#secret sanders sized 2019

[delimeful]

a mourning dove

here it is! a little late, but this is my @secret-sanders-sized gift for @roseof-alltrades3 ! 

i apologize for the lateness! i was so excited to work with your prompt that i ended up biting off more than i could chew and writing quite a bit more than planned! still, i hope that you like it! <3

warnings: blood, capture, fear, referring to a person as an ‘it’, random jerk giant

-

Logan was in the middle of breaking seven different rules when he was almost caught by a human. 

He’d been frustrated with his teacher, who refused to even consider the possible benefits of human technology, and with his best friend, who got upset at even the mention of humans being anything but dangerous, evil creatures. Nobody ever listened to him, not about the things that mattered. He’d seen some of the tools humans had, and he was certain they could benefit greatly from studying them! 

Of course, he’d only caught glimpses of those tools because he’d gone past the borough’s boundaries… far past them. But his point still stood! 

Incensed by being disregarded, Logan had abandoned his daily tasks to find his way to the edge of the woods again. Now, he was searching the forest floor for any possible human artifacts he could bring back as evidence to support his claim. 

Unfortunately, most of what he’d found was trash. Human litter tossed out of car windows or blown in from nearby fields. Logan grimaced, angling his wings to bank left, away from another shiny wrapper he’d mistaken for metal. 

Though their creations were interesting, Roman did have a point. Humans themselves were rather repulsive, in both mannerisms and appearance, what with the lack of wings. He almost pitied them. Almost. 

Distracted as he was by scanning the ground, when he finally caught sight of the human, it was just as the giant creature was crossing the boundary into the woods, only meters away. He froze for a moment, seized by some primitive instinct that overrode his logical mind screaming to flee before he was seen.

The human’s eyes flicked in his direction, and then promptly tripped over a stray tree root and toppled over with a yelp and a loud crash. The ground seemed to almost vibrate with the impact. 

Shaken by the quick movement, Logan finally managed to break out of his terrified haze and snapped his wings to swiftly dive towards the nearest branches for cover. He was going too fast to manage his usual precise landing, but managed to slam chest first into a thicker branch and cling to it, tawny wings tucked up against himself.

“Oops,” the human mumbled, picking a twig out of his bangs absently. “Sorry for the scare, little birds.” 

He didn’t give the trees around him more than a cursory glance before continuing over to a nearby birch, settling easily at the base of it and pulling the shoulder strap of his bag over his head. Logan breathed a near-silent sigh of relief, letting his death grip on the branch ease slightly; it seemed like the human had mistaken whatever glimpse he’d caught of the winged tiny as a bird. 

Still, the scare was enough to make his heart beat like it was trying to jump right out of his chest. He began to edge slowly along the tree limb, trying for a branch that extended behind the human’s field of vision. A leaf fluttered down, shaken loose by his movements, and he followed it with his gaze to where the human was sitting with a strange, rectangular device in his lap. 

Logan bit the soft inside of his lip. He should go back to the borough, warn Roman and the other guards of the human wandering near, especially after such a close call, but… 

Below him, the human opened the rectangle up, forming a right angle that was almost like an open book held sideways. He hummed a cheerful tune as the inside panels of the device suddenly changed color. Logan locked his legs around the branch, peering down. The human hadn’t seen him, and was very intent on the device, so it couldn’t hurt to take a bit longer. 

For the next hour, he watched curiously as the human pressed on the bottom rectangle, which was full of small square buttons that clicked, sometimes hesitant and sometimes so fast that it seemed as though he wasn’t even looking at what he was pressing. 

More intriguing was the way the bright, color-changing part would respond to the button pressing, small black lines appearing on a white background or entirely new scenes flashing into existence. The device seemed to glow, like a light reflected by water or one of the boroughs enchanted lanterns, but he could find no source for the light to be reflecting from, and everyone knew humans couldn’t perform enchantments. 

By the time the human stretched and changed the square back to a dull black, it was beginning to grow dark. The human closed the device back into its original form, and tucked it into his bag with easy motions. Logan sighed in disappointment, brimming with questions. He wanted to know everything about that strange technology- how it worked, what it was used for, where the human got it- but his only source of answers seemed done for the day, packing up and rising to his feet. 

After all, it wasn’t as though he could speak to a human. He’d be killed on the spot, or worse, captured. He watched as the tremendous creature yawned, displaying a mouth with teeth large enough to bite him in half, and shuddered. He was fairly certain humans weren’t that barbaric, but it was still unnerving to see. 

It was only once the human had vanished back over the hill that Logan finally felt at ease enough to stand on his branch, spreading his cramped wings a few times. He sent one last longing glance at the place where the human had last been, and-

Wait. What was that? 

He glided down to the oddly bright colored shape on the ground, landing a few feet away and glancing over his shoulder warily, suspecting a trap.

Nothing jumped out at him, though, and when he prodded the odd rounded rectangle, it didn’t do anything but sit there like a rock. He cautiously reached out to touch it, lifting it up into his arms and inspecting it closely in the dying sunlight.

It was lighter than he expected, more like an acorn than a rock, and made of a smooth blue material that certainly wasn’t wood or spidersilk cloth. He ran his thumb along the hard surface, finding a strange divot in it, and pressed his thumbs against the line. It gave slightly, and Logan grinned victoriously as the shell of the device cracked open to reveal… another smaller and more angled rectangle within.

He blinked at the shine of metal, wondering what in the world the purpose of such a tool could be. It wasn’t sharp enough to be a knife. Was it made to open something? Some kind of human key? 

A low hoot echoed nearby, and Logan stiffened, squinting at the bramble nearby in the low light. Roman would be having a fit by now, and it was too dark to do more investigating anyhow. 

Pulling the shell-cap loosely back into place over the metal, he ran a few feet and then took off, flitting between the trees back to the borough boundary lines. 

Taking care to avoid the night patrol, he kept the human item tucked closely to him as he reached the small aspen that held his home in its trunk. Luckily, he lived fairly far from the crowded borough center, and nobody took note of him slipping quietly in through one of his ceiling entrances. 

At least, that was what he thought until he touched down on his bedroom floor and heard someone clear their throat pointedly behind him. He whirled around, not entirely surprised to see his best friend standing there.

Roman was the son of the king and part of the guard, well-known and well-liked for his charming personality and looks alike. He had broad red hawk wings that flecked with gold whenever he cast enchantments, and many of their small town would sigh with longing or admiration whenever he passed by. 

Logan wondered how many of them would still have crushes if they knew how much of a worrywart their prince was. 

“Roman, what have I said about entering my home without permission?” he scolded automatically, his grip tightening on the item.

“Maybe I’ll actually listen to that when you start listening to the elder’s rules,” Roman shot back, his hands on his hips and his wings distinctly ruffled with his annoyance. He squinted at the bulky item in Logan’s arms. “What is that?” 

“... A human artifact,” he admitted, already drawing himself up in defense of his prize. “I found it, and I intend to study it.” 

“Oh, and I suppose that it was just laying around within borough limits, huh?” Roman scowled at him for a moment, before dragging a hand over his face. “Logan, you can’t keep doing this! We both know stealing from humans is dangerous.” 

“I wasn’t stealing. The human left this behind,” Logan defended, turning away to set the device on the floor next to his bed. 

“The human? As in, a particular one?” Roman’s voice went up a pitch, and Logan hid a wince. 

“I meant whatever human left the device. There was no human in sight when I retrieved it, of course. I’m no fool, Roman.” 

It was technically mostly the truth, but he was careful to keep the tips of his wings still anyhow, since they tended to flick around when he told lies. Roman sighed, looking caught up in his own thoughts. 

“Right, of course.” It was the closest they got to apologies, admitting the other was right. “I just wish… maybe we could meet up and work on spellwork more often? It’d keep me from worrying about you, and I miss when I had a decent partner to spar with.” 

Logan pulled his wings tight against his back, irritated by the guilt welling up inside him. “I’ve told you before that I cannot help you progress any further. I have imparted all I can in theory work, and you have already surpassed me in terms of casting, traditional and freeform. There is no sense in having me present to sit around uselessly when you are busy working on bigger and better things.” 

“Oaks above, Lo.” Roman swore, ruffling his hands through his hair in frustration. “You’re not useless.” 

“Of course I’m not,” Logan sniffed, staring intently at the device to avoid Roman’s gaze. “I am simply better suited to spend my time researching other matters to help the borough, namely the potential of human artifacts, regardless of what you or our mentor are so set on believing.” 

“Ugh! I don’t know why I even bother when you never listen!” Roman groaned, hands dropping to his sides.

Logan scowled. “I am listening, and that’s why I know you’re being ridiculous. I don’t need to be under constant supervision. I can take care of myself.”

“Fine, then! Keep dropping feathers in wolf dens, see how long it takes for one to hunt you down.” Apparently fed up, Roman flared his wings up and launched himself upwards, exiting through the skylight. Dramatic as always. 

Logan shook off his lingering unease with an absent flap of his wings. He refused to let himself linger on his friend’s ominous analogy, choosing to instead refocus on the mysterious item. 

He would be fine. Humans weren’t wolves, anyways. 

-

The next day, Logan found himself once again heading for the edge of the woods, the device strapped securely to his lower leg. 

He’d spent hours fiddling with the thing, attempting to understand how it worked to no avail. He’d considered taking it apart by force or trying more dangerous experiments, but ultimately he only had the one, and he didn’t want to ruin something that could potentially be vital to proving his point about human tech.

At least, not before exhausting all his other options, which included seeing if the human had another one, and if Logan could catch a glimpse of him using it. It was a long shot, particularly since he wasn’t even sure if the human would return at all, let alone happen to use a duplicate of this item.

Still, he had to try, and so he spent a few hours staking out the treeline from the leafy branches above. Taking the odds into account, he hadn’t honestly expected the human to return, so he was more than surprised when the giant actually did appear, several hours earlier than the previous afternoon as well. He leaned in to watch as the human scoured the forest floor, holding a black box to his ear and speaking to it. 

“No, I remember having it in my bag at the end of class, for sure. It has to be around here somewhere, because this is the only place I went between campus and home, and I already searched my whole car!” the human said, voice growing more distressed as he went on. There was a pause, faint sounds coming from the box. Logan wondered if it wasn’t some sort of communication device. 

The human took a deep breath, settling down onto the dirt for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, she’s a very nice professor. If I explained, I’m sure I could get an extension to redo the work, but that’s not what I’m really worried about.” A sniffle. “That thumb drive isn’t my normal school one. It has a bunch of old family photos stored on it, and I don’t have them saved anywhere else. If I can’t find it…” 

With a pause to take a deep, shuddery breath, the human managed to keep from crying. “I’m just going to keep searching, okay? It’s kind of windy, maybe it got blown a little ways away or something. Yeah, I promise to stay safe. Are you sure-? Okay. I’ll text you when I’m done here, then. Thank you… bye.” 

 Logan watched as the human took the box from his ear, tucking it away into his pocket and beginning to sweep his hands over the dirt again. Searching, Logan was fairly sure, for the device currently tied to him. He stuck his leg out to look at it, studying the size. It certainly didn’t match up with any of his body parts, but for the human… he supposed it was vaguely thumb-sized. 

Thumb-sized but somehow containing something important to the human, something relating to his family. Logan felt a traitorous sting of guilt, which was ridiculous. It wasn’t as though he’d known the human would miss the item when he took it, not with its size. And there was no way he could return it now. Could he? 

He supposed if he managed to place it just right… and maybe, if he was lucky, the human would do something with it to check that it still functioned, and Logan would finally have at least one question answered. 

His desire to return the item was purely scientific. It had nothing to do with how the human had to take breaks from searching to push his glasses up and rub at his eyes with the back of his hands. Nothing at all.

His plan came together simply enough; the human was traveling from tree to tree in a line, apparently not sure which one he had sat under the day before. Logan remembered, of course, that it was the birch next to the log with the oyster mushroom colony, and knew that the human had already passed it. He flitted over to the birch in question, climbing down the branches until he was as low as he could get.

As soon as the human was a solid four trees away, he dropped to the ground, banking with his wings to slow his descent. He stumbled slightly upon meeting the dirt, and hurriedly ducked so the tree was between him and the human, heart pounding in his ears. He took a deep breath. 

There was no reason to panic. Humans were dangerous, yes, but he wouldn’t have to deal with a human so long as he was smart. He was always smart, therefore, nothing to worry about. 

Checking to make sure that the human was still occupied, he hurried over to a boulder entangled in the tree’s roots. It was prominent enough that the bright blue of the device’s shell should stand out noticeably against it. He carefully laid the device on top of the rock and then took off, returning to the treetops. 

He was careful to conceal himself thoroughly in the branches, well aware that the human might find the sudden mysterious appearance of the ‘thumb drive’ suspicious. He certainly would, but he knew that humans were generally as ignorant as they were huge, so he wasn’t overtly worried. 

The human continued to search further and further, enough so that Logan began to worry that he’d bypass the tree entirely on his way back, but luck was on his side. Shoulders drooping with defeat, the human turned around and headed back the way he’d come, only to stop dead at the sight of the thumb device sitting innocently atop a rock. 

He blinked, and then rubbed at his eyes for a moment as though wondering if he was seeing things. The thumb device remained real, and he knelt to pick it up with a growing smile, opening the case to check the metal inside with ease.

In the next moment, his head snapped up to search the woods around him, and Logan was careful to remain completely still, not a feather out of place. As expected, the human didn’t spot anything, and Logan watched as he rose to his full height, feeling a small twinge of disappointment as the device disappeared into his pocket.

Unexpectedly, the human spoke. “To whoever is looking out for me, thank you very much!” 

He placed a hand over his heart and did an odd little half-bow, eyes curious, and then waited a few moments before straightening again and beginning to walk back along the path out of the woods. As he left, he held that little black box up to his ear again and began to talk into it after a few moments’ delay.

“Virgil, I found it, I found it! I don’t know how, but I think a friend helped me…” Logan’s feathers ruffled slightly as the conversation continued outside his hearing range. 

What a ridiculous human. It was almost a shame Logan would probably never see him again.

-

“Hello, little bird!” A cheerful voice called out, nearly making Logan topple off his perch. 

He clung to the wood beneath him and peeked through the leaves, eyes widening in disbelief as he confirmed that it was, in fact, the human from before. 

“I hope you don’t mind if I call you that, since we weren’t formally introduced!” the human continued, spreading a blanket along the ground in front of the birch to sit on. “My name is Patton Hart!” 

He paused, and the only response was distant birdsong. Patton seemed undeterred.

“Well, little bird, I’ve deemed this area my lucky spot, so I hope it’s okay that I study here!” He pulled his strange color-changing rectangle out of his bag as he spoke, and Logan couldn’t help but lean forward with interest. 

“Thankfully, I was able to turn my final in on time with the files from the thumb drive! It worked perfect, so thanks for keeping it safe for me!” 

Logan perked up, immediately spotting the small blue thumb drive- or rather, half of it. The shell had been opened, and the metal part was plugged into the large rectangle. So it was a key! 

He waited for the human to elaborate on how it worked, what it unlocked and what it’s purpose was in conjunction with the rectangle, but he seemed content to sit and work in silence. Logan opened his mouth, and then snapped it closed again. He may have broken many of the rules already, but this one would put more than just him at risk. 

No, he couldn’t talk to the human… but he could listen.

Scolding himself for leaving his notebook at home, he settled in to watch the human study, noting certain patterns or phrases the human used whenever he started off on some random tangent addressed to “little bird”. As far as nicknames went, it was... tolerable. 

What made the encounter even more interesting was that when the human packed up to leave, he left something behind again, this time on purpose, going by the “Freely given, little bird!” he had announced before leaving. Logan had spent a good while agonizing over whether or not to approach such an obvious trap, but in the end his curiosity won out.

When he dropped down to the ground to investigate, he found that a small, embroidered piece of cloth had been set out with a variety of objects on top. Some he dismissed easily, like the oversized human food- undoubtedly drugged or poisoned- and the simple carved toys, but others were more intriguing. 

Of course, there was no way he could take anything back to his home, not now that the human was likely waiting for that exact thing. He couldn’t remain here to investigate either, seeing as the sun was setting and he could get… immersed in his work. Anything could sneak up on him.

Deciding on a compromise, he took the objects that interested him- a small white cylinder with an orange protrusion, and a band with a metal face- and carried them to a nearby abandoned woodpecker nest inside a sturdy trunk. Once they were safely tucked away, he resolved to study them in the morning and headed home. 

His evenings were strangely quiet without Roman there to laugh and tease. The heir was still giving him the cold shoulder, not that Logan had done anything to rectify the situation. Having Roman keep an eye on him would make his daily excursions all the more difficult. That was all that mattered. 

The next morning was spent fiddling frustratedly with the items he’d taken, trying to understand how the switch triggered flickering light, what the light was meant to do. It wasn’t near warm enough to burn, so was it simply a light source? It was so dull that he’d need several to properly light up his room, let alone a human home. 

The face of the band was no better, covered in symbols that clearly held some sort of meaning, and moving parts that continued unpausing in a cycle around the center of the symbols. It reminded him vaguely of a sundial’s rotations, but he had no way to guess the meaning of the human writing. 

When he went to see how the human reacted, however, he found that not only was he completely unconcerned by the missing items, but even enthusiastic to see what had been taken.

“Are you a curious one, little bird?” he asked, carefully clearing the other objects away. “That little fake candle and the watch… I guess you’re light on time, huh?” 

Logan watched as his human grinned brightly without explaining his words at all, and bemoaned the fact that he’d gotten a human that spoke in riddles. At least he knew what the items were called. 

The next day, his human left more objects, none of them wooden toys. He wondered if maybe the human was conducting an experiment of his own, with how what he brought seemed to build off the few that Logan selected to take. Excluding the food, which was always replaced with new food despite the fact that he’d never touched it. 

His hidden nook got crowded quickly, and he expanded it to a few other trees, careful to keep the precious items safe from rain or mold. 

His curiosity about his human also grew with each passing day, learning small things about him from his daily chattering. He was going to college, which was what he was studying for, and he lived with another human named Virgil. He was incredibly forgetful, and whenever he forgot an item, he would politely request it back and then count down from sixty with his back turned and his hands covering his eyes. 

The first time he did this, he was sorely disappointed, seeing as there was no way Logan would fall for such a trap, not even when baited by Patton calling him shy, which he most certainly was not. 

The next day, however, found his human delighted by the return of his ‘keychain,’ and Logan continued to tell himself that he was simply being practical, since the item had no discernible use. His human’s smile had nothing to do with it. 

Eventually, he started to get sloppy. When things were too large, he snuck them back home. When Patton lost his keys and did his customary turn-around-and-count gesture, he dropped them from the trees and fluttered barely a safe distance away to watch him reclaim them. Worst of all, he became… almost relaxed in Patton’s presence. 

This lapse in caution was the only explanation he had for what happened next. 

He had been running late, held up by one of his teacher’s lectures, and so cut through a swath of trees nearer to the road in order to arrive at their customary meeting spot. 

Once he got close, he spotted something glinting in the grass. Normally, he’d assume it was another stray bit of litter and move on, but with Patton, one never knew when the human would accidentally lose something, or where. He sighed and dipped down to land, squinting at the… wire? Next to a pile of sunflower seeds? 

Distracted as he was by the unnatural sight, he didn’t notice the top netted part of the trap until it slammed down on top of him, triggered by the shifting plate underneath his feet. 

The impact knocked all the air from his lungs, leaving him wheezing and thrashing weakly under the mesh. He forced himself through a breathing pattern, over and over until it no longer felt like he was choking on nothing. His overwhelming panic calmed momentarily, he shoved against the trap with his wings, grunting in frustration when the bound edges of the net didn’t even budge. 

There was no question about it. This had to be a human trap, and he didn’t want to be in it when the human came to collect. 

A bit more desperately, he wrapped his hands around the edges of the trap’s thick wiring and pried at it, cursing when his foot slipped and plunged through the holes in the bottom netting. 

Before he could wrench it free, he felt a distant, rhythmic rumble in the ground. It grew louder and closer, and a chill ran down his spine as his movements became frantic. 

As soon as the giant boots creating the noise stepped into view, his whole body froze up, as though back in the clearing on the first day Patton showed up. 

Seeing a human from the ground was so much worse. His body began to tremble uncontrollably as the human approached the trap with easy steps, each one heavy enough to trample him into dust. 

The stranger was wearing a dusky camo jacket and bristle across his jaw, but Logan’s attention was entirely riveted on the long, serrated hunting knife in his hand. 

“Shh, little thing. You’ll be f-- what…” 

Logan heard the exact moment the man realized that he hadn’t caught a bird, and he resisted the urge to curl into a ball and hide behind his wings as a huge gloved hand approached. It gathered the netting of the trap up into a makeshift bag with him stuck in the center. Logan writhed against the hold, his breathing becoming quick and shallow once again as he stared at the knife. 

“Easy, little thing,” the hunter muttered absently, turning his hand this way and that to see Logan’s ensconced form better. “What are you?” 

Logan shuddered at the fascination in his eyes, pushing out against the net despite the fact that there was no way he could beat those massive fingers. 

His silence cracked as soon as those same digits pinched down roughly on his wing, spreading it to its full wingspan. 

“Agh! Let go!” he yelled, body shaking as the muscles in his shoulder were overextended. The man released him, more out of surprise than anything else. 

“You can talk? Incredible!” The man prodded at him again. “Go on, say something else.” 

Logan opened his mouth to say something that he would likely regret, but a different voice spoke first. A familiar one.

“Hello? Is someone over here?” Patton asked, pushing a low branch out of his way as he peered over at the hunter. 

The hunter jumped, and for a second Logan believed he’d be shoved in a pocket, but the man seemed to decide showing off took precedence. He held Logan out slightly, net and all. “Take a look at this!”

Patton stepped closer, the furrow in his brow growing as his gaze fell onto Logan. His body vibrated harder with terror, betraying him easily at the sight of two humans looking at him. 

“Um, did you… catch him?” Patton asked, voice hesitant. 

The hunter barely seemed to notice. “Sure did… I was trying for-- well, it doesn’t matter, this is better. I think it can imitate human speech!” 

Logan felt another shudder run through him, and Patton’s soft brown eyes found his. 

“I think… I think you should let him go,” Patton blurted, surprising all of them. He drew himself up, nodding once. “You’re not supposed to be hunting here at all, anyhow.” 

The hunter’s grip on Logan tightened, and a strangled whine escaped his throat without his permission. “Man, you actually pay attention to that conservation notice? This place is abandoned, park rangers haven’t checked on it in years. Finders, keepers as far as I’m concerned.” 

“That doesn’t apply to people that can talk!” Patton protested, stepping closer with his hands lifted placatingly. “Look, just let him out, okay? I won’t report you to the authorities if you take your traps and leave.”

The hunter snorted, gesturing vaguely with his knife. “Yeah, right. I’m a careful guy. They’re not going to find anything that I don’t want them to find, and with the money that this,” he lifted Logan slightly, “will bring in, I won’t have to worry about cops anyways.

“You don’t have any leverage over me, so turn around and mind yourself before you get in trouble,” the hunter finished, turning on his heel and beginning to walk away. Logan, ironically enough, felt a thrum of panic at leaving the other human behind. He wasn’t entirely sure that two bickering humans were better than one malignant one, but it certainly felt that way at the moment. 

Footsteps thumped loudly behind them, and the hunter whirled on his heel in time for Patton to catch both his wrists, Logan grunting as he was tossed about in the net. 

“What are you--?”

“Let him go, now!” Patton was frowning, arms visibly straining with the effort it took to keep the other man’s hands still. Logan stared down at the dizzying drop beneath him, wondering if it would kill him on impact if he was dropped now.

“You little--!” The hunter pried his knife-wielding hand free, and Logan watched as Patton swung his now unoccupied hand back and slammed it against the side of the hunter’s head, cupped right over his ear. 

The man cried out and fell back, his grip on the net loosening, and Logan felt as though he was near heart failure as a new pair of hands gently closed around him, prying the trap away from the hunter. 

Patton - for who else could it be - brought his hands close to his chest and bolted, making everything around Logan bounce rhythmically. He eventually pressed close to one of those large palms and clung to the edge of a finger, his head aching with the abrupt motions. He’d been ‘rescued’ from one human, but now he was securely in the hands of another. 

No matter what Patton said, he was still a human. It had to be some sort of trap, some long con that he was trying and failing not to fall for. 

The movements came to a stop with one final thud as Patton’s knees hit the ground, breathing heavily. Moments later, the hands surrounding him cracked open like a bird’s egg, sunlight pouring in. 

Above him, Patton was flushed with exertion, and he was still breathing deep as he spoke. “Are you okay, little bird?” 

His face creased with concern as Logan stared up at his giant features, body frozen like a deer before a mountain lion. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you, I swear. It’s gonna be okay.” 

It was a ridiculous claim for a human to make, but he found himself relaxing fractionally anyhow. 

“I’m gonna- um, take this off of you, okay? I’m gonna get you out of there, don’t worry.” Patton shifted him delicately to one palm, wincing at the way Logan’s wings flapped ineffectively, and began to carefully pry the net open. The trap which had given him so much trouble was barely an obstacle for a human. Logan shifted uncomfortably as Patton untangled it.

“How- how did you know?” he asked, since his mouth had never known when to stay quiet. To Patton’s credit, he didn’t even blink at the question or the tiny winged person it had come from.

“It was just a guess!” Patton offered, a grimace crossing his face briefly. “I normally feel like I’m being watched when I’m out in that clearing, but today there was nothing, so… I got worried. Oh, unless you’re asking about the ear clap. My best friend signed me up for a self-defense class, because I… uh, ‘have a marshmallow heart’ and I’m ‘exceedingly liable to get into trouble,’ allegedly.”

It felt like a fairly accurate assessment. 

“There we go,” Patton managed, finally getting the net completely open. Logan bolted for the exit before he could change his mind, spreading his wings as soon as he was in the open air and gaining some distance before turning. 

Patton hadn’t moved from his spot. He was smiling, bright like his smiles when Logan helped him, and Logan couldn’t help but flutter a bit closer and return the gesture, so grateful for this strange, kind human. 

“Glad… I’m glad you’re okay,” Patton said, and then winced, a hand dropping to his side. 

When he pulled his hand away, it was glistening with blood. They both blinked at it for a moment, smiles faltering, and then Logan followed his gaze down to where a dark stain was spreading slowly through his shirt and jacket. He realized suddenly that Patton, one hand busy keeping Logan secure and the other busy boxing the hunter’s ear, hadn’t gotten away from the man unscathed. 

In the process of rescuing him, his human had been stabbed.

“Oh,” Patton said weakly, and then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell into a dead faint.

[bilgisticallykosher]

Hey, I saw this the other day, but I couldn't respond then, I was only checking to make sure that my scheduled post worked, and then Shabbat so I didn't have time.

So! Things I love about this! First of all how I am led to assume that you checked my blog for research, took one look at it, and decided "yep, Remus." Perfect.

I love Deceit's curl on his tail, is it indicative of his mood? Is that Just How It Is Sometimes? Is it aesthetic? Is it ominous because he's a dramatic boy? I love it anyway, it's so cool.

The scale work? Great. And!! I just noticed that he has pointy ears and claws/nails, that is super cool! This is like an AU of an AU that I'm writing, and I might have to steal some of that imagery. Maybe. It looks so good.

Remus! Obligatory mention of the patchwork clothing, and sash, and oh wait wow, does he have a pin weapon? The li'l moustache, I'm weak. Both pictures make me double the weak. I like how in the first picture he's more frightened and "I have made an error" and then in the second one he's a little more "let's see where this goes," a little cheekier. But which cheeks?

I'm super glad that you had fun and that my prompt grabbed you, what a wonderful Secret Shloimy, thank you!

Heres my Secret Santa entry for @bilgisticallykosher​!

The prompts were so good but god you had me at supernatural/monsters man in that second prompt. I imagine poor Remus had to sneak his way into a cave one night when it was raining badly which isnt safe for a borrower when the woods are already dangerous as it is. Now he’s got to deal with a certian Naga…

The event was hosted by @secret-sanders-sized  thanks for hosting! Ive never done a secret santa online and it was fun~

[shadow-whisperer152]

Storm Wrecked

Here is my secret sanders sides present for @heyhelloitsk ! I hope you enjoy it! I have more to add to this story, so keep an eye out for the rest if you’re interested!

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In his defense, the day had started out nice enough. The sky was a beautiful shade of blue, fluffy white clouds dotted here and there. Birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and it was all too wonderful to stay inside! You didn’t get all that beauty from inside the old tree trunk they called a home, and Roman was determined to enjoy the lovely weather while he could. However, there was a slight problem….

“No.”

Roman groaned, wings drooping at the answer. “Come on, Virgil! Just for a little while!” He begged, fluttering about his side of their small home. A low grumbling came from the opposite end, where his enemy-turned-roommate turned-friend sat bundled beneath his pile of leaves.

“I said no! It’s been raining non-stop for the past three days. What if it starts up again while you’re out there? What if you get swept away, or you get hurt?” Virgil argued, sitting up. He tugged lightly on the ends of his cloak, a nervous habit of his. Despite his frustration, Roman could see how uneasy the idea of going outside made him. The young fairy sighed, coming to a rest on the floor next to his friend. “I know you’re worried about me, but the sky’s been clear since last night, and there are no signs of storm clouds anywhere.” He reasoned. Virgil still refused to look at him, biting his lip as his wings twitched beneath his cloak. The dark fairy shook his head, causing Roman’s heart to sink.

“Alright, I’ll stay home.” He mumbled, getting up and making his way over to his own bed,sitting on it with his back to his friend. Virgil felt relief flood over him. The feeling, however, was replaced by guilt when he laid eyes on the defeated stance of the light fairy he called his roommate. His shoulders and back were slumped, his delicate butterfly wings curling slightly around himself, consequently making himself look smaller. It felt wrong to see him looking upset, and it made his heart twist to know he was the cause of it. Huffing out a short curse he stood up, pushing down the nervousness that began rising again at the mere thought of what he was about to agree to.

“Alright, alright! No need to make your wings all droopy.” He grumbled, stretching a little. Roman perked up immediately, his wings shooting up from his back as he hurried over.

“You mean it?” He grinned, eyes sparkling with excitement. Virgil rolled his eyes; he looked like a child on his first flying lesson.

“One condition.” He stated seriously. “I’m coming with you, and the second something feels wrong, we are heading back immediately, or so help me I will drag you here by your wings. Got it?” He crossed his arms, looking him dead in the eyes. Roman gulped slightly, trying to school his face into something more serious.

“I promise.” He nodded, a smile creeping back despite his best efforts. Virgil nodded firmly, going back over to his side before shedding his cloak. No matter how many times he saw them, Roman would always be in awe of Virgil’s wings. Unlike his own, Virgil had wings similar to those of a firefly. They were a light purple hue, and even more delicate than Roman’s own. Biting his lip, Roman frowned at the realization of how careful he was going to have to be if Virgil was coming with. He couldn’t let anything harm his dark friend, and risk keeping him grounded forever. 

Virgil turned back around, blushing a little when he saw Roman’s intent gaze. He crossed his arms, looking away a little. “What’s with the face?” Virgil grumbled, feeling a little insecure.

Roman immediately, snapped out of it. “N-Nothing! I was just…admiring the view.” He said, a small smirk on his face. It wasn’t entirely a lie. Virgil spluttered, his face going red. “S-Shut up! Let’s just go already!” He managed, pulling open their door and taking off into the outside.

“Hey! Wait for me!” Roman flew out after him.

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

The sun was blinding, and he took a minute to take in his surroundings. A vast field of green grass was splayed out before him, patches of flowers giving it touches of colors. The edge of the forest stood tall by his sides, leaves swishing in the soft breeze. Roman beamed, taking a relaxing sigh. He’d missed this view, which had until recently been replaced with heavy clouds and pouring rain.

“You just gonna stay there?” Roman looked down a little, noticing Virgil perched upon a dandelion. “This weather isn’t gonna stay forever. Better enjoy it while you can.” The spring fairy nodded, taking off. He dived sharply, leveling out to weave through the stems of the flowers. Roman laughed in glee, shooting upwards before letting himself fall yet again.

Virgil watched him from his flower, a small smile on his face. He had missed this cheerful side of his friend, having had to watch him mope and pout for three days straight. The sight of Roman enjoying himself made his heart flutter, though he would never admit such a thing. 

Roman looked over at the dark fairy, a playful smile on his face. “Hey, Stormcloud! Let’s race!”

Virgil rolled his eyes. “No thanks, Princey. I’m fine right where I am.” He smirked. “Besides, it’s no fun when I know I’ll win.”

Roman made an offended gasp. “Are you doubting my abilities?! Why, I’m the fastest in this here forest and you know it!”

“Nah, I’m pretty sure that’s me.” Virgil mocked, snickering as the other fairy spluttered where he was.

“That’s it! We are racing, right now!” Roman demanded, his arms crossed with a huff.

“Suit yourself.” Virgil shrugged, getting up off his flower. “But don’t cry too badly when you lose!” He took off, flying straight through the trees and into the forest. Roman chased after him, yelling something about how that was cheating, but Virgil couldn’t care less. He ignored him, not bothering to look over his shoulder as he flew with grace and ease.

Roman watched his friend soaring ahead of him, smiling to himself. He would never admit it, but he loved seeing him so happy and free. These occasions were rare, as the dark fairy would usually spend his days cooped up within their home out of fear. He’d been surprised, to say the least, when he had agreed to come outside with him. Roman knew that Virgil enjoyed these rare outings, no matter how much he complained beforehand. Which is why, naturally, he’d asked to race. Roman was no idiot. He knew his wings were more for show, and less for speed. Virgil, however, was faster than the wind. He knew he was going to lose this race, but the triumphant look on Virgil’s face after would always be worth it.

This is where things began to go wrong.

Stuck too far in his own head, Roman realized too late that he was about to hit a tree. Swerving violently to the side, he dove head first into a bush, the leaves swallowing him. He managed to hit the ground running, but due to his speed he tripped and rolled onto the moist soil. Groaning, the young fairy got up and wiped himself down.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine!” Roman called out, running his fingers through his hair. He paused, noticing a lack of response. “Virgil?” With one final shake he lifted himself off the ground, flying up and out of the bush.

It was then that Roman realized two things: one was the fact that he didn’t know where Virgil was; the second was the fact that he didn’t know where he was either. He looked around, feeling the panic mount when he realized he didn’t recognize anything around him. He’d never gone very deep in the forest, since Virgil always warned him about the dangers that lurked there, and those stories piled on in his head as he spun around.

“Virgil? Where are you?!” He yelled, feeling a bit more frantic with each passing moment. The forest sounded too quiet, not a bird or cricket making its soothing sound. It was in this silence that another noise made its presence known. One that sent chills down the fairy’s back. Roman’s head shot up at the roll of thunder, his eyes going wide as the grey skies stared down at him.

“Virgil! If this is a game i-it’s not fun anymore! We need to go!” Roman yelled. Lightning filled the sky, followed by another round of thunder. The wind began to pick up, swirling leaves and threatening to send Roman spiraling. Feeling adrenaline in his veins, he took off in a random direction.

“Virgil! Virgil, where are you?! Virgil!” Roman dashed around, eyes wide and searching. He struggled against the wind, desperately flapping his wings against the harsh pull. His mind was yelling at him to hurry, to move faster, to find him! Oh gods what if he got hurt? What if he landed wrong or his wings are broken and he can’t move? What if he’s already been carried off and there was nothing he could do to-

“Roman!”

The fairy in question’s head shot up, looking around as he heard his name. “Virgil!?” Roman strained his pointed ears against the howling of the wind, gasping as he heard his name being yelled again. He barreled in that direction, evading trees and leaves. Coming out into the edge of an opening, Roman had to grab on to the trunk of a tree to stop himself from being hurled due to the change of wind direction in the open space. Before him was a wide, gushing river. The water sped down its trail, splashing the sides and over the rocks within. His eyes darted around until they landed on Virgil, and his heart clenched at the sight.

Virgil was gripping onto a long, low-hanging branch that hovered directly above the river. Water splashed around and below him, and Roman could see just how soaking wet he was. Even without the wind whipping around them, he would never be able to fly his way out of there. Their eyes made contact and Roman felt time slow. Virgil looked at him with pure, unbridled fear, his eyes wide and pleading. His grip faltered in that moment, and his body went cold as Virgil’s pale fingers slipped from the branch. Time sped up, and in a split second Roman launched himself from the trunk with all the strength he had. He pressed his wings to his body, shooting towards his friend. They both collided hard, Roman immediately wrapping his arms, legs, and wings around the other in a desperate attempt to shield him from harm. He felt Virgil grip on to his shirt tightly as the wind shrieked in his ears. 

A scream, a loud splash, and his world went dark.

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And there you have it! Hope you enjoyed! Thank you to @secret-sanders-sized for allowing me the wonderful opportunity to participate in this exchange! 

[hiddendreamer67]

Secret Sanders G/t Event 2019

What’s that, you say? Secret Santa Sign Ups in October? Shhh don’t worry about it. 

You’re officially invited to participate in the Infinitesimal Sides Secret Sanders! That means all content produced by this Secret Santa event will be G/t. It will also be about Sanders Sides.

What is G/t? It stands for “Giant/tiny”. It simply means these stories contain extreme size differences, which often means some of the characters are borrowers, fairies, giants, etc. Could also include things like characters shrinking or growing. If that idea appeals to you, even if you’ve never heard this term before, you’re welcome to participate! :D

Sign-Ups will be open until the end of October, and your Secret Sanders assignments will be sent out November 1st! (Caveat: it may be Nov. 2nd or 3rd, but it will be that first weekend). Here is the link: 

https://forms.gle/mhNxoREkb4n7QHrS7

If you have any questions, feel free to message me! I’ve also created a side blog @secret-sanders-sized where I’ll be compiling more information and also keeping participant updated as we go. 

Happy Holidays, y’all! :D

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!

[theatresweetheart]

A Little Misunderstanding

This was for the Secret Sanders 2019 event run by @secret-sanders-sized. The lovely person I got for this fun event was the amazing @i-will-physically-fight-you!! 

Prompt: “Good news: Logan's shrink ray works. Bad News: Logan accidentally shrunk himself in the process. ??? News: He has been mistaken as a fellow “Borrower” by Patton, a tiny humanoid being who apparently has been living in his walls all this time.”

Warnings: Fear, shrinking, non-descriptive injury, incredibly brief Remus mention, incredibly brief Deceit mention (Dorian), misunderstanding, negative self talk.

Pairing: Platonic Logicality

Word Count: 8674 words

A/n: I really didn’t mean for this to get nearly as long as it did. I just started writing and then got inspired and then it got longer. However, this was a super fun write and I loved participating in the Secret Santa event this year. 

Merry Christmas everyone!

                                     +~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+

As it was, there were two different outlooks on Logan’s current predicament and, thankfully, he had already been able to gather sufficient data.

Even if his original plan had backfired horribly.

Truthfully, he could focus on the negative side effects of this mess. However, on the other hand, there were quite a few positive outlooks to this as well. Not to mention the fascinating discoveries he had already made and the incredible advancement of technology in a shrink ray that actually worked.

So with that in mind, Logan had already good news; his machine worked.

Bad news, perhaps, was that it seemed to work a little too well and Logan had accidentally managed to use it on himself.‌‌ (Not that he hadn’t thought about it. Just not instantly. He had wanted to test it before using it on something alive and sentient—just in case it had side effects.)

This accident had rendered him helpless in his own home as he gazed from his new vantage point up toward the table where his creation laid. Unassuming and harmless unless there was someone behind it. Thankfully he had thought ahead, and when he’s actually capable of getting back up there, he had added a switch that would reverse the ray’s affects just in case something like this happened.

(That and he had an overly curious friend that liked to touch his things—even if they were clearly labelled.)

It was a good thing said friend was busy today, so Logan had little worry about his accomplice making his presence known in the meantime.

And then, there was the news that Logan had yet to classify.

At the moment, there was a tiny humanoid creature standing worriedly over him—perhaps saying “tiny” at the moment would be false, as how it seemed, the both of them were currently of the same stature. The only time this creature would be considered tiny was when Logan was at his normal height, which was all the time save for now.

Worried brown eyes blinked at him, watching him through spectacles that seemed as if they had been meticulously handmade. Perfected frames made from wire that had been bent and forced into a shape resembling Logan’s own glasses.

It was rather fascinating.

To see such a level of craftsmanship when dealing with supplies that you only had on hand.

The humanoid being had a bag slung around his shoulder and a fishing line that had a hook connected to the end of it wrapped around his torso. More things that seemed to aid in survival, at least from what Logan could guess and gather.

“Gosh, you must have taken quite the fall!” The other said, dropping down to his knees and sliding his bag over his shoulder. He leaned a bit further into Logan’s personal space, eagerly wanting to help but being far too close for Logan’s comfort. “Did you fall from the counter?”

Well, not technically. However, it seemed as though he would need to come up with a story that would be believable. If he was able to get some help from a creature that presumably lived at this height, then he would do what was necessary. It would be painfully obvious in little time just how unprepared Logan was to be this size, so any help would be appreciated.

Unfortunately he hadn’t had enough time to really think about a story that would be believable. He’d hardly been this size for less than twenty minutes and Logan hadn’t known that a being this small existed in the first place.

The creature’s hands were fluttering to and fro, as if he didn’t know what to do with them. It seemed as though he wanted to make sure Logan was physically unharmed since he was hypothesizing that Logan had slipped from the counter and landed on his back on the floor.

The care seemed to be genuine, however.

Logan floundered for something to say back. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, his eyes flickering between the height of the counter and the being knelt beside him—who was still uncomfortably close. “Yes,”‌ he agreed finally, meeting the other’s eyes and watching as they widened slightly.

“You must be sore then,” he said, letting his hands rest on his knees, even though his fingers still twitched slightly. “Where does it hurt?”

It doesn’t. Logan wanted to say it outright but thought better of it. If he were to say it didn’t hurt, then the creature would probably be led to suspicions. And, to be fair, his right shoulder did sting a little.

The injury itself was from a fall he had taken a couple years back and he had ended up spraining his shoulder. It hadn’t ever really healed correctly, so Logan would feel the pain flare up every once in a while. It didn’t happen all that often anymore and he had come to learn to live with it anyhow.

It also wasn’t Earth shattering pain as one would expect, especially not if one had just fallen from such a treacherous height.

“My shoulder’s just a bit stiff, but it really is not a problem,”‌ Logan assured him, rolling it back to test it. He winced, but schooled the pained expression professionally after a minute. “Nothing I‌ can’t handle on my own.”

“Oh.” The other relented, a bit of a somber expression wiping the concerned one away. If Logan didn’t know better, he would say that he looked a bit let-down. Of course, Logan did know better… didn’t he? “Well. If you’re sure, who am I‌ to argue! I‌ should get back on my way then, anyhow. Gotta finish my borrowings for the day before the human comes back, you know?”

He said ‘human’ as if he wasn’t one. Which only brought more questions forward, such as what was he? Why was here? How long had he been here without Logan knowing? And, because of this, Logan belatedly realized he had made an incredible discovery right here.

A creature that he had never heard of before. Clearly a sentient bipedal mammal that looked, acted and talked exactly like a human. He was just a fair bit smaller. A species that remained inconspicuous to mankind and he was swiftly losing his chance to learn more.

Logan quickly sat up a bit further as the other slid his bag back over his shoulder, sat back on his haunches—almost looking like he wanted to say something before thinking better of it—and then pushed himself into a stand. His hands fidgeted in front of him for a second, before he took a step back.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, really!”‌ He said, offering a smile, before turning and calling over his shoulder. “I’ll, uh, I’ll see you around then.”

He needed to gather more data. He couldn’t let this chance slip through his fingers. He had to do something. Logan knew he could play up the pain in his shoulder, though, granted he was no actor.

Quickly making up his mind, Logan went with his latter plan.

Leaning back again on his right arm, he winced once more but instead let the emotion play out. “On second thought,”‌ he said, stopping the humanoid being in his tracks, wired spectacles turning and meeting his own eyes once more, “a little help would be appreciated. If it is not too much of a bother.”

He watched the other’s features light up almost instantly at the request.

Immediately Logan was being overwhelmed once more as the creature was suddenly excitedly talking a mile a minute. “Oh!‌ I would be more than happy to help!” He said, clasping his hands and practically bouncing back over to where Logan still sat. “It’s not a bother at all!‌ And I haven’t seen another borrower in what seems like absolute ages, so it’d actually be really nice to have some company again. And really, between you and me, I’d never leave one of my own in need.”

Borrower, Logan filed that information away, already beginning to take mental notes.

“Oh my goodness, look at me fussing over you and I‌ haven’t even introduced myself. Heck, we’re still practically strangers!”‌ His smile stayed bright and shining, practically exuding with warmth. He then stuck a hand out and Logan reeled back slightly from the surprise of it, not to mention how enthusiastic he seemed to be. “I’m Patton!‌ You are?”

Collecting himself enough, and shaking the surprise off with a practiced ease, he shook the borrower’s hand. “Logan.”

Patton took his hand back after a moment, his excitement never seemed to flicker. “It’s a pleasure, Logan. See?‌ Now we're not strangers!‌ Now, let’s get you off the ground before the human gets back, wouldn’t want to be caught now would we?”

Based on how Patton was talking about humans, there seemed to be an amount of fear associated with Logan’s own kind. “I‌ suppose not.” He lifted himself off the ground, and stood just a little taller than Patton did. “Though, I‌ am curious. What is all the fuss about being seen by a— a human?”

It was odd referring to his kind in the third person, as if he was talking about something other worldly, but whatever was believable he guessed.

“Hmm?” The other hummed, quirking a brow while turning on his heels and heading towards the kitchen counter. Logan was quick to fall into pace with the borrower. “Oh, well, humans are gigantic. They grab and they never let go and really, once you’re taken captive you’re never seen or heard from again. Every borrower knows that.”

“Of course, forgive my…forgetful nature.”

Patton didn’t seem to believe it at first. The quizzical look in his eyes as he side glanced Logan said it loud as bells. For a moment, Logan was half afraid that Patton knew. However, he shrugged and turned his attention upward. “You must be Wild then,”‌ he said an afterthought. “Right?”

Stunned at the revelation that there more of the same creature, he nodded in agreement. Perhaps if he feigned ignorance when it came to the dangers of mankind, he could gather more information on how the race of “borrowers” saw mankind.

Obviously so far, it was not a positive perception.

“Exactly,”‌ he agreed, watching as Patton came to stand still and staring upward toward the counter-top. “So, I‌ am rather rusty when it comes to, well, anything really.”

“Well, good thing I‌ bumped into you then!”‌ Patton’s bright demeanor returned swiftly. “I‌ can help you get your bearings and help you with that pesky shoulder of yours, before you get on your way!”

Before Logan could even say another thing, Patton had slipped the hook and rope from around his torso, swung it a wide circle a couple times and threw it up toward the top of the counter. A small clicking sound caught his attention before the hook came tumbling back down. Logan flinched away, worried slightly for his safety but Patton remained unfazed and instead smoothly caught the hook by the hilt and quickly tried again.

After the third attempt, it finally stuck and he watched as Patton tugged on the line to test it’s weight.

“Third times the charm,”‌ he chirped with a toothy grin, before wrapping his hand into the fishing wire and heaving himself upward with what seemed like no effort at all. There had been absolutely no hesitation. It was obvious this was something Patton did on the daily as it took him little to no time to reach the top.

Logan blinked when Patton was peering down at him from so far above.

“Whatcha waiting for?” He called down.

“I am afraid I’m not as swift as you are when it comes to climbing anything of such scale,”‌ Logan admitted.

His eyes locked on the fishing line in front of him, the thin rope was deceptively strong.

The last time Logan had done something even remotely like this was when his friend had insistently begged—and then inevitably dragged—him to come to the rock wall at his University. However, they had been harnessed and spotted. This, this was nothing like what he was used to. A free handed climb was not Logan’s specialty, nor was he remotely interested in trying something of the like.

“Isn’t there an— easier way up?”‌

One that didn’t completely rely on Logan not slipping and actually break something? That and his shoulder was already messed up enough, surely Patton would understand him not being able to make the climb anyhow. When he only got a confused look in response, he decided to prod at the fact his shoulder was screwed up.

“My shoulder hasn’t exactly healed in the past two minutes,”‌ Logan reminded.

“Oh shoot, of course it hasn’t!” Patton disappeared over the edge of the counter. There was some shuffling and before long he was peering back over, just as the fishing line was being drawn up and out of sight. “There’s an outlet just a couple paces away from you. It should be a bit loose around the two left screws. When you get in the passageway there, wait for me and I can meet you down there in a few seconds! We can still get to my place from there.”

A passageway inside the walls?‌ What an odd place to call home.

Logan nodded, his eyes drifting over to the outlet on the wall. “Alright,”‌ he called back up in a final affirmation.

Turning to the side and heading over, it took far longer than it would have if he were of normal height. As he laid his hands over the smooth grooves of the outlet cover, Logan was surprised to find that the thing was loose enough as it was. All he had to do was shimmy it a little to the right and he had created a space wide enough for him to squeeze through.

For a second, Logan turned to glance over his shoulder. The shrunken human looked up to the counter where the machine sat, unassuming and out of harm's way. He’d get back to it in a day or two. There was nothing wrong with spending a little time getting to understand the quirky borrower that was so willingly taking him into his home.

Logan would have to do something for him as a thank you gift.

It was only logical, of course, to want to repay someone for their hospitality and generosity.

Shaking the thought from his head, especially with how absurd this entire situation was, he pulled himself inside. Stepping over the thick electrical wires, he fit the cover back into place and was welcomed with a dusty darkness. He scanned the inside of the walls, intrigued at the absolute detail of everything that would go entirely unnoticed to the average eye. Being at such a small scale gave you a keen eye for detail.

His attention shifted when he heard footsteps from just to the left of him. Before long, a shape emerged from the total darkness and came into the slightly less dark darkness.

“Great to see you could make it,” Patton said, meeting his eyes as best to his ability. “Sorry about that whole climbing thing. Totally forgot about your shoulder for a hot minute.”‌

Logan offered a shrug. “No harm done.”

“Well, with that out of the way, let’s get home! That way I can actually help you. That’s where all my supplies are, you know,” Patton chattered at him, brushing by the taller man and heading down the opposite way he had come from. Logan was prompt to follow, not wanting to lose his only guide in the darkness and twisting passages. “That and I‌ actually have light there as well. Not that the kitchen didn’t have light, but we can’t risk helping you right out in the open.”

Easily keeping up with Patton’s pace, Logan was able to ask a few more of his questions. “Are humans really as bad as you’re making them out to be?”

“Well, of course they are.”‌

“You are not…overreacting on the entire thing? How are you so sure that a human would not be willing to help aid in your survival?”

“Logan, you seem like a nice guy but you’re also Wild,”‌ Patton said, taking a sharp left. “Out there you don’t survive off of humans. You can live off of nature and all you really have to worry about are animals. I‌ wouldn’t think some animals would be all that interested in something as small as we are, but cats—” He shuddered involuntarily, “—just stay away from cats.”

“I’m not entirely sure what my status as a Wild, as you put it, has anything to do with this.”

“Well, if you don’t come in contact with humans,”‌ Patton continued as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “you don’t have to worry about them. You don’t rely on them for anything.”

Logan hummed in response. “If you’re so terrified of humans, why not move out and live in the wild?”

Patton laughed. A gentle sound, but one that said more than just mirth. “I wish it were that easy, I really do.”

What did that mean?

Patton then put a hand out, stopping Logan in his tracks and just in time. Not another footstep in front of them was a steep drop downward.

“I hope you’re not afraid of heights,” Patton teased, sending a smile in Logan’s direction before taking his first step into the dark.

Logan could just make out the shadow of a nail protruding from the left hand wall. As his eyes got used to the constant darkness, he could see an entire pathway leading up. There had to be about fifteen steps in the staircase like creation and if one were to misstep, it would be a deadly fall.

Heights had never been an issue before now and while Logan wasn’t afraid of them, this almost reminded him from the incident before. It was like free handing another thing. His heart stammered as he watched Patton do it with a memorized and practiced ease.

Once again, Logan found himself falling behind. He moved to the wall and placed a hand firmly against it, feeling nerves welling without his permission.

“Nervous?” Patton’s voice came from somewhere in front and a little above him.

“That statement wouldn’t be…incorrect,”‌ Logan mused.

“Don’t worry, it’s probably just as easy as human stairs. You just have to get into the rhythm of it,”‌ the borrower explained, trying to ease his worry. “And, hey, I’m right here and I won’t let you fall.”

Slightly reassured, Logan stepped onto the first nail and his hand pressed firmer to the wall as if looking for a handhold on the smooth wood.

Okay. One step after the next.

“I presume there’s no way around this?”‌

Patton laughed. The sound was warmer this time. It sounded like an actual laugh and not a halfhearted chuckle. “Not this time, I’m afraid.”

“That is what I‌ was afraid of.”

Okay. One breath after the next.

It took a while, and with some unsteady steps and two almost slips, but Logan was at the top in little under ten minutes. It wasn’t one of his proudest moments, but he had come out of it alive so it couldn’t have been that bad at all.

“See?‌ That wasn’t too hard!”

And just like that, Patton was off once more. It took a few more minutes of walking through winding corridors and hopping up onto one slightly more elevated platform (that was far easier than climbing over a stairway made of nails) and they were headed down a skinnier passage.

Not lower, but just thin enough that nothing but a borrower would be able to sneak through. It was almost as if Patton had chosen this place to make his home for that very reason. It hadn’t really occurred to Logan, but there were probably a lot more things out there that could injure a borrower—other than humans, as they were thought to be the primary threat. It seemed as if it wasn’t just cats that were worrisome when you were this small. It was everything.

And that was a startling realization.

“You’ll have to excuse the state of my home,”‌ Patton told him sheepishly, a shy grin on his features as he nudged the door open. A door that was made by an old credit card. Not one that Logan recognized.

The house itself was dark as Logan stepped inside, his eyes scanning around as if trying to make out what he was looking at. He couldn’t really see a mess, so he didn’t understand why Patton was apologizing.

Before he could even voice his thoughts, a small clicking sound of a door closing followed by another softer click caught him by surprise and all of a sudden a warm yellow light filtered into the room. He blinked spots from his eyes and suddenly Logan was looking at the interior of a home lovingly made from hand. The light itself being shone via a single Christmas light hanging just above the kitchen table like a chandelier.

“Oh.”

“Hmm?” Patton turned at the quiet sound, slipping his bag over his head and hanging it on a nail protruding from the wall, bent into the shape of a coat hook. “Something wrong?”

“No, nothing,” Logan hadn’t even realized he had made the sound of astonishment until Patton had said something. “Just that— this is all fascinating. Did you wire this all by hand?”

The interior was astounding to look at, truly. The small home closely resembled that of his own, or perhaps anyone’s house for that matter. It was becoming clearer by the minute that Patton was just as human as he was, just smaller.

He could talk, think, react…It was all just rather startling.

How had a race like this remain unheard of for so long?

Were humans really so oblivious that borrowers could live off of them and not even notice they were sustaining a complete society of creatures?

Looking around the room, it seemed to be filled with little things that Logan wouldn’t have noticed had gone missing in the first place. That being said as well, Patton probably didn’t only take things from his own apartment and instead would scour the entire building.

Logan was left to assuming that taking things from a single person could be dangerous, especially if they started to notice things disappearing periodically.

“Oh, uh, yeah!”‌ Patton said, toeing off his shoes at the door before slipping his jacket over his shoulders and hanging that up next to his bag. “I‌ can’t really call an electrician. Did it all by hand. I did have some help though, but it mostly just runs on this pack of batteries.” Patton patted the slightly transparent battery container, which had two different wires stuck out from the top of it and were hidden somewhere within the walls of the home to hide them from sight. “It’s nothing too groundbreaking though.”

“Falsehood,” Logan said before he had realized it. It was the second thing he had said without thinking about it, but he was getting to see a completely independent world that laid right under humanity’s nose. And yet, even with all of this intricacy of maintaining life, there was no inkling that borrowers even existed. “Whether you did this by yourself or not is irrelevant.‌ The fact that you were able to mimic a human-styled electrical design is an incredible feat.”

Patton blinked. Almost unsure of how to respond to such a kind compliment. It…was a compliment, right?

But he broke out into a wider smile nonetheless. “Thank you.” He then shifted the conversation, not sure how else to keep it going from there. “Well come now, get comfortable. Make yourself at home, I have plenty of room! I’ll get some supplies and help you fix up that shoulder of yours.”

Logan knew there wouldn’t be much Patton could actually do for his shoulder since it was an old injury anyway, but he was getting the chance to talk to a creature that shouldn’t be able to physically exists and, yet, here he was being proven very wrong.

So, he could let Patton bandage his shoulder and do what he believed was necessary as long as he got the answers he hoped for.

When the borrower returned from a room further down the hall with an armful of what looked like bandages and tape, Logan was beckoned forward and motioned to take a seat on the chair at the table. His eyes drifted around the home further and it was cozy. The warm yellow light made it feel comfier than it probably was, and he couldn’t help but feel astonished. Everything here had to have been handmade or stumbled upon by pure chance.

After a moment though, Logan’s attention drifted back to Patton as the borrower’s hands had suddenly appeared on his right shoulder, feeling around the tendons carefully. He pressed down, but not enough to cause too much discomfort. He then paused. “Shoot,” he murmured.

“Whatever is the matter?”

“I didn’t ask permission to touch you.”‌ Logan blinked, surprised that Patton had even brought that up. Logan had thought it had been sort of unmentioned at this point. Sort of like a silent agreement. That and he wasn’t uncomfortable. He did have a friend that liked to hug him out of nowhere, so two hands on his shoulder wasn’t something Logan was particularly worried about. “Can I?”

“I‌ thought that was already previously agreed upon.”‌ Logan voiced himself and Patton relented, his hands pressing back into his shoulder blade.

“It’s more of a comfort thing for myself too,”‌ he explained. “It’s…nice to hear vocal permission, instead of just banking on the hope that it’s okay. I know that permission is really important for some people, while others can be really lenient with it.”‌

Logan carefully phrased his next question. “Do you know people that prefer to be asked?”

“Mhmm,” Patton hummed, moving to stand in front of Logan. “This is going to sound...weird, but you’re going to need to take your shirt off. It’s easier to feel the damage from there.” He seemed to consider something before quickly adding on, “though if you’re not comfortable with that, I‌ can work around it!”

“That’s alright,” Logan assured him, though it was a bit odd. He complied by pulling his shirt over his head and settling it over his lap.

With no hesitation this time around, Patton’s hands smoothed over his shoulder once more and the borrower hummed again. “I‌ knew a whole family of borrowers. They moved in about five years ago and moved out about a year later.”

“How come?” Logan winced as the other pressed a bit too harshly into his pained area by accident.

Patton mumbled a soft apology before pulling back and reaching for the bandages. “The family had twins, Roman and Remus, that liked to get into a lot of mischief. Bless their hearts, but the kiddos managed to continuously cause mayhem everywhere they went. There was one night the two had managed to tip over an entire thing of flour and tracked it absolutely everywhere. Virgil said they’d nearly given him and Dorian a heart attack when they came back covered head to toe in all this white powder.”

So, that’s what had really happened when Logan had come back from work, only to find flour spilled in every crack and crevice. He had seen the little footprints, but they had looked more like paw prints than footprints. It now also made far more sense on why those tiny footprints had led directly to one of the loose tiles on his counter-top.

It was strange to find the truth of the accident had been tiny children messing around and accidentally spilling it, but this whole situation was still so surreal that Logan was just about ready to believe anything he was being told.

To a point, of course. He wasn’t naive.

But had the family really been so terrified for their safety that they had fled? The idea almost made him feel queasy.

Were humans really as terrible as borrowers were taught?‌ Certainly, there had to be some exceptions right? Logan, himself, didn’t believe he’d be all that awful if he were to stumble across a creature of such an incredible size. Especially not if one of those creatures were a child.

Logan leaned back a bit more, lifting his arm slightly in response to Patton gently tugging on his elbow. “That was the only reason they left? That single accident?”

“You have to understand that an accident like that could have gotten the entire family caught,” Patton reminded him softly, beginning to wrap the gauze around the affected area. “With two kids that like to run around and play pretend, all the while shouting and giggling, not to mention how much the twins fought; let’s just say that Dorian realized very quickly that living in an apartment building so close to humans was not the right place for their little family.”

“I see.”

“Yup. Moved all five of them out as soon as possible.” Patton wrapped the bandage around Logan’s shoulder a couple more times before using his teeth and ripping it off. He set the roll aside and grabbed the tape, tearing a piece off and then tearing that single piece in half. Logan belatedly noticed that that one piece of tape possibly could have covered his entire chest.

“All five of them?”

“Mhmm. Dorian was the oldest, he’s actually just a couple years younger than I‌ am. Then there was Virgil, then Thomas and the twins were the littlest brothers of the bunch, but goodness, they’d have to be, what, 13 now?”

Logan was almost curious enough to ask Patton how old he actually was, since he didn’t look much older than Logan himself, but refrained. Asking someone their age was considered a rude question anyhow, but there was the lingering question in the back of his mind that wondered if borrowers were some sort of mythical creature that had either a longer—or even a shorter—lifespan than humans.

He decided to direct the conversation in a different direction for now, assured that he would still get the chance to ask his questions.

“Since they moved out,” Logan moved his arm to test the hold of the bandages and tape before moving his eyes back to Patton, “are you the only one in the entire building?”

“It seems that way,”‌ he agreed, before holding Logan’s arm still. “Stop moving it, I’m not done just yet.” He relaxed his hold once Logan quit squirming. “Besides, it’s not like I‌ haven’t been alone before, so it isn’t that big of a deal.”

The borrower then moved to stand behind him once more and pressed his hands down firm enough to feel comfortable, but not enough to hurt. Then, he began to massage at the slightly swollen muscle.

“I‌ do suppose it’s better that way, though,‌”‌ he said after a heartbeat of quiet. “If any of the Steelgates had been caught, they would have had someone to miss them, you know. Me?‌‌ Well. I‌ guess no one would really notice.”

It was such a sad thought, but Patton had said it so casually that Logan had nearly startled.

“It’s alright though,” he continued before Logan had gathered the wits to say something back to him. To refute it. “At least if I were to be found and caught, none of the humans in this building would be able to find any more borrowers—assuming you’re not sticking around after I‌ getcha all patched up.”

Logan shook his head. “I wasn’t exactly planning on it, no. Living so close to humans is not my area of expertise.”

“I‌ can’t blame you for wanting to get back to the wild,”‌ Patton said, his voice lowering slightly. Logan wasn’t good at reading emotions, but this didn’t take a professional to read those signals. This mood change was obvious and immediate. “It must be so much nicer out there. Not having to be constantly worried about mouse traps and cats. Heck, even humans probably.”

The more Logan heard, the more it sounded like humans were a borrower’s natural predator if they were to get their hands on them.‌ It made sense, logically, that a creature of this stature wouldn’t be able to escape from a human being that was so obviously superior to it. Maybe not intelligence wise, but in strength, size and dexterity.

Logan cleared his throat as the silence seemed to rage on longer than he was comfortable with. He was curious though, since Patton didn’t seem to recognize him. “Do you…know the human in the apartment here?”

“No.”‌ The response was cutthroat, concise and to-the-point. “I avoid him mostly, if we’re being honest. A human with all that science-y stuff in their apartment can only mean bad news for borrowers. I try not to go into his apartment too often. Only if it’s really absolutely necessary.”

“Oh.” Logan almost felt…hurt by that statement. Which was stupid and irrational. He had barely known Patton for two hours and yet here he was, feeling somewhat awful. Did he really exude such a cold exterior? For most people he was fine with that, but he guessed from a borrower’s perspective it would only make him seem heartless, cold and analytical. “I see.”

He had to take a moment to recollect his thoughts, fiddling with his glasses for half a second before righting them.

“Do you think he’s really all that bad?”

“Well— no,”‌ the other softened, his hands lessening their pressure on his back before removing themselves from his skin entirely. Logan felt something in his chest warm at that, but only for a moment. “I‌ like to try and see the good in everyone, you know? But sometimes, he makes it a bit…difficult. I don’t think he’s inherently bad, but I‌ don’t know if I’d be able to trust him.‌ Especially not with all those beakers and scalpels and such.‌ Who knows what would happen if he got his hands on someone like you and me.” Patton fiddled with his hands, before pulling up the other chair and sitting. He pushed his glasses further up his nose idly. “But…no, to answer your question. I don’t think he’s bad. Just– morbidly curious.”

“Hmm.”‌ Logan nodded to himself, taking the fact that Patton was now sitting in front of him as a sign that he could put his shirt back on. As he did that, he was careful not to upset any of the carefully placed bandages and was actually surprised to not find any tightness in his shoulder. None.

Deciding that now was as good a time as ever to change the subject—especially with how downtrodden Patton looked—he rolled his shoulder as a test. Nothing. “Can I ask what you did to my shoulder?”

Patton instantly looked distressed at that. “Oh no, did I‌ make it worse?”

“No, no,”‌ Logan was quick to reassure him, “if anything, I think you may have made it better.”

“Really?”‌ He looked genuinely surprised.

“Really.” Logan rolled his shoulder once more, but felt the slightest twinge. “It was an old injury I‌ managed to acquire a couple years back but I‌ can hardly feel it now. Where did you learn to do that?”

“Oh! Um, just from the Steelgates.” Patton raised a hand to rub the back of his neck sheepishly. “Dorian and Virgil learned it somehow and they taught it to me. I’ve taken quite a few falls myself, so I learned how to ease that pain. Makes borrowing easier if you’re not constantly hunched over in agony.”

“Understandable,”‌ Logan relented. “Nevertheless, it is very impressive.”

“Awe, it was nothing,”‌ Patton shrugged it off, directing his gaze elsewhere though the gentle grin on his features said that Logan’s compliment had been taken to heart. “That’s what friends are for, right?”

Logan’s heart stammered for a moment.

Truth be told—and a surprise to probably literally no one—Logan didn’t have many friends. He had acquaintances, coworkers that he got along with, but no one that he was close enough to really consider a friend.

It was…nice.

“Yes,”‌ he agreed, a small grin twitching at the corners of his own mouth, “I suppose that is what friends are for.”

An odd friendship, no doubt. But a friendship.

“I really cannot thank you enough for all of your assistance,”‌ Logan said as the two  made their way down the corridor back toward his apartment.

He had said he had left a few things in the apartment that he would need to collect before they parted ways, however, Logan had a bit of a…different plan in mind.

Patton shrugged it off, giving Logan a humble grin as he looked over his shoulder briefly. “It’s not a problem!‌ And hey, if you ever find yourself back in the complex, my house is open to you.”

In reality, he did feel a bit bad that he hadn’t exactly told Patton the truth just yet. But it wasn’t like he was holding out on it for too much longer. He just had to make sure Patton didn’t react too badly once he learned the truth. Especially when it came down to how the borrower viewed him.

Well, not him specifically of course, but his kind.

The thought was a bit sour and it didn’t sit well with him, but he wasn’t going to let that rule his thoughts.

However, instead of following the same path, Patton had taken a few different twists and turns and, much to Logan’s relief, they hadn’t had to cross any more nail bridges or climb anything that needed a hook and a rope.

He had mentioned that since he had supposedly taken a tumble off of the table, that’s where all of his belongings were. Which wasn’t entirely untrue.

Logan’s things did reside on the counter.

Before long, Patton was stepping over a cacophony of electrical wires and Logan was following suit. The borrower held up a hand for a moment, biting into his lower lip as he peered around through the small holes in the socket. After a few seconds of deliberate silence the coast was deemed clear—of course, since the owner of the apartment was currently stood behind him—and soon the other managed to jostle the outlet from it’s socket and slipped through the small opening it had created.

As soon as Logan had stepped out and righted himself, his gaze was directed onto the interior of his own kitchen. He straightened out his shirt, adjusting his glasses before really taking in the sight before him. A look of astonishment crossed his features as he reveled in the fact that his shrink ray had worked in the first place. Not to mention because it had worked, Logan had been introduced to a whole new secret society of tiny humanoid bipedal creatures that survived wholly on their dependence of humankind and taking things that humans wouldn’t miss.

“It’s pretty scary, isn’t it?”‌ Patton said to the side of him, crossing his hands in front of him. He had obviously mistaken the look on Logan’s face. “You’ve…never actually seen a human before, have you?”

“No,”‌ Logan said, inching a bit closer to the edge of the counter, before turning around and looking upward. Seeing the scale of his cupboards and such. He was still entirely taken by the sights. He would have to try out his machine more often now.

“You’re pretty lucky then,”‌ Patton hummed, following him slightly before his attention shifted to the ray sitting harmlessly to the side of them. He seemed to consider it uneasily, not liking the look of it, but turned his attention back to the other supposed borrower. “And I really hope you never have to.”

Logan understood that Patton was wary and that was good of him, especially in a world where everything seemed to outmatch him. However, everything was coming down to this point and he had to make a decision. He could tell Patton the truth and risk the borrower fleeing, or he could wait until Patton showed himself out and then turn himself back to normal.

However, while the second option was admittedly more attractive, Logan could only keep the whole charade up for so long.

And maybe, just maybe, he could prove to Patton that not all of humanity were mindless monsters that would just grab with the intention to keep. If everything worked out according to plan, there would be no worry of Patton packing his things and leaving the complex altogether.

“They must be terrifying from your stature,”‌ Logan mused then, his eyes scanning over the ray that sat harmlessly next to them. The thing itself towered over him, just as everything else in his kitchen did, and he paused. Considering his next words carefully, he turned to face Patton head on. “Do you trust me?”

The sentence was obviously startling as the other blinked at him, brown eyes surprised and suddenly cautious. “Well, yeah,”‌ he relented after a moment. It was true because there was trust in the relationship but a lot of it came from how neither had done anything to prove that trust to be faulty. “Why?”

Logan flexed his hands, unsure of how to phrase it without it coming off as alarming. “Then I‌ need you to stand there,” he said finally, watching Patton’s confused expression morph into a slightly more concerned one. Even more so when his hands tightened on the straps of his bag. “I am asking a lot of you and I‌ will not take offense if any of this is startling and you feel the need to leave.”

The more Logan spoke, the more nervous he seemed to be making his accomplice. “What are you talking about?”

Logan took a moment, gauging his expression and considering whether or not he should say what he was about to. After a moment, he decided that he might as well get it over with. “Patton, I’m not what you think I am.”‌

Patton laughed nervously, taking a slight step backward. “What?”

Knowing that just saying it wouldn’t be taken seriously, Logan turned to look over his shoulder eyeing the ray that sat behind him. He turned on his heel and went right over to it. The thing itself was taller than he had ever thought possible and pushed the button he knew would reverse the entire mess he had gotten himself into.

He could feel Patton’s gaze watching his every move, carefully aware and astute. Logan had noticed that the other was incredibly vigilant. Even if he didn’t always let it on. Patton could notice small shifts in one’s features or dips in the atmosphere of a room.

He was incredibly intelligent and knew a lot more than he seemed to let on.

After adjusting some more of the settings on the machine itself, Logan stepped back and stood in front of it. The silence was tense, but filled with the low humming of the ray coming back online and beginning to work just as it had before.

After a second more, there was a flash of bright white light and Logan prepared himself as best as he could for it, but the change was still weird and odd and rather staggering. Going from one size to a completely different one was not a feeling he would ever get used to, but perhaps he could find a way to make it a little less uncomfortable.

However, as he blinked his eyes open and adjusted his glasses that had gone askew, Logan was looking up at the kitchen counter once again, but from a normal size while sitting slightly disoriented on the floor.

He shook off the wave of nausea as he pushed himself up onto his knees and made it so that he was eye-level with the counter and the borrower in turn, whom of which—to put it kindly—looked shaken.

Logan could read the expression on Patton’s face easily. ‌It was a mix of terror and betrayal. As this was not a secret that would be easy to swallow or wrap one’s mind around. As the whole act of shrinking and growing oneself should be scientifically impossible. And yet, here they were with yet another captivating anomaly.

Patton shook his head, unbelieving of what he was seeing right in front of him. “I, um…”

“Take a breath Patton,”‌ Logan instructed, but not unkindly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Instead, he was greeted with another shake of the head. It seemed as though his words had gone right over the borrower’s head. He was obviously in shock.

“Y-you’re a—”

“A human, yes,”‌ Logan stated, his tone remaining calm, soft and collected.

“I…I said all those things,” he stammered out, almost looking horrified at the information he had revealed without truly realizing it. His hands tightened on the strap of his bag. “And you…you know—and I…”

“Easy.” Logan would remain the calm one in this situation if that is what the other needed, which it obviously was. “Do you really think I‌ would use any of that against you?”

The borrower’s hands were shaking.‌ Actually, if Logan looked closer, his entire body was trembling.

Patton was petrified.

It set an uneasy feeling in his chest, knowing that his very presence was causing this amount of distress. So, trying to alleviate some of it, Logan lowered himself down further so he was below Patton’s eye-level. Perhaps it would have been better to have admitted to his human nature before now, but it was too late for that and now he had to deal with the backlash of such a thoughtless decision.

“You can trust me,” Logan said, his voice was firm but calm. A reassurance that he hoped was working. With the panic overriding probably everything in Patton’s being, he supposed it may be difficult to get a positive reaction. “I‌ will not touch you without your permission, I promise.”

Patton eyed him warily, his hands still snapped shut on the strap of his bag. Logan did notice that the borrower’s eyes kept darting around as well, trying to figure out a safe escape route without alerting him to the silent idea. Not that he faulted Patton for wanting to find a way out of this situation, but he supposed it was better handled now and explain himself, rather than to have Patton run off believing the worst.

Even if it hurt, inexplicably, to have Patton staring up at himself the way he was.

“I–I’m sorry,”‌ Patton stammered out, ducking his head as if waiting for something.

“I‌ assure you there is no reason to apologize.”‌ Though, Logan was a bit baffled by what Patton meant. When the borrower kept his head down, Logan understood. The talk they had about the human that lived in this apartment, the one with all the science-y stuff, as Patton had put it. “I‌ am very much not upset by that at all.”

“But I— I‌ said…”

Logan raised a hand to stop him, only acutely aware that that was the wrong movement a few seconds too late. He quickly put it back in his lap, trying to remedy his thoughtless action. “I‌ know what you said Patton, and I‌ harbour no ill will towards it. In fact, your statement earlier was rather accurate and one cannot argue with the facts.”

The borrower shuffled nervously on his feet, eyes still flicking around to make sure that he did have some sort of way to get away if things did go south. Logan could guarantee that if Patton decided to make a break for it, he wouldn’t grab for him—as that would shatter any and all chance of getting Patton to trust him.

Patton bit his lower lip, trying to weigh the pros and cons of this situation. An easy con, the human knew about him. The pro to that, however, it was Logan. Someone he had talked to and gotten to know fairly well. While everything in him was screaming that he should duck and run, it almost didn’t feel right. He tried to still his shaking hands as he dug further into the strap, looking up and meeting Logan’s eyes finally. “R-really?”

Logan offered a single nod in affirmation. “Really.”

Well, while he was still very scared—and with good reason!—Patton found himself wanting to understand, more than anything. “Then why did you…?”

“Use the shrink ray on myself?” Logan chuckled slightly when he got a nod, finding the situation almost comical as he recalled the event. “I‌ can assure you that it was not deliberate. My finger slipped on the trigger, if you must know. And while it was not an intentional usage, I‌ cannot say that I‌ am disappointed with the results it yielded.”

Such terminology seemed to make Patton almost more nervous and Logan belatedly realized that his vocabulary could make him seem intimidating, even to other humans.

“That said, I mean such in the way that I got to meet you.”‌

Logan was not one for sentiment, that much was very apparent, but for the short time that Logan had known Patton, the other seemed to be incredibly sentimental. Kind, understanding, if a bit melancholy at times. Patton was an absolutely fascinating bipedal mammal that should not be able to exist, but that was not the only fascinating thing about him. What Logan also found intriguing was just how delightful and considerate he had been with a complete stranger. Patton was sensitive, so much so to the point that it almost baffled the human. How someone could be so giving and genuine with a person they had never met before, it was almost unheard of.

Such a gentle statement had seemed to have startled Patton, but it didn’t take long before a tentative grin broke across his features. Logan was surprised to see the borrower take a few steps toward him. “You really mean that?”

The statement was so hopeful and warm, Logan couldn’t help but a let a small grin alight his own features. “If I did not mean it, I‌ wouldn’t have said it.”

Patton had been alone for a long time, at least that’s what Logan had gathered from his chat with him. Like this, he supposed one could remain in the building and live in safety and he could continue to learn more about borrowers as a whole. Only, of course, if Patton was willing to share such information with him.

“I‌ am curious, however, does me being human taint our friendship?” Logan completely understood if it did, but Patton almost looked hurt at the statement.

Logan was simply stating the facts, not trying to be inconsiderate to one’s feelings.

“Of course not!” The vehemence behind Patton’s voice was surprising, to put it lightly. “I— I‌ admit that this surprise scared me. And I’m still kinda scared, I’m not gonna lie, but you said you wouldn’t do anything to me and you haven’t yet even though you’ve had plenty of time.” He was almost rambling to himself at this point, before shaking it off and meeting Logan’s eyes again. “So, no. To answer your question, you being human does not taint our friendship.”

Logan felt warmth bloom in his chest at the reassurance and he found his smile becoming more genuine.

It was hard to say if one had been able to befriend a borrower before (which did have it’s possibilities) and just didn’t document it, but knowing this secret felt sacred. And looking down at Patton, who was no longer anxiously clinging to the strap of his bag but instead looked more comfortable, said far more than Logan would be able to fathom.

If someone as inviting and warm as Patton could like him, then maybe Logan was doing something right after all.

[grey-says-heck]

Aw I love it! Virgil was like "ahahah no," after overhearing Roman 😂

Becoming a pet… great

This is my present for @infinitesimal-grey​ for the @secret-sanders-sized​ by @hiddendreamer67​

I think I got exited and wrote a very long fic… but I hope you like it!

Summary: Roman is a werewolf and has a pet borrower named Virgil who doesn´t really enjoy being a pet even if Roman’s a decent owner, things get interested hen Roman´s school provides them with a potion that’s able to switch their sizes

TW: treating people as pets, being locked in a cage, fighting (if there’s another one please let me know ;))

———

Virgil sat on his bed, he wasn’t able to sleep, like usual, he looked at the nightstand next to his owner’s bed, the alarm was going to sound soon for him to go to school, and he had to wait for him alone.

He had to admit that being with Roman was not as awful as he first thought it would be, but he was still his pet, and no matter what Roman would never see him in other way.

The alarm sounded and the werewolf turned it off, he sat on his bed and stretched his arms while yawning, showing his sharp fangs and making Virgil shiver.

“good morning Virge” Roman said while standing up, he walked to the borrower’s cage and opened the door “did you sleep well?”

“Yeah” said Virgil lying, he stood up and got out of his cage, stepping into Roman’s hand to go get breakfast.

Ever since borrowers were downgraded to pets and he was bought by Roman, they had the same routine everyday, except for weekends when his owner didn’t have to go to school.

Roman left his hand on the counter and his pet stepped out of his hand “I have a surprise for you” he said, smiling and walking through the kitchen.

“A surprise?” Virgil was confused, usually a surprise would mean a new toy or piece of clothing, but Roman seemed so happy for some reason, so that couldn’t be.

The werewolf nodded as he grabbed something from a cabinet “you’re going to go to school with me”

“Wait what? Didn’t we tried this already? And it went horribly wrong…”

“Yes” he said turning around and smiling to Virgil “but this time, things are gonna be different” Roman took one of Virgil’s cups and filled it with a clear shiny liquid.

“W-What is that?” Said Virgil a little nervous.

Roman left the cup next to Virgil “they gave us this potion at school, it’s supposed to teach us about equality with borrowers so that our bond becomes stronger” he said, taking a needle from a drawer.

“And how does it work?” Asked Virgil, he couldn’t imagine how borrowers could be seen as equal.

The werewolf poked his finger with the needle, he left it on the counter and let a drop of his blood drop into the potion, turning it red “It’s going to make you my size”

Virgil’s eyes went wide, he doubted magic like that existed, he saw Roman pushing the cup closer to him, he looked at it, he was a bit disgusted by the fact he had to drink his owner’s blood, but if that could make him his size… he started to wonder if it could work the other way, he didn’t hate Roman, but having the tables turned could be interesting.

Hesitantly, the borrower picked the cup and got it closer to his lips, drinking it’s contents, he kept it on his hands when it was empty ”I don’t feel anything…”

Roman hummed ”I think it needs time to activate”

Virgil was about to say something else when he felt a warm sensation trough his body, he looked down at the cup it was smaller, it usually was te size of his hand, but now it was half it’s size.

The werewolf smiled ”It’s working! You’re getting bigger!”

The borrower left the cup aside and sat at the edge of the table, he looked around at how everything was getting smaller, he got off the table, surprised of the short distance between it and the floor, he looked up at Roman, compared to him, Virgil was currently the size of a child, but he was getting bigger with each second, the growing stopped once he was eye level with the werewolf ”Wow…”

Roman hugged Virgil ”I can’t believe it really worked!”

The ex borrower was struggling to breath because of the other’s strong grip ”R-Ro… l-let me breath…”

”oh right sorry” he said breaking the hug ”I got overexcited” he giggled nervously ”This is awesome! You’re normal sized! And you can come with me to school, I promise we’ll have a lot of fun afterwards, we can go get some ice cream, or to the movies, or”

”woah woah, relax princey, how about I try to get used to this first?” Said Virgil, cutting him off.

”Right, how about we have breakfast first? Do you want coffee?”

”Yes please”

Roman smiled and walked to get some mugs, Virgil looked at the table, spotting the cup, his cup, he was amazed of how small it was, he could take it with just two fingers now, when it was the size of his hands just some minutes ago.

Roman’s cellphone started ringing ”Would you mind serving the coffee while I answer outside?”

”oh, not at all”

”and you can take any other thing you want for breakfast, it’s your house too after all” said Roman as he went outside the apartment, without noticing he left the door open.

Virgil took the mugs and poured the coffee, he opened some cabinets until he found the cookies he was looking for, he wanted to do something for Roman, but he could decide what, he left everything on the table and went to ask Roman what would he like, he was about to get out when he heard the conversation he was having.

”-I just didn’t like the idea of being borrower sized… I know the teacher said it was supposed to change us both but… hey it worked! That’s what matters, Virgil’s normal size, I didn’t have to shrink, everyone’s happy-”

Virgil backed away from the door ’Roman was supposed to shrink? That was the whole point of the potion, that’s how he was supposed to learn about equality, but he was just too coward to do it’ he thought as he walked back to the kitchen, he looked at the counter where the potion was, if Roman’s blood made him his size, maybe Virgil’s would make Roman borrower sized.

He took it and poured a small amount on a glass, he grabbed the needle and washed it, he pocked his finger with it and left it aside, he looked at the drop of blood coming out of his finger, he could still hear mumbles from outside, which meant Roman was still talking through the phone, he took a deep breath and let the blood fall into the potion, this time turning purple instead of red.

He took the glass and poured the potion on Roman’s mug and mixing it, the coffee was dark so there wasn’t much difference, he would never tell the difference, he left it on the table and took some random fruit before his ex owner came back in.

The werewolf went back into the house and into the kitchen “I didn’t know what you wanted so I just took out some cookies and fuit” said Virgil, watching Roman coming in.

“It’s okay, I’ll take you somewhere to eat after school” he said smiling and taking his mug, Virgil watched as Roman took a sip from his coffee “where would you like to go?”

“Uhm…wherever you want to take me it’s fine for me…” he said, drinking some of his coffee.

Roman drank some again but stopped when he sniffed it “wait, something’s not right…” he continued smelling “did you put something on this?”

“What? No, what could I put on…” said Virgil, as he could swear he was looking down at the werewolf now “…it”

“Are you sure?” he said, getting closer to the now tallest one and smelling him ” it kind of smells like you… wait, are you taller than me?”

”Maybe is just part of the effects?”

”That could be… but I could swear we were the same height just a second ago”

Virgil gulped as he saw how Roman got a little shorter, for a moment he feared Roman would get angry at him once his shrinking stopped, he also wondered if the process was slower because the potion was mixed with the coffee, or if it could affect his final height.

This time, Roman noticed the change “d-did you just got taller?” He looked down at the mug on his hands, it seemed a bit bigger too “or am I..?” He sniffed his coffee once more, his eyes opening wide when he realized what could have happened “no…” he looked up, yes up at Virgil with fear “y-you didn’t…”

The tallest one felt a bit of guilt, but he had to admit it felt nice to be the one in charge, so he hid it with a smirk “I didn’t what Roman?”

“T-the potion, you put it on my coffee, i-it’s shrinking me” he left the mug on the table, it was getting heavy “why did you do it?” He said looking at Virgil, he was at his shoulder height now.

“Why? Maybe because this was supposed to happen on the first place? But you were just to coward to do it correctly”

The werewolf sighed “you heard me talking to Patton didn’t you?”

”I didn’t mean to…” said Virgil looking somewhere else ”but you know what? I’m glad I did, now your little equality lesson can be completed”

”look I-I just thought it would be the same if we were both normal size”

Virgil hummed ”maybe, but anyways, it’s too late now, and you’re going to be seeing things from my perspective soon” he said, seeing Roman shrinking to his stomach height.

Roman looked around, amazed at how everything was getting bigger, he felt like a little kid as he shrunk to be eye level with Virgil’s waist.

”aww, does the prince feel a little overwhelmed?” Said the ex-borrower, he took Roman from under his arms and lifted him, making them be eye level once again ”you’re so light, I never thought I would be able to be bigger than you, to be able to pick you up like nothing” Virgil tossed Roman in the air and caught him, making him yelp.

“just think about it, less than an hour ago, I was just a couple of inches tall, you had complete control over me and I could do nothing about it, but you gave me the opportunity to turn the tables” he left the shrinking werewolf on the table as he was now just two feet tall.

Roman blushed of embarrassment, Virgil was right, he was helpless, he could barely move around his on apartment without help at this size, he was at Virgil’s mercy, unable to stop him of whatever he wanted to do to him.

Virgil pinched the back of the werewolf’s shirt between and lifted him up “it seems like you’ve stopped shrinking already, I can’t believe we’re this small” he left Roman on his palm and walked to their room ”There are some things I want you to notice”

The shrunken one was left on the desk ”Let’s start with this” Virgil opened his cage’s door and pushed him inside, closing and locking the door behind him, Roman turned to see him and grabbed the bars ”How do you feel Roman?”

Roman looked around the cage, he had tried his best to make it as cozy as he could, he didn’t even called it a cage anymore, but that didn’t made it feel less like one ”Trapped…” he said looking down.

”And how did you feel when I grabbed you?”

”…Controlled, vulnerable…”

”There you go, now imagine how I feel with those things being a borrower with anxiety, but of course, you didn’t even cared that much to read my file, so you don’t know that”

Roman’s eyes went wide ”b-but why didn’t you said anything” he said looking up at Virgil.

”Uhm, did you heard when I told you I have anxiety? You’re stammering, you’re afraid to speak to me and you ask me why I didn’t point out the things you were doing wrong?”

”Virge… you don’t have to be afraid of me, you’re allowed to tell me if I’m doing something wrong”

Virgil hummed ”well, you could show interest more often, and you can’t ask me to not be scared of you” he opened the cage and grabbed Roman in a fist, taking him out ”The only reason I’m telling you this is because you’re not scary like this”

Roman yelped as giant fingers surrounded him, bringing him close to giant eyes ”W-well… you are scary like this…”

The ex-borrower softened his gaze and opened his hand, he of all creatures should know what it feels like to be vulnerable, to feel powerless, and he was making Roman feel that, he wasn’t thinking on his perspective ”y-you think I’m scary?”

”w-well… you had me on your fist, you were almost yelling at me, a-and I was just so close to your frowned face… it was overwhelming”

Virgil looked away from the shrunken creature on his hand, he hated everyone who was bigger than him just because they used their size as an advantage over him, and now he was doing it, thinking about how someone so small felt was way more difficult than he thought it would be, even for him ”sorry…” he left Roman back in the desk.

Roman looked up at him “Don’t worry, I know it’s hard to think about how someone feels when they’re so small, and I’m sorry if I made you feel like I didn’t care enough, but I do, you don’t know how much I freak out when I have to carry you, or when I feel you’re too close to me” he said looking away “I thought that if you were normal sized, it would have been easier for us to be friends, that’s what I didn’t want to shrink” his ears were folded down “but you were right, I was scared of seeing your perspective, of seeing how bad owner I was”

Now Virgil felt guilty, but he huffed “I guess we both suck at telling each other how we truly feel”

”You’re not wrong in that” said the werewolf returning the brief laugh ”Would you be willing to make an agreement?”

Virgil hummed ”what kind of agreement?”

”We won’t stay quiet, when something’s bothering us we’ll tell each other to see how we can fix it” Said Roman extending his hand towards Virgil

He thought for a moment ”And none of us will get mad?”

”And none of us will get mad” said Roman ”Deal?”

Virgil took Roman’s hand between his fingers ”Deal” he said shaking it slightly.

Roman took his hand away from Virgil’s fingers when the handshake stopped ”So… what do we do now?”

”I don’t know” Virgil shrugged ”Does the potion has a time limit or something?”

Roman hummed, thinking ”Yeah, it has to be an hour or so, I think I left an alarm on my phone”

Virgil was about to get up to look for Roman’s phone when a loud noise came from the kitchen, the alarm, has it really been an hour already? He felt a tingling sensation run through his body “I think the effect’s running off already” he said as he shivered.

He saw how the table was starting to get taller, he stood up and pushed the chair closer to the desk, he started climbing it once he was eye level with it, he got up of the chair and tried to get up the desk, but the shrinking made it difficult, he was about to slip when Roman grabbed his hand and pulled him up, it was a little hard since he was still bigger than him.

After some more seconds, both of them stood on top of the tale, borrower sized, Virgil huffed “we’re the same size again” he looked at his owner -friend? And hesitantly pulled him into a hug.

Roman returned the hug wagging his tail, they broke the hug after some time “I guess we have to wait until I grow back to normal”

“yeah, that would be the best…”

It wasn´t long before Roman started to grow, there was half an hour or so between when Virgil drank him drank the potion and that was why they didn’t returned to their original size at the same time.

When they both went back to normal, they both realized Roman had skipped school, he had to call Patton to tell him he was okay and stop him from panicking.

“Pat, I promise everything’s alright…I’ll tell you everything tomorrow…promise…see ya then” the werewolf hung up his phone and looked at his borrower, sitting in the table eating a cookie, they were both hungry since they didn’t ate breakfast either “better?”

“definitely” answered Virgil, taking another bite as Roman reached for a cookie from the package behind him “about everything you told me… it was true right?”

Roman bit his cookie and chewed it a bit before answering “of course it was true! I want you to be comfortable with me, not as your owner but more like as a friend”

The borrower smiled “You weren’t that bad of an owner, over all people, I think I’m lucky I ended up with you”

Roman returned the smile “and you’re the best borrower I could have ever asked for”

[startwithbrooklyn]

THE GREAT ND REWATCH OF 2021 / OCTOBER 4, 2019 // the party

again w the first 2 minutes of the next episode to keep the dates 🙏🏻

"if only i could get myself a new father, too" WELL SWEETIE! here ya go! 😅 ("you already have a barbie dad at home" "thats a fake dad, i want a real dad")

-"ohhhhhhh" charlie 😂

-"someone needs a spin on the chore wheel" - i honestly cant see victoria doing the chore wheel. it definitely sounds like a george thing. what if george went to parenting classes with victoria drunk/asleep taking the notes to help raise her sisters

-"with the exception of one vandal" i was SO CONFUSED by this statement for ages but i finally figured it out 😅

-"kate would have been happy to see it" oh nick. if only you knew her truth

-ace surrounded by all these romantic interruptions lmaoooo

-"hi bessie!!" 😍😭💙

-"need any help?" i get that this quote is to show how george has parenting well in hand but this also reminds me of when george went to the beach in ep 2 to help the crew w the morgue and then overheard nancy and nick talking and left

-"with everything that's happened" so does owen know?

-"my closest relative is not my blood relative" i get that shes had like. 12 hours to process this but this statement acknowledges a relationship for nancy and carson not based on blood which is very against what nancy said/felt previously and throughout

-"yours is like a moped with a roof" in ep 3 ryan mocks carson's "dad car" but in the end ryan's the one with the dad car 🙂

-BESS 😂😭🙈 and "lets hope the agleaca doesnt feed off of negative energy" it kinda does tho!

-what was ace decrypting for owen? paperwork diana is going through from the next ep? (similar stuff to tiffany's flashdrive? how did she get thet stuff btw? and when were she and ryan married? how long has she been digging up skulls?)

-ryan omgggggg i hate how his kid has to take control of the situation bc he cant handle adult interaction appropriately (and "i'm sorry for your loss" im sure ryan is sick of that phrase by now) ryan + women/losses v gains : losing lucy, tiffany, george, potentially his mom (disappointed d/t everett) and gaining nancy (and regaining lucy via)

-"do you think you would have tried to-" i really wonder what she was gonna say here. i guarantee it was gonna be some version of "ask for help" as in "do you think you would have tried to get some other adults involved or ask for opinions from a social worker or something" and enter carson & kate. i guarantee she was trying to envision a situation in which ryan had her but carson and kate featured anyway

-ryan vs carson -->nancy<-- ryan vs owen : asking ryan to help save carson (ace/poisoner) / wondering if owen dies here / would ryan have saved carson in that ep if he knew they had taken nancy or would he have treated him like owen and let him die? (also, ryan is weirdly prophetic about owen's death here)

-"what the hell is wrong with you?" ryan to everett and "what is WRONG with you?" nancy to ryan

-"don't blame genetics. because people make choices."

-she seems SO shocked that ryan would actually leave her there after she screamed at him lmaoooo like sis the entitlement

-"i dont even understand some of the words you're using" CARSON 😂

-DIANA damn bc of a wedding speech?? i fuckin love her tho and her actress too soooo classy

-owen: -sees nancy- -immediately dumps other people to go to her- // shades of blue again! (+he wants to introduce her to the family 😭)

-okay but babies DO look alike

-"and are they haunted by lucy sable?" **

-"what if you hadn't needed me?" parallels how nancy wasn't going to be told either- ryan and nancy are equals in their haunting in ways that carson was unequal to nancy in grief. *this and the previous statement i will explain de jure at the end of tomorrows ep to recap the whole season

-"that's the first time i've believed you actually cared about something" vs "finally. a straight answer"

-"are you alright?" she finally doesnt lie

-ryan and carson sizing each other up lmaooo and ace with the save as always

-"they're not my friends" vs "i need you to save my friends"

-nancy's pain during ritual echoes lucy's birth giving (pain & noises) but nancy is with ryan this time while lucy had to go through it alone

-how many fucking times does bess put her foot in her mouth??

•"murderer on the loose" in front of nick

•bess in george's office with ryan

•"you slept with my cousin!" in front of nick

•"george slept with nancys dad" to george

which is honestly contrasted with george, who makes the succinct observations: "you mean do it for you?" "oh, so this is a thing" "you mean rehab?" but george also outs peoples secrets like nancys mom dying and bess's van living to nick (only to nick tho lmaooo 👀🤔)

-so all these portents are things that happened to odette? hair shorn, bound and choked with rope, drowning in water with crabs and maggots crawling all over her, occasional fish hooks getting caught in her as she sinks (+dead in the water being so appropriate here, sadly)

~~~~~

-"i trusted you to be kind but look what it cost me"

and lastly:

-again with the truth telling and the straight up rejection! thats 0/2 lisbeth and john sander cancelling the supernatural

[destinys-dragon]

On Borrowed Time

Warnings: Remus, Swearing, Fear, Captured Side(s), calling someone an “It”,

Gift For: @sanderssidesthehouse for @secret-sanders-sized 2019 Event

Cast: Roman, Remus, Dee, Logan, Virgil (mentioned)

Ships: Brotherly Creatwins (Roman & Remus), Brotherly Logan, Dee, and Virgil

Words: 1382

Notes at the end

Logan was always careful, always. He was cautious and refused to get caught or seen. It would be disastrous, not only for himself, but for his family as well. The only thing worse than himself getting caught, was one of the other’s getting caught.

Sadly, that seemed to be the case today. He knew he should have told Dee to stay inside today. He had a gut feeling and ignored it because he believed in his brains and facts telling him everything was gonna be okay. It wasn’t okay, far from it actually.

He watched helplessly as the bean, the green one went to poke and prod at his Dee. He wanted to step in and yell at the wicked one to stop it, leave him alone! But his legs were frozen to the floor and yet so shaky that he almost fell over.

He had never truly been afraid before this. Sure, there were close calls, very, very close calls, but that was it. Just close calls, as in none of them had been seen or caught. That is, until today. Today, on Christmas. Of all days, Of all days.

“Are you sure Dad didn’t get us this shit for Christmas? It’s so little and fucking weird it’s totally something he would get us.”

“I’m sure, and watch your mouth, Remus! You know how Mama hates it when we curse!”

“Fuck it! I’m old enough and I can do what I want. Besides that, they aren’t here right now, Prissy bitch,” the green one, now known as Remus, responded, adding a dramatic eye roll.

“Still Remus! You need to mind your mouth! Now, what are we gonna do with it?”

“Keep it?”

No, No Logan didn’t want that. He felt himself wanting to act and flee all at once. He wanted to cry and scream and beg them to give him back. Give back his family and leave him alone. He told Virgil he would bring Dee back, he promised them. He promised.

“Well duh, why would we let it go? Maybe we could ask Dad when he and Mama get back,” the red one offered, shrugging. “He probably knows what this is if he got it for us.”

“God, you ruin everything Roman. Like, every fucking thing,” Remus huffed, pushing the cage around. Logan could hear Dee screaming and crying from his position on the highest shelf in the room, watching Dee trying to hold onto something so he wouldn’t be thrown around.

Logan felt sick and gross, feeling powerless yet powerful in this situation. He could walk out and save Dee or offer himself in his place, but he was a coward. He could feel his inner thoughts taunting him.

Worthless.

Useless.

Pathetic.

What a horrible big brother you are.

“I do not! You ruin everything you chaotic fuck!” Roman snarled, before his face paled. He went to say something, but Remus cackled loudly. Dee covered his ears, curling up and crying softly. Logan’s little snake had always been sensitive to loud noises, and now he was right next to one of the loudest things alive.

“I’m telling Mom! I’m telling Mom! She is gonna be so ashamed of you! I mean, she already is, but still! At least she will be proud of me for finding this thing! Do you think it’s the same thing that has been stealing bread?”

“Don’t tell her you psycho! And I don’t know, I mean, what would one little thing need with all that food?” Roman asked, opening the top of the cage and petting Dee. He ignored the cries and whimpers getting louder, focusing on Remus. “What would something so small need all that food for?”

“Maybe it was trying to feed and befriend my rats to create a little army!” Remus squealed, shaking the cage. “Were you trying to make an army out of my babies!?” He cried, his green eyes filled with fury.

Dee shook his head quickly, scrambling back and away from both brothers. Logan watched him, wanting to walk out and save him. He felt tears filling his eyes because of the overwhelming emotions filling him.

“Oh gods Remus, leave it alone! It’s terrified and those beasts of yours only take orders from you.”

“Nuh uh! Dad likes to play with Trashheap sometimes! He says that my baby is cute!” Remus whined, stomping his foot. “And I only have three and they are perfect angels!”

“They are menaces to society! How dare you call them precious! They are horrid and smelly and disgusting!” Roman huffed, before he screamed as Remus tackled him.

And they were fighting. Logan resisted the urge to roll his eyes and he realized this was his chance. He started to walk forward, before he heard the door crack open. It was their Dad. He scooted back, looking at the man’s sunglasses that made his annoyed stare look even darker and more ominous.

“Boys, what have I told you about fighting? Especially inside the house.” The dad took a sip of his drink from that weird green lady cup and sighed. “You’re both grounded Remus, go to your room.”\

“But Da-”

“No Buts! Room, now,” the father hissed, causing Remus to stand up and bolt, running past his dad to get to his room. “Roman, go to bed, now.”

“Yes father,” he whispered, quickly climbing into bed and pulling up the covers in a poor attempt to hide from the angry man.

Logan watched the man leave and he took a breath. He slowly climbed down to the lower shelves, thanking the red brat for putting the bookshelf next to the desk. He tried to psych himself up for this, his heart pounding in his chest as he made eye contact with Dee.

He could save him, and he would. He watched the bed as he walked towards the cage, tugging and pulling at the lock to try and unlatch it.

“Hurry Logan,” Dee pleaded, his eyes wide and fearful as he stared at the bed. “Please, Please I’m scared.”

“I am!” Logan huffed softly, pushing against it until the latch gave a soft click and the cage unlocked. “Come on!” Logan snapped, grabbing Dee’s hand and pulling him out of the cage and towards their home in the walls.

“H-Hey! Stop that!” Roman cried out, sitting up. His eyes widened when he saw two tiny people running on is desk and he quickly tried to climb out of bed. He got tangled in his covers and fell to the floor.

Logan kept moving, thanking all high heavens that this bean was stupid. He pushed Dee inside, watching him run into the waiting arms of Virgil, who had started crying. He ran in himself, but he yelped when his leg was caught between massive fingers

He heard someone screaming, “No!” and he wasn’t sure if it was Dee, Virgil, the bean, or himself. He thrashed and scratched the hand to no avail. The bean easily pulled him out, staring in confusion.

“Why did you let him go? He was our gift, you’re not. now I have to go find him,” He mumbled, walking back and locking Logan in the cage. This time he set a massive book in front of the door, trapping Logan inside.

“Where is the other one? What did you do to him?” He asked, tapping on the bars near Logan, who retreated at the fingers trying to touch him.

Logan remained silent, his heart hammering in his chest. He glanced at the hole, hoping and praying Virgil and Dee had ran back into the walls to avoid this bean.

Roman groaned, looking at the tiny as he shook the cage. “Fine then, be that way. I’ll find them myself! You stay here,” he ordered, standing up and leaving the room.

Logan watched him leave and he tried to get the door open from this side to no avail. He whimpered and curled up. He wanted Dee and Virgil to come save them, but he knew that they would be caught the second they stepped out.

‘Just leave me,’ he thought, hoping they would hear him. 'Just leave me and run away, I’ll be okay.’ He curled up, his eyes slowly drifting shut as he did so. Maybe a little sleep wouldn’t hurt, and he slept in worse places than this, way worse.

———————————————————————————————————–

Hey sanderssidesthehouse, here is your gift! Super srry it was so late, but I wanted to take the time to make it super duper special for you! I hope you enjoy it!

[davidthetraveler]

My gift for @theatresweetheart as part of the Secret Sanders G/T Event for 2019 (as hosted by @secret-sanders-sized).

Sorry this took so long to put up.  I’ve been having some connection issues with my internet.  But they’re now resolved and I’m able to get this out to you now.

Fair warning, this story features consensual tickling and semi-consensual semi-intentional fear play.  Other than that, you should be good.

In any case, I hope you guys enjoy it, especially you Brook.  Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays.

[bustedbernie]

Here’s the actual reason I don’t support him for president: I think he’s got some pretty unnerving authoritarian tendencies.

Now, I know a lot of people will balk at this and tell me that this is ridiculous. Great! Please be right, all of those people! This is one thing I definitely want to be wrong about. But nothing has really convinced me otherwise so far. Granted, I’m not a political scientist, so I might not be using the word “authoritarianism” in a strictly correct way. So, by all means, please respond to this with whatever unsubstantive semantic pedantry you think will best shut me up.

Okay, so, that’s a big claim, right? I’d better have some real shit to back it up, huh? Well, I do. I can’t promise you that any of it will convince you. And, honestly, I’m not even trying to convince anyone of anything. I’m just stating my case and explaining why I’m reluctant to jump onto the bandwagon. So here we go:

I don’t like the antagonistic relationship he has with the press. He regularly presents the media as being corrupted or simply against him, and he’s been doing it since forever. Efforts to rein in criticism through the press is step one for keeping citizenry in line. It’s on, like, the first page of the manual.

He’s secretive. And needlessly so. While walking back an earlier promise to release medical records, he opined that if you “start releasing medical records, it never ends.” He says that as though we’re all on board with the idea that transparency for our elected leaders is absurd and unnecessary. He also spent all of the 2016 cycle and most of this one resisting calls for him to make his recent tax returns public. When he finally did bend to pressure and release them, there wasn’t anything there! Why is he so resistant to simple public oversight? Do we even need to discuss the relationship between opaqueness and firm authority?

Civil liberties do not seem to be very high on his list of important things to protect. As conservative columnist Ross Douthat pointed out in a 2019 op-ed, everything in Sanders’ political record points to the strong possibility that he’d be willing to sacrifice a lot of social progressive interests in pursuit of his lifelong economic progressive interests. He’s single-minded of purpose when it comes to fixing economic disparity. Which is commendable. Unless you’re one of the people who gets tossed under the public transportation vehicle in order for the rest of us to get there. Fidel Castro fought to overthrow the Fulgencio Batista’s super-corrupt government with all the best intentions for the people of Cuba. Go ask Havana’s LGBTQ community how well that worked out for them. Just saying that when it comes down to it, authoritarians tend to side with the movement over the individual. And it’s not exactly calming to witness the willingness of the Sanders campaign to wrap its arms around and defend a well-known bigot due to the size of his following. Do I think that a Sanders administration would start imprisoning LGBTQ people? No. But do I think that he would use his political capital as president to focus on economic concerns over social ones? That, to me, seems eminently believable.

Sanders has a history of publicly admiring authoritarians of the left. Fidel Castro for one. Then there was the time he went to Nicaragua to meet with Daniel Ortega. Granted, Ortega wasn’t at the time quite the strongman he’d eventually turn out to be, but Sanders was still happy to defend the regime’s “temporary suspension of certain civil liberties.” What the what?? (And I’m not even going to go into how weird it is that Burlington, Vermont was, at one time, sister-cities with Yaroslavl, U.S.S.R.) Is it so hard to imagine that Sanders styles himself after this kind of populist leader?

There’s more, but that’s fine for right now.

[ilovemygaydad]

title: bubble, bubble

pairings: moceit, mentions of virgil/other

summary: patton sanders is a witch. it just so happens that he keeps that fact a secret.

warnings: a couple of swears, anxiety, witchcraft, spider mention (briefly), hiding things from a significant other, lying, food mention, and possibly something else

a/n: the prompt is from @hiddendreamer67‘s october prompt list! october 23rd’s word was “witchcraft.”

check my bio for commission info

all other october fics are under the tag “#october 2019 fics” or on ao3

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buy me a coffee

-

Patton Sanders was a witch.

And not the “I’m-trying-not-to-say-bitch” kind of witch. A spell-casting, magical witch.

At the same time, Patton had a lovely family, and he had an even more wonderful boyfriend.

Dee Lange owned an antique shop on Main Street, which held all kinds of special items. There were old clothes that had seen so much history, dishware in all shapes, sizes, colors, and uses, furniture that had become worn to a specific person’s body, and even jewelry, both precious and not. Everything was meticulously maintained by Dee himself, and it was a wonder to everyone how he managed to keep his shop clean and organized while also running the business and having a life outside of work.

But Patton didn’t mind. He loved Dee so much. Their relationship was nearly perfect, too.

Except for one little thing.

Dee didn’t know that Patton was a witch.

Patton kept all of his witchy items stored in boxes hidden behind storage units in the closet, and he only ever worked on his charms and potions when he was absolutely certain that Dee would be out of the house. Claiming that he was simply a plant enthusiast deflected any questions about the dozens of fresh herbs and plants that he grew around his apartment. He kept his traveling and ceremonial robes tucked away in a hidden drawer of his jewelry box. And, luckily, the scent of magic was undetectable by the human nose, so while Patton smelled a mixture of baked goods, electricity, and something so distinctly magic, humans would smell nothing but fresh air.

He didn’t really need to keep it a secret. Witches were no longer killed for just existing, but... that didn’t mean they were fully accepted, either.

Sighing, Patton wrapped his coat tighter around himself as he walked home from the bakery. It was his mundane job that he kept on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in addition to his Etsy pages for crystal jewelry, spells, potion recipes, and other items of both the witchy and mundane variety. The weather had turned cold recently, which was fairly normal for October in New York, but Patton didn’t want to risk getting caught using a heat spell. There was always a chance that someone would see. He just couldn’t take the risk.

He slowly trudged up the steps to his apartment, reveling in the warmth of the building, before opening the front door and stopping dead in his tracks. On the kitchen table was one of his boxes of magic supplies, and Dee was sifting through them curiously.

“Where are the spider legs?” Dee asked plainly. He was acting as if this wasn’t earth-shattering news, which confused Patton to no end.

The blood rushed from Patton’s face in one fell swoop. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dee. What is all of this? Where did you get all of that?”

Dee raised an eyebrow. “Behind the shelves in the closet. Are you telling me that these aren’t your witchcraft supplies?”

“Yes! No. I mean--Those aren’t mine!” Patton scrabbled. “They must have been there from the last tenant. I’ve never moved those shelves since I moved in.”

“Right. And that’s why the box is painted with your favorite flowers and signed with your name,” Dee drawled, rolling his eyes. “Please just tell me where the spider legs are so that I may make this potion.”

“Bottom drawer. Left back side,” Patton said numbly. His whole world was being turned upside down right before his eyes. “I’m sorry--are you a witch?”

“Yes, and so are you, I’m assuming?”

“Yeah. Why was I never able to sense your magic?”

Dee smiled slightly, looking just a bit smug as he explained, “I’m not a very powerful witch, and I use my powers just infrequently enough that the scent of magic doesn’t linger like it does on you and most others. I mainly cast spells for housekeeping around the shop or make a few potions here and there. However, I was missing spider legs this afternoon, and I figured you had some around here.” He glanced up at Patton with a wicked grin. “I was right.”

“So you knew this whole time?”

“Yep.”

Patton slowly lowered himself into one of the dining room chairs. “Oh my gods…”

“You would get along well with my brother, Virgil. He did the exact same thing with his husband.”

“Well,” Patton laughed. “At least I wasn’t the only one.”

[bountyofbeads]

Why Does Only One Party Play by the Rules? https://nyti.ms/2MNdCOX

Why Does Only One Party Play by the Rules?

Thanks to Trump’s deepening dependence on “alternative facts,” the assertion of reality is now a viable campaign strategy for 2020 Democrats.

By Jennifer Senior, Opinion columnist | Published October 25, 2019 | New York Times | Posted October 25, 2019 |

It’s that time of the campaign season when some Democrats are starting to feel — as President Jimmy Carter might have put it — malaise. They’re staring at their 2020 lineup and wondering whether it’s a guaranteed recipe for buyer’s remorse. Joe Biden is too old, Pete Buttigieg is too young, Kamala Harris is too uncertain, Bernie Sanders too unpalatable, Elizabeth Warren too unelectable.

All of which may be right. But I have an additional theory for why some Democrats are the vexed and depleted souls they seem to be these days, waking up with lead in their veins and worms in their stomachs. It boils down to this: They can’t escape the sense that they’re living by different rules.

Let me rephrase that: Democrats are acting as though there still are rules, when in fact they’re living in a political multiverse — with at least one parallel reality containing no rules at all.

What do you do when one party stakes its faith — and ultimately government itself — on observable, measurable realities while the other has made the cynical decision to cast these principles away? How do you strategize? How do you cope?

It’s not just that President Trump serially lies in plain sight. (What’s The Washington Post’s latest tally? 13,435? Whatever: Just imagine a whirring odometer on a shuttle to Mars.) It’s that he’s surrounded by occluders and toadies, nihilist tricksters spun directly from the looms of the Marx Brothers’ imagination. (“Who you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?”)

A raft of House and Senate Republicans — including (say it with me) Senator Lindsey Graham — learned that Ukraine’s top diplomat had confirmed the Trump administration’s aid-for-dirt caper, yet still insists the impeachment proceedings are a sham. The acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, acknowledged this same quid pro quo in a news conference, only to proclaim later that none of us understands English. Any public servant who dares say that two plus two just might equal four is immediately accused by Trump of radicalism, treason, witch hunting.

Compare that with President Barack Obama’s relationship with those who inconvenienced him. When James Comey, then the head of the F.B.I., made the fateful decision to announce that he’d reopened his inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s emails just days before the 2016 election, Obama could not have been especially pleased. By imperiling Clinton’s chances, Comey was imperiling Obama’s own legacy too. Yet Obama still behaved warmly toward him, according to James Stewart in his new book, “Deep State.” Why? Because “Democrats,” as Jonathan Chait  explained in his review of that book, “still believed in institutions and norms.”(See review below)

This idea — that Democrats still believe in norms, customs, the rather crucial notion of checks and balances, in government itself — may be the crux of the multiverse problem. Look at someone like Joe Biden, whose essential pitch (in addition to experience, incremental change, working-class-guyness) is that he can work with the men and women on the other side of the aisle.

But this suggests that compromise is an option. It doesn’t appear that the other side is much interested. You have Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, holding a Supreme Court appointment hostage for nearly a year, blocking  almost all legislative debate and passing a bill to protect the 2020 elections from foreign interference only under extreme duress; the world’s “greatest deliberative body” is now a speedway for the Trump agenda. You have the House Republicans informally observing the “Hastert Rule”— named for the former speaker Dennis Hastert, who was carted off to prison for paying hush money to a former student he’d sexually abused — which says bills can come to the floor only if a majority of the Republicans support them. It virtually ensures minoritarian rule.

And you have partisan news outlets with zero interest in reporting the basic facts of Trump’s corruption or the catastrophic consequences of his impulses. We’ve gone from Pax Americana to Fox Americana in the blink of an eye.

Whereas the more traditional media, whatever their unconscious biases, do try to hold Democrats to account. Sure, let’s stipulate that there are more liberals than conservatives at these organizations. Maybe even a lot more. But it was mainstream newspapers that broke the Whitewater story, which led to an independent investigation of Bill Clinton. It was mainstream newspapers that kept Hillary Clinton’s emails on the front page in the run-up to the 2016 election. This newspaper covered Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine too — in May. These pages also ran an editorial about it. That was in 2015.

Of course Democratic politicians — all politicians — distort, gerrymander evidence, even lie and apply their greasy thumbs to the scales. (What was Bill Clinton doing on that plane with Loretta Lynch in 2016?) The question is whether their sins are occasional or habitual, whether their worldviews are Capra or Chandler. The Trumpkins are firmly in noir territory.

Now you have Trump strafing Facebook with campaign ads popping with falsehoods. Elizabeth Warren, meanwhile, ran a Facebook ad with falsehoods that acknowledged they were false midway through.

Which says it all, really.

So, to repeat: What to do about this? Do you capitulate, sell your soul and resort to the same lawless tactics as your opponents? Or do you take the high road and run the risk of losing?

The only guide we have is 2018. But it’s not a bad one. What it showed was that sometimes it pays to go high. The Democrats just have to aggressively sell an honorable message.

Specifically, what the Democrats should say is: Anyone who’s not in the business of peddling the truth shouldn’t be in the business of government. Or publishing, for that matter. Trump once said that he could probably get away with murder. (And his lawyers recently, surreally,  made this same case in a federal appeals court.) That’s what Mark Zuckerberg is doing on Facebook, figuratively speaking, by allowing political ads with demonstrably false content to run on his platform, no matter what other features the company rolls out.

Right now, the Democrats are badly losing the Facebook war. But it’s not too late for them to wage this fight, and in the right way. They could still campaign on the idea of a government that believes in itself — and self-evident truths, like something as basic as the size of an inaugural crowd.

It would be a declaration of values. In the Trump era, that’s not a bad place to start.

*********

Two Candidates, Two Investigations, One Deeply Flawed Agency

By Jonathan Chait | Published October 25, 2019 | New York Times | Posted October 25, 2019 |

DEEP STATE

Trump, the FBI, and the Rule of Law

By James B. Stewart

During the 2016 presidential election, one of the two major candidates labored under the shadow of a criminal investigation by the F.B.I. That candidate was Hillary Clinton. As we now know, though voters had little reason to apprehend it at the time, there were actually two investigations underway — and, while the probe into Clinton’s mishandling of emails played out in public, the more serious probe of Donald Trump’s secret political and financial connections with Russia remained largely unknown until well after the voting had concluded.

In “Deep State,” James B. Stewart, a columnist for The New York Times and the author of “Blood Sport” and “Den of Thieves,” among many other books, tells the story of both investigations. His account produces few new facts, nor a bold new thesis, that would dramatically alter our understanding of either. Instead, his contribution is to combine the two accounts into a single chronological narrative. He shows how the twin investigations turn out to be closely linked, and not just because an election pitted their subjects against each other.

The F.B.I. agents investigating Clinton’s use of a personal email account realized early on that they would never have a prosecutable case. While Clinton had violated laws pertaining to the handling of classified material, she had apparently done so out of a combination of technical ineptitude and convenience, and the government had never charged an offender without establishing nefarious motives. As a result, the bureau concluded it didn’t “have much on the intent side.”

You might think this decision made life easier for the F.B.I., which would be spared the ordeal of having to insert itself into a presidential campaign. Instead, it made life harder. The reason for this: The bureau contained what some Department of Justice officials considered “hotbeds of anti-Clinton hostility,” especially in the Little Rock and New York offices. Stewart describes how F.B.I. officials encouraged colleagues investigating the Democratic nominee with messages like “You have to get her” and “You guys are finally going to get that bitch.” James Comey, the F.B.I. director during the Clinton email probe, went so far as to tell Attorney General Loretta Lynch, “It’s clear to me that there is a cadre of senior people in New York who have a deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton.” Those agents leaked regularly to right-wing media sources that the bureau was turning a blind eye to what they saw as Clinton’s criminality.

This pressure drove Comey to make two fateful decisions. First, when he announced that the bureau was not bringing charges against Clinton, he denounced her “extremely careless” behavior, as a kind of middle course between what the law dictated and what Republicans demanded. Second, when an unrelated investigation into sex crimes by the former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner turned up more Clinton email 11 days before the election, Comey felt trapped into announcing that he had reopened the investigation.

Stewart shows how Comey violated the F.B.I.’s norm of doing everything possible to avoid involving itself in election campaigns, especially at the end. He believed that failing to intervene would lead conservative agents to leak the story — and would result in his own impeachment by the Republican Congress after the election. As a result, Comey told his staff he needed to publicly reopen the investigation lest he create “corrosive doubt that you had engineered a cover-up to protect a particular political candidate.”

This was a catastrophic violation of protocol — and probably a decisive one; as Stewart notes, the new email story led the news in six of the seven days in the final week before the election. But what drove Comey to this error was the refusal of Republicans in the bureau and Congress to accept and follow the rules. Stewart’s narrative shows Democrats still believed in institutions and norms — even after Comey’s extraordinary intervention against Clinton, he was still treated warmly by President Obama and cordially by Loretta Lynch. Comey felt bound to appease the Clinton-haters because they refused to accept any process that failed to yield their preferred outcome.

Notably, the Republican William Barr enthusiastically endorsed Comey’s decision to reopen the case against Clinton, but then — once Comey became a threat to Trump — cited that very decision as grounds to fire him. Barr’s subsequent elevation to attorney general is an ominous development that hangs over the second half of Stewart’s book.

Unfortunately, his account of the Russia investigation is less satisfying. When Comey briefs Trump on the so-called Steele dossier and its litany of supposed ties between Trump and Russia — including the unproven allegation that Trump had watched prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room urinating on a bed where the Obamas once slept — we see the new president give suspiciously unconvincing denials. “Almost to himself, Trump repeated the year ‘2013’ and seemed to be searching his memory,” Stewart recounts. Trump tells Comey he would not need to pay for sex, and links the charges to other women who have accused him of groping them — charges that have high levels of credibility. He insists his well-known fear of germs would preclude him from enjoying such a performance, even though he could easily have done so at a safe distance.

We also see Trump or his agents dangling pardons before Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, the two advisers who had the closest political contacts with Russia and WikiLeaks, leading to both men refusing to cooperate with the investigation. We come to see Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general and supervisor of the Mueller report, as human Jell-O, losing his composure at times to the point of seeming unhinged. Stewart points out that Rosenstein agreed to meet with Trump privately. “Each time, against seemingly long odds, Rosenstein emerged with his job intact,” he notes. “What did he offer Trump in return? What threats, explicit or implied, did Trump bring to bear?”

Stewart also recounts the harsh treatment dispensed to government officials who, as a result of their involvement in the Russia investigation, became Trump’s targets. The Department of Justice publicized an affair between two agents working on the probe. It demoted the Justice Department lawyer Bruce Ohr after he spoke out, and ended the career of the longtime F.B.I. agent Andrew McCabe. All of these things, Stewart writes, “raise disturbing questions about their willingness to stand up to a president and preserve the long tradition of independent law enforcement and the rule of law.”

However, for all the suspicious patterns he reveals, for all the dots he connects, Stewart does not manage to produce a smoking gun that proves misconduct. We never learn the depth of Trump’s involvement with Russia, or whether he or Attorney General Barr applied undue pressure on the department. If these questions have incriminating answers, the people who hold them probably have no incentive to reveal them and possibly never will. What “Deep State” does tell us is that there are ample grounds for suspicion that Trump’s well-documented efforts to obstruct justice succeeded. To what end? That remains a mystery.

*********

In Tribute to Cummings, Obama Hints at Rebuke of Trump

The former president said that Representative Elijah E. Cummings showed that “you’re not a sucker to have integrity.”

Peter Baker

Oct. 25, 2019Updated 3:52 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Former President Barack Obama, who has remained largely silent amid the convulsive impeachment debate now gripping the nation, offered a tribute to a late Democratic congressman on Friday that sounded to some listeners like an implicit rebuke of President Trump.

Speaking at a service for Representative Elijah E. Cummings, who died last week, Mr. Obama never mentioned the president by name but seemed to draw a contrast between his successor and the congressman whom Mr. Trump denigrated last summer.

Mr. Obama said that Mr. Cummings showed that being strong meant being kind and that being honorable was no flaw.

“There’s nothing weak about kindness and compassion,” Mr. Obama told a packed hall at New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore, which Mr. Cummings, a Democrat, represented in the House for the past 25 years. “There’s nothing weak about looking out for others. There’s nothing weak about being honorable. You’re not a sucker to have integrity and to treat others with respect.”

Warming to his topic, Mr. Obama pointed to a sign behind him referring to “the Honorable” Mr. Cummings.

“This is a title that we confer on all kinds of people who get elected to public office,” he said as the largely African-American and Democratic audience responded with knowing applause and laughter. “We’re supposed to introduce them as honorable. But Elijah Cummings was honorable before he was elected to office. There’s a difference. There’s a difference if you were honorable and treated others honorably outside the limelight.”

As chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Mr. Cummings, 68, had become a major thorn in Mr. Trump’s side and was one of the leaders of the drive to impeach the president for abuse of power. Last summer, Mr. Trump lashed out at Mr. Cummings, calling him “racist” and “a brutal bully” who had done “a very poor job” representing a district that he described as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”

Mr. Obama was part of an all-star lineup of speakers and guests at the Friday’s service, including former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

But much of the attention was focused on the 44th president, who has largely avoided weighing in lately on his successor even as Mr. Trump lately has repeatedly accused Mr. Obama of illegally spying on him while in office and blamed the former president for various policy setbacks.

Mr. Obama made no reference to any of that, but did call on his audience to step up as Mr. Cummings did. “People will look back at this moment,” he said, “and ask the question: What did you do?”

*********

Elijah Cummings’s Funeral Draws Presidents and Thousands of Mourners

Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton spoke Friday at the service for the longtime Maryland congressman.

By Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs | Published October 25, 2019 Updated 3:39 PM ET | New York Times | Posted October 25, 2019 |

BALTIMORE — Representative Elijah E. Cummings was firmly rooted in Baltimore, but for decades his voice extended far from his brick rowhouse on the city’s west side. On Friday, the legacy of his tireless advocacy brought powerful leaders from Washington and elsewhere to his city.

Mr. Cummings, a Democrat who rose in prominence in recent years for his unwavering pursuit of President Trump, died at 68 last week in the city he called home, the same one in which he was born and lived all his life.

Two former presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, were among the prominent cast of politicians, mentees and relatives who spoke at his funeral on Friday morning. Others included Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and presidential candidate.

Mr. Obama roused the congregation, extolling Mr. Cummings’s values and saying that the congressman had earned the title, “the honorable.”

“This is a title we confer on all kinds of people who get elected to public office,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re supposed to introduce them as honorable. But Elijah Cummings was honorable before he was elected to office.”

“There’s a difference,” Mr. Obama continued, his voice rising as many in the crowd stood up and clapped. “There’s a difference if you were honorable and treated others honorably — outside the limelight, on the side of a road, in a quiet moment counseling somebody you work with.”

Mr. Cummings’s success validates the concept of the American dream, Mr. Obama said, and his compassion and empathy were a lesson that kindness can be a sign of strength.

“There’s nothing weak about looking out for others,” Mr. Obama said. “There’s nothing weak about being honorable. You’re not a sucker to have integrity and to treat others with respect.”

Earlier in the service, following a psalm read by Ms. Warren and a song from one of Mr. Cummings’s favorite singers, BeBe Winans, Ms. Clinton took the stage and thanked members of Mr. Cummings’s district “for sharing him with our country and the world.”

Ms. Clinton said Mr. Cummings never backed down in the face of abuses of power or from “those who put party ahead of country or partisanship above truth.”

“But he could find common ground with anyone willing to seek it with him,” she continued. “And he liked to remind all of us that you can’t get so caught up in who you are fighting that you forget what you are fighting for.”

Ms. Pelosi asked attendees how many had been mentored by Mr. Cummings, and at least a dozen raised their hands. She recalled that he had sought to mentor as many freshman representatives as he could after Democrats took control of the House in the 2018 election.

“By example, he gave people hope,” she said.

Ms. Pelosi had spoken at another funeral in Baltimore on Wednesday for her own brother, Thomas D’Alesandro III, a former mayor of the city.

Earlier in the morning, thousands of grieving Baltimoreans stood in looping lines as the sun rose outside of New Psalmist Baptist Church, which seats 4,000 people and filled up shortly before 10, with many still outside. It’s the same church where Mr. Cummings sat in the front row most Sundays even after he began using a walker and wheelchair.

Mr. Cummings’s body lay in an open coffin at the front of the church on Friday, his left hand resting on his right as mourners passed by and a choir sang gospel music. An usher stood nearby with a box of tissues in each hand.

Elonna Jones, 21, skipped her classes at the University of Maryland to attend with her mother, Waneta Ross, who nearly teared up as she contemplated Baltimore’s loss.

“He believed in the beauty of everything, especially our city,” Ms. Ross said. “It’s important we’re here to honor a civil rights activist who was still around in my generation.”

Ms. Jones, a volunteer coordinator for a City Council candidate, said Mr. Cummings had motivated her to pursue a role in improving her city.

“As a young, black woman in Baltimore who wants to be in politics, he inspired me,” she said.

Mourning residents stood in black coats, hats and heels and sang Mr. Cummings’s praises as the police corralled the extended lines of people who woke up early to pay their respects. Above all, attendees noted, he always looked out for his city.

“He never forgot who we were,” said Bernadette McDonald, who lives in West Baltimore. “He was a son of Baltimore and a man of the people.”

The big names on the service’s agenda, the television cameras lined up outside and the large crowd belied the way many attendees interacted with the devoted congressman, who lived in the heart of West Baltimore and would simply give a knowing nod to those who recognized him on the street. He carried himself like anyone else when running errands or taking a walk around the block.

“If you didn’t already know him, you wouldn’t know who he was,” Ms. McDonald said.

Mr. Cummings saw his profile rise in recent years as he consistently sparred with Mr. Trump, determinedly pursuing the president, his businesses and his associates as head of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Mr. Cummings became a leading figure in the impeachment inquiry and was said to still be joining strategy discussions with colleagues from his hospital bed.

Rhonda Martin, who works at a local high school, said Mr. Cummings had inspired the next generation of Baltimore’s leaders by speaking to students in schools around the city.

“He brought a message of hope and told students that he did it, and they can do it, too,” Ms. Martin said.

Mr. Cummings, whose parents were former sharecroppers in South Carolina, graduated from Howard University in Washington and earned a law degree at the University of Maryland. He was first elected to Congress in 1996 and never faced a serious challenge over 11 successful re-election campaigns.

On Thursday, Mr. Cummings’s body lay in state in the Capitol, the first black lawmaker to do so, and Republicans and Democrats praised his integrity and his commitment to his constituents.

Over more than two decades in Congress, Mr. Cummings championed working people, environmental reform and civil rights. He served for two years as the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and frequently spoke of his neighborhood while pushing legislation to lower drug prices, promoting labor unions and seeking more funding for affordable housing.

Even in his war of words with the president, the battle made its way to Baltimore when, in July, Mr. Trump called Mr. Cummings’s district a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and appeared to make light of a break-in at Mr. Cummings’s home, during which the congressman scared an intruder away.

The president’s insults still anger Baltimore residents. “See? We’re not all trash and rats,” one congregant said as she sat down in the church on Friday.

Mr. Cummings responded to the president by saying it was his “moral duty” to fight for residents in his district. “Each morning, I wake up,” he wrote, “and I go and fight for my neighbors.”

Jennifer Cummings, one of Mr. Cummings’s two daughters, recalled early morning calls from her father on her birthdays and the ice cream they shared in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Reading from a letter to her father, Ms. Cummings said her father had taught her to “love my blackness” by insisting on buying her dolls with brown skin and telling her to appreciate her lips and nose.

While she was proud of all the titles he held over his life, “perhaps the most important title you held in your 68 years on earth was dad,” she said.

One of Mr. Cummings’s brothers, James Cummings, said that in one of their last conversations, the congressman spoke of his heartbreak over the unsolved killing of James’s 20-year-old son, Christopher Cummings, in Norfolk, Va., in 2011.

The killing “haunted Elijah for the rest of his life,” James said.

Adia Cummings, the congressman’s other daughter, said Mr. Cummings always challenged her and her sister to be better people. And even though he would nudge her about owing him money, he rarely turned down her requests, even recently making sure that she could attend a concert for the rapper Cardi B.

“He didn’t really know who she was, but he went out of his way, even from his sick bed, to make sure I could go see her,” she said.

Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, Mr. Cummings’s wife and the chairwoman of the Maryland Democratic Party, gave a fiery speech that brought multiple rounds of applause and many congregants to their feet more than once. And while she did not cite President Trump by name, she invoked him clearly, saying her husband’s work had become “infinitely more difficult” in the last few months of his life when he “sustained personal attacks” on him and his city. “It hurt him,” Ms. Cummings said.

Looking at Mr. Obama, she recalled that Mr. Cummings had stood with the former president early and proudly. “But you didn’t have any challenges like we have going on now,” she added with a smile, as Mr. Obama nodded and responded with an appreciative chuckle.

Ms. Cummings said she felt as if people were trying to tear Mr. Cummings down, and that the celebrations and outpouring of love this week had assured her that he was sent off with the respect he deserved.

Two days before Mr. Cummings died, his wife said, the staff at the Johns Hopkins Hospital had wheeled him up to the roof to see the sun and look over the city he never left.

“Boy, have I come a long way,” he said, according to Ms. Cummings.

*********

[vietnamesebeauty]

Vẻ đẹp gợi cảm của “thiên thần nội y” ngoại cỡ đầu tiên -

Người đẹp Ali Tate-Cutler là “thiên thần nội y” ngoại cỡ đầu tiên của hãng nội y danh tiếng Victorias Secret.

Cô nhận được nhiều lời khen từ người hâm mộ khi chia sẻ ảnh của mình trên trang cá nhân.

Trong các bức ảnh trên Instagram, Ali Tate-Cutler tạo dáng khoe vẻ đẹp của mình. Cô trông gợi cảm không thua kém những người đẹp mảnh mai vốn luôn được xem như “đặc sản” của Victorias Secret.

Ali Tate-Cutler tạo dáng khoe thân hình mũm mĩm của mình

Ali Tate-Cutler với mẫu nội y mới

Ali Tate-Cutler là người mẫu ngoại cỡ đầu tiên của Victorias Secret khi hãng này muốn đa dạng kiểu dáng, phong cách mẫu mã, kích cỡ nội y của mình nhằm chinh phục nhiều khách hàng.

Cô ký hợp đồng với Victorias Secret từ năm 2019 và trở thành người mẫu ngoại cỡ đầu tiên đứng vào hàng ngũ “thiên thần nội y”.

Cô sau đó tham gia bộ sưu tập Thu Đông 2019, truyền tải thông điệp nữ quyền với từ khóa “loveyourself” (dù có vóc dáng ra sao , hãy yêu cơ thể bạn trong các thiết kế đẹp mắt).

Ali Tate-Cutler trong chiến dịch quảng bá với tư cách “Thiên thần nội y”

Ali Tate-Cutler khi đó rất hạnh phúc vì đã hiện thực hóa ư��c mơ từ thuở niên thiếu của mình.

Cô được đứng cạnh những người mẫu hàng đầu từng rất thần tượng. Người mẫu này nói size 14 là kích cỡ trung bình của phụ nữ ở Mỹ, cô mong thấy size này nhiều hơn trong thời trang cũng như trên truyền thông.

Ali Tate-Cutler sở hữu chiều cao 1,78m, nặng 65kg, bắt đầu sự nghiệp người mẫu vào năm 2011. Cô làm việc với nhiều nhà thiết kế và thương hiệu nổi tiếng như Ralph Lauren , Christian Siriano, Tadashi Shoji, Mango… Ngoài làm mẫu, cô còn là giáo viên yoga.

Trong quá khứ, Ali Tate-Cutler từng phải đối mặt với chứng trầm cảm, lo âu và điều trị bằng phương pháp thiền. Cô dần tự tin khoe vóc dáng của mình, không quá lo ngại khi mình mũm mĩm so với dàn người mẫu mảnh mai kiểu truyền thống lâu nay.

Những bộ nội y được cô đăng tải trên trang cá nhân nhận được nhiều bình luận khen ngợi. Cô trở thành nguồn cảm hứng cho người người hâm mộ để họ yêu bản thân mình hơn, không nhất thiết phải chạy theo chế độ giảm cân khắc nghiệt để rồi mắc phải bệnh biếng ăn hay rối loạn ăn uống.

Ali Tate-Cutler trên bãi biển

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[bigyack-com]

DealBook: A Peek Inside YouTube’s Money Machine

Good morning. Silicon Valley is buzzing over Sheryl Sandberg’s engagement, nearly five years after the death of her husband, Dave Goldberg. (Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.)

Alphabet draws back a curtain on YouTube’s billions

The tech giant surprised Wall Street yesterday when it offered some financial information about YouTube, long a closely guarded secret. But the new information was part of a quarterly report from Alphabet, the parent company, that didn’t meet investor expectations.YouTube collected over $15 billion in revenue last year, which Rob Copeland of the WSJ says was on the “lower end of projections.” It suggests that YouTube took in less than $8 a year from each of its two billion users.• YouTube’s revenue figure is higher than Viacom’s for its 2019 fiscal year, our colleague Kevin Roose points out.• But Alphabet didn’t say how much profit YouTube earned.• And our colleague Shira Ovide notes that YouTube reported “gross” revenue — which includes the money that the service pays out to content creators and is not the whole financial picture.Investors weren’t impressed, and Alphabet shares fell 2.7 percent in after-hours trading. The company’s overall revenue growth was less than expected, while its losses from its “moonshot” projects increased 53 percent.Still, the limited disclosure introduces some transparency to tech giant financials, Ms. Ovide adds. What if Alphabet’s move successfully puts pressure on Microsoft to break out its Azure cloud sales, or on Facebook to disclose Instagram’s revenue?____________________________Today’s DealBook Briefing was written by Andrew Ross Sorkin in New York and Michael J. de la Merced in London.____________________________

We still don’t have an Iowa caucus winner

Blame new reporting results, a faulty app or some other factor, but as of this moment there are still no results from the Iowa Democratic caucuses.The official line: “A spokeswoman for the state party said there was no issue with the integrity of the vote but it was taking longer than anticipated to collect and check the reported data for irregularities,” Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin of the NYT write.One potential culprit is a new app being used to report caucus results. It was created by Shadow, a tech company affiliated with a prominent Democratic nonprofit, Acronym. (Our colleague Sheera Frenkel says poor training on how to use the app, not a hack, appears to be at fault.)What we are watching for:• Whether Bernie Sanders, who has been surging in the polls, will officially become the front-runner for the Democratic Party nomination.• How Democratic business leaders will respond. If Joe Biden underperforms in Iowa, will they flock to, say, Mike Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar?An event to watch: Top Wall Street executives are planning a fund-raiser for Mr. Biden in New York on Feb. 13, with entry at $2,800 a head, according to an invitation we have seen. Organizers include Roger Altman of Evercore; Blair Effron of Centerview Partners; Marc Lasry of Avenue Capital; and Faiza Saeed and Christine Varney of Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

OPEC weighs effects of coronavirus on oil prices

The group is meeting today and tomorrow to figure out a response to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, which has pushed down oil prices, Stanley Reed of the NYT reports.• The epidemic has reduced demand from China and affected other big consumers of oil, like airlines.• OPEC is expected to discuss whether to cut production by up to a million barrels a day, Mr. Reed adds.• It may also push an emergency minister-level meeting to this month, several weeks ahead of schedule.The group is moving because oil prices keep dropping. The price of Brent crude has fallen about 19 percent over the past month to less than $55 a barrel, erasing the effects of a production cut announced in December.But there’s not much OPEC can do. One oil trader estimated that Chinese oil demand over the last two weeks has fallen about 2.5 million barrels a day, or close to 20 percent compared with the previous year. And China has cut the size of its March orders from Saudi Arabia.More: The outbreak is likely to delay China’s ability to meet targets in the recent trade deal with the U.S. And the Chinese authorities’ efforts to halt the disease’s spread have turned neighbor against neighbor.

Goldman’s latest bid for Main Street: Amazon loans

First Goldman Sachs partnered with Apple on a credit card. Now it may work with Amazon to lend to small businesses as it tries to become a more mainstream financial giant, writes Laura Noonan of the FT.• “Goldman has begun building technology to facilitate the offering of loans to small and medium-sized businesses over Amazon’s lending platform,” Ms. Noonan writes, citing unnamed sources.• Goldman has sought to push beyond M.&A. advice and trading into other businesses, like consumer banking, wealth management and lending.• Amazon would benefit, too: It could expand its services for merchants without having to take on additional risk.

Are regulators dashing start-ups’ dreams?

There’s potentially a lot at stake as the Federal Trade Commission sues to block the $1.4 billion sale of the upstart shaving brand Harry’s to Edgewell, the owner of Schick — including the fate of many start-ups.• The F.T.C. argues that the deal would “eliminate one of the most important competitive forces in the shaving industry.”• Over its nine years, Harry’s grew in popularity by selling sleekly styled razors online and in stores, chipping away at the market share of Gillette and Schick.• Harry’s “has forced its rivals to offer lower prices, and more options, to consumers across the country,” said Daniel Francis, the deputy director of the F.T.C.’s Bureau of Competition.Harry’s founders said they were disappointed by the move. They told Michael last year that they had considered going public and remaining independent, but decided that selling to Edgewell was the best way to keep growing.This could spell trouble for other start-ups. Many investors support them in the hope that they will either sell themselves or hold an I.P.O. Not all start-ups can go public, so preventing them from selling to bigger rivals could deter investors from backing them in the first place.

Bernie Ebbers, ex-WorldCom C.E.O., is dead

Mr. Ebbers, who built a telecom giant only to go to prison after its collapse after the dot-com boom and become a symbol of corporate greed, died on Sunday. He was 78.• He turned his small Mississippi company into WorldCom through more than 40 takeovers, including the $37 billion acquisition of MCI, Kit Seelye and Daniel Victor of the NYT write.• But WorldCom collapsed in 2002 — its bankruptcy was the biggest ever in the U.S. at that time — and Mr. Ebbers was later arrested on charges of corporate fraud.• “Former employees testified that Mr. Ebbers had urged them to inflate WorldCom’s financial results to make the company appear more profitable than it was.”• He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and came to be seen as a corporate villain alongside Jeff Skilling of Enron and Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco.• Mr. Ebbers was released from a federal prison in Texas in December after his lawyers and family members said his health was deteriorating.

The speed read

Deals• The financial services company Worldline agreed to buy Ingencio, a big maker of point-of-sale payment terminals, for $8.6 billion. (TechCrunch)• The bankrupt retailer Forever 21 agreed to sell itself to two major landlords and Authentic Brands for $81 million, subject to higher offers. (WSJ)• Asana, the productivity software company co-founded by a founder of Facebook, filed to go public through a direct listing of its shares. (TechCrunch)Politics and policy• The U.S. auto industry wanted more lenient emissions rules. Instead, it got chaos. (WSJ)• Britain plans to ban the sale of new gas- and diesel-powered cars by 2035. (BBC)• Washington is again abuzz with speculation over the identity of the anonymous Trump administration official who wrote an NYT Opinion piece and a book criticizing Mr. Trump. (Politico)Tech• Recent earnings reports show that the tech industry is increasingly divided between a few big giants and everyone else. (NYT)• Makan Delrahim, the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, is said to have recused himself from the department’s competition review of Google because of past work he did for the company. (NYT)• Drew Houston, the C.E.O. of Dropbox and a friend of Mark Zuckerberg’s, has joined Facebook’s board. (Business Insider)• Democrats may be taking shots at the tech industry, but Silicon Valley moguls are still among their biggest donors. (Recode)Best of the rest• Citigroup reportedly suspended a senior bond trader in London over accusations of theft from the office cafeteria. (FT)• The conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said he had advanced lung cancer. (NYT)• The Super Bowl broadcast on Fox drew 102 million viewers, up slightly from last year. (Bloomberg)Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow.We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to business@nytimes.com. Read the full article

[jakejamesjournalism]

the case for a cardi b presidency

9/1

This weeks political landscape has been a busy one, with the testimony of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Democratic debates being held within just seven days of each other. The Mueller testimony generally failed in its hope to be the democratic parties last hope to really sway public opinion on the special counsels report to favor impeachment inquiries.  While he pointed to several issues that were “beyond problematic” and other concrete examples of obstruction of justice, public opinion remained unchanged.  The same could be said about the lackluster debates among twenty presidential hopefuls.  The field was still too wide to create a tension worth sitting on the edge of your seat over but the parties ability to shoot themselves in the foot remains an unfortunate burden that will never not frustrate.  Thankfully, an insightful Elizabeth Warren pointed out this self-inflicted wound.  “We are the democrats” she said proudly “We are not trying to take away health care from anyone, that’s the republicans.”

Senator Warren had a great point, but the meticulous details of a Medicare system overhaul deserves a fleshed out debate.  “Medicare-For-All-Who-Want-It” Mayor Pete cleverly puts it while other members hash out fine line details about the relationship between the public and private sectors role in the health care of the American people.  It’s a topic well-worth discussing, but it creates one of these disassociating black mirror-esque moments that are often symptomatic in the Trump presidency.  We are debating scrupulous health care points with vigor and precise detail in a country ran by a leader who doesn’t even read legislation, never mind construct it.  Even so the 2020 race will be close.  Sometimes it hurts your head.  

Donald J. Trump, despite all his incompetence, is undeniably a ruthless man.  A true alpha male who frequently resorts to race baiting bully tactics to take as much attention away from the fact he is not up to the task of the job intellectually.  Making the race as apolitical as possible gives him the playing field he’s most familiar with. When the conversation is about nothing Trump is at his best.  He wants to talk about the size of his penis, not child care.  Mastering the political tactics of hyperbole and branding have helped him keep the shtick going.  Remember we are talking about a man who lost more money for 11 straight years than anyone in America and got elected president on his business acumen.  If he’s anything, he’s in the running for the greatest con artist in human history.

For the record I essentially disagree with every political stance the president has taken.  But I am far from the politically correct liberal who tries to pretend like he’s not even there to better their morning meditation class.  I myself have become fascinated with Trump and his brazen unhinged Twitter behavior that makes me simultaneously laugh and cry. He talks so directly to his base on Twitter they are brainwashed into thinking that Donald is just another friend with similar nationalist ideas.  His hilariously ignorant affability is often times the perk of my day.  It’s a coping mechanism of mine.  However, this week the tweets took a sinister turn. Racially motivated attacks were made against four minority women of congress.  These unconstitutional attacks were widely condemned by everyone but Republican lawmakers.  His devoted fan base threw fuel on the fire by chanting “Send them back!” loud and cohesively at the President’s very next rally.  Trump stood there with his head held high basking in the bigotry.  He ended the week with an attack on the city of Baltimore alluding that the 7th district is a place in which no human being would want to live.  A city in his America.

I’m from a city in his America.  The same one he is from actually.  The same one Cardi B and AOC are from.  (Which would make sending AOC back to where she came from hard to explain.)  I try to stay informed- AOC clearly does her part- but some of the most poignant public support for democratic policies has been from rap superstar Cardi B, who once again released a statement of public support in regards to the four congresswomen just weeks after doing the same from Rep. Omar.  It’s no secret Cardi B demands to be heard-but it’s not just her provocative bars and charismatic social media presence that’s doing the most good-it’s her actions.  

Recently the Bronx native had a chance to interview liberal icon and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. The wide-ranging interview discussed topics of student loan debt cancellation, climate change, and social justice reform.  Definitely not the most status quo duo in politics but the two of them together make for a good blend of entertainment and information that reaches a broad coalition of Americans.  Their partnership is part of an outreach program to invigorate young voters.  In a statement about the initiative Cardi said “Together, let’s build a movement of young people to transform this country.”

When it comes to that rhetoric, Cardi B more than backs it up.  As early as 2016 Cardi openly endorsed Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Primary via Instagram, in 2017 she went on cogent stream of conscious asking the government poignant questions about where the hell our tax dollars go “I WANT RECEIPTS! I WANT RECEIPTS!” I Believe was the quote.  Cardi also referred to FDR as the real MAGA president for his role in implementing social security, a post endorsed by Bernie himself.  She criticized Trump on his government shutdown in January 2019 and has remained loyal to her support for Bernie.

Politics isn’t new to her and it sure isn’t a hobby, this is a passion of hers and her affinity with Senator Sanders is far from a novelty.  Cardi B has known what’s been going on for quite some time now and telling you how she feels is not something she shies away from, its precisely why we love her. Her power lies in her shameless ability to tell the unsolicited truth and nothing but the truth in the bluntest way possible.  In comparison this ranks just about evenly with the lack of veracity behind so many of the Presidents statements.  The honesty of Cardi B may just be his kryptonite.

Cardi B has always been a musical outlet for the oppressed... hell an outlet for everybody- to let go of their current troubles put up their middle fingers and say fuck you to all their problems. Her music has acted as a subtle but poignant antithesis for the current political landscape.  Her debut album Invasion of Privacy, especially the track Bodak Yellow, united people in various communities all across this country.  ‘I Like It’ had a massive international impact.  In modern day rap culture, you need something other than rapping ability to make it to ‘mogul status.’  Staying relevant in rap music is hard and public relations ingenuity is now required.  It has that in common with politics-I think Cardi has discovered a lane outside the club in which she can and will do great things.  Her story is one of self-belief and perseverance.  One that advertises the need to do what we can to advocate for the disenfranchised so they can receive a platform.  As democrats, we can work and will continue to fight for that platform, but for now…Listen to Cardi B- go get it yourself. 

Cardi B Goes Off on Trump Over the Border Wall Government Shutdown...

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

In weird career move, Sean Spicer is now talking about the Oscars on 'ExtraTV'

Like an unexpected stiff gust of wind in the middle of this long, dark winter, Sean Spicer has swept back in to our lives once more. 

The former Press Secretary for the Trump Administration is back in the public eye as a "special correspondent" for, of all things, the syndicated ExtraTV entertainment news show. 

In a new video posted by ExtraTV on Twitter, a hiking-vested Spicer is seen joshing around with current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his wife Susan about the Oscars.  

Tonight on #ExtraTV: From White House press secretary to special D.C. correspondent! @seanspicer is with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo & his wife Susan, talking music, #Oscars predictions & more! pic.twitter.com/3jLi7itAzc

— ExtraTV (@extratv) February 20, 2019

Why? We're not exactly sure but it seems to be to put a soft touch on some of the role players that are part of a notoriously embattled administration, a decision that, well, still doesn't make a lot of sense. 

SEE ALSO: Sean Spicer apparently stole a mini-fridge from his junior staffers

In the above clip, Spicer discovered that Pompeo likes AC/DC and Toby Keith and he really liked Bohemian Rhapsody! In other words, no deep state secrets about summits with North Korea are unveiled here. It's a short segment teasing a longer feature set to air on ExtraTV's Wednesday night episode.

It's the kind of lighter, puffier content aunts across America will devour. And, according to Spicer, that's the point. In a phone call with Mashable, Spicer said, "it's an opportunity to shed light on people you see only on the news." 

"It's light, fun, it's not a news segment," he continued. "The goal is to make it a bipartisan thing."

While bipartisanship may be the eventual goal, Spicer's segments are, as I noted earlier, all focused on current members of the Trump administration. And if Spicer and Pompeo joking about the Oscars seems a bit weird, just wait. After Wednesday night's visit with the Pompeos, two more segments with Spicer will air: a visit with Trump aide Kellyanne Conway and her kids airs and a chat with current Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her husband Bryan.

As for if he'll do more of this in the future, Spicer told me it's a "one off," adding, "I've always had the opportunity to do things I've enjoyed. It's a cool idea."

As for why ExtraTV decided to hone in on Spicer, who has been, to put it gently, something of a lightning rod of controversy, that's more of a mystery and I've reached out to ExtraTV reps for more on that decision. 

The idea, not surprisingly, isn't exactly going over well on some corners of Twitter, of course, where the judgement is a bit harsher and confusion reigns. . 

his pick of "Bohemian Rhapsody" is not even in the top 100 worst things about this

— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) February 20, 2019

pic.twitter.com/ygXDMWZ1b2

— Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) February 20, 2019

pic.twitter.com/nTImkC9cUo

— Kyle Walsh (@KyleWalsh109) February 20, 2019

Hey, remember when Sean Spicer lied to the press about crowd sizes on the first day on the job? But hey now he is a correspondent for @ExtraTV interviewing the Secretary of State for his former boss so it's all good.https://t.co/sIMWavnubh

— Eric Michael Garcia (@EricMGarcia) February 20, 2019

Whatever this winds up being, it's definitely a new addition to the ongoing list of bizarre moments Spicer's had in the public eye, from all those wild press conferences to the incident with the fridge. 

And the entire thing feels intentionally built to spark controversy by normalizing controversial figures who represent a divisive administration because, hey, for ExtraTV, any press is good press, right?

Even in soft focus and sweaters, it'll be nearly impossible for all but Trump's most ardent supporters to separate the Spicer they see on TV from the one that declared Trump's inauguration was the most heavily attended in history, to forget about Conway's Orwellian "alternative facts" line, or to dismiss Sanders's withering credibility.

Good luck, Sean. Just steer clear of Beyoncé. 

UPDATE: Feb. 20, 2019, 5:09 p.m. EST Updated to include quotes from Sean Spicer.

WATCH: Bizarre moments from Sean Spicer's short stint at the White House