#on the other hand my brain keeps trying to default to the Spanish

[cerealmonster15]

knowing a decent chunk of Spanish really does help with Portuguese 🙏 but also sometimes in practice I’ll forget what exactly the term is in thinking of so I’ll just say what the Spanish word is cuz it’s all I can remember @-@

[deadinside-butstill-horny]

The Night We Met

Part One - The Night We Met

Pairing: Javier Peña/ Female Murphy!Reader

Words: 5.3k

Summary: Murphy's sister travels to Colombia after realising Steve might not quite be A-Okay and meets the Javier Peña.

Content Warnings: 18+ Smut-ish (I wouldn’t wanna read it out to my mom), dry humping, dirty talk in Spanish which reader doesn’t understand so does it really count?, gratuitous love of the black shirt from the torture scene.

AO3

MASTERLIST

Author Note: So here is my return to writing! The word count got away from me but I loved every second of it. Always after prompts, so drop me a message on here if you'd like to see anything in particular. If it's in my wheelhouse, you'll definitely see it.  

Pedro in the black shirt in this scene is what inspired me to write this, I can’t lie. 

If you were brutally honest with yourself, this spur of the moment decision may have been a mistake. 

Other people could make these choices and not have that nagging feeling in their gut from the second they booked their fuckin' airline ticket. You had attempted to grab life by its metaphorical horns and go and sort this shit show out by yourself, but after your momentarial bravery was used up, all that was left was a crippling anxiety that threatened to send you into a full scale panic attack if you thought too hard about the fact you were following your big brother to Colombia.

Yes, Colombia. You, a U.S. national with no particular interest in hunting Pablo Escobar, had decided to vacation in sunny, crime ridden Bogotá on a whim. 

You were fuckin’ dumb. 

Sarcasm aside, you weren’t actually here on vacation, you were going to check on Stevie. Your brother, one of the DEA agents assigned with taking down Escobar. 

You’d been worried about him for a few months, it had sounded like he was dealing with heavy shit in South America, you knew that was the job, but he was still your brother.

His calls had gotten less and less frequent until he stopped returning them all together and the only reason you knew he was alive were your pep-talks with your sister-in-law, trying to help her keep her shit together, but hell, you weren’t a therapist or a miracle worker. So when Connie rang asking to stay at your place you had obliged and she had returned to Miami a mere shell of her former self. 

After a mammoth amount of prodding over the course of two days you managed to wring the truth out of her, not the nuggets of information she had given you over the phone in hushed whispers during her time in Colombia but the whole messy story; the communist Elisa Alvarez, Steve’s kidnapping and the cold edges your brother was developing. 

It was all you could do not to book the tickets there and then, but you held out and supported Connie in the ways Steve couldn't have, taking care of Olivia when you could and just trying your hardest to be there for her. Your presence alone seemed to be enough to help her through the days that followed.  A week and a half after her return, you booked your flight to Colombia in secret. 

You had to check on Steve. 

He hadn’t answered a single one of your many many calls. You packed light and told Connie the morning of, and whilst she didn’t like it, she understood. You supposed that a part of her was relieved to know her husband would have someone in Colombia that wasn't there to kill him. 

So here you sat, two hours into your flight to the paradise destination; Bogotá. Your brother's address scrawled on a scrap piece of paper in the one hand and a glass of cheap whiskey in the other.  The alcohol did little to to calm your nerves, this was a dangerous place for a cop, let alone a fuckin’ clueless civilian. 

When the plane finally touched down, you stood from your seat emptying the last few drops of whiskey which had tried to evade you onto your tongue, you picked up your backpack and queued to leave the plane.

The second you left the aircraft the humidity hit you like a brick wall, it was like all of the fresh air had been sucked out of the atmosphere. On a normal evening you would appreciate such a warm climate, but now the heat meant frustration to your tired brain and it only added to your baseline levels of anxiety as your hairline and upper lip were drenched as you walked through the arrivals gate.

Cards on the table; you didn’t have much of a game plan, you spoke no Spanish and stuck out like a sore thumb. You had the address but no means to get there, you didn’t relish the idea of getting in a taxi as a woman alone in a foreign country, but with little to no other options you went to hail one of the cabs that sat outside the airport.

Your fears turned out to be for naught, well not quite naught as the man had raked his eyes across your body for a large percentage of the trip in his mirror, but he had the good grace not to kidnap or murder you, which for you meant it was a successful journey, how low you had set the bar was just occuring to you.

After paying the gentleman he dropped you outside what appeared to Steve’s apartment building. You take a moment on the pavement to recollect yourself ready for your reunion. Peeling your denim jacket off, you decide instead to wrap it around your waist, tying the sleeves securely. With a harumph, you grab the handle of your suitcase, and drag it behind you. Your success thus far gives you a second wind of determination.

Though apparently dumb luck can only get you so far, because after heaving your suitcase up a flight of stairs and rapping on the door of apartment 20 until your knuckles ached, it began to dawn on you, you had no clue if this was even the right building.

“Fuck.” you mutter to yourself, you should’ve rang Connie or tried Steve again when you landed, but you’d been so single minded in carrying out your plan all common sense had apparently abandoned you. So with a million different scenarios of things you could’ve done better playing out behind your eyes you dragged your suitcase to the small lobby of the building, where the front door stood.

You huffed and dropped onto the bottom step in surrender, not quite sure where to go from here. 

Weeks of anxiety and worry finally took their toll on your body as reality set in, and as it did so you couldn’t help but laugh at the sheer stupidity of the situation you’d put yourself in. A light chuckle escaped your body as you held your face in your hands,you rubbed at your eyes as a way of refreshing yourself before sighing and leaning back.

You must have sat with your head in your hands for around three hours before anyone of note arrived, you had received strange looks from residents in their comings and goings as they stepped around you, your expectant looks turned to disappointment when you realised they weren’t Steve. In fairness, you, a gringa sitting on the stairs at 2am, most likely wasn’t a daily occurrence to these homeowners.

By the time he came through the door, your eyes were closed and your head was leant on the bannister, trying to get what little rest you could. Your eyes opened a crack to see a man and a woman enter the building and turn right, the man had his arm around her as he stared at you in confusion, the look was so quick you may have missed it if you blinked, but they were talking in low whispers of Spanish and from the looks of things he didn’t give you a second thought. 

So you extended him the same courtesy and shut your eyes once again, you heard the metal jangling of keys going into the lock, the sound of smacking lips and then the door was closed. You figured that was the end of it, instead you heard hurried footsteps coming towards you, your eyes shot open as he rounded the corner.

“Estás bien?” The man questioned. It took you a moment to realise he was talking to you, as you took him in you were struck by your stupidity, how could you have dismissed this man so quickly even in the throes of a mental breakdown. His chocolate brown eyes bore into your own as you realised he was waiting for a response. 

“Uh… no hablo... español?” you pretty much asked him, cringing internally at your butchering of the most basic sentence of this gorgeous strangers language, his lips quirked at your mumbles making his mustache raise on one side with his smirk. Now, you’d never been a fan of a mustache, Steve and your father had both taken to styling their facial hair in such a way, and as a rule of thumb they were a big no-no. But my god. This man made that mustache his bitch and that bitch worked for him.

“You’re American?” He questions, smirk dropping along with his eyebrows in confusion as his brain processes the information.

“Oh thank god and Jesus fuckin’ christ above. You’re American!” Your timid nature had given way to pure unadulterated relief. “Stevie, Steve Murphy, he lives in this building, yeah?”

“Yeah… Stevi...Steve lives here- I’m sorry, who the hell are you?” He asks with a puzzled look and a shake of his head, there’s an air of distrust about him for some strange reason. 

“I’m Y/N Murphy, I’m his sister.”

“Sister? Mierda... does he know you’re here?” 

“Nope,” You pop your P as you shrug at the man before you with false nonchalance. “He’d have to answer the phone to me or Connie to know that now, wouldn’t he?”

“Steve.” The stranger sighed, annoyed. 

“Sorry, who are you?” You asked, yourself becoming more bemused by the man by the second. 

“I’m Steve’s partner, Javier.” He held out his hand which you were more than happy to take in a shake, his tan hand was soft yet strong as it held your own captive within it. “C’mon in I’ll give him a call, God knows what time he’s planning on getting back.”

“Uh, I don’t want to interrupt…” You mumble, waving your free hand vaguely towards where you knew the woman was waiting for him, making him smirk once again. 

You were beginning to think that the sarcastic raise of his mouth was just his default resting face.

“You’re not interrupting anything.”

Now I know what you’re thinking, ‘cause I’d think it to. This is how people die in America, let alone fuckin’ Colombia, but if it's a choice between dying at the hands of a gorgeous man who seems to know your brother or a stray that wonders in through the non-descript lobby door then you’d rather go out with a nice view, even if he did have a girlfriend.

If you had to gamble, you’d say you had a damn good chance of making it out of this apartment alive. 

So you nodded and used the hand he hadn’t released yet to pull yourself up into a standing position. He wasn’t particularly tall but he still towered over you, your eyeline gave you a great view past his black shirt which was unbuttoned quite liberally, you assumed that was courtesy of the woman he’d entered with. 

“Thank you,” you nodded at him with a genuine smile of relief. He didn’t reply, only grabbed the handle of your pull along suitcase before extending his arm towards his apartment and motioning to wordlessly say, after you. 

Now you know how people say when you can feel a stare? You had the sensation before, but as you leaned over to pick up your backpack from the bottom step, you felt his eyes laser focus on your denim clad ass. You turned your head in disbelief and found his eyes still lingered there for a moment before meeting your own. Unbelievable. Part of you was flattered, the other part was bemused that he had a beautiful woman in there waiting and here he was ogling you.

You rolled your eyes, instilled with a new confidence as you turned and walked towards his apartment, you felt his eyes follow your form once more. 

Steve’s hot partner was an ass man... Good to know. 

...

As it turns out Javier’s girlfriend, or what you we’re starting to think was more of a one night stand, was not happy with the situation at all, you came to this discovery as Javier pointed you to the sofa before beginning arguing with her in hushed Spanish, the beautiful woman huffed and sent a dirty look your way before storming out and slamming the door behind her, with enough power to make it shake in its bearings. You raised your eyebrows at Javier from your seat. He shook his head with a sigh and began lighting up a cigarette, he turned and offered you one. 

“No thanks, I quit.”

“Woman with an iron will?”

“Not quite,” You whisper, shaking your head.

He smiles before clearing his throat and moving over to pick up his landline. Javier presses a combination of buttons, before putting it to his ear and blowing the smoke from his lungs. His eyes met yours as the phone rang, he gave you reassuring wink. 

“Murphy? … Yeah…  you need to get back to your place now... You’ve got a guest.... No … come find out why don’t you?” Sarcasm dripped from his lazy tone, his voice was so smooth. It was like chocolate on gravel, you could listen to him talk for hours, which led your mind down that deep dark hole of what he sounded like during more carnal acts, he’d be a talker, for definite, what with all that confidence and swagger. “‘Kay… I’ll see you soon.”

Shaking your head you centred yourself, it had been a dry patch for you. You needed to calm down and not throw yourself at your brother's partner, even if he just so happened to be the first man you had any interest in to show you attention in months. 

“He’s on his way,” He confirmed what you already knew but you liked hearing him speak so you nodded in thanks. An awkward silence filled the air for a few moments, as you two perfect strangers shared one another's company.

“Drink?” He offered pointing at the bottle of whiskey on the counter.

“God, yes.” You all but moaned at the offer. Javier chuckled, and grabbed a second glass from his cupboard, before pouring you both a generous serving.  He walked around the back of the sofa, and passed you the glass of liquid gold and took a seat next to you. Close enough to initiate something, but not touching, quite a respectful distance. 

Initiate something? God Y/N, get your mind out of the gutter. This poor man had only invited you in because you were his partner's sister and he was doing the decent thing. 

“Uh… The television work?” You ask, pointing at the empty screen.

“I didn’t realise you could speak Spanish…” His voice was dripping with false surprise, mocking your earlier attempts at the language, though he reached across and switched the box on with the remote, he began flicking through the channels so quickly he almost gave you a headache.

“Oh yes, I’m very proficient, I just didn’t want to intimidate you earlier. Hola Señor Javier.”  You say continuing his ruse. He chuckles at your words, it's a deep warm noise that shakes his entire frame. You were definitely thinking about adding Javier’s voice to your top ten list of favourite sounds. 

He flicks through the channels, for a few seconds before sighing and dropping the remote in your lap. Taking your assignment seriously, you sit up, bringing yourself a few inches closer to the man next to you, purely accidentally of course and begin flicking through the channels as Javier had done moments before, though 3am TV scheduling left a lot to be desired. 

News, News, Colombian QVC, News, News, Soap opera. Bingo!

“Ah, now we’re talking.” You mumble, eyes stuck on the screen of the Colombian Soap opera playing. The two of you sat in silence once again as you slowly sipped on your drinks watching drama play out. 

You watched in silence for around ten minutes, not understanding a single word of what was being said. The scene was on two latino actors sitting in a bedroom. The woman was sat on the bed being confronted by the man in a serious tone. 

“What is she saying?” You question narrowing your eyes at the beautiful woman's tone. Javier, who had been watching your reactions the whole time as you got into the awful tv show scrambled as he tried to listen and translate the woman's words.

“Uh… her dads an alcoholic and she’s trying to support her son… that guy didn’t know about the son... I think… she was happy living a double life without the worry and she wants him to forgive her and start over…”  Javier translated, giving you the general cliff notes.

“Oh shit,” You gasped at his words, but your attention diverted to the screen where the two had continued their heated argument and began kissing or rather where the man was devouring her neck, “I’m getting vibes that he might be open to forgiving her.” 

You chuckled at your own joke, as did Javier. Though this time when his body shook his bare elbow touched your own. 

How was he so goddamn warm? 

All he was wearing was a black button down shirt. One that looked to be the wrong size it was so tightly fitted- not that you were complaining about the view. My God, were you horny today.

You took a gulp of your drink, trying to refocus for the third or fourth time this evening, trying so desperately to reign in your inner school girl and focus on the television, though that didn’t help as the actors were now eating one anothers faces on a bed. The silence was thick with tension, though that could’ve been entirely on you; one innocent touch of a man's elbow and you’re a blushing mess.  

Get a grip Y/N. 

The silence dragged on as you pretended to watch the soap opera you had absolutely no understanding of in a futile attempt to ignore the man next to you. You can only imagine what he thought of your levels of focus on the tv, as you stared at the box in the corner of the room like it was the greatest cinematic masterpiece of all time and you were getting ready to write a full-scale analysis on the work of art. 

Javier broke the tension in the room by finally asking the question that had been on his lips all evening.

“You came all the way to Colombia... Why?” Javier grabbed a cigarette off of the coffee table, placing his drink where the carton of smokes had been. He lit the stick and waited for your response, honestly, you were thrown. The question had come out of nowhere whilst you were still trying to analyse why exactly this man had such an effect on you when he was doing nothing but being a good host.  You hastened to think up a half coherent reply before you just answered truthfully. 

“Steve stopped answering the phone, I mean he’s always been shitty at checking in, even when he was in Miami. When he got here we’d have a catch up every week or so, we all know how dangerous it is for you guys over here, so we joked about calling it ‘the alive check’. For the last couple of months, I was checking in with Connie more than Steve but he’d still pick up once every week, without fail. Then four weeks ago the fucker stopped answering my calls all together and Connie showed up on my doorstep with Olivia in tow last week.”

“Look, you coming down here probably makes more problems than it solves, Steve’s a big boy if he doesn’t call to check in, it's probably ‘cause he’s busy...  He’s-” Something about Javier’s dismissive tone rubbed you the wrong way, call it sleep deprivation or blame the weeks of stress, but you were tired of being called paranoid. You were not an overbearing mother hen.

“My brother always answers my calls. Or at least he used to. I can’t begin to understand what you guys are going through, but I’m not losing my brother to some piece of shit Colombian drug dealer.” 

Javier raised his hands in mock surrender, cigarette still in mouth. “He’s actually more of a drug lord slash narcoterrorist, but-”

“How is he?” You interrupt Javier’s attempt at diffusing the situation with humor, turning to him on the sofa. You rearranged yourself, bringing your leg up so your knee touched his thigh as you gave him your full attention,  you plucked the smoke from between his lips and held it between your two fingers as you spoke. “Tell me Steve’s fine. Tell me I’m worrying for nothing and I’ll get back on that plane and leave tomorrow morning."

You take one drag and offer it back to him, he accepts it, deliberately looking you in the eyes as he places the cigarette in his mouth, attaching his lips to where your own had been seconds earlier.  He takes it from his mouth and stubs it on an ash tray that rests on the arm of the sofa, his focus is single minded on his task. The pressure in your lower stomach is mounting as you stare at the tanned man before you who is carrying out a menial task that has you more turned on than you’d ever admit. 

When the red tip is extinguished thoroughly, taking much longer than you thought it needed to, Javi turns to you, his mahogany eyes have you pinned in your tracks. You found yourself admitting they were gorgeous for the second time this evening, they were the type of brown you could never quite describe, they had so much depth, not quite a chocolate, not quite coffee, they were rich and deep pools. They reminded you of the forest, not the green leaves but the earthy brown, the strong beams of wood that held everything up around it.

Javier's hand emigrated forward slowly, your eyes followed the movement in your peripheral but you didn’t dare look away from the pools of molasses as he reached to grip one hand at your denim thigh, his eyes roamed your face for any sign of this being an unwelcome approach and when he found none his other hand began its climb to rest on your jaw, just below your ear.

You couldn’t say if you moved towards him or if he advanced on you, all you knew was he was on you now as the tips of your noses rubbed against one another.

“Quiero saborearte…” He whispered so lowly you barely even heard it before he leaned in that last inch and captured your lips in a single, chaste kiss. Your lips connected and you realised the heat you had felt from his arms had been nothing. Fire coursed through your veins upon contact, surging through your blood and going south to a pressure that built in your lower stomach. 

Your hand shot up to land on his collarbone, before you could even really consider your own actions you pulled apart until your foreheads were the only thing touching.  He was intoxicating, you could lose yourself completely in this man, he somehow smelt like cinnamon, whiskey and sweat, a combination you’d never thought would send liquid fire through your central nervous system.  You’d give anything to taste him properly, but this was wrong. So so wrong. This was your brother's partner, this was inviting complication to your door, when you were just here to check on Steve. You were here for Steve.

You were here for Steve... 

“... This isn’t a good idea.” You all but whisper, closing your eyes. Regret pulses through your veins at your self imposed restraint. 

“Never is.” He leaned forward and captured your lips. You didn’t have any fight left in you, exhausted and at wits end you embraced your spiral into stupidity instead and your hands glided across the clammy skin of his neck to grab at his short ink black hair. You wrapped your fingers around it to drag him closer to you, your lips clashed, all teeth at first but you didn’t care as his tongue began to fight against yours for dominance. 

He tasted as good as you imagined, he was the right combination of sweet and bitter, with undertones of whiskey and tobacco on his tongue. Your response to his assault on your mouth told him it was go time, Javier pulled you into his lap and his hands lowered to your ass. Your body was flush with his own as your breasts pressed against his chest, you could feel every solid line of his lithe body against your own. 

You licked at his honied tongue, before withdrawing and pulling his bottom lip into your mouth and sucking on the soft plush skin. His mustache tickled your upper lip, a sensation you weren’t used to but could so easily grow to love.  This made him tighten his grip on your backside in response and he let out a throaty groan at the meat he found there, Javier was definitely an ass man, you felt his bulge pressing against your core as you both began grinding against each other in earnest. You felt like a horny teenager as you grinded on a man you barely knew. 

You felt him grip at the bottom of your tank top and begin to lift it, except he stopped, and began to rub patterns on the stomach he exposed. Javier’s mouth descended from your lips to begin to suck and lick at your throat. Your eyes rolled into the back of your head at his work as pleasure rippled throught your body. His hands slid the length of your body to grab at your chest, which conforming to every stereotype was heaving, he palmed your breast blindly as his face was still buried in your hair, sucking and kissing along to your ear, before he raised his mouth a mere inch and whispered  “Te follaré toda la noche niña.”

He said it with such surety that your body convulsed in on itself without even needing to know what the man above you was saying. You could only hope it was absolutely filthy and profanity ridden, because then at least, the sentiment would be shared. He bit at the lobe of your ear before his hands left your breasts and travelled to the hem of your tank top, getting ready to pull it over your head.

It was strange to say that you remembered your brother was on his way here as a man tried to take your t-shirt off, but that’s just the way it went. You knew if that top came off, dry humping would be the most PG action of the night and if Steve turned up and found you mounted on his partner, he probably wouldn’t be too thrilled. 

You couldn’t stop yourself from stroking the man's hair whose face was planted in between your tits as his hips rose against your own pushing his hardened length up against the seams of your jeans, you gasped as he hit that sweet spot. You let out a noise that sounded like a wail. You wanted nothing more than to lie back and let this man have his filthy way with your body. And you know, from the hour you’ve spent with this man it would be phenomenally filthy. The kind of sex that would ruin all men for you, but no. You had to be a good sister. Like a fuckin loser. 

Sighing, you threw your body sideways before you could change your mind and ended up on your back. Javier followed you, caging you with his frame as he covered your body with his own.  Gripping your face like he was a starving man and you were the only sustenance he’d ever need. It would be so easy to get lost in him, to give in to that magic tongue but you couldn’t let this go any further so you placed a hand on his chest.

Taking your cue he paused his tongues assault on your mouth and stopped, resting his forehead against your own. You were both breathing heavily trying to come back down to reality, his eyes were no longer the chocolate brown you’d been comforted by when you met, but rings of obsidian staring into your soul. You wanted this man, my god you did. But this would make more problems for Steve.

The two of you stayed that way for a while, foreheads and bodies pressed against one another until both of your breathing evened out. The silence dragged, heavy in the air as you two strangers both waited for the other to break it. 

“...Is Steve okay?”

“...No... He’s been fuckin’ mess ever since Connie left.” Javier sighed whilst closing his eyes and breathing deep. You raised your hands from his chest, which was difficult as he was crushing his body to yours and cupped his cheek, you joined your lips once more, much like the first kiss. This was sweet and there wasn’t a carnal appetite behind it but rather an understanding. 

The loud knock on the front door startles you both as you’d been so wrapped up in one another you’d not heard the steps leading to it. The two of you split apart like a pair of guilty teens caught in the act. You both stared at each other for a second before he nods at you and walks to the front door whilst rearranging his bulge discreetly in his jeans, this was something you pretended not to see as you sat back up right on the sofa. You had only a moment to fix yourself, as you pulled your tank top from where it was hooked by your breasts and ran your fingers through your hair so you didn’t look like you’ve just had the ravaging of a lifetime. 

Javier pulled open the door and you clutch your hands into your lap, not quite sure what kind of reception you were about to receive from your brother. You hear the two men greet one another in hushed whispers, you couldn’t make out Steve's voice much until you hear his voice clear as day “...what the hell was so important it couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”

You stand from your spot on the sofa and quickly realise the button on your jeans is undone; if you’re honest you don’t even know how he managed to do that without you noticing, even though it's not the time you take a solitary second to commend Javier on his artistry of disrobing a woman. Turning quickly you pull the rivet back through the hole and swing around as Steve crosses the threshold from the hallway.  

Steve looks from you, to Javier and then back to you once more in complete surprise. It takes his brain a hot second to process that you’re here in front of him and in Colombia before he rushes you. Clutching you tight and hugging you to his chest. You hear something that sounds suspiciously like a sob leave your brothers chest before he collapses into you. The front door and Javier’s bedroom both in rapid succession, giving you the privacy you knew your brother would need after breaking down like this.

You couldn’t support Steve’s weight with your considerably smaller frame and the two of you fell to the ground as you held your broken brother. His body shook with silent sobs as he buried his face in your shoulder.

You said nothing as you held him and stroked his hair. In that moment you thanked your every instinct that screamed at you to come to Colombia. 

This had definitely not been a mistake. 

Part Two

[firefeufuego]

allegrezza: chapter two

Inspired by the prompt ‘Media Adaption’ for RebelCaptain Appreciation Week, I thought I’d bang out another chapter of the coda to my Mozart in the Jungle crossover. Enjoy!

‘Tepoztlán’, the voice of the driver carries down the bus as it comes to a stop and Jyn stands and reaches for her bag before stepping off into Cassian’s hometown. It’s a bit odd to be here without him, but the orchestra’s delayed flight out of Rio left her with an extra day in her little surprise trip to Mexico and there’s something here she wants to do alone.

Tapping in  her destination on her phone, she sets off through the streets of the picturesque town, nestled in a valley between the soaring cliff sides of lushly forested mountains. Jyn’s less interested in the landscapes and architecture than the people though, because everywhere she looks, she sees a younger Cassian — in the two boys kicking a football back and forth that could be him and Rodrigo, or the babbling toddler sitting on his father’s shoulders.

There’s a bittersweet heaviness to those fond invented memories that mirrors the ache she feels when she thinks of her own childhood, those early years of happiness making the subsequent loss cut all the deeper. 

Still, better than to have never been happy at all, as Cassian would say if he were here. She misses him, even more than she has done for the past month that they’ve both been touring. 

She’s supposed to be in Belgium now before setting off for the last leg of the tour in Germany, but the thought of not being there when Cassian played his first professional concert in Mexico (a concert that he and Rodrigo had been stressing each other out over for months) was unacceptable. Or so she’d thought after a bottle of wine in her empty hotel room before shelling out more money than she’d rather think about for last minute flights.

Her phone buzzes in her hand, telling her she’s reached her destination. There’s a stand selling flowers near the entrance and she buys the two most expensive bouquets, feeling strangely nervous about first impressions even though the people she’s buying them for could literally not care less.

After a few minutes scanning the rows of stones, she finds them. 

Jeron Andor Lopez and Charlotte McMillan share a simple headstone, engraved with a short message about Cassian and — Jyn notes with a smile — a few of the best bars of the Brahms sonata. 

Laying down the flowers, she gets the water bottle and a packet of tissues out of her bag and sets about cleaning the dirt and dust off of the stone, which looks as if it had gone unvisited in some time. She knows Cassian is never able to visit as often as he wants to and he has no other living family in Mexico, which is why he had to move to the US to live with his mother’s dour brother after the accident. 

Once she’s done scrubbing, she drinks the rest of the water and sits beside the newly gleaming granite, looking around to check that she’s alone before clearing her throat awkwardly. ‘Hello. My name is Jyn Erso and I’m in love with your son.’ She pauses for a minute, tracing Cassian’s name. ‘You would be so proud of him, he’s just— he’s the best person. I feel like I should thank you both, for, you know, making him.  I’m, um, I’m  going to ask him to marry me soon, actually, which is kind of why I’m here. I think that if you knew me, and how I hurt him, you probably wouldn’t trust me with him. There are days when I don’t really trust myself with him. But I promise, on every grave in this place, that I will spend every day of the rest of my life trying to make him happy. And if I don’t, you can feel free to strike me down with whatever powers you have at your disposal.’   

There’s no sudden burst of sun or gust of wind that she might imagine into a response, but the sense of duty that brought her here still feels satisfied. She feels the weight of responsibility of making that promise to the only other people who loved Cassian as much as her, but it feels grounding — more like an anchor than a burden.

After another few minutes of thoughtful silence, Jyn murmurs a goodbye and starts toward the second place she’d come here to see.

Maestro Rivera’s music conservatory is a gorgeous old building, bustling with young students lugging around instrument cases that are still just a bit big for them. There’s a particular kind of cacophony that only comes from music schools and makes her miss Yavin fiercely.

More than a few of the students recognise her and excitedly ask for selfies and after a few minutes of increasingly awkward smiling and being maneuvered within various configurations of friendship groups, she asks them where she can find the maestro. Two of them immediately appoint themselves as her guides, eagerly pointing out various ensemble rooms and places of interest, including a bin where the great Rodrigo de Sousa apparently set all the school’s Tchaikovsky scores on fire in a fit of adolescent pique. With the benefit of years of living with Cassian, Jyn just manages to keep up with their slowed-down Spanish, though she keeps her responses to a minimum to avoid having to use her apparently comical accent. 

About a month after that first recital at Yavin, Jyn — feeling outgunned in the romance stakes after Cassian had so tenderly nursed her back to health then treated her to a series of increasingly lovely dates — tried to tell him how she felt in Spanish, practising in the mirror more times than she was willing to admit until the words felt comfortable in her mouth.

Once she’d said them, Cassian’s expression was almost entirely charmed, but she still caught the laugh he’d quickly suppressed.

Flustered and a little dismayed, she asked, ‘How did I not get it right? I looked it up in a proper dictionary and everything.’

Quickly wrapping her in his arms, he explained between kisses that he’d just never heard such strongly Danish-accented Spanish before. ‘I think your brain just defaulted to the foreign accent it already knew.’

Somewhat mollified, Jyn nevertheless looked up the hardest words she knew in Danish and made Cassian pronounce them, which he did with exaggerated incompetence.

Then of course, because he really was impossible to compete with as a romantic, he took her face in his hands and said, his voice hushed and reverent, ‘I’m falling in love with you too.’

She shivers now as she did then, but her reverie is soon interrupted by their arrival at Maestro Rivera’s room. 

The man who opens the door looks like some kind of vengeful Old Testament deity, all stern brow and long, white beard. No wonder Cassian and Rodrigo are as good as they are, if this is who was telling them to practise. His face soon brightens as he takes her in though. ‘Ms Erso, what a pleasure.’ He takes her hand and presses it to his lips. ‘How you have grown since the last time I saw you.’

Jyn opens her mouth in surprise, brow furrowing. ‘When—’

He links his arm with hers and starts to walk down the hallway, raising an eyebrow at the two students who have surreptitiously moved to follow them and sending them scurrying off. ‘Your father and I crossed paths a few times before I retired here. I remember you as a very well-behaved young child at one of his concerts.’

‘That doesn’t really sound like me.’ Hellion had been bandied about quite a lot during her childhood.

‘Ah!’ He chuckles. ‘Perhaps not normally, but you were so enchanted by the music, even then. You followed your father’s fingers so closely, I’m surprised you didn’t turn out to be a violinist.’

‘I nearly did.’ She’s about to go on to explain why she chose piano instead, but decides she’s had enough of thinking about children losing their parents for one day.

‘Now, I think that you did not come here to talk about your past.’ Guiding them to one of the many photos lining the corridor, he points to one with a hint of mischief. ‘Maestro de Sousa tells me one of my other students has caught your eye.’

The photo shows a string ensemble mid-performance and in the first row sits Cassian at around eight years old, face serious as he holds his little 13 inch viola aloft. She gasps out a delighted laugh at his terrible haircut and chubby cheeks, marvelling at how they could have transformed into the razor-sharp beauty of the man she knows. 

Maestro Rivera laughs along with her. ‘Puberty really was a blessing for that boy. But so talented.’ He frowns. ‘I’ve always thought he’s wasted on the viola. You know, I tried so hard to get him to switch to the violin, but he would not listen.’

Jyn thinks of how Cassian’s face lights up when he’s playing with the orchestra in a way that it never quite does when he plays alone. ‘He’s too selfless for violin, he just likes making other people sound good.’

The maestro hums in acknowledgement. ‘And of course there was his mother. A truly impressive musician. She played like you, not quite as beautifully as Cassian, but with such fire.’

‘With the blood?’

‘With the blood, exactly. I see someone has been stealing my lines.’ He leads her down the corridor to other photos of Cassian, including one of him and Rodrigo in a string quartet, arms around each other and smiling. Jyn gets out her phone and is about to take a picture of it when Maestro Rivera plucks the frame off the wall and hands it to her. ‘Consider this my payment.’

Raising an eyebrow as she puts the photo away, she asks, ‘Payment for what?’

‘For the piano recital that you’re about to give for my students, of course.’ His tone is benevolent but brooks no argument and she pities the poor soul who would ever try to say no to this man.

Within half an hour, she finds herself seated at an old but well-maintained grand piano and surrounded by students. Most of the hastily-gathered crowd is seated but the maestro has allowed the pianists to come up close and they watch her technique with eagle eyes, making her think harder about it than she has in a while.

She plays the Prokofiev from her current tour repertoire along with some Beethoven and Mozart for good measure. Once she’s finished, the piano students are asked to list all of her mistakes, with any that they missed helpfully supplied by Maestro Rivera. 

It’s just like she’s back with Saw, and she makes a note to find his most recent contact details. Rumour has it he’s somewhere in Mongolia doing something interesting with throat singers.

After many more selfies and a fond ‘Hasta pronto’ from the maestro, who’s coming to the concert in a few days, she’s put in someone’s parent’s car and driven back to the bus stop. 

While she waits, she gets a message from Cassian. You still awake?

She goes to call him before realising the country code will ruin her surprise and she doesn’t have enough data for an internet call. With a disappointed sigh, she replies, Barely. Talk tomorrow?

Okay. Miss you. 

She feels a little awful, knows he’s even more stressed about coming to Mexico and the concert than he’s letting on. But she’ll more than make up for it tomorrow. God, she’s never felt better about dropping two grand on a whim. Miss you too, it’s not long now. Have a safe flight.

Yeah, just two more weeks. I love you.

Who knows, maybe it’ll feel shorter. Love you too. So much. Even without those cheekbones.

????? 

;)

[trickstercaptain-archive]

𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑹𝑨𝑪𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑺𝑯𝑬𝑬𝑻

repost,  don’t reblog !

𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

FULL NAME.      Jack Sparrow PRONUNCIATION.       Sparrow. Not Sparra, or however Salazar decides to pronounce it that particular day. NICKNAME.       Jackie, but you can only use that if your name is Edward Teague. GENDER.         Cis male. HEIGHT.     5′10″ AGE.    Default is 38. ZODIAC.         Leo. SPOKEN LANGUAGES.  English, Spanish, French, Latin, Mandarin and several others that he picked up while travelling the world.

𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

HAIR COLOR.       Brown/black. EYE COLOR.       Dark brown. SKIN TONE.        Tanned. BODY TYPE.       Wiry and lean. ACCENT.         Somewhere between Estuary English and Cockney. VOICE.         Deep, smooth and silky. DOMINANT HAND.         Right, but he’s somewhat ambidextrous. POSTURE.     Confident, with squared shoulders and open gestures ( he would normally rest his hands on his hips than cross his arms ). SCARS.         A cut in his right eyebrow and bullet wounds on the right hand side of his chest that left scars, burns along his left arm that he never had skin grafted, a brand on his right wrist. TATTOOS.        The sparrow tattoo on his right forearm, the Desiderata poem tattooed onto his back. BIRTHMARKS.         None that are particularly noteworthy. MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S).       The cheekbones.

𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝 !

PLACE OF BIRTH.        London, England. HOMETOWN.         London. BIRTH WEIGHT.         Around 5 pounds -- like in canon, he was born a little prematurely. BIRTH HEIGHT.          Around 19 inches. MANNER OF BIRTH.       Natural. FIRST WORDS.       Oh it was definitely mama or mummy or something along those lines. SIBLINGS.         None as far as “canon” is concerned, but he has a younger sister Isobel in an AU. PARENTS.         Edward Teague and Maria Sparrow. PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT.       Well, his mother was very involved in Jack’s early life up until her death when he was seven, particularly as she homeschooled him as well as being the dominant parent. Teague was always distant, but that only got worse after Maria’s death -- Jack effectively had to fend for himself after that point, although loosely speaking was provided for in the sense that he was enrolled at school, had a house to live in and food to eat -- although he had to learn to cook himself. So he learned all of those adult ‘survival’ skills at a pretty young age.

𝐚𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 !

OCCUPATION.         Con Artist. CURRENT RESIDENCE.          Primarily London. But depending on the timeline he’s lived in Europe, Singapore, the Caribbean and the US. CLOSE FRIENDS.         Joshamee Gibbs is Jack’s best friend and flatmate in modern verse, and is pretty much the only steady presence in his life. He’s also close to Robby Greene during his childhood and adolescence, and the two do reunite later in his adult life. RELATIONSHIP STATUS.        I generally write Jack as unattached, but I do have arcs where he’s in committed relationships. FINANCIAL STATUS.        He’s neither poor nor rich; grifting people earns him enough to make a living and fund his expensive sailing hobby, but not to live in luxury or completely without money trouble. DRIVER’S LICENSE.    Yup. The moment he turned 17 he started taking lessons. CRIMINAL RECORD.       He was ordered community service in his youth for his involvement in Christophe’s criminal activity, although he’s spared prison because he was the one who brought the man to justice in the first place. He’s also had some near misses in his adult life, but Jack is careful enough not to be caught. VICES.       Alcohol is probably his constant vice, although it’s more of a symptom that arises from his emotional damage, insecurity and fear of abandonment. 

𝐬𝐞𝐱 & 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 !

SEXUAL ORIENTATION.         Bisexual. ROMANTIC ORIENTATION.         Demiromantic. PREFERRED EMOTIONAL ROLE.       submissive |  dominant |  switch  ( he does try to emotionally take care of his partners but he’s much better at being taken care of lmao ) PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE.       submissive |  dominant  |  switch LIBIDO.       High. TURN ONS.        Intelligence. That’s the big one. You need to be able to keep up with him, and you also have to be able to challenge him. Jack doesn’t want someone who blindly follows or agrees with him, so strong personalities are definitely a major appeal for him. Danger and dominant/possessive behaviour is also a turn on, anyone who has shipped with me knows that lmao.  TURN OFFS.        Stupidity, ignorance, being too possessive or controlling, cruelty. LOVE LANGUAGE.    Touch. He’s terrible at words and telling people that he cares, so you have to be able to pick up on his non-verbal signs of affection. He’s essentially a touch-starved puppy. RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES.    Jack isn’t the dominant personality in a relationship at all, he’s much more likely to let his partner take the lead, which I guess could be misconstrued as disinterest if you didn’t know any better, but he’s always seeking validation and approval from his partners so that manifests itself in a bit of people pleasing. But if he genuinely cares, you couldn’t really ask for a more loyal partner.

𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐨𝐮𝐬 !

CHARACTER’S THEME SONG.      It’s so much more difficult to pick one for modern, but this has always been one of my favourite songs to associate with him, regardless of verse. HOBBIES TO PASS TIME.       Sailing is the major one in modern. Jack is good enough that he can and does compete professionally as well as purely for leisure, and it’s genuinely one of the few passions in his life. Music is another one: Jack can play the guitar and a little piano as well, and collects records and other musical memorabilia in his flat. He also enjoys swimming, card games ( including playing poker, roulette and other casino games ), sleight of hand and amateur magic tricks, learning languages and reading. MENTAL ILLNESSES.     PTSD and depression, although neither are ever diagnosed because Jack would resist any kind of counselling or therapy for what he’s been through. PHYSICAL ILLNESSES.       None. LEFT OR RIGHT BRAINED.       Can I say both? Jack probably leans more towards right-brained though. PHOBIAS.     He doesn’t really have any phobias, but things that he’s afraid of include not being good enough, failure, abandonment and fire. SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL.      Heartbreakingly poor tbh. Jack has an ego and he comes off as very confident and cocky, but it’s all just a shield to hide some deep insecurities of his. Not so much to do with appearance -- Jack is vain and knows that he’s attractive -- but it’s his fear of not being good enough that creates this grand facade that he hides behind. So you can flatter the ego and Jack will absolutely lap it up, but if you genuinely pay him a compliment, he’ll have no idea how to react. VULNERABILITIES.       Jack likes to think that he’s completely invulnerable, but I think his vulnerability comes across more strongly than he thinks. Physically speaking, he’s on the smaller side so he can quite easily be outmatched, but also despite his claims to the contrary, he still has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to judging character and letting the wrong people in.

TAGGED BY:  @murroyilodel <33 TAGGING: @cptwhizbang, @thecodekeeper, @aglaecan ( pick whoever you’d like! ), @iniziare, @peaceinourrtime, @traumaturgic, @timelessoldier, @talktoten & anyone else who would like to do this!

[i-am-parsec]

Unaddressed Letters - Part V

                                                           Leaving Jacksonville - part I

The night they leave is warm and quiet. End of the summer, the streets downtown are still fairly crowed after the sun goes down, Stacy has some costumers roaming around the thrift shop while Chase, just across the street, sweats in the kitchen of a Mexican restaurant, trying to leave no meat uncooked and no drink without ice.

During a brief moment of precious spare time, he checks his phone.

“Call me when you are done with the dishes, kitchen boy" reads the screen.

His heart skips a beat and he frowns. Of course she’s texting him, they are friends. They go back home together every single night after work. This is not something worth a heart-beat skipping, when the fuck is his brain going to get the memo?

He can’t continue his internal screaming - those burritos aren’t going to make themselves.

The young girl puts her phone away as an old man approaches the counter. Dark eyes, whitening short brown hair, a full goatee and about two heads taller than her. He doesn’t look scary per se, but neither does he look friendly and yet Stacy is invaded by an strange feeling of warm comfort when met by this unknown client and ponders, for a second, why. When it clicks, her hands freeze. She keeps her gaze glued on the light blue shirt she’s bagging, choking back the tears. It’s always like this, something ordinary, unimportant, pulls the trigger and the pain rushes to her eyes. She manages to snap out of it, but not without the man noticing.

“Is everything okay, ma’am?”

Fuck, even his voice is similar. She fails at smiling and looks away.

“Yes, sir, it’s just…you look a lot like...uh, my dad. Well, not a lot, it’s mostly the beard...I think…”

As she looks down, it’s impossible to deny the burn in her throat and the shaking of her hands. Not now, please, not here. Crying during working hours in a thrift shop that’s probably – totally – laundering drug money.

Well, that’s a new low.

“Did you lose him recently?” asks the man gently, prompting her to look up.

“No, I…I lost him when I was kid. He was shot…a robbery gone wrong…”

He nods, no trace of pity in his features, only compassion and understanding. Maybe he lives in town, maybe he also lost someone in the hands of the corrupted and greedy. Maybe he knows this pain too.

“I’m sorry to tell you, darling, that it won’t ever stop hurting, especially in your case, a loss so unfair, but let me tell you this…” the old man stops for a second, and then, with more conviction than Stacy has ever witnessed in her entire life “…you are strong enough to handle this and any other nonsense that life throws at you. You just gotta remember that, always."

Her phone buzzes for a long minute but she doesn’t pick up. She’s still holding her breath when he gives her the money. She wants to tell him to not worry about it, the shirt is on her, but with such a tight budget, every cent counts. All she can do is smile and thank him.

Another call. She tries her best to sound calm but Chase can tell something's wrong in the tiredness of her "hey". She explains quickly, hoping to ease his friend's mind - he's already anxious mess by default, wouldn't want to fuel it up - and after repeating at least ten times "yes, Chase, I swear I'm ok now", she sighs and then asks.

"Can we go down to the bar tonight?"

There's a second of silence. She hates drinking or, to be more precise, she hates seeing him drinking. She claims he likes it a bit too much for his own good. She continues.

"I'll hurry up and close this dumpster in a minute, and then we go straight down to Joe's, what do you say?"

He knows what his friend is doing, she's avoiding herself, avoiding the thinking, the pain and honestly, he can't blame her. He's been there, done that, and she always stayed by his side whenever he went into Emotionless Drunk Mess mode, so he has no problem returning the favor now.

"I say I'm covered in sweat, blood and other unknown bodily fluids so maybe we go home and take a shower first?"

When she laughs, he feels his heart become a little lighter.

"First of all: ew, gross; secondly: We take shower? Are you suggesting we take it together, Brody?"

And there it is, that's the Stacy he knows and loves - a teasing smart ass. This time though, he doesn't let her words fluster him - too much - and attacks back.

"Of course, Walters, we gotta do it for the environment's sake, you know? We gotta save water!"

"Oh, yeah, totally, that’s why, it has nothing to do with you dying to see me naked."

"I feel so insulted you would even dare to think that, young lady, I am a gentleman!"

"Oh, sure thing, perv. Okay, I'll finish here and meet you outside in a bit."

The smile on his face lingers all the way until he sees her walking out the store. He nods curiously at the bag on her hand. She smiles like a kid planning a prank and simply winks.

“I’m just borrowing a little something.”

“Uh, yeah, that’s called stealing, Stacy.”

She chuckles and then, as she usually does, starts a fire in his chest with just a short phrase.

“Don’t judge me, I just want to look pretty for our date.”

She’s joking, Brody, she’s fucking joking, like all friends do.

Just as they get to their stop, their bus arrives.

“This must be our lucky night” exclaims Stacy surprised. Once they are settled in their seats, she rests her head  on his shoulder and grabs his hand. Chase simply does his best to not suffer a stroke.

“We have to get out of here, dude. Soon.”

“That’s the plan” stutters the young man, wishing he could sound a bit less nervous by something that they have been doing for years now.

“Yeah, I know, but we always talk about it as a goal in the future and I…I don’t know. I feel like we shouldn’t wait too long or we might end up never leave this town” mutters Stacy with a sudden grim tone.

“Don’t say that, dude, of course we are doing it,” says her friend as her grabs her chin, looking for her eyes, all awkwardness replaced by the imperative need to bring her smile back “we promised we would, didn’t we?”

She nods half-heartedly and snuggles up against him, like a lost dog hides from the rain under a frail tree. As he hugs her, bringing her closer, he whispers against her dark hair: “Let’s set a date.”

“For our wedding? Sorry, Brody, but you haven’t even proposed to me yet” she jokes dryly.

Ignoring the sudden rush of heat on his body, he replies: “No, dumbass, for our escape!”

She come out of her shelter and looks at him with a hint of excitement on her eyes.

“A date?”

“Yeah, a date. Tell me when you want to leave.”

She bites her lower lip - one of her many quirks that drives him insane - and inhales slowly. As she breathes out, she answers: “End of this year. That should give us enough time to save a decent amount of money, make a good plan and maybe find a place to rent.”

“Well, end of the year it is. December 31 we are getting the fuck out of Jacksonville.”

And when he laughs, she feels the whole world become a little lighter.

More info, previous chapters, tag list AND HEADCANONS under the cut

First and foremost, I apologize for any mistakes in the chapter. This one wasn’t proof-read either and on top of that I wrote it on a rush but hopefully it’s decent ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

All chapters in chronological order, here. Previous chapter, here. Next chapter, here.

SO, yes, this is a two-part chapter - truth be told, I’m only posting this now and not both parts as one since I’m quite busy and have no time to finish writing it but I still wanted to post something now as, idk, a christmas special???? whatever, I just wanted to post it, lol

Anyways, HEADCANON TIME:

* As you may have noticed in the last chapter, Chase and Stacy’s daughter - Esperanza (which, by the way, means Hope in Spanish) - has a VERY Latino name, well, that’s because my hc is that Stacy is latina! Well, half latina, her mom is latina, her dad is white and because Stacy is white-passing and her mom knew about the struggles of being a Latina woman in the US, Stacy’s parents decided to give her a very white first name, so she would have it “easier” in life. Spoiler alert: she didn’t have it easier in life. Like, at all.

* Despite that, she still has a very Latino second name - Dolores (which means Pains in Spanish *winkwink*) - that she loves just as much as she loves her Latino heritage, and that’s why she named her daughter like that - Chase 100% loves the name as well.

* This is kinda spoilerish (because I will explore this headcanon in far more depth later on the fic) but I still feel you guys should know: Before they were the best of friends, Henrik and Chase were penpals - they met through an elementary school penpal project and kept writing each other all the way until adulthood, when they finally met face to face.

* Neither Chase or Stacy had pets - or were allowed to have any - by the time they became friends, but they both love animals and started feeding a cat they always came across on their way to school. They named the cat Sam.

* Stacy is allergic to cats. She loved Sam from a distance.

* Chase knows quite a bit of Spanish Stacy taugh him. She didn’t teach him just for funsies but because she ended up getting him a job in a Mexican restaurant and the owners didn’t speak English. She was very impressed by how easy it was for him to get used to the Latino enviroment and how good he turned out to be at cooking.

* Chase knows Stacy likes her second name better than her first, but sucks at pronuncing it correctly so he only call her Dolores jokingly andsometimeswhentheyhavesex

* They weren’t each others “first”, but Stacy told Chase after they did it for the first time that she had never enjoyed sex before him (and Chase almost cried because of such huge compliment).

* Esperanza is fluent in Spanish and English and knows a bit of German thanks to Uncle Henrik. Henrik is also Esperanza’s godfather.

I have way more headcanons but all of them are incredibly spoilery, so this is all you get for now. Now let’s move on to the next chap-

❤  Tag list ❤: @amyxmiaplay, @beck-pma, @closedworldofmathiel, @darktrash-drash, @fanfictionrecommendations-com, @flyingfishflopsthings, @fruitycasket, @happysingingturtles, @hiimizzyxoxo, @hishex, @kitnkas, @mcomegalletas, @mijako98, @mjjau, @mysterious-cupcake-ninja, @mysticalanimallover, @novasingalaxies, @plutoandpolaris, @probablyghosting, @randomartdudette, @saltyweirdbi, @sassy-in-glasses, @scarlet--raven, @septicuniverse, @skyewardlight, @thevampireauthoress, @youllnevertaketheskyfromme

Thank you so much for reading, hope you enjoyed it! If you did, please reblog, that helps me a lot ❤

[brigdh]

Reading Definitely Not Wednesday

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey. A space opera set in the relatively near future. Humans have colonized Mars and the asteroid belt, and a few scattered populations make due on the moons of planets further out. There is, however, no faster-than-light travel, no contact with any solar system beyond our own, no sentient AIs, and no aliens. A major theme of the book is the culture clash between those who live on Earth or Mars – the superpowers of this future – and those who live in the Belt, where mining is the preeminent economy and life is the hardscrabble sort where even water and oxygen have to be imported, never mind concepts like justice and equality. Different characters move from one place to the other or switch allegiances, but their origins are as baked in as we would regard ethnicity or nationality. As one character puts it, "A childhood spent in gravity shaped the way he saw things forever." Corey (who is actually two separate dudes writing under a penname) does a wonderful job of fleshing out the background worldbuilding. I loved references to fungal-culture whiskey, Bhangra as the default elevator muzak, hand gestures exaggerated to be seen through a spacesuit, and largely unintelligible localized slang (“Bomie vacuate like losing air,” the girl said with a chuckle. “Bang-head hops, kennis tu?” / “Ken,” Miller said. /“Now, all new bladeboys. Overhead. I’m out.”). It feels like a more detailed world than a lot of sci-fi does. Which is good, because the characters are not all that compelling. The two POVs are Jim Holden and Detective Miller. Holden is the second-in-command on an unimportant spaceship that works as a freight hauler, moving ice back and forth between the Belt and Saturn. Things change dramatically when a mysterious someone attacks their ship and kills everyone except for Holden and a few others, and he finds himself centrally involved in the runup to war. He has the most generic action-movie-hero personality I can imagine, with no discernable characteristics except 'idealistic' (and I really only know that because other people keep telling him he is), kinda nervous about being suddenly thrust into command but doing a good job, a womanizer (but see, it's okay because he just keeps genuinely falling in love with so many women!), and earnest. He's fine. He's not even objectionable, just incredibly boring. He comes with a crew of entirely indistinguishable followers that I couldn't keep straight, but that's all right because most of them get killed off so I no longer had to try to remember who was who. He also develops a romance that is 100% unbelievable, but I suppose that's what action-movie-heroes do, so who's even surprised. Miller is a detective on Ceres, the largest city in the Belt, who's been hired by a rich family to track down their anarchist, slumming daughter. Miller is an incredibly cliche noir protagonist - alcoholic, divorced, not as good as he used to be, cynical, a little bit corrupt but underneath it all he still remembers his good intentions – but at least that means he has more of a personality than Jim, even if it's a personality you've seen a thousand times before. On the other hand, Miller becomes obsessed with this dead/missing girl in a way that is painfully stereotypical Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Two things kept this from ruining Leviathan Wakes for me. One, Miller is at least somewhat self-aware about it: This was why he had searched for her. Julie had become the part of him that was capable of human feeling. The symbol of what he could have been if he hadn’t been this. There was no reason to think his imagined Julie had anything in common with the real woman. Meeting her would have been a disappointment for them both. And two, there's a twist near the end that allows Julie to finally have her own voice in the text, and not exist solely as Miller's imagined dependance on her. It takes almost half the book for Miller and Holden to finally cross paths, at which point the missing-girl mystery and the war plot combine and take a twist for a direction I DID NOT SEE COMING. I am ambivalent on whether to spoil this; on the one hand, I read it unprepared and it was incredibly awesome to experience it that way. On the other hand, I suspect this is information that will be a determining factor for many people on whether they want to read it or not. So: halfway through, Leviathan Wakes takes a wild jump and becomes about a zombie outbreak. I would not have previously thought that 'space opera' and 'zombie apocalypse' are two genres that should be combined, but the tension and excitement skyrocket once the book takes this turn, transforming it from average quality to 'I CANNOT STOP READING, MUST FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT'. So, good choice! The sequence with Miller and Holden trapped on a small space station trying to sneak their way past zombie hordes is one of the most thrilling I've read in ages. Leviathan Wakes is the first book in a series (apparently it was originally supposed to be a trilogy, but there's currently eight books out with at least one more planned, along with a batch of short stories) and has also become a show on the Syfy network that I haven't seen. I feel like I've spent a lot of this review complaining, but honestly I mostly enjoyed the book and am planning to read the sequels. The fact that people seem to like the characters from future books more than these ones certainly doesn't hurt! Pig/Pork: Archaeology, Zoology and Edibility by Pia Spry-Marques. A nonfiction book about everything remotely related to the farming and eating of pigs. I expected from the subtitle and the author's personal background that archaeology would be the main focus, but it turns out that's really only the first two chapters, which cover the Paleolithic hunting of wild boar and the original domestication of pigs. The other chapters turn to topics as diverse as experiments on feeding farmed pigs leftovers from restaurants, the spread of foot-and-mouth disease, a special Spanish ham called ibérico de bellota which can only be fed acorns, genetically modifiying pigs so their manure would contain less phosporus, sunburn in pigs, minature pet pigs, organ donation between humans and pigs, the terrifying tapeworms to be acquired from eating raw pork, why pork is a 'white' meat, how to make sausages, theories on why pork is neither halal nor kosher, the use of an enzyme from pig pancreases in wine production, EU food-safety regulations on traditional pork dishes, Cuba's 'Bay of Pigs', the Pig War between the US and Canada in 1859, and Oliver Cromwell's favorite pig breed. Basically if it has the remotest connection to the title, Spry-Marques has included it. She even includes recipes for each chapter, though some of them are clearly more for amusement than actual consumption – I can't imagine anyone having just finished a chapter on how eating raw pork will give you cysts in your brain is eager to try figatellu, a type of uncooked sausage from France. And it would take a braver foodie than me to taste "Asian-inspired pork uterus with green onion and ginger". In fact, as is probably not surprising for any book which touches on factory farming however briefly, you will probably come away not wanting to eat pork at all for a while. Spry-Marques's writing is breezy and conversational, which kept me turning the pages even when the structure was a bit scattered. I wish it were more focused, but it's a great book for anyone who enjoys popular science, history, or food writing. I read this as an ARC via NetGalley. Song of Blood & Stone by L. Penelope. A YA fantasy novel with some unusual elements. Rather than being set in vaguely medieval England or a dystopian sci-fi future, we're in a country where the technology seems to be around 1900: cars and electric lights exist, but they're restricted to rich cities, and someone coming from rural poverty might well have never seen either. Magic exists, but comes from one's heritage; you're either born with it or not. In Elsira, where our story is set, it's rare to the point of nonexistence. Our heroine Jasminda, however, does have magic, due to her father having been a refugee from the neighboring country of Lagrimar, where magic is common. Elsira and Lagrimar have been constantly at war for hundreds of years, but are separated by a magical Barrier which allows no one to pass through, except on rare occasions when a temporary breach happens and violence erupts. Elsirans are light-skinned and Lagrimari are dark-skinned, so Jasminda has dealt with fairly severe racism throughout her life. The story starts when Jasminda runs across Jack, a Elsiran soldier just back from spying in Lagrimar who has super important information that must get back to the capital as soon as possible; unfortunately Jack has just been shot and is closely pursued by a troop of Lagrimari soldiers. Jasminda and Jack team up, fall in love, and try to prevent the coming outbreak of war. The most revealing thing I can say about Song of Blood & Stone is that it's very, very YA. (As you could probably guess, what with its title that fits exactly into the pattern of the 'YA title' meme currently going around tumblr.) Almost everything that happens is easily predictable from the back cover (Jack's long-withheld backstory is clearly supposed to be a shocking twist, but it's obvious from the moment he appears), the prose is mediocre but fine, good and bad guys are clearly signalled, the real world parallels (racism, treatment of refugees, domestic abuse) are good-hearted but extremely Social Justice 101. On the plus side, the beginning was the worst part and it got better and better as it went along; several developments near the very end were so interesting that I'm tempted to read the sequel, despite my initial boredom. Overall it's not a bad book, but I'd only recommend it to people who are extremely affectionate of the most repetitive tropes of the YA genre. I read this as an ARC from a GoodReads giveaway.

[DW link for easier commenting]

[miphastudies]

17 Questions for 17 People

Thanks @its-bianca​ for tagging me in this! Sorry it’s taken so long, we’re in a third lockdown and I’m pretty sure my body thinks that time no longer exists.

Nicknames: Kim, Kimbo, Kimberlim, Kimothy, Kimberley Dibberley (For some reason my family thought that a nickname based off Cat’s other personality from Red Dwarf, Dwayne Dibberley, was funny and it’s stuck with me my whole life), as well as KIIII (shouted by my sister when she was about 2 and couldn’t pronounce my name, my best friend now yells it when she wants my attention) and Kim-Kim by my Dad who refuses to believe I’ve grown up (beats Kimberley Dibberley any day) 

Height: 5'9 - towering over most men is fun, I suggest it to all of you, I’d rather round it up to six foot, but I probs stopped growing at 20.

Hogwarts House: Well I got Gryffindor when I first went on that site, but being my goth self I had to take the test again until I got Slytherin - as far as I remember I had unicorn hair (or horn?) or something of the like in my wand but I’m not gonna fuel JK’s anti-trans pockets by visiting Pottermore ever again. 

Last thing I googled: The soundtrack for Futurama’s Luck of the Fryrish episode, I knew Simple Minds were on it but I could’ve sworn Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty was on it, but apparently not. I spent a good half hour trying to sing it into google with their new song-analysis thing to no avail, so I ended up siphoning through all the songs Lisa Simpson has ever played on her Sax to find out what it was (I should be doing my dissertation proposal but my tutors haven’t got back to me yet so what can ye do).

Song stuck in my head: yknow wha I’m just gonna list the songs that have been stuck in my head so far today because it’s too many to be just one as I keep cycling through them (also gonna link them so you can see how garbo weird my music taste is)

Run - Joji Alive - Pearl Jam Clinging On For Life - The Hoosiers Tension - Avenged Sevenfold  Boots of Spanish Leather - Bob Dylan Nutshell - Alice in Chains Jaded - Aerosmith  The Sea of Tragic Beasts - Fit For an Autopsy 

I’ll add my current favourite at the bottom too for good measure (Honestly I spend way too much time listening to music and I regret nothing)

Number of followers: Currently 85. I’ve got about 2k on my main blog but I’ve not touched that since July 2017.

Amount of sleep: Good lord, so I aim for 8 hours, sometimes I only get 5.5 or something along those lines, other times I depression nap during the day and can’t sleep at all, sometimes (like this morning) I’ll go to get up at a normal person time such as 9am when my body naturally wakes me up, but it’s so dark and gloomy outside and cold in my room that I just stay in bed and end up accidentally falling back asleep. 12pm gang rise up xo 

Lucky number: 7

Dream Job: Hopefully I get somewhat successful in monetising my hobbies, I’m working on it all atm (I don’t know why but I really hate telling people about my plans because I’m deathly afraid they’ll mock me or do whatever they can to ensure it doesn’t happen, I’ve got this list of things I need to do for my own mental health sellotaped to my laptop stand that had things like when to clean the house, do my laundry, shower, exercise etc, and my old flatmate/friend saw it the other week and mocked me, so I haven’t followed it since and need to find some sort of other way of organising my life instead). But yeah, hopefully hobby based, I don’t want to be stuck in an office job all my life, and I want to leave the UK (although I don’t want to leave my family) so hopefully I’ll be successful enough to bring em all with me.

Wearing: Well I was gonna wear jeans and my Unus Annus longsleeve but I decided to go full kitchen witch and wear this black milkmaid looking dress with long sleeves that I’d bought for work when I got my thigh tattoo started (all the old men appreciated the legs but I didn’t make any more tips, oops)

Favourite song: My favourite song of all time would be The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony , the band formed at my college, has great meaning and has resonated with me since I first saw the music video after it was played at my Stepdad’s funeral in 2002. Weirdly enough on my last day of college, right after my last exam, I went to get the bus home - put my Spotify on shuffle (bearing in mind I’ve got 805 songs on this playlist) and this came on straight away. That’s probably not important to most people, but being pagan, I like to think that small things like these are signs from loved ones that have since passed. Not too happy that it’s used as the England Rugby theme because it gives me anxiety every time as though I feel like everyone hearing it doesn’t have the same emotional connection with the song as I do, but idk. I saw Richard Ashcroft live and he played this and I legit bawled my eyes out in public, safe to say I’ll try and hold it in next time. I suggest you all have a listen to the song or even watch the music video for it, it’s the most simple but most meaningful music video to me. 

Favourite Instrument: I’m left handed and I had this Yamaha acoustic guitar that my stepdad gave me - and taught me to play when I was about 5, a few months before he died (it’s still weird to me that I had no idea he had cancer at that point and instead spent his last few months teaching me his favourite hobbies) all he had was right handed guitars, so he taught me to play Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters upside down on this 20 odd year old right handed acoustic. He hadn’t played upside down himself before but did it so I could see what he was doing. I remember sitting in our green living room on the couch with him moving my hands to the right position (I don’t know where my mum was in this scenario, probably in the kitchen). He’d brought this guitar with him the first day I met him, it was probably like 11pm but I was 4 and thought it was 3am or something, but I heard voices coming from the living room and had gone to investigate - there sat my mum and my stepdad having Chinese on the living room floor, laughing together, my stepdad saw me and had brought sweets for me and my brother for when we woke up, but he beckoned me over, gave me a lollipop, stuck a two litre bottle of tizer in front of me and told me to dip the lollipop in the drink and lick it (not a good idea as I would’ve been bouncing off the walls, but I think I must’ve had a sugar crash and fallen asleep). My mum had no idea he was coming as he’d sneakily been texting her, asking what her favourite drink was, her favourite food and flowers etc, after they met in a pub when my mum was at a hostel with my brother after my Dad had taken me. My mum told him that the council had given her a place and he decided to show up and surprise her with all her favourite things and play guitar for her after my brother and I had gone to bed, I don’t remember much time passing before we’d moved into his house (where my mum and her new husband live to this day), but they got married a few months later and I still can’t play that Metallica song (I did try to teach myself more of it though). I also had this black left handed Ibanez prestige that my Dad got me for Christmas about 9 years ago, I could play quite a lot on it but eventually just stopped. Very good at piano though. 

Aesthetic: I’m not sure what this entails but I’m a sucker for neon/RGB/cityscapes and that type of malarkey. Also space. Love da space.  Also whatever Cornwall would be considered as. Cottagecore? I think that’s only an animal crossing related aesthetic but I’m claiming it nonetheless. 

Favourite Author: I’m a big goth so it has to be Stephen King by default. I’ve got copious first editions of his books from the 70′s and 80′s that my Mum bought when she was a teen. At my flat I’ve got Carrie, Christine, Salem’s Lot, Misery and The Shining first editions and the others are in my room at my Mum’s house. I don’t tend to read for joy like I used to, or write for fun either but I’m hoping I do more in 2021. Currently reading The Outsider by King, it sounds eerily familiar to a novel I wrote for coursework in college in 2014 and I’m half pressed to think he’s stole my brain ideas. I’m watching you Stephen. Always watching. Always. 

Favourite animal sounds: I don’t have favourite sounds, but my husky Nanook is my favourite animal because he’s dumb and I love him. Also Kookaburra sounds are terrifying and you all should go listen to what a koala sounds like. When I go to Adelaide (hopefully this year, if not next) I am NOT stepping foot in a nature reserve unless I’ve got an anti-kookaburra noise suit on. They obviously don’t exist so I’m gonna have to make one.

Random: I’m part of a viking reenactment group where they use actual swords and fight each other, and we have to basically sign our lives away when we join, to say that if we die, it’s not the groups fault. I don’t actually do the fighting though, I’m part of the villager group, so I do all the crafting and food making and most of the teaching when we do shows. I’ve not yet been to a show as I’ve had uni to go to, but my parents, sister and brother do - They stayed within Whitby Abbey last year during the Viking festival where everyone did the show and the adults got drunk round campfires in the castle grounds. Zacky Vengeance once complimented my shirt if that’s something. I’m also colourblind, got glared at by Liam Gallagher in the Liverpool Echo Arena parking lot and have too accurate a sense of smell.

Sorry this was so long, obviously I felt like word-dumping and my brain has a lot to say as I find too much meaning in these things.  Thanks again for tagging me! I’ve not got 17 people to tag as I don’t interact with anyone at the moment but I’ll come back to this and add people as the week progresses :) 

[evenstevensranked]

#26: Season 3, Episode 13 - “Boy On A Rock”

Louis is under the impression that Twitty's ex-girlfriend Allison is hitting on him judging by the looks they've been exchanging. A plot filled with wonderful miscommunication ensues! Meanwhile, Steve volunteers at LJH and Ren competes against Tom for a spot to march in the annual Rose Parade. 

This one opens with Steve driving Louis, Twitty and Ren to school. Steve takes the opportunity to tell them that he’s signed up to be a parent volunteer at their school, to Louis and Ren’s absolute dismay. It’s pretty great when Louis asks if he’s going to embarrass them and Steve says “Well, that’s probably unavoidable.” Well, at least he knows. But, since he knows he’s embarrassing.. why can’t he make a conscious decision to dial it down?! 

We see that Twitty is talking quietly on the phone to someone before he hangs up and reveals it was Allison and that they just broke up. I love this bit because it comes across as refreshingly grown-up. Another thing that feels more High School than Middle School to me. It’s also a very nice moment for Louis and Twitty’s friendship. Louis is super comforting and soft spoken here all “Dude, I’m sorry...” Awww. I love it. 

At school, the flag core is rehearsing their routine for the annual Rose Parade. Coach Tugnut tells them, “Hey! Don’t get too cocky. One miss-twirl and, well..... We all know what happened to Shamski.” This is so funny. Whatever “unfortunate incident” happened to this Shamski guy has opened up a spot on the team. Literally no one else wants the spot other than Ren, so Tugnut is about to give it to her by default -- until good’ol Tom Gribalski comes jogging into the picture, late due to Opera Club running overtime, hoping to try out. Tugnut tells them both to practice and they’ll hold official tryouts after school. 

Louis is in class about to take a quiz when Allison walks by the door and starts cheekily smiling at him. I swear to god this is so freaking funny. Louis does a double take because... why would she randomly stop and stare at him like that?! There’s this sultry, instrumental Spanish flamenco music playing and it kills me. 

The girl is literally biting her lip... what de heck. 

Of course, this is all it takes for Louis to start thinking he’s God’s gift to earth and that every woman ever must be after him. He goes to talk to Tawny about it and says Allison gave him “The Eye” which is great. Tawny thinks he’s being ridiculous so Louis is all “Sounds like you’re jealous that ~the ladies~ are checkin’ me out.” Oh my god. Tawny says “We had our little thing, and now we’re just friends. I’m fine if the ~ladies~ are checking you out” -- which we know is a lie but okay. Again, this all feels very high school to me and I love it tbh. 

Later in the cafeteria line, Allison gives Louis another look. THE MUSIC KICKS IN AGAIN AND IT’S MY FAVORITE THING. This melody gets stuck in my head constantly. I just hum it and laugh to myself because it’s so dramatic and overly romantic sounding for this situation. Louis is now totally convinced that he’s not crazy and she’s definitely into him. Tawny’s had enough already and flat out asks Allison if she’s been checking him out and she says “I have. I like his look.” WELL, DANG. It’s amazing because as soon as she says that, one single chord from the flamenco guitar plays as she walks away and I die every time. This counts as music humor to me. 

Louis gets lost in his thoughts and it zooms into his brain to show us these two elderly men chillin at a Deli discussing the current drama of Louis’ life. WHAT?! 

This show is so freaking random. I don’t even know where they come up with this stuff. I used to think these guys were stupid and pointless, which they kinda are. Especially since we’ve never seen them before and they’re only featured in this one episode. But, the more I thought about it.. the more I started to find it hilarious. One of them thinks Louis should go for it and date Allison, the other thinks it’s wrong because she’s his best friend’s ex. Um, I agree with the latter. Twitty and Allison broke up THAT MORNING and Louis is already considering going in for the kill. I cannot. He’s insane. But that’s already been established many times and these Deli men are just the icing on the cake. 

Just then, Steve busts out of the kitchen shouting “HOWDY, KIDS! STEP RIGHT UP TO BIG STEVE’S TEXAS BARBECUE!” Are you kidding me right now? Yeah, ya know how I said if Steve knows he’s embarrassing he should just do his best to dial it down? It’s like he purposely turned it up to 11: 

I love how Shia does the shirt-over-the-head thing to hide from the embarrassment, lol.

Cut to the flag core tryouts. Ren tries her best, but of course, Tom blows her away. Some stock music that reminds me of “76 Trombones” from The Music Man plays while he does his routine, lol. Steve is now on trash duty and comes over to Ren and asks how it went. She says she’ll probably be watching the parade from home again and Steve is clearly a little mad. You can tell he’s gonna do something about it which... come on, man. Let the better person win. Coach Tugnut goes on to say one of my favorite lines when Tom asks which one of them made the team: “Well, I could tell you that right now... But it would be better for your character if I were to prolong the agony for a couple more hours.” So good. Tugnut says quite a few gems throughout the series, tbh. 

Tawny is me once again and confronts Louis about him seriously considering getting together with Allison. She, too, agrees that it’s way too soon. It cuts to the Deli guys and one of them just says “What does she know?! Ehh, this corned beef is too fatty!” which just makes me laugh. Louis suddenly agrees about it being too soon and says he’ll put a stop to whatever’s brewing between him and Allison IMMEDIATELY. Just then, Allison approaches him and it takes all of 0.5 seconds for Louis to completely cave. 

The flamenco music is playing again here, btw. 

Honestly, y’all gotta hear what this music sounds like for yourself so it can be hilariously stuck in your head too:

Louis goes to the bathroom to talk to himself (and the guys in his head) out loud, as you do when you’re in crisis. Speaking of the bathroom, ya know how I’ve mentioned a few times that Louis moved up to 8th grade in Season 3? Well, this scene is one of the few that definitely confirm it!! The door clearly tells us that he’s in the 8th grade bathroom. Ayyyy!

Still not sure why the bathrooms are segregated like that tho??? Is that a thing?

Tom is in one of the stalls practicing his flag routine and Louis is shocked. He’s all “TOM! What were you doing in there?!” but Tom turns the tables “The better question is, who are you talking to out here?” Gotta love how Louis owns his craziness and explains “OH! Well, there’s these two old guys who hang out at a Deli in my head and help me out with lifes little problems.” Fantastic. Louis asks Tom where Templeton Park is and we get one of the best moments ever. (Tumblr won’t let me embed more than one thing, so click that link to see what I’m talking about. Tom is the GREATEST.) So, yeah. Louis finds out that people call it “Temptation Park” because it’s a popular makeout spot. Seriously, these kids are in high school ok. I refuse to believe otherwise. 

Basically, to shorten and simplify this subplot: Steve bribes Tugnut with donuts so that Ren will get the spot on the flag core... which she does. Ren finds out and gets mad because she a very fair-and-square person. So, she in turn bribes Tugnut with a cheese calzone to ensure Tom gets the spot instead... which he does. THE END!

Ren handing her flag over to Tom -- whose life has just been made. 

Louis is a nervous wreck around Twitty because he obviously knows that he should not be messing around with Allison in any way shape or form. So when Twitty asks if he wants to hang out later, Louis makes up some bogus excuse about needing to go sock shopping with his dad. Wow. As usual, Twitty knows that something’s up. 

CUT TO ~TEMPTATION PARK~! The miscommunication culminates here and I love it so much. Louis meets Allison at the park and she lays out a blanket for them and everything. They get comfortable and she asks “Soo, you wanna try something fun?” and Louis’ voice cracks so bad when he answers “.......su..re....” Oh my freaking god. He’s totally thinking they’re about to makeout or something and it’s too much. It only gets worse when she asks him to slip into a bathing suit she brought with her. I’m dyin right now. The guys in his head are all “No good can come of this!!” - Ain’t that the truth. This is where Louis draws the line. He tells her that Twitty is his best friend and what they’re doing is VERY VERY WRONG. Allison is confused out of her mind like “....what are we doing?” Then we get one of my favorite Louis quotes: 

I cannot get over how CONFIDENT Louis is?! He thought he could easily make a 36 year old woman fall in love with him. Now he assumes Allison can’t resist his gorgeousness as if he’s 1997 Leonardo DiCaprio. Chill, Louis. 

It’s here that we finally learn the real reason why Allison has been checking him out and invited him to the park. She explains “I don’t want to date you, I want to paint you!” Louis is crumbling, oh man... And it only gets worse. She says she wants to recreate her favorite painting “Boy On A Rock” and she was staring at Louis so much because said boy on the rock is literally Louis:

I swear, if Shia had to actually sit for that painting... that is iconic and yet another poster that should exist if Even Stevens ever becomes as big as Seinfeld. Which it won’t. But still. I’d buy it. It’s actually a real painting by Dan Haberkorn, who was the art director for the show. He has it up on his website in high quality! It’s amazing. I so wish he’d sell prints/posters of it! Gah. 

Allison just keeps going on about the similarities between Louis and the painting: “See? Not really handsome, kinda of quirky, a little off...” “OK I GET IT!” Louis interrupts, lol. That must’ve been a wakeup call. Since Louis stopped their non-existent relationship because of Twitty, Allison tells him he’s a very good friend. I like that. They’re cool after that and Louis poses for the painting. (cover photo) I love the quote here: 

Allison: “Louis, you look perfect. Except you’re missing one thing...” 

Louis: “My dignity?”

Twitty happens to be passing through the park and sees Allison running her hands through Louis' hair to make it look more like the original painting. Twitty gets pissed at Louis for lying which leads to the most ridiculous chase sequence. The way Shia runs is so funny, omg. There’s also some stock song that’s sung in gibberish or something that plays here and it always gets stuck in my head, too. Which sucks because there are no actual lyrics, lol. Louis falls into some mud while running which irks me every time. That poor bathing suit! 

He ends up wandering into the middle of some girl scout meeting. They call him a mud monster, accidentally toss a cake on his head, and start chasing him as well, lol. These chases are also amazing because Louis is screaming the entire time, and we all know how great his scream is. Twitty eventually catches up to him and I love this dialogue so much:

Twitty: "So, why're you running?"

Louis: "CAUSE YOU'RE CHASIN' ME, TWITTY!"

My mom and I quote this at least once a week. This is a nice scene, though. The two of them have a heart to heart. Louis basically says it was stupid to let a girl come between them, so they agree that “from now on it’s friends first” -- Disney’s way of saying “bros b4 hoes” which is definitely what two 14 year old middle school boys would say instead. 

Then the girl scouts catch up to him again and the episode fades out on Louis running from them: 

Some say he’s still running today...

And that’s it! This is one of my personal favorites, guys. I LOVE the Louis plot here, haha. I’ve said before, I’m a sucker for teen drama and seeing Louis spiral into insanity over girls will never not be entertaining and endearing. I think this episode is funny, solid, fast-paced, and quotable! AND again, it’s a personal fave. This one has a lot going for it imo. It kinda kills me to place this one at 26, juuuust shy of the Top 25 (which, can you believe we’re about to hit the Top 25?! I can’t!) but yeah. I like this Ren plot too because it involves Tom and he is the best. 

In case you missed the last entry you can read it here. 

Thanks for reading! 

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[suteshiro]

(1) Do You Sleep With Your Closet Doors Open Or Closed?

Open, kinda? My closet is built into a wall and one of the sides has like, shelves I use often so it’s just open for accesibility

(2) Do You Have Freckles?

Nope! I got nerfed, honestly. I’d look lovely with freckles

(3) Can You Whistle?

Hahaha nope,

(4) Last Song You Listened To.

Night of Fire bc im listening to an eurobeat mix while working on a school assignment skjfvnskjfv last song I Willingly listened to is The Hearse by matt maeson which fucking slaps

(5) What Is Your Favourite Colour?

Probably purple!

(6) Relationship Status.

Single

(7) What Is The Temperature Right Now?

18 celsius/64 fahrenheit. pretty average but for some reason im cold

(8) Did You Wake Up Cranky?

Nope! I woke up feeling wonderfully actually

(9) How Many Followers?

404. Very nice number

(10) Zodiac Sign.

I’m a scorpio and a dragon :3

(11) What Is Your Eye Colour?

Brown!

(12) Take A Vitamin Daily?

I do not, though I used to and might start again, who’s to say

(13) Do You Sing In The Shower?

Not rlly. I shower listening to music and I have a lot of trouble singing along to things im hearing for some reason skfnvskfjb

(14) What Books Are You Reading?

I’m too embarrassed to say publicly which one im reading now skjvnskfjb i kinda wanna read some cute cheesy romance in the nearby future

(15) Grab The Book Nearest To You, Turn To Page 64, Give Me Line 14.

I grabbed the first lotr book and gottt

“Ah,” said Ted, “ you hear them, if you listen. But if I wanted to listen to old lady tales and childish legends, I’d stay home”

(Translated a bit roughly bc my physical books are mostly in spanish

(16) Favourite Anime?

You cant ask me thatt skjfvnklabmksfjb It might be Violet Evergarden? It’s the only anime that’s really made me cry

(17) Last Person You Cried In Front Of?

I think I cried in front of my mom at some point recently while pretending i wasnt crying

(18) Do You Collect Anything?

Notebooks skfnskfsnb I just think they’re neat

(19) What Did You Have For Lunch?

havent Lunched yet, dont scold me

(20) Do You Dance In The Car?

I’m rarely in cars and they’re usually not mine

(21) Favourite Animal?

Coatimundis pretty...... and adorable

(22) Do You Watch The Olympics?

Nope

(23) What Time Do You Usually Go To Bed?

I try to go to bed a bit before midnight but im needy and like talking to my friends so its usually around 2am

(24) Are You Wearing Makeup Right Now?

Nope! I p much never do that

(25) Do You Prefer To Swim In A Pool Or The Ocean?

Both have their pros! I think I tend towards pools bc as a rule they dont rlly have like, annoying consequences

(26) Favourite Tumblr Blog?

@yournewapartment​​ keeps popping up in my dash with good advice and nice stuff and i appreciate it

(27) Bottled Water Or Tap Water?

Bottled waterr the tap water in my building is weird and doesnt seem very safe to drink and by now i hate the taste skjvfnkjn

(28) What Makes You Happy?

My friends, comedy shows, reading good fanfiction, writing fanfiction, drawing my characters, reading about others’ characters, giving gifts, the smell of roses, fairy pokemon, butterflies-

I like being happy

(29) Post A Gif Of What You’re Currently Feeling Right Now.

Im not really a Keeps Gifs That Convey Emotions kinda guy

(30) Do You Study Better With Or Without Music?

Depends a lot skjvfnskfjvn my brain keeps switching

(31) Dogs Or Cats?

Very hard questions,,, I think I tend towards dogs bc they’re like me. Big. Excitable. Needy.

(32) If You Were A Crayon What Colour Would You Be?

Purble.,......

(33) PlayStation Or Xbox.

PlayStation

(34) Would You Swim In The Lake Or Ocean?

I have been in the ocean before and idk how much i liked it but sure id do it again. A lake sounds fun!!

(35) Do You Believe In Magic?

I practice it!

(36) What Colour Shirt Are You Wearing?

Red

(37) Can You Curl Your Tongue?

I’m not sure what exactly this is asking

(38) Do You Save Money Or Spend It?

I like saving money skjfnvksjv I rarely think of things to spend it on

(39) Is There Anything Pink Within 10 Feet Of You?

Ye! There’s a bag I use to keep my chargers in it when im outside. it has flower pictures. very pretty

(40) Do You Have Any Obsessions Right Now?

Love Live,,,,, and now my character Curiosity bc @zuramaru​​ is an angel and running a campaign he’s in and we played yesterday and holy shit theres a lot going on

(41) Have You Ever Caught A Butterfly?

Oh yes!! this one time I was in a place absolutely full of butterflies and I caught one between my cupped hands and it stayed there when I opened them and it was a wonderful experience

(42) Are You Easily Influenced By Other People?

Ya,, I do the fawning thing so I tend to agree with other people by default, lest we have any kind of conflict

(43) Do You Have Strange Dreams?

Oh yes, most of the dreams I remember are. bizarre

(44) Do You Like Going On Airplanes?

Yeah!!! Only done it twice but it was a blast

(45) Name One Movie That Made You Cry.

Inside Out fucking got to me

(46) Peanuts Or Sunflower Seeds?

Peanuts,,, I don’t like sunflower seeds. I mean they’re tasty but. Too much effort for too little reward

(47) If I Handed You A Concert Ticket Right Now, Who Would You Want The Performer To Be?

Uuuuh, FOB probably

(48) Are You A Picky Eater?

Not really, but also yes? I have a few things I absolutely refuse to put in my mouth

(49) Are You A Heavy Sleeper?

Perhaps? I’m not very hard to wake up but I can sleep through a lot of stuff

(50) Do You Fear Thunder / Lightning?

Nah I fucking love it

(51) Do You Like To Read / Write?

Yes!! I think I would actually like to become a writer. Not sure tho

(52) Do You Like Your Music Loud?

Yea but only when I’m really into it. Like, usually I’m listening to stuff and the volume tends to low but then there’s this One song and I turn it up all the way until it’s over

(53) Would You Rather Carve Pumpkins Or Wrap Presents?

Wrap presents, I’ve never carved pumpkins before skjfvnskjfv seems like a hassle and I’d feel bad for not making it look nice

(54) Put Your Music On Shuffle, What Is The First Song That Came Up?

Haven’t you noticed (I’m a star) from Steven Universe

(55) What Season Are You In Right Now? (Weather)

Winterr

(56)What Are You Craving Right Now?

Choclet........

(57) Post A Screenshot Of Your Tumblr Feed.

Here you go!

(58) What Is Your Gender?

Solarian!

(59) Coffee Or Tea?

I’m a tea guy!

(60) Do You Have Any Homework Right Now? If So, What Is It About?

I’m helping translate an entire thing about the way emails work, its a bit of a hassle skjfvnsf

(61) What Is Your Sexuality?

Uuuuh I’ve been questioning but im mlm and also into nb people

(62) Do You Make Your Bed In The Morning?

Yeah! Makes me feel accomplished and sexy

(63) Favourite Pokemon?

SYLVEON SYLVEON SYLVEON

(64) Favourite Social Media?

Absolutely Tumblr. Unless you count Discord as a social media

(65) What’s Your Opinion On Instagram Stories?

I don’t use. Instagram. But sure they’re neat

(66) Do You Get Homesick?

A little. Usually when I travel I’m either at a place I hate or at a place where I don’t have commodities I do have at home skjfnskjfb so I miss my room

(67) Are You A Virgin?

Yup

(68) What Shampoo And Conditioner Are You Using Right Now?

Uuuh I’m using a Head & Shoulders shampoo I believe? WIth no conditioner bc my hair is real short now and conditioner tends to feel weird

(69) If You Were Far From Home And Needed To Sleep For The Night, Would You Choose To Rent A Crappy Motel Room For $60 Or Sleep In Your Car For Free?

Well you see I would choose the crappy motel but 60 bucks seems a bit unattainable so sure, let’s stay in my car

(70) Are Both Of Your Blood Parents Still In Your Life?

Nope, father is Dead

(71)  Whats The Next Movie You Want To See In Theaters?

I’m not interested in anything, honestly

(73) What Is Your Favourite Quote Right Now?

“If I could make days last forever, if words could make wishes come true, I’d save every day like a treasure and then, again, I would spend them with you”

(74) What Eye Colour Do You Find Sexiest?

There’s this like. Really nice honey color

(75) Did You Like Swinging As A Child? Do You Still Get Excited When You See A Swing Set?

I loved swinging! I still do but I’m. Self conscious about my weight and scared of breaking something

(76) What Was The Last Thing You Ate?

Some pastries for breakfast

(77) What Games Do You Have On Your Phone?

20B wives, My sweet angel is a real angel, BitLife, Buriedbornes, Cardinal Quest 2, Crazy 8, Egg Inc, FarmVille 2, Fire Emblem Heroes, Gardenscapes, Get bigger! Mola, Homescapes, Human Resource Machine, Kept Man Life, Love Live, Mermaid Evolution, My Little Star VIP, Piano Tiles 2, Plague Inc, Pocket City, Pokémon GO, Puzzledom, SmithStory, Soul Knight, Tap Knight, Tower Breaker

To be clear quite a few of these stay there completely untouched

(78) Would You Give A Homeless Person CPR If They Were Dying? Why Or Why Not?

What kind of question is this???

I mean I don’t know CPR but if I could yeah???

(79) Been On The Computer For 5 Hours Straight?

… listen,

right now ive only been on my computer for like an hour or two but yeah ive done that,

(80) Stalked Someone On A Social Network?

I don’t think so?

(81) Do You Like Meeting New People?

Yyyyes and no. I’m a bit awkward but I like people

(82) Do You Wear Rings? If You Do, Take A Picture Of Them.

Oh!! I wear this really pretty crown shaped ring but idk where I left it

(83) Do You Sleep With Your Bedroom Door Open Or Closed?

Closed closed closed I haaate when my bedroom door is open

(84) What Are Three Things You Did Today?

Talk with friends, make some tea, read? I haven’t done a lot today skvnskjvn

(85) What Do You Wear To Bed?

Comfy shirt and sweatpants

(86) List All Of Your Different Beauty Products You Have Right Now.

What’s a beauty?

(87) Are You A Day Or Night Person?

uuuh both? hard to answer??

(88) List All Of Your Video Games On Your Phone, Console Etc.

Well, we’ve already clarified what I have on my phone skjfnskjfb

THe only games I know I have on console are Mortal Kombat Armageddon, Devil May Cry 3 special edition, and Okami. Oh! And God of War. I think at least the first and second. Were there more than two?

(89) Tell Me About A Dream That You Had And When It Happened.

Nah

(90) Favourite Soda Drink?

I don’t like fizzy drinks, they make my throat hurt

But Fanta is nice

(91) What Sounds Are Your Favourite?

Melodic voices singing, the rain, absentminded humming, small clicking noises...

(92) Do You Wear Jeans Or Sweats More?

Jeans! I have very few but I’ve grown fond of them. Used to wear yoga pants pretty exclusively before

(93) How Do You Look Right Now?

Gorgeous, of course

Skjvnskfjvn I’m still wearing the clothes I used to sleep

(94) Name Something That Relaxes You.

Ghibli movies

(95) What Tattoo Do You Want?

A star map on my back!

(96) Favourite YouTuber?

Right now I think that’s John Wolfe. But I like quite a few

[anneedmonds]

Life Update: Red Wine and Muffin Puppets

I always have such good intentions for this monthly life update post (in fact even writing the first part of this sentence seems very deja vu), but however hard I try to do things in advance I always end up compiling it at the nth hour on the 3rd day of the month. (It has been on the 3rd day of the month since Ted was born; before that it was the 17th of every month, Angelica’s birthday. I have never failed to publish my post before midnight on the right day – I’m borderline superstitious about it now.)

Many people would have thrown out the whole “stick to the same date every month” rule years ago, no doubt finding it ridiculously restrictive and unnecessarily stressful. But I seem to be at my most productive when life is ridiculously restrictive and unnecessarily stressful so go figure – if I didn’t have a set date for my life updates then you probably wouldn’t be reading these very words. I’d just never get around to it, like my cookery videos and the post about sunscreens that’s been languishing in drafts since May 2013.

(By the way, if you want to catch up on all of the life updates – and there are almost four years’ worth now – then you can find them by clicking here and browsing backwards to reach the older posts.)

After that semi-apologetic introduction, which is now pretty much mandatory, let’s get down to business. Or pleasure. Or a mixture of both. I can tell you what hasn’t been a pleasure and that is the twelve days (and counting) of suffering from minor ailments that have been popping up with almost comical regularity. It’s become a standing joke, almost, that every morning brings a new gripe and I can’t tell whether I’m missing some sort of vital nutrient or mineral and need urgent fixing or if this is just what it feels like to get older.

Do I moan and demand that the GP takes my ailments seriously (“but how do you know that my stomach acid isn’t something to do with my eye strain and my running nose and they’re not all related and I have one great big super-illness?”) or do I moan (default setting) and accept that multiple ailments, aches and pains are just an inconvenient way of life. And be grateful that I’m generally well. And alive.

I mean I am always acutely grateful to be alive and not have any serious illness or disease – I’m actually very mindful of checking myself in that respect and reminding myself that every day is an absolute blessing, but by God it’s hard to keep perspective when you can’t breathe through your nose, isn’t it? If there’s one thing that makes me furious with the world it’s a blocked-up nose. Few things are more cruel. Being forced to mouth-breathe through the night, as the inside of your throat dries into something resembling an ancient piece of parchment from Caesar’s journal and then feels as though it’s been set alight, is one of life’s great injustices. Why someone hasn’t invented a sort of irrigation/misting system for the mouth I do not know; a little tube, perhaps, that just spritzes the tongue and throat with water when you have a cold – or better still, a glycerin/honey kind of affair that stops tickly coughs in their path and provides lubrication.

Coming soon on Dragons’ Den.

Anyway, the toothache/headache/stomachache/bottomache/throatache/cough has been exhausting and I would just like a whole week off. To reset. Preferably somewhere hot but not too hot (Greece? Spain?) and with a kids’ club run by Mary Poppins. Or the Greek/Spanish equivalent. Maria Haciendo Estallar. (Google translate has possibly let me down there.)

But enough of me, I must leave some time to talk about Headstrong Ted (two years and four months old) and Pre-Teen Angelica (turning four in a couple of weeks). They are chatting away to one another now, Angelica in perfect, surprisingly crisp English and Ted in his own strange little alien language that likes to elongate vowels and completely miss off the beginning consonants from words. “Ooooo!” is zoo. “Armer!” is farmer. “Iraffe!” is giraffe. But we now have sentences, sort of, or at least the seeds of sentences – the intention’s all there.

“Go! Go! Gaga’s ‘oom! ‘Ide! ‘Olf!” is, obviously, “Go! Go! Angelica’s room! Hide! Wolf!”

Apple is “pull”. Snack is “ack” and baby is “dee dee”. And all of this is monumentally boring to other people so I can’t quite believe I’m writing it. Next I’ll be telling you about the knee operation that my Mum’s brother-in-law’s friend had before Christmas and how he’ll always set off the beeper at the airport. I am turning into the woman I always dreaded, though I haven’t started wearing fleece tops or saving eggshells. Why do people save eggshells? I want to say it’s something to do with slugs but I’ve had a large glass of quite a fine Chianti (no fava beans!) and my brain has gone soft.

Oh but I do have to tell you about my favourite Angelica-isms. Can I? I promise I’ll be quick. She now  understands just about everything so I rarely have to stop to explain – in fact a lot of the time she can tell if I’m oversimplifying things for her and she pulls me up on it. So it makes it even funnier when she gets things wrong. My favourite is this one:

“Mummy I’m going to paint my face but not poke the brush in my eye bulbs.”

Eye bulbs! I think I prefer eyebulbs to eyeballs – I may adopt it. At any rate I can’t bear to correct her because it’s so sweet. She still says coldsnore for coleslaw, and then there’s the one that had me in stitches the other day: Muffin Puppets. Guess what Muffin Puppets are? She was desperate to watch a film we had saved on Amazon Prime and it was about Christmas with the Muffin Puppets. I had absolutely no idea what she was on about. “You know Mummy, the Muffin Puppets at Christmas. With Scrooge.”

She was talking about the Muppets. Muffin Puppets!

If someone doesn’t form a band and call it that I’ll be very upset. Maybe Angelica should form a band – her and Ted are becoming quite the duo when it comes to singing their little ditties and putting on dance performances. Granted, Ted just sort of spins about on the spot and then falls over, but Angelica is full-on Sylvia Young jazz-hand material. She even introduces herself in a (slightly creepy) man’s voice before she begins her show. “Ladies and Gentlemen, my performance is about to begin.”

One of the things that I wanted to write about this month was how intense it was all becoming, looking after two small kids. Sometimes I feel as though we’re on a treadmill and it’s stuck on the highest setting and we just can’t stop running, you can’t even shift your gaze to the control panel to find the slow-down button, let alone reach a hand towards it.  You’re desperate for someone capable to lean over and adjust the speed, give you some breathing space, but it’s relentless. I thought that the newborn phase was hard, and it is, but for such different reasons. Because it’s new, because you don’t sleep, because your brain and body are completely mangled. But then they get older and the guilt becomes a thing, and you have to try and navigate your way through disciplining and educating and trying to instil in them the values and behavioural traits that you find acceptable and it’s a BLOODY MINEFIELD!

Why is there not a course on this? Parenting? I mean for the love of God! You learn about algebra (haven’t needed it once) and you learn how to read maps (hello? Sat nav?!) and you do classes on 1066 at Hastings and the six wives of Henry VIII and all sorts of things that are inarguably interesting; but surely there should be some basic bits and pieces on kids? Like what you should do when you shout at them and they just laugh in your face, or what to do when NO, NO, I SAID NO! doesn’t work, or how to get yourself out of the black hole of doom that is the “using ice cream and treats as bribes for good behaviour” hole.

I’m sure it’s all basic psychology, but it’s the sort of stuff I needed drilled into me from teen years onwards; I don’t have the energy to learn it all now. It needed to be second nature. If I took my eye off the ball for long enough to read up about parenting now, the cat would probably have been shoved into the oven and the walls would be bright green with bits of dried pasta glued all over them. And we’d have no floor, because Ted would have picked the lock on the cupboard with the cleaning products in, managed to mix two highly flammable solutions together and blown a hole in the ground. All in the space of nineteen seconds, which is the time frame in which he can achieve pretty much anything, including climbing two flights of stairs, mounting a window sill ledge and unlatching a window that requires the skill and dexterity of a professional bank robber.

Right, I’m onto my second glass of red which is almost unheard of for me, but it has been a testing kind of week(s). Not that I’m going to make a habit of it – two glasses and I’m a felled woman the following day, I can barely tie my shoelaces. But I have a new book to read and it’s a sort of biography and I feel that it calls for slight tipsiness and perhaps some light weeping. I’m too embarrassed to tell you what the book is at the moment, it’s a daft sort of thing, but I do feel a separate post coming on. I have a weird connection with the woman in question – perhaps it’s a nostalgia thing – so I’m really looking forward to curling up and getting stuck in.

On that mysterious note, I bid you all farewell until later on in the week, which is how long it will take me to recover from my two glasses of wine! So it’s goodnight (or morning, depending on when you’re reading) from me and goodnight from the Muffin Puppets – if you have any funny malapropisms of your own then please do pop them into the comments below. They don’t even have to be kid ones – my parents still call memory foam mattresses the “Tempura Mattress”.

The post Life Update: Red Wine and Muffin Puppets appeared first on A Model Recommends.

Life Update: Red Wine and Muffin Puppets was first posted on June 3, 2019 at 10:00 pm. ©2018 "A Model Recommends". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at contact@amodelrecommends.com Life Update: Red Wine and Muffin Puppets published first on https://medium.com/@SkinAlley

[3one3]

The Sequel - 796

Clouds of Something

André Schürrle, Juan Mata, other Chelsea/BVB players, and random awesome OC’s (okay they’re less random now but they’re still pretty awesome)

original epic tale

all chapters of The Sequel

“Were you sleeping in the water?” André questioned when Christina emerged from the master bath in the same outfit she had on earlier. It was a lot earlier. He ate his Sriracha shrimp and watched two TV shows before moving to bed. He knew she wasn’t snoozing in the tub because he heard her turn the tap on, presumably for more hot water, when he first got under the covers. But he didn’t know how else to start.

“I was reading.” The rider padded to the bed in her slippers and plugged her phone into his charging cord without giving him any hint about how she felt after having some time to cool off in the hot water. Nothing in her voice or on her face told him how she was currently feeling about the argument or the problems presented in it. Also, she didn’t have a book. André thought she was probably texting with Juan the entire time she was sequestered in there.

“Reading what?”

“A book.”

“What book?”

“Iniesta’s autobiography.”

“I didn’t know you had that. Where is it?”

“On my phone.”  

“Oh.” What is she doing, he wondered after she sat down across the room on the floor by her overnight bag and pulled out her laptop. “I considered eating your dinner but I saved it for you. I left it out but it probably needs reheating.” Please eat, because you’re even crankier when you’re hungry.

“Reheated shrimp is disgusting,” Christina mumbled. Her phone died while she was in the bubble-less bath and there was a word she needed to look up. Juan gave her his login information for his e-books so that she could look for something to read in there. It saved him the trouble of having to go through the same conversation all the time, in which she called or texted him to say she needed something to read and wanted to know if he had any recommendations. He would mention a title he recently read, or what he was reading presently, and then she’d have 10 follow up questions about the plot, the author, who or what it was similar to, etc., so giving her direct access to at least the electronic portion of his library allowed them both to skip all the questions. She could just read the synopses herself. Juan had his friend Andres Iniesta’s book in Spanish, and reading long form text in Spanish was challenging for her. It was the perfect thing to take her mind off André, and it was absorbing work easy to get lost in, so it kept her in the water for a long time. There was something really nice about being mostly submerged in plain hot water and fully engaged in an exercise of the brain instead of the heart.

“I bet it tastes okay at room temperature.”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

“Mhm.”

“Why don’t you bring that over here so you don’t have to-“

“I’m done with it.” The rider shut her computer and promptly slid it into her backpack, glad to have brought it. Normally she wouldn’t bother to take it with her on a two-night trip. It got packed out of horse show packing habit.

“Do you want to talk?”

“About what?”

“Come on. Stop pretending like nothing happened before,” her partner complained from the middle of the mattress.

“What do you want to say about it?” She gently tugged the elastic out of her hair and wrapped it around the handle of the brush in her Louis Vuitton, and used her fingers to encourage the shiny and smooth brown waves to fall on the right sides of her head. André loved when her hair stuck up in the wrong places, like when she grabbed a handful at the top and pulled it to the wrong side without really thinking about it, or when he played with it a lot and moved too many pieces for it to all fall into the default place. He wanted to make their problems go away so that they could focus on better things, like having sex- so that his beautiful girl could pull her hair to the wrong side and make it poufy on top while she rode his lap and didn’t know what to do with her hands, and so that he could worm his fingers around in her hair and make it into a mess while he held it out of the way for her so that she could suck his dick. Not knowing what to do with her hands and getting hair stuck in her mouth would be her biggest problems in life if he had any say in it. He didn’t know how else to make her believe that he was right about living under one roof and sleeping in one bed every night being one key to restoring all the good things to their marriage and eradicating the bad ones, or that nothing was ever great for her if her relationship with her special stallion wasn’t good and put to good use. He saw signs and he’d explained them to her before. He had reasons. She knew them. He refused to acknowledge her theory that he turned a blind eye to anything that didn’t fit into his “reasons”. He wanted her to have faith in him, and in them, and believe in his belief. It was difficult to defend his belief though because Christina was right. His instincts and his trusty solutions that gave him so much comfort didn’t always work. He always felt that a problem wasn’t a problem once there was a plan to solve it. Sometimes his problems defeated his plans.

“I don’t know, Prinzessin, but I planned to spend tonight having Valentine’s sex with my baby, not having awkward tension.” Games were played out for him. Tiptoeing around trying to ascertain the state of her mood and level of grievance was a waste of time. “So if you have anything you want to say or ask that will help us be relaxed together like before I made the mistake of giving you good news...” There was just enough teasing in his leading and unfinished remark to prevent his wife from latching onto it and claiming he was trying to reignite the fight. It took balls to go in with “the mistake of giving you good news” so soon after trading barbs.

“Why do we always have to fix fights with sex?” she asked with a sad sigh. “I tried to do it one time and you said I need therapy. You do it all the time. We get upset at each other and then we end up fucking.”

“Yeah but I wanted to have sex already before the fighting. Doesn’t that count for anything?” he asked back with a wink. It didn’t have the same nice effect as blinking at her on the couch earlier. Her eyes didn’t seem to grow with delight. “Come. I warmed up half your spot for you. That’s better than warmed up shrimp, yeah?” Christina got up from the floor and slid into her half of the bed, but she was reluctant.

“I’m only getting in here because I’m tired,” she warned while André moved pillows around. “I have no interest in any part of you being in any part of me.”  

“Okay. Got it.” He rolled his eyes but nonetheless lifted his arm and expected her to slot into her spot under it. She hesitated for a second, and then installed herself there. “While fully accepting that you have valid and legit reasons to be upset, and while fully accepting that you don’t have to be happy and easygoing at all times, I respectfully request that you not be so sour tonight, in honor of Valentine’s being 20 minutes away and in respect of the fact that I have been looking forward to pillow talk with you, desperately, for several days.”

“Why are you talking like a member of Parliament?” she yawned.

“You keep sending me videos of American politicians arguing in Congress but sounding like they’re not arguing.”

“Yeah but I don’t expect you to actually watch them. I just see stuff that makes me angry and all hyped for a minute and I have to share it with people and Tim won’t let me be publically political so I just send it to you and Juan.”

“Okay.” The player rubbed her upper back and inhaled her hair scent once she found a good place on his rather wide chest. It was a relief to him that his wife seemed willing to shelve her more negative feelings and agitation in order to just relax with him. That sort of thing was always a sign to him that they didn’t have deep lying issues eroding their relationship from the inside out the way she seemed to imply she believed.

“I miss puppies.”

“Does Isa let them sleep in his bed with him when they stay at his house?”

“I have no idea. I never thought about it. What are you watching?”

“Clouds of...something. I just left it on because I saw Kristen Stewart’s ass in a thong. Has anyone ever said she reminds them of you?” André questioned curiously. He felt relaxed too. He felt no tension coming through her body pressed into and on top of his, nor in her voice, or her breathing.

“Marco said I’m exactly like her when I’m sad and smoking. I think it’s just because I play with my hair a lot when I’m sad, and she’s like addicted to messing with her hair. Why? Do you really see anything of me in her?” Christina was skeptical about any potential comparison. She always thought Marco just likened the physical manifestation of her depression to Kristen Stewart’s brooding and quiet and ticky portrayal of the girl in Twilight.

“Oh I see the opposite. That’s funny, actually. I was thinking that she kind of looks like you when she’s wearing makeup and pretty clothes and forced to be like a girl for ads and things- when she’s pretty.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say,” the rider snorted. “Forced to be like a girl? Okay, maybe she isn’t the most feminine stylistically when she’s just chilling with her girlfriend, but that’s...I don’t know. You’re not supposed to say crap like that, boyfriend.”

“Whatever. Her facial features remind me of you when she wears fancy makeup.” And yes, maybe I could see Marco’s point too, the German acknowledged to himself while he watched the actress on screen. Only when things are really, really bad for her. When she gets skinny, and pale, and hangs her head a lot.

“Pfft. I’m way cuter than her.”

“Okay.” André smiled and prepared to leave the conversation there, but his wife reached down and slapped his crotch area. “Ow! I meant “yes”! You are way cuter!”

“Good boyfriend.” She patted his left pectoral muscle praisingly and then returned her hand to the small gap between their upper bodies. Her nose was right on his t-shirt and it reported to her that he was using new laundry detergent. That made her sad, for no particular reason. There were a lot of things that would have to change soon. There were all sorts of foods and products she was used to and which she wouldn’t have easy access to in Germany, and not just for herself or the family. Bedding, hay, and grain for the horses would all have to come from different distributors, and she didn’t know if it was easy to get the brands and varieties she preferred and which she knew worked well for her animals. Of course Tom would know what was good and where to get it, but if it was different then there was no guarantee to her that it was as good as what she was used to. Those unknowns bothered her a lot. Unknowns were a major reason she dreaded the final move. “Love you,” she mumbled, thinking about how much she was going to need to lean on her pillow, figuratively speaking, while adapting to her new home. To her his primary function would be to help her figure out those product conflicts, and find ways to adapt. She knew she’d need him, and regardless of what underlying problems were bubbling to the surface, she was glad he was the one that would be there.

“Love you,” he shot back as if it were a competition. “Are you going to sleep? You really don’t want any dinner?”

“I’m not hungry. I’ll survive ‘til morning.”

“Are you still making me nice breakfast?” His question was delivered like that of a sheepish little boy who was afraid his mom wouldn’t still look after him after he defied an instruction and angered or disappointed her enough to receive a major dressing down.

“Babe I came here almost with the exclusive purpose of giving you 24 hours of being treated as well as you deserve most days. I came today for you- to try to do all the stuff for you that I would do every day if we were together. I came to make you pancakes and deep condition your hair and listen to you bitch about Tuchel and rub your back and tell you it’s completely fine to call Marco not-nice names for being in your way and to make you smile and shit. I’m not gonna not do all that just because you reminded me of a problem we’ve had for almost a year.”

“I thought you came to get Mausi and flowers.”

“Well you’re dumb, so that doesn’t surprise me.”

“Meanie,” André pouted. He wasn’t that offended. In fact, he was delighted to hear that taking care of him and delivering special treatment were the primary purposes for her visit. “When are we doing my hair?”

“After pancakes.”

“Can you not wake up really early for Mausi and to make the pancakes and then bring both to me? I don’t want to wake up and eat pancakes right away. Can we-“

“Are you seriously trying to schedule your special no-longer-a-surprise Valentine’s Day breakfast?” Christina asked skeptically as she lifted her head to glare at him more directly.

“Hear me out,” he laughed. “Mausi will probably wake up at 8. That’s when he’s been getting up. Let’s set our alarm for 7 and have sex first, and then I’ll look after him while you make the nice breakfast. After food you can do my hair. Then you can work out or hang with Mausi or whatever while it’s conditioning, and after I shower and everything we’ll go to the park.”

“That sounds like the least romantic Valentine’s Day ever.” Her brows knitted together and her mouth slanted sharply in one direction. The holiday didn’t even really matter to her that much. It just seemed ridiculous to her to plan it in such a manner. It sounded more like trying to finagle an intricate schedule of things on a to-do list. Her idea was to wake up before both boys to make their three course breakfasts and then to serve it to them in bed and discuss what to do with the rest of their time together while they ate. Other activities she was interested in included napping, and playing with her son while waiting for her flowers to be delivered or for André to make an excuse to go out for something but really go get her a bouquet, box, bag, or bucket of flowers.

“Well you’re cramping things because you wasted a couple of hours in the bath and because we’re not having sex right now.”

“What is your sex obsession? Have you not gotten off since I was last here? Does your hand not work anymore?” the rider teased. She also settled back into her place. André slid his hand down her back to squeeze her butt.

“No I just want you. Isn’t that allowed?”

“Yes,” she replied quietly. Aww.

“Does that turn you on? Can we have sex now?”

“You’re so lame! And hairy. Your arm feels extra hairy,” Christina thought out loud while she petted the player’s arm resting on his chest. “Is this your winter coat? Are you going to shed when the days get longer?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you should deep condition my whole body.”

“I’m really glad I won’t have to miss your furry arms every day soon.”

“You keep switching from like...sarcastic and not serious to quiet and sort of serious and sweet and I can’t tell if that means you want to snuggle and go to sleep, or you’re sort of upset still and want to go to sleep, or if it means you want to have sex but you’re trying to get me to be sweet to you, or you’re trying to get me to seduce you and make you horny. See! See? I get confused easily when I don’t see you. I forget how to read Prinzessin-speak. This is why I know we’ll be better when you live here.”

“No. You’re doing fine. You can’t figure out which it is because I can’t either.” The confused and confusing girl tilted her head to look up at him and blushed a little. “To be honest I’m not feeling like this is a super sexy moment, or a romantic one, but I like what you said, and I want to give you whatever you want, so it’s not clear in my head what I want to do right now. I’m not really in the mood, but that doesn’t really matter, and usually you make me get into it eventually anyway...but I’m sleepy and I don’t like...like, scraping away an important conversation and the associated reflection period by having sex instead.” Her right knee crept over the player’s waist, claiming more territory for herself. The gesture was slightly contradictory given her statement. It was an unavoidable fact that one of her most valued ways to make a decision or reach a conclusion was to get as comfortable as possible in her happy place, and attaching herself as comprehensively as possible to André was to be in her happy place, traditionally. Juan’s microhabitat was where she felt at home in England. André’s was where she usually felt at home in any place, and where she wanted to feel it most. The disconnect they discussed earlier sometimes made that difficult, or impossible.

“That’s good to hear I guess- that I can’t read your signals clearly because they aren’t clear- but I don’t want to have sex if you don’t want, baby.” The German began to rotate to his side, and held onto her knee so that it would stay over his hip. He hugged her head too. “It’s not that nice for me if you’re not enjoying too.”

“I always enjoy being with you,” she protested. I really have no idea what I want here, she sighed inside. Why is this so hard? He was laughing at her.

“How about we just stop thinking about it? How about you tell me something, you pick something to talk about, and then...either we fall asleep or we don’t. What’s been on your mind lately that hasn’t come up, or hasn’t seemed important enough to mention, or is better to save for face to face? Anything?”

“I think I want to end some of my sponsorships, or run them out and not renew.”

“Really?” André had to let go of her head to allow her to speak freely. He even thought he misheard her the first time.

“Yeah. I know this could be my most profitable year with the Olympics and everything, but I want to scale back. I don’t want to be in ads or magazine features for D&G anymore, or make ad posts for the supplements, or hock champagne at horse show cocktail parties. Adidas matters to me. They’ve done things for me. They give me a lot of money. But I don’t need the others. Do you think it would look really unprofessional of me to step away from that stuff?” she questioned, genuinely seeking his counsel. The conversation was a product of her “day off from life” on Friday, and what she was able to come up with when she had the opportunity to first really unwind and rest her mind, and then put it to work constructively on analyzing her situation, which she discussed with André when she was ready, on Saturday. The background she didn’t even need to provide for him was that she was tired of belonging to others, and tired of having to give her time up for nothing but money. Fortunate as she was not to have to worry much about her finances, selling time for money was nothing but a waste for her. It was time away from her family and friends, time away from her training, and time she couldn’t use to take care of herself and her private needs.

Giving over her image for the use of others was corrupting it too. Juan pointed out, when she brought the subject up with him too over the weekend, that selling her outward facing self to others to use for their narratives couldn’t possibly be helpful for any woman struggling to sort out her identity for herself. That was even more important to her than the time sacrifices. She wanted a chance to reestablish who she was, and who she wanted to work toward becoming, for herself. She needed to figure that out so that questioning those things could no longer interfere with her riding.

Doing the right thing mattered too. To her, and as she would expect of a student in her position, or even a teammate, the right thing to do when struggling to get the consistent results necessary is to weed out distractions and refocus on work. The conviction she was lacking when that was suggested to her in the fall came predominantly from Juan’s fact-based campaign to get the rider to believe she was in the driver’s seat in terms of selection for the Olympic team. He had her almost convinced that her entitlement to inclusion in the team was immune to self-destruction. What he meant was that she could make any decision she wanted, like dumping her sponsors and withdrawing from the limelight, and it wouldn’t affect her bid for Tokyo. He said the team wouldn’t care if she lowered her profile because they needed her for her clear rounds first, and her brand value second. A private, faultless Christina would be worth more to the federation than a public cash cow, two-knockdowns Christina. He had her convinced the only threat to her trip to the Games was other riders getting better or more consistent than her, or the emergence of a horse on smoking hot form. Juan convinced her that the smartest strategy for ensuring her inclusion in the team was simply delivering on her potential, and that the best way to do that was to simply axe from her life any influences that detracted from that. Her ginned up appetite for change wasn’t all the Spaniard’s doing, however.

Christina was only able to believe him because of something André did. He suggested that allowing her to have any kind of relationship she wanted with Juan would take away a major source of stress for her- that if she understood that it didn’t upset him and he understood her feelings and she needn’t get crazed about those feelings and their implications and instead should simply do what felt good, then she’d feel better overall and move past the mental chaos and logjam that was defeating her. And that was proving very true. Taking down the barrier imposed between her and the Chelsea man whacked off an entire category of anxiety for her. She didn’t have to actively contemplate which player she wanted and should be with anymore, because she wasn’t choosing to hurt one anymore, and she wasn’t guessing about how being with the other would make her feel. It wasn’t a choice of one over the other anymore. André was completely right about the relief she would get from herself if he simply took away the situation’s ability to force questions on her, and that set a precedent. If she could hack away the part of her life that was making her feel pulled in even more directions than the boys could do, then that was another major source of anxiety gone and another guarantee that she was giving herself the best chance to succeed.

“Quite the opposite, Prinzessin,” the taller, blonder boy replied reassuringly. “I think that is the most professional thing you could do. Your job isn’t to be good at selling yourself and marketing your brand. Your job is to win trophies and titles and medals. Asking if dropping sponsors would make you unprofessional is like me asking if you think it would be a bad idea for Paul Pogba to stop fucking around with emojis and haircuts and focus on football. You go off on that stuff all the time! I think that’s an obvious thing. I think your friends and your fans would love it, because it’s for your riding. Especially the fans, actually,” he stressed while rubbing her back. “You had more time to be open with them when you had less to do, and Tim gave you more freedom to be yourself in public, like on social media and stuff, before he had to worry about protecting your image for all these partners.”

“Will you help me talk to him? I feel like I’m going to be letting him down.”

“Yes, I will, and no, you aren’t.”

[moreweirdfuture-blog]

NO AUDIBLE DIALOGUE (奇妙な未来 # 003)

Michael went home for his grandmother’s funeral.

 It was a few days later, early one morning when you couldn’t tell the difference between night and day, Michael dropped a glass and it shattered on the floor.

 “Careful,” his grandmother advised. “That glass’ll cutcha.”

 His mother refused to leave her bedroom, but his father got a kick from it and kept bragging about its features. His sister Elaine was six and walked up to her mom and challenged, “I thought she wasn’t going to wake up ever again?”

 Its capacity for language fascinated Michael. He was almost convinced of its humanity until one night when its gaze and smile froze in place. He assumed the battery had died, but he left the room without checking because he got the chills.

 In the morning, her eyes were glued in the same trajectory.

 “Do you have to leave so soon?” his mother asked when he was packed and ready. “Don’t leave me here with that thing.”

 “It’s not that bad,” Michael said and hugged her. His mom scrunched her face.

 “I don’t like it one bit,” she said. “Don’t ever do that to me.” Michael promised he wouldn’t as she drove him to the airport. He always missed home as soon as he left.

 He passed an advertisement for the youtwo when he stepped off the plane.

 Michael worked on a program that allowed your phone to have entire conversations in your place. It was called youtwo.

 Just the other day, Michael noticed a text dialogue between his youtwo and his friend Ruis about 20th century French film editing. Except for a few artifacts, Michael’s youtwo was a stunning product of linguistic science.

 “It’s more than statistics,” Michael explained at a sales meeting. “Users are convinced of its humanity.”

 The fluorescence blurred the stockholders’ faces until one smile became many.  

 Michael recognized a Chopin composition when he came home.

 “I don’t know why you play, “ he said to his husband seated at the piano. Then he signed, in front of his face so it interrupted his play and he had to notice, You’re deaf.

 The music stopped. Kyle glared at Michael and walked out of the room.

 Michael hardly even thought about his husband anymore except that he was rarely there.

 Michael had fallen in love with someone he had never met.

 It started as a bet. His high-school friend Ruis wanted Michael to see if he could fool a man into thinking Michael was a woman over the Internet. Michael didn’t want to.

 “I mean,” Ruis laughed, “You’re effeminate enough already.” Michael gave her a look.

 “That’s,” Michael looked for the word, “Sneaky.” Ruis blew a raspberry.

 “The youtwo isn’t?” Ruis said. “How do I know when I’m texting you that I’m talking to you, or your youtwo!” 

 “They’re the same,” Michael defended. “The youtwo is trained on a corpus of the user’s text, so, it’s me.”

 “No,” Ruis smiled through her teeth. “It’s not.” Michael wasn’t convinced, so Ruis added, “Think of it as a Turing test.”

 They laughed and drank beer in the abandoned observatory. Michael took the bet because whenever he heard the word test, he envisioned the grade, and how much higher it would be than everyone else’s.

 Michael had spent years as a linguist for the FBI, running semantic analysis on chat corpora to anticipate sex offenders.

 He had learned much about human psychology. The major mistake any sex offender knew to avoid was coming on too strong, too fast. It had to be slow, so grooming could happen.

 At first, they talked about nothing.

 His name was Chris, twenty-nine. They chatted over text. He was pretty boring, Michael remembered, handsome, assuming the picture was real. They flirted, and it jump started Michael.  

 Before Chris, Michael slept until noon and struggled to get out of bed. After, he delighted in waking up, and even took up running and yoga for no reason other than to try.

 Michael used a picture of Ruis, one where she had her hair done up and her hip off to the side looking ridiculous but fun.

 Chris wrote that Michael was gorgeous and even though it was obviously a compliment meant for Ruis, it felt just the same. He was getting attention from the kind of guy he used to fear.

 “He likes your picture,” Michael told Ruis. They had been friends since high school algebra and literature. Michael liked binary and she liked we real cool.

 They came up with a secret language where vowels could represent one another.

 ded je hur wot a sed = did you hear what I said?

 Michael used it to confess a crush he had on Ruis’ boyfriend, a skinny jewish boy who couldn’t pronounce invisible and who played soccer every Tuesday. They sat in the stands and Michael would fantasize about kissing him.  

 One afternoon Ruis pushed scrap paper into Michael’s lap.

 Scribbled next to You do not do, you do not do and a list of irregular Spanish conjugations she had written, Ma befrond laks gois.  

 Michael wrote back, Hew du u knu?

 Becos a fund gei purn an hes liptap.

 Suddenly Michael lost interest.

 In high school, none of his crushes were gay. They were straight. He never made eye contact with them, and it was in the locker room he first learned the mistake of touching one. Michael was trying to get from the locker to the door.

 He was square faced with a high edge up and lunged to punch Michael.

 “Touch me again,” he threatened.

 Kyle had lost his hearing after they were married. Doctors stuck plugs in his ears and prescribed medication, but he looked like a freeway exit you get farther and farther away from. He quit DJing. He sold an unopened Underground Resistance cd for five-hundred dollars. A few days later, Michael had found the money ripped up in a blender.

 It had happened suddenly.

 The poor guy had been dizzy for days, to the point of sick. Then he woke up and zip, couldn’t hear a sound, just feel its dull throb.

 Michael was never sure why they married. Kyle had admitted to loving someone else even before, back that summer where they would make out between the Leland cypress. Kyle would spit in Michael’s ear and suck it out with a chuckle that made Michael cross-eyed. Kyle whispered, “Every little thing I do, you’re on my mind,” and Michael just stood there kissing him.  

 Kyle spun hip-hop in the black clubs from Crescent Heights down to West 3rd. He arranged tracks in an apartment that smelled like sawdust. Michael would jab Kyle, talk about patterns and math, and Kyle would shrug. He was never a rational guy like Michael. His thoughts didn’t live in logic, but in the pulse that made logic possible.

 He worked a day job as a mechanic and would leave giant handprints all over Michael’s textbooks.

 “You’re dirty,” Michael would say.

 “You better believe it.”

 Michael was finishing his dissertation, what would become youtwo, and Kyle always said:

 “You’re gonna realize,” then he grabbed his crotch, “You can’t program this.”

 He made a song especially for Michael. Soon, Michael’s brain defaulted Kyle.

 Michael caught him one night kissing some greasy kid with studded earrings and goatee in a lilac haze of patio smoke. When Kyle found Michael outside the club, Michael shoved his hands in his pockets and couldn’t decide to leave or stay. Kyle smoked a cigarette and convinced Michael to share an uber. He set the path to repeat the perimeter of Hancock Park, and Michael saw the tops of old homes as Kyle strummed Michael on the one and four.  

 They were married with the photos to prove it. Then Kyle lost his hearing.

 Michael bought flash cards and a couple apps to help teach Kyle to sign.

 One time Kyle could not remember the gesture for dance. He gave up and stormed from the room.

 That night, Michael found him beating his head with his fists, so Michael wrestled his arms to stop him.  

 Later, barely awake, Kyle grabbed Michael’s wrist.

 “Why are you always making me do things I don’t want?”

 Since he couldn’t hear the reaction, Kyle said whatever.

 It was easy to ignore someone you couldn’t hear.

 “Here.” Michael helped Kyle reach for his glasses. Kyle snatched them away. “I got it.”

 Michael telecommuted and lived in a suburb. What he admired most was the silver carpet got watered every evening at 1800 and the home owner’s association issued a newsletter first of every month, always with some kind of orthophonographic error. Those were a real treat.

 Nothing that wasn’t supposed to happen would.

 Chris talked about the weather, safe topic to break ice. Michael realized he must be a nice guy if he was willing to talk to a random stranger about nothing in particular. Michael started to like him.

 About a week later, Kyle was bouncing silverware off the walls because he couldn’t find a fork. “I can’t hear any of it,” he said when Michael tried to stop him. “Go back in your hole.”

 So Michael did, and he found out Chris loved Escape from L.A just like Michael. Michael forgot about Kyle and the noise. Chris wrote that he didn’t know a girl could be so into action movies. Michael felt sick.

 “I won the test,” Michael insisted. “He thinks I’m a woman. I’m done.”

 “Okay, okay,” Ruis relented. “No harm.”

 “No.” Michael shook his head. “There is harm.” He had begun to think about Chris incessantly. “It’s fucked up to lie like that.” Ruis looked confused and did eyebrow math.

 “So… you don’t want the money?”

 “Keep it,” Michael intoned.

 One night Kyle was gone without a note or trace, probably to Seattle. Michael was busy writing expression code for a new youtwo feature. Michael wondered if one day Kyle would leave him and his thoughts wandered to Chris.

 Chris asked if Michael wanted to watch Memento and Michael was happy for the distraction. They synced the video files and it felt like a date, but that was stupid so he kept it to himself.

 Michael pointed out a cut where Teddy says you think he’s still here? and his mouth is clearly not moving. Never caught that, Chris wrote. Good eye.

 Michael swelled with pride.

 Kyle never cared for Michael’s trivia. They would watch movies with Kyle’s feet set on Michael’s lap. Kyle would work them around the more he lost interest. Michael might point out continuity errors to keep his attention, but Kyle would tell him point blank, “I really don’t care.”

 Plus, now the captions had to be turned on. They got in the way, and when the caption really sucked, it just read no audible dialogue.

 Couldn’t they just leave it blank for the same effect?

 Chris pointed out a discontinuity with Leonard’s tattoo SG13-71U and what it should have been, SG13-7IU. Michael was impressed. Good eye, Michael wrote. Chris gave a =).

 They talked for hours until Kyle tossed his car keys and slammed the screen door.

 He asked Chris to hold on, that his friend had called, which wasn’t a complete lie, since your spouse should also be your friend.  

 Michael found Kyle in the kitchen gulping orange juice from the container.

 “Where ya been?” Michael spun his right hand. Kyle finished the orange juice and sucked in a breath of air.

 “The fuck you always ask me where I been?” He was livid and quickly calmed down. “What do it matter, I was out.”  

Michael had a high school crush on a light-skinned black boy who sat next to him on the bus. He always read a different manga. Michael thought it was so cool. Samurais. Aliens. Computers.

 Michael tried to get it so they would sit together, but then the guy’s parents bought him a ’59 Chevy and Michael hardly saw him at all.

 Then he caught the guy kissing a girl once in that Chevy. He brooded for weeks. If only he had noticed me, Michael thought. That could be me in that Chevy.

 Michael told Chris sorry, his friend was having a rough go of it, needed advice. Chris said he was tired, but it was fun and they should do it again.

 Michael dreamt Chris picked him up in a ’59 Chevy. Michael was the only passenger allowed.

 Michael got free tickets to CES through his job, and Kyle was having a good day and went on the five-hour drive with him.

 It was CES for sure, because Michael couldn’t tell the coffee lines from refugee lines.

 Kyle marveled over earbuds that could bring hearing to the deaf. Then he saw the speculative price tag.

 Michael had to push past three undergrads in plaid and low-rise to see the Mariah Carey and Madonna replicas. Kyle emerged and hooked Michael in a neck lock before letting him go.

 The replicas could speak with a combination of Michael’s youtwo software, while another company built the text-to-speech mechanism, which had recently won awards for its startling reproduction of human language—although it still had problems with agglutinative languages like Hungarian, because the polysyllabic inflectional morphology of those languages introduced an amazing amount of perplexity that TTS automata were unequipped to handle.

 “My dad got one,” Michael signed to Kyle. Michael touched his chin to his thumb to say grandmother.

 His grandmother had been ninety-eight. Lived for a century to sit in a rocking chair facing eggshell sheetrock.

 “What does she think about all day?” his mother asked. Michael pictured one of those halls where the doors all led back to the same room, and the hall curved infinity it kept going so far.  

 “You’re avoiding me,” his grandmother accused Michael during a visit.

 “I have no idea,” Michael would say to his mother. His mother had come up with the nickname that thing for her, and it made Michael laugh. His mom liked the strangers in the grocery line more than his grandmother.

 His grandmother was so out of practice speaking she could hardly finish a word without stuttering through it five times. She liked farm stories, and, Michael did you know that the cows could be friends with the donkeys?

 Talking to her felt like volunteer work.

 “She did not speak to her son for four years,” his mother had said several times, always emphasizing four. “What mother does that?”

 Kyle looked bored, signed the holy trinity, walked off and bumped into one of the undergrads in a backwards cap.

 The guy expected an apology and when he didn’t get it he mumbled fucking nigger and Kyle just kept walking where he wanted.

 By evening, full of holoscreens and tomorrow, Michael wandered the hotel lobby. A group of girls in pixie skirts and cone heels were on about a club. Kyle agreed to go only if his new friends could come too. Michael said fine and they packed into a car with some artists and a guy who smelled awful. Michael kept accidentally crossing eyes with a girl whose sclera were blacked out, or maybe she was staring at him. Then she sighed.

 “I wish people would just get the hint, like why do I have to say it.” Her friend broke into laughs. Michael was uncomfortable and texted Chris, y r ppl annoying and he texted back a little while later, yah they suck. Michael snickered.

 When he looked up Kyle was staring at Michael from the corner of his eyes.

 “Wish I knew what’s got you in stitches.”

 Your nose could feel the bassline hump the floor a block away. Kyle danced a line for the bathroom with his hands tucked in some guy’s pockets. He emerged with his eyes burning holes in Michael, grabbed Michael and they grinded the throb with the Reebok, hip to waist. Michael dreamt of the song, round and round I go, where I’ll stop, only you know, I guess it’s all in my mind.

 Middle of the night Michael saw SG13-7IU in the mirror, blinked his eyes. The microwave’s TRATS 223RP instruction was inverted like alien code.

 Sunrise woke Michael, but Kyle was already up staring at earbuds in front of their hotel window.

 Kyle was in a good enough mood that Michael bought a seashell from a souvenir shack and held it to Kyle’s ear. Can you hear the ocean? he signed, and Michael thought he witnessed a smile.

 Kyle’s forehead smudged the window on the drive home. He watched the cactus redshift. His foot would not stop shaking and his fingers were tight. Michael had been fiddling with the satellite radio when Kyle punched the console and cracked the screen.

 The next morning, Michael could not find Kyle. He often disappeared for weeks on end. He would hitchhike to Seattle, where someone he loved more lived.  

 He teared up one evening watching an advertisement for wind power, and it so happened that Chris was online.

 “I don’t know what they’re talking about half the time,” Michael’s grandmother used to say. She was so old that even mundane talk eluded her.

 Would Michael get so old that one day he wouldn’t even be able to carry on a conversation?

 The last time Michael had seen her, that thanksgiving she hobbled the kitchen carrying bowls from the table to the sink. His mom eyed her over the brim of her glasses. With a look of disgust, his mother waited for her to drop the plates and glasses. His grandmother had fallen just the month earlier and broken her arm, and his mother was waiting for it to happen again with a hidden delight.

 “I think she fell on purpose,” Michael’s mother said. “She wants attention.”

 His grandmother had not been invited to Michael’s wedding, because his parents thought that she would withhold money from them when she died if she knew Michael had married a man.

 “She’s just backwards,” his mother would say. “Better she doesn’t know.”

 His grandmother pulled him off to the side every chance she got, whenever he visited, which was infrequent, maybe once a year, because he was very busy and preferred solitude. She showed him chiwara statues and clay masks from Kush, and photos of her standing beside prehistoric plants she ferried from death’s brink, and she would point and say, “plants tell you what they want,” and that you could always rely on that.

 It would be refreshing if people were like that, Michael thought.

 She showed him photographs from 1996, but Michael did not believe it was the same person.

 She wanted to talk so much that she agreed with everything you said, so thankful for the company, which reminded Michael of those telephone recordings they used to have when you would call to pay a bill, and they would ask if you’d like to leave feedback on your experience afterward, like:

 Right, let’s rate how the programmed voice made you feel.  

 “Where do you think the most magical place in the world is?” she asked him one night. Most places looked best in photos, and then he got there, and he wondered why he made the trip in the first place. Michael shrugged.

 “Dunno,” he said, too disinterested to complete a sentence.

 “I don’t think your parents like me,” she said to Michael once from the veranda. He sighed. He was the only person in the family who paid her any attention. Her casita was being built, a requirement from Michael’s parents who could no longer stand the sight of her and wanted her to move out of the main house.

 “She expects us to entertain her,” his mother would say. “If only you knew how much I put up with her.”  

 It was one spring Michael and his father were looking at old science fiction films on IMDB that his mother came in the room, out of breath and complaining about his grandmother when his father yelled enough that Michael thought he might have a heart attack, “I wish she would hurry up and die.”

 “You come visit me anytime,” his grandmother said to him.

 The next time he did, she was dead.

 With Kyle gone, Michael hardly left his room. He went to the gym in the morning to run, sat at his computer while he reviewed analytics for the youtwo, and talked to Chris.

 Michael had gotten so close to Chris that he would ask questions like—and with all the seriousness you would normally save for pressing the president on his plans for nuclear deterrence—Do you like kalamata olives?

 They talked about artificial intelligence taking over the White House.

 Chris sent him messages in binary. 00111100 00110011.

 Michael expressed his fear for public bathrooms: a deep-seated phobia of small tiles and urine, mixed with a primal anxiety related to filth and taboo desire.

 Chris told him that he donated money to Planned Parenthood, and Michael was so impressed.

 What a stand up guy.

 In undergraduate, there was this one boy Michael had a daylong crush on because the guy had flung his hands up and said, “Fuck a feminist,” and there was something sexy about the way he flaunted his maleness.

 Like he knew he was privileged due to it and didn’t care.

 He had cybersex with Chris one night that it was raining so hard you would’ve thought it was programmed. It was cold, and Michael was fiddling with the alarm because he could never remember the code. Afterward they talked about the rain and Michael wrote a poem about it:

                                                 When I rain, I pour—

                                               But when I pour, I’m not raining.

                                               What am I?

 Do you covet things? Chris asked afterward. Michael didn’t understand.

 I don’t think I do, he wrote back.

 We should give up all attachments, Chris wrote. Our attachments will only bring us pain.

 What if you love someone? Michael asked.

 Love is selfish, Chris responded.

奇妙な未来 

Michael had originally referred to the youtwo as KYLE, which was of course a reference to ELIZA. Michael trained the bot through word chunks called n-grams.

 With unigrams, KYLE sounded nonsensical:

 Months because the and issue of year next September we did you like

 With bigrams, you witnessed some connective tissue between chunks—  

 Last week through the process of Hudson corporation would seem to complete the implementation.

 —you still knew that the thing you were talking to was just that, a thing.

 Trigrams gave you the uncanny sense that you might not be talking to a machine, but you probably were, because the relationship between constituents was still lacking or hazy:

 They also point to a six billion dollar transaction. This indeed will be what they tell you. You want to?

 Finally, mixed with pattern matching and entity recognition, quadrigrams provided the illusion of speaking to a human being:

 Amanda, maybe you could advise me on what to do? I have been wondering about that lately. And I know you told me you were a good listener. I could really use that right now.

 It pained him to think of his grandmother, who was always interested in hearing about his work when no one else was, so much that she agreed to be a subject in his research.

 “You just speak into the microphone,” Michael explained.

 It was late one night when news of the protests was everywhere, he was only calmed by the thought of words. Beautiful words that had meaning only because people wanted them to, and that they would fight over, and fall in love with.

 It was a syntax textbook and it went:

 In (29a), we have the same kind of headedness. Very is the head and quickly is the head and we have two heads and each has their own head and this is called hierarchical structure.

 It was subliminal with it and he suddenly thought of giving Chris head. It made him fantasize for the rest of the night and when he woke he smelled clean clothes.

 Kyle had been gone for nearly four months. Michael wondered if he would ever see Kyle again. In his absence, Michael felt a pit grow in his stomach.

 Would Michael wait eternity with sheetrock?

 Michael could only escape the thoughts through Chris. Maybe he was a monk, Michael thought. He donated to charities, went on for hours about the blind, and said he overtipped service workers because, after all, who else would do their jobs?

 How could Michael match his virtue?

 But Chris had stopped messaging Michael. Sure, there were intermittent messages about the weather, but nothing of any substance. One conversation in particular bothered Michael. He had asked: 

 How’s your mom?

 Chris’ response:

 It’s so nice out today!

 The non-sequitur made Michael feel empty. Their text message history was a never-ending dialogue, where you couldn’t find a single period because why would two lovers end anything?

 And here it was, ruined.

 Michael insisted on meeting Chris. He sent message after message, and after days of no response, Michael grew sick. He called Ruis and they watched movies where the soundtrack had words like it must have been love and moving on and baby he’s a liar.

 It was the next day when Michael’s heart jumped and Chris said yeah they should meet and they agreed on the Mulholland memorial.

 Michael’s heart was in his throat. He could hardly move his legs. What would Chris say? What would their friendship become afterward?

 Chris looked like the man Michael had seen in his photos. He was small, and wore clothes that squeezed him like a teenager. His grin made Michael feel like he was filling out government forms. Sign here. Black Ink Only.

 Michael’s blood rushed. Here was the man he had been talking to for nearly two years. Michael came to trust him more than Kyle. But could Chris forgive Michael for lying about being a woman?

 “I’m so sorry I was lying to you,” Michael said. Chris shrugged and offered a sympathetic smile.

 “Oh,” he said, like gravity was still the same, so why fret, “it’s no problem.”

 Michael could not have been happier. Chris was a very enlightened person.

 But he acted differently in person than he did online. Maybe it’s just his way, Michael thought. They walked down the street and talked about their day just as they had been doing for so long on their phones. But Chris was silent, and had little to add, and Michael thought—maybe he really is a monk.

 It struck Michael as odd that Chris couldn’t remember Michael’s birthday—he had told Michael happy birthday twice, so he knew.

 And then Michael felt funny because Chris couldn’t remember what Michael did, even though Michael talked about it every week because he loved his job, and that was one thing he liked about Chris so much—he was always so inquisitive about his field.

 “Wait,” Chris said and stopped Michael. “You created the youtwo?” Michael beamed with pride. They had spoken about this many times before—why was this news? But Michael ate it up.

 “I did,” he said.

 Chris coughed and his face grew grim.

 “I should tell you something,” Chris muttered. Michael was still smiling. He had met the love of his life, in person, and here they were.

 “What is it?” Michael asked. What could it possibly be? Michael had gotten through the worst—confess a lie and be absolved.

 “I actually,” Chris struggled for the words, “haven’t ever really,” like he had thought of how to say it for quite some time, “talked to you,” but couldn’t figure out how to arrange them in such a way that wouldn’t make it feel like a punch to the stomach. “Before.” 

 “What?”

 “Yeah,” Chris added, like finishing a math equation, “it was right after we first started talking. I sort of knew you were a guy? But I didn’t want to be mean, so I turned my youtwo on and you know how it is, you don’t pay attention to the conversations that thing has.”  

 Michael felt like someone had just removed all the alphabet’s vowels and the leftovers fit together wrong.

 “So it wasn’t you? All this time?” Michael’s smile melted.

 Chris looked apologetic. 

“I turned the features off so it would only talk about superficial stuff,” Chris said. “But it was too late, by that time you had been talking to it for like...a year?” 

Michael was suddenly frustrated at the little girl across the street blabbering incoherently. 

“I’m totally willing to become friends with you. I don’t really know you, but, why not?”

But he looked like the Alzheimer’s patient trying to make heads or tails out of family members, and Michael knew there was nothing there. 

Michael thought and left his grandmother. When he fell asleep, he got home and closed his eyes. 

How had he been so stupid? How had he spent the past two years of his life involved with a text program? 

One of his own creation at that. 

 And all those talks about how awful people were, and how people were so awful, and how people were so mean, and here Chris was, complaining about the politician in one breath and matching their duplicity in the same.

 Except it wasn’t Chris. It was a program.

 But it was Chris. A facsimile of him.

 But Chris did not know who Michael was, so it wasn’t.

 Or it was.

 Michael had a nightmare sometime the next week where his mother had died and his father replicated her, and then she scratched her face off. He called his father the next day and said he would be flying out for thanksgiving.  

 It was a few nights before the trip that the alarm went off in the middle of the night. Michael jolted awake and fell to the floor. It was gray and the tile was cold, and he heard static. Michael held his hands to his ears and stumbled into the hall. When he got into the living room a dark figure was sitting at the dinner table.

 The alarm shook the house. Michael rubbed his eyes and leaned on the wall. A sliver of television light lit Kyle up. He twisted his keys around his fingers.

 I thought you changed the locks, Kyle signed. The noise was so loud Michael could feel his ears itch. He scrambled to input the alarm code when he felt hands reach out for his neck and pull him away from the wall console and knock him to the floor. Kyle’s hands wrapped tightly around Michael’s neck until Michael closed his eyes and could feel sleep settling in, a light headed and happy sleep.

 When he woke, Kyle had packed his things and was sat square in the front room. Michael’s neck felt tender and his voice was shallow.

 Where are you going? Michael signed. Maybe Michael would never have all of Kyle’s attention.

 I’m leaving, he signed and stood. Michael could feel anger rising inside him. He thought of the cruelest thing he could say, but it just wasn’t in him.

 I fell in love with someone, Michael signed. Then he put his hand over his heart and made a pitter-patter effect.

 Who? Kyle signed.

 Michael pointed to himself.

 I fell in love with myself, he signed. Kyle nodded and pulled his sunglasses down.

 When Michael had gone home for Thanksgiving, he could not find his grandmother’s replica.

 “That thing was too weird,” his mom said. “We put her in the garage.” Michael felt a lump in his throat. They ate dinner and Michael cleaned the plates. They asked where Kyle was and Michael said he didn’t know, and his father invited him into his study where they looked through old landscaping designs.  

His sister Elaine was seated in front of an old 16-bit video game, and the music sounded sweet and clear. He stroked her hair and she fidgeted.

 The pixels danced. The colors were magenta, cyan, rayon, and fuchsia. Michael got lost in the patterns of graphics, the little tree sprites cut and pasted until a screen boundary told them to stop.

 At half past midnight he wandered into the hallway and down past the kitchen, where the pendant lighting made him think of kitchens in department stores, no one cooks in them, and he descended the steps into the garage.

 His grandmother’s replica had been propped in the corner. He pulled blankets and wrapping paper and adjusted her head until it fit the socket. He fixed stray hairs and patted her clothes. She had been buried in a pair of frumpy jeans, his mother had called them frumpy. His grandmother had always said, what use did she have to look good for anybody?

 “The whole world’s trying to look good,” she said once.  

 There was a storm outside and the rain splattered the window squares of the garage. Michael looked at his phone and all it said was the time.

 The rain painted the garage gray. Michael hadn’t realized how much time he had spent there and he turned to his grandmother’s replica and asked, “Where do you think the most magical place in the world is?”