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cindylouwho-2 · 5 years ago

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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, September 2019

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across in the past 5 weeks, although some may be older than that.

I am still working on scheduling enough time to post these every 10 days or so, but lately luck is just not on my side. Writing this elsewhere then cutting & pasting it here is creating some significant formatting issues, so if you find any errors or broken links, please let me know.

Are there types of news you would like to see here? Leave a comment below, email me through my website, or send me a message on Twitter.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

Etsy introduced Etsy Ads at the end of August; I covered it on my blog. Some people are seeing decent returns, but many are not. I started a forum thread here for continuing discussion.

A day later, Amazon announced it has waived their $40 a month shop fee for Handmade by Amazon shops. See the pinned post on their Facebook page.

A large study of click-through-rates (CTR) on Google reveals that the top link gets over 30% of the clicks, titles with questions get 14% more clicks than those without, and moving up one slot in the results leads to more clicks, unless you move from 10th to 9th. They cite Etsy’s study of titles & CTR (which showed that shorter titles get more clicks, something that this study also found).

Trend watch: a suggestion that Americans can avoid most of the tariff pain in the pocketbook by buying used clothing & other items. “Secondhand and vintage is no longer synonymous with a dusty pile of outdated sweaters in the corner of a church basement, or a yearly rummage sale. Online resale, including high-end designer items, is booming, thanks to start-ups like The RealReal, Depop, Poshmark, eBay, and Etsy. It’s possible to fill your entire closet this way”. Pre-owned & rented clothing also makes fans of sustainability happy.

Also, “grandmillennials” are a thing.

ETSY NEWS

Etsy US searches often now have a full first page of items that ship free or have the $35 free shipping guarantee, as of September 6 (although they were testing it earlier than that.) I was seeing the rare exception, beyond searches that have fewer than 48 items shipping free, but it wasn’t clear if these are tests or personalization. Then on September 21, we started seeing many items with shipping charges on the first page of even very large results, & most smaller results didn’t give much if any priority to free shipping at all. There has been no statement from Etsy, so your guess is as good as mine ...

In the meantime, they’ve begun promoting free shipping to buyers, which has led to some media coverage. Some note that the timing is good, since most US holiday purchases online in the past several years have included free shipping.

There is a new chapter in the Ultimate Guide To Etsy Search, involving attributes. The accompanying podcast with Etsy’s head taxonomist [transcript with links to the podcast] is quite interesting. She says that one of the reasons that some attributes haven’t shown up yet as search filters is that not enough sellers have applied them to listings. “If we have 100,000 items in the search results and a buyer uses a filter, and that filter causes the results to return just 20 items, that makes it seem broken. The buyer no longer trusts the results. If only 20% of sellers fill out an attribute, showing a filter based on that attribute to buyers isn’t going to be helpful because such a drastic reduction in results makes them lose confidence in those search results. We have to wait until a large number of sellers fill out that data to show it to buyers as a filter. When we do, sellers who have filled out that attribute show in those filtered search results. Sellers who haven’t, don’t.” Also, “[w]e know that shoppers who interact with these filters tend to buy more expensive items.” And, there aren’t separate jewellery attributes for “gold”, “gold-filled” & “gold-plated” because “[m]any jewelry buyers don’t have your experience and don’t know the huge difference between these things.”

The new commercials were launched earlier this month; you can check them all out here, and here is some media coverage. Some analysts think this is a good thing for the stock.

Vox published a review of Etsy’s latest free shipping push, in contrast with its history. [I am sure most of you have seen that, but if not, it is a good read!] “Silverman doesn’t like the words “handmade” or “craft” because they “don’t communicate anything to buyers about when to think of Etsy.” he says now. Nobody wakes up thinking, “Gosh, I need to buy something handmade today,” he tells me, which may be true but I rarely wake up thinking I need to buy anything at all, and more commonly wake up in horror because I’ve already bought way too much. “You need to furnish your apartment. You need to prepare for a party. You need to find a gift for a friend. You need a dress. Handmade is not the value proposition — unique, personalized, expresses your sense of identity, those are things that speak to buyers.” [emphasis added] Also, apparently Etsy founder Rob Kalin “didn’t know what seed funding was when he took it” 😮

The new tool for creating country-specific sales is finally out. You still can’t create the equivalent of the $35 free shipping guarantee for countries other than the US, however, which makes this pretty useless for people wanting to offer free shipping in the US and to their own country. The only way to come close is to set a 30 day free shipping sale to your own country, but it won’t show up in search (unless people filter for free shipping) or get the Canadian search boost for items that ship free, and you still need to renew it every 30 days. In short, Etsy is telling us to overcharge our customers in other countries with no way to offer them the same deals Americans are getting.

Sellers can now use Etsy Labels for USPS First Class letters & flats.

Holiday tips continue to roll out: here are some ideas for running holiday sales and promotions on Etsy.

Advanced content on machine learning: Etsy is employing its data on styles to serve up personalized recommendations, including the “Our Picks for You” section on the home page. The purchase and favouriting rates are part of what gets shown. They’ve discovered that some styles are more popular are different times of the year.

For those of you who think Etsy doesn’t spend enough on advertising, they are actually buying spots on tv shows now, including this Las Vegas morning show. [video]

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Sad to report that Keywords Everywhere is becoming a paid tool starting October 1st (although it may take longer to roll out to your account). https://keywordseverywhere.com/news.html They need to do this because they were being scraped by bots, which was affecting user experience & costing them a lot of time and money. Fortunately, it is still going to be very cheap - 10,000 keywords for $1 USD, purchased ahead of time as credits. They say that the average user will spend less than $2 a month, & I suspect that the average Etsy user will spend less. Once your account moves to a paid one, you will no longer see the search volume, cost per click & competition numbers under search terms until you buy credits, although the "related keywords" & "people also search" sections will still show up on the right side of Google search. I usually do not recommend any paid tools, but I do think this will still be worth every penny, especially if you remember to turn it off when shopping instead of researching! Every comparable paid tool costs way more than this. And despite the rush of attention since their announcement, I still received a personal reply to my email within 24 hours.

You know how I always talk about nofollow links? They still exist, but Google has expanded their link attribution codes to include “sponsored” & "ugc" (user generated content), and all might be crawled at any point after March 1, 2020. Moz did a top level explanation, and here is Google’s (shorter) summary. But it may not really matter much to the average site.

Want to rank well on Google and other search engines? Create “complete content.”

A followup on last edition’s discussion of canonical URLs - Google gets the final say. [video]

Google is now releasing monthly videos of their search news; first one is here.

Some of you will remember Moz’s Whiteboard Friday series on learning SEO in one hour. They’ve now compiled all 6 videos in one place.

And if you want to learn the basics of link building quickly, Moz has a short version of that chapter from their Beginner’s Guide to SEO.

If you are afraid you are missing some SEO rules on your top pages, check out this complete checklist for on-page SEO.

There are tons of SEO tools for Wordpress; here are 15 of the best.

Many people will find your blog through search engines, so make sure you use keywords in your blog posts.

If you have a website, check out 16 things that can harm your search engine rankings [semi-advanced in part, some points are discussing coding]

Success on YouTube involves SEO, something I find many users forget.

Mostly advanced: reminder that as of September 1, you can’t use robots.txt to tell Google not to index pages or sites.

Advanced content for website developers: you need to make sure the site is ready for SEO work.

There are always more Google updates; this one is still rolling out, and was confirmed by Google, but very few details were given. Sistrix did the first comprehensive analysis, although it is still early, and health and media sites seem to be the most dramatically affected.

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Marketing emails need to be carefully designed for success. Everything from the layout to the “preheader” matters.

If you have content on one medium that is doing well for you, it’s time to “repurpose” it for different platforms.

Infographics are very popular in content marketing; here’s how to make one, with 15 free templates.

Some Instagram posts do better than others; here’s why. Among other study findings, “smaller profiles which use more hashtags actually do see better engagement rates per post.”

If you aren’t getting much interaction on Instagram, you could be “shadowbanned.” There are ways to avoid that happening, and ways to fix it when it does.

“Content factories” are a big part of Instagram traffic. Maybe Facebook should crack down on this?

Pinterest is combining image recognition visual search with Shoppable Pins.

Facebook is considering hiding the like counts on News Feed posts, as Instagram is testing in 7 countries right now. “The idea is to prevent users from destructively comparing themselves to others and possibly feeling inadequate if their posts don’t get as many Likes. It could also stop users from deleting posts they think aren’t getting enough Likes or not sharing in the first place.”

Video app TikTok can be confusing, so here is a step-by-step guide for beginners. And here’s a podcast [with text] on the basics.

Twitter chats are a great way to attract interest in your business.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Facebook is testing new shopping ads, but they are only available to small groups at the moment: checkout from the Facebook app, and turning Instagram shopping posts into ads. Here’s more on the latter.

Snapchat now has longer ads and different formats.

I see a lot of questions on what you can advertise on various platforms; here’s a good summary of items/topics prohibited on major sites.

Since so many sellers are interested in other types of advertising right now, here are a few primers, most of which I have posted here before: Setting up Google Shopping for your website Instagram Sponsored Posts How to beat Facebook’s ad algorithm Setting up Pinterest ads

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Have Google Analytics set up on your website but don’t know how to use it? Here are some common features [text and video] you may want to take advantage of. Note that the part about setting it up doesn’t apply to most marketplaces and many website builders, which have a more simplified set up, as Etsy does.

The old Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is now almost entirely converted to the new version. Expect all of the old reports to be moved to the new version soon.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

There’s new evidence that Amazon has skewed its search algorithm to favour its own products & third-party products that make Amazon the most money. ”Executives from Amazon’s retail divisions have frequently pressured the engineers at A9 to surface their products higher in search results, people familiar with the discussions said.” In case that WSJ article goes back behind a paywall, here is some news coverage of it. “Instead of adding profitability into the algorithm itself, Amazon changed the algorithm to prioritize factors that correlate with profitability, the article said.” Amazon denies this, of course.

Despite the legal agreement in Germany, Amazon is still suspending accounts without 30 days notice.

Want to use cash to pay for online purchases? Amazon is now offering that option in the US.

eBay listings now default to 1-day handling; if you ship slower than that, make sure to remember to change the default on each new listing you make.

eBay managed payments (the equivalent of Etsy Payments) are now available in Germany.

A review of major shipping trends in ecommerce notes that “[t]he accelerated supply chain is putting small sellers at a crossroads regarding if they can afford to take a hit on margins” when discussing Etsy’s free shipping push.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Over ⅓ of US adults have bought something on social media, over 50% of 18-34 year olds are in that group. Far fewer had used visual search or virtual reality.

More people are shopping online late at night; women are more likely to do it, but men spend more when they do. [I’ve noticed this trend on my site and Etsy shop for a few years now,compared to when I first started selling in 2008.]

The majority of shoppers worldwide who are online use videos to make some purchase decisions, as shopping lists, how-to research, and to check reviews.

Gen Z (the generation after millennials) is more concerned about their health than the the previous 2 generations, and sometimes avoid the stresses of social media by shopping in brick & mortar stores. “About two-thirds (67%) of Gen Z prefer products made with ingredients they can understand, and tend to buy products in health and wellness categories more frequently than other generations. On environmental issues, 65% said they prefer simple packaging and 58% said they want eco-friendly packaging. Half of the group seeks products that are locally sourced or made, and 57% are seeking products that are environmentally sustainable, but fewer are willing to pay a premium price for them.”

For the 2019 holiday season, “65% of holiday shoppers will use a mobile device to shop, and 65% will make an online purchase via mobile.”

How do different industries get their online traffic? Google sends sites 8 times more traffic than all social media sites combined, and Facebook drives nearly ⅔ of all visits from social media. Instagram is responsible for less than 1%, while Twitter tops 10%. The author notes that “faster-growing social networks like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are designed from the ground up in a way that makes it difficult to drive traffic to external sites.”

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour)

Google is working on letting you search your Google Photos for text; it seems to be using AI to identify & store the text in your screenshots and other images. It’s interesting technology that will likely be used in many ways, including search engines, if it works well.

If you like convo snippets on Etsy, here’s a tool that will make them possible in many more places.

Need a photo editor that works on mobile? Here’s a list of 12, most of which are free or cost only $1 USD.

This one simple trick makes everything faster and easier.

Stuff that probably shouldn’t taste like pumpkin spice. [humour]

#seo #search engine optimization #search engine marketing #etsynews #analytics #stats #social media #contentmarketing #content marketing #Ecommerce #smallbiz #CindyLouWho2NewsUpdates

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wannabealexjenningscoffee · 6 years ago

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Notes on a fair lady

As an icon of screen and stage makes her Australian directing debut, her "gorgeous" aura has made a lasting impression on her cast, writes LISSA CHRISTOPHER.

'It was a complete no brainer," says Alex Jennings of his decision to take up the role of Henry Higgins for a third time. In this instance, it came with the opportunity to be directed by the legendary Dame Julie Andrews, to visit Australia for the first time and to relish what the 59-year-old feels is probably his "last chance" to play the eccentric professor of phonetics in a credible way. Rex Harrison - My Fair Lady's first Henry Higgins - was still reprising the role well into his 70s. "But I do not want to be doing that," says Jennings. "You'd have to find an actress in her 90s to play your mother, Mrs Higgins, for a start, and then there's the whole relationship with Eliza. Is it a romance? I know older men do marry much younger women, but I think it's slightly queasy-making if the gap gets too big."

Jennings is one of those high-calibre, never-seen-in-Who-magazine British actors whose faces are probably more recognisable than their names, particularly for Australian audiences. His career has been focused primarily on the stage - he's a veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre - but he has had some significant film roles. He played opposite Maggie Smith, as the writer Alan Bennett, in The Lady in the Van, for example, and Prince Charles in The Queen. He has appeared in a number of well-known British TV series, from Whitechapel to New Tricks to Foyle's War and later this year, viewers will see him as the Duke of Windsor in the Netflix series The Crown. Every story about Jennings, including this one, points out that he is the only person in history to have won uber-prestigious Laurence Olivier theatre awards for performances in the comedy, drama and musical categories, the last for his first rendition of Henry Higgins, in 2003. Jennings has such a deep, clear and resonant speaking voice that the timber and steel table between us, in a small rehearsal room at Opera Australia's Surry Hills headquarters, seems to vibrate slightly under its influence. It's a beautiful voice and narrating audiobooks is also a big part of Jennings' professional repertoire. His register is particularly low today, he says, because the cast did a full run-through of the show the day before. My Fair Lady is a taxing show, particularly for him and his co-star, Anna O'Byrne as Eliza Doolittle. To sustain your voice over the season, he says, "you have to warm up, warm down, keep hydrated, steam". Then, adopting a plummy tone, "You have to tend your instrument." The upcoming Australian production of My Fair Lady celebrates the musical's 60th anniversary and is a homage to the original, successful Broadway production, starring Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. Jennings says he was nervous about meeting Andrews for the first time - "I mean, she is an icon really, isn't she?" - but he soon relaxed in the 80-year-old's "gorgeous" company. Somewhat heavy-handed attempts on the part of your correspondent to wring a morsel of gossip or criticism from Jennings about Andrews end in failure. "No! She doesn't have any strange habits!" he says. "She is fan-tastic. Honestly. Just fantastic. Working with her is like a masterclass. It's amazing. And very sort of touching to see her revisiting something she did 60 years ago. Her staging instinct is immaculate. Her notes are incredibly detailed. She is so fantastic and generous with the ensemble, and gorgeous to be around. She is amazing. Amazing. Amazing." The 2003 production of My Fair Lady was the first musical of Jennings' career. "It was sort of the obvious one for me to do because ... you don't need to be a beautiful singer," he says. He went on to do Candide and a long West End run as Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. His singing, he says, has come along in leaps and bounds, with help from the renowned voice coach Mary King. "I always feel slightly nervous about saying I can sing, probably because someone will say 'well, go on then', but I can sing." He says he has spent time working with the voice coach on really singing - rather than talk-singing - Higgins' lyrics. "I wanted to see how far I could go with that, but Julie is pushing me in the opposite direction - to sing less. It makes sense. His songs are patter songs and you can do more with the lyrics if you speak them than if you adhere to the notes." O'Byrne, who as Eliza spends much of her time on stage with Jennings, says he brings a sense of playfulness to the production. "He's a joyful person, a lot of fun to be around on a personal level, and professionally, his skill level is so high. His attention to detail and his willingness to play around with new things on stage is wonderful to watch." The role of Eliza is a huge one. O'Byrne has played Christine in The Phantom of the Opera and its sequel, Love Never Dies, but never a role with as much stage time as this. "It's one of the dream roles in music theatre," she says. "Eliza has so much strength and bravery. She is the most human character I've done on stage. But on a practical level, the trickiest thing is keeping the storytelling strong all the way through." Andrews, who created the stage role of Eliza when she was 21 years old, encouraged O'Byrne to make the role her own. "She didn't want a carbon copy and I don't think that would be right in our version of the show, so I've felt great freedom in that respect," she says.

After decades of highly respectable success as a theatre actor, including his dream job playing Hamlet with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Jennings says he wouldn't mind a bit more Hollywood-style celebrity in his life. "When I was doing publicity for The Lady in the Van, being flown first class to LA and being picked up in nice cars and things like that, that hadn't been my career, really, but I thought oh, hello, this is quite nice."

He even harbours what appears to be a near-genuine ambition to appear on Strictly Come Dancing, the popular British version of Dancing with the Stars. "I don't actually think I could do it. It's such hard work, but they seem to have such a good time ... My agent doesn't want me to do it though and I haven't been asked, you know. I don't have that kind of profile."

In the meantime, Jennings and his wife, Lesley Moors, a landscape gardener, make do as enthusiastic amateur hoofers. It transpires that Fred Astaire rather than, say, Laurence Olivier, was Jennings' childhood idol. "I've always been quite a nifty disco boy ... We are party dancers and Prince is very big in our lives. We mourn him." My Fair Lady opens opened at the Sydney Opera House on September 6.

Lissa Christopher Sydney Morning Herald 3 September, 2016

#alex jennings #my fair lady #uk actors #alex jennings interviews #sydney opera house #henry higgins #dame julie andrews #julie andrews #musical theatre #opera australia

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inyournightmares97 · 6 years ago

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The Passionate Discourse

Part of the Thirsty Days of September series, a collaboration with @ijustwantacue. Find her version here!

A difference of opinion leads to a healthy debate between you and the sexy Professor Mark Tuan… and just maybe, a little something more.

Word Count: 7k+

Warnings: A little steamy but no smut, also some strong opinions on feminism and other sensitive subjects. The opinions stated by the reader or Mark are not necessarily my own so don’t attack me for them, I just took up two extreme viewpoints.

This was possibly the most pathetic excuse for a party you’d ever seen.

Then again, your mother had organized the whole event and a large majority of the invitees were busybody women in their late fifties from her new book club. You had been worried that your mother would be sad and lonely after her recent divorce, but she had taken on life as a single woman with fresh vigor by joining a new book club and becoming quite popular among the elderly and retired in your community. You’d never seen her pick up a single book throughout your childhood yet now she met up every Saturday with a group of similarly lonely women to discuss the likes of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte.

Oh, well. As long as she was happy you had nothing to complain about. You wished that she wouldn’t invite her friends over here on weekends and pressure you to serve them tea and buy those cute little finger foods while they told you that you looked exactly like your mother and commented on how you were still unmarried.

It was demeaning, really. You were a fully-grown adult woman and you didn’t need to be subjected to this infantile treatment.

“Darling!” your mother came over to you and grasped your arm firmly as she pulled you aside. You had been trying half-heartedly to explain to a group of older women what you did for a living. With their dangerously limited knowledge they had somehow wrongly concluded that you were a doctor and you didn’t care quite enough to correct them. You were rescued from hearing about Mrs. Lee’s backache when your mother pulled you away. “Darling, I must have a word with you. Do you remember I mentioned Mrs. Tuan the other day?”

You blinked. “You might have. I can’t remember.”

“Well, she is one of my very dearest friends,” you mother explained, although it was much more likely that they’d just met a few times at the book club. “She’ll be coming down here to join the party and she messaged me to let me know that her son is dropping her off. Now I know that you don’t really like me to recommend you to my friend’s sons because it hasn’t gone very well in the past-“

You glared at your mother. “Not very well? The last man had been divorced twice already and he was one of those!”

Your mother frowned. “One of those what?”

You folded your arms across your chest and hissed. “Those anti-vaccine movement supporters! He told me right to my face that he would never let his children get vaccinated because vaccines were a conspiracy created by the medical community to make money! Do you know insulting it is as a biomedical scientist to be told right to your face that your entire life’s research is a cheap scam? Was I supposed to date that disgusting man?”

Your mother sighed. “Yes, all right. I see how he wasn’t right for you. For your information, it’s very difficult to find men who can live up to your absurdly high intellectual standards. But Mrs. Tuan’s son is different. I think you might actually like him. He’s a Professor! Isn’t that exciting?”

“Not particularly.”

Your mother frowned and her grip on your arm tightened. She lowered her voice to make sure that nobody else at the party was listening to you. “Now listen. You’re not getting any younger and it’s hard for women like you who are so constantly focused on their careers to find men willing to put up with them. Mark Tuan is a perfectly lovely man. He’s never been married or divorced, he’s a Professor at a rather prestigious university and judging by the summer holiday pictures that his mother showed me last week, he’s also extremely handsome. At least give him a chance?”

You sighed. “Yes, fine.”

“Thank you, darling. I knew you wouldn’t disappoint your mother. It’s been so lonely since the divorce, you know, and I at least want you to find some happiness and not end up like me.”

You resisted the urge to roll your eyes. Reading too much Jane Austen was turning your mother into one of those typical, overdramatic mothers from the Regency era whose sole aim in life was to marry off her daughters. You opened your mouth to tell her that maybe she should remember what century she was in, when the doorbell suddenly rang. Your mother jumped up with an enormous smile on her face.

“That must be Mrs. Tuan! Come with me, darling, let’s go greet them together….”

You followed your mother to the door reluctantly. It was indeed Mrs. Tuan; you smiled and greeted the older woman pleasantly before allowing your gaze to turn to her son standing just a little bit behind her. You froze for a moment while you looked at the man.

Well, well, well. Mark Tuan was handsome indeed.

Your heart did a little leap when he smiled at you, his gorgeous lips spreading into a rather boyish but still extremely attractive smile. Mark was wearing a dark blazer and the round spectacles on his face made him look intelligent and mature despite his young age. Your mouth went dry as he held out a hand to you. His handshake was firm and his skin warm. You couldn’t help but look down at the large hand grasping yours. You’d always liked a man’s hands. Mark’s were smooth yet strong.

“Mark Tuan,” he introduced himself in a soft and deep voice. You looked up into a pair of chocolate brown eyes that seemed innocent, yet briefly flickered up and down your body as they drank you in. You forgot how to speak for a moment so your mother grasped your arm and smiled for you.

“It’s such a pleasure to meet you, Mark. Won’t you come in and join us?”

Mark hesitated and as he exchanged glances with you, you saw a mild hint of panic in his eyes. He clearly didn’t want to be trapped into discussing Wuthering Heights with his mother’s friends. You decided in that split instant that you were rather attracted to this Mark person and that if you were going to be stuck at this stupid party anyway, you would much rather be stuck with him.

“Actually, I had just come to drop my Mother off. I wasn’t planning to stay-“

You gave him one of your most welcoming smiles. Mark was surely handsome, but you knew how to handle yourself around handsome men. “But you must come in for at least one cup of tea! The book club meeting doesn’t start for another twenty minutes and I’m sure that everyone would love to meet you in the meantime. We’ve heard so much about you, Professor Tuan.”

Mark blinked at you in surprise. “Well, um-“

“Come dear, have some tea with us!” his mother insisted, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him inside. You noticed that both of your mothers exchanged a rather mischievous glance and realized that they had probably been planning this for a long time. Honestly; were they running a book club or a matchmaking ring for their children? Either way, the longer you looked at Mark, the more you decided that perhaps your mother hadn’t made such a terrible choice after all.

You followed them into the dining room where all the women almost literally pounced upon Mark at once. You had to admit that in that dark coat and with his naturally charming smile he looked like a hero straight out of a Jane Austen adaptation. You left the older women to badger him with questions and compliments while you slipped into the kitchen. For once, you weren’t the center of attention and the moment’s respite was a relief. You turned the coffee machine on and listened to the chattering drifting in from the dining room half-heartedly. If he survived the crowd of women and lived to tell the tale, you decided that you would give Mark a chance.

He was definitely a treat for the eyes, after all.

About fifteen minutes later, Mark entered the kitchen by himself. He was straightening his jacket and you noticed that he seemed a little bit flustered. He adjusted his glasses on his face and gave you a small, slightly embarrassed smile that made your knees feel weak. Damn. It should be criminal to have such a gorgeous smile.

“Hi,” he greeted you shyly.

You smiled at him. “Survived the wolves, did you?”

“Yes, they’re finally starting their book club discussion now,” Mark replied, shoving his hands into his pockets. You leaned back and noticed that despite being slender, he looked extremely athletic. The jacket buttons were certainly straining over his chest. He leaned against the counter. “I’m informed that it’s Sense and Sensibility they’re discussing today, although there seems to be very little of either to go around in that group.”

You giggled. He had an interesting way of speaking. Perhaps he taught Literature, or something along those lines. How interesting and poetic. You heard the coffee machine behind you ding and gestured towards it. “Can I offer you some coffee? They’re only serving tea out there today. Apparently it’s in keeping with the Jane Austen theme but neither I nor my mother have ever made tea so I’m sure it tasted disgusting.”

Mark grinned. “The little tea cakes were all right.”

“Oh, those were store-bought.”

“Good decision.”

You turned to grab mugs as you poured generous amount of coffee into them. It smelled heavenly and Mark stepped closer to you in order to peek at the delicious beverage. He pointed out your extremely fancy coffee-maker with a smile. “That looks like the sort of machine you would find in an actual coffee shop. A little bit much for a normal household, isn’t it?”

You shrugged as you added milk into the heavenly brew. It became a lovely dark color and you made a little white swirl on the top. “I love coffee. I bought it as a gift for my mother but I think we both know that it was really for me. Sugar?”

“Yes, please,” Mark replied eagerly. You turned to him and noticed that he still had that handsome, boyish smile on his face. He took the coffee mug that you offered him and took a small sip. You couldn’t help but watch as his tongue darted out to lick his lips gently. God, did this man have any idea how attractive he was? Mark noticed you staring at him and his mouth twisted into a small smirk but he said nothing. “This is delicious. Thank goodness I can finally get the taste of that tea out of my mouth.”

“You’re welcome,” you told him.

Mark nodded and took another sip of the coffee before placing the mug on the counter. He was still leaning against it with his arms folded across his chest and you noticed that his chocolate-colored eyes were looking you up and down gently. His gaze sent a shiver down your spine, even though his eyes didn’t linger at any one place for too long. Well. At least he knows how to keep it classy. You found yourself subconsciously straightening your shoulders so that your chest looked nicer.

“So,” Mark began casually. “Do you live here with your mother, then? I don’t see any other reason why you would spend your weekend doing something like this.”

“Unfortunately, yes. I moved back here after my mother’s divorce was finalized because I thought that she might be lonely. I had no idea that she’d suddenly developed a more active social life than my own,” you said with a small laugh. You leaned against the counter and smiled. “I don’t think I could get this many friends to come over to my house at once. I’m always working.”

Mark blinked. “Oh? And what do you do?”

“I’m a scientist. I specialize in biomedical research and I work for the Medical Research Council,” you explained. Mark’s eyes widened and you could tell from his expression that he was impressed. You gave him a small, teasing smirk “But before you ask, I’m not a doctor and no, I don’t know why you’ve been feeling a little warmer than usual these days. My best guess is either menopause or global warming.”

Mark nodded. “That’s very impressive. Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to diagnose my health problems. Although I wonder if there’s anything you can do about this one constant headache I’ve been suffering. It gets significantly worse when I’m in the same room as the women from my mother’s book club, you see…”

You could tell from the mischievous smile that spread across his face that he was joking. You laughed and rolled your eyes at him. Handsome, intelligent and funny. You wondered if this man could get any more perfect. This was the first time that you’d ever felt so attracted to someone that you were meeting for the first time and from the way Mark’s eyes never moved away from yours either, he was equally attracted to you. You bit your lip and smiled at him.

“So, Professor Mark. Let me guess what it is you teach,” you told him with a flirtatious smile.

Mark took a sip of his coffee and shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“Your comment about Sense and Sensibility was rather interesting. At first I thought you might teach something like literature, but then I realized that the comment was a little superficial. It’s not likely to come from somebody who’s actually read the book and knows that the title is referring to foolish young love and not gossiping old women. So I’m guess your field of study has nothing to do with Literature or Poetry or anything like that.”

“You’re partly right,” Mark told you with an amused smile. “I’m not a Literature professor but I have read Sense and Sensibility. So that leaves your conclusion accurate while your analysis is rather lacking.”

You tapped your cheek with a finger as you scanned him. What did this mysterious man teach? It was difficult to tell just by looking at his face. Mark merely pushed his glasses further up his nose and looked at you calmly while you stared at him. You finally snapped your fingers and pointed at him. “Okay. If you read something like Sense and Sensibility, then you must be a rather sensitive and romantic person. I’m getting some sort of artsy vibes from you. And you have a lovely voice. Do you by any chance teach some sort of music?”

Mark laughed his gorgeous laugh and shook his head. “No, you’re going in the wrong direction. Thank you for the compliment about my voice, though. I’ve never heard anyone say that before.”

You flushed. “It just has a rather nice, deep tone to it.”

Mark simply smirked. “Well, you’d better stop getting distracted by it because you’re losing whatever little game we’re playing. Music and Literature? Is that all you can think of?”

You frowned. “Give me a hint.”

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a moment. Then he smiled and straightened up a little bit. “Okay. But this is a pretty obvious hint. You know how I said earlier that I read Sense and Sensibility? Well, I did read it from an academic perspective. So make what you will with that.”

A little lightbulb went off in your head and you beamed. “Ah! History, then!”

“No, not History.”

Your lower lip jutted out into a small pout at the slightly triumphant expression on his face. You honestly couldn’t think of anything and you wondered what you could possibly be missing. You sighed and raised an eyebrow at Mark. “Why one earth would you read Sense and Sensibility from an academic perspective if you’re not looking either at the literature or at the historical aspect? What other angle could a Jane Austen novel about a pair of sisters looking for love possibly have?”

“Are you giving up that easily?” he teased as you felt your cheeks warm. You hadn’t intended to make yourself look like an idiot but Mark seemed extremely amused. “I thought scientists were always on an endless quest for answers about the universe?”

You rolled your eyes. “You’re definitely not a scientist if you believe that.”

Mark nodded. “That’s correct.”

“Well then, please tell me. What does the mysterious Mark Tuan actually teach and what academic angle could he possibly have found in a classic romance tale such as Sense and Sensibility? I’m just dying to know.”

“Let me give you a few more hints because you’re almost there,” Mark explained. “Sense and Sensibility was written by a woman. The main protagonists are all women and it talks about the lives of women. So therefore I must be studying….?”

You blinked at him. “Women?” you asked, confused. You stared at Mark for a few more moments until the puzzle clicked in your mind. “Wait… you can’t be referring to feminism?”

“Close enough. I teach Gender Studies.”

You couldn’t help it; a slightly derisive snort escaped your mouth. He couldn’t possibly be serious? You searched Mark’s dark eyes for any sign that he was joking and concluded that he looked perfectly serious. You had to cover your mouth in order to hold back the amused chuckle that was pushing past your lips. You had never heard anything more ridiculous in your life. Why on earth would a handsome, intelligent man like Mark Tuan choose to study something as frivolous as Gender Studies?

Mark raised an eyebrow. “Is something funny?”

“Yes!” you blurted out. You knew you were being extremely rude but you had never been one to hold back whatever you wanted to say. “I mean, why would you choose to become a Professor in something like Gender Studies? You can’t mean to say that you actually did a bachelor’s degree and then a masters and then a doctorate, all those years of study… on something as useless and commonplace as gender?”

The smile had dropped from Mark’s face. There was a slightly serious, more intense look in his eyes and his voice sounded a little hard. “I’m sensing some condescension in your tone.”

“You’re sensing right!”

“I take it you don’t approve, then.”

“It seems like a complete waste of time to me,” you replied with a challenging stare. “I mean, I’m assuming you talk about things like feminism and you argue over whether this gender is more oppressed or that gender is more oppressed or… oh wait! There’s no gender at all! It’s a social construct that has been imposed on us without any scientific backing, and the world is a better place because we’ve somehow all decided that. It’s a waste of time. It’s like arguing over whether jam tastes better on toast or butter. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to anyone or really impact anything.”

Mark bit the inside of his cheek and looked down at you. You could see that his eyes had darkened and his arms coolly folded across his chest. “So if I’m hearing correctly, you think my field of study is… pointless? Or that arguing about feminism or gender-based discrimination is useless?”

You stared back at him, unblinking. “Isn’t it?”

“You don’t believe that women are oppressed?” he demanded.

You sighed and rubbed your temples. “Look. I agree that there are orthodox countries and parts of the world where women are locked up indoors and denied education and the basic freedom to move around and killed if they have sex before marriage. It’s terrible. It really is. I agree that social reformists are extremely important in places like that. But you’re not in one of those countries. Why on earth would educated and developed people like us still sit and whine about gender discrimination in the First World? We’re not locked up. We have access to resources. Everybody agrees that women should be allowed to be educated-“

Mark sighed and shook his head. “You can’t really believe that gender-based discrimination is restricted to orthodox, backward countries where they murder women for having sex.”

“I do, actually,” you replied with a frown. “Look. Feminism was relevant when, for example, women weren’t allowed to vote. It’s not relevant now. Now people who have all the resources and the money and the time in the world are just wasting their time conducting research about useless things like gender when they could be spending their efforts doing something more productive.”

Mark scoffed. “Like what? Biomedical research?”

“Yes, actually. I’ll have you know that my field of research saves lives.”

“Do you really think that a woman would be able to work in STEM fields like biomedicine if it wasn’t for the work of so many feminists before you? Scientific research is a male-dominated field. It always has been. Not only is it dominated by men in numbers but the inherent structures and the demands of the field are such that men are preferred for the work-“

You scoffed. “Don’t tell me about my own field. Do you think I’m an idiot? I’m a woman who’s been working in biomedical research for over five years and I know perfectly well that gender studies is just an excuse for women who don’t want to put in the hard work it takes in order to study and be successful in such a highly demanding field. Women like that just want things handed to them because they don’t want to struggle. So they like to blame the system.”

“And you don’t think they struggle more than men do?” Mark demanded.

You laughed. You couldn’t believe the nonsense that this man was speaking. “Why on earth would women struggle more than men? It’s exactly the same work! I’m sorry to break it to you, Professor Tuan but there are an absurdly large number of women who sit and study about why there are so few women in STEM fields while none of them actually have the courage or the intelligence to enter into a STEM field themselves… I have nothing to say to women like that, and I don’t think a man like you should be encouraging them to waste their time.”

“You’re unbelievable,” Mark said with a soft chuckle. He didn’t even look angry anymore. He just looked bewildered. “How can a woman like you be so blind to the institutional problems and everyday sexism of STEM fields?”

“Maybe because I’m not looking for excuses to slack off.”

Mark pushed himself away from the edge of the counter and stepped closer to you. You felt your heartbeat thud as he stepped closer, his dark eyes piercing into yours as he approached.

“Okay,” he said in a soft, low voice. “Let’s assume for a moment that you’re right. That my research is a complete waste of time and that women like you don’t need feminism. Let’s assume that the only reason so many women fail to be successful in STEM fields is because they don’t want to put in the hard work. Can you seriously tell me, on a basic level, that men and women are entirely equal in society?” he demanded. The smile had disappeared from his face and he was moving closer to you every moment. “Are you telling me that you are capable of doing every single thing a man is doing?”

Your heartbeat raced as you felt the kitchen counter pressing into your back. Mark didn’t stop moving. He was standing inches away from you and his face was leaning down closer to yours. You could see his dark eyes staring down at you and the perfect angles of his gorgeous face. You tried not to blush and maintained eye contact with him despite the blood rushing to your face.

“Yes,” you replied. “I believe that I am just as capable as a man. And a study trying to convince me that I’m weaker or that the world is unfair and that I need someone’s help is a waste of everyone’s time.”

Mark’s hands moved to both sides of your waist and he gripped the kitchen counter behind you. You were trapped in between his arms while his head dipped down to level with yours. “So,” he said as he lowered his voice to a whisper. “You’re telling me that if I decided to take you, right here and right now on this kitchen counter just to satisfy my carnal urges then you would be able to fight me off?” Mark’s breath was warm on your face and his tongue darted out to lick his lips. “You wouldn’t feel a little bit… powerless? Like it was an unfair fight?”

You couldn’t help but smirk as you leaned closer to him. “I think the question you should be asking,” you whispered in a sultry voice. “Is why I would want to fight something like that at all?”

Mark chuckled. The deep rumble in his chest sent shivers down your spine as one of his hands left to the kitchen counter to gently caress your waist. His hand splayed out on your side, a feather-light touch that was possessive and yet left you craving more. “I should have seen that coming,” he admitted with a small smile as he bit his lip. “You really haven’t been able to take your eyes off me from the moment I entered this house.”

You felt your cheeks flush. “And you’re not attracted to me?” you demanded.

Mark raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say that. You’re an extremely attractive woman.”

“But you think my views are stupid, is that it?” you demanded. Mark’s eyes were fixed on your lips and you felt a surge of confidence. Gender studies professor or not, the lustful part of your mind had taken over the logical portion and you decided that you wanted this man. Nobody had ever made your heart race like this before. Your body was physically craving him. “I suppose our opinions don’t really coincide, do they?”

“No, they don’t,” Mark whispered. “And that is a little bit of a problem.”

“I have a simple solution.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. We stop talking.”

Mark looked down at the twinkle in your eyes before smirking. “For once, I think I agree with your idea.”

You leaned up and kissed him, your lips colliding together in a furious clash. Mark pressed you against the counter harshly while he devoured your lips and molded your bodies together. Your head spun in a cloud of lust. Mark’s tongue slid into your mouth and his hands cupped your ass. Within moments, he had lifted you up by the thighs and set you on the counter without once breaking your kiss. You moaned as he pulled away from you to breathe for a moment.

“Fuck,” you whispered.

He let out a soft, boyish chuckle. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” he growled before kissing you again. You let your hands slide into his dark hair as his palms gripped your thighs tightly. You melted against him while he nipped at your lips and smiled into your kiss. Mark kept teasing you and you had to thread your fingers into his hair tightly to keep his lips connected to yours. He didn’t seem to mind at all. Your forehead kept hitting his glasses and you let out a soft whine before reaching up to rip his glasses off his face.

“You don’t really need those, do you?” you teased as you kissed him again. Mark let out a low moan that made your stomach twist. You tossed the glasses onto the counter and whimpered as he sank his teeth into your lower lip softly. It was getting harder to stay quiet and Mark’s hands had started to move higher up and were beginning to slide under your shirt. He pulled away from you and pecked your lips softly.

“You’re getting too loud, sweetheart,” he whispered with a smirk. “Is there anywhere more private that we could continue, uh, not talking?”

You gasped as Mark’s cold hands trailed up the bare skin of your torso.

“Fuck. Fuck, okay, let’s go upstairs. Through the back door.”

“Lead the way.”

Mark Tuan was an amazing lover.

Admittedly, things got a little clumsy and awkward after you’d both fucked in your bedroom. Neither of you could entirely forget that your mothers were right downstairs, discussing a classic romance novel and probably hoping that the two of you would fall in love at first sight, get married and have children. Mark had looked a little embarrassed while he gathered up his clothes. He gave you a sheepish smile and pointed out that he should head back downstairs before your mothers noticed.

That had been your opportunity to say something. Let’s exchange numbers, you could have said. Or do you want to have coffee sometime? Mark had paused in your doorway and looked at you for a few moments, giving you the opportunity to say that this wasn’t a one-time thing. But you simply couldn’t do it. Despite how extremely attracted you were to Mark and even though it was the first time you’d ever slept with a man that you’d just met, you knew deep down that it wouldn’t work.

If I can’t respect what he does, then how can I ever respect him?

So you merely nodded and smiled, letting him walk out of your room and out of your life. Your mother looked heartbroken when you told her that things with Mark hadn’t worked out. But she knew better than to pressure you, and so you simply moved on with your life and convinced yourself that you hadn’t let go of an amazing man.

(A few days later)

You entered the office building and headed straight for the break-room. You were early and you planned to have a cup of coffee before a meeting with your boss. Some of your coworkers were sitting and having a quick breakfast so you smiled at them in greeting.

“Hey guys. Have a nice weekend?” you asked the pair of guys sitting and munching on toast.

“It was all right. You’re at work pretty early today!” Youngjae greeted you with a friendly smile. He was one of the brightest and happiest guys that you worked with, and one of the few that never seemed to differentiate you as a woman. He offered you some toast and shrugged when you refused. “Going to get cracking early on Monday morning, huh?”

You shook your head. “Hardly. I have a meeting with Dr. Lee today, I’d applied to be a part of his research group on antibody research and I’m going to find out whether I made the cut. It’s a five-year project and I’ve been focusing on antibodies recently, so it would be amazing to finally be a part of some solid, useful research instead of all this medical testing nonsense they make us do.”

Youngjae blinked at you. “…Oh.”

“Is something wrong?” you wondered.

“It’s just… um, I don’t know how to tell you this. But I heard that all the positions on that research team were filled. I think the last slot went to Park Jinyoung.”

You stared in shock. “What? Park Jinyoung? But I have at least three years more experience than him and I don’t think he’s ever done any specific research on antibodies before. I thought his specialty was stem cell research? Why on earth would Dr. Lee choose him over me?”

Youngjae looked embarrassed. “I don’t know. Maybe you should ask Dr. Lee.”

You nodded, setting down your coffee mug and storming over to your boss’ office. It was at least fifteen minutes before your scheduled meeting with him but you weren’t going to wait around in order to hear about whether you’d been rejected. You knocked loudly on the door and were told to come in. You put on your sweetest smile as you faced the older man who sat behind his desk.

“Dr. Lee! I hope I’m not disturbing you. I was hoping we could talk about my research?”

The man blinked at you through his glasses. “Of course! Come in, come in. I know you applied to be a part of my special research team and I’m sure you’ve heard already but I had to give the position to Park Jinyoung. I hope you understand that I had to take into account the stability of the project and the limited funds we have.”

You bit your lip as you sat down in front of him. “I… don’t exactly understand, to be perfectly frank, sir. I have at least three years more experience than him. There’s nothing wrong with my work records here and I already have specific research experience in the field of antibodies. Why has he been preferred for the position over me? If there’s something lacking in my performance then I’d like to know.”

Dr. Lee shook his head. “Certainly not! We’ve had consistently excellent performance from you. It was merely a strategic decision.”

“Well, I’d like to know what the strategy you applied was.”

The older man cleared his throat and for the first time, you noticed that he looked a little uncomfortable. You had no idea what was wrong. You’d been working for him for almost four years now and he had always been perfectly pleasant and seemed to appreciate your work. Why wouldn’t he want you on his research team? Dr. Lee placed his hands on his desk and gave you a gentle smile.

“All right, dear. I know you’re one of those people who considers the progress of science to be much more important than individual goals so I’ll be perfectly honest with you. This is a five-year project and I have to get a lot of research done in a very limited budget. I need to be assured that everyone on the team is entirely dedicated to the project and we don’t fall behind schedule.”

You felt hurt. “And you don’t think I have that level of dedication-“

“I’m sure you do. But this is a five-year project and you’re a woman in your mid-twenties. I have to consider… I mean, if you suddenly chose to go on maternity leave for a few months… well, that could be enough to derail the entire progress of the project. I had to choose Jinyoung to be safe.”

You stared at the man, unable to believe what he was telling you. Did he just deny you a position on the research team that you’d been aiming for year merely because there was a chance you could choose to get pregnant? You had never heard anything more absurd. You gritted your teeth and tried not to lose your temper. It wasn’t Dr. Lee’s fault, he was just doing what was best for his research team.

“Dr. Lee, I’m not even married-“

“But you could get married soon, if you chose. And so many women choose to become single mothers through donated sperm these days. As I said, I need a guaranteed five years of dedication.”

You felt helpless. How could this be happening? You weren’t pregnant and you hadn’t gotten married so how could he deny you the position due to something so flimsy? You felt a surge of desperation and leaned forward. “Dr. Lee, you know that I’ve been focusing all my efforts towards contributing to your work in the hopes that I would be able to be a part of this research. It’s one of my life’s dreams, and getting married or having children is entirely secondary to me. I would be willing to sign a legal statement waiving my right to maternity leave or any such benefit if that was what it would take…”

Dr. Lee merely gave you a sympathetic smile. “You know I can’t ask you to do that. Such a document would have no value, it’s entirely illegal to ask a woman to do give up her right to maternity leave.”

You felt a burst of anger flare inside of you. “It’s also illegal to deny a woman a position solely on the basis of her sex. We live in the twenty-first century, in case you’d forgotten.”

“I expected better from you. I thought you would understand that the consistent pursuit of science and saving lives comes before any individual person’s interests-“

You scoffed, glaring at the old man sitting in front of you. You had always thought he was sweet, kind and brilliant but it suddenly struck you what selfish creatures men really were. How dare he deny you a position that should have rightfully been yours? How dare he accuse you of not being loyal to science? You had dedicated your entire life to the cause until now and they still didn’t trust you to hold out for another five years? Would Dr. Lee have hesitated to hire Park Jinyoung if he wanted to have a baby?

“Does it really?” you asked with a sweet smile, as you stood up. “Well. We’ll see how your noble pursuits hold out in court, shall we?”

Professor Mark Tuan was sitting in his office and preparing for his lecture the next day, when he heard a sharp rap on his office door. It was regular office hours. Plenty of students walked in around this time, hoping to discuss the reading material or get help on their research papers so he merely pushed his glasses higher up his nose and called out.

“Come in!”

The last thing he expected to see was you.

You entered his office, looking as beautiful as ever despite the slightly embarrassed smile on your face. Mark felt his heart skip a beat. He hadn’t expected to see you again. If the disagreement you’d had over feminism wasn’t a deal-breaker, then the awkward goodbye after sex certainly had been. Mark had felt angry with himself after he left your house. Sleeping with you had been amazing, but he wondered whether, if he had held on for a little while longer, he could have gotten to know you better. Something about you still intrigued him.

“Hi,” he greeted you, unable to hold back a bewildered smile as he saw you hesitate in the doorway. “Wow, I certainly didn’t expect to see you today. What are you doing here?”

You bit your lip as you stared at him. This was so humiliating. “Uh…”

“Why don’t you sit down?”

You sat down awkwardly, wondering how to go about this whole thing. It seemed a little silly to be talking to a man whose life’s work you had dismissed and ridiculed just a few days ago. But Mark seemed genuinely glad to see you and deep down, you knew that he wasn’t holding a grudge over your previous conversation. “Sorry to come to your workplace like this,” you apologized softly. “It’s just that we never exchanged numbers that day and I didn’t want to get my Mom involved so I thought I’d just come to the university and ask about your office hours.”

Mark nodded, his eyes twinkling. “Well, it’s nice to see you again.”

You bit your lip. “You too.”

“Is there something you wanted to say to me in particular?”

You took a deep breath but it was difficult to speak. The events of this morning were still fresh in your mind and you couldn’t get over it. It had taken you years to get your dream job and you had just walked out on your boss and risked everything in a moment’s rage. But the rage was still burning inside of you. Mark seemed to notice the pain in your eyes because he walked around the desk and stood beside you, placing a hand on your shoulder. “Hey. Are you doing all right?”

You shook your head, finding it difficult to speak. “I… um. I quit my job today. Well, not exactly. I didn’t hand in a resignation or anything I just threatened to sue my boss and stormed out of the office, so…” you choked out. Your shoulders trembled and to your surprise, Mark gently pulled you up and wrapped his arms around you. You let yourself relax into his warm embrace. His touch felt amazing; not like the electric sexual tension you’d felt before, but a soft and comforting feeling that you needed.

“It’s okay,” he whispered gently, his deep voice relaxing you. “Take a deep breath and talk about it.”

“You were right. He denied me a position on a 5-year research team because there’s a chance I might get pregnant and want to take maternity leave during that time. That asshole. I thought Dr. Lee was a good person and I thought that he really valued my work because he always seemed to treat me as an equal with all the other male employees but- but the moment my gender posed the slightest inconvenience to him, he…”

Mark’s hand stroked your back comfortingly. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

You blinked back your tears and looked up at him. “You’re probably thinking that I deserved it, right?”

He chuckled and one of his hands reached up to cup your face gently. Mark’s dark brown eyes were looking down at you with a hint of kindness as well as sympathy. “I won’t lie, there are probably things you could have done if you’d been a bit more prepared and accepted that this was something that could happen to you,” he said lightly but his tone change once he saw your face crumple. “But, no. Nobody deserves this.”

You closed your eyes. “What am I going to do?”

Mark looked down at you and before you could react, he leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead. You were surprised at his sweetness as he stepped back and gave you his charming, handsome smile. “We are going to go and get a cup of coffee while you tell me exactly what happened and then we decide whether to sue this bastard in court or write an anonymous article shaming him before the entire academic community.”

You giggled. “I like both of these options.”

Mark grabbed his coat and put it on before reaching out to squeeze your hand comfortingly. “Thank you for coming to me about this,” he said softly. “I was worried I’d never see you again and I was starting to regret walking out of your room without saying anything that day.”

You bit your lip. “What would you have said?”

Mark stepped forward until he was standing inches away from you and he leaned down to whisper into your ear softly. “I would have told you that you are the most beautiful and sexy woman I’d ever met, and I wouldn’t mind arguing with you every single day of my life if at least half of our arguments ended the way ours did.”

You shuddered as his lips brushed your ear and you gave him a teasing smirk. “You haven’t seen the worst of me yet. I can be extremely stubborn about my views. What are your opinions on multilateral free trade at the international level?”

“Isn’t free trade a good thing?”

You leaned back and smirked. “Excellent. Let’s discuss that in detail, shall we?”

#got7 #got7 scenarios #got7 fanfiction #got7 angst #got7 fluff #mark tuan #got7 mark #mark scenarios #mark fluff #mark tuan angst #got7 imagines #got7 reader #mark tuan imagines #professor mark tuan #got7 professor!au #thirsty days of september

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awfully-sadistic · 5 years ago

Text

Week 1: Oct 2nd

The Adventures of Dottie and Dodger A series of linear prompt one-shots.

I kind of broke my own rule and couldn’t resist adding in a little something-something special. You’ll know it when you see it. I just hope it’s not too strange. But what the fuck, I can mold this story any way I want.

It was very early morning in the second day of October and Dot was on her way to the office building she and Dodger had purchased just yesterday. Driving down the road, Dot could see that various Halloween objects have been put out decorating yards and roofs with over-sized grim reapers, inflatable and real pumpkins, and strings of lights celebrating Halloween colors, but that wasn’t a surprise. It was as early as mid-September when she began to see signs of Halloween and it excited her.

Halloween was her favorite holiday and the entire month was already promising to bring along the spirit as soon as it could. With the appearance of the Poltergeist yesterday (and the paperwork that followed, but we don’t talk about that), Dot thought that Halloween had definitely come early. She wasn’t complaining. She wished it was Halloween all year-round, but with the spooky month comes attached their busiest time of the year.

It was expected that Human and Supernatural alike call upon the Agency in a tizzy about hauntings, possessions, and other spook factors that wouldn’t normally make an appearance any other time of the year. Obviously, Halloween lowered some sort of barrier that allows the things that go bump in the night liberated freedom this time of year.

She remembered last year; she didn’t think she’d survive much longer running their business out of her home. There were people coming and going and she didn't like the unexpected visitors who would appear in the dead of night for an emergency. She would not admit this, but it was also kind of freaky hearing about all these spooky stories and then having to go to sleep in the same house. There were times when Dodger had been called and invited to stay the night simply because Dot had heard something she wished she hadn’t and her overactive imagination had convinced her that everything was out to get her.

In those times, Dodger was nice enough not to question her intentions as if he had already known what had been bothering her. Then he’d attempt to bore her with interesting tidbits he might have learned that week. It normally had the opposite affect; they’d both stay up all night talking.

Dot finally pulled up to the office space. The building on the outside looked as abandoned as it had on the inside. But Dot figured with a little TLC, the place would brighten right up. A little bit of rose bushes lining the sidewalk to the front doors could work wonders and baby’s breath with some carnations and other filler flowers as accents would make the place seem cheery and fragrant. Someone to take care of the grass would flush this place with some much-needed color instead of the concrete jungle in its place. Trees were scattered about but they looked like they were dying; granted it was in the middle of fall, perhaps they’d look a little different come spring.

It was all one story, (thank god because who liked to climb stairs?), with the parking lot in front right off the road with enough space for the employee range given in the office. There was about twenty-four rooms and Dot knew because she had made a quick run back and forth from her home to make good on the promise about filling the rooms with her old outfits. She had her very own personal dressing room and it felt real fancy if anyone asked.

She just didn’t know what to do with the rest of the rooms. Rooms with more than enough space than an employment of two.

Well, three now with Armand, Jr.

Armand, Jr. or from this point forward known as Armand was the ghost that lived in the Grandfather Clock Dot had named Armand. So, in reality, the clock would be Armand, Sr. There was honestly no reason to tack on a Jr. to Armand, Jr’s name but for the sake of this on-going inside joke now, it was there now and Dot didn’t want to change it. Perhaps it hinted at her personality that she was resistant to change, no matter how little. Dot wouldn’t give it another thought now especially since she was pushing her way through the glass double-doors that would sweep her into the receptionist and waiting area.

Her eyes widened as she took in the receptionist area. It was like a whole new place. Yesterday, there had been cobwebs and dust settled on surfaces and white sheets over various furniture pieces that had been left behind. It had given the place a gloomy look.

Now, there was no sign that there had ever been a speck of dust. The area was brightly lit and felt welcoming. The walls were painted, she now realized. A light, baby blue. She could see there was also an assortment of hanging pictures and magazines laid out on the coffee table nearby and stocked with one of those wooden holders you’d mostly see at an official looking doctor’s office or a dentistry. She was taken back by the presence of a water cooler; she hadn’t seen that yesterday. Perhaps even more surprising was a working 32” flat screen television on the wall opposite the assembly of chairs and it was switched on, mute, showing various flashing pictures about Ashbourne; News. Local stuff. Captions on.

Looking at her feet, she could see that the carpet had been vacuumed recently and perhaps possibly cleaned but she couldn’t tell. But it surely seemed like it because it wasn’t this color yesterday.

Holy fuck, this place was actually functional.

She bumped against the receptionist area, the cutout window reminded her something of a shell and she hung in, trying to take a peek in the back. From what she could see, the police station area with its cubicles was arranged, straightened out, and she thought she could hear voices further back.

“Helloooooo?” she called out.

The voices stopped. Dot strained to hear if Dodger or Armand had been talking to each other but when she felt a light tap on her back, she nearly shrieked. Pulling herself out of the cutout, she whirled around and saw that both Dodger and Armand had come in from the outside with grocery bags in their hands.

Dodger had been the one to tap her. Dot placed a hand over her racing heart, taking in a deep breath to steel her nerves. “Goddamn it, Dodge. What did I say about doing that?”

“Announce ya’self.” Dodger repeated using the same inflection Dot had always used on him.

“Cheeky bastard.” Dot scolded but she had a grin on her face. “Don’t just do that. It’s a good way to get smacked one day.” her gaze trailed down to the bags they held, a question already forming in her eyes even as she finished speaking.

“We thought we’d stock the break room.” Dodger met her halfway, nodding his head beyond the door separating the waiting area from the rest of the office building. Dot followed his gaze before coming upon a sudden reminder. One that sent little shivers up her spine. It had suddenly clicked that she had without realizing, subconsciously noticed, she was the only car in the parking lot.

“I thought I heard voices back there.”

“You probably did,” Dodger said, looking at Armand. “there’s a television set in the breakroom, too. At his insistence.”

“I tried to get one put in the bathroom but I remembered, I do not have to use one.” Armand smiled.

“I reminded you of that.”

Armand’s smile never wavered even as he amended, “Dodger reminded me of that.”

Dot still didn’t feel comforted for some reason but it might have been her overthinking everything. But the banter between Dodger and Armand did a good job of distracting her enough to push that uncomfortable feeling away.

“I didn’t know you could eat, Armand.” Dot said, giving him a rub on the head. In his corporeal form, Armand was physical to the touch which allowed him to hold on to the groceries and appreciate Dot’s gesture. He was also taller than her and she had to stretch her arm up to even do that much. Armand ducked his head and the look on his face was similar to the look he had when he was praised.

“I can eat. I can taste flavors. But it doesn’t do anything for me. I cannot gain any nutrients or get the same satisfaction of feeling full. I think it does help me with energy, but I don’t know for sure.”

“I suspect it helps him keep his corporeal form for longer.”

Dot looked surprised at Dodger’s input, “He can’t hold onto this form for very long?”

“He can go about a full day but needs to rest the next so he’s told me. So, every other day. To see if eating restores any energy to allow him to hold onto this form for longer, I would have to test this theory by feeding him and then checking against how long he can previously hold out, if there’s any change at all. It’s going to take weeks to gain a definitive answer.”

“How exciting.” Dot said dryly before adding, “You do know, he’s not a science experiment. Right?”

Armand, silent through the exchange, finally spoke up, “It’s alright, Dottie. I told him he could try. If it helps you guys, I would love to be in this form for much longer. It just feels right.”

Dot could feel that Armand meant that with every ghost fiber of his pure being. She could feel her heart melting at his resolve and knew he earnestly meant to do anything he could for them. It had been radiating off of him in waves. Armand almost seemed desperate to be of use to them.

For what reason, she still had to find out but she wasn’t about to make him bend over backwards in the meantime. It was even harder to tell if he was mistaking this corporeal form as to partake in being alive again. His comment about trying to use the bathroom was funny but the undertones seemed depressing. He was doing live things or entertaining the thought, but what for? Because Dot and Dodger were alive and he was trying to fit in? Was he staying in this form because it helped them or him?

And was it wrong to encourage him to stay in this form longer in case it feeds into the fantasy? Dot wasn’t one to turn away from anything fantasy related because reality sucked. She daydreamed all the time. She didn’t want to tell Armand to face reality. He shouldn’t have to especially if she didn’t want to.

And why was his personality as eager to seek out praise as often as he did? Was this part of his unresolved business? Ghosts were tricky because there could be many reasons they stayed behind. Armand showed no indication that he was disgruntled or regretful in anyway. If anything, he seemed happy-go-lucky and incredibly naïve. Trusting. Perhaps, too trusting.

She searched Armand’s expression; he stared back at her with a smile that looked hopeful. She knew she couldn’t help him if it turned out he missed being alive if only because she didn’t know how to bring back the dead and the day when that realization hit him was going to break her heart. She hoped that wasn’t the case. With every fiber of her being, she hoped so dearly.

She took the groceries from Armand’s delicate looking arms, signaling the men to follow her as she pushed through the doors to head for the breakroom.

“What would help us is you being yourself, Armand. I don’t expect anything from you except to do what you want to do. If you want to help us, that’s great! And if you want to help Dodger with his weird experiment, you can do that, too.”

Dodger made a discontented noise at the back of his throat as they settled the groceries on the counter in the breakroom. Dot made a note to check the television; to her relief, it was still turned on. To her ‘not relief’, the volume was turned down so low, you could only be in the breakroom to hear it. She hoped to god sound traveled in this building.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been part of an experiment. Do you think it’s fun?” Armand asked, looking between Dodger and Dot. Dot was pulling apples out of the bag before she turned to look at Dodger because she didn’t know how to answer this one.

“It’s fun for me.” Dodger replied, pulling out a hand of bananas.

Armand pulled out a toilet brush scrubber, “How do you eat this one?”

Dot took the scrubber gently from Armand’s long, graceful fingers. “You don’t eat this, honey. And Dodger is going to try to make this experiment as fun for you as he can or I’m going to make him eat this.”

“Noted, love.” Dodger murmured, preoccupied with his groceries to worry about what was in Dot’s hand. Armand had a look of realization on him.

“Oh, it’s Dodger food.”

“Exactly.” Dot laughed.

Putting away the groceries was longer than usual if only because Armand kept asking how to eat everything. And not everything Dodger had bought was for consumption. But Dot had the patience to teach him what was and was not safe to eat. Basically, anything in the fridge but if Armand was unsure, he was to get Dot’s approval first. Dot also had to hand it to Dodger; he did a good job of stocking the breakroom with lots of snacks and he didn’t forget her creamer and fixings for her coffee.

“After five years paired with you, I better remember.” He said, taking a sweep around the breakroom. “I’ll have to write a thank-you note to the Agency for giving us their old equipment.”

“Ah, I was wondering where we got half this shit.” Dot commented. “Can’t believe Chief Aldric would part with any of it to help us.”

“He specifically told them to give us the stuff they had in the storage room. If they attempted to give us anything new, they could start working for us. At least, that was what Agent Hartwin told me while sounding very apologetic.”

Dot’s face grew a discontented look about it, “Mm. He’s always been a little cowardly. But that’s the same storage where everything gets thrown in once it outlives its usefulness? That sounds more likely. Yeah, thank them for me too.”

“I kept telling them I could repair almost anything. Everything they’ve given us I was able to repair with no real cost. I had most of the spare parts I needed at home.”

“Well, like you’re fond of saying, their loss.” Dot said, wondering what the inside of Dodger’s house looked like. “It certainly looks like everything works like new. I wouldn’t have thought we got hand-me-downs whatsoever.”

Armand looked lost, “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Free stuff usually is,” Dodger pointed out. “but they meant to give us their broken and out of date equipment. Perhaps as a way to haze us. Or thumb their nose at us.”

“I don’t think anyone’s used that saying since the 1800’s,” Dot cracked.

“Actually, my dear, the first usage was recorded around the 1920’s. It made a reappearance around the 1930’s but since then I’ll admit it’s a little out of date.”

Dot and Armand stared at Dodger who didn’t say anything after that, content that his lesson had gotten across. Learning something new was never expected or planned as far as Dot was concerned. However, Dodger’s matter-of-fact way of speaking and on a rare note, when he went on spouting facts about word usage or anything else he seemed to be an overnight expert on, she would let him babble on about the little factoids because she would learn something new whether she asked for it or not.

For the most part, he could come across as a know-it-all for those who didn’t know him.

Dot did know him and understood he wasn’t just showing off. He was genuinely sharing something with her and she often replied like a proud mother. “Thanks, Dodge. That’s really interesting.”

“That sounds silly,” Armand said next. He placed his thumb on his nose, “What is the point of this?”

“It’s a gesture that’s meant to disrespect,” Dodger replied. He took a moment to extend Armand’s fingers so he was doing the gesture correctly. “wiggle your fingers. That’s how it’s supposed to look.”

Dot placed a hand over her mouth to conceal the giggle wanting to escape. Armand looked confused, seemingly still not understanding how it’s supposed to be an insult. But he seemed to realize that he was currently gesturing towards them and gasped at the sudden revelation. “Oh no! I didn’t mean any disrespect!” His hand flew off his nose and straightened to his side. “I’m so sorry!”

Dot laughed this time, “You didn’t do anything wrong, Armand. It’s just a silly little gesture and if you want to do it, go ahead. But always at Dodge and never at me.” She gently teased. Armand seemed shocked at the insinuation that he could ever thumb his nose at Dot. The very idea of insulting her whatsoever seemed to pale him more than his ghosted form.

“I’d never!”

The sentiment was sweet and filled Dot with a warm feeling that surely showed in her smile.

“I’ve had the business cards renewed, “Dodger brought up, calling their attention. In a separate bag that Dot hadn’t noticed, Dodger pulled out a cardboard container the size of a medium jewelry box. The top came off like lid and Dodger pulled out a single card. It was a matte black cardstock with their new address and phone number pasted under the name of their office in sprawling gold script. It looked incredibly fancy, Dot was afraid to touch it.

“Sanctum Sanctorum?” Dot asked, looking up at Dodger. “Isn’t that that one place where you-know-who lives in New York or… something? It was all over the news years and years ago, we can’t get away with something like this.”

Armand quirked his head, “Is something wrong with the name? When Dodger explained it’s something you really liked, we thought it was the best idea to go with.”

Dot could feel herself grow soft at the thought they put in for her especially since Dodger remembered a passing comment from more than a year ago. But she shook her head, “You probably don’t know this, Armand, but it’s a really big world out there. Aside from the Agency, there are organizations out there that do bigger work than what we do with a lot more pull and power.” Then she turned to Dodger, “We’re going to get sued.”

“It’s alright. It’s a Latin phrase and the last time I checked, there was no copyright on it. There are plenty of places that use the same phrase. By its very definition, all it means is a sacred place.”

“You really have an answer for everything.” Dot remarked but she couldn’t believe they were actually getting away with calling their new office building a Sanctum Sanctorum. As long as they didn’t put “the” in front of it, maybe it’ll be okay. That way it didn’t seem official and they didn’t step on anybody’s very important toes…

“Well, we better start calling it the Sanctum for short before we get a call from… disgruntled but really impressive superheroes.”

“Superheroes?”

Dot and Dodger glanced over at Armand. In a lot of ways, he really was like a baby. He remembered some things from the time he was alive but other things, you had to explain to him. It was a good thing both Dot and Dodger exhibited patience well beyond their years. Dot cleared her throat taking the lead on this one. After all, she’s been following the history and accounts ever since their appearance.

“Years and years ago, like way before Dodge and I were born and before our parents were born and perhaps even their parents, so we’re talking about grandparents and maybe even great-grandparents, there was a really scary war. Like, we’re talking throw everyone back in medieval times, end of the world as we know it, war. Back then, relations between Humans and Supernatural beings were non-existent as proof of the Supernatural was more or less unverified. Things like Ghosts, Vampires, Weres, Witches, or anything else like that was deemed legend and at most, urban legends. Other times it was fuel for scary stories on camping trips and scaring little children into behaving.

But it was near impossible to prove the existence of anything Supernatural and for the most part, Humans didn’t have anywhere near the impressive range of abilities they have today so everything was really boring and mundane. Even so, Humans were pretty advanced. I mean, the stuff they had back then doesn’t hold a candle to what we have now, but they were pretty advanced in technology and space exploration and in those times, it was pretty impressive especially when we look back in the past and see how far we’ve come. Back then, they could only get to Luna. Now, we have a colony on Luna. See the comparison?”

“Luna?”

“The moon, love.” Dot laughed. “So, circling back to the Supernatural, Humans had sightings, superstitions, and sometimes proof like video and pictures but that eventually ended up as hoaxes most times. They didn’t have the equipment we have today that can verify Supernatural presence without a doubt or equipment that detect latent power in Humans. Furthermore, people liked feeding into the fear that there might be something wandering on this planet other than themselves. Yet, ironically, Humans were, and some could say still are, really arrogant in terms of their chain of command in life. Even if there had been something out there, they would always deem themselves higher than anything else that came along. They’ve just been in charge for so long, it was unthinkable that anything greater could challenge that. And in a lot of ways, Humans were right. They have the capacity to think a lot bigger than they are and when they band together, they can pull off some of the most incredible spectacles. But Humans are also very prideful creatures which prevent them from reaching their full potential.

Or so it’s been hypothesized. After all, they did fight with each other over territory and stupid shit like that impeding their own progress.

In a lot of ways, the Supernaturals should have expected it. But one day, there they were. Tired of hiding, tired of their cultures and beliefs being ridiculed and turned into insulting myths, they just emerged. As I remember every account in the history books have put it, it was like an invasion. However, no one could tell who was put on the planet first. Humans thought they had the right to the world because they’ve been the ones to dominate it. Supernaturals felt they’ve also been there just as long but were forced into hiding because of the discrimination and hatred Humans fueled into their stories turned them into hideous things. Monsters, honestly. They would have been hated.

But everyone hated each other. There were clashes, skirmishes, wars. Cities were decimated because despite the Humans claiming to have dominated the world, they were still Humans. They bled easily, bruised easily, weren’t as psychically or physically gifted like Supernaturals were known; enhanced strength, telekinesis, flight, shapeshifting—as you can imagine, it really tipped the scales in the Supernatural’s favor.

But one day, there was a point where Humans were able to somehow turn it around. If you ask anyone their opinion, there are many guesses as to what happened. Some say that at a certain point, to save themselves, Humans just evolved. In high stress situations or faced with extinction, it awoken something in Humans that allowed them to push back. Others say a miracle took place bestowed upon whatever God they worshipped that saw the Humans suffering and decided to help. And if that were the case, whatever God touched them never fucking appeared again. Kind of ridiculous if you ask me—”

“Dot,” Dodger cut in, steering Dot back into the story. He turned to Armand and explained, “Religion is a touchy subject. Every case she’s had at the Agency concerning the religiously imbalanced turned everything upside down and inside out. She’s never had a good experience dealing with them.”

“Don’t forget they are often the most judgmental and preachy assholes to ever deal with. Sorry.” She cleared her throat, finding her stride again. “Anyway, whatever had happened imbued the Humans with the strength to fight evenly with the Supernaturals. The powers that Supernaturals exhibited were suddenly shared with Humans. If a Vampire had super strength, so did Herbert the Human. If this Werewolf can run very fast, so can Susan the Human. It was both a good thing and a bad thing; that meant Humans wouldn’t be extinct but it also meant it fueled their idea that they were the true inheritors of the World. I mean, what else could convince them if not that moment that they evolved or were God-touched on the butt or whatever.

The fights and wars escalated and this happened all over the World. Human and Supernatural homes and cities and lands were absolutely fucking wrecked. Civilians that didn’t have supernatural abilities, and that accounted for Supernaturals and Humans alike, were housed in safe zones; it was about the only truce Supernaturals and Humans honored. People or Beings who couldn’t fight back to defend themselves should be given protection was the one thing they agreed upon, it was a fucking miracle. Now that I think about it, it might have to have been who was in power back then, honestly.”

“That sounds so terrible,” Armand said. He looked like he was about to cry. Dot was starting to regret telling the story. “everyone really hated each other.”

“Well, I mean, it sort of gets better.” Dot pointed out, “I’m not done yet. I promise the superheroes are coming in.”

Armand’s eyes brightened, “Oh yes! Superheroes! What are they?”

Dot laughed, “Now hold on. Before they came along, we need to get to the part about the aliens.”

Armand looked confused for a second before he finally asked, “What is the aliens?”

Dot and Dodger exchanged glances. Dot seemed worried and Dodger just looked perplexed. The things Armand did and did not know were astounding sometimes. It never failed to throw them for a loop when he asked.

“You don’t know what aliens are?” Dodger asked. Before Armand could reply, he explained, “Extraterrestrial life. Or, a person who is not a national of the country they are living in.”

“Or a movie franchise,” Dot input.

“What is extraterr—”

“Something that did not originate of this earth.” Dodger quickly explained. “Aliens come from outer space. Outer space is the big thing above our heads past the sky with many stars and planets.”

Dot laughed, smacking Dodger on the arm playfully. “I’m sure he knew what outer space was.”

“I, for one, am not quite sure, love.”

Armand replied, “I know! I know now.”

Dot gestured, pulling attention back to her so she could continue with the history of their planet that apparently Armand might need another run through with. She hoped she hadn’t lost him somewhere along all that explaining.

“The aliens. Okay, with the Humans and Supernaturals fighting each other, it seemed like nothing could have been able to stop this on-going war that would surely have pulled us into it years down the road. But we were either very lucky or unlucky because Aliens appeared out of nowhere and blasted all of our collective asses.

The sorry thing about that was the Aliens waltzed into a war that they weren’t even concerned with. They were running away from their own stupid shit. Apparently, history reports from an Alien POW had revealed they were on the run from a fleet from another freaking dimension. It shocked everyone to the core hearing about different dimensions and seeing Aliens that the war against Humans and Supernaturals seemed so… petty, now.

In the meantime, Aliens killed without discrimination. Remember the safe zones that both sides had agreed were untouchable? Aliens struck there first. Humans and Supernaturals alike were being targeted and even dragged into a war that wasn’t theirs. An even larger war on a scale that no one could fathom. We eventually figured out why we were being hit so hard. Aliens had the technology to brainwash their prisoners to use themselves as canon fodder so they’d lessen their own causalities and since the World was ripe with many shields, Humans and Supernaturals found out really fast it didn’t matter what they were. As far as the Aliens were concerned, they were the same.

I remember reading that it was the point where Humans and Supernaturals banded together to fight a common enemy to save themselves. By then, about one-third of the population had been wiped out.”

“To put it into perspective,” Dodger interrupted, “That’s two billion people. Total, our population including the Supernatural was about seven billion. Our history’s worst genocide before the Alien invasion is about six million. Doesn’t even come close to the damage of almost wiping us off collectively as a species and without a certain intervention, we would have been wiped out without a doubt.”

Armand’s brows were furrowed as he tried to imagine what two billion people looked like. The numbers were huge, he understood that much at least. “What is this certain intervention?”

Dot continued with a smile that stretched widely. This was a subject she knew all about as it fascinated her. “This is where the superheroes come in. In this other dimension, people with incredible gifted abilities who use them for good and justice were fighting the Alien race on the other side. Our planet didn’t know at the time and assumed the Aliens were just fighting other bad, stupid aliens. But that wasn’t the case. This Alien race who were crystalline and spindly were called the Dovirs. They had been trying to take over another earth-like planet coincidentally… named Earth-616 but bit off more than they could chew and were chased off. That didn’t mean they were retreating. They were desperate as it had been explained to us. In the midst of this chase, they ripped a tear into another dimension to cheat and bolster their numbers—which they accomplished coming here—to one day go back and try taking over once more.

If my memory serves correctly, and it always does, we’re Earth-6969. Which, by the way, we came away as the winner for coolest planet name. The representatives from Earth-616 landed here and explained it for us. It’s all over history books and by now is common knowledge.

In a lot of ways, Earth-616 is like our planet; same geographical lands and climate. We even have the same cities give or take a couple of small towns that differ between us. Oh yeah, and they weren’t in the throes of war waged in the name of discrimination but for the most part, yeah. We were pretty similar. Granted, they were more advanced in terms of technology but with the appearance of the Dovirs and our access to their technology, we’ve bolstered our own. Earth-616 even shares some of its technological advances with us which was pretty cool of them.

But comparing the two worlds, the Human races are the same, the Supernatural races are the same, we were just lacking our own Superheroes. And Armand, that means they are a band of people that come together despite their differences to make the place they live a better environment for everyone.”

Armand smiled, finally understanding. “So, they’re really important.”

“I’d say that they were. I know there are people who don’t share the same sentiment. It’s stupid and surprises me that this is coming from both sides.” Dot took a deep breath before she went down that road. It was clear to anybody listening that this was a passionate subject for her.

“I’d say we’re getting close to the ideal of living together in harmony, slowly. That’s why organizations like the Agency and what we do popped up. The Dovirs made us realize that we were entirely unequipped to handle an outside invasion. At the same time, we can’t keep fighting each other.

Taking a page out of 616’s example, their Superheroes and Supernaturals and Humans live together in a way that we’re trying to pull together nowadays. I’m not saying their side is perfect; if you pay attention to them, you’d see they just as well have their own issues with discrimination and blatant racism. Their government can be corrupt just as any political power, but we’re all trying to fight that and have been for a long time.

If it’s going to end in our lifetime remains to be seen, but I’d like to think we’re closer than five, ten years ago. It took a long ass time for our present to happen. I mean, the effects of that war are still very present today; tensions between the Humans and Supernaturals are still tense in some situations but for the most part, we’re getting there.

Plus, there’s still that nasty tear between our dimensions that now connect us to Earth-616. Isn’t it cool we’re neighbors?”

Armand was silent for a very long time, his expression reflecting a thoughtful gaze. Dot wondered if she had lost him along the way somewhere. She winced, glancing over at Dodger, “I might have gotten a little preachy at the end, there.”

Dodger shook his head, “Nonsense, I think you’ve pulled together a very beautiful summarization of our history. There wasn’t anything in what you said I disagreed with.”

Smiling, Dot gave Dodger’s hand an affectionate pat before Armand finally spoke which took them both by surprise as he asked, “How do we visit Earth-616? Do we have a very long ladder we climb to get there?”

Dot remained in a stupor for another second before laughing almost in disbelief, “Oh, no, honey. Haha, that’s where the Sanctum Sanctorum comes into play.” She further explained as soon as she saw the confusion in Armand’s features, “There’s a Sorcerer who lives down in New York that bridges the connection between our two worlds otherwise it’d be dangerous keeping that tear unsupervised. It’s complicated. Something about not having our own guardian. From what I know, he spends his time between the two worlds; we’re sort of like his vacation house.”

Then it clicked. Armand’s mouth formed a perfect ‘o’ as his eyes rounded in unison. “That’s why we’re going to get sued!”

“We’re not going to get sued.” Dodger argued.

Dot turned her head to face Dodger, almost jumping when she came face to face with a terrifying red expression. It took her a moment to realize he had pulled something out of a grocery bag and put it on his face.

“Take off that mask,” she scolded before adding, “that is a mask, right?”

“Ah! My Halloween costume!” Armand exclaimed, taking the mask from Dodger’s hands. “Dodger explained in the store why there were so many skeletons and witches on display. Hellowoon.”

“…Why would you think that was my face?” Dodger asked but went unheard as Armand continued.

“You’re supposed to dress as something scary, so I thought this was scary.” The ghost lifted his pale hand up to cover his impressive face with the unimpressive red mask. It had a long nose and angry eyebrows, its mouth furled down in the snarliest of snarls. Dot eyed it wearily.

“That’s great, honey. But you don’t have to be scary if you don’t want to, you can be anything you want. Also, did you say Hellowoon?”

“That’s not what it’s called?” he asked, pulling the mask to one side. He peered out with an amethyst hued eye expectant of Dot to correct him. But she didn’t have the heart.

“Well, it’s official. Happy Hellowoon, everyone!”

“I’m serious, did you really think that was my face?”

“Dodge, I swear to god. Any god.”

There was ring from the front which caught Dot, Dodger, and Armand’s attention. Their heads turned towards where the receptionist desk area sat before they looked at each other again.

“Do we have a literal doorbell?” Dot asked.

“Mm, I think there was a little “ring for service” bell somewhere on the desk. Armand was ringing it incessantly earlier.” Dodger replied.

“I had to make sure it would ring the next time, too.” Armand whispered.

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“What do we do?” Dot asked Dodger lowering her voice to a conspiring whisper. “It can’t be a client, right? You just printed the cards out today.”

“You might have, but I asked around and found out where you relocated. In any case, I let myself in. I hope that’s okay.” The new voice spoke with an authority that told anyone listening that he had every right to be there. It didn’t fail snapping their attention to the doorframe where a tall man stood as if he belonged there clad in a red cape that seemed to have a mind of its own. It moved where there was no wind and occasionally, the man would brush back the flap of the collar out of his face. The breakroom never had a more important guest. In all of her life, Dot never expected to come face to face with anyone as extraordinary or significant as Doctor Stephen Strange.

Dodger leaned in, whispering, “On second thought, we might be getting sued after all.”

“That wasn’t quite the idea I had in mind.” Stephen smiled. It looked like he was confronting a group of guilty children. Well, two guilty children. The third was quite obviously unusual. A flicker of recognition sparked in Stephen Strange’s gray gaze before it landed on Dot. “I was hoping you could take on a case for me.”

Dot swallowed dryly and she gripped the sides of her shirt, then ran her palm down the side of her leggings. She was nervous and it wasn’t coming from Stephen. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Stephen Strange, THE Stephen Strange, visiting the planet just to enlist her services? From what she could remember, she didn’t know how often he visited 6969, but it couldn’t have been that often, right? He had his own responsibilities on his own planet, didn’t he?

“O-Of course,” she put cautiously. She couldn’t help the stutter in her voice mainly because she had never expected in her lifetime to ever run into a Superhero from 616. An encounter was supposed to be rare. Even if their planets were connected by the rupture the Dovirs were responsible for, that didn’t mean the two planets could interfere with one another unless absolutely dire. Unless, that had changed? “What could we do for you, Doctor Strange?”

There was a brief moment when it looked like Stephen Strange looked in approval at being recognized. He all but purred the next statement, “Good, so we know of each other.”

“Y-You know me?”

“Dot Dreadful and Dodger Ainsworth Mac Alister of the private eye institution, Supernatural Investigations. Previously employed by the government sanctioned organization known as The Agency, real creative name, hm? You guys obviously have the superior one.”

Dot laughed nervously.

“You two were employed by The Agency for ten years, partnered for five because you, Ms. Dot, weren’t compatible with anyone who didn’t overload your empath abilities and Mr. Dodger stayed at entry level because he just liked doing the paperwork.”

Dot and Armand looked at Dodger who shrugged. Doctor Strange continued.

“You two quit a year ago and partnered to create your own business citing irreconcilable differences for your departure with the Agency to mask the fact you two were really unhappy there but it was an open secret considering how much Dot was known to push the cases deemed too “unimportant” by The Agency to favor the ones with more publicity to shed the project in a better light. In reality, you understood the corruption taking place once the previous Chief was replaced with Aldric, the mayor-elected official with a discrimination against Supernaturals. Another reason included being tired of being tied up by bureaucracy and wanted to make a genuine difference. Starting yesterday, you relocated to this site after operating out of your home for the last year. I hope I didn’t miss anything.”

“We hired a ghost as a receptionist.” Dodger pointed out. Stephen’s gaze trailed from Dot, then to Dodger, and last to Armand. “His name is Armand.”

“Yes, of course. That’s how he fits in.”

“And this is my Hellowoon costume,” Armand added, lifting the thing to his face. “It’s spooky, isn’t it?”

Stephen pointed, almost doing a double-take. He seemed genuinely taken aback by the outburst but covered it up as soon as the emotion flickered across his face. “Did he just say Hellowoon?”

By this time, Dot stepped up to Stephen, floored by how he knew so much. And it seemed everyone she was meeting lately simply towered over her. She extended an arm out towards the main office space.

“Why don’t you tell us the details of this case, Doctor?”

Stephen glanced down at Dot, giving her a charming smile that Dot could sworn was her imagination. Only in her dreams could someone this amazing exist, right? She had many fantasies about meeting any of the Supers in 616 but to actually be meeting one right now? …Maybe reality didn’t suck for once.

She led the Doctor to a random desk hoping it was to his taste. Maybe she should have paid more attention to the furniture. Once seated, she took out a legal pad and grabbed a pen. She had no idea where the invoices were but it was a good thing Dodger had her back. He grabbed an invoice while Dot recorded the details for any pertinent information.

Doctor Strange had the presence even while sitting to intimidate her. He seemed so regal and she could feel the pen feel warm in her hand. It took a while to realize the warmness was coming from her own hand. She just seemed so flustered! She hoped she looked composed on the outside at least.

“This peculiar case is located in the small town of Whitecrest. I’m sure you know it.”

Dot nodded, getting down to business. She ducked her head and wrote down Whitecrest as she spoke, “I know it. It looks like a little village from a medieval fantasy. Has a tavern and inn, even a functioning blacksmith. Everyone likes to ride horses to get around. It shouldn’t be too far from Ashbourne.”

Armand, seated across from Dodger who was copying the information for the Invoice asked, “Is Whitecrest that different?”

Stephen smiled, approval glinting in his eye. “After the Great War, as your planet calls it, a lot of towns had trouble rebuilding. Or more correctly, the people of states and towns all over had trouble deciding how they wanted to rebuild. Some had the finances to support their ambitious renovations while other towns like Whitecrest ended up looking like a piece of the past.”

“Way past,” Dot input with a smile, looking at Stephen. It was amazing how much of their history he bothered to learn. “Towns like Whitecrest have a lot of problems. It has nothing to do with the people most times. Ah, Doctor, what would you like for us to do while we’re there?”

“I’ll be honest,” Stephen suddenly said in a serious tone. His face took on a pensive expression and he seemed hesitant on admitting something. Up close, Dot could see that there was a gathering of wrinkles at the corner of his eyes and with the addition of the white at his temples made him seem a little older than he appeared just a few minutes ago. Whatever he wanted to say weighed heavily on his mind for a while before he finally continued, “I don’t usually put off my tasks like this but I don’t trust going to The Agency to carry out what I’m about to ask you. I can’t do it myself as I’m needed back home, in fact, as soon as I’m done here, I’ll be heading back to my New York.”

“You’ve traveled a long way to see us,” Dot encouraged. “Whatever you have to ask, I promise we’ll do our best to carry it out.”

Stephen looked up giving Dot a little jolt as their gaze connected. He still looked grave and serious. “I don’t like passing the tasks I can do myself onto anyone else, especially if I don’t know them. But I’m taking a chance on your business.” He paused and his next statement lightened up his features, “What can I say, I have a soft spot for it.”

Dot tried her best to quell the blush that was threatening to rise to her cheeks. She cleared her throat and took her legal pad to fan herself, “Ah, haha.”

“The reason we don’t trust The Agency are possibly the same as yours,” Dodger put quite bravely. Dot was often surprised by the way he spoke as if he knew everything. By the way Stephen nodded convinced Dot that Dodger probably did know everything. Dodger continued, “Then all we have to do is prove that we’re not The Agency. We can complete this job. I’m sure of it.”

Coming from any other man, it may have sounded like boasting and Stephen said as much. “But there’s something in your tone that could reassure me that’s the case,” he admitted with a slight chuckle. “It reminds me of someone else I know. A little egocentric, likes his name on tacky buildings that he owns.”

“That’s not just a little.” Dodger said.

Stephen’s grin widened a little, “And much like that egotistical man, I like you.” Stephen took a glance at his watch and realizing he was pressed for time, decided to wrap it up. “When you get to Whitecrest, there’s a person I want you to see. The name I was given was Fitzsimmons. Word is that he hangs around the tavern or the inn.”

“We talk to him?” Dot asked, writing down the name.

“I’d like if you could. I wasn’t given much information myself but to get to me, it must have been significant. I’ll find out what that is as soon as I get back and you can report to me what that was.”

“Is this case was giving to you and is so significant, would it be dangerous?” Dodger asked. Dot was thinking it but she wasn’t sure she could pose the question without insulting Stephen. She cautiously looked up, thankful for Dodger who always said what was on his mind.

“It could very well be dangerous. But I had been digging around and came upon the conclusion that I could pass the task on if I didn’t have time for it. That is what I’m doing as much as I would like to solve this myself. I was told The Agency had the equipment handled to deal with almost anything but I don’t exactly approve of the publicity my name brings in this world.”

“We have the same equipment The Agency has,” Dot interjected quite confident herself. “so you don’t have to worry there. And we have no problem keeping your name out of anything, anywhere. Even out of our mouths. No one say Doctor Strange’s name.” Dot put a hand over her mouth then mumbled, “Starting now.”

“Can we call him Doctor Cape?” Armand asked.

“That’s insulting,” Dodger said.

“We have to call him something, right?”

Stephen surprised them by laughing. “That’s alright. I meant in newspapers or in any media where the public can get to it. I’m sorry to ask as I’m sure the exposure could help your company—”

“No no no! Don’t worry about that!” Dot exclaimed, wide-eyed. She had almost reached across the table to take his hands but restrained herself and her emotional self by sitting back in her chair and gripping her pen with both hands, longways. “That isn’t why we’re here. We really want to make a difference, doesn’t matter if our names are attached or not. If the people of Whitecrest can benefit from being helped by us or even Doctor Stephen Strange, it’s the outcome that’s important.”

“Besides, if we’re good at our job, our name will get out there somehow.” Dodger added.

Dot was nodding in agreement. Stephen chuckled again, quite entertained by this little group. If it wasn’t the strange ghost that didn’t know how to say Halloween, it was the blunt Dodger and the compassionate leader of the group, Dot, that made up Stephen’s mind.

“Alright then, I’ll entrust this task to you.” he deemed. Dot was filling out the last-minute details such as the date and time as Stephen stood up. For the first time, he took a good look around. “It’s just the three of you, right?”

“Yeah,” Dot said, looking up and following Stephen’s gaze. “it’s big, huh?”

Stephen sent her a wink that sent Dot’s tummy flipping. “I think it’s about the right size. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to take my leave. Do you mind if I meet you here the day after tomorrow, around the same time?”

“Oh, definitely!” Dot smiled. “So, the fourth at around seven-thirty.”

“It’s a date.”

Dot blinked, feeling herself flush this time. Before she had a chance to reflect on it, Doctor Strange opened with a strange gesture with a swing of his hand and an orange portal flickered to life in the middle of their office. From the other side, she could barely make out something that looked like an office and dark wood.

“From one Sanctum to another,” Stephen mused. “Good luck.” He finished before stepping into the portal. It disappeared as soon as his cape had cleared.

Dot, Dodger, and Armand were left gaping.

“Whoooooa! I can’t believe it!” Dot shrieked, throwing her hands up. Legal pad going with them.

“Fascinating. I wonder how he did that,” Dodger sounded just as thoughtful as Stephen had, moving around the spot where the portal had been.

Armand was the only one who wasn’t saying anything. Instead, he was looking at his mask. Dot, noticing, frowned and asked, “What’s wrong, love?”

“I wonder if it’s too late to change my costume.”

#{{ original drabbles: spooktober 2019

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dcarevu · 6 years ago

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DCAU #10: Be a Clown

“They don’t make straight jackets like they used to! (I should know…)”

After that last oddball episode, it feels nice to settle back into some familiar territory for this one, at least somewhat. Admittedly, even though we have been enjoying the show, it does have kind of a slow start, and to me, this episode isn’t really an exception. Next time things are scheduled to rise to the next level, but in the meantime, let’s look at why Be A Clown was passable, but a little underwhelming.

Villain: The Joker Robin: No Writers: Red Pedersen, Steve Hayes Director: Frank Paur Animator: Akom Airdate: September 16, 1992 Episode Grade: C

Having the Joker disguise himself as a birthday clown and fighting Batman at an abandoned (or maybe it was simply closed?) carnival is an obvious setup for an episode, maybe a little bit too obvious? It didn’t make for much excitement, at least not until the end where Bruce Timm ended up storyboarding (apparently they had a freelancer leave before the episode was finished, so Bruce Timm had to finish it himself). I think this episode was another example of them not taking full advantage of their concept. But like I said, I did enjoy the ending, particularly when Batman was attempting to get the situation under control while on the roller coaster, and Joker is lobbing those “baby bombs” as Char called them.

The baby bombs were cool because it would be so easy to give the Joker some cornball 60’s-inspired clown weapons and call it good. I feel like the “baby bombs” in a way were partially that, but they also had a sense of weird and creepiness too, and work for a modern version of the Joker. We also see the return of Joker’s razor sharp throwing cards, along with a card that could somehow expel knockout gas. The razor cards are awesome, as they are a play on actual card throwing. A very real stunt among magicians, such as Ricky Jay, is throwing cards at such a speed that they can actually stick into objects such as a watermelon. The Joker is a dishonest manipulator, so giving him what is basically a cheater’s version of throwing cards, along with that being an actual weapon, makes sense with his personality. The knockout card was a bit weirder, neither Char or I really know how that would work. It jumped the shark a little, especially with how quickly it seemed to work on Batman. That must have been some strong stuff! Batman wasn’t super prepared for that one, and moments where he lacks the competence he usually has does stick out a little. But that’s more just nitpicking, and it didn’t really take away from anything.

I also thought that the Joker easily could have unmasked Batman when he was out cold, but maybe at this stage the Joker didn’t care so much about seeing Batman’s true face? The Joker is almost like a cat playing with a mouse sometimes, he doesn’t really care that much about what ultimately happens in the end, or even planning the next time they meet. He mostly cares about the in the moment plan, and having fun making life a living hell for everyone involved, including Batman. And I mean, he decided to set off a bomb at a child’s birthday party just because the mayor noted in an interview that he wanted to keep Gotham a safe place. As Char said, Joker may seem to have a high IQ, but his insanity level is also high, and they are constantly at odds with each other.

This episode also gave us our first major look at Mayor Hill. We have seen him before, but I think the most we’ve seen of him was his appearance in On Leather Wings which I didn’t even note when I covered that episode. I had honestly forgot that he becomes a semi-recurring character. Like the series bible planned, going by this episode, he seems to be a wishy-washy man that has practically zero guts, zero spine, and zero ambition to do anything aside from making sure he is seen as good in the eyes of the public. It’s not really clear as to whether or not the ordinary citizens of Gotham appreciate him as a mayor, but with how phony he seemed, it wouldn’t surprise me if people saw right through him. Come on, there is no way anyone living in Gotham would believe that the police chase which interrupted his speech on the new apartments was an isolated incident, right? This is the main reason why The Joker decides to challenge him a little, and show just how easy it is to detonate a bomb and rack up a body count it is in this place. I like seeing some actual motivation for the Joker, even if for any sane person this wouldn’t be.

On top of a phony politician, the mayor seems to be a disconnected father who thinks that he cares about his son, or at least wants people to think that. His son seems to love his father, but get easily frustrated with how he behaves, projecting himself onto his son all too often, and not truly getting to know what his son likes or wants. He completely dismisses his son’s magic hobby, as an example, and he turns his son’s birthday into what is basically a meeting among people with power and people with money. Poor kid. At least his father did have the courtesy to hire Jekko the Clown, but not even that can go right as it ends up being the Joker in disguise.

As a child-focuses episode, something I mentioned not typically being very good before, a lot of the usual sins aren’t here. The integrity of the episode isn’t completely thrown away to completely turn it into a kids’ show. We actually do have some relatable emotional scenes as well, such as when the kid is returned to his father, or even when it comes to the father being so distant toward his son. Also the child voice actor is surprisingly pretty good! Basically, I didn’t find myself embarrassed to be showing this episode to Char, and that’s a main reason why I find this episode to be passable in my book, despite it being a recipe for disaster. The only thing about the kid that Char and I really didn’t care for was his design. There was another kid at the birthday party with the same design issue, too. They don’t really look like kids, they look like mini adults with high-pitched voices. I don’t know if it’s the suit, or the hair, or the proportions, or something else entirely, but the kids in The Underdwellers looked a lot more like kids to me. Yeah, maybe they were meant to be younger, but one thing about kids is that they’re god damn goofy looking, particularly when placed inside an adult-looking suit. This kid doesn’t. Oh, and that receding hairline didn’t help, either.

It is interesting to see the Joker interacting with a kid, though. When they’re at the party, the Joker doesn’t seem to put too much attention into the kid, aside from messing with a him a little bit. But then back at the amusement park, he gets a little bit more giddy at the thought of ruining the kid’s innocence, and he even abandons Batman to chase after the kid to get him to watch Batman die. That’s pretty messed up, when you think about it! Char thought that the Joker seemed to work off of a partner in crime pretty well, and that maybe in a sense he is lonely. But I think we’re also both on the same page where we think it more comes from his joy of manipulating people, brainwashing them, and molding them to fit his needs, much like what happens with another character that we all know and love. Other than that, though, I never really got the sense that the kid was in any real danger, at least not in the moment, but who knows what would have happened if Joker did manage to escape or take Batman down. I think that if Joker escaped, he would have left the kid at the park. Maybe even on the roller coaster. But if Batman was killed, I have a suspicion that Joker would not be able to ignore the opportunity to adopt him in his own special kind of way, and morph into something similar to what we see when we get to Batman Beyond. But that’s not until way later. This is probably my favorite bit of the episode by the way, when the Joker is exposing the kid to his madness, as Char and I both think that this segment contained some of the best lines in the episode. One of them is the first quote used in this post, and then we had others such as, “If it wasn’t risky, I wouldn’t enjoy it,” and “Quiet, kid, it’s a free ticket.” Mark Hamill’s delivery is probably 60% of why these moments were so funny.

So this episode did have quite a bit going for it, but before we get to the spooky carnival stuff and the Joker/mayor’s son dynamic, there really just wasn’t that much which I considered entertaining. It’s hard to narrow down exactly why, but because there isn’t too-too much to complain about, I can hardly say the episode failed. It just turned out to be a little too forgettable for me. If they had gone further with the initial concept of Batman having a hard time saving the boy due to his frightening costume I think we would have had something much more worth watching (again, Batman Beyond). This is also our 3rd Joker episode, so he has made up 1/3 of the series so far. Maybe a little break from him would do some good? At least he didn’t trip and fall over a pit of something this time, but, yeah, he still fell at the end. Oh, Joker. You have gotta do something about that.

Char’s grade: B Major firsts: A close look at Mayor Hill.

Next time: Two-Face (Part 1)

Full episode list here!

#batman tas #batman the animated series #the joker #dcau #dc animated universe #be a clown #batman

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danniellabonilla · 2 years ago

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laikagohome · 7 years ago

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Introduction: This is an interview with the manga author Yoshida Takashi. The original article is here: http://mangaonweb.com/news/2018/01/27/448. There are some interesting opinions in it, so I decided to translate it.

If you asked which ebook people are talking about the most right now, there would probably be many people who would mention the name “Yaretakamo Iinkai.” It’s always up there on the sales rankings of each of the digital bookstores, its live drama adaptation begins on January 27th on Abema TV, people are always talking about it on the net whenever there’s a new chapter, and its paper publication is slated for a second printing -- just to name a few things it’s got going for it. It really is a major-level grand slam.

The reason for its success is, of course, how interesting it is. But that’s not all, there’s another unexpected hidden aspect to this work that deserves some attention. The creator of this work, Yoshida Takashi-san, actually manages the copyright of this work on his own and takes care of everything from the writing to the sales. The publication of “Yaretakamo Iinkai” isn’t exclusive to any magazine put out by a publisher. The creator publishes his works on each web platform independently and makes a living using the royalties he earns from them as a source of income. The only contract he’s signed with a publisher is for the paper edition of the work to distribute it to bookstores, but he manages the digital version, drama adaptation, and such all himself. He doesn’t have to deal with any restrictions and can create his works freely. In other words, the work is one that is produced in an almost completely indie style.

It’s quite rare for a creator to be able to make this a reality. If you consider all the ins and outs of the publicity and distribution for a work, the contract negotiations, production costs, etc., taking care of it all on your own would require an extraordinary amount of labor. A single creator standing against the world without that ever-critical factor -- the backing of a major company -- would face extreme difficulties.

Why did Yoshida-san choose a path filled with such hardships? What’s really going on behind the scenes? How was he able to parlay that into the success that he has now? Let’s hear what the man himself has to say.

“Yaretakamo Iinkai” Yoshida Takashi Special Interview

The Royalties from Digital Publications Exceeded 1 Million Yen per Month

The drama adaptation has begun airing, and now people are talking about “Yaretakamo Iinkai” even more, but it’s not being serialized in any particular magazine. It’s a comic that gets tweeted about pretty regularly, but there are also probably a lot of people who are wondering how the creator makes money. Could you tell us a bit about what’s actually going on and how that works?

Yoshida Takashi:

To begin with, there are four platforms that my work is published on. “cakes,” “note,” “PixivFANBOX,” and “Manga on Web.” The way things are structured on “cakes,” “note,” and “PixivFANBOX” is that you only get the royalties for your works that people buy on each of the sites. From those three sites combined, I make around 100,000 to 110,000 yen a month. “Manga on Web” is an online magazine. You can buy it in all of the domestic digital bookstores. The agreement there is that I make a fixed amount of money from it, the minimum publication fee, as well as royalties that correspond to the amount of sales that the magazine makes. If anything could be called a "manuscript fee," then that would probably be it.

And then there’s income that I make from the royalties on the paper tankoubon as well as the digital versions. The other day, I got the royalties from the digital books for the first time. It was over 1 million yen for a single month. I’m a bit anxious about what will happen to the taxes I’ll have to pay for next year, but it’d be great if it kept selling at this pace.

Making over 1 million yen in a month on one book is pretty amazing. If you were talking about royalties from a paper publication, that would be about the amount you’d make if you sold 15,000 copies. It’d be a dream to get that much every month. Why did you decide to make your money writing in this way anyway? Please tell us a bit about the circumstances of how you came to draw “Yareta Iinkai.”

Yoshida:

Well, it’s not like I intended to do things the way I’m doing them now from the very beginning. At the start, I was just going to try to do things like any regular mangaka. I did the normal assistant thing, sent in an entry for a newcomer’s award that a publisher was running, and my gag manga “Finland Saga (Sei)” got serialized in Morning Two, but that ended in 2011. The tankoubon didn’t seem to sell very well. After the series ended, I brought in the name for my next work to the Morning editorial department, but I couldn’t get it past them at all. Like, really… it was almost like they had tacitly decided they weren’t going to allow me to have another series (laugh.)

I had no other choice, so I took the rejected names and turned them into manuscripts and sent them all over the place for newcomer awards at other publishers and magazines. One of the shorts I included in those was “Yaretakamo Iinkai.” It got noticed in the newcomer's award for Shougakukan's Superior magazine, and received an honorable mention. That was in 2013, but I had actually written “Yaretakamo Iinkai” a long time ago before that. I was assigned an editor, and I wanted to write the second chapter of it, but the editor said that the material was only good for a oneshot and wouldn’t let me draw a follow-up. I drew another name on some other subject and brought it in, but that didn’t get greenlit either.

While I was doing all of that, another 2 years passed, and in the meantime, I continued to send out my manuscripts to other editorial departments and win awards for them. It was like I somehow ended up with an editor in each of the editorial departments. I started thinking, “I really can’t let this go on,” and that’s when I came up with the idea for my work named “Share Body.” I felt like I was onto something that was sort of new, so I drew three chapters worth of names and sent them around to all the editors that I’d met so far. That ended up catching the eyes of the editor at Spirits.

I Still Haven’t Read the Last Volume of “Share Body”

You didn’t get to writing “Yaretakamo Iinkai” right away, did you?

Yoshida:

That’s right. At the time, I still wanted to have a series in a commercial magazine. But that ended the worst way possible and was quite traumatic for me… The editor in charge of me at Spirits who read the name for “Share Body” said it was interesting and wanted to make it a series. I should’ve been happy about that, right? But they wanted to use it as the original story and have another mangaka draw it. Of course I wanted to draw it, since it was my own work, but none of the names I had drawn were going anywhere, and I really wanted to do a series. So, after agonizing over it, I ended up accepting that condition. Someone else did the art, the series began in September of 2015, the first tankoubon came out in January of 2016, and 5 days after it went on sale, they told us to end it. So I was out of a job by spring. My dream was over in an instant.

So after bringing in all those works to be evaluated all those times, you didn't even get to draw the series that you finally got. And it even got cancelled too. I can see how that might be traumatic.

Yoshida:

Around the time the 6th chapter got printed, the editor in charge said “It’s not doing well in the surveys, so redraw the name.” I’m the type of person who can’t draw when they’re pressured, so before the series started, I had drawn about 30 chapters worth of names ahead of time. Of course, I showed all of those to the editor, and they said it was good back then. Fixing the names was really difficult. For example, if I revised the 7th chapter, then I’d have to adjust the 23rd chapter as well, otherwise it’d be inconsistent. There were important scenes, and that’s why I’d drawn them, but when I explained that things wouldn’t make sense later if I changed them, the editor wouldn’t budge and kept going on about how the survey results were poor. Even when I brought up the fact that they’d said it was good before, they just said, “Well, it’s not.” You’d hope that if an editor said something was good, then they’d stick by it till the end.

Anyway, I couldn’t change something that I thought was already interesting into something that I found boring, so the editor and the artist came together and changed the story. The artist probably didn’t want to do something like that either -- and I don’t really want to badmouth anyone -- but I felt like if I were drawing the pictures myself in a situation with a deadline, then I could’ve at least forced my way and drawn what I’d wanted. The survey results just kept getting worse, and the series got cancelled.

In the later half of things, it was being produced in this inexplicable way where I was drawing the names for the original work, and the artist and editor would base things on that, change it, and draw the manga. Now that I think back on it, it’s a complete mockery of how to go about producing anything. We were making fools of the readers. After the name were getting changed, I couldn’t read the magazine it was being published anymore. I kept having nightmares about running people over in a car with a broken steering wheel.

From the second half of the second volume onward, it pretty much wasn’t based on what I wrote. I told them myself, “The 3rd volume isn’t really based on what I wrote, so please downgrade what I’m being credited for.” I thought that might convey to them how I felt about having the original work changed, but they replied, “Then it’s okay if we lower your percentage of the royalties, right?” So I got in a fight with them, saying, “That’s not what’s in the contract!” It was a total quagmire. In the end, I still haven’t read the last volume of “Share Body.”

I couldn’t forgive myself for releasing something that didn’t live up to my original intentions into the world, and more than anything, I had done something inexcusable to the readers. The experience was traumatic for me, and I decided not to trust the judgement of others.

I Decided on Four Things that I Would Not Give Up

You were now pretty far off from the “regular mangaka” that most people would imagine. So is that when you started to draw “Yaretakamo Iinkai” for real?

Yoshida:

No, I had already tried bringing everything I thought up, and my series failed, so there was no way left for me to do things. I started uploading my manga onto twitter. I’d upload a 20-page manga that got rejected at Morning, 1 or 2-page manga, 4-panel comics, and I had a tons of rejected names. At the time, I was doing this livestream once a month on Nico. I’d announce that I was going to go viral on the program and keep uploading my manga. Deep down, I did wonder if there was any point to it, but there wasn’t anything else I could do.

And then, around a half year later, because I was uploading stuff every day, eventually there were some things that’d get retweeted 5,000 or 10,000 times. People began taking a look at my older works from that, and it caught the attention of sites like Omokoro and net celebs like Yoppii-san. In September of 2016, “Yaretakamo Iinkai” saw the light of day.

Oh, finally! It’s easy enough to say, “I’m going to go viral in half a year,” but it’s another thing to be able to accomplish that when you have nothing to guarantee it. That’s amazing.

Yoshida:

It’s going to sound like I’m tooting my own horn a bit, but back then I really felt like I was working hard (laugh.) The first chapter hit around 200,000 views at the time. I got a flood of requests to turn it into a book right away. I think it was about 4 or 5 publishers that asked to publish it, but because “Share Body” was such a big failure, I decided to be quite careful with everything, right down to dealing with the editors. That’s when I decided there were four things that I would not give up. They were basically, “I would decide the title myself,” “I wouldn’t have any meetings about it,” “I would do the art myself,” and “I would manage the digital publication myself.” The first one may sound quite obvious, but when you get a publisher involved, the title reflects on their brand, so they make you change it often times. (Though I was able to decide the title for “Share Body.”)

The second item had to do with the same thing. There are a lot of editors that will meddle with the work, and there are a lot more people than you think who will be very heavy-handed when dealing with you because they feel like they’re the ones paying you. When I would go to meet them after they invited me to turn it into a book, they’d say, “Let’s have some meetings about this and make it together.” I turned them all down. They’d say things like, “I can come up with all sorts of ideas that could fit the story,” and go on about all these different plans they’d have, and I’d just listen to what they had to say with a smile, and then leave. I was asked if it was possible to participate in the selection process for the different episodes, but I even said no to that. It was pretty brazen of me, but my stance was, “You’re the ones that said you wanted to turn it into a book, so please just do that.”

I also wanted them to accept that I was going to do the art as something that was a given. The publisher was coming on board after the planning, so handing over the digital rights would be strange too.

That all makes sense, but it must’ve been a perilous path. I can’t imagine talks proceeded all that smoothly once you made your stance clear to the publishing companies. They probably felt like they were setting the stage to make the chances of profitability higher, and you were refusing to go along with it. Did they feel a bit like, “Why is this guy even meeting with us then?”

Yoshida:

I did get told with a sigh that they didn’t want to talk to me anymore about that sort (negotiations about the rights) of stuff (laugh.) They’d laugh and ask me, “What happened to you to make you feel this way?” “Yaretakamo Iinkai” was the first piece of work out of all the manga that I had drawn that I actually felt like was going well, so I didn’t want to change the system that I was using to produce it until it was over. The things I was asking for came from a place more of fear rather than desires. I didn’t want to have the work get messed up anymore.

You felt like you were cornered. Thinking about it normally, a company offering to publish your work would have you take down the stuff you had put up publicly on “note,” serialize it exclusively on their own media platforms or magazines, and want to sell tankoubon. Did the conversations ever turn into something like that? That’s usually the pattern of what happened to other manga that got popular on the net at least, which is why I think it’s truly impressive that you were able to present a different method of success.

Yoshida:

Naturally, I insisted on not taking down anything on the sites that I had already put up. I had all these people on the net reading my work, so what would be the point of taking it down? Even if you go viral, what you really need to value the most aren’t the publishers that will give you work but your readers.

When I see people tweeting, “My series is starting,” or, “My book is coming out,” and fans respond, “Congratulations,” I end up thinking, “It’s not worth getting that happy about,” because I got cancelled after a half a year. Delivering your work to the reader is the goal, and having a series or putting a book out is just one way to do that. I know I’m being mean about it, but it’s almost like people just want to do a series so they can tweet about how it’s about to start. Having the publisher validate you and starting your series… it feels real nice for a moment, but then they suddenly stop tweeting for a month, and you see they’re getting cancelled. The story ends in the middle of things, and they end up letting down all the readers they worked so hard to build up.

After that, the mangaka that had their series cancelled are regarded differently. They won’t let you do things by yourself next time. They’ll have you adapt someone else’s original work or pair you up with a different person to do the art. The mangaka could just part ways with the publisher at that point, but they think to themselves, “If I just listen to what I’m told, something good might happen,” so they follow the rules that get set for them. Whenever I see someone talented just doing whatever they’re told by the publisher and the original work they’re adapting is no good, I wonder why they’re doing that. Like, “They’re so talented, and it’s such a waste!”

Starting your series or putting out a book, it’s not really something to celebrate. You may not be able to see it with your eyes, but delivering a work to the readers is what you should be most happy about. Having a series or putting out a book isn’t even a completely effective way to deliver something to the readers nowadays.

Tweets Are like Dust or Pollen

If delivering something to the reader were established as the goal of the process, then the landscape of this scene should look different. It’s certainly true that just drawing whatever the publisher tells you to do won’t always lead to good results. Did you have some plan you’d concocted to succeed without joining up with a publisher though?

Yoshida:

Not at all (laugh.) It feels like it just ended up this way because I decided what I didn’t want to do, like it was a process of elimination. I went viral once, so I thought if I just quietly drew a volume's worth of material and sold a digital version, I’d probably make some money. Even if I didn’t make that much money, as long as it was enough for me to draw my next piece, that would be enough.

A big reason why other mangaka-san get fixated on the idea of a series probably has to do with getting paid a manuscript fee. I understand where they’re coming from too, but if I were aiming to become a mangaka with everything I know now, I’d draw the manga that I want in the way that I want while working a part-time job or something, and put out an ebook once a year. I probably wouldn’t sell anything at first, but I’d polish my skills while seeing what works through trial and error, and then when someone comes across my work and it goes viral, I’d sign a contract that would be advantageous for me with the publisher. That’s the method I might choose to pursue. You can still dream like that.

Futabasha, the publisher that put out the tankoubon, didn’t pay a manuscript fee, but they were okay with me keeping the works I had up on “note,” “cakes,” and “Manga on Web,” gave me the freedom to put out a digital edition, and allowed me to have creator control over any application of it for derivative works, such as movie adaptations and the like. If I had made it my goal to put out a paper book, I don’t think it would’ve turned out this way.

After hearing everything that you’ve said, I can see that you have a deeply rooted distrust of the publishing companies at your core. But at the same time, although you make use of the internet and social networks in a very proactive way, there’s also this sort of vibe that you don’t believe they’re completely awesome either. It feels like the existence of the net was indispensable for the success of the work. You could even say that the success of “Yaretakamo Iinkai” was only possible because someone famous on the net picked up on it. How do you feel about that?

Yoshida:

I was honestly thankful that they were spreading it around the net. But it didn’t really change anything about my fundamental distrust in others. I might need some counseling or something (laugh.) It’s obvious, but it’s not like I think that everyone at the publishing companies are evil and everyone on the net is good. People who work in marketing or other internet-related fields are always looking for the next big thing that people will be talking about, and are incredibly fickle, so I’m trying to remember to not get consumed by that.

Also, people in IT can create places and spaces for manga (manga sites and applications,) but they can’t actually create the content itself. They can only make the restaurants and plates; they aren’t cooks. There are tons of sites out there with someone famous supervising but no views or ones with views but no monetization system in place. There are more apps and sites now, and the places you can draw manga have exploded in number, but the creator has to be careful and needs the power to carefully examine the place where they’re going to serialize their work.

If all you do is believe in the word “serialization,” you’re going to get turned into a dancing bear to attract attention. And you might even be made to do your jig in front of an empty audience. You want to at least have an audience if you’re going to be a dancing bear.

It’s true that there’s this idea of people who work in internet-related fields swarming around something in a flash, eating all they can, and then leaving. It’s common for new services to pop up one after another, and then disappear. They all seem very transitory.

Yoshida:

I was contacted by someone working for a certain application, asking me if I wanted to put my work on it. When I went to meet that person, they kept on saying things like, “You should do it now,” “It’s now or never,” “If you do it now, it’ll definitely do well.” They just kept saying the word “now” over and over. I said to them, “It’s true that “Yaretakamo Iinkai” might just be a flash in the pan, but you don’t really have to be so blunt about it, do you?” They responded, “Sorry, that’s not what I was trying to say. Please consider putting it on our service…” The conversation didn’t go anywhere. They were trying to make things go viral in the now, and I was wanted to continue drawing manga for the long haul. It got me feeling like our sensibilities were pretty different.

Recently, I’ve gotten quite skeptical of people who approach others just because they get a lot of retweets or have a lot of followers and ask them if they want to put out a book. Numbers make things easy to distinguish, so people tend to see retweet counts and follower numbers as having some value, but is it really okay for professional editors to be trusting them?

Are you talking about how editors are starting to resemble people who work in internet-related fields?

Yoshida:

They have, haven’t they. An editor I met the other day said to me, “I found this promising creator recently with around 6,000 followers. It’s my job to turn that number into 30,000,” and I was like, “Seriously?” Apparently there’s some data that came out that said if you have 30,000 followers, 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 will buy the book. I don’t think you can really believe in any of that, but they were telling me all this sort of proudly, so I started thinking, “What’s with this guy? I really shouldn’t trust him! I can’t trust him!!” (laugh.) I think everyone’s reacting too much to numbers. I mean, we’re not dogs here.

It would be simple if all you were trying to do was get people to clap their hands together and tell you it’s good, but you need some sort of action to get people to open up their wallets and give you their money. I think the act of pushing a “like” button is about as minor as patting the head of a Jizou statue. No matter how much something gets posted on the web, when it comes to which ebooks are selling, it’s always “One Piece” or “Shingeki no Kyojin” or “Dungeon Meshi.” Twitter has nothing to do with it. I think tweets are like dust or pollen. The lighter the dust is, the further it can fly, but nobody is going to remember what was flitting around last year.

I think that something a person will pay for might need to have a certain kind of weight to it. I believe that it’s not about likes or retweets, but rather that it’s important the person who put down the money for it feels like they bought something worthwhile and will want to buy it again.

The reason why books aren’t selling has nothing to do with people reading less manga, pirate manga sites, the internet, the end of paper publishers, or ebooks.

The people who determine that lightness or weight are supposed to be the professional editors, but are you saying that’s not really the case anymore?

Yoshida:

I think so. There’s this negative current of completely trusting in fabricated numbers the worse that books sell. There’s been some recent news about how “comico” has been driving down the price they’re paying for manuscripts (though “comico” denies that to be true) and that manga tankoubon sales are half of what they used to be in the heyday of manga.

I think the two are connected. Around 2013, IT enterprises like “comico,” “LINE manga,” “GAMMA,” “Mangabox,” etc., came into the manga marketplace with ample amounts of funding. But fast forward 4 years, and I don’t think they’ve made much money. As for why, it’s because they’re using a business model where they depend on selling paper tankoubon to make money. If they could come up with a single “Shingeki no Kyojin,” then they could make it all back, but it’s not going well. Why isn’t it going well? Because tankoubon aren’t selling. And why is that? I think it’s because the number of publications have increased too much.

IT companies enter the market, comics increase, as if in opposition to this, the publishing companies make their own manga sites and applications and create even more content, they cut down on the page count to increase the numbers of volumes, and the result of that now is that the comic corner at bookstores are in complete disorder. I think it’s too much of a pain for readers to choose, so they just don’t buy manga anymore.

It’s like when a non-native creature is introduced to a pond and it ruins the ecosystem. The water gets muddy and people don’t want to approach it. They don’t know what’s interesting anymore. There are even too many books that recommend manga like “Kono Manga ga Sugoi,” “Manga Taishou,” or “Kono Manga wo Yome.”

In my opinion, the reason why books aren’t selling has nothing to do with people reading less manga, pirate manga sites, the internet, the end of paper publishers, or ebooks.

Mangaka are drawing manga that suit their editors, editors are trying to proceed with projects that suit the editor-in-chief, and IT companies are trying to hit it big on a single jackpot manga. This is the natural result of nobody paying attention to the reader.

If the market goes back to being healthy, I think that manga will start to sell again. It’s not like you can drain all the water out of the pond though, so it’s pretty tough. I don’t think you can expect much from paper tankoubon until the water is clean again. The ones that have it the worse here are the people running the bookstores. But I believe that the ones that do a good job of selecting what they carry will be able to survive.

Right now, I have the good luck of being able to just focus on the reader and draw my manga. There’s no greater joy than that.

(My Own) Commentary:

At https://note.mu/shuho_sato/n/n657d9e19f18f, there are some additional notes on this article written in a blog post by Shuuhou Satou. If you’re familiar with some of the details of Shuuhou Satou and Yoshida Takashi, then the interview would’ve come off as maybe slightly disingenuous. The mangaka that Yoshida Takashi was an assistant to was Shuuhou Satou, and Shuuhou Satou runs “Manga on Web.” Shuuhou Satou is a very vocal person about these issues (publisher vs creator rights, digital publications, etc.) and even manages a consulting service for mangaka contracts as well as a ebook distribution consulting service (Densho Bato.) In the blog post Shuuhou Satou confirms that the interview was meant to help a bit with the sales promotion and that Yoshida Takashi did go through his service with his ebook. He talks a bit about the perceived success of the article in boosting its position on Kindle’s comic ranking, but there are some more interesting points that he makes. One of them is that he made sure to not include his own name in the interview (though he was the one who authored and conducted it.) For anyone not familiar with the history, it probably doesn’t make a difference, but if you do know who he is, then it comes off as a bit underhanded. I think a lot of the things Shuuhou says are interesting, even if I don’t particularly think his comics are. Not putting that out there upfront for the reader when the interview is going to touch on the issues he’s known for getting into just makes Yoshida seem more like a parrot than his own person. It should be noted that Shuuhou and the people that he represents are really among the most successful in terms of making money off digital distribution, but Shuuhou is also pouring tons of money back into marketing and promotion.

Also, some of the numbers that they mention people talking about always strike me as a little humorous. At the moment I’m writing this, Yoshida has about 7,000 followers on twitter, and Shuuhou has about 10,000. Most of the retweets for the interview come from someone else’s account. Many of the authors that I enjoy reading and follow have lower numbers or no twitter account at all. That makes the editor’s comment about getting an author’s follower count to 30,000 pretty funny. In context, with the “data” that was getting mentioned, you’d move 3,000 units at best, which is close to the minimum of what you’d want to make profitability feasible on a tank’s print run.

Regarding the comments Yoshida makes about the marketplace currently, I do think there’s a lot of shit in the water, but I also think it’s worth mentioning that this shakeup also allowed for the existence and development of manga sites like Torch (Leed) and Mavo. I never would’ve expected the publisher that puts out Comic Ran, a magazine that is basically all samurai comics, to be behind something as forward-thinking as Torch. Shuuhou’s own Manga on Web is also one that was built in the muddied environment, though Manga on Web has been running in the red just like all of those other IT based sites. It’s not as though editors at paper publishers were making amazing decisions all the time prior to this marketplace flooding either. They may not have been looking at follower counts, but they definitely were stressing sales numbers, and a lot of them went with veterans that drew crap that sold rather than developing and fostering younger authors. At least in this environment, younger authors have some places online to put work up when niche magazines are getting shuttered, even if they’re all working side jobs at the same time. For the general consumer, it may be too confusing to choose, but for someone who will invest their time into finding works they want to read themselves, it’s not the chaotic environment he makes it out to be.

As for “Yaretakamo Iinkai,” you can actually read some of it in English “officially” on pixiv at https://www.pixiv.net/user/3130738/series/22797. My personal opinion of it is that… I’d rather read this than Shuuhou’s comics :T

#translation #manga #shuuhou satou #yoshida takashi

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finding--cat · 7 years ago

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That’s it, that’s all, folks. Story is halfway over. Now it’s onto NaNoWriMo to try to finish this - although, quite frankly, my spare time is hovering around level 0 these days. In the meantime, read Part II in its entirety.

To visit the story page, click here.

Thanks for reading pals. I’m touched that you would take time out of your day to spend on my work. If I could ask you to spare just a small amount more of your time - 1 minute max - to share your thoughts with me -- you have no idea the service you would be providing to a writer who truly wants to grow (and is curious if anyone is enjoying this and would be interested in reading more).

Part II: The Songbird 2.4

A few days later, Ari joins Niall at Gram and Gramps’ place. Kalene gives her the day off, though it doesn’t really matter because Niall has a delayed start to the day taking Olive to the doctor to get her ears checked. Z is convinced it’s an ear infection after swimming in that possibly non-chlorinated pool at horse camp, and even though Niall assures him it’s highly unlikely, it turns out that’s exactly what it is. Her right ear is inflamed and built-up with fluid, so Dr. Gibbs gives her a prescription for banana-flavoured medicine. Niall picks it up at the pharmacy and coaxes Olive into gulping down a serving before holding her hand and walking her into school an hour and a half late.

Then he’s on the phone with Z for another fifteen minutes to receive a comprehensive list of all the reasons Z’s not going to listen to him anymore when it comes to his child and how they should’ve taken her to the doctor’s two weeks ago, but actually, no, they never should’ve let her go swimming in that disgusting pool in the first place, even though all the other kids did and Olive would’ve had to sit by herself on the sidelines and watch.

By the time Niall swings by Ari’s place, it’s close to noon, and she’s had the time to make four vegetarian wraps for their lunches, including for Gram and Gramps.

It turns out Gram isn’t home – on Tuesdays she plays Euchre with a group of ladies in the Knights of Columbus rec hall – but Gramps peers with genuine interest at the wraps until one is placed in his lap out in the garden, and then he eats quite happily, not even asking for a hit of indica until he’s done.

“Feelin’ slow, Niall,” he says, head tilted back so his eyes meet the sun.

He’s answered a question Niall never asked, but Niall replies anyway. “The slow of a good high, you mean?”

“The slow of the Tin Man when all his joints began to rust. Can’t move the way I used to.”

“Soon you’ll start to perk up again. That’s what the doc said. Haven’t been able to work your muscles in a while, that’s all,” Niall assures him. He pauses to lick a strip along the rolling paper and then expertly folds the herb into a neatly-tucked cylinder in his lap. “But for now, you’re in luck,” he adds, raising his head to flash Gramps his grin, “because summer’s turning to fall. Everything slows down in winter.”

“Well,” Gramps begins, drawling the word with that sticky molasses tone that sounds more like Waaaale… “I fear it’s the winter o’ my life.”

Though his chin is lowered to his chest, Niall raises his eyes as everything, for a moment, comes to a halt. “Please don’t say that,” he murmurs.

“Backyard’s fallin’ to pieces,” Gramps remarks, ignoring Niall and surveying the land around him with a sigh. “Linda ‘n I used to be out here all summer sprucin’ it up. Now look at it. Shithole.”

Niall snorts, his thumb smarting on the lighter before he ignites the joint and hands it dutifully to Gramps.

“Don’t tell that to Ari,” he says, gesturing with a nod toward the girl crouching over a wilted flowerbed across the lawn. “She’s doin’ her best to clean it up.”

“So she is.”

Gramps’ hand trembles as he brings the joint to his lips, almost to the point of Niall reaching over to hold it for him. He puffs on it like a cigar, because no matter how many times Niall tells him that’s not how to get the best high, Gramps can’t let go of that sophisticated, my-wife-just-gave-birth-to-my-son feel of the 1950’s. When Niall used to get on his case for being old-fashioned, Gram always corrected him to say he simply never grew up in the first place and still lives in the 50’s in his head.

“She have fun with that? Weedin’ and prunin’ and what have you?” Gramps asks.

Niall shrugs, steadying a hand on Gramps’ shoulder as he takes another series of drags. “She likes plants. Mostly, though, I think she just likes to help. She likes to feel part of something.”

His stare strays to Ari where she hunches dozens of yards away, picking one weed at a time and hoping that at some point, it makes the garden less cluttered, more workable.

She’s stayed over at his a few times now, joining Niall at Sherman’s or waiting up for him afterward, always with the same brilliant smile on her face, the same eagerness for adventure. Or recklessness. Or some kind of intimacy. Whatever it is that she gets from him, Niall’s just glad he’s the one who can provide it. Because after that first time, he knew from that inexplicable rock in his throat and the weight of her in his arms, giving him something to hold through the night, that he wanted it again and he wanted it with her. After that first time he was already fantasizing about her again. After that first time, he knew from the way his feet angled toward her and she drew him in by his chest that he was All In, whether his brain told him otherwise or not.

“Could do with more like her,” says Gramps. He folds his arms across his chest and flicks the ash off his joint, content to watch Ari work for a few moments.

“Yeah,” Niall murmurs in agreement, hand still on Gramps’ shoulder but mind elsewhere. When he comes to, Gramps is watching him.

“You good to her?”

Niall holds his gaze like a man, because it feels like this is a question meant for Man Niall and not Boy Niall.

“I try,” he answers, frustrated with himself for faltering under Gramps’ stare.

“Hmm.” Gramps thinks about this. “Might be biased, but she may be lucky to have ended up knockin’ boots with the likes of you.”

Niall rolls his eyes and uses his hand on Gramps’ shoulder to give him a light slap across the cheek. “Knock it off, old man,” he laughs, “you’re stoned.”

Unaffected, Gramps continues, “Then again, you were the one livin’ life as normal until she walked in. That’s a lucky circumstance right there.”

“That’s how I see it.” Niall swipes the joint from Gramps to take a drag, not because he needs it but because his fingers were itching for something to do.

Ari finally gives up on her squat and falls back on her bum, a bouquet of weeds and brush tumbling to the grass. She glances over her shoulder with a bout of laughter. Niall smiles despite himself.

Gramps was watching. “You don’t look at each other like that if you don’t both feel a little lucky,” he muses, “and in that case, you’re stupider than a box o’ lint if you don’t do something about it.”

Niall wraps his arms behind his back, around the iron bars of the chair, until his fingers find one another and latch on. Amused, he looks to Gramps and doesn’t say a word.

Gramps is waiting for a response. After a minute, he asks bluntly, “S’pose you should get to asking yourself if this is what you want.”

“That so, huh?”

Annoyed, Gramps empties the ash from the joint near Niall’s chair and purses his lips. “You either ask yourself now, on your own terms, or the question creeps up on you when it’s too late.”

“You used to say it’s never too late.”

“You’re a man now, and you should know that sometimes it is.”

“Very comforting.” Niall sighs. Ari tosses weeds over her shoulder one-by-one in painstaking fashion. But he notices with a slight arch of his brows, now that she’s been at work, he can start to see the flowers and the fresh soil. Of course, it’s only two square feet of the entire yard, but if she kept working on it, conceivably, it could come alive again. “Let me ask you something,” he says, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, gaze trained to Ari, “and be honest with me, because like you said, I’m ready to hear the answer as a man: when does it start being less about what I want, and more about what’s possible to have?”

Gramps needs no more than a second to construct a reply. “When you give into it,” he says. “But what’s worth being yours if you didn’t go after it – if you didn’t truly, desperately give it a good honest shot?”

A week into September, Z and Niall put Olive to bed to the rousing lyrics of Billy Joel’s Vienna while Ari watches from the doorway, one ankle slung over the other and arms folded across her chest. Her fond observations are now familiar even to Z, who sings to his daughter without reserve. Ari may pretend he’s singing to her, too, as so many do when they listen to Z sing (including Niall), but every time Niall glances at her, her eyes seem to be stuck on him. At first he thought it was a fluke. He still does, but because her gaze is a honey-like rain showering over him, he lets it be.

They say their goodnights to Olive, who pouts as Niall and Ari leave the room because she likes an audience and still banks on hearing what she calls The Mighty Jungle, and they end up in the living room, where Niall works on the arrangement of Ed Sheeran’s newest material to add to his set list and Ari jots down ideas for her Maid of Honour speech.

Z joins them after he has a few minutes alone with Olive. Having changed out of his work attire, he falls onto the couch in sweat pants and a loose t-shirt and clicks through television channels until he settles on Mad Men reruns. Nose buried in her notebook, Ari slowly looks up.

“I love this show,” she says quietly, using her notebook almost as a shield in case the reaction is harsh.

From Niall’s other side, Z looks over, pulled from a trancelike state. He glances at Niall for reassurance, unsure of what to do. When Niall offers nothing, Z replies just as softly, just as timidly as Ari, “Me too.”

Silence envelopes them, thick as smog. Niall stops plucking his guitar strings and wonders if the other two are wondering, same as him, what the hell just happened and why it seemed so damn momentous. Does he dare point out that everyone and their fucking brother loves Mad Men?

“I like Peggy,” Z pipes up again. He opens his mouth to say more, but then decides to leave it at that.

Ari blinks, a small smile crossing her face. “She’s my favourite.”

That’s it. They have no more to say to one another, content to simply sit and watch the show, but Niall notices Z glance at Ari out of the corner of his eye, curious and bewildered, and though her eyes remain focused on the words in her notebook, he sees Ari’s smile grow.

Niall can’t troubleshoot while sewing, but he knows enough about it from that time Trisha spent an afternoon teaching him and Z how to maintain Olive’s wardrobe without constantly having to go out and buy new things. He can thread a needle and weave it through torn fabric well enough, which is the most he’s ever asked to do when Olive comes home from school with a rip in her knee or a tear in the seam of her blouse.

Tonight, he sits on the couch under a light with the intention of repairing a tattered shirt pocket. It’s meant more for decoration on Olive’s frilly purple t-shirt, but she likes to use it to hold a few coins in case she needs to use the pay phone at school to call Z at work or Niall at wherever he is on any given day. This morning, when she dug her hand in to ensure the coins were still there, the pocket fell apart.

Z tried to fix it himself, but his patience wore thin after about five minutes because he complained his fingers were too large and the needle was too small and the thread was probably, most likely, too flimsy to be productive.

So Niall took over, and now he sits wetting the tip of the thread to insert it through the eye of the needle, with Ari rubbing his back in affection as he works and Z looking on with quiet gratitude. On the TV in the background, they watch another rerun of Mad Men, because Z thinks Ari likes it and, in his own sullen way, he wants her to feel at home.

What would take Trisha ten minutes takes Niall the better part of an hour, but once he tests that the pocket has returned to the shirt and is securely fastened, he triumphantly sprawls the article of clothing across the coffee table and flops back onto the couch, massaging a crick in his neck and stretching his legs.

By then, Z has gotten up to put the kettle on. He returns a couple of minutes later with mugs of tea for Ari, Niall, and himself. He lifts the shirt to inspect it and nods, impressed. He flings it over his shoulder and murmurs his thanks to Niall.

“No problem,” Niall says in reply, even though his neck is too sore to move.

Z brings two fingers below Niall’s chin, encouraging him to raise his head. When he does, Z uses the backs of his fingers to gently trail across Niall’s cheek, sending an arrow shooting down his spine and hitting whatever target it was aiming for.

“You okay?”

“Mm hmm,” Niall assures him.

“’M gonna take this to bed,” says Z, raising his mug an inch or two in the air.

Niall nods, returning his smile. While applying pressure to the back of his neck, he watches Z cross the landing and ascend the stairs, not looking away until he’s out of sight.

He doesn’t realize he’s heaved a satisfied sigh until he spies Ari out of the corner of his eye and looks over. She cups her mug of tea with both hands and takes a sip, instantly recoiling at the heat. All the while, she watches him.

She hisses and licks her lips before blowing away the wisps of steam rising from the mug. Quietly and almost casually, she asks, “Do you love him?”

Niall blinks.

He blinks again.

She waits for him to speak.

He has half a mind to pretend to misunderstand her question, to say of course I love him, we’ve been friends since we were kids, but he can’t disavow the question in his response out of respect to her. Out of respect to Z. Out of respect to himself.

So he sighs again, murmuring a surrendered, “Yeah.”

“Oh.”

Ari replies without malice or spite, neither a smug I knew it nor an I had no idea. Like everyone else, she probably knew or suspected as much, but is too polite to admit it.

Niall squeezes his eyes shut, hating, for a moment, that everything in his life always comes back to this.

When he opens them again, words start coming to him. “I did,” he corrects himself, “back in high school, we—and then in college, I—” Frustrated with himself, he shakes his head. “I did back then. When I thought that maybe… I don’t know what I thought. But, um, he didn’t want me,” Niall finishes with a frown, “so it… it’s in the past. It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing.”

Ari continues to watch him, lips parted but unspeaking, cradling her mug close for comfort.

“What?” Niall asks after several seconds have passed. His pulse quickens in his neck.

“Nothing,” Ari says with a shake of her head. She tucks one socked foot underneath her on the couch. “It’s just… I think every time you love someone, it matters. Even if they don’t love you back. Because it’s a feeling, you know? Love. From what I know of it, it’s a pretty strong feeling, maybe the strongest. And any time you can feel something, any time something moves you… that matters.” Niall aches to look away, to bury his head in his own frustrations, but he holds Ari’s gaze and nods.

On a Friday, Niall has work to do for both jobs and should be at home researching a piece he has to draft for submission early next week, but he takes advantage of Ari’s free time and meets with her as soon as she texts him that she’s done a morning yoga session, showered, watered her plants, and checked off whatever other items on her list are necessary to her mental health.

As they walk up the road side-by-side, Niall’s hands stuffed in the pockets of his black jeans and Ari struggling to fix her ponytail, Niall thinks it’s nice. Whatever they are and whatever this is, it’s nice. Nice isn’t fantastic and nice isn’t the stuff dreams are made of, but nice is something he hasn’t really had in a long time. To enjoy someone else’s company and to feel sparks crackling in his veins when she’s near and to feel warmth radiating from her smile and to get to kiss her and hold her and fuck her is fucking nice.

Niall has her laughing today as he recounts last night’s epic struggle to get Olive to sleep. He and Z had to pull out the big guns and not only perform The Lion Sleeps Tonight (or, as Olive consistently refers to it, The Mighty Jungle), but also enthusiastic and foot-stompin’ versions of All Star and I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles). Afterwards, Z confessed to him that he could literally feel the exact moment his soul escaped his body.

The air outside is fresh and cool, too warm to be truly autumn but too crisp to be mistaken for midsummer heat. Even with a clear sky and plenty of sun, Tillson City seems sleepier than usual, with very few cars and trucks whizzing past as Niall and Ari walk alongside the road. They don’t really have a destination – Niall knows that Ari is content just to walk – and somehow they end up at the high school. For some reason, it surprises Niall. He should have paid less attention to the fallen red leaves crunching under the soles of his shoes, but as usual, he’s fascinated by the new season and ready for change.

Tillson City High is a two-storey brick building initially erected in the 1940’s after a surge in the coal mining industry. There was a fire in the west end in the late 60’s and a rebuild of the gymnasium and several classrooms in the mid-90’s to remove asbestos from the walls and ceilings, but otherwise, it’s the same crummy school it’s always been: a haven for white, Christian footballers and cheerleaders and whatever circle of hell they decide to create for the rest.

Niall tells Ari this, but leaves out the last part.

“So this is where it all began?” Ari asks, inhaling deep in her chest and staring out at the faded brick and rusted metal. “You, Z, and Harry, three punks who loved music and who just didn’t fit in with the cool kids?”

Niall grins, purposely keeping his eyes on Ari and not the school. “You forgot Tafi, a loner of her own making who popped in and out occasionally to tell us what to do and how to live our lives.”

“Ah yes. Without Tafi, you might still be a virgin.”

“Oh yeah?” He chuckles to himself and brings his fist to his mouth, pretending to cough into it. “You weren’t, uh, questioning my virginity two nights ago when you had to plant your face into my pillow so you wouldn’t wake up the house with your screams.”

Ari pokes him in the side, where she knows he’s ticklish. Niall squirms away with a yelp. “Tafi teach you any of those tricks between the sheets?”

“On the contrary,” Niall jokes, looping an arm around Ari’s neck and pulling her close, urging her to walk with him around the side of the building, “I taught her everything she knows. That one night she spent with me when we were seventeen years old set her up for life.”

“Mm. Yes. Totally believable.” She melts into his side and wraps an arm around his waist. Her hand fights his for entrance to his jean pocket and wins the battle. “So where did it happen, Casanova? Science lab? Between two dusty shelves in the library? Or did it happen out back, where you guys used to go to get high?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Niall whispers under his breath, because he can’t believe they’re still talking about this. “It did not happen here, at school. That would have been in poor taste.”

“Really?” Ari lifts her head from his shoulder to give him a frown. “You never got up to any illicit sexual hijinks at school? Not after hours in English class or in the dirty gym locker room?”

Niall’s smile fades. Uninvited, a memory sweeps through his mind: puddles on the floor, a pair of cleats with knotted laces at his knees, a locker door slamming shut.

“Uh…” he trails, clearing his throat for real this time, “nah. Virgin misfit, remember?”

She shrugs and eyes him with a coy smile. “Virgins can still have fun.”

“Not this virgin.” Niall pauses, adding, “I mean, it wasn’t really all that fun.”

She hesitates, her lips flattening into a thin line as she squints at him.

“Not that I… it’s just that…” He shakes himself out of it, forcing a laugh. “My first time was with Taf in the back of Harry’s shitty old van. That’s it, that’s what I got up to in high school. Let’s talk about you now?”

Ari giggles and squeezes his waist before releasing him. As she pulls away, she grabs for his hand. Niall doesn’t resist as she intertwines their fingers and swings their arms back and forth.

“Okay,” she agrees. “I was eighteen, it was November in my first year of college, and I got just drunk enough at a dorm party to tell a guy in my bio lab that I wished he was my lab partner because he was funny and smart. We had sex in what I assumed was his bed and what he assumed was mine. We didn’t figure it out until the guy who actually lived in that dorm room came back from across the street where he’d run out to order a pizza.”

“Oh, shit!” Niall guffaws with laughter. “He walked in on you?”

“Nope.”

“How long was he out of the room?”

“Less than five minutes.”

Niall snorts. “Nice.”

“Yeah, it was real romantic. We went on one date the next weekend for Mediterranean and then we never spoke again.”

“Bio lab just got awkward.”

She chuckles. They round the building, suddenly overlooking Tillson City High School’s pride and joy: the football field. Before them are dozens of bleachers circling the field, enough room for almost every resident of the town, every seat filled under the Friday night lights at least a few times per season.

Niall’s never been, personally. While everyone in town crowds their asses onto those stone cold pieces of metal, Niall packs the bed of his truck with blankets, pillows, and his guitar and drives in the opposite direction with Z and Olive. That’s just how it is. They’re not birds travelling in a flock, him and Z. They’re more like mice scurrying away from the noise.

Ari lets go of his hand and walks ahead of him, curious to view the field up-close, with its gigantic growling bobcat painted in the center of pristine turf. The only 50,000 square feet in the entire city that everyone will chip in out of their own pockets to maintain.

“They’re in class now,” Niall remarks as Ari stands between two gigantic rows of bleachers, one hand on the pillar as she looks out, “but when that bell rings, they’ll be out here, decked out in their home uniforms and doing their drills half-assed to impress the girls who stick around to watch ‘em.”

“Who’s they? The football players?”

Niall nods. He hangs back from the field, only following Ari when she ventures underneath the bleachers and looks over her shoulder in excitement, like she’s entering a large tent. He knocks on a metal support rod and says, “These’ll be full tonight. They’ll bring in a couple foods trucks for hot dogs and ice cream, parents will paint their faces in blue and gold, and they’ll squeeze into these seats to watch a few kids run around with a ball.”

“You don’t ever go?”

She asks the question, but the way she asks it proves that she already knows the answer.

“Nah.” He steps lightly, eventually leaning against a support beam with hands in his pockets while Ari seems interested in the nooks and crannies. “Under the bleachers used to have a lot of allure, though. Their parents would be at the game, but benched players would sneak under here to make out with cheerleaders while all the fuss was happening out there. Heard it was pretty risky back in the day.”

Ari spins on her heels, a patient smile on her face. “You never tried it.”

He shakes his head. “Me, Z, and Harry were far away, in Harry’s van or in Mickey’s garage, listening to music or playing music or… smoking with music on.”

She approaches him slowly. Her head tilts toward her shoulder, a thoughtful expression written across her face. “You ever wonder if you missed out?”

Niall crosses one ankle over the other. “Yeah,” he says honestly. Doesn’t everyone? No matter what he was doing in high school, he always wondered if it would be better if he was doing it with someone else, or doing what that someone else was doing. That was his entire teenage experience.

His pulse quickens when she stops in front of him and smoothes her hands over his bomber jacket while gripping it on either side of the collar to pull him forward. His nose crushes against the side of her face as she brings their lips together, instantly licking out to catch his tongue. Niall’s in such a rush to free his hands that he turns his pockets inside out, but then he’s got the reign to cup her elbows, run his hands up her arms and slide his fingers into her hair. Her ponytail comes apart in his fingers. Ari grunts, but her irritation only makes her press him harder into the beam, claiming his mouth with her tongue and his thoughts with her insistent hands.

To be honest, if this was factored into his high school experience, he would probably think back on the whole thing more fondly.

An hour later, Olive’s strapped into her carseat and Niall drives along the winding road on the way home with Ari at his side. Out of nowhere Ari gasps so dramatically that Niall, stunned, nearly veers off the road.

“What the heck?!” he cries. Behind him, Olive giggles.

Ari’s palm presses against the glass window as she stares at a sign until it’s behind them. Then, so excited her eyes are blown wide, she whips around to face Niall.

“What’s a Harvest Festival?” she demands.

“Huh?”

“There’s a Harvest Festival all weekend in Somerset, starting today.”

Niall hesitates, anticipating more. Ari says nothing, but her gaze is so pressing that he breathes, “And…?”

She blinks. “Can we go?”

“What? Like, right now?”

“Yeah.”

He peels his eyes from the road to assess her level of commitment. “Seriously?”

“Yes!” She reaches out to give his shoulder a nudge. “It sounds fun. The sign said there are fresh vegetables, a pumpkin patch, hayrides, and a petting zoo.”

“I wanna go!” Olive chirps, kicking the back of Niall’s seat.

“What? We don’t even know what it is,” Niall argues.

“I just told you,” Ari says. “It’s a town Harvest Festival. There’s lots to do.”

And there are lots of people, and any quiet day in Tillson City means its residents are either in church, packed onto the football field, or taking advantage of some other town’s event. That’s what Z says, anyway. He purposely took Olive to Charleston to stay with his parents two years ago when Tillson City celebrated its bicentennial. He was terrified that if they stayed in town, Olive would beg to go, and then he’d run into someone he’d banked on never seeing again.

“It’s something to do,” Ari says gently, chiding him with a hand covering his thigh. “How often is there something to do around here?”

“Fair enough,” Niall’s quick to reply. Ari’s in and Olive’s in and that’s pretty much all it was ever going to take for Niall to be in, too. “To Somerset we go.”

Whatever a Harvest Festival is, Somerset throws a good one. And why shouldn’t they? Niall vaguely remembers learning in ninth grade geography that Somerset has the lowest population density and the highest ratio of pigs to people in the entire state. In other words, these folks are all about farming and fatback bacon.

Niall thinks it smells delicious, but out of respect for Ari, he avoids the communal cookout that smokes animal flesh. Turns out there are lots of other things to do. Olive begs to ride the mini ferris wheel with Ari. Ari gets motion sickness and won’t go on the Merry-Go-Round, so Niall bites the bullet and, from atop a plastic unicorn, waves to Ari with a shit-eating grin each time they spin around. She links arms with him as she browses the season’s fruit and veggies, selecting a bushel of apples and several stalks of corn to come back for later. Olive uses Ari’s phone to take photos of the autumn floral arrangements on display because Ari has the idea to bring them back to Kalene and Rosen for discussion. Niall makes the ghastly decision to allow Olive her first-ever caramel apple after she nearly loses her mind in excitement over riding a pony at the petting zoo, and then she’s a livewire, racing this way and that, jumping up and down, on an adrenaline rush and a sugar high that may very well result in an overdose.

Niall realizes just how problematic this day is going to be from Z’s perspective when he finds out, but it’s too late now.

He stands dutifully behind Ari as she digs through her wallet to pay for harvest pies – one apple cinnamon for Rosen and Jackson, one peach for Niall and Z, and one banana cream especially for Olive. Ari’s got her back turned and Olive’s tugging on his hand, begging for one last pony ride before they leave—“Pleeeeeeease, Niall? I want to ride Bubbles with the black spots! I’ll do anything!”—when Niall sees them out of the corner of his eye and feels an age-old brick of dread low in his gut.

“Well, well, well,” says a low voice, accompanied by a nasty laugh, “so this is where you are when you’re not taking it up the ass at Sherman’s.”

It’s easy enough for Niall to ignore him at first. After all, he’s got a bit of a situation on his hands, what with Olive beginning to work herself toward the dangerous ledge of a tantrum.

“Will we see you at the tailgate tonight, Horan?” asks the other. Niall doesn’t have to look at him to see his sneer. “Millcreek versus Tillson. You could play us a few songs to lighten the mood, huh? You know the one by Katy Perry, don’t you? I kissed a boy and I liked it…”

His obnoxious singing captures Ari’s attention. With three boxed pies and a receipt in her hand, she twirls around with a grin that quickly fades as she stares at the two men beyond Niall.

“Luke?” she asks.

Niall follows her eyes. Luke looks just as surprised to see Ari, but his smile only falters for a moment even as his eyes cloud with envy and disdain. Alongside Luke and his crony are two girls Niall recognizes as well as the guys, one with a caramel apple identical to Olive’s.

“Ari,” he begins, “you should come to the game with us tonight. Get the full Tillson experience. Horan won’t take you – too much of a coward to show his face again.”

Next to Luke, Janowitz chuckles, a pitiful sidekick ‘til the end.

“What are you talking about?” Ari asks. Her face hardens. Olive stops pulling on Niall’s arm, finally aware of the tension.

“It’s nothing,” Niall says hastily. He puts a hand on her shoulder, urging her forward. “Let’s go.”

He begins to herd her toward the parking lot with Olive’s hand clutched tight in his grasp. The little girl trots along beside him but continues to protest.

“Sure you won’t come, Horan?” Luke calls after him. “I heard some of the Millcreek players need their dicks sucked. You’re the man for the job.”

In a flash, Niall lets go of Olive’s hand and spins around, nostrils flaring as he approaches the two men without fear. Fuming, he spits, “Watch your damn mouth, all right?” He gestures to Olive. “You don’t have respect for me, but at least have some for her. She’s five, man.”

Behind him, Olive starts to cry.

“That your lovechild with Malik?” asks Luke. He looks over Niall’s shoulder and directs a question to Ari. “Has he told you about that yet? About how in high school, him and Malik—”

“Shut up.” Ari’s voice cuts Luke off like a knife. She’s nearly trembling with fury, her lips pressed in a thin line and her eyes dark. “Leave us alone, Luke.”

She has her hands on Olive’s shoulders, ready to take her away. Niall’s ready, too. He doesn’t spare either of them a second glance before turning his back to them.

“Hey, Horan,” calls Janowitz as he walks away, “settle a bet for us: when it’s you and Malik, who’s top and who’s bottom?”

He doesn’t catch up with Ari and Olive before he’s spinning around again, charging towards Janowitz’s sick, smiling face with a flame of hatred. Janowitz doesn’t process Niall’s intentions until Niall gives him a hearty shove, and then, after he regains his footing and the accompanying girls shriek, he barrels forward and crashes into Niall.

Olive wails. He thinks Ari calls his name, but Niall’s tossed over a hay bale, pinned down by a man eighty pounds heavier than him, and he can barely hear a thing other than breathless grunts and Janowitz hawking his spit. Niall manages to free his arm and sends the heel of his hand flying into Janowitz’s cheek, meaning to send his saliva elsewhere, but it lands him with an elbow to the face, which hurts like fucking hell. The pain is so intense it makes his eyes water.

Even after Luke and a festival worker drag Janowitz off of him, Niall still lies there for a moment, winded and breathless. There’s some shouting, a small crowd has gathered, and Niall just hopes, fruitlessly, that he’ll never see any of these people again. When he stands, slowly and carefully rising to his feet knowing full well he’ll be sore tomorrow, he sweeps his blurry vision over the hay bale in case he left his nose behind – it may very well have become disconnected from his body when he took that blow to the face.

The owner of the pie booth comes out to yell at them. Niall can only focus for a second before he shifts his attention to the girls. Ari’s picked Olive up and holds her against her hip, while Olive clings tightly to Ari’s shirt and blubbers. Ari’s breath hitches when she takes her first glimpse of Niall’s face.

Did Janowitz really spit on him? Jesus. He goes to wipe the wetness from his lip with the back of his hand. Pulling it away, his hand is streaked with blood. Even fucking better.

Festival security, otherwise known as one single man probably two years Niall’s junior wearing a pullover labeled SECURITY across the back, joins them at the scene of the disturbance and, without asking questions, immediately begins to usher Janowitz away, trailed by Luke and the girls. With his free hand, he motions to Niall, pointing towards the exit across the way.

“Out, fellas,” he orders.

While Niall nods because duh, of course they’re being kicked out, Janowitz complains like a child, protesting, “Come on, man, he started it!”

“This isn’t a bar, this is a community event! There’s no place for your violence. Don’t come back!”

This. This is why Z hates public events.

The guard sees both parties off at the gate, leaving them to their own devices. Niall, carrying Ari’s bag of pies for her, finds a napkin inside and uses it to blot at his nose. While Luke and Janowitz get into it with the guard over the grounds of their dismissal, Niall takes his punishment soundly and trails Ari and Olive to the pickup.

Standing outside the driver’s side, Ari sets Olive on the ground and looks at Niall. He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out, and even if it did, it would be choked on the blood-spotted napkin he holds to his face. But Ari’s not looking for an explanation – after a few moments, she reaches forward and pats down Niall’s pockets herself, hearing the jingle of his keys in the left pocket of his bomber. She grabs for them to unlock the truck.

It’s Niall who’s trembling now, not out of fear or anxiety but rage. And it’s not rage directed at his own assault, but rage that they’d target him at a public event, in front of other people, in front of his family. Olive is his, not his flesh and blood but his heart and soul, and for them to go after him in her presence is despicable. For Ari to have to see it, too… it’s too much.

Niall leans against the van next to his pickup and hisses at the feel of his tongue running over the scrape on his upper lip. It stings – it might swell, like the time Olive fell off her trike on the sidewalk a couple years ago and had to go into daycare with a fat lip. Z was shattered and barely let her climb the stairs unsupervised for a month afterwards. Something tells Niall Z won’t be quite as overprotective of him when he hears of what happened.

Ari takes care of Olive now, fishing a tissue from her bag to help Olive blow her nose, speaking softly and reassuringly in her ear, and then lifting her up into her seat in the truck. She buckles Olive in with a promise that they’ll be home soon and she’ll make her a cup of hot cocoa, because she saw some powder in the cabinet the last time she was over.

Even though she’s being so wonderful to Olive, Ari probably wants to scream at him. Niall doesn’t blame her. She probably wants an explanation, because in her world, it makes no sense that high school rivals would come back to haunt her well into her twenties. All of that stuff shouldn’t matter anymore, but in Tillson City, it does. It matters that they caught Niall on his knees in the locker room at seventeen with Matt Gray’s dick in his mouth. It matters that Gray, the starring quarterback of the Tillson City High Bobcats, was so distraught from his teammates walking in on his secret that his parents transferred him to a school in Charleston. It matters that Tillson City, 7 and 0 up until that point, didn’t make the playoffs because of a freshman quarterback entering midseason.

People don’t forget their own spin on these events, not around here, not ever. Niall will be Mickey’s age, wrinkled and dying from cancer, and he’ll still be known as the gay who sucked a straight guy’s cock so good the town lost the entire football season and every single season since.

With Olive safely in her carseat, Ari gives her what remains of her caramel apple and then faces Niall. He braces himself as she approaches, pushing himself off of the van and balling up the blood-soaked napkin in his fist. With her brows pulled together in a frown, she takes his cheeks in her hands and assesses the damage to his face. Niall cringes, embarrassed.

“It’s a split lip,” she says quietly. “The bleeding has stopped.”

He nods. As soon as she lets go of his face, he drops his chin to his chest and shakes his head. After a deep sigh, he lifts his head to meet her eyes. She stares at him with concern. But surely, she must be angry.

“I’m sorry, Ari,” he murmurs.

It’s her turn to shake her head as she wraps her arms around his neck. The last thing he sees is her pained expression before she presses a lingering kiss to his cheek. Confused, Niall freezes. Surely, she’s angry. Is this the calm before the storm? He glances to Olive, who sits calm in her carseat and looks on.

He tentatively hugs back when she keeps him in her arms, one hand on the back of his head as she whispers in his ear, “Are you okay?”

“Mm,” he agrees, momentarily allowing himself to shut his eyes and breathe. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

When she pulls back, she wears a resolved smile. It’s not altogether bright and it’s not altogether cheery, but dammit, it’s a smile of strength.

Gulping down his emotions, Niall approaches Olive in her carseat. She looks at him with a frown.

“’M sorry, squidge,” he says in a near-whisper, placing a hand on the other side of the seat. “I didn’t mean to scare you like that. I promise it won’t happen again.”

“Why was that man hurting you?” she asks, lower lip extending into a pout.

“We see things differently, that’s all,” Niall assures her. He wipes a stray tear from her cheek. “But it’s wrong to fight with your fists. You know that, right?”

She nods seriously, returning, “Do you know that?”

He cracks a smile. “I do know that. I just made a mistake.”

Olive takes the last bite of caramel apple in her mouth and says matter-of-factly, “When we get home, Baba’s gonna put you in a time out.”

Olive is right. Z puts him in a mental time out after Niall explains (with frequent interjections from Olive) what took place at the Harvest Festival. He stays mostly silent through dinner, nearly whispers a thank-you as Ari doles out the peach pie, goes outside to watch Olive while she plays with the kids down the street as Niall and Ari do the dishes, and then keeps his stare only on Olive as they sing her a bedtime song (Sweet Child o’ Mine is tonight’s pick, followed by the chorus – and just the chorus – of The Mighty Jungle).

Niall is no stranger to Z’s silence. When he forgot to pack Olive a lunch before sending her off to school, Z didn’t speak to him for two days unless absolutely necessary to exchange crucial information concerning Olive’s wellbeing. Back in college, when Niall thought Mel was taking Z out for his birthday, he went out with Liam and got absolutely shittered, missing all of Z’s calls and texts that he would meet Niall wherever he was – Z avoided contact with him for a week after that one, with band practice being especially salty. And then there was high school, when the football team caught him sucking off Matt Gray in the locker room. Z didn’t speak to Niall for nine days after that. Niall remembers clearly: nine whole days. Gray hated him, the football team hated him, the school hated him, and the town would soon hate him, but what sucked the most was that his best friend hated him, and Niall didn’t even know why.

And now he can feel it coming like a cloud casting a shadow: another frosty silence, another thick tension. When Z gets too upset with Niall, he can’t talk to him. He can’t even look at him. He needs to stew in his own thoughts for an extended period of time – hours, days, weeks – before he comes back to Niall on his own, ready to move on.

So, when Z doesn’t come back downstairs after his final goodnight to Olive, Niall doesn’t go looking for him even though his legs are itching to race up those stairs. Instead, he traps himself in his room, pacing back and forth from his nightstand to his dresser and occasionally bringing a hand up to brush his lip, to check the cut is still there, now swollen and hot. A melting ice pack sits abandoned on his nightstand, but Niall doesn’t care to use it. He feels ill and unsettled, his stomach a boiling swamp, bubbling and sloshing from side to side.

Ari slips into his room after a ten-minute nighttime yoga session and soundlessly shuts the door behind her. She’s so quiet that Niall doesn’t look back, doesn’t even sense her presence until he spins on his heel to walk back to his dresser and nearly smacks into her. Startled, he sucks in a breath and grinds to a halt.

“I can hear you walking in circles from outside the door,” she says. Though she snorts in amusement, her eyes portray genuine concern. “Take a breather. Sit down.”

Niall mutters an incoherent decline, but somehow, he ends up seated on the edge of his bed anyway.

Ari doesn’t crowd him. While he leans over his knees and lets his head fall to his chin, staring at the traitorous creaking hardwood that divulged his actions to Ari, she backs up to the empty wall and leans against it, hands behind her back.

After a long period of silence, she says, “You’re upset.”

“No, I’m not,” Niall lies, “I’m just—Z’s upset.” He sighs and hisses at the sting when his tongue touches the open wound on his lip. “He’s pissed at me. I just feel shitty.”

“It’s not your fault they went after you,” says Ari, confident yet gentle. “You reacted – you didn’t provoke.”

“I should’ve walked away.”

“You did,” she reminds him, “and you would’ve kept going, if Olive wasn’t with you. You didn’t want her to hear what they were saying… and they wouldn’t stop.”

Niall nods, slowly straightening his back until it’s at a ninety-degree angle to the bed and he’s able to look at her again. Why is she here? Not here in his room, but here in his life. He’s got nothing going on, no prospects, no plans – everything’s the same, day in and day out. Here’s this girl who’s looking for an awakening, an experience or a place or a person to shake her alive, to rattle the bones beneath her skin and charge her veins with electricity, and yet she chooses to sit with Niall in his bare, dingy bedroom in this boring, one-horse town while he obsesses over the past.

He’s a fucking idiot. He can’t offer her what she’s looking for, but he can offer more than this.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, cheeks pinking when his voice cracks.

“Stop saying that.” She chuckles. “I’m not upset with you about what happened. I’m only upset because you’re upset. You’re upset because Zayn’s upset. Zayn’s upset because Olive was upset. And Olive? She’s over it; she had a nice evening with her baba and she’s forgotten what happened. Situations like this… you just have to let go.”

There’s a reluctance in her expression that doesn’t match the certainty in her tone. Niall can guess what she’s holding back: it’s what’s been sitting heavy in the air between them ever since their run-in with Luke and Janowitz at the Harvest Festival. It’s what probably has her wondering the same thing as Niall, albeit for different reasons: what she’s doing here, in this house, with this man, when she could be anywhere else.

Hands on his knees, he stretches out and begins to stand. “What they were saying about me today,” he begins with resignation, “I don’t, I mean, I’m—”

“Shh.” Ari holds up a hand to silence him. “You don’t have to say anything. It doesn’t matter.”

“Well, it does matter,” he counters, frustrated, “especially if they made you think—”

“They didn’t make me think anything,” she hastily interrupts, “except that I’m really glad you started talking to me that night at the bar, because if I’d had to make real conversation with Luke… I mean, he’s such an ass.” She releases a breathy laugh.

Niall pauses to read her face. She doesn’t shirk from his gaze or flush; rather, she widens her eyes, just as intent on searching his expression to ensure he understands her.

He takes a step forward, the floorboard creaking under his feet. “You don’t believe them?”

She shakes her head definitively. “I believe what you tell me,” she assures him, “not what anyone else tries to tell me about you. I don’t even care if it’s true.” Her shoulders slump, her back sinking against the wall. “If it’s relevant right now,” she says, gesturing to the space between them, “to this, whatever this is, then I’ll believe you if you tell me. Otherwise, I don’t care.” She gulps. Her eyes stray to the open window only for a second. Niall only has time to blink before her gaze is locked on his eyes, their eyes holding each other like an electromagnetic force. “They don’t influence my thoughts.”

“It’s not relevant,” Niall mumbles, though truthfully, he’s not sure. Tillson City society is fragile like domino infrastructure. With all the pieces so close together, even the slightest breeze affecting one single domino can cause the design to crumble until nothing’s left standing. But he lets that worry go, pushing it toward the edges of his mind as Ari’s image crowds the center. Niall takes another dubious step forward, and another, until he’s right in front of her, his eyeline only an inch above, her breath hitting his neck. Once in fists at his side, his fingers unfurl as his hands find her hips. “You should know, then,” he begins weakly, “that I’m really… fuckin’…” –he swallows— “into you.”

Her lips press into a shy smile, her fingers circle his wrists.

Niall uses his hold on her hips to pull her just a little bit closer. His movements are sure, his leg slotting between her thighs with confidence, but he trips over his own breath when he opens his mouth to speak again. “I, um… you’re funny, and smart, and real, and, um, really hot?” Ari’s once-coy smile spreads across her face until it stretches from ear to ear. She giggles. “And I just like being with you, and having you naked in my bed, and, um…”

He loses his train of thought and comes to a standstill, certain his cheeks are flamingo-pink as Ari’s giggles fill the silence. He drops his head, exhaling in surrender.

“Jesus,” he breathes, managing a chuckle, “I know this sounds insincere and contrived, but it’s not – not at all – I’m just, I’m not good at, like… verbal… stuff.”

“Of course not,” Ari laughs, “why would you be? It’s not like you write songs and articles for magazines.” Her hands loosen on his wrists and she trails them up his arms, finally hooking her arms over his shoulders so he can’t back away.

“That’s writing, though. With speaking, I’m garbage.”

Ari pecks him on the cheek. She winds her arms around his neck and trails her lips to his jaw, where, after a nibble, she murmurs, “It felt very unrehearsed, unlike your other performances.”

“Maybe. My mouth is better at doing other things.” With a short laugh, he tilts his head until he finds her lips. Their kiss is brief, lasting only until Niall’s swollen lip begins to sting. As he pulls away, he adds, “What I said, though… I didn’t pull it from nowhere. I do think all that stuff about you. And you should know that.”

Translating into words the flutters made by someone glued inside his chest has never been Niall’s forte, but perhaps it’s not Ari’s forte to receive feelings in words, either.

She nods. Her eyes flicker to his lips and back again. It’s difficult for her to swallow all of a sudden, and Niall fears he may have upset her until she says very quietly, almost in a whisper, “I believe you.”

Niall’s heart has always pointed him to people, and his feet have always done the travelling to close the distance between them. With Ari, for the first time, he feels a pull from her direction – like she’s thrown out a line that’s hooked him and she’s reeling him in as fast as he’s swimming towards her. And it’s strange to meet someone’s mouth earlier than he expected and to turn around to look for someone only to find them already at his side – strange, but so easy to fall into.

That night, as Ari rides him in the tangled sheets on his bed, the open window barely easing the stifling temperature in the room or their bodies, slick with sweat, Niall has to throw the back of his wrist to his mouth and bite down to keep from crying out. Ari tries to pull him up, to get him to straighten his back and seat her in his lap so he can use her shoulder to silence himself, but he’s too boneless, too breathless from the way he feels inside her, the way she opens up for him and fits him better than his best pair of jeans, so he collapses on his pillow and pulls her down with him, not even aware of the sting in his lip as she kisses him quiet when he makes his final thrust up into her.

Afterward, with the setting sun a perfect glowing semicircle through the window above the bed, Niall throws on a pair of boxers, sits cross-legged atop the crumpled bedsheets, and reaches for his guitar. Ari curls up on her side, tucks her hands between the mattress and her cheek and watches him with the kind of adoring eyes that never stare back at him, not in any crowd he’s ever played for. It reminds him of Olive’s eyes, though he can’t be sure – she’s only ever directed that kind of stare at Z.

He only plucks at strings, and he only hums the melodies. It’s enough to have Ari drifting back to sleep, her eyes struggling to widen further than slits. When he sets down the guitar and moves off the bed to get his jeans, she sighs.

“I’m getting up,” she promises, low and groggy. “Thirty more seconds.”

Niall grins at her absolute lack of commitment to being awake as he pulls his jeans up to his hips and buttons them. In fact, her eyes are sealed shut, confirmed by Niall when he waves his hand several times in front of her face and she fails to react at all.

Once he pulls a fresh t-shirt over his head, accompanied by a button-down plaid, he crouches by the bed and pokes her lightly in the nose.

“I’m getting up,” she repeats. This time, she doesn’t even open her eyes.

He laughs below his breath. “Keep sleeping,” he murmurs. “It’s okay.”

“You’re going to work.”

“Yeah. I’ll be back at midnight or so.”

It’s only a little over three hours. They’ve never done this before – he’s never left her or returned to her sleeping soundly in his bed, but he likes the idea of it. He hasn’t suggested it for fear of scaring her, because he’s not really sure what the boundaries are and doesn’t know where to begin to test the waters between them, but right now, with Ari as good as asleep and Niall with no other choice but to hop into his pickup, it seems like a good time to try.

To his dismay, her eyes open slightly, forming half-moon slits crinkling into a frown. “I can stay?”

He nods, his chin resting on the mattress near her face. “I don’t mind.”

“Okay.” Her eyes drift shut again. Her facial muscles relax into something more peaceful almost instantly.

Well. That was easier than he thought.

“Wake me up when you’re home,” she adds.

“I will,” he agrees. He’s lying.

Niall hesitates in his squat for a few moments, wondering if it’s okay to kiss her or tuck a piece of hair behind her ear or whisper that she looks very, very beautiful right now, but instead he gulps and stands up, because he doesn’t want to risk ruining any part of this.

He shuffles quietly around the room, cringing when the floorboards creak beneath him, gathering his wallet and keys and gently placing his guitar in its case and closing the latches. With his hands full, Niall pauses at his door to glance at Ari one last time: her hair is fanned across his pillow, her arms curled to her chest as she sleeps. He frames that image of her in his mind before he slips through the door and closes it carefully behind him.

He turns to find Z in the living room, the TV on low. Z’s eyes are fixed to Niall and on the door behind him. He must know, whether he heard them or not, that Ari is beyond that door.

Niall neither confirms nor denies this. Instead, with his swollen lip and the fleeting thought that hopefully Luke and his gang will have somewhere else to go after the game tonight, he mutters a goodnight to Z and lets himself out.

If Z says anything in return, Niall doesn’t hear him.

On weekends, Niall hardly ever wakes with the sun. He shuts his blinds and buries his head under his pillow to cloak himself in darkness until his body can’t possibly sleep anymore.

The morning after Ari spends the night, Niall’s eyes open to the faint rays of morning light shining over the horizon, creeping around the side of the house and into his bedroom. In truth, it’s not the sun that rouses him – it’s his bladder. It’s a water balloon ready to burst. With a wince of discomfort, Niall’s quick but mindful of Ari sleeping next to him as he removes himself from the bed and darts out of the door.

He exits the bathroom feeling weightless with relief, and even though there’s a prominent ache in his fat lip and the light of the morning sun is too harsh in his eyes, he feels good. The house is quiet, the sky is clear, and Ari is in his bed exactly where he left her.

At least, she was. Niall comes to a halt in the doorframe to find the door wide open and the bed empty.

What?

A shuffling across the hall has him looking over his shoulder. Ari’s up and awake, moving from the living room to the front door to look through the screen and check the drive. Niall stands and watches her. Confused, her shoulders slump, and she turns slowly with her thumbnail between her teeth.

As soon as she spots him, her face brightens. With loose strands of hair falling from her side braid and Niall’s t-shirt falling off her shoulder, she bares all her teeth in a grin and makes her way toward him.

He’s the one she was looking for. She got out of bed to see where he’d gone, thinking he may have left. Niall’s feet lead him where his heart wants to go, but he can’t remember the last time another pair of feet led someone else after him.

When Ari’s close enough, Niall hooks an arm around her neck, helping her to right the t-shirt on her shoulders before coaxing her back into his bed.

Niall finds a suspicious flyer on the counter mid-month. With Ari at work and then having dinner with Rosen and Jackson, there’s nothing stopping Niall from confronting Z as soon as he can get him alone without Olive in the room.

“So, uh… what’s this?” Niall asks, tea towel slung over his shoulder and hands sudsy with soap from dinner’s dirty dishes. He points vaguely to the flyer for before- and after-school daycare.

“What?” asks Z, eyes following Niall’s finger to the ad. While he cleans up the place settings on the table, he shrugs. “Oh, that. My mom said they stuck the flyer on her windshield while she was shopping in town the other day.”

“So she gave it to you?”

“Yeah.”

Niall nods, turning back to the sink and grinding his teeth. “What did you tell her?”

“I just said thanks, is all.”

“Huh.” Niall might begin to scrub the pasta pot a little bit too hard, but that’s not his primary concern.

“What?” Z stops cleaning to straighten his back. Niall feels his glare on the back of his neck even if he can’t see it.

“Why’ve you kept it so long? You thinkin’ about it?”

“I dunno.” Z sighs. “Look at the address. The daycare center is two blocks from my office. I could drop her off and pick her up on my way every day, and if something happens, I couldn’t be closer.”

Niall glances again at the flyer to confirm that yes, the center is close to Z during the day. “But, uh… what about me?”

“What about you?” Z must have known the conversation was heading in this direction, but to his credit, he keeps his cool. “You’ve got other things to do, two jobs to work. You don’t need to be Olive’s babysitter, too.”

“I’m not her babysitter, I’m—” Niall forces himself to shut up in the middle of speaking when he realizes he’s nearly growling. Instead, he abandons the soapy pot in the sink and rinses his hands, turning to face Z while he dries them on the tea towel across his shoulder. “You know that’s why I’m here. I made my schedule the way it is to account for Olive, always. Why would you send her to daycare if I’m here to watch her?”

Z shrugs again, his expression neutral. “Maybe it’s time for a change. They say kids should be social, spend time with other kids, and Olive doesn’t have siblings, so… this makes sense. It could be good for her.”

“She goes to school, though. She plays with kids on the block.”

“Yeah, well, now she’ll meet new kids. Have even more friends.”

“How you gonna afford it?”

“I just will.”

Niall screws up his face, holding his hands at his sides until he lets them fall. “You just will?”

It’s Niall’s cynicism that sets Z off, causing him to drop the placemats on the table and approach the counter. “Yeah, I just will,” he retorts. “She’s my daughter; I need to make sure she’s taken care of. I don’t care what it costs, I’ll make it work. I just will.”

“What the hell, Z?” Niall cries, flaring up in anger instead of simmering. “You were gonna do this without even telling me? One day I’d wake up and you’d be loading her into the car to drop her off at daycare?”

“I’m just thinking about it, Jesus.” Z huffs. “It’s a thought, that’s all.”

“Why is it a thought now when it’s never been a thought before?”

“Because things change! I have to do what’s best for my daughter.”

Niall shakes his head in exasperation. He takes a moment to calm himself with a breath before saying to Z in a voice that’s soft and near a plea, “Don’t take her away from me. You know she’s mine, too.”

Z, normally affected by the mood of others around him, doesn’t settle at Niall’s tone. Instead, he bites back, “She’s not yours.”

Niall physically recoils, stung. Still quiet, he adds, “I love her.”

“Who?”

That does it. Niall hopes Olive has her door closed while she plays quietly upstairs, because he slams his hand down at the counter, blue eyes blazing. “Olive,” he spits. “I fucking adore her, Z, you know I’d do anything to protect her, to make her life better. You’re just being spiteful.”

“Get over yourself. You think this has anything to do with you?”

“How could it not?” Niall cries. “All along, we said we’d try to get by without daycare, now after Trisha hands you one fuckin’ flyer you’re sold?”

“It wasn’t one fuckin’ flyer!” Z barks. “We’ve been talking, okay? Talking about where to go from here, how to make sure Olive gets everything she needs.”

“What does she need that she doesn’t have? Tell me!” Niall demands.

“Stability! Routine. She doesn’t need to be around doped-up Mickey one day and then going pony riding at an out-of-town festival the next. She needs to be with kids her own age, doing age-appropriate things, for fuck’s sake.”

Niall’s nostrils flare. Fuming, he says, “So it is about me.”

“It’s about her. It’s always about her. Every fucking thing I’ve done in the past five years has been about her.”

“So now you’re the martyr.”

“No, I’m the father. Fuck, Niall! Grow up. Recognize that I don’t have time to pick up girls at bars and show them around town. Recognize that I put in my time at work every day to provide for my family and then I come home and put in time with my daughter. That’s my life – it’s not yours.” He snorts. “It’s very clearly not yours.”

“Oh, come on. Just because you think being celibate is the only way to go, doesn’t mean it is. Don’t you get lonely? Don’t you ever want someone? I’m not a villain just because I’m hanging out with someone new.”

“Fucking someone new,” Z corrects him.

Niall throws his head back, caught between a laugh and a snarl. “I don’t need your approval to date, or to sleep with anyone, or to do anything involving my own love life. You made it clear you don’t want a part in it.”

“Actually, you do need my approval,” Z counters, to Niall’s incredulity, “when you’re bringing your fuckmate around my house to interact with my daughter. Jesus, Niall! You didn’t even think before you brought Ari ‘round to meet Olive, and then all of a sudden, she was just here. All the fucking time. Do you not understand how fucked up that is, how damaging it can be to a five year-old?”

“Olive loves Ari, and vice versa.”

“Yeah, and what if she leaves? Let alone if you two have a falling out, but what if she actually leaves? She’s from Long Island; you know she’s not here forever. And then what? Olive feels forgotten, like she doesn’t even matter to this woman she started to love. Did you even think about that, Niall? No, of course you didn’t, because you’re not her father. You were thinking about getting laid.”

Niall bites his lip, still swollen from the Harvest Festival, no longer able to look at Z. He looks at his fingers instead, tapping angrily on the countertop. Voice calm and even, he says, “You jealous? Is that what this is?”

“Fuck off,” Z spits, “this has nothing to do with that.”

“Oh, really? Timing seems pretty convenient.”

“Timing seems pretty damn late if you ask me. You wanna do this forever?” Z asks, throwing up his arms and gesturing to the world around him. “Live here with me and my daughter, never having your own life? You want this?”

“This is your dad talking,” Niall accuses him.

“Yeah, well maybe he’s right!” Z shouts. With a growl of frustration, Z sinks into a kitchen chair. He runs a hand through his hair, eyes falling to the table in surrender. “You don’t need this, Niall,” he croaks. “This is my life. This is what I have to do because of the choices I made, not you.”

He looks up, begging Niall to meet his eyes, but Niall won’t. He can’t, because Z’s last thought is going to ruin him, he knows it.

Niall’s heart sinks into his ribcage as Z speaks again, asking him the one question he once thought he had an answer to: “So what the hell are you still doing here?”

The television wakes him in the middle of the night. Niall’s eyes flutter open slowly, adjusting to the faintest hint of light streaking in through the crack between his door and the frame. The kitchen lighting is harsh, and the way the single ray of grating light falls upon Ari’s sleeping form in the darkness does no justice to how peaceful she looks when she sleeps. Niall prefers the moonlight for that – for when he gets home after performing at Sherman’s or for when he wakes, due to a sudden noise or his own body alarm, in darkness and watches her sleep, chest rising and falling, soft breaths escaping, one hand usually tucked underneath the pillow to keep it warm.

Ari doesn’t know that she’s a comfort to him when she sleeps. Just having her near, calm and still next to him, lulls him back into slumber. It gives him the sense that things are Okay, and maybe they’re not Okay in the sense that Ari talks about when she talks about being Okay, but they’re Niall’s type of Okay – and it’s an Okay he didn’t quite recognize he was missing until Ari crawled under his blankets and cuddled up to him in the night.

Tonight, it’s the sound of gunshots that wake him. He comes to slowly. His arm drags over Ari’s waist, covered only by a thin sheet, to rub his eyes. A film shrouds his vision, a haze of sleep. He cranes his neck over his shoulder to check the time: half past two in the morning. Carefully, he extracts himself from Ari, gently pulling his arm out from underneath her neck and sliding his shin out from where it rests between hers. With a deep yawn that conquers his chest, he rolls to his back and considers staying there, in bed, where it’s hot and comfortable and the person next to him wants him there.

Outside his door, shouts come from the television, followed by more turmoil – machine guns or cannons and many very loud engines. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think Z was trying to wake the whole house. Niall does know better, but a part of him remains curious if Z doesn’t want to be alone. If, perhaps, he’d welcome company, if that company were Niall.

Niall peels the sheet from his body like a bandage, torturously slow in anticipation of the sting of cool air. Lifting himself from the mattress is another story: he cringes as he stands on his feet and the mattress lifts. He knows from having her in his bed for many nights now that Ari’s neither a particularly heavy nor a particularly light sleeper, but he doesn’t want to take a chance waking her and won’t dare ask himself why.

Tiptoeing across the carpet, he grabs a t-shirt flung over the chair and throws it over his head before slowly turning the doorknob, opening the door only as far as it takes for him to slip outside. It closes soundly behind him.

The kitchen lighting, white and unfriendly, makes him squint, and he unfolds his glasses and pushes them up his nose in the hopes they’ll help. They don’t, so he makes his way over to Z – sitting on the couch in the living room with only a single lamp illuminated, yolky light warm and enticing – while rubbing his eyes underneath the lenses and blinking fiercely.

They don’t greet one another. Z’s eyes shift from the screen to watch him approach, wearing just a pair of pajama pants while Niall’s scrawny chicken legs are exposed in boxers and a t-shirt, but he neither invites him closer nor turns him away.

Niall doesn’t bother pretending he’s conflicted over where to sit. He ignores the armchair and walks straight to the charcoal couch, picking up a cushion next to Z because it’s in the way of where he wants to sit. As soon as he sinks down, toes curling into the fuzz of the rug and hip knocking against Z’s, he hugs the cushion to his chest. He likes his hands to be busy, and the cushion is something to hold.

Z’s got some black-and-white documentary on TV, something about Franklin Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor. Niall barely registers the fighter jets zipping about in the sky dropping bombs on an entire island. His eyes see the images but his mind sees nothing.

“Is Ari here?” Z murmurs. He releases the remote in his hand in favour of slinging his arm across the back of the couch behind Niall’s head.

Niall nods, eyes affixed to the screen. A bomb spirals through the sky and torpedoes into a ship. He hugs the pillow tighter.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Z adds. His gums make a squishy, wet sound when he parts his lips and runs his tongue below his teeth. “Olive crawled into my bed after a bad dream, so once she fell back asleep I came down here.”

Niall hears every word, though his eyes barely flicker in acknowledgement.

Z brings the sole of his foot to the couch, his knee tucked to his chest. Fingers graze the back of Niall’s neck, tickling the hairs there. “You okay?”

Finally, Niall gives in and looks at him. It’s been a few days since he’s shaved and black stubble lines his jaw. The facial hair gives Z a refined, mature look, with none of the patchiness and fuzz that defines Niall’s struggle. Niall hadn’t noticed it before tonight because, he realizes, it’s been a while since he’s seen Z up-close. They’ve crept around one another for days now, ever since their blowout over the daycare flyer, both too proud to offer concessions to one another over the quarrel yet both ashamed for the way it dissolved into stiff silence.

Z’s brows are furrowed in concern and his gaze roams Niall’s entire face, from his chin to his nose to the still-visible lump on his lower lip. Stuck on a certain spot on Niall’s head, Z focuses on the blond tips of hair fading to brown, curling an arm around Niall’s shoulders and using his hand to fix the bedhead. Niall struggles not to shut his eyes and give into the feeling of his head being scratched but, like a dog, he’s powerless to fingers in his hair.

Z knows that.

“Thirsty?” Z mumbles, trying again to elicit a response. Niall shakes his head, just once, while Z massages the back of his head. “Could make you some tea,” he offers. “Get you a glass of water, if you want.”

Niall declines nonverbally. He keeps his eyes closed and fades into a dreamlike state. Z’s voice is musical, even when he’s not singing, and the one place Niall’s always felt at home is in music. For a moment, he allows himself the fantasy that he’s a priority to Z, that Z will take care of him, that Z loves him like he loves Olive or like he once loved Mel. The dream spikes a pleasure center somewhere in him so that he feels like he’s almost floating, cocooned in heat from within. He sinks into Z, into the warmth of his bare chest and the soft scruff of his jaw, and even though he tilts his head to one side in a silent plea for Z’s fingers to run through the hair near his ear, he won’t let himself fall asleep.

This is so easy, this routine. So comforting to sit with Z and not have to speak a word. So reassuring to feel the heat of his body and his pulse steady beneath his skin. So beautiful for the few moments he allows himself to pretend they’re each other’s, in the hazy glow of late night TV while the crickets chirp through the open window screen.

But in the morning, it’s always the same. In the morning, they’re friends, co-parents, cohabitants of a residence. That’s all they are. It’s a lot, but it’s not enough.

Niall’s waited for him for so long, hanging onto any shred of hope Z gives him in the night, and it’s led him nowhere. Same old town, same old job, same old empty bed. Z could meet someone he clicks with or he could move Olive to Charleston when he transfers to his dad’s office. Gramps and Gram still live with the sadness of a runaway daughter, but they’ll leave Niall before he leaves them. And then that’s it. Niall’s on his own.

Everyone he loves, everyone for whom he’d take a bullet and bleed dry, can’t be trusted to stay in his life. And when they go – by finding another love or by succumbing to death – he has no backup. No reason to stay, no reason to keep the life he leads.

Niall allows himself a moment of self-pity in which he dumbly decides he loves everyone more than they love him. But, as Z attentively strokes his hair, Niall knows it’s unfair to think that way. He’s felt love all through his life and has never had to look far for advice, comfort, support. Maybe it’s just that he loves people differently. He hinges every part of himself onto the ones he loves. His feet listen to his heart, and his heart is Z and Olive. Gram and Gramps. He goes where they go, no questions asked. To go elsewhere would be to separate his heart from his own body.

But where does that leave him? Twenty-five years old with half of a college degree in music, back in the same town he and Z promised they’d escape from when they were teens. It wasn’t as long ago as Niall would like to pretend it was.

His stomach flips uneasily. Niall takes that as a sign to dislodge himself from Z’s side, to stand up and peel off his glasses. The war documentary is nothing but a grey blur now, but Niall hears the pelt of bullets as he runs a hand through his hair, roughly moving it back and forth to mess it up and forget Z’s fingers were ever there. Z doesn’t say a word as Niall leaves the room and flicks off the harsh kitchen light. As Niall slips back into his bedroom, he can only make out Z’s figure sitting in the same position on the couch, Niall’s cushion now pulled close to his body. But Niall can feel his stare. He doesn’t have to see it clearly to know it’s fixed on him as he disappears from view.

He climbs back into bed just as carefully as he’d climbed out of it. As he covers his body with the bedsheet, he pulls it up over Ari’s shoulders to keep her warm. Then he turns his back to her and curls up on his side, the red glow of his bedside digital clock burning into his pupils. His hands are restless and empty, yearning for something to hold.

Ari’s sharp intake of breath alerts him that he’s woken her by mistake. She shifts on the mattress, her arm skating behind her back to feel for him. Her palm lands on his thigh.

“Did you leave?” she murmurs, voice groggy with sleep.

Niall doesn’t cover her hand with his under the blankets. Toying with the fabric on his pillowcase, he quietly returns, “Where would I go?”

Because that’s the question, isn’t it?

She rolls over. He feels the dip of the mattress as she sidles up behind him. He feels her lips press a kiss to his shoulder. He feels her hitch her thigh over his waist, her hand sliding over his chest and settling around his middle, her heartbeat thumping, only for a few seconds, against his shoulderblade. She holds him.

He lets her.

Ari’s meant to stay the night one Thursday evening, but Rosen phones her with what she insists is a “wedding emergency” and comes to pick her up shortly after eight o’clock. She instructs Ari to be ready and waiting on the front stoop, so Niall goes out, barefoot in the late summer mugginess, to sit with her on the steps until her ride arrives. They giggle and murmur and kiss as the sun goes down, fingers interlaced and hearts thrumming. When the Honda Civic approaches on the road, Niall stands, pulls Ari to her feet, and holds her cheeks in his hands as he kisses her long and slow and deep, sealing their mouths together for several seconds until he has to let her go.

As Ari moves to get in the car, Niall waves politely at Rosen behind the wheel. She offers a bewildered stare in return.

Then they’re gone, and Niall stands with his hands in his black denim pockets to watch the little car zip down the street and turn the corner, lost in the dark. He swivels on his heel and heads inside, shutting the door quietly behind him and turning the lock. The silence on the main floor incites a crease in his forehead. With Z’s soft, melodic voice floating down the stairs, Niall’s frown deepens.

Did Z start Olive’s nighttime song without him?

He takes the stairs two at a time, hurried but light, and by the time he reaches the landing, he recognizes the tune. Z’s voice glides easily across the range, singing in tune with the small keyboard he uses to occasionally supplement Niall’s guitar.

There’s a part of Niall that wants to storm into Olive’s room, exclaim that he’ll go grab his guitar and they can start over. But there’s another part of him that exists, and no matter how deeply it’s buried, it’s stronger: it wants to listen, to observe, like Ari does at night when she watches them play. Niall wants to be a fly on the wall, and he’s not sure why.

“And the songbirds keep singing like they know the score… but I love you, I love you, I love you like never before.”

He doesn’t know what he’s looking for until he peers around the corner and it hits him like a slap in the face, a cannon ball to the gut, a hand reaching into his chest and squeezing his heart until all the blood drains and he’s left with nothing but a shell of an organ.

Keyboard in his lap, Z plays chords to the song he knows off by heart, with Olive tucked up against his side and staring up at him like he hung the moon. Her big, brown eyes are wide and inspired, in awe of her father because he’s the man who can do anything, the one she loves most. Z’s face is warmed with a smile, and he stares right back at her because in his world, she is all that exists, she is the sun that his Earth must travel around in order to remain in the light.

This is their moment, not his. And maybe every night before this one has been their moment and Niall’s been just an accessory, a third wheel, a temporary addition to the real duo.

His heart wants him to watch, because it’s captivating and sweet and just how it should be, but this time his mind wins and he physically tears himself away, using his palm to push himself off of the doorframe and blinking his eyes, hard, to erase the image burned on the back of his eyelids.

Z and Olive are fine as long as they have each other.

But, Niall thinks forlornly, he needs them, too.

#tls #my writing #1dff #niall horan fan fiction

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