#none of the jokes landed for me and at some points it was incredibly predictable like you could guess word for word what someone was going

[abimee]

was wondering why i was hating the writing so bad and found out the creator works on hazbin hotel so it all makes sense now

[heli0s-writes]

II. Solipsis

Summary: Rogers isn’t stupid. Quite the opposite, he’s incredibly perceptive and remarkably intelligent.

It doesn’t matter how you feel about him or how you feel about this situation; there’s only two weeks to let it go. Both of you must relinquish every individual sentiment to each other and obey the system or else the neural handshake collapses and you’re crushed inside a Kaiju’s maw.

A/N: Video reference for Greco-Roman Wrestling. Please do yourself a favor and imagine Steve Rogers owning your ass. 7.8k words.

Warnings: Language. Bucky angst. Tension.

Trinity Epoch Masterpost

You wake around 0500 and flip on the light—a jaundiced splash of color that makes your skin gleam sickeningly yellow. You shake your head, rub your eyes, and try not to linger on last night’s dream.

Lashing rain. A metal shriek. Your world bursting with red.

There’s movement outside the hall—appreciated distractions to rouse you from your thoughts. Footsteps, wheels on smooth concrete, muffled alarms, all sorts of noises clanging around together in the distance. Small comforts of familiarity; you remember how these facilities work.

There’s always something to improve in a Shatterdome. Data to analyze, parts to product and repair, training to be done. From the highest to the lowest position, every single bit needs to run tirelessly like a well-oiled machine.

You will need to as well. The war clock demands it.

You have a maximum of two months to be combat-ready, but you’re not pitching your hopes on that timeline; Kaiju have been known to emerge earlier than K-Science predicts. Rogers broke it down last night: evaluations and endurance building the first week. Sparring the next. Week three will intertwine both more intensely. Week four will be when you face him in front of Fury in the Kwoon Room—prove yourself well-suited to be his co-pilot.

And you had argued shouldn’t we do that earlier? If we’re already not compatible, why waste anyone’s time?

What would waste my time is you fighting me when you’re not ready and throwing the match. You agreed to this, so start acting like it.

Out of all the rattling noises you can hear, his phantom voice rings the loudest.

Drift compatibility doesn’t happen for just any Dick and Jane, and you’re betting on that—but let me tell you again, we’re compatible. Got it?

Fine. Fine. Fine. You’ll keep your thoughts to yourself, but they’re bitter thoughts, truths that he isn’t keen on facing. No, compatibility doesn’t happen for any Dick and Jane. It doesn’t happen much at all.

Most co-pilots are related or coupled for a reason. The potential for alignment is higher with these pairs because they’ve already established a personal connection and know how one another work. There’s history, trust, and something more. Something deep and intrinsic. Something that binds you until you die.

You used to joke that you and Natasha got lucky finding each other at Kodiak. Two misplaced orphans finally given a home in the shape of Decima Red’s Conn-Pod. It was metal and cold, but it was home, even if it was too brief.

Three minutes after waking and the dread has already settled in your gut like debris floating to the bottom of a lake— another layer on top of all that old sludge inside your body but there’s no time to ponder it. You have precisely one hour after breakfast to let your food settle before he joins you in the Combat Room. You brush your teeth and dress.

-

“Again.”

His voice cracks through the quiet space. Fury’s closed it down for today, keeping the session private. The staff in his right hand hovers above your shoulder before it retreats. From behind a wet curl of hair, you glare.

It’s 2015 and you’re back in Kodiak Island. Except this time, instead of sparring with Nat, Steve Rogers is there in all his effortless glory. Clean-shaven, jaw set, stoic, not a single hair out of place. Ruthless.

And it’s not like you’ve been slacking these past two years; you’ve been on army bases, worked on construction sites, did a short stint in security. You’re in shape and you remember how to fight.

But he is ruthless.

1300 and you’ve been whacked in the head, chest, thighs, ankles, back, and up and down both arms. You’ve gotten a few on him. Some good, most laughable. Only six more hours to go and you’re not sure if there will be lunch in-between.

At this point, you’re too tired to think about your burdensome conscience. Too tired to feel anything but tired. It must be a purposeful tactic from him because the less capable you are to think, the less you’ll worry, and the less you’ll feel inclined to dive into Victoria Harbor and swim yourself away.

“Is this your idea of a partnership?” You snarl when your side contracts in agony, an ache burrowing beneath your soaked shirt. You grasp the staff firmly, ignoring way the muscles of your wrists beg you to stop.

“This is my idea of an evaluation. Focus.” He says it calmly, like you’re supposed to be grateful. “You’ll be better for it tomorrow. In a month, you won’t even recognize yourself.”

Well, you’re not grateful. 

“I’d rather not recognize you.”

His grip falters, features flashing amusement at your comment.

You momentarily ponder a few things: the pros and cons being insolent again on the second day when he’s liberally kicking your ass; that the last memorable thing you said to Steve Rogers was fuck you three times in a row; and suddenly, the way he looks with the corner of his mouth turned upward, lips slanting.

Moment over. You take the opening and the tip of your staff stops half an inch from his Adam’s apple, letting it bob up and down. Then, you press it gently to his throat. His lips part, jaw sliding forward incrementally with attitude and another emotion you can’t place.

“I’m hungry,” you assert.

He stops breathing and closes his mouth. When he opens it again, he takes a shallow breath and says, “Alright.”

Taking advantage of your surprise, he immediately seizes the same opportunity you took. His staff pushes against the side of your neck, the cool, smooth wood landing on the slope connecting to your shoulder. The slant of his mouth grows an inch wider. You gulp at the crescent shape of his eyes, bright with mirth.

“Hit the showers,” he says, passive again, “You have one hour for lunch.”

-

No such luck. Not even twenty minutes pass before someone else fucks up your day.

Across the table, a man sits down with his tray, smile wide and handsome. He’s been watching you from the corner of his eye for a few minutes now, probably wondering if he should come over. Other residents of the Shatterdome have been equally inquisitive, but none as bold.

“Saw you go into the fight room with the big guy. I’m surprised you’re alive.” His head tilts forward as he inspects you playfully, “I’m Sam Wilson.”

You remember your manners, no matter how exhausted you are, and extend your hand, “Good to meet you, Sam Wilson, but I’m not sure about being alive yet.”

An understanding laugh, “Can’t help noticing you’re new. Steve training you for something?”

You shrug, sidestepping his inquiry, “You a pilot?”

Sam Wilson is polite enough to follow your path. “Yeah. Avis Dominion—the flyest girl in the game—that’s me and Riley.”

You know of Avis Dominion. Maroon and silver, propulsion rockets attached to her ankles. She doesn’t fly, of course, but she’s lithe and graceful, the jets giving her quick bursts of speed. Avis has particle dispersal cannons on her back, firing plasma charged ion rails to wound and cauterize. She’s simply incredible, and Sam beams expectantly.

“Think I’ve heard of her,” you respond, lightened by his humor.

Suddenly, a pair of heavy bootsteps pulls your attention sideways. Not even twenty minutes and Rogers is marching forward, hands clenched in fists by his side, mouth pressed into a worried and thin line. Wilson doesn’t even have the chance to greet him before Rogers stops by your hunched-over form.

“He’s up.”

And the partly chewed bite in your mouth threatens to turn sour.

He’s up means he wants to talk to you. And you couldn’t have avoided it forever, but you fantasized that meeting James Barnes might be put off indefinitely.

He’d been in and out of consciousness since last night, lucid enough to speak and question his state, enough to raise hell when he looked down at his left side, and certainly enough to thrash himself open and bloody and needing to be sedated again.

You run your hand through your hair, grip it tightly for a second out of frustration, and finally rise. You’re an eloquent orator in a pinch, so, you groan.

“Fucking fuck me.”

-

Back at the table, Steve’s attention never leaves the way you uncomfortably walk down the hall. To his left, Sam’s leg bounces impatiently because Bucky’s injury still hasn’t been announced and CNN has called the facility every six hours since they landed post-battle. Everyone has questions and suspicions, and Sam’s last three minutes of snooping wasn’t enough to glean a clear answer.

“Steve, man—what is going on?”

Steve looks gravely back at Sam, watchfully inspecting his expression as he admits, “That was Decima Red’s former pilot.”

A beat passes. Sam blinks once, then twice, and then his eyes fly open.

“Decim—shit— Anchorage 2017? Natasha Romanoff?” Sam clamps his mouth shut, at a loss for words, outraged and impressed all at once.

Decima Red’s story is one of those tales Rangers pass around a campfire—or in their case, a boiler room. Natasha Romanoff was a stiletto dagger— elegant and lethal and blood red. She would show up to events like a goddess, always stunning and magnetic and she never took a bad picture. Sam met her once, at some award show where he had too much champagne and Riley asked him to kindly stop drooling on the pretty lady.

He’s never met her co-pilot until now and he’s not sure if anyone outside The Icebox has. Romanoff would laugh it off when reporters would ask. She’d say her partner’s camera shy and doesn’t like crowds. Then her long lashes would flutter, her sly smile glittering, and men would drop like Kaiju in the ocean.

She was extraordinarily skilled and beautiful.

So when Decima Red washed up as a devastated heap on Anchorage’s shore with only one pilot, no one thought it would be her partner who survived. Romanoff handled the right side, after all. She was the dominant one. The stronger one.

Sam shakes his head, “Steve, what the hell are you up to? Where the hell did you find her? How--”

The slew of queries slowly tapers out as Sam lights up in understanding. But it’s a joyless light and he shakes his head again, dismayed. “You’re recruiting her. She’s replacing Barnes.”

“Yeah,” Steve frowns deeply. The truth always sounds worse from an outsider’s point of view but he didn’t expect much else because it sounds bad in his head, too.

“He’s gonna hate her,” Sam mutters, cracking a joke because if Steve’s had to bring in a new Ranger, it means that Bucky’s more hurt than they’d thought. And the two of them? Closest co-pilots he’s ever had the pleasure to meet.

Their drift was immaculate. Absolutely seamless. As if they were brothers—as if they were twins. And that’s not even – look, Sam Wilson knows some twins. There’s a pair here in Hong Kong and even their connection is nothing like Steve and Bucky’s.

From the moment they step into their drivesuits to the very last blow they land in combat, you’d think they were one single person spliced into two like a damn science fiction novel. The simple sight of Rogers and Barnes walking into the Jaeger bay was uncanny and nearly an act of God. They moved the same. They breathed the same.

Sam knows what happened to Bucky, and what Steve must do in its aftermath, must be killing him.

-

James Barnes is upright in bed, sheets around his waist, right fist over his thigh. He hasn’t said anything or even looked at you yet and in the strained silence, you find yourself absurdly craving the fight room. At least you know what to expect in there.

Outside of his Ranger biography—which is public knowledge—you know nothing about him. Barnes is reserved on T.V. and in interviews. Having grown up with his co-pilot, their biographies are eerily similar, and so he rarely slips out from Rogers’ shadow and is rarely anything more than stoic. He smiles for the camera, sure—real big and pretty—but never quite true.

It unsettles you. Here sits some kind of modern-day Achilles, heel pierced and torn through-- still more powerful than you.

You shift your weight from one foot to the other when his eyes flicker over to your boots before darting to your face, a quiet breath leaves him. His left shoulder jerks and you look away, tense and apprehensive, not wanting to stare.

A few curious seconds pass before his right hand shakily rises to run through his hair. His fingers tremble as he pinches dark strands, jaw ticking, and you realize James Barnes just had that moment—that moment—when he catches himself trying to use his left arm.

And you know there will be many more of those.

“Jesus...” he mutters, breaking reticence with a venomous hiss, “Fuck!”

Your tired body takes the impact of his words like a car crash. The fight has fled your heart at the sight of him and you’re left regurgitating all those jumbled-up-worse words every Jaeger pilot vomits sooner or later:

You owe a debt. You need it paid. He can’t take it personally. This is neither about you nor him.

“Look,” you begin apologetically, “I didn’t— this wasn’t my idea.”

“I know that,” Barnes retorts, scrubbing his face with the heel of his palm, the skin of it scratching against his chin and jaw. He’s grown a bit of stubble, his usual smoothness replaced by a grey-green shadow. He props himself up with his right arm, legs swinging over the edge of the bed.

“Maybe you don’t think you can do this,” he snorts derisively, “But you better.”

His line of sight is fixed on the floor, right arm flexing with the pressure he exerts on the poor mattress and you watch the way his muscles ripple up into the shade of his sleeve. When he turns to you after a deep breath, his face—sharp cheeks and dignified brow; tall, straight nose bridge; strong jaw and his distinctly wide lips—is fatal.

“Personally, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about who gets into the robot as long as when your fucking feet hit the rig, you’re one-hundred-percent in.”

Barnes’ eyes are piercingly blue. They’re reflective like frosted gunmetal. Cold.  Hard. He bares his teeth.

“If there is even one tiny bit of you that doesn’t believe you can, and in the middle of the drift you chase that rabbit, and you get him killed?” His mouth is a wide and devastating slant. “I will dig your corpse out of the Pacific Ocean--”

The door slams open with a crash. Rogers barrels inside with a cafeteria tray of food in hand. They stare at each other before Barnes shoots him an annoyed look and suddenly the threat from only seconds ago disappears with a blink of his silver-blue irises.

“You ruined my moment, Steve.” He states plainly, grabbing at the tray. He gives you a look— half of an amused quirk, tongue flicking at the point of his canines— and then tucks into the meal, moving the platter with his knee. You’re staggered.

It’s silent other than the sound of his chewing, rhythmic and carefree. He even folds a square bit of napkin inside the neck of his shirt to catch crumbs and you’re helplessly trying to reconcile that this is the same person who just promised you he’d find your dead body 10 thousand miles underwater.

The more time passes between his verbal gutting and his cheerful eating, the more your sympathy rots.

A pop of his blue Jello container opening and you snap.

“You know I just fucking got here, right? You—” your finger jabs accusingly at Rogers, “kicked my ass all day, and you—” your finger turns to Barnes, who stops slurping midway, “—sorry about your arm, that’s not my fucking fault—"

“Hey—” Rogers warns, stepping forward, hand out to derail the impending shouting match.

“No. Fuck you, Rogers.” He stumbles back with the force of your two-handed push on his chest, stunned at how quickly you leapt from the wall, “I agreed to it already, assholes. Maybe it’ll help your cause a little to not keep pissing off the other half of the fucking robot.”

And because you’re both incensed and starved from having lunch interrupted, you yank Barnes’ Jello from his shocked-slax grip and shake it into your mouth. A loud crinkle fills the otherwise silent room when you fiercely throw it into the trash bin and stomp off.

All the atmosphere gets eaten up by your temper. It’s silent like a black hole, nothing but the receding clomps of your irritation in the distance.

Bucky waits for your footsteps to pass before he begins to laugh, bright and astounded, quick puffs of air passing over his lips. He looks at his hand, still out in front of his chest, fingers curled around nothing. He looks at the trash bin by the door, plastic liner crumpled inward with the force of your arm.

He looks at Steve, standing with his hands uselessly by his side, an array of emotions passing over his face. He’d been calm—really, really calm—kept it pushed down and pacified, but it’s just the two of them now, and Steve looks like he could cry when he sees Bucky’s shoulder. He looks like he could level the Shatterdome.

“I’m fine.” Bucky says, rolling his eyes dramatically, humor gone. “Quit your blubbering.” He tilts his head towards the open door, “She’s tough, like you said.”

Decima Red’s pilot, the one who brought her skeleton back to Anchorage through a storm, of course she’d be. When Steve proposed it— explained it to him, practically wheeled out a chalkboard so Bucky could see his whole plan—Bucky was pissed. He’d just lost a fucking arm, after all. And now he was losing his fucking robot. 

But he slept on it, thought about it some, knew Steve was right.

He trusted Steve. Always have, always will. Whoever Steve decided on needed to be more than just tough. Steve needed reliability. Conviction.

They needed to match that Rogers persistence. Stubborn. Smart. Torn open by guilt and walking around with the world on their shoulders as if it’s their burden alone.

Yeah. It’s perfect.

Bucky looks at the blue specks of Jello clinging to his fingertips and sighs, “You’re gonna have to break her.”

Steve nods. He knows.

-

Time blurs as routine gives way to monotony.  

Your sanity is precariously tethered to lunches and dinners between psych evals and full-body exams. In the two weeks you’ve been here, maybe there’s been one rest day. You hoard what comfort you can from the time you limp from the fight room to the second your back hits the mattress to the bedside alarm blaring. 

Ephemeral relief also trickles in by way of conversations with other inhabitants of the facility.

The rest of Hong Kong’s STRIKE team take to your presence well enough. Co-pilots Wilson and Riley; the Maximoff twins, Wanda and Pietro; cousins from Wakanda, Erik and T’Challa; Odinson brothers, Thor and Loki.

They’re supportive and encouraging, but certainly not naïve. They keep their distance, the entire thing like a caged animal they can view, but not interact with wholly. You’re here as James Barnes’ tentative replacement, still just a prospect before anyone can entertain the idea of becoming attached to you.

Not to mention, you’re a deserter. Fucked off from the Ranger life and went off the grid. Most co-pilots died together—which was the honorable thing to do—and the rare few who are unlucky enough to survive at least come back to their Shatterdomes to continue their righteous work. You understand why they’re guarded.

Sam Wilson is the one person most willing to ignore all that, it seems. He hunts you down in the dining hall, finds you on morning runs, is kind and easy-going. He grabs an extra tray when you’re hobbling into lunch and plays basketball with you when you’re well enough to amble around the court.

He keeps you grounded with reminders: Rogers is a hard ass, but look—past that, he’s just a dude, you know? Trying his best to keep it all together—and there’s a lot to keep. Shit… you seen this place. I couldn’t do it.

The whole world wants to suck his dick, Wilson. You too?

Appreciate you, but man’s not my type. But hey, I’m just sayin’—maybe the world’s onto something.

You get a laugh, and you get to complain to at least one sympathetic ear about how Rogers seems adamant on turning you into a blood bag, or how Barnes is gleefully spectating, or how Fury is willfully ignorant. You get at least one person in your corner when Rogers yells at you for mouthing off—for fighting him in a wrong way—again.

You wish you were jogging the perimeter with Sam now, but this morning there’s only persistent torture.

Apparently today is, once again, exclusively about kicking your ass.

The rules are: no kicks, no punches, nothing below the waist. Traditional wrestling only, which means your hands can barely get halfway around him before he takes you to the mat effortlessly.  

All morning you’ve been pinned. Shoulders and waist constantly under his palms, flipped sideways and upside down. His reach is longer. His hold is stronger.

Barnes stands against the wall, shoulder in a sling, observing with amusement. Sometimes he clucks his tongue. Other times he smirks. He walks in and out like he’s at the movies. Fucker.

You cuss when you land on the mat for the hundredth time. The wet smear of your forehead glistens when you roll over, clutching your side. You’d woken up this morning feeling alright, taking to heart some of Sam’s advice, attempting to be understanding a little more each day, but with the way this session’s going, you’re headed for a backslide.

Your legs are shaking. Too hot all over even with your pants rolled up and shirt knotted at your hip. You plant your feet stubbornly, pacing around Rogers. A touch too soon, a weave too late. He slams you on the floor.

“This is—fuck!” you scream, “—a fucking unbalanced fight, Rogers!”

“I know,” he responds from above you, a single bead of sweat collecting on his placid brow. He gets up, yanking you along, and watches you try again. 

Two seconds pass before he’s hooked, biceps locking beneath your chest, spinning you through the air, and coming down hard on top of your back. Another crash into the mat, another muffled scream of pure, helpless rage.

You’ve had it. It’s been hours of his domination and your humiliation. You’re done with wrestling and done with him. Your knees and hips dig into the plastic, fury stoking the fight, fully intending on throwing him off but he shifts immediately. His chest presses into your spine, thigh flexed diagonal over both of yours.

“Don’t.” He says, shallow breaths heavy over the top of your head.

“Get off me, asshole! You’re too fucking big to wrestle with—I’m not Barnes!”

Rogers only grunts and bears down until you’re motionless and gasping beneath him. The air is hot, too hot. Scorching waves roll from your body, between his chest and your back, scalding with heat and embarrassment.

Your cheek drives into the plastic, burning with submission. Early stinging of pre-emptive tears prickles your eyes as frustration comes to a head, seizing your body and mind, and you feel up to your throat in despair. Anger makes you want to thrash but weakness makes you obedient. There’s nothing to be done but clench your fists and bite it back, swallow the tears, chew your lip bloody.

He is too big and too strong and too overpowering.

It was different wrestling with Natasha; you were closer in size and well-matched. It was a good recreation of what Kaiju combat may be if ranged weapons were to fail. She’d be the Kaiju, you the Jaeger. Then you’d switch. It felt like preparation.

This doesn’t. This feels like a setup for failure. This feels like a lesson.

And suddenly, you shut your eyes. God damn him. God damn him. God damn him.

Allowing insight to cool your temper, you stop resisting and go slack. Your fists unclench, head dropping to lay on your sweat-slick forearm. Surrender vibrates through your chest, tremors undulating to the rhythm of his breathing. 

You’ve figured it out. 

Rogers lets off some pressure and you can finally take a good breath. Slowly, he moves. His weight carries to one side of his torso, then his knees and he rocks off you, rising.

His hand splays over your shoulder blade, thumb pushing gently against the back of your neck before he hoists you up by the collarbone. It’s a delicate grasp as opposed to his previous ones. Calloused finger pads avoid the bruising on your shoulder from old hits.

Barnes looks on as his hand curls over your bicep, melting around the shape of your muscles, vice-like but merciful. The heat of your body becomes indistinguishable from his as he props you securely.

“You understand?” He asks gently, “Why it’s an unbalanced fight?”

His brow furrows, earnest blue eyes respectfully apologetic, searching yours for acknowledgement and perhaps forgiveness. You press your lips together tightly.

Of course you do.

He’s breaking you piece by piece until you’re malleable and pliant, willing to surrender your ego and give yourself over to a force much larger than your personal reality. You haven’t vocalized rebellion since the second day, and many days have passed, but it’s obvious how you struggle against the current.

Rogers isn’t stupid. Quite the opposite, he’s incredibly perceptive and remarkably intelligent.

It doesn’t matter how you feel about him or how you feel about this situation; there’s only two weeks to let it go. You can’t hold onto your pride, your resentment, or your reservations about any of it in the con-pod, and you can’t have one single fleeting thought about failure.

Both of you must relinquish every individual sentiment to each other and obey the system or else the neural handshake collapses and you’re crushed inside a Kaiju’s maw.

Barnes was right: you’re either one hundred percent in, or you’ll get him killed. So in today’s simulation, no, you’re not the Jaeger and Rogers isn’t the Kaiju.

He is the drift. It’s equal parts cruel and effective.

Today’s session is a reminder. When you fight the drift, it will take you down hard and fast, there’s no changing that. Only in silence will it support you, and only in silence will it keep you alive.

“Do you understand?” He says again, in a whisper. His lips are parted, turned down solemnly. “You can’t push back. Do you understand?”

Sam Wilson’s petition for Steve Rogers’ character echoes.

He’s just a dude. Trying his best to keep it all together. And there’s a lot to keep.

You manage a nod despite the aching throb of your skull. Shame crawls up your arms, erupting beneath the clutch of his fist. You nod. You’ve learned your lesson. Of course you understand.

-

After that, everything seem to flatten itself out. You heed Sam’s words, bitterness chipping away in the patient flow of Rogers’ direction until it becomes smooth like a time-worn pebble. You no longer fight the slipstream of your situation and rather become more mindful of his labor-- more appreciative.

You can either be a fatalist and fixate on how much you’d rather not be here, or, like he said, you can get on board.

If Barnes is a modern-day Achilles, Rogers might as well be the Hercules. Some radiant demi-god tasked with backbreaking labours in the form of beast-slaying. Unlike Hercules though, he’s all mortal, burdened even worse with mortal toils.

You might as well not be yet another thing that gets him killed in the end. It’d be further hell on your conscience and Barnes would personally scalp you, anyway.

So you iron out your attitude and grow friendly, and on a Thursday morning, he shows up with his hands tucked into his pockets. Barnes is to his side, matching in posture, his new prosthetic arm gleaming black and gold.

“Ready?”

They walk in conjunction. Left foot, right foot, hips following a perfect cadence.

His blonde head turns back at you with an expectant grin, “You excited?”

A snort, “You’ve dangled it in front of me for weeks. What do you want to hear, huh?”

There’s no offense in your words, only a hint of mischief because you’ve discovered the joy taunting him brings. Amusement in the form of riling him up because he’s surprisingly easy to rile, because there’s many ways to do it, and because you’re a damn fast learner.

Steve Rogers might be athletic and quick, but he’s terrible at guarding his legs. It makes his cheeks flush when you repeatedly strike his thighs and even more so when Barnes cackles from the corner. It’s infinitely better than any entertainment you can buy.

He gets you back, though, biding his time until your jogs, then laps you twice to keep you humble. The best kinds of friendships are built off torment, besides. You’re hopeful.

“I’m not convinced you’re excited,” he sings now, stopping abruptly so that you bump into his back with a grunt of surprise.

Barnes smirks, “He gets you every time. It’s sad.” Cheeky bastards, but they pick up the pace again, threading through the hallways.

They’re finally taking you on a proper tour of the Shatterdome. Four weeks and you still need a map to get around. They’ve kept you from wandering, kept others from being your guide, kept you on your fucking toes because they’re absolute little shits.

It’s friendship.

The first stop is the enormous Jaeger hangar. 

Stretching on and back, it’s a mess of moving parts and electricity. Cranes up and down, engineers and workers in constant motion. They walk you across the main bridge of the perimeter, taking leisurely steps to let you catch your dazed breath and absorb the view. 

The anticipation was clever provocation on his part, created in jest, but the sight of it now in front of you feels like a kick to the teeth. Your teasing demeanor drops.

The Mark-3’s are beautiful despite their conditions. Scratched and dented, wind-bleached in places, but all gorgeous and exclusively equipped to best fit their Rangers. Titanium cores, angel wings, plasma casters. Assault mount sting-blades, K-Stunner warheads, sentry treads. The list of features running on and on and on.

Unique traits for unique pilots.

Pain strikes your heart.

Decima’s Crocus-9 reactor core was uranium powered and instead of angel wings or blades, she had extendable plasma batons. You and Natasha amputated six Kaiju with them. A 1700-ton ballerina, she was created to fit your partnership’s style— brutal but dexterous. The fight was always good in Decima—always, always, good.

You’ll never have that with Orion. You’ll never have that with Rogers.

In the distance, voices shout and echo over gears and metal joints. Forklifts whirr and beep, personnel scrambling like dedicated worker ants.

Two years without Decima and Natasha. Over seven hundred days and each one felt too long, stretched, infinite, miserable. Waking up was just another twenty-four hours to bury like how you buried Nat. But now, here you stand—returned to the front of the continued Jaeger Program that’s moved on without her, and the last two years comes to crush you in a tidal wave all at once.

You feel powerless, distraughtly wishing you were back in your Jaeger. You wish you were stronger than you are— wish you could take on the tidal wave.

“Hey,” Barnes calls, urging you forward his perceptive, sharp eyes. “Stay with us.”

You quell the hurt and keep up.

At the end of the ramp, Tony Stark teeters on a crane. His face is covered by a thick iron mask and he’s welding something tiny on Orion Bravo’s left flank. Over the banging machinery and screeching blades of metal on metal, he yells, “Good to finally meet you, kid!”

You don’t get a chance to holler back. 

“Gotta say, Decima was one of my personal favorites,” and you flinch.

Nobody notices. Life moves on. Tony Stark does so even faster. 

“Still damn proud of her after all these years! I know exactly where she is in Oblivion Bay—if this—” he gestures vaguely to the three of you on the walkway, “—doesn’t work out, let me know and I can go get your girl. Sure, her chest’s all ripped out—” he motions to his pecs, and you recoil each time his blowtorch sizzles past, “—and I’d be breaking my back to get those pieces right— but hey, a little boob job isn’t gonna hurt anyone. If you ask me, people could use more of ‘em!”

You’re speechless. You finally meet the Tony Stark—the genius mind behind every single Jaeger. His endless vat of brilliance designed them, breathed them to life, equipped and armed them, made them perfect, and— boob job?

“What?” You whisper, feeling your entire body drain of warmth.

Rogers tucks his chin to his chest in an attempt to hide his smile. Barnes speaks up, dismantling the silence of your shock with strategic and considerate intention. He snorts a clipped sound at Stark and says simply, “He’s on speed. Don’t listen to him.”

Life is moving on all around you in rushes of sound and color. The noises of the Jaeger hangar blare in your ears. The blues of Barnes and Rogers’ eyes flash like lighthouse beams and you feel yourself ebb and flow in the current of time, like a buoy floating toward the shore, and suddenly— strangely— you realize you’re laughing.

They share looks before grinning themselves. You wipe the corners of your eyes with a final smirk and run your hands through your hair.

-

He was right: you hardly recognize yourself. Monotony has come and pass and now you find comfort in the routine. You’re stronger, too, hitting harder and moving faster, matching his tempo and technique. You parry his every punch, slip from his grasp, deflect his force with your skill.

There’s louder talk in the Shatterdome the closer you get to proving day. Your presence no longer feels uncertain.

“Stop dicking around, Steve.”

Barnes is leaning against the wall, watching the way Rogers pads around you like a panther. Two long strides and the heavy staff comes down an inch away from your forehead. He spins it in one hand like a drumstick, kicking his legs leisurely as if you’re no threat at all.

“Point,” Barnes comments. He’s acting as judge today, another perspective on the potential of compatibility. The Kwoon Room’s got your name on it next to a time slot, the official fight scheduled for tomorrow when you’ll be proving yourself in front of a crowd.

Rogers backs up with a chuckle, goes right too carefully, and you land on his thigh in retaliation. The smack sounds like it hurts. A few feet away, the Maximoff twins pause their sparring to look over in amusement.

“Point.”

A huff, he hisses between his teeth at the sting. “This how you wanna play?”

A return whack on your arm rings out before you can respond- much harder than you hit him originally. It burns. Steve fucking Rogers. Oh, you wanna play.

“Point. Hey, careful.”

You slap his bicep with your staff and it leaves a red welt on his skin.

“Watch it. You’re gonna mark each other up.”

He returns it to your lower back and you hit him next in the same spot. His mouth opens indignantly, but Barnes has had enough of childishness, coming up behind him and yanking the back of his head. Quick as a whip, he kicks Rogers’ knees out and picks up the weapon, aiming it at you menacingly.

His arm glimmers like a warning beacon.

“Drop it, sweetheart.” And you grin. 

Sweetheart. Barnes only says it when he’s feeling fully annoyed, which, both you and Rogers are particularly good at making him. If drift compatibility could be determined by how much two people can piss off another one, Orion would be looking at a new pilot right the fuck now.

You put both hands up in the air in mock surrender and he rolls your staff away with his foot. Rogers is on his back, chuckling and rubbing the back of his knees.

“Isn’t it obvious the two of you are suited?” Wanda speaks up from the corner.

Pietro stands by her side, fists wrapped in bandages on his hips. “Three of you, truly.”

“It’s just formality,” Rogers replies to Wanda, “Fury wants what he wants.”

“What Fury wants is for the two of you to get in the robot.”

From the shadows, because he’s a dramatic son of a bitch, the marshal steps forward. You immediately fix your posture, pulling Rogers up by the hand until he stretches himself tall next to you.

“I’ve seen what I needed to see.” The marshal looks you up and down, standing stiffly next to your awaiting co-pilot. “An estimated three weeks before the next breach and time is of the essence, Rangers.” He pulls his wrist from his sleeve and taps on the leather watch rhythmically, not bothering to give any of you another glance as he sweeps himself from the room.

“Hangar. Suit up five minutes ago.”

In his wake, your harried expression says it all: I’m not ready—I don’t think can. Your eyes frantically find them, emotions spiraling out of control, panicked and shaken. There is a logic to formality—you’re still working yourself up for the fight. You were supposed to have more time to prepare for the next part. Twelve hours or not, that’s still time.

But you’re being thrown into the cockpit now.

They compose themselves for your sake, all hints of levity gone. There’s determination and severity in their expressions.

In unison, because they know each other in ways you don’t yet, because they’ve been in each other’s heads, two pairs of controlled blue reply: You can. You must.

-

Rogers stares at your chin in the Drivesuit room, both stripped down to your underwear. His muscles are sweat-slick, dappled rose with exertion as the two of you shove your limbs into new skin until you’re encased in black circuitry. Technicians zip the first layer up, then retreat to other cabinets with haste.

Your hands are balled into fists, mouth set grimly as you fight the urge to scream or crumble. It’s been two years since you’ve been in battle armor. Even worse, it’s been two years since you’ve been in someone else’s head.

The polycarbonate shell gets snapped on. The spinal clamp sinks its hooks in. 

He steps forward, geared up in matching polished white. The technicians nod and leave the two of you to privacy knowing that in just a few moments there will be none left; the entire hangar will be an audience.

“Hey,” he calls, voice low and rigid, “You’ve done this before—you know how it works. It’s just a test run. No rabbits. No modesty reflex. Got it?”

The biggest setback to the neural handshake—besides chasing rabbits—mistakes made by rookies and greener Rangers, are what PPDC psychologists call the “modesty reflex”. It’s the instinctive shielding of personal information during a drift, cluttering your thoughts with barriers to keep someone out, and the exact thing that will shut down any chance of alignment. 

Simply put, it’s about sex.

“You just eye-fucked me in there. I think we’re past modesty.” A useless attempt at a joke to soothe your rattled mind. Sex is the lowest on the totem pole of things you give a fuck about in the drift. There’s nothing Rogers could learn about you that he likely hasn’t ever thought or experienced for himself. You’re both adults. Sex is merely biology.

He takes the helmets off their stands, holding one to you. Your fingers curl underneath and press tightly into the molding to keep themselves from shaking.

“It’s Tasha,” you whisper with a tremble, “I’ll find her in the drift. And—”

The admission makes him swallow, thick and nervous. You mean to say, and you’ll find Barnes.

It’s a trauma that’s been seared into his brain—a cruel truth to air—but it’s true all the same. The worry is that once you see Nat, he’ll see Barnes, and you’re afraid that after all this time avoiding her memory, you won’t be able to let her go again. Your weakness will dislodge his focus, ruin the drift, tear apart the alignment. Tear yourself apart along with it.

You’re afraid.

He’s still holding onto the other side of your helmet. His grip is tighter and firmer, and it keeps you steady enough.

“You can’t chase her,” he urges, “But if you do, I’ll come find you.”

He sounds sure, and you nod for both your sakes.

-

A hundred people stand in wait, hands on their hips in anticipation as Steve enters the cockpit with you by his side. Sparse clapping begins behind the glass. Engineers, flight crew, technicians, Rangers. Bucky is next to the LOCCENT officer, Shuri, at her monitors, watching electrical impulse levels rise and fall.

He’s spent all month with you, mentoring in some ways, giving space in others. He meant it on that god-awful hospital bed—get Steve killed and Bucky’s wrath would move heaven and earth to wreak vengeance. Steven Grant Rogers, his whole life being Bucky’s responsibility, now placed into two hands that are not his.

He looks at his left arm, the Stark-made prosthetic leering up at him like an excruciating reminder. Not his. Not his. He looks to the blue screen, projecting lines of data. Two bodies slowly arranging into one. One similar, one—not his.

He wants to trust you. He’s learning to trust you. Bucky squeezes his eyes shut and grits his teeth.

-

The rig locks in place. Feet, shoulders, arms, backs. It’s comforting and jarring, facing the flickering projections of the heads-up display, seeing the skeleton of Orion Bravo so similar yet so alien from Decima’s. You don’t dare look to your right, don’t dare think about Nat’s face over his.

You miss her, god damn it, you miss her. A panicked breath. A low, quiet, whine you hardly register as yourself.

Shuri’s voice comes over the speaker. Her usual cheery tone has been replaced with firmer speech, all business, “Orion, are you ready?”

Rogers mouths calm down and punches the corresponding buttons. He gives you a nod and you return it in good faith. Calm down.

“Initiating Neural Handshake in three—” Shuri activates the system, “—two—” Electricity shoots up your spinal column.

The first rip of immersion is searing hot and freezing cold. You try to remind yourself you’ve done this before, that you know what to expect. It’s been done—yes—and it’s been done well.

Trust the drift. The drift is silence.

Your thoughts subdue as the first tendrils of Steve’s consciousness bleed into yours in the form of red-bricked alleyway and summertime. There’s a sweet breeze rushing over your face before time slows and the seconds stretch into years.

A silver bicycle. His feet on the metal pegs. Barnes, plump-faced and pink-nosed from sunshine, grinning and whooping. Seven and eight. On top off the world.  “—two—“

Past and present cease to exist. You’re in the sun, too. They’re older now. Thirteen, fourteen. Bruised from street fighting, sharing popsicles as both a treat and an icepack.

All at once, it comes. 

Art school, army, academy. Graduation, first drift, first drop. Barnes by his side every step of the way. They laugh, they cry. Flashes too highspeed to be wholly memory, but you feel it flooding and soaking your brain. You feel it like intuition. It burns. It chills. It’s gone. “—two—”

His hands become your hands. His body, your body. He’s swimming in your every thought. A flash of crimson streaks through your line of vision. You impulsively turn to face it. “—one—”

Hey! Let it go. It’s your voice and his voice blended. You listen, flinching at the abrupt sound, knee-jerk reactions firing off, fear beginning to chew at the center of your brain, spreading out slow and thick.

Don’t chase the rabbit. “—one—”

A figure appears at your side, tall and quiet. He’s half torn open, red like Nat, with big, ghostly irises peering down and you hear yourself calling his name:

Bucky?

Don’t! Steve demands, don’t look, please. I can’t— I can’t either. You quiet your pounding heart at his pleading, forcing the image from your mind.

Trust the drift.

Steve continues to sink in like a palm running from the edge of your temple to the back of your skull, tugging your head toward the blue sky of his eyes. It feels like his hand— it feels like your hand. Your body lifts, weightless, secured only by a single hold. He’s everywhere, inside your muscles, your pulse, your heartbeat, like he’s been a part of you your entire life. Like the way Natasha used to feel, he’s vivid and alive, thoroughly woven through.

Okay?

The two of you look each other without looking at each other. A nod of his head— your head— vaguely registered as real movements.

Shuri returns both of you to time’s fixed pace. Her voice lifts the trance.

“—Neural Handshake complete.”

Steve’s right arm moves forward. Yours continues the motion. Orion brandishes its shield in salute.

The drift is silent, but the entire facility has erupted into cheers.

-

“Yes! It’s good!” Shuri exclaims from her seat. A loud exhale followed by victorious punches at the air and she can’t help grinning so big her face begins to ache.

She looks over at Bucky, standing with a smile, both proud and pained, and places a gentle palm on his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he says calmly, eyes still shut. “It’s good.”

[evilrubberducke]

IzuMina week Day 1- To Save an Emerald

Yeah, I’m a day late on this one. I blame the pandemic. On the plus side, this means you’re getting a double update from me today.

This is based on the day 1 prompt “Protection”

On a side note, I now have an actual EvilMuffinLord blog here on Tumblr. If you follow me for Mina content, you might want to switch your follow over to there. I’ll keep posting Mina stuff on this blog for the rest of IzuMina week, but after that I’ll switch over to the new one, and leave this for other fandoms/personal blogging.

Read it on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23298604

Or on FF.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13530836/1/IzuMina-Week-2020

Mina stood in the center of her dorm room, decked out in her pajamas with her phone in hand, contemplating making the worst decision of her life. The number was already punched in, staring back at her from the screen as if to taunt her into going through with it. All she had to do was make the call.

She honestly couldn’t believe the circumstances that had brought her to this point. They were so outlandish that if she had read them in a book, she would have dismissed it immediately for being too unrealistic.

-

Just a few short months ago she had rocked up to UA, flushed with victory from completing the entrance exam. She’d done an absolutely awesome job, placing just high enough to land her in class 1A. The experience had been absolutely hellish, and she had spent the week afterward hoping against hope that her performance had been enough to sneak by.

Being able to parade her acceptance letter around had been entirely worth it though. No one could believe what an excellent job she had done in getting in, and she’d been insufferable in her victory for nearly a week afterwards. Her father and brother had deserved it too, the doubters.

Then her first actual day at UA had arrived, and hit Mina like a ton of bricks. It was an experience unlike any she had been through before. She had looked up photos and videos of the school beforehand, but it was so much different to actually stand on its grounds and look up at the towering main building. Sure, she’d seen it during the entrance exam, but she’d been far too preoccupied at the time to really take in the spectacle. Now she had the time to really be wowed, and she was taking full advantage.

The grounds were absolutely immaculate, the shrubbery perfectly trimmed and not a trace of trash to be seen anywhere. That was probably a side benefit of UA having a budget the size of a small prefecture. They could throw around money for a bit of spectacle.

That same spectacle had led to her meeting Izuku just before class had begun. She’d been in the midst of checking out a collage of famous UA alumni battling equally notorious villains, searching for anyone she knew, when he had crashed into her and sent them both sprawling.

Izuku had, predictably, apologized profusely for his mistake and offered to do anything to make it up to her. Mina had tried to brush it off as a simple mistake, but he had been so insistent that she had eventually agreed to let him buy her a drink. If he hadn’t been so awkward and oblivious about the whole affair, she might have thought he had engineered the whole encounter in order to hit on her.

To her surprise, she’d actually enjoyed talking to him while they sipped on their drinks. Once he had gotten over his initial awkwardness, he’d proven to be incredibly enthusiastic about getting into UA and training to be a hero. Mina had been delighted to learn that he was in the same class as her, giving her a head start on getting to know the students she’d be training with. He’d practically keeled over when she had offered to be his friend and exchange numbers, which had actually made her giggle a little bit. He reminded her of a puppy, so eager to please that he was tripping over himself as he did so.

The rest of the day hadn’t gone quite so well. Aizawa was exactly the kind of hardass that Mina hated, lording his power over the class for shits and giggles. She’d placed high enough that she didn’t have to worry about getting eliminated, but watching him berate the lower scoring students had really ground her gears.

Especially when it came to Izuku. It was obvious to everyone that he was trying his best, but Aizawa seemed to have latched onto him in particular as a target. It was hard for Mina to keep up a smile as she watched him spiral lower and lower throughout the day. 

Thankfully, he’d managed to stick it out in the end, and Aizawa had proved himself to be a hypocritical ass, calling himself a hero while lying and berating his students. Mina had to admit, seeing Izuku standing there with a broken finger while he smiled at Aizawa, flushed with victory had been awesome. She’d even cheered a bit, though not so loudly that she stood out from the crowd.

That moment of happiness for the boy, and the subsequent relief that he was staying in the class had stayed with her for the rest of the day, refusing to leave her alone. It was unlike her to get so attached so quickly to a person. Sure, she’d had friends in the past, and she had her family, but those relationships hadn’t felt quite like this. Maybe it was because Midoriya was so open and honest that she couldn’t imagine him having an ulterior motive in the slightest, and that made it all the easier to connect.

She’d made a few more friends in their class after that, commiserating with the rest of the girls over having to deal with Mineta’s perverse actions and cracking jokes with Kaminari, but none of them had come as easily as the first.

And then the day of the USJ incident had come, and Mina had been tested. She couldn’t hear what had been said in the main plaza, but she had been able to watch as Izuku came close to death at the hands of the Nomu, only to be saved at the last moment by All Might. As she watched the blond hero smash his way through the miscellaneous villains in an instant, Mina had noticed something. Before All Might’s arrival, she had taken a single step forward, towards the plaza. That had shocked her on a level she couldn’t even begin to describe. Her urge to protect the precious green boy had been so overwhelming that she had been willing to confront the League over it.

She couldn’t reconcile it. She’d never been like this before. She’d met plenty of sweet, friendly people over the years, and none of them had made her feel so fiercely protective, so possessive.

Try as she might to quiet them, Mina’s feelings had only grown stronger as time had gone on. She’d rooted for him in the sports festival, actually biting her nails during his battle with Todoroki, and when he had been injured during the attack on Hosu, she had rushed to his hospital room to check on him. 

It had earned her some funny looks, but being able to see that he was safe had been an incredible weight off of her chest. Sure, he was laid up in a hospital bed, covered with bandages, but injuries could always be fixed. His life, on the other hand, couldn’t be repaired.

It was then, staring at Izuku in his hospital bed, costume torn to shreds and stained with blood, that Mina knew this went beyond a simple friendship, or even just protective instincts. She cared for him, in a way that she hadn’t realized she was capable of. And she was going to protect him, no matter what it took.

She’d pitched it as a mutual exchange. He would help her study for the end of term exams, and in exchange she would help him expand his fighting style with some more varied moves. A friendly exchange. He leapt at the chance to be a better hero, and to get to know her better.

She’d been so caught up in celebrating the success of her own clever idea that she completely missed the blush that dusted his cheeks as he said the last part.

The two months before their final exams flew by faster than she would have thought possible. But then maybe that was because she had something to look forward to after school now, instead of just lessons and training. She had someone she cared about, someone she trusted, someone she could talk to about all the things she had never dared speak, not even to herself.

She’d told him about feeling helpless and frustrated about the world around her, the way the bullies always seemed to win no matter if their victims stood up for themselves or not. She told him about trying to stand up to the bullies herself, only to be punished by the teachers for being a disruption. She even told him about her desire to change things, to make a better system where no child would have to suffer for being born weak.

Maybe she had wanted to share all of that, to let the poison she had been carrying for so long out, or maybe she just wanted to ease her sense of guilt for Izuku’s injuries.

In exchange, he had told her about his childhood, about being one of the children crushed by the system. About watching his tormentor be praised for his skill and strength while Izuku was relegated to the class laughing stock. He told her about being labeled as Quirkless, since his Quirk had taken so long to come in. 

Mina noticed that he still slipped up sometimes and called himself Quirkless when he wasn’t paying close attention to his words, a fact that ripped at her heart. She couldn’t imagine being labeled like that for so long, or how he still had the strength to stand up after it all, to keep going, to keep having faith in the heroes who by all rights had failed him.

She knew he didn’t tell her everything, but she couldn’t really blame him either. After all, she had her own secrets, though they were getting harder to keep by the day.

She hadn’t bothered to hide her cheers during the final exams. Why should she? The entire class knew that they were friends at this point, though Hagakure liked to tease Mina about how much time she spent with Izuku. She didn’t think her cheers actually did anything, considering the viewing room was at least a mile from the testing site, but it still felt right to her. And in the end, Izuku had come out victorious, despite Bakugou doing his best to bring them both down.

And then Mina didn’t have any more time. Summer break was upon them, and their forthcoming training camp as well. She wasn’t supposed to go along, she was supposed to remain at UA taking makeup exams with the rest of the ‘dunce squad’. But Aizawa had pulled another of his ‘logical ruses’ and taken them all by surprise.

For Mina, however, it was more than a surprise. It was a source of worry that gnawed at her throughout the next day and into the weekend as their class prepared for the trip with a visit to the shopping mall. A visit that turned into an incident when Tomura turned up to threaten Izuku.

Mina had been paralyzed when she saw the hooded figure standing next to Izuku, hand around her friend’s (could she even still call him a friend?) throat. Her instincts had warred with her logical mind, fighting for dominance.

And yet again, her heart had won out. She had taken a single step towards ruin before she had even realized what she was doing. There hadn’t been an opportunity for a second step, though, before Tomura had walked away, leaving Izuku shaken but unharmed.

She had thought long and hard about what that step had meant that night. What it meant for her, what it meant for Izuku, for her class, for her teachers, for her family, for her future. And she had come to one, inescapable conclusion.

She wanted to stay at UA, to grow stronger along with the people who had become her friends. She wanted to make the world a better place, not by tearing down the system but by exemplifying what a hero should be. She wanted to stand in the light with everyone she cared about.

And she wanted to be able to tell Izuku about the feelings that she could no longer deny.

So Mina lifted her phone to her ear, and pressed the button that would forever change her world.

“This is Principal Nedzu,” a crisp voice answered after only a single ring, “To what do I owe the pleasure of this late night call, Miss Ashido?”

She looked to the photo that sat on her desk, slightly askew in its frame from when she had taken it out to stare at it earlier that evening. She and Izuku were smiling broadly, arms around each other’s shoulders as they celebrated Izuku perfecting his Full Cowling for battle. It was a reminder of how far they had come, and how far they still had left to go.

The League was a threat to him for as long as they existed, and Mina could no longer accept that. She had to take a stand, and do what she knew was right. For her classmates, for herself, and for Izuku.

“Because my birth name was Ashido. But for years, my name has been Mina Shiguraki, and I am a spy for the League of Villains.”

[hookedontaronfics]

A (Not So) Secret Crush - Prompt fic

Title: A (Not So) Secret Crush Pairing: Taron x Reader Rating: T Warnings: None (Just some cursing but we’re all adults here, right?) A/N: I just had so much fun writing this imagine; it really flowed from my fingertips with ease and I hope you enjoy reading this super sweet fluff as much as I enjoyed writing it! x Prompt: Could you possibly do an imagine where the reader is drunk and leaves a voicemail for taron saying that she’s falling for him? then he confronts her? SUUUUPER FLUFFY

Here was the scene: Another Friday night at a loud bar, drinking with your friends, some who had been your mates since your RADA days, others who had been brought into the fold because they knew someone who knew someone. Either way, your group had been hosting these Friday night get-togethers for as long as you could remember, and whoever could make it showed up. The mix of friends changed time to time but the fun never stopped. 

You truly loved these people and you were grateful you had made friends for life. You’d been through every heartbreak and every victory together - new jobs, losing parents, getting engaged, getting married, getting cancer, having babies, getting promotions, losing jobs, shitty breakups, you’d seen it all together, and you’d been there for each other through thick and thin, plenty of tears and plenty of laughter.

One of your closest friends had drifted away from the group slightly, not because he didn’t care but because he was just so exceptionally busy. Taron had made quite a name for himself lately, and was constantly running the awards circuit as of late. You couldn’t help but admit you slightly envied him. Out of your entire RADA group, he’d been the most successful. Some of you still did civic theater or indie film projects, but nearly everyone had gone on to normal plebian jobs. But Taron had been incredibly talented from Day One; how he hadn’t made it into the school on his first audition was beyond you. You knew he’d go far and you were pleased to see your predictions had been right. Of course he’d always brushed you off when you’d tried to tell him that all those years ago; he was almost annoyingly humble.

Look at him now, you thought, racking up awards buzz for his latest project as Elton John, sitting there downing his pilsner and laughing like he hadn’t a care in the world. He’d decided to join your lot finally after months of half-promises or apologies, and you couldn’t help staring at his fine-cut suit… or that jawline. He’d just come from some banquet or another, you’d lost track at that point, but boy did he look fine.

You weren’t sure when the crush had started really. Maybe you’d always found him attractive, but he had been your friend so you never really dwelled on it. Plus, as gangly young adults, you all had had some growing up to do. But Taron had aged like a fine wine, and only gotten more handsome as the years passed, and so your crush had slowly become more than just a spark. But you’d never tell him that, you couldn’t. You felt like it would ruin your friendship, a friendship you both had come to rely on over the years. He’d called you in tears when he and Emily had broken up, and you’d brought over frozen pizzas and let him cry on your shoulder while they baked in the oven. That kind of friendship wasn’t worth ruining over your silly crush.

But at this moment, as the alcohol you were drinking was working its way through your system, you couldn’t help but wonder what could come of it all if you just told him the truth. You were both single at the moment now, and every time he smiled at you you felt your heart leap into your throat. It was getting kind of annoying, to be honest. Taron with those intense green eyes and that boyish grin and that hair you wanted to run your fingers through. But you never would, because you loved him too much to trip over the line and cause an irreparable rip in the fabric of your friendship.

The night wore on, and so did the drinks, shots and cocktails and a beer to chase it all down. As you were nursing your Firestone ale, Taron finally slid over on the booth next to you. The conversations had died down mostly into private talks between couples, and you’d been sitting by yourself, aware of how that branded you in your singleness.

“You shouldn’t be sitting by yourself, love,” he grinned at you, tossing an arm casually on the back of the booth behind you, but not touching you. Still, you were all too aware of his presence now. He smelled of alcohol but also vanilla and sandalwood; it was a bit heady to you, and you had to take a steadying breath before you answered him.

“Everyone decided to couple up,” you laughed, the sound too loud and bright to your own ears. “And I am definitely… uh.. Single,” you added for good measure.

“Suppose that makes two of us, eh?” he smiled gently at you. You could only nod at that.

“So, I feel completely rude in not asking what you’ve been up to these days,” he said, taking a sip of his own beer, your eyes trained on the way his mouth worked the rim of the glass and giving you a thought you instantly banished from your mind. You suddenly felt quite warm and adjusted the collar of your blouse.

“Just work, you know, the usual boring adult shit. My life is not nearly as exciting as yours, Mister I’m Winning All The Awards,” you said, giggling slightly at your own dumb joke.

“Oh please, that’s not even remotely true,” he chuckled, but you could see a bit of blush creeping up his neck. You had to admit, it didn’t look bad on him at all.

“But really, I just go to work and come home and veg in front of the telly and do hot yoga and drink with this lot and that’s about it. I guess I’m waiting for something more exciting to come along,” you shrugged slightly.

“Or someone?” he asked, turning his full gaze on you. You couldn’t decipher the meaning behind his words, though, so you just took another drink of your ale.

“I guess you could say that but who knows if that will ever happen, T. You’ve seen me go through it so many times before. I’m beginning to wonder if there’s such a thing as true love, or if life is just really about settling for someone you at least can tolerate,” you sighed heavily.

“Hey now, no reason to give up just yet,” he said, tilting your chin up to look at him. You’d hugged him many times over the years, even tackled him full-on during a friendly rugby match, but for some reason his touch on you now sent shivers down your spine.

“I’ll believe you when you find me a match,” you teased him lightly, and he chuckled.

“Alright, well, let’s start with this here bar, right now,” he smirked sideways at you as you slid down in the booth to try and hide. “Ohhh that one over there, in the chummy corduroy jacket, he’s got nice eyes. Or the biker jacket by the window, he could take you for a wild ride,” Taron snickered and you slapped him playfully on the arm.

“Taron, stop,” you said, hissing in your attempt to not laugh.

“Hey, what about Mr. Silver Suits over there, 9 o’clock?” he said, sweeping his arm over to point and accidentally knocking you in the back of the head in the process. “Oh my god, I’m so so sorry!” he said, pulling you to him and holding you tightly against his chest. You couldn’t breathe in this close proximity to him, and he must have interpreted your silence as pain. “Please tell me you’re okay,” he pleaded slightly, his alcohol breath on your cheek not unpleasant.

“I’m fine Taron, but you’re squeezing me a bit,” you laughed, as he quickly loosened his arms around you and you sat back up.

“I’ve totally gone and messed up your hair,” he said, trying to help you rearrange it, his fingers whispering slightly over your cheeks and shoulders and making you suck in your breath slightly. You were far too drunk to think about this rationally. He was drunk too, though, you realized, and couldn’t possibly be meaning anything about this.

“It’s fine, T, you’ve done enough,” you said with a smile, as he withdrew his hands and looked slightly embarrassed at himself.

“Sorry, I’m a bit drunk?” he offered, and you just laughed at him.

“Not the first time I’ve seen you pissed,” you giggled, and he grinned at you.

“This is not untrue,” he smirked. “But we should maybe call it a night?” he said, loosening his tie slightly and drawing your eyes straight to his neck, where you wanted to kiss him. Fuck, you really needed to stop thinking those things. You were going to go home to your quiet, lonely apartment, by yourself, and probably crash and sleep off your hangover. Taron was no part of that reality and the thought sobered you up a bit.

You both ordered Ubers and finished your drinks while you waited, chatting about nothing of consequence. He walked you out the door, his hand at your lower back, and made sure you got in the Uber safely.

“Text me when you get home, yeah?” he said, slurring his words only slightly.

“Of course,” you said sweetly at him as he closed the door behind you. The Uber driver was rather chatty but thankfully didn’t seem to mind that most of your replies were “uh-huh” and “yeah” and you were grateful when you got home, a small headache beginning to work its way into your brain, and also a slightly painful longing in your heart.

You had once again walked away from Taron without telling him how you felt, and tonight he’d even slightly made you feel like maybe he felt something too, the way his gaze had landed on you often when he didn’t think you were looking, the way his fingers had always found your knee under the table, the way he leaned into your shoulder when he laughed. Boy, you had it bad, and you didn’t know how to stop. Maybe you didn’t want to stop feeling this way about him, but you could never have him either.

You hopped in the shower, hoping that would calm you down, before realizing you’d completely forgotten to text Taron that you’d made it home safely. You quickly grabbed your towel and wrapped it around your dripping body, hair still full of shampoo, before pawing through the contents of your purse for your phone, where you found several <are you home yet?!> texts from Taron.

Rather than text him back this late, you just decided to call since that might be quicker in reassuring him that you were safe. He didn’t pick up the call though, and you half-imagined him crashed out on his couch, still in that suit coat, now rumpled, mouth hanging slightly open and the couch blanket tossed haphazardly over himself. The image made you smile as his voicemail beeped at you.

“Hey, Taron, it’s me. You would have known that if you’d been looking at your phone, of course. But you’re probably asleep already so… I’m just letting you know I-” you said before the phone service cut you off. You sighed and dialed again, waiting for the beep before trying again. “I made it home! Thought you should know that. Because you left me like 18 texts asking me if I was home yet. I had fun tonight with you, really. It was great to catch up. I hope we-” you rambled into the voice message before getting cut off again.

You hoped what? That you could fall in love and get married and have his babies? The thought was absolutely absurd, and you laughed out loud at how ridiculous you were being. You dialed his number one more time, hoping to leave something semi-coherent. “Hey, sorry I’m really drunk but if I don’t tell you how I feel now I never will. I think I’m falling for you and I know if this ruins our friendship I’ll forever regret it. But I just needed to tell you that, because I’ve known it for a long time. I think I love you, and I-” You were cut off again, and suddenly lost your courage too. You threw your phone on the bedside table and wished you could take that message back.

“SHIT!” you yelled out loud, standing in the puddle of water you’d left on your hardwood floor. What have I done, you thought, feeling like you might cry. Well, it was all in Taron’s hands now, really. You felt sick to your stomach as you went to finish your shower, and afterward stood staring at yourself in the mirror for a long moment. There was no way he could possibly feel the same about you. He probably only thought of you as a sister, nothing more. You brushed the tears away from your face and sighed before collapsing in your bed, not even bothering to dry your hair, the water soaking into your pillow as you passed out.

When your alarm went off the next morning you batted half the crap off your bedside table before finding your phone and silencing the alarm, groaning slightly at it before sitting bolt upright and opening your phone. There were no return texts, no return voicemails. Nothing at all. Maybe he was still asleep, you told yourself, though it was already nearly 11 a.m. Maybe he just didn’t know how to respond, because you sure as hell wouldn’t if he had left you messages like that. Maybe he’d just chalk it up to drunkenness and let the whole thing pass like a bad dream. Or a kidney stone. Painful, but forgettable. Because that’s exactly how you felt about yourself in that moment.

There was no way you were getting back to sleep, so you got up and went about your Saturday, tidying up your apartment, going to the grocery, chatting with your mum, watching some telly, and jumping every time your phone chimed with a text. But they were never texts from the one person you needed to hear from, and when the sun began to sink toward the horizon with still no response, your heart sank to your toes right along with it.

You slept fitfully that night, before spending Sunday as a nervous wreck, pacing your apartment and debating whether to ring him. You settled on a text message, typing it and deleting it and retyping it again. <I think we need to talk. But I just want to know you’re okay. Please text me back.> You paced some more before you finally received a text back.

<Everything’s alright, just been busy. We can talk at some point but I’ll be in the States for a while coming up so don’t hold your breath.>

“Don’t hold my breath?” you asked out loud, a wee bit shocked as it sounded rather rude, coming from someone you’d known the better part of 10 years. Someone who had cried on your damn shoulders just a few months ago. You huffed slightly and tossed your phone on the couch, staring at it and sighing. You figured the conversation would probably end up with you conceding just being drunk and an arsehole and both of you agreeing to forget it ever happened. 

But could you live with your unrequited feelings for the rest of your life? Could you stand by Taron’s side when he married another girl, knowing how you felt about him? Or would this truly be something neither of you could get over? Could you live with never talking to him again? The thought made you feel sick to your stomach; you’d rather deny your feelings for the rest of your life than lose him completely, you decided. You spent the rest of the night on the couch with a tub of ice cream, eating your feelings and trying to not so subtly ask your friend group if they’d heard anything from Taron, but no one had. At least he had kept your secret admission to himself.

Weeks passed and you didn’t hear anything from Taron. You attended the next several Friday outings with the group and even though you enjoyed your time with everyone else, the lack of Taron’s presence was a glaring hole in your mind. Don’t hold your breath, he’d said, the phrase stuck on an endless loop in your mind. It distracted you in your daily life, and even your best friend at work called you out for it. You came up with some lame excuse she saw right through, figuring it was “boy trouble” and wondering when you’d ever manage to find a decent man. 

The problem, though, was that a decent man had been right in front of you, so close to you but so far out of reach. Maybe Taron had ruined you for everyone else, you thought to yourself, laughing at that but half-wondering if it was true. No one ever measured up to the man you knew he was, the man you’d spent countless hours beating at Mario Kart, he was so laughably bad, the man who’d helped you memorize your monologues, who sent you funny gifs when he knew you were down, who always took you to lunch after a bad breakup. He knew more about your life than most anyone else.

And you’d gone and thrown it all away.

On a particularly stormy day, six weeks later, you were sitting on your living room floor, surrounded by half cut-up magazines, the scattered images of people’s faces and flowers and animals and the words you’d cut out. You were dressed in a pair of floral leggings and a white sweater, your hair up in a messy bun with a cute headband holding your bangs out of your face. You were tapping your scissors against your lips, deciding how to arrange your collage, when a loud crack of thunder made you jump, your lights flickering slightly. “Jesus,” you breathed out, your heart racing slightly before a knock sounded on your apartment door.

You almost thought you’d imagined it, not expecting anyone, when it sounded again. You quickly put the cap on the open glue bottle before unwinding your legs and standing up, stepping carefully around the scattered art. The insistent knocking came again, and you sighed. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” you said even though they couldn’t hear you. It was probably just a neighbor wondering if your lights had flickered too.

You popped the door open and gasped slightly, an entirely-soaked-to-the-bone Taron standing at your door, rainwater dripping off the tip of his nose and chin, his wet hair plastered to his forehead.

“Taron!” you said in surprise, your hand still on the doorknob.

“Did you mean what you said?” he asked, his voice a bit hoarse.

“What do you mean?” you asked softly, knowing full well what he meant.

“Your voicemail that you left me. When you said you were falling for me,” he said, still dripping onto the floor outside of your apartment.

“I- … was drunk,” you started but he shook his head.

“Did you mean what you said?” he asked again, his gaze looking vulnerable and a bit tortured too.

It really was now or never, you thought to yourself. “Yes. Yes I did,” you replied, a bit faintly.

“How long have you known?” he asked, his own voice failing him slightly, cracking a bit.

“Years, Taron. But don’t stand out there, you’ll catch your death,” you said, gesturing for him to come inside. He stepped across the threshold gingerly, awkwardly, as if he hadn’t been in your apartment before. You quickly went to get him some towels and took his sopping wet coat and did your best to wring it out in the bathtub before hanging it up to dry. You couldn’t help but hide a laugh behind your hand at his appearance; he looked like a drowned rat, but it was somehow adorable.

You sat a stack of towels on the couch so he could sit and not worry about getting it all wet but you could tell he wasn’t comfortable in the least. “Why did you never say anything to me?” he asked after a moment, as you paused in the middle of your attempt to sweep up your collage work into a tidy pile.

“I knew it would ruin our friendship. I knew it would make things awful and awkward between us, and it has,” you admitted, peering over at him. He seemed lost in thought, wrestling with something, his face an open book.

“I’ve only been awkward and distant because I … I’ve had trouble coming to terms with how I felt about you. I don’t think I’ve had nearly the same courage, drunk or not. But I’ve done some thinking, and I started to realize that, y/n, it’s really always been you. You were always there, for my smallest victories to my biggest heartbreaks. You were the one tipping back a beer with me every time I landed a role. You were the one encouraging me when I felt like I wasn’t good enough. You went shopping for my first real suit for my first real awards show back in the day,” he grinned, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the memory with him.

“You were so nervous, it was darling,” you giggled.

“The hem! The hem!” he chuckled, shaking his head.

“All the pants were too long on you,” you giggled lightly as he gazed at you, biting his lip slightly.

“I don’t think we have to lose this at all,” he said softly. “I think we can make it even better. I at least want to try, because I fell for a girl a long time ago who’s been right in front of me all along. And I know that sounds super cliche, like one of those cheesy romcoms you love so much, but it’s true,” he said sweetly.

“They are brilliant pieces of cinema and you will never change my mind, Taron David Egerton!” you laughed, but your heart was also falling open at that moment as you heard the words you’d been wishing to hear for so long. You almost wanted to pinch yourself to see if this was just a dream; that’d you’d wake up tomorrow and all of this would have evaporated like mist on the wind. Before either of you could say another word, your lights went out accompanied by another loud clap of thunder, and you groaned loudly.

“Well shit,” you said, going to check the breaker box but the lights were truly out. You rummaged around under your sink and found a flashlight, flicking it on and setting it on its end so the beam of light hit the ceiling and scattered around the room, drawing weird shadows on the walls. You noticed, suddenly, that Taron was shivering quite a bit, but you weren’t sure how to solve that until you remembered you had borrowed one of his sweatshirts eons ago.

“You should get out of those wet clothes,” you said, as you went to go dig the sweatshirt out of your closet. You kept your eyes trained on the ground as you handed him a blanket and the sweatshirt, and it was enough to hear his clothes rustle as he presumably wriggled out of them, considering his jeans looked tighter than your leggings.

“I’m decent,” he chuckled once he was settled on the couch again, the blanket tucked over his lap and the sweatshirt on. He looked almost boyish now, a crooked smile on his face and his hair, which had gone fluffy as it dried, a total bedhead mess. You hung his wet clothes up on the shower rod, since the dryer wouldn’t work without power, and then sat primly on the couch next to him. He was presumably still in whatever he wore beneath his jeans, but the thought still made you blush and you were grateful for the semi-darkness now.

“So now what?” you asked quietly, feeling awkward and like you were twelve again and trying to discuss your first crush with your “bff.” Only your bff was the man you had fallen in love with.

“Oh I know how this next bit goes. You see, usually in these cheesy romcoms there’s some sort of cutesy music in the background and then the couple with all of their newly discovered attraction kisses,” Taron smirked at you, and your breath sort of caught in your throat.

“Taron, that isn’t even remotely practical!” you said, trying to laugh it off. “It’s storming like crazy outside, you’re half-naked-”

“Only half,” he interjected in a teasing manner.

“- on my couch and we don’t even know exactly how we feel about each other!” you protested, barreling through his comment.

“You so sure about that?” he asked, pulling you to him suddenly. You squeaked in surprise but didn’t pull away as his eyes searched yours for a long moment. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to do this,” he said, cupping your face in his hands before leaning in and pressing his lips to yours, kissing you in a way that very much could have been described as “romantic.” It opened a whole new world of feelings to you, feelings you didn’t have to pretend away anymore. You were completely head over heels for this man, and as he ran his fingers through your hair, and gazed at you in that loving way he had, you felt so totally undone but somehow put back together in all the right ways too.

You dared to kiss him back, and it was just as good the second time around, like a nice bowl of chili that warmed you all over, from the inside out. You pulled away for a moment, almost feeling shy, and settled your head against his chest instead. He instinctively wrapped his arms around you, and you could hear his heart hammering away. Just knowing you were the reason for that made you smile to yourself.

Neither of you said much as you cuddled in a way you had never done. Sure, you’d laid in each others’ arms before, half-drunk or sick or sad, but this was a new level, a mutual and deep caring for each other that went further than your friendship ever had. Or maybe it really had been leading up to this all along; you both had just never seen it until now. One thing you were certain, though, was that you could never go back now. One little taste and you wanted so much more, in its time and place, of course. You had adored him from afar for so long, and now you had the chance to show him just how much.

Just then your lights clicked back on, and both of you blinked in the sudden onslaught of light at each other.

“So what happens in the dark… stays in the dark, right?” you joked lightly, sitting up again and noticing that the blanket on his lap had shifted rather low. Your face went completely red then, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Oh, my dear, there’s no keeping us in the dark any longer,” he said, kissing you again but with gusto this time. You melted into him again, letting the rush of feelings wash through you, but neither of you let it go too far. There would be time enough for that in the future, a future that stretched out long ahead of you.

“I thought I would forever regret that voicemail but now it’s the single best thing I’ve ever done in my life,” you smiled at him as he sweetly brushed his thumb over your lips.

“I’ve listened to it every day since, just to make sure it was real and I hadn’t imagined it,” he said cutely. “I mean yes, I was confused and maybe even a little angry at first but mostly at myself for not seeing it sooner, for not admitting it sooner. For wasting so much time,” he said, his eyes so soft and light despite the harsh glare of your lamps.

“Time spent with you, even as just your friend, was never a waste to me,” you said quickly, squeezing his hand. “I’m just lucky, and grateful, for this now.”

“As am I,” he said, lifting your hand to his lips and placing a sweet kiss there.

“And Taron, I’ll be sure to leave you more voicemails in the future,” you said cheekily, your heart feeling so full of promise.

“I shall count on it,” he grinned back, and you would forever be able to lose yourself in that gaze. “But the best voicemail of all, was the one that brought us together.”

You nodded in agreement and sighed softly. “The one we’ll never forget.”

[mimiplaysgames]

stay awake. love, sirens

Terraqua Week Day 5: Dreams

Summary: Dreams are made to be had, broken, and mended. Terra finds he still has his own, even in the thicket of his nightmares. @terraquaweek

Read on AO3

***

Just because the War is over, it doesn’t mean that everything is fixed. 

The Land of Departure may look like it’s in pristine shape, and for the most part it is. It’s missing one body, but all in all, it looks like everything has stayed in place, almost like it couldn’t exist without its proper inhabitants and therefore never aged. Like magic, it comes back. Like destiny, it sits there waiting for them to come home.

Things are only broken because they’re slightly different. Terra and Aqua are not equals anymore. 

In certain ways, they still are of course. She doesn’t want him to think of her as his superior. In all personal matters - in the kitchen, in bed, in friendship - they’re equals. 

Not with matters of the Keyblade though, and he remembers it every day. 

It’s time to address the elephant in the room: What are their futures going to be like now? 

Are there specifics? Does Aqua solely become Keeper of the castle? Can she share that with Terra or does he have to be a Master first? Should they consider Terra a Master already?

They stand in the entrance hall, where three wooden thrones sit patiently, in silence. 

Here, the awkward question is Who takes the middle seat?

“You should take it,” Terra says. 

Aqua immediately shakes her head, giving him a look of sympathy. “Terra, you knew him longest.”

“You’re still Master.”

“I honestly…” These words are going to be the hardest to hear, because they’re the easiest to deny. “I think the Master would have wanted you to sit there.”

Ventus stands by her side, shooting the both of them side glances because Yes, approaching the subject of who the Master favorited (Terra) will always be awkward.

For the favorite, he sure has had the most difficult expectations set onto his shoulders, and it’s a good twelve years of believing that he really fucked up last time. Aqua’s right but still - Eraqus was incredibly proud of her, and would still be, and would have wanted her to take his throne.

“Technically,” Ventus drawls out, “the middle is my seat. I’m the only one who bonded with it this entire time.” 

“So do you want it, Ven?” Aqua asks, like she wants to be rid of it.

“No way.” He crosses his arms. “I never want to sit there again.”

Dead end. 

Terra goes ahead to take the seat to the left, ultimately ending the discussion. Gestures over to the middle.

When Aqua takes it, she’s very hesitant. Ventus, usually the last one to decide, has no other choice but to sit on the one to the right. 

Ventus wiggles and stretches, like he’s trying to see if it fits him even though they’re all the same. “S’not bad.”

Aqua keeps her hands folded on her lap, like she has the proper regal formality for such a grand seat - if only she wasn’t looking so defeated. 

“You know, Aqua,” Terra says, playing with the marble texture of the arm rests. It’s not a comfortable seat by any means. “I never got to congratulate you.”

“For?”

“Becoming Master.” He wants to reach over and take her hand, because he needs comfort to deal with what he’s so ashamed of. But this isn’t about him, it’s about her. So he smiles. “Congratulations.”

Ventus brings his feet under and sits on his ankles, swinging over to face her. “Congratulations!” 

She doesn’t want the praise. “Please, don’t-”

“Why not?” It’s hard to be happy when she’s like this.

“This isn’t what I wanted.”

Terra nearly does a double take. “What are you-”

“The point was that both of us became Masters,” she says with conviction. “That was our dream.”

Again, such an awkward conversation, and Ventus sinks back into his throne, bringing his knees to his chin to shy away from it. Most of the time, it’s about the three of them, always, an unbreakable connection. There are certainly times when he’s the third wheel, though, unintentionally eavesdropping into matters that have really nothing to do with him. 

Terra knows she doesn’t mean what she’s implying. He knows it. He knows it, he keeps telling himself. “I’ll catch up with you.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She sighs, glancing over at Ven. She really hates leaving him out of conversations. “I was thinking maybe I’d renounce my title-”

“No.”

“I fell to darkness, too, Terra.”

“You deserve to be praised for your hard work.”

“What does it mean anyway?”

“It means you’ve survived things I could never have.”

He could never have, not the Realm of Darkness. He doesn’t have that kind of strength. 

It’s not that he feels necessarily insulted by the thought of her holding herself back for his sake, but that he’s guilty because she’s done too much for him. Not on any single fiber in his entire body would he ask her to suffer hell for him, but she did it anyway. She keeps telling him that she’d do it again if it meant he’d be safe. So yes, to hold herself back in a way is a slap to the face, because on some level he needs to get his shit together. Enough has to be enough, and he wishes that she’d let him pick himself up.

Of course, none of what she’s doing is meant to put him down… twelve years separated means that the both of them still suck at elaborating what they mean, and in these sticky situations, the best thing to do is to give the benefit of the doubt. 

“Besides, it fits you very nicely,” he says, forcing himself to smile. It’s only difficult at the first try, then it settles into his face and relaxes. He gets up from the throne, outstretching his hand for her to take. Glances at Ven as well, thinking of anything that could get him involved. “Maybe throw a small celebration for you, too.” 

Ventus stares at him wide-eyed, like he’s too scared to say anything right now.

Aqua doesn’t take his hand. “Why won’t you let me name you Master, then? You’ve been through a lot, too.”

“I want to do it the traditional way.” His hand stays in the air, waiting. 

“Terra,” she says softly, “you know you don’t have to prove anything to me.” 

“It’s not to you.” It’s to himself. 

She sighs - it’s been a strife to get her to agree and actually give him an exam, since she believes he’s putting himself down. In his mind, he needs the opportunity to stand up. 

Aqua takes his hand and rubs it with her thumb, her gaze falling to his knees. 

“I promise you,” he says sweetly - they may both be hard-headed, but the need to make her smile always trumps. “That dream is closer than you think.”

She scoffs, and he swears that whatever breath Ven has been holding this entire time is finally set free. 

~*~*~*~

If you really think about it, dreams don’t have beginnings. They just happen. 

A chessboard, mix and match black and white spaces, sprawled for miles under a purple sky with no clouds. 

Chess pieces at chest height. 

Black against white.

White is her, all of them, moving past him, approaching him, dodging many hims, in fact. 

“No,” he says.

But he moves anyway. He has no other instinct. 

Sword in one hand and a shield in the other, he’s a knight.

A knight is what she is too, a spear cradled in her arms. 

She’s sleeping as he approaches. 

She only opens her eyes when he stops to her left. 

“No,” he says.

But it doesn’t matter, because he swings that sword.

She wears the mask of despair but she doesn’t cry, like a satire.

Watch her as she blows up into a million dusty pieces.

Terra has a nasty habit, who is he to kill her when she’s the one he loves the most?

Many hims killing many hers because whoever is playing him in this game is pretty good. 

The white queen comes, twice as tall as him, with a staff held high like she’s a saint leading a crowd.

She holds scales on the other, and the feather in one of them is too heavy.

“We’re supposed to be on the same side,” he says. 

She opens her eyes. White on white on white, no irises.

“You spoke?” she asks before she strikes him down. 

Chess has only one hit point.

Dreams don’t have endings, either.

~*~*~*~*~

“It’s a bad dream,” she whispers to him before he finally allows himself to breathe. 

Shivers, headaches, sobs, and stiff muscles - so much that his whole body hurts. 

Not to mention the fear of being alive and all the other damned symptoms that come with the nightmares.

She waits to hear his breaths slow down into a crawl before she wraps his fingers in hers - they both know, from experience unfortunately, that accidentally scaring him is a bad idea. 

“Welcome home,” she coos into his neck, her fingers brushing his hair. “I’m happy you’re safe. You’re here with me. Whatever it is, it can’t harm you here.”

Reminders. He needs them, and she needs them. 

He groans. He can barely remember what the nightmare was except for the nauseating suspicion that he has done something terrible.

“You’re okay?” he asks her, like he’s expecting her to be hurt.

She chuckles, stroking him arm. Her voice is hoarse with exhaustion. “Of course I am. The question is, are you?”

He doesn’t answer her. 

Usually after his nightmares, his needs are random and yet, predictable. A walk in the woods. Some water. A bath with her. To be read a story. To beat on the pillows. Yell. Cry. Tell some jokes.

She doesn’t question any of his whims, choosing to stay by his side for whatever he needs.

Tonight, he wraps around her, feeling the softness of her skin, which he’s glad is nothing like porcelain. Keep her close, keep her locked tight. He takes the blankets and layers them on top of her, and she has this amused grin on her face as he does so - if this is what he needs, she’ll play along and not ask what on earth he’s doing. He wraps her enough that if anything were to strike, it’d hit his arms first. Intertwine her legs with his to keep her extra secure. 

She replies with soft kisses on his cheek and deep sniffs of his hair, and he waits until she’s asleep first to be extra sure.

~*~*~*~*~

He feels better in the morning, when he runs laps in the courtyard, still so early that the sun hasn’t yet broken through the fog.

He feels better after a shower and some coffee, even though it still doesn’t make him feel like that much of an adult.

He feels better when he sees Aqua still sleeping in his bed - she normally likes to wake up early too, but when he has bad nights that interrupt her, her body demands its rest. It’s good knowing that he hasn’t ruined everything for her - she looks so comfortable bundled up in those layers. 

He feels better when he gently kisses her cheek and leaves her to dream, finding someplace in the library to spend time reading books.

Being a Keyblade Wielder is not just about knowing how to fight with it; that’s what all these books are for. Who knows how many are in here, maybe thousands? He’s read most of them but these days he still needs answers. 

He sifts through ones he’s read before, to see if all this experience might give him a completely new perspective on the battle between darkness and light (white and black). He’s also looking for ones he’s never seen before, hoping that there is some answer in there to help him sleep at night. 

No luck.

It’s only when footsteps approach that he realizes he’s been obsessing and lost track of time. Again.

“Look what I found,” Aqua announces, displaying a long wooden box with a rusty brass lock. 

Keyblade Wielders believe in light. They believe in the stars, which teach them that light will shine down even among a dark sky. Sometimes, their wise lessons are rough, heartbreaking, confusing. 

Sometimes, the stars think they’re funny when they’re trying to be serendipitous. 

“The Master’s old chess board,” Terra answers.

She sets it down on the table, and with the careful way she’s opening it, Terra can tell that she had waited until he was with her before peeking inside. 

It’s in surprisingly good condition, the spaces clean (with one side chipped, Terra can’t remember who did that), and the pieces pristine in each of their unique designs. It smells musty, very much like the Master if he was close enough to hug. 

“It makes me really miss him,” she says and she might as well speak for the both of them. 

There’s so many good memories over this game - the Master never allowed room for any arguments, any disagreements. This game was strictly a test for analysis, for nerve, for patience. Even when playing opposing teams, this game is and will only ever be made for friends. 

Terra and Aqua of course played against each other but their favorite version is when they tag-teamed against the Master. 

Young children would break the rule that banned arguing, ordering each other which piece should go where, but with enough vigilance (and enough years), Terra and Aqua learned to trust. Don’t tell the other where to go, watch for clues of what they’re thinking, let it be and have faith that their partner has a plan and if it changes, hopefully it’s for the best. 

Besides, if they sat there discussing all of their strategies in detail, then the Master would know (not that it helped, he always won). They used to hope that one day, they’ll finally beat him.

Eraqus was a man who kept his personal life very private, and it’s one of their lingering questions - who taught him to be so good? They’ll never know.

“We’ll never be able to tag-team again,” she says to Terra, setting up the game and putting the pieces in their proper places. Twelve years did not make her forget. 

“We could on Ven,” he says, before realizing how dumb that sounds.

“We’d pulverize him.” She shakes her head compassionately.

The board is prepared, and she spins it, giving Terra the white pieces.

“That means you’ll go first,” she says.

Every game of chess, at least to him, starts off pretty plain, but she’s an aggressive player. A sinking feeling in his stomach burns when he takes one of hers, but she always comes around to show him who’s boss.

Not that he particularly cares about winning this time.

“We used to pretend to be the pieces when we were little,” he says, a memory coming to defend him from the more gruesome images from the dream last night. “Remember?”

She’s about to put down a black rook but stops herself to laugh. “We did, wow, I completely forgot.”

“That would put you today as… I guess the Queen? Queen and Master of the castle,” he announces, using a bishop to take her pawn.

“And that would make you…” she makes a condescending face. “The King? You sure you want to be that one?”

Even pawns are better - he can sacrifice one for the good of many, and sometimes they can become Queens themselves, like a backup. 

Take the King and it’s over. 

“No, he’s completely useless. I’ll be your other Queen.”

She lifts a black knight into the air, above the board. “We wanted to be knights together.”

“That’s right.” He holds up a white knight, crossing it with hers. “Knights that would save the worlds and all other Kings and Queens out there.”

“What do you think? We’re still knights?”

“Hm.” Sometimes, more than he likes to admit, he thinks of her as his superior, like he isn’t good enough and never will be and there’s no telling why she would settle for him. But this is a horrible thought, and she’s his partner. Always, they said to each other. “We’re still knights.”

Her eyes sparkle. “Good.” She uses her knight to take one of his pawns - putting his own Queen into a precarious situation. “Now we just have to prepare your Mark of Mastery exam.” 

Terra takes a sharp inhale - layers his arms over the surface of the table and for some odd reason, he’s nearly moved to tears. “Thank you,” he whispers. 

“You’re very welcome.” She waits for his move.

But he bides his time. “How do I know I’ll get a fair assessment when I’m sleeping with the Master who’s conducting it?”

She bites her lip, watching him knock her knight out of the board with his trusty white bishop. “I’ve thought about that and… I’ve decided to invite Riku to help me run the exam. He’ll watch you and promised to give his honest opinion.”

For a moment he forgets what his gaming strategy is supposed to be as she moves another knight. “That’s honestly a great idea. He’s better at this stuff than the both of us really.”

“He is, the little prodigy.” 

Aqua’s now distracted and has neglected to really protect her Queen. He moves a knight in. “That has to be the easiest checkmate I’ve ever experienced,” he proclaims leaning back as his hands interlace behind his head. 

“Well, you’ve cheated.”

“How?”

“Because I wasn’t at my A-game.”

“You’re such a sore loser.”

“Takes one to know one.” She leans on her hands, biting her lip and it makes him want to bend over and kiss her. Thinking of doing that over the Master’s ancient, precious chess game seems violating, though.

But it’s moments like these where it gets him to think that there’s not a definite timeline for dreaming. Some will wait, others will pass, and there are some that morph and become different.

Here is Aqua though, in her grace, companionship and loyalty to him, making dreams come true. He feels better.

[undercoverwatermoon]

Unexpected Dreams- CH. 2 (Jalton)

WARNING: The rating has been updated to a solid "Explicit" you guys. You've been warned :)

A million apologies for taking so long to update this story. To make it up to all of you, I am posting an extra long chapter, with an added bonus towards the end! (Hint: German Professor Adam!)

There is a lot more of Adam POV in this chapter, and we delve a bit deeper into Jaz's dreams.

SO MANY THANK YOUs to the rest of #TheFab5 ( @icarryyourheart16 , @chibisere23  @stupid-jeans and  @kyrieanne) for putting up with ALL my rambling and crazy thoughts about this story. They helped so much that I don't think this chapter would be posted, ever, without them :) And as always, thanks to the awesome Nicole for the detailed and super fast beta!

Enjoy!!

AO3 Link Here

Exhausted, they all tumble out of the humvee and walk towards the picnic area by the Quonset hut. A long, competitive afternoon is behind them, and Team Patton is ready to celebrate their drill day win.

Despite the underlying awkwardness from that morning - that elephant in the room both of them have avoided since Tehran - Adam and Jaz are still a force to be reckoned with as a team on the training field, prompting some griping from the others about unfairness and team assignments being rigged.

Jaz walks ahead of them, muttering something cooking related to Amir. When she huffs out a laugh at Amir’s response, Adam lowers his head with a fond smile. Maybe he’s been reading too much into her actions, or lack thereof. Maybe he’s being paranoid and she’s just going through the normal phases of recovery after Tehran. Maybe none of it has to do with him. Feeling the frown on his face, he schools his expression as he catches up with the team.  

“Patton, you’re such a cheater.” McG says, flinging a tactical glove at the dog’s head. Immediately after it lands, Patton snatches it up and runs.

“NO! Patton! Son of a--”

“Let it go, McG. It’s history,” Adam says, beaming proudly as he watches the mutt disappear into the hangar. “Besides, it’s not his fault you couldn’t hold your position quietly.”

McG turns to Adam. “He tickled me with his stupid nose!”

Apparently no one is done enjoying this because they erupt into laughter again, Amir and Jaz holding their stomachs and leaning shoulder to shoulder as they struggle to breathe.

Minutes later, once the jokes have died down, they stand around the picnic table, discussing possible options for the traditional team night out. Team Patton - Adam and Jaz today - is ready to enjoy the spoils of war.

Reaching into her camo backpack, Jaz pulls out her bright turquoise Hydro Flask water bottle - it’s new, and it makes her smile - and notices four pairs of eyes follow her movements as she takes a swig.

“What?” Jaz says warily, wiping at her mouth and eyeing her teammates standing across from the table she’s perched on. Adam is to her left, and as he crosses his arms over his chest, Jaz pivots in the opposite direction. It’s something she’s been doing - standing or sitting with her back to him when they’re not on mission- and Adam frowns, staring at her profile.

“That’s…” McG waves at her water bottle, “...colorful, Jazzy.” He tries to keep his voice neutral but fails miserably. Jaz rolls her eyes, her standard response to most things McG says when they’re not taking fire, but internally she flinches a little.

McG can be ridiculous, but they all seemed to notice the same thing- that the cheerful color is  just not her. She remembers handing the $40 to the cashier with such excitement, but now she wavers as her hands wrap protectively around the bright bottle. Is this the new her? Is she now the soldier that wears hot pink underwear to feel feminine and buys eye-catching accessories to...what? Stand out? Hide? Pretend she’s fine? Whatever the answer is, she still has one more question: Why?

Jaz’s body language betrays her thoughts so subtly that only Adam picks up on the slight hesitation - because he notices everything about her these days- before she fires her witty comeback at McG.

“So are your canary yellow Spongebob boxers. What’s your point?” McG points at her, an affronted look on his face.

“Those were a gift, first of all--”

“From your mom,” Amir interrupts with an explanatory nod to the group, and they all chuckle because it’s probably not wrong. McG, however, is undeterred, so he speaks louder over the laughter as he punches Amir in the arm.

“And second...turquoise? Can’t you get your sniper card revoked for that? I thought only black, camo, and army green were approved colors.”

Jaz regards McG, unfazed for a second, then taps her chin and nods.

“Yep. I’ll just order you one then. You’re obviously jealous. Maybe in neon yellow, to match your underwear.”

McG’s grin is wide and triumphant.  

“Why are you checking out my underwear, Jazzy? You interested?” His eyebrows raise suggestively, and Jaz’s eyes sparkle with the challenge. Just as she readies her response, a shadow expands in the corner of her eye and a familiar voice interrupts.

“So, Jaz. Are you? Interested?” Dr. Xander Martin points at McG as he asks, and awaits Jaz’s response with a teasing smile.

“In his dreams,” Jaz scoffs, and McG holds a hand to his heart. Laughing now, she turns fully toward Xander and greets him warmly. He says something about a Call of Duty rematch and Jaz asks if he’s prepared to lose again.

Adam watches the interaction with interest from his place now behind Jaz, and he doesn’t know why, but something about it unsettles him. Jaz and McG have always bantered like siblings, and Amir is fitting in better and better each day that passes by.  

Preach however, seems a little off- Adam’s caught him giving Jaz that “knowing” look more than once today. Maybe Preach’s insight is exactly what he needs. Making a mental note, Adam shifts his attention back to the group as they start heading inside.

Xander hangs back, arms crossed, probing green eyes focused on Adam as he comes closer.

“Top.”

“You come around looking for patients?” Adam jokes, and Xander chuckles with a nod as he gives the outstretched hand a firm shake.

“Like you? No thanks.”

“You know, screwed up people like me are the reason you have a job. I’d be more careful with the insults,” Adam replies.

“Ah, yes. Supply and demand. I owe you my livelihood.”

“Damn right.” They both smile at that, but Adam knows they’re beating around the bush. Xander sees all, and in a much more infuriating manner than Preach, because observing and analyzing is his job. Adam braces for the question, but is surprised that he finds himself anticipating, rather than dreading it.  

“In that case, care to tell me what’s on your mind? We haven’t talked since...” Trailing off, he waves in the general direction of the team walking away, but they both know what he means. Losing Hossein, surviving Iran, and...Jaz.

Adam stuffs his hands in his pockets and averts his eyes. This dynamic between them is always fascinating to him. They can joke one second and discuss the meaning of life the next, and it never feels forced or out of place, even in an open, dusty road in the middle of an Army base.

Over the years, he’s learned two things about Xander Martin: that avoiding him is a waste of time, and that everything he does is always with his best interests at heart, Army requirement or not. When he’d said to Jaz that Xander is good people, he’d meant it. So, he doesn’t deflect or lie.

“Honestly? I’m...I don’t know...I think I need a little time.”

Xander regards him for a second. It is not an overstatement that Adam Dalton has had a rough go in life. Being a special operations psychologist -so focused around post-mission diagnosis, solutions, and results- it’s sometimes easy to forget the incredible hurdles some people overcome just to get here. Nevermind the strength required to recover from the invisible wounds that war can inflict.

The Sgt. Dalton he’d met 15 years ago at SFAS -the one who’d already survived so much grief in his young life- isn’t even in the same galaxy as the Army Captain staring at him now with honest, thoughtful eyes. A true leader, in every sense of the word. So because of this, he lets it go.

“Understood.” Xander finally says, and Adam gives him a grateful smile. “You know where to find me.”

As his long-time friend walks away, Adam looks up at the sky as he exhales a long, slow breath.

It’s time for team night out, and he is ready to unwind. Or at least try.

                         __________________________________

“You didn’t.” Amir’s horrified expression causes more howling laughter around the high-top table where they’re standing in the crowded bar. Jaz is telling the story of that now-legendary prank she’d pulled on McG after she’d caught him stealing her iced tea, and the medic can’t help but laugh along with them.

“Alright, alright. That was brilliantly evil, Jazzy. I taught you well,” McG says, patting Jaz on the head. Swatting at his hand, she laughs and starts toward the bar in search of another beer.

Adam watches her. Preach watches him.

Amir and McG spot a pool table opening up, and are off to claim it as Adam hangs back, eyes still on Jaz. The bartender says something, and Jaz leans forward on her elbows, most likely to repeat the name of the beer she wants, this weird concoction they import, Adam thinks, rolling the standard IPA bottle between his palms. Predictable Jaz would say, and that makes him smile.

Long moments pass, and then the loud opening chords of the next jukebox song jerk him out of his trance. He looks around quickly, trying to recover from the momentary lapse, and is relieved when he finds Preach apparently immersed in something serious-looking on his phone. Lucky Adam thinks. If Preach had seen him spaced out staring at Jaz, he’d never live it down.

“Hey, Top,” Preach says, patting the stool beside him as Adam approaches him. Noticing the barely touched, almost warm beer in Top’s hand, Preach smiles to himself. It’s about time for some friendly advice, maybe even a little tough love.  

Adam considers jumping straight into the topic that’s been dominating his thoughts the past few days. He is no stranger to PTSD, and while he’s not sure Jaz’s odd behavior stems from that, the possibility alone has him on alert.

A dozen questions race in his mind. Has Preach noticed the weirdness with Jaz? What does he think it’s about? Does he think she’s having second thoughts...about the team? About her life here? About him? Instead, he settles for the safest topic he can find.

“Hey, um, the change you made to the comms malfunction drill was clever. No question, the new gear could go haywire during an op like that.”

“Yeah, well. Not like the disruption worked on you and Jaz. From now on, we’re banning telepathy during team competitions.”

Adam’s wistful smile comes and goes in an instant, as he darts a quick glance at his sniper just feet away, waiting on her drink. He wonders if the thoughtful look on her face means she’s considering hopping up to sit on the wood bar top. Distracted, he absentmindedly starts responding.

“We can’t read each other’s--” stopping abruptly, he clears his throat, then mutters, “Well, I can’t…”

When he trails off, Preach notices the clenched jaw, the strain in his forearm muscles. Adam relaxes almost instantly, tapping his fingers against the colored glass, but it’s too late.

“Adam.” The use of his given name always has the desired effect. Top sighs, wondering why he even tries. Preach can read him like a book, and isn’t that why he walked over here in the first place?

“I’m worried, Preach.” That catches the older man a little off guard. Adam’s not even trying to be subtle, which speaks volumes about his state of mind. Still, Preach doesn’t press too hard.

“About what? McG’s susceptibility to street dogs during close quarter combat?”

Adam huffs out an obligatory laugh with a sideways look, and Preach nods as he raises his hands in acquiescence. It’s only been two weeks since Tehran, and Jaz’s recovery has been on everyone’s radar. Even without the intel he’s gathered by watching Adam and Jaz interact recently, Preach would’ve guessed what he’s concerned about.

“Alright. So, you’re worried about Jaz. What’s new?” Adam rolls his eyes, and against his better judgment tries to defend himself.

“I’m not always worr--”

“Top, this conversation will be a lot easier if you at least try to be honest--”

Adam flares. “Hey, I’m not-- ”

“--with yourself.” Preach finishes, knowingly. That seems to halt Adam momentarily, so he continues. “I don’t care what you say to me. I already know the truth. Do you?”

Adam seems to deflate visibly at that, running an impatient hand over his beard. Preach waits, and when Adam doesn’t speak, he prods.

“Tell me about the worst case scenario in your head.”

Adam doesn’t expect that. “What?”

“You’re worried. About Jaz. But what specifically about her? You think she’s slipping? Or you think she’ll shoot you in the ass accidentally?” Air quotes accompany the last word and Adam begrudgingly smiles.

“McG’s rubbing off on you,” Adam mumbles, but Preach knows he’s made his point. None of this conversation has to do with Jaz as a soldier, a professional, a member of the team. Jaz is the best sniper in Special Forces, and they are damn lucky to have her back. What happened in Tehran? It can’t touch any of that.

For a few seconds, Adam looks down, turns the green bottle fast in his hands, watches it spin like his mind.

“What truth?” he finally asks. “What truth do you know that I don’t?”

Preach considers that. It’s possible he might’ve overplayed his hand using that particular phrase. But after witnessing a completely spaced out Jaz that morning, oblivious to everything but Top, he feels a responsibility to the team, to them. Wisdom is knowing when to speak and when to let things be. And Preach is wise. It’s time for a nudge.

“You and Jaz...you trust each other when your lives are on the line. That’s the job. But real life? It’s...not that.”  

Preach stands, strolling away casually towards his teammates, leaving Adam to mull over his words.

Real life. What does that even mean for him now? This is his real life. Is it not?

From experience, he knows there’s an ocean of difference between the connections that form after trauma, and the organic nature of normal friendships. So, him and Jaz. Are they bound to each other due to circumstance? If they weren’t soldiers, teammates, commanding officer and subordinate, would they meet at a bar or a restaurant and bond over everyday things?

Whatever the answer, Adam only knows one truth. Real or not, Jaz has become an essential piece of this pie chart he thinks of as his life. Obviously, a much larger piece than he’d realized. And the idea that the fallout from Iran might threaten that? He won’t allow it.

Jaz’s distant laugh interrupts his escalating thoughts. Startled, he lifts his head, eyes searching for her. He finds her leaning casually against the rounded edge of the bar, staring up at some stranger’s face.

The tall, well dressed guy -probably some IT contractor or a businessman- smiles down at her, his body language making his intentions clear as day. When he reaches inside his jacket pocket, Adam jumps to his feet, but freezes when he notices a harmless pen emerge. Not a threat.

Oblivious, Jaz looks down, clearly radiating amusement instead the annoyance Adam finds himself hoping for. The clean-cut man scribbles on the white napkin next to her beer. Adam shifts uncomfortably on his feet, taking a couple steps toward the pool table where Preach and McG are standing, as if he was headed there the whole time.

Surely, Adam thinks, Jaz will offer a polite smile and chuck the napkin when the guy turns around, like he’s seen her do countless times. But she tucks it safely in her jacket pocket instead, zipping it closed with a curious smile on her face, and it’s the second time tonight Adam has to force his body to relax.

Jaz is quiet, but pleasant, the rest of the night. Adam steals quick glances in her general direction, pretending he’s keeping watch over the front door to their left. She seems lost in thought, occasionally chuckling or interjecting one-word answers.

Since he’s known her, Jaz has always been an all or nothing kind of girl. Present or absent, engaged or disengaged. As her CO, his entire management strategy around her is based on this fact. Jaz is black and white. No gray area. No compromise.

But this Jaz, the one weaving in and out of his private thoughts, this is not the Jaz he’s used to. A whole new side of her is starting to show -since Iran- and it makes him wonder if a real friend would behave like him, watching from the sidelines while she morphs into whoever she’s gonna be.

As his internal dialogue takes on a life of its own, Preach regales Amir with more old team stories and McG tells inappropriate jokes. Before they know it, it’s time to head back to base.

Outside, they near their SUV parked on the street, and Jaz moves to take a seat in the back.

“Your long legs fit better in the front,” she tells Preach as she closes the car door.

Because he’s wise, Preach doesn’t miss a beat. McG and Amir follow his lead. “Not gonna complain.”

Adam hides his disappointment well as he climbs into the driver’s seat, but his hands tremble almost imperceptibly around the wheel.  

On the ride home, it takes all his willpower to stop himself from looking back at her through the rearview mirror.

                        ____________________________________

It’s late, and Adam tosses and turns in bed. Sleep has slowly returned to normal for him since Tehran -although the nightmares are not entirely gone, they are manageable now- but tonight, his mind is wide awake. He refuses to think about why, knowing it will take him down a path he just doesn’t feel ready to consider yet.

Jaz, standing at that bar tonight, smiling -genuinely this time- at another man. It’s not like she’s not approached on a regular basis when they go out. Jaz is beautiful, and there’s never a shortage of men circling around. Still, she’s never entertained any of them. Not on deployment. Or at least, not when she’s out with the team. With him.

Enough. God, he needs to clear his head.  Shuffling out into the hallway, thinking a quick walk outside will help, he’s puzzled when he finds her door across from his slightly ajar.

A faint noise from the kitchen draws his full attention, and he quietly moves in that direction, reaching the living area in time to see Jaz walking away, crossing the plastic strip curtain, headed outside. Indecision paralyzes him briefly, but he follows her, feeling silly about spying, but unable - or unwilling- to make his body turn around.

He finds her sitting on the picnic table, legs crossed, her profile visible to him from his hidden spot by the door. Briefly, he worries she’ll notice him -because ninja skills- but after a few moments he thinks he’s safe, and finds himself just watching her. Memories of their talk by the fire wash over him, unabated, as he takes her in. When did this start to happen exactly? This need to be around her, understand her? Have her understand him?

The late evening breeze blows softly, the hair around her face fluttering, and his eyes focus on something square and white in her hand, the soft edges flapping lightly in the wind. From his position, he can’t read her facial expression, her long thick hair covering most of her profile, but her head is tilted down. The way his stomach drops when he realizes what’s in her hand doesn’t entirely surprise him now. A napkin. Most likely the one from the bar, with someone else’s phone number scribbled on it.

Preach’s words from earlier ring in his ears…what exactly is ��real”? And if it’s not this... does Jaz want whatever real may be? Does he?

                           _____________________________________

The next morning, Jaz walks back from her morning run, and the 12’ x 12’ plankwood square that serves as their storage space on base catches her eye. The door is ajar, and seconds later she finds herself inside. Shuffling around the grimy, dark room, breathing in and out, gliding her fingers over the dusty edges of the cardboard boxes neatly piled and catalogued.. Not looking for anything in particular, she wonders what she’s even doing here.

A single box she finds halfway open draws her attention- “Undercover Props / Accessories” it reads in scrambled sharpie ink on the outside. Adam’s scribble. A few rows of bulk cleaning supply boxes are lined up next to it, and that old couch Elijah had begged them to replace frames the back wall. When she inches closer, a flash of light reflecting on something like glass catches her eye, and she reaches inside for it instantly.

Staring at the rimless, fake reading glasses- Adam’s- in her hand, her mind flashes back to that busy Tehran airport, the smell of jet fuel, sounds of rolling luggages and high pitched chatter. Closing her eyes she can recall every detail. It makes her stomach flutter, but not from the thoughts she expects- the botched jump from the hotel window, the torture room designed to strip her raw, or the almost impossible rescue by her guys.

Instead, she recalls unexpected images, grainy black and white daydreams. Adam’s strong hand on the small of her back, his warm breath on her cheek, the intoxicating feel of soft lips and his scratchy beard against her skin. None of these are details she consciously noticed at the time -her focus had been on playing the role, making it through customs untouched.

A mild sense of unease creeps in as she becomes aware of her thoughts. Her dreams- and fantasies lately -have been full of... this, she thinks a little bitterly. Loaded with an undecipherable fusion of images and thoughts and feelings that feel disjointed and unnatural to her.

Memories after a traumatic event can be a tricky thing, Xander says. It appears he’s right again.

She remembers sitting in her room that day, staring at the clothes she’d picked for their flight into Tehran, and feeling nervous and a little excited about the undercover assignment as Adam’s wife. The memories are murky- chronological snapshots of that morning’s events flashing in her mind -but what strikes her now is the feeling that comes with them, the emotion that floods her so unexpectedly as she stands there, lost in thought, in the middle of that dusty room with Adam’s glasses in her hand.

She’d felt...safe that day; walking through the shiny white corridors along the crowded airline terminals, Adam by her side, holding her hand. As dangerous as she knew it was, she couldn’t recall a mission where she’d felt more prepared. A 650 yard shot- she could execute that in her sleep. An airtight escape plan- undercover couple assignments were practically their specialty by now. The world a little safer with Jarif dead - finally getting justice for her fellow servicemen fallen at that beach.

The humorless chuckle escapes her as her focus returns to the present, a fingertip tracing the edge of the lenses’ frame. How wrong had she been.

Chatter from some soldiers discussing the lack of adequate soap choices at the PX makes her snicker, and she wonders how long she’s been in the storage room. With a quick shake of her head, she moves toward the open box to put away the glasses, but her hand freezes just above the opening.

No one will know if you take them.

The thought - and the accompanying chill down her spine- startle her. Jaz is not sentimental about these things, so it makes no sense that she can’t make her fingers loosen around the folded thin temples of the glasses. Even more illogical is that leaving them in that box feels like leaving him .

You’re being ridiculous she chastises herself, forcing her fingertips to let go, but the moment the glasses fall between Top’s go-to gray scarf and that curly hair wig she hates, she knows they’re going with her.

Walking out of the storage room, one hand wrapped around the smuggled prize in her pocket, Jaz runs straight into Adam.

“Hey,” Adam says. Calm, collected and steady. Under his piercing stare her cheeks start to burn.

“Hi.” Jaz says, scanning the space around him as if assessing threat levels. Adam wants to touch her shoulder, get her attention, so he shoves his hands in his pockets instead.

“You find any treasure?”

“What?” It’s a little too quick, and Adam’s eyes narrow. Widening his stance, he considers her for a moment before waving a listless hand at the structure behind her.

“In the storage room?” Jaz just stares, so he continues. “You just walked out of--”

“Ah, yes.” She interjects, recovering with a nod. “No, I didn’t.”  

“What were you looking for? Maybe I can help.” Damn him and his perseverance. The hand in her pocket squeezes involuntarily, reminding her to relax.

“Oh no. I found it.” Adam is visibly confused, so she amends, “I mean...I have what I need. Back in my quarters. I don’t even know why I...went in there.” The last few words uttered as she moves to walk away.

“Okay…” But it’s not, he thinks, and his brow furrows further. What does she have back in her quarters? And for what mission? DC hasn’t called in the three days since they’re last mission. On instinct, he takes a quick step to the side and blocks her path.  

Jaz feels her temper begin to wind. All she wants is to be left alone with her illogical thoughts and inconvenient feelings, and yet, here’s Adam, being his steady, thoughtful self and her hand is burning in her pocket, and she just wants to snap.

“Did you need something, Top?” A bit sharper than she intended. Adam straightens.

“No, I just--”

“Because it seems you were waiting for me. Out here.” Adam starts to smile sheepishly, but stops at her look.

“Yeah. Listen, Jaz--”

“I’m fine.” Jaz interrupts, calmer now, realizing that flipping out on him only increases the chances he’ll figure out what she’s carrying in her pocket, and in her mind.

“Last night you were pretty quiet.” When she meets his eyes he feels the need to clarify. “At the bar.”

That catches Jaz off guard. Of course he meant at the bar , where else would she have been quiet last night that he would’ve noticed? Her head tilts, processing the information, and he swallows before averting his eyes so briefly she almost misses it. Whatever that’s about she’ll have to find out another time. Right now, she needs some space.

“I was tired. Listen, Top...” Adam waits.  

Taking a deep breath, Jaz blinks a few times. She doesn’t want to have this conversation- about her fruitless attempts at distracting herself from thoughts of him- but if she doesn’t give him something concrete, they will dance this dance until she loses her mind. So, just like the morning before, she decides a partial truth is better than a lie.

“I just feel...different. That’s all. I’m working through it.”

“Different how?” There’s something like distant panic in his chest at her explanation, and it all starts to jumble in his head -Preach’s words about real life, spying on her under the stars, visions of her calling that other guy- but he catches himself, and offers an apologetic smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to--”

“It’s fine,” she dismisses with a wave, and vaguely registers that her temper has all but vanished at the depth of his concern. “Just...you’re gonna have to trust me.”

“I do.” The lack of hesitation draws out a small smile as she looks up at him.  

“Thanks.” Adam nods, and steps out of her way, following her with his eyes until she’s out of sight.    

                       _____________________________________

The rest of the day is mostly routine. A solid morning run, sparring with her guys, chores and maintenance checklists for weapons and equipment, a short trip into the city for lunch and supplies. But now, as Jaz moves through her room preparing for bed, she feels anything but normal. Slipping on a worn long sleeve tee and tugging up her flannel pants, the barrage of thoughts and feelings that have swirled within her the past few weeks weigh heavily on her mind.

Tying her hair up in a pineapple bun, she plops down on the edge of her bed and her eyes can’t help glancing at the bedside table compartment where Adam’s glasses are now stashed away. She tells herself that she should be sleeping already, but her hand pulls the drawer open and a second later her finger traces the metallic edge around the lenses. Unbidden, a soft memory from hours before that fateful flight into Iran floats through her mind.

“Hey, Mrs. You ready?” Adam walks in, dressed in his preppy professor outfit, and Jaz grins.

“Well, well, professor. Been a while since you’ve gotten to play dress up.” Jaz eyes him up and down, and he smiles indulgently.  

“Been a while since you’ve gotten to play wife.” She catches the smirk on his face as he turns to drape his jacket over the kitchen table chair.

“Such a privilege.” Jaz deadpans. Adam simply raises an eyebrow at that, and gestures toward her hand.

“The ring to your satisfaction, dear?” Jaz stretches her hand out and eyes her ring finger suspiciously as she shrugs.

“This cracker jack ring?” Adam chuckles. “It’s okay. For a professor’s salary, I suppose.”

When he doesn’t reply, she looks at him, and finds him lost in thought - that soft “Adam smile” she rarely gets to see visible on his face. Preach’s voice as he walks into the kitchen breaks Adam out of his trance and he walks away quickly, without meeting her eyes. Before she can process those last few seconds, Preach distracts her with talk about comms and Iran’s latest airport security protocols, and Jaz never gives Adam’s hasty exit a second thought.

Until now. The easy banter between them that day belied the seriousness and danger of the task they were about to take on. But it hadn’t mattered. Not then. Those moments - memories - feel so precious to her now. A reminder of a time when she could be around Adam, casually, without every nerve ending in her body awakening; without her thoughts drifting to the future possibilities, or lack thereof, between them.

Them. A kind of sadness swells inside her as she considers that. Somewhere deep down she knows the idea of Top as more than her CO has been dangerously hovering near the fringes of her conscious mind longer than she’d care to admit.

These days, though, it seems like the proverbial Pandora’s box has exploded inside her, and all the wishes she’s spent her life holding at arm’s length are now roaming around freely, mockingly staring her in the face.

She wants her simpler life back. The one where she felt balanced, prepared, in control. That black and white life where all but her next breath was expendable. This desire growing inside her- the idea that she could have more than just the Army as the backbone of her life - it translates into one thing and one thing only in her mind: risk.

Shaking her head, she stuffs the glasses in the drawer and flops backwards on the bed. Sergeant Khan, she mentally admonishes herself, get your shit under control. Now.

Satisfied with her stern internal dialogue, Jaz burrows under the covers, but as she reaches to turn off the lamp, she catches a glimpse of her bright turquoise water bottle and smiles. Maybe some changes haven’t been entirely bad.

The darkness and quiet seep in slowly as sleep overtakes her. And in spite of her logical conclusion that a simpler life is what she should want, the last conscious thought that swims in her mind’s eye is of Adam’s smile.

                       _____________________________________

“Jaz, what the…” The words die in his throat as his capable, lethal sniper struts into the room, wearing the shortest skirt he’s sure she’s ever owned, and a white button down shirt that barely covers her midriff.

“Yes, professor.” Adam’s hands ball tightly at his sides at the sultry tone in her voice, and he watches Jaz advance toward him. Slowly. Eyes on him.

“You don’t have to call me--”

“I want to.” Well damn. Adam swallows and manages to point at the classroom chair a few feet in front of him, but his eyes are locked on the exposed skin of her legs.  

“There are… um, papers, uh, that list of...things for, um, today…” German language prep, is what he means to say -Jaz has been working on German quals and he’s been helping her in their free time- but his brain is scrambling to stay somewhat focused and the pitiful attempt is not successful at all.

Alarm bells start ringing in his head as she bypasses the chair and comes around to sit on the corner of the desk.

“I thought maybe we could...improvise.” It has the desired effect and Jaz smirks as she watches him take in a shaky deep breath. Momentarily, a fleeting thought reminds her of the last time they’d improvised. In Tehran. But right now, Adam is standing there in that checkered button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up with his veined, muscled forearms flexing as he tries to reign himself in, and Jaz just can’t find it in herself to give a fuck about Iran.

Still staring at his hands, Adam replies, “Uh, yeah. Well, no--” he shakes his head “--we should follow the---”

“Adam.” At the sound of his name, he turns his head to look her in the eye, gripping the edge of the desk almost painfully now. Jaz leans her upper body closer, staring up at him through thick, long lashes. She’s got him right where she wants him, and the anticipation bursts in her chest as her eyes explore his familiar face.

When she scoots over to the right, closer and closer to where he’s standing, Adam instinctively lets go of the desk and plops down on the chair behind him.

“Jaz, we should probably---”

“The door is locked. The guys are out at that beach soccer tournament.” Methodically, she’s been rearranging her position so that she’s sitting on the edge of the desk now, right in front of him. Long, lean legs crossed at the ankles, swinging back and forth playfully.

“It’s just you and me.”

Adam tries to speak, but no words come out. Instead his eyes roam over her, hungry and dark, and Jaz has to press her thighs together to stave off the want. Adam is slowly unraveling, fidgeting a little wildly and squirming in the leather chair, and Jaz thinks he’s never looked more unpredictable.

“Will you do something for me?” That gets his attention and his eyes fly up to hers. She reaches inside her white button shirt between her breasts, eyes never leaving his, and pulls out the familiar pair of glasses he’d worn that day in Tehran. Adam’s mouth opens slightly, and when she bends down to place the glasses on his face, Adam freezes as his gaze locks on the visible edges of the white lace bra under her shirt.

Jaz hums appreciatively at the sight of him and licks her lips on instinct, tracing her fingers lightly down along his cheeks, over his beard, caressing that distracting bottom lip of his with her thumb as she straightens.

“Where, um…how did you get…” Right now, he couldn’t string a sentence together to save his life.

“Lucky treasure hunt. Adam...” The soles of the white tennis shoes she’s wearing are now resting on his knees, and his body just moves on autopilot, leaning towards her like metal to a magnet. The leather chair slides forward as Adam runs his large calloused hands softly over her shins, around the back to cup her calves, squeezing involuntarily as he looks up at her, questioning.

“Jaz?”

“Please,” she breathes while leaning back, hands on the desk behind her for support. When he pushes her legs back and open, and anchors her feet on the edge of the desk, her head falls back with a slightly desperate moan. The sudden rush of air over her hot, aching center shocks her, but Adam’s deep raspy growl drowns out her strangled cry as he takes in the full sight of her.

“Fuck, Jaz…” Feeling the suddenly intense grip of his hands around her ankles, she chuckles triumphantly because that’s the exact reaction she’d imagined when she’d chosen to forego wearing panties under her bright pink tennis skirt.

“Surprise.” Jaz’s voice trembles with anticipation, and because she can feel his warm breath so close to where she needs him, her hips roll forward on instinct, back arching, searching for the feel of his mouth on her. It’s his turn to grin now at her disapproving whine, because payback is only fair and he’s going to take his time savoring this. Her.

Closing his eyes for a second, he takes in her scent- she’s been wet for him for hours it seems, and it makes his cock painfully hard. He’s immersed in the experience of her, the sighs and deep breaths as he rubs his beard over the perfectly smooth skin of her inner thighs.

Traveling up her silky tanned legs, his hands come to rest over her knees for a second before pushing gently, opening her wider to his gaze.

“God.. Adam, please…” Jaz has been planning this for days, dreaming about it, and if he doesn’t touch her soon- really touch her- she will implode.

“Shhh… Sei geduldig .” He tells her to be patient, in fucking German, and Jaz feels the heat low in her belly grow into wildfire. Without warning, he runs his tongue from her opening up to her clit and closes his lips around it, sucking hard.

The incoherent rambling coming from her lips is enough to make him lose some of his self-control, but he’s ready for her, and holds her in place easily as she jerks against his mouth, chasing the pleasure, moaning his name.

“Adam...I need.. Please… now.” Two fingers slide inside her, rough and fast, curling as he feels her clenching, and not a minute passes before stars explode behind her eyes, body going limp.

“Wow.”

“Just wow? Ouch.” Adam jokes, looking down at her, relaxed and beautiful, thick black hair fanning around her on the desk.

Jaz rolls her eyes and offers a mischievous grin. “That was a good start.”

It reminds him there’s still way too many clothes between them, and his eyes darken behind the glasses as Jaz hooks her legs around his waist for leverage, comes up to snake her arms around his neck, and pulls his face down for a kiss.

Adam makes quick work of her shirt and bra, and when she moves to take off the skirt bunched around her waist he breaks the kiss and stops her with his hand. “Leave it.”

At her raised eyebrow, he touches a finger to the glasses on his face and explains, “You’re not the only that’s fantasized about this...us.” He emphasizes that last word with a pointed look - his attempt at communicating so much more than he’s able to verbalize just then- and Jaz bites her lip.

“Good.” That’s all she can manage, because his familiar piercing stare that’s always felt a bit unnerving but reassuring, is doing nothing but making her wet and desperate for him again.

“So, professor,” her wicked smirk sends a blinding spark of need straight to his groin, “you gonna stand there and talk, or show me how it’s done?”

“Jesus, Jaz…” Adam growls as he threads his fingers through her hair, closes his fists around it, and proceeds to devour her mouth. Jaz never knew a kiss could feel like this, and while her head is swimming in delirious bliss, her hands are busy ridding him of his clothes.

The moment she wraps her fingers around his cock, Adam opens his mouth and inhales sharply, lips still brushing against hers.

“Fuck, Jaz...yes, baby….” Jaz hums her approval as he sweeps her tongue inside her mouth, and sucks on his bottom lip one more time before breaking the contact.

“Condom. Now. Drawer.” Adam fumbles to find it, too blind with desire to even register that she’d put it there purposely. Just how long has she been planning this?

“Let me.” Taking the foil square from him, Jaz rips it open. Adam brings his forehead down against hers, wide blue eyes focused on her slender fingers rolling the condom over his cock, and he thinks he won’t live another minute without burying himself deep inside her.

“Fuck me, Adam,” Jaz whispers as she looks up at him with hooded eyes, and that hot coil of desire low in his belly grows so strong he feels like a geyser on the inside, ready to erupt.

Spreading his legs wider, he leans his thighs against the desk, and brings his cock to her entrance. With a rough desperate hand on her ass, he pulls her forward to the edge, and then finally sinks into her, hard and fast.

Holding her head firmly in place with his other hand, Adam thrusts his tongue into her mouth in a blinding kiss. Jaz holds onto his shoulders for leverage, nails digging in, begging for speed as she tightens her legs around his waist.

The need for air forces them apart briefly as the pleasure and sensations overwhelm them both. Slurred, incoherent half-words mix in with the sound of their hips slamming against each other, filling the silence in the room.  

“Oh, god. Jaz…you feel… incredible.”

“Don’t stop, please...Adam… more...”

Adam tucks his face in her neck, sucking and licking at her sweet-scented skin, and Jaz bites down on his earlobe, whispering unintelligibly as she nears her breaking point.

She meets him thrust for thrust a few more times, and together they slam into oblivion.

Later, Jaz lays straddling Adam’s thighs, sated and content. He traces small circles on her back, restless fingers teasing the hem of the pink skirt gathered around her waist.

“Don’t think my brain can take any german right now.” Adam’s laugh rumbles in his chest and she rubs her nose against the hollow of his neck.

The silence stretches between them. “I can hear you thinking, Top.”

The sound of his nickname on her lips is jarring. Reality explodes around her. God, what has she done? But she is frozen now, unable to make a sound as her brain runs through the countless ways this could go so very wrong.

Jaz is still, her insides now cold as ice. Adam shifts slightly in place, and exhales an agonizingly slow breath.

“I think---”

                         _____________________________________

“What? You think what?” Jaz murmurs as the embers of the dream dissipate and her eyes open to the stark, cold darkness of her quarters. A deep sense of dread envelops her as she registers the way her thighs are pressed together, her soaked underwear, and the vivid images in her mind of pink skirts, those damn glasses, and Adam’s face buried between her legs.

“God…” She breathes, still so aroused, and horrified. She rubs at her eyes with one hand as she fumbles for her phone to check the time. What the fuck was that, Jaz?

4:55 AM.

Time for a damn run.

[hes-a-rainbow]

The Hoet

Requested by Anon from this drabbles list!

25.“Drunk me is like regular me, except with more grammar errors and a deeper meaning to everything.” (I changed up this quote to work with the story better.) 26. “I’m glad to know you think of me when you’re drunk.”

A/N: I used Bukowski because I vaguely remember Harry talking about reading his work once. Enjoy! 

P.S. This has not been edited, only re read by me so sorry if there are any grammer/spelling mistakes!

Word Count: 2.4k

Warnings: Angsty, blink and you’ll miss it NSFW

“I will remember the kisses ...our lips raw with love and how you gave me everything you had and how I offered you what was left of me. And I will remember your small room...the feel of you...the light in the window...your records...your books...our morning coffee...our noons, our nights. Our bodies spilled together; sleeping. The tiny flowing currents. Immediate and forever. Your leg, my leg. Your arm, my arm. Your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again.”

You rolled your eyes as you watched your friends hang to Harrys’ every word. He always did this when he was drunk. After a few drinks (usually three) he would start becoming some sort of amateur poet, except none of it was his original work. He had a way of remembering things. Song lyrics, movie lines, etc. But his specialty was poems. He could somehow remember them perfectly. And he could somehow remember them drunk. This was his go to poem from his go to poet, Charles Bukowski. It irked you just how pretentious and predictable he could be some times.

Your eyes roamed over the faces of the girls practically fanning themselves on top of him on the couch they all sat at. Usually you would call Harry out for his bullshit poetry sessions, but it was the day before his birthday so you thought you could at least give him this one. It was also his sure fire way to getting laid, which meant he was definitely looking for someone to warm his bed tonight for a little bit of birthday fun. Your stomach knotted at the thought of who it would be in your close knit group of friends and how you would still have to see them after their night rolling in the sheets. Everyone would know it had happened but no one would bring it up.

Harry was one of your closest friends and of course, just like everyone else, you had fallen for him somewhere along the line. You never told him but you were sure it was obvious. He was a smart man and he could always somehow know exactly what you were thinking.

A part of you hoped maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he was just oblivious because it was you, but you knew that was wrong. He noticed every blush you made at his cheeky yet sweet comments and he noticed how your body tensed under his touch. The great thing about Harry was that he was so good at reading people; he knew what would make them uncomfortable and vice versa. So he never bought it up and you were thankful for that, not wanting to hear his rejection. (Which would probably just be another quote from Bukowski or one of those rom coms he was always watching.)

The night had been fun so far. Harry had invited his closest friends to his house for a dinner party. His closest friends included about fifteen people.

He had said he wanted to be “an adult tonight and a teenager tomorrow”, referencing the club hopping he wanted to do the night of his actual birthday. But of course, like clockwork, Harry started reciting lines of poetry that you have heard a thousand times before. You knew you weren’t the only one in your friend group who had a crush on him, but it still bothered you to see them so blatantly all over him. At least you were somewhat subtle about your crush. At least that’s what you thought.

“Wow, Harry that was amazing, did you write that?” Your friend seated next to Harry placed her hand on his knee, ignoring all the other people around them. You knew what was going to come next, Harry’s speech about how he didn’t write it but he felt it. He would go into such detail about how he had felt a spiritual connection with Bukowski and how he would swear up and down they had met in a past life.

You rubbed your forefinger and your thumb against the bridge of your nose, trying to calm the annoyance you always felt when he got this way.

You pushed yourself off the wall you were leaning against in the far corner of the room and made your way into the kitchen, you didn’t need to watch these girls fawn over him any longer. Not to mention, this would probably all happen again tomorrow night.

A few of your friends were sat around the kitchen table, talking among themselves, completely unaware of the poetry session being given in the living room.

Their conversation didn’t falter as you entered the room. You walked straight toward the make shift bar on Harry’s kitchen counter and poured yourself another glass of wine, nearly downing it all in one gulp before filling it up some more.

It was nights like these that were the worst, knowing you were going to go home alone while Harry was spending the night with someone else; you being the last thought on his mind.

You always fantasized about him randomly confessing his feelings for you one day and then taking you right there, where ever you were. (You mostly fantasized about him bending you over on this very counter).

You leaned your hands against the counter. The warmth of your body nearly sizzling when it came in contact with the cold granite. Taking in a deep breath before letting it out through your lips.

“You shouldn’t frown like that love, you’ll get wrinkles.” Harry’s voice came from behind which caused you to jump. You were so deep in thought you hadn’t even heard the click of his boots as he walked up behind you.

He was so close that when you turned to face him your back grazed his chest. You hoped he chalked up your red cheeks to the alcohol.

You stared up into his eyes, wishing he would just go away and leave you to your thoughts. Why was he even talking to you anyway? Shouldn’t he be schmoozing up somebody else? Somebody he’s actually attracted too?

“You know you become a real pretentious asshole when you drink.” The words were out of your mouth before you could even think about the repercussions. His eyebrows lifted in surprise but soon a small smirk tugged at his lips.

He leaned down a bit so he could whisper in your ear, “I could say the same about you.” He didn’t pull away right away, but when he did, he had that shit eating grin that you were well acquainted with.

“I like you better sober.”

“Sober? Drunk me is like regular me, except with a deeper meaning to everything.” You scoffed at his words, side stepping passed him and out of the room. You had decided you had enough of him for one night. You just wanted to go home now.

“Where are you going?” He called after you. This time you could definitely hear his boots clicking behind you. The both of you ignored the stares your friends gave and the occasional questioning of your names as he followed you up the stairs and down the hall to his bedroom. You walked over to his bed, picking up your jacket and purse before turning around and nearly breaking your nose against his chest.

“Where are you going?” He repeated in a more stern voice this time. He towered over you, making you feel like a small child about to be reprimanded.

“Home.” You tried taking a step forward but he just moved with you, blocking the path to his door.

“Why? It’s not even midnight. Don’t you want to ring in my birthday with me?” His breath smelled of the expensive wine he had gotten tonight.

“I think I’m good, there’s more than enough suitors downstairs to help ‘ring in’ your birthday.” You emphasized your point with obnoxious air quotes. Again, you tried to make your way passed you but again, he didn’t let you. This time he put his hands on your shoulders, holding you in place.

“Harry.” You spoke sternly, straightening your shoulders in an attempt to look more intimidating but failing completely.

“Babe,” His tone was more mocking which made you even madder.

“Seriously, why do you even care? It’s not like I’m going to be the one you fuck tonight!” You knew you would regret your words tomorrow, but right now you were going to stick with them no matter the result.

He leaned back a bit, obviously confused by your statement. He let his hands drag slowly down your arms, raising goosebumps along the way, until he reached your hands. He casually linked your fingers together,  rubbing his thumbs across the back of them in a soothing manner.

“Well love…” Your teeth clenched at the pet name. He slowly raised his eyes to meet yours. “Who said I don’t want to fuck you tonight?”

You could hear your heart pounding in your ears. You weren’t sure if it was the wine or the close proximity but the room suddenly felt increasingly hot. You didn’t respond, words racing through your head trying to find the perfect response. It didn’t seem like he was joking but he had to be, right?

He sucked in a breath through his teeth causing your eyes to flicker down to his lips, the same lips you fantasized about a thousand times. He raised his hand to rest on the side of your face, swiping his thumb across your bottom lip. You just stared at him, trying to calculate his next movement.

“Ya know, I’ve wanted to kiss you for the longest time…” He let his thumb swipe over your bottom lip again, this time pulling it down a bit to expose your teeth before letting it bounce back into place.

“You are just one of those people who don’t know how incredibly sexy they are. It truly amazes me…” He moved his hands down your shoulders again before landing them on your waist, rubbing calming circles into the soft skin on your hips.

“I think that in some way, you not knowing only makes you more beautiful.” He pulled you closer to him, connecting your bodies by your waists until there was no more room left in between you two.

Your breath caught in your throat at the feeling of him pressed up against his jeans. He rolled his hips against yours causing you both to let out a sigh. He had a look of pure concentration on his face. He was biting his bottom lip and his eyes looked they were trying to see inside your soul. You hadn’t noticed that your hands were clinging on his biceps for dear life, most likely leaving marks from how hard your finger tips were digging into his skin.

“Well-” Your voice cracked. You were trying to sound confident but it only came out whiny and pathetic.

Your mind was racing. You had a million thoughts per second and you had no idea if this was real or some very cruel, realistic dream.

You squeezed his arms one more time to make sure he was really there.

He was as real as could be and this was really happening.

You moved your hand upwards so it could rest on the back of his neck. He finally let go of his bottom lip; his tongue sweeping out to wet it. You lightly pulled him down so he could be closer to you, closer to your lips that you wanted him to kiss so badly. You saw his eyes close but you kept yours open, still vigilant in case this was all some big joke and in a minute everybody was going to pop out and say “Surprise! He never wanted you, bitch!”

That one thought alone made you rethink everything. Just as you felt the ghost of his lips on yours, you pulled away, successfully putting distance between you two and getting out of his hold.

His eyes shot open. You almost pitied him for how pathetic he looked in that moment, but your brain reminded you of the facts of the situation.

He was drunk.

You just so happened to be in the right place at the right time for him to make his move. You were only his friend who he would only want for one night and you knew you couldn’t put yourself through that. You knew that if you gave in you would only want more from him, and you knew that was not something he could offer. Your brain was a cruel place, always putting you down instead of lifting you up. But this time you thanked her for being the only rational part of your body at the moment.

Harry opened his mouth to say something but you cut him off immediately, “I’m glad to know you think of me when you’re drunk.”

This time you did sound confident. You were suddenly stone cold sober and completely aware of your thoughts and actions. How could you have almost kissed him? How could you have let it get this far? You were both drunk and that was all. He didn’t mean a word he had just said, or at least that’s what your brain told you. And she could be such a bitch sometimes.

“What are you-I’m not drunk!” His voice raised a little too loud, something that he did when he was, indeed, drunk. He looked confused and hurt but you had convinced yourself it was because he realized he wouldn’t be getting any tonight, well at least not from you.

He took a step towards you, “Okay, I may be a little tipsy, but I meant what I said!”

Emotions were a weird thing. So weird in fact, that at this very moment all you could do was laugh. His face twisted in bewilderment as he tried to figure out what was going on.

“What the hell?” He whispered, more to himself than to you.

When you finally got your giggling under control, you leaned up and placed a kiss on his cheek.

“Oh, Harry. You’ll realize the mistake you were about to make in the morning. Trust me, I stopped something terrible from happening.” You place your hand on his chest and added, “Happy birthday, H.” You walked out of the room before he had any time to react of respond to your words.

Thank you for reading! I left it a bit open ended so there could be a chance of a part two. (Also because I’m a hoe for cliffhangers)

Masterlist

[exxar1]

Episode 1: A New Beginning

9/23/2020

2020 has been, to put it mildly, an eventful year thus far. A global pandemic, social and civil unrest, and a national election in 6 weeks. America has been thrust into a crucible, and, if you’re like me, you’ve stood at your front door, staring out at the world with a mixture of astonishment, befuddlement, anxiety, and, at times, quiet fear. Every morning has brought news headlines worse than the day before. Since mid-March, it has felt to most of us as if the entire world was flipped upside down and turned inside out. Where daily life was once an ordinary, comfortable routine, it has now taken on the feeling of a long, terrifying roller coaster ride: lengthy, nervous pauses followed by heart-stopping, terror-filled drops, and we never know at each sundown what the next sunrise will bring.

For me, personally, the last six months have been all of that – and more. No, thank God, I did not lose my job. Ever since moving to Las Vegas in 2012, I have had a successful career at a payday loan company. For the last eight years I have done well for myself, attaining the rank of assistant manager and making more than enough money to not only meet my needs but also put some away for the future. I’m still single with no children to support, so I have always been a workaholic; not so much that I burn myself out and have no social life, but neither do I believe in stopping at just 40 hours a week when I’m still young and capable enough to go for at least 60 or 65 on a good week. The last 8 years have been incredibly rewarding for me, and I’ve been very happy with my decision to relocate to Las Vegas.

But then, in mid-March of this year, my luxurious comfort zone was abruptly – suddenly – shattered. The Nevada governor declared a statewide shutdown of all non-essential businesses and a forced quarantine of non-essential workers. My job remained intact due to our status as a financial services company, but because all the casinos, restaurants, and most of the other businesses on the Las Vegas strip were abruptly shut down, most of my job’s customer base was suddenly unemployed. As a result, our company had to adjust accordingly. We have 26 stores in Las Vegas and Henderson, four of them operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. One of the reasons I was making so much money was because I could pick up overtime shifts at other stores. As soon as the statewide shutdown and quarantine went into effect, our company was forced to cut back store hours, lay off some employees, and cancel all overtime. Other perks such as quarterly bonuses were also canceled along with annual raises. All of this caused a sudden and immediate drop in my monthly income that I was not ready for.

Something you should know about me is that I am a type “A” personality. That means that I prefer schedules, planning, and as much preparation as possible for anything and everything. I live my life by a clock and lists. There’s no such thing as spontaneity or lollygagging. We workaholics believe time is money, and even on our days off we never really relax. We’re using that precious little free time to get the household chores done and prepare for the busy week ahead. Even when I watch TV I’m multitasking – usually doing the crossword or playing a game on my phone or Nintendo Switch. Type “A” people need to know exactly what’s coming and we usually plan not just for tomorrow or the week ahead or even the month ahead. We plan for at least 3 months ahead, and we freak out if anything unexpected pops up to ruin our best laid plans.

Now, of course, we all know that daily life is full of little surprises and upsets. But, if we’ve planned and prepped well, then we’re not entirely thrown out of whack by life’s minor emergencies. Flat tire on the expressway? No problem. We have great auto insurance, and there’s plenty in savings to cover a new tire and time lost in wages for missing that day’s work. Wake up with my throat feeling a little scratchy and nose stuffed? No problem! Grab that emergency bag of tea bags and cough drops from the bathroom medicine cabinet on my way out the door to work. Type “A” folks are what keep the world running smooth and on time. We’d control the timing of the sunrise and sunset if it were possible.

So, you can see why the economic shutdown of 2020 threw a massive and wholly detestable wrench into my comfortable, orderly life. I say this with a dryly humorous tone, but it was no joke. I had to scramble to rearrange my finances, but my monthly bills depended on a specific amount to make all ends meet, and I was suddenly going to be very short. The future, which had once seemed so bright and certain, was now dark and unknown, and I could no longer plan for even one week ahead, let alone three months. Yes, there was some relief in the form of the economic impact payments from the government as well as a one-time withdrawal allowed by my 401K. But always, in the back of my mind, there was the nagging worry about what would come after that extra money ran out. If the statewide shutdown wasn’t lifted, if my job didn’t allow me to work overtime, and if I hadn’t found a second job by then, what would I do? This is where it began to feel as if I was on a roller coaster. There were days when I felt good, when I forced myself to not worry about the future and live in the present, and I focused on my work. And, because I had so much free time now that I was working only 35 or 38 hours a week, I used the opportunity to catch up on my reading list as well as my writing. (I also watched more TV and movies in two months than I had in my entire life to that point.)

But then there were sleepless nights where all I could do was toss and turn and worry. April dragged into May, May slowly turned into June, and the news headlines just got worse and worse. George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis in late May, and suddenly the nation was erupting with violent and frightening civil unrest. Portland, Chicago, Seattle, New York – and even Las Vegas – saw marches, protests, demonstrations, and none of them were peaceful. Social media was flooded with black squares and “Black Lives Matter” posts, and now we didn’t have just a global pandemic to worry about. For me, personally, it wasn’t my own financial future that had suddenly become uncertain. The future of the nation which I have called home for my whole life was unexpectedly called into question.

Life had turned upside down and inside out. My own anxiety and worry multiplied with each passing day, and I did my best to distract myself with writing, reading, binging old TV, and a brief vacation back home to Idaho. But always, in the darkest hour of the night, in the back of my mind all during the day, there was that steady, drumming fear: how much worse could things get? How much longer could we endure all of this? What in the world would happen next? I began to suffer periods of genuine depression. It took everything I had to force a smile on my face and pretend at work that everything was fine. Inside, I was falling apart.

In the first week of July I landed a second job at Walmart. My financial future suddenly became a lot more certain, and there was some genuine relief in that. But the violence, the unrest, and politics of the world around me continued to be a major source of worry and anxiety. It wasn’t just my daily life – job, home, friends, local government – that needed to be orderly, calm and predictable. I needed the world at large to also be certain, ordered and organized. I needed to know that my basic freedoms that I had taken for granted my entire life were not going to suddenly disappear. In just a span of a few weeks, the American dream that I had been living for 42 years was rapidly disappearing in a rising tide of ideological dogma that was gaining a foothold in every American institution with alarming speed. For the first time in my life I was witnessing the stuff that I had only read about in sci-fi novels such as 1984. All I could think was, What if the democrats win this election? What if the police really are defunded? Could America really devolve into a true socialist state? What if the worst-case scenario really happens?

And that is what finally brought me to what I can only describe is a mid-life spiritual crisis. I throw the word “spiritual” in there for good reason. I’m an atheist, you see. I was raised in the Baptist church, but I walked away from the church and all religion in my senior year of high school because I couldn’t reconcile the fact that I’m gay with what the Bible teaches about that particularly heinous sin. The only way I could live a successful, happy life was to be myself. I have always been out and proud, and I had no room for any religion that would call me a sinner and claim that my soul was damned because of my lifestyle “choice”. (More detail on this in a later post.) I’ve been on my own for 23 years now, and I’ve been just fine. I decided a long time ago that God doesn’t exist. He’s a figment of man’s overactive imagination, a crutch for those too weak to face life on their own. I have never needed such a crutch, and, until this year, I was doing just dandy living my own life and my truth.

My job at Walmart is to stand outside the front entrance and, per the new health mandates from the state governor, ensure that everyone entering the store is wearing their mask. Those who aren’t and who don’t have a valid reason for not wearing one – such as a medical exclusion – cannot go in. This means that I’m paid $11/hour to do basically nothing. I stand outside by myself, greeting the customers, and doing a LOT of thinking. For the last few weeks I have thought about everything happening just beyond my front doorstep. I’ve thought about the future of my nation, as well as the future of my own soul. I have silently questioned all of the beliefs and convictions that were once so certain. I have wrestled with my ego and my intellect, confused and angry with the fact that I was so certain of many things in my youth, yet now I am so unsure and afraid. My parents say that God is in control. Yet I see no evidence that God – or anyone – is in control. The world has lost its collective mind, and America, in particular, is on a fast track to chaos and anarchy. IF God really is out there, why is he allowing any of this to go on?

One of the fundamental changes that occurred as a result of this soul-searching was my decision to switch political parties. For the last 20 years or so I have been a staunch democrat. I have had no use for the conservative views of the republican party. I’m gay, after all, and I proudly supported all the progressive movements over the last two decades that eventually culminated in 2015 with the nationwide legalization of gay marriage. I also believed that no one other than the police, the military and government agents needed to own a gun. I was also pro-choice. But I have never been much interested in politics. Until 2012 I had never even voted. My reasoning for this was a combination of laziness and apathy. No matter which political party won the election, my life never changed. The world went on every day as it always had since before I was born, and besides, thanks to the electoral college, the majority vote doesn’t always mean a win. Therefore, I reasoned, my one vote didn’t really matter unless I was in a swing state. And since Nevada is a blue state, and since I was a democrat, I knew which candidate would get my state’s vote every time, no matter what. (The only reason I voted in the 2012 national election was because I wanted Obama to have a second term just to piss off my conservative family and friends; and I was bored that afternoon after work.)

But then, in the wake of George Floyd’s death in late May, as the Black Lives Matter movement began a newly rapid ascension in almost every aspect and institution of American life, I began to do a lot of reading online during my lunch breaks and days off. Later, in July and August, as the national election campaigns kicked into full gear, I read even more news from both sides of the biases on the candidates, their views, and their platforms. In particular, I started subscribing to The Daily Wire and The Federalist. As time went on, as I read more and more opinions and news, and as I spent my days in front of Walmart in the Las Vegas heat, I started to ruminate on everything happening in the headlines as well as the ideological war going on behind the scenes in daily American life. I also began to wrestle with my own beliefs and convictions.

There was no specific time and day for my change of heart. I do know it was somewhere in late July that I decided I was no longer a democrat. I was going to vote all republican in November, and I was now a proud supporter of Donald Trump. But this was only the start of my mid-life spiritual crisis. I realized in early August that I wasn’t just a republican. All of my fear and anxieties about the civil unrest, the economic shutdowns due the pandemic, the war over whether or not mandated masks and social distancing were, in fact, the first step in many that would end with all Americans under a socialist dictatorship after November 3rd, the national debates about critical race theory and “white fragility”, the numbers of Americans on forced unemployment with no hope in the near future of any economic relief, the conflicting reports in the media surrounding everything to do with COVID-19 – all of it was just becoming too much to bear. It seemed that there was too much happening at once, every day, for me – or any of us ordinary citizens – to keep track of, let alone properly digest and analyze. By the end of the summer, as every state was debating whether or not to re-open public schools for the fall semester, it appeared to me as if everyone was close to their breaking point. My time spent every day in front of Walmart gave me plenty of firsthand evidence of just how frayed the nerves of all Americans had become. Everyone seemed on edge, yelling at one another because someone wasn’t wearing a mask, or someone else was wearing a “Trump 2020” t-shirt, or a black man cursing at the white store security officer, calling her a racist, because she was kicking him out for shoplifting. Tempers were short, nerves were frayed (including mine), and I – like so many others – started wondering: Just how bad things could really get?

In other words, it seemed to me as if the entire world around me had lost its fucking mind.

It was around the end of August that my worry finally turned into genuine fear. In the last few weeks, I have to come realize that America’s future as a democratic republic is not as sure as it’s been these last two centuries. My mind started to spin with all the “What if?” scenarios. What if Biden wins the election? What if the police force everywhere – not just cities like Portland, Minneapolis, Seattle and New York – really are defunded and scaled back? What if all the chaos caused by the unchecked rioting in those cities spreads to other cities and states? What if this pandemic doesn’t end soon? What if all this “white fragility”, “critical race theory”, and BLM nonsense actually gains traction in the worst possible place: the white house? What if? What if? What if? (Remember, I’m type “A” all the way!)

And now, the present; my reason for putting all this down on electronic paper. I came to a decision about a week ago that I was tired. No, scratch that. Fucking exhausted is more like it. I realized that, for the last six months, I have been trying to digest, analyze, categorize, rationalize, and compartmentalize everything that’s been happening around me so that I can sleep peacefully at night. I’ve been trying to make sense of all of this in order to calm myself and stop worrying. This has always worked before, but not this time. I realized that everything I had put my faith in for the last 23 years – my own reason and intellect, the ordered certainty of the world around me, the calm predictability of everyday life – had been wiped away in the span of six months. For the first time in my adult life, I felt truly helpless.

And that’s when I turned to the one thing that I had been ignoring for most of my life. For the last couple months, during my day shifts at Walmart, as I baked in the summer heat with no company other than my own thoughts, memories started to re-surface. Long forgotten memories, in fact. I began to wonder if maybe God really did, after all, exist. I remembered pieces of old sermons, fragments of Bible verses, lyrics from old songs of the Christian artists whose CDs I had long ago burned into iTunes. Some nights, as I drove home after finishing my late shift at my other job, physically and emotionally exhausted, I would pull up an old playlist on my phone and listen to Steven Curtis Chapman or Amy Grant or Michael W Smith. I have always enjoyed their music over the years as it reminds me of my youth and better times. Lately, however, it was reminding me of something else.

 As I finish writing this, September 23, 2020, I am sure of two things:

1.    I am saved. I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart in 1985 when I was 7 years old. I don’t remember exactly what time of day it was – or even the exact date – but I do remember it was after a SPARKS meeting. I believe without a shadow of a doubt that if I were to die this moment, I would be reunited in Heaven with both of my grandmothers, my grandfather, as well as others in my family who have passed on before. I believe that that prayer whispered by that seven-year-old boy those many years ago was genuine and heartfelt, and that it was uttered in sincere desire to have Jesus come into his heart. I have wandered far from grace in the decades since, but in just the last few days I have felt a peace and a calm deep in my soul that I have not felt for a very, very long time. God does not go back on His promises, and if we are sincere in our prayer for salvation, then I believe we are saved, no matter how far we might stray from Him afterwards.

2.    I am gay. This right here was the main issue that I have been grappling with for the last couple months. I will go into this more in another post, but, put simply, I had been taught for all of my youth that homosexuality is a sin. It is an abomination against God, and the Bible clearly condemns it in several different passages. But I know that I am made in the image of God, and I know that I was born this way. There is no doubt in my mind about this. I knew as early as sixth grade that I was different, and, later, in high school, I came to realize what exactly that difference was. I now believe that God created me this way, and that I can still serve Him and His will without converting my sexuality. I don’t yet know exactly how or why I believe that with such conviction, but I do. Part of this new journey will be to understand and reconcile this conviction through reading, prayer, and other research.

 My reason for creating this blog is twofold:

1.    I have felt a need for some time now to get all of my thoughts and feelings down in black and white. Just writing this post alone has helped me clear my head from what has been piling up in my brain for the last six months. The act of writing helps me organize, digest, and analyze exactly what it is I need to understand about all of this.

2.    And since I’m writing it all down, why not share it with the world? I know that I can’t be the only one who’s struggling to make sense of the world right now. Or, perhaps, there’s others out there, like me, who are trying to reconcile their belief in God with their sexual orientation? Or maybe they’re struggling with their own faith in some way in response to the chaos around us? Whatever the case, I want to be an inspiration for them, and I hope that this blog will help them in some way.

 I don’t know where this journey will take me. For now, I am just re-reading my Bible, starting at the beginning in Genesis. I have the love and support of my family, and, as with everything else in this fucked up year, I – and God – are going to take this one day at a time.

 Thank you for reading.

[misssophiachase]

Caroline's ex sells her stuff and klaus ends up buying a painting that was a heirloom. Caroline tracks him down.

In Loving Memory

Thanks luv! What an amazeballs prompt, I hope I did it justice : )

Sante Fe, New Mexico - 106 degrees

To say Caroline Forbes was a little frustrated was an understatement. Canyon Road seemed to stretch for dusty, red miles and one art galley seemed to turn into another. Pity none of the ones she’d already passed were her destination and the fact the weather was a dry 100 plus degrees and steadily climbing was doing nothing to help the situation.

Granted, yes, she was a highly strung individual but after searching for months and making the long trip from mild Boston to claim what was rightfully hers, Caroline figured she’d been unusually patient. Now was the point she was beginning to lose it. 

“Looks like you could use some water,” an unexpected voice said under the verandah. She stared blankly at the stranger, a little girl with messy, blonde pigtails and big, brown eyes. “You know agua?” She persisted, pretending to drink from her hand. 

“I’m..” she paused, her eyes landing on the street number and realising this was her destination. Finally. “Actually, yes, that would be nice.” The girl gestured for her to come forward, excitedly waving her hand and racing inside.    

She ascended the four steps and followed her inside, the cool breeze from the air conditioner welcome in her current frazzled state. The floors were polished hardwood and the walls littered with paintings, not that she was expecting any less. She was taken aback by just how stunning they were. Each landscape and portrait seemed to come to life in front of her eyes. 

Caroline shook her head, telling herself that she was here for a purpose. Unfortunately she hadn’t managed to find what she was looking for on the walls. 

“Here.” The little girl interrupted, shoving the glass into her hands. She sent her a small smile and took a sip, relishing in the relief she felt as it cascaded down her dry throat. 

“Thank you…”

“Lexi,” she finished. “That’s my name.”

“Well, hello there Lexi,” she offered her free hand and shook her tiny one gently. 

“What’s your name?”

“It’s Caroline,” she explained. “I’m actually looking for someone. I was wondering if you could help me?”

“Who?”

“Niklaus Mikaleson, do you happen to know him?” The little girl giggled mischievously, her cheeks colouring slightly. 

“That’s my dad but most people call him Klaus. Well, except for my Aunt Rebekah when she’s mad and my Uncle Kol when he’s teasing and my Uncle Elijah pretty much all the time.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a big family there,” she chuckled as the little girl nodded, her pigtails bobbing up and down. She’d arrived in such a hostile mood but for some reason this little girl bearing agua had made her decidedly less grouchy. “So, where is your dad?”

“He’s out the back, painting again.”

“You mean he did all of these?” She squeaked, taking in the combined beauty of the surrounding artwork. 

“Pretty much, dad says it makes him feel good.” Caroline wished at that point she had something to make her feel good. Lexi took her hand unexpectedly and lead her through the hall and into a Spanish style courtyard. If the scenery over the valley from this vantage point didn’t take her breath away the man standing by the easel did. 

He was staring intently at the canvas, paintbrush in hand. If the crimson lips, stubble and dimples weren’t enough of a distraction, his white shirt was only half buttoned, a toned chest peeking out from within.  

“Dad!” Lexi yelled, breaking not only her trance but his obviously. His blue eyes flickered over her body curiously. Caroline suddenly feeling a little underdressed in her short, floral dress.  

“Let me guess, she lured you in with that whole water excuse?” He asked, pointing to the empty glass in her hand. 

“I was thirsty,” she offered a little defensively, wondering where her bold, negotiating skills had disappeared. Maybe if he’d just do up a few more buttons she could retrieve them. 

“This is my daughter’s ploy to try and bring in extra business,” he explained, giving Lexi a knowing look. “I’ve told her it’s incredibly misleading.”

“What does misleading mean?”

“You know exactly what it means,” he chided. “You’ve been around Aunt Rebekah for too long.”

“The one who calls you Niklaus when she’s mad?” Caroline asked, noting the slight blush that crossed his face. Like father, like daughter. 

“Did I mention that my daughter loves to talk?” Lexi gave an exasperated sigh. 

“I don’t know, she seems to be the best asset you’ve got,” Caroline grinned, sending Lexi a knowing smile. 

“Ouch,” he groaned, thumping his bare chest and pretending to be wounded. “Any chance you could get me a glass of water, sweetheart?” She regarded him dubiously before running back inside. 

“I think someone is intimidated by his own daughter,” Caroline raised her eyebrows. 

“You don’t know the half of it,” he sighed, placing his brush on the nearby table and moving towards her. “Is there something I can help you with, love?”

“I’m looking for a painting.”

“Well, you came to the right place,” he smirked, wiping his paint stained hands on his jeans. “Anything in particular that took your fancy?”  

“Actually something has,” she began trying to ignore his increasingly close proximity. “But it doesn’t seem to be here.” He looked at her quizzically. 

“Well, then I’m not sure I can help you then,” he shot back, his tone telling her that she’d offended him. 

“These artworks are beautiful,” she said, attempting to placate him. Given she wanted something, offending the owner of her much loved painting wasn’t the best way to go about it.

“Okay, what do you really want then?” He asked slyly, almost like he could read her mind. 

“The Bill Forbes original,” she managed to utter, her father’s name still causing numbness. “It should be mine.”

“I’m sorry?” He asked, taking a seat at the nearby table. “Last time I checked, I paid handsomely for that painting.”

“I know,” she conceded, joining him on the other side. “But I’m willing to buy it for whatever price.”

“If I could give you any tips, I’d suggest you don’t offer anything, you know it’s called bartering.” She didn’t respond immediately, in fact she was madly trying to keep her composure. This ass had no idea what this painting meant to her but she wanted it back. Caroline wasn’t quite sure she could live without it in her life, it meant too much.

“How about we cut the bullshit,” she muttered in frustration. “I’ve travelled all the way from Boston. Just tell me how much you want?”

“I’m sorry you’ve come so far, Miss, but that painting isn’t and never will be for sale.”

“But I need it,” she implored, her blue eyes boring into his. As if the struggle to find the painting hadn’t been enough but now she had to endure another setback. It was almost too much to comprehend. 

“Why?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, you seem extremely attached to it and I’m wondering why?”

“I am,” she rasped almost helplessly. “If you insist on goading me then I’ll tell you. Bill Forbes was my father.”

“You mean?” He asked, clearly shocked and leaning forward in his chair. “The little girl in the painting is…”

“Me.” Caroline was on the verge of crying but for some reason she didn’t want him to see that so kept her eyes downcast. 

“But why…”

“Don’t I have the painting?”  She asked, predicting his question. “Someone sold it without my knowledge.”

“But how?”

“My ex boyfriend Stefan thought it would be a novel thing to do seeing as I called it quits. Funny joke, hey?” She could feel a hot, salty tear followed by another running down her cheeks. So much for keeping her composure. “And I’ve been trying to get it back ever since.”

“Now I understand,” he murmured, his hand reaching out for hers. Caroline would never forget the feeling of his rough and calloused fingers on her skin. “And not just because your ex-boyfriend is a serious ass.“

“That’s putting it nicely,” she muttered.

“But just so you know, I’m going to need some identification for handover. As much as I love my daughter’s intuition, she’s only six.”

Caroline wiped the tears from her eyes and finally met his gaze, even through the waterworks, she knew he was being sincere. “How much do you want?”

“Nothing,” he answered. “But how about a date?” 

“Seriously?”

“I’m deathly serious,” he smirked, squeezing her hand. “I haven’t been on one in over six years so if you could show me the ropes, I’d appreciate it. If not for me then my nosy siblings and daughter.”

“I suppose that could be arranged,” Caroline grinned, realising that if his hand stayed on hers forever she wouldn’t mind. “But I’m curious.”

“About?”

“Why did you want that painting so badly?”

“That father-daughter moment reminded me so much of me and Lexi,” he admitted, his hand still firmly placed upon hers. “I didn’t want to forget the way she looked at me so adoringly and that picture was exactly what I needed to know even if she grows up we’ll still share that moment.”

“The terrible teens?” Caroline joked. “Okay, so how about we organise a sharing arrangement?” She proposed, her fingers exploring his skin freely now.

“Between Massachusetts and New Mexico?” He baulked.

“I’m sure we can make it work somehow.” Their hands were now firmly entwined and for some reason it didn’t feel like that bond could ever be broken. 

Turns out it wasn’t that difficult to manage especially with the little girl that brought them together unbeknownst to them. Lexi loved to claim credit and funnily enough no one was going to argue. The painting that brought them together was hung in pride of place and, believe it or not, they lived happily ever after.  

[vertyblog]

The Best: The Saga

I have a good friend, not on tumblr, who frequents terrible roblox roleplay servers, looking for fun.

A result of this fun is one of the best stories I’ve ever read. The Best story.

He preferred to remain anonymous, but I think this needs to be shared with the world. With that in mind, all of this text below this readmore is his own words, not mine, and a completely factual account of events. (The art is by me tho.)

Oh speaking of that-  the art was made at the time of original telling, which means there was some artistic liberty and also my art separates it into three parts while the actual text goes with two parts. I left both as is for the sake of historical accuracy.

Now then, before I get into the glorious clusterfuck that is my story, I need to make a few things clear. Yes, this was an RP, but it took place within an actual game space. All characters were in a "Physical" world and not just some text on a page. However, most complex actions were done 100% of the time through text. With that out of the way, we can begin.

This story is split into two pieces, each one taking place on a different real-world day. They all happened back-to-back, and the entirety of the story took place over the course of a weekend. As a sort of hobby, I like to go trawling for terrible RPs and join them to laugh at what I find. It's nothing short of incredible observing (and sometimes being a part of) the often hilariously bad antics Mary Sues get up to. This being said, while this STARTED as one of those times, it quickly escalated into the greatest thing I've ever lived through. So, enough of the backstory, let's get into it. For this particular outing, I decided to pick a Super Paper Mario RP. Yes, they exist and yes, they are exactly as terrible as you think they are. But that's not why we're here.

PART 1, In which a Hero is born-

It all started from the moment I logged in; we were off to a flying start. Basically every bad RP trope and sin was being evoked at the same time completely unironically by people who didn't know any better. I don't come to these to clean them up or set everyone on the right path, I come here to point and laugh at the people for my own amusement. Still, you can't exactly lurk an RP that takes place in an actual game; You have to be SOMEONE, and if you looked important in any way you would somehow be swept up into whatever crap they were doing. So with all of this in mind, I chose to look as unimportant as possible. I was a Green Toad. Not a frog, mind you, but those vaguely adorable Mushroom folk from Mario (Why am I saying this? I have seen some real idiots and the last thing I need is someone thinking I was a frog while doing this). Toads are nearly invisible, as far as the dozens of Marios and Luigis and what-have-yous were concerned. So, with my character set and with one eye on the global chat to catch any wonderful bits of Fail RP, I set off on the greatest ride of my life.

I chose to settle down in a town on one of the map borders. Honestly it was a quaint little place. Snow-covered, with a train occasionally showing up to ferry off whatever Joe Q. Jerkholes wanted to go to where things actually happened. Now, while there's definitely some cringe-worthy stupidness in every last RP I've gone to, I can reliably say without a doubt in my head that I have never seen something as laughably terrible as what this one group of people was doing. There was one group SOMEWHERE that were having a Cyberpunk RP. In this Paper Mario game. How exactly you do that is beyond me; it's not like the map is full of cities and technology and flying cars, and yet they were having the time of their lives blasting away at each other with their guns and smoking their cigarettes in back alleys that didn't even exist on the map. It's been over a month since this happened, and I can't even remember what was going through my head at that point, so I'll put it bluntly. I'll stand for a lot, I'll idly sit by and just let a lot of crap happen. This was just one step too far, and through the power of bad (great) decisions, I decided that I was going to put a stop to it. Of course if it was as simple as that, we wouldn't have this story.

Before I set out of the little snow-covered town, some preparations had to be made. Even if I was the most un-threatening Toad in the world, someone out in that grand old world would find SOME reason to start something with me. To that end, I took up a simple spear. There wasn't a single thing special about it; no legendary enchantments, no amazing artifact status, no +1. Just a completely mundane spear. And that was it. So with newfound weapon in hand, I boarded the train out of town. Cutting out the boring travel time, I arrived in a desert area. As frequently as these people were talking about their trenchcoat-wearing Bob-ombs and augmented Yoshis (I wish I was joking), I still had not a damn clue where on the map they actually were. As I would soon find out, where they were didn't matter. While the group actually having this RP was only something like six people, it happened to be the "Coolest" thing on the whole server, so everyone and their mother was copying it. Enter our first contestant, who now stood in front of me. His sprite was your average Shy Guy. The way he was DESCRIBED to me, he was nothing short of Adam Jensen, sunglasses and all. And just as I had predicted, he saw some random Toad wandering around and figured I must have been easy pickings. So he more or less started trying to kick my ass. If you're expecting some amazing and epic battle to get written here, I'm sorry to disappoint you. Instead, this is what actually happened. He tried his best to get his actions across, and I responded by using the largest words I could get from my vocabulary and putting them into my responses. After a few minutes of this, I'm convinced his brain shut down and he simply logged out. So, that was one victory for me. And I continued on my way.

To say that the effects of this RP were server-wide is an understatement. Everyone I came across had some bit of metal stuck to them somewhere, and I'm convinced they saw the Mushroom Kingdom as some glowing neon cityscape. Luckily for me, most of them seemed content to let me continue on my way. I wasn't out to burn down the whole server, my problem was specifically with the source of the madness. Rapidly exhausting the places these guys could be, I hopped on a cruise ship to maybe point me in the right direction (And to get away from the throngs of cyborg rejects wandering the streets). Unfortunately for everyone, not even at sea was I safe from out-of-place Cyberpunk whackos. Our next offender happened to be a Yoshi. This particularly wonderful individual had a mohawk and could breathe fire, among other fun abilities (Can you guess what color Yoshi he was? Hint: it was black). In hindsight, I'm pretty sure he was trying to make himself Bowser without actually playing as Bowser. At any rate, he was yet another wonderful problem who saw fit to try and murder me. To his credit, this guy wasn't actually thrown off by large words, and did put up a reasonable fight. After a few minutes of us dancing around the ship trading blows (And the entire thing being an inferno because of liberal application of fire), the two of us go overboard. It was either to escape the fire or he grabbed me and jumped, but that doesn't matter. What DOES matter is that when you replace a large portion of your body with metal parts, you don't float very well. To my utter shock and amazement, the Yoshi forgot to augment his lungs. I think he wanted me to pull him ashore and start some wonderful friendship between us, but I was having none of it. I left him to sink to rock bottom, which prompted some wonderful comments from him riddled with questionable grammar, mostly to the effect of "Aren't you the hero?". He didn't get a response from me. I was just some Green Toad with a spear.

So, I clamber ashore from this underwater zone and I'm on an island. Decently sized, and as I would soon find out, without a single other person on it. While I DID want to get away from it all, this was a tad extreme. I get to exploring and find out a few wonderful things: The only boat that takes you off of this island was broken because of shoddy scripting and would never arrive, there is nothing to do on this island outside of jump on things and reenact your favorite castaway movie, and the Circuit City wholesale saw no signs of stopping any time this century. What would have normally been entertaining roleplay failures in the global chat became anything but. I'm not some insane Mario fanboy, but having gotten this far into attempting to stop this from happening and having it continue unopposed just felt like a slap in my face; It was an insult to me, and this had gone from a visit born from morbid curiosity to an anger-fueled mission. With my only way off of this island never arriving, I decided on simply killing myself to respawn on the mainland. I was simply going to walk into the ocean, fall through the map, and respawn back where there were people. It was when I took five steps out into the water that something incredible dawned upon me. The entire ocean was a solid object, just like the land. It was simply a different kind of land painted blue and with a fancy water texture on it. Only the water immediately around the cruise ship was special in any way, with the rest of the ocean just being a solid slab. I was walking on water. I walked all the way back to the mainland. The mapmaker does deserve SOME credit, however. When I say this was an ocean, I mean it. The walk was long, but eventually, I came ashore once again.

Where exactly I ended up concluding my miracle walk across the ocean was another matter entirely, however. I stepped out into a forest that I hadn't been to before. Once again, giving the mapmaker some credit, I did get lost in these woods. After a couple of minutes of aimless wandering, the forest took on a different tone. It's become obviously more spooky (I use that term loosely. It was about as spooky as a bedsheet ghost) and it becomes very clear why: the woods appear to lead directly to the titular mansion from Luigi's Mansion. Why exactly it was in a Paper Mario RP I couldn't tell you, but there it loomed, amidst the trees and less-than-adequate lighting. It was here than I ran into a pretty large issue; not so much the mansion proper, but what was right next to it: E. Gadd's lab. This is one of the very few locations on the entire map that had actual, honest-to-God technology in it, so to say that it was swarmed was an understatement. Now, I want to make something very, very clear here. I won my first two scrapes with these clowns because of sheer luck or glaring incompetence on their part. No matter how well I wrote or how amazingly I could wield a spear, it would offer no defense from an entire room full of these people all coming at me at once. So the lab was a no-go, but I derived a small amount of joy from the fact that there wasn't a single one of them in the mansion proper. I like to think they were actually afraid of the place, although that probably wasn't the answer. So my next course of action was to go inside.

As mentioned before, the inside hadn't a single soul within. I have never played Luigi's Mansion so I cannot attest to the accuracy of the interior. For what little the words of a stranger on the internet are worth, it certainly looked the part. Probably much smaller than the real thing, but once again that isn't the point. After walking through a few identical hallways and being moderately shocked at the complete lack of anything even remotely resembling a ghost, I finally ran into someone else, and was more than surprised with what I found. I fully expected another wonderful individual to come charging at me with his cyber-arms and demand my lunch money or something, but instead I was greeted with a "Hello" and the realization that this one guy wasn't a cyborg. For those that care, he was playing as Mr. L, or at least had him selected as his player model. He wasn't exactly in-character, but I think he just wanted to talk to someone that ALSO wasn't trying too hard. We get to talking, and he genuinely threw me a curveball when he asked, "What's your name?". To be honest, I hadn't given our hero one yet. In thinking what name would be appropriate for a random Toad, something rang out in my head, something that Toads always seem to say. "I'm The Best.", I told him. Seemingly content with that answer, we exited the mansion together. It is at this point that, once again, I have to be the bearer of bad news. I'd love to say that we teamed up like some kind of Buddy Cop movie, found those jerks, and saved the day like the big-dick heroes you think are at the end of this chapter, but alas there is no such thing. So here's what actually happened. A hacker turned up, and crashed the game. As simple an anticlimax as that. With that being said, in all honesty I don't think I could've went out and gotten a better ending. There's something wonderfully poetic about Cyberpunk RPs ending because an actual hacker turned up.

If our story ended there, I would have been content. But once again, through the power of excellent decision-making, I returned the following day.

My second excursion started more or less the same way as the first: Roleplaying failures abound, yours truly as a Green Toad, and a whole wide world to blunder through. Except at the onset of this adventure, there were no Trenchcoats or Augments. It wasn't exactly 100% normal goings on in the Mushroom Kingdom, but really it never is. As I once again trekked up to that snow-covered village, I scanned the Global chat for anything worthy of my attention; be it offensively bad or just stupid enough that it had to be seen in person. Three things caught my eye. The first was a bodysnatched/posessed/evil/combination Princess Peach who was now out to kill Mario. Normally this would be cause for alarm, but there were roughly a dozen people playing as Mario. As far as I was concerned that Peach was doing her God-Given duty and thinning the herd, so I would let her carry on this most righteous mission. The second event was that, apparently, the Mushroom Kingdom was in the midst of some kind of alien invasion. This was ALMOST what this  part of our story was about, until I saw the third and final thing to grace my screen. Somewhere out in that world, out in that grand old expanse of continent, there was another Toad calling himself The Best. It was a common thing for any enterprising Toad out on the street to say; that wasn't what set me off. He was using it as a title, claiming that he was actually The Best. He swung those two words around like some kind of blunt instrument and expected everyone to bow down to him. So I made it my NEW mission to take the title from him. I had claimed in passing to a random stranger a day prior that I was The Best, and now the time had come to prove it. With spear once again in hand, I set out from my frozen home to take a random person on the internet down a few pegs.

I elected to not take the train this time, instead deciding to hoof it back to civilization. I had an entire server to comb for one man in particular; a train or any kind of fast-travel would raise my chances of missing my mark. Fortunately (Or unfortunately, depends on which camp you're in) it also increases my exposure to the ever-present bullshit that infests these places, which is exactly what I ran into. Fleeing at high-speed from a full-blown Dragon, a Princess Peach made a beeline straight for me. Yelling "Help me!" in about every way imaginable, she just sort of kept on running past me and left the first person she ran into with the monumental task of getting rid of a Dragon. Deciding a Toad was an easier target than a Princess, the dragon seemed pretty happy with the arrangement as well. I've had my fair share of fighting dragons, so I had a pretty good battle plan. Of course, EVERYONE always has a plan, until the goddamn lizard starts breathing fire. The start of the fight was pretty ineffectual on both of our parts, the Dragon trying vainly to hit the tiny target that is a Toad and me trying to piece together how I would take down something this stupidly big. Calling upon my experiences dealing with things far too large for a person so small to be expected to kill, I decided to take the Shadow of the Colossus road, and start scaling the beast. I'm assuming at this point the thing took flight and I somehow brought it down to earth again after a prolonged struggle, because the next thing in my memory is me still fighting this damn dragon in the middle of the desert.

I don't know just how long we had been locked in this struggle, but I know that at that point I just wanted to be done with it. I did my best to force the thing into a good position for me to gain the upper hand, but it's pretty damn hard to make a dragon do much of anything, especially when it wants to consume your weird Toad head thing (Is it a hat? Is it their head? Someone please inform me, I need this question answered.) But sure enough, through judicial use of baiting both literary and physical, I managed to get the Dragon into a corner. Three separate times I tried to end the fight with a decisive strike, but each one he would bullshit out of it. It's to be expected, the last thing anyone wants is for their character to get offed, even worse if its in an excessively embarrasing matter. "Killed by spear-wielding Toad" is about as embarrasing a death as you can have in something like this, being only a few steps above "killed by Goomba walking to the left". But anyway, that's not the point. After a bit more flailing, I took one final shot at the damn thing in such a way that there was well and truly no way out of it. Probably fed up with getting whooped all up and down the map and airspace by something only a few steps above "Goomba" in threat level, the dragon promptly ragequit. And that is the story of how I killed a dragon. Unfortunately (Or fortunately, depending on how you feel today) I didn't have time to go track down the Princess and inform her that the dragon was dealt with. I probably would've gotten a cake, maybe a statue, maybe ignorance. Who can say? At any rate, with that distraction dealt with I got back to my primary mission.

You would think that in a game like this, Toads would be in short supply. I certainly thought so, but apparently they were more popular than I first assumed. For a good long while, the only thing I did was wander the earth, find a Toad, and ask them if they were The Best. It was always followed with a "No" and I continued on my way. There were probably far better ways I could've gone about it; I could've just called the guy out in general chat and hopefully had him come to me. Hindsight is 50/50 and in spite of how often I'll think of myself as a smart individual, I am definitely not the brightest bulb in the box. Anyway, back to our story. This pattern of asking random Toads if they were The Best and moving on went on for a few more iterations, until I saw one of them get on a train. Thinking it was my man, I made a beeline for it, only for the train to pull out of the station and speed off with me having not even seen the guy's name in time. STILL unable to grasp the concept of "Global Chat", I did the only thing my mind thought of and started running after the train like an idiot. I don't have to put it in writing but I'm going to anyway: Trains are faster than Toads. I did not come even close to catching up to that train before it sped off over the horizon and carried the mystery man with it. So I did the (reasonably) smart thing and just caught the next one, hoping that maybe he'd be standing around the next train station, making my life easy.

It seems endemic of the Mario universe that nothing is ever simple. You want a dollar? Go bash your head against a brick. Out for a Sunday Stroll? Hope you're headed to the right, 'cause that's the only way you're going. So of course shit went down on the train. A player dressed as Mr. L walked up and down the cabin kind of aimlessly. Given my one and only instance of prior experience with anyone dressed up as Mr. L, I was almost delighted. For one brief and shining second, I thought I would finally have an ally against the chaos. The first words out of his mouth were that, verbatim, he pulled out a knife and tried to stab me. He was one Katana short of fufilling every stereotype in three seconds. Honestly I don't know what I expected. I never got a chance to respond to my assailant, as another player dressed up as Luigi spotted his evil twin, thought he was hard enough, and decided to have a go. Say what you want, but I wasn't about to deny Luigi a shot at his doppelganger. The two of them launched into combat, and I made myself scarce. I don't know who won the scrap. Some say they're still fighting to this day. All that matters is that the train pulled into the station, and I kept on my search.

The cycle continued. Find a Toad, ask if they're The Best, get the answer of "No", keep on walking. Until finally, I found my man. He didn't look like your average Toad, but that isn't saying much. Clad in some kind of cloak and armed with a spear all his own, he had chosen Yellow for his color. I approached, and I asked the question for the last time. I got a lot more than a "Yes", but to save all of you the hospital bill and subsequent psychiatrist visit, I'm just going to condense it down to a "Yes". After a while of his rambling about just how great he was, I cut him off with an offer someone of his pride couldn't refuse. It was something to the effect of "I don't think you're all that great, and I'll fight you to prove it.". Several sentences of heated words and a LOT of escalation later, it had gone from a simple test of honor to a full-blown fight to the death. My plan was to keep it on the down-low; any sort of high-profile and high-impact fight would be sure to draw attention from everyone and their mother, and the last thing I needed to deal with was some full-blown warzone. Unfortunately for me, someone playing as Bowser overheard us and walked up.

I know what I expected. I expected Bowser to go on about how HE was actually the Best and try and kill both of us. Instead, he said that he wanted to host this death battle at his "Rad castle". Before I could object to this in favor of the quiet 1 v 1 I wanted, the other guy agreed to it. What I DID finally say was that I would meet him there at sundown. Both for dramatic effect (which I knew he'd eat up), and to give me at least fifteen minutes to come up with a plan for when this inevitably went tits-up. So, with the date and time for our climactic showdown set, I hit up the local shops. I bought everything I could that I thought would give me some kind of edge, which turned out to not be much. Wandering the continent on a manhunt didn't exactly pay well, and I could only afford a few Mushrooms and a single Fire Flower. Knowing full well I was pretty unprepared for some kind of mass-swarming if Bowser sent out the army of minions he'd probably have waiting, I went anyway. Even if I was marching straight into what I thought was a massive trap, I had little choice anymore. I knew what I expected. When the sun set, and I made my way through that castle gate, I realized that I had completely under-estimated whoever was playing Bowser. What greeted me when I walked through that gate was nothing short of incredible.

You see, Bowser had spread the word about this fight across the land in record time. His castle was packed with people, all watching from the ramparts and the balconies and anywhere else they could stand or sit. And amidst them all, looking down from his throne room, was the King Koopa himself. As I entered the courtyard, he gave me a goddamn entrance worthy of some kind of wrestler on WWE. It was absolutely astounding. He went on to do the same for my opponent. I hadn't planned for an audience, much less one the size of damn well near the entire server. With that many people watching, I threw aside my plans for some quick and decisive conflict. These people probably paid really good fake money for those seats and goddamn if I wasn't about to give them their money's worth. And just like that, we crossed spears and the fight began. Everyone I had encountered up to this point was either incompetent or simply unintelligent. He was a completely different beast. Prideful, overconfident, and showboating like you wouldn't believe, but he could actually back it up. For the first time in my entire misadventure, I was toe-to-toe with someone who could stand up to me. He might have actually been The Best, if only I wasn't here. It was a knock-down, drag-out brawl, eventually exiting the courtyard and had us both parrying and dodging through all of those balconies and ramparts I had mentioned earlier. Spear met spear, strikes glanced, and we continued to drift through the castle locked into a lethal struggle only one of us would walk away from. Eventually the fight gravitated to the highest spire of the castle, steered there by both of us. We both knew the fight was going to end up there, and we both wanted to be the last man standing. Unfortunately for him, I borrowed a page from Joseph Joestar's playbook and started going for some hard reads and some pretty sick bait.

At the very pinnacle of the spire, I went for an all-or-nothing maneuver: I let him disarm me. My spear sailed off the tower and far, far out of my reach. Rather than go for the killshot, he gloated. He launched into yet another speech about how great he was and how I was a fool for challenging him and all that wonderful jazz said better by about three dozen other folk. It was at this point that I pulled out the ace I'd been hiding up my metaphorical sleeve the entire fight, and used the Fire Flower to launch a point-blank fireball right into his face. It caught him mid-sentence, and it gave me the upper hand, if only for a brief moment. My one regret out of this entire adventure is that I didn't have a cool thing to say at that exact moment. So, wordlessly, I dropkicked him straight off the tower. And down he plummeted, well within view of everyone who attended, right into the lava below. And with my brutal mission achieved it was official: I was The Best, and everyone in the server now knew. So much for being an unassuming Toad. As I stepped down from the tower back into the courtyard, Bowser stood before me and the exit. To this day, I am absolutely convinced that he was going to start something the moment the fight was over. But after the display I put on up there, he merely handed me my spear (No idea how he got it), told me that the fight was the most awesome thing he'd ever seen, and got the hell out of my way. With my goal attained and no reason to stick around with all the attention I was about to get, I walked out of the fortress and logged off.

But what if I told you it got better? The following day, curiosity won out one last time and I logged back in.

PART 2, in which the Hero becomes a Legend-

Everything up to this point was great and amazing, but this is the point at which this story transcends reason. It's also the part I remember the best, so strap yourselves in, this is going to be a long one.

I log in, I pick my Green Toad, I exit spawn. As an extra measure, to keep anyone who remembers me from last time from swarming me immediately, I hide my Username. Immediately, something strikes me in a metaphorical sense; I spy another Green Toad. Not exactly out of the ordinary, except they were talking to yet another Green Toad. Chalking it up to coincidence, I entered town. The sheer number of people playing as Green Toads was staggering. It had gone from nearly a dozen Marios, Luigis, and any other important guy that looked cool, to nothing but the most unimportant character in a Mario game in a very specific color that wasn't red. In one chain of bad decisions and murder in front of an audience, I had gone from some nameless jackass to the new meta. Everyone wanted to be The Best, it was goddamn surreal. On the upside, when everyone's The Best, no one is. So by virtue of being so popular, I was once again invisible. Imagine if every problem solved itself like this. On the downside, it was going to be a bit hellish proving my own identity. Still, it was nice to blend into the crowd again. I kept a watchful eye on the chat. With this many people wanting a title that can only belong to one man, I figured the entire server was going to devolve into complete anarchy sooner or later. There was a certain appeal to a server-wide free-for-all with everyone vying to be the same guy Highlander-style, but that's neither here nor there.

It was calm. It was surprisingly calm; no one went for each other's throats, life proceeded as normal. The Princess and a few Toads that guarded her walked amongst the crowd of people in the town square. Spotting her and her guard was pretty easy; they were the only thing that wasn't green. She was handing out invitations to the townsfolk for some kind of banquet or celebration or party or SOME kind of mass-gathering at the castle that night. Even the Global chat was calm; the entire server was, if only for a minute, peaceful. Honestly, the place had started to grow on me; I can say that I legitimately liked the dumb antics that I usually got up to every time I logged in. So I stuck around, even though nothing was going on; Hell, I thought about buying a house near the castle just to be closer to where the action happened. Funnily enough, this was the right choice. While I was house-shopping, I saw speech bubbles floating up from this sort of back area inbetween a few of the houses. It wasn't out-of-place or anything because the town was jam-packed; it was what the bubble said that caught my attention. "They can't know we're here.", it said. So, naturally the curious type, I ducked into a nearby vacant house and started spying on whomever was speaking.

It was more Toads, but something was off. They were purple and not green, the both of them. One just an ordinary Toad and the other using some kind of palette swap of Toadette, I think. Their conversation continued, and to say that I had struck gold was an understatement. So, to run you through who these two were and why they were about to set the greatest cavalcade of insanity in motion: Remember when I mentioned that there was some kind of alien invasion going on in Part 2 of my story? Well, these two were it. Shapeshifters, and not friendly ones. Obviously they wanted to take over the Kingdom, but their plan was to crash the gathering the Princess had planned for later tonight,  slaughter her and any other important figures that turned up, turn all of the Toads into more aliens through MacGuffin Magic, and then take their army and steamroll the rest of the continent. Now, I was in a bit of a tight situation. I didn't have my spear yet, so charging into the alley and handling them right then and there was out of the question. Warning the town or the Princess' guard was something I was strongly against, as that reduced me to nothing more than a whistleblower and not the absolutely legendary figure that I had somehow become in the eyes of these people. So really, I had one option: Get my spear, get supplies, and personally foil their plan in front of everyone. The only problem was, I did not have a lot of time or money to do it with.

I had very, very little in the way of coins to my name, and I wasn't just about to grab any spear from any old shop; It had to be the one I've always carried. The journey from the main city up into the snow-covered lands isn't exactly a long one, but it wasn't short, either. Worse still, what shops they did have up there were pretty lackluster in supplies and rather high in price. Still, I didn't have time to do much else. I made the trek, keeping a watchful eye on the sun and the global chat, hoping the party wouldn't start until I got back. I made it up there as fast as I could, and my spear was there waiting. I'd used it for a lot up until now, but its greatest challenges were still ahead of it. With my weapon of choice sorted, I walked into the local storefront. All I could afford was two mushrooms and a bottle of Hot Sauce that happened to be on sale. Honestly, I was ready to take anything I could get on the shoestring budget I had brought with me. As I departed back for town, things took a turn for the worse: The sun had set, the party had begun, and I was nowhere near the city.

I was running as fast as a Toad could go. I kept glancing from the road to the global chat; their plan could kick off at any moment and if I wasn't the guy to stop them then I don't think anyone else would. Yeah, everyone wanted to be me, but nobody wanted to have the danger of potentially having their character die doing heroics; they only wanted to be heroes and live to gloat about it. Sooner rather than later I get back into the town. There's no yells about dead princesses or mass anarchy in the town, so I only assume that I still had time left. Finally, I reached the castle proper only to be faced with something I forgot to prepare for: The Princess had posted up guards out front whom were actually checking for invitations. I didn't have one and I didn't have time to go looking for one, either. I had to get through that door as fast as possible; I had no idea where my enemies were and for all I know they were already inside. It's then that I looked at the guards at the door and remembered a very crucial fact: everyone was playing as a Green Toad today. If I could just get through the door, they wouldn't be able to pick me out from the crowd. So with that in mind, I picked my moment and simply sprinted through the doors. Once inside, I walked into the nearest group of similar-looking mushroom people and held my breath. The door guards walked in, picked some random fellow that just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time, and kicked him out instead of me. If you're out there, and you're reading this, Thank you random citizen. Yours was a pivotal role in this tale, and I will not forget your unintentional sacrifice.

I was inside, and the gathering was in full swing. Just what this was all for I never found out; I was moving too fast to take in the details. First it was scanning the crowd and trying to pick out anyone that was purple. Luckily, it seemed as though they weren't here just yet. Then, I tried to find the Princess. Outside of their plan and the fact that they came from outer space, I had no idea what those two could do, so my best bet was to get the Princess out of the castle and hope that the confusion they'd cause would let me and her get the hell out of dodge before the E.T.s realized she was gone. Let me tell you, it's no wonder Bowser is able to kidnap her so easily, because she REALLY makes no attempts to hide herself or even have guards around her. She was talking to Daisy and a few OC Princesses from made-up kingdoms about, well, me and my stupid antics yesterday. Almost on cue, I walk up to where she was standing and strike up a conversation. Well, perhaps "conversation" isn't the right word; it was pretty one-sided. I got her attention, and informed her that some very not-nice people were due to turn up any minute now and that she should come with me if she wanted to get out of this in one piece. This prompted a question I was hoping beyond belief would eventually get asked. "What? Who are you?" I needed only to utter three words and draw attention to my username for just a moment. "I'm The Best."

Three words worth twenty times their weight in gold. Three words that silenced a whole table full of royalty and fixated all eyes on me. Three words, met only with a singular response of ":O". With little ceremony, and even less to say, the Princess stood up and was at my side in an instant. I had lucked out; the person I was trying to save was also a huge fangirl. The rest of the table had their own things to say, but at that point my mind was already trying to think five steps ahead. Every second I was still at this party was another second off of the invisible timer heralding the arrival of the aliens. I was being posed with a really, really difficult question: How do you sneak a Princess out of her own party while attracting as little attention as possible? Frankly I didn't have an answer, so my initial plan was to simply say "Screw it" and walk out the front door, all witnesses be damned. Fortunately for the dramatic tension of the story and unfortunately for my nerves, at that exact moment, my time ran out, and our two antagonists strolled into the castle, shooting down my plans for an easy front door escape. Our escape was temporarily put on hold, and all mental resources were instead pushed towards NOT letting the regicidal extraterrestrials spot me or Princess Peach.

As fast as my fingers could manage, I typed out my instructions. Specifics aren't important, the gist of it was that I wanted her to stay as close to me as possible, and to follow my lead. With that out of the way, I ducked behind a pillar and triple-checked that I was talking into local chat only. It doesn't take a genius to conclude that attempting to do anything remotely discrete with Princess Peach is nigh-on impossible. The stealthy approach lasted all of fifteen seconds before the gig was up, the aliens spotted the Princess, and they started making a beeline for her. Now, at this moment, I did not have a lot going in my favor. My plan was falling apart, the bad guys were closing in at a very fast pace, and it was a very real possibility that if I wasn't the luckiest man alive our story would have ended much sooner and with a much bleaker twist than the version we got. Luckily for me, my original plan was still VERY fresh in my mind, and they weren't inbetween me and the door anymore. So with a very simple exclamation of, "RUN!", we made a mad dash for the door and the chase was on. It was at this precise moment in time that all hell broke loose.

When someone yells "RUN!" inside of a packed venue, people tend to panic. When shapeshifting space aliens pull out guns and begin firing into a crowd of people, said people tend to freak out. When everyone's pretending to be a hero and the shit hits the fan, you find out who the real heroes are. Toads were racing everywhere, lasers were being sprayed like Xcom just turned up, the Princesses still at the table were having a full-scale freakout, and what guards there were inside were fighting a losing battle at attempting to make sense of the utter chaos. The Castle emptied at an alarming pace, both because people were throwing themselves out of any available exit they could find and because there were two determined shooters killing those that couldn't. Ducking and dodging, my luck held out long enough to get outside with the Princess in tow. The streets weren't much better than the inside, with most of the sensible folk running as far as they could, and a few plucky people that didn't have a grasp on what they were up against charging into the Palace to play the hero. Still, if only for a few seconds, we weren't being shot at. Those few seconds let me think on my options to devise a new plan better than "Run like hell". I came up with "Run like hell, but towards the harbor, then get on the first boat going anywhere." And so, I informed Peach as we made a madman's dash towards the coastline. Unfortunately, the Princess hadn't caught on to the whole "Local chat" thing, and ended up saying aloud how great a plan it was. The aliens became an issue again really quickly after that blunder.

I called on every action movie chase scene cliche that my mind could spit out to slow them down. There wasn't a tremendous amount of city we had to cover, but it felt like I was running a cross-country marathon (In spirit. I was sitting in a desk chair holding "w" for a minute or two.). In spite of my best efforts, their blasts were getting more accurate by the second and the lead I had on them was evaporating. Still, sometimes you can call in a favor from Lady Luck, and sure enough when I reached the port, there was a ferry departing. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and so a shout of "Get on the boat!" was all it took to secure our getaway. In my mind, it was the classic action dive onto a boat just as it departs the harbor, laser bolts barely missing the hero as he escapes below deck. In reality, all I did was walk into the designated "Get on the boat" area. Details, details; what matters is that I had managed to pull this escape off, and at least for the moment we were well and truly safe. A minute later, and we step off of the ferry with a few other frightened townsfolk in a place called Rogueport. I had no time to relax, however, as the ferry was very punctual, and I had only three minutes at best before the next one turned up, probably carrying two whole units of bad news. After a very, very quick examination of the town, I noticed it had a train station. An escape by rail certainly beat walking, and so we set about the time-consuming task of waiting for the next train. With what she percieved as a moment of peace, the Princess got around to asking what we were running from. There is no good way to explain to someone that Aliens are trying to kill them; take it from me, I tried. She didn't believe me; maybe she had doubts that I was who I said I was. Honestly, wherever her indecisiveness came from has no real bearing on the story, because the train didn't arrive in time, and the aliens turned up in all of their glory.

We were cornered, but I could tell from the way they were acting that they hadn't caught on to who I was just yet. There were some generic villain-esque statements, "Turn over the princess and we'll spare you" and all that nonsense. Their answer came in the form of a drawn spear and a combat stance. I thought over how this was going to play out. There were two of them, both with guns. There was one of me, trusty spear in hand and a handful of items to keep me in the fight. I made damn sure they didn't get the first move, and launched my attack. What played out was a game of cat-and-mouse, with them trying to stay just out of range and pelt what they thought was any ordinary wannabe with lasers until he went down. They quickly realised that I was no poser, and began to play dirty. Up until now, I had been dodging everything they could throw at me. They seemed to know this, too, and decided to fire on someone that couldn't dodge half as well: Princess Peach. My plans shifted from an all-out offensive to playing completely defensively, having to block or leap in front of every shot they now fired at the Princess. Things rapidly fell apart even further as what little healing items I had to keep myself in the fight disappeared at an unacceptable rate. It was absolutely clear that they were about to win, and Lady Luck was unreceptive to any further bribes as the train was still nowhere in sight. I looked into my inventory for some kind of 11th-hour miracle; who knows, maybe I had another Fire Flower I had forgotten about until now. The only thing left was the bottle of Hotsauce. To put it bluntly, I had no idea what it would do. Maybe it WAS another Fire Flower, just by a different name. Maybe it was one final healing item to keep me fighting for just a few seconds more. With everything to lose, I downed the bottle.

I promptly burst into flames.

Absolutely zero people were expecting that, myself included; the Princess practically fell over when it happened. Life had given me lemons and the means to go out and burn something down in one fell swoop; I felt Cave Johnson give me his strength from beyond the grave. I decided to see if space aliens were flammable by disregarding any form of subtlety and just bumrushing them, spear swinging all the while. Still shaken from the act of self-immolation and scrambling to come up with a counter of their own, the psychological warfare value of a flaming madman stabbing you with a spear proved to be the alien's Kryptonite. All told, these two were incredibly smart, but more than that they were organized. Maybe they had another chat program open or something, but these two were absurdly coordinated. This was one of the few times I managed to disrupt their harmony, and it gave me the edge I needed. For a few seconds I tore into them, paying back what they had done to me over the course of several minutes. When they finally got back in-sync with one another, they unanimously decided to run the hell away. With shouts of "This isn't over!", they fled back into town and away from the Princess and I. The train STILL wasn't here. I was completely battered, and if they had just stuck around for a second longer, that would've been the end of the story. Still, a pyrric victory is still a win in my books, and I turned to the Princess and gave a simple "Believe me now?". She did. She also believed that we needed a new way out of Rogueport, which I was more than happy to agree with.

Hoofing it out of town was somewhat unacceptable because that's what the bad guys just did, so that limited things slightly. After a few seconds of looking around, we found a blimp offering nonstop service to somewhere named Glitzville. I don't care what the name was, when I got off of that airship I was convinced that it was where Pro Wrestlers went when they died. It was literally this fighting arena floating in the clouds, built up like a massive coliseum. I have no idea what the hell Super Paper Mario's plotline is and even now I don't have any goddamn clue, but between the cruise ships, aliens, and Wrestling afterlife it must have the most confusing story of all time. At any rate, we moved inside, and I judiciously purchased snacks to get my HP back up (With the Princess' help, of course. She had money and I still didn't, glorified murderhobo that I was.). There was one problem that we noticed, however, and it was that Glitzville is its own little world; it doesn't connect to anywhere and was a very, very flashy dead end. Still, it was probably a bad idea to head back down into Rogueport in case the terrible twosome was there looking for us, so we decided to lay low in a floating sky coliseum for a few minutes. It didn't take long for someone to stumble upon us, and boy, had I seen nothing yet.

At first, much like an eldritch abomination, my brain could not comprehend what had walked up and started engaging in conversation. He was talking like several different big-shot wrestlers all got mashed together into one man, and said man was some kind of bird-person-thing. Absolutely ripped, on every poster all over the Coliseum, and asking me who I was. I still couldn't articulate a sentence, so it was a good thing the Princess was quick on the draw. "He's The Best.". I will never get tired of that line for as long as I live. Of course, Birdman wasn't quite ready to believe it yet, but a flash of my username made him take a step back. Obviously he recognized me, but he still had some doubts. I called it from a mile away; he wanted to fight me in the ring. I was of two minds about this: It would frankly be really, really cool to throw down with the guy, but I was in the middle of saving the Kingdom. I declined politely, trying to get the point across that this was a really bad time and that I had some more important things to do. Just as I'm about to walk out of the door, he says it. A declaration, and a challenge I couldn't refuse. "I thought you were The Best!"

The Princess was probably about to jump to my defense, but I was quicker on the draw this time. I turned right around. "I am. Meet me in the ring." Saving the world could wait; beating this bird was now my top priority. I handed the Princess my spear and headed ringside. At this point in our story, I was more than a little nervous behind the screen. The only thing I had ever made sure this lovable yet murderous scamp was good at was wielding that spear of his, and with it out of my hands I felt positively naked. To make matters worse, I was stepping into a coliseum with a positively ripped professional wrestler; I had really little margin for error here. As I strode through the doors that led to the ring and gazed upon the massive audience of NPCs, the very beginnings of an idea started to form in my head. As he, too, made his entrance, I got an overwhelming feeling of Deja vu. This fight, in a sense, was nothing new; save for my opponent and the locale, this was a repeat of yesterday. There was little warmup; we both were eager to get this started, with him wanting to thrown down with The Best and me wanting to end this and get back on the road. He started off with some bombastic moves and acrobatics, staying true to his avian nature and attacking in drops and dives. I did my best to stay out of his way, but he was the one in charge here.

With his high-flying style, he controlled the pace of the match from the get go. Finding opportunities to try and get hits in was difficult, and I could only dodge for so long. Eventually, he changed tactics and tried to bring me to the floor with a lariat. I ducked his arm, and seeing this as what could potentially be my one and only opportunity to get a hit in, threw out a leg sweep. I was expecting him to dodge it and retaliate with something of his own, but not only did I connect, the way his response was worded was like he just got hit by a car. In that moment I remembered just who I was, and the enormous amount of weight my self-made title held in the eyes of these people. What the hell was I afraid of?

I was The Best.

To figure out just why this happened, take a minute to imagine what the conclusion to yesterday's match must have looked like to everyone but me. A nameless man challenges some hotshot that's been hooting about how great he was all damn day to a duel at Bowser's Castle, and without saying a word, brutally murders him and then disappears without a trace afterwards. That is the kind of edgy-ass intro and outro all of these people WISH they had, and I just sort of did it without even thinking about it. Because of that, rumors had spread about The Best. What he was truly capable of, where he had come from. At this point, not even I knew just how strong I really was. Truly, though, there was no better place to find out than in this ring, against this bird. I pushed my newfound advantage, and the tide began to turn. Every time he came down, I was ready for him. Instead of dodging, I was blocking and countering. The tables turned, and I threw in some style of my own. There was something inside of me that felt deeply, deeply validated when I came up with the idea to start using spears, as in the wrestling move, in this scuffle. I soon decided to really push the envelope, and go for suplexes. I didn't have a mirror anywhere near me, but I didn't need one to inform me of the big, stupid grin on my face when some tiny mushroom man grabbed a buff bird three times his size around the waist and actually pulled it off. In spite of all of this, the eagle would not fall, always managing to kick out at 2 and keep the fight going. Maybe it was a dare from him; some kind of pride that made him demand that I truly gave him all that I had. Perhaps he just wanted to drag out a fight with a legend for as long as he can. I'll never know his reasons, but they didn't matter. If I lingered here, there was the chance someone with less than wonderful intent would walk in and kidnap the Princess while I was distracted.

With this in mind, I had to go big: bigger than anything I had used so far. One move popped into my head before all others, and I decided to give my opponent a finishing barrage worthy of a Platinum game. He launches a few strikes of his own, but at this stage in the game I knew that I was a god among men. Like Neo at the end of the first Matrix, I blocked and no-sold everything he pulled out. Finally, he over-extended, and I saw my opportunity. Getting him in a grab once again, I launched into a wholesale stolen Final Atomic Buster, but I didn't stop there. After slamming him down into the mat and leaving him stunned, I sprinted out of the arena, shoulder-barging through my exit doors and rushing into the stands. From there, I ran up as high as I could go, and launched myself into an elbow drop that shook Glitzville to its very foundations. I transitioned into a pin, and at last, he stayed down. The Princess was cheering, the NPCs were cheering (But that wasn't news, they were always cheering), and I took a second to bask in the glory of it all, before remembering that there was still a world I had to save. I helped the turkey off of the floor and, as he described it, an indent in it shaped exactly like him. There was a small conversation afterwards, and I want to give the player behind that bird a shout-out. He never broke character once, and goddamn was he skilled in the art of a good RP fight. Still, my journey wasn't going to end here, so after some goodbyes, we got back on the Zepplin and the Princess and I came back down to earth. Unfortunately, it was not the same earth that we had left. In my fifteen or so minutes of absence, the aliens had gotten busy.

I had saved the Princess, yes. However, that was the only thing I had managed to save. Every other Princess at Peach's party was dead, logged out, or otherwise totally on-board with the new management. The general population of the server, easily swayed, were all over the chance to sign up as world-conquering aliens. Except the ones that weren't, which ended up becoming something called the X-Nauts in some attempt to fight the space aliens for control of the server. To put this lightly, the Kingdom was a war zone. Conflict and strife had erupted everywhere, and anarchy reigned. At first, I was ready to take up my spear and take on the entire world, but that's when I realised something. That's exactly what the last guy calling himself The Best did, and then I came around and knocked him clean off of his high horse; I could not let me pride consume me like it consumed my predecessor. No, if I was going to win this war, and bring peace back to the land, I needed a plan. To fight back this many people, I'd need an army of my own. Only problem was, I didn't have much left to work with. The aliens were converting anyone they could get their hands on at an alarming rate, The X-Nauts were razing everything they came across, and if I didn't act soon we'd be caught in the middle of it all. It was here that my mind came up with its final, greatest plan. I already had an army, for all intents and purposes. I just had to convince an old acquaintance to lend it to me. I told the Princess that we were going to pay Bowser a visit. For a minute, she thought that I had played the longest con in the business, and was about to hand her off. Fortunately for her, I hadn't come this far for a cop-out ending like that.

Our travel time to Bowser's domain was not a completely peaceful one, with lots of sneaking around on our parts. With everyone having moved on to other things, I was once again the only Green Toad on the map. If anyone caught sight of me, I'd be drowning in assailants from both sides of the fight, and chances are I'd lose the Princess in the human tidal wave. Once again, I do not know the storyline to Super Paper Mario, so for all I know, everything happening around me was super canonical. Still, I find it hard to believe that space aliens toting guns were fighting men from the moon decked out with technology all their own and even some towering mecha, in this universe most known for an oversized turtle that kidnaps the same Princess from her castle over and over again with two plumbers playing the hero. Either way, we made the trip to Bowser's castle a little easier when we stole one of his airships and simply flew all the way there. You'd think that would attract a lot of attention, but so do giant robots piloted by space men laying siege to your town. We slipped through by simply being part of the background noise. We DID, however, end up attracting a lot of attention from Bowser, and what little forces he had managed to hold onto during this war.

The welcome we recieved, by flying up to Bowser's own fortress in one of his stolen airships, was a lot less than warm. It was plenty warm temperature-wise, active lava flows have a tendency to ensure that, but that did little to warm the ice-cold stare of a few Koopas at the front gate. The fortress was already on edge given all the fighting everywhere else, it's a wonder they didn't try shooting us down before we even got this close. Still, as I strolled down from the ship's wheel and dismounted with the Princess, the general tone at Casa de Bowser went from "barely-restrained fury" to "utter confusion" real damn fast. They were prepared for an army, hell they were probably ready for a last stand, but the moment they commanded me and the Princess to halt, and demanded to know who I was, they collectively realized that they weren't prepared for just one Green Toad. I told them three words, and revealed my username for the whole fortress to see.

"I'm The Best."

Their momentary silence spoke volumes, more than what came out of their mouths next ever could. They could have done a lot in that situation, and what they chose to do was doubt my claim. It was a pretty sensible move on their part, after all if a man came to your front door and claimed to be the President, the first word out of a lot of people's mouths is going to be "Bullshit". Unlike the possibility of the President upon your doorstep, they next decided to attack me. And that second part told me everything I wanted to know about the company Bowser still held. They were tenacious, weren't afraid of literally anyone, and had so much loyalty that they would sooner throw themselves at the mushroom equivalent of Chuck Norris over disappointing their lord. They went down in a few moves on my part, but I knew I was in the right place. I told the Princess to hang around outside of the gates, and that I wouldn't be long. More came in behind them, happily a few more troops than I was expecting Bowser to have. It was a creative writing exercise on my part; I had to find a way to disable or knock out every combatant that came at me without roughing them up too bad, after all if my plan worked these were going to be my soldiers. Skipping over a stroll through Bowser's castle with a couple of speedbumps on the way, I made it to the same courtyard I had begun yesterday's deathmatch in. And wouldn't you know it, Bowser was waiting for me atop his balcony. I didn't have to say a word, he knew who I was. He didn't know why I was here, though, and that part got me to say quite a mouthful. In short, I needed an army to take back the Mushroom Kingdom, I had the Princess on my side, and he was the world's only shot at getting thoroughly un-fucked. And here, I got some very lovely exposition on the situation and exactly the level of fucked the world was at that moment in time.

As far as Bowser was concerned, it was already too late. The aliens had everything they needed to complete some kind of ritual or something, the usual "Unseal the ancient evil" type of plot, you know the kind. The only thing really stalling them was the X-Nauts, and even then it wasn't going to last for much longer. The moment this thing was out of its can, the aliens were going to bowl over everything that wasn't them. But to top it all off, out of everything he COULD have called Bullshit on, he thought I didn't have the Princess. That was the easiest fix in the world, all I did was whistle and she was by my side in an instant. I don't know what it was about that gesture, but the moment Peach came into the frame, he did a complete 180 and agreed to help. If it was all screwed anyway, then he thought he owed it to his men, the Princess, and even me to be, and I quote, "The nastiest thorn in their purple side for as long as we can!". Which was a hell of a motivation, but from there? We had a start. I had my army, I had the Princess, and I had a clock counting down to Doomsday. What I didn't have was an assault plan.

I did have experience and a black belt in kicking asses by these folk's standards, though. So I let Bowser figure out the finer points of the assault, while I grabbed up every Goomba, Paratroopa, Koopa, EVERYONE I could get my hands on inside that fortress, and I trained them. It was a crash course if ever there was one, and I knew that at best, these guys were only going to get me so far. Still, when an army "trained by The Best himself" came rolling over the hills, suddenly these mooks were going to be looked at like supersoldiers. I devoted no time to planning the assault out myself, as I figured, having done it so many times and with me at his side, Bowser needed no help coming up with a plan for breaking into Princess Peach's castle, and my faith was not misplaced. The X-Nauts had the full brunt of the alien's attention, currently launching an all-out, last-ditch offensive from the harbor in some vain attempt to get in and drive them out before their Cthulhu cult did its job. We were going to come in from the side, using the very airship I rode in on, and take the aliens by surprise. We were nothing more than a handful of hopeful idiots, but we had Bowser, and we had me. With the element of surprise, he thought, smashing into the castle and taking out the aliens was going to be a cakewalk. Getting out again was going to be the problem, but he thought I could take care of that part on my own. I didn't object to that. After all, I was The Best.

And here, I took a moment to realize just how far I had come in the past few days. As I had said at the very start of this chapter, I had gone from some nameless jackass to the new Meta literally overnight. I didn't come out here to be the hero, but here I was, at the forefront of an army I had personally trained to save the world from an alien invasion. From beating back cyborgs with big words to suplexing a buff bird in the great Wrestlemania in the sky, my story was a winding, insane pathway that I don't think will ever be replicated. And one way or another, when I got on that airship, it was going to have an ending. I was going to do everything in my power, and perhaps a few things beyond it, to see this through to the bitter conclusion.

Just before we departed, there was one thing I had to take care of. I had to ensure that, during this whole escapade, nobody swooped in and stole Peach out from under me. Honestly, at this point she had little value in the grand scheme of things but I'd be the shittiest goddamn hero ever if I let the Princess get offed during the big battle with evil. I couldn't keep her at my side, we were marching into a war zone. I couldn't just leave her at the castle, as everyone and everything was coming on this assault, and either side could kick down the doors with no one home. Eventually, I picked one of the more useful people in my army, and told him to stay with the ship for as long as he could, both to defend Peach and to rain down hell with the cannons. Something about me calling him "The best in the army" really sold it to him, though, and he agreed to the plan. That was all the preparations I could make, because we were out of time. By the way things sounded in the Global chat, it was now or never. Everyone piled on to the ship, Bowser took the helm, and I climbed up the mast to deliver a pre-battle speech to my men. I don't remember the whole thing, but I remember the gist and spirit of it.

For as long as anyone could remember, this land had heroes. Gods to some, they were so almighty on the field of battle that none could ever hope to best them. And as far as anyone knew, no one could surpass them. Everyone in front of me, from the Goombas to the King Koopa himself, had lived in the shadows these figures cast on history. Well right now, I didn't see those heroes. Instead, I saw in front of me something far brighter, far deadlier, far stronger. Now, it was everyone else's time to shine. This was OUR time, damnit, and for once in our lives, WE were the giants people would look up to, not because of some prophesy or some pre-ordained onus of heroism, but because we had fought tooth and nail for everything we had. And now, in this dark hour, it wasn't gods that rode on wings of fury to save the world, but the common folk with absolutely nothing to lose.

When that first volley of cannon fire left the Airship, the Aliens had no idea we were even coming. Two seconds afterwards, though, they found out real quick. Bowser didn't just land the ship, no, he ran it aground right through a column of the purple bastards and the broadsides started FLYING after that. I vaulted the railing, leading my army from the forefront, and from there it was all a blur of combat. I can't know what happened for sure, I was so sucked up in the high of warfare that my eyes were focused solely on that castle at the end of town. I think when Bowser crashed the ship, it gave the aliens such a shock that their front line basically collapsed, and the X-Nauts came pouring through. It was absolute goddamn pandemonium. The chat was moving so fast that I just closed it, instead relying on the speech bubbles popping up over people's heads to react to the warfare around me. We had aliens in front of us, X-nauts at our rear, and in the center of it all, a legendary Green Toad and his elite fighting force annihilating all that dared approach. Bowser was a one-man wrecking crew, bashing down X-Naut mechs faster than they could get to the combat zone, while I had attained a level of power so ridiculous that I was parrying gunshots with my spear.

I was invincible, shouts of "IT'S HIM!" and "IT'S THE BEST!" popping up so frequently that they accounted for nearly half of the local chatter. Nothing could stand in my way, but that didn't stop everyone from trying. The element of surprise only helped for so long, because as soon as they knew who I was, EVERYONE came swarming twoards me. My progress twoards the castle was slow, but I was simultaneously the unstoppable force and the immovable object. They could slow me down by sheer weight of numbers, but there was no halting our advance. Knee-deep in the conflict, I became blind to just how dire my situation was getting until far too late. I was making progress twoards the castle, yes, but things had been taking a turn for the worse right under my nose for a while. My men were good, but they had their limits. I had started to lose them, and it's only when I took a look behind me that I only saw four of them left, including Bowser.

At this point in the fight, the aliens had lost too much ground, and too many numbers. What remained was falling back inside the castle as a last line of defense, but the X-Nauts just kept coming. Whenever they'd lose someone, that guy would just run back to the Harbor and re-join the fray as reinforcements. There was absolutely no end to them, and soon making our way to the castle doors wasn't the biggest of our concerns. The X-nauts were grabbing all the space we gave up, and soon the five of us found out backs up against the castle doors, too busy fighting for our lives to get inside. I lost another man to the tide, but I couldn't fight any harder. I was hitting the limit of how fast I could type out coherent actions, there were just too many. On the other side of the screen, I was sweating bullets, both metaphorically and physically, because I was beginning to think I couldn't do this. I know that analogy that says, "What's a mob to a king?" and frankly, I don't think that man has seen what a pissed-off mob of people can do. Back against the wall, typing to my limit, I thought I had come all this way to finally fail right at the finish line.

And then, it happened. Lady Luck hid an ace up her sleeve from me this entire time. Chekhov's gun got speed-loaded and fired, because  Rawk Hawk dove out of the sky with the most literal interpretation of an RKO out of fucking nowhere I will ever witness. I don't even know how the hell he got up that high, the game didn't include methods of flight, and Glitzville was across the goddamn map. But SOMEHOW, that glorious bastard came in during the 11th hour, with an entrance so perfect that for a moment, I wanted to name him my successor. With typical professional wrestling banter, he tore into the crowd in front of us like a hurricane, and I knew that this was going to be the last miracle I got today. I told whoever was left to buy me time, and I kicked in the front door to the palace.

The war raged outside, and now inside I waged a one-mushroom offensive on everything those extraterrestrial bastards could muster. I channeled the collective fury of everyone that had ever played an XCOM game, and I ripped and teared my way to the room where the ritual was taking place. I don't know the names of any that stood beside me on this fateful day, and held that door, but if you find this story and you read it, know that I await you in Valhalla, brothers. Shoutouts aside, I made it to the ritual chamber. I found out I had made it too late, JUST too late, probably because the Ayys wanted to win so bad they had started to bend the rules. Either way, they had their God or Leader or whatever the hell they were trying to summon right there in the chamber. Frankly, I expected hentacle tentai or Cthulhu, what I got made very little sense and frankly almost felt like a cop-out. Standing in front of me, in the middle of this somewhat intimidating ritual circle, I had what I can realistically describe as an edgy Princess Peach and her Stand, The Downward Spiral. Upon looking this one up after the fact, I now know that I was staring at the Shadow Queen, but that name is nowhere near as good as what I came up with. And lo and behold, the first thing she asks is who dares to defy her.

Do I even need to type out what I said at this point?

The only noteworthy thing about her response is that she had never heard of me. Which frankly, is both an insult that a fourth grader would come up with, but also absolutely perfect given the context of everything about me. I properly introduced myself via a spear stab to her midsection, which didn't go over very well with her OR what little lackeys she had left. In the grand scheme of things, it's sort of funny how this adventure began and semi-ended with the same three words, in the same place. Upon looking it up, I now know the term for this is "bookending" but damn if life doesn't work out sometimes. Anyway, this final brawl proved to be one hell of a show, looking back. She was pretty reliant on that Stand of hers, a lot of stuff involving hands that sort of gave me a few flashbacks to Geb, but legally distinct from Geb because these are made of shadows or some stupid shit. It was a big game of keep away for her, because she could just keep the damn hands coming all day long, but I still had to land a hit on the actual her to keep the show going as planned. To pull out a cringeworthy joke on any readers, I was trying to catch her, while she was trying to make me catch those hands.

Still, a mob fight involving twenty different people is a lot different than one person controlling twenty different things. I was still fighting in mob mode, and she just couldn't keep up. I would have loved to know just how quickly I was launching my assault during that, get some kind of time-traveling WPM counter so I have a solid statistic to give you, but without that I have to describe it. I was typing pretty fucking fast, to avoid flowery language or a dumb analogy. She still dragged out the war of attrition for as long as she had patience, but at this point in the story I had come too far, and sacrificed too much to give any ground in there. Like the dragon a day prior, she gave up too much ground, got cornered, and I promptly finished the job. Unlike the dragon, she had enough respect for both the narrative at play and herself, and played out her downfall. Kudos to her, because with that one action she was already a better roleplayer than a lot of the folks that came before her. So, job's done, hero wins, evil is defeated, right?

I fucking wish it ended there. GOD, do I wish it ended there. In my mind, the X-Nauts would have fallen back, I would have strolled out of the palace, and me and my surviving troops would celebrate with whatever the Mario equivalent of a cold one with the boys is. But no, sometimes fate demands a final act.

I made my way back to the door, only to find that my troops were all dead and the X-nauts were swarming the lobby. Rawk Hawk, Bowser, every last one fought to the bitter end, of that I'm fucking certain, but in the end, they were overrun. I couldn't accept it! I flung open the chat window, trying to find ANY record of that battle, frantically scrolling up as far as it would let me. Maybe they just fell back inside the castle, and they're waiting for me to come rescue them. Maybe they doubled-back to the airship and they're going to come in and pick me up in a really badass, "You thought we were dead, haha!" sort of way. No, they were gone. They put up a slobberknocker of a fight and raised hell for as long as they could, but every last one died defending that door. And that wasn't all, no, if that was all maybe I could have accepted it. Wrought bloody vengeance on the X-Nauts until they gave up the ghost themselves, but no. I saw in the Global Chat the one thing I absolutely, positively did not need to read with my own two eyes. Somehow, two of those alien bastards broke through every last goddamn X-Naut, got to the airship, took down my best man, and they stole the Princess.

And at that point, all I saw was red.

I do not know where I summoned the typing speed from, nor do I think I will ever manage it again, but when those X-Nauts finally found me, they didn't even have time to call it in. I was on them like shit on a pig, and more than that, I wasn't stopping for anyone. Squads, mechs, it was all the same in my mind, just more obstacles between me and the only goddamn thing that mattered in this bloodbath. I kept one hateful eye staring into the global chat, and something kept turning over in my mind. Their names seemed so familiar to me, but I couldn't place them. Steeped as I was in the battle, my brain devoted solely to ripping through an entire army singlehandedly, I didn't know who I was dealing with. I hauled ass out of the town and cut down anything that tried to stop me, the X-Nauts could have the goddamn palace if they wanted it so badly. And only now, holding W harder than I had ever held a key in my life, did I recognize those two names. These two are the ones that started it all. That couple I saw behind the house, The aliens that shot up the palace, the duo that fought me at the train station, those two insurmountable dickheads that just couldn't accept defeat like everyone else, and had to try and drag me down with them. I thought they were going to kill the Princess any minute, petty bastards that they were, but no. They decided they were going to do it onboard a train just to fucking taunt me. Ride off into the sunset, kill Peach when you get there, and then log out. No chance for me to interfere.

But I knew that train real goddamn well, and it took its sweet-ass time getting to that station.

And I ran. I ran so far away. I just ran, I ran all night and damn well to the crack of dawn, because those bastards weren't getting away. Getting to Rogueport without the ferry, especially when you're traveling from the town, is a daunting prospect. It's not like you're running a cross-continent marathon, but with everything riding on my ability to get there before the train did, you can't fathom how long that sprint felt like it took. The train arrived before I did. They got onboard, but before it pulled out of the station, I slipped on. I made it there with time to spare, and in the interim, we could do nothing but awkwardly stare at one another, knowing full well the confrontation that was about to take place the moment this train left the station. It all came down to this, one final showdown between me and them. They had numbers and guns. Unlike last time, all I had was my spear. No miracle hotsauce to tip the scales, no healing items to call upon to drag it out. And just like last time, they had no idea who they were dealing with.

The train left the station, and we were transported to an endless bridge over an ocean, the train hurtling twoards the unknown. The sun was just breaking over the horizon, and the moment the game let us move, it was on. They tried the guns, but I was knocking blasts out of the sky like it was nobody's business. They tried to attack the Princess again, but this time I got so thoroughly in the way that they couldn't even reach her. Still, these two had otherworldly coordination, and a desire to see me fail almost as strong as my need to win. There was no cavalry coming. If I failed here, my legend was going to die with me. Lady Luck had pulled every string she could just to get me on this train; she had nothing left to give me, and in the back of my mind, I knew it. Both of them wouldn't accept defeat, not even taking a blow here and there to make the fight seem fair. They just wanted victory. I needed to make my own luck, and to do that I needed to throw the playbook out the window; do something so unconventional that not even they would see it coming. I did the absolutely unthinkable, gave a mental farewell to the only ally I had left, and threw my spear.

I threw it knowing full well they would dodge it without a second thought. Whenever he dodged, he moved his in-game character a little bit, just to make it feel that much more real. So when he went to dodge it, I "physically" sprinted right at him, and used the momentum of my in-game avatar to bodycheck him right off the train. No amount of godmodding or powerplaying can save you from literal, inescapable death, and just like that the fight was one-on-one.

The remaining alien was none too pleased with my maneuvering, and redoubled their assault to try and kill me. I was having fucking none of it anymore; I slapped that ray gun out of their hand and gave them a hook to the jaw. The fight with Rawk Hawk flashed through my mind, and I once again called upon every close-combat move I could muster. The chips were crooked, the dice were weighted, but I had no choice anymore. A spite-fueled grudge match on the top of a speeding train probably looked cool as all get out to any spectators, but in my mind there wasn't anything about looking cool, or being flashy. It was about being The Best. It was about saving the Princess, about conquering all of the odds, about being the hero everyone thought I was. But more than that? It was about beating this stuck-up, godmodding bastard in a straight-up fight. Still, there's only so much you can do in a roleplay fight when the other person doesn't want you to win. Take it from me, because I tried everything. There was no reasoning with them, there was no outplaying them. They wanted to see me die, and I wanted to see them fail. Only one person can get what they want out of a conflict like that, or so I thought. Something finally dawned on me, trading blows with this thing on top of the train for what felt like aeons. Nobody was walking away from this, and that is the only way this is going to end.

I had to face facts, I was going to die on top of this train but so were they. A world where neither of us win, but in a way, we both get what we want. I made my move, grabbing them with both hands and forcing them to the train's edge, both in RP and with my avatar. They fought the entire time, trying to squirm out of it, knowing what I was trying, but I wasn't letting anyone live. Not them, not me. I backed up just a hair's breath, and then came at them full-speed. The avatars ended up colliding with one another, flooring both of us as we tumbled over the side together. As I went over the edge, I said one final sentence to the Princess before I hit the water and met my fate. "Tell my story." And just like that, we slammed full-speed into the kill-zone underneath the bridge together, the alien keysmashing in impotent fury the entire time. A pyrric victory for me, but a victory nonetheless. I started to go through the motions to log out, and just before I exited, I saw the Princess' final words. She never even knew my name. Only that I was The Best.

That's my story, and I swear to god it's true. I'm sharing it because a few friends demanded a writeup, and while it took me a while to get it all together, better late than never. I don't want any fame from this, and I can guarantee that, for that reason alone, anyone claiming to be me is lying. The Best's story is finished, ended. Only a handful people know who it was, and I'm content with that. I'll go down in the annuls of nameless history like I've always wanted. All the fame, none of the consequences. Thanks for reading all the way through, you have a good day.

[wand3r3r]

Pure Comedy - An Essay by Father John Misty (aka Josh Tillman)

“What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.



Is there a thing of which it is said,
‘See, this is new?’
It has been already
in the ages before us.



There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.”
- Ecclesiastes



Pure Comedy is the story of a species born with a half-formed brain. The species’ only hope for survival, finding itself on a cruel, unpredictable rock surrounded by other species who seem far more adept at this whole thing (and to whom they are delicious), is the reliance on other, slightly older, half-formed brains. This reliance takes on a few different names as their story unfolds, like “love,” “culture,” “family,” etc. Over time, and as their brains prove to be remarkably good at inventing meaning where there is none, the species becomes the purveyor of increasingly bizarre and sophisticated ironies. These ironies are designed to help cope with the species’ loathsome vulnerability and to try and reconcile how disproportionate their imagination is to the monotony of their existence.



Now all of a sudden they expect light in the dark, warmth in the cold, and to make something out of nothing. Cooperation among the species to achieve these goals eventually yields a worldview wherein some among the species believe that there are individuals for whom this type of work is maybe ill-suited. The contribution of the ill-suited is of a more abstract, inspirational nature. The ill-suited begin to make subtle distinctions among themselves that extend beyond “eaten by a bear/not eaten by a bear”. These distinctions involve do-it-ness, cool-face-and-body-ness, craftiness, etc. – an arrangement emerges where these traits can be traded in for better-than-ness. This better-than-ness really starts to run rampant, and the species begins to wonder if there isn’t a Sky-Man in the sky who is perhaps the source of all better-than-ness. It seems like a pretty good explanation for why the species is so important.



Sky-Man pretty much runs the show for a really, really long time, and his inner-circle of better-thans gets increasingly smaller and smaller, even though by the end of his reign everyone in the species considers themselves one. Unfortunately there are some better-thans who get together and decide that one way of better-than-ness is better than other betters-thans’ better-than-ness and teach their little half-formed-brain babies as much (most who interpret this distinction as “me’s” vs. “not-me’s”). “Not-me’s” eventually come to encapsulate everyone that is not a single “me” at any given time, and this paves the way for incredibly distasteful behavior until the species arrives at a place of such alienation and fear there is really nothing so horrible that one of them wouldn’t do to the other. To deal with this less than ideal state of affairs, which seems suspiciously incompatible with how progressive and evolved they are by this point, they set about to entertain themselves into an oblivion with politics, sex, finance, philosophy, and other games of war. This they do until they are so numb, and the idea of any “not-me” so untenable, that they are blissfully incapable of noticing they’re all dead. This happens more or less on an infinite loop until the end of time.



Something like that.



Imagine if you will, as the album starts, that you’re way out in space looking at the earth and, though it’s impossible to “fall” through space, you start a free fall anyway in the direction of the bright blue marble. For the next 75 minutes you plummet toward the earth, losing more and more perspective on what an abstract and impermanent place our planet is, how predictably we step on the same rakes, slip on the same banana peels over and over again through the ages, quickly becoming more and more immersed in the very messy business of being a human – the dubious privilege of being here, the elusiveness of meaning, true love and its habitual absence, random euphoria and the inexplicable misery of others, truth and its more alluring counterfeits, the sophistication of answers that don’t make any sense, the barbarism of our appetites, lucky breaks and injustice, faith and ignorance, crippling, mind-numbing boredom, and the terror of it all ending too soon. Before you know it, you’ve delicately crash-landed and find yourself lying on your back looking up at the stars. If you’re lucky, with someone you love; even if just for a day, a year, a lifetime. Though just an hour has passed you have no recollection of what the earth looked like from the far-flung reaches of space, nor how simple it all seemed a matter of minutes ago.



I know everyone doesn’t feel the same about what’s going on right now. What for some is clearly garden-variety violent white nationalism serving as a catch-all for any number of paranoia-induced anti-fantasies foisted upon the poor and uneducated precisely by the ideologues bent on manufacturing voters who can be manipulated into voting against their own interests by making good and sure they remain poor and uneducated before cravenly blaming their problems largely on people bearing distinctions like race, gender, and sexuality so people forget everything that’s good about the American experiment, is to others an opportunity to wrench the country back from the influence of hypocritical corporate tyrants bent on enslaving our minds with spineless liberal rhetoric in order to justify wiping out the jobs of decent people so they can fulfill their fey utopian dream of an impossible global community designed to profit only its architects (probably Banking Consortiums, pedophile rings, and definitely The Illuminati).


This album does not espouse either of those views.



Both of those views take for granted a certain degree of sophistication, or at least a knack for cooperation, that I’m absolutely convinced humans do not possess; not to mention some kind of innate logic to the proceedings here on Earth – which make a much better case for being some kind of demented joke than anything else.



The terrifying reality concerning the dilemma above is everything is chaos and no one is really in control of anyone or anything.



But what about the well-documented history of humans making life a living hell for other humans since time began?



There is no intellectual, political, or spiritual explanation that will ever satisfy anyone for longer than a moment, least of all this, the only explanation with any dignity. The explanation that appeases both our instincts for compassion and liberation. The explanation that we can either accept and move forward together or keep screaming to our respective heavens, “Why, God, why?”



Things are the way they are because this is how we, the human race, want them.



This is how we want it.



Hold the motherfucking phone. Josh Tillman, you have said and done some stupid fucking things since we’ve known you, but this is too much.



Now the liberals and the conservatives are both outraged because that is a sentiment that is so profoundly insensitive to the ways in which the other side is clearly wrong in objective ways regarding basic decency, but what’s the alternative? We’re either all complicit in this purest comedy, or the people who aren’t to blame are at war with the people who are to blame until everyone is dead. Simple as that.



Is progress possible? What does it look like? The conversion of everyone to our respective beliefs? Well, we’ve seen how that typically goes. The destruction of everyone who fails to conform? That’s not it. The erection of institutions with the power and infrastructure to enforce a rule of law with the good of as many as possible at heart? Not much evidence for that panning out.



What I recommend is this: we return to the Vedic cycle and submit ourselves to the likelihood that many of us will end up getting eaten by bears. It’s only natural. What if instead of imbuing our expectations for the quality of our lives to include perpetual happiness, dream fulfillment, excessive painlessness, existential certitude, material wealth, and all variety of romantic stimulation, we were just grateful for every day that didn’t involve getting eaten by a bear? What if progress only meant literally progressing from one day to the next without getting violently dismembered by a 9-foot tall, 500-pound grizzly?



The irony here of course is that many more humans than we’d like to think, most of whom are not reading the interminable liner notes to a folk rock album, do live in daily, perpetual fear of getting killed by a mammal far more terrifying than a bear, and I think you know the one to which I refer. This form of mammal attack is made all the more nightmarish by virtue of the fact that the mammal in question kills purely ideologically. Bears kill because they’re hungry; they’re very reasonable in that way. So maybe we should submit ourselves to their authority. Bears we can trust.



Bottom line is that as long as we expect to live in such a way – immune to the natural laws of this godless rock that govern everything else here – human existence will continue to be a cruel joke. I fear, however, that it is too late for us to go back into the natural order. We have no desire to return to our primal scene. We like the way things are. We’ve got sandwiches when we’re hungry! Airplanes for when we want to go somewhere! Social media when we want our voices to be heard by all God’s creation! We know that these magical conveniences come at a staggering price, and that excess for the few is based on the scarcity of the many, but that’s why we invented the business of globalization! We’ve already built the wall! It’s a great, great wall that goes up to the heavens and is as transparent as museum glass. It’s a beautiful wall that winds surgically through nations, cities, neighborhoods, and sometimes even homes. It is a globe within a globe, and those who live within its interior are as clueless as to what’s happening on the other side as we are to what’s happening right now on the far side of Mars.


There’s only one creature that can penetrate that wall, friends, and it is bears. Bears can smash through that glass like a pitcher of sugar water through a brick wall. The equalizing revolution of bear justice is coming too. Sooner than you think. As it gets hotter and hotter, they’re coming. They’re coming into our neighborhoods, they’re coming into our schools, into our churches, into our banks, into our places of business, into our governments, into our beds.



The joke is that the best we can do is keep on keeping on, which we’ve proven ourselves pathologically adept at. We’re going to save the planet alright, and it will be a glorious sacrifice just like the Sky-Man we invented showed us how.

Bears, man.

[baguettetime]

I’m back on my bullshit

pairing: Brack (Brandon Wardell x Jack Wagner)

rating: NC-17 (sorry it’s all porn)

length: 2492 words

okay so this ship is something i didn’t expect would ruin my life? at some point. but it did. so here i am producing trash lmao.

this is posting a little bit late, but it’s writing and i got it done.

enjoy!

Click to read on AO3.

“You coming over after all?” Brandon’s voice fades away, becomes distant behind the rustle of motion on his end of the line. Brandon’s voice comes back clearer, louder the next time he speaks, “Are you already on the way here?”

Jack sighs, slightly ashamed of them both, “Yeah… That predictable?”

Brandon yawns, “Okay, well you better hurry. I’m getting sleepy.”

Jack steps on the gas, hopes that Brandon doesn’t somehow know, “Almost there.”

Brandon breathes into the microphone, suddenly sounds more awake than he did before, “Alright, just let yourself in. ‘M already in bed.”

Jack replies dryly, “You gave me keys, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” Brandon laughs.

“‘Kay. See you in a minute.” Jack tries not to smile, hates himself when he fails.

“One minute. I’ll be pissed if you’re not here in the next sixty seconds. Or maybe asleep. Haven’t decided yet.” Brandon jokes and Jack can almost see the stupid grin forming on Brandon’s round little face.

Jack gets the last word in, “See ya.”

Jack Wagner nervously eyes the clock as he speeds down the rainy Los Angeles streets he’s frequented more than he’d like to admit. He knows Brandon is joking about the time limit, but he finds himself driving much faster than is safe for current conditions. Jack arrives at Brandon’s place in less time than he expects, considers waiting in his car for a few minutes before heading in.

He manages to wait a whopping two minutes before he turns the car off and gets out. He trudges up the steps, Brandon’s keys ready in his hand, still attached to his own. He unlocks the door, steps in quietly to the dim apartment, and stops to make sure to lock the door behind him.

Jack makes his way to Brandon’s room, goes in, finds him buried under a blanket. He startles Brandon when he pushes the creaky door open. The top of Brandon’s head barely emerges out from under the blanket, dark head of hair messy, glasses askew, face thoroughly flushed. It’s a familiar sight to Jack, familiar enough yet it surprises him still.

Brandon’s words are muffled by the blanket, “Got started without you.”

Jack tries not to blush when he realizes exactly what those words mean. He tries to pick his words carefully before he speaks, tries not to sound too eager when he murmurs, “...I thought you didn’t want to do this anymore.

It’s a strange feeling to be back in Brandon’s apartment after a slight drift between them. Jack doesn’t want to be at fault for ruining Brandon’s hand at a monogamous relationship with his girlfriend, doesn’t want to feel the crushing guilt the next time they’re all in the same room together. It should make Jack feel bad that he finds himself in Brandon’s room, especially before 1 AM this time, as odd of an occurrence as it might be.

There’s a long pause, silence where they can only hear each other breathe and it’s then that Jack notices how loud Brandon is actually breathing. Jack feels the words escaping before he can stop them, “Fuck, are you touching yourself?”

Brandon exhales, “Yeah. Are you going to make me do all of this myself?”

For a moment, Jack’s tempted to peel the blanket away and watch. Contemplates how it would be just as satisfying but without the guilt of being involved in this again. Though, desperation gets the better of him when Brandon lets a tiny groan slip from under his blanket and Jack makes his way to the unoccupied side of the bed. He peels his jacket off, tosses it into the nearby chair, blindly tosses the keys onto the bedside drawer where they slide and land with a clink against the champagne sized bottle of Baja Blast. The bottle is another reminder of their history, maybe a warning, but Jack finds he’s too busy to pay it any mind as he removes each article of clothing as quickly as possible.

“Hurry up,” Brandon whines as if Jack isn’t already pulling the covers away and slipping into the bed right beside him.

Jack watches Brandon for a moment, watches as the younger man works himself. Brandon saves him any more trouble when he hands over the bottle of lube with a shaky hand. Jack smirks and whispers, “Alright, quit touching yourself.”

Brandon does it, though reluctant fingers still linger and ghost over the tip of his dick. Jack is already past half-hard, but doesn’t think to touch himself. Not yet, anyway. Instead, he pats Brandon’s upper thigh, squeezes it gently, “Alright, buddy. Turn around.”

Brandon sighs, rolls his eyes, inconvenienced by having to get on all fours. He shivers when he turns around. The cool air makes him feel incredibly exposed for a moment before Jack places a warm hand on his ass and makes him forget. A hot kiss on his lower back surprises him, but it’s enough to hold him over while Jack struggles with the lube bottle.

“God, it’s so slippery!” Jack chuckles from behind him and Brandon can’t help but bow his head between his clasped hands and smile a little.

Brandon listens closely, listens as Jack squeezes the viscous lube into his hand and coats his fingers in it. It’s still too cold when Jack presses a slick finger against his skin, feels it warm as Jack’s thumb rubs circles against his hole. Brandon’s ready to complain, but then Jack finally moves on and carefully presses the tip of his index finger into him.

Brandon whines without meaning to, feels the breath leave his lungs when Jack’s finger gradually goes the deepest it can. Brandon rocks his hips, begs Jack to do something other than just stay still. Jack smirks, pulls his finger out just a tiny bit before he presses it back in. Brandon exhales, impatient as always, “More.”

Jack pulls his finger out, presses two of them back in this time. Brandon tenses up and Jack slows down, keeps his fingers steady until Brandon backs onto his fingers again. Brandon sighs when Jack carefully bends his fingers and lets his fingertips rub at Brandon’s prostate. It feels good, but none of it is enough for Brandon. He wants more so he turns to complain, “C’mon… more.”

Jack’s dark, thick eyebrows rise in surprise and Brandon laughs as he turns back around, rests his head on his hands so his ass remains high in the air.

“Fuck,” Jack whispers under his breath and goes to grab the bottle of lube again. He holds it between his thighs and snaps it open, crudely pours some directly onto the fingers still inside Brandon. Brandon jerks in surprise again, but is too eager to really care or complain.

Jack makes sure his third finger is slick enough before he attempts to press it into Brandon. It’s definitely slick, maybe too slick, and he realizes when his finger easily slips in farther than he means for it to go. Brandon groans, muffles his sound in the pillows under him, smudges his glasses in the process.

Jack hesitates, “Shit, are you okay?”

Brandon nods wildly in response, doesn’t reply in fear of making another sound that’s too embarrassingly loud.

Brandon feels full, fuller than he has in weeks, maybe longer. It takes him a few moments to get used to the thickness of Jack’s fingers, takes him longer to get used to excessive slickness. Brandon rocks his hips again, hopes Jack remembers how to read his body language. Brandon shivers when Jack pulls his hand away, presses it back closer this time, fingers going the deepest they can. Jack’s fingers rub against his prostate again and Brandon arches his back further.

Jack continues to work Brandon open, occasionally presses kiss against Brandon’s pale skin. Brandon rises from the pillow and whimpers, “That’s enough.”

Jack stops what he’s doing and slowly pulls his fingers out of Brandon. Brandon continues, giggles as his body shakes involuntarily, “This is exhausting. I’m turning around.”

For a second, Jack thinks that maybe Brandon is joking, but he’s stupidly surprised when Brandon ends up on his back and with Jack in between his legs. Jack looks for the bottle of lube again, laughs when he realizes it’s still stuck between his knees. Jack keeps his eye on Brandon, licks his lips, doesn’t realize how dry his mouth is from breathing so hard.

He only looks away from Brandon to fumble with the small bottle and pour more lube into his palm. Jack hisses when he finally wraps his hand around his own dick, the lube much too cool still. He watches his hand for a bit, pumps himself slowly,, teases the head with a softer touch. He glances up and decides he better hurry when he sees Brandon jacking himself off in time with him.

Jack whispers, “You sure? It isn’t too late to stop.” Brandon smirks and Jack rolls his eyes, interrupts the younger man before he can speak, “I swear if you say something about being back on your bullshit, I’ll leave right now.”

Brandon tilts his head back in laughter and Jack feels a little of something he hasn’t felt since before Brandon went and got himself a girlfriend. Jack chuckles, “Seriously!”

Brandon straightens up a little and with a dead serious look on his face says, “Just get in me.”

Jack raises his eyebrows at Brandon for what feels like the hundredth time already, decides it’s best if they just don’t think about it too hard. He crawls closer to Brandon, forces the younger man’s legs farther apart, lifts Brandon so his lower back has support from Jack’s thick, sturdy thighs just long enough to grab a pillow and place it under him.

Brandon breathes heavily, watches Jack pump himself a few times before he holds his dick steady against Brandon’s entrance. He lines himself up with Brandon, presses slowly and carefully as possible. Brandon’s hole gives way, allows the head of Jack’s dick to slip in just enough. Brandon gasps, the stretch is sudden and already more than he remembers. Jack pauses, but Brandon’s hand flies to Jack’s lower stomach, non-verbally requests for Jack to stay still. Brandon closes his eyes, steadies his breathing before his hand drops from Jack’s stomach and moves over to Jack’s hip. Brandon pulls him closer, whines as Jack inches further, lets out a shaky breath when Jack is fully in him and he’s stretched around his friend’s dick, feeling impossibly full.

Brandon wraps his arms around Jack, pulls him down so they’re face to face. He exhales, “Move.”

“Someone’s not getting enough action lately,” Jack laughs, but obliges anyway.

Brandon’s voice trembles when he jokes, “Crissy wouldn’t do this to me.”

They’re pressed close and it’s the first time in a long time that Jack has faced one of his lovers during sex. It’s the first time he’s ever faced Brandon and he’s not sure how to feel, not sure how to feel about how close they are, how to feel about how their foreheads bump or lips touch when Jack starts to put thrust after thrust into Brandon. It’s slow, in the dim light of the room and the orange glow of the streetlamp outside Brandon’s window. It’s more intimate than they want, but they can’t give it up now.

“Hey Jack?” Brandon moans softly and it fuels the hot tension in Jack’s lower abdomen.

Brandon is tight and hot around him, so soft and pliable underneath his hands that Jack nearly forgets to reply. He grunts breathlessly, “Mm?”

Brandon sighs, “Kiss me.”

Jack nearly stills all movement altogether as soon as the words leave Brandon’s mouth, but he does it anyway, too caught up in the heat of the moment to really care. Jack kisses Brandon clumsily, bumps the younger man’s thick-rimmed glasses with his nose. Brandon laughs into the kiss, gasps when Jack hits that sweet spot inside him with the next thrust.

They laugh together, bodies pressed close, lips connected, and it almost feels like old times, only a tad more intimate. Brandon’s glasses fog up halfway into the kiss and he giggles again, pulls them off, tosses them aside next to Jack’s keys on the nightstand.

“There!” Brandon pants softly and Jack is confused for a bit.

However, Brandon clarifies breathlessly, “Ah. Fuck! There…”

Jack pulls away a little, aims his thrusts at the same spot, watches Brandon as he falls apart. Brandon shuts his eyes tightly, dark eyelashes fluttering against rose-dusted cheeks, mouth red and slick repeating curses under his breath.

And then Jack realizes how close Brandon really is. The way he tightens and pulses around Jack’s dick is enough to tell, but Brandon still warns him with a choked up, “Close…”

Brandon’s eyes snap open when Jack wraps his hand around Brandon’s dick. Jack’s hand has a strong, consistent grip, moves in time with Jack’s hips, and Brandon is grateful, so grateful he could cry. He tries to keep his eyes open, tries to keep his eyes on Jack, loves the way Jack watches him with soft blue eyes, pupils blown so wide the color is hardly present anymore. It’s too intense for a moment or two so he shuts his eyes again, lets himself get lost in the friction of the hand surrounding him, the girth of Jack’s dick just deep enough inside him.

And then he cums, feels himself pulsate around Jack’s dick, feels thick, hot stripes fall on his own chest, feels Jack’s hand as it slows with his thrusts, Jack’s thumb as it rubs the underside of the head of Brandon’s dick, careful not to overwhelm him.

Brandon forgets how to breathe for a moment, limp and relaxed and lost completely in post-orgasmic bliss. He snaps into a more aware state when he feels Jack’s hips falter, feels Jack start to pull away. Brandon whines, eyelids heavy, voice tired, arms weak as he struggles to hold on, struggles to pull. His voice is quiet and lazy, “Cum in me.”

Jack lets himself come closer to Brandon again, so they’re pressed together, Brandon’s legs wrapped loosely around him. He buries his face into Brandon’s neck, gently sucks and bites before he has to remind himself not to leave any marks. Brandon cries out, hypersensitive, probably still riding the last few waves of his orgasm. Jack thrusts slower, hardly moves anymore, hyperaware of how much more friction and heat there is now with Brandon still around him.

Jack is deep inside Brandon, buried to the hilt when he cums. He’s silent except for a groan he muffles against Brandon’s neck. He feels himself tremble as he spills into Brandon, feels the quiet, satisfied hum in the base of Brandon’s throat when Jack finally stills.

This is a mess, Jack thinks as he’s still on top of Brandon.

The entire thing is a mess, but it’s a mess they’ll eventually have to clean up together.

[theliterateape]

Why I Will Only Post Positive Things On Facebook Ever Again

By Peter Kremidas

I. Bipedal Nomads Who Can Send Thoughts Worldwide At The Speed of Light

Historically speaking, we have only just started playing around with the internet in general and social media in particular. I think we’ve done, or at least I have done this, without much thought as to how powerful these tools truly are or how to use them responsibly.

I think we have a responsibility to really think about, to have an honest conversation about, how we use it. And then think we need to hold ourselves accountable to whatever conclusion we reach. Because this is potentially a very dangerous tool we have here. People get hurt on social media all the time. I know people who are changed, and not in a good way, for the way they were treated online. People can get broken by this stuff. It’s happened to me. I’ve done it to others. And it’s horrible. Kids are killing themselves over this stuff. And that’s just the stuff we are now reckoning with. We have no idea what it’s doing to our brains.

However on the other side of that, 2017 and 2018 and beyond are the dawning of a new and normalized increase in freedom for women. And it’s because of the internet. People could immediately share their stories to hundreds of their friends, see that they are not alone, and pull the lid off something that has been happening for centuries. The internet did that.

Because the power of the internet, just one of them, is that you can create such a fuss that traditional news media is forced to look. They don’t want to look. But they know if they don’t look they’ll look stupid. Because so many people already know about it without their influence, and they are supposed to be the greatest influencers of all. There’s a lot of power to protect there, and now we have some of that. And that is incredibly cool. So obviously there’s a lot of power for good here.

And I’ve been thinking about this for while, but instead of preaching to people I have no control over about what they should or shouldn’t do I started looking at myself. In 2018, I guess my new year’s resolution was to be more honest in my writing, and with myself. And that means calling myself out on my own bullshit, even when it hurts. It's been several bitter pills to swallow.

A few months ago, I was in some stupid facebook debate I don’t even remember what. But it was the billionth time I was impatiently just impolitely and obnoxiously being contrarian on social media. Nothing to gain from it. It was probably me quibbling as usual over some useless irrelevant minutiae that alienated me from someone I actually agreed with. I think it’s called ‘I almost see your point but you’re kinda being a dick so I don’t care.’ Or, more accurately, ‘Just being a dick.’

Someone commented, I don’t remember her name, and told me that there was another time on social media when I did this and it really hurt her. She asked me to stop. She said ‘please’. I reacted predictably, with more condescension and ‘fuck you’ subtext. She told me that was mean, and again could I please stop. Of course, I’d already thought of what to say next and was about to throw it.

But instead I just felt bad. And I knew she was right. And I hated that.

I stopped. I said that’s fair. I apologized. I haven’t been engaging in any debate or anything other than jokes and positive things since then.

Because when when I actually listened. Not just words, but what must this person feel like that makes them want to say that to me. It hit me. I hated that it did. I denied it and was angry for awhile. But it stuck. And at some point it got real quiet. Quiet enough to hear myself say, “Shit…”

“...I have an issue.”

She was right. And that’s why she was being polite, because she didn’t want to incite me more. That’s how smart she is. While I shoot my mouth off and make an ass of myself, she’s the adult in the room. It’s fuckin’ embarassing being such a broken guy sometimes.

II. The Medium

Ever since the election I’ve been reading about human psychology and neurology, because I had to understand how the fuck. And one of the things I’ve found is that humans, we aren’t all that smart. A full 98 percent of our thinking is unconscious. We get caught into different long term habits just by doing them a lot, because they’re rewarded somehow. It’s why if you see a video of someone at 7 years old you can see exactly where their personality traits have come from. They worked somehow and they just kept doing them. It’s why there is addiction. It’s why you have to spend 10,000 hours doing something before you’re a master at it. It’s why when you’ve had a belief for so long it’s hard to change it. Most of our behavior is pretty much automatic, based on some reward system we’ve set up for ourselves or to prevent us from feeling something bad.

The human brain is full of little cognitive weaknesses that would make you a very disappointing robot. If a self driving car slowed down and created unnecessary traffic every time there was a car accident to look at, that would be an annoying feature. But you aren’t a robot, you’re a human. Flaws are a feature, not a bug. They’re actually beautiful, the imperfections. Because they show that survival and progress requires all of us, because one person alone is too flawed to take on that weight. But together, we can take on any challenge because we compensate for each other’s weaknesses with our own strengths. Flaws humble us and remind us how we are weak, and in so being how we are the same.

But some of those flaws also make us easy to manipulate.

The social media business model, the literal one they drew up upon its creation, is that someone giving you a ‘like’ will addict you to the platform. This draws attention to the platform, and therefore advertisers with money along with demographic data to sell. And studies show that ‘likes’ are very much are addictive. You can’t eat them or even exchange them for a coupon. Regardless they cause a little rush of endorphins when you get them, and anything that does that is addictive. This is fact.

In this environment very few will express unpopular opinions. And I actually think that most of the time, that’s a good thing. There are a lot of people need to shut up and listen. Yes, including myself. People often forget that conformity can also be a good thing. But sometimes, not most of the time but every once in awhile, an unpopular opinion needs to be heard. A lot of important truths have started as controversial opinions. And I think that incentivizing human interaction with ‘likes’ can encourage the bad kind of conformity too.

It’s the reason why we’re all fake on Facebook. All of us. Admit it. As long as there is a way that you wish to be perceived, you’re faking it at least a little. And you do. We all do. None of us are above caring what other people think.

Because we all want to be cool. We all want to be accepted and loved. Our desire to be accepted in the tribe is one of the most deeply human qualities honed by billions of years of evolution. So naturally we all put ourselves out there in a way where we will be most accepted, with varying degrees of concern for authenticity.

So it becomes our own personal PR campaign. We choose how we are perceived. We have time to hone every phrase and pose. It grants us time to think about our responses based on how we want to be seen that we don’t have in the moment. We can tell people what we want them to know about us and what not. It’s a self reinforcing game of ego strokes as we are told how great we are, when it isn’t even our authentic selves being validated most of the time.

And the rush we’re subconsciously chasing is those delicious little likes and pieces of attention that shoot endorphins into our lizard brains. We really can’t help it, we’re human. And while it may not always be the case, over the course of time across all the billions of people using it, most actions within the social media landscape will be primarily incentivized by that endorphin rush because that’s the primary reward baked into the system.

If you think it doesn’t apply to you, I promise you that as long as you have a human brain, it does apply to you. And by the way studies actually show that the less you think you are able to be manipulated, the more you actually are because your guard is down. Also consider the truth that, in capitalism, if the product is free then you are the product. It’s no exaggeration to call it both Orwellian and Huxleian. And I think social media’s ubiquity is a testament to some very serious human brain design flaws.

III. The Exploit

And here is where I almost just quit the whole system altogether. And I did disengage almost completely for a time. Almost right away I could feel my lizard brain sinking into loneliness in the absence of my usual stream of digital affirmations. Like, in fact exactly like, an addict in withdrawal. I wondered if there was a way to make feed the addiction without all the harmful side effects. Because remember, it can also be a powerful tool for the positive. And unlike every advertisement, TV channel, magazine, movie, radio station, website, and so on fighting for my attention 24 hours a day every day, this is also the one medium wherein I have a some degree of control over the content.

What I’ve landed upon, at least for now, is just allowing addiction to be fed but with just a little more mindfulness. I have a line drawn now, I cannot allow the addiction to chase the endorphin rush with complaints, anger, to feed my ego, or so on. If my lizard brain is mostly in control of me, and it is, then I will only allow it to be incentivized by good.

Sure, in person I’ll be happy to debate politics and what not, but I think there’s something about arguing online that can never work. And I think it has something to do with how only 7 percent of human communication is conveyed by just the words alone. 38 percent is vocal elements, and 55 through facial expressions and body language. There’s some fundamental disconnect involved in debate on the internet that, when combined with what social media incentivizes, usually only serves to enrage and hurt people.

I'm done making complaint statuses. If I have complaints I will take them to someone who will hear them in person, someone I can vent to at least. If someone wants to have a disagreement, we can do it i person too. I will stop pretending to be someone I’m not. Because while a lot of that behavior is natural and fine, I just don’t want to be rewarded for it. I don't want my brain trained to do it. I will only allow the endorphin feedback to hit me for saying true and good things. And it has to be both. No bullshit.

Things like this:

If lizard brain wants to get that sweet hit, it better make someone else feel good first. I will be a better person, even if that means I have to manipulate myself into being it. I’m not particularly smart or wise, so maybe I just need this.

[plarndude]

For those of you who are unwilling to even Glance at an article because of the website it's on, I've copied and pasted it here. I agree with every single thing this guy wrote in this article.

"Over the weekend, the Planeteers converged on Washington to hold a “Climate March.” I know what you’re thinking: didn’t they already do that, like, last week? Also, how will marching and holding signs improve the climate? And how many trees were slaughtered to make those signs, anyway? And how much CO2 was emitted by the cars and planes they took to get to this march? And how many of D.C.’s pigeons and squirrels were rudely disrupted from their daily routine because of all the extra humans traipsing through the street? Isn’t organizing a march to fight climate change a bit like organizing a hot dog eating contest to fight obesity?

I have posed these kinds of questions to environmental activists many times and never received an answer other than, “You must hate science.” I really don’t hate science, though. I love science. I hate faux-science. I hate leftist dogma disguised as science. I hate activism that calls itself science. I hate bad conclusions drawn from science. I hate hypocrisy. I hate inconsistency. These also happen to be all of the reasons why I hate climate change alarmism.

But my real problem with the alarmists, who I will now address directly, boils down to this: I don’t believe you. And when I say I don’t believe you, I mean that I believe neither what you’re saying, nor that you believe what you’re saying. I doubt both your narrative and your sincerity. I question your facts and your conviction about those facts. Allow me to explain why.

First, your facts. If you stuck simply to the modest contention that the world has warmed very slightly in the last 130 years, and you theorized — and admitted it was a theory — that humans have contributed to it in some small way, I wouldn’t take much of an issue with you. The problem is that you lie so much. You lie when you refuse to confess that the climate prediction models you use are extremely flawed. You lie when you scream about the “97 percent consensus” that doesn’t exist. You lie when you act like the real scientists who doubt man-caused global warming are all kooks and lunatics.

Most of all, your overblown, hysterical doomsday prophecies are lies. The world is supposed to already be over by now, according to you. At the very least, New York City should be under water. We should have all been dead from global warming or global cooling or overpopulation dozens of times over. Around the time of the first Earth Day, we were told that hundreds of millions would be starving to death per year within ten years of that date. Human civilization should have crumbled into dust and the few remaining survivors should be floating through a vast water world, locked in a struggle of survival against Dennis Hopper. Yet, here we are, standing on dry land. How many times are you allowed to be wrong about the end of the world before we are justified in not taking you seriously anymore? I’d say that threshold, whatever it is, has long since been reached.

Second, your sincerity. Here’s the real issue I have with you. Even if you’ve been wrong about the Environmental Apocalypse 100 times, you still insist that this 101st prediction will surely pan out. You tell us that we could be looking at an extinction event within a generation or two. Our planet will turn into Venus sooner rather than later if we don’t drastically change the way we live. Major world cities will be lost into the sea, and this will happen within decades. And even those not drowned in the depths of the ocean will face mass starvation or worse. What’s more, you tell us that Armageddon may already be happening. Even now, whenever there is a hurricane, or a tornado, or a thunderstorm, or even a snowstorm, you tell us that this is a direct result of global warming caused by our modern lifestyle. This is all quite traumatizing, so it’s good for your emotional well being that you don’t really believe any of it.

I can only assume that you don’t believe it because your actions do not at all resemble what one would expect from someone who does believe this sort of thing. With very rare exceptions, you continue living just like the rest of us. Maybe you recycle your plastic bottles, maybe you ordered a salad at Panera Bread today, but for the most part you are just another callous Homo sapien murdering the planet and cannibalizing the future of the human race. Why? How? You think the world is about to end, for God’s sake. What are you doing sitting at Starbucks like the rest of us? Why haven’t you renounced all modern technology? Why haven’t you fled to the mountains before the sea engulfs your family? Why aren’t you doing… anything?

I can only imagine how I would react if I actually believed that the extinction of all mankind was imminent, and my lifestyle was directly contributing to it. At a minimum, I would not drive a car anymore. Ever. At all. I would ditch electricity. I wouldn’t eat any kind of meat. I wouldn’t buy mass made consumer products. I wouldn’t give my money to any company that sells items made in factories with giant smokestacks. Those smokestacks are literally killing people. How could you continue shopping like everything is normal? What kind of monster are you? If I were you, I would live as John the Baptist, eating locusts and wild honey out in the desert. Lives are at stake, are they not? The end is near! Why are you so relaxed about it? Have you even started building the ark yet?

I’m not joking. If I were in your boat (pun intended), I would feel morally obligated to take extreme measures. As a member of the enlightened few, as a person who knows that human life is about to be eradicated, and who knows why, and even when, I would feel an incredible burden of responsibility. If I knew that driving my car, turning on my lights, shopping at the mall, and generally going about my day immersed in modern luxury were all directly causing the current and future death of millions of people, I could not continue engaging in these lethal activities. I would see them as acts of extreme moral recklessness, if not murder, to saunter along on as usual. My conscience would compel me to ensure that I am not responsible for the carnage that is about to occur. How could a person who believes what you allegedly believe possibly arrive at any other conclusion?

It’s become a cliche to point out how all of the major environmental mouthpieces, like DiCaprio and Gore and all the rest, also happen to fly private jets in between the several mansions they own. This fact alone does not disprove the environmentalist narrative, but it is a curious fact that none of its most vocal proponents seem to have taken their own words to heart. Imagine, by comparison, if almost every major pro-life activist also happened to sit on the board of Planned Parenthood. If one or two were exposed as hypocrites in this way you might overlook it, but all of them?

Strangely, only the Amish can be seen riding horses and buggies down the street in this country, but even they don’t believe that automobiles are going to annihilate life on Earth. You do believe that, yet you still drive them. You know how much CO2 was emitted in order to produce your iPhone, yet you still buy a new one every 18 months. You know that hurricanes and tornadoes are popping up everywhere because of the factories that make your trendy shoes and clothing, yet you still stock your closet full of them. You know that your air conditioning unit is slowly poisoning the atmosphere and leading us rapidly to certain death, yet you turn it on the moment the temperature rises above 70 degrees outside. You know that your refrigerator is a cancerous tumor metastasizing on Mother Earth, yet you still won’t preserve your food by drying or pickling it. You know how much safer we’d all be if we stopped using electricity, yet you haven’t gotten that ball rolling, either. WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE, aren’t we? And you can’t even be bothered to crack a window and eat pickled cabbage in the dark like a real environmentalist?

You seem only focused on insisting that the government fix the problem. But even if there were a problem to fix, the law couldn’t do anything on its own. The law can only influence or coerce behavior. So, rather than sitting around and waiting for the law to tell you to live how you already think you ought to live, why don’t you just start living that way? It’s like a vegetarian who declares that he will continue eating steaks until the government finally prohibits him from doing so. The cynical among us may conclude that a vegetarian of this type is not a vegetarian at all. If every vegetarian were of this sort, we might suspect that vegetarianism itself is hallucinatory: a belief system that many advocate but none believe strongly enough to actually live by. And if those who advocate it don’t believe it, why should the rest of us take so much as a second out of our lives to consider its merits?

Now, please understand that I’ve cut you some slack here. I’ve assumed that you don’t believe your own tales of civilizational destruction. The less flattering interpretation is that you do believe everything you say, yet you’re so unbelievably selfish and lazy that, even staring at Armageddon on the horizon, you still cannot stir yourself to make any noticeable changes to your life. One shudders at the moral baseness required for a person to sincerely say to himself, “Yes, my vehicle is melting the ice caps and inching humanity ever closer to liquidation, but, screw it, I don’t feel like walking.” I have faith that you are not so cold and heartless. I have faith that you are merely disingenuous hypocrites. Let’s hope I’m right." - Matt Walsh

original post

[ricardosousalemos]

Here Is Father John Misty’s Incredibly Long, Incredibly Awesome Explanation of What His New Album Is About

On April 7, Father John Misty returns with his new album Pure Comedy. He’s already shared the opening title track and a 25-minute documentary about the making of the record. The announcement was also accompanied by a nearly 2,000-word essay explaining the album’s inspiration. It begins with a quote from Ecclesiastes and ends with the thought, “Bears, man.” In between, Tillman addresses the evolution of man, the shortcomings of religion, and the idea that maybe more people should be eaten by bears. Read the entire thing below, if you dare:

“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new?’ It has been already in the ages before us.

There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.” - Ecclesiastes

Pure Comedy is the story of a species born with a half-formed brain. The species’ only hope for survival, finding itself on a cruel, unpredictable rock surrounded by other species who seem far more adept at this whole thing (and to whom they are delicious), is the reliance on other, slightly older, half-formed brains. This reliance takes on a few different names as their story unfolds, like “love,” “culture,” “family,” etc. Over time, and as their brains prove to be remarkably good at inventing meaning where there is none, the species becomes the purveyor of increasingly bizarre and sophisticated ironies. These ironies are designed to help cope with the species’ loathsome vulnerability and to try and reconcile how disproportionate their imagination is to the monotony of their existence.

Now all of a sudden they expect light in the dark, warmth in the cold, and to make something out of nothing. Cooperation among the species to achieve these goals eventually yields a worldview wherein some among the species believe that there are individuals for whom this type of work is maybe ill-suited. The contribution of the ill-suited is of a more abstract, inspirational nature. The ill-suited begin to make subtle distinctions among themselves that extend beyond “eaten by a bear/not eaten by a bear”. These distinctions involve do-it-ness, cool-face-and-body-ness, craftiness, etc. – an arrangement emerges where these traits can be traded in for better-than-ness. This better-than-ness really starts to run rampant, and the species begins to wonder if there isn’t a Sky-Man in the sky who is perhaps the source of all better-than-ness. It seems like a pretty good explanation for why the species is so important.

Sky-Man pretty much runs the show for a really, really long time, and his inner-circle of better-thans gets increasingly smaller and smaller, even though by the end of his reign everyone in the species considers themselves one. Unfortunately there are some better-thans who get together and decide that one way of better-than-ness is better than other betters-thans’ better-than-ness and teach their little half-formed-brain babies as much (most who interpret this distinction as “me’s” vs. “not-me’s”). “Not-me’s” eventually come to encapsulate everyone that is not a single “me” at any given time, and this paves the way for incredibly distasteful behavior until the species arrives at a place of such alienation and fear there is really nothing so horrible that one of them wouldn’t do to the other. To deal with this less than ideal state of affairs, which seems suspiciously incompatible with how progressive and evolved they are by this point, they set about to entertain themselves into an oblivion with politics, sex, finance, philosophy, and other games of war. This they do until they are so numb, and the idea of any “not-me” so untenable, that they are blissfully incapable of noticing they’re all dead. This happens more or less on an infinite loop until the end of time.

Something like that.

Imagine if you will, as the album starts, that you’re way out in space looking at the earth and, though it’s impossible to “fall” through space, you start a free fall anyway in the direction of the bright blue marble. For the next 75 minutes you plummet toward the earth, losing more and more perspective on what an abstract and impermanent place our planet is, how predictably we step on the same rakes, slip on the same banana peels over and over again through the ages, quickly becoming more and more immersed in the very messy business of being a human – the dubious privilege of being here, the elusiveness of meaning, true love and its habitual absence, random euphoria and the inexplicable misery of others, truth and its more alluring counterfeits, the sophistication of answers that don’t make any sense, the barbarism of our appetites, lucky breaks and injustice, faith and ignorance, crippling, mind-numbing boredom, and the terror of it all ending too soon. Before you know it, you’ve delicately crash-landed and find yourself lying on your back looking up at the stars. If you’re lucky, with someone you love; even if just for a day, a year, a lifetime. Though just an hour has passed you have no recollection of what the earth looked like from the far-flung reaches of space, nor how simple it all seemed a matter of minutes ago.

I know everyone doesn’t feel the same about what’s going on right now. What for some is clearly garden-variety violent white nationalism serving as a catch-all for any number of paranoia-induced anti-fantasies foisted upon the poor and uneducated precisely by the ideologues bent on manufacturing voters who can be manipulated into voting against their own interests by making good and sure they remain poor and uneducated before cravenly blaming their problems largely on people bearing distinctions like race, gender, and sexuality so people forget everything that’s good about the American experiment, is to others an opportunity to wrench the country back from the influence of hypocritical corporate tyrants bent on enslaving our minds with spineless liberal rhetoric in order to justify wiping out the jobs of decent people so they can fulfill their fey utopian dream of an impossible global community designed to profit only its architects (probably Banking Consortiums, pedophile rings, and definitely The Illuminati).

This album does not espouse either of those views.

Both of those views take for granted a certain degree of sophistication, or at least a knack for cooperation, that I’m absolutely convinced humans do not possess; not to mention some kind of innate logic to the proceedings here on Earth – which make a much better case for being some kind of demented joke than anything else.

The terrifying reality concerning the dilemma above is everything is chaos and no one is really in control of anyone or anything.

But what about the well-documented history of humans making life a living hell for other humans since time began?

There is no intellectual, political, or spiritual explanation that will ever satisfy anyone for longer than a moment, least of all this, the only explanation with any dignity. The explanation that appeases both our instincts for compassion and liberation. The explanation that we can either accept and move forward together or keep screaming to our respective heavens, “Why, God, why?”

Things are the way they are because this is how we, the human race, want them.

This is how we want it.

Hold the motherfucking phone. Josh Tillman, you have said and done some stupid fucking things since we’ve known you, but this is too much.

Now the liberals and the conservatives are both outraged because that is a sentiment that is so profoundly insensitive to the ways in which the other side is clearly wrong in objective ways regarding basic decency, but what’s the alternative? We’re either all complicit in this purest comedy, or the people who aren’t to blame are at war with the people who are to blame until everyone is dead. Simple as that.

Is progress possible? What does it look like? The conversion of everyone to our respective beliefs? Well, we’ve seen how that typically goes. The destruction of everyone who fails to conform? That’s not it. The erection of institutions with the power and infrastructure to enforce a rule of law with the good of as many as possible at heart? Not much evidence for that panning out.

What I recommend is this: we return to the Vedic cycle and submit ourselves to the likelihood that many of us will end up getting eaten by bears. It’s only natural. What if instead of imbuing our expectations for the quality of our lives to include perpetual happiness, dream fulfillment, excessive painlessness, existential certitude, material wealth, and all variety of romantic stimulation, we were just grateful for every day that didn’t involve getting eaten by a bear? What if progress only meant literally progressing from one day to the next without getting violently dismembered by a 9-foot tall, 500-pound grizzly?

The irony here of course is that many more humans than we’d like to think, most of whom are not reading the interminable liner notes to a folk rock album, do live in daily, perpetual fear of getting killed by a mammal far more terrifying than a bear, and I think you know the one to which I refer. This form of mammal attack is made all the more nightmarish by virtue of the fact that the mammal in question kills purely ideologically. Bears kill because they’re hungry; they’re very reasonable in that way. So maybe we should submit ourselves to their authority. Bears we can trust.

Bottom line is that as long as we expect to live in such a way – immune to the natural laws of this godless rock that govern everything else here – human existence will continue to be a cruel joke. I fear, however, that it is too late for us to go back into the natural order. We have no desire to return to our primal scene. We like the way things are. We’ve got sandwiches when we’re hungry! Airplanes for when we want to go somewhere! Social media when we want our voices to be heard by all God’s creation! We know that these magical conveniences come at a staggering price, and that excess for the few is based on the scarcity of the many, but that’s why we invented the business of globalization! We’ve already built the wall! It’s a great, great wall that goes up to the heavens and is as transparent as museum glass. It’s a beautiful wall that winds surgically through nations, cities, neighborhoods, and sometimes even homes. It is a globe within a globe, and those who live within its interior are as clueless as to what’s happening on the other side as we are to what’s happening right now on the far side of Mars.

There’s only one creature that can penetrate that wall, friends, and it is bears. Bears can smash through that glass like a pitcher of sugar water through a brick wall. The equalizing revolution of bear justice is coming too. Sooner than you think. As it gets hotter and hotter, they’re coming. They’re coming into our neighborhoods, they’re coming into our schools, into our churches, into our banks, into our places of business, into our governments, into our beds.

The joke is that the best we can do is keep on keeping on, which we’ve proven ourselves pathologically adept at. We’re going to save the planet alright, and it will be a glorious sacrifice just like the Sky-Man we invented showed us how.

Bears, man.