#people are a bit saner here

[rmorde]

It's so so fucking embarrassing to be a JJ.K manga fan right now.

[lys-jeorge]

.

[debtsunpaid]

somehow this blog has become populated with a dozen characters whose relationships to their siblings roughly boils down to "that's not just my family, that is my limb, and to remove them from me would be unthinkable."

and then there's manny and the demon constantine, with a hacksaw and a dream.

[ficandkaboodle]

Now for everybody’s favorite opinion-based game they might not admit to playing but absolutely do play in nearly every fandom they’re in:

✨🫦Does That Man Moan in Bed?!👄✨

(Sponsored by Monster Energy: We lied, we are Satanic)

Papa Nihil: Yes. Just. Yes. This man moans like a little bitch even when he’s topping. And growls. And whimpers. Even if it’s someone he’s not really into all that much. Honestly, it seems very exaggerated on his part like he’s trying to be a porn star but no, those are very real sounds he’s letting into the air like that, He just takes every ounce of pleasure he can get from the stimuli and that’s enough to make him drown out every single noise that isn’t him and maybe a bit of the bed putting up a fight.

Papa Primo: No. Lack of interest in foreplay aside, I think even a saner, more pleasant-in-bed Primo isn’t particularly noisy in bed. He comes off more as a heavy breathing, occasional panting or grunting type of guy to me. Maybe a sigh here or there. If anything, the most noise I can see him making an effort in making is either dirty talk or reciting the text for the sexual magick ritual you’re performing. You might even think he’s not into it but rest assured, he absolutely is. He’s just not a particularly bombastic person by nature, and this carries over into the bedroom. He’ll show other signs he’s into it if you think his regular sounds aren’t enough, though.

Papa Secondo: Yes but unless you two have been together a good while and he trusts you, you’d likely never know. Secondo, for as flamboyant as he can actually be outside of his robes, probably sees moaning as a sign of weakness. That, or he’s embarrassed of how he sounds. (And has probably accidentally overheard his gross old man a few times. Frankly it’s a miracle he didn’t wind up completely disgusted by sex.) He tries to make “strong manly noises”: He’s taught himself how to contort those sounds into tooth-clenching grunts and forcing himself through words unbroken. They’re sexy for sure, but when you’ve finally reached a point where he lets you hear his real sounds, you can’t help but notice an extra layer of warmth to his voice. Simultaneously, it’s lighter; more floating. Even if he trusts you now, though, he’s still going to be embarrassed about it so make sure you make it clear to him that you adore his noises and would certainly love to hear more.

Papa Terzo: Yes. Kind of. Terzo does moan, but it’s actually naturally quieter than what sounds he winds up giving in bed. He’s so used to playing everything up and bolstering peoples’ expectations of him as this flamboyant slut of a man that most of what noises he makes in bed are just exaggerations of what he actually does. He tends to make much softer moans and sighs compared to the absolutely pornographic noises most lovers wind up hearing. He tries to justify it internally as helping to arouse his partner, bringing them to that cherished orgasm, of course, the thing is that because he’s so focused on how he thinks he should sound, he doesn’t always feel every inch of his own release. Much like Secondo, I think the real sounds come through when he knows you can be trusted and isn’t afraid of you seeing the real him, warts and all. He feels much more relaxed and you can feel the depth of adoration he has for you now that he’s not so focused on putting on a show.

Papa Copia: He does but honestly? He’s more of a gasper and whimperer. Higher-pitched noises. It’s an awful thing to have inherited from Nihil, all things considered, but it makes the most sense at least to me. He’s always been a bit shy in one-on-one interactions with people. Add in a splash of possible humiliation when his peers might’ve overheard him and started calling him a Rat Boy and he might’ve just developed a means of being quieter. Well, as quiet as he can get. He’s such a sensitive topino after all. However, you absolutely can work those bigger moans and pleas out of him. Simply pin him down, praise him, ride him like he’s a sex toy that won’t break no matter how rough you ride him, and watch him unravel into a begging, crying mess beneath you that can barely string together a coherent sentence. All in all, though, for as fun as that can be, you still quite adore Copia’s usual little noises. Oh, your sweet little Satanic Church Mouse…

[morganski-19]

Chills Right to the Marrow Part 29

ao3 link| part 1 . . . part 26, part 27, part 28

Dustin’s not exactly sure what happened. He was patiently waiting for Steve to meet him in the lobby, but it’s been almost a half hour, and Dustin has no idea where he is. He already went back to check in Eddie’s room, but nothing. Then outside, nothing again. And Steve would never leave his stranded, so it can’t be that.

Which leaves Dustin completely alone, eating a Snickers bar that he got from the vending machine because they were out of Three Musketeers. The second one he got for Steve slowly melting in his pocket. Wondering if it was at the level where he had to go check under the bathroom stalls to see if any of the feet were wearing Steve’s shoes.

But he can at least be a little bit saner and go double check Eddie’s room again. Maybe Steve couldn’t find him and went back there to look. That would be the logical thing to do.

When Dustin opens the door, Steve has the chair pulled up close to Eddie’s bed hunched over and looking like he’s about to cry. Eddie’s looks like halfway there himself. Both of them jumping to hide that fact when Dustin entered.

“I didn’t know where you went,” Dustin says. Not sure whether to ignore or acknowledge what he just walked into. “I thought we were going to go home.”

Steve shakes his head gently, pressing his eyes shut like it will stop the tears from flowing. “Yeah, sorry. Could you just give me a second? I was just talking to Eddie about something.”

“It’s ok,” Eddie brushes off with his hand. “Take the kid home, we can talk about this later.”

“Are you sure? He can wait another minute-.”

“I’m sure. We’re good, ok. Go home.” Eddie looks at him like he really means what he’s saying. Not just pretending for both of their benefit. Not again.

Steve nods. Standing and pushing the chair back in place against the wall. “I’ll see you later then.”

Eddie waves Steve over and whispers something before letting him leave. Steve just snorts and smiles at whatever it is. Whispering something back before finally ushering Dustin out of the room. Some sort of weird energy radiating off of him in the car ride home. A mix between happy and sad that Dustin doesn’t understand.

“What was that about?” Dustin asks. Trying to do it without a confrontational tone.

Steve shrugs. “We just had something to talk about, that’s all.”

Dustin nods. “But you’re both ok, right? It looked like you were both about to cry.”

He’s trying to be gentle about the topic. Trying to calm the way he can ask about things. So it doesn’t sound like he’s pressuring his way into situations. That way people can feel like they can open up to him, and tell him what’s going on. Instead of just brushing it off and telling him it’s not his problem.

Because it was his problem. This was his friend. This was his family. He didn’t have siblings to fight through all of this with. He didn’t have parents who he could tell these things too. For the most part, it’s been Steve that he’s talked to about all this. It’s been Steve that he radioed in the middle of the night when he was so scared he couldn’t breathe. Or when he needed advice about school problems. Or anything.

Somewhere along the line, Steve became the sibling he fought through stuff with. That’s been a sure fact since he helped Dustin get ready for the Snowball. They were one of the mini units in the bigger organization.

It hurt when Steve hid things from him out of “protection”. Dustin didn’t need protecting, he needed transparency. He needed for Steve to know that Dustin’s here for him. Just as much as Steve’s there for Dustin. This was a two-way street.

“We were, kinda,” Steve says after a long break of silence.

“Are you ok?”

Steve puts the car in park, turning to Dustin with an almost relieved expression. “Yeah. I am.”

“Ok.” Dusting is choosing to trust that Steve would tell him if he wasn’t. “Just, if you start to feel not ok, you know you can talk to me about it. I’ll listen.”

“I know.”

There’s a knock at Dustin’s window. His mom waving hello with a gentle smile. Dustin knows why, he always knows why. It’s to invite Steve in to have dinner that he’ll refuse three times before giving in. He’s over there for dinner more nights that he would probably admit.

“Hi, Miss Henderson,” Steve says when he rolls down the window.

“Hello. I haven’t seen you in a while, Steve. Why don’t you come in for dinner?”

That’s a lie, she saw him two days ago when she returned a movie at Family Video.

Steve lets out a small huff, catching her on her lie. “I appreciate it, but I really should be heading home. I don’t want to bother you.”

“Oh, it’d be no bother at all. It’s the least I can do for all the time you drive Dustin around.”

Dustin rolls his eyes as Steve rolls out another excuse. His mother already coming up with a response that negates the excuse entirely. Steve takes a deep breath and turns the car off, accepting the dinner invitation.

He only refused twice this time. Steve is starting to be worn down.

They go inside and are almost immediately ushered to the table. Set with three places each with their favorite sodas. Because there wasn’t an option for Steve to not be here for dinner, and the three of them knew it. It was just in Steve’s nature to try and refuse.

Even though he knows that once Steve steps through the doors of the Henderson house, he never wants to leave it. It’s much smaller than his house, and a lot more cluttered. But that’s what makes it warm. Every time he walked into his house after an upside down event, with all of this clutter and décor surrounding him, he never felt more relief in his life. He was home.

Whenever he visits one of the other guys’ houses, that feeling is mirrored in its own way. That same feeling wasn’t there whenever he went to Steve’s house.

Dustin remembers the first time Steve ever let him come over. The house was pretty much what he was expecting. High ceilings and fancy flourishes. A room full of furniture no one was allowed to sit on and carpets that couldn’t be walked on with shoes. But there was something wrong with it. The house was only a home when Steve was in it.

Without Steve, it would feel like no one lived there. The walls only had a few pictures on them, and there were more shut doors than open ones. The kitchen sink only ever had a few dishes in it, and the couch only had one cushion with a permanent dent. The whole of it felt so empty.

The worst part was that Steve knew it to. It was a nice place to throw get togethers. It was nice to look at and imagine living there. But Dustin felt the pull from Steve to stay anywhere else for just a second longer. So he didn’t have to go to a place that didn’t feel like home to him.

It’s part of the reason that his mom invites him over to dinner so much. When Dustin told her about how empty his house was, they decided to build Steve a place in theirs. They didn’t have a lot of space, but it was easy for them to make it feel like there was more. For Steve to have his own coat hook when he came over, and a place to put his shoes. A chair at the table that was always his, and his own blanket when they had movie nights.

Dustin wanted Steve to know that this could be his home if he needed it to be. And he knows that it worked. He can see it in the way that Steve relaxes every time he walks through the door. How he is nothing but himself when he’s here.

But eventually he has to leave and go home. He hugs Claudia goodbye and tries to refuse the container of leftovers shoved into his hands. Even though Dustin knows he’s grateful for it. Steve says goodbye to Dustin with a brief hug and a ruffle to his curls. And then he leaves.

Dustin wishes he didn’t have to.

tag list (capping at 100, only 2 spots left): @the-they-who-nerded, @insteviewetrust, @croatoan-like-its-hot, @jettestar,

@tinyplanet95, @steddie-as-they-go, @slv-333, @littlecelestialmoth, @thatonebadideapanda,

@fandomsanddeath, @marismorar, @wonderland-girl143-blog, @glass-bottle03, @gutterflower77,

@here4thetrama, @goodolefashionedloverboi, @jaytriesstuff, @cryptid-system, @manda-panda-monium,

@resident-gay-bitch, @anaibis, @xxsutherlandxx, @forevermineliv, @mugloversonly,

@gregre369, @n0-1-important, @different-tale-student, @spectrum-spectre, @tartarusknight,

@devondespresso, @swimmingbirdrunningrock, @cheertain, @anti-ozzie, @autumncrocusandladybug,

@greeniebean911, @cr0w-culture, @stillfullofshit, @connected-dots, @daisynotquake,

@morgannotlefay, @a-little-unsteddie, @dolphincliffs, @maskofmirrors, @me-and-my-sloth,

@papergrenade, @waelkyring, @sweetheartprincess28, @katouasobj, @astercomoasflores

[sunny-mercya]

Coffee with Butter

Steve McGarrett x Male Reader

Fandom -> Hawaii Five-0

Masterlist

Danny in his humble opinion of any sane human being, would forever continue with his complainants about Steves—absolutely weird and disgustingly—habit of putting a good chunk of Butter (once even salted) in the coffee.

I mean, who in their right mind does that—but than Danny remembers how Steve once told him, it's a Navy Seal thing and Danny agrees in honesty that this sounds about pretty right of being a truth—because Military and Navy people were just that weirdish in general—so really, whatever Steve put next into his coffee, Danny wouldn't be shocked anymore.

Danny could live—being accepting—with Steve to some extent degree, weird like antics and habits—but what Danny couldn't accept, was Steve teaching those habits to someone else—like you for example.

But here Danny was—in Steve and your kitchen, waiting for Steve to finish up whatever he's doing—watching with disbelief and slight horror, how you too put a chunk of butter in your coffee and stirring it around as if it was something normal, like sugar, to do.

»You should get divorced from Steve, [Nickname].« comment Danny, shaking his head in disappointment and wearily eyeing his own cup of coffee—wouldn't put it past Steve, who had made the pot of coffee to begin with, to have put butter in his cup as well.

»And oh, why?« you asked, looking at your friend in question with slight amusement—knowing well how Danny's friendly banter with Steve was and that he doesn't mean such words in seriousness.

»Simply because Steve is tainting you with his weird ass nonsense navy stuff.«

»Och, Danny,« you laughed, taking a sip from your cup.

With all the things Steve had unintentionally and intentionally already done—like forgetting anniversaries, standing you up on dates, prioritising his job (and these spontaneous missions of going into another country) most of the times over you—and Butter in Coffee is the line which Dannys draws and only valid argument to get a divorce from Steve?

Danny could be so silly sometimes, you mused—still finding it funny, even when Steve had gotten down and asked what joke he had missed.

~~~

»I told [Name] to get a divorce from you.«

Steve wonders why they always have such conversations—be either serious topics or the nonsensical one—(mostly) during a drive and than he remembers, he never actually put a mind of questioning to it anyway, because it always—ever since having Danny as his partner—had been like this.

»Why?« still Steve ask, wanting to know what he had done to make Danny say such things.

»Because, you have corrupted [Name] with your butter coffee nonsense.«

Steve chortled a cough, thought he didn't heard correctly what Danny just said, lips curling up in a smile nonetheless although.

»Danny. [Name] has sometimes pregnancy cravings, where my liking of butter in coffee is harmless.«

»[Name] is a male, but go on.«

Steve retells gladly about your food cravings, which were so random in mixing and put together—that Steve had once voiced to let you get checked from the doctor, which had you made so upset that you didn't eat for almost a whole month.

There was that one time were you asked for chocolate pudding with tuna or chicken with gravy and ice cream or—which Steve had sadly the unluckiest luck to have a bit from it—peppermint jello pudding with sour cream, mustard and cornflakes.

»Valid points and I admit, your coffee with butter sounds indeed saner, but [Name] still should divorce you.«

Steve didn't reply, lips laced with amusement and still curled up in a smile—shaking his head at his friend.

~~~

When Steve has gotten home, later than he had planned, he was surprised to see you still awake on the couch—dressed in pyjamas, he never had seen before, watching television and snacking on some cookies.

»Are these pyjamas new?« Steve ask, pulling his pants off—throwing them onto the armchair.

»No, just never wore them till now.« shrugging your shoulders, eyeing Steve's bare lower half—having half a mind to remind to get naked in the bathroom and not in the middle of the living room, but you were still way too tired to do so.

»Did you stayed up just to wait for me?«

You shook your head, munching on your last cookie, but Steve saw the exhaust on your face and the sleepy expression—signs that you had been asleep before, only to wake up soon enough from nightmares and him not being near you.

Taking a seat next to you, Steve pulled you into his arms—hugging you close him and lips ghosting kisses over your face.

»Shouldn't have drink coffee with butter, although it does taste good...« you mumbled out into his chest, after Steve had stopped his kisses and picked you up—switching off the television with the remote—and carrying you upstairs to the bedroom.

Steve didn't voiced his question of why, but could pinpoint the answer to it as the butter had probably affected your sleep—which hadn't been the best over the past years at all—like most foods and your special cravings does, again.

Lying down with you in bed, cuddle up under the blankets, Steve continues to hold you close—humming a tune in low rumbling, till your eyes dropped close once more and were asleep.

[lord-of-the-margins]

Recent thoughts on Transgenderism

Tumblr, I think it’s time we approach the gender talk.

I’ve been very angry at liberals since about 2022. Before that (2019-2021) I was terrified of them. I grew up as a liberal in a very liberal area. I knew one moderate conservative. All I’ve known is liberal perspectives and ideologies for most of my life. I went to Evergreen State college for years (super senior). I lived in the epicenter of woke.

I’m not going to be a liberal ever again. Being around a lot of liberals, like in a city, makes me nervous. That’s how bad things have been in my little world. All the bridges have been burnt and every knife has somehow found its way into my back. I’ve since taken them out and re-calibrated my expectations.

Still, I have gender issues. They’ve gotten a lot better. And gender shit is still consuming society for no real reason other than to spread misery it seems.

Because of how horrifically poorly liberal society handles the issue of transsexualism and transgenderism, I’m scared to share the new insights I’ve made regarding gender dysphoria. The way the left fetishizes and commodifies mental illness is truly disturbing. The teenage impulse to commandeer and mimic mental illness for attention is never discouraged at any point. Not even in fully grown adults.

If I tell you what I’ve discovered, I’m afraid you will destroy yet another portion of the DSM in a misguided attempt to validate me. It is not validating. You are harming people. I needed the DSM to figure out what was happening. I needed psychologists to push back on my impulses. I’m glad they did. They can no longer do so without fear of being slandered as transphobic.

I look at the work you’ve done on behalf of the trans community and it reads as a collection of demons trying their best to fix society.

So yeah.

I like Tumblr for reasons other than politics. I don’t really want to talk about politics on here all that much. But this national gender dysphoria the younger generations all seem to have is hard to ignore. It can also be offensive. I’ve felt as offended by Zoomers and Alphas trying to be inclusive as I did from Gen X trying to hurt my feelings. So that’s been a fun little discovery I’ve made about myself and the world. Maybe you just can’t escape it. It’s part of life either way. And if you’re fucking around with gender, it’s inevitable. Maybe constant offense needs to happen just to make this demented form of self-expression that less attractive. Because a trans identity is not an attractive endeavor. It doesn’t make for attractive men and women. If you must do it, you need a thick skin just to look at yourself in the mirror let alone to hear what anyone else has to say about it. It’s signing up for a lifetime of disappointment and can only be explained through mental illness.

To conclude, what I found behind the mental illness was even more mental illness. Given liberals’ inclination to celebrate, imitate, and capitalize on mental illness, I don’t think it would be wise for me to tell you about what I did to make the pain of gender dysphoria go away.

What I will tell you is that I had to recognize that I suffered incredible abuse growing up. Truly exceptional abuse. I’ve been studying books on the matter on and off for about four years now. I had to learn a lot of new things and it was very overwhelming at first. It changed how I saw myself and even how I view reality. It’s been quite a journey.

None of the resources I used were made by anyone in the trans community. None whatsoever. All the people who helped me wrote their books in saner times. Your big gay trans social justice movement didn’t help me one bit. Just like feminism has never really helped me personally. Because exceptional people don’t need a parade to get their foot in the door.

Whenever I get close to woke people, I get nervous. I’ve gotten better at sensing that malevolent energy. Since I grew up with it, it took some time to suss it out. It took a massive fuck up, followed up with sticking to my convictions, to feel about fifty knives in my back before it finally sank in.

A lot of damage has been done and yet there are people under the left’s banner I could still care for. People who make uplifting art that has truly helped me. If I hadn’t found them, I wouldn’t have bothered writing this. So I guess this is for the innocent, the clueless, the kind.

I would only consider seriously talking about gender dysphoria with the public if and only if the DSM once again recognizes transsexualism and transgenderism as mental illnesses and the American Psychological Association allows its practitioners to discourage transitioning.

[incomingalbatross]

LAMC AU (all Evernote content)?

You've discovered maybe the sole Doctor Who document in that list!

So when I posted this, the title was not precisely true. It was going to hold all my Evernote content for this AU (my Evernote period came before my Google Docs period, so older fics are still languishing there) but I got fed up with the transfer process and quit halfway through. Good news, though: getting this ask motivated me to finish that! So thank you. :)

More pertinently, the acronym stands for "Less Angst More Chill" and it is a very self-indulgent AU I developed ages ago, still dear to my heart, where I take the Tenth Doctor and forcibly make him calm down by removing Rose from his era and adding the Brigadier.

(For those curious about the mechanics of how, the divergence point is the TARDIS being found in "The Parting of the Ways" by the Brigadier, Liz, and Kate, en route to a UNIT conference; they step inside and the TARDIS takes them to Nine, before Bad Wolf has a chance to happen. The whole scenario's definitely contrived, but that's what fixits are for, right?)

It's a fun AU for me because it has more Brigadier (you know I think that's always an improvement ;P), the Tenth Doctor is somewhat saner than in canon, and along the way it turned into a sandbox where I could play with all my Doctor Who toys blissfully canon-free.

Snippet:

"Hullo. Bet that was a bit of a surprise--sorry, best I could do. Just a recording, though. I'm the Doctor, by the way." The recorded image waggled his fingers in a wave--facing Alistair, but not quite looking at him. "I probably don't look familiar--don't quite know who's going to see this, so I can't be sure--but trust me, I'm the Doctor. The whole different face thing, it's just . . . something that happens occasionally. Sorry 'bout that."

Alistair sighed, leaning against the console. "Yes, I'm familiar with the concept of regeneration," he muttered. "What's going on, Doctor?"

The image (which had been patiently scratching its ear, arms folded, as if waiting something out), straightened up. "Anyways. That actually isn't the important part here."

"No, really?"

"The important thing is this message. Because if it's playing for you, that means two things. One: I've been separated from my TARDIS, probably forever. Two, and more importantly: You're on the very short list of people I actually trust to take care of the old girl without me."

Alistair stiffened, shoulders falling into military stance without his conscious input, chin coming up and eyes narrowing to focus on the hologram.

The Doctor's image was smiling slightly, contritely. Unfortunately for him, that was an expression Alistair had seen too many times, in the wake of far too many harebrained schemes gone wrong, to be at all impressed by it now.

[silkendandelion]

My Own, Distant Home (Completed), A Fears to Fathom: Ironbark Lookout fanfiction

Chapter 2 (END), ao3 link

Jack Nelson x Connor Hawkins Words: 16.6k Genre: Horror, humor, smut

"Jack thinks him a good guy, Connor, despite what others probably thought. He wasn’t particularly friendly, a bit of a short fuse, but he took his job seriously, and didn’t forget to wish Jack well, even among his rush for a solution. Some people would call that dedication. Jack decided, as he tied his boot laces, that it was endearing."

Or

A romantic, creepy, canon-compliant retelling of the game's narrative where Jack and Connor are more fleshed out characters, and not immune to falling for a voice on the radio—until they aren't.

Rated Explicit for sexual content, strong language, horror elements, frightening imagery and descriptions of violence.

Cross-posted to ao3, same username, here.

Cheers to rarepairs, and to all the people who had a crush on Connor during the game: I have heard you. If you like Firewatch, or Do You Copy, check out fears to fathom, you could play the entire series in a day but I liked Ironbark the best. Even if you haven't played the game, I'm sure this can be read alone for people who like horror and making love in a thunderstorm 💙

Chapter 1 (Below)

It was only a transfer.

Not usually a big deal, this other park needed to fill a lookout position urgently, and Jack was probably the best suited for it. Not only because his coworkers spoke highly of him, but because he had the RV, and relocating was as easy as driving down the road. When you’re this free, no wife, no friends, no obligations, 2 hours is nothing to go to the next job.

Yeah, he thought as his eyes wandered off the road to the side mirror, the endless blacktop behind him, the empty road in front of him. No obligations. Free.

So why did driving up to the trail-head make his stomach ache?

He blamed it on his last meal in civilization for the time being: a perfectly greasy, buttery cheeseburger, no doubt made by a certified home-cooked chef with hairy arms. He wasn’t used to eating out, eating so much, and in hindsight, the large coke was a bit of an Icarus move.

Just a bit of indigestion, nothing to worry about.

Not at all related to his walk to the gas station next door for cigarettes that was interrupted by a creepy local. The one leaning against his car and mouth-harassing his own hamburger, gossiping cryptically about big foot and missing kids like he was a Stephen King minor character. Real “you wanna watch out for that road” stuff.

The same missing kids on the poster across from the gate office. Gone without a trace, with no more search parties willing to keep looking after they lost some of their own people to what witnesses called “strange whistling in the dark”. Anyone saner, smarter, might have gotten back in their RV and not looked back. But Jack loved nature, and liked his job. Until he heard this strange whistling for himself, he had bills to pay and a guy named Billy to see for check-in.

The light to the guard shack was on, the door unlocked as he turns the handle. Worn out and road-fatigued, his brain hardly lends him the advice he should have probably called out to see if anyone was inside. His eagerness earns him a twin-barrel to the face, and a rightfully earned yell from both of them.

“You scared the piss out of me!” The ranger scolded him, and Jack fired back—

“Do you shove a gun in the face of everyone who sneaks up on you? What if I was a camper?”

“You can’t be too careful out here. There’s bobcats, bears and—wait, you say you’re not a camper? What are you doing barging in here anyway?”

“I’m Jack Nelson… Your new hire? Tower 11?”

“Well,” the mustached man regarded him with suspicion beneath his black cowboy hat. “Tower 11 is empty, but I didn’t hear about any new hire. Give me a second.”

“Oh,” Jack refrains from saying anything nasty, regardless of his fatigue, and puts up a patient, half smile. “Sure. Take all the time you need.”

He wandered out of the shack, back to the billboard with the missing poster, only half-reading the posted copy of the trail map he already owned when Billy came back out.

“You’ve been vetted. Sorry about all that, I don’t check my email as often as I should. You must be tired from driving, I’ll just take a copy of your ID and get the gate open so you can start the hike up to the tower.”

Billy was gone for only a minute before he came back, enough time for Jack to get his duffel and lock the RV. He handed back his ID, and pushed open one of the arms of the gate.

“… Hey.” He called before Jack could get passed him.

“Tower 12 is your closest neighbor, call him if you need anything. And don’t—I mean, do NOT go out further than maybe a 1/4 mile north of your tower on foot. Got it?”

“Uh, sure?” Jack gapes at him, unprepared. “Why?”

“It’s dangerous out that way. You’ve got bears, bobcats, all sorts of stuff.”

“Right… Thanks again, Billy. Goodnight.” He waved, eager to make some distance between him and this newest creepy local, and start wearing down the trail to his tower.

Did everyone in this town take etiquette lessons from a paperback horror novels? They were at least in the same book club, which actually wouldn’t be weird for such a small, quiet place.

The walk to the tower is easy, if a little cold by the time he crosses the creek. Tower 11 sits up against a nearby radio spire, lit up red and guiding him to the foot of his home for the foreseeable future. He knows to gas up the generator and crank it before he starts up the long flights of stairs to the top, and the tower cabin, small but not cramped, is a welcome sight.

The sheets on the bed are clean, free of holes and smelling of cheap detergent (ocean breeze something, he guessed), and the good burn of a wood fire seems to be baked into the panel walls and secondhand furniture. All his needed tools are haphazardly scattered but identifiable at a glance, and the fridge, beginning to kick on, is filled with old, freezer burned food.

Not rotted, there’s no unpleasant smell besides stale, and the room is otherwise well-kept, but he can’t help feel that the last occupant left in a hurry. Beside the bed lay a pair of abandoned wool slippers, and those go in the trash too.

All he needs to do is lay out his blanket and pillow to call himself moved in, and getting a fire going is even faster. He’s tying off the trash, waiting for the microwave to finish heating up a cup of coffee, when his radio, boxy and cumbersome on the little desk, clicks to life.

Static greets him before another male voice, deeper than his own.

‘I saw the lights go on. You copy, new guy?’

“Yeah, hey. I’m Jack.” He squeezes the receiver on and off as he sits in the old, steel chair in front of the desk, wiping a bit of sweat from his brow with the back of his arm.

‘Connor, Tower 12. Your new neighbor, I guess.’

A beat of silence, and then a click. “Billy mentioned you, just not by name. Nice to meet you.”

He hears Connor hum into the receiver, distantly wondering if it was a sound of irritation at him or something Jack couldn’t see. ‘Well, you got a fire started, that’s good. It’s good to see Tower 11 alive again.’

With a pause, his voice was friendly again, like whatever he was worried about suddenly resolved itself. ‘Anyway, don’t let me keep you. Oh, and don’t forget to submit your report before you go to bed.’

Jack suppresses his yawn with a wince—half headache, half ready for bed, and clicks the receiver. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

‘Get some rest, new guy, don’t let the bed bugs bite. Over and out.’

“Over and out.”

The radio dims with no open connection, and Jack forgets his coffee in the microwave when he can’t manage to avoid dozing off in the chair.

A few hours pass, midnight rolls upon the park and an unintelligible static rouses him from his sleep. He wants to investigate, his instincts whispering to him that something was wrong, something lurking in the forest beyond his tower, but an ache in his lumbar and the pressure in his bladder leaves no room for anything except the urgency to get comfortable quick. He stretches until his back gives a satisfying crack, and with a quick leak off the railing of the tower, he falls into bed without another thought.

NIGHT 2

On nights like this, Jack can imagine being a lookout forever, nipped by the last throes of winter on a chilly wind yet cradled safely between the warmth bleeding out of his tower and the hot coffee in his hands. Perched up high, nearly brushing against the clouds, the sunset seems brighter than down on the trail, all melted pinks and oranges that don’t begin to betray how in less than an hour the forest will be all but black.

The static of his radio breaks the silence.

‘New guy, this is Connor from Tower 12. Do you copy?’

He drops his empty mug among the dirty dishes from dinner when Connor speaks again. ‘Tower 11, do you copy?’

“Tower 11, I copy. What’s up, Connor?” Jack answers before he eases himself into the desk chair.

‘Son of a bitch! Nobody bothers to get a camping permit anymore. Do you have eyes on the smoke north of your position? Looks like it’s off the Lacey Trail.’

“Give me a second, I’ll check.”

He grabs his binoculars, is almost out the door when Connor’s opening the line again. ‘I need you to confirm.’

“You can hang on, it won’t kill you,” says Jack to himself while peering off the railing. Exactly as Connor described it, north of his tower, and near enough to likely be off the Lacey trail—a closed area—he spies the telltale white smoke of a campfire.

‘Do you see that smoke up north?’, comes the radio again and Jack answers with what he hopes passes for patience.

“I see it.”

‘Shit. People like that don’t clean up after themselves either, and fire risks are high this season. Do you mind checking it out?’

“I’ll head up there, and report back anything I find.” He rises to get his coat and boots.

‘Stay safe out there, new guy. Don’t forget to carry your bear spray. Over and out.’

Jack thinks him a good guy, Connor, despite what others probably thought. He wasn’t particularly friendly, a bit of a short fuse, but he took his job seriously, and didn’t forget to wish Jack well, even among his rush for a solution. Some people would call that dedication. Jack decided, as he tied his boot laces, that it was endearing.

Lacey Trail was several miles away on foot, no matter how close the smoke had seemed in the binoculars, and he pocketed both his bear mace and his flashlight before leaving the tower.

~*~

Unseasonably cold air nips through his fleece jacket, fingers already red around the knuckles as he fumbles to zip himself up. The beam of the flashlight bobs about over the dark trail, “3.2 miles” the optimistic sign had declared back near his tower. Only, the longer he walked, surrounded only by the icy wind biting on his ears and a deafening chorus of insects, the more it felt like “ETA unknown”.

A campfire lights the path around a bend in the trail, a match flame at the end of the path.

Whatever he wanted to call out, “hello”, or “get lost”, was cut off by the unmistakable sound of a man’s scream.

He makes no attempt to call back, taking off in a sprint towards the glowing campsite. The campfire in the center of a couple picnic tables and a tent illuminates the entire clearing between the trees, fresh wood popping, what must have been tossed in only minutes ago. But the campsite is empty. The tent’s open flap reveals a rumpled sleeping bag, the tables are crowded with an oil lantern, a battery-powered radio, and heaps of fresh food—but completely empty.

“Hello? Where are you?” He shouts into the dark with no answer. On the side of the clearing closest to the creek, a closed gate and red sign read ‘No camping allowed’.

“Are you hurt? Where—oh!” Jack coughs out a startled grunt, nearly tripping into the dirt over what he discovers is an abandoned flashlight.

His blood chills, colder than the unseasonable weather. Beyond the cautionary signs, where the darkness swallows the unkempt trail, drifts up the sound of a whistle. A human whistle, devoid of any recognizable melody.

It’s all he can do to stagger back, swipe an empty dinner pot from the picnic table and douse the fire with cold water from the creek. He tosses an unseeing glance over his shoulder, and is hoofing it out of the campsite and up the trail before the campfire has even stopped sizzling.

The cold air stings his lungs as he runs most of the trail back, hot blood thrumming into his ears and all but drowning out the insects. Were he less panicked, he would have heard over the sound of his own breathing that the insects had actually stopped, startled to silence by the looming shape in the treeline.

~*~

The glow of his tower beckons him home, and he scrambles his faculties to remember to grab firewood before climbing the steps, as well as relieve himself in the portable toilet beside the stairs. With what he witnessed, too vivid to not want to trust his own eyes but too strange to possibly be real, he wasn’t sure he would have the nerve to walk back down before dawn.

His radio flashes with an open channel, presumably Tower 12, and he sits heavy down in the metal chair. “Tower 12, do you copy?”

Beats of silence remind him his blood has yet to warm up.

‘Loud and clear, new guy. Sorry for delay, I was just cooking up some hot—’ Connor pauses, too much like Jack did when he thought he was being boring.

‘Nevermind that. What did you find out there?’

“The campsite was abandoned. Not a soul around,” Jack said, pushing down his nausea and the phantom sound of an eerie whistle.

‘Are you—’ A loud clang in the receiver, like a fork dropped in a bowl. ‘Kidding me? Son of a bitch. People like them are part of the problem, and on top of everything they run off.’

Jack fingers the sleeve on his jacket, realizing suddenly he had been too worked up to shrug off his fleece or his boots when he came inside. “I put out the fire, but there’s nothing else we can do tonight.”

‘No no, I get it… Thanks for checking it out, Jack. Tomorrow morning, I’ll report it to the authorities and they can take care of it.’

The words are out of Jack’s mouth before he can scold himself for being frightened in front of someone else. “I heard a scream. Honestly, I feel kind of bad for not sticking around to look harder.”

‘A scream? Probably just a red fox, they sound almost like a screaming lady when the rest of the forest is buzzing.’

Jack clamps down on a protest that it was a man’s scream, clearly no fox, then Connor is speaking again.

‘This is the third time this month. Ever since those kid’s went missing, there’s all sorts of rumors about the area being haunted, and we just can’t keep people out. Well, maybe I could, but not from this tower. I’ve got a job to do.’

The whistle is back in his mind, as vivid as Connor’s voice over the radio but, again, Jack keeps that to himself.

‘Well.’ Connor breaks him from his thoughts. ‘I’ll let you get to dinner, or whatever it is you do after you log off. Goodnight. Over and out.’

“Goodnight, Connor.”

2:27AM

He can’t explain what wakes him.

Nothing immediately seems wrong but he can’t begin to trust his senses, not with the greasy film that smudged his eyes no matter how hard he blinked, the heaviness of his limbs, and a sluggish mind at the helm, ripped from the deepest parts of his sleep cycle.

But even blind, dumb, and lame—he knew he was being watched.

Weak hands scrubbed at his face, trying to clear the sleep, until the room came into some kind of focus. Moonlight drifted in the one open panel behind his computer desk, casting the upright shadow of a—

His heart all but stopped. He squinted, unbelieving, blinking more at the peculiar silhouette painted across his front door. Unclear if it was man or beast, the sloped shoulders suggested humanoid but the shape of the head, wide with points that could be horns or ears in the dark made him unable to do anything more than stare.

Struck by a sudden wave of courage, he leapt up from the bed, throwing the blanket aside without certainty his legs would support him, and dashed to the light switch.

The shadow vanished with the incandescent bulb over head, banished by the light but lending no evidence as to whether it was some paranormal, hungry entity vulnerable to light, or something more secular afraid to be caught. Jack didn’t know which was worse, and standing alone in the center of his floor, he could finally hear how fast his heart was racing.

Whether by insanity or curiosity, though they hardly seemed different from where he stood, one of his shaking hands grabbed his bear mace while the other went for the door. The abrupt quietness of the night lent him courage where it shouldn’t, and upon venturing outside he was horrified to realize he was truly, tragically alone.

Or he was now.

Against the railing, and almost disturbed by the bear mace that clattered to the ground, was a skull.

Goat, from what limited knowledge he had, flanked by a few, worn, lit candles, and smeared across the ivory forehead with a red symbol he refused to get closer to identify either it’s shape or composition. He resigned to shove the door shut, slamming the lock’s hammer in place with no regard for the bear mace he abandoned.

“Tower 12, come in.” He tries the radio receiver, met with static. “Tower 12, can you hear me?”

More static and another beat of silence makes his stomach ache. “Connor, I need you to wake up.”

He’s never been so happy to hear the quiet click of another radio opening the line.

‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’

“This is an emergency.”

‘Are you okay? What’s happened?’ Connor immediately sounds more awake, like he’s sat up straight.

“Someone’s been on my tower, I woke to—I heard footsteps, it woke me up.”

‘Are you kidding me?’ Less composed now, angry but not nearly as when he vented about the campers earlier that evening. Though it was easily explained by the remnants of sleep clinging to him.

“I think they’re gone now.”

‘Did you see what they looked like?’

Jack’s mind raced back to the shadow, the beastly silhouette, and the footsteps that seemed to vanish when they passed by his door.

“N-No, but they left a skull on my doorstep. An animal skull, goat or—something, with candles, what looked like blood. Sick shit, Connor, I don’t—know—”

‘Take a deep breath, new guy. Let’s think about this rationally. You went and investigated a fire tonight, right?’

“… Yeah.”

‘So we know there’s unregistered campers in the area who don’t care about rules or regulations, probably bratty kids or college students. Suppose they wanted to get back at the fire watcher who doused their evening, it wouldn’t be that far of a walk. It’s just kids, Jack, don’t let it bother you.’

“You—” He let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “You’re right.”

‘Did you happen to get a photo of the thing?’

“I didn’t think about it.”

‘No shame in that. It’s all right to be riled up, but it’s not okay to panic. Lock your door, try to get some rest. Take a photo in the morning, and we can file a report with the authorities.’

But no sooner was Jack beginning to calm down, the hairs on the back of his neck began to rise, his stomach tightening with the idea that Connor was only coming to the conclusion of what limited information he had.

“Connor?”

Sleepier now, the other man’s voice came back a bothered rumble. ‘Yeah, Jack?’

“What if it’s related to the disappearances? At the campsite tonight, sure, it was empty but I heard… I heard whistling beyond the barriers for the closed trails. It’s a heck of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

For all his neighbor’s frustration at being woken so suddenly, there was no doubt that he was fully awake now, deliberately staying quiet on the other end of the line as Jack waited for any kind of answer.

‘New guy… You don’t believe all those rumors, do you?’

Behind his ribs, Jack’s heart is back to hammering. “Nah. No, I mean. You’re right, it’s gotta be kids.”

Connor didn’t seem convinced, even for a disembodied voice. ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll send someone to check on you tomorrow. For now, try to get some sleep, new guy. There’s nothing we can do in the dark.’

“Yeah… Thanks. Of course.” He rakes his hand through his hair like if it might knock his anxiety loose. “Goodnight, Connor.”

‘Goodnight, Jack.’

~*~

The skull was gone when he awoke the next morning. Nothing ever came of the report, and for a short time, the forest was quiet.

He’s gotten quite used to this little routine: submit his report, have dinner, say goodnight to Connor, bed.

Check the weather, put dinner in the oven, submit his report while talking to Connor, bed.

So they continued for days, falling into the comfort of predictability and looking forward to their goodnight radio checks.

‘Honestly, I envy you a little bit,’ said Connor one night while Jack posted himself up beside the radio, blanket around his shoulders and holding a hot mug of coffee. Probably not the best idea before lights out, but the warmth in his core more than made up for what his little wood stove lacked in power.

“Envy me? Why?” Jack sipped quietly.

‘You’ve got the RV, you can literally just pick up and go wherever you want. Hell, you did it once already when you relocated out here.’

“It’s… lonelier than I like to admit.”

Down in his cup, Jack could see the undissolved granules of his coffee lying along the bottom. With a quick swish, they’re gone and Connor speaks again.

‘While Tower 11 was empty, I forgot how nice it was to have someone to talk to.’

“You must really be desperate if you’re enjoying my company that much.” Jack found himself smiling, a bittersweet thing.

‘I should be the one saying that to you. Every day I call you to vent about these fucking campers, leaving their trash and shit. And you answer for me every time.’

He chuckled, unaware Connor was also smiling on the other line. “It’s kind of my job.”

‘Ouch.’ They laughed together this time. ‘You’re not supposed to agree with me.’

“Then maybe you should be nicer to yourself.”

‘You first, Jack.’

A comfortable silence falls over both sides of the radio transmission, twin smiles and the warmth of more than quick and dirty coffee between them.

‘You still with me? Sounds like you’re about to go any minute now.’ Connor said, soft and slow. If Jack kept his eyes closed, he could have imagined he said those words beside his ear.

“I think that’s all I’ve got, Connor.” He scrubbed at his eyes. “You get some rest too. Goodnight.”

‘Night, Jack.’

BETWEEN 2 AND 3 AM

A hand over Jack’s mouth bolts him awake, his entire body tensing as he grabs at the arm that holds him.

“Shh! Shh, Jack. It’s me… Its Connor.” He hears a familiar voice somewhere above him, and the blonde man comes into focus as Jack blinks away the last of the sleep. Moonlight shines through the open paneling, illuminating the side of his handsome, worried face, the width of his broad shoulders in a thin t-shirt.

“There’s something outside.” He looks briefly to the window. “Scoot over, Jack.”

He hardly has time to obey, let alone time for rational thoughts like What’s outside? and How is us both getting under the blanket supposed to help? before the other man is climbing into the single bed and pressing against him from the shoulder down.

“What are you doing?” Jack half demands, half pleads.

“Shh.” Connor hushes him, and he wants to relent—almost does—under such dark eyes, close enough to see they were brown in the dim light. “We have to be quiet, or they’ll hear us.”

“Who will hear us? Connor? What’s happ—mmf! M-mm,” Jack moans, startled, when their lips meet, smooth and wet like Connor had licked them before he leaned in.

His belly twinges, toes curling from only a kiss, and he might have been embarrassed if it weren’t for the hot outline of an erection digging into his hip. Connor’s tongue tastes of instant coffee, no doubt he himself tastes like cigarettes, but Connor doesn’t seem bothered. Not with how hard he is and the firm grip of his palm on Jack’s ribs through his old shirt, the way his thumb flicks at his nipple with little regard for how it makes him shake.

Teeth rake his bottom lip when their kiss turns deeper, hungry, panting hot into each other’s mouths as they work together to yank their sleep pants down to their thighs. A whimper jumps up between them as Connor’s hand clasps around them both, and Jack realizes it must have been him because when his thumb slips in the pre leaking from his tip—he makes it again.

The hand retreats long enough for Connor to lick his palm, but Jack knows he’s getting wet enough for the both them, so long as those capable hands keep pulling needy noises from his lips, pulling on his cock like that. Just like that, just how he likes.

“They’re gonna hear you, baby, you gotta be—quiet,” Connor pants against his wet lips. Jack wants to kiss him back, needs it, but he can do little more than leave fervid little moans against his tongue, joined by the spit-slick sound of Connor’s hand, warm and tight around them.

“I’m—s-sorry, Connor,” Jack fusses when the tightness in his belly finds the next gear, and for all his warnings, Connor is doing nothing to help him make less noise when he leans down to suckle at the side of his neck.

“Come on, baby, you’re almost there. Say it again,” he whispers warmly into his shirt collar. The rumble of him speaks to control, all whiskey and smoke, but Jack can feel how the rhythm of his forearm waivers, how the leg he has threaded under Jack’s begins to shake.

“C-Connor, get something to—Connor—”

Jack’s eyes throw themselves open on a gasp when he wakes, startled from the dream by the warm wetness seeping into the front of his underwear. He tries to sit up as best he can but his stomach quivers, heart thumping, as wave after wave of pleasant ache widens the stain on his sleep pants and steals his breath.

“For fucks sake,” he sighs, letting his body flop back to the bed when the feeling in his hands returns.

Awareness follows right behind his mess, and he flips the blanket away to hopefully spare himself the further embarrassment of taking the damned thing to the laundromat. But, even that was better than doing a spot wash in the sink, and having to tell Connor it was an Italian food incident when he sees it draped over the railing to dry.

First his waking hours, now his dreams. Connor filled his mind with thoughts of normalcy, the lingering ache of loneliness, and the insane idea of enjoying another person’s company. Such a luxury eluded him most days, a comfort he hardly believed could be found in these ominous woods.

Between distracting daydreams, some salacious, some sweet, and his immersion in his work, he almost forgot to be afraid.

~*~

The days that follow are easy but hardly quiet, not with Jack’s brain torn and oscillating between the paranoia of the encroaching forest—and his growing crush on his neighbor. His heart struggled under the stress of peering over his shoulder in the dark woods at every broken twig, just to be riled again by his nightly check-in. He began to sympathize with the rabbit his sister had when they were kids, perfectly still for all their fervent affection, until their veterinarian explained it’s early health problems were stress-related: poor creature was unable to distinguish their childish, heavy-handed petting from the musings of a predator biding it’s time to feast.

People had already disappeared. How long did he have until he was eaten too? Swallowed by the woods until all that remained were the tenets of skeptics and a ghostly whistle.

He busied himself with maintaining the tower, hammering down loose boards and checking the horizon repeatedly until the sun was long gone and the eerie quiet had settled it’s blanket across the forest.

“24.4 knots…” He murmured to fill the silence, as a flare lights up the north. Before he can go for his binoculars, the radio flicks on with an unfamiliar man’s voice.

‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

“This is Tower 11.”

‘Oh! Oh, thank god.’ The voice, a young man, shaking and unsure, comes over the line. ‘I’m lost and—I’m really starting to freak out.’

“Take a deep breath,” said Jack, his free hand opening the trail map on his computer. “Can you tell me where you are?”

‘I don’t even know where to start. I went out exploring and lost track of time. Everything looks different at night. The uh, the last trail marker I saw was by a stream, but I couldn’t read it from where I was. I’m walking west because I remember walking east to get here but… I’m definitely lost.’

“What equipment do you have?”

The hiker ignored his question, excited to finally be somewhere familiar. ‘Oh, man. I found the fork in the trail. But, I don’t remember if I’m supposed to go right or left to get back to the trail-head.’

“I have a map, let me take a look.”

‘Thank you.’ He says, but only lets Jack look for a few seconds before trying again. ‘Hello? Are you still there?’

“One more second, it’s all right.”

‘Oh. Oh, I see you!’

Jack looks to the radio, shocked to silence while phantoms of a predator’s fingers slip up the back of his neck, loosing shivers in his warm tower.

“What? What do you see?”

‘I hear you. You’re whistling to me. I’m right here!’ The hiker shouts, surely waving his hands above his head to welcome the unknown danger, and Jack’s thumb nearly cracks the receiver.

“Hey, HEY! That’s not me, I’m—”

‘What do you mean? You’re starting to freak me out—’ The transmission ends early, no crackling, no screams. Only silence, save for Jack’s breathing, his pounding heart.

Fuck.

He shoves the desk chair away, jumping up to grab his flashlight, and was two hastened footsteps from the door when a knock startles him almost to shout. Whatever possessed him to wrench open the door without a second thought, he hoped a well-aimed flashlight is enough to take them down.

“The hell are you doing in there? I’ve been out here knocking for awhile.”

His heart jerks, relieved, having never thought Billy would be the cause. “S-sorry. Was helping a lost hiker.”

“At this hour? Lord have mercy,” he drawled, his perpetually rumpled mustache shifting across his troubled frown. “Anyway—here’s your supplies. Just the essentials.”

“Thanks.” Jack turned away to set the box on the counter, when Billy spoke again. “I hear you been a little stressed lately. Everything all right?”

He never considered himself a liar, but Jack liked to think he knew how to pretend well enough to avoid suspicion about most things. Especially in regards to his own well-being. The smile that slips over his face is practiced, appropriately tired for the time of night. “It’s taken me a little longer to adjust to the new environment than I thought, but I’m getting there. Thanks for asking.”

Address the question logically, formulate a response from a half-truth. Acknowledge their concern. Easy.

Billy is so willing to not push the subject, it’s almost too easy. “That’s the spirit. Well, I won’t keep you. Get some sleep, Jack. Don’t forget to submit your report.”

He leaves as fast as he can without falling down the stairs, and Jack is happy to clap the door shut behind him. In the back of his mind, routine called to him, rubbing on his shoulders and offering him a cigarette after an exhausting day.

“Firewood, dinner, Connor in bed—THEN bed. Firewood, dinner, talk to Connor, respectfully, professionally, finish my report. Then bed.” He waved the flashlight back and forth anxiously as he wandered down the stairs, single-handedly determined to not have anything scary happen for the rest of the night.

If only he hadn’t gone for firewood.

The pile in the shack isn’t dwindling as fast as he anticipated with the weather warming up, and he makes a mental note to skip chopping more wood tomorrow. He balances the wood under one arm, flashlight tottering in the other as he leaves the shack—straight into another man.

“AH—damn! You nearly gave me a heart attack,” he pants when the bald man in clean coveralls doesn’t immediately move to disembowel him.

“No need to be afraid, son… I’m a worker, here for some routine maintenance on the radio tower over there.” The man’s flat, almost drowsy cadence is anything but comforting, too close to Jack’s liking of what he imagined a wax figure or mannequin to sound like, speaking slowly and quietly to not arouse suspicion of their sentience.

“Thought I would say hi to the new guy everyone’s been talking about.”

“… What’s your name?” Jack said as his hands flexed on the firewood, itching to run.

“Names can be deceiving. Call me Silas.”

“Do you always work so late?”

“Every Sunday.” A strange thing to admit, rather than lie about being up on the mountain so late for something so menial. “Just trying to keep the communication lines open. We must ensure the right messages meet the right people, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Right,” Jack said without hesitation, though he doubted he and Silas were talking with the same subject in mind.

“Absolutely. You watch for fires, but some fires are meant to burn. And no amount of prevention can stop them.”

His fingernails ache from holding the firewood throughout their conversation, and he can feel his heart beginning to thump against his ribs. “… It’s late. I should be going back. Goodnight, Silas.”

“Nature has plans,” he called after him, the intonation of his voice carrying without having to shout: an orator’s calm, suffocating inflection. “Ones even you can’t control. It will be cleansed.”

Upstairs, Jack shoved the firewood into the stove, both to relieve his stinging arms and to burn away the creeping dread that prickles at the back of his skull. Something is wrong with these woods, wrong with the people, from the supervisor who seems to have had his tongue stapled to the roof of his mouth, to the radio repairmen who spouted doctrine with the affect of a puppeteered corpse.

When had the woods he found such comfort in become so grim, promising only death to those who didn’t know when to run?

‘I can see the smoke coming from your tower. Don’t tell me you’re not in there?’ Connor’s voice, unbothered and probably craving his evening small talk, laid a calm over the quickly warming cabin.

‘Jack? Come in, new guy.’

“Here, Connor.” He lowered himself into the metal chair, pulling his jacket over chilled fingers.

‘Finally. Where you been?’ If Jack concentrated hard enough, perhaps he could sponge his blissful ignorance, or at least pretend to take refuge in the wrap of his arms. He couldn’t remember the last time he hugged anyone besides his sister, and most recently was still months before he left for the middle of nowhere.

“I went downstairs for some firewood and ran into Silas.”

‘Who?’ He says, half-muffled like he’s sat at the radio with his dinner.

“The guy who maintains the radio tower. Creepy as hell, spoke in riddles—I don’t think I actually saw him blink.”

The silence over the channel lasts long enough Jack reaches to flip the receiver on and off, hands skimming the metal casing for any sign the call had been disconnected, then Connor scoffs with some one-sided realization.

‘Is this about the other night? Tryin’ to yank my chain?’

Jack has to bite down on his lip next to bleeding to not fire back “I am not nearly funny enough to yank anyone’s chain, and if I was going to pull on anything of yours it would be your—”

‘That radio tower’s been out of service for ages now.’

His heart drops into his stomach. When he doesn’t answer, Connor continues to explain as if Jack wasn’t reeling, two seconds from puking into the receiver. ‘It was closed down right after I got here because a lightning strike fried it’s systems. Mitch said he would get it fixed next time there was room in the budget, but—well, you know how that’s going.’

“Then who did I just talk to?!” Jack shouts, too frightened to be embarrassed for his volume, and only hoping it didn’t hurt Connor’s ears or break their speaker.

‘Easy, Jack,’ replies Connor, too cool for the pounding in his ears. ‘Hey, you’re okay. Listen to me. This isn’t our first run-in with pranksters, is it? They got you again, but that’s all they can do. They’re not gonna hurt you.’

“He called me Jack.”

‘He knew your name? Do you think he’s been listening?’

“I don’t know, maybe?” He ran his hands through his hair, hoping to dispel some of the compounding anxiety of an imminent death.

‘Either way, we need to report this. Next time you see him, get a photo or his ID and anything else we can use to identify him. We’ll figure it out, Jack. Don’t worry.’

“Thanks, Connor.” His hands scrub down his face, he can not keep up this pace of being frightened and then having to convince himself nothing’s wrong just to keep from running into the woods and not stopping until he sees the road.

‘Call me if you have a nightmare, all right? I’ll put you back to sleep.’

“You asshole.” He can’t help the chuckle that sputters from his suddenly warm chest, hearing Connor’s smile through his cheeky tone.

‘Got you to laugh, didn’t I?’

Jack’s face is hot, he knows he’s blushing hard, and he summons the strength to not say anything too embarrassing (like “come over”) with a shuddering sigh. “Goodnight, Connor. Thank you… for everything.”

‘So sentimental. I like that. Night, Jack.’

The line clicks closed before Jack can chase him through the line, demanding to know what he meant, why his voice had to drop into the register that made his stomach flutter before disappearing from the face of his very, very small world. His suffering sigh rattles from his chest.

“I need to go to sleep.”

2 DAYS LATER

If it rains any more, his tower might flood.

All day, all evening, Jack had spent the majority of the day watching the shower soak the forest, ignoring the chores he tended to avoid anyway, and drinking far too much instant coffee because it was his only alternative to water. Although, he did get the spray duster out from under the counter, just to say he did.

“Maybe I’ll ask Billy to put some teabags in my next resupply,” he said, pouring out the last of his cup into the sink and picking up his cigarettes to take with him outside.

The forest below should look half-drowned after drinking all day, but it only sways elegantly in the gentle wind, not strong enough to push rainwater over the railing where it might disturb his smoke break. Tower 12 stands in the distance over the treeline, the soft, golden lights in the window suggesting Connor was taking a lazy day too.

Was he reading a well-loved, dog-eared novel? Cooking something warm and spicy? Maybe he fell asleep, belly full of warm food and blanket curled around his legs as the novel slips forgotten to the floor. Down into a deep sleep, the kind of rest what leaves him too warm when he wakes, hair rumpled and shirt risen over his middle to bear birthmarks or a secret tattoo.

“Jack, come back to bed.”

“Ah,” he grunted, sudden static from the radio ripping him out of his daydream. He presses out his cigarette, kicking over the ash tray as he hurries to his feet.

“This is Tower 11.” Silently, he congratulated himself for sounding perfectly professional and not guilty in the slightest.

‘This—does it—damn.’ Connor’s voice over the radio is smothered with screeching electronic snow, laced with intermittent words of increasing urgency.

‘Can’t—need h—Jack—can you hear—’

He whipped around to the window. The lights of Tower 12 hadn’t dimmed, but the persistent static and ominous, disconnected message chilled his blood. He gave no further thought to logical explanations, common sense could hike up the mountain with him if it really cared that much—and ran from the tower without changing his jacket to something waterproof and only his flashlight to protect them.

Above him, the rain pounds down harder, deafening as it pushed through the treeline to soak him, splattering over his trousers with every puddle he stomped across to get to Tower 12 as soon as he was physically capable, or sooner, even if it wounded him.

He reached the bottom of the tower not long after nightfall, expecting to be met with some sign of a struggle, but found nothing. Apart from the generator flashing a yellow warning light and the stack of firewood down nearly to nothing, there was no ripped grass, no gashes in the mud to suggest there had been anything unsavory in the woods that night. He tore up the metal steps anyway, two at a time, not convinced and not bothering to knock before he threw open the door—

And found Connor at the sink, half-dressed, the last dregs of shaving cream on his cheeks in thin stripes, steaming rag in hand.

He just stared at him.

Jack stared back.

“Can I help you?” Connor broke the silence, wiping his face clean and grabbing the henley draped over the back of his chair.

“You’re alive.”

“Jack?” He gaped at him, blonde head popping from his shirt’s neck hole to piece together the voice he knew with the grainy, black and white photo he had glimpsed on the staff directory website.

“Yeah that’s… that’s me.” Jack’s voice muddled down to a tiny murmur as the embarrassment threatened to melt him into two humiliated puddles inside his boots.

He really ran here, never-mind the several miles, ran here in the rain, dragging in water and mud like he was going to self-promote from fire lookout to ghost-buster with just a flashlight and some home-grown, grass-fed nerve. Death would have been kinder, he thought.

“God, you’re soaked. Here.” The towel that flies across the room to slap gently against his face smells like their cheap, provided laundry soap, with a thin vein of cologne, sharp and clean, a smell Jack suspected was baked into most everything fabric Connor owned.

“Sorry about your floor.”

“If I actually cared, I’d make you clean it,” Connor smirked at him, rummaging through his open duffel on the counter to hand over a sweater, boxers, and a pair of sweatpants of the same brand as the ones he wore himself. “Put these on, I’ll hang up your clothes by the stove.”

Jack changed obediently, careful not to spread his mess any further than his little corner by the door, and sheepishly offered his wet clothes for Connor to thread over hangers.

“You’re a mess.”

He thought to protest, finding he could only continue to rub the towel over his hair, a little like a nervous tick. “Feels like it.”

“So. You gonna tell me why you tore across the mountainside and threw yourself into my lap half-drowned?” Connor said as he leaned against the counter, arms—nice arms—focus Jack—crossed over his chest. But, for all his posture and words that spoke to some degree of scolding, he could only find warmth in his gaze, patient enough to hear every word of his reply with grace and an open mind.

“The radio…”

“The radio?” Connor went to flip it on, demonstrate how it crackled and sputtered before coming online, green light ready.

“My generator started giving me crap a couple hours ago, I thought the power surge might have killed it so I tried to call you. You didn’t answer, I thought you just couldn’t hear me.”

The embarrassment releases him in an instant, he’s suddenly back where he had been an hour ago, disoriented and tearing down the trail. “It was terrifying, you sounded like—you weren’t making sense from the words that did get through. I didn’t know if you were being murdered up here and calling for help.”

He scoffs, then turns away from him, towards the window. “Is this about the missing campers again? Because I’m not willing to entertain all of your theories right now, all right—”

“I was worried, Connor. Scared the shit out of me.” His words left him in a rush, hanging between them, the only sound among the hum of the fridge against the wall.

“… You came all the way up here—in a storm—because you were worried?”

Jack couldn’t bear to look up to see the extent of the confusion he heard in his voice. “It’s—just a shower, really. It’ll stop soon and I’ll get out of your way,” he mumbled and rubbed at the back of his neck.

“Weatherman says it’s gonna get bad. You should stay.”

The timber of his voice, softer, almost nervous, had Jack raising his head to meet his eyes.

“I’d like you to stay.” He offered, and the nervousness turned out to be more uncertainty, testing a boundary he wasn’t sure would welcome him on the other side. “I’ll feed you. There’s soup, a couple beers left in my stash. What do you say?”

Jack’s hands tightened in the damp towel, suddenly he struggled to breathe.

“I’d like that.”

Chapter 2 (END)

[terrence-silver]

hii! what about beloved acting crazy after reading a message from Cheyenne to Terry om his phone? beloved has started a relationship with Terry months after Cheyenne, and demonstrates jealousy over him to read a message from his ex

---

Terry gives me the impression of being the type of guy to literally block his fling on everything the minute John returned into his life and Terry decided it is time to go back to his old ways. Locks changed. Messages transferred to voice mail and then deleted. Emails auto-erased in the trash section. All possible ways to contact him cut off in no time at all. Secretaries instructed to swerve and avoid said person. There's walls and there's no crossing them anymore because he doesn't want them crossed. The doors to his life are closed. This is nowhere confirmed in the show, of course, but I just get those vibes, as the kids nowadays say. I mean, he even changed his place of residence from the Malibu beachfront to another manor altogether, that's how definite and drastic his shifts are and can be. Terry Silver is possibly one of those people who have the capacity of changing within a second. On and off switch. He's that person who blocks you without ever explaining or giving closure, because he doesn't give closure when he doesn't want to. He's not that man. Not for everyone anyway. He's here when it is convenient and he's no longer here when it is not. Next time you meet him? If you meet him? You might not even recognize him as the him you knew because his mannerisms, behavior and overall aesthetic might be that different.

That skin is shed and long since devoured by him. He's a new snake now.

It is a bit like a sleeper agent triggered into action after years of slumber and being activated to complete his mission, which, considering Terry was with the Spec Ops in Vietnam isn't that bad of an analogy. Malibu Terry doesn't exist. Malibu Terry was an identity. Whatever Malibu Terry did while he was Malibu Terry was simply a way to believably put up a front and kill time while he was 'slumbering' and cleaning himself up. Brumating, if you will.

I feel beloved never sees any messages of any sort. No indication of past relationships, adventures or affairs. Nothing stashed. Nothing archived. No notifications. No nothing. No surprises. No unexpected pop-ups. Nothing beyond his control. They never have the chance to be jealous. It's not that he's lying. He's an older man of wealth and leisure and he's experienced; of course there has been women before and of course beloved knows. He's not a monk and he's not an innocent spring chicken and that's part of his allure. But, he has this uncanny ability to separate himself from things and people that have reached their expiration date and he does it as easily as putting on a new tie or slicking his hair back. All his attention is strictly and entirely on beloved, and in the context of everything written here that is both a beautiful and daunting prospect because there's people he's going to unapologetically and coldly ghost the living daylights out of like they never even existed to him...and then there's people he's going to smother and drown in his love and possessiveness until they're more himself than themselves.

It is almost entirely saner to be in Cheyenne's shoes and be met with indifference.

[kerubimcrepin]

Episode 30 - Bonta Folie's (part 1)

This says: "COCO PEOPL PLAQU"

I wonder what this magazine is about, as someone who doesn't read magazines. Swimwear? Beaches?

Guys are we sure she was shaving "him" off, and not "it"? Because I'm scared, Mr submaker.

There are multiple things to point out here:

Simone is basically Joris's babysitter whenever Kerubim leaves. And by god, Kerubim seems to leave a lot.

Living/working across from Kerubim, Julie is familiar with him and Joris, and has a prior relationship. She is an ecaflip, and a fellow business owner, — besides that, being an ex-hairdresser, Kerubim probably has taught her a thing or two. So, she's very happy to see him. Cute.

She discussed Simone's hair, and how to style it with him, without Simone's knowledge.

It's so sad that Simone is trapped in a reality where at times Kerubim Crepin really is as cool and knowledgeable about everything as he likes to present himself.

Imagine if the world's most entitled person entered your coffee shop and turned out to be a 30-year-in-a-row winner of the coffee making competition. Imagine if this happened every day to you at every single place you went to, with the exact same guy.

He's recommended your girlfriend what dresses to put you in, and they're all amazing. Yesterday he forgot a knife on the table, his son began running around with it. You want to beat his ass for both.

The translation here doesn't really carry across that he's saying that he wasn't a male hairdresser, but a Female Hairdresseresse.

"I was a Girlboss, my Jojo! A girlslay, gaslight, gatekeep one!"

Here Julie confirms what I already supposed: that she knows this story, and that he's taught her things.

I want to believe this is Ecaflip's doing, because Kerubim slipping on a banana peel that evil fucking cat left behind twice, and it making his life better each time, would be the funniest brick joke to date.

"LOU PRESENTE

LA _RAIE"

It doesn't look like a V at all, but it would make sense if it said "La Vraie," and they simply didn't bother to add any detail to the letter under his finger.

I think Lou is bisexual, and told him repeatedly about the cool sapphic cabaret she went to, to him, and this man who has never before been interested in cabaret was like "yeah that's probably the best one, the most renowned coolest one." and never understood it's a., lesbian thing.

I think this is the easiest way to explain how he knows about it, yet knows nothing about it.

I will be real, it's heart-warming to see him drink something that isn't beer while in a bar. Though the little artistocratic pinky thing he's doing is... very distracting.

Thank you, ecaflip psychiatric ward, for making him a bit saner, yet insane in new, weirder ways.

Feminism.

(Eric Andre voice) Oh you think the Bontarian Sapphic Cabaret has girl power? Well then, do you think the Bontarian Sapphic Cabaret effectively utilized their girl power by propagating the Bonta-supremacist view among their viewers using their sex appeal, in service of the corrupt nobility?

God, redressing from that costume in five minutes sounds hellish.

A lot of shows would have made an episode, where their male protagonist cross dresses, and infiltrates a "female space", one filled with Goofs about him being a pervert, or uncomfortable, or would have him act visibly flustered. Because it's "funny", man in drag fails at being a woman, laugh.

...I am very happy this one doesn't go in that direction, for many, many reasons.

Realistically, after losing his fiancée, after weeks, or months, in a psychiatric ward, he really wouldn't have "this is a place full of pretty women", of all things, on his mind.

Beyond that, the whole concept of drag as a joke at the expense of the person wearing it, is, well, offensive, and to see it being something more than that, is quite refreshing.

His nerves come from how much he has to do, and how out of depth he is.

This guy has never worked in a high-stress environment like that, he's never done a girly thing before either! He just fucked up a woman's wig, and is about to burn a hole through these clothes. Things are bad.

The real Lili wasn't fucking lying: this really is hell.

Your daily reminder that, for all the jokes of Joris being a manlet, Kerubim is almost the exact same height as he, give-or-take like, ten centimetres.

The thing is that, he used to hate himself so much, that he developed 30-50 addictions and gave her magical amnesia about it.

Now he wants her back so badly that he's drinking tea in taverns, dressing up as a woman (despite, y'know, his incredibly fragile sense of masculinity), and he's chasing her despite knowing how badly he fucked up and that she may never forgive him, simply because he wants to try to make it work anyway.

What he hadn't solved, is his issue with lying, but it is a nice sentiment, — for him to be ready to toss aside his previous identity that used to serve as his shield, in favour of this more vulnerable, girlfailure-esque one.

He can't even muster it in him, to feel bad, when Lou's teasing him here.

I think it's also important to point out that this episode is, funnily enough, one where we see young Kerubim at his most carefree and happy, and his relationship with Lou at it's peak.

He isn't forcing himself to learn how to do make-up through gritted teeth just to get closer to her. He's learning that his girlfriend's interests are fun, and that he likes it. That he's been missing out all this time.

Yes, as an old man he views it as "forgetting who he really is," but to say this didn't affect him greatly, would be a big, big lie. He is still implied to, at times, do drag. He's far more emotionally open with his peers, and doesn't really view it as a weakness anymore. He knits, for god's sake.

Also, and I'm sorry for this., but he has an actual fucking Single-Mom Syndrome. A fatal case of it, in fact. So that's just one last nail in the coffin, proving that this really was one of the most profound thing to ever happen to him, and one that changed his brain chemistry forever, for better or for worse.

[taralen]

A Moment of Clarity 💌

So, over the course of my entire life, I have never once actually blogged any moments of mental breakdowns/madness until this year (specifically the past month or so I've been active here.)

For the record, when I say I'm crazy, I am not LARPing or just kinning a character because I think it's cute or quirky. I am a real deal nutjob who can actually say I know what a psychiatric ward is like. I've been through a slew of doctors, psychiatrists, and therapists over most of my life. Every day, I must take a cocktail of prescriptions just to stay functional, and even then, they don't always work. I'm not addicted to any substance, but sometimes I do feel saner on a substance than without. That's the really sad reality of how broken my brain is.

It's fascinating to me when I can look at posts I wrote while manic and think, "Did I really write that?" It reframes my perspective a bit. Right now, I'm stable, but I know it's not going to last. I feel the need to type this while I am.

I'm being transparent about this because I'm tired of pretending I'm sane and normal. Additionally, I really appreciate the kindness and support people have shown to me on this site. I can say for certain that aside from super close friends, I have trepidations about being open with others. I always feared that no one would want to be my friend, look at my art, or engage with me, knowing full well I am a trainwreck. I intentionally locked my heart away for nearly a decade now since I was terrified at the thought of someone getting close to me only for them to leave because they realize I'm insane.

Man, I don't know what else to say except thank you all for being so accepting and nice to a nutty sonofabitch like me. If it's because of a certain [[specil salesman]], then God Bless Toby for making an insane character handled with enough tact that thousands of people love. It honestly brings a tear to my eye knowing someone like me isn't totally worthless, haha. Love to all who have been so kind and supportive. Even one little hashtag or nice comment is enough to brighten my day.

I already know I'm going to read this while manic and laugh about it or scorn myself for being a piece of trash, but for now, I'm going to enjoy this moment, haha.

❤♥️❤♥️❤♥️❤♥️♥️❤♥️❤♥️❤♥️❤♥️❤♥️❤❤♥️❤♥️❤♥️❤

Credit to @superdrawer11 for the cute gif

[nokingsonlyfooles]

Courting the White Nationalist Vote

Wow! Which President who cranks out policy that the ACLU needs to sue over do you want to vote for? I'm so excited for democracy!

I've been watching this with my fingernails digging into my chair, and it went through. Of course it did. They may not be able to enforce it, but they're gonna try.

If too many people flee the violence the US is helping create, and legally present themselves for processing like they are supposed to do, the US will stop granting asylum to anyone at the southern border until the numbers fall below 2020 levels. Pretty sure we're violating international law, here, but that's never stopped us before. Trump has also used the little loophole that says, "Actually, if it's in the national interest, we don't owe refugees anything." The national interest in this case seems to be vacuuming up the votes of the more moderate white nationalists and the folks who are willing to excuse their behaviour. Please, this is politically expedient. We must compromise!

We must also include an exception for unaccompanied minors, because what we could really use is an excuse to put more children in cages. That'll knock those scary numbers of people-begging-for-help down to 2020 levels! We've been through this. Parents care more about getting their children somewhere safe than about keeping their children. If the children have a better chance alone, they'll send the children. But if it becomes obvious that the children are not safe, they'll reconsider. So step one is manufacture a crisis of unaccompanied minors, and step two is torture them. Obama did it first, and I believed him when he said it wasn't on purpose. That level of naivete is no longer available, I no longer respond to snappy suits and eloquence, and Biden doesn't even have those. I will not get up and dance to his crappy remix.

There is an entire voting bloc of people who have been so abused and neglected that all they know how to do is harm others. Many of them are involved in fundamentalist religions that punish them for assuming the slightest level of agency and independence. They are a gun to be aimed and they will be pointed at various outgroups indiscriminately. Instead of trying to help them, both political parties are going to have a fight over who gets to use them as a power source, even though the Democrats should know by now that the Republicans will ALWAYS set the bar lower and slither under it.

So we're racing to the bottom, and Democrats will always look a little bit saner because they're a few steps behind. But we're all headed to the same place, the place where all the problems are caused by bad people it's OK to kill. We can keep manufacturing bad people and killing them forever! And everything else can stay as broken as it already is, or get even worse, because we're already doing the right thing to fix it - killing our enemies. Forever.

What really hurts my soul is knowing more people would stand up and fight this if Trump were doing it. If it's a Democrat, our objections might get an unhinged Republican elected, so we quiet down. Yeah. That means it's in the Dems' best interest to go up against the scariest, craziest Reps available. Can't beat Trump! Republicans tried and failed! 34 felonies, wow! I don't know what happens when there's no more Trump to be had, but both sides will be groping around for the worst replacement they can find. That works for them.

And it doesn't really matter how many people die to make it work. As long as they're bad!

[thirdrootwriting]

Brother of my Brother (Infinite Crisis - Bad End) pt1

I am sorry if the timeline events of Infinite Crisis here are a bit wonky. Also we are going with Nightwing run version of Jason and Dick's first meeting, bc that one's my favorite.

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.

The world nearly ended, it does that sometimes. A great, physics-defying colliding of universes and cosmic god-beings that required every sucker that's ever donned spandex -and occasionally some semi-willing, saner rouges- to put their noses to the grindstone , kick some ass, and maybe fart out a few inspirational speeches if you were the friendly paragon type like Superman, the Flashes, or darling Nightwing.

Jason's involvement in the whole thing had been minimal. He'd busted up some of the weird-ass robot things that preceded the main event, spared a whole goddamn sympathetic wince for the poor bastards that had to fight Superman's evil alt-universe son, and knocked around a couple of wannabe thugs that thought Bludhaven getting nuked was a chance to start getting cute with some profiteering or trafficking on his turf in nearby Gotham.

Not too helpful, cause Jason wasn't one of those fools wearing spandex anymore. (He had actual pants now, imagine that!). Not too unhelpful, cause he was a fool choosing to live in Gotham, and he'd prefer his city to not be a radioactive wasteland trashed by robots and mad Kryptonians and his universe not to be melted or unwritten or whatever cosmic bullshit the villain de jour had planned.

Eventually, the dust had settled. Heroes had run back to their claimed cities, the JLA fucked off back to space, and the various tech whizzes had actually started bothering to lock down or shut off the emergency channels they'd thrown together to call out the all hands on deck situation, making it a lot harder for those that weren't exactly invited to the party to listen in.

Leaning back onto his ratty but comfortable couch, in an apartment that edges closer to housing rather than a safehouse, Jason is now instead idly trawling through the official responses published by the JLA, the Titans, and a couple of the more put-together, public facing heroes.

He's not a bad hacker, far better than most, but Jason really only gives a fuck about information relating to Gotham and its vigilantes. (And well, formerly Bludhaven. Sucks to suck, circus boy, looks like even the great Nightwing fails sometimes). There's no way Oracle doesn't have anything Bat-related on lockdown already, and Jason's not fool enough to tangle with her in her home court like that.

He scratches his neck.

Nah, he'd rather not have cop-girl turned surveillance-woman rat out his location or get in his systems cause he'd gotten curious and poked his digital nose into whatever terse, control freak communications Batman was sending to the League and his little solider boys. Jason could just paint a general picture reading between the lines of official, publicly available reports, and then investigate through other, more in-person means after. Shake some people down, break into government offices that sort of thing.

Well, first off, it seemed his snobby little replacement was going to be in Gotham for a while. There's a short, despondent little announcement from knock-off Robin's knock-off Titans that due to the tragic loss of Superboy in the recent crisis, Young Justice would be suspending activity.

It's followed by a short but clumsily sincere little memorial piece about Kon-El, like that's supposed to make up for the fact he's dead, like just posting a couple of cheesy pictures of cook-outs and daylight missions and blubbering out a few sentimental sentences about how kind and heroic the deceased was enough to make up for his violent death.

Jason scratches his neck again. His nails are cut almost to the quick so they don’t catch his skin, don't draw blood, don’t really get rid of the itch.

Batman's more of a problem, as always. He'd never deign to give anything as mundane as a public statement, of course, but the JLA has an actual PR team and a constant need to maintain an image of transparency in front of the general public and its many trigger-happy governments. They've put out a handy list of various commendations being given, memorials being held, and ongoing efforts of various heroes to help with the after effects of the tragedy

Jason idly opens the memorials tab for some rubber-necking after he's finished investigating. He doesn't even bother glancing at the award ceremonies page (no Bat would fucking ever).

Little mention of Batman in any of the rebuilding projects or various JLA committees on preventing this horrible tragedy from ever occurring again . (Even though they all knew something similar would happen in another couple of years, cause the universe  tries to off itself on damn schedule these days).

Jason sighs. Nary a sign of the Bat on anything from the JLA, and the various social pages and gossip rags of Gotham were mostly empty of their favorite drunken fool, Bruce Wayne.

If Jason was lucky (and he never was), the Bat was on some short, international mission that would be finished up before the Red Hood's even had time to finish shaking down air traffic control for their records of Batplane sightings.  If he's unlucky, the old man's on one of his long-term out of the city projects or stupid self-discovery journeys that seemed to mostly involve screwing morally grey spies and assassins.

If he's supremely unlucky, though, Batman's fucked off to space or some alternate dimension to do this this, that, and the other cause he's similar to Jason in at least one regard. Occasionally they had to give a shit about the stability of the universe and the fate of the world, cause that's what Gotham is sitting on.

Uggh, it better not be that last one. Shaking down or threatening a Flash or Lantern would be a goddamn pain and require a fuck-ton of planning (steal some shit from Freeze? Lure the space cop into a sulphur mine? Might just be easier breaking into the Batcave.)

Jason rolls his shoulders face twitching into a grimace. He hasn't decided what he wants to do or say or whatever the next time he sees Batman, but he does know he wants it on his fucking terms. He's never gonna have a moment's peace if he doesn’t' figure out where Batman's lurking.

Shit, worst comes to worst he'll beat the Bat's location out of his shiny new Robin or prod it outta Nightwing who's almost certainly an emotional wreck now that Shithaven's radioactive rubble.

…. Maybe the Red Hood will even buy Nightwing a beer instead of greeting him with a gunshot outta consideration for his loss next they meet. Might be worth it so that Jason can see pretty, perfect Dick Grayson floundering in failure like the rest of the mortal world regularly had too, the prick.

Feeling a bit calmer, Jason settles back into a sprawl and starts casually perusing the JLA's page of memorial announcements for people he might've met with Batman or Dick. He idly scrolls down the page, stopping once in a while to search engine a name that rings absolutely no bells on the off chance it’s a rebranding instead of new-blood or a  total no-name. After all he very much doubts any mid-to-late twenties men are going around calling themselves Aqualad, or fucking Speedy.

Near the bottom of the alphabetically organized page is a blue hyperlink that reads 'Nightwing'.

Jason blinks. Clenches and unclenches his left hand. That's … a weird fucking way to list a memorial for the city of Bludhaven.

He knows a lot of the old core Leaguers like to fawn over Robin Number 1, Superman especially, and that Nightwing's probably the only non-exploded, halfway decent person left willing to admit association  with Shithaven, Gotham's poorer, dirtier little sister-city, but still. Not super tactful.

Jason stares at electric blue of the hyperlink for another couple of seconds, then clicks on it.

'The public memorial for the hero known as Nightwing will be held at 5pm on October 24th on the public access field in front of Titian's Tower. A beloved figure of the hero community, founding member of the Titians, and known associate of Batman, Superman, and many other long time Justice League members …'

The word 'Robin' does not appear once on the entire page, Jason notes hysterically. Like every two-bit thug with half a brain cell left after Batman's regular beatings and Gothamite still sane enough to parse a newspaper don't know that the little, grinning dare-devil child mad enough to take on the night in Gotham armed with nothing but pixie boots and a smile, good enough to not just fucking survive that but stay laughing and kind, like they don't all know he grew up into their migratory bluebird who would swoop between the brighter, outside world and their resident shithole city, returning to the nest to help beat down their rouges, remind Batman to act like a freaking human being, and teasingly rescue little Robins that got in over their heads. Perfect, lucky, Dick Grayson, Gotham's little songbird that got to grow up and stretch his wings.

Jason numbly realizes he's started to chuckle, an ugly smile pulling at the corners of his lips.

A hideous cackling monologue that never really shuts up in the back of his memories laughs and laughs about dead birds, about Batman's failures. The sentences are impossible to fully parse, every other word punctuated by a crack of pain or an ugly giggle.

A soft, sharp, croon in his recently resurrected ears, as Talia-of-his-memory whispers, "Family and love are just pretty, useless words until they've been proven in blood and sacrifice."

Jason hurls the laptop across the room, shattering the bright screen displaying its memorial message against the wall then stalks off to grab his helmet. He needs to see for himself if this is, if Nightwing is . . .

. . . If it is true, he needs to know who. Needs to know badly, insistently, itchingly cause Jason really fucking doubts whatever JLA fuck that wrote the page, or Titan hanger-on that organized that memorial actually loved Richard Grayson that way his brother deserved.

He sure as hell knows their father won't.

------------------------------------------

Six years ago

The first time Jason met his predecessor? (maybe his brother?) went  . . . . alright.

Sure Jason's flubbed the gauntlet test thing that Bruce'd set up, Nightwing dancing circles about him with his fancy flips. Then that had been followed by the older teen basically dragging him about the whole city like a scruffed kitten as they'd raced through the streets to save Alfred dressed as Two-Face.

 On the other hand, they'd basically raced the length of the whole city, bus-surfing and peeping into warehouses, and ended up fighting with some sewer-croc monster to save Alfred dressed as Two-Face cause Batman had flubbed his whole secret test thing worse. Jason had come out of that whole mess not looking too bad in comparison and gotten the official go-ahead to be Robin from both Batman and the original.

He'd parted ways with Dick kinda amicably. Dick had given him his original Robin suit (which was actually pretty cool) and his phone number to call in case Batman was being a 'stoic, immovable, grump' (actually a bit tempting to use cause  Bruce had been snit over his car crash injuries). Jason in turn had passed over the new Nightwing suit Alfred had sewn up and repeated his challenge that he was gonna be even better as Robin so Dick'd better watch out (he'd gotten a raised eyebrow  and a sigh again).

Not bad or anything. No hitting, no screaming (at him anyway, he's fairly certain Nightwing and Batman had it out behind his back at some point). No angry demands about who let a grubby, homeless kid have Robin's costume.

Still, Jason felt like Nightwing was just humoring him, and it rankled. Worse, was he knew why. In contrast to Jason's rather lackluster first night as Robin, Batman had shown him clips of Nightwing's Gotham debut right before he sent him out to catch him, and really those said it all.

A smiling young man in midnight blue and bright gold on a playful rampage through Gotham's darkness, a grinning Batgirl in tow. He knocks out street thugs with a showy, graceful kick on one screen, raids the Iceburg Lounge and talks down to Pengiun with an grinning, effusive, confidence on another, and on the final screen on the bottom right breaks into Arkham to play a prank on the fucking Joker, the clown's angry threats near drowned out by his fearless, undaunted laughter as he slips away.

"This is Nightwing" says Batman. "He'll be your test."

"That's Robin." Realizes Jason. "He's what I've got to live up to."

[the-lady-of-the-labyrinth]

Listening to you little pishers one would think that no one had ever tried peace in the Middle East before, like it’s something you just thought of, as though Israelis haven’t been working hard at this for decades. No, it’s much easier to believe that they’re warlike monsters who like nothing more than a bit of genocide in the morning.

I’m not saying that Israel is perfect – far from it – or that the IDF doesn’t have its share of bad apples. I simply challenge you to find one army that doesn’t, or one country that is. I ask you to look at some of the other nations in the region and tell me yeah, that’s a place I’d like to live. But no, Israel is held to much higher standard than the rest of the world, and even if they become better than all the rest, it still won’t be enough. It will never be enough so long as they still exist.

Speaking of double standards, it’s funny how you get all over people who say they aren’t racist despite the racialized community telling them otherwise. You always said that groups are entitled to define the boundaries of their own identity and decide for themselves what is and isn’t considered hatred towards them. Every group except… you guessed it (are you really going to make me say it?) Even more, if any one of us dare challenge a single line of your orthodoxy, you take it as an invitation to threaten and intimidate us in the worst ways you can think of.

My dear left wingers, we’ve stood side by side for so long. We got through the Trump presidency and all manners of horrors. Why do you abandon us now? Because we won’t stand for your dehumanization of Israelis or stand idly by while your thoughtless words and mindless chants stoke the flames of antisemitism here at home? It’s seems to me that you really don’t care, and maybe you think we deserve it for having the tenacity to say “maybe that solider was trying to help that child, not murder them”.

These are scary times for all Jews everywhere. If you can’t even feign to care, or if you react with hostility for being called out for not being kind, don’t you dare call yourselves allies. I don’t want to hear any of you ever say how if you were alive during WWII that you would have given shelter to the Jews, because you couldn’t be further from the truth. We are right here, hiding in plain sight, pleading with you to bring it down a few notches, but you refuse to see. Our existence threatens your sense of self-righteousness and outrage.

I refuse to beg for your understanding anymore. If you want to block me, please do me that favour. Honestly, Tumblr has been a much nicer and saner place since you all dropped off my timeline. I’ve learned more about antisemitism in the past seven weeks than in all my life prior. It’s been eye-opening, to say the least, so I might as well thank you for helping me understand what it truly means to be Jewish… but on second thought, no. You can all go f*** yourselves.

[nerdylittleguy]

just my rambling about the new alignment chart and poster, mostly in relation to Breakdown, but there's more in my head then Breakdown's arms spinning in circles. trust me im sane!!

i am going to add a 'keep reading' to keep the rest of you unsuspecting mortals saner than me! /lh

okay! so here are some notes i made throughout the day, edited to sound more coherent and structured because i was loosing my marbles today! (these are about the alignment chart btw!)

tarantulas... evil? i'd say true neutral or something because he just wants to be alone, not cause anyone any trouble. leave my guy alone he just wants to do science!!

skullcruncher... chaotic evil? has he even had a voiced line??

grimlock - well, we haven't seen him, either. maybe this hints at his personality? i haven't seen many grimlocks yet (bits and pieces of cyberverse, RiD2015 and G1) but he's always seemed more chaotic than lawful, or just in the middle. eh, what do i know?

the most lawful good character i can think of in earthspark is Optimus, or if you asked me to think fast and name an LG character, optimus would come before bumblebee, that's for sure. i've seen lots of people say - and honestly this sounds very likely - that optimus is being isolated from other transformers by GHOST, so they can manipulate him. perhaps that would/ will shift him away from LG?

before we get onto my main event - Breakdown, of course, anyone surprised? - i'd like to quickly say i'd love one of these for the humans!! it'd be cool i think. calling that agent Croft would be lawful evil, or even neutral/ true evil.

okay, fasten your seatbelts, you're in for a ride! maybe. a ride of my rambles!!

it seems that this chart, for better or worse, had defined the good-evil scale as an autobot-decepticon scale. fair enough, that could be the basic idea.out of the three neutral characters, we have one we've seen nothing of (however, grim still has his autobot badge, so he's not with GHOST. maybe he's more of a rouge from the autobots, not decepticons?), we have megatron (who switched sides onto the side of 'good' - autobots and later GHOST, but that's falling apart pretty fast ain't it?) and breakdown (whose heart seems in racing more than fighting).

based on that, the alignment chart could be:

good - autobot/ main characters who are obviously good

neutral - rouges, side-switchers and unenthusiastic fighters

evil - decepticons lmao.

alright, alright, but what about BD??

here's my line of reasoning: if he's dead, why has he been on both the new things released? there's a lot of characters missing from the poster - hashtag, nightshade (who's on the chart), jawbreaker and tarantulas (who, despite being put as NE, did the Maltos more good than breakdown.) etc etc. so, why put a dead man on these two new releases?

if whoever was making this alignment chart was just 'ticking boxes', so to speak, and needed a CN character, why breakdown? okay, so who else could be classed as chaotic neutral?

if our scale here truly is autobot - rouges/ side-switchers/ whatever breakdown's loyalty is - decepticon, who could be neutral?

it's kinda a short list, but here it is:

sky warp and nova storm no longer work for the decepticons. it even sounded like they considered joining the autobots, but (curiously sounding in episode 9/10) didn't for fear of ghost. technically, they're former decepticons who would take a better chance if it was presented to them. on the scale, that might be considered neutral. and they certainly have an air of chaos

laserbeak and frenzy, mostly for those same reasons. yes, they do currently (? well, last we saw, anyway) work for mandroid, but they're former decepticons and they're very chaotic. additionally, from a realistic point of view, they're more likely to be alive than breakdown. we didn't see their limbs hanging around, they're small, and laserbeak and fly. they'd get out of that brawl no trouble! therefore, if breakdown is dead, laserbeak and frenzy could have been placed in CN.

here's the conclusion i wrote down: Breakdown is alive! why would he be in the poster, and on the chart, if he's dead? what the heck would be the point of that?? especially becuase he's so popular...

oh? what's this? i haven't mentioned arms yet? well, i'd hate to disappoint. here goes!

in both the new images, one of his arms (the left one, which was seen hanging in mandroid's lair) is out of sight. unfortunately, my digging has lead me to the conclusion that the image from the chart is not new, it's from the moment when breakdown leaps, transforms, and attacks GHOST agents.

note the red lights underneath his torso, and behind the letters. apologies for the awful episode screenshot!

the angle and zoom on the chart made this hell to pinpoint, and i still don't feel perfectly confident, especially due to his head's angle - something just feels off about the images, but maybe if i'd pinpointed it better it'd make more sense. and obviously the above images are not perfectly pinpointed, but it was hard to find a frame where it wasn't all blurry! maybe someone can get a cleaner image?

the image from the poster, though, it's bugging me. he's literally a few pixels on it, but...

that other arm is bailing me out here! as far as i saw during ep 14, i didn't see him raise his arm like that, but that could be just me. also, here's a shot from later in episode 14:

it has paint scratches on, and because the poster-breakdown is a few pixels, i can't really see if there's scratches there, but there might be a little bit of discolouration in similar places. so, either the poster is like... an unused image, or the paint is there (painting... knockout?) or (so??) it is a new image. whoohoo! he'd... be alive, then??!!

and would it really be one of my rambles without a little diagram?

no i cant do proportions. next question--

anyway, i'm sure i've missed something, or made a massive leap, but it's been chewing away at my mind all day, so enjoy! feel free to point out stuff that i have missed/ assumed. thanks for reading :)

@transformers-earthspark, you seem to enjoy my madness. /lh here's more overanalysing!

(funfact: i have been rambling about this to my family. my dad joked about a wanted/ missing poster...)

the search continues i guess!