#the vague Thing here is that these little clips all loop perfectly it's all about trimming and giffing them right

[jackfromthefairytale]

⮡  C:\ ⮡  Projects\ ⮡  CJ[OST]\ ⮡  02 - V.A.N [POPPY].mp4

[1kook]

attachment: 1 image

— jjk x (f) reader

summary; But for Jungkook to initiate some sexting, nevertheless sexting at 1pm on a Saturday, when you were at work and you were almost positive he was supposed to be on stream right now? Unheard of, you had to mark this down somewhere. warnings; sexting, dick pics, dirty talk?, phone sex, vivid depictions of jungkook being just so sexy bc its true, rating; mature (18+) misc; mentions of youtuber kook 🥰, he’s just horny, stupid selfie trends (see here), he’s a little whiny but so hot v.v  wc; 4.6k 

notes; I've had this in my drafts since april 😐 n then i was like maybe we should actually finish this so i started n then last night i hit another follower milestone!!! so then i rlly forced myself to finish this bc i was so 🥺🖤👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 anyway enjoy lmk what u think its not proofread bc uhhhhh yeah 🤩

You’re at work when it happens.

It’s sometime between your usual listless thoughts of what to write for your weekly reflection papers for some course, and your trip to your store’s pharmacy to bother a coworker. Your phone vibrates in the pocket of your work apron. You’re normally pretty good at ignoring the sound, most of the times it’s just a classmate asking for help on homework or Jimin lamenting his love life, so you’ve grown used to ignoring the tiny vibrations, stocking a quarter shelf of different cooking oils before something in your brain tells you to check your phone.

You already know it’s not something grave, but that thought alone means nothing at the sight of the tiny jungkook♡ that appears at the very top of the list of notifications. Your boyfriend’s texts tended to be wildcards, never following a certain routine or alluding to any specifics. He could send you a long paragraph on how much he misses the scent of that one shampoo, the one you’d briefly run through last year because your usual brand was out of stock, with a ten point explanation on why you should switch back to it. Or two word, caveman sentences that drove you crazy because you never understood what exactly he wanted when he’d send those nondescript “munchies dip” texts.

You unlock your phone, clicking to the messenger app instead of directly on the notification. Hopefully the preview will give some warning on whether you should invest in this conversation or not. You hated the read receipts on messages, choosing to ghost conversations as you pleased, but Jungkook had wiggled his way into your phone one afternoon and specifically turned them on for his chat with you, and you’d never turned them off since. So he knows if you choose to ignore Attachment: 1 Image at 1:43pm exactly, and he'll pester you about it until you respond.

You contemplate it all for twenty seconds. It could be a variety of things, you guess, but the only way to find out is to actually see with your own eyes what he’s up to this time. He knows better than to distract you at work, is usually really good at waiting until your shift is over to spam you with messages. For him to send you something now, only a few hours into your shift, is uncharacteristic of him.

But you glance down the aisle anyway, taking note of some elderly woman you’d helped a few minutes prior and another teenager aimlessly walking around, probably looking for the snack aisle. You inhale and press down on your chat with Jungkook.

It takes you a moment to make out exactly what the image is, twisting and turning your phone around as you fight to see it without raising the brightness. It’s only when your eyes finally adjust to the dark screen, the faint beeping of the check-out registers fading into the distance, that you realize it’s a shot of the front of his sweatpants.

“Hm?” you murmur, getting brave enough to pinch the image between two fingers, zooming in until you’re able to decipher a multitude of details. For one, there’s a Flaming Hot Cheeto stain on the hem of his sweatpants, the same one you’d accidentally put on there a few weeks back and haven’t been able to wash out since. Then there’s that huge palm of his, tattoos and all, rested carefully against his thigh. It’s veiny and thick in all the right places, bringing all the attention to his knuckles, which you guess is what he was going for when you consider the centerpiece of the image—his hardened dick straining against the grey material.

There’s no text attached to the message, no snapchat font slapped over the image, so you wonder what exactly he wanted you to do with this information mid-shift. Well, realistically, you know exactly what he wants, but that doesn’t mean you won’t clown him before getting there. After all, Jungkook was seldom the naughty texter; sexting annoyed him, he would whine, because he would do all that and not even get to feel the true pleasure of sex, of being inside you. You’ve dabbled in it here and there, but it never went as perfectly as it did in pornos. He’d drop his phone and forget it, or you would straight up ignore the damn device as you went all in on yourself.

But for Jungkook to initiate some sexting, nevertheless sexting at 1pm on a Saturday, when you were at work and you were almost positive he was supposed to be on stream right now? Unheard of, you had to mark this down somewhere.

you what’s this about?

You decide to play it safe, because as exciting as the image of Jungkook at his computer chair, cock hard and angry at the thought of you, fluffy hair ruffled in that way you adored, jaw twitching and tightening as he touched himself, moaned deep and rough and just how you liked and—

As nice as that image was, for all you knew this vague message was Jungkook sending you a picture from a week ago to purposefully fuck with you at work.

jungkook♡ what time u get off? jungkook♡ miss you bad baby

Your stomach flips, and it takes everything in you to not squeal and bounce between the shelves like a toddler on a sugar rush. Here was your boyfriend, the cutest, sweetest boy, sending you dirty pictures of himself and telling you how much he needed you. Yes, YOU, not some random on the street, or someone else in a club, Jungkook needed pleasure and that pleasure could only come from you.

You glance back down the aisle again, checking your surroundings for the second time that day. You’ve been standing here, stock cart empty for a little over five minutes now, so it’s probably best to change location lest your manager come barking down your neck. You send one quick text before heading off for stock again.

you 4pm :(

Your phone dings again just as you’re leaving the stockroom, but you decide to check it once you get to the hygiene aisle you need to work on next. Still, the prospect of Jungkook having texted you has you walking with a skip in your step, one your coworker teases you about when you pass by her.

jungkook♡ fuck jungkook♡ tell me what panties youre wearing jungkook♡ please ?

You bite your lip, stopping yourself from smiling at the tone you’d picked up from his message. There was no doubt he’d been riled up for a while now, and you wonder if he sat through his usual Saturday morning streams with his cock hard, pushed against the edge of his desk like you knew he did when such things happened. The thought has you nearly fumbling with a bottle of aloe vera.

you seamless black thong you the one you bought me at the last vs sale

Briefly, you wonder if you should have lied and told him you were wearing that red lace set he’d given you last Valentine’s Day, the one he’d bought with his first big YouTube check. But the beauty of being in a relationship with someone like Jungkook is that you could have told him you were wearing grandma undies and he’d still think you were the most beautiful person to grace the planet.

jungkook♡ mm jungkook♡ tiny ones u ruined last time?

You set your phone down, speed stock a row of sunscreen like you’re on some shelf stocking national competition, before daring to text Jungkook again. Your cheeks are still warm, and your hand tightens dangerously around a bottle of shaving cream.

Before you can formulate some response, he’s sending another one in.

jungkook♡ u soaked those jungkook♡ came fast that day jungkook♡ want u so bad

Your cheeks burn, a little embarrassed that he remembers such details. As with all Victoria’s Secret panties, they were, like Jungkook said, extremely thin. You pause, shift your stance just barely, but you’re definitely wet. Not terribly so, but with this fabric, you’d start to notice it sooner than with others.

you mm you makin me wet bunny

It’s not a complete lie, but knowing Jungkook this is exactly what he needs to hear to get that competitive streak going. You shake your head to clear your thoughts, stocking another section of men’s shaving cream. It takes longer for him to message you back, and you wonder if he got off fine on his own. If it’s over now, at least he provided you with some distraction midway into your shift.

When he texts you again, you’ve almost completely convinced yourself he’s finished, so the Attachment: 1 Video that appears on your lock screen throws you for a loop.

It’s a short clip, no longer than ten seconds, but it has you scrambling to lower the volume on your device as some unsuspecting mother of two wanders past. You flash her your practiced smile, the same one you give all the store’s customers. Not like your boyfriend is jacking it off on your phone, shallow pants filtering out from the speakers.

You turn your phone over carefully after she leaves, try to at least pretend you’re still doing your job as you play the video again.

Sweats are gone, but boxers remain. Legs deliciously exposed, thick thighs with muscles that ripple when he moves. Shirt pulled up just slightly to showcase that broad expanse of tummy, cute belly button and defined abs that tighten with each glide of his palm over the outline of his cock. Your mouth fills with drool at the sight. He was so hot.

Your brain hasn’t even processed it yet, all your energy directed towards your clenched pussy, when he shoots another text.

jungkook♡ im so fckin hard jungkook♡ wanna kiss yuo every where baby jungkook♡ come ove r soon ??

Shutting your eyes and counting to ten doesn’t help ward off the sudden wave of horniness that consumes you, but it does remind you of the job you’re supposed to be doing now. You shake your head, as if the image of Jungkook’s dick throbbing beneath his boxers, low voice in your ear, will magically disappear. It doesn’t, and it plagues you even more when you begin stocking a section of sunscreen, numbly instructing yourself on what to do next. Shaving cream, sunscreen, lotion next, you repeat.

It doesn’t help.

Two minutes later and you’re scrambling for the phone you’d hastily tucked into your apron pocket, tapping your passcode in until your messages with Jungkook are pulled up again.

you after work you promise

Your head is absolutely spinning, the coil in your stomach too tight for you to try and be a functioning member of society. Something in you says to sneak off to the bathroom and call him, but your boss is a little bit of a prick when he wants to be, thinks you take too many bathroom breaks as is.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. A curt call of your name has you whirling to face your shelves again, phone tightly pressed against your ribs like maybe it’ll melt into your skin and he won’t see it. At the same time, your sudden fright has you scrambling to turn it off, fingers sloppily pressing against the buttons, hitting the volume like seven times before you eventually feel the familiar click that signals it’s off.

Your boss disappears shortly after, and with his sudden appearance having made every hair on your body stand, you find yourself now slumping against your stock cart. Jesus, that man was a handful to deal with.

The paranoia sticks for a little bit, has you stocking shelf after shelf like a robot until you finish the entire row of hygiene products, back stiff from bending over so much. It’s only when you return to the stockroom ten minutes later that you dare take your phone out again.

A pleasant surprise awaits.

It would appear that during your haste to hide your phone from your boss— Jungkook’s scandalous messages and all —your frantic hands had done something else. A fuzzy picture on your end, a blurry display of lotion bottles you had stacked just before your boss’s impromptu appearance, with no words to accompany them. Normally Jungkook would have ignored that; you frequently sent accidental messages like this, butt texted him, he says.

But there’s something about Jungkook’s horny brain that makes him do stupid things, makes him blow up your phone with a series of question marks, call you four times, whine and fuss in your message thread, and eventually, send you probably the oddest image to date.

jungkook♡ ??? jungkook♡ ????what is that jungkook♡ baby please jungkook♡ I don’t get it ??

jungkook♡ Missed Call (4)

jungkook♡ baby jungkook♡ what does it mean jungkook♡ please ur drivign me insane jungkook♡ jsut wanna hear yuor voice jungkook♡ fuck please just

And then, there’s another one of those cursed Attachment: 1 Image messages.

You shouldn’t be as surprised as you are. You’ve been dating Jungkook for a few months now, know he had that sort of unique personality most college dropouts turned YouTubers do. But every now and then the absurdity of his actions makes you question him still, makes you wonder what exactly goes on in that pretty head of his to warrant such ideas, makes him balance a bottle of body lotion on the thick outline of his cock like this.

Unlike the first few images, this one was taken in front of a mirror. The blinding fluorescent light in his bathroom paints him in a stark color, has every inch of his pretty face on display for you. Rosy cheeks, dewy skin. Perfectly swollen cock straining beneath his grey boxers, curved up against his hip. Shirt pulled up, finally freeing that expanse of muscles on his abdomen, cute little belly button on display once again. The red material is pulled up to his mouth, pearly white teeth biting down on the fabric, and he’s got this flushed expression on his face.

But the real star of the show isn’t his chiseled abdomen or sexy expression, but the sheer hardness of his dick that lets him balance a bottle of body lotion over it, like a fuckin’ shelf or something. He’s so hard, dick so full beneath his boxers. So big too, the little boxers pulled taught around said engorged cock and thick thighs.

Your brain says to laugh, to tease him for being such a clown even when he’s horny as hell. He won’t take it to heart, will probably laugh along with you and you’ll add it to your still growing list of funny memories.

But your caveman libido says call him, so that’s what you do, ducking down behind a new shipment pallet with a squeak as the phone rings. It only lasts four seconds before he picks up, voice breathy and low, but it sounds so loud in the silence of the stockroom.

He doesn’t even let you get a greeting in. “You like my picture, baby?” he husks. It sounds like he’s right there, right beside you, speaking into your ear. Your pussy throbs at the way he sounds. Paired with the picture from before, it has your body tingling all over.

“What the fuck is that?” you hiss, trying to not let the sudden overflow of arousal leak into your words. Jungkook chuckles.

“What?” he huffs. There’s the brief sound of shuffling, the scratchy noise of his phone presumably being pressed against his shoulder. “I’m so hard, baby,” he sighs before you can pretend to reprimand him any further. “Fuck— you, can you just talk to me?” he groans, and the disgusting sound of him spitting into his palm fills your ear.

Your face feels warm, eyes nervously peering across the stockroom like your boss will suddenly appear now of all times to rip you from this important phone call. The anxiety and arousal mix weirdly, have your leg bouncing but every new movement sends a shock up your aching cunt to your chest, and then out to the tips of your fingers.

“You shouldn’t be doing that when I’m at work,” you murmur hurriedly, moving to nervously bite at your finger. Jungkook moans softly.

“Uh huh,” he says.

The air conditioning turns on and you nearly jump out of your own skin. “Kook,” you stress, frazzled by your own burning arousal and the fear of being caught. Like you said. Weird mix. “I— not when I can’t respond.”

He shudders on the line. “You’re responding now,” he points out. You hate when he’s right. Before you can defend yourself, define what a proper response is in this scenario, he’s beating you to the punch. “Baby,” he whimpers, voice so airy yet low, makes your eyes roll into the back of your head, back unconsciously arching. “Couldn’t stop— fuck.”

Your mouth feels dry, all and any form of lecturing fading from your thoughts as you become consumed in Jungkook’s little whines and whimpers. He talks smoothly, a modern day Casanova, and it’s certainly because of that cult-like harem he’s gathered on YouTube. Teenage girls who kiss his ass, tell him he’s cute and dreamy. Make his ego so big.

But then he gets horny and can barely contain that lisp you tease him about, shivers and melts when you put his cock in your mouth. “Couldn't what, bunny?” you mumble, voice drawn tight because now you were really horny, and it was all his fault.

The nickname makes him mewl prettily, your speaker suddenly going scratchy as he fumbles with his phone. “C- Couldn't stop thinking about you— your mouth,” he admits, and now you’re certain he’d sat through that Saturday morning stream like this. “T- Tits,” he adds, lisp slipping through. “Fuck.”

You bite your lip, eyes fluttering shut as you remind yourself now was not the time or place to get yourself off. But, well. That didn’t mean you couldn’t get him off. “Sat through your stream like this?” you murmur, circling your kneecap with a trembling finger as if it’ll ward away the raging lust in your abdomen. Jungkook confirms with a breathy moan. “Had all your little fans wondering why you ended so early.”

He groans. “No,” he chokes, voice hot from how much it wavers. “They— I lied,” he confesses out of nowhere, “s- said I had a doctor’s appointment.”

You muffle a giggle into your palm. “Naughty,” you tease. “Too hard to do your job.”

“Just,” he cuts off, voice feathery. He sounds so close and you haven’t even said anything of substantial value yet. “Tell me,” he says quietly, “what to— mmh, what to do.”

A smirk consumes your features. You try to hide it, but there’s no one here anyway so you’re left grinning at an unpacked box of dental floss like a madwoman. “Why?” you inquire playfully, bask in the sad little whimper he responds with. “Shouldn’t you know how to make yourself cum?”

Another groan of frustration, desperation seeping into his tone when he speaks again. “Baby, please,” he begs, and it feels good. Feels nice to have this big YouTuber begging for you like this, whimpering your name like his doesn’t appear on the top 25 most viewed. “Like when you— ah — when you tell me… what to do.”

Your body feels hot, thighs pressing together with each whimper that falls from his lips. “Okay,” you concede, and he audibly moans in relief. “Tip first,” you instruct softly, eyes defocusing as your brain slowly starts to manifest the image of Jungkook spread out on his bed. Thick thighs, grey boxers pulled taught around them, fat cock between his pretty hands, inked knuckles squeezing around his member. You swallow. You can tell exactly when Jungkook does as you say because another muffled moan fills the speaker. “One finger,” you remind him quickly, head spinning from the mere memory of his dick. “Run it… run it over the slit, bunny.”

“Nngh—“ Jungkook sputters. You can only imagine the face he’s making now, the bottom lip he’s bitten raw by now. He does it a lot; it’s a nervous habit. But as sexy as it looks when you’re in bed, you know he has sensitive lips because of it, bleeds easily if he’s too harsh. You have half the mind to remind him about it now, but then he’s hurriedly gasping out for more. “And, and then? Wha— what then, baby?”

He sounds so sweet, melodic voice dripping with honey. “Touch your balls,” you say a little breathlessly. “Don’t squeeze,” you add, “just roll your palm over them.” Your palm squeezes against your thigh, as if it’s remembering the feel of his body, the soft skin between his thighs when you’re down there. He gets so jittery, thick thighs nearly crushing you if you drag him along too much. “O- Other hand on your cock,” you stumble, thighs squeezed together. “Stroke yourself just like I do, bunny.”

Jungkook complies. “Just like you?” he mumbles, suddenly sounds farther away. As if he’s dropped his phone off to the side. “Fffuck,” he grunts, “m- mouth is so pretty.”

“Hm?” you inquire, so consumed with tampering down your growing arousal for a second that you miss his sentence.

Jungkook’s breath stutters, and for a moment you’re met with the wet squelch of his cock in his hand. And then, “pretty mouth… make me— make me wanna see you cry.”

You bite your lip. “Why,” you say tentatively, finally caving in with a hand fluttering over the front seam of your jeans. Not a question, more of a gentle nudge for him to spill his thoughts.

“Be- Because,” he cries, fucking into his hand. He sounds closer and closer. You have to wonder just how long he had been riled up. It’s been a while since his first message, he was probably desperate by now. “Y- You’re so nice,” he cries, and the sentiment, though oddly out of place, makes your heart squeeze with adoration for the boy on the line. “Wanna be,” he groans, “wanna be so fucking mean to you, baby.”

The sudden change of tone makes you choke on a moan, hand pressing against your mound like it’ll somehow penetrate the thick material of your jeans and give you the sensations you crave. As it stands, it’s a muted feeling you get instead. When your hands fail, his voice compensates. “Fffuck, don’t you— don’t you think about it too?”

Admittedly, no.

Jungkook had always been a gentleman in bed. Always cared for your needs before his own, went out of his way to make you feel pampered and adored during your most vulnerable moments. Contrary to what his online persona might say, he was a good boy. Sweetest boy you knew, touched you like you were made of glass.

So to suddenly learn of this dream— fantasy? kink? —of his that you would certainly enjoy equally as much, well. It made you whimper into your palm, eyes worriedly flickering toward the stockroom’s entrance.

“Why?” you whisper, feeling like a broken doll repeating the same phrase over and over again. You’re suddenly aware of how hot everything was. Your polo felt sticky against your spine, apron too tight, jeans too stuffy. How long had you been hiding in here for? You don’t even know. Hopefully your absence on the floor had gone unnoticed.

Jungkook pants into the line; everything sounds so sticky and wet on his end, hand undoubtedly working away at his cock. “Shit,” he curses, doesn’t really answer your question until you prod a second time. “I- I like it,” he stammers. “When you… fuck, when you look small.” He elaborates before you can even ask, breath heavy and drawn out. He was so close. “When your mouth… when it hurts,” he says, thoughts a scrambled mess. “Like when you— when you cry because my cock is— it’s too big for you.”

A blatant ego boost you’ll ignore for now. Not like you can focus on too many things right now anyway. “Your cock is big, bunny,” you agree softly instead. Your legs feel cramped from crouching so long, so you push yourself to your feet. Except then you’re made aware of how fucking wet you are, panties soaked from the phone call with your boyfriend. You shift and they stick to your folds, make you release a shaky exhale that Jungkook doesn’t miss.

“I— you’re wet,” he says boldly, and this time your meek confirmation isn’t a lie. Jungkook grunts. “Fuck, baby, I—“ cut off by his own whiny cry, probably bucking into his hand like a madman by now. “Wanna, wanna kiss you everywhere,” he says, a call back to his earlier message. Your legs feel like jello. You want him to kiss you everywhere too— lips, tits, cunt that is dripping for him now.

“I- I’ll be over soon,” you stammer, feeling like you’ll pass out if he carries on any further. He sounds so good on the line, soft pants, rough growls. You can’t possibly listen anymore, not when you’re so wet and horny in the middle of your shift. “Just,” you pause, can’t get the image of his pretty cock out of your mind. Every blink makes it more vivid, reminds you of the vein on the underside, the exact shade of the tip.

“What?” Jungkook hisses, voice higher than usual, parts of it lost under the rapid movements of his hand. “Tell me, baby, tell me what to do,” he begs hoarsely, “I’ll do it.” Sounds so desperate and needy, two seconds away from busting all over his hand.

You have to lean against the wall of the stockroom to ground yourself, remind yourself you’re not in the same situation as Jungkook and can’t cum in your pants like a teenager. “J- Just cum,” you choke, eyes fluttering shut.

He must’ve been waiting for that command, because the second the words leave your throat he’s filling the line with breathy groans and cries as he comes all over himself, probably ruins his t-shirt. The sounds have your hips unconsciously bucking forward into nothingness, the frustration of not being able to cum with him manifesting in the form of a tiny little sob. Luckily, he doesn’t catch it.

When it’s all said and done, he’s left panting into the receiver, flooding your speaker with breathy sighs that only make you more and more aroused.

“You’re terrible,” you frown, cheeks flushed, body tingling. You flip your wrist over and check the time; it’s been about sixteen minutes since you disappeared from outside. Sixteen minutes of listening to Jungkook touch himself and moan and whine and whimper. Tease you with new possibilities you had never considered before. And now he’s satisfied and you’re not.

Jungkook chuckles, low and tired. The sound shoots straight to your cunt. “Come over after you shift,” he says, as if you’re not planning to fake a severe case of the flu right now in order to get off early and run to his bed. You only had a little less than two hours of your shift left anyway. Not like they paid you well to begin with. Jungkook shifts, releases one of those saccharine groans as he probably snuggles into his bed, all sweaty and worn out. “Want you to fuck my face, baby.”

You frown, counting to ten to calm yourself down. Another few minutes of listless conversation, and you hang up. Your body feels featherlight, a little woozy as you make your way back out into the floor.

Nothing has changed. Customers pour in and out, your boss scolds you for a display you didn’t do, and life inside the store drags on. No one knows that you’re soaking your panties to hell and back, Jungkook’s soothing moans in your ear. Life goes on.

you shift ends in 20

jungkook♡ sweet jungkook♡ got your seat ready jungkook♡ Attachment: 1 Image

Copyright © 2020, 1kook on tumblr. absolutely NO reposts allowed.

[welllpthisishappening]

It all kind of happens in slow motion.

One second, Emma hears the crack of the bat and the requisite roar of the crowd, and the next her eyes have widened to a size most scientists would likely advise against. Because, standing at home plate, that same home plate multiple baseball players are sprinting toward, is her kid. More or less waiting to be run over. That is, of course, until Killian Jones.

———

Word Count: 4.1K Rating: Flufffy fluff fluff of the fluffiest variety AN: Writing has been something of a legitimate challenge for me in the last few weeks, but earlier this week @ohmightydevviepuu sent a link to this tweet, tagged me, and said what I basically took as an unspoken prompt. Like, you’re going to send me video of a bat boy getting scooped up at home by a player in the middle of the game and then think I won’t write about it? Not possible. Even with the aforementioned writing challenges. Nothing stands a chance against my love of baseball. Here’s hoping the Yankees turn it around in the second half. Neither Aaron Judge or I deserve the season we’ve had so far.

———

Biologically speaking, Emma Swan is perfectly aware that the current positioning of her heart is more or less impossible. 

Stuck somewhere between the back of her throat and the pit of her stomach, it makes her all too aware of the now-empty chasm in her chest, stretching out toward her arms and threatening the structural integrity of her lungs, neither of which appear all that intent on working properly. Oxygen is a luxury not currently afforded to her capillaries. Instead, nerves mix with anxiety and the telltale flush of adrenaline that probably also makes her look relatively crazy because her pupils are definitely dilated and she does not know nearly enough about science to be making any of these claims. 

Whatever, really. 

It feels like that ooze from that movie. FernGully, Emma thinks. With the fairies. She thinks they were fairies. She’s not entirely certain they were fairies. 

And the ooze was definitely oil, obviously. There was a message involved in that movie. Not one that she appreciated when she was seven and Tim Curry’s animated-oil voice sort of freaked her out. But, like, she gets it now. The environment, and everything. With or without fairies. With Robin Williams, though. 

She’s positive about that, at least. 

Robin Williams was definitely in that movie. 

Less positive about the ability of her heart to actually split itself in half, as it seems wont to do at the moment. So, as to make it easier when it inevitably soars out of her mouth and falls onto the scuffed-up clubhouse floor beneath her feet. Naturally, this will happen simultaneously. For maximum effect. 

Much like the fireworks currently exploding over the left-field bleachers. 

She’s not sure if fireworks do explode, actually. That seems dangerous. Likely to lead to injuries and sounds that don’t resemble the  oohs and ahhs a ballpark generally inspires. Explode probably isn’t the right word. Maybe something more like…detonate. 

No, that’s worse. Way worse. She’s got to learn more words. Find a thesaurus or a dictionary or—a fireworks expert would be ideal, honestly.

Someone who could give her a detailed description of the inner-workings of a Yankee Stadium pyrotechnics display on a Tuesday in July, enough words that Emma’s mind would still for a few moments, allowing her to catch her breath and reestablish a consistent heart rate, and both of those problems could also likely be solved by sitting down, but the chair to her left looks a little wobbly, and her legs appear to have minds of their own because science is rather quickly becoming a lie and—

“Is he alright?” She spins. Nearly falls over. Her knees are also awfully wobbly, that’s why. 

Despite all of that, and the overall circumference of her pupils, the voice doesn’t retreat. Doesn’t even flinch. Shows absolutely no signs of imminent stumbling. And that’s probably because the voice is a man, one who is in possession of world-class instinctual reactions, and his hair is still damp from his post-game shower and it absolutely makes her something of an atrocious mother to acknowledge that last thing as quickly as she does. 

His shirt sleeves are noticeably sticking to his biceps, so that helps too. 

Opening her mouth, Emma is going to say words that are both vaguely intelligent and passably accurate, absolving this Major League Baseball player of any of the guilt he so obviously feels. Which is just patently stupid, really. None of this was his fault. None of it was anyone’s fault, really. 

Except maybe the idiot who left his bat at that particular angle across home plate, but Emma’s an adrenaline expert these days and walk-offs are understandably exciting. First walk-offs more so. 

She’s happy for Scarlet, really. 

They won the game. 

Everything is fine. Great, even. She nearly jumps twenty-six feet in the air at the next boom of fireworks. 

The pinch between the Major League Baseball player’s eyebrows gets—

Pinchier. 

The little roll of skin draws Emma’s attention, effectively robbing her of the ability to respond like an almost-sane person, but she’s also still trying to rationalize why she can remember the words to several FernGully songs while also being unable to recall what flavor PopTart she had for breakfast earlier this week and she figures watching her kid nearly get run over by professional athletes approximately forty-two minutes before gives her a fairly reasonable excuse. 

For opening and closing her mouth no less than eight consecutive times. 

Like a goddamn fish. There were no fish in FernGully. Least not so far as she remembers. 

It’s entirely possible she squeaks on attempt number five. 

The Major League Baseball player’s eyebrows do not move. It’s equal parts frustrating and incredible to behold. 

“I should probably thank you, right?” Emma asks, not quite regretting the words immediately, but it’s awfully close. That gets her some movement. Of the eyebrow variety. One eyebrow, specifically. Arching up, it somehow still manages to pull her attention directly toward eyes that should be the star of their own marketing campaign. Not quite Yankee blue, but distractingly blue, and it takes everything in her not to huff as dramatically as she wants to. Once the athletic trainer is done with Henry, Emma is going to make him examine her lungs. Rationality rules the day. 

Major League Baseball player shakes his head. It’s dumb to call him that. She knows his name. Knows at least some of his history. Is still staring obnoxiously at his freakishly attractive face. 

Freakishly is kind of mean, too. As far as descriptions go. 

“Unnecessary,” he says, an undercurrent of worry still clear in the letters. Ducking his head, he takes a cautious step forward, almost as if he’s wary of what Emma will do, and she supposes that’s fair. What with the impressive vertical she’s in possession of these days. “Anyone would do that.” “I’m not sure they could, actually.”

At some point in this otherwise shitty experience of a night, Emma is vaguely confident something will go the way she wants it to. Aside from winning. She’s glad they won. Seriously. 

“No?” “No,” she echoes, and it’s not like she can feel him. A few feet of space separates them, so whatever heat appears to be wafting off the Major League Baseball player in front of her, with his damp hair, and stupid, stupid, stupid eyes is as impossible as any of the various impossibilities currently taking place within her person. 

And yet. 

He sticks his hand out. 

It’s disarmingly earnest. 

“Killian Jones,” he says, confidence replacing the nerves, and Emma begins to see why there are so many stories. And Twitter threads. Regarding his face and the potential for that face to date a variety of other attractive faces across at least four of the five boroughs. Somehow Emma doesn’t think Killian Jones, New York Yankees third baseman, is schlepping out to Staten Island for a date. 

Nor does she believe that Killian Jones, New York Yankees third baseman, has ever once let the word schlep pass through his conscious mind. 

She takes his hand. 

It is—

Surprisingly warm. And...not quite soft, that’d be impossible with the job he performs almost nightly. But the calluses on the pads of his fingers aren’t as rough as Emma expects, which also suggests she’s managed to ponder the overall texture of Killian Jones’s fingers in the last twelve point six seconds, and that’s not entirely true. What is true is that Ruby thinks Killian Jones is real good-looking and has determined that the phrase quite a catch is the pinnacle of humor, so, sure, Emma has possibly considered the possibility of paths crossing and intersecting, and her hand looks minuscule wrapped up in his. So, that’s something to think about later. 

Their arms move. Bob up and down as society dictates they should, and he’s smiling at her, and she’s trying not to look like a serial killer, straining to hear the voices behind the door, and it does not work. 

“Why do you think people are so consistently fascinated by fireworks?” If he’s surprised by her absolutely inane question, he doesn’t show it. That’s points. For what, Emma hasn’t totally decided yet, but it’s something, and it’s probably good, and they’re going to play that clip on loop for weeks. Longer, probably. 

Every goddamn day if the Yankees make the postseason. 

When the Yankees make the postseason. 

Her dad wouldn’t appreciate the buffer. Leaves room for loss, and that is not the Nolan way. Not when there are championships to win, and this was supposed to be the best possible time. Smack dab in the middle of the season, with the All-Star break looming, Henry would get to suit up as batboy for one game that didn’t mean much and wouldn’t draw too strong of a spotlight, no murmurs about nepotism by internet trolls who couldn’t possibly define the word with any sort of accuracy, but also like to shout about canceling and culture with an almost alarming sense of self-righteousness, so, of course, the whole thing was now blowing up in their face. 

Much like the goddamn fireworks. 

It wasn’t Will Scarlet’s fault. 

Wasn’t Henry’s fault, either. 

His job was to get the bats out of the field of play. Doing it while the field of play was still active was a mistake any kid could have made. Just so happens that it’s Emma’s kid, and the grandkid of the Yankees’ hitting coach, and that means something to the New York media and the New York fans, and if Killian Jones, New York Yankees third baseman with an arm that can make cross-field throws with ease, wasn’t also so quick-thinking and sure-footed, scooping Henry up as he crossed home plate and avoiding the ensuing swarm of players at home plate, all intent on celebrating Will Scarlet’s first-ever career walk-off, Emma can only imagine what would have happened. 

Trampled. Stepped on. Broken bones. Concussions. 

They’re checking Henry for a concussion now. He absolutely does not have a concussion. He was laughing while he was carried off the field. Like he hit the walk-off. 

Front office is absolutely petrified she’s going to sue them. 

The thought hadn’t even once crossed Emma’s mind. Plus, she’s sort of busy. Holding Killian Jones’s hand. His stupid, warm hand. 

“Bright colors,” he says, responding to a question Emma’s nearly forgotten about. Jumping is more challenging when his fingers tighten ever so slightly. “Flash, boom. Taps into baser instincts, I think.” “You think people’s base instinct is to enjoy explosions.” “Phrasing that as a statement makes me think you don’t agree with me.” “You didn’t want me to thank you,” Emma points out.

“Well, no,” he says, and the precise way his eyes drop does something specific to all of her instincts. Leaves her flush with a heat that reminds her of Fourth of July sparklers rather than any sort of massive explosion, and that’s not bad, per se, although it’s admittedly a little surprising. As is the slight uptick of precisely one side of his mouth. It takes her a moment to realize he’s smirking at her. And another for her subconscious to admit that it’s working as intended. Her shoulders drop half an inch. While Emma pulls her hand back to her side. “Thanking me suggests I did anything to warrant the thanks.” “Big words.” “For a dumb athlete, you mean.” “That wasn’t a question, either.” “No,” Killian repeats, “it wasn’t.” “I’d really like to thank you. I—Dad told him when to come out of the dugout, so he definitely knew the rules, but I think he was super worried about you tripping over the bat.”

The smirk becomes a full-blown smile. Which is no less than forty-seven thousand times more powerful. Equivalent to staring directly into a solar eclipse or gazing upon the dark side of the moon, and Emma should at least do some research before coming up with these internal examples. Basic Google searches would provide her with the necessary information. 

“That’s more or less what he told me, yeah.” Emma’s nose creases. “Talked your ear off after your daring rescue, huh?” “Keep complimenting me like this, and my ego won’t know what to do with it.”

She hopes she’s not blushing as much as it feels like she is. The state of Killian’s eyebrows and the precise curl of his lips make that seem unlikely. “Your reflexes are unparalleled.” “Something about big bucks and why I get paid them.” “Oh,” Emma laughs, unable to stop herself, and she doesn’t remember deciding to stop pacing, only that her knees appreciate it once she has, “you think you’re real funny, don’t you?” “I think I’m moderately funny, not the hero you’re suggesting I am—” “Oh, I never used the word hero.” “—And you never actually told me your name.”

“Because you don’t know who I am.” It’s not a question, either. Neither one of them mention that. 

“I do,” Killian concedes, “Henry was also fairly quick to mention exactly who he was and where his mother was sitting.” Emma’s nose is going to freeze in this position. “But I gave you my name, which makes it only fair that we’re all square and whatnot.” “Whatnot, huh?” “Yup.” He pops his lips on the letter. Which is also unfair. In, like, the grand scheme of the world. The black ooze that is not actually oil when used in this particular metaphor recedes. Leaves Emma with a chest cavity that is partially full of butterfly wings and the growing sense of anticipation that isn’t quite as nerve-wracking as it should be. Like she’s about to step into the batter’s box with two outs and runners in scoring position. She’s totally going to hit against the shift. Fluttering her fingers at her side, Emma doesn’t lift her hand. It doesn’t matter. 

Killian’s eyes drop. To the movement. And her. And part of her shies away from that because part of her has spent a lifetime tucked into a shadow that didn’t belong to her and doesn’t belong to Henry, but now there’s some joke about Peter Pan to be made because they live in an internet-age and Killian Jones has a very good face. So. Viral video, enter stage right. Starring Henry Swan, Killian Jones, and the inevitably uneven pitter-patter of Emma’s traitorous heart. 

“Emma Swan.” “I think you should sit down.”

“Why is that, exactly?” “I’m worried about your legs.”

Whatever noise she makes can’t quite be classified as a scoff. It hurts her throat too much. And it’s not a laugh, either. Even as the butterflies threaten to rise up in mutiny of Emma’s more rational feelings, and she gets the distinct impression that Killian is reading her mind. Trying very hard, at least. 

“Sounds like a line.” “Might be a line,” he admits, which draws another wholly inhuman sound out of Emma’s barely-functioning lungs. 

“Did he kick you on the lift?” Killian hums. “You’d kick too if you were just hauled off your feet, so I understand the reaction. What I’m more worried about is the inevitable bruise on my foot from the bat landing there.” “Ah shit, really?” “I’ve had worse.” “But not in 4K video that people will play on loop for the rest of the news cycle. If not longer.” Narrowing his eyes, Killian doesn’t immediately respond. Mind reading requires a modicum of focus, Emma assumes. Instead, he rests a hand on her shoulder, directing her toward the chair and ignoring the soft crack her left knee as it bends. “That’s what you’re worried about.” “Stop sounding so confident.” “I can only sound how I am, Swan.” “Oh, I’m not sure we’ve reached nickname status yet,” she mumbles, pushing down the soft rush of metaphorical insects doing their beset to soar out of her barely-parted lips. “But, yeah, I—I mean, don’t get me wrong, I was totally terrified in the moment.”

“Understandable. Grown men barrelling down the third-base line at your kid are a lot to take in.” She snorts. It’s not cute. Not dignified. Killian smirks. “Should you be concerned that the Scarlet was making such solid headway behind you? Are you exceedingly slow?” “I am league average.” “How fast can you get out of the box to first?” “I’ve never timed it.” “Liar, liar.” “Please don’t make a crack about my pants,” Killian says, “I won’t be able to cope.”

“Oh God, you think you’re charming, too.” “I’ve had no complaints.” “To your face, at least.”

Throwing his head back, the laugh that erupts out of him is not of volcano proportions. Of which there was also one in FernGully if Emma’s memory is to be trusted.  An arm circles his middle, stretching muscle and ensuring that Emma notices just how corded that same muscle is, the slight bend of his wrist leaving her off-kilter. When he meets her gaze, she swears his eyes are brighter. “Yeah, yeah, that’s true,” Killian concedes, “no one has flat out told me I was lacking charm to my face.” “This thanking you thing is going great.” “And I continue to not need thanks. Why are you worried about the video getting out there? Filmed in 4K like you suggest, at least we’ll all look great. Sharp pixels and whatnot.” “What do you know about pixels?” “You basically heard the extent just now.”

She’s getting better at laughing. The ooze has almost all but disappeared, Emma twirling a strand of hair around fingers that are intent on moving, and it’s an old habit. One Killian’s gaze catches on. Immediately. Quickly. Seriously, Emma needs a thesaurus. “Baseball’s always been my dad,” she says. “And that’s—well, we’ve lived this game, me and my mom, weekend series and West Coast swings, waiting up for him to get home because the flight got delayed, but Henry’s just a kid, getting thrown into this world because of his last name and who his family is? That sucks. Nothing was supposed to happen tonight.” “Nothing did happen.” “Because of you.” “I’d like to believe Scarlet, ridiculously fast as he might be, would not run over a small child,” Killian says. “And, uh, for the record and all that, I got a bad jump off first because I didn’t know if they were going to catch it in left. No one wants to get caught on the base paths.” “Yeah, that’d be embarrassing.”

He must hear the hitch in her voice because the next thing Emma realizes, her fingers are twisted back up in Killian’s, and she’s warm and falling and flying, and it’s good and weird, and the door swings open. 

They both jump.

So, that’s something. 

Rushing out quickly enough that he nearly trips over his own feet, Henry’s head leads the way and finds Emma’s stomach, a tangle of limbs, and overly-excited words, all of which rival the now-finished fireworks display in volume. 

It takes Henry about five and a half run-on sentences to notice Killian standing there. 

His eyes widen. His mouth drops. Killian grins. Emma tries very hard not to die. It only sort of works. 

She blames the faulty body parts she’s in possession of. 

“Killian,” Henry exclaims, clamoring back to his feet and nearly falling again in the process. Hands that belong to both Emma and Killian dart out, steadying Henry while their eyes meet over the top of his head. Killian winks. He tries. It’s more like a blink than anything. “Hi, hi! You did so good tonight! And we won, and I got to go on the field and—and, it was so,” Henry heaves a deep breath, “we were so good.”

Collective pronouns do something to Emma’s entire state of being. 

Flips it on an axis she hadn’t been aware previously existed until it almost feels as if this was the path they’d been directing themselves toward from the start. Her eyes flit toward Killian. Who is already watching her. 

“We did,” he nods, “maybe next time, though, you wait one extra second to grab Scarlet’s bat, ok?” Seeing her own nose scrunch reflected back on her kid is not the worst thing that’s ever happened to Emma. The vibrating phone in her back pocket, might be. 

It’s one-hundred percent, Ruby. 

“That’s what grandpa said too,” Henry grumbles, digging a toe of the cleats Emma’s mother bought him last week into the ground, “but I wanted to make sure you didn’t fall.”

Definitely dying, then. A systematic shut down of all necessary internal organs. It’s not as bad as Emma would have expected. 

Neither one of Killian’s knees crack when he bends. That seems heavy-handed. 

“And I don’t want you to fall either,” he says, “so we agree, right here, right now, not to let the other one fall, huh?” Emma holds her breath. Ignores the pinch in her lungs and the clearly unstable nature of both her mind and her heart, digging her nails into her palms. To ensure she isn’t tempted to haul Henry back toward her. Or push that one strand of hair away from Killian’s forehead. 

Henry nods. “Deal.”

They hook their pinkies together. 

It’s adorable and as endearingly charming as everything else Killian Jones, New York Yankees third baseman, has done since he walked into that hallway. Less so when her dad emerges from the office, the athletic trainer on his heels to not-so-quietly inform Killian that he can’t just blow off post-game like that, and the second wink is as bad as the first. 

She does her very best to memorize the movement. 

And the joy on Henry’s face the next morning when a box arrives on their doorstep, a genuine, game-worn Killian Jones jersey inside. She doesn’t notice the note at first, tucked between the cardboard and the tissue paper someone must have bought for him. He can’t have bought that tissue paper himself. He just—it’s unfathomable. 

Emma knows he bought the tissue paper himself. 

As clearly as she knows that those numbers in that particular order will lead to Killian Jones answering his phone and that her voice likely won’t shake when she replies to the question written in surprisingly loopy script. Which is why, Emma will argue, she does reply. In the affirmative. To several questions over the course of the remaining season, and they don’t star in any more viral videos, but there are a few pictures once they clinch the division. 

Drops of champagne cling to the tips of Emma’s eyelashes and the ends of Killian’s hair, hands on her waist that blaze a quick path up her back and around her middle, and she has to tilt her head up to get the right angles. Of lips. While they kiss in the middle of the clubhouse, the hat someone forced onto Emma’s head falling and it’s impossible to hear over the sound of celebratory fireworks, but she can somehow still hear Henry’s laugh ringing out from the general area near Scarlet’s locker, and his jersey collection is growing at an impressive rate. 

No one can withstand the overall cuteness of him. 

Emma included. Emma, especially. 

Sometimes she worries she’s so happy she’ll burst, unable to contain the sort of emotion her body is still acclimating itself to. But then she realizes just how dumb that is and happiness cannot possibly be quantified, and her head is buzzing enough from champagne that she nearly misses Killian when he says, “people love the bright spots, Swan.” It’s not the most romantic thing he’s told her. Doesn’t crack the top five, quite frankly. She swoons all the same. With her kid laughing and her team winning and that’s about all the sentiment she’s willing to acknowledge before her tongue is in Killian’s mouth. He groans. She grins. 

And he’d been right about the video. It wasn’t the embarrassment Emma worried it could be. Was mostly relegated to the corners of the internet set aside for formerly popular content as soon as the season ended, spoken about only in fond recollection as the other seasons went on and the wins kept coming and all three of them stand on a parade float with the World Series trophy a few dozen feet away, several Novembers after that first game. 

It’s a Thursday afternoon, then. 

And yet Emma never entirely forgets. What the video meant and what it did and she’s not remotely surprised when it finds its way back to the forefront of the sports zeitgeist on a Wednesday in July. Most mentions come with similar taglines and messages. Something about feeling our age and wanna feel old because that bot boy, David Nolan’s grandson, Killian Jones’s stepson, he’s getting drafted now. 

Got drafted, technically. 

Third round, video of the soon-to-be third baseman for the San Diego Padres makes the internet circuits and garners plenty of interest. It’s not the most exciting video, though. Henry just hugs his family. Who hug tightly back. 

What is more exciting is the box that arrives on Emma and Killian’s doorstep. With a note that eventually earns a frame next to the last one and a wholly official, game-worn jersey that has a noticeable streak of dirt across the left sleeve. From sliding head-first into home plate.  

[endcant]

aimless musings on subgenre, citypop, and internet subcultures

theres something very interesting about watching citypop become very mainstream in korea and watching that feed back into both western listeners’ opinions and also into the sometimes-cynical efforts of a variety of kpop producers

a lot of people in the youtube/kpop sphere talk about the growth of citypop as if it were a spontaneous wave that appeared out of nowhere with mariya takeuchi’s plastic love getting picked up by the youtube algorithm in like 2018 or whatever, but thats a very like online-ignorant view of the interaction between vintage japanese music and worldwide online EDM production. citypop has been used in future funk and vaporwave for almost a decade by now, and, as a result, a number of citypop songs took off on social media here and there before plastic love’s acceleration— dress down by kaworu akimoto is one of the big examples off the top of my head, but there’s likely many many more.

“Plastic Love” by Mariya Takeuchi (1984). if you haven’t heard this yet, you’d better listen to it now. The video that first went viral was uploaded in 2017

“Selfish High Heels” by Yung Bae, Macross 82-99, and Harrison (2014) is a popular Future Funk remixes of Dress Down by Kaoru Akimoto (1986)

people who haven’t been very aesthetically literate online over the years— musically or visually, since those things are tied in subcultures— treat things like they come from nowhere. there are ongoing subcultural conversations that lead to certain aesthetic choices, and when someone tries to cash in on a trend without understanding what the trend is, that leads people to call bullshit. calling bullshit is not meanspirited, in my opinion, because it very much is like somebody who can’t speak a language getting up in front of everybody and saying “hey, i’m fluent!” and then speaking some vaguely that-language-sounding nonsense. of course people who genuinely speak that language will be outraged instinctively. it feels like being mocked.

that’s why the difference between music producers picking up on a trend cynically and music producers picking up on a trend with earnest interest in that trend’s origins feels different, even if the producers are similarly distant from the original subculture that produced that trend.

“Lady” by Yubin (2018) committed hard to the 80s JP citypop aesthetic, musically and visually, down to the sets, all fairly early in the major resurgence.

i’m sure that anyone with a passing familiarity with citypop and kpop can ascertain that not all kpop producers know what citypop is and what makes it citypop. all they know is that it is on-trend and they have to make it. not all kpop listeners know what citypop is and what makes it citypop. all they know is their idol said citypop as a buzzword in their little prepared statement. all this results in some interesting moments for me as a Music Fan, Online.

here is where i get to the thing that spurred this post: loona “did a citypop” for their japanese comeback. it doesnt sound like citypop.

“Hula Hoop (Citypop Version)” by Loona (2021). It has very odd percussion rhythms and mixing for citypop, no real attempt at a citypop verse, and strangely sparse gestures towards citypop in the form of a few seconds of bass and some synthesized orchestral embellishments that were taken from the original mix …all in spite of a very disco-inspired melody that should have worked perfectly for citypop

this is not a very big deal, and im not mad about it or anything. when a kpop act i like gets saddled with an unfortunate B-Side track i dont tend to take it very hard. however, it did raise a little bit of musical discourse in the loona fandom— in the form of remixes.

“hula hoop if it was actually a citypop song” by loonahatetwinks and Olivia Soul on youtube. this one has an original instrumental that is spot-on for contemporary k-citypop

My most favorite one of these remixes is a futurefunk remix by ZSunder, one of the very best LOONA fan producers. The fact that ZSunder thought to make a future funk remix at all speaks more to an understanding of the mutually supportive relationship between citypop and EDM genres than most kpop citypop producers or fanmixers seem to care to know about.

“Hula Hoop (Future Funk Mix)” by ZSunder is futurefunk made and mixed with such love that it has the infectious summery energy of a polished, big-name future funk hit

in the comments of this video, some people seemed to get the citypop-future funk connection and some didnt. many did get it, don’t get me wrong! but also, its not all that surprising for some kpop-focused listeners to not know much about EDM subcultures and the reasons behind various trends among producers, since kpop as an institution tends to take influences from any genre and culture it likes and then decontextualize those influences by just having their names used as buzzwords in the blurbs the idols have to recite when variety show hosts ask them about their latest single. this isn’t a criticism of the genre or the fans really, it’s just a part of the kpop industry that is used to add shine to an endless firehose-like stream of polished pop tracks. there are some issues with using whole genres and subcultures with complex histories as buzzwords, but god help us if we ever want a pop industry to give its influences their dues.

anyway, the intention behind ZSunder’s future funk Hula Hoop remix happened to remind me me of why i love Yukika’s discography so much, especially the Soul Lady album. I’ve seen some reviews online baffled by parts of Soul Lady, because the album in general is an exploration of that relationship between citypop and modern/internet EDM. i’ve seen plenty of Soul Lady reviews especially baffled by pit-a-pet, saying something along the lines of “what’s with the modern-sounding dance track in the middle of a retro album?”, but i think that pit-a-pet is a futurefunk-inspired track, at least in the chorus. considering both that and the Chill Lo-Fi Interludes, it seems like estimate’s team put together Soul Lady for Yukika in a way that shows that they love citypop and understand the online-specific electronic music subcultures that led to citypop’s resurgence.

“pit-a-pet” by Yukika (2020). the stacatto, bass heavy chorus is futurefunk enough, but the soaring orchestral part in the final chorus seals the deal for my interpretation.

“All Flights Are Delayed (1 hour version)” by Yukika (2020). Estimate literally released an hour-long youtube mix of one of the Lo-Fi interludes on Soul Lady as part of their promotion, clearly inspired by “Lo-Fi anime beats to chill out to,” which is another example of online producers from around the world using Japanese samples as a focal point of their music

Estimate, in the end, is still a Kpop production company, just the same as BBC, so they have no inherent claim over citypop, but the way that their exploration of subgenres clearly comes from passion and interest on the part of their production staff makes it so that their work with Yukika rings true. on the other hand, i really appreciate Ryan S. Jhun’s work on LOONA’s JP comeback, as well as on Not Friends, but the citypop mix thing was so clearly an afterthought to the point where fans of Loona who like citypop seem mostly just irritated by the cynical-seeming attempt.

heres one last good modern kpop citypop MV that has nods to the internet culture that led to its revival in the form of the videography— vaporwave, future funk, lofi, and other internet genres along those lines tend to have videos consisting of looping anime and vhs clips. future funk in particular is known for this, especially since a lot of future funk music, esp early future funk, is just loops of very short, catchy segments of citypop and disco songs. it’s all about the loops

“My Type” by Yoon JongShin ft. Miyu Takeuchi (2019). This song is so dedicated to the retro JP citypop sound that it’s almost beyond my personal taste. The singer, Miyu, was a headlining act at a seoul citypop festival and sang this song as part of her act (:

this video of “Only One” by Conscious Thoughts (2015) has a looped clip as an example for comparison with My Type. it also has a pulsing sidechain compressor working in time with its drum beat in a way that is common for future funk and that i think is a good example for my pit-a-pet yukika comparison to future funk

i guess the takeaway here is that media is more and more online, and the creation and propagation of digital audio and video content has been in the hands of literally almost anybody who wants to do it for the past two decades thanks to garage band and fruityloops and audacity and tiktok and youtube and bandcamp and soundcloud and myspace and newgrounds and p2p file sharing and so on and so forth. and therefore like… as with all things, the consumer class more and more is also the creator class, and therefore every member of an audio-visual subculture will have the ability to discern what is and isnt made with knowledge of the audio-visual language of that subculture

[lalainajanes]

for the prompt list: 12. “Welcome back. Now fucking help me.” / 1. Coworker AU / 16. "Sit in my lap" :D

Thank you! I was thinking the other day that I’ve never really done a musicians AU which is silly. So I made that happen here though it’s probs stretching “coworkers.”

The Beat Goes On

When Caroline steps on the bus, she stops immediately, only halfway up the steps. She surveys the scene – Kol, Marcel, Klaus, plus about a half dozen fans. Her eyes turn murderous. She hitches her bag higher on her shoulder, yanks her suitcase up the rest of the way, and storms through the living area. She’s whipped the curtain that hides their bunks closed behind her before Klaus can snag her attention.

A pity. He’d been hoping for her help.

He’s in no mood for company either. Partying all night is such a rockstar cliché – and completely unrealistic considering they need to be on the road in a few hours, then unloading their gear in the next city a few hours after that.

It’s their first headlining tour. They can’t quite afford a complete crew. It’s going well, with most shows sold out. They’ve had to put in a rush order for more merch. Klaus has high hopes the next outing will be a little more luxurious.

Higher hopes that one day they’ll have more than one bus. He’s willing to share with Caroline. Preferably something with an actual bedroom – not the claustrophobic stack of cots they’re currently enduring.

He can’t complain too much. Their current accommodations are far superior to the unreliable van and dingy motels they’d piled into on their first tour. They’d been the first of several supporting acts, had considered themselves lucky when they’d turned a profit by the end.

That profit had bought some decent recording equipment, the EP they’d put out after doing well on Spotify. A better tour had followed. Then another. Press, photoshoots. Then interest from a few labels.

Klaus has only spent a few nights of the last few years in his own bed. He has no regrets.

He sets his beer down, stands. Pretends not to notice when one of the women who’d been inching closer and closer swipes it immediately.

He’ll have to check eBay tomorrow. See what the going rate for his saliva is. He doesn’t bother to excuse himself.

Caroline’s stowing her belongings. Klaus would bet they have the cleanest tour bus in the history of the music industry. Caroline’s a bit of a psychotic neat freak. Over the years she has doled out vicious punishments when a “Close Cohabitation Survival Rule” (there’s an extensive list - laminated and prominently posted) is violated.

Kol had been the slowest to learn. To drive the lesson home, Caroline had snipped out the back pockets of every pair of trousers he’d packed. She’ then hidden all of his underwear. Had bribed, threatened or cajoled every man on tour not to offer a spare pair.

She’d timed it flawlessly, Kol hadn’t had time to run out to a shop, and they hadn’t been significant enough to have anyone they could send on an errand. Kol had done a show with his arse – clad only in a pair of Caroline’s lime green lace boy shorts, hanging out of a ruined pair of jeans. The pictures appeared online within minutes, Kol will likely be answering questions about his preference in underwear for the rest of his natural life.

Caroline’s plots had done the trick. Their belongings tend to stay organized, their floors are never sticky, and the bathroom is perfectly sanitary.

Her bunk’s curtain is closed, but Klaus sees a faint glow, knows she’s not asleep. He yanks the curtain aside.

He’s willing to risk stoking Caroline’s anger. He’s exceedingly good at soothing her.

Caroline glares and tries to pull the fabric out of Klaus’ grip. “Go away.”

He gauges how much she means it, finds little heat in her tone. And she shifts over willingly when he climbs in next to her, lifts her legs so he can curl his under them. Caroline had showered at the venue, had her hair braided and off her face. She wears an old pair of sweats (his) and a tank top. Klaus attempts to coax, “Come out and have a drink.”

Caroline’s nose wrinkles, “Pass.”

“One drink.”

“I’m tired. It’s crowded.”

Weak excuses. “You’ll miss the show.”

That piques her interest. Caroline hates to be out of the loop.

“What show?”

“Our lovely manager should arrive shortly, shouldn’t she? Why else would Kol have three girls who’s name’s he hasn’t bothered to learn draped all over him?”

She twists her head to stare at him, and Klaus is sorely tempted by how close her mouth is. It would be so easy to close the minuscule gap and press his lips to hers, to stroke the spot on her neck that always makes her eyes roll back and her hips shift close.

But they don’t do that anymore.

“Are you telling me,” Caroline says slowly, disbelief etched in every word. “That Kol’s concocted some teen soap style plot to make Bonnie jealous?”

“I did try to tell him it was unwise.” Though, if he’s honest, Klaus hadn’t tried that hard.

Caroline presses the heel of her hand to her forehead, a frustrated groan spilling from her throat. “I have been trying so hard to convince Bonnie he’s serious. He’s going to ruin all my hard work.”

“All the more reason for you to come out, hmm? Can’t have all of your most excellent matchmaking going to waste.”

He’s not even upset when she elbows him in the stomach because he knows he’s won. He slides out of the bunk, and Caroline twists, “I need to find my phone and stall Bon,” she mutters. Her tanktop slides up as she rummages through her blankets, and Klaus clasps his hands behind his back because the urge to run his hand over the smooth skin of her hip might be stronger than he is.

He has a plan, well thought out, and practically foolproof. He cannot rush. Caroline pauses when she notices Klaus watching, balances on her elbow, and shoves his shoulder with her free hand. “Get out there. Make sure no one does anything too stupid.”

“No promises.” Klaus knows better. He’s known Kol since birth. Reckless acts of stupidity are one of his brother’s specialties.

Caroline’s found her phone, has settled on her stomach. She’s frantically texting, so Klaus exits.

He immediately notes that several bottles of liquor have made their way out. That more people Klaus doesn’t recognize have joined them. Kol’s lost some clothing, has got one arm raised high, splashes of what Klaus is reasonably sure is bourbon splashing down, onto his bare chest.

It has all the makings of a disaster.

Unfortunately, for some reason, Caroline is slow to appear. Kol’s at his jittery, exuberant drunk stage, unable to sit still or focus on a topic for longer than a few moments. He’s telling stories that are only half true, gesturing wildly. A few of their visitors are enthralled. Marcel had slipped outside with a few people, Klaus hears his laugh drift in through the open door occasionally.

Two women have boxed him in. They don’t seem to mind that he has no interest in the conversation they insist on prolonging. They giggle delightedly at his clipped answers. Klaus has already taken photos, signed skin. Has his fingers crossed their not the type to rush off to a tattoo parlor.

When Caroline emerges from the back, Klaus has a moment of déjà vu. She barely notices Kol; her attention focused on him, and the people invading his personal space. She’s furious again, more so, Klaus thinks.

He’s always been confident in his plan but won’t say no to the ego boost her obvious jealousy provides.

It’s a small space; she’s in front of him in a few steps. Klaus smiles up at Caroline, grabs her wrist. She appears confused for a second – it’s been ages since he’s touched her in front of another person.

He hasn’t attempted it since being photographed, having the images splashed all over social media and picked apart, became a real possibility. Caroline had begun shying away once the tweets and the Instagram comments had started coming in. Some positive, a lot negative. Klaus had followed her lead. Had figured he’d let her get used to the fame, that he’d just have to convince her that they could be together publicly without ruining what they have privately.

He drags her hand to his mouth, distracts her by pressing a chaste kiss to the back of it. He hears a gasp to his left, but he doesn’t care, tugs harder until Caroline loses her balance.

She lands in his lap, and one of the women leaps to her feet with a yelp. Convenient, as it gives Klaus more room to maneuver. He wraps his arm around Caroline’s waist and settles her more comfortably, her side resting against his chest. He pitches his voice loud enough to be heard clearly by everyone in the room, “A bit clumsy tonight, aren’t you? It’s fine, sit in my lap.”

The woman who’d swiped his beer bottle is either drunk enough not to mind her tongue or unconcerned with basic manners. “Are you two?” She lifts a hand in a gesture that’s both vague and slightly lascivious.

Caroline squirms, but Klaus squeezes her hip, cutting off her denial with a whisper in her ear. “You took ages. Welcome back, now fucking help me.”

She pinches his stomach in retaliation. Klaus holds back a wince. Caroline ignores it, turns on the charm, smiling warmly at their nosy questioner. “Nope. We’ve just known each other for ages. Spent way too much time in tight spaces. Not a lot of boundaries when you’ve spent months crammed in a van, you know?”

Klaus could comment about the private time they’d managed to enjoy in that van occasionally but Caroline’s fingernails are sharp. He doesn’t mind wearing their imprints, but he’d prefer to earn those marks pleasurably.

“So, you’re just friends?”

“Bon-Bon!” Kol shouts, interrupting Caroline’s response.

(Probably a good thing. Klaus isn’t entirely sure he trusts himself to stick to his timeline if Caroline tried to claim they were just anything while sitting on his lap and wearing his clothes.)

He’s surprised when Caroline settles back against him, rather than leaping to his feet. Pleased, too. Her arm drapes around his shoulders, her fingertips tangling in his necklaces. She watches the scene unfolding in front of her.

Her touch is familiar, missed. Klaus closes his eyes to enjoy it while he can.

[theunsentletterstoyou]

Dear Muse:

Hi S.

I feel I owe you an explanation, as best I can, of me unintentionally being a total creep on your birthday, though feelings are always tricky to put in writing and this won’t be adequate. Hopefully this will reassure you that I never meant to make you uncomfortable in the slightest – really the very last thing I ever wanted. I feel awful and I’m (still, a month on!) really sorry. I know you said not to worry about it at all and you're probably long over it yourself, but I can’t help it! This might not help. It might make things worse. I’m a terrible judge of these things, as you can probably tell. But here goes.

I don’t fancy you. While I doubt you believe that, it should hopefully go without saying. I mean – eleven and a half year age gap?! But just to be totally clear.

But I sort of approach that feeling from two directions, which collide very uncomfortably and add up to something that from anyone else's point of view probably looks romantic.

First – ever since you were three and impressed me so much with how incredibly mature you were for your age (I'm really surprised you remembered that conversation, last month, so many years on – how on earth do you so clearly remember so long ago and being so young?), I've had the hugest squish on you – to borrow a term from Tumblr. Like a crush, only platonic. A very intense feeling of friendship and desire to be your BFF, basically. I've always really liked you. (Not "like liked", but regular liked, but then again LIKED bold italic underline and larger size, you could say). Not love, but way stronger than regular friendship; I have no idea why. I always regretted that we weren't closer friends than we were. And even after we lost touch for so long I still remembered you very fondly and wanted to be friends again. I'm just rubbish at not letting life get in the way, and suddenly months became years became almost a decade. Turns out seeing you again ended up in almost instinctively releasing all that "HELLO FRIEND :D!" in a great rush before thinking how strong that's coming on from your viewpoint. Oooooops.

Second – you are beautiful. Really unexpectedly pretty.

I don’t mean sexy. I couldn’t find you sexy if I tried. I mean (1) eleven and a half year gap, so UGH, and (2) old close friends, and (3) I first knew you when you were a little baby and vaguely remember changing your nappy once, which would rather kill that thought even if it arose. There's this thing called the Westermarck effect – where someone who has grown up with someone else or known that person as a child can never find them sexy, scientifically it prevents inbreeding – which is very much in effect here. You’re not dating material in my eyes, just not attractive like that, and never will be.

But having said that, looking so to speak with the eye of an artist rather than a lover, the way one might look at a pretty flower or a sunset or a cute kitten or something (horribly objectifying, sorry, but there isn't a better way to put it), or the way I can tell certain celebrities are handsome – David Beckham, say, or Bradley Cooper – without any romantic interest, in the general sense of the word, you are extraordinarily beautiful.

Except it’s stronger than that. The same general feeling as finding a random celebrity generally good-looking or admiring a nice landscape or painting, only up to eleven. For an even better comparison: Seeing you is like walking around on a rainy day, when everything's grey and dull, and then suddenly the rain lets up a bit and the sun shines a bit, and a really bright rainbow appears. And I can’t help but stop and stare at it, with this “wow!” sense of wonder and awe, and think of how beautiful it is. And it’s not something I could ever have any sort of relationship with or even touch – and I have no desire to, even the thought of that makes no sense at all. But the striking sudden and unexpected beauty of it sticks in the mind long after the rainbow itself vanishes, and leaves me with a lasting sense of joy. I think most people I know would react to a rainbow the same way. You’re like that. I did write a song very, very long ago (when you were 3-4) calling you “Rainbow Child” – you might have heard it back in May – it’s still so true.

But there's no real sense of love attached, except insofar as I love everyone in your family (the totally non-romantic way, just a very strong friendship almost like extended family). It's definitely not attraction in the usual sense and I have absolutely no interest in anything more than friendship ever – “oh good”, I hear you say – it’s just “this girl! She's so... well she doesn't seem to be anything in particular. But wow, look!”

You just have one of those faces – this is something I've experienced with a couple of other people – that seems to stand out from far away even in a crowd, as if you were highlighted, to the point that I ask myself “there was a crowd too?” It's literally attractive, compelling like a magnet, my eyes almost can't help but be drawn to you when you're in the same place as me, and my thoughts do the same when you're not. It’s sort of like, if you’re looking at a big painting and most of it is black and white but there’s a red circle somewhere – your eyes just immediately and consistently want to go to the red circle. And you might walk away from the painting and think about that red circle again later in the day because it’s just so visually appealing to you compared to everything around it.

Another comparison I could make was brought on by something Sinead and I were chatting about before you turned up when I popped in last month: at one point she showed me your DVD collection and we got to discussing films, and she mentioned how a clip from one film got inexplicably stuck in her mind for ages afterwards, like a sort of “visual earworm” I think was her phrase. You know the thing: it's like having a favourite song that's so nice you want to listen to it over and over on a loop as long as you can, and maybe that song's a bit catchy and gets stuck in your head, and you find yourself humming it, even when you're not listening to it. And again, you couldn't date music – but you could certainly call some tunes beautiful. I get a visual version of that with your face. Like a Vine loop, maybe. Speaking of which, your actual Vine is insanely addictive!

It reminds me of something I once read in someone's autobiography:

“One of the most vivid experiences I have ever had was sitting quietly for at least an hour before a picture by the Dutch painter Vermeer, and absorbing its sheer beauty… The room was crowded with people, but I was oblivious of them, as I was equally oblivious of the passage of time. As a result of this act of concentration the vision of this particular masterpiece is indelibly stamped on my mind which has forever been enriched by it. I know that my ordinary acts of seeing and observation have been sharpened by that experience. There was drawn from me an acknowledgement of the greatness of the artist and his painting and I caught, with awe, the light of his inspiration and creativeness. It awoke in me a desire to follow in his footsteps and create something beautiful.”

In general, the way I feel about you is the feeling one gets when looking at a beautiful painting. But more specifically, like that man with that particular painting, your face is imprinted on my memory. It's sort of formed the background to most of my other thoughts since late April. Look up Shakespeare's Sonnet 113 and you get a pretty good description (admittedly in olde language) of how I feel. Normally when I see something pretty I just think “wow pretty” for a moment and move on. I’m not sure why you stick so much! I suppose it was the combination of you being quite pretty and that being completely unexpected – at another point we were looking at the family photos on your wall and Sinead showed me an old Vine clip of hers featuring a few of them which pretty much perfectly sums everything up from my point of view – you might know it, the one where she's comparing old photos to your present-day family with increasing surprise. "Then. Now. / Then - now. / Then, now! / THEN! NOW! What's happening to the world?!" She remarked, and I wasn’t going to actually say it but agreed, that your whole face has really changed. Even between then and now too and that wasn't even too long ago! And until April, I hadn’t seen you for so long, since you were seven going on eight: still don't really have any idea how I've managed to keep in touch with your whole family but keep missing hearing from you directly for over a decade. I've always been bad at keeping up with people but that was absurd. I missed you hugely, by the way. So since then I’ve felt exactly like her in that clip, only stronger (“THEN!! / NOW!!” :O :O :O).

You probably got the idea a few comparisons ago, but I just wanted to be totally clear. Getting technical for a bit (because that's how I roll...), I find you incredibly aesthetically attractive. This is a thing that's distinct from, but usually linked to and the beginning of, attraction in the conventional sexual or romantic sense – yes, those are two distinct things. If you know, just skip the rest of this paragraph! There's sexual attraction (“I'd like to get in your pants/hugs/kisses/touching up and ultimately make babies”) which is absolutely not there AT ALL. There's romantic attraction (“I'd like to date you/buy you flowers/"long walks on the beach" etc etc and ultimately marry you”) which is also definitely not there at all. And then there's what this actually is. Aesthetic attraction, in this case disconnected from any other sort. Which is “I wouldn't like any sort of relationship with you beyond simple friendship and could do fine even without that, and have zero interest in any sort of physical contact, but WHOA, your face, I want to look at it SO MUCH, no more than look, but really look and look for as long as possible and just never stop – in an ideal world I'd like to spend time around you just watching you, from a nice respectful distance, and just... drink you in, because you're so incredibly good-looking”.

On top of this (possibly a sort of by-product, but I don't know), as I once told your sister, and you might already know and have seen some of it – every time I've ever seen you, going back years, I've come out shortly afterwards (within a week or two) with some sort of art. Sometimes music, sometimes poems (you've seen a few), sometimes a short story or two, pictures once (not of you – I can't draw people!) And it's quite good art, or so most people who've seen it reckon. Which is remarkable because otherwise I'm not artistic in the slightest. I'd be happy to show you any of it, just ask. You just... really inspire me creatively, for some reason, and that bit has actually been around practically since you were born. If I had to sum you up in a word it would be muse.

I think my point is made. I brought you a present out of simple appreciation and wanting to just… thank you for just being you, super pretty and inspiring you – no actual desire for any relationship of any sort attached. I’m leaving everything right here. It was hard to tone things right. I was going to send you a birthday card, at least, anyway. I’d do the same for Sinead just out of general friendship. I didn't sign it with my name out of the worry you'd react just the way you did. Wasn't expecting for you to answer the door right as I stuck it through your letter box though – so much for anonymity.

I know what you're thinking: if he doesn’t fancy me, then why the "someone special" and why sign the card "admirer"? Simply because anything more (in both cases) was too strong, but anything less not enough. It was hard to find a word for how I feel – for a particularly close-feeling and beautiful friend but it never quite crossing into love –and I picked and phrased the card very, very carefully. Probably not carefully enough, but I tried. (Thank goodness “someone special” is a card category, it does the job quite well.) Even “admirer” is a bit strong, but having linguistic-geek leanings, I settled on admirer for etymological (language origin) reasons: it comes from Latin ad-mirare – literally, to look at, with affection and respect. For some reason it all seemed like a good idea at the time!

That was going to be the last deliberate direct contact I ever had with you after you said you weren't comfortable with it. But I just wanted to clear things up as well as possible, so that hopefully you aren’t uncomfortable any more. I know this is the third(?) time I’ve said “you won’t hear from me again” (random encounters aside), but this time I mean it, unless you care to reply.

I hope you know now I meant well, and would never not mean well. And I hope I'm not making you uncomfortable even now. That's the very last thing I'd ever want; the thought of you creeped out feels like physical harm to me.

I hope you enjoyed the Isle of Wight! Always a pleasure to host you :) 

With friendship

T

“Memories” – or “Thoughts on a Visual Earworm” early June 2016 

I cannot forget you! Although I last saw you in April, And now it is June, in my mind I can still see your face. Both waking and sleeping, your memory fills every moment, And summer's long days seem pale shadows of Summer's sweet grace. In all idle moments, my mind jumps to thoughts and to visions Of memories of you, both old and more recent to see, And trees, houses, people – my eye ‘shapes them all to your feature’, As Shakespeare once wrote! Tell me, when will I ever be free? Will it take till the summer fades out into red-golden autumn For Summer to fade from my memory into the past? Or will even in winter each day seem as bright as the summer And might memory-glimpses of you to the New Year last?

And why am I thinking of you? I’d not seen you in ages, Since you were a child, barely thought of you most of that time, Then I saw you again for the briefest few hours – but for weeks since You’ve written yourself into poem after verse after rhyme! You’re almost a stranger to me, and so very much younger, And we barely spoke – so why should I be thinking of you, When many more people have been in my life for much longer, And meant so much more to me: family, friends, lovers true? Why over them all does your likeness seem laid every moment? Why do you inspire every word, line and note of my art? Why though we might not meet in person again for ten more years, Do I find you in each passing moment engraved on my heart?

I wish I could tell what I’m feeling for you, but can’t place it – Romantic it’s not, for the thought makes me sick to my core, Yet a joy and a wonder at thinking of you overwhelms me And a lively creativeness turning to art more and more. It links to a realisation that you are attractive: In strictest of senses – my mind turning always to you, But not in a way that says ‘her I would like for a lover’ (Thank goodness, you cry) – more ‘I’d like to spend time watching you, Then drawing and painting and singing and writing about you’: Like poetry given girl’s form, or a portrait made living, Or a song in a body, that’s how you seem to me, sweet Summer; ‘Aesthetic attraction’, that could be the term for the feeling.

You stand out in a crowd, as if highlighted under a spotlight, As if life were an image in sepia, black, white and grey, But a single bright colourful part of it grabs the attention, And remains in the memory long after looking away. Or as if, on a dull rainy day, there shines out a bright rainbow, An iris of colour so vivid that cuts through the rain And illumines the world with a halo of red, orange, yellow, Green, indigo, violet bright – and then fades out again, Yet while it is there one can’t help but to stare at its beauty, It fills all the heart with a wonder, a joy and an awe, And its image enlivens the mind with its bright shining colours, So that all of the rest of the day the world seems dull no more. 

I don’t love you: you can’t love a painting, you can’t love a rainbow, Or a flower, or a sunset, but ‘beautiful’, yes, you could say, And could want to stop, stare at them, dazzled with wondrous amazement, And drink in the transcendent beauty of such things all day. And that's what you’re like, Summer, ‘Rainbow Child’ (so I once called you In a song that I took from a novel): if I had the choice And if rainbows and sunsets and beautiful you didn't vanish, I’d spend hours just watching your face, listening to your sweet voice. When we’re in the same room, your face draws my eye like a strong magnet, When we’re not, I still find that my thoughts to you keep on returning, Like a visual kind of an earworm, stuck in my memory On a loop, red-brown hair and bright eyes in my mind always burning. 

Whenever I see you, I find myself turning creative, And trying to capture your beauty in colour and line, But I cannot paint, cannot draw, so it turns into music And poems and prose, to describe your sweet face so divine. (Or rather to try to describe it – my words cannot capture How you move, how you talk, how you laugh, how you smile, how you look: Ten poems would not be enough, and I'm getting the feeling One couldn't sum you up in words even in a whole book!) A ‘muse’ I would call you – a girl who inspires an artist: Indeed I’m no artist except after I have seen you, But then how it flows out, the music and poems and colours, Attempting to echo the memory of beauty so true! 

I felt it when you were young too – but now stronger than ever, And far longer-lasting – a month it’s been, yet still you're here In my mind, in my eye, and on all things imprinting your likeness, A sight that with each passing moment seems ever more dear; So lovely, like art made incarnate, infusing my memory With big brown eyes, dark waves of hair, and a face from a dream, Well named, as reflecting the beauty of beautiful summer – The sun, sky, leaves, flowers in bloom; like that season you seem, Full of light, full of laughter and joy, so vivacious and vibrant, Even when summer passes, still Summer will live in you yet: Though autumn and winter tear leaves from trees, bring cold and darkness, Remembering you will bring sunshine: and I can’t forget.

[shipaholic]

Omens Universe, Chapter 15

Link to next part at the end.

(From the beginning)

(last part)

(chrono)

---

Chapter 15

Crowley and Aziraphale sat facing each other in the dying firelight.

They’d made themselves more or less presentable. Aziraphale had reconstituted most of his clothes from the firmament. Crowley had done the same, and looked immaculate, but had slung a blanket around his shoulders like a cape. He met Aziraphale’s eyes and saw his own seriousness reflected back.

“OK,” he said. “We need a plan.”

He left a pause, in the vague hope Aziraphale would fill it with a bullet-pointed list of Anti-Antichrist measures he’d prepped in advance.

When this didn’t happen, Crowley gave a little cough and went on.

“I know him pretty well, I think. I was basically there his entire childhood. He thought I was imaginary, but I don’t think that matters.”

“Any information will be helpful, I think,” Aziraphale volunteered.

“Hmm.” Crowley scratched his head. “OK. Uh. Friendless kid. Except for me. Maybe I could appeal to his better nature.”

He realised this was stupid as he said it. Adam was literally the reincarnation of Satan. On top of that, he’d had a tailor-made demonic upbringing. The better nature ship had sailed.

He drew a blank on helpful things to say. What else was there? He was utterly detached from humanity? He could remake reality on a whim? Fighting him would be even more pointless than trying to reason with him?

“He hates Hastur?” he managed.

Aziraphale looked blank.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said.

Crowley let out a breath. It sounded like a pressure valve wobbling under strain.

“OK, never mind. I’ve got to admit, angel, I can’t think of much that’s useful. It doesn’t look good, basically. Maybe we should cross that bridge when we come to it. Improvise something.”

He could tell by the look on Aziraphale’s face that this was already off to a poor start.

“Why don’t we start at the beginning? We need to get off this planet.”

That should be a bit better. Aziraphale was the ideas man when it came to getting from Planet A to Planet B.

Aziraphale looked put on the spot.

“Ah,” he said. “Er. We could fly?”

“Fly?”

“Right, sorry. That would take years.” Aziraphale fidgeted. He did that when he was stressed. This wasn’t going well.

“How about a portal?” Crowley suggested.

That somehow went over even worse. Aziraphale practically squirmed. Crowley thought portals were his thing.

“Portals are very complicated, Crowley.”

Crowley gestured with both arms. The cape moved with him. He was a bit fond of this cape.

“Don’t you just draw on the ground with chalk and pray?”

Aziraphale gave him an affronted look. “There are calculations involved.”

“Well, you’re clever. Can’t you figure them out?”

Aziraphale sighed. “Honestly, without reference books, or a clear idea of our current coordinates…”

Crowley tried not to sound as frustrated as he felt. “Well, just remake the one from your bookshop and… adjust it a bit?”

Aziraphale’s expression contained volumes.

“What,” said Crowley. “Would we end up inside a volcano on Jupiter or something?”

“No. It’s far more likely it would do nothing at all,” Aziraphale said, a little snide.

“Great.” Crowley lost the battle. He sounded frustrated. Fine, he might as well let it out. “You may as well try it, then. The only alternative really is that we start flapping and hope we run into another spaceship.”

“Yes, all right. I suppose we have no choice.” Aziraphale’s voice was clipped. Fine. They could both be annoyed.

“Damn right. I’m not flying for four light-years without a break.”

Crowley stood up and stretched his legs. He felt bad already for being snappish. It wasn’t fair on Aziraphale. He was, once again, going to be the one doing all the work. Crowley’s stomach gave a guilty squirm.

“Can I bring you anything?” he asked, a little gentler.

Aziraphale’s gem glowed, and a piece of chalk fell into his hand.

“The coffee machine should work inside the café Zadkiel made.” He still sounded a trifle cool.

“No problem.” Crowley hesitated. He bent down and kissed Aziraphale’s head. Some tension left his shoulders.

Crowley strolled out, leaving Aziraphale to begin the preparations.

~*~

???, ? days until Armageddon

Everything was bloody awful.

Crowley didn’t say it. Neither of them did. But it was hours later, maybe the next day on Earth already, or even the day after that. Adam could have razed the place to the ground by now, and they had accomplished absolutely sod-all.

Aziraphale’s fingers were stained with chalk. So were the ends of his hair. Crowley tactfully wasn’t mentioning this. It wasn’t as if he could get rid of it with a miracle, anyway.

Crowley’s job had been to fetch coffee, which he had done on a loop for the past however many hours it had been, to the point he’d practically worn a footpath between their front door and the café. Unfortunately, Crowley had never so much as switched on a coffee machine in his life. He had a similar heavy industrial device back at his flat, but he had always snapped his fingers to operate it. He listened to the whir of machinery, thought contentedly about how much electricity it was using,[1] and collected the perfectly made cup without further speculation of how it had got there.

Crowley’s attempts to wrangle some coffee out of the infernal[2] machine in the café, however, had gone about as swimmingly as Aziraphale’s attempts to make a working portal.

There was a chalk circle in the centre of the living room. It was around the same size as the one in Aziraphale’s bookshop. However, the squiggles overlaying it looked as though Hieronymus Bosch had had a go. It was as though Aziraphale had tried to duplicate his old portal, and then rotated five degrees and done the same again, laying copies on copies until the pattern that arose could make a physicist’s brain dribble out of their ears.

Crowley’s contribution to the endeavour was about twenty espresso cups filled with congealed liquids[3] that had been undrinkable when they were fresh, littered around the room.

He glumly handed the latest one to Aziraphale. Aziraphale accepted it, eyes wide and slightly mad. He raised it to his lips, reconsidered, looked into it, raised it to his lips again, smelled it, and put it down beside the last one. Crowley, for want of anything else to do, started collecting them all up. He’d stack them in the kitchen. Zadkiel had made them a kitchen, although it didn’t include a sink. Washing up had never been a thing that happened to either of them before. Crockery just got summoned from the aether and banished again when it was dirty.

Aziraphale scrubbed more chalk dust into his hair. He made a noise best described as that of a distressed penguin.

“I’m sure these runes are wrong,” he moaned.

Crowley risked a peek over his shoulder. “Which ones?” he hazarded.

“Who even knows. This is hopeless. I’m making this up as I go along and then filling in the gaps with nonsense. We’ll be lucky to end up in the right solar system.”

Crowley carefully avoided saying anything unhelpful about how some other solar systems were a bit of alright, really. He sat down beside Aziraphale.

“Maybe we should just get it as good as you think you’re going to and test it out.”

“You know we could teleport into a volcano on Jupiter, don’t you?”

“So we’ll climb back out and make another portal on Jupiter. At least it’s closer.”

Aziraphale tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes.

“You know what’s really eating away at me? Not getting a proper look at that book. I’ve never ignored a book before. It was a terrible time to start.”

“A book of prophecy’d be useful right about now,” Crowley admitted.

“I’m sure that young lady back in the Bentley mentioned an Agnes. She can’t have meant…”

Aziraphale trailed off. The prospect that his personal holy grail was within two feet of him for the entire day without him noticing was a thought too excruciating to contemplate.

He gasped, rummaged in his trouser pocket, and pulled out a tiny, charred scrap of paper.

“I forgot about this until now! Look, Crowley! This blew out of the book.”

Crowley scooted over. They both read it.

When alle is fayed and all is done, ye must choofe your faces wisely, for soon enouff ye will be playing with fyre.

“That’s cheery,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale mouthed ‘choose your faces’ several times in a row. His face crumpled. Crowley patted him on the arm.

“Were you hoping it was a portal diagram?”

“Slightly,” Aziraphale confessed.

“It’s good news, in my opinion. If you think about it. We must get through this crisis in order to end up in, er. Another crisis.”

“Unless this isn’t about us at all.”

“Must be.”

Crowley had no hard evidence for this. It would just be really irritating to him, personally, if the one useful thing they’d turned up in the last two days wasn’t even anything to do with them.

“I reckon we should test the portal,” he said.

Aziraphale tossed down the chalk. “Fine. Why not. I’m going cross-eyed staring at the blasted thing.”

They got to their feet, wincing as joints popped. They’d acquired a few middle-aged human traits by accident over the years.

A quick dance and a fusion later, Zadkiel snapped his fingers for candles. They floated into place around the circle and lit themselves. He sat back down, cross-legged, and put his hands together in prayer. It gave his demon half a little headache, but it was ignorable.

He reached out to Her with a question and waited for Her answer.

Like a house with faulty wiring, the portal began, very faintly, to flicker.

Zadkiel prayed with all his might. He screwed his eyes tightly shut and reached into himself, offering himself up. There was something here, he just had to find it.

The portal blipped on, briefly.

A little smoke fart went up in the middle. All the candles blew out, emitting an unpleasant smell.

Zadkiel sat perfectly still. His cheek twitched.

“Fuuuu -”

He split apart.

“- ck!” Aziraphale remained sprawled on the floor. He looked on the verge of tears.

Crowley pulled himself into a seated position. He poked Aziraphale in the side.

“I didn’t think that was a bad start.”

“Yes, clearly we’re in two minds about it,” Aziraphale snapped.

Crowley withdrew his hand. He felt a little stupid. Bit hurt, too.

“I’m a pathetic excuse for an angel,” Aziraphale almost whispered.

“Hey!” Crowley felt, ridiculously, offended on Aziraphale’s behalf.

“It’s true. She made me to love humanity, and I abandoned them.”

Well. That. Crowley’s mouth opened, then closed.

“But She abandoned them too!” Aziraphale pushed himself upright. He looked anguished. “What kind of loving Creator would do that?”

“Er,” Crowley said.

He’d personally grappled with questions like these millennia ago, when he was young and angry - angrier - and arrived at the vague sense that he’d drive himself mad trying to understand some people, so he might as well just get on with things. He wasn’t sure how to handle Aziraphale suddenly plunging into the beginning of what was, for Crowley, a lifetime’s worth of existential angst.

“And I don’t even have time for a crisis of faith right now! This is all my fault. This entire scatter-brained plan was my idea. All I’ve done is strand us light-years from home in the middle of nowhere. I thought I was being so clever, Crowley. And daring, to turn my back on Heaven and flee into the night. But I should never have turned my back on Earth. It’s unforgivable.”

“That’s my line,” Crowley joked, feebly.

A tear rolled down Aziraphale’s face. Crowley pressed close and kissed his temple. He had no idea what to say. Scraps of the wrong words tumbled across his brain, but nothing at all that was helpful.

He had to say something, though. No matter how badly it went. He drew a breath.

“OK, so we’ve both been massive cowardly idiots, that’s pretty obvious.”

“That’s incredibly non-reassuring,” Aziraphale hiccupped.

“But it doesn’t matter. You know what we need?”

Decades of pop culture flashed before his eyes. Oh, yes. He could do this.

“A redemption arc.”

Aziraphale looked up. On the plus side, he was no longer crying. On the other, he looked like he might vomit a tiny bit.

“Crowley, please tell me that isn’t a cinematographic reference?”

Crowley held up a hand. “Hear me out. We’ve both been incredible idiots and cowards. True enough. But you know what I’ve learned from humanity? If you show up late after messing everything up, give a speech that’s mostly about yourself, and save the day, everyone will forget the stupid, selfish stuff you did until that point. People have short memories. It’s the worst, best thing about them. You can be a flaming shit ninety percent of the time and turn it around at the last minute, and it only makes them like you more. But.”

He looked into Aziraphale’s eyes. This was the important part.

“You do have to actually save the day. Otherwise you look like an arsehole. So just focus on that. If we pull that off, we’ll be heroes, no matter how often we ran away and put ourselves first and let everyone down.”

Nailed it.

Aziraphale stared at him, mouth ajar.

“Crowley, that was the worst speech I have ever heard in my life. I actually feel worse now.”

Crowley’s confidence wavered. He pulled it back up by the fingernails. Stick the landing. He could do it.

“No, angel. My point is… people are forgiving. They’ll forgive you even when you can’t forgive yourself. That’s… the thing, isn’t it? Grace? Humans have it. You’ll never find it in Heaven, we both know that. You’re right - it was another thing entirely to abandon Earth. So let’s make up for it. I know you can get us back there. And we’ll save them all, together. And if you still want to beat yourself up, I won’t let you. We are on the same side. And you may be an idiot, but you’re also the cleverest person I know. So. Be clever.”

A faraway look appeared in Aziraphale’s eyes.

Aha. Crowley tried not to lean forward expectantly.

“I just thought…” Aziraphale said. He sounded like a man basking in a sudden epiphany.

Crowley held his breath.

“...You obviously learned to write motivational speeches in Hell.”

OK. Fine. He wasn’t as moved as Crowley might have hoped. Crowley was willing not to mind, so long as they got a plan out of it.

“She said, playing with fyre…” Aziraphale read the scrap of paper again. “Could she have meant hellfire?”

Crowley frowned. “I don’t know how to make a portal to Hell either, if that’s what you’re -”

“What would happen if our sides summoned us back?”

Crowley blinked. “Kill us on sight, presumably?”

“Well.” Aziraphale looked disconcertingly blithe. “We could always cross that bridge when we came to it.”

So far, Crowley didn’t love where this was going, but he held his tongue. Aziraphale stood up and paced.

“We can’t make a portal from here to Earth, that’s a total dead end. But I can get to Earth from Heaven. And you could get back to Earth if you were in Hell. It’s as easy as stepping on the lift. All we need to do… is get on their radar. Perform a miracle as ourselves, unfused. They’ll see someone dallying around in space instead of preparing for Armageddon and summon us back.”

“And kill us on sight.”

“It’s mad enough to work!”

“I’m not sure about this -”

“We’re supposed to choose our faces wisely. She wrote us a clue… she means us to outfox them.”

He had a point. Crowley took the slip of paper from him and read it again.

“OK. I trust you. Let’s puzzle this out.”

~*~

An angel and demon faced each other over a scuffed chalk circle.

They had made their preparations. If things went according to plan, they would see each other again on Earth. If not… then this was goodbye.

Aziraphale leaned in and straightened Crowley’s tie. They exchanged smiles. Nothing that needed saying had gone unsaid.

“See you on the other side.”

They snapped their fingers.

Crowley made a shower of sparks. Aziraphale, a bunch of party balloons.

There was a pause, long enough for a pair of beleaguered actuaries to go, “hang on”.

Twin thunderclaps rang out.

Both of them were sucked into the air and vanished.

---

[1] None. None of Crowley’s appliances ran on electricity. None of them were even plugged in. Crowley didn’t understand this, however, so he mistakenly believed his coffee maker churned through factory-level quantities of electricity. It gave him a warm glow as he sipped his morning cappuccino.

[2] For once, not a compliment.

[3] And some solids.

(Link to next part)

[redvsvblue]

Paint and Metal and Everything in Between (1/4)

Uh...so...there was one scene I wanted to write but it needs build up, so...this happened. Uh. Here’s some Jeremwood set in the FAHC AU. There’s a NSFW scene. I’ll crosspost it on AO3 when I clean it up a bit. 

(Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, general tag) 

Jeremy's running down backstreet alleys with Michael, a cash-heavy duffle slung over his back and his legs protesting with every corner – Michael's glancing back at him and laughing gleefully and the sirens only get louder, ringing around in the narrow alleyways.

“What's the plan?!” Jeremy shouts, smiling despite the fact that the cops already pinned down Michael's escape car and now they're running for their lives in the worst part of Los Santos.

“Don't worry, I called backup!” Michael yells, and Jeremy wonders what it'll be now. He hasn't spent much time with the FAHC yet but he's already been treated to one of Gavin's dizzying chopper rides. He hopes it's not that, but some part of him has already resigned itself to climbing a hook.

They burst out into an open street and Jeremy immediately scans for cops and flinches at the car that squeals around the corner, low-riding and black and zooming up to them before braking sharply. Michael grins and yanks open the back door, squeezing in with duffle and all and ushering Jeremy in as the engine revs and the car speeds off again, the door slamming shut with the force, barely missing Jeremy's fingers.

Lights flash behind them and Michael laughs loudly as he retrieves an SMG from his footwell – Jeremy kicks his duffle down and looks up into the rearview mirror to see – oh shit – the Vagabond staring back at him, maskless and painted ghoulishly, grinning almost manically as he swerves around another corner.

“Hey!” The Vagabond says, meeting Jeremy's eyes in the mirror.

“Lil J, this is V, V, Lil J,” Michael says before smashing out a window with the butt of the SMG, twisting to shoot behind them.

“Aw, you didn't have to break it,” the Vagabond complains, accelerating through a red light and flipping off the honking horns.

“This was our backup?!” Jeremy shouts, the new speed slamming him against the seat and he scrabbles wildly for a grip. He's never really met the Vagabond, let alone talked to him – the Vagabond was busy on a job when Jeremy joined, and he supposes this is now their first official meeting and boy what a fucking first meeting.

“It's the best backup!” Michael yells back, crouching into the car to reload.

“Gun's under your feet!” The Vagabond calls, spinning the car into a sharp U-turn that makes Jeremy's head whirl but he gropes underneath for the gun anyway, pulling out a heavy carbine and fumbling for the extra clips sliding around beside it.

As he straightens again the back window shatters, glass spraying all over the inside of the car and Michael just offers Jeremy a wild grin and turns to shoot out the back. Jeremy snaps back the slide and turns to do the same, aiming for wheels and windshields as the Vagabond races down one-way streets the wrong way, nearly sending them flying when he zooms over speed bumps. Bullets hail over the roof of the car and bounce off harmlessly – Jeremy snaps in a new clip and empties it into a cop car engine as they drive into a tunnel. It explodes in a thunderous crash boom and he sees the cops diving out of it as it flips, blocking the path of its friends.

“Nice one!” Michael yells, ducking back down to grab grenades from fucking somewhere, Jeremy doesn't know, he's dizzy and they're going really fucking fast and next thing he knows they're on a bridge, dashing around civilian traffic.

A helicopter whirs above them and starts shooting – Michael and Jeremy both tuck back in, Jeremy taking the moment to gulp in huge breaths while the Vagabond navigates them off the bridge and into shitty back roads.

“Get the chopper!” The Vagabond shouts, and Michael and Jeremy pop out to do just that, pummelling it with bullets until they hit a blade and it starts going down. Parachutes drop from it and Michael shoots those, too, laughing when they rip and start twirling in sharp circles.

The sirens fade a little, the cops seeming to have given up on them, and the Vagabond slows down to only twenty above the speed limit, driving out of the shitty bit onto the coastside motorway, slotting in behind a fast white Infernus.

“We're clear,” Michael says, slumping back in his seat and returning the grenades back into the bag they came out of. Jeremy sighs and drops his carbine on his lap, brushing glass off of his arms and out of his clothes.

Michael reaches over to slap his arm and gives him a wide grin while fist-bumping him. Jeremy laughs a little hysterically and glances up at the mirror to see the Vagabond looking at him.

“How much'd you get?” The Vagabond asks, glancing over to Michael.

“Aw man, at least fifty,” Michael says, his gaze dropping to the bags.

“Fifty G?” The Vagabond raises an eyebrow and overtakes the Infernus. “That's pretty good.”

“Yeah, pretty good take,” Michael agrees, “wouldn't you say, Lil J?”

“What? Oh, yeah,” Jeremy pants, his hands trembling a little from adrenaline.

“I think you wore him out,” Michael teases, leaning forward.

“What a shame,” the Vagabond replies with a smirk, lifting his eyes to Jeremy in the mirror.

“Fuck you,” Jeremy says, grinning at their laughter. “I'm perfectly fine.”

“Sure,” Michael says. “Where we goin', V?”

“Well, Hookies is up here,” the Vagabond says, flicking on his headlights as the sky darkens around them. “Heard they got new owners. Cleaned the place up a bit. Wanna check it out?”

“Hell yeah. Lil J, you in?”

“Can I even be out?”

Michael and the Vagabond laugh again.

-- 

It turns out Hookies is a great place now, and it's got these fucking amazing little vodka shots that Jeremy's had way too many of and a home-brewed moonshine that's fucking delicious.

They've claimed a table outside, plopping down with their cold drinks and numerous glasses and talking shit in the stagnant Los Santos heat, their loud arguments lost in the din of the outside crowd. Michael often steals the Vagabond's Diet Coke for a chaser – V doesn't drink, that's why it's great to go out with him, Michael had slurred, looping an arm around Jeremy's shoulders, designated driver, and the Vagabond had merely cocked an eyebrow and replied, who said I'm taking you home? - and even with the face paint on he's still easygoing, thumping Jeremy on the back when he chokes and sliding napkins over to Michael when he spills moonshine on the table.

It's a fucking great time and Jeremy's drunk enough the lights are starting to blur, and when Michael finishes his latest bottle of moonshine the Vagabond decides to usher them out. He holds tight to Jeremy's arm and Michael stumbles along beside Jeremy, still half draped over him and chattering about something to do with the stars and Jeremy laughs at his slurred insults, the Vagabond's good-natured chuckle echoing quietly beside him.

“Oh god, please – please don't drive as fast as you did before,” Jeremy asks when the Vagabond's bundling them into the car, Michael already sprawled in the backseat and Jeremy about to lift a leg to get in.

“Don't worry, I won't,” the Vagabond says with an amused quirk of his lips. “I don't want my seats stained.”

“Thanks man,” Jeremy slurs, patting the Vagabond on the chest before getting in – the door shuts gently behind him and he's starting up another conversation with Michael as the Vagabond slides into the driver's seat and turns on the engine.

True to his word, the Vagabond drives at the speed limit, keeping his corners smooth and his lane changing seamless, and Jeremy internally thanks him as he presses his cheek to the cool glass, idly watching his breath steam up against it.

-- 

“I bet we could, y'know, mould it around his face,” Gavin says, gesturing vaguely to his own face as Michael stares at him.

“Sure man,” Michael says with a laugh, shaking his head. “I mean, if he's up for it.”

“What – What are we doin', again?” Jeremy asks, resting his elbows on his knees to lean forward and look around Michael to Gavin.

“Geoff's got a bunch of silly string shit,” Gavin says, “and it – it hardens after a while, don't it? So I figure we could make a – a mould of your face.”

“Why me?” Jeremy asks.

“'Cause you're new,” Gavin says with a shrug. Michael cackles and presses his hand to his chest.

“Yeah, 'cause you're new,” he giggles, mocking Gavin, “it's an induction ritual.”

“An in-in what what? Induction?” Jeremy asks – okay, he's had a little moonshine, he's not exactly straight-faced sober right now. Some words are hard. Michael breaks into fresh giggles – he's been hitting the moonshine, too, and Gavin laughs loudly.

“Can you imagine if we got Ry to do that?” He exclaims, laughing again at the thought.

“Ry?” Jeremy asks, puzzled. “Who's Ry?”

“Ryan,” Gavin says, and furrows his brow. “V.”

“Shut up,” Michael mutters, slapping Gavin's arm. “He doesn't know his name yet.”

“It's okay, I won't – I won't tell 'im,” Jeremy promises, patting Michael's knee. “It's our secret.”

“Yeah, okay, our secret,” Michael says, and then they get back to the silly string matter.

-- 

Jeremy's walking around with straws in his mouth and disgusting rubber on his face, holding his hands out in front of him like Marco Polo with Michael guiding him, both him and Gavin snickering behind him.

“Here, stay a second,” Michael says, leaving him somewhere as his hands slip away. Jeremy waits a few minutes and then there's a noise beside him and he whirls around, his arms knocking solidly into someone's ribs and he stumbles back, grunting through the straws.

He nearly trips over his own feet but a hand lands on his lower back, urging him back upright and Jeremy sighs in relief. The hand doesn't leave, warm and broad against his spine, and Jeremy ignores the drunken shiver that runs up him.

“What're you up to?” Someone asks – the Vagabond, Jeremy realises after a moment, definitely a smile in his voice. He tries to speak through the straws and fails, but the Vagabond laughs anyway.

“Michael and Gavin?” He asks, and Jeremy nods. The Vagabond hums in acknowledgement and Jeremy tries to ask another question through the plastic. Thankfully, the Vagabond seems to understand him.

“Where are you? You're in the kitchen,” the Vagabond – Ryan, Jeremy remembers suddenly, his name is Ryan – says. “Right in front of the fridge, actually.”

Jeremy makes a relieved noise and Ryan chuckles again, curling more of his arm around Jeremy's back to hold him steady and that's absolutely not why Jeremy's suddenly sweating under his rubbery mask.

He hears Michael and Gavin returning, laughing madly about something, and Ryan gives him over to Michael's hands. Jeremy's a little disappointed when Ryan's fingers leave but doesn't let it show, instead turning towards Gavin's voice – he smacks him in the face with the straws by the sound of it and the rest of them break into a chorus of laughter.

“Jeremy!” Gavin exclaims, batting lightly at the straws. Jeremy snorts and the sound sends Michael into more cackling, his hands squeezing Jeremy's waist.

“Don't hurt him too much,” Ryan says. “We still need him.”

“We'll try,” Michael says, and starts to steer Jeremy in another direction. “I can't promise for Gavin, though!”

“Michael!”

-- 

Jeremy ends up hunkered down in a warehouse with Ryan, both of them sitting on the floor leaning up against crates as the comms crackle in their ears. There's a deal going down in the next building over, and they're simply there as backup in case it screws up, but it seems to be going smoothly so far.

Ryan idles plays with the slide of his pistol, snapping it back and running his hand over the barrel in a very distracting manner. Jeremy keeps glancing over at him, only a couple metres away, doused in shadow.

“I thought you always wore a mask,” Jeremy says. Ryan 'hm?'s and looks up at him.

“Police footage. You're always wearing the mask,” Jeremy explains, and Ryan glances back down at his pistol.

“I wear it,” he says.

“Yeah, but, like, I thought you wore it all the time.”

Ryan shrugs and brings a knee up to rest his elbow on it, letting the pistol lay on his thigh.

“The paint's easier,” he says. “Doesn't get as hot.”

“I thought you were famous,” Jeremy says. “Aren't you, like, wanted in five states?”

“Seven,” Ryan corrects, tossing the pistol up and flipping it cleanly in mid-air. “And not anymore. Gavin cleared my rap sheets.”

“Huh.” Jeremy leans his head back against the crate and looks up at the dusty rafters. “Why doesn't he do that for all of us?”

“We keep getting new ones,” Ryan replies. “No point in wiping them all the time.”

“But you're special?” Jeremy teases.

Ryan glances at him and then back to the pistol. He doesn't answer, and Jeremy lets the subject drop. He's sure Ryan has a good reason.

-- 

“Hey, V, pass the charges,” Jeremy says, holding out a hand and waiting for something to drop into it while he wires up C4 with the other. Ryan hesitates and Jeremy glances up, making grabby fingers with his hand.

“V?” He asks, and Ryan meets his eyes, his paint especially eerie in the faint yellow lighting of the docks.

“Ryan,” he says, and Jeremy pretends not to understand why he's saying that.

“Call me Ryan,” Ryan continues, carefully pressing a detonation charge into Jeremy's hand.

“Okay. Ryan,” Jeremy says, testing the name out on his tongue and smiling at him. Ryan smiles back a touch shyly and Jeremy looks away before he can start to flush.

The drug ship goes up in a big, beautiful explosion and Jeremy can't help but notice how nice the reflection looks in Ryan's eyes, and then the nervous twitch of Ryan's lips when he glances down at Jeremy and there's a tense, loaded moment before sirens rise from the city and they have to go.

-- 

Ryan's arm curls around Jeremy's shoulder moments before he slams them to the floor, half-covering Jeremy's body with his own as shooting breaks out across the bar – opposite them Jack grabs a handful of Gavin's shirt and hauls him down to the floor with her and they all cower as bullets tear through the wooden counter.

For once it's a shootout that's nothing to do with them, but it would still probably be pretty fucking wise for them to scram.

“Fire door,” Ryan whispers into Jeremy's ear, his chest pressed to Jeremy's shoulder blades. Jeremy nods and looks up at Gavin, who jerks his head towards the fire exit as well and together they all make a silent agreement to head for it. Ryan slides his hand down the back of Jeremy's jeans and pulls out his gun – Jeremy would complain but the brush of Ryan's knuckles against his lower back makes him shudder and Ryan definitely felt that.

Jack takes out her own gun and nods at Ryan and suddenly Ryan's hauling Jeremy up by the back of his collar as Jack does the same with Gavin, pushing them both in the direction of the fire exit as they stand and shoot back.

Jeremy kicks open the door and Gavin spills out behind him, helping him hold it open as Jack and Ryan twist to sprint out, bullets flying over their heads. They stumble into the sand and the door shuts heavy behind them, the small glass window shattering in a shower of shards.

Gavin pulls on Jeremy's sleeve and Jeremy follows him down to the shore, all four of them running along the waves – behind them Jack and Ryan laugh breathlessly about something, and when Jeremy glances back he sees a smear of blood on Ryan's palm and more on the hem of Jack's shorts, but neither of them seems seriously hurt.

They all burst into the beach car park and Jack immediately leads them to the motorbike bay, shooting off the metal chain locking it to a stand and hotwiring it as Jeremy does the same with another bike.

A cop car races by on the motorway and on instinct Jeremy ducks, but then he realises it's going for the bar, not them, and he quickly swings a leg over the bike and starts it up. Jack does the same and beyond her Gavin straddles another bike, saluting them with two fingers before revving up and swerving away.

“I'll go make sure he doesn't crash,” Jack says with a roll of her eyes, hunching over and gunning her engine to catch up to Gavin.

Just as Jeremy gets the bike in gear Ryan gets on behind him, pressed up hot to his back with his chin on Jeremy's shoulder as he tucks the gun back into Jeremy's jeans. His fingers linger around Jeremy's lower back again and he chuckles quietly at Jeremy's sharp inhale.

“Your place?” He asks, placing his hands on Jeremy's hips and squeezing slowly. Jeremy shivers at the low, rumbling pitch of Ryan's voice, deep and intimate against the sensitive skin of his ear.

Jeremy nods and Ryan secures himself better to Jeremy's body as Jeremy backs out, straightening the bike out before driving up to join the motorway. Ryan noses at the back of his head and Jeremy suddenly accelerates, revving up the engine and zooming onto the road amongst the streaks of car headlights. Ryan laughs breathlessly, delightedly behind him and Jeremy grins to himself.

-- 

They barely manage to get their shoes off before Ryan's manhandling Jeremy to the sofa, sitting him firmly down and sinking to his knees between Jeremy's spread legs. He smirks and Jeremy groans, leaning in for a hard kiss that Ryan gives easily, biting at Jeremy's lower lip and paint smudging bitterly over Jeremy's tongue.

Ryan breaks away and grins as he runs his hands up Jeremy's thighs, shouldering between them to dip down and press his nose and mouth to Jeremy's rapidly forming erection and god Jeremy only just resists the urge to buck up into his face. He groans and gently threads a hand into Ryan's hair – with Ryan's nod as permission Jeremy curls his fingers to grip, not pulling or pushing but definitely holding on.

The white light of the living room glints in Ryan's eyes and he backs away to unzip Jeremy, pushing open his fly and tugging him out of his briefs, slowly dragging his hand up and down with his eyes glued to Jeremy's face. Jeremy groans and twitches involuntarily in Ryan's hand, sitting up a little more to see better as Ryan flicks his thumb over the slit.

Ryan merely presses the leaking head to his lips with a smile, catching Jeremy's eyes before he opens his mouth and starts to sink down, jaw dropping open to accommodate the head. Jeremy moans and tightens his grip in Ryan's hair, panting harshly while Ryan works more into his mouth, slowly pulling up to reveal the spit-slicked length and sweep his tongue over the sensitive vein underneath. He wraps his hand more firmly around Jeremy's base and licks all the way back up to the head and goes down on him again, lips stretched wide around the girth.

Jeremy tilts his head back against the sofa as Ryan blows him, sinking down far enough to meet his fingers and humming on the slide up. With an effort, Jeremy straightens his neck again to watch, grunting encouragingly when Ryan starts bobbing, eyes closing and throat relaxing every time Jeremy pushes up against it.

“God, fuck, Ryan, your mouth,” Jeremy gasps, experimentally pulling on Ryan's hair. It earns him a pleased moan that shudders all through Jeremy and makes his toes curl in the carpet. There's still adrenaline pumping lazily through his veins, making everything more sensitive and tingly and Ryan's mouth is hot and wet around him, spit leaking down to dribble over his fingers and leaking out of the corners of his mouth.

Ryan pulls off for a breather and glances up at Jeremy while he pants, jerking him slowly and grinning at Jeremy's choked groan. He sinks back down easily, and this time when Jeremy nudges at his throat he just rises up on his knees and angles a little and then Jeremy's sliding into his throat, the sensation tearing a moan out of him. Ryan hums again and resumes his bobbing, this time letting Jeremy slip into his throat on every thrust and god, Jeremy's not going to fucking make it. Ryan's other hand drops from Jeremy's thigh and Jeremy leans forward a little to see it slip into Ryan's own jeans and that's a whole other level of hot Jeremy wasn't prepared for and he has to sink back into the cushions.

He can't see Ryan's crotch from here but just the knowledge that's he jerking himself off while blowing Jeremy is insanely arousing and Jeremy twitches in his hot throat, pulls him up a little roughly and drags him back down – Ryan lets him, goes a bit more slack so Jeremy can slowly fuck his mouth and his breath huffs out hard over Jeremy's crotch, his eyes fluttering open and locking onto Jeremy's.

Jeremy pushes into his throat again and Ryan's eyes water, shutting again as he shudders and moans thickly around Jeremy's cock. Ryan sucks harder, now, tracing up over the underside with his tongue and sealing his lips more firmly around the shaft, swallowing when Jeremy's in his throat and drooling otherwise, spit dripping down to his chin.

“Ryan, I'm – fuck, I'm close,” Jeremy pants, urgently tugging at Ryan's hair but Ryan stays down and blinks up at him and Jeremy's gone, groaning as he comes straight into Ryan's mouth. His eyes slam shut and he leans back into the sofa as he shudders, gasping out Ryan's name all the while. And Ryan fucking swallows, too, sucks noisily to do so and Jeremy's long finished when Ryan finally pulls off, muffling a moan against the slick head of Jeremy's dick and shuddering again.

“Fuck, let me – let me,” Jeremy babbles, grasping for Ryan's shoulders and leaning forward to reach down, but Ryan's already pushing his hands away, wiping his mouth and chin on his shirt and leaning up to kiss Jeremy.

“Wanna – Wanna get you off, too,” Jeremy murmurs, reaching down again but Ryan pushes him firmly back, hands on Jeremy's hips.

“Don't worry about it,” he says, and Jeremy notes that his fingers – the ones that weren't on Jeremy - are wet, shiny and slick in the light of the living room. And Ryan's flushed under him, a new laziness to his kissing and Jeremy decides to drop the matter – if Ryan doesn't want him to touch him, he won't. Although he feels a little bad about not reciprocating, and kisses him all the deeper to try and make up for it.

And after their breathing evens out, after Ryan's bitten Jeremy's lower lip to swollen and kissed him to boneless, he finally pulls away, spit-slick lips still brushing against Jeremy's. The angle he's leaning at is terrible for Jeremy's back but he can't really bring himself to care right now.

“Can I use your shower?” Ryan asks, his voice hoarse and raspy and Jeremy flushes hot all over. “Still got the bar on me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jeremy says, nodding. Ryan grins and presses another wet kiss to his mouth before backing away and pushing himself up to standing with a hand on Jeremy's knee.

“You can stay over, if you want,” Jeremy blurts out, and Ryan's eyes drop away, hesitant.

“Not – we don't – I have a guest bedroom,” Jeremy adds. “You can sleep here if – if it's too much bother to go back home.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ryan says, agrees with a small smile.

-- 

In the morning Ryan leaves him a plate of cooked breakfast and a slip of paper with a number on it – not his crew phone number, it must be his personal number – and Jeremy grins stupidly to himself and laughs even though there's no one there to hear him.

-- 

“No, use Michael's car!”

“Why mine?! You'll destroy it!”

“No I won't, boi, you can trust me!”

“Gavin you crashed my Bati yesterday.”

“No I didn't, Jack, that truck drove into me.”

“Yeah, because you were going sixty the wrong way down a one-way street.”

“Shut up, Ryan. I still say we use Michael's car.”

The crew collapses into bickering – and mostly ganging up on Gavin – and Jeremy takes a long, long drink of Red Bull while Geoff very clearly and very loudly lays out all of Gavin's recent vehicle offences, from the trashed skateboard to the dented pickup. Ryan nudges Jeremy's arm and offers him a croissant with a raised eyebrow – Jeremy gladly takes it and stuff the entire warm pastry into his mouth to make Ryan laugh.

“Use Michael's!”

“Use your own!”

“...I can't.”

“Why?”

“...it's in the shop.”

“Gavin!”

The argument devolves into petty insults and laughter and Jeremy even joins in, teaming up with Geoff and then promptly being accused by Gavin and Michael of being a complete kissass. An accusation he merely waves off with a flap of his hand and an imperious frown.

Beside him, Ryan steals two more doughnuts from the box and starts munching on them, crumbs sticking around his mouth. The paint smudges when he wipes them off but Jeremy's a little transfixed at what the fuck he just witnessed. Ryan winks at him and offers a doughnut but Jeremy declines. Ryan shrugs and takes a bite of it himself, downing it with his soda.

Jeremy glances between the quarrelling crew and to Ryan and thinks back to what statement sparked this entire debate. Very specifically, whose statement.

Yeah, we can use Gavin's car for that.

“You sneaky fuck,” he hisses, and no one hears him but Ryan, who grins smugly and stuffs more pastry into his mouth. He's polished off about seven doughnuts since he set off the crew – the sneaky fuck, this was his entire plan. He's turned the crew on themselves to steal the fucking pastry box.

Jeremy's a little impressed at the cat-burglary - as Ryan would say - and a lot horrified at how much sugar Ryan's shovelling into his mouth. Michael wasn't fucking lying when he said Ryan was a trash bin.

-- 

Jeremy scratches his chin as he looks in his fridge, wondering what the fuck to cook tonight. He hasn't got much – he should really go grocery shopping, but a Friday night isn't really the time and he doesn't want to deal with the traffic if he can wait until tomorrow.

He pulls out a bowl of peppers he cut up earlier this week and sets them on the counter, grabs the bag of potatoes in the fridge. Looks like it's salad tonight, made of whatever shit Jeremy's got left in his fridge before it goes bad.

There's a knock on his door shortly after he closes the fridge, while he's washing his hands. He dries them on the towel and doesn't bother rolling down his sleeves down before walking over to get the door, grabbing a pistol on the way and tucking it into the back of his jeans.

He opens the door to reveal Ryan, no face paint and no blood-stained clothes, and Jeremy takes a moment to absorb him, from the nice jeans to the dark purple shirt that stretches over his shoulders to the smart silver watch on his left wrist – Jeremy recognises that from the jewellery store they robbed last week.

“Hey,” Jeremy says, stepping back a little to invite Ryan in. Instead, Ryan just steps up and leans against the doorframe, raking his eyes over Jeremy, who suddenly feels a little underdressed in baggy jeans and a faded Henley.

“Hey,” Ryan replies, crossing his arms over his chest. Jeremy has to force himself not to stare at all the attractive skin his rolled-up sleeves reveal. “You busy?”

“Busy doin' nothing,” Jeremy says. “Why?”

“Do you want to go for dinner?” Ryan asks, a little rushed.

“Dinner?��

“Yeah. Like – a date,” Ryan says, quieter this time, and Jeremy flounders for his composure. Ryan's smile falters and Jeremy starts nodding, unable to find the words quite yet but he definitely wants to say yes – he just doesn't want to sound like a total dork while doing so.

“I'd love to,” he settles on, grinning wide when Ryan's face lights up. “Are you – now?”

“Well, yeah,” Ryan says with a shrug. “Don't – Don't have to do it now, but - “

“No, no, now is fine,” Jeremy says, steps back more to invite Ryan in with a gesture. “Let me get changed?”

Ryan nods and lets Jeremy lead him to the sofa to wait – the same sofa he blew Jeremy on not four weeks ago, and the memory burns hot in Jeremy's mind. Since then they haven't done anything else, but they've started texting on a near daily basis, a little flirting but mostly just friendly chatting, and in real life there's been nothing more than faintly suggestive touches or glances. It's been nice, not stumbling headfirst into each other, as much as Jeremy is all for that method when it comes to Ryan, but he also likes being friends with the guy, as close to him as he is to Michael and Gavin now.

Jeremy opens his closet and almost immediately groans because he has nothing that would look good on him as Ryan's clothes do on him. Fuck Ryan and his stunning good looks. And body. And basically everything.

He guesses that Ryan's going for a slightly fancier place, picks out his nicest jeans and a plain blue button-down, shrugs a thin leather jacket on over it because that's how fancy he can get with what he has – he almost regrets not owning a suit, and then swiftly remembers he hates suits and plucks his sunglasses off the table even though it's night.

When he emerges into the living room, Ryan's on his phone, tapping away at something on it and pulling a little at his collar – Jeremy makes his footsteps louder and Ryan looks up, gasps softly at what he sees.

“You look – great,” he says, standing up and pocketing his phone in one move.

“Shut up, just 'cause you look like a GQ model,” Jeremy mumbles, smiling anyway as he shoves on his boots. Ryan flushes faintly at the compliment and Jeremy quickly goes to wash his hands.

“I still think you look amazing,” Ryan says when Jeremy returns to his side. Jeremy laughs and Ryan leans down to kiss him, his fingers curling around Jeremy's leather-clad shoulder and a restrained eagerness to his movements. Jeremy sighs and rests a hand on Ryan's hip, places the other over Ryan's scruffy jaw to tilt him a little.

“Wanted to do that for weeks,” Ryan says when he pulls away, panting quietly and his cheeks tinged pink.

“Well, why didn't you?” Jeremy asks, as if he hasn't had the same impulse and probably the same reason for repressing it.

“I don't think Geoff would take kindly to me interrupting meetings like that,” Ryan whispers, pressing another kiss to Jeremy's open mouth.

“Eh, fuck Geoff,” Jeremy says, and their laughter breaks them apart.

“Come on, I've got reservations,” Ryan says, pulling away and linking a hand with Jeremy's to lead him out. Jeremy revels in the thrill that sends up him and squeezes Ryan's hand simply because he can. Ryan squeezes back and Jeremy grins.

-- 

The restaurant is on Vespucci and their table is a floor above ground – Ryan deals with the talking while Jeremy admires the grand chandelier sparkling over the tables. Moments later he's whisked away, guided gently to the stairs by Ryan's hand on his back and they follow the waitress to the balcony.

There's heat lamps posted among the tables, paired with bright lights that glitter and glint off of jewellery and silverware. The clinking of champagne glasses accompanies the soft chattering around them, chimes of laughter mixed in with the sound.

Their table is tucked into the corner of the balcony, a clean white tablecloth draped over it with a delicate vase of pink flowers and a small candle in the middle. The waitress seats them with the menus and leaves them to decide with a polite smile.

“This place is fucking fancy,” Jeremy whispers, glancing up at Ryan. Ryan moves the flowers and the candle to the side so they can see each other, leaning in on his elbows as he peruses the menu.

“It also has the best burgers this side of the tracks,” Ryan murmurs, looking up at Jeremy. “We can leave if you want.”

“No – no, Ryan, I don't want to leave.” Jeremy hesitantly reaches out to place his hand on Ryan's and Ryan smiles, flips his hand to hold Jeremy's. “Best burgers?”

“That being said,” Ryan says, idly flipping the menu. “The desserts leave something to be desired.”

“We're on Seventh, right?” Jeremy asks. Ryan nods. “I know a gelato place nearby, we can get something there.”

Ryan smiles and squeezes his hand and Jeremy orders the cheeseburger and they steal each other's chips. It's amazing.

[kidolegend]

Renewals - A Prompto Argentum Fic (Part 3)

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Hello all! I’ve returned--sooner than expected--with a new chapter of Renewals!! As always, any comments, reblogs, moral support, constructive criticism, or just some hellos are always appreciated~

Tagging those that have left such nice feedback or expressed interest! If you do NOT want to be tagged in my work, please feel free to let me know--I won’t be mad or anything, I just don’t wanna bother you will all this LOL... @blindbae @joioliviapolaroid @xnoctits @themissimmortal @poisonous-panda @insomniascure @thegoddesseos @crossedquills

The Start of a Plan

Prompto, Ignis, and Gladio split up the next morning--or what would have been morning, had the sun still been visible--to take on their objectives. It was a lonely chocobo ride back towards Insomnia, but Prompto was resolved to tackle the garrison on his own. He passed a few hordes of daemons, but thankfully wasn’t chased far--even the fastest daemons were no match for a chocobo.

“It’s only been a few weeks and everything’s already so bad…” Prompto mumbled, half to himself and half to his pale blue steed who--while not quite understanding--crooned softly in response.

He jumped as his cell phone vibrated, but switched the chocobo reins to one hand and continued racing across the dirt roads as he answered. “Yyee-hello?”

“Prompto.”

“Heya, Iggy!” Prompto’s cheery greeting seemed too loud in the dark desert area, so he lowered his voice. “What’s up?”

“We’ve just reached Old Lestallum. Gladio’s getting us something to eat and we will then be heading on to the garrison to conduct surveillance of the area.”

“Gotcha. I just passed Longwythe, so I’ll probably be in Hammerhead before noon.”

There was a brief pause. “Prompto, are you sure about this? You can still turn back or wait for us in Hammerhead…”

Prompto shook his head, even though he knew it was a pointless gesture over the phone. “I can handle this. A couple magitek armors and maybe an airship… No big deal. I’ve already got a vague idea of what I’m gonna do, so don’t worry about me.”

“...If you say so.” Ignis replied after another silence. Prompto heard a deeper voice in the background. “Ah, Gladio is back with the food… Hmm, cup noodles, how predictable.”

The gunner laughed, giving the reins in his hand a slight tug to keep his chocobo on the main road. “Well, it’s better than nothing.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Ignis sighed. “I’ll be going, then.”

“Right, and uh, hey, Ignis?”

“Yes?”

“I won’t let you guys down!”

He couldn’t have been sure, but he could almost hear the smile behind Ignis’ voice. “I know you won’t. Take care.”

 “All right, buddy… I’ve left enough food for a few days here for you, but don’t go eating it all at once!” It hadn’t taken long for Prompto to set up and rest at Brackham Haven, the campsite east of the garrison. He was tethering his chocobo, making sure the poor bird couldn’t easily wander into daemon territory, but keeping the ties loose enough to pull free from in case he didn’t return. “I should be back within a day or so, but if not…”

He was patting the pastel bird absentmindedly and it nudged his face, trilling affectionately into his ear. Prompto laughed, ducking away. “All right, all right! I promise I’ll be back. Just… keep watch over my stuff, okay? I’m not gonna need all of it at the base.”

The chocobo cocked its pale blue head at him blinked. The gunner nodded, deciding the bird’s gesture was close enough to an affirmation. “Well, I guess I’ll be off…” He murmured, turning towards the the nearby garrison and hitching his daypack and water canteen higher on his shoulder.

It wasn’t a particularly large base, but the high walls and imposing structure still sent a chill up Prompto’s spine. He took a deep breath, steeling himself as he jumped off the haven’s runestone and headed for the watch tower just outside the base. “Here we go…”

Reaching the tower had been simple enough--Prompto had gotten there before any infantrymen could be assigned to the outside guard and had managed to avoid the daemons’ attention by keeping the light clipped to his lapel under strict control. He was nervous, but extremely glad to avoid any early conflict that could interfere with his surveillance.

“First off…” Prompto took out a thin spool of electrical wire and began looping it around the entrance to the stairs. It wouldn’t do him any good to get ambushed at the top of the watchtower--while he would survive the jump, he knew he wouldn’t be able to avoid injuring his legs and probably wouldn’t be able to run far if he did. He secured the wire so it criss-crossed along the railing, making sure it was pulled taut before knotting it and cutting the end with his pocket knife.

“I’d like to see an MT get around that,” He stepped back to admire his handiwork, imagining one of the troopers unwittingly tangle itself in the wire and short itself out. Prompto was confident that if--by some chance--an MT managed to sneak past his watch and attempt to ascend the watchtower, he would have plenty of warning. “All rightie, phase one, complete!”

He hopped over his trap and headed up the stairs, keeping a low profile and watching the entrance to the base warily. It wasn’t until he got to the top that he spotted the activity within the garrison--infantrymen circling the perimeter of a large, makeshift warehouse in the center of the facility. There were freight containers, giant spools of industrial cables, small shacks containing various control panels, and a couple of watchtowers identical to his own that dotted the fortress--all ideal hiding spots and vantage points--and inside the main warehouse he could just make out several large magitek armors and a couple of heavy-duty turrets.

“Perfect,” He grinned at his own luck, pulling a worn notebook out of his pack and getting to work.

 It didn’t take long for Prompto to map out the visible MT’s patrol routes. He was only half-thankful that the Niflheim empire used technology over real soldiers--mechanized sets of armor were easy to control and even easier to predict.

‘Would I have been this empty if I had ended up like…’ Prompto gave his head a small shake to dispel the unpleasant--and admittedly, reoccurring--thought. “Just keep it together, Prompto…” He told himself, focusing again on marking his rough blueprint.

He glanced at his phone periodically, making sure he hadn’t missed any messages from Ignis or Gladio. He hoped that they were doing all right with their strategizing--without Ignis’ vision how could they possibly come up with a solid plan?

He sighed, trying to worry about his own strategy instead of his companions. They had both trained in combat their entire lives and they would do doubt watch each other’s back.

He was on his own.

Prompto shook his head again, a little more vigorously. No, he wasn’t going to chicken out now. Sure, it was reckless and stupid, but he had something he wanted to prove to himself. “I can do this. I will do this.” He reassured his pounding heart. “I’ve got everything set up, now all I have to do is…”

“...Take down a military stronghold.”

He exhaled loudly, plopping down and leaning against one of the old supply crates, shifting so he wasn’t immediately visible from the stairwell. He checked his phone again--he wouldn’t be getting the go-ahead from Ignis or Gladio for several more hours. He had told himself previously that he would get some sleep before launching his assault, but when he closed his eyes all he could feel was crushing self-doubt.

Looks like napping wouldn’t really be an option until he got his mind off things. “Hm. Might as well play King’s Knight in the meantime. Bet my Zell tree’s almost full...”

  Prompto wasn’t sure when he managed to fall asleep, but he snapped awake at the sound of soft footsteps. His heart leapt into his throat but he kept perfectly still and silent, his presence concealed by the crates. He knew it couldn’t have been an MT--none of them moved quietly and--given his past traumas--he could hear them approaching even in the deepest of slumbers.

So… who?

He swallowed and inched forward, craning his neck slightly so he could peek around the side of the worn containers. The figure was crouched, facing away from him and peering down at the military fortress. Prompto straightened up as best he could, still in a sleepy daze but ready to run or fight if it came to it. The kneeling figure shifted backwards on its knees towards him, keeping its eyes on the garrison. Before the drowsy blonde could figure out what to do, the figure flipped back its hood, shaking out its short, dark hair.

Prompto’s throat went dry and he made an oddly strangled noise as he suppressed the urge to shout and alert everything in a hundred-yard radius of his presence.

“Wait, N-Noct?!”

[inyri]

Equivalent Exchange (an SWTOR story): Chapter Thirteen- Ghosts

Equivalent Exchange by inyri

Fandom: Star Wars: The Old Republic Characters: Female Imperial Agent (Cipher Nine)/Theron Shan Rating: M Summary: If one wishes to gain something, one must offer something of equal value. In spycraft, it’s easy. Applying it to a relationship is another matter entirely. F!Agent/Theron Shan. (Spoilers for Shadow of Revan and Knights of the Fallen Empire.)

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Chapter Thirteen: Ghosts

She lets him stay.

She doesn’t know why- it breaks half the unspoken rules they’ve set for themselves- but later that night, at the moment when they’ve caught their breath and their heartbeats slow to normal pace, when normally whoever doesn’t belong to the place they are would get up and dress and go, she reaches out for Theron’s hand as he stands up from the bed.

“If you don’t want to,” she says, “you don’t have to leave.”

He stops, turning back toward her as her fingers loop around his wrist. “You know I can’t say no to you, but it’s late and I leave for Coruscant at six. I need to sleep.”

“I still don’t understand why you have to meet in person. If you get caught-”

“I won’t get caught.”

“You’d better not.” She’s been worried about it ever since he first proposed the trip, especially since he’s been strangely vague about the entire thing- support for the Alderaan shield generator mission, he said, which doesn’t make sense at all. He wouldn’t say more, even when she pressed, which wasn’t like him. “That wasn’t what I meant, though. Just…” She looks up at him. “If you’d rather not brave the corridor there’s a perfectly serviceable bed here. For sleeping in.”

He doesn’t move. In the half-light of her quarters- she isn’t shy, but industrial-grade lighting isn’t flattering to anyone- his face is hidden in shadow; she can’t read his expression. Letting go of him, she rolls from her stomach to her side and pushes the pillow, marred with lipstick smudges in the precise shape of his name (they still have to be quiet here and, spurred to inventiveness by the game and the conversation that followed, tonight he’d made that very difficult indeed) away from her toward the headboard.

“But if you’d rather-”

Theron sits back down, nudging her toward the center of the bed with the pressure of his weight against hers. “Better move over, then. I thought you preferred the left side.”

She curls around him, ringing the narrow of his waist with her own body, as he reaches for the top edge of the blanket. “I do, usually, but I can’t sleep on my left at the moment. Still a bit tender.”

“I keep forgetting about that, sorry.” Bedclothes half drawn back, he stops for a moment, his hand traces the writing on her side; the callus of his trigger finger catching lightly on her healing skin. “It suits you. Didn’t know Ciphers went in for tattoos.”

“We don’t- not permanent ones, at any rate. Too easy an identifier. I would have gotten hauled in for this, once upon a time.”

“Such a rebel.”

At that, she shoots him a look of mock horror; he grins.

“Too far?”

She smirks, uncoiling, and stretches. “Let me up, hm? I need the ‘fresher before I pass out. Shall I leave you out a toothbrush?”

(Force help her, she really has gone domesticated.)

He chuckles. “You’ve got an extra?”

“The one I like only comes in sets of two.”

***

She doesn’t dream that night, but when she wakes he’s-

No, not gone. She can hear him breathing, a steady rhythm in the darkness, but she’s alone in the bed and his pillow’s gone cool. Sitting up, she scans the room as her eyes adjust.

Already dressed but for his jacket, Theron’s sitting cross-legged at the head of the stairs down to the work area; his hands rest, palms up, on his knees. His shoulders rise and fall in time with the sound of his breath. He’s-

He’s meditating.

She’s worked with enough Sith to know better than to disturb him, Force-sensitive or not. Instead she gathers the bedclothes around her body, hugs her knees to her chest and simply watches. After a while her own breathing starts to synchronize with his- in and out, in and out, a hitch after inhalation like timing a shot through a scope, relaxing in its familiarity. Minutes pass.

It’s well past five by the time he moves. His fingers curl, first, inward toward his palms before he straightens, stretching his arms overhead with an audible yawn.

“I could never get the hang of that. Always ended up falling asleep.”

“I did, too, at first. It’s easier to learn when you’re young.” Theron looks back over his shoulder, a smile ghosting at the corners of his mouth. “How long have you been awake?”

“Twenty minutes, maybe- not such a long time. I didn’t want to break your concentration.” She shrugs, wrapping the blanket tighter. “I thought meditation was a Force thing.”

For a fleeting moment, he’s somewhere far away. “It usually is. But when you do something every day for over a decade, it gets to be a habit.” Bracing himself with one hand on the floor, he pushes himself to his feet. “One of the things Master Zho insisted on- no breakfast until after cleaning and meditation were done. I gave up the fasting a long time ago, but some of it stuck. Helps clear my mind.”

“You’ve mentioned Master Zho before. He raised you?”

“He delivered me.” Theron keeps moving down the stairs, toward his belt (hanging, properly, next to the weapon rack) and his jacket (hanging, improperly, off her desk lamp). “He trained me as a Jedi. When he realized that would never happen, I don’t think he knew what to do. It- I’ll tell you the story sometime.”

She nods, watching him dress. “How old were you?”

“Thirteen.”

What would he have looked like at thirteen? Too thin, she’d bet, like the Jedi children they rounded up on Tython, all arms and legs in shapeless tunics and oversized robes. Wide dark eyes and sharp cheekbones, hair long- or clipped short, except for that silly little braid-

She smiles, despite herself, at the mental image, though she suppresses it quickly as he turns to face her again. To judge by his tone of voice, it isn’t a happy story; then again, most people in their line of work don’t have happy stories. People with happy stories, happy families- they don’t go for jobs where the average life expectancy’s on the near side of thirty.

“I’m sorry. That-”

His chrono alarm sounds; he silences it with a sigh. “Five thirty. Hold that thought until I get back, okay?”

“Be careful, Theron. I’m serious.”

“I’m always careful. But if that’s an order-” he bounds up the stairs, two at a time, and onto the edge of the bed, leans forward until his hands tangle in her hair as he kisses her- “I’ll be extra careful.”

With a few words and a touch she could drag him down, pull him into her arms and keep him there until the shuttle’s long gone; it would be a simple thing but it would be selfish, too, and the war comes first. It has to.

So she kisses him back, and then she watches him go.

***

She can smell ozone, sharp and clean, halfway down the corridor, and when she gets to the training room she nearly collides into an anxious-looking Republic scout and two apprentices all moving rapidly backward through the doorway. As she angles to pass them, a forked bolt of lightning crackles across the length of the room; she can hear the shield around one of the training dummies give way with a sharp pop, and the odor of charring duraplast mingles with the ozone as she inhales.

“I- ah, Commander, you might not-” The scout, a dark-skinned Zabrak girl with pale gray markings, reaches for her arm. “You might want to come back later, ma’am.”

“I’ll risk it.”

“Your funeral, ma’am.”

She waves them off, and the three disappear down the hall. Peering through the door, she yells in the direction of where the arc’s trajectory suggests Lana ought to be. “I’m coming in, Lana, and if you shock me to death I’m leaving Theron in charge of the Alliance.”

“Good.” The lightning stops abruptly, replaced by the low purr of an igniting saber. “I always hated titles, anyway.”

She steps further into the training hall. Normally crowded by this time of morning, the room’s entirely empty today save one very aggravated-looking Sith Lord, currently wielding a lightsaber against a trio of orb-shaped remotes. Across the way, one of the dummies smokes ominously.

“Did you want something, Commander, or are you here to gloat?” Lana’s still got her back to the center of the room, deflecting bolts back at the floating drones with each change in her blade’s angle. Her shoulders are tense, though, and her bladework uncharacteristically sloppy.

This isn’t anger. She’s seen her angry often enough to know the flavor of her rage- keen  and cool, an ice-rimed blade honed razor-sharp. This is-

This is what she’d seen during the Gravestone’s maiden flight: Lana, disarmed by Arcann’s knights, wounded, retreating to a corner of the ship to throw lightning at something until it burst into flame or she collapsed into exhaustion- anything to drive the taste of failure from her mouth. She isn’t angry, she’s brooding.  

Well, then. Past time to snap her out of it.

“Oh, stuff it, Beniko. Gloat about what? I just wanted a little practice on the wall before breakfast.” Crossing the room to the base of the exposed rock wall and pulling on her climbing gloves, she launches herself at the first ledge and starts to pull herself upward. “You know I couldn’t care less who you fuck.”

Shots fired.

The second outcropping is too high to jump to; she digs her fingertips into a crack in the rock and braces her right foot on a half-buried stone, listening for the tinny chirps of the remotes or, if she’s misjudged her mood, the sound of her own hair lit on fire by electricity. The next volley from the drones goes flying back- she can hear the impacts as she continues to climb, one handhold after the next- but when she turns to look over her shoulder Lana’s hooking her lightsaber onto her belt.

Target down.

“You certainly have a knack for vulgarity.” She’s been here for a while, clearly, face flushed and hair damp with sweat, her practice robe sticking to her back. “But it would serve me right. All my nattering on about objectivity and not letting one’s personal feelings interfere with the mission and there I go, stomping off like a sullen child. He ought to have kept his damned mouth shut.”

“I’m missing something, Lana. Force knows I’m in no place to judge- ow-” she misses a foothold and her knee skids into the wall before she hauls herself onto the topmost ledge- “and it’s not as though anyone would think less of you- besides Senya, maybe, but given her romantic history she certainly doesn’t have the high ground there. What-”

Lana folds her arms across her chest, staring up at her peevishly. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Suit yourself. You’ve been working together all this time and haven’t killed each other yet. Assuming you can keep that up, it’s business as usual.”

“I will manage, as always, but by my calculations the gossip mill will reach critical mass at eleven o’clock this morning.” Lana’s pacing, now, at the base of the wall, seven steps back and forth, still looking upward. “It’s likely to be a distraction.”

“No, it won’t.” The hanging rope’s three meters to her right, an easy jump; she walks to the far end of the ledge and turns, takes a few running steps and leaps from the edge.

Lana sighs. “I wish you’d wear a harness like a normal person. And you can’t possibly know that. Between Tora and Kaliyo-”

As the rope stops swaying she winds it around her calf and inverts herself, letting the blood rush to her head. “Kaliyo’s not a gossip, believe it or not- she’s a provocateur, but she’d rather bank her secrets and cash them out later. I doubt Tora will be talking, either. Koth threatened to throw all her tools into the garbage compactor.”

“He did what? When?”

“After you left.” She gestures, upside down, toward the door. “I was lip-reading, technically speaking, so I’m going by context, but I think you’re safe. Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to do those calculations?”

“That’s-”

She curls upward into a pike, grabs the rope again and untwists it from her leg before she releases, drops half the distance to the floor and catches hold again. The stretch on her side makes her wince as Lana reaches out; the air ripples and she feels her body start to float upward against the pull of gravity. “Let go. I’m not going to fall.”

“You have no sense of self-preservation, do you?” As she says it, though, Lana lowers her hands. “How long… hm. What time is it?”

“Quarter to seven or thereabouts.”

“About six hours.”

She slides the rest of the way to the ground. “Before or after you slept?”

Lana shrugs.

“You’ve got- what, just the quartermasters’ meeting today? I’ll take that over. You-” before the Sith can duck away she grabs her by the shoulders and turns her abruptly toward the exit- “are going to bed.”

“You’ve already got three other meetings. You can send Theron to talk to the quartermasters.”

“He left for Coruscant forty-five minutes ago, so no, I can’t. I will see you at dinner, and if I hear you’ve been out of quarters before then I will hide in the rafters and shoot sleep darts at you until you’ve got more shit sticking out of your head than an Alderaanian courtier.” She keeps moving forward until, with one last shove, they’re both back in the corridor. “Now go.”

Lana, surprisingly, does.

For her part, she shoves her gloves into her back pocket and takes the lift up to the mess hall. Today’ll be a five-cup sort of day, she thinks. At least.

***

The rest of the day passes in meetings and a stack of ops reports that badly need filing- she only needs three cups of caf, as it turns out, the near-fistfight between Hylo and Doctor Oggurobb over who’d get the last of the prototype shielding being more than enough to keep her awake for the remainder of the afternoon. (For his size, the Hutt is surprisingly spry.) By evening the reports are nearly done and she’s singing along with a cheerful Twi’leki pop song as the last few upload when, over the music, she hears a soft knock at the door.

“Door’s open.”

“I thought we were having dinner.” Lana steps across the threshold, a plastic mess tray balanced in her hands. “I waited for you.”

She’s only been working on reports for two hours, maximum. It can’t possibly be that late- and yet, somehow, her terminal insists it’s 2030. “I’m sorry. I lost track of time, I suppose, though that’s no excuse. How was dinner?”

“Gorak. Again. I swear they must have run into a flock and are trying to pass it off as rations.” Her nose wrinkled at the memory, Lana holds the tray out toward her. “I brought sandwiches. And biscuits.”

“Better than supplement bars by a long shot. Did you sleep?” She pushes the terminal screen away, studying her in its reflection; she looks better, eyes clear and hair brushed, her robes neat and unwrinkled. “We’re short-handed this week as it is without you coming apart on me.”

“I know. I slept, I promise.”

She takes the tray, sets it on the table in front of the couch as she clears her empty cups away, and gestures. “Good. Come on, then. Sit. Talk.”

When Lana starts to protest she picks up a piece of biscuit and, just as she reaches peak volume, pops it between the other woman’s parted lips.

“You’ll feel better. Trust me, nothing good ever came from pining over men.”

“I am not,” Lana says, crunching by way of punctuation, “pining. Nothing to pine over.”

She takes a bite of sandwich- some indeterminate kind of cheese, but still better than gorak for the fifth day in a row- and sits, cross-legged, on the couch. “I haven’t seen you that upset since Ziost. Even when Arcann skewered me it just pissed you off, but Koth’s got you rattled. Why?”

“I made a mistake with Koth, and then I made a second mistake trying to fix the first. I still don’t know that he’s quite forgiven me for the second.”

“After the look he gave you last night, I’m fairly sure that isn’t true. I’ve seen that look a thousand times- you could snap your fingers and have him back.”

Lana settles down beside her, pulling a pillow onto her lap and clutching at it until her knuckles blanch. “What if that isn’t what I want?”

“I’m fairly sure he knows that too, Lana. So it didn’t work out… that sort of thing happens, I hear.” She sets the sandwich back on the plate- she’s starving, honestly, now that she’s paying attention to her stomach, but it seems impolite- and turns toward her. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I- oh, damn it all. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not in the least.”

She clutches the pillow tighter. “It happened on Arron Prime. But it started on Asylum.”

***

“You have to understand,” Lana says, looking up at her, “I’d been trying to make inroads on Zakuul for the better part of a year, completely alone. Koth was doing the opposite, of course- he’d deserted after Denon, as I think he told you- but he had leads I couldn’t have found on my own.”

Her fingers keep busy as she listens, weaving and unweaving little plaits into Lana’s hair. “He did tell me, yes. Keep going.”

“There was a record archive on Arron Prime, which seemed safer than trying to hit Zakuul directly. We got the information we needed, but we took mortar fire on the way out. Crashed the shuttle. After that, we were running from skytroopers for six weeks straight.” She sighs. “Not quite as bad as after Manaan, but it came close.”

“But you escaped.”

“We caught a Knight on solo patrol. I hid the body, Koth took his armor and stole a ship. It was an ancient cargo transport, but after almost a month of foxholes it was practically a yacht.”

Lana shifts restlessly onto her side; she adjusts the pillow in her lap, shifting it down a little to cushion between her thigh and Lana’s shoulder. “And that’s when-”

She nods, silent for a moment, before she continues. “I was so wretchedly lonely, Nine.”

“You don’t have to justify yourself. You’d been running solo for a long time- that wasn’t meant to be a double entendre, sorry- and Force knows adrenaline does interesting things to people.”

“Something you and Theron know nothing about, I’m quite sure.”

“Guilty as charged, but you’re changing the subject.” Separating out another few strands of blonde hair, she winds them between her fingers. “So you were lovers, but you said you made a mistake. What was it?”

Lana closes her eyes. “That was the first mistake. I wasn’t that kind of lonely.”

***

To be continued in Chapter Fourteen: Past Perfect, in which we learn what the second mistake was, and in which Nine answers a question Lana’s been dying to ask. (Yes, I know I said I wasn’t going to write a prelude to the prelude. I lied. It’s flashback time, darlings.)

[villainscomplex]

love, let the spirit fly out of me

so anyways i totally forgot to post my piece from @the-heroine-mystique so while i’m procrastinating my essay and math homework, here’s that

You can also find it on:

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Quotev

The year was twenty-thirty-six.

Humanity ran rampant. Overpopulation led to overuse of limited resources and technology progressed in leaps and bounds. Crime skyrocketed, plunging the world into an endless state of fear. Natural resources began to vanish in mass numbers, natural disasters filled the world as the Earth fought against the fleas that humanity had become. Nobody knew if they'd live to see the new dawn. Government and order dissolved, leaving each person to fend for themselves and their loved ones.

Just when all hope seemed lost, a group of people stepped forward. Their individual names are lost to history, but they called themselves the Arco Order. Beneath the Order, the U.R.M was formed. The Universal Regulation Movement gave humanity hope again - overpopulation was controlled, technology aided humanity in the stead of lacking resources, giving the world time to replenish itself. Crime decreased, murders and thefts were reined in and eventually completely diminished. The U.R.M allowed people to live peacefully in their assigned towns, and allowed the Order to keep track of its people and their safety.

Slowly, the Earth turned peaceful, tsunamis and earthquakes decreasing in frequency, volcanoes erupting less frequently, and storms-

"Mina," Kyouka interrupts, without lifting her gaze from her rapidly moving, transparent screen or even bothering to remove her earpods, "you and Denki need to lay off with the stories. You'll scare the interns again."

Mina's groan is only matched by Denki's own. "You're no fun," the former informs her, curling one finger into her pink dyed afro.

"I'm tech," Kyouka informs her coolly, "not field. I don't need to be fun."

"She's right," Hitoshi, her desk mate, informs them without looking up from his rapidly scrolling screen.

"Killjoys," Denki snorts.

Kyouka is fully prepared to fling the nearest pen at him, when her screen beeps insistently at her, flashing a red warning. Kyouka's eyes snap to the highlighted area.

"Well," she begins, eloquently, "shit."

Hitoshi pauses in his typing. He leans over to eye her screen, stares unblinkingly for a long moment as though something might change, and finally gives a resigned sigh. "I'll call the boss."

Suffice to say, the boss, Shouta Aizawa, is none too pleased to be called into the data room. He drags his feet as he comes in and makes his way to Kyouka, who stands from her chair and steps away from the paused screen so Shouta can see what they're looking at.

"Hitoshi said something about a hole in the data," Shouta grumbles, tapping the screen and dragging the information up as he glances through.

"Yes, sir," Kyouka replies, "it begins on the second of August earlier this year and continues to be patchy within that particular town's information through now."

Shouta is squinting now, having come to the irregularity. He flattens his palms against the screen and pulls outwards, expanding it. A few of the other technology agents look up from their screens, curious about the commotion. Even Mina and Denki pause, looking up.

"And what town did you say it was?" Shouta asks, cutting the holes in the data from the screen and dragging them aside.

"Peltragow," Hitoshi adds helpfully, but none too respectfully.

"A border town..." Shouta sighs, touching the radio in his ear. "Bring me the Andromeda team."

Kyouka has heard of the Andromeda duo, but she's never met them. In fact, she can't think of any desk agents who have - even the field agents are lucky if they get to meet the Order's top agent team. She's clearly not the only one with the thoughts if the way a murmur ripples among the desks and Hitoshi sits a fraction straighter and meets Kyouka's gaze. It seems they're all going to meet them now. She catches sight of Mina and Denki scrambling to fix their suits and feels a little relieved that they're not the only ones who are nervous.

"Oh, this is exciting," Mei hisses from across from her, practically rocking in her seat. "We're finally meeting the top dogs around here! Do you think they'll let me look at their gear? Or make new gear for them? Or better yet, go with them? Kyouka, isn't this just-"

Two pairs of perfectly synchronized footsteps come tap tap tapping down the corridor. Mei goes silent.

"Shouta," says a brunette woman with bob cut hair as she enters, looking vaguely irritated, "a little advance warning would be nice, next time. These two are ridiculously hard to find."

"Agent Mandalay," Shouta greets calmly, "that is the idea. In any case, it was an emergency."

Rationally, Kyouka knows she isn't prepared to have this encounter. Rationally, she knows that. However, it doesn't stop any and all sense from leaving her the moment they turn the corner in their crisp black suits, exuding power and poise. The man of the two is collected and unreadable, with a looming presence and dual colored hair. The woman is an actual goddess, all sleek black hair and commanding presence. Kyouka can't see either of their eyes behind their identical black shades, but she makes no effort to meet them regardless, fixing her gaze on her feet to allow Shouta to address them.

"Agent Alpheratz, Agent Mirach," Shouta greets.

"Sir," the two reply respectfully.

"Sorry for calling you two on such short notice - and to here, of all places. We have a problem I need you two to investigate."

"Aw, come on! Why can't De- uhm Hadar and I take it for once?" Mina complains. "You always give them the good missions."

"Yeah," Denki whines, "Agena is right. You never let us go on cool missions like this."

"Well," says Shouta, turning and fixing them with a steely look, "perhaps if you weren't so inclined towards troublemaking, I might."

"Sorry to interrupt," says the male of the Andromeda duo, "but you were saying?"

"Right," Shouta continues. "Kyouka, explain what you came across."

"Oh," Kyouka says eloquently, her head snapping up. "Me. Right. I'm the-"

Oh, god, they're staring. Kyouka kicks Hitoshi when he snickers and watches the subtle movement of the dual haired boy's head as he tracks the movement. The woman's attention never wavers, remaining steady on Kyouka. Kyouka clears her throat and turns to the screen. Now that she's not looking at them, it's easier to pretend they aren't there - suffice to say, she's relieved when her voice comes out steady and clear.

"Log: Year twenty-one-nineteen, August second." The screen flickers and scrolls as Kyouka speaks, reaching out to enlarge the data gaps. "Town: Peltragow. As you can see, going back to August of this year there's not only a hole but a massive gap in the data of this town. It's as though the data flow has stopped entirely, like the entire population just vanished. Before now, the routine data checks haven't shown any irregularities, yet it's clearly been three months since the data stopped being registered."

"What about the camera feeds?" The man asks.

"Mirach," the woman - Alpheratz - murmurs, "let her finish."

When Mirach doesn't speak up again, Kyouka continues.

"The camera feeds appear to be on a loop feed. It isn't evident at first glance, but if you replay and sync it, the clips are just things reused from years prior - which seems innocuous at first, but feeds this old should only be accessible by the higher-ups in the Order. To summarize, we're completely blind in this town with no information about what's happening - or happened - and who is doing it."

"And that's where you two come in." Shouta informs them, scratching at his stubble. "Your objective is to travel to the town and discover and resolve the problem. Be prepared for anything - we don't know what's out there. This is the first time in years someone is going in blind, and I'm trusting you two with the task."

"Uh," Kyouka clears her throat, turning slowly and fixing her gaze on Shouta instead of the two agents, "if I may. Whatever did this would have entirely taken over the mainframe in Peltragow. It's the only way they could so efficiently keep the data holes and feeds hidden for so long. It might be best to bring a technology agent along to restore it. Agent Hatsume-"

"Well," Alpheratz draws Kyouka's gaze with a tilt of her head, "why don't you just come along, then?"

"Me?" Kyouka stiffens. "Oh, no, no, I'm not meant for the field. Not that I'd hate going with you- you two- I'd just hold you back!"

"I'm inclined to agree," Mirach replies, adjusting his shades, "I believe it might be safer for all parties involved if it's just Alpheratz and I. After we've resolved the situation another team can escort a tech agent in to fix everything."

"I agree with Agent Alpheratz," Shouta yawns, "Kyouka, you'll accompany them to fix the mainframe in Peltragow. We don't have time to wait for the situation to be fixed before we restore data collection - this hole can't be allowed to grow any larger."

Kyouka isn't presented the chance to protest. Looking her dead in the eyes, Shouta says, "Dismissed."

The rest of the day passes in a blur of congratulations and Kyouka methodically packing what she'll need. It isn't much other than a few changes of clothes, gadgets, and food, but it's enough. Kyouka adjusts the tie of her suit once more - she doesn't make a habit of wearing them very often, given they're a lot more lax on what the desk agents wear, but she has a few stored away for events and apparently for going into the field now. The suit is stifling and uncomfortable to someone like Kyouka, accustomed to wearing big sweaters and baggy hoodies and she doesn't understand how field agents constantly have them on.

There's no time to dwell on the thought, though. She has a team to meet, however reluctantly it may be.

Alpheratz and Mirach are waiting for her by the back exit, where the corridor leads to the carport. The light in this hall always flickers relentlessly and Mei keeps saying she's going to fix it but never has the chance. Shouta doesn't care enough to hire someone else. Nonetheless, there's something almost comforting about it as Kyouka joins the two agents - it's familiar. Both of the agents are carrying duffle bags and neither have removed their shades, but Kyouka feels their gazes as she approaches.

"Are you ready?" Alpheratz asks her, reaching out to take her bag and passing both to Mirach, who turns and vanishes into the carport.

"As ready as I'll ever be," Kyouka replies, watching his retreating back.

Alpheratz smiles, a soft curl of her lips. "Don't worry too much, I'm sure you'll be fine. I was just as nervous about my first mission - besides, Mirach and I will be there, so you won't have anything to worry about."

Kyouka doesn't know if she believes her, but hell, she's pretty and nice, so Kyouka follows her regardless.

By the time they catch up to him, Mirach has already loaded all three bags into the back of a sleek, black SUV. Alpheratz swings into the driver's' seat and Kyouka hesitates only a moment before crawling into the back seat behind her. Sure enough, Mirach purposefully takes the passenger seat and straps in as Alpheratz presses the starting controls.

"You'd think they would have self-driving cars by now," Mirach comments under his breath.

Alpheratz laughs, and Kyouka wonders if she was even meant to hear it. She puts her earpods back in and settles in for the long ride.

Kyouka drifts in and out of sleep as the car drives over smooth roads endlessly, stopping only once or twice to switch drivers. At some points, she's staring at the back of Alpheratz's head in a dream-like haze, and others it's Mirach's, dual colored hair catching the sunlight. She stops recognizing her surroundings soon after they leave the facility and tries to just count trees.

Mine, something fierce and primal, vicious and angry washes over her, for just a second, and Kyouka jerks awake.

"Good timing," says Alpheratz, looking back from her place in the passenger seat, "we're here."

There's something grim about her tone, but Kyouka doesn't understand why until she sits up entirely. Welcome to Peltragow! The sign reads, but the roads are desolate, the lights off and houses looking abandoned, silent and looming. The sight sends chills racing down Kyouka's back. Instinctively, she fumbles for her tech, clicking the side of her watch to do a scan. Nothing. No life, no heat signatures but their own. There's just nothing.

Alpheratz voices her thoughts. "It's almost like they all up and left."

"Or vanished," Mirach murmurs, parking the car in front of the government building. "I'm going to look around. Alpheratz, you should go with her. There might be danger inside."

"Right," Alpheratz agrees, opening the door and gesturing for Kyouka to follow her out.

Kyouka hesitates a moment, glancing back at Mirach, and then slides out after her. As Mirach pulls away in the SUV, Alpheratz leads Kyouka into the building. It's odd; nothing seems disturbed within. There are no signs of struggle or infiltration. It really is just like everyone up and vanished. Alpheratz sweeps the corridors as they go, her gun at the ready. A map of the facility projects from her watch, flickering against the dark backdrop of the walls.

"Somehow," Kyouka comments quietly, "I feel like this is too easy."

"You're right," Alpheratz agrees, lowering her weapon and removing her shades, "it is. You already checked for readings, didn't you? Did you come across anything?"

"Nothing but the three of us," Kyouka tells her, entering the main computer room.

Sure enough, it's empty. The computers, black screened and covered with dust, sit in silent rows, as though waiting. It was as though everything had just been shut down. That was impossible, though. The data collection mainframes couldn't be shut down without the consent of the Order, and Kyouka knew for a fact that they'd never give it. Besides that, if everything had simply been shut down, there would have been an earlier notification. She circles the main desks near the door and climbs to the elevated area where the main computer rests. This one is still on, but the screen flickers and glitches. Mine, it reads, and then the word disappears.

"Mirach," Kyouka becomes aware of Alpheratz's voice. "Mirach, come in. Hello?"

Kyouka glances over the top of the computer to watch as Alpheratz pulls up a holographic screen on her watch. It's vitals and communication, she realizes, noting the large image of Alpheratz and the vitals around her, then the much smaller image of Mirach in the corner, outlined in red.

"That's odd," Alpheratz says, "his coms are off. Computer, last known position of agent six-three-six-three-seven-three, codename: Mirach."

The screen beeps and pulls up a map, flashing a small red beacon near what appears to be the town center. Alpheratz looks to Kyouka, dark eyes questioning. Kyouka sighs.

"Let's go. I can't do much until I figure out what did this."

The trek to the town hall isn't long, but it's still awful on foot and Kyouka isn't a very athletic person. Alpheratz keeps going ahead and slowing for Kyouka to catch up - she almost feels bad for holding the other woman back. Alpheratz seems almost anxious, consistently checking her com and screen. When they arrive, Alpheratz spots the black SUV first. The doors are open and it's parked crookedly, as though in a rush, and Kyouka doesn't see Mirach anywhere.

"Mirach?" Alpheratz calls, hurrying to the truck and looking in.

Kyouka clicks the side of her watch again.

"Mirach!" Alpheratz calls again. "Mirach? Shouto!"

Kyouka knows she isn't going to find anything. There are only two signatures now - herself and Alpheratz. Mirach - Shouto - seems to have just vanished from the face of the earth like the rest of the town. Kyouka has the feeling that something bigger is at play here, something that neither of them can even begin to understand. Alpheratz is still calling for Mirach, still calling for Shouto, still shouting, Todoroki Shouto, you better answer me, and Kyouka knows he won't.

"Agent Alpheratz," she tries, "we have to go. The sun is setting and we don't know what's out there."

Kyouka sees the slow tremble of Alpheratz's shoulders. "You don't see him, do you?" She states more than asks.

"He's not registering, no," Kyouka confirms. "We need to go. I'm sure he'll be okay."

Alpheratz's shoulders drop. "He's my best friend. I don't know what to do without him." Her voice wavers.

Kyouka knows, rationally, that she isn't built for field work. She's a desk agent and she always has been - technology is her forte and her comfort zone. But watching the way Alpheratz's shoulders tremble, she knows it's time for her to step out of that. She moves forward to touch Alpheratz's shoulder.

"Come on," she says, "we've got to take shelter."

Alpheratz nods.

They carry what they can from the truck - it's best to leave the truck itself, for it would draw too much attention - slinging their duffle bags over their shoulders and heading off. Kyouka pulls a map of the town up, scanning for a place that seems safe enough. She comes to a house first, tucked away neatly and inconspicuously. This is where she leads Alpheratz, shutting the door and dropping her bag once they're in.

The house is empty, unsurprisingly, but it certainly looks lived in. Kyouka could just hope whoever had lived there before didn't mind them staying the night. Alpheratz crosses the room and seats herself on the couch.

"Right," Kyouka says, "food first, and then I'll take watch. You should rest."

"I'm sorry," Alpheratz replies, "I shouldn't be acting like this. I'm supposed to be one of the Order's top four and here I am, acting like a child."

Kyouka sighs, sitting down on the floor in front of Alpheratz. "I don't blame you, though. I think anybody would react badly to their best friend suddenly disappearing like this - I know I would. My best friend is a field agent, too. He's annoying, but he's still my friend and I worry about him when he goes into the field. I promise you, we'll find Agent Mirach. Once we figure out this whole thing, we'll find him and the townspeople."

Kyouka reaches out to squeeze Alpheratz's knee, standing back up.

"Momo," says Alpheratz.

Confusion strikes Kyouka. "What?"

"My name is Momo. I probably shouldn't tell, but I feel like I can trust you with it. Call me Momo."

"Momo," Kyouka echoes, embarrassed by the way her voice cracks on the name, "then I'm Kyouka. You already knew that, but you can call me it."

"Okay," Momo tells her, "okay."

Kyouka takes first watch. Around them, the world is silent save for the soft sound of Momo's deep breathing. There's no life around them; no animals, no people, no insects, just nothingness. Even the wind is silent. She's half asleep, but Kyouka is fairly sure Momo knows what she's doing when she reaches out silently and takes Kyouka's hand.

The sun wakes Kyouka before Momo does, but Momo has a new determination burning in her eyes.

"So," she starts, as soon as they're both dressed and ready to go again, "we have no leads and it seems this is a total blackout zone. You can communicate within the town, but not contact anybody outside. In other words, it's up to you and I. We have no contact with home base."

"Then we go back to the official building," Kyouka concludes, "and figure out the problem from there."

"Exactly," Momo smiles.

Kyouka decides she'll never tire of that expression. They travel back to the government building, on their guard. Kyouka is a naturally paranoid person, but it doesn't help that she's new to the field and they're dealing with something they have yet to discover the identity of. This time, she knows the route to the control room and races there alongside Momo, hurrying up to the main computers and accessing the mainframe through her watch. Whatever had happened to this thing had been thorough.

"Kyouka," Momo tells her, "there's something out there. I'm going to check it out."

Kyouka furrows her eyebrows, clicking the side of her watch again to check. Two signatures. Oh, hell. Leaping clean over the short stairs, Kyouka races out the door after Momo. She couldn't allow them to get separated.

"Momo, wait! It's not showing up!" She calls.

But when she turns the corner, all she sees is Momo's gun on the ground, laying next to a pair of broken sunglasses. Kyouka immediately feels any and all of the courage she'd had drain from her body. No, she thinks, and then, desperately, no! There's no way she's doing this without Momo. There's no way, not even an option.

In the end, Kyouka knows, rationally, that she isn't a field agent.

"Momo!" She shouts, knowing it's futile. "Momo, please!"

Momo's voice doesn't return the call. Kyouka fumbles for her watch, clicking the side. One signature.

"Kyouka," comes a voice, soft and familiar.

Kyouka's head jerks up. A few steps further, Momo's watch is on the ground, face down. Light flickers from it - a hologram. Kyouka scrambles for it and sure enough, it's a close recording of Momo's face.

"Listen closely," she's whispering, "this thing isn't human. I have no chance of getting back to you, so I can only hope you see this and figure out what to do. Whatever this thing is, it's drawing the people to it. I don't know where they are, but I know they're alive, Kyouka. Somehow. Now listen," Momo pauses, holding her breath at the sound of a rattling hiss, and then continues, quicker, "it's sound. Whatever this is, it works sort of like a siren - it uses sound to draw people to it, hypnotizes them. The only reason I was able to record this is because of the sound my gun made when I dropped it. I'm leaving it to you, Kyouka. Good luck, and I-"

The feed cuts off. Kyouka is left staring at empty space, a new feeling of resolve in her chest. She scrambles for Momo's gun and pops in her earpods, turning up the familiar sound of the music constantly playing in them. She's got work to do; field agent or not, she's their last hope.

Although, in hindsight, she could have thought her strategy through a little more than just find the thing, follow it to its lair, free everyone and maybe get like a cheek kiss from a pretty girl, but here she was, walking down the center of the town lane with Momo's pistol at her hip. The music in her ears is comforting, but her timing has to be precise - otherwise, this won't work. She may not be a field agent, but her senses are sharp and she trusts them.

Sure enough, she feels a prickling feeling at the back of her neck. Mine, it comes again, and she realizes with a start that it was this thing the whole time. She turns slowly, coming face to face with it, all long and gangly limbs of charred and greasy flesh, sunken sockets where eyes would be and a mouth split all the way up. For a moment, fear swells in her chest, but then she remembers that Momo is depending on her, Shouto and the rest of the townspeople - she's their last hope.

Kyouka sucks it up, watches the creature's mouth open, snake-like and full of teeth, and pretends to fall under its thrall. As the creature snatches her up, it takes everything in Kyouka to remain limp and complacent. Every part of her screams for her to escape, to run away, but she can't.

The edge of the town is an unwilling host to a network of underground caves, and this is where the creature takes her. The room she ends up in is cold, despite the people lining the walls, staring blankly into space, hollow-eyed and bony. These must be the townspeople. She can't do anything but let the creature add her to the ranks of people, tucked neatly between one girl she doesn't recognize, and a much more familiar face with dual colored hair.

The thing lurches out and Kyouka seizes her chance, twisting in an attempt to loosen herself. It isn't as hard - the material is something similar to a spider's web: sticky and clingy, but not impossible to escape. She nudges Shouto.

"Agent Mirach," she hisses.

He doesn't budge, staring blankly at the other wall. Kyouka hesitates a moment, before yanking her earpods out and putting them in his ears. He starts almost immediately, gaze clearing and sweeping the area as Kyouka takes the earpods back.

"Wha- Where are we?"

"Some underground cavern system. Help me get these people out. I'm going to look for Mo- uhm, Agent Alpheratz."

Shouto narrows his eyes at her, but fishes a knife from his belt loop regardless and cuts himself loose, hurrying to start trying to get the other people out of the hypnosis. Kyouka goes in search of Momo - the order of the people seems random, judging by where she and Shouto had been, so it takes a moment, but she catches sight of the suit first, rumpled and unkempt from fighting, and her hair, loose around her shoulders.

Kyouka doesn't even hesitate this time, running towards the other girl. "Momo," she breathes in relief, touching Momo's cheek and then putting the earpods in her ears.

"Oh," Momo breathes, "I know that song."

"We have to go," Kyouka says, but Momo is staring past her again, wide-eyed.

Kyouka turns in time to see Shouto's gunshot slice through one of the creature's limbs, wide mouth yawning over Kyouka and Momo. Momo scrambles for Kyouka, whose legs go weak with shock, tugging at her, but Kyouka's gaze is set on the thing, eyes wide and lips parted. Oh god, she thinks, is this how I die?

And then the creature is swinging at her in what feels like slow motion, but Kyouka never feels the impact come. Instead, she sees Momo leap in front of her, dark hair whipping, expression hard with resolve. She sees Momo take the full force of the blow, roll across the room and stop.

Kyoka doesn't think when she yanks Momo's gun from where it still rests as her hip, raises it, fires once. Twice. Again. Again. Again.

---

Later, when the town celebrates them, Momo comes to find Kyoka in the data collection mainframe of the government building, watching the screens work again.

"I'm not much of a party person," Kyouka admits, fiddling with her earpods.

"Well," Momo laughs, "you're certainly quite the field agent. Thank you, Kyouka."

"No," Kyouka grins back at her, "thank you."  

[mindthump]

Reid Hoffman: To Successfully Grow A Business, You Must 'Expect Chaos' http://ift.tt/2omxhKE

Dan Lewis has been wrestling with one of the most common, and critical, bottlenecks that bedevil every tech startup seeking to scale fast: How can his company staff up quickly enough to cope with expected growth without blowing through cash unsustainably? Lewis is the CEO and co-founder of Convoy, an on-demand trucking startup headquartered in Seattle, so the first idea he had felt obvious. He should open up a second office in a city that’s way cheaper than Seattle.

But he just wasn’t sure. Which is why, on a Friday evening in early March, he’d trekked down to Silicon Valley to meet a man known to have answers to quandaries like this: Reid Hoffman.

The two men sit down at the Sand Hill Road offices of Greylock Partners. Greylock, where Hoffman is a partner, led a round of financing for Convoy in early 2016. Hoffman now sits on the company’s board. “So what shall we talk about today?” he asks. “Customers, or recruiting?” 

“Recruiting,” Lewis answers.

Lewis dives into the details of his problem, and Hoffman settles into a posture that looks well-used. He steeples his hands in front of his chin, fingertips almost touching his lips, elbows splayed sharply to the left and right. His eyes might be half-closed, but his body language is benevolent; he could not possibly be more attentive.

And when Lewis is done, Hoffman has plenty to say. If Convoy does pursue a second office, they’d better make sure direct flights are available from the new city back to Seattle. Requiring execs to regularly make multiple-stop cross-country journeys plays hell with company culture. It’s a minor point, but one you might never think of unless you’d been there yourself. 

But splitting up corporate teams may be premature, Hoffman adds. It runs the risk of disrupting “the learning loop” -- that all-important, constantly iterating process in which a startup figures out how best to do whatever it’s doing by observing itself in action and making the necessary course adjustments.

Lewis nods. You can see him writing those words down in his mind: the learning loop. This, after all, is the effect Hoffman has on people. It’s why the 49-year-old billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, veteran of PayPal and venture capitalist is widely considered something of a seer in Silicon Valley, who can distill complex ideas down to important truisms. It’s why he’s now expanding into media with a podcast called Masters of Scale; each episode explores his often counterintuitive theories on how businesses can grow, such as “the only way to scale is to do things that don’t scale,” and includes conversations with friends such as Sheryl Sandberg and Bill Gates. (It runs for 10 weeks, starting May 3.) For founders wrestling with big, sticky questions about their companies’ promise and direction, a few words from Hoffman can go a long way. A conversation can go even further.

That’s why Lewis and his cofounder chose Greylock as their lead investor. “Reid can go into the weeds and say, ‘Here is how to think of an onboarding experience for a product, here’s how to think of a marketplace, here’s how to think of a recruiting growth strategy,” Lewis says later. Another beneficiary of Hoffman’s capital and wisdom, Kiva president Premal Shah, concurs: “Reid gets in the foxhole with you.”

But for Hoffman, getting into weeds and foxholes isn’t just about helping the individuals he’s invested in. It’s about something greater -- something that, he hopes, will push all entrepreneurs to grow their companies strongly and smartly. It’s about nurturing an adaptable mindset suitable for navigating a confusing, chaotic world. All in the hope of making that world better for everyone. 

Born in Palo Alto, raised in Berkeley, educated at Stanford and Oxford, Reid Hoffman is a very smart guy. He originally wanted to be a philosopher, but he also wanted to have a concrete impact on the world, and eventually he concluded that abstract reasoning in academia wasn’t going to give him the scale to get him or the world to where it needed to be. In the mid-’90s in Silicon Valley, the lure of the digital revolution was irresistible. He got the lay of the land from gigs at Apple and Fujitsu and, in 1997, started his first company, a primitive social networking operation called SocialNet.

SocialNet failed, but Hoffman recalls the experience as invaluable. After SocialNet, Hoffman joined his college friend Peter Thiel on the board at PayPal, where he soon became the COO and then executive vice president. eBay’s subsequent purchase of PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion made Hoffman a multimillionaire. He began investing in startups and co-founded LinkedIn in 2003. He joined Greylock in 2009. In 2016, Microsoft purchased LinkedIn for a whopping $26 billion. (Hoffman joined Microsoft’s board of directors in March.) Among the startups he has helped mentor: Airbnb. Mozilla. Zynga. Groupon. Greylock declined to provide details on Hoffman’s current net worth, but after the sale of LinkedIn concluded, Forbes calculated it at $3.7 billion. 

But a funny thing happened on the way to billionaire-dom. Reid Hoffman, capitalist par excellence, ended up becoming a philosopher anyway. He has written two books -- The Startup of You and The Alliance -- and is working on a third, Blitzscaling, which is an adaptation of a course he taught last year at Stanford with Greylock partner John Lilly. All three drop heavy doses of knowledge on how to form the proper entrepreneurial mindset. Hoffman’s philosophy is based on the principle that entrepreneurialism is a force for good. He is convinced that in the long run, more Silicon Valley-style innovation will lead to greater prosperity and more jobs. “The world’s better off the more Silicon Valleys there are,” he says, “and the more scaled companies there are.”

So how do you scale a company?

That’s where it gets interesting.

“Entrepreneurship is throwing yourself off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down.” -Reid Hoffman

Premal Shah first met Reid Hoffman at PayPal. In 2006, after Shah joined Kiva, a nonprofit that crowdsources microloans to people around the world, he recalls chasing Hoffman down in a parking lot hoping to get his one-time colleague to invest in the nonprofit. Before Shah could utter a word, Hoffman said, “The answer to your question is yes.”

Hoffman not only invested but also joined the board -- and has stayed there ever since. Kiva’s innovative technology platform helps would-be entrepreneurs across the world get funding. That meshes perfectly with Hoffman’s desire to encourage entrepreneurial productivity -- and he believes big platforms can connect people in important ways. 

Related: 5 Things the Best Leaders Do Every Day

Plus, even nonprofits need to scale. Shah remembers back in 2012, when Hoffman began hammering that point in board meetings. Kiva was doing reasonably well by nonprofit standards, distributing millions of dollars, but Hoffman wasn’t satisfied. During one meeting, Hoffman observed that “one of the problems with Kiva is that you actually have to pay money to participate.”

There’s a joke in here: Only in Silicon Valley, land of hyperinflated values for companies that make zero profit, would a hugely successful businessman and venture capitalist point out that the act of charging customers could be construed as a bad business model. But there was method to this particular bit of madness. No one has to pay to use LinkedIn or Facebook or Gmail, which is why the masses will give them a shot. When a curious person arrived at Kiva, though, the only thing to do was give money -- and even if you were reasonably confident that your $25 loan to a motorcycle repairwoman in Uganda would eventually be paid back, you still had to get past that initial credit card plunge. There was friction in the system. 

Hoffman came up with a new strategy, a “freemium” model in which Kiva would just plop down a pile of cash and let its users decide where to loan it. And he put his own money down: $1 million to test the theory that Kiva could bootstrap its growth by jump-starting loaning activity. 

“We said, ‘Hey, lend out Reid Hoffman’s money. Do good for free,’” recalls Shah. “We just wanted to see what would happen.”

What happened is that 50,000 people joined Kiva in one month (a huge jump over the normal 10,000) and then those new members ended up loaning out an additional three million of their own dollars. Hoffman made back most of his donation, while setting an example that was quickly followed by Google and Hewlett-Packard, who established similar philanthropic programs for all their employees. 

The Kiva example nicely illustrates some themes that Hoffman has stressed. Take chances, learn from your experiences, be ready to pivot. But it also sheds light on why Hoffman is currently so focused on the question of scale. It’s not enough to just have a good idea and get a little traction. Real change requires a more ambitious canvas. 

“People are still very focused on the startup story: Risk-taking founders, with a bold idea, some capital and a network supportive environment, go out and take the shot on goal,” says Hoffman. “But the problem is, this is no longer the truth about what makes Silicon Valley so special. There are lots of places that have technical universities, venture capital, bright young talent and even relatively risk-taking cultures, because everyone has realized, oh, wow, taking that risk actually can be valuable. But what they haven’t realized is that that’s only the first step; that what is really critical for making these companies go is scale.” 

So what’s the second step toward getting to scale?

“Expect chaos,” he says.

The intro theme to the Masters of Scale podcast plunges the listener into an anarchic audio landscape. Short clips from scores of interviews conducted by Hoffman come flying at your ears from all directions, while vaguely martial music builds to a crescendo in the background. The effect is slightly ominous. The message comes through loud and clear: Building a new company is an exercise in surfing chaos. 

In one early episode, Hoffman interviews Mariam Naficy, another entrepreneur who, like Hoffman, has started two successful companies, the cosmetics supply website Eve.com and Minted, an online design marketplace. Minted’s initial plan was to market name-brand stationery, but when customer demand for independently designed works and art spiked instead, the company was forced to completely change its model. As the two discuss that moment in the show, Hoffman observes that, as a general rule, “your customers are always a bottomless well of surprises.” And unless you can quickly figure out what those surprises mean, you are doomed. 

After I listen to the episode, I ask Hoffman how entrepreneurs can possibly keep up. He says they should focus on three main things: their ability to scale customer acquisition, ability to grow their company’s size and “delivery of the value proposition to the customer.” If there is no one around to answer the phones when demand for your services takes off, you can crash even more quickly than you rise. 

But beneath all the operational aspects involved in scaling a company lies something more fundamental. Hoffman believes a successful entrepreneur must be flexible, ready to adapt and willing to accept that although the future is essentially unknowable, there is always something new to find out. 

“One of the first things that you learn when you are trying to do scale at speed,” says Hoffman, “is to focus on your learning loops.”

The simplest way to define “learning loop” is as a process in which your goals are constantly modified by experience. One of the worst mistakes a startup entrepreneur can make is to stick blindly to plan A when market realities are telling you it is way past time to go to plan B. Hoffman has done a lot of thinking about pragmatic ways to enhance learning loop efficiency.

It’s all about “OODA,” he explains.

I look blank.

“Observe, orient, decide, act. It’s fighter pilot terminology,” says Hoffman. “If you have the faster OODA loop in a dogfight, you live. The other person dies. In Silicon Valley, the OODA loop of your decision-making is effectively what differentiates your ability to succeed.”

The critical point Hoffman is always trying to get across -- in his books, his podcasts, his interviews with journalists and his mentoring sessions with company founders -- is that no one really knows what is going to happen next. Rare indeed is the business plan that survives contact with reality intact. 

Examples from his own career come readily to mind. 

Exhibit A: PayPal.

PayPal, says Hoffman, spent two years perfecting a technology that allowed PalmPilot users to make mobile payments. As a sideline, it also worked out a simple system for making payments via email; at the time, the company thought of that as a patch for when a PalmPilot user and a non-PalmPilot user wanted to split the bill for a meal.

The service launched, and after a week, says Hoffman, executives discovered that almost no one was making mobile transactions with their PalmPilot. But there was a hubbub of activity on eBay of people using the email payment feature to pay for their bids. As Hoffman remembers, there was some preliminary discussion of whether or not the company should quash the eBay activity; some saw it as an unlooked-for distraction from their primary business plan. 

“We have all this PalmPilot technology,” says Hoffman, “and this is the thing that makes us cool, and then, at the end of the week, we’re like, No no, these are our customers; it’s actually, in fact, the email payments on eBay that matter!”

Related: 7 Reasons You Need a Mentor for Entrepreneurial Success

Today, when company founders are seeking Greylock’s funding, Hoffman and his partners will look for signs of learning loop capacity. They want to see whether the founder can adjust and adapt on the fly when presented with new information or advice. Greylock is fine with funding a company that might not have the clearest idea of how it will make money. But funding an entrepreneur who is too rigid -- who can’t go with the flow of whatever the market dictates -- is an absolute nonstarter.

Hoffman (of course) has a name for the mindset of the successful entrepreneur. He calls it permanent beta. There is no such thing as a permanently finished product, even inside your own head; everything is always a work in progress. “It’s basically feeling that you always need to be learning,” he says. “That you know things but don’t know the whole game, and you are alert to how the game is changing.”

He dives into this in more detail in The Startup of You:

The conditions in which entrepreneurs start and grow companies are the conditions we all now live in when fashioning a career. You never know what’s going to happen next. Information is limited. Resources are tight. Competition is fierce. The world is changing. And the amount of time you spend at any one job is shrinking. This means you need to be adapting all the time. And if you fail to adapt, no one -- not your employer, not the government -- is going to catch you when you fall.

Everyone, in other words, needs to be their own fighter pilot.

“It’s an intense amount of work, and you are going to have to move fast,” he says. “You’ve probably heard me say that entrepreneurship is throwing yourself off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down. Well, the ground is coming, and you have to be comfortable cooperating while you are fearful of vertigo. Even if you are energized by it, the easiest way to be able to function well in that environment is to be something of an adrenaline junkie.”

But what if you’re not an adrenaline junkie?

As a lover of philosophy, Hoffman may appreciate that he’s creating something of a paradox. In interviews and across his books, he repeatedly points out that the qualities of successful startup founders are also the qualities that can help anyone inside any career. We live in an era of destabilization, he argues. Nothing anywhere is predictable, which means we’re all better off living in permanent beta.

And yet: Isn’t it fair to say that the disruption caused by Silicon Valley startups -- and to some degree, by Hoffman himself -- is itself a source of at least some of the destabilization? What are people who aren’t adrenaline junkies and don’t feel comfortable jumping off cliffs supposed to do when their jobs disappear because a new app has upended yet another industry?

“I think most people don’t react well to uncertainty,” he concedes, when I put this to him. “And that is part of the reason you have fear and the renewed rise of strongman politics around the world.” 

But is Silicon Valley culpable for all the negative things in the world? 

Hoffman isn’t sold on that. While our ever-changing economy may be difficult today, it’s not at all clear that it’s a permanent condition. And while he acknowledges that the negative job impact of developments like self-driving cars and trucks “will be one of the very big bumps along the way,” he doesn’t believe that artificially intelligent robots will take all our jobs. New conditions create new opportunities -- the openings that entrepreneurs will use to build companies that scale, become important and help everyone around them. Education is a good example, he says. What if, he suggests, instead of packing dozens of students into classrooms or hundreds into lecture halls, we could move to a system where there was a teacher for every three students? That becomes a sector with more jobs, not fewer.

“There are a lot of professions that could actually grow as work is redistributed,” he suggests. “During the agrarian-to-industrial revolution there was obviously turbulence in the middle, too, but the long-term story was good.”  Making sure that the long-term story has as happy an ending as possible is Reid Hoffman’s goal, a point underlined by his activism, his philanthropy and his decision to spend as much time as he can sharing his ideas and experience to help companies grow while the ground shifts beneath their feet. And that’s what Hoffman, the philosopher king of entrepreneurs, has dedicated himself to doing. Here’s the upgrade path, he says. Here’s how you tweak your learning loop. Expect chaos, he says, and then go from there. 

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