#new yorkers are a strange breed

[toffoliravioli]

everyone: the most specific coffee order

mat: black 😐

[afreakingdork]

Weak Spot - Chapter 19

RotTMNT Donatello x Reader

Warnings: Aged-up Turtles, Romance, Meet Cute, Villain Donatello, Cussing, Crushes, Xenophobia, Fear, Intimidation, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Hurt/Comfort, Love, AFAB Reader, Vaginal Sex, Sex Rough, Sex, Penis In Vagina Sex, Creampie, Teasing, Scent Kink, Sexual Tension, Breeding Kink, Multiple Orgasms, Cunnilingus

Synopsis:  Though it hadn’t come easily, as these things rarely do, you found yourself in a whirlwind romance with a handsome and mysterious mutant. His idiosyncrasies had been easy to ignore as attraction grew into something more. However, will love endure when the unknowns about him end up being far darker than you ever considered?

Also available on Ao3

First 💜 Previous

Fem!Reader References/Warnings: single bra mention

Lucky.

You considered yourself so damn lucky.

You had been riding a high for over a month now. Between your friends and Donnie, your heart had never felt fuller. The latter of which was probably the most cause for your euphoria, but you didn’t want to give him all the credit. Work had been a pleasant monotony and your recent outings without him had been fulfilling in a totally different way. Your meals had been good. Other New Yorkers had only kind of gotten on your nerves and your usual barista had given you a free pastry the last three times you’d seen her.

You mused on this while staring at your computer. A refresh here and there was more for you since the clock in the lower right hand corner of your screen hadn’t actually clicked over to the right time yet.

Right beside that was your phone and you no longer needed to resist the allure of texting Donnie. The relationship had been going so smoothly that you were comfortable enough to label it as such even though in reality the conversation still hadn’t occurred. There was little room left for questions with how open the two of you had been as of late. Communication was now routine to the point where Donnie rarely dodged you. If a topic he couldn’t pursue came up, he simply explained that he couldn’t expand. The first time he had done so you had also essentially jumped him which was probably more than enough signal to him that you preferred that over being ignored. 

It meant that you knew something was up with his work. It had started a few weeks ago when you’d met for a date and immediately pinged his tense aura. Instead of letting you simmer on the question as to why, he’d come right out that he was having complications with so-called competitors. He hadn’t exactly apologized as it was something he rarely did, but he had explained that he felt bad for bringing those concerns with him during his off time. You only had to remind him of the many, many times he’d let you complain about your own work before he softened up. It became an odd routine of its own. The meeting would start with frustration clinging to him and after a few minutes with you he would hang it up like a coat. Your heart and pride swelled over the amount of control you seemed to wield over his mood.

It was also something you swore not to take lightly.

It additional added to the self-esteem that had been on the rise as since his little reveal during the first  B.E.D.F.A.S.T. deployment. He had not joked about being unable to keep his mouth off you. In a strange buoy, it had made up for the seeming drop in penetrative sex which hadn’t occured since before the chase. You kept meaning to ask him, but it was difficult to remember when he seemed to be making up for some kind of timetable orally. Squirming in your chair, you checked the clock and decided to shift your thought to other tenderness for focus’ sake.  

On days where psychical touch was out of the question, you’d found yourself at the receiving end of a different type of affection. His close eye had always translated to a sort of doting, but he was nearly shameless when it came to days he couldn’t get his hands on you. He listened to everything you said, even the silliest things, and seemed to have a stock pile of gifts at the ready. You were only thankful he had some and understood that not everything was meant to be received. Otherwise you basked in the many small things that ranged from new ink for your favorite pen when it’d run out to snacks you’d half mentioned wanting to try.

Seconds ticked down and you let the cozy thoughts fall away as you readied yourself. In a refresh the page opened and you filled the dialog boxes. In several rapid clicks, you imagined yourself as a expert hacker. The page turned with a loading bar and refreshed into another. You squeezed your eyes shut with one final wish before you opened them to see you had acquired two tickets for an art installation you’d been hoping to see. Jumping clear out of your chair, you kept your voice to yourself and instead rapidly pumped your arms with victory.  

It was definitely some kitschy thing and probably more for taking selfies, but the walkthrough museum  had a new theming you just adored. You’d been vaguely interested in the past, but it’s latest exhibit was a must. Sadly, the tickets had been on a first come, first served basis, during work hours. Instead of hiding it, you’d shamelessly asked your boss to block off time and said you’d take a cut to lunch. He’d waved the whole thing off as thanks for your honesty and now you sat, a ticket holder, having moved with precision. Taking a screenshot for later, you refreshed the page curiously to see how others faired. The sold out banner was hung across the screen and you nodded to yourself.

You checked the clock and found only a minute had passed.

Sitting down and praising your luck yet again, you still had five minutes until you were due back. Pulling out your phone, you snuck down to the elevators to make a call.

The phone rang a few times and you stared out the window of the high-rise which only afforded you a view of more glass.

“Hm.” The voice came through with tepid curiosity. “Let’s see what’s more probable…”

“Go ahead.” You hummed and rolled on your comfortable work shoes.

“You could either be calling due to your excitement in garnering the tickets or, because you are devastated that despite your best efforts, you did not get them.” 

“I wonder which…?” You pressed your lips into a thin line to keep from blurting out the answer.

Donnie played up a noise that he was thinking it over.

A giggle broke through.

“Congratulations.”

You did a little hop. “Thank you! You should have seen me. I was clicking keys so fast.”

“You wouldn’t have had to bother if you’d just let me enact my algorithm.”

“No cheating!” Moving one foot at a time you did an awkward twirl.

“As I have explained that is not the case. It would have simply purchased the tickets the instant the site opened.”

“Yeah, yeah.” You heard him huff. “So next Saturday we’re in!”

“Next Saturday.”  

“Yeah and it’s in your area so I was thinking we could walk over? We got the primo prime time night slot so I’m extra pumped. I think they do something special with the lights when it’s dark! My only complaint if I had to give one is it’s technically the day after opening too. I wasn’t as fast as I hoped, but still pretty speedy! ” 

The was silence on the line and you became hyperaware that you had excitedly blown past his curious repetition.

“Something’s wrong.”

“It’s sooner than I anticipated.”

“Oh.”

“You were forthcoming with the dates; I’ve just been distracted.”

“Yeah…” You leaned against the glass and stared at a nearby plant that needed watering.

“Based on my research and your refusal to allow my help, I underestimated your purchasing speed.”

“You thought I’d get a later date.”

“Correct.”

“Is that… a problem?”

“I also can’t imagine that either I misheard or you misspoke. However, I recall the location being near Soho and not my abode.”

You grimaced. “Uh, yeah… The permanent instillation is, but the new one is a pop-up. That’s why it’s temporary and has so few tickets...”

Another bout of silence came through the line. 

“It’s okay if you can’t make it…” You wanted to strangle the stupid disappointment in your tone.

You heard a little inhale through the static as he seemingly thought something over.

“Really!” That was better. “Someone else is sure to be around and, no matter what, I’ll take so many pictures! You’ll feel like you’re right there with me!”

More quiet emanated from your device.

“Are… you still there?”

“Yes.”

“I… I’m disappointed, obviously, but it’s not the end of the world.”

“You wanted to go with me.”

You gave a small, knowing smile to yourself. “I want to do everything with you.”

You heard a clear tapping noise and wondered what it could be. It sounded louder than a pen, but had a density you couldn’t place.

“We don’t have to figure this out now and I should get back.”

“Okay.”

“Alright! I’ll text you at lunch!”

“No, I’m saying ‘okay, I’ll go.’”

You paused.

“Unless you already penciled someone else in.”

You blew out a puff of air. “Hardly, someone’s hogging my line.”

He hummed.

“Are you sure? It’s work, right?”

“Yes to both queries.” There was a sound as if something large was turned over. “I haven’t… wanted to bring it up, because I was hoping to avoid it, but I may need to take a business trip soon.”

You straightened up a little. “Yeah? I didn’t know you did those.”

“They can sometimes be a necessity.”

“Donnie, if you need to go, it’s really okay.”

“I’ve already agreed, it’s automatically logged into my calendar, and I will seek restitution if I find you worrying.”

“Geez, fine!” A coworker popped their head out from around the hall and waved at you genially. “I really have to go...”

“Send me the exact time. I’ll hear from you at lunch.”

“Gotcha! I’ll… talk to you then. Bye!”

“Farewell.”

-

You tried to avoid paying the penalty, but Donnie had been on increasing edge up. In the short amount time up to the ticket date, he’d been slower to let his guard down around you until he suddenly stated  he couldn’t meet the entire week prior. His texts came through uninterrupted, in contrast, and, though he attempted to make up time with calls, his voice had been heavy with things you couldn’t place. You almost thought it was anger, but it wasn’t exact enough.

It meant that as you stood outside his apartment, you wished you weren’t as excited as you were. You’d been instructed to wait as he’d come to you which left you pacing to burn off the excess energy. This was supposed to be your special night, but he was part of the equation. With a failed kick to a pebble, you tried a second time and stood triumphantly as it skid down the sidewalk. An amused huff came from your back so you spun around to find a bare stoop. Continuing the rotation with a crinkled brow, you soon spied Donnie walking over from down the street.

“You weren’t home?”

“A misdirection.”

You squinted. “And why do you need to throw me off your trail?”

He seemed to realize what he had said and moved to close the gap. “It was work. There was a misguided attempt to thwart my date for the evening so I took appropriate measures.”

That wasn’t very convicting, but he’d been so honest as of late.

“Oh, a hot date? Have they shown up?” You mimed putting a hand over your eyes to look around.

Donnie turned his head one way and then the other before landing back on you. “It looks as though I’ve been stood up, but I may have found better.”

“Only ‘may’?” You teased and that buzzing excitement returned in full force as he seemed more himself. You squirmed and withhold yourself as the next question was how much touch you were in store for. Ready, he answered your question by stepping to your side and holding an arm out. Heart skipping along, you went to take him up on his offer when you registered the way he was dressed. His usual primped clothes were gone and what replaced was a type of all black modified street wear that had such a subtly to them that you had almost missed them entirely.

Stepping away to take him in, you traced how his well tailored black pants slid directly into sharply cut combat boots. His usual outwear was gone and in its place he had only a single long sleeved piece over his torso. It had a wrap quality to it where the stitching was barely visible but seemed to be segmented in three strips going from his right shoulder to his left underarm. The fold became apparent at the bottom where an asymmetric cut dropped a triangle of cloth longer down one leg. Resisting the urge to circle him in an attempt to chase the hem, you instead moved your gaze up to find two separate necklines. One hugged his throat, but bunched in a way that said there was quite a bit of that stretchy fabric than necessary. The other sat with a wide breech around his collar and you could just barely tell it was a sort of hood that had been portioned out. Knowing you were gawking, you slid your hand delicately into the crook of his arm and observed how his sleeves came down over his hands. It was a rare oversized fit that you had never seen on the man.

“Cool outfit.”

He said nothing and took the lead in an easy stroll.

“I should have dressed up myself.” You tried to eye him, but he was looking straight ahead. “Is this what you wear to work?”

“No.” He parted you a little glance. “Is pushing my style boundaries unsatisfactory?”

You stiffened. “Oh! No, this isn’t bad at all! It’s just surprising considering you have a pretty set style.”

His interest seemed faint. “Consider it a practice in versatility.”

“An art piece at an museum? You’ll steal the show.” You tittered and bumped him slightly as you walked.

You felt him tighten his arm around your hand to signify his contentment.

“You do look good in everything.” You craned your neck to see a little more of him.

“Remind me to schedule time for your ogling the next time I so much as raid my closet.”

You blew a raspberry. “Like you need me for that. I bet it’s already logged.”

From where his eyes were glued to the sidewalk, he wrenched them away to look at you with a devious air. “Very much so.”

He always liked it when you understood his tech. You giggled and took the chance to lean up to him. “Make a note about undressing too.”

He slowed and through hooded eyes he seared a look into yours before bumping your foreheads together.

You caught the move and pushed back with a little nuzzle of your own.

His arm left your hold and wrapped around you. “That was completed days ago.”

“How long have you been planning this little outfit stunt?”

“To answer that would include an enormous commitment.” He tried to take a step with you in his hold, but the height difference made moving awkward.

“Usually it’d be a huge ‘explanation.’” You tilted your head at his word choice and slipped one of your arms behind his back in an attempt to help.

He stiffened and you remembered his shell. Back pedaling for a rapid extraction, he lowered head into your air space to stop you. “Keep your hands flat and don’t grope. It should be alright.”

You looked up at him in awe.

Doing as he said, you were able to reach about halfway around him. You splayed your fingers there and made sure the pressure wasn’t overt. From what you could feel, it was flatter than it looked. It took him a moment, but he settled into the touch and attempted to step again. “As usual your attention to detail has aided your assertation. While it would be impossible to explain, showing you is something more of a question. I should have adjusted my phrasing as such.”

His wordiness kept you from falling in line with him so the two of you ended up diagonal to one another as something dawned on you. “Did.. you say commitment?”

A new giddiness took hold of you as you wondered what it could possibly be.

He broke away from both you and the rooftop he was studying. The air around him shifted and you could sense the nervous nature he took on. “If I were to take a second, I would ask if you would ever consider sharing a digital calendar with me?”

For any other person in the world that might have been a boring clerical necessity, but coming from him and paired the near timid way he’d said it, your heart leapt. For someone as studious as him, it was a clear relationship step. You looked at him earnestly and tried to drown out the blood rushing in your ears. “I’d like that.”

“It would prevent future complications and-” He stopped and blinked down at you.

From where you were already love struck, you sank even further by the fact that he hadn’t thought you’d say yes and felt the need to convince you.

“Right.” He tried to bounce out of what seemed like clear embarrassment and look back down the road. “I’ll set up a shared one and invite you on.”

“Can’t wait.” You followed his gaze to give him a little reprieve. You strolled comfortably together amongst the others dotting the street. No one seemed to look twice and the night air felt especially comfortable for the time of year.

With the venue only a few blocks away, you moved to look up at Donnie. Though you’d already scoured emergency exits, it never hurt to be prepared and you figured a quick itinerary check was in order in case of an oversized crowd. Your attention slowed as you saw a tightness in his jaw and his eye seemed transfixed on something in the distance. The question was just on your lips when there was the clear sound of a metallic warble. It was growing louder by the second and, before you could blink, you were halfway down the road where you were now facing the opposite direction. From where you had just been you stared as a large sword was stabbed into a pool of blue light that definitely had not been there a moment ago. It slowly began to sink and, as your jaw dropped with it, Donnie’s face appeared in front of yours.

“I need you to listen to me unlike ever before.” He caught hold of your face and squeezed hard. It caused a squish of your cheeks, blurring your eyes, but the desperation in Donnie’s features was unmistakable.  “What is about to happen is one of those accursed unavoidable occurrences I warned you about. I tried my best to get rid of them, but obviously that was not the case. I am going to need your full cooperation if I am to get you out of this. Do you understand?”

Everything was happening way too fast.

He squeezed even tighter.

You could only nod so he’d let up.

“My actions do not reflect how I feel about you. I beg you to keep that in mind. Do not speak at all, no matter what you hear, and I apologize for what you’re about to see. This isn’t… how I wanted you to find out…”

You wanted to yell.

You had just about a thousand questions.

All you could do was make a small grunt as he let go of your face.

His arm coiled around you and, as soon as it locked, you were airborne. 

A screech left your lips as in a zigzag pattern you were rapidly scaling between two buildings. With wide eyes you saw the night sky seemingly up close as you shot high above the rooftops. Your stomach bottomed out in a terrible drop as the high tapered off before you landed on the edge of a desolate building. The rushing movement made you feel like throwing up, but you couldn’t even keel over with Donnie’s arm like an iron bar crushing your ribs. Dazed, you went to communicate your discomfort when you caught how different your partner now looked.

That small collar you had noted earlier was now pulled taunt and melded as a mask around Donnie’s snout. You had been right about the other being a hood as it was now served such a purpose and shrouded his face in near darkness. Balking, the arm that wasn’t around you extended and out from under his sleeve material grew something like black ichor. It stretched until it coated his fingers before rolled back to burst forth to swallow up his sleeve’s hem. When it finally settled, it formed a smooth latex glove that ended at Donnie’s elbow.

A weird laugh rattled out of you.

There was a loud thump and you turned towards it dumbly.

A huge figure now knelt crouched down in the center of the roof.

Your eyes lost focus and you scrambled to correct.

Even in the scattered night lights it was obvious that there was a huge shell sitting on the person’s back. It contrasted Donnie’s in every way and there was a sway as the figure’s outstretched arms came in from what must have been a super hero landing. The person then rose up and with a quick adjustment, you saw they had a sword in hand. You curled into Donnie at the sight of it and his arm tightened as the figure’s face appeared.

“If it isn’t his violet-ness!” There was a clear smirk there and a blue mask.

You blinked and then twisted to look at Donnie.

You could barely see him and your senses gleaned even less.

He had clearly shut down.

Looking back to the interloper, you watched as he reached into another flash of blue light and extracted a second sword.  

You weren’t moving, but it felt like everything was spinning.

The figure then flicked the oval away like it was muck and renewed the grip of his weapons. Adjusting their stance, you saw that they were shirtless and proudly displaying a plastron nearly similar to Donnie’s. There were some marks carved out of one top corner, but you refused to linger in your sweep. Skirting down momentarily you took in how his baggy pants where wrapped up below the knee save one that had a sharp metal cap covering it. Safetly identifying him as a turtle, you watched as he seemingly dripped a carefree attitude until he didn’t.

He was glaring down Donnie with a palpable ferocity.

“What’s the problem?” The turtle’s head lolled to one side. “Oh! I’m sorry! Not going by Violet Violence these days? Hard to keep track of all the variations!”

“Maybe he’s waiting for ‘Mauve Marauder?’”

You nearly jumped as another voice came from a nearby rooftop. You didn’t dare lean out beyond Donnie, but you could just see a pair of white eyes glowing from atop an access door.

“Nah, wasn’t the last one ‘Plum Perpetrator’?”

Unable to stiffen any further, you simply closed your eyes as this chipper voice came from the complete opposite direction.

With one in the front and two on each side that meant you were basically surrounded.

The thought was enough for you to shift direction away from the odd nicknames they were listing.

You needed to be on guard, for Donnie’s sake.

Opening your eyes, the immediate turtle rolled his weight as he spoke.

“Who knows? And don’t expect me to ask because, as you know, I literally could not care less.” He took a step forward and Donnie’s free hand went to your throat.

“Don’t move.” Donnie’s voice was ice and you felt sharp daggered points dig into your jugular.

He had claws.

A flash memory of nails digging into your scalp appeared and you wilted.

The turtle gave a loud dramatic sigh and dropped his blades as if he might throw a toddler-like tantrum. “Seriously, no shtick. What’s the deal? I thought we were past the whole trafficking thing. Didn’t you deem every living being that wasn’t yourself inferior or something?”

There was the bassy thud and it was clear the voice to your right had joined you on this building.  You tensed to look against the hold on your throat and watched a second turtle come up from a posing that mirrored the first. Similar in again how different he was to the other two, you watched as he rose up with a body somehow even larger than anything you’d seen. He was all brawn and sharp spikes with a long tail that matched him like a Stegosaurus. He had a loose sort of jumpsuit on that barely covered his front before coming up to hood at one end and held down with wraps at the other. Unlike Donnie’s cloak, this turtle’s cover did not mar the clear red of his mask.

There was clearly a pattern here.  

You could almost surmise what the third person looked like.

“I’ve never hesitated before.” Donnie snarled and you could feel the points digging in painfully. “What makes you so sure otherwise?”  

You tried to swallow, but felt the motion would break skin.

“Easy…” The red masked turtle raised their hands and made a show of loosening the grip on their weapons.

You didn’t know the name of them, but their dagger like points told you more than enough. 

“Oh, right. Thanks for reminding me!” The blue masked turtle folded his arms and pointed out with one sword as if he were extending a finger. “Let’s see what we’ve got: you’ve been skulking around one area for awhile which put you back on our radar. It’s weird, guess you’ve gotten sloppy in your old age. Shame, thought you’d retired.”

The red masked turtle groaned and pinched the bridge of their snout.

“Now, hold on!” The blue turtle half turned towards the red one. “This is classic banter. When’s the last time I got to do solid banter?!”

“With him or in general?” The red turtle dropped the hand from his face.

“Uh…” The blue turtle drew out the syllable and then gave an all too bright smile. “The first one, duh.”

“I think you just love to hear yourself talk.”

“When you have a voice of an angel, right Plum-sucker?” The blue turtle rolled his head back to Donnie.

Though he hadn’t moved in the slightest, you finally pinged an emotion off your turtle: pure unadulterated hatred.

“Anyway!” The blue turtle’s bottom teeth came up in a cheeky grin. “We track you the last few weeks and find something similar in the area every… single….time…  you show up! And what do you think that is?”

Your brows knit.

That approximately matched the timeline for Donnie’s work troubles.

You were struck by your turtle’s first comment of the night: misguided.

Your eyes widened as you realized they had been tracking him the whole time.

“Or should I say ‘who?’” The blue turtle dropped his gaze from Donnie to you and your shoulder’s bunched. “Hi, doll. The name’s Leo, by the way. You doing alright there?”

Something bitter burned your tongue, but Donnie’s plea kept it from saying it.

“Don’t worry your pretty little head.” The blue turtle cooed. “We’ll have you out of there uno momento.”

You didn’t like that.

Given what you had, you translated it into a sharp glare.

“Eugh! Oh yeesh. What’d he tell you?” Leo grimaced and looked towards the red turtle who simply shrugged. “We’ll work on that too.” He then gave you a more realized smile before returning his attention to Donnie. “So yeah, I don’t think you’re going to hurt this one. I am curious what caught your eye, though! We tried doing a background check. Didn’t get much. Are they secretly some kind of politician’s kid? Royalty? Tech heir? Robot in disguise?”

“Always a step behind.” Donnie’s voice was utterly dismissive.

Leo gave a loud theatrical laugh and stumbled over to the red turtle who he used to seemingly hold himself up. “Oh, that’s rich, huh Raph?”

“It’s surprising. Never seen ya look twice at humans; let alone anyone else.” Raph shot Donnie a little sideways glance and you noticed there was something off about the gaze.

If you weren’t encased by him, you might not have felt the microscopic twitch Donnie gave.

Leo feigned wiping a tear away and did that deadly shift from comedy to gravity. “Ah! See… Cause I remember-” He righted himself. “-the last time we met, we beat you down so badly, you seemed to give all this up! Sure, you’re still up to no good, doing a job here or there, but nothing, nothing, compared to before.”

 Raph shifted and you could tell he was preparing for something.

Your nerves frayed.

Did Donnie know?

“Coulda sworn you’d rolled over after being beat by the superior players.” The blue turtles clipped tone spoke volumes as he readied his blades.

That sounded eerily familiar.

Your heart sank.

“LOOKS LIKE WE GOT THE CHECK!” Leo screamed. “WHAT DO WE DO, BROS?”

Everything shifted into motion, but for you time slowed down.

Donnie crouched and took something off the arm around you.

Leo began to sprint towards you.

Raph broke off toward the left.

Donnie applied whatever it was to your wrist and then let you go.

Shaking at the knees, you refused to drop.

Donnie reached up to his shoulder and slammed down on it.

There was a distinct hiss of pressure.  

Flinging his arm back, Donnie reached up under his shirt and came away with what looked like a large metal plate.

You steeled yourself as he slammed it onto your back.

It immediately came to life and glued itself to you with parts locking in over your shoulder and a large belt appearing around your waist.

You began to float and watched, wide eyed, as a metal rod appeared in Donnie’s hands before extending to become a long black staff.

In a spin, he had both a clawed and plain hand on it that pointed towards Leo who was rearing to strike.

Time caught up with itself.

“SPLIT!” Leo roared and his blades came down.

“THE!” Raph sounded beside you with his weapons fisted.  

“BILL!!!” That chipper voice was right behind you in your ear.

Your hearing was temporarily stunted by his volume and an ice cold sweat soaked your neck. Though muffled drums you heard a loud clang and glimpse Donnie block Leo’s swords before you were launched onto the next rooftop.  

Screeching, you landed without ever touching the group and kept moving even though your limbs hung uselessly. Left with only sight, you glimpsed the flash of a mechanical arm in motion. You didn’t get a clear view, but it reminded you of a beefier version of B.E.D.F.A.S.T.

Trying to connect the dots of what was occurring, your attention was diverted as a bright glowing orange chain shot out in front of you. Thinking it had missed for only a moment, it then curved around and a yell tore from you as it collided with your skin. It burned on contact and spun back out of your vision. A burning scent hit you momentarily before whiplash snapped your neck as the chain halted your momentum.  

“I’m real sorry about this!” A turtle materialized in front of you and you could only stare at him in pained horror. This one had no mask and instead a bright pop of orange bows sat wrapped around a bun crowning the messy hair on his head.

You didn’t think turtles had hair.

His face was steeped in concern and didn’t match the angry facial scar that ripped up a part of his lip before shooting across his face. It was even further contrasted by the burnt orange robes that seemed to flow around him ethereally.

“MIKEY, GET ‘EM OUT OF HERE!” Leo’s unmistakable voice came from behind with a tinge of distress.

That shifted Mikey into gear. “Sorry, sorry, I’m gonna explain anything, but we gotta get you-”

There was a loud mechanical whirring and you felt the thing strapped to you undulate. The belt around your waist tightened suddenly and you wheezed as it knocked the air out of you. The weight of it seemingly tripled and you gasped pathetically.

“That’s not good.” Mikey’s voice sounded very small considering he was still in front of you.

Fighting off the wince, you renewed your gaze on him to see his eyes hovering just above your head in horror.

You weren’t sure if it was a good thing that your foe was that scared of whatever was stuck on you.  

Your pack tried to wrench you free which only caused the chains to further strangle you. Your ribs screamed in protest and, in a twist, you watched Mikey wrap the orange metal around his hands before reading back.

He was about to yank.

You choked at the thought.

Leaving the ground this time was a stark contrast to before.

In a jerk that pained your already bruised neck, you flew to the right and started to curve around.

In a blur of searing energy, you looked back to the source and watched as Mikey operated as the center of a top. Feeling very much stuck on the world’s worst carnival ride, the g-forces hollowed out your ears and then your anchor point disappeared. The parabola continued before a sharp pull propelled you to wherever Mikey had leapt. Dragged like a broken pull toy, your head snapped back to collide with unrelenting metal. Angry sparks vignette your vision as you got sight of Mikey in front of you. He leapt off a building and, as if in a rollercoaster, you shrieked as your cart reached the drop. You were pulled over and the bottoming out sensation you’d felt when airborne with Donnie was incomparable. Bile bypassed your throat and went straight into your nostrils as your leash leader changed direction. The chains were a step behind and you arched again with an unrelenting curve from the drag. Everything went into blurry motion save the clear image of the bricks you were about to collide with.

Dropping out of a scream, you turned to curses and prepared for impact.

“Ah!! No, no, no!” Mikey’s voice sounded like it was flying around you and there was sudden release of pressure.

In a bounce that was far gentler than you expected, you heard the crumble crunch of stone.

You guessed instantaneous death wouldn’t amount to much.

Only, you didn’t feel dead.

Surprisingly, you didn’t even feel more injured than you already were.

Starting by cranking one eye open, you no longer saw the orange chains and instead saw the daunting height that dropped to the dirty alley below. A little noise of fear caught in your throat and you looked up to find large coils of mechanical arms buried into the brick where they’d both stopped and protected you.  

“Oh gosh… I know I said it before, but you have no idea how sorry I am.”

Looking just past the arms, you found Mikey perched on the ledge of the building you were dangling from.  

“It’s those dang arms. They’re really not cooperating! But-but I’m gonna make it up to ya! Expect a month-! No, a year-! Wait! A decade’s worth of free pizzas! Also… a video game partner that will willingly toss every match, and a snazzy kitten coloring book where only two of the pages have been colored in!” He punctuated the statement with what looked like a peace sign.

It probably was meant to signify the two pages, but he only had three fingers.

“Seriously though, you gotta tell the robot to chill and I can seriously explain everything. Me and my brothers just want to get you somewhere safe.”

“I don’t know why this is hard to comprehend…” You had no idea how your voice was coming out so evenly.

Mikey seemed to wait with bated breath.

“…but I was actually DOING JUST FINE BEFORE.” You roared to life; your voice burning your throat.

 “H-huh?” He nervously reached out as if scorned and it was enough to activate the fight or flight in your pack.

With a rear, you were flung across the alley to a nearby fire escape. The metal wheezed under the weight of the mechanical arms before it swung to the next safety ladder. Choking on a sudden bout of vomit from the intense seesaw, there was a sharp pressure in your wrist. Your nausea evaporated and you wanted to examine how, but the speed at which you were moving meant your limbs were uselessly pushed back.

“Wait! Ah geez!! Not again!!” You watched in horror as orange chains shot out around you.

Not ready for another set of burns, you winced and felt a violent bob. It forced your eyes open to see that your pack would not be fooled the same way again. It now zigzagged aggressively as it dodged alarming number of glowing loops that seemed to manifest in a never ending spool.

Barely able to track the progress, you dropped low dodging a chain overhead only to hear a hiss below. Looking down you saw burning orange melting steel as Mikey had gotten a hold of your bottom left mechanical arm. Your rig was undeterred as it spun around to face your attacker head on.

The sight across from you nearly stopped your heart.

Mikey’s eyes overflowed with the same sizzling energy and he was literally seated in the sky in a holding pattern.

He hadn’t just sounded like he was flying.

He could actual fly.

“WHAT THE FUCK!?” The surprise tore from you and you watched as it hit him in a similar way.

In a blink his pupils returned and you felt your pack jar as the chains retracted rapidly to his person.  

In what seemed like a never ending escape, the arms surge to put distance between you when you noticed a single chain had yet to return to its master.

“Wait!” You tried to warn it, but it was too late.

Your movements stalled and there was a bitter screech of metal being torn from metal. Down a limb, little crumbles rained down on you as your pack got hold of the edge of a building. In a pathetic hoist, it seemingly used the last of its strength to fling you over the top. You landed on the roof hard as the rig further destabilized. Suddenly on your feet and unable to bear the weight, you stumbled backwards with all the weight until you were back against the ledge.

Mikey landed similarly to his brothers right in front of you before running over.

“Shit, shit! That’s not gonna shock you, right? Ugh, look at all those exposed wires!” There was a sparking sound and a worried scream was muffled by closed lips that tried to muster some kind of reassurance. “We gotta get this off of you!” Mikey’s hand came into view and you recoiled away as it was the closest he had gotten yet.

As if fending off a predator with its last breath, your pack came alive and awkwardly stumbled to the side. Mikey gave chase and you rounded the roof until one of the arms dug down to stabilize the unit. A mechanical arm shot forward and you watched with a front row seat as some kind of instinct came over Mikey. His hands flew up and he redirected the blow away on what looked like sheer instinct. He didn’t seem surprised and instead moved to direct another as your pack whirred viscously. Within milliseconds you could not long track the movement. It left the only evidence of the exchange as a blur of green, grey, and thumps as flesh struck metal. It oddly gave you a moment to yourself and you broke away to check your surroundings.

From the roof there wasn’t a specific landmark you could ping. Instead you mostly gleaned that during the chase, you had somehow swapped positions and now you were the one on the roof proper while Mikey stood on a ledge to take your rig on at a similar height. You felt a buzz in your limbs and brought you hands up to find a smooth black bracelet Donnie had left you. It seemed unremarkable and featureless save it had, at some point, sized exactly to be flush with your skin. Donnie stopping Leo’s attack flashed in your mind and you brought the device close to your chest before looking up.

Stupid luck.

It wasn’t supposed to run out in such a crappy way.

Stupid turtles.

Had you asked for too much?

Bottoming out all the things that didn’t make sense, you remembered the one thing that did.

You had surely missed your ticket window.

It filled you with a sudden rage as all your confusion redirected towards that loss.

It brought your knees came up reflexively.

“Hey, carrot cake!” You spat.

“Wha-?” It was enough to break Mikey’s concentration for a split second.

“GET LOST!!!” You roared and kicked out as hard as you could. The pack seemed to sense your movements and stopped its onslaught to add to the force. Your shoes connected with the turtle’s rock hard plastron in a way that seemed to immediately shatter your feet, but the combined strength sent him tumbling over the edge of the building with a shout.

“Leave! Leave! Leave! Fast!” You pleaded.

The pack complied.

As if leaping after him, you shot over the edge and bit down onto your lip until it bled. Gravity caught your throat as you dropped to a cacophony of sound. It took you a second to register that it sounding like a rushed assembly line before you suddenly stopped falling. Blinking down at the dirty sidewalk and lack of orange opponent, you hovered in place for only a moment before shooting straight upward like a rocket. The stars skewed until slowly the whipping speed edged off. Nervously opening your eyes, you saw only the cosmos before Earth reached back for its inhabitant. You fell down below the building line before the flight pattern shifted to a straight one. This time the wind proved to be too intense and it took all your strength just to keep your mouth closed. Taking far too sharp of a sudden left, you gagged. As if spurned on by the sound, you began to rock violently side to side as dozens of rapid turns were taken. You sort of began to register that it was probably to shake Mikey when you dropped like a stone.

Tearing your lip more, a counterbalance only activated right before you hit the ground. Your body shook with empty sobs as the momentary pause only preceded another round of mechanical construction. The arms reappeared and started to arrange trash near a dumpster. You sat feeling very much like a baby strapped to someone’s chest until you were pulled into a hovel of its own creation. The weight of the rig dissipated as the arms seemingly disappeared. You were left with what was essentially a steel backpack and a pile of trash. Above you, a bit of cardboard provided cover and, to your immediate right, the dumpster sat as a solid surface. Sinking against the cool, dirty metal, the tears finally came.

Streaking your cheeks, you curled in on yourself and tried to become as small as possible. The little hole afforded you additional quiet and for a long time you just waited out your shaking nerves. It took long after your tears had tried up before you were left with only the dull ache of the many bruises littering your body. Otherwise numb, you went to extract yourself from the trash when you found you couldn’t move. Alarm hit you before reason and you tugged violently as the pack appeared to be stuck on something. Growling out of frustration, your eyes burned with the lack of fluid before your wrist started to buzz violently.

Stopping out of sheer confusion, you sank back to the ground to stare at it.

There was no light, but it continued to vibrate angrily at you until it seemed to notice your staring. It then switched over to a very specific pinging that you could only guess was Morse code.

“I’m sorry…” Your voice sounded shattered. “I don’t understand...”

The bracelet halted for a moment before giving one last one ping that struck you as sad.

“Do… you understand me…?”

It started back up again.

“I don’t...!” it stopped and your exhausted mind finally provided something useful. “Yes or no questions, one buzz for yes and two for no?”

A single quick vibration.

“You understand me?”

Buzz.

You lowered your lids and wished with every fiber of your being. “…Donnie?”

Buzz. Buzz.

You went slack.

The bracelet sat patiently as you regrouped.

When you came too, you felt like you had nothing more to give. “I can’t ask who you are… What you are?”

Buzz.

“Yes. What you are?” You trailed off and thought. “Have I met you before?”

That seemed impossible, but it was as good a starting point as any.

Buzz.

For a second you waited for the inevitable second vibration, but it didn’t come.

“Wait, what?”

No response.

“Ugh, right. Stupid.” You shook your head. “I’ve met you before?” 

Buzz.

“Like formally?”

Had you met any of Donnie’s acquaintances?

Did Donnie have those?

Did he know anyone?

Three turtles flashed in your mind.

Buzz. Buzz.

“No, we haven’t met.” Leaning against the pack, you stewed.

All you knew of Donnie’s was his tech, but only B.E.D.F.A.S.T. had moved on its own.

There were no stupid questions at this point.

You were stuck after all.

“Are you B.E.D.F.A.S.T.?”

Buzz. Buzz.

You looked down in confusion. It was just vibrations, but that sure seemed like a bitter response.

What else was there?

Cycling through your memories with Donnie left an empty feeling in your chest.

You had no idea where he was or if he was even alright.

He’d taken two of those arms turtles on with what looked like a stick.

They’re weapons were way sharper in contrast.

The third one hadn’t found you yet, so there was a very real chance he’d returned.

That was, if there was even a battle still going.

Shuddering, you remembered your phone and immediately went to retrieve it.

You found all your pockets empty and groaned loudly.

Of course being flung around like a rag doll had thrown your possessions away.

You grumbled angrily and wished you had just been let up to Donnie’s apartment at the start of the night.

Maybe that extra time would have prevented the ill fated meeting.

You blinked.

“Are you the door… robot?”

…Buzz.

It almost seemed disgruntled.

“Do you not like being called a robot?”

Buzz.

“I’m sorry.” You softened. “I didn’t know.”

Quiet reigned for a moment.

“So.. you’re the door?”

Buzz. Buzz.

“No… More than the door?”

Buzz.

“Well, duh.” Shimmy against your pack, you looked out at the building across from you. “You’re obviously this device too.”

Buzz.

“I bet there’s more too, huh?”

Buzz.

“And yet we haven’t been introduced.”

Buzz.

“That seems unfair.”

Buzz.

This thing had personality.

It was enough to crack a small smile on your lips.

“Do you know if Donnie’s okay?”

…Buzz. …Buzz.

“Do you wish you did?”

Buzz.

“Do you worry about him?”

Buzz.

“Me too.”

You pulled your knees close and folded your arms over them so you could stare right at the bracelet. “I’m stuck waiting here, huh?”

Buzz.

“Am I waiting for something?”

Buzz.

“To be safe?”

…Buzz.

“A hesitant yes.”

Buzz.

A single chuckle came and with it came a stab to your ribs.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

It was less like a response and more of a warning. “Be careful?”

Buzz.

“Are you worried about me?”

Buzz.

“Do you have info on my condition?”

Buzz.

“Yeah, it hurts so I can’t imagine I’m doing great…”

There was a sound at the end of the alley and your muscles went taunt. It flooded you with more pain until you watched a rat scurry by across from you. You stuck your tongue out at it and relaxed with a wince.

“Where were we…?” You hummed. “Oh, yeah I’m waiting.”

Buzz.

“Almost to be safe…” You closed your eyes and saw Donnie. “Am I waiting for Donnie?”

Buzz!

That sounded extra peppy.

It was like it was excited you did a figured it out. “Will he come to get me?”

Your bracelet stayed still.

“Not a yes or a no…?” You licked your lip and tasted the wound there. “So a maybe or an I don’t know… Was it a maybe?”

Buzz. Buzz.

“You don’t know?”

Buzz.

“Does he know where we are?”

…Buzz.

You lowered your gaze to think. “Rephrase: he knows where we are, but you don’t know if he will come?”

Buzz.

“But I’m stuck here until he does?”

Buzz…

That one seemed sad.

“What if he doesn’t come-?”

You saw the three turtles all jumping him at once and shook the image away violently despite your body’s protest.

“If he never comes, am I just stuck here?”

Buzz. Buzz.

“No, so there’s another way to leave?”

Buzz.

“Okay…” You peaked out as much you could from under the cardboard. “When the sun comes up?”

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

“Woah little guy!”

The bracelet stilled.

“When the sun comes up I get to leave? Yes or no?”

Buzz.

“You get excited easily.”

Buzz.

“Me too, bud.”

You sunk against your arm until your cheek nearly butted up against the bracelet. You sat for awhile and let your thoughts drift. Nearly falling asleep, a bubbling thought said otherwise in the very real instance you had a concussion. Blinking and sitting up against the exhaustion, you looked down at the bracelet. “You still with me?”

Buzz.

“Thank you for protecting me.”

Your wrist was quiet.

You couldn’t let your new friend down.

“I bet you’re real good at 20 questions, huh?”

Buzz!

You played back and forth until the dryness of your mouth made your tongue swell. You swallowed hard on nothing and did another peak to find color barely tinting half the sky. You tried to get up, but the pack was remained locked. Sneering, you grouched to it and your bracelet seemed to sympathize. You wondered what in Donnie’s book registered as actual sunrise when a loud crash sounded all too close. Going deathly still, you felt the pack take on a weight as you imagined the arms manifest in silence. Making fists of your own and not ready to be another useless appendage to a sparring match, the cardboard was ripped off from above you. You launched forward and the pack followed suit only long enough for you to clothesline yourself.

You hacked as it dug into your pained ribs.

“There-!” A body crashed into you and you tried to fight against it. “I found you! Y/N! Wait-”

You had punched his jaw before you registered it was Donnie. Having had no fluid replenishment, your eyes burned yet again and you pulled your fists back only slightly. “Donnie?”

 “You have alarmingly accurate strikes.” Rolling his maw, you resisted the urge to crumble and instead searched him. He was hunched into you and looked to be in pain. If whatever it was had been enough to penetrate him then it must have been bad. Doing a second scan, you found his clothes only clung to him in long shreds. His hood was still intact, but the little mask had been pulled down.

You reached up carefully to his cheek.

He looked at your hand with an expression that rapidly deteriorated before he seemed to collapse into your touch.

Spurned by it, you shot forward and threw your arms around him.

He hissed in pain, but you didn’t let go.

He didn’t seem to want you to because he pulled you just as tightly to him.

It was your turn to blow air out from between your teeth.

Unlike you, he immediately retracted and did his own flurried scan. “What’s wrong?”

“Ribs… other… all of the above?” You were finding it harder and harder to breath.

He touched your shoulder and the pack mercifully fell away. You felt like you could catch some oxygen and leaned heavily into Donnie as you regained what you could.

“We need to get you to the cleaners.” Donnie touched your arm carefully.

“Bad time… to pick up… dry cleaning… Wouldn’t… you say?”

Why were you still wheezing?

“You’re not wrong. Can you walk?”

You nodded with uncertainty and tested a little step. Your body protested, but moved. Donnie took hold of your arm and lead. Stepping away from the dumpster, you saw the trash pile that had exploded from where you presumed he crashed and saw the trail of blood from there to you.  

“Donatello…”

He followed your gaze. “It’s mine, don’t worry.”

“That’s…!” You coughed, but pushed through. “…why… I’m worried!”

“Natural resilience, do you not remember?” Something seemed to occur to him. “I haven’t done even the most basic assessment. Damn it all.” He sighed heavily. “Do you have a headache or feel pressure?”

You swatted at him, but didn’t let go. “Both. What’s… at the… cleaners?”

He urged you to continue walking. “Doctor. Nausea or vomiting?”

“Not since…” You had a flash of what stabbed your wrist. “I think… this did… something?” You held up your bracelet.

“Pressure points. Balance problems are a yes. Are you dizzy?”

“Not really… Is it far?”

“Not from here. Programming accounts for strategic landings. Are you bothered by light and noise?”

“I mean… I was scared…” You thought back with a wince as you both made it out of the alley and onto a street in what looked like Chinatown. “Did… you get… hurt in… the crash?”

“My landing was less than ideal. Would you say you’re feeling sluggish, tired, or hazy?”

“W-wait.” You looked back toward the alley.

Donnie seemed to read your mind. “My shell will make it home on its own.”

“You’re… What?!” Before he could stop you, you pulled away to look behind him.

You shoulders dropped at the sight.

The back of his shirt was completely gone and you now knew exactly where the blood was coming from.

Seeping red, two long gashes ran diagonal across Donnie’s shell.

“Oh! Donnie…! Oh no…!” You reached out to it and he was in motion. He caught your wrist and his teeth snapped as he bit down just shy of your face.

“Don’t touch me.”

You shook from probably a hundred ailments at this point, but primarily shock.

Donnie seemed to remember himself and looked away.

“Twice… in one day. I’m a mess…” Self hatred flooded a dozen other emotions.

“Let’s hurry.” He redirected both the conversation and you.

You followed and kept your head down as he navigated streets with little foot traffic even when accounting for dawn. Light filtered in here and there, but the chill between buildings cast a cold bluish light. When you arrived at the designated building, it indeed looked like a dry cleaners though the sign was not in English. The windows themselves were covered by shutters and you resisted the urge to look toward Donnie as he seemed to do something. Grunting and groping, he only sort of registered that he had reached high along the screen before he hit something that made a thick clunky sound. He came down with a bitter seethe and stewed beside you until there was commotion inside.

With several shouts that didn’t make sense to your ears, there was the clear sound of a door with a bell opening before the shutter lifted. A man in his early twenties stood there with messy hair and baggy clothes that clearly indicated he had been asleep. He groggily looked over Donnie and you before giving a half wave within a turn. In your periphery, you saw Donnie nod to you before he continued to lead you inside. The smell of starch hit your nose as you watched the young man head through an arch behind the counter. Following, you all ducked through the carousel of clothes before passing through a seamstress area. Several presses and sewing machines had various work laid about. You tried not to look around as your chest burned with each inhale.

Through a washing and steaming area the humidity shot high before dropping suddenly as the next door felt like a cold storage. Losing track of doorways, you then moved into a what felt like a subspace that had been repurposed into a living situation. There was a half made bed there that you felt must belong to the young man as right about it was a large box that had wires on it heading back towards the entrance. It pegged you as some kind of alarm and your eye lingered on it when you were stopped by a door that did not immediately open. The man gave an odd rhythmic knock before spinning right around and giving a lazy nod before dropping right into his bed.

You passed him half a glance as the entry opened.

An older woman stood there and adjusted her glasses. “Othello Von Ryan.”

Donnie lowered his head.

Despite really wanting to stare Donnie down at that exact moment, you followed suit.

“Curious for you to bring another.”

“They need a scan and I require stitches. Your usual price plus a fee for bothering you at such an hour?”

She waved languidly to both dismiss both his words and as a signal to follow her as she turned around. “I always get up before the sun. I’ve only had my first cup; you will brew the next pot of tea.”

She departed and Donnie tried to follow, but you tugged your tether.

He turned towards you with a steely expression.

You mouthed one thing. ‘Othello?’

Breaking through stiff features, he seemed repulsed. With a bitter aura, he came in a little closer to whisper. “A pseudonym from a bygone era.”

You gave him a dry eye before moving to lead. He followed close as you stepped through to find the next room an odd combination of a kitchen and a doctor’s office. An exam table sat on one end while a stove and sink sat on the other. Beside the uncomfortable bench was a long armed light attached to a mobile table with many sealed implements on it.

Donnie gave your hand a squeeze before he released you. He then moved over to the little kitchen and seemingly dove straight into making tea.

The old woman looked him over for a long moment before gesturing to you. “What shall I call you?”

You opened your mouth to respond, but Donnie cut you off. “Anonymity fee.”

The woman clicked her tongue loudly. “He is reliable in his payment, but he has never had a favorable demeanor.”

You weren’t sure if that was meant to be a joke as you approached her. She motioned for you to sit on the exam table and you did. “Bruised ribs, concussion, and whiplash.”

“Scan.” Donnie reminded her with half a grumble as he reached up into a cabinet with his own seething sting.

“What did he do to you?” The woman adjusted her glasses and for a moment you could have sworn her eyes were yellow with a black slitted pupil.

“This was not my doing.” Donnie had fully turned around and was oozing rage. “You can thank the bastard’s three.”

The woman was unmoved. “The damage would be quite different if it were all of them.” She turned to you. “It’s not exact enough. This has to be a combination of something else and Michelangelo.” She moved over to the cart and wheeled it to your side.

The eeriness of how she placed it was immediately drowned out by the name off her lips.

You snapped to surprised attention while pain radiated from your neck and acidic flecks burned the edges of your vision.

“I am correct.” The woman hummed and adjusted the lamp.

Donnie stared with wide eyes before indignantly turning around.

You watched the woman readjust her glasses before she brought the lamp right above your head.

“You will feel a rush.”

“A…rush?”

She only nodded as she clicked the lamp on.

On contact, a flush of heat that started at your head and sped down to your feet. “W-wait… shouldn’t…. you cover… up?”

The woman ignored your question in favor of staring.

Confused, you looked down to find any part of you in the light was nice see-through. Your veins were clearly visible and you brought your hand up blankly. “Uh…!?”

“No internal bleeding. The bruising is extensive. There must have been some sort of protection?”

“All settings.”

The woman turned around to give Donnie a squinted look before moving back to the switch for the lamp. She clicked it and it turned over so that your bones were now visible.

You put your hand down and tried not to think about it too hard.

Three more setting were clicked through and the last two left you too wary to see what they revealed.

The woman hummed something to herself before joining Donnie in the kitchen. She reached into the cabinet as he boiled water before returning to you. “Apply this.” She held up a green bottle that had a flask-like shape. “To your neck and joints multiple times a day for the muscle ache.” She made you take it before she would hold up the next product. “This needs to be slathered on your ribs and wrapped. It will help you breath while you heal.” The old woman turned to Donnie with sudden scorn pouring off of her. “May I do that much or will you interfere with my job further, Othello?”

Donnie’s snout crinkled as he poured water into a cup. “Whatever you see I am paying you to forget.”

She clicked her tongue so loudly that she ended up sucking air through her teeth. “Terrible, terrible attitude.” She softened as she returned to you. “Let’s get that shirt off. Cut or stay intact?”

You tried to open your mouth, but Donnie approached. “I’ll help.”

“You’re… being a… dick.”

The old woman’s brows shot high and panic snuck onto Donnie’s face. He turned towards the woman who broke her façade to give a little laugh. “I see why you’ve brought the human now.”  

“You see nothing.” Donnie frothed.

She rolled her eyes at him, but relented to take his place in the kitchen. You glared at Donnie openly and he ignored you to take your hands. You pulled them away and he made a noise of displeasure. Spurned by irritation, you brought your arms up as if it didn’t feel like tearing your lungs by doing so. He hesitated for only a moment before grabbed your hem and carefully pulled your shirt off. He barely got away from you when his inhale alone told you how bad it looked. Looking down in spite of that, you grimaced at the deep dark purple and yellow blotting. Your whole demeanor tanked and you did nothing as Donnie unhooked your bra with great care. You sat lifelessly as he maneuvered it off of you before stepping back with it and your shirt on his person.

The old woman took a long loud sip from her cup.

Donnie glowered.

She only nodded and brought her tea with her as she returned to you. Donnie hovered nearby as she set the cup on the instrument table. “Besides timely payment, I let him return because he knows how to make a decent cup. My useless nephew scalds the tea.”

You nodded hollowly and straightened as she uncapped a tub of medicine. With gloves, she then proceeded to layer on a pungent amount of goo that had the texture of petroleum jelly over your body. You watched Donnie bring your clothes up to his nose and you couldn’t imagine how bad it must have smelled to him since it was already burning your nose hairs. Once you were thoroughly coated, the woman then retrieved gauze and bandages from a lower shelf on the cart. She wrapped you up like a mummy and, though it made you lightheaded, you could immediately tell how much easier it had become to breath.  

“You’ll apply this.” The woman shook the green bottle you had lost track of once Donnie got your shirt back on. You nodded and got the hint that the table was needed for her other patient. Slowly creeping down, you hobbled over to lean against the kitchen cabinets as Donnie hopped up. He didn’t wait for the woman and you were slow to uncork the bottle as you watched him open up a bag of surgical scissors and began to cut what was left of his top. You looked away only long enough to squirt some of the loose liquid into your hand before slapping it onto your neck like aftershave. Eucalyptus mixed with the other scents you couldn’t identify and your head felt light.

Leaning against the counter, you saw the last vestiges of Donnie’s shirt fall away. The old woman had adjusted the exam table to lay flat and was coming towards you with a bottle of soap. You readied to move out of the way when you caught Donnie turning.

You slowed wondering if you’d get a full view of Donnie’s shell.

“Get out.”

You hadn’t expected to find him openly glaring at you.

You bristled. “You seriously want to say it like that?”

“Now.” He barley pulled the punch in his voice.

You hated the way your lip quivered as you pivoted to leave. The door closed slowly and you heard a resounding slap followed by irate growling in a language you didn’t understand. With a shut, the sounds disappeared and soundproofing made a useless sort of sense to you. Swirling with hurt and exhaustion, you looked to find the nephew sound asleep. You passed him a glance before finding a crate to sit on. Staring listlessly at the hands in your lap, you caught sight of your bracelet.

“Are…” You looked up at the nephew before bringing your voice down. “…you still there?”

Buzz.

With the wraps, bending was out of the question so you brought your hand up. You touched the device to your forehead to convey your affection despite not knowing if it could even tell.

“Does Donnie know what we talk about?”

…Buzz.

You gave a dry wheeze.

That figured.

“Is there any way around that?”

Buzz.

You blinked.

Bringing your hand down you stared as if the black band could explain. It held no hints and you tried to think of computer terms for such a thing. It hit you in a way that made your eyes close. “Bypass protocol D.A.R.?”

Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!

“Yes or no?” You gave an tired scold.

Buzz!

“So I just say it and we’re safe?”

…Buzz …Buzz

“More to it, great.” You didn’t have the energy for this. “Bypass protocol Dar?”

…Buzz …Buzz

“Dar… what even isn’t that? It’s not my name.”

Silence emanated from your band and you sat back to think. You returned with feeling very much like your brain was buoyed in the ocean of your head. “Does it stand for something?”

Buzz!

“Is it an acronym?”

Buzz. Buzz.

“It’s not?!” You looked down at the bracelet incredulously.

Buzz. Buzz.

A shot in the, “Dark?”

Buzz. Buzz.

You groaned. “I can’t… go through the dictionary right now. Is there any way to temporarily keep him from knowing?”

The silence was particularly loud.

“Maybe?”

Buzz!

“Ugh, great, but what do I do!?”

Your bracelet started buzzing wildly with Morse code.

“Ah, stop! I don’t understand, remember?”

“Ugh!” A pillow flew passed your head and you stiffened. “It keeps saying ‘don’t give me back!’ Now shut the fuck up!!” The nephew slurred angrily.

The bracelet with quiet and you stared openly as the young man rolled back over in his bed before pulling his covers over head.

“Can… I ask one more question?” You tilted your head at the man.

“If you say one more word I will break your stupid jewelry.”

You gave a defeated nod.

Guess ‘Dar’ would have to wait.

You removed the bracelet and tucked it into your pocket.

-

You were dozing from where you’d propped the crate up by a wall when the door opened. You stirred as Donnie came out looking worse for wear in a mess of bandages and reeking of a totally different balm than you. He looked like he might pass out when he caught your eye and tried to assemble some kind of stoic face.

It wasn’t the least bit convincing.  

It shifted and you weren’t sure if it was meant to be apologetic, but there was a injured quality to him that was far more than psychical. He passed you heading towards the next door when the old woman followed in full surgical gear. She popped her gloves off and into a nearby trash can. You stared blankly at the rust colored streaks of dried blood on her. She shook a plastic bag and you moved your gaze to find she had a ton of what looked like bandages, boxes, and various medicinal tubs packed for you. You took it with a little bow and she leaned in close. “I have known Othello for many years. He is deeply mortified by the thought of looking weak. I imagine that extends to you: the one that is special to him. Give him hell until he apologizes by begging at your toes.”

Donnie turned around in a delirious glare that didn’t land on anyone in particular.

“Thank you for your help.” You bowed deeply to the woman.

“Get plenty of rest, dear.” She nodded before chucking her mask at her nephew and screaming at him in another language.

Donnie opened the door and you quickly slipped through as a verbal fight ensued. The two of you made it back out the shop and Donnie was somehow able to lock the door as you exited. His car was waiting outside and you went right to it. Climbing in, Donnie followed closely and opened all the car windows. The drive home was in heavy silence, but currently gave very little shit about dealing with it. At his apartment building, the trek from the elevator to his floor was one of motions alone. You hit his door first and knew it would be open as you sensed a buzz from your hip. Donnie thankfully didn’t seem to catch it and was swaying as he trailed behind. You ended up backtracking behind him to carefully lead him in.

It was surprising how easily he complied.

He was in terrible shape.

Separating, you went to the kitchen and chugged two whole glasses of water before you brought Donnie his first. He had perched on the bed and appeared barely conscious as he sipped on it. He didn’t seem like he’d fall at least so you left him to get a third for yourself. When you returned he’d just finished one and you ignored your body’s whine as you went to get him another. Now wanting to keep making trips, you brought 4 full glasses with you in a bunch and left 3 on Donnie’s nightstand. You then set the other two on yours before backtracking to Donnie.

You watched him fight against his lids and leaned down to look him in the eye.

He met it with a slither of his pupil and your frown twisted as you wished to find something wholesome to cap the night off with.

He gave a beaten sigh and reached up a fist to rub a circle on his chest.

You’d seen that before, but you still didn’t know what it meant other than something akin to remorse.

It would be enough for now.

You gave a single nod before collapsing into your side of the bed.

Donnie followed closely after a difficult maneuver onto his stomach.

His shell protruded with a thick wall of gauze and bandages.

You stared at it until your lids drew lower and lower until the curtain fell.

NEXT

[taperwolf]

I keep getting these weird crossover fic ideas that are rooted in a single plotbunny and then trail off into nothingness.

This one: The Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, on their way back to Tokyo in one of the school's big transport vans (as seen in SIFAS — Kaoruko-sensei is driving), pass through a strange fog and break down outside a strange bar. In Long Island, in late 1980.

Yeah, this is the excuse to throw school idols at the folks of Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, and the whole originating spark is that I want to see Ai there on Punday Night. (It's canon that Ai has been diligently studying English specifically to be able to pun in it.)

I'm trying to remember which regular around then was called out as a master mechanic — and she's gonna have some trouble with a Japanese bus from 40 years ahead — but she does get it fixed and

Other ideas:

Emma: "We're school idols; we perform as idols as part of our school activities." Long Drink: "Oh, right, like Pink Lady."

Mia is probably the first to realize that they're in America but not modern America; Setsuna gets excited and quickly briefs everyone on twelve different sets of time travel rules from her favorite books, anime, and games. "But the most important thing is to not let on that we're time travelers!"

Fast Eddy, to Mike Callahan: "'sanother buncha time travelers, boss."

Maybe Ralph von Wau Wau is there, and he's struck by the way that Rina can communicate from behind the Rina-chan Board — "Why, nobody would know if you were a dog," he says, anticipating the New Yorker cartoon by over a decade — but despite Rina's enthusiasm for the prospect of the Ralph von Wau Wau Board, Ralph decides that it's not really a good idea.

Since there's no way to pay the Callahanians back for their hospitality and assistance — there are futuristic mint dates on everybody's money, Lanzhu's and Mia's credit cards draw on accounts that don't yet exist, and Callahan's Place is cash only anyway — they have a mini-live there; the styles are a bit alien to the regulars, but enjoyable, and Mia sings a few covers of her dad's old songs.

A couple of Callahan's regulars — those few who always manage to not be around for the previous visits from aliens, time travelers, espers, and the talking dog and the guy from the mirror universe — still suspect they were being pranked until James Taylor drops "Dad Loves His Work" in 1981, and they hear "Believe it or Not" on there.

I'm torn on whether time cop Josie Bauer should be around or not. Pro: her and Mia bonding over being time-displaced daughters of famous people. Con: she really should be immediately bundling them back into the van and taking them back to Japan and the 2020s. Then again, the pro is just:

And the real trouble with this is that it's basically a travelogue and not anything more than fanservice. But plotbunnies breed, y'know?

[tremendousladypeanut]

Things I saw when visiting Brooklyn Bridge:

“Obama was better”

“Follow the light” (illuminati sign next to this)

“I kissed Ivanka Trump”

A cyclist wearing a shirt that said “I’m beating him” followed by a very furious, very red cyclist behind him

A woman making chilli-salt-lemon mangoes? Wtf? (Tasted awesome tho)

“Ice cold water for a dollar, dollar water water water...” (he even had a lil remix of it blasting over his speakers)

[reidio-silence]

Like Miller, Donnelly saw cities—New York in particular—as breeding millionaires, tramps, and urban Armageddon. “The classes from which we have most to fear,” agreed Josiah Strong in Our Country (1891), “are the two extremes of society—the dangerously rich and the dangerously poor.” Like other popular Cassandras, Strong, who was secretary of the Congregationalist American Home Missionary Society, emphasized that “a mighty emergency is upon us”—us being the country’s imperiled Protestant middle classes, who were fast losing any ability to rein in either irresponsible monopolists or “ignorant and vicious” aliens.

In New York itself, the comfortable middle classes were finding the final decades of the nineteenth century a strange and perplexing time. They knew they lived amid unprecedented progress and prosperity. Yet everywhere they beheld portents of danger: poverty, corruption, licentiousness, militant unionism, political radicalism, open strife between capital and labor, and a surge of immigrants so vast and alien that it was hard to imagine what would become of the old Anglo-Saxon republic.

Badly buffeted by the upheavals of the mid-1880s—the recession, the rise of the Knights of Labor, the great strikes for the eight-hour day, the burgeoning immigration, the near-triumph of the Henry George campaign, and the Haymarket bombings—many middle-class New Yorkers would enlist in movements dedicated to warding off the now so frequently prophesied apocalypse. Some would direct their energies toward checking the unbridled growth of corporate power, others would concentrate on constraining or transforming the disorderly poor, and others still would find their self-assigned mission of preserving order and civility in urban affairs leading them in both directions at once.

— Mike Wallace and Edwin G. Burrows, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (1998)

[theparanormalperiodical]

The Sewer Alligators Of New York City And The 7 Other Craziest Urban Legends That Turned Out To Be TRUE

It always starts somewhere in the woods.

It always starts with a group of teenagers armed with flashlights and the age old dream to just get out of this piece-a-shit town, man.

But most importantly, it always starts with a rumour. And you only have to go a ‘couple sentences deep to discover that the story doesn’t quite add up - there was no abandoned hospital at the end of that street and there was no nuclear accident here in 1957.

You see, urban legends have this terrible habit: they’re legends. 

They’re rubbish. They’re BS. And yet somehow America’s most famous urban legend still manages to conform to this undying principle: it is full of shit. But at the same time, the Sewer Gators of NYC are also swimming in truth.

Government reports, newspaper clippings, and photographs dating back to the 1930s all document evidence that fits the legend first mentioned on the streets above. Even as recently as 2010 a 2 foot gator was found thrashing about in icy, slushy water by a sewer grate, cowering from the cars roaring past on the highway.

As terrifying (or as tragic) as that may sound, the Sewer Gators isn’t the only urban legend that turned out to be true. Grab your head torches, kids, and let’s discover the reality that inspired our favourite scary stories.

The Sewer Alligators of NYC (New York)

The urban legend: there is a vast population of monstrous, mutant alligators living and breeding in the sewer system beneath the city that never sleeps.

Our story starts 100 years ago in the roaring 1920s and the poverty-stricken 1930s. It was during these years of bust and boom that sewer workers began to report seeing strange things down in the depths below. They were used to the rats and they were desensitised to the stench - but it's when they started seeing 8 foot long alligators swimming towards them that they kinnnnda started getting concerned.

(Understandable.)

The alligators rumoured to exist in the sewers allegedly mutated overtime, becoming hulking albino beasts. This legend was recorded in The World Beneath The City (1959), from which Robert Daley explored the many problems of the utilities network beneath Manhattan and recorded the original sightings of large gators terrifying sewer workers.

But the backstory of these legendary monsters isn’t quite as terrifying as one would expect.

As late as the 1950s souvenir shops in Florida sold baby alligators to tourists. Not realising their potential size and threat, New Yorkers would buy these novelty souvenirs as a reminder of their stay in The Sunshine State. What was once memorabilia would soon become a monster, however, when the alligators began to grow. When their new pets became too much of a burden, they would flush it down the toilet just like that dead goldfish you overfed when you were 8.

The rumours festered far more on the creation of a mutant alligator population rather than just the existence of gators: with a diet of rats and trash - and then a cocktail of chemicals to wash it down - the gators were becoming terrifying beasts flushed with strange colourings. The albino trait was pinned on the alligators’ lack of sunlight.

It's almost like they were becoming a different, dangerous species, like a product of an experiment gone wrong. And it all started with a flush of the loo. What was happening beneath the glittering lights of Manhattan would only become a greater mystery as time went on. Books, films, and even a cameo on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles put the legend on the map.

What’s really peculiar, however, is that some believe this urban legend was created by Teddy May, the Commissioner of Sewers at the time. Surely this would prove the sewer system was poorly managed, you know, it being crawling with mutant creatures that just appeared from nowhere?

May was even interviewed for Robert Daley’s book, claiming the first reported sightings in 1935 prompted him to explore the sewers himself. When he cast the beam from his flashlight on a two foot long gator, he realised the rumours were in fact true.

And yet despite the strange claims, sightings, and circumstances, May’s campaign to exterminate the alligators is somehow the weirdest part of this urban legend: May would used poisoned bait, flood the side tunnels, flush the alligators out of the major arteries of the system, and they would wash up in front of sewer workers armed with rifles.

By 1937, Teddy May reported that the alligators were gone.

May might have exterminated the original population, but according to numerous sightings since then the gators shortly returned to their dark, disgusting home.

What’s really worrying, however, is that New York isn’t the only place is the US that has alligators lurking in its sewers. It’s not even the only place in the world that has these reptiles roaming underground:

Alligators are often sighted in their native state of Florida and are reported to shelter there during storm surges and the colder winter months. And in Paris a Nile crocodile was captured in 1984 just below the Point Neuf bridge.

(Elenore currently resides at the aquarium in Vannes, France.)

Charlie No-face (Pennsylvania)

The urban legend: a mysterious man with no face who glows with a radiation green aura walks about an abandoned train tunnel in western Pennsylvania.

This legend has all the traits of an All-American scary story. There’s a strange recluse who wanders around in the dead of the night and, just like the Sewer Gators, they are the result of some twisted experiment.

There was no twisted experiment, however. There was only tragedy.

In 1919, an 8 year old boy - Ray Robinson - was electrocuted by a trolley wire whilst climbing a pole to reach for a bird’s nest. He fell headfirst. He lost his nose, his mouth, and an eye. The injury was so severe he was unable to go out in public for fear of being ostracised by the community or creating a panic.

He would instead go for walks along a quiet stretch of State Route 351 in the middle of the night, meeting the strict cultural standards of Victorian ostracism of the visually disabled or disfigured. It was alongside this road that he was frequently seen and the legend first began. Locals would even venture out into the night in an attempt to find him when he was walking.

Also known as the Green Man, the colour often associated with Robinson is attributed to the electric shock locals claimed gave his entire body a greenish tinge. As far as we know, he did not glow with a ghoulish green aura.

Corpse Found In A Hotel Room (Nevada)

The urban legend: a couple turn up at their hotel room to discover a strange smell - they then discover a corpse rotting beneath their bed.

This legend dates back to 1991 according to folklore expert Jan Harold Brunvard. Every version he heard traced the original story back to Las Vegas, but the vague details also told him this was merely an urban legend.

Only it wasn’t.

If you type ‘corpse found in hotel room’ into a search engine of your choice, you’ll discover that this has actually happened in real life. And it happens a lot.

Actually it happens all the time, this is genuinely concerning.

Whether a dead body has been tucked away in a mysteriously stained mattress, or one’s stashed in the broken wardrobe with a miniature kettle, this is happening far too much. 

The most concerning case, however, has to be that of the death of Elisa Lam:

In 2013, guests at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles began to report that they were having water problems in their room. The water pressure in the shower was temperamental and the taste of their morning coffee was odd.

5 days prior to this flurry of complaints, a young woman was caught on CCTV acting strange in an elevator. The footage would later go viral, with many claiming her strange behaviour - which included hiding in an elevator and gesturing to what appears to be an invisible figure - was a sign of either deep mental distress or paranormal activity.

Her roommates in the hotel also reported her strange behaviour, and she was moved to a different room. Her body was later found in the water tank of the hotel.

Cropsey (New York)

The urban legend: an escaped asylum patient who lives in the woods of Staten Island kidnaps and murders children, and takes them back to the abandoned TB sanatorium nearby for unknown reasons.

Some say he had a hook for a hand, others claim he would drag the children through a forgotten underground tunnel system to their fated death. What we do know for certain, however, is that Cropsey is real. And that Cropsey is still very much alive.

Andre Rand was a janitor that worked at Willowbrook School (which closed in 1987) and was associated with the disappearances and murders of 5 children and young adults in the 1970s and 80s. According to a documentary on the urban legend, he might have been involved with Satanism and provided these children for sacrifices or trafficked them to the homeless people that lived in the nearby underground tunnel system.

One of his victims was even found in a shallow grave on the grounds of the school he once worked at.

Regardless of the urban legend, this is still a terrifying - and a tragic - tale.

The Maine Hermit (Maine) (Obviously)

The urban legend: a mysterious recluse living in the woods of central Maine would break into the houses of locals and steal food and possessions before returning to his hidden camp.

Most urban legends are embellished to say the least. A flying saucer here, a missing person there… This one isn’t much of a mystery, however.

On April 4th 2013 at 1.30am, Christopher Knight was arrested with his pockets full of stolen foods and candies in a local cabin’s dining room. He complied with the police, eventually giving them information as to who he was and what he had been doing - that is, committing approximately 40 burglaries on local houses a year.

When asked for how long he had been living in the woods and stealing from the locals he failed to provide a date. He had lost track of the days, of the months, and of the years that had passed. Instead, he asked when the Chernobyl nuclear-plant disaster took place.

For the last 27 years he had been living alone in the woods, moving this camp under the cover of darkness to avoid detection. He had only uttered one other word to another human being in nearly 3 decades: he said ‘hi’ to a hiker walking past an unknown number of years ago.

The Bunny Man (West Virginia)

The urban legend: in the early 20th century, there was an asylum in a town called Fairfax. The asylum closed and the patients were transported to the local prison by bus - but it crashed. Only one patient was not caught. Gutted rabbits were found hanging from the Fairfax Station Bridge the next day, however. The morning after Halloween night a group of teenagers were found hanging from the same bridge. If you go to the bridge at midnight on Halloween, you will meet the same fate.

Most of the time the stories that inspired urban legends turn out to be worse than the story. Thankfully, no furry creatures were harmed in the making of this legend.

In October 1970, an Air Force Army cadet and his fiancee were sitting in their car near a friend’s house when they saw something rather odd: a man in a white suit with bunny ears was walking towards them.

He yelled at them, claimed they were on private property, and proceeded to throw a hatchet through the window of the car.

Two weeks later, on Halloween night, the Bunny Man was spotted once again. An off-duty security guard saw the strange man in rabbit-mode sitting on the porch of a house. He was holding an axe.

The security guard started talking to him but it wasn’t long before Bunny Man lived up to this name and began to swing his axe at a pole on the porch, threatening to kill him if he didn’t get off his property.

The Fairfax County police soon began an investigation into this armed and dangerous man, and later confirmed they were looking for a male in his late teens or early 20s that was dressed as a rabbit. They never found out who the Bunny Man was.

The Mole People (Nevada)

The urban legend: there is an underground society of homeless people living under large cities in abandoned underground structures. They have formed vast communities including tribes and an entirely separate culture hidden from those living on the streets above.

Just like the Sewer Gators of NYC, this urban legend is technically true: it is common knowledge that homeless people in large cities use abandoned underground structures for shelter. For example, in the Las Vegas Valley, roughly 1,000 homeless people find shelter in the storm drains below the city for protection against the fiercely hot summers and icy cold winters.

It is also typical for parts of the shelter to be furnished, for example a 2009 ABC news report documented a couple who had lived in the tunnels for five years had managed to accumulate and craft a bed, bookshelf, and a shower.

The existence of tunnel people, as they are also known, is not necessarily a surprise. The existence of an underground city as suggested by the numerous books and documentaries that have sought to showcase life under the city is less likely.

One controversial book - The Mole People: Life In The Tunnels Beneath New York City (1993) - attempted to paint an image of an underground society but few claims made by the author, Jennifer Toth, have been verified.

"Every fact in this book that I can verify independently is wrong." - Joseph Brennan

The Alice Killings (Japan)

The urban legend: an unknown serial killer was slaughtering people across Japan from 1999 to 2005, leaving only a playing card with the name ‘Alice’ written on it. It was written in the victim’s blood.

Not many creepypastas can champion the fact that they were based on a true story. In fact, internet culture claims one must take the story as fact for the ultimate horror experience. However, one of the most infamous of these stories left to fester on the web was caught up in a horrific set of murders that took place on the other side of the planet.

Even though no brutal murders described with such details took place in Japan, an eerily similar series of events did take place in Spain in the first few months of 2003.

Alfredo Galán Sotillo, The Playing Card Killer, killed 6 and wounded 3, leaving only playing cards on the bodies of his victims. He is currently serving 142 years behind bars for his crimes.

Do you know an urban legend that turned out to be true?

Type that shizz in a comment, and don’t forget to like and reblog if you’re #livinnnnnngggg for this post.

(Gurl you know you are)

Love the paranormal? I post a new article on somethin’ spooky every Saturday and a new real ghost story everyday so make sure you hit follow and check out my other articles!

[regrettablewritings]

Can I please request B, F, and O for Benoit Blanc? I’m simping for this gentleman sleuth so hard.

I’m surprised you didn’t put DNUT just for the sake of reference 😂  Stuff is below the cut!

B = Baby (Do they want a family? Why/Why not?): While he isn’t against the idea to the point of fighting it, Benoit doesn’t strike me as someone actively looking to start a family, either. At least, not in the most traditional sense of what a family could be. He knows he’s not ancient, but he’s certainly not the very picture of youth, either. There’s plenty of things he’s not afraid to do in fear of appearing odd, but he can’t help but wonder if, perhaps, becoming a father at his age would appear peculiar.

Technically speaking, there’s nothing wrong with it, of course: He’s sure enough men his age have become fathers, and he knows plenty celebrities had at much older stages of life. But no matter what The New Yorker may think, Benoit knows he’s not exactly a celebrity; becoming a father at his age might appear less glamorous. And as flattering as the theory might be, he’s not so sure he’d be comfortable with the world knowing his virility in practice.

But, of course, things don’t always go the way we plan for them to. Just because he’s not actively looking to grow the family doesn’t mean it won’t somehow happen. It’ll catch him by surprise, no doubt, especially given how he’s so used to being able to predict things by calculation and logic, but it’s nothing he’s necessarily going to fight, either. If the great Benoit Blanc is to become a father to an actual baby instead of just a fur baby, then he’s going to accept that position with pride and zeal. (And much confusion, but that’s nothing a lot of research and a handful of classes and Youtube tutorials couldn’t fix.)

Benoit knows the impact a loving parent can have on a child, and he wants to assure any progeny of his is granted that chance. He won’t be a perfect father, he knows that, but he most certainly would want to make an effort to be one that they wouldn’t hate. He’s encountered way too many patricide cases to go lax on it all.

More to the point, however, he’s honestly just content with his family as it currently appears to be. He may come from more traditional and decidedly old-fashion means, but this doesn’t exclude the sleuth from possessing an open-mindedness toward the ever-changing image of what a family could be decreed and recognized to be. And sometimes, a family is just a peacockish gentleman with a thick drawl, his more grounded and snarky partner, and their handsome pet cat who is either plotting their deaths or actually enjoys it when they sing show tunes to him.

There are times when he looks back on his life so far and feels ribbons of regret, however. How might things have turned out if he’d settled down before? Would things have been better? Worse? More or less the same?

Well, whatever the case, he doesn’t intend to dwell on it too often or for too long; you’re here now, and if that’s all there was meant to be, then he’d take it without a moment’s hesitation.

F = Feelings (When did they know they were in love?):

He’s not sure, if truth be told. There wasn’t really a precise moment or even necessarily one singular action that offered him any confirmation. The sting of Cupid’s arrow never actually radiated through him, so much as the realization flitted into his mind as a random memory might. It was simply a matter of fact to him one day: He absolutely adored you.

Part of him wanted to go into detective mode, to use that brain of his and search for a specific date that might have triggered the sensation, or to pester Elliot and Marta by using them as soundboards for his monologues and conclusion. Benoit Blanc is a self-aware man, he’s too old to be caught off guard by his own feelings like a schoolboy. But thankfully for all, he stops himself from doing so when he considers the stance that perhaps the feelings had already been present for months now, that there wasn’t any suddenness to the realization. A sense of jamais vu, but of the emotion. Jamais réalisé. Still, the ever-inquisitive spirit in him thirsted for an answer. He tried to satiate it.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that unlike most, you appeared to enjoy his monologuing. Most people would normally just sit there, the only feedback offered being blank expressions or ones that displayed how thrown off they were about his strange analogies. You, on the other hand, were always listening even when your eyes weren’t directly on him or if you appeared to be busy with something else. Sometimes, if you deemed it necessary, you would even throw in your own input. When he joked about how invested you were, you reasoned that you tended to do the same when you infodumped.

Going off that, he liked when you infodumped: Your entire person would gain a sprightliness to it, particularly in your eyes. The detective truly believed in the value of all sorts of knowledge, and he genuinely did appreciate whatever you had to offer, even when it only appeared to be trivia. The only downside to this was that you almost always would catch yourself and, casting your sights elsewhere, all that vibrancy from before would snuff out like a light. It would darn near break his heart to hear you apologize for “babbling on about such silly things.” He would always insist that it was quite alright, that you needn’t apologize, but you always assumed deep down that he was simply being courteous as all others in his position would be. The truth always was that he was being genuine, you deserved that much.

Maybe he thought you deserved that much because you were relatively patient with him. He didn’t think of himself as a nuisance but Benoit knew that to many, he was more of an acquired taste. He always tried to be polite and considerate but sometimes, his more abrasive traits would come to the foreground, especially when he was on the case. But you never seemed to get especially testy with him as Elliot would. If anything, you were quick to put him in his place with a gently-worded but sternly-spoken reminder that he needed to mind himself.

“The truth can only soothe you so much when you got a foot up your ass,” as you put it once. It got a smile out of him. Of course, he always knew you had some kind of wit about you; one that, while a bit more blunt than his, never failed to make him laugh yet force him to acknowledge the truth. He might’ve been known for his rich vocabulary, but he couldn’t help but admire your own, more direct means of getting the point across. He knew damn well that you understood everything he said, and sometimes he questioned if maybe your responses to him were so straightforward as a means of taunting him over his perceived verboseness.

Even if this were true, he found himself amused every time you opened your mouth. In fact, you were quickly becoming his favorite person to speak to. And he even dared to consider the possibility that, based on how you lit up every time he came to the office, perhaps the same could be said on your part . . .

Well, whatever the case, Benoit never got as far as he’d wanted to whenever he pondered the cause of his feelings for you. Much to his dismay, every effort was thwarted by himself: Every time he came to a theory, he would quickly become sidetracked by other thoughts of you. Eventually he became distracted to the point where every consideration he made could be counted on to be accompanied by some appraisal of your character. In short, he was simultaneously coming up fruitless and fruitful.

But then maybe those were the answers he was looking for. Of course, they weren’t in the usual format he was familiar with but he supposed it was for the best: Feelings weren’t the same breed of mystery as, say, a murder investigation. He didn’t count it as a failure on his part, however (given that Benoit Blanc wasn’t one to quit). No, he decided that perhaps it might’ve been better to keep his work and his play separate. He’d spent enough of his life revolved around solving mysteries, after all; this one, he concluded, was best enjoyed just being experienced as it was.

O = Orange (What colour reminds them of their other half?):

It’s hard for you to choose, really: Benoit is a rather colorful man, after all, with his bright blue eyes and lack of fear regarding certain male accessories. But you do tend to veer towards shades of green. Specifically, peacock green because not only does he own a suit of similar shading, but also because frankly, due to his dandy-like nature, you couldn’t help but compare him to a peacock in your head. Sure, he lacked the arrogance associated with the bird, but what else could you compare a man with an assortment of floral ties and pretty-patterned pocket squares to?

Similarly, Benoit associates you with the color cranberry because of something in your wardrobe: Specifically, the red cardigan you were wearing the day you both met. Admittedly, he’s a twinge embarrassed that he couldn’t associate you with something more overtly romantic: He remembers that you like pink Starbursts but still give him half of yours; he remembers how you argue that black Converses are “the only valid converses” next to glittery ones; and he has no choice but to remember that godawful brown scarf you refuse to discard because “it’s still a good scarf and you’d already had it for this long.”

But you don’t mind. In fact, you’re elated and nearly swept off your feet at the fact: He remembers all the little things from the moment you two became acquainted, even though at the time he was under no awareness or intention that you would become so important to him. You know that, technically, it’s a part of his job to just commit things to detail, but you’ve seen this man forget website passwords and his own keys. Yet, if anyone were to demand that he recall three things from that fateful day, he would immediately recite about how you had a frog Beanie Baby resting on your computer monitor; that you were stabbing your Chinese takeout lunch with one hand and typing up a report with the other; and that you were wearing a cranberry-colored cardigan.

Sometimes, the first two bits were swapped with different things he remembered (all being true), but the one consistent memory that he would always bring up with be the cranberry cardigan. And frankly, you're satisfied with that bit alone.

Thanks for your patience!

[jusky]

That European eels come from the Sargasso Sea remains the official word of science. But, as with that sea and the animal born there, the boundaries of this knowledge are fluid and strange. Many expeditions have followed Schmidt to the breeding grounds in the decades since, each with better technology than the last. They, too, have found plenty of larvae, but, when one expedition collected and examined seven thousand fish eggs, not one of them turned out to be from an eel. Scientists have put G.P.S. trackers on silver eels beginning their migration; they’ve used hormones to bring females into heat, transported them to the breeding grounds, and attached them to buoys to use their pheromones as bait. They have dropped microphones into the water and opened the stomachs of predators. And yet no one has ever seen Anguilla anguilla mating anywhere, or so much as set eyes on a mature eel, living or dead, in the Sargasso Sea.

Where Do Eels Come From?

Brooke Jarvis, The New Yorker

[toffoliravioli]

isles fans have permanent “johnny” ptsd bc of tavares, don’t take it personally 💀💀

[thelittleredheadedmusician]

It’s Lit

@wordshakerofgallifrey​ prompted “"all our friends are drunk" with whoever's most responsible between the Newsies and Les Mis revolutionaries (aka gimme more of your crossover please;))” This went more into crossover land in general and less into drunken shenanigans but I think you’ll like the outcome.  Rating: G Words: 2,750 Gen AO3

Combeferre had been looking forward to spending New Years in New York. Not that they were going to the ball drop, no one really wanted to deal with that crowd, but getting to go into the city and spend the time with his friends had been all he could think about since Katherine and her friends had invited them.

The day after Christmas he’d packed his bags and his mom had given him a ride to the airport. It was shorter and cheaper to just fly from Savannah than to try and drive or take a train. Some of his friends would be doing one or the other but he knew that Bahorel and Musichetta would be flying in too, they’d tried to coordinate their flights to all land around the same time so it was easier for whoever would be meeting them at JFK.

Combeferre checked his phone once they landed and it had time to power up, Specs had texted that he had found Chetta and they were by the rental car kiosk. He smiled as he typed out a quick reply.

The Newsies seemed to be taking the task of hosting the ABC for a week with aplomb, figuring out housing arrangements and airport/train pickup/drop-off schedules and relaying it through Katherine to their groupchat. By the time they were leaving Baltimore from their last summit the week before the holidays it had already been settled and all that needed to be done was ticket purchasing. Combeferre had asked for his plane tickets as a last-minute Christmas present and been thrilled when his grandparents handed him them, wrapped up in an overlarge box and stuck into a book on the legend of Mothman. The book had made the flight interesting, if only because of the strange looks from the guy sitting next to him.

He scanned the lobby, looking for the car rentals and subsequently Specs and Chetta in the spacious white and silver environment. They saw him first and started calling out to him and waving; Combeferre grinned and course corrected as he made his way over.

“Ferre!” Musichetta pulled him into a tight hug when she saw him, forcing him to let go of the handle of his small carry one to return it. “How was your holiday?”

“Good! Good. And yours?”

“Oh excellent. I got new shoes!” She twirled her foot to show him the boots that did look new.

“Nice,” he smiled before turning to Specs who had been watching them with a grin of his own. “And how’s your holiday?”

“Well hosting one of my friends from D.C. for a week definitely makes it pretty great.”

Combeferre laughed and hugged the other boy. They’d gotten close over the last semester and when he’d been told that he would be bunking with Specs for the week Ferre couldn’t stop grinning.

“Rel should be landing now,” Musichetta commented once they released each other, checking her watch.

“Cool. I had to park pretty far, just warning you now,” Specs said, giving them both a look. “So if you want to sit now’s your chance.”

“I’ve been sitting!” Chetta laughed. “I can stand and troop to your car yet. Trust me.”

Combeferre quirked an eyebrow. “You drive?”

“Yeah. It’s my mom’s car but it’s better than having to pay for a cab or an uber out here.”

“I didn’t think you could drive,” Combeferre said honestly.

Specs smirked. “Oh, cause I’m a New Yorker I can’t drive? I’m a rare breed, sure, but my grandma’s not from the city and she thinks that it’s a necessary skill so…” he trailed off with a shrug.

“Well as long as we get where we need to be in time for food, I have no complaints,” Musichetta added with a twist of her lips.

“Race’s mom is hosting dinner for everyone tonight, homemade Italian,” Specs said.

“I heard, someone let that slip to R and he hasn’t been able to shut up about it. He got Joly and Boss set on it too.” She rolled her eyes but it was with love, not malice.

“Ayyyy-o!” Someone called out, drawing the attention of everyone in the lobby. They all looked to the area that led from the baggage claim where Bahorel was now walking, arms raised with duffel bag in hand and backpack on his shoulder.

Combeferre laughed as Musichetta let out a responding “Ayyyy-o!”

Bahorel ran the rest of the way over and pulled the trio into a tight hug.

When he could finally breathe again Combeferre turned to Bahorel with a raised brow. “Finally see Bohemian Rhapsody?” he guessed.

“And Mary Poppins and Aquaman.”

“Well you’ve got me beat. I only got to see Into the Spider-verse,” Specs said as they all turned to start the trek to the car.

“Oh how was it?” Chetta asked, leading to a conversation that ended up just being about John Mulaney by the time they actually got to the car. Specs wasn’t kidding about having to park far away.

They’d all left their bags in the trunk of Spec’s mom’s Toyota as they walked up to the apartment building in Manhattan Racetrack Higgins called home, at least for now. Specs had told them about how he and his boyfriend Spot were trying to find a place to move into together at the end of the spring semester.

Specs pressed the buzzer, waving at the camera with a warm smile. The door clicked open and he ushered them in. When they got off on the eleventh floor they turned a corner and upon reaching the door at the end of the hall Specs raised a hand to knock. A lanky boy with dirty blonde curls answered, pulling Specs immediately into a hug when he did.

“Race! Let me go!” Specs laughed as he tried to fight the other boy off, who by this point had turned the hug into a headlock even though Specs had a couple inches on him. He finally did and Specs shot him a dirty look before rounding on the three ABC members behind him. “This is Bahorel, Musichetta, and Combeferre,” he pointed to each in turn and Ferre gave a little wave at his name. “Racetrack,” Specs finished, pointing back at the boy still standing in the doorway.

“Welcome to the madhouse, keep your coats on,” Racetrack said and stepped aside to let them in.

The apartment wasn’t exactly small, after seeing Jehan’s micro apartment Combeferre had a new appreciating and understanding of what constituted a small home, but it was cramped. Filled to the bursting with people.

“We’re all going up to the roof then so you don’t have to sit on anyone’s lap to eat,” Racetrack called over his shoulder as he led the way. “My family’s pretty big so my ma knows how to cook in bulk and made up her mind before I could point out the space issue. Just be glad that the cousins aren’t all here yet, you wouldn’t be able to even get in the door then.”

Ferre took the plastic plate someone had handed him and began loading it up from the platters of food on the dining table. Some seemed to be leftovers from Christmas dinner the day before but there was still more that looked freshly homemade. Suddenly starving now that there was food in front of him everything else seemed to disappear but the table until someone clapped him on the shoulder. Combeferre startled but held onto his plate, turning to find Courfeyrac grinning at him.

“Happy Boxing Day!” Courf raised his own plate piled high.

Ferre snorted. “Boxing Day?”

“Technically my family is French-Canadian. It’s a Canadian holiday.”

“Your family has lived in Maine for the past hundred years,” Ferre said dryly.

Courf seemed unperturbed by this fact, just shrugging and turning to head back out to the living room where people seemed to be crawling out a window and up the fire escape.

“We were in Canada for Christmas,” Courf called over his shoulder as Ferre followed him.

Combeferre scoffed. “You were in upstate New York for Christmas.”

“Right. Canada.”

“You’re from Maine, you’re not allowed to call Albany Canada.”

“I dunno, it’s pretty close,” a boy about their age with fluffy blonde hair sticking up from under a knitted lime green beanie that Grantaire would be jealous of when he saw it had said from where he stood next to the window. It took a second to recognize him but once he did Combeferre grinned.

“See! Charlie here agrees with me!” Courf said with a smile. It was the one he only got when someone joined in on his ridiculousness. Combeferre had a love hate relationship with that smile.

Charlie smirked and held out his hand to Courf. “I’ll hold your plate while you climb through. There’s drinks up there already.”

“Oh! Thank you,” Courfeyrac beamed at him.

Once Courf was on his way up the fire escape Combeferre turned to Charlie. “You really don’t have to encourage him.”

“I’m from Manhattan, Albany really is Canada to me,” Charlie joked.

Combeferre snorted as he took his plate back. “Do you want help with the steps?” he asked, guessing that Bossuet had already given Joly a piggy back up to the top.

“Thanks but Jack’s gonna come. Besides it’s nice and toasty in here,” Charlie smirked and Combeferre nodded in return before starting up the stairs.

Charlie was going to soak up the warmth while he could and Ferre wouldn’t blame him for it. It wasn’t exactly cold out but it certainly wasn’t normal picnic weather. Yet that’s where they were all eating, on picnic tables on the apartment building’s roof. A small patio area with lights was all set up and it looked like just about everyone was there from the ABC with nearly as many Newsies.

“Combeferre!” Someone called and he turned to see Enjolras motioning him over to their table.

Setting his food down Combeferre folded his long legs under wood top and turned to see who all he was sitting with. Enjolras and Grantaire seemed to be next to him with Katherine, her boyfriend Jack, and David were across from him. Jack, David, and Charlie had all been to visit Katherine and Specs so Combeferre was glad to see the familiar faces so soon.

“Hey Ferre,” Kath smiled, lifting a glass filled with dark liquid to him in a small toast.

“It’s good to see you Katherine,” he told her. “I must admit though, I hadn’t realized you were a vampire.”

Katherine noticed his look to her glass and laughed. “It’s sangria. Race’s sister smuggled all the alcohol up here, something about if we’re going to be outside we might as well stay warm. Just, uh, mind the gap,” she giggled.

Combeferre caught David rolling his eyes. “She means don’t fall off the roof. It’s a bit stronger than anyone expected.”

“And she spent the entire day yesterday watching British movies with her sisters,” Jack snorted.

“So what?” Kath turned on him, a fire in her eyes. Combeferre couldn’t help the corners of his mouth from twitching up at that, he’d missed her and it had only been a few weeks.

Jack started teasing her, something Grantaire joined in on eagerly. Combeferre let the jokes flow around him as he began to eat what he was willing to call some of the best homemade food in his life. Not that he’d let his mother know that. The conversation changed to an actual topic, rather than just poking fun at Katherine, and Combeferre listened with interest. Combeferre realized that Charlie had joined them at some point and grinned as he said something that had Enjolras laughing.

Their table seemed to become the nucleus of the gathering, everyone coming over at some point to join their conversation. Combeferre also realized that everyone seemed to be getting steadily drunker. Even Enjolras seemed to be more than a bit tipsy, the sangria really being stronger than anyone had anticipated. Grantaire could hold his liquor but if the volume of his laughter was anything to go by then he was edging towards being inebriated too.

Everyone had finished eating at this point and Combeferre as fairly sure he’d been introduced to all the Newsies as someone pulled out a speaker and started playing Queen. The effect was instantaneous as a little over two dozen college kids all started singing “Mama, just killed a man…”

Combeferre couldn’t help himself, it was hilarious, but he knew that if Enjolras saw him laughing the blonde would get offended and the effect would be ruined. So, he got up from the table and moved to stand at the edge of the patio, laughing at his friends from the shadows.

“All our friends are drunk,” someone said from next to him. Combeferre glanced over to see that David had joined him. Ferre couldn’t read his expression and his tone had been hard to decipher too; whether David was annoyed or amused by this turn of events was anyone’s guess.

“I don’t think anyone thought this through, getting back down and into the apartment is going to present a challenge.”

David winced. “I’d forgotten about getting them back through the window and past Race’s parents.”

“Well we could dump the drinks and force them to dry out?” Combeferre suggested.

“I’m fairly certain they finished it all off themselves. I just checked the cooler and it’s only capri suns in there.”

Combeferre couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped him at that. At this whole situation. David shot him a questioning glance. “I’m on a roof in the middle of New York City with a bunch of young, arguably, revolutionaries who have drunk literally everything but a bunch of juice boxes and are now thoroughly sloshed as a result. On the day after Christmas.”

“It is kind of crazy,” David said with a twist of his lips.

“I think my favorite part is how in to the song they all are.”

David’s head fell back a little as he laughed. “They really are. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Spot that invested before and we play this song at parties a lot.”

An idea creeped into the back of Combeferre’s mind as he saw Courfeyrac grab Marius and start jumping up and down, Bahorel and Cosette dramatically singing to each other, and Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta huddled around Joly’s cane as if it were a microphone. Even Enjolras had been pulled in, with his arms slung over Feuilly and Katherine’s shoulders as they swayed.

“Do you know whose phone is playing this?” He turned to David quickly.

“Probably Mush. He has a tendency to dj.”

“Do you think we could steal his phone and queue up some songs of our own?”

“Seeing as he’s trapped under Blink right now and I can see his phone on the table from here I’d say so.”

Combeferre glanced to where David had nodded. Blink was indeed sitting on Mush’s lap and had his arms wrapped around the other boy, giving the impression that Mush was truly trapped. Not that he looked like he minded.

“Be right back,” David said. He slipped around the edges of the patio, coming up behind Mush and Blink and swiping the phone off the table before retracing his route to come stand next to Combeferre again. He tapped at the phone and after a couple tries got it unlocked. “It’s Blink’s birthday. They’re cute if gross,” he supplied at Combeferre’s raised brow. “So, what did you have in mind?”

Combeferre passed David his own phone, a playlist called “White People Get Turnt” already pulled up. David laughed at the name but typed it in to Mush’s spotify search bar and found it on the first try. As soon as Bohemian Rhapsody’s final gong began to fade he pressed play and Mr. Brightside started up, to everyone’s excitement.

“So maybe most of us aren’t white, it’s still the best party playlist we’ve found,” Combeferre said with a shrug as their friends began to scream along to the lyrics. Combeferre raised his phone, zooming in slightly so that it was clear who was who in the video as he started recording.

“Really?” David whispered when he noticed.

“You have no idea how rare Enjolras acting like this is. It’s for posterity.”

David just snorted. They shared a wicked smile before going back to watching their friends make absolute fools of themselves.

[whitepolaris]

Local Heroes and Villians

“There are new words not that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.” -Bette Davis

Every town has that one person to be proud of or ashamed of or, at least the very least, amazed city. Colorful characters and local lunatics, their celebrity may extend only to the borders of their own hometown, but within those limits, they shine as bright as any media star. 

It would be an understatement to say that New Yorkers are a rare breed of people, and even more more of an understatement to say that to stand out among them means you must have done something awfully spectacular, or spectacularly awful, to gain your fame (or in certain cases your infamy). 

Here’s to the New Yorkers that New Yorkers have come to love (or loathe). Whether they are performers with strange and unique acts, religious fanatics, obsessive types, or heinous murderers, the following characters have all earned their hallowed place in Weird New York.

[pandajames59-blog]

Cynical Satire and Civic Optimism Across the American Heartland

NOVEMBER 19, 2018

THE ONLY TIME I’ve ridden on a Greyhound bus was in 2012, en route to New Hampshire to watch the primaries unfold. The trip itself was uneventful, and in electoral time it feels as if it happened eons ago. I may believe you if you tell me that the Republicans’ choice of Mitt Romney as their presidential nominee occurred in an age before air travel. I may even agree to take buses exclusively from now on if it means there will be a saner politics waiting at the end of the road.

Gary Shteyngart’s Lake Success is a novel centered on Americans’ nostalgia for the Greyhound bus. But it’s also a novel that skewers us for that nostalgia. Long-haul bus rides may seem the perfect vehicle for post-partisan populism. The Greyhound, we may imagine, combines beatnik fantasies with Middle America geography as it transports those too poor to buy a plane ticket and too down on their luck to be politically correct. But anyone who gets aboard the Greyhound to live out a sociological experiment rather than to simply secure an affordable ride from point A to point B is probably carrying some baggage of his own. This is certainly the case with Barry Cohen in Lake Success.

Barry is a hedge-fund manager who, like Martin Shkreli, has gotten fantastically rich off of corrupt Big Pharma deals. He’s running from the law, though he doesn’t admit that’s what he’s up to. His more immediate reason for buying a bus ticket and tossing his black Amex card is that his wife, Seema, and his nanny have just gouged his face after a fight with the neighbors in their Central Park West penthouse. Neither Barry nor Seema is ready to confront the fact that no amount of money can buy off their son’s autism diagnosis. Instead Barry cursed out the neighbors for having the sort of “neurotypical” three-year-old who can perform all the verses of “I’m a Little Bumblebee” at a dinner party. Now he’s fleeing through Baltimore; Richmond, Virginia; Atlanta; and El Paso, Texas, on an impromptu search for his college girlfriend.

Shteyngart’s allusions are aggressive. While traveling, Barry contemplates writing about his journey in the style of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), “but in thoughtful middle-aged prose.” Instead of President Donald Trump’s “small hands,” Barry has small wrists, and he obsessively collects designer watches to compensate. Barry’s fund is named This Side of Capital, and after that fails, he starts another called Last Tycoon Capital. Lest we miss the references, Shteyngart reveals that F. Scott Fitzgerald is Barry’s favorite author.

At the same time, it’s easy to imagine a man of Barry’s narcissism making it clear that he graduated from Princeton University by cornering someone at a high-status party to tell tales of acquaintances who once performed with the Triangle Club. Barry realizes he can’t brag to the Greyhound passengers in quite the same way, but he finds other outlets for his ego-driven ambitions. He dreams up schemes for an “Urban Watch Fund” to teach kids the mechanics of Rolexes and turn the youth of Baltimore into “stakeholders.” He mulls launching a hedge fund in Mississippi (“Absalom Investments”) and posing under a magnolia tree for a photo op as part of a Wall Street Journal story.

As satire, Lake Success is brilliant, yet Shteyngart seems to be reaching for something more. The book plays out in two parts broken around Trump’s election. The first half, which begins with a drunken Barry stumbling into the Port Authority Bus Terminal “at the start of the First Summer of Trump,” is a more entertaining read. Barry encounters various strangers, such as the Baltimore drug dealer he thinks may make a decent business partner; the beautiful Marriott employee in Jackson, Mississippi, who becomes the first black woman he’s ever slept with; and Barry’s personal favorite, the “one-eyed Mexican man [who] fell asleep on my shoulder!” But they are merely props on Barry’s personal stage rather than people who offer real insight about life outside Manhattan. The travails of the Greyhound ride get tedious and, predictably, Barry’s marriage comes to an end.

The latter half of the book is then tinged with guilt that we could ever find a man like Barry funny. Shteyngart emphasizes that Barry and his fellow plutocrats are responsible for our present political mess and that no road trip through the heartland can assuage that. Not only is Barry not as funny as we’d hoped, he lacks the modicum of self-reflection needed to pull off a narrative arc. Narcissists make for lousy presidents and off-putting protagonists — 350 pages is a long time to spend with such self-centered New Yorkers.

Barry’s wife is a deeply conflicted woman who is well aware that she traded in her Yale Law degree to become a trophy wife. Seema contemplates joining the Hillary campaign or working part time at Planned Parenthood, yet she enjoys the ease of Barry’s wealth, if only because it pays for her daytime trysts with a semi-famous Guatemalan novelist at the Gramercy Park Hotel. But Shteyngart’s message is less about the contradictions of feminist one-percenters than about the sort of men they marry. It’s high-powered men, Shteyngart maintains, who can’t have it all. Barry wants to live as a rich Manhattanite who can nevertheless take solace in having once completed a creative-writing minor at Princeton. He wants us to know that, at bottom, he’s a sensitive guy who’s read some Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

In one of Shteyngart’s best scenes (perhaps inspired by his own experience teaching creative writing at Columbia University), young Barry tries to wow his college girlfriend with a story about a misunderstood banker who stumbles out of his Mercedes-Benz into a Vermont pasture to confess his mistakes to a beautiful shepherdess (i.e., his girlfriend). Barry’s professor is having none of it. About Barry and his Goldman Sachs–bound classmates, he says, “Even the volatility of their emotions is a financialized asset which can be traded between them at will.” This feedback is lost on Barry. What sends him reeling on his road trip these many years later is Seema’s accusation that he has “no imagination.” As Barry tirelessly reminds us, he strives to be a man with both “a vocation and an avocation.” But with the Feds on his tail for fraud and his wife unimpressed by his reading habits, Barry seems to have neither.

While Lake Success seethes with cynicism, Our Towns, by James and Deborah Fallows, is doggedly upbeat. And whereas Barry’s cross-country adventure ends in an expensive divorce, Our Towns is a travelogue co-authored by a husband and wife who alternate chapters. The book, now slated to become an HBO documentary, expands upon a series of articles and blog posts James wrote as a correspondent for The Atlantic. The couple makes a deliberate effort to see “flyover country” by way of their single-engine Cirrus SR22, and the many flights they record between 2012 and 2017 put a new spin on the Kerouac conceit: steering their small propeller plane toward out-of-the-way landing strips allows them to see much more of the country than would be accessible by car (or, for that matter, by bus).

So the Fallowses crisscross from Burlington, Vermont, to St. Marys, Georgia, from Guymon, Oklahoma, to Dodge City, Kansas. Some of their tales from the field are genuinely interesting: we learn why most credit card payments are processed in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and how engineers at Texas A&M University are mass-breeding a species of weevil that will eat up the invasive plant threatening Caddo Lake. But the book as a whole starts to read like a lengthy chamber of commerce brochure. The founder of the Ocean Renewable Power Company in Eastport, Maine, boasts that it’s the “Kitty Hawk of hydrokinetic power.” Holland, Michigan, is home to the world’s largest pickle-processing plant. The kids at Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science know how to construct 3-D printers. All the civic boosterism begins to run together.

The Fallowses are big fans of “public-private partnerships,” street art, and minor-league baseball teams — in other words, very visible signs of regional activity. They explain that, when they arrive in a new place, one of their first questions is, “Who makes this town go?” This method inevitably points them in the direction of mayors and local developers, and, naturally, these are the types most likely to emphasize sports stadiums, river walks, and the new magnet schools.

Attractive downtowns are all well and good, but it’s strange that the Fallowses don’t feature clergy, social workers, or nurses, who may have offered a more nuanced glimpse of daily life when citizens aren’t dining out by the waterfront. Surely there are success stories to be told about rehab centers or local parishes defying the national odds. Maybe these conversations would have been too moralistic or ambivalent for a book that is so relentlessly sunny.

Whereas Lake Success is saturated with Trump allusions, the Fallowses work hard in Our Towns to eschew national politics even as the 2016 election haunts their travels. James admits that Fox News is often blaring in the background but insists that Washington, DC, just doesn’t come up that often. Somehow, however, residents know about James’s career as a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter. How do they learn this unless the conversation occasionally veers toward Washington?

The Fallowses conclude that “[t]he more often national politics came into local discussions, the worse shape the town was likely to be in.” This is likely true, but the Fallowses hold so firm to this maxim that the reader gets the sense they’re afraid to broach both national politics and deep-seated local problems. James mentions that a nurse in Bend, Oregon, seems wary of giving him codeine for his flu because of the region’s opioid epidemic. But we’re left wondering what would have happened if James had followed up with her about how the city is faring with the crisis. Instead, the chapter pivots to a bullet-point list of all the opportunities available at Central Oregon Community College.

Likewise, when Deborah investigates rural healthcare in Ajo, Arizona, she gives a quick nod to drug- and depression-related issues and the challenges of operating a clinic so isolated that pregnant women can’t receive prenatal care. But then we receive a cheerful description of how gardens and farmers markets are answering nutrition needs in the desert. The story of Ajo ends with the Fallowses purchasing “jars of local citrus marmalade.”

In their preface, the Fallowses concede that two of the businesses they profile in Our Towns have since failed and that not all the places they visited are on the mend. We’re left to wonder which businesses these are and whether, in retrospect, the Fallowses see why they didn’t make it. Such reporting, however, would have required more skepticism toward their hosts’ sales pitches, an approach that clearly didn’t fit their book’s message of civic optimism.

So if the Fallowses come across too earnest and Shteyngart too stinging, what’s the contemporary writer to do? As puritanical as it sounds, some sincerity may help. In Lionel Trilling’s famous formulation, the rise of the novel coincided with the decline of sincerity as a serious moral virtue. At some point in the 18th century, Trilling suggests, the commitment to do and say what we mean — usually in conformity with religious principles — came to seem wooden and odd.

American sincerity probably lingered a little longer, given our rates of religiosity and the fact that we are so geographically dispersed. But there’s no question that plainspokenness gave way to an obsession with “authenticity.” The earlier strain of honesty had less to do with the individual: we spoke sincerely as a mark of faithfulness or, relatedly, to uphold the community’s virtue. Whatever primness was present at Plymouth Rock has long since yielded to romanticism, Freudianism, and the free-spirited urge to be true to oneself, not to some preening external authority. Authenticity remains a crucial part of the stories Americans tell themselves, but the self-conscious, self-centered strain of recent decades has flattered libertarians, hippies, Southerners, start-up executives, and, of course, wandering tourists.

Maybe, though, Americans are so angry because what they’ve been sold no longer seems authentic and they’ve lost the moral vocabulary to be sincere. In this absence of plainspokenness, Lake Success and Our Towns quest after what they want to be true. Barry tries to honor the love interests of his 19-year-old self, while the Fallowses look for the perfect microbrewery to fight urban blight. Yet they invite our suspicion: Barry doesn’t have an avocation, not all American towns are healthy, and our president isn’t a self-made man. We can only hope that, as citizens take to the streets, the authors who meet them there will truly tell it like it is.

¤

Danielle Charette is a PhD candidate with the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought. Her work has appeared in The Point, The Chronicle Review, The Hedgehog Review, and Tocqueville 21.

Source: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/cynical-satire-and-civic-optimism-across-the-american-heartland/

[alexandra-corral]

on heels and courage

August 17, 2017

Comfort over style. Style over comfort. The high heel or the flat. The sleek, quintessentially New York Helmut Lang dress or the simple H&M navy shift. The bold lip or the chap-stick. 

I wrestled with these trivial dilemmas every morning when preparing for that walk down Seventh Avenue (really known as Fashion Avenue) for my first fashion job. I worked in a building where Carolina Herrera graced the long hallways and stuffy elevators with bad lighting. She was the quintessence of femininity, elegance and grace with her crisp white button down shirts; collar popped up, of course. Our clients included the breed who worked for American fashion royalty like Michael Kors and The Row, style always matching the employer. Always unattainable and edgy. Always with a bit of a nostril stuck up in the air.

No matter how hard I tried or what high-end fashion label I wore, I don’t think I was ever able to really get it.

Heels were always something I struggled with. Heels gave me the height necessary to position myself, just barely, in the air of the Amazons. Height, to me, has always been synonymous with power. Heels always transformed the remnants of my spinal surgery into sheer straightness. And it always elevated anything I wore.  White tee-shirts and blue jeans with the right heels and messily middle-parted hair, immediately made me feel like Jane Birkin.

I led with introducing these dilemmas as trivial, but really I am a stout defender of fashion. I once explained to an ex-boyfriend the ways fashion mattered. My number one defense was always that fashion is the first line of defense. You are saying as much about yourself when you wear flannel and jeans versus a Proenza Schouler number. Indifference versus caring. The Girls versus the Gossip Girls.

As much as people inside and outside the fashion world applauded or deigned the film The Devil Wears Prada, this rant by the character ‘Nigel’ always struck me:

Don’t you know that you are working at the place that published some of the greatest artists of the century? Halston, Lagerfeld, de la Renta. And what they did, what they created was greater than art because you live your life in it. Well, not you, obviously, but some people. You think this is just a magazine, hmm? This is not just a magazine. This is a shining beacon of hope for… oh, I don’t know… let’s say a young boy growing up in Rhode Island with six brothers pretending to go to soccer practice when he was really going to sewing class and reading Runway under the covers at night with a flashlight. You have no idea how many legends have walked these halls. And what’s worse, you don’t care. Because this place, where so many people would die to work you only deign to work.

My moments of fashion triviality arrives when I choose style over comfort. I recently purchased a pair of Scandi grey architectural heels and wanted to wear them with navy culottes (pants that only work with height). You have to understand, my commute to work from Capitol Hill to the Northwest quadrant of Washington D.C. is not easy. Wearing new heels that haven’t been broken into is a very stupid idea on a hot August summer day. So why did I choose to wear the heels? 

Was the inevitable pain worth the ephemeral confidence-boosting moments when walking through the vanilla bland DC metro stations, dressed like the New Yorker I was raised to be despite my true upbringings in New Jersey. Does impracticality trump practicality simply because most people don’t understand my view of fashion?

Here’s a thought. Isn’t it worth pursuing something despite knowing that failure and pain are very real possibilities? Isn’t that the definition of courage? Atticus told Scout, “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

I know I’m stretching it - using fashion - particularly heels - to make a point about courage especially in the same breath as Atticus Finch. The literary gods and elitists are surely rolling their eyes. But something must be said about the conscious act of choosing to wear something that causes pain but provides a desired outcome. Does that in some way translate to courage? Does that courage cover the spectrum of courage? You can wear a heel that may cause blisters and blood, but does that mean you have the courage to publicly speak about your beliefs or take a bullet for someone? Absolutely not and I know I’m going on a strange tangent.

But there is always something to be said about the whats and whys you choose to wear something. I know I feel most confident when I wear towering heels and have glowing skin. The pain may be present if the heels are new, but it vanishes eventually and the confidence remains. Maybe it is a small, but necessary step to find some form of courage.

[bonfire-at-the-crossroads]

Dropped off stuff for the next auction”Collectibles and Memorabilia”

Which we don’t have much of - but managed to gather up a few odds and ends.

We picked up stuff that has NOT sold, and will drag it to another auction house to see if we can move it along.

Long days of loading, packing and hauling - followed by today where I drove our friend Tori to the outskirts of Dublin to buy a car.

What a lot I learned today about used cars and those who sell them, here in Ireland.

Tori had gone to the local credit union, where they loaned her 2k in cash. She had one day to locate, view, and BUY a car to be able to get to work on Monday.

Long drive to the ass-end of the Dublin airport, and onto the back roads of shabby suburbs and dismal roundabouts...

#1 - All cars in used car lots have mold all over the carpets and upholstery. ALL of them. The damp, the cold, and the warm, and the rain create a giant Petrie dish on wheels - and it’s gross.

#2 - irish car salesmen are a strange breed.

The car she saw online was sold “ten minutes before you got here” - but “see what you think about this Toyota.” The salesman handed her the keys, and we were off...

No names exchanged, no discussion, no bank information, no looking at her license, - just the keys. He handed the keys to a pair of total strangers.

“We should have chosen a better car, Tori - if we are just gonna drive off with one and never look back.” Sez I.

#3 - nobody does anything to spruce up used cars that are for sale. No detailing, wax, or tire-shine on these babies. Just the dents, dings, and key scratches they arrived with - buy it, or not.

Don’t much care....

#4 - used cars cost between 1400. and 2800 euros. This used to be considered lunch money by us spoiled New Yorkers.

My, how things have changed.

#5 - cars are tiny. Ridiculously small, with minimal back seats and no trunks.

#6 - after squeezing into the back seats of several - we got into a Honda

Civic - and it was the size of a football stadium. I’ve forgotten what a real car feels like.

In the states a Civic is considered a small car. Woof. It’s huge in comparison to the Renault Tori liked....

#7 - the sign sitting on the roof of the Honda Civic that said “AUTOMATIC” - was in fact a detriment rather than a recommendation. “How do you drive this?!” She asked in alarm. The salesman patiently explained the intricacies of not having to use a clutch. It frightened her....

#8 - she said yes to the Renault, they shook hands, and we went into the office trailer to finalize the deal.

#9 - salesman counted the 1400 euros she put into his hand. He wrote down her name and address in a spiral notebook, with a stubby pencil - handed her a piece of official looking paper - and the keys.

#10 - she drove her new car next door and we both filled our tanks with gasoline.

Two cups of coffee from a machine, a bag of gummies, and Tori paid the pair of strangely out-of-place African guys who run the station. They were pleasant, but seemed confused - especially when she couldn’t find “reverse”, and they watched anxiously through the glass as she bumped back and forth in the parking lot.

We drove home in the dark.

Mission accomplished.

I am SO tired....

[morganbelarus]

Beast Fiction: Christopher Bollens The Destroyers

Ive never known the specifics of Charlies familys wealth. Like pools or country houses or fathers with healthy, poorly hidden porn collections, money was just a condition that some kids had and others didnt.

Thats not to say I didnt realize early on that the Konstantinou fortune trumped my ownthat I was a votive candle set beside a bonfire. Their residence was a labyrinthine, low-ceilinged duplex on the forty-eighth floor of Fifth Avenue and West Fifty-ninth Street, its brown-tinted windows glazing all of Manhattan with a high-desert varnish. The front rooms were rearranged and redecorated with the same seasonal restlessness as their corner view of Central Park: flocked wallpaper gave way to raw muslin; oily Regency chairs lost favor to skeletal Italian minimalism. The only permanent decor was a collection of tiny silver-framed pictures of skinny children and overfed dogs.

Charlies family had staffreal staff, housekeepers and au pairs and drivers and a Portuguese chef who, for reasons unclear, insisted on buying meat at a certain kosher butcher (Saturday was their night to eat out, and the chefs night to chain-smoke on the balcony). Orders were relayed in subtle, inscrutable eye movements. During my visits, there was always someone dressed in unobtrusive black to provide drinks or snacks or movie times or alibis for Charlies older brother, Stefan, who was more a constant point of conversation than an actual presence in the house. Meanwhile, my mother and I, living post-divorce in a garden apartment on Riverside Drive, had a pudgy Peruvian cleaner who would come for three hours every Tuesday, begrudgingly paid for by my father. When I phoned Charlie there was very little chance hed be the one to answer; it was the rare kind of New York home that took five minutes of waiting on the other end for him to be tracked down. When he called me, I was right on the line 90 percent of the time, turning hello? into a life-or-death question.

We were all spoiled kids, no question. Whatever dim connection Buckland Academy maintained to its Protestant roots reminded us that we were all born with unfair advantage. Some of us were just more spoiled. I knew even at age nine that Charlies money was the kind generated from larger reserves than baby food. It was a strange pocket of America in which I was raised: children whose ancestors reached the shores of this country already loaded. The Bledsoes are a Michigan breed, devoutly modest and thrifty, proud of owning their own snow shovels. My family goes back several midwestern generations, but we are first-generation millionaires, and my father despised ostentation wherever he encountered it (especially in his son). He was a New Yorker by trade and not by social observance. The Konstantinous, on the other hand, seemed to revel in their fortune: trips to Biarritz or St. Barts or Greece or Palm Beach were treated as migratory necessities rather than as vacations, something one couldnt not do, and there was always a new cause or artist or wetland they were subsidizing with the giddy thrill of an illicit romance. I grew up alongside Charlies wealth, I made a second home in it, and, as with anything introduced so young, I never really questioned its source. Both of our fathers were businessmen focused on the global economy, which was similar to calling them sharpshootersa designation that didnt lend itself to particulars.

Over the years, though, I did learn certain crucial details. Mrs. K was a quiet, stout woman with deep wrinkles running from her eyes like two palm trees blowing in separate directions. She had the curious habit of cracking open little half-and-half creamer containers in her kitchen and knocking them back like whiskey shots. For calcium, shed say. She was kind and eloquent and had a tic of rotating the clasp of her earring, and she treated me with the sincere appreciation a mother bestows on a friend who might be a positive influence.

Now how is your mother? shed drawl in concern, without ever remembering that her name was Helen. Mr. K, at least fifteen years older than his wife, was bald and brown. He had the round, boneless face of a seal, and he sat cross-legged on the sofa, his pant cuff pulled up to reveal the spot where an argyle sock met his hairless leg. He laughed with his shoulders and asked a scatter of questions, which I rarely understood because of his thick Greek-Cypriot accent. Charlie would quickly intercede. No, Dad, Ian isnt doing lacrosse this year either. I told you, were committed to after-school chess club. Occasionally, though, words and sentences did leap out with clarity, and the Konstantinous enjoyed talking about their homeland over dinners of expensive kosher lamb needlessly slaughtered according to Jewish decree. This is the story I managed to piece together: Mr. K and his father had built a construction empire in Cyprus in the late 1960s. When the 1970s oil crisis cut American businesses off from the Middle East, Konstantinou Engineering took full advantage, becoming the regions premiere construction company, partially due to its ties with the West. I also learned that after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, the family abandoned Nicosia for London and then New York. In the 1980s, Mr. and Mrs. K briefly moved back to have their two sons, Stefan and Charalambos, before resettling permanently in New York.

But what does your dad build in the Middle East? Id ask Charlie. Hed shrug. Things that need building. But whats their specialty? Charlie had been taught to be oblique, and hed dutifully change the subject. He remained oblique even when, once in high school, protesters besieged the lobby of their apartment building, accusing Mr. K of traitorous oil deals and the mistreatment of Burmese laborers. Mr. K could be found forty-eight flights up, cross-legged on the sofa, an argyle sock snug against his calf, and his shoulders shaking in mirth. Dehors eastos raskhish anix? No, Dad, Ian cant stay for dinner.

There were threats made and suspicious packages destroyed without ever being opened. For a month, Charlie was assigned two bodyguards to shadow him, a cause of bewilderment even in the halls of Buckland (where the sons of disgraced dictators included their familiarity with the political process as campaign planks during student-council elections). I found Charlie sitting on one of the benches in the school locker room, nude and slumped, wiping his face with a towel. The bodyguards were lingering somewhere out of sight, the whole subterranean room as steamy as a prep kitchen in a Chinese restaurant. I couldnt tell if he was crying or just taking a minute to compose himself. But he looked up at me just then, his brown eyes defiant, his naked body so vulnerable and strong. He said in a slow voice worn-out by its own rehearsal, Whats so bad about us really? Is it because were successful? We built the highways in the Middle East.

That was it, all I knew of the Konstantinou wealth, and maybe, dimly, all that Charlie knew. We never discussed our parents dealings. When you look for the monsters tearing at the seams of the world, you rarely examine the people who love you. So we went on, teenagers, shoplifting at CVS and attending black tie benefits at the Harvard Club. We wanted our own lives to be pristine, untouched by anyone before we slid across them. We talked about girls and ate microwave pizzas and got into the idling town car and saw a movie. Normal things. My father made baby food, and his father built the highways in the Middle East.

*

The concrete dock is runny with soap and hose water. Fetid rainbows collect in the puddles. Compact cars and supply trucks lumber out of the ships hull and disappear like gleaming hammer-heads into the crowd. Leather-skinned women hold color photos of rooms for rent and deep-sea shots of tropical fish as reminders that rooms neednt be luxurious. Everyone is in finding mode: the locals studying the new arrivals, and the arrivals scanning the locals and the taxis streaming on the cobblestones and the chalk-white buildings of Skala. Already stretched octopi are drying on the lines. Red bougainvillea cracks from alleys and creeps along the sides of stores, its flowers a fluttering parrot red that jars the sleepless and the slept. I search the street for Charlie. I do what he told me to: I look. But so many people are weaving around the port or filling the seats of outdoor cafes, loud with the clatter of cutlery and lounge music. I read signs for my name and walk up to a woman holding the photo of a yellow room in her hand.

Good bed. Fresh towels. Free TV.

Excuse me. Do you know

That hotel no good, has bugs, she says angrily. My place, new AC!

No, Im trying to find

Bledsoe, a voice yells. Bledsoe. It rolls smoothly through the air from someone accustomed to calling it. I see Charlie forty feet away, leaning against the back of a mini truck, its empty flatbed a series of thin wood planks. As I walk toward him, I take in what five years have done. His black hair is longer and wavier than I remember it, curling around his forehead and ears like boiling water, and his shoulders are wider by an inch. The years have dissolved the fat from his face, chiseling out a man of thirty, with high cheekbones and tight brown lips. He wears faded pink shorts, the drawstrings hanging limply, and a loose white T-shirt with the glimmer of a silver chain at the collar. His legs are hairier, scribbles of black, and he holds himself up on the bumper with his ankles crossed. Ratty white boat shoes have been pummeled into slippers. His deep tan whitens his teeth.

If I saw him this way in a photograph, Id say, Yeah, thats Charlie, handsome and unhassled, the same as he always was. But in the sharp sunlight and mounting heat, under the blue blaze of sky, I feel like Im closing a great distance, that were strangers meeting on an island who have only some half-forgotten past in common. It hits me that were men now, still young, but men separated from each other by all the nights and days that make long deserts out of years. Im nervous and dazed and my throat catches and, for some reason, I cant summon one joke or funny memory to tie us to the kids we were. Before I went to Panama to work for Kitterin, my father advised me always to have my first sentence ready, the clever, crack-shot opener that determines whether youre just another man in the world or whether theres a world inside a man. He also told me to stick my hand out and force others to lunge to shake it. Like your arm is a sword and they could impale themselves on it. I never shared his bloodlust for the baby-food business.

Charlie remains leaning, stone still, and I can tell hes assessing how much Ive changed since he last saw me. He squints like a man studying an orchestra recital for the slightest instrument out of tune. His tongue flickers across his teeth; one of his incisors has a tiny chip in its corner. He waits until the last second to push off from the bumper. He creeps forward, his back bent, taking enormous, goblin-like steps, and springs. He wraps his arms around me and knocks my suitcase to the ground. His palm presses against my cheek. I can feel his heart beating against my chest and catch the faint smell of fish and tobacco on his breath. His eyes are the same, deep and brown, like two pennies dropped in fountain water. His hand moves from my cheek and slides around the back of my neck.

God, its good to see you, he whispers, staring directly into my eyes. He squeezes my neck. Ive missed us.

My hands are on his hips like were slow dancing. I feel as if Charlie is the first person Ive touched in weeks, or maybe its just his way of holding me, like Im something that belongs to him. One early memory does come to mind, an indecent oneboth of us at twelve in his bedroom, Charlies face glowing with pride, the waistband of his sweatpants pulled down in the front, showing off his first pubic hair; it was a tiny black corkscrew, a hesitant too-early flower, and for some reason I reached toward him in that moment, and Charlie jumped back wincing. Dont you dare pluck it out. I might have reached out because I wanted him in some way I couldnt have understood at that age, or I needed him to take me along in his teenage ascent, or perhaps I was trying to pull him back. We spent that afternoon applying his fathers Rogaine to our crotches and the proceeding weeks providing regular updates on follicle growth. It would be another year before I farmed my own. How many prayers have been sent to heaven over a single wisp of hair? How many mornings have made apostates by their answer? A few years after that, Charlie was responsible for the loss of my virginity. He threw a small party at his place when his parents were out of town and invited a clutch of young models from lonesome tornado states who were in New York on go-sees. I knew her name, but we referred to her later by a promotion on a sign we saw advertising weekend brunch specials: Endless Mimosa. She took a bizarre, entirely unearned interest in me, the act was accomplished in Stefans bedroom, and her teeth were caked black from her personal stash of pot brownies. For the next decade, Endless Mimosa haunted me, showing up in retail catalogs and advertisements for better wireless service, and a brief fever of guilt and dread would overwhelm me during those surprise visitations. Did Charlie pay her to do that? Of course not, he said when I confronted him. Youre out of your mind. Christ, what a question! As I recall, you two just liked each other. Give yourself some credit. I never knew whether to hate or love him for that, and, like most first experiences, it grew so vague and abstract in my head it felt intrusive for me to return to it for a cheap moment of pleasure or shame. My first time, and still Charlies fingerprints were all over it.

The sun is leaking down my face. Charlie grimaces. Im sorry about your father. Are you all right?

Yeah.

I step back and wipe my forehead. Holding Charlie while thinking of my father spread out right now in a funeral home brings me too close to the brink. Im fine. Really, I am.

When I lost my mother, it took a few months for it to register that she was gone. Its not the kind of pain you can count in days.

Your mom? Oh, god, I didnt know. Kind Mrs. K, dead, like a stamp marked over the image of her in my mind, final, paid, no further action required. I had spent years speeding past their Fifth Avenue building, picturing her high up in its glass, guzzling creamer and packing and unpacking between trips. When?

Two years ago. Breast cancer. I didnt write you about it? I shake my head. She spent most of her last months in Switzerland for treatment. It was important to be with her at the end. One of the most important experiences you can have, dont you think? Like walking through a door labeled adulthood, no reentry. We buried her in Nicosia. If we had done it in New York, I would have called you.

I wish you had called me anyway.

Yeah, well, now its just the Konstantinou men. It was good to be around family at the time.

I couldnt handle the rest of my family. I didnt see the point of the funeral. No one wanted me interrupting their hard-earned grief. I guess I didnt earn it. You know, after Panama, my father and I werent close. We werent close before Panama either. You remember how it was.

Well, youre here now. And Im family. He smiles like a shot of sun through cloud cover and picks up my suitcase. Kalosorisma. Welcome to Patmos. What do you think?

I examine the port town again. Already it seems calmer and more navigable. Dry, dirt roads wind through the hills with the haphazard logic of ant tunnels. The sea sways forth and back. Possibilities magnify: the cold drinks and the thin legs of backpackers and the yachts along the dock teeming with hectic crews. Its a loud, greedy paradise hardening white in the morning sun like an egg in a frying pan.

Its nice.

Its nice, he huffs. Then he repeats the Athens taxi drivers description. Holy island. Some people say they can feel it vibrating. We get our share of crazies. They arrive crazy and then they blame it on the island. He drops my bag in the truck bed. My god, I cant believe youre here. Look at you. Youre still so He searches for the right word and comes up empty. You havent aged at all.

I feel like I have.

All you need is some rest. And a swim. We can take the boat out tomorrow. You dont get seasick, do you? Charlies accent is different, lighter on the vowels, less drying-concrete American. He chops the edge of his hand against his palm, a gruff Mediterranean gesture to indicate decisiveness or that were running late. He turns to the white buildings and waves his arm. An old man with silver hair jogs toward the truck, carrying grocery bags and a case of beer. The man is beetle brown from a lifetime roasting in the sun. Thats Christos, my captain. Hes been with us forever. You can trust him. He looks over and winks.

Who cant I trust? I ask.

Charlie yawns, as if the excitement of our reunion has already subsided and hes feeling his early wake-up.

You found the red hair, Christos grumbles as he plants the groceries next to my suitcase in the truck bed. I look but not find.

Im used to finding Ian, Charlie replies. The captain offers his hand, and I lunge over the side of the truck to shake it. His stubble and chest hair are the color of Christmas tinsel, but his taupe skin is magically unlined. The hollows of his cheeks suggest missing teeth.

Wheres Helios? Charlie asks. And to me, Thats Christoss son.

He down by boat. He working. He remove . . . But he cant think of the word. Both Charlie and Christos are speaking English for my benefit, and the captain grows frustrated. He finishes in Greek, and he and Charlie continue their conversation in the island vernacular. Charlie ties my bag to the truck bed with a rope, and Christos climbs into the drivers seat. There isnt room for three inside the tiny vehicle.

Youre not too tired, are you? Charlie asks me.

No. I need to get back on a normal clock anyway. I should try to stay up.

Good. Christos is going to take your bag to where youre staying. See, hes even stocking your fridge. Charlie shakes a ball of white cheese and returns it to the grocery bag. He knocks on the truck twice to signal departure. We can get a taxi to my house.

I thought I was staying with you. Worry floods in, as much because I dont understand the geography of the island as because I dont want to be separated from my suitcase. I think of the cash in its plastic bag without even a lock on my luggage.

Charlie shakes his head. Full house, Im afraid. Its August, high season, and the place is exploding with family. If youd come any other month, thered be plenty of room. Sonny wants to boot them into a hotel, but you cant kick out family.

Whos Sonny?

Wow, it has been a long time. Charlie grabs my shoulder to lead me from the truck, but I lock my legs, unwilling to leave my bag. Youll meet her. I also have a surprise guest for you. Shes staying out where you are, on the north side of the island, in some cabins I own. Its quiet countryside, away from the tourist surge. You might even say romantic. He grins deviously, an impression enhanced by his chipped tooth.

Who?

I dont organize surprises to blow them just before theyre revealed. His hand pulls at my shoulder. The truck engine revs with an up-chuck of diesel, and my poorly tied suitcase lurches away. Charlie notices my panic. Your bag will make it to the cabin fine. I told you, Christos is trustworthy. What do you have packed in there, your inheritance?

Im blushing. I can feel the betrayal of capillaries, and I compensate by walking swiftly toward the taxi stand. Charlie leans in and kisses me on the cheek. Forever, together, friends make the weather, he sings. Fair warning. Sonnys going to treat you as competition. Im in love with both of you, what can I say?

Can I trust her?

Hell no. He groans. I often wonder if shell be here the next morning or the one after that. Every time she says something nice about me, I think she might be eulogizing, softening me up before the final split. I just hope shes staying with me for He grows as flustered for the word as Christos did for barnacles. He flinches briefly and shuts his eyes. Charlies face has aged to thirty but theres still the boy I knew lurking behind it; a scared kid hoping the goodness in others matches the goodness in him. Charlie can afford to be good. Im beginning to think that duplicity is a necessity of hardship. Real reasons, he finally mutters. Whatever those are.

Ive never known Charlie to be worried about someone leaving him. Maybe he has matured. I do what I can to comfort him and pat his chest. Charlie presses his hand against mine, as if forcing me to feel him up. Its another game we played as kids, just before the turn of the century, pretending to be prepubescent lovers, holding hands or fake groping each other on the sidewalk to the shock of the last Upper East Side matriarchs taking their nurses and canes for a walk. It was hilarious in its obnoxiousness then, but now not so much.

Three young men in tie-dye T-shirts, their beards patchy like desiccated shrubbery, squint at Charlie and share bent smiles. Charlie growls as we pass them, a little animal motor through bared teeth.

Do you know them? I ask.

I try not to. Jesus freaks are taking over Patmos. More like Apocalypse freaks, death heads, camping out on the beaches of Armageddon, just hoping to catch the last gnarly wave to the end of the world. Remember when surfers and hippies were all about peace and love? Its a new world, Ian. Poor Jesus isnt even safe in it. He stops for a second in the middle of the road to point to the southern hills of the island. He seems oblivious to the lanes of traffic bowing around us. Over there is the cave where John wrote Revelation. And up there, that giant gray fortress is the Byzantine monastery that looks after it. Its right by my house. You can visit both of them. You should take . . . Oops, I almost said her name.

I still have no idea who the surprise guest is. Im too tired and dazed by time zones to figure it out.

We climb into a taxi, and Charlie directs the driver to a town pronounced H-O-R-A. A wave of nervousness returns, a wave cresting on the quicksand beach of personal Armageddon. I feel like were both avoiding mention of the help I asked for when I called him from New York, the desperate pleading that strips this visit of its aimlessness.

Charlie, youre like a brother. I need your help. Please take me in. Ill do anything. Just dont abandon me.

How have you been? I ask him.

Ive been fantastic, he replies, flashing a tuning fork of a smile, as if just enough time has elapsed mourning our dead parents to return to his natural ease. I love living here. Its so good for me. Its rare to find a place in the world that draws an X and tells you home, but when you do

Its perfect weather.

Perfect, he agrees. Turns red when the winds pull up from Africa. And if there are rings around the sun that means three days of crap weather for sailing. Heavy seas. But no rings today.

The taxi snakes along the waterfront of Skala. At the end of a row of T-shirt shops and shaded tavernas, theres a boarded-up storefront, plywood sheets where windows once hung. The stone around the wood is scorched black, and fresh flowers are clumped on the ground, torn petals skidding in circles in the wind.

Is that where the bomb went off? I ask.

Yeah, he mutters. Did you see that on the news?

I heard about it in Athens.

Awful, Charlie says flatly. Killed eight people. They beefed up the police presence for a week or two, even brought in the military, but it could have been any island. I used to go there for coffee every morning.

Some Americans were killed, right?

But Charlie isnt listening. Hes staring at the boarded-up shell through the rear window, his lips contorted as if hit with a sudden toothache.

Americans, I say again. Two died. Thats what my taxi driver told me.

What? Charlie looks at me with confusion. His cheerfulness has been replaced with something darker and agitated. He tenses the muscles of his forehead, and when he relaxes them the wrinkles go white. When his voice returns, it sounds far away. Yes. Two American girls. Vacationers. They were about to board the ferry.

Jesus, thats bad luck.

Charlie opens his mouth and keeps it open, like his expression is stuck.

Arent you scared it could happen again? I ask.

No, Im not scared, he says. It could have happened anywhere. Bad luck for anyone who dies like that. And then he snaps, as if Im blaming him for the force luck plays on the world, It has nothing to do with me.

My driver thought it might be some antigovernment contingent.

Charlie drops his hands in his lap and concentrates on the sea out the window. The taxi is twisting along the coast.

Skalas a shithole anyway, he mumbles. Too many tourists tripping over each other and expecting everything to be a postcard. Soulless shithole. Its the hippies that ruined it. I pray I never find religion.

Since the illusion of peace has already been broken, I decide to lay the facts down straight. There is nothing worse than the silence of expectation and all the plotting for the perfect second that never arrives. Plus, with all the August houseguests, Im not sure when Charlie and I will speak again alone.

There is no inheritance, I tell him, my fingers pinching the seam of the vinyl seat. I dont mean to sound pitiful but the pity is there, trembling in the words. I went to see my father the day he died. I was going to ask him for a loan. For the first time I was going to beg him for money because thats how bad things have gotten. And you know Ive never asked him for a cent. But he died before I could, and he left me nothing. I guess I deserve that.

Charlie doesnt react. He continues gazing out at the blur of blue, here and there interrupted by the contrails of a speedboat.

I just wanted you to know my situation.

A minute passes, as if I have been talking passionately about breakfast.

Dont you think were too old to blame our deficits on our parents? he murmurs to the glass. Its a punch Im not expecting, and I hook my fingers around the door handle to steady myself. Charlie, whose whole existence has been paid for by his parents, is lecturing me on financial maturity. In the backseat, I watch the future go dark. He isnt going to help me. And all the money I have is tied to a truck heading in the opposite direction.

I said a loan. I was going to pay him back. Dont worry, Im not here to ask you for a handout either. Forget I mentioned it.

Charlie turns, his lips stiff and pained. Ive seen that look before, on the corners of the Financial District, on the long sidewalks of Fifth and Madison, on every student of Buckland forced to work in a soup kitchen for volunteer credit. It is privilege encountering the mess of the weak, empathy offset with gratefulness. It isnt pride. Pride is meaner and unguarded, sweeping into rooms rather than shrinking from them. This is the look of self-protection. I might as well be raving on about 9/11 in pajama bottoms while holding a cup for spare change. But Charlie makes a fist and taps it against my knee. He stares at me curiously, as if he only remembers my last outburst and not the entire conversation that preceded it. I have forgotten what a bad gauge Charlie has for censoring his thoughts. But I am still afraid of his eyes.

Easy, he says, loosening his lips into a smile. I didnt invite you all the way here so I could shut the door in your face. Things are going to work out. We can talk about it in a day or two. Cant we have a nice time first?

I nod, and he returns to the view.

Youre planning on staying a while, arent you? he asks.

Im here. Here for as long as he wants me. For the rest of the ride we sit in silence, pretending to admire the water.

Excerpted from The Destroyers by Christopher Bollen.

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How a 19-year-old lion fathered 35 cubs in 18 months

Lion tamer at work. Though no evidence is available, the mustachioed man is unlikely to have survived this scene. (Library of Congress, 1873/)

Popular Science’s WILD LIVES is a monthly video series that dives like an Emperor penguin into the life and times of history’s noteworthy animals. With every episode debut on Youtube, we’ll be publishing a story about the featured beasts, plus a lot more fascinating facts about the natural world. Click here to subscribe.

Feature Creature: Frasier the Sensuous Lion

Have you ever wondered about the number of lions at your zoo? You probably don’t think about lion reproduction too much. Well, consider this:

If one female lion in captivity has a litter of cubs and they all survive and breed—for reference: zoo lions can start breeding before their third birthday—and then those offspring all survive and breed, and then the next generation the same, and so on, it would take about 37 years until that one family tree of descendants from that one lioness needed to eat the entire population of Los Angeles every day just to survive.

Dr. Craig Packer, Professor and Head of the Lion Center at the University of Minnesota, originally came up with this thought experiment. He used it as a way to answer a question on if lions have any difficulty breeding in captivity or the wild. Clearly, no panda bear-type pornos are needed to stimulate mating here. This lion factoid came up during a conversation about a lion that actually did take over L.A. That prolific Panthera leo was named Frasier. In the video above, we tell his story.

Let us now praise other famous animals

Below, a collection of fast facts about famous critters.

Question: why does this Peruvian military helicopter emblem have a tiger on it—its tail around a missile—when there are no tigers anywhere in South America? (Tom McNamara/)

Magicians Siegfried and <a href="https://ift.tt/2yKi50i" target=_blank>Roy</a> got their start in 1957 in Germany when Roy, who apparently took care of a <b>cheetah</b> at a local zoo, <i>borrowed</i> the animal and used it as part of the duo’s show. Nearly half a century later, their act came to an end when Roy was attacked by a <b>tiger</b> named Montecore onstage at the Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas.

In 2015, <b>Cecil the Lion</b> was killed by American dentist Walter Palmer. The <a href="https://ift.tt/2YVVIPJ" target=_blank>13-year-old lion</a> was a popular attraction at Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, known for his striking black mane and comfort with tourist vehicles. His fate drew intense news coverage, a flurry of celebrity tweets, and an impassioned monologue from Jimmy Kimmel. <a href="https://ift.tt/2YVVIPJ" target=_blank>Read more. >></a>

In a recent book, <a href="https://amzn.to/2E4SQ8P" target=_blank><i>No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History</i></a>, author Dane Hucklebridge details the surprisingly methodical and incredibly blood machinations of a single <b>Bengal tigress</b>. Between 1900 to 1907, the Champawat man-eater stalked humans living in the villages of southern Nepal and, because tigers know no borders, eventually northern India. Along her route, she killed 435 people, making her perhaps the most murderous non-human animal in recorded history. <a href="https://ift.tt/2D4Kuk7" target=_blank>Read more. >></a>

<b>El Jefe the Jaguar</b> is the last known of his species to be seen in the United States. The <i>Panthera onca</i> was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTC8XdViC5s" target=_blank>spotted in the Santa Rita Mountains near Tucson, Arizona</a>, between 2011 and 2017.

In 2014, I accompanied a scientific expedition to a previously unexplored part of the Peruvian Amazon. When I boarded a military helicopter to get there, I noticed the design on the door pictured above. Why a tiger? There are no tigers anywhere in Amazonia. Well, first, there are no tigers or lions in Detroit, but that doesn’t stop the city from having those animals as their mascots. A member of the expedition clued me in, though, saying that across South America the <b>Amazon Jaguar</b> is often called “tigre” or tiger. And, let’s be honest, the tail around the missile is a nice touch.

Popular Science’s Encyclopedia of Big Cat Facts

The math of tiger stripes:

How’d the tiger get its stripes? MATH! (Pond5/)

Math might be able to predict the tiger’s stripes. Or, more accurately, mathematical rules likely work with biological processes to determine patterns on animals—the leopard’s spots, the horse’s dapples, and, yes, those beautiful black stripes that contour and bend around the tiger’s orange fur.

Famed World War Two codebreaker and British mathematician Alan Turing first theorized in the 1950s that spontaneous patterns emerge when “chemicals [react] together and [defuse] through tissue,” writes Ian Stewart in his 2017 book, The Beauty of Numbers in Nature. These chemicals are also known by another name: morphogens, a term Turning coined. We should think of them as shape creators.

Over half a century later, scientists found support for these theoretical models in the real world. A 2015 study published in Cell Systems used them to take Turing’s theories a step further to explain pattern orientation. Think about it, if math can predict an animal’s spots and stripes, why couldn’t it also tell us why a tiger’s stripes are vertical and an okapi’s stripes are horizontal? The most abstract level of mathematics can play out in the day-to-day lives of the biological world. Read more about the study, this way. >>

The Saber-toothed cat

Los Angeles looked a lot different 10,000 years ago. Teratornis birds, saber-toothed cats, and an extinct species of horse all roamed around the La Brea Tar Pools. Fall in and you’ll be preserved forever! (Field Museum/Charles R. Knight, 1921./)

How long did it take for Smilodon fatalis—the saber-toothed cat—to grow their 7-inch long mouth swords? Well, the extinct feline’s fearsome canine teeth grew at an incredibly quick 6 mm per month, almost twice as fast as human fingernails.

(Oh, and that picture is by way of famed early 20th Century natural history painter Charles R. Knight, who was legally blind. Some of his paintings are hidden like Easter eggs on random walls at The Field Museum in Chicago and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.)

How climate is changing animals

Snow Leopard, <i>Panthera unica</i>. (Joel Sartore/Getty Images/)

This spotted and thick-coated Snow Leopard thrives in a Goldilocks zone between 9,800 to 17,800 feet in altitude across the Tibetan Plateau, a frigid, rocky region that offers wild goats and sheep as prey. But rising temperatures are pushing the zone higher, forcing leopards and their quarry up the slopes, fragmenting their habitats into isolated summits. Rising temps also pull in competing predators like common leopards, which previously avoided the chilly heights in favor of forested hunting grounds at lower elevations. Humans are moving in as well to graze their ­domesticated goats and sheep, which sometimes requires killing cats who get too curious about the flocks. Read more about animals reacting to climate change, this way. >>

Calls of the Wild

East African Cheetah, <i>Acinonyx jubatus jubatus</i>. Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. (Tom McNamara/)

If you had to guess, what sound does a cheetah make? Lions roar. Tigers bellow and growl. And cheetahs…chirp? Yup. They also purr, hiss, bark, and even meow. It turns out, their chirp can mean a lot of things. Females, who are more solitary compared to males, chirp to attract mates. Yet both sexes also chirp when they’re distressed. Males do it if they get split up from their pack—and they chirp in celebration when the crew gets back together again. Same goes for mothers and their cubs. According to the National Zoo, “cheetahs may even be able to identify each other by the sound of their chirps.”

Denzil Mackrory · Cheetah Chirp

And, finally, rabbit holes I went down while researching this video

What’s the lion equivalent of a rabbit hole? “Daniel in the Lions' Den” is a 1614–1616 painting by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. (National Gallery of Art/)

Did you know in the 1970s. actor Tippi Hedren (probably most famous for her role in the Hitchcock classic, <i>The Birds</i>), her husband Noel Marshall, and their whole family lived with 150 untrained wild animals? And filmed it? <i>Roar</i>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi3fz5Dbn6k" target=_blank>released in 1981</a>, became known as “the most dangerous movie ever made”—mostly because 70 members of the cast and crew were injured in its creation. Someone even got their scalp sliced clean off. <i>New Yorker </i><a href="https://ift.tt/2RW2X6o" target=_blank>remembers the film</a> here. The movie is somehow worse than you’re imagining.

This headline from <a href="https://ift.tt/2hV7IhF" target=_blank><i>The Washington Post</i> in 2017</a> says it all: “The strange and deadly saga of 15 circus cats’ final week in America.” Also, this <a href="https://ift.tt/2FZXjx3" target=_blank>history of the Indian circus from Quartz India</a> is fascinating.

Ever wonder what it’d be like to be a lion tamer? OK. Probably not. But one-third of Errol Morris’ 1997 documentary <a href="https://ift.tt/3lqtu9l" target=_blank><i>Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control</i></a> will make you glad you found out about lion tamer Dave Hoover. The other two-thirds of the movie are pretty weird in a good way, too.

After watching the PopSci <a href="https://youtu.be/eK_zmYWHxxo" target=_blank>video short about Frasier the Sensuous Lion</a>, you might start having questions about if it’s ethical to keep wild animals in captivity or not. This <a href="https://ift.tt/3gymgfQ" target=_blank>2007 Radiolab episode</a> about zoos is a must-listen, especially the first segment.

PopSci found out if <a href="https://ift.tt/2EBUq54" target=_blank>a lion could live on veggie burgers</a>. Also, did you know that <a href="https://ift.tt/31AkExU" target=_blank>mountain lions are so scared of humans that the sound of talk radio sends them running</a>?

And, if you can stomach it, you can meet the deadliest cat in the world via <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl8o9PsJPAQ" target=_blank>a PBS Nature clip</a>. It’s intense. Seriously. Turn back now. OK, you’ve been warned.

Subscribe to WILD LIVES on YouTube for more wild stories about animals like Frasier the Sensuous Lion.