#my brain is a fucking excel spreadsheet and my work is never finished

[rhymingtree]

I'm so sorry this took so long 😭😭 but I've decided to procrastinate on all my other responsibilities and now here I am 🙃

Ollie flashbacks are starting to drive me insane. Can't spend too long in a psychopath's brain without being driven into insanity yourself

Also I have so many snacks rn so I'm wondering if I'll be crying with a mouthful of sandwich later on in the course of the chapter

Setbacks that included an entire sect of weapons dealers being picked off one by one.

Courtesy of Ghost, our dear Lady Disdain herself.

How Gonzalez saw everything before it happened and planned for it; he could only be blindsided if (F/N) was in harm’s way. How (F/N) would jump into a fight without a second thought and she wasn’t used to losing.

He could literally be blindsided so easily if you plan it right

but also fuck yeah Danny. Green flag guy.

The fact that Daniel Gonzalez is a fictional man hurts me to my core every day.

“Your mission?” “Исправляем свою ошибку.”

I know the Soldier was probably told to say that, but I can hear Bucky's signature sass. Like him saying 'you fucked up and now I have to clean up your messes. You are so fucking annoying. Redheaded asshole.'

Ok my bias showed back there but still

Zac and Belov were practically slumped over a pair of computers that looked as though they were at least two decades old.

They're working on their Excel spreadsheets

Shadows danced in your peripheral, their ghostly voices whispered in your ear. They begged and pleaded and screamed for mercy. Their faces stretched into horrified cries. Their bodies marred and mangled by fire and riddled with oozing bullet wounds.

How the hell can anyone find their way back to being sane after all this...

“You slept for over eighteen hours,” he said, pulling back with a low scoff, “How the hell did you manage to wake up cranky?” “I’m talented.”

Me to myself after one week of classes.

But no honestly how am I so drained after just ONE week back it makes no sense

How is she springing into work mode so quickly SHE ALMOST DIED FUCKIN' TAKE A BREAK

GIRL DONT YOU REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED TO HAMILTON WHEN HE DIDNT TAKE A BREAK

INFIDELITYYY

YOU DON'T SAY NO

well

she already didn't say no to Novak...

Ghost is genuinely insane. You know how I know?

She refused to take the nap offer

what kind of person says no to a nap??? In this economy??? Take the damn nap

— “Danny?” you cried, your lungs closing in on themselves as you struggled to breathe, “Mi amor? I’m scared. Stay with me, please?” —

Darke I'm gonna fuckin kill you

WHY DO I ALWAYS FALL INTO THESE WITHOUT ANTICIPATING THE FUCKING FLASHBACKS

this'll be the death of me

— He smiled softly, pulling you against him and resting his chin on your head, “I love you.” —

DARKE

Had he misread Walsh from the beginning? Had they been marked for death from the moment he walked aboard their plane?

So many what-ifs of what their lives would be had it not been for Walsh

What if there were more of him? What if more Hydra agents were littered among Aftermath’s ranks?

And background checks would be practically useless, because if Walsh had fooled them, anyone could

demon-green... jesus these descriptions are fuckin awesome

Also I don't think reading about people with these kinds of stress levels are helping me with my stress levels

I am double stressed. No triple. No... just a very alarming amount of stressed.

“I’ve seen her worse. I’ve seen her better.”

That is now code for: she literally almost died but is still refusing to take naps like a petulant toddler.

He was never going to see his friend again.

I'm going to die in a puddle of my own tears by the end of this aren't I

my poor sandwich is gonna be so salty if I use tears as condiments

I keep forgetting that Wraith's reveal was still so recent timeline wise... god reading all this all over again is gonna hurt once it's all completed

Which reminds me I've been thinking about it and I genuinely thought this fic would be finished by the time I graduated my senior year of high school

I'm in my senior year and it's not even close.

I might get a master's degree and still be typing out live reactions to new chapters while procrastinating a thesis.

Sounds like fun, can't wait for it.

“I do. She tried to kill Dugan. Cavanaugh hit her over the head with a chair. I damn near pissed myself. It was great.”

Oh, the good old days

 A small smile twitched to the corners of her lips as she looked down at him with the same sparkling eyes he fell in love with all those years ago.

Fuck you they're so fucking sweet I'm gonna cry

“Damn you,” he chuckled, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her into his lap. Imara set her chin atop his head, holding him close as the smile on his face fell.

I need fanart of this. I will pay with my internal organs to be able to put this image on my wall as a poster.

OOOOH A CONTAINMENT UNIT

OOOOOOOOOOH THE PLOTLINE THICKENS TO AN IMPOSSIBLE LEVEL

HOW MUCH THICKER COULD THIS FUCKING GET

I'm trying to remember where Peter is right now without checking the last chapter

great gods above, another stressed out plotline to wind down my stressed soul

sooner or later I'll be needing a pacemaker

PETER WITH A GRAND ENTRANCE

Zac is no longer Big Brother. Zac is now Guy in Chair

“Good.” He nodded, turning from him slowly before adding, “You don’t get to leave the city ever again.”

Cut to Peter a few years after this, wreaking havoc in fucking LONDON with Mysterio HAHSHAHA

oh, poor Ghost and poor, poor Jack...

Hell, maybe they’d take over the mansion in Medellín and run the safehouse there.

So romantic... so ambitious... what if someone blew that up too

“Don’t worry about it,” Jack said, glancing down at the kid with a wink, “I can handle Ghost.”

Yeah, you say that now

“That didn’t sound like a ‘no’ to me.”

Gotta admire how stubborn the kid is anyhow

But he’d be damned if he didn’t find her again.

There are tears

On the bun

of my fucking sandwich

😭😭😭 Zac's got beef with the fifteen year old now too

oh no

fuck it he's here now too... oh shiiit oh SHIIIIT

Reading this is doing serious damage to my life expectance. This amount of tension is taking a decade off me at most

JACK WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING

JACK BENNET-DUGAN WHAT ARE YOU DOING

“Have we met before?” the man asked, his head cocking to the side. “Yeah,” Jack growled, “I enjoyed breaking your face in Medellín.” Wraith paused, seemingly taken aback for a moment before Jack’s words sunk in. “Copycat,” he hummed, “Come to finish the job?” “With pleasure.”

See I knwo this is supposed to be thrilling

but mostly my heart is just lurching out of my ribcage

“You shoulda kept the mask. I can see fear in your eyes. Panic,” Wraith paused with a chuckle, the sound twisted and wicked, “I like it.”

Oh wow... didn't know he was into that sorta thing but I guess it isn't surprising 😏

Right. Left. Uppercut. Kick.

It's almost as if those moves are in their blood. In her blood.

WHY'D HE BRING A GUN TO A WEAPONS DEAL TURNED AMBUSH

STRESSED

ON THE VERGE OF CARDIAC ARREST

SANDWICH ABANDONED

goddamn fuckin Peter and Jack angst

I did not sign up for this

My Little Soldier Girl —

I'm about to throw a tearsoaked sandwich to the wall in a fit of unbridled rage

ew she slept 18 hours without taking her contacts off

how likely is it for a near-death supersoldier to get eye infection

not that that's at the top of her priority list but still

Maybe it was Danny’s guiding hand making sure they were safe.

Now I'm genuinely curious about these guys' spirituality

The only confirmed person with a belief system is Boone who's pagan. As far as I know Ghost and most of Alpha One and Two are agnostic atheists, but with that I feel like she still has a spiritual belief system that centers mostly on Danny's everlasting presence in her life

I don't know how much this'll affect her post-Westview though. It's gonna be a lot more tough for her after that

“Jack is blowing up city blocks. Just like (F/N).” “Must be a super soldier thing,” Zac muttered, not daring to turn toward you as you leveled a glare at him.

Well, it runs in the blood

You were going to have to send Ollie a message.

Cool what's his email address

Or would you rather go for Jack the Ripper-esque letters written in blood with someone's severed ear in the envelope?

MELINA AND NATASHAAAA MY TWO BEST GIRLS

😀 WELL THIS IS GOING WELL

“So, Walsh knows you’re moving them for him?” This stopped Melina in her tracks. She frowned, glancing up at her in confusion, “Who?” “Walsh,” she repeated herself, watching as the woman’s face never changed, “Ghost.”

SO VERY WELL

YELENA ALMOST SLIPPED

god I am stressed

Where the hell is that sandwich

Captain Lady oh mygoooooood Yelenaaaa

“You? Pft. No. He is the stupid archer and you’re my sister. You’re the coolest.”

nice save babes.

OH MY WHAT

(F/N).

THE WAY I ALMOST BOUNCED OFF THE FUCKING WALL

GOD IT MUST BE SO FUCKING TENSE HOW SCARED HE MUST BE

Ghostie's probably lying through her teeth

she probably hates tea

but I love tea so now Ghost does too 😀

I think I just shat my heart out with genuine shock at that reveal

I love how May didn't question the almost ghoulish looking woman coming to talk about the ✨internship✨

like even i would slam the door in her face if I saw her. She's scary. May's got some balls.

I was holding my breath the entire fucking time

Maybe, if Wraith knew who he was, it was high time he figured out who Wraith was.

Well it's high time I scream at someone to put the pieces together again. This'll be fun.

I love it when all of Alpha Two gangs up on ghost and starts scolding her like she's a child and they knew she broke something in the living room

With so much shit going on in the East Coast with Wraith and Ghost and all that, I find myself almost grateful to be so far away from the US

but then again far away also means the fucking philippines so we'll keep it at almost grateful

“Funny,” he said with a deadpan, “We don’t usually leave fingerprints.”

No you just leave a fuck ton of collateral damage, which is leagues away from little smudgy fingerprints, you fuckin' psychopath

EVERYONE IS STRESSED OUT WOOHOOO THIS IS FUN

Peter is the highlight of the chapter, of course. He almost always is. I'm so curious how the homecoming fight will play out.. and how his relationship with Ghost and Jack will go in the next movies of his storyline. The banter is fun. The angst hurts. I'm all in for it.

Now I need to finish that goddamn sandwich.

CHAPTER 97: GENESIS OF A FIRESTORM

To all my live reactors,

Please, please, please, hide your reactions under a Read More cut. I don’t want any spoilers floating around. 

&

To all my Anonymous Avengers, 

If you want to react in my asks, feel free. However, I won’t be answering any of them until at least Wednesday if they contain spoilers. 

Thank you,

Darke

┍━━━━━━━━ ★ ━━━━━━━━┑

Every other memory had come so clearly. When he pulled the trigger in Odessa and Inessa. When he trained soldiers and Widows in Siberia.

He could remember the cold in the chamber. The frost bursting and burning through his veins in the darkness.

But there was also heat.

Heat and sand and sun.

It was numbed heat and a blurred face and whispers of a voice that cracked and rasped.

He knew her once.

She knew him too.

They’d made him forget her.

It was too dangerous to remember.

So they made him forget.

They erased her.

But he’d be damned if he didn’t find her again.

┕━━━━━━━━ ★ ━━━━━━━━┙

CHAPTER 97: GENESIS OF A FIRESTORM

✪ Bᴀᴛᴛʟᴇ Sᴄᴀʀʀᴇᴅ : Aғᴛᴇʀᴍᴀᴛʜ

♜♠ Tʜᴇ Sᴏʟᴅɪᴇʀ & Tʜᴇ Sᴘʏ

⧗ Tʜᴇ Rᴇᴅ Rᴏᴏᴍ

☞ Bᴀᴛᴛʟᴇ Sᴄᴀʀʀᴇᴅ: Oʀɪɢɪɴs

»Jᴏɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴀʀᴋᴇ sɪᴅᴇ Tᴀɢʟɪsᴛ

TAGLIST BELOW

@thexbookxnerdx // @fadingbakeryfarmoperator // @rhymingtree // @itsmeatballworld // @kippykasey // @turtleedovee // @onewithnomightypowers // @pixviee // @riahmcq // @thequeenofthefallen // @jesuswasnotawhiteman // @fnnshelbys // @knowyourworth-sellyoursoul // @banbananas // @oikawasblueearbud // @itsarussian // @mrsbarnesinmyimagination // @oopsiedoopsie23 // @luhuhzy // @heyimjustlaura12 // @moonlightreader649 // @sighmurderbot // @useless-creature-213 // @xiyouchan // @bookfeen // @afraidofshrimp // @yjck121 // @born-a-sinner-die-a-martyr // @comfortzonequeen // @aftermatharchives

[the-butler-siblings]

I made a super comprehensive list of all the tags I use here!

(lol I briefly took the hyphens out of my url but then I realized I’d have to edit all my links and I don’t feel like doing that. Also I think it looks better with the hyphens) (I am not currently very active here :/ so this is only accurate for like. A six month period back in 2019 probably. I’m just rbing stuff like once a week now)

Keep in mind that most of these are newer and while I am working my way through my archive to tag them, it’s very tedious. All posts from here on out will be tagged like this though! I’m putting an asterisk* by tags that I’ve only added in the last month or so

—————————————

Categorizing Tags (what kind of a post is it?)

Fanfic and Fanfiction

Art - any post that includes visual art. Also tagged as either digital art or traditional art, and sometimes graphic design (mostly bc the art tag is so fucking long and I felt the need to break it up somehow)

Animation

Cosplay

Video

Audio

Music - playlists, original music, “this song made me think of this character”, etc.

Quizzes

Essays - basically any analytical and semi-structured writing that takes up more than 3/4 of my phone screen.

Conversating - any post with at least two people, resembling a conversation

Incorrect Quotes

(Correct) Quotes

Memes

Exchanges Zines Etc - information, announcements, interest gauging for any community-organized event or project

Liveblogging - any kind of live-blogging, by me or anyone else.

Fic Rec

AF RP - any kind of roleplay

Meta - anything that talks about the books/graphic novels/movie in the context of their worldbuilding, storyline, character development, etc.

Metafandom - y’all are so cool that you get your own tag <3

Subject Tags (who, what, where, when)

Character Tags - I use full names for everyone but Butler, and I use Artemis Fowl II to differentiate from the general fandom tag. (consequently, you can find all my original posts under Artemis Fowl). Any OCs are tagged with OC

A Fowl Bunch - when there’s like, too many characters for me to have the energy to tag them all. I’ll probably only tag the more rarely mentioned characters alongside this.

Book Tags - for when a post references a specific book, or the events of a specific book. I tag the full title, for example: book 5 is The Lost Colony, The Fowl Twins is Fowl Twins Book 1, and Artemis Fowl is Book 1

AF Movie - additionally tagged as either movie crit (wow that movie sucked) or movie pos (neutral to positive about the movie)

Eoin Colfer - pretty much any post that at least mentions him by name

Ship Tags - [commonly used ship name] or [character x character] or [character x oc] (these tags use first names)

The People - when we’re talking about The People as a whole, whether about their culture, government, magic, or anything else. I also tag The LEP for posts about it as an organization.

Tech Design - thoughts about or art portraying the more techy side of the books’ sci-fi content

Public Relations - Artemis Fowl and his friends are a very weird group, and it’s hard to believe that the general public has not noticed this by now

Orientation Headcanons - For posts explicitly indicating a character’s sexual and/or romantic orientation: I tag with [orientation] [character] and [orientation] headcanons

Trans Headcanons - posts with trans/nb headcanons. Tagged with [trans or nb] [character] and [trans or nb] headcanons

Bullying Artemis - sometimes we’re a little mean to him, and that’s ok, because sometimes he sucks <3

Bby Artemis - pre-canon Artemis

Old Artemis - he’s an ADULT now and he has BAD JOINTS

Spartemis (Space Artemis) - he’s in space now and I wasn’t sure how to tag those posts by book

AU or Canon Divergence AU - I also usually tag the more easily named aus like superhero au or role swap au along with these

Crossover (except alexmis to avoid clutter) - tagged with [title of the thing], and [name(s) of character(s)]

Not AF - I post off-topic like three times a year max, but this is just in case. Sometimes I’ll put Alex Rider posts on this blog so they don’t get lost on my main.

Tags For The Blacklist

Blood CW

Eye Strain

Long Post

Wow, that’s a lot! If you notice something missing from any of these lists feel free to let me know!

Also: because I don’t know how to effectively use links and I almost exclusively use mobile, I’m going to reblog this a few times with all these in the tags, in the same order they appear in here

UPDATE: I found out how to link tags so I’m working on that rn

[greenninjagal-blog]

The Rumor Mill Game (pt4)

I swear I didn’t forget about this au. This chapter is just....long.

Welcome back to this mess of an au :) If you need a refresher, you can find Part Three [here!] Or if you’re new check out the first part [here!]

Summary: Logan is...dealing with the fallout of him and his coworker, Remus, having created a rumor about them being married and now apparently having a kid except not because Logan screamed at the top of his lungs that Virgil wasn’t his kid. His boss has a different definition for what “dealing” actually means. 

Words: 8292 (Holy shit remember when this au was 2k words)

Read on Ao3 || My General Writing Masterlist

When Logan had seen his boss after he made Virgil cry, he hadn’t expected it to end up like this.

Granted when he hadn’t exactly been expecting anything. He hadn’t been looking ahead, hadn’t been making plans, hadn’t been thinking at all. Which was most likely how he ended up outside the bar in the first place. 

Logan could, of course, count the number of times he had been drunk on one hand. College had been a time for experimenting, and of course for his twenty-first birthday his friends at the time had been insistent that he needed to imbibe an unholy amount of alcohol in one night. They had turned it into an experiment, where Logan documented exactly what he was feeling after each drink and he still had the notes in his desk at home, despite the fact that his handwriting had become illegible after the fifth drink and someone had spilled an orange soda based tonic on the third page. The notes themselves were worthless, but they served as a memoir to people who he no longer associated with and a younger version of himself who had still been learning.

And Logan did have a soft spot for that imbecile: Twenty-one-year-old Logan Ackroyd who still believed in the goodness of people and who wanted to change the world and who could fall in lov--

Logan pitied him-- that kid he used to be-- which he was certain that his younger self would be indignant about. Logan always did hate when people pitied him. Those emotions had rarely ever been genuine, rarely ever been helpful, rarely been productive. What was he to do about people feeling bad for him? About others being disappointed? About others making assumptions about him and how he felt?

He didn’t need pity, and he didn’t want it. Not when he got rejected to his first three colleges, not when flunked that English class and had to pay to retake it the next year, not when he had bought that ring and gotten down on one knee and made a whole carefully edited speech and--

And he’s not nearly drunk enough to deal with these types of thoughts. Or any thoughts for that matter. Wouldn’t it just be great to stop thinking? 

Then he wouldn’t have to remember the looks on his coworkers faces when he storming into the office less than fifteen minutes after initially leaving for lunch and demanded that Beatrice turn in her overdue spreadsheets in twenty minutes or he’d have her fired before slamming his office door hard enough to crack that frosted glass, or the look on Remus- fucking- Prince’s face when he tried to act like everything that had happened was not his fault and that Logan had taken the game to far by himself without any sort of prompting from Remus, or the look on Virgil’s face when Logan lost his self control.

Like an idiot. Like an asshole. Like someone who doesn’t think before he acts.

Like someone who should be alone for the rest of his life, because he can’t seem to get a hold of those useless emotions of his. 

And Logan wanted so very badly to blame Remus Prince for this whole endeavor, the whole production, the whole catastrophe. He wanted to say that without Remus he never would have gotten that angry, wouldn’t have had that conversation, wouldn’t have even gotten Thai today. 

Logan wanted to say that, but really it's his own fault. If he had just dismissed Remus’s rumor in the beginning, if he had just told Jen and Quin that his personal business was his own, if he had just ignored the urge to get coffee and finished the spreadsheets without getting up that last night.

His fourth finger itched around the base, the area where that little silver ring had been sitting for less than a day. It was ridiculous, utterly ridiculous, because Logan had never worn a ring before and now suddenly the absence of it caused his skin to crawl in a most unpleasant, unproductive way. 

Distantly Logan realized that by gifting Remus such a wonderful present, he had also thrown away four hundred dollars. And perhaps ironically Logan noted that he feels annoyed about it-- four hundred dollars had been sitting in a pocket of a dress jacket in the corner of his office for over nine months and he had tossed it aside in a fit of impulsive anger.

Logan had not been hurting for money recently, with how decently he was paid, and the amount of overtime he worked, and how little time he had taken off since that disastrous night.

But perhaps he might have been able to return it to the jewelers and weathered the terrible, awful pitying looks they would give him when he requested about their refund policy or a location where he might be able to sell it himself. It was a ring that was worth four hundred dollars and he had given it to Remus, and isn’t it funny that that’s farther than he got with the one for whom the ring had been originally intended?

And as Logan downed his next rum and coke of the night, he hoped that Remus found a better use for it. Newton knows it hadn't done any good for Logan. 

(Its stupid, Logan knew, to blame a ring for the way that he had screeched “He’s not and never will be our son!” Its stupid, Logan knew, to blame a ring for the way that Remus had hummed mischievously “I think I enjoy being fake-married to you, Logan." Its stupid, Logan knew, to blame a ring for the the way his last partner had said “We should see other people”. Its stupid, stupid, stupid--)

“Hmmm,” A voice behind him said, “I thought I would find you here!”

Logan didn’t realize he had closed his eyes until he heard the voice and felt every atom in his body figuratively threaten to combust. He wasn’t drunk enough to be thinking about him, and he most certainly wasn’t drunk enough to turn and look at the incessantly, perky man that had decided to sit down next to him.

Logan waved at the bartender and ordered another rum and coke and watched his freshly emptied glass disappear like the handful of others he didn’t bother to keep count of.

“And I’ll have two waters, please!” Patton Hart added with one of his peppy, happy, insufferable laughs, before turning to face Logan. “Hiya, Lo! It's been so long since we’ve seen each other!”

“Not long enough,” Logan disagreed, with a rueful smile that should very clearly, very precisely detail how much he does not want company at the current moment. “Don’t you have things to be doing tonight, Mr. Hart?”

Patton hummed, pressing his lips together as he thought-- a monumental task for someone like him, surely. Logan was partially convinced that if he removed his glasses he might be able to see the squirrels beginning to run on that rusted wheel in the other man’s brain. If Logan was of a less logical mind he might even be brazen enough to call this the first time Patton had used his brain all week.

“Well,” Patton said, carefully settling himself on the stool next to Logan. “I was graciously informed by my son that he would be enjoying the perks of being a teenager with no bedtime tonight and along with where exactly I could shove my homemade lasagna.” He laughed lightly, “Kids, these days! He really does keep me on my toes!” 

Logan did his best not to roll his eyes. “I do not know the whereabouts of your son, Mr. Hart.”

“Patton,” He said easily, “And I’m not here for my son. I’m here for you, Logan.”

“If this is about the glass in my door, you are very capable of taking that out of my paycheck.” Logan told him.

The bartender placed Logan’s new rum and coke in front of him and he reached for it almost immediately, only stopping when Patton’s hand landed on his forearm.

“Mr. Hart--”

“Patton,” Patton corrected with that smile that Logan suspected was the worst thing in the world. Worse than Virgil’s blank expression when he told them to get out, worse than Remus’s smug one when he suggested that Logan did indeed enjoy the ability to manipulate his coworkers, worse than Beatrice faulty excel sheets, than broken glass of his door, than a ring he never wanted to see again and yet he still felt like it was missing from his finger.

“Mr. Hart,” Logan said again, “I am going to get horrifically drunk tonight, and I will be calling out sick tomorrow, regardless of what you say. So my advice to you is, say anything of importance now, before I am too incoherent to register and respond accordingly.”

“That doesn’t sound too smart there, kiddo!” Patton said, like he was any older than Logan was.

“I do not feel like being smart right now,” Logan said snippily. Because being smart involved thinking, and Logan had done quite enough thinking for the day. He was tired of thinking, tired of memories, tired of the lump in his chest that had formed during his lunch break and hadn’t dissolved in the eight hours since. He was tired.

“Would you like me to be smart for you?” Patton asked.

Ah.

Yes, Logan remembered suddenly with just a few words why he hated Patton Hart so much. Why he hated those too-wide brown eyes, those stupid freckles, that soft smile. Why he hated the way that Patton had tracked him down despite the fact that he had turned off his phone, the way that Patton had ordered two waters, the way that he hadn’t taken off his jacket. The way that he had taken out his keys and put them on the bar counter between them and Logan could pick out his own house key from the jumbled mess of bits and bobs.

“I heard something pretty interesting today,” Patton said, when Logan didn’t reply because he was too busy remembering why he hated Patton so much.

“Please don’t pretend like you didn’t know about my so-called affair before I did.” Logan snapped. “Honestly, Patton!” Logan dropped his arm from the glass and instead pressed his knuckles to his forehead. “Playing dumb about your own company is my least favroite thing about you.”

“I thought you hated my laugh the most.” Patton looked at him, letting the smile slip into something more serious.

“I hate everything about you.” 

“Pay for the drinks, Lo.” Patton told him, “And I’ll take you home. We can have some of my lasagna and watch a space documentary, like we’re twenty years old again.” 

Logan hated Patton and hated the way his chest ached at the offer. His knuckles bore into the side of his head, jabbing the frame of his own glasses into this temple. He hated the way that Patton was looking at him, soft and sweet and naive.

He hated the way his fingers itched to take Patton’s hand and go home.

“And after all that,” Patton continued so lightly, “You can tell me all about how Remus Prince got under your skin.”

 Logan’s hand slammed on the counter, so suddenly he surprised himself. Patton, however, didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink, didn’t react other than to hold that smile. 

“I am not drunk enough to be talking about Remus Prince,” Logan spat. “Especially not to you, Patton.”

Patton was quiet and at first, Logan really had thought that he had won something-- he thought that perhaps Patton would grant him mercy and let him drown his sorrows alone and miserable in a bar until he forgot his own name. But Patton was too good of a friend and Logan really should hate him less for that.

“You know,” Patton said with a cold type of humor that doused Logan with awareness. Bad awareness. The type of awareness that sunk it’s metaphorical claws into Logan’s chest and pierced straight through his heart before Patton finished what he was saying. “I think….yeah that does sound familiar. Do you remember the last time you said you weren’t drunk enough to tell me something?”

Logan did.

Logan couldn’t forget if he tried. 

And he had tried so very hard for so very long-- except that Remus Prince had waltzed into Logan’s life, had called him a Robot, had smirked at him and run their coworkers around like cattle with pretty little words. Except that Remus Prince had gotten bored and decided that the only logical next course of action was to mess with Logan’s personal life. 

Except that Remus Prince had played along with the rumor game, and smiled at him, and kissed him, and---

And Logan had started thinking---

And Logan’s mouth had started moving--

And Virgil face had--

Logan reached for the glass in front of him, reaching for the cool ice and the spritzy carbonation and the burn of the rum.  

Patton watched him, blinking in the long, slow, dumb way of his that had fooled just about every person that he had come in contact with. With the goofy smile and the habit of deliberately misunderstanding key phrases and making puns and jokes when things were tense, it was hard to see him as anything other than a rich son who became CEO via thinly veiled nepotism. 

Logan knocked back the drink, blinking back the burn behind his eyes that were from the alcohol and definitely not from the lump in his throat that had started dissolving.

He didn’t want to close his eyes, because he knew what he would see when he did: a nice suit, a fancy dinner, a walk to the bridge dotted with fairy lights of all things. He’d see that stupid ring, that stupid face, that stupid end of the night that everyone had told him would be nice, and perfect, and everything he would ever want! 

And he didn’t want to think about how it had not been nice or perfect or anything either of them had ever wanted!

He didn’t want to think about how years ago he had come to a bar just like this, and tried to get so drunk he could pretend that it hadn’t happened, and Patton had shown up then and offered him a job and--

“He wants to go by Janus now,” Patton said, picking up one of the waters and taking a sip.

Logan squinted at him and tried not to be happy about the distraction from his own thoughts, “Who?”

“My son,” Patton said, like it was obvious he had switched back to a neutral topic. “He told me earlier during our phone call he wants to go by Janus, now. He said he’s hated the name Dante for forever. Can you believe it, Lo?”

Logan couldn’t actually. Because he had known Patton since they themselves were teenagers, since before Patton had brought up how empty being a CEO was without anyone to come home too, since Patton had first invited him to Sunday brunch and introduced him to the child he called “son”. Logan had babysat Dante when Patton had business trips and Dante had always been proud of himself, of his better-than-the-status-quo lifestyle, of his name that held power and prestige and weight.

Dante had been practicing saying his name in the mirror since before his voice cracked. Dante Hart, future CEO. Dante Hart, son of Patton Hart. Dante Hart. 

“He’s a teenager,” Logan said, “He’s rebelling.”

“Maybe so!” Patton laughed, and it dwindled down to something that was easier felt in the air than definable in terms Logan was familiar with, “Gosh, I love him so much, Lo. My baby! He’s growing up so fast now! The other day he told me he had a boyfriend. He’s at that stage where he doesn’t want me to help him anymore!”

And despite the buffoon having not had a single drop of alcohol, Patton was tearing up. Logan gritted his teeth at the implications of a weepy, teary, so-full-of-emotions Patton. He had spent enough time in college trying to console him as he figured out the whole “Why does it always have to be about sex? Why can’t I just love hugging someone, Lo? Why does everyone make me feel so broken?” Logan hadn’t been any good back then, and he definitely hadn’t gotten better with time. 

After that disaster with the last guy, Logan had decided that feeling things, frivolous things, emotion-like things, were not something he was into anymore.

Logan learned from his mistakes, after all.

Even the mistakes that started with “R” and ended in a $400 ring being thrown away.

“Is that why you’re here, Mr. Hart?” Logan asked, in that way of his that told even Patton with his squirrel run brain that it wasn’t actually a question at all. “You can’t baby your son anymore so you’ve moved on to the next best thing?”

Patton stuck his tongue in his cheek and set his water back down. “Patton.” He stressed. “And I’m not here to baby you, Logan. I’m here to be your friend.”

He said “friend” like it was a word in the dictionary Logan didn’t know. It was infuriating: the insinuation that Logan had never cracked open a dictionary before, that he was so unknowledgeable about the concept of a friend that Patton was about to show him the online Oxford dictionary definition, like someone who played dumb all day and peppered his windows with sticky notes in the shape of a game of Frogger knew more about something than Logan who had clawed his way up from nothing and was constantly needing to prove how he earned his position.

Patton nudged the second water in Logan’s direction.

Logan stared at it, at the condensation on the glass, at the ice cubes, at the refraction of the low lights from the bar counter. He stared at it like it was a portal back through time that would allow him to slam some sense into poor, pitiful twenty-one-years-old Logan before he let himself fall in Love.

Before he bought a ring or stopped taking days off unless Patton tromped down to his office himself. Before Remus Prince borrowed his cup and before Logan got it in his head that he was serving revenge rather than idiocracy. Before he let himself think too little and say too much and hurt a kid that had never deserved to be upset before in his life.

“If my son wants to be called Janus, I’ll call him that,” Patton says softly. “Because even if it doesn’t make sense to me, it means something to him. And even if my friend is struggling with emotions that don’t make sense to me, I’m still gonna try to help him, Lo.”

Patton ducked his head just a little, just enough that he managed to catch Logan’s strategically averted gaze and make something out of it: a swell of guilt, a sense of hope, a pinch of safety and unadulterated kindness.

His throat was dry, but it was the type of dry that couldn’t be fixed with a glass of water.

“I made a kid cry,” Logan said, because self loathing is a coat he had thought he’d outgrown but he can still fit his arms in the sleeves.

Patton nodded. “Yeah, I heard about that.” He sipped his water. “I think we all have at one point or another.”

“See, the distinct difference that you are missing here, Patton, is that you are a father.” Logan snapped, “And your son will cry at the drop of a hat if he thinks he can get something out of it. And you would never harm a child! Not for any reason in the entire world!”

“And you would?”

“I did.” Logan felt himself sink into the chair, sink like an anchor in the ocean, sink like the floor below him had turned into a blackhole. “I did, I did it. What type of person does that make me?”

“I hate to break it to you, Lo,” Patton said, as kindly as he could, which Logan knew was truly, sickenly nice. He wanted to choke on the sentiment but he found that he couldn’t quite make his chest hurt the way he wanted it too when it came to Patton’s pity.

 “But that just means you’re a normal person.” Patton smiled dumbly, tilting his head and shrugging. “Everyone says things they don’t mean sometimes.”

“You don’t.”

“I do,” Patton countered gently, “Like when I hired Beatrice before realizing that she had lied about knowing how to use Excel.”

“Fuck, Beatrice,” Logan agreed, because if he closed his eyes too hard he thought he might still see grid patterns as much as he might see Virgil’s hurt expression and he hated it so much. So much. 

“I also told-- Janus once that I would get him anything he wanted for his birthday, and he asked for a snake.” Patton shuddered, almost comically, “And you saw how that turned out.”

“I’ve always been impressed with his ability to sneak things into the school buildings,” Logan sighed. “I doubt anyone has ever forgotten that Show-and-Tell.”

Patton chuckled quietly. It was almost lost in the buzz of the other patrons in the bar. He drew a smiley face in the condensation on his glass and Logan reached over to wipe it away, like he had done a hundred seventeen times since college.

“So….Lasagna?” Patton offered. “We can make some garlic bread too.”

“I regret ever meeting you,” Logan said, even as he picked up the keys on the counter between them. He wished that Patton didn’t look so self satisfied, so pleased, so smug when the words tumbled from his lips, but Patton had never been one to pertain to the wishes and whims of Logan like that.

Settling his tab was quick; a pile of bills from his wallet that he didn’t actually check, but decided the bartender deserved anyway and then Patton linked their elbows together so that Logan couldn’t walk off the way that he used to when he would agree with Patton just to get him to shut up. Logan snagged Patton’s glasses from his head and fogged them up with his breath, before taking on the tedious task of cleaning the fingerprints off the lens meticulously while walking in a wobbling straight line. 

Patton laughed like silver bells and it alone brightened the entire street with a type of magic that Logan had long since given up on trying to scientifically explain. The poet in him that Logan had buried under Calculus classes and Statistics courses and a Business degree and only let out when the alcohol out weighed the blood in his system, whispered that it was because it was Patton and his aloofness, and his kindness, and his generosity that never made any sense, and wasn’t that reason enough for the universe to lighten up?

It was drizzling outside, scattered raindrops and dark heavy clouds that whispered of a thunderstorm later. Patton skipped, Logan rolled his eyes and let himself be dragged towards the familiar pale blue punch buggy. It was the same exact car from their college time together, if one ignored the frankenstein replacements of just about every single component in it. Patton clung to the car the same way he had clung to the delusion of Logan being a good friend; sticking close through every breakdown, excusing every letdown, and spending far too much money on it when economically it would have been more beneficial to just let them go.

A wave of self loathing wrapped over Logan again when he pulled on the car door. Patton was genuinely a good person, a good friend. He was stupid at times and he made decisions that made Logan was to strangle him, but he cared so much more than other people. He offered fourth and fifth chances when Logan would have stone-walled his offender at one. 

Not to mention, he had come out in the rain to find Logan specifically, probably traversing through three other bars to find the one that Logan had chosen to be his misery echo chamber.

By some sort of lucky happenstance, Logan had originally walked far enough to hail a taxi  to get to this bar, leaving his car in the safety of the parking garage where Patton’s company paid a nice sum for security. Logan had tried to argue about that expense with him back in the day, but Patton had pulled out a picture of his toothy grinning son-- Janus-- and said “Lo!! What if my son comes to visit when he learns to drive?! I don’t want to worry about him getting attacked in the parking garage!” 

Logan had brutally pointed out that his son would never visit him during work, and so far he had been correct in that assessment, but that didn’t stop him from feeling the slightest bit guilty about his bluntness even so much time later.

Patton had always looked for the best in people, had more strength than most of humanity, had more hope in happy endings that Logan had trust in fact and numbers.

“Is your son okay with me calling him Janus? I’m unsure of etiquette on this. Should I wait until he tells me his preference or should I just make the switch and not bring it up to him?” Logan asked with a sigh as Patton pulled out of the parking spot and set them towards Patton’s house on the other side of town. Unobstructed and following the driving laws, it would only take them about fifteen minutes, and yet Logan wondered about the possibility of Patton having Advil in the car.

The back of his head was already aching from the days events: banging his head on the keyboard all morning leading up to his disastrous lunch date, Remus, Virgil, squinting at spreadsheets until he couldn’t make out the numbers anymore, and the of course stumbling his way to the bar and dealing with Patton.

Patton giggled. “Oh yeah! I asked him earlier if it was okay to tell you. He said he wanted you to call him Janus now. He also said to tell you, you can take a hike.”

Knowing Janus, it was probably something more volatile than “taking a hike”. Most likely it had been something that might have required him to put a full five dollars in the swear jar that they kept on the counter next to the cookie jar. Not that it would matter much. Logan had stayed over at their house dozens of times and every single time he had come across Janus taking that money back out of that swear jar.

As far as Logan was aware, the swear jar had never actually been full. Patton must have noticed at some point-- probably that very first time Janus had taken the money back out-- but he was irritating insistent that he play dumb about it. Thus, Janus continued to swear in excess, Patton continued to make him put money in a swear jar for no real reason, and Logan continued to never understand either of them.

The radio in Patton’s car had been broken fifteen times since Patton had gotten it, but Logan assumed from the silence of the drive that it was now sixteen. He rested his elbow on the window and watched the drizzle turn into a steady rain and the windshield wipers flutter across their vision to occasionally bring them clarity.

The night life was somewhat dreary. The driving pace was slow, and they hit every single stop light in the city because that was just Logan’s luck. There were a few people running around in the rain: a family with a small child who was jumping in every slowly forming puddle on the sidewalk, a couple sharing an umbrella walking so close together they appeared as if to be one misshapen form, a group of friends chatting outside a 24 hour dinner in raincoats, and a few smokers huddled under an alcove with embers burning just enough for Logan to make out their forms through the downpour. 

Logan realized almost immediately that the pit in his stomach was much more bearable if he instead focused on the raindrops on the window that are much easier to look at, much less representing something that Logan had always expected he might one day have, much less accusatory in wondering what is wrong with him that he can’t act like a normal human being, this isn’t working, who wants to marry a robot like you--

That was the reason why he wasn’t expecting the sudden jerk of the car coming to a hard stop at a yellow light that they absolutely could have made. 

“PATTON!” Logan yelled.

The car behind them blared it’s horn and Logan rubbed his neck and reset his glasses from the sudden movement, ready to question what exactly Patton thought he was doing, because truly of all the things Logan was not in the mood for, this was one of them. 

Except that before Logan could get any words out, Patton had put the car in park and whipped off his seatbelt to kick open his door. A wave of rain came pouring into the car as the man threw himself from the driver's seat like there was something wrong with the car, and for a second Logan entertained the absurd idea that they were going to blow up.

Which truly, would have just been a fitting end to his horrific day.

“Patton!” Logan hissed, grabbing after the other’s coat to pull him back inside before the rain soaked into the seats. “Get back in th--”

The other man ignored him, frantically waving to someone in the rain. “REMUS!! MR. PRINCE!! OVER HERE!!”

If Logan knew slightly less about human biology he might have been inclined to say that his heart jumped straight to his throat and climbed its way up his esophagus to strangle him. He wouldn’t have recognized the figure on the street corner on his own: Remus Prince was wearing a black leather jacket and jeans with holes in the knees. He was soaked to the bone, without an umbrella, and his usual bouncy brown curls were matted to his head, as if he had been walking out in the rain for much longer than the rain had been sweeping through the city.

He was standing with the smokers under their minimal tarp, although he, himself, was without a cigarette at all. When he turned at the call of his name, there was only confusion and exhaustion in his face. None of the smugness, or the ego, or the energy that he usually had.

Logan didn’t know why that bothered him. He was hurting from earlier; that was good. 

After all, it was Remus’s ridiculous game that he had dragged everyone else into. 

((Logan’s finger itched and he dug his nails into his skin so deeply he was afraid to glance down in case there was blood pouring off hands.))

Remus ventured out to meet them, dodging across the lanes of traffic without a care in the world, or perhaps with a death wish. Remus didn’t seem particularly like he would mind getting run over by the way that he opened the back door, climbed in, and shook the excess water out in the interior of the car like some type of undomesticated dog. 

“Is this a kidnapping?” He asked, rain dripping down his face. “A murder? Do I get to know your name before you dismember me, cutie?”

Patton laughed joyfully, even as Logan felt his face screw up at the sound of Remus calling their boss “cutie”. It was beyond unprofessional, even if Remus was apparently unaware that his career hinged entirely on not insulting Patton. It took a lot to make Patton angry enough to fire someone-- his patience was the best and worst thing about him, as Logan had been reminded every time they interacted-- but once Remus crossed that line, not even a cockroach like him would be able to drag himself out of the metaphorical wasteland Patton would make out of his life.

Cutie, honestly. Who calls anyone they’ve just met cutie. Logan could understand Remus having called him Lovebug and Lolo, but cutie? 

For Patton?

Patton climbed back into the car, snapping on his seatbelt and managed to get out of park at the very same moment as the light turned green. He wiped his sleeve along his glasses, and brightly said, “I’m Patton! And you already know Logie here!”

“Logie?” Remus repeated, sitting back against the seat taking in Logan for the first time. “Oh shi--”

“Do not call me that,” Logan said. “Patton, you can drop me off at the next corner. I will walk home.”

“Don’t be silly!” Patton said, in the same tone that he had used during their college days to coax Logan into driving him to the nearest grocery store after he had successfully managed to pull two all nighters in a row. Logan hated that tone, and Patton knew that well.

“If you do not stop the car, I will throw myself from it while it is still moving.”

“I can get out, actually!” Remus said far too loud for the small car. Logan resisted the urge to turn around and scowl at him. Surely, his pea-sized brain had managed to figure out that he was the point of contention here and that his best move would be to shut up, so why had he decided to open his mouth? “I need to get home anyway. Big day tomorrow and everything.”

“Oh?” Patton said delightedly because Logan would not ever play into subject changes willingly. “What’s tomorrow?”

“I’m getting fired,” Remus said with a nonchalant shrug.

Patton blinked for a moment-- his squirrel-run brain jamming at the sudden twist of the words because whatever he was expecting from his visitor it was not that. Logan resisted the urge to reach over and give him a shake at the shoulders: of course he wouldn’t be able to expect anything with Remus Prince. The man was insufferable and illogical and he wrought chaos for fun. 

With everything that had happened, did Patton really think that there was an exaggeration in there?

Remus wanted attention. And he said whatever he needed to in order to get it: a fake affair, a fake divorce, a fake child-- Of course he would say he was getting fired tomorrow if it got Patton to have to use all of his meager brain cells to figure out how serious he was.

“Is that something to celebrate, Mr. Prince?” Logan cut in coldly. “Getting fired?”

“And here I thought that you would be happy, Ackroyd,” Remus said. “Unless you think you’re going to miss me.”

“If only I would be so lucky,” Logan said, digging his phone from his pocket, and turning it back on. The screen was blindingly bright and Logan’s eyes ached just glancing at it in the corner of his vision. “Patton, pull over. I am not doing this tonight. Or tomorrow. Or ever again.”

“I’m not going to let you walk home after however many rum and cokes you had, Logan.”

“Patton,” Logan snarled. “If you continue to treat me like you treat your son, I will tender my resignation tonight. Pull over now.”

Patton opened his mouth, but whatever he was going to say was swallowed up in Remus’s empty voice speaking. 

“You went drinking?”

“Do not talk to me, Mr. Prince.”

“You’re not even yelling.”

Logan wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, which may have irritated him more than the fact that he was so insistent about continuing to talk when Logan was liable to push the car to crash and kill all three of them. Remus was already staring at him, his expression dark and serious in the passing car lights and somehow Logan thought that he looked vulnerable. 

Logan gritted his teeth as his headache pulsed behind his eyes. 

“Shut up,” he said. “And put on your seat belt.”

“Or what? You’ll divorce me?” Remus pushed forward between the seats until he was just a few inches from Logan’s own face, grinning with all his teeth. It was at once the same smile that Logan had catalogued through every week of working with him and also something completely foreign.

Remus had pulled him into a kiss earlier that morning, and Logan remembered the taste of pickles on his lips just as well as the smirk he kept as Logan walked away. But this expression is somehow inverted, somehow shifted, somehow a weapon more than a challenge.

“Boys,” Patton said. “Please don’t fight in my car!”

“If you did not want us to fight, why did you invite him in this car?” Logan asked. “You, of all people, know my opinions on--”

“Logan, you’re drunk.”

“What does that have to do with this?!” Logan bit out. He glared at his phone: there were three missed calls from Patton and a handful of text messages from him that Logan couldn’t actually read in the combination of the bright phone light and darkness around them. His eyes were blurry even with his glasses on and the frustration of not being able to read only heightened as he made out the notification for his email which meant that Beatrice had managed to finish her work (allowing Logan to be able to go fix it) or that news of him yelling at a child made it around the office and now he was going to harassed by them as well.

All because of Remus Prince’s inability to shut up. 

 Patton threw a hand out and grabbed Logan’s phone from his hand and carelessly tossed it over both their shoulders to Remus.

“Patton!” Logan hissed, rubbing the irritated tears from his eyes. “Remus, give it back!”

Remus, however, was just staring at the phone in his lap like it was some type of bomb. Logan’s phone locked itself and the screen went dark, and still Remus sat inhumanely still in the seat, staring at it, with a type of blank expression that Logan oftentimes related to their coworkers when Logan asked them to perform any sort of math without a calculator.

“Remus,” Logan said again.

Remus jerked at the sound of his voice, snapping out of whatever fit the phone had put him in almost meekly-- if Logan could describe anything Remus did as meekly without it being a blatant falsehood. “Meekly” itself had never seemed to be a word in Remus’s vocabulary which was another irritating fact about him that made Logan break out in figurative hives.

Logan knew how Remus was.

He knew Remus.

It didn’t matter that he had never talked to Remus before today, that his thinly veiled contempt for his coworkers kept him from being willing to stand in their presence more than he was being paid to, that this fake affair was the first stupid relationship of any kind he had gotten outside of Patton and his son since his last boyfriend had dumped him on the night he was going to propose and hadn’t he thought he’d known him too? Isn’t that what led to all this? 

It didn’t matter. 

Logan was smarter, now. Logan was better now. Logan was--

“I don’t…” Remus said, trailing off as he stared at the messages popping up on Logan’s phone and Logan wondered why it felt like his lungs had shrunk right in his chest. “I don’t think you should be reading these right now.”

“He definitely should not!” Patton said, with a very convincing amount of forced happiness. “Hold that for him will you, Remus? Oh and why do you think you’re going to get fired tomorrow?”

Remus looked up at Logan and then at Patton and then back at Logan, like Logan was supposed to know what that meant in addition to every other stupid look he’d given Logan all evening. Logan shoved his glasses up to his hairline and rubbed his aching eyes, and yet somehow that still didn’t fix the pounding in his head or the exhaustion hollowing out his bones. It also didn’t make Remus disappear from the backseat, which was equally annoying, even though Logan hadn’t truly thought he was a shared apparition for him and Patton.

“You didn’t mention anything about today to your… what are you a fuck buddy?” Remus said.

And Patton laughed. 

Logan grabbed the door handle and yanked on it, but of course the ridiculous safety locks were engaged, and Logan had spent far too many sober years getting locked in this car to try to puzzle out the broken locking system in order to drunkenly throw himself out of the car. He was not in the habit of wishing for miracles, or even believing in deities, but he imagined that some powerful entity was finding ruining Logan’s life to be semi enjoyable.

“See this is why I can’t fire him!” Patton said through giggles and Logan thought maybe he was being addressed for this. Patton met Remus’s gaze through the rearview mirror and shook the last bit of water from his damp hair. “You make everything so entertaining!”

“What?”

Logan grit his teeth and yanked on the door handle again. “Remus, meet Mr. Hart, the CEO and your boss. Also put on your seatbelt.”

Remus blinked at them both, leaning between the seats and definitely not putting on his seatbelt. Logan counted backward from ten, reminding himself that one of the hiring requirements for Patton’s company has always been must be the stupid beyond belief. He’d known for a while that his coworkers were idiots on a good day, hazards to his health on bad ones, and yet somehow in the whirlwind of the day he’s had, Logan had forgotten that Remus counted as a coworker still.

“I’m not… getting fired?” Remus said, acting much like a computer after being turned on. “Why do you know my name then?”

Patton shrugged, flicking on his blinker to change lanes before the next light. “You have interesting ideas for your advertising strategy! Of course I would know your name! I’m sorry about vetoing that last one. I know Logan liked it, but I wanted to stick to the family-as-a-whole angle.”

“Patton,” Logan warned with an edge.

“Logan liked…?” Remus echoed, before turning towards Logan with a look of bewilderment that annoyed Logan far more than it had any right to. “You actually look at my shit?”

“Put on your seatbelt, Remus,” he said, because wasn’t it obvious that Logan looked at his things? Before the whole Robot incident Logan hadn’t had a problem with Remus at all: he was effective and efficient and the rumors were irritating but below him to indulge in. Before Remus had dragged him figuratively kicking and screaming into this mess, Logan approved the budgets that came with the projects Remus created.

He still did that, just with more anger than before. Petty feelings for Remus himself aside, his work was objectively good. 

Logan knew that about him.

“So!” Patton said over both of them, with his signature grin that Logan suspected he would still be wearing even if Logan decided to kill him right now. It must be the by-product of being controlled by rodents running on a wheel. “How was your volunteer work Remus?”

Remus froze in the back seat, going unnaturally still again. “Are you some kind of stalker-- uh sir?”

“Will you knock that off?” Logan snapped, which only made Remus’s shoulders jump straight to his ears. “And put on your seatbelt.”

“Just curious!” Patton said, ignoring Logan entirely. “Darlene is a good friend of mine! I make sure to send monthly donations to the organization since I don’t have a lot of free time to jump over and help.”

Remus didn’t say anything to that. He swallowed audibly and leaned back against the seat, dragging fingers through his wet hair and then tucked his arms in his own armpits. Logan pressed a palm to his forehead watching the street lights bend from behind his eyelids because that was easier than staring at Remus act like Patton was trying to pull his teeth out.

“You actually do volunteer work?” Logan said. “You don’t seem like the type.”

“Ha,” Remus said without any inflection. Logan thought that was the quietest that he had ever been. Where was that stupid ass smirk? Where was the stubbornness that pushed back against everything? Where was that loud voice and that confidence?

“Put on your seatbelt,” Logan said again.

“Why do you care if I wear the belt or not?”

“Remus put on your seatbelt or, so help me Newton, I will climb back there and put it on for you, myself!”

The air simmered from the acid in his tone, making the silence figurative chafe against his ribs. Remus stared at him, blinking slowly, with the street lights casting roving shadows on his face. His dark eyes were just so-- so--

Logan dug his nails into his palm. Why was it Remus Prince could make him feel like this? What gave him the right?

“It’s okay!” Patton said, setting the car to park. “We’re here anyway!”

Logan reached up and pulled his glasses back onto his face properly, but it still took him a moment to realize that they were near a bunch of townhouses, double parked outside one that Logan had considered moving into all those years ago when he had first been looking for an apartment for after college.

Remus too, apparently needed a moment to recognize the area. “We… are at my apartment? Holy shit, you are a stalker.”

Patton giggled, flashing Remus with his blinding smile and reached back to pick up Logan’s phone from his hands. “Thank you so much, kiddo! We’ll wait until you get inside all safe and sound, and I’ll see you tomorrow!”

“You will not,” Logan said. “Tomorrow you have a business deal two hours away to complete and if you miss it--”

Patton stretched back in his seat and let out a hugely exaggerated yawn. “But they’re so boring! Maybe I should bring Janus with me. He always makes my business deals entertaining. I love when he sets his snake on people. He looks so happy and he laughs and--”

Logan squeezed his eyes closed and recited the first twenty digits of pi in his head to keep from grabbing Patton’s squirrel run brain and slamming it into the steering wheel.

“Homicide is wrong,” Logan said.

“I’ll help you vouch for insanity,” Remus said. “I mean, tied together through a murder, and possibly hiding a body is much more juicy than a fake marriage that’s falling apart. We’d be the talk of the office.”

“They would not find any body that I hid,” Logan said. “Nobody would.”

Remus opened his mouth to say something more, but whatever it is he decided against it. Instead he slid over the seats and kicked open the door right behind Logan and stepped out into the night air.

“Thanks for the ride, Mr. Hart, sir,” he said, strangely formal, then squinted and added, “Daddy?” 

“I’m not firing you, Remus,” Patton said. “No matter what you call me!”

Logan ran his tongue over his teeth counting each and every one. Remus looked at him but ultimately finally adhered to that whole shutting up thing. He closed the door to Patton’s blue punch buggy and started towards the door to the apartments.

“Oh,” Remus said, and turned back at the last second. He knocked his knuckles on Logan’s window a few inches from where Logan’s gaze fixed itself on a light. Patton apparently knew more about what to do than Logan because he pressed the window lowering button and Remus reached his entire arm into the window to drop a small object right into Logan’s lap.

Logan caught it mainly due to reaction rather than skill and his skin tingled at the familiar item. Even in the dark, Logan’s fingers roll over the shape of the ring that had always reminded him of the worst day of his life. It was still warm from being in Remus’s pocket.

“I think that should stay with you,” Remus said, like it wasn’t a big deal at all. “You know… for the next boytoy you take to your sex dungeon or whatever nerds like you do on weekends.”

And then he turned around and fled towards the apartment building. Patton turned off the hazard lights and slipped back into traffic and Logan wondered if he would be polite enough to not comment if Logan started crying right then and there.

His throat felt swollen, his tongue too big for his mouth, and the headache thrummmmmmed painfully. 

Logan knew Remus Prince.

“You know that Remus Prince isn’t gonna be like him,” Patton said to fill the silence.

“Remus Prince isn’t like anyone.” Logan didn’t whine. To whine would be unbecoming. And childish. And embarrassing.

So Logan didn’t whine and Patton mercifully didn't call him out on his not-whining.

And neither of them mention the choked tone that Logan had for the rest of the night.

When Logan had seen his boss after he made Virgil cry, he hadn’t expected it to end up with him clutching that ring like a lifeline, but as he ran his fingers around the rim, he wondered if it had fit on Remus’s finger at all.

(Part Five)

[leam1983]

It’s the end of the work week and, well...

I’m having thoughts on labor culture.

My father was born in 1958. He lived as the son of an absent father of five children who had no ability to truthfully express his love and care, and who instead chose to bury himself in work as a means to display his commitment. My paternal grandfather made and sold mattressees and died quite young of a cancer strain that today would’ve seemed benign. He was described as a hard worker, either up to his neck in his business or wanting just a scant few hours per day to himself. It made an aloof lover out of him and a distant father - who still loved his wife and children to bits but who felt emotionally castrated in a sense, as were men of the era.

The family consensus is that his work killed him.

My father is now 65 and survived a bout of Non-Hodgkinian Lymphoma. The oncologist and anyone with half a brain agreed that stress was the culprit. Early on, Dad had the family as an excuse for his tendency to overwork. He had to provide for us, after all, and garnish my mother’s meagre savings. All she has is her government-issued pension plan, while my father does have his own pension as a retiree of the City of Montreal’s Real-Estate Appraisal service. Considering, he felt obligated to pull a heavier load to bring in more, so they’d have better investment opportunities. Later on, he kept working out of a sense of fealty and attachment to his division, breaking out of retirement during the pandemic to join the work-from-home team. He wanted to help techs and city officials find ways to bring more of the traditionally snail-mail-based parts of the system online so the city’s Land Management service wouldn’t be paralyzed by COVID-19. What was supposed to be a single month turned into four, which turned into twelve.

By the end, they were begging him to stay on the team and to pull longer hours. We’re talking twenty hours per day, in some particularly grueling stretches. That means being logged in by breakfast and scarfing bagels down with Urban Design techs on Zoom instead of your own family, or having supper with your boss because she needs a play-by-play of the situation to stave off her executive anxiety.

Long story short, I didn’t see Dad much during the first wave. His reasoning was that he’d eventually stop, pool all this cash, and chuck it into his and Mom’s Registered Retirement Savings Account - with maybe an extra two thou or so in case the country reopened enough for their postponed trip to Cuba to take place.

Guess what? His zona flared up and he ended up with odd, shingly bumps along his scalp which to this day the local dermatologist grimaces at and tentatively has us dab with cortisone cream.

Mom, though? She’s a retired and registered nurse with a self-negating streak and a chronic propensity to undervalue her own physical ailments. Someone who quite literally understands the pain of busted hips on a clinical level because she was trained in Gerontology - and also someone who refuses to schedule an appointment with her GP and who inexplicably self-medicates with white wine.

As for me, I’m a 37 year-old man with a paycheck I consider massive with its meagre six bucks above the minimum-wage threshold - someone who chose to shack in with his folks until the current crisis ends and who therefore has a history of a single, willingly terminated apartment lease that originally began in the Planned Housing market. The apartment I want is basically a Barbie doll house for adults, a gleaming fantasy I’ll never have enough capital to touch unless I feel like trying my hand with criminal applications of my skills. The apartment I can get right now is a shithole, and I have the audacity to think I deserve a shithole that at least wasn’t someone’s former cockroach den.

Now here’s the kicker: I value my sanity and my health. I know my mental stamina levels and I know from experience that after working seven-point-five hours per day with the occasionally shorter Friday, I’ve found my limit. I could invest more if I worked more, yes, and I’m already in a better position than my parents, retirement-wise. I’ll never be rich, but I’m already set to be comfortable, provided I don’t spend my golden years trying to make it as an unsponsored TechTuber or anything else that’s equally ludicrous.

Where that’s a problem is in the toxicity this is generating. See, I have the gall to slide my daily schedule later so I can start at an hour that fits my biological clock and ends at an hour where I’m at my most creative. That means the folks saw me spending my pandemic mornings on Animal Crossing while Dad was trying to wrangle Excel spreadsheets for non-tech-savvy fellow Boomers while preventing the dog from eating his meeting notes. That means they guzzled vinho verde like it was Kool-Aid after seven while I made sure to find more concrete means to distance myself from work - ideally ones that didn’t involve functional alcoholism.

Naturally, what was bound to happen, happened: Dad soon spent his evenings calling me shiftless or “unwilling to commit”, while I was stuck watching him miss all the cues his stressed-out body were sending him. We already had Trump’s last desperate months and a global plague to handle, I really didn’t want my work to turn into more of a nuisance than it already is. I already love the people I work for and hate what I do (repeating the family cycle, it seems), but I’ve at least decided to give myself ample Me time every single day. 

I’ve paired that with smaller, if consistent portfolio investments, along with a few new habits I wanted to get into to stay saner. Dad pulls crosswords or plays competitive chess in the wee hours, while I usually lay down to meditate around midnight and fall asleep by 1 AM at the latest. I’m half-expecting my father to pull a Tyler Durden and to sneer at me, at some point. “Self-care is masturbation,” he’d probably say.

Looking at classifieds for rentals, it’s obvious that the entire system is predicated on abuse. Work yourself down to the therapist’s office, right down to the fucking bone, and you just might earn a half-decent retirement because nobody’s taught you to invest incrementally. Nope, Society seems to say, you’re supposed to buy, buy and buy some more, until you realize you have ten years left to start from scratch!

I remember Dad’s face on my eighteenth birthday. “Why would you want a Disability Care Savings Account, Brain? You just turned into a legal adult by Canadian standards - you’re in no rush, right?”

I told him the real gift I wanted for my birthday, that day, was a ride to the family’s Financial Investments counsel. I pulled up the PDFs I’d printed out and filled and brought them over. From then on, if I dropped a penny in my nest-egg, Ottawa would drop another one. If my share grew, so did the government’s. In the twenty-odd years since, it’s expanded exponentially.

Dad thought I’d done this to have a big cushion by the time I’d retire. Mom thought I’d done this in case my disability worsened and I started requiring equipment or physical assistance. Honestly, my dumb, if slightly prescient eighteen year-old self figured I’d rather spend my time reading or playing video games than working. I knew I’d need something to help cushion my admittedly low career-related ambitions. I might throw several thousands at a new computer every seven to eight years, but that’s because I’ve saved them up for just as long, little by little. I have no vices beyond what sillicon offers and what you’d find in the pages of a book and don’t exactly need a big ‘ol, stonkin’ humidor stuffed with conoisseur stogies.

I have a shoebox with a poked-out Ziploc bag and a sponge, with a handful of joints and a few Santa Anas I got off of a buyer’s pool from work. Five of us occasional chair-bar goons pooled cash together on Cigar Chief and cushioned prices with a single, shared and massive order. I’m nowhere near rich, but assuming the housing market can catch its breath eventually, I’ll be able to live modestly - with one or two markers of occasional luxury I’ll have chosen.

I have a shittier job than my father has had and I’ve chosen to be happier than him. It’s just sad that the usual response elevates overwork as the supposedly one, true way to leave a mark in society.

No, Dad. I don’t want to die while my own cells eat me alive, I want to die blazed out of my fucking mind, happy because I’ll have had time to enjoy my friends’ company and to finally make some sense out of Kerouac’s Subterraneans or to figure out what the fuck is going on in Joyce’s Illiad. I’ll die crusty as shit and fulfilled as a Pop Culture jockey, because I’ll have either finished Persona 5: Golden in my lifetime or I’ll have watched the entirety of the MCU’s output before Disney finally manages to kill their golden goose.

I want to die decades from now, feeling like I at least owned my choices and didn’t spend my time tethered to someone else’s professional expectations of me.

[theda-rison]

Camp Nano July 2020 - Results, Discussion, and Conclusion

the Like, wow, Scoob! 

Camp Nano July 2020 is done, and here are some thoughts:

I always knew that writing a comic script was going to be a learning experience - I’ve never written a comic script so it really couldn’t be anything except for a learning experience - but hoooooo boy, was it ever!

Before starting I couldn’t find anything on how long comic scripts normally are; I don’t know why, that just seems information that isn’t really shared? (If anyone knows of a resource, please send it to me!) I’m guessing it has a lot to do with there just being less comic writers than there are say, book writers and movie writers. That’s probably what happens when your interests are niche in some way, it’s just harder to find anything about them.

FORTUNATELY, I have the fancy library-bound volumes of The Sandman, and there’s excerpts of the scripts in the back. Which like… thank you @neil-gaiman​, or whoever made that decision, because being able to look at an actual script and see how it’s formatted and what’s included has been the biggest help. Even the “How to Write a Comic Script!” videos I found on YouTube didn’t have example scripts which... I don’t know, I don’t get it. Please include examples, comic YouTubers. I am confusion.

Now is the time for a sexy graph, because we are the kind of people who keep Excel spreadsheets of word counts and make graphs for fun.

Anyway, let’s look at…

[Good. I was listening to As The World Falls Down by David Bowie over and over, and now this is stuck in my head again. I don’t know why I do these things to myself. Also, I love Peter Tork’s face during some of the “AAAHHHH”s lol]

I can’t remember if I stated this before or during Camp at any point, but my goal was 60k words. I dislike aspiring for un-round numbers like “1667″ every day. Any number I could possibly pick is arbitrary, but for some reason the classic Nanowrimo number of 1667 seems even more arbitrary. “2000″ is a much better number. And, I can generally write 2000 words in two hours before running out of steam, so it works out well. It also divides better.

Having said that, you might be thinking, “Theda, the end Actual number on your graph is a lot closer to 90k than it is 60k,” and you would be right, good eyes. Were I Brandon Sanderson and you were one of my students, I would toss you a gummi bear. As it is, you’re not my student and I have no gummi bears and I’m not even Brandon Sanderson… so life is just upsetting I guess.

[But I am back to listening to As The World Falls Down, so I suppose it all works out.]

Back to the graph: The Actual. Look at this wavy-fucking-scalloped-fucking progression. Look at it. I can’t tell if it makes me happy or angry or what, but I know it gives me some kind of feeling. I think I like it from a purely aesthetic point of view, but from the point of the view of the person who made it, it annoys me.

I had a couple of days where I - in my infinite stupidity - didn’t really elaborate on what was supposed to happen in some of the scenes in my scene list and so I spent my “Writing!” time (as it’s labeled in my planner) not writing, but looking at the page cursing myself for not having written any directions for me, a directionless person.

You may also notice that the Goal bars suddenly jump up on the 24th day,. That’s because - in my infinite wisdom - I redid my goals after reaching 60k. It just makes more sense to me to be like, “Well, I punched that goal in the face. Let’s try and go WAY overboard,” because I have the Too Much gene and as Henry Rollins says: “Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts.” I wouldn’t say that’s a personal philosophy so much as a Thing I Am Compelled To Do Or I Will Die.

But that’s just me.

As for the trend line, I prefer it looking more steep because that’s way more gratifying, but that’s what I get for writing parts of my scene list like, “That’s okay, Future Me will take care of it!” Past Me, you are a dick and you need to stop doing these things. You are a bastard.

Now for the table! 

[I’m sorry if that’s very small.]

And this time I’m showing you the actual table I use to write down my words. Complicated? Yes. Sexy? Very yes. A little annoying? Also yes. Do we get a little worried that she works too hard and refuses to take a vacation? We do, but we also know that she does it because she loves her work, and we love and support her and bring her snacks throughout the workday to keep her going. What a great table.

First of all: Yes, my first writing block is at 4am. It’s because I have a day job and if I write from 4-6 I can use my brain right when it’s freshly slumbered instead of using it for nonsense at work all day and being unable to write and aggravated because my mental capacity is nil and I no longer know what words are. In an ideal world I would be able to write all day but, here we are.

You might notice there’s a lot of 0’s in the 4am block, especially in the fourth week, and that’s more so because - in my infinite infiniteness (infinity?) - I am secretly an ice giant (but like, smaller) and it’s summer and the northern hemisphere is Too Hot and I literally will not be able to sleep at night until about December. Until then, I am forced to understand what it’s like to be a jacket potato for half of the year so I can empathize with their starchy pain because this is, for whatever reason, Important.

It me. (Recipe)

Anyway,

My record day was 7519 on the 10th, which is just sexy and fun and cool and everything we want, and my lowest was a big fat 0 on the 16th.

I felt super motivated for reasons I don’t remember on the 10th. This is because I didn’t have my planner yet and was not keeping notes anywhere else at that time. (It’s an undated Daily Passion Planner, in case you’re also a slut for planners and wish to know ;) ). I think I was trying to do a 10k day just for funzies? Which, technically, at 2k words in 2 hours I should be able to do 10k in 5, but cell phones exist (and are too distracting), and until I shed my corporeal form I still have to do things like “make food and eat it,” and “get up to pee,” and “experience all the vagaries and horrors of human existence.” I’m hoping it clears up soon. 

The 16th was the day that Future Me took Past Me by the hand and said, “My good bitch, you need to stop doing that thing where you leave shit for me because you run out of motivation or executive function or whatever the fuck is happening where you decide you don’t want to do something anymore, seemingly at random. You deciding to leave school before the day even started because you were bored may have been cute when you were a kid - and also annoying for everyone around you, and just alarming that time they had to pry your hands off the door molding as you held on to it and screamed - but as an adult you are both the cause of and the person who has to deal with this bullshit, and you need to stop.”

On the 16th I went to the Shrine of the Self (sorry, I’ve been reading a lot of manga lately) and made an offering for forgiveness, and then hunkered down and added a TON of notes and partially written scenes to my scene list. You can see how much that helped; it’s almost like having direction is actually useful, lol.

BUT, despite all that direction and despite punching my goal in the face, breaking it’s glasses, and taking it’s lunch money, the script is not finished!

Here’s some math as of the 23rd:

There are 124 points in my outline On the 23rd, I had completed 44 of those points, at 363 pages or 59,601 words 124 / 44 = 2.81 Now we check: 44 * 2.81 = 123.6 (close enough) So as of the 23rd, the projection for completing the script was: 363 * 2.81 = 1,020 pages 59,601 * 2.81 = 157,479 words

Now, I don’t know what the fuck that means because I don’t really do numbers, but at the time of the 23rd it looked an awful lot like I wasn’t going to finish this Camp project. And uh… hey, that was correct.

So I’m going to be continuing Camp Nano July 2020, but also in August 2020, over about 20 more days (providing I hit my goal every day.)

So:

IF -> I need to get up to 158,000; 158,000 - 86,000 = 72,000 words need to be written. (I'm rounding the total up because I canNOT imagine this script being somehow smaller than that at this point, and I’m rounding my Camp total down because who cares about 72 words?) I divided 72,000 from a few numbers until I got a word goal I was okay with, that I think I can do, here’s that one: 72,000 / 20 days = 3,600 words a day (This would mean I can either do 2k in the morning and then 1600 later, or the reverse. You know, whatever way I feel spicy that day.) THEN -> I need to write 3,600 words a day for 20 days to (hopefully) finish this script before work picks up at the end of August.

And then I’ll chill from the end of August - October (except for maybe some short stories or essays. I have a lot of Thoughts and they need to be purged from my brain for my own good). And then I’ll use Nanowrimo Classic (November) to edit this fucker.

SO… that’s some stuff.

As I said at the beginning this endeavor was only ever going to be a learning experience. Having to write 158k words total doesn’t scare me, the longest thing I’ve written yet was something like 190k words. Trying to finish it before the end of August is the daunting part. Especially since being able to be creative right now just keeps making my brain puke out more ideas, and then there’s too many ideas and I’m just writing them all down and hopefully I can get to them later.

Anyway, good job on Camp Nano July 2020 everyone! We did it!

And if you didn’t do it: don’t worry, you’ll do it next time :D

[bangtanstanst]

Thunderstruck

When you and Namjoon stay late at the office, you just expect to get home a little later than usual. But when you finally leave for the night and step into the elevator, you set out on a different trip entirely.

“Just be careful out there, weird things happen in thunderstorms.”

A fic crossover event in which the Bangtan Unsolved crew meets office workers Namjoon and Y/N! But don’t worry, you can still definitely follow the whole story if you haven’t read either of them :)

≽ pairing: namjoon x reader, ft. the rest of ot7 ≽ genre: fluff, angst, (attempts at) horror ≽ warnings: paranormal stuff, mentions of death ≽ word count: 8.4k

a/n: hiiiiii, I hope you’re all having a good week!! As you may or may not know, my blog’s one-year anniversary was on the 7th of July and I wanted to celebrate it with a fic; so here it is!! I’m really excited to share it with you all, and I hope you like it :)) As I said, you don’t have to have read the fics that cross over in this, but I’ll link them anyway if you want to do it before or after :) Thanks so much for making this year so great and for reading my works, I appreciate it so very much and I hope to continue sharing more with you for a long time :))

And, of course, thanks to my amazing friends mars & snail for helping me out by betaing this and being wonderful people in general!!♥♥♥

›› tag list: @nambewb @dimplemono @sugasheart @csol16 @joon94net @lilacdreams-00 ‹‹

bangtan unsolved | only you | masterlist

You jump when a clap of thunder rings in your ears and makes the entire office floor flash with white. Rain is aggressively battering the large windows that surround the desks and the sky is dark and grey, an endless sea of thick rain clouds hanging over the city’s skyscrapers. Nervously tapping your foot against the carpeted floor, you cross your arms and turn to glance at Namjoon. He doesn’t seem to notice much of whatever’s happening outside, his eyes glazed over as they stare at the screen and his fingers fly over the keyboard.

Turning your gaze to the desk you’re sitting at yourself, you glare at the monitor, eyes idly scanning the spreadsheet but not quite registering anything that’s in it. You shift in your chair – it’s uncomfortable, but you’re scared to adjust anything to it, lest you piss off the guy whose desk you’ve planted at while you’re waiting for Namjoon to finish up his work.

“Hey, guys, I’m gonna get going, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Jimin says, his briefcase swinging around in his hand as he walks up to your desks.

Your gaze snaps up to look at him and you send him a smile. “Of course!” you reply, standing up to quickly hug him goodbye. Another bout of thunder hits the streets outside and you jump yet again. “Walk safe, okay?”

Jimin just laughs as you break apart, nodding. “Yeah, I’ll be sure not to drown in the subway,” he replies, holding out his hand to Namjoon, who absently claps it and gives him a half-hearted hug. “You just make sure to pull this one away from his work before midnight, yeah?” he adds with a grin as he pulls back, pointing at Namjoon.

You snort. “What, or the gremlin in him is gonna jump out?” you retort, dishevelling your boyfriend’s hair until he laughs and takes your hand to push it away.

“Yes,” Jimin replies very seriously, frowning as his eyes flicker from Namjoon back to you. “You’ve never seen it?” When you laugh once more and shake your head, he shrugs. “Well, I guess you just don’t know him as well as I do, then,” he teases through a long sigh, patting Namjoon’s shoulder.

You let out another laugh. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jimin,” you tell him rather than responding, sitting back down in your chair. More thunder rumbles through the night sky and your smile falters, your eyes snapping to the office windows.

“See ya,” Jimin replies, his hand folding over your shoulder. “And at least, if you and Namjoon die because of this storm, you’ll go down together.”

“Ha ha,” you say dryly, narrowing your eyes at him, despite the fact that you don’t really doubt the possibility of that happening. “You know, maybe you should stay after all.” Tilting your head at him, you raise an eyebrow. “Die with us.”

Jimin just chuckles, taking a step back and sauntering towards the elevators. “Bye, guys!”

With a huff, you sit back in your chair and cross your arms, watching as he turns the corner and listening to the elevator doors opening and closing. You’re the only two left in the office now, and it’s awfully silent in here. You look back at the monitor on your temporary desk, the Excel sheet it’s displaying glaring right into your soul – but the numbers are blurry when you try to look at them and you know you’ve long surpassed the timeframe of Y/N’s brain is able to work.

Letting out a sigh, you quickly save your work and log out, shutting off the desktop. “Can we go soon, Joon?” you mutter, rolling your chair over to his desk and leaning your chin on his shoulder, eyes fluttering closed. “I’d rather die at home than at the office.”

He chuckles. “Of course, baby,” he mutters lowly, pressing a warm kiss to your temple. The thunder and lightning fade to the background as you focus on his touch, and a small smile teases over your lips. “I just need to send out these emails and I’m done.”

You hum, sliding both your arms around his torso and hugging him tightly as he types. His hand leaves the keyboard for short moments here and there, his fingers absently brushing your arm or your hand, moving up to play with your hair or tickle your cheek. Minutes pass and you seem to lose track of time, though your mind can’t help but focus on the rain, the thunder, the lightning flashing outside, and you remain tense no matter what you do.

“Namjoon…” you mutter after what feels like plenty of time to send out a few emails, and he hums in reply. “How many emails were you talking about, exactly?”

“I’m done, I’m done,” he says through a soft chuckle, running a hand through your hair as your eyes pop open and you jump up – another burst of light illuminates the office floor. “Ready to go, I take it?”

You laugh, nodding fervently. “Oh, yes,” you reply, holding out your hand for Namjoon to take. “So please, before we die?” you add, cocking an eyebrow at him.

He laughs, briefly turning back to his desktop to turn off his computer, then taking your hand and rising to his feet. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you,” he mumbles, taking a step towards you to peck your lips.

You can’t help but smile at him as he pulls back. “Right.” A burst of thunder rings in your ears, but you don’t jump this time.

Namjoon is wearing a fond smile and stays in his place for a moment, even as you take another step back and tug at his arm. “You okay, there?” you ask, chuckling in amusement.

His smile just widens and he nods as he takes a step forward, intertwining your fingers with his. “Definitely,” he replies, glancing down at your hands for a second before lifting his eyes to yours once more. “Hey, I love you, you know that, right?”

Another amused chuckle escapes your lips, but that laughter soon fades as his eyes catch yours – there’s something in the way he’s looking at you that makes you suspect there’s more behind his words than he’s letting on, but you don’t feel you should ask. “And I love you, Joon,” you reply instead, upon which he grins and kisses you briefly. Thunder and lightning continue to rage outside, and you let out a shaky breath as you pull back, looking up at Namjoon. “Now let’s get the fuck out of here, yeah?”

He laughs, nodding as he steps back to grab his bag, slinging it over his shoulder. “Let’s.”

You let out a happy sigh, turning to walk back to the elevators and pulling Namjoon with you before he can decide to send another ‘few’ emails. Your footsteps are drowned out by the thunderstorm outside – but otherwise, silence cloaks the entire office, all of your coworkers having gone home before the storm even started.

“Hey, Al,” Namjoon says from behind you and you’re confused for a moment, looking around to look for whomever he’s talking to – when you see the janitor cleaning the kitchenette counter in the breakroom, and you almost squeal when a loud clap of thunder echoes in your ears, a burst of bright light illuminating the figure in the room. Fortunately, you manage to hold it back, and you just paste on a smile as you wave back at Al.

“You kids staying late again?” he asks, and you’re practically forced to come to a halt so you can talk to him.

Namjoon squeezes your hand, running his thumb over the back of it – it’ll be fine, we’ll get home before death gets to us. “Yeah, work never stops, right?” he jokes.

Al laughs and nods, gesturing to the break room around him. “‘specially when you’re cleaning stuff, eh?”

“I’ll certainly give you that,” Namjoon returns with a smile. “I hope we kept the room clean for you, though?”

“Oh, couldn’t wish for a neater floor,” Al replies with a smile and a wave. “You should see the fifteenth.”

Al’s eyes catch yours and you clear your throat, suddenly feeling nervous with the way he’s looking between you and Namjoon – almost worried. An involuntary shiver runs down your spine and you frown, blinking at Al, who just keeps intently staring at you. There’s a strange, unsettling feeling in your gut and the air feels heavy all of a sudden. Wait, were you actually right? Are you really gonna die here in this office?

Trying to push through the weird feeling, you clear your throat, unable to tear your eyes away from Al’s. “Well, we’ll leave you to it, then,” you say cautiously, nerves rushing through your veins as a beat of silence falls and you wait for Al’s answer.

But in a split second, it’s as if a spell is lifted, and Al’s expression returns to his usual smile. “Right on,” he replies, picking up his cleaning rag. “Just be careful out there, weird things happen in thunderstorms,” he adds just before you step out of sight, and the look he gives you is so piercing and intense that you can’t help but stop and stare, lips parting. “Bye, kids!”

With that, he turns back to the counter and starts wiping it vigorously, leaving both you and Namjoon gaping at him for a moment. “Bye,” you reply, dazed – but Al doesn’t look up nor respond. Your eyebrows furrow and you look up at Namjoon, who has the same level of confusion etched into his features as yours as he shrugs at you.

“Good luck on the fifteenth floor,” he says, eyes diverting back to Al. Yet again, he doesn’t look up, simply waving at you as you slowly start to walk to the elevators.

“What’s wrong with Al?” you whisper as you come to a stop at the elevators, hitting the button to summon one of them. The sound of rain and thunder has faded slightly now that you’re further away from the windows, but a low rumble still booms in your ears every so often.

Namjoon hums and shakes his head, looking over his shoulder into the direction of the break room. “I don’t know, he’s never acted this weird before,” he mumbles in reply, the elevator doors jumping open with a harsh ding! – your heart skips a beat and you let out a breath. “Maybe he’s just tired.”

You hum and nod, pulling Namjoon into the elevator, pressing the button for the ground floor and leaning against the wall. Namjoon looks down at his feet as you ride the elevator down, tapping them against the floor rapidly. You tilt your head at him, eyebrows furrowing, and you squeeze his hand to grab his attention – he looks up.

“You okay?”

He exhales sharply and nods, his shoulders relaxing at once. It’s relieving to see the stress seem to flow out of him so quickly, though you’re still curious as to what got him nervous in the first place. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he replies, nodding once more. He looks down at your hands and smiles softly as he plays with your fingers, his free hand dug into his pocket. “I just –”

A sudden boom of thunder interrupts him and you jolt out of the conversation, looking around with wide eyes – it sounded way too close to be safe. Ears starting to ring, your lips part as the elevator starts to actually shake underneath your feet, and you stumble into Namjoon’s arms. Your heart drops into your stomach as the shaking grows wilder, and you close your eyes, grabbing a fistful of the fabric of Namjoon’s button-up as you try not to literally start screaming into his chest. You feel a strange sensation in your gut, as if you’re falling down the elevator shaft floor after floor after floor without ever coming to a stop, likely only nearing the inevitable end.

Okay, so you are gonna die tonight and there’s literally nothing you can do about it, though at least you’re with Namjoon for it all and – 

“It’s gonna be okay,” Namjoon whispers, putting a hand on your back – but you can feel his fingers trembling against your spine as well, and his words don’t quite get through to you. “We’re gonna be fine.”

Just as the last word leaves his mouth, the shaking stops, and the elevator goes completely silent. Completely. You look up at Namjoon, your grip loosening around his blue button-up as the two of you exchange wide-eyed looks. Are you stuck here now? Are you gonna have to wait here all night without food or water or enough oxygen? Fuck, how are you gonna –

Ding!

You jump and look to the side, where the elevator doors have jumped open to what is definitely not the ground floor. The space is empty as far as you can see, your sight blocked by the dirty plastic sheets hanging from the ceiling. Faint moonlight breaks through them and illuminates the few support beams you can see, and it’s as silent as your own office floor was when you left it, only the sound of rain beating against glass echoing through the large space.

“Let’s just take the stairs,” Namjoon proposes in one exhale, his grip around your hand tightening subtly. As his voice echoes off the concrete surroundings countless times, he nervously fumbles with the shoulder strap of his bag, adjusting and readjusting it.

You nod hastily, straightening out your blouse with your free hand and rushing to step out of the elevator before the door somehow closes on you and you might get stuck forever. Namjoon is walking right behind you, your footsteps echoing off the concrete surroundings. “Where are the stairs around here, again?”

“They should be in the same spot as they are on our floor,” he replies, looking around and slapping a sheet out of his face when he almost runs into it. It rustles with the movement, even the soft sound echoing harshly throughout the floor. “So I think it’s right –”

“Y/N? Namjoon?”

You whirl around at the strange voice ringing in your ears, your eyes darting around. For a moment, you don’t see anyone, only hearing footsteps – when suddenly, someone pushes a plastic sheet out of the way, and an entire camera crew steps out from behind it. They’re only a few steps away from you but you can barely see them, and you have to squint to not be blinded by the bright lights shining into your eyes.

Namjoon, however, seems to have more luck in seeing who the hell you’ve run into here. “Jimin? What are you doing here?”

The lights and cameras lower slightly, allowing you to finally see beyond an arm’s length. A group of six has gathered in front of you, all looking at you with furrowed eyebrows. Two cameras are now pointed at the floor, the beam of a bright flashlight pointed at your feet. One guy has a harness around his waist, a selfie stick with a Go-Pro fastened to it, pointing at his face from what seems to be the least flattering angle that could ever be. He’s frowning at the two of you, his eyes narrowed.

“What do you mean, ‘what am I doing here’?” sounds the reply, and your eyes snap over to the source of the voice. It’s undoubtedly your desk buddy, and you almost feel relieved to see him – but the confusion etched into Jimin’s features makes you wary more than anything. “You were up on this floor for almost thirty minutes so we went to get you.”

“What?” you and Namjoon breathe out simultaneously – you can feel your heart starting to beat faster. “Is this some sort of prank?” you add, eyes wide as they glide over the crew standing in front of you.

The relieving answer you were hoping for doesn’t come, however, and no one breaks out in laughter like you’d hoped – there’s just a stunned silence hanging over you.

“Weren’t you supposed to wait in the lobby?” Namjoon inquires lowly, leaning forward as if that’ll keep you from hearing what he’s saying – but you still catch his words and you frown at him, confused.

Jimin only furrows his eyebrows, tilting his head, just as you turn to look up at Namjoon with just as much confusion on your face. “What?” Jimin returns, chuckling in disbelief. “What the hell are you talking about? We’re not finished shooting yet.”

The words make Namjoon frown, and he opens and closes his mouth again and again and again as he tries to formulate an answer. You put a hand on his arm to pull his attention and he turns to look at you, his confusion unfaltering. “Joon, he already went home, I don’t get how –”

“Okay, sorry, but we don’t have time for jokes like this, guys,” another familiar voice speaks up. You tear your eyes away from Namjoon to look at the owner of the voice, your eyes widening to the size of dinner plates when you see your boss standing at the back of the group. “We’re running further behind the longer we stay here,” Seokjin remarks, filing through some of the papers in his hands. It certainly sounds like him, but…

“What?” Namjoon asks, his frown deepening. His fingers tighten around your hand, and you look around the floor. It looks no different than when you stepped out of the elevator, though plastic sheets obscure your path to the exit – you can’t even see it anymore. “Running behind on what?”

Seokjin frowns and looks up at Namjoon. “The… schedule?” he replies slowly, papers rustling in his hand. “Are you guys okay? Did you hit your head on something?”

You remain silent – neither of you is quite sure as to how to answer that question. Did you?

Suddenly, the guy with the Go-Pro strapped to his chest gasps, the sound echoing through the space. “Oh my god, so it’s true!” he exclaims, his hand slapping to his mouth.

Confusion washes over the entirety of the group and you turn to him, frowning. There’s only one person who laughs, jokingly elbowing the man in the side. “Come on, Hoseok, they’re just messing with us. Nothing we’ve ever been to has ever been cursed.”

“Cursed?!” you repeat, lips parting in shock. Your hands are starting to go clammy, but you hold onto Namjoon’s as tightly as possible – you’re afraid that either he or you will disappear once you let go. “What do you mean, cursed?”

“See?” ‘Hoseok’ insists, pointing at you as he frantically looks between the guys standing around him. “The real Y/N wouldn’t react like this, she’d literally burst out laughing!”

“Excuse me, since when am I not the real me?” you inquire, tilting your head as you take a step forward. “I think I know who I am.”

“No, I –” Hoseok lets out a sigh, shaking his head. “I meant our Y/N. The one we know.”

“Okay, you lost me,” the laughing guy says through a snort.

“The curse, Jungkook! How else could you explain it? Different clothes, different hair...” Hoseok hisses, eyes flickering to you and Namjoon. Jungkook. Now that you hear his name, you’re starting to think he does look like the Jungkook you once talked to on some company drink. But it can’t be.

When Jungkook simply raises his eyebrows at Hoseok, looking no less confused than before, Hoseok huffs. “The one that sends you to a parallel universe!”

Even though the words Hoseok is saying are absolutely, ridiculously far-fetched and you normally wouldn’t even come close to believing it for one damn second, they hit you in the face like a ton of bricks. Your eyes widen and your mouth falls open, your heart starts beating faster and faster. Meanwhile, the thunderstorm outside is still raging on, and a flash of lightning cuts through the plastic sheets surrounding you.

“A parallel…” Namjoon mumbles beside you. When you look up at him, you notice the way he’s staring off into nothingness, his eyebrows furrowed into a thoughtful frown, his fingers idly playing with yours. “That’s impossible.”

“But it happened, didn’t it?” Hoseok insists, taking a step towards you. “What was the last thing that happened before you got here?” he asks the two of you, his eyes seeming to grow wider by the minute.

“We uh… we were working late and then we got into the elevator,” you reply cautiously, your eyes flickering to the two guys you know – at least, you think you know. But with the way they’re looking at you, you’re starting to see some merit in this curse theory. “And some lightning hit and then the elevator started shaking, and then we got onto this floor.”

Hoseok breathes in sharply and claps his hands, stumbling back. “Just like the stories!” he exclaims. His voice is sharp and cuts right through the sound of the rain against the windows, now slowing down to a pitter-patter. “The elevator – where was it?”

“Just over there,” Namjoon replies with a frown, pointing to the direction you came from. “But –”

His sentence is cut off when Hoseok starts to sprint, plastic sheets rustling as he pushes them out of his way, his footsteps as loud as the thunder outside. You only wait a moment, exchanging confused looks with Namjoon before decide to chase after him – hell, at this point, you’d love to just go back into that elevator and go down to the ground floor and get the hell home, away from whatever this situation is.

“Right here?” echoes Hoseok’s voice only seconds later. You push away the last plastic sheet to reveal the set of elevators that you stepped out of – but they all have an out of order, take stairs sign pasted to the metal doors. You let out a shaky breath, your skin going cold. “These elevators?”

Hoseok hits every single button he can hit to summon any of the elevators, but there is no response. The buttons don’t light up, nor do the elevators arrive, even after minutes and minutes and minutes of waiting. Behind your back, you notice that the crew has started to film again, walking around you in circles in an attempt to find the best angle to capture whatever the hell is happening here.

“They worked just a few minutes ago…” Namjoon protests weakly, letting go of your hand to press the buttons again. You cross your arms, biting on your lip as your mind starts to run off in all directions – what the hell is happening?

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” Hoseok mutters, shaking his head and pressing the button twice more before he whirls around. His selfie stick wobbles along, and you’re surprised that it hasn’t broken yet. “What the hell do we do?”

“Wait, hold on– are you seriously saying that these are different versions of Y/N and Namjoon?” a low voice chimes in from the back. You turn to see the owner of it take off his headphones, lowering what looks like some sort of recorder in his hands. “Are you listening to yourself?”

“It’s the only explanation!” he shoots back. “Why the hell else would we be investigating this place if the stories could never be true?”

Silence.

“I mean… we could be dreaming,” you say slowly, tilting your head – and you want to believe your own words with all your heart. Only problem is, you don’t.

“Pinch yourself, then,” Hoseok replies, crossing his arms despite the selfie stick that’s in his way. “See if you wake up.”

You’re taken aback by his words and you open and close your mouth in surprise, blinking at the stranger standing in front of you telling you to pinch yourself. “I –”

“Just do it,” he insists. “See if you’re dreaming.”

Opening and closing your mouth once more, you look aside at Namjoon, who shrugs at you – and before you can change your mind, you pull back your sleeve and pinch hard. Your skin stings and you wince at the feeling, the spot starting to burn as the blood rushes up to your arm – but when you look around, your surroundings seem as real as they could be.

“See?” he says through an exhale, turning to the others in his crew. “Not dreaming. It’s a parallel universe, I’m telling you!”

“Wait, so are you saying we ended up in your universe somehow?” Namjoon inquires, tilting his head at Hoseok. “That this elevator is some sort of vessel to get us there?”

He hums and slowly shakes his head. “That would mean that our Y/N and Namjoon would be here too,” he mutters, rubbing his bottom lip as his eyes dart around the environment. “We must’ve all travelled to a universe that isn’t ours in some way…”

He stays silent for a moment, lifting his gaze and narrowing his eyes at the sheet right behind you. He lets out a sharp breath, which comes out in a white cloud – suddenly, the room feels colder than it did before, and you shiver. “I have to check something,” he mumbles, slipping past you to push through the several sheets in his way, walking to wherever he’s planning on checking – leaving you behind.

“He isn’t like this all the time,” someone mumbles as the five remaining crew members brush past you to follow Hoseok, though you don’t quite catch who it could be before they melt into the group.

“Are we supposed to follow them?” Namjoon whispers, letting out a breath in disbelief.

You stare at the same plastic sheets as him, silently taking his hand in yours. “Well…” you say through a sigh, closing your eyes for a moment to try to calm down your pounding heart. “The elevators aren’t exactly working, so what else are we supposed to do?”

“But this parallel universe thing…” he adds, slowly shaking his head. His eyes are still fixed on the dirtied sheets, on the way they subtly sway back and forth in the draft that travels throughout the floor. “It’s ridiculous, right?”

He looks aside at you, his eyebrows furrowed, and you look back at him – only you stay silent, simply biting your lip instead. His face falls at your non-response, his lips parting. “Babe…”

“I mean, what other explanation is there?” you reply, letting out a sigh. “It can’t be just some –”

“Oh my god!”

Your head snaps into the direction that the others disappeared into, and you and Namjoon exchange only a single glance before curiosity gets the best of both of you – you rush towards the spot where you first bumped into the crew, pushing your way through several plastic sheets and moving towards the low hum of chatter.

“What? What’s wrong?” you ask as soon as you push the last sheet out of the way, coming to a halt in front of the stairs. Two crew members are pushing at the door to the stairwell as hard as they can, hitting their shoulders against the glass embedded into the frame.

“The door’s locked,” Jimin – who is apparently not your Jimin – replies, glancing at you. “And before you ask, no, it’s not a pull.”

You let out a laugh, playfully elbowing his side as you shake your head. A bright smile washes over his features as well, and he quickly looks down at his camera, starting to mess with the buttons. “So are we stuck here now or something?” you ask, crossing your arms as your eyes divert to the crew members trying to break into the stairwell.

Jimin shrugs, glancing up as his apparent crew members keep trying to get the door to open. “Well, I mean, Hoseok thinks the stairs are a portal to whatever this universe is, too, so I guess we are if it stays locked,” he says with a frown, shaking his head at the scene in front of him. “Oh, in that case, I guess I should introduce myself, huh?” he adds with a grin, holding out his hand for you and Namjoon to shake. “Jimin. I film Hoseok and the other Y/N while they bicker about ghosts,” he says, holding up his camera.

“Y/N,” you return, shaking his hand. “I calculate stuff.”

He laughs, nodding approvingly as Namjoon shakes his hand as well, and Jimin turns to face him. “Namjoon,” he introduces himself. “I also calculate things.”

“Nice to… re-meet you guys,” he says with a laugh, looking over his shoulder as someone lets out a shout, pounding their elbow against the glass – it doesn’t budge. “Hey, has someone called the site rep?” he calls.

Not-your-boss Seokjin turns to Jimin and shakes his head in response, wiggling his phone at him. “We don’t have service or wifi here apparently, so it’s no use.”

“Oh my god, we somehow ended up in a strange parallel universe and we’re definitely gonna die,” Hoseok mumbles through an exhale, shaking his head as he turns around and starts pacing back and forth, running his hands through his hair.

Your smile falls and your eyes widen in fear. “What?!” you gasp, blinking at Hoseok. No matter how many times Namjoon tries to soothe the dread building in your chest by running his thumb over the back of your hand, it won’t go away. “Why do you think we’re gonna die?!”

“We’re not gonna die,” Seokjin corrects Hoseok calmly, putting a hand on the man’s shoulder and making him stop at once. “We just need to figure out how to break through these windows and get out of here, okay? That’s all.”

“But we’re in a parallel universe, it’s dangerous,” Hoseok says with a shake of his head. The rain is picking up again and the sound of water beating against glass booms in your ears – a low rumble of thunder sounds in the distance. “We could mess up everything for the versions of us that live here.”

There’s a short silence as Seokjin takes a slow breath in and then pushes it back out, looking up at the concrete ceiling as he subtly shakes his head. “Okay, then we’ll each figure out how to get back to our right parallel universe. It shouldn’t be that hard, should it?”

Hoseok chuckles, his hand pinching the bridge of his nose as he shakes his head. “Yeah, parallel universes are so very simple to figure out that we might as well –”

A sudden beep cuts off his sentence and his head snaps up, eyes wide as they dart around the space. Another beep, followed by one more, then more, until the beeps get so fast that they almost sound like one long, high-pitched sound.

“Isn’t that the EMF reader?” the guy with the headphones – Yoongi, apparently – says with a frown, nodding to Hoseok’s bag. He gasps and slings it off of his shoulder, rummaging around in it until he pulls out a weird, rectangular device that looks more like an old, flat cellphone than anything – antenna and all.

“It’s going haywire,” Hoseok mumbles, hitting the thing a few times before looking at it again – it’s still beeping, showing no signs of shutting down. You wince at the sound, moving your hands up to cover your ears when, suddenly, a loud, static sound cuts through the beeping EMF reader and Hoseok’s eyes grow wider still. “That’s the spirit box!” he shouts over the loud bursts of white noise, undercut by voices that are starting and stopping so quickly that you can’t hear a thing they’re saying.

He bends over to search his bag once more – and then pulls out another strange device you’ve never seen before in your entire life. The spirit box is black and just as rectangular as the EMF reader, emitting an annoyingly loud sound of white noise that never seems to stop – until one of the voices you’ve been hearing every once in a while speaks for longer than a millisecond.

“Trapped. … Die.”

Despite the fact that you have no idea what any of this means for you, your heart drops into your stomach and the blood drains from your face. Your eyes wide, you look up at Hoseok, who seems to be just as shocked. “I…”

“That didn’t sound good,” you breathe out, looking around – the others you don’t seem as fazed, though their faces are visibly paler and their eyes noticeably wider. “What was that?”

“It’s a spirit,” Hoseok breathes out, tearing his gaze away from the spirit box to look at you. When you show just as much confusion as before, he lowers both the EMF reader and the spirit box, taking a breath in, a breath out. “The– this building is constructed in the exact spot where an old and really cruel prison used to be,” he starts, his voice shaky. “And they say this whole place is haunted for exactly that reason.”

Your eyebrows shoot up and your eyes widen. “The whole place is what now?”

“Haunted,” Hoseok repeats, as much concern etched into his features as you feel there is in yours. “There were like fifteen escapees that died trying to get out,” he adds, his breath coming out shakily, and he’s starting to blink a lot. “And they say that their spirits opened up a portal to a parallel universe, just to be able to get away somehow, but they never got to leave themselves.”

“Jesus fuck,” you breathe out, lips parting in surprise. You shiver when a cold breeze runs through your hair, and you grit your teeth to keep them from clattering. “Since when is our office haunted?”

“I mean, Al’s joked about it before, but I never thought…” Namjoon mumbles, his grip tightening around your hand. “I just figured he was really joking.”

You whimper, hand coming up to cover your forehead as you keep shaking your head. You’re cold, you’re tired, you’re scared, and you just want to go home. The only consolation here is that you’re with Namjoon, but even the steadiness that simply holding hands provides doesn’t make the discomfort go away. “That’s not good.”

“Come on, you’re not supposed to do that!” Hoseok says through a groan, even going as far so as to stomp his foot on the ground, and you blink down at his shoe in surprise. “You’re supposed not believe any of it and laugh at my suffering and annoy me out of being scared!”

You raise your head to look at him, letting out a bitter chuckle. “That sounds like a lot.”

It’s silent for a moment and he lets out a breath, shoulders relaxing as he sends you an apologetic smile. “Sorry,” he says, his voice so soft that you almost can’t hear it over the sounds of the EMF reader and the spirit box – but your brain seems to have relegated both of those to the background for the time being. “I just– you’re usually the one who thinks straight and finds… non-paranormal reasons for everything.”

You clear your throat and nod, glancing down at your feet before looking up again. “I’m sorry I’m not the sceptical ghost hunter Y/N tonight, then.”

“Hey, what can you do?” Hoseok says with a shrug, fumbling with the EMF reader and turning it off. “You didn’t exactly ask to be transported to a parallel universe and be threatened with death by some ghost.”

“You’re definitely right about that,” you return with a laugh, nodding as Hoseok switches off the spirit box as well. “Now we just need to figure out how to get the hell out of here and we can all go on with our lives,” you add, wrapping an arm around Namjoon without thinking much of it – and you’re immediately reminded of where you are and who you’re supposed to be when you only see eyes widening briefly and gazes averting.

“I take it we’re not dating in your universe?” Namjoon says sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck – when you look up at him, you swear you see his cheeks have flushed a faint red colour.

Seokjin laughs, shaking his head as he stuffs some papers in his bag. “No,” he simply answers through a chuckle. “But we should see how you guys’ll fair,” he adds with a grin, looking up at the two of you. You don’t quite know whether you should laugh or not here – but you do it anyway.

“Let’s get out of here before we start planning alternate-universe experiments, alright?” Yoongi interjects, eyes gliding over the group.

Seokjin shrugs. “We could do both.”

Trying to hold back laughter, you scratch the corner of your mouth in an attempt to smooth out your amused smile. “We should see if there are any other ways to get out,” you say after clearing your throat, looking aside at Namjoon. “There should be an emergency exit, shouldn’t there?”

“Oh shit, you’re right!” Namjoon breathes out, a relieved smile washing over his features. “It should be on the other side of the floor, but…” He turns his head this way and that – but suddenly, there are plastic sheets all around you, and you can barely see a few steps ahead.

“There were less of these before, right?” you note warily, taking a step back from Namjoon to inspect one of the sheets closer, poking the one in front of you – it feels real.

“I –” Namjoon pauses. The others seem confused as well, their soft murmurs, shuffling footsteps echoing against the concrete surroundings. Turning your back to them, you tilt your head at one of the sheets reaching out to push it aside – more sheets. “I think so.” His voice sounds further away than it did before, but you don’t pay it much attention, simply stepping forward to check if there are as many sheets behind the next one as you think there are.

And the answer is yes.

“It’s like a maze or something,” you note to the others, turning to look over your shoulder and huffing when you don’t hear any response – but when you push the sheet aside to walk back to them, your heart drops into your stomach.

Everyone’s gone. In their place, there are only more plastic sheets, dirtied and musty, softly swaying back and forth in whatever draft is blowing through the floor. No people, no cameras, no stairs, nothing.

“Namjoon?” you breathe out – silence. The rain has stopped, and so has the thunder, just like the street sounds you can usually hear when you’re working at your desk. There’s just your heart beating in your ears, your breathing starting to grow ragged – the silence feels almost suffocating.

“Namjoon?” you repeat, turning around and around, a feeling of dread tightening around your chest and your lungs, making it hard to breathe. Your surroundings don’t change in the slightest. “Jimin? Seokjin?”

More silence.

“Hoseok!” you shout at the top of your lungs, falling silent right after – but, much like you expected and unlike you were hoping, there is no reply. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” you mutter underneath your breath, over and over and over again.

Closing your eyes for a moment, you wrap your arms around your own torso, trying to stop yourself from shivering too much, trying to get yourself together. Your foot is tapping against the concrete floor, blood rushing up to your face, but you try to ignore all of that, focusing on keeping your breathing normal.

Why can’t the fearless, professional ghost-hunting version of you be here instead of you?

You push aside a sheet of plastic, faced with yet another one behind it, then another and another and another. Starting to pick up your pace, all you can do is try to push through the fear closing around your throat, making your muscles tense up, try to channel this other, apparently existent version of yourself right now, to be fearless and sceptical and not afraid of any of these goddamn ghosts. You’ve long lost control of your breathing and you feel like you could trip over your own feet any second now, your legs burning, your heart beating out of your chest.

But when you push aside a last sheet and come to a stop in front of the emergency exit, it momentarily stops beating.

You’ve found it.

It’s right there in front of you. A single door painted a dark green, its glossy varnish shimmering in the soft moonlight – you’d almost say it’s glowing. A green sign with a drawing of a running stick man hangs right above it, flickering frantically. You take a step forward, reaching out to grip the metal doorknob –

You feel a tap on your shoulder. Namjoon?

With a gasp, you whirl around, looking behind you, your eyes scanning your surroundings.

No one.

You let out a slow breath, your heart rate picking up so much that you can hear it beating in your ears. It wasn’t. A. Ghost. Not a ghost. Not. A. Ghost.

Turning back around, a relieved sigh escapes your lips when the emergency exit is still there. You’re gonna open the door and call for the others to come to you until they join you. You’re not leaving this spot, no matter what.

Your hand closes around the doorknob and you take another breath, gripping the cold metal so tightly that your knuckles turn white and its edges dig into your skin.

“Stay.”

The voice sounds so close to your ear that you let out a yelp, hand shooting off the doorknob as you jump a mile in the air. Shivers run down your spine as you recall the sensation of actual breath ghosting over your skin, goosebumps prickling on your arms and legs. Not a ghost. Not a ghost. Not a ghost. Just open the door, wait for the others, and get the hell out and then figure out how to get back to whatever ‘your’ universe is.

“Guys!” you shout out, eyes squeezing closed as you grip the ice cold doorknob once again. “I found the door!”

As expected, there is no response, but you push on. “Guys!” you repeat, slamming the door open, ignoring the shivers running down your spine as breath ghosts over your skin yet again, setting one foot outside and –

You jolt awake.

Inhaling sharply, you sit up, wincing at the shrill sound of a phone ringing in the background. Your back is stiff and your eyes are puffy – you rub them in an attempt to see better, letting out another sigh. Blinking as you lower your hands into your lap, you look around, dazed.

You’re sitting at a colleague’s desk in your office, a thunderstorm raging outside, rain beating against the windows. A flash of lightning illuminates the entire floor in white, and you squint to protect your eyes from the brightness. “What the –”

“Y/N?”

You gasp and your head snaps to the side, seeing Namjoon sitting in the chair right next to you. He’s looking at you with wide eyes and parted lips, his eyebrows furrowed as his gaze darts over your face.

Without another thought, you pull back your sleeve and pinch. You wince but smile when it hurts like a bitch, and you look down to see a red spot start to form on your skin. Ignoring the second red spot right beside it, you look back up again, your smile widening.

“Namjoon,” you breathe out, your shoulders relaxing as you throw your arms around him. He breathes out a relieved laugh, wrapping his arms around you in response, and you close your eyes to focus on his warm embrace. Your heart is beating hard, beating fast, and you can’t help but open your eyes again to look around the office to see if you really could be back. The desks, chairs, carpet, windows – everything looks the same as it always has. There isn’t a speck of dirt that seems out of place, even the weird stain on the wall by the printer looking the exact same. You’re back.

“Is it just me, or did we just have a really weird dream?” Namjoon mutters into your shoulder, his arms staying tight around you.

You breathe out a laugh. “Did it have something to do with ghosts and universe travelling?” you ask, flashes of plastic sheets, concrete floors, bright camera lights running through your mind. They seem real, they feel real – but you’re starting to wonder if they even happened in the first place.

“I –” Namjoon pauses, letting out a disbelieving breath as you break apart, leaning back in your chairs and staring off into the distance. “It did.”

You lift your eyes to his, holding his gaze for a prolonged moment. It wasn’t real, right? “Just... a weirdly similar dream, then,” you mumble, saying it more to yourself than to Namjoon – and even though the both of you seem to want to believe it, you aren’t exactly convinced.

“But how did we –”

“We fell asleep and our brains just synced up somehow,” you insist, shaking your head. “Just a dream,” you repeat firmly, though your eyes flicker to the two red spots on your arm and you wonder...

Namjoon stares at you for a little while longer. His eyebrows are furrowed and he’s fidgeting with his fingers, though he’s nodding slowly.

A phone continues to ring in the background, its shrill sound cutting through the soft pitter-patter of the rain outside. The thunder has ceased for the time being and so, the office feels much calmer and more peaceful than before you left – or, at least, you think you left. But you’re not so sure of anything right now.

Abruptly tearing his eyes away from you, Namjoon jumps into action and swipes his phone off his desk, clearing his throat when he looks at the screen – you swear you see his cheeks flushing as he purses his lips. Before you can ask him about it, though, he quickly slips his phone into his pocket.

“Let’s just go home before we fall asleep again,” he says with a soft smile, getting up from his chair and holding out his hand.

You grin up at him, lacing his fingers with yours and letting him pull you up. “Or are we just trying again?”

He narrows his eyes at you, though he can’t help but laugh, shaking his head as he quickly hits the off-button of his computer. “Too soon,” he says with a chuckle, snatching his bag from the ground and slinging it over his shoulder.

A short silence falls as you walk away from his desk, and you look down at your hands as you trail behind him, watching the way you can make his fingers move with yours, feeling the way his hand slots into yours so easily, and smiling softly.

“But let’s take the stairs, just to be sure.”

With a laugh, you nod eagerly, following him as he strays from the path towards the elevators and heading for the stairs down instead. You feel yourself growing tired, exhaustion starting to take over you. The memories of a shaking elevator, footsteps echoing through an empty office floor, your heart pounding out of your chest – they’re all starting to feel less and less real with every step you take. Names and faces start to fade from memory, images growing blurry until there’s nothing left but the sensation of breath softly ghosting over your skin, sending a shiver down your spine.

“Hey,” Namjoon pipes up as you take the umpteenth set of stairs down, the both of you panting, out of breath, though not complaining.

You look up at him, eyebrows raised. “Hm?”

Frowning, you notice the way he bites his lip as he looks at you, then quickly averts his eyes, stopping in the middle of a set of stairs. “I know it was just a dream and everything,” he starts, and you stop on the step right above his. “But I’m curious.”

A smile teasing over your lips, you take another step down, taking his hand in yours. “Curious about what?”

“How did you get out?”

“Emergency exit, like we said,” you reply. Yet another shiver runs down your spine as you feel the sensation of breath tickling your skin, goosebumps spreading over your arms and legs. “I wanted to call you guys, but you were gone and –” You heave a sigh, looking down at your hands as you play with Namjoon’s fingers. “I woke up before I could find you.”

Namjoon hums, and you lift your eyes to look at him, noticing the way his frown is deepening, the way he’s chewing on his bottom lip.

You tilt your head, letting go of his hand to run your fingers through his soft hair. “Why?”

He lets out a slow breath, his eyes closed as he smiles. “Nothing. Just curious,” he mutters, quickly leaning in to peck your lips and pull you further down the stairs. The door to the lobby is already in sight, freedom lurking on the other side. “Anyways, I hope this weird dream doesn’t overshadow tonight too much.”

You raise your eyebrows at him as he opens the door for you, letting you step outside. “What’s tonight?” you ask slowly, tilting your head. You walk backwards into the lobby, keeping your eyes on him as your footsteps echo off the shiny white floors. It’s not as brightly lit as usual, which makes you frown – the lights are dimmed instead tonight. “Did I miss an anniversary?”

Namjoon just smiles at you, nodding to something behind you. With a frown, you turn around, and your heart skips yet another beat as you draw in a sharp breath – rose petals rain down on you, courtesy of Jimin, who is standing a few feet away from you with a bright smile on his face. He’s dressed in his usual office clothes, and you suddenly realise why he stayed late with you, as well. On the floor, candles are carefully arranged into the shape of a heart, and the shape almost seems to glow right in front of you.

Are you still dreaming?

“Namjoon, what –”

You swallow your words when you turn around and Namjoon isn’t at eye height anymore. Rather, he has sunk to the floor on one knee, holding open a small, black box with a ring inside.

Holy shit.

You pinch yourself for the third time tonight, blinking fast in an attempt to get rid of the burning feeling in your eyes. Hurts like hell – you’re not dreaming. And all you can think as you look at Namjoon, his eyes glittering in the low lighting as he smiles up at you is – you’re so fucking glad you live in this universe.

“Will you marry me?”

bangtan unsolved | only you | masterlist

a/n: thanks so much for reading, I hope you liked it!! I know it’s a bit different from my usual stuff but I still had a great time writing it, and I hope you enjoyed it too :)) Let me know what you thought, I’d love to hear from you♥ Have a wonderful day/night wherever you are, and I hope to see you next week :))

[austinpanda]

Dad Letter 120119

1 December, 2019

Dear Dad--

Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to December! I got a couple of gifts from you, and I want to thank you for them! It looks like one is a paracord bracelet (which I’m going to keep in my car in case of emergencies) and the other looks like a big scary knife! That’s a really good-looking knife! I am ready to be the heavy in a Steven Segall movie. Thank you thank you! I may keep the knife in my car too, just because I don’t have anything for self defense in the car, other than a viciously-thrown handful of sugar-free Werthers. Being here in Yankeeland, I’m supposed to have an emergency survival kit in my car, in case I go off the road and get stuck in snow. I believe it’s supposed to contain warm clothing, and a snow shovel, and food. (What I really need in that situation is a tow truck, so I’m going to have to be better about taking my phone with me wherever I go. 

Job hunt! I have an interview tomorrow at a temp agency called Bangor Area Staffing Solutions (BASS!) where they will take my references, review the results of four assessment tests I will have taken by then, and hook me up with a job. I’ve taken the first two assessments, which were a typing test and a clerical skills test (math, grammar, punctuation). I have to take another assessment on my abilities with Microsoft Word, a word processor program, and a final assessment to gauge my abilities with Microsoft Excel, which means spreadsheets. I’ve worked with spreadsheets before, but never created one, or did anything really complicated in Excel, so I’m watching tutorials on YouTube. They not only have Excel tutorials, but they have tutorials specifically geared to help you through an Excel assessment as part of a job application, so I’m getting that knowledge packed into the ol’ brain in preparation.

I believe I’ve made a new friend! Found him on a website that specializes in, not to put too fine a point on it, fat gay guys, and their admirers. It’s a bit silly in concept, but it’s also how I met Zach. Now most of the guys who go on this website are trying to find love, or, more likely, trying to get laid. I am the rare exception to this rule. I’m one of the few who use the site because they just want to make a new friend, and specifically NOT do any fornicating. And I got lucky! I found a big friendly fellow named Josh, and he even lives in Old Town (and not Bangor) like me, so he’s quite close. I’ve been chatting with him online. I’ve learned a few things. 

I thought I liked decorating for Christmas. Nope, I’m an amateur with no hopes of ever going pro. Josh is a pro. While I was chatting with him, he sent me a pic of his Christmas tree, which he had decorated. It was gorgeous. It had red and white lights on it, with blue accent lights nearby, just like the tree in my living room! Then he mentioned that he was decorating another tree. This made me stop and think, because how many single people have multiple Christmas trees, much less the stuff to decorate them? Turns out, Josh does! I asked him how many trees he had, and he wasn’t sure (!), but he thinks 7 to 10. He mentioned getting 15 totes full of Christmas shit at a yard sale once. 

So that’s my new friend Josh’s big secret; He has a vicious Christmas addiction. It’s cunning and baffling and powerful, and the first step is admitting that he has a problem. I saw snowshoes in one of the photos, and mentioned that he owned snowshoes. He had to correct me; he doesn’t own snowshoes that he can use to walk in the snow, those are antique snowshoes he borrowed from a friend for purposes of a Christmas display near the entryway in his apartment. They’re decorative holiday snowshoes.

So now I’m fascinated by this guy. You don’t meet too many people in life who are so committed to Christmas. I don’t have many friends who are that committed to anything. And he’s allergic to beef, and nuts, so we’re going to cook his ass a lasagna with pork Italian sausage in it. I think he’s earned a lasagna for his holiday efforts. 

So...exercise. Fucking exercise, bane of my existence. I figured I would get more outdoor time and more long walks once I moved north, and so far I’ve been right. It’s a lot more fun to go walking through an empty park covered with snow when it’s 30 degrees (for me) than it is to walk through a park full of hip, young, pretty people when it’s 100 degrees. Yesterday, before going on our walk, I checked my cell phone to see if it had a built-in fitness app that would track how far we walked, and lo, it did! Once I turned that shit on, my phone became a pedometer, and it turned out we ended up walking 1.46 miles. It was about 22 degrees. We really froze our nuts off, but it was a beautiful trail we were on (I’ll include a pic or two) and I slept better last night than I’ve slept since we moved here. Fucking exercise, hahaha! And my depression isn’t noticeable today...I hate when everybody except me gets how healthy exercise is, and then my own body proves them right. I shall have to walk again today. 

I’ve discovered a new TV show I like, and it’s strange but fascinating: The Great British Bake-Off. Start with ten of the country’s best amateur bakers, have them compete against each other, eliminate the biggest loser, and repeat until they have an ultimate winner. The thing to enjoy about the show is just how British everything is. Everyone is super polite, and so eager to bake something perfect, and disasters happen, but because they’re British, they don’t hurl a coffee mug across the kitchen, they just get kind of quiet while they chastise themselves for their feeble effort. One baker was icing his cake, then turning it slightly, then icing some more, then turning it slightly. Only every time he turned it, he was also shoving it forward just a bit, which he didn’t notice. So he turned it one too many times and gently shoved his whole cake onto the floor. The judges (because, remember, it’s England) came over to help him pick up his cake and encourage him to finish the competition as best he could. I think if it were America, the judges would run up and start yelling at him, and make him do push-ups. 

I’m going to get started on my test preparation and take my assessments now! Wish em luck. Thank you again for the paracord and the knife; I’m now much better prepared in case of robbers or grizzly bear. Much love to you both!!

[pinelife3]

Sadness

The treatment of the breaking of the fourth wall in Fleabag is the most compelling thing I’ve seen all year. Throughout the first season, our protagonist Fleabag (played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge who also writes the show) would look at the camera to make witty asides. Usually a sarcastic remark or eye roll to hammer home that she’s sardonic, insincere, perhaps a little underhanded. 

You’ve probably noticed how if you’re in a one-on-one conversation, it’s hard to rag on someone but that in a group it works (because you can pretend it’s good natured humour rather than a scathing attack on their very existence). In Fleabag, the breaking of the fourth wall is a way for Fleabag to safely ridicule whoever she’s speaking to. It’s also a succinct way of delivering backstory, revealing her intentions, and getting us on side. These interactions with the fourth wall are pretty standard, see: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Amélie, House of Cards, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Shakespearean asides, American Psycho. It’s an accepted device. But then in season two, when Fleabag speaks to us, someone takes notice, someone spots her dipping out of their diegetic reality as she speaks to us in ours. 

I thrilled at this. 

Sometimes I feel like I’ve seen everything - but I’d never seen this before. This is the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen on a TV show (forget the Red Wedding). This is a masterful trick, and great storytelling all at once - it demolishes a literary device. But most of the coverage of Fleabag has focused on how sad the show is:

People seem to like that: they like being crushed, enjoy being devastated. Why is that?

I’ve recently cried over two cowboy related things: Brokeback Mountain and Red Dead Redemption 2. 

I cried when I finished Red Dead Redemption 2 because I love Arthur Morgan so much: he was just the sweetest guy, and I was sad the story was over because we can’t go fishing anymore, or crash his horse into trees and fall, or fight gators in the swamps, or brush his horse while we cruise around the old west. I just felt so wistful for his life and the idea of bad guys working hard to be good in a changing world. 

And then I cried at the end of Brokeback Mountain because it is objectively very sad. The shirts tucked inside each other which Jack kept all those years. The possibility that Jack didn’t know how much Ennis loved him. The life they could have had together, and how much they loved each other - but the families and relationships they destroyed along the way as well, because no one ever said what they felt. 

I really liked both Brokeback and Red Dead, because they have great stories and characters. In Red Dead, I have so many fond memories - and for that reason it made me feel strong emotions. But I don’t like Red Dead because it made me feel strong emotions. I don’t like Brokeback because it was ‘crushing’ and/or ‘devastating’ - it was enjoyable because it was a beautiful story with tragic, poignant elements. I like the story - not that it made me cry. Most Fleabag reviews seem to focus on the sadness it made the audience feel as a way to recommend it to people. 

Watch Fleabag - it will make you feel something. 

Prepare to emote because Fleabag is preternaturally sad.

The discourse around the show on Reddit is similar:

Pffft want to feel really sad? Check out this scene from Synecdoche, New York:

It’s very moving, kind of irresistibly so. And I think that’s because it’s calling out to that scared, bitter, self-pitying part of you which is always cringing in the shadows, waiting for someone to invite it out of the garage into the living room. This speech is designed to frighten you: you’ll make misssssstakesss and ruin your life. You won’t even know you’re doing it until it’ssssss toooooo late. You might think your life is nice - but that’sssssssssssss only because you haven’t ssssssssssseen how bad it will get. It’s giving you permission to feel bad without providing any reason to feel bad, and then it’s allowing you to wallow in that bad feeling. It’s poison. 

I promise you, for 99% of people who watched Synecdoche, New York , life is not that bad. People in horrible, war torn places where they aren’t able to watch Charlie Kaufman films because no one dubs indie movies in Kurdish have it bad - and not just because they’re missing out on great films, but because they essentially live in a sandier version of Hell. Haven’t you ever sat in the sun with a dog and seen it look back at you and felt a perfect connection? Haven’t you ever fallen asleep, perfectly comfortable, tucked in beside someone you love? Haven’t you ever eaten pancakes with ice cream, or seen a huge mountain, or been really cold and then gotten into a warm bath? Haven’t you ever seen a baby fake-crying on the tram and then its mum tickles it under the chin and it laughs, and you see everyone around you smile because babies are so pure? Come on! You’re not Othello. Your life is pretty nice. Even Othello’s life was pretty nice right up until the end. 

Pretty nice.

But boring. Right? 

Pancakes? Cuddles?

How am I to thrill at sunsets and smiling babies? 

Good. Now I’m sad again. 

And if the realisation that you don’t have anything to be sad about (except for the ordinariness of the pleasures in your life) didn’t make you sad, check out this compilation of the 10 most depressing moments in Bojack Horseman (ranked in order from least depressing to most depressing!).

A major inconvenience of modern life is that most of us have supremely comfortable, happy, safe lives. And when something goes wrong, you can’t go on a tragic rampage and tear out your own eyes, beat your breast, or wail on the moor in a thunderstorm - even though that may be what you feel like doing. 

Work sucks, no one respects me, and I messed up that section of the Excel spreadsheet so maybe they are right to not respect me: take me to a moor where my tears can blend with rain and my howls will be swallowed by the wind! 

Ordinary people don’t get to live in a tragedy - and besides, there aren’t as many moors around as literature might have you believe. The most you can do usually is make a scene at a family dinner or isolate yourself at a party and then get drunk and walk home crying. Who would write a sweeping, romantic story about an embarrassing fuck up walking home drunk, feeling sorry for themselves.

Oh.

Wait:

And Now For That 2000 Year Old Mystery

Aristotle’s Poetics is the source of the word catharsis (in italics because it’s Greek which is the way I was taught to do it in high school - if only there were Greecian-alics, am I right?), which in common parlance today basically means any kind of dramatic release of emotions. Kickboxing is cathartic. Getting your eyebrows waxed is cathartic. Crying during an emotional episode of a TV show is cathartic. 

Because the word appeared in Poetics, it's original usage related to the theatre, in particular the experience of an audience watching a tragedy: the release of emotions they feel in watching things go seriously wrong for the hero. For this reason, catharsis is often tied to anagnorisis - the moment of tragic realisation. 

Oh god I killed my father and married my mother. 

Oh god, that’s my son’s head on the pike, not the head of a mountain lion.

Oh god, remember when I messed up that bit of the spreadsheet and everyone knew it was me. Existence truly is pain.

You get the idea. It’s not enough that the protagonist is a fuck up: that matter needs to be brought to their attention and they need to reflect on it.

(A more proper (read: academic) definition of catharsis is: “an imitation of an action ‘with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.’” The emotions the audience feel echo what the people on stage are feeling. The jump scare in a horror movie scares the character on screen and the audience watching at home.)

Aristotle never clearly defined catharsis. So for all this time (2000+ years) people have been trying to infer what he meant from a couple of references to a pretty slippery concept. Even though the general public has their understanding of the word, academics still cannot agree on a definition. But we know what it means, roughly, because we’ve all experienced it. 

Over the weekend I watched Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s other other TV show (not Killing Eve) which had an exchange between an artist and a drunk girl on sadness and how it factors into art:

Character 1: He’s my muse!

Character 2: Your muse?

...

Character 2: Like an artist's muse?!

Character 1: Yes, he is! You think meeting someone like Colin happens to artists all the time?! He gives so much.

Character 2: Yeah, sure, and you just lap it up and just slap it on a canvas.

Character 1: Pardon?

Character 2: "His pain is so beautiful." You're using him to indulge yourself.

Character 1: I am indulging? And what is this? 

Character 2: This is a $4 bottle of wine.

...

Character 2: Sorry if I upset you, Melody.

Character 1: You don't upset me. You bore me. All you seem to want to do is drink and wank and drink and wank.

Character 2: Well, at least I don't have to wank other people's pain onto a canvas, and then shove it in people's faces and call it "my art."

Character 2 in this scene is played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I can’t be bothered to explain why it’s relevant. 

For the eternity of human brains, or at least for as long as preserved creativity, the most comfortable, secure people in the world have tried to experience the things tragic victims feel - perhaps so they can briefly know what it feels like to be a romantic figure struggling in an unjust world. A passport to feelings and drama we aren’t permitted in every day life. Catharsis is the word to express the reaction, but what do we call an audience who seeks out that sensation? Catharsis chasers?

It’s not insightful to say that people like to watch Fast & Furious movies because they’re exciting and perhaps audiences enjoy that excitement because their own lives are un-exciting. But commending a thing because it will make you sad seems aberrant in some way. A fast and dangerous car that will make you miserable. A roller coaster that will make you depressed. An incredible shootout in the streets of LA that will make you sob in the bathroom cubicle at work every time you think about it. I can’t explain the drive, but like Aristotle I will invent a new word, so that academics can never know what I meant but will still write at great length about it, so that it will slip into common parlance and be horribly misused until eventually, 2000 years from now, a girl can waffle on about it on her blog. And the word will be: scartharsio. Or maybe scorpithoniacs? Or sarcastiharsics? 

Sadness is entertainment for a scartharsio.  

ALL TIME HALL OF FAME: WAILING WOMEN AND MOORS

Nobody knows what it’s like to be me, a sad woman who weeps on moors! 

I’m not being overly dramatic!

[tkuhnhackl]

1-70

i can’t tell if i love you or hate you rn but i really don’t want to do anymore work on this placement nonsense so we’ll go with the former, thanks

i’m stupid enough to actually do all these but i will put them under a read more to spare y’all

01: Do you have a good relationship with your parents? yeah, i’m really close to both of them. we’re all a little nuts in the family, but in the best way.02: Who did you last say “I love you” to? my mom, when talking to her on the phone on the way back from work today (well, technically i said “love ya, shorty” because my family is not good at sentimentality without a little bit of roasting but close enough, i suppose)03: Do you regret anything? I already answered this!04: Are you insecure? I guess? It’s weird - I’m very comfortable with who I am, that sort of stuff, but things that have happened in the past have made me insecure about aspects of myself - so I suppose my answer is that i’ve become fairly good at disguising my insecurities over time05: What is your relationship status? single af06: How do you want to die? quickly, fairly painlessly, in a blaze of glory - there’s one Brian Jacques novel where the Long Patrol hares mount a final charge to stall the enemy and 8 year old me was absolutely ready to go out wielding a longsword in one hand and a sgian dubh in the other and tbh i’m still lowkey up for it07: What did you last eat? i had tacos for dinner with homemade barbacoa beef (i froze half of it when i made it back in february so i am finally treating myself to the rest of it)08: Played any sports? baseball, softball, basketball, tennis, and soccer/football. i also did field hockey briefly and ran track and field (primarily hurdles) for a year; i wanted to do short track speed skating but my parents were too worried about my safety09: Do you bite your nails? yup, i’ve tried for years to break the habit but every time i get stressed, it happens again10: When was your last physical fight? i’ve never been in a full-on fight; probably high school was the last time that anything even came close to that level and it was still not particularly close11: Do you like someone? already answered this one too!12: Have you ever stayed up 48 hours? once? usually i end up taking a nap, even if just for an hour, so it rarely ends up being 48 consecutive hours13: Do you hate anyone at the moment? i mean, on an impersonal level, there are famous people i despise. in my own personal life, there are a handful of people that i dislike enough to perhaps call hate but i also don’t believe in wasting my time being angry with them if they’re not even in my life anymore14: Do you miss someone? answered this one as well!15: Have any pets? the loves of my life, my dog Flora and my parents’ dog Liam. also the spider who lives in the corner of my room because sometimes it’s nice to pretend that counts as having company16: How exactly are you feeling at the moment? tired, overwhelmed, ready for another vacation, helpless, frustrated, but also hopeful because i’ve got three potential job leads that came up this week (but can’t be followed up on until I return home in Sept)17: Ever made out in the bathroom? nope18: Are you scared of spiders? no, i love spiders as long as they don’t encroach on my personal space19: Would you go back in time if you were given the chance? as an art history person, absolutely. there are a lot of questions that i had to leave unanswered in my research papers and i’d love to just be able to ask the artists in person (and maybe punch picasso and jackson pollock and tell bierstadt to calm down a bit with the entire congress incident because no one cares about those pictures anymore)20: Where was the last place you snogged someone? a dorm room (idk if it counts as a snog but we’re counting it nonetheless)21: What are your plans for this weekend? finish getting my portfolio done for this placement and hopefully book another trip for next weekend22: Do you want to have kids? How many? i definitely do not want to birth any children, but i’d certainly be open to adopting later in my life should my life lead me in a direction where i feel ready, able, and willing to open my heart and home to a kid. probably only one, definitely no more than 2.23: Do you have piercings? How many? two ear piercings, i used to have my nose pierced but that ripped out in a very painful moment and i’m waiting for it to heal completely before i get it repierced24: What is/are/were your best subject(s)? i was a fucking nerd in high school; i think the only subject i struggled a bit in was physics and that’s just because i don’t like theory - in uni, i took classes in a bunch of different departments, but my best ones were art history and anthropology25: Do you miss anyone from your past? answered this as well!26: What are you craving right now? poutine from the Yard, good Knights hockey, a brain that functions in a healthier way, and an end to my writing block27: Have you ever broken someone’s heart? i don’t think so? i mean, i feel like it’s highly unlikely28: Have you ever been cheated on? can’t happen if you’re not even in the game 😏29: Have you made a boyfriend/girlfriend cry? see above answer30: What’s irritating you right now? my flatmates, the other work placement who won’t shut up and insists on using the library computer with the cataloging software despite me reserving it, my professors’ general incompetence, international politics31: Does somebody love you? romantically, no, unless the cheesemonger’s really committed to our non-existent relationship. but i’d like to think my close friends and family do (otherwise the love you’s we exchange at the end of conversations are awkward now)32: What is your favourite color? russets and other earth tones33: Do you have trust issues? hahahahahaha yes34: Who/what was your last dream about? i don’t actually remember? i know i woke up disoriented a few nights ago because it was something realistic but idk what i actually dreamed about35: Who was the last person you cried in front of? i cried in front of my mom on skype recently; in person, also probably my mother when she visited a few months ago (moral of the story is that i refuse to cry in front of anyone that’s not family)36: Do you give out second chances too easily? depending on what happened, i really don’t do second chances at all. i’m an expert at putting things in my past and, while i don’t often burn bridges, i’m more than happy to let them fall into ruin on their own 37: Is it easier to forgive or forget? to forgive is easy (depending on what was done), but forgetting is much, much harder38: Is this year the best year of your life? depending on my paper grades and this dissertation and whether or not someone wants to hire me, it could well be, but it sure as hell does not feel like it39: How old were you when you had your first kiss? 1840: Have you ever walked outside completely naked? no way in hell51: Favourite food? beans and rice52: Do you believe everything happens for a reason? not really - i do believe that every experience is one that can be learned from and every one has some sort of value, but i believe that the “happens for a reason” idea ascribes more sentience to the universe than i like53: What is the last thing you did before you went to bed last night? did my daily duolingo requirements so that the owl didn’t show up in my bedroom and murder me54: Is cheating ever okay? no, i don’t think there can be any sort of justification for betraying someone’s trust55: Are you mean? not particularly, i can be if i need to be but i prefer not to (i prefer to go for the ‘asian mom threatening glare’ that i have inherited from my mother)56: How many people have you fist fought? zero; for all its portrayals on tv and movies, my experience in american public school had absolutely no physical fights57: Do you believe in true love? no, i find that the concept can be so limiting and people feel pressure to find some ideal that may not really exist (i’m not a romantic in any way, shape, or form whoops)58: Favourite weather? spring, when it’s right on the edge of summer, so it’s warm enough that you can wear absolutely anything and still be comfortable, and the birds are nesting and the flowers are blooming, and the world just feels so alive59: Do you like the snow? yes, but my sad frostbitten toes can no longer handle the cold so i must now limit my time in the snow so i don’t lose them completely60: Do you wanna get married? i wouldn’t say i want to get married; if i find someone and we end up getting married, great. if i stay single the rest of my life, also great. it’s one of those things that i don’t feel is a necessity to make my life complete, but i’m not necessarily opposed to it either if it happens. I have so many things on my bucket list for life, but romance has never been on it.61: Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you baby? i will accept “babe” but will not accept baby unless it’s followed by giraffe. 62: What makes you happy? dogs that wag their tail a little faster when they see you, the way puffins fly and land, the sound and sight of sea birds reuniting with their partners after spending the last year apart, lilies of the valley beginning to peek out as the seasons change, fruits and veg picked straight from my garden, good food, excel spreadsheets, being the only one in a gallery in a museum and getting to be alone with the art, sharks that challenge our perspectives on what sharks are supposed to be and do, my sports teams winning63: Would you change your name? no. for a long time, i did because it’s always getting mispronounced and, when you go to a predominantly white school district, it’s always hard to be the one kid with an obviously non-white name. but also my last name means ‘king of snakes’ and fuck if anyone’s taking that away from me64: Would it be hard to kiss the last person you kissed? nope, she remains very dear to me65: Your best friend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do? run screaming for the hills, catch me sailing out to shetland on the next ferry because that’s a conversation i don’t want to have66: Do you have a friend of the opposite sex who you can act your complete self around? yeah, i don’t really believe in having close friends that i cannot act my complete self around, regardless of gender67: Who was the last person of the opposite sex you talked to? my dad? non-family, the regimental representative at the museum i work at, who’s basically my work dad (who i cook for because i worry about his health)68: Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with? i avoid all deep emotional conversations, so it’d probably be my parents (specifically my mother because my dad is like me). but i did have a deep conversation about politics and race with a girl i met on my trip this weekend up north69: Do you believe in soulmates? answered this as well70: Is there anyone you would die for? absolutely

[uschickens]

Getting to know you meme

Okay. Okayokayokay. I said I was going to post more, actually engage more, so that requires, you know. Actually posting more. (Plus @momosandlemonsoda has graciously tagged me twice now, with no response from me, and that shall not stand!)

So. That meme thing going around.

Part I

name: Fannishly, I’m uschickens pretty much everywhere. Back in The Olden Times, I used Vix as my first name with uschickens, as in short for Vixen, as in a fox in the henhouse, which, like so many things with me, is so obscure as to only amuse myself.

star sign: Sagittarius, which seems a little ::skeptical headtilt:: at first, until you pair it with my Gemini rising and Virgo moon, and then it becomes a lot more we-know-but-hey-john-mulaney.gif

height: 5'5" (165.1cm)

time: 11:12pm

birthday: every handful of years, it coincides with Thanksgiving, so I get cake AND turkey.

nationality: american

fave bands/groups/solo artists: Like, currently listening to, or of all time, or or or??? This is a loaded question! Recently, Taemin’s Never Gonna Dance album hooked me hard. My other most-played playlists are called “last of the hardcore troubadours,” “frenzied banjos,” and “forest gods,” so I’m working the alt country/folk pop/whatever Florence and her Machine and Hozier have going on. Oh, and the Sleep No More soundtrack, so 1930s jazz, Hitchcockian strings, and edm all mashed together.

song stuck in your head: not even a song, just the one line from Taemin “we were just two kids/too young and dumb” over and over and over on repeat.

last movie you watched: I...have not watched a movie in a long, long time. Possibly a Knives Out rewatch? It Part Two? No, all my media consumption time lately has been devoted to...

last show you binged: All Things Tomb. I started watching reboot in, hmmm, late October? Early November? And with very few exceptions, various dmbj adaptions have been ALL I watched since then. It’s...kind of a problem. It goes in fits and starts, not a true binge since reboot, except for some blocking-out-the-outside-world plunges into Ultimate Note in early January. Reboot is the Tomb of My Heart, with Sha Hai a microscopically close second. Chen Minghao is my one! true! Pangzi, with surfer!Pangzi from tlt2 being a worthy predecessor. I am mostly here for post-Bronze Gate Wu Xies, and I vastly prefer the more realistic fighting style of reboot!Xiaoge than emo!XG, mathnerd!XG, or dancer!XG. But this was supposed to be about a binge, not my Standard Tomb Opinions Dissertation.

when you created your blog: 2010? There was a brief period when apparently I used tumblr for...interior design porn?? Rather than porn porn??? I quickly learned my lesson.

the last thing you googled: firstly, that would be the last thing I duckduckgoed, if we’re being strictly accurate, but I digress. It was [Richard Diebenkorn Guggenheim], part of a long-running conversation with my dad, who is a landscape painter currently going through an abstract expressionism phase. It’s getting wild up in here, folks.

other blogs: as I said, uschickens everywhere, by which I mean Twitter and dreamwidth and ao3.

why i chose my url: back in The Early Days of Livejournal, I lurked even more than I do now, so when I finally took the plunge, I couldn’t resist going with a name that really captured my inner Do Not Perceive Me, crossed with big band music and Louis Jordan. Ergo my tag line was “ain’t nobody here but... [us chickens]”.

how many people are you following: fuck if I know

how many followers do you have: fuck if I care

average hours of sleep: NOT. ENOUGH. But better than it used to be; see also my Twitter for some of the more bizarre paths my mind goes down when I’m in the middle of a juicy bit of insomnia.

lucky numbers: 3

instruments: a couple decades of piano and a solid eight months of French horn.

what i’m currently wearing: the dress I wore to work over pajama bottoms. I’m getting ready for bed, I swear. Halfway there!

dream job: ::hollow laughter:: I feel I would be excellent at being independently wealthy, at which point all my time would be devoted to travel, food, and writing about/photographing that travel and food, plus whatever experimental theater/circus/dance performances I happened to run across. But I shudder to think of actually relying on that sort of writing/photography to earn my keep, because there’s no faster way to kill my joy in a thing than to make it an obligation. Is “dilettante” still a thing? I’d be very good at that.

dream trip: do you want that chronologically or alphabetically? I have spreadsheets! I *will* be going to Singapore once all this ::gestures vaguely at the world:: sorts itself out. There’s a weeklong food tour in Mexico City for which I have lust in my heart. I want to rent a beachside with a million bedrooms for a month and just have friends show up for as much or as little of that month as they want. When I want true escapism, I look at the Aman hotel website, pick a location at random, and decide which suite I would like for a) myself, solo, b) myself with family, c) myself with friends and d) whichever characters currently live in my brain.

fave food: ha, I couldn’t pick a favorite band, and you want me to pick a favorite FOOD? Gumbo. Spaghetti and meatballs (but only good ones). Georgian khachapuri and aubergine satsivi. Fresh strawberries and cream.

top three fictional universe you’d like to live in: something written by Diana Wynne Jones, because it’s always a good mix of fantastic and pragmatic, with fundamentally decent people. Probably Howl and Sophie’s neck of the woods. Star Wars, because fuck it I want a lightsaber. And faster than light space travel. And I can’t think of a third offhand, but something with magic. Because if you’re going fictional, go big fictional or go home.

Part II

last song: the moody acoustic version of the Guardian theme song.

last movie last stream last podcast: We’ve already talked movies, and Vix Does Not Stream, so let’s go to the only thing that means my laundry gets folded in a timely manner - podcasts. I would be remiss in not mentioning the primary ‘castular joy in my life, the I Saw What You Did pod, which is two fortysomething women of color talking nerdily about two movies based on a theme each week. You’ve probably never seen most of these movies, and it doesn’t matter in the slightest. They themselves are a delight, and it’s exactly the sort of chewy discussion over media that I adore, especially because it is not done in an exclusionary, clerk-at-that-one-independent-video-store-who-always-seemed-to-be-sneering-at-your-choices way. Highly recommended. But, uh, the one I really should talk about is All About Agatha, a very good podcast reading and ranking all of Agatha Christie’s novels in order, because it is an excellent segue into...

currently reading: ...the fact that I am a solid 80% of the way through all of Agatha Christie’s novels in audiobook. In, like, the last two months. I haven’t read a book with my eyeballs since ::gestures vaguely at the world again:: (wait, no, I made it through the dmbj novels, for better or for worse), as reading with my eyes seems to be reserved for fic these days. But I am plowing through these audiobooks like it’s a part-time job. What even is life if not narrated by Hugh Fraser at this point? I’m not sure if I recommend the endeavor or not, but I and my knitting and my mystery audiobooks will be over here getting our Miss Marple on as long as possible. (For the record, the audiobooks have edited out some but not all of the egregious bits of racism but left most of the anti-Semitism. So, uh, there’s that.)

currently watching: Mystic Nine, my last full Tomb series. The only I’m not going into preemptive withdrawal is the presence of several side stories on iqiyi with English subtitles. Naturally not the ones I really want (heeeey, Liu Sang vs haunted paint can, plus whatever the hell is going on with Hei Xiazi from last month), but needs must. I suppose after that, I’m back to a reboot rewatch, for fic research purposes, if nothing else. I mean, I suppose I could watch a non-dmbj property? Like the backlog of recommendations I’ve been collecting?? Sounds fake, but okay.

what is antipoetry to you: I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s another form of poetry. Something something even by rebelling against the form one is inherently bound by its concepts, especially when one tries to define oneself in opposition to something one cannot help but be shaped by it blah blah.

currently craving: I could say something existential about what the pandemic has made me yearn for (live! theater! with! friends!), or I could talk about the roast pork from Big Wong’s that I’m seriously contemplating for lunch tomorrow, but what I want most right now is for the goddamn construction crew that dug a hole in the road right outside my window starting at 10pm would finish and go away ASAP.