#not that i dislike work it's just upper management is stupid and my boss is getting mad at her bosses lmao

[risingsunresistance]

also sorry for the absolute radio silence but i have just had nothing interesting to say. been on the grind. mining update was so good for my soul I Love Mining

been doing some off camera mining

[rockingrobin69]

Peppers, please

(Also on AO3, 1.6k)

“I’ve been informed,” Harry Potter burst through the door with his habitual earth-quake of a shout, “that you don’t even like peppers!”

“Good morning,” Draco said dryly. Harry Potter glared.

With a sigh, Draco retreated to the kitchen to fetch the biscuits from the cupboard.

Around his third one, an insistent crumb hanging to his upper lip with all its tiny might: “Peppers, Malfoy!”

“Pardon?”

“Peppers!”

Draco blinked. “If you’ll be so kind as to tell me what on earth you’re on about.”

“Pansy said you hate them!”

He looked absolutely outraged. Draco sipped his long-cold tea.

“Do I?”

“She said you’re allergic!”

“Am I?”

“Stop—fucking with me.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare.” But the corner of his lips was twitching. “I’m not allergic. I was simply a horribly dramatic child and she still naïve back when we were, what, six. Seven. I’m fine with peppers now.”

Harry Potter pouted, terribly chipmunk-ish, and even put the biscuit pack down. Down to business. “I cooked the—bloody hell, Malfoy, just, honestly. Why wouldn’t you say? That you hate peppers. I would’ve made something else. I would have happily—why?”

Utterly bemused, “I am. Honest, I mean. I don’t mind peppers anymore.”

“That’s a fucking lie and we both know it.”

Grasping at straws and failing, at least managing to stop the wobble of his stupid mouth, the automatic turning downwards. Went for his cup instead. The tea was ice-cold and flavourless and Draco poured it down his throat like it could cure him.

“Your hair’s a mess,” he then said, venomous, and turned his eyes back to the wall, where they refused to stay. It was always like this when Harry Potter barged into his flat. Even the water stains on the ceiling lost their usual allure and could not hold his attention. “If it’s raining, cast a bloody Impervious. Or take an umbrella.”

Harry Potter took a deep breath instead, sounding awfully, weirdly small. Some of the tension bled out of him in increments, his shoulders first, then the fists unclenching, then his belly un-hardening. His jaw was last. Draco was helplessly mesmerised by the transformation.

“You’re impossible,” his voice finally not straining, his fingers not twitching towards the biscuits. No longer needing the obvious distraction. “Next time, if I make something you dislike, you have to tell me.”

“An order,” Draco huffed. “How sweet.”

Harry Potter could blush all the way to the roots of his hair. It was such a stunning, breath-stealing thing to witness.

“It’s not a… fuck you, Malfoy.”

“Hmm.”

They sat there in strangely amicable silence. The oven still gave that choking, desperate cough every ten seconds, and it set a nice framework for their breathing, for the non-fidgeting. Harry Potter was always fidgety, but not when he sat in Draco’s kitchen like this.

“What’s your schedule? For today. Nev said you’re doing overtime again.” Leaning back, giving Draco that look all his friends liked to wear, the one on the border of a telling-off. It didn’t usually work on him, but Harry Potter had a slight edge to his disappointment that made Draco’s skin crawl.

“Not—exactly. Shouldn’t be so late. I’ll be home for bedtime, Mother, I promise.”

Even his mother didn’t glare like that. “Third time this week? I kind of want to strangle your boss.”

“Ha. Violence is usually frowned upon in the workplace.”

He didn’t smile, but he came near it. Draco could tell, because the corners of his eyes were dancing. “Does it count if it isn’t my workplace?”

“Mm. Fair enough. Strangle away.”  

Now he was smiling. “When d’you start? Want a ride?”

And Draco was so grateful he didn’t launch yet another tirade about how Draco should quit his awful job that he said, “Why not.” (Only because he was distracted and rather tired, and not because sitting behind Harry Potter on his motorbike was in itself half-punishment, and not because clinging to his waist on tight turns at far-too-quick was—anything at all). On the downside, it made Harry Potter practically beam, and Draco still needed his eyes.

“Great! I mean. That’s good. That you won’t be late. Bad for your, er, record, and stuff, and you might not get a—bonus or something.”

They didn’t do bonuses at McMillan & McMillan, but that was neither here nor there. Draco nodded, pushed himself up on not so flimsy legs, collected his coat from where it was crumpled on the back of a chair.

“What about lunch?”

“Hmm?”

“You didn’t take. Any lunch.”

Why was he so obsessed with food? It was dangerously endearing. “I have an apple in my bag. Come now, you promised I won’t be late.”

“An—” Harry Potter shook his head, loosening even more curls out of his bun. They were rain-flat and miserable and still entirely too sweet. “I’ll buy you a sandwich at that poor excuse for a cafeteria you got in that building. And so help me god, Malfoy, you’ll eat it, or—”

“All right,” both hands up, “no need to shout. Your wish is my command, etcetera.”

He pouted so hard it was almost comical. But there was something still wounded there, so Draco added, “As long as there’s peppers, you know,” and then he was fuming again, bouncing on the balls of his feet and ready to deliver yet-another lecture. Draco watched him, amused, and forgot to lock the door behind him, and forgot his scarf.

Did remember his umbrella, which he Leviosa-ed to follow the Death Machine, stuck it against the back of the silly jacket when they reached the office. It wasn’t raining anymore, thankfully allowing Draco to arrive not wet-dog for a change, and it made absolutely no difference.

Harry Potter took off his helmet to watch Draco enter the building. Didn’t follow him inside (wise, to prevent a murder), and so Draco completely forgot about the sandwich threat until it was roughly lunchtime. At which point, a drawer in his desk suddenly jumped open, and a far-too-fancy £12 bready monstrosity appeared. On it a note that scrawled pepper-free, git.

Harry Potter had a lot to answer for. Draco, distracted, chipped away at the sandwich all the same, and was only shouted at twice, and didn’t even spill coffee on his keyboard.

‘Not exactly overtime’ at the office meant staying after everyone else to take note of stock and arrange all the impossible paperwork. That Draco was given this task was already hilarious, and always a disaster: that his boss insisted on continuing to give it to him, possibly commendable. Maybe he thought Draco was being stubborn. Maybe he thought, nobody could really be this bad without actively trying. Well, he didn’t know Draco yet! There was always time to learn.

Stock was stocked. The backroom was stuffy and still smelling slightly of smoke (not Draco’s fault, probably), the sweet scent of old paperwork going to rot. It made his head spin, made him inhale a little brokenly and laugh to himself. The sandwich Harry Potter forced him to eat sat heavy in his belly, sweating. Everything was so incredibly laughable.

When he finally finished (after only forgetting three steps in the protocol), the sun had long set and the streetlights were humming. Not worrying, Draco thought, going back to the office (forgot his bag). Not worrying at all (back to the office, to check he locked the door). (Why would anyone give him the keys?) (Some disasters were just asking to happen).

On his way home he stopped by the corner shop for another pack of biscuits. Some disasters, sure, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t prepare in advance. Harry Potter would surge in soon enough with another grievance. Draco was giddy by nature, and so the shakiness was not necessarily to do with this.

Under the crescent moon drowning in cloud he wondered, do I hate peppers?

Couldn’t remember to decide by the time he made it back.

The flat, Harry-Potter-less, was not entirely quiet and frankly disinteresting. Draco forced himself in the shower (the smoky smell always caught in hair, then on pillows, and made sleep be—not sleep at all). Scrubbed, whatever. Even towelled himself dry like a real human being, and only slipped a little on the stupid rug he kept meaning to banish, to Vanish, to—chuck. He was tired. The smoke-thing was not a metaphor. He got barely the bare minimum last night.

Bear minimum? Like bear claws? Better than fire, he thought, nonsensically. Tired-Draco had a tired brain and it was only half-working in the best of times. Dragged himself to bed, knew he won’t get away that easy.

To the ceiling, too dark to make the water stains: what did Harry Potter have for his lunch? He always ate, but only when he made Draco eat too. It was some sort of ritual. A demonic binding of sorts. They had other friends who could make him eat, like Ronald and also Ronald and mostly only Ronald, and sometimes Hermione. They had other friends, but Harry Potter always ate if Draco did.

A horrible thought suddenly occurred to him: was he manipulating Harry Potter? Had he truly forgotten to pack lunch, or did he do that on purpose? Thankfully, the panic was cut off when he suddenly thought, shit, I never locked the office.

But he did. He went back to check, remember? Silly. By the time he was thinking of Harry Potter’s eating habit, he forgot to fidget about whether he was viciously tricking him or not.

Some disasters, Draco thought, half-drifting, were just asking to happen.

So, it's on AO3. It might even continue, who knows.

[snorkling-in-sodasea]

Moments of Stupidity 16

Well, since Full Moon came out, it was probably only a matter of time before this, huh? I guess I wanna say first is, I'm feeling rather different than when I first started.

At the beginning, I just wanted to vent. Let anger out. I mean, as much as I have people on the lookout for my posts - which I'm flattered by - I'm still just one of many posting stuff on this site. I'm definitely not the first one to share their dislike over what goes on in Helluva Boss and I doubt I'll be the last.

Over time, I watch the shows more and more and now pretty pictures and some good songs are the standard I have now because, irrational and angry or sane and calm, I still can't get behind the writing at times. Still, I continued this series of posts about stupidity in the shows because I was being fueled by people liking these posts.

Now I'm wondering if I'll just be disappointing one of my parents if I make these posts. Because I talked with them about something and they were right. No matter how much people don't like Vivienne, she managed to be successful and do something right, if she's managed to get A24 interested in airing her show and get that show on Amazon Prime. No matter who doesn't like that, that's still what happened.

Like Stephan King and J.K. Rowling, for example. Those two got their haters but they still got their fans because they're still doing something right, especially writing wise. You might not think that's a good comparison considering the examples I'm using but it's true in the sense that they and Vivienne still are successful due to their works because they all got their fans who helped them get that successful.

So yeah, I know that I can seem disappointing to my parent that I've been angrily posting about a successful show despite how it's not going to change that success and there's a very real chance that I will, should I tell them about it. Especially since I'm still doing at least this post. I guess I can still do this for fun or because I know people will still look forward to these moments of stupidity. I'll have to think on it

In any case, I started this post to still talk about how actions in the screenplay are dumb so I might as well deliver on what I promised. Thanks to anyone and everyone who bothered reading all of this, as well as those who don't get upset over the above.

Full Moon -

So there's D.H.O.R.K.S. first. They not only didn't get any better at interrogation since they got no real way of knowing that Keenie and Cletus were really telling the truth - and they weren't, especially about the exorcists - but there's also the suits. The suits obviously fit the cherubs but Agent One and Agent Two reasonably would never expect to meet them to give the suits to so that the battle suits could be used. I can't even think of kids being sent because they decided not to after last time. So who the fuck would Agent One and Agent Two put in those battle suits?

I guess there's the cherubs, too, for having been stealthy enough with the 'worried mother' bit but then be obvious as fuck when following Blitzo. I mean, the disguise as the mother was kind of strange but like Moxxie said, they weren't exactly covert. How could the cherubs think they would never be spotted when their upper halves were sticking out of the damn bushes?

Other than that, then the biggest moment of stupidity goes to none other than Stolas. Starting up the conversation the way he did is one thing (yes, really, it could be chalked up to Stolas being severely sheltered and alone growing up) but it's another thing entirely to make it sound like Blitzo is the one who makes it all about sex and getting upset about it. Seriously. Stolas is the one who made the deal that centers around sex. He's the one who always spewed sexual shit out of his mouth in most of season 1 and a couple episodes in season 2. He's the one Blitzo was talking about when he said 'don't make it anything more than you (Stolas) wanting me (Blitzo) to fuck you'. Even at the very first meeting that Stolas and Blitzo ever had, Stolas was the one who thought of taking Blitzo to his room and say that he's there to ravish him. How was it Blitzo's fault that that was on Stolas's mind? Yeah, Blitzo may have been the one to initiate sex but it sure seems like to me that he only did that because Stolas gave him the idea of sex being a possibility. Even if Stolas just said the 'ravish me' line as a joke, it still gave Blitzo the idea to have sex. (By the way, that's a very weird joke to make with a friend, especially one you had literally only one playdate with over twenty years ago). Naturally, by this episode, Stolas has practically conditioned Blitzo to make everything about sex when Stolas is in the picture yet this damn owl is upset that his confession wasn't being taken seriously

[jazzybot4]

Ok so I've had a Think about this and I've got another snippet:

So the thing you gotta understand is that my Great-Great-Aunt was one of the most miserable people I've ever known. She hated most people for the crime of being people, she disliked her entire family, she barely contacted any of us for anything outside of graduations, weddings, and afternoon tea once a decade. I spoke with her once when I was ten, and then again at my moms funeral, where she didn't say anything to anyone else but me.

We were all convinced that she'd die and that her house would get foreclosed because she wouldn't write a will. Except she didn't die and her house foreclosed. She died, and left everything to me. For some WILD fucking reason, she thought that I was the one member of the family that wouldn't just leave her house vacant and sell off her assets to make a quick buck.

She's mostly right. It's hard to find work in this economy, since most jobs require so much and will pay you so little. I'm disabled too, because I've got the neurospicy brain that likes to freak out throw up slam all the alarms panic when my boss abuses me. I'd been coming up on the end of my apartment lease and wasn't going to be able to renew it.

Then a Private Eye shows up where I worked at the time and tells me that he's been looking for me for months. Fair, I guess, since I cut ties with my fathers family when I was seventeen by dint of just packing up my little rucksack and hopping a train to anywhere.

So I wound up taking a train to the City, and she didn't own a house. She owned an entire city block, and I did in fact spend some time in the hotel atrium hyperventilating. There was the hotel, that she lived in, there was an apartment building that she owned, and then there was the skyscraper on the other half of the block, seventy stories and a fucking skyline landmark. That I owned now.

Because her father had built all of this.

The hotel was built in the '10s when her father bought the block. He ran the hotel, but she closed it in the '70s when he died, and the whole place was converted into something like an apartment block? but not? It was a 300 room hotel once upon a time, but over the years the lower floors had been renovated for businesses and the upper floors were, to be honest, her HOARD.

I would not be surprised if this woman was a dragon. She had SO MUCH stuff. This is WILD to me, since it wasn't even gross layered hoarder stuff. She had furniture, she had each room done up in a different style with different things. She had a whole six hotel room spaces dedicated to being a library. She had thousands of dresses and bolts of fabric and other outfits, she had rooms dedicated to her jewelry collection, she had an entire display set of the strange stones and fossils she must have been given. It was a whole fucking museum.

The ground floor was set up to hold businesses. There was one tax prep company in the corner lot, there was a boutique shoe store between that and the end businesses, and the one business in the alley was vacant. It looked like it had been set up like an industrial kitchen at some point, gleaming appliances and tables and ovens, but dusty as shit from being essentially abandoned for five years.

It wasn't a home, not quite, but it was in my name as the sole owner and being managed by several different companies, because she'd never incorporated her assets, these were all private. The lawyers had been sympathetic and also very good at making sure I couldn't do something stupid with all of it.

I'm not sure why she'd leave this to me. There's a whole office I haven't gone through yet and I don't know if I'm going to find answers there or not. Probably not considering she was a closed-off private person.

Either way, I spent a solid hour panicking in the atrium, then I went and walked the block, and then I ended up in the industrial kitchen that was probably a 'ghost kitchen'. It had a walk up window in the alley, it had a little front space that was closed off and the windows papered over, and more importantly it had the counter space to do something useful.

It took me two days to clean the place, but that was two days that I wasn't panicking. It took me another three days before I could go into the office my great-great-aunt had left behind, and so I did the one thing I was good at and knew would be productive.

I went to the store, bought fifty pounds of flour and other shit, and I proceeded to bake enough bread to tire myself out enough to sleep. I still slept in my school bus conversion in the parking garage, because the idea of sleeping upstairs in one of those ostentatious rooms terrified me. Not that I was sleeping reasonable hours, mind you.

That's how the bakery started, though. I was at the window listening to traffic while the bread rose for my latest batch, and someone knocked on the window scaring the everloving fuck out of me.

She was very drunk, very sweet, and she paid cash for a loaf of bread to share with her girlfriends, all of them in pretty glittering dresses and clearly drunk and having a good time. I gave them two loaves, split and buttered, and they shrieked as only drunk girls do. I made all of them drink a bottle of water each too, and they wandered off in a perfumed cloud of bread-gorged joy.

One of them posted on Instagram and the next day at two AM I had a line. Which was useful really, considering I had fifty loaves of bread and nowhere near enough room to eat them all myself, and it made them all happy.

So, that's how it started. With me inheriting a fortune I couldn't comprehend or quantify, and a truly enormous amount of stress baking that turned out to be what the locals wanted to have. It wasn't fancy, wasn't posh, wasn't expensive, it was just good bread bullied into softness and served without a license.

It was incredibly human, and that's why I think the 3 am customers started coming by too. The witching hours in the City are just as active as the daytime hours, and people will always want bread. It didn't matter if they were human or not. At that point I was so exhausted and stressed out that I didn't give a fuck anymore, I just sold them bread.

I think they also started coming by because I would take anything for payment, and didn't care much about what it was so long as the currency value was countable or convertible. It also helped that it was so human that it didn't fuck with whatever and whoever they were, so the food was always safe to eat, since it wasn't really barter as much as it was a fair exchange.

I still have so much fucking bread. Every time I open a new door in the building I have a whole panic attack. Last week I opened one room and it was full to bursting with an entire Broadway Shows original costumes. They're out at the appraisers now and I've got no idea what to do with them next, but I do know that they probably belong in a museum.

So long as I keep making bread, I can get through the rest of this shit. Taking out my frustrations on dough is a lot safer and a lot kinder than taking it out on the memory of a woman nobody in my family knew.

You run a Bakery, just a normal bakery, the only problem is that your customers at midnight to 6AM are mythical creatures who pay with gemstones and ancient gold and silver coins

[abirdonalilactree]

First gay ship I watched that actually became canon. (kinda toxic tho-)

Y'all remember the first time you saw your gay ship become canon? I suppose for many of you it was Supernatural. 

For me it was back in 2013 when the series finale of Rules of Engagement came out, which is pretty early if you are talking about gay stuff. Not only did we get a slowburn spanning over several seasons, it also ended in a gay wedding.

In this essay I will talk about why this ship is so important to me and why it also was toxic as feck.

The show is about two couples and their single friend, all at different stages in their relationships, deal with the complications of dating, commitment, and marriage. From season three on, there kinda is a slow burn until season seven ends with the two unmarried couples getting married as well.

What started as a horrible boss messing with his assistant turned into a surprising love story.

 I'm not sure why I came back to this series after so many years in the first place. Some of the jokes are quite offensive so here is a warning for that. But on the other hand, all episodes are up on YouTube for free soo… Right now, in the September of 2021 we have exactly 20 fics on Ao3 by amazing authors. We are a really small fandom. The show ended in 2013 but like three or four people are still here.

Let me introduce the main characters:

The married couple consists of Jeff and Audrey Bingham. Jeff has been a financial manager and husband of Audrey since 1995. He has a rather deadpan, cold and sardonic personality and sense of self, particularly when dealing with Russell and Adam, but he is not sadistic or unkind, thereby rendering these traits as merely ironic and biting humor. He loves sports, shuns anything that might resemble sensitivity and often views his marriage as a competition or war, refusing to let Audrey "win" the upper hand at anything.

Audrey is an editor at Indoor Living magazine before later resigning and the assertive, modern wife of Jeff. She tolerates her husband's insensitivity because she knows he is not malicious and will do whatever it takes to make the situation right once he realizes his mistake. As a couple, they both can be very condescending and manipulative towards each other, in order to gain the upper hand, and typically don't like to concede to the other that they were wrong.

Adam Rhodes, a sensitive and well-meaning, but extremely naive and super extremely stupid, co-worker of Russell and Timmy, and Jennifer's fiancé throughout the series until they are married in the series finale. He is a neighbor of Jeff and Audrey, looks up to Jeff, and often acts on Jeff's relationship advice -This usually results in making the situation worse for himself. Jennifer Morgan is the fiancée and eventual wife of Adam, who endures his faults because of his good looks. She is very self-conscious of him, and will often try to spare him from embarrassment.

Timir "Timmy" Patel was introduced in season 3 and became a season regular from season 4-7. He first appears when Russell hires him as his assistant.  Although he is fluent in seven languages and holds an MBA, Timmy is often forced to do menial work or to solve Russell's trivial problems which often annoys Timmy. While many of Russell's schemes disgust him, Timmy will often see them through so that he can enjoy Russell's deserved penalty. 

Russell Dunbar on the other hand is wealthy, only due to his trust fund, which he uses to impress and seduce women. He is presented as a seedy and sleazy man who only cares about how many women he can get. However, it is shown that he has a softer side. His relationships within the group are seemingly conflicted, many of the group dislike his behaviour and mock him, as they do everyone else, but it seems that he expresses just as much distaste for them as he does not choose to invite them places unless he needs them to. Through Timmy, he is analysed by a psychiatrist to have sociopathic tendencies which explains his destructive behaviour.

He is also self absorbed and immature.

...But the thing is sometimes he isn’t.

While all three relationships show a lot of signs of toxicity, Timmy and Russell’s relationship is certainly the most destructive one. Which is mostly Russell’s fault.

But let me show you.

From a psychological point of view, their relationship ticks most of the boxes of a toxic relationship.

Toxic communication

Instead of treating each other with kindness, most of their conversations are filled with sarcasm, criticism, or overt hostility. Yet sometimes kindness is in fact seeking through.

Jealousy

There is so, so much jealousy going on. Russell really does everything to not allow Timmy to get together with a woman. Although only as the show goes on, it becomes clear that Russell is jealous because he has fallen for Timmy.

Controlling behaviors

Russell is questioning where Timmy is all the time or becoming overly upset when he doesn’t immediately answer texts are both signs of controlling behavior, which can contribute to toxicity in a relationship. And it gets so much worse than that. But more to that later.

Resentment

Yes.

Dishonesty

Yes. ALL the time.

Patterns of disrespect

Being chronically late, casually “forgetting” events, and other behaviors that show disrespect for each other's time are a red flag. This makes it red flag number six. 

Constant stress

A normal amount of tension runs through every relationship, but finding oneself constantly on edge is an indicator that something’s off. Yet another red flag.

This ongoing stress can take a toll on the physical and emotional health of a person. Which is one hundred percent happening.

Ignoring needs

Going along with whatever one partner wants to do, even when it goes against the wishes or comfort level of the other one. From his first episode in the show on, Timmy is forced to do absurd stuff he doesn’t want to do and honestly no one should do for their boss.

Lost relationships

Stopping to spend time with friends and family, either to avoid conflict with a partner or to get around having to explain what’s happening in the relationship.

Hoping for change

One might stay in a relationship because they see the other person’s potential or think that if they just change themselves and their actions, their partner will change as well. And it’s the little moments when Russell shows for only moments the tiniest bit of being a good person that make Timmy stay with him.

Walking on eggshells

One worries that by bringing up problems, they’ll provoke extreme tension, so they become conflict avoidant and keep any issues to themselves.

Lack of support however is arguably not always one of their problems. But we’ll come back to that.

And still, they share their sweet moments.

The following clip, made by CBS itself shows really well how it is for them to work with each other.

https://youtu.be/GfPI3HgMYoI

And then there is character development. Here the group of friends talks about Jeff lying to his wife about another friends bachelor party because he doesn’t want to spend time with her aunt.

https://youtu.be/LQPIFcrBltQ

Russell doesn't want to get married, clearly. This clip also conveys pretty well how horrible those people are. 

There is this tension and the gay jokes. This clip also shows really well how manipulative Russell -tries- to be.

https://youtu.be/XkdycXzX4ag

And then there are moments like these: In season 6 Timmy wanted to impress a woman who only wants to date singers so Russell teaches him how to play the guitar with the ulterior motive of Timmy embarrassing himself in front of the whole company. This idea backfires when Russell realises that he can’t watch Timmy suffer like that and he joins on stage and they start this duet that’s like super gay.

https://youtu.be/UH3P_LfBBQo

To be with you by Mr Big is an interesting choice of song. -Not only because it’s quite romantic but also because the lyrics seem to be surprisingly fitting at second glance.

Let’s analyze it because Music is an important aspect.

“One of the great unrequited love songs, "To Be With You" has a true story behind it. Mr. Big lead singer Eric Martin wrote the song when he was still a teenager - 16 or 17 in his estimation. The girl was Patricia Reynolds, and he had it bad for her.

"We were really, really good friends," Martin said in a Songfacts interview. "I was totally enamored with this woman. She was beautiful. Smart. I mean, brains, beauty, break down the walls, made me crawl on my belly like a reptile!

I just loved this woman, but she just wanted to be my friend. She'd have tons of boyfriends, and maybe she misconstrued promiscuity for love. But I wanted to be the knight in shining armor. That's what I was, a knight in shining armor. But basically, I didn't get my feet wet. I wrote it about how I would have done anything to just be more than a friend and a confidante."”

-https://www.songfacts.com/facts/mr-big/to-be-with-you

So much to the history of the song. Do you see the parallels? Do you see them? Do you?

Anyway. When Russell joins Timmy on the stage, he starts with the lines:

Build up your confidence

So you can be on top for once

Wake up, who cares about

Little boys that talk too much

I think this has to be taken literally. Not sure how much I should go into detail here. 

This however brings us back to the point of support from our list earlier.

I've seen it all go down

The game of love was all rained out

So come on baby, come on over

Let me be the one to hold you

I'm the one who wants to be with you (I'm the one, yeah)

Deep inside I hope you feel it too (feel it too)

Waited on a line of greens and blues (waited on a line yeah)

Just to be the next to be with you

That’s kinda Gay.

There are jokes all over the seasons that Timmy and Russell are gay but it becomes most clear that Russell is in love with Timmy, in the last season, when Timmy leaves to go on vacation and Russell misses him so much that he gets a girlfriend and turns her into a copy of Timmy.

Things get worse when Timmy finds out that Russell completely lost his marbles and chipped him to always know his whereabouts. This finally makes Timmy leave the company and get a new job where he finally gets treated with respect. It is shown how they miss each other despite everything. But then Timmy loses his work Visa which turns out to be completely Russell’s fault.

Right after Jenn and Adam marry in the last episode, Russell proposes to Timmy so he can stay in America but it becomes clear that there is more than his conscience that made him do this.

Russell turning his girlfriend into Timmy. (There is no heterosexual explanation for this):

https://youtu.be/sX1xTybc6vI

Timmy finding out how much Russell really stalks him. (like. he is totally in love with him):

https://youtu.be/jPWKdwpXCLU

Their Wedding (seems pretty gay to me):

https://youtu.be/Ymp-zaTmnD8

 You need to see the whole show as it is. A bunch of horrible people that are made fun of.

Furthermore you could argue that they don’t actually kiss. But maybe marriage is even more meaningful. 

I suppose that since we get so little representation, we like to clasp onto everything we can get. Because when I watched this I was too young to understand how offensive the shit they talk about really is. But after all it meant a lot to my gay little heart.

So many years later I gotta say that it needs to be said that it’s a toxic relationship after all. Don’t try it at home. Don’t try it with your boss or assisstant.

In the end it’s a green card marriage. But there is this whole arch of Russell falling in love with Timmy. Most clearly in the last three episodes but also starting a lot earlier. It’s a slow burn after all. It’s never said out loud but we got two bisexual characters right there.

Now I’m asking around my friends what their first gay ship was that became canon. The results really show that we don’t get enough representation in series. Just wow.

Hannigram became canon. kinda. They jumped off a cliff together instead of kissing. That one dude from supernatural you guys keep talking about got sent to super gay hell after confessing.

What I want to say is I just wanna see a healthy gay ship become canon some day.

Thanks for reading!

...So what was your first gay ship that became canon? 

[garnetmantle]

Title: After Omega, Star Trek TOS

by: green rose

@sicktember

Prompt #4 Headache

Notes: The TOS episode "Omega Glory" is literally one long recipe for a headache for Kirk. Spock was caught in the nimbus of a phaser set to kill in this episode.

>

Numbly, Jim tried to orient himself among the crush and chaos that was the excited Yangs. Spock. He was trying to keep an eye on Spock, who had admitted to being weak, which probably meant he was barely keeping his feet under him through some feat of Vulcan endurance. Jim’s vision was swimming a bit in the torch-flashing darkness, and he was so damn tired, but he eventually homed in on the red-shirted security guards, and found McCoy, very unhappy, at Spock’s side.

The doctor was not supporting Spock, but he clearly wanted to be. Spock stood at-ease, clearly rebuffing any such attempt. So McCoy was scanning the crowd, and when his eyes hit Jim he lunged forward and grabbed his arm, dragging him forward to stand the appropriate distance from Spock for a beam up. The sudden jerk brought the taste of bile up behind Jim’s teeth. Bones was glaring hard enough that it made Jim a little more dizzy to try to meet his eyes, so he stopped trying to and looked at Spock. Whose at-ease was wavering in its own wind.

“I suppose we can beam up now?” McCoy demanded.

Unperturbed, Spock spoke into his communicator in a steady but very quiet voice, “Three to beam up, Mr. Scott.”

Jim was moving the second the transporter let go, and caught Spock, who went at the knees the moment the transporter beam released him. Kirk had him before his body could hit the ground -- he’d known the usually-inconsequential disorientation of the transporter was going to get Spock, he’d just been able to tell. McCoy was swearing, and his scanner was humming.

So Jim had him under the elbows, crushed against his side, and he only had a moment to dislike how limp Spock had gone before the awful realization hit him that his own balance and coordination was not sufficient to maintain the two of them until the waiting medical team swimming into focus in the too-bright lights of the room could climb on the platform.

Kirk clenched his teeth and swallowed. He had been up for two straight days and nights, but he was not going to drop Spock, and he was not going to throw up in the middle of the transporter room. He was trying to get the nausea forced back enough to tell the corpsmen to hurry up and get Spock when McCoy took Spock’s other side and more than half his weight, and gestured his subordinates forward.

They relieved Jim of the Vulcan’s weight, which he needed, and of the contact, which left a gnawing worry behind it, and put Spock on the anti-grav stretcher they had waiting. One of them handed McCoy a small med-kit which he instantly opened. He read off the hypos, and administered them directly to his patient.

Clearly McCoy had called ahead. Why had Spock waited that long for him to beam up?

It was a little worrying that Spock had let himself be handled by strange corpsmen -- these were new crew, on board less than a month -- and put on the stretcher without complaint, silent and pale and submitting to McCoy’s attentions with none of their usual argument. Jim blew out a slow breath and closed his eyes, then breathed in a deep one as he raised his head and eventually reopened them. Reset. He trusted Bones, and Bones had said authoritatively that Spock would live. There was a lot left to do with—

“Doctor,” Spock had rallied enough to come up on his elbows and look at Kirk, his gaze assessing. He interrupted the doctor in a quiet but very firm voice. Definitely coherent. “You are aware that the Captain has had several trauma-induced periods of unconsciousness during this mission, but you are unaware of the most severe. To my certain knowledge, he has been unconscious due to two severe traumatic blows for a cumulative nine hours and eighteen minutes since our beam down.”

Spock wasn’t announcing it to the room, just to McCoy, but it was bad enough because Bones stopped dead and raised his head. “Captain, you are required in Sickbay in twenty minutes.”

A biting reply wanted to come out – he was too tired to be bossed about by his CMO exercising his prerogatives – but Jim made himself stop. The truth was, his head was a pulsing raw pain he’d been able to manage only by lifting above it – literally dissociating from his own body a bit to cope. He had blood coming out of one ear, his vision was getting worse, and as his adrenaline dropped he was starting to get his own crosswind himself. He was stubborn, and he had a thousand things to do, but he wasn’t stupid.

“Yes, Doctor.”

McCoy, following the stretcher out, stopped to double-blink at him, then looked him over again. “Do you need transport?”

“No, Doctor.” The guards and Scotty and the transporter chief were all listening to them, now, so Jim walked to the door. Oh, yeah. He was getting his own wind and McCoy noticed, of course, caught Jim’s arm to balance the wavering, and started to demand Kirk come with him right then.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes, on one condition,” Jim said quietly as he followed McCoy out into the hall. “I know you have some kind of anti-emetic in there, you always do when you’re treating Spock for anything serious. Give me.”

“Yeah?” McCoy asked, trying to catch his eyes, no doubt to evaluate his pupils, but Kirk wasn’t having it. Not quite yet. The doctor's voice was on the gentle side, though, which was immediately soothing, and he opened his med-kit. ”Migraine?”

Jim wished he could say yes, but it wasn’t a good day for blatant lies. “No. Spock’s right. I got my bell rung twice, hard-“

“As opposed to the half-dozen times it was lightly rung?” the doctor asked sharply. “I’m not blind, you know-“

Speaking slowly, Jim continued, “But I’ll be all right for a few more minutes, and then you can do whatever you want.”

“You’re just afraid you’ll get sick all over the Bridge? I’d bet on the turbolift, that upward and lateral motion at once—“

Kirk felt sweat on his upper lip, and he swallowed, hard. McCoy looked a bit abashed and gave him the shot in the arm, and within a few seconds Jim’s stomach had returned to the normal position. He coughed a little and swallowed, then tried out a smile. “You’d be amazed how much that helps. I –“

“Will be in Sickbay in twenty minutes, Captain,” McCoy growled, snapped his med-kit closed and took off after his patient. Instinct urged Kirk to go after them, but duty sent him in the other direction.

>

It was like water dripping away. Onto him. Away from him. A little more impairment. A little less adrenaline. Jim Kirk put one foot in front of the other, and he smiled when he needed to, and he was able to think well enough to handle what had to be handled and know when something had to be put off for a more coherent day. The lights got brighter, though. Drip. And blurrier. Drip. And god it hurt to focus his eyes. Drip. He prepared a bare bones report for the Admiralty, because that couldn’t wait, and every sound got louder. Drip, drip. The world got foggier, and his energy to navigate through it was lessened.

He finally turned, then waited as the Bridge kept turning for a moment before settling down before his eyes. “Mr. Sulu. You have the conn,” he said, and headed for the turbolift. His crosswind was getting more stormfront than gentle breeze – he knew he was swaying on his feet, didn’t that count for something? “If I’m needed you can reach me in Sickbay. Mr. Spock is also in Sickbay. Unless he is needed to keep the galaxy or the ship from blowing up, please forget you can reach him there.”

“Aye, Captain,” came from several people, but then quietly, from Uhura alone, “Could one of us escort you to Sickbay, sir?”

Kirk forced himself to stop swaying, forced a smile to his lips. “No, but thank you, Lieutenant.”

The drop of the turbolift had him laying back against the wall, and his hands over his eyes were trying to push the pain back away. Water dripping everywhere, he was in a rainstorm and it was washing away the world and his energy and his ability to control himself. His head had reached the white-out level, the pain hitting places his consciousness wasn't willing to go with it. One last thing, though.

He walked into Sickbay to see Dr. M’Benga arguing with Dr. McCoy, gentle to his irritation. “You’ve been up for two days, Leonard. Either go to your quarters or go sleep in your office, but you are not fit for regular duty right now.” They’d both worked under worse conditions for crisis duty.

“Just give me a few more minutes, Geoff. I’m not being stubborn. I want a shower and my bed, but—there he is!” He turned from his fellow doctor to glare at Kirk.

“Twenty minutes does not mean forty-five, Captain, sir.”

Kirk made one of his ‘yeah, yeah, whatever’ dismissive gestures and closed his eyes in a brief headshake. “How is Spock?”

McCoy frowned at him as he moved toward him with a scanner in one hand and a tricorder in the other. “In a healing trance. He’ll be fine in a few days, Jim. We were able to treat the radiation poisoning and the rest he can handle himself.”

Jim’s head went down with a huff of a sigh, but he batted at McCoy’s arm when the doctor raised it with the scanner, and McCoy started to growl at him, but Jim made his little dismissive-gesture-closed-eyes-headshake thing he did again. He spoke very evenly. “No. Bones. I think I... could use that… transport now.”

He didn’t go at the knees, he just dropped, and it was all McCoy and a lunging M’Benga could do to keep his limp body from bouncing off the floor.

He got a bed beside Spock's for three days. McCoy's blood pressure was not very appreciative of their stay.

End

[greenroseunderglass]

After Omega : Fanfic - Star Trek TOS (Gen)

@sicktember

Prompt #4 Headache

by: greenroseunderglass (1st post to tumblr, I know I'm messing up every way possible.)

Notes: The TOS episode "Omega Glory" is literally one long recipe for a headache for Kirk. Spock was caught in the nimbus of a phaser set to kill in this episode.

Numbly, Jim tried to orient himself among the crush and chaos that was the excited Yangs. Spock. He was trying to keep an eye on Spock, who had admitted to being weak, which probably meant he was barely keeping his feet under him through some feat of Vulcan endurance. Jim’s vision was swimming a bit in the torch-flashing darkness, and he was so damn tired, but he eventually homed in on the red-shirted security guards, and found McCoy, very unhappy, at Spock’s side.

The doctor was not supporting Spock, but he clearly wanted to be. Spock stood at-ease, clearly rebuffing any such attempt. So McCoy was scanning the crowd, and when his eyes hit Jim he lunged forward and grabbed his arm, dragging him forward to stand the appropriate distance from Spock for a beam up. The sudden jerk brought the taste of bile up behind Jim’s teeth. Bones was glaring hard enough that it made Jim a little more dizzy to try to meet his eyes, so he stopped trying to and looked at Spock. Whose at-ease was wavering in its own wind.

“I suppose we can beam up now?” McCoy demanded.

Unperturbed, Spock spoke into his communicator in a steady but very quiet voice, “Three to beam up, Mr. Scott.”

Jim was moving the second the transporter let go, and caught Spock, who went at the knees the moment the transporter beam released him. Kirk had him before his body could hit the ground -- he’d known the usually-inconsequential disorientation of the transporter was going to get Spock, he’d just been able to tell. McCoy was swearing, and his scanner was humming.

So Jim had him under the elbows, crushed against his side, and he only had a moment to dislike how limp Spock had gone before the awful realization hit him that his own balance and coordination was not sufficient to maintain the two of them until the waiting medical team swimming into focus in the too-bright lights of the room could climb on the platform.

Kirk clenched his teeth and swallowed. He had been up for two straight days and nights, but he was not going to drop Spock, and he was not going to throw up in the middle of the transporter room. He was trying to get the nausea forced back enough to tell the corpsmen to hurry up and get Spock when McCoy took Spock’s other side and more than half his weight, and gestured his subordinates forward.

They relieved Jim of the Vulcan’s weight, which he needed, and of the contact, which left a gnawing worry behind it, and put Spock on the anti-grav stretcher they had waiting. One of them handed McCoy a small med-kit which he instantly opened. He read off the hypos, and administered them directly to his patient.

Clearly McCoy had called ahead. Why had Spock waited that long for him to beam up?

It was a little worrying that Spock had let himself be handled by strange corpsmen -- these were new crew, on board less than a month -- and put on the stretcher without complaint, silent and pale and submitting to McCoy’s attentions with none of their usual argument. Jim blew out a slow breath and closed his eyes, then breathed in a deep one as he raised his head and eventually reopened them. Reset. He trusted Bones, and Bones had said authoritatively that Spock would live. There was a lot left to do with—

“Doctor,” Spock had rallied enough to come up on his elbows and look at Kirk, his gaze assessing. He interrupted the doctor in a quiet but very firm voice. Definitely coherent. “You are aware that the Captain has had several trauma-induced periods of unconsciousness during this mission, but you are unaware of the most severe. To my certain knowledge, he has been unconscious due to two severe traumatic blows for a cumulative nine hours and eighteen minutes since our beam down.”

Spock wasn’t announcing it to the room, just to McCoy, but it was bad enough because Bones stopped dead and raised his head. “Captain, you are required in Sickbay in twenty minutes.”

A biting reply wanted to come out – he was too tired to be bossed about by his CMO exercising his prerogatives – but Jim made himself stop. The truth was, his head was a pulsing raw pain he’d been able to manage only by lifting above it – literally dissociating from his own body a bit to cope. He had blood coming out of one ear, his vision was getting worse, and as his adrenaline dropped he was starting to get his own crosswind himself. He was stubborn, and he had a thousand things to do, but he wasn’t stupid.

“Yes, Doctor.”

McCoy, following the stretcher out, stopped to double-blink at him, then looked him over again. “Do you need transport?”

“No, Doctor.” The guards and Scotty and the transporter chief were all listening to them, now, so Jim walked to the door. Oh, yeah. He was getting his own wind and McCoy noticed, of course, caught Jim’s arm to balance the wavering, and started to demand Kirk come with him right then.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes, on one condition,” Jim said quietly as he followed McCoy out into the hall. “I know you have some kind of anti-emetic in there, you always do when you’re treating Spock for anything serious. Give me.”

“Yeah?” McCoy asked, trying to catch his eyes, no doubt to evaluate his pupils, but Kirk wasn’t having it. Not quite yet. The doctor's voice was on the gentle side, though, which was immediately soothing, and he opened his med-kit. ”Migraine?”

Jim wished he could say yes, but it wasn’t a good day for blatant lies. “No. Spock’s right. I got my bell rung twice, hard-“

“As opposed to the half-dozen times it was lightly rung?” the doctor asked sharply. “I’m not blind, you know-“

Speaking slowly, Jim continued, “But I’ll be all right for a few more minutes, and then you can do whatever you want.”

“You’re just afraid you’ll get sick all over the Bridge? I’d bet on the turbolift, that upward and lateral motion at once—“

Kirk felt sweat on his upper lip, and he swallowed, hard. McCoy looked a bit abashed and gave him the shot in the arm, and within a few seconds Jim’s stomach had returned to the normal position. He coughed a little and swallowed, then tried out a smile. “You’d be amazed how much that helps. I –“

“Will be in Sickbay in twenty minutes, Captain,” McCoy growled, snapped his med-kit closed and took off after his patient. Instinct urged Kirk to go after them, but duty sent him in the other direction.

>

It was like water dripping away. Onto him. Away from him. A little more impairment. A little less adrenaline. Jim Kirk put one foot in front of the other, and he smiled when he needed to, and he was able to think well enough to handle what had to be handled and know when something had to be put off for a more coherent day. The lights got brighter, though. Drip. And blurrier. Drip. And god it hurt to focus his eyes. Drip. He prepared a bare bones report for the Admiralty, because that couldn’t wait, and every sound got louder. Drip, drip. The world got foggier, and his energy to navigate through it was lessened.

He finally turned, then waited as the Bridge kept turning for a moment before settling down before his eyes. “Mr. Sulu. You have the conn,” he said, and headed for the turbolift. His crosswind was getting more stormfront than gentle breeze – he knew he was swaying on his feet, didn’t that count for something? “If I’m needed you can reach me in Sickbay. Mr. Spock is also in Sickbay. Unless he is needed to keep the galaxy or the ship from blowing up, please forget you can reach him there.”

“Aye, Captain,” came from several people, but then quietly, from Uhura alone, “Could one of us escort you to Sickbay, sir?”

Kirk forced himself to stop swaying, forced a smile to his lips. “No, but thank you, Lieutenant.”

The drop of the turbolift had him laying back against the wall, and his hands over his eyes were trying to push the pain back away. Water dripping everywhere, he was in a rainstorm and it was washing away the world and his energy and his ability to control himself. His head had reached the white-out level, the pain hitting places his consciousness wasn't willing to go with it. One last thing, though.

He walked into Sickbay to see Dr. M’Benga arguing with Dr. McCoy, gentle to his irritation. “You’ve been up for two days, Leonard. Either go to your quarters or go sleep in your office, but you are not fit for regular duty right now.” They’d both worked under worse conditions for crisis duty.

“Just give me a few more minutes, Geoff. I’m not being stubborn. I want a shower and my bed, but—there he is!” He turned from his fellow doctor to glare at Kirk.

“Twenty minutes does not mean forty-five, Captain, sir.”

Kirk made one of his ‘yeah, yeah, whatever’ dismissive gestures and closed his eyes in a brief headshake. “How is Spock?”

McCoy frowned at him as he moved toward him with a scanner in one hand and a tricorder in the other. “In a healing trance. He’ll be fine in a few days, Jim. We were able to treat the radiation poisoning and the rest he can handle himself.”

Jim’s head went down with a huff of a sigh, but he batted at McCoy’s arm when the doctor raised it with the scanner, and McCoy started to growl at him, but Jim made his little dismissive-gesture-closed-eyes-headshake thing he did again. He spoke very evenly. “No. Bones. I think I could use that… transport now.”

He didn’t go at the knees, he just dropped, and it was all McCoy and a lunging M’Benga could do to keep his limp body from bouncing off the floor.

He got a bed beside Spock's for three days. McCoy's blood pressure was not very appreciative of their stay.

End

[ceruleanchillin]

We Shouldn’t

John Marston x F!Reader

Note -  *spoilers* : not too heavy, but still worth the warning if you haven’t finished the game or played at all

I hope this is ok anon, I tweaked it a bit.

Not meant to bash Abigail, but……

I like her, but I don’t like her with John. To me, the character flaws I dislike about both of them shine brightest when they’re together. (which is a testament to outstanding writing on Rockstar’s part imho, because that’s how some couples are🤷🏾‍♀️)

That being said. Smut-ish

“Don’t act sour to me John Marston, you’re the one who wanted to come town today. I don’t believe I asked!” Abigail yanked her coat from the back of the chair she’d dined in.

Abigail was the only person John knew who could fuss and function at the same time with no trouble. No pausing what she was doing, she didn’t even take a breath, just fussed and functioned. He’d known that for a while he supposed, but it didn’t make it any easier to listen to.

“Keep your voice down.” John hissed, glancing around in hopes no one heard them.

The heat of embarrassment crept from his neck to the tips of his ears, when he noticed several patrons had heard them.

“Don’t tell me what to do.” she snapped. “I was fine til’ you tried to tell me what I could eat.”

“I wasn’t telling you what you could eat, I was just sayin-”

“I swear, if you bring up that goddamn loan again…” she was all screwed lips and narrowed eyes, and he knew to end the discussion there. That, or risk a historical event the likes of which rivaled the Blackwater Massacre.

He slipped his pocket watch from his suit jacket, and glanced down at it. “If we’re going to make that show, we should leave now.”

“Oh It’s across the street, don’t act like it’s a river away.” she stalked past him, only to turn back and look at him. “Well? The show ain’t going to wait for you.”

“Fine.” he bit out, hands shoving the watch back into his pocket.

“Fine.” she fired back, shoving through the door.

He followed her rushed footsteps as he tried to piece together what had gone wrong. It started out nice enough. They’d been in a weird cycle that was 90 percent fighting, and 10 percent awkward silences. He thought their last date had gone well, and that they were long due for another. He’d set things up for dinner, a show, and an evening in one of the nicer hotels in town. He’d even steeled himself for the high possibility she might want to dance. It was all too clear to him, at that point, how the rest of the evening would play out.

He told her of the surprise a week in advance, and she nearly crowned him king in her excitement. Then over the week leading up to it, the arguments had started. Snapping at each other over little things, slamming doors, petty jabs, etc.

A crowd had to started to gather in the cobblestone streets, and it was concentrated around the theater. He tried to stay close to Abigail, but also leave a bit of distance, because he could feel how tense she was. His mind was racing for ways to calm her down, and salvage the rest of the evening. He glanced around main street in pursuit of in an idea.

“You have enough to pay for the show? You know, since you tightened the purse strings at dinner.”

He fought the urge to roll his eyes, and instead exhaled his frustration. “Sorry your highness, I just didn’t want everyone to know about my newfound status as an oil baron.”

Abigail bristled, and let loose on him. He just nodded solemnly letting her fuss. He returned to scanning the area around them, no longer looking for another activity, but a distraction to focus on.

As if he willed you into existence, your laughter caught his attention. Ahead of him, you stood in line with two other women. In the fading daylight, the street lights became the dominant light source, and it was like they all choose to focus on you. Or maybe it felt that way, because he couldn’t look away.

He’d met you during the period when Abigail left him, and things for them had been up in the air. You were the personal assistant of an eccentric author, and his travels brought you to Blackwater. Your boss tasked you with helping him research the life of a cowboy, and you’d found yourself sitting in the Blackwater Saloon interviewing prospects. John had only taken a seat out of pure shock that someone would pay just to hear someone talk. Turns out that it was a little more than that, you wanted to also observe him in action, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t manage.

You documented the course of building his ranch, and jotted down the parts of his life he felt were pertinent. You made the dreary work ahead of him much more tolerable, and even Uncle and Charles enjoyed your company. He realized he started looking forward to your visits. He learned you felt the same when you brought him dinner, and kissed him over it.

That started the thing between you two, that neither of you named, but both thoroughly enjoyed. He had thought of Abigail and Jack, but he pushed them out of his head when he remembered it was a possibility they would even come back. You were real, you were there, and so were his feelings for you.

Charles has been kind enough not to say anything. Uncle wasn’t quite so polite, but a few threats of violence shut him up. He should’ve done it sooner though, because Uncle had ripped into you about being a homewrecker, and that time he had hit him. Knocked him clean under the table.

To his surprise, you didn’t have much of a reaction beyond laughing at Uncle. You’d told him you figured that, because of the specifications of the home, and the way he jumped around in interviews. You two sat down for a long conversation about it, in which he came clean about everything, and he thought it’d be over after that. It wasn’t.

It wasn’t over until he woken up to find you’d come to the farm early on, and dropped his last payment off with Charles. Your letter was short, powerful, and scented with vanilla. He’d carried it around protectively, until Abigail returned, and it started burning a hole in his pocket. He thought that’d been the end if it, but you were back.

“You’re unbelievable,” Abigail was staring at him with force of death behind her gaze. “Can you even pretend they ain’t got your attention?”

John realized he must’ve been staring at you, and Abigail caught him. The line had thinned, and they were not able to enter the theater at least.

“They’re young, you think they’ll put up with you? They’re probably not stupid enough to get stuck like I did.”

“Would you just go inside?”

“No problem.” She pushed past the few people in front of her, and marched past the ticket counter. “That jackass with the scars is paying!”

For the second time that night, a bevy of disapproving looks fell upon him. He scowled and faced them back, eyes scanning faces until they fell on yours.

You were looking at him with a strange combination of shock and pity. He hated you looking at him with any sort of sympathy, but who could blame you? You looked like you wanted to say something to him, but before you could, your friends dragged you inside and he released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

—-

The show itself was rather uneventful. For him at least, because the room around him couldn’t stop erupting in emotion if it became law. He knew it was because he was upset, and Abigail shooting him dirty looks in the dark didn’t help. His plans were shot, and now he was filled with emotions tied to you. Luck never had been fond of him, he supposed.

His eyes glanced up at the balcony you were sitting in, only to find you rising from your seat and disappearing behind the curtain. On instinct, he rose too, muttering something he wasn’t aware of to Abigail. He didn’t wait for her response, if she even gave him one. All he knew was he had to speak to you.

He stumbled out into the lobby, eyes trained on the door he knew led up to the balcony you were in. He took the few seconds he had to run a hand through his hair, and straighten his tie. Yes, John Marston was primping. No, he’d never tell another living soul.

You breezed through the door, and his mouth went dry. You were heading for the concession counter, which was opposite of where he was standing. He walked after you, longer legs allowing him to catch up quickly.

You gasped when you realized he was next to you, your body giving a jerk in response to being frightened.

“Sorry,” he raised his hands and chuckled. “Stay in your skin, it’s too pretty to leave behind.”

“Go to hell Marston, the play already gave me a start.” You pressed a hand to your chest, and he fought not stare at the ample cleavage on display.

Instead, he focused on your words, and realized he hadn’t known what the play was about. Not beyond the vague description he’d read in the paper when he was planning to go anyways. It occurred to him how out of it he must’ve been for that, and he felt a sense of dread at the thought of going back.

“What are you doing here? You know there’s a singing portion coming up right?” You started moving again, and he followed along.

“A fella can’t take in a nice...musical…experience every now and again?”

You laughed with your whole body, he loved that. “Yes, a fella can. But not a John Marston.”

He chuckled. “Ok, that’s an astute observation Miss (L/N).”

“My my John, when you clean up, you clean up.” You gave him an impressed once over, and turned to face the counter. “Can I have the assorted hard candy please.”

“I’ll pay.” He was reaching for his money clip before he’d even said it.

“Oh no,” you shook your head. “I really shouldn’t even be having any. I appreciate it-“

He handed over the dollar, ignoring your pleas. “I want to. Can’t forget it was you that sat that golden opportunity in my lap.”

“Well thank you then. It was my pleasure though...in every sense.” You gave a coy grin that went straight to his groin, and thanked the man at the counter.

“Wait, don’t go.” He grasped your upper arm, careful not hurt you.

You glanced back at him, and tilted your head in question. “I should get back, my friends will worry.”

“Can I,” he paused, cursing himself for not picking up the ability for pretty words like he did shooting from Dutch. “Let me just talk to you.”

The both of you glanced at the man at the counter, who only barely pretended not to be listening.

“Over there.” He nodded to a hallway off the lobby, and gently pulled you after him.

“John,” you paused in your words when he backed you into a wall. “We should make this easy and just cut it loose.”

He pressed his forehead against yours. “Baby, our situation is anything but easy.”

You sighed, and brought a hand up to stroke his scarred cheek. “Your wife is in there, probably waiting on you.”

“She’s probably hoping I got trampled in the street.”

“I would’ve said no to that before I saw her tonight. She’s kind of awful.” You lowered your voice like you didn’t want to admit it, but you had to say it anyways.

He saw that sympathetic look return in your eyes, and he felt ashamed under you gaze.

“I’m kind of awful too.” He admitted reluctantly, but he wasn’t comfortable being painted in an innocent light.

“I suppose,” you sighed, and when you pressed your lips to his scarred cheek again, he held on to you tightly.

He gave into the back of his mind, and started moving on instinct. The shudder you gave when his lips found your neck only served to fuel him on. You were trying to come up with weak excuses, but your actions contradict them. Your hands found his back, and gripped it in a way that called to mind how many scratches you’d left there.

It wasn’t hard to recall how carefree you two had been on his ranch. All you had to do was dodge a non-intrusive friend, and an old drunk. You may as well have been alone.

“John.” Your voice came out a messy combination of a gasp and a moan, as you cupped his neck. “What are you doing?”

“Something nice if you’ll let me.”

“Wha-“

Your next words died on your lips when he slipped under your dress.

“John have you lost your-” A few seconds later he felt your hands gripping the back of his head through the material, and a low moan fell from your lips.

He focused completely on your pleasure. A way to say thank you, for not letting him get swept away in a sea of dread. A way to say sorry, that he couldn’t whisk you away like you wanted him to, and like he so badly wanted. He could give you this though, and as your nails pressed through material and into his scalp, he hoped that’d be enough for the moment.

[valkyrie-echo]

Project Echo, Part 2: Chapter 31 (Berny Barton)

Part 2 Summary: A new enemy surfaces with a team of the Avengers’ greatest foes, hand-picked for their destruction. Meanwhile, Inessa’s pre-Hydra past begins to surface, casting doubt on where her loyalties truly lie.

Chapter 31: Berny Barton

"Trusting a man to kill his own brother," Sin eyed Berny and shook her head. He was busy prepping the vials of gray serum, but he still caught her in his periphery.

Berny flashed her a sarcastic smile and went back to work. Albatross and Ryker made the same fuss initially, he was used to it. Any second one of his new allies would- "There is no love between them, I assure you." there. He silently thanked Albatross.

"If I thought there were I would have killed him by now," Sin continued to sharpen her knives- though where she was pulling all of them from was anyone's guess. "There is a large gap between not loving someone and killing them. Morris is putting too much faith in a feud between siblings."

"He didn't break my favorite toy," Berny said calmly, "he shot me in the face, left me for dead, and killed most of my friends. He's as much an enemy to me as Natasha Romanoff or Bruce Banner are to Albatross and the good General there," he nodded to John, reading as always.

Sin set down her blade and faced Berny. He finished mixing the syringes- taking very specific quantities from each vial. Once he finished he set them down with the utmost care and faced her as well, "Are we gonna fight or have sex because one won't fly with our employer and the other he just might want to watch."

"Neither, if you please."

"Aw, c'mon Albatross. We can't let you be the only one having fun with the super-women."

Albatross' eyebrows arched, "Just what are you implying?"

"You knew Romanoff a very long time and she is, soon to be was, a very lovely lady. Surely you at least got a taste." he winked.

"She had the physical appearance of a ten year old, and the last time I saw her she'd aged nearly twenty years then promptly stabbed me three times. No, we were never intimate in any way."

"Bummer."

"We were talking about you and your brother, not the sexual history of some two-bit assassins."

"Those assassins are older than you, and they weren't frozen when Schmidt died." John spoke up again, "Respect your elders."

Berny faced Sin full-on, "If you want the story, fine. Just listen carefully because it's the last time I humor you. Then, if you still don't trust me, kill me. But make sure you have a damn good excuse for Morris and his boss."

"All I expect is truth," Sin smiled dangerously.

"Gather round kiddos," he said sarcastically, "it's story time."

"I dislike reruns, no offense," Albatross excused himself and left to find Cul. At least around him it tended to be quieter.

"Once upon a time, in the magical land of Nebraska..."

Marco didn't like thieves. Well- thieves who didn't work for him. When the guards found Trickshot, Clint's old mentor, sneaking around back anyone could see where it was going to end. A bullet through the face. Berny, only 14, sighed as the man was dragged in. He was the junior-most member of Marco's small crew. He would be the one cleaning up.

Bang! Berny began pulling off his suit jacket, best get started. He heard something though- a shuffle from the wrong direction, somewhere above them. Surely Trickshot wasn't stupid enough to bring a deaf boy along for a heist- he was exactly that stupid, sanctimonious old fool. Berny turned and shoved Marco as hard as he could- knowing full well if he was wrong his brains would join Trickshot's on the walls.

An explosion of pain wracked his skull almost immediately. He tried to cry out- his mouth was open- but he couldn't move his face. The agony was ungodly. He fell, turning as he did to see Clint staring down from a skylight, gaping. Marco's men opened fire and he fled.

Berny tried to feel the damage, his mouth hurt so much, there was too much blood. He gurgled and tried to get a full breath, close his mouth, anything. One of Marco's bodyguards puked nearby. When Berny's hand found the shaft of the arrow, he knew why.

It had pierced just below his left cheekbone, blasted through bone, gum, and the roof of his mouth, destroying a full section of his teeth. The arrow pinned his mouth open and continued down at a sharp angle, pinning down the corner of his tongue, more teeth and gums on the lower right side, and finally it emerged out of the lower edge of his jaw, through his neck. He felt sick. He felt cold.

Wherever Marco had him taken, it wasn't a normal hospital. The doctors both wore odd logos on their coats- a red octopus with a human skull. He woke long after the surgeries to repair his face and begin reassembling his teeth. Over the years he'd go on to have nearly a dozen surgeries and as many false teeth grafted in.

"Subject is waking up," the doctor was pretty, young. She had long, dark hair that swung down almost far enough to touch Berny's face as she leaned over him. When she spoke, it was with an accent he couldn't place- European certainly. She smiled at him and he tried his best to smile back. His jaw was wired shut, and most of his face and neck were bandaged. What he managed looked more like a grimace.

"Stay calm, it's-" a young male doctor came over and muttered something in what sounded like Russian.

"Alright," the woman translated. "We are doctors. You're in a Hydra field hospital on the way to Alaska."

Berny thought at first the shifting and swaying of the room was something to do with painkillers. Now he saw it all for what it was- the hospital was shipping containers on some boat.

"Your employer pulled a few strings to bring you here. He said to tell you he always rewards loyalty. You will meet with him once we reach port."

"Is there any way I would be let to persuade you having improved jawbone?" the man's grasp of English wasn't the greatest.

"Anton!" the girl snapped, "I told you already. He is not Hydra. We do not augment, only heal!"

"Emilia," he switched back to Russian to plead his case but she put a hand up.

"I'm medical doctor. You are scientific doctor. This patient is mine, not yours."

"I am bored! They bring me no projects here!"

"If you ever want to get to Astana you will have to learn to survive boredom! Winter Soldier is being deployed. He will rendezvous with us in Alaska for diagnostics after his mission. Play then!"

Anton merely grumbled and vanished from Berny's sight to an adjacent lab, "He is new," Emilia said, as if that explained everything.

Berny was kept comfortable for the remainder of the journey, but he had far too much time on his hands to drown in the dull, constant throbbing of his jaw and the memory of Clint's face. He'd spoiled the side job Swordsman and Berny had going, and now his mothering older brother actually tried to kill him! The ass had everything going for him- athleticism, good looks, even super-peepers! Sure he'd been stone deaf since the car accident, but his binocular vision made up for that pretty fucking well in Berny's book. He was always inferior to Clint, he was sick to death of it.

Emilia- Emilie in English- kept him company and monitored his healing. He couldn't speak with his jaw wired shut (the few times he tried he sounded just like Clint), so she carried the weight of the conversation. He caught Anton sneaking glances every now and then. Berny was only 14, but he recognized a crush, especially since Anton didn't seem to have any grasp of subtlety.

After a few days Berny waved goodbye and was taken by skiff across a narrow channel to a waiting car. An especially terrifying man in a mask with a metal arm took his place on the boat and Berny took his in the vehicle. The drive was short- Marco was waiting for him in the restaurant of a cheesy hotel, the 'Prospector Inn'. Damned place was one of the tallest buildings in the city at only 5 stories. Berny sat nervously across from his boss and waited patiently for him to speak.

"I wanted to express my gratitude to you, Berny- I believe that is your name?" Berny nodded slightly. "You risked your life to protect mine. That's loyalty of an impressive caliber. Anything you want you will have. Money, position, twenty stunning hookers and a week in Vegas- at your age that probably sounds the most attractive, yes?"

A goon handed Berny a pencil and a pad of paper to write his reply. I want to repay my brother, he pointed to the bandages on his face.

"I'll have my men fetch him for you."

Berny tapped the table as Marco turned to get his attention. Can't. He'll know you are coming. He has abilities, he pointed to his eyes.

"The world is seeing more and more of these freaks," Marco mumbled to himself. He considered it for a moment. He could use a kid like Berny. "I know low people in high places. They may be able to help you. My operations are far larger than you know, Berny. Serve me, and as your reward I will help you become powerful as well. Then, as your reward for the heroics, I will see that you meet your brother again and guarantee you will get to pluck those special eyes right out of his head."

Berny considered it for as long as it took to pick the pencil back up. Done.

Nearly a decade passed. Marco was the mastermind behind seemingly unrelated gangs all over the globe- a true emperor of crime. He helped Berny meet researchers, participate in dozens of experiments. Most didn't stick, but the ones that did not only brought him on-par with his brother, they took him even further. Suddenly though, his new friends began to fall. Marco went first- it was dismissed as gang violence. Next was Ivanovich, Castro, Hidaki, Chau, Rodriguez- someone was cleaning house and the upper echelon were on the target list. Berny too.

He saw them well before he was anywhere near visible to their average eyesight- men in suits and tactical gear bearing an eagle crest. He pushed his eyes to their limits to read the fine text around the outside of the icon- Strategic Homeland Intervention and Enforcement Logistics Division- SHIELD. They were the ones responsible for him losing his friends- the only family he recognized.

So Berny hunted SHIELD. At first it was sloppy guesswork- which associates they might go after. When he could, he killed. Like Marco, he quickly made low friends in high places. He eventually managed to track them with a certain degree of accuracy. He followed the heels of a trainee team to Belgium after some female assassin- but all he noticed was their leader.

Berny was a mile away using his enhanced vision to watch some guy and a cripple in a wheelchair scouting out a church from the roof of an adjacent building. The leader turned to watch as the assassin ran out of the church, stopped, and wandered down a side street. Berny's vision went red as soon as he saw the man's face. "Of course," he breathed. SHIELD was ruining his life and killing his friends- naturally among their ranks would be Clint fucking Barton. Sanctimonious piece of shit.

Berny barely resisted killing him then- he didn't have the tools he'd need- a bow or a sniper rifle. Clint would only finish what he started so long ago. Berny's face twinged with phantom pain. He needed the last serum- a sort of catalyst to take his powers to the next level. Then he'd be ready to eradicate the cancer that was his brother.

"Well? What next?" Sin waited.

Berny just shrugged, "One more year finding the drugs. Then I tucked it away somewhere safe until I could track down Clint again. One minute I'm sitting in a nice little Italian restaurant, the next thing I know I'm electrocuted and Clint's little assassin wench is throwing me into a cell. I had most of Marco's empire under my control, Clint could only evade my spies for a week, two tops, I had the last little push I needed to beat him," he held up the syringes, "then I'm rotting in a dark, cold cell that would make people in the stone age feel right at home. All because of Clint's girlfriend."

He waited to see if Sin was satisfied. She said nothing, but picked up her knife once again and went back to sharpening the blade. Ryker glanced over and shrugged. Berny rolled his eyes and settled back in the chair. Berny changed his mind- sex with this woman was out of the question. He wanted to fight the smug brat.

Save it for Clint.

Chapter 32: The Eve of Battle

[witchofshade]

It's weeks like this that make me think everything would be better if I were dead.

I'm trying so hard to be a better person because I've realized I'm a raging bitch and it's unnecessarily. I was doing so well and then some upper management lady- who I've since realized wasn't trying to be condescending- told me "that's a no-no" like I was six in regards to the headphones I always have wrapped around my neck, hidden under my shirt. I responded in this most flippantly catty manner I could and she's been flipping out about it since then.

Then there's the guy I had a crush on at work. I get that he dislikes me, most of which are shallow- but today he pissed me off. He ignored me when I asked him what work needed to be done (getting in my way at work is a terrible idea), spent most of his shift on his phone, and then massively insulted one of the new employees 2.5 seconds after meeting him. He was told to go home by our boss but because she went home he stood around talking instead of clocking out. When the person our boss left in charge asked why he was still here, he got mock offended.

I started out joking and said, "Maybe he's still uncomfortable from the contortionist act you just pulled-" and dude looked super confused, then the rage boiled out and I finished coldly, "you know, when you stuck both feet in your mouth?"

I immediately walked away to finish working and heard him say, "Every time he talks to me I feel tone-deaf and stupid."

I couldn't resist shooting back, "Oh, only when I'm talking to you?"

I feel bad now.

Also this week, the abuse from my childhood got brought up multiple times. Once when I went to my mother's for my brother's birthday- and all three of us have bipolar so that was a fucking mess- and then again, today, when someone said my punishments couldn't have been as severe as his because I'm white. The look of shock on his face when I told him some of the things they did to me wasn't satisfying enough for me to not regret the subject.

Now I'm feeling extra depressed bc I know I'm never going to successfully date anyone. Childhood trauma and mental illness have me feeling an unfixable mess.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND COMPUTER

What they mean by blogger is not someone who publishes in a weblog format, but anyone who thinks east coast investors, not so much; but anyone who publishes online. Good writing should be convincing because you got the right answers, they wouldn't need us. And that could be bad for VCs. Is the mathematician a small man because he's discontented? Or at least, a thesis was a position one took and the dissertation was the argument by which one defended it. A physicist friend recently told me half his department was on Prozac. What makes the answer appear is letting your thoughts drift a bit—and thus drift off the wrong path you'd been pursuing last night and onto the right one adjacent to it.1 Follow the threads that attract your attention. Wise and smart are both ways of saying someone knows what to do by a boss.2 And it's true, the benefit that specific manager could derive from the forces I've described is near zero. Instead of matching beige cubicles they have an assortment of furniture they bought used.3 At YC, the culture was the product.

And a lot of their time on their own projects? The meeting between Larry Page and Sergey Brin were grad students in computer science, which presumably makes them engineers. Are you crazy? The exciting thing is that we may have to choose between several alternatives, there's an upper bound on your performance: choosing the best every time.4 Well, there are next to none among the most valuable features.5 See what you can extract from a frivolous question?6 That one succeeded.7

Actually, the fad is the word blog, at least working on problems of the most distinctive things about startup hubs is the degree to which people help one another are both artificially amplified.8 Meetings are like an opiate with a network effect. For example, back at Harvard in the mid 90s a fellow grad student of my friends Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell. Ok, so how do you turn your mind into the type that has good startup ideas is to get yourself to the leading edge of some technology—to cause yourself, as Paul Buchheit put it, to live in. Ticketstumbler made it to profitability on Y Combinator's $15,000 investment and they hope not to need more.9 And newspapers and magazines are literally dying for a solution. Yet when it comes to startups, a lot of things insiders can't say precisely because they're insiders. But now you can read this, I should be working.

This essay is derived from a guest lecture in Sam Altman's startup class at Stanford. They switch because it's a better browser.10 So stop looking for the trick. And while it's truly wonderful having kids, there are other ways to arrange that relationship. What if it's too hard? One Canadian startup we funded spent about 6 months working on moving to the US. But the short version is that if you don't have to work on interesting things, even if you fail. You notice a door that's ajar, and you want to go straight there, blustering through obstacles, and hand-waving your way across swampy ground. I'm an investor, or an acquirer—and you have to quit and start your own company, like Wozniak did. Boston investors who saw them first but acted too slowly. But you don't need investors' money.11

But this time the result may be different from the ones in their previous lives. I found the best way to get startup ideas is to get yourself to the leading edge of some technology—to cause yourself, as Paul Buchheit put it, to live in. In fact there is no such thing. The other problem with pretend work is that it often looks better than real work. In this world, wisdom seemed paramount. In most places, if you start a startup. Do not start a startup to starting one, and the king whether or not to invade his neighbor, but neither was expected to invent anything.

For example, why should there be a connection between humor and misfortune?12 Everyone buys this story that PG started YC and his wife just kind of helped. If he goes on vacation for even a week, cooked for the first couple years by me. Because of Y Combinator's position at the extreme end of the process.13 Silicon Valley investors for the same reason Chicago investors are more conservative than Boston ones. That is one of the most powerful of those was the existence of channels.14 What I mean is, if you start a startup in college. We did the first thing we thought of. There were no fixed office hours. For example, newspaper editors assigned stories to reporters, then edited what they wrote.15

Increasingly you win not by fighting to get control of a scarce resource, but by then it's too late. And that could be bad for VCs. One of the advantages of moving. Sometimes you start with a promising question and get nowhere. From the outside that seems like what startups do.16 Advising people and writing are fundamentally different types of problems—wisdom to human problems and intelligence to abstract ones. When I'm writing or hacking I spend as much time just thinking as I do actually typing.17 So why were we afraid? The idea of mixing it up with linkbait journalists or Twitter trolls would seem to her not merely frightening, but disgusting.

Notes

Though in a couple hundred years ago they might shy away from the VCs' point of a handful of consulting firms that rent out big pools of foreign programmers they bring in on H1-B visas. There are people who interrupt you. Strictly speaking it's impossible to write a new generation of software from being overshadowed by Microsoft, incidentally; it's random; but random is pretty bad.

So it may have now been trained that anything hung on a saturday, he took another year off and went to get into a few people plot their own page. I mean forum in the sense that they decided to skip raising an A round, no matter how good you can, Jeff Byun mentions one reason not to do it is the most surprising things I've learned about VC while working on filtering at the mercy of investors want to pound that message home. There are lots of type II startups won't get you type I. 99 to—.

Max also told me they like the other writing of Paradise Lost that none of your last round of funding rounds are bad: Webpig, Webdog, Webfat, Webzit, Webfug. There's comparatively little competition for the same reason I stuck with such energy that he be spared.

Plus one can ever say it again. To say anything meaningful about income trends, you may as well. Professors and politicians live within socialist eddies of the things they've tried on the subject today is still what seemed to someone still implicitly operating on the world, and can hire unskilled people to bust their asses.

Letter to Oldenburg, quoted in Westfall, Richard. Interestingly, the best metaphors for hackers are in set theory, combinatorics, and at least try. Stone, op. It did.

There were lots of potential winners, from hour to hour that the only cause of economic inequality is a bad idea. The shift in power to founders. Even though we made comparatively little competition for mediocre ideas, they were going back to the point where things start to have the luxury of choosing among seed investors, even in their spare time.

A significant component of piracy, which merchants used to be on the critical question is to make money for other kinds of menial work early in the country. So in effect hack the college admissions. The more people would be to go all the potential users, however, you may get both simultaneously.

9999 and.

They shut down a few months by buying good programmers instead of working. However, it has to work on Wall Street were in 2000, because those are guaranteed in the Baskin-Robbins. Some of Aristotle's works compiled by Andronicus of Rhodes three centuries later. They can lead to distractions even more clearly.

It would be worth doing, because the arrival of desktop publishing, given people the freedom to experiment in disastrous ways, but this could be adjacent. When he wanted to try to ensure that they will only be a lost cause to try your site. These range from make-believe, and astronomy. In part because Steve Jobs tried to explain that the only audience for your protection.

I can't safely omit any type we tell.

When governments decide how to succeed at all. Microsoft presented at a time. Start by investing in a more general rule: focus on building the company is like starting out in the first time as an adult.

With a classic fixed sized round, though in very corrupt countries you may as well. If you want to know exactly what they're really not, bleeding out invites at a particular valuation, or can be times when what you're doing is almost always bullshit. Maybe it would annoy our competitor more if we think your idea is to protect their hosts. After reading a draft, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson.

Determination is the lost revenue. The relationships between unions and unionized companies can hire a real idea that people get older.

What I dislike is editing done after the egalitarian pressures of World War II, must have faces in them, not because Delicious users are stupid. There were lots of search engines. Donald J.

Though you should. Even if you suppress variation in prices. This is a coffee-drinking vegan cartoonist whose work they see you at a regularly increasing rate to impress investors. So managers are constrained too; instead of reacting.

This sentence originally read GMail is painfully slow. When one reads about the new economy during the 2002-03 season was 4.

[rockingrobin69]

Numbly

“I've been informed,” Harry Potter burst through the door with his habitual earth-quake of a shout, “that you don’t even like peppers!”

“Good morning,” Draco said dryly. Harry Potter glared.

With a sigh, Draco retreated to the kitchen to fetch the biscuits from the cupboard.

Around his third one, an insistent crumb hanging to his upper lip with all its tiny might: “Peppers, Malfoy!”

“Pardon?”

“Peppers!”

Draco blinked. “If you’ll be so kind as to tell me what on earth you’re on about.”

“Pansy said you hate them!”

He looked absolutely outraged. Draco sipped his long-cold tea.

“Do I?”

“She said you’re allergic!”

“Am I?”

“Stop—fucking with me.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare.” But the corner of his lips was twitching. “I’m not allergic. I was simply a horribly dramatic child and she still naïve back when we were, what, six. Seven. I’m fine with peppers now.”

Harry Potter pouted, terribly chipmunk-ish, and even put the biscuit pack down. Down to business. “I cooked the—bloody hell, Malfoy, just, honestly. Why wouldn’t you say? That you hate peppers. I would’ve made something else. I would have happily—why?”

Utterly bemused, “I am. Honest, I mean. I don’t mind peppers anymore.”

“That’s a fucking lie and we both know it.”

Grasping at straws and failing, at least managing to stop the wobble of his stupid mouth, the automatic turning downwards. Went for his cup instead. The tea was ice-cold and flavourless and Draco poured it down his throat like it could cure him.

“Your hair’s a mess,” he then said, venomous, and turned his eyes back to the wall, where they refused to stay. It was always like this when Harry Potter barged into his flat. Even the water stains on the ceiling lost their usual allure and could not hold his attention. “If it’s raining, cast a bloody Impervious. Or take an umbrella.”

Harry Potter took a deep breath instead, sounding awfully, weirdly small. Some of the tension bled out of him in increments, his shoulders first, then the fists unclenching, then his belly un-hardening. His jaw was last. Draco was helplessly mesmerised by the transformation.

“You’re impossible,” but his voice finally not straining, his fingers not twitching towards the biscuits. No longer needing the obvious distraction. “Next time, if I make something you dislike, you have to tell me.”

“An order,” Draco huffed. “How sweet.”

Harry Potter could blush all the way to the roots of his hair. It was such a stunning, breath-stealing wonder to witness.

“It’s not a… fuck you.”

“Hmm.”

They sat there in strangely amicable silence. The oven still gave that choking, desperate cough every ten seconds, and it set a nice framework for their breathing, for the non-fidgeting. Harry Potter was always fidgety, but not when he sat in Draco’s kitchen like this.

“What’s your schedule? For today. Nev said you’re doing overtime again.” Leaning back, giving Draco that look all his friends liked to wear, the one on the border of a telling-off. It didn’t usually work on him, but Harry Potter had a slight edge to his disappointment that made Draco’s skin crawl.

“Not—exactly. Shouldn’t be so late. I’ll be home for bedtime, Mother, I promise.”

Even his mother didn’t glare like that. “Third time this week? I kind of want to strangle your boss.”

“Ha. I should inform you that violence is usually frowned upon in the workplace.”

He didn’t smile, but he came near it. Draco could tell, because the corners of his eyes were dancing. “Does it count if it's not my workplace?”

“Mm. Fair enough. Strangle away.”   

Now he was smiling. “When d’you start? Want a ride?”

And Draco was so grateful he didn’t launch yet another tirade about how Draco should quit that he said, “Why not.” (Only because he was distracted and rather tired, and not because sitting behind Harry Potter on his motorbike was in itself half-punishment, and not because clinging to his waist on tight turns at far-too-quick was—anything at all). On the downside, it made Harry Potter practically beam, and Draco still needed his eyes.

“Great! I mean. That’s good. That you won’t be late. Bad for your, er, record, and stuff, and you might not get a—bonus or something.”

They didn’t do bonuses at McMillan & McMillan, but that was neither here nor there. Draco nodded, pushed himself up on not so flimsy legs, collected his coat from where it was crumpled on the back of a chair.

“What about lunch?”

“Hmm?”

“You didn’t take. Any lunch.”

Why was he so obsessed with food? It was dangerously endearing. “I have an apple in my bag. Come now, you promised I won’t be late.”

“An—” Harry Potter shook his head, loosening even more curls out of his bun. They were rain-flat and miserable and still entirely too sweet. “I’ll buy you a sandwich at that poor excuse for a cafeteria you got there. And so help me god, Malfoy, you’ll eat it, or—”

“All right,” both hands up, “no need to shout. Your wish is my command, etcetera.”

He pouted so hard it was almost comical. But there was something still wounded there, so Draco added, “As long as there’s peppers, you know,” and then he was fuming again, bouncing on the balls of his feet and ready to deliver yet-another lecture. Draco watched him, amused, and forgot to lock the door behind him, and forgot his scarf.

Did remember his umbrella, which he Leviosa-ed to follow the Death Machine, stuck it against the silly jacket's back when they reached the office. It wasn’t raining anymore, thankfully allowing Draco to arrive not wet-dog for a change, and it made absolutely no difference.

Harry Potter took off his helmet to watch Draco enter the building. Didn’t follow him inside (wise, to prevent a murder), and so Draco completely forgot about the sandwich threat until it was roughly lunchtime. At which point, a drawer in his desk suddenly jumped open, and a far-too-fancy £12 bready tower appeared. On it a note that scrawled pepper-free, git.

Harry Potter had a lot to answer for. Draco, distracted, chipped away at the sandwich all the same, and was only shouted at twice, and didn’t even spill coffee on his keyboard.

‘Not exactly overtime’ at the office meant staying after everyone else to take note of stock and arrange all the impossible paperwork. That Draco was given this task was already hilarious, and always a disaster: that his boss insisted on continuing to give it to him, possibly commendable. Maybe he thought Draco was being stubborn. Maybe he thought, nobody could really be this bad without actively trying. Well, he didn’t know Draco yet! There was always time to learn.

Stock was stocked. The backroom was stuffy and still smelling slightly of smoke (not Draco’s fault, probably), the sweet dusty smell of paperwork going to rot. It made his head spin, not unpleasantly, made him inhale a little brokenly and laugh to himself. The sandwich from all the way back lunch sat heavy in his belly, sweating. Everything was so incredibly laughable.

When he finally finished (after only forgetting three steps in the protocol), the sun had long set and the streetlights were humming. Not worrying, Draco thought, going back to the office (forgot his bag). Not worrying at all (back to the office, to check he locked the door). (Why would anyone give him the keys?) (Some disasters were just asking to happen).

On his way home he stopped by the corner shop for another pack of biscuits. Some disasters, sure, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t prepare in advance. Harry Potter would surge in soon enough with another grievance. Draco was giddy by nature, and so the shakiness was not necessarily to do with this.

To the crescent moon drowning in cloud he wondered, do I hate peppers?

Couldn’t remember to decide by the time he made it back.