#trying some new things in the candy department so this could end up being chaos

[thebluestockingfirefly]

Fuck it. It's 6 November and the Christmas decorations are coming out tomorrow because I'll take anything that gives me joy right now.

Christmas candy making therefore also starts tomorrow. I'll be saturated in sugar by Saturday.

[ironmandeficiency]

accidents happen

pairing: kix / mechanic!reader (afab here)

word count: 2163

summary: accidents happen even to the most careful people.

a/n: can be read as part of the kix/mechanic!reader universe i accidentally made (here, here, and here). made some tweaks to the og req but stuck to the general theme. sprinkled in a few of my oc boys for ✨flair✨

warnings: speeder crash, prego!reader

you don’t remember much of the speeder crash. it was a blur of lights, a cacophony of twisting metal and the screams of passersby as they worry about the wellbeing of those involved. that is, until your head slammed too hard against the controls and knocked you out cold.

the sensations of latex icicles checking your pulse roused you from your unconscious state. your eyes struggled against the bright lights of what you knew was the five-oh-first medbay, the foggy yet familiar voices of frantic clones being a dead giveaway. they were worried about many things—your condition after the wreck, whether you would be able to return to field work with them once you recovered, kix’s reaction once he catches wind of what happened...

kix hadn’t kept his cool when your arm was slightly crushed by general skywalker’s delta-7 aethersprite, how was he going to handle his cyare being in a speeder crash?

answer’s simple: he wouldn’t.

kix had just left the operating room when he heard the commotion of a new patient being brought in. jogging to the cot where they lifted the patient, he pushed his way through the unusually tight crowd of vode until he got to the foot of the bed. “alright boys, what do we got?”

“speeder crash just outside of 500 republica, two broken ribs, a—oh we got it taken care of kix, go get some rest-”

“you just left surgery, take a break!”

“this’ll be easy peasy, we got it!”

the voices of his brothers were agitated as the crowd was damn near trying to push him away. with a few well-placed nudges and shoulder bumps, kix realized that they indeed were trying to push him away. this just made him all the more intent on figuring out why they were trying to boot him out. he was a medic for kriff’s sake, bronco had no business trying to shove him out of the way like that!

“easy peasy my shebs, bronco! i…”

it was you.

you were lying unconscious on the bed in front of him, surrounded by brothers on all sides as the other medics, clone and civvie alike, were taking care of you. there was an oozing, bloody gash along your temple and a growing knot that was already grossly discolored.

it was instinct for kix to want to take point on this. it was you, he didn’t want anything to go wrong. and if something did go wrong, he wouldn’t want to have the scapegoat of blaming a vod for anything. it had to be on him, he had to be the one to take care of you.

the protests of several vode immediately follow kix’s insistence, multiple hands starting to pull him from your bedside. he begins to struggle against them and they immediately start to grip him tighter as they guide him towards the exit.

“you can’t do this! i need to-mmph! be here! let me go!”

“you know why we can’t do that, vod.”

“bantha karking shit you can’t! i need to be there, you don’t understand!”

arguments continued and tension mounted in the medbay, kix still fighting to get to you while the others were either treating you or holding him back. all other conscious thought ceased to be, the gut instinct of taking care of you being his only purpose.

then a firm voice booms through the chaos with enough force to wake the dead as he calls the medic’s name.

“leave, kix. that’s an order.”

rex’s heart was being smashed by his own boot as he spoke. he hated having to be the one giving the ultimatum to the frightened medic in front of him, but as captain, the burden fell onto him. kix was clearly not able to separate you from what needs to be done for the patient and he was not going to allow that kind of responsibility on his vod’s shoulders.

not if he was going to be able to sleep tonight.

rex’s eyes betrayed how much it hurt him, but the bristling of his words showed no such emotion. he couldn’t show any of this inner conflict, not as a captain and especially not as ori’vod to nearly every man surrounding your bed. but the men know that their captain isn’t heartless, that he views you as one of the best things to happen to the five-oh-first, that he has a reason for everything he does.

it takes a hell of a lot more convincing (read: sedative) to get kix to back down. rex and fives carried the medic to the barracks, taking care to lay him down gently. the proximity to the younger trooper told rex that a sedated kix was having more of an effect on him than he let on.

even though fives had other duties to take care of while on leave, rex knew that a distracted fives would not be able to complete any of them to his regular standards. so, like a good captain and ori’vod, he excused the younger brother from his tasks.

“you can stay with him,” rex could read the arc trooper like a datapad; fives was tense and afraid, two feelings that only his closest brothers would recognize on him. “he’ll probably feel better if someone’s here when he wakes up.”

“but rex—“

“i know you stayed with him the last time his cyare was injured, fives. he would be grateful to have someone with him during this.��� fives nodded his thanks grimly, taking his perch at kix’s bedside.

rex returned to the medbay with haste, hoping against hope that your injuries were mild. his return to the medbay was met with you awake, recounting the story of how you were rammed by a rogue speeder that ran their traffic light.

“we’re just glad you’re okay, gotabor.”

“yeah, no speeder can keep you down.”

a wave of peace rushes over the tired captain and he takes his leave. you were okay, kix would be okay, the five-oh-first would be okay.

queen and starchild continued to praise your resilience (“the toughest mechanic in the gar” is what you’ve been dubbed) before they’re cut off briskly by morticus, whose face was sporting a strangely lighter expression, like some of the burdens he carried were lightened for a moment.

“but we also have some news, gotabor. some that you really should be told in private.”

your first instinct is to tell morticus that you trust these men with your life, that anything he had to say could be said in front of them. but something in his eyes told you that pushing the matter wouldn’t end well. “i’ll be here when you get back, boys,” you give the remaining troopers soft smiles and a gentle squeeze of their hands, reassuring them that you were okay now, that in the hands of the five-oh-first you were the safest you’ve ever been.

they took a reluctant leave, looking over their shoulders one last time as they left the medbay. it wasn’t that they didn’t trust morticus, no not that at all, it just seemed that you had a penchant for getting injured and when brothers were repeatedly injured in increasingly severe ways, they didn’t always stay around much longer.

morticus is quick to say what he needs to, privacy being a very rare luxury in a five-oh-first medbay whether on leave or otherwise. “now that we have some privacy, gotabor, i have some news.” again, there was this happier lilt to his voice that he just didn’t have. morticus was stoic, cynical, even a bit dickish on the right day. to see him smile and sound happy about something was abnormal but pleasant all the same.

“is everything alright?”

“more than alright—you’re expecting.”

your face warped in your confusion, eyebrows crinkled and lips slightly pursed. “expecting what, morti?”

this man laughed—genuinely laughed—at your reply and if you weren’t so distracted by your perplexion, you would have said something about how nice his laugh is.

“a child, gotabor’ika. you’re pregnant.”

a sly grin made an appearance, morticus’s voice slightly teasing. the air was lighter around him than it has been in a long time and he was going to enjoy it with everything he’s got. “i’m going to assume that the baby belongs to kix—“

“of course it’s his, di’kut! but we had been so careful, always using protection! i don’t know how this happened…” racking your brain, you tried to remember a time when the two of you were a little less than careful but came up empty. “we weren’t trying for this, morti. it just happened, it was an accident.”

he patted your thigh with a smile. “sometimes accidents happen to even the most careful people. just take this as a win and keep going.” something to your far left beeped—another brother’s machine—and morticus quickly reverted back to tense medic mode, scrutinizing the readings before taking notes in their datapad and returning to your side.

“you got this, gotabor. you’re made of the stronger stuff.” he flurries around you, making sure you’re as comfortable as possible before telling you to rest and that kix will be with you soon. it didn’t take a seasoned member of the resolute to know that kix was so devoted and bent on protecting you however possible, and you knew that he was probably sedated yet again. he would be here when he’s up, you know he will. you just hoped that he liked what he was waking up to.

rex made sure to stop by kix’s bunk to tell fives that you were conscious and by all accounts, appeared to only be mildly banged up. the way the tension fell from his vodika’s shoulders comforted rex, glad that he could give the arc good news to depart onto the unconscious medic before them, the smile on his face genuine as he departed from the barracks.

it wasn’t very long after rex left that kix began to stir. as predicted by fives and the rest of those aware of the situation, his first waking thoughts and concerns were for you. the arc was quick to console his vod and encouraged him to go to the medbay to see you as if kix could have been stopped. fives had to bargain (and trade some of his favorite candies from his stash) to convince kix to let him walk to the medbay with him, the medic still on shaky legs after being sedated.

everyone with a lick of sense knew to steer clear of kix until he was able to see you again. they made a path for him and fives without hesitation, knowing that all hell would be let loose if any of them tried to stop their advancing to the medbay.

“special delivery for gotabor’ika!” fives shouts as he enters, promptly getting shushed by coric and morticus.

you laugh from your cot when you hear your second favorite trooper before you see him. “over here, fives!” he follows your voice and soon, kix is being deposited on the foot of your bed with a smile.

fives grins and pokes his cheek, signaling for a small peck in return for his services. “now if you’ll just sign here-ow!” honestly he should expect the light slap you deliver to his face instead. “you got him from here, gotabor. get better soon, i don’t trust those kriffing ships without ya!” he leaves with a smile and a wave, comforted to see that you’re truly okay.

kix still hasn’t laid down with you and you’re slightly worried. by now, he’d be wrapped all over you like a tooka to lothnip. you nudge him with your foot to get his attention and when he finally meets your gaze, his eyes are wet. it looks like he’s trying his best to not cry but it’s soon to be a losing battle.

“kix, baby what’s-“

“you’re pregnant.”

the datapad with the reports of your injuries and conditions is cradled in his palms. bloodwork has never lied to him before but every nerve is on edge, like this would all be pulled out from under him the moment he let himself indulge in the what-if’s.

you weren’t sure how he would react to the news and he isn’t exactly giving you any hints as to how he feels about this which slightly worries you; kix has never been one too shy away from telling you his thoughts and the fact he’s doing it now has your stomach in a knot. “honey, what-“

your question can’t even leave your lips before the datapad is tossed on the bed and he’s wrapping his arms around you, face buried into your shoulder and failing to hold back the tears. at least he doesn’t seem to be angry, that’s a plus. “i love you so much, ner gotabor,” he raises his head to meet your eyes, one hand resting on your stomach with a teary smile. “i love both of you.”

kix taglist: @blue-space-porgs @leias-left-hair-bun @likeshootingstarsinthenightsky @olluea @catsnkooks @simping-for-fives @captainrexstan @mackstrut @battletales @stardustsunrisekisses @darthadeline @artemis61003 @majorshiraharu @getdookuedon @capricornrabies @jedi-mando @whovianwar @hornystarwarsbisexual @bo-kryze

[will-die-without-chai]

I have great taste!

A/N: This is my entry for Muskan’s 500 followers celebration! Congratulations again on this follower milestone Muski ( @thebookwormslytherin​ ) and I can’t wait to write for more such follower milestone celebrations. Also, thank you for hosting this!!!!! Love ya!.And forgive me for this less than subpar submission.

Also this is the first time I’ve tried writing for Sam Wilson so all feedbacks and criticism are most welcome! Hope I haven’t done too bad lol.

Pairing: Sam Wilson x desi!reader (she is not as desi as I wanted but whatevs)

Words: 2752

(College au, roomates au)

Warning: A couple of swear words (And this fic isn’t beta-ed...so)

Prompt: “You got a crush on me? Ew”

Summary: Y/N gets cheated on and had to move out of her ex’s boyfriend’s house. Luckily, Sam’s roomate is moving out as well creating a vacancy. Who knows what outcome staying with your friend can bring about? 

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

“I know I am stupid and I never should’ve moved in with him so soon” Y/N sniffled and rubbed her red puffy and tear filled eyes dry with the sleeve of the shirt she had on as she whispered and hiccupped through berating herself after the revelation she had made that very morning. “But I cannot stay in that house Natasha! Not anymore! What do I do?” Natasha, ever concerned, patted her back, sympathy etched deep into her features whilst Y/N continued to whisper her despair into the table top where her head lay. . 

Y/N had just that very morning discovered her boyfriend, or rather ex-boyfriend with his tongue deep in some other person’s mouth, while naked, on the bed they shared. Y/N had been out for the night, studying with Natasha for the upcoming exams and had unexpectedly gone home early in the morning to grab some notes only to be met with the devastating sight.

Needless to say, Y/N bolted out of the very apartment she called home for the past few months, holding back the bile and the tears rising to surface rapidly and rushed back to Natasha’s place which was only a couple of blocks away to unleash the slew of tears and heartbreak.

The sound of the jingling of the lock and the shuffling of shoes against the hardwood announced the return of the boys who had left the girls the night before to  their own devices and had shifted themselves to do whatever it is that college boys do. Steve, Sam and Bucky certainly hadn’t anticipated the sight before them and already had their hackles raised, ready to have a faceoff with whatever had caused unease to their friends, but instantly settled down when Natasha motioned them to. Y/N also had significantly been drawn out of her crying stupor at their entrance.

The boys had the decency to not pry into the matters and let things be told to them, they had learned from previous experiences after all. Nat looked at Y/N and she nodded.

“Y/N went to her apartment this morning and saw Rumlow sticking his tongue deep into someone’s throat. So…” The room went into an uproar and chaos ensured as if all hell had broken loose. A chorus of “Damn it” and “I’ll fuck him up” and certain more colorful words were heard, which were then stopped and the rage was coaxed down by one menacing gaze from Natasha and a tearful sob from Y/N.

Steve immediately found his place beside Y/N and held her under the crook of his arms, hugging her tightly and Bucky and Sam settled for sitting across from them, sympathy and rage and sorrow in equal measures creeping into their features as she once again resumed crying into Steve’s shirt.

After loads of incomprehensive mumbling and sobbing till her throat felt like sandpaper and she could go no further due to exhaustion, Y/N raised her head to face the rest of the group around her. “Now that I have sufficiently rubbed tears and snot all over Steve’s clothes” She snorted causing chuckles to emanate from other’s mouths, “I have to figure out where I am going to stay, given my imminent homelessness.”

“Stay here!  I can crash on the sofa, you can take the room. Nat and Buck already sleep in their room.” Steve piped in from beside her. Bucky nodded in agreement as did Nat.

A small frown took over her face. “No, no” She shook her head. “I can’t. You three are already… I can’t make you sleep on a couch in your own house, Stevie. And I cannot couch crash with the amount of stuff I have. I am definitely not going to let that asshole keep my furniture. They’re too cute and costed a fortune” This was enough to cause smiles to spread on their faces.

“That’s my girl!” Bucky cheered on.

“Yeah so I need more permanent options.”

“What about Tony? We can talk to him—“

“Not Tony!” Y/N cut Bucky off mid sentence. “I am not going to stay with Tony for the same reason Steve won’t. He wouldn’t accept rent and I’ll feel guilty and highly uncomfortable living in that state of art house. How the fuck do you have sex there Steve? Aren’t you afraid you’ll break something?” Steve turned red at the mention of his sex life and Bucky and Sam snickered like a schoolgirl. Natasha, noticing the very apparent discomfort cleared her throat pointedly.

“What about your old apartment?”

 “I think the landlord already rented it to someone else.”

Sam, who had been silent thus far finally decided to speak up, “Riley is moving out in a couple of days. I haven’t looked for anyone yet and I am sure I can’t afford the rent by myself.” He looked at her meaningfully.

Y/N’s eyes brightened. “Of course! Oh you’re a savior Sammy!” She jumped up to hug him and sagged in relief when he wrapped his hands around her.

“Yeah, yeah.” He tried to say nonchalantly but the tender kiss he placed on the top of her head that was buried into his side and the tense look he shot at Natasha who had been wiggling her eyebrows at him betrayed his emotions to the rest of the occupants of the room if not to the object of the emotions.

~~

All of Y/N’s stuff had been picked up and packed into the second-hand pickup truck Bucky owned. ‘It has a certain amount of personality’ he had said when buying it against the wishes of everyone around him. Certain choice words had been spat at Rumlow and papers had been thrown at his face dramatically and tears had been held back satisfactorily. Sam had to be contained to avoid him throwing punches and the party had been successful at extracting all important things from the apartment, furniture included.

It didn’t take much time for Y/N to settle into her new living space. She was fairly familiar with the apartment given all the time she previously spent there trying to make sense of her chemistry notes with Sam. And even though it was a house previously lived in by a couple of boys, it was surprisingly very clean. Her furniture, after a lot of moving it around was satisfactorily placed and dare she say complemented the preexisting stuff in the house very well. (The blue of the couch matched the gray of the curtains Sam had picked very well. He did have a good taste after all!)

It took merely 2 months for them to settle into a nice routine. Sam, the early riser, was responsible for breakfast. Pancakes or waffles or eggs and bacon. He was a masterful breakfast cook and Y/N was forced to adopt healthy eating habits after not much persuasion. Sam had replaced his caffeine fix with Chai*. Although chai was left to be Y/N’s department of expertise. He had tried making it once and it ended with what looked like a grimace and a forced smile on Y/N’s face. Tea making was a talent he didn’t possess.

After her classes finished for the evening, Y/N would go and hang out in the café Sam part-time worked at so they could head back home together. Dinner was on Y/N and her grandma who guided her through video calls had apparently taken a liking for Sam. He had definitely heard whispered conversations in a language he didn’t understand much of and his name being mentioned often. Anyhow, study nights were all the more easier when both the members of the group occupied the same house and there was no fear of notes getting mixed up and rushing over to each other in between lectures to exchange them back. . Life was a well oiled machine when lived with appropriate people, after all.

They had also adapted the system of movie nights. Both had found each other lacking in their own definition of pop culture and had decided to teach the other and make them a respectable member of society, wise enough to get popular references. Saturday nights were mostly unoccupied and hence were conveniently movie nights. Each picked one movie, unseen by the other on alternate weeks. And oh boy, it was an event.

The couch was loaded with throw pillows and blankets, temperature was brought down and hoodies were worn for utmost comfort. Popcorn was popped, candies were bought a plenty and if the occasion called for it, or the ambience of the movie, beer was welcomed. And on occasion, they even fell asleep on the couch (If their backs were witches, they would’ve been cursed by now).

One such night, after loud exclamations of ‘How could you not have watched it!’ and ‘She was my bi awakening!’ and ‘This would not be borne’, Pride and Prejudice was the movie they settled upon. By the end of the movie a half asleep Y/N had ended up draped halfway over Sam with her head comfortably nestled into the crook of his shoulders and neck, her every breath peacefully lulling Sam into the state of drowsiness. Sam knew from previous experiences aplenty that he would regret sleeping like this in the morning but he couldn’t be bothered right now. Future Sam could deal with a bit of back pain.

“It would be nice to have someone to tell you that they love you most ardently. I wish I could have someone tell me that they love me most ardently and mean it.” Y/N mumbled with her eyes closed.

“I will if you let me.” Sam subconsciously let it slip and then tensed up immediately when he realized what he had said. When he did not feel any reaction, he relaxed back again but not without a frown. He half wished she were awake and could listen to what he had said. At least that way it would have been out and on the table. It would also be terribly painful if she didn’t feel the same and ended up feeling uncomfortable around him.

It had taken a very long time for Y/N to again be comfortable and confident after her breakup. She was apparently very serious about the asshole and he had broken her heart. Good thing Sam reciprocated by breaking his nose! (Don’t tell Y/N though. She thinks Brock broke his nose when he fell down the stairs. This was not completely a lie… Sam did push him down the stairs as well. Don’t worry. There were just 5 steps)

Anyhow, it was getting tough for him to control his emotions around her. He couldn’t help but stare at her when she laughed so openly at his lame jokes. He couldn’t help but stare at her lips when she tasted his newest experimentation on pancake batter. He couldn’t help his eyes when they inadvertently went towards her table, when he was supposed to pay attention to the order in front of him at the café. He couldn’t help but deviate towards her at any given chance. He couldn’t help but savor all her little touches. And he was afraid that he was painfully obvious. If not to her then to everyone else around him.

All these thoughts kept encircling his brain and he fell asleep, clutching Y/N a little bit closer than before, burying his nose further into her hair. Morning came and Sam surprisingly woke up alone with a blanket draped over him. Generally he was the first to wake up. He got up and followed the noises coming from the kitchen to see Y/N making breakfast. And of course, chai. Some old Hindi song played on the radio softly and he could see the hello kitty apron he had bought for her as a joke hastily thrown on, its back untied.

It was a picture of serenity, to an outsider maybe. But Sam knew there was something off. Y/N getting up this early, cooking and old hindi songs playing was a deceptive picture that screamed something was bothering her.

“You cooking something, hon?” He said out loud as he made his way to the dining table. Y/N jumped slightly at being startled and then nodded enthusiastically. Almost too enthusiastically. Sam narrowed his eyes. Without turning to face him Y/N explained further. “You were asleep. I woke up early and thought I could make something. It’s been days since we’ve had poha*, no?”

Sam kept quiet and decided to take out plates and set the table instead. They kept working silently but the silence was too heavy. It settled over his skin thickly and Sam didn’t like the feeling. Once they were sat on the table Sam decided to bring up the subject again, the silence and awkwardness becoming a little troubling.

“What’s wrong Y/N? You know you can share it with me. I am here.” He said, placing a comforting hand on hers. Her eyes that were focused on her plate shot unto his face.

“I heard what you said last night.” She blurted out, eyes still trained at him. Sam was stunned into silence and his heartbeat rose rapidly. It was incredibly unexpected and sudden and Sam was caught off guard. Incredibly so.

“You- you did.” He stammered stupidly. Y/N nodded. “I was on the verge of drifting off and I heard it and I-“ She fell silent, her eyes slipped to where his hand rested on hers, her teeth automatically trapping her bottom lip between them.

“I like you. Like like you. I have, since the day we met at Steve’s party and you went on and on about tea and how to make it and how coffee could never compare and you weren’t even drunk!” Y/N let out a chuckle at that and Sam continued. “I couldn’t help but fall for you and I looked for reasons to spend time with you, snatching every opportunity to have you around me. I know I am sounding like the cheesiest cheesy person, like a kraft’s dinner but add cheddar to it level of cheesy, but you being happy makes me so fucking happy! And that’s the point. I can bear to see you be sad and if this makes you uncomfortable, tell me to stop. I will. I won’t mention this ever again and we could go back to being us and you aren’t obligated to reciprocate my feelings or anything. But I think I don’t have it in me to keep it in anymore.”

He finally looked up to look at her and maybe take a breath after the rant he just had in one go and found her still staring at their hands. Assuming that it made her uneasy, he proceeded to take it away, his heart sinking. But he was stopped by her fingers grasping at his sleeves.

She peered from under her tear laced lashes to look at him. “You have a crush on me? Ew” she let out a sound that sounded like something between a sob and a snort and a smile spread across her lips. “I thought you had better taste.” She joked albeit a bit bashfully.

Sam felt a weight lift off his chest and the urge to bang his head against an iron pole reduced significantly. “Hey, I have great taste! I picked up those gray curtains that go so well with your blue couch and that you love very much. Also I introduced you to real maple syrup and took you away from that ‘aunt jemima’ bullshit you were poisoning yourself with.”

“Hey I am a college student who earns just enough to fulfill my bare necessities so give me a break! That shit is costly. And I was the one who introduced you to Mukesh*, okay?” She held his hand now and intertwined her fingers with his.

“Goes to say how good my taste is.”

“I like you too.”

Silence fell over them once again as they giddily looked at each other and held hands, the chai long gone cold and the poha turned a little stiff. But the silence now was palatable, pleasant even.

~~

A couple days  later, chaos ensued again in their little group when Y/N planted a sound kiss on Sam’s lips before separating from the group with a quick cheeky ‘goodbye’ to go to her class. The chorus of ‘How?’ and ‘When?’ and ‘I want details’ and a quiet call of ‘who won the bet then’ left hanging in the air for Sam to answer.

~~

*Translations:

Chai: Chai is tea ofcourse. But its also more than tea. Its an concoction made of tea, water, milk, sugar and spices all meticulously brought to a boil and then heated some more. It is a thing that requires practice, but also some magic.

Poha: Poha is a breakfast food made of flattened rice flakes sauted with onions and other vegetables and spices, according to one’s preferences hich is served warm with a dash of lemon and a sprinkling of coriander (Varun Thakur’s stand up, anyone?) 

Mukesh: A very illustrious, very very famous indian musician from the 60′s and 70′s. He had the voice of an angel.

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Hope this was a bearable read! As said earlier, feedback and criticism is always welcome!

Tagging: @spiderrpcrker​ @officially-tonynat-shrine​ @hoeticulture​ @dragoncreek319​ @severelytinyeagle​ @lgbtonystarks​ @cynical-ravenclaw​ @fandom-is-my-middle-name​ @emilyshurley​ @fiovske​ @bispiderson​ @moonbeambucky @revengingbarnes @shurisneakers @kuuhakublank00 @stardustandbucky @infj-slytherclaw @anjali750 @your-villainous-neighbour @viktorkrumn

[lookingforromansconfidence]

Lmao help the children are breaking and entering (again)

hA- I’m actually kinda proud of this one??????? 

Word count- 1,382 (one thousand three hundred eighty two)

Warnings- Swearing, minor rickrolling

I think that’s all please tell me if there’s more to add!!

One - Two (this one) - Three

EDIT: This is the playlist if you’re interested

“Hello?”

“Hi Mr. Graham I think there’s 3 of them now.”  a sigh was heard on the other end of the line 

“I’ll be there.” 

“Thanks, apologies if I’m bothering.”

“No problem” A click came from the line, indicating the call was ended.  Willow had heard of the chaos family before, a relatively large family that committed arson to practically everything. From the amount of figures there were, and how they weren't really being violent, fae could only assume that some people form the chaos family broke into the mall and were now robbing it.  Fae sat in the security room, watching the screens closely for movement. These children sure did run fast. Something flicked across the screen near the Hot topic. Willow’s head snapped toward the silhouettes standing in front of the camera, they seemed to be talking to one another, one pointing towards the jewelry store, the other nodding towards the escalator that leads to the lego store. They nod and run away from each other, separating. 

Where’s the other one? Fae thought, frantically looking around the multiple screens. 

“C’mon c’mon where are you?”  The night shift worker asked to the air, staring at the screens. 

“Hello there!” a voice cries out. Willow whips around to face the empty space next to fae. It wasn’t until fae realized the voice was coming from the computer speakers. Fae looked around the several screens, searching for the source of the voice. Fae noticed a lot of movement in the screen that they were watching with the two people conversing. 

“Hi!!!” the voice said again. They were throwing a baseball up and down in their hand. “Y’know, I don’t know if you can hear me,” they said, talking a little louder, “or if anyone’s even looking at the monitors, but anyways uhhhh, yeah, we’re robbing the place. Apologies for the inconvenience.” They then threw the baseball into the camera, breaking it. Willow leaned back on their chair, sighing in exasperation. 

“Ok- ok. No biggie, we can fix this. This will work.” Fae whispered, getting up and calling chief Graham again.

---

“It’s not gonna fucking work.” Willow muttered as the screens started going black. Willow started clicking buttons, trying to get the monitors to work again. Frustrated, fae tugged on their coat and grabbed a flashlight, deciding that fae’d deal with the situation faerself.

Sighing, Willow walked down the escalator, slowly looking around the wide space, hoping to find someone. Willow looked around the area, shining faer flashlight inside the nearby store windows. How they managed to get inside the mall, let alone the stores, was beyond fae. 

“Shhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Someone’s coming-” a hushed voice said. The sound of sneakers squeaking going silent a few seconds after. Willow stayed still, hoping to see whoever was hiding. Nothing moved for a few tense minutes, the silence stretching out until it got tense. 

“Hey guys-” Someone shouted from above. Willow’s head snapped up, finding someone whose arms were filled with candy. 

“Run!!!!” a third voice shouted.

“El what the fu-” 

“Just run!!!” Three figures ran out the corner they were hiding in. Willow recognized one as the person who threw the baseball at the first camera, they now had a huge stuffed animal in their arms. Fae recognized the second and third as the people who were conversing at the hot topic before. One carrying hot topic merch, the other had a backpack filled with what seemed to be books. 

“Shit.” fae whispered, sliding down the escalator rail, then running after the trio, who were now arguing on how they’d escape. 

“Ora can just set the whole place on fire, don’t worry!!” one with a bunch of Hot topic merch said. 

“No, no, xe can’t set this place on fire, maybe just like, set the fire alarm off?” the one with the stuffed animal said. The trio took a sharp turn just as the lights switched off. Slowing down, Willow switched on faer flashlight and sweeped it around faerself. 

The speakers crackled to life. Someone began talking, wondering out loud what to play.

Shit, I left the door unlocked.  Willow thought. A second voice joined in, suggesting a different song, too distant to hear what song specifically though. 

“Ah, yes, perfect.” The first intercom voice said. The speakers crackled out for a second, before the iconic drum intro played,  and the trio ahead of fae burst into laughter. 

We’re no strangers to loooooooooove

 you know the rules, and so do I

A full commitment’s what you’re thinking of

You wouldn’t get this from any other guy-

Willow groaned. Really? Fae sighed and continued chasing the trio, who seemed to be heading towards the entrance. 

Just as they approached the front doors, they split up, each going in different directions, stuffed animal person going through the large doors leading to the mall parking lot, the Hot Topic merch heading towards the escalator again, probably to find the other person, and the book person ran to the cinema. Soon after the trio was out of sight, the lights turned back on. 

Willow groaned and stared to head back to the security room where fae was stationed that night. The song changed from Never gonna give you up to the gummy bear song.  Willow sighed irritably and clicked off the flashlight, then started the walk to the security room. 

Willow walked up to the door of the room, and tried to turn the doorknob. It wouldn’t turn all the way. 

“Shit.” fae said, knocking faer head against the door softly. Fae looked below the door, looking for a light or something to indicate that someone was in the room. The room seemed empty, but the slightly irritating meme music was still playing in the background. Sighing, Willow slowly walked back to the front entrance, making sure to keep an eye out for the kids that were hiding in the mall.  

The song finally changed to the Little Einsteins theme song when the fire department arrived. Chief Graham walked through the doors, sighing irritably when he heard the song playing. 

“They got into the security room and locked it.” Willow reported. Graham nodded, and asked to lead the way to the security room. 

---

The door was open to the security room when they got there. 

“It was locked when I checked it I swear.” fae said, crossing their arms defensively. Graham slowly pushed the door open, as if he was expecting a bomb to go off. Instead, they found the room seemingly untouched, except for a phone from the apple store playing a Spotify playlist that was titled “Yeah” connected to the speakers. Graham sighed and disconnected the chord, making the increasingly infuriating music stop once and for all. Willow sighed with relief. 

“Thank you, chief Graham.” 

“No problem.” he said, smiling. “I’ll be on my way now, call me again if they show up.” 

“Sure thing. Thanks for the help.” Graham nodded and left the mall, leaving Willow to the paperwork that had to be filled out. Fae sighed, this’ll be a longer night than fae thought. 

Back in the security room, Willow realized that the incident paperwork had already been filled out, the screens were back to normal, and a small voice recording was left on the phone. Fae clicked on the play button, not knowing what to expect. 

“Hello!!! Apologies for the robbery. By the time anyone’s listening to this, -if anyone’s even listening to this, there’s a total possibility Ora just burnt the entire place to the ground-  anyway, we’re probably back at home, showing off our stolen treasures. Thank you for being a good sport!! Have a good whatever time you’re listening to this!!” 

With that, the recording ended. Willow shook faer head, surprised. Fae looked over the paperwork that had been filled out. Everything was correct, the only thing left was the signature of the person on duty there. Willow got a pen from a drawer near the desk, and signed the stack of paperwork. Double checking everything was filled out, fae noticed the “cause of incident” was slightly edited. A new box had been added, then checked. It was labeled, “chaos family”. Willow laughed quietly and walked over to faer boss’ office, put it into the mail slot, and clocked out of faer shift.

---

The ending seems a bit rushed, apologies. Also, google docs is a bit of a bitch and kept trying to correct fae/faer pronouns, which might explain if there’s a random word where the pronoun should be. Anyways, hoped you enjoyed!! 

[thepeacetea]

Broken Angels Ch. 4

Hi everyone! It’s me again. I’m really glad that you guys like the last chapter, I had a lot of fun writing it. Thank you again to everyone who liked, commented and reblogged! I couldn’t have done it without your guy’s encouragement. If i missed you in the tags, let me know and I will get you the next time. Again, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions please let me know! Anyway, hope ya’ll enjoy! Peace!

The Gotham City Police Department was always busy. Gordon could not, in all his years of service, remember a single, quiet day at the office. Today proved to be no different. Ever since the first video of the ‘crash’ was uploaded, the station had been flooded with calls and visitors. From reporters wanting statements to just people wanting to know what was going on. Needless to say, the station had turned into a mad house.

The girl, Marinette, had adamantly refused to be taken to the hospital to be thoroughly examined. Gordon hadn’t pushed the issue. The girl was already on edge enough as it was and she didn’t need another reason to panic. So they managed to compromise. Between Gordon and Spencer, they had convinced Marinette to allow a doctor come to the station. ‘Just to be safe.’ She was currently in one of the back offices, as far away from the chaos as Gordon could get her. Spencer and one of the female personal were staying with her. Spencer’s main job was to keep her distracted and try, discreetly, to get some information from her. But Marinette hadn’t spoken since she had arrived at the station. All she did was listen to whatever Spencer was going on about. She had started to doodle after an hour and currently had an impressive stack of drawings beside her.

The doctor had arrived around an hour ago and was currently examining her.

“Hill, tell me we got something on her teacher. We need to contact her stat, and Marinette’s not saying anything.” Gordon shouted over the clamour of the office. “And get those reporters out of the lobby! The GCPD does not have any comments.”

“Airport security is faxing everything over, it’ll be here in a few minutes. Jackson, you heard the chief, get those reporters out of here.”

“Once it comes through, I want you to find out where they’re staying and get in contact with that teacher. I don’t care if you have to call every damn hotel in the city, just get it done. We need to find out what happened and why she was alone.” Gordon ordered, his voice straining slightly.

Collapsing onto his desk, Gordon raked his hands through his hair, a frustrated groan making its way out. He could understand why the girl wasn’t talking. Anyone in her place was likely to do the same. While it was making things slightly harder on their end, Gordon couldn’t bring himself to blame her. The poor girl was terrified by just letting a doctor look at her. Heck, she wouldn’t even let Gordon leave. They had to bribe her with a giant bowl of skittles they had stolen from Jackson, and if he had an issue with his candy being stolen, he never should have left it in the breakroom.

“Commissioner?”

Glancing up, he found Dr. Allen, one of the doctors the GCPD had a contract with, standing by his desk, waiting to give Gordon her report on Marinette.

“How is she?” He asked, offering the her a chair. Dr. Allen all but fell into the offered seat, a long, drawn out sigh escaping as she did so. This caused Gordon to tense. He had known Dr. Allen for years, and she only ever did this if something was seriously wrong.

“As far I can tell, nothing’s broken. But I can’t be sure until I do an x-ray, and . . .”

“ . . . And she refuses to go to the hospital.”

“Exactly. Now as I said, there doesn’t appear to be anything broken. The swelling on her cheek will go down, but she will have severe bruising for weeks. She also has severe subconjunctival hemorrhaging in her right eye. It should heal fine, but I would suggest that she goes to see an eye specialist to make sure.”

“Subconjunctival hemorrhaging?”

“Broken blood vessels in the eye. Like I said, it should heal fine, but a good precaution would be to go seen an eye doctor.”

A beat of silence stretched  between the two. Dr. Allen ran a hand through her hair, unconsciously biting her lip, a habit she had when she was contemplating what to say. Gordon just waited. Whatever she had to say was important enough for her to hesitate. When she finally spoke, she chose her words carefully.

“Physically, the girl’s going to recover fine. But mentally? Emotionally? Gordon, I’m gonna be frank, something’s wrong. I don’t know if it’s an environment or a relationship or something else, but something is wrong. Gordon, I’m scared for her. Something is going on and she needs help.”

As Dr. Allen spoke, her face revealed so much concern that it was almost palatable, leaving a sour taste in Gordon’s mouth. He didn’t even bother to mask his sigh. He agreed with her observations. He knew something was wrong, but unless they had solid evidence or if she told them what was going on, there was very little they could do. She wasn’t American. They couldn’t just send social services to investigate. They needed to have something solid in order to intervein. If they didn’t, they could have a very messy international affair on their hands.

“Listen Gordon, I have to get back to the hospital. But keep me informed, ok? Do some digging. Try to get more information on her.”

“What do you think I have my department doing?” Gordon said, a small, teasing smile making it’s way onto his face

“Just keep me informed.” With those final instructions, she gave Gordon on last smile before leaving.

For minutes after the departure of Dr. Allen, Gordon just sat at his desk. The buzzing of the office faded into the back round as he thought about what Dr. Allen said. While he had been sometimes known to misjudge something, she had never been wrong in an assumption. That alone worried him. If she noticed and brought it up to him personally, something was really, very, very wrong.

A stack of files slammed onto Gordon’s desk, knocking him back to the present. The bang caused everyone within a three desks radius to jump. Glancing up, Gordon found himself looking into the  triumph face of Detective Jessica Hoffman.

Detective Hoffman was new to the force. She had only been in service for six month. She was cocky, irritating, hardly ever listened to instructions if it involved her cases, but she was a good detective.

“Got something! And trust me chief, your gonna wanna see this.” Her voice nearly radiated with excitement.

“What is it?” Gordon asked, picking up the files.

“So I looked into the kid, you know, to verify that she is who she says she is.”

“We already did that, Hoffman. Airport security already confirmed. Her name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng, from Paris, France.” Gordan said, putting the file down. He didn’t have time for this.

“Ah, but that’s not her real name.”

That caught his attention. Looking up at her, Gordon tried to see if Hoffman was serous.

“What?”

“Dupain-Cheng is her adopted name. Her parents, Tom and Sabine, adopted her when she was nine. Before that, Marinette was in multiple foster homes. I mean a ridiculous amount. In the sixteen months she was in the system, that girl was in fifty-six different foster homes. That’s more homes there are weeks in year. Anyway, according to the paperwork, Tom and Sabine couldn’t have kids, and they adopted Marinette because she looked like their niece, who had died in a car accident. And get this, she’s not French. Not by birth. It was an international adoption. And guess where she’s originally from?”

“Where?”

“America.”

“Then couldn’t she speak English, Hoffman?”

“Think about chief, she was living in France for like seven years. She wouldn’t have had anyone to speak English with and she would’ve needed to learn French. It was the only language she was hearing and speaking for nearly eight years, it must have become her default.” Hoffman said, her hands moving as she explained. “But that’s not all chief, guess from where in America she’s from.”

“Hoffman,” Gordon growled. “I don’t have time for guessing games. If you have something to tell me, spit it out!”

By now, nearly the entire department was listening. Gordon didn’t get angry often, but this new detective was getting on his last nerves on an already stressful day.

“Chief, she’s one of ours.”

“. . .What?”

“She’s Gotham’s kid.”

 @mystery-5-5 @particularlygeeky @captainmac6 @you-will-never-know-how-i-think @mochinek0 @sonif50 @zalladane @thebananathatwrites @schrodingers25 @kuroko26 @miraculousbelladonna @souleaterlicestein @worlds-tiniest-spook-pastry @ijustwannabecanadian @ellerahs @ranger-paladinikoe @xxmadamjinxx @derpingrainbow @sassy-spocko @vixen-uchiha @mjisntme @iggy-of-fans @violentbisexualprophecywriter @valeks-princess @crazylittlemunchkin @redscarlet95 @alexzandria-747 @ayuchan07 @whomthefyck @rhub4rb @constancetruggle @rikku052 @kurogaya913 @shizukiryuu @spicybelladonna @zazzlejazzle @luciferge @mewwitch @emotionalsupportginger @grunklestantheman @my-name-is-michell @northernbluetongue @chez-pezeater @shamefullove @goggles-mcgee  @gingerdaile @zebrabaker @tinybrie @bluefiredemon @tbehartoo @god-is-dead-and-so-am-i @shyestofhearts @darkthunder1589 @fridayfirefly @throneoffirebreathingbitchqueen @yazi-ing @lunar-wolf-warrior @ladylb @vivilakitty @ghostcryptid @casual-darkness @bluerosette23 

[vanchlo]

The Assistant / Chapter Twenty Five, “A New Hope”

// FIND OLD CHAPTERS HERE //

hi!!!! i hope you’re all doing okay and hanging in there during this crazy time in the world. please know that im thinking of you, and please stay safe and healthy!!! id love to hear what you think of this chapter so plz like reply with thoughts or send me an ask??? id love to talk to anybody about this story bc it sounds weird but i love this story too???? like tell me what was your fav part??? what do you predict is gonna happen? 

thanks so much for still reading after all of this time, and i hope this chapter distracts you from some of the crap going on in the world ♡♡♡♡

                                            *SNEAK PEEKY TIME*

“But some moments when I’m so deep into my work, a thought pops into my head making me think that I’ll look up and see him there. Or some days I even think I hear his voice. Or I think the text I just got was from him. 

None of that happens. 

And it upsets me far more than it should. Some days I’m just better at ignoring it. 

I couldn’t have wished for a better “new job,” but sometimes I miss him. And I don’t know what to do about it. Because there isn’t anything I can do. I know I made the right decision to leave, but in the moments I get overwhelmed and frustrated with learning new tasks, I wish I could be sitting back in that desk down the hall from his office.”

                                   PART TWO: THE STRANGER

The noises here are all new and hard to get used to. The printer works differently. It’s like a maze in order to find the department I work in. There are key codes I have to put in and doors I have to scan my badge at. There are so many more names to learn here, and new phone extensions to master. 

But I like it. 

And I think I’m getting the hang of it. Slowly but surely. 

“It’s Becky, right?” a voice says, pulling me from my chaotic thoughts. 

I blink, looking away from my steaming cup of tea and to the face smiling at me. 

“Uh yeah, it is. And you’re . . . Molly, right?” 

“Yeah, wow! You’re good at names!” she laughs before sipping from her own cup of tea and taking a seat beside me. “How are you liking it here so far?”

“It’s good so far, thanks,” I reply, picking up my tea and blowing on it. Avoiding her round brown eyes, I think hard about where I’ve seen her before. She must be in the same department if she’s in this break room. Hmmm. I hate it when I can’t remember things even though it’s on the tip of my tongue. 

“You used to work for Styles and Lawson, did I hear that right?” Molly asks before taking a long pull from her mug. She crosses her legs clad in black slacks that end at the polka-dotted blouse hugging her large chest. 

If I got a pound for every time somebody has asked me that here, I wouldn’t even have to work here. 

“Yeah,” I say, trying not to sound how annoyed I am to have to answer this question for the hundredth time. I told my new boss this once, and somehow everybody in the Administration department now knows it. 

“Interesting. It looks like you stayed in the same world coming to work at the courts,” she remarks and I nod blankly. 

Yeah, as if I haven’t heard that one before in the last month, too. 

I continue to smile and nod at her repetitive questions. I sometimes answer them and then listen to her drone on about her three kids until the small hand reaches the 6 on the clock and my break is over. I’ve never been so excited before to go back to work. 

Sitting down at my desk, I almost smile at the way the cushion welcomes me back. Framed pictures smile back at me. 

Skye and I. Robbie and I as kids in matching outfits. My dad. My grandparents. 

The same ones I had on my old desk. At his firm. 

My chin arrives in my hand and a heavy sigh falls from my lips. The little pink clock on my desk tells me it’s only 12:30 in the afternoon. 

I wonder what he’d be doing right now. 

My eyes fall shut with a groan. I try to shake my head free of those kinds of thoughts. The very thoughts I’ve been trying to push away this last month. But after so long, it’s almost too hard. I thought that the more time that passed would make it easier, but some days it’s harder than others. 

I really like it here. Everybody is nice and helpful. My boss is easygoing, supportive, communicates well, and helps me with any questions I may have. My workload is realistic, it’s familiar, and I enjoy it. 

But some moments when I’m so deep into my work, a thought pops into my head making me think that I’ll look up and see him there. Or some days I even think I hear his voice. Or I think the text I just got was from him. 

None of that happens. 

And it upsets me far more than it should. Some days I’m just better at ignoring it. I couldn’t have wished for a better “new job,” but sometimes I miss him. And I don’t know what to do about it. Because there isn’t anything I can do. I know I made the right decision to leave, but in the moments I get overwhelmed and frustrated with learning new tasks, I wish I could be sitting back in that desk down the hall from his office. I tell myself that I just miss the familiarity. But I know that I also miss him. 

His sweet cherry smile. 

His contagious laugh. 

His bizarre outfits that I looked forward to every day. 

His twinkling green eyes. 

The taco dates. 

The late-night hangouts in his office with wine coolers and take away. 

The silly yet frustrating Scrabble games. 

His smell. Sandalwood mixed with bergamot and cedar. 

And his jokes.

His raspy deep drawl. 

And his warm bear hugs. 

Pressing my fingers into my temples, I blink hard. The thoughts disappear for a second, but not long enough. I lift my head and settle my fingers on the letters of the keyboard.  The login screen is only blurry for a moment, and the moment passes. But the ache in my chest and the racing inside of my skull doesn’t stop. They only continue as I open up a document and continue my work, as I continue missing him. 

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop.

+ 

12:30 right on the dot. 

The black second-hand ticks past the three nears the four, and then the five. Fat snowflakes fall against my foggy window, blanketing the rest of London in its opaqueness. The words of David Gilmour and Roger Waters tickle my ears, but I don’t listen to them. The thoughts whirring around inside of my head keep them out. 

I wonder what she’s doing right now. 

Is she liking her new job?

Are they being nice to her?

Did she already eat lunch?

Are any blokes flirting with her?

Does she have her own desk?

What kind of place does she work at now?

Is she happy?

That thought weighs heavier than the others, and I feel it. My lips part and a long sigh leaves them. 

Knock knock! 

“Yeah?” I call out, not bothering to turn around. The bustling of double-deckers, cars, and people on the streets are more entertaining than any emails I should be reading. 

“Harry, are you going to join us?” I hear a familiar voice ask. 

“Yeah, ‘ll be there inna minute,” I answer, ignoring the tone of Myles’ voice. 

The sound of the door closing trickles past the music and into my ears. My head falls into my hands and I let my eyes close. My fingers find their way into my hair and I remain there for a second, feeling my breaths leave and enter me. 

I miss you, Becks. 

A few breaths later, my fingers fall. Now, they find the closed laptop sitting near me and the leather book atop it. Next, my feet find their way to the door. But they stop in front of it. All of the moisture in my throat suddenly disappears, and a giant old lump appears in its place. 

Oh, not again. 

I breathe in and out and wait until it passes. 

My ringed fingers wrap around the handle and turn it. Swallowing past the lump, my feet move again and down the hall. Knuckling at my eyes, I round the corner and quickly wipe at my eyes. 

“You okay, Harry?” Myles asks me, welcoming me when I sit down beside him in the large meeting room. 

“Yeah, jus’ got somethin’ in me eye,” I tell him, gulping hard. But there’s something in his ocean blue eyes that says different. He’s been a blessing putting up with my shit and excuses, but I think he knows more than he lets on. He’s always cared more than he shares. 

He pats my arm before he turns to face Jennings who begins to talk. “It’ll be alright, it always is,” he mentions in a whisper. 

I nod and turn my attention to Jennings. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t. I can’t focus, and I can’t believe him. Because the chaos of my mind continues. And so do the pictures of her scattered around in there. And so do the feelings, because no matter how hard I try to shut them off, they stay. Even after a bottle of brandy. But the alcohol doesn’t make me stop missing her, and hating myself for messing up. And for losing Becks. 

+

Alex Trebek’s voice welcomes my ears as I step foot into my flat. I jump when I hear Skye shout back at him. 

“What is Little Women!” she nearly screams, and her arms fly into the air when she gets it right. “Yessssss!” she exclaims, cheering for herself. Her pigtails the color of snow and blue cotton candy dance in the air around her. 

I laugh with a shake of my head, sighing as I shrug off my coat. 

“Oh hey, Boops,” she greets me, garnering an eye roll from me. 

“You know not to call me that,” I reply, closing the closet door that now holds my peacoat damp from the winter flurries. 

“I think I’m one of the few people allowed to call you that,” she replies, and I give her a glare in return. 

To no surprise, it doesn’t do anything, because she just picks up another gummy worm and feeds it between her lips coated in neon pink lipstick. 

“What, did your clients cancel their haircuts and colors because of the blizzard?” I ask her, padding over to the kitchen island. 

“Yeah, bloody idiots forgot how to drive in the snow or something,” she nearly hisses, but it doesn’t last long because she yells another answer at the tv. “What is the Mariana Trench!”

“Skye, we have neighbors you know,” I scold her as my eyes search the shelves of our refrigerator. “Also, would it kill you to do some grocery shopping, perhaps before we’re snowed in?”

“Yeah sorry, I meant to but I forgot.”

“What’s new,” I mumble under my breath. I grab the first thing of leftovers I see and pop it into the microwave. Rice and broccoli from last night. It’s just so exciting eating healthily. “You’re on grocery shopping duty next then.”

“Have you seen Harry yet at your new job?” Skye pipes up, ignoring my question. I truly wonder how many times I roll my eyes at her in one day or even one hour. 

“No, I told you that I’m in like the way back in the admin department in the courts. He would be on the other side in the actual courtrooms where the cases are held, silly.”

“Oh well sorrrrrrrrrry,” she retorts and then yells another answer at the tv. “Who is Martin Clunes!”

The microwave beeps as I reach up into the cupboard and pull down a mug at random. It has superheroes donning its sides - Batman, Superman, and Wonderman. An old one of my dad’s. But that’s not who it makes me think of. 

“Funnier is not a word!” 

“Oh yes, it ‘s! Jus’ look it up in tha dictionary, or better yet, on yer phone,” he giggles in reply. Shaking my head, I type the word into Google and feel a smirk begin to warm my cheeks. 

“Oh god, what ‘s that look for? I know that look’s no good.”

“So funnier is a word, huh?” I counter, feeling the smirk inch up my cheeks slowly. Turning my phone around, I show the Google page to him and watch his face morph into denial. A sneaky grin lines his lips as he resists to roll his eyes. His head falls next with a defeated sigh and he punches the pillow. 

“Don’t you roll your eyes at me, Harry Styles,” I tell him, my lips letting loose a laugh. He joins me before groaning and taking his word off of the board. 

“I needa break,” he huffs. The sofa whines from his shifting weight and I hear his footsteps trailing behind him. 

“Tea break?” I ask and hear a pleased ‘yes’ in return. 

“Here lemme, ‘s my turn anyways,” Harry insists, and I feel his hand on my back. Facing him, he winks a hazel-green eye at me. “Go pick yer word, Becks. Lemme take care of tha tea.”

I nod and begin to turn to walk away. I almost stop when I feel his long fingers rub a circle into my back. But I don’t, because they’re gone before I can blink. A silent sigh drops from my bottom lip as I walk away from him. 

You have no idea what you do to me, Harry Styles. 

The thoughts being sewn together in my mind revolve around something other than the Scrabble tiles sitting in front of me. Instead, they’re about how well the skinny blue jeans hug his legs and another asset of his. And how the black and blue flannel he wears makes him look insanely cozy. My God. 

“Don’ think so hard, Becks,” Harry titters, and I pull my eyes away from the Scrabble tiles that were beginning to grow blurry. I look to him with a question on my face and find him laughing with those eyes on me. “Can’t find any good words, eitha?”

“No,” I say with a shake of my head. I let my head fall to the back of the sofa I’m curled up against. 

“Tha’s fine. Why dontcha put it t’ tha side an’ we can do somethin’ else?”

“Like what?” I ask, moving our racks of tiles to the coffee table where the board sits. 

“I dunno, you can pick,” he answers. As I grab for the remote, I hear the pouring of water and the clinking of spoons. 

Yawning, I sink into the sofa and press the power button. The television screen comes to life in front of me and the last thing watched appears. I flip through the channels, and after a couple of programs, I arrive on a familiar scene. 

“Oooo, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” I hear, turning to find Harry arriving on the sofa next to me. I take the steaming Marvel mug in his outstretched hand with a ‘thank you.’ 

“I didn’t know you liked Harry Potter,” I mumble before blowing on my tea. After deciding it’s far too hot, I sit forward and set it down on a coaster. 

“Oh, I love it. I read a few o’ tha books when I was younger, an’ ya can’t find a betta movie. There’s nothin’ like these,” he answers, eyes already glued to the screen. He sets his tea aside with a clud on the table. “Here,” Harry says, and I look over to find him draping my velvet black star blanket over me. And him. 

“Mmmm, thanks,” I mumble happily, pulling it up to my shoulders. I feel him move around next to me before finally getting comfortable. 

“Yer welcome, bug. I think this issa good way t’ spend tha resta tha night. Too cozy an’ tired t’ do anythin’ else,” he comments with a laugh ending his words. 

I nod and tip my head to the side, not expecting to find his shoulder right there. I freeze and peek a look up at him. He notices and glances down at me. All he does is smile at me before his eyes go back to the scene on the television. 

I decide to stay there and he doesn’t seem to mind, only intent on commenting on the scene happening where Dumbledore first meets Voldemort. “Oooo, I like this part here. They make it look so cool with tha wisps o’ memories, an’ tha lighting ‘s incredible an’ so spooky.”

“Mmmmh, I always liked Tom Riddle, because of how creepy he is. And he’s much better looking than Voldemort,” I comment. 

“What?” Harry laughs, taking a peek at me. His thick eyebrows are scrunched in a disbelieving question as a smile pinches his dimpled cheeks. “But Tom Riddle ‘s Voldemort, ya goof.”

“Yeah I know, but like his younger self is far cuter than the noseless bald bloke he becomes,” I try to explain, but he only shakes his head with a few giggles. 

God, I think I could listen to that sound for hours on end. 

“Ya don’ make any sense, sometimes,” Harry chuckles. 

“Come on, yes I do! Wasn’t it like with every Horcrux he made he just started looking weirder?” I counter, nudging his shoulder with my own. 

“No, ya silly! It was cuz he was so deep into tha dark arts-.”

“Including making the Horcruxes!” I almost shout in argument. I watch the realization embed into his features, and I know I’ve won. 

“Okay fine, yer right. Well kinda. From what I rememba it has t’ do with that, an’ cuz he was a Slytherin an’ Parselmouth so he wanted t’ look like a snake. Y’know, tha lack o’ hair an’ nose? I also read that it could also be cuz he was one o’ tha last descendants of Salazar Slytherin,” Harry continues, words of admiration falling out one after the other. 

“Woooooow. I didn’t know we had a Harry Potter geek in the house,” I say, trying to stifle a laugh, but it doesn’t work. 

Another eye roll. 

Then possibly the most adorable pout I’ve ever seen as he moves away from me with a whimper. 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I laugh, trying to pull him back over to me. But he’s so tall and long, that I have little success with my noodle arms. “Harry, I was just kidding.”

“Sure ya were,” he pouts, keeping his back to me as he settles on the other side of the couch. 

His name leaves my lips in a laugh. My fingers remain around one of his biceps, and I pull, but he doesn’t move an inch. I give up with an exaggerated sigh and my own whimper. 

Plopping myself back in my spot, I hunker down underneath the blanket. Pretending to watch the movie, I wait. 

“Yer not gonna get me with that pout,” Harry says all of a sudden. 

Taking that as a dare, I slowly look over at him. With knitted eyebrows and my bottom lip sticking out. A smile appears on his lips and blush fills his cheeks. His hands fall from his shoulder-length hair he’s just put into a bun. 

“Fine, ya got me. I can’ stay mad at that face,” he relents with words dipped in sugar. 

“You’re not the only one who can do a good puppy dog pout,” I comment as the couch dips with his movements. I feel his shoulder bump back into mine. I try not to smile too big as I tip my head to fall back against his shoulder. 

“Ya comfy, bug?” Harry mumbles next to me. 

“Mmmhmmm.”

“Good, ‘m glad me shoulder’s all comfy for ya,” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. I see it in all its glory when I chance a look up at him and find him smiling down at me. 

It’s like looking into the sun. And like all of the times before - I never want to look away. 

I swallow hard, feeling the lump forming inside of me. 

“Can you please not bring him up anymore? It’s not helping the fact that I’m trying to forget him,” I spit at Skye, setting the mug down hard on the granite countertop. 

“Sorrrrrrrrrry. Goodness, what’s gotten into you today? I thought you were liking your new job, Ree.” 

“I am, I just don’t want to talk a-about Harry anymore,” I reply, pressing the button to open the microwave. The smell of broccoli and garlic trickles past me. 

“You can’t even say his name,” she laughs, and I groan as I stir the broccoli and brown rice around in the hot glass bowl. “Heeeey, I’m sorry, okay? I don’t know why you gave up on him, you could always go back and finish your . . .” 

Skye’s words trail behind me as my feet pad down the hallway to my bedroom. You’re not helping me to forget him, Skye. 

You’re only making me remember him, and I’ve been trying so hard lately not to. 

My quilt several shades of pink welcomes my return as I plop onto my bed. Shoveling a bite of broccoli and garlic rice into my mouth, I grab the remote and turn on my tv. Reaching for the Fire Stick remote teetering on the edge of the table, I push it and instead of grab. It clatters to the hardwood floor and I groan in response. Setting my dinner on the wood table, I regrettably leave my bed to retrieve it. Flicking on my lamp, I squat by the table and peer into the space behind my table. 

There it is. The long black rectangle waits for me there. But just as I’m reaching for it, another rectangle catches my eye. This time, it’s a white one. 

“Huh?” I mumble, feeling the stiff paper welcome my hands. 

I flip it over and the light catches on it. The long envelope stares back at me, and so do the letters on its front. My name in black pen interrupts the white expanse, but that’s not the writing that I’m focusing on. It’s the return address. 

Styles and Lawson 418 Stevens St.  London UK

Turning it over, I finger at the sealed edge. I don’t realize I’m doing it, but I bite at my bottom lip as I debate whether to open it. I can’t stop wondering what’s inside, and the postage date of December 18th only makes my curiosity burn brighter. And the fact that I’ve never seen this before in my life. 

“Skye, why do I have a letter from Styles and Lawson that I’ve never opened or seen before?” I yell to her through my half-open door. 

“Oh, that? I put it on your bedside table when it came that day. How am I supposed to know why you haven’t opened it?” she quips, as dumbfounded as I am. 

“It was behind my table, so it must have fallen.”

“Ya think?!” she replies with her usual loud volume, followed by another Jeopardy shout. 

I rip it open without another moment of hesitation. The paper makes a satisfying sound. A matte white paper looks back at me. The numbers and watermark on it tell me what it is. My fingers recoil instinctively when I touch the glossy object. I instead pull it out by its edges. 

Splashes of red and green and long-forgotten faces stare back at me. Myles. Mickey. Rose. Jennings. Myles. Rory. And Harry. Their faces are followed by the words “Merry Christmas from all of us at Styles and Lawson. Wishing you a happy Christmas and a fantastic New Year!” in a blocky white font. Little holly berry branches decorate the corners of the picture. A picture taken months ago at one of their big meetings, I assume. The sun is shining in through the window, and Harry’s hair isn’t as long. Everybody’s arms are around each other and a big goofy smile sits on his face. Tongue out and all. 

I do it before I can stop myself. My finger dances around the outline of his face, and down the black and maroon suit he wears in the picture. Probably the only printed picture I have of him, and one of the few I have in total. But there are enough burned into my brain that I’m already trying to erase. 

I toss them both onto the floor, leaving them behind my table where I wish they would’ve stayed in the first place. I return to my broccoli and rice and play a new video on YouTube. It does a good job of drowning out his voice in my head, but not good enough. 

I want ya t’ come back, Becks. I want us t’ try again . . .. . . .. 

+

Shades of brown dance around in the steaming water. I watch them twirl together and meet one another. The water slowly grows darker and darker as steam rises off of the surface. 

“If you stare any harder, I think your superpowers will come out and it’ll explode,” somebody says wryly.

“Wow, I didn’ know you were a comedian,” I respond, wrapping my fingers around the warm metal chain. 

“I didn’t know you were eco-friendly all of a sudden,” Myles says, nodding his head towards my cup of tea. “Or a little kid, with that dorky thing.”

“Oh shuddup,” I respond, watching the brown liquid fall from the pink silicone pig tea infuser. “It makes me feel good tryna save tha environment, an’ this li’l thing ‘s bloody cute.”

“Sure, if you’re a bleeding first-grader,” he responds with a titter, pulling a mug down from the shelf. 

“Yer jus’ jealous,” I quip as I pry off the pig’s head and dump the soggy tea leaves into the waste bin. 

Myles laughs and walks around me to the black fridge to take out the carton of milk. I blow on my steaming mug, watching little waves form in the brown water from my breath. A little water tornado forms from my next breath. I watch in fascination as it twirls around in the mug before finally tapering out. 

“You okay, Hare?” Myles asks, his voice taking on a softer tone. A friendly tone. “You haven’t seemed like yourself lately. You haven’t even been drinking coffee much, and that’s odd.”

“I’m fine,” I answer, bringing the mug to my lips and avoiding his eye contact. Setting the mug down on the counter, I chance a look inside the fridge and wonder what to have for lunch. 

“Is it Becky leaving? Is that why you’ve been acting differently?” Myles prods, nearly pulling a sigh from my lips. Or a groan. 

“I said ‘m fine, My,” I nearly retorted, my eyes glazing over the lone yogurts and forgotten sandwiches occupying the shelves. Slamming the door, I walk away and pick up my phone from the table in the center of the room. Maybe some takeaway. 

“Hare, you know you can talk to me about it,” Myles insists, throwing his hands up in the air. I ignore him, typing something on my phone, but I can see him out of the corner of my eye. 

Like he often does, he uses his hands to talk and they jump in the air only to fall with an exasperated sigh. Then they comb through his tousled blonde hair. 

“I hate seeing you like this, and not knowing how to help,” he continues softly. I give up, pressing the lock button on my phone and shoving it into my pants. 

I finally face him and look in his distraught brown eyes. 

“I miss her, Myles! I connected with Becky, a-and I screwed it up. I called her a liar and Amber was harassing her tha whole damn time without me knowing!” I confess, feeling the weight of the words fall from my shoulders as I finally say them. But the emotion rises in my throat, no matter how hard I try to hold it back. “She was amazing! She put up with me shit, and yet she stood up fer herself when she needed t’. She was funny, she was smart, she was beautiful, an’ I fooked it up!” The emotion eats at my words and by now, the horses are already out of their gates. And I don’t know how to corral them back in. “I hate feeling this way, but I dunno how you can help or even how I can help myself, Myles. So ‘m not g-gonna be myself ‘til I learn how t’ get ova this.”

I don’t know what to do. I steal a glance at him and find the sadness in his eyes is worse than before. I can’t handle it, and so I lift my feet and soon I’m walking out of the room. Leaving my tea, and the god awfully cute tea infuser pig. The one she got me before she left. 

“I saw it and immediately thought of you.”

“Wow, thanks, that makes me feel all warm an’ bubbly inside.”

“No, silly, I just mean it looked like something you’d like. And since you drink tea so much. And you’ve been buying metal straws and bamboo toothbrushes . . It seemed fitting. And isn’t the little piggy just so cute?”

“Yeah, I guess yer right . . . it really ‘s cute.”

Winding my way around coworkers, I suddenly find myself in front of the elevator stabbing at the buttons. I don’t even register which one I’ve pushed, because I want to be anyplace but here. Today is worse than most because anywhere I look there’s a memory of her stuck there. And they jump into my head and start playing before I can stop it. 

The elevator doors open with a ding and I step into the empty four walls, gladly. Rubbing at my eyes, I stab at the button for the parking garage my car is at. With a sigh, I feel some of the tension boiling inside of me leave. I get rid of the warm tears painted under my eyes and blink hard until my vision is clear again. 

Suddenly, the doors open and I nearly curse out loud when I see who’s waiting. The look on his face says that he feels about the same way. I step to the side, allowing him room to join me. He almost changes his mind, but he steps on and presses the button for 17. An awkward silence surrounds us as the elevator hums to life, dinging with each floor it passes. 

“Can I ask you a question?” I blurt out loud, doubting myself the second the words pass the threshold of my lips. 

His confused gray eyes rise and lock with mine, a question on his face. “What?” he answers, nearly annoyed with me. 

“I’m sorry, we’ve neva really talked and ‘ve neva been very nice t’ ya-,” I try, but he stops me. 

“Yeah, you haven’t, Harry, and so why should I? The last time I did a favor for you it didn’t really turn out too great,” Asher responds sharply, moving further away from me shaking his head. Pulling his phone from his pocket, he changes his focus to that. 

I look away and bite at my bottom lip. 

Way to go, Harry. 

But then the words are being shoved past my tongue and I can’t stop them. 

“I . . . jus’ wanna know if she’s doin’ alright,” they say, and I’m not even sure if he heard me with how quiet they were. 

Staring ahead, I see his head of blonde quiffed hair rise. He doesn’t say anything right away, but instead, he seems to think about it before he raises his head fully. 

“She’s okay,” he responds, with certainty to his words. And with those words, they take a little more of the tension I feel coating my body. 

“Good, ‘m glad t’ hear that . . . Is she uh liking her new job?”

“Yeah, she said it’s good. I dunno if I should be telling you this, but uh she found a clerk job in town. The same sorta thing as what she did here, which is good and makes switching jobs easier,” he continues, and I soak up every word because they’re about her. I wish I could hear these words from her mouth. But I can’t, and that’s my fault. 

“A-an’ they’re good t’ her there?” I continue, not knowing how to articulate the rambling thoughts in my head. 

“Yeah, they are,” Asher says, looking at me briefly. I look back and I watch his expression soften. “She’s doing well, Harry. She misses it here sometimes, but she’s adjusting and I think she’s where she needs to be right now.”

He doesn’t get to say anything more, because the elevator doors glide open. 

“Thank you, Asher . . I really mean it,” I tell him, giving a small smile. He nods and steps off and out of sight. 

And thus began our random elevator talks. I looked forward to them, even if they only lasted a couple minutes. And even if I only got to hear a vague update about her. And even if it made trying to forget her harder. 

+

The halls are quiet. A ghost town from earlier in the day where hundreds of feet traveled, and even just twenty minutes ago. But it’s the lunch hour, and everybody else has the same idea as me. To leave. Now, my black mod boots are the only sound on the speckled floors. The tall ceilings hide fluorescent lights and the gorgeous stained glass also hides, but from the snow. Identical snowflakes fall in the sky outside, and I pull my coat tighter around me in preparation to join it. 

The snowflakes melt in my hair and try to fly into my face, the wind pushing them this way and that. My car takes forever to warm up, making me curse myself for forgetting my matching violet hat and mittens on my desk. It only has just begun to warm up when I pull up in front of the towering brick building. Flocks of people rush to the doors from their cars, and the other way around. The vents blasting out warm air hush when I turn the key, bringing the chill with it. 

Well, this is it. My lungs heave a nervous breath and I try to sike myself up to even just open the door. But my thoughts get the best of me, and strings of what-ifs and doubts circle in my mind. 

What’s the point?

What if it turns out the same way as before?

What if I can’t do it?

What if I’m not good enough?

What if I made the right decision to leave?

Why should I try again?

What if I don’t like it anymore?

How can I do it by myself again when I never could the first time?

What if I fail?

Finally, I open the door and get out before I can stop. And I decide to leave all of the what-ifs and doubts there. Behind me. I focus on picking up my feet and putting one in front of the other until I’m standing in front of the familiar doors I haven’t stood before in a long time. 

The warmth welcomes me and so does the familiar smells of books and fried chips. The smells I always associated with this place. Lines of people fill the entrance and conversations paint the air. The Christmas decorations are long gone, and new knick-knacks and flyers replace them. Instead, cheesy Easter decorations line the bulletin boards. Yellow baby chicks. Pink fluffy banners. Easter eggs colored in patchy by tiny hands. Colorful signs advertise local events, reminders, schedules, and many more things I don’t have the time for. 

Pushing back the sleeve of my coat, I peek at my watch. I have 20 more minutes until I have to be back at work. Oh goodness, I hope I won’t regret this. 

But I don’t think I will, because I’m finally doing something about all of the nagging thoughts and ideas I’ve had the last few weeks. And I’m proud of myself for at least taking the first step. 

Stopping in front of the Information Desk, I’m met with a cheery smile asking me how they can help me. 

“Hi, I was hoping to speak with an advisor, a Mrs. Shepherd,” I begin, feeling the words roll off my tongue with hesitance. I’m surprised with myself for even remembering the name.

“Do you have an appointment with her?” she responds, looking away from her computer she types on. 

“No, I uh was just on my lunch break and I was hoping to meet with her to speak about something.”

“Alright. I’m going to need your name and what your question is for her,” the lady replies, looking between her computer screen and me. I pause, focusing on the fake yellow chick sitting atop her screen. Her heavily lined eyes wait for me behind her pink framed glasses, and her curly brown hair dances in the wind from her mini fan. 

“My name is Rebecca Holte, and I wanted to speak with Sally about finishing up my last 30 credits of my law degree.”

[whattimeisitintokyo]

Somos Familia Ch 39: It Hits the Fan

Chapter 39: It Hits the Fan

Today was the day!

Miguel's birthday!

Héctor chuckled to himself as he finished shaving and wiping off the leftover shaving cream off his face, leaving behind the little tuft of hair that was his goatee. He had often considered shaving it off completely, being too old to have such juvenile facial hair, but at this point in his life it was practically trademarked. All his official photos and even illustrations of him all had it. He was practically stuck with it.

He chuckled again, letting his mind drift over these trivial things that made him smile. Any thoughts that didn't include what this day also was. Yes, he would put items on the ofrenda for his beloved daughter, tell her how much he missed her and loved her. Even give a respectful nod to Ernesto's foto. But other than that his thoughts were only on Miguel's birthday party. All the family would be there, everyone would feast on Miguel's favorite meals, presents, games, laughter and love. If he just concentrated on that then the pain wouldn't be so bad.

He didn't sleep well last night. He never did on the days leading up to Dia de Muertos. He vaguely remembered waking up crying once last night, but he was soon lulled back to sleep by his wife's calming presence and he was fine afterwards. She didn't even say anything when he awoke the next morning, and he was thankful for that. He could pass off the dark circles under his eyes on his age, and no one besides Imelda would notice.

He stepped into his walk-in closet and pushed aside Imelda's beautiful dresses to get to his clothes. He was feeling particularly festive today and pulled out his royal purple suit jacket off the hanger. Thinking about which tie would go well with hit, he looked up and saw something gleaming in between the hanging clothes.

The golden tooth of a grinning skull.

Immediately his mood dropped as he blankly stared at the headstock of his once prized guitar. He didn't feel any pride or joy in looking at it, hadn't even played it for over nine years, but he couldn't bring himself to hate it either. Many times he had considered giving it away or, in his more depressive states, simply throw it into the dumpster where he felt it belonged.

But he never could. Because his beloved wife had given it to him on his birthday, oh so many years ago.

'Y-you… bought this for me?! I don't know what to say…'

'You don't need to say anything Héctor. Feliz Cumpleaños. Now stop saving your money for it and go buy yourself some food, tonto.'

And then she had kissed him for the first time ever. On the cheek, yes, but it had made his whole head burst into flames and his ears buzz. It was the true beginning of their relationship, and this guitar was the key. It was a precious moment in his life: a fond memory. So no, he couldn't get rid of it so easily. But it wasn't going to stay in the closet anymore either. He'd have a talk with Chente later about sending it off to Rivera de La Cruz Records to be put on display to the public if they wanted it. It would still be his, but he wouldn't have to look at it anymore.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Picking up a red necktie he pushed a bunch of clothes over the guitar, concealing it again, and walked away.

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

"Facundo! Don't smear icing on your sister's dress! Anselmo! Osvaldo! Stop fighting, you're in front of company, show some respect! Ay, Dahlia hold the baby for me, would you? You're the oldest, you need to help Papá."

Miguel walked into the courtyard with Victoria to absolute mayhem, with Victoria pulling him out of the way just in time before a sticky pastry struck the wall where his head was. Nodding his thanks to his niece he looked out to see Elena and Charlie playing with five other small, very rambunctious children dressed in their best church clothes. Soiled in mud, breakfast foods and sans shoes of course, but there was an effort to get Martín and Rosita's children dressed nicely for the special occasion. Martín was standing over them, trying not to be knocked down by the running, screaming children as he also tried not to drop the baby girl in his arms. Matty was also seated at the table set outside, holding Clara and looking very smug that his own children were behaving themselves properly, and Julio was looking out at the chaos with a thousand-yard stare.

Sitting down after finally passing the baby to his eldest, Martín slumped into a chair with a groan and leaned towards Matty in exhaustion. "Remember the Nazis? How easy it was with them? They were so neat and organized. Precise."

"They blew your leg off, amigo."

"At this point in my life, I wish they blew something else off."

"Papá, Papá!" One of Martín's sons came up to him, pulling on his sleeve and smiling with gapped teeth. "Charlie wants to play horses! Can we, por favor?"

"Ay, all right." Reaching down underneath the table, Martín fumbled around a little with belts and straps before pulling off and giving the child his prosthetic leg. "Don't get it dirty and do not, I repeat, do not… stick forks in it again."

Suddenly Julio sat up with a smile and shouted. "Hey everyone! The birthday boy is here!"

All the little children stopped immediately to look at Miguel standing in the doorway, before screaming again and running into him for hugs. This time Victoria didn't help, and Miguel let out a squawk when he was bombarded with seven sticky children. "Feliz cumpleaños, Miguel!" several little voices yelled out.

"Agh!... Gr-gracias… AHH! You guys are squeezing me to hard!"

"Ah, there you are mijo." Imelda swooped in and managed to pry the little ones off her son, brushing down his hair and giving him a kiss. "Fashionably late to your own party, I see. You look very nice today."

"Gracias, Mamá." Miguel said, pulling down his sleeves to cover up the wristbands that Victoria had made for him. 'I've gotta look nice for my performance tonight.' He said to himself. It wasn't a charro suit that he would have liked to wear, like a professional mariachi, but the bolo tie and shiny new boots were a nice touch.

"Well I hope your hungry." Imelda said. "We've been cooking up a storm all morning in that cramped little kitchen. And Wanda has made a delicious surprise for you."

"Cinnamon rolls!" Wanda said happily, placing a tray of pastries absolutely dripping with icing and candied nuts on the table. "My grandmother's recipe. I really hope you'll like them, but if you're anything like your brother then I know you're going to love them Miguel."

"No, I don't love them." Matty said, already double fisting the freshly glazed rolls with hungry eyes. "I'm damn near addicted to them. I crave them all day every day. But they're considered a Sunday food, and I'm forced to go without all week! It's torture, hermanito, pure torture."

"Which reminds me, since I'm making them on a Friday that means you've had them two times this week. So, we can skip them on Sunday and have them the next week."

"What?!"

"It's actually a little funny." Wanda said as Matty started to hoard as many rolls as he could in front of him. "Rosita's had three so far, but she's been pouring lime juice all over them. Lime juice! Can you believe it? How can you eat something so sour with something so sweet is beyond me!"

The others laughed a little and started to doll out the rest of the pastries to everyone else, with only Matty noticing the way Martín's face had turned pale white and he sunk lowly in his chair. "Lime juice?… Oh, no no no no nooo…"

Matty shook his head with pity, but mostly with exasperation, and ate his cinnamon roll. "Cochino…"

Breakfast was delicious, of course, and the party continued throughout the day. There were party games, cake and ice cream and even more sugary delights that threw all the little children into an even more manic frenzy until they had finally passed out underneath the shade of the tree. The ofrenda had been set up, decorated with flowers and offerings for Imelda's parents, Leti, the late Facundo and even Matty's friend Barto, while the adults shared stories of their dearly departed despite Héctor's best efforts to divert their attention to another party game or business idea he had. Even Chente and his best friend Javier had come to whish him a happy birthday to join the festivities. They always seemed really cool to Miguel, and he also felt like they understood his frustration with the lack of music.

Miguel absently kept checking the clock every so often, time seeming to move achingly slow as it creeped towards seven. He had hidden his guitar underneath the ofrenda table, somewhere he knew his father wouldn't be near that much, so it would be ready to be picked up when he left.

But for now his concentration was on opening the last birthday present, then he could go get his real gift. "Wow, sneakers! Gracias Tío Oscar y Tío Felipe!"

"Not just any sneakers." Felipe said proudly.

"But the new Rivera Freeflyers!"

"The new line of children's shoes-"

"-that goes on the market next year."

"Designed by us of course."

"But you're the first kid to wear them!"

"Feliz cumpleaños!"

Smiling, Miguel set the shoes back in the box. "That's really cool. Thanks again. Is that the last present? Aw man, that's sad. But I guess good things can't last forever. Well, if we're done I have some stuff I-"

"Atata. Not so fast, Miguel." Héctor walked up to him, smiling widely. "Because I also have a present for you."

Sitting back down, glancing at the clock again, Miguel's smile drooped a little in uncertainty. "Okay…"

Clearing his throat theatrically, Héctor stood next to his son in the center of the room spoke loud for all to hear. "Twelve years ago today, Miguel Rivera… beloved nephew, tío, brother and son… was brought into this world. A harrowing, frightful day for the whole family, especially for his dear mother, mi diosa, but one that ultimately ended in triumph. For that tiny baby was able to grow into a healthy little boy, and who has now grown into the fine young man standing before us all today."

"And since you are on the brink of adulthood, it's high time that we start thinking about your future, Miguel. Specifically what you're going to do for a living when you grow up. Now as much as we, and pretty much the whole world, loves your Mamá's shoes I get the feeling that's not where your passions truly lie. But after having a talk with Chente yesterday, we came to the conclusion that maybe your future lies with… Rivera de la Cruz Records."

Miguel noticed the way his father flinched at saying Ernesto's name, like he always did, but that didn't matter at the moment. There was a sudden bubbling of excitement and anticipation welling up inside of him, and he happily looked over at Chente for a confirmation. The former assistant, now CEO of the biggest movie and music production company in Mexico, gave him a silent smile and thumbs up. Turning back to his father with a big smile, Héctor continued.

"So your mother and I talked about it last night, and we both decided the best opportunity for you would be-"

Miguel could see it now: His name in lights, the crowd chanting his name, strumming a guitar just like, no better, than Tío Nesto's. Singing songs that he had written himself, the crowd singing along with him because they were so good, so memorable. Immortalized for all time by doing the one thing he truly loved to do: Playing the guit-

"-to start training you in business, just like your brother! And to start with that, we're going to enroll you in business management classes!"

…..

…..

"… What?"

There was not a sound coming from anyone else in the room. Wanda, Julio and Coco looked at each other in complete disbelief and mild disgust, Matty slowly bringing his hand over his eyes in complete exasperation. The other adults in the room cringed and suddenly became very interested in their plates of leftover food and cake, except for Vicente and Javier. Poor Chente stared at Héctor like he had just condemned the man to his death, eyes wide and mouth agape in horror, while Javier was bent nearly in half in his chair. Shoulders shaking and biting down on his clenched fist, Javier was doing everything he could to not just bust out laughing at the entire fiasco in front of him. Oblivious to everyone's obvious displeasure of his grand announcement, Héctor continued.

"There's a school nearby. In San Benito. They specialize in training children for college. Mateo, you went there, remember?"

Nodding and smiling painfully, Matty said, "Yes, Papá. I remember going… I remember willingly going-"

"Well, you did so well there that we thought Miguel would too! Now, they've got a new program where they include room and boarding, and you can do your regular schooling there."

"Which" Imelda interjected, "I have already vetoed. They still have just the same smaller classes every other weekend that you went to, Mateo. I don't want our little boy to be away from home for so long."

"Right," Héctor said. "I agree with her. You'll still go to school here, so don't worry about that. You won't miss your friends or your family. But I feel like this is a great opportunity for you."

Miguel felt like congratulating himself for how well he was hiding his displeasure from his parents. No, displeasure was too light a word for how he was feeling. He felt like his face was about to break and shatter for how long he was holding the rictus of his earlier smile, and his heart and stomach freefalling down to his boots. He felt like he was slowly dying, and yet his parents were looking at him like they were doing this for his own good. And they were proud of it too!

Maybe it was his own fault: being so secretive about who he truly was and what his interests were. His parents didn't know who he was at all and thought he would be glad that they were practically dooming him to a fate worse than death.

Swallowing painfully, almost as if he felt like he was about to cry, Miguel croaked out. "W-well… That's… a lot to take in."

"It's just an idea, mijo." Héctor said gently, as if finally sensing that his son might not be totally ready for such a radical change in his life. "And you've got plenty of time to decide. We can talk about more in the morning alone."

"It's just that that- uh…" Miguel fumbled a little with his wristbands hidden under his sleeves. "I'm not like Matty was when he was my age. I mean… I'm more like a normal kid, you know. Not a nerd like him."

"…Hey…"

"I mean I not as smart as him. I won't be any good in a school like that."

"Don't worry about that, Miguel." Imelda said softly, placing her head gently on his head and smoothing his hair. "You'll have your family here to guide you. We'll help you every step of the way. You won't be alone."

"And to help you even more, here's another present!" Héctor said. From behind his back he pulled out a small briefcase, made from leather dyed in a brilliant shade of red, and the letters M.R. embedded on the front in solid gold. Placing in the boy's hands, Héctor smiled widely and clapped his hands with pride. "Look at that. Another businessman in the family! You look so professional already! Ha ha!"

Glancing down miserably at the briefcase, as if he were handed a live grenade instead, Miguel nodded and once more looked up at his parents with that same faked, gritting smile. "Gracias Papá… Gracias Mamá…"

"Aw, feliz cumpleaños, my boy!" Héctor said as he hugged his son happily. "And don't just thank me. Thank Chente, since this was also his idea!"

"Ohhh…." Vicente moaned, trying to ignore the way Javiar was applauding loudly next him with that stupid smug grin of his. "Please don't thank me…."

"Better watch out!" Héctor jokingly said. "One day Miguelito here will take your job out from under you!"

"…I'll do that…"

As the adults carried on with their conversation, Miguel kept looking at the briefcase in hands. It really was a beautifully designed briefcase, something that Matty probably carried around all the time and would probably love having himself, but all it did was make Miguel want to cry. This wasn't what he wanted at all. This wasn't him. And the fact that his own parents didn't see that in him, couldn't see that, broke his heart.

He would have started crying then and there until he felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning he saw Victoria standing next to him, giving him a look of sympathy and understanding. But also of defiance. Glancing down at the briefcase in disgust, she said, "Put that thing away and go get your guitar. Wanda and Papá will distract Abuelito and everyone else. It's showtime, Tio."

With a start Miguel looked over at the clock and gasped. All his inner turmoil had made him nearly forget about the contest! And it was in twenty minutes! With Victoria giving him an encouraging smile and a slight shove Miguel took off to the ofrenda room. Ducking underneath the tablecloth he flung the accursed briefcase underneath it and grabbed his prized guitar, feeling so much better now that it was in his hands. Glancing to his late sister's foto, and then to his Tío Nesto's, Miguel gave them a watery smile.

"Wish me luck." He whispered, and then headed out the doorway.

No one noticed he, Victoria, Matty and Coco leave the party at all.

Except for one little girl with a big mouth.

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

Picking up a small, fried grasshopper from the bowl on the side table, he twisted it to and fro for his grandson to see. It was such a lovely surprise: Here he thought there wasn't many chapulines left for the season, and then all of a sudden Julio gifted him with a heaping bowl of the crunchy little things! Then Wanda had come up to him, saying that his grandchildren wanted to spend some time with their grandfather and to tell them stories. He was more than happy too, even if it was odd that he and the children were practically shoved into the kitchen and the door was slammed shut. But for now, with Clara babbling happily in his arm and with Charlie's rapt attention, he continued his story.

"So at the end of the day, there I was: Scratched up by dried alfalfa, bitten all over by every mosquito there ever was, and with a bag of caught grasshoppers slung over my shoulder. I took it to old Señor Perales and he would fry them up for the customers, and for my pay he would give me a handful of them on a stale tortilla. Sometimes that would be the only thing that I would get to eat for the whole day. But I didn't mind much, it was worth it for me. They're good, no?"

"They're salty." Charlie said as he crunched one with a grimace.

"Sí. Salty, crunchy and my favorite snack. And that was the first job I ever had at four years old. Your age, mijo! Grasshopper catcher extraordinaire."

"My friend Timmy likes to pick out earthworms from his Mommy's garden and eats them too, even with dirt on them! Is that the same thing, Grandpa?"

"No, your friend's just odd."

"Oh."

The sound of the door being opened caused the three of them to look, only to see Elena poking her head in. Héctor was immediately worried: His granddaughter looked very troubled, staring at the floor and lip trembling, trying to decide if she should come in or not. Shifting the baby in his arms to free his hand he held it out. "Elena? Is there something wrong?"

Nodding a little, she slowly edged her way in and closed the door. "My tummy hurts…"

"Aww, too much cake and ice cream, huh?" Héctor asked kindly, squeezing her hand when she took it. "I guess it also didn't help that your cousins gave you too much excitement as well. Well, if you want I can walk you home-"

"It's not that, Abuelito." Elena said softly. "My tummy hurts because I feel guilty."

"Guilty? Did you and your sister have a fight? Because if you said or did something to make her upset I'm sure she'll forgive you. That's what a family who loves each other does, mija. We always forgive each other with time."

Eyes widening, Elena looked up at her grandfather with a slight glimmer of hope. "Really? Family forgives each other for anything?. They don't… get really mad and hate them for it?"

"Of course not."

Elena smiled a little at that, looking like she felt a little better. Then her smile faded, and she shook her head. "No, no… Papá says that I should always do what my parents say…"

Blinking in confusion, Héctor nodded in agreement. "Uh, yes… Yes, children should do what their parents say. Your Papá's right."

"Buuuut…"

"…But?"

"But you're Mamá's papá…" Elena said slowly, nervously picking at her fingers and biting her lip hard in agitation. "So, she has to do whatever you say… right?"

Now he was growing concerned. Pulling his granddaughter close to him, Héctor made Elena look at him squarely in the eye. "Elena, if something is wrong with your Mamá you need to tell me, claro? Now, what's going on?"

"….Well…"

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

"Congratulations, Señor Magallanes."

"Oh you too, Mrs. Rivera."

Chuckling and clinking their mugs of coffee, Julio and Wanda sat on the old boarded up well and each took a sip of the hot brew. They watched as the Reyes children ran around the courtyard in a wild frenzy, having woken up from their sugar comas and putting an end to their parents' moment of peace and quiet, and smiled smugly to themselves. Both because they were thankful that their own children were not as wild and rambunctious, and also for a job well done.

"Nice work on getting the fried grasshoppers so late and getting so many. I'm told they're a seasonal…delicacy." Wanda grimaced at the word.

"Gracias. And that was a nice move of giving him your kids. 'Charlie wants to hear all about you when you were his age!'" Julio chuckled at that. "It really was a nice distraction."

Wanda hummed and gave a sultry smile, gazing off into the distance. "Well, Matthew has always said that I am… a master of distraction. In more ways than one"

"…Uh, right…" Taking an uncomfortable gulp from his coffee mug and coughing awkwardly, Julio changed the subject. "So when should they be back?"

"Well Miguel is the first act." Wanda said. "So it'll start at seven, he'll sing his little song, then Matthew and Coco will bring him right back. So I guess they should be back in about half an hour? Plenty of time before anyone notices they're gone. And if they ask we'll just say he went to a friend's house."

"Thirty minutes?" Julio asked, a little downhearted at the thought. "So, he won't get to stay to see if he wins?"

Wanda nodded in sympathy. "Yes, it is a shame. But honestly do you really think he would win? I mean, I know he's very good, but he'd be going up against musicians who have been playing for much longer than he's even been alive. It seems a little unlikely, right?"

"Sí, you're right… It still would be amazing if he did, though."

"Honestly I think the poor boy just wants to be heard. Can you blame him? Especially after that… gift his parents gave him. Ugh…"

"Sí. Let him have some fun for one night." Julio nodded, bring the cup back up to take a sip. "Thirty minutes. Plenty of time. Go out, perform, come back. No one will suspect a thing."

"All will be well." Wanda agreed.

The sudden slamming of a door hitting the wall startled everyone in the courtyard. All the children skidded to a halt, the adults stopped talking immediately, and all eyes turned towards a very livid Héctor Rivera.

"MIGUEL IS GOING TO PLAY THE GUITAR IN THE PLAZA?!"

Clara started to cry in fright in her grandfather's arms, but Héctor paid her no heed as he marched up Julio and Wanda. "Elena just told me that Miguel's playing in the contest! Julio, is that true?!"

Julio stared at his father-in-law, chalk white and looking like he was about to drop dead on the spot. His mouth worked itself up and down, but all that came out was choked squeaks and croaks. "Uh-uh…uh uh…ah…uh."

With a growl, Héctor turned his glare to his daughter-in-law. "Wanda, did you know anything about this?!"

Wanda, also much whiter than usual, managed to give a nervous half smile and shrugged with a weak chuckle. "Uh… No hablo es-pan-ol?..."

"Forget it!" Héctor shouted, placing the now screaming baby in her mother's arms and turning out to the exit. "You all want to go behind my back?! Fine! I'll put a stop to this myself!"

As Héctor left the courtyard in a mad dash, Julio wilted with a moan. "No no no no! This has all gone to hell. We had one job to do and we failed even that! Matty and Coco are going to kill us!"

Wanda shook her head, trying to calm down her poor baby. "No, they won't!"

"You're right. Only Coco is going to kill only me!" Julio cried. "Elena, why did you tell Abuelito?! You promised you wouldn't!"

Elena was sobbing by now. This wasn't supposed to happen: Abuelito had said that he wouldn't be angry, that he wouldn't hate Miguel for what he did. But it was all a lie! "You don't keep secrets from family, Papá! I couldn't stand lying to Abuelito!"

"What is going on here?!"

They all turned to see Imelda, Rosita, Martín and the twins coming out of the ofrenda room, confused as to why everyone was either in shock, scared or crying their eyes out. With a sigh Wanda came up to them. "Oh, Mamá Imelda, you might as well know now. Miguel was going to play the guitar at the music competition in the plaza-"

"What?!"

"- and Papá Héctor just found out. He's going after them to stop him. I've never seen him look so mad! I think he's going to do something-"

"Stupid…" Imelda finished, hitching up her skirts to run as fast as she could in her high heeled boots. "Dios mio, Héctor! Héctor come back!"

"Oh Rosita, could you take the baby?" Wanda asked as she handed Clara to Rosita. "I need to go to! Matthew might need my help! Come on Julio, Coco needs you to!"

"Wait! Coco will need my help as well!" Rosita cried out. "Martín, mi amor, hold the baby and hold down the fort. Oscar, Felipe! Let's go!"

"Wait, what?!" Martín cried out, watching helplessly as all the adults ran out of the Rivera complex, leaving him alone with nine children all under eight years old, screaming and crying with fright. Looking at Clara in one arm and his own crying daughter in the other, Martín growled in frustration. "Oh sure! Leave all the kids with the one guy who can't run away! I see how it is! This is discrimination! I am a war veteran, I deserve some respect and a break!"

"Don't worry, Tío Martín…" Elena sadly said, taking Clara away from her uncle and holding the baby close. "I'll help you with the babies…"

"Ay, gracias Elenita." Martín sighed in relief, patting her head gratefully. "You're a good kid."

Burying her face in her little cousin's blanket, Elena tried to hide as the tears came pouring out again with her sobs. She wasn't good. She didn't deserve the praise. She deserved to be punished, not Miguel. Miguel was going to be kicked out of the family. Abuelito hated him now.

It was all her fault.

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

"I knew it." Miguel moaned as he, his siblings and Victoria made their way to the plaza. Clutching his guitar for dear life, as if he was afraid it would be ripped away from him, he hung is head low while Victoria guided him by his shoulders. "I knew Papá would never even consider letting me play music, he just hates it too much. I'm gonna have to play in secret for the rest of my life."

"Yeah." Victoria sighed with a pout. "I guess I'm going to have to as well. I'll never get to dance in the likes of La Scala or the Royal Opera House. I'd even settle for dancing at a rec center at this point."

"Cheer up, both of you." Matty said. "Miguel, you know Papá doesn't hate music. He just… has some hang-ups about it that is hard for him to overcome. A lot of bad things happened to him, and he attributes it to music. You understand, sí?"

"No, I don't." Miguel said. "And that's easy for you to say. Papá sang and danced with all three of you and let you play instruments. I never had that."

"That's not true, Miguel." Coco said. "Papá used to sing to you all the time, especially when he tucked you into bed. And he played his guitar for you, don't you remember that?"

"No. I was a baby, Coco."

Coco tsked and shook her head in mock sorrow. "Well that is a shame. You should remember stuff like that. I, for one, can remember stuff quite vividly all the way from when I was about two years old. It's a gift I possess."

Breaking out of his current funk, Miguel looked up at his older sister and smirked. "Gee Coco, maybe you should be the one in the talent show instead of me."

Matty barked out a laugh and nodded. "Yeah, you could tell everyone what you had for breakfast in May of 1936."

"Or recite an old shopping list you made ten years ago." Victoria added.

Coco huffed and crossed her arms with pout. "All right, all three of you can go kiss a burro."

"Well we can't do that now, because," Matty said as they rounded the corner, "we have arrived at our destination."

As they all walked into the plaza, Miguel smiled when he saw the gazebo decked out in the familiar decorations for Dia de Muertos: garlands of cempazuchitl flowers, papel picado and, most excitingly, posters for the contest. He also saw several other musicians dressed up in charro suits and practicing on their own instruments. They had probably been practicing for much longer than he ever had and were probably better than him too. But Miguel didn't care if he won or lost the contest, he just wanted to perform in front of people. To show them all that he had what it took to be a musician. And luckily for him there were plenty of people who had come to watch.

A very… large amount of people.

Practically the whole town. Even other kids from his school were there.

Suddenly Miguel felt a nauseous curl in his belly, and his breath seemed to stick in his throat. Without realizing it he took a step backwards, softly bumping into his sister, and flinched in surprise when she knelt down to speak to him.

"Miguel?" Coco asked softly. "If you're nervous you don't have to go up there."

"Wh-what?" Miguel asked, wincing when his voice gave an unexpected squeak and trying to cough it away. "Nervous? I'm not nervous!"

"You're really pale Miguel, and you started sweating bullets in less than five seconds." Victoria pointed out. "It's actually quite impressive."

"Callate!" Miguel grumbled.

"It's alright if you've changed your mind, Miguel." Coco said and rubbed his shoulder comfortingly. "We can just go right back to the museum, and Papá will have never known you were here."

The very mention of his father, how much he hated music, how he would be forced to play music in secret again if he backed away now, how this might actually be his last chance to perform before he was to go to that stupid business school, steeled something inside of Miguel. Straightening up, jaw clenched tight and his guitar held up like a shield, he shook his head vigorously. "No! No way! I'm gonna play in mariachi plaza if it kills me!"

"That's the spirit!" Matty said. "And good thing too because it looks like you're on now!"

"What?!"

"They're beckoning you over! Knock 'em dead and break a leg, gordito!" With a hearty slap on the back Matty propelled his little brother towards the stage. As they all watched the boy meekly walk to the contest coordinators, Matty leaned into Coco. "He can sing, right?"

Coco nodded. "Of course! He has the voice of an angel, you're going to be blown away."

"Either that or he's going to blow his dinner all over the stage floor." Victoria said.

Miguel took his place next to the steps of the gazebo, turning back to wave at the siblings and niece, who all returned it with a thumbs up. With his back turned to them again Matty sighed wistfully. "Papá would really love this. He would be so proud. If… you know…"

"If he was like he used to be?"

"Si…" Matty nodded. "It just doesn't feel the same without him here. Miguel is so much like how our father was: Filled with a love of music, bursting with creativity. Miguel may look up to Tío Nesto, but I see Papá in him more than any of us."

"You're right." Coco sighed. "I wish Papá were here to see this too."

"SOCORRO! MATEO!"

Coco and Matty immediately felt their hearts stop, blood seize up, insides clench and air leave their lungs as they heard their full names bellowed out from behind. Turning around they saw a sight they had never seen before. Héctor Rivera, normally so jovial and mild-mannered with all he encountered, marching towards them red-faced and glaring holes into their very souls. As he got closer and closer to them, Coco whispered, "Itakeitback, Itakeitback!..."

Placing himself in front of his sister and niece like a shield, Matty leaned causally on his cane and smiled shakily. "H-hola, padre! Qué tal? I d-didn't expect to see you come to the plaza today. They're having a music contest right now so you might want to go back and-"

"Would you both care to explain to me," Héctor said as he reached them, very close to seething like a bull. "why I had to hear from Elena that my son is going to play the guitar, on a stage, in front of an audience?!"

With a loud groan Matty turned to glare at Coco. "You told la Lengua Larga about the plan?!"

"I told you it was a bad idea, Mamá."

"So this was your idea!" Héctor growled as he glared at Coco. Distantly they could hear Imelda calling out as she was making her way to the plaza herself, but they all ignored her for the moment. "You're letting your brother perform? After what nearly happened to you? What did happen to your godfather?!"

Coco glared back. "What happened to Tío Nesto was terrible, but it was an accident that could have happened anywhere! It had nothing to do with music! Why can't you see that?"

"It has everything to do with what happened to him!" Héctor shouted. "And I will not have the same thing happen to my-"

"Put your hands together for our first contestant, Miguel 'De la Cruzito' Rivera!"

As a loud smattering of applause and cheers erupted, the family turned to see Miguel taking the small stage of the gazebo. Smiling nervously and waving at the crowd, he didn't seem to notice the brewing turmoil taking place amongst the audience. Héctor gritted his teeth and was about to make his way towards his son to put an end to this nonsense, when one of the nearby bands decided to strike up some intro music for the young guitarist. After all, the son of the world's greatest songwriter, the patron of Santa Cecilia, deserved a grand entrance for his musical debut.

And they couldn't have picked a worse song.

As the trumpets blasted the upbeat version of Remember Me and the audience clapped along to the beat, Matty and Coco moaned in dread and instantly went into damage control. Coco and Victoria shouted in vain over the crowd to get the musicians to stop, but their voices were lost among the deafening cheers and song. Imelda heard the song playing from the distance, and with a curse tried to run even faster to her husband. Matty grabbed his father by the shoulders and shook him, trying to direct his attention to him. "Papá! Papá, listen to me. Listen to my voice. It's okay. It's just a song. Come with me, we'll get you out of here…"

It had been about a year since he had heard that song last. Not intentionally, of course, but when a song is that popular people are bound to either sing it aloud or try to play it themselves. One such incident occurred when he was out with Elena for a treat of ice cream, when suddenly he had heard it. A quite lovely rendition on a violin by that scarf-wearing kid with the weird facial hair whose named escaped him. But it was enough to do the trick. Several painful minutes of him hunched low to the ground, pressing the heels of his hands into his ears hard, trying to get his breathing under control. His own granddaughter, seven years old at the time, was forced to take action herself: Swatting that kid with her shoe in order to stop him from playing, then sitting with him silently and comfortingly until the panic had finally passed. They had both lost their ice creams on the ground that day, but the two had grown even closer due to the experience.

But those same feelings were rushing back just like that last time: Nothing had changed. Immediately his heart started hammering and it became hard to breathe, his insides squirmed and clenched painfully and those awful visions flashed in his mind again. As the song continued he didn't see his eldest son frantically trying to get his attention, but his youngest daughter wheezing her last breaths in his arms. Of Ernesto walking away from him to the stage, underneath the bell that would eventually turn him into nothing but a smear. And the blood, so much blood. He could smell it, practically taste it.

He was about to try to block out the sounds like he always did and then curl up in a ball, when he happened to glance at the stage again. Ernesto was there, about to perform with the bell perch precariously over his head. But no, that wasn't Ernesto standing there. It was-

"MIGUEL! NO!"

Breaking Matty's grip on his arms he made a run for the gazebo, pushing and shoving others out of the way. He didn't hear their exclaims of alarm and pain as they were roughly shoved aside or to the ground, nor the cries of his family as they begged him to wait, to come back. No, all he heard was that damned song playing loudly in his head, now a ticking timer to the point where, at the end, his boy would be no more.

Miguel didn't notice his father parting through the crowd at breakneck speed, too busy tugging on the emcee's sleeve to tell him to make those musicians stop playing the song 'That's the song I'm going to play.' But it was too late, and as the band played the last triumphant note he turned back to the crowd with an eye roll and hefted his guitar up to begin to play the song everyone had just heard.

Just in time to see his father diving straight for him.

Imelda reached her oldest children just in time to see Héctor tackle Miguel and send them both flying to the back of the gazebo. The incident was so shocking that aside from a large gasp from the crowd, it became so still and quiet. Quiet enough that everyone was able to hear the sickening crunch once the two of them landed in a crumpled heap.

A flash of terror made it's way down Imelda and her children's spines. "No…" she breathed, and then quickly made her way to the gazebo herself, the others following her.

The song was over, put panic was still surging through Héctor as he got up and immediately started checking over his boy. "Miguel! Are you all right?! Sit up, let me see!" He patted his body up and down, trying to see if there were any injuries, thankfully finding none. But the boy seemed shocked, and frantically he cupped the boys face to look in his eyes. "Did you hit your head? Look at me, mijo-"

"Papá…"

Miguel's eyes were widened with shock, but surprisingly the wind was not knocked out of him nor was he scuffed or marked in any way from the surprise tackle. The guitar in his hands, however, was not so lucky. It had taken the brunt of the assault and protected the boy from harm, but it had not survived. Three of the strings had snapped right off and were coiled in bent angles, the body was completely caved in from the center hole and up, and the neck had broken cleanly in half, now only connect by the remaining strings. His beloved guitar was now destroyed. His father had destroyed it.

"What-? Why?... What have you done?" Miguel whispered as he gripped the broken neck and tried in vain to get it to stick back into the position. "It's ruined…"

Héctor looked down at the broken guitar in his son's hands, taking in the cheap gold paint that had been sloppily painted all over it. The crude designs done in brown, and the headstock. That same mocking skull that looked so much like his own, except for the one personal detail that he had made for his older brother: The thin mustache above perfectly white grinning teeth. His worries and concerns over his son instantly vanished. He was fine. Now what came back was more comfortable, easier for him to handle: Rage.

"Where the hell did you learn to play guitar?!"

Miguel's attention snapped back to his father, and he shrunk back at the ferocious anger meekly. Before he was able to squeak out a pitiful answer, he felt eyes on him. Turning slightly he paled when he saw everyone in the crowd looking at him with morbid curiosity. The whole town had watched as his supposed debut had crumbled to ash, his most prized possession had been reduced to kindling, and his father was now bearing down on him about to start a very public fight.

It was all ruined. It was too much for him, and the poor boy broke.

With a choked-out cry of heartbreak Miguel flung what was left of his guitar away, shot up to his feet and fled from the gazebo. The crowd gave him enough room to make his getaway and he was grateful. He didn't want to be held back, didn't want to be touched by anyone. Especially his family. He heard his Papá angrily yelling at him to come back, his Mamá pleading with him to do so as well. But he couldn't even look at anyone right now.

He just ran and ran, broken sobs escaping as he gasped and panted.

He hated his birthday.

[nataliedanovelist]

GF - Tapes

The Mystery Shack was quiet, a rare treat for the hectic household. Waddles was enjoying the silence, glad to be back in his old home. He enjoyed the scratches behind the ear from Mr. Pines and the belly-rubs from Mrs. Pines and the couch in the living room back in Piedmont, but the pig felt comforted by the sounds and smells of the cabin in the woods of Gravity Falls. It was like being hugged by an old friend or a family member unseen for too long. While he slept in the old armchair, the only human in the house sat on the floor, watching the pig sleep.

Ford shook his head and chuckled under his breath, craning his neck to look at Mabel's pet. It was cloudy outside, like it might rain soon, but for now the weather was dry. Ford turned to face front again, facing the TV, as he sat on the carpet with a big box out in front of him. At the end of last summer, when trying to help Stan regain his lost memories, Ford had dug out some old home-movies of the twins going on adventures, building the Stan O' War, and battling ghost pirates. When it was time to depart for the sea, in the chaos of it all, the film reels Ford had kept hidden away over the years had been haphazardly shoved into a box that was then tucked by the TV. Reorganizing the movies seemed like a nice task to take part in with everyone else in the Shack gone.

Carefully as to not ruin the tapes, Ford laid out each reel on the carpet and started to read the labels. Some were neatly written in his mother's handwriting, while others were quickly jotted down in Stan's chicken scratches or in Ford's little cursive writing. Quests to find the Jersey Devil, adventures to discover Atlantis, and progress of their beloved boat all laid out on either side of the old scientist, and Ford held his cleft chin with a six-fingered hand when his eyes averted back to the cardboard box and discovered VCR tapes.

Ford began to read the labels. Well, all the labels there were, anyways. Some of the tapes were blank and intrigued Ford the most, and so to discover what they were and how to best organize the home-videos, he randomly selected a tape and slipped it in the VCR player. He turned on the screen and pressed play on the player. After a quick second of nothing but static, Ford smiled at seeing his grandnephew sitting at the desk in the attic-bedroom that separated the younger twins' beds.

"Welcome to Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained." The boy said, taking advantage of the night as he sat in his orange t-shirt and grey shorts. "Today, Gravity Falls' Anomaly #13: The Modius Chicken Strip."

Ford made himself comfortable, his knees up to his chest and his arms wrapped around his legs, as he watched the twelve-year-old give a small investigation about said chicken strip. It seemed like the kind of thing Ford would've done at Dipper's age. His mind began to wander when the Dipper on screen said,

"Well, that concludes Gravity Falls' Anomaly #13: The Modius Chicken Strip." He pulled the strip out of the basket and munched on it happily. "It's infinitely delicious."

Suddenly, catching Ford's attention, some small creature sped by the camera, knocking it over and sending playing cards all over the floor.

"Whoa! Hey! What the…? Ah!" Ford watched as Dipper aimed the camera at his sleeping twin sister. "Mabel, did you see that? Wake up!"

"Never. Let me sleep forever." Mabel moaned as she turned her back on her brother, making Ford chuckle. Yup, she was definitely related to Stan.

"Some creature just jumped out of nowhere!" Dipper explained. "It's eating out leftover Summerween candy!"

That got Mabel's attention. "What?!"

"Look!"

Ford peered at the screen as Dipper turned the camera to where a small monster was nestled inside an old tire and eating the children's Summerween candy. The scientist's eyes widened with wonder and disgust as he saw a…

"Ew, it's like a… naked little man." Mabel said it best and Ford privately agreed with her, its sharp teeth, beady red eyes and lack of sanity making it apparent that it wasn't human. Ford honestly didn't know what it was. A rabid gnome? A gremlin?

"Okay, this is now Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained, #76… uh, That Thing." Dipper announced to the camera as he showed a title card to the one-man audience.

Ford edged himself closer to the screen as Mabel tried to get the monster to drop the basket of candy, but he only licked it creepily and the static appeared again, but was soon replaced with Dipper wearing some sort of makeshift armor out of stuffed animals and had clubs and a trash can for weapons.

"I'm gonna capture him for science." Dipper said boldly.

"And for candy!" Mabel added from behind the camera. Sweet Lord, how similar were Mabel and Dipper to Stan and Ford?

"Get this on tape in case I die or whatever."

Ford laughed and watched with a smile on his face as Dipper slowly crept up to That Thing and tried to trap it. Using a club to edge the candy closer, he waited until the monster grab the treat and Dipper just barely missed it with his little trap. That Thing climbed up the ceiling, the bucket of candy in his sharp teeth, and Mabel tried to hit it with a stuffed toy that only fell back on her as she yelled, "Die, mutant, die!" The creature ran out of the bedroom and the twins followed, the camera losing focus for a moment as the kids ran down the stairs. That Thing pounced on Dipper when they reached the living room and the video cut to the monster sitting on top of the fridge. Eventually they chased it back into the living room to then have it be distracted to the TV. Ford laughed at the irony, seeing how he was just as drawn to the TV screen now as the monster was to whatever movie he was watching.

The film cut away and made Ford laugh again to find the children sitting and eating candy as they watched the movie with the monster, to whom Soos confused for Stan. That was the end of the tape and it soon poked out of the player. Ford rewind the tape as he looked for a new one to watch. That same pride he had for his nephew when he read the boy's entries in Journal 3, when Dipper saved him from the spaceship, and when Dipper graduated middle school last month returned strongly in Ford's chest. The same could be said for Mabel, too. The logical part of Ford told him to only glance at the tapes so he could know how to organize them best, but his softer side told him to enjoy watching the tapes he didn't know existed until three minutes ago.

The second tape showed Dipper holding the camera as he stood in town. "Alright, ah… welcome back to Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained. Today we investigate Gravity Falls' Anomaly #82: This Guy." Dipper panned the camera to a balding man with a mustache reading a newspaper and sipping coffee in a bowling alley. He looked like he was an employee on his break. "Sure he looks normal, but if he's so normal explain why he's always facing left."

The video cut away to many shots of the man always facing left, and Ford had to admit that his behavior was very abnormal. He held his chin in thought as the man was so inclined to run and walk backward to avoid being seen by his right side.

"Literally, I've been following him around for weeks, and I've never once seen the right side of his face. And neither has anyone else." Dipper explained. "But why? Mabel. Theories?"

The camera panned to Mabel as she pulled out a bunch of drawings of their theories and narrated through them. "Theory One: he's hiding an embarrassing sunburn. Theory Two: half-man, half-lizardman. And Theory Three (my person favorite): he's normal, and Dipper's just crazy!"

"That's not a theory! That doesn't count as a theory!"

Mabel and Ford both laughed and Dipper walked into the bowling alley, giving Mabel control of the camera as he managed to convince the poor guy that it wasn't on. Dipper tried to get the guy to show his right side by passing shoes and giving Dipper his fallen wallet, but in the end it looked like the boy was going to give up, until the man was about to pick out a bowling ball and Dipper shoved him by the shoulder, revealing the right side. Ford gasped as half of a robotic man was missing, revealing little green jelly-like creatures that committed suicide as soon as their cover was blown. The robot was disassembled, caught fire, and set off the sprinklers in the bowling alley.

"Well, that concludes anomaly #82!" Dipper said as he and his sister ran for their lives. "Uh, I think we might wanna burn this tape!"

Ford shook his head, seeing how the boy must have forgotten to, and he rewind it before selecting another tape. The old scientist had seen many things in his inter-dimensional travels and within the magnetism of Gravity Falls, but anomaly number eight-two might be best left alone. Regardless, he had no intention of burning the tape. Ford picked another tape at random and slipped it into the VCR player. He chuckled at seeing Dipper's abnormally-large head being crushed by his sister's fingers.

"Hello, I'm Dipper Pines. The girl trying to crush my head in Mabel."

"I'm helping!"

"Today on Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained - okay that, that's enough - today, we investigate Anomaly #23: Grunkle Stan's Secret Tattoo."

Ford's heart sunk uncomfortably as the camera panned to a board full of Stan's back and shoulder and ideas of what the hidden symbol could be. Clearly, Stan was very careful to not let anyone see it, and today the children were going to try to figure out why and what it was.

"What is he hiding? A college prank? Secret symbol? Or something stranger?" Dipper asked the camera. "Stan claims it doesn't exist, but today we're gonna find out."

Ford was deaf to Mabel trying to show what was under her bandage as he thought about the "tattoo". Stan's scar was a painful reminder of everything Ford had done to him, of all the things Ford did to his brother over the years, like refusing to thank him after saving him from the Nightmare Realm, letting him live on the streets for ten years, and erasing his mind. He had called Stan up to Gravity Falls, he had demanded Stan take the first journal and get as far away as possible, he had refused to let Stan destroy the book, and he had kicked Stan into the hot symbol, burning through his clothes, killing his flesh, and leaving him tagged like an animal.

Ford rewind the tape when he saw Dipper hiding on the roof from an angry uncle and picked up another tape to watch. He had just pulled out the tape with Stan's scar when the door opened and closed and Waddles perked up. Mabel came into view and the pig ran into her arms. She giggled at having her cheek licked and hugged her pet tightly.

"Hi, Waddles. Did you have a nice nap?" Mabel looked up and her smile grew. "Hey, Grunkle Ford! Whatcha doin'?"

"Hello, Mabel." Ford greeted as he carefully stacked the already-watched tapes and picked out a new one to watch. Hopefully the next one wouldn't shove his mistakes back in his face. "I'm organizing these videos."

"Oo!" Mabel said and put Waddles down, who retreated back to the armchair and curled up for a nap.

The brunette pulled put out a blue sweater-in-the-making, some yarn, and a pair of needles from behind the armchair and sat next to Ford on the floor. The old scientist smiled down at his grandniece and started the next video.

"Welcome back to Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained. Anomaly #54: The Mailbox."

Mabel's eyes widened and she gasped, "You found Dipper's tapes! Hey, I remember when we found that mailbox."

"You do?" Ford asked as Dipper explained how the mailbox had no house or address.

Mabel nodded and scooted closer to Grunkle Ford as she knitted a sweater. Ford smiled, sat with his legs crossed, and had Mabel in his lap as they watched Soos slip a letter into the mailbox. Mabel looked up to see Ford's shocked expression when the tail of the mailbox lifted on it's own and a new letter was inside the mailbox. The thirteen-year-old girl laughed and continued to watch Dipper and Soos test the mailbox.

"What did I shave into my head this morning? 'A baby duck holding a paddle ball.' Dude! It knew!"

"What?!"

"Ask it more questions!"

"When is the end of the world? '3012'. Huh, we got awhile."

"Who's my dream-woman? Whoa! Hot tamales! Save that one for the archives…"

"What is the exact time and date of my death?"

"Did aliens built the pyramids?"

"Or… what is the meaning of life?"

"What are marshmallows made out of?"

"Or… who wrote Journal #3?!"

"Who wrote the journal?! WHO WROTE THE JOURNAL?!"

Ford's face suddenly felt hot as his nephew said, "We're finally gonna get the answer to the greatest mystery in Gravity Falls!"

Mabel laughed over the tape of her destroying the mailbox by trying to mail a video of her shoving gummy worms up her nose at remembering her twin's old obsession. "Oh, man! I almost forgot how crazy Dip-Dip was to find you! He spent half of last summer obsessing over who wrote the journal."

Ford smiled gently at remembering the excitement Dipper had when he first met his great-uncle. While Mabel had happily shaken his hand, claiming his extra finger made it more friendlier than normal, Dipper had nearly thrown up over discovering who the Author of the Journals was. Not only that, but the author was a family member - his long-lost Great Uncle Stanford - and would grow closer to him as time went on.

Ford rewinded the tape and looked down at Mabel pleasantly. "I can imagine it was thrilling to have such a big mystery solved."

Mabel nodded. "At first we thought it was Old Man McGucket, but then we found a memory that explain that he was your assistant. We kinda hit a roadblock after that, but I know Dipper never stopped thinking about it, even if he was dealing with Time Baby, an angry Love God, or a level-ten ghost." Mabel picked up a tape and said, "Let's watch this one next!"

Ford let her slip it into the machine since the episode about the mailbox was done resetting, and they watched an episode in which Dipper and Mabel tried to find The Hide Behind. Ford let out a soft "ah" when he recognized the page in Journal 3 that told of a "mysterious creature always just out of sight". First, Dipper did some interviews to confirm from locals if The Hide Behind was real or not.

"The Hide Behind?" Manly Dan asked and Ford smiled fondly at seeing who had once been a teenager and built his home was now a grown man with his own kids, three of which was cutting a tall tree down behind the lumberjack. "Oh, he's real alright, REAL AS MY BEARD!"

"I remember Boyish… I mean, Manly Dan." Ford told the girl in his lap. "He and his father built this house. Well, mostly he built the house. Dav Corduroy wasn't as young as he once was, but Dan was more than up to the task."

"Wendy's dad built the Shack?!" Mabel gasped.

"Yup." Ford chuckled.

"Dad…"

"It's comin' down!"

"DADDY'S DOING A MOVIE!"

Dan yelled without even looking behind him as a tree was falling and threatened to crash his house. "He's doing a movie now…"

Ford and Mabel both laughed as the tree fell on top of their house and then the video cut to an interview with Lazy Susan. A flash of lightning and then the sound of thunder occurred while the pair of Pines watched the home-video of Lazy Susan spinning and Grunkle Stan grunting that the people of Gravity Falls were literally the dumbest people in the world. Literally. And to prove a point, the video cut back to Lazy Susan pointlessly spinning on one spot.

By the time the video about The Hide Behind had ended, it was raining hard outside. The drops of water drummed on the roof and the thunder and lightning were distant enough that they were not afraid of a disaster occurring and could enjoy the sights and sounds of the summer storm. Ford and Mabel both awed at the dark figure that hid behind Dipper as he walked away. Ford's eyes were as wide as saucers and he grinned.

"Incredible! Dipper managed to get the Hide Behind on camera!"

"Wait until Dipping Sauce finds out!" Mabel said gleefully.

While Ford rewinded the tape, Mabel suddenly jumped up and ran off. Soon the sweet smell of popcorn wafted from the kitchen and into the living room, and Mabel soon came back with a big bowl of popcorn.

"What good is watching movies without snacks?" Mabel asked as she held up the bowl to her Grunkle Ford.

He smiled. "I agree, my dear. Thank you." He popped some pieces into his mouth and the teenager resumed her spot on his lap and continued to work on her blue sweater.

Ford inserted the tape just as the door opened and closed once more. Dipper walked in, wet from the trip home, and pulled his blue journal out of his vest to make sure it was dry. He sighed with relief to find that it was, looked at his family in the living room, and said, "Hey guys, what are you watching?"

The teenager's eyes widened when he saw himself appear on the screen.

"Welcome to Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained. Anomaly #42: The Tooth."

"Oh, no!" Dipper panicked, his hands over his signature pinetree hat, the hat he had traded with Wendy when he left last summer and had gotten back when the twins arrived back in Gravity Falls. "No, no no!"

"C'mon, Dipper!" Mabel whined as the camera panned to giant tooth, scaled by Mabel.

The video then cut to Dipper playing the tuba. The boy groaned and held his face, covering his eyes, as Ford marveled at his grandnephew playing an instrument by the lake.

"You play the tuba?" Grunkle Ford observed and turned to find Dipper clearly uncomfortable. A bit confused as to what the boy was embarrassed about, Ford said, "Don't worry, Dipper. I can play the piano."

"You can?" Mabel awed as she watched the screen and saw her twin brother examine the giant tooth.

"Your great-grandmother taught me before Pa made Stanley and I take boxing lessons." Ford explained and cringed. He made himself promise to never refer to Ma as a great-grandmother again; it made him feel too old.

The video cut to Tate McGucket in his tackle-shop as Dipper and Mabel interviewed him. Dipper sat in the armchair with Waddles and petted the pig to give him something to do other than watch in humiliation.

Ford stared and pointed to the TV. "Wait, is that Fiddleford's son? Tater?"

Mabel nodded. Sweet Lord, the four-year-old boy was all grown up. A man now. Yes, Ford was well aware he had been gone for thirty years, but to see Dan and Tate had changed so much really showed how much time has passed. Then again, they weren't the only people to have changed. Pa was gone, Ma was now a great-grandmother, Shermie had grandchildren for crying out loud! Shermie's son, whom Ford had seen as a baby when he was in high-school, had children of his own. So much time had passed in the long years Ford had roamed the dimensions after the incident. He became so lost in his own thoughts that he almost didn't catch Mabel's response to his question.

"Yeah! He's a nice guy! Isn't he living with McGucket now?"

"That's what I heard." Dipper said from the armchair.

Ford nodded in agreement, having heard from his Fiddleford recently, and the old scientist tried to focus on the home-video.

"I'm here at the lake to investigate. I brought Mabel for backup."

"And I brought Bear-O, my adorable childhood puppet! Hey-Oh! Ain't that right, honey? 'Did somebody say "honey"?!' Haha!"

"Nope. Creepy. Bear-O's creepy. Everyone hates Bear-O."

"'But Dipper, who could hate Bear-O?'"

Mabel had asked in her Bear-O voice.

"I can think of a few people."

While the screen showed just how much people hated Bear-O, Mabel glanced up to see what her Grunkle Ford thought of her childhood puppet. She grinned, mistakenly taking his look of disgust for a look of delight, and said,

"Aw, see, Dipper?" The brunette said. "Grunkle Ford doesn't hate Bear-O!"

Dipper was too busy sitting in misery to argue as he watched the pair of twins paddling out onto the lake, thankfully without the creepy bear.

"Mabel, I have seen many disturbing things among my travels across the multiverse," Ford narrated. "Very little makes my skin crawl anymore, but somehow Bear-O has managed it."

"Thank you, Grunkle Ford!" Dipper sighed.

"Boo!" Mabel yelled as she resumed her knitting and watch as bubbles started to come up from the lake.

"Dipper, look!"

"They're over by that island!"

Ford leaned forward a little to see if his old theory of a giant head being disguised as an island was true. He had never taken the time to fully investigate, the idea coming to him in the midst of building the portal, but now he wondered if he was going to receive some answers thanks to his niece and nephew.

"We have to see what happens. What was that?" The camera glitched and something was rumbling. "Oh, no! What's happening?!"

"IT DOESN'T MATTER! ROW, ROW, ROW!"

Ford, Mabel and Dipper watched as the camera was sat in front of Dipper, facing him and the island, and watched as it emerged from the lake and yelled in a horrible voice; the island was in fact a giant floating head with a missing tooth.

"HOLY MOSES!" Ford yelled in shock.

"IT'S GETTING CLOSER! KEEP ROWING!" The camera glitched and soon the little audience saw Dipper looking for the camera. "I dunno. I've been looking for... there it is."He picked it up and explained, "Okay, after it attacked us, that giant head-thing just sunk back into the lake, and it lost another one of it's teeth trying to eat our boat! But the important thing is, we survived. Barely."

"Huh, yeah… 'Did somebody say "Bear-ly"?'"

Ford and Dipper both yelled in horror and Mabel scowled as she worked on her sweater angrily. Ford rewinded the tape and caught the sound of his nephew groaning in misery. He turned as much as he could with Mabel in his lap to find Dipper shielding his eyes as much as his hat could.

"Why did you have to look at those stupid tapes?" He groaned, embarrassed that his old idol had seen his amateur Guide to the Unexplained.

"Dipper, I thought you made those videos to show people the weird stuff or whatever." Mabel said as she worked. "Why are you getting so embarrassed over it?"

"I dunno, I just…" Dipper lifted his hat a little to uncover his eyes and he hugged his knees as he sat in the armchair with Waddles. "It's nothing but stupid aggression of an adolescent. I guess… I guess when I made them I never thought that one of the greatest investigators of anomalies would ever watch them."

Ford watched the teenager carefully and something dawned on him, something that nearly made him throw up. When Ford returned to his home dimension, he had his journals in his possession. He had opened Journal 3 and assumed that he'd skip a page or two from where he left off and resume documenting his research and findings in it, but he had found that his nephew had written and drawn on it. At the time, Ford was immensely angry about everything changing and needed to vent, so he passed off Dipper's recordings as pointless diary entries and spent all night spilling his aggravations onto the pages.

Dipper and Mabel only had the journal a handful of times after that. Ford had asked Mabel to record what she had discovered about unicorns and then Ford gave all three of the journals to Dipper to "look after them" while he hunted down the Mothman for some money he owed him, when in actuality Ford wanted to thank the boy for his loyalty and understanding by letting him look at his recordings, completely forgetting the harsh judgment he had indirectly delivered to Dipper by saying that being a twin was the only thing they had in common. If Dipper hadn't read Ford's rant then he most definitely did when the journal was restored and found just before summer ended.

Obviously, things were different than that first night Ford was home. Dipper and Ford had grown to be very close and the old scientist saw just how similar they were. It was a shame that Dipper never had a chance to read what Ford had written about his nephew before they threw the book into the Bottomless Pit. Ford had taken the time to read Dipper's last passage and wrote his own farewell, which contained something that Ford had mistakenly never taken the time to tell the young man. Ford had hoped that the old feeling of needing to earn his approval had died months ago, but clearly Dipper still felt the need to prove himself worthy to his hero. Ford was determined to make sure that Dipper knew that his fears were unfounded.

"Dipper," Ford said softly and the thirteen-year-old looked up at him. "I… I am flattered that you think so highly of me, but please understand that I hold you in the highest regard. You are far wiser at thirteen than I was at thirty and have a bright future ahead of you. And, for what it's worth, I'm very proud of you and your work, and I'm glad you recorded it so I could see it."

Dipper pressed his lips together and Ford was uncertain if he was trying to hold back a squeal or tears. He somewhat got his answers when Dipper wiped his stinging eyes with his arm and cleared his throat. "Th-Thanks, Grunkle Ford."

Ford gave him an encouraging smile and turned back to the VCR when it ejected the tape. "Unfortunately, this is the last one. Shame really, I've really enjoyed Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained."

"Let's make another one!" Mabel cried out and turned to Dipper. "What do you say, Dipper? What anomaly number should we work on?"

Dipper opened his journal and turned to the latest page. "I think I have just the oddity…"

"Hello! I'm Dipper Pines, here with one of the greatest investigators of anomalies of all time and achiever of twelve PhDs, Dr. Stanford Pines!"

"Thanks for the introduction, Dipper."

"Hey, how come I don't get one?!"

"Mabel, you're so spontaneous that you don't need one."

"I'll take that as a compliment!"

"Today we're here to investigate Anomaly #168: the Mothman. He owes Grunkle Ford some money and has been avoiding him ever since."

"But today we're gonna make that creepy bug pay him back! No one cheats a Pines!"

"You are definitely Stanley's niece."

[madaboutmerlin]

Merlin Writer Month: Round up

Hello Merlin fans! We hope you’ve all had a fabulous week and that you found new authors to enjoy. 

We wanted to let you know that we’ll be posting a compilation of all your recommendations every sunday so, please, if you uploaded something remember to use the hashtag: #MerlinWritterMonth2018; so that we may include what you shared. 

This post will always be divided by the pairing that is the focus of the fic, if it is not tagged under one, then it will go under a General category that  will be at the end. Also, all fics will be found after the cut, because this is a long post and we don’t want to clog yout timeline.

With all of that out of the way, enjoy!

Arthur/Merlin

1. If Merlin’s Into It, by Remianly Length: 660 words Summary: Arthur realizes he’s in love with Merlin and wishes to convey his feelings. He asks Gwaine for advice to help him in writing a love song.

2. The Witchfinder by StoriwrYNos Lenght: 4,669 Summary: When a witchfinder comes to Camelot looking for the person responsible for the magic witnessed there he quickly settles on Merlin as the perpetrator. Will Arthur be able to come up with a plan to save Merlin in time, and will he even want to if he knows what Merlin really is?

3. Em-bare-assing by alienvomplanetenwooh Lenght: 1,589 Summary: Letting down your pants in public can lead to unexpected outcomes.

4. A More Comfortable Place to Sleep by JimJamDavis Word Count: 912 Summary: On the floor in front of the fireplace he could see the tasseled edge of one of his cushions, where it had no place being. The misplaced cushion wasn’t what had stopped him however, but the curl of delicate fingers loosely grasping it.Apparently the room wasn’t quite as empty as he’d thought. Merlin falls asleep on the floor, and Arthur makes him more comfortable.

5. Dead And Breakfast by yourrockyspine Lenght: 4,345 Summary: After his Mum’s demise, Merlin kept her beautifully-maintained B&B up and running.And though he mostly loves having his mother’s ghost nearby, it’s some of the other deceased residents that make it exceedingly hard to please his (living) clients.[This was originally going to be a Happy Merloween chapter, but it’s just too silly and whimsical. No scary here, just utter madness. And a spot of smut and romance.]

6. My Major is Pre-Sorcery by princepratness Lenght: 5,843 Summary: Merlin’s in the pre-sorcery department and Arthur’s in the Prince program. The last thing Arthur expected is for them to ever get along. However, they do. In fact, they get along so damn well that Arthur’s stuck wondering how he never noticed when the insults became kisses instead.

7. Modern Merlin AU by V_L_G_4200 Summary: Inspired by tumblr posts by ‘katiemcgrath’“Almost got arrested.” Lenght: 6,494 “What?? Why?” “Punched the Prince of Wales.” “Was he angry?” “I don’t know. Gave me his number.” “You going to call him?” “Nah, gonna post it on Twitter.”

8. all the best it could be (just you and i) by pynk (pinkjook) Lenght: 7,860  Summary: Arthur’s never been much for pining, but he’s never been much for lying, either. Not even to himself.

9. Between the shadow and the soul by fireatwill52 Lenght: 29,333  Summary: Arthur meets Merlin at a wedding and falls head over heels. About an hour later his fiancee Vivian talks Merlin into being their wedding planner. Arthur thinks this is fantastic, because he gets to spend more time with Merlin… if only there wasn’t going to be a wedding that married him to someone else at the end of it.

10. of blowjobs and candy rings by coffeeandparchment Lenght: 6,221  Summary: "No.“ "What? I didn’t even say anything yet.” “You didn’t have to. It’s all in your beady little eyes. You want me to give you a piggyback to the club.” Arthur said. “My feet hurt,” Merlin said, as if that was a good enough reason for a piggy back. At Arthur’s silence, Merlin pouted. Gods, maybe he was a little more than tipsy. Arthur slowed down as Merlin walked past. “What are you doing now? For someone who is all about doing these quickly you sure ar—” Merlin cut off as he turned to see Arthur stopped and crouching down. "What are you doing?” Arthur huffed in annoyance. “What does it look like, Merlin? Are you going to get on or just leave me crouching here like an idiot all night?”

11. If You’re Still Breathing You’re The Lucky Ones by Withstarryeyes Lenght: 1,722 Summary: But the concern wasn’t the fact that his eyes itched, but what that meant. Ever since Merlin was a child he’d get random fevers at least once or twice a year. They’d stay for a day or two but they always spiked during the night, leaving him delirious and shaking under blankets. He would wake up with itchy eyes, then at midnight he’d have a 105-degree fever and his mother would have to tend to him all night to make sure didn’t die or boil alive. But tonight, Arthur was going on a hunting trip with the knights and Merlin had to tag along to cook and clean and polish armor and his eyes itched.

12. Carry On, Calm or Not by yourrockyspine Lenght: 14,765 Summary: After an inadvertent attempt on his life, 17-year-old Merlin finds himself stuck in the Camelot Ward for Troubled Adolescents. Forced to work through his feelings of helplessness, Merlin develops a new lease on life and learns to find happiness in the strangest of corners.

13. You Can Be King Again by asuralucier Lenght: 14,886  Summary: Victorianesque — Arthur Pendragon, Marquess of Harington flees to his (father’s) country estate for a well-deserved summer holiday. He has his hands full with Merlin, the surly stable boy and Arthur is also pretty sure there’s a ghost haunting his father’s house.

14. The Vacation by Mina264 Lenght: 5,718  Summary: Merlin needs a vacation from Camelot and Arthur tags along. They make some realizations during this vacation that will change their lives forever.

15. Fractured Magic by LunaCanisLupus_22 Lenght: 141,847 Summary: “Oi!” Merlin shouts. “People are trying to study in here. Piss off somewhere else!” “What did you say, spellbegger?” he calls back, tone arrogant and haughty like just about every other Knight on Campus. “Come down here and say that to my face.” Or the Sky High AU where Knights and Magic Users attend University to learn how to fight evil magic and Merlin and Arthur do not get along. Until they do.

16. Knights on the case by TheGameIsOn_Geronimo Lenght: 3,707 Summary: The knights decide that they just can’t deal with all the pining and sexual frustration that comes from being near Merlin and Arthur, so they decide to take matters into their own hands. As (probably) expected: chaos ensues.

17. The Jealous King by guessimaclotpole Lenght: 2,057 Summary: “How about jealous Arthur when he finds out there are loads of other knights and servants who have crushes on Merlin (who sometimes flirts back) and he loses his shit when one starts to court him and is just like “no” and kisses him up against the wall and afterwards Merlin is just like “it’s about fuckin time” mm yeah that’s some good shit right there”

18. inhiare ardens by mishcollin Lenght: 9,616 Summary: Merlin starts a courtship, and Arthur’s fine with it. Completely fine with it. In which Arthur discovers that he’s not fine with it, and some other things about himself.

Gwaine/Merlin

1. For the Love of All Who Gather by  Nebula5030 Lenght: 92,053 Summary: Merlin hadn’t wanted Arthur to discover his magic like that: with Merlin performing a spell in the woods and Arthur simply stumbling across him. But with wounds both old and new festering within him, Arthur believes he has no choice- and banishes his dearest friend. Forced from Camelot, Merlin and Gwaine find themselves living amongst Druids, and Merlin discovers he has the chance to learn more about his magic, his heritage, and the prophecy that binds him and Arthur together. But with tensions stirring both near and abroad, past lies come to light, and everyone finds that not everything is truly as it seems.

2. My Dearest Merlin by Nebula5030 Lenght: 2,305 Summary: A week after the Battle of Camlann, Merlin receives a letter.

3. Private Moments by Nebula5030 Lenght: 758 Summary: With Gwaine’s body against his, the mattress to his back, and Gwaine kissing him slowly and deeply, Merlin found himself wondering why they didn’t do this more often. Why they always waited before taking time to do this. Merlin’s hand began to slide up under Gwaine’s shirt- “Merlin?” Gaius’s voice came through the door. Merlin and Gwaine both froze, their heads snapping to the door. Oh. That was why.

4. Obelus: Doubt The Tale by Lion_owl Lenght: 2,427 Summary: Gwaine's got back to Camelot and Gaius is safe; now, he's worried about what's become of Merlin. But soon they're reunited and they talk everything out.

Arthur/Gwen

1. got to be (something bigger than me) by CyberQueens Lenght: 30,620 Summary:  A thousand and a half years (or thereabouts) after Camlann, Gwen finds two strange men at her door. Written for roundtablemanagers' Round Table Minutes March 2016 prompt 'Once and Futures'.

2. Baby this is it by sadpendragon Lenght: 342 Summary: It had given Arthur a certain joy to tease Guinevere about the words she had told him during his illness. But it had also made him think.

3. Knights & Merlin (+ Gwen) by tymedfire * Lenght: 9,171 Summary: This is a collection of unconnected fics, with each fic focusing on the relationship between Merlin and a Knight of the Round Table, with a bonus addition of Gwen. There will be fluff and angst, though mostly angst, but who knows. There WILL be fluff, though, I promise you that.

* We decided to put this one here because even though most of the fics in this series are not tagged to go with a certain ship, one of them has Arthur/Gwen as the tagged pairing.

Gwen/Merlin

1. Kiss me when I’m down by sadpendragon Lenght: 937 Summary:  We were each other’s first after all.

Merlin/Morgana

1. Any Other Name by RemixConstellation Lenght: 1,024 Summary:  She fits him, like nothing else he has ever worn. Nothing he will ever wear again. There’s a bounty on their heads. One they cannot out run. One that flows in their veins and lights up their eyes. Sometimes, in the glow of the fire, he wonders what crime it is to just be born. How could a king with magic under his sign, put a sword through a sister’s chest for the magic under her skin?

Arthur/Leon

1. A Poetic Affair by sadpendragon Lenght: 732 Summary:  Leon knew what poetry meant, and Leon wasn’t so sure he was amused by it anymore.

[angrykittybarbarian]

Egg Timers

So a while ago I wrote this one shot as a tribute to my friend’s grandfather who passed away suddenly last summer. The following story is inspired by one that has actually happened and when she told me this story of her grandparents I couldn’t help but think that my Ryder and Jaal would totally do such a thing. I hope you like it, I’m not really much of a writer.

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It was a sunny and peaceful day on Harval. The red gas giant was looming over the sky and groups of mantas hovered across the horizon.

Two years have passed since Rachel Ryder, human Pathfinder, had defeated the Archon and effectively began the end of the kett as a meaningful force in the Heleus cluster. Normalcy began to descend over the troubled galaxy, a normalcy the Milky Way species desperately welcomed back and adult angara were absolutely unacustomed to. Even without an imminent threat most of them constantly walked around in battle armour, as if ready to strike down any possible attacker who might show themselves and Resistance patrols were still a very common sight too, although they mostly spent their time walking around and doing nothing.

Colonist settlements and angaran daara began to truly develope and grow. On Harval it meant that the hidden villages stepped into the light where they were formerly hidden by the planet's viscious jungle. And this developement contained a variety of new buildings. For the first time after centuries of chaos and disorganization the angara started to run their own buisnesses. Not the loose trading exchanges they did with eachother mostly to keep everyone alive and supplied, but actual economic structures in co-operation with Milky Way traders.

One of these buisnesses was a shop in Daar Pelaav that opened on this exact day. It wasn't really something special if it wasn't for the galactic scale war with the kett not too long ago. The shop sold mostly kitchen wares and cooking utensiles like plates, pots, pans, bowels and any tool necessary to keep the tummy happy, but also decorational items, simply made to look pretty on a window shelf.

Colourful shining balloons decorated the entrance. A big red sign read '10% opening discount on everything' and a human woman in a painfully yellow t-shirt distributed small packages of candy to any children entering the building with their parents.

Like other curious inhabitants, the Ryder siblings and their partners decided to take a look at the new shopping opportunity.

Rachel, Jaal, Jacob and Vetra came here per Vetra's request respectively. Originally it only involved her husband Jacob, but when Sahuna heared from Rachel, who was telling Jaal that her brother and his lover planned to pay a visit there, the older angaran woman insisted that her son and daughter bring her one of those flower forms she had seen on the extranet not a long time ago so she can bake her pies (or attempts of the same) in them, instead of the blunt round ones she happened to have around during her first try.

So here she stood, with her husband and a clear quest from her mother-in-law. Vetra wasn't so clear about her interest in the place however.

„So, why are we here again?“, Rachel asked, as the group walked in, deliberately ignoring the cringe worthy smile of the woman in the eye cancer provocating t-shirt.

„Vetra wanted to buy something.“, came Jacob's immediate and prompt response.

„Oh really, Captain Obvious? And I thought she wanted to sacrifice a fiend here.“, Rachel shot back, slightly too sharp. It earned her a low chuckle from Jaal and a nervous mandible twitch from Vetra.

„Well, it's because she didn't tell me either what exactly she wanted here, oh mighty queen of saracsm.“, Jacob answered dryly. Vetra beside him fidgeted with her talons restessly.

„I actually wanted it to be a surprise...“, she mumbled shyly. Jacob's face lost at least two shades of colour. Oh boy, not again...

„I found an earth recipe in the Nexus data banks and...“, Vetra explained.

„Vetra, please...“, Jacob attempted to talk the idea ou of her.

„...and I need a very large pot for it and we don't have one, so...“, the turian ended her explanation and glanced into the round.

Rachel had a wide grin on her face that reached from one ear to the other. Her twin brother had told her about the incident with the burnt steak.

„Ah, you wish to cook for him. To take care of someone's every need is a true testimony of love.“, Jaal commented.

Vetra's mandibles twitched again, this time with hope and a slight sparkle in her eyes.

„Yeah, well, she doesn't need to cook for me. There are othr ways, love.“, Jacob said hestitantly and turned to Vetra with his last sentence.

„You don't want me to cook, because of last time?“, she answered with audible dissapointment.

„What? No, no. I mean, I'm an adult-“, he stumbled over his own explanation.

„Or trying to be.“, Rachel threw in. Jacob sighed heavily almost bordering on a growl.

„Look, point is, the reason I'm with you is not because of you being some kind of subtitute mom for me. I'm with you because I enjoy your company, I enjoy you and because you show your love by being there when it counts. That's all I need.“, Jacob replied, his ckeeks won their colours back and turned into a glow of red now.

He looked at Vetra and took her hand in his, exhaling shakily. It was like he was confessing his love to her for the first time.

And here he was complaining about her and Jaal being sickeningly sweet together, Rachel thought, still grinning like an idiot.

She felt Jaal's hand wander up her back and finally resting on her shoulder. He drew her slightly closer and gave her a knowing smile. He thought the same.

„And this is why I love you.“, Vetra said softly.

„No pressuring expectations. But this is also why I want to do this. Not to conform to some ideal or duty. I just thought why not make something nice once in a while?“, she said with more confidence.

Jacob sighed defeatedly. „Alright, let's get in. But promise you'll let me help you with this.“

„Deal. Oh, and you two are officially invited to dinner now.“, Vetra gazed at Rachel and Jaal with her last sentence.

„A pleasure.“, Jaal replied happily and Rachel nodded in agreement.

The group finally entered the shop. A few signs hung from the ceiling, giving directions to the various sections.

„Okay, so cooking is to the right and baking to the left. Where do we go first?“, Rachel asked.

„How about we split up, quickly get what we need and meet up at the exit?“, Jacob suggested.

„Good plan, let's not waste more time in here than needed.“, Rachel agreed. She hated shops like this one, not because it wasn't fun shopping for dayly tools like pans and baking forms, but because she tended to get carried away by the offeres and as a result ended up leaving more money behind than necessary because that bowl was so beautiful and little else.

The group did as planned. As Vetra and Jacob walked straight for the cooking department Rachel and Jaal began looking for the requested silicone form between other baking utensiles. To their great dissapointment they didn't find the desired item anywhere.

„Maybe ask a clerk?“, Jaal suggested. As if on command an angara with a name badge reading his name pinned to his rofjin with the same sickening yellow as the woman's t-shirt from outside they walked by.

„Uh, excuse me?“, Rachel beckoned for him to stop.

„Yes, how can I help?“, he answered.

Rachel proceeded to explain what they were searching for. The angara replied that they had had only few exemplars to begin with which were taken already early on on that day.

„I'm sorry. Perhaps we'll have another load next week.“, he apologized.

„Thanks anyway.“, Rachel answerd and left the clerk to go on about the rest of his work.

„Kind of a pity but not so dramatic. We just come back next week.“, Jaal said. The words were on themselves nothing special but they way he said them made Rachel think for a moment. Like many other angara Jaal still wasn't used to having such certainty in his life. Not too long ago he couldn't even surely tell if he would live to see the next day. Rachel shook the thought away. The shop wasn't really the place to dwelve deeply into such gloomy thoughts.

„Back to our rendevouz point then.“, she prompted and the pair made their way back to the entrance which was also the exit. Rachel however was stopped in her tracks not two seconds later.

On a table she saw packages of egg timers arranged above one another in no particular order. Many of them were standing there unpacked. About twenty to thirty of them.

„Darling one?“, Jaal asked her in confusion as he was forced to stop suddenly as well. A diabolic idea came to her mind and once again a grin spread on her face. But this time it was an evil one.

„You see those things?“, she said and tilted her head to the egg timers. Jaal eyed the devices dubiously. „Yes. What are they?“, he asked. „Egg timers. You use them to see if your cooked egg is ready. They ring once the required time is up.“ Jaal opened his mouth slightly as if he wanted to say something but closed it again. His eyes wandered a bit around as he processed the information until it seemed to sink in as much as it could.

Rachel still grinned. „And...?“, Jaal questioned further as he saw the lasting smile.

„Okay listen, we turn on these unpacked ones, all with a one minute difference.“, Rachel answered. Jaal's face split into a wide smile as he slowly understood where this was going.

„And then we wait.“, he said.

„And then we get the hell out of here.“, Rachel corrected and they immediately proceeded to realize their genius plan. They worked as quickly as possible so they would have enough time to escape before the alarms would go off and returned the colouful devices to their places as accurately as possible so no one would notice that something was off. Once they were done they rushed away to the exit.

Jacob stood behind Vetra as she measured two pots that caught her interest the most against each other.

„Do you think this one's enough?“, Vetra asked and held up the slightly smaller one.

„Depends on how much you want to make.“, Jacob replied.

„Hm...“, Vetra made. She glanced at both pots in exchange before she decided to put the small one back.

„This one's only slightly more expensive. And it will not be too small if we decide to make a bit more.“, Vetra explained. She seemed to be content with her choice and that was for Jacob enough to go with it.

„Alright then, let's go pay and...“, Jacob stopped in midsentence as he turned towards the outskirts of the baking department only to discover Jaal and Rachel fumbling with the egg-timers.

„What's up, Jacob?“, Vetra now asked after his sudden silence. The turian lady followed her lover's gaze to its focus. They both observed the other pair for a few moments before Jaal and Rachel appearantly decided to jogg out of the shop, giggling maniacly and loud enough for Vetra and Jacob to hear.

„Did they seriously...?“, Vetra asked with an unbelieving surprise.

„These children.“, Jacob commented laughingly and shook his head slightly.

Only seconds afterwards the egg-timer began to go off. One loud deafening ringing after the other started to sound through the room in a seemingly unending harmony of panicking annoyance as confused clerks scuttled around the table attempting to turn the devices off.

Shopping for houshold utensiles turned out to be fun after all.

[claws-and-wit]

There's something so unnervingly bitter sweet about looking at my camera roll's "one year ago today" feature, with tomorrow being the "anniversary" of when I travelled to Munich.

I didn't know it then, a year ago today, that that would be the final place I visited. I could sense that things were getting dire and there was a chance my location would go remote. I even made a tongue-in-cheek Instagram post about covid cough on the train. But there's something so sad about it being my final weekend abroad, and I didn't spend it in Prague. I don't know if I'll ever stop mourning what could've been. Next Saturday is the one year anniversary of my return to the States. A year into this global pandemic and the end is finally coming into sight—but it's still months away. I cannot even begin to process that it's already been a year, and I wonder if I will ever be able to process the grief this past year has brought me.

On March 5th I went to Munich, with plans to visit London, Amsterdam, Vienna, and a field trip to Karlštejn in the coming weeks. On March 8th I returned home, we would have remote class sessions moving forward. On March 10th I went shopping and bought a few dresses: one for an opera I would never attend and two others for a spring break in Greece that would not come to pass. I took a photo of a building I thought was pretty because I had the feeling I might not get the chance to do so again. That night, I was reassured that despite the closing of our campus, our dorms would stay open. On the 11th, I went out to dinner at my new favorite restaurant.

at three in the morning local time I learned Trump had given a speech— travel from Europe to the US would be henceforth halted. Three hours later my best friend was getting into a taxi headed to the airport, the sunrise was beautiful and I was heartbroken. I fell asleep and woke up around 3 pm. The dorm was in chaos— RA's were knocking door to door taking a survey: are you returning home? I told them no. My dad is high risk, I want to stay as long as possible. They came back a few hours later: are you sure? my response: Yes. An hour later: I'm sorry but you'll need to leave, please go to campus and they'll arrange you the next available flight home. It's 5 pm now and I need to get there before 6.

On the way there I take photos and videos of my every day life I had neglected to record: the long escalator into the subway, the announcement of the closing doors, the tunnel that gave me a shortcut to campus (as long as a the door was open), The exterior of the NYU buildings. I had just purchased a transit pass to last me the rest of the semester a few weeks prior, this is the last time I'll use it. All said and done, in less than 3 hours I had gone from "I'll stay as long as I can" to "my flight leaves for the US in fourteen hours." I make it out in time to record a video of the Astronomical Clock striking the hour, a video I hadn't thought to take yet. A friend invites me to watch the sunset with them— I inform them I won't be able to make it before dark, they invite me to dinner/a farewell party in their dorm. I accept. Instead of taking the metro straight home, I spend the last of my crowns on souvenirs and finish walking my normal path to the Tescos and buy some snacks and candy. I buy beer that I won't be able to legally drink back home for three more months, I buy a kinder egg that I forget is contraband. I take the tram home, this time it's empty and I get a seat. I nearly forget to record my stop announcement. A half hour walk later and I arrive in an area of Prague I hadn't had the chance to explore. I climb the ten flights to the shared kitchen common space. On a long table are the remnants of everyone's perishable foods. At some point a raspberry is squished onto my coat. Someone passes around a pint of beer and the last of their vermouth— the RA looks the other way. We pose for a photo wearing masks left over from the H1N1 epidemic a decade prior, the masks are expired but I still grab a few— just in case. We chat and laugh and play Jackbox games until 1 in the morning and I suddenly realize I hadn't spent any time with my classmates outside of lessons. I had intended to make friends and now it was too late. At some point, I walk home, alone. I still hadn't gotten the chance to pack and clean up my room. It takes me the remaining three hours but I finally get most of my possessions into my suitcase. I say goodbye to the sweatpants I bought when I was 16 and most of my jeans— I couldn't fit them and my new clothes and souvenirs both in the luggage.

At five am I wait outside for my taxi... it doesn't come. I call an Uber and make it to the airport on time. He drops me off at the wrong gate. The line for checkin is long. At 8 am I board a flight for Vienna, the friend who invited me to the get-together is on the same flight. I notice the plane has propellers on the engine. I take a photo. It's cloudy and I'm on the aisle so I don't get to see Prague as we depart. I finally get to rest. I only have an hour layover between flights and the plane taxis for a half hour. I sprint to the gate and make it in time to board the jet home. The man at the customs counter had stamped my visa. I briefly note to myself that my stay was so short I wouldn't have needed that visa. My friend's flight is headed to Chicago. Mine is to New Jersey. We split up and I'm suddenly flying on my own for the first time in my life. The plane takes off and I have a beer with my breakfast. The man in front of me orders a glass of red wine. He has three more throughout the flight. The baby in the row next to me starts crying. I have another beer. When the plane lands in New Jersey I learn the final leg of my journey home to Vermont is delayed. It's too windy for the small planes to land and they're only allowing a few at a time. I have wait an additional two hours in the airport. The Auntie Anne's pretzels give me a stomach ache. I try to take a nap but I'm afraid I'll miss my boarding call. My phone is dying. We board at 8. My dad is there to pick me up at the gate when we land just after 9. Then there's an hour drive back home, I almost ask if we could get chipotle— the only one in the state is 10 minutes from the airport. I forget to ask. By the time I arrive home and lug my stuff up the stairs it's 10 pm. I had been traveling for 20 hours. In just 48 hours I had gone from watching Shrek on Netflix with my best friend during an exciting semester abroad to sleeping on the couch in Vermont.

8 days later and I'm in the ER with a high fever and intense stomach pain. My mom fears it might be a kidney or liver issue, and calls the hospital. They tell me to stay home. She tells them I could be dying, and brings me anyway. they tell me it's just a digestion issue and give me a glass of water. Indigestion is apparently a symptom of the new virus. They ask if I have a cough, I tell them I had coughed the day before, once, but it was probably from my smoky environment. They "diagnose" me with covid. I'm denied a test, there's not enough to go around to be testing otherwise healthy people like me. "Call your GP if your symptoms worsen"; if I'm actively dying I can get a test. My symptoms do worsen. I fear for my family's safety. For a week I wonder if I'll stop breathing during my sleep. It winds me to walk from the bedroom to the bathroom. When I lay on my back my lungs make a rattling noise. Each exhale i make is accompanied with a small wheeze. I don't call my GP. I get better. And now it's a year later.

I still struggle with stairs and brisk walks. I can't tell if it's from wearing the mask or the extra weight I gained or irreparable damage to my lungs. If I pay close attention sometimes I notice my lungs feel weird when taking a deep breath. I'm eligible for a vaccine now, but getting it will prove easier said than done. They say people who already had it only need one dose. Did I have it though? I wasn't given a test. Graduation is cancelled.

[httpsjournal]

The table is full again. I sit closely to watch how, one by one, the househelps swarmed the table for six on a regular dinner night, with pans and dishes they had probably spent the entire day running to finish. If it were a game of who made it first, the barbecue would’ve won for making it to the first cut. It had probably been the first thing they had to start on, judging by the hours and hours of smoke shrouding their backyard since this morning. Then came in the celebratory staples: bihon for a touch of Filipino, spaghetti for a taste of Filipinized west, fish for the repenting sinners, lechon for the religious pagans who sign their crosses at the sight of hypertension, and fried chicken for the tongues not made out for anything but deep fried. I sit closely to watch how at every dish that lands on the holy table, heads turn to catch a glimpse of the piled-up grubs—drenched in oil, fats, and carbs all together. I chuckle at the sight. I can almost hear them sifting through the dishes they'd try out first. The last dish came in the grandest entrance and marks the end of every grumbling appetite's anticipation. As the freshly steamed rice is set put, vis a vis the array of dishes set before it, everyone rises for thanksgiving. Tita Nene, the wife of my paternal grandfather's eldest brother who lives a block across us, whom by the technicalities of genealogy I should refer to as lola but never got around to doing so, leads the grace for blessing. Dressed in our oddly ridiculous color-coded tops, in which this year involved a deep rummage in my wardrobe to find a red shirt hopefully buried underneath, we gather around, heads on bow, and recites the prayer we’ve been taught at the table at the age of seven.

Reunions are a tradition to our family. We do it every year or two: we take a dip on a summer or gather for dinner on December. Usually, it's a dinner on a summer, when our relatives from the States, to which our family has dubbed the Macandog's Seattle branch, come by to check up on the East Asian department—the main office. These reunions are likely to always involve (over)eating, dancing, singing, drinking, playing, and lots and lots of talking. And in the course of years we gather for, yet another table filled, reunions held different meanings at different points of my life. I remember when I used to love these reunions. I get so giddy at the thought of a gathering. It was like my play in the park after an afternoon of forced nap by my mother who fright me with words like: "’Di ka lalaki kung di ka matutulog ngayon." But I never got around to always loving it. I remember so vividly why I began hating the thought of coming up for dinner, surrounded by relatives whom I've not seen in years. During the era of my consciousness, it became a pit hole of unsolicited judgment and unnecessary opinions. It drained me. So, when I distanced myself, growing apart made reunions a gathering of familial strangers. I sit across people whose faces resemble mine or my father or my tito, but I feel robbed by the very doing of our blood—the culprit of this show. And that moon, streaming through the openness of the night, rendered them, all the more, a stranger.

It’s amazing how things manage to take a 360 degree turn without even realizing it. When I was little, I remember waking up to the chaos in the kitchen when my mother had started preparing her share for tonight's dinner. Outside, the men had gathered around to turbo the skewered lechon, over the makeshift roaster made of charcoal and several dried-out leaves gathered the day before. We live in a neighborhood where our neighbors are my cousins and titos and titas. So I grew up seeing the behind the scenes of every reunion. It was a dramatic stress for everyone, especially to Tita Julie, my father's cousin from his father's younger brother. Their house is, by default, the venue each year. My cousins and I would turn up to play early that day. Taking advantage of the chaos, we escape to play nonstop until we're called in for a brisk cold bath in preparation for dinner. Once dinner consumes the night, we resume the game that had not ended just yet. My cousins and I would join all the program play to win a prize of candies our parents made us repack the night before. We'd run around, eluding the frustrated gazes of our mothers, and bump into a foreign face whom we'd gang up with to join our tactics. And after all had devoured and committed their yearly sin of gluttony, we'd slowly sneak our way out to play a game of tag, patintero, or if we feel bold enough, hide and seek under the dark bed of the night. We’d run and run to our breaths desire, like our hearts running out of life to keep itself pumping. The day would end with our shirts doused in sweat and laughs louder than the animated anecdotes of our parents, who’s sober enough to drink more but intoxicated enough to spare us the reprimand. I remember when reunions were my play at the park. Until such time that it wasn’t anymore.

Like any other high school teen, I grew out of the mold and was exposed to whole different world of self-consciousness. I started getting my period, housing pimples and gaining weight here and there. I never thought it was a big deal until each year, someone would point it out to me.

"Ang rami mo ng pimples ah," a tita, who has been staring long enough, blurt out. This family isn’t a fan of euphemism, you can tell.

Everyone close enough to hear would remove themselves from their own set of conversations to agree and huddle on me. I remember forcing a laugh and etching a face of pretense to ease myself off the growing mass of awkwardness.

"Ah, oo nga po e," I'd respond.

"Gamitan mo ng (a soap unknown to this generation's Korean skincare inventory)."

"O kaya ng (another primitive practice my lola had already ask me to do)."

It's a long list of remedies and a long night of narratives about their own pubescent pimple experience. It's a safe zone of smiling and laughing until they begin asking what I’ve been doing that's making it worse or how it's my fault that I stress too much.

How in the world is it my fault now?

I suddenly became the subject of an interrogation. And my mother, my life saver, my bearer for nine months, and my comfort, joins in to gang up on me as well. In the words of this generation's language of the bird, "I feel attackedt" with a “t”. Ang it would finally conclude with, "Huwag mo nalang galawim, it'll go away on its own" . And at the back of my mind, I have the strongest urge to pull off the most the dramatic eye roll there is.

On the other end of the room, however, I find myself stumbled amongst the topic of the my titos, drunk enough to begin slurring their speeches about life and love. They start asking about my relationship at 13—a topic at which my parents don’t even dare touch. The long lament of the how's of life would come hereafter: get into this college, get into this course, or get into this job. It's a never-ending list of suggestive pressure, that at 13, I never had the intention to fathom.

The next years were a series of de ja vu. As I transformed towards the age of maturity, the playground of reunions I used to know, transformed itself into a pit hole I wouldn't dare cross. So, I drifted.

But growing apart made us live very different lives that reunions became a gathering of familial strangers.

Tita Nene concludes the prayer with the Catholic ratification of “amen,” and we finally line up for the buffet, each one painting a picture of eagerness and hunger on their faces. I serve myself a platter of chicken and rice and begin searching for a table I could sit well on without being bothered by the clamor of conversations. A tita, who, in God’s forgiveness, I do not know, catches my elbow and lures me into the most awaited conversation I’ve been trying to evade. Apparently, they had just landed the plane from Seattle yesterday, unloaded their bags in Naga today, and went directly to this infamous celebration of family. Her face does look like a Macandog. With that distinctive feature of a nose wide enough to pass down from one generation to another, she’s probably one out of the many titas I failed to draw on family trees back in grade school. She asks me how I’ve been, but I keep on wondering how she’s known me all along. And the short 3-meter distance from where I was standing to the array of tables set in the middle of the yard became the longest walk I’ve had in so long. She finally made me sit down and join her children’s party of silence and awkwardness at a table directly up front the stage. For some universal force, I end up sitting across our Seattle branch cousins, gawking at each other's unfamiliarity, sharing a nudge of smile, and uttering a good "hi" and "hello" at its best. Come to think of it, their faces do come out of my Facebook timeline every now and then—at Christmas, at New Year or at the exclusive Penafrancia fiesta they hold each year. They’re my family, but they’re no stranger than the people I sit to mass with at church. I’d say distance is an excuse but even the cousins I used to play with became strangers in the span of years we spent inside our own houses doing school and making friends. We'd only share a smile of greeting when an eye lands on each other before departing off to our own share of spaces, drowned in our better version of reunions on Instagram, Facebook or whatever social media application is set to the market for the year. The titos and titas, who've lost track of our ages, ready their scripts of speeches that they had already asked me the year before. I ready mine as well. Little updates but, for the most parts, the same.

Setting aside the cutleries, I finish my food with another prayer of thanks. Taking caution not to be pulled in a conversation again, I remove myself from the group and safely secure myself a place at a distance, near my tita’s smokehouse, where light seems to shy away. I look at them and thought, this is our reunions now, huh.

I watch as the night closes into another drinking session of grownups. They drink as if their stomachs can’t fill a barrel of beer already. A tito, who had had enough alcohol, removes himself from the table and picks the mic off the karaoke machine rented out for the night. Barely pressing anything but manages anyway. Those sober still laugh to ridicule the drunk but does not miss a chance to sing along to the tune of the national Filipino karaoke song—Frank Sinatra’s My Way. Faking a cough of what seems to be a vocal routine, my tito enters into the beat:

And now, the end is near

And so I face the final curtain

The song then croons its way into the night.

My friend, I'll say it clear

I'll state my case, of which I'm certain

Still hidden behind the lurking dark of this reveling moment, I smile at the thought of their happiness as my eyes well up with salt and water.

I've lived a life that's full

I've traveled each and every highway

Under the light damp of shine from the moon that blessed us full for the night, my mind wanders back to us-- the generations to succeed.

But more, much more than this

I did it my way

I sit still to capture everything—the growing redness on my parents faces, the stretching smiles drawn on their lips, and the amassing joy on each one’s heart. I sit still, shuttering my eyes for a snap, because maybe, this will be my only return ticket to a memory otherwise forgotten.  

Regrets, I've had a few

But then again, too few to mention

[thats-pucking-amazing]

Kiss Cam (Andre Burakovsky)

So Crosby was supposed to be next, but I already had this written...so enjoy a Swedish Bean while you wait. Crosby is next :)

"Andre. It's going to be fine. I'm going to be fine." You were walking hand in hand with your boyfriend of three months toward his place of employment...otherwise known as the Verizon Center. Yes, when you said Andre you meant the lovable left winger, Andre Burakovsky.

"Yes," He agreed in a slightly accented voice. "But....what if something happens and I can't get to you? Or a puck goes over the glass? Or some criminal tries to kidnap you??"

You waited for him to finish his tangent and looked at him with your eyebrows raised. When he trailed off you decided it was safe to talk. "Andre. Take a deep breath." You waited while he complied before continuing. "I will be in an arena full of security, I'm not going to be kidnapped and nothing will happen where I will be in disastrous danger. I will keep my eyes on the puck at all time. I'm not going to be caught by surprise and get nailed in the head. I promise."

"But-" He began to protest again.

"Babe," You looked up at him through your lashes. "I really am looking forward to this. I can't wait to see you in action up close..."

He groaned. "Don't give me that look." The look persisted. "Fine! Fine! You can come!"

You gave a slight laugh. "If you were going to decide I couldn't come you should have decided that before you picked me up. Since we're literally already at the door."

He stuck his tongue out at you and pulled open the door that led into the players area. You walked down the hallway together that led towards the locker room, still holding hands. As you saw it in the distance, you slowed to prolong your walk.

"I really am excited," You said letting go of his hand to straighten the tie he was wearing.

"I'm excited you're here. Even though it's sketchy."

You giggled a bit and wrapped your arms around his neck. "Sketchy?"

"Yes. Sketchy." He wrapped his arms around you waist and pulled you to him in a hug. "I need to go get changed for warm-ups and you need to go find your seat. Tom got his brother a seat by you."

"I guess you're right. And I'll make sure to get the dirt on Tom from his brother for future use. Good luck." You stood on your tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his lips. One you had intended to be short. However, with his lips on yours, all intentions flew out the window.

One of his hands worked it's way up your back to tangle in your hair as he kissed you harder. A sudden loud bang broke the two of you apart. You peeked around Andre to see Ovi standing in the locker room doorway with a stick in his hand and smirk on his face.

"You can kiss him after we win." He shouted. You rolled your eyes and pressed another kiss, this time a closed mouth one, to his lips.

"Bye for real this time." You turned around and headed in the opposite direction as him, this time headed for the stands.

You had been to games before. You had even been to games while dating Andre. The only difference with this game was he had surprised you with a glass seat for your birthday instead of you being in the WAGs box. Hence the whole freakout on the way into the center.

As you worked your way through the throngs of people you were in Caps heaven. Thousands of people were milling around, trying to find their seats, buying merchandise and concessions. Since you were normally in the box, the one that didn't result in power plays, you didn't get to see all this chaos.

You found what section you were in and headed down the stairs. You showed your ticket to the attendant stationed halfway down the stairs and she directed you to your seat. Which was front row, right behind the left face-off circle. There was a man in the seat beside you, that you assumed to be Tom's brother. The Wilson jersey he was rocking and the resemblance kinda tipped you off.

"Hi!" You shouted over the music and people. "I'm Y/N. Are you Tom's brother?"

"Hey! Yeah, my name's Peter!" He stuck out his hand for you to shake. "You're Andre's girlfriend?"

"Yeah! This is the first game I've been to that I haven't been with the other WAGs...so he's kinda nervous about everything."

"I'd be nervous too, releasing you out to the wild must have been hard." You laughed before standing up to cheer as the Caps skated out. As they settled into their routine you smirked at the glass in front of you. Andre had skated up and planted himself right in front of you. You tapped the glass to get his attention and he turned around with a smug look on his face. You gestured for him to move and he rolled his eyes but moved forward slightly so you could see around his large bulk.

Peter leaned over towards you, "Protective?"

"Silly." You responded. You and Peter laughed but broke off when a sharp rap sounded on the glass. You looked up to see Andre glaring at the two of you. You gave him a confused look but then laughed as Tom playfully shoved him to wave at the two of you. Your laughter again broke off as Andre and Tom engaged in a heated discussion you couldn't hear. Tom just laughed and skated off, so obviously he was not very concerned with whatever was irritating Andre.

"I wonder what that was about." Peter said from beside you.

"Your guess is as good as mine." As warm-ups came to a close Andre skated by your seat one last time. You pounded that glass and he stopped briefly. "I love you!" He must have read your lips because he made kissy lips in your direction before clearing the ice.

"I'm going to go up and grab myself some food. Do you want me to get you something while I'm up?"

"A water bottle and cotton candy?"

You fished out some money as he laughed. "You're just like my wife. She says the healthiness of the water balances out the sugar of the cotton candy."

"That's because it does!!" The two of you laughed before he headed back up the stairs. While he was gone you looked around the arena and appreciated the fact that you saw very few rival team jerseys. You took a selfie with the ice in the background and posted it online. Just as the teams came back out for the face-off to start the game, Peter returned with your snacks.

"A water and cotton candy for the lady."

"Why thank you, my good sir." You took them from his hands and got ready to focus. It was game time.

The first period flew by scoreless and it seemed like you blinked and second period was starting. This was destined to be a longer period because somebody...*cough cough TOM WILSON cough cough* decided to crack a pane of glass on the other side of the stadium from you. So as the employees raced around trying to take out the broken piece in order to put in the new one and the players skated around so they didn't ice themselves, the Capitals media people played things on the jumbotron.

You and Peter laughed at the dance cam and the children who were dancing around and then laughed even harder when they showed Holtby on there and he gave a little hip shake to play along. They had a quick trivia round and then as the new piece of glass was wheeled onto the ice they started a kiss cam.

You were cooing over the older couple who were shown when suddenly your face was reflected up on the screen. With Peter. Oh. No. As the stadium began to get rowdy because the two of you did not immediately comply you caught a glimpse of a red bullet speeding towards the glass.

Andre stopped right in front of the glass in view of the camera and pointed at you and Peter before animatedly shaking his head no. This captured the attention of a lot of people, so instead of the screen changing after a few seconds of resisting...it stayed on.

Peter held up his left hand and pointed to the gold band that was displayed on his ring finger. Matching the gesture you held up your left hand and pointed to your bare ring finger. Evidently the crowd and screen controllers got the memo because finally the screen changed.

Finally the whistle was blown, signalling that it was time to continue with the game. Before Andre skated off you caught his attention again. You winked and blew him a kiss. He rolled his eyes but blew one back to you, causing your heart to warm.

The rest of the game passed mostly without incident and the GWG was scored by none other than Andre himself. After it ended, you and Peter headed for the player hallway to wait for them.

Tom came out first and he and his brother did the weird bro hug before the two of them departed. Andre followed shortly after and grabbed your hand as the two of you started for home again.

"So what was your issue with Tom at the start of the game?" You asked.

"You saw that, huh?"

"Babe...it was literally right in front of me. How could I have missed it."

"Well...I was....." He mumbled something indecipherable.

"What?"

"I was yelling at him for bringing his single brother to flirt with you." He said in a rush.

"But Peter's married." You pointed out.

"I figured that out with the kiss cam debacle." He screwed his face up in disgust with the mention of the kiss cam.

"Andre," You stopped and reached up turning his face towards you. "Were you jealous?"

"I thought he was going to kiss you!" He shouted. "Or worse...that you would kiss him." He looked down at his shoes and your eyebrows drew down at his insecurity.

You wrapped your arms around his waist and looked up at his face again. "Baby...the only person I ever want to kiss is you. Now, let's go home and celebrate your goal."

He smiled and pressed a quick kiss to the top of your head.

"Deal."

[ohmama2012]

My Eulogy for Dad

This is the eulogy I read for my dad at his memorial service on April 28, 2019 at the Riverside Memorial Chapel in NYC. He passed away on April 2. I have revised a few things to correct typos and reflect what I actually said in the room, to the best of my recollection. I wrote this with a desire to let everyone in the room know who he was as a father, a side of him only I had the luck to know. It was my good friend Christopher Piatt, the only person I shared my draft with, who noticed the “stage manager” through line and advised me to add a few more theater anecdotes. I am indebted to him for the line about dad being a consummate stage manager at the center of our lives -- not just because it made a good line in the speech, but because it’s true and it helped me to see that. - Ali, 5/3/19 

According to family legend, one of my father's earliest memories of me, and one of his latest memories of his father, was the look of abject horror on my grandfather's face as I tangoed around the living room as a toddler, singing “I’d be Surprisingly Good For You” from Evita. In the song, little Eva propositions Juan Peron with something more than just a “frantic tumble and a shy goodbye.”

I grew up with the theater. And not just because I'll always think of my dad singing “Bobby Bubby Bobby” as he pulled out Company album on vinyl to place on the turntable.

I should add that’s rare form -- my dad didn’t much like singing along to the many musicals he so adored. He did sing me “Doh a Dear” as a lullabye, and I sang it to him repeatedly in his final days, but by and large he would say: “Lyrics are your mother’s department."

They made such a good theater pair. He designed the shows, she remembered the names and dates, and they both equally treasured the adventures. Their love of musicals shone through in their parenting. My mother likes to say that if Patti LuPone had had better diction, a young Alison Weiss would have never picked up the Evita libretto and learned to read.

If I learned my ABC’s from Evita, I learned my LBJs, IRTs, and LSDs -- and several latin words -- from the other great musical that I forever associate with my father. He got his start on Broadway stage managing Hair. He was not a hippie, but he was a great enabler, calling cues in a haze of pre-show puffs and taking the show on the road through the USA amidst a backdrop of the Vietnam era. He taught me so much history through his stories about working on Hair. 

But beyond the love of theater by association, my dad gave me the unique privilege of growing up as the child of a designer. As a baby, I crinkled canary paper at his drafting table. As a tot, I cut out collages from Rosco gel samples. As a kid, I made origami from extra Playbill inserts, hanging out in the box seats of a Broadway house during tech week.

He taught me a true love of New York. Once he sent me a postcard from LA, on which he wrote 3 words: “Sun & Sprouts!!!” He taught me that a city is the only place where you can just walk and run into people.

Once I ran into him on the street In New York, randomly, on 11th Avenue in midtown, on a summer day, as I walked south and he walked north. I was in my 20s and, naturally, upset about something. I saw him and hugged him and started to cry, and he took me out for lunch and told me everything I needed to know to feel better. He'd been coming from some theater-related errand or meeting. He used to walk everywhere. He would probably have walked all the way home to 83rd street had it not been for our meeting. And he walked FAST.

My dad liked to relax, but he had no patience for dilly-dallying. Always on a mission, he would run like lightening for a train that he could easily catch walking, leave 6 hours early for a flight, dash through the streets of a city on vacation rather than waste time strolling. Once, on the streets of Amsterdam on vacation, we repeatedly asked him to please slow down. There was no rush. The 75th time we nagged him with this request he snapped, "If I were walking any slower I'd be walking backwards on my hands!"

His dogged sense of time management was matched by his consistent desire to help. He was always reaching out to help with whatever I was doing, whether or not the help was needed. Often in response to this gesture I’d say: "Dad! I've got it!" But he never stopped trying to lift the box, carry the bag, hold the door, adjust the project, or move the stack of papers somewhere better where it wouldn't get lost.

Here is an incomplete list of things my dad taught me, in no particular order, either by example or by a lifetime of consistent reminders or some combination of the two.

Quack like a duck.

Thumb wrestle.

Properly hammer a nail. Use a level. Make pilot holes with an awl. Patch and sand walls.

See a need, fill a need.

The golden rule.

Warm tones make the colors around them look cool. Cool tones make the colors around them look warm.

Snakes are not smart.

You know rice is done when you see little craters appear on the top.

Never feign disinterest.

Never feign interest.

Put something on your feet.

You cannot be warm without a hat.

When driving on a curvy road at night, save time by changing lanes so as to stay on the inside of the curve. He called this: "Using Pi."

France had no problem letting Hitler take all the Jews.

You should be able to go all the way up Amsterdam Avenue without stopping if you just slow down and drive with the green lights.* There is nothing like a good stage manager.

This last one rings so true. He valued efficiency -- CALM efficiency, even in the midst of chaos and absurdity. (And I certainly gave him my share of chaos!)

He loved anybody who was good at their job, no matter the job. He valued confidence and imagination. He blended the science of getting things done well with the art of, well, the things he got done. He got art done. He made his living making art, and he worked his butt off and gave me a great life and I sometimes need to stop and smack myself to remember how brave that was.

My dad was brave, he did great things, and through it all it could be said that mother and I had in my father a consummate stage manager at the center of our world.  

But back to quacking like a duck. This was his signature sound effect and it's what sealed his status as the family duck. I feel like it's my obligation to demonstrate his quack. [Quack]  Fortunately for his grandchildren, when Aphasia took much of his speech, it never took his quack.

There was another sound effect I'm afraid I cannot replicate and that is his water drop. He tried to teach me. It's the perfectly-time combination of a swift blow out the mouth and a tap on the cheek. It made and echoing "bloop" sound that I can best describe off the top of my head as the VH1 pop-up video sound.

But back to his voice. My dad had a voice that smiled. "Hi Ali, it's your dad," began every voicemail. "Helllo!!!" began every visit. He delivered dry quips, delighted in awful puns, had the sickest sense of humor. He earned the silence of a room any time he paused to choose his next words. He spoke with the perfect grammar of a gentleman, and he greatly preferred storytelling to small talk. As someone who cherished long stretches of focus and reading without distraction, he often spoke in the hoarse, breathy tones of a person who, perhaps, had not spoken out loud in several hours.

One of his most oft-used adjectives later in life was fabulous. "Just fabulous," he'd say, of everything from Derek Jeter to Opera to something cute my kids did. It was this funny, slightly out-of-character word for his generation and it became his highest stamp of approval.

My dad also dropped F-bombs like the best of them. I admit to taking some glee in the fact that he lived to see my then 3-year-old son shout, in front of the entire family at Thanksgiving, "open-da-fucking-door!"

Everyone laughed. I looked at my dad. He looked at me. I said, "I will take the blame for this . . . but we all know where I got it." And Marc smiled sheepishly and nodded.

That look of recognition, of amusement, of understanding -- that sly, conspiratorial grin -- served as my lifelong homing beacon for all that is right and good. Even as his face began to take on the mask of what we can probably attribute to Parkinsonism, that glimmer of the old Marc would come through. He relished being a grandpa, and regaled the kids with quacks and faces and games even when his body was well past its airplane hoisting days, and his voice could no longer sell Sandra Boynton.

During the last birthday party for my kids he would attend, I subjected this frail man who enjoys peace and quiet to an afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese. I believe, at least, he enjoyed the cake.  Frazzled at the end of the party, I stood at the ticket munching machines, which are, as you may know, these kiosks where you have to take your hundreds of loose strips of raffle-style tickets and feed them into a slot to redeem a voucher which you then take to a crowded counter to wait in line to buy plastic crap and candy. Dad likely had no idea about or interest in this nonsense system. At the time, I had asked someone to get him to the car and not worry about clean-up.

But as a big ball of loose Chuck E Cheese tickets fell from my hands to scatter all over the floor, and I stooped down to get them, there was dad's hand, from out of the crowd, with its tremor, struggling to pick up those tickets for me, because it was something he could do.

* * * 

You never expect to stand in the ER watching through the window as they attempt to keep alive the center of your world. But as I watched the doctor who oversaw the action we could not see behind the curtain, the doctor who spoke so calmly yet so intently, saying things like "OK, we have a pulse" . . . "next time let's try this" . . .  "remember, everyone, base-line state is non-verbal" . . . "can we bring down the noise level please" . . .  "OK here's what I want to try on the next one" . . .  "OK, does anybody have any ideas?" . . . as I stood watching this magician preside over what we would later learn was my father dying three times and being brought back to life, I turned to mother and said: "I hope Dad can hear this . . . because he would LOVE this guy."

I pictured my dad sitting at the table back home someday, fully-recovered, saying "that doctor who brought me back to life, he was JUST FABULOUS."

That doctor stage managed his final hours and gave him the gift of a peaceful and dignified goodbye. But it’s a brutally hard goodbye nonetheless.

I miss him exactly as he was in the end -- even had he not gotten "better," I would give anything to sit with him for years on end, to watch the glimmer in his eyes and the strength of his hand around mine stand in for the sound of his voice. But I also miss him as he was before the final years, and so did he.

"Dad, I miss you!" I said to him during one of our last phone calls. He said: "Oh, I miss me too." It wasn't self-pitying. It was witty and it was brave.

[annietipton]

Friends and Family,

Last year I celebrated 10 years at the company I work for. A decade. 120 months. 3,650 days. 29,200 hours on the clock. (1,752,000 seconds, in case you’re wondering about the math on that one.)

I’m thankful to say that I love my job. In addition to a paycheck, personal satisfaction, fulfilling working relationships, and professional challenges, after 10 years of service I gained an extra week of paid vacation. Sweet. An extra week at the beach? Sign me up.

But God poked my heart a bit—asking me to think about reserving part or all of this extra week for service to Him. He may not call me every year, but I felt His Spirit asking me to be willing and open to the possibility. So I started praying for an opportunity.

And then in early 2017, Deb got up in front of church and I knew He was speaking through her, directly to me. She and her husband, Adam, would lead a group to Mexico in July to offer help with a week of church camp put on by Vida Nueva (“New Life” in Spanish) Ministries in Piedras Negras, Mexico. It’s an organization and a place that our church has sent many teams over the years, and my heart beat faster as Deb gave a 30-second spiel about the trip.

I couldn’t wait till after the service to sign up. I walked out of the auditorium to the Welcome Center as Deb prayed before the offering and sermon and scrawled my name and email address on the top line of the sheet.

And now, 48 hours after returning from the trip, I am still in awe of the experience that God gave me. He went before me. He stood beside me. He returned with me. And I believe He allowed me to experience a tiny taste of what eternity with Him will be some day. I am changed for the better in so many ways.

First, I want to thank you. For your financial support. For your interest in the trip. For your prayers. For your specific prayers on specific days. I felt them. We as a mission team felt them. The camp staff and campers felt them:

·         Your prayers kept us safe in a country where safety isn’t guaranteed.

·         Your prayers kept us united in mind and in spirit.

·         Your prayers helped us form deep bonds that never would’ve formed otherwise.

·         Your prayers kept our planes on time, our connections made, our van trucking down the highway.

·         Your prayers helped us cross the border (both ways) without incident.

·         Your prayers kept us in good health.

·         Your prayers kept us encouraged and upbeat.

·         Your prayers helped us rest (or thrive on little rest).

·         Your prayers helped us connect with people who spoke little or no English.

·         Your prayers brought us back rejuvenated in body, mind, and spirit.

·         Your prayers helped us be a light in a world different than our own.

 We are humbled by your prayers, and I am so thankful to consider you part of my mission team.

The team from First Christian Church included 10 people—the oldest at 74, the youngest at 13, and the rest of us at varying decades between. Other than the teammates who are related to each other, the rest of us weren’t much more than acquaintances. You know who I mean. . .the people at church that you know by name and can say hi on a Sunday morning but haven’t had a real conversation with.

It took a mere 24 hours of travel and living with my team to realize that they were my people. God gave us a spirit of love and camaraderie unlike any that I’ve ever experienced.

Don’t get me wrong. We are all very different people. Varying ages, stages in life, personalities… Dover vs. New Phila (all in good fun)…but God blessed us with unity. With understanding. With an uncanny love of just being together and hanging out. I laughed more last week than I have laughed in the past year. (And that’s a lot of laughing, because I tend to find humor in everyday life.)

We worked together. We played together. We played with campers together. We ate together. We laughed. . .and laughed. . .and laughed. We studied scripture together. We prayed together. We slept in very tight quarters and took turns in a single shower. And we loved every minute of it.

We arrived at Vida Nueva on Saturday evening, and we got to experience church Sunday morning at the church next door. A good 90% of the service was in Spanish. The thing I loved most was the singing and seeing the lyrics on the screen. I took 3 years of Spanish in high school, so there were several words and phrases that I could translate. Although none of the songs were familiar to me, I sang about the freedom I have through the blood of Christ. I sang the promise that God takes away my fear. I sang for God to be glorified. I celebrated His promise of eternal life. In Spanish.

Camp started on Monday morning when 60 kids ages 5-12 arrived at the camp. The theme of the week was “Jesús es mi superheroé” (Jesus is my superhero), and the verse of the week was Juan (John) 3:16.

Part of my week was spent prepping and painting classrooms for the semester that will start at the school in a few weeks. There were 4 of us—all who happened to be 30-somethings—who became the painting crew. All-in-all we completed 4 large classrooms during the week. And we had a blast doing it. Maybe it was the paint fumes or the old-school Christian music (think Supertones and Audio Adrenaline) or the worship music that we sang at the top of our lungs. But it was also the hours of conversation in the midst of hard work—kneeling and climbing ladders and rolling and sweating and trying to stay hydrated—that bonded me to Renée, Jason, and Kris.

The other part of the week I got to work with kids in a couple of the camp classes—woodworking and crafts. Renée and I experienced a day and a half in a large, echo-ey classroom filled with about 20 kids hammering nails into boards. It was like a Mexican Santa’s Workshop with more sweat and fewer candy canes and cocoa. In my normal life, I legitimately may have put one of the hammers through my own skull just to make the noise stop, but there was something calming (and ridiculous—Renée and I laughed through the chaos) about the whole thing. We found joy in every task and in every moment we could.

Wednesday Deb asked us to lead her class for the day—crafts. So the 4 of us on the painting crew (with the help of the teenage Mexican leaders to translate) worked with kids to use fabric markers to color superhero-themed headbands and tiny superhero figures out of clothespins. The kids had a blast, and we did, too.

The food we ate at camp was mostly amazing and sometimes a little weird. I tried cactus for the first time, and I’d always choose the picante (spicy) option if we were given an option by the cooks. Some on our team were EXTREME lightweights in the spicy department, but I found the spice to be really delicious. Although, to be fair, they do tone it down a bit since they’re feeding kids. One lunch that was particularly strange included a side of pasta that was a mix of Chef-Boyardee ravioli, Spaghetti-os, and other types of similar noodles in sauce. I was hungry and it was good.

We got to meet and interact with so many of the kids and adult staff, and it was a blessing to be with them and help in whatever way we could. John used his skills and talent as an electrician to install new lighting in the campus’s outdoor gym. Adam helped manage and orchestrate detailed woodworking projects that the kids loved making and will hang on their walls at home for years. Deb and Donna helped the campers create fun and interesting crafts that they will cherish. Bailey (13) helped with childcare, was Adam’s shadow and helped him with lots of odd jobs, and her dry/deadpan sense of humor kept us laughing all week. We gave Ty (15) a hard time, saying that he didn’t work all week, but he did. He made connections with the kids and other teenage leaders that none of us adults could have. Jason was the big, fun, and goofy Americano that all the kids loved. Kris’s quiet, hardworking, patient, kind demeanor, and ever-present smile encouraged everyone around him. And Renée’s warm hugs and infectious laugh were freely given to campers throughout the week.

I am so blessed to call them friends.

I have a notebook full of my memories that I recorded throughout camp, and I will be happy to tell you more when I see you. But for now and for the end of this update, I want to leave you with something that God revealed to me mid-week:

We live in a fallen world. There is darkness, poverty, sin, pain, sadness, and despair all around. As believers, we know the end game—God will redeem this world when Jesus comes again, and we look forward to that day. But for a moment—for a week in the middle of July—God, in His great love for me, allowed me to glimpse a shadow of heaven. Of joyfully working for Him. Of unity with believers with white skin and darker skin. Of living in, radiating, and reflecting His love.

What a privilege. What an honor that He gives us opportunities to see that glimpse of eternity.

If you have served on a short-term mission—in the US, at a church camp, outside our borders, overseas—you understand what I’m talking about. If you have never taken the step out of your comfort zone to serve, I urge you to listen for God’s call. Don’t wait for heaven. Get the taste on your tongue and in your spirit now.

Tú hermana en Cristo (Your sister in Christ),

Annie

Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God.  Whenever I pray, I make my requests for all of you with joy, for you have been my partners in spreading the Good News about Christ from the time you first heard it until now. And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. Philippians 1:3–6 NLT

P.S. If you’d like to see more pictures and videos from the trip, you can find one at: https://youtu.be/i46s64GQzLY

 Follow Vida Nueva on Facebook and find even more pictures and videos from the week: https://www.facebook.com/vidanuevaministries/