But in second, his washed-out gaze is wide and alert—a shadow of his normal self—his hand lifting to make room for her beside him. “Thought you might've gone home.”

Home.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she shakes her head. “Don't be stupid.”

She wishes she could stop the renewed flow of tears, but she's too tired to turn them off—to do anything but curl up against him and let them soak his hospital gown.

“Not going anywhere,” she sniffs out.

Malcolm hums, but says nothing. Just strokes his hand up and down her arm. He's cooler than he should be, veins filled with foreign hospital fluids, so she nestles in, sharing her body heat. Their combined weight sinks them into the mattress, closer to each other. It's like a small pocket of shared gravity, belonging only to them.

“I called my dad,” she says, she doesn’t know how long after.

His hand pauses. “Oh, yeah?”

“You know I love you, right?” Talk about a non-sequitur.

There’s shifting against her, and she looks up, easing her weight off him in case he's uncomfortable. God knows he's got no chance of escaping, so at least she can not crowd him.

But he’s not trying to move. Just settling. “Rose,” he says, holding her gaze, “where's this coming from?”

She blinks.

“My heart, you berk.”

“I know that,” and he rolls his eyes, lids fluttering. “I mean, where is this leading to?”

“Well, I'm gonna ask you to do something I know you won't want to do, and before I ask, I just—I dunno, thought it would be important for you to know.” She almost pouts at his unchanging stare. “That I love you.” Nothing. “And that I'm asking because I love you.”

He answers too quickly. “No, I don’t think we should open things up to a third.” Quippy, light. The effort of it hurts her head.

“Jesus, Malcolm.”

“I know it works for a lot of people,” he blithely continues, ignoring her narrowing gaze, “but I’ve already sowed pretty much all the wild oats I want to sow.”

“Malcolm.”

“And we’re not getting a dog either.”

“I want you to take a break.” She meant to finesse it a bit, but no, she’s just blurting it out now and he’s just staring at her. Chin tucked, like they’re just curled up on the couch and she’s telling him she wants chips for dinner, again. “A holiday,” she presses on. “Two weeks. My dad’s got this place near Windermere, it’s called Rose Cottage—I know,” she adds, before he can even open his mouth to comment, “Rose Cottage, horrendous. He’s still getting the hang of apologies. But he said it’s ours if we need it, everything’s set up. It’s quiet, peaceful, but not so boring you’ll go mad locked up there, I think. Plenty to see in close walking distance. There’s a lovely garden and a library, and we can just take the train, and—”

She is rambling.

And he just watches her do it. Watches her dig this hole right in front of him. Possibly he’s trying to think his way out of the situation.

“I mean, if you don’t want me there,” to see you like this, god, please don’t say that, “if it would be better, we could hire a nurse and you can go by yourself. The important thing is you need to rest, but I didn’t think—I mean, it’s not just about you recuperating either. I guess I thought… we could…”

She shakes her head, wishing it would clear. Wishing she could say things in a more helpful way. But all she’s got is this endless stream of, Don’t go back, don’t go back there. Don’t go back to them.

“Can you take pity on me for, like, five seconds and say something, maybe?”

“All right,” he says. “C’mere, shift.”

He waits for her to resettle, her head in the curve of his shoulder, her arm poised carefully around his waist. She’s never been surprised by his capacity for gentleness, or his overt affection, though she’s sure it would shock the shit out of practically anyone else. Maybe not Pete. But to her, it always made sense. There’s the side of the moon you see, and then there’s what’s hidden beyond. Smudgy and impossible unless you look from a different angle.

Malcolm loves like that.

He lets her breathing regulate before he speaks again. “I don’t want to do that.”

Even laying down, her shoulders sag a little.

“I don’t want to turn off my phone, stay in some quaint little middle-of-nowhere called Rose fucking Cottage, doing nothing for two weeks while the world moves on. While my party makes a fucking laughingstock of itself—which,” he adds, “—I know they all will, more than likely already have. Fucking disaster waiting to happen.”

For a moment, there’s a flicker of heat in his voice. The energy that is essentially Malcolm, his constant belief that the world should be better than this, that it’s always letting him down with its many varied incompetencies. But it fades back into something slower.

Sadder, she thinks.

“I don’t want to end my career notorious, with a heart attack that nobody’s happy I survived. Almost nobody,” he corrects when she moves to argue. “I don’t want a holiday, Rose. How you can even call it that when we both know you’ll be playing nursemaid—shuffling my sorry arse around, ordering takeaway and doling out probably a whole rainbow of little colour-coded pills… Jesus. It’s miserable, and humiliating, and frankly, it’s hardly a holiday at all. But it’s one I particularly don’t want to take without the woman I love.”

She blinks again, her eyelids feeling so heavy, mind so slow. But her heart lurches in her chest like it’s lighter than air. “Really?”

“Yes, darling. So I guess you’d better come along, if you think you can stand it.” He must feel how relieved she is. How every bit of her begins to unspool.

“I can.”

His lips land soft against her head, breath gusting out over her rumpled hair, and his hand resumes its steady path up and down her arm. She thinks that’s the end of it. Until: “You know, the doctor said something funny earlier, when you were out of the room. Called you my wife. ‘I’m glad your wife is so serious about your care,’ he told me.”

Oh, god. Honestly, she’d forgotten, in the midst of everything else. The lie she’d come up with in the heat of the moment, in her desperation to see him. She should’ve known it would get back to him somehow. It’s either very good or very bad that she’s too tired to react with appropriate embarrassment.

“He seemed to think quite highly of you. All your notes and questions. And I thought, ‘Now that’s interesting.’ ‘Cause I didn’t want to correct him.”

She can’t help it. Her arm tightens, her whole body burrowing closer. Ribbons of warmth trail through her, centralising around her heart. “They weren’t going to let me see you,” she says. It’s all the explanation she feels she needs.

“I didn’t want you to see me either.”

“That’s just stupid. I always want to see you.”

His chest judders with a silent laugh, and then he sucks in a short, pained breath. But he doesn’t let her squirm away, just holds her tighter. “I know,” he says quietly. “I have come to discover that I’m a very stupid man.”

“Well, I’m bloody brilliant, and I have a plan to get you better and keep you around for a long time, so don’t—you shouldn’t even bother arguing with me,” she says, going for some measure of authority. She can’t take her eyes off the machines at his bedside. Numbers blurring in and out, back and forth. Thinking, You’re not a ghost. There, look—your heart’s beating. “And even if you do, I won’t listen.”

It’s mine to keep.

“I’ll try not to.” She hears the smile in his voice. Smiles herself. It feels like a good stretch, muscles that need to be tended to after an endless tense day.

“You fight everyone,” she says. “You don’t have to fight me.”

He answers in a whisper, close. “I know.” Nobody else would believe it.

But it’s close enough to a promise. The words wash over her head, more air than sound, and she holds them tight while the world goes fuzzy and soft at the edges. And eventually, Rose sleeps, exactly as she wanted to. With his heart beating steadily, safely beneath her head.

[ocs-rainbows-and-stuff]

Malcolm: Dare - Get out of the Middle Truth: Would you, could you, on a boat?

"Seems like a certain someone *cough cough CYNTHIA cough cough* told you a certain nickname I hold a vast amount of disdain for. But? You know, I'm in a good mood, I'll humor it."

Malcolm pauses for a moment, and reads the ask over again.

"THIS QUESTION MAKES NO SENSE! Anon, have you ever read a book on grammar, more or less retained any information from it?! Would I, could I, on a BOAT?! What does this even MEAN?!" Malcolm goes on a rant for a while about how the sentence doesn't make sense.

He chooses the dare anyway.

(live Malcolm reaction to the Truth prompt:)

[the-flaming-nightmare]

Fuck It Friday

Tagged by the wonderful @snowviolettwhite! ❣️

Here's another (slightly longer) snippet from the next installment of A Bright Life:

After closing Malcolm's door, Gil rounded the car and climbed into the driver's seat. Before he turned the key into the ignition, however, the older man reached into the backseat and breathed an internal sigh of relief when he came across an empty Walmart bag. He handed the plastic, grey and green bag to Malcolm, just in case the kid got sick again on the way.

Aside from the quiet rustle that came from the bag in Malcolm's hands whenever he would fidget with it, the drive to Urgent Care was spent in relative silence. Fortunately, it took them less than twenty minutes to arrive, and Malcolm thankfully hadn't needed to be sick again in that time, either. After finding a parking close enough to the entrance so Malcolm wouldn't have to walk far, the older man helped the younger into the building just as he did back at the precinct.

When they walked in, Gil was relieved to note that there weren't too many people in the waiting room. The lobby held an elderly woman with greyed hair sat by herself with a book in her hands, an exhausted looking middle-aged couple sat together on the other end of the room, and sat across from them was a lone man who looked to be around Malcolm's age with a bloody cloth wrapped around his left forearm. With so few people, it hopefully wouldn't be long before they were called back.

Gil ushered Malcolm into one of the beige leather chairs, before going up to the receptionist's desk and getting his son checked in. The brown-haired man behind the desk handed him a pen and clipboard with three pages worth of paperwork to sign. Gil thanked the man and carried the forms back with him over to Malcolm's side. He took a seat right next to the young man and got to filling out the necessary forms for him.

As he neared the end of the second page, Gil felt a warm weight settle against his side. Malcolm had laid his head on Gil's left shoulder, and one of his hands had migrated to clutch a piece of the older man's coat. The kid's eyes were closed, but it was clear from his breathing that he was still awake. Gil couldn't help the fond smile that lifted the corners of his mouth.

Once Gil was done filling out the medical forms, he set the clipboard down on the end table beside him for the time being, not wanting to disturb his kid until it was absolutely necessary.

Over the next ten minutes, Gil watched as the other patients in the room were called back one by one. The man with the bloodied arm was called back first, then the elderly woman, and then the middle-aged couple.

"Malcolm Bright?"

Gil gently pushed Malcolm off his shoulder before grabbing the clipboard. Malcolm made a small, disgruntled noise at being moved and sluggishly blinked his eyes back open.

"Come on, son, it's time to get up," Gil said in a soft voice, holding out his free hand to help him up.

Malcolm grabbed the older man's hand and allowed him to pull him up. He swayed on his feet for a second, prompting Gil to tighten his grip on the kid's hand. When Malcolm didn't take his hand out of his once he regained his balance, Gil was more than content to keep holding on to him.

After handing over the clipboard to the nurse, she led them into the back and into one of the exam rooms. Malcolm sat down on gurney-like bed that was in the room, Gil at his side still holding his hand.

Tagging (if you wanna): @angelique-of-the-volturi-guard, @tomwise, @sempiternalailurophile, @adhd-mess, @deevotee, @bat-to-da-robs and anyone else who wants to join!

[nehswritesstuffs]

Intro Post, GO!

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph--I last did one of these in 2018... fucking...

Info under the cut, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Hi! My name is Nehs and I write stuffs. I’m a trained screenwriter and hope to one day break into that, but I also know that since it’s a lot of work and luck I might as well enjoy myself along the way. I’ve been writing fan fiction since about 1998 and sharing online since 2004, so when I say I’ve been writing fic for most of my life, I mean it. More recently I’ve been very active in the Doctor Who/Whouffaldi fandom and back in One Piece. These things are more alike than one would think. My life force feeds off of weird, rare, and otherwise less-popular ships as well as alternate universe settings.

Aside from being here I’m also on fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own. In the past nine years I’ve put out about 1.78mil words on AO3. My totals on FFN (which begin in high school (beware weird/lower quality work earlier on) and are skewed due to author’s notes and review replies bc i’ve been on the site for so long) are at ~2.38mil. Not everything from here is on my FFN or AO3 and not everything on FFN is on AO3 and vice versa. I do tend to crosspost a lot of my work, however, so when one site is down, there’s usually a good place to find my stuff otherwise if you were in the middle of something!

(No, seriously, my FFN hits took off during the latest mass-AO3 outage and it was mainly for stuff that was crossposted, so don’t be afraid to come on over!)

Uhh... big things I’m known for...

The Time That We Love Best: slice of life Whouffaldi AU set from WWII-1960; a hundred chapters of a relationship and lots of period-related plot; there are prompt fills to add to the story

The Thick of UNIT: crossover involving Doctor Who and The Thick of It, prominently showcasing the crackship of Kate Stewart/Malcolm Tucker; contains many OCs, canon cameos from both shows, weird shit, and current events; lots of offshoots and even has spawned fic of the fic

The March of Kasterborous and Gallifrey: pseudo-fantasy/nobility Whouffaldi AU that starts with an arranged marriage and morphs into a loving relationship and the building of a dynasty; consists of In Want of An Heir, Stars in A Sky of Blood and Blue, a prompt fill fic, and an AU of the AU that’s a remix of the first fic

Getting the Hang of Things: my attempt at a close-as-possible-to-canon Whouffaldi AU where they raise kids

a bunch of different fantasy-related Whouffaldi AUs, incorporating things such as selkies, werewolves, vampires, a How to Train Your Dragon setting, and more

Father Like Son, Mother Like Daughter, Parent Like Child: a One Piece Bellazón AU where Cora-san and Bell-mère raise their six kids in the East Blue, they’re all better adjusted, and proceed to make it everyone’s problem

little seagull, little seagull, where shall you go?: a One Piece AU where the Heart Pirates find a kid during the timeskip and Law completes the circle and becomes her Cora-san; is pretty much becoming a pick-your-own adventure story as I write varying branches to the plot

Love, Loss, and Finding One’s Self on the High Seas; I wanted to write Sanji/Pudding that gave her agency and made things less creepy; there’s lots of other ships too and it’s just weird af trust me

Other than that I am generally friendly and willing to interact with people. Drop me a line anytime, about fic or fandom or anything else, even if you think it’s negative. My personal blog is escapaldi. I enjoy hearing from readers (I’m one of those people that stalk reblogs for fun tags) and anything is better than nothing. There’s always room for improvement in a writer’s craft, so if you catch something then please let me know. Anon is on and if you prefer to confer in private just say so. Another thing to note is that I tend to reblog fanart for things I’ve written,things I find neat/important, and any other projects I may be in at the moment. If you got a problem with that, then I’m not really sure what to tell you. *shrugs* Oh, and yeah, don’t feed my fics to an AI for any reason whatsoever or I’ll astral-project myself to your computer and no one will enjoy themselves. :D

[justabooknerdposts]

I've always been curious about Thalia's perspective of hanging around Percy and Annabeth once they are a couple. It's an interaction not really ever seen and I think itd be really sweet

This was a really interesting concept—I feel like I partly covered this idea in the Hamburgers after the War prompt response, so I tried to touch on some different things here.  And it kind of turned into being more about Thalia and Annabeth’s friendship, but I hope it’s still a satisfying snippet!

As she crossed the green in the middle of Camp Half-Blood, Thalia’s head was spinning a bit.  It had been nearly six months, but she still couldn’t believe that her brother was back in her life.  The warm June breeze blew through the camp, rustling the strawberry fields.  Thalia closed her eyes, taking a deep breath in.  Being back at camp was always harder than she expected.  She could start to feel the borders close in around her.  Nothing against Camp Half-Blood, but Thalia definitely preferred the freedom of being out in the woods with the Hunters.

However, it was worth being back at camp to get to spend time with Jason.  She wished there was more she could do to help him with reclaiming his memories or with the upcoming quest to the ancient lands, but her primary responsibilities now were with Artemis and the Hunters.  She’d told him to keep in touch, though, and she would do what she could.  Mostly, she was still just happy to get to see him again and talk to him. 

Speaking of talking to people…there was one other person Thalia needed to stop and visit before leaving.  But when she poked her head in the Athena cabin, there was no one there.  She found the cabin at arts and crafts, but minus their head counselor.

“I think she’s at the Big House,” Malcolm Pace said.  “Doing more research.”

Thalia thanked him and made her way up to the Big House.  Sure enough, she found Annabeth on the porch, sitting cross-legged in a rocking chair, blonde hair falling out of a messy bun, head bent over a silver laptop.  She was so absorbed that she jumped when Thalia said her name.

“Oh, hi.”  Annabeth brushed her hair back from her face.  “What’re you doing here?”

“I stopped in to see Jason.”  Thalia hopped up on the porch railing.  “And I thought I’d check on you.”

“I’m fine,” Annabeth said, her voice flat, not even trying to hide the lie.

“You’re not,” Thalia said, and she knew she was right when Annabeth didn’t bother to correct her.

Annabeth turned her eyes back to her laptop.  “Have you heard anything?”

Thalia shook her head.  Annabeth was still looking at her laptop, but she must have been watching Thalia in her peripheral vision because her shoulders slumped.  After a moment, she said, her voice small, “I miss him, Thalia.”

“I know.” 

They were quiet for a couple of minutes, Annabeth tapping away on her laptop, Thalia alternately watching her and occasionally glancing through the rec room window, where Mr. D, Chiron, and a couple of satyrs were engaged in a game of pinochle.  It had been nearly six months since Percy had disappeared from his bed in the Poseidon cabin.  For six months, Annabeth had spent nearly every moment searching for her boyfriend.  They hadn’t really been together that long, just a few months, but Thalia knew their relationship had deeper roots than that.  She’d been there when Percy had snuck on the quest to rescue Artemis, more determined to rescue Annabeth than the goddess.  She’s spent a semester as Annabeth’s roommate, hearing stories about Percy this and Percy that, and their adventures from the previous two summers at camp.  The moment that stood out the most, though, had been from last August, on Olympus, when the staircase connecting the mountain to the elevator had begun to crumble.  Thalia, Grover, and Percy had made the jump, but Annabeth, injured, hadn’t had the strength.  When she’d leapt, she’d only managed to half grab the ledge.  When she’d started to slip over the side, Percy had been the first to grab her.  Thalia could still recall the intense look on his face when he grabbed Annabeth’s arms.  It had hit her, in that moment before she and Grover had grabbed Percy in turn, that there was no way he was going to let Annabeth fall. 

She told Annabeth some of this, then pretended not to notice as Annabeth surreptitiously wiped her eyes.  Finally, Thalia said gently, “You’re not fine, kiddo.  But you will be.”

Annabeth smiled slightly at the old nickname.  “You know, I’m older than you now.”

“Doesn’t matter.”  Thalia swung her legs back and forth.  “I can still picture that seven-year-old kid who threatened Luke with a hammer.”  They shared a smile, then Thalia added, “She was tough.  She still is.”

Annabeth swallowed and swiped her hand across her eyes again.  She dropped her eyes to her laptop and, in a tiny voice, said, “Jason showed up with no memories.  Like, none.  What if…” she bit her lip as her voice trailed off.

Thalia’s heart squeezed.  She slipped down from the railing and instead perched on the arm of Annabeth’s chair, putting her arm around her friend’s shoulders.  Annabeth leaned her head against Thalia’s side, a tear slipping down her nose, and Thalia was reminded of a night nearly ten years ago, after the fight in the Cyclops mansion.  It had been their last night before reaching Camp Half-Blood.  None of them could sleep, but they’d been too tired to keep trekking across Long Island.  Annabeth had laid down, but Thalia heard her sniffling.  When she’d touched the little girl’s shoulder, Annabeth had at first flinched.  Then, she’d turned over and buried her head in Thalia’s side, letting Thalia hold her as she cried.  Now, as then, Thalia’s chest ached, wishing she could do something to make her friend feel better.  But she knew now, like then, that there was nothing she could do to fix this heartbreak.  So she simply stayed there on the arm of the chair, her arm around Annabeth’s shoulders, and let her friend cry. 

Because sometimes, just being there was the best she could do.

***Thanks for reading!  Happy almost-release day for The Sun and the Star!***

[esoterium]

@executiioner || halloween location prompts || accepting!!

mortuary, an abandoned mortuary with blood still on the embalming tables. (malcolm)

malcolm's fingers press together. steepled one. by. one. thumb tips meet forming the perfect triangle to frame his nose and mouth. he stands in the middle of the mortuary and listens. eyes closed. but it isn't ambient noises he's straining to hear. no. not any dripping. not any footsteps. not any sounds that might give some clue he's looking for.

no. none of those.

then what is he listening for, you may ask?

the answer to his inner monologue's question of why the hell he, always, lets himself end up in places like THIS. killer lair? couldn't get any killer-lairy than this. not even a little bit. yeah? he's here by himself. yeah? he's got his gun and it's loaded..sure. there's that. yeah, he's definitely seen and been through worse. but most people learn from those sort've situations. move past them. build up some kind of stockpile of bullshit experiences that leave them with even more reasons to have a stack of pill bottles in their medicine cabinet that'd put a strain on anyone's PPO.

not him. nope. give him a creepy situation marked with bloody embalming tables. rusted saws. scalpels. acidic liquids rotting out of their containers. what may or may not be old bloodstains on stomach churning aged white and what used to be minty green colored tile? and he's gonna end up there. moth to a crematorium in the basement, as they say.

no, malcolm, no one says that. only you. only you.

his hands fall from their spot. right dips into his pocket to pull out the hastily scribbled letter he found in his mailbox. this address. nothing else. he unfolds it. reads it. and repeats the action twice before stuffing it back away and walking further inside. his gun's in his hand within ten feet. it's not his inner voice he hears. but the presence of someone else past the tattered curtain that once separated work spaces. doesn't matter how quietly he walks around it. cause he comes face to face with her the second he clears it. and they're both ready...

guns drawn and recognition flickers in both their eyes damn near instantly. "christ! shit. sorry. i-right. yeah." malcolm rushes to shove his back in it's holster. the last thing he wants to do is put a gun to anita blake's face. once his gun's tucked away, the paper's grabbed from his pocket and held against his palm with a crooked thumb as four fingers spread towards the ceiling. "please don't tell me you got one of these? or this situation just got even more weird..."

[general-kalani]

1. The sender walks into something while ogling the receiver. (Down the rabbit hole we go! Malcolm x Cobbs)

Prompt from here!

Under a cut for getting a little long for a drabble ;3

"Oy! Y'got anything in this joint that's-"

A sudden cut off from talking.

Why? Well perhaps it was because of the fact Cobbs was shirtless, scars on his back on full display. Not only that, but had clearly interrupted Cobbs in the middle of getting changed, if the clothing on the lower part of the body getting ready to be pulled down meant anything.

Was that a sly smile on the bastards face as he looked over his shoulder at Malcolm?

What a cheeky fucker. No he wasn't interested in the other man! He'd never be interested in a fucker like him, he's too dangerous! Too sly! Like the damn fox hat he wears and loves apparently way too much to take it off while getting changed.

He'd never! He'd never ever think about such a thing in the god damn world and-

OW! His fucking pinky toe! Damn the furniture in this damn place now he stubbed it. Fancy shit that doesn't make sense half the damn time why did it have to be him of all-

Oh. Shit. When did Cobbs get there? When did his back hit the wall?

Probably when he got scared by the fact Cobbs just appeared out of nowhere. So close to him.

"... You're cute panicked, Malcolm... It's a good look." Hand underneath Malcolms chin, thumb rubbing at Malcolm's lower lip.

"Oh I'm fuckin' sure you think that. Gettin' a hard-on after every murder y'do." Although that imagery was... Hard to get out of his own head.

Fuck how this man was so perverse in his mind. As if his mind was a wildfire and Cobbs was the center of the fire itself.

This wouldn't be happening if that damn... Kiss hadn't happened. Since that night, that drunken... Drunken night, it's all been going wrong for him, his ability to function...

"The alcohol you seek is down the hall, second door on the right."

Oh right... Yeah he had come in here for that.

And all too soon the other man was moving away again. That damned fucking smile on his lips...

He hoped it didn't invade his dreams tonight after drinking.

[kath-artic]

i need to text that guy again but the last few conversations we had were

- favorite malcolm in the middle character (prompted by him)

- my very brief review of mad god (want to talk to him in person about themes)

- "have you ever worn an eyepatch in your life" <- asked by me

and most recently

- me getting too high and frantically texting him "ogres outside" (he did not respond to this)

[b4nanaa]

AMERICAN HISTORY FINAL ESSAY

it so fucking happening. we are so 🔛🔝!!!!!!!!!!!!

CAN WE GET MUCH HIGHER???????????

SO HIGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

ANYWAYS THE PROMPT: Explain the evolution of the Civil Rights movement into Black Power and Black Nationalism.

The Civil Rights Movement rose around the 1950s with the goal of equality for African Americans. It aimed to end racial segregation and discrimination around the United States, and claim equal rights for Black Americans. The movement ran mostly from 1950 to the 1960s, and through that time it made significant milestones, such as the bus boycotts and legislative actions. Famous figures were also born, like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. However as time progressed, there was a shift in the movement. As tension and frustration grew among the people over their limitations, there was a shift toward a new revolutionary movement that embraced Black Power and Black Nationalism.  In pursuit of racial equality, they expanded beyond the goal of just desegregation and aimed for black autonomy in the face of oppression and discrimination.

As mentioned, the movement ran through the 1950s and the 1960s. Within the 1950s of the Civil Rights Movement, it had achieved milestones such as desegregation in schools and legislative action. But by now, many of the activists were now middle-aged. New members wanted faster changes and their methods of protesting became more confrontational. In the 1960s rose the organization, SNCC, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. It was a group that would "push the civil rights movement in a new, more confrontational direction (American Yawp 27)" while still maintaining a nonviolent principle. However, that would soon change when figures like Stokely Carmichael came to power.

The SNCC began transitioning away from its original ideals and began to embrace Black Power, as well as Black Nationalism; a belief that centered on maintaining a separate identity and self-reliance. This was largely influenced by Malcolm X, a minister of the Nation of Islam (NOI). His speeches largely encouraged the pursuit of "freedom, equality, and justice by “any means necessary (American Yawp 27)." He was also an advocate for "armed resistance in defense of the safety and well-being of Black Americans (American Yawp 27)." and stated, “I don’t call it violence when it’s self-defense, I call it intelligence (American Yawp 27)." His call for action to achieve the goals of equality went directly against MLK's agenda, who saw his speeches as a disservice to Black Americans. Ultimately, the clash in ideals represented the changing atmosphere in politics and the Civil Rights movement. As new activists rose from the old, came new ideas.

Among the SNCC organization, members were becoming dissatisfied with the slow progress brought by nonviolence. Inspired by Malcolm X, they began to turn to Black Power, a movement that focused more on self-reliance and determination rather than integration. It was a "more aggressive movement (American Yawp 27)", that "called for African Americans to play a dominant role in cultivating Black institutions and articulating Black interests rather than relying on interracial, moderate approaches (American Yawp 27)." In contrast to the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power encouraged the use of violence in self-defense and to achieve freedom, justice, and equality by any means necessary.

During a march on June, 1966, Carmichael coined the slogan that would define the movement, “What we gonna start saying now is black power (American Yawp 27)!" The phrase 'Black Power' resonated with audience and would represent the movement, as well as directly clashing with MLK's 'Freedom Now.' Although it can be interpreted differently, it's overall message emphasizes self-determination for black community politically, economically, and socially. Alongside Black Power came Black Nationalism, a movement with a similar goal for equality and empowerment for the Black community with an emphasis on unity and autonomy, as well as separatism. This can be seen in the expulsion of white members from the SNCC. "By the late 1960s, SNCC, led by figures such as Stokely Carmichael, had expelled its white members and shunned the interracial effort in the rural South, focusing instead on injustices in northern urban areas (American Yawp 27)." Slowly, organization within the movement was moving away from the idea of desegregation to focus solely on their people.

me strugglign to keep going because im sooo hungry ahhh

The Black Panther Party was a large part of the era for Black rights and is an example that embodies both of these ideals.  Formed in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California, the party was known for being a uniformed group and for Black Nationalist beliefs. Most often the group is seen and remembered as 'violent', likely due to their open display of firearms and weapons, being "the standard-bearers for direct action and self-defense (American Yawp 27)." They were known for protecting black citizens from brutality, mostly from police. The fear around the Panthers went as far as them being called the 'greatest threat' to international security. However, there was more to the group than just self-defense. "...the party’s 10-Point Plan also included employment, housing, and education. The Black Panthers worked in local communities to run “survival programs” that provided food, clothing, medical treatment, and drug rehabilitation (American Yawp 27)." Beyond direct action, the group was known for helping out local communities. They provided resources for those in need, from opportunities to supplies. Not only were they focused on having militant power, but they also focused on equity for Black Americans.

The goal of the Civil Rights Movement was the pursuit of equality and equity for Black Americans. For the most part, it was largely influenced and led by a nonviolent approach that would allow for integration. Yet as time went on, activists' views shifted and introduced other conflicting ideologies. This included Black Power and Nationalism, two ideas that had the same goals but different approaches. Instead, they proposed using violence and separatism. Change was only inevitable within the movement as people grew impatient with the rate at which it was moving, and to achieve their goals, they turned to more confrontational and action-based ideas.

[cyarskaren52]

“It was like holding a f**king live wire”: how Rage Against The Machine’s explosive debut album changed everything

It was early evening on Sunday, February 21, 1993 when the balloon went up. To the majority of people listening to Radio 1’s weekly chart rundown, the name Rage Against The Machine meant nothing. Why would it? A brand new band mixing metal and hip hop like no one had done before, they’d yet to make an impact outside of the nation’s rock clubs or the stereos of the more clued-in metal fan.

And so, when presenter Bruno Brookes cheerfully announced that their new single, Killing In The Name, had entered the charts at No.27 and cued the song up, neither he nor several million listeners knew what was about to happen.

The song started with a coiled guitar and tense bassline, as some guy rapped about the American police force’s inherent racism with palpable vitriol in his voice: ‘Some of those who work forces are the same who burn crosses.’ Then – boom! – the whole thing suddenly erupted. Over guitars that sounded like a thousand police sirens wailing all at once, the line ‘Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me!’ blasted out of radio speakers everywhere, not just once, not twice, but 16 times. And then, suddenly, it reached its gloriously profane crescendo with one word hurled out with all the anger and pain that could possibly be mustered: ‘MOTHERFUCKER!’

Understandably, the snafu prompted a deluge of complaints to the BBC from offended listeners. Bruno Brookes, who was unaware that an unedited version of the song had accidentally been aired, was suspended for a week and almost lost his job. In just three and a half minutes, a group of political agitators from Los Angeles had detonated an incendiary device live on the airwaves.

“We knew the band’s politics were radical,” says guitarist Tom Morello today. “And that the band’s music was a radical combination of styles. But we didn’t think it was going to matter, ’cos no one was ever going to hear it.”

But people did hear it, in their millions. Rage Against The Machine were about to start a four-man revolution.

More than a quarter of a century after it exploded like a car bomb under the hood of mainstream culture, Rage Against The Machine has lost none of its power, impact or provocative fervour. It was the sound of Public Enemy yoked to Black Flag, of Dr Martin Luther King and Malcolm X set to a soundtrack of cutting-edge rap-metal.

Rage arrived as the wilfully shallow, MTV-driven rock scene of the 1980s was flat on the canvas with bluebirds fluttering around its head, laid out by the emergent grunge movement. In America, a new generation of hip hop bands was providing a vital social commentary, marrying the gritty reality of the streets with the violent glamour of a Hollywood crime blockbuster. All this was happening against a backdrop of global turmoil, racial tension and the threat of war in the Middle East. In hindsight, their timing was perfect.

In reality, it was purely accidental. Vocalist Zack de la Rocha, guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Timmy C (aka Tim Commerford) and drummer Brad Wilk had been in various low-level LA bands, including hardcore firebrands Inside Out (Zack) and Lock Up (Tom, who played on their sole album, the unfortunately titled Something Bitchin’ This Way Comes).

“I had been in a band that had a record deal, I had already had my grab at the brass ring,” says Tom. “The band got dropped and I was 26 years old, and I thought that was it. I thought, ‘If I’m not going to be a rock star, or make albums, I’m at least going to play music that I believe in 100%.’ And I was fortunate to meet three people who felt very similarly.”

The four were brought together by various mutual friends, though Zack and Tim had known each other since childhood. Zack and Tom came from similarly radical backgrounds – Zack was the son of Mexican-American political artist Robert de la Rocha, Tom was the son of a white American activist mother and a Kenyan diplomat father. Growing up, both had experienced racism first hand, and bonded over their hard-left political views – views that would shape Rage from the off.

“I wanted to ensure the protection of this band’s integrity,” Zack told journalist Ben Myers in 1999. “Our words had to be backed up by actions, because we’re dealing with this huge, monstrous pop culture that has a tendency to suck everything that is culturally resistant to it into it in order to pacify it and make it non-threatening.”

Ironically, for a band who would go on to become one of the most successful of the 1990s, Rage Against The Machine saw their very existence as limiting what they could achieve.

“We began with zero commercial ambition,” says Tom. “I didn’t think we’d be able to book a gig in a club, let alone get a record deal. There was no market for multi-racial, neo-Marxist rap-metal punk rock bands. That didn’t exist. So we made this music that was just 100% authentic, it was 100% what we felt like playing. We had no expectations.”

Still, it was clear to the members of Rage from the start that they were onto something unique. Brad Wilk can vividly recollect the band’s very first rehearsal.

“More than anything, I remember this connection and movement and momentum that was happening in the room,” he says. “Something clicked. I played so well with Tim and Tom, and then we had Zack, who was a bolt of lightning, flying off my kick drum and was in it for real. There was something really special about what we were doing. We weren’t analysing it or putting our fingers on it yet. It was just an intense moment for us all. We saw the very beginning of the potential we could have.”

Like so many Californian bands before them, Rage’s first gig took place not at a club but at a party, in Huntington Beach, in the sprawling suburb of Orange County, south of Los Angeles.

“It was a party in a house, and the place felt electric,” says Tim Commerford. “A lot of our songs didn’t even have vocals at that time. In fact, we played a version of Killing In The Name that was just the music – he hadn’t got the vocals done. You could feel the electricity. It felt like holding on to a fucking live wire. That’s what it was: a live wire. And it kept getting more and more live.”

Collectively, Rage were fans of hip hop, and Tom recalls the band’s early days being sound- tracked by the likes of Public Enemy and Cypress Hill. But while hip hop provided a big steer for the band, it wasn’t their sole influence. All four had grown up on guitar music ranging from 70s rock and 80s metal to punk.

“Our histories run deep, that’s why we were the band we were,” says Brad. “We didn’t just listen to hip hop, we listened to all kinds of things, from Black Sabbath to Led Zeppelin to Minor Threatand the Sex Pistols. When we were getting together, we agreed that we wanted our record to sound somewhere between Ice Cube’s AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted and Led Zeppelin’s Houses Of The Holy.”

In March, Rage embarked on their first proper tour as openers for Public Enemy. Thanks to the controversies whipped up by the US media around ‘gangsta rap’ acts such as NWA and Ice-T, mainstream America had a poisonous – read: virulently racist – relationship with hip hop, and trouble was never far away. It was the perfect environment for Rage Against The Machine.

“The tour was a needlessly controversial one,” says Tom. “At the time, rap was considered a dangerous endeavour, and the police sometimes outnumbered the audience at these shows. They tried to shut several down, filed injunctions – none of which were successful, I might add. We were playing these colleges, and the audience would be 100% white fraternity boys and sorority girls, passing through five levels of metal detectors and pat-downs. I think the cops were afraid that we were going to be bussing in Bloods and Crips to the show. There was an air of hysteria.”

Today, the guitarist still expresses bafflement that anyone at all would want to take a chance on Rage Against Their Machine and their political message, let alone a corporate record company. But their 12-track demo tape found its way into the hands of Michael Goldstone, the Epic Records A&R hotshot who’d previously signed Pearl Jam.

“Our only goal was to make music for ourselves and to make our own record – a cassette tape, an elaborate demo tape of the 12 songs we had written,” says Tom. “That was our entire goal. We never thought we’d play a show. We never thought we’d make a record.”

Garth Richardson was a young Canadian studio engineer whose biggest credit came on an album by hair metal B-listers White Lion. But he was young and hungry, and when Epic asked his boss, producer Michael Wagener, who should work on the debut album by this hot new rap-metal band they had signed, he was an obvious choice.

“I got the demo tape and went, ‘Holy shit.’ There was nothing else like it,” he recalls. “I went over to see them play in their jam space. I think they played me four songs, and I was blown away, to the point where I couldn’t talk afterwards, because my stutter was so bad. I was like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me – I’m going to be doing this band?’ It was their power, and also what Zack was saying. It was so fresh and so new.”

Rage began recording their debut album with Garth in March 1992. Seven of the 12 tracks from the demo tape, including Killing In The Name, Bomb Track and Bullet In The Head, would appear on the album.

“The songs were probably about 85 to 90% there,” remembers Garth. We made a few changes, mostly lyrically. Literally, somebody just had to capture them.”

To achieve this, the producer brought in a full concert PA system to get the full impact of the band’s live firepower. This was undiluted Rage – though sometimes it created unforeseen problems.

“The problem is that sometimes Zack’s voice went,” says Garth. “He was working it so hard. The end of Freedom, where he’s screaming, ‘Freedom!’, that’s just one take. Every time he sang, he gave it his all. Anybody that wanted him to hold back, he was, like, ‘No, fuck off, leave me alone.’”

Given the incendiary lyrical subject matter, there was surprisingly little input from Epic. They seemed to learn their lesson after suggesting the band remove the line ‘Now you’re under control’ from Killing In The Name. “There was a big conversation about that,” remembers Garth. “And the band just said, ‘Fuck you, that part stays.’”

Killing In The Name would be the song that broke the band in the UK. For six months, it soundtracked every rock club in the country, its impassioned call-to-arms galvanising dancefloors of people out to party. Yet, like so many of the great songs, it came about by accident.

“I remember coming up with that riff,” says Tom. “I was giving guitar lessons at the time, and I was teaching some Hollywood rock musician how to do drop-D tuning. In the midst of showing him, I came up with that riff. I said, ‘Hold on a second’, and I recorded it on my little cassette recorder to bring into the rehearsal the next day, never realising that it would be the genesis of a song that would have that lasting impact.”

In April 1992, a series of riots erupted in Los Angeles when four white policemen were acquitted of beating African-American motorist Rodney King, despite the assault being filmed by a witness standing on his balcony. For America, it was a moment of chaos. For Rage Against The Machine, who had already recorded their debut album and would release it in November, the timing was unfortunately convenient.

“All of those songs were written prior to the Rodney King riots,” says Tom. “In some ways the record was prescient, in that it saw this maelstrom of racial strife and imperialist war on the horizon. When the record hit, it was a fertile field for us to have the ear of audiences around the world.”

Rage were proudly revolutionary – too revolutionary for America, who were slow to catch on. Britain was a different matter, as Bruno Brookes’ unfortunate Radio 1 mishap proved.

“The UK was the first place people lost their minds over this music,” says Tom. “One of the principal reasons was that there were more lax lyrical censorship laws on your MTV and radio. We never edited the curse words out of songs, so people in the United States couldn’t even hear them on MTV, they couldn’t hear them on radio. And secondly, people over there were surprised to hear an American band that had a view of America that was similar to Europe’s view of America.”

From that small spark, a conflagration began to spread, as word about Rage Against The Machine grew. Their snowballing success had the desired effect, as a generation – or at least sections of it – began to wake up to the messages they were delivering through the bullhorn of their songs. Musically, too, they dragged the dormant rap-metal movement that had briefly flared up in the late 1980s back out of its stupor (in Bakersfield, California, the members of a brand new band named Korn were certainly paying attention to what Rage were doing).

Plus, society was changing fast in the early 90s. While sexism, racism and homophobia were still unfortunately prevalent, there was growing opposition to such outdated outlooks. Rage Against The Machine took it several steps further, crediting Black Panthers founder Huey Newton and Provisional IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands on the credits list to their album – a contentious move on both sides of the Atlantic. The sleeve itself featured a 1963 picture of Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc setting himself on fire in protest of his government’s oppression of Buddhism. It was the ultimate visual representation of protest.

“My heroes were not guys in rock bands,” says Tom. “They were revolutionaries who were fighting to change the world. It looked like we were going to have an opportunity to get in that arena. This was an incredible opportunity to engage the planet – not just with our music, but with our ideas.”

The success of Rage Against The Machine took everyone by surprise, not least Rage Against The Machine. They rapidly went from being the outcasts of the Hollywood scene to a lightning rod for the alt-rock movement. Rather than blunting their political edge, success only sharpened it – most famously in 1993, when they took to the stage at a Lollapallooza festival show in Philadelphia naked, apart from gaffa tape over their mouths, as a protest against censorship.

But the pressure-cooker environment that comes with being in a revolutionary left-wing band eventually took its toll. Tensions between the bandmembers grew, and Rage split up in 2000 after just three studio albums. They have sporadically reformed since – most famously for a one-off gig in London’s Finsbury Park, after a fan-led campaign saw a reissued Killing In The Name trounce the Simon Cowell-backed X-Factor winner Joe McElderry to the 2009 Christmas No.1.

More than 25 years after it was released, Rage’s debut remains a landmark – the point where rap and metal truly came together to deliver a body-blow to the status quo.

“Human strife has not changed. Racism has not changed. Things have actually gone backwards,” says Garth Richardson. “Rage Against The Machine wrote an incredible record that was current – and it will be time and time and time again.”

Dave Everley has been writing about and occasionally humming along to music since the early 90s. During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on Kerrang! and Classic Rock, Associate Editor on Q magazine and staff writer/tea boy on Raw, not necessarily in that order. He has written for Metal Hammer, Louder, Prog, the Observer, Select, Mojo, the Evening Standard and the totally legendary Ultrakill. He is still waiting for Billy Gibbons to send him a bottle of hot sauce he was promised several years ago.

“There was an interruption to a news broadcast with the voice of this alien… I thought, ‘What if it were real?’” I Am The Manic Whale bring an old storybook to life

Sent from my iPhone

[rosecoloredknight]

Reg. the ocean asks: hurricane, storm, boardwalk :)

hurricane: describe a strange habit of yours.

okay tmi, but i do not like peeing standing up and i always wash my penis after peeing. NOW WAIT, allow me to dissect this statement: firstly, I've grown in a household with four women (mom and three sisters) and throughout that experience, I've learned both the tough way of cleaning after myself, putting the lid down, etc!! Obviously, i learned that from a young age but!! Because i was young, stubborn, naive, and lazy as a kid, i loathed doing that so i decided one day just to sit down and pee like that instead — IT'S A THING NOW. What about those days where i wake super hard because of all the water I'm holding in? sometimes i win sitting down, sometimes i have to compromise, stand up, and clean up.

SECONDLY, actually started this 10 years ago because i saw i think in MTV or something where a girl was like "guys wipe and wash your fucking ass", now i always did already, but it prompt me to try something different, i hated that feeling after i peed where it felt like there was still pee particles? I started washing my penis thoroughly after i pee. I know, disgusting and bizarre, but IT HELPS ME FEEL NOT DIRTY AND I ALWAYS CLEAN UP AFTER MYSELF REGARDING THE BATHROOM SINK AREA.

sigh — I've never told anyone this, consider yourself lucky

Or cursed

boardwalk: who is your favourite fictional couple?

hmm, i would say Hal and Louis from Malcolm in the Middle — but they're so many good fictional couples out there. Bones and Booth, Nate and Elena, River and Jess, and much more?? I'm not really good at answering this question, sorry!!

storm: do you like piercings and tattoos? Why or why not?

Of course!! piercing are extremely pretty!? from ear, nose, BELLY, upper/lower lips piercings, each are unique!! it only enhances someone's look? plus, have you seen the variety of earrings AVAILABLE!?

As for tattoos!? haha, i guess its the same thing? plus, everyone has/have such a "one of a kind" tattoo(s)!? and that's the beauty of it!! some have meaning to it, and some are just for fun or the fucks of it!? either way, i always want to and am down to know about someone's entire tattoo "collection"!! like please, share them with me and tell me about them!!

Also, tattoos makes one look sexy asf 😆😊

Speaking of which, I GOT THREE MORE TATTOOS COMING SOON. hopefully by the end of the year 🤞🏼

—

thank you so much for the ocean asks!!

[bitterbrained]

❝ oi, feckin' cool it, mate! relax, jer, come off 'im ! ❞ the discouraging shout is called from the sidelines of the sudden street brawl as malcolm eyes the altercation for several long seconds and debates whether he should intervene. to be fair to his brother, the little shit on the curb did have it coming to him ― the fuck sort of nerve's this guy got talking smack on the pair of them ? and un-fucking-prompted, no less ; they'd just been coming out of the gym after a training session run late, minding their own damn business. matter of fact, he was quite literally in the middle of asking jericho if he wanted to grab a midnight meal before parting ways for the night when his younger brother launched himself from the stairs. his words appear to fall on deaf ears and malcolm sighs, takes a few more seconds to savor the cigarette he's only just lit on the way out the door. on the last drag, he flicks the wasted smoke into the street and heaves himself down the stairs to break up the fight.

( more like pull jericho off the poor bastard before he ends up killing him, but malcolm has never been too particular when it comes to semantics. )

yanking his brother away from his would-be homicide victim isn't difficult ; mac has been extricating jericho from unnecessary altercations for years and he's learned by now how to handle him. like a feral animal. malcolm would scruff him by the collar like a wild cat and yank him back if he didn't think he'd tear right through his own clothes in his frenzy to spill blood. instead, he hooks an arm around his middle and pulls hard, knocks the wind from him long enough to make him let go and pull him into the narrow alley on the side of the gym. ❝ leave him be, jer, ❞ malcolm warns as his brother remains fixated on the street. ❝ don't look 'im, look at me. ❞ he's still thrashing in malcolm's grasp and the older hayes groans. looks like he needs a hard restart. mac grabs him by the shoulders and slams him back against the wall hard enough to try and ground him. judging from the rabid glint in blown pupils, it's not enough. a broad palm swiftly lifts to deliver a firm smack to the right side of his head. it's hard enough to rattle his skull a little, but not much else ― malcolm isn't trying to really knock him around, just get his attention. and sometimes, when it comes to his brother, force is required. ❝ i said look at me. ❞

once jericho finally sets himself straight, malcolm gives himself a moment to get himself together ― out of respect, of course ― before he's forced to give in to the laughter he's been trying to contain because, christ, is his brother a fucking sight to behold. ❝ ye look like a feckin' loon hoppin' around wit' yer one toe to the wind like that, fucksake. real feckin' class, jer. ❞ he's cackling through the words, though, and the raucous sounds of his amusement echo off the walls of the empty alley as he starts toward the street in search of the missing shoe. ❝ i canny understand how'd ye even manage it ― world class fighter over here, and ye got yer shoes flyin' off in a feckin' street match. ❞ the words are teasing, but they're not malicious. he's used to his brother's antics. ( and for many years, he's got to admit, he really fucking missed them. ) he looks over his shoulder as he steps down off the curb. ❝ are ye even lookin' yer damn self, or are ye just havin' a hissy fit over there? ❞

WHERE: outside four level gym WHO: @bitterbrained - malcolm

a slap upside the head after his back slammed into the wall outside of the four level gym. look at me. it took a moment, not long, but soon enough jericho obliged his brother. a growl gurgled through clenched teeth while different shades of blue hues bore into another. having a silent conversation without the need of words. he’d gone too far, by normal public standards and general morality. all it took was some off comment by the random pedestrian while they were walking out together and, like a rabid dog, jericho had launched himself off the top of the few steps leading down to the walkway to tackle the smartass. only got a couple good hits in before malcolm decided to intervene. ( jer pulled away for one more graze of a hit on the person, though). pulled, snarling, around the corner and held there until he calmed down again ( and the asshole ran off ). ❝ alright, alright, feck aff me. ❞ he pushed out of his beast of a brother’s hold and shook himself out.

❝ ma shoe? waer’s ma feckin’ shoe? ❞ jericho was spouting off to no one in particular. somewhere between exiting the gym, the scuffle, and the alleyway, one of his shoes had gone missing. a big toe sticking out of the hole in his sock while he stomped around looking like a wronged child. stupid feckin’ people always had to come ‘round startin’ shite when it was most convienient for them. jericho had to restrain himself ( or in this case malcolm ) so he didn’t get lifted. wasn’t fair. ❝ ur gunna help me look fur it or no? ye bastart. ❞

[andmyvape]

Reese could make so much fucking money doing stunts for movies holy shit